The amount of power being generated by the Black Hole Generator was steadily climbing. It served as a reminder that they hadn't stopped it yet.
Using the GPS signals in the League's comm links, he was only able to locate Superman, Diana, Green Lantern, Flash, Captain Atom, and the Titans. He didn't bother searching for J'onn since he knew exactly where he was. It was very discerning not to have the rest of the League.
Flash was at the generator. That at least gave him on-site intel and so far, there was confirmation of a forcefield, one the speedster couldn't break through. Superman and Diana were heading to the generator, though he wished the two were at the Thanagarian command ship. Lantern was there, along with Hawkgirl and a host of Tamaraneans. Captain Atom was on his way to the generator too, closer than the two Founders, so he might be of some assistance.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much else that could be done. The transporter was down again, sustaining some damage during the Thanagarian takeover. No doubt it was targeted so that the League couldn't use it to escape. There went their plan for quicker troop movement.
The doors to the Monitor Room opened then. "The Watchtower is officially pest-free," Green Arrow announced, Black Canary at his side. "How are things planet-side?"
"Aside from engaging the Thanagarian command ship, not much better," Batman reported. "The forcefield is still up."
"We're starting to cut it a little close," the archer mused.
"They'll get it down," Canary interjected. "What we need to think of now is how we're going to destroy that generator."
That was a good point. "Flash is on-scene; Superman, Wonder Woman, and Captain Atom are enroute. If we get the shield down, those three can do as much damage as they possibly can to it. Failing that, Atom can blow it to kingdom come."
"And Flash can get them out of there in the blink of an eye," Green Arrow added. "That solves that."
"That's assuming they don't get caught up in the fighting," Canary pointed out. "There are Thanagarian forces out there. I doubt they'll just let those four sit tight."
Another good point. "They'll be the first option," Batman decided. "As for a contingency, perhaps we can use one of the Tamaranean ships. Surely one of them has a plasma cannon strong enough to do some damage."
"We should ask that Carrot guy," Arrow suggested.
"Karras," the vigilante corrected him absently.
As if being summoned, Karras entered the Monitor Room, the doors opening and closing for him. "We have apprehended all of the Thanagarians!" he announced proudly.
"Told ya we got 'em all," the Emerald Archer said.
"Karras," Batman responded, looking towards the Tamaranean. "Do any of your ships have a weapon strong enough to destroy the Black Hole Generator?"
"With enough time, yes," he answered. "Nothing that will achieve success with one shot, I am afraid, but with enough time, it can be done."
That wasn't exactly what he wanted to hear. If they got the forcefield down with only seconds to spare, no amount of firepower the Tamaraneans had would matter. That option was a bust.
"Maybe we can drop something on it, like the Thanagarian command ship," Arrow then suggested. "A pile of scrap metal will make certain it can't be used immediately and then we can have our supermodel aliens use it for target practice."
It was a thought, but not entirely probable. "The command ship is currently putting distance between it and the generator," Batman said. "There's—"
"Another way you're being a buzzkill," Arrow interrupted. "But I get it. It's too bad you or I don't have an arrow or batarang big enough to hit it with."
"What about the Watchtower?" Canary then asked. "Does it have any weapons we can use?"
Batman began shaking his head before he froze. No, it didn't have weapons, but it did have size. In fact…
Fingers danced across keys as he began to type. It took a few seconds, but he got exactly what he wanted. "It doesn't have weapons," he answered the blonde woman, "but we can use it to destroy the generator."
"Use it how? You gonna fly this thing into it?" Arrow replied. He must have looked at the monitor then as a digital image appeared, one showing Earth and the placement of the Watchtower in space, along with a projected flight course that ended with the satellite landing at the approximate location of the Black Hold Generator. "Wait, seriously? You're going to drop the Watchtower on it?"
"It's the only play we have should Captain Atom be indisposed," Batman said. "We're running out of options and time as it is. It's either this, or we sit and watch as Earth is destroyed."
