#trinity ghoul

“My baby’s all tuned up.”

“Tuned up? Looks like a completely new bow.”

“I guess I did a pretty thorough rework.”

“More like a rebuild. Is there anything you didn’t replace?”

“Actually didn’t have to fully replace much at all. Most of the major components were there, under the somewhat messy rigging this thing had when it came to me. Did put a new casing on, though, so I suppose outwardly it looks quite different.”

“It does indeed. And how’d it turn out?”

“Oh, it’s a thing of beauty. Truly.”

“Had a chance to test it yet?”

“Yes, yes. I’ve still been out in the field with it through the whole process, been getting plenty of testing done all the way through.”

“Oh, really? How’s it done?”

“Well, I put a kill tracker on it when I started the upgrade, and now it’s at... ah. Coming up on 60K now.”

“Hm? That’s 60K as in... sixty thousand?”

“Yeah.”

“Since you... began fixing it up? Not a lifetime total from before?”

“No, sadly. Didn’t have the counter on before.”

“And that’s since you started upgrading it... when?”

“Oh, uh... last year—guess it was seven, eight months ago.”

“That’s... pretty extensive testing.”

“Had to put it through its paces.”

“By taking out a small army? Now I really understand why you call that thing a ghoul.”

“...It wasn’t all at once.”

I. The Whisky II. The Scream III. The Plan  IV. The Corsair

V. The Ambuscade

A few days later, the Titan and the Hunter perched atop a ridge overlooking a hollow gulch in a desolate asteroid loosely anchored to the Tangled Shore. The eerie purple glow of the Reef’s particulate shroud played off the surfaces of their armor, sketching them in spare lines of dim light against a canvas of dusty, dead rock. The Hunter lay prone, looking through the scope of a long rifle. The opposing curves of a compound combat bow lay beside him. The Titan sat out of sight, back to an outcropping, watching the visual feed from the sniper rifle’s scope.

“This must be the place, huh?” Radiant-6 repeated what Mardin had declared when they arrived. “You sure your Corsair friend got it right?”

“Darthula was very specific,” Mardin answered, the glassy, featureless faceplate of his Awoken-made casque held steady to the rifle’s eyepiece. “She was certain about the place. Unfortunately she couldn’t be precise about the time. But they’ll be here... sooner or later.”

Radiant grunted dubiously. Xie trusted Mardin, and the Hunter trusted his Corsair acquaintance, but details about the actual operations of Spider’s wide-ranging business were difficult to come by at all. More often than not, anyone claiming to know where or when Spider’s underlings planned to do anything was looking to scam glimmer from know-nothing amateurs. The information from Darthula the Corsair could turn out to be bogus, no matter how earnestly given in response to Mardin’s hunterly charms, without any failure of trust involved.

“There,” Mardin said, his voice falling low. “Two o’ clock.”

Then again, Darthula the Corsair might’ve come through for them.

Radiant watched the feed from the scope, processed into spectral input xie could more readily parse. The field of view panned right and slightly upward, till the crosshairs framed the unmistakable outline of a skiff as it hove over the lip of the asteroid’s small horizon.

“This them?” xie asked. The skiff bore no house markings, but houseless Eliksni weren’t necessarily Spider’s.

Mardin kept the scope on the skiff as it slid into the gulch, heedless of the two observing Guardians. “We’ll know in a moment.”

The skiff settled into a low hover over the bottom of the gulch, and a moment later the flash of transmat materialization below it silhouetted the ship’s rounded, spiny hull. Almost in the same instant, it pulled up sharply and began accelerating away, then vanished with a shimmer as its stealth came online.

Radiant could make out three dregs and a vandal standing with a modest load of cargo crates. Each container’s sides were marked with a rounded triangle cut by three short, angled bands.

“Those’re our lads,” Mardin confirmed, “with fresh goods from New Monarchy, as promised. Hmph—perhaps we should take them out next.”

“I’ve heard worse ideas. You got ‘em?”

“Yeah, I got ‘em.” Mardin lay down the rifle and rose to a crouch, taking up his bow and toggling a switch on the grip that let its complex sights snap open wide with a click. He selected an extra-long, thin arrow from the quiver on his thigh and held it out delicately toward Radiant-6. “Gimme a little zap, will you?”

The Exo felt inward for the spark of the Traveler’s gift and found it immediately, steady and sure. Xie clenched a fist, summoning up a tiny spurt of arc Light. When xie reached out and opened xir hand, the arc charge eagerly leapt from xir fingers and entwined itself excitedly around the arrow.

“Thank you,” the Hunter said, nocking the sparking arrow and raising the bow as he drew it. The bow’s cams whined grimly as the bowstring ran through them, then fell silent as it grew taut. Mardin went entirely still, except for the slight rustle of his tattered cloak in the Reef wind. The moment sat heavy and quiet.

“Now listen close, and listen good. You profited from a whole lot of injustice for a long, long time, and I saw it happen. Maybe you thought it was behind you, that everybody put it out of mind—but I remember. I know what you did, how you wrang your wealth from people stuck on the Shore with nowhere else to go. I see you still living large off it today, acting respectable like every last goddamn chit of glimmer you spend isn’t blood money.

“I know, though—and I’m gonna make sure everybody else remembers. And as for your business now: I’m gonna rain so much thunder on you that your footprints won’t even be left behind, and I’m gonna throw those bolts from so far away you’ll never see ‘em coming. You’ll never know when or where my lightning’s gonna fly next. You can send armies after me, but trust me, I’ll strike the lot of ‘em down with a single draw. And when that’s done—when all your goons and allies abandon you or are vaporized, when everything you built with the riches you stole outta people gets knocked down, when the last structure of oppression you set up to keep yourself comfortable falls apart—then I’m coming for you. I’m gonna be a goddamn ghoul, hunting and haunting you for the rest of your cursed days.

“You’ll never feel safe. Every place you try to rest, every spot you look to find refuge, every hidey-hole you think you’ve made secure—I’ll turn every last one to glass. In the end, you’ll find yourself out in the open, nowhere left to go. You won’t see me, but I’ll be there. You won’t know where the last arrow comes from, but maybe you’ll hear it singing in the air—just for a moment.”