Issue #3

"Blood Origins"
by Dale Glaser

TWENTY SOLAR CYCLES AGO …

Dyrspa flew unerringly through the crossfire of laser cannons, her eight legs collapsed tightly together to streamline her form within the protective emerald forcefield provided by her power ring. The laser blasts that she wove between in the vacuum of space were yellow, and would easily penetrate the green energy shield and mean certain doom for the young Green Lantern.

The lasers were yellow by design, not accident. The two massive ships - also yellow - attempting to ensnare her in their deadly net of searing golden light belonged to the Dominators, longtime enemies of the Guardians of the Universe, and well-versed in the strengths and weaknesses of their Green Lantern Corps. Cold and ruthless pursuers of their own ends, the Dominators prided themselves on preparing for any eventuality, including the unwelcome arrival of the Green Lantern of Sector 2811.

Dyrspa, for her part, was not entirely unprepared to deal with the Dominators, either. When she had first sighted the Dominator ships, Dyrspa had willed her ring to cast out a fantastically large web of emerald energy, which collected interstellar dust for thousands of miles around. Her race, the Rakni, were creatures vastly advanced in their mental evolution, perhaps second to only the Guardians themselves. Dyrspa was therefore able to focus great reserves of concentration and willpower upon several tasks at once. It was something that made her one of the foremost Green Lanterns in battle, as proven now as she was easily dancing between deadly laser blasts from the Dominators' ships and searching for a weak point in their defenses while simultaneously drawing together a massive quantity of space debris.

Dyrspa found the chink in the Dominators' armor for which she had been searching, and at that moment willed her green web construct to collapse in around her, drawing with it all the dust, ice fragments, heavy particles and other stray elements that it had gathered. The Dominator ships suddenly found themselves in the midst of a small but impenetrable nebula, unable to track the Green Lantern through the interference of dense, free-floating foreign matter. A few more yellow laser shots were fired, before the weapons commanders realized they risked shooting each other without usable sensors.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Dyrspa soared under the belly of one of the Dominator ships and made her way to the largest exterior cannon, mounted under the ship's stern. The mouth of the weapon was not quite big enough for Dyrspa to fly into, so she thrust her arm inside and fired a beam of emerald energy from her ring. It traced its way down the barrel of the cannon, turned toward the hull and smashed through to the ship's interior. The beam then split into a four pronged grapple hook, took hold of the ship flooring on either side, and retracted, ripping the entire cannon off the underhull of the Dominator ship and creating a fairly large hole in its belly.

Dyrspa darted through the hole in a green flash of light, barely making it inside before the ship's auto-repair systems generated a heavy forcefield across the rupture to prevent the entire craft from being evacuated into the vacuum of space. The interior of the Dominator ship was a uniform pale gray, with no decorative features and no signs distinguishing this part of the vessel from any other. Dyrspa knew from her orientation outside the ship where the bow and bridge must be, and she began to float in that direction.

Dyrspa came to a door that opened automatically for her, and found herself in a featureless corridor. She continued toward the front of the ship, then saw shadows cast from just beyond a curve in the corridor, and stopped, alighting on the floor. She spread her eight triple-jointed legs all around to completely brace herself and readied her multi-leveled concentration and her power ring.

The security drones rounded the curve in the hallway, five in all, massive robots with heavy plate-armored torsos and legs and gigantic arms that started just below the peak of their triangular heads and ended near their feet. The two drones in the lead raised their monstrous upper limbs and began firing rapid laser bursts at Dyrspa.

These lasers were yellow as well, but the drones themselves were not. Dyrspa lunged forward and threw herself against the deck as the yellow lasers blasted past over her head. She rolled onto her back and aimed her power ring at the drones, emerald light shining forth and constructing two huge green walls on either side of the killer robots, against the walls of the corridor. At Dyrspa's mental command, the green solid-light walls slammed into each other, crushing the drones between them. Dyrspa channeled her willpower with vigor for a few moments, then dropped the projection. The drones were disoriented, turned around and forced into a single file line, but appeared otherwise unharmed. They re-located Dyrspa and the barrage of yellow laser fire began anew.

Dyrspa dodged the lasers as best she could, given the limited maneuvering room of the corridor, and at the same time used her power ring to analyze the structure of the drones, searching for a way to gain access under their strong armor plating. The ring reported back to her that a hairline V-shaped seam existed on the back of each drone, just below the base of their heads. Dyrspa willed her power ring to issue a thin thread of light to penetrate the seam in the lead robot's back, even as she used another wedge of green energy to pry up a section of the corridor deck to shield her from incoming lasers. The light thread found its way into the depths of the robot's torso, and Dyrspa willed it to expand into a sphere big enough to fill the entire corridor.

