Risen: Shatterverse

... And Death Blinked

Then the world suddenly lurched as the compression units sent a second surge into the bubble around the star. Thankfully it was enough to disrupt whatever the Collector was doing and the pain ebbed into a fiery echo of what it once was as my essence reseated itself in my shell. I barely stopped myself from heaving a sigh of relief.

Unfortunately, it was also enough to send a ripple of displaced gravity washing through the core. A ripple that not only twisted the Collector's incoming path and send it angling off to the right. But it also made my missile jerk up and to the left, sending it slamming into the core's outer shell, narrowly missing one of the receptacles as it did so. Then the impact point disappeared in a brilliant, white flash of light as the antimatter detonated.

Instantly my internal sensors registered a hard spike in gamma radiation.

- The annihilation event has ruptured the energy conduit, - Legion grimly reported. - We only have a matter of moments before your shell is compromised and your essence degrades. -

I grimaced. I should've guessed things were going a bit too smoothly. A quick look around located the Collector's avatar some distance away just, glowing even more brightly as it looked like it was attempting to compensate for all the gamma.

- At least the Collector isn't handling the gamma any better than we are, - I pointed out. - It's having trouble keeping that avatar coherent. And the rad is disrupting whatever it was doing to try and pull me out of the shell! -

- Fortunate, indeed, - the shard replied. - We have no counter for that type of assault. - Then, with a flicker of light, a timer appeared in my HUD and immediately spun into action. - I have activated a countdown to when your shell will fail. -

I could feel my expression tighten as I looked at the rapidly-ticking off numbers. Sometimes Legion's practicality was a pain in the ass. The timer was already below four minutes when it had appeared and was now swiftly dropping.

- What's the status on the quantum compression? - I asked, again finding the Collector's massive avatar with a twist of my head. I located it just in time to see an arm detach with a flare of golden light before the Collector managed to snag it with its other hand and slam it back into place. Whatever signal it was using this time around, it wasn't as fragile as the one we knocked down with the jammer. It still appeared to be mostly in control of its gargantuan construct. Mostly.

- And can we funnel some of this gamma into building a second antimatter warhead? -

- To answer your initial query, quantum compression is at fifty percent, - the shard replied. I couldn't help but tear my eyes off the Collector and flop them onto the star. And I felt a grin touch my lips to see that it was visibly half the size that it was when we first blasted into the core. Then I was fighting to stay airborne myself when a third pulse made the chamber hum with its power as the star visibly shrunk by another third.

- And negative to your second query, - the shard managed to say into my momentarily-disoriented mind in the roaring silence that followed the third pulse, forcing me to focus on what it was saying. - The omni-field is currently being used to reinforce your outer surface. If we retask it, it would require two point two minutes to construct a second magnetically-sealed void to store the antimatter while another warhead is being built and armed. Your shell, without the protection, would fail in one point five. -

Sonofabitch; close but no damn cigar. The bad news was enough to finish focusing my mind. Just in time for a fourth surge from the compressors to rock the core.

Again I fought to stay in the air as my shell's ability to alter my EM status versus the planet's gravitational field came under duress with the gravity in the core fluctuating so wildly. And yet again my mind was clouded by the dance of conflicting EM fields in and around my body.