Firebreak Calculus

Firebreak calculus.

Solara can't remember where she had heard of that. Maybe it had been Cillian, or even Lord Shaxx. In any case, that didn't matter. While she may have forgotten who told her, she'd never forget what it was.

"How much good could I do if I find the right place and fight until I die?"

It always struck her as such a quintessentially Titan way to think. Who else but a Titan would choose to make a last stand like that? Any Warlock worth their salt would have strategized out of trouble (or at the very least used their crazy space magic). And any self-respecting Hunter would have never been cornered in the first place. Only a Titan could have come up with that.

"How much good could I do if I find the right place and fight until I die?"

A Cabal slug whizzed over the broken pillar Solara used for cover. She flinched down as a reflex. A grenade landed next to her feet. She jumped back, only realizing in mid-air that she no longer had the ability to jump again. She landed awkwardly and had to scramble away behind a wall to escape the grenade blast. The explosion still thumped through her chest, and the heat of it still washed over her head.

Solara was in a bad spot.

Luckily, her radar still worked, so she had a rough idea where those damn rhinos were. She pulled her hand cannon from its holster and stood. Three shots in quick succession, followed by three sharp hisses and heavy thumps. Her radar showed all clear. For now. She knew the Cabal were everywhere in the City. It had been overrun. Worse than that. Something had happened.

She'd lost her Light.

She glanced up at the looming form of the Traveler, trapped in its new cage. Whatever the Cabal had done to it had severed her connection to the Light. After the shock had worn off, Guil warned her that he couldn't rez her. It was all he could do to heal her if she got injured.

Her next death would be final.

"How much good could I do if I find the right place and fight until I die?"

The Tower had fallen, the Vanguard had fled, and the City had been occupied. And here she was, smack dab in the middle of the City. The Cabal had the airspace locked down. Solara couldn't just fly away.

She glanced around, and saw a young boy huddled in the corner of an alley.

Even if she could just fly away, she wouldn't. She couldn't.

She walked over to help the boy. If anyone could find somewhere safe in the middle of Hell, it was a Hunter. The City had just become the new frontier, and Solara knew how to tame it.

Solara had never quite understood the Firebreak calculus. What good could someone do dying in one place? No single building or hill could be worth dying over. It was only now that she realized she'd been thinking too small.

Solara had found the right place. It was the City. All of it. Everywhere a civilian sat huddled in a corner, too scared to find safety, she'd find it for them. She would fight here until she died, and she prayed that would be enough.

##########

Of course Galina-5 had heard of the Firebreak calculus. Every Titan had at one point or another. The Firebreak order was famous (or infamous, depending who you asked) among Titans. Personally, she'd never been a believer in that philosophy. Then again, she'd never really been your average Titan to begin with.

Still, she'd be lying if she said she'd never thought about it before.

"How much good could I do if I find the right place and fight until I die?"

Galina had actually run the calculus a few times in the past. The calculations were shockingly complex, yet very straightforward. Quintessential Titan, huh? None of the locations had ever yielded a return that passed her personal threshold. She placed a high value on her life and all the things she could still do in it. A single key location in a single encounter didn't really stack up.

The City had been a close call. As soon as the attack hit, she started crunching the numbers in her head. Fighting through the Tower, the scales could have tipped either way. Once in the City itself, it was at the point where a rounding error could have changed the outcome. Then it happened.

Losing her Light threw a wrench into the numbers. Suddenly she only had one death to give, and that drastically altered the parameters of the calculations. Her life had so much value, and with only one left, that value approached infinity.

So Galina escaped the City with her life intact. She fled through Twilight Gap and got lucky enough to encounter a refugee column going to the European Dead Zone. She found herself at the Farm. She helped where she could, but without her Light she felt powerless. Worse than that. She felt afraid.

Then Cillian came along.

That… that bastard had somehow reconnected to the Light. He could do what literally no other Guardian could anymore: He could die. And die again. And again. And again. Until the fight was over.

And he started making a difference.

Galina eventually put aside the tiny sliver of resentment and started helping him where she could. She followed him to Titan. She followed him to Nessus. She followed him to Io.

And now here she was, at his side on the Almighty.

"How much good could I do if I find the right place and fight until I die?"

Without even realizing it, Galina had been crunching the numbers, running the calculations in her head. Time and time again she had made her decision without even thinking. She had found the right place. In the end, it was never a constant place. It was never a hill or a Tower or even a City.

It was at his side.

Cillian had given her hope, and come Hell or high water, she wanted to spread that hope with him. That was the good she could do. That was the best she could do. And she would do it until the moment she died.

##########

Adeen remembers exactly where she'd first heard of the Firebreak calculus. It had been two hours ago. One of the Titans on this raid team, Reverend-28, had mentioned it, almost offhandedly. Right before they stepped through the Ascendant portal in Oryx's court, he mentioned that this was likely the closest he'd get to finding that one spot.

She had asked him what he meant, and he told her about the calculus. Adeen chalked it up to your typical Titan mindset. Glory in battle, hold the line, and other militant sentiments.

Fighting through Oryx's throne world, she toyed with the thought. Would I do enough good dying here? And at each place, the answer always came back no. Dying here would do no good whatsoever. It would mean they had failed. Chewing through Oryx's court and, eventually, his daughters, Adeen knew that she was doing good by living, not dying.

Finally, here, standing before the immensity of the Taken King himself, a small part of her understood. The majority however, still knew that to win, to do good here, meant to live. Every death made Oryx more powerful, and she wouldn't give him one more.

The fight was brutal. Everything her team had painstakingly learned over their journey into Hell had come back into play. There was no room for error, no room for death here. A single death would kill them all.

When the final bombs went off, a cheer rose from everyone's lips. A wave of relief washed over Adeen. All her years studying the Hive had paid off. She had just killed their King.

Maybe that was the crux of the Firebreak calculus: It wasn't the dying that mattered. It was the fighting. It was the act of doing good by fighting until you died, not of dying after you fought.

"How much good could I do if I find the right place and fight until I die?"

Anywhere Adeen chose to fight was the right place, whether it was on Luna learning about the Hive or here on the Dreadnought killing the Taken King. Having something to fight for and the act of doing that fighting was the good she could do. In a real sense, it was the antithesis of the Sword Logic. Oryx fought and killed to better himself. Adeen fought and killed to better others.

She would fight for the rest of her life to defend humanity and the Last City. She only hoped that when she finally died, the good she had done would be enough.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed this self-indulgent fic of mine. I've always loved Destiny, and I recently remembered the obscure lore about the Firebreak Order of Titans that only shows up as item text for a piece of green armor in D1. I wanted to explore how my OC's would react to, and interpret, this concept of the Firebreak Calculus. Some of you might recognize Adeen from my other Destiny fic, and Solara and Galina are my other two OC's.

Anywho, that's it from me on this one. Till next time, ta ta!