Green light shone violently out the seam in the drone's back, illuminating the wall of the corridor, but the drone was still unharmed. Dyrspa willed the sphere she had created within to become jagged, with sharp edged blades erupting from its surface, and could feel the emerald energy responding but still the drone was unfazed, continuing to blast away more of the deck fragment Dyrspa shielded herself with. Frustrated, Dyrspa dropped the energy construct inside the robot altogether.

Dyrspa contemplated how to dispatch these defense mechanisms which were indestructible inside and out. She needed to reach the bridge as quickly as possible, and thinking that, Dyrspa realized that she only needed the drones out of her way, whether or not they were intact. She raised her ring high and five heavy green tendrils unfurled from its surface, each one ensnaring a security drone. The tendrils then lashed out in five different directions, bashing through walls of the ship at high speed, pushing the killer robots to the far corners of the vessel. The tendrils dropped the drones and receded into Dyrspa's ring, and she floated quickly down the cleared hallway. Let the drones track her down now, and tear apart the ship entire in the process, as they seemed programmed to do. Dyrspa hoped she had slowed them down enough to make her way to the bridge unmolested.

The corridor walls whizzed past as Dyrspa navigated the labyrinthine interior of the Dominator craft, but finally a large double door stood before her, and even without indicia Dyrspa knew the bridge lay beyond. Her power ring constructed a massive, blunt battering ram and the assault on the door began. It lasted only three blows, and then the doors flew inward, their shapes distorted almost beyond recognition. Dyrspa took two steps into the ship's command room, then paused, surveying the scene with her eyes as well as the artificial intelligence of her power ring.

Three Dominators turned on her as she entered. Dyrspa had faced Dominators before, but their grotesque, hate-filled features never failed to chill her hearts. All three leered at her with narrow eyes, set beneath a red circle of skin on their otherwise completely yellow heads. Their sharply pointed ears and wicked, needle-like rows of teeth made them resemble malignant flesh-eating elves, although Dyrspa knew the Dominators would never sully themselves in such a way. Their long, white robes were testament to how fastidious the Dominators could be in sequestering the alien races they captured.

The Dominator farthest from Dyrspa turned toward her a second later than the other two, after finishing tending to some instrument panel first. Dyrspa instructed her ring to determine the purpose of those controls while she said, "I believe we all know why I am here."

"And we all know that your mission is futile," the Dominator in command snapped back at her. Dyrspa's power ring silently informed her that the Dominator at the control panel had been remotely shutting down the killer robot drones buried in the bowels of the ship, to prevent them from further damaging the vessel. Dyrspa wondered how many other innovative and lethal countermeasures the Dominators would unleash on her in an attempt to stop her. They seemed supremely confident as they stared at her from across the bridge.

"You will be stopped," Dyrspa asserted, spreading her eight legs into a slightly wider stance, and brandishing her power ring suggestively. "Too many worlds have already been ruined by your ilk. The Dominators are blight upon the Universe. Surrender. Now." Dyrspa emphasized her impatience in the final word.

"Is that your mission? To force our surrender?" the Dominator commander scoffed. "We had assumed it was to rescue the pitiful lifeforms which inhabited the last world the Dominators laid claim to. Most of them are on our sister ship, of course." He laughed ghoulishly, and the other two echoed with their own mocking amusement.

Dyrspa's eyes darted to the bridge's main viewscreen, depicting the other Dominator ship, still partially obscured as Dyrspa's mini-nebula dissipated on the cosmic winds. She looked just in time to see a small sphere which encompassed that ship's control room separate from the main vessel and speed away. A split-second later the main vessel exploded in a fiery maelstrom, utterly incinerating the ship and all of its contents.

"Our brothers in control of that ship have now escaped," the Dominator commander said with a cruel chuckle. "A pity that a ship full of slaves had to be sacrificed, but there are more worlds to cull for labor." The commander raised a weapon from the folds of his robe, as did the other two Dominators, and all three pointed them at Dyrspa. "Since you are already inside our command module, we will have to kill you ourselves in order to effect our own escape."

Dyrspa screamed, and her power ring released a dazzlingly bright nova of green light, completely blinding the three Dominators. At the same time, the power ring reported more information to Dyrspa about the drone control panel, indicating that a pair of smaller killer robots had been activated in the ship's main laboratory. Dyrspa willed her ring to maintain contact with the Dominator ship's computer, and flew backwards off the bridge.

