3858/Broken Sky: Listening For the Echoes

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Broken Sky: Listening For the Echoes
Date of Scene: 19 October 2020
Location: Infinity and BEYOND!
Synopsis: The Titans follow a signal from the point of the collapsed wormhole to Jupiter, where they find a stand-off between two alien species. Much confusion ensues, but eventually the Titans find someone willing to help.
Cast of Characters: Donna Troy, Kara Danvers, Cassie Sandsmark, Siobhan Smythe, Kian, Gar Logan, Vivian Vision, Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Kate Bishop




Donna Troy has posed:
    It has taken some time for the Titans to launch their own mission, but this should come as no surprise. While the T-Jet was already rated for orbital flight, adding a new engine for vacuum flight is not a simple procedure. Beyond the fundamental technical challenge of a cutting-edge spacedrive, the T-Jet is primarily used for flying in the atmosphere, and messing around with the mass of the vehicle causes aerodynamic complexities. Ironically the new engine has rendered the craft lighter than it was. The drive itself is heavier than the previous reaction drive, but the reaction mass - the fuel - is lower. More importantly, the way mass is balanced in the craft changes the way it handles.

    As well as the aerodynamic simulations and engineering, the simulator had to be updated, and the designated pilot, Kate, had to check out on it again before flight. The protocols could have been bypassed, but frankly it would have been unwise.

    Finally though, everything is ready. The T-Jet sits on the roof of the tower, VTOL engines idling while Kate runs through the pre-flight checks for the third time and last-minute engine checks along with her guest for the mission, Vivian. her and the Titans board. It's far from certain that anything can be achieved in this flight - how do you even science a wormhole? This isn't a terrestrial technology, it's all theoretical, and even if the T-Jet was well-equipped with scientific instruments what measurements do you even take?

    Nonetheless it's a flight a lot of the Titans are eager to go on, even if they can't really see a reason why they should. At the very least it's /doing something/.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Space. Kara was there yesterday. Space is fun when you're not stuck in a tiny little pod subjected to years and years of cryogenic sleep while absorbing the powerful radiation of the sun. This is a lot bigger than her tiny pod, safely secreted away in the Fortress of Solitude. The technology is utterly alien and there's room to move.. but still it feels a touch claustrophobic.

Kara is therefore being quiet so far. She's entered the vehicle and strapped herself in. If things go wrong.. well, she's a great backup plan. She can take them all safely home or to the moon. Here's hoping nothing goes wrong. She has her NASA designed space mask regardless - just in case.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Definitely sign up Cassie for the 'doing something even if she has no idea what it can possibly accomplish' camp.

On the list of the team's brilliant scientific minds, she ranks at 'got Bs in math in High School.' But among those insistent on doing anything and everything they possibly can to reach or even simply discover the fate of their missing friends (up to and including appealing to unknown divinities for obscure knowledge), her voice has rated among the loudest. So while her involvement in the T-Jet overhaul has been limited to 'hold that heavy girder while I weld it' style elbow-grease, she wouldn't dream of missing the maiden voyage.

So, she's here, strapped in, and ready. She is wearing a suit- she has no idea if she'll need it, assuming the worse. Diana probably wouldn't. Does Wonder equivalence apply? WHO KNOWS. So better safe than sorry on that one.

Once settled, she gives a thumbs-up toward Kate in the driver's seat. "Ready to go, captain!" And then sidelong to Gar: "This is just like that flashback episode..."

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
Siobhan wasn't sure she was all that useful in space. A lot of what she does involves sound. Could she survive out there? Maybe. Probably honestly. She hasn't tested such things nor really tested her limits. Either way, when told about joining this mission into space to help her friends and she jumped at the chance. Now, wearing a space suit but without the helmet yet, she sits and stares ahead, breathing in and out slowly as she sits there. She can't really know what she is going to do. She just wants to be there and help if possible.

Kian has posed:
    Kían does *not* like the T-Jet.
    Not that he mislikes the technology (however primitive), it's just SMALL.  Ridiculously small.  Not at all the way ships are, to the birdman's sensibilities.
    As such, he does not suit up, nor does he properly strap in; he just holds himself into a seat, sprawled out semi-sideways so he's not lying on his own wings.  Even a sensible restraint is beyond his psychological limits right now.
    He stashed the project he and Nadia have been working on with rather more care than he's taken with himself.  It's a kludge, and the Gods alone know if it'll work, but it can't hurt to try.  Worst case, it leaves them no further ahead than they were before.

Gar Logan has posed:
If a spacesuit is good enough for an astronaut, it's good enough for Gar. Besides, when the unexpected can usually be counted on, it's reasonable to take the necessary precautions. Besides besides, if you go to space, wearing a spacesuit is practically required in order to fit in. Besides besides besides, it totally makes his butt look good, and looking good is what he does.

Ahem.

"S'up, yo?" he asks of everyone else, a greeting of some sort, not even in an alien language - just ask Kian! Or maybe not, in his case. "We ready to go do this thing and get one step closer to bringing our friends back home"

Ever since the idea he sprung on Nadia and Kian, he's been champing at the bit to get back into the depths of space and see if their plan will make a difference.

Not as a horse, though. They don't make spacesuits for horses, especially ones with bits.

"Ohhh yeeeaaahhh," he asides to Cassie, likely remembering. His helmet is also off, but kept nearby. As long as they're actually inside the ship and oxygen levels are what they should be..well, he might just decide to put it on at some point anyway.

He adds, "Look. Kian wants us to draw him like one of our French girls. Do we have any French girls?"

Vivian Vision has posed:
With green hair, glowing yellow eyes and pinky-red skin that's clearly inorganic Vivian Vision looks rather out of place amongst the hustle and bustle of the Titans nascent space program. Not just because she's obviously not a Human, but also she's not a Titan either. Still she has been through the security checking process and has formally been booked in as Nadia's Great Niece here to help out. A few of the Titans might even recognise her from various Pym/van Dyne rescue missions.

Strictly speaking she's also booked in as long range communications gear too. As well as a back up super computer. You never know what might go wrong in space!

And fret not! Although she might be an extra body on board she won't be taking up any of the precious oxygen or even adding extra mass that the engines have to lift into orbit.

While it hopefully won't be needed the synthezoid teenager splits portions of her mind off to review the basic principles of flying and repairing the craft. As well as checking in on various reports about solar activity, space debris and watching the top ten most popular movies about space travel on the off chance someone tries to make a pop culture reference. Typical AI pass the time activities.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia is wearing her Waspette armor and strapped in at the engineering console, one of the many upgrades that went with the new space propulsion systems and structural reinforcements. The new engines should work, everything should work, it should all be fine. It's a lot of 'shoulds'. But that is why she is there monitoring the performance of the engines and various other systems to make sure nothing goes wrong with the new highly experimental technologies.

"Engineering to the Bridge, we are all green!" She calls out enthusiastically over the T-Comm, despite being in basically the same room. Did someone show her Star Trek?

Kate Bishop has posed:
Kate did all the danger room simulator logging to get up to speed on the changes made since the last time she had to pilot the T-Jet out from the wormhole back to earth after the last battle.

She also may have taken it up into orbit past the debris field in an actual flight test a few days ago before trying to really push it like they plan to do today. Not that she bothered clearing it with anyone at the time. The responsible people who would want to triple check everything are all lost in space.

Today though she has on a Hawkeye themed space flight gear, the helmet magnetically attached to the wall next to her in case she needs to put it on with a sudden loss of pressure or another emergency. She also has a much fuller T-Jet than the test flight and a lot of responsibility to get the science team out there and back now in one piece. Sure Kara could just fly herself back but that isn't the case for everyone. So no pressure.

Once Nadia gives the all green to Kate there is a shipwide comms "Okay hold on to your butts." she says very seriously to everyone and eases back on the controls bringing the T-Jet in VTOL mode up and out of the hanger and then flips the configuration for a more traditional Jet and over comms <<Titans flight plan registered, proceeding>> because it is best to not get shot down while zooming up to Orbit.

Which is what Kate proceeds to do though, she likes going fast, keeping one eye on the HUD and various sensor arrays as she takes them up very fast. Have to get escape velocity after all right. It is a bit of a wild ride honestly until they hit low orbit, which surprisingly is uneventful.

For now.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Blue skies darken and give away to blackness. The sun is up, but so are the stars. The slender, life-giving skin of atmosphere that clings to the Earth is finally left behind. The rush of air against the hull, barely a sound you're aware of until it's no longer there, falls to silence, and just the thrumming of the engines remains to mark the motion. The engine sound picks up as Kate engages the circularization burn, and the readout ticks down as the delta-v approaches orbital velocity. When the delta hits zero, the engines cut and the T-Jet drifts in silence.

    The Titans are in space.

    Earth orbit is busy. Virtually the world's entire space fleet continues the program of clean-up. The battle with the Warzoon had left a lot of debris in space, and one thing even the nations of the Earth could agree on was the importance of clean-up. Shuttle craft have been removing larger chunks for weeks, a priority for removal due to the dangers of collisions causing ever larger debris fields. There's also the unspoken point that some of those larger pieces of debris may provide valuable technical advances, so everyone with ships to launch has launched them on the mission. Cleaning up the smaller pieces of debris will be a longer-term problem. Earth orbit has never been so busy, and this is something of a traffic jam - which means that there are actually two other craft detectable by the T-Jet's sensors, a League lunar transport and an ESA shuttle, within a range of a mere thousand or so miles.         
It's time for the moment of truth - Pym drive engaged. Why didn't Nadia say "Make it so"? Lights light up, all green on the console. There's a faint hum, but it's far quieter than the impulse engines. The continent drifts slowly below, but it's hard to detect the change in velocity with no nearby frame of reference. The readout indicates that it's all working though, and the target zone, calculated in advance from the T-Jet's nav logs on the fateful flight and the video recording of the final events, approaches.

    Compared to that original flight, the voyage is fast, though at this distance the new drives aren't really having a chance to strut their stuff. Kate disengages the drive, and the T-Jet drifts. There's nothing visible, just darkness, but somewhere out in that darkness, a few weeks earlier, a wormhole had been opened and had collapsed.

    What next?

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara lets out a small breath as the craft takes off. She looks tense. Nope, she is tense. When they get higher in to the atmosphere her head turns this way and that, listening to the noises the vehicle is giving off. She can't help herself.. in fact, she ends up gripping the side of her chair and the steel crumples under her grip.

She takes in another breath and lets it out slowly. She reminds herself it'll be okay. The worst won't happen. Her friends will be fine. They'll do their Earth sciences on the wormhole. She'll pop out the airlock and take a good long stare at the patch of space. They'll go home. Everything will be fine.

A piece of her chair snaps off as she jerks her hand suddenly. She looks at the bent and crumpled piece of metal with slightly wide eyes. No where to hide it, guilt written across her face. She places it back where it was and leans over, -pop- with a tiny little blast of heat vision to spot weld it back where it belongs. Sort of.

The Pym engines seem to have done their job, Kara unstraps and moves with ease around the cabin in zero-G. She turns about slowly and lets out another soft breath. It's small, but it's bigger than too small. This is something she can handle... is what she tells herself.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan clarifies, "Nadia, last time I checked I'm the only green one here," which he says with a grin that's a little too playful. The mood lingers into Kate's comment, which has him shifting in his seat as if to slide his hands beneath his rump. "Holding on..now!"

Then, they're off, soon into the dark, relative silence of space, en route to where it all happened weeks ago. Hard to believe it's been that long already, and something brings a more serious look to Gar's expression, whatever it is.

Once it's safe to do so, he gets up to have a closer look at what can be seen outside the ship, a hand resting against the interior wall. There's Earth below, the moon looming larger beyond. "This was the place," he says, more gravity to his voice than what's in the cabin now, not that that's saying much. A silent look follows to Nadia and Kian in particular.

Kian has posed:
    Kían closes his eyes and just hangs on.  Earth technology space travel is... not as smooth as Akiár surface-to-orbit systems.
    Once safely in orbit, though, he unfolds himself from his seat and visibly relaxes.  Floating over to an available viewport, he just marvels at the sight of space again.  And then he slowly reaches out with his /rhy'thar/, looking for any unusual radiation, any excesses in the background rate of strong or weak force emissions... anything.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Woo!"

Yes, as they launch, Cassie woos.

Its a pretty crazy thing, being launched out of the atmosphere, and for the initial portions, the physical sensations are quite intense. But a few of the various superhumans on this trip have the advantage over average most astronauts. For one, extreme exceleration forces something she's already quite familiar with from, say, her own ability to fly, and while escape velocity is quite a bit beyond those typical speeds, the G forces aren't nearly so unpleasant or crippling. Which makes the speed of it all a bit more thrilling and enjoyable.

By comparison, the second increase inspeed isn't felt at all... because if it was, well, a lot of mess to clean up. "Was that it?"

Still, once they're in position and it's safe to so, she unstraps herself and floats free. The first thing she tries, naturally, is seeing if she can still maneuver herself. And... woo #2, flying still works! Like many, her first stop is to get to a window as quick as possible to see what there is to be seen out there. "Woah."

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
Even as they take off, the intense sensation has Siobhan's eyes glowing brightly for a moment as her lips peel back from her teeth briefly. The intensity of it having her body wanting to defend itself. She focuses hard even as they get into space and she keeps it together. Last thing she wants is for the Banshee to come out in this situation. She's already had trouble in the past with this and here lately, she has been having an internal war with the Banshee. However, now they are here and she pushes up from the chair.

"It's a lot." Siobhan says in her Irish brogue, moving over toward the windows and looking to the others. "Dis was an intense situation for everyone." She states simply and licks her lips, "It'll be better once we have dem back and put all dis behind us."

Vivian Vision has posed:
"We should still be within communications range of Earth although any messages we send will take longer from this point onwards," Vivian notes, seemingly immune to the thrill of being in space. "Great Aunt Nadia... Or should I be using codenames as you are all on a mission? Anyway please let me know if there is any specific scanning or other tasks you need assistance with."

Even though it probably won't come up with anything Viv dials her communications gear up to maximum sensitivity. Listening for any distress signals that might be too weak to reach the ground. And idly checking anything else she picks up and storing it for later review if it's not immediately relevant.

"I would hate to come all this way and be unable to help. Even if I do not have a personal stake in the outcome."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
There is an expression of enthusiastic glee on Nadia's face as the T-Jet hits escape velocity and her system fills with the adrenalin rush. In her mind this is perhaps the greatest rollercoaster ever. It's not her first time entering space, but that doesn't make the experience any less amazing each time.

Once they reach Zero G, Nadia's eyes become glued to her console and the various instruments and displays as the performance of the new space engines are meticulously monitored. "That's a good propulsion system, you can do it. Don't let me down." Is she talking to the engines? Sure why not, it's Nadia.

Once the point where the wormhole collapsed is reached, she takes a deep breath, inhaling sharply before letting it out slowly. She's finally here, the place they were lost and now it's time to do whatever she can to get them back. It's an intense feeling, full of emotions she can't completely parse in the moment, but a serious determined look settles over her expression.