Shayera wasn't one to meekly enter a battle. She had learned a long time ago if one wasn't aggressive on the onset, you were setting yourself up for a very fast death. Strike first and strike fast, that was how you survived on the battlefield.
Leaping towards Kragger, she swung her mace at the oversized dick. He was ready for her, raising up his Nth metal axe and successfully blocking her strike. Her mace bounced off of the weapon, to which she quickly raised it above her head. Bringing the mace down to one side, she swung it from the opposite direction, only to be blocked again.
Over and over, she swung her mace until Kragger began to back away. He continued to hold his axe defensively, only using it to block her every swing.
After another block, Kragger suddenly parried her blow, swinging his axe blade right for her face. Instantly, she swung her mace, striking the axe and knocking it away, leaving the man wide open.
But before she could attack, Kragger's fist came flying in, slamming into the side of her face. Her head snapped to one side, causing her to stumble back a step. Keeping up his advantage, Kragger brought his extended arm back to his body and lunged forward, ramming his shoulder into her, sending the redhead several stumbling steps back.
It took a few moments, but Shayera regained her balance, immediately assuming a defensive stance, holding her mace in front of her mace low, pointing its spiked head towards her foe. Kragger just held his position, a smirk on his face. "Care for another round?" he gloated.
Shayera snarled before she threw herself towards Lt. Kiss-Ass. She leapt into the air, her mace held over her head. Once she was within striking distance, she swung it down, only for Kragger to block this blow with his axe, holding it high above his head.
Which is what she was expecting. Because she had leaned forward to swing her weapon, this allowed her to naturally draw her legs back. The moment she was blocked, she immediately swung a leg through the air, her foot arching upward until the toe of her boot connected with the underside of Kragger's chin. His head snapped back as he went stumbling back a step.
Extending her mace-wielding arm out to her side, she then swung it across her body, her timing perfect as Kragger began to lean his head back. Her mace slammed into the side of his face, the force of the blow sending him flying headfirst into the wall next to them.
Pressing her advantage, Shayera threw herself towards Kragger as he leaned against the wall, using his arms to brace himself. She had her mace held above her head as she soared through the air towards him.
Suddenly, Kragger leapt off the floor, his upper body still pressed against the wall. He lashed out with his legs, thrusting a foot out that rammed right into her abdomen. Instantly, Shayera came to a stop, her eyes widening as she felt the air in her lungs be forced out, leaving her breathless.
As the lieutenant brought his leg down, he then shoved himself off of the wall, lunging towards her stunned self. With one arm raised, bent at the elbow so that his forearm appeared to be guarding his face, the winged woman soon realized that was a misleading pose. As Kragger threw himself towards her, his elbow slammed into her face, knocking her backwards in the air.
Then came his next strike. Twisting his body, Kragger swung his axe at her, the blade racing right for her head, or maybe her chest, it was hard to tell which. She wasn't in much of a position to care, mustering enough strength from her breathless body to move her mace into the axe's path.
The two weapons clashed and the force of the collision overwhelmed the redhead. The next thing she knew, she was dropped to the floor, landing on it hard on her back. Gasping, she sucked in as much air as she could. Never once did she close her eyes.
This allowed her to see Kragger raising his axe above his head, grasping the handle with both hands. He let out a yell as he swung it down. Instinctively, she twisted to one side, causing the axe to strike the floor next to her rather than her face.
Immediately, she jerked her mace upward, ramming it into Kragger's gut. It wasn't a good, solid blow, just one with enough strength to make him grunt, but not much else. So she activated the electrical properties of the Nth metal and got a more desired reaction.
"Gyaahhh!" Kragger cried out as he jerked backwards, letting go of his axe as his hands shot to his stomach. Shayara took the opportunity to roll to one side until she was on her hands and knees, pushing herself up.
