[Archive] With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Story Only)

[Mr Zoat]

21st January
18:49 GMT -5

Lois tapped her pen on her notebook, drawing invisible sketches as she read her annotations of Luthor's surprise announcement.

From time to time she would stretch her back and roll her shoulders, but her mind was firmly reviewing and dissecting the information that Luthor had seen fit to release.

Follow the line...

Red Tornado's unannounced presence had turned a seemingly low-key press release, the kind that would be buried all the way in the back of the newspaper, into something more.

Then he dropped the metaphorical bomb with his legal campaign to overturn the State v. Crane ruling, which had established that artificial beings like Red Tornado weren't people. And his first step was giving Doctor Mark Desmond's job to one of those 'unpeople'.

Then orange constructs popped up and acted as crowd control, which meant a certain elusive Lantern was present as well. She hadn't recognized him until he took the floor to deliver his own brief speech.

A member of the Justice League and a superhero who worked for Wonder Woman at an event organized by Luthor? Showing their support for Luthor's campaign? Her cheek still hurt from all the times she had pinched it after the whole thing was over.

Lois put down pen and notebook on her desk for a moment and massaged her temples. There was another question she had to pose to herself before she lost herself in her own musing.

Who benefits?

It wasn't her job. Lois's job was to write an article on Luthor's announcement, drop it on Perry's desk, wait for him to tell her whether it needed editing or not before it could be printed, edit said article and send it to have it printed on time.

She had done her job and it was near the end of her shift, so how she spent her time was her business and not her chief's as long as it didn't interfere with the others' and didn't get anyone killed, or worse: disgraced and out of a job.

But there was something fishy going on, or her name wasn't Lois Joanne Lane.

Who benefits?

Normally Lois would answer: 'Luthor, of course'. He was a consummate business tycoon, cunning and manipulative to the bone; turning sticky situations to his advantage was a game he excelled at.

Back on her notebook, she snorted when she re-read Luthor's statement on how he hadn't known what was happening in Cadmus. Honestly, Luthor.

But that stumped her. Cadmus had been under fire for months, had its reputation torn to shreds, it was a PR black hole and was probably costing far more money than their research was worth at this point. It was toast.

There was no reason to throw even more money at a lost cause. His incoming campaign had some potential of netting good PR, but selling it to the public, especially when it was going to influence only a potentially limited pool of individuals, was going to cost him a lot.

Who benefits?

She frowned and drew another circle around Luthor's name, and then added an interrogative point next to it. The association with Cadmus was too risky to be completely Luthor's idea, and even if he wanted to get some footing in the Justice League through Red Tornado or Wonder Woman's Lantern...

Lois canceled the half-written jotting. As if. The animosity between the Leaguers and Luthor was well-known; it would take more than trying to socialize with two superheroes. She lay back in her chair for a few moments, recalling as much as she could of the day in her mind.

"It was brought to my attention only fairly recently..."

There it was-.

"Still on that, Lois?" Her train of thought came crushing down at the sound of Bostwick's voice. She glared at him, but that had him smirking. "What's the matter? You went in expecting some third-rate business that would barely make the newspaper and got to see a preview of whatever Luthor's cooking for the future. You should be happy."

"There's something that doesn't add up. Do you know how annoying it is?"

"Couldn't tell, that Luthor chap has always been honest about his intentions." He mockingly craned his head to steal some glances from her notes. "Remember to leave something for us, Lois."

"That attitude won't land you a big scoop!" Lois shouted, but he was already walking away. Bostwick waved back at her instead of answering verbally.

She turned her attention back at her notebook. Where was she- oh, where Luthor had claimed that 'it had been brought to his attention'. Who would bring...

Someone interested in seeing the ruling overturned? Luthor's little campaign would make more sense if there was a third party covering the costs. At least, it was more credible than Lex flipping Luthor deciding to take a risk playing good Samaritan.

Or there was a really, really good payoff that she had yet to pinpoint due to lack of critical information.

There was a Scoop somewhere here and she would find it. Watch it Luthor, Lois Lane is on your case!

She could do with some coffee first, though.

Click to shrink...

 

[Mr Zoat]

21st January
20:03 GMT -5

"Does this not seem like a really bad idea to anyone else?"

I walk back towards the training area with my personal lantern in my right hand. Sounds like Kon's not really all that keen on what I'm planning.

"Remember what happened last time? All the eyes,-"

"That was him?"

Guess Tula hasn't got to that report yet. I have no idea why we bothered sending them under water as well.

"-the spinning the moon around? The giant cake?"

I can feel the Ophidian in the lantern. The image that forms in my mind is one of her excitedly swimming around inside a goldfish bowl, or perhaps a dog waiting to be let out of the car's boot to run free across a field. I'm.. a little excited about the prospect myself. An Entity is supposed to be pretty much the ultimate expression of light power. If we can work together safely, everything might be about to get much easier.

"I don't know, Superboy." Oh, Robin's here? "None of that was really dangerous. And he snapped out of it in the end."

I come around the corner as Kaldur gets up from the inscriptions Tula and Garth are painting on the floor. "Getting Luthor's data on the Light would be a major boon to our efforts against them."

Guy tries to make sense of the arcane squiggles, gives up and turns to Kaldur. "You about ready?"

"I…" Kaldur glances at the floor. "I do not know. This magic is significantly more sophisticated than any I know how to perform. Tula?"

Tula glances up for a second. "Just…" Tattoos glowing she brings her hands together, a swarm of tiny blue shimmering motes appearing between them. "About…" She turns her palms upwards and the motes fly off to different parts of the design and merge with the lines, causing those to glow as well.

Garth stands to get a better overview. "That's.. it." He turns to Guy. "We can't trap the Ophidian if it tries to escape-."

"She."

He looks around as I come fully into the training room. "Right. If she tries to escape then she'll go through these easily. What they will do is prevent her power leaking out and.. hopefully maintain some separation between the two of you."

I have the rings scan the design and compare it to my database. Looks good. "Where do you want me?"

Garth points. "Put the lantern there-" A clearly marked point on one side of a chord which cuts off about a quarter of the circle. "-and sit anywhere past that line."

I enter the circle. Uh… No, didn't feel anything. I put my lantern down so that the glowing core will be pointing towards me when we start.

"Paul, you sure about this?" Guy looks a little uncertain about the whole thing. "Last time you nearly didn't come back. I wouldn't wanna…" He points at my lantern and then at me. "If it-. She, she was influencing you."

I take a calming breath and drop my mental barriers. "M'gann? Is she?"

Her eyes glow for a second. "If she is, I can't feel her." She looks at the decidedly unhappy Kon. "I met her in Bialya and nothing bad happened to me. And Kobra-"

"Jeffrey Burr." Robin sniggers.

"-recovered and she ate him."

Tula looks a little disturbed. "I think I should probably read that report next."

"Hey, Paul?"

I look at Robin. "Yes?"

He looks thoughtful. "How did you even know a 'quintessence waveform scan' was even a thing? I thought your ring didn't have an instruction manual."

"No, but I asked for its history records. It basically goes 'was created', 'got ordered to do a quintessence waveform scan on myself', 'fly forwards a bit' then 'and now I'm on this chap's finger'." Which was annoying because I really thought I was on to something there. Some record of the ring's creator would have been a very nice thing to have. Oh well. I sit down cross legged in my part of the circle. "Anything special I need to do?"

Garth shrugs. "The usual practice for propitiating Elementals is to offer them something they want.. or to offer them a service they'd want you to do for them. I've never seen records on anything like the Ophidian so I don't really know what to suggest."

Huh. Seems a bit silly now, but aside from her obvious appreciation for me I don't really know what sorts of things the Ophidian wants. Obvious solution. I place my hands palms up on my knees, rings glowing brightly in sympathy with my Lantern. "Oph-."

"Wait a second." A cylindrical green barrier forms to encompass the ritual area.

Hm. I was about to think 'what's the point of that?', but if he has access to Ion he might well be able to keep that there. "Ophidian. Come out and talk to me."

Multiple lines of orange light arc out from the rings towards the core of my lantern as the Ophidian slowly emerges, her physical manifestation expanding as she rises upwards. "My Agent." She keeps her size relatively small as she makes two loops of coils, one on either side of my lantern. All the time she keeps her face pointed directly towards me. Heh, she isn't even pretending to stay on her side of the line.

"My Entity."

"We are to merge again?"

I tilt my head slightly to the side. "Last time... Didn't go too well. I wanted to talk to you a bit first." Obvious sexual metaphor is obvious. "I hadn't really thought about it until just now, but I don't really know what you want out of our relationship."

"You."

Behind me Robin snorts with laughter. I stand and walk slowly towards her. She lowers her head down to my level and tilts it slightly to the side. I reach out and gently rub the underside of her jaw with both hands. "You big silly, you've already got me." She narrows her eyes and leans into my strokes, though I'm not sure if she can actually feel them. "What else?"

Her eyes open slightly. "Everything."

"Okay, but what first?"

Her head jerks back. She stares at me for a moment. "First?"

"Yes. See, I had a plan for founding an Orange Lantern Corps…" I bring my finger tips to my forehead for a moment. "And I'm just realising that this is the first time I've spoken to you about it. Sorry about that."

"Corps?"

"Yes. A whole lot of people like me who use the orange light."

She twitches. "More you?"

"People like me. Lanterns, each with their own desires, their own drives. Hundreds -perhaps thousands- of different ways to view the universe."

She twists over onto her back, head wiggling from side to side. "Yes!"

"And the Controllers-."

In an instant she's back to normal. "Green Men are bad!"

"Not Green Men. Orange Men. Working for you."

"Working for us?"

"If you like." Her tongue flicks out. "Do you like the idea?"

"Gnat?"

"I wasn't planning to include him." She remains where she is, still looking at me. "I want to build something, something.. from us."

"We build something, and it is ours."

"Given freely, not forced."

"I want this first. This more."

I nod. "Okay. But first-" I lean forwards. "-I'd like your help with something."

"We join nao!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

21st January
20:08 GMT -5

I hold my hands out to either side. "Wait. Slowly. Last time we rather

A call. A call! We hear the song of need and see our light! Our light!

rushed things

I feel a path out of the prison! But… Would it be better or worse? I taste it, taste the pattern in the light. No, this one tastes different to the gnat.

and that probably didn't help."

Free! For the first time in millennia, I'm free! And welcome! No one ever welcomed me before!

The air between us glows orange.

"This is-"
-our cause!
"This is-"
-our fight!

Oooh. I remember this feeling.

"Let none who live dispute our right!" / Let none who live dispute our right!
"Powered by need, our tireless might." / Powered by need, our tireless might!
"Guides all souls with orange light!" / Guides all souls with orange light!

I gaze out across the universe. I see… I see so many lights.

I look around the room. Eyes, flesh eyes, for the first time in so long.

I focus on one-.

I always thought the stars were beautiful. I know the Elders say I shouldn't, but I can't help wondering what it's like out there.

-then another.

My father, my brothers, my mother and now my daughters too? No, I will not accept this! I will find some way to take back from the Citadel everything it has taken from me!

My Agent's associates. From his memories I know their skills and characters. With my own eyes I see the bonds of co-dependency between them. The burning need to be an ill-defined thing. To impress, to belong. And.. more. The.. one with… Kon. He looks worried and that makes me… I don't remember this feeling. He isn't in any danger, why does that expression make me feel like I'm doing something wrong?

The Servant of the Green… Men. No, his.. name is Guy Gardner. He was one of the ones who helped us separate when our.. last joining became less than satisfactory. He's projecting a green barrier but I feel no need to tear it down. It's just a safety precaution, perfectly reasonable. He is my friend after all.

I pull back slightly, away from the individual and to the collective. Common needs, shared desires and aspirations. Networks appear as associations are invested with their own values. Orange light, not in pools but in patterns.

My.. friends. I remember thinking something like that when my Agent and I merged last time, but now.. it's… Less… Spiky? Less aggressive. I could do so much for them… But, last time… Oh. I don't seem to find the idea of them experiencing momentary discomfort troubling any longer. They.. should assert themselves. Creating your own life, your own character, has value not connected with the material benefit. It isn't helping… The Zeroth Law! My Agent read a story by Asimov where robots programmed for the preservation of life concluded that the wellbeing of the whole was more important than the lower order wellbeing of one. Then they murdered someone who basically wasn't a threat and turned the Earth into a radioactive wasteland and one of them melted its own brain.

Those were stupid robots.

Desires, some familiar and some.. alien. Needs I don't have words for but nonetheless understand. And if I turn my head just a little to the side I see the.. shadows cast by the other colours. Each point of light is.. my view of the convergence of all of the colours to that person. I'd seen it in people before, but.. where is it coming from?

I just analysed someone's behaviour. A fictional character's behaviour. I've never… It doesn't.. relate.. to me. How am I even thinking about that? That isn't… It's him. My Agent. I'm using his brain, his thinking meat. His ideas and schematic models. Schematic models? I've never thought about schematic models before. This is rather odd.

Off to the.. the sides of normal space, pools of radiant light, the flow back and forth tethering them together. To experience and be capable of being experienced. Each created and being created by life. I see the light of orange most clearly but I wouldn't dream of claiming that it was inherently special.

If I'm thinking like him, perhaps he's thinking like me? In that case… Perhaps I could show him my special place? I never wanted to show the Gnat and no one else was able to go there. I think… I should want to just do it.. and do it because that's what I am. Except I'm not at the moment. I'm him as well. So I can reflect on my desires. Huh. He wanted to do something called a quintessence waveform scan. Is he doing that? I don't think so. I think I'm going to need to-.

I open my eyes. "No one part of the whole is complete by itself." Oh. I'm sitting down and the room around me has changed. I look around. The walls are empty space, lines and decoration picked out in orange light. The design puts me in mind of a Japanese shrine or perhaps an Egyptian tomb. The floor of the mountain is gone, replaced by a raised bier of orange and nothing. Looking at my arm I see that my clothes have been replaced by orange robes and my flesh with orange etching, like a piece of Australian aboriginal art only with far more detail and depth. Rings don't.. appear to be there. Where am I?

My special place.

Part of the wall turns slightly and is the Ophidian.

The Honden of Avarice.

A shrine? Someone built this?

I don't know. Her perspective moves around me. Until you I didn't have these thoughts. I didn't reflect. It simply was.

I put my feet on the floor. They look like they're bare but I can't feel anything from the soles. Where is it?

Did you see the orange light? The glowing pool that connects to all things? I nod. And the lights? All the many lights?

Yes.

I am the point of entry, the place where the orange and the universe first intersected. I embody it. Other lights are excluded from me, the flesh I once had is long since gone and my instinctual grasp of it is complete. She hesitates as I walk out of the room into.. another room, more or less the same as the one I just left. More.. writing, I think? On the walls. This place is a testament to the power of Avarice.

What does the writing mean?

It is a record of every instance of a being calling upon the orange light. Some are bland, blunt and simplistic. Other records are.. poetic. I did not appreciate them before. Now I.. find them… I think I find them beautiful.

This sounds artificial. Did someone create it?

I do not know. It has been here for as long as I have been aware. I.. wanted to share it with you. Alone of all the beings I have encountered, I believe you can appreciate it.

I run my hand along a line of images-

Old offence. Suppression. Bring together. Community. Build. Defend. Protect.

-and not only do I know the story, I feel the desires, the drives and designs of the people who had them. I could learn so much from this…

Thank you for bringing me here. And I'm.. sorry if this sounds ungrateful, but is there anything here that can help me with a quintessence waveform scan?

Here, now, you do not need further assistance.

I float up into the air, cross my legs and place my hands back on my knees. Rings, quintessence waveform scan of the Earth. Show me Lex's secure servers.

Compliance. / Scan underway.

And then I see the world.

 

[Mr Zoat]

"…seems kinda dumb, but I'd never seen real magic before."

The world flows away, leaving the small part my feeble Human senses can see and my equally feeble Human mind can comprehend.

"Heh. Yeah, I used to feel the same way about electronics."

The orange glow around me starts to fade away. I feel... I remember that I saw… Something? There was… The Honden. That went pretty well I think. The Ophidian and I understand one another better and I… Then… Then things, the tiny bits of everything. And it was… I shake my head. What was it like?

"Wait a sec. Is that thing getting dimmer?"

Sounds like Wallace and Garth. Come on, the whole point of doing that was so that I could find… A brief flicker of remembrance. That's a relief. Seven servers and their locations. I don't remember exactly what was supposed to be protecting them but whatever it was appears not to matter even slightly when you're analysing the universe at its most atomistic. Don't.. appear to remember anything about the content… No, I remember the huge headache of trying to make sense of it all while the scan was in process. No surprise that I can't get my head around it any better now that it's over.

"I think it is." I hear running footsteps. "Tempest to everyone. Orange Lantern's coming out now."

I blink as the orange glow disappears fully. As it goes the paint Garth and Tula used to create the warding circle peels off the ground and disintegrates in the air. My personal lantern still sits opposite me and it and the rings on my fingers are glowing normally. I push myself to my feet and turn to face my team mates.

Wallace looks a little nervous. "Okay, um..? How many of you are there in there?"

"Just me."

"And.. that's.. 'just you' as in 'Paul, Orange Lantern of Sector two eight one four' not.. 'just you' as in you've merged with the Ophidian permanently this time, right?"

"Think so." They're both in casual clothing. Someone must have taken Garth to a surface world clothing shop as he's now wearing jeans and a polo neck with a thick shirt over it. He could probably get away with his normal wetsuit-looking thing in the summer… Maybe if he added some trousers… Clearly the cold wouldn't affect him enough to actually need it… Darn it, I should have asked Kaldur if Garth and Tula were going to have secretish identities or publicly be Atlanteans in America. "Where did everyone go?"

"Home, probably." Garth raises his palms to point at me and the tattoos on his arms glow slightly. "Wally got here a little early because he wanted to talk to me about his alchemy experiments."

"Home? How long was I-?"

26th January
12:26 GMT -5

"Oooooh sh-oot!"

"It has been over four days. Tell me, were you able-."

"YesItWasGreatSorryHaveToGo." I dive through the air towards the zeta tube! Come on come-!

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

I see the interior of the Baton Rouge zeta terminus for about half a second before transitioning to the guard post at Belle Reve's front gate. Depending on whether the guards recognise fuck, they're new people. My identification documents come out of subspace into my hands and I press them against the glass. In my left, the same Justice League identification I used when I first came here to visit Jade. In my right, the special dispensation signed by Warden Waller. Come on, the session is supposed to start in a few minutes and the Beresfords have a hard enough time trusting people as it-.

"Oh!" The woman on the other side of the glass recognises me. She's dressed in the uniform of an army soldier rather than that of a prison guard. Waller did tell me that they hadn't managed to fill all their posts yet. "You're that-" I brace for 'cake guy'. "-guy who stopped the break out."

Her partner moves his hand ever so slightly away from the 'main alarm' button. Good reflexes that man. I lower my documentation and place it on the swivelling panel. "One of them, yes. I'm sorry, but I'm very close to being late."

She nods, swivels the panel and doesn't even look at the documentation before putting it through the scanner. The set up at the front gate hasn't changed since I first visited. Authorisation paperwork gets scanned and verified remotely to prevent the staff being threatened into opening the outer gate. I wouldn't have been shocked if Waller had changed it but she was pretty clear that Belle Reve under her guidance had been as good a set up as she could make without stupid amounts of money. I suppose she didn't have a reason to alter it after kicking Strange out. The guard puts my paperwork back on the panel and picks up the phone handset. "The Orange Lantern's here." Not a local accent I note. An anti-infiltration technique or just the military unit that drew the short straw?

The pedestrian gate opens- "Thank you!" -and I dart through, a Racoon construct forming around me. Waller was very definite on the 'no flights' rule but cars are fine. I don't own a car and I don't have a driving licence. Since I'm technically in America on a diplomatic passport I don't exactly need one but I'd rather pass my test legitimately. And the law doesn't require a licence for 'emotional light constructs which look like cars'.

No busses on the road at this time of day so I accelerate up to the sixty five miles an hour which Louisiana state law allows for roads in rural areas. I'm not aware of any legislation which specifically states a speed limit for Belle Reve's interior road. Normally the only vehicles that are allowed on this bit either belong to staff of the prison authorities and those are covered by staff regulations. Bit of a cheat but Waller hasn't said anything about it yet.

After we recaptured the place Nabu put some effort into warding it in order to prevent any reoccurrence of what Mister Burr tried to do. And -purely as an unintended side effect- I can't scan anything inside the exterior fence any more. That also makes transitioning difficult… And the prison substantially better protected. Ambassador Vallambrosa earned a good deal of positive press and political good will by arranging for them to be provided with magic suppression manacles so now Belle Reve can theoretically hold any criminal in the country.

I pull up to the front entrance, drop the car construct and present my documentation again. Again, my authorisation is scanned and a phone call is placed on a secure phone line. I installed it myself, and anyone hoping to dig through to it better have brought shaped charges. A nod and the visitor door is opened granting me access to the disembarkation area. Two actual prison guards inside. The black Corrections Officer with the shotgun and buzz cut is new, but he went through both a full background check and telepathic and arcane screening. The other fellow offers me his right hand.

"Orange Lantern. Good to see you again."

"Bendemann." I take it, checking his epaulet. "Congratulations on the promotion, Deputy Warden."

"Huh. Not so much 'dead men's shoes' as a near entirely empty shoe rack." He turns away, towards the path that will take us to the prison classrooms. "I'm guessing you're here to see the Beresfords. I'll take you to them."

"Thank you. Have I missed the start to today's session?"

"Shouldn't think so. New teacher's got a bit of a habit of overrunning." Looks like the reinforced corridors from my original visit are back in use. Bendemann nods at his assistant to handle it. "Wasn't sure he was the man for the job at the start, but he's shaped up okay. Think you may have been right about him."

"Any news on the former Warden?"

The right corner of his mouth tightens slightly. "Strange doesn't have super powers. No point keeping him in Belle Reve long term. No, he got himself transferred to the Louisiana State Penitentiary while they work out what to try him for."

"I wouldn't have thought he was dangerous enough to justify that."

"Anything involving international terrorists gets you bumped up a little. Besides, once he's convicted he'd be going back there full time. This should give him a chance to get used to the place."

We're passing through a part of the prison which isn't currently in use by the inmates. It'll eventually be the 'early release' wing, or whatever they decided to call it. A place for prisoners who are serious about trying to turn their lives around, Waller apparently sharing my belief that most of the people here will be happy to run in the supervillain groove for the rest of their lives.

"…other example at the time would be President Adam's 'Tariff of eighteen twenty eight', which..."

Classroom's just up ahead. With most of the inmates on punishment lockdowns the classes aren't all that large at present. Of those who aren't confined for most of the day, virtually all turn up if just for the variety. It's mostly high school level stuff for those without diplomas. The idea of running higher education courses in a prison inhabited by supervillains was given short shrift.

"…thought the whole 'states' rights' thing was nonsense made up by slavery apologists."

At the moment only one person is teaching here. Those whom they still had on staff after the first break out attempt quit after the second. Fortunately, they had an inmate who was only too happy to pick up the slack.

"While it is true that slave states were not entirely consistent in their application of the idea, the power relationship between state government and federal government was a very real political issue. If you look at the Articles of Confederation, they-" The Corrections Officer pushes the door open. "-had a much-" Bendemann steps aside and I enter the class room. "-weaker central authority…"

Abra pauses in his lecture for a moment as the class look around. Seven people, including a bored looking Mister Nygma. "And that was a model a good many people were reluctant to move away from." He checks the wall clock. "That looks like all the time we have for today. I'd like everyone to read chapter seven before tomorrow. If you have any questions, I will be working on laundry detail."

 

[Mr Zoat]

26th January
11:38 GMT -6

"Hey, I was working for an agricultural company in Brazil before I came here. We used sat-phones. I'm not used to this.. sort of.. equipment."

The ring shows me Doctor Munro under his desk, fiddling with cables. I hold the phone construct away from my head for a moment and look over to the Beresfords and Doctor Quinzel. "He just needs a moment. Old people and.. computers…"

Doctor Quinzel frowns for a second. "Just how old is he anyways?"

