Ghia'ta and I stop in the air, and I raise my bracer so I can look at the screen.
"We're here. Go ahead."
His bracer effectively being a tactical tablet, much like Robin's. Presumably quite a lot more durable and lacking the deeper hacking capabilities, though...
"The dominators just broke Ursa and Zod out."
Huh? "How?"
At least they're in the know now. And they're probably two of the best options for taking Ursa down gently enough to not trouble her unborn child much.
"They teleported a guy in and handed them a sunstone. Guess they didn't take them with them so there'd be a distraction."
"Is Mary okay?"
If I remember right, Mitchell is a stable full kryptonian, so him getting that sunstone could be quite useful to him. Something to loot after the fight!
"Yeah, she's got it, but Xudar's navy isn't exactly on the Dominion's level and I'm stuck jamming their teleportation until Tomar and Arisia get back. Any luck finding Lyla?"
I shake my head. "Nothing yet. How did the dominators get here so fast?"
Well, the Timaronians would have been spreading word of Zod's trial to local systems with an interest. It's possible the Dominators got that word and took up a position nearby to see what turned up...
"They probably had a cold gate set up somewhere. Space is too big to check everywhere, especially when you don't know there's anything to check for. Let me know if you find anything. Green Lantern out."
'Cold gate' meaning a long-range relay running on low standby output, so that it doesn't produce much more emissions than any other interstellar object, I take it.
I nod and lower my arm, looking at Ghia'ta. "Any luck?"
She shakes her head sadly. "I can feel no love for her or from her."
As for Lyla, I doubt she's been left with much of the positive emotions after whatever they did to augment her abilities.
I nod. "X-ray vision's no good. Half the buildings here block it completely and for all I know she can make an illusion to change how her skeleton looks. Hearing's no good because she doesn't have to use Non's voice, and I can't smell her because this whole city smells weird." I shrug helplessly. "So I guess we're just stuck hoping we get lucky. At least until the dominators come closer."
And he's working blind on all fronts anyway in terms of Lyla's 'real' presence. At best, he's hoping she doesn't disguise her scent the way she does her appearance or voice...
She nods. "Could we ask Dame Carol to ask the dominators which the Earth has as prisoners to speak with the Dominion fleet?"
I looks up, narrowing my eyes until my eyes pick out the Dominion fleet. I can't really get scale like this, but it looks like… Three cruisers, a couple of dozen attack craft and… The other ships have a different style, but…
I doubt they're remotely anywhere near the same chain of command. At
best, they'd be ignored.
"Do dominators use mercenaries?"
"Oh yes. The usually prefer using mercenaries to sending their own ships."
Which makes this fleet a little atypical? Or did they figure they'd need to make sure of overwhelming force to capture the
Doomsday?
"How do they make sure that the mercenaries stay on their side?"
"Good pay and brutal retribution. They won't betray the Dominion unless you can move their entire planet to somewhere the dominators will never find it."
And if you were
that powerful, you wouldn't be working for the Dominators...
Darn. "What's their technology like?"
"Dominator technology is… Advanced. But they usually don't sell anything that good to their henchmen."
"So the three cruisers are the main threat if we start fighting."
But the smaller ships have the advantage of numbers, and they'll likely try to defend the bigger ones.
"If we knew what they were trying to do. But not necessarily. Dominator ships can just be workshops or something to carry their machines around in." She shudders. "But if we can get inside them, then we should. Some of their recent victims might still be in storage."
A good, compassionate point. Embodying 'love of all' quite nicely.
"Have you fought them before?"
She nods slowly. "Dame Carol said that they were a 'guilt-free target'. I tried to find any love at all inside them and there was none at all. They have torn the capacity for love out of themselves and said that it is a good thing."
And to a race like the Zamarons, that must seem like an unspeakable
atrocity...
"Like the psions?"
She shakes her head quickly. "The psions became like they did because of how maltusians treated them. If they'd treated them better then I'm sure that they would have been better. Or even if they'd just left them alone. The dominators became how they are all by themselves."
Eh, I'm not so sure about the psions, but yeah, the Dominators probably leapt full-force into their current manner of existence. Most are bred specifically for their intended role, are they not, with advancement upwards or downwards only upon a great victory or loss...
"Do they clone themselves too?" She nods. "Do you know how they think?"
She shakes her head uncertainly. "They are disturbing. I don't want to think like them. Why are you asking?"
Few people would
want to think that way. It'd feel like dunking you brain in a cess-pit, I bet.
