On the off-chance, I try warping space. I can mange a little, but the feedback I'm getting from my ring makes space-time feel unusually… Sticky. Which means that my second favourite form of faster than light travel is effectively unavailable unless I feel like trying to override their generator… Which could actually be outside of the system.
"I look forward to the day when we can do this to your home system."
And I'm picturing the gravitational silhouette of the place looking less like a
funnel around the planet... And more like a
Klein bottle...
"My home system?"
"Yes. Why, did you think we would grant it clemency?"
Bitch, please. You try anything against Earth, and
it'll kick your ass.
I try transitioning a test object, and… It works, but that system is dramatically slower than warping. Flying in normal space would make me deal with relativity and relativity is no fun at all. Honestly, when I imagine trying to get around Universe Prime with FTL probably being impossible I actually shudder.
"Tell you what. If you abandon your attack here, I'll take you there right now. I'll even escort your troops to the surface and do absolutely nothing to them."
Heh. Dump them into the middle of the Anti-Life broadcast, see how
they handle it.
"So you are a deviant even amongst your own kind."
A sternguard element of their fleet… Rotates with impressive speed to face me. They don't actually move in my direction, but their heaviest armour and main weapons are now pointing in my general direction while their existing momentum carries them along towards Karrakan.
Because in space, you don't need to be pointing in the direction you're moving. A fact so much space sci-fi forgets in favour of
dogfights.
"Oh, Earth. Did you know that we gained powered flight technology a hundred and ten years ago? Sixty six years later we had rockets capable of taking us to our moon. Giant moon. Whenever I stand on another planet and someone describes the moonrise as 'beautiful' I always end up squinting. 'That tiny thing?'"
Ring, cold gun.
And the Nemesis probably thinks he's exaggerating, or making it up whole-cloth. After all, no
rational society could advance technology so quickly without cutting
so many corners...
Compliance.
Big cold gun.
Compliance.
No,
Bigger.
Compliance.
"We've got hundreds of gods no one even worships because they're so common, humans with bodies made of mud, AIs that run on electromagnetic tape reels… A few weeks ago I had to fly through a pocket universe made of fragments of dreams. I call it 'hard mode' sometimes because I know of exactly no other planets that have the same range of madness that we have to deal with."
"Fascinating. Please, keep talking. This is helping me build a far more accurate psychological profile."
Admittedly, their own cultural bias will probably lead them to get it
entirely wrong.
"And about ten years ago, a man with no higher education invented a gun that can reduce anything its beam hits to zero-"
Fire.
Sadly, the cold gun in space doesn't really have the
giant beam of doom this scene deserves...
Compliance.
"-degrees Kelvin. Completely arrests molecular vibrations. How good's the thermal insulation on those ships?"
...Not
nearly good enough.
Okay, so don't point it at the star, unless it's a star no one's using and Leonard needs an ego boost. We're all in the inner part of the system but the beam won't hit anything for five minutes or so-
Realistic space combat sucks.
Ah, right. Slower-than-light weapon. Much slower, given most depictions. The joy of shooting at things almost a full
Astronomical Unit away. Space combats tend to be more like long-range
target shooting than firefights......
(Edited for word-of-Zoat concerning Cold Gun beam speeds.)
-unless… I focus on our desire and the desire of all within N.E.M.O. to strike at the Reach… No, let us draw upon the desires of species long since extinguished as well and add that to out force!
"I suppose that we'll find out in five minutes."
Ah, giving space-time, relativity
and their negative space wedgie the middle finger through the power of
WANT. Classic OL.
"Maybe."
Space wobbles like a rubber sheet, snapping back almost immediately. But the distortion carries with it a beam of max-strength cold ray, partially concealed by the ongoing beam I'm firing in the direction of those ships. No beam attenuation makes this a far better weapon for long-ranged sniping than a laser.
If anything, the beam getting wider would be
worse for them, because it'll hit more of their hull at once.
I watch as the Reach fleet manoeuvres, using gravity manipulation to shift a little at right angles to their main angle of thrust. Plenty to make sure that they're not on the same trajectory five minutes from now that they were when I fired. The sternguard do something-
My pulse hits the largest ship in the sternguard.
Too little, too late. To quote Kenshiro: "
Omoi wa mou shindeiru."
-similar, manoeuvring but not moving as far due to their lower speed.
Not that it matters.
After all, they're not part of the fleet any more. Heck, they might make a good
comet.
The ship I hit tremors, but it keeps moving and manoeuvring. Maybe it-.
The hull cracks, a dozen rents appearing in the frontal armour and atmosphere venting from all of them. Usually there would be emergency force field or -given that this is the reach- reactive armour automatically patching small holes. But it looks like those systems also just got wrecked by absolute zero and can't function. The ship isn't dead-dead, but it's severely-
Ah, not
totally effective, then. But the frozen bits are suddenly finding themselves having trouble maintaining their structural integrity, eh?
"That's interesting."
-impaired in its functioning. I think I got about half of its frontal weapons, though the dorsal, ventral and side weapons are completely fine.
And I bet the Reach scientists take one look at the sensor readings and visual footage and scream about it 'being physically impossible!' or 'in complete violation of all known laws of thermodynamics!'
"Glad that you liked it."
"But can you do it again?"
Oh, would you like some more ice for your drinks? Pity it'll have a
metallic tang to it.
"No, that's completely impossible."
We do it again, aiming at the next ship in line, predicting based on observed to-target time and manoeuvring pattern.
Nemesis: "I don't appreciate the
disingenuous tone, sir."
"Excuse me."
Ring, drop channel and try contacting the Ascendants in charge of those ships.
Right, that's a thing. And they're rather worrying potential combatants. At least they're likely to fight
alongside OL.
Compliance. Channel open.
"This is the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. Please respond."
Hopefully they'll be polite about this.
"Illustres! It is good to hear from you."
"Ascendant
Thiva. Well done for still being alive. Any idea why the Reach are coming here?
"
Well, there's a familiar face. At least that smooths any diplomatic issues quite nicely.
"This is the Reach? Their ships are different from out records."
"This is one of their inner sphere fleets. They use them to defend their core systems. People don't usually see them. Considers yourself honoured."
Or
unlucky. Mostly because they're here because of OL. And Grayven.
"It is an honour I would gladly pass. As to why they are here, we are evacuating the remains of Grandmother Rhea to be interred in New Orthys. We were going to finally abandon the system after that."
"Do you have them on board?"
Ooh. Better not let the Reach get their hands on her. Who knows
what they'd do with the material remains of a terrestrial Titan.
"Yes."
"Can you make it to the edge of the system? Without being overhauled?"
Definitely a concern, if the Reach fleet is
faster than their ships at sublight.
"Perhaps."
"Try it. I don't think we're got the force here to defeat them in conventional fleet combat. Did you send an alert out?"
At least,
before the Reach folded the system into a
nasty little knot of space-time origami...
"Yes but… The system… Can they get in?"
Given how boom tubes work, probably not using those.
"We'll have to assume that we're it for now. What can the Ascendants you have on board do?"
So, make for an edge, see if you can slice it open, and hope for the best? Not a
great plan...
