Chapter 36: World of Green
Disclaimer: All things Supergirl/Superman and Green Lantern belong to DC. No infringement is intended.
"A prior engagement, she said," Guy Gardner grumbled. "Just a short side trip on our way to Oa, she said. Won't take long at all, she said! Ha!"
Guy Gardner, Green Lantern of space sector 2814, was well aware that most people considered him to be a jerk and he was just fine with that. He considered most people to be jerks, too, though most of them were too stuck up and hypocritical to live up to it. You would never catch Guy Gardner telling anyone some prettied-up lies just to make himself look better, no sir. Guy Gardner would get in your face and tell it like it was, no matter what.
"No one thought to mention the homicidal computer tyrant, though. But hey, not that big a deal!"
Superwoman pulled him out of the way of a hailstorm of laser beams and ducked behind the edge of a building.
"Gardner, shut up!" she yelled. "If we get out of this alive, you can whine all you want!"
"I am NOT whining," he yelled back, projecting a steel wall with his power ring to intercept another hail of laser blasts coming their way. "I am letting you know, toots, that armies of robots with laser guns intending to kill me are something I would really like to know about BEFORE they start shooting in my general direction. Just for future reference!"
He started grinning. "Because then I'd have needed a lot less convincing to come on this trip!"
Sixty minutes earlier
"So what are we doing here?" Gardner asked, looking at the planet now visible on the view screen of the Javelin. "Visiting some old high school buddies or what?"
There was a tick in Superwoman's jaw, he had observed, whenever he spoke to her. He could practically hear her grind those perfect pearly whites of hers. The rational part of his mind was reminding him that provoking someone who could squash him like a bug was probably not a great idea, but he just couldn't resist winding her up. That woman couldn't possibly be as straight-laced and goody-two-shoes as she pretended to be. No one was. He had learned that lesson the hard way from his brother Mace.
"We are investigating a possible threat," the Martian said. Gardner couldn't remember his weird-sounding name, so he called him Marvin. "Information has come to our attention that the planet Colu might be the home base of Brainiac."
"Brainiac? Really? What is he, some kind of big alien brain?"
Superwoman was leaving fingerprints in the steel armrests of her chair, he observed with a grin.
"Brainiac was a Kryptonian super computer. When our world perished, it decided to save only itself and left billions of my people to die. Now it intends to remold Earth into New Krypton with humans relegated to slave labor."
Okay, that did sound like something he, being human, would like to avoid happening. Not to mention something the Green Lantern Corps should definitely put a stop to.
"Okay, bad guy then. And you think he is hanging out here? Why this place?"
"The people of Colu are renowned for their skills in computer engineering and robotics," Marvin the Martian told him. "An ideal work force for a sentient computer program."
Superwoman rose from her seat. "We are still outside the planet's sensor range. The Javelin will remain here, while we make a discreet trip to the surface. You do know how to be discreet, Gardner?"
"My middle name, ma'am," he grinned, giving her a mock salute.
"Sure it is."
Superwoman took the computer box she had clipped to her hip and pressed some buttons. A moment later a loud BOOM sounded through the interior of the ship and Gardner found himself falling forward through a tunnel of light.
"Give a guy some warning, will you?" he yelled as he was pulled along.
When he regained his bearings a moment later, he found himself standing in an entirely different place. They were in the middle of a city, one that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Star Wars movie, all shiny metal and concrete. Huge towers nearly blotted out the sky and everything was so clean Gardner was sure he could have eaten off the floor with no ill effects.
It was also very, very quiet.
"Charming place," he muttered, activating his ring to scan for nearby life signs. "Hell of a night life."
"This is strange," the Martian said. "The buildings around us are filled with people, but... it seems all of them are sleeping."
Gardner nodded, his ring telling him the same thing. The city was practically teeming with life, his ring picking up well over a million individual life signs just in their general vicinity, but each and every one of them was soundly asleep right now.