The blinded Dominators, howling in pain and rage, fired their weapons at the sounds of the double doors to the bridge opening, but Dyrspa was agile enough to evade their blind shots. Dyrspa flew like a guided missile down the corridors of the ship, as her power ring accessed schematics of the vessel and instructed her as to the location of the lab. A different ring-assisted aspect of her willpower skimmed through the laboratory records, revealing that approximately twenty children were being held in examining bays, having been drawn at random from the main slave population on the other ship. Cross-referencing the ships other records, the entire native population of the world the Dominators had just left was either killed or enslaved. Except for the twenty children brought to this ship for experimentation, the surviving slaves had all been killed in the destruction of the sister ship. And now a pair of killer drones were online in the laboratory with the children …

The corridors of the ship began to reverberate with klaxons and were bathed in red lights of a full-alert, but Dyrspa was undeterred. She navigated the corridors as her ring guided her until she reached the laboratory. Shattering the slow automatic door with her power ring, she burst inside. The smell of burning death assaulted her senses instantly. Examination bays lined both sides of the large, sterile room, and inside each one were the immolated remains of a young captive of the Dominators. The drones had worked their way methodically down the length of the laboratory, slaughtering the defenseless children. They were now looming over the last examination bay, and Dyrspa could hear the frightened crying of the child within.

Reacting at the speed of thought, a shaft of emerald energy raced down the laboratory floor and engulfed the alien child, just before the deep orange radiation bombardments were unleashed from the hands of the drones. Dyrspa pulled the child close to her, and the drones turned to face the Green Lantern, re-targeting her as their primary objective. Dyrspa ignored them for a moment as the bubble surrounding the child merged with her own forcefield, and she took the young one in her arms. The child clutched desperately at Dyrspa, burying his head in the symbol of the Green Lantern Corps emblazoned across Dyrspa's thorax. Dyrspa held the youth tightly, and floated out of the room, willing her power ring to insert two commands into the Dominator ship's computer.

Dyrspa entered the hallway and the killer drones were behind her. She fired several salvos of emerald energy at them, yet they proved every bit as indestructible as the ones Dyrspa had previously encountered. Dyrspa bashed a hole in the corridor floor with a huge green rock pick and descended into the bowels of the ship, making sure that the drones followed her.

Ring, Dyrspa mentally inquired of her weapon, did the Dominator computer accept those two commands?

Affirmative, the ring responded. Command module is locked to main vessel body, and remote control of drones has been deactivated.

Satisfied, Dyrspa continued toward her ultimate goal: the engines of the Dominator ship. Smashing through pipes and support structures, the Green Lantern and her young charge flew through the heart of the vessel, pursued by the drones, and finally arrived at the gigantic ship drive. Dyrspa put one reassuring hand atop the child's head, gave a look back over her shoulder to confirm that the drones could see her, and phased into the heart of the engine.

The basic programming of the drones caused them to try to follow Dyrspa into the engine. Their robotic senses identified the engine only as an obstacle between themselves and their quarries, and the drones assailed the stardrive bulkheads with the full range of their weaponry. Dyrspa could imagine the Dominators frantically trying to stop the drones from destroying the engines, only to find the computer unable to relay the message. The metal of the stardrive became superheated as the drones continued to attack it, and Dyrspa increased the strength of her forcefield as best she could. The little boy's crying had subsided, but whether that was due to his fear decreasing or simply overwhelming him the Green Lantern could not be certain. Dyrspa imagined the Dominators attempting at the last moment to disengage their command module and depart in the spherical escape vehicle, only to find that avenue denied them as well. Then Dyrspa spared no more thoughts to the Dominators' fates as she focused every iota of willpower into her forcefield, protecting herself and the small alien child from the resultant engine explosion that tore the Dominator ship apart.

When the white light subsided, Dyrspa held the child out at arms' length. The race the youth belonged to exhibited one of the most common physiognomies in the Universe - bilateral symmetry, a head, torso, two arms and two legs. Hair atop the head, and light tan skin covering the rest of the body. Common throughout the Universe, but not on any of the sentient worlds in Sector 2811.

"Where am I to take you, then?" Dyrspa wondered aloud. The little boy looked with silent awe upon his savior, his tearless eyes now fixated on the Green Lantern Corps symbol. "Your whole race is gone, avenged but still gone. I can't play nursemaid to you forever, so I should at least bring you someplace where you might blend in and be able to take care of yourself."

