#3 - INSURRECTION

By Dale Glaser

A clanging alarm bell droned mindlessly in the evening air, disturbing the silence of Keystone City.

The noise originated inside a jewelry store which was well-maintained except that it was currently missing its front door, sheared from its hinged by an act of brute strength and tossed into the street. On either side of the store were buildings in greater disrepair, windows boarded up and dark, neglected paint peeling from brick. The contrast was typical of most major cities fifteen years after the planet Earth had been subjugated by the Green Lantern Army. In order to placate the wealthiest members of society, the Green Lanterns preserved most of the harmless apparatus of their lifestyle: designer boutiques, fine dining restaurants, sports car dealerships, and jewelry stores were protected and allowed to prosper.

Those at the less affluent end of the spectrum were left to fend for themselves. If a factory was closed down by the Green Lanterns because it was suspected of manufacturing weapons, and one thousand workers lost their jobs, then one thousand families became more destitute. If a man was killed by a Green Lantern for being caught on the streets after curfew, leaving a wife and child with no means of support, then the wife and child would abandon their home and seek shelter elsewhere. Between the steady attrition of hunger and disease and other ills of poverty, and the constant threat of merciless Green Lantern patrols, the utter emptiness of Keystone City's streets as the sun went down was unremarkable; the population was dwindling and terrified.

The individual who had forcibly entered Gardner Jewelers was not a native of Keystone City, and had anyone witnessed his emergence from the store that fact would have been obvious. The looter was not a man at all, but a towering gorilla, easily over eight feet tall and one thousand pounds. The gorilla began to lope down the street, one massive hand tightly clenched around his spoils.

Before the giant ape had reached the end of the block, a glowing emerald wall of thorny vines erupted in his path. The gorilla turned around with a savage snarl and looked up.

Two Green Lanterns floated in the air, haloed in verdant energy. On the left was an elfin female with a brassy complexion and pointed ears, her hair composed of long purple plant fronds. On the right was an obese male with lime-green skin, triple-chinned and completely bald but wearing a white headband with a red gem.

"The beast seems frightened, Hyathis," the corpulent Green Lantern of Zarox-13 observed.

"That is hardly surprising, Garguax," the Green Lantern of Alstair replied in her lilting voice. "I wonder how it escaped its cage?"

"I am no caged beast!" the gorilla retorted angrily. "And it is not fear you provoke in me, but wrath! I have traveled halfway around the world from Gorilla City to find the Heart of Omuli, which was stolen from Africa by humans nearly two centuries ago, despite their utter ignorance to its power!" The gorilla brandished a large, multicolored stone. "I will brook no delay in returning it to the glory that awaits ..."

The gorilla was muzzled into silence as one of the spiked vines projected from Hyathis's power ring wrapped itself around his mouth, while several others bound his body. The gorilla struggled against the vegetative energy projections for a moment, then furrowed his brow and unleashed a torrent of psionic force at the Green Lantern of Alstair. She stiffened in mid-air, and her luminous vines began to dissipate.

Garguax raised his own pudgy ringhand and unleashed a solid-light homunculus. The energy projection had a smooth, almost plasticine body, with a hatchet face, a slender torso and long, serpentine arms. The lower half of the body tapered backwards in a ghostlike trail to the power ring.

The gorilla backhanded the encroaching green wraith, unimpressed. "Your physical attacks make scant impression on a master of mental disciplines," the gorilla growled.

"And did you think the Guardians of the Universe would be so foolish as not to include mentalists of their own amongst the ranks of the Green Lantern Army?" Hyathis asked, recovered from the gorilla's earlier assault. She narrowed her eyes and fired a telepathic bolt at the ape, who immediately slumped forward onto the pavement.

"Good show, my dear Hyathis," Garguax said. He willed a green energy sarcophagus around the unconscious gorilla's form, while the Green Lantern of Alstair projected a grasping tree limb to retrieve the Heart of Omuli. The two aliens then flew off.

Appa Ali Apsa stood in silent contemplation in one of the uppermost rooms in the Central Battery Citadel.

Word had come from Earth, word which caused the ancient Guardian to wonder if the planet would become the first to retain its classification as a gamma-level world even after it had been subjugated for more than fifty years. Another sentient race had been discovered, a pocket civilization located near the planetary equator, this one comprised of gorillas possessing artificially evolved intellects. When that information had originally reached Appa Ali Apsa, he had given orders for the Green Lanterns occupying Earth to reconnoiter every corner of the globe, to discover if any other races existed alongside humanity.