From a pocket of her suit, Nadia pulls one of her custom data drives loaded with all the wormhole data from the Fantastic Four's computer network she received from Valeria. Once that is loaded into the system, she begins calibrating the T-Jet's sensor suite to begin scanning for the dimensional anomolies and energy signatures in the data and cross referencing with the results that come back.

There is also the psychic beacon she and Kian developed with Gar's brain patterns, but before that can be put to use they need an opening to send it into, so for now it remains put away.

Kate Bishop has posed:
Kate relaxes after the new drive disengaged and all the readings idnicate they are where they are supposed to be. <<Okay team, I am pretty sure we are approximately where we are supposed to be now. Tell me if you need me to move the ship in any particular direction to do the science stuff.>> yup Science Stuff. That is how Kate labels all the technically science stuff for this. Sciencing. Pick your poison.

The pop from Kara's nearby chair makes her jump a tiny bit though, then she relaxes again not calling out what happened. Letting it be a silent sort of thing and she is definitely not about to embarass her friend.

<<Also good job on the engine Nadia>> She continues to scan the various sensors, guages, and read outs watching everything very closely. No pressure.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Kian's senses pick up ripples in the background radiation of an unfamiliar conformation; the geometry of space-time just isn't quite right here, and it's impacting the way particles are effecting each other in subtle but detectable ways. It feels weird. It's also just slightly familiar. The sense is almost one of deja vu, a hint of memories he hadn't even been aware of until this moment, dating back half a year to when he suddenly found himself falling into an alien ocean. It's not the same, he knows that much, but there's a hint of familiarity about it.

    For the less science-oriented Titans, there's little to do but wait. They wait with Siobhan's tightly-wound tension or Cassie's irrepressible enthusiasm for zero-gravity, Gar's uncharacteristic seriousness, Kate's determined professionalism or Kara's nerves, as the scientists do their thing.

    Nadia's sensor package fires up and readings flood in; an esoteric torrent of mathematics describing the same deformations of space-time that Kian had detected. The correlation with the Fantastic Four's data is not straightforwards; within moments Nadia can see that the sheer violence of the collapsing wormhole is producing a lot of distortion to the information. This data may take a lot of crunching to make any sense out of.

    However Vivian's scanning shows up something more immediate that does not tally with the wormhole scans, and isn't even in range of energetic modes being analysed. It takes some time for her systems to detect the pattern. At first it's just a series of random ionization events, but over the space of a few minutes the pattern becomes obvious - there's a line of particle ionization leading out from close by to some point in deep space. The conclusion is obvious, and a quick calculation of the ionization effects gives more detail. She's picking up the traces of a rapidly pulsing highly columnated coherent stream of photons in a very narrow infra-red band - in other words, a high-energy laser beam firing off into the distance. Following the line of the beam reveals a small patch of space that looks slightly darker than the rest. From time to time, the patch of darkness occludes the stars behind it.

    The Titans are not alone here. There's something else, close to the wormhole distortion, sending a rapidly pulsing laser signal out into space.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara grimaces a touch. "I'm going to go outside. Does anyone want me to take anything out there and position it anywhere?," she asks as she puts on her clear mask. She taps the comms and checks them, "Testing 1 2 3.. good." She smiles and then crouches down under the seat she was using and takes out a case. For now she doesn't open it, just holds it. The case has a Kryptonian symbol on it.<Because I have a free hand>

Kara pats Nadia's shoulder in encouragement and then looks over to Kate. "How did it feel to fly?," she asks Kate. It's inelegant technology, like most of the stuff the people of Earth create.. but also like all the technology on Earth, it's ingenuitive, creative to the max.. and it works.

"Hey. We're up here - as a team. Titans in Space. Without a warmonger breathing down our necks." She narrows her eyes a moment as she remembers Dru-Zod and the words he spoke, she still can't believe she ever thought that guy was a shining example of Krypton. Then a nod is given to Vivian, "Thanks for coming along Viv. I might need some help positioning my equipment correctly." She hefts the case as if it weighs nothing at all.

Stepping in to the airlock, she cycles it, then floats out in to space. She gives a wave to those still inside via the windows and then opens up her case, taking out six small crystals. Her eyes focus in on the region of space, zooming in on the area as she circles around and carefully places the crystals in a cube face pattern.

"Okay, I'm good out here. Anything anyone else needs doing while I'm out and about?," she asks, her cape and hair waving slowly in the vacuum of space from subtle inertia effects.

Kian has posed:
    Kían really just sort of lets his mind drift, trying to sense what's out there, so it takes a moment to sink in.  When it does, though, he whitens and backs away from the viewport with an audible gasp.  "There iss a warp out there, like space is still recoverin' from hwat happen here.  But it iss... nnh.  There iss some-thin' that feels like... feels like hwen I came to this worl'.  Like a hole... like... oh.  Oh!!"
    The birdman's expression brightens.  "Hole in space, like I fell through!  They /are/ out there some-hwere!"
    Someone finally got his data.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Since other people are busy being nerds, Cassie flies up front to bother her fellow cool kid Kate, coming in horizontally and upside-down between the pilot and co-pilot chairs, and then rolling a little to one side to peer at the main controls.

"Good flying," she offers, not that she actually has any real basis for comparison. But they're all alive and the space ship didn't explode and no one is a fine red paste so... good flying! "This is kind of fun, I mean the gravity. Flying feels kind of different, somehow. Not that it made any kind of normal sense before, but still. You liking the upgrades? Kinda beats the bike for speed, huh? Or even the old Jet I guess. Definitely beats my Toyota." Much-maligned, that poor car is!

She hangs up there a while, even peering at some of the instruments, thankfully not touching anything, and-

She orients a little more upright and looks back as Kian speaks up. "You found something?"

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
Walking up to Kara, Siobhan smiles at her, "Careful, Kara." She states and nods her had, "Ye might be tough but space is space." She looks out into it and then back to Kara, "It don't seem forgivin'." She then pushes a button on her comm, <"Good job, Kate. We're all in one piece and all dat.">

She then moves over to another window to check out another direction. She glances back at Kian and then shakes her head as she looks out there, "I don't like any of dis." She states, "Too quiet." She really means that. For some, it is just fine. She can't hear anything beyond the ship and that...is disturbing for Siobhan. She looks back to Kian again, "So, what does it mean?"

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan plays silent observer just right now, but he's closer to Kian and gets a good chance to follow what he's talking about. Even if he only acted on a space show, that counts for something. "Like a portal? Just sitting out there?" he asks, brows shooting upward.

"Do you think that's where we can try to plant the beacon? Is it safe? It's not a black hole, is it? I don't see everything getting sucked toward it and I think we would have heard about it if one was /that/ close."

Vivian Vision has posed:
Vivian Vision gives Kara a nod of acknowledgement, then blinks a few times. "Does anyone know if the Justice League by any chance happen to have a giant space laser?" she wonders aloud. "Because I seem to have picked up.. something. I am trying to search for a pattern... This may take a few moments..." There's a hrm as she devotes more processing power to the task. Those movies shall remain unwatched for now. "It's like binary although I can't really tell what it says at this moment in time. It's anything but quiet though."

She opens a channel to Nadia or the ship itself if she has permission and sends the info across.

And for those who don't want to dig through a wall of data she creates a holographic visualisation, adjusted to put things into a Human-visible format, so the Titans can watch the pattern and see the odd point in space where the pointer is directed. If she were a betting synthezoid she'd expect it to line up with whatever Kian just announced he'd detected.

She can't help but idly begin working out if the pulsing beam could potentially output enough energy to blow up the ship. But if it can? Well that's some data she won't be sharing just yet. No need to cause a panic!

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Eyes focused intently on the screens before her, only Nadia's pupils seems to be darting this way and that as she takes in and parses all of the esoteric mathematical data scrolling across the displays before her, even as her fingers fly across the holographic keyboard making minor adjustments to the instruments trying to isolate the bizarre and unexpected phenomenon she is encountering.

She looks up an smiles at Kara's hand on her shoulder, momentarily brought back to the here and now from the sea of incoming data. "It's like Space-Time is deformed, this doesn't even look like any of the data Val provided from Dr. Richard's files. It's a localized event likely to do with the collapse but the sub-atomic particles here are not behaving as they should, I've never seen a Quark do that before. This is going to take some time to sort out but buried in all of this might be the key to reopening the wormhole, and if we can do that we can get the psychic probe into hyperspace."

Nadia blinks when another window pops up with Vivian's data, "That's definitely something I didn't think we'd need to scan for. Judging by this telemetry and the occlusion of stars in that direction... there might be another ship out here sending laser signals." She punches in an estimated heading, trajectory, and coordinates, sending them over to Kate's console. "While I would still like some more sensor data, we might want to investigate that?"

She taps her T-Comm, <<Supergirl, heads up, there seems to be something nearby, possible ship sending laser communications.>>

Kate Bishop has posed:
"Titans in spaaaace.... " notes amused back to KAra over the comms as well and finally she relaxes some back in the pilot chair. She keeps half an eye on the monitors for the ship while everyone else seems to mostly be watching monitors of SCIENCE.

"Thanks." she notes to Cassie with a grin. "I've been practicing a lot in the danger room... and I took it up into orbit a few days ago to make sure it was ship shape as it were. I didn't dare use the pym drive but still it was good to see that all the normal systems were still good to go."

"Also yeah... everything is kind of fun at this point. I wish I could put on my college admission documentation that I am in the rare astronaught club."

She may be joking, hard to tell. "Bet that would cinch Ivy league without my dad's money clearing the way..." joking, definitely joking.

Kate focuses back on the console now and tilts her head "Okay." over comms <<Setting approach, everyone consider yourself at battle stations, especially you Supergirl.>> she looks over to Cassie "Man the guns just in case?"

Then after checking the data that Nadia provided one more time she fires up the engines again and starts to manuaver the T-Jet towards the communication source.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Kara's crystal array engages and starts to glow faintly, the lights pulsating slightly as they react to the gravitational echoes of the wormhole event. Even this long after the wormhole closed, the sensitive Kryptonian technology would normally be able to get a pretty good reading of the spacetime deformations that opening the wormhole had created. Closer to the event it would generally be possible to make an educated guess at the shape of the wormhole from the energetic traces of its opening, and calculate where the other end would have opened. This long after it would normally be a trickier proposition, but not entirely impossible.

    There's a problem though. The readings indicate an anomaly, a 2-dimensional fracture in the 4-dimensional pattern of gravity waves. How can something with a 2-dimensional profile have had that kind of impact, when it should have had zero mass?

    Unless it was a singularity that crossed the mouth of the wormhole somehow...

    Directed by Vivian's display of the laser and the dark patch of space, the T-Jet's sensors are able to focus in and pick out a rough shape in space - a faceted wedge with a density profile that indicates metals are present, that returns no radar signals. Whatever it is, it is either intentionally stealthed or made up of some material that is absorbing local radiation with extremely high efficiency. Directed by Nadia to the anomaly, Kara's vision can make out little more than the sensors can - the object is very, very black. She closes in on the object, taking care not to get on the wrong side of that laser beam firing out into deep space somewhere - whether it's strong enough to damage the T-Jet, or even a Kryptonian, isn't known, but why risk it? At close range she can see the black object is clearly manufactured, but certainly isn't terrestrial technology. It glistens ominously, metallic in construction but with an almost organic look to the design. About ten by six by four feet in size, it's probably not a ship, unless the people inside are very small. Small projections from the surface are probably some kind of sensor suite. It's a good bet that this is a satellite of some type, broadcasting data via a narrow-beam laser transmission to somewhere else in the solar system.

    Nadia's work with the T-Jet sensor suite continues. The Fantastic Four's data just doesn't seem to be offering any good matches for what she's picking up, but each time she runs the simulations, there's one variable that keeps coming up as unmatchable - the local gravity. The only way the figures would match up is if there was FAR more local gravity. Without knowing what could have caused that, and exactly how much extra mass would have been involved, decoding War World's wormhole signature, and the patterns of spacetime manipulation needed to re-open the wormhole, looks like a big ask.

    Kate brings the T-Jet cautiously alongside the object, joining Supergirl. The object - satellite, ship, whatever, does not seem to react to the presence of the T-Jet. The signal beam keeps transmitting, and Vivian runs through countless possible decodings of the binary, but without any way of knowing what the encoding is, what language it might be, whether it even is a language, there's not much that can be done. The T-jet's nav systems do tell Kate something interesting though - following the beam path outwards from the object intersects with a Jovian orbit.

Gar Logan has posed:
"Is that a giant laser pointer?" Gar asks, following up with the first thing that pops into his head afterward. "Hey, maybe whoever it is is trying to get Vorpal's attention."

No, probably not. Wishful thinking though.

Both in the ship and over the comms, he asks, "What /is/ that out there?" The concern about potentially needing to deal with a battle situation has him going back for his helmet, just in case. "If you guys need me to do anything..." he's offering next, knowing he's already been a part of just getting to this point. Anything more is a bonus.

Kian has posed:
    "It iss not a hole, not anymore, but it feels like when I fell through to this worl'.  Not quite.  Almos'.  Iss like it but iss not the same," Kían explains.  "Iss maybe after-mat' of hole?  I do not know; I was too confused an' scare to scan hwen I fell here.  I... hope hyu under-stan' I do not wan' to try to reach into it.  I am afraid of fallin' in."
    He returns to the viewport and peers into the darkness.  "I thin' I can inter-fere wit' that laser.  If that woul' help."

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara looks at the light patterns coming off of the crystals now that they're set up and aligned correctly. She folds her arms and rests one foot against her inner knee. <<Well, that's unexpected. It's almost like there was a portal within a portal or something. Err.. unless it was Vorpal and Warzone messing each other up... Wasp, Kian I think you're going to like this data.>>

<<I'm being careful Siobhan, see,>> she says playfully over comms as she flies gently over to the strange black object. The closer she gets the more she tries to zoom in on its details. <<Well this isn't from Earth, that's for sure. I'm hesitant to touch it, or even move it. May be it's monitoring the wormhole. May be it's keeping the wormhole from collapsing. May be it's keeping the wormhole closed...>>

She flies around the object, it's not terribly big. <<I think if this were Lantern corps it'd be talking to me already. Green Lantern's ring talked to me when I rescued him from space earlier in the year,>> she comments casually. <<It sure is black. Black on black.>>

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
As the unidentified object comes up in more details on sensors, Cassie maneuvers around, twisting and flipping, to bring her attention to the screens. "Kind of like an alien satellite?" she wonders. "I mean, we put an awful lot of stuff in orbit that pretty much works like this, right? Just kind of hang there, bounce data around. Though I guess it's sending its signals in the oppoosite direction."

She doesn't have any special knowledge to make heads or tails of the ship-satellite-whatever it might be, and at Kate's urging, swings herself enough around fully to drop into the co-pilot seat so she has some of the weapon controls at-hand, although she cautions, "If this turns into a whole thing, it might be better I try and go out there. We really don't want the T-Jet getting shot up." For reasons as varied as 'its their only ride' to 'a few of the people on it would probably die.'

Left with just the msytery of the hanging object, her mind ambles on the non-science route: "I wonder if this could count for part of the prophecy nonsense? It's definitely unseen below. Although it's nearly unseen above, for that matter."

