With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

[Mr Zoat]

24th August 2012
14:18 GMT

"Do you think I should have brought something?"

I shake my head as we walk along Ranx's corridors in the direction of Dox's office.

"He's an Orange Lantern. If he wanted a material object, he could make it himself."

"Yes, but if I'd saved a project we would have something to do."

"He's running a major war. I'm sure that he'll appreciate any insight you…" I frown. "No, honestly, I'm not sure of that, but according to the two people closest to him you're the first person Dox has expressed a desire to see for personal reasons."

"Make up?"

"Unless it would help bolster your confidence, I'd say no. Georgia, why are you this worried?"

She wrings her hands.

"I don't have a great deal of experience with this sort of thing."

"You've been talking to Dox for months. With full two-way holographics. He knows what you look-. Georgia, you haven't been using someone else's face, have you?"

"Of course not. He'd see right through that."

I wave as we walk past a couple of L.E.G.I.O.N. officers, and get respectful nods back.

"So, just be-. Maybe tone down the overtly psychotic evil a little, but otherwise just be yourself."

I field Lantern Ratchet in a construct baseball glove.

"Sorry Lantern Ratchet, not today. We've got company."

He rises out of the glove, orientating himself on Georgia who already has her scanner out. "Hello. I'm Lantern Ratchet, Clarissi Vril Dox's aide."

"Yes, he's mentioned you once or twice. How do your species naturally locomote?"

"We swim. Out of the water we tend to use a combination of gripping and pulling, and looking pathetic and hoping someone takes pity on us."

She frowns. "Does that work?"

"Oh yes. Our tentacles are quite strong, and we are fairly light."

"No, the pity thing. It seems extremely chancy to me."

"That was a joke."

"Oh, a.. joke." Georgia fidgets. "Yes, I… Should have spotted that."

"We use robot suits. Before we had those, we could use picks or simple mechanisms. Can I touch you?"

She frowns. "Why?"

Ratchet deflates slightly. "Clarissi Dox didn't mention me at all, did he?"

"No, he mentioned you. He just didn't actually tell me anything about you."

"Just…" He sags in the air slightly. "Never mind. You can go in. Both of you."

Ratchet turns around and floats back to his work station. Georgia watches him go.

"Why did he want to touch me?"

"He's a social deviant from a zero tactility culture. He really likes touching people."

"And you indulge him."

"Yes. It's harmless and it makes him happy."

"Is that..?" She frowns. "You have a girlfriend, don't you?"

"Letting people touch you isn't cheating. It's fulfilling a basic psychological need we get from our monkey ancestors."

"I don't think our primate ancestors would have found being grasped by tentacles fulfilling to their grooming requirements." She gives her head a small shake, then marches straight-armed towards Dox's door.

The door opens, and…

And.. someone -I'm going to assume that it wasn't Dox- has decorated. His minimalistic hologram system is still here, but now it's been joined by… Potted plants. A soft seating area. A wooden desk. Carpet. I'd.. guess.. Brande was responsible, but I don't think that this is something that anyone could sneak by Dox without him noticing. So he's approved it, and the first I'm seeing of it is when Georgia appears.

Well paint me pink and call me Star Sapphire.

"Doctor Sivana."

Dox isn't wearing his normal uniform jacket. Instead, he's wearing a lab coat, though his posture is exactly the same.

"Clarissi Dox."

Georgia is awkwardly looking him over and… It looks like she's trying to work out whether or not she should adopt a similar pose.

"You have a mission for me, sir?"

Dox's eyes move from Georgia to me for a heartbeat, before returning to Georgia.

"Yes. Would.. you.. both.. like to take a seat?"

He gestures to the seating area, and… That's a tea service.

I think I need to get out of here before they start holding hands or something.

Georgia stiffly takes a seat, and I take the position next to her. Dox sits down rigidly opposite us, using his ring to call up a holographic image.

"As I told you prior to your mission to Yuna, the Reach are building up for a counterattack."

A map of the region appears, seventeen locations being highlighted. They're well inside Reach territory, but taking into account travel times… Yes, those would cause significant local problems.

"You want me to destroy one? Or two?"

"No."

A thought and the image zooms in on one of the fleets. Not.. Reach ships. Those are juluuni, a species the Reach overran centuries ago. Dox spots the look of recognition on my face.

"Leftovers?"

"The Reach wouldn't put their own people on inferior ships. We've been working on the assumption that these species were extinct. If they're still alive and the Reach are just… Storing them somewhere, it undermines our credibility. Doubly so if we are the ones who finally wipe them out."

"So I need to board them, find out what's going on and then rescue as many as I can."

"If by 'rescue' you mean 'collect biological samples', yes. The Reach has had them for long enough to overwrite their minds with whatever they want. There's little point in trying to liberate them."

"I don't want to pre-judge that."

"You could just wipe them out." I turn to Georgia with raised eyebrows. "That far into Reach space there are unlikely to be any observers. If you destroy them outright, you could dismiss anything the Reach says as mere propaganda."

"I could. But I won't. If you'll excuse me, I'll start requisitioning resources."

 

[Mr Zoat]

24th August 2012
15:37 GMT

Darkstar Lotta frowns as she scrolls through her pad.

"Cloning tanks."

"Yes, for medical emergencies. It has to be the general purpose ones because there aren't any standard models designed for human physiology."

She nods, apparently unconvinced. "I thought Orange Lanterns of your level could regenerate their injuries?"

"We can. But only if we have an intact brain. I'm going to be storing a complete body here so that my soul can jump into it if I'm completely disintegrated."

She nods, tapping the 'approved' button a little harder than the situation truly required.

"Un-der-stood."

Hm. I should probably.. requisition a spare ring for it. Or…

I call out one of the thralls who took part in the attack on Yuna. Standard pattern humanoids with oddly angular skulls; it's a little like someone painted a face over the corner of a right angle. The face is two flat surfaces with holes for nostrils and eyes. No desires of her own, but just enough undirected orange to maintain a connection.

Let's see…

We pull and tie fragments of desire from the Honden to the remnants, binding and programming the structure to heed our desires, twisting until the construct becomes a thing in the material universe. A pull

and the lich-ring is complete. I-.

"Did you just turn a person into a ring?"

"No, I turned a construct into a ring. I turned a person into a construct a week ago." I pluck the ring out of the air and try making a construct with it. Eh, it's not great, but I could work with it in an emergency. "Though if it makes you feel any better, she was already essentially mindless thanks to the Reach."

Lotta nods. "It does."

"How have you been?"

"Since when?"

"Since last time we saw each other? I don't.. think I've seen you since I first arrived."

"Ah… Better than I was expecting." She exhales amusedly. "Sorry, I've been partnered with Phil for so long that I've forgotten what basic social enquiries sound like."

"You do have other squad mates."

"Yeah, but you spend most time with your partner. As for how well I'm doing… It's… Nice not to be losing the war any more."

"You didn't request a transfer."

"No, I actually listened to you when you said that orange power rings affected your judgement. And Phil wasn't going to transfer, so…" She shrugs. "The new exo-mantles are plenty for me."

"I'm a little surprised that Phil stuck with it. I'd have thought that direct combat was more his thing."

"According to him, power rings take most of the fun out of it. They're too 'remote'."

I nod. "They're not for everyone. Though if it.. comes up, please point out that there's nothing to stop him just using a construct axe or something."

"I'll pass that on." She looks around the Darkstar infiltration ship's cargo hold. "Putting a bio-lab in here is easy enough. Can you tell me what we're going to be studying?"

"Reach bio-modification techniques on novel species."

She nods. "We have the expertise. Which species in particular?"

I throw an orange dot at her pad, transferring the files Dox gave me. She moves her finger as she scrolls through.

"This is-. These are extinct species."

"Maybe not. But you see why I want a Darkstar ship; I'm going to be flying into a hostile fleet, kidnapping the crew and flying back while inside Reach territory."

"Yes. So, about that power ring?"

She chuckles, but it's awkward and nervous. She's a veteran, but flying into Reach territory like this is triggering her 'and they send the medals to your next of kin' instinct.

"If you're serious-."

"No, I'm.. not. So all we're doing is hiding until you get back, and then running away?"

"That's the plan. Though if you tell me that it can't be done, then I'll come up with something else."

"I assume that we're running to somewhere?"

I nod. "Into a waiting L.E.G.I.O.N. assault fleet. If for some reason that's unworkable, orders have been sent to L.E.G.I.O.N. ships over-" I create a construct map. "-here to assemble here to give us protection. Obviously that creates a lot of holes in our perimeter and Commander Dox would rather we didn't do that, but the option's there if we need it."

"And Lanterns?"

"Those are not small fleets. I'm going to ask Lantern Natu if she'll come along, but she'll be joining the science staff. I'll be heading in on my own."

"Are there Lanterns who could make the ship faster?"

"Faster?" I nod. "I can make it faster. There are a couple of paranoids who could make us better at hiding, but there are some… Rather serious side effects to them using their abilities."

"Such as?"

"We might forget that they're on the ship. Or that we're on the ship. Or that ships exist, or that the universe exists, or-."

"Right." She frowns. "How do we know we haven't already recruited them?"

"Dox has an alert system, and we think I should be immune. But… You see the problem."

"I see I was right sticking with the exo-mantle."

I nod, twitching my nose. "Probably. How long will it take to get the module installed?"

"If we put your name on the order, half an hour."

"Do it. Though point out that since I'm not a L.E.G.I.O.N. or Darkstar officer it probably shouldn't be accelerated like that."

"Do I tell them that before or after-?"

"After."

"Request sent. Any preference on the crew?"

"Darkstars who are used to hiding and running."

"That's still most of us. Just about. I'll see who's available. When do we leave?"

"As soon as possible. I'll go talk to Lantern Natu."

 

[Mr Zoat]

24th August 2012
15:55 GMT

"Oh."

Lantern Threllian's environmental shield cuts out completely as he hears the news. I expected something like that might happen, which is why I made sure to tell him on the surface of Maltus well away from obvious sources of danger.

Most of his species were believed dead at the hands of the Reach, and given their environmental requirements and the fact that the escapees aren't numerous enough to fill a small town they weren't prioritised for access to the newly terraformed planets. Most of them chose to enter suspended animation, but Threllian decided to join the Darkstars instead. Dox tapped him for our headquarters staff during his first wave of recruits in virtue of the fact that he was the second most intelligent non-Controller on Maltus.

There's nothing quite like knowing that the Reach conquered your people so they could use their brains in their computers to make you want them dead.

"I don't-." I shake my head. "They're almost certainly controlled to the point of being mindless-."

He shakes his head. "The biological samples alone are.. invaluable. Illustres, I.. beg you to let me accompany you."

"Try flying."

He twitches, as if expecting to rise off the ground.

"I-."

"I understand, and I'm sympathetic. But if you can't use your ring reliably I can't in good conscience bring you with us."

He closes his eye for a moment, then his environmental shield snaps back on.

"I will master myself. I was.. taken by surprise. It will not happen again"

I take a moment to look inside him. There's no questioning his commitment, but that news rekindled a hope he'd long buried. He'd decided in his own mind that his species were heading for extinction, and on the off-chance that they weren't that he wouldn't live to see their rebirth. Even after the founding of the Orange Lantern Corps he regarded it as such a long term endeavour that it didn't change his mindset beyond 'it's good that that will be dealt with'.

But if we get enough biological samples, it shouldn't be that hard to persuade a Controller with geomantic inclinations to build them a planet and set up the cloning systems they need for accelerated biogenesis. The hold up had been that there wasn't enough genetic variety and the Controller who took the job would have to create it artificially, but with that done there could be a functioning planet up and running inside ten years.

"I can't tell whether that's true or not."

"Illustres, I assure you, when faced with the enemy I will not deviate."

"And I'm sure that you believe that." I frown. "Take a moment to review my file on Lantern Koriand'r."

His eye glows for a second.

"The.. blue ring."

I shrug. "There's nothing wrong with feeling hopeful. Ordinarily I'd say that if you're feeling hopeful, feel hopeful. But I don't have a spare blue ring." I bow my head for a moment. "Your life is your own. If you choose to risk it in this fashion, I'll have you. But you're intelligent enough-."

"It might be a better use of resources for the Corps to not dispatch me. But as you yourself have said, we are not the Utilitarian Lantern Corps. I want this."

I nod, and pull my ring off my finger and put it in my equipment harness. Then I hold out my left hand.

"Pass me your ring."

He blinks, but complies. For a moment we're incapable of understanding each other, then the environmental shield re-engages as I lay his ring on my palm and hold it out.

"Prove it."

He nods, holding out his left hand. This whole thing's become a bit of a ritual amongst Orange Lanterns, but he gets it. If he can't call it back with a little added resistance, he'd be a fool to come along.

He settles himself, focusing on his desire to destroy the Reach-.

"Do you know if your homeworld was thaumically active?" The ring wobbles. "Because if it was, we might be able to-"

He works out where I'm going with that line of reasoning before I complete the sentence and his calling wobbles, but he bears down and suppresses the distracting impulse so quickly that if I wasn't looking at his thoughts as he did it I may not have noticed.

"-restore anyone we recover."

"Then-" There's a change in… Pressure within his emotional network. Oh, that's interesting. The impulse that was feeding his hope-thoughts is now… Feeding his avarice-related ones as well. "-I want to be there to see it."

The ring leaps from my palm onto his left ring finger, his environmental shield flaring for a moment before settling back down.

"Looks like you're in, then. We'll be hitting your people's fleet second, just in case there's an overt trap involved. I'll want you on analytics."

"Yes, Illustres."

He looks up and then metaphorically rockets into the sky towards our ship. I narrow my eyes… They're installing the bio-lab module now, and I can see the flickers of orange as Lanterns Natu and Nax work to get it connected up faster than Ranx's stevedore teams could on their own. Georgia's still with Dox, so that just leaves Thaddeus.

I

appear next to him in the workshop he's purloined from one of Kalmin's students. It looks like he's taking an inventory.

"Thaddeus-."

"I've never been in a duel before. Do I need to wear special clothes?"

"Depends on how seriously you're taking it. Qwardian duels between Weaponers are about demonstrating their best equipment so there's no restriction on weapons or other equipment. Maltus doesn't have a duelling code."

"Hm." He plugs three devices into each other and twists an activator, causing green energy to collect in a crackling ball. "I am a little surprised you dropped me in it like that. You know I had her, right?"

"I'm a little surprised you picked a fight on a planet that's actually quite important to me. Besides, I'm setting the rules of the fight. I aim to make it a learning experience for both of you."

"If she lasts more than five minutes."

"Then we have it fought in shorter rounds, with time for both of you to work on your equipment between them. This isn't about winning, Doctor Sivana. This is about what you can learn, even from an inferior opponent."

"Are you saying that you were acting in my interests?"

"I didn't honestly think you'd fight like that while you were here as my guest. I wanted you to stop, and I thought that was the best way to get you to do so."

"That's fair." He turns his device off with another twist. "And you have a point. I was treating it as a violent confrontation and not an opportunity. That was short sighted of me."

"If you want another opportunity, I'm going out to pick a fight with the Reach. Do you want to come along?"

"You know? I think that I do."

 

[Mr Zoat]

24th August 2012
20:23 GMT

"…kind of interesting." Thaddeus looks on as Lantern Nax allows my clone's body to snap back together. "How did you learn to do that?"

"It is simply an ability which some members of my species manifest naturally."

Thaddeus sighs and turns his face away.

"And not interesting again. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to meet aliens who can just 'do' things?"

Lantern Nax looks like she's not quite sure how to take that. Goodness knows that Thaddeus hasn't made any sort of effort to make friends since coming on board. I was half-hoping that meeting a fellow mad scientist would make things easier for him, but it looks like our vivisectionist just isn't on his level.

"Isn't finding out how we do things-"

"Density-sensitive telekinetic phasing isn't that interesting."

"-what… Makes it interesting…" Nax blinks.

"Especially when it's built-in."

"Have you encountered other people with this ability?"

"Not this exact ability, but it's not…" He frowns. "Why am I still talking to you?"

And then he turns around and heads off to one of the analysis stations.

"Oh." Nax stares after him for a moment, then looks at me. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No, Thaddeus just has extremely poor social skills, and no incentive to improve them."

"Would it have helped if I said that I only believe it is a natural ability for some members of my species because that is what my parents told me, and they were the only other members of my species I have ever met?"

"I doubt-." I give her my full attention. "Really?"

She nods twice. "They told me that there weren't any interesting test subjects back home. After they died, I was stuck on a planet with no way to try and find others like me even if I wanted to. And now that I am a Lantern, I have a job to do."

"Yeah-yes, but we're not keeping you prisoner here. If you want to take a couple of months to visit home-."

Lantern Natu shakes her head.

"I already tried that."

"Since I've never met another member of my species, I don't really miss them. And…" She glances at her mentor. "From what I have learned about morality, I… Don't think my parents were very good people."

"Well..." I nod. "No, but that doesn't mean that the rest of your species are like them."

"Then what would I have in common with them?"

I raise my hands. "It's your life. As long as you're-"

"Bridge to Illustres."

"-happy, that's the main thing." I raise my ring. "Illustres here."

"We're as close as we can safely get to the first target."

"Oh, you're making me actually work today?"

"Yes, that's… Why we're here."

I roll my eyes.

"Seriously, less time around Phil. I'm heading to a deployment tube now."

"Understood."

This isn't a huge ship, so I don't have far to travel to get to my launch zone. Being a stealth ship, we can't exactly just jump out through a big warm electromagnetic-radiation-rich hole in the sensor-defying armour when we want to get out. Any sort of shuttle is completely out of the question. Instead-

My stealth power armour appears around me as I head for the exit.

-we… I am going to have to exit a series of locks very carefully, and take care not to give the ship's location away. Having reviewed the capabilities of the ships I'm going up against, I shouldn't need to retreat, so the main thing is to avoid my targets being able to send ships this way while I'm busy.

I step into the first stage chamber and bring my stealth systems online. Given the relatively low speed of light, visual stealth isn't the most important thing, but it's still a consideration. Preventing space-time ripples by neutralising my own mass profile is far more important, and I can do that. Heat, electromagnetic, phasic…

I rise off the ground slightly and look out into the launch control room. The Darkstar in charge presses keys, causing the sensor systems where I'm floating to try and detect me. A few moments pass and he shakes his head. Not that he can see me, but I appreciate the gesture.

Then the aperture to the next module opens and I float on through. Another round of scans, then a light turns go-purple. Then it's through an aperture covered by an environmental filter, the door closing a moment later and the air being completely evacuated. And only then does the exterior door open into deep space.

We're not hiding in an asteroid 'field', because those are actually extremely diffuse and… Frankly, the first place anyone looking for a ship that's hiding is going to look. We're not in a nebula-. No, actually, we technically are, but those are defined as having slightly more dust than normal space. They're even less dense than asteroid fields. I don't think there's a single grain of dirt in my visual field.

Space, the final frontier.

Both my ring and my armour's computer have my heading, so I turn in that direction and activate my empathic vision.

These are the voyages of the Orange Lantern Corps.

I wonder what it would be like if… I'd been able to found the Corps in a time of relative… Peace.

Its continuing mission: to scout out well-charted worlds. To seek out Reach life and allied civilizations. To boldly destroy what no one has destroyed before.

Or something.

There they are. Looks like there are no Reach citizens in the mix, and the desires of the crews are just as dimmed as I thought they'd be. They're still there though; they're not the biomechanoids I thought they might be. I can't tell more from here, and I can't risk a scan until it's time to stop silent running.

Time to go.

I accelerate, space rippling as I bend it to accelerate my passage and then force it to snap back to reduce the risk of it being detected. The amount I'm bending it is tiny compared to what I do when I fly long distance. It's pretty small when compared to what most Lanterns do. But I'm not travelling all that far and there's no real deadline. Dox isn't expecting me to hit every single one of these fleets. If I'm too slow, we lose some investigation opportunity and I'll have to move at higher speed.