The final report, the word which had most recently been transmitted to Oa, was disheartening. Several hidden civilizations had been found in addition to Gorilla City. Feithera, homeland of an avian species, Poseidonis and Tritonis, beneath the surface of the ocean, and the kingdom of Morlaidh. Other secret societies were rumored to exist, from an island populated exclusively by females, to an empire of those who pretended to understand the energies of wild magic, but no Green Lantern had been able to confirm their location.

"Kalanor was not this difficult to impose order upon ..." the Guardian said to himself with a quiet, smoldering indignation. He stared at the luminous green gno-screen before him, his dark eyes occasionally flicking from the scrolling symbols to the stars visible through the clear wall just beyond it.

Appa Ali Apsa made up his mind, and began to formulate his next missive to the Green Lantern troops on Earth. He would order detachments to invade and impose universal order on the various hidden civilizations, to expose to the emerald light of control the enclaves which had heretofore remained in the shadows, undiscovered.

And perhaps, in the course of rooting out ancient offshoots and reclusive hybrids, the Green lanterns might finally discover the location of the last Kryptonian.

Ted Kord sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes, trying to scrape away the achy glow of the computer monitor that lingered on his retinas.

The scientist in him was often saddened more by the losses in technological development that mankind had endured under the Green Lanterns than the losses in personal freedoms. It was 1995, nearly twenty years since the conquest, long enough by far for the world to have achieved the dreams of Ted Kord's childhood: flying cars, personal jetpacks, artificially intelligent computers. Instead, held back and held down by the aliens and their power rings, humanity had only crawled forward slightly in two decades, and computers were sluggish electric adding machines with monochromatic yellow monitors. Yet even though they were not yet all they could be, Ted loved them.

"What's the word, Ted?" Ralph Dibny asked, appearing behind Ted's shoulder.

"The word is interesting," Ted replied. "Lots of reports of Green Lanterns sweeping through countries all over the world. Brazil, Turkey, Greenland, Nepal, Congo. They're looking for something."

"But what?" Ralph asked, his nose twitching visibly.

"I don't know," Ted admitted. "But the others are going to want to know about it, aren't they?"

"Indubitably," Ralph grinned. "Don't look so glum! You must be the least adventurous member of this adventurer's club!"

"Probably," Ted agreed. "Still, let's round everyone up."

A few minutes later, Ted Kord, Ralph Dibny and their associates were gathered around a table in a meeting room in the Kord Industries building. Although the company had fallen on hard times and lost much of its portfolio, and the headquarters building occasionally suffered from outages of power and water, it was still functional enough to serve as base of operations for the resistance. In addition to Dibny and Kord, the small group consisted of Ben Turner, Mari McCabe, Wallace West, and Eve Eden.

"Plain and simple, the Green Lanterns are spread thin right now," Ted concluded his briefing. "If we're really going to take action ... any kind of action ... now would be a good time. Better than usual, at least. Relatively speaking."

"There's only one action worth taking," Ben said emphatically. "We strike directly at the Green Lantern command center, while it's not fully manned." Ben's manner of speaking evoked a caged but still wild animal, a barely restrained force of nature. His nom-du-guerre "the Bronze Tiger" was all too apt.

"I don't particularly savor the idea, but Ben is right," Mari added, her serious expression somehow rendering her fashion-model features even more strikingly lovely.

"That's what I signed on for," Eve affirmed, trying to infuse her words with a bravado that was completely belied by her fragile appearance, her pale skin framed by raven-dark hair, and most of all her tender age of fifteen.

"I just want to do something to honor the memory of my uncle Barry," Wallace put in. "And to make those bastards pay."

"We all want to do right by Barry Allen," Ralph assured his younger colleague. "And Oliver Queen. And Charles McNider and Rex Tyler, and everyone else who ever fought those green creeps under the banner of Justice. That's why we're the Justice Squad, right?"

"But a full frontal assault on the Green Lantern command center," Ted sighed, shaking his head. "That makes us more like ... the Suicide Squad."

"Maybe not," Ben asserted. "I told you all I had found something in Nevada that might be the edgemaker for us. That wasn't entirely accurate."

"Meaning?" Ted asked skeptically.

"It wasn't something," Ben asked. "It was someone. Someone we should invite along."

Many Gordanians had been inducted into the ranks of the Green Lantern Army over the course of years since their empire's subjugation.