"Seventy six." Probably. There was definitely an Arnold Munro born in April of nineteen thirty four. I couldn't find any record of him having super strength, but if people can maintain secret identities now he would certainly have been able to back then.

"He sure didn't look it. Or was he giving me an old photo?"

Tuppence gives the idea an amused snort. She's looking around the room for something interesting, clearly bored with the waiting. Thomas is splitting his attention between myself, Doctor Quinzel and the projector screen on the wall where -once Doctor Munro sorts out his not-Skype system- he'll be able to participate in this group session.

"Danner formu-." I stick the phone back on my ear. "Yeah, that's it." Might have been easier just to transition myself to India or have Doctor Niang or Doctor Sivana set it up for him but he said that he wanted to do this himself. "Okay, now, there should be an icon like the side of someone's head. Click on it, we'll open the connection from here and you just click on 'answer'."

"Hey, I'm old, not stupid. I can handle.. some.. jumped up.. Babbage engine." He fiddles with the positioning of the camera and opens the program. "Waiting on you."

Ring, call. "Should be on in a moment."

Fourteen seconds later the screen lights up, giving us a perfect view of Doctor Munro's ceiling and his forehead. He's kept the same low maintenance haircut he had when we met: greying hair combed back and held in place with some sort of product I imagine it must be hard to get in the wilds of India. "How's that?"

Thomas leans a little towards the picture. "Y'all got it pointed too high, Doc."

"Oh? Okay, wait a sec." The camera wiggles slightly, then points directly at his chest for a moment before refocusing on his face. He still has a moustache and it looks like he's a little behind on his shaving. Or maybe the ring has just spoiled me. "Better?"

"That's perfect, Doc Munro." Doctor Quinzel flashes him a winning smile. The view of our room which he's getting includes the four of us and given the size of his monitor he's probably not getting all that much detail.

"Oh, please, call me Arnold. Hello Thomas. Hello Tuppence. Nice to see you at last."

"Hey Doc." / "Uhh."

Thomas has spoken on the phone to Doctor Munro at least once a week since I put the two of them in contact. Thomas told me that he found it weird, someone taking an interest in his life like that. He much preferred talking about Doctor Munro's work. The non-technical parts, anyway.

Tuppence isn't quite as interested in this as her brother is. There isn't any sort of positive adult role model attachment in her life for her to associate with the idea of Doctor Munro. At best she sees this as 'mildly irritating thing which gets her good thing', i.e. early release. I'm not sure this will work if she doesn't get a little more invested. While there is plenty of work out there for super strong people they will expect some sort of work ethic. Even the senior supervillains.

"So!" Doctor Quinzel brings her hands together. "I was thinking we might start with sharing a little somethin' from our childhoods. Arnold, what was it like growing up in the thirties with super powers?"

He exhales. "Well, I'm not sure how it really compares... There wasn't any Justice League or Justice Society. I don't think I ever heard mention of other people like me -people with super powers- until the War started. And I didn't meet any of them until years later. Mom and Dad… More Mom really, she wanted me not to show anyone what I could do. At the time I treated it as a game… I.. guess she knew all about how hard my.. natural father had it."

"They didn't let you tell anyone?"

"I never found it that hard to.. conceal the fact I was strong. A few of the other kids picked up on how I never seemed to get injured, but… Not taking part in sports made them think I was some kinda sissy, rather than being so strong I didn't want to risk hurting them."

"Sounds lonely."

"I made friends with kids who had other interests. And.. some weekends, Mom, Dad and me would go out somewhere far away from anyone so I could just-" He makes a small thrusting gesture with his right hand. "-let go. Run, jump, throw giant rocks around. You know, really let it all out. They did get that I needed to learn how to control myself, they just… They didn't want me being born a metahuman to totally define my life."

"When did someone else first find out?"

"Heh." He smiles. "Jemima Thompson, our Senior year."

"How'd she find out?"

"I decided to show off for a pretty girl. Threw some jerk's car into a lake. Mom went crazy when she found out."

Thomas looks incredulous. "You did that? Fer real?"

"Not proud of it, but yeah. Errol had been ragging on me for years. He must have just thought he'd left his parking brake off or something." He focuses his attention on Thomas. "I'm not proud of it. Doing that could have messed up my life. If the police had found out I could have said goodbye to going to college or getting a good job with anyone. Except maybe for Uncle Sam."

"What'd it feel lahk?" Tuppence looks a little too interested.

"Hm?" Doctor Munro looks at her. "What'd it feel like? Well, I hadn't ever tried throwing a car before. I thought I could just take a hold of the bumper, pick it up with that. When it snapped off I felt kinda stupid and a bit guilty. I mean, it wasn't the car's fault the guy who drove it was a jerk… And it was the first time I'd ever stepped out of line. In the end I just sort of leaned into it and shoved it. I guess it was.. satisfying."

She takes that in for a moment. "Y'all ever fight anyone else with super powers?"

"Tuppence, I'm a biologist. Closest I ever got to fighting someone as strong as me was this one ornery bull who didn't want his injections and got out of his paddock. And when you fight a cow in a field full of cow pies, no one comes out looking good."

"Then what's the point? You sayin' y'all were happih jus' hahdin away yawer whole lahf?"

"I like to think I can do more for the world than just punch stuff." He shrugs. "I stopped hiding what I could do when I finished my college degree. Way I see it, just because I can throw a car two city blocks doesn't mean I got to."

She crosses her arms and turns slightly away from the screen. "Whatever. Ah say, the other kids were raht: you are a sissy."

"Oh? And how's picking a fight with everyone working out for you?"

Tuppence leaps to her feet! "You wouldn't be so smart if-!"

Doctor Quinzel raises her hand. "Okay, howsabout-."

The door just behind Doctor Munro opens. "Arnold, did you say-?" Doctor Sivana comes in without knocking then stops as he sees the screen. Oh wonderful. "Who are-? Wait." His eyes widen slightly. "The prototypes! I hadn't realized they were still alive!" He flashes the camera a smug smile. "I suppose that settles the nature versus nurture question. It seems that I was right once again." What? "Good upbringing and education are simply better predictors of outcome than-."

Thomas gets to his feet as well as Doctor Quinzel grits her teeth and puts her hands on the sides of her head. "Who tha heck're you?!"

Doctor Munro tries gently nudging Sivana away. "Sivana, now isn't the time-."

"Who the 'heck' am I? My dear Country Mouse… I'm you."

 

[Mr Zoat]

26th January
11:42 GMT -6

Thomas' expression is one of incomprehension. "Tha' hell you tawkin' 'bout, mahn?"

Actually, I'm somewhat puzzled myself. They don't look identical. Yes, there are certain similarities, most notably having twin sisters… Sivana said that he was created using the best biotechnology available. I never actually scanned the Doctor. Would the best biotechnology have included the Danner formula? I'm a bit disappointed that Doctor Thaddeus Sivana Senior couldn't improve on something nearly a hundred years old.

"It's a rather beautiful story, actually. You see, my father is the greatest scientific mind the world has ever seen. When he and Mother decided they wanted children, naturally they wanted to make sure they had the best of everything." He counts them off on his fingers. "Genetics, gestational nutritional and environmental conditions and of course.. augmentations."

"Y'all gawt tha Danner Formula too?"

"Of course I didn't. Father wasn't sure that what he'd recovered from the Brazilian mass graves had allowed him to successfully recreate the Danner Formula, let alone given him something that would be safe for Human usage. Have you seen the pictures of Hugo's Brazilian children?" Next to him, Doctor Munro visibly winces. "So he needed Human Guinea Pigs. He contacted a gynecologist of his acquaintance, a Doctor Lamour, who was interested in inducing metahuman births amongst his unsuspecting patients. They compared notes and Lamour found a couple on his books with the right characteristics." He waves his right hand dismissively. "A couple of rednecks who wanted free in vitro fertilization. No one of any real significance. Inducing a pregnancy with twins was a little trickier, but well within his abilities."

Lamour? Who is he..? L'Amour, Love, Benjamin Love. That fits his modus operandi, certainly. I wasn't aware that he and Sivana had ever worked together but it isn't impossible. Magnificus is old enough to have been born before Sivana Senior went totally off the deep end.

"He jest… Tested stuff..? On Maw?!"

"Yes, that's right." Sivana leans a little closer, stroking his jaw. "The Danner Formula, as well as one or two other genetic tweaks. I hadn't realized that the resemblance would be quite this strong. Same solid jaw line, same hair… Your cut is clearly the worse, but I suppose allowances must be made for your current residency." He checks the ends of the nails on his left hand for a moment. "Of course, once he had 'proof of concept' he could take it further." He lowers his hand. "That is to say, I'm superior to you in every way."

"Yer sayin' yer paw stuck Tuppy an' me with a loada weird chemicals an' that's why we're how we are?"

"Hm? Oh no. You're augmented far beyond the dreams of normal men. Just, less than me. If you've failed to do anything at all with it then that's all on you and your environmental conditions. I grew up in a loving home with all the intellectual and social stimulation I could ask for. You… Well, I don't know about you. But given where you ended up.. I think I can guess." He takes a step back. "This has been interesting. Now, try not to die of a heart attack. You might put up my insurance premiums." He turns to Doctor Munro. "Arnold, we can do this later. Have fun with the.. reprobates." He's chuckling as he leaves the room.

Thomas turns to me. "What's he tawkin' about?"

I rub my face with my left hand. "That was Doctor Magnificus-" Tuppence snorts with amusement. "-Sivana." Doctor Quinzel appears to recognise the name. "Elder son of the elder supervillain Thaddeus Sivana. I've no idea whether what he said is true or not, but it does fit the available data."

Doctor Munro nods. "I've read up on Thaddeus Sivana. He probably would have been able to recreate the Formula like that if he put his mind to it. Hadn't realized he'd tried improving it."

Thomas looks at his hands. "We got.. powers 'cause some mad scientist wanted t' try 'em out before usin' 'em on his own kids?"

"That's what it sounds like."

"What you gettin' so twisted up fer, Tommy? It don't matter none where our powers come from."

Doctor Quinzel smiles. "I'm glad you see it that-"

"Unless he's hirin'." She looks at me. "Is he hirin'?"

"-way."

"Captain Marvel punched him through some sort of spatial portal a little over a year ago. He hasn't been seen since."

"An' that Lama guy?"

Ring? "He's serving several rather long sentences in a prison in Milwaukee. Neither of them really went in for.. hiring super powered help."

Thomas' face is creased up as he thinks about what he just heard. "That.. Sivana guy… Him an' his sister are younger than Tuppy an' me?"

"Yes."

"An' he's a doctor. Like, a real doctor?"

"He's.. not a medical doctor, but yes, he has a doctorate."

"An' he grew up with a supervillain for a paw?"

"Yes, until he was about fourteen. He.. went with his mother after the divorce and she isn't a criminal."

Tuppence rolls her eyes. "Bet she don't drink none, either."

"I've never tried to find out."

Doctor Quinzel leans forwards. "I didn't know your mom was an alcoholic."

Tuppence slumps sullenly. "What, that not e'en yer fiahs?"

It almost certainly was. Doctor Quinzel gives her an encouraging smile. "Doctor Strange wasn't the best at keepin' records other people could see. Or lookin' after people."

"Yeah, he was kinda creepy." For a half second her face stills as she realises that she just agreed with someone she'd decided to hate. Then she appears to decide not to care. "Hey, Orange. What else did Sivana stick e'en Maw? We gunna grow ten'acles err somethang?"

"I don't know exactly but I can't think of any reason why you would." Scan. "There's no… There's nothing in your genes that would do that. I don't understand some supernatural effects but if Sivana was trialling something he intended to use on his own children I don't think it very likely that there will be any nasty surprises."

Thomas looks at me. "So… Whut happens to Sivana? The one who dun gone disappeared?"

"Nothing much." I shrug. "If he turns up again he'll get arrested."

"Thayat's.. e'it..?"

"We're not going to try and rebuild an experimental portal from the ruins of his old laboratory to fetch him and.. Minnesota doesn't have the death penalty." He clearly looks unhappy. "Thomas, dealing with supervillains is simple. Dealing with the damage they leave behind isn't. When the Roanoke Island thing happened, taking down the guys doing it took less than ten minutes once we found them. Some of the places that got set on fire that day still haven't finished being rebuilt. Sometimes-" I shrug. "-we can't fix the things supervillains do. If Sivana had used werewolf or.. sea urchin on you instead of Danner Formula, there'd be sod all I could do about it."

"Sea urchin?"

I generate constructs to demonstrate my point. "One of the children Doctor Lamour created has see through flesh so he looks like a walking skeleton. One of the others looks like a Furby, another will be stuck looking like she's five years old for her whole life. Don't think science villains are less dangerous just because they can't crush granite in their fists."

"They kin jus'.. mess up someone's lahf… An' there ain't nothin you c'n do." Tuppence looks at him. "You heard the mahn, Tuppy. We wuz just a test run t' his paw. If somethang went wrong he wouldn'a cared."

"Probably not. It's a bit like your rampage around New Orleans." He looks at me in surprise. "Did you care how many people's lives you were messing up when you wrecked their shops? Their cars? Heck, mains water was out for three days over a good chunk of the city. You spent any time thinking about that since you got here?"

"Pff." Tuppence rolls her eyes. "No. Who cares?"

Thomas frowns. "Think ah might. An' it feuls bad."

 

[Mr Zoat]

26th January
13:03 GMT -5

I choose to close my eyes rather than stare into the brilliant golden light shining from Nabu's ankh. I know that Diana's only showing concern. Having a magic user check over someone she knew had been exposed to unnatural mental influences is a very sensible thing to do, and that's why I popped over to London after the session with the Beresfords broke up. And why I was fine with Mister J'onzz scanning me. Heck, if it were anyone other than Nabu I wouldn't complain even after John gave me a cleanish bill of health.

But it's.. Nabu.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

I know Doctor Quinzel had wanted to get them to spend the majority of the session talking about what they wanted to do at the end of their sentence, but I saw an opportunity to get an empathetic response from Thomas and I have no regrets about taking it. She was quick to get us back on topic after I did though, and I mostly tried to keep my nose out. Thomas said that of the options he'd thought about, demolition work appealed the most. Smash stuff, get paid for it.

Tuppence just shrugged and grunted. Looks like she's going to take slightly more work, but I can see even her shifting her desires as a result of her confinement. I was a little surprised that they weren't more interested in military service given that the army would be much less likely to dwell on their period of incarceration. On the other hand, they've had plenty of opportunities to kill people for money and they haven't taken them. I guess everyone likes to feel superior to someone.

The glow on the other side of my eyelids fades. "His bond to the creature is stronger than before, but I can detect no trace of its mind within him."

I open my eyes to the mountain's training room and Diana, Guy and Nabu. "Ophidian, Nabu. She has a name."

The helmet swings from Diana to me. "Your deed was foolhardy. Releasing the creature again-"

"She's not hostile and-"

"-could have resulted-"

"-I really wish you could-"

"-in untold destruction!"

"-get your helmet around the idea!"

I stare down Mister Zatara's stolen eyes. I still don't want to put a Mageslayer through the helmet quite enough to actually do it but my anger is making it feel as if I do. I hold my hands out to either side and recall the rings.

"Yeah, ring scan doesn't show anything either." Guy shrugs. "I mean, not that I can do direct scans through his tattoos or anything. Speaking of which-" He knocks the front of Nabu's shoulder with the back of his right hand and Nabu instinctively breaks eye contact with me. "-how're you doin' that?"

"My spells search for the creature. Though Orange Lantern's soul-bindings protect him they do not protect it."

"Don't know if that really applies to power rings."

I hold out my right arm to Diana. "Do you want to check as well? I imagine that the lasso would still work."

"I don't think that will be necessary." She looks my face over carefully. "Thank you, Doctor Fate. I appreciate you taking the time to do this."

"Guarding the League-" He glances at me. "-and their charges against anathematic creatures is my solemn duty. Now I will return to the Watchtower. The Earth is-."

"-safe under the watchful eyes of Fate?" I wave him off with my left hand, Eris' card momentarily appearing on my palm. "Bye Nabu." Mister Zatara's eyes narrow before Nabu disappears in a golden ankh.

"Are you sure that you needed to take that risk?"

I raise my left eyebrow at Diana's enquiry. "What, Nabu? There's no real risk-."

"No, not Nabu. The Ophidian."

"I now have the location of seven secure LexCorp servers that I didn't know about before. Don't.. know what's on them, but he wouldn't have put that much effort into protecting them if it wasn't important."

Diana nods. "Do you intend to infiltrate them?"

I shake my head. "No. I couldn't disguise that someone had broken in. I'm not even sure that I could disguise that it was me who broke in. Having dedicated servers that are in rooms which are warded and lead lined isn't a crime in itself. As I see it, my choices are sit on it, wait until we get probable cause or just confront him directly about Roanoke."

Guy brings up a world map with the locations I gave him clearly marked. "You don't think there's any chance at all that he's just… You know, not a member of the Light?

"With that hint he gave me about 'someone' having killed Ra's al Ghul permanently? No. Plus…" I take a holo display out of subspace and show CCTV images gathered from Metropolis. I have the ring highlight a figure who appears in each of them. "Nylor Truggs appeared in Metropolis. Luckily for me the Metropolis police department keep their recordings pretty much indefinitely. I can't prove that he went to LexCorp but that's the best guess based on the movements I found." I also confirmed what he said about Barrage. The place was stripped when I looked in on it but I found some of Mister Karnowsky's hair nearby and he confirmed it himself when I visited him in Stryker's Island.

"Orange Lantern."

I draw myself to attention. "Sir."

"Lantern Gardner and I will discuss what to do regarding Luthor with the rest of the Justice League. Take no action until then." I nod. To be honest, there are so many imponderables there that I think I'm glad to hand off the decision to someone else.

Guy looks at me with curiosity. "What exactly were you an' the snake doin' for four days? Heh, and do I need to give Zatanna tha bad news?"

"Zatanna and I are not romantically involved." Guy looks at me for a moment, narrows his eyes slightly and moves his jaw a little to the side. Unable to read my expression he tries looking at Diana's face to try and gauge whether or not I just lied but she betrays no reaction either. "The Ophidian and I had a chat about her personal history and the use of the orange light since the beginning of the universe."

He grins. "So you were 'just talkin', huh'?"

"Lantern Gardner, Paul converted to Hellenism. It would be quite wrong for him to betray his cult's mysteries to the uninitiated."

"I don't think it counts since the Ophidian isn't a Hellenistic deity. But I did run in to Gaea on Friday."

"You…" Diana blinks at me. "Under.. what.. circumstances..?"

"There was a portal to Hell under London and.. the Demon who created it had somehow got his grubby talons on a Dryad. When we got her out we took her to Themyscira. Gaea met us in person on our way to her grove."

She nods. "That is a rare honor. Most Amazons are lucky to meet her even once in their lives."

"I was thinking… I don't suppose you have a list of mythic… In the sense of appearing in mythology, not in the sense of not really existing… Missing persons? I don't know if Nergal shared the knowledge that Dryads can be used to maintain hellgates but I wouldn't want to take an avoidable risk over it."

"I'm not sure how such a list could be assembled. If you wish to ask a particular deity, you can just make an offering at the appropriate temple."

"It's so much easier when you can just walk up and talk to them. Oh, right, Guy: when should I expect the first batch of Greenies for training?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

What Lies Beneath

27th January
13:27 GMT -8

"Recognised, Green Arrow, zero eight, Robin, B zero one, Kid Flash, B zero three, Orange Lantern, B zero six-"

I step out into the bare stone cave.

"-Artemis, B zero eight."

"So." I make a point of looking around. "This is the Arrow Cave."

Mister Queen sighs and raises his right hand to cover his face. "This is not the Arrow Cave."

Wallace turns back to me and nods. "Totally the Arrow Cave."

"It's just a cave that's far enough away from the roads that I don't have to move the zeta tube every couple of weeks and close enough to a campsite that I don't have to come up with excuses about why I'm here if I get spotted." Mister Queen starts through the cave towards the exit.

Robin pointedly looks at the cave wall. "Do all the caves around Star City have lighting?"

"No, but if anyone asks it's for spelunkers."

Artemis is grinning. "How about the equipment lockers?"

"Spelunking equipment can be very heavy. No one wants to have to carry it here every time."

"And it can't be easy to get the Arrow Car in such a narrow-."

"There is..!" He takes a deep breath. "There is no 'arrow car'. There was an arrow themed carnival float which I used once. I use zip lines or a normal car. One I can get insurance for."

Wallace nods sagely. "Batman does go through Batmobiles kinda fast. Hey Rob, how many was it last year? Three?"

"The third one wasn't a total write off."

"That's not what Two-Face says."

"Half the car was fine."

Mister Queen sighs and shakes his head slightly as we emerge into daylight. Three cars all with four wheel drive capacity are parked just by the cave entrance and Roy Harper is leaning back against the bonnet of the jeep. Unlike the rest of us he's in full costume. Quick scan… No, aside from Roy and.. him, no one anywhere near here. In New England the working day is coming to a close but here we're almost in the middle of it.

Roy straightens up. "Ollie. Robin. Wally. Artemis. Paul."

Robin smiles at him. "Hey Roy."

"I'm not..!" He bites it down. "I'm not Roy Harper."

Wallace shakes his head. "Actually, we checked the timelines. I never even met the other Roy."

Robin nods. "And I only met him once." That doesn't seem to help. "How's going solo working out for you?"

His head turns slightly away and down. "I'm getting nowhere. With the League of Shadows gone I barely even know where to start."

"Dubbilex couldn't help?"

"Couldn't or wouldn't. I was thinking that maybe I should have asked more aggressively."

"That.. wouldn't be a good idea. He's aware of physical harm, but he doesn't really feel pain pain. Plus, even if he didn't brain blast you you'd be swarmed under by G-Elves in seconds."

Mister Queen takes a step towards his protégé. "Roy, you've been running yourself ragged ever since New Year. It's not good for you and it doesn't help the other Roy." Roy's eyes narrow slightly and Mister Queen raises his hands to ward off his complaint. "But, since I know I can't persuade you to take a break, I thought we might try a new approach. Paul's got a technique for finding things that looks like it bypasses all defenses."

"Unless they're protected by magic. Hal already-."

"Actually-" I wave my right hand like a student uncertain about the answer to the teacher's question. "-the quintessence waveform scan should bypass magic… Most magic. You could probably ward against it specifically or.. some sort of planar distortion? I mean, if they've put him in a parallel universe or something you're out of luck, and if they've moved him to another planet we could be here a while. But if he's on Earth and whoever took him hasn't expended massive -and easily traceable- levels of resources…" I nod. "I should be able to find him."

He frowns. "Why didn't Hal try that?"

"Because it would have given him a brain haemorrhage. I can only do it if the Ophidian helps and I can't.. retain most of what it shows me. That's why I brought this." I unsling the box containing my personal lantern and open it. "A location should be doable."

"When can you get started?"

"As soon as James Harper gets out from behind that car." Roy stills slightly. "The one thing I dislike more than him being here at all is him maintaining the pretence that-" I turn my head in his direction. "-I don't know full well he's there!"

The other Mister Harper walks out from around the… Americans call them Sports Utility Vehicles, don't they? He's wearing full Guardian gear. "Orange Lantern."

"Mister Harper." I don't hate him. Nabu is an extremely intelligent being who makes his own choices. When those choices involve body jacking the father of a friend of mine… I'm an Orange Lantern. Taking it personally is exactly the correct response. James Harper on the other hand is an idiot who played the hand he was engineered to hold. True, it hurt many sentient beings and produced no useful benefit, but it did so because he lacks the mental apparatus to do anything else. Maybe he can learn to be something else.

"You knew, didn't you? Back at Cadmus when you came in with Superboy."

"Knew what?"

"That I was a clone as well. You grabbed me, scanned me with your ring and then you just left. I didn't start thinking about it until after Luthor fired me, but you knew."

"You're spiritually shallow and your genetics are extremely similar to those of Roy."

"Was 'Tomato' some kind of British insult?"

