22nd August
16:18 GMT
"Ragnar, good to see you with us.
" I form cold gun constructs and transmit my targeting solutions to Guy.
"You're on rearguard duty. Keep moving downwards at best speed, and otherwise do your best to kill anyone following us.
"
His head appears over my second ring, flickering and glitching as its ancient and primitive systems try to cope with his ersatz ring's transmissions.
"This feels like fleeing."
"It may feel like fleeing but it's actually a tactical manoeuvre which brings us closer to our objective. Feel free to turn and face Lantern Duran once we're out over the Ash Plains.
"
Okay, the tunnel going downwards is sixty metres in diameter. It probably used to be used for spacecraft or missiles, but from the cargo lifts built into the sides I'm going to assume that it is now used mostly for transporting goods, supplies and personnel. Should I be surprised that the Qwardians don't have a teleportation system, or would that just be because if they can teleport from one point to another any potential attacker would have the same ability? This way, anyone who wants to get in has to either blast their way through miles of rock or breach a heavily fortified location.
I
spin across the passageway as the first blasts from the automated defences fire, fat orange/yellow
Kirby Dot impregnated beams of
something firing up at me and mine. Shots are… Relative velocity… About half a second long, the guns' capacitors taking an appreciable amount of time to charge up between shots. I see Guy firing bolts of green energy at them… Still bolts, but at least he's not projecting them directly from his ring anymore. The guns have energy shielding… What kind, I wonder? I aim my cold guns at the ones he's already weakened and fire, even as I generate railguns to replace-.
Oh my goodness me, Guy just made a railgun. For a fraction of a second I'm so flabbergasted that I just blink. Yes, I gave him some ammunition for Christmas but I never actually thought that he'd use it in
combat. Okay. I fire at the
other turrets, crumbler rounds striking and disintegrating the… Plasma shields. Those we can deal with. The armoured cowling is made of the same stuff as the Thunderers' shields but rings are nothing if not precise instruments and the guns are fixed. Hitting the lightly armoured areas is no problem.
Flying downwards
fast like this is actually quite an odd experience. I'm blasting towards a ground I can't see… Can't even
detect, really. I mean, I got a reasonable map of the place from Guy so I know
roughly how far down we're going but I'm
very glad that my ring is making it so that my inner ear thinks I'm flying level-.
Dull green beams flash past me and score the sides of the tunnel.
"Ragnar, have-?
"
"I checked the angle. I knew he would miss."
"If you're hard pressed, I can fire-.
"
"No! I have this!"
On his head be it. Duran doesn't appear able to fly faster than us, so the melee weapons he and Ragnar both favour are off the table. Energy
bolt exchanges are
largely ineffectual,
with both of them able to
absorb shots
better than
they can land them. There isn't.. really an easy way for me to assist Ragnar. Duran appears to have decided that the best approach is to keep Ragnar between him and us, and neither of them are dodging that much. I can't get a clear shot with a crumbler-.
Another volley from the tunnel guns fires upwards. One gets a glancing hit on my construct armour, abrading it but otherwise causing no damage. Guy isn't using armour, he's just maintaining an armoured plate in front of him and letting it fail as he takes hits. It's probably a
lot easier for a Green Lantern to do it that way than making conventional armour. We both target the new guns and open fire, blowing them apart in a hail of railgun rounds, energy pulses and cold beams. The wrecked guns from our initial exchange flash past me-.
The guns further down open fire, this time with light speed weapons. I increase the reflectivity of my construct armour in response, causing the lasers to splash off harmlessly. A pink-
agh-.
Ugh. I shove off the wall, recreate my engine constructs and resume my full throttle downwards blast. Okay, quantum detonators
aren't affected by shininess. I send Guy a
revised targeting schedule at the exact same moment I receive
his. I send an acknowledgement, then start firing. Actually, I should probably start firing something at the armoured door at the bottom of the shaft. Or at least at the walls near the end, because we're probably going to either come out into a fortified building in a Qwardian city or a fortress in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, let's get-.
My shots pass harmlessly through the weapon hardpoints as they shift out of phase.
Aaaaahhhh… That's a
problem.
"Guy, phasing turrets. Don't have any Nth Metal on you, do you?
"
"Actually, no."
Okay… Okay… I've got phasic rounds. It's just a matter of matching phase, and there are only a few dozen that are usable with the energy requirements that other frequencies have. Um, select a target, set the round to a frequency at random, fire-.
Below me, Guy blasts a chunk out of the tunnel wall next to a phased turret, causing the rock and metal to explode outwards and send the turret tumbling downwards.
…
Okay, brute force and ignorance it is then.
I dismiss my existing weapon constructs and generate two large railguns, load them with crumbler rounds and
fire.
"Ragnar, if you get the chance, try to provoke Lantern Duran into throwing a qwa-bolt directly down towards the bottom of the shaft.
"
"He is not some puppet I can play at your convenience!"
I fire
again, smashing another pair to guns off their mounts.
"Try taunting him.
"
"I am taunting him!"
"Try taunting him
more.
" Another pair of shots, but this time the lasers switch their attention from me to strike at my rounds. The simple kinetic strike that results when the crumbler mechanism is destroyed does nothing like enough damage to prevent the gun from-.
A
raugh!
Constructs gone, I'm hurtling downwards… Slower than I was a moment ago. Ah, let's see, construct armour
gone, weapons
gone, armour…
Somewhat battered but actually doing-.
Lasers pierce my right arm, chest and left leg, and-. Okay, the ring prevents me from feeling
pain exactly but it's still bloody disconcerting. I re-establish my construct armour-. No,
thicken it, I'm not going to have to fight anything particularly manoeuvrable in it. Good, thrusters back on and try catching up with Guy-.
"Guy, are you alright?
"
"Been better. Still… Flyin'."
"Okay, we should only have a minute until we're inside Qward and can try breaking out. Did you ever get around to adding a kinetic barrier to your costume?
"
"Yeah? Why?"
"Because I'm not
totally sure where the bottom is, and I want to make sure that we'll both survive if we fly into it at full force.
"
"…good thinkin' thereooooh crap."
"What?
"
A qwa-bolt burns through the air to my right.
"We got incomin'."