Vivian Vision has posed:
"If this signal contains a message I am unsure I can decode it. At least not in a useful timescale," Vivian says with a sigh. Finally admitting defeat and consigning the task to background resources only. Although when Cassie mentions prophecy she takes a last gamble and tries run it through the Internets best version of Ancient Greek. "I might be able to phase through the device to look inside but I have no way of knowing if that would be prudent."

She frowns and looks out one of the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mystery device with her enhanced senses. "Especially as I have never had chance to test my flight system in a vacuum.."

"I am uploading a copy of all the data we have gathered back to trusted sources on Earth. So if anything does happen to us it'll be possible for others to follow our course and locate this object."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"That thing has stealth written all over it." Nadia observes perhaps stating the obvious when the T-Jet gets closer to the object, "The real question is why? Unless another party is also looking for Warworld? But why so sneaky? I don't like it."

She looks over at Vivian, "Do you think you can decipher the messages they are beaming?" She asks, before making a face at Viv's negative reply, "Well, see what you can do, anything could be helpful. I'm going to try and reconfigure one of the arrays a bit to see if we can't get an estimate on where in space they are sending it, so we can compare it with some star charts."

Even as Nadia says all of this though, she still has one eye on the data from the wormhole scans, "Local gravity..." she mutters to herself. It's kind of amazing with how easily distracted she normally is, how well she can not only focus but even multi-task when SCIENCE! is involved. "What'd they do create a black hole?" She asks the cosmos incredulously.

<<Wait... portal within a portal... no that shouldn't be possible... But...>> Whatever Kara said seems to have sparked a thought, though she is shaking her head in disbelief at what she is about to say, <<So I don't think this should be possible, but it seems like the only thing that maybe fits. What if there was a portal within the portal, maybe some distortion from the collapse, I don't know, but what if that portal opened on a black hole? Which would be bad and I'm not sure how they'd survive, though Raven says they did, but that might explain these unexplainable concentrations of local gravity that otherwise make no sense. Though the whole thing really kind of makes no sense.>> She takes a breath, <<But first we should probably figure out whatever this thing is. Ridiculous space warping calculations after.>>

Kate Bishop has posed:
"I definitely do not want the T-Jet shot up." Kate says very amiably to Cassie as she eases in near the alien sattelite, probe, whatever it is. She studies it for a long moment through the sensors and the view screen there. "It definitely is black on black..." she agrees with Kara next ssquinting a bit.

"So..." she traces on the navigation display a bit. "That thing is shooting it's laser out towards one of the moons of Jupiter for some reason.. or .. well Jovian orbit yeah... which laser straight line. So ... out there is either the ship that dropped it.. a space station.. or a repeater satellite..."

She starts to punch in the flight path for the location the messege seems to be going to. "Okay... Nadia.. we cleaer for another jump?" waiting to punch it until she gets the alll clear from the Waspette.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Nadia double checks the drive and it's looking good. The power regulation is a touch off, but it's within acceptable limits. Something to look at when they get back to base, but nothing to worry about now. Kate dials in the course, taking care that it doesn't cross the beam path, and as Kara zooms into the distance, she punches the control.

    The drive spins up, energy from the micro-fusion generator surging through the systems. At the front and rear of the T-Jet, the Pym field generators fire up and begin to modify spacetime, compress it in front of the ship and expanding it behind the ship. A powerful electrostatic difference develops, and the T-Jet accelerates rapidly.

    For the first few minutes, the Titans are pushed back by the acceleration, but the pressure isn't vast. Acceleration feels like 2-3g, the kind of accelerations they regularly feel during atmospheric flight, but the warping of spacetime means that the relative velocities are far highter. Earth starts to get visibly smaller in the rear view. It also gets redder. The view in front becomes oddly blurry as a faint glow of plasma ripples across the forward screens, glowing blue.

    While the Titans continue their journey, Kara arrives ahead of the at Jupiter. In front of her the great globe of swirling earthy colors is a familiar sight, not just from countless photographs but from personal experience, when she, Donna and Mary had gone to meet War World when it first arrived in the system. Without the T-jet's sensors to provide accurate positioning for the far end of the laser beam, she has to rely on her enhanced senses to try to locate anything that shouldn't be here, and it takes a while.

    Twenty minutes after she arrives in the system, Kara sees it - a bizarre construction Jupiter orbit, a ring about a mile across and a few feet thick, looking a little like a miniature version of Saturn's rings, though if there is anything in the middle it's not immediately visible. Dotted across the upper surface of the disc are a number of clusters of complicated metallic constructions - perhaps small buildings, perhaps large pieces of scientific equipment, perhaps some kind of defensive structure. Faintly visible some miles from the ring is a silvery space ship of unfamiliar design.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara comes to an abrupt stop before Jupiter and her smile widens. Gorgeous. The colors are so alien and delightful - just like Earth. A palette she had never imagined, nor been exposed to, on Krypton. She floats about for a while, her vision zooming in and out on features. It's exploration and discovery and she loves it.

Then her eyes fall to rest upon the ring. She floats a little closer to it, cautiously, looking at its structures.. and the silvery space ship. <<I don't know if you can hear me when you're using the Pym drive, but there's something out here. Some sort of platform - and silver space ship. I've never seen its like before,>> she warns over the comms. <<Don't come out too close to it, we might scare it off. I'd like to talk to whoever is behind this - if there's anyone at all. Here's hoping they don't shoot first and ask questions later?>>

Gar Logan has posed:
The ride..takes a while. It's sort of strange to be going this far out into the solar system, but for Gar it's interesting because while he's acted it out before, this time it's completely real. He fidgets, he tries to nap, he asks generic science-based questions to the science types just to pass the time.

Once Jupiter is literally looming before them outside, he takes out his phone - because of course he's brought it - and snaps a selfie with the planet in the background. "Hey, how much do you think roaming costs out here, or should I just wait until we're back home again? I got a cool..wait, did she say there's a spaceship out there?"

He checks out one window, then the other. "Oh, snap. Do you think they have a teleporter? Did you guys ever hear the story about the Star Trek teleporters?"

Kian has posed:
    Kían settles back into his chair for the trip.
    When the ship begins to accelerate, he clings tight to the armrest... and then exhales slowly.  "Was afraid I might fall through another hole in the universe hwen this ship start to move," he admits, and relaxes.
    Upon arrival, he's glued to the viewport.  A planet like Jupiter is impressive, even to someone from a spacefaring race, and he lets out a low, trilling whistle of appreciation.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Cassie takes the time in transit to familarize herself a little more with the controls. A little last minute, but why not. At least the weapons are pretty familiar, not too different from Galaxy Blaster 7.

Once they arrive, she starts going over the sensor readouts of all the stuff ahead of them, because there's a lot. Well, there's also Jupiter itself, which, while for once she is actually not the least mature person in the room(spaceship), apparently ceding selfie-rights to Gar, does draw a certain awed look and with it an introspective moment. After all, the names of the planets do invoke a particular mythological cast. Among them, Jupiter is the chief and patriarch, a powerful deity to the Romans. And his Greek version...

...anyway. It's a thought that is cast out as quickly as it passes, and her attention returns out to the readouts on the ship. "So we have another ship and... is that a space station?" The scale is hard to grasp, visually, especially when you're flying next to something as incomprehensibly vast as a gas giant with permanent storm systems larger than your whole planet. "Do we have uh, the equipment to like, 'hail' them?" She still mostly takes her space knowledge from Gar's old TV show!

Vivian Vision has posed:
Vivian Vision spends most of the journey quietly working away on various computational problems as needed by the science team. And when she's not doing that she volunteers to play any songs people might wish to hear using her holographic subsystems audio function. With the caveat that Nadia can't just request several hours worth of Dazzler tracks.

"I am able to forward a cellphone message without a fee. As I am able to function as a cellphone tower or wifi hotspot as needed," Vivian informs Gar earnestly. "It will take about forty five minutes for a message to return to Earth. Providing nothing unexpected interferes. You would however need to consent to my seeing the message and be aware that whatever is out here might detect the signal as well.."

All the same she begins taking the most detailed recordings possible and listening on every communications channel she can. Loading it all up into an emergency broadcast she can send out in the event of an attack. They might all die but at least the people of Earth would get a warning about a potential threat within the solar system.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
There will always be a chance to get more data on the way back, or so Nadia hopes at least. Her fingers dance across the holographic interface of the console in front retracting the various arrays and getting things ready to go really really really fast before giving the signal that it is clear to punch it.

The trip still takes some time, the Pym Drive is faster than traditional rockets, but it is still a sub-light engine. Nadia has plenty to do in the meantime though. She is still glued to her screens puzzling over the data and the anamolous local gravity value, trying to parse how you get a portal inside a wormhole that leads to a black hole. The whole thing is mind bending, and probably a Nobel Prize in Theoretical (or not so theoretical) Physics.

"Have you been to the Justice League's Moon Base Gar?" She asks looking up from her data, "They have teleporters! They're really cool, kinda tingly."

Nadia's attention turns back to her screens when Kara's reports start coming in, <<I think we definitely want to talk to whoever is on that ship, yeah. If we can talk to them anyway...>> Where is a Green Lantern ring when you need one? <<Perhaps we should bring it in slow from a distance and if they try to leave uh don't let them?>>

Gar Logan has posed:
"Deal," Gar says to Vivian. "It's just a picture, see?" He turns his phone around to show her, and with it is a message stating, 'Guys, check out where I am! It's Jupiter, and this isn't Space Trek either. It's real! We're gonna be getting our friends back soon, too!' The photo has him wearing a hopeful smile, just the upper part of his Titans spacesuit visible.

Shaking his head to Nadia, he adds, "No. That's kinda on my bucket list, so we'd better get out of this in one piece." He grins at even Kian marveling over things, but rubs the back of his head after Cassie's question. "I know Supergirl's been to space and stuff, and I've only just pretended to be, but I /am/ green and I'm willing to try to talk to someone if it'll help."

Could be a bad idea. Could be a great idea.

Kate Bishop has posed:
"I ... yeah I am not sure what I am looking at. Is that ...." Kate trails off and zooms in with one of the sensor arrays. Then brings up the silver ship on another one.

"I think they are building a gate. That looks like a stargate or some sort.... so yeah.. that can't possibly be for good intentions given our recent alien track record." and yeah at this point Kate sounds dismayed.

"I'm going to ease closer to the silver ship. We should hail them and yes we also should not let them escape at this point. It is sus." yes Kate has played the latest video game craze sweeping the youths back home.

Kate makes good on it though, taking the T-Jet in nice and careful towards the silver ship. She flip on the comms, because she has faith Kara can catch that ship if need be. <<Unidentified Ship, please respond. This is Hawkeye of the Titans hailing.>> because otherwise they are an unidentified ship.

Donna Troy has posed:
The arrival of a Kryptonian doesn't seem to trigger any reaction. Perhaps nobody has sensors targeting a human-sized target drifting through the void without a space ship of their own. As she watches, the silvery ship maneuvers several times, always keeping a good distance from the ring, but changing its position relative to the ring as if prompted by something unseen.

    As the T-Jet approaches, the Titans are able to determine that the ring, or something close to it, is the target of the laser signal. This far out the beam will have diverged sufficiently that anything within a few miles could pick up the signal.

    The silvery vessel, according to the T-Jet's sensors, is about two hundred foot long. Significantly bigger than the T-Jet. Power signatures are unfamiliar, but it would appear to be employing some kind of shielding technology. It's just a guess, but the look of the ship just doesn't really match up with what they'd seen of the black wedge-shaped satellite. It's more streamlined-looking, and much brighter, and the aesthetic sense behind the design seems different.

    As the Titans come into range, the silvery ship reacts. It immediately starts maneuvering again, but this time it heads in different direction than before. Previously while Kara had watched it had taken up positions around the ring but roughly on its ecliptic - now it moves upwards rapidly, as if getting out of the way of something. Sensors aboard the T-Jet pick up some kind of low-powered energy beam playing across it, presumably an active sensor technology of some kind. Kate answers Cassie's question of how to hail them by doing so, and apparently they are familiar with terrestrial frequencies, because there's a response a few moments later.

    <<Hawkeye of the Titans, please retreat." The voice speaks English, which answers Nadia's question too -- though it's heavily accented and has a slightly synthesized quality. It may be using some kind of translation technology. <<This matter does not concern you, and you are in danger if you stay.>>

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara watches with interest, her arms folded. Finally the others turn up. <<Nice of you to join me,>> she says playfully. The silver ship reacting, back off, changing its pattern gets a raised eyebrow from her. <<You know I'm not so sure the two technologies are the same. It feels like silver ship is scanning ring thing...>> The Titans are all about technical terms. Kara doesn't not have a good enough grasp on English to get it right anyway.

When contact is made though, Kara moves in closer so that the silver ship can see her.. and with her hands on her hips, showing off the symbol of House El upon her chest. Not that she expects anyone to really know her family except the people of Earth.. it is obviously Kryptonian.

<<Try and convince them we're here to help - may be tell them we're trying to find our friends. We've come all this way, we can't leave now and I'm not going to let anything hurt you guys if I can help it.>>

Kian has posed:
    Kían would say that he doesn't recognize the ship -- but that's a fairly obvious logical conclusion.  He's said his people have not had a first contact yet, although they know of a few signals of intelligent origin that no one has cracked yet.  Probably leakage rather than a deliberate signal of greeting.
    "I will try to see if they can be reach min' to min'," the birdman offers.  He focuses on the ship and reaches out his mind on the odd chance of a telepath -- or at least a telepathic circuit -- being present.  You'd think he would have learned his lesson with that guy from The Villains that Can't Count... and besides, reaching out with his /rhy'thar/ even just to scan might be seen as something less than peaceful.  At least with another telepath, his intentions would be clear: peaceful contact.
    And if there is nothing to contact, they're no worse off than they are already.

Gar Logan has posed:
There is definitely consternation at the initial response from the mysterious ship, putting some hesitation in Gar's words. "Hey, Vivian. I'm gonna get a shot of that ship, too. Could you, like, set a timer so it gets sent to the Justice League and stuff in case this goes belly up for us?"

Snap.

"And let me try to talk to them. I'm the charming one of the group." He doesn't lack in self-confidence, or at least, a willingness to talk himself up for self-esteem purposes.

<<Uh, hello? This is Beast Boy of the Titans. With all due respect, we aren't going anywhere. There was a big battle over Earth a couple months ago, and we helped save the world but four of our friends disappeared. One of them..he's my boyfriend, and it's been real hard with him and the others gone for so long. We know they're alive and are trying to get back safely, but we were led out here for a reason and I'm pretty sure this matter concerns us a whole lot. So please, help us, or let us help you if we can.>>

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Oh neat, it worked," Cassie reacts, pleasantly surprised when the Space Trek approach works out more or less as it is usually depicted. Universal translator and all!

However, they do not seem super stoked with the Titans' presence, so that, at least, is a little less great. "Seems we've got something, go ahead," she encourages Gar-

-and once he's finished, chimes in, <<Do you mind maybe clarifying what 'matter' you're talking about? Are you affiliated with this... uh, construct? I'm pretty sure building something in our solar system makes it our business as a matter of interplanetary law or whatever.>> Cassie is not in fact a planetary lawyer, but it seems like it would be true. She is really pulling more from the Sci-Fi playbook here.

