Tales of the Green Lantern Corps: Noleon Fae: Slinger, Chapter 2: Space Cowboy

by CSyphrett

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Petty Officer Mar Tyr, a Korugarian, was going through the motions of a duty watch. No one had found the pirate base, and threats were not close according to his screens. So Tyr jumped to his feet when a coated figure wearing the hated Green Lantern symbol appeared out of thin air.

Pulling the heavy blaster he had strapped to his leg, Tyr began shooting. He wasn’t going back to jail easily. The yellow bolts ripped through the Green Lantern and struck several of Tyr’s fellow pirates and equipment.

Tyr’s comrades, thinking he had lost his mind, returned fire. The Korugarian’s body danced some before dropping to the floor.

“What the Lokir was that about?” said one of the crewman as he kicked the heavy blaster away from the lifeless body.

***

Noleon Fae lined the bridge crew up in an invisible crosshair. He laughed as he set loose a pack of animals that resembled canines crossed with reptiles. The pirates began to spray the room, not watching where they aimed as long as they hit the sudden threat.

Equipment exploded in bursts of flame. Some of the men were thrown across the room by the slobbering beasts, while some were shot in the back. A few of the beasts were cut apart by yellow beams. Chaos reigned as the pirates scrambled to regroup.

Fae located the power room, satisfied that the bridge was wrecked. Locating the generators for the satellite, he turned the air around the machinery into super-heated plasma. The whole section of the room melted away instantly. Emergency lighting lit up at once.

“Abandon ship,” announced a PA. “All crews report to your ships and lift. A Green Lantern is somewhere on board.”

The humanoids ran from the damaged room as Fae frowned. Should have made sure about the PA, he decided.

Locating the hangar, he flew down to it and saw that three of the ships either hadn’t waited or didn’t need crews as they were battling to clear the exit runway. The next one in line was closing its hatches. The last two were just firing up their engines.

The Green Lantern directed a repulsing wave of antigravity against the third ship not in flight as he flew across the hangar. The spacecraft sailed into its two companions like a hungry sea creature, smashing them apart with its mass. The other three ships cleared the runway and veered away in different directions.

Fae sent out three separate glowing green insects, directing one to each of the ships. As long as nothing yellow was used to block their signal, he would be able to find the craft later. First he had to get his catch to the authorities on a civilized world somewhere for their day in court. Then he could get back to dealing with the rest.

The Green Lantern flew behind the satellite, finding that most of the thing was metallic. He directed two huge Krayt dragons to push the satellite forward into the nebula with directed magnetism.

He tried to build up a massive amount of speed to carry the thing through the cloud and out through the other side. From there, a simple amount of coasting should take the craft toward a planet that had lost ships and had laws against piracy.

***

Noleon Fae turned his catch over to the planetary authorities. Nebula Jav Gozar was not among the prisoners. As Fae concentrated on his three bugs, two answered immediately, while the third was silent.

Fae decided to go after the two he knew about and deal with the last one when he could. He had no doubt that the spacecraft was hidden by something yellow. That would be the one Gozar was on.

Summoning his winged steed, the Green Lantern headed after the closer ship. He expected to bag the wily pirates before the day was out.

Fae shot after his first quarry easily. He had to dodge some missile and beam fire before shearing the exposed gray engine section from the rest of the sleek body.

He used a tentacle beast to drag the crippled ship back to where the rest had been imprisoned for a trial. He captured the second ship in much the same way.

Gozar wasn’t commanding either craft. Nor did the insect that Fae had planted send a signal. The Green Lantern was at a loss on how to proceed.

Finally, he decided to wait. Eventually Gozar would surface to rob someone else.

Noleon Fae had thought for some hours before hatching a scheme to find Nebula Jav Gozar. He charged his power ring and headed back to the nebula the pirates used.

A simple scenting gave him the paths of the three ships as they fled the nebula. His ring matched the profile of the ship to the trail so that he could eliminate the paths of the two he had already captured.

