AN: sorry about the wait once again. I've had lots going on in my personal life(mostly good, so no need to worry :D) but hopefully I'll be back to work soon!

Enjoy Guardians.

Mark's head pounded, and his lungs burned as he sprinted towards the wrecked colony ship. He met no resistance as he ran. It seemed as though in his outburst he killed too many hive or they ordered a retreat. It was also possible, they waited inside the ship to ambush him. Either way, he wasn't going to take any chances.

As he approached the ship's rusted hull, its name came clearly into view. USS Final Frontier adorned its crew module in bright, white letters along with a flag bearing thirteen stripes and one large star, surrounded by the words Earth, Luna, and Mercury, no doubt the planets the nation that built this ship laid claim.

A memory flashed through his mind at the sight of the flag. This memory was far more vivid than the last few. He remembered walking onto a ship much larger than this one, a ship with hangar bays and orbital deployment shoots designed to carry ships, men, and material no one alive today had ever seen. He remembered looking down the hallway and seeing a young, redheaded woman standing next to a computer console, feverishly typing in commands and cataloging information from a manifest she held in her off hand.

As he approached, she didn't slow down. Her eyes were fixed tightly on the screen in front of her. She didn't notice his presence until he was standing right next to her.

"Lieutenant," he said dryly, hoping to get her attention.

The sound of his voice so close to her caused her eyes to widen as she jumped in surprise and turned to face him. She frantically sat down the manifest she was holding and smoothed the wrinkled blue fabric of her digital camouflage uniform. Her floundering unfolded a name tape and her rank. Mark's eyes scanned it quickly: Lieutenant Clearwater. Mark's heart skipped a beat. He quickly glanced to the patch on her shoulder; USNEXOWARCOM, or United States Navy Exoatmospheric Warfare Command…Amanda!

She brushed her grease covered red hair away from her face revealing a set of deep, green eyes that were bloodshot with exhaustion yet full of life, and delicate facial features that seemed out of place with her athletic build. She smiled at him and extended a hand.

"Staff Sergeant Kelly," she said, her grip soft and her eyes looking everywhere but his face. "Sorry about the mess, it's a pleasure to meet you."

Mark paused for a moment and let out a small laugh before accepting her hand.

"Likewise," he said with a smile. "May I ask why I'm meeting you today?"

Amanda returned to her computer and began typing furiously, dodging the question like it was hot plasma her shoulders tensed and her hands pressed down flat onto the keyboard, leaving a mangled collection of letters on the screen, that she

then quickly erased. Whatever it was, she didn't want him to know, but it clearly wasn't anything small. A ship of this size has not been brought into active service for nearly twenty years. Not since the traveler arrived in the solar system.

The only conflicts Mark was during humanity's so called Golden Age, were series of brush fire wars and a few large scale terrorist movements, most of which were handled by bomber strikes and a few Green Berets like himself. They were one of the last true fighting forces left. Most of humanity's other armies were just for show and threats nowadays. Arms races long since turned to cold wars.

He raised an eyebrow at her apprehension.

"Lieutenant?" He asked one more time.

She looked him in the eyes and sighed before moving over to a nearby viewport, and gesturing for him to stand next to her.

"Everything I'm about to tell you is classified," she said apprehensively. "You know that, right?"

Mark laughed and smiled.

"Ninety percent of my life is classified, ma'am."

He meant the comment as a joke, and maybe he was reading too much into her dark and expressive eyes, but Amanda seemed to see the sad truth in it regardless. She dragged her hands across the glass of the viewport and pulled up a navigational map of the solar system, before zooming in on a small civilian outpost on Pluto, the edge of humanity's expansion into the universe.

"This is Pioneer station," she said while pointing to it, "A couple of months ago it started to detect strange energy readings headed our way from outside the solar system, something akin to a lightning storm. We thought it might be some kind of small collection of dust propelled through the ISM by stellar winds, but upon closer inspection, however, we discovered it was the signature of a group of impulse drives using crude, electromagnetic propulsion systems that are also somehow powerful enough for intergalactic travel.

