Risen: Shatterverse

Death by Pinprick

Then we were both reflexively ducking as a second terraforming city whooshed by overhead, throwing our embattled position into deep shadow if only for a moment.

"We've got two more heading for a fly-over," Nah'tem announced over comms as I stared up at the terraformer's bottom surface, festooned with all manner of shapes and objects. "Not sure if it's deliberate or they're just reacting to the firefight."

"Again I'm just grateful they don't appear to possess weaponry," Hannibal replied. "Or that firefight would've gone in an entirely different direction."

A final blink and the city was by us, returning the bright light being shed by the blue giant back onto us. Yet my vision wasn't empty.

Instead, it was filled with a strange, velkin-siphon looking thing, and I use that description because it was the closest to what I was actually seeing. A giant cylinder, with several smaller cylinders attached at staggered vertical intervals, it had a giant basket of metal filaments at the top instead of a control section and didn't end in a massive drill for burrowing through the crust of a planet. In its place, there was a powerful emitter, similar to what I had seen on some of the big guns I had seen on both the Vanguard ships and on our own battlecruisers.

"General Hannibal, permission to act on a hunch, sir," I said as my sensors told me the first of the second cluster of terraformers was rapidly approaching. If I timed it right ...

"A hunch, Two? Care to elaborate?"

"The Collectorverse entity, Korisahnt, has requested I build an energy collector and concentrator to give the entity Tamarin a boost so she can trigger a Risen event," I began, keeping my words terse and to the point. That damn terraformer was almost right on top of us! If I didn't make my explanation short and sweet, I could miss my window of opportunity.

"Until I had full control of my omni-field, I couldn't provide that. However, I am now in complete command of my shell and its capabilities and have a possible design for the concentrator. I just need ..."

"Raw materials," Hannibal finished for me. "Understood. You are cleared to engage."

"Thank you, sir." Then thruster pods were morphing into being on my back and I re-negotiated my gravio-metric status to defy gravity. That done, I blasted into the air like I had been shot out of a mass driver, quickly reaching then shattering the sound barrier.

It was surprisingly exhilarating, the feeling of soaring through the air under my own power. It was enough to stir memories of Afghanistan and staring up at the fighter jets going over my position on a strafing run after we had called in an air strike to support our operation. I had wondered what it'd be like to be a pilot then, streaking through the air at two or three times the speed of sound, darting in to rain death down from above.

The memory was so intoxicating, that briefest whiff of the human I once was, that I nearly forgot why I was there. I actually had to shake my head to bring my attention back to the here and now.

Just in time; even as I climbed to the one-kilometer mark, moving smoothly thanks to the anti-gravity field I had formed around my body and traveling at least at three or four times the speed of sound, my sensors sounded a proximity alert. Then the gigantic terraformer was streaking by a mere five hundred meters overhead.

"Mother ...!" I began to hiss, fighting the impulse to duck. Duck? You fucking idiot! You need to hit that thing! My face a resolute mask, I willed even more speed into the thrusters.

That closed the distance quickly and, with a flare of energy and the crunch of exotic metals, I plowed into the bottom of the rapidly-moving terraformer. I went through what felt like two or three levels before cutting my thrusters and letting the mass of material on top of me slow me down.