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

13th February 2013
19:11 GMT -5

Turns out? No. No, they don't see things differently when-

The cruiser skimming the atmosphere above us opens fire with its ventral weapons, lasers turning the air to plasma which slams into my construct shield.

Ah…

-we visit them on their own planet.

"Gentlemen and lady, I can keep this up indefinitely, but it's not doing the planet any good."

Vykin looks at Lightray. "Will they keep shooting if we approach a settlement?"

"Vykin, I've never been to this planet before or met these people."

"Lantern B'dg, do your records give-?"

"They're.. pretty much gunna-" He raises his right hand as if contemplating adding his own shield to mine, then decides against it. "-keep shooting until we're dead. On the plus side, their system defence ships aren't anything special. You could probably destroy them."

"No." Bear looks decidedly truculent. "We burst into their home. They're scared. We're not killing anyone."

"Aircraft incoming. Looks like troop carriers."

Hang on. Ring, are the people in charge of those soldiers communicating with the ship?

No direct communication detected.

Is that because the air is too thoroughly ionised for anything to get through?

Suggested explanation is plausible.

The ships fire again and the area of energised air above expands.

Knowing what I do about the history of this species, I'm not exactly going to be choked up if they get a few of their own soldiers killed due to stupidity. On the other hand, I doubt that it would help the Forever People's recovery if that actually happened.

I think-.

"They will die if they fly into that plasma cloud." Moonrider holds up his lightning gun thing, and then-. "That will not happen." The Lightning Will Be Earthed.

Electrical energy leaps… Leaps through my construct and slamming into-. Into the ground right next to Moonrider! The ground explodes and knocks him flying, Bear diving to catch him before he lands. His armour is.. a bit singed, but-

"Uh-hg."

-he's alive at least. I take a purple healing ray out of subspace and shoot him with it. Bear twists his head around, clearly alarmed-.

"It's a healing ray. Look at him."

And I look at the sky. It's suddenly clear, and-

Communication detected.

-the soldiers can now talk to the ship, which… Yes, it isn't firing and my scan shows that the cruiser is closing its weapon port.

"Mooney?" Bear looks down as his friend stirs. "Are you well?"

He blinks, then manages to open his eyes. "Yes." "I felt like me again."

"I'm giving you half marks, could do better. The aim is to earth the electricity into the ground, not into yourself."

"I will remember that. What is this beam?"

"A healing ray from Earth. Since you tried discharging a large plasma cloud into yourself."

"I'm not-." He starts smiling. "I wasn't aiming at myself. I was trying to channel it into the ground. I am not fully recovered, but that was more than I have managed since our return."

"Good for-" I switch from an overhead shield to a horizontal one as the incoming soldiers start firing. "-you."

"This ray from Earth feels… Good. Usually alien healing devices don’t work well on New Gods."

I frown. "How 'good' are we talking-?"

"Please!" Vykin walks up to the inner surface of my shield construct, his hands raised. "We merely want to ask if you have seen someone we are trying to find! We have no interest in fighting you!"

They respond by aiming at his face. He drops his hands, takes a deep breath, and waits for them to realise that it isn't going to work.

Bear helps Moonrider back onto his feet and makes sure that he's capable of staying upright, and gets a grateful nod as Moonrider proves that he can.

"Dreamer, I don't suppose you can… Get anything out of them like this, can you?"

She looks at the advancing soldiers and shakes her head. "Too many people thinking about too many things."

"Alright, I'll give it a go, then. Poke me if you need me."

Serifan looks confused. "How're we supposed to poke you in all that armour?"

But I'm already unfocusing, staring beyond the world. The desires of soldiers in combat are much the same from place to place, slanted by the fact that we're obviously not receiving damage or fighting back. Beyond that, I look for images of Ub'x or Paldak, anything they've done or anywhere they've been.

I don't see anything. If she was here, it wasn't for long enough to cause any real fear or stimulate any strong desire. That doesn't mean that there wasn't some sort of bulletin or other news release. Or maybe their fleet engaging someone doesn't really count as 'news' to them.

"No, nothing. Never mind."

"…will die, alien!"

Vykin shakes his head solemnly. "We have no interest in killing-"

Two shots hit the construct shield in front of him at almost the exact same time. Then one of them throws a plasma grenade. It explodes, doing nothing.

"-anyone."

He half-turns back, looking for suggestions.

"Have you considered paying them for information?"

"We do not usually engage in.. commerce."

"But you don't object to it?"

He shakes his head, so I fly up to him. Ring, transmit on radio in addition to normal speech.

Compliance.

"We want information, and have refined-" I get two shots level with my faceplate. "-metal to trade." I extend my right hand and let a selection of gold and jewellery fall to the ground. "And then we'll get lost."

No more shots. Good.

"Have you-" Their leader appears to be counting down. "-seen a small-" They all fire at once, aiming at the centre of my mass and still not doing any visible damage to my construct. "-beaver or lizard with a power ring-?"

Another unified shot. And then another. Honestly, their discipline and aim are really quite impressive. But this isn't getting us anywhere. Empathic vision.

"Anyone feel like taking the deal? Anyone want a nice big bonus to their regular pay?"

Flickers of orange-.

I attach filaments to all but two of the soldiers and transition them halfway across the continent.

"Right then." The two nervously lower their guns as I drop the construct barrier. "Let's try that again."

 

13th February 2013
19:15 GMT -5

The two remaining soldiers very slowly move their guns out to the side, one hand around the barrel and nothing anywhere near the trigger.

"Um…" The one on the left looks at the small pile of gold behind me. "You… Mentioned payment?"

