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

24th January
11:57 GMT -5

Canis nods. "Pirates are cultural parasites. It is entirely correct to kill them."

"Okay, but firstly-. "

He shakes his head in irritation. "Yes, I am aware that it is necessary to prove their guilt. But I suspect that you would prefer to imprison and rehabilitate them."

"That depends on what they've done. My actual intent is to hand any I capture over to the authorities who have jurisdiction over the offence, and in doing so reinforce their authority."

"Why not simply request that they devolve that authority to you?"

"Because I have no existing relationship with those governments. And it's a bit of a big deal to give that authority to someone you don’t know."

He frowns. "If they post public bounties, those would usually specify their conditions. If approaching them as an official of your Corps creates additional work, why bother with it?"

"Because not all pirates will have public bounties, and I'll be working with a Green Lantern."

"Then that is even easier. The people of this region revere Green Lanterns. Simply have him strike an agreement. Or if they are in need of aid in rebuilding their civilisations, offer that as part of a package which sees them agreeing to have the Orange Lantern Corps provide security during their reconstruction. Xalitan Xor and Mother of Mercy can both afford to spend their time on pirate suppression duties."

"I'm.. not sure that I want to leave-"

"Recognised, Green Lantern, one four. Identity confirmed."

"-Lantern Xor unsupervised."

John strides into the Mountain's training area and gives me a nod. "You ready?"

"Naturally. Where would you like to start?"

"Xor's on Ungara, isn't he?"

I nod. "That sounds like a good place to start. Have you ever visited?"

"Once." He nods. "Hal wanted to introduce me to their government. The Green Lantern Corps has an official liaison there."

"I haven't… How does the Green Lantern Corps usually conduct anti-piracy operations?"

"That depends on what treaties the Guardians have with the local worlds. In this Sector we usually hand whoever we catch over to the nearest world."

"No marooning?"

He shakes his head. "That might have been an option right after Devlos was defeated, if the resources had been available to set up a colony. They weren't, and right now I don't think anyone would be prepared to make the offer. There aren't that many inhabitable worlds around here that aren't claimed by somebody." He looks at me for a moment. "Though if you're thinking about repeating what you did on the Citadel-."

"No, no." I raise my right hand in mock-surrender. "Even if I wanted to -which I don't- I wouldn't expect you to go along with it."

"Good."

"Canis, would you be so good as to open a boom tube to Ungara?"

"Do they have art galleries?"

I look at John and raise my eyebrows slightly.

"Uh, yeah, I think so."

"Then I will accompany you." He taps his Mother Box, and a glowing portal-

BOOM!

-booms into existence just in front of us. "I am interested to see what sort of art is produced by a people who have seen such a reversal of fortune." He pulls himself up into Brut's saddle. "I expect most of it will be trite and uninspired, but there is always room for something truly reflective."

John glances at me, but I just smile at Canis. "What did you mean about pirates being 'cultural parasites'? I assumed you were talking about them stealing from more productive sections of society, but-."

"No. No!" He actually glares at me. "A single inspired murder has more artistry to it than a hundred bland watercolours." John actually takes a step away from him and slightly raises his ring-hand. "But the actions of pirates are driven by economic systems they have no interest in understanding. Their murders are economic, their aims too base for grand hatreds or practical ironies. Their voyages seldom go beyond hunting grounds they know, as risk is death when all hands are raised against you. And they certainly do not create amongst themselves." He shakes his head sadly. "If you find their bases, search them. You will not find a great work. Nay, nor even a single bland watercolour."

"I'll take a look and report back to you."

I rise off the floor and fly through the tube aperture and out over the Ungaran surface. And it's… Mountainous? Ungara isn't really much better off than the Sector's other planets. Despite being spared from Devlos's direct assault, his forces wrecked the network of reflective satellites they used to raise the planet's temperature. As a result, the temperature dropped globally, and while that might have been survivable the sudden shift in heat patterns caused massive continent-enveloping blizzards. Political unity shattered, and while Abin Sur was popular enough to keep things from getting out of hand while he was alive, after his death things got a bit stupid. Some idiot decided that shooting out the satellites was a clever thing to do, and another round of world-blizzards later wrecked their society all over again.