Mark nodded, hoping he understood all the important parts of that. He knew that intergalactic travel was impossible, even with all that humanity achieved. The only thing known to have entered this system made by anything other than nature was the Traveler, and it did little by way of talking in all its time in the Sol System. Maybe it had something to do with this?

Amanda scanned his eyes and shook her head, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking, before returning to the screen.

"I know what you're thinking. It has to be related to the traveler," she said with a hint of disdain. "That's what everyone I've told about it seems to think. I barely managed to convince the Joint Chiefs of Staff otherwise."

The JCS? Mark considered the Lieutenant's words. If that were true, then she's got friends in high places. If the JCS were personally involved in this, that meant this might be a first contact scenario, something Green Berets like him trained for since the Traveler arrived. Until now, however, humanity's concern about running into another alien race were never realized.

Amanda didn't linger on that shocking revelation for long, however.

She pointed to the grainy image from pioneer station of what was approaching them, taking particular care to note the showers of sparks and electricity that were pouring from what seem liked a formation of ships.

"The propulsion technology of this craft match nothing we've seen from the Traveler. They're crude, but they get the job done with impressive efficiency. I hope it's nothing, and that this will be no sweat off all our backs, but if it isn't..." She said with a sense of foreboding.

He served with people like her before, and he could clearly tell that running through her mind at a million miles a second were the anxious thoughts that usually went along with people that possessed her level of intelligence. They were always analyzing, reanalyzing, and invariably over analyzing every situation and thinking light years ahead of the here and now. A lot of those men and women wound up dead, but some only needed a little bit of grounding to get them through the mission at hand.

"I think we can handle it, ma'am," he said in a calm tone with a reassuring smile.

She peeled her head from its resting position on the console in front of her, her messy red hair falling in front of her face as she reached for a cup of coffee next to her and finished it in one go. She closed her eyes for a moment and then looked back at him with a smile.

"You special forces types, always so damn optimistic," she said with a laugh. "Glad to have you."

The memory ended on Amanda's smiling face, framed by stark white bulkheads and tousled red hair. He felt relieved to see someone so important to him so happy. It was a sight he hadn't seen in a long time. Maybe even longer than he realized.

It couldn't last long, though. He ignored it and stay focused as he over to breach the colony ship. He didn't need any distractions as he moved to blow the place wide open and make an entrance. He ran to the cargo module of the spacecraft, which consisted of a large, open section at the center of its body. If the device he was looking for was still here, this would be where it was stored.

When he reached the crew escape hatch on the module's side, he found that the Hive and the Taken welded it shut from the inside with brilliant solar light. Seeing no quiet way to open a door with this much reinforcement, Mark took a few steps backward and prepared for a shoulder charge

He left at the door at full speed, before ramming his shoulder headlong into the door. The force of hundreds of pounds of powered armor and the energy applied to it impacted the door and made a tremendous sound as metal sheared from metal and the door was ripped from its hinges, landing several yards inside the spacecraft.

Mark stumbled from the force, and the sudden lack of anything to stop him once the door gave way, but he managed to recover by tucking into a roll and avoided hitting a nearby bulkhead. Once he had his head back on his shoulders, he sprang to his feet and scanned the room, rifle at the ready.

He nearly dropped it, however, when his eyes met the room before him. The cargo module of the ship was cavernous, leaving a wide open space filled with waist deep sand and punctuated by a few shafts of light coming from the ceiling. It was far from empty, hoever, because every inch of available space was taken up by a mix of Hive Thrall and Taken Thrall.

Mark's mind all but froze. A part of him considered laying on the trigger of his rifle and hoping to take out enough of them to give his fist of havoc time to recharge, but his mind was smart enough to realize the futility of this idea. He spun on one foot and tried to jump clear of the module before the Thrall inevitably came pouring through. His foot caught on the hatch, causing him to stumble and fall on his face.

Mark figured that by this point any hope of running was dashed. He rolled onto his back. With his rifle aimed at the hatch, he might catch a few Thrall as they came through. They never came.

He held his shaking hands steady, with his weapon pressed firmly to his shoulder as he waited and waited and waited for his death. After a moment he dug his feet into the sand and desperately pushed himself back before staggering to his feet and clinging to the side of the ship, but still, no Thrall came through.

