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

18th January 2013
21:47 GMT

Zartok returns to the bridge, glancing at me before returning his attention to the main screen.

"Anything of note, Drusa?"

Many things, few of which will interest him. Life on the planets in this system doesn't seem to have been changed by the presence of the invading ships at all. The ship can get close enough and the sensors are acute enough to follow single individuals as they go about their day. And because we're monitoring all of it, I can just leave that on in one corner of my screen while I work through the rest of the data.

"The main inhabited world is suburban."

"And?"

"Different forms of land use occur at different levels of technology. Large settlements can't form until transportation and farming increase to a certain level-."

"Spare me."

"They don't have cities. Technically. There are some industrial zones that cover a significant area of land, but there aren't many residential buildings in those areas."

"No single targets to attack, but the people are too spread out to be properly defended."

Not how I'd put it.

"I imagine that their strategy for defending a world is the same as their strategy for defending their empire. Their forces are so mobile that they don't see any advantage to keeping their population in smaller areas."

"They could build stronger shelters-." He cuts himself off. "Of course."

"Of course?"

"They're not a martial people. Not any longer. They can fight, but they fight with the intellect, not with the spirit. They have weighed and measured and found that this is the most resource-efficient way to organise things."

"Isn't that what you did?"

He frowns, his eye briefly returning to me.

"Of course not. If people in my outer colonies knew that I wouldn't defend them because it 'wasn't efficient', then no one would have settled those worlds. I'm not talking about the policy of their government, I'm talking about their people."

Ah.

"The fact that people live in settlements laid out like this means that they know what their chances are, and they aren't doing anything about it. They're not trying to moderate the effect of the policy on… The chance of them living. They just accept it."

He leans slightly closer to the monitor.

"The question is whether it's indolence or fatalism. I would assume indolence had I not born witness to the skill of their fleets and Scarab Warriors. But perhaps there is some internal divide that only the Reach are aware of. Some worlds allowed to grow lazy while others provide tithe of warriors."

"Genetic analysis of recovered remains suggests that's not the case."

I can see him trying to understand. He's not stupid by any means, but-.

"I read what the Illustres wrote on the subject, and what little the Controllers have been willing to share with the rest of us. All creatures need to have certain impulses in order for their species to live long enough to attain intelligence. One of those things is a desire to live, to fight to protect themselves and those close to you. I have it, you-."

He looks mildly disappointed.

"Have part of it. It may have different strength in different people, but a creature lacking it entirely indicates that something is fundamentally wrong with them."

"What about artificial int-?"

Oh.

"Yes. Only creatures that were designed can be different. An artificial intelligence needs no ancestors. It does not need to inherit their passion to live. It can be told to do things that would see a creature in the wild killed and it will do so without complaint because it lacks spirit."

"You think that they bio-engineered themselves."

"When they used to make war on their neighbours, before the fight with the Green Lantern Corps, they cleared the worlds they conquered using guns. Such widespread death would normally cause an adverse psychological response in their soldiers. The level of hatred that is required for such methods take time to create, but it's hardly unheard of. Then the war, and before the ink is even dry on the treaty with the Guardians they begin subverting their neighbours."

"You think they already had the technology. They just didn't use it on other species."

"Or perhaps they did? If any public health records survive from those worlds then the Reach are the only ones who have them. A plague might be noticed by their neighbours, but anything more subtle might pass unnoticed."

"And the neighbours would have bigger problems, like their new neighbour."

"Yes."

"We'd need to get access to their medical databases to find out for certain."

He grunts. "Does it matter?"

"If they've edited their genome too much then it might mean that they're more susceptible to biological weapons."

"You might get a single world. Their command of biological science means that they would detect it too easily for a delayed attack, and they would be able to neutralise it without much difficulty. In ship to ship combat it would be less effective than an explosive even if they weren't wearing sealed suits. It might be possible to make something that could be used on a civilian population to secure compliance in exchange for palliatives, but we already know that they don't value their own lives."

Oh.

"Don't look so surprised, Drusa. I built an empire. I'm not a fool."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be wiser. What else does them not having cities mean?"

"Planning and terraforming. New colonies might have the technology to function spread out, but that technology still needs infrastructure. Most species build a relatively dense settlement with farms surrounding it when they first colonise a planet. As far as I can tell, the Reach didn't."

"Did they use a slave species to do it for them?"

"Not here, not as far as I can tell."

"And they do not make much use of automata. Then they planned everything in advance. Most likely their buildings were pre-fabricated and transported here in great cargo transports to be assembled on the planet."

I nod. "Or built using material from local asteroids, fabricated in space and then landed for construction."

"And they all accepted the plan. Have you found anything resembling a civil enforcer station?"

I perform a quick check. Some things don't look the same in different cultures, but there are some things that police usually do or have…

"No."

"Then their rulers are certain that the populace are obedient and will remain so, even if they are attacked."

