CXLIX
Darkseid vs. The Justice League
Part Six: Oa's Final Stand
Ganthet the Guardian stood fast by one of the last Green Lanterns remaining in existence, the young Earth-woman called Barbara Gordon, with both of them now shocked into silence…
The green shield that they had been vigilantly maintaining to protect the group of heroes below from the thousands of Manhunter beams bombarding them from above had disappeared! Reaching out with his will, Ganthet could feel that all the emerald energy within Barbara's Ring of Power had been suddenly drained. He realized that Darkseid had simply pushed the energy out of her Ring by nothing more than his pure will…
But of course he had!
For centuries, the Guardians and their Green Lanterns had manifested this magical energy as an extension of their own will… and the Manhunters above were nothing more than floating power batteries attuned to Darkseid's thoughts. Energy to move from one source to another. But did that mean…? Could he?!
As emerald beams rained down from the sky above, Ganthet used his own innate power to teleport far into the sky beyond… farther than even the attacking Manhunters. If Darkseid were able to manipulate the energy of a Green Lantern's ring, could Ganthet also manipulate the energy of the Manhunters batteries?
For the sake of Life, he had to try!
Sending out a psychic distress call across the Universe to all remaining Guardians for immediate assistance, Ganthet was prepared to make their last stand alone. Somehow, in his ancient Maltusian heart, Ganthet knew that if foul Darkseid was victorious on this night, the Universe itself would collapse before the Tyrant.
The eternal legacy of the Green Lantern Corps would be forged this very night - for better of for worse. Let history remember that one Guardian was willing to die for its sake!
Ganthet was pleasantly surprised when a few of the other Guardians began popping into the space beside him, Guardians who had miraculously survived Darkseid's onslaught upon their Council… And then suddenly a dozen more joined. Within seconds, there were at least thirty of them!
Like the untreatable wound of being stabbed in the back, Darkseid had reminded all of them that Oans still remained within the grasp of fragile mortality. The torn-asunder bodies of so many of their compatriots still replayed in their grieving minds, murdered by Darkseid's callous Manhunters… They had been dragged in the darkness from their Ivory Tower to the Battlefield below.
So be it. They would remind the arrogant Tyrant that the Guardians of Oa valued nothing more highly than their sacred cause. They were the first protectors of the Universe. And they would be the last. They fought evil in all its forms and had done so since the dawn of time, before the New Gods even had ancestors.
And the Guardians of Oa did not require a Ring to be powerful.
Forming a mental link with the other Guardians, Ganthet sent his consciousness along a thin green ray out into the circuitry of the nearest Manhunter, finding a maze of technology superior to the ancient machines doomed Maltus had constructed so long ago.
But it was still familiar.
Sharing the revealed inner workings of these Manhunters mentally with all the Guardians hovering by his side, Ganthet had little doubt that these machines were not sentient. By some dark advance of technology, they were attuned to Darkseid's mind and desires, an extension of his own tyrannical will. Given enough time, the Guardians may have been able to break even that command structure, to turn these machines against their master…
But tonight was measured in seconds.
As the microscopic, all-seeing beam slid through the inner workings of this Manhunter, Ganthet quickly found what he was looking for…. its internal power battery and controls. And Darkseid had been correct, energy could flow both ways… in and out. These Manhunters were constructed with the ability to do so.
Ganthet willed the contained emerald energy to be pulled from this Manhunter's battery and into Barbara Gordon's Ring – then smiled as he watched the affected Machine begin to tumble to the Earth below. Did Darkseid not comprehend that the Guardians had bent this green energy to their immortal will since the last days of Maltus? Locking a power battery into a murderous machine would not stop the Guardians from reducing them into lifeless toys.
His fellow Guardians surrounded Ganthet and reached out their own wills to the dozens of Manhunters in the atmosphere below, reclaiming the power Darkseid had stolen – filling Barbara's Ring until it was brimming at capacity. Within brief seconds, hundreds of Manhunters suddenly fell from the sky like dying stars. And then they brought the emerald energy to themselves - this was their fight after all.
As the cold machines of Darkseid now turned their weapons upon the Guardians, Ganthet knew that they had finally attracted the attention of the vicious God below. Placing a barrier around his fellow Guardians as a shield, each of the Oans continued to leech power from their attackers, adding it to their new defences. It was as though a bright green star of power were being born in the heavens above, its unyielding gravity pulling emerald energy from the hapless Manhunters into the heart of the star, made of thirty-six Guardians.
It was then that Ganthet saw a beam of pure light suddenly blaze across blanching space and connect to the Earth below. The Oan marvelled at his second witnessing of Tachyon energy… a miracle that even the Guardians themselves had not yet mastered - and it had now been deployed twice within moments! Truly they had underestimated the Earth and its people… to have developed such powerful energy technology that actually travelled back in time!
But perhaps even more so, Ganthet had also underestimated Bruce Wayne, the mortal who had fired the weapon... The same mortal man who lay far below - crushed by the power of dozens of Manhunter beams to within an inch of life – the man who had somehow found the strength to fight back against his dark oppressor.
Could the Guardians do any less?!
Emerald beams now erupted from the small green star of Guardians, rays of deadly green light ruthlessly melting Darkseid's cold machines of death. They were reclaiming the power that had been their own, blazing in jade splendour, burning away the God's evil. There would be no more hiding for the Guardians of Oa.
The beams of dull white which broke through their defences took them surprise.
Some surrounding Manhunters had re-energized themselves with the power from the criminals of Oa, the power source the Council had been tricked into procuring by the manipulative schemes of Darkseid. That new power was something they were unfamiliar with, something unrefined and base… which put the cruel Manhunters back on an even footing.
Thirty-six Guardians against a mechanical army of almost one million.
The war had begun in earnest.
Author's Note:
Now we know how that miracle happened that allowed Bruce to activate the LexCorp Tachyon Cannon Number One. But was our hero able to activate it in time?!...