Risen: Shatterverse

'Collected' Prisoners

The camp was basically set up in a pentagram shape, with the terraformers serving at the sides. But, as large as they were, the terraformers couldn't be parked close enough to each other to seal the corners in. That meant each corner was basically an open space nearly a hundred meters across, giving plenty of room to enter the camp from all five corners.

If this had been a Risen camp, or even a human camp protected by Special Forces back in the day when I was still alive, each one of those corner points would've been heavily fortified to prevent any intruders coming in to try and do what we were attempting. As it was, however, there were no tanks or armored vehicles with mounted machine guns, or even a humvee or two with a squad or two manning them. There was only the Collector's defense grid. Which, as we had already witnessed on the control spire, was pretty damn effective.

"I am shielding your presence from the detection grid," my passenger announced with my voice, "and confirming that a greater part of the security here has its attention on your second group of soldiers approaching on foot."

"Thank you," Hannibal said, sounding sincerely grateful for the additional cover the t'sang was giving us. Then we were all falling silent as we pushed forward towards the nearest set of cages.

With the terraformers making up the perimeter, that meant there were literally dozens of square kilometers of space in the pentagram-shaped camp within. To reach the nearest group of cages, we needed to cover nearly five kilometers in a straight line without getting caught. Which, thanks in no small part to my passenger hacking the local security system and our own strength, speed, and endurance as Risen, we were able to cover that ground in short order.

Still, it was nearly ten minutes before the first cage clusters came into view. Which, to my surprise, contained a good number of our living troops. Including a bedraggled-looking Nah'tem.

The veteran n'vorn officer was facing the cage's near wall, hands clasped behind his back as he stood staring at the ground, his expression grim.

- Can your shield cover me while I pull energy out of the pod on my waist to build suits for our people? - I asked as we continued to approach as quietly as we could so the prisoners wouldn't abruptly change their attitudes and possibly draw the Collector's attention to them.

The t'sang was quiet for a moment before:

- I believe so," it said. "My control over Garolan's security system isn't absolute, however. If your draw spikes past a thousand terawatts in your measurements, I won't be able to hide it from the grid. -

- Understood, - I replied, fairly confident I wouldn't even come close to pulling that amount of energy out of the pod holding the captive star that dangled on my waist. Still, there was no point in testing that. A quick calculation allowed me to estimate how much I would need for my omni-field to assemble a j-class Legion-modified set of armor. Nope. Like I thought: not even close.

"Sir, I believe I can craft a nano-actuated armor pod with my omni-field," I said as we drew within five hundred meters of the first cage.

"Do it," Hannibal replied with no hesitation, having already witnessed what I could do with my omni-field back in the dark matter universe when we gave the kendari and the zim their neo-shell bodies. "But don't give it to any of them until we can ascertain whether their minds have been broken or not!"

"Copy that," I replied even as I opened the storage pod and spun up my omni-field.

The surge of energy created by the omni-field coming online must've been significant enough that it could be sensed. Because as soon as I sent it swirling around my body, Nah'tem was looking up, his expression suddenly intent. As we were camouflaged, he shouldn't have been able to see us. But that didn't stop him from putting his eyes directly on us.