"My employer can't have you rotting in a prison... He sees 'potential' in you..." the titan in yellow armor said as he unclipped a grenade from his chestplate and handed it to Logan. "This will sabotage those suppression mines."
Logan held onto the grenade, making sure it would not prematurely detonate in his face. "Who's your employer?..." he asked, growing slightly suspicious. Without a reply, the titan activated a customized cloaking system and vanished completely.
Logan gawked and shook his head. He faced the mine handed to him towards the suppression emitter on the ceiling of his cell; he stepped away and covered his eyes as the mine shot off three lightning bolts and fried the Light cancelling device. Immediately, Logan could feel his power flow through him again. He looked to his gauntlets as they roared back to life with dark, Void energy. He opened a portal and stepped out into the hallway.
"Ahem..." Nick growled.
"Yeah, what about us?" Angel asked.
"I can't go in there, I'll lose my powers again. But I will come back for you," Logan replied. He opened another portal, then he and Merlin vanished. Angel sat back down on her cot and pouted. After some time, Logan returned with card keys for the cells Angel and Nick were in. He swiped both cards and watched as the gates cracked open. "I told you I'd be back."
The team stepped into the hallway and through a portal that Logan conjured. They found themselves in an armory filled with their confiscated belongings. Logan took his sidearm and placed it on his back, then he took his staff and spun it around behind him and over his head. "Thank God my time in prison didn't make me rusty," he said sarcastically.
Nick picked up his fusion rifle, a small device that gave off a couple of pings, and his red and blue 3D glasses. "Oi! It appears Commander Arsehole is sending a team to where they believe Daggr might be at!"
Alice scanned Angel's jetpack, then transmatted it onto her. "They don't know what they are up against..." the glowing ghost said.
Immediately, Angel's helmet lit up with flight plans and controls for her plasteel wings. "We have to get to the City quickly!" Angel exclaimed. "Logan, can you make a portal to get us there?"
Logan froze with fear. He began shaking his head quickly. "No, no, no I can't... I can't even maintain a portal from the moon to Earth, how could I open one from the Asteroid Belt?!" The warlock placed his hands on his helmet as if he was trying to rip his hair out. "I can't do it! I can't do it! I can't! I can't!" Logan declared as he paced back and forth.
"Hey, what about how you jump through the air?..." Angel asked.
"What?..." Logan asked while looking up to her.
"You know how you open a bunch of portals for sky jumping? Can you do that?"
Logan began thinking. "With the distance between here and Earth, along with the maintainable distance between each portal, I would neeeed... around a thousand portals..." Logan said with instant frustration. "And if I channeled that much Void, I would freeze myself before we would make halfway. And we would all be stranded in space... or lost in the Void..."
"What 'bout a ship?" Nick asked.
"No, it'd be too slow. It would take roughly fifteen minutes to reach the City, and by then it would be too late," Logan rebuked.
"Aye... But a ship travels further t'an we would per second. We would travel further between portals so you wouldn't haf to make as many..." Nick continued.
Logan thought about the idea. "That is true... Merlin, run the numbers!"
"Silajir would only have to summon twenty-eight portals if flying at sub-light speed!" Merlin stated instantly.
"What about at light speed?" Angel asked.
"I couldn't do that. It'd be impossible for me to create a portal far enough ahead of the ship so that we would actually hit it..."
"So it's settled, t'en? We take a ship and fly it t'rough two dozen portals to reach t'e City..." Nick said.
"There's another problem: with my Light alone, I couldn't create a portal large enough to fit a whole ship..." Logan said, but not wholly disappointed.
"Then how are we gonna do this?" Angel asked, sounding defeated.
"I'm just goin' to need some help," Logan replied.
The team ran through the halls of the Vestian Outpost, seeking the hanger; Nick remembered seeing some ships there. The team reached a door labeled with "Hanger Bay" on it; the warlock swiped his security card and the door opened.
"Prisonerssss trying to escape, I see? Trying... but not successssful," a Fallen captain in a pale green garb and chainmail said. The aparratus on his mouth puffed out a bluish-white mist when he huffed. The Guardians froze in their tracks and stared at the Fallen with his hand on a shock pistol.
