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

8th January 2005
19:12 GMT +5:45

Komand'r stalks along the corridor of Shadow Spire, and I.. walk behind her. She's been on edge since we got back and she refuses to talk to me about it. My people skills aren't all that great, but I'd have thought…

I love her, she loves me. Why is this-? Why can't she..?

There aren't a lot of Shadow Cabinet operatives around. With only twenty or so of us on the planet… That I know about, anyway. I certainly wouldn't put it past Dharma to have a whole lot more people on retainer. But the point is, we have lives. We have jobs. We don't hang around the command centre that mostly exists to keep the brains of the operation safe and informed.

"Where is he?!"

"Just to the-."

Krona.

I appear next to her, and point to the door leading to Dharma's office.

"That's his office, but-."

Komand'r flies at it, shoving it inward against its hinges and snapping it off the wall!

Dharma is standing just outside of door range without any breakable object between him and Komand'r. Ramon's with him, but-. Yes, looks like he got pulled in for bodyguard duty. I'm not too worried about him. He.. kind of approves of my direct action approach, and he does owe me for boosting his raw power by about a million times.

His ability is to transform parts of himself into other animals. I still can't believe no one had asked him whether or not he could do kryptonians before.

We make momentary eye contact as Komand'r faces down Dharma. I shrug, apologetically. He nods sympathetically.

Komand'r's eyes are glowing as she floats at looking-down-on-you height. Dharma's eyes aren't focused, and his head isn't really orientated on her.

"Shall I answer your questions, or would you like to ask them first?"

"Why haven't you got any jobs for us? Is the world suddenly fine? Because it didn't look fine!"

"The world isn't fine. It has never been fine and it will probably never be fine. I see that every day. But that isn't what you want to ask."

"Well if you answer it then maybe I'll ask something else!"

"I do not have any tasks for you because every time I look at the result of assigning a task to you I see the outcome becoming worse."

"What? How can killing monsters make things get worse?"

"That is something that I am trying to determine. I do not like having my operatives unavailable. I suggest going back to Jump City. There always seems to be something-."

"We can't go there because my stupid sister made me promise not to kill anyone!"

"It doesn't matter. I only suggested it because you seem to-."

"So give me something or I'll just kill someone at random!"

"The only person in Jump City who can cause a true catastrophe is Raven, and you have already refused to kill her." His right hand drifts to his belt, and I see that he's got a swatch of fabric I brought him torn from Ms Roth's cloak tucked into it. "Yes… Only a few years, now. Are you sure that you won't reconsider?"

"No! Yes, I won't 'reconsider'! I like her!"

I take a step closer.

"Dharma, if you could.. just come up with something. It doesn't even have to be-."

Dharma steps left, right hand darting out to touch Komand'r's left leg while his left taps my chest. He blinks as I step past him to catch Komand'r's fist as she ow swings at him-.

Her eyes go out and she drops to the floor as I pick myself up and gently test-ow, yep, that's broken. I stand-.

And I sit down again. Oh dear. That… Hurts. And I feel dizzy and the room's blurring.

Komand'r is just in front of me, eyes wide with concern as she stares into my eyes and then looks at my shattered armour plates.

Then she turns back to Dharma.

"That was your fault!"

You'd think that a superhero world… Heck, a superhero team, would have all sorts of advanced healing options. If that is the case, they're not selling them in places where I can buy them. The best I've been able to get hold of is some magic stones that increase the human body's natural healing speed by about one fifth and a 'may cause malignant tumours' stem cell injector. And of course aliens are no help.

And -refusal to murder her notwithstanding- I don't think Rachel likes me enough to heal me directly.

"…risk of sending you out in your current state."

Ramon is actually standing between them now, ready to hold her back if she goes for Dharma again. Not sure how annoyed I should be about him not using some of that super speed to shield me, but I suppose that's not what he's here for.

"You knew that was going to happen!"

"For about half a second before it did, yes, but-."

Komand'r's about to go critical and I'm being weak.

I let out a wince-gasp as the red light flares through me, basic.. blood magic and a touch of the Red patching some of my injuries. Or at least patching them over. My arm is still going to need a splint, but at least I can see straight.

Komand'r's attention immediately switches to me as she revises her assessment of my injuries then-.

"Komand'r, stop taking it out on him. Tell me what's going on. You've gone longer than this between missions before. I want to help and I don't understand."

She stares at me, her face falling.

Then she half looks at Dharma and Ramon.

"Get out."

Dharma's already walking through the door-space. Ramon gives me a decidedly dubious look. I nod, and he follows our employer out.

"Was it Kron-?"

"Yes!" … "No."

She starts pacing, fists balled and stutter-glowing.

"I was trapped! Powerless! Those.. robots just..! Stuck me in a cell like I was so weak I wasn't even worth killing!"

"Komand'r, there's always someone stronger and tougher. You told me-."

She stops, facing away from me.

"It made me think of the psions. Being strapped into their machine. Being… Being strapped to a table while they experimented on me to see how long it took me to die."

She takes a few breaths.

"I hate it. Why didn't-? All the-. Yous let me kill him?"

"I don't know." I carefully come to my feet, and I spot Komand'r notice out of the corner of her eye and then start to move towards me to help before stopping herself. "But I know that I love you and I want to help. And if we can't hunt down Krona… Maybe we can hunt down the psion responsible for your transformation?"

 

12th April
14:08 GMT +3

I ignore the laughter as I walk uphill towards the inner city plaza.

I ignore the rigid expressions of the gate guards, though I-. Someone came up and told them while they were on duty. That was unprofessional. I'll see if I can track down Philippus and talk to her about some sort of shared training session with another country's military.

I ignore the way that the guards around the plaza try to avoid looking at me. See if I tell them about the hot orange alien princess visiting.

I don't ignore Lantern Savenlovich, because she's my best option for getting information on how things are going without sticking my head through the doorway. She's standing outside the Temple of Athena and appears to be considering going inside before she spots me.

"Orange Lantern."

I can't tell from her face whether anyone told her or not. Of course, people who can't focus on the relevant and ignore the irrelevant don’t get green power rings.

"Lantern Savenlovich. You may as well use my name. There are three Orange Lanterns on Earth at the moment, not counting the loaner I gave Ghia'ta."

"She did not use that in our training session."

"She's trying to overcome an upbringing where she was repeatedly told that the other colours were inherently evil." I nod to the entrance. "Thinking of going inside? It's basically just Themyscira's national library. You don't need to pray or anything."

I hesitate, and then look upwards.

"'Just' in the sense that 'library' is its primary function, not that its function as a library is unimportant."

"The way you looked upward does not reassure me."

"I can't afford to alienate any more gods. Besides, I like libraries."

"Perhaps I will do so later. Besides, I am concerned about the idea of coming to the attention of the Greek gods."

"Oh, most of them aren't all that bad. I have positive working relationships with several."

"I understand that strange things can happen to people who involve themselves with such beings."

"Yes, but look around. This is the only country on the planet where the worship of the Olympians is common, and there isn't that much-."

"Please explain to me how you impregnated a spider."

…

"I didn't, the girl just said that because she wanted me to feel responsible. The Spider Queen is a geneticist of considerable skill, and did her best to create a Guilder who thinks like me-"

Lantern Savenlovich closes her eyes for a moment.

"-as a way to get into the Orange Lantern Corps. The Queen thinks that the only way for her to survive in the long term is to reform the entire Spider Guild, and we're the next step."

"The small spider is not your daughter."

"That is correct."

"Good. Then perhaps I will risk the library."

I nod. "I'm sure that they'll appreciate having a new patron. How are the talks going?"

"Polite. Icy. Aquaman is angry, but controlled. King Cyprian is far more relaxed."

"All of his worst possible outcomes have vanished. Nothing he could be asked for presents an existential problem for Venturia so this can't go wrong. For King Orin on the other hand he's having to tacitly admit that he's going to lose a city and the most he can do is make them take extra steps. And he's finding out how badly advised he was, which has got to be annoying."

"If he blames this on his advisers then I will lose respect for him."

I shrug.

"Have you read up on his history?"

"I have read the Justice League reports."

I shake my head.

"No, his personal history. The only Atlantean he met before his eighteenth birthday was his mother. He grew up in the United States. And even after getting intensely tutored in Atlantean customs, he's still an outsider in a lot of ways. That's why he became a superhero and left running the country to his brother."

"Ocean Master." She frowns slightly. "If he was to be king, why was he raised outside of Atlantis?"

"The official reason is that his mother Queen Atlanna wanted him to know surface world culture so that he could lead Atlantis in fully integrating with the rest of human civilisation. But I have to admit, I've… Wondered if Queen Atlanna dumped him on his father until she'd firmly established her control of Atlantis so she wouldn't have to deal with the social consequences of an unplanned out of wedlock royal pregnancy."

"Then why bring him back?"

"I'm not really sure. I mean, Orm wasn't actually a Purist and he was a competent administrator." I shrug. "I can't think of a rational reason for it. Maybe I was being unduly suspicious."

"People do not always do things for rational reasons. Or at least reasons which seem rational to other people."

"Speaking from personal experience?"

"I devoted my professional life to keeping Roscosmos going. As Russia empowered the oligarchs and nationalists, I tried to keep us active in space."

"Yes, and you said that you only kept your ring because the Director said he'd arrange things so that you weren't missed."

"Yes, he said that. And he has kept his word. You have seen Starfire's ship?"

"Yes? I… Didn't think they could replicate it."

"That is quite true. But they learned enough when working on his ship to obsolete all of Roscosmos's rockets. So he did not so much increase the budget of Roscosmos as appropriate its budget for his space fleet."

…

"The Russian Federation has a military space fleet?"

"A small one. And it is not as advanced as the ships which we are both familiar with. They are going to unveil it officially by flying to the ClusterShip…" She creates a watch construct. "In about half an hour."

Why is it that the one person on this planet who is doing what I want without needing to be told to is the head of Russia's military superhuman development program?

"Is it purely military?"

"At the moment it is about waving the flag. I think that the President will want to see how the world reacts before he makes any final decisions. There would be no point making elaborate plans if it turns out that China and America are both doing the same."

"China's trying to use Durlan technology, so they're not really getting anywhere. America… Doesn't as far as I know. But hey." I smile. "Maybe this will spur everyone else on?"

 

12th April
08:08 GMT -5

"And done."

I open my eyes, sitting up as I carefully look over the hundreds of tiny tattoos which now cover my body. As I watch they fade, the token shapes absorbed into my augmented metaphysique. But I make sure to note exactly what they look like. Even now, even knowing that the person who worked on me is literally incapable of wanting to act contrary to my interests, I'm not entirely comfortable putting myself in her hands.

I know that evil overlords traditionally aren't good at trusting people, but in my defence, this is Circe.

I put my rings back on my fingers, opening and closing my fists as my environmental shield re-engages. "Is it working?"

She triggers her Nabu-ring to conjure an ankh and presses it against my chest. The golden light of Nabu's totemic image fades and fails almost immediately. And I can't help but feel a little sorry for my alter-ego. As remarkable as his achievements are, he had Constantine and Sackville create his tattoos before he fully investigated what micro-inscriptions could achieve. That's the problem with being an early adopter, I suppose.

"Thank you. Good work."

A blush of pleasure appears on her face, and the illusion covering the orange of her irises flickers slightly.

"I'm happy to be of service."

And as Alucard would say, she means it too.

I float off the bier and then don my clothes and my armour. And inwardly I sigh. I thought I had everything covered, but a parallel universe version of me went and trumped me. Merging with the Ophidian? Achieving enlightenment? Okay, that was a desperation hail Mary, but still... I can't deny that I'm impressed. And letting Krona get the drop on me like that. I'll be rewriting a few Standard Operating Procedure documents, I don't mind telling you.

"How long will it take you to incorporate this new information into the curriculum?"

She shakes her head.

"None of it really changes what we teach at the entry level. We could improve the tattoos the Atlantean battlemage students receive, but it might limit what they can do later in their lives."

I frown. "Don’t the tattoos they already use do that?"

"No, they're weak enough that they can be removed far more easily." Her eyes widen slightly as an idea occurs. "But we could switch them over to enchanted bracers entirely. The bindings the other Constantine developed would work perfectly to enable a switch over from body tattoos. Ah-." She looks nervously at me. "It wouldn't have worked for you, the warding tattoos wouldn't allow for it."

"Don't worry. I understand that technical specialists need more precision than non-specialists like myself. Let Queen Mera know that you have my approval."

Circe nods. "And I'll try and find our version of this 'Sephtian'. There's no reason why we can't recruit him just as easily as your doppelgänger did. A soft sell; special measures won't be necessary." I nod. "A shame about our Constantine."

I nod again. I hadn't realised that he was so principled. Even after I got hold of his brain, he preferred to die rather than be controlled. I can respect that. And it was a useful lesson; if you really want to keep somebody, make sure that you take away all of their choices.

I smile at Circe. "If there's nothing else, I've got an interrogation that requires my personal attention."

"No, that's everything. I'll see you again at our next briefing."

She fades away in a cloud of glitter.

It's so nice when people take full advantage of the opportunities I force upon them.

I head out of the door and down the corridor, towards the more heavily secure parts of the tower. Things become so much easier to make happen when ego is taken out of-.

"Hey, Orange!"

Ollie waves as I head past the training area where he's overseeing a class.

"Green Arrow. How are things?"

He looks around the tired but enthusiastic metahumans in his charge.

"Ah, the kids are doing great. I'm organising a soccer tournament after class. Any chance you could put in an appearance?"

I nod happily. "Wouldn't miss it. As long as you don't expect me to call it 'soccer'."

He chuckles. "Great. Ah. Is Empress going to be back in class soon?"

I nod. This is the advantage of changing a person's motives without altering their intellect or imposing 'Asimovs'; they can still question you. Especially if they think you're acting against your own interests. "Oh yes, I just need a quick word with her. Shouldn't take more than an hour, if that. In fact, if you'll excuse me..?"

He waves me off, and I continue on my way. He's an excellent role model for the trainees, and this is a far better use of his abilities and character than trying to keep up with superpowered brawlers on the front line. I'm not sure whether I'll have extended periods of field experience continue to be a requirement for teaching here in the future. There are obvious advantages, but it's not as if schools require biology teachers to have worked as doctors.

Diana's on guard duty, making sure that Anita remains where she is. Heh, I remember very well how resistant Diana is to mental intrusion. When I made my move she lasted longer than anyone else on the League; I had to tie her to the Orange Central Power Battery with her own lasso before I could muster enough power to dominate her, and didn't that cause trouble. Fortunately, she's just as resistant to further changes as she was to mine, which means that Anita's arcane coercion abilities won't do a thing.

Oh I do so like having Diana.

In fact…

I know it's unprofessional, but rather than wait for her to complete the security scans I just walk up to her and kiss her. She responds happily, because who wants miserable slaves? Of course, she's in full armour so I can't fondle her arse or breasts… Ah well, it's not like either of us are getting any older.

I pull back, smiling. "Is Anita causing any trouble?"

She shakes her head. "No. Now stand still. You implemented this procedure."

I nod and hold up my arms as she completes the identity check, then walk into the airlock as she buzzes me through.

Anita's eyes dart to me, but her self-control is good enough that she doesn't immediately make a move. Not that the chair she's strapped to gives her a lot of room to move, but a lot of people I've had in this position have strained against it anyway.

Though that.. could just be the drugs…

"Anita-."

"Are you going to rape me too?"

I frown. "Now, why would you say a thing like that?"

"I saw what you did to Wonder Woman. You're fucking evil."

"No." I shake my head. "No. I'm.. bad. Perhaps very bad. But I'm not evil."

"You mind control people and rape them."

"If I were 'evil', I'd be doing it for the sake of causing suffering. As it is, I'm doing it for my own selfish benefit. To efficiently realise my goals. And often that means that other people benefit as well. Sometimes, that means convincing a group of isolationist primitives to share a groundbreaking technology, sometimes it means convincing vigilantes to adopt a utilitarian standard when it comes to dealing with unrepentant serial killers-."

"And sometimes it means raping Wonder Woman."

I frown. "I wouldn't call that 'rape'. It was really… More like murder. Her original personality and values don't exist any more; it's like her body is inhabited by a new person who's a bit like her former self. That's.. why your effort to free her didn't work, by the way. You were trying to remove a spell which.. wasn't there. It couldn't work any more than a fire extinguisher can turn ash into wood. There's no binding to remove."

And now she's crying. Oh dear.

"Now, obviously I need to know everything about how you found out, and the names and locations of anyone else who suspects or whom you spoke to about your suspicions… But I can see this is very stressful for you, and I don't like inflicting unnecessary suffering when I don't profit from it."

I raise my left hand in benediction as my rings glow and I activate the Left Eye of Zoltec.

"So why don't I take your suffering away?"

 

12th April
11:46 GMT

I watch as the nascent fleet reaches orbit.

Fascinating.

Koriand'r frowns in puzzlement.

"They seem so primitive."

The Russian Space Fleet launched entirely without rocket blasts. Instead, they built magnetic subterranean launch rails and anti-air resistance force fields to shoot them off the planet, the ships' own main drive providing the extra thrust needed to make orbit. No one part of the design is new to me, it's just that most species who go into space don't.. use those sorts of methods. Usually, they either build their ships in near-planetary space or they've got sufficiently advanced drive systems that they can take off without special arrangements. Launch rails like that are pretty much… Just used for… Bases on low-gravity planetoids, where it's more efficient than strapping boosters on.

"I think the most technologically advanced part of that whole arrangement is the launch system."

The ships have railguns as their primary armament, and I silently thank the Russian government for not putting nuclear torpedoes on the things. Their guns already have the power to shred anything in the system built on Earth. They… Might even be able to take a fight with a Martian ship of equivalent mass, assuming they could see it. They're slower and less agile, but then Martian gunnery isn't anything to get excited about. Particularly at long range.

"I was expecting… More."

"Why?"

"Some of the devices you carry are so advanced. Compared to what exists in Vega. I assumed that your ships…"

"You knew that we didn't have any."

"I knew that you hadn't built any for many years. There are species who are advanced but have no interest in travelling in space. Those are less advanced than the first ships my people built after settling on Tamaran."

"Yes, but it's more progress than we've made in the last fifty years so I'm calling it a success. I've learned.. to accept baby steps."

And I'm bracing for Russia to decide that they're no longer going to contract for NASA, which is going to leave the North American Space Agency entirely bereft of ways to actually get into space. Would the United States of America be prepared to put in the money needed to resume the space race? For an openly nationalist not-dictatorship like the Russian Federation this sort of national vanity project makes sense. It increases national pride and distracts-.

I narrow my eyes and look down, glaring at the Director's Siberian research centre. There's a flicker of resistance from the basic wards the local shaman probably put up, then…

The Director's not there. I move my attention to Moscow and try to spot-.

Ring, compare that to the usual death rate in Moscow at this time of year?

Substantial increase on seasonal norms.

I mentally pull up a copy of police reports and begin checking people off. Yes, they're cleaning house. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a substantial rise in criminal gangs all across its former territory. With the fire sale of national assets and various types of civil servant not getting paid, I suppose that it was inevitable. Back on Earth Prime the line appeared to be 'don't make waves and you'll be left alone'. But here, with the Director and the President both being pro-internal reform…

The Russian mafia has drawn the attention of something infinitely its greater. Batman sent us a briefing document on the reform of the Russian Federal Police, but I didn't really pay it all that much attention. Looks like the mafia didn't either.

Starting to think that I may have been working on the wrong continent.

"Alright, nothing for us to do here. I'm sure that once everyone stops panicking we'll get an intelligent summary."