<<And if it's not yours, maybe we can, right, offer assistance or something. Frankly we'd like to know what it's doing, and why it has a satellite parked closer to our home sending info back here.>>

Vivian Vision has posed:
"I've been preparing an emergency broadcast and keeping it updated since we left Earth orbit," Viv assures and then the synthezoid goes quiet for the time being. She's not a Titan and hasn't downloaded any files on xenobiology, exobiology or even diplomacy. So making first contact should be left to the professionals. Or in this case... by Gar.

She takes great care to 'listen' to the alien scanning. Anything they do could give hints as to how their tech works and what that mystery signal means. And while the Titans ship has it's own sensors another set of 'eyes' can't hurt.

She also readies every electronic warfare subsystem she has available. Not firing any up, yet anyway, but making them available if things turn hostile.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia's expression is thoughtful as she studies the visuals coming in from outside of the ship, something about Kate's stargate comments seem to have gotten her thinking. "We might be able to use this. If it is some sort of hyperspace gate or stable wormhole creator, we could either try to open a gateway to wherever they were lost, or at least get our psychic beacon into Hyperspace so it can potentially help guide them home. Of course first," She glances at the silver ship on the other screen, "First we need to deal with them, because they haven't said who they are, I think they just threatened us, and that doesn't make me think they have the best of intentions for this space station gate thing. It also might be a good idea to capture that stealth satellite for further study." She doesn't join the others broadcasting at the ship, at least not yet, instead trying to game out the situation in her head and how they might be able to turn this alien technology into an opportunity.

Kate Bishop has posed:
Kate just sinks back in the pilot chair and lets Cassie and Gar talk to them on the comms band. She isn't exactly sure if this is a good idea to potentially confuse the aliens with multiple people breaking in and talking to them there.

Still it is done.

So Kate is focusing very closely on the readings from the ship there and watching it for any sign of hostilities. Also watching the ring gate as far as Kate as concerned as well. She wants to try to fire the engines and jerk them out of the way into evasive manuevers there if necessary. She is piloting. she will let the others take over on comms.

She does not power up the weapons though or try to get a lock on them at least, she is pretty sure sensors would show if she got weapon lock.

Donna Troy has posed:
    <<Beast Boy of the Titans, this matter does not concern you or Earth,>> is the reply. <<We recommend you retreat. We cannot help you and you are in danger here.>> The broadcast cuts off, and the T-Jet's sensor detect an energy build-up from the silvery vessel. They may be warming up the engines, or may be warming up some weapon system. There's no indication of anything actually targeting the T-Jet, but the Titans cannot be confident they'd actually recognize an alien weapons system in action. Vivian has been monitoring their scanning beams and they are currently not being scanned, so unless they use some quite different technology for targeting, this may be a precautionary move rather than anything threatening.

    Kian reaches out with his mind towards the silvery ship, and tries to probe that region of space for something he can recognize as the carrier waves of cognition that any telepath would be familiar with as the mark of an active psychic mind. The mental silence is all too familiar since his arrival on Earth. Just as he's about to give up and withdraw, he feels a featherlight touch on his mind. Something seems to very briefly probe back, and in that instant he knows with absolute certainty that his own mind has been recognized by... something. He has communicated telepathically with humans often enough by now, mostly through touch, but there has been that experience with Psimon of an actual telepathic human. This is something much more alien.

    The radio crackles to life again. <<Earth ship, please clarify. A satellite in orbit of your planet? We did not construct that. You should return to home and destroy it at once. It is a threat to your planet.>>Kate's attention is on the ring, and as this discussion between humans and unnamed aliens takes place, she can see activity of some type happening on the surface of the ring. This close, it's possible to see that some of the constructions dotting the surface seem to be moving around. The motion is slow, but they are traversing the surface, and she gets the feeling that they are in some way tracking the motion of the two ships.

    The radio crackles again and there's a new voice. This is quite different - softer, breathier, oddly hissy. <<Humans. Do not listen to these bandits. They are dangerous. Destroy them!>>

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara listens to the chatter. Gar going for the personal angle, probably won't work as well as he hopes.. but then again, none of their arguments are likely to work it seems. She focuses in on the ring first, looking through its walls. Now that they're acting against the wishes of the sentient life that lives in this solar system.. ie: her home, she feels it reasonable to do so. <There's no one on board the ring thing. Lots of computers, may be we can use that. Very advanced technology though, kind of reminds me of /raozrhynj/.. err.. Kryptonian computers.>

She turns her attention to the silver ship and can't quite see through, so she flies in nice and close so that she can grab it if they try to run; then she looks inside and catches glimpses of bipedal like creatures, <And there are sentient creatures on board the silver ship. I cannot tell who is speaking for whom or from whom.. but tell therm if they don't start explaining themselves with facts instead of opinions, I'll drag them both back to Earth for questioning>

She turns around in space, her hair slowly twirling with the motion, followed by her cape. She nods to her team back on the T-Jet. A full pirouette is completed so that she is once again facing the ship. <May be that threat will get their attention>.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Oh jeez this really is like an episode of Space Trek," Cassie can't help but remark. Multiple weirdo aliens, space station-slash stargates orbiting Jupiter, and now one of them even sounds like some kind of lizard-snake people. She's totally seen this episode.

"Admittedly I'm not super trustful of any of these people," she admits, voice far from as certain as if often is. "But building crap in our solar system seems way more of a big deal than whatever that one ship might be here for, and if that other thing is a gate... that's like, 'BEGIN THE INVASION!' kinda stuff. Do you have any kind of- uh, analysis on it? The ring that is?" And the latter is asked of Nadia, looking back over her shoulder. "Do we have sensors? They have sensors on TV." She knows very well that they have a degree of instrumentation and monitoring equipment, since some of the screens are RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER at the copilots station, but frustratingly none of them are giving her Sci-Fi levels of detailed information about what they're looking at.

<<SG, if you can like, space-impound them, that's awesome->> she starts on the radio, double checking she's not broadcasting on the hailing channel for the ship in question, and then continues in the ship, "-but I think our priority has to be figuring out what the hell that ring is. Even if we have to board it. Because either its a rescue plan for our friends and we need to help, or its a freaking invasion in progress and we need to blow it to hell."

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
Standing up and looking at the ring, Siobhan has been quiet up until now. All of this has been heavily disconcerting for someone who can basically live in a realm of sound. The outside has been so damned quiet. So...quiet. She looks over at the others as the speak and then listens to Kara's words. She has heard the words of the aliens and she finally just shakes her head.

"Do we know what da atmosphere on dat ring is like? Is it a vacuum or is it sometin'?" She asks and looks at the others, "I can get a look into it if dere's at least some way for sound to travel dere." She nods her head, "Technically, I tink I can even if dere isn't but not so sure about gettin' back." She then peers back out the window at it.

Kian has posed:
    {/Wait, please,/} Kían 'sends back.  Aloud, he informs his teammates in a quiet voice, "There iss a min' out there I can reach.  In the ship.  Iss not like any min' I haf fel' before.  Not Akiár, not Eart'er either.  Alien to bot' our species.  I am tryin' to convince the.. the min'-holder to communicate."  It struck him in mid-sentence that words like him, her, it or they might be inaccurate.
    He reaches out his mind again, gently, not aggressively.  {/I am Kían.  We need to understand.  We have lost four friends and the trail to find them leads us here, so we can't leave, not without learning everything we can about where they went and -- Gods willing -- how to get them back./}  The feel of his mind is open and gentle, but determined as well.  Kían has never heard of the Terran mathematician David Hilbert, but he would agree most wholeheartedly with Hilbert's dictum: "We must know; we *will* know."

Gar Logan has posed:
The reaction to Gar's contact was not what he was hoping for, no. It leaves him briefly flustered, but he wasn't Tork on Space Trek: 2222 for nothing. He is still an actor, and he was built for moments like these.

"Guys, I've got this. Watch and learn. And no, we aren't attacking anybody without a good reason." Hailing both frequencies, he clears his throat.

<<Mysterious alien..species. You will..identify yourselves now..and explain your reasons for being..here. I will remind you..that we are the Titans and..we have defended Earth and our Solar System from..the..threats of Brainiac and Warworld. We..come in peace..and will not harm anything..based on nothing more..than your claims..but this is our..part of the universe and therefore..our business. If you..attack us we..will return it in kind. As you may..have seen we..have a Supergirl..and we are not..afraid to use her..if forced to do so. Now..may we speak..civilly..or will we have to..get medieval on your heinies?>>

"I was gonna ask them if they had any pretty alien women too, but I /do/ have a boyfriend and I don't want any of you to boot me out into space," he explains to the ones on his side, Kara also kept in the loop via transmissions. "And if /that/ doesn't work, I guess we'd better hope we have good weapons systems. And I think that ring is kinda important to figure out too, yeah. I don't know anything about it except for what Supergirl just said."

Kian's revelation brings a curious tilt of Beast Boy's head, and he adds, "Well, for everyone's sake I think they'd better do something to convince whoever it is over there that there shouldn't be any fighting here, if everyone wants to get through this in one piece."

Vivian Vision has posed:
"If that object we encountered previously is dangerous I can send a signal back to Earth and hopefully the Justice League or Avengers will be able to respond? It will be quicker than us physically travelling back. Supergirl excepted that is," Vivian offers with a frown. Preparing some emergency codes for broadcast and checking if the T-Jet will let her interface with it's communications gear on the off chance she needs extra oomph to punch through alien jamming systems. "If you wish me to assist with targeting and fire solutions I can do. My reaction speeds are faster than most Humans and I can calculate the flight paths of multiple fast moving objects."

"If not then I shall prepare for any possible boarding actions we need to make. And I suppose try and scan it with my sensors." Not that she has many of those which the organic crew members don't have. But she can at least try and figure out which direction the bloodthirsty hissing aliens are transmitting from and listen for anything coming through the weird space structure. "On the off chance this structure is a portal I may also send out a simple morse code siganl.. Unless anyone objects?" She mostly looks to Nadia for yes/no confirmation. If she gets the nod she'll emit a very simple morse code message that boils down to 'Titans please respond'.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia's mind is racing and her eyes have become very focused as her Red Room situation analysis training takes over, all of the facts they have encountered replaying in her mind, even as she begins readjusting the T-Jet's sensors to target the space station array. "Working on it Cassie." It takes a bit of doing though, figuring out what a space station array does and scanning for wormhole traces are really completely different tasks. She continues thinking as she works though, she really doesn't like the thought of a possible invasion, but the more she thinks about it the more her thoughts don't point quite that direction.

Once a hypothesis begins to form in her mind Nadia gets on the T-Comms so Kara can hear her, too. <<The black stealth satellite. What if it was doing the same thing we were? Scanning for traces of the collapsed wormhole? It was pointing here to this array. Our friends went through that wormhole, but what else did? A moon sized space station built for war. We want our friends but it is entirely likely other parties want what may be one of the most dangerous weapons ever created. We need to know more about this ring," She says as she continues working on the sensors to do just that, "but purely hypothetically what if its function is try and reopen the wormhole seeking Warworld and the silver ship is either trying to stop them or take it for themselves. We need to know more about this station's function and we need to know who we are dealing with.>>

Nadia looks over at Siobhan, "Not a perfect vacuum, no. But there isn't going to be any air out there."

Donna Troy has posed:
    As Supergirl flies in close to the silvery ship, she feels the faint tingle of some energy field passing briefly over her, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the Kryptonian. She can see a number of opaque blister domes moving across the surface of the ship, and one moves round tracking her own motion as she approaches. Others are moving in various different directions, but if they are tracking something else, it's not visible.

    It might be even more baffling to the Akiar to meet a race of aliens that can communicate telepathically and choose not to than to meet one that can't. The alien mind that he had previously touched on is out there somewhere, and he can pick up a kind of mental susurration of multiple minds, but every time he feels like he's about to engage on of them in direct communication he's met by a sudden wall, a kind of mental silence that's noisy for being /so/ silent. It's eerily similar to the sense of a blank carrier wave he gets when trying to communicate mentally with Colette.

    Gar takes to the radiowaves, and The Shatnering occurs. Somehow the faint hiss of several long moments of radio silence that follows sounds baffled. Then the comms burst into life with two separate broadcasts, trying to talk over each other.

    <<We have no intention of attacking you, Titans>> the synthesized voice says. <<We are on your side. The others are engaged with hostilities against us>>

    <<They lie!>> the other voice hisses. <<They attempt theft of our construction. We do not threaten Terra. We perform science!>>

    <<They endanger the entire system! Help us capture the annulus from them.>>

    <<We no intend hostility. They lie!>>

    Nadia's scans of the ring are very difficult to interpret. This technology is like nothing she has seen before; even Brainiac's projector seemed somehow more conventional, if not necessarily less advanced. She can detect however that there is an extraordinary concentration of muons within the ring - it may be somehow projecting beams of them inwards.

    Kara suddenly catches a motion out of the corner of her eye. A patch of darkness moves rapidly towards the silvery ship, and accelerates suddenly. One of the blisters moves rapidly to track it, and a purple beam lances out from the blister to intercept the dark object when it's already very close. There's a flash of superheated gas, and for just a moment Kara can make out a shape identical to the stealth probe in Earth orbit, before the object starts to melt. The intercept point is too close though, and a blob of molten probe and plasma erupts against the side of the silvery vessel.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara folds her arms. This is unexpected. Gar's speech that is.. she's never heard anything like it. It sounds like may be he's having a stroke. <Titans! Somebody check on Beast Boy, I've never heard him speak this way before. Is he okay?> She turns to look at the T-Jet, through the T-Jet in concern. But Gar is just.. there.. he looks fine. She narrows her eyes in confusion.

Her eyes look over the blister tracking her and she gives it a small wave. Was that a force field? did she just accidentally drift through her first force field? #lifegoals. <Okay so these two are clearly hostile toward each other and neither own the ring.. tell them Earth is taking the Rondel in to our custody and if they wish to make their claims for it they will need to do so formally to us at the Titans Tower.. or something along those ... whoa!>

It is then that she sees the sudden engagement and she flies between the stelath ship and the silver ship. She peers at the molten blob and then holds out her hands, <Guys tell them to cease fire. I'll run interference if they try to shoot each other again. Be careful that other ship is black on black. I think it best if you somehow board that ring and plug in to it somehow. Oh and may be tell them all that in a normal voice Beast Boy?>

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Despite the seriousness of the moment, Gar's TV-mimicking performance causes Cassie to burst out laughing. "I'm really glad we brought an expert." Ahem. She calms down, attempting to get her laughing under control.

And... then she tacks on jokingly, "Seriously though, what about pretty alien women for the rest of us?"

Probably, she's PROBABLY jokingly.