Their cold-blooded instincts, as well as their brutish physical resilience, made them ideal foot soldiers. Two of the green-scaled aliens, representing the planets of Slagg and Hynxx, patrolled the perimeter of the Green Lantern command outpost on Earth, located near the planet's north pole.

One of the Gordanian Green Lanterns turned to look back over his shoulder, his thick saurian tail thrashing instinctively. An instant later a silver blur crashed into the reptilian alien, sending it flying with a spray of black blood flying from its wide lips and staining the icy ground. The Gordanian slammed into the Oamite wall of the command center and slid down it, unmoving.

The flying silver projectile had come to rest and was now standing on the frozen terrain. It was a metallic man, with blue boots, red gloves and a red symbol of orbiting electrons on his chest. He held himself erect with a military bearing, and waited for the second Gordanian Green Lantern to turn its attention to him.

He did not wait long. A fanged snarl split the Green Lantern's flat, beaded face as it flew towards the silvery man, power ring blazing with verdant fire. A jade beam split the arctic air, spearing toward the attacker's metal-coated heart. The man raised his gleaming red gloves and unleashed a torrent of quantum energy which met the emanation from the power ring in mid-air. The energies collided and exploded, leaving both the Green Lantern and his opponent untouched.

The Gordanian hovered above the ground, staring dumbly at the silvered man, who showed no such hesitation. Another burst of quantum power blasted into the Green Lantern's chest and knocked the alien backwards, leaving it in a smoking ice crater. The rest of the Justice Squad, bundled in heavy parkas against the cold, tromped across the snow and caught up with their metallic teammate. "That was some show you put on there, Mr. Adam," Ralph Dibny said admiringly.

"It's Captain, actually," Nathanial Adam said severely. "The Army did a lot wrong by me, but they never took away my rank."

"Well, Cap, it's great that you took out the first couple of Lanterns, but now we need to get inside," Ted Kord announced, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.

"That's what Eve is here for," Ben Turner reminded his teammates. He gestured toward the wall of the command outpost, and the pale, dark-haired girl stepped forward. She raised her arms, and a perfect circle formed of deep, dark shadow formed on the wall, just wide enough for each member of the Justice Squad to step through. Adam, Dibny, Kord, Turner, West, and McCabe did so, and Eve Eden passed through the umbra portal last, allowing it to close behind her.

At the other end of a tunnel of blackness, the Justice Squad found themselves in a large chamber within the Green Lantern command center. The room was dominated by two even rows of what appeared to be large display cases, with square circuit-etched bases and translucent green walls. Many of the cases were empty, but several appeared to contain aliens. The aliens were so haggard and unkempt that they could only be prisoners.

"Oh no," Mari McCabe said breathlessly. The others gathered around the shimmering emerald walls of the case she had gravitated towards, and saw within it a human being, with shaggy blond hair and a beard. His body had been utterly ravaged, and he was missing a hand.

"Whoa," Wally West's eyes widened. "Is he ... dead?"

"Dead or alive, he doesn't belong in here," Adam insisted. No sooner had he said the words than a blast of quantum energy shot from his metallic fist and turned most of the enclosure's square base into ruined scrap. The emerald walls blinked out of existence immediately.

The bearded man looked up weakly. "Water ..." he gasped.

Ralph Dibny reached into his parka and pulled out a canteen, offering it to the prisoner. The man took it, gulped down several swallows, then dumped the remainder over his head. "Thanks," he said as he tossed the empty canteen aside and stood up, looking startlingly healthier than he had moments before.

Suddenly, klaxons began to sound shrilly through the command center. "SCIENCELL BREACH --- SCIENCELL BREACH ---" an electronic voice announced over the din of the alarm.

"So much for the sneaky approach," Ralph Dibny lamented.

"It's now or never," Ben Turner proclaimed in as rallying a voice as he could muster. "We make our stand here!" He looked around at the rest of the Justice Squad, who nodded resolutely in turn. The bearded prisoner also stood fast and eyed the entrance to the chamber expectantly.

Three emerald-and-black uniformed Green Lanterns flew into the sciencell room. In the lead was a creature with brownish-gray flesh, large bat-like ears, four arms, and a lower body that tapered like a slug's. To the right flew a Green Lantern with the slight build of a human teenager, alien only in the pale green hue of his skin and the shocking blue of his hair. To the left was a massive scarlet-skinned brute with a hugely overdeveloped upper body, wearing a silver helmet from which black dreadlocks trailed.

"Only a few humans," the brutish Green Lantern of Nubir-3 growled in disappointment, brandishing his power ring menacingly as he approached the Justice Squad. "This planet offers no worthy foes."

