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

Discussion in 'Creative Writing' started by Mr Zoat, Jan 27, 2019.

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  1. Someguy Somewhere

    Someguy Somewhere The Critical Fumbler

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    Greece itself might be under Godly rule, they had one god in public office and a few demi god amazons on site. Wouldn't be that hard for them to rally around those, as they'd fill in the 'new god' hole anti life has held in folks minds rather easily.

    Dunno how the Shinto Gods are doing, no word from the Norse Pantheon, but if Odin wanted to make a move into the mortal realms while the door was open he might.....assuming he doesn't think this is the start of Ragnarok and is busy running for the hills.

    What other powers are out there? Cobra's doomsday cult is...well...self defeating under this...as without orders they'd likely just lay down and die since it does look like it IS already here.
     
  2. AmericanNumbers

    AmericanNumbers Not too sore, are you?

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    I welcome Alexa the Benevolent Dictator!

    But seriously, Mister Atom is a perfect counter since ha can talk people out of the Anti Life loops.
    Lol, at Death World Earth forming a Supervillian AI counter to Anti Life application .
     
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  3. Duke Long

    Duke Long Glomerulus

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    Well, there are a bunch of other pantheons who probably won’t do anything. The Aztec, Chinese, Celtic and Vietnamese pantheons have come up in this story, albeit briefly. Presumably many other pantheons also exist but haven’t been mentioned.
     
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  4. Pinklestia

    Pinklestia Well worn.

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    Honesty we can and should automate trains as the routes are fixed, but cars and buses? Way too many things can go wrong.
     
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  5. Coda

    Coda Versed in the lewd.

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    You know, I thought the #xxxxx links on the bottom-right corner of posts were supposed to be permalinks. I was surprised to see that they aren't. They are on SV.

    Most of the things that can go wrong are humans, you know. The biggest issue is the transition period where both autopilots and humans are driving at the same time, because humans are the worst-case scenario for autopilots. (They're also the worst-case scenario for humans.)
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2023
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  6. Coda

    Coda Versed in the lewd.

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    Far be it from me to be a Tesla fanboy (I respect that they made EVs viable in the market but they haven't kept up with producing good products) but I would like to point out that this link says that in a one-year span there were 367 crashes involving level 2 or higher advanced driver-assist systems, of which 273 involved a Tesla vehicle. 46.5% of the 14M car sales in the US in 2022 had level 2 ADAS (that is, about 6.5M). I can't find specific collision numbers for that time span, and there is no reporting for non-fatality collisions that don't involve ADAS, but there were around 43,000 crash fatalities in 2021, and obviously not every crash results in a fatality, and there were around 289M cars in service; the numbers I could find for 2022 say there were fewer cars on the road (284M) but the number of fatalities for the first half were on pace to be approximately the same.

    Level 2 ADAS is on the rise (only 10% of cars sold in the US in 2019 had it), so while it would be an underestimate to say that the 6.5M cars sold in 2022 were all of the cars on the road with it, it's not too much of one. Let's use that underestimate because it'll make that 367 number look worse: that means that 0.006% of such cars had a collision.

    And continuing with using underestimates to make things look worse, let's assume that 100% of crashes involve a fatality, whether ADAS or not. That means that our estimate is that 0.015% of cars in use in that same span of time were involved in a collision. This is a HUGE underestimate.

    Now, to be fair, crunching the numbers this way assumes that every level 2 capable car uses level 2 at all times. This isn't a reasonable assumption, but it also isn't a reasonable assumption to say that every collision results in a fatality either. But it isn't an unreasonable assumption to guess that these errors roughly cancel out.

    All told, the statistics tell the story that even with their faults, cars with autopilot-like functionality are less likely to be involved in a collision than cars without it.
     
  7. Coda

    Coda Versed in the lewd.

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    Hellenes. Curiously, this was right in the original version, suggesting your local copy is missing that correction.
     