But I do want to know what they're doing. Because if the Reach isn't quite as brutal as we'd been assuming… Maybe we could negotiate something. Not now, obviously, but before we're forced to bombard their worlds from orbit. But that doesn't seem to track with what we've got good intelligence on them doing.

I want to know what they're playing at.

And I'll find out in… Four hours and seventeen minutes.

Joy.

 

[Mr Zoat]

24th August 2012
22:13 GMT

"And… How's it going?"

Lantern Ph'yzzon -the Ph'yzzon I'm talking to at least- looks out across the ship graveyard. He's long since recovered from the negative effects of what the psions did to him, though I'm told that they're responsible for his skin being more a burnt umber rather than traditional bright orange. Well, he has an orange ring now; if it was a problem he'd have changed it. His ability to be in multiple locations at once isn't that useful, but his ability to parallel process makes him perfect for jobs like this.

Work crews cover the ships as far as the eye can see, a smattering of ship-loving Orange Lanterns scattered amongst the Euphorian labourers and engineers. A newly refurbished cruiser rises into the air as I watch, turning slowly and then flying through the boom tube overhead.

"Well, my Lord. The work continues apace. Since we don't know how long we have until your doppelgänger arrives I've prioritised the smaller craft, but even the battleships are in relatively good condition. Do you know how long we have?"

"No, not as yet."

He pings me a summary and I take a moment to review it. Yes, they're going as fast as they can. Dulak is holding up his end of the deal; we're getting as many engineers as could meaningfully contribute to the task at hand, and a lot are volunteering to work with us as crew. The shield is still up for now… Probably for the best. If the fighting heads this way I wouldn't want stray shots to hit the planet's surface.

"My Lord, we need to know that. If the gordanians just.. appear in Vega… They don't have any base for us to attack. They'll have complete strategic manoeuvrability. Freedom to attack whatever they like."

"Yes, I do know that." Remember Your Place.

"I'm…" He ducks his head slightly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean-. I'm just concerned."

I nod. "And you're right to be. But these aren't gordanian raiders. Amongst my people… There's a way to establish supremacy. It makes us predictable, to a degree. He will need to prove that his civilisation is superior to my civilisation. He's not just going to do something dispassionately logical like hit and run attacks by boom tube. He needs to break my will more than he needs to destroy our fleet."

He frowns.

"So he doesn't care about the rest of us?"

"No, he cares. His basic drives are the same as mine; it's his epistemology that's different. Once I'm dead, his Source-based powers will have free rein with no counter. You'll bow to him and think that it's your idea. And he will make you all bow."

"What about the others of your kind?"

"None of my subordinates have the strength. My brother-." I frown. Kalibak's out and Scott isn't aggressive enough, but… "My brother Scott isn't violent enough to confront him. My brother Orion would be, but I haven't spoken to him…"

Ping.

"Ever."

"Ever?"

"He and his mother were sent away from Apokolips not long after he was born. We've never actually met in person. I suppose I could try talking to him, but I doubt that he'd want to listen."

"What's the risk?"

I frown. What actually is the risk? He might just pick a fight with me. Father Box's records indicated that he has a psychotic hatred of everything Apokoliptian so I doubt that I'd get a fair hearing. Would he..? Include Scott in that hatred? I wouldn't have thought so… For purely selfish reasons I've been trying to discourage Scott from reaching out to his natural father, but…

"He kills me and doesn't bother to find out why I wanted to speak with him. My alter ego arrives and walks all over the defences."

I sigh. But These Are My People.

"But it's not a terrible idea. I'll give it some thought. Anything else?"

"His… Control. How does it work? Is it something we can resist?"

"Are some of yourselves watching the work crews? Measuring their productivity?"

He frowns. "Of course."

"Watch this."

I reach out with my metaphysique. The Lanterns are sworn to me personally, and loyal to me in a way which satisfied something deep in my soul. The Euphorians aren't, but they're bound to me by the pact I have with Regent Dulak and by common purpose. The ships are war engines directed to the preservation of my empire against its enemies. We share a task. I direct them, they labour.

Feudal Empowerment Methodology.

My vision briefly blurs as I feel myself bound to everyone on the site.

"What was-?" Ph'yzzon's eyes glaze slightly. "I see-. Engineering teams are working with greater speed and precision. What did you do?"

"That was me investing a little of myself. I don't like doing it like this, because it involves me controlling the people around me. Now imagine someone like me who didn't hold back."

And it feels… Good. Right. The people here are still mostly themselves, and now they serve…

Serve a greater purpose. Yeah.

Is this.. him, or is this..?

"Keep up the good work, Lantern Ph'yzzon." I turn away and walk in the direction of the desert. "I'll keep you informed of any developments."

He bows, something tamaraneans don't do, Lanterns don't do and he's never done. "Yes, my Lord."

I don't like this. I don't like how natural it feels.

Mother Box, let's go and see Scott.

Ping.

BOOM!

24th August 2012
17:17 GMT -5

In his exercise vault Scott performs a diving leap, evading laser fire from eight different turrets while picking his ankle manacles. His eyes flick my way for a fraction-

A laser hits his wrist manacles and melts the lock.

-and then he weaves around two spinning blades.

"Hey Grayven." "Hey Conquest."

"Afternoon, Scott. You got a minute?"

"A minute?"

Hands free, he inserts a piece of metal into his neck-mounted bomb collar, unlocks it and tosses it aside seconds before the timer runs out. There's a clunk as the pneumatic drive in the inside of the collar constricts, then it hits the off button and the weaponry powers down.

"No explosive?"

"I can't keep blowing up perfectly good collars in practice; I'm not made of money." He walks towards the exit, picking up a towel and dabbing his neck as he comes towards me. "What do you need?"

"A duplicate of me is bringing a fleet to Vega to take it from me. I think I need to talk to Orion, and I'd like you to back me up."

He stops moving for a moment as he considers it. Then he nods.

"Okay, I'll tag along. I've got a few things I wouldn't mind saying to Highfather myself."

 

[Mr Zoat]

24th August 2012
17:29 GMT -5

"Grayven…" Scott stares at me through the eyeholes in his Mister Miracle costume in apparent bewilderment. "What are you wearing?"

I shift uncomfortably in my 'revised' costume.

"What?"

"I've seen you wearing something other than your armor twice, and one of those times was on T.V."

"You wear your costume a lot."

"I wear my costume when I'm working. I'm a t-shirts and slacks guy most of the time. Is this..?" He floats around me on his aero-discs, looking me over. "Is this supposed to be camouflage?"

I sigh. "I thought that my usual grey armour was a bit too much of a visual reminder of Father. As for this…"

6th April 2012
10:13 GMT

"…why you think that I would want anything to do with a brute like you!"

Rarity glares at me, and stamps her right forehoof before lifting it back to her chest.

"Because I'm giving you the perfect opportunity to revenge yourself upon me for my brutishness. I'm asking you to design clothes for me, someone with no taste at all. I have no ability to assess your work. Whatever you make for me, I will wear at least once, and the only requirement I have is that it be at least somewhat red."

She… Considers. "You'll wear anything?"

"Anything."

She huffs. "Tempting as that is, I simply cannot deliberately design something that isn't magnificent. Fabulosity might as well be my middle name."

I didn't know she had a last name.

"But could you design something that would be fabulous in a very particular situation, but look ridiculous anywhere else?"

"Such as?"

"You wouldn't wear the same thing to a diplomatic reception as you would to a spring clean, would you?"

"Well, of course not." But her hoof is down on the ground and she's looking thoughtful. "And you'll wear it?"

I nod. "And I'll wear it."

She leans forward, staring at me sceptically.

"Hmmmmmm."

24th August 2012
17:30 GMT -5

"I just wanted to fit in with you and Orion. All the sons of Darkseid are wearing red this year." I nod at the empty space just in front of us. "After you."

"Mother Box?"

"Ping."

BOOM!

He holds his right arm out to the tube. "After you."

"Yea-I-. I think you should go first. They're a little more likely to ask questions if they see you. I'm probably 'shoot on sight'."

"But if I go through first, they might think you're chasing me."

…

"Fine, okay."

I walk through the portal, appearing in a grove on a planet quite close to New Genesis. While Apokolips has The Waste, New Genesis has protectorates. Places which rely on the gods for their defence. And worship them, and are stupefied into maintaining a low-tech civilisation aside from anything the gods grant them.

That about says it all. New Genesis: better than Apokolips. Just.

Scott flies through a moment later, then the tube shuts down. Okay, boom tubes are noisy things and easy to detect, so-.

BOOM!

Scott braces in the air as a new tube opens over our heads, ready to jink in any direction to avoid attack. I just make a point of keeping my hands away from my weapons. Of course, this might not be Orion. If they're sending the Forever Children I'm going to be-.
Defend! / Ping.
Orion flies through, looking as Father Box told me he would. His astro-harness is grey rather than gold and he's got black trousers rather than red leggings. He's also a good deal more slender than I was expecting. He's muscular, but he's nothing like Kalibak or myself.

But no astro-bolts. That's a positive start.

I smile, raising my right hand. "Hail, Orion-."

"Apokoliptians." Unsourcely wretches! / Ping.

"You are, but I wasn't going to mention it." My smile broadens. "Now I can honestly say that I've met all of my brothers."

Scott straightens slightly, but he's still clearly ready to evade. "I'm only Apokoliptian because Highfather traded me for you. If you're wondering, I'm not exactly happy about being handed over to the God of Tyranny."

"Leave this place. Both of you." Purge the Unclean! / Ping.

I nod. "Happy to do that, but I do need to talk to you. Have you got somewhere else you'd prefer do it?"

"No. There will be no debate. Leave, and thank me for my mercy." Destroy the Apostate! / Ping.

"Hold on." Scott rises in the air, heading slowly in Orion's direction. "Are you telling me that after all these years my father has nothing to say to-."

The astro-bolt narrowly misses his face as Orion glares at him imperiously.

"It is for his sake that I do not simply destroy you where you stand."

"Scott, I…" I shake my head. "I don't think this is going to work."

"Yeah." Scott descends, tapping his Mother Box. "I can't believe that my father passed me over for this." Poisonous Key.

BOOM!

With one last look up at Orion, Scott flies through the tube back to Earth.

I linger for a moment, waiting until Orion's hands tighten around his harness's triggers.

"I know that of all of us, I resemble our father the most. But seeing you there, staring down at people who came to you in peace to exchange words… It's interesting to see how all of Izaya's efforts were in vain. It is you who is truly our father's son."

Mother Box quick.

Ping.

Orion's jaw is shaking in rage as he pulls the trigger, astro-bolts eating through my construct shield-

BOOM!

-as I drop through the portal to the Vega trench and close it behind me.

Okay, this is roughly where Other Grayven would have to fly through to reach us in a line from his old base of operations. This is the best I can do. Ring, take us to Tamaran.

By your command.

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
00:40 GMT

The juluuni are an omnivorous species who look a little like oversized pangolins. Their distant forebears were burrowers, but they didn't burrow deeply. According to archival data from before the Reach conquered them they tended to live in shallow subterranean homes and be completely ruthless about adapting their environment to suit them. Even after they developed the technology to detect mineral deposits underground with reasonable precision, they actually preferred to strip mine. By the time they developed faster than light travel their homeworld had no more mountains, a fact which can't be explained by efficiency.

And no one has seen one for about four hundred years, when the last surviving settlement they had away from their homeworld was absorbed by the Reach. Their actual homeworld was absorbed nearly two thousand years ago.

The ships I'm looking at match the general outline of the files we have for their ships. The larger ships are essentially cones, the pointy part covered with guns. Their FTL drives are supposed to be pretty good -precise, if not all that fast- and their sublight manoeuvrability is relatively poor. They never really had anything to do with the Controllers and none of them have ever served in the Darkstars.

I take a look around. Eight battleships, none of which are on record as having existed while they were still autonomous. Twenty cruisers, and about five hundred automated gunships. They use those instead of more conventional fighters, and according to my records are quite happy to just dump them and move the larger ships off without them. They act more like mobile flack than conventional fighters and exhibit only fairly simple behaviour. It's a decent sized force. Unless they've brought Scarab Warriors along then Orange Lanterns could handle it, but a L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet would take casualties. Assuming that they could get into position fast enough. I'm not.. seeing any Reach naval vessels, so I'm not clear where their fleet would be retreating to when we started going after it…

I don't think I can learn any more with passive scans. Originally, none of these ships had anything that could interfere significantly with the effects of a power ring, so let's have a go.

Scans show… Shields, weapons and power all slightly improved. FTL… Altered but not strictly improved. It will allow them to make short FTL journeys more quickly but will fall off in performance if they try to travel longer distances. Which.. means… Aggressive deployment. Not hitting and running. Jump into the area, jump into contact, jump into bombardment position before reinforcements arrive… But if they get caught, they're done. The Reach don't design their own ships to work like that. Their people aren't disposable. Their commanders want the option to pull out and try again another day. These ships don't really have that.

Perhaps more importantly, I have enough information to know that I can destroy this fleet without much difficulty. There's no obvious reason to preserve any of the crew, but genetic samples will allow their species to be resurrected later if we decide to take that route. Grab a few samples for the-

Drives flare and the fleet vanishes.

-l.. ab..?

Where are-? There they are, not too far away. Not sure why they carried out a short jump. Practice? Security? They've left their gunships behind and they're… Patrolling?

They're irrelevant. With stealth less of an imperative now that I'm not leaving a trail back towards my base ship I don't have to move quite so slowly. I mimic the effects of their FTL drives and go after them, appearing within a few metres of the hull of one of the battleships. Their shields… Are designed to block phasing objects, but their launch bays need to drop their shields in order to launch… There they go. And.. through…

Since the launch bay isn't designed for people, it isn't anything like as spacious as normal launch bays. The factory units spit the gunships almost directly out of the mothership, the rest stacked one atop the other off to the side. But the area is accessible by engineering crews, so there's a door… With no anti-phasing shielding. I fly through there and start looking for somewhere to access the internal computer network.

The corridors are fairly roomy, which, again, is a feature their ships used to have. Short range scans pick up scale-fragments and DNA, but I won't actually take physical samples until it's time to act openly. I'm not seeing anything that would easily detect me, but all it would take is one scarab attached to one of the crew and the jig would be up.

Here we go. Maintenance hatch. Locked, but there's no force field and.. no damage detection in the structure of the metal. I take position, phase in and trigger my armour to extrude an exploratory cable, which punches through the hatch and worms its way down and inside. Cable there, carefully interface and link in…

I can't request data. For that I'd need log in details or to interface directly with the central database. But I can monitor data traffic and see what's going on.

And the answer is… Not a lot. Internal monitoring doesn't appear to refer to the central computer on a routine basis, which would be a weakness in some circumstances but doesn't make much difference for me. Gunship production figures are being sent, but only an automatic acknowledgement is being sent back.

Ah, none of this matters. A hundred or a thousand won't make any difference to me. I need to find the crew, examine them and then destroy the ships. Nothing I'm getting identified the crew's location, but empathic vision… There, that'll do.

I withdraw the cable and fly in the direction of what appears to be an engineering workshop. Out of combat these are usually fairly quiet, while in combat they'll be a frantic hub of repair requests and damage control teams. If they're waiting for attack orders then they shouldn't be running drills because the last thing they'd want is to have anyone out of position when the shooting starts, but that doesn't mean that they'll have a full house.

No one in the corridors, but I don't know enough about their fleet doctrine to know how unusual that is. Their shields should block most forms of teleportation so they might well have decided that marine patrols were superfluous, and since this is a warship there wouldn't necessarily be a lot of traffic. Door to the engineering station is through there…

Ah, my first juluuni. It looks like they're working to turn ore into refined metals, but taking a look…

Huh.

Okay, it seems that I was being a bit too harsh on the Reach. Someone deviated from the 'acquiescent, quiescent, obsolescent' paradigm. These people aren't just suppressed, they genuinely don't have desires outside being useful to the Reach any longer. Their neurology has been redesigned… Yes, and their genes as well to ensure that future generations are the same. Their endocrine system has had a bit of a rework…

So. This is what the Reach has planned for us. The propaganda value will be significant if I can grab a few and record their responses to interviews. But there's no point in grabbing these individuals…

Huh. For a moment I'm reminded of what Zauriel said about angels. 'I am uncertain as to whether my mind is truly more limited than that of a deeply devout Human. What do you believe that free will means? What is it that you think that I lack?'

I mean, I haven't seen a Reachian since I got here, and a look out across the fleet shows me no one with their particular desire set-up. Scan instead… Yes, no-

"BLAUGH-IGH! BLAUGH-IGH!"

-sign of them, but that did set off the alarms and flashing warning lights. And-. And that was a jump; the fleet moved again. So they have a way to detect ring scans, and my initial scan may well have been the reason for the last jump. It might be interesting to have Ranx or Mother of Mercy use their rings to do extreme range scans of the entirety of Reach space and see what happens.

Any sense in drawing this out further? No, I don't think so.

I drop stealth, construct spears impaling the engineers in this section. A thick construct cable worms its way into the local computers and begins demanding data, while a crumbler construct punches its way through the multiple decks between me and the computer core. There are all sorts of protocols for wiping computers during boarding actions, but the fact is that if you wipe your own computers every five minutes it's very hard to get anything done. There has to be a delay while a report is confirmed, and it isn't that easy to-.

There's a flare as a fission explosion destroys the computer core. And… We've dropped shields and-. And the room shakes slightly as the rest of the fleet starts shooting at us.

Alright then. If

that's all it

takes, I'll take this ship's computer core into subspace and

then try

this ship's bridge crew.

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
00:44 GMT

Desire suppression and grab.

Juluuni officers fight weakly due to their training, but there's no passion to their actions as they're pulled across the bridge to me and stuck in a construct constraint box. I take a fraction of a second to send an interrogation command to the ship's computer, triggering its self-destruct.

"…of the Restitution, report in. If you do not respond, you-"

Singularity beam.

"-will be considered-"

I swing the beam in a low arc, space distorting as it slices through the ship's interior and out into space. Lights in the lower part flicker and die as I replace the projector with a construct jack and shove the two parts of the ship away from each other like an angry pearl inside a mussel.

Situational awareness, ring. And interdiction field.

Compliance.

The ships are manoeuvring, spreading out and-. Huh, they can eject their gunship production modules. That lets them flush their stores faster, but… They can't make more. And it looks like that's an emergency action that can't be easily reversed, creating a critical weakness in their hull. On the other hand, against most Lanterns it's probably the best thing they can do. There are now a lot of flak turrets out there.

Let's do something about that.

Positron beams, track and rapid fire.

Two weapon constructs appear just in front of me, aiming through the growing gap between hull fragments with their containment vessels glowing purple. Rays leap out, each one existing so briefly that the human eye can't truly see them but firing so quickly that there's a purple haze to the air. The positron beam doesn't convey a lot of antimatter and compared to a true lightspeed weapon it's somewhat slow, but the gunships are unshielded and close enough and predictable enough that every shot is a kill. Really, I'm just trying to lure out any Scarab Warriors who are on-site and feeling-

I feel it as half the fleet tries to jump out. They disengage their drives in good order when they realise that that isn't going to be happening.

-lucky. They aren't used to being weaker than their opponents. It's not just me: in all other encounters with Orange Lanterns where the Lantern has lived to report back, the Scarab Warrior has stubbornly refused to quit the field. Oh, they'll evade an attack or fall back in the face of numbers, but they just refuse to give up. I wonder if it's a programming error?

The battleships turn, accelerating away from me at their best sublight speed. While they do that the cruisers cluster closer, trying to line their guns up through the gap in the hull to get a clear shot at me. Not a terrible idea by any means, though the prow-mounted guns of the battleships mean that they can't add their fire to the attack while moving away from me.