"What in the hell?" He wondered.

He eventually built up the courage to look in through the hatch and see what was going on. He swept his rifle over the hatch, but no Thrall opposed him. Looking back further into the fuselage of the spacecraft, he found where all the Thrall disappeared to. The Thrall weren't massing for an attack, they were gathering for a retreat. A large portal appeared in the center of the decrepit ship, and the thousand plus Thrall began to file back through it like a stream of water.

Mark fired angrily into the crowd of Thrall, dropping two mags of ammo into their backs. He cursed them for what they did to Li, and Amanda. He dropped maybe fifteen or so Thrall before he decided it was useless. They didn't have any interest in him. The loss of a few of their brethren made no difference to them. They would follow orders to the letter.

Mark describe to crouch and wait for the Thrall to leave so he could pick up the pieces of what was left of the ship. Five or so minutes later the last Thrall stumbled through the portal. It sealed shut behind them and disappeared. The sickly, green glow of the portal went with it, leaving the Martian light filtering through the many cracks in its rusted hull as the ship's only light source.

He took a moment to survey the ship, and immediately regretted his decision. From the inside, it was even more of a wreck than it was from the outside. The ship appeared to have been stripped down to begin with so that it could reach Mars faster without all the dead weight. This left little structural support to keep it together through the years. Nearly every beam that supported the craft was rusted through. Miraculously, however, live, sparking wires dangled from the ceiling. Sealed in another compartment, the ship's reactor must have survived the crash and the years of being degraded. That meant that the ship's computer systems still worked, and if one place in the world had information on Amanda, it was here.

Mark waded through the waist deep sand that occupied the fuselage towards a bank of computers on the other side. He flicked his palm open, and his ghost materialized. Without even having to guide it, the small AI silently began to work on the booting up the computer. Miraculously, it snapped to life the moment the ghost began to interact with it. The beam of manipulated photons the ghosts worked with could perform miracles, but given the dilapidated state of this computer, Mark was still impressed.

He reached up and wiped the back of his hand over one of its monitors, freeing the dust and rust from it and revealing a login screen. The ghost quickly guessed the password using a simple algorithm, and the computer opened for Mark to use.

He reached forward and gingerly pressed one of the old, plastic keys. When it clicked and didn't break, he began to sift through the ship's files. Most of it was telemetry and navigational data along with weapons targeting algorithms, but miraculously, a few video files survived. He scrolled through a list of security recordings for this very room of the ship, starting with a few days after it left Earth.

Back then, the ship looked a whole helluva lot better than it did now. Its walls were a sharp, prototype white in color, with harsh, white light illuminating it. Banks of computers, racks of weapons, scientific equipment, cryo pods, and even a small Armored personnel carrier secured to a pallet all adorned the cargo bay, packed nearly and tied down. What caught Mark's eye, however, was the device in the center of the room. It was the Vex device, the one he came here for. The device, at one point, was only feet from where he was right now. Now it was missing once again like it always seemed to be.

Mark decided to play the recording at an extremely fast pace.

As the crew raced about the ship in the high-speed video, they quickly decided all of the equipment they brought with them would be worthless if it slowed their trip to Mars. Weapons went first, then scientific equipment, then unnecessary computers. The turret and armor plates were cut off the APC, and it was converted into a flatbed. The Vex device was loaded onto it by a forklift and secured.

Immediately afterward, the forklift was also thrown from the aircraft.

The center of the ship was now adorned with almost nothing. Only the cryo pods, the computer terminal he was currently watching the recording on, and a pile of military equipment remained in the hold. The military equipment consisted of a few rifles, several boxes of ammunition, and a few heavy machine guns all welded to mounts on various point of the APC.

To Mark, it looked like the Marines stationed on the ship set the vehicle up for a suicide mission. It looked as though they planned to use the vehicle to charge the Black Garden. Maybe they hoped that they would make it through to the other side and save humanity by activating the device. The only question was whether or not they succeeded.

If they did, he might never see Amanda again. If they didn't, the result may be the same.