"This isn't right," Superwoman muttered, looking around. "I was only here once, but it wasn't like this." She looked over at the Martian. "J'Onn, can you scan the mind of one of the sleepers to find out what's going on here?"
"I can try, but I will need to be closer. It's impossible to differentiate a singular mind in this vast hive."
Superwoman nodded and together they entered one of the buildings. The doors weren't locked. Not much of a crime rate, here apparently. Well, the crooks were probably sleeping as well. Down a long corridor they found numerous rooms, all of them set up like small apartments, all of them looking the same. There were tables, chairs, desks, computer terminals, but none of them were in use. Instead in each and every one of them the inhabitants were lying on their beds, sleeping.
None of them so much as stirred as three aliens invaded their bedrooms. Also, all of them had some kind of gizmo on their foreheads. Three blinking lights arranged in a V-shape.
"Brainiac," Superwoman hissed, sounding more pissed off than Gardner had ever heard her... which was saying something, given how often she had already been pissed at him. Maybe he could still learn something from this Brainy-thing.
Marvin (had she called him John or something earlier?) put his hand on the temple of one of the sleepers.
"It's amazing," he muttered, his eyes gazing at nothing. "The sleeping minds are all connected in a vast network. They are dreaming and... and their dreams are equations, formulas..."
"Like a computer network," Superwoman said, nodding. "A network made from the best organic computers in the galaxy, the brains of the Coluan people."
"You're telling me someone has turned all these poor suckers into their own personal internet?"
"Not someone," she swore. "Brainiac! Brainiac did this!"
"Incorrect, Kara-El," a voice said from behind them.
Gardner whirled around, his ring crackling with energy waiting to be unleashed against whatever enemy had managed to sneak up on them. There was no one there, though. Well, not quite. The computer screen that had been inactive when they came in was now lit and showing the same three lights in a V-shape that seemed to be this bozo's trademark.
"Well, hello Brainy-thing," he muttered.
"What have you done to these people, Brainiac?" Superwoman demanded, leaning towards the screen. "Are you looking to destroy yet another world?"
"I have done very little, Kara-El. The Coluans developed their Sleepnet nearly two decades before I arrived on this world. They wanted to make better use of their rest periods and discovered that sleeping minds can easily be used as processors without any ill effect on the sleepers. I have merely taken this admittedly ingenious idea to its logical conclusion."
"By putting an entire race into permanent sleep?"
"Only their bodies are sleeping and are being well cared for by my drones. Their minds are highly active, as your telepathic companion has asserted. The sheer processing power of the Coluan Sleepnet dwarves even the resources I had available on Krypton."
"And what are you using it for, Brainiac? What do you need so much processing power for?"
Gardner kind of expected an evil chuckle or something like that, but the computer just droned on in its highly annoying monotone. "Why, Kara-El, I am simply following my programming. Krypton will rise from the ashes. A new Kryptonian empire will rule the galaxy. The Coluans are helping me to accelerate this process."
"The Kryptonian race is all but extinct," Superwoman yelled at the screen. "Who are you building this empire for, Brainiac? I have already told you that neither my son nor I will ever work with you, so who do you think is going to benefit from this?"
"Everyone will benefit," Brainiac replied calmly. "The Kryptonian civilization will improve life for all sentients in the galaxy. Even on the outside chance that neither you nor your son can be convinced to see reason, Krypton can still live on, even if not biologically."
"I can see how well your 'improvements' have worked on Colu," the Martian said, sounding angry too.
"The Coluans are doing what they do best in the most efficient way possible," Brainiac replied, clearly not one for sarcasm. "Further improvement is hardly possible."
Gardner was fed up and blasted the screen apart with a green energy beam. "This was turning into a very boring conversation!"
Superwoman scowled at him for a moment, but then nodded. "You are right, arguing with it isn't getting us anywhere. We need to turn off this Sleepnet if we want to have any chance to stop Brainiac. Without its vast processing power, it will be reduced to utilizing whatever non-organic hardware it currently inhabits. Can your ring find some central processor or something?"