Brut canters through the portal behind me as I rise up into the sky. The cities on Ungara's surface these days look like a series of giant igloos, designed to allow the winds to flow around them and to provide the best possible insulation to their inhabitants. Now that everyone's gotten it into their heads that shooting the things keeping them from freezing is a bad idea, there's no real reason why they couldn't repair everything.

Maybe I can use this as an example for Xor..?

John flies through the portal, and Canis glances back to make sure that he's completely through before shutting it down. Brut sniffs at the snow covering the rocky ground for a moment as his master takes it all in.

"Is there any game worth hunting? I have found Earth's game-animals disappointing."

He was rather put out when Batman turned down his request to train against blockbuster-enhanced bears, but was forced to admit that they probably wouldn't have been that much of a challenge. Barda pre-emptively banned him from cloning dinosaurs.

"Not around here. We're too close to the equator for any of the original ecosystems to have survived."

Because when giant blizzards eat your planet, they don't respect pre-climate control boundaries, and while animals from the frozen regions could -to a degree- cope, plants and animals from the balmy equatorial region by and large couldn't. The region isn't completely dead, but that's mostly due to the efforts of the locals in reintroducing things to the wild.

"Disappointing." He rides Brut to a small promontory and sights the city. "Perhaps a ride will give me a better impression of the place." Show Me Beauty!

Brut dashes, the hulking canine moving swiftly across the snow with a lightness of foot which belies his size.

"Illustres to Lantern Xor." Xor's face appears above my first ring. "Any trouble?"

"They do not believe that I am a Lantern."

"The universe has known only Green Lanterns for millions of years. It's hardly surprising that they're a bit slow on the uptake."

"So it is not an insult to my honour? They are not accusing me of taking a title that is not mine to claim, they are simply ignorant?"

"I.. think that's most likely. Xor, have you done something rash?"

"I was mindful of your words, and used nothing stronger than harsh language."

"Good, I'm pleased. Lantern Stewart and I will be with you shortly."

"I will await your arrival."

 

24th January
18:06 GMT

Lantern Xor is standing at what I suspect to be parade rest just outside the local military barracks. A small group of ungarans appear to be taking a moment away from their regular tasks to stare at him, while Xor himself is just ignoring them. Huh, I suppose they didn't know until just now that other colours of Lantern exist. Though-.

"Has Sinestro ever come here?"

"Not since he went bad." John still flies in the swimming position, going vertical only when he lands. "That I know about."

"I was just thinking: he was married to Arin Sur. He probably visited, right?"

"I guess." John shrugs as we walk towards Xor. "I never met him. You wanna know about his personal life, you should talk to Hal."

Xor takes a look around and then marches over to meet us. "Illustres. Orders?"

Out of the corner of my eye I see more locals gather, those already here using personal communicators or taking pictures. Funny thing is, while they're far more technologically advanced than humans are, the damage Ungara has taken to its industrial base means that I can recognise a lot of the technology. Simpler things are easier to make. Why build a Bleed-tech communicator when there's now plenty of room in the electromagnetic spectrum and radio-based communicators are a fraction of the cost? Similarly, though there are a plethora of different synthetic cloths they could use to keep themselves warm, local wool variants are far more popular. I guess it's.. a post-apocalyptic thing, though I'm a little surprised that things haven't shifted a little more towards pre-Devlos norms yet.

"Lantern Stewart has a government contact. We're going to get a situation update and then go from there."

Xor nods, and John takes the lead as we head into the air and towards a bulky building near the city centre.

"Lantern Xor, wasn't it?"

Xor looks at me for a second before answering. "Yes."

"Paul says you were a soldier. You do any anti-piracy work before?"

"No. Warhounds are heavy assault infantry, not marines. Pirate ships are best fought by warships."

"You don't board them?"

Just for a second, Xor looks at him in confusion. "I was a soldier, not an officer."

"And?"

"I was not taught strategy. I don't know why our commanders would want to attack pirate ships with infantry. I just know they didn't use my unit for it."