He continued to jump through the recording, this time right up to the point where they were about to enter the natural atmosphere. The ship looked to be going completely haywire as red warning lights flashed in all directions. Mark paused the video and zoomed in on one of the consoles the technicians were using.

WARNING! It said in all caps, multiple contacts off the port side. Cabal Devastator class vessels. Recommend immediate evasive action.

Mark sighed. So at least he knew how the mission ended. There was no way a simple colony ship could survive an assault by the armada of Cabal craft that claimed the surface of Mars, however, many thousands of years ago. He hoped against hope that Amanda didn't die in the crash.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he watched as she dashed across the camera's field of view. She and a group of assorted personnel were all making for the cryopods. One by one they all sealed themselves into their caskets and waited for the ship to descend to the surface of Mars as a smoking wreck.

Amanda checked each of the pods personally before entering her own. He couldn't make out the details in the feed, but he swore he saw her sob before stepping into the pod and sealing herself in. The pod barely had time to freeze before the atmosphere inside the ship began to heat red hot, and then the feed cut, presumably as it hit the surface of the planet.

Without even searching for any more information Mark immediately spun around and began to check for anything he saw in the video. The cryopods, the weapons, the APC. All of them were gone. The only thing left in this module was sand and a few spilled containers that no longer held anything. Did the Cabal scavenge it all? Did the hive steal it? Did they have Amanda's body and whatever she was transporting?

He got his answer as he spun around to look back at the computer. Two more files were marked as priority aside from the main surveillance feed. One looked to be an unmarked video file transmitted to the ship from an external source post-crash, and the other was a personal log from US Navy TECHINT officer that was stationed aboard this ship.

Amanda! Mark realized. It must be.

Without even thinking he snapped up the video. Sure enough, the emerald eyed beauty that haunted him from halfway across the galaxy appeared before his eyes. She looked exhausted. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the fatigue weighing her down shown through in her slumped posture and solemn expression. No memories flashed back to him from this image. Was he seeing this for the first time?

Amanda frowned as she adjusted the camera to record a video log. In the background, he could see the APC being worked on by a group of marines. This was filmed while she was en route to Mars.

"Normally I would start with the date and time," said Amanda as she pinched the bridge of her nose, "but hell if I know what time it is on earth while I'm halfway across the galaxy. Besides..."

She sighed heavily and paused for a moment.

"It's not like there's an Earth left to go back to," she said heavily.

"Anyway," she continued, "Lieutenant Amanda Kelly log number ten Enroute to The Black Garden on Mars."

Kelly? Though Mark, stunned as he heard her speak, Amanda Kelly?

He didn't have time to dwell on this before he was cut off by the voice of Amanda's ghost.

"We've almost finished modifying the device to load onto the back of the APC, and the marines have spent most of their time doing their favorite activity. Fitting a hundred pounds of weapons into a five pound bag," she said with a distinct eye roll, "anyway. Once that device is rigged up, I will be the only one able to activate it. We should be able to get it into the Black Garden if we move quick enough and with enough of an element of surprise. The Gate Lord's eye we stole should be able to get us into the Garden, and the Vex construct we built around the device should keep them from realizing it's an electromagnetic pulse weapon. Vex chassis are EMP shielded, but this bomb has enough nuclear material in it that it should be able to do some damage anyway. Hopefully."

Amanda paused for a second. She closed her eyes tight and stifled a sob, forcing herself not to cry. Flashes of her crying broke through the fog of his memory. The same flashes he felt many times before. Her nails felt like flechettes that dug into his back and threatened to split his heart in two.

He remembered always resisting the urge to tell her not to cry when she broke down like this. It cut him deep to see her in pain like this. All he wanted was to see her content again, but keeping her from releasing her sadness would be a cruel and selfish way to react to a small amount of discomfort.

He remembered crying a few times too, on long nights after battles where his soldiers were killed. He would do well to remember that.

She looked back at the camera with bloodshot eyes, not allowing herself to cry.

"God I miss you, Mark," she said heavily. "Why did you have to leave me like this? We were supposed to face the world together!"

She spat the last part with a hint of anger before reaching down to her finger for a ring on her left hand. She yanked it off and wound up like she was going to throw it, but stopped herself before she could. She curled her fingers angrily around it, and then clutched the small, diamond and gold band close to her chest, and stayed like that for a long while.