Incoming message.

I reform my singularity beam projector and aim it at one of the more on the ball battleships that is firing at the upper portion of my 'shell' as it turns.

Play it.

I fire, cutting a plane through its main drive and reaction mass reservoir. No explosion, because I'm using a gravity weapon, but as I send a positron beam that way… Yes, there we go. The battleship massing goodness knows how many tonnes jerks in space at the force of the detonation, the hull coming apart from the inside.

"Illustres, you are still alive."

I recognise that voice.

"And you're out of qwa-matter. Good effort, though."

I aim and fire the singularity beam through the hull covering me, cutting through the battleship furthest away from me. I don't want them to think they can escape. I want them to stick around and try fighting me, because if I have to chase after them it'll waste my time. Shots from the cruisers are sporadically hitting my construct armour and the positron beams aren't doing anything to their shields.

"Your construct defences are impressive. I will have to use a bigger bomb next time."

A scything motion from the singularity beam and the cruisers aren't quite so aggressive any more. Given all of the options that a power ring grants its user, I feel that I'm being a little boring here. But… Well, when one form of attack is virtually always superior in effect and there's no way that you can cow the enemy into submission with a more showy attack… It just makes sense.

"No, no, the qwa-matter worked. The problem is that I'm immortal."

Now, do they have enough free will to work out that there must be a reason why I'm staying in one place? Oh, ring, acquire genetic scans of everyone in the region.

Compliance.

"That seems unlikely."

"And yet, here we are."

I replace the jack construct with an oversized clamp construct and push, lifting that half of the ship off me to give myself a better angle. Usually, I'd request an opponent's surrender by now. Or they'd offer it.

"You've got data on qwa-matter explosions and construct defences. You know that there's no way I blocked that."

But there's only so many times you can have someone suicide bomb your prisoner handling units before you learn not to do that. Still, it would be interesting to see how much freedom their admiral has, and the additional biological samples could be useful.

"Orange Lantern Illustres to surviving juluuni vessels. Power down your engines and surrender, or I will destroy you."

The next shot with my singularity beam goes through the bridge of the crippled cruisers. Two lucky effectives in that class left, and a few dozen gunships who dodged behind something.

"True to the Writ we live. True to the Writ-"

Track transmission and fire.

Compliance.

"-we-."

That battleship gets cut in half lengthwise.

"Die, yes. Anyone else?"

Mildly interesting, though. The Reach don't usually perform that sort of indoctrination. Loyalty to the Reach as a political entity, yes, but they don't share their religion with aliens.

The battleships open fire en masse, the ship around me still intact enough to block most of the opening barrage. I swing-.

A small bolt of energy hits me in the faceplate, and I turn to see that… Huh, okay, I'm impressed. A couple of juluuni marines made it this far, breaching the bridge and getting a shot off. My positron beams-.

No.

My railgun shots cripple their arms and legs, then I grab their weapons and destroy them before shoving the marines into my containment unit. They earned that.

But no one's surrendering. And looking at their desires, no one is even considering it.

Singularities all round it is, then.

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
00:49 GMT

Orange strands shimmer as Lantern Threllian goes to work on the two cores I was able to recover.

"So that you are aware, the ships used by my people don't have central servers."

"Noted."

"That's interesting." Thaddeus has the laboratory's computer bring up a full genetic workup of the captured and currently paralysed juluuni officers. "Not brilliant, but I suppose I can credit them with being rigorous in their simplicity."

"Any idiot can make something more complicated, Thaddeus." I walk over to him to get a better-. Yeah, I've got no idea what I'm looking at. "The Reach were trying to achieve a particular social aim, not learn more about biology."

"Why?"

I take a moment to stare at him.

He frowns. "What?"

"I'm sorry, for a moment there it sounded like you had a moral objection."

"You remember what you said to Father about 'alternate moral paths'?"

I wince inwardly, but keep smiling. "That… Was a small part of a larger discussion about moral systems w-."

"Yeah, but that bit made sense. I'd kill a few people because I needed something which they had or because I could learn something from doing it. I would not do it simply because they were there. That feels… Wrong." He looks introspective for a moment. "Am I having a moral intuition?"

"Um. Maybe. I don't think that you or Georgia have your father's inability to understand morals or social organisation, so it's possible. But in reference to the moral paths I was talking about, that might just mean that you are far less moral than most people and it takes more to arouse your distaste."

"How would I know?"

I look over to the data cores Threllian is analysing. "How would you feel about me destroying those?"

He looks at them for a moment, then shrugs. "I do not care. The technology is not particularly advanced. I could easily create something better."

"If you're not offended by the fact that I could be destroying unique information, then it's probably not an alternate moral system. If you were actually following a moral code of wissenschaft über alles, it would offend you."

He frowns. "So your conclusion is that I'm not so much dedicated to knowledge as I am monstrously jaded?"

"It's a tentative conclusion based on insufficient evidence, but it does sound like it."

His frown deepens. "I do not like that. I do not like that at all."

Over to our right, Lantern Natu squeezes her eyes closed for a moment before turning to face him.

"You're not supposed to like being a monster."

Thaddeus folds his arms across his chest. "What do you know about it?"

"Thaal Sinestro used to rule my homeworld. He wasn't.. terrible to begin with, but as time went on he became more and more anal retentive. Littering became an arrestable offence with gaol time. He shut down off-world travel because he said it encouraged disorder."

Thaddeus nods. "Yes, contact with out-of-context ideas generally does encourage disorder."

"It paralysed our entire civilisation. Nothing that he didn't approve of was allowed to happen and he-. He genuinely believed that it was for our good. He liked doing things that he thought were for our good."

"I do not see what any of that has to do with me. He doesn't sound like a monster, just an inefficient sovereign. Unless it did actually improve your civilisation, then I suppose that he would be farsighted instead."

"Far-?"

"Yes? Educators frequently compel people to do things that they do not want to in order to teach them. I would never do anything like that. Which I suppose means that Paul is correct about my morality."

"Fascinating as I find moral philosophy, could I please return your attention to the juluuni..?"

Thaddeus nods, apparently dismissing the aggrieved Lantern Natu from his awareness.

"It is custom work, only vaguely similar to the phages they have used before. Humanoid species might resemble one another, but chemically they're all very different. In some places I can tell what they've changed by comparing it to other creatures, but in others I can only… Guess."

"Can they be changed back?"

"These juluuni haven't ever been anything else. These were almost certainly grown in a tank. See here?" He presses a button and calls up a wire frame hologram. "Multiple feed tube scars and no abdominal attachment point. If it were me, I would do the initial work on adults and then work out how to code the alterations into their germline, but I am far better at it than whoever did this."

"So is that a no?"

"I can use other examples from their ecosystem and reconstruct a lot of it. Or just make something new. I have a program which I use for subverting automatons which can learn function from form, and I think I could probably adapt it to genetic programming and biological specimens. But it would not be the same." He brightens up slightly. "It would probably be better. But not the same." He shrugs. "If that matters to you."

Threllian glares at him. "It matters to me."

"They won't even have done the same thing to your species. And you have records good enough to undo what they've done."

"If they're growing extinct species in tanks, that would mean that they have records of their original genetic structure somewhere, wouldn't it?"

Lantern Natu nods. "It should. They can't have known what all of their modifications would do until the… Their slaves grew to maturity."

"Good to know. Sorry, Thaddeus, it looks like we won't need your program."

"How about these ones?"

I look over the juluuni currently on the examination beds. What to do with people the Reach have mind controlled is an issue that the Controllers have had to deal with for the entire war. Not every N.E.M.O. member has the same solution. Most will allow reversions to be performed where the technique for undoing the mental alterations is known. Just about all are fine with summary executions where that isn't possible, though the more technically savvy ones prefer live specimens. Earth standard prisoner of war rules aren't followed by anyone… Or perhaps I should say Earth's official prisoner of war rules. I don't think I'd have to look all that hard into the war with the Sheeda -or any other war- to find examples of prisoners being killed out of hand because it wasn't practical to do anything else.

But I don't think we're quite there-.

I glance at Thaddeus.

But I don't think I'm quite there yet.

"Put them in suspended animation and prepare for the next batch. We can study them more once we're out of hostile territory."

Lantern Natu nods.

"Illustres, I've found something curious." Lantern Threllian creates a construct image of a ship. "The fleet has purged records of its point of origin, but they were visited by this. They were in the process of installing something when you destroyed them."

I frown.

"That's the Free Lancers' ship. What were they doing here?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
01:12 GMT

"Contact Green Lantern Harold Jordan."

"Compliance."

In retrospect, perhaps crushing every ship into scrap wasn't the best idea. The data core recorded that the Free Lancers had visited and that the machine shops had been more active after their visit, but there's no record of what they were making. I was focused on scanning their weapons, shields and engines and I didn't notice anything out of specification, but… I doubt they were visiting for a natural history lesson.

Jordan's face appears.

"What's this I hear about you stealing that power ring?"

"Lantern K'ryssma wasn't being honest with me, so I wanted Controller Hinon to take a look at it." I shrug. "She wasn't all that impressed. Apparently it's an attempt to rework the whole power ring-."

"I don't need to know that. I trust the Guardians. If it's not ready to be deployed, then it's not ready. But if she's finished playing around with it, then I'd like it back."

"Shouldn't be a problem. I'll ask when I see her."

Jodran nods in acknowledgement. "I suppose I should just be glad the Reach didn't get it."

"They did briefly get it. Turns out that Scarab Warriors don't make particularly good Lanterns. I'll send you my-. Hang on."

Ring, send him the recording of my fight.

Compliance.

"My recording should be with you now. Look, I need to ask you something else about that whole situation."

"What's that?"

"Despite not having a power ring to offer them, the Free Lancers are still working with the Reach. They visited one of their fleets a little while ago. I don't know what they did, but when you were in their general vicinity, did you notice anything worth mentioning?"

"Ah… I don't think so. They used combat robots but they weren't anything special." He frowns. "Oh, and Chance had a gun that can drain the energy out of constructs."

Juah-!

"That's somewhat significant, Lantern Jordan."

"Sure, but you've been destroying constructs with those crumbler things for over a year now."

"Yes, but the Reach doesn't know how to make them. If the Free Lancers shared that technology… We've got to go on the offensive right away. We can't let them work out how to work it into their strategies." I exhale somewhat sharply. "Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?"

"Ahh… No, I don't think-. Look, I'm sorry. I've run into so much weird technology that it didn't really stand out at the time, and this was.. years ago."

"Don't worry about us, worry about you." He frowns, puzzled. "The peace with the Reach was never going to be a permanent thing. The Reach now has the design for shutting down-. Can you just send me the file?"

"Yeah, sure. Why exactly should I be worried?"

"Peace between the Green Lantern Corps and the Reach can't last. But they aren't just going to declare war on you one day, or try sending Scarab Warriors after isolated Lanterns. They're going to sell the technology to anyone who wants it. Below cost. For now they're going to be focusing on retrofitting their ships to fight us, but once they've got the production line set up they're going to make sure that every space capable enemy your Corps ever fights has one."

"And you're sure our treaty doesn't cover that?"

"The wording of your treaty has been studied by the Controllers at length. If they don't use it themselves, there's nothing stopping them selling to whoever they want. You can arrest weapon merchants who sell in violation of local law, but there's nothing that would trigger a war in there."

He clenches his jaw. "God damn. I guess I'm going to have to start wearing armour after all."

"And not before time, but that's not all. Did you ever copy Guy and start using that Halla stun pistol thing? Because you can dodge to save your environmental shield, but any ship with decent flak can shoot out your offensive constructs."

"This is a whole can of worms…" He sighs. "I'll send you the recording, but I'm going to need to talk to the Guardians about… Everything."

"Tell Earth's other Lanterns first. Alan needs to get over his aversion to armour. Maybe Dame Carol can give you all some pointers. Or you can wait for me to come back, but I.. think I'm going to be here for a while."

"Do they know where Earth is?"

"Not as far as I know. But between me and that fleet there's a trail. I mean, the way I normally move isn't easy to trace and the fleet took reasonable precautions, but…"

"Great. Great."

"N.E.M.O. has very effective anti-infiltration strategies if you want a look. And that L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet hanging around two eight one four has an unlimited licence to hunt down and kill anything associated with the Reach, so if a Reach 'trade' mission does turn up you can just clue them in and then turn around."

"Right. I'll get on that. Jordan out."

His face vanishes.

And I scream, very quietly.

"Aaaaaaaaggghh…"

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Ring, mess… Message to Clarissi Dox. I can't-. I need to confirm this is actually happening before going crazy-. Oh, there's Jordan's file of Chance shooting him in the middle of a Lantern versus Lantern fight and shutting his ring down. Yes, thank you Jordan, that would have been helpful to know.

Message… Ah, 'new information from Lantern Jordan indicates that the Reach may be deploying a highly effective anti-construct weapon, recommend all Lanterns move to fully sealed armour, more information to follow'. Send.

Compliance.

I sigh, then walk into the strategy room where Lantern Threllian is studying a display of his people's fleet.

"Let me guess: they've remodelled."

"There has been a number of changes when compared to the pre-conquest ships my people used. They appear to have more rapid-traverse anti-attack craft batteries, though they might be an adaptation to fighting Lanterns."

I nod. "I'm going to assume that they are. Anything else?"

"My people have had gravity shielding for several centuries. Your singularity beam might still work if you focused on it, but I wouldn't recommend relying on it. Similarly, our interdiction systems are better than what the juluuni use, as are our sensors and… Everything else."

"Marvellous."

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
05:36 GMT

These…

These are scary ships.

Threllian's people were very intelligent-. Are very intelligent, and part of that is that they were good at forward planning. Their history contained relatively little warfare because they were all too aware of exactly what they would be throwing away by destroying lives and property. Theirs wasn't a particularly dangerous region of space, so they'd managed to spread out across their home system before they suffered from a raid by a more martial species.

It was a bit of an eye-opener for them, but they didn't really want to invest the resources into building a fleet that could match their new enemy ship for ship. So they studied and experimented and built a small but extremely sophisticated fleet that could -and did- blow anything their foes could throw at them out of space. They were a major stabilising force in their region for a little under two hundred years by virtue of having more power and at the same time choosing not to use it to forcibly oppress.

And then the Reach happened, reaching out to a regional hegemon in 'friendship' and for 'trade'.

But I'm looking at that fleet's great grandchild. Glowing purple blurs along the sides mark the intrusion into normal space of their fracture cannons. No traversing or charging required, just press a button and space breaks in a line to your target. There's no gun there to disable either; it's literally just a point in space nominated by the actual projection system inside the well-armoured hull.

Well force fielded hull too, I note. And Threllian was right about the gravity shielding. And the flak.

The flak turrets look a bit… Off? Actually. The outer hull looks like it's designed to be as featureless as they could make it, but the small turrets break that aesthetic and… Look almost stuck on. Which means that they… What, that the Free Lancers came almost directly here, gave them the designs and left them to it? Had been working on the turrets for a while and handed over a warehouse worth for them to integrate in their own time?

Jordan's file implied that those turrets were lightspeed, which might mean that I can dodge them if I stay far enough away. It also implied that the weapon was only weakly penetrating against anything that wasn't a construct. So my best defence against them is armour which the big guns will blast through like it's not even there, because from their point of view it isn't. And my best defence against the big guns is a type of physics-warping construct that I can use, but will go down very easily to the anti-construct guns.

Oh, and I can't hide in a ship because the big guns aren't affected by their hulls and their internal sensors are sufficiently good that it would be suicide to try.

But other than that-.

Oh, no, I forgot: while the main guns have a somewhat limited effective range and their sub-light speed isn't that good, the ships can use their gravity shielding to do short range space-bending teleports. So…

So if I can dummy them into teleporting towards me and have a gravity weapon pointing in the right direction, I could get lucky.

Starting to think I.. should have brought more clones.

Okay, actual plus side: though their ships have very good energy generation systems, their guns consume more than they can generate during high-intensity combat. Which is probably why the Reach haven't adopted the design across their entire fleet. So if I get all of the doomguns to fire constantly at the same time then I might exhaust them, assuming that they're far more stupid than I know them to be.

Actual attacking plans, then.

The people on board don't appear to have any actual defence against magic. Orange light manipulation won't necessarily work against people the Reach have reprogrammed, but it.. might be a place to start. Or…

I mean, there's no reason why I couldn't make a construct version of those guns.

Or…

Okay, given the maximum speed of the Free Lancers' ship and the amount of time that's passed… Even if they flew directly between fleets without needing to stop off at a Reach facility to get directions, they… Can't have visited all of them. I doubt that they'd have been able to equip more than… One.. other..? And since this fleet is fully equipped…

It's that or go full Ophidian mode and hope I still understand how to fight sophisticated foes.

I

step out and

reappear in the midst of a swarm of flying rectangles, the crews' gestalt minds collectively having just enough mental freedom for one independent thought, colossal construct claws reaching out, grabbing, crushing! No anti-construct guns here but I take the orange light and pull

and drag it through

the Honden to a swarm of space dragonflies, telepaths controlling their biotechnology using distributed nervous systems. A construct neural chaff generator leaves them twitching and writhing, and whatever psychic defences they could muster are gone as I pull

and head

into the centre of an armoured sphere, mollusc-like internal defence tentacles reaching for me, phasing through my construct shields as I use an intense burst of ionising radiation to fry their central computer and pull

them along with me as

I use construct shields to block shots from the cybernetically augmented marines -ah, some more orange here- who respond immediately to my appearance. But I'm not entirely here any more, and the usual delay while the construct forms just isn't a problem. We'll take those and

head back.

Let us share avarice with you.

And I snap back as the purple beams from eighteen ships flare into being. I counter with shielding for the radiation and spatial reinforcement constructs to block the beams themselves, causing them to peter out before they can touch me. Amped up like this, dropping physical barriers from subspace to block the anti-construct turrets is at least possible and when one-

Like just then.

-slips through, my shields are ablative and it only gets one. I duck and dive, keeping my constructs a little way away from me to make judging my exact position a little harder, and I can see the confusion wrought by the alien desires the Ophidian and I just forced onto the crew. How good is the Reach's programming? Without magic they shouldn't be able to design something that can cope with that, but they've made allegiances of convenience before…

Let's make it a hard choice. I fly closer to one ship, intensifying the spatial stability constructs to -at least temporarily- close down the projectors closest to me. Now the other ships have to make a choice between friendly fire and letting me take cover which for a normal Reach thrall would be very easy. But their desires have just been inflamed and confused, so hopefully-.

Then one of my suppression constructs is gone and I frantically dodge as a fracture gun opens fire and then pans through space to follow me. A shot-. No, all the turrets with a line of sight are blocked, where did it-?

"Orange-"

I ram a crumbler construct into the hull of the ship and the armour abrades, hopefully concealing my deployment of the hellwraith through the side of the ship. My other Construct Lanterns I deploy around me with instructions to-

"-meat."

-distract that Scarab Warrior-.

A rapid flurry of shots from his shoulder-mounted construct disruptors annihilate them before they can move a metre and his main arm-mounted gun charges.

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
05:39 GMT

This-

I calculate angles and shift to put the Scarab Warrior between me and as many of the primary weapons as possible.

-is-

As his anti-construct weapons target my stabiliser constructs I simply abandon them, his shots flying past me and hitting the hull of the ship.

-going-

Physical barrier and create a railgun behind it, load crumbler rounds.

-to-

The shot from the Scarab Warrior's main gun disintegrates the shield, but the follow up shots from the construct disruptors do nothing to the entirely physical railgun. I charge it with ring power and fire.

-be-

The Scarab Warrior ducks behind his shield, crumbler rounds hitting home and abrading it before-

-interesting.

