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

8th September 2013
10:58 GMT


Mosteel. The outermost planet of the Antares system, and almost on the opposite side of the system from where the Thanagarian fleet appeared. Stellar cartographers in this region of space have suggested that it might be a capture, because otherwise there's no obvious reason for a metal-rich planet being this far out in a naturally-developing solar system. And due to the high levels of radioactive material inside and the lack of sunlight outside, radiotrophic life replaces the photosynthesis of plants in the food chain.
Also, the absolutely bizarre metallic biology of the native population. Doesn't really fit with the other planets in the system, does it? I see they don't really have any dog in the fight against the Thanagarians, though. Wonder if they'll keep out if it...

Unlike the other planets of this system -before I stuck my oar in- they actually engaged in some trade with other systems, exchanging radiological material for radiotrophic fungi that species who'd been less careful in their development of nuclear technology could use to clean up after themselves.
Though I expect they're very careful with their use. Not really the kind of thing you want running loose in an unfamiliar ecosystem.

They only really got involved in the war when the other participants started trying to mine the nearby asteroids, so I might consider them an innocent party were it not for how enthusiastic they've been about throwing radiological weapons at the homeworlds of the other participants. Also mildly interesting that they don't bother to defend the surface of their planet when one of the other three manages to send ships this far because there's not really much there. The only things worth targetting are the giant silo doors that lead to their subterranean ship yards, and they're purposely designed to take a battering.
Heh. They sound like the classic 'ultimate defensive build' sort of 4X race. Hard to deal with a planet that's unpleasantly hostile to any ground troops that might land, especially if the locals are resistant to the same conditions.

They favour heavy armour for their ships. Their guns aren't anything particularly special, but on the few occasions the Llarrians tried boarding them they found out that they can broadcast enough radiation at short range to give the people on hostile ships terminal radiation sickness. Given that Hyathis managed to melt one of their ships with a spore cloud last time I was here, I imagine that she's found a way around that.
Some sort of metal-eating plant, perhaps.

"I'm not seeing many ships."

"They don't need much food or air as long as the environment is radioactive enough. And they're good at insulating. They've managed to get past all three of their enemies by having ships run dark and drift past them."
Naturally patient folks, eh? At least when it comes to important things.



"Are you going to send me the results of your scan-?"
OL getting a little distracted, eh?

Send. "Sorry."

Compliance.


"I'm sure the history of a system like this is fascinating, but it probably doesn't relate to what we're investigating."
Never know how some small detail might become important.

"No, it's just-. People have tried to kill me a lot. They've succeeded twice. How about you?"

"No, I'm still Jade One."
To be fair, she is a bit more vulnerable to death than OL is. He's a bit shot of it, having done it a couple of times now.

"I think you're Jade Sixteen, actually. Given how we number universes-."

"I haven't died."
Not the time, OL.

"But people have tried to kill you."

"You've tried to kill me."

"Are you referring to the tentacles or the time I gave you a ring? Because-."
He was very apologetic about the tentacle thing, though. And the Ring thing did a lot of good for the Vietnamese.

"Did you forget what happened in Belle Reve?"

"That was Miss Frost. I'm the one who-"
Ah, right, nearly freezing to death at the hands of Killer Frost.

"Put me in there."

"-healed-. I was not involved in that decision."
Admittedly, that was the League or the Courts, not OL personally.

"I'd have gotten away if it wasn't for you. Mosteel ships are in dispersed formation… Apart from a small group near… Does their version of Mercury have a name?"

"It has five different names that I know of." Hm. "Have you been taking couples communication advice from Artemis? Because while I'm happy for her and Wallace, that's not really how I want things to be with us."
Guessing the planet has a lot of claims laid on it by the other polities. And it's hard to have a solid relationship misunderstanding with an Empath.

"Yes, people have tried to kill me."

"So I'm having trouble taking this one personally."
He's just a bit blase about the whole dying thing these days, isn't he?

"I would have died if you hadn't been there."

"No, you'd have phased. Bleez would have died, and I'm a little upset about that, but she's not you. So, Artemis lessons?"
Ah, he just understands that Jade can take care of herself and hovering concernedly isn't helpful, eh?

"I didn't forget the tentacles, but I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about the time I nearly choked to death on your cookie when you told me what you said."

"Well, if it's such a foundational part of our relationship… Nine days, and I'll see what I can do about choking you again."
I mean, a little spice in the bedroom never hurt anyone.. 😘

"That wasn't a request."

"Are you sure? What're the ships near Antares One doing?"

"Nothing, and yes."
I think they're starting to get a little distracted with this little discussion...

"But was it an objection?"