  8. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Billy was using Susanoo's power the same way Adom was to make people resistant, so it's possible that they're defending their territory.

    Granted, it is possible that Manheim did something to prevent the various pantheons from interfering and now they can only rely on things they did, like blessing mortals, before the Anti-Life was unleashed.
     
  9. Prince Charon

    Prince Charon Just zis guy, you know?

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    Hackers exist, and are already messing with cars that have remotely-accessible systems, like anything else on the Internet of Things. That alone would be a good reason to keep a functional and easy-to-use manual override on cars, along with all the others.
     
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  10. Someguy Somewhere

    Someguy Somewhere The Critical Fumbler

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    Reminds me of an old gag image that went around

    [​IMG]
     
  11. Threadmarks: Counterpunched (part 7)
    Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    17th January 2013
    22:10 GMT


    Unlike most Orange Lanterns, I didn't care about the Reach.

    Didn't.

    The empire I built… I was proud of it. I expanded my family's holdings from a single continent to a dozen systems, pushing my regional rivals back and forcing concessions and tribute from defeated foes. I never thought that it was the biggest or strongest empire in the galaxy. I knew that there were larger foes out there; I welcomed them! Fighting people weaker than you are encourages weakness and lassitude, and I refused to allow that in either myself or my people.

    I fought on the front lines whenever practical. My palaces were not gilded; they were fortresses and places of administration first and foremost. I did not indulge myself with erotic pleasure of any kind. On those few occasions I thought about it, I assumed that I would die fighting and that my strongest general would take over from me.

    That was not what happened.

    Two fleets nearly reduced to scrap, and an infantry battle I could not refuse. And then, not only was I defeated due to the disloyalty of my auxiliaries after the enemy focused on killing my most loyal soldiers first…

    But I lived.

    I lived, and was paraded before their people as a war-prize. Some… Cousin of mine took control of my empire and rather than rallying our military himself… Gave most of what I conquered away. And I was forced to sit in a prison, visited by anyone who wanted to stare at me for their own entertainment.

    I don't feel that I owe Vril Dox II for freeing me. He made a decision based on his own interests. I will say that he had sound judgement. I agreed to fight this war because it is the war in front of me and I refuse to step away.

    I didn't care about the Reach.

    But as I look down on one of their worlds, seeing what they build when they are unconstrained by the needs of war…

    Now I care.

    Drusa's eyes glow as she looks where I look, no doubt trying to decipher what exactly has me so worked up about it. She won't be able to. Her practical utility is considerable but she is almost entirely free of moral virtue. It won't offend her, and she will overlook it as a result.

    It's disgusting.

    I can see clearly where Grayven's ships entered the system. I can see where his smaller ships hunted down what I first took to be small cargo transports, but which my ring's analysis claims must be 'pleasure vessels'. I can see the likely angles of attack, where his capital ships struck at the orbital structures. Not his own flagship, but a considerable number of battleships of the type used by the Citizenry.

    The Darkstars are no doubt reconstructing the event in precise detail.

    I know enough.

    The people here died because they were soft.

    Pleasure craft, when you know that your enemies can strike your interior at will? The orbital defence network would shame a newly spacefaring civilisation! I cannot even detect ground to orbit weapons. The garrison fleet appears to have given a reasonable account of itself, but they had no reinforcements and nowhere to fall back to.

    The planet's surface has industry, but their structures are light. Easy to build, but fragile. I can see only a handful of fortifications across the entire world, and none of them are particularly large. Minimal anti-air defences.

    I can see landscaped continents and not a single place of safety.

    And now their failure of planning has gotten every single one of them killed. It can't happen to the rest soon enough.

    How dare they? How dare they be so careless with so much?

    "Sensors, any sign that they've noticed us?"

    I nod to myself as Darkstar Colos asks. Regular checks are wise, though with a crew this capable in a combat zone I don't think that he really needs to check quite so often as he does.