By then, Kragger was leaning back to stand up straight. More importantly, he was weaponless. "Haaaaaaa!" Shayera roared as she charged, swinging her electrified mace at him.
Only for Kragger to shoot his arms up. In an instant, he used his arm to block her blow, his forearm colliding with the shaft of the mace, stopping it from coming closer to him. His other arm went into action, swinging a punch that slammed into the side of her head, causing her to jerk to one side. Kragger leaned with his extended arm, allowing his blocking arm to push her mace further away. With his extended arm, he brought towards his body, his fist hovering by his ear, elbow jutting away from his face. He then lunged towards her, ramming the elbow into her face.
Shayera went stumbling back until the back of her foot struck something. Completely losing her balance, she went tumbling to the floor, landing on her back once more. Lying there as she winced, she slowly pushed herself up and spotted the handle of the Nth metal axe nearby; clearly, she had tripped over it.
"You fight exactly as I imagined you would," Kragger suddenly said, causing her to redirect her attention to him. "How refreshing to know I was right."
"And you fight like I always thought you would," Shayera replied as she began climbing back onto her feet. "Like a Gordanian worm."
"Insults at this time? How predictable," Lt. Kiss-Ass mocked. "You're going to have to do a lot better than that."
"Then how about this!"
The next thing Shayera knew, a green boxing glove construct slammed into the side of Kragger's head, knocking him clear off of his feet as he went falling to the floor. Jerking her head to follow the green beam that connected to the construct, she saw John standing in the middle of a crowd of unconscious guards, the same ones that had accompanied Kragger when he surrounded the League. The Green Lantern must have knocked them out while she had been focused on Kragger.
Never had she been so happy to see him.
Flash hadn't just begun to pant yet, but he was starting to breathe hard. Naturally, the forcefield was still there, blocking him, mocking him…
His lower right arm vibrated violently before he swiftly decked the unyielding barrier. His fist remained against the invisible wall, making absolutely no headway. Damn, for a second…but that wasn't the hardest punch he could. There was one…and he might have to pull that out…and there it was, the pain. Had he broken something this time?
The speedster pulled his hand back, fingers curled and hand trembling. Yep, yep, something fractured. Give it a few seconds, a minute at most, and he'd be golden again.
His eyes glanced up and found that white beam coming out from the top of the Black Hole Generator was still growing. Slowly, yes, but still growing. That made every single second too important to waste, even for healing.
"Come on," he growled at his hand. "Come on, come on, we don't have time for this."
"You're not having any luck?" a voice called out, distracting Flash from his poor excuse for a limb to find—
"Hey, Captain Atom!" Boy, did his mood perk up. "Long time, no see! Where've you been?"
The silver-colored man gave a short and sweet answer. "Busy."
Someone was trying to copy Batman in the short answers department. Well, it's not like they had time for the long version, so he'd let this one pass. "I think everyone's been. So these Thanagarians have this forcefield all around their doomsday machine; you know, the one we helped build? I can't get through it and I'm running out of ideas. You have any? Because that would be great."
Atom grunted and looked to the shield. "Typical." Hovering in the air, the former—was he former?—army man moved closer to the shield and placed a palm against it. After a second of what looked like concentration to the speedster, Atom said, "That's pure energy. Matter doesn't stand a chance against getting through."
"So…?" Flash prompted. He glanced up, seeing a few more missiles striking against the forcefield. Sure, the actual missile wasn't getting through, but those explosions, that was energy, right? "The army's been blowing up whatever they can and haven't gotten through yet."
Captain Atom glanced up. "Those are your standard incendiary devices. They're for taking down our aircraft. It doesn't take too much to do that. To get through this, we need something stronger."
"And you got something stronger?" The speedster was really hopeful that his fellow League did.
Atom gave a nod. "I do. Nuclear energy."
