Risen: Shatterverse

Extra Space Back Door

Using Lux's extraordinary set of skills and capabilities, we quickly built ourselves a holographic model of the Collector's control spire. Unlike the planets it was creating out in its artificial stellar nursery, the spire itself was almost completely unprotected by diffusion and dampening fields so Lux was able to make relatively thorough scans of the planet-sized structure.

Which, in itself, troubled me. Why hide the terraforming efforts on its fledgling worlds but not the very throne of power it used to make those worlds and everything in this Collectorverse? Was the Collector so confident in its ability to stop whatever plan we were formulating that it left its most precious possession virtually unguarded? Or were there safeguards in place that even Lux's advanced Demdagon technology couldn't detect?

Having met the Collector via its avatar up nice and close, I was leaning towards the first possibility. That bastard was cocky as hell. We were the ants and, as far as that motherfucker was concerned, it was the boot.

That being said, I couldn't dismiss the second possibility out of hand. We thought we had the Collector and its first avatar dead to rights in the wreck of the downed terraformer. So much so we began building our pulse tower thinking we had bought ourselves some space destroying that avatar. Only to have it come out of nowhere and crush not only the pulse tower and the Pathfinders that were defending it, but our entire foothold as well. We had underestimated its power and had paid a dear price for that oversight. I had the memories of being torn limb from limb as proof.

Turning away from the model of the spire, I called up what we knew about the Collector's tech out of my internal database and started scanning it. Maybe we needed a scouting mission first, a recon to give us some idea of what we'd be facing when we assaulted the spire.

- You have broken away from the planning session, Master Two, - Lux's voice suddenly spoke into my head. - Is there something I can help you with? -

I grimaced before sighing. Of course there was something the powerful AI could help me with. I should've frickin' asked it to do so right off the hop.

- As a matter of fact there is, Lux, - I replied, staying with the mental voice. With the entities, Hannibal, and Naveaia feverishly trying to hammer together an attack plan for their excursion onto the spire, I didn't want to disturb them with my musings about the possibility of the spire being one huge Collector-fueled trap.

- I suspect the spire isn't as unprotected as it appears. So I'm thinking a recon mission may be in order to avoid our extraction team getting wiped out when they attempt to pull the remaining entities out of the spire's containment. -

There was a slight pause as the AI seemed to be considering my words. Then:

- A wise precaution, Master Two, - it conceded, its mental voice thoughtful. - The Demdagon found the T'sang had a fondness for traps during the war. They lost millions of assets to them. But how do we run a reconnoitre without triggering those traps? My scans are revealing nothing. -

I found myself nodding in agreement. It was a conundrum to which I was afraid we didn't have an easy answer to. If only we had access to the campaign fleet's scanning arrays, they may be seeing something that we weren't.

Hold on. Maybe we could access those.

- Lux, can you access the fleet our people have engaging the Collector's gatherers on the edge of the universe's space? -

Again there was a slight pause, which I suspected was to allow Lux to actually test to see if its advanced capabilities could reach that far.

- Affirmative, - it said after those few seconds. - I can access both their current sensor array and their database. Are we looking to see if they have detected something that I have not? -