"We'll see. Do you want to contact the planet's authorities?"
I suppose he should, if only to touch base.

"Might as well. Orange Lantern to… Kromm."

Assuming that he's still in charge. Not much is on record about Mosteel's internal politics, so I don't know how big a deal getting beaten up by Mr. J'onzz was for him.
And if he isn't in a high position anymore, he can always point OL towards someone who is.

"Orange Lantern. Are those Thanagarian ships?"

Voice matches Justice League recordings, though he's not transmitting an image. "Yes, they are."
No time-wasting with pleasantries, I see. I'm Guessing Kromm has been steeling himself for this call once they saw him in orbit.

"Then I suppose that our war is over."

"Looks like. Would you like me to ask for terms on your behalf, or do you intend to make a fight of it?"
What, no defiance? I'm surprised.

"I thought that you were supporting Hyathis?"

"Right, but did you notice how I didn't actually give her any military equipment?"
...Relatively speaking, anyway.

"Dominion battleship computers aren't military equipment?"

"It was a computer. A novel technology, yes, but it wasn't a weapon. I… Sort of assumed that the rest of you would either three-on-one her or come to terms."
What's the bet it was far better than anything Hyathis had beforehand?

"And new allies with compatible technology?"

"J is a peaceful world. I was sort of hoping that they'd influence her in that direction."
Evidently those hopes were in vain.

"I suppose that it doesn't matter. Let the thanagarians know that if they make it this far we will offer not further resistance."

"Will do. One question, though."
Not that there's much need to make a personal showing or anything, given the radiation.

"I have little to do but wait. You may as well ask."

"Where does the metal for gamma gongs come from?"
Ah, still chasing this lead. Hopefully it's not made from Mosteelian bodies or something.

"The Dhorians mined it from our asteroids."

"And you never developed the technology yourselves?"
Might have been a trick the Dhorians worked out that wouldn't work for Mosteel.

"Our nervous systems don't work like yours. And they're of little use in space combat."

"But you know how to make them?"

"At this point in the war we all know something of the technology the others use. Alstair has just developed faster than we have."
Huh. So it doesn't rule out someone copying the tech involved on all sides.

"I suppose that-."

"Paul, there's something wrong with Antares. It-."

I scan it detail just in time to see an entire star undulate!
Oh, that's definitely bad.

That sounds like a system-wide issue, because stars really aren't meant to move like that. At the least, there's going to be massive solar flares as the surface stabilises. The real worry is who did that and how. There were ships over there, right? I didn't think Thanagarian technology had anything capable of this, does it?
 
I might consider them an innocent party were it not for how enthusiastic they've been about throwing radiological weapons at the homeworlds of the other participants.
To be fair, considering the evolutionary adaptations of the Mosteel themselves, radiation is, metaphorically, their hammer, and we all know what one does with a hammer when it is all you have.

They've managed to get passed all three of their enemies by having ships run dark and drift past them."
'past'

That sounds like a system-wide issue, because stars really aren't meant to move like that. At the least, there's going to be massive solar flares as the surface stabilises. The real worry is who did that and how. There were ships over there, right? I didn't think Thanagarian technology had anything capable of this, does it?
I don't think it's the Thanagarians. They might want to blow up five-sixths of the solar system, but the fact their entire fleet went charging in indicates they're not doing that; even if they're simply going to slingshot through the system at max burn, you don't send twelve command carriers to chuck a sun-killer at the star and run, you send one cruiser.

Meanwhile, recall that Hyathis was caught completely off-guard by being informed that gamma gongs had been used to control a Thangarian official; the Dhorians didn't outright deny it but didn't confirm it either while pointing OL to look elsewhere for the culprit, and the Mosteel basically said "yes we know how to make them but why would we?".

I have a feeling somebody is playing every party in this conflict, and they've just started their endgame.
 
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The premise of this entire investigation is wrong.

The story hawk guy intel chief told is that he was mind controlled to only act in ways that would benefit his controller's objectives, and he managed to convince himself that striking OL would do that, when really he wanted to reveal himself so as to end his ability to sabotage Thanagar.

The controlling party didn't want OL dead. That was the intel chef's idea. At least that is how I understood his explanation.
 
The premise of this entire investigation is wrong.

The story hawk guy intel chief told is that he was mind controlled to only act in ways that would benefit his controller's objectives, and he managed to convince himself that striking OL would do that, when really he wanted to reveal himself so as to end his ability to sabotage Thanagar.

The controlling party didn't want OL dead. That was the intel chef's idea. At least that is how I understood his explanation.
Striking OL and failing didn't serve their objectives. That doesn't narrow it down. Best not miss.