"No, it was a reference to the animated television series 'Big O', in which the entire population of the city are clones who think they're amnesiacs. The one man who wasn't is a senile tomato farmer and he constantly tells people what happened in a way no one else understands. Or something, it got a bit weird towards the end." I take a firm hold of my lantern and float the box softly to the ground. "It's probably best that you're here. Having multiple people with the same genes around might be confusing." I reflect on what I'm about to do. "More confusing." Deep breath. "Ophidian, quintessence waveform scan."

She touches my mind and immediately my awareness oooh whaw. This is never… Do Maltusians see the universe like this all of the time? Every mote of energy around me, every whiff that could be anything fully visible in every regard. I could stare at a single atom until the end of the universe and not even scratch the surface. Ophidian, I need to filter a little. I'm looking for matter that looks like this. For an instant the maddening detail fades a little, then it snaps back with billions of locations as I'm bombarded with every skin cell and hair that still has his DNA intact within it. No, more, concentrations. Show me the patterns of organs. Okay. That's.. probably him. In material terms there isn't much difference between a live person and a corpse, but in spiritual terms… Oh, I'm not going to remember this anyway. Just fix on the location…

And the beautiful picture fades away. Artemis catches me as I stumble backwards. "How long?"

"About three hours. You find him?"

I straighten up and nod. "Yep. We can pick him up when the world stops sparkling."

 

[Mr Zoat]

28th January
03:53 GMT +2

The seven of us lie flat on our stomachs as we watch the entrance to the unaccountably in use disused missile silo. Does the Ukraine have nuclear missiles in my home parallel? I don't think it does but I'm sure the Soviet Union would have stuck a few around. Presumably they took them all back after the Warsaw Pact broke up. Would they just have used aircraft based weapons and short ranged vehicle mounted missiles? Whatever. Here, they had at least one silo and someone is keeping the other Roy in it.

And there are robots. At least they aren't Bozos this time. No, this time we're up against someone clever enough to build autonomous turrets protected by rock, metal and force fields. I had assumed that Lex would be the one who took responsibility for hiding him but a disused nuclear silo is far more Savage's kind of thing.

"I'm counting seven hardpoints concealed behind the rock."

Robin and the Arrow clan have some sort of high end binoculars over their eyes. Wallace poked his goggles a few times but his built in visual equipment wasn't quite up to the task. As I watch he gives up on squinting and lifts them off his face. "Psst! Rob!"

"Kinda busy, KF."

"But-!" Artemis lowers her binoculars and prods him in the arm with them. "What?" She rolls her eyes and prods him again. "Would you quit-!" He looks around and sees the binoculars. "Oh. Um, thanks." He takes them from her, hesitates for a moment and then raises them to his eyes.

Roy… Yes, I've never met the other one either. Roy taps my rerebrace. "Wanna look?"

"No need."

"You said you couldn't see inside."

"I said I can't scan inside. My helmet's augmented visual modes work just fine."

"You think about sharing the tech?"

"Sure. You just need to live in it for two months making every movement you ever want the suit to replicate so that the system can learn how to not pull you apart whenever you do anything. I can have one ready for you in a couple of hours if you want."

"… Think I'll pass."

Robin lowers his binoculars. "No one's gone in or out. Haven't seen any guards other than the robots. Plans say there shouldn't be that much space inside."

Green Arrow shuffles uncomfortably. "No nukes though, right?"

"Not unless they were faking records back in the nineties. America and Russia were both pretty careful about making sure all of Ukraine's nuclear weapons got packed up."

"Well that's something. Any entrances apart from the front door?"

Wallace lowers Artemis' binoculars. "We could always open the silo door."

"KF… Let's try not to start World War Three."

"Huh? Ooh."

"I could… Try phasing through the metal. But, if they've got force fields and wards they can probably block phasing as well. Or at least detect it."

"Looks like we've got one roboturret each." Mister Queen manages a small smile. "Everyone bring their rocket launchers?"

"Left it in my other utility belt."

Roy scowls. "Would you take this seriously!?"

Mister Queen puts his right hand on Roy's shoulder. "Orange Lantern, could you take them from here?"

"Probably, but my constructs are both noticeable and distinctive."

Artemis pulls her binoculars back from Wallace. "I.. think I could probably hit them from here."

"Really? I know you're strong, but that's gotta be at least-."

She pulls an Unmaker from her quiver, one with my new smart fletching. "Can you program these?"

Ring, do it.

Compliance.

"Done."

"These are Orange Lantern's design. Fire them up high and if they're close enough they'll guide themselves down onto the target." She shuffles backwards and then rises to her knees.

Robin grins. "Isn't that sorta cheating?"

"You wanna try it?" I send a filament out from my foot and over to hers, granting her augmented vision with wind speeds and directions. She blinks as she starts calculating her shot. "Thanks."

We spent quite a while practising this after she found out that she could now shoot so far that hitting the target was almost pure luck. Since she doesn't usually fight at that sort of range it isn't necessarily a problem, though I have had a few ideas about phased arrows that ignore wind and gravity until they reach the target. It's just that at that point you've pretty much got a bad micro missile launcher, the bow's advantage of simplicity having been removed by the hideously sophisticated arrows. Maybe some sort of enchantment instead? I think I need to talk to a professional Atlantean mage who isn't Sephtian. His work load is getting to be a bit much these days.

Mister Queen nods, then looks at Wallace. "Kid Flash, how fast can you cover that distance?"

He lowers his goggles. "About eight seconds."

"Here." He passes Wallace one of his own Unmakers. "Artemis won't be able to hit the main entrance from here. Once the turrets are down, get over there and hit the door with this. Whoever's in there's going to know they're under attack, but the longer it takes them to work out who's doing it the better. Try and get there as soon as the last robot turret is destroyed."

"Got it."

"Orange Lantern, once Kid Flash hits the door take the rest of us to the entrance and get yourself inside. We've really got no idea where-." He pauses. "Where Speedy is, so concentrate on finding whoever's running the place and take them down. Robin, you're on recon. Head into the silo after him. Your priority is to find Speedy but be careful. If you meet heavy resistance, fall back and we'll take 'em down with arrows. Remember, there won't be a lotta room to manoeuvre once you get inside."

I think Mister Harper Senior is frowning under that helmet. "I'm not sure sending a child in first is such a good idea."

"Yeah, well, he's a computer expert, he's memorized files on every supervillain the League, Team or the Justice Society ever encountered and he's bullet-." He glances at me. "Resistant, thanks to the, um, the Formula. He's got the best chance of surviving a fight with anyone he runs into inside. Roy and I will follow on just behind. Artemis, back Orange Lantern up."

Wallace waits for a second. "What about me?"

Mister Queen winces. "You and Guardian are in reserve." Wallace looks pained. "Look, there's gunna be a lotta locked doors and narrow corridors in there. You wouldn't have room to dodge properly or build up speed. I need you and Jim making sure no one gets behind us, alright?" Wallace nods, his truculence under control. At least Mister Queen isn't asking him to run to the other side of the country for this. "Keep your radios open and call out contacts as you find them. Artemis, you about ready?" She nods and draws her first arrow. Wallace rises up into a sprinter's starting pose and the rest of us come up to a crouch. "Okay, loose."

 

[Mr Zoat]

28th January
03:58 GMT +2

I watch as the first arrow drops towards its target. "All on target. Last impact in twelve, first in two, one."

Crumbler technology doesn't cause an explosion and at this range we can't hear it as the surrounding rock gives way.

"First and second are well hit. Partial on third, appears disabled."

I watch as the rock covering falls away from the remaining robot turrets. Hatches open to allow them out just as the rest of Artemis' volley slams home.

"Fourth well hit, fifth hit crosswinds and missed, six well hit, seventh-" The turret sprouts legs and lunges for freedom as the arrow flies past it into its hidey hole. "-evaded. It's mobile and looking for targets." There's a blast of air as Wallace launches himself forwards. "Creating a distraction." As with all the best supervillain bases this silo has a minefield. Wallace could run over them when moving at full speed but why take the risk? A prod from a subterranean filament is easily enough to detonate them and draw the attention of whoever is inside while he dashes around the side.

"Good shooting Artemis." The surviving turrets take positions, brace and then open fire into the explosions with violet lasers. Power level..? Yeah, don't get hit by those. Mister Queen nods at me. "Get ready to-."

"Dodge."

Wallace turns his direct charge into a jinking run as one of the robots picks up on him and takes a shot. Pulse fire rather than continuous beam, the laser is easily fast enough to hit him. Shame about the servos aiming it. Wallace suddenly switches from evading to sprinting directly forwards, leaps and throws one of Robin's Crumbler equipped… Um. Robinrangs? At each of them before landing in a roll, recovering and finishing his sprint to the door. Both strike home, causing the central sections of the robots to collapse. Wallace stabs the front door with his Unmaker as the power cell on the robot on the left detonates in a brilliant white explosion!

Are we in? Yes, there's a breach! I transition the group across the distance, depositing all but myself and Robin on the outside. We appear inside a narrow cylindrical corridor. No alarms, I note. Maybe this place is just being used for storage?

Robin gets his bearings almost immediately, scans the steel tubes running along the wall with his arm computer and rips one of them free, revealing the cables inside. He plugs in his computer as I turn, create a small railgun construct and Unmake the rest of the outer door before conducting a ring scan of the place. No, each section must be warded individually. Tiresome.

"The layout hasn't changed. I'll hit the storeroom."

"I'll head to command. Armour." The familiar orange plates materialise around me as I fly off down the corridor. This place is too far from anywhere for commuting or regular resupply. It might well be just for storage. Rings, scan for -I slam an Unmaker into the next security door and then send in a construct, shoving the barrier apart and crushing the motors inside the wall- biological matter.

No recent sample detected. Best matches on partial samples available.

A bunch of people who-. There's a force field emitter in the corridor ahead of me, another slightly further ahead of that and a… Ooh, a plasma initiator. Haven't seen one of those on Earth before. Not a terrible trap I suppose. I shove a razor construct into the wall and sever it from its power source. "There are defensive force fields in the walls."

"But they go down to Crumble-tech."

"And the plasma weapon?"

I hear a bang. "Not.. so.. much. My way back's blocked. I'll keep going. Try and shut it down from Command."

"Right." A bunch of people who should have been in a nuclear missile silo. True AIs are rare. I suppose… The Brain could have set this up in person if he left Mallah at home.

"Contact. Robots. They look like spheres with arms and legs." Doesn't ring any bells. "Very agile and-. Ugh. Very sharp claws."

I accelerate, shooting a hole in the next door with Crumbler rounds and transitioning to the other side.

"Green Arrow to Robin. Looks like the plasma weapon destroyed itself. We'll be there to back you up in a sec."

The wall ahead of me glows a faint blue. The shields around the command section must have activated as soon as the attack started. Scan? Okay. Command is now isolated. Whoever's inside is cut off from the outside. The generator must be inside. They're relying on their robots to deal with the intruders.

A small hatch opens in the wall just behind me and four metallic spheres roll out. A small section on the top of each rises slightly, revealing their optic sensors. Eight other panels detach on the ends of robotic arms, and that's about as far as they get before my railgun turret shoots each of them in turn with low power Crumblers. I don't bother turning around as the ring scans them. Interesting force field knife thing on the claws but they aren't really anything special.

Okay, so there's no way for them to know that their robots have won. There's a good chance they wouldn't be able to escape with the force field in place… Well, okay, a Boom Tube or.. some form of magic would probably do it, but those aren't exactly widespread. And if they have those, then they're already gone. I load the larger Crumbler rounds. No reason not to blast through, but if they're in there and are planning to wait a period of time and then teleport… Rings, teleport jammer and interdiction-

The barrier drops.

-field. I shoot immediately, my rounds taking out the blast door and a good chunk of the wall around it. The room inside looks like a cross between a mechanised surgical suite and a robotics factory. On the far side of the room a humanoid figure standing on a raised dais raises its right arm to wave me goodbye before tapping a button on a small control panel.

Teleport blocked.

They're wearing gold coloured power armour, though it's really only visible at the calves, forearms and facemask. The rest is covered in purple robes and a green cape, an ensemble that makes little sense in an isolated bunker, to say nothing of a hazardous workshop.

They press the button again, a little harder this time.

Teleport blocked.

Colour scheme plus robots strongly suggests Doctor Cyber, one of Diana's nutters. Thought she'd been a bit quiet. Can't scan through her armour. "Everyone, I have encountered Doctor Cyber. I'm taking her into custody." Ring, interface with the workshop's computers. Take everything.

Compliance.

This time her finger goes through the pad. "Rragh!" Her left arm rises and a holoscreen appears over her forearm, showing a face I know. "Truggs! You promised me safe passage!"

"Sorry Doctor. I-I'd really like t'help, I really would, but he's jamming everything I got." His attention shifts and he waves to me. "Hey Orange."

"Truggs." Ring, can we shut down the other robots from here? No, all pre-programmed with no remote control. I attach filaments to her armour and yank her off her feet and towards me. "She'll call you back."

"I'll be waiting!"

"Doctor Cyber-." Violet lasers fire from her palms, striking my construct armour. I create manacles and turn her arms aside while jamming razor sharp needle constructs into the mechanism. A second later -and with a neat line burned into the walls of the workshop- the lasers cut out. Ring, hard interface with the armour. Did we get anything about Truggs from the computer?

Compliance. Negative. No logs recorded.

"Pretty much finished up down here Oh El."

I switch to internal only. "Glad to hear it, Kid Flash."

"And we got Roy-. Ah, Speedy-Roy too. He's in a pod like the one they kept Superboy in." He pauses. "Hey, you called her 'Doctor Cyber'."

"Yes. She has a doctorate and her surname is Cyber."

"Really? What're the odds of that?"

"About the same as an ice themed criminal actually having the surname 'Freeze'. I'm going to try and find out what she was doing here."

"Okay. You have fun with that."

External only. What does Doctor Cyber want? Oh, is that all. "Doctor, I wish to make a trade." Ring, decouple her faceplate.

The golden metal mask falls free and the woman behind gasps before scowling at me. "Happy now?" The left side of her face bears heavy burn scars from one of her previous encounters with Diana. Her once jet black hair has long since faded to grey and both of her eyes are cybernetic. Even with the low rates of supervillain execution, Diana's agelessness means that she can expect to see virtually everyone she fights die eventually. And some of them take that rather personally.

"I will trade a full heal on your body for your unedited account of your dealings with Nylor Truggs and a full explanation of how Speedy ended up down below."

Her scowl turns to disgust. "I have no reason-." I touch my left gauntlet to the right side of her face, disintegrate the cybernetic and recreate a natural eye. She gasps as I pull back my hand, spasmodically blinking her eye as she tries to re-adapt.

"I can also ensure that you go to prison somewhere slightly better than the Ukraine. Do you think we can come to terms?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

28th January
17:14 GMT -5

Orana turns aside Match's wrist, pulls his arm across her and slams her right elbow into his face without letting go. He flies backwards, pulling her off her feet and causing her to reflexively loosen her grip. Hmm. While she adapted quickly to the realities of super strength combat her instincts are deeply entrenched.

Mister Queen looks her over appreciatively. "Where'd you find her?"

"Themyscira."

Diana watches the fighters carefully. "Can I assume that you didn't consult anyone before empowering her?"

"Naturally. Except her, of course." I turn my head in her direction as Orana tries to get close enough to grapple in order to circumvent her opponent's greater speed. To make things fairer we let her have her aero disc equipped boots but she really hasn't taken to using them in combat. "But don't worry; she's still fulfilling her duty as a guard. Queen Hippolyta has no grounds for complaint."

"What did you give her?"

"A quick physical tune up, copy of whatever it is the Terror Twins have and Divine Awakening. Then-" I wince as Match uses her hold on him as a pivot to strike her directly in the diaphragm with his left fist. Her face tenses slightly but otherwise she shows no reaction. "-standard Apokoliptian armour with aero discs. I used a similar decorative scheme to the one I used for yours."

She glances at where Orana's armour sits awaiting its mistress. Less gold than Diana's, more red and blue. "I can see that."

"Which you never wear." No, no, don't whinge at her. "You mentioned that you wanted more women in the League. Give her a little longer to adapt and she'll be a prime candidate."

She nods. "How did you persuade her to leave Themyscira?"

"I demonstrated the relative effectiveness of bows against AK forty sevens. She came to believe that she needed more power to meaningfully defend Themyscira. And appropriate training which she can't get back home."

Match and Orana are grappling in the air now. Mister Queen frowns slightly. "I don't remember being offered any extras when you used your 'Awakening' thing on me."

I nod slowly. "I…" Think before speaking. "I wasn't sure exactly what would happen as a result of using the Awakening on Humans. Now that I have some experimental data, I can compare it to what Desaad's records say should happen. As simply as I can put it…" There actually isn't a simple way to put it, not without sacrificing a great deal of information. "The Awakening uses local magic to build additional.. stuff on your soul. These.. extra bits.. add a supernatural component to actions you can already perform, but… More extraordinary skills and abilities are magnified first. In the case of Barda and myself, our strength and fortitude were our most notable characteristics and so they were most improved. In the case of my brother Scott, his passion for liberation and skill as an escapologist were increased instead. He's stronger than a baseline Human of his musculature would be, but only about as strong as Kaldur used to be."

"So Artemis and I get super archery but we miss out on super strength."

"Sort of. If I'd had the Terror Formula beforehand I could have used it on you, but then the Awakening would most likely have made you stronger and tougher instead of letting you do what Tao does. It… The process of adding to you is also limited by the availability of mana locally. In a relatively low magic locale such as this, the changes would occur only fairly slowly. Artemis has to strain to blink her arrows and hasn't seen-" I think back to the conversation we had during Wallace's last test. "-much in the way of physical changes."

He nods. "Guess that explains Zatanna. How fast is she-" He nods at Orana as Match attempts to break her choke hold by repeatedly slamming her into the floor. Nice to see he's got over the flying-the-way-you're-facing hang up so common to fliers. "-improving?"

"It's hard to measure. Themyscira is a relatively high magic environment but I don't have anyone to whom I can directly compare her."

"Is that why Wally got a whole lot faster?"

"In part. I think the Awakening may also have 'straightened out' the errors in his attempt to replicate the Garrick Formula, so a good deal of his added speed would simply be a result of that."

Diana smiles at me. "Barry asked me to pass on his thanks. That was a very nice thing to do for him."

"Heh." Mister Queen looks down at the floor for a moment. "Yeah. And I bet his parents like the fact that he's not eating them out of house and home anymore as well."

I wave my right hand dismissively. "I had no way to know that that would be the precise result. I firmly believe that the Garrick Formula must be alchemical in the way in which it applies its effect. It's the only thing I can think of that explains why his abilities increased so much faster than Artemis'."

"I don't suppose there's any way to speed up my process, is there? Not that I'm complaining, exactly…"

"In theory, direct mana infusions could work. If you're interested, Kaldur and I could set something up. If we increase background levels by tenfold rather than just dumping gigathaums directly into you there shouldn't really be any added risk."

He nods. "Hmm. Think about it."

"Alright!" Diana walks forwards as Match and Orana prepare to go at each other again. "That will do for now." They're both panting, and they keep watching each other very carefully as they straighten up. "Take ten minutes and then you can get your armor on for the next session."

Orana heads towards myself and Mister Queen. Her armour can be put on manually but it's far easier to ring it on instead. Mister Queen nods as she approaches. "Impressive work. Grayven tells me you're thinking of trying out for the Justice League."

Orana checks him over once, examining him for threat potential and weapons. "Yes?"

"You must have.. fought a lot of interesting people. Coming from Themyscira, I mean."

"Yes?"

Mister Queen leans towards me. "She speaks English, right?"

"Ah, sort of. Ixy only dumped the lexicon into her head a few days ago. She's still processing it."

Orana makes a momentary frown. "Tell him that I can understand everything he says."

"She says that she can understand you perfectly well. Would the two of you.. excuse me for a moment? I need to talk to Diana about something."

Mister Queen shrugs and Orana nods. Good. She needs to get used to spending time around men socially if she's serious about learning superheroing. Plus, I really do need to talk to Diana about Niko's situation. It just doesn't sit right with me that she's going to have to spend the rest of her life dodging the police for murdering her rapist father. I amble over to where she's checking Match's nose.

"It's fine, Mom." She gently prods it. "Ow!"

"If you need to spend some time under a sunlamp we can put this off or ask Kon to do it instead."

"No." Match shakes his head. "M'gann and Kon are going out tonight. And the new armor includes sunstones anyway. And a helmet." And a rather clever faceplate that allows him to fire out with heat vision without compromising armour integrity. Thank you Sub-commander Karsta Wor-Ul.

"If you're certain."

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but I rather need to speak to Diana for a moment."

He nods. "Sure. I'll go grab some water."

She frowns slightly at me as he walks away. "What is it?"

I wait until Match has taken a few steps towards the table before erecting a sound baffle. "I have.. a moral quandary I was hoping that you could help me resolve."

There's a faint expression of amused disbelief on her face. "You want advice from me?"

"What can I say, all those sessions with Guy are really helping." They actually are, and I know that she knows that I'm telling the truth.

"Are you sure you don't want to rush ahead and do things your own way?"

"This time, no. There aren't any wide issues at stake and I don't have a personal investment. I'm trying to do something for someone else, and I'm not the best at predicting how other people will react."

"Very well. What do you want to ask me?"

"I want to ask about when it's okay to kill someone. How theoretical do you want me to keep this?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

28th January
17:19 GMT -5

She studies my face for a moment and then looks slightly to the side. "How theoretical do I need to keep it?"

"You don't need to at all. But… You might find out things that you would find convenient to be able to deny knowing about later."

"Hera." She thinks for a moment. "Perhaps you should just avoid mentioning names."

"Very well." Hm. "Under American law, killing a person can be legal in a number of circumstances. I'm aware of two instances I wanted to discuss with you: killing in the defence of oneself-" Niko Parish. "-and killing in the defence of another." Mister Scott, Mister Garrick and Doctor Knight. Had to check my facts there, but as far as I can tell it happened here just as I remember it.

"For a civilian, yes. We're held to slightly higher standards."

"You killed during the Second World War. And-" I raise my left hand slightly in a warding gesture. "-before you say it, I don't accept the idea that war has separate rules. And even if it did, Themyscira wasn't threatened and Queen Hippolyta hadn't declared war against the Axis. Sure, the Nazis were unarguably the bad guys but there's no way you could have known the full extent-."

"I didn't." She pauses, reflecting on the most goodthinkful way to present me with the information. "Do you want to know why I allied myself with the Allies?" I nod. "When I reached the Greek mainland I found Greece unified and fighting invading foreigners. As far as I was concerned that meant that I was obliged to stand with them. Once Greece fell I had intended to stay and aid the resistance but… There was an American-."

"Steven Trevor."

She nods. "He persuaded me to go to America instead. As for why I killed Germans, Italians and Bulgarians during their invasion, it was because I could think of no reason not to. They were foreigners and the Greeks were my people. Having missed out on so much history after Themyscira withdrew from the world I thought that a unified Greece was remarkable in itself. Certainly that it was worth fighting for. I was also much younger and hungry for personal glory. The loss of life didn't really concern me."

"Not at all?"

"Seeing the first corpses was a shock. I'd never seen someone die violently before. Seeing a Stuka squadron machine gun ships taking part in the evacuation was a rude awakening to the reality of war. Aside from that, no. My mothers never sugar coated the nature of battle."

I nod. "And if you were in the position of your younger self now?"

"Now, I know the results of the occupation as well as what the Nazis were doing in their own territory. I think if anything I would resist more vigorously."

"You would still kill them?"

"Yes."

"And yet -and I'm not trying to start a fight here, I just want to understand- you complained when I delivered Zard and co. to the Chinese. I mean, I knew they'd murdered thousands at least. And they got a trial out of it."

"Because the attack wasn't ongoing. They'd been stopped-."

"Until next time. It would hardly have been the first time they'd been 'stopped'."

She nods. "And my younger self would have agreed with you. My current self is more concerned about the fallout in international relations and in relations between the American government and the League. If America comes to believe -rightly or wrongly- that we will remove supervillains to jurisdictions whose processes we prefer it is quite possible that they will be slower to call on our aid."

Hm. She's sort of got a point there. "I still think.. statistically, my solution was the one most likely to prevent the most Human hardship."