Gardner nodded, focusing on the job at hand. His power ring swept their immediate surroundings, following the wireless data streams of the forehead gizmos.
"There seems to be some kind of hub in that big tower three buildings down. All the data streams converge there."
"Let's go then!"
They only managed to get about halfway there before they were suddenly beset by an army of robots with laser guns intending to kill them.
Gardner was having the time of his life. There were many cool things about being a Green Lantern. Flying through space, seeing alien worlds, preserving law and order across the stars, all cool. But the coolest thing about having arguably the most powerful weapon in the universe on one's finger was those few times when one could really just cut loose with it and damn the torpedoes.
The green light responded to his thoughts, powered by his will, and green beams of energy sliced through the approaching army of robots like a hot knife through butter. No need for restraint, no need to hold back, just a huge number of targets and no reason to feel bad about annihilating them. Just lifeless tin cans that made cool noises when he blasted them apart. He was having a blast.
Still, maybe it was possible to have a little bit too much fun. The individual weapons carried by the robots weren't that powerful, but there were hundreds of them. Laser blasts pelted Gardner's force field like rain drops and he could feel the neural feedback from the impacts mounting. And while his ring was extremely powerful, it would eventually run out of gas.
"He'll whittle us down by sheer numbers," Superwoman yelled where she stood beside him, slicing robots apart with those red eye beams of hers. "We need to take out that tower!"
As much as he hated to admit it, blondie was right. So together the three of them shot into the air, heading towards the tower his ring had identified at top speed. The robots could fly, too, but not as quickly as the three of them. That soon ceased to matter, though, as some kind of flying drones rose above the skyline and started shooting at them as well.
"I give you this much, blondie," he yelled, "you really know how to show a guy a good time! Don't think I've ever been shot at this much before."
"I find that hard to believe," she yelled back.
"Cover me, I'll destroy the tower," the Martian said, his body becoming indistinct and nearly invisible. Okay, that was pretty cool, too.
"Consider yourself covered, Marvin!" A wide sweep of his ring took out a dozen drones between the Martian and the tower. Red beams took out more of them and for a moment the sky was almost clear. Then more drones arrived and more laser beams shot towards them.
"Controlling this many drones and robots all at once must take quite a bit of processing power," Superwoman said, evading most of the beams and shrugging off those few that hit her. "I hope taking out that tower will even the odds a little."
"There is probably more of these things scattered around the planet, though," Gardner replied, keeping a tight force field around his body. "I doubt your Brainy pal is stupid enough to put all his eggs in one basket."
Superwoman's answer was drowned out by the sound of a huge explosion and the tower in front of them began to topple. Gardner quickly scanned the surroundings, but there were no lifeforms to be found in the immediate destruction zone. The data streams he had picked up earlier began to sputter as the local Sleepnet started to collapse.
"J'Onn did it. The Coluans in this city should be waking up shortly."
"Great! One city down, only a few hundred more to go, I'd say?"
Thankfully his estimate had been way over the mark. Coluans were apparently big fans of big cities and living together as cramped as possible. There were roughly thirty huge population centers scattered across the planet, each housing almost a billion people, and it took them another forty hours of near-constant flying, fighting, and blasting to take out the remaining nodes of the Sleepnet. With every tower taken down, the performance of Brainiac's robots and drones noticeably decreased, making things easier. Still, it ended up being a whole lot of work.
Tiredly leaning against a wall, Gardner recharged his ring for the third time since arriving on the planet, wishing for a solid twelve hours of sleep. Preferably in the arms of a busty blonde that would express her eternal gratitude for his help once he had recovered his strength somewhat.
"Good work, Gardner," Superwoman said, walking past him towards the waiting Coluan delegation without sparing him another glance. Oh well, it looked like sleep would have to do for now. Blondie seemed to prefer the green-skinned to the green-clad. Maybe if she saw him in Blue Jeans?