-the fracture cannons open fire. Space around us turns purple, though I've got no idea if they're missing because they're distracted by their own confused desires or they're trying to aid the Scarab Warrior.

This one's orange, for some reason.

But if they're trying to avoid-.

My half-formed fracture cannon construct is destroyed by the ship's anti-construct guns, which activate for long enough to hit me all over. My armour holds just fine but even my environmental shield is driven back inside it. Keep moving extrude-

Dodge!

-armour plates and then dump Construct Lanterns while vision is blocked and then

step out and

appear on the far side of the ship because as thematically significant as fighting an upgraded Scarab Warrior who can turn off my constructs is, I'm actually here to destroy the fleet and acquire biological samples. And keep moving and

evading, because

without a Scarab Warrior to avoid shooting at the gunnery crew are a little more on the ball. Construct armour-.

And it's gone, and this time from a direct hit rather than a specific anti-construct gun.

Dodge harder and recreate the armour, then… Destructive blast.

The ship's shield shimmers, flak turrets locking onto the beam immediately and extinguishing it. Progress… Shields somewhat degraded-

One of my Construct Lanterns is destroyed and returned to my ring, giving me a sudden image of how well the ambush worked. And it did work, but the Construct Lanterns weren't able to do significant damage before-. And there are the rest. Not sure whether or not it would have worked better if I reinforced them… Or if they'd had stronger avarice when I assimilated them. Hellwraith is still going strong.

-so I fly closer and fire again. Same result: some damage, but the flak deals with it before it does anything too serious.

Ah heck.

Construct crumbler fire at the seven closest flak emplacements destructive pulses!

The flak guns start to track the projectiles and then switch to the pulses once those appear. Which means that they're just slightly out of place and slightly too slow in tracking them. The pulses hit the shields and somewhat disrupt them, the crumblers striking just a-

Another volley of destructive pulses.

-moment later and… Shield's down for a second and the second wave of pulses go in and yes, flak emplacements gone.

That doesn't help with all of the others, but at least I've got a viable strategy now. Destroy the flak, then fly back out of convenient range and use con-.

The space around me explodes in a flare of light and radiation!

I shift position, scanning for the source. Constructs. Workable. And since there's slightly less flak now I fire a destructive blast in the direction that shot came from and briefly see the outline of a Scarab Warrior. A different silhouette from the last one, though that could just be shapeshifting. Empathic vision… Yes, there they are. Focus on the ship.

Destructive blast at the ship. Flak response slower. The shield over this section is back up but goes down again after a moment, allowing me to hit the-. To briefly hit the hull before the Scarab Warrior gives up on invisibility and switches to rapid fire construct disruptors, neatly covering the hole in the-

Where's the other one gone?

-ship's defences but who cares now because they're both on the far side of the fleet so same again. More destructive pulses targeting flak turrets, crumbler barrage and a second volley of pulses and same result, good.

Keep moving. Always

keep

moving, and let the purple-. Ah, they finally actually hit their own ship! Nice to see, even if it doesn't actually help me all that much. Shift position up the hull a little and repeat, because I'm still taking fire from three other ships and there's no way that I could try mustering the power to breach the armour just yet.

Lantern-

Suddenly there's a ship in front of me as space bends and it manages

a full broadside

but I'm out of there immediately because a warship appearing right in front of you isn't a good sign. Okay, if they've got their heads straight to the point that they can do things like that I've got to consider another empathic attack to re-stun them.

Threllian-

The Scarab Warriors would probably work as a source, but there's no way that will make them stop fighting. I'm.. not too far away from an actual Reach world here, but I'm not super keen to risk their defences until a good deal more intelligence gathering has taken place.

-to-

Still, I can repeat the process here, by-.

-Illustres.

This time the guns completely ignore the destructive pulses and target the crumbler rounds. They're not.. completely effective, but the shield stays up and the flak turrets are undamaged. Darn it.

"Yes?"

Dodge and

move

and try again, no, they're sharing. Okay. This time I fire a volley not of destructive pulses but of small construct crumbler rounds. The guns ignore them for the fraction of a second it takes them to cross the intervening space and their shield is gone and the constructs keep going! Hah!

The other-

There go their turrets and I get some actual hull damage in before I'm forced to move by the fracture cannons.

-fleets are moving.

…

Darn it.

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
05:40 GMT

Okay, that's not necessarily too bad.

Through the rent in the shields I get a better scan of the interior of the ship, marking out the rupture emitters, shield generators and the location of the crew. A heartbeat later and the shield is back up, but I got what I need. And it's a little weaker now.

Dox wouldn't have sent me now if it was a last minute thing. If the other fleets are attacking that means that they're doing so early. Something that was causing them to remain where they were hasn't been dealt with as their Reach overlords would have preferred. I hope. If they were literally just hanging around to act as a distraction to me… Then as LIIVI said, I'm performing the useful action of tying up a significant quantity of enemy materiel.

This ship doesn't seem to have a dedicated self-destruct system. Probably because if it comes to it then its primary weapon system can tear it apart easily enough. Power generation is also decentralised. There isn't anywhere where I could score a knock-out blow with one hit. Other than by rupturing the entire hull, but… Yes, even then, individual sections might well maintain power and be able to operate their guns. We don't really have ships like this in L.E.G.I.O.N. because our member worlds wouldn't be able to build them, not because they're not good enough.

I

move

to the outermost ship and repeat my-

Dodge!

-trick with the construct crumblers. There's a slight hesitation in the tracking system and I exacerbate it by firing a couple of physical crumblers as well-. I've hit the shield envelope just fine, but the flak took out a few of my constructs rather than just ignoring them. Flak turrets destroyed-.

This time I spot the Scarab Warrior before they can attack, my lance of orange energy forcing them to break off their charge and evade. Another new one. Three Scarabs represents a significant expenditure of resources, Reach resources that they actually care about. Ordinarily they'd be a higher priority target than this fleet. But I suppose that we've proved that we can beat Scarabs; the jury's still out on this fleet.

The Scarab Warrior hangs back, their overdeveloped thruster array keeping them mobile enough to avoid anything short of a dedicated attack on my part. Their actual weapon appears to be a scaled-up version of the construct nullifier, so the counter would appear to be a physical barrier. Straightforward enough.

If I've worked out a way around their flak defences, the next step is piercing the hull. I know that Threllian recommended avoiding gravity weapons, but I want to see-.

Ship! I

leave

at once, a new target on the other side of the fleet finding itself the object of my assault. This time the flak targets and destroys almost all of the oncoming attack constructs, apparently prioritising time-to-target.

Okay, I can work with that.

Illustres?

I-.

And there the ships are again and I'm

moving

again. I think the crew are recovering. And if the other fleets are moving then the solution is obvious. I

follow the thread

into a command centre inhabited by aqua-skinned humanoids with minor cybernetic grafts, lashing out and pulling

and moving

to empty space, the ships matched to the known profiles of a scaly-skinned humanoid species accelerating away as I pull their desires and

then

pink blobs with numerous pseudopods appear for a moment before losing all motivation

as I return

to the fleet I was fighting moments before and pushing the desires at them. The closest ships vanish, reappearing a moment later much further away, presumably as the drive to move overwhelms them. That gives me a clear view of one of the Scarab Warriors who appears to be.. jerking around aimlessly. I

head

towards them, car crusher construct appearing around them and ramming closed.

Now the ships, and this time a little faster.

Illustres?

Comparing primary weapons fire now to primary weapons fire immediately before I left… Yes, slower and the prediction is less good. A bit of a surprise that they're doing manual targeting but I suppose that it could be like the Coluans: they don't really need computers to speed up their decision making.

"Here."

And that's the turrets on this side of the ship gone. Armour plates behind me and crumbler ram!

"Busy."

I keep pushing the ram forward, sundering the hull and smashing into the meat of the ship. There's a flare of purple as I hit one of the fracture generators, and a section of the ship's interior evaporates. Relatively weak internal armour, probably not worth knowing. Ring, find me biology.

Compliance.

…

Oh.

It seems that while the Reach might have considered the brains of Threllian's people to be top notch, they weren't anything like as impressed with their bodies. They're directly integrated into the ship. Their life support is directly connected so I can remove them and stow them… Or wreck the ship around them and come back for them lat-.

The ship before me comes apart as it's impaled by purple lances. They don't seem to have specifically aimed for the crew, but-.

Something hits me, my constructs collapsing and my armour shuddering at the impact. What was-?

A brain. The Scarab-. From the Warrior I just killed, it survived and attached itself to one of the spare brains. It visibly reconfigures as it loops around, generating some sort of energy field that.. my ring is struggling to analyse.

I respond with rapid pulses of destruction, and… They hit home, but are visibly drained of power as they do. Right then. It may have a shield but it doesn't have a gun, and there's enough ship hull around me to shield me from flak from the other ships. I generate a singularity projector construct and take a shot… Which bends away from the target and.. sort of stays there. Right, they're familiar with gravity-based weapons. And they're small and mobile but I'm pretty sure that a construct-generated laser would-.

And they're gone. Gravity teleport…

I'll keep my guard up, but there are still a lot of ships here.

"Okay, I've got a moment. I've got a method for destroying these ships but I don't think anyone else in the Corps could do it. Does Dox have new orders for-"

Dodge.

"-me?"

Not as yet.

"Then I've-."

A ship on the far side of the fleet vanishes. Then another. Then-.

Gravity stabiliser!

A ship shakes, then is reduced to drifting, its fracture cannons going dead. The other ships manoeuvre slightly, then-.

Fuck!

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
05:41 GMT

The space around me turns purple and I abandon everything other than personal defence.

Shieldshieldshield!

Something just happened that caused them to snap out of the confusion my desire manipulation caused. I-.

Ah, duck and get back inside the hull because the flak shots are heading towards me and if they hit I'm dead. The fracture cannons are going through the hull easily enough but the beams from the two weapons can't coexist and I can just about hold out against this. It's not just a matter of maintaining the construct barriers, I've also got to prevent them opening a fracture inside me, which…

Fewer incoming shots. The ships are warping away. I need to

break

out and recreate my gravity stabiliser construct and-. Beam singularity, while they're trying to use their shields for running. That ship-. Yes! Now again, smaller, target their fracture generators! Crippled, good. And then

break

away to hit another ship. Hull broken! Target the weapons and fire-. Another ship crippled and another three warp out because I can't stop them, shield myself and attack at the same time. The next one's-.

Construct broken

move!

Where did that-?

A Scarab Warrior, the first one I encountered. I don't recognise the propulsion system they've morphed, but they're faster than they were-.

No, that was a warp. One of the ships bent space to move them into place, but since a spatial warp is pretty much a spatial warp I've got no way to tell which. Guess the closest? Fly behind that ship to restore my constructs fly out target and-.

And the construct's gone again because someone's-. The ships are feeding him data in real time. He's listening to aliens? Fine then, duck back and pulse orange energy because I spotted that lensing effect-. Hah, weren't expecting that were you? X-ionised sword and lunge, because I can't spare the-

Warning: low power. Fourteen percent remaining.

-charge right now. Been a while since I've heard that warning, but if Dox intends for me to do this sort of mission then he's going to have to accept the inefficiency and grant me a second ring again. Or give me the time to make a decent one myself.

My sword cuts through the left side of his chest as another ship leaves the combat area. Three effectives left, and one less Scarab when my follow-up cut slices his head and Scarab in twain. Now fly and fire!

And the last two go. I can't see either of the two remaining Scarabs, so either they're in hiding or they left with the ships.

"Lantern Threllian, you watching?"

Yes, Illustres. Doctor Sivana was just informing me that he believes he can build an interdiction field to prevent those warps that will be significantly more effective than… Currently-.

"Than the constructs I used. Good; I'll use his device in future. I'm low on power and Dox wants me elsewhere. Do you think you can handle the recovery without me?"

Yes.

"Then come and relieve me."

Because I need to stay here in case they come back. I don't think they will; those reports Guy shared with me suggest that the Reach never found a reliable way to determine how much charge a Lantern has left. If the rest of the fleet did come back I'd fight on until I was on vapours and then head to the Honden to recharge. That would only buy them… A few seconds entirely free of my interference, but they could use that to destroy the crippled ships and warp back out again.

Another Lantern would be stuffed, of course.

I could start the recovery process myself, but I can't spare the power. Because if they come back I'm going to need that fourteen percent. But… This… Went relatively well. I didn't need that clone, which I'm glad about. Didn't get all the ships, but I did get enough to demonstrate a viable counter-strategy to construct-draining attacks and took down some of them. We've got enough of Threllian's species to increase their genetic variety, and study what the Reach did to them.

"That was a rather impressive display."

Of course, I didn't target the ships' communications systems. Which means that my Reach admirer can still speak to me.

"Me or them?"

"Oh, both. If you were a Scarab Warrior your creativity and speed would put you in the top hexile, at the very least."

"Gosh. Are all the Scarabs who can keep up with me on holiday?"

"You know enough about Reach strategy to know that we don't respond at full force to initial attacks. Our best Scarab Warriors are in reserve, for when we need them."

"I didn't know that Scarabs could bond with severed heads."

"As long as the brain is alive. Though the Scarab will struggle to maintain vital functions without organs. I hope that one makes it back; I suspect that it will prove extremely instructive."

"Did you get a report on my peace negotiation attempt?"

"No, but I doubt that it matters. We can't let you get away with this. A purely local arrangement might be possible, but… You asked for something that would cripple us, didn't you?"

"You would have become the trading state you pretend to be."

"With you guaranteeing the peace?"

"Telepaths exist, you know. You wouldn't have to just take my word for it."

"I'm trained to evade telepaths, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you were too."

"Magic, then?"

"Even if you were honest, I don't know enough about the subject to confirm anything you told me about it."

"And even if I could, your people wouldn't go for it."

"You could try teaching us?"

"That sounds like a rather critical security breach."

Though having said that, as far as we know the Reachians aren't capable of using magic. It wouldn't give them a new capacity; it would just let them plan around ours a little better.

…

Yeah, no.

"But you were happy with the performance of the ships?"

"They clearly out-performed the ships we use in our Outer Region Fleets. I invested, and I reap the benefits."

"I should thank you, then. We were worried that those species might have been lost permanently."

Threllian appears next to me, and I nod.

"But I'm afraid I'll have to cut this short. Excuse me."

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
05:45 GMT

"…keep what is mine, that is my right."

The usual recharge-flare isn't all that big, but I make a point of causing huge arcs of orange light to flow around me to make it very obvious to the N.E.M.O. fleet that the Illustres is back in fighting form.

"Sorry I'm late. Traffic was terrible."

N.E.M.O. fleet. Not a L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet. Dox's plan to bring everyone up to speed is a remarkable piece of work, but it's got a lot of moving parts that can get gummed up. We assumed that the Reach wouldn't make a counter-attack at this point, as that would have been in line with their previously observed behaviour. That meant that the plan favoured building up those stellar nations who were nearly to the point where they could build L.E.G.I.O.N.-grade ships rather than rushing ships as soon as possible. By the time the Reach were likely to get serious, we would have the largest possible number of ships. But naturally, that means that we're a little short now.

"Hierarch-Illustres, we detect no lateness and we are grateful for your presence."

Only a little short. L.E.G.I.O.N. ships are moving in on all of the other preserved alien fleets, with reserves to cover any likely location for a Reach attack from the fleets we know about. Not an ideal situation; our fleets aren't really designed to capture ships intact and so we're going to be getting tissue samples at best. But… You go to war with the military you have.

"My pleasure, Admiral."

It's the big sphere ship, the raw power of its shields and armour meaning that these ships… Don't really have anything that can meaningfully hurt it. Colossal size isn't an unalloyed good as every strategy has a counterplay option and making one big ship means that you can't really switch strategy. On the other hand, if your opponent isn't ready for your all-in, they rather get bulldozed.

Big, powerful shield and tough armour and thanks to me savaging their desires earlier I don't think that I can just appear onboard again. On the other hand, having had a good look at the fracture cannons earlier I don't think that I need to.

"Please make sure that your ships stay clear."

The fracture cannon construct appears next to me, its huge size meaning that its appearance is relatively slow. Not sure if whoever's on the sphere knows what it is I'm making, but anyone with any sense gets nervous when a Lantern points something like this at them.

"Illustres to Reach-affiliated ship. Strike your colours, power down your weapons and shields and prepare to be boarded. You have ten seconds to comply."

I don't have to worry about powering the thing, but to make sure this looks good for the cameras I physically take hold of my personal lantern and slot it into the construct. The sphere… It can't really accelerate above its current slow rate, but it's channelling combat power into its shields, interdiction systems and point defences. A quick scan shows none of the Free Lancers' clever guns, and I'd like to take advantage of their absence for as long as I can.

"You have been identified as hostile and have refused to surrender. May Lord Hades have mercy on your souls."

There's a faint purple glow around my construct, then a flash from the ship as a line of purple pierces it pole to pole. The armour isn't worthless -in fact it's relatively intact- but all of the space along that line that wasn't armoured just got horribly damaged. Including their main reactor, because their ship prioritised output over redundancy. After all, if an attacker can punch through the strongest shields and armour they can build, why wouldn't they just fire again if they didn't score an immediate kill? Better to have a more effective reactor to power the strongest possible shields.

And it makes sense. Up to a point.

The speed of light being what it is, it'll be a few minutes until we see the ship lose thrust as the lights on the outer surface start going out, but since I'm seeing it by ring-scan I share it with the fleet. No sense leaving them to worry unnecessarily.

The construct glows purple again as I target the armoured command bunker inside the ship. The tactic they used to use if something went wrong with primary power was to hunker down and prepare counter-boarding tactics, in the not entirely incorrect belief that while an enemy might be able to disable them, breaking a ship that size apart was a whole nother matter. They would sacrifice mass for time as the engineers worked to repair the reactor.

I target their reaction mass containment and fire for a third time.

A normal fleet in this position would retreat, sacrificing a rearguard if necessary. A one-ship fleet like this can't. Once it stops functioning it's stopped, and all of the resources put into building it are forfeit. If I was depriving the Reach of something they invested effort in I'd feel quite good about this. But I suspect it was just in mothballs until a Reach xenophile felt moved to take it out. Probably brought it up to specification using his own funds. And while having me single-handedly destroy it is a good news story for our side, the Reach as a people and a polity aren't going to care at all.

Two more shots targeting emergency batteries, then I dismiss the construct. At this point we could just leave them to starve to death. I doubt that the Reach will spend the effort needed to pick them up, and the ship is damaged beyond what the people on board can repair by their own efforts.

"Admiral, the ship is disabled. Please have your fleet picket it until Orange Lanterns become available to board and clear it."

"We have Citizen-Marines who can perform that operation."

"I appreciate the offer, but this ship comes from a species the Reach made extinct. We want to take the crew alive if at all possible, and it would be entirely unreasonable to put your marines in that much danger."

"For what reason?"

"Because we're not fighting this war to take territory or resources. We're not fighting the Reach because they're offensive to our gods, or our sense of aesthetics. We're fighting them because they're an existential threat to us, and to everyone else. But if we are to be the righteous side, there must be beneficent things we do where they would instead be malevolent. They enslave and exterminate. We will recreate civilisations and make their people free. Quite aside from the moral value, there are few things as satisfying as entirely undoing your enemy's work."

"That is the Zenith-Controllers' objective? I know that they transform worlds for their vassals, but I did not realise that their powers included recreating entire species."

"They're welcome to join in of course, but it's possible for the rest of us as well. It just takes longer. I don't fight because I rejoice in the piles of corpses I create. I rejoice in making the universe more like it should be."

I dismiss my construct and return my personal lantern to subspace, having my ring send me an update on the ongoing fights with the other fleets. The ones I visited are performing noticeably worse than their pre-Reach counterparts, but I need to get moving.

"Moving into position, Hierarch-Illustres. We will stand by until relieved by Citizen-Lanterns."