Instantly there were, like, a ton of alarms going off in his head. Nuclear?! Oh right, Captain Atom's powers were based on nuclear energy. So far, he hadn't seen any long-lasting effects on your regular people and all, but if this shield was so tough, how much nuclear energy was going to be needed to get through?
"Isn't that going to turn this place into a nuclear wasteland? Wouldn't that cause, like, a huge ton of radiation that kills people?" he exclaimed.
Captain Atom stared straight ahead at the forcefield, not even looking down at the speedster. "I have enough control I can mitigate that, but this…this is a place most people don't go to. It's isolated, unpopulated. I'm willing to take that risk. If it's between no Earth, or only a small part of it forever uninhabited, I'll take the second option. At least the rest of the planet will still be here."
It was cold, hard logic, and it flooded through the easily excited hero's body. As much as he wanted to protest, he knew the other man had a good point. A very good point. This spot was chosen because it was isolated and it was unlikely for people to stroll through, Captain Boomerang notwithstanding. It was out of the way, and who would want to come out here while in their sane mind?
But this was still a part of the planet. Just because humans couldn't figure out what to do with it didn't mean it was worthless. Even in a desert, life found a way, you know? And there could…be stuff under it. Valuable stuff. And…and…and maybe one day humans could figure out what to do with deserts, but not if there were unlivable wastelands where just standing in it could kill you.
Yet, what choices did they have? He could be a bleeding heart, Flash admitted it. A day where everyone could go home was a great one. But not everyone could, for countless reasons.
It was like that damn trolley problem and no matter what you did with the switch, someone was going to be hurt.
"Do it."
It was the calmest he had ever been, and it spooked him internally.
"Right." Captain Atom backed away slightly while holding his hands close to one another. Bright light shines around his hands and through the fingers, growing stronger in its intensity. Thrusting both of his arms forward, the Captain fired a blast of what Flash assumed to be concentrated nuclear energy. It had him moving a…safe distance away, if you know what he meant.
There was so much rippling running through the shield, more than the speedster had ever made, and for a moment, Flash thought the silver man would break through. His hope was strong enough that his body was bracing itself to go at close to full speed to get in there and do something. Then, Atom's blasts weakened and stopped and the forcefield—that forcefield—was still there, unbroken.
Mocking the both of them.
"Please tell me you were only holding back on that one!" he called up, ever an optimist even in the face of annihilation. It was one of his many talents.
Shoulders rising and lowering, as if taking in deep breaths, Captain Atom finally answered, "I was. I was hoping not to go…full nuclear, I guess you could say. I wanted to test it…and its lot stronger than I thought it would be. If I go all out, well…"
The speedster's eyes looked further up, the ever-widening column of light from atop the generator. Precious seconds ticking by…
Oh, he really didn't want to do this. Where was…everybody else when you needed them?
"Go all out, pal. We're not going to get a second chance," he said, dying a little…no, a lot, on the inside.
Atom looked over his shoulder. He didn't say anything, as a mercy, and then he gave a slow nod.
This was officially the nuclear option, and to think it was him, the Flash, the fastest man in the world, giving the order.
Everything truly was upside down and topsy turvy, wasn't it?
This wasn't good.
The preparations for re-entry went swimmingly. All the relevant programs were activated and ready. The Tamaraneans along with Green Arrow and Black Canary were rounding up the captured Thanagarians and loading them onto the Tamaranian ships. When the Watchtower would collide with the Black Hold Generator, everything was going to be destroyed.
There was just one small problem.
The autopilot was inoperable.
From what Batman could figure out, it had been damaged during the fight between J'onn and the other Founders. It hadn't been fixed because there had been more important systems that needed to be checked or reinforced—the life support systems for instance.
This wasn't good at all.
Batman tried everything he could to fix it, hoping it was a software problem versus a hardware one. If it was software, he could create a program to go around the problematic areas. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a hardware issue, one that would take too much time to fix, especially on the time crunch they were on.
What the hell were they going to do?