A small fragment of the Dominator ship's hull drifted past Dyrspa and the young child, and he reached out to it. The fragment changed course and flew directly to the boy's hand, blocked only by Dyrspa's forcefield which encompassed them both.

"Magnetism? That's very handy," Dyrspa asked her ring to scan the child and confirm this; the ring complied and returned the answer that the child did possess electromagnetic abilities. "I think I know a place where the natives look like you, little one. And some of them can do other handy things as well. You might just be able to blend in there. And it's only three sectors away …"

Dyrspa landed on the ground of the world called Earth as its single yellow sun was setting, in the back courtyard of a huge stone building which the power ring had identified as a communal home for children without parents. Dyrspa set the child down, and looked around at the surroundings, content.

"You will be safe here," Dyrspa announced, intending to depart. But something in the way the child continued to look up at her adoringly gave her pause. She spread all of her legs as far apart as she could, lowering her own head to the level of the youth's, and said softly to him, "I am sorry for what the Dominators did to your world, little one. More sorry than you will ever know. I know you are so frightened right now, but that fear will grow less every day. New days continue to offer themselves to us even after the blackest of nights. You survived this night, now live in those days."

The child nodded, comprehending on a more emotional than intellectual level. Dyrspa pulled herself back up to her full height, and raised her ring over her head. Suddenly, she looked back over her shoulder, right before an enormous blast of yellow laser fire crashed into her body and drove her to the ground.

The ring had warned her of the approach of the Dominator commander, but Dyrspa had not been fast enough to avoid his attack. Now the Dominator swooped down, wearing an exoskeleton that resembled the bodies of the indestructible killer drones with a clear helmet.

"You destroyed our ship, Green Lantern!" the Dominator screamed. "Killed my brothers! Only I was able to utilize the survival suit and follow you and the last slave child here. And here you both will perish!" The commander aimed his lasers at Dyrspa again and fired.

Suddenly a small metal rung from the ladder of a jungle gym detached itself and flew through the air at the Dominator's helmet. Under the control of the alien child's magnetism, the tiny metal piece knocked repeatedly but ineffectually against the clear bubble around the commander's head. The commander's gaze shifted momentarily from Dyrspa to the little boy, and he bared his numerous fangs furiously at the child.

The distraction was more than enough for Dyrspa, who willed her power ring to project a beam of green force which ended in a clamp around the Dominator's exoskeletal hand. Dyrspa pushed hard and brought the hand up, smashing through the helmet. The yellow laser never stopped blazing, consuming the commander's head in its potent heat. The Dominator slumped to the ground, and Dyrspa collapsed as well. Neither figure was breathing. Only the alien child, hiding near the jungle gym, made any sound.

Lights began to flicker on in the windows of the orphanage. The power ring on Dyrspa's finger floated off and hovered in midair. The young child reached out his hand expectantly, but the ring did not approach him.

Negative, the ring intoned. This ring must return to Sector 2811, to find a successor Green Lantern. Final directive of Green Lantern Dyrspa to be carried out: ensure the welfare of the child.

An older woman stumbled out the back door of the orphanage, tying the belt of a robe around her waist as she did. The ring rendered itself, Dyrspa and the Dominator invisible before she had completely exited the building. The woman looked around the courtyard for the source of the noise which had awoken her. She saw only the small boy by the jungle gym.

The ring, still invisible, planted the appropriate memory in the woman's subconscious, and she approached the child. "Jack! Jack Fenris! You should be inside in your bed! Come with me this instant!" She took 'Jack' by one hand and began to lead him in the house. The exhausted child made no argument and followed willingly. When they reached the orphanage's back door he looked up at the night sky, and saw a green starburst high overhead as the ring departed Earth's atmosphere, Dyrspa and the Dominator's bodies invisibly in tow. The woman pulled little Jack Fenris inside and took him to his bed. "Honestly, you are the biggest handful in the entire city of New Orleans, and that is sayin' something!" the woman exclaimed as she laid the boy in the bed. Jack was asleep before the woman could pull the sheets up to his chin, dreaming of a bright day beyond the black night. The doorway from night to day was green, a colossal green circle with solid green bars across its top and bottom. Jack dreamed of the green doorway until morning.

Twenty years later, Jack Fenris has taken on the role of protector, and his exploits are available in the pages of BAD BLOOD! And the Corps lives again, in the pages of GREEN LANTERN! Read them both … only here at FauxDC!!!