"Thank you, Admiral."

I

step out

and appear in the midst of a starship dogfight! I generate a construct shield to block a missile barrage that could have crippled a L.E.G.I.O.N. cruiser and retaliate with a destructive lance that rips an enemy heavy cruiser into pieces.

"Illustres to Clarissi, I've dealt with the sphere. Please send Orange Lanterns who can reliably brand to board it."

I'll assign them after the attack is over.

I form construct point defences and an instant later there are no enemy missiles in the combat zone.

"Thank you. I think my secret admirer is behind this attack."

Yes, I heard your conversation. I will continue investigating them. This methodology is irregular for the Reach. I dislike my enemies behaving irregularly.

"Me too. I'll pop by once the attacking fleets are defeated. Illustres out."

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
07:23 GMT

Dox nods.

"I am in complete agreement."

Off to one side Georgia is busy taking apart one of the captured construct destroyers with obvious relish.

"Our greatest advantage is that Orange Lanterns can outperform everything the Reach can send against them at anything remotely resembling even tonnage. That advantage is about to be nullified."

His ring shimmers.

"I'm sending orders now. Orange Lanterns will begin striking at Reach targets immediately."

I nod. "Where do you want me?"

He shakes his head. "I don't. Having analysed your conversation with your…" His face twitches in distaste. "'Admirer', I have reached the conclusion that you're becoming a little too visible."

"Clarissi-."

"It's not about my personal pride. Your death would be a substantial blow to our allies' morale. And while there is some advantage in having the Reach focus their research and development efforts on a single individual, I would rather not give them a single thing to focus on at all."

I nod. "If you say so. What do you want me doing, then? Should I head back to Earth, do a tour of our member worlds to spread the good news..?"

"The abilities you used to defeat the byryte fleet aren't shared by other Orange Lanterns. That will be a problem when the Reach reinforce them."

"Yes, but that's been true since we started this. What I did to.. get these abilities, I'm not sure how to replicate that. I've tried teaching my methods…"

"I know. But I want you to focus on it. Select whatever Lanterns you think have the best chance of repeating your success and assist them as much as you can."

"And if it turns out to be impossible?"

"Those Lanterns you've tutored already display measurable improvements in their abilities. It would be useful if they could share your breakthrough, but if they simply improve in a linear fashion then we can use that to improve our training procedures."

I nod.

"Can do. But the problem might be in my teaching techniques." I shrug. "I'm not sure how inclined to share the Guardians are, and Dame Carol has… Suggested that maybe I should avoid Zamaron for the moment… Karax."

"If you think visiting Karax would be productive, you have my leave to do so."

Karax. Saved from the Spider Guild by a Green Lantern Task Force, it's gone on to become the centre of Lanternism in the Milky Way galaxy. Its records on the activities of members of the Green Lantern Corps are second only to the records on Oa, and unlike the Guardians' records are available to the public.

Also, I may have caused a bit of a religious explosion there. And I should probably do something to moderate it before someone does something regrettable.

"I'll take Lantern Onik, then. There's a good chance that he has the right outlook. And… I'll take a look at the rest. See if the shape of their thoughts means something to me or the Ophidian."

He no-

"Oh, that is interesting."

-ds.

Dox turns around, something that thinks it's a smile on his lips. "Already? I thought we might study it to-." Georgia looks up. "Together."

"Naturally, I can't study precisely how it interacts with power ring generated constructs without knowing more about how constructs are formed, but I can tell what this device does easily enough. And, um. For our first joint project. It's-. It's a bit simple."

"Do the Int characters want to explain it to the Wis character?"

"It disrupts the physical manifestation of the construct. The 'draining' part only occurs after the construct has already destabilised, though the switch from one condition to the other is extremely quick. The only thing I can't determine is where the energy is going, but I'm-" She flashes Dox a smile. "-sure we can quickly work that out with a little experimentation."

..

No.

No. No, fuck off. I know that technology.

I spent two months watching that blasted mortician before it occurred to me that there might be more than one man named 'William Hand'.

"Did you ever study William Hand's work? His power beam?"

"Junior and I once made a game of writing total nonsense into his memory book to see if we could get him to actually do it. I think I remember reading about his 'power beam', but I never really thought anything about it. It shouldn't be that hard to steal an example of his work."

"No, I can get one legally."

"Where's the fun in that?"

"The security probably wouldn't challenge you and the analysis will be more interesting?"

"I… Suppose."

"Georgia, this is a serious problem. If-."

Dox nods. "You think that the Free Lancers acquired the technology on Earth. Which means that they may have a full catalogue of Earth's exotic technologies to sell and certainly have the location of Earth. I had already assigned a Darkstar team to track them, but I'll increase the priority of the mission."

I nod. "Thank you. Any ideas on counter-strategies?"

"Your use of physical obstacles was… Simplistic, but effective. I would coat my constructs in a malleable but resilient substance instead. Once the Reach begin deploying them on their ships we will have to retrain the Corps in the technique."

Georgia frowns. "Once I've perfected my understanding of the technology, it should be perfectly possible for m-. Us to find a way to disrupt the mechanism it uses. I suppose that in combat it would be one more thing to think about. Perhaps you could try putting Lanterns on ships and leaving them there, to allow them to focus on exotic effects while their colleagues fight?"

I bow my head.

"I'll leave you to talk about it between yourselves. If you'll excuse me, Clarissi?"

Dox nods, already turning to the device Georgia has partially disassembled. I

step out

and appear a little way outside of Kalmin's workshop.

"Illustres to Kalmin."

His head appears over my ring at once.

"Illustres. I understand that we have negotiations to perform regarding a duel."

I nod.

"Indeed we do."

 

[Mr Zoat]

26th August 2012
11:02 GMT +1

Illusion ward in place and Mortalla on my arm, I amble in the direction of the easel where Kanto is giving a small cluster of students a demonstration in Renaissance-era painting. Nearby, Claudia is doing something similar with stitching, a circle of embroidered cloth on her knee as she points something out to a student of historical handicraft.

It's nice that they've found such a peaceful place to fit in. I'm honestly not sure how Kanto is channelling his godly nature into teaching art of all things, but more power to him. I wonder if this is the first actual peace he's had since… Ever? I mean, he went from Granny Goodness's school to working for Cesare Borgia to working for Darkseid. That's not exactly a life that leaves much time for… Painting.

Kanto spotted us the moment I opened the hush tube, but it's Claudia who reacts first, putting her swatch aside and rising to greet us with a curtsey. Mortalla returns the gesture while I bow politely. I've only spoken to her a few times, but she's impressed me with just how well she's managing to function five hundred years out of time.

"Lord Grayven."

"Lady Borgia. I don't believe that you've met my mother, Lady Mortalla."

Which would normally get a few odd looks, due to my preferred illusion being that of a large dark-skinned man while her skin is ivory white.

"A pleasure to meet you, my lady."

"Oh, please. 'Mortalla' is fine. And how are things with you?"

And I smile inwardly as Mortalla takes conversational initiative in my presence without being prompted. I've still only got the vaguest glimmerings of how I'm going to deal with Darkseid and it's quite possible that he could 'request' her return tomorrow… But I've done good work there.

"The Naples of this age is a marvel, and my husband's decision to tell people that we are travellers in time has led to people being remarkably kind about mistakes in my mannerisms. The people of my own age would be far less kind." She turns her attention to me. "But I doubt that you are here to ask after my health."

"No. And I'm sorry. But I'm here to ask your husband to take up the tools of his former profession on my behalf."

"I'm a little surprised that it took you this long. Skills such as his are often sought by great lords." She smiles very faintly. "Do you intend to offer him the same reward as his last master?"

I frown. "I didn't think my father gave him anything other than his name."

"I was referring to my brother, though I will confess that him having more than one name may be convenient in some regards. Iluthin di Milano sounds strange to modern ears."

"Ah. I don't know if I have a sister… That's not the sort of question a man with three brothers by different mothers feels comfortable asking his father, though it wouldn't surprise me."

She regards me with mock offence.

"My girlfriend has a sister who's single, but she's got a face like a horse. You're definitely the superior choice."

"And I don't intend to share, whether you do or not!" She pauses a moment. "Do you require his services immediately?"

"No, no. And I'm sorry if we've come at a bad time."

"You may wish to acquaint yourself with the modern device called the telephone."

I shake my head. "No. Too impersonal, for something like this. Please ask him to call upon me once the school day has ended. You are welcome as well, of course, but we'll be talking business."

"After what happened the first time my husband's business followed him home, I think it best that I keep myself apprised. And I am curious to see your keep."

I nod.

"Then we will see you later. Good day."

26th August 2012
07:11 GMT -5

Artemis exhales heavily when she sees me.

"Grayven, what's going on?"

"Another version of me is bringing his fleet to Vega to kill me and take everything I've built."

She glares.

"How long have you known?"

"A few days. I had to get things ready in Vega-."

"I've-. Felt it you ass! The constant feeling that I'm supposed to be getting ready for something!" She steps up to me and pokes me in the chest. "And you went to Kanto first!"

"He's an art teacher now. He's going to need a while to get ready if he even wants to get involved. And… You're a superhero."

"Yeah, 'cause Earth has civilisation. Vega barely does. How much weaker would you be without me?"

It's actually a little difficult to tell precisely. We are attuned to one another, and can fight like we're one person in two bodies. But how much that actually… Weakens me is a matter of some debate. Most Apokoliptians pooh-pooh the idea, unwilling to add the very definite vector of vulnerability that trusting someone that much creates. And the vector for attack. But having seen… What we did… I know the truth of the matter in my soul.

"Noticeably."

"Which is why you're going to take Lynne." She looks thoughtful. "That's… Yeah. Even if he kills you he can't leave her, because she's part of you as well. She's not any safer on Earth, and she's powerful enough-." She frowns. "We're taking a kid into a war zone."

"Or the war zone comes to her. Frankly, I'm under no illusion that the other Grayven doesn't know about Earth-."

"Because of all the New Gods. Even if he didn't know about you until the Citadelians-." A deeper frown. "That long?"

"I thought he might ignore me. For a while, anyway. Without an established realm he shouldn't be as strong as me."

"Except you've been spending all your time on Earth and he's going to Vega."

"Yeah. Because Vega can take it. Earth can't."

"But you're stronger the more you invest in a place."

I shrug.

"If there was a perfect solution…"

"What's the other you got?"

"An old Apokoliptian dreadnaught and quite a lot of upgraded Gordanian ships. Beyond that, I don't know."

"Then I need to go and take a look." Huntress Seeks Her Prey.

"You do. Which means that you need your own Mother Box."

"How do I get one of those?"

"We go and see Himon, and hope that his son-in-law hasn't spoken to him yet. I think he'll like you rather better than me."

"You're not actually an easy guy to like." She sighs. "What else have we got?"

"Ships, a Lantern Corps and that Kryptonian ship the team were trying to spy on when Lex dug it out of Texas."

…

"I'm gunna need a little more on that last one."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Medidiction

26th August 2012
15:15 GMT

"Hierarch-Illustres!"

I glance down, spotting the female humanoid with the hover camera waving at me. With most of their fleet away picketing a spherical warship with a total mass about seventy times that of said fleet, I felt that spending a little time on the planet might be advisable. A couple of the Lanterns I want to take to Karax with me can't be spared right this moment, and Thaddeus's duel isn't until tomorrow.

"Citizen-Journalist. What can I do for you?"

Carran social hierarchy is a curious thing. It reminds me a little of the turians in mass effect, only rather than being promoted by their superiors they're promoted by their peers. And it's all roles; this woman is a street life reporter who almost certainly encountered me by chance-

Though I give her and her equipment a scan anyway, because I'm not stupid. No, just what it looks like.

-and I actually prefer to do interviews like this rather than something staged. Dox likes controlling the message-

He likes it a lot, actually.

-and while a certain degree of consistency is useful you don't have to be super media savvy to recognise a line when you're being fed it. Something a little more genuine from the Illustres-right-brain side of the partnership should help our credibility with people whose suspicions… While unwarranted in our case, certainly aren't foolish.

"I just wanted to say how completely amazing it was how you disabled that entire ship in a few moments and tried to keep the Inert-Crew alive!"

Or… Maybe a roving reporter just… Isn't going to test me on a planet that already loves N.E.M.O. and hates and fears the Reach, and is genuinely completely happy to accept the party line.

I land and stand at ease.

"As I said to the Hierarch-Admiral, I'm here to fix the universe." I shrug. "As much as I can."

"That's wonderful!"

Oh. I smile and try to make it obvious that I'm trying to be self-depreciating, but I think I've misjudged the audience for that.

"Are we going to be attacked again?"

"We have no information that suggests an attack is imminent, but… As we keep saying, it's going to be a long war. I'd be surprised if your world wasn't in the firing line at least once or twice more before it ends."

"And why are you here now?"

"I thought I'd take a look at the new space docks and industrial sectors. I haven't had the opportunity to speak to the Lanterns involved yet, and I would be remiss in my responsibilities if I didn't look things over."

Because it's generally fairly obvious when a combat-focused Lantern is having a little episode, but when construction or education focused Lanterns start going off the rails it's sometimes not. But we need worlds like this in full production as quickly as possible, so we give power rings to people with a burning desire to learn and then tell them to get on with it. The psychologists follow with the L.E.G.I.O.N. engineering team, but we don't always know enough about the species involved to judge things precisely.

"And to reassure people. I can well appreciate that seeing a ship that size can be a little disturbing."

"I was terrified."

Something else about their culture: the carrans don't censor information releases. At all. Their logic is that someone who isn't fully apprised of the facts can't make educated decisions, so the moment the attacking ship was seen nearly everyone knew about it. And.. the response was fairly rational. Some panicking, no rioting and as far as I've been able to tell the population is still four-square behind the war effort.

"Well, on current timelines your planet should have its own L.E.G.I.O.N.-grade security fleet inside four months, so hopefully you won't need me to make a personal appearance."

"Were you involved in other fighting?"

"Yes. I destroyed one fleet and.. half of another before I arrived here. After that it was more a matter of supporting L.E.G.I.O.N. ships and other Orange Lanterns."

She frowns. "What happened to the other half?"

"They retreated further back into Reach space. Our science people are working on better counters for their guns, so next time I should be able to do a little better."

"When are the recordings going to be released?"

A fairly natural request from a carran. And… Honestly, given the effort that we've made to keep Reach infiltrators out of N.E.M.O. territory, not as much of a risk as it would be to, say, broadcast an equivalent recording on Earth about another earthly enemy. The Reach would need to have a monitoring device in the local data networks with a faster than light communicator, and the Darkstar counter-insurgency teams have been looking for things like that very thoroughly. Without that, even if there is a concealed infiltrator on the planet there's no way for them to tell their domitors. And given that the ships were Reach-controlled, it's unlikely that they don't already have complete recordings of the entire fight.

But it's usually not the technologies you know about that give you trouble.

"Not anytime soon. We're concerned that the Reach might be watching our transmissions to learn what we know about them, and we want their picture to be as inaccurate as possible. When it gets to the point where they can't gain any useful information from it, then we'll release them."

She frowns, because that's very much against her culture. But it looks like a combination of my rank -which implies that I know what I'm talking about- and the fact that she's dealing with an alien and aliens are weird, means that she's prepared to accept it for the moment. Though I suspect that her idea of 'soon' and Dox's are rather different.

"Will you be fighting the Reach again today?"

"No, not today. Today I've got to oversee a-" Duel. "-sparring session between two of our technologists, and then I'm working on improving our Orange Lantern training program."

She nods.

"To reduce their level of mental instability."

And she's fine with that, because… Senior officers don't generally achieve their ranks because they're better fighters than everyone else. They achieve their ranks because they're better at organising and planning. So the fact that I'm actually doing some organising isn't anything like as strange as, say, Kal-El announcing in the middle of the Sheeda invasion that he was taking time off from punching to do some accounting spreadsheets.

"Stability yes, but you have to understand… Power rings are empathic tools. Someone who learns to use them to the highest standards possible isn't going to be like the person they were at the start. It's more about how to manage the transition to avoid the negative potential consequences. Have you had a chance to read my book?"

"Only a summary."

"It explains my transformation fairly well. I have abilities that other Orange Lanterns don't, and this is… probably the only time in the war when it's going to be practical for me to experiment with helping other Lanterns to replicate what I can do."

"Have you selected any of our Lanterns for training?"

"That's part of why I'm here; I want to see if any of them are close to making the transformation that I did. However, they shouldn't be disheartened if the answer is 'no'. This is a new area of study, and… Well, much like how N.E.M.O. is focusing on developing worlds who are nearly advanced enough to fully participate in the war, I'm going to be focusing on Lanterns who have something close to my mental state to start with. Improvements to our training processes will later become available to all Lanterns."

She nods.

"Why are you needed to oversee a sparring session?"

…

"Why indeed."

 

[Mr Zoat]

26th August 2012
17:28 GMT

I suppose that 'because they'll kill each other if I don't' is the obvious answer.

Thaddeus appears to have rebuilt and improved the mechanical frame he wore to get-.

Ah.

"Thaddeus, you haven't actually found a way to access the Honden of Avarice without me, have you?"

"Hm…" He squirms into position. "Accessing arcane realms is relatively simple, but interacting with them in a useful fashion is complicated. I can not do what you do and go there whenever I feel like, and the inertia of people's desires means that it is actually quite-" He checks the range of movement, rotating the right arm in a circle. "-difficult to change it. And the Ophidian would not like it one bit."

"Please don't."

"I am.. more interested…" His frame bunny hops up and down, a cyan… Fizzing effect appearing around the wrists and ankles. "In exotic energy and mechanics than I am in arcane physics..." He wobbles the frame back and forth, nodding as it automatically adjusts to remain upright. "Anyway."

"Have you ever been in a fight before?"

"Yes? Of course I have." The frame begins walking out of the preparation area and towards the arena. "I mean, not a formal duel like this, but the-. The encounter that led to this, that was fighting."

"Right, yes, but if I remember the Justice League files correctly, don't you usually make sure that you have the drop on your target, shoot first from concealment and avoid getting into combat personally?"

"Yes, I do know that I'm not as physically imposing as Magni. But I have engaged in fisticuffs with Lieutenant Marvel."

I frown. "Really?"

"Well. Nearly. He was punching the force field, and I was-. The point is, I'm no stranger to working in close physical proximity to violence."

"Have you ever been injured?"

"A few bruises, a few scrapes."

"No serious injuries?"

"Paul, look at me. There's not that much of me to injure. When we fight the Marvels, if the force fields go down then it is time to throw in the towel. Qwardians like Daciya aren't anything like as strong as that, but if it somehow comes down to a contest of strength then I have still lost."

"Alright, but you need to be aware that she's had a lot more physical conditioning than you have."

"All time wasted." We walk out of the entrance and start out across the arena floor. "Physical effort is constantly being supplanted by machinery in every field of endeavour. If she was serious about being a Weaponer, she should have realised that her time was better spent improving her weapons."

He pulls a lever and his frame's right arm swings in a gesture of dismissal.

"That sort of foolishness is why they assigned her to be a test subject."

Approaching from the other side I see Kalmin walking… I don't think that he and Daciya are actually walking together so much as walking in the same direction from the same place. Daciya's augmented her dull brown armour with additional plates and.. some sort of bracer-mounted assemblage connected to the armour's back. I suspect that her armour isn't made for taking direct hits so much as blocking shrapnel or the radiation emitted by her own weapons, but I suppose that I shouldn't assume where an Apprentice Weaponer is concerned.

"Huh. Her armour's interfering with my scans."

"Yes?"

"That's actually somewhat-. Oh, no, there we go."

Daciya skips a half-step and her armour shimmers slightly.

"And there we go again."

"Worried?"

"I have no objection to working for my successes. Though that may well make it a little harder to leave her alive. I assume that you would prefer that?"