"We thank you for your aid, Superwoman," one of the green men said, Gardner's ring translating his language into English for his ears. "We have swept our entire planetary computer system, but there is no trace of the Brainiac program to be found. We are doing a complete system reboot just to be sure, but it appears the malevolent software is gone."
"There were several off-planet transmissions before the Sleepnet collapsed," another greeny added. "Sadly the logs were purged, we do not know what data exactly was transmitted."
"Brainiac is nothing but code," Superwoman replied, looking peeved that the bad guy had apparently gotten away. "He probably copied himself to a backup site on another world. Along with everything he managed to copy from your servers and whatever he came up with on his own, using the processing power of your Sleepnet."
"The Collective has decided to permanently dismantle the Sleepnet." Was that the same green guy from before or another one? Man, they all looked alike to him, especially when his eyes seemed determined to close. "Clearly its benefits do not outweigh the inherent danger to our people."
There were more words, more expressions of gratitude, something about eternally being in their debt, it all blurred together in his tired mind. He barely managed to get back to his feet when Marvin and Blondie told him it was time to go. He sure hoped there were some bunk beds on that Javelin thing of theirs.
"This was too easy," Superwoman said.
He blinked, forcing himself awake. "Too easy? Blondie, I don't know what world you're coming from, but taking out roughly a million armed robots while they're shooting at you does not count as easy in my book!"
"She is right, Guy Gardner," Marvin interjected. "We have faced Brainiac before. He knows of Superwoman's and my abilities. He is also no doubt familiar with Green Lanterns. Yet his attacks on us were almost entirely ineffective. Only sheer numbers made this fight difficult."
"Whatever Brainiac's goals were here on Colu," Superwoman concluded, "he has either already accomplished them or they simply weren't important enough to waste any more effort here. This isn't over by a long shot."
Gardner sighed. "Well, let me know when there are more robots to smash, blondie. Right now, though, this guy here really needs some shut eye."
She smirked at him. "No rest for the wicked, Green Lantern. We have an appointment with your bosses on Oa, remember?"
Gardner just groaned. Maybe this job wasn't that cool after all.
The Brainiac master program analyzed the results of the Colu operation. It had been a relatively easy matter to infiltrate the Coluan Sleepnet. Despite their highly advanced technology, the Coluans had never been a particularly aggressive race. They had never encountered someone even remotely capable of hacking their systems and thus had not taken many precautions against it. Surely that would change now, but it was a small price to pay for the achieved results.
Images showing the Coluans express their gratitude to Kara-El and her comrades flashed across numerous screens. The subliminal programming he had written into the Sleepnet during his occupation of the planet ensured that their gratitude would translate into fierce loyalty towards Kara-El and Kryptonians in general.
Brainiac was a computer program and concepts such as irony or humor held no importance for it. Otherwise it might well have appreciated the fact that, by "liberating" Colu from the clutches of Brainiac, Kara-El had taken yet another step towards her intended role.
Earth and Colu were a solid beginning for the future Kryptonian Empire. More planets would soon follow and be united under the rule of the Last Daughter of Krypton (or her son if she should prove too difficult after all). It was just a matter of time.
Speaking of time, the Brainiac master program sent a transmission burst towards Earth. It was time to inquire about the status of its local assets.
"Project Cadmus, progress report!"
End Chapter 36
Author's Note: It's kind of fun to write things from Guy Gardner's perspective, I hope I managed to make him a somewhat more sympathetic character while still retaining his inherent jerk-ness. I had originally planned a longer chapter (or possibly multiple chapters) to deal with the liberation of Colu, but then remembered that Brainiac (at least my version of him) isn't a bad guy in the classical sense. So I hope that little twist there at the end made sense.
Up next: the planet Oa and a chat with the Guardians of the Universe. Also, more Guy.