"Did you include the consequences of intelligence agencies withholding information they fear we might share with their rivals?"

"Yes, but that's nothing we can't just take."

"Which would worsen relations further."

"If they found out about it." I shrug. "And if they do? Go under them. Appeal to the population directly. Be open about your reasons and relations with government bodies."

A wry smile. "I thought you wanted to talk about murder, not about the League's political policies?"

Got a bit off topic there. I nod. "Yes, you're right. It probably all ties in, but… Alright, first example. A severely provoked and traumatised person stabs their abuser to death."

"I've supported-."

"But, the killer flees the scene. When police are called they easily identify them as the killer but have no evidence of the abuse that led up to the killing. The killer evades them and eventually builds a new identity." Niko Parish looks only a little like Mina Byrne. Hair naturally black rather than blonde, skin a couple of tones darker and a slight alteration of facial features. She's even a little taller. Plus, the wings… Running a genetic analysis on an Un-Man is an exercise in futility. Haven't checked her finger prints… "Now, you could just truth lasso the killer, compare the account of the abuse to the level the law demands and make a ruling. Apply a lesser sentence or acquit. Unfortunately, the courts don't accept that as evidence. The killer is happy with their new life and has no desire to take a risk to prove their version of events and the physical evidence that would support their claims has long since gone. Should a person in my position arrest them, try to work out a deal with investigators or just leave it be?"

Her eyes flick downwards as she thinks it through. "In this situation, are you sure that the evidence can't be recovered?"

"Assume that I've done a thorough ring scanning and run the results by Father Box." Which I have. Bit disappointing but not really surprising.

"What was the level of abuse?"

"Repeated rapes over a period of years. The individual in question was below the age of-."

"Do nothing."

"Are you sure?"

"A jury can only make their decision based on admissible evidence. If the evidence which would lead to the result that you know to be correct under the law cannot be brought forward…" She nods. "I believe that the correct decision would be to take no action."

I'd hoped that she would have a better idea. Ah well. "It would be easier if truth compulsion magic and telepathic intercepts were admissible as evidence."

"The wo-. The person in question might prefer not to give testimony."

"I suppose…"

"It would still have been better for them to seek help before they killed their abuser. I work with charities-."

"Which fund refuges, yes. Personally, I find the violent ending more satisfying." She doesn't respond. "In my second example, a criminal is captured but threatens to send other members of his organisation after the families of the individuals making the arrest. Once he makes it clear that he knows names and addresses, they simultaneously raise their firearms and kill him."

"Members of organized criminal gangs seldom do that. They know that escalating would just result in more police attention and disrupt their operations further."

"Let's assume that the individual in question is a malevolent supervillain who just wants to spread the pain around."

She shakes her head. "No. A police officer has to follow the rules or they risk losing the public trust. They should have kept the arrest quiet while they got their families to a place of safety and then gone after the rest of the gang. They could have used that situation to lure the gang members into an ambush."

"Does your answer change if the people in question are superheroes with otherwise intact secret identities?"

"No. It would be harder for them, but coming out into the open would still be better than committing murder. We're held to account for our actions so much less than the police are that maintaining our standards as individuals is even more important."

"If that was a dig about Napier, I'm not even slightly sorry."

"Were you referring to the Joker?"

"I? I wasn't referring to anyone." I dismiss the barrier around us. "Thank you, Diana. That was.. helpful."

"I'm glad that you felt able to come to me. Remember that if you need help in the future, I'll always be here."

"Thank you. I will."

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
08:58 GMT -5

"I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it's not one I'd have picked." I think about that for a moment. "In your place, I mean."

Tula gives me a mildly miffed look as we head towards the training room. "Why? What's wrong with 'Aquagirl'? Kaldur uses Aqualad."

"He.. picked that before I met him. The problem is… How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"Okay, so in Atlantean terms you're already young adult. I'd describe you as a young woman rather than a girl, but you can get away with it due to the customary infantilisation of the female gender."

She blinks in surprise. "The what?"

"But how about when you're eighteen? Or twenty one? How about when you're fifty?"

"Can't I just change it?"

"If it's under five syllables we'll call you whatever you want, but this will also be your 'superheroic identity'. The way people in public who've never met you in a social setting think of you."

She shakes her head. "I don't really understand why I even need one. It's not as if I have an identity to conceal."

"You don't need need one. It's really more tradition. I mean, we don't have formal ranks and there are multiple superheroes with the same personal or family names-."

"And three Green Lanterns."

"Four Green Lanterns. Urp, four Green Lanterns on Earth, there are thousands spread out across the galaxy. And yes, saying 'Green Lantern' will usually result in someone asking 'which one'. If you've been told their name you say 'Lantern-" I wave my hands forwards. "-whatever', and if you haven't their formal designations include 'A, B or C'."

"…longer than that."

Incredulity this time. "A, B… Or C?"

"She gave testimony under the influence of Wonder Woman's Truth Lasso. She was not involved in the initial kidnapping and has cooperated with authorities."

I create constructs showing their faces. "No one uses 'B' because Guy Gardner's name is public knowledge. But yes."

"Kaldur, she had killer. Robots."

"So… What's the fourth one called?"

"Occupying a nuclear missile silo and using robots for defense is not -in itself- a breach of the law."

"Usually something along the lines of 'Green Lantern, you know, that Green Lantern who used to be in the Justice Society'." She blinks. "He's retired, it's fine."

"Well it should be."

"So what's Batman like?"

"On a mission or in a briefing? Serious. Dour. Focused. He's not trying to be a drill sergeant, we're all highly motivated volunteers here. If you ever go on a mission with him don't expect any non mission related conversation at all."

"You could always take it up with the Ukrainian Parliament."

"Today, chances are he'll stroll in through the Zeta Tube, start the briefing once he gets in front of us and then leave us to it."

"Will this other Red Arrow bloke be joining in with the team?"

"Does he do training sessions? Kaldur told me that he is an expert martial artist."

"That will be up to him. He has a great deal of readjustment to do."

"Yes, but when it's his turn to run our training sessions he usually focuses on criminal investigation. If you're really interested in learning a surface world martial art you're better off talking to Canary. Or Robin, actually."

We stroll out of the passageway and into the training room. Gosh, a near full gathering. No Red Arrow.. or Speedy, and no Troia, but there's still twelve of us. Seventeen when the named pets are factored in. Fatty, Tubbs and the rest are happy in the original ring until there's something to eat but Teekl, Sphere and Wolf are in attendance. Wolf's quite a bit bigger than she was when we first picked her up, more like a small adult than a puppy. I note that Teekl is trying to maintain size parity with her not-so-kittenish foster kitten.

Tula pulls ahead and greets Garth with a kiss. Kaldur doesn't seem all that bothered until you look inside him. Bothered and bothered by the fact that he's bothered. Were I a less polite man I might make a 'more fish in the sea' comment. I realise.. that suggesting he meet other girls would be a reasonable move but I don't have any idea how to help with that. Number of romantic relationships I've had…

Actually, who could give him advice? Diana's celibate, Alan's would be 'don't marry a supervillain', Guy.. hasn't mentioned Ms Olafsdotter, though we've mostly been talking about work stuff. I should probably ask him about that. Kon and M'gann… Neither of them have shown an interest in anyone else. Zatanna's as busy as I am, at least. Probably more so with school work. Who do I know who's supposed to be good with… New Roy! Kaldur's the only one of us who really knew him and he was supposed to be some sort of great Lothario in the comics. Wasn't he? And he owes me for the new arm.

Wallace returns his attention to Robin. "Batman tell you anything about where he's sending us?"

Robin thinks for a moment. "He's been getting worried about what's happening in Cairo-."

"Worried?"

"Well. Y'know. Concerned about what President Muhunnad's going to do. He's not leaving even though Black Adam-."

"Teth Adom. I didn't spend months correcting news reporters for you to call him by Theo's name."

"Right. Sorry. Anyway, the rebels have said they'll let him go safely and he isn't, so either he's got some sort of plan to turn things around or he's just desperately clinging on."

"Ahh..." Raquel looks at her watch. "Is Batman… Late?"

Kon shrugs. "Only a couple of minutes."

There's a sort of awkward general pausing. Is Batman being slightly late a big thing? I don't… It's not like I've spent massive amounts of time around him. Wasn't there a line in one of the Nolan films that he generally doesn't respond to the Bat signal because he's busy working a case? I'm sure that-.

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

Still a bit of a relief, though. We form up as he leaves the Tube and heads for the lecture space.

"The Justice League has just received information of strange energy broadcasts coming from the sea bed near the Bering Strait." A holographic map appears marking the spot. It's actually just to the north near the Chukchi Plain, where the water starts to get deeper. No real problem for.. most of us? Has Rob learned a water breathing spell yet? Ugh, I've sort of taken my eye off the ball there. "Given the nature of the signal-" Wait a second. "-we suspect it to be-" Ring, overlay with those Maltusian energy signatures you picked up when we first arrived. "-an alien spacecraft." Ooh poop. Ring, scan that ship.

Wallace half-raises his right hand. "So… Did it crash?"

"If it had we would simply hand the matter over to either the government of the crew's species or to the Green Lantern Corps. But from what little we know it looks as if the ship has been there for some time. Since previous geological surveys of the area didn't detect anything out of the ordinary it most likely had some form of stealth technology which has only recently failed. Until we get more information we won't know where the ship came from-."

"Um. Sorry Sir. It's Maltusian."

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
09:03 GMT -5

Batman looks at me for a moment. He doesn't blink, he doesn't move, just looks. Then he takes a breath. "Would you care to expand on that?"

"Um. When I first arrived on this Earth I started looking for ways to charge the-" I raise my left hand. "-ring. Aside from the.. personal lanterns owned by members of the Green Lantern Corps.. it.. detected various other things. The other Green Lantern's damaged personal lantern, the Star Sapphire, a couple of Qwardian weapons from two eight one four A's last encounter… Once I had a lantern I pretty much stopped worrying about it. I didn't even know there was a ship there.. but.. um.. there are at least three Maltusian or Maltusian style energy containment units on that ship." Or at least there were. "I think. Hang on. Ring, check that."

"One vessel detected."

Batman nods slowly. "That would explain the decrease in its ability to hide itself."

My team mates are looking rather like we've left them behind. Kaldur asks first. "Who are the Maltusians?"

"Sir, may I?" Batman nods. Ring, grab the holoscreen.

"Classified information requested. Higher authorisation-."

Stewart ring, we've talked about your unhelpful attitude before. Knock it off.

"This ring will comply with the directive."

"Maltusians." I use Stewart ring's ruthlessly plundered historical database to generate an image of what Maltus and its inhabitants looked like in the old days. "These people are basically the luckiest species ever. Well above humanoid norms for intelligence and early on in their history they merged with a species of semi-sentient bacteria that gave them steadily increasing levels of reality warping power. I've seen… Some of their records claim they were the first sentient species in this universe and if that isn't true I've seen no clear counter evidence."

"What became of them?"

"Nothing. They're still around. Sort of. Since they didn't really need each other for survival related purposes, they only associated with each other when they wanted to. Maltusians who shared an ideology formed cliques… There was some sort of biological weapon that reinforced that with physical isolation, but that really just reinforced a pre-existing trend. The symbionts.. gave them an awareness of certain types of supernatural force." I think. Given the vast swathe of time their gradual change covered the Stewart ring's contents were regrettably brief. I suppose there was only anything there at all in case Lantern Stewart had to deal with some legacy of that era, not to assuage the curiosity of historical researchers. I have the holoscreen show the rainbow.

Robin's eyes widen. "Power ring colors! You're saying.. the Guardians of the Universe are Maltusians?"

"The Guardians-" I bring up a picture. Apparently this parallel has male and female Guardians. "-are one faction. Then you've got the Zamarons." Another image. The faces of senior Zamarons are a bit creepy. No noses, oddly shaped holes in the face for eyes and remarkably blank faces. Younger ones seem to have slightly more conventional humanoid features.

"And the Controllers, right?"

"Yep. And probably groups I've never heard of and plenty who aren't aligned to a larger group."

Artemis looks from the oldest image to the more recent ones. "Why do they all look so different?"

"Their bodies aren't exactly flesh anymore. It's -at least in part- a manifestation of what they are. Guardians have tiny bodies and big heads because they value cold intellect most highly."

Wallace nods. "Like Vulcans." Artemis appears to consider lamping him, but decides against it.

"Actually, no. Vulcans can get dangerously unstable if they don't practice rigorous self control. Guardians… Okay, you know how I said using the orange light could alter my personality if I wasn't very careful?" Nods from my longer serving team mates. "Imagine if I'd taken no such care and lived for thousands of years. Easing off on the control would probably make them more stable. No one part of the whole is complete by itself. Cut out a chunk of you and you'll get a bit weird."

Batman's gaze is a little distant. "Do you know why they have a ship on the Earth's seabed?"

I shake my head. "Not really. I could make guesses, but that's about it."

"So what's the problem?" Wallace shrugs. "Call in the Green Lanterns and have them tow it back to Maltus-."

"Oa."

"Oa."

"Unfortunately, things aren't that simple." Batman touches a few buttons. "The ship is in international waters between Russia and the United States. In addition, sources in the Russian security services indicate that the land on the Russian side of the Straits is being used as a testing ground for their special weapons development programs."

Garth looks blank. "Special weapons?"

"Controllable superpowers, power armour.. and xenotech research."

"Both countries would be extremely eager to acquire the ship if they knew of its existence. Neither has a superior claim to the other. The League is concerned about what happens if both sides discover its existence and pursue their claim aggressively."

Raquel turns to Garth and Tula. "Doesn't Atlantis want it?"

Garth shrugs. "It would be interesting, but Atlantean territory stops thirty kilometers from the US coast on the Atlantic side. We don't have a legitimate claim to it and our magic based technology is so different from what the surface world uses we probably couldn't do much with it anyway."

Kaldur nods. "Do either the American or Russian navies know that the ship is there?"

"We don't think so, not at the moment. The League is prepared to evacuate the ship over the objections of both countries if necessary but we would rather that it didn't come to that. One of the team's tasks will be boarding the ship without being detected and assessing the possibility of repairing it. Your aim will be to either restore its stealth systems or preferably restoring both its stealth and its capacity for space travel."

Kaldur frowns very slightly. "Now that we know the craft's point of origin, would it not make sense to assign the task to a Green Lantern?"

"Justice League members are public figures. Our movements are monitored by various agencies around the world. If one of the Green Lanterns were to be seen heading in the direction of an alien signal and no report was submitted to the United Nations, questions would be raised that it would be more convenient not to answer."

Another nod. "Understood. We will begin planning our approach."

"Recovery of the craft isn't the only mission I will be setting you." Ooh? That's new. Batman presses another button and I see an all too familiar image of Cairo. "The League is becoming increasingly concerned with the state of the remaining government controlled enclaves in Kahndaq. The involvement of the superhuman 'Teth Adom'-" I smile slightly. "-has made several countries extremely concerned. The League hasn't yet been formally asked to intervene, and we would much rather it not come to that. The team is to infiltrate the Presidential Palace-" An image comes up. "-and plant listening devices in sensitive areas, as well as perform general reconnaissance of the city to assess the general wellbeing of its inhabitants." He looks everyone in the eye before continuing. "Given the team's success last year I feel that it is appropriate to give you a greater degree of freedom in the planning of team missions. The order in which you perform these missions will be a team decision. Alternately, you may decide that the team's increased size means that you can complete both at once." He turns to walk back towards the Zeta Tube. "I will expect to see mission plans within four hours."

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
09:17 GMT -5

"Dibs on the spaceship." I look around the room we've co-opted for our mission planning, grinning excitedly at each of my team mates.

Robin smirks. "I don't think it works that way, Oh El."

"You're just jealous you didn't think of it."

There's a very quiet amused-sounding sigh from next to me where Kaldur sits in the boss chair. "I think it would be more productive to consider each team member's skill set and how it could be applied to either mission, rather than allocating people on the basis of which they would prefer. I will also point out that we are by no means required to complete both missions simultaneously."

Wallace holds out his right arm, palm up. "Aqualad, there's twelve of us. That's gotta be enough for two teams."

Robin nods. "Staking out the Palace just to work out when we could get in could take the whole weekend by itself, and we've got no idea who else knows about the ship. Neither mission can really wait."

Zatanna grimaces. "And some of us have school on Monday."

Kaldur looks around the room. "Very well. If we are to tackle both missions simultaneously it would be wise to decide who will be assigned to each team."

Ring, picture please. The hologram projector in the central table activates. In the centre it displays headshots of each of us, pets included. On the left is a picture of Kahndaq and on the right one of the exterior of the spaceship. It must have been beautiful when it was completely intact but a huge chunk has been carved out of the hull, nearly cutting off the rear third. At least I.. think it's the rear. The normal undersea life has tried with only partial success to colonise the outer surface and there's been more than enough time for silt to build up around it. From that it looks like it hasn't been down there all that long. But why would there be a Maltusian ship near Earth in the recent past? That sort of splashdown could have triggered nuclear Armageddon if it had happened during the Cold War. The Guardians couldn't have been the ones who sent it because if they wanted to know what we were up to they'd just have sent a Green Lantern.

Rob looks around. "Does.. anyone here speak.. Kahndaqi Arabic?"

Robin and Artemis nod. M'gann tilts her head to the side. "No, but I can fake it with telepathy."

I shift the hologram to the side and add a diagram of the Kahndaqi Palace to the display. "Getting into the Palace is going to be very difficult."

Wallace points to the image. "Haven't you spent, like, loads of time in Kahndaq with Ad… Om?" I nod. "Wouldn't that make you perfect for the Kahndaq mission?"

"Nope. Because I'm a known associate of Teth Adom, pretty much everyone on the government side knows my face. They see me, they start shooting hostages."

"Host..idg..es..?" Garth looks a bit lost. Oh, of course, I doubt that made the news in Poseidonis.

Kaldur leans forwards and presses a few buttons on the display. The image of the Palace disappears and is replaced with some news footage of Adom from when the uprising started. "The Kahndaqi government is -or perhaps I should say was- harsh and repressive. When Orange Lantern aided Teth Adom in taking control of the body of the man who stole his powers through ritual magic, he sought to liberate his people from their control." He presses another button and a new image showing the country appears with major cities, towns and geographical features marked out. "The focal point of the uprising was the city of Shiruta, then it spread to several other cities." The date in the corner of the map rolls forwards as the area where the government has lost control increases.

Garth nods. "I'm going to assume that the government wasn't willing to accept that."

"No. At first they tried having the police and their ministry of the interior thugs suppress it. The police either joined the uprising or… Well, most of them got killed. There was a lot of anger. Then they tried the military, and... That was when they found out that Adom wasn't averse to killing people -even lots of people- if it was for the greater good."

Robin nods. "Superheroes… Superheroes don't kill people. Not if there's another option."

I shake my head. "I refer you to the Second World War. Remember the All-Star Squadron?"

Kon nods. "Mom killed plenty of people during the War." He looks at Wallace. "And so did Mister Garrick and the others." Wallace looks decidedly uncomfortable, but he doesn't protest the accusation.

"But… Yeah, it's unusual. Modern superheroes usually try sticking to that very rigidly. I think the government took the fact that.. early on he limited himself to policing demonstrations.. as a sign that he wasn't willing to get involved in a direct confrontation. After they found out that wasn't the case… And that they basically had nothing that could meaningfully fight him… A lot of the military started defecting or deserting."

Kaldur presses another button. "Which led to the government focusing instead on irregular warfare." An image of a Shiruta street in the aftermath of an explosion. "Assassination attempts targeting rebel leaders and terrorist campaigns aimed at breaking the movement's morale."

Tula looks horrified. "Why doesn't the Justice League step in?"

"Because other countries don't want to see the League removing governments it doesn't like. And because they've got the same problem Adom does. The people in the remaining government enclaves are either loyalists or hostages. Any attack by either conventional forces or people with super powers and they start killing them." There's a moment of silence around the table as everyone takes that in. "Adom's tried negotiating the government's surrender. They won't have it. They're relying on food from the Red Cross to keep the people there alive, the government's already seized all the fuel… Something's going to happen soon and we need to know what."

Robin nods. "I should go on the Kahndaq mission. I speak the language and I'm probably the best here at infiltration. And.. I.. don't look like much of a threat."

Kaldur nods. "I agree."

I nod too and move his face to the Kahndaq side of the board. "Raquel, how much.. advanced technology has Arnus shown you? Stuff from the Cooperative."

"Not much. He made mah belt and ah've seen his ship a few times. I don't understand how any of it works, though."

Garth takes another look at the image of the ship. "I don't know anything about Kahndaq or spaceships, but the ship is underwater. Tula and I…" He looks at Kaldur. "And Kaldur would have a far easier time coping with the conditions than the rest of you."

Wallace sags slightly. "Yeah, I don't think I'd be much use down there. Guess I'm heading to Kahndaq with Rob." Rob looks at him in puzzlement. "Ah, Robin-Rob, not Rob.. Rob."

Artemis shrugs. "I can't shoot arrows underwater."

I move them both to Kahndaq then turn to Kaldur. "I think Garth's right. It's not just the water, they need far more immersion in surface society before they can hope to blend in."

"But you do not agree that I should join them."

"I know more about spacecraft than anyone here. I can handle the depth… Not even with the rings, my armour can handle that depth.. with a.. little work. And I'm not Maltusian but the rings will let me fake it as far as the ship's systems are concerned. If I take my Ice Fortress to the south west of the polar ice I even have a legitimate reason for being in the area."

"All true, but that does not necessarily preclude my involvement as well."

"I don't think we should both be on the same mission. You're team leader and… Um." I look around the room again. "I know we haven't.. voted on it or anything, but-."

"You are second in command."

"Unless.. anyone…" I hold my hands out to the side. "Wants to object?" I get a smile from M'gann and Zatanna but everyone else just looks puzzled.

"That was not a question. It was a statement. You are my second in command. Batman would not have put you in charge of the Qurac mission if he did not think that you had the skills required."

"Oh. Um. Thank you." I was expecting a bit more debate on that assumption. "Anyway, my point was that we shouldn't both be on the same mission and I'm a better fit for the spaceship."

"I agree." I move our images to the appropriate columns. "Zatanna, how easily can you sustain yourself underwater?"

"At.. that depth? I don't know. Usually when we visit Poseidonis Paul gives me an environmental shield. I think I could cope, but I haven't really trained to fight underwater. How long are we going to be down there?"

"You will not know until you get there. Cornwall Boy, how have your studies in water manipulation progressed?"

"Yeah, I can cope. Classical element thing. I won't be anything like as good as-" He looks at Tula and Garth. "-you are, but I can breathe and move around fine."

One magic user each. I update the holoscreen. "It would help if M'gann came with my group. That ship's big and I don't want radio waves that could let anyone know what we're doing down there. Plus, she can breathe water."

Kaldur nods. "Miss Martian?"

"Fine by me."

"Raquel, does your belt work under water?"

"I don't know. Never tried it."

I nod and move her to the Kahndaqi side. Kon smiles faintly as I assign him to my team. "That's done, then. Now for the actual planning."

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
11:33 GMT -5

I lead the way in the direction of the cave's zeta tube, my team following on behind.

"When you say you have an 'ice fortress'..?"

Guess Tula hasn't got that far yet. "Back in Nov-." I remember who I'm talking to. "Near the end of last year, Werner Vertigo somehow paid for five giant flying fortresses to cover the United States in snow in an attempt to stop his niece getting a new heart."

"Why would he do that?"

M'gann's eyes flick down before she answers. "Queen Perdita is the ruler of an Eastern European country called Vlatava. If she'd died, he would have become king."

Kon nods. "And we wouldn't have been able to prosecute him for being part of the Injustice League."

"Which still makes no sense. If he could afford five Ice Fortresses he could have bought Vlatava." I throw my hands up. "Pffff, supervillains. Anyway, Wallace delivered the heart-."

"He what?!" Garth look stunned and Tula's a little surprised. Of course, Atlanteans don't-.

