Risen: Shatterverse

A Crazy Plan gets Approved

Whoever was flying their landing craft was exceptionally skilled. The energy field keeping air in and vacuum out of the shuttle bay was easily breached without even a shiver. Then they were bringing the vessel around to neatly land it between two others without as much of a bump. Tate found himself nodding in silent admiration for the pilot's skill. Then he was looking up as the landing ramp began to drop and the Risen in the craft with him, unbuckled from their security harnesses.

Grint was waiting for him when he stepped down the ramp himself, his face a thoughtful mask.

"So we finally make a successful defense," the dorvaldi avatar rumbled. "Now do we position ourselves to make the strike against K'eth?"

"That's what Tusk led me to believe," Tate replied, looking up at him. "At least, that's what I heard."

"Yeah, me too." The big avatar frowned as the returning Risen forces thronging all around them, officers heading to the conference room for the debrief and the regular soldiers returning to quarters to peel off their armor and get cleaned up.

"Especially the part about Tovin and the Command Council giving us the green light. We've spent enough time sitting on our collective thumbs and warmin' 'em up while we waited for targets to become available. Or repairs to the fleet be made."

"Don't forget how long we waited around for reinforcements to make their way to New Oblivion," Tate dryly pointed out. "We need to make this strike, and quickly. Or we'll lose our momentum."

Thankfully Tusk was of a similar mind. Almost before Tate and Grint could take their place at the conference room table for the debrief, she was speaking.

"First of all, I just wanted to say well done, my friends!" the Risen admiral said with a broad smile. "It feels good to finally get a clean win against our tin roach friends." The smile vanished as the officers murmured happily about the win.

"But we're not even close to being done. General Tate, Master Walker Grint, and Legion have submitted a plan to directly attack K'eth. And just before the defense of Naruda and its trade worlds, we received word from Supreme Commander Tovin of the Risen, and representatives of the Avatar Alliance that their attack plan was approved. All they wanted from us was a successful defense of an inhabited world against a swarm cloud attack. Which you just delivered to them.

That triggered a wave of applause, the officers nodding and smiling as they congratulated each other on taking the next step. Tusk let it roll through the room for a moment, knowing that it was good for moral to get a win now and then, and to celebrate it. At the same time, she couldn't help but notice that neither Tate nor Grint joined their officers in the brief celebration, the two commanders looking grimly thoughtful as they obviously considered the enormity of the task that now lay before them. Which was enough for her to call for silence so they could press on.

"Yes, yes, well done, my friends," she said, holding up her hand to quickly bring the conference room back to attentive silence. "With the K'ethik holding a bloody nose, we need to take advantage of our momentum to initiate the attack against their homeworld before they regroup."

A wave of a hand over the interface on the table and the now familiar sim that Legion had run for him and Grint appeared over the table just to Tate's left.

"A number of scenarios were run to determine the best course of attack," she said as the sims played out in the order Legion had gone in with the variables.And, like he and Grint had done, Tate watched as each failed, sending a dismayed murmur over their officers and a wave of head shaking.

Until the final sim that saw Legion's iso-magnetic devices fired from Collectorspace into the clouds close to the planet's surface. As they pulled the clouds into tight masses, they were followed by Hammer's disruptor Shrikes, which shredded the clumps into dust before the Swords fired into the disconnected masses to sweep space clean enough for the landers to blast through.