There was always the manual override. Someone could pilot the Watchtower through re-entry. Naturally, there were a couple issues with this option: one, there weren't many people around who knew how to pilot the satellite; and two, whoever the pilot was would surely die on impact. Asking someone to sacrifice themselves was a tall order.
Another possibility was maybe using the Tamaranean ships to guide it in, but there were a limited number of ships and the Watchtower dwarfed them all considerably. There was no telling if they could get the satellite to go where they wanted it to go. The same issue was present for shooting the Watchtower down as well.
So yeah, there weren't a lot of solutions to this.
With a sigh, Batman removed himself from the Monitor Room. First thing was first, he needed to see the progress on the removal of all personnel from the Watchtower. There was no point in even starting anything if they weren't remotely close to finishing that.
He moved through the hallways silently, seeing signs of the recent battles that had taken place on the satellite. There were scorch marks and cracked walls, discarded weapons littering the floor. Blood stained each surface, a reminder that not everyone had survived the fighting.
Eventually, he reached the hangar, finding Green Arrow and Black Canary watching the proceedings. The Tamaraneans were boarding their ships, along with their Thanagarian captives. The former looked pleased with themselves as they conducted their tasks, the latter marred with sour expressions. Approaching the heroes, Batman asked, "How are things here?"
"Almost done," Arrow answered him as he turned around to face him, the same for Canary. "I have to say, this is probably the emptiest the Watchtower has been in a long while."
"Good." Batman looked towards the Tamaraneans, spotting Karras heading for them. "That solves one problem."
"What now?" Black Canary questioned. "Don't tell me reinforcements are on the way."
The dark-clad vigilante shook his head. "Nothing like that. There are some programming issues with the autopilot that I don't have enough time to fix."
The blond couple glanced to each other. Then, "Is it anything we can fix?" Arrow asked.
He shook his head. "Not in time to stop the generator."
"Then what are we supposed to do? Is this plan of ours really—"
The entire time they were talking, Batman had allowed his cape to cover his body, hiding him from view. This allowed him to pull out a couple pellets from his belt. When he was ready, he rolled his shoulders, forcing his cape to open. He held a pellet in each hand and squeezed as tightly as he could until he felt them crack against his palm. He then shot out each hand, opening them in front of each blond hero's face.
The gas from the cracked pellets hit them and they jerked back from surprise. However, this move made them take deep breaths, sucking the gas into their lungs. Immediately, they began coughing, trying to get the gas out, but it was all for naught. Arrow and Canary dropped to their knees before falling over, lying on the floor limply.
That was two obstacles dealt with.
By then, Karras had stopped, staring with wide eyes at them. "Will you board these two on your ship?" Batman asked the Tamaranean, his tone as casual as if he were asking about the weather.
"If you explain yourself, I will," he answered slowly.
"There's only one way to accomplish our mission of destroying the Black Hole Generator with the Watchtower and that's for me to pilot it in. If I told them that, they would try to stop me."
Karras slowly nodded. "Are you certain this is the only way?"
Unfortunately. "Yes. There is an escape pod on the Watchtower and I plan to use it once I have confirmation. Until then, we can't risk any interference."
"I…believe I understand," Karras said after a moment. "I will see to it that your friends are taken care of personally."
"Thank you." Batman watched long enough for Karras to move up to the unconscious Green Arrow and Black Canary, hoisting the former over one of his shoulders, and tucking the latter beneath the other arm, pressing her into his side. He gave one final nod to the vigilante before he began heading back to his ship.
There had been two qualifiers for piloting the Watchtower: someone that knew how to fly it, which he did; and someone that would be willing to give their life. Batman never asked something out of someone unless he was willing to do the same. No way was he going to ask someone else to do this.
Batman watched until all three of his allies disappeared into a ship, then turned to head back to the Monitor Room. There was a little more prep needed, but it wouldn't take all that long. Once this started, there was only one way it was going to end.