"Where are you going with this, Lantern Zartok?"

"The Illustres has said that the worlds that the Reach took from species which still exist will be returned to them after the war. All other worlds will be up for grabs. I see no reason for slaughtering their entire species."

"You want to take over?"

"A system like this would be a perfect place to start again. But on this occasion, I want to deny the Reach whatever is on that ship."

 

18th January 2013
21:56 GMT

I bite down.

Marrow.

False marrow. Not marrow. The bones aren't real bones. Made by machines. Made by my ring-machine.

I swallow.

Taste good, though.

"…tube is easily detectable too, if we could make one, which we can't."

"Allyn?"

"I… Don't have a handheld system. And I didn't bring my ship-. The ship I used to command, with me, when I joined the Orange Lantern Corps. The assassin who worked for Sparta had a lower-emission version of the system, but I don't remember anyone else having anything like that."

"Could you use theirs?"

"The system is designed to need a New God in communion with the ship. I'd have to be close to even try. If there is another New God onboard, I'd have to be on the ship. I may have to beat them in combat."

Words. Not action. I can understand, but it does not smell of food. Hunt-Leader Zartok looks for pack victory on ship. Prowls cage, searching for it in his mind.

"What if we brought the ship closer?"

Drusa's liver is not in it. Not supporting Hunt-Leader.

"If you mean, 'brought into physical contact', that would break our stealth field. And if the boom tube generator was working, the Citizenry would have left by now. Which means that we'd need to repair it before we could use it."

"Unless it was hard coded to create tubes for the ship, not for the crew."

"No, it's the same system. Sparta, or Grayven, or Astarte, might not have explained it to them as a security measure."

"A cowardly measure."

"Would you want to serve under Astarte?"

"No. I am a warrior, not a gigolo or a eunuch. But the warriors who form the Citizenry accept their culture."

What? Ring-voice, explain.

The Citizenry kill most men who they encounter. A small number are kept temporarily as breeding stock.

What happens to them?

Eventually, they are killed, liquidised, and fed to the population.

Eventually?

No precise timeline has been established. It is not known what eugenic standards the Citizenry hold themselves to. Nor is it known if their breeding slaves are bred naturally, or if their seed is extracted mechanically and then implanted into the citizens.

Oh.

I move the bone, and bite down again.

I was eating soft food, but my mouth felt strange when my teeth got too long. So now I eat hard food. Feels better.

Drusa said that ring can fix teeth. Don't want. Should not build body with ring. Ring might be gone tomorrow. Must remember how to be strong without it. Must remember how to have body without it.

"…way to get things off this ship at all?"

Drusa thinks hard. Difficult. Difficult to do things when secret-hunting to remain secret.

"If one of us were inside the ship, next to the hull, we could fabricate an object outside of the hull. It could be detected -and I don't know how easily- but we could do it."

"How large an object?"

Drusa makes a motion of her hands.

"One cross section could be no bigger than that. The rest, as long as you want. But the longer it is-."

"Yes, yes. Can we include the object in the stealth field?"

"If you're a Controller and you can talk Colos into staying in the system for a few months-."

"Just say 'no'."

"I… Might…"

"Lantern Allyn?"

"I haven't experimented with using my ring to make New God technology. And… My nature doesn't lend itself to stealth. But I do know the designs for New God stealth systems. They're not as effective as what we're using now, but the Reach have no knowledge of magic-."

"Start experimenting."

He does obeisance and then leaves.

"I don't understand where you're going with this."

"The Reach clearly don't understand what they're looking at. They want it intact so that they can study the system while its active, and living crew they can mentally subvert to explain it to them. But I know the limits of normal sensors. I don’t think that they know exactly how many survivors there are on board."

"So if the boom tube system is either intact or intact enough to repair, and if we can get on board and convince the crew to cooperate with us, and if the Reach don't put together a boarding party and if the Reach don't fire on the ship once they realise what we're doing, we could get valuable information."

"Yes. Though none of that matters if we would just give this ship's position away the moment we tried. I'm eager, not foolhardy."

"Unless-."

"Using this ship as a decoy would be foolish. Even if we could evacuate the entire crew using the boom tube, it would destroy its value as a stealth craft and alert the Reach to our capacity. We will always have a use for a stealth vessel that can sneak around Reach space undetected. If this is to be successful, the Reach must simply assume that the Citizenry were making repairs while they delayed in their boarding."

"That will be easier to explain to Colos."

"There is no sense in explaining anything to Colos until we have a firm plan of action. And we will rely on Allyn to fabricate the materials we need."

"He's new."

"If he can't do it, I'll either try something else or accept it and move on. Prisoners are useful, not essential."

"What I do?"

"You, Grood? You'll be the first on board. The Citizenry respects brutal violence. I'm sure you'll convince them to respect you."

"Kill them?"

"Yes, Grood. Kill them until I tell you not to."

I grunt, and get new bone.