The Ghost - I think of it as a she, even though her voice is synthesized masculine - hovers at the edge of the treeline. It took some convincing, but I got it to let me paint its shell matte black so it doesn't glint so much in the afternoon light. Could be an afternoon on Venus with the acid rain sizzling on my shoulders, or back on Earth where the twilight shrinks behind the mountains and pillars of carbonized steel. It doesn't matter what world I'm on, there is always an afternoon and the Ghost, she blazes in it like the optics of a badly angled scope. She pulses, collapses in on herself and traces across the leaf mold, low to the ground, "You know, we could be waiting here forever." "They'll come," I reply - the interlocking plates of my helmet unsealed and folded back across the crown of my head. The air is cold, clean, tastes of water - Earth air - and it feels good not to need a respirator. I tried this one on Mars and couldn't get the blood-taste out of my mouth for two days. But on Earth, I just sit back against the crooked back of a tree and chew on grass and breathe. The Ghost is restless and spins about, agitated, ready to be off elsewhere, a passenger to another fight - gathering her proxy data to fill up the shattered mind of her beloved Traveler. "Those Fallen transmissions could have meant anything." "But they meant here, today, on this hour," I reply casually and flick my lip-sodden grass stem at her. "Is this because I broke their encryption and you didn't?" The Ghost tilts her topmost prongs, furrowing after a fashion, "That's preposterous." I smile, needling her a bit with the expression, "Admit it, you're embarrassed." "You got lucky," She turns away, huffy and sullen. "And we don't even know if it was a real transmission." Disconnected from the ground, hovering over it, The Ghost doesn't feel the shudder of a nearby compression-shock rise up out of the ground. The intention-sensors in my helmet feel me tense and it closes itself down across my scalp - sealing me in, tomb-like until the HUD connects and flashes to life. I transmat a scout-carbine that I've named Thomas Aquinas and leap up into the fork of the tree overhead before The Ghost turns around to continue haranguing me with her defensiveness, "And even if it is a real transmission, don't you think we should have a fireteam...where did you go?" "Shhhh," I hush her from above, holding a single finger in front of my respirator, "They're here." The Ghost looks up then spins, casting her sensors around the forest, "Where?" I've already jumped a second time and landed amongst the topmost branches where after a few moments of processing, the adaptive camo patterns out the canopy across my armor until I melt away into a ripple. I use Thomas' highest power optics to scan to the south-east across the wounds of an old battlefield, one time has covered with grass and scrub like scar tissue. Near a rusting hulk about two klicks out, the convoy has crawled into view over a ridge. One walker, a of squad of vandals and their dreg subordinates on foot all followed by three pikes in a line on the rear flank. The Captain, clad in the white tabbard of The House of Ice, sits astride the walker's main gun - lounging like some kind of arrogant princeling. The Ghost rises up just to the right of my knee and scans, "House of Ice, an offshoot of Draksis' former House. They're a long way from Venus." "Astute, as always," I tell her and drop down before the adaptive field loses its coherency, sliding branch-to-branch until I alight down on the ground. "With the House of Devils fighting a two front war with the Hive and us, they're making a play to make a name for themselves." "By doing what?" The Ghost slides down and assimilates into my armor-interface, her voice now playing through the ambient amplifiers. "Claiming something that the House of Devils is too preoccupied to. They'll disgrace the Devils and gain esteem - maybe even legitimate standing." I dart through the trees and settle at the edge of the wood where I won't be noticed, with or without camouflage. "But what are trying to claim?" "I don't know, but it's probably worth preventing if they've come this far to get it." The column of fallen move slowly across the battlefield, climbing in and our of furrows that look like they were dredged up by the claws of some ancient behemoth, "Something from The Archive?" "Maybe - they did have servitors mucking around in the systems for a few minutes before we stopped them," I consider the zettabyes of data The Ghost recovered from The Archive on Venus. Even if the fallen only recovered a fraction of it, they probably got something worthwhile, and when The House of Winter fell...that data went to whoever was smart enough to grab it. "Cross-reference the Archive data with these coordinates and see if you come up with anything." "Earth Battle referred to as Bellwater Fields between Exo rebels and a coalition force of humans, " The Ghost says as she distills the contents down into something useful. "There is a reference to a weapons platform used in the battle by the Exos that churned up the earth and sliced through armor plating like it wasn't there. It was some kind of weaponized quantum tech - it separated matter at the molecular level by altering the behavior of entangled particles." "Sounds fecking lovely," I sigh, "What happened to it." "Reports indicate it was hit during the battle, but never recovered," says The Ghost. "Seems like we know what they're looking for then," I sigh. The ghost seems hopeful, "It's not to late to call in backup."