"Ideally. Don't risk yourself."

"Of course not."

We come to a halt in the middle of the arena, slightly ahead of the Qwardian duo. They approach at a steady rate, stopping five metres away.

"Weaponer Kalmin. Is your student ready?"

"She is. Is the boy ready?"

"Always hard to be sure ahead of time, but he thinks so."

Thaddeus looks at me.

"What are you doing?"

"You're here at my invitation. Daciya's here at Kalmin's. Kalmin and I negotiated how this was going to work while you were preparing."

"What do you mean, 'how it's going to work'?"

"Did you think we were in the business of letting people challenge each other to fights to the death? If you want to fight here, you will follow the rules we lay down."

"Why are you bringing this up now?"

"Because I didn't want to give you time to argue. So: the format."

"What's wrong with just fighting?"

"Because it turns the whole thing into rock-paper-scissors. Neither of you have seen each other's best work. So either one of you has an advantage and wins, or you're both vulnerable to each other and both die. And that's boring."

Kalmin shakes his helmeted head. "He actually suggested turning the arena into a junk yard and forcing you to build from what you could salvage."

"That could have been interesting. But what did you agree to on my behalf?"

"Nine rounds of five minutes each, with ten minutes between them to repair or modify your equipment. Rounds are fought to time, until one party concedes or until Kalmin or I call it. The victor is the first to win five rounds, or the one who incapacitates their opponent. When we call a round, you will stop or we will stop you. You will not like it if we have to stop you."

It looks like Kalmin briefed Daciya, but she doesn't look entirely sanguine.

"What happens when I kill him?"

"As if."

"Them's the breaks. Deliberately killing an incapacitated opponent will result in our displeasure, but if they happen to die… That's just what happens sometimes."

Kalmin nods. "This is intended to be a learning exercise. I'd like it if you both left with a few scars, but it's most important that you both learn something."

"Oh, fine." Thaddeus raises his frame's arms into a boxer's pose. "I'll go easy on her. When do we begin?"

I nod to Kalmin, and we rise into the air and head back towards our respective entrances. Engaging arena force fields…

"Go on three. One, two,-"

 

[Mr Zoat]

26th August 2012
17:32 GMT

"-thre-"

Thaddeus leaps back as Daciya throws her arms forward, qwa-matter forming in front for a fraction of a second before detonating, her force fields channelling the destructive output at her enemy!

"-e."

From what I can see of Kalmin's expression he's not exactly impressed with such a beginner level application of his god's gift. Logically, I can see the utility. There are species that feed matter into singularities in order to use the x-rays it generates as a power source, where I use singularities as a weapon.

Daciya is sliding sideways on some sort of force field roller skate and firing another shot at Thaddeus while he's still in mid-air. He spots it-. He's snorting as he presses a button and teleports half-way across the arena before it can hit, the shot carrying on and striking the shield protecting the stands. One of the Lanterns on the far side suffers from a control lapse and shields their part of the stands as the incandescent plasma splashes and causes the arena's barrier to flare. No, you Muppet, they're easily strong enough to take it.

Thaddeus thumps his frame's hands into the ground with an odd snapping sound. A moment later a chunk of the arena floor has turned to dust, and as Thaddeus raises his arms the crackling dust cloud billows forward!

"Hn."

I glance at Kalmin. "Interested?"

Cables twitch along Daciya's forearms as she reconfigures her tools while retreating in an arc away from the electrified plume.

"Ionised dust is commonplace."

A thin conductive staff flashes into being in her hands and she throws it into the cloud without turning.

"The magnetic steering mechanism is of mild-"

The staff pierces the cloud, a flash of light radiating out as it tries turning the miniature electrical strikes it's suffering into a magnetic field strong enough to disperse the cloud. Some dust falls away, but Thaddeus gestures and the greater mass of the cloud rises up over it or slips to flow around it.

"-interest. The disintegration mechanism-"

Daciya flash-forges a series of balls and tosses them back into the cloud. They do something similar to the staff, rapidly glowing red hot as they generate a strong enough magnetic-

"-is more-"

-field to push the dust away but they're still-

"-interesting."

-glowing and they explode, dust changing to a.. low temperature plasma and surging back towards Thaddeus, who brings his frame's arms together in a block. The cyan fizzing intensifies slightly as the plasma washes over him. Daciya takes the opportunity to reconfigure her bracers again and waves-.

She vanishes from view, though I can still see her as she's still feeling avarice. Her involvement in this fight is as much a result of her need to win as any anger she's feeling at Thaddeus.

"Disappointing."

Thaddeus has his frame jog towards Daciya's last visible location, coils of electrified cabling lashing out-

Daciya reappears, forearms glowing while the rest of her body is-. She's absorbing light and focusing it. That seems inefficient, but-.

The laser beam lances out and touches Thaddeus's shield, which switches to two dimensions, twists, and fires it back. Daciya's light absorption field takes it along with the ambient light and fires it back, triggering Thaddeus's shield…

Which deals with the attack faster this time, the beam of light flickering back and forth between them, visible per instance only because the angle is slightly different each time. I don't know if Thaddeus's defence can run out of power, but I doubt that it would fail against a laser this quickly.

"Ooh, a laser! I have never seen that before."

Daciya changes her angle slightly as Thaddeus stomps around to face her, using the projector on her right arm to maintain the assault.

"What next, a sharp stick?"

Her left arm fires a volley of weaker shots across Thaddeus's frontage, because perhaps he can only block one attack at a time? Looks like 'no'. Several shots go unblocked as they pass through the gaps in the frame, but the ones which would have hit the frame trigger the same response as the going 'main' attack.

Okay, it's not working, where's she going with-?

She clenches her fists and light erupts from Thaddeus's shield-. No, the shield's gone and he's awkwardly staggering backward and Daciya's still in light absorption mode so she's unaffected. A qwa-matter-decay-generated plasma bolt hits his cyan dust and disperses it, and Thaddeus-.

Teleports across the arena, some sort of-. That's a purple healing ray, deploying and giving him a quick shot in the eyes before folding away.

"You broke my shield."

Destroyed the device emitting it too, I notice.

"You might actually have a reasonable intellect after all."

He extends his frame's hands and the top centimetre of the area floor explodes upwards into dust! Daciya fires another laser shot but Thaddeus's cyan cloud effect manages to absorb it as electricity surges through the dust now covering the arena floor!

Daciya shudders, then darts off the ground into the air, her armour regaining its usual colour as her bracers reconfigure again. Thaddeus moves his frame's arms and sends the dust after her, but this time the electrical discharges are more obvious. Daciya responds by changing her direction of travel, heading for the inner surface of the arena's shield with her bracers acting as additional thrusters.

I suppose that if he can only control a finite volume like that, it should be perfectly possible for her to keep away as long as she moves faster than the cloud does. And I don't think that Thaddeus can make the electricity jump to her because her armour's insulated and there's nowhere for it to jump to.

"How are you scoring this?"

I glance at Kalmin with a surprised frown.

"You're asking me?"

Daciya lurches in the air as her right arm is knocked out of alignment. She recovers, then it happens again-.

Ooh.

Thaddeus is using the electrified dust as a coil gun, the rest of the cloud concealing it from visual and electromagnetic detection. Streams of dust are evacuated at speed-

Daciya takes a hit to the chest and slams into the perimeter wall.

-and shoot at the target. Okay, I understand the physics of the coil gun, but how the heck is he aiming?

"Yes."

Most of the rest of the dust cloud falls to the ground as Thaddeus focuses on his gun. I hear the cracks as supersonic grains of dust hit Daciya, her force field active and keeping her safe but she appears unable to retaliate.

"I'm on the verge of calling-"

Thaddeus teleports and his cloud undoes her shield-.

"-this Cease!"

Thaddeus teleports away, smiling smugly, while Daciya glares at me for a moment before running for her workshop.

"Ten minutes. Make the most of it."

 

[Mr Zoat]

26th August 2012
18:14 GMT

Daciya waves away the arena's medics, preferring to hobble back towards her workshop-

"Daciya!" Thaddeus smiles arrogantly as purple light plays over the ripped flesh of his right arm. "Would you like to borrow my healing device? Just my little way of thanking you for being a good sport."

-under her own power. Thaddeus's frame has seen better days, but there's no real doubt as to who the winner was.

Kalmin considers the scene.

"I'm sure there is some reason why you and he are letting her live. Explain it."

"On Earth, there's a television series called Dragonball Z. One of the characters by the name of Vegeta was born with the second greatest amount of raw spiritual power of any member of his species, second only to his father. For years he coasted on that, and then he ran into a chap called Goku. Goku started weak, but worked extremely hard to get stronger. When they fought, Goku won. It was close, but it was a definite win. That lit a fire under Vegeta to copy Goku's work ethic. For the rest of their lives the constant presence of Goku made Vegeta obsessed with getting stronger, with always improving himself."

"I just apply electrodes. I find pain and the threat of death to be efficacious motivational tools."

I shake my head.

"You're a Weaponer at the height of his powers. Thaddeus is roughly her age. He's had better equipment for most of his career, but she's clearly more physically able and… Qward is far more advanced than Earth."

"You think that she will focus her efforts on besting him." He nods. "If he were q'ardajin I would approve. As it is, I suppose it could be a useful data point."

"Besides, they weren't, were they? Efficacious, I mean. That's why you're bothering to teach the remedial students."

"Actually, I'm teaching them because the system was too corrupt for me to have any confidence in their designation. Though I do want to be clear: you are not planning on… Breeding them, as you are with the human female and the Coluan, are you?"

"That was more a case of taking advantage of their instincts to encourage them to act in a more useful fashion. Dox's father made him paranoid and untrusting. For him, that was useful because it reduced the chance that Dox would try and escape his laboratory. For me, it makes it harder for him to work with the rest of N.E.M.O. and that's not helpful."

"What do you intend for the male human to get out of this 'rivalry'?"

"Hopefully, Daciya wins the next one and he gets the same encouragement she just received. Failing that, he gains confidence in his interactions with people and becomes a little more social."

BOOM!

I look around as Georgia walks through the portal in the middle of the arena, her brother taking a moment to strike a pose.

"Congratulate me, Georgia. I am triumphant."

"Is that really important?"

"Is field testing important?! What do you think we've been doing since we left school?!"

Inwardly, I sigh.

"I'm sure that Daciya will want a rematch, but make sure that she's got something new to bring to the table."

Kalmin glowers through his helmet's eyeslits.

"Do not presume to give me orders."

"I wasn't trying to give you an order; I was giving you advice on the assumption that our goal here is the same." He appears to be willing to let that go. "How will you handle Daciya?"

"Handle? This is a test for her as much as any practical examination. If this duel had taken place on Qward she would be dead now. We shall see if the effect on her is what you desired."

I nod, and-. Ah, good, he's here. "Excuse me."

Kalmin turns and trudges towards the closest exit, while I fly into the stands and land close to Lantern Onik. And a few of his associates.

"Lantern Onik, a moment of your time."

He takes a moment to check that I'm actually talking to him, then cautiously approaches me.

"Yes, Great Master?"

"I'm heading to Karax soon, and it would be helpful to me if you'd come along to show me around. Clarissi Dox has informed me that he doesn't need you for anything. Do you have any of your own business you need to take care of? Or is there some reason why you can't go home?"

"No, Great.. Master. I… Can go home."

"Any reason why you might not want to go home?"

"It-. I…" He takes a moment to collect himself. "Source worshippers are a minority on Karax, and… Compared to other Source-worshipping religions, my… The monastery where I studied, our practice was far closer to Lanternism than other Source-focused faiths."

"Have you made yourself an apostate?"

"I… No. For anyone from Karax, we all see taking up a ring as a great honour. And I do regard the Source as the ultimate origin of the universe and all order within it. But while what I am doing here is in theory perfectly within the tenets of our religion, this is the first time this particular thing has happened to one of us. I am an irregularity."

"Do you object to coming back?"

"No. Now that I have a better understanding of how the emotional spectrum actually works and the place of the orange light in it, it is far easier for me to justify my decision." He smiles faintly. "When Clarissi Dox first offered me a ring, accepting it was… Something of a leap of faith."

"I can imagine."

"I… Have been reassured by your policy of collegiality. Ah. If that helps."

"In what way?"

He removes a… Paper copy of my book from a pouch, and opens it to a page about two thirds of the way through.

"'No one part of the whole is complete by itself.' You wrote that about the colours of the spectrum. Before you, I didn't even know what the other colours were. My denomination believes that the green light is a manifestation of the Source, but… We also believe that there must be others. And now we know that there are!"

"That's not exactly… I mean, you're making a bit of a leap between healthy psychology and a significantly distinct part of the Source."

"My last leap went well."

"Right, but…" Oh. I didn't actually put much in there about Apokolips or New Genesis, and the New Gods in general. And I think we're still keeping the white light under wraps. "Well, we'll have plenty of time to discuss this on the journey. Please make whatever preparations you need to be away from Maltus for an indefinite period of time."

He bows.

"At once, Great Master."

He steps back and then flies from the arena at considerable speed. I raise my right hand to my forehead

and

 

[Mr Zoat]

26th August 2012
18:27 GMT

step out and…

Back, appearing just behind Lantern Dul and blocking her immediate plasma shot with a construct barrier…

Training arena, combat ro-

I activate my armour's phasing system and fly over to the observer area as she cleaves a flying.. skeleton robot with her axe.

-bots, probably using Nth metal so could in theory be a threat. I phase back in surrounded by armed Thanagarian soldiers, and… I think that one's a Raven, the Double Oh agents of the Thanagarian government.

"Good evening, everyone."

Hands don't drift towards weapons, because being Thanagarian they never left them. But they're not pointing them at me any more than they were anyway.

"Illustres!" A Thanagarian with the Arena Master's insignia nods at me. "You can join in the session if you want, but we generally call it rude if you jump in without the permission of whoever actually booked the session."

"Yeah, sorry."

"No need to apologise to me. Your problem if you get hit, by the robots or by Paran Dul. Just remember that we don't know much about human medicine, so don't come crying to me if your arm gets stuck back on in the wrong place!"

"An entirely reasonable point. Is she-"

Lantern Dul shoulder-charges a robot, hitting it and using it to soak shots from a nearby turret, casting it aside once she's within axe range.

"-likely to be long?"

"Shouldn't think so. It's a standard course. Mostly I think she's just doing this because it's the only time she can fly with her own wings."

"It is?"

He wing-shrugs. "She's the only Lantern Thanagar's had in a long time. We've got plenty of soldiers who can do-" He points to where Lantern Dul is swooping in and cutting the legs off a large spider-like robot. "-that, but no others with power rings. So the High Council want her to be as good as she can possibly be."

"That's nice? But I don't think that the High Council understand how motivating Orange Lanterns works."

"What makes you say that? They get all the intelligence reports. I'm just the schmoe who's going to have to rebuild all of this-"

The large robot fails to draw a bead on Lantern Dul as she swoops hither and thither before finally slashing into its main torso with her axe.

"-once she's finished. Hey Dul! It's meant to be a speed and agility test!"

Lantern Dul flies over a line and there's a beep, the few surviving automata going inactive.

"Seemed pretty fast to me, Deruoh!"

She looks up, making eye contact with me. I smile and wave my right hand at her. She doesn't smile back, but pulls her power ring out of a pouch and puts it on before flying up to us.

"Illustres."

"Lantern Dul. Are you busy?"

"What's left of the Seven Devil Cults are in prison or in hiding. If you have orders for me, there's nothing holding me here."

I frown. "That's a sad thing to say about your homeworld."

"I mean in terms of my work for the Corps."

"Okay. In that case your new orders are to accompany me to Karax. I've selected you to take part in an experiment in Lantern training."

"What sort of experiment?"

"The Clarissi and I have decided that it's a good time to see if I can teach other Lanterns to do what I do, and you're one of the three I've selected for the first class. So we're off to Karax, and given that it's quite a bit further from Thanagar than from Maltus, I'll be conveying you myself."

"Karax. Why?"

"I'm pretty good with my ring, but I don't actually have a lot of experience as a teacher. Karax-."

Her eyes flicker with orange light as her ring feeds her the information. "They worship Green Lanterns."

"And keep records on them. I'm hoping we'll all learn something."

"I can be ready within an hour. Who else is coming?"

"Lantern Onik has already agreed to come, since that's his homeworld and he already has the right mindset. I'm also going to ask Lantern Xor… I don't think you've met him? He's huge and grey with orange hair. He's from this region of space, so I can nip over and pick him up while you're preparing."

"How close?"

"He's from the Alignment, so…"

I generate a construct map, rotating it along all three axes to give a better idea of the relative location in three dimensional space. Thanagarians are generally much better at picturing three dimensional space than humans, and two dimensional images aren't useful when showing distance in space.

"About that far. Have you heard of them?"

"I haven't, but they're close enough that our government will have. Is there anything about him that I need to know?"

"Very strict sense of honour. No double-dealing, no covert activity without specific authorisation from me, do not start any fights and if you do get in a fight, avoid causing collateral damage."

Her eyes narrow slightly. "Who do you think you're talking to?"

"Someone who doesn't want to be reduced to pâté by an enraged supersoldier?" I shrug. "I have a fairly laissez-faire command style, and I feel that's fair warning."

"It wasn't necessary."

"As you will." I raise my right hand to my forehead. "I will leave you to your preparations."

I

step out, reappearing

in the Warhound training area… There he is.

Lantern Xor is momentarily distracted by my arrival, taking a solid punch to the forearm guard before returning his full attention to his opponent.

"When you're finished, Lantern Xor."

"I can fight-"

His right fist hits his opponent's guard hard enough to make them stagger back a step.

"-and talk-"

His left hits under their guard and his right hits their exposed leg.

"-at the same time."

"I'm going on a field trip. Are you avail-"

His opponent attempts a hammer blow but in raising their arms they reveal their face, an opening Xor is happy to take advantage of.

"-able."

His opponent staggers back, then falls to the ground outside of the ring. Xor watches for a moment as their colleagues help the man up, then turns to face me.

"Yes. I am."

 

[Mr Zoat]

26th August 2012
19:15 GMT

Lantern Dul meets us in mid-air over the Thanagarian capital, eyeing Lantern Xor like a…

I'm mildly disappointed with myself.

Like 'a hawk scanning a field', while Xor regards her fairly impassively for a moment before returning his attention to the Thanaldar cityscape.

"Why do the buildings fly?"

"Nth metal. We use it to control mass and gravity."

"No. Not 'how'. 'Why'? Why do you make them fly? Your world has much space. You do not stack buildings because you need to. So why do you make them fly?"

"Status. We like flying. Unlike all the other species in our empire thanagarians can fly. Nth metal is a part of our bodies, so why shouldn't it be part of our buildings?"

"Because it is profligate and unnecessary. Because it adds structural vulnerability. Because it takes a scarce resource and wastes it."

"Do your people live in plain fortified bunkers?"

"No. But only the tallest buildings use systems to stabilise themselves, and none can fly." Xor frowns. "And our population is much greater than yours." His eyes glow. "And you have a city under your city."

"Poor people and aliens have to live somewhere. Where do your people put them?"

"In smaller towns, in the outskirts. In larger cities, in large habitation blocks. The poorest live in the tallest, windiest parts, furthest from the ground."

Her eyes narrow further. "Heights are a lot less scary when you have wings. Though if you want to send us labourers, I'm sure we can find room for them somewhere suitably low."

I smile brightly at them. "Ready to go, or would you like to continue this exercise in comparative anthropology?"

Xor takes a last look before rotating towards me, deliberately choosing to avoid looking at the city.

"I am ready. I do not think that there is much to learn here."

"Which of our species is more advanced? Which controls a larger area of space?"

This time I glare at her.

"Lantern Dul?"

"I am ready to depart. Sir."