Mosteel is acting like they want to deny it but expect to be facing a lie detector. Interesting on both sides.
 
Replanting (part 19) New
8th September 2013
11:02 GMT

'See' on my ring's instant scan, obviously. The light won't reach us for about five hours. And maybe by then I'll have recovered my equanimity, because making stars wobble is hard. Massive magnetic fields can do it -I read a science fiction novel before coming to this universe where an A.I. species used a powerful electromagnet to expose a star's core and sterilise a nearby planet with radiation, and I checked the physics involved after I got here- but the machine required to do something like that isn't exactly small. I'd certainly have noticed if there was one in this system.

A sun eater would make it shrink as more energy was extracted, but that's not what that was.

Um.

The images of half a dozen theoretical doomsday weapons appear in my mind, but I'm reasonably sure that Dr. Sivana hasn't been anywhere near Antares.

I need-.

To not rush off, and I need to not assume that people are telling me the truth just because there's no obvious reason for them to lie.

I look down, following the tread of intent to find Kromm. There he is, and there's… An air of fulfilment about him that suggests that he isn't expecting this to end with his surrender to anyone.

"Jade-."

"The Thanagarians have noticed. Their scouts are redirecting for a closer look."

"And the Alstairans?"

"No reaction."

"I'm going to forcefully interrogate Kromm. If it turns out that this isn't a-."

"Go. I'll continue monitoring."

I

step out, moving towards the place where Kromm's desires exist in the Honden. But it's not just him. I can see similar structures with enough differences to show them as belonging to different people, desires to destroy and become supreme. And if they were thwarted desires then they'd look different, but they appear to be very much in place. I

appear in their… Command centre, heavy armour appearing around my body as I do so and just about catching the first volley of incoming fire because these people didn't survive hundreds of years of war by being slow off the mark.

Kromm is already being hustled out of the room by his bodyguards, but not fast enough to escape my construct claw. An alarm rings out and guards with heavier weapons dash in, but my railgun construct shoots holes in their guns before they can bring them to bear. No sense in worrying about the smaller weapons.

Kromm's face looks fairly blank as I haul him closer.

"If it turns out that you were being honest, then I'm sorry about this."

Brand.

Compliance.

There's a brief flare of orange light, and though the brand itself is covered by his armour, his eyes are glowing the classical orange.

"You want to be honest with me."

"That is true."

"Sir-!"

Another surge of orange light sends the soldiers slamming into the walls, though their metallic nature means that they're not really injured by the impact.

"What's going on?"

"You're attacking our command centre. It's been almost two hundred years since-."

"With the sun."

"At the moment, it should be stage one."

"Of?"

"Our plan to end the war in our favour. Our interdiction fields should be going back up shortly; they're not controlled from here. We couldn't risk it."

"Why not?"

He points to-. Ah.

A radiotrophic plant growing from the ceiling. The flowers add some pleasant colour to the room, but that's clearly not a native organism.

"Hyathis already won. But we already knew that was going to happen, and so we prepared for it."

"Are you sending your sun nova?"

"Not yet. We have to lure in the thanagarians first."

"Jade, warn them."

"They're using broad-spectrum jamming."

And it's not like we have a-.

"Bleez is a spy. Is there a-?"

"I'm looking for it now."

"Okay, so you bring a thanagarian fleet here and send your sun nova. Prevent them escaping and you turn a defeat for you into a defeat for everyone."

"Technically, our sun won't go nova. It doesn't have enough mass. It will just begin turning into a red giant."

"Which-." Ring, calculate the-. "You're outside of the peak expansion range."

"And we quite like the increase in radiation. The worlds of our rival will be consumed, along with the thanagarian fleet. Thanagar could attack us, except that they won't have the spare fleet capacity any longer."

"And they'll probably blame either Alstair or Dhor anyway."

"We're not relying on it. Most of our fleet are in our subterranean hangars."

"Even if you triggered the expansion phase, the sun expanding should take enough time that the thanagarian fleet could just turn around and fly out at sub-light."

"The sun will expand at a massively accelerated rate. More slowly after the inner planets are consumed, but fast enough that the thanagarian carriers won't be able to turn around quickly enough to escape it. Not when their crews are paralysed."

"Paral-?"

My body freezes, a sensation I remember well from the last time I was exposed to a gamma gong.

"Like that. It actually doesn't affect my species in the way it does yours. That 'wobble' you saw from the sun was it ejecting just enough matter to cause the effect to precipitate across the entire system. Honestly, I feel that I should apologise. If I'd realised that you were going to be this much of a non-issue, I wouldn't have made our agent on Thanagar try to kill you."
 
