"Finally." Lantern Zartok glowers at the screen. "They actually decided to fight for their worlds."
Details sensor returns appear only slowly while we're in full stealth mode. The place the Reach fleet is gathered isn't particularly close to any of the settled planetoids. Nor is it in a particularly convenient place to reinforce any of them if they're attacked. There are damaged ships there, but after this much time I can't believe that the Reach haven't recovered their own personnel. I'd be surprised if they haven't recovered their wrecks; this system doesn't have shipyards that could handle battleship-class vessels or larger, but they could handle the smaller classes of ship.
Assuming those are only
their ships floating derelict. If they put up a fight, maybe they got a kill or two...
Instead, they're… There.
"Take us toward the closest settlement. I want to assess what sort of damage it took."
Not totally wiped out, I expect. What's the bet the Citizenry showed up, tried a raid and fled after being beaten back?
"Yes, sir."
But my attention stays on the wreckage, as our view of it gradually improves. Because if it's not a Reach wreck, that implies that it's one of Grayven's. Or several of Grayven's. The drawback to their strategy being that if their ships are caught they can't just run using their faster than light drives. They have to open a boom tube and fly through it at sublight speeds. If they're surrounded, then they're probably dead.
And I doubt they get access to things like Hush Tubes. Grayven would probably keep the best for himself, after all.
Zartok comes up alongside my chair. I'm not entirely sure why he's on the bridge, but since he hadn't been overstepping his bounds I decided to accept it.
"Citizenry vessels."
More than likely, yes. Your point, Corpsman?
"Probably."
"Are our sensors good enough to harvest data from their computers without needing to reveal ourselves?"
...Probably not without getting a
hell of a lot closer.
"Not with citizenry systems. They use a type of magic that we can't combine with our sensors."
"I have a godling in my squad."
And he
does have
motivation to break Citizenry coding. Only one problem...
"And if we had time to study the way his people's sensors work, that might be enough."
"You have wizards onboard to operate the stealth system."
Huh. So that explains the 'new' stealth technology.
"Which is why we can't have them stop doing that to study an entirely original magic technology. The Illustres has handed the ship he captured over to the research and development researchers. We'll get the opportunity to study the Citizenry later, but I doubt this is the time."
"Mm."
Remember, those wrecks are under the eyes of a Reach fleet. And they're watching them very closely. Do you really think you can slip in under that cordon?
His ring glows as he directly accesses the sensors. He's probably examining the system with his brain. I read up on his record when he first started gaining notoriety,-. As a Lantern. The Orange Lantern Corps has mirrored the Green Lantern Corps' practice of employing people from warrior cultures who don't necessarily have civilised virtues. So far he's tolerated not being in command better than I thought he would. But then, there hasn't been anything to disagree about until now.
Not yet, no. Let's hope
this isn't the first thing he chooses to disagree with you on.
This ship is nothing like fast enough to outrun the Reach fleet if we're discovered. And unless one of the Lanterns is secretly an Illustres too, there isn't any other way for us to escape.
"Their ships are surprisingly intact."
Never know, Zartok
might stumble into some additional prowess during adversity.
"It may be that the Reach as a way of disrupting their sublight drives."
"The Citizenry have heavily armed ships and a powerful warrior ethos. I doubt that simply disabling their drive would stop them."
And any boarding action would be best performed by Scarab Warriors, not regular marines.
"No, but the Reach could cycle their ships. They could take as long as they needed to batter their target down."
While we do have reasonable data on Citizenry behaviour, we don't have good data on what they do when they lose. They usually only attack targets they can be certain of overwhelming. They take losses, but they haven't left wrecks behind anywhere that N.E.M.O. has been able to find out about.
...Until
now. It could be a good thing, or it could be a
trap of some kind...
On the other hand, destroying the ships is a good deal more practical. I firmly believe that it's in our interest to keep Grayven's people attacking the Reach and slow their research into his weapons whenever we can.
But it's not our priority. I turn my attention to…
...Zartok's
gone, isn't he?
Zartok's gone.
He can access the sensor reading from anywhere on the ship with his ring. He can also communicate with anyone on the ship with his ring. He might even be able to communicate with the Illustres without turning off our stealth system. There's no real reason for him to.. either be on the bridge or leave the bridge.
...He's not going to Leeroy Jenkins his way to the Citizenry ships, is he? Because I get the feeling that's what he's planning to do...
Unless he wanted to use the toilet…
He probably wants to ask Lantern Allyn about the Citizenry ships. I read his debrief after I heard that he had encountered the Citizenry. None of it was anything I could really use. As a field agent I like to think that I keep up to date on our information on our enemy's capacities, but when magic and gods start getting involved… I don't even know how to prepare for things like that.
Not many do, unless you come from Earth. And I would assume the Illustres has had plenty written down about that sort of thing already.
"Sensors, any sign that they've noticed us?"
"No, sir-. Ah, ships are moving in this direction. We'll pass close by them if they continue on their current heading. Looks like a patrol group."
Of course, 'close' at
this scale could mean a few hundred thousand kilometres. But if their sensors are pointed the right way at the right moment...
The one thing we couldn't account for was alien technology the Reach might have traded for. Trying to trade with Apokolips is a fools errand, but we know that the Reach have traded with Qward. Given how… 'Dissolute' the Weaponers had become and how chaotic the place is now, it's far from unthinkable that one or more might have decided that a change of scenery suited them. Kalmin was part of this ship's design team, but even he admitted that there's no such thing as flawless stealth.
"They still have
eyes, don't they? Avoid being
seen." To be fair, stealth in space, even with magic involved, is
always tough.
"Tell me immediately if their behaviour changes."
"Yes, sir."
Let's hope they aren't feeling trigger-happy...
"And for the sake of the record, how much do they outgun us by?"
Darkstar Scratch-Scratch-Squeak clicks their mandibles together.
"They appear to have a standard configuration. So no more than fifty times. As a group."
Definitely
outgunned, then. It's be like swatting a fly with a nuclear bomb. Not even by setting it off, just
hitting it with the bomb itself.
I smile wryly and make eye contact with the pre-Illustres Darkstars on the bridge. Yes, this puts us all in mind of how things used to be: fighting a foe that outgunned us by a hilarious degree and sure that we'd be killed the moment we were spotted. It feels depressingly familiar.
"Let's avoid giving the ship's shields a trial run."
In this case, running and hiding is definitely the wiser option.
"We have shields? I thought those were coming with the production model."
Technically we have shields, and if we run into a speck of dust while moving at high sublight speed we'll be very glad that we have them. But they won't do much against actual weapons fire.
Yeah, unless your ship has
armour a hundred feet thick, you need
some kind of navigational shielding.
"Count on the battleships?"
"Two, and no dreadnoughts. The largest object appears to be a mobile shipyard vessel."
...Sounds like they're either planning to recover their wrecks onsite, or dismantle Citizenry ships for study right here.
"Anything we haven't seen before?"
"The shipyard vessel is slightly different to models we've seen before, but there's nothing particularly unusual about it. The fleet composition is slightly weighted towards smaller ships, but that may well be because the heavy ships are chasing Grayven."
So, a fleet of small-to-medium ships, any one of which outguns the Darkstar ship. Not great odds.
"Anything that looks like it's had a sensor upgrade?"
"No."
Well, that's a relief.
"Anything that could move faster than us?"
"At sublight? The smaller ships maybe. At faster than light? Probably not anything here, but the Reach has dedicated faster than light interceptor squadrons."
"Then let's hope it doesn't come to that."
Yeah, you probably don't want a fight... Which makes me really worried what Zartok's up to.