I project orange light around us and begin warping space, sending us flying faster and faster away from-. Yes, now invisible to the naked eye Thanagar and in the direction of Karax.

"We'll meet Lantern Onik closer to our destination. In the meantime, we may as well have a lesson." I frown. "Though Lantern Dul, how did things go with the Seven Devil cultists?"

"Eliminated. Between me, the fleet and the Ravens, we scoured everywhere they could hide and every citizen who had contact with them."

"Meet any other Exalted Ones, or anything like that?"

"Nothing on that level. Some manhawks and a few other abominations. Easily dealt with."

"Good, good. And their records?"

"Secured."

"I'd like a little more than that, Lantern Dul. I don't need the access codes myself, but the Seven Devils coming back is extremely bad."

"Only researchers with a long history of loyalty are allowed closely monitored access, and they will be watched constantly for the rest of their lives. The High Council has accepted the broad truth of Sharon Parker's account of that part of our history. We have excellent reasons to be careful."

"The reason I ask is that -as an empath- I'm perfectly aware of how eager certain officials in the Thanagarian Empire's government are to learn what the cults know about Nth metal fabrication."

She doesn't twitch, but she does go slightly still.

"Which isn't a problem for me right up until one of the Seven Devils manifests. I also know perfectly well that your first loyalty is to Thanagar. That isn't a problem for me either, so long as you remember that what serves them best isn't necessarily what they tell you to do."

I give her a hard look.

"But if we're agreed that the worst possible outcome is the Seven Devils returning to life, then there isn't any contradiction."

"No, Illustres. I agree."

I go back to smiling.

"Okay, good work then. Is there anything else in the Thanagarian Empire that requires your attention?"

"I have been trying to replicate your feat of creating Nth metal using your power ring."

"Any luck?"

She pulls her wings in slightly. "Not yet."

"You weren't trying to use your desire to serve the Thanagarian Empire to catalyse your construct, were you?"

"That is my strongest desire."

"No, no…" I shake my head. "That's not how it works. Orange is the colour of avarice. Lantern Xor, can you explain what she did wrong?"

"Altruism does not work, even if the desire is genuine. When I fight, I do so to affirm my nature. My desires. I am an honourable warrior. I will harm none who have not wronged me. I will leave no slight unavenged. I will repay my debts. I will speak no untruth. This is who I am. This is the proper code of the universe, and I will teach it to others in whatever way I must."

He regards her with… Disappointment.

"The Illustres helped me when no other would, so has earned my fealty. My nation is the Alignment, and they took me as a child and turned me into a mindlessly loyal living weapon. And when I understood that, I tore them down. You say you are loyal to a place, a time, as if their nature makes no difference. As if you would serve a liar as willingly as an honest person, merely for the… Fancy hat upon their head. Your devotion is empty of meaning, it-."

I hold up my right hand.

"Okay! Okay, thank you for your plain-spoken denunciation-" Lantern Dul looks a heartbeat from swinging her axe at him, and it's probably only the fact that her anger has shut her ring down that's stopping her. "-Lantern Xor, I'm sure that Lantern Dul will hear it in the spirit in which it was intended. Won't you, Lantern Dul?"

"I… I will try."

"You'll note that despite his obvious contempt for your personal philosophy, his environmental shield is still working. His philosophy is objectively superior when it comes to orange light manipulation. Or… Perhaps you're not being entirely honest regarding your own motivations? And perhaps this far from Thanagarian listening devices, you might like to talk about that."

 

[Mr Zoat]

26th August 2012
20:21 GMT

I frown as I look down at Emana, which appears to be on fire.

"I'm honestly a little surprised that they've got the resources for something like that."

Clarissi Vril Dox the Second twitches in a way which suggests that he'd quite like to grit his teeth.

"I have provided you with intelligence updates on all of the worlds of the Vega Systems, including an analysis of the likely results of your isolation edict."

Ah… I…

Dox has been responsible for overseeing… Everything, really, during my prolonged absences from Vega. The rebuilding project, actually running the Tamaran half of the Orange Lantern Corps, training the fleet… Except when I swing by and drop something new on his lap. I… Sort of assumed that he was enjoying the challenge, but I… Think that I've been being a bit… Neglectful.

It's not as if I didn't read any of them, but there are only so many hours in the day.

"Yes, and I read those relating to Tamaran, Euphorix, Karna and Rashashoon. I just didn't regard Emana as being my problem."

"It-."

Dox is biting something down. I don't.. really know if addressing it directly will actually help at this point, but… I've heard of this 'subtlety' thing, but I've never actually seen it.

"Did you..? Want it to be my problem?"

"If you had read the reports, you would know the answer to that."

"Dox, if I were a detail guy I wouldn't have broken you out of prison. Just give me the summary."

"Emana is a society controlled by networks of corporations. When you stripped the assets of some and not others, that created massive instability in their civilisation. The result of that massive shift in internal power is the war we're seeing."

I frown. "What about their government?"

"They didn't have one."

My frowns deepens. "Sounds like they were asking for trouble, then. Who ran their courts?"

"Whoever the local landowner was. The planet's supervisory council was permitted to exercise some power in adjudicating disputes between the various consortia, but they had very little power."

"'Had'?"

"They were targeted in the second round of fighting and no longer exist."

…

"Huh."

I don't really feel bad about that. They sided with the Citadel, and no one made them have a world war. Still, it is pretty wasteful. Plenty of advanced civilisations manage perfectly well with a single planet.

I look a little closer. "Some of those blasts look pretty big."

"They built weapons for the Citadel. With no market and no ships to mount them on, they turned them on one another."

"So long as they haven't launched unrestricted fusion bombardments-."

A rather large explosion appears on the southern continent.

Dox notices it as well. "A little ahead of the most probable timeline, but perfectly expected."

"What on-? They're-." Drat. "More of them are going to do that, aren't they?"

"Yes, but not immediately. That's an escalation, and the various groups have to decide whether to group together against the aggressor or follow suit and retaliate in kind."

"Why did it take this long?"

"Consortia aren't arranged geographically by alliance blocks. For the most part they were clustered by function, meaning that each one had its most bitter rivals as neighbours. They had to seize control of geographic locations before area bombardment made sense."

Makes sense, I suppose. If they're arranged by business rather than nation state…

"So… What are our chances of getting anything useful out of that mess?"

"Minimal."

I sigh softly as a series of smaller explosions pockmark the western continent.

"Could we actually use t-?"

"Yes. Most of our orbital infrastructure is theirs. Most of the people who worked it were still alive."

"I thought that letting the Tamaraneans have their independence and revenge was… Would be more useful in the medium term."

"Possibly."

I glance at him as he doesn't look at me.

"No, come on. You can be honest with me."

"It was a moronic waste of resources. This was a productive world. It would have been easier and more efficient to extort them than to seize infrastructure and ships as you did."

"There's more to life than efficiency. Though I'll admit, in our current situation, that would probably have been a better decision." I turn my attention back to the planet. "Can't help but notice that you didn't do anything about it either."

"You didn't order me to."

"If I'd wanted a Clarissi who did nothing beyond my orders, I would have hired a pocket calculator. You are allowed to exercise your own initiative where it doesn't directly contradict my orders. And if you think I'm doing something 'ill-advised', then you're free to tell me that." I frown curiously at him. "Honestly, a man of your intelligence, I'm a little surprised you can't model my behaviour well enough to predict that."

"I don't have enough data on magic or 'New Gods'. My models for you were always off."

"Okay, well, let's just chalk this one up to experience and…" I nod at the planet below us. "Work out what we're going to do about that."

Dox appears to consider for a moment.

"It's too late."

"That's a little ominous."

"Social order has broken down too much for standard contractual arrangements to be possible. There's no government, and the heads of the consortia won't negotiate in good faith. The more idealistic ones would sabotage us in revenge rather than try and network with us."

"Individual recruitment?"

"Not worth the time it would take to locate useful individuals."

That makes a depressing amount of sense.

"Okay. Anything else you've wanted to do but haven't because I haven't specifically authorised it?"

"Yes."

"Tell me the top three, and we'll go from there."

"I want to try and recreate the circumstances that led to the creation of X'Hal."

"Get volunteers and I'll approve it, though unless you've already made progress I'm going to say leave it until after we deal with my alter-ego."

"I want to study Qwardian technology."

"The Qwardians aren't alien-friendly. If you can talk a Weaponer into sharing, sure, otherwise it's not worth the aggravation."

"And I want to study New Gods."

I hesitate.

"That… Could be tricky."

 

[Mr Zoat]

26th August 2012
22:49 GMT

"…car journey, we'd compete to spot pubs and then score points based on the number of legs on the heraldry."

Lantern Xor nods, taking in this information fairly impassively. I suppose that he doesn't have anything to compare it to, his own childhood having been spent almost entirely in state orphanages or the Warhound training centre. Though… I know from my medical scans that he retains sexual function and virility, so perhaps he's storing it away for when he has children?

Lantern Onik on the other hand looks fascinated.

"Are all hostelries on your homeworld owned by the nobility?"

"No. In fact, very few are. It just became tradition at some point for public houses to identify themselves with a logo rather than call themselves by the owner's name or just plain 'pub'. How does Karax handle it?"

"Most businesses would use a word to identify what sort of business they were, and then put something more abstract after it."

"So, Pub Coach and Horses rather than The Coach and Horses."

He looks puzzled. "No, Great Master. Not unless it was on a coach behind the horses. More like: Pub Third Canto."

"And that would be a pub that had live music?"

He nods. "Usually. Or it might refer to the themes of a particular third canto. Green Lanterns tend to be direct and literal, and see those characteristics as virtues."

I nod. "So your people do as well. I suppose I hadn't fully appreciated-"

I end the warp and drop my three passengers back into normal space at the limit of Karax's home system.

"-what sort of changes that would bring about in the long term. So what's the best way to get in touch?"

"Oh,-" Lantern Onik shakes his head. "-no, Lanterns are free to fly directly to the planet."

"Am I supposed to announce myself?"

"Not to the government, though it would be a good idea to keep the population informed."

"So I should hold a press conference or give an interview?"

"You could, but on Karax we have something called 'social media', wherein individuals broadcast information to the public at large-."

"Yes, I know what social media is. I just don't think it's anything like as important as is sometimes assumed. So I just… What, create an account and post that I've arrived?"

"A few images would be the usual way to introduce yourself. If-?"

"I can manage, thank you. Smile, everyone."

Xor takes that as an order, and… Actually, that's better than I thought it would be. Onik manages a slightly worried smile while Lantern Dul makes an effort to scowl less.

Right, pick an 'alien visitors' server, apply appropriate search tags, upload images and basic biographies and… Would like to meet…

"Okay, done. How-?"

Green Lantern Graf Toren appears a short distance from us, and I raise my right hand in greeting.

"Lantern Toren."

"Illustres. Why are you here?"

"I want to learn more about how mortal creatures like us are changed by using power rings. And to learn from the most capable teachers of Lanterns in the galaxy."

He watches me for a moment, green bands of energy rotating around his right hand.

"Are you aware of any Reach presence here?"

"No. Though I haven't looked."

"You are… Simply here to learn."

"I might also do some tourism? Is..? This a problem?"

He glances at Onik for a moment as he considers.

"Would you accept me showing you around?"

"Is there something you don't want me to see?"

"You have acquired a reputation as a disruptive influence, and Karax is going through a period of religious turbulence. I am concerned about what the result would be if a significant number of people tried to adopt your philosophy without the necessary depth of understanding."

"That's pretty reason.. able…" I frown. "Ah. I… Assume that I was responsible for that turbulence?"

"No. The existence of your Corps is exacerbating it, but it is Sinestro who was the root cause."

Oh. Right. He'd basically be Karax-Lucifer, wouldn't he? The brightest star in the Corps, only to fall and find some alternate power to the green light he'd had for his whole career.

"I suppose there's no problem with limiting our exposure. Do you have somewhere in mind?"

"The abbot of my monastery has offered to accommodate you and your fellow Orange Lanterns. Our records are extensive, and our teachings have produced many highly effective Green Lanterns."

I smile.

"Sounds like a good place to start. Anything we need to know before we arrive?"

"We're going to a monastery. It's over eight hundred years old. I expect you and your companions to treat it with respect."

"And the monks?"

"The monks are students of the green light. We are not easily turned from our path. Most of them would enjoy discussing your philosophy with you."

"Good show. Are any of your predecessors still around?"

"On Karax, we consider a power ring to be a lifetime calling."

"There's no shame in being invalided out, but, okay."

"It's not a matter of shame for failure, but having touched the green light… I can't imagine life without it. I assume that they felt the same."

"A monastery is the last place I expected to hear 'It's better to burn out than fade away.'"

"'Burning out' is an act of will; a triumph of focus over instinct. We go to our deaths embracing the green light."

Lantern Xor nods approvingly. "I respect your attitude. I think that I will like it here."

 

[Mr Zoat]

27th August 2012
02:33 GMT

I look around the ravaged cityscape.

This… Why would any version of me do this?

Nearby, Artemis is kneeling, running her hand along the concrete. No doubt it's very informative, but… "This is fruitless unmaking."

She looks around, her hand still running over the hardened ground. Read the Traces.

"You knew he was a bad guy."

"That's not the point. The version of me I met on Earth Fifty was a bad guy. He killed and he conquered, but he was still me. He was still trying to build something. What's-. Built here?!"

Kanto née Iluthin is looking through some sort of local data recorder, one of the few pieces of advanced technology on this planet.

"A hole in the ground, I'd say. A statement, perhaps?"

"If I had to send two New Gods with hunting and stalking skills to find it, then who exactly was it supposed to be a statement for?"

"Unless he knew that you would send us?"

I shake my head. "Deliberately destroying something without a benefit… He'd be making himself weaker. This place… They were trapped by Avleb's Wall, their world lacking enough fossil fuels to fully industrialise when they reached the level of technology where that would usually happen. He could have worked wonders here."

"Charcoal burning was a major industry, and of course their elites had generators bought from off-world."

I shake my head. "At some point in the future, I'd love to come to a world like this, just for the challenge of raising it up. Did they take anything?"

Artemis shakes her head. "Nothing stolen. Some of their machinery is damaged, but as far as we can tell that's just because there was a fight there. Ingots of metal were left stacked where they were."

"And the people?"

"There are signs of a fight." She points at a wall. "There are three musket rounds embedded in that wall. Plenty more places like that. Just no people. Or animals."

"Did he kill them?"

"It's not just that they aren't alive anymore. They're gone. I haven't even found any blood stains."

Kanto looks contemplative. "And it is not easy to kill an entire planetary population without shedding blood." Believe me, I've tried.

"Nanotechnology?"

"Buildings still stand, plants still live and bones still rest in graveyards. Nanotech weapons are seldom that discriminating."

Artemis nods. "And there aren't any inert machines left on the ground from after they finished."

"Dragged off as slaves? Slavery is pretty common amongst gordanian clans."

She shakes her head. "No residue from any kind of knockout gas. There was a fight here, and no blood got spilled? I don't buy it."

How many people was it? When humans had this level of technology the total population of Earth was less than a billion, but they've been-. They were at this level for longer. Knowledge spread out, rather than being concentrated in a few places. Still, they lacked the capacity to create truly dense urban regions. Call it… Three billion? Still a… Lot of people.

"There are robots that can capture people like that." Kanto strokes his beard. It's shorter than it was. He originally grew it because Darkseid told him to, then shaved it off shortly after we resurrected his wife. Turns out that she rather liked it, and… Since New Gods don't age much past thirty, it was a sign that time hadn't just stopped for him after she died. "But we haven't found treads or tracks or signs from anti-gravity devices, nor fuel residue in the air."

Artemis looks at him. "You think he's got some kinda god-power that lets him go all Pied Piper of people?"

I shake my head.

"He could have disintegrated them with the Omega Effect, but it would take a very long time to do it to this many people. Any sign of a boom tube?"

"No, but he might just use a hush tube like you do."

Another shake on my part. "That would conceal the aperture itself, but it wouldn't conceal Grayven himself. You'd be able to feel him."

She frowns. "Does he.. feel like you?"

"I don't know. I only spoke to him once. Grayven Fifty did. Someone who could depopulate a world… I don't know."

Artemis closes her eyes. Read the Traces.

"Kanto, do-." I stop myself. "Do you prefer 'Kanto' or 'Iluthin'?"

"Given the work we are engaged in, I think 'Kanto' is appropriate. Though you should feel free to greet me as 'Iluthin' when we play our mortal roles." He holds up the data recorder. "We'll get nothing out of this, I'm afraid. Whoever these people were, they didn't record day-to-day occurrences here."

"There's… Something…" Artemis opens her eyes, frowning. "I can feel something. It doesn't feel like you, but... Mother Box, hush tube."

Oh marvellous. If Grayven has other New Gods supporting him then this is going to get a lot harder.

Artemis rises and.. gingerly stalks towards the aperture, stopping every few steps to listen to the flows of the universe with her godly senses. I can't feel much of anything, which implies to me that this wasn't an example of Grayven brute forcing it… But it's not as if I've studied his work in detail.

I follow her, Kanto bringing up the rear. She leads us through the portal and out into another part of the planet, another town. This one is on the shore of a lake, but I… Don't otherwise see anything particularly…

Ruler's Presence.

I nod as Artemis accelerates, dashing through the streets towards.. a watchtower of some kind. Someone was here, someone with authority… Did they try hiding their government here? They couldn't supply settlements over a certain size and it's not an unpleasant place to live.

Artemis waves from the top of the watchtower.

"I've found something!"

I nod and trigger my aero-discs, rapidly flying up to her. "What is it?"

"Someone was standing…" She walks to a position with a good view of the lake. "Here. Looking that way. The shape of their feet and the way they balanced was wrong for the locals. And there's a small amount of residue on the ground from a material the locals don't make."

"Off-world visitor?"

"Yeah, but it's more than that. I can feel them."

I nod. "I felt the presence of someone important, but I can't tell more about it than that."

Listen to the Wind. She nods. "I… Can. I can't draw you a picture or anything, but… It feels like… Wonder Woman."

I frown. "Wonder Woman? Well, yes, she's a little like a New God… We can ask if she's been here, but..."

There's no explanation that makes any sense to me for Diana being here. And the Amazons didn't make any others like her.

Did they?

 

[Mr Zoat]

27th August 2012
21:51 GMT -5

"Nice."

Mr Hall grins as Donna Troy walks towards us, a local police officer at her side. I haven't had much to do with Diana's other student, but I don't think I've given her any reason to dislike me.

…

Other than the… Obvious.

"Professional, Mister Hall. You're here in an official capacity."

He clears his throat, straightening up slightly. "Okay, but can I ask her out in an unofficial capacity?"

"In your own time, certainly, assuming that she had nothing to do with the incident we're investigating."

Miss Troy approaches to within convenient speaking distance, and I nod to the police officer and dismiss her with a wave. She's obviously curious about what's going on, but the arrangement between the federal and local authorities doesn't give her any grounds to listen in. She nods back and heads back towards her police car.

"Grayven? Ah, Agent Grayven? What is it?"

Because she has a secret identity and there's no reason for her to know me personally in her role as 'Donna Troy, college student', and we're in a public location. Which is why I didn't just boom tube to her location when I left Artemis and Kanto to see if I could find anything.

"Nothing to worry about too much, Miss Troy." I look over to where a group I assume to be her friends are clustered around the library's entrance. "Would you prefer if we moved somewhere private?"

"Do I need a lawyer?"

"You are entitled to one if you want one, but at the moment I'm not arresting you. Or investigating you for a crime. This is really more of a 'due diligence, eliminating you for my enquiries' sort of thing."

"Okay then, yeah. That's probably a good idea."

I nod and smile.

Mother Box, hush tube to that planet.

Ping.