Koriand'r blinks at me.

"Are we not going to greet them?"

"No." I consider who I'm talking to. "While I imagine that knowing that Tamaran exists will do wonders to spur on humanity's efforts at space exploration, those ships don't really have an easy way to take on space-going travellers. They've undoubtably calculated every mote of energy and thrust, and… This is a matter of national pride. If I start hanging around it's just going to annoy them."

So, where next? Back to Themyscira, and lurk outside of the meeting hall like a ghost at the feast? Happy Harbour? There must be some people who don't know that the Mountain is operational again. Gotham?

That's actually not a terrible idea.

"Koriand'r, how about I show you the city where I live?"

She smiles. "That would be most delightful."

"That just shows that you've never been there. Follow me."

12th April
06:49 GMT -5

It's early morning here in Gotham. Early morning joggers are out doing circuits of Robinson Park, though I've missed my usual meet up with the Nguyens. Some traffic noise but no screams, explosions or gunshots.

Koriand'r appears next to me and looks around in fascination.

"This is very different to Themyscira."

"This is a bit more representative of modern Earth cities. At.. least, in the more prosperous parts of the world."

…

"Some parts of the world. A plant elemental turned the whole place into a forest last year, and when we persuaded him to leave he replaced a lot of the foundations and pipes with plant growths as a peace offering. That's why… You see the bridge-"

I point.

"-over there, how the third support along doesn't look quite like the others?"

"I see it."

"It's actually made of a type of ultra-resilient wood. There was a huge argument between the city government, the state government and the national government about whether they should leave stuff like that in place, remove it due to safety concerns or remove it for study. They only left it there because no one wanted to pay for replacing it properly."

"How..? Long did this take?"

"What, the argument? About four weeks, I think."

"How long did it take for the plant elemental to cover the city in a forest?"

"The initial surge of growth was about… Four minutes? It kept growing until we negotiated an armistice."

She turns her head to regard me curiously.

"You are telling me that the plant elemental turned this city into a forest in four minutes?"

"Roughly four minutes. Maybe a bit less. I wasn't monitoring it precisely."

"And now the only sign that it happened is an oddly textured bridge support."

"And some people scream if you sneak up on them while holding a plant." I snort with amusement. "And the sewer system is self-cleaning. Honestly, if Swamp Thing wasn't such an idiot he could make a fortune offering that sort of thing as a service."

I turn to face the direction of Gotham Police Central.

"Come on; let's see if Commissioner Gordon will let us ride along with anyone."

 

12th April
14:21 GMT -5

"Shouldn't you be in school?"

Richard shakes his head.

"Batman's busy with the 'ClusterCorp' thing and the 'Russia has spaceships' thing, and you're in Gotham."

"I live in Gotham."

Richard smirks.

"So you get why he's concerned."

"…extremely disrespectful to public property."

"Ah… Yeah… Babe."

Below us, Koriand'r attempts to berate two young men who were graffitiing an underpass while Detective Montoya looks on. I don't think they've stopped staring at her breasts since she landed.

I'd criticise, but they are very nice breasts being displayed to their best advantage.

"So is that Komand'r or Koriand'r?"

"Koriand'r."

"Why do you think her name sounds like 'coriander'?"

"There are only so many syllables."

"Does she know those guys are checking her out?"

"I… Fifty-fifty. She knows that she's attractive, but she also knows that she's an alien on an isolated world. And Tamaraneans are a lot more open about that sort of thing than humans tend to be."

"…paint over the marks you have made to restore this place to pristine condition."

"Can we just paint over this bit? I mean, the city hasn't done any painting here for, like, years."

"No, because you are being punished for your misdeed. Now go!"

One takes a step away from her, probably-. Yep, intending to head home and forget this ever happened, which sounds like a good way to get an alien warrior princess knocking on your door to me. The other hesitates.

"If I do, will you give me your number?"

Koriand'r looks slightly puzzled.

"I do not have a number. I am a person; I have a name."

There's a somewhat complicated burst of emotion from the other chap, a combination of irritation that his friend is drawing this out combined with good natured envy at his friend for having the moxie to ask.

"Could you get me her number?"

I raise my eyebrows.

"What? I'm fifteen. And she's… How old is she?"

"She's from a different planet, a different species and a different culture. Her people consider her an adult. I've pegged her as seventeen-equivalent. And she doesn't have a number."

"She doesn't have a number or she doesn't 'have' a number?"

I actually don't know what Tamaraneans do for telephones. Adam said that their communications were working, but I didn't think to ask what that means for individual citizens. I'll have to ask Koriand'r.

"Look, she's right there. You can just talk to her, or ask me to send her a message, or ask any other Lantern in the universe to send her a message."

"Because Lanterns are so-. Huh." He nods. "Earth actually does have a lot of Lanterns. That's actually not so hard."

"I know. We have more Lanterns assigned here than any other Sector in history. Though.. Sector Lanterns are a post-Qarrigat thing, so there were probably regions before that which had more Lanterns."

"You said that Orange Lanterns can do whatever they want when they're not doing Orange Lantern work. Does that mean that Koriand'r is a free agent?"

"She's assigned to Vega. She's here because she's interested in Earth and Vega is quiet at the moment. This is.. sort of a holiday, so… Yes."

"I don't suppose she works for another trading company?"

I shake my head.

"I already thought of that. Tamaran-." No, she can use her ring for private commercial activities, as long as they don't conflict with her official assignments. "Tamaran doesn't really have anything to export at the moment. In.. five to ten years they'll have spare space in their space docks and a population with a space age education, but at the moment the place is too badly damaged."

"Is there anything they want from us?"

"You can ask, but I doubt it. They're rebuilding and don't want to be dependent on aliens, but they're rebuilding back up to a higher level of technology than we have. Ah, in widespread deployment at least. They used to have an interstellar fleet and interstellar merchants. The only thing we could really offer would be mass low-tech manufacturing, and then there's.. the problem of shipping."

"I thought they were building an interstellar fleet?"

"'Interstellar' doesn't mean instant, it just means that they can get from system to system without needing a generation ship. Flying around Vega is a day or two between systems, but the planets in Vega are weirdly close together. Depending on which FTL drive they go for, flying from Vega to Earth could be anything from six months to two years."

"It doesn't take Lanterns that long."

"True, but I don't-."

My ring blinks.

"Illustres here."

The helmeted head of Comic King appears, and my heart sinks.

"How can I help?"

"Are the Russians natural pranksters?"

"I'm afraid that I don't know enough about Russian culture to answer that. Why do you ask?"

"Their fleet has vanished."

Oh… Gods.. damn it.

"And my ship disappeared as well."

"And you can't track it?"

"ClusterCorp has an excellent safety record for the lives of our senior executives! All standard tracking procedures will have been implemented the moment anything untoward happened! I have received no signal, and my ring shows nothing!"

"Alright, that's a little-."

"Nothing! Nothing at all."

"I underst-."

"Not the slightest buzz of the hypercom, not a fizz from the bleedcom."

"Any deb-?"

"Not a peep of a spatial dis-."

"Mute. I will begin investigating. Feel free to either make yourself useful or keep out of my way. Illustres out."

I lower my left hand as Richard breathes in sharply.

"Well that isn't good."

 

12th April
09:28 GMT

Koriand'r lowers her left hand, ring dimming as she shakes her head.

"I do not know where the ship went."

I nod, then look at Khan just in case he's got something helpful to say. Since I'm not a member of the Justice League I don't know quite how critical things are going in the Kremlin at the moment. I don't think that someone prone to fits of genuine rage -as opposed to the staged kind- would survive in the current atmosphere, so I think that we're going to get a reasonably measured response… At least in the short term. In the longer term… This was a major investment of financial and political capital. The heads that roll might do so from any height.

Khan hasn't noticed-.

"Lantern Khan?"

"Hm? Yes, one class three ClusterShip, seventeen executive level-. Yes, that's the one. The valuation is up to date?"

Jam.

"You see, it's rather clever: we make sure that anyone who could be due a payout is also on the ship. That way we minimise our exposure to piracy. Hah, 'bring your child to work year' was a masterstroke. And you have a backup of L-Ron's personality? I'm pretty sure I paid for it, but I want to make sure that it's ready to go."

…

"Did you just hang up on me? How dare you hang up on me! I want to speak to your manager!"

"Lantern Khan, if I could borrow you for a moment?"

"See if I use you people again. Yes, Illustres, how may I help at this tragic time?"

"Do you have any way of tracking the ship?"

"Yes, of course. L-Ron!"

…

He's… Looking around.

…

I'm actually feeling a little sad.

"I'm assuming that he was on the ship?"

"Yes, I-. Yes."

"Okay, does he have a locator beacon of some k-?"

"L-RON!"

Orange energy bursts out of him in a high-power scan wave, and I spot Lantern Savenlovich hurriedly throw up a shield as the orange light cascades through local space. Leonid's ship actually overcharges its shields in response to what the mostly reassembled tactical computer thinks is an attack.

I'm actually a little impressed with that. Not only was it powerful, I'm pretty sure that would have bypassed most forms of stealth and phasing. I was pretty sure that wasn't what had happened here, but it's nice to be certain.

Khan… His armour is just armour, so there's no body language to read. His gaseous form on the other hand is Brownianing with alarming ferocity and I.. don't know what that means. I don't know if he knows what that means. And then-.

A construct L-Ron appears besides him. His helmet swivels a hundred degrees right and he stares at it for a moment. Then it bursts.

"L-Ron doesn't get sick days or job-share. I'm going to find him so that I can dock his pay."

And he actually wants him back. There are ways to mislead my empathic sense, but using power rings requires the real thing.

"Alright then, both of you. How could the ships have vanished, given that we can't detect them?"

Koriand'r looks thoughtful. "Some form of faster than light travel that is not on our database, which leaves no traceable sign?"

"If it's not on a Maltusian database then we've got bigger problems than a missing ship. And unless there was something a lot more valuable on board than I think there was, they were wasting their time."

"Your reports mention that some people on Earth with great technical ability do not apply their skills wisely."

"Painfully true, but perfectly stealthy mass-teleportation is incredibly difficult, and the Justice League is perfectly capable of detecting the sort of massive power draw it would require. It could be that, but what's more-?"

"Magic." Khan's eyeholes are glowing orange. "A rare resource I wanted to exploit. Hard to detect with power rings."

"That's my first guess. There isn't much we can do about it until Doctor Mist arrives, but just in case they weren't as clever as they think they were…"

I take out a couple of rune stones and use construct tethers to move them around where the ClusterShip used to be.

"Now, it would be quite hard to actively cast this far from the Earth, but there have been some rather significant breakthroughs in bound spells recently, so with a little luck…"

No, nothing. Ah well. I pull the stones back.

"Lantern Khan, do you have a record of every trip your people made to and from the Earth?"

"Yes, but our security-. Mmrughmrppffah, would not be easy to breach. We've had incidents in the past, infiltrators and the like. L-Ron can-."

I float forward and pat him on his armoured shoulder. He really thinks about L-Ron in the same way as I think of my rings; not exactly separate from my own concept of me.

"Then the obvious potential source is the Russian ships. I'm sure that everyone involved underwent extensive vetting, but Russian magic is rubbish. It wouldn't be too hard for a sufficiently skilled person to sneak something in."

Would they have done this deliberately? Would they risk the security complement of the ship in an attempt to steal it? No. No. They might get away with salvaging ships that crashed in their territory, but they have to know that if they tried piracy then the Green Lantern Corps would not be on their side. They were already stealing a march on every other country on the planet; there wasn't any need for them to risk it.

The Light is a possibility, but… I'm not seeing the payoff. Khan was here to trade. If they wanted technology then buying it was the easiest way to get it. And we get enough alien visitors that any competent international conspiracy could get hold of parts… And the ClusterShip wasn't all that advanced by interstellar standards.

I've got a worrying feeling that this is going to be someone I've never heard of.

"Orange Lantern Illustres to Watchtower."

"Manhunter here. Go ahead."

"I'm not getting anything. If the Russians will have us, I'd like to take a look around their launch site in case something got onto their ships that wasn't supposed to be there."

"Doctor Mist, Hawkman and Batman are already on-site."

"And none of them are empaths."

"True. I will relay your request. Stand by."

 

12th April
17:15 GMT +7

He-llo…

My eyes widen slightly as I look at a member of the ground crew. A thought and his employee file appears in my mind. Corporal Mikhail Kuznetsov, air force man from when he left high school until he moved to the Director's command. Certain… 'Unreconstructed' Russian military units don't keep useful records for… Various frustrating reasons, but all the ones I'd consider reliable paint a glowing picture. Which is why the Director moved him to this project; no one here isn't highly motivated and skilled.

Batman noticed the slight change in my posture.

"Orange Lantern?"

"Corporal Kuznetsov. Some of his… Recent memories don't have the emotional depth that they should."

"You believe they've been edited?"

"Can't say for sure. Could even be stress, but… Since we're a bit desperate..."

"Is he dangerous?"

"I don't think so. His deeper memories appear unaffected, which should mean that they haven't tried rewriting his priorities… But I couldn't swear to it."

Batman raises his right hand to his cowl, activating his communicator. "Director, please bring Corporal Kuznetsov in for questioning. We believe that he may have been under the influence of something. "

There's a momentary delay, then I see a couple of military policemen move forward to apprehend him. Fortunately, he goes with them without complaint. Everyone at the launch site is going through a detailed interrogation, and Russia doesn't have any of those frustrating laws against telepathic or arcane compulsion when it comes to gathering evidence. They also don't have enough telepaths or magicians to make much use of it. Pravda's already here and Firebird's being flown in… Heh, it's taking her longer to get here from Moscow than it took me to get here.

Interesting that the Director had a zeta tube set up here just in case. I can't see an American general doing that, no matter how much sense it would make. But if you really need the Justice League, you don't want to have to hang about.

A project like this has thousands of people working on the site, and tens of thousands more in the supply chain. The President might have unusual levels of personal authority but someone has to have oversight on things like this, which means that a number of politicians are at least somewhat in the know…

And they're all going to have to speak to the Director's people. They're got two security cleared telepaths. They'll probably accept Mr J'onzz and… Maybe M'gann, but the League's not exactly blessed with a plethora of security-vetted telepaths either.

And I don't think that Ted's Thinker's Cap is… Quite ready for this. Even if the Director could probably secure volunteers prepared to put up with the implants, and the headaches and occasional auditory and visual hallucinations that the current version causes.

"I'm going to check his barracks. I'll let you know if I find anything."

Batman nods very faintly, his eyes fixed on the records of this site's working life as I

step out

and reappear in the enlisted barracks. They're… Well, I've seen worse. The benefit of working on a highly classified project out in the middle of nowhere is that they make an effort to keep the workforce happy. The downside being that if you don't like it then you're rather out of luck.

I scan in detail, orange light strobing off his bunk, wardrobe and trunk. Not… A… Lot… I take out a rune stone and carefully-.

A member of the military police -brought in from another facility entirely, though still thoroughly vetted- sticks his head around the door.

"Orange Lantern? Is there anything you need?"

"Nothing that isn't already being worked on, thank you."

His emotions are… Well, he's a little anxious. Annoyed, too. The Director likes to employ people with strong patriotic inclinations, and this mess has turned what should have been a day of nationalistic triumph into a potential tragedy. I don't feel it quite so personally, but…

Oh. That's… Odd.

There's a slight… Change in the structure of the wall. It's not a lot; unusual patterns of ionisation and stress in the brickwork. But that's not something that should occur naturally unless they were using radioactive paint or something.

Certain types of energy weapon could do it-.

And certain types of phasing.

Check the project history. No, no work was done here that might cause something like that. The patch is too small for a humanoid. A drone, perhaps? I'm only seeing the one patch, but that might just mean that whatever it was came through the same place each time.

"Orange Lantern to Batman. I believe that something phased into Corporal Kuznetsov's quarters. Not sure if it was by magic or technology; I suggest sending Doctor Mist when he's next available."

"Understood."

Hmm.

I look at the building from the outside and try to detect anything similar, but… No, nothing. In by air? They've got pretty good detection systems here, but nothing is infallible. Basic wards again… They really need to hire an Atlantean to do the job. Heh, or at least a Londoner. All they're doing is giving themselves a false sense of security.

I need to raise the idea of a worldwide magic detection network again. Perhaps a little more forcefully.

Would whoever did this rely on one person? Ordinarily, I'd say that was a bad idea. At least, if it was something that absolutely had to work. But… If one infiltrator was discovered, the result would be a shutdown while they examined the site with a fine toothed comb. Any others would have to flee or simply accept being discovered. So it would only be worth using more than one if it made the one attempt more likely to succeed-.

"Batman to the Justice League. Hawkman has been attacked at the supply depot and-"

I look south east, focus my empathic vision on the pattern I recognise as being Mr Hol and

step out

, appearing a short distance from him with construct armour appearing around me!

He stares at me for a moment as I note the unconscious warehouse staff and Lantern Koriand'r floating in the air with her ring glowing.

"-alert for other mentally influenced individuals."

Right. Batman wouldn't make an announcement if the attack was ongoing.

But since I'm here…

I look into the souls of the unconscious men, and… Again, it could be the concussion, but I'm definitely seeing odd emotional attachment in their recent memories. No, not just recent. This goes deeper, and… Guard dogs. Someone set them to attack under certain circumstances.

"Orange Lantern, please attend the warehouse and investigate for possible mental alterations or the use of phasing technology."

"Already here, sir. I confirm the mental alterations, stronger than what the Corporal has. I'll check for phasing now."

 

12th April
17:52 GMT +7

"Alright, that's-."

I stare at Lantern Koriand'r.

"Where did you get that coat?"

She smiles brightly as she pulls the furs more tightly around her.

"The Director gave it to me. He said that I looked cold."

Yes, I imagine that surrounded by men stuck on a single sex military base in Siberia, the athletic, well endowed alien princess in short shorts and halter top probably did look cold.

Speaking of which…

"Speaking of clothing, how does this-"

I take a bracer with an embedded sunstone out of subspace and hold it out to her.

"-feel?"

She gives it a small frown, then puts it over her left forearm and activates the auto-fit function. It tightens in place, the sunstone lighting up a moment later.

Lantern Koriand'r gives a slight gasp of surprise.

"It feels like warm sunlight! What is it?"

"A Kryptonian sunstone. Kryptonians are also solar powered, though it works a little differently for them."

"Do you have more? Can Tamaran buy them?"

"You'll have to talk to one of our kryptonians." Jor-El isn't really set up for mass production, and we can't really ship anyway. I look down at the depot. "Find anything?"

She shakes her head. "I did not. None of the patterns which you described were on any of the walls, or the ceiling, or the furniture, or the people."

I nod. This is a 'secure' facility, but it isn't anything like as secure as the launch site. By design; it wouldn't be practical. Things are checked coming in and going out, but a lot of things come in and go out.

"So… Something came from somewhere, passed through here and might have ended up on the ships. But since we don’t have any idea when or what it was, that doesn't really help."

"Are there very many things on Earth that could do this?"

"There are machines that can grant humans telepathy. A company I'm associated with is trying to update one, but the original machine was built decades ago and I doubt that I'm the only person who had this idea. Any human can learn magic, and… A sufficiently skilled street magician could do everything we've seen so far."

Russia.. doesn't.. exactly have supervillains. There are superpowered criminals, but they generally don't wear costumes or use signature weapons. Not unless they're working overseas, anyway. Independent superheroes are also somewhat thin on the ground. As a result, there isn't a readily available data source that isn't coming out of the Ministry of Justice, and the League's never really been sure about how reliable those are.