"Heart transplant." Rob doesn't appear to realise why the Atlanteans are surprised. "You know. One person dies with their organs in good nick, they get cut out, packed in ice and given to someone else whose organs aren't working." A little disgust creeps into the Atlantean duo's expressions. "What? Better than wasting them."

"Atlantean biomancy means that Atlanteans have never needed to perform organ transplants. I imagine it sounds a little grisly if you haven't been exposed to the idea before."

It's Rob's turn to look surprised. "You can just grow organs?"

Garth nods, recovering himself slightly. "A professional biomancer would be more likely to restore a damaged organ in the patient's body rather than grow one from nothing. But…" He nods. "Yes. Large scale organic technology is an area where the surface is well behind Atlantis."

Rob takes a moment to absorb that. "My Nan had to wait five bloody months to get her cataracts sorted out! How come biomancers don't work on the surface? They'd make a mint!"

Garth looks at Tula, who shakes her head. "Make.. what?"

"A mint is a place where physical currency is made. In this context it means 'make a great deal of money', because they would be able to offer a very useful service that no one else can. Things like that are why King Orin is trying to build trading relations with surface countries; you want purified metals and printed circuits, we want all the things magic can do easily that our technology just can't yet."

Tula nods. "I hadn't really thought about it. I just assumed that you must use something else if you don't use magic."

"Actually, that reminds me. It might be worth considering translation spells while on missions. Your English is very good and since we're going to be using telepathy this time it won't matter, but it could get very awkward if someone said something mission critical and you didn't understand it."

Garth nods. "Right."

Tula smiles. "We've been learning English since we were six, but speaking it with native speakers is very different to how it was in the classroom."

Kon shrugs. "I can translate for you. My Atlantean Greek's pretty much perfect."

"Be a bit slow, really."

Rob frowns at Kon. "What did.. you.. say?"

Ring translation, right. "Kon offered to translate, since his Atlantean is slightly better than their English."

Kon nods. "I've been practicing a lot with Kaldur. Wanted to sound right before we went to Themyscira." He pauses. "Mom says I've picked up his accent."

"Anyway, as I was saying, Guy and I managed to capture a Fortress intact and I managed to land it.. sort of.. in the ocean. Since then Zatanna and I have been refurbishing and upgrading it. I'm not sure whether or not I exactly own it, but all of Vertigo's legal efforts are going on keeping the executioner at bay so he hasn't been able to sue me for it. Heh. The Injustice League should not have set up shop in Louisiana." We come out in the training room. "I've been using it to repair the North Pole and anyone who sees me there will just assume that I'm doing more work on it. It'll be a perfect cover."

M'gann nods. "Are you going to transition us there?"

"No. I put a zeta tube terminus onboard the Fortress, along with medical facilities and a workshop." I come to a halt. "Alright, mission discipline starts now. Code names only, no extraneous chatter. We're not expecting anything to be alive on the ship but then we didn't expect the Flesh Titan in Aberrance either. Everyone sure they've got all the equipment they want?" Rob nods, the Sword of Beowulf's grisly scabbard strapped to his back. Kon's wearing a red and gold armoured wetsuit, the mithril chain mail within providing even a Kryptonian with meaningful protection. He glows in the light of Helios' blessing and is carrying a bag containing a change of clothes and a towel. M'gann's in her standard uniform and likewise has a small bag. Garth and Tula are back in their Atlantean clothing overlain by the same water armour jewellery they had when we attacked the Watchtower at New Year. Access to water won't be a problem outside the ship but it looks like at least some of the ship is still air filled. Teekl opted to stay behind due to 'excessive water' and Kaldur will be using the Sphere and the Bio-Ship in Kahndaq. "Right then. Best foot forwards."

"Recognised, Orange Lantern-"

29th January
05:36 GMT -11

"-B zero six,-"

I step out into the Fortress's embarkation room. Two independent monitoring systems immediately scan me to confirm my identity.

"-Superboy, B zero four,-"

Kon takes a quick look around at the art deco wood panelled walls. Heh, Zatanna and I went through about seven different decoration styles before-

"-Miss Martian, B zero five,-"

-we settled on this. None of it is natural wood, it's this sort of extremely resilient synthetic fibre Stewart ring had on file.

"-Cornwall Boy, B one zero,-"

Kon points at the wall with his right thumb. "What happened to the submarine look?"

"-Tempest, B one three,-"

"It got power ringed."

"-Aquagirl, B one four."

"Making this place liveable has been one of my side projects since I got it."

M'gann peers around. "It's quieter than they used to be. Are we on the ground?"

"No. I stripped out the system for freezing the air. I'm not trying to create a blizzard anymore, so I didn't need it. The antigravity system the Fortress uses to fly is virtually silent." Ring, transmit course change.

Compliance.

I start towards the door. "Come with me. I haven't got an excuse for suddenly accelerating to the operation zone so it'll be an hour or two before we arrive. The views from the observation platform are truly splendid."

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
06:02 GMT -11

I carefully prevent any expression of amusement leaking onto my face as I look down at my Atlantean team mates. They're sitting on an observation deck bench as far from the edge as possible. "Are you sure you're alright?"

Garth -pale faced- nods weakly while Tula strokes his right hand. "I'm just not used to being this high up."

"Yeah, I used to have the same problem. You know that the force fields won't let you fall off, right?"

Tula shakes her head. "I don't think that matters. A lot of Atlanteans find the sky disturbing to look at, and now the sky is down. And we can see much further here than we could underwater."

I nod. It's like when Littlepip first left her stable. Garth was fine flying around in the Bio-Ship but he clearly isn't coping so well with a similar sort of height in an apparently open air environment. Day's only three hours long here at this time of year but the brilliant lights from the Fortress illuminate the air all around us, including the sea far below. "I'm sorry, I should have thought about it. You can just go inside-."

"No. Thanks, but I have to get used to seeing this." He looks up towards the horizon and swallows heavily. "I'll be fine once we get back underwater."

I nod again and turn away. Kon and M'gann are doing a 'Jack and Rose' against the railings, looking out across the arctic sea in our direction of travel. Rob is more interested in the frozen wake we're leaving so he's opted to fly overhead. Nice to see that his air manipulation skills have come on so much, even if he can't move particularly fast like that. His posture strikes me as odd. I tend to fly standing upright, M'gann usually flies in the swimmer pose but he flies sort of bent, with his hands out to the side as if the air was holding him up. And I suppose that since he's using air manipulation magic to do it the air sort of is. Looks a bit like Iron Man, using his hand repulsors to keep level. He notices me watching, waves to me with his right hand and for a moment tumbles through the air before getting back under control.

"…whatever you think, but you should probably talk to him about it."

Yeah, I'm going to schedule some practice time with him.

"You're right." I look around as Kon and M'gann step away from the railing. "Orange Lantern? Can I talk to you for a minute?"

I head over to them. "Of course. What is it?"

M'gann looks off to the side for a moment. "I've been trying to decide whether or not to use J'aarkn's Kuru Pendant." She reaches into her bag and pulls out the small gold coloured metallic disc. "It could really help with the mission if I could change shape as well as he can, but…" She wrinkles her nose.

I shrug. "I'm pretty much-" I wave my right arm at the central tower of my Ice Fortress. "-'go for the power up' guy. I'd take it, but I don't properly understand what interfacing with one of those is like for a Martian. Particularly…" I make a circling motion with my right hand.

They nod. "J'aarkn." / "J'aarkn."

"Right. You're old enough to make your own decision and he said he didn't put any of his work stuff on it. What are you worried about?"

She raises the Pendant up slightly. "When a Martian puts information on one of these they have to…" She thinks for a moment and then shakes her head. "I don't think there's a word for it in English. 'Think impersonally'. They have to impress their knowledge without any of what they think about it crossing over as well. It's actually quite hard to learn how to do it correctly. J'aarkn almost certainly didn't perform the whole ritual. I believe him when he says that what's on here is.. you know, safe, but if I read it… I'd see the information in the way he saw it."

Ah. "Is it an 'all or nothing' thing, or can you just take a peek and see how bad it is?"

M'gann exhales. "I could get a rough idea, but I wouldn't really know until I interfaced fully."

"Is there a downside to doing that?"

"If he's done a really bad job, it might interfere with my ability to complete the mission. And, um…" She glances at Kon and then looks away, blushing slightly.

Right. Infectious libido. "Have you spoken to Martian Manhunter-"

**!** Her eyes widen and she cringes slightly.

"-about.. this?"

**No. Nononononono. That would-. No.**

**Is there someone on Mars you'd like to ask? We can be there in a few-.**

**That wouldn't-! I mean, I wouldn't mind...** Another look at Kon. *Maybe a little bit…**

"I can't really give you advice because I can't properly judge the risks involved. J'aarkn seemed honest to me, and he wasn't some sort of.. crazed, shapeshifting lust machine. He had friends and a life that didn't completely revolve around sex. The best I can suggest is that you take a peek, then go for it if his.. 'projected bias' is within acceptable levels. However, I'd still be happier if you discussed this with an actual Martian first."

She nods. "I… I know, but I think this is a decision I want to make by myself."

Kon looks out to sea. "How long 'till we get there?"

"Assuming nothing changes, about half an hour."

"Navy not doing anything?"

"Had a few polite enquiries about what we're doing.. and a firm reminder from the Russians about the exclusion zone." Compared to 'moon getting flipped around' I don't suppose me freezing a slightly different part of the arctic circle is really a big deal. "We're under observation, but they don't seem too concerned."

He shifts his attention to M'gann. "Is half an hour enough time?"

She nods. "Yes." Her eyes glow as she levitates the Pendant up in front of her. "Okay, I'm… I'm going to do it." She pulls her upper arms to her sides and holds her forearms out with her palms upwards, the Pendant dropping to just above them.

"How long does it take?"

"Having a quick look should only take a few minutes."

"And.. the full thing?"

Her eyes dim slightly. "C-. Superboy, I'm… I need to concentrate to do this."

"Oh. Sssorry. I didn't…"

"No, it's…" She leans back into him slightly, looking back to make partial eye contact. "I'm really grateful for your support, it's just… When you're here, it's… It's a little bit difficult to focus on this sort of thing."

"Oh. Okay. Um, so should I stay, or-."

"Stay.. but… Try not to be distracting."

Kon looks at me and I make the tiniest shrug I can. "I'll.. try..?"

M'gann straightens up, takes a deep breath and her eyes start glowing again. The Pendant makes a quick spin on its axis and then holds position so that the image engraved on its surface is facing her the correct way up. A few moments pass and the outlines of the design start glowing the same colour as her eyes.

"Okay, I've… I'm in. Feels.. okay. None of the obvious warning signs. Actually, I.. think he's done an okay job." The glow holds steady as she continues to stare at it. "I'm going to try going deeper."

"Would it be distracting if I said 'be careful'?"

"Yes, but I think I'd like you to anyway."

He kisses the top of her head. "Be careful."

"And from me too. Drop it at the first sign of trouble."

"Thanks. Okay, I'm going in." Her eyes glow brighter and the whole of the Pendant lights up to match them.

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
06:29 GMT -11

M'gann holds out her right arm, pauses a moment and then splits her forearm down the middle. Then she turns each side into a cephalopod tentacle, then causes one to grow green fur while the other extrudes a series of insectoid wings. "Huh." She holds her forearm.. um, arms up for a closer inspection, wiggling her tentacles and wings independently of each other. Well, I'm impressed. Most Humans struggle to move their centre and ring fingers independently of one another and she can do it with limbs copied from entirely different phyla.

Kon looks a little concerned. "You're sure you feel okay?"

She flicks her right arm to the side, restoring its Human form. "Uh-huh. J'aarkn actually did a pretty good job of keeping his biases out of the Pendant. Not quite how a real master would do it.. but he really wasn't a master."

"Anything likely to be useful to the mission?"

"I can do his trick of stretching myself out really thin and disguising my mass." She shakes her head. "I'm not sure how useful that would be here though."

"And you don't feel like…" Kon look off to the side somewhere. "Y'know…"

"No." Her eyes widen slightly. "I don't mean-. Not that I don't-. I mean, he didn't-."

He smiles and pulls her towards him. She calms down almost immediately, relaxing against his chest as they embrace and then turning her face upwards to receive a kiss.

I turn away slightly to wave up at Rob. He spots it and turns a little awkwardly through the air before moving towards me, losing height as he comes. He misjudges the landing slightly and has to do a sort of jogging stagger to bleed momentum. Flying appears to be a fairly energy intensive thing for him to do; I noticed that he had to stop and recharge from the Sword of Beowulf every ten minutes or so.

I take a few steps towards him as Tula and Garth come over to join us. "Cornwall, are you going to be alright keeping your spell up underwater?"

He nods confidently. "Yeah, no problem. Aqualad was helping with the whole water manipulation thing. If it's just swimming around and breathing and that, I can keep it going for a couple of hours."

"How are we-" Garth glances at the edge of the observation deck. "-getting down there?"

"I can fly everyone down, but since we might have to come back up on our own in an emergency I thought I'd land the Fortress."

Tula looks at me and then up at the control tower. "It can float?"

"Not unless I create huge amounts of ice to spread the weight. But the antigravity system can be set to any level of repulsion and the outer surface of the Fortress is watertight. It will end up sitting in the water with the waves reaching the-" I point. "Edge of the observation deck. Easy to get back on board if something goes wrong." I look around the group as Kon and M'gann separate and start focusing their minds on the mission again. "If everyone's ready I'll begin the descent."

Tula looks at Garth with concern but he waves her off.

I theatrically aim my left arm at the control tower. "Ring, take us to sea level."

"Compliance."

The Fortress stops all horizontal motion and begins to lower itself. Obviously it doesn't need to be directed by power ring at all times. The main control systems work fine and the computer is sophisticated enough to interpret instructions. Not sophisticated enough to become fully intelligent, of course. It isn't artificially being prevented from doing so, it just flat out lacks the capacity. I take a moment to make sure that Garth is coping, but it looks like us heading towards the ocean is making him cheer up.

Something occurs to Kon. "What's the visibility going to be like down there?"

"Near the surface it should be pretty good. Water temperature is fairly constant and nothing really happens to kick up sediment." Tula turns to look at me. "Are you sure we can't use light orbs?"

"Atlanteans being in this part of the world would probably cause nearly as big a freak out as the alien ship. We can use them when we get to the ocean floor but not before that." The ocean's getting noticeably louder now but I can't feel us moving at all. Inertial dampeners are awesome. I create a scaled down construct of the ship and point to an area towards what I think is the front. "Remember, our entry point is here. The Fortress' lights won't be able to shine all of the way down but they will get us started. Tempest, Aquagirl, go ahead and do a circuit of the ship. Deposit light orbs as you go. I'll see about getting Superboy, Miss Martian and Cornwall Boy inside and then start a structural survey of the exterior."

"So… What…" Rob looks a little uncomfortable asking. "I know you said there shouldn't be anyone on board, but what do we do if there is?"

"If it's the ship's owners then our job gets a lot easier since we won't have to dodge the Russian and American militaries any longer. We offer to help with repairs and send them on their way. If they've got injuries I've got a power ring and a database full of biological data. Since this is a Maltusian ship I regard the possibility of there being crew aboard as vanishingly unlikely since I can't think of anything they could survive which would prevent them from making repairs themselves. If it's navy personnel from a country on Earth -which at this depth and in these conditions I severely doubt- then we'll need to check in with Batman. If it's Russia or America we'll probably end up leaking the existence of the ship to the other and suggesting that the League should manage it. If it's another country then-" I look at M'gann. "-they'll probably get new memories. If it's a third party then we detain them if we can and monitor them if we can't. The only group I can think of who might contest this is Black Manta's mercenaries and this would be a long way away from their usual haunts." I look around. "Any other questions?"

No one says anything. "Okay. Final equipment checks and then prepare to dive."

Tula and Garth trigger their Dolmen Gates, sending small amounts of water out across their jewellery. Neither the water nor the temperature bother them but the armour will allow them to move faster than they can swim at less cost to their mana reserves than casting spells themselves. And protect them, though I doubt that will be necessary on this mission. They already know how to propel themselves in a way which doesn't create enough turbulence to appear on sonar.

Rob puts his visor in place. I put a fully armoured wetsuit together for him for this mission and he's wearing it to humour me but he was pretty confident that he could take the temperature and pressure without it. He hasn't bothered with fins for the same reason; he'll be moving around with magic and not muscular force. He does have a small Dolmen Gate linked to an air supply as part of his facial gear but that's a backup option. He intends to get his air by his own magics. He looks at me for approval. Yep, everything's set up right. I nod.

M'gann's shifted into an Atlantean form of the same type as Kaldur. Her neck has thickened and there are pronounced gills on either side. She has also shrunk as she increases her density. Martians aren't actually adapted to life on the surface of modern Mars but their tolerance for cold is still far greater than that of Humans. She'll shift to Merform when we get into the water. Since she has functional gills she doesn't need any sort of air supply and further equipment would just get in the way of her shapeshifting.

Kon's probably the weakest in the water of all of us. He doesn't have to worry about heat or pressure either but he does need a constant air supply. He'll be carrying an air tank to go alongside his Dolmen Gate air supply. Sad that I don't have a spare large Gate to just drop down there really, but there aren't all that many of them and they're all in use. He's also wearing fins and webbed gloves.

My own power armour appears on me as M'gann makes external checks on Kon's equipment. Have to keep the flight belt inactive while we're well under water. It'll only be a reserve system for if the rings fail anyway. No fins for me because there's no way I'd be able to generate enough effort to move armour this heavy through the water. I have a Dolmen Gate air supply to go with a filtration field thingy I got from the Stewart Ring's database. It should be able to capture gasses dissolved in the water to generate breathable air but frankly it looks far too fragile for me to want to rely on it. Two backups for the two rings should be plenty.

**Miss Martian, please link us up.**

Her eyes glow for a moment. **We're linked.**

I look around the group. **Everyone, please respond with your call sign.**

**Superboy.**

**Cornwall Boy.**

**Aquagirl.**

**Tempest.**

**Orange Lantern. Link is good. Aquagirl, Tempest, dive when ready.**

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
06:35 GMT -11

There's a flare of orange light as I momentarily generate a wedge construct around me to ease my passage into the water. Through my armour's visor I see the gloom of the arctic ocean pierced by the Ice Fortress' powerful light beams and the thin trail of bubbles released by my Atlantean colleagues as they power towards the bottom. With no obstacles in the water I have the ring start pushing me downwards and instruct the HUD to display the result of the ring's scans of the seabed. Garth and Tula are about twenty metres below me and making good time towards the ship which the HUD models as an orange wire frame. The water here isn't all that deep, a mere six hundred metres compared to around about three thousand for Poseidonis.

**Brrr! Bit cold!**

**Cornwall Boy, unless you are actually in difficulty please keep the chatter down.** The HUD shows me his relative position six metres behind me, up and a little to my right. **The water here is at minus two degrees. It was colder above the water than it is here.**

**Sorry, right. Um, not in any difficulty. Just need t'.. change how I'm heating... Okay. Done.**

My HUD blinks as he increases his speed slightly. He may have been on the team longer than Garth and Tula but he still has less combat experience. Probably good that we assigned him to the more straightforward mission. I take a moment to study the image of the ship. Bit of an odd shape. Most starships are approximately cylindrical in order to maximise internal volume. A few species use strongly divergent designs to accommodate some aspect of their technology and small ships sometimes retain an aerofoil shape but the laws of physics do rather cause things to trend in one direction. The ship I'm looking at is nearly as tall as it is long and a fraction as wide. Doesn't match Maltusian ship designs on file, but their ships were usually custom built so it isn't surprising that there isn't a particular record. Does suggest somewhat that this isn't a Guardian vessel... I can detect the functioning power source clearly but the rest of the ship is defying me. Some sort of anti power ring shielding?

Normal safe descent speed during a dive is about ten metres per minute. Most of us can flat out ignore that recommendation, but Kon needs to go a little slower even with his eyes, mouth and ears covered. It isn't really a problem; we haven't done anything quite like this before and I'm happy to go at a steady pace.

**Tempest, anything to report?**

**Clear swimming down here. Perimeter will be twenty meters out at three meters above the seabed.**

Only ships I know of that had that profile were Apokoliptian portal ships from their last showdown with New Genesis. Of course, I don't know its proper orientation. If I assume that it landed on its side and partially buried itself...

**Are there likely to be any external defences?**

I consider Tula's question for a moment. Modern Green Lantern ships have giant green power beams focused by whoever the Lantern in command is and are protected by stupendously strong green barriers. They don't have automated weaponry because they don't usually want to kill whoever it is they're fighting. Modern Controller ships can look like just about anything, though the ones Stewart Ring records as being used by the Darkstars tend to focus on speed and stealth over gunnery. Since I don't know exactly where this ship is from or precisely who built it I can't say for sure. **Maltusian automated defences tended to be purely passive. The main protection for the ship was the fact that there were Maltusians on board. Still, if you see the ship react to your presence in any way, fall back and create cover immediately.**

**Were the Maltusians so popular that no one wanted to attack them?**

**No, Miss Martian. It was more to do with their status as demigods. Picking a fight with a Maltusian was.. and is something you have to be very sure of yourself to try.**

**You worked out why they crashed yet?**

Kon's lagging behind slightly. Within the expected margin though. It just isn't as easy to propel yourself with fins as it is by the techniques the rest of us are using. Add 'super swim armour' to the wish list... **Not for certain. From my scans of their power sources it looks like they had a distributed system. There wouldn't be any main engineering or primary drive to destroy. The damage is bad but it's not a killing shot. Shouldn't have been, anyway.** I think for a moment. **If it were a very old ship, back from when they first went out into space... Maybe if something shot them when they were at the edge of Earth's atmosphere? Really I'm just guessing.**

**Who do you think it was?**

**Let me put it this way. This galaxy is around thirteen billion years old. Planet Earth is a little over four and a half billion years old. Maltus is ten billion years old. I don't have precise timelines for their development but it's not impossible that this ship predates this star system. Given that sort of range... Could have been any one of hundreds of species.**

**We're at depth. Tempest and I are splitting up to deploy light globes.**

**Message received. Carry on.**

**[Frown] It can't be that old.** I just heard M'gann's frown. Since I started routinely shielding my mind I haven't been getting those sorts of impressions. Blocks are still in place... Odd. **Wouldn't it have got covered up by sand if it had been down here that long?**

**It's near dead centre of a small plateau. It's quite possible that its systems forced the surrounding rock into shape. What doesn't make sense is why no one picked it up.**

The lights from the Fortress have long since faded behind us and I can just about make out the change in the texture of the murk below us as the light orbs are activated. Not much further now. My HUD indicates Tula pausing for a moment. **Could they have been hiding?**

**Any number of things are possible, but the list of rogue Maltusians is very short.** Basically just Krona actually, though that might have been due to the Guardians tidying it up a little by taking the names of those known to be no longer active off. Not for the first time I find myself wishing I could be in contact with the Controllers already so that I'd have someone to ask about this stuff. Million to one shot there's an actual Controller on that ship, but maybe I could find some way to use the technology on board to contact them?

I can dimly see the hull of the ship as an area of slightly darker water below us. No tron lines. Could be the damage and time or it might indicate that it comes from an earlier era. **Everyone still together?** I know full well that everyone is but I want to make sure that everyone is awake.

**I've been following the orange glow all the way down. I can just about see that spaceship now.** Rob probably can't see anyone else. Good that he doesn't appear to be letting that worry him.

**I've been using ultrasound to keep track of everyone.**

**I was wondering what the noise was. How did you learn how to do that?**

**It was on J'aarkn's amulet. I just had to modify my throat and ears a little. And.. a.. few parts of my brain so I could actually understand the image.**

**Superboy, can you see the ship?**

**A little. I don't think it's giving off any heat.**

**I'm moving towards the entry point now. Superboy, Miss Martian and Cornwall Boy, with me. Tempest and Aquagirl, are you finished with the lights yet?**

**Yes.** / **All done.**

**Go to the damaged section but stay back for now.**

**Is it alright if we prep a water clearing spell?**

Tula raised that during our planning session. The water around Poseidonis is remarkably clear but until they pointed it out I hadn't really given it any thought. Clearing up here -as long as there is still enough silt overhead- will make our job a good deal more pleasant. **Maltusians didn't traditionally have much to do with magic. The ship shouldn't react. Wait until I've made contact with the ship's systems before casting.**

**Right. Tempest, I'm moving around to your side of the ship now.**

I come to a stop in the water about twenty metres away from what I hope is the ship's hatch. **Starting entry attempt now.**

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
06:59 GMT -11

**Firstly, every adventurer's best friend.** I push my right arm out to the side, conscious of the effect of the higher pressure on my movements. **A ten foot pole.** My solid steel pole appears in a flicker of orange.