Mr. Hall heads through first, due to a combination of machismo and a genuine concern for what might happen to his brother if he left him alone for any length of time. Genuine, but insulting concern. I head through next, because we're not escorting Miss Troy and I don't seriously think that she had anything to do with this. But 'feels like Wonder Woman' doesn't result in all that many matches.

I step aside as Donna comes through, frowning as she looks around. I'm not seeing anything on her face or in her actions which suggests any familiarity with the-.

She looks up at the sky with a frown. Ah, she's spotted that we're not on Earth.

"Where are we?"

I shut the tube down.

"You haven't been here before?"

"I've been to two alien worlds, and this isn't one of them. What's going on? Where are-? Where are the local people?"

"We don't know. There are signs of a struggle, but no organic remains. Can you account for your movements over the last three days?"

"Yeah, but, why?"

"It's not her." Artemis walks over. "She feels kind of similar, but not the same."

Donna glances at her, then returns her attention to me. "She's waiting for that explanation."

"I'm not used to using my magic senses on people who aren't Sheeda. Someone was here, and their magic feels like yours and Wonder Woman's."

Donna frowns. "There isn't anyone like me and Wonder Woman."

"Far as I can tell?" Artemis shakes her head. "Not true."

"Except-?"

I shake my head. "Not Orana. I awoke her after she ritually accepted my authority. I could probably navigate back to Earth using her. She certainly hasn't been here."

"There are other demigoddesses on Themyscira, but-. Well…"

I nod. "They're a bunch of shut-ins who wouldn't come to an alien world even if they had the opportunity."

"I wouldn't-." … "Yeah." … "I mean… Some of them might."

I nod. "But if they were inclined to covertly murder three billion people they'd have shown some sign during the last three thousand years. Amazons don't do innovation."

"They certainly don't do three billion murders. What.. happened here?"

I make an exaggerated shrugging gesture.

"We don't know! We don't know. There're signs of a struggle but no bodies. No damage relating to weapons that weren't native. No residues of any kind. Other than the fact that someone incongruous stood here we've got no idea."

Artemis nods. "I was trying to track the other Grayven, when-."

"Other Grayven?"

I nod. "I have a duplicate. I don't know where they came from, but he has a fleet and he's heading for Vega to remonstrate with me. We're… Not exactly on a direct line from his last known location to Vega, but it's not far off."

About half the distance, which… The barrels of some of the muskets were still warm. This was recent. So assuming that they're moving at a constant speed, I know roughly when we should expect them. Unless they're just going to set up a base in our area before actually attacking.

"You don't know of any others?" Donna looks at me quizzically and I shrug. "I don't know, no Amazon went on a mysterious nine month long spiritual retreat after visiting the mainland or something? Because there aren't a lot of options here."

"Plenty of Amazons from the old city of Themyscira didn't ever manage to get to the island. But they would have died thousands of years ago. The.. same with any of them who went back; their immortality is tied to staying there."

I nod. "And the demigoddesses?"

"There was.. about two thousand years where Themyscira had no contact with the mainland at all. And the thing about Themyscira is.. there aren't any men on it."

"Right, but there's magic and there's gods."

"And there's an island full of militant lesbians and it still took three thousand years for Queen Hippolyta to create Diana. If someone had children I haven't heard about it."

"Drat. Well, thank you for your time. I'll take you back-."

"No."

"I'm sorry?"

"You can't just announce something like this and expect me to carry on like nothing happened. And Diana's going to want to be involved too."

That's… I mean, I have-. No, I haven't wanted to get the League involved. This is my dog, and…

This Is Mine.

They aren't likely to appreciate how I'm building the place up, and I can't exactly shove them back out of the way once the fight's over. And while I'm reasonably confident that they won't side with someone who'd do this over me…

I'm not completely sure that they wouldn't try doing something ill-advised.

But if I'm looking at exposure anyway, it's best to make it controlled exposure.

"Then let's go and talk to her."

 

[Mr Zoat]

27th August 2012
00:13 GMT

"I like the colour-."

"Yes, we've heard that joke."

If you don't want people to make fun of the colour of your Green Lantern temple then don't make it green. And not just green; anything that's actually coloured is the closest they could get to the actual colour of green light constructs. Variations on the green sigil feature extensively in the wooden coving, and artwork featuring the Guardians portrayed as deific figures covers the walls.

"Do devout Lanterns get interred here, or in the crypts on Oa?"

"Why would we consider it a lesser honour than Lanterns who don't share our beliefs?"

Behind us, Dul and Xor float slowly after us, taking the opportunity to study their surroundings. Onik just looks awkward. I suppose that this isn't his religion, after all.

"Lantern Gardner mentioned that he'd opted for it. Jordan wants to be buried on Earth." I smile. "Savenlovich is donating her body to medical science."

"And you?"

"I'm taking it with me. Saves me from having to build a new one. Lantern Onik, did your monastery have the same overwhelming green theme?"

"No, Great Master." Lantern Toren glances back with a raised eyebrow tattoo, but doesn't otherwise comment on the appellation. "Our symbol is a sphere-and-arc, and we use the entire rainbow of colours."

Hm. Probably more interesting to the eye. Ring, add recordings of my interactions with Doctor Ub'x, Dame Carol and Al Scott, a copy of my book and a summary of my knowledge of the seven standard colours to our social media site.

Compliance. Error, compliance impossible due to server overload.

On a planet this advanced? Ah, okay, rehost it and make those additions.

Compliance.

Somewhere with a better reputation for reliability.

Unable to comply. Karax data servers use a cloud system where the location of data components is uncertain.

Fine.

We pass a training area where monks with shock rods are fighting one another. I see one monk score a solid hit to their opponent who proceeds to power through the shock and return the favour, which causes both rods to go dead. Of course, they're training their willpower as much as their bodies. Backing off isn't to be encouraged.

"Lantern Toren, have you completed your M'eelam Na'aquall?"

"No. I do not believe that I am ready. Does your Corps have an equivalent?"

"Not in the formal sense. I've done something similar, but that involved joining with the Ophidian and then separating. What sort of preparations are usually considered necessary?"

"Intense self-reflection and moral development, combined with the trials of duty in the field."

"Was the way in which Jordan and Gardner passed unusual, then?"

"Lantern Gardner had already touched Ion. I don't know Lantern Jordan well enough to comment on his preparedness."

"Do you know how Lantern Gardner managed that?"

"A tremendous feat of will, putting aside all distractions to focus on a single act."

I nod. "Is that what you're working towards?"

"No." I frown. "Or rather, I would like to achieve what he has, but… Lanterns who gain his level of spiritual elevation usually struggle to maintain balance. I seek to master the green light as a part of my life."

"Very sensible. Lantern Xor. How's your work-life balance going?"

"Yesterday Onigar took me-"

I hear the 'thud' as his environmental shield fails and deposits him on the ground.

"-to a theatre production of The Dream of the Comet. I cried when the lead character realised that he was trapped, for I saw myself in his struggle."

"Good man. Lantern Onik?"

"I… Ah…"

I half-turn and give him a reassuring smile. "It's always awkward when the boss puts you on the spot, isn't it?"

He hesitates, then nods. "Yes, Great Master. A.. little. A short time ago I studied the histories of some of the peoples the Reach has destroyed. When I studied their culture, the wrongness of their loss became all-"

His landing is far more quiet than Xor's.

"-the more clear to me."

"See, that wasn't so bad. Though you might want to consider something that isn't related to the war. Lantern Dul?"

"After the rest of my team died I forced myself to carry on my mission without-"

She doesn't land, though holding her wings open is a little awkward in these corridors.

"-allowing myself to doubt that I would succeed."

"And you succeeded beyond your superiors' wildest dreams-."

"No."

"Alright, you succeeded beyond what they could have reasonably expected. Though again, I would encourage you to develop a life outside of work. We're all members of social species, and I'm firmly of the belief that a greater range of interests is necessary for coping well with the stress of using our rings."

"What do you do, Great Master?"

"I do work both in industrial development and prisoner rehabilitation on my homeworld, and I'm optimistic that we might actually be starting to use our advantages properly. And I've been romantically involved with a Darkstar named Jade Nguyen for about a year now, and enjoy working out how to spend time together wherever she's stationed. Lantern Toren, are you going to want to participate?"

"It is more that I have been advised not to leave you alone." He nods. "But I think that it would benefit me."

"Glad to have you. Do you feel like experimenting with an orange ring?"

For a fraction of a second, he looks decidedly nervous. "I will see. For now, I would like to introduce you to the abbot, who can grant you access to our archives and our records of our historical training methods."

We halt outside a large wooden door and he knocks twice, the doors swinging open as the second knock is complete.

"Enter friends."

 

[Mr Zoat]

27th August 2012
00:19 GMT

The abbot is a tall and thin man, and rather than the robes I half-expected he's wearing light body armour with only small amounts of green sigil decoration. A simple weighted ball sits in his right palm, which he holds straight out to the side without a tremor. It doesn't look particularly heavy, but holding even a light weight in that position for any length of time can be a strain. There's a desk off to one side of the room but the main area is filled with what appears to be gym equipment. Nothing complicated, mostly weighted objects and other devices to improve endurance. Or rather, to improve the willpower.

Makes sense. This order was inspired by the Green Lanterns who fought against the Spider Guild. They're a martial order… Ah. I've sort of been getting 'kung fu monastery' vibes, but the inclusion of modern weapons and armour was throwing me off slightly.

"Welcome, Green Lantern Graf Toren. And welcome to you, Orange Lanterns."

The abbot isn't smiling as he says it, but he isn't frowning either. Maybe that's the sort of thing Lantern Toren was talking about when he mentioned his concern about forgetting how not to be green. Empathic vision of the abbot gives me a green glowing fuzz, suggesting both considerable willpower and spiritual self-mastery. Not seeing much else.

"Thank you, abbot." I perform a shallow bow. "There's no telling what mischief we might have gotten up to if you hadn't agreed to sequester us away here."

"If you wish to learn to be a better teacher, and your students better Lanterns, this is the best place for you to be. Your social media page-"

Error, server overload.

"-just crashed again." He gives me a look of mild disapproval. "And I honestly think that young people like yourself place too much import on those things."

"I'm… I'm inclined to agree." Have to find time to dump a few hundred copies of my book on a local library. "I understand that Karax is having some sort of religious reformation?"

"Yes." The arm with the weight remains completely still as he nods. "Though the precise nature of our social changes would probably be difficult for someone not used to our civilisation to understand."

"Understood. But if you think that there's something I can usefully do, feel free to ask."

"Should such a situation occur, I will certainly mention it. I will make our full library open to you, save for the private words past Lanterns have for their successors. Those are not mine to grant you. Meditation rooms, lecture halls and sparring arenas can also be made available at your request. In return, we ask that you share any particular revelations you have."

"Certainly. I imagine that will come in handy for working out what to do with the orange light."

"If I had been asked prior to your emergence, I would have assumed that the sort of person to use a power ring driven by avarice would be an easily distracted self indulgent monster. And yet, you have created a Corps and aimed it at the largest and most successful empire in the galaxy. Why?"

"My predecessor lived down to your expectations. But for myself, I believe that the measure of my life is the changes I make in the universe. And I prefer it when the universe works a particular way. If we handed out rings at random or to people who experienced the strongest avarice, it probably wouldn't go very well. But by selecting people who want what we want or what we want them to want, we've managed to keep almost everyone pointing in the same direction."

Mild disapproval.

"'Almost'?"

"The orange light is inherently corrupting. Some people lose sight of their higher order desires while using it. They get disarmed and placed in a rehabilitation centre. We're still perfecting the process to screen out people vulnerable to that sort of thing. But orange is hardly the only colour to have that sort of problem."

"Oh? Does yellow have a problem like that?"

"It's not quite as corrupting as orange, but it still encourages its users to see the people around them as vessels for their fears." I shake my head. "The first yellow lantern I met said that was literally why he did anything: to relish the fear he caused and the power he held over others."

"And you believe that was the result of his use of a yellow power ring?"

"I don't know for certain, but I met a parallel universe version of him who didn't have a yellow ring, and he is a really nice guy."

"I see. I would like to discuss this with you further later, but unless you have any questions for me, Lantern Graf Toren can show you to wherever you want to go."

"Just one question, both for you and Lantern Toren. You know how Green Lantern selection works, right?"

Toren nods. "Not in every detail, but a general overview."

"On Earth, we don't have any sort of Green Lantern training program. Jordan got picked because he was competent and close to where Abin Sur died. Guy was picked because he lived close to Jordan. Stewart was the same. But if you've got a monastery full of trained people, why were you chosen in particular? Rather than…"

The man who is still holding that weight smiles faintly.

"I believe that I was passed over due to my age. I'm fairly robust, but I'm not as young as I was. It also becomes harder to learn new things as you get older. I would struggle to adapt to the requirements of power ring combat."

Lantern Toren nods. "Most monks who study here do so to improve their self-discipline. Few make this their home for their entire lives. When I received the ring I was one of the youngest full time monks. I also studied interstellar law prior to receiving this ring."

I nod. It makes sense. The Guardians want strong willed people, but they also need people who can do a fairly complex and risky job. Just having a strong will doesn't guarantee that you'll make a good soldier or police officer.

"Thank you. That makes sense."

"I have a question in return." The abbot looks me in the eyes. "How many Lanterns does your species have at the present time?"

"Four Green, one Blue, one Violet and one-" I spread my arms slightly. "-Orange. In this parallel; I've met alternate versions of myself with every colour."

Except White, but, under wraps for now.

"With such a success, are you sure that you need to be here?"

"If I was sure, I wouldn't be here. And the fact that my species appears to make good Lanterns doesn't help anyone else."

Toren doesn't look quite certain how to take that.

"But if your species has a knack for using power rings, why don't you recruit other members of your species?"

"Because I know what we're like. It's funny when we cause problems for other people, but I don't really want to be stuck on the other end of that."

"Hah!"

The abbot smiles, nodding. Toren seems a little surprised by his outburst.

"Also, we were recently on the receiving end of a planetary invasion. Things are extremely unsettled. And the war the Corps is fighting is a long way away from Earth. People won't be as invested."

But maybe I should consider it? Luthor's out but Lonnie's around… I haven't checked on him since the Sheeda attacks, but I'd be astonished if he weren't still alive. That's probably something I should do.

"I think that's everything. Lantern Toren, please show us to the library."

 

[Mr Zoat]

27th August 2012
00:57 GMT

Oh flip the heck yes.

Onik looks around in fascination at the printed books. They're not printed on paper; it's actually a type of plastic with the words being made of the same stuff in a different colour. But they're designed to look like leather-bound paper books, just like mine is. Toren has clearly been here before, so rather than stare at the books he's staring at the strands of orange that are radiating out of me to touch all of them.

Dul is standing at ease, waiting for me to start. Xor is next to her, but that's more because this part of the library isn't designed to be accessible to people of his size.

"Lantern Toren, it feels like the books and passages relating to fear have been accessed considerably more frequently than the rest of late."

"My fellow monks are the most likely to be called to replace me if I die. Sinestro has killed more Green Lanterns than anyone else in centuries."

"I didn't think you'd ever met him."

"I have not. But this monastery is the sort of place that he has shown himself inclined to attack. A place with a serving Green Lantern and others loyal to the Corps."

The Orange Lantern Corps doesn't have an official position on Sinestro. He hasn't allied with the Reach, so he isn't our problem. Dox told me that he hasn't spoken to him since their initial conversation, and there isn't any obvious reason for him to lie to me about it. Personally, I'd like to learn a little more about what he's trying to achieve before making a decision. Silver Age Sinestro was a Dark Kantian sort of guy, while Modern Age Sinestro was acting in the belief that order was the highest good and that it was best maintained through fear. I'd probably just kill the first one, but the second… Not sure.

"So you wanted to read about how other Green Lanterns have confronted and overcome their fears?"

Toren nods. "Since Sinestro's constructs are strengthened by fear, it seemed like the logical thing to do."

Ah, so many stories! And… Mostly lacking in the sort of detail I'd need, but they're a start!

"Well then. If fear's what you're worried about…"

I transition back to Xor and Dul.

"Let's do some sharing!"

Dul looks dubious. "What sort of sharing?"

"Fear. From what I'm reading, it seems that learning to respond to fear by strengthening their focus helps Green Lanterns punch through their problems. Several trained to confront their fears until the response was instinctive. Feel fear and focus, though…" I turn to Lantern Toren as he walks out of the stacks. "Don't try that against Sinestro. He knows that it's a standard technique and would almost certainly prepare to take advantage of your focus narrowing."

He nods. "I thought that he might. Of course, completely defeating my own fears is far more difficult than learning to work through them."

I frown.

"Wouldn't learning Sinestro's fears work better? He needs to command them to even use his ring."

"Sinestro did not become First Lantern by being weak-willed."

"Great! If he just focuses his mind to shut out everything else then his ring will stop working." I look at Onik. "Lantern Onik, would you mind demonstrating?"

He nods floating off the ground for a moment before his environmental shield shuts down and he lands lightly on the floor.

"Thank you. Sinestro spent a long time as a Green Lantern. If some responses from that time are ingrained, tricking him into falling back on them might work."

"I will try and turn that into an actual tactic and bear it in mind."

"I still catch Alan out like that sometimes."

"Who is 'Alan'?"

"Alan Scott? Got hold of Green Lantern Yalan Gur's power ring, used it for decades and then switched to a blue ring. Since that-."

"You mentioned a 'blue' Lantern earlier, but I don't know what those are."

We stare at each other for a moment.

"Isn't knowing this your religion?"

"I understand that Earth is a strange place."

"Alright, fine. The spectrum." I take a holographic display out of subspace and show the image. "Red, for rage and hate. Though Weaponer Kalmin uses a single word for it and I've never heard of anyone catalysing it with cold and calm hatred, so my label might be a cultural artefact. The Qwardians experimented with it, but couldn't ever harness it in a controlled way. Then orange for avarice, yellow for fear, green…"

"Then blue for hope, and as far as I know Alan Scott of Two Eight One Four is the only blue ring user currently active. Lovely man. Then we have indigo for compassion. They're active and recruiting, by the way, though I've only met one. And last of all violet, love. The favourite colour of the Zamarons. Two violet ring users are active on Earth, both running off sororal love, though one is highly interested in this 'romantic love' she's heard so much about."

"I have personally seen power rings of each of these colours. Each of these colours is an emotion you -collectively- have to learn to integrate." I reach out and take hold of Toren's right hand, and after a moment's consideration he doesn't resist me touching his ring. I pointedly make eye contact with Onik as I start to float. "This is not something that I have a problem with. I cannot be weakened by exposure to other emotions. And neither can Guy Gardner-"

Tora blushed when we told her how we were testing it, but I think she was pleased. Whow, I haven't spoken to her since… A… While.

"-and I'm pretty sure that Green Lantern Illustres Chaselon can't be either. Though remember that certain emotions are built into the universe while others aren't; you can feel any amount of joy or pride or boredom without it affecting ring use at all. One of the things I want to teach you to do is to redirect impulses from the other colours to fuel your use of the orange light."

Dul considers my monologue.

"Is that what you did to gain 'enlightenment'?"

"No. That was a rather different process."

"If we're trying to get what you have, shouldn't we do that instead?"

"You can. Step one, learn to turn off your ring without feeling a contradictory emotion. I did this without practice while merged with the Ophidian because I realised that continuing to feel avarice was making it impossible to get what I wanted. Step two, openly and honestly examine all of your desires and accept them all as part of who you are. Some of them will probably horrify you; that doesn't matter. They're still you."

"There is no step three." I smile sarcastically. "Simple, yes?"

Onik frowns, then raises his left hand slightly and stares at his ring.

His environmental shield stays on.

"Maybe you don't want it off hard enough."

"I don't think-"

His shield flares.

"-that's how it works, Great Master."

"No. It isn't. So since Lantern Dul was having trouble with rage earlier, let's start with that."