China grudgingly cooperates with the League because they don't think they're ready to go their own way yet, and hate being reminded of the fact. Russia grudgingly cooperates with the League because they used to be fine going their own way and now aren't, and hate being reminded of the fact.

On the other hand, both of the Russians associated with the League are national heroes while the Chinese guy is someone they wanted rid of.

Hm. There are a few people listed as 'at large' who might have been able to do the bits we've been able to detect… But other than grabbing and interrogating every one of them-.

Ring, scan Moscow. Current location of 'The Goatsmasher'?

I get an image of a group of heavily armed Federal Police and.. Red Rockets, attacking a white haired man. Bullets do nothing but empower his kinetic blasts, but they were prepared for that. He's hit by flares, some sort of ice gun and high-powered tasers until he collapses.

Cleaning house. I wonder if the Director kept quiet after the collapse of the Soviet Union so that he'd have a target-rich environment to work in when he had someone in the Kremlin he could work with?

No. No, deliberately letting things get worse seems contrary to his character. But he probably finds it really convenient.

Something below catches my eye, and I look down to see that Dr Balewa has arrived. I take that as a sign and drop down to ground level, Koriand'r following me as I do so.

The warehouse workers have been restrained, but haven't regained consciousness yet. Mr Hol isn't superstrong, but he is a fair bit stronger than a human of his proportions would be, and he wasn't exactly pulling his punches when those guys jumped him.

Dr Balewa is staring at them… I'm assuming that he's trying to sense any residual magic or at least identify spells that could have been used to do this, but there's nothing visible going on. I'll just.. wait until he finishes.

"Curious."

"Sir?"

"I have the spell, but I do not recognise the form or the tradition." He frowns. "That is strange."

"It is? I thought random cults brute forced blood rituals often enough-."

"That is a tradition in its own right." He shakes his head. "Magic schools have their forms. Even 'traditional' magic has a form, whether it works or not. I have had a very long time to acquaint myself with all of the forms of magic on the Earth. I do not recognise this."

"Martians?"

Because if so this is going to be a pain.

"Perhaps. Perhaps. I have not seen martian magic. But I do not think that a martian could adapt to the magics of the Earth quickly or easily."

Ah shit. Mental manipulation and magic?

"Do you think it was the Star Conquerors?"

He freezes, then slowly nods.

"That is distinctly possible. None of the victims have the wounds on their faces that their bite leaves, but the improved version created at STAR Laboratories did not need to leave such wounds. Doctor Mist to Betman."

"Go ahead."

"Orange Lantern has observed that this could be the work of the Star Conquerors, and I believe that he could be correct. I can attempt to track whoever did this by using the people they have touched, but they have become adept at disguising themselves and it will take some time."

"How long?"

"I cannot be certain. I should have a better idea after half an hour."

"The Lanterns are on call to perform an emergency interception if they try to de-orbit the ships. I'll contact Fate and ask him to check the remaining personnel at the launch site."

"Very well. I will speak to you again in half an hour. Doctor Mist out."

Koriand'r frowns, then her ring glows and her eyes widen.

"Why did you not track down these 'Star Conqueror' creatures after you fought them?"

"Because the planet is a big place and they're very good at hiding. And we had no idea what they were trying to do, and we still don't."

As far as I remember from the comics, Star Conquerors mostly wanted to control things and keep expanding. These ones -if it was them- clearly had something in mind when they picked these targets. And now we're stuck waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

12th April
18:20 GMT +7

"Okay, so you see how the memory of him clocking in today doesn't have anything like the same number of attachments as the other memories?"

Koriand'r's eyes are glowing brilliant orange as she tries to see what I see.

"I…" She shakes her head. "Do not think so."

Okay, perhaps if we…

I turn to the site manager who has been assigned to assist us.

"Excuse me. Would you mind assisting me in a training exercise?"

"Ah…"

"You just have to clock in and out and then stand there for a bit."

"Oh. Ah, sorry, but I need to stay here. Timofey!" One of the warehouse workers stops pushing his trolley and looks around. "Help Orange Lantern."

He shifts his trolley to the side so that it won't get in the way, and as a former warehouse operative myself I find myself nodding in approval. It's considerate. I float towards him and Koriand'r follows me.

"Lantern Koriand'r is-"

And despite the coat, it's pretty clear which of us he'd rather be looking at.

"-learning to identify altered memories. Please show us where you clock in."

He nods. "This way."

We follow him through the warehouse, and I note that there don’t appear to be any more soldiers around than there were when we arrived. I suppose that there are only so many highly vetted soldiers around in any one place. Perhaps the Director decided that bringing more people in was a bigger risk than having fewer people on guard? Then again, this warehouse does supply Russian military facilities across the region. If they tighten things up too much people might not get fed and… Heh, every society is three meals away from chaos.

"Timofey, have you worked here for long?"

"Four years."

"Excellent." I turn my head to look at Koriand'r. "Timofey will have all sorts of memories associated with the action while I have next to none. You will observe carefully as we both form memories and note the difference."

She nods uncertainly.

"I understand, but I do not think that I have the accuracy to perceive the memory forms as you do."

"That could be." I nod. "I mostly teach ways of thinking. Lantern Xor wasn't much for subtlety, and my own progression was… Rather atypical. I really don't know what it takes for another Lantern to see things as I do."

"Were you able to see the desires of other people before you joined with the Ophidian?"

"Yes… But it was much harder to work out exactly what was going on. I could see drives, but I never learned to see exactly how they related to individual experiences. So this is a learning experience for both of us! You're learning to do it, and I'm learning what it takes for you to learn it!"

Timofey stops next to a somewhat dated computer system with a barcode scanner attached.

"Um. You're looking at my desires?"

"Just the ones associated with clocking in and out every day. And… Think of us as proctologists. You haven't got any shit we haven't seen before."

"Ah-." Another glance at Koriand'r. "Okay?"

Quick check, nothing too specific, just getting a general overview… Yes, nothing I haven't seen before. The orange light associations with the act relate to ingroup affirmation and financial reward. This won't have quite the same associations as this is just a demonstration, but he's been doing it every working day for the last four years so it should be bedded in.

Koriand'r's eyes glow as she tries to see the parts of Timofey's psyche that I'm referring to.

"Okay, if you could please clock out?"

He smiles slightly nervously.

"You'll tell my supervisor why I did this, right? We're so backed up now that they're going to be on our-. Cases about timekeeping."

I nod. "Of course."

He unclips his name tag from his overalls and waves it in front of the barcode reader, which beeps its acknowledgement. As expected, the associations trigger more weakly that they normally would, but they're still there. I'm a little worried that we're throwing things off just by being here, but we're just killing time until Dr Balewa finishes anyway…

"And now I do it."

"But I cannot see you."

Oh. Right.

"The eye thing is psychosomatic anyway. Just connect a filament to me."

She raises her left hand and closes her eyes, a strand of orange light attaching her to my environmental shield. I fabricate a copy of Timofey's name tag and scan it.

"Did you see-?"

"Orange Lantern!" The three of us look around as Dr Balewa shouts. "I have them!"

I transition back to him, taking… A somewhat confused Timofey with me.

"And where are they?"

"Take me to where the ships disappeared, and then I will tell you."

"Rightoh. Koriand'r, we're-" She flies into view. "-going up."

I attach a filament to Dr Balewa and the universe flickers as we reappear in space.

12th April
11:23 GMT

"Yes, I see." He looks around as Koriand'r catches up with us. "Clever, and not an approach that most people would use. But… With a small application of power…"

My rings chime, and a short distance away Lord Comic King flares with orange light!

"Hold on, L-Ron! I'm coming!"

And he's gone. Ring?

I see the ships-. Well, the ClusterShip at least. It's keeping station near Pluto. No sign of damage, no active weapons…

"Orange Lantern Illustres to interested parties. The ClusterShip is near Pluto. Manga Khan's already gone after it and I don't think he's amenable to reason. Batman, how would you like me to proceed?"

 

12th April
11:23 GMT

"Have you located the Russian ships?"

Scans… Can't get through the ClusterShip's hull. I try looking, but I can't see-. See anything other than Lord-Lantern Comic King slamming the fists of a giant construct avatar of himself into his ship's shields.

"No, but-" I look at Dr Balewa. "-I imagine that the spell revealed them as well?"

"That is correct. If Orange Lantern cannot detect them, then they are still inside."

"Can you detect it?"

"So far from a living world? No. There is no power to draw upon, no arcane world to shape. Whoever is doing this, they will exhaust themselves before long."

"Orange Lantern, investigate the situation. I will send Blue Lantern and Captain Atom after you. Doctor Mist, return to Earth and continue your investigation. We need to know if anyone else has been subverted or if any of whatever group this was remain on Earth."

"Understood." Dr Mist and I flash back down to Earth, then I transition back to Koriand'r. "Lantern Koriand'r and I will take a look."

"Very well. Report what you see as you see it."

I don my armour and check that Koriand'r has done the same, then warp us both to the general vicinity of Pluto, far enough away that it's barely visible to the unaided eye, and turn up the power on my empathic vision. It just… Slides off. Whatever whoever is doing this is doing, they're either very clever or very powerful.

I wince as Comic King finally batters his way through the shield covering the main docking bay and flies on board. That didn't cause the wards to fail so it's not a simple threshold effect.

"Manga Khan has entered the ClusterShip. Pursuing."

I fly at speed, mindful not to outrace Koriand'r. The ClusterShip's guns aren't even trying to track me, and the shield emitters are visibly wrecked around the docking sphere. Its main reactors are non-volatile -if only to cut down on costs- so I'm not worried about the ship itself being a trap. Being an explosive trap anyway; we'll still need to detain everyone we encounter in case they've been subverted.

"Ship not reacting to attack. Will attempt to ascertain status of crew."

We fly towards the docking bay, and I see that Comic King battered his way through the docking hatch as well as the defence shield. The atmosphere shield engages according to emergency protocols and only a little air is vented, but I imagine that the sudden unobstructed view of space would have been pretty disturbing for human cosmonauts. I fly inside, the shield rippling as I pass through it and get a clear view of the Russian ships. They're still safely where they landed, though I can't see any of the crew. I can't see any damage either, at least not on the outside.

I try a scan, but… Something's futzing with-

"L-RON!"

-it. Shouldn’t go anywhere alone, but I also don't want to leave Comic King in avarice-crazed rampage mode.

"Lord-Lantern Manga Khan, desist. That is an order."

"I HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT;-"

Ah. He's lost all reason.

"-THAT ALL BEINGS ARE CREATED-"

Sad when that happens. I extend my left hand in his direction and feel for the bundle of neurotic obsession that is the tangle of his current mentations.

End.

"-with…" He stops and looks around. "AH! I have found the ClusterShip!"

"Yes, well done. Lantern Koriand'r, we're going to check-."

"ClusterShip! Acknowledge-"

I create a soundproof bubble around us.

"-the return of your lord and master! And tell L-Ron where I am!"

"Lantern Khan, if-"

"Lord and Manga."

"-someone took this ship then they've almost certainly subverted the computer systems, and on the off-chance that they aren't using the internal monitoring and somehow missed you battering a hole in their shields I'd rather not draw their attention."

"My shields."

"I'm sorry?"

"My shields. This ClusterShip is the property of ClusterCorp, and as the ranking ClusterCorp official that makes it mine. I'll expense the shields to myself."

…

"We're going to check the Russian ships, and then we'll check on your crew. Do you understand?"

"Of course."

I fly towards the-

"The Russians aren't covered by my insurance."

-closest Russian ship. The design is completely standard and… It's a mixture of shuttle, submarine and 'actual' starship. Enough internal space that the crew could stay inside for months, but without the surfeit of internal space that a space station could afford. The main hatch is open, and they don't appear to have had a defence shield. I try scanning the interior, but I can't even scan the bit I can see.

I know a magic that can achieve that. I wear it on my skin. And I'm sure that Sephtian documented it, so the knowledge is out there. Most individuals can't use it for long due to having pre-existing souls, but an active magic user could keep something like it going if it were bound to a device.

"Koriand'r, cover me. Khan, don't do anything stupid."

"How would I tell?"

I step inside the ship. No blood, which is generally a good sign. Manual construct probes reveal… No phasing residue yet, though manually probing the entire ship will take a little while. Biological residue… A few skin cells and hairs from the crew that the air filters haven't caught yet.

Other than Star Conquerors, who could this be?

The demon genomorphs are perfectly capable of making new variants of themselves, with new forms of magic and… Greater intelligence. But what could they want that's on Pluto? Or am I making the unwarranted assumption that this is where they actually wanted to go? No, no, if they could suborn Russian military personnel then they could certainly do the same to the ClusterShip's bridge crew. Dr Balewa took a look at the g-oni corpses we had in storage, but I'm not sure that seeing their corpses gives him enough information to work from.

No one here. Construct probes aren't showing anything not on the technical specifications.

Since this is Pluto, I'm pretty sure that rules out martians. We're far too far away from other people out here. Unless they just wanted the ClusterShip's population to ease their telepathic discomfort and they're actually here for something else? I'm not sure if news of Dr Balewa's abilities has reached Mars yet; it's quite possible that they didn't think we had anyone who could get through their spell baffles.

The ship's bridge looks orderly. There should have been a couple of cosmonauts left in here while the diplomatic party went to greet the ClusterCorp representatives, but there's no one here. No sign of struggle… I attach a filament to the ship's computer to get a copy of the logs, then leave to check the rest of the ship.

 

12th April
11:32 GMT

"Russian ships clear. No crew on board, some signs of phasing. Lantern Khan assures me that while they could build phasing equipment with what's on board the ClusterShip, they didn't have anything already constructed."

My ears metaphorically twitch as I fail to hear Comic King correcting me about his name. I look around to see him accessing the docking bay's internal monitoring computer.

"We're about to proceed further into the ClusterShip."

Batman nods. "Has there been any reaction from the crew, or the automated systems?"

"No. No one has tried to get in here, and no one has tried to repair the damage Khan did getting in. He said that repair robots should have gotten to work almost immediately."

"Is there anyone onboard?"

"I don't know. Our scans and my empathic sense are still being blocked. We can examine the ClusterShip more forcefully if you think it best. I was holding off in case we triggered a response."

"Blue Lantern and Captain Atom will be with you in a few seconds. Your primary objective is to locate and recover any survivors. Your secondary objectives are to identify the thief or thieves and find out what they were planning."

I nod. "Who has local command?"

Because despite my rank-

"Captain Atom."

-in the Orange Lantern Corps and the fact that three out of five of the people who are going to be here are Orange Lanterns, and despite the fact that we can get a response from base instantly instead of in nine hours, as far as Earth is concerned I'm a glorified sidekick while Captain Atom is a veteran Justice League member.

"Underst-"

There's a flash as Alan and Major Adams appear just outside the docking bay and immediately head our way.

"-ood."

"Batman out."

I lower my left hand.

"Lantern Koriand'r, you remember what I said about some humans having a second name for professional purposes?"

"Yes." She nods, smiling. "I find it adds an element of fantastical whimsy to the tales of their heroism."

Alan and Adams land, Adams taking a careful look at the weapon hardpoints while Alan just gives us a smile and a wave.

"Captain Atom." He gives me his full attention. "You're in charge." He gives a small nod. "Where are we going next?"

"Lantern Khan?"

"Lord and Manga." He flies away from the computer console and lands next to us. "The records are scrambled. L-Ron.. might be able to reassemble them."

Adams frowns. "You couldn't reassemble them with a power ring?"

"Mmmphgh. Upon occasion-."

"You really designed your docking bay computer records to resist power ring scans because you were worried about a Sector Lantern catching you smuggling?"

"Some customs laws are very broad. And for all we know it could be the same thing that's stopping us scanning the ship."

That's a halfway reasonable point. And Sol has no extraplanetary customs laws anyway.

I look at Adams with my eyebrows raised.

"Then I guess we're going on. Orange L-."

His face stills as he considers the obvious identification problem. I guess he's only ever worked with one Green Lantern at a time.

"Try 'Illustres'."

Another small nod. "Illustres, you're on point. Lantern Khan, you know where the closest crew shelter point is?"

"General Crew or Executive? Because the General Crew point is more of a muster point."

"Anyplace you think someone might have sought shelter. This is a rescue mission first."

We four Lanterns nod.

"Call out contacts as you find them." He floats back a little to give me space.

I look at the interior cargo doors. This is mostly a cargo docking bay, so they're pretty large. But since we can all fly I float up above them, generate a large crumbler construct and smash it forwards. A chunk of bulkhead and armoured shutter is erased, and I fly through the newly formed gap-

"We're insured for Act of Lantern. Colour isn't specified."

-and into… The cargo depot.

"In fact, if you want to smash some more things…"

No one… No one…

I send out construct eyes to look at everything and float forward to make myself as tempting a target as possible. Not like this ship's internal weapons are a threat to me.

No, no one and nothing.

"Lantern Khan, where to?"

"The executive transport system is over on the right. That will take us to the Executive Section."

I see it.

"Captain?"

"It's as good a place to start as any."

Maintaining my constructs, I float in the direction indicated. There's a-. Hah! A lift in the docking bay which takes executives to an overpass with transparent sides so that they can look down on the proles toiling beneath them. It still goes to a part of the ClusterShip which is just as easily accessible from the cargo depot…

I crumble my way through the wall and-.

Some of the synthetic potted plants which decorate the place wave in a faint breeze. Another hull breach? Air's moving, but the air purification system they use doesn't make a breeze-.

I attach construct tethers to the floor and walls-.

The hull's vibrating.

The ClusterShip doesn't have chemical thrusters. It would come apart if it used a system that primitive.

"Captain, I believe that we need to get back outside. Now."

He nods.

"Everyone: pull out."

 

12th April
11:36 GMT

Pluto's not all that big.

I mean, it's still 13 sextillion kilograms in mass and has five minimoons, but as planets go that's nothing. I've seen super-earths and gas giants close up… Heck, at least three of Krypton's chunks are bigger than Pluto.

But that's still a very big laser.

"Lantern Khan, what's that?"

"Mining laser?"

"That wasn't there when I scanned the ClusterShip when it arrived."

"We didn't have one. No, no, we totally didn't-."

"Lantern Khan."

"-have one externally mounted. We had small and medium demonstration models in the heavy machinery department in case someone wanted to buy them. ClusterCorp has a very strong don't-kill-people-who-can-give-us-money policy. Besides. The beam attenuation anywhere with an atmosphere is terrible. Otherwise you can be sure that we'd-"

"Charge a lot more?" / "-charge a lot more."

I turn to look at Major Adams.

"Sir, shall I forcibly shut it down?"

"What would that do to the people on the ship?"

"There's no such thing as a non-lethal weapon, but that's not exactly cutting edge technology-"

"Miningonanaffordablebudget!"

"-there and I can hit a pinhead from a billion miles away. I should be able to destroy it with minimal collateral damage. On the other hand-."

"Nobody's actually in any danger because no one lives on Pluto."

I nod. "Plus, since we know the layout of that ball section's power grid, we have the knowledge required to shut it down from inside."

"What exactly are they shooting-"

"Mining!"

"-at?"

"The feature doesn't have a name. Studying Pluto is rather hard for Earth-based astronomers."

"Are you certain there's nothing down there?"

I crank up my empathic vision so high that I start getting vague impressions from the next inhabited planet along my sight line.

"If there's anyone down there, one, they're having a very bad time due to mining laser, and two, they're using the-. "

There's a tiny orange twinkle, which… Vanishes almost immediately.

"Huh."

"See something?"