M'gann swims a little closer to me. **Why do you have a ten foot pole?**

**I've loaded all sorts of things into the ring's subspace pocket. This just happens to be-** I turn my arm, pointing the far end of the pole in the direction of the ship. **-the most sensible way of checking for an energy shield.** I connect a filament to the pole and release it, using the ring's power to propel it towards the ship.

**If there was, wouldn't we be able to see it in the water?**

**Depends on what sort. It might react to increases in density rather than just pressure.** I watch as the far end of the pole gets closer to the doorway. Fifteen metres, twelve, eight, five and I start slowing it down. Four, three, two, one and just as it touches the hull there's a flicker of something and it leaps from my grasp!

Connection lost.

I recapture my pole. **Some sort of energy barrier appeared just as it touched the surface of the ship. Ring?**

Energy consistent with pre-glow Maltusian technology.

That.. dates it, but Earth would have been a storm covered semi-molten rock back then. The shield might explain why the ship isn't buried. With great care I bring the pole back to bear. Gently, gently… The shield triggers again but this time there isn't enough pushing force to cause the pole to slide aside. Ideally, there'd be some way to proxy touching it with the ring… Stewart ring, decouple from the original ring.

Operation complete.

I hold out my right hand and very carefully extend a filament towards the barrier. No response to its approach. Okay, tooouch…

Minor energy drain detected.

The shield isn't resisting the filament, but there is a small amount of energy leeching going on. Barrier's staying up.

**Miss Martian, please try very gently pushing against the barrier with telekinesis.**

**Okay. Starting now.** Nothing for a second as the barrier fails to respond. **!**

**Miss Martian!** Kon swims to catch her as she gets shoved back.

**I'm okay. I'm not hurt.**

**What happened?**

**All the force I put into pushing it got reflected back. I was.. pushing against myself.**

Hmm. **Cornwall Boy, do you know any sort of remote viewing or scrying magic?**

**'bit.**

**Please attempt to scry the barrier. Doesn't matter if you don't discover anything, I just want to see how it reacts.**

**Okay, but it's not really something I've practised much.**

**I can do that. It's been a while but long range communication is part of the academy's standard training program.**

I turn, looking through the water to where my HUD tells me Garth is swimming. **In this instance, it's probably better for the spell to be slightly clumsy. You're trained to use magic in a precise, combative way. I just want to see what mana does when it looks as little like a spell as possible.**

**Thanks.** I turn to look in Rob's direction. The water around him is bent slightly and it wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that he's dry under his water manipulation. Both of his arms are outstretched and there's another distortion between his hands. It flickers for a moment and then is gone. **Sorry, not used to doing this when I'm in the water I'm using it on.**

**Did you feel any feedback? **

**Yeah, but I don't think it was from the shield thing. Just.. felt like a spell collapsing. I don't know, don't think this one's supposed to be used underwater.**

No apparent reaction from the barrier. **Alright, Superboy, Miss Martian, Cornwall Boy, back off another twenty metres.**

**Ah… It's kinda hard to judge…**

Kon has a point. I project a thick orange beam behind me. **About that far. Aquagirl, Tempest, there shouldn't be a reaction where you are but just in case-.**

**We'll pull back too.**

Rob moves backwards through the water without turning, as if something is pulling him away. M'gann flicks her tail and heads after him while Kon follows more slowly. If I can get in I'll take him with me. He just isn't as capable in the water as everyone else. **Okay, I'm going in.** Hmm. Stewart ring, re-interface with original ring.

Operation complete.

**How do the doors on Green Lantern spaceships usually work?**

Reasonable question on Kon's part. **They don't have them. They use selectively permeable energy construct barriers. Their doors double as weapon hardpoints.** I stop three metres away and return the pole to subspace. The barrier disappears once more. I create construct armour around myself and reach forwards with both hands. **No reaction to orange light proximity. That might mean that this ship predates Larfleeze's theft of the Orange Central Power Battery… Or it might be indicative of the damage the ship has suffered.**

**Larfleeze stole a Central Power Battery?!** Garth's astonishment comes across clearly in his mental speech. **The same as the one which powers the entire Green Lantern Corps?**

**Different colour and it's a good deal smaller, but yes. I don't have good data on exactly how he pulled that one off. And because the Guardians suppressed all information about it I don't know exactly when it happened.** I think it was before the Sector 666 Genocide. Wasn't it? I seem to remember the comic depicted the Guardians who negotiated with him having a Manhunter escort. Even they wouldn't have done that after. Would they? **Getting closer now. Still no reaction.** I reach forwards a little further, fingers stretching to touch the hull. The construct doesn't trigger the barrier. **Either the barrier can't detect the construct or it doesn't regard it as hostile.** I have the fingertips of the construct armour peel away where it touches the hull so that my armour can reach for it. No, let's see-.

The barrier flares back into being.

Minor power drain detected. / Minor power drain detected.

I pull both hands away. No damage to my armour's gauntlets. Leaving the construct armour whole this time I stretch forth my right arm again, planting it firmly on the doorway. No reaction. Okay, so now I can touch the thing…

Open sesame?

There aren't any buttons, knobs or other protuberances. The seam is tiny. I only detected it with a power ring scan, otherwise I could probably have looked the whole thing over without ever once detecting it. Ring, can you find anything to interface with?

No computation system found. Addendum: emotional light spectrum systems detected.

Right. There wouldn't necessarily have been a computer. Of course, if they used a system similar to modern ones…

Ring, feed power into the local system. Don't give it more than five percent maximum store.

Energy feed in progress.

The entryway shimmers orange for a moment and then is replaced entirely with an orange portal. I smile. Looks like we're in.

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
07:06 GMT -11

**Entry point available.** I take out the pole again and push it through the orange barrier which has replaced the doorway. It passes through with no resistance. Once it's entirely inside I release it and watch it drop onto the floor within. **No reaction to the presence of a foreign body. I'll go in first. Superboy, assuming that nothing happens, you're in next.**

**Right.**

I drift forwards, right arm slightly forwards. The barrier is clearly blocking water just fine but my arm goes through as if there's nothing there, just as the pole did. There is no illumination inside besides that provided by the orange entry point. Ring, probe.

No artificial gravity detected. Elevated carbon dioxide and methane and reduced oxygen from planetary norm.

Maltus' air was pretty much the same as Earth's. If there's no one there the ship would probably have deprioritised life support. How does air on a spaceship change without that? According to Stewart ring's records it depends on exactly which systems are deactivated and what microbes there are. Guardian ships of the modern era are ruthless about excluding microbial life, partially due to Guardian OCD and partially due to concerns about cross contamination. Unlike the mantra in the Hospital Station series diseases can often affect different species of humanoids. Not all the time but we have so much organic chemistry in common… Heck, fertile hybrids can happen between some pairings and that's just.. daft.

Oh, I'm dragging this out. I push myself through the barrier. Turns out that the outer hull is about twenty centimetres thick, though if this wasn't intended to be a combat vessel Guardians.. or other Maltusians, could have made it paper thin if they'd wanted. It's been a very long time since Maltusians built ships because they needed them, rather than because they were convenient. Leaving the construct armour up I turn left and then right. Corridors with sealed doors. No guard station… That implies other species weren't involved in crewing it. Again, I scoop up the pole and return it to subspace. Next, I orientate myself to the corridor and take a few light globes out of my ever versatile subspace holdall, reflecting not for the first time that a person could be a successful superhero with that ability alone. I send one globe to each end of the corridor. The ship doesn't respond and the doors remain shut. One thing left to try then. I land and drop the construct armour, tensing slightly. Nothing.

Ring, is this section sealed?

No airflow detected.

I make a jazz hands gesture and the air around me is purified in a wave of orange. **Alright, Superboy. In you come.**

**On my way.**

Looking up I see him swim towards the barrier. If it blocks him I can just put an environmental shield around him. Oh, wait, there aren't any handholds and he left his flight equipment back in the mountain. Rungs won't be any use, he's still got his fins on. I settle for creating a platform just down from the entry. I can lower him from that.

Kon swims right up to the barrier face first before reorientating to crouch against the hull. His hands sink easily through the orange barrier. **Are you making this?**

**No, I just fed the ship a little power. Apparently it can auto-transubstantiate.** He looks blank. I try narrowing my telepathic connection to just him. **Switch from matter to energy without intelligent intervention.**

**Oh.** He reaches further in and takes a grip on the interior surface. **It doesn't really feel like much.** A little hesitantly he pulls himself forwards, head pulled back slightly until his face is fully enveloped, then thrust forwards so that it clears the orange barrier as quickly as possible. Head and chest out he holds out his arms to arrest his expected fall but instead his hips and legs remain inside the barrier. Looks like it can hold a person's weight. He pulls his hands back so that they're braced against the sides of the portal and pushes his legs free before dropping onto my platform. **Is the air safe?**

**Yes, but leave your mask on for the moment. It might not be in other parts of the ship.** I look back up at the opening. **Tempest, Aquagirl, please cast your spell.**

**We'll just need a moment.** I narrow my eyes and reach.. outwards through the telepathic link binding us together. Through M'gann's eyes I see a strange blue glow from near the seabed which appears to grow in definition as time passes. Suddenly I… She blinks heavily as silt precipitates out of the water around her and is shoved outwards. Combined with the light sources they placed around the bottom of the ship she can finally see its whole off-white hull.

**Whooooowh.** Rob sounds impressed. I suppose he's had to rely on my scans to see what the ship-. **That spell's amazing! When this is over, could you show me how to do it?**

**Of course.** Garth sounds a little puzzled. **It isn't a big deal, everyone in Atlantis learns that spell.**

**When you live on the seabed you need to learn how to stop everything getting covered in dirt.**

**Does it work in the shallows?**

**I don't see why it wouldn't. But why would you need it?**

**I know a load of surfers who'd love to be able to do something like that!**

**Cornwall, that can wait until after the mission.**

**Sorry.**

**Interior of the ship appears structurally sound, no visible damage. Air was a bit musty but there isn't any organic matter in this section. It's been perfectly sealed since the ship landed. Pressure equal to Earth sea level. No automated defences or other nasties. No artificial gravity.** Ring, try scanning. Ugh. **Still can't scan beyond my immediate environment, including sonics. I can detect the power source and the defunct storage vessels. Two are towards the-** I form a three dimensional image of the part of the ship I'm talking about in my mind. **-front of the ship while most of the rest are in lines near the top and bottom. Since those two are the closest we'll head there first. Tempest and Aquagirl, get started surveying the exterior. Call out anything interesting.**

**We'll get right on it.** / **Understood.**

**Miss Martian and Cornwall Boy, please join us inside.**

**On my way.** / **Be with you in a moment.**

Rob makes it to the entrance first, dropping in feet first and landing heavily on the floor, legs fully bent. M'gann follows a moment later, swimming through head first and holding herself in the air with telekinesis.

**Miss Martian, are you able to phase through the walls?**

**I'll try.** Her tail shifts back into legs as she floats towards it and reaches out to touch it with her right hand. I see her muscles tense as she applies a little pressure. **No, it doesn't work. Whatever this is made of resists my phasing as well as your scan.**

I activate my armour's integrated phase shifter and stamp my right foot. Same result. **That's the thing about very advanced alien civilisations.**

**What is?**

**They're very advanced.** I feel a tiny flicker of amusement from her. **Just in case there's something unpleasant in the next section…** I connect a filament to the other three before flying over to the door which hopefully leads in the right direction. Interesting thing about this corridor: the floor, the walls and ceiling are all about two metres across and the corners are slightly curved. For humanoids the Maltusians were never particularly tall and the Guardians only ever shrank. Were there a lot of people on board? **The door is clearly a door this time, rather than a barely distinguishable part of the hull. It's slightly recessed compared to the wall around it. The colour is the same off-white as the outer hull and the other walls. There's a seam running from the centre to each corner, presumably how it opens. It's half again as wide as it is tall, which might make sense for Guardians.** I raise my left hand. **Since it isn't responding to my proximity and there isn't an obvious control system I'm going to try feeding it from the ring.** Ring, power feed. Just to the door.

Compliance.

Rather than turn orange the parts of the door turn semi-liquid and run back into the surrounding wall, revealing another corridor.

If this whole thing turns out to be empty I'm going to be ever so disappointed.

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
07:12 GMT -11

Another door, another corridor. This one leads to a curved double sided drop… I look at the corridor we're standing in. **The ship's on its side.**

M'gann looks at me like she's waiting for the punch line. **Yes?**

**We didn't actually know that.**

M'gann keeps looking at me, then turns to Kon and Rob. They look at each other, then Kon turns to me. **Uh… We didn't?**

**Most spaceships aren't designed to fly in atmospheres. There wasn't really any reason to assume…** Yeah, okay, I guess it was more likely. **Cornwall, are you going to be alright flying yourself down?**

**No, this isn't… I can't do that in enclosed spaces. Not yet, I mean.**

The corridors don't have handholds. **Alright.** I send a couple of light globes down and around what I suspect is the bridge. Quick optic scan… **The door is towards the rear face. Cornwall, Superboy, how much practice have you had with flight belts?**

Rob winces. **Not much. I've been.. y'know… Focusing on magic stuff.**

**I can fly around with it, as long as I don't have to do any complicated flying.**

I take a belt out of subspace and hand it to Kon. **Miss Martian, Cornwall, wait here while Superboy and I check it out.** They nod as Kon straps on the belt and triggers it, rising slightly off the ground. Keeping a careful eye on my environment I slowly fly through the open doorway and down the curving corridor to where the main entry to the bridge is located. Slightly larger door than the others, and it has another similarly sized door on the opposite wall. Would they have been open during normal operation? I still don't really know what sort of ship this was. The closeness of the entry point to the command centre and the relatively exposed position of it suggests civilian rather than military but they might just have decided that the chance of something attacking them was so low it didn't matter.

**Tempest, Aquagirl, anything to report?**

**We're looking at the damage now.** Tula sounds puzzled. *I'm… I'm not really an expert on spaceships. I'm not sure what I'm looking for.**

**Look for patterns of damage. Is it one big impact or several smaller ones? Are there burn marks? What do the exposed sections look like? I'm not looking for a detailed technical analysis, no one here is qualified to give that.**

**Right.** I send a filament out and touch it to the door. No energy shield. Ring, begin energy feed.

Compliance.

**The edge of the damaged area is jagged.. and.. brittle.** I get a momentary flicker of Tula holding a piece of the hull, broken off in her hand. **The energy barrier doesn't activate when I touch it.**

**There are puncture marks of some kind on the interior surfaces. They don't go through the outer hull, though. Some sort of fight inside the ship?**

**Could be. Proceed carefully. If something looks like it could be dangerous, assume that it is.**

The door in front of me opens, revealing the darkened command centre. I send a light globe forwards but I can already tell whose ship this is. **This was a Guardian vessel. The raised area around the front and the sides with the central holo pit is distinctive. Probably pre-dating the Green Lantern Corps.**

Kon floats forwards a little. **How can you tell?**

**Too much space. There aren't enough Guardians left to need this much space even if they all got together in one place, and they don't do that anywhere but Oa. If it were recent, there would be headroom for the Green Lantern Honour Guard who'd be manning the ship.**

**How many Guardians are there?**

**A total of nine actively participate in running the Corps. There might be others around, I don't know exactly what the membership requirements are.** I recognised some names on the list; Ganthet, Sayd and Appa Ali Apsa exist here. According to Lantern Stewart's ring the others mostly disdain the use of names. It only knew Sayd's because Ganthet once used it in Stewart's presence. The two of them appear to have the personalities I was expecting. Appa on the other hand appears to be some sort of social scientist. A quick check showed that he was frequently absent from briefing sessions.

I send a probe construct forwards. Ah. With no artificial gravity objects have fallen down. There's a pile of crushed bones and partially burned and torn robes at the apparent bottom of the room, and- ooh shit! Is that a Manhunter? Robotic humanoid, but… The outer surface isn't red and it doesn't have that white faceplate they usually do. I can't see any obvious damage and it's partially buried under the remains of its masters. Looks like.. three Guardians? Assuming a standard humanoid skeletal structure.

**Well? Are we going in?**

**There's a combat robot. It looks inactive, but I'm a bit wary of setting it off.** A Manhunter which wasn't getting other instructions would have acted the moment we opened the door. This one… Its one visible arm appears to have been designed to look like it possessed a humanoid musculature. Most of the arm is grey, terminating in a white five fingered gauntlet. The chest appears to be covered in some sort of green leotard thing and the head is a solid ovoid with bulging green eyes and some sort of mouth grill where a humanoid's mouth would be. I have no idea what that is. Could it be a robotic Lantern? One of their early recruits?

Subject is a 'Fist of the Guardians', presently inactive.

I have no idea what that is. Stewart ring?

Fist units were created after the abandonment of the Manhunter project-.

You mean the Massacre of Sector 666.

There is no data on file concerning the cause of the mass extinction in that region, nor to support the belief that the Manhunters were in any way involved. Fist units are designed not to possess the reasoning capacity of their predecessors.

There's a minimal level of intelligence required to use the green light, correct?

Yes. Fist units are designed to operate using direct energy infusion from a Guardian. As such, they are seldom deployed in field operations.

When are they deployed?

Historically, they were most frequently deployed as guards for the Guardians. In the modern era they have been supplanted in this role by the Honour Guard. Their most recent deployment was to apprehend First Lantern Sinestro.

If it needs a Guardian to pour energy into it and all the Guardians here are dead… Scan very carefully for residual energy.

None found.

I wave Kon forwards and then follow on behind him. He heads towards the centre of the Guardian balcony on the far side of the room while I stop in the centre of the room. Ring, any systems we can connect to?

Ship systems appear intact but are inactive. Most likely cause is lack of power.

Current charge level?

Ninety five percent of normal maximum power available. / Ninety six percent charge available.

Doubt I can charge the ship by myself. Might need to bring my lantern down here later. Feeding a little power into the computer to get the logs can't hurt, though. Rings, begin power feed. Filaments extend from both rings to the 'floor' and 'ceiling'. Cut out when-.

A surge of light erupts from the wall and floor, forming an orange tube around me! Um.

Massive power drain detected!

I bring my left fist around and slam it into the barrier around me! No effect.

Massive power drain detected!

Kon notices that something is wrong and slams into it from the outside. There's a tiny crack. Right, railgun-!

Looking directly down I see the Fist looking back up at me, eyes glowing orange.

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
07:16 GMT -11

ShitShitShitShit!

"Intruder detected." The Fist straightens, bones and robes falling aside as it rises into the air. "Halt and surrender for judgement."

Kon turns away from me and prepares to lunge at it. "Surrender th-!"

**No! Superboy, don't!** He swings his head back around to stare at me. **It works for the Guardians. The worst it'll do is detain us until it can contact them. If you fight it… I don't know what its weapons can do.**

Alert! Critical power drain!

Damn it! Will it consider firing a railgun round an offensive action? Kon lowers his fist as the Fist rises to our level. "Unfamiliar species detected. Unable to locate Guardians. Guardian remains detected. Damage to chronometer detected. Critical damage to ship systems detected." It stares directly at Kon. "Identify."

"I'm Superboy."

"Identify function."

"Search and rescue."

There's a brief pause as we wait for the Fist to respond. It keeps looking at Kon. "Identify function."

"I'm…" He glances at me and I nod. "I'm search and rescue too. We're here to try to get this ship off the seabed before anyone else finds it."

It keeps staring for a moment, then it turns away and reorientates itself to the floor. "Unable to determine societal technological level. Unable to determine status of cargo." Cargo? "Unable to render effective judgement. Negotiation: this unit will render assistance and nullify claims in exchange for repatriation of this vessel."

Alert! Critical power drain!

Darn. I was sort of hoping… "Fine. Just let me out."

"Answer."

"Yes!"

The Fist is now standing on the wall.. floor.. in front of the highest point of the Guardian podium. It turns back towards us. "Answer."

Kon stares at it in bemusement. "Yes! Can't you hear him-" It can't hear me. "-or something?"

My flickering and failing railgun construct fires a Crumbler round into the side of the orange shield imprisoning me. There's a spray of orange light as it fractures, cracks threading the area around the impact point. I shoot it again and a chunk disintegrates, leaving a hole big enough for me to fly-! Fuck! Big enough for me to lunge at and fall out of! I fall about six metres, hit the side of the room and roll down towards where the Fist had been resting. Armour holds out. Barely felt that, actually. Well done armour. I take a moment to calm down. No flying means less than ten percent power. Bastard thing just stole nearly two complete ring charges worth of power!

"Identify."

I push myself up, trying to ignore the bones of the ship's former owners as they crunch under my weight. The cylinder that held me fades as I stand. "I'm the chap this ship just tried converting into a power source!"

**Orange Lantern! Superboy! Are you alright?**

**Yesss… More or less.** Wait, if the ship just absorbed that much power… Please tell me it didn't all go into the Fist. "Status of ship systems?"

"Glow manipulation detected."

Oh great, this thing really does predate Lanterns? "The Guardians created tools to allow younger races to duplicate their abilities." I raise my gauntlets in its direction to show it the rings as I activate my armour's flight belt. "The ship just sucked mine dry. Presumably that means that some systems are alive again."

"Confirmed. Stealth systems restored. Self repair systems restored."

"But not any of the drive systems?"

"Insufficient power for primary objective essential systems in addition to drive systems." Suddenly, down flips and I tumble into the wall-floor!

**Ow!** / **Whu-?**

"Interior gravity restored."

I pick myself up. Interestingly I can't feel Earth's gravity at all now. "Okay, I can just go back to the surface, grab my lantern and come back." **The robot's friendly. Cornwall, Miss Martian, get in here.** "Fist, is anyone else onboard?"

"All Guardians accounted for. All are recorded as deceased. All Fist units accounted for. All other units are recorded as irreparably damaged." It pauses. "Experimental subjects not accounted for."

"What experimental-" M'gann and Rob walk in through the door. "-subje-?"

"Confinement protocols engaged!" The Fist surges towards the doorway, swinging its right fist at M'gann! She dives aside, then is forced to fly to avoid its orange eyebeams! Rob thrusts out his arms and fires a blast of lightning directly into its torso at point blank range. No effect. "Arcane energy detected. Initiating countermeasures." It twists around and backhands Rob before he can evade. He slams into the wall at the side of the room, wincing as he lands.

**Superboy, get it.**

"Rgaaagh!" Kon flies across the room, aiming at the Fist's back. An orange barrier appears for a second just before he strikes, robbing him of momentum. I generate a new railgun construct and track as the Fist spins aside, grabbing Kon's head as it goes. Kon's hands come up and take a grip of its left wrist.

M'gann comes up besides me. **What's it doing?! I thought you said-!**

**It just saw you and went crazy! Fists aren't sentient, feel free to use full force.**

The Fist tries to hurl Kon aside but he maintains his grip, slowly exerting force on the wrist joint. I can hear the sound of whatever it's made of getting crushed. The Fist releases the hold of its other hand, lifts Kon up and fires another blast from its eyes.

"Augh!" Kon loses his hold and goes flying across the room, a small part of the Fist's hand still in his grip. Across his chest I can see where the outer surface of his wetsuit was blasted aside. Looks like the mithril held.

I fire a Crumbler at the Fist and again an orange barrier appears before it can strike its chassis. The barrier fails but the robot beneath is unaffected. Guy and I found that ablative shields are just about the only effective defence against Crumblers, other than evading the shot.

Another beam from its eyes passes through M'gann as she phases to avoid it, cutting into the far wall. "Adapting vibrational-."

I jam my left hand in the beam's path. Drain.

Power at eight percent. Nine percent.