"I was thinking… What are they trying to do, exactly? We couldn't find Lyla anyway. The Xudarians aren't going to accept them just sitting there forever, but they could probably have teleported her out before Green Lantern started jamming them. Why did they try freeing Zod?"
...They want the
Doomsday, right? And it probably won't respond to anyone but a kryptonian. So they'll need at least
one to use as a catspaw until they can mass-clone replicas.
"Ah-um..? Because they knew where he was?"
"So, what, they want Zod or Ursa to find her for them? How would they know where she is either?"
And that's assuming that they actually
want Lyla. Maybe if she can replicate kryptonian biometry enough to fool restricted kryptonian tech?
"Maybe… Lyla knows that she's supposed to look for them?"
"But how would she know that the dominators contacted them? The xudarians aren't announcing it, I'm using the theta wave state, and… Are you sure she can't read your mind?"
Have the Dominators contacted the planet? Made demands for the Kryptonians or Lyla? A bit of a stretch if they haven't.
She shrugs. "My mom was Zamaron. I'm… Not millions of years old like she was, but I'm… Older than your country."
"America?"
"Themyscira. I've learned how to keep people out of my mind, and I'm deeply connected to the violet light."
That must be a little frustrating. Spending
millennia as a teenager, unless it's more a state of mind than anything.
"If-."
Ow! I wince as a high frequency sound pierces my brain-. Ghia'ta isn't reacting so it's probably something only a kryptonian can hear. Can I-? Yes.
If this was Earth, I would have asked if Jimmy Olsen were around... But this has to be
significant. A signal to attract the Dominators to her location? Or her to theirs.
"This way!"
I fly across the city, mindful of the air traffic lanes. Ghia'ta's right behind me.
I bet they appreciate that, given the emergency conditions.
"Match to everyone. I just heard an ultra-high frequency sound and I'm heading towards it's source now."
"I heard it too." Superman's face appears on the bracer's screen. "Someone's trying to attract a kryptonian's attention."
But
which kryptonian? Zod or Ursa? Lyla in her transformed disguise?
"Ursa."
"Not necessarily. They know we're here."
...And a young kryptonian clone must seem like a valuable target, so i suspect he or Clark are priority secondary targets...
True…
"Then, why?"
"Another distraction, maybe? Or it could be a code they set up before Lyla went into the Phantom Zone."
If that were true, the signal would also have featured something capable of reaching them anywhere in the galaxy... Maybe Lyla has an implanted Quantum-Entangled communicator?
Okay, we're here… I come to a halt, staring around, eyes darting from place to place as I try and spot whatever it was that made that noise. Ghia'ta's scanning, but there are only a few local people around and… I don't think any of them are Lyla in disguise. If I can-.
There!
Maybe he needs to scan for the odd one out... There has to be
something that would give Lyla away.
I fly downwards, picking the speaker out of a gutter. It's… Kryptonian technology, set to play a burst of sound on a delay. Piezoelectric, so there's no battery or anything else like that we could detect. I trigger it to play -ow- again. Same noise.
I look closer. I can see fingerprints, so I guess I know what her real fingers look like now. But… She's not here.
Great. But unless you plan to spend hours scanning
every surface in a slow spiral over the course of subjective hours, that's not going to be helpful...
"Found it. She's not here. And it doesn't look like she only just ran off. Ghia'ta, are there any cameras around here?"
Her eyes flicker. "Not close to here."
So this location was picked for privacy. But was it a 'come here' signal for Lyla, or a distraction for any other kryptonian? The fact it's kryptonian tech is significant, but the Dominator forces do seem to have some of it handy.
Superman nods. "Okay. Stay there for now in case someone else turns up."
I nod. I can still see the Dominion ships from here, and Ghia'ta can move us faster than light if normal flying isn't fast enough. I-.
There must be something behind all this. Some kind of
plan to discern...
Huh.
I press the crystal again, triggering the sound burst-
That can't be
pleasant.
"Match?"
-and it's…
"It's not a continuous tone. But I can't make it out. I don't think it's words, and I don't have any way to-." I look at Ghia'ta's ring. "Ghia'ta, can you check it out for me?"
Ah, well done, Mitchell! That could crack the play.
She holds up her right hand, ring glowing as I trigger the crystal again. And then she frowns. "You were right, it's not words. A series of pulses, like Morse code."
Superman nods. "Send it to the Doomsday and I'll get Karsta Wor-Ul to take a look. Good guess, Match. Superman out."
Better make sure the terminal she uses is protected, it could be a
virus.
