"…of the Restitution, report in. If you do not respond, you-"
Singularity beam.
"-will be considered-"
At least the other ships are smart enough to recognise one of their vessels may be subverted...
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 muscle.
Situational awareness, ring. And interdiction field.
No escape. No surrender. These guys are getting an up-close lesson of
why he's the Illustres.
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 flack turrets out there.
That's a nasty trick. Dumping automated factories making kill-drones into space... I doubt they care to deploy shutdown commands afterwards, either, since they'd have IFF to call the drones off. Could be
messy if one gets forgotten about...
Let's do something about that.
Positron beams, track and rapid fire.
Heh. Quality over quantity, eh?
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-
Consider that swarm squashed.
Without prejudice, because OL just doesn't
care.
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?
Or a method to prevent capture and subversion. Can't be
turned if you're dead, after all. Same reason they self-destruct on
Identity Theft attempts.
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 means that they can't add their fire to the attack while moving away from me.
Incoming message.
I doubt their drill-ships (Thank you,
Hell's Razer) were ever intended to turn away from a
live enemy anyway. So the crews are
well out of their depth.
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.
Oh, one of them wants to talk? Let's hear what they have to say, then...
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."
...Oh, it's
you. Trying to gloat again, Mr Reach Admiral?
I recognise that voice.
"And you're out of qwa-matter. Good effort, though."
Not that I expect such a trap would
work on OL again. Even if he didn't notice it with scans, he's got that little respawn point setup going on, not that the Reach realise that.
Yet.
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."
...Okay, he's got
class. Your last gun didn't do the job? Use a
bigger one.
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.
"
<sucks a breath through my teeth> Oh,
dangit, OL. Even if you're just trying
headology on him, you do not need to make them think that. Who knows
what they'll try next. They might even break out the weapons with
theological implications...
Now, do they have enough free will to work out that there must be a reason why I'm staying in once place. Oh, ring, acquire genetic scans of everyone in the region.
Compliance.
Even with
live ones, you do have actual mission objectives...
"That seems unlikely."
"And yet, here we are."
Hopefully they'll just take it as bragging and assume he just has some manner of exotic escape method. Like a good old dimensional shift.
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."
<facepalm> OL, dammit... Let them think what they
want. Make their intelligence division scramble to confirm or repudiate your claims...
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."
Probability of Success:
Nope.
The next shot with my singularity beam goes through the bridge of the crippled cruisers. Two luck effectives in that class left, and a few dozen gunships who dodged behind something.
"True to the Writ we live. True to the Writ-"
Quoting Reach scripture? Odd. Do they honestly
believe they're Reach, and thus covered by their holy books? Would explain the desire to serve...
Track transmission and fire.
Compliance.
Problem with speaking up in combat: It announces your location pretty
damn well to all who can hear it...
"-we-."
That battleship cuts cut in half lengthwise.
"Die, yes. Anyone else?"
On the upside, the support ship's going to have one hell of a view of the fight (albeit at some delay.) Imagine the scenes when people review the combat footage. "Oh, nice! He
cored that one right through!"
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-.
Looks like the last of them want to go down fighting.
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-.
<Paragon Interrupt>
No.
Indeed. You're not such a bastard as to be merciless. And
badasses like this? They deserve to live.
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.
...A pity the rest haven't the sense to quit when they're behind.
Then again, any smart fleet keeps its' combat command centres deep in the ship...