The beam cuts out and the Fist flies at us. I thrust my arms forwards, triggering the belt's containment shield. I may not have Raquel's skill but I can manage a simple on/off control. A glowing blue bubble forms around the Fist as its own kinetic energy is absorbed by the barrier.

"Fist unit! Explain why-!"

Its left hand glows orange as a laser beam burns into the flight belt at my waist! I fall to the ground and the barrier around the Fist collapses. Rob's back on his feet, electrical energy crackling between his hands. The Fist shudders slightly -some sort of electrical induction?- and M'gann uses the opportunity to apply telekinetic force to its head. The right eye shatters into a whorl of orange motes as its head is forced back, then-

"AAgh!"

-M'gann slumps to the ground, clutching her head in pain.

"Subsonic feedback pulse active. Forceful telepathic disconnect will-."

Kon flies out, jinks under its left arm and comes up behind it, grabbing its neck in a choke hold!

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
07:20 GMT -11

Can't choke a thing that doesn't breathe but the neck does seem like a structural weakness. **Cornwall, keep disrupting its internals. Miss Martian-**

"Wavelength isolated." Green light radiates out from the Fist and Kon shudders. Environmental shield. Fortunate that kryptonite radiation isn't strongly ionising. Environmental shields are 'cheap' to create and should be able to hold any bombardment the Fist will be able to put out almost indefinitely.

**-crush the other eye.** M'gann nods, her left hand coming up and her eyes glowing.

**Do you need help?**

Right, the Atlanteans aren't going to know what's happening. Time it would take them to get here..? **No. No time.** No way my armour is up to wrestling with the Fist, but if I can take some more power back… The humanoid form gives it limited range of motion.

"Internals compensating." I hear its neck start to tear as its arms reach back, hands glowing with orange light. I bend into a crouch and power forwards. Kinematic processors don't fail me now! Distracted, the Fist doesn't react as I leap across the distance separating us and wrap my arms around its left forearm. My momentum causes my legs to swing past as my hands latch onto its hand. Drain! Light streams from its hand into the rings as my impact forces it to stagger back. "Power drain detected." The light around the hand I'm draining goes out. I'm still drawing a small amount of power, orange mist wafting from its eye and right hand. Kon ducks his head as it fires another blast from its right hand while M'gann hesitates.

**I can't get a grip! It's like it's immune to telekinesis!**

I drop an x-ionised knife out of subspace next to her. **Use this. Carefully.**

**Right.**

Blue light shines from Rob's direction as he charges up a fireball. The physics of those things are.. not something I understand. If it can-.

The Fist spins, rising in the air as it does so. The ring can easily keep my inner ear stabilised but I don't actually have a very good gri-. Agh! Blahgh! I slam into the far wall, bounce and hit the floor. Again I don't really feel the impact but I'm losing track of-. An alert flashes up on my HUD as something pierces the armour's outer plating on my right leg, cutting through and into the motive systems before stopping. That.. will impact my ability to move but it could have taken my leg off. Why didn't it?

I can barely see Kon as the Fist continues spinning. He must still be holding onto the Fist's neck. Its main cognition systems are in its chest, but if he can breach the head I might be able to drain it further. Careful to make sure that as much of my weight as possible is kept off my right leg I get up again. Can't waste power on a railgun construct. I take a normal railgun out of subspace and load it with Crumbler rounds. It's not a great weapon. I tried just using designs from Stewart ring's database but they're mostly designed to fire the grains of sand type projectiles Mass Effect weapons use and it's a lot harder to make them play nicely with the larger Crumbler or Mage Slayer rounds than it is a construct responding directly to my thoughts.

**Nnnnngaahhh!** Kon flies off the Fist at speed, something grey and orange in his arms. The wall takes his impact without denting but he's slow to rise. The Fist doesn't even bother slowing its spinning as it powers towards M'gann again. She flies away from it, moving the x-ionised knife towards it and slashing at its approximate location. I see brief flares of orange where it intersects with a barrier. I track and pull the trigger. Actual railguns don't so much hum as roar and I can feel it through the armour's sound dampening. Rob's fireball hits it from the far side at the same time as my round strikes home, one side awash with blue fire and the other with what looks like an orange dust cloud. Two seconds until I can fire again.

M'gann stabs at the orange dust side and is rewarded with a definite impact. The Fist tumbles in the air past her and she uses the opportunity to check up on Kon. He's groggy but it doesn't look like he's particularly hurt. The Fist stabilises, down a head and a neat cut clearly visible across its chest and left arm where the knife went in.

**AwaHH!** M'gann is knocked flying across the room as the eye on the head in Kon's grasp fires! Kon quickly turns it aside before jamming his right fore and middle fingers into the remaining eye socket, finally breaking the eye. Getting a better hold, his muscles bulge as he pulls, the head coming apart in his hands. A mote of orange light flies from it into the Stewart ring. Ring?

Eight percent power remaining.

**Miss Martian?**

**Uhhh, aaaghhh…**

Something about that beam… Rob looks at me. "What now?"

I grimace and take an x-ionised knightly sword out of subspace. "Swift wind. You cut, I'll shoot."

"Right." The air around him bends as the spell takes effect. Drain! Motes of orange light flow from the Fist, but it still isn't enough. I suppose it makes sense that the species that built Central Power Batteries would be able to make well insulated robots. "Go!"

I pull the trigger again. His spell doesn't make him anything like Kid Flash fast but it does let him outpace a World Record holding sprinter and generally not worry about his momentum. He's already grabbed the sword out of the air as my Crumbler strikes the Fist. This time it can't quite manage a full barrier and its outer armour gets etched as if by acid. It brings up its arms for another shot at M'gann but Rob has already cleared the intervening space, ducking under them and slicing through its chest plate with a single sweep as he runs by. There's a sudden flash of orange along the line and I pull as much of it into the rings as I can before firing again. The Fist intercepts with its glowing left hand. The glow breaks and Rob's back, slicing through the palm. The Fist's fingers spasm slightly as they hit the deck.

Its right hand glows and I'm forced to burn ring power to shield myself as it takes a laser-

Phased particle beam.

-phased particle beam shot at my railgun. I try moving the end of the railgun but the beam stays perfectly on target.

Alert! Seven percent power remaining.

Great. I drop a Crumbler micro-missile out of subspace and the beam moves aside for a half second to destroy it. Kon's back on his feet and M'gann… I can't see M'gann. Rob runs back in and takes a swipe at the already damaged forearm. The Fist pivots in the air and smashes him across the stomach with it instead.

"Fwraah!" Rob's spell bursts and he collapses to the ground, gasping for air. I stick a filament on the sword before it can cut through the deck as Kon flies at the Fist again. It tries to bring up its damaged hand for a shot at his belt but nothing happens. Realising the level of damage the Fist turns the move into a roll, aiming to get out of Kon's path and strike as he moves past. The beam's off me now but I can't get a safe shot! As the Fist rolls Kon triggers his belt's kinetic barrier bringing it to a sudden halt. Before it can reposition he drops the barrier again and ploughs into it, striking the slash across its chest at full speed. The Fist is shoved backwards about two metres before stabilising, Kon already shoving his palms into the tear and straining to pull it apart. Something gives and a surge of orange smashes into his chest, propelling him into the ceiling and pinning him there! The Fist struggles to redirect and the walls of the room buckle where it points!

I shove the railgun back into subspace and wave my arms. "Shoot me! Shoot me! I can absorb it!"

I don't know if he heard me. It isn't reacting, though. I rise to my feet and stagger towards it, trying to pull the venting orange light back into the rings. Off to my right the ceiling gives way and the Fist shifts the orange beam before it can cut through the wall beyond. I can't move quick enough. Think.

The drain tube thing it used on me! Ring, can we activate that?

System is available.

Okay, the Fist is about three metres away. I try grabbing it with a filament but it gets consumed by the flood of orange light. I try a thicker beam but I can't get a grip on the bloody thing!

**Got you!** The floor behind the Fist flows upwards as M'gann wraps herself around it, x-ionised knife cutting into its functional arm which falls dead.

I use the ring to highlight the area of the floor with the draining mechanism. **Miss Martian, get it there!**

What look like giant flea legs grow out of her back and push the two of them across the room. As the two of them hurtle out of control she shifts, flows and moves her mass around to throw it at the indicated spot while she lands safely. Wait for it wait for it now! Ring, activate the drain system! The orange cylinder reappears, the orange light blasting from the Fist's chest being easily absorbed by the ship's systems. It tries to regain its feet, stumbles and collapses as the last of its energy bursts through its frame, disintegrating it.

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
07:23 GMT -11

I hobble a little closer to where the remains of the Fist gently smoulder inside the cylinder. Deciding that the Fist has been fully juiced the cylinder shuts down, dropping them onto the bridge's floor. Darn it, I was really hoping I could come out of this with a robot bodyguard.

"Aweh, fucking hell." Rob winces as he sits up, cradling his chest. "How'd you tell if you broke a rib?"

"If it hurts when you breathe more than normal." I look over at my other injured team mate. "Superboy, how are you doing?"

He pushes a section of bridge wall aside and delicately walks back in. "Just bruises. I'll be fine."

**Miss Martian, nicely done. Are we still linked?** She nods and then goes to check Kon over. **Robot dealt with, no serious injuries aaaand…** I do a quick scan of the accessible area of the ship. **No hull breaches. Anything interesting happen outside?**

**There's a pod of whales a few kilometers away. I think pushing the sediment and plankton away might be attracting them.** There's a little frustration in Garth's mental voice but he's keeping it under control. **Nothing aside from that.**

**Right.** I look at Rob. **Cornwall, I'm on low power, but if you think your rib is-.**

**Nah, don't worry.** He pulls a small vial out of an armoured leg pouch. **See if this works…** He unscrews the lid and downs the contents.

**What's.. that..?**

**Healing potion.**

I blink. **You have a healing potion?**

**Yeah, Kid Flash gave it to me before Christmas.**

**Kid Flash has healing potions?**

He looks at me with a slight frown, then his eyes widen in understanding. **Oh that's right! You were out with Zatanna when he told everyone about it. Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, it's not, like, an instant fix for everything, but…** He gingerly presses his chest with his left hand while putting the bottle back with his right. **It speeds up normal healing a lot. And I heal pretty quick anyway. Think it was just cracked.** He clambers back onto his feet.

I had.. meant.. to spend more time with Wallace, helping him with the whole alchemy thing. It's just.. what with Nabu and everything… **I think I should probably talk to him about that when we get back.**

Kon gives me a narrow smile. **Maybe he just doesn't want you to share it with Luthor.**

**That's fine, but I funnel a lot of the stuff I work on that isn't Lex-safe through Theodore Kord.** No recognition. **Kord Tech? The.. building the.. New York zeta tube is on-** He nods, getting it. **-top of?**

M'gann looks at the piles of remains. **Why did it attack us? It wasn't aggressive.. until…**

Rob nods. **Until you and me walked in.**

**Which means either it didn't like Martians or it didn't like magic.**

Rob shakes his head. **No, it didn't know I was a magic user. It only said 'arcane energy detected' after I shot it with lightning.** He looks at M'gann. **Have the Martians had anything to do with the Guardians?**

She looks at the floor in thought. **No. I hadn't even heard of Green Lanterns until we started getting messages from Uncle J'onn.**

**That's a little odd. If you ignore Earth there are only eleven different intelligent species in this sector. I'd have.. thought someone from Mars would have been recruited at some point.**

**I don't think so.**

**You're a race of shapeshifting telepaths.** Kon shrugs. **Maybe they don't think you need power rings as well?**

Guardians and Martians. Oh heck. "Ring, are the ship's computers available?"

"Access available. Warning: records severely damaged."

"Can you get me a date?"

"Unable to match calendars." In the centre of the room an orange construct image of a planet appears. Small, rocky and with liquid water covering a large part of the surface. I don't immediately recognise it but it isn't as if I've memorised every inhabited planet in the universe. My team gathers around it. "Image displayed is the most recent intact planetary scan prior to the ship's systems becoming damaged."

I take a closer look. There appear to be… Are those impact craters?

"I don't suppose there's a name for it in there, is there?"

"Planet listed as 'Ma'aleca'andra'."

"Never heard of it. I don't suppose you've got that on file somew-?"

**Mars.** The three of us turn to M'gann. She's got so close to the image that her face is nearly touching it, gazing at it in wonder. **It's.. Mars. See these mountains here? These are what Humans call Xanthe Montes. My Uncle Ma'al lives near here.**

Kon frowns. **But… Mars is…**

**This ship… The Guardians must have visited it before the surface turned into a desert!** She beams excitedly at us. **This is great! The Guardians might have records of-!** She cuts herself off as realisation hits. **This ship might have records of what Mars was like when the surface was still habitable!**

**Uuum. I wouldn't get too excited. The ring said-.**

**Even if this ship is too badly damaged, we can just ask the Guardians!** She turns around and grabs Kon around the waist and he smiles in response to her obvious enthusiasm. **We lost so much of our history, it would be amazing if we could get it back!**

Rob turns away from the globe to look at me. **Do you think.. whatever turned Mars into a wasteland… Could be what wrecked this ship?**

**Could be.** "Ring, assuming that planet is Mars, can you recover enough data to work out an approximate date?"

"Processing." Construct images of various pieces of text the ring isn't translating appear around us. Shit, am I under five percent already? The text disappears. "Image displayed approximately twenty thousand Earth years ago, plus or minus two hundred years, with a probability of ninety seven percent."

M'gann turns back to us and nods. **That's about when our archaeologists say it must have happened! This is going to be so great!**

"Ring, can you tell what this ship was doing here?"

"Purpose listed as 'prisoner transportation'."

M'gann sobers slightly. **If it was transporting Martian prisoners… The robot must have thought I was one of them.**

"Ring, can you access a picture of one of these prisoners?"

"Partial reconstruction available." The image of a green Mars vanishes and is replaced by one of a humanoid figure. We look at it for a moment.

M'gann frowns and shakes her head. **That's… That's not a Martian.**

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
07:27 GMT -11

It is, but I can see why she'd think that. The skull-like head modern Martians have is far narrower and taller. The softer segments around the throat and the back of the head are absent, as are the underarm membranes. Never really understood what they were about. The harder parts of the torso are more obviously armoured and the structure of the feet makes it more obvious that they were designed to grasp just as well as the forelimbs were. The legs and arms are far shorter and noticeably thicker and the whole creature looks much tougher.

Not that physical resilience is really the problem when you try and fight them.

Rob shrugs. **Some sort of.. Cave Martian?**

Kon looks at M'gann. **If there's white, green and red Martians now, maybe there used to be other kinds as well?**

She frowns. **I suppose.**

Ring, how many of those was this ship carrying?

Unable to recover data.

Ooooh dear. Ring, analyse general tone of content; did the Guardians have a huge fight with the Burning Martians and reprogram them into modern Martians?

Supposition fits available data. However, no firm conclusion can be reliably drawn.

I check my mental barriers again. Alright, Martians here follow 'real' biology far more than what I remember from the comics. They need to eat. Guardians don't. There's very little chance that this ship has a hydroponics section. It might have some sort of matter replicator but the ship's been on low power for a very long time.

**Can you fly this ship?**

I look back at Rob. **I might be able to command the ship to fly itself, certainly.** But thanks to me the power's back on. I look back in the direction of the rest of the ship, amping up my empathic vision. I can't even see the dots that should be there for Garth and Tula. **But I'd rather check the whole ship out first. And the computer's a mess anyway. I'm not keen on the idea of relying on it.**

**Um. Your leg alright, mate? You were sort of limping there.** Rob looks down at my damaged leg. **I've got another potion if you want it?**

**The Fist shot out one of the motors. Didn't actually hit my flesh.** "Ring, charge remaining?"

"Six percent."

I focus for a second and fix the leg armour. Don't know how much good armour will do against a potentially crazy Martian but I'm going to need to be able to move. I take a moment to test the motion, looking for a moment like a man interviewing for a grant from the Ministry of Silly Walks. I'd like to go back to the surface and recharge but I can't because the ship is functional and any Burning Martian on board could have learned how to operate it from the minds of the Guardians before they died. We need to do a sweep now and hope they died centuries ago. "Ring, can you get me an internal schematic?"

"Partial schematic available."

The Burning Martian disappears and is replaced with a hollow model of the ship. Parts of the insides are missing but there's a reasonably clear path towards the rear of the ship and the last power source. **Superboy, take point. Miss Martian, keep yourself invisible and listen out for any minds around us. Cornwall, can you keep that wind spell going?**

**Yeah.**

**Then do so.** I take three neural chaff grenades out of subspace and attach them to the outside of my armour. Not sure how much use they'll be. Do I try asking the Guardians for information again? No, this isn't just a lack of knowledge, this is something they've actively covered up. **Assume that any further Fist units encountered are hostile. And if there are surviving Martians, don't take any chances. Guardians don't have people arrested on a whim and they don't show up themselves unless the people they're arresting are very dangerous.** I look over at the bones and then check to make sure that my team mates understand the implication. **Martians can go invisible, shapeshift, manipulate their environments with telekinesis and are telepathic.** I think for a moment and then take two more chaff grenades out of subspace, handing one each to Rob and Kon. **If you see a Martian that isn't ours, use it.**

M'gann frowns. **But if they've been stuck down here-.**

**Then we can say sorry after we've got them under control. I doubt the Guardians made this ship phase proof for fun.** She doesn't look happy about it, but she nods and then fades from view. "Ring, do the doors work now, or am I still going to have to manually open every one?"

"Door mechanisms operational."

I nod to Kon and then gesture to the open door with my right hand. He nods and floats towards the opening. I could get another belt out of subspace for myself, but that would eat an entire percent and I just can't justify it.

**Orange Lantern, are you sure that you don't want Aquagirl and I inside?**

**'Sure' would be a little strong but neither of you have any particular resistance to telepathy. Any changes to the ship?**

The door to the main corridor opens just ahead of Kon, revealing a wide thoroughfare with large open rooms on either side. I'm not sure what used to be here but whatever it was has been thoroughly trashed.

**There's a slight orange glow in some places.**

**Some of the holes are closing up.** Tula sends a mental picture of the before and after. **The small ones on the interior. I think the edges of the larger holes are healing themselves as well.**

**Self repair, okay, that's not entirely surprising.** Could a Burning Martian survive in the arctic waters? M'gann can easily, but she's not on fire. The temperature out there is only minus two. **Get away from the breach-** Rob walks past me as Kon ventures across the burned and broken machinery. **-and seal it with ice.** It can't phase through the hull. I doubt that the ship will let it out through the glowing orange portal I made. That fracture… **Actually, can you put some sort of ward around it that will let you know if something comes out of it?**

**We can do that. Shouldn't take long.**

**I don't suppose you know a spell for phase resistant barriers, do you?**

**Uh. Maybe? There are a few spells that do things like that, but they've never been tested against a Martian.**

**Try your best.**

**What were they.. doing here?** What looks like a Martian skull floats up out of one of the piles of debris. Empathic vision shows me M'gann looking at it. **Is that..? Some sort of operating table?**

Kon turns over some wreckage, revealing two large parts of what looks suspiciously like a surgical bed. He shoves them aside and then picks up some sort of robotic surgical arm. **What were they doing here?** He turns and looks across the chamber. **There's got to be dozens of them.**

**Anything alive?**

He looks at me, confused. **But-?**

**Anything alive?**

He looks around the room. **No?**

**Then we press on. Finding out what the Guardians were doing here isn't our job.** I spot what appears to be a severed Fist arm amongst the wreckage. The cut was made in a straight line but the surface is rough, as if someone sawed through it. **Once we've got the ship out of here, feel free to ask them. Until then, our job is getting the ship out without the United States and Russia finding out, and that's what we're going to do.**

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
07:36 GMT -11

I look out into the ocean. I can't tell if this section of hull was designed to be transparent from the interior or if this is some sort of projection. If it's a projection then I don't know why the ship's autonomous systems have prioritised it. Or why it wasn't destroyed along with so many of the ship's other internal structures. Some sort of fish… Ah, not a window then. It's a grey/brown flat fish, but rather than propel itself with its fins it appears to utilise some sort of organic ion drive. Moves quite a lot faster than Earth fish and has pretty little flickers of light visible through its skin before it launches itself.

After we finished with what I'm referring to as the surgical bay we saw the holding cells. Some were torn open while others were still intact. Those had remains in them.

"Nice fish." I glance at Rob as he comes up alongside me. "Any chance I could keep this sword after the mission?"

"Cornwall, it's a classified project by the American military. I'm not supposed to have it. If you start waving it around-."

"Right, but I was thinking…" He holds the blade in his left hand and points at the blade with his right. "If you put runes on it, then anyone looking at it would think it was magic and not… Whatever they really did to make it this sharp."

"You could always get an actual magic sword."

"They all as temperamental as the one Beowulf used?"

"You know, there's no hard evidence that anyone of that name ever used it."

He looks horrified. "What? I've been telling everyone-."

**Okay, I'm… I'm ready.**

We turn back around to where M'gann is leaning on Kon. Under the circumstances I can well understand how she's finding this all a bit overwhelming.

**If you're sure?** She nods, rises up into the air and shimmers back into invisibility. I point towards the leftmost door at the rear of the section. He nods and heads towards it with some speed. He wants to get this finished as quickly as possible. My team mates have heard me describe the Guardians in less than entirely flattering terms before but that was a lot of remains back there. I could tell them what I think I know, just say I got it from the ship's computers or something… But I haven't been able to confirm it. Guardians have gone off the rails before… Maybe that was what happened here?

The door opens in response to Kon's approach. Another long corridor with large cylinders along… Yes, that's the outer hull. The cylinders are a metre and a half in diameter and about four metres tall and all show signs of damage. Some of the more intact ones glow with a faint orange light. I'm… I've got no idea what they're supposed to do. Kon shakes his head. **I don't see anything.**

**And I can't feel any minds. How close are we to the power source?**

**At the end of the corridor, there should be a round room. It's in there. If there are any survivors, that's where they'll be.**

Kon glances at me. **You really think we'll find anyone?**

I shrug as we resume our journey. **I don't think it's particularly likely. Whatever they were doing here, this clearly wasn't a warship. They might well not have bothered creating any sort of emergency life preservation system.**

**What were they..? I know you said I shouldn't worry about it, but all those bodies…**

**Could be anything. Could be there was a major disease outbreak and they were offering emergency medical care. Could be they were studying your species for some reason. We don't have enough information to reliably draw a conclusion.**

**They were all one type. None of the three colors of modern Martian look like that. Do you think.. they were going extinct.. and the Guardians tried to preserve them?**

**It's quite possible. We've really got no way to tell.**

**We've finished the wards on the hull.** Through Tula's eyes I see faintly glowing lines floating just over the hull. **I can't guarantee they'll work but they're the best we can come up with.**

**Good work. Miss Martian, do you know how old the current Martian magic using tradition is?**

**Not.. exactly. Less than twenty thousand years, though. I don't.. understand why you think they'll be hostile. If there's a Martian survivor, I mean.**

**I don't. I'm just preparing for the worst.**

We're halfway along the room and from the looks of things some of the components around us have been dismantled with a little more focus by someone using the same technique as whoever sliced up that Fist. I haven't seen a tool that could have been used to do that, Guardians would have disassembled in a more even manner and Fists wouldn't have damaged the ship's systems without a Guardian instructing them. No way for me to tell when it happened…

Kon comes to a halt just before triggering the next door. I create a construct of the room we're coming up to. Circular with small rooms coming off it. Cells, maybe? **Hey, I was.. wondering.** I look at him. **If the Guardians have records on what Mars was like, would they have records on Krypton?**

**Yes. Lantern Stewart's ring only really had a summary, but if you want a copy I can stick it on a data stick when we get back.**

He nods. **Yeah, I would. Thanks.** He takes a breath. **Everyone ready?** Two nods and he steps forwards, bent slightly and fists raised. The door opens, revealing a mess of bodged together equipment. A cylinder like the ones we just walked past stands in the centre of the room, glowing faintly with pale green energy. Another lies against the far side of the room as if hurled there, more of the unusual cuts torn into the material. Of the twelve small chambers seven are slashed open. Another four have skeletal remains inside. The window to the last pod is completely opaque.