"Yes, we need some information and I'm hoping that you can provide it. Someone we wish-."

"Dude." The second soldier glances at his financially-motivated colleague. "It's just like in War Fury."

"Shut up."

"I'm sorry? 'War Fury'?"

"Yeah, it's a television series. Ah. Your species has those, right?"

I consider the state of television during the current Anti-Life infestation, where Batman authorised the use of worldwide jammers to prevent it being a transmission vector.

"Not… Right now, but I know what you mean. So… What..? Happens in War Fury?"

"There's this guy-. One of my species? Some stuff happens, and he gets recruited to fight for this alien warlord, wins a ton of battles, and… Ah… Meets a bunch of alien women." He glances at Dreamer. "Hot ones. Not like-. I mean, I'm sure she's-. You? Are very attractive by your species' standards-."

"I… Get the idea. And that's something that you want to do?"

"S-?" First soldier looks shocked. "Seriously?"

"I mean, I can't recruit you right now, but the alliance I'm part of is fighting the largest empire in this galaxy, and we can always use… Are you infantry, or do you have specialised skills?"

Second soldier looks like he's having about a decade's worth of birthdays at once. "We're trained as marines. You know, landing and boarding operations… But we're always eager to learn new skills!"

"Okay. Well, once this trip is over, I can get a L.E.G.I.O.N. recruitment flotilla sent this way. Might take a little while to get here, but it's not really a problem for me. I doubt that you'll answer to Supreme Commander Dox personally for a very long time, and… You'll have to work out the attractive females thing yourself-"

"No problem!"

"-but that can happen."

First soldier isn't anything like as excited. "I'd… Rather have cash. I'll probably join up if they actually turn up, but I don't know you."

"Perfectly reasonable concern."

I use a construct to pick up the valuables, split the piles in half and proffer a half-pile to each of them.

"No point trying to fight you." First soldier shrugs. "It was pretty obvious that we weren't doing anything against your force field."

The soldiers take the opportunity to squirrel their bribe money away in various parts of their armour.

Vykin nods. "I understand. We mean no slight on your honour."

"Honour? No, it's just dumb to keep attacking someone you can't hurt. I hate getting dumb orders."

T.V. enthusiast nods companionably, while the other decides to try hiding a ruby in his stock in place of one of his spare power cells. After checking that it fits, he looks up. "What did you want to know?"

Dreamer waves her right hand, and images of Ub'x and Peldak appear just in front of them. "Do you know these people?"

"The one with the head fronds… That's from Qualar IV, yeah?" She nods. "Don’t they fall over if you look at them funny?"

"This one would be different."

The two of them peer at the images for a few moments, before performing a negative gesture. The ruby-squirreler also makes a gesture of appeal. "Is there anything else we might know them by?"

"Indigo force fields, like the force fields Lanterns use."

The two of them twitch, then make an affirmative gesture. Squirreler raises the screen mounted on his right arm. "Display attack on dockyard eight, highlights."

A fairly standard docking cradle network with central hub design. A few unique touches, but for the most part there are only so many ways to make a space dock that make sense. Form comes from function almost exclusively.

An indigo speck appears, slamming into the force field protecting the important military asset. Defence turrets deploy and open fire a moment later, the indigo blur ducking and dodging as they evade.

I narrow my eyes. The constructs look-.

"Bad constructs." B'dg floats next to my head. "She's not channelling compassion well. She's just fighting because she wants to."

I nod. "And she's not even denting those shields."

Squirreler indicates a negative. "Our shields are tuned to block constructs."

"Really?" I frown. "No offence intended to your engineers, but specific construct-blockers are usually something species a good deal more advanced than yours start developing."

"Oh, yeah, yeah, don't worry. We bought the design from these bald guys with bug-eye cybernetics years ago."

"Qwardians." I generate a construct image of Varnathon. "Like this?"

T.V. addict makes another affirmative gesture. "He said… He said they… Ah… Were releasing their previous-generation shield designs for export because… They were upgrading their own fleet."

Squirreler points to his computer screen. "See, this is where it-."

Peldak stops moving, the point defences shooting holes in her construct shield as whatever camera was recording this zooms in. She trembles-.

Her construct barrier turns green, patching its holes as light surges along its surface. Now the point defence shots are being absorbed or deflected, and she looks decidedly satisfied with that eventuality.

B'dg frowns. "Huh. Did you know they could do that?"

"I wasn't sure."

That covers her defence, but her energy bolts still aren't penetrating the shield. Finally she moves on to trying a… Denture construct? And she's clearly making an effort -I can see the shield being stressed- but it doesn't go through. She pulls back and flies away.

"Okay, we-."

"It hasn't finished."

The camera angle changes to an external facing, zooms in on-. She's grabbed a wreck with a construct tether and is accelerating towards the dock. This time secondary batteries open fire, striking the wreck and punching through-.

Most ship-scale weapons are designed to mission-kill ships, not completely disintegrate them. Peldak is a small and agile target, her tether isn't much bigger and while the ship is taking holes it isn't breaking apart. The accurate but unfocused fire continues for several seconds before someone gets the gunnery under orders and they target… The bow of the ship, where the construct tether is attached.

They hit, so Peldak… Flies around behind the wreck and starts pushing it.

It gets closer, weapons continuing to fire.

Closer. It's taking some damage, but it's got enough momentum at this point that it doesn't matter.

Closer.

Closer-.

It slams into the shields and shatters, achieving nothing.

"Yeah, she basically vanished after that. No further sightings."

"Thank you. We can follow up on that in orbit."