"For a moment, I saw a desire. It wasn’t.. really.. focused on anything. Though that could just have been because there was a momentary gap in the disguise spells. I'm not picking up anything other than a large hole on the surface." I shake my head. "Sorry, not getting anything else."

He nods.

"We'll breach the hull near the laser and go from there. Lantern Khan, Lantern Koriand'r, we haven't worked together before, but I want to be clear that we're trying to keep as many people alive as possible."

Koriand'r nods.

"I have studied the tales of the Justice League's heroism. I know your rules of engagement."

"Training new employees is expensive. Our insurers always increase our premiums when we claim for lost work-hours."

I turn to-

"Are there any corporations on Earth which offer starship insurance? I'm asking for a friend."

-the ClusterShip and transition forward, crumbler construct disrupting the shields and smashing into the hull. I generate an airlock construct just in case the emergency atmospheric regulator isn't working. Shots from the interior -mostly plasma-based- strike my constructs at once, but with nothing like enough force to significantly damage them. The interior of this part of the 'ball' of the ClusterShip has clearly seen a lot of very rapid engineering work; the mining laser is exposed directly to vacuum and the ship-side of the arrangement looks like they've just cut through the decks until they had enough space. Dozens of crew members in space suits are attempting to advance, though it looks like ClusterCorp decided not to overspend on flight systems.

A dozen species with different tolerances for electricity and atmospheres, fighting in a vacuum.

"Blue Lantern. Catching duty."

"Ready when you are."

Filaments flicker out, punching through unshielded civilian spacesuits and apply species-specific knockout gasses while simultaneously disarming them. Guns get chucked away and our new prisoners are thrown towards open space, where Alan catches them in a Looney Tunes cage-construct.

He needs to spend less time with Guy.

Lantern Khan flies past me, a construct hemisphere protecting him from incoming fire as he flies for the mining laser's controls.

"I'm garnishing your wages for this, all of you!"

Well familiar with murderous pirates, Koriand'r scans the inner hull for scuttling charges or other booby traps, shooting out the handful of functioning internal defences as they deploy. Adams hangs back slightly; his energy blasts don't have a 'stun' setting and would be massive overkill for soft targets like this.

I chuck the last 'guard' at Alan just as Khan shuts down the mining laser. Okay. That wasn't too bad. I look out through the ersatz firing port and down at the planet. There are some pretty violent dwarf planet quakes going on down there, lines of stress radiating away from the point of impact.

I frown. That's a little odd… But it's not as if anyone's ever done a really detailed geological survey of Pluto.

I punch probes through the sealed doors abutting this section-.

"More people on the other side of those doors. They're ClusterCorp employees and they've got runic cuts on their faces in the shape of a star."

Major Adams grimaces.

"I don't know magic. Is that conclusive proof that this was the Star Conquerors?"

"Sadly, no, but it's very suggestive. Lantern Khan, is there anything useful on their targeting computer?"

"I'm the CEO! I don't know how things work!"

Fair enough.

"Captain Atom, where would you like us to breach?"

 

12th April
11:40 GMT

"You still can't see through the walls?"

"No. But given what Doctor Mist was saying… Just waiting until the spell runs out of power is a perfectly viable option, if you want to take it slowly."

"Unless they're sacrificing the hostages for power."

"Ah-? No, that wouldn't work. Magic… Short explanation: while magic energy is universal, unless they're tapping directly into the Dream, magic users are generally manipulating pre-existing structures using pre-existing power flows. Out here there's no system and no ready power source. Ritual sacrifice won't work because there's nothing to respond to it; you can't ritually violate arcane taboos which don't exist."

"You sure they know that?"

"This wouldn't be possible without specific preparation."

"You willing to bet their lives on it?"

I shrug, though the armoured plates covering my shoulders don’t move.

"There's nothing stopping them ordering their thralls to kill themselves anyway."

"Illustres Paul?" Koriand'r is looking back through the open hull towards the still-enthusiastically erupting Pluto. "Should that planet be behaving like that?"

"There was a theory that it had subterranean oceans. Depending on their chemical composition and location, that's certainly within the realms of possibility. If you want to see something really impressive, I'll take you to the Rao system when we're finished here."

Major Adams shakes his head.

"No one's going to fire a giant laser at a planet for no reason. The hostages take priority, but we need to find out what that reason is." He looks at Lantern Khan. "There a good place for a command post through there?"

"Yes? Several. I command from wherever I am, and I need to be-"

"That's fine. Just take us to the closest."

"-seen and heard to my best advantage, that I may inspire-"

Major Adams looks at me. I just shake my head.

"-my serfs-. I mean slaves-. I mean thralls-. I mean scum-. I mean valuable employees-. No, wait, that's completely wrong. I don't even know why I said-."

"How about you go inspire them right now?"

"Yes!" He flies towards the closest doorway, a construct butler forcing it open for him and a potted plant being thrown out by the air pressure shift and hitting him in the face. "My people! I come for you!"

Major Adams gives me a low-level glare as we fly after him, and I'm forced to catch the remains of the plant as it slides off Khan.

"Why does that guy have a power ring?"

I repot the plant and set it aside.

"Not all Orange Lanterns are supposed to be combat-orientated. He's a surprisingly -very surprisingly- skilled economist."

I accelerate after Lantern Khan. No other members of the crew are immediately in sight. I can see where they ripped out a dividing wall, presumably to make moving materials to the mining laser easier.

"I feel a corporate motivational speech coming on!"

The automated defences deploy as we cross what I.. think was a raw materials store room. Pulse laser batteries this time. I generate a shield construct for Major Adams while the beams reflect off Lantern Khan's shiny armour and burn slashes across the inside of the room.

Khan makes an identical line of pulse lasers and destroys their metal cousins in a single volley.

"There's a factory oversight centre just up-"

He creates giant hand constructs and pulls the door -and a chunk of the wall- open.

The Star Hunter in the middle of the room blinks, then red lightning leaps from the tips of its tentacles and reduces Khan's armour to smouldering slag! The thralls around it are armed with-

Major Adams fires a scintillating beam of energy from his forearms at the Star Hunter, and I see the circuit runes embedded in its skin light up as it works to shield itself.

-some sort of arcane gun, though they look somewhat bodged. The Star Hunter's red lightning continues crackling out, passing though my construct barrier and striking my armour before being soaked by my spell eater. I form railguns and fire mage slayers as the facially mutilated thralls rouse themselves and-.

Alan's drawn his purple healing ray and he uses it to shoot the closest thrall in the face. The cuts steam and vanish and the thrall collapses.

**Will not stop us. Can not stop us.**

The wards around the room-. No, the entire ClusterShip fail, and I see the trapped desires of the people the Star Conquerors are puppetting twisting and writhing, unable to express themselves-.

Alan shakes me, and I blink as I see that we've pulled back into the cargo area. He backs off slightly as I come to my senses.

"You feeling yourself again?"

I nod. Clever starfish.

Lantern Khan's gaseous form is lurking near the ceiling, orange ring glowing in cover while he takes shots at the thralls with Alan's purple ray. Major Adams is going all out in his assault on the Star Conqueror, trusting Koriand'r to shield him from small arms fire.

Why did that-? My spell eater is dripping down my cuirass, overwhelmed by whatever the Star Conquerors did to try and take me down. I replace it and generate a coilgun as Alan goes back to pulling injured crew out of the line of fire.

**All will be one.**

Message to Batman: Star Conqueror presence confirmed. Engaging.

Message sent.

Major Adams suddenly stops shooting, arms dropping as he lolls in the air. His spell eater has gone into meltdown, and-.

Tiny pieces of debris hurl themselves at his face, only to be defeated by his dilustel epidermis. Trying to cut a star shape? So it doesn't require contact.

I tag Major Adams with a replacement spell eater -need to emphasise how they aren't actually a replacement for a field magician- and then fire an ultraviolet laser at the Star Hunter. Kind of a shame I didn't melt down Nabu's helmet to make an Ace of Order, because that's clearly chaos magic it's using. The laser does nothing but make it realise that I'm mobile again, which means that its shield is general purpose rather than specific.

Brute force and ignorance it is, then.

I don't even bother with a construct. Thick orange beam from my ring to the ward, just enough kinetic force to make it activate and a whole lot of effort draining it. Because-.

The Star Hunter collapses to the deck, the runes in its body flickering out. The few remaining thralls-

"Aaaagh!"

-drop their weapons, staggering as the bleeding wounds on their faces are suddenly a pressing concern. I scan the Star Conqueror, and… It's barely alive, but it is still functioning.

Major Adams appears to have recovered, and Lantern Khan reconstitutes his armour and raises his arms high.

"My people! I have returned!"

Most of them don't throw anything.

 

12th April
11:56 GMT

"…sections have reported in."

The construct of Batman nods as Major Adams gestures to the containment device I built for the Star Hunters. Physical restraints, telepath suppression, some of Lantern Khan's robot men-at-arms and… My attempt at a ward. In theory a way for the Ophidian to feed on any spell they try to create, just in case they're not as tapped out as I think they are. I'll get Dr Balewa to replace it with something Earth-appropriate if that's where we take them.

"Eight of the medium-sized Star Conquerors are on board and we've got some of Manga Khan's robots-"

.-.. --- .-. -.. .-.. .- -. - . .-. -.

"-keeping watch on them, but they're not doing anything. Whatever magic they were using, looks like they've run out. Orange-. Illustres, thinks these cages will hold them until Doctor Mist can make something more permanent."

"Unless the Guardians want them. A Sciencell would be better than anything we could build. Though given their status as a galactic menace, I'm perfectly happy to just disintegrate them. And not just because that's almost certainly what the Russians are going to do if we give them the people who abducted their cosmonauts and stole their ships."

"I'll take that under advisement. The status of the cosmonauts?"

"Hooked up to some sort of magic device." I shrug. "It was dead when I got there, and they appeared to be fine. Everyone here knows that they're going to have to be quarantined, so Manhunter and Doctor Mist can give them a good going over before we send them home."

I'm not sure what the device was supposed to do. I don't recognise a lot of the runes, and if they were using a truly alien system it will be one for the thaumaturgists.

Major Adams nods again.

"Lantern Khan is going over the ship's internal monitoring records now. I want to be sure we got all of these things before we leave."

And that could take a while. The Star Conquerors tried doing something to L-Ron and the robotics maintenance people were badly affected by their thraldom. And Lantern Khan's blithe attitude now that the ClusterShip is back under his control means that he isn't motivated strongly enough to do it quickly.

"Have you found any more of these things back on Earth?"

"Doctor Mist was able to trace them. We'll be launching an attack shortly."

"I'll be glad to know those things are finally dealt with. Good luck. Captain Atom out."

I shut the communication channel down. Okay, next step. Khan's getting the ClusterCorpCrew back into order. Alan and Koriand'r are checking on the crew's health. I… Could go and patch the-.

The ship.. vibrates.

-hull-?

"Illustres to Lantern Khan. Are we underway?"

"I don't know. Are we?"

"I felt a vibrat-." Why am I bothering asking him? "Ring, source of vibration?"

"Ejection of matter from planet."

Hm. Well, I know that sufficiently violent volcanic eruptions on Earth can throw material into space. And if things are getting that violent then I think we can safely assume that no Star Conquerors went down there. But just in case…

"Captain Atom, unless you desperately need me I'd like to head outside and make sure that we're not about to get a continent thrown at us. This ship has shields, but they're not military grade."

He shakes his head, then nods at the Star Hunter.

"I'd rather have you stay on guard."

I nod.

"Illustres to Lantern Koriand'r. Please exit the ship and prepare to block mass ejections from the planet."

"I will go at once."

I take a moment to scan the planet myself. I.. would have expected things to have died down by now, but it looks like the force of the internal explosions is being amplified by a solid structure under the planet's 'crust'. But the worst that could mean for us is that we'd need to make a jump with the ship before the crew are fully compos mentis. I'd-.

Why is that… Getting closer?

"Lantern Khan, are we underway?"

"No, no, haven't touched the controls. Are we moving? Because I can go and shout at some people."

"Stand by."

Major Adams frowns.

"What's the problem?"

"We're getting closer to the planet. Not.. quickly, but… This ship isn't designed to land."

"Was it the.. decompression? Were we pushed out of orbit?"

I shake my head.

"No, the atmosphere filter means that nothing like enough air escaped to do that. And the ClusterShip has automatic systems to anchor it in geosynchronous orbit and the Star Conquerors didn't remove them." I shrug. "With the crew recovering we can't fly away yet, but if it comes to it I can just tow the ship myself. The issue is that if I don't know why this is happening…"

He nods.

"We don't know what else is going to happen. What would cause this?"

"Tractor beam. Strapped-on thrusters that are still stealthed, somehow. Some extreme-density materials escaping some sort of suppression field and causing a sudden change in local gravity. Some types of exotic portal. And… Probably other things. It might just be that someone was messing around with the ClusterShip's artificial gravity system, but-."

"Lantern Koriand'r to Illustres."

"Go ahead."

"The eruptions are decreasing in intensity, but planet quakes are happening over a much wider area."

Okay, worst-case scenario… Someone stuck a whole lot of neutronium down there in a zero-tau field that was breached by the mining laser. That's… Still not a threat to anything other than this ship and us. And… Our movement downwards appears to be accelerating. Not.. to a terrifying rate, but I'm a little concerned.

"Captain, the worst-case scenarios here are much easier to deal with if I can see them coming. The Star Hunters aren't going anywhere, and between your lack of an organic brain in your enhanced state and your spell eater, you could incinerate them even if they did regain consciousness."

"Okay, if you're that worried, get out there."

"I'm not worried-worried. Just concerned about the bounds of my own ignorance."

I raise my left hand to my forehead

and a moment later

I'm looking down at the fracturing planet.

 

12th April
12:00 GMT

I'm.. seriously wondering if I should call Lantern Mother of Mercy in to deal with this, if only so I can stop worrying about it. I vaguely remember that Pluto actually was destroyed in the comics, and…

Not like I have any real attachment to the place.

"Should we..? Stop it?"

"Do you want to?"

"I am disquieted at the idea of a world being destroyed. Does this not matter to your people?"

"We don’t even class this as a planet anymore." I frown thoughtfully. "Remind me to introduce you to a species that dismantles planets at some point."

"Why would they do that?"

"It makes it a lot easier to get at the useful materials. You remember you mentioned that some advanced species don't leave their homeworlds?" She nods. "For the really advanced ones, breaking up one of their home system's gas giants can provide them all the material they ever need. Even places like the Reach-"

Again I see a flicker of light. Something so simple as an awareness of its own existence.

"-use…"

Koriand'r directs an interrogative look my way. Knowing that she can't see my face through my helmet, I exhale with confusion and frustration.

"I got another glimmer of orange. I don’t know why. My scans aren't showing anything special; certainly nothing intelligent. Something could be concealed with magic, but the Star Hunters all collapsed at the same time. If one of them was down there then it should have collapsed as well…"

"Could they be down there and unable to escape?"

"If we're lucky."

"I am… Surprised to hear you say that."

"These creatures provoked the Green Lantern Corps into taking the gloves off, and Earth made them even more dangerous. As psychic parasites, they can't see other species as anything other than a host waiting for a Star Conqueror to be put on their face. And maybe I could fiddle around with their desires and change that… But then again, I could have done that with the Citadelians. Or the psions. And I've thought about that a fair bit, and I'm still happy with the choice I made."

Okay. Still can't reliably see anything, but if that dense patch is an old spaceship or something… I generate a construct-.

"I am.. not."

"I suspected. Would you care to narrow it down?"

The shape is… Somewhat like a stereotypical diamond; a large flat block which tapers to a point beneath it. The build up of other materials around it is uneven… But its centre of mass appears to be roughly in the centre of the planet. It could be a generation ship, I suppose…

"The young Citadelian clones who had not completed the implantation process. You could have moved them from their world before you destroyed their cloning factories."

"Yes, I could. To what end?"

"They were children. That had not shared in the crimes of their elders."

"They were modified clones of the First. Every part of their conditioning and training was designed to make them-"

The mass is.. shifting slightly. Lighter material being pushed aside due to pressure or heat?

"-better killers. You yourself were held at the facility where they created the 'better' version; you know what they were trying to do, and how well they were succeeding. They were as instinctively sociopathic as they could be made. There have never been any Citadelians who rebelled against their intended purpose. Not. One. I could have mind controlled them; made them my thralls. I don't want thralls. Or Citadelian children."

"I… Want to be a person who tried."

I nod.

"When I was first training you and your sister, I thought to myself that if there were any justice in the universe I would be offering you a blue ring. Time permitting, I'd like you to try working with Alan's ring while you're here."

"Any… You did not want me to have an orange ring?"

"Most people can learn to use any power ring to at least some degree. Ideally, people would be matched to those they suit best. I'm a good match for orange, and so is your sister. You… Clearly you can use it… But I've never been entirely convinced that it's… You. And I want to give you the opportunity to be the most you you can be."

"Do you have more blue rings?"

"No. I had to talk Kalmin into making one, and Alan needed it to live, not merely to thrive. If it is a good fit, we can try talking him into making another one."

"Kalmin, the monstrous weapon-maker who kills entire worlds."

"If you know someone else, feel free to commission one from them instead. The only possibles I know of are the Guardians Ganthet and Sayd."

Something's happening with the top of the 'diamond', a large crater opening as material is pushed back by mechanisms I… Don’t know. I'm increasingly thinking 'ship', because if that's some sort of launch…

Bay.

"Lantern Koriand'r, how resistant to telepathy are you?"

"I have performed mental strengthening exercises taught to me by the Warlords of Okaara. The Star Hunters did not trouble me."

I generate a construct of Pluto, with the denser mass as a more solid orange inside it.

"This is what's down there. And while I'm not sure what that is… If it were a Mother Star…"

I add definition and it fits… Horribly well.

"Orange Lantern Illustres to everyone, I think that Pluto is a Mother Star containment unit. Strongly suggest advising the Green Lantern Corps."

**I…**

A new eruption of rock and ice clears an area the size of India, hurling the material which previously covered it past the ClusterShip.

**Aaaaaaahhhh…**

A planet blinks at me.

**Awaken.**

The opposite side of Pluto bursts as its tentacles flex, cracks along the dwarf planet's surface becoming canyons of unfathomable depth before-. Its telekinesis is working again. It's lifting the covering off itself and throwing the discarded wrapping away as it works itself free.

**Hunger.**

 

12th April
12:04 GMT

Three basic options.

Alpha strike. It's big, bigger than Ranx and possibly bigger than Mother of Mercy's actual body. But it isn't immortal. The Green Lantern Corps killed its brethren with constructs and none of them had the raw power that I do. I'm pretty sure I can kill it, half asleep as it is, but my chances are best if I go full power right from the start.

Mind control. Same as the above, but with the orange light. Mother Stars are resistant to constructs but far from immune. Enough orange light on the primary neural clusters and it'll be mine. Probably. Its unusual neural structure combined with its telepathic abilities mean that it might be able to consciously resist, and I've got no idea what sort of personality it has. If it turns out to be profoundly selfless then that option might not work.

Actually talk to it. It is an intelligent being who was probably hiding here because it knew that its species was being destroyed. It's got to know that trying to hide again isn't going to work. The Guardians are older than it is, and they aren't the sorts to leave a job unfinished. The Controllers could protect it, and might if they thought that it would behave itself. Even if it mind controlled the entire population of the Earth, there's no way it could take the fight that is coming.

Or I could combine the last two. Tease out what it wants while it's too sleepy to resist effectively, nudge its desires a little…

But highest priority is protecting the people on the ClusterShip.

