Chojin Patriarch
Veteran Lurker
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Sensible. And it's clear that it is exactly where OL wants to go, given the drone's reaction. And we have pretty clear confirmation that the Dominators are involved with this, given the technology. Time to welcome the visitors.16th April 2013
02:58 GMT -5
"This is not the entrance to the Great-Mother."
"Sure."
And what gives the game away is that it's clearly not part of the larger creature. Or exactly part of the stuff… Grafted? Onto the larger creature. Oh, some attempt has been made to match colouration and materials but it's far too close to being a normal Dominion hangar door for me to mistake it for a part of… This. Hiding it this close to the Mother Star's mouth was a clever move, because that's something that anyone who's had anything to do with Star Conquerors will instinctively avoid.
Perhaps they've been sent out as a response to the sighting of OL and Bleez? A few more patrolling sentries to find the disappeared intruders.I watch as more of the glass ball creatures swim out from the modified Star Conqueror ducts. I'm not sure exactly what they're doing. Something to do with encouraging the growth of the new flesh?
"They should not be being released."
I shudder to imagine the actual anti-bodies of the Great Mother... Probably something akin to the Sentinel units from the Matrix: Flying armoured squid-forms with energy weaponry..."Oh?"
"They are wrong, altered. They should be dismantled, their errors studied and avoided in future."
And for all you know, only a few of the staff are trained to monitor the drones. It seems like something that would be mid-tier at least.Fortunately, there doesn't seem to be a review process for whatever 'safe' signal we're sending out. Which hopefully means that this is a small operation by a small number of dominators.
"Look… What do you want for your mother?"
Seems reasonable to assume that if she gets free, things might get a little hectic for a little while she exacts vengeance."I do not want for Great-Mother. She wanted for us. Then the aliens came. Now she wants for them."
"Okay, you seem like a dutiful son. What sort of life does Great Mother want for herself?"
Since it's intelligent enough to maybe draw conclusions from the data it collects. Not that it would mention them, that's not it's job."I do not know. I know that my function was to absorb and convey data, and that that is what she wants from me and for me."
"Is there something that she wants from and for other members of your family?"
In the end that's what happened to Swamp Thing on his space odyssey. And it wasn't voluntary, either."She wants to find someone to sire a daughter. Our sister would then leave and fly into The Great-Black-Outside-That-Is-Everything."
"Is that more or less likely to happen with the aliens in command of her?"
Come on, OL. It's a sensor and repair drone, not a thinker. Who knows what having to deal with your questioning will do to it's sophoncy..."…" He wiggles a little. "Less… Likely..?"
"You don't sound very confident in that answer."
Surprising. In most cases, the drones wouldn't be so complex. I guess the Great Mother prefers her offspring to have some measure of independence so that she doesn't have to micromanage."I am not made for this."
"But you can learn new skills, right?"
"I… Can learn."
Geez, OL... You're practically forcing the thing to grow new cognitive pathways at this rate."And if it helped your Great Mother go back to doing the things she wanted to do before the aliens altered her..?"
The glass ball trembles for a moment.
...I think it just graduated from Dronehood into something higher up the ranks...
And now he's on a mission. He wants this situation fixed in the Great Mother's favour, and if helping the meat-things will ensure that..."Okay, good. So are you-?"
He space-swims towards the hangar door, lights inside him flickering.
And a cluster of tentacles that serves as motive impellers is a common design for things that small. Like a set of long, spiralling propellers."Hey, is it just me, or-" I turn towards Bleez's ship. "-is he… Kinda like..?"
"A space sperm, yes. I don't know whether he actually is or not, but there are only so many ways to build biological structures."
To be fair, it's a reasonable assumption for her to make. Hyathis' people use plant-based systems. This has a big wad of plant-based tech in it..."So… Queen Hyathis didn't build this?"
"No, of course not. I have a good relationship with Queen Hyathis. If she wanted something from he, she'd just ask for it. Or-. Heck, she had to be invited to Thanagar, didn't she."
