Risen: Shatterverse

A Good Idea in all the Worst Ways

I wasn't really sure how I knew, or what exactly had happened. I just felt something as I was churning upward through the guts of the stricken terraformer, using both gravimetric adjustment and my suit's battered thrusters to send me careening towards the terraformer's heart.

- Do not hesitate, Two, - Legion's shard immediately spoke up to caution me. - You are close to your goal. Faltering here may invite failure. -

- I'm not hesitating, Legion, - I immediately retorted. - I just felt something ... something big just happened. Can you not feel it? -

- I did. And you felt it because I did, - came the enigmatic response. I didn't have to wait long before the neo-shell's shard expounded on that answer.

- In a metaphysical way, I am still connected with the remainder of my self. The thinnest of threads reach across the ether to bind my original self with the shards that couldn't, or wouldn't be reassimilated into that self following the events on the k'ethik research world. -

- And? - I prompted when the shard fell silent, not entirely surprised that the original still had some sort of handle on its various missing shards. It was kinda like how Max could still feel the bodies he sacrificed when he brought the Collectorverse world entities back to life out of the Collector's control spire prison.

- What happened? -

There was the slightest of hesitations before:

- My original self witnessed the Risen forces in the K'ethik campaign experience a great defeat, - was the grim reply.

WHAT??

"Defeat?" I repeated out loud, so stunned by the revelation I couldn't help myself. - What the hell does that mean, Legion? -

- It means they weren't victorious, - Legion flatly replied.

- Holy fuck, tin man, I know what it means. But it was a crack team that General Tate was leading into battle with the k'ethik. A team that included not just Legion and Armada, but the dorvaldi avatar Grint as well. How could they have been defeated?? -

Again there was the slightest of hesitations, almost as if the shard was pondering the proper way to tell me what the answer to my question was.

- I cannot be certain, Two, - it began, its mental voice careful. - As I explained, my connection to the original Legion is tenuous, stretched across the ether between universes. I am not getting everything that it is seeing and feeling. -

- I feel a 'however' coming on, - I noted drily even as my mind mentally churned, both anxiety and uncertainty rippling through me in massive waves.

- You'd be correct, Two. However, what I am picking up over our connection was that the original mission to stop a swarm cloud from destroying an inhabited planet failed. General Tate determined that there were insufficient military assets to defeat the swarm cloud in battle so switched the mission to a rescue and extraction of the local inhabitants before the planet was destroyed. -

Okay, a switch to a rescue mission made sense. It was always the Risen's first priority to save the locals, if possible. But how does one get defeated on a rescue mission? I decided to repeat my question across the link with the shard.

- So a rescue mission. How did that get defeated? Were they unable to rescue any locals before the cloud destroyed everything? -

- Quite the contrary; nearly 2 million locals were successfully evacuated. However, in the holding action to defend the Risen foothold on the planet, the position was overrun when their defensive shields failed and approximately 60 percent of all Risen assets on the planet were lost. -