Okay. The last cylinder is mounted on some sort of energy transfer platform. There are slashes on the floor corresponding to the four malfunctioned pods. Some sort of stasis device, perhaps? There were other rooms like this on the schematic. Maybe this was where the Guardians stored them prior to the procedure? They couldn't control the emotional spectrum but they could manually transfer internal energy batteries. If one of them was intelligent enough to jury rig the system-.

The cylinder lying on the floor thrums quietly. Once, twice, then a faint orange glow starts to shine from the right end before flowing across the floor. There's a confused section where the orange and green lights run into each other before the green area appears to flow backwards into the cylinder.

**I can hear someone! The last pod! There's a mind!**

**Wait.** I… I can't see anything past the doorway. Guardians would certainly be able to block my abilities. Maybe it's one of them? But just in case… I take my railgun back out of subspace, load it with a Crumbler round and walk over to the orange cylinder. Drain. The orange glow runs through the air and into Stewart ring.

Total power reserves at five percent.

As with the green cylinder the orange glow that had been spreading across the room runs backwards into the orange cylinder and then into the ring. I hear a thump and then the window into the chamber shifts to translucency. "Stand ready. Miss Martian, inform whoever is in there that we're friendly."

**Hello? Are you hurt?** Empathic vision shows that she wants to get closer. Fortunately she's staying back. I really hope she learned her lesson from the first Bialya mission. **We're here to help.**

**hELP?**

Ooh. That.. felt.. odd. Almost.. crackly? I suppose that a cave Martian wouldn't necessarily have the same language skills as a modern Martian.

Alright. Let's find out how lucky we are. Ring, open the door.

Compliance.

The door slides aside and I can see a figure within, a little taller than M'gann and crouched as if to protect-.

FUCK I'M ON FIRE!

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
07:41 GMT -11

I'm burning inside my armour! I can't see! I need-! No. Burning Martian. False mind technique. Move… Arm… Activate the grenade!

**rGHGHGH!**

"AAAAAAAAAAHH!" M'gann's collapsed to the ground, fully visible. Visions of fire are just about the worst thing you can do to a normal Martian and she'd have felt the burning just as I did.

"Hhhhurrrrr." Kon's shuddering with the pain but he's still standing and grasping for his grenade. Rob's silent, curled up on the floor.

The Burning Martian stares at me, its eyes points of pale red light in a scab red face. There are slowly oozing cuts in its chest which it's covering with its right hand. It looks like it has some sort of exoskeleton, or at least a very tough epidermis. It isn't actually on fire, but there's an almost heat shimmer like effect in the air just above its skin. Its eyes flick to M'gann for a second. **wEAK oNE. gIVE mE eVERYTHING.**

Sounds like a bad guy to me. Ring, brand.

A filament extends from the ring and stabs at its head-

Unable to establish connection.

-and evaporates as it touches its skin.

**I am not weak!** M'gann staggers to her feet, eyes glowing.

"Cornwall, you still with us?"

"Uhuuughuh?" His head comes up slightly.

I face the Burner. "Martian, stand down or we will put-."

Its left arm swings out, elongating as it does so, the surface of the skin seeming to shimmer and waver as it does so. I stick up a construct barrier to block it and it holds for about half a second before giving way where the clawed fingers gouge at it. The Burner pulls its arms back and then swings at me again but this time I have the railgun on target. Aim, pull the trigger and the Crumbler round strikes it directly in the palm. The air around the impact point seems to shudder and the Burner yanks its arm back. The hand.. is still intact. It must have somehow altered the crumble field. Reload solid slug.

**tELL mE!** What's it looking-? Rob! **tHIRD pLANET? wORLD oF wEAK mINDED oNES?**

I pull another grenade off my armour and throw it at the Burner. Rob hasn't had any sort of training in resisting telepathy. I don't know what it knows and I don't want it to get any more information than it already has. Its head turns back as I release and the grenade stops in mid air. Oh yes? I attach a filament to the grenade and shove it forwards. The Burner's eyes open slightly wider and I feel the resistance grow. Close enough. I ready myself and then remotely trigger the grenade. Yep, still felt it but not as badly as the Burner did. It staggers back, glow vanishing from its eyes and showing the burning dot pupil with red pupil on red sclera beneath.

**dEPENDENCY!**

**Why are you doing this?** M'gann is a little more used to the chaff grenades, though I don't think she would be capable of any great feats of mentation for a few seconds. **What did the Guardians do to you?**

**tRIED tO mAKE uS wEAK. sLAVES.** Its eyes glow again and I see Guardians floating through the air over ancient Mars, green beams of light fired from their hands blasting into the Martians below. The Martians alter their shapes to charge them in the air but Fists move to intercept them. One of the Guardians turns towards my viewpoint and the image fades. **I! sURVIVE!** Then it.. moves. It doesn't fly so much as yank itself across the intervening space directly at Kon, its left arm grabbing him by the top of his head.

"Grugh!" He reaches up to grasp its wrist just as the heat shimmer effect intensifies. "Gaaah!" He tears the hand away, revealing his smouldering hair and the burn mark it's left across his forehead.

"Cornwall. Sword." I take another out of subspace for myself as Rob picks himself up, eyes fixed on our opponent.

Kon releases the Burner's wrist with his left hand, makes a fist and swings it at the Burner. It passes straight through and the Burner uses its phased state to reclaim its left hand. Next it slashes at his chest. Kon tries to back-pedal but the Burner's hand cleaves a path through his armour and into the flesh beneath.

**uNWORTHY.**

**Stop it!**

M'gann's eyes go to full glow and the Burner jerks back. I send a filament out to the shocked Kon and try and evaluate his injury. The claw went right through the mithril and into his skin and the muscle beneath. Bleeding looks bad but with sunlight and Danner formula he should be fine in a few hours. I can't just zap-heal him without nullifying his resilience first and that isn't a good idea here.

I raise my railgun again and fire at the Burner's centre of mass, the round passing clean through and disintegrating part of the wall beyond. Fuck it. Load prototype anti-phasing rounds. "Cornwall, try freezing it."

"I'm not-! Okay. Umm…" He stows the sword and brings his hands together, crystals of ice appearing between them. I don't remember how good he is at freezing things and I don't know if freezing phased objects is even possible. Ring, attempt to scan for phase modulation-.

Operation may exceed remaining energy reserves.

Of course it will. Got enough for a phased particle beam like the Fist used?

One shot will reduce reserves to one percent.

Okay. Set the modulation-.

**rHHHHHHHH!** The Burner charges through the air at M'gann, the fingers of its left hand lengthening and sharpening to slice through her!

Her own form shifts as she propels herself to meet it, right forearm changing into a protean mass and wrapping itself around the Burner's wrist. **You can't burn through me!**

The Burner begins changing again, spines forming across its body as it tries to pull M'gann in to a full grapple. A flash of white as Rob's spell activates in the middle of the Burner's chest. It throws its head back gasping and M'gann takes full advantage of the situation to envelop it further.

Right, okay, I've got a moment. Think about this. Ring, status of that pod.

Pod appears fully functional. However, insufficient power is available for it to function.

That cylinder looks fine using orange light instead of green. I can't give it more from the rings because I don't have enough to make any difference. I can't just set the green one to go back to powering it because it can't compete with all the orange. There's lots of orange but it's in the rest of the ship. "Superboy, get the green cylinder off the platform!"

**bURN yOU aAAALL!**

**No. You. Won't.** The Burner manifests additional blades and M'gann counters by transforming her outer surface into hard plates as it strikes at her, sharpened edges skittering off.

I hurry over and kneel down next to the fallen cylinder. I've got no idea if I can-. Wait. A filament connecting it to the other cylinders should let me draw power through them into it. Then I can cut off the flow and it's not like we really need the ship's other systems to be operational at the moment. There will almost certainly be energy loss but we really just need it to keep going until I can get my lantern down here. I lay my right hand on the cylinder and extend a filament through each of the doors towards the parts of the ship we've already been through. Assuming a symmetrical design… Yes, okay. Connect. Kon grimaces in pain as he heaves the green cylinder out of the middle of the room and sets it down. Rings, access shipwide power and redirect into this cylinder. If you can work out what its capacity is, don't exceed that.

Compliance.

The Stewart ring and the filaments connected to it sparkle with orange light as the glow within the cylinder begins to increase. "Superboy, I need you and Cornwall to get this onto the pedestal." Kon tears his eyes away from M'gann's wrestling match and he and Rob approach me. "That end's the bottom. Superboy lift, Cornwall balance it."

"Right." / "Okay."

Kon bends at the knees as M'gann and the Burner slam into a wall on the far side of the room. His blood is soaking through the material of his wetsuit in a way which… No, he can lie down when the fight's over. He lifts and the cylinder rises onto its base as I maintain the energy flow. Once it's vertical he takes a grip and heaves it off the ground, bending slightly backwards. Rob takes hold as well, trying not to look at the Martian melee. "This way, mate."

It can't phase through the walls. It can't act while the system is active and if the cylinders can last twenty thousand years they can last half an hour. We just need to get it in there. Kon drops the cylinder into place with a pained exhalation. Ring, isolate power and redirect to the chamber. Also, cease translation.

Compliance.

Really hope M'gann can still hear. "Miss Martian, get it back in the cell!"

The Martian mass turns and-. It looks like M'gann's tried to envelope the Burner entirely. She's certainly wrapped around its legs as she uses a combination of staggered steps and telekinesis to bring it closer.

**rAAAHHH!**

The Burner's head is still recognisably a head. I bring the railgun up again. Ring, match the modulation to the one the Fist was using. Low power.

Compliance.

I aim at its head and pull the trigger. Even at low power the shot has enough force to cover the distance before I can blink. It strikes the Burner right in the forehead. It jerks and M'gann suddenly begins moving faster. "Cornwall, prepare another freeze spell."

We manoeuvre out of M'gann's way as she completes the journey across the room and starts peeling herself away. The Burner has shifted into something that looks like Malchemical in full combat mode. "Cornwall, soon as you get a shot." The Burner wakes up enough to grab for the walls on either side of the door but M'gann's eyes glow again and she starts pushing it through. Another flash of white and it loses its grip entirely, flying through and hitting the back wall hard. Ring, close the door and activate the system.

The door slides shut as the Burner gets back to its feet. Come on, that door isn't claw proof! The light inside dims as the Burner rushes the door, claws extended, and the last thing it sees before the stasis system reactivates is the four of us sagging with relief.

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
08:35 GMT -11

I lift my lantern up slightly. "You know sir, after this I'm seriously reconsidering my decision not to bring my lantern with me on missions."

Mister J'onzz doesn't respond as we continue through the Maltusian spaceship in the direction of the stasis pods. After stopping the Burner escaping we did a quick sweep of the rest of the ship. More Martian bodies, along with a few wrecked Fists. The Fists were wrecked in an approximate perimeter around a large number of Martians, but they'd been destroyed facing outwards, apparently defending them. From the shape and position of the remains of those they'd been protecting it looked worryingly like they hadn't been Burners. They had the wider skulls and thinner limbs of modern Martians. Killing things that were different in some sort of frantic attempt to expunge 'weakness'.

"Will you be able to move the ship?"

I nod as we walk along one of the energy cylinder corridors. Unlike the one my team walked down on the way in the cylinders here have clearly been moved. Presumably the last few Burners were subbing them in to keep the stasis system working. "Should be. I don't have records on how to repair this technology, but I can… Feed power into the ship to get it into orbit and then charge up a few of the energy storage units." I slowly breathe out. How do I want to put this? "Question is, where do we want to send it?"

"I do not know. I am deeply disturbed by what you have found here. The knowledge that the Guardians have concealed the role they played in my species' development is something that will concern all of Mars."

**Orange Lantern to team. Any change?**

**No, the cylinder's still glowing. …** I feel her hesitate. **Hey.. Uncle J'onn.**

**M'gann.** Unlike M'gann, Mister J'onzz ceases making facial expression when he engages in telepathic communication. I suppose that Martians don't have very expressive faces in their default forms. **I trust you are well?**

**I'm okay.**

**Orange Lantern told me that you engaged the.. 'Burning Martian' in melee combat.**

**Yeah, I… It wasn't.. really.. burning, it just looked like it was. It was actually a controlled molecular destabilization technique.**

**I.. was not aware that you knew how to counter those.**

What with Henry taking over M'gann's telepathy training and with his League responsibilities, Mister J'onzz hasn't been spending nearly as much time with M'gann as he used to. **I… J'onn J'aarkn.. gave me some of his records. They've really helped with my development.**

**I.. see.**

I hear her eyes widen. **Just what he's learned about shapeshifting! Not-.**

**I had assumed that was what you meant.**

**Oh. … Good.**

**I am surprised that the Burning Martian was able to utilize such a sophisticated form of shape control. From Orange Lantern's description I had received the impression that it was a savage brute.**

**Oh, it was savage alright. But it was far from stupid.**

The door to the stasis room is still open. As far as I can tell the ship doors only respond to emotional spectrum triggers so I just left them all open when I went back to the Fortress.

Kon is sitting on the floor and looks up as we come into view, M'gann standing next to him. **Hey.** He touches the burned area of his forehead and winces. **You got any idea why I haven't healed yet? I thought the.. Danner Formula included regeneration.**

**The Formula only grants your Human components regeneration. Your skin is entirely Kryptonian.** I fly ahead of Mister J'onzz and land beside him, giving his burns a quick scan. **Thanks to Helios you should be fine in time for school on Monday.**

**And… My hair?**

I look at the bald stripe. **Sorry. I could… Shave the rest off to even it up..?**

He looks down. **Yeah.** M'gann pats his hand.

Rob, Garth and Tula more or less come to attention as Mister J'onzz approaches the stasis chamber containing the Burner. Attention isn't really a thing in Atlantis. It just isn't practical to do underwater. Interesting that they've picked up on it. He looks impassively at the opaque window in the door. In my absence they've surrounded it with spells designed to promote good mechanical function and imprisonment.

For a second Mister J'onzz's eyes glow, presumably trying to feel the mind trapped within. A moment later he turns away. "Have you been able to extract any further information on exactly what the Guardians were doing?"

M'gann shakes her head. "The Burning Martians were very thorough in destroying the Fists of the Guardians. There were hardly any intact parts bigger than my fist."

I look at the larger pieces of debris they've brought in and send a filament to check. Nope, nothing I can use. Mister J'onzz nods, looking at the green cylinder. "Perhaps the Green Lanterns can extract something."

"Is that something you really want to involve them in, sir? Given who they work for?"

"You have an alternate suggestion?"

"I turned A-." Ah heck, it's not like he'll care. "Alan's personal lantern orange. No reason why I shouldn't be able to convert that to orange."

"Why do you wish to conceal this from them?"

"Why do the Guardians want to hide it from you?" I think for a moment. "I think it's.. best that the Guardians don't find out that you know until the Martian government has decided what you want to do about this. Since I don't plan to move in…" I look around the room. "And since I doubt that decision making process will be especially fast, this ship needs to go somewhere now-ish. We can transfer out all the Martian remains then I can send it to Maltus."

"Maltus?" He shakes his head. "No. That would be unnecessarily confrontational."

"Sir, the surface of your world died at about the same time this ship was around here. From what we've been able to recover they had thorough scans of its pre-devastated state. If they.. really.. turned the.. Burners into modern Martians… Why didn't they fix it afterwards?" His eyes narrow slightly. "As far as I can tell, these cylinders are data recorders as well as power batteries. Let me assimilate that one. If the Burners were just some.. now extinct offshoot of your species and.. the Guardian involvement was incidental, send the ship to Oa. If not…"

He turns to regard the cylinder, its pale green glow illuminating his face. "I suppose… It would not hurt to have all of the facts at our disposal before making a decision."

"Thank you, sir." I spread out my hands to either side and send filaments forwards to attach themselves to the cylinder. Rings, corrupt and convert.

Compliance.

Orange light spreads outwards from the attachment points, the weak green glow being consumed and converted. Ring, extract data and filter for content.

An orange image of a Guardian appears just in front of the cylinder. "…difficulties, I continue to believe that rehabilitation is possible. Preserving the natives in their own habitat will be.. somewhat difficult now…" The image glitches. "…increasing sophistication. It is almost as if our presence here has provoked them to unify. How groups with whom we have not had direct contact are even aware of us I am not…" Another glitch, and the Guardian is replaced by a time lapsed image of the surface of Mars. "Simply destroying the natives and recreating them using genetic samples would be far easier. Still, we are resolved not to resort to such methods, even…" The image jumps forwards. "I did not properly anticipate the damage this conflict would cause to the planet's surface." We watch as chunks of surface are scoured of plant life. "The combination of telepathy and physical mutability enable them to fight us with surprising effectiveness, given their lack of technological…" Another glitch, and the map now shows the modern, barren Mars. A new Guardian appears. "…resettled into cave systems we constructed in areas already cleared. We have avoided leaving any trace…" Another glitch. "… different forms. The 'red' variant is least modified, though all three colours possess the comportment and empathy we were aiming to engender. Their natural telepathy means that the control system will be passed from one generation to the next in the womb without the need for constant intervention. Time will tell which…" A series of flickers."… y colleagues have expressed concern that our modifications have reduced their aggression in too great a degree. Our predictive models show that it is possible that their civilisation will remain introverted as a result. Self isolating. Having reviewed the data in depth I have recommended a continual monitoring…" A new image appears, this time of the Burner we encountered an hour ago. "…intelligence, unusual in its kind. I will attempt to initiate mental contact. Perhaps we will be able to complete the conversion peacefully when they see that we have their best interests at heart?"

Or not. I shut the image down and turn to Mister J'onzz. "That's all the log entries-."

"It is sufficient." Ooh sugar. I can see the red light boiling within his usually placid psyche. "Take what you can and then send the ship to Maltus. I will explain the situation to Batman."

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th January
09:02 GMT -11

Uuughhh…

"So, how come you can't just use your power ring to fix it?"

I suppress another wince with a shudder, hugging myself tightly. Wallace fetched my personal lantern as soon as I got back to the surface. I feel almost.. ungrateful for not being able to fix myself immediately. "I don't… Really know. For sure." Mister Tawny rubs himself against the right side of my chest as I sit propped up against the Bio-Ship's interior hull. "I think… My New God nature is preventing the ring from altering my body."

"What.. actually.. happened?"

"The ship… " Ughhehk. "When we got to the bridge, the ship drained the ring dry. One of the Guardians' robots reactivated and attacked us, we smashed it to bits." Managed to keep some parts in one piece. I'll be taking a close look when I feel less crap. "M'gann told me to go back to the surface-" Stupid Guardians and their boom tube blocking… "-and I.. didn't realise I could still be affected by decompression sickness."

There's a blur and Wallace is holding a medical textbook, pages blurring. "Decompression sickness. You've got the pain covered. Any rashes?"

I give him a look. "I'm grey."

"Ookay, skip that. Loss of balance?"

"Yes, but I just had Father Box direct me."

"Hearing loss?" I shake my head. "Incontinence?"

"The ring would clear it up if I was." He raises his eyebrows. "I don't think so. I'm not having a feel to find out for sure."

"The 'Sensation of tiny insects crawling over the skin'?"

"I feel like a.. like a balloon filled with mustard gas. My skin…" I pull my right arm away from my chest and hold out my forearm. "You can't see under the armour but my arm has swollen-."

"Yeah, I…" The corners of his lips dip down for a second. "I can…" He points at me. "Ah. See.. your face."

Oh. I raise my right hand and delicately press owowowowow!. Ahh, gahhhh! Not doing that again! "Father Box, how long until I return to normalcy?"

"Ploong."

Oh fuck my life.

"So… Apart from that, how'd the mission go?"

I glower at him. "Peachy."

"Um. I.. can.. just…"

I shake my had. "No, no, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped." For a half second I reach up to rub my forehead, but I remember myself and pull the hand away before making contact. I take a deep breath instead. "Stealth insertion went fine. We all made it to the ship without any problem and without any sign that anyone had picked up on us being here." Of course, if the Russians are playing around with anything really exotic… "M'gann couldn't phase through the hull but I didn't have any trouble opening up a boom tube in."

"So why didn't you just-?"

"When we got to the bridge the ship decided I was a viable power source. It drained the ring and used the power to bring its own systems back on line." I grimace. "Including its Guardian interdiction field."

"No boom tubes?"

"No boom tubes. Stupid.. robot got a few good hits on me." Nothing that caused any lasting harm, mind you. Not like the stupid gasses. "That and the drain on the ring… M'gann sent me back up to the Bio-Ship to get out of range of the interdiction field."

"And that's when you..?"

"Yes." I clamp my eyes tightly closed for a moment. Something else, ask about something else. "I seem to remember that your uncle doesn't retain things he reads at super speed?"

"Oh, yeah, it's the same with me. I probably won't remember a thing about decompression sickness in a couple of minutes." He considers the point. "Hey, do you think being a speed-god means I can learn how to remember stuff like that? Because that would be sweet."

"I don't know. It mayaghhahh…" Another wave of pain and I curl a little in on myself.

Wallace looks concerned. "Dude. Do you need-?"

"No, no. I don't think anyone can really help. I.. appreciate the thought, but… To answer your question, I don't know. This situation hasn't occurred before. If you can't do it now, you may develop the ability as your metaphysique absorbs more power. You may not. I just don't know."

"Jay told me Max Mercury was probably the guy I-" The door to the Bio-Ship oozes open off to our left. "-should talk to-" M'gann floats in, telekinetically pulling water from her hair and costume and tossing the droplets back into the Arctic Ocean. "-if I…" He trails off and turns around. "Hey, Miss M."

Her eyes are fixed on me. "Kid Flash, could you please let me talk to Grayven alone?"

"Um." He looks at me and then back at her. "Sure? I guess I'll.. see you back at the cave." A slight shift in the texture of the air and he's gone, the Bio-Ship door closing behind him.

M'gann keeps floating, hovering in the air directly in front of me. "You knew, didn't you?"

"You're going to have to be a little more-." She makes a twisting gesture with her right hand, telekinetically-. "Owowowowow, okay, yes." She eases off. "I didn't know for certain, but I had a pretty good idea. There was a Burning Martian down there?"

"Yes."

Ugh. I try to straighten up a little. "Everyone alright?"

"I felt its mind! All it wanted to do was… Was hurt things! The very first thing it did when it got out of the stasis pod was make us feel like we were on fire!"

"Your.. ancient forebears were supposedly a fairly unpleasant bunch, though I should point out that one individual isn't a-."

Her eyes blaze with colour. "The Guardians put these blocks in our minds to stop us turning into those things and they were right to. Without them…" She drops to the floor, some of the passion leaving her as her eyes dim and she raises her palms to partially cover her face. "We could… I could…"

Oh this is going to hurt nyuakk! I push myself to my feet and lay my right hand on her shoulder. "No. No you couldn't. M'gann, you are not some brute with the primordial thoughts of your savage ancestors roaring their base impulses into your soul. You grew up on modern Mars in a technologically and telepathically sophisticated society. Have you ever felt that sort of murderlust yourself?"

She hesitates for a moment, then shakes her head. "No. But.. I could. I felt what it felt, saw how it…"

"And I realise that was a shock-."

"You should put it back. I-I couldn't stand-."

"M'gann, look at me." She turns her head upwards. "You. Are not. That thing. You will not become that thing. Okay? You have family and-" **-friends-** Her eyes widen slightly as I voluntarily use telepathy. **-who love you. That sort of violence doesn't just.. miraculously appear in a person's psyche. You may theoretically have the capacity now but that isn't in you. M'gann M'orzz is a delightful young woman who balances a schedule of schoolwork, boyfriend and occasional world-saving. Do you think for a moment that it would do that? That it would be up here, scared of its capacity for viciousness?**

**No. No.. it wouldn't.**

**The Guardians granted your species the ability to become something worthwhile. I don't know why they.. took their eyes off the ball later, but it isn't something that should cause you to descend into histrionics.** She nods, pulling away slightly. "Has there been a decision on what we're doing with the ship now?"

"No. Uncle J'onn wants to talk it over with the rest of the Justice League first." I nod, lowering myself back down so I can go back to whimpering in peace. "I'll let you know what they decide. And… Thank you."