"Yeah, realistically, boarding isn't really a 'thing' in space warfare. It's easier to just shoot your target than go through all the effort of getting someone on board a ship that's.. probably trying quite hard to evade you. Even for pirates, it's usually far easier to pick up valuables after destroying the ship. Pretty much the only reason to even try is if you're trying to capture the ship intact or take someone alive, and doing it successfully requires a combination of high technology and a disregard for the life of the boarders that not a lot of people have. Citadelians used to do it, but they used teleporters and didn't expect to get their boarding teams back."

John frowns. "I've boarded ships before."

"You have a power ring. Most navies can't equip their soldiers to quite that level." We land in front of the well-insulated front entrance, the soldiers on guard duty nodding respectfully at John as we head inside. Xor only has to duck a little. "Who are we here to see?"

"Prefect Malo. After the time he got ordered to kidnap Hal, he volunteered to act as go-between whenever we needed to work with the Ungaran government. I called ahead, so-."

One set of internal doors opens and a heavily-built ungaran man in a lighter variant of the uniform the soldiers outside were wearing comes through. "Lantern Stewart."

John nods. "Prefect."

Prefect Malo looks at Xor and I curiously. "I.. wasn't aware that power rings came in other colours."

"Most people aren't. I'm the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. This is my trainee, Lantern Xor."

"Is this your first time on Ungara?"

"I'm afraid so. I don't strictly speaking have Sector-wide responsibilities, but I'll.. give you an emergency beacon before I leave."

A slight rise in his eye ridges. Yes, alright, I know that Jordan got his knuckles rapped on several occasions for ignoring the rest of his Sector. That was part of why he gave up having a full time job in addition to his Lantern Corps work. And… Yes, I was calling myself Orange Lantern 2814. But it's not like I ever told them that.

He smiles politely. "It would save me from having to grab you off the street."

"Do you have any problems that require my immediate attention?"

"No, I don't believe so. Not unless you're an expert in altering climate systems."

Hm. Mother of Mercy has finished spinning up Mars's core, and is helping the locals install the telekinetic system they're going to use to concentrate the atmosphere. But they don't need her for that. Mars doesn't have a surface population, and as far as I can tell Martians regard the changes their world is undergoing with hope-tinged disinterest. There's no real reason I couldn't send her this way for a month or two.

"I'm not, but I do have one on staff. I'll send her your way."

"Thank you. But what brings you here today?"

"A guy calling himself 'Effigy' is going after the Black Circle Syndicate. Unfortunately, no one trained him to tell who's a pirate and who isn't."

"Ah. A bounty hunter?"

John shakes his head. "Some guy with a weapon. If he was a professional I wouldn't be so worried. What sort of shipping do you have going on at the moment?"

"Not a great deal. We have a small number of ships we use for local patrols and repairing the solar reflectors. There's a mining station in our asteroid belt with a few hundred robot miners, and… That's it." I frown, and he notices. "We never went in for off-world colonisation, and our only significant space colony was destroyed by the Traitor. We don't really have any reason to send ships anywhere else."

"No unexplained disappearances from amongst your fleet?"

"We never found out exactly what happened to every ship the Traitor destroyed, but if you mean recently?" He shakes his head. "Not to my knowledge. I can check, but we really aren't a good raiding target."

John nods. "I'd appreciate it."

He nods and walks over to a terminal. "The only thing worth a pirate group taking interest in would be the wrecks left over from the Traitor's fleet."

"You didn't try salvaging them?"

"They were booby trapped. But to someone who had the codes, they probably represent a lot of money. Hm."

"Find something?"

"No, not really. There's been a slight increase in robot miners being disabled." He shrugs. "It happens. I doubt that it really means anything. They don’t have shields, so small asteroids are a constant danger. It's generally more efficient to keep them simple and repair or replace them."

"It won't hurt us to take a look."

He nods. "I'll let the crew know that you're coming."

I frown. "No… Don't do that."

He looks at me with a frown. "Do you have a reason to suspect them?"

"Nothing specific, but I'd rather take a look around without anyone tipping them off. Just in case."

He nods. "Very well. I will need to notify the picket guarding the wrecks if you're planning on going there."

John nods. "Can you notify just their commander?"

"If you think that's best. Is there anything else?"