"At our wedding, you said we'd be together," she rambled. "Why aren't we together?"

Mark stopped listening to the recording a few moments ago. Memories were shooting through his head like bolts of lighting. The life he lost was coming back to him in flash after painful flash.

The sight of the ring, the mention of their marriage, and the sweet sound of her voice brought everything back to him.

He remembered what happened on that first voyage to the stars with Amanda. He remembered how he and his men were deployed to the surface of Pluto to meet with the Fallen scavenging party that descended to its surface. He remembered how they savagely attacked: electrocuting, stabbing, and shooting his men with all manner of awful weapons. The smell of burnt flesh permeated the terraformed air of the planet as he and what remained of his team fled from the overwhelming force.

When they returned to the ship Amanda disappeared, and Mark ran off to find her. He found her near that same viewport where he found her earlier that day. She was collapsed on the floor crying, her bright green eyes now bloodshot and soaked with tears. He knelt down next to her and wrapped his arms around her. He knew it was a wildly inappropriate gesture considering that she was an officer, but she seemed to accept it nonetheless.

That was the first taste of death in her military career. That can do a lot to a person.

She wrapped her arms around him, digging her nails into his back, and cried hard for the better part of an hour. This was the first time he took her into his arms, and even when he lost his memories, this would be a piece of how he would remember her.

He remembered their valiant fight to keep the Fallen and the many other races of The Darkness at bay, and how their need for mutual comfort developed into attraction, and attraction into love.

He remembered that fateful day, shortly before the solar system was to be overrun, that he and Amanda wed. It was a simple ceremony. Only a few remaining members of his unit and a civilian pastor they evacuated from Venus were in attendance. It was short, sweet, and to the point. They said their vows and I dos and kissed like their lives depended on it.

He took her hand in his and ran his finger over the ring he gave her and smiled down at the flame red haired beauty that he could now call his wife.

"I promise we'll be together Amanda. No matter what happens," he said in earnest.

The words sounded distant in his head, but the message was clear as day. Now he knew why he needed to find her.

His mind was in shambles. His head ached from the overload of memories, but the pleasure of having his life back more than made up for it.

On a hunch, he reached for his knife. Some distant part of him told him the reason he kept it despite being offered a better, tower made blade, was that if he unscrewed the handle, he would find a small gold ring. Sure enough, he did.

As the small piece of metal fell into his hand he clenched it tightly, never to let it go. Finally, he found who he truly used to be. He was no longer a lost soul searching to get his life back. He was Staff Sergeant Mark Kelly. A husband, a soldier, and a Guardian.

When the recording closed, he hastily clicked on the next one, hoping to find more information on where Amanda was.

The video popped into the window. It showed a recording from a single security camera mounted on one of the ship's airlock's facing inward. The words: Warning. Movement detected. Recording activated, adorned the top of the video feed. The hangar looked much more intact in this shot than it currently did. Mark could see the cryopods, old weapons, debris, and even the APC with the Vex device loaded onto it. Mark checked the time stamp. It was taken only twelve hours ago.

He began to wonder how all of this equipment could have possibly been moved out that quickly, but the question quickly answered itself. A Hive portal, much like the one he saw the Thrall dashing off into when he approached the ship. Hive of all kinds poured through the gap. A horde of Thrall and acolytes thundered through the ship and out through the airlock into the Martian sands, probably to eliminate any nearby Cabal.

The flood of creatures was so great that he almost didn't notice what came behind them. Several, large Ogres commanded by a Witch came lumbering through when the stream of Thrall dried up. The Witch darted around the room, illuminating it with an eerie, green glow that made the ship look even more aged and decayed than it did. It inspected some pieces of equipment in the ship's hold, then turned to the Ogres and let out a blood-curdling scream.

They seemed to get the message. After roaring back, one of the ogres wordlessly stomped over to the Vex device and tore it off of the APC with one, massive hand. The remaining ogres picked up various important looking pieces of technology from the ship's hold and carted them back through their portal into whatever Hive shit hole they came from.