    "No, sir. All enemy ships still on established patrol routes. No new ships arriving. Non-combat vessels acting within expectations."

    "Good. Carry on."

    Rebuilding a planet. I wonder if the Reach will lie to their people and say that it never happened? In truth the Citizenry did little damage to the infrastructure when their giant flying snakes attacked the people down there. It's mostly cosmetic, though they seem like the sort of people who would care about such things.

    "Do you think they'll clone them?"

    My sneer grows at Drusa's comment.

    "Do I think they will clone the citizens of an entire planet so that they can lie to their own people about their deaths? I doubt that they care enough about their people to bother."

    "They've never seemed particularly callous to their own people to me."

    "Then how was this allowed to happen? They should have been able to destroy the snake-harvesters in the skies even if they could not stop the fleet. We move slowly through the periphery in fear of their fleets, yet they had nothing here."

    "He misdirected them."

    "The most charitable interpretation. I suspect that the admiral was simply slow to respond, and now seeks to absolve his guilt by taking his fleet on the offensive."

    "Without orders?"

    "We know nothing of the Reach's high level command structure. Besides, if he was assigned to protect this world then he is hardly abandoning his responsibilities when there are no citizens left to protect."

    "I'm surprised you're taking it this hard."

    "What do you mean?"

    "We were going to have to kill them anyway. Probably not with flying snakes-."

    "Before you joined the Lantern Corps. Did you ever steal something from someone who didn't care that it had gone?"

    She thinks for a moment.

    "Yes. It made it a lot easier. Are you.. saying that you don't think they'll acknowledge you fighting against them? Because they haven't reacted to having a billion or so of their people dying, they…"

    "I've lost fights before. Even before the battle that saw me cast down. There is no particular shame in losing to a stronger opponent, and much glory in defeating one. But to decide not to fight at all… It disgusts me."

    "Because they're saying that you're so small a threat that they don't need to."

    "They're so indolent that they would rather lose an entire world than lift a finger to save themselves. I am profoundly offended that they've been able to expand as much as they did. I assumed that an empire of this size would be… Better."

    "It is surprising. How would you defend against it?"

    "Planets don't have to worry about their mass. They can build massive force field generators guarded by laser turrets all over the surface without ever leaving the ground. They could stop almost anything that could be fired from space. They have enough industry here that they could build it themselves without troubling any of the Reach's other worlds. And yet, they clearly did not."

    "I wouldn't assume that was their reason just yet. This is just one example."

    "I've seen enough already. Colos! When are we leaving?"
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2023
  12. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
  13. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    "event in"

    They've become victims of their own successes.

    "I've seen"
     
  14. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Zoat, this should either be 15th of January or you should add the date above the link for this chapter in the spoiler box.
     
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  15. Ct613hulu

    Ct613hulu Experienced.

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    It could also be the result of a deliberate grand strategy meant to prevent any single world from resisting the rest of the Reach. This would make sense if they are more concerned about internal rebellion than an outside attack
     
  16. Ngamer11

    Ngamer11 Experienced.

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    This is an interesting analysis of Zartok's thought processes. He truly sees himself as a warrior and conqueror above all, but he's not so deluded as to thinking he's destined to be the greatest in the galaxy, even before Paul humbled him. And now that he's seen what the Reach is like when they aren't infiltrating/conquering planets, it has given him a reason to want their destruction for ideological reasons. At least he's more motivated now than before.
     
  17. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
  18. Lord Ernest

    Lord Ernest At the End...

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    Have to be honest, I couldn't follow the dialogue clear enough to know who was speaking when or about what.

    Are these spoken by the same individual?

    Because I tried counting the back and forth and it didn't seem to match or whatever. When Drusa firsts speaks it says it clearly, but then I can't follow.
     