"Worthy this," Ted Kord retorted, pulling a large pistol from his parka and aiming it at the scarlet-skinned Lantern. He fired the weapon, which discharged a blinding directional beam of light. The Green Lantern of Nubir-3 snarled and jerked its head, but too late to avoid being blinded. The sightless Green Lantern landed awkwardly, and Mari McCabe seized the opportunity to deliver a solid uppercut into his broad, red jaw.

The young Green Lantern of Talyn stayed near the ceiling of the chamber and leveled his power ring at the intruders. A jade figure issued forth from the ring, a large humanoid glowing with green light, completely encased in powerful armor. The energy projection barreled into the midst of the Justice Squad; Ben Turner dove aside, while Wally West ran with superhuman speed to gather Eve Eden in his arms and move her from harm's way.

Nathaniel Adam launched himself into the air and rocketed toward the Green Lantern of Eupulmonata, his hands blazing with quantum energy. The energies seared through the air ahead of him, but encountered a stolid shield of green photons and splashed wildly. The bat-eared alien grinned viciously at Adam and willed the light shield into motion. The green construct slammed into Nathaniel Adam's metallic form and pushed him backwards and downwards. When Adam, impelled by the unrelenting shield, met the outer wall of the sciencell chamber, both he and the construct crashed through it.

"Well struck, Varkan," the Green Lantern of Talyn observed.

"It was nothing, Jarras," the Green Lantern of Eupulmonata replied archly.

The Green Lantern of Nubir-3 had been kept off balance by Mari McCabe and Ben Turner, both of whom were delivering punches and kicks to the brute's mid-section that were devastating enough to paralyze a normal human. Finally the Green Lantern blinked away the last disorientation that Ted Kord's flash-pistol had caused and lashed out, a huge recurving blade emanating from his ring and slicing through both of his attackers. Crying out in agony, both Mari McCabe and Ben Turner fell to the floor, their blood quickly spreading across it.

The bearded prisoner rushed to meet the muscular Green Lantern, vaulting nimbly over the swinging scythe of solid green light. The Green Lantern of Nubir-3 sneered at the man, then reeled backwards as the heel of the man's foot drove into the Green Lantern's throat with furious force.

Wally West had set Eve Eden down behind one of the sciencells, and sprinted away to rejoin the fight. Varkan's eyes fell on the young girl, and he aimed his power ring at her. A harpoon of viridian energy plunged downward.

"No!" Ralph Dibny cried out, lunging toward Eve. He stretched himself through the air, and somehow placed himself between the girl and the projection. The light-harpoon struck him through the ribs and pinned him, lifeless, to the floor.

Eve Eden's face became a mask of horror. She looked up at the Green Lantern of Eupulmonata and raised her hands as if she were a priestess in a pagan ritual. In answer, shadows from the corners of the room began to writhe from the corners and attack the Green Lantern, who found them impervious to his energy ring projections.

At the same time, Nathaniel Adam flew back into the chamber through the rough hole in the outer wall. He thrust both fists toward Varkan, whose four arms were being held behind his back by shadow homunculi, and unleashed a barrage of quantum waves. The Green Lantern's power ring automatically protected its wearer in a thin halo of verdant force, but Varkan nevertheless felt the punishing force of Adam's onslaught.

Wally West darted through the room in a blurring zigzag pattern, with the armored automaton commanded by Jarras's power ring flying close behind him. He turned sharply in front of an empty sciencell and bolted in a different direction; the emerald battlesuit crashed into the sciencell and both exploded, rocking the entire room. Wally turned his attention on the Green Lantern of Talyn himself.

While Wally West looked for some means to run up to the hovering Green Lantern, two more uniformed ring-wielders flew into the room. Both were female, the curvatures of their bodies similar to an Earth-woman's, and the long, elegant one in the lead resembled a human except for her upswept gray-and-black striped hair and her glowing blue eyes. Her more compact companion, by contrast, had a monstrous clover-shaped visage that seemed to be made of yellowed bone, with savage green eyes set above a cluster of fangs and pincers. The taller Green Lantern of Korll aimed her ring at Eve Eden, while the stockier Green Lantern of Tormock set her sights on Wally West.

Ted Kord thumbed a switch on his customized pistol and fired it at a treetrunk-thick cable running along the ceiling of the room. A column of super-compressed air rushed from the pistol's muzzle and struck the cable, tearing it loose, at which point it fell heavily into the back of the Green Lantern of Tormock. Her blast of emerald energy missed wide of Wally West, but the monstrous ring-wielder turned on Ted Kord and fired a slash of green light at him a moment later, leaving only a burnt carcass behind.