Finally done with the space humor, she turns back to the task at hand: "Even if there's no atmosphere, well, we've got suits and some of us might have decent odds without them. If Waspette can't figure out what it is from here, I don't think we have a lot of choice but to check it out, figure out what it's doing, secure it or destroy it as necessary. We can't just wait on the Justice League to handle this, who knows when that thing might start up." She pauses, to let the seriousness sink in, her usual firm resolve more obvious again. "If it comes down to volunteers to go over, I'm willing."

As for the two arguing alien sides, she doesn't seem too interested in playing favorites. "It's OUR solar system. I say that gives us jurisdiction over any of this stuff, and they can just-"

Except now the aliens are shooting at each other.

"I'm gonna prep the airlock." And indeed, she's gotten up and started back toward it.

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
"Ye know, I'm not sure you or Shatner are da best representatives of Earth..." Siobhan states with a smirk at Gar before shaking her haed and looking back at the ring. "Also, I'm not entirely sure that air really matters all that much to me." Siobhan states and nods her head, "When I'm the Banshee that is." She nods again before looking over toward the ring, "Probably." She takes a breath, "Just without sound, a great deal of what I do doesn't work. As long as there's something for me to make noise in, I can do things."

She then blinks as she watches what is happening in space. She feels so damned helpless here on the ship. She glances to Cassie and nods to her, "I agree." She then starts over toward the airlock herself, "At the very least, if ye can get me on to Either ship I can deal with that." Then she switches over to the radio.

<"Kara, if I go to the ring, I'm assumin' ye can get me out of dere easily enough, right? I am not sure dere'll be enough air or such over dere for me to teleport back if I get caught in a vacuum."> She looks in the direction of Kara even if she can't clearly see her.

Kian has posed:
    That *is* weird, to Kían's thinking... but his people also have fairly strict customs about privacy, since privacy can be so easily broken among telepaths.  So he respects the silence and pulls his mind back behind his own eyes.
    Even so, privacy is secondary to safety.  Kían's mind flicks back out, showing what he sees.  {/You are under attack.  Please take evasive action,/} he tells them, {/I can't be certain it's something we can stop./}
    It is a breach of protocol to ignore a desire for privacy.  It would be infinitely worse to be in the presence of many telepaths in the process of dying.  He explains, "They do not wish to communicate by min'-touch.  I am warnin' them of the attack anyway."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"This is.. I've seen a lot of things but never anything like this. Alien tech is so neat. It really shows how much is left for us to discover!" Nadia stares at the displays in front of her, enthusiasm for Science! leaking out despite the gravity of the situation. "The ring is projecting beams of Muons towards the center," a pause, "They have nothing to do with cows Gar they're elementary particles similar to electrons, really small, basic, no sub-structure." Seeming to anticipate Beast Boy's likely quip.

"Kian can you look at this? They're focusing them all in on a singular point at the center of the ring. It's an amazingly high concentration." She asks as she reaches into her pocket for something and suddenly her suit's helmet is full sized in her hand and she's pulling on a Waspette themed space propulsion system of her own. "I'm going to try and get a closer look, I would really like to access that ring's systems if I can."

Rising from her station, Nadia pulls her helmet on and begins activating the environmental seals as she moves towards the airlock.

Gar Logan has posed:
"Supergirl, clearly the way I was talking to them registered, because they're behaving now," Gar points out ever so helpfully through their own comms before he follows up to Siobhan, "Hey, Star Trek was successful enough that we did a version of it that was apparently too close to being a ripoff, which kind of explains why the producers got sued." He gives Cassie a look of mock shock when she suggests he could have asked about the pretty alien women anyway.

Gar adds, "But yeah, it's sounding like landing on that ring is a good..whoa! What just happened?"

He has indeed seen the attack from the silvery ship to the dark, nearly invisible one, leading to him quickly opening up the hailing frequencies again. To go full Shatner or no? They say never go full Shatner. Or was that never go full retard? Anyway.

<<Cease fire and stand down! You are in the Earth Solar System, Local Interstellar Cloud, Local Bubble, Orion-Cygnus Arm, Milky Way Galaxy! You are all trespassing and in violation of International Space Treaty 867.5309! I repeat, stand down immediately! The annulus is under Titans control now!>>

"Please don't ask. Please don't ask," he mutters under his breath, after muting the transmission. "We need to get down to that ring and find out what it's about before this goes sideways."

He is flying by the seat of his pants right now, and Nadia just gets a raised eyebrow out of him as he fiddles with his helmet. It might be required at any moment.

Vivian Vision has posed:
"Is there even space inside for people to enter into?" Vivian wonders. "It could just be solid matter.." She sets a portion of her mind scanning for any geometric shapes that could resemble an airlock. If she spots any she'll be able to make holographic pointers to help direct people mid-flight. "I am willing to fly over first and try phase my way inside but I do not know if that would interact with anything the structure is currently doing." Regardless she heads to the airlock too. "If you can remain close to me I will project a holographic stealth field and emit area jamming signals that will hopefully make it fractionally harder to target us."

"Although I must confess I have no way of knowing what sensor technology they are using. Heading into space may just open us all up to weapons fire from both sides..." She glances at Kian. "They seemed aware enough of the attack to fire weapons. I expect they have far more information about what is going on here than we do.." She bites at her lip as Nadia gets up too. "Great Aunt Nadia please feel free to use me for cover if an attack happens. I shall ensure I maintain my most durable state while in transit."

Without getting a firm 'no' on the signal question she sends out a repeating morse code message telling the missing Titans to try fire up their comms. The message in a bottle for Earth remains unsent for the moment. No point alarming everyone back home for a situation which could be resolved before anyone has finished fueling the rockets.

Kate Bishop has posed:
"There is a good deal of movement on the space ring." she had been quiet as her team interacted with the aliens on the comms system and with each other.

Then Kate blinks registering what Gar just said to the aliens, about having a Supergirl and being ready to go medieval on their heinies. "God.. I wonder how that translated with their technology..."

The sudden hostilities has her sitting up more straight than she was, not that  she was slouching. "Good idea Cass... back up Supergirl." she frowns and moves the T-Jet, backing it off a bit and making sure it, and it's weapons are pointed in the general direction of the silvery ship as well as angled towards where the drone impacted. She is very good at trajectories but she also knows that it may have manuavered and it may not be a straight shot or an arch. She looks to Viv as she leaves, then reaches over and brings up the weapons systems herself, targeting the silver craft and priming everything.

Oddly Kate seems confident in her ability to aim the weapons and shoot the aliens if need be.

Also they have a Supergirl.

Donna Troy has posed:
    <<You witnessed them attacking our vessel! They show their hands. Now do you believe us?>>

    <<More lies! They attempt our destruction for many time periods. See their weapons! If they knew our location, they destroy us.>>

    <<They fired a missile at us!>>

    Repurposed drone! Unarmed, we. Only defense!>>

    <<An attempt to destroy our vessel!>>

    This time, Kian gets a response from the mind-voice he had originally heard. "You misunderstand. The craft you can see is not ours. They are attempting to steal our ((incomprehensible mental image)). They are pirates. We are trying to drive them away, but we have no weapons. We launch our drones at them, but their defenses are too strong. Please help us." The mind-voice shuts off again sharply.

    There's a long silence after Gar's latest eyebrow-raising Trekkery, then the synthesized voice returns. <<Titans ship, we are Jukon patrol vessel seven-seven-four, on patrol in compliance with the security protocols of the Alkonian accords. These beings are creating an intrinsic-field disruptor. It has already engaged, and unless we reverse the field, this gas giant will be destroyed in less than one-tenth of an orbit. >>

    <<More lies. We perform science. We Seekers of the Forever-Dark are. Annulus not danger to local space!>>

    <<Seekers of the Forever-Dark? Well that's not ominous.>>

    Cassie, quickly followed by Siobhan, Vivian and Nadia make their way out of the airlock and drift towards the annulus. Cassie out ahead has barely got a quarter of the way there when the radio crackles to life again. <<Do not approach annulus!>> the hissy voice says excitably. <<Dangerous. SACRILEGE!>>

    The silvery vessel starts moving away from Kara, though the one blister that had been facing her moves across the surface to keep a track on her as the ship moves. She feels the same brief tingle of energy passing over her as it moves away. The movement isn't at speed - it just seems to be shifting position in relation to the ring.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara gives a thumbs up toward the T-Jet, <Okay Banshee, I'll get you out there if you need me. Wave your arms wildly if you can't use T-comms for whatever reason. That goes for anyone who goes is going to the rondel> she says with a huff at the chatter going on from both of the alien vessels. One stealth, one dangerous.

<Team make it clear to both of them that I won't let them fight, no matter how hard they try I will get in the way. This must end peacefully. I demand they settle their differences and if that means some sort of peace summit then so be it!>

Kara is starting to get annoyed. She touches the control to transmit to the two alien vessels as well <<I am Supergirl. I am Kryptonian. This is your one and only warning>> Her eyes begin to glow bright and she looks away from both vessels and unleashes a blast of her heat vision to let them know she means business. There is no way she'd actually shoot any of the ships, but hopefully they don't know that.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
The airlock cycles and suddenly, all before Cassie is blackness.

Well, maybe there's a ring gate and several alien space ships and FREAKING JUPITER (hi maybe-dad), but the impact remains the same. The star-dotted vastness of the universe opens in front of her, and she can't help but be awed. Unlike some folks born to alien bizarreness, she was a pretty normal human kid up until a few years ago. And while in that time she's seen Olympus and met its divinities, perhaps not even that surreal experience can compare to the infinity in front of her.

She takes a breath (inside her helmet) and then moves forward. One small step for Cassie..

OK, she's technically flying. But the experience is no less profound. Flying on Earth, she could still feel UP and DOWN. Here, those are nearly meaningless terms. Yes, Jupiter is massive, and absent external forces, its gravity would claim her eventually, but at their distance, the overwhelming feeling is one of weightless, directionless nothing.

<<This is... this is pretty wild.>> She shakes her head. <<Sorry. OK. Lets move.>> With that, she gets in a loose formation with the other three, taking the front position herself, and propelling toward the annulus.

Then the voice comes on. Suffice it to say, she's not super impressed: <<Yeah, sorry buddy, I'm quite familiar with 'dangerous,' why don't you let me worry about my own safety, huh? If you don't want us poking around, I suggest making with the explanations, not the cryptic nonsense.>>

But she is not stopping. <<Waspette, uh, robo girl, you got any reads on a good entry point? Docking hatch if they were nice enough to build one, thin spot in the hull otherwise.>>

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
Taking off from the airlock, Siobhan lets out a long lasting sigh as she goes into space. She's been here before. It wasn't any less freaky then. She uses the propulsion systems in the space suit to move but already her eyes are glowing and she's wanting to just go. She starts moving toward the ring with all the speed of those jets. She looks over at the others and then looks ahead as she moves.

<"I am tinkin' I might be better off bein' da Banshee while out here, just in case."> She nods her head a little in her suit as she flies, <"Honestly, why do we keep goin' to space? Isn't one planet enough? We just spend too much time out here.> She grumbles a little as they fly, <"And now we have aliens hissing and pissing all over this area. We really need to have a talk about our territory and range as Titans.">

Kian has posed:
    Kían relays what he can to the others... there's just no way to describe an incomprehensible mental image other than "somethin' I did not under-stan'".  He shrugs helplessly.  "Iss may-be an object of worship?  I do not know.  It iss somethin' they hol' in high regar'.  An' they did ask us to he'p them."
    When the word 'sacrilege' comes over the comms, the birdman jerks to full attention.  "I thin' the min' I haf been touchin' iss the one who iss respon-sible for the rin'.  They gif a sense of reverence.  Approach the rin' is sacrilege.  Iss possible."
    The birdman withdraws his mind fully, and now reaches out with his /rhy'thar/ to see if the ring gives off the same oddly familiar sense of damaged spacetime that he got back in Earth orbit... and that he dimly remembers from his own arrival on Earth.
    Somehow, he won't be surprised if it does.

Gar Logan has posed:
"God, they're like bickering children," Gar states flatly, only for the ears of those with him, within the ship and without.

Back to hailing, as he looks up whatever their files might have on Jukons, Alkonians, the Forever-Dark as well. <<This needs to stop, now. If you don't behave, Supergirl will prevent further destruction, and so will we. Someone had better start explaining themselves further, because right now I'm not sure any of you can be trusted. We need to see a representative of both sides on our screens so we can talk about this face to face...to face.>>

He looks at Kian, biting his lip enough that the snaggletooth shows more visibly. "Are you saying we shouldn't touch it? But what if they're right about what it could do?" Of course, the possible threat of Jupiter being destroyed is..not good. And how did Beast Boy end up being one of the ones to lead the attempts at discussion with the aliens? "If any of that is true, we're gonna have to be very careful here. That one side keeps calling the others pirates, but if what they're doing could blow up the planet..." This, again only to those on his side. "This is why I'm not cut out to be a leader. How am I supposed to know what the right thing to do is?"

Vivian Vision has posed:
While the Titans are putting on the helmets for their space suits and checking oxygen levels Vivian prepares by tying her hair back with a scrunchie and making sure the pockets on her cargo pants are all buttoned up. Once that's done she gets to work projecting the holo-bubble even before the airlock opens, trying as best she can to mask just how many people are leaving the T-Jet. As far as she knows this could be the first time a Synthezoid has been in deep space. Thankfully she only needs air for cooling purposes so there shouldn't be any problems in the cold void of space. At least in theory. In practise she's probably voiding her warranty ten times over...

She doesn't seem to mind that Kate wants to control the weapons by herself. For all Viv knows the T-Jet doesn't even really have proper weapons. Hopefully Kate will be better at shooting than she was about keeping her civilian cellphone on her during her stakeout of Happy Harbor!

Unfortunately her top flight speed is rather lacking compared to some of the Titans, but she's not shy about being carried or towed if it's an option. Either way she devotes most of her attention to jamming, stealth and if needed shooting energy blasts into any of the exploding probes sent towards them.

<< Wonder Girl please feel free to call me Vivian or Viv for short. Terms like robo-girl are a little rude to an AI. As for your question I have been looking for suitable entry points. I am also capable of travelling through solid matter, so potentially I will be able to let you in from inside without causing hull damage. >> Once they get there she'll tentatively try phase through. If she can get in that way it'll presumably be much easier to open an airlock from inside than hotwiring it from outside! Otherwise she can assist with attempts to hack the system or just brute force their way in.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia doesn't seem to consider sacrilege a valid reason to stop and instead seems to vanish as she continues towards the annulus at a much smaller size. It's entirely possible they will still be able to detect her with their sensors but at the very least she should be a lot harder to target.

<<The destruction of Jupiter would be pretty bad, I would definitely not like that to happen and the Forever Dark or whatever also sounds pretty terrible. We need to get on that Annulus.>> She relays over the Titans comms as she punches her propulsion system to top speed like a tiny bullet flying towards the ring.

Kate Bishop has posed:
"Okay... seekers of the forever dark seems like an awful thing." things she isn't transmitting. She can't help but agree with the other ship though sassing about their name. She respects sass. Almost makes her want to take the stealth ship's side.

On secure comms <<Does anyone see the ship that fired off the drone as a torpedo?>>

Then she notes squinting <<The stealth ship seems to be really really keen on no one messing with the ring, even us, I am starting to lean towards the thing being bad news.... I am with Supergirl we need to power it down, impound it, and neither of these two ships gets to be happy about it.>>

Pause.

