I opened my eyes to the dark interior of the ship; all the lights broken and sparks occasionally shooting out of broken electrical lines. The alarms had finally stopped. My seat harness had mostly stayed intact and I undid the buckle, slipping out of the seat. I looked around and spotted Cassie, Jason, and Claire still unconscious in their seats. Maxwell's seat had been closest to the front of the ship, and the harness had broken. I looked down to see his body at what was left of the front of the ship; the harness must've broken on impact and his limbs now shot out at unnatural angles, his head was pressed against the warped hull of the ship, helmet completely shattered at the point of impact and blood flowing out onto the floor. Most of the front of the ship was gone, broken away at impact, but a part of the -blam!- was still there, including the pilot's seat with Derick's crushed and mangled body. The others began to stir in their seats. "Guardians down," I called. A Ghost appeared above Maxwell's body; it was his own. It drifted around in shaky circles for a moment, seeming a little disoriented, then expanded the pieces of its shell around it and lit the room up with a blue light. After gathering energy for a moment it slammed the pieces of its shell back against it and Maxwell's body suddenly disappeared and then reappeared on the ground nearby on his hands and knees, his armor all intact again and limbs in proper positions. "Ugh," he moaned nauseously, "Not a pleasant landing." I nodded to myself, glad that Maxwell's Ghost had gotten him back on his feet and that everyone one else was now getting up from their seats. But Derick's Ghost was nowhere to be seen. Cassie started looking around as I had and noticed that Derick wasn't among us. "Where's our pilot?" She asked. "His Ghost hasn't shown up. I advise not looking at the -blam!- if your stomach's upset from the crash," I told her, putting a hand to my queasy stomach as the image of his body filled my vision again. She took my advice and didn't look, as did everyone else who heard. Maxwell, unfortunately, did not since he was at the front, only several feet away from what remained of Derick. He oriented himself and ended up glancing over to where the -blam!- used to be, only to turn back and throw off his helmet to spew chunks on the floor. "Let's see where we landed," I suggested. Everyone moved to the back of the ship where the bay door had busted open, Maxwell following slowly behind. Outside it was still nearly pitch black, the only sources of light being stars and sparks from the ship. We had landed on the current dark side of the Moon, nowhere near the transmat zone when we had been hit. It was barren; not even Golden Age human settlements could be seen amongst the rocks and craters. I had been told that before the Traveler came to our system the Moon had almost no atmosphere, so you couldn't breathe there or survive without thermal regulation, and temperatures dropped to points where you would freeze instantly on the dark side of the Moon. Stupid Warlocks trying to scare me with their facts just because they think Titans are dumb; the Moon is different now anyway. We stood up there for a few moments, all looking for any sign of movement or structure. Jason broke the silence. "Look!" He exclaimed, pointing a short ways off. A Ghost was floating to us quickly above the rocks. We waited patiently until it made it over and stopped among us. It was Derick's Ghost. "Apologies for being late. I couldn't stay inside his body's busted armor matrix and had to transmat myself out of the ship for safety," it explained, "Where is he?" We all pointed to the ship and it floated straight on in without hesitation. After a moment a blue glow came from the Ghost within and faded away shortly. After another few seconds of waiting, Derick emerged from the wreckage, inspecting his body and armor as he walked. "Glad to see you out of pancake form," I joked weakly, again regretting the decision to bring up the image of his body in my mind. "I'm glad to see everyone turned out fine," Derick said soberly, "But we'll either have to hitchhike or steal a new ride to get home now." "We'll work something out," Claire said positively. "Let's move before something unfriendly finds us," I urged, ready to leave now. "Transmat point is that way," Derick said, pointing at a slight angle away from the direction the ship had hit the ground at. Everyone nodded in agreement and we all pulled out our weapons as the trek began. I think we walked for a couple hours without anything happening, just going by rock after rock and around crater after crater, only able to see by the beams of light our Ghosts shone from their eyes for us. Then a waypoint appeared on my visor display. Everyone stopped simultaneously and Maxwell asked, "Are you all getting this?" "Yeah," a few of us answered simultaneously, the others just nodding. "It's the target bounty you acquired earlier, we've come into a close enough range to track the threat," Cassie's Ghost told us. "It's a start, let's follow it," Derick said, starting to lead the way. Seeing how Derick was the pilot we were all kind of used to him leading and directing us. If our team had a leader, it would be him. We all followed the waypoint for a little while and in the distance a couple of large ridges could be seen jutting above the horizon line, clouds of an odd gas spewing out of it. "What the heck is going on there?" I inquired. My ghost turned off its light and looked for a moment, then turned the light back on and continued to illuminate my path. "The Hive have hallowed out the Moon, creating tunnels miles long and deep below the surface. We don't know the extent of these underground caverns, but some foul residue of their tunneling and rituals breaks through the Moon's surface in places and leaves the surface scarred," it answered, a touch of sorrow for the doomed space rock seeping into its voice. "Oh..." I mumbled, no words coming to me for a response. The waypoint suddenly changed the direction it was pointing and all our heads automatically swiveled after it. To our right lay a couple of small human structures, sections of walls laying on the ground in rubble and one tilted at an angle because a section of the surface beneath had pushed up out of the ground, probably from the Hive landscaping project. The waypoint directed us underneath the protruding section of ground and my Ghost shone its light in so I could see that the ground had been pushed up to create a tunnel coming out from under the buildings and leading beneath the surface. I looked up at the buildings; in the dark I couldn't see much, but they seemed like small living quarters, probably just placed as an outpost to keep an eye on the activity in this wasteland. Not even a pity that the Hive had shoved it out of the way to make their tunnel. "C'mon," I said, walking downward, "I'd rather take my chances with the Hive and this lead than wander aimlessly up here." The others muttered in agreement and followed, keeping guns raised and ready. A few minutes in and nothing but tunnel; not even one of those eerie green Hive lanterns among the rocks to vary the view or the chattering of a Thrall's teeth added to the sounds of our footsteps. "Well this is bori- WHOA!" I began to complain, but my foot met open air and I began to fall. A hand caught me by the collar of my chest plate and pulled me back onto solid ground. I landed on my butt and quickly scooted backwards from the edge, looking up to see that Derick had caught me. "Where did that come from?!" I asked, still alarmed. Everyone turned from me back to the drop and leaned forward to look. I got up and looked, too. The path had suddenly ended and dropped off into a pit that the bottom of could not be seen. The chasm stretched off to either side as far as the eye could see and at close scrutiny the opposite wall could be seen a couple hundred meters away. "An abyss," Derick stated plainly. "It's massive," Claire mumbled in awe. "So where did it come from, or in other words, how did we not see it?!" I asked again. Cassie inspected the tunnel walls. "Optical illusion," she stated, "In the darkness we couldn't properly measure the depth of the rocks on the opposite wall." I sighed at that. Nearly done in by my own eyes. "Well where do we go now?" Maxwell asked. I felt like that question was mostly directed at Carrie. Hopelessly in love. Derick looked around. "Stairs," he said, pointing to a little path sticking out of the trench wall just outside the mouth of the tunnel and to the left, slanting down deeper into the abyss. It actually looked like it was in good condition, sticking out a few feet and only crumbling in a few places. We walked down single file, staying close to the wall just in case. A feeling that had been creeping at that back of my mind since entering the tunnel finally formed into a thought: it was somehow scarier that we were going through Hive territory in the pitch black with no sign of the Hive presence at all than it would be to be fighting our way through Hive in these underground pathways. I shuddered. What was going on? __________________________________ Link to part 1: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/217378556/0/0 Link to part 3: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/217378787/0/0 Master post: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/217384398/0/0