Risen: Shatterverse - The God War

Chapter 7: The Final Straw

As it seemed to always be with the Risen, once something got rolling, it quickly picked up a great deal of speed and became almost impossible to stop. As soon as I was back in Carthage, I obtained the storage pod and began breaking out the various remaining world entities Garolan had managed to capture and store. It was significantly harder than whatever Max did to pull the first ones out of the morass; these ones were so tapped, they were almost as weak as the regular essences all around them, making them virtually invisible against the background energy.

Thankfully my passenger's resonance wave had the power to pick them out, along with whatever essences that came from the same planet. We swiftly isolated several dozen sets of entities and matching essences and put them into a storage pod. Then I set up as many sets of the devices my passenger had crafted to mimic the effects of the relic key, along with the injector.

Several sets upsized for the Vanguard, then the remaining sets regular sized for the Risen and the terrans. Then, with them assembled in sections, I had psyrens standby to jump them to our various staging areas.

That was especially important for the resources going to the Vanguard, the various devices so large, it would've required heavy transports to get them out to the enclave. As it was, however, I was able to make my way back there and have Nakahnet clear an area in their central square before the psyrens moved them over. A quick tutorial of how to use the equipment and the extra space portal that we wove close to the enclave's dedicated landing pad and the Vanguard were on mission, both the Nehvest and the Ingahn'var almost giddy with the opportunity to actually get in on the fighting.

The Ascendency was next. With a spot set up outside of New Atlantis for their mustering and disployment center, I made the delivery of their resources next. Griff, Mayhew, Teal, and a handful of other officers then got the tutorial, the target list, and how to activate the extra space portal I wove for them there, and I was on my way to observation five. Where, arms folded, I found Hannibal waiting for me.

"You've been busy, 'Specialist'," he dryly noted a heartbeat after I winked into sight.

"Sir," I said. "I saw an opportunity, and in the absence of direction ..."

"Easy there, soldier," Hannibal stepped in to say. "There was a plan discussed. You just were unconscious when it happened."

"Yes, sir," I said. "May I speak freely, sir?"

Hannibal looked at me for a moment. Then, folding his arms, he nodded.

"Pardon me for saying, sir, a plan may have indeed been put into place. However, there was little or no effort to disseminate that plan so that common soldiers such as myself ..."

"You're no common soldier, son, and you know it!" Hannibal retorted.

"No, General? Then tell me this, sir: after all I've managed to assist our alliance with, why didn't anybody bother to tell me what the fuck is going on? Why wasn't I let in on this plan of yours? You and your command staff have had plenty of time to come look me up."

Hannibal folded his arms, his expression tightening. But, by this point, I didn't care. I was mad and frustrated, and I was going to let him know about it.

"I get it. I'm not Max fuckin' Niekro so I can't command people into action. But I wasn't about to just let the fleet do their thing and leave us ground pounders with our collective thumbs up our asses. And we've been working for the better part of the day on our plans and none of you senior officers, until this very moment, bothered to come over and find out what the fuck we were doing."

I paused to chew down the spicier words I was about to say. Some things you just can't say to your commanding officer, free to speak or not.

"So, knowing that our ground troops were yet to receive any sort of assignments, and also knowing we needed to confront Garolan on the spire directly, I took the opportunity to put some things in motion. For the day we actually got the call. And I won't apologize for that."