At the same time, the Green Lantern of Korll encased Eve Eden in a honeycombed cone of glowing jade. The cone compressed in response to the Green Lantern's will, and crushed the young girl within it. Satisfied, the Green Lantern turned to her counterpart and asked tauntingly, "Having trouble, Karine?"

"Absolutely not, Zazzala," the Green Lantern of Tormock answered indignantly.

Wally West was frozen in shock, looking back and forth between the bodies of Ted Kord and Eve Eden. From above him, he heard the voice of Nathaniel Adam. "Wally, get out of here!"

Wally looked up to see Adam grappling with Varkan. He had gotten behind the Green Lantern of Eupulmonata and clamped a hammerlock on the alien before Eve Eden's shadowy servants had dissipated, but the Green Lantern was now clawing at the silvery figure with all four hands. "We're dropping like flies, and they're bringing in reinforcements!" Adam bellowed. "I'll hold them off! You run!"

"He's right," the bearded prisoner said, reaching Wally's side. Several feet away, the bulky form of the Green Lantern of Nubir-3 lay unconscious, barely breathing. "We have to go."

Wally took one more look at the Green Lanterns converging on Nathaniel Adam, then nodded sadly. He sprinted for the hole in the wall, with the bearded prisoner following him.

"I'm ... I'm not sure how far I can carry you," Wally admitted as the icy winds hit them outside.

"No need," the shaggy-haired, one-handed man said. "Until we meet again." The man dove through a fissure in the ice that revealed the Arctic Ocean waters below. He disappeared into the depths, and Wally West ran as far and fast as he could.

Within the command center, Nathaniel Adam channeled as much quantum energy as he possessed into a wide blast that swept across the Green Lanterns of Eupulmonata, Korll, Tormock and Talyn. The sheer power of the attack gained him a temporary reprieve as the aliens shielded themselves. A moment later, however, the ring-wielders were more than ready to return force in kind. More Green Lanterns arrived to join the battle, some from deeper recesses of the command outpost, some returning from missions on other parts of the planet. Dagon-Ra, the Green Lantern of Trom, soared through the opening in the wall, his mane of white hair flung back from his human-like face. He was followed by the floating spherical globe of the Green Lantern of Gil'Dishpan. Another pair of Green Lanterns glided through the doorway, one a bipedal canine with brown fur interrupted in places by bronze cybernetic enhancements, the other a man-sized insectoid with a bulbous abdomen, six spindly legs jutting from its thorax to terminate in delicate, chitinous fingers, and a round green head dominated by two golden antennae and eight red eyes.

More and more and more Green Lanterns flooded the room with emerald glare, and Nathaniel Adam was assailed on all sides by power ring projections, bound by solid light chains, scourged by solid light whips, hammered by solid light clubs, immolated by green flames and beset by green demons. Eventually, despite its inherent strength, its quantum power and its nearly impervious exterior, his body succumbed to devastation.

Bruce Wayne sat in the library of his ancestral mansion, reading a leatherbound chronicle of the American Revolution.

From what he understood, many such history books had been banned under the rule of the Green Lanterns. He counted himself fortunate to possess the wealth which shielded him from anti-subversion raids and allowed him his solitary pursuits.

"If you won't be needing anything else, sir," Alfred Pennyworth said from the doorway of the library.

"No, thank you, Alfred," the heir to the Wayne fortune said, dismissing his manservant for the evening. The butler nodded slightly, then walked away from the threshold. A moment later the lights in the hallway were extinguished, leaving Wayne alone in a vast darkness broken only by a small yellow cone under the reading lamp.

Several minutes later, the huge chimes in the foyer of Wayne Manor rang, indicating a visitor ringing the doorbell. Wayne set the book aside and stood up, crossing the room and walking down the hallway to the entranceway. He opened the front door to find two men standing on the front steps. One was tall and muscular, with dark hair and an open, innocent face; he seemed a few years younger than Bruce Wayne. The other was of average height and build, lighter hair, and yet had an ageless quality that made him seem as if he had lived many, many lifetimes.

"Do I ... know you?" Wayne asked, addressing the fairer man.

"Not yet," the stranger acknowledged. "Nor do I know you, in the usual sense. But I know that you have a part to play in the universe, Mr. Wayne. May we enter your home?"

TO BE CONTINUED ...