<<When the hell did we become space cops?>>

<<Also yes... Annulus sounds very bad.. on it's face.>>

This is all on secure Titan comms not hailing

Donna Troy has posed:
    Kara's eye-laser blast is accompanied a few moments later by seven near-parallel purple beams following the same path. <<Krypton is gone, and we have weapons too. I repeat, this is a Jukon patrol vessel operating under the Alkon accords. We are attempting to save your system from destruction, STAND DOWN Supergirl.>>

    Drifting her way along on the puffs of ionized hydrazine from the suit's reaction thrusters, Siobhan finds herself drifting further and further behind Nadia and Vivian, with their more efficient propulsion. Cassie, who ignores the limitations of reaction masses with a typically Olympian disregard for the laws of physics, is moving even further ahead. It's Siobhan then, taking up the rear, who first notices stars blinking out and reappearing again, as a patch of darkness slips silently closer to the group of Titans approaching the ring.

    Nadia and Vivian start scanning for entry points as they approach, but there's nothing that looks remotely like a door. Nor are they are kinds of windows, portholes or vents. There are a lot of slender metallic fins covering the surface, perhaps operating as a heat sink, and down closer they can see that the shapes moving across the surface of the ring appear to be some kind of robots - not the kind you'd expect to be fighting in the streets of Metropolis when the latest mad scientist has had a bad day, but more like industrial robots.

    <<Jukon patrol vessel to Titan ship>>, the comms respond to Gar. << I repeat; we are trying to save your solar system. Stop acting like fools and help us deal with these 'forever dark' lunatics! Can you locate their stealth ship anywhere? We need to locate and disable them before they launch any more attacks, so we can reverse the disruptor. Time is pressing!>>

    Kian's sense pick up complicated arrangements of very simple particles. To a scientist such as him, it's fascinating - these particles are some of the basic building blocks, indivisible, and should never be found in these kinds of quantities. His knowledge of wormhole technology is limited, but he knows that this isn't the way /his/ people would go about it. The energy levels are far too low to create a stable wormhole - though they would be ideal for projecting some kind of signal /into/ a wormhole.

    While his mind is lost in the realms of physical speculation, he again feels the lightest touch of an alien mind communicating with him. This time the aliens are seeking to make contact themselves. "Please. Stop your colleagues. They must not interfere with the annulus. We have never been this close to the Forever Darkness. Stop them!"

    Life as space cops is never easy, and Titans jurisdiction does indeed seem to stretch distressingly far lately.

Kara Danvers has posed:
<Hey, we need to hurry up here. These guys are really spoiling for a fight. If that thing is a real threat, I can cut it to pieces. But if it is connected to that wormhole somehow, we need to use it to get our friends back. These two are clearly not going to settle their differences. If the stealth ship truly owns it, they can turn it off. And if what they say is true, we can grant them permission to turn it back on again when we're satisfied. If they're lying, they won't have any control over it at all... right?>

Supergirl floats closer to the ring too now that the Juton ship is moving toward it. Those purple beams look like they might hurt.. but better they hit her than the other ship. Even if the stealth ship is doing wrong they don't deserve to die. <Diplomacy is never easy and sometimes people refuse to listen to reason. That doesn't mean we don't keep trying. We have to be better than the ones with the big guns, because hey I carry two of the biggest guns around in my head. Does anyone have some good news on what that ring does?>

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
<<Hey, if they didn't come around here causing trouble...>> Cassie echoes back at Siobhan. <<Seriously. Galaxy is huge. How is it that all these alien weirdos are coming around our neighborhood to start crap?>> If she sounds a bit surly, it is no mistake.

Vivian, on the other hand, gets a much brighter reaction, well, once she's finished apologizing <<Ohmygoddesses I'm sorry, I didn't mean, I really just- it was more of a guess, like how everyone is some kind of yaddayadda-Girl or blahblah-Lad. Vivian, cool.>> But more importantly... <<Through solid matter you say?>>

A plan coalesces, especially as no one is otherwise able to locate an obvious entrypoint, although the robots on the surface become obvious. <<Looks like there's plenty going on, on the surface. Let's land and look around, Viv you can absolutely poke inside and see waht there is to see, and if there's a way in. I'd rather not have to punch a hole in their big space doohickey but like, I definitely will if I have to. That is assuming we're not just going to blow it up anyway.>>

Regardless of all the planning, getting there is half the battle. Cassie keeps pushing, maybe not even realizing at first just how much she's accelerating, or the fact that she might be breaking her old Earth records. Without the wind on her face, landmarks on the ground whipping past, with the total NOTHING-ness around her, it's hard to guage. Even the objects, they're all so far, so big, the scales are just hard to get in perspective. And so by the time she actually approaches the Annulus proper... she realizes she's actually going too fast and has to suddenly haul herself to a stop to avoiding making (or at least attempting) a much more violent boarding.

But she manages, because no laws of physics, so her deceleration is rather sharp. Instead, she just re-orients from her headlong position to a feet-first one before touching onto the surface of the thing. <<So... there's lots of ACTUAL robots here too. Viv? Maybe you can talk to them? Or if you can make anything more of the readings, Waspette.>>

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
Looking ahead, Siobhan almost misses it. She looks to her right just at a moment of seeing the stars wink out and realizing she's seeing that cloaked ship. She stares for a moment before calling out to the other Titans, <"I found de other ship. Not takin' chances and sick of doin' not'in'."> She then sucks in a breath, <"Wish me luck."> And with that, her space suit explodes. A moment later, she appears on the cloaked ship on what she hopes is the bridge or near enough to it. She can't really tell. It was a big shape in space. She picked a spot in the sillouhette that looked bridgy.

Besides, she's now a skeleton faced, glowy eyed, death ghost spirit demon thing. She's fine. Probably.

Kian has posed:
    Kían's voice comes over the team's internal comms -- unusual in and of itself, especially since he isn't asking a question.  «Be careful, the rin' feels like a gate, it has some of the same feelin' that I got in Eart' orbit.  I do not wan' any more frien's fallin' through a hole in the universe.»
    And then with a quick flick of his wings, he flits over to the control panel Nadia explained to him, for launching their probe.  «Nadia, I am sendin' in our device.  The field feels right.  I--»
    He breaks off suddenly, automatically raising a hand to his temple; he's in mental contact again, and they're begging him to leave their project alone.
    {/You cannot be allowed to destroy one of the planets of this system.  This isn't even my home system, but I know you can't be allowed to do that,/} he replies, without anger... but without much sympathy either.  He's all for basic research, but there are limits to what constitutes a good idea.
    So he launches their probe, right towards the center of the ring.
    Since that exchange took place mentally, good luck figuring out why he just stood there motionless for a moment, then poked a button.

Gar Logan has posed:
Nobody followed Beast Boy's request for a virtual meeting of sides. Would it have changed things? Probably not. However, the more this standoff persists, the more his gut is telling him one thing in particular.

And yes, pizza can wait.

The Jukon ship went from telling the Titans they had no business here, to asking for their help. The Forever-Dark side has been hiding, and if there's any truth at all to the danger of Jupiter getting /blown up/ - well, they've got to ensure that doesn't happen.

He relays to the group, Titans and non, "We need to get the ring. It could be the key to getting everyone back. If that means stopping the Forever-Dark guys, do it. I don't like the sound of what they're saying, and I sure don't like the idea of losing Jupiter. That would be bad, m'kay?"

Even in this moment, he hits them with a taste of Mr. Mackey.

"Supergirl, can you deal with that? Just make sure they can't, like, blow the planet up. We might need them, though. I don't think the Jukon guys are the big threat here," he explains. A moment later, after Siobhan reports, he adds, "Yeah, go with that, Banshee. Sorry. Silver Banshee. Be careful, and, uh, don't kill anyone unless you have to. Supergirl, be ready, okay?"

He studies Kian for a few seconds, blinking after what they are able to hear from him, and the pause after before he sends the probe out. Finally, he hails the non-Titans. <<Like I said, finding our friends is our priority, but if what was said about Jupiter is true, we just aren't going to let that happen. We're taking control of the ring. Do not interfere.>>

Wiping his brow, he says more to himself, "I don't know how Kirk and Picard did this shit every episode without losing it."

Vivian Vision has posed:
<< I am picking up signals between the robots and the structure. It's as if they are taking orders from a central control system and then co-ordinating between each other to make adjustments. >> Vivian broadcasts over the encrypted team channel. << I am not formally involved in superheroic activities Wonder Girl and as such have no codename. So please don't worry about having offended me. Besides my understanding of Human culture is that people who are considered to be 'attractive' may use whichever names they wish when addressing others. Is this not the case? >>

<< The signal seems to be coming from... this way >> She transmits co-ordinates and, for those close by, points. << Great Aunt Nadia if you wish to invesigate the structure further I suggest we concentrate our studies there. >> Of course if that's where the processing is going on it makes it a lot riskier to phase through the material. But that just means she has to be extra careful if she tries it.

The signals from the structure and the robots are all compared against the earlier transmissions to check for patterns and similarities. Really she's looking for anything which might give a clue as to what the very first alien probe was doing. Or what this thing is doing for that matter. If she can find a way to ask the robots nicely in machine speak then so much the better! Machines are always a lot more rational than organics.

Lets just hope they're not rationally trying to blow up a gas giant and willing to kill anyone who tries to stop them.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia continues to push her propulsion system, testing out just what it can do. She doesn't get many chances to go into space and test things so she is definitely taking notes even as she speeds towards the ring.

<<Be careful Sio.>> She is in the process of saying when Banshee's spacesuit explodes and she is left blinking, that's probably okay right?

<<They seem to be industrial robots, not combat types. Then again industrial tools can do some damage. So should probably be careful. Anyway, anywhere is an entrance if you're small enough. I'm going in.>> Nadia informs Cassie over the comms.

<<Thank you favorite Great Niece! Coordinates received!>> She replies to Vivian over the comms. Upon reaching the ring, the already tiny Waspette goes microscopic and ceases to be perceptible to the human eye as she attempts to enter the ring by flying between it's molecules heading towards the provided coordinates.

Kate Bishop has posed:
"You are doing great Gar." she says encouraging him there and keeps an eye on the sensors as she studies everything from a more tactical standpoint. Honestly she is trying to make sure if another probe is fired as a warhead she might be able to shoot it before it impacts with anny of her team members.

Honestly though Gar seems to have talking to the aliens covered. Several of her team are being more direct because they can go out in space and jusst deal with it all. Then there is team science who has a plan.

When Kian launches their own device she tracks it, ready to fire to defend it.

Also worries. Kate is very worried since the last time they were out like this they lost four of the team.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Cassie lands on the surface of the ring, and... nothing. There's no immediate reaction. A robot about two stories tall trundles towards her, but at a gradual pace she could easily avoid. If anything it seems like it is paying her no attention. She's probably just in its way. All around the ring, the robots continue doing whatever it is they are doing. Moving, stopping for a while, moving again.

    The Silver Banshee's attempt to jump onto the bridge of the ship suffers from a common problem when trying to judge objects without frames of reference. She does not arrive on the bridge, but on the surface of the ship. The reason for this is immediately apparent - it's just too /small/ to have a bridge. It's another of the stealth probes rather than the stealth ship. The stealth probe continues its way towards the ring, aimed at where Cassie has landed, with the Silver Banshee riding it like a space surf-board.

    <<Jukan patrol vessel to Titan ship. Do not interfere with the device!>> It seems the Seekers of the Forever Night aren't the only ones trying to discourage the Titans. <<It's an Intrinsic Field Disruptor! Do you have any idea what you're doing? You could destroy us all!>>

    Kian's message to the Seekers is along similar lines, but the response is immediate and vociferous. "They lie! The pirates lie! It will not damage this world. We probe this region of space-time within the ring to determine the shape of the fracture left by the arrival wormhole. We already performed this operation close to your planet at the collapsed exit wormhole, your planet was not harmed. We are scientists, Seekers of the Forever Dark. They wish to steal our research, perhaps salvage War World for themselves."

    Vivian's analysis of the broadband signal coming from the central communication point on the ring quickly reveals that either the protocol is spectacularly inefficient, or there is an absolutely massive flood of data. There must be a huge amount of processing power on the ring to generate it, in the latter case. Trying to decode such a signal with no fixed datapoint for comparison, no 'Rosetta stone' is a hopeless task - but there are patterns that can be identified. Within a few seconds, she can identify a data block pattern with headers that contain a sequence she is able to predict from the datablock, which is almost certainly some kind of data checksum. Checking back over her logs, she finds the same data block structure was being used by the probe at the site of the collapsed wormhole back in Earth orbit.

    Nadia passes through the molecular structure of the outer shell of the ring easily enough, arriving into what is to her a vast open space (several microns across). Around her is a vast landscape of rigid molecular structures, rising up into giant peaks and plummeting into great abysses. The molecular structures are fascinating - clearly crystalline, yet intensely elaborate. These are no natural crystals, nor something that could be grown by terrestrials science. Countless strange structures of impossibly complicated metal salts are embedded into the crystal matrix. The closest thing she has ever seen to this was Supergirl's Kryptonian construction crystal.

    The Titan's probe flies true towards the center of the ring, and almost immediately, Siobhan feels the stealth probe beneath her feet shift and accelerate. It's clearly on an intercept course.

    "DO NOT DO THIS!" The voice screams into Kian's mind.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Supergirl looks to the special package as it is fired from the T-jet. Floating through space toward the center of the ring. She then looks back to the silver ship, definitely the most dangerous thing out here. Then Siobhan seems to be riding a stealth probe and she raises an eyebrow at that.

<Here's what I'll do. I'll wait for our package to go through its aperture and then I'll destroy it. An intrinsic Field Disruptor aimed at a black hole? it seems likely it's designed to force the black hole open. In some ways, it's true it could destroy this region of space. The ..the uh.. uhm.. er. Thingy of the.. ah.. thing... is.. hm.. words...> Supergirl says over the t-comms

And then sudden, she hits a word road block. She wants to explain the way quantum entanglements create networks of causality which act as fields and that these fields have intrinsic properties that can be altered with the right kind of science... but words fail her completely. She has never felt so dumb in her entire life that she cannot communicate these physics concepts to her Earth friends.

With a huff over the t-comms she says, <...anyway what is pertinent to the situation is a willingness to use this dangerous technology in our solar system without our permission. For that reason alone -- point me in the right direction and I will blast it to bits. Ideally a power supply. And if that doesn't stop it, I'll fling the thing away from the wormhole it's trying to operate on.>

She looks back to the silver ship, <on top of that, I am willing to believe that they are scavengers who want to scare us away from their proposed bounties.. in short, I think that both sides are telling the truth and that we of Earth are the last people they care one iota about>.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Cassie considers Viv's report first, even as she wide-eyes the slowly lumbering giant construction bots. See what she meant about sizes and distances being hard to judge out here? << OK, so they're talking to the main hub. Do you have any idea what those orders are? What the adjustments mean? And for now... do you think you can interrupt them? If we're not sure if this thing is harmless or trying to blow up Jupiter, seems like pressing the PAUSE button until we figure it out isn't the worst idea, and won't escale the alien conflict out there so much. >>

Of course, no conversation between heroes fighting for the potential survival of a solar system can pass without some side talk: << ... and no, it's not OK for attractive people to call you whatever they want, although maybe some act that way, and also... thank you? Anyway we can talk about that stuff a little more when we get back, if you want. >>

Because there is an important message from Earthfleet Captain Gar Logan!