Okay… Gah. Koriand'r is right there. Alan's right there. I've got a rough idea of the parts of its body it uses for its anti-ship telekinesis surges. I… Should be able to do this.

Mother Stars can detect radio waves, so…

"Hunger for what?"

I deploy probe constructs, trying to get more accurate scans of its interior. I'm… Going to need to know when it starts becoming more active.

**Hunger.**

I try to-. Ugh. Given its size, I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised that it has a decentralised neurology. Neuron clusters ranging in size from standard humanoid brains to the size of football stadiums are placed throughout its body, bound together by a telepathic field that is building back up in fits and starts. I'm probably not talking to.. all of it at the moment. Different bits want different things, and it's like trying to look at a civilisation comprised of members of different species. I'm not sure what bits I'm talking to, but at least it's responding.

Sort of.

"You don't appear to have a digestive system. Are you hungry for attention?"

**HungerCold. HungerCold.**

The last large piece of Pluto is telekinetically hurled in the direction of the Oort cloud. There are still bits of Pluto clinging to its skin, and I see a swath of ice shards the size of Ireland flake off as it straightens its tentacles.

Ring, message to Captain Atom. Message: am attempting to talk giant starfish down. Please let me know if you want me to do something else. Send.

Message sent.

"If you're cold, I'm happy to take you closer to a star. Would that help?"

Its eye is.. moving. Given the size difference I'm not sure if it can actually see us. No, wait, those brains are spec'd for detailed telekinesis. It probably doesn't 'see' so much as 'feel'.

How did they make these things?

**Cold Stop Dead notDream Hunger.**

If that was a sentence then my rings would have translated it. It's just throwing out words, probably as bits of its mental network flare up. Which means that I'm just speaking so that parts of it have something that isn't the ship behind me to focus on.

Ring, play it relaxing music.

Compliance.

And while it's doing that, I'm going to try to make sense of its desire networks.

"Lantern Koriand'r, I'm going to try and work out what it wants. Please begin towing the ClusterShip away."

"I cannot move it fast enough to escape-."

"I don’t expect you to be able to dodge an actual attack. I just want you to avoid its telekinetic flailings."

"Then I will do so at once."

She flies away, moving to the approximate centre of the ClusterShip's mass and extending constructs outward.

Right, let's… Take a look.

If regular scans weren't telling me which bits weren't back in contact with the rest, empathic vision makes it extremely obvious. Networks of desires and fears just.. cut off, or… Exist, but the drives and memories which created them are somewhere else. And with a mental network this size and this disconnected I.. genuinely can't.. identify them all.

That part has… A fear response to certain shapes and sensations… Attackers? And a desire for certain other sensations. No green, as that bit never had to process competing inputs. It just does what it does. I.. think that bit is a part of its anti-attack craft system, which would explain why there's no violet or indigo at all. An anti-aircraft gun doesn't need to love or empathise.

Okay, so that's what those do. What about… Oh, that's interesting. It doesn't have the horrifying mouth parts that the other types do. Rather, that's replaced by what could… Either be a hangar or a.. womb. I mean, normal starfish extrude their stomachs to eat. The.. neural clusters in that area.. miss.. having other Star Conquerors around. Maintaining that mental contact-. Oh, those can stand in for being stuck on people's faces. The Green Lantern Corps never really studied exactly how they worked… Or if they did, Salaak didn't think to include that information in the data he sent us when they first showed up.

Those clusters… A slightly more complete emotional range.

**DreamHunger.**

But the structures don't make any sense. I'm seeing at least a recollection of the entire spectrum in there, but the thing itself…

Ring, structural analysis. Any idea what those are for?

Analysing.

Okay, yes, that looks like it could be a data store. Mother of Mercy has similar structures, though not similar enough to be related. And those look vaguely like… Telepathic receivers? A communication network? Star Conquerors are telepathic, and they must have had some way of remaining in long range contact.

But comparing to the telepathic systems on record, it looks like something's… Missing? I could be completely wrong, there isn't anything quite like this-.

**NoDream. NoBeacon. HungerHungerHunger. AwakenMistake.**

That was a bit more coherent. And… How did they feed these things? Star Conquerors didn't consume their hosts, even when they were starving. Does 'dream' mean their telepathic field? They're not a hive species, but there's usually a level of mental exchange amongst telepathic species, so-.

Parts of its neural network are shutting down. Ring, why?

Exhaustion. Stress. Starvation.

It's dying? I mean, there are all sorts of things that can go wrong with cryogenic suspension, but I rather assumed that they'd have a work-around if…

That's what the Star Hunters were doing. Something about… How they were acting was supposed to keep the Mother Star alive. And… It's going dark. Already the major clusters are dimming, and-.

I

dive into its earliest associations and see eternity.

 

12th April
12:07 GMT

See frond. Grasp. Pull to mouth. Chew.

An old memory. I recognise the species from Green Lantern Corps records; their favourite host from their original homeworld. It was burned to ash by a now-extinct empire who 'totally had this'.

I see other similar desire-sets. Simple creatures eating, sleeping and mating. Defending the herd against predators. Not being mentally complex enough to recognise that the 'oddface' members of the herd were now hosts for the primordial Star Conquerors.

Was one of them the host of the Star Conqueror who eventually became this?

A partially submerged city with six-limbed sentients going about their business, apparently ignoring the starfish on their faces as they greet friends or work at their jobs.

…

What?

Yes, Star Conquerors kept some civilisations sort of functioning, but never 'as is'. They only maintained the things their hosts needed in order to live and procreate. They didn't… Carry on like before but with added starfish.

In the sky, Mother Stars.. look.. down, obscuring the stars and at the same time… Not. There's a sense of… Rightness about this. Either the Mother Star regards this as exactly how things should be, or… Star Conquerors in general do? I can't tell whether this is a stored memory from this Mother Star or telepathically shared memory from another part of the species.

I look.. around, and through the overwhelming orange I feel from the Mother Star observers I.. can feel the other emotion of the people. A… Um, I don't know what sexes this species had. A starfish-faced 'care giver' escorts a small group of starroed children and I can see the bonds of love. A flash of compassion as one being helps another out of the water after they struggled to pull themselves up.

No, seriously, what is this?

I press on, trying to find an actual memory and things snap. Mother Stars fade into nothing as I see lifeless streets, the inhabitants moving 'efficiently' from place to place. Children are kept in orphanariums until they're large enough for a Star Conqueror, the silent caretakers keeping constant watch on children…

Their faces are blank.

What am I seeing?

My ring ever so helpfully flashes up a diagram… The emotion-association patterns are retained in different parts of its neural network, okay. One literal and the other… Imagined?

There's no emotion from the hosts here. The small Star Conquerors don't have a huge emotional range, and the hosts… The Guardians were never completely certain as they had no interest in studying Star Conquerors in situ. But studies of the survivors and the remains of those who were killed suggested that their mental processes were severely distorted. They shouldn't be capable of what I just…

I'm floating over the streets of a city of thralls as they suddenly look up. There's no obvious reason for them to do so. They don't really need to look at loud noises or flashes of light in the way that humans do. Wrong set of instincts. But they've stopped, and-.

The false-reality trembles

A street of happy starfish faces

A street of mindless starfish faces

A city of people

A city of thralls

Emotion

Hollowness

Something… Emerges, from the starfish, from the people, from the thralls, from the structure of the city they live in. I feel ideas and thoughts and memories flow past and up up up into

An eye opens in the sky, the five tentacles of a Mother Star-. No this Mother Star becoming… Visible. They were always… I think they were always there, just…

"You just appear? That was where you were born?"

**QuietPeople DreamEchoes NoDream. So Hungry.**

"I don’t understand! What do you eat?"

A section of its neural network lights up

and I'm drawn in to see a young amphibious alien spooking some sort of sea anemone which spits forth a school of bright red aquatic near-slugs and the alien is drawn to them swimming among them

and music interwoven with emotion, fragments of images and scents I can barely grasp

an endless meadow

streets racing past

a crystal refracting the light of a dozen tiny suns

"Is that how you see us? Our imaginations?"

more images than I can easily count or even perceive and something stirs from the part of me that touches the Ophidian as I try and soak them all in.

**QuietAloneTired. HurtAloneTired. NoDream. NotDreamHurt.**

"Dreams? You see dreams?"

**AllDream. ManyDream**

"You feed on dreams? You-?" No, hang on. "You are a dream?"

**Remember. RememberDream.**

"How can I help-?"

**Rem… em...**

It-. No, the shut down of the major neural clusters has… Reached what looks like terminal levels. A life form this big is going to take a long time to completely die, but I'm not going to get anything much else out of it. And in case it telekinetically flails around in its death throes I need to keep moving the ClusterShip.

"Illustres to everyone. The Mother Star is dying, and unlikely to present a further danger after today. I… Didn't kill it. I will make a full report available shortly."

Half-glimpsed images continue to flicker through my mind

and I take a moment to check my spell eater and my armour's telepathic defence modules. No, they're all working just fine.

I'm not sure… What to t-.

"My Lord Illustres!"

To think about the Mother Star. I'm pretty sure what to think about Lord Lantern Comic King.

"Lantern Khan."

I turn around in space. Lantern Koriand'r is still towing the ClusterShip, and Alan's gotten outside to cover it if necessary. Lantern Khan's only a short distance from me, with L-Ron held firmly under his right arm.

"Might I suggest that your crew could benefit from your presence at this trying time?"

"Yes. In fact, they're going to be benefiting a good deal more!"

"… Right. What-?"

"I quit." He pulls the ring off his finger and tosses it to me, his environmental shield fading out at once. "My insurance doesn't cover giant starfish gods. No insurance covers that. We'll be leaving the Sol system as soon as we've recalled our planetside assets."

…

I catch his ring in a small ring case construct and stuff it into the most heavily armoured storage compartment in my armour. Then I weld it shut.

"Oh. Nooo."

 

12th April
12:04 GMT -5

"Mother Star, huh?"

I glance around from my workbench in the Mountain as Guy leans against the wall near the door. Then I turn back to my equipment, slotting a new kuru pendant into the thinkers cap currently plugged into my brain and

remembering.

Guy frowns at the device, eyes flickering green as he tries to make sense of it.

"Thought that thing wasn't ready fer the big time."

"The neural hook ups are constructs. I can just reset the physical structures of my brain when I want to disconnect. I've been thinking of integrating one into my armour, but it never seemed worth all the time I'd need in order to learn to use it well."

He nods.

"You know somethin'? This is the most Star Hunters the Green Lantern Corps has seen since the big war. Guess that's Earth for yeh."

He waits for a moment to see if I want to respond. When I don't, he looks away for a moment.

"We're takin' 'em. They can all sit in a sciencell fer the rest of forever."

"To what end?"

"Keeps 'em outta the way." He looks at me out of the corner of his eyes. "Burning 'em up would save space, yeh, but the war finished a long time ago."

I nod sadly

as I focus on the network of separate but related desires that the Mother Star remembered from when the war was at its height.

"It took me a while to work out how a creature that big could exist."

"Telekinetic, right? Holdin' itself together?"

"No. That sort of system could work, but I got pretty good scans of its neurology and I don't think it had the equipment."

"Well don't keep a guy in suspense. Spill it, already."

"I looked back over the records of Star Conqueror victims. The patterns of damage in long term hosts, the psychological effects of short term control, and the meaning of the runes they used on the ClusterShip."

He nods.

"Yeah? You find somethin' nobody else did?" He nods slowly as he works it out. "Magic, 'cause if it was anything else, the Guardians woulda found it." He frowns. "But you 're goin' on 'bowt how yeh can't use magic away from a planet-." He raises his eyebrows. "The starfish cracked it?"

"To a very basic level, yes. You see, when they did brain scans on the long term victims, they decided they were.. vegetables. Random flares of disorganised activity. No person left. But there's no.. obvious reason for Star Conquerors to keep any higher functions in their victims. They don't need them. If anything, they get in the way."

"Sooo?"

"Sephtian took a look at the rig they had the Russian cosmonauts in. Apparently they were using it to make them dream."

"And magic comes from dreaming, right?"

"Sort of. And yes, that’s what I think they do. They use a whole lot of thralls all dreaming whatever they're told to dream, and use that to create… Really big Star Conquerors, with… Their own thaumic.. zones… Fields… Which… Is an interesting bypass."

"So what does that mean fer us?"

"There are people who specialise in dream magic. If we hire them, we can probably track down the last few Star Conquerors on Earth a lot more easily. Perhaps more to the point for me-."

"You think you can get magic workin' in space with.. dreams? I don't think people are gunna sign up for starfish facials."

"We could probably build something to replicate the effect. If we can study it in detail. Are the Green Lantern Corps planning to throw it into the sun?"

"Nah. Though it could be a tourist attraction. 'Come to Earth: we have giant starfish'."

"I… Don't think Earth needs any more alien visitors for a little while."

Though at least it's lit a fire under certain people's bottoms. Despite rumblings to the contrary, the Democratic party nominated President Horne as their candidate. He's made some noise about encouraging private space exploration, which is apparently the quickest that he's ever responded to anything. Senator Knight doesn't quite have the Republican nomination yet, but he's loudly announced his intention to throw money at NASA in order to catch up.

"Think you're right." He frowns. "What happened to that Khan moron?"

"His insurance doesn't cover Star Conquerors. He quit." I pull his ring out of my equipment harness and put it on the work bench. "One orange ring, slightly used. There is an actual L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet heading this way, but if you know anyone who's in the market..?"

"You'll prob'ly trip over someone too dumb to say 'no' before too long." He looks around my workshop. "So what's got you so bent outta shape?"

"It kept the dreams of every species the Star Conquerors ever destroyed. It had specialised brains for holding on to every feeling and fantasy they ever had. The last-."

I feel the feedback change as the pendant is filled. I pull it out, put it in the case with the others and slot in a new one.

"The last living testament of all of those civilisations. As it was dying I.. looked… I doubt that I got more than a tiny fraction. And I'm not sure whether or not the Mother Star really… Understood that it was killing them."

"They'd prob'bly all be dead by now anyway." Guy shrugs. "That thing went inta the ice over a million years ago. That kinda time, wouldn't even be ruins left."

"The Maltusians survived that long, but that's not the point. I just saw every record erased. Not because of anything I did; once we freed the ClusterShip's crew it was going to die, and we couldn't let it go."

"You're just bummed out."

"Yeah." I exhale. "Though since we know that interstellar magic is possible now, I'm going to talk to King Cyprian and King Orin about making it a joint research project. If we crack this… All sorts of things are possible."

 

9th November 2018
19:12 GMT -5

Hah.

So this is the future?

Looks… Pretty much the same.

If I knew more about fashion then I could probably make a clever observation about clothes or something, but… I haven't seen anything particularly strange. More smart phones than I remember seeing, but mobile phones weren't something I've ever been interested in.

…

DC.

It's curious. In the comics the Justice Society came together… I'm not sure, actually. I remember from Starman that Jay Garrick and Alan Scott were active in the forties and I think I remember a Superman comic where he went back to that era and tried to ask them for help returning to the present only to be blocked by the Spectre…

Here, they were a modern group. There were superheroes during the Second World War, and they were called the All-Star Squadron. But the Justice Society formed in the nineties from a group of heroes who'd worked together to varying degrees for years. It's like… If someone really wanted to do a Justice League film, had the ideas and the budget but couldn't get the licence for the property they really wanted to adapt.

And eight years ago they were all killed.

Quite how that happened I'm not sure about, but more than a few names I remember from the comics turned up dead after a major fight with a group called 'The Injustice Society', who promptly appear to have gone underground.

Which leaves me with a choice to make.

There are supervillains, but major battles appear to be a bi-annual thing, and if you're not in that city there's a good chance your life will be entirely unaffected. Worldwide crises… Even if you count something like the Second World War, there have been.. maybe.. three..? So life is pretty much the same as it was back home, not just in terms of society and technology but in terms of life-as-experienced.

I don't… Need.. to get involved.

Then again… I've done the obvious thing of getting a giant pile of precious metal by mining asteroids. I sold enough to get walking around money, and selling the rest at intervals won't really present much of a problem. Even with no qualifications that I can prove, I can easily get away with not working another day in my life. Which is… Nice, but it does leave me with a rather empty schedule.

And the few hours I've spent with this ring have been the most intense of my life.

I'm…

I'm trying to justify doing something stupid and dangerous. But I don't think I could stand not doing that stuff. I don't think I can give it up.

So then. Here's to being stupid.

I raise my right fist to knock on the-.

And I'm airborne, a glowing green disc propelling me through the air! The acceleration is keeping me pressed against it but I can see quite a long way down at the moment. And-.

The disc slows, rotating as it does so to keep me onboard. As it comes to a halt in a horizontal position I carefully pick myself up and straighten my clothes.

And here she comes. White and black costume with a green atomic nucleus emblem between her breasts.

Gosh. Um. This may not be a very superheroey world but her physique clearly took its cues from the generous proportions of-.

"My face is up here."

"Yes." My eyes move upwards to her decidedly unimpressed face. "Yes, it is."

"Who are you and what do you want?"

I could mess around and use ambiguous language, but she's already annoyed… Best to be direct.

"I would like to purchase Green Lantern Alan Scott's personal lantern. I believe that you're the owner, and since you obviously don't have a secret identity, finding you-"

"In a cabin in a national park with no roads for miles around."

"-was simple."

She looks down, and I see a green light strobe over the countryside.

"Who else is here?"

"I didn't.. see anyone."

The band of green light vanishes into the distance, and she returns her attention to me.

"Why the hell would I give-"

"Sell."

"-Alan Scott's ring to a creep like you?"

"In my defence, you're an extremely attractive woman wearing a thin skin-tight costume in November. And while I certainly don't wish to diminish the significance of your achievements or character, I don’t think my being distracted is completely unreasonable."

That gets a half eye roll. Not 'Dad's ring', I notice. I suppose that if they… Unlike her brother, Jennifer-Lynn had good parents growing up. Understandable that she thinks of the man who raised her as 'Dad' rather than her biological father.

"And I don't need his ring. I've already-."

I'm in America. I've heard this story enough times to know to warn armed people before reaching anywhere they can't see.

"I'm going to reach into my pocket to get something to show you?"

She looks mildly puzzled. Alright, fine. I slide my right hand into my jacket pocket and take out the ring I was wearing when I got here.

"See? I've got my-" Her only reaction is mild curiosity. One point in favour of the Green Lantern Corps not existing in this parallel. "-own ring."

She shakes her head. "So what do you need his lantern for?"

"As a charge point. I'm… Hopeful that I can adapt it to charge this ring."

She shakes her head. "I'm not letting you damage his equipment."

"Is someone using it? I didn't.. see anything about a new Green Lantern."

"No. No one's using it. But that lantern and the ring that goes with it are a part of his legacy, and I'm not going to let just anyone take it."

"So there's no amount of money-?"

"No."

"I mean, you could endow a scholarship in his name, or set up a charitable foundation or something?"

"I'm not going to sell you his lantern so you can mess around with it."

I sigh.

"O… Kay. How about if I don't? How about if you sell me both, and I only use his lantern to charge his ring?"

"That's… Something I could agree to. But how could I trust you?"

I grin.

"Are you in the market for a sidekick?"

 

15th June 2020
21:22 GMT -5

"For.. goodness sake, Patrick. I know it's not easy for a step-parent to establish their authority, but burglary is a bit beyond-."

"I.. know. Believe me, I know."

On the other end of the phone I hear him exhale in frustration, while from the sofa of our living room Jennie flashes me an interrogative frown.

"The worst part of it is, I phoned Ma to get a list of all the stuff that was missing, and not all of it's in her room."

