Risen: Shatterverse

Third Strike?

Nodding as he looked past her to see Risen medical staff swarming over his ground forces, satchels of goa crystals ready for the summoners to use to heal undead tissues ravaged by radiation.

"Thank you, Admiral," he said, looking back over at her. "As am I." He could feel his expression abruptly tighten.

"But, once again, our efforts to thwart the K'ethik were in vain. We landed in anticipation of the swarm clouds sending down ground forces for us to face. Only to have the clouds and us both kicked around by a solar storm so powerful, it essentially did the bloody work for us."

"It was a frellin' waste of time, was what it was," Grint added with a growl. "We need that algorithm to show us planets that we can actually defend from those jobby-slappin' bastards, beggin' the Admiral's pardon for the language. Not some dead end muck ball where we just end up getting our asses kicked!"

Tate looked over at the dorvaldi avatar with a frown. And watched a play of emotions go over Grint's face before he spoke once more.

"What we need is ..."

"To hit the K'ethik homeworld," Tusk interjected to say, quickly holding up a hand to forestall both Grint and Tate's protests to the contrary. "Don't bother denying it, gentlemen. That's what you were about to say."

Tusk looked from a frowning Grint to a thoughtful Tate, a thoughtful frown of her own on her face. Before they could ask her what she was driving at, she spoke again.

"Maybe this little tidbit I've just received then will brighten up your day!" A smile ghosted over her lips for a moment before her face was serious once more. "I've just gotten word from HQ that Tovin and the Command Council have agreed to your proposal."

"You ... sent them our proposal?" Tate asked, genuinely surprised. He glanced over at Grint and found the dorvaldi so stunned, he was gobsmacked into silence, a first for the normally verbose avatar.

He had thought, with all the pushback that they had gotten during Legion's sim, the proposed direct assault on K'eth was dead in the water due to its lack of viability. Especially in the first stages of the attack when they had to enter the K'eth system with its network of swarm clouds providing its defense.

"I did," Tusk confirmed with a nod. "But, before you get to planning something rash to prepare in the next couple hours, and I'm looking at you, Master Walker, we still have some work to do." She pulled a portable holo-emitter into sight and waved a hand over it.

Instantly a tactical display of a complicated star system appeared, with a yellow giant at its center and no less than four worlds in the system's life zone swinging around it. Two more were surrounded by a blue halo, indicating they were terraformed and capable of supporting life similar to Earth's.

And one of those was surrounded by the unmistakable shape of a swarm cloud, which glowed a dull red.

"Tovin wants us to stop this cloud attack first," Tusk noted, drawing both her hands and putting them behind her, leaving the emitter to float by itself at approximately waist height. "The four inner planets are heavily populated by a fairly advanced species, capable of interstellar space flight." She pointed to the two terraformed planets sitting a bit further out, swinging through an orbit similar to Mars', when compared to Earth's orbital path back in the Solar System.

"Those are trade worlds, constructed to allow the system's inhabitants to trade with others in their local stellar cluster without having them come all the way into their core planets. And, as you can see, one of them has been engaged by a swarm cloud."

"Defenses?" Tate asked, finally pushing his astonishment aside enough to engage with what the admiral was saying. Eyes narrowed, he studied the two trade worlds.