There is no reason Paul should need to move an inch to use his ring or to get his ring to move his body around. Branding, or knocking out everybody else in the command center than commanding them to turn off the doomsday device and the gong should be child's play.

If there's one thing I dislike about this story is Paul's repeated need to overcomplicate everything.
 
There is no reason Paul should need to move an inch to use his ring or to get his ring to move his body around. Branding, or knocking out everybody else in the command center than commanding them to turn off the doomsday device and the gong should be child's play.

If there's one thing I dislike about this story is Paul's repeated need to overcomplicate everything.
To be fair, we ended with Paul just getting paralyzed. I'm confident that he'll have his Construct-Lanterns take care of enemy combatants while he finds out from Kromm how to undo what happened, assuming it's possible.
 
8th September 2013
11:02 GMT


'See' on my ring's instant scan, obviously. The light won't reach us for about five hours. And maybe by then I'll have recovered my equanimity, because making stars wobble is hard. Massive magnetic fields can do it -I read a science fiction novel before coming to this universe where an A.I. species used a powerful electromagnet to expose a star's core and sterilise a nearby planet with radiation, and I checked the physics involved after I got here- but the machine required to do something like that isn't exactly small. I'd certainly have noticed if there was one in this system.
Something like that would have to be the size of a moon, at the least. Stars are not small, nor are the kinds of devices that could successfully interact with anything past their outer shell of stellar plasma.

A sun eater would make it shrink as more energy was extracted, but that's not what that was.

Um.
I imagine that looked more like a giant slap to the surface...

The images of half a dozen theoretical doomsday weapons appear in my mind, but I'm reasonably sure that Dr. Sivana hasn't been anywhere near Antares.

I need-.
Which says concerning things about the kinds of thing Doctor Sivana can and has created.

To not rush off, and I need to not assume that people are telling me the truth just because there's no obvious reason for them to lie.

I look down, following the tread of intent to find Kromm. There he is, and there's… An air of fulfilment about him that suggests that he isn't expecting this to end with his surrender to anyone.
...Oh, he is totally behind this.

"Jade-."

"The Thanagarians have noticed. Their scouts are redirecting for a closer look."
Sensible, but quite dangerous, I suspect.

"And the Alstairans?"

"No reaction."
That's also suspicious.

"I'm going to forcefully interrogate Kromm. If it turns out that this isn't a-."

"Go. I'll continue monitoring."
Well, diplomacy is out the window. Time to be the big sledgehammer of Lantern power.

I

step out, moving towards the place where Kromm's desires exist in the Honden. But it's not just him. I can see similar structures with enough differences to show them as belonging to different people, desires to destroy and become supreme. And if they were thwarted desires then they'd look different, but they appear to be very much in place. I
So him and his subordinates were all aware of this happening, from the sounds of it.

appear in their… Command centre, heavy armour appearing around my body as I do so and just about catching the first volley of incoming fire because these people didn't survive hundreds of years of war by being slow off the mark.
Impressive reaction time.

Kromm is already being hustled out of the room by his bodyguards, but not fast enough to escape my construct claw. An alarm rings out and guards with heavier weapons dash in, but my railgun construct shoots holes in their guns before they can bring them to bear. No sense in worrying about the smaller weapons.
"Get over here!" No escape for this guy.

Kromm's face looks fairly blank as I haul him closer.

"If it turns out that you were being honest, then I'm sorry about this."
Sadly, I fully expect he was honest about 'submitting' to Thanagar. But if Thanagar isn't going to be an issue...

Brand.

Compliance.

There's a brief flare of orange light, and though the brand itself is covered by his armour, his eyes are glowing the classical orange.
At least their minds work normally enough to that to work.

"You want to be honest with me."

"That is true."
At least now he'll want to monologue.

"Sir-!"

Another surge of orange light sends the soldiers slamming into the walls, though their metallic nature means that they're not really injured by the impact.
More of a 'sit down and shut up' reminder than anything.

"What's going on?"

"You're attacking our command centre. It's been almost two hundred years since-."
Ha, ha, totally literally minded. You know what he means, Kromm.

"With the sun."

"At the moment, it should be stage one."
...Of how many? That doesn't sound good.

"Of?"

"Our plan to end the war in our favour. Our interdiction fields should be going back up shortly; they're not controlled from here. We couldn't risk it."
Blocking off at least their part of the system. Won't stop people fleeing via other routes, though.

"Why not?"

He points to-. Ah.

A radiotrophic plant growing from the ceiling. The flowers add some pleasant colour to the room, but that's clearly not a native organism.
Ah. The Alstairian equivalent of a security camera, perhaps?