  19. Chojin Patriarch

    Chojin Patriarch Veteran Lurker

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    No doubt that has changed, Zartok? Not feeling a little possessive of your allies now? Not a feeling to suppress, since it's one of the strongest drives an Orange Lantern can make use of, behind raw selfish greed...

    It's better to be second place, because it keeps you sharp. Second place works harder to hold on to their place from those below, yet lacks the fatalistic certainty first place ends up with as they realise there's only one way for them to go...

    Naturally, or you wouldn't be here, after all. :p

    Still, if you live, you can return. And this time, you'll have the power to take back what you once owned.

    Well, at least you're dedicated.

    To some degree, what their idea of a peaceful life looks like tells you a lot about a species.

    And that's one of the reasons she hasn't progressed as a Lantern. She can't understand any desire but her own...

    And all the while, those on the planet would have been hearing the signals die down, the screams of terror cut short... Those allowed to know about an invasion, anyway...

    So, walk us through it, then...

    They probably expected to be able to call in larger fleets, but found themselves cut off.

    Perhaps this was simply a holiday planet, never expecting to be targetted?

    And that's what offends you, isn't it? You would have been more aware of the danger, more defensive? o_O I can't help but feel there's something wrong with that point of view too...

    Still, better than letting bad habits or complacency set in.

    Good to see their stealth systems holding up, then.

    ...An entire planet? Why waste the resources? Just offer places on 'a newly completed colony' or something, and lie about the name.

    A town, maybe. But not a whole planet. It's unlikely they'd go any further than retconning their history to 'revise' the planet's origin.

    Only because it isn't profitable. And not necessarily in a monetary sense. Just in a resource-management way...

    Not that difficult, with access to Boom Tubes...

    Never underestimate emotional responses. Logic can have very little to do with them...

    And there's the difference between you. Billions died here. Because they had poor defences, poor leadership... They thought they were safe... That doesn't offend you in some way?

    That would be a stupidly inefficient way, given you don't need what the Providers... provide...

    Sadly, I don't think she was the kind of thief who stole for the thrill of seeing their victim's lamentations...

    So that's what offends you? Their laziness? An interesting view.

    Who's to say your empire might not have become the same way if it had kept growing?

    Probably because they weren't told to. Who knows?

    Hoping to see something more to your tastes? We'll see, we'll see...

    An interesting insight into Zartok's way of thinking. He certainly has standards of 'correct' behaviour for those who govern, doesn't he? Standards that the local Reach aren't living up to, and that offends him. Just the way a truly powerful Orange Lantern should think: 'I want the world Universe to be a certain way. I shall act to make it so.'
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2023
  20. Ngamer11

    Ngamer11 Experienced.

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    Small correction. That should be: 'I want the universe to be a certain way. I shall act to make it so.'
     
  21. moralrelativity

    moralrelativity Recovering pendant.

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    reached -> reacted
    would -> would be
     
  22. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
  23. Megaolix

    Megaolix Moderator

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    Well, if the discussion got into insults, time for me to step in and tell you guys to cut that shit out. And since it seem pretty much about RL, then this became a derail too.
     
  24. DeathReaperZ

    DeathReaperZ In the Void.

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    That it raises*

    I think you mean thighs.

    This should be added.

    Well they are professional superheroes, saving the world from mass destruction is just the average Tuesday to them.

    I can't exactly blame his assessment here. Furbies can look like the spawn of Satan sometimes.

    Did he just leak Superman's metaphorical IP? Thank god the only person around(seemingly anyway) is affected by the Anti-Life.

    I imagine Paul coming back to Earth and seeing a similar opportunity.

    He'd make a great green lantern.