"Aye, Variks! Yer a reasonable beast! Ya haf to let us go, t'ere is trouble in t'e City!" Nick exclaimed. Variks squinted his eyes and gripped his spear tighter.
"We wouldn't be trying to escape otherwise, but the City is in danger. We have to do something," Logan said, trying to reason with the Eliksni.
"I have seen evil in many forms, yessss. Skolas, Oryx, many of your kind, but I see no evil in you... You were never prisoners to the Reef, but you will be at the mercy of your superiors, yessss." Variks stepped to the side and let the team pass.
The team rushed to the hanger and looked around. The only ship left was Variks' personal skiff. Nick smiled. "I have a bad feeling about this..." Logan said.
"No time! Let's go!" Angel exclaimed.
Everyone got in the skiff and launched from the hanger. Nick took the controls and navigated through the debris field from the various destroyed colony ships. Once they were clear, Nick pushed the throttle as far as it would go. Logan and Angel stood in the back, preparing their plan. The titaness placed her hands on Logan's shoulders and channeled her Void Light through him. The warlock went into a deep trance, gathering Void Light into his hands. Just beyond the ship, a massive hole in reality formed. Nick flew into it, then looked at his positioning system; they were several miles closer to Earth than they were mere seconds ago.
Logan gathered more Light into his hands, then conjured another portal ahead of the ship. He conjured another one, and another. After five portals, the warlock's fingers became numb and crisped over with ice. Nonetheless, he continued to conjure more gateways. The skiff continued to jump hundreds of miles at a time.
"Logan, you need to take a break," Angel demanded.
"N-n-not... yeeeet!" Logan said with chattering teeth. Ice crystals crawled up his arms and legs. Logan gritted his teeth and yelled as he summoned more portals for the skiff.
Finally, Earth was in view. "We're here! I'll fly us t'e rest of the way!" Nick shouted. Immediately, Angel let go of Logan's shoulder, then caught him as he started to collapse. Angel sat the shivering man down and threw her blanket, that Alice spawned, over him.
"Will he be warm once we get to the City?" Angel asked to Merlin.
"I... I think I have a spell that could instantly warm him up..." Merlin spawned a display in front of him and began reading the list. After closing hit, he waved his magic wand around and pointed it to Logan.
"Ow!" The warlock quickly sat up, steam lifting off of his body.
"Oh my... It worked..." Alice said, sounding impressed.
"Get ready! We're almost ovar t'e City!" Nick shouted. Angel climbed down into the drop-pods in the cabin of the skiff while Logan opened a human-sized portal into the Void and vanished.
Down in the City, several teams of Guardians surrounded an abandoned factory where the Vexified titan, responsible for the previous nights' murders, was believed to be hiding. "Watch the skies. New signature detected..." a hunter whispered over the radio. The titan, Hawkman, and his hunter copilot transmatted to their ship while the remaining Guardians broke open the doors.
"Yeeehaw!" Nick shouted as he zoomed over the City with the skiff. Unbeknownst to anyone else, Angel had jumped out and was soaring through the sky as well.
"It's a skiff! I repeat: it's a skiff! It's the Fallen!" Hawkman said as he perused the ship.
"Handle them, Hawkman! We can't let our current target escape!" Commander Zavala said over the channel.
"Copy that, Commander!" Hawkman boosted and chased the wild ship around the Traveler and away from the City.
[url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/231217123/0/0]CONTINUE TO PART 2[/url]
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I just have to... [spoiler]Variks twirls his Skiff keys on his finger. Tonight was the night he was planning on meeting that female Eliksni on Ceres. They'd met over a Reef online chat, and had been trying to meet face-to-face when the Taken had shown up. Even with the Queen's death, Variks found his conversations with her one of the highlights of his day. He opens his hanger and finds his Skiff missing. Later that night, he sees a news report from Earth, with his Skiff being chased over the skies of the City. Flying beside it was the titaness he let go. Variks flipped his coffee table and called them... ...well, it was an insult.[/spoiler] Bump!