Risen: Shatterverse

Stellar Vagrancies

"Drop 'em!"

"Aye, sir. Dropping in three, two, one ... Dropships away!"

Tate grunted as the bottom of his stomach abruptly was in his throat. A heartbeat later the dropship was getting tossed in every direction as it penetrated the ionized layer the locals had created for their defense.

"Sweet fuckin' hell!" Hammer said from somewhere near the dropship's entry ramp. "Is it always this bad??"

"Hammer!" Tate barked through grit teeth. "What the actual fuck are you doing on this dropship? Shouldn't you be building us some goa-damned disruptor Shrikes??"

"Letting the union bitches build them," the eccentric tesla quickly fired back. "They don't need me now that they have the plans. 'Sides, I'm gonna get me some k'ethik shells to hang on my mantle, Sith style!"

Instead of responding to that, Tate fell silent. Not because he didn't understand a good number of Hammer's references, even though he didn't. Unions were something long dead in his time, Human society fairly egalitarian in the years before the Velkin attack. And he wasn't sure 'Sith' was even a word.

No, it had more to do with the fact the tesla seemed to come up with last minute solutions that ended up being game changers. Like his adaptation of Thek's disruptor idea that allowed them to tear apart entire k'ethik larval clouds with modified Shrike missiles.

That kind of innovation on the fly could prove invaluable on the ground if they ran into anything new. In retrospect, Hammer would've given them the edge with his out-of-the-box thinking on Lansik, if he had been part of the team at the time. As it was, it was a pair of neo-shells and their omni-fields that got them out of there without it being a total loss.

Speaking of:

"Legion, which dropship did you and Armada take?" he asked over comms.

"Delta Sierra twenty two," came the quick response.

Before Tate could respond to that, a tight voice came over the ship's intercom.

"Ground fall in thirty seconds. Firing retros to compensate for higher than anticipated gravity fields."

Tate felt his teeth clench in reaction. Then the dropship was jerking hard as its retros fired to slow its gravity-assisted descent through the atmosphere.

Resetting himself after the retros finished reducing them below terminal speed, Tate pulled up his HUD to make sure his suit systems, and those in the ship were still fully operational. Then:

"Computer, count us down. PODs, stand by to extend stasis fields."

"Yes, General," the tight voice replied. "Brace for impact," the voice then tautly directed before: "Five, four, three, two, one ..."

"PODs, extend your stasis fields now!"

Wham! The dropship came to an abrupt halt as it slammed into the ground, throwing its passengers hard into their flight harnesses. At least it would have, if the psyrens accompanying the ground forces didn't use their telekinesis to cushion them all. Without it, they would've been crushed by the sudden change in direction, velocity, and gravity, even as Risen and tharkura.

Instead:

"Pop the doors!" Tate barked as forty tightly packed Risen soldiers began throwing off their harnesses and readying their weapons. "Weapons to ready! Point team, I want a perimeter one hundred meters out. Go! The rest of you, follow me!!" Then he was charging down the center of the troop area and down the ramp.