"You think she lost it?"

"I think she might have got it into her head to try and restart the Justice Society."

"I'm going to warn you right now that Jennie's about three metres away from me."

"Yeah, I-. I didn't want Courtney getting involved. I didn't want to say anything to encourage her, so I didn't tell her about Infinity Inc. I don't think she knows you guys exist."

"Can I assume that Courtney isn't.. some sort of combat savant, trained from infancy in martial arts?"

"Yeah, that's a pretty safe assumption."

"And the Cosmic Staff's brain wave scanner is just.. acting up after a decade without maintenance?"

"I'm a mechanical engineer, not an electronics engineer. I wouldn't know where to start with something like that."

"Okay." I lean back against the hall wall. "Okay. Let me talk to Jennie, and… We'll put our heads together and come up with something. You're in.. Blue Valley, right?"

"That's the place."

"Okay, I'll come in person. See you later."

"Yeah. And.. thanks."

I hang up, then bow my head slightly as Jennie gets up and slowly walks over.

"What did Pat want?"

I raise my head to look her in the eyes.

"Short version… You know Pemberton left him the Cosmic Staff?" She nods. "His step-daughter found it and started using it and somehow bumped into a couple of Injustice Society members. He bailed her out, then took her to the Justice Society's old headquarters to try and make a point about how they all died despite being a lot better trained than she is. Unfortunately, she didn't listen, went back there after he took her home and stole all of their old equipment."

Her eyes widen.

"She what?!"

"I know. So I.. guess we're.. staging an intervention?" I grab my mobile and scroll through my contacts. "I'll phone Jack-"

Who last time I checked was still angry with Pemberton for giving away his dad's staff and with Patrick for keeping hold of it, so that's going to be a fun conversation.

"-and Matt-."

Jennie nods.

"And I'll call Pieter and Tommy. Hopefully we can talk some sense into this girl before someone gets killed."

"Someone else."

15 June 2020
22:42 GMT -5

"Hey!"

I don't know if it's the difference between the physique of a comic character and the physique of a real person, but even in this light what Courtney Whitmore is wearing looks ridiculous. And impractical. It looks like she's taken Pemberton's 'dress' costume and cut a display window for her abdomen. It's not armoured in any way and I wouldn't trust the flame resistant treatment after a decade in a cupboard. Particularly with that much skin not even covered.

Jack catches the Cosmic Staff in his right hand and… For a moment, smiles. Then he goes back to glaring at the delinquent who stole it from the person who took it from the person who borrowed it and didn't return it.

"Give that b-"

"D-dad?"

"-ack you jerk!"

Rick Tyler looks at Matt in shock for a moment, then his face hardens. "What the fuck! I thought you were supposed to be dead!"

"Ah, no. I'm Matthew Tyler. We're related, but… Distantly. I had been under the impression that you were living with your uncle?"

"Yeah."

And his expression says exactly how he feels about that.

"Ah. Is now a good time to catch up? I'll buy you a coffee?"

Rick sullens at Matt for a moment.

"If you make it a beer, sure."

"I think -given the circumstances- my morality subroutines will accept that proposition. Which way to the local liquor store?"

As the two of them walk off I notice that Courtney's taken the opportunity to march up to Jack, who doesn't look even slightly impressed.

"Give it back! That's my dad's!"

"No, it's my dad's."

She grabs it while he's still holding onto it, prompting him to shake his head and let go. She smiles slightly and tries to pull it towards herself, only for it not to move at all.

"What? What's going on!?"

"It's designed to recognise its owner's brainwaves, and I'm its owner."

"No, it-. You're Sylvester Pemberton's son?"

This time, Jack outright scowls.

"No, I'm Doctor Theodore Knight's son. The guy who was the first Starman and who lent Sly his spare staff."

The Staff floats upwards two metres, with Courtney hanging off it for several moments until she finally gives up and drops back down to the road surface.

"Ah." Tommy approaches the young woman who has somehow managed to fit herself into Ted Grant's old costume. "I don't really care about that costume. Dad always hated it. Said it threw off his instincts. But kids shouldn't be fighting serial killers, which is what you're signing up for if you put that on. So go home, change out of it, and give it back to Pat."

Courtney jumps up to try and reach the staff as Pieter steps out of the shadows to take the goggles off the twelve year old who somehow got her hands on them. Fortunately, she's smart enough to see how this is going and surrenders them without a fight.

From the glowing platform we're standing on, Barbara Whitmore shakes her head in astonishment.

"I'm.. so sorry. I had no idea Pat even had the.. staff. I certainly didn't know that Courtney was using it. I'm going to be laying down the law with both of them."

Jennie nods.

"Just so long as you make it clear that it really isn't safe for children to be involved in this."

"And just to make sure…" I smile as my construct microfiche reader finds a picture of Injustice Society front man Sportsmaster in the local paper. "We'll pick up all of the remaining Injustice Society members before we leave town."

 

A Week in the Life of

11th April 2011
00:43

I take a moment to regard the petty criminals sitting on some sort of large canine on the rooftop a short distance from me. The young woman in the dog mask.. is quietly growling. Odd. The young man in regency dress is subtly trying to nudge his hound backwards. The thickset man in leather is trying to appear completely calm while supporting the semi-conscious woman sharing his dog, wisps of the black.. material he appears able to control pooling around their feet.

"Undersiders. Please pay attention, for I will say this only once. I will be cleaning house in Brockton Bay. You may find legitimate employment, you may leave the city, or I will kill you. Am I understood?"

Regency looks down onto the street below, where the charred remains of Lung and the corpses of his retinue are slowly cooling.

"Yeah, I think we got the fucking message."

Leather's head dips for a moment, then returns to facing me. "What did you do to Tats?"

"Nothing deliberate. She appears-" I scan her body. "-to.. have unusual activity in the part of her brain controlling her superhuman abilities. I could attempt to turn it off, but that probably wouldn't be healthy for her. If she collapsed when I arrived, I would suggest removing her from my presence as quickly as possible."

"Yeah. How long you giving us?"

"I'm working from most serious to least serious. I will be checking on you shortly after Uber and Leet."

"That's.. after the Nazis and the Merchants?"

"And what's left of the Asian Bad Boys, naturally."

He snorts quietly. "Good luck with that."

"Thank you. Ah, I see that you all have the same brain abnormality. That will make this easier."

No sirens, I note. A man glowing with yellow light shoots a dragon in the brain with a positron beam, and no one calls the police. Clearly, I couldn't get here soon enough.

"So, like… Can we go?"

"Yes. Be about your business."

A series of somewhat frantic looks are exchanged between the two men, then the one in leathers carefully lays a hand on the dog girl's shoulder. She tenses, but after a moment she whistles and the canines turn away.

I hope that they make a sensible decision.

I float downwards, yellow filaments flicking out and plugging into the phones owned by members of the fallen dragon's retinue. I doubt they have much identifying information stored on them, but I'm perfectly capable of brute forcing the records held by their service providers, bankers and.. accessing city records to locate their registered addresses, scanning their home computers and-.

Why are there so many flies? And why aren't they being attracted to the corpses?

Hm.

In a city there are almost always going to be some observers. I turn slowly in the air, looking through the walls at the fears of those inside the buildings around me. Generally, I can tell how bad things are by how glad people are to see me, and from the look of things…

Things aren't too bad-.

Several small flies attempt to land in my hair. A scan of the local area reveals one person with the signature brain abnormality of the local superhumans. A young woman wearing a.. ersatz costume. Nothing about her in local records. I transition to just in front of her.

"May I help-"

Flying insects of many types swarm in from all directions, creating a cloud around my face as she hurriedly backs away.

"-you? I bear you no malice, my environmental shield is proof against insects and I can see where you are perfectly well without using my eyes. I am merely trying to ascertain your purpose here."

She's showing up rather brightly in my 'empathic vision' at the moment. She knows perfectly well that she wasn't ready for a confrontation like this, but-.

"If you're looking for the Undersiders, they've already left."

The insects are showing up in yellow as well. Curious. Simple insects shouldn't be mentally complex enough for true fear. And if they were, they wouldn't be behaving like this.

"Who are you? Are-? You a hero?"

"I would be somewhat sceptical of anyone who would describe themselves as a hero." I raise my hands to gesture to the cloud of flies. "Would you mind?"

The insects withdraw, forming a dense cloud around the young woman and settling on her body. She's trying to disguise her outline. Alright.

"You killed Lung."

"If violence troubles you, I suggest finding a new career. There's always work for a good exterminator."

"Why did you kill him?"

"He was a serial murderer who runs an organisation of rapists, slavers, murderers and drug peddling thugs. Would you like to reflect upon your question?"

She just stands there for a moment.

"Look, if there's nothing else I've got a lot of people to kill-."

"Are you-? Trying to be a hero? I mean, is this-? Normal?"

"How are you defining 'hero'?"

"How are you defining 'hero'?"

"A hero is someone who lives to improve the lives of others, rather than to improve their own. I look at the situation in Brockton Bay and I see rampant gangs and under-resourced law enforcement organisations with bad doctrine who are failing to bring the situation under control. Therefore, I will cull the criminal population until it reaches a level where civil peacekeeping becomes possible. Once I am done, I will move on to the next city and repeat the process."

"So you do think you're a hero."

"I'm trying to be one. Not that I want to imply that I think there's only one way to be a hero."

"And what about the Protectorate? Do you think they're heroes?"

"Probably not. The silly costumes were the first clue. Not that there's anything wrong with being a police officer or a soldier, or that people employed in those capacities can't be heroic or be heroes."

"But you wouldn't join them."

"No. They would hobble me and drag me down to their level of ineffectiveness. Though-" I smile. "-it could just be that I'm a pontificating serial killer with delusions of utility."

Another person with a super tumour is approaching… On a large motorcycle.

"I believe that the authorities are responding. You may wish to absent yourself."

"You.. know they're.. going to arrest you?"

I smile wryly as I turn away.

"If they couldn't arrest Lung then I very much doubt that they can successfully arrest me."

 

11th April 2011
00:47

The ring shows me the approaching motorcycle in my mind's eye, the general construction reminding me more of an Astartes bike than the more usual design. Scans show that it's riddled with exotic mechanical and electronic equipment, and…

That's a halberd.

So this is a 'superhero'.

I feel a moment of sympathy for my alter egos who had to put up with that sort of lunacy on a regular basis. Thundera has no such tradition, and never will if I have anything to say about it.

The armour is passable, as light power armour goes. The colour is a little off-putting, but in an urban environment it probably serves adequately as camouflage. The exposed chin-. Is there a retractable chin guard? No, there isn't. Ordinarily I'd have said that such a small weak spot wouldn't matter significantly in urban combat, but if he routinely closes to halberd range -and stays there- then that clearly isn't the case. It also implies a vulnerability to gas weapons and contact toxins.

My own armour is a masterwork of technology and magic wrought for me by Mumm-Rana's hands. My only influence is in the yellow lantern built into the cuirass, freeing me from the need to recharge the ring. It has served me well on a dozen battlefields, and a simple analysis shows that it will outperform… Armsmaster's? Armour in every regard.

The young woman with the insects is still watching from a nearby rooftop. I imagine that she's curious as to whether I am a deluded serial killer or not, but I'm not sure that it's actually worth my while remaining here. While I doubt that the Undersiders are going to pass what I said on to anyone, my work will be easier if I can attack the local superhumans before they can gather hostages. Naturally, I would simply shoot through them, but I would prefer to minimise civilian casualties.

On the other hand, it would be useful to gain first hand information on the capacities of the local law enforcers. I do intend to pass the pacified city back to them after all.

Ring, scan for neurological oddities such as those so far seen in local superhumans.

Working.

Armsmaster turns onto this street, sees me and leaps from his bike, which slows, turns away and parks itself automatically. He watches me from a defensive crouch, polearm in the guard position.

Located.

The ring shows me an albino in a warehouse. The people around him have an unusual number of swastika tattoos, and the quantity of firearms rather implies that they're not Buddhists.

"Unknown parahuman-."

"Excuse me for a moment."

I fly upwards about a hundred metres, giving myself a clear line of sight to the warehouse. The albino operates under the name 'Alabaster', and has some sort of regenerative ability which resets his body when he's injured. The obvious counter is entombment, but logically speaking destroying the part of his brain which controls his ability should do the job.

The quantity of ammunition present does give me some concerns, but I still have Orange Prime's cold gun designs on file so I should be able to prevent it cooking-

Located.

-off. I create a positron ray construct and a cold gun construct, target Alabaster's brain with the former and fire. There's a small blast as the positrons briefly interact with the outer wall of the warehouse and explosively neutralise a few of its electrons, and then another slightly larger one as the beam carries on and puts the positrons in a position to briefly interact with Alabaster's cranium.

His accomplices don't require such careful treatment. I target brains and hearts, moving from one target to the next in a matter of seconds. Few have time to understand what's happening before they expire and… Ah, good show. The heat increase is palpable but nowhere near cook-off temperature.

I put my constructs into an 'at ease' position and return to ground level.

Located.

Armsmaster has come a little closer, but he was clearly monitoring me and the only change in his stance as I come to a halt on the road is to tilt his head to continue to track me.

"I apologise. You were saying?"

"Did you kill these people?"

"Yes." I generate a data stick which should be compatible with local technology and float it towards him. "A full recording of the incident. Death was near-instantaneous in all cases."

He lets the data stick float in front of him for a moment, and I notice some sort of broad spectrum probe deploy from his axe. Most likely trying to determine whether it's an explosive or not. After a moment he takes it with his left hand and places it inside an armoured compartment in his cuirass.

"If you surrender and accompany me now, it is possible that you will be offered a favorable plea bargain regarding these murders."

"Your statement is probably true. However, I am not interested in your offer."

"The alternative is that I defeat you and bring you there by force."

"I believe that you overestimate your chances. But I am curious as to your motives. What is it about what I've done here that bothers you?"

"Aside from the cold-blooded murder of sixteen men, including-"

"Thirty-four men and three women."

"-both of the ABB's parahumans?"

Two-? Oh, yes, that corpse has a mask and a super tumour. I hadn't noticed at the time.

"And one belonging to Empire Eighty Eight."

"That will trigger a gang war. Dozens of innocent people will die in the crossfire when Empire Eighty Eight move in on former ABB territory."

"And what do you propose to do about it?"

"I'm not here to discuss policy with a criminal."

"The correct thing to do is bring in the army, as you clearly lack the resources to deal with such a major upsurge in violence. That said, if local law enforcement had adequate resources to deal with the level of opposition you face then this situation would not have arisen. You need not worry about collateral damage. I will simply kill all participants."

Located.

Oh, that's interesting.

"I had been under the impression that superhumans were prohibited from holding positions of authority in the Parahuman Response Team. Does that just apply to directors?"

"Why are you asking?"

"Thomas Calvert is a superhuman. He has the signature growths in his brain. I don't yet have the data to tell you what his particular ability is, but there doesn't appear to be any record of it in your files. That seems like a substantial oversight, given his current role."

…

"How did you come by that information?"

"I scanned him just now. Determining whether someone is a supervillain or not requires a manual review, but those growths in your brain are quite distinctive."

"You can locate-?"

He cuts himself off, but I nod anyway.

"Yes. I'm going to get back to work, now. I suggest-"

He gestures, and a bolas of some kind attempts to wrap itself around me. I catch it with a construct and drop it on the ground.

"-that you make preparations for your job suddenly becoming possible. Farewell."

I rise into the air, target Purity and then fire.

 

12th April
15:48 GMT -6

"Oh?" Alan smiles at Lantern Koriand'r. "I hadn't realise you spoke English."

"Yes!" Koriand'r is.. just about keeping herself from jumping up and down in excitement. Which is probably just as well, because her top doesn't look very supportive and Alan's not a young man. "Tamaraneans can learn languages by touching people!"

"Ah." Alan frowns in puzzlement. "How does that work?"

"I have no idea!"

Alan raises an eyebrow in my direction, but I just shake my head as well.

"My best guess is that it's a modification the psions made to X'Hal so that they wouldn't have to learn her language, but I've got no idea how it operates."

I've got Lantern Koriand'r's ring in my pocket, along with former Lantern Comic King's. I suppose that instead of keeping it to issue to someone else I could just give it to Koriand'r to extend her battery life-. No, no, Komand'r would hate that, and the two of them are cooperating reasonably well at the moment.

"Guess we.. might as well get started."

Alan gently removes his ring from his middle left finger and hesitantly holds it out to her.

"Now, be careful. I know-"

Koriand'r doesn't grab it, but I can see the effort it's taking.

"-that you're used to using an orange ring, but from what I can tell it's a whole lot less… Direct, I guess."

He takes a breath. Understandable, really. I think this is the first time he'll have been without it on since I gave it to him. And while he might accept death as an old man, I imagine that having your vitality renewed encourages a person to reconsider the matter.

"But flying's pretty intuitive, so-" He offers her his ring. "-if you wanna take it for a spin, go right ahea-"

Koriand'r plucks it from his hand and slides it onto her left ring finger, a wave of blue flowing over her outfit and replacing the orange sigil with a blue one.

"-d."

Koriand'r beams excitedly as she floats into the air.

Alan nods. "You seem to be getting the hang of-"

Koriand'r turns her head towards the western horizon and then she's gone.

"-things…" Alan turns to the west and watches the glowing trail. "Is she coming back?"

"Yes, but I suppose that answers the question of which colour suits her best."

"You sure you can't get her another blue ring?"

"Sure? No. I'll definitely be asking Kalmin about it after we're finished, but…" Hm. "You know that Lanterns are perfectly capable of making new-"

He's shaking his head.

"-rings, right?"

"I don't… Can Gardner do that?"

"I… Don't know, actually. I haven't asked."

"He doesn't seem like the sort of fellow who'd be slow to tell you if he'd learned to do something he thinks you can't do." He frowns slightly. "You can't, right?"

"I haven't yet. I probably can. But… I can get as many orange power rings as I want, and I can't make a new ring without already having a ring. Making a lantern is useful because I can do it when I have some charge but don't have access to my personal lantern, which is.. why I learned to make one."

"So you can't coach me."

I shrug. "Sorry."

"Oh, no. It could be an interesting change of pace. You know, back in the forties, Ted asked me how my ring worked. I guess he thought I made it myself."

I frown. "Ted Grant, or-."

Alan shakes his head. "No, no, Knight. I let him run a few tests, but we didn't really learn anything." He shakes his head. "After that, I just figured it was beyond human science."

"And now?"

"I'm only just getting back into this whole thing. Kinda awkward asking Diana to explain how the League's computer equipment works."

"Why?"

"When she first came to the US, Jay and I ended up showing her how a whole lot of things worked. She's nice about it, but I can tell she's enjoying the role reversal."

"I thought that was Major Trevor's job?"

"He was her official… Liaison, but I think half the reason for that was because the army didn't know if everyone else on Themyscira was as strong as her so they wanted to be a bit careful. He sure couldn't go with her on missions or train with her or anything." He looks away for a moment. "Hah!"

"What?"

"Oh, I just remembered the first time Hank had a practice bout with her. He got his-" Alan points to his right forearm. "-arm bent in half. Diana was horrified because she didn't know it was a prosthetic."

"Was he alright?"

"Oh, he made a joke out of it! Got hold of a regular uniform and started pranking some of the…" He glances down, his smile fading slightly. "Some of the kids. Pretending it was his real arm."

Yeah. The thing about hitting ninety is that a good few of 'the kids' have probably predeceased you.

