DEAD GHOST

“I think I’ve got it.”

My Ghost sounds confident as I deploy it into the air behind old server racks and machinery in this forgotten radar station. It hovers around, lighting up the gloom around us, its illuminating beam finally landing on a yellow-striped asterisk of metal tangled up in dusty, rat-chewed cables. It is what remains of Cael’s allied Ghost.

In the heart of the room, I hear the crack and hiss as Niner swings his fist across a dreg’s armor and the grunt disintegrates into light. That trooper’s leader snarls what sounds to me like a promise for revenge. But arcs of luminous, energetic ether spray into the air from that Fallen Captain’s neck when Hearan’s sniper round finds its target.

“Captain’s down. Good shot, Hearan,” Niner says.

My Ghost turns to me, its digital eye blinking. I hold up a finger and it waits.

I pivot quick on my heel, level my hand cannon, and feel it buck with two trigger pulls. The Fallen vandal that had been creeping up behind me, disguised by bent light, flops to the concrete floor. “My radar is clear,” I report to the fireteam.

“Mine, too,” Niner says.

“Any word on the Ghost?” Hearan whispers into his mic.

“I’ve found it,” I say. “Back here.”

Hearan covers us, crouched by the door with his sniper rifle. Niner watches the stairs coming up from below. My Ghost activates what’s left of the power in Cael’s dead comrade and it effervesces into luminous dust, read by my Ghost’s systems as data.

“Anything?” I ask.

“Bits and pieces,” my Ghost says. “This Ghost was eavesdropping on Fallen communications in the area while … its light was ebbing out from … a wound dealt by a Fallen Baron. Sounds like the Fallen massed a small fleet of ships after looting old Chicago. Some of them are still there. Some headed for the Moon to recruit troops from the House of Exile, it sounds like. Others went to trade with the House of Winter? Whatever their plans are, the Baron has left Earth for … somewhere else. It’s sketchy. We should get this info back to the Tower.”

“Let’s go,” Hearan says.

“Just like that?” Niner asks. “What about Cael?”

“Cael’s dead,” Hearan said, his voice flat. “His Ghost, too.”

“And that’s it to you?”

“What do you want to do, Titan?”

“Find this Fallen Baron and — ”

“Not now. Not yet.”

“This Guardian is dead! He shouldn’t die for nothing.”

“I agree.”

“Then shouldn’t we — ”

“Get angry? I’m plenty angry, Titan. But one step at a time, yes? Let’s go.”

My Ghost interrupts them. “I can’t find any ships in range that could be a ketch suitable for a Baron. He’s not here.”

“Then that’s that,” I offer. “Let us return to orbit and report in.”

Hearan deploys his Ghost and transmits himself to his ship without another word. He was a current of light in the shadows, then he’s gone.

“Gyatri?” Niner says, walking toward me and my hovering Ghost.

“Yes?”

He deploys his Ghost, a robust, squarish model with red and blue markings. It hovers over his palm. “You know Hearan well, yeah?”

“I don’t think anyone knows him well.”

“He prefers to work alone.”

“He does now.”

“Say no more,” Niner says. “It’s not really any of my business.”

I shrug, because it comes across even through the armor.

“I hope the Baron is our business,” Niner’s Ghost offers. “I don’t like the idea of it out there. Scheming.”

“Me neither,” my Ghost says.

Niner looks from his Ghost to mine, asking “Do all you Ghosts have the same voice?”

The Ghosts glance at each other. I grin inside my helmet as I start the transmat cycle to beam into my ship. “We should go.”

As we dissipate into light, bound for our own ships, I hear his Ghost say, “What? I like my voice.”