<< Beast Boy, we're on the ring. Vivian has located what might be a hub for some kind of control signals here, and Waspette is getting into the structure. We might be able to disrupt commands, and if not, at the very least, I bet targetting Viv's coordinates might disrupt it. >>

<< Supergirl, if things go south and you end up going eye-laser, that's your target. Even if it's not instantly destroyed, I think that might disable it. I can hit it from down here, too, if it comes to it. The scale is uh, pretty big, so it might take some firepower. >> Among other things with her space suit, Cassie did have the foresight of putting the lasso in an external pouch, which, with some less than dextrous fumbling in her suit gloves, she's able to pull out. This, like lasers, is a back up option- she tends to assume that massive amounts of divine lightning are bad for delicate electronic systems.

Beyond that, she wouldn't have much to do but wait for Viv and Nadia to collect more data... except for the fact that Siobhan is rejoining them, apparently joy-riding an alien vessel. She spins about and rises a bit above the gate, ready to intercept. << Looks like we've got incoming. >>

And yeah, she will totally attempt to follow in Diana and Donna's footsteps and punch a spaceship to divert that thing from their own probe.

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
And then suddenly Siobhan is standing on the front of a probe. She blinks as she looks down at the nearly invisible thing under her feet and then leans forward a little to try to keep momentum from pulling her off. There's at least no wind or anything to stop her but she isn't really attached much either. So, after a moment, she squats down to plant a hand on the front. Her glowing eyes staring ahead.

Well, that answers that. She is indeed immune to space. Sorta. She doesn't really need to breathe and cold is no big deal. So, she now just has a new problem. She has no idea what is going on and everything is deathly quiet. So...quiet. She's never heard silence like this before.

<What have ya done, Siobhan?> A voice asks in her head and the girl frowns at it before she looks up and notes their course. She looks down at the thing beneath her and she attempts to use her amazing strength to grip it tighter then start pulling a little, trying to open it up and get an idea of the inside, not to mention maybe alter its course.

Kian has posed:
    "/Kya/!!"  Kían claps his hands to his face and slumps against the wall; that *hurt*.
    It takes him a moment to close off his mind as best he can; he can still 'hear' the aliens, but not so painfully 'loud'.  Once satisfied he can manage his mind, he flicks into the air again and drifts over to Gar, touching down lightly.
    He doesn't say anything yet; he just watches events unfolding.  It's all rather out of his hands at this point.  "Hyu can not do science hwen hyu treat it as religion," he finally says, quite quietly, maybe mostly to himself, without looking at his teammate.
    With a jerk, though, he turns to face Gar, and he looks worried.  "But hwat if I haf done the wron' thin'?" he asks, suddenly and sharply.

Gar Logan has posed:
More things being shouted back at them. Was Beast Boy wrong? It wouldn't be the first time. Are they all making the wrong decision? In the interest of making sure Jupiter remains in one piece, they surely don't think they are. As for the rest? He still isn't sure who's being truthful with them and who's not. What if both sides are being honest? What if they're both lying? Which way is harder to go by?

No, he doesn't really know what he's doing. He isn't Nightwing, not Robin. There are a lot of other people he's not. He's just Gar. He can only ever /be/ Gar, for better or worse. Being thrust into the role of decision-maker isn't easy. There's so much responsibility over the safety of not just his teammates and friends, but well beyond that when dealing with stuff like this. It's easier to just turn into an animal and go attack something or be clever with picking the right creature for the job.

For this job, the only thing he can be is himself.

This time around, he has no response to the other races involved, the silver ship or whatever's behind the Forever-Dark worshippers, cultists, whatever they are. For now, all he does is flash Kate an uncertain look at her words, then he takes a half-step closer to Kian, a hand coming out toward his shoulder, to reassure with a touch regardless of the link it will create. "I guess we won't know until we find out, will we? I'm asking myself the same thing."

Vivian Vision has posed:
<< A significant portion of this structure may well just be the computer system, >> Vivian marvels as she tries to make sense of all the data. Taking great care to store everything for later study at GIRL. << Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to decrypt the programming in time to do anything with it. Not without a key of some sorts. >> She continues to approach the structure and, if it's not impossible due to the shape, will land on one of the huge robots and try to carefully phase peek inside. << I might be able to cause some minor confusion but unfortunately Wonder Girl it's a question of antenna size. It'd be like asking you to drown out the sound of Niagra falls by shouting. I suspect without the 'brain' it will... I don't know. Probably explode? >>

She switches to open communications and sends out a short range signal to one of the large robots. It's nothing complex, just a combination of logic puzzles and simple math, intended to confirm if it's even a little bit self aware and willing to talk. And of course if it relays the signals to main control it could give her the reference point she needs to understand the alien code.

<< I do not really study science much but if it /is/ black hole related then a significant amount of energy could release so we may need to vacate this area very /very/ quickly. >> She updates her emergency broadcast for Earth in real time now. Ready to go the fraction of a second after something goes wrong enough to need it.

Well more wrong than it's already going anyway....

Kate Bishop has posed:
Kate has a problem.

There is a probe on it's way like a weapon towards the Titan's device. The logical course of action would be for her to fire at the probe.

Her ghostly teammate is flying on it though so that is a problem. <<Not sure this is the best time to hang ten Siobhan?">>

"Lets hope you didn't do thae wrong thing. Personally I am tired of all of these guys and think we need to disable the ring after we use it for Nadia and Kian's science... and all these trespassers can either get the hell out of our solar system or come back and answer questions to the League or SHIELD or whatever."

She gives Gar and Kian a reassuring look. "You guys are doing the best we can right now." reassuring words too right, then she looks back out at the readings.

On the inside she is feeling frustrated and a bit helpless. None of this is in her wheelhouse.

Donna Troy has posed:
    The Titans appear to have plotted a course, and once they start moving - so does everything else. Very fast.

    The Silver Banshee Surfer finds that a lack of wind makes staying on the probe surprisingly easy. So long as she's in contact with it, the forward motion is as good as gravity. If anything it's a rather high gravity. The deep black metal is hard to get a grip on, but the banshee's strength is greater than the hulls, and before long she's able to peel back the surface. Under the bent metal beneath her feet she can see that what she had assumed from a distance was the bridge contains a small crystalline lump, which she quickly shatters. She can immediately feel the effect - the faint vibrations stop, and the probe starts to drift slightly as it continues on it's way, towards the waiting figure of Cassie, fists raised to punch.

    As Nadia continues to explore the interior of the crystal computer inside the ring, Vivian works on one of the giant construction bots. Her logic puzzles are channeled into it on the frequency that it had been relaying adjustment data on, but perhaps it has failed to pass some kind of recognition filter, because the robot has no immediate reaction. Perhaps it would, eventually, have responded, but Vivian will never know, because at that point the robot explodes.

    It's the Titans on the T-Jet who are first aware of the reason why - the silvery ship is launching a barrage of purple beams at multiple targets. The one that destroyed the robot was clearly intended to hit the Titan's probe, but scored a narrow miss. Another beam is on target, but this is what Kara had been waiting for, and the Kryptonian takes the blast herself. When the initial blinding flash has gone, she finds herself tumbling dizzily through space. The beam didn't hit her quite as hard as Ursa, but it was close. A fourth beam rattles the T-Jet, and immediately sirens within it blare and warning lights burst into life across the console. A fifth passes just in front of the Silver Banshee and her crippled drone-surfboard. Had she not damaged it, that would probably have been a direct hit.

    The silver ship turns, and the blisters move around on the surface. Those blisters that had fired curve away across the hull, and more blisters move into place for a second volley.

    The Titan's probe gets closer and closer to the center of the ring, and a last desperate shot is taken by the silver ship as one blister gets on target, but again it misses. A chorus of voices fill Kian's mind, wailing in despair, and the Titan's probe reaches the center of the ring.

    And passes through it untouched, continuing on its path through space, apparently completely unaffected.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara lets out a small sound of desperate in to her mask. Mostly because the silver ship starts firing. That sound of desperate turns in to an ooof.. as she's hit with that purple beam right center-mass. She knew it would hurt, and it sure did. Like getting walloped by Ursa, though only once instead of over and over again. She coughs up her air for a moment as she drifts back. At least they didn't get the probe. She sucks the air back in and tries to get her breathing back under control. She's going to need to get some new air soon at this rate.

<Hey everyone,.. did it work? did it do the thing it was going to do?> She zips around to scoop up the probe and flies it back to the center of the ring and holds it there like simba. <Isn't it meant to disappear or something.. _something_?>

She glares daggers at that silver ship and wants to shoot back. It could tip the balance in favour of the stealth ship though who will no doubt swoop in for whatever they want out of this mess. <Anyone? do I let it go? time for boom pow smash?,> she begs over the t-comms as things get deadly.

Gar Logan has posed:
"Aw, crap!" Beast Boy blurts as things suddenly turn upside down, at least figuratively. The silvery ship attacked, after all this. They tried to shoot up the probe. They shot Supergirl. Now they're attacking the T-Jet. Whatever contact was made with Kian is at least momentarily broken, as he braces himself against any shuddering on the part of the ship.

Then, he turns toward Kate and says two words he was hoping he wouldn't have to resort to:

"Return fire."

He elaborates, for the whole team: "They fired on us. Hit them back."

Kate Bishop has posed:
<<Okay listen up you jerks!>> because yeah they didn't just fire at the T-Jet they pretty much fired at all of her teammates as well. "Gar... Kian get on those alarms make sure nothing serious is damaged now!"

Yup now it is in Kate's wheelhouse, she still isn't sure where the stealth probes may be coming from but that silver ship is a problem and hostile at this point. She locks on, kicks the engines into motion so she can do more evasive manuavers.

She looks thoughtful as everything jerks into motion, and she hasn't stopped having the silver ship in her targeting system. The Auto-Cannon swings into motion and she starts to just lay down a torrent of high velocity projectiles. Mostly to just mess with the silver ship.

The real kicker is when she moves it up a notch and launches two of the purlioned Warzoon space torpedoes at it.

Of course she doesn't let up for a moment on the autocannon, tracking the silver ship flawlessly. Little known fact. Kate is an amazing shot with a whole lot more than a bow, it is almost preternatural her marksmanship. <<Eat it!>>

Oh right on the secure comm <<Time for Boom Pow Smash Supergirl!>>

Also that Warzoon Warhead thing, that is just dirty fighting. They are also very fast and built for.... WAR...

Kian has posed:
    Kían's expression eases, and not only because the noise in his head has quieted.  "Than' hyu, Gar.  It may soun' odd, but it he'ps to know that iss a normal feelin', bein' unsure if hyu haf done right or not."
    "/Kya/!"  He staggers under the voices in his head, and then under the attack on the ship.
    The response to that, he leaves in Kate and Gar's hands.  And when his head clears, he blinks rapidly, and with a wingflick is back at the console he launched the probe from.  "That iss odd."  Over comms, he makes a request: «If anyone can, please get the probe.  We need to see hwat wen' wron'.  If somethin' did.  If hyu can get it *safely*," he finishes.
    One might fairly question the birdman's priorities under the current hostile circumstances....

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Cassie winds up...

...and punches what seems to be an already disabled probe! CLUNK-bonk. OK, it's a bit underwhelming for her first time punching a spaceship, but hey, what do you know, THERE'S ANOTHER SPACE SHIP LEFT. For now, she just kind of knocks the probe in a direction that's hopefully not directly harmful to any of them and...

Well, they're being shot at a WHOLE LOT. Alright. Forget investigation (she sucks at it), let's go deal with the thing trying to shoot her friends. << OK, you can't easily shut it down, well, keep working Viv, I think you and Waspete are as good at this as anyone we've got, hopefully you can figure something out. And uh, if it starts trying to blow up Jupiter, maybe try to do that explode-y thing you said. >>

Meanwhile? She resumes her upward path from punch-a-probe and onward toward Silver Ship, this time without the 'how do I space?' warmup, and jumping right to appropriate space-dogfighting speed. Alien misunderstandings or not, these people are not acting like friends.

<< Hey space-dicks, here I come! >>

Did she just warn them? Yes.

Why? Well, partly because Cassie is kind of mad at being shot at, but also, seeing KARA take a shot and actually feel it, she kind of wants to make sure her LESS INVINCIBLE friends get as little as possible, including the T-Jet as it unloads its Warzoon arsenal. Also, she does have one advantage when it comes to lasers: This is all a setup for bullets and bracelet- oops make that LASERS AND BRACELETS, IN SPAAAAAACE, planning to aim their first shot at her right back at them.

And yes, doing it will breach her suit, cuz they're on underneath. Time to learn a thing.

Assuming she doesn't die, she's still aimed full speed at the thing, for the follow up ship punching she's been previously denied!

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia is still trying to make since of the inside of this crystalline technology and is definitely taking lots of visuals and readings to study later, deciphering alien technology is rapidly becoming a hobby and it just keeps being relevant to saving the world or at least her friends.

<<Suuuuupergirl, can I get a crash course in crystal tech? What's an off switch look like?>> She asks over the comms.

And then her entire world shakes violently, or at least the world inside the structure of the ring that is getting shot by space pirates. <<Woah! What was that, what's happing?>> She doesn't have to wait long for an answer as it rapidly becomes clear the silver ship turned hostile. <<I wonder if they like Dazzler?>> She wonders aloud before she begins using the communications gear within her suit to access the alien ship and broadcast her entire collection of Dazzler MP3s to their bridge while overriding the volume control.

Vivian Vision has posed:
For a moment Vivian disappears in the explosion. Quite possibly blasted to pieces along with the huge alien machine! And then the cloud of debris clears up and she's hoving in space seemingly unharmed. Although her expression is perhaps a little perturbed and she's a lot more translucent than before. She did get to see inside the robot in a way. Just very briefly and at a much higher velocity than she'd have liked. It's just lucky for her that she was in the process of phase peeking when everything started to explode..

Yes she named the giant construction bot George. She could hardly call it 'huge alien robot thing' now could she?

Unfortunately her flight speed isn't really quick enough to engage in an epic space battle but Vivians eyes are at least energy weapons. So she picks a point that looks delicate and starts to pew pew away. That doesn't take up a lot of her processing power and with the rest she sets to full on electronic warfare mode. Doing her best to jam anything which isn't a Titans signal and to scramble any targeting locks as best she can.

That emergency message she's been working on all this time? It finally gets sent. Unencrypted so the Silver ship aliens can read it if they like. The core of the message is that the Silver ship is a hostile invader attacking peaceful Earth vessels and the planet should deploy it's mightiest weapons to drive them out. Of course Viv knows Earth doesn't really have any star ships likely to respond. So there's a little code tucked in letting the Avengers and Justice League know they don't actually need to respond. It's nothing more than a bluff.

