1st January 2013
20:50 GMT
The faint
whiff of exotic energy and
desires changes its angle of approach slightly.
We're aware that we're more immaterial than we've allowed ourself to be for a while, and that is making perceiving the desires and drives of the Reachians so obvious that for a moment we can't imagine not seeing them.
I raise my right hand and point at it, keeping my right finger trained on it as I reinforce my construct armour and add a cluster of small railguns for anti-Scarab work. Regular Scarabs… It's not that they're not a threat to me, but it's more on the level that
Sodom and
Gomorrah are to Kal-El. Yes, they
could kill him, but once the initial transmutation didn't work it was pretty obvious which way the fight was going to go.
"I…
See… You…
"
And… Tiny flecks of-.
Move. Load phasic rounds, fire.
Shoot the warp-assisted cold beam at-.
One of the Scarab's drones deactivates its phasic system and fires-.
And my giant cold gun construct is
gone. Didn't register any conventional damage. Have they managed to replicate the crumbler effect? Tricky, but-.
Another drone -looks like there are four of them- phases in and fires at my armour. I'm using ablative construct plating instinctively, so I'm not too-.
A whole chunk of armour vanishes, leaving my right shoulder and the upper right portion of my torso exposed.
That wasn't a crumbler.
I shift plates around, taking small x-ionised plates out of subspace in order to-.
I just about spot the
shift in desires as another drone phases in and takes a shot. I block this one with a metal plate at about thirty metres from my actual body. Block is… Successful. Looks like whatever that beam is doesn't do much to conventional matter. And the beam is… Light speed.
Rats rats rats.
Alright, I-.
Another drones shoots at the back of my helmet, the
intensification of the desires associated with it giving me just enough time to block
that shot.
It's behind me.
That means that I no longer have the advantage of my enemy being in a single arc.
"How many years at war with the Green Lantern Corps and
now you develop-
"
Two shots, two blocks. They're moving to surround me, but multi-channel processing
isn't hard for us. Were they expecting someone other than me? Someone
not from Earth, or.. just.. not the Illustres. A normal Lantern who had their defensive construct shot out would be a good deal more vulnerable, and even if they recovered they'd go through their ring charge much faster than normal in order to repair it.
"-anti-construct weapons? I mean-
"
We block another two shots. It looks like there's a recharge time issue.
"-I'll take it as a sign of how seriously you're taking this.
"
"How
are you tracking our drones?"
Just because I'm not communicating with
him, that doesn't mean he can't communicate with
me. I was just trying to reach the Scarab, but… Ah, why not?
"How stupid do you-
"
Block and block, block and block.
"-think we are?"
"'We'? Are you using an AI, perhaps?"
Fiddlesticks. On the other hand, not exactly a secret-secret. And
without using the senses of the Ophidian portion of us, this wouldn't be possible.
"What's an 'AI', really, when you get down to it?
"
"Or is it
you who's the AI? Is
that how you came back from being totally disintegrated?"
"Yes, you've found us-
"
Since the drones appear to be holding off for now, let's have another shot at those ships. Can't take another shot with a giant cold gun without it being
really obvious, but if gravity manipulation is the order of the day…
"-out. Curses, we are undone. Melon melon melon.
"
They're abandoning the system anyway.
Beam singularity projector.
We have no idea what will happen when we fire this, but-
Drones fire and
blocked.
-it should satisfy any number of the desires we feel to find out. Bend space between here and the target and fire!
We hit the central dreadnought and it… Shudders. There's a neat hole where we hit, and a neat hole at the far end. Presumably we hit everything between those two points, though the ship is disrupting our scans-
Blocked.
-too well for us to tell for certain. The ship… Doesn't appear to have changed its acceleration, so perhaps-.
There's a
small bloom of heat from inside the ship. Wait, all this gravity manipulation and they can't even disrupt a singularity beam a
little? If this whole space-bending thing turns out to be a macro-scale hologram I'm going to be
annoyed. Or maybe I was right and the generator
is outside of the affected area, and these ships only use gravity manipulation in a more normal way? Either way, I-.
The drones
fire at us again, this time joined by the Scarab Warrior. Shots blocked, but I'm being delayed and… And this isn't a viable strategy for anyone who isn't me. And I couldn't do it if there were more drones, or if there was a lot of other things going on. In the brief moment it was in normal space the Scarab itself didn't look anything special. Larger guns mounted on the forearms, but I assume that's just what they're using to disrupt my constructs.
"It's amusing how dependent we become on certain things. The Reach has long relied on our Scarabs to be the last word in humanoid warriors. We scarcely made any effort to improve other weapons at that scale; our regular soldiers are
far inferior, despite the fact that our oldest conquests were made with a conventional army."
"The Guardians depend on their Lanterns, despite the fact that they have always been perfectly capable of building both war fleets
and other sorts of exotic weapons. That's a weakness that your 'N.E.M.O.' doesn't share. You personally don't rely on your constructs, which is wise of you."
"Thank you. From all of us.
"
We spot it as the Scarab Warrior prepares to fire once more, and-
-it emerges from its phased state-
and our construct armour vanishes.
"But you
do rely on subspace storage. Kill him."