The Witch, however, stayed behind. With the hold now clear, it floated over towards the cryopods, the only thing the ogres had yet to take with them. It scanned the pods, looking for anything that might be useful. Most of them were cracked or crushed during the crash, killing most of the crew. One, however, still had a few blinking lights on it, and seemed to have survived intact.

When the witch finally stumbled upon it, it shrieked in approval. It opened its hand's palm up and recited a hideous chant that could only be described as a spell, and then let the green energy flow from its body and into the cryo pod.

The pod's lights blinked red, and then it popped open. A flash of steam from flash-vaporized cryo fluid boiled up from it, and out tumbled a single occupant. She gasped for air and flailed around on the floor in pain, trying to suck in her first breath in hundreds of years.

When she finally caught her breath, she stumbled to her hands and knees, revealing a young woman with flame hair and emerald eyes.

Amanda.

Mark could see the wheels turning in her head as she dug her hands into the Martian sand that now filled the floor of the ship. She wasn't expecting to wake up when sheltered that cryo pod. This awakening must have been very similar to his. He wondered if she had any concept of how much time passed since she went to sleep.

She coughed and hacked and fought to clear her eyes as she lay face down on the floor, her uniform soaked and her hair matted to her face. Eventually, she gave one final cough and opened her eyes. A quick look up put her face to face with the hideous hive witch. She cried out in terror and dug her hands into the sand as she failed to get away from it pressing her body against the cryopod. She let out a horrified streak as the witch motioned for her Thrall to grab her. Amanda back pedaled and fumbled with the latch of the small weapons locker next to her cryopod. She frantically drew her service pistol from it and pointed it in the direction of the thrall before firing it indiscriminately at them. One of them was struck square in the face, killing it instantly. The other roared in rage and went for her throats with its skeletal hands. Her eyes went wide as it's talons wrapped around her, before it proved the gun out of her hand and drug her, kicking and screaming, towards the portal they entered through.

Mark couldn't watch. Anger and sorrow ripped through him as he dug his hands hard into the computer console. How could he have been resurrected from the dead just to wake up and find this? Surely there was some purpose behind all this?

It wasn't long after that that he heard the familiar sound of his ghost materializing next to him.

"Hmmm," it said, oblivious to the state of the Guardian it was supposed to care for.

"If I am interpreting the Hive's language correctly, the hive raided this after discovering references to it in old earth military archives. They must have been after the bomb Lieutenant Kelly was transporting. The time stamp on this video states it was taken a month ago, and no detonations exceeding 500 megatons have been recorded since then, learning me to believe they still probably possess the bomb."

Mark was too broken to be angry at his ghost's insensitivity. Right now, he just needed any hope that Amanda was alive. If the timestamp was a month ago, that meant Amanda spent a month in Hive captivity, but she's strong. She could survive it.

"Where..." Said Mark, clearing his throat as he fought to regain control of himself.

"Where do you think they took her?"

The ghost whirred and clicked as it processed the likely destinations. Every moment it took felt like an eternity to Mark. How long would it be until he finally found her, dead or alive?

"The most logical destination for a weapon of this size would be the Hive dreadnought. It's the center of their force deployment and command structure. They no doubt are holding Lieutenant Kelly so that she can give them access to the bomb's controls and detonation protocols."

A bittersweet feeling crossed over Mark. If the hive were indeed holding her she was at least alive, but it crossed his mind that life may very well not be worth living as a prisoner of the Hive.

He wasn't going to waste any more time sitting around.

"Derrick," Mark said into his comm.

"Is the jump ship ready?"

"Affirmative," came the response a moment later.

"I stabilized Li for the ride back. She should make it to the tower. The warlocks there are a lot more skilled healers than I am."

Mark sighed in relief. Maybe they wouldn't be losing anyone this mission.

"Copy that."

"Transmatting to you now."

Mark's ghost settled into his hand as he began to transmit sequence. This journey was coming to an end, one way or another, and no matter what, he was going to complete it. Maybe the traveler had some grand plan for him, and maybe it didn't. Either way, the hive would rue the day they crossed him.

As his body began to dissolve for transport, his mind began to relax.

"Hold on Amanda. I'm coming."