Ah, how much to tell her, eh? Since anything you tell her will end up reaching her handler's ears sooner or later."… I mean… Yeah…"
"Even if she wanted to demand something with menaces, well… She did cure the Equality Plague. She could have just kept the equalised thanagarians are serfs. And she's… Busy in Antares right now."
That's one way to put it."Are you sure?"
"Unlike you, I can just go there. She's… Consolidating."
Which to Bleez would sound more like she's taking stock of her losses and deciding whether to push her luck further."Consolidating, like..? She's rebuilding her forces after an attack..?"
"No, 'consolidating' like she just-." Um. "After she won a battle."
To be fair... While individual Thanagarians might be nice people, the government as a whole seems a bit troublesome and likely to be looking for fresh targets of expansion...I should not be talking to a Thanagarian Empire intelligence asset about how Antares is now firmly under her control and they're next. I don't… I'm not sure exactly what I want out of that situation, but I doubt that…
"Was it a big battle? Because they have a lot of battles in Antares. It's sort of why we didn't want her as our queen."
Heh. Effectively deflecting the matter and talking up the Reach threat at the same time.Oh, I don't know. They know where she is. I'd be astonished if they didn't have at least a rough idea about what she's doing. So… Does telling her just mean that I don't irritate the Thanagarian government? Imply that I'm not backing her?
"It looked like a pretty big battle, but I can't say I'm an expert in the Antares War. By Reach standards it was barely a skirmish."
And your mother and handlers will be sending out search parties by now."Huh. Yeah, probably just the usual back and forth." The hangar doesn't open, but the… 'Space sperm' swims around to a side entrance and vanishes. "Has he just dumped us?"
"No. I felt his genuine desire. He'll be back. Ah, I've been meaning to ask; now that the Yellow Lantern who was stalking you has been disciplined, are you planning on hanging around? I'm happy to have you of course, but the Earth isn't really at its best right now and no one's really in a concert mood."
Time to see just how well their disguises are working."I just… Really want to make sure."
"Fair enough. I-" The hangar door shudders for a moment, then opens at the standard rate. "-think we're in."
Ugh. No point wasting effort in making it more aesthetically pleasing, I guess.It's not that I don't think that Sinestro will keep his word. It's that I don't think that his recruitment tactics will result in him getting well-disciplined Lanterns, and one lacking the foresight to realise that his boss wasn't joking could cause Bleez really trouble.
The inside is… Ah, they've gone with the space-airlock design. Practical, and far easier to hide than a synthetic environmental barrier. The interior of the lock looks like it was cut through the Mother Star's body, and I can see where veins and arteries have been cauterised or blocked while the muscle and fat has been left bare. I suppose that it doesn't have to worry about rotting, exactly, though it's interesting that this part isn't being consumed by whatever's replacing the top side.
If anything, it's more like an implanted medical device."Ew."
Bleez pilots her ship into the opening, and I follow her.
"I will never complain about Thanagarian Empire ship decoration again. Did they just cut a hole in this thing?"
That would probably have been noted as unusual for the drone's behaviour. Then again, she's significantly larger than OL's shell or the drone they're working with, so maybe no-one's looking at them."Looks like." The exterior door begins closing behind us, and I note that there's no interior lighting. I can still see fine and I'm sure that Bleez's ship has some sort of augmented vision system, but it's unusual by human standards. "Does your ship have shields?"
"Basic ones. I could just have waited outside."
Well, there it is. Hopefully they aren't looking out a window or anything and note the odd drones lurking about."No, I can't mark two locations as friendly. If it comes to a fight, just keep out of the way or abandon your ship as a distraction. I can fly you back once we're done."
"That's what I was planning."
Then the interior door opens, and I see the dominator ship.
So, one step closer to sorting this out. Kick some Dominator teeth in, break the controls on the Great Mother and hope she chooses to head back to deep space. Still, that's a later problem. First thing will be persuading the Dominators that Earth is off-limits. Which means getting inside their ship without knocking over the anthill...
If she wanted something from me...
She could have just kept the equalised thanagarians as serfs.She could have just kept the equalised thanagarians are serfs.
...could cause Bleez real trouble.