He set out on the trail left by his bug as it passed through space. Yellow would block the signal and prevent detection, but it would not stop a ringed analysis of an energy trail.

The Green Lantern followed the marker to a yellow desert planet. He spotted where the ship had touched the atmosphere, and then the path was gone without any traces.

Fae hovered in orbit, balked by the high winds buffeting the planet. As long as Gozar was buried by the sand, he was undetectable by a power ring scan. Fae wondered what else he could bring to bear.

Aiming his ring at the planet after long moments of consideration, he willed vast sea anemones into existence around the planet. Their delicate stalks sent wave after wave of sonar to the surface of the planet.

Finally, one had a positive lock on something metallic. Fae held his net in place as he located the general area where he was getting the positive reading.

Descending to the surface, he made himself invisible to detection and solidified the air around him to form a shield from the grit thrown by the swirling wind.

The Green Lantern caused a creature resembling a natural ramjet to appear and hover over where his sonar had reacted. The creature sucked in water at one end and expelled it from the other. In this case, Fae caused it to suck in air and magnify the wind against the sandy desert.

A mountain of material was swept aside to reveal the craft hiding there. Fae kept his invisibility working as he thought about how he could crack the yellow ship.

The Flarain’s musings were cut short by a spray of plasma as the ship cold-jumped to escape velocity. He reeled hard into the ground, almost knocked out by the contact with the yellow sand.

Fae held on to his awareness with the will that had made him a successful Green Lantern. He woke himself up, jetting into the atmosphere after his prey.

A moment later, Fae closed with the vessel. He entered one of three exhaust tube for the engine, forcing his way with his ring. Luckily, the ship’s plume was a narrow blue, and the inside of the nozzle was a scorched black.

Fae caused a large puffer fish to expand through the walls of the exhaust tube. The thrust of the craft was dispersed, causing the ship to slowly turn.

Given time, Nebula Jav Gozar could have corrected for the uneven thrust given by his remaining two engines. Fae didn’t give him that time.

The Green Lantern emerged from the exhaust tube, changing the puffer to a low-slung bovine with massive horns. With a small application of willpower, he caused the yak-like creature to slam the exposed darker metal of the pirate craft to knock into the yellow sand of the planet below.

Noleon Fae smiled. It had been a long chase, but finally he was within grasping distance of his quarry. He flew down gently as humanoids fled from the crippled ship. His ring told him that Gozar was not among those running away. He would deal with them later. The captain was all he wanted. The rest were just a bonus for his persistence.

Fae descended the entrance ladder easily, affixing a green creature much like a star-shaped flower to his lapel. He found Nebula Jav Gozar on the bridge of his broken starcraft. The thin humanoid sat in the huge captain’s chair, his long face frowning.

“What do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” the pirate said, his long fingers steepling over his spindly chest.

“I have come to return you to Alvarsia to serve out the sentence handed down for your crimes,” Fae said, his tail twitching slightly.

“How do you propose to do that?” asked Gozar. “I cannot be moved from my chair, especially not by the likes of you.”

“We’ll see about that,” Fae said, grimly pointing his ring at the other humanoid.

Mental force beat against Noleon Fae’s mind as he tried to create shackles for Gozar. He flew across the room, smashing through a control console.

“Where is your vaunted will now?” Gozar asked. As the pirate waved the fingers of one hand, the Green Lantern found himself thrown into a lighting bar. He barely kept a shield up from the terrific impact.

“It is right here,” Fae said, exerting his will into the star on his lapel. A roar of light and sound escaped the thing in a directed pulse. The chaotic disruption blinded and deafened Gozar.

Fae slammed the captain through the back of his chair with a six-legged dragon. The pirate lay as if he were dead. Fae wished that he was, but knew that a prison awaited his foe.

***

Noleon Fae stood in the small office he had built below his home. A board was on the wall, containing hundreds of notices.

The Green Lantern searched for one particular notice with his three-fingered hand. When he found it, he pulled it off the board and incinerated it with green flame. Nebula Jav Gozar was no longer at large.

The End

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