"Oh, hey, are you alright about the big.. starfish thing? Guy said he was going to talk to you…"

"I'm not shy about killing people who deserve it. But I'd rather not kill people when there's a reasonable alternative, and I really don’t want to kill someone-. Something that doesn't deserve it." I shake my head. "With the Star Conquerors, I've seen their records. I know what they do and how dangerous they are. But the Mother Star didn't even seem that hostile. I can't reconcile the desires I saw with their recorded behaviour, and that… That makes me uncomfortable that it died on my mission."

"So what did it want?"

"In the short term it wanted dreams to feed on. Or.. possibly watch or experience. I'm not sure. I mean, it was capable of complex behaviour… I don't even really know why the Star Hunters were digging it out. And I don't really think that the Green Lantern Corps is going to continue with an investigation."

"So? You want to go to Oa and talk to them about that?"

"No. It's not worth it just because I'd like a 'clean' ending. If we follow up with-."

A beaming Lantern Koriand'r appears, carrying three large teddy bears and a bicycle.

"I like this ring very much!"

 

12th April
18:32 GMT -6

"Oh. Hello." Tia gives Alan and Koriand'r a puzzled frown and then looks at me for an explanation.

"Doctor Sivana, this-"

"Tia, please."

Which is what I normally call her, but it seemed to me that emphasising her title would be more appropriate and 'Doctor Tia' sounds a little silly.

"-is Blue Lantern and Lantern Koriand'r. If it's not too much trouble, I'd appreciate it if they could join us."

She shakes her head. "That shouldn't be a problem. Are either of you involved in what Paul's been doing?"

Koriand'r shakes her head. "I have been on Earth for less than a day."

Alan shrugs. "He's been keeping me updated."

"Okay. If you'll all come with me?"

She leads the way from her office to Fawcett Hospital's research ward, nodding to the duty nurse as we arrive.

"Anyone new in this evening, Mark?"

"Yeah, they're bringing a guy in now. Low-speed motorcycle crash. The paramedics don't think anything's broken. He's already signed the consent forms, so you can get started as soon as he arrives."

Tia nods as she uses her holoscreen to review the file for a moment, then smiles.

"Thank you." She turns back to the three of us. "We've been gathering test data on purple healing rays since Paul gave them to us, and we switched to human trials back in December."

"Ah…" Alan looks mildly concerned. "It hasn't been tested on humans? I thought-?"

"We've got pl-." / "FDA approval doesn't mean-."

We look at each other and I bow, opening my right hand in Alan's direction.

"FDA approval doesn't mean that it's safe, it means that it's passed FDA standards for safety and efficacy. We haven't changed the way the purple ray functions, all we're doing is gathering data on how it affects the human body. If it gets approval for widespread use everywhere that picks it up will still be using essentially the same device as the one Doctor von Gunther built in München in nineteen forty four. Just, about a twentieth of the size."

"Have you had any trouble at all?"

"Not exactly, though we have discovered some of its limitations. The purple ray doesn't remove foreign objects, so we've had situations where glass or metal fragments have caused damage after the wound was healed. It also doesn't treat displaced bone fragments as being part of the body. Normally, if someone's bleeding to death on the table we don't worry about that, but with a purple ray blood loss and brain swellings simply aren't a problem any more whereas a bullet fragment which is physically impeding regeneration can be."

She takes a breath, smiling the satisfied smile of a chirurgeon in a major city who hasn't had to tell a family that one of their relatives has died in over a year.

"Some people were reluctant to have a experimental healing ray used on them by someone named Sivana, but once news got around that the Justice League used it we started having the opposite problem."

"Opposite..?"

"People deliberately injuring themselves so they could participate. I had to do a piece on local news after someone died…" She shakes her head. "That's mostly stopped now, tha-"

The doors at the end of the ward are pushed open and a man is pushed through on a gurney. The biker gear he's wearing is clearly heavily scuffed on his front and left side, and his expression makes it clear that he's in a degree of discomfort. I do a quick ring scan to make sure that there's nothing seriously wrong -and out of the corner of my eye notice Alan and Koriand'r do the same thing- and find nothing of note. Enough bruising that in other circumstances he'd probably be spending the next few days high on painkillers, but that's about it.

"-nkfully. Mister Augustin, hello!" Tia steps away from us and falls in beside the orderlies and they push the gurney towards the purple ray room. "I'm Tia, and I'll be overseeing your treatment today."

"Yeah, h-" He glances up at the three of us as we fall in behind them. "-i. Ah..?"

"If you don't have any objection, Paul, Koriand'r and Blue Lantern would like to observe the process. If you'd rather that they wait outside-."

"Nah, nah, that's cool." He lies back down. "This take long?"

"Well, that depends. This is a research-"

The gurney is brought into the centre of the room, under the purple ray emitter. The orderlies then head back out while Tia steps closer.

"-project, so I'd ideally like to do a full assessment of your injuries first. That could take a few minutes and require you to remove your clothes. Then we would apply the ray and monitor exactly how your injuries respond. Then you'd be called back every few weeks so that we can check on your progress."

"Progress..?"

"We haven't had any adverse effects as a result of the purple ray, but we'd like to be able to prove that. On the other hand, since we've already submitted our data we can skip the assessment if you prefer, and that will shave a few minutes off. We'll still need to do follow-ups just in case, but I don't imagine there'll be any trouble."

"And after you zap me, I'll be fine?"

"Ninety-nine point nine nine percent."

"And it's free?"

"Yess?"

"I.. think I'd rather skip the assessment?"

"Okay, that's fine." Tia takes hold of the purple ray projector and points it at Mr Augustin's head. "Now, some patients feel a small amount of discomfort, but if you feel any pain, let me know at once."

She activates the purple ray, and after an initial flinch Mr Augustin doesn't appear at all uncomfortable.

"We've found that fifteen seconds is enough-" She moves the ray down. "-to completely eliminate the risk of concussion, and since brain damage appears to be something the ray can't entirely fix, we like to start there."

Alan nods. "You said you've already submitted your data?"

"Yes, and it's now up for peer review. Once that's done we can make our FDA application and it's just a matter of having them inspect KordTech's manufacturing plant and paying our registration fee." She moves the purple ray to Mr Augustin's left arm and he looks visibly less uncomfortable. "Ted's been talking about selling internationally, but I'm only familiar with the US process."

And since there isn't anyone with an existing 'fast heal' product on the market, no one in the US government has a financial stake in trying to block this. Even painkiller manufacturers won't be affected all that much, at least until Ted can make enough to equip every ambulance in the country.

"Does it just work only on humans?"

Tia glances at Koriand'r as she moves the purple ray briefly over her patient's right side. "We don't have enough aliens in Fawcett City to test it. If you can bring injured… Ah, what was your species?"

"Tamaranean."

"Tamaraneans here, we can give it a try."

"Could you not give me spare purple rays so that tamaranean doctors could perform the trials?"

"Purple rays are magic-based. As far as I can tell, it won't work as well away from a source of magic." I shrug. "Sorry."

Tia shuts down the purple ray and returns it to its cradle.

"How do you feel?"

Mr Augustin smiles.

"Like it never happened. Thanks."

 

12th April
22:03 GMT -5

I'm not looking forward to this.

But there's never going to be a good time. I'm at home, sitting on the settee and I'm as up to date on Earth affairs as I can reasonably be.

"Ring, contact Clarissi Dox."

Compliance. Call pending.

I offered to book Koriand'r in at a hotel, but she preferred to take Alan up on his offer of m-. Of his spare room. My old room. Jade's apartment doesn't have a second bedroom or I'd have offered to put her up myself. She appears to be enjoying her time on Earth so far, including the alien starfish fight. I suppose that there are only so many times you can fight pirates whose ships aren't capable of threatening a Lantern before it starts to get a bit dull.

Good news about the healing rays. KordTech's valuation -and Ted's personal wealth- was increased hugely by his magic weather control system, and unlike in the field of power generation there don’t appear to be any competitors. Which surprises me a little; Mark Mardon may be resident in Iron Heights but his technology exists. I've strongly been considering trying to resurrect his brother to get access to it myself, but… Perhaps that doesn't have the best of associations.

"Illustres."

"Clarissi."

No facial projection. That's usually a fifty-fifty with Dox, and I haven't noticed a particular pattern. I assume it's based on whether he's working on something he actually needs to look at or not.

"Slight problem."

"I am aware that Manga Khan resigned. The fleet which you requested remains en-route to Earth and you already have the authority to replace him."

"He quit after the outermost planet in our system turned out to have a Mother Star inside it. In point of fact it was mostly Mother Star by mass. The Mother Star is dead and we think we got all of the rest of the Star Conquerors. The Mother Star's corpse is currently in-system. Sending scans now."

"A shame that no record of the bioengineers who created these macroorganisms exists."

"Preliminary investigations suggest that it was magic. I'm still looking into how it was achieved. Do we have any telepathic Lanterns available?"

"Lantern Nax may become available in the future, but at the moment I need her to focus on countering Reach bio-infiltration techniques. The L.E.G.I.O.N. xenology team will have to suffice for now."

I nod.

"I'm sure we'll cope. Earth is getting the expertise required, but we're still organising things. Is the fleet briefed on the Sheeda?"

"The limited information you assembled was included in their briefing documents. Do you have any information indicating that their return is imminent?"

"Depends what you mean by imminent. I'd say 'yes', but given the time frame involved and the recent incident with Krona that could be years away. The only good news is that it can't have already happened."

"If I thought that anyone understood what changes you made at Vanishing Point I would accuse you of misusing your language's temporal tenses."

"I can't give away what I don't know. Though I do know a couple of time travellers if you want me to try and get a more helpful answer."

"Do so. You should strongly consider them as recruitment candidates."

"I.. don't think either of them like me well enough for me to want to risk giving them a power ring."

"Work on them. We may require their expertise."

I nod. "Since the Sheeda are time travellers, I might be able to persuade them to cooperate that way. It's not in either of their interests for our civilisation to be destroyed."

"Whatever you think best."

I nod.

"One other minor thing. Lantern Koriand'r has been experimenting with Alan Scott's ring and she's got rather a knack for it. Have you given any thought to us expanding the range of colours we use?"

"Why?"

"Useful people respond better to other colours. Plus, if we don't, someone else might. I can talk to Lantern Ferris about having her train Violets, we have Alan for Blues, and I'm sure that we could find someone for other colours."

"Other versions of you, for example."

I'm glad he didn't mention Sinestro, if only because for him to do that he'd have to have already decided to do it.

"I'm not sure how to get in touch with all of them, but yes. I'm a fairly reasonable guy. There's almost certainly things we could trade for their help."

"I'll talk to unaligned maltusians about it, though I'd rather not split our focus. The Controllers are being somewhat slow in aiding us in building up our fleet resources."

"Perhaps some of them would prefer other colours as well?"

"It's possible. Is there anything else?"

"No, that's it, thank you. Illustres out."

I lower my left hand, mentally accessing Lantern Nax's file. Ah. Well, I'm working with the entire Sivana family, I can't really complain. That sort of thing is why I wouldn't have minded getting a psion or two on staff. Though I suppose that a dominator's cold disinterest would be better than a psion's active malice.

Or maybe a scientist from New Genesis? I doubt that they'd go for it…

I sigh inwardly.

Next call.

"Call Kalmin."

"Compliance."

"What?"

"Thank you for taking this call."

"Still alive then, Illustres?"

"So far. Look, Alan's ring and personal lantern are working really well. He's rejuvenated, he finds making constructs… Fairly intuitive. What would I have to do to persuade you to make another one?"

"Another blue ring?"

"Yes."

"The process is catalysed by my emotions. To make another one I would have to have something new to hope for. And that's not even counting the payment."

I nod slowly.

"What sort of payment would you want?"

"Sinestro's head. I can't think of anything else that I want."

"I'll get back to you. Illustres out."

 

13th April
04:43 GMT

"Victory!" / "Victory!" / "Victory!" / "Victory!" / "Victory!" / "Victory!" / "Victory!"

Jade and our dinner guests raise their tankards in a salute, then the locals -a four eyed humanoid species- immediately chug a gulp. Jade follows suit with a little less enthusiasm, careful not to obscure her sight-lines as she does so. Caccanah just takes a small sip while the clicker serving as L.E.G.I.O.N. coordinator chugs too much and ends up choking on the stuff, prompting a friendly expression of amusement from the locals.

Okay, the locals' potato bread type thingy is done, the fish analogue will be ready to serve in a few minutes… I check the grill and the scraal -eight-legged pseudo-insectoids that the locals think are fine dining- are… Done. I pick up a pair of tongs from the work surface and transfer them to small plates. Drizzle of the flavoured oil… And carefully check the faux-insectoid for the officer with the alternate digestive system… Okay! I load them onto the floating serving tray and push it into the dining area.

"…looked like-"

Caccanah holds her hands up to her forehead and mimics the eyestalk gesture someone made.

"-this, and the guards dropped their weapons without even trying to fight back."

Jade looks mildly relieved to see me as I place a plate in front of her slightly tipsy colleague, immediately drawing her-

"You cook too?"

-attention.

"I'm a man-" From the affirmative gesture from the locals I hand plates to next -an officer in the planetary police called Baezen and someone from their intelligence agency named Trouk- it looks like I copied the local dish reasonably well. "-of many talents."

K-Ku'ss seems a little uncomfortable.

"I don't think I can digest this."

"Already thought about that. Yours is synthetic, designed to replicate the taste and texture of a scraal without actually being one. It's perfectly fine for you."

"Oh. Thank you."

"That's a fake?" Seinea, one of the locals and a strong political proponent of N.E.M.O. cooperation, takes a closer look. "Where did you get it? I've never seen one that good before."

"Oh, I made it myself. I'll send the design to one of your vegetarian food companies after dinner."

I put down the last plates in my and Jade's places, then take my seat next to her. Jade pulls off a leg, dips it in the oil and then bites the oiled end off. Really, it's remarkable how edible alien food generally is. But… Humanoid species generally have similar nutritional needs, fruit-bearing plants need animals to eat their fruit in order to spread their seeds, so it's not that unusual for a person to be able to pluck a fruit from just about any planet in this galaxy and be able to eat it safely. Or at least as likely as it is on their home planet; plenty of fruit on Earth are poisonous to humans, after all.

K-Ku'ss picks up her faux-scraal and gently begins feeding it into her mandibles. She's remarkably adept at the process. Not a drop of oil or faux-bug juice drips onto the table and I can hear the quiet crackling as the carapace is crushed.

"So… What exactly was the Reach trying to do here?"

Jade glances in my direction.

"Do you want a full report?"

"I'm not that boorish, Jade."

Trouk makes a gesture of disbelief with his right arm. "We've known that the Reach were going to head this way for generations. We've tried guarding against them, making alliances… We usually spot infiltrators and patsies pretty quickly-"

My eyes dart to Jade and she slightly inclines her head. The summary is mostly true, though it does skip over the brutal totalitarianism they've had to instate to do it. Of course… There's a reason why they're our strongest partner in this region of space. When any internal division is a target for Reach leveraging… Not allowing any works really well for keeping them out.

"-but some entertainment programs created by our allies-"

Vassals, but they're not total dicks about it.

"-only get light-"

Medium. If you want to ask a politically sensitive question, best do it in private.

"-censorship." He looks around at his fellow members of the local establishment. "I suppose we should take it as a mark of our success that the most they can do is interfere with our children's entertainment."

Baezen makes a gesture of disagreement with his eyestalks. "That is what happens when standards are allowed to slip; enforcement was lax."

"What exactly was this children's program supposed to do?"

Baezen looks around to… Ceally, who works for their intelligence service as a scientific advisor.

"Mm?"

"Pael wants to know how the Reach's program was supposed to work."

"Oh. Well, we've known for a while that certain sounds combined with certain colours can induce predictable emotional responses in our species. The stun projectors used by the low-police use a very particular pale blue combined with a high pitched tone to render suspects unconscious without risking injuries. But the Reach have.. been studying our brains. They were able to introduce a signal which would render those exposed to it susceptible to pro-Reach ideas. The complexity of it is greater than anything we've tried ourselves; we thought that level of control was only possible in fiction. But… They managed it."

"Did they give you any trouble?"

Caccanah nods. "We had.. five..?" Jade nods. "Five assassination attempts from people they've used their signal on already. There was nothing linking them because they were responding to the signal rather than making decisions themselves. But the security at their base wasn't a problem because they were just supposed to be the security for a television production company."

I nod, finishing my own scraal with knife and fork rather than the more manual option my fellow diners are going for. This sort of infiltration is what the Darkstars exist to prevent, and from the reports I had my rings feed my brain this sounds like it was another resounding success for Jade. Which in turn firms up our support in this region of space. While we haven't got the Reach completely enclosed -that would be more or less impossible- we now have allies and N.E.M.O. members all around Reach space. I… Think the totality of our military power is greater than theirs, though not all that much is made up of ships designed by Dox's team or under his direct command. The Reach warships have a technological advantage on everything else, even if they can't use them aggressively without starting a war with the Green Lantern Corps.

Seinea slides her empty plate forwards. "Have you studied our cooking for long?"

"No, but I've studied a great many different culinary traditions. Specifics vary, but a lot of things are the same."

Wallace seemed to enjoy insectivore week well enough, until Richard told him what he was eating.

"Are you a professional chef? That's… Not the match I would have expected-"

I frown at Caccanah, who isn't watching.

"-for an operative like Jaed. And I don't recognise your species; have you been in the service of the Controllers for long, like the clickers?"

"Oh, gosh no. Our homeworld is a long way from here, and I've worked for the Controllers for less than a year."

Jade nods. "This is a personal vocation, for both of us."

"Then how did you get here?"

I pick up the empty plates with orange filaments, to the visible surprise of several present, and float them back into the kitchen.

"Long range teleportation."

I raise my right fore and middle fingers to my forehead and

vanish, reappearing in the

kitchen.

"Does anyone want a refill?"

 

13th April
14:57 GMT -7

"Alright, if you're sure."

Luna nods. "We feel that Our dignity may be undermined by meeting your offspring whilst barely able to keep Ourself upright."

"Yeah, but…" I exhale. "People on our side are perfectly at home with the idea of nonhuman sophonts, but aside from my genomorphs they don't generally meet them."

"And you are concerned that they may fear Us."

I.. take a moment to look at the living pony princess plush toy I'm dating. Or.. think I'm dating. For a moment I amuse myself with the idea that she's simply waiting for me to give Celestia her bride price. I haven't asked any ponies about their courtship customs, because whatever they are the current alicorn population is too small for there to be a tradition on how to court the goddess-princesses.

"No. I.. think that you can safely assume that they won't fear you."

She nods. "Because you are renowned as a stalwart protector and your presence will reassure them."

"No. Because you're… Cute."

"We are… Cute?" She regards me sceptically. "We hope that you are not allowing your own opinion of Us to colour your advice."

"No, you're small and furry and look like… Well, you look like a more aesthetically appealing version of a type of farm animal. People are going to ask me if they can ride you. Children are going to come up to you and stroke your fur. Are you sure that you wouldn't rather do this as a human?"

"We feel that We will most likely survive their affection."

"I'm not the one who's going to be pulling chewing gum out of my pelt, but if it's really what you want…" I trot up to Starswirl's Mirror. "See you on the other side."

I trot in and stroll out in a way which… Still doesn't make sense to me. Looking on the process from the outside I'd guess that the person going through it was in some sort of state of flux, but… My front goes in Wilson-side and I'm coming out Earth-side, even though I can feel my hooves back there until my feet emerge here. I should.. fall forwards as my front support vanishes, but that's not what happens.

Weird.

"Mother Box, boom tube to the Mirror room."

Ping.

