On the bridge of the Eternal Seeker, Osiris's main body brought up the star map.
The icon indicating the Meinhoff system flashed continuously, while the attached real-time data summary coldly displayed the spreading scale of the infection and the saturation of local defense forces.
At this exact moment, a communication request from Valerie, marked as "URGENT," was connected. Her holographic image appeared on the bridge, with the chaotic scene of the evacuation point faintly visible in the background.
"Magos, the situation on Meinhoff is spiraling out of control." Valerie's voice came through the encrypted channel, calm as always, though her speaking rate was slightly faster than usual. "The evolution rate of the infectors has exceeded expectations, making conventional methods difficult to suppress them. Raynor's team plans to establish an evacuation point at the north pole, but they are facing a dual deficit in both troops and transport capacity. The local authorities are no longer capable of controlling the situation."
Osiris's crimson optical lenses flickered slightly. "Specify the deficit."
"The defense perimeter is too wide, and the current combat personnel cannot establish a defensive line with sufficient depth; the pressure during the night will be particularly immense. The critical issue lies in transport capacity—the locally gatherable transport ships can transfer a maximum of fifteen hundred people at a time, whereas the baseline of uninfected civilians requiring evacuation is nearly ten thousand. This means at least six waves are needed, during which the defensive line must withstand sustained onslaughts," Valerie reported quickly, attaching a rough calculation of transport capacity and time estimates. "Risk assessment indicates that under the current defense strength, the probability of the evacuation operation failing exceeds seventy percent. Therefore, I suggest evaluating the possibility of our direct intervention, utilizing the transport capacity of the Eternal Seeker for a one-time deployment and evacuation."
Osiris did not respond immediately.
His logical core instantly retrieved the relevant data: the Hyperion, roughly nine hundred meters in length, with a standard crew of several thousand; the Eternal Seeker, stretching over five kilometers, which, if reconfigured into a pure transport mode, could temporarily hold eighty to one hundred thousand personnel. A single deployment would indeed resolve Meinhoff's transport crisis entirely.
"Calculations show that direct intervention can highly efficiently resolve the current humanitarian crisis and acquire a massive amount of goodwill and trust from local factions in the short term, creating favorable conditions for subsequent contact," Valerie's voice continued. She had clearly already weighed the pros and cons. "At the same time, the opportunity to collect mutation data of the infectors at close range, as well as to contact and recover more intact samples of Terran Dominion technical equipment, will also increase significantly."
"The risks," Osiris's synthesized voice rang out.
"The most prominent risk is the premature exposure of our existence," Valerie listed clearly. "It could trigger systematic attention from the Terran Dominion, the Protoss, or even the Swarm, disrupting our current observational posture. Furthermore, it will inevitably consume considerable resources and may passively drag us into local political and military conflicts, interfering with our tracking of core objectives like the artifact fragments. The deepest uncertainty lies in potentially alerting and drawing a targeted reaction from a potential high-level threat—such as the mastermind manipulating things behind the scenes, as you hypothesized."
During the brief silence, only the low hum of the bridge equipment resonated.
Osiris weighed the options rapidly. Valerie had successfully embedded herself within Raynor's team and was a key node for obtaining intelligence on the artifact fragments; her survival and the continuity of her mission held the highest priority.
However, revealing the Eternal Seeker at this moment would be no different from placing themselves directly under the spotlight.
"Risk assessment module conclusion: the risk of direct flagship intervention outweighs the benefits," Osiris said at last. "However, your safety and the mission must be guaranteed."
"Then, the alternative?" Valerie asked.
"Deploy additional supporting forces, but without exposing the mothership." Osiris pulled up the shipboard deployment status. "Form a second ten-man security team, composed of the remaining elite 'test subjects.' Simultaneously, allocate a full-strength Skitarii Centuria of one hundred troops to reinforce the ground defense and firepower sustainment in your area. They will board disguised transport vessels and arrive at your designated secure coordinates in three hours."
"Command of the reinforcements?"
"You shall have sole command. Outwardly, they will be explained as 'supplementary security urgently dispatched by the corporation and locally hired escort forces,'" Osiris instructed. "Your core task is to utilize these reinforcements to assist Raynor's team in stabilizing the evacuation point's defensive line, ensuring the evacuation corridor remains open. And during this process, recover as many intact or repairable samples of Terran Dominion equipment from the battlefield as possible—especially different models of CMC power armor. Do so under the guise of battle-damage repair or salvage."
"Understood. Acquisition priority for technical samples confirmed." Valerie responded. This was not the first time she had witnessed Osiris's craving for these technical assets, and she had long grown accustomed to such tasks.
"Furthermore," Osiris added, "the signs of gene splicing between the infectors and the Swarm have increased, elevating the threat rating. Five technicians carrying specialized sampling equipment will be integrated into the reinforcement forces. Ensure you harvest samples of the new hybrid variants, handling them with the highest biological containment protocols. Should the situation deteriorate to a critical threshold, you are authorized to execute a limited-scope 'Purge Protocol.'"
"Understood. Valerie out."
The communication ended. Osiris's gaze fell back onto Meinhoff's star map on the main screen, then shifted to the data stream of the CMC power armor structural analysis running on another panel.
The decision to send reinforcements was both a necessary measure to protect a critical intelligence node and an opportunity to accelerate this strategically valuable technical analysis. In the Koprulu Sector, a force armed with locally mass-producible technology might prove far more sustainable than projecting power from their distant home.
He needed more samples, and the chaotic battlefield was the perfect cover to acquire them.
In Meinhoff's north polar region, the fourth hour since the establishment of the temporary evacuation point.
The biting, freezing wind howled through the rusted factory buildings, kicking up ice crystals from the surface and pinning the temperature firmly at negative twenty-five degrees Celsius.
Despite being on the edge of a prolonged polar night, the pale light of the star barely skimmed the horizon at an extremely low angle, offering sustained yet weak illumination. The relatively strong ultraviolet radiation contained in this dim skyward light became one of the few effective natural suppressors against the infected at this moment.
The evacuation point was set within an abandoned mining processing plant that had long ceased operations.
The structural integrity of the metal and concrete perimeter walls surrounding the facility remained largely intact, and several sturdy factory buildings inside were sufficient to shelter several thousand refugees. The Raiders and the local garrison had already purged the sporadic infected within the area and were now racing against time to reinforce doors and windows, set up weapons, and transform this ruin into a final bastion.
Valerie stood at the observation post atop the roof of the main factory building, the cold drafts of air sweeping through her hair.
The screen of the data pad in her hand flickered with a faint glow, continuously updating the situational map transmitted back from drones and sensors.
Red dots representing the infected hordes were slowly crawling and converging toward the polar region from the edge of the scanning range—it was not an organized offensive formation, but rather resembled a dark, blind instinctive migration after sensing a massive life signal, like a school of deep-sea fish catching the scent of blood, drawn in from the shadows in all directions.