    PS:Mr.Zoat, what made you make Paul unable to say his name without becoming unconscious? Was it a plot device to be used against telepaths and the likes? Usually in SI stories where the SI loses their name, they get a new name or use a pseudonym. Which isn't really the case here, unless whoever or whatever sent him here took it as payment or something. Speaking of which, what or who sent Paul here? And will we ever meet them/it or find out? Might be Mister Mxyzptlk, but then again, he'd probably inform Paul about it. Also, I'm new to this site, and I'd like to know if replying to the (Story Only) posts will post my reply in the collection of those posts or not.
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2023
  25. Sockmonkey

    Sockmonkey I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    Also contempt. Remember back at the beginning where OL couldn't touch paper money without destroying it? Zartok will now easily spam destruction pulses at reach soldiers on pure reflex.
     
  26. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
    Lois Lane is publically associated with Superman.

    It's so incomprehensible to Mr Atom that anyone might not realise that Clark Kent and Superman are the same person that he won't think to mention it.
    To be honest, I don't remember.
    No. They'll just appear in the Story Only thread. Please don't.
     
  27. Coda

    Coda Versed in the lewd.

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    I think it's public knowledge that there's a connection between Superman and Lois Lane. After all, villains know that Superman will always come to Lois's rescue. This does suggest that Clark Kent doesn't publicly show affection towards Lois.

    I had assumed it was some sort of doxing-avoidance strategy, and you did what you always do, turning minor details into plot points.

    But then in the end you recruited Dox anyway, so it was all for naught.
     
  28. The Unaligned Player

    The Unaligned Player Agony that desires to meet Extinction

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    Still too limited. It should be 'I want all within my sight to be a certain way. I shall act to make it so.'
     
  29. PDV

    PDV Revelation That Uncertainty Is Itself An Answer

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    Man, Zartok is weird. Gonna have to kill him eventually to make the universe a safe place for civilization. If he doesn't martyr himself first.

    I always assumed it was an excuse to never mention your legal name, and so keep it unconnected from your pseudonym.
     
  30. Threadmarks: Counterpunched (part 8)
    Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    18th January 2013
    05:03 GMT


    We crawl into the system, those sensors we dare risk flicking outwards to try to find our target.

    Yes, there. I see the return on the sensor station half a second before the officer sends it to the main screen. Three planetoids with signs of habitation, and an actual Reach fleet.

    "Finally." Lantern Zartok glowers at the screen. "They actually decided to fight for their worlds."

    Detailed sensor returns appear only slowly while we're in full stealth mode. The place the Reach fleet is gathered isn't particularly close to any of the settled planetoids. Nor is it in a particularly convenient place to reinforce any of them if they're attacked. There are damaged ships there, but after this much time I can't believe that the Reach haven't recovered their own personnel. I'd be surprised if they haven't recovered their wrecks; this system doesn't have shipyards that could handle battleship-class vessels or larger, but they could handle the smaller classes of ship.

    Instead, they're… There.

    "Take us toward the closest settlement. I want to assess what sort of damage it took."

    "Yes, sir."

    But my attention stays on the wreckage, as our view of it gradually improves. Because if it's not a Reach wreck, that implies that it's one of Grayven's. Or several of Grayven's. The drawback to their strategy being that if their ships are caught they can't just run using their faster than light drives. They have to open a boom tube and fly through it at sublight speeds. If they're surrounded, then they're probably dead.

    Zartok comes up alongside my chair. I'm not entirely sure why he's on the bridge, but since he hasn't been overstepping his bounds I decided to accept it.

    "Citizenry vessels."

    "Probably."

    "Are our sensors good enough to harvest data from their computers without needing to reveal ourselves?"

    "Not with Citizenry systems. They use a type of magic that we can't combine with our sensors."

    "I have a godling in my squad."

    "And if we had time to study the way his people's sensors work, that might be enough."

    "You have wizards onboard to operate the stealth system."

    "Which is why we can't have them stop doing that to study an entirely original magic technology. The Illustres has handed the ship he captured over to the research and development researchers. We'll get the opportunity to study the Citizenry later, but I doubt this is the time."

    "Mm."

