Yue

 24th January

18:17 GMT

What a fascinating sight. The Ungaran Commodore is an ambitious woman. The strongest desire is to seize the drifting hulks, repair them and then spread out from Ungara. I hadn't known this until I saw it written in her soul, but apparently this region had some rather strong arms limitation treaties prior to Devlos Ungol's rampage. She believes that the best way to prevent a repetition of that event is to increase Ungara's military power and that utilising the mothballed ships her fleet guards would be the best way to do that. Even knowing how many ungarans died last time they tried boarding the ships. Respect to her though, she wants to lead the boarding missions in person, so it isn't a case of her being willing to throw other people's lives away.

I step back in

a short distance away from her, my armour's stealth and phasing systems activating immediately. The picket fleet's sensors might have detected something at the moment of my arrival, but I would be very surprised if they can detect me as I am now. No… The ships don't appear to be reacting. I turn in the direction of the largest surviving ship and use my ring's flight system to accelerate towards it. As I'm having the flight aura cover the armour's interior there isn't any visible glow, though I might be in a spot of bother if these ships have still-functional phase-defences.

I activate my armour's fracture-pulse communication.

"Heading to the ships."

"We're coming up to the mining station now. Xor, you alright checking the robots?"

"Yes."

There's a moment of silence before John realises that's all he's getting.

"Okay, I'll interview the crew. If anything's going on, they should feel okay talking to a Green Lantern."

"Either that, or get nervous enough that you spot it."

"I don't think it will come to that. I don't see Ungarans willingly working with the Traitor's fleet."

"Hopefully not. Xor, you got the schematics for the robots?"

"Yes." A slight pause. "What are my orders?"

"We need information more than we need dead pirates, at least in the short term."

"Am I authorised to perform identity thefts?"

"If in your judgement it is necessary, yes. However, I don't think we're under any time pressure here. I can be with you in a moment to brand them, and they don't have anywhere to run."

"Understood. Living prisoners."

"Now hold on. We don't know that anyone's done anything yet."

"I am a soldier. Civil policing is new to me. I want clear orders."

"I was a soldier before I was a Lantern. I didn’t need to be told not to brainwash people."

"I could apply the rules of my people. I do not think you would like them."

"He probably wouldn't. Xor, while Lantern Stewart isn't in your chain of command, he does have considerably more experience of this type of work than you. It would be wise to follow his example."

"Understood."

"Illustres out."

The ship is coming up now. The Traitor's fleet tended to build their battleships as artillery platforms, giving them a much flatter shape than those used by the Citadel. They also have a smaller number of far larger guns, a smaller troop complement in exchange for more powerful shields, better sensors for worse FTL preparation time. I'm slightly reminded of the difference between Imperial Titans and Ork Gargants, though that isn't.. entirely correct. None of that ship's guns are tracking me, though I know from Ungaran records that its point defences are still active in places.

And why not just shoot them out? Or destroy the ships? Well, that's to do with why Devlos Ungol is called 'The Traitor' in the first place. His own people did it because he turned the suit of super-armour his world's military built for him against them-.

I frown. Ring, did the people of Tartarath ever produce any other sun-draining artefacts or similar technology?

No records of such technology exist in this ring's database.

That's suspicious as heck. I mean, they never made more and everyone's been assuming that was because he killed the people who made it and he didn't want anyone around who could threaten him. But what if they received the technology from elsewhere? They didn't make more because they couldn't, they just.. had armour and the question was whether or not to use it at all?

Qward might do something like that, but it seems out of character for other examples not to have shown up by now. And-. The other most likely suspect would be a human if this was happening now, but the gap of two hundred years pretty much puts us out of the running. I can't.. think of anyone else with sun-eating abilities…

Doctor Sivana said that the sun in the Sheeda's era looked wrong-. No, no, Sheeda technology has a distinct look, and there's no evidence that they have conventional faster than light technology. Actual Sun Eaters don't work like that, Wotan was using magic… No, nothing's coming to me.

Anyway, the reason why everyone else calls him that is his habit of engaging in 'population reduction' even on worlds that surrendered to him without a fight. He would gleefully agree to any terms they asked, and then betray them. His general attitude appears to have been that since no one could hurt him he might as well do whatever suited his fancy moment by moment. There was even a record of an uprising on his command ship that he ignored as it went on around him and those loyal to him died to a man and only then did he take action.

Which was activating the ship's self destruct and flying out of the explosion like nothing happened.

This ship is the Sureshot, and is known to have destroyed at least twenty capital ships and three continents. There's a gash where the bridge was holed and craters where several of the main guns used to be, but the ship is otherwise intact. Devlos set the internal defences to kill the crews in the event of his death and only a handful were ever recovered alive.

Mildly depressed that such a total shit got as far as he did…

Copying what the salvage teams did I float in through the hole in the bridge. The first thing they attempted to do was connect to the central computer core through the bridge consoles, which was when they first came under attack. The Ungaran marines destroyed the guns at the cost of five of their number. Other weapons deployed -arc wands and plasma sinks- but they were stymied by the lack of an atmosphere.

Ring, status of ship systems?

No automated repair detected. Known weapons remain destroyed.

Okay. The Commodore knows not to look too closely in this direction…

I phase in, stealth systems still active, and use the ring to take control of the sensors the Ungarans left to monitor the wreck. Not reporting changes. Warship hulls are pretty good insulators so even if the interior does light up it won't be easy for them to detect it.

Unless I trigger the auto-destruct. Though even the Traitor didn't design his ships to be able to destroy themselves instantly, so I should just be able to pop back into the Honden and avoid the blast. The Ungaran ships are far enough away that -based on what is known from the ships destroyed during the war- they should be out of range. And I think should because the man's armour literally sucked stars dry and made him invincible and when that's the known top level it's hard to put hard numbers on the potential output of an explosive you haven't reviewed personally.

I look over to the bridge door the Ungarans breached. They set up an emergency airlock, cut through without much difficulty, and two died as the metal within connected to the ship's power distribution system and electrocuted them. I phase through the outer airlock door and look at the breach hole for a moment. No electricity running through it now, and no sign that anyone has been here since. And since my armour is heavily insulated…

I reach out and tap the ragged cut in the door. Hm, that should have destroyed any sensors the ship's computer had built into the structure of the door, and since I'm still pretty much invisible its interior cameras shouldn't be able to see me. The airlock is keeping the atmosphere in, though it's a little thin…

No electricity.

Okay. I cautiously float through the hole and into the ship's interior.