BOOM!

Luna walks through, her wings bristling slightly with tension as she looks around the room, and then at my crotch. And then at my abdomen. And then at my chest.

And then she backs up slightly so that she can see my face.

I raise my right hand in greeting.

"Hello."

"You are… Quite large."

"Yes. I am, but the difference here is mostly because I'm naturally bipedal. Rather than being long, I'm tall."

Luna frowns faintly, slowly walking around my right side so that she can get a better look at me.

"Your posture makes Our spine ache in sympathy."

"Oh?" I turn anticlockwise to face her, dropping onto my hands and knees. "Is this better?"

"Now Our legs ache in sympathy." I grin, and crawl towards-. She backs up, a look of distinct disquiet on her muzzle. "Stop stop!"

"Okay." I come up onto my knees and then rise to my full height. "But I warn you; I don't mind being pony-shaped-."

"But this is your true self." She nods. "We understand. And we hope that you will not grow too besotted with Our human-seeming form when We choose to assume it."

I shake my head as we head for the exit.

"Nah, I'll be too busy laughing. You and Sunset sorted out a translation spell?"

"We have the form of it, but We think that We will test our skill with your tongue before resorting to magic aid." Her horn glows faintly as she looks around. "Your home is truly a magnificent citadel, but We think that We would sorely miss natural sunlight and the chance to stretch Our wings."

"Once the whole of the world is progressing in the direction which I want it to, I can probably afford to expand upwards and create a more conventional habitation area jutting out of the mountainside. Or just move and repurpose this as a pure fortress. I originally acquired it more as a statement than anything else."

"That you are a troglodytical troll?"

"That my mountain is better than the mountain of those whom I left."

I bend at the waist, contorting myself until my head is close to her level.

"Though if mountains aren't your thing, we could renovate your old castle. Could be a bonding activity."

She rolls her eyes. "Yes, because clearly We wish to return to the site of our greatest shame."

I straighten up as we reach Sunset's laboratory.

"Yes, getting beaten up by six teenagers and a baby dragon was a bit pathetic, but I'm sure we can whip you into shape."

"We were referring to Our fall, not to Our purification."

"Luna, in a thousand years no one is going to remember that."

She tosses her mane. "We are not yet entirely accustomed to the idea that We will live so long. We are uncertain how we feel about it. We were always the less sociable sister, and we have seen how Our Sister's venerability serves to isolate her."

"If you're asking to include her in our herd-."

A mild glare. "That is not what We meant."

"I mean, one of my brothers is single, but he's… Kind of evil..? If you want to try friendship lasering him we could try getting them together…"

The door slides open and Sunset stands in the doorway. Her human form grew significantly as a result of her ascension, and… She definitely has a more womanly figure now.

"Are we heading out?"

"Indeed, Sunset Shimmer. But why are you accompanying us?"

"You're… Acting as my canary."

Luna tilts her head back slightly. "We do not understand your reference."

"Well, I'd kinda like to walk around as a pony myself… But I don’t wanna get mobbed. So I'm going to watch what happens to you and then decide what to do."

I leer at her. "I wouldn't be so sure that humans won't mob you anyway. You weren't exactly hard on the eyes before your ascension, and now…"

"I'm not talking about going to a club, Grayven. Just walking down the street. I like people admiring me. I should be admired. I just don't want little kids pulling my mane or my feathers."

"And so We serve as your test case."

"Hey, you volunteered." She frowns. "And I got promoted from 'thou'?"

"You are an alicorn, and raised to that state by your own skill. We feel that We should hesitate to address you as Our social inferior."

Sunset smiles happily. "True."

"Alright then, if we're all ready? Mother Box, hush tube."

The portal opens, and I bow to Luna.

"After you."

13th April
15:02 GMT -7

Luna sits, wings flaring slightly and eyes widen as the tide of grinning primary school aged children draws closer.

"We fear that We hath made a terrible mistake."

 

13th April
15:03 GMT -7

Luna manages to keep her nerve as I step forwards to slightly discourage them. Children here aren't afraid of me, but I register as 'adult' and 'authority' and they're not quite as eager to-.

"Mister Grayven?" A small girl points at Princess Luna as her mother catches up with her and gives me a slightly embarrassed smile. "Is that your pony?"

The boy next to her stares at Luna. "Is it an alien pony?"

I nod. "Technically, yes."

There's a small disruption at the back of the huddle as Clare and Sarah are gradually recognised by their peers and their peers' parents as being my children and permitted closer. Lynne and my namesake are hanging back with the others, with Knockout keeping watch over the crowd of parents and children for potential attackers.

"Everyone, this is Princess Luna. Luna, these are the students and parents of Rifle, Colorado."

Luna metaphorically girds her caparisons and steps forward.

"SALUTATIONS, DIMINUTIVE HOMINIDS!"

Her legs are spread and braced against the playground tarmac, her wings are unfurled and on full display and by the Source I think my right ear is ringing.

The front rank of children stagger backwards into their wincing parents' legs. Even Clare and Sarah are cringing, their hands covering their ears.

"WE BRING WARM FELICITATIONS FROM OUR NATION OF EQUESTRIA, AND HOPE THAT WE MAY PROCEED IN THE SPIRIT OF FRIENDSHIP!"

She pauses for breath, and the crowd are torn between risking uncovering their ears or covering their ears harder.

"Luna…" She turns her head towards me and I raise my eyebrows. "Volume..?"

"WE SPEAK WITH THE ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE, WHEN…" She sighs. "When.. We.. hath no need to at all." She trots forward and extends her head towards a child with both arms over her head. "Art thou well, small child? Hath Our speech injured thine ears?"

The boy blinks at her and lowers his arms.

"You're a really loud horse."

"We are a pony."

The boy smiles.

"You're a really loud pony."

"Thou are suredly a most astute human."

"You talk weird."

"We speak in the proper manner for an Equestian princess."

The girl next to him perks up.

"You're a princess?"

Luna gives her a mildly puzzled look, then glances upward to check that her crown is still in place. "Doth thou not see the crown 'pon Our head?"

The boy looks thoughtful.

"I put a plastic crown on my dog's head one time. That didn't make him a princess."

"Couldst thine crown'd canine speak?"

"He barks."

"And didst thou understand his meaning?"

"Ah… No? Not really."

"Then We shall continue to consider Ourself to be his superior."

The boy doesn't have a response, just taking a half-step back and shrugging. The small girl is already stepping forward to replace him, right hand nervously extended.

"Can I pet you?"

"We-. Ah…" Her ears twitch and I see her consider looking at me for support. "Are not entirely averse to-"

The girl places her right hand on Luna's muzzle, causing Luna to momentarily go cross-eyed.

"-thine-. Yes, that…"

The girl sort of rubs the fur a little, while Luna… She's trying not to sneeze. I'm not sure whether that's due to the pressure on her nose or the scent of modern perfumed detergent.

"This is not quite-. Yes, that is Our nose. Do not wear it-"

And that's the cue the rest of the ragamob needs. The horde advances once more, lapping around Luna's sides to lay their hands… About as gently as could be expected, on her neck and barrel, with one or two of the braver souls daring to brush her darkly-feathered wings.

"-out."

I… Get ready to perform an emergency pony extraction if she gets distressed, but she.. seems to be handling-.

A different girl finds herself lifted into the air by Luna's thaumokinesis and brought to float in front of her face.

"Grooming Our pelt is acceptable, but pulling 'pon Our mane is not. Doth thou understand the difference?"

The girl nods shamefacedly.

"Very well."

Luna carefully sets her down a little back from the scrum, then notices that the children are now staring at her horn.

"You're a magical pony?!"

"Didst Our wings and horn not providst thou with sufficient evidence?"

"I thought it was stuck on."

"Our horn is most assuredly affixed to Our face, in much the same manner that thine nose is affixed to thine own."

I step around the huddle of curious children and address their bemusedly smiling parents.

"Sell out toy for Christmas twenty twelve?" There's a quiet chuckle. "But seriously, there's a whole country of magical ponies where she's from. How do you feel about interplanar tourists?"

A fellow named Chet -his son Davis is friends with Stephan- waves his right hand at Luna.

"They all her size?"

"About half her size."

An amused hissing-exhalation whistles through his teeth. "Well, I don't think they'll cause much trouble, but… Ah…"

And the children have lapped around to her haunches.

"I don't know if the kids'll be able to keep their hands off them. How'd you two meet?"

"Sunset-" Who is standing well back and letting events unfold. "-wanted to visit home, we bumped into each other in the palace. And now we're dating!"

Chet looks uncertain about that. "You're dating a horse?"

"I'm an alien dating an alien. Not all intelligent creatures are humanoid, you know. Heck, not all Apokoliptians are humanoid."

Sunset reluctantly takes a step forward. "Yeah, in Equestria, most intelligent species have four legs. Not all, but bipeds are pretty unusual. I think it's just yetis and minotaurs."

The first small girl stares at our equine guest. "Princess Luna?! Are you dating Mister Grayven?!"

"We have tentatively accepted him as our consort, though-."

"Oh?" I mug for the crowd. "Sounds like I'm getting promoted this evening."

Luna's ears prick up, followed by the rest of her head as she glares at me.

"Thou art most certainly not 'getting promoted', rapscallion!"

I bow my head in mock shame as my fellow parents laugh.

Demoted to 'thou'.

Darn.

 

13th April
16:01 GMT -5

"What's your favorite book?"

I.. frown slightly. Leonard generally doesn't bother with personal questions, and… He doesn't respond all that well if I try asking them. But it's not as if it's a security risk.

"Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett."

He looks away pensively.

"Second favorite?"

"Night Watch, also by Terry Pratchett."

"He your favorite author?"

"Yes. Um, if you're interested… I'm sorry, but he doesn't exist in this reality, and I've only ever been able to do a ninety six percent recreation of Small Gods…"

"No, it's… Something Wizard said."

"Wiz-?"

If Wizard's out then I need to speak to John-.

"Weather Wizard, not.. whoever you were thinking of."

"William Zard. He operates under the name 'Wizard' and he was one of the people responsible for Roanoke Island."

Leonard looks right at me, his eyes widening slightly. "Shit. Yeah, not him. I never even heard of him."

"You might want to suggest to Mister Mardon that he consider a different abbreviation. If the police hear someone call him 'Wizard', they might just shoot first without checking."

"See, this was what he was talking about. You just gave me advice to give him so he doesn't get killed because the cops thought he was someone else."

"Okay?"

"Do you have people..? Superheroes, who are total psychos?"

"I… Generally wouldn't call people like that 'superheroes'. I mean… There was The Reaper in Gotham. That was after Green Lantern One left but before Batman started working there. He murdered.. quite a lot of people. Quite a lot of them had it coming…" I frown. "Do you actually know anything about Gotham?"

"Everyone who lives there is crazy."

"Hey, I live-. Yeah, okay."

"I went to Gotham once, 'cause Mister Freeze had some equipment I needed. Never went back again."

"Right, but the city's history?"

"Used to be an alright place, then manufacturing jobs left and crime went up." My surprise clearly shows on my face. "What? I go to Kadabra's lectures."

"Sorry, sorry, I know you're intelligent, I just didn't think you were interested in that sort of thing."

"No point robbing someone with no money."

I give him a mildly disappointed look, to which he responds with a small smile.

"What? There isn't."

"So the Reaper… The place had gone to pot. The mob owned the police, the politicians and the judges. So the Reaper decided to kill them all."

His smile grows slightly. "Didn't do a very good job."

"There were a lot of them. He killed quite a few of them, then got too badly injured to carry on. By the time he was fighting fit again, Batman was in his second year and the police were starting to get straightened out. But he didn't care and went right back to murdering. Two honest policemen killed and several injured, Batman decided that the only way to keep the death toll down was to make a deal with the mobs-"

"What?"

"-for information."

"No, no, you can't just drop something like that and keep talking."

"What? Batman hated them, but the Reaper killed a lot of people in a short space of time. He thought that with their help he could deal with the Reaper in a few weeks, but that the mobs would be a long term problem whatever he did."

"And given that Batman's still around and the Reaper isn't, I can guess how it went."

"The Reaper's motives were a lot like Batman's. And his aims were too. But his methods weren't. If he'd been a little more discerning… I mean, Gotham was pretty bad. But the moment he killed honest police officers escorting a criminal they already had in custody, no one thought he was a superhero. He was just another serial killer."

"But a supervillain's a supervillain."

"I'd.. encourage you not to think about it in such binary terms."

He leans back in his chair and waves his right hand. "I mean, the more violent a superhero is, the less heroic they are. But for a supervillain, the more violent you are, the more villainous you are."

"That's… Surprisingly philosophical. What brought this on?"

"The day after I told you Luthor offered me a job, I started getting letters. WayneTech, KordTech, a few other places…"

"Mister Luthor may not be Alva, but I'd still be much happier with you working somewhere else. Almost anywhere else, in fact. It would be like putting a bottle of whiskey down next to an alcoholic."

A reference to his father usually gets a scowl out of him, but he just looks away again.

"It's about class."

"In what sense?"

"When I thought about what sort of supervillain I wanted to be. When I started out." He shakes his head. "I know Doc Quinzel wants me to say I'm lashing out at society 'cause I want to lash out at my dad, and… Yeah, she's probably.. not wrong. But you don’t tell yourself.. you're stealing from innocent people 'cause you can. You… Dress it up in your own head, too. Like, there was a story about one of the banks in Central City foreclosing on a whole lot of mortgages. I think.. one of the car factories closed and put a lot of people out of work." He shrugs. "So I robbed their vault. I didn't do it because they foreclosed; I don't know anyone who got a loan from them. I did it because… The fact they did that made it okay. They were bad, so… If I make their lives harder, so what?"

He smiles.

"If I shot some security guy dead when I was robbing a place, that's murder. And if I shot a psycho like Joker dead, it's still murder, but…"

"But he has it coming, so it's easier to tell yourself that's why you did it. You don't have to internalise 'I'm a guy who will kill anyone to get his way'."

"Yeah. Wiz-. Mark said something like that, once. 'Ask someone what their favorite book is'. 'cause… Anyone who's read a book has a favorite book, even if they don't like it much." He shrugs. "Right? And it's not like it's a big secret or anything. The only reason not to tell someone is if you've literally never read a book, or you're such a total psycho that you can't… Have a conversation without turning it into a fight."

"And I don't think I'm that person. I know I never wanted to be. But I also know I can't tell you what my favorite book is."

 

13th April
22:12 GMT +1

Koriand'r looks around the Mount Etna countryside with an expression of puzzlement on her face.

"This is the home of your gods?"

"No, just two. They were worshipped before modern foundries were invented, so it was easier for them to build their main workshop in a volcano so that they'd have a source of heat."

She frowns as she lands on the ground next to me.

"If they are gods, could they not create fire for themselves?"

"Not ex nihilo. Conceptually, they design and build. Fire is something they use and manipulate, not something they conjure into being. And Hellenism doesn't really have a fire god, so if they'd wanted to negotiate for some sort of divine fire they'd have had to trade with someone outside of the pantheon."

Koriand'r doesn't seem to have as much trouble with the idea as Lantern Dul did. Which is not entirely surprising; while Thanagar and Tamaran were both shaped by active gods, X'Hal is still widely worshipped while the Seven Devils very definitely aren't. Actually…

"How much contact do X'Hal and Auron have with Tamaran?"

"We have not had contact with either of them for longer than we have lived on Tamaran. When X'Hal's rages grew too great and too frequent for any mortal to survive, it was Auron who persuaded her to leave Vega. I do not know where either of them are now."

I suppose I can put a pin in the idea of bringing them back to Vega, then. At least until we get some idea of exactly what the psions did to her.

"I suppose that it's not exactly the same thing. X'Hal underwent apotheosis. Hephaestus and Vulcan were born as gods."

And unlike when I first came here, it's no longer necessary to use their original stairwell. Because disguised as a blank rock face…

I walk into the wall, and the dolmen gate built into it takes me into… An antechamber which they built because they kept getting birds trying to nest on the rock and flying through. The guardian mechanoid on guard duty inside switches to 'active' mode, standing more upright as it fixes its eyes on me.

"Orange Lantern Illustres and guest to see the forge-gods."

The guardian mechanoid is a dramatic improvement on the tripods they used to use. Rather than have a single animating spirit they have hundreds bound to the microscopic mechanisms of a mechanical Babbage engine. The process makes it capable of far more complex decisions as well as substantially increasing its agility and dexterity. It isn't a person and it isn't much of a conversationalist, but it's remarkable how they've taken the whole arcane technology thing in such a different direction to the Atlanteans.

"Communing."

Koriand'r comes through the ring behind me and takes a look around.

"We are inside the volcano?"

"It's really more of a mountain these days. She's-" I point to Koriand'r with my right hand. "-the guest."

"Communing. Lord Vulcan responds."

"Thank you."

"Follow."

Its upper torso rotates, legs already in motion as it leads the way into the Mount Etna facility. Runic panels built into the walls are their power cables and fibre optic lines, magitech crystal chandeliers their light sources and-

We walk past a specialised cleaning mechanoid as its partially aqueous body removes whatever dust build up inside a mountain from the floor and walls.

-bound spirits their servants. Their actual helpers are human, and last time I visited they were inducting a few that Lord Vulcan had picked up. I'm not entirely sure how no one has twigged about-

"Paul!"

-Etna being reactivated.

"My Lord."

Vulcan's wearing a full face mask which puts me in mind of the masks Roman standard bearers used to wear. And… Hang on. How is his nose fitting under there?

"What are you working on?"

"Ah." He holds up his right arm, which has various runic bands strapped to it. "Watch."

He clenches and unclenches his fist, then swings his-.

A giant mechanical arm swings across the workshop, the open palm stopping next to us.

"I read an article on telepresence." He clenches his fist again and pulls his arm towards his chest, which causes the mechanical arm to fold back up. "And I realised that it was far easier to get around signal speed limits with magic than with radio waves. Well, until you leave the planet, anyway."

"Did you give up on the mechanical prosthetics?"

"No, those are ready." He shrugs, his mask still in place. "But if the Atlanteans are opening up, no one is going to want a mechanical limb when they can get their original limb grown back at a fraction of the cost."

I nod. "Probably not. This is-" I gesture to Koriand'r. "-Lantern Koriand'r. I wanted to introduce her to one of my gods while she was on Earth."

Koriand'r comes to attention and does a Roman salute. "Hail Vulcan!"

"Hail Koriand'r."

"Did you make a new face for yourself?"

"No. I'm-. My face is part of my concept, but I don't like it all that much." He unstraps the giant arm's control mechanism and uses his now freed hand to tap his mask. "I'm trying to find out if I can change it. I've managed to make my face conform to the interior surface of the mask, but only so long as I'm wearing it."

"That's still a significant achievement."

"I suppose. Though speaking of achieving things; did the Hawks from the Justice League tell you that they've been visiting me?"

"No. We're not on.. particularly good terms. Did they want anything in particular?"

"Nth metal." He picks up a small ingot from his work bench. "Interesting stuff. Transmuted lead, with a variety of fascinating properties. They made me an offer."

"They want to buy as much as you can produce?"

"And in return, I get my choice of unlimited resources, or unlimited resources and to be their new chief god. Do you think it's an honest offer?"

"They really need the Nth metal. But… They're materialists. They aren't used to worship, and they generally treat other species as inferior."

"Does that extend to gods?"

"I don't know. I doubt that they've been in this position before." I shrug. "I'll miss you if you go, but this is a good opportunity for you."

He nods, then makes a beckoning motion with his right hand.

"Come, Lantern Koriand'r. I'll show you around."