    His ring glows as he directly accesses the sensors. He's probably examining the system with his brain. I read up on his record when he first started gaining notoriety,-. As a Lantern. The Orange Lantern Corps has mirrored the Green Lantern Corps' practice of employing people from warrior cultures who don't necessarily have civilised virtues. So far he's tolerated not being in command better than I thought he would. But then, there hasn't been anything to disagree about until now.

    This ship is nothing like fast enough to outrun the Reach fleet if we're discovered. And unless one of the Lanterns is secretly an Illustres too, there isn't any other way for us to escape.

    "Their ships are surprisingly intact."

    "It may be that the Reach has a way of disrupting their sublight drives."

    "The Citizenry have heavily armed ships and a powerful warrior ethos. I doubt that simply disabling their drive would stop them."

    "No, but the Reach could cycle their ships. They could take as long as they needed to batter their target down."

    While we do have reasonable data on Citizenry behaviour, we don’t have good data on what they do when they lose. They usually only attack targets they can be certain of overwhelming. They take losses, but they haven't left wrecks behind anywhere that N.E.M.O. has been able to find out about.

    On the other hand, destroying the ships is a good deal more practical. I firmly believe that it's in our interest to keep Grayven's people attacking the Reach and slow their research into his weapons whenever we can.

    But it's not our priority. I turn my attention to…

    Zartok's gone.

    He can access the sensor reading from anywhere on the ship with his ring. He can also communicate with anyone on the ship with his ring. He might even be able to communicate with the Illustres without turning off our stealth system. There's no real reason for him to.. either be on the bridge or leave the bridge.

    Unless he wanted to use the toilet…

    He probably wants to ask Lantern Allyn about the Citizenry ships. I read his debrief after I heard that he had encountered the Citizenry. None of it was anything I could really use. As a field agent I like to think that I keep up to date on our information on our enemy's capacities, but when magic and gods start getting involved… I don't even know how to prepare for things like that.

    "Sensors, any sign that they've noticed us?"

    "No, sir-. Ah, ships are moving in this direction. We'll pass close by them if they continue on their current heading. Looks like a patrol group."

    The one thing we couldn't account for was alien technology the Reach might have traded for. Trying to trade with Apokolips is a fools errand, but we know that the Reach have traded with Qward. Given how… 'Dissolute' the Weaponers had become and how chaotic the place is now, it's far from unthinkable that one or more might have decided that a change of scenery suited them. Kalmin was part of this ship's design team, but even he admitted that there's no such thing as flawless stealth.

    "Tell me immediately if their behaviour changes."

    "Yes, sir."

    "And for the sake of the record, how much do they outgun us by?"

    Darkstar Scratch-Scratch-Squeak clicks their mandibles together.

    "They appear to have a standard configuration. So no more than fifty times. As a group."

    I smile wryly and make eye contact with the pre-Illustres Darkstars on the bridge. Yes, this puts us all in mind of how things used to be: fighting a foe that outgunned us by a hilarious degree and sure that we'd be killed the moment we were spotted. It feels depressingly familiar.

    "Let's avoid giving the ship's shields a trial run."

    "We have shields? I thought those were coming with the production model."

    Technically we have shields, and if we run into a speck of dust while moving at high sublight speed we'll be very glad that we have them. But they won't do much against actual weapons fire.

    "Count on the battleships?"

    "Two, and no dreadnoughts. The largest object appears to be a mobile shipyard vessel."

    "Anything we haven't seen before?"

    "The shipyard vessel is slightly different to models we've seen before, but there's nothing particularly unusual about it. The fleet composition is slightly weighted towards smaller ships, but that may well be because the heavy ships are chasing Grayven."

    "Anything that looks like it's had a sensor upgrade?"

    "No."

    "Anything that could move faster than us?"

    "At sublight? The smaller ships maybe. At faster than light? Probably not anything here, but the Reach has dedicated faster than light interceptor squadrons."

    "Then let's hope it doesn't come to that."
     
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2023
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