"Hyathis already won. But we already knew that was going to happen, and so we prepared for it."

"
Are you sending your sun nova?"
Seems a bit nasty, but given that they don't seem to use much of it anyway here at the outer rim of the system...

"Not yet. We have to lure in the thanagarians first."

"
Jade, warn them."

"They're using broad-spectrum jamming."
Because of course they are.

And it's not like we have a-.

"Bleez is a spy. Is there a-?"
Quantum-entanglement communicator or similar. Something that won't give a flying fudge about jamming signals.

"I'm looking for it now."

"Okay, so you bring a thanagarian fleet here and send your sun nova. Prevent them escaping and you turn a defeat for you into a defeat for everyone."
Although the Mosteelians are likely to shrug off the electromagnetic effects, I bet.

"Technically, our sun won't go nova. It doesn't have enough mass. It will just begin turning into a red giant."

"
Which-." Ring, calculate the-. "You're outside of the peak expansion range."
Whereas the other life-bearing planets are not. An extremely vicious method of claiming victory.

"And we quite like the increase in radiation. The worlds of our rival will be consumed, along with the thanagarian fleet. Thanagar could attack us, except that they won't have the spare fleet capacity any longer."

"
And they'll probably blame either Alstair or Dhor anyway."
Given the evidence they've seen, anyway. They might well assume the expansion was an unintended result of a super-weapon or something.

"We're not relying on it. Most of our fleet are in our subterranean hangars."

"
Even if you triggered the expansion phase, the sun expanding should take enough time that the thanagarian fleet could just turn around and fly out at sub-light."
Since it's limited to light-speed. Unless they somehow made it super-luminal.

"The sun will expand at a massively accelerated rate. More slowly after the inner planets are consumed, but fast enough that the thanagarian carriers won't be able to turn around quickly enough to escape it. Not when their crews are paralysed."

"
Paral-?"

My body freezes, a sensation I remember well from the last time I was exposed to a gamma gong.
Oh, hell. Gongs.

"Like that. It actually doesn't affect my species in the way it does yours. That 'wobble' you saw from the sun was it ejecting just enough matter to cause the effect to precipitate across the entire system. Honestly, I feel that I should apologise. If I'd realised that you were going to be this much of a non-issue, I wouldn't have made our agent on Thanagar try to kill you."
Thing is, OL doesn't need to move his body to do stuff.

So, the Mosteelians have basically enacted a doomsday weapon release, because they don't need to worry much about the side-effects like the paralysis. Naturally, there's no off-switch, either. So OL's going to have to send off his Construct Lanterns and possibly have to learn how to partially constructify himself to get all this sorted out.
 
Being in the minority doesn't make you wrong, except mathematically.
So not at all! ;)
Wonderful moment with self actualization there with "I need.... To not rush off"


Which says concerning things about the kinds of thing Doctor Sivana can and has created.

img
 
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If I'd realised that you were going to be this much of a non-issue, I wouldn't have made our agent on Thanagar try to kill you."[/color]
Hubris
noun
(in Greek tragedy) an excess of ambition, pride, etc, ultimately causing the transgressor's ruin

Paralysis is not an effective weapon against Lanterns. Or constructs. Or the Ophidian.
 
A radiotrophic plant growing from the ceiling. The flowers add some pleasant colour to the room, but that's clearly not a native organism.

"Hyathis already won. But we already knew that was going to happen, and so we prepared for it."
So Orange Lantern you have a choice, either let the insane nearly immortal dictator you gave power to enslave an entire star system, or take responsibility for your actions and stop her.
 
So Orange Lantern you have a choice, either let the insane nearly immortal dictator you gave power to enslave an entire star system, or take responsibility for your actions and stop her.
Hyathis isn't insane.

And those aren't his only choices.

Another choice he has is to stop the genocidal metal man and his genocidal government.

The fact that they chose to destroy even people that had nothing to do with Hyathis does not paint them in a good light.
 
Frankly everybody involved here sucks. The Thanagarians are racist, expansionist facists; Hyanthis' neighbors all seem various flavors of shitty and have gone after Earth in the past, and Hyanthis runs a mind control empire.

Of the options, I don't think Hyanthis is noticeably worse than the others.
 
I don't think she does that.

Heck, she helped the Thanagarians deal with a disease that damaged their minds.
Been a while since I've reread the Hyanthis stuff. My understanding is that she dealt with the Equalization (?) plague but required them to treat her as queen afterward, and used mind control to ensure this.

It was only when she returned to her homeworld that they could throw off the mind control, kill her local collaborators, and retake their empire.

As for her current empire, I don't actually remember if she's mind controlling all her subjects.
 

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