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
The blast has Siobhan leaning back and glaring at the ship. Too bad she can't scream or she would. She'd show them. Instead, she's stuck floating on a probe that has been disabled and then notices Cassie winding up. She leans forward and pushes off the probe right before it is hit and floats gently on to the ring before coming to a stop on top of it. She glares at Cassie briefly and then looks over toward the silver ship again. She starts looking around at the various things happening, trying her best to figure out the next best course of action that doesn't involve taking out her anger on the ring itself.

Kara Danvers has posed:
<I've got it Kian>, she replies and then tosses the probe back toward the T-jet. A serious look crosses her face though as she watches that silver ship taking shots at her friends. That beam could do some serious damage to their ride and they only just got it.

She makes fists and launches forward to the silver ship in a blue and red blue. Those blisters are the problem.. perhaps if she gets rid of them they will run out of tricks. She feels the tingle of their shield as she passes through it again and then her heat vision is unleashed in a head sweep across the blisters.

The heat ray out of atmosphere looks like a beam of pure solar energy. She's not done though, she flies to the surface of the ship, they may need to answer for their aggressions in a prison of some kind, perhaps at SHIELD.

Donna Troy has posed:
    The voice that had been speaking to Kian returns as the general mental wailing dies down. "Why? Why? You disrupted the readings! All our work is wasted. Now we must start again and hope there is still time to get a reading, if these pirates do not destroy everything! The Forever-Dark passed through here so recently! Through local hyperspace interface. The Forever-Dark caused the wormhole collapse. We could have traced its track if we had complete data of wormhole pair! The Forever-Dark is /all/. Four thousand years we waited for a chance like this, now perhaps it is gone! We could have probed it, found much about the exterior of Forever-Dark! Now - tragedy. Children! Foolish"

    Gar puts Operation Hit Them Back onto an official footing, and the Jukon vessel - if that is what it really is - discovers that the small Earth-vessel is not armed like one. The raking autocannon fire is surprisingly effective, with relative velocities of these ships rather larger than typical for aircraft, but ammunition is limited. The first salvo of Warzoon torpedoes is a bigger challenge. A pair of purple beams lance out to intercept them, but both missiles engage autonomous anti-intercept programs and loop rapidly out of the way. Another set of blisters roll around the surface of the ship to track the movement of the two torpedoes, peppering them with lower energy blasts to keep up a rapid rate of fire. One is blasted before it can reach the ship, but the other impacts in a blinding flash of crimson heat.

    Cassie's charge on the ship makes her the target of another of the Jukon plasma cannons, but she's not trying to dodge. She raises her bracelets in the approved Amazon style, making no attempt to dodge - this is a tactic the Jukon are certainly not expecting. Unfortunately for Cassie, she's not expecting just how powerful the beam is. Diana would be able to get away with this stunt, but the youngest and least experienced of the Amazons finds that a lot of that energy does in fact end up transferred to the Amazon. Bullet energy is easy for one such as Cassie, but plasma cannon energy, beams capable of piercing space ship hulls are another matter. In a painful blast of light she finds herself spinning away into space, every muscle screaming. Her bracelets though? They are much tougher than a ship's hull. Although a good chunk of the energy is transferred to Cassie, the majority of it heads back the way it came, scoring a line of fire across the surface of the silver ship that causes two of the blisters to erupt.

    The Kryptonian blur arrives at the ship, heat-ray vision searing across more blisters as they fire away at the T-Jet. Kate keeps the ship rolling and spinning, dodging one blast after another, but the Jukon are firing everything they can at the T-Jet now, and she's running out of tricks. When two, three, then four more blisters are destroyed by Supergirl's heat ray, Kate starts to feel like she's come through it unscathed. She pushes hard to the side to dodge one more beam, but fines her new course is lining up on another blister. Flying in space just isn't the same as flying in the atmosphere - there's so much intertia, and so few ways to bleed energy, that the turns aren't tight and the maneuvering slow. A purple beam darts out towards the T-Jet, and there's no way of escaping it.

    Something flickers in front of the vision of the Titans in the T-jet in the moments where they await their doom. A patch of darkness streaks in front of them - another stealth probe, hurling itself in the way of the beam. The probe explodes barely fifty feet in front of the T-Jet, and the ship is shaken, but survives.

    Kate triggers a second volley of Warzoon torpedoes towards the silvery ship. Blisters move across the surface to target them, but there are so few functioning any more. The ship starts to turn and pick up speed - and then with a sudden flash of light it seems to momentarily /elongate/ into the distance, and is gone.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara feels her feet touch down on the surface of the ship just as it bursts away faster than the speed of light. No time like the present, right? She stares after the ship and steels her mind.. just the count of two.. count to two.. count to two.

Kara pushes off the quantum fabric of reality and stretches in to the distance.

One..

Two..

Kara returns back to regular less than the speed of light and finds herself drifting ....somewhere....

<Titans, can you read? I lost the silver ship>, she says over t-comms to the void. Stars in the distance like usual, but she's not in Sol any more. She zooms her vision in to the distance trying to find it, but she can't see it.

<Titans?> .... "Why did Power Girl make this look so easy!?," she says to herself as a gnawing fear seeps in to her bones. She presses the S.O.S. button on her T-comms.

Kate Bishop has posed:
<<WOOOOOOT>> declares Kate with authority over the comms there and then fist pumps "Totally nailed it.... " <<Run you losers!>>

Then there is a long slow pause.

<<<Wait.. where is K.. Supergirl..... also .. uh.. someone should pick up Siobhan...>>

Okay now Kate is worried flipping the scanners and trying to find Kara.

Suddenly very concerned.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
... yeah remind Cassie to bug Diana about that thing where she bangs the bracers together to somehow make a magic forcefield or whatever. It both looks cool and is very practical!

Presumably, Cassie is AWARE she doesn't know how to do said trick, and the suit would probably have made it tricky anyway. She does it anyway, because in the moment, she's really thinking far more both about her friends and sticking it to the aliens than herself. But good intentions only get her so far.

The beam hits, and her suit gloves and forearms evaporate, revealing the gleaming metal beneath. It holds, declaring *something* about the power of the Olympians and their forebearers, and the crafts the Amazons have inherited. But the metal is only... so big, and without the mystical echo of the full Aegis and merely the itty-bitty physical shards bound to her forearms, a great deal pours past even as the center of the blast is directed back.

The -rest- of her suit (and clothes, and some layers of skin) evaporates microseconds later, in an outward wave too fast to really be relevant. Cassie meets the vacuum of space, but hardly has long to appreciate either the initial horror, wonder, or subsequent relief that it, at least, won't kill her. The pain takes moments to register across nerves, but it's a much more primal process than all those thinky things. It, along with her defiant anger at the ship is the last thing she remembers, Olympian will holding her consciousness in some coherence as she aims the reflected beam toward its target.

And then the pain catches up, along with all sorts of esoteric forces, as she's hurtled backward, screaming.

The Titans won't even get it on the radio, as that probably gets evaporated too, although the impact of the blast and its gleaming reflection registers quite brightly, both visually and on sensors, and her reverse trajectory sends her back toward the surface of the Annulus, at least, rather than into open space or down to meet her father's quasi-namesake.

Kian has posed:
    Kían clears his mind and answers the other minds clearly: {/You are confusing religion and science.  You are talking about beliefs, not about research.  There are thousands, millions of black holes to study, and disrupting this planetary system for just one is not an acceptable side-effect.  That can't be allowed, and I don't care what you're studying./}
    He hopes, he really really hopes as he retracts his mind, that he remembers how the controls work as he tries to capture the probe.  «Than' hyu, Ka... Super-girl!» he allows himself briefly over comms before focusing on the controls.
    He does allow himself a glance to Gar, who is captain on board as far as he's concerned.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Deep within the crystal core of the alien ring Nadia has been shaken and rattled by the explosions outside. Once the musical assault is complete and the attacks seemingly stop coming, she tries again on the comms.

<<Supergirl? Supergirl? Hellooooooooo?>> With no answers about crystal technology and how to possibly shut this array down forthcoming, she begins to get the idea that something may be wrong and begins making her way back out between the molecules of the anulus' exterior again and into the void of open space, whereupon she resumes a wasp size that is at least visible to the human eye.

<<Guys? What's going on? Where is Supergirl?>> She tries the comms again, <<Is everyone okay?>>

Gar Logan has posed:
A lot of things happen in short order, more than Gar can effectively keep up with by himself. One positive is the Jukon ship vacating the area rapidly after the T-Jet showed it wasn't just going to be fired upon without retaliation. Those Warzoon missiles sure helped with that. He checks the status of their shields before running a hand through his hair, only to remember he's already slipped his helmet in place in the event they had a breach of some kind, in which case things would have been a lot more problematic.

Now, there are multiple people (using the term loosely in one case) outside the ship, whether near or suddenly very far, bringing more concern to his thoughts and expression. They're going to have to be brought back on board, and hopefully they survive. They have to survive.

Beast Boy is silent for a long while, making it look like he's locking up. He feels eyes on him and turns toward Kian, a questioning look in place before he eyes the comms console again. He hails the aliens who are left.

<<Whoever is still out there, respond. We can't see your ship, but we know you're here somewhere. We need to work this out. We need you to help us understand what you're really doing here, and we have to get this probe safely in place to help our friends find their way back. You've seen what we can do. We were left without a choice.>>

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara twists and turns around in the vacuum of space. She can still feel the warmth of the sun. It's there, the brightest star in her vision. She takes a moment to draw in a breath. Oxygen is a resource and she can't afford to waste it when she's so far away from the T-Jet and Earth.

She makes fists and shuts her eyes, focuses, then tries to go faster than light again... and nothing. She can feel the drain within her. Her first super luminal flight really drained her. "Oh no," she murmurs to herself and looks down at the SOS beacon again to make sure it is transmitting.

There's no choice here now.. she pushes herself forward through space, getting up to speed - then she shuts her eyes and relaxes. It's going to be a long trip back home even at the speeds she's going, as it is slower than the speed of light. Though, the faster she pushes it, the shorter the trip will be for her at least. Yay relativity. If only she didn't feel so tired.. and sleepy.... momentum will carry her back. Just gotta keep her eyes open and let the sun warm her insides back up again.

Donna Troy has posed:
    The probe's data returns are confusing for someone who has to convert everything from base-10 to base-8 in their head first, particularly when the probe's intertial sensors are not tallying even remotely with its course predictions. Things like that happen to a poor probe when a Kryptonian hurls it back in the direction it originally came from. Fortunately there is a shut-down option, which Kian can activate, and at least that stops the flood of sensor feedback. The probe drifts on past the T-Jet, and Kian is able to give it a new course setting and re-activate the thrusters. It takes some concentration, but shortly the probe is turning and burning to slow its course away from the T-jet, and the diagnostics show an intercept in just over five minutes. Whatever they are.

    Nadia exits the ring in time to see a blurry human form, arms flailing, going past at some speed, with Vivian powering after her to intercept. Vivian is visibly moving faster, and should catch up with her in a minute or two, long before she drifts into Jupiter orbit.

    Kara looks around her to see everything is darkness. There are no solid objects within the range of her vision, not even a drifting rock. The stars, barely dimmed by the sun, are a brilliant but vastly distant orb all around her. One star, a little larger and far brighter than the others, casts enough light on her to see by - perhaps as much light as twilight on Earth, not impossibily inhospitable for a Sun-loving Kryptonian, but it feels a bit chilly even to her. As she starts out on her journey back to the life-giving light of the inner solar system, she can be comforted that even out here she is not entirely deprived of that solar radiation.

    As Kate brings the T-Jet to a relative stand-still and the Silver Banshee returns to the comforting embrace of an atmosphere, Gar works the radio, trying to re-establish contact with the Seekers.

    They do not respond directly to Kian this time, but after a short delay, they respond to Gar. <<We already told. We gather scientific data. Peaceful intent. There will be no harm to your system. Tell the one who talks true talk. No disruption. This was a lie of the bandits. We do not know of any probe. Please do not interfere with our instruments again, do not fire missiles.>>

Kian has posed:
    Kían is just as happy to not have to deal with further mental intrusions, as he's determined to recapture the probe... which, a bit to his own surprise, he actually does.  "I thin' I haf the probe back," he says a little tightly, still working the controls.  "The data is... hard to inter-pret jus' yet.
    Satified that things are controlled on that end, he flits over to Gar.  "This iss a new situation to me.  How can I he'p?"

Gar Logan has posed:
"I don't know. What do they mean, 'true talk?' What's that about?" Gar asks Kian as he paces before the console. "You heard them. They say that's no danger." He points out toward the big ring thing. "That the others were lying. Can we trust them? Do we have a choice?"

He really wishes they could count on someone who'd know the right thing to do, because right now he's not sure that person is him at all. "Supergirl's out there somewhere, and..I think Vivian is getting Wonder Girl."

There is no response to the Seekers, the Forever-Dark, just yet. "We still have to get that probe through. Does that ring need to be turned on or something?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia activates her space propulsion system to fly back to the ship leaving Vivian to get Cassie, <<How is the T-Jet doing? Was it damaged? I'm coming back aboard.>> She calls over the comms as she jets through space back from the anulus and towards the T-Jet.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Out in deep space, where Kara flies back on the long journey from the Kuiper belt, amazingly, impossibly, her T-Com pings with an incoming signal. <<Human, we see you caught in warp field. We trace fracture in space-time. This our expertise. We follow warp fracture, find you. Five point seven times further from solar body than before. Do you need assistance?>>

    Nadia arrives at the T-jet about the same time that the probe finishes its deceleration burn and comes in to drify alongside. A signal comes in to her from Vivian, explaining that she has recovered Cassie, but that it would be helpful if Nadia could find a /spare space suit/, as Cassie's appears to have been vaporized. Cassie will no doubt be relieved that Vivian's able to project modesty holograms...

    The alien who had been communicating with Kian makes tentative contact again. "You misunderstand. This is not a normal... black hole... the Forever Dark is something different, unique. A singularity within a singularity. Artificial. Infinite warping of space time, looped in on itself. "

    There's a short pause, and Kian gets a sense of curiousity over the mental carrier wave, followed by "You are not a human. Why are you with them? They are savage, primitive. Like..." the mental image that follows is complicated, but Kian's mind finds a direct translation. On Akiar there is a small furry mammalian species noted for boundless curiosity and a tendency to interfere with anything and everything, that are considered by the Akiar to be both something of a pest and highly amusing, clown -like creatures. His psyche interprets the incoming image as one of these creatures carrying what his Earth experiences let him know is a very large gun.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara's eyelashes flutter back open and she takes another slow breath. The unexpected T-comm chatter catches her off guard. That should be impossible! who are these aliens?? she can't say no though, it will take her half an hour to get back may be, but it'll be 4 hours for the rest of the Titans waiting for her.

<Hello? I'm very sorry I didn't mean to fracture space-time, my name is Supergirl and I would really appreciate a lift back to my team in the T-Jet. I'm sorry to confuse, but I'm not human, I hope that's alright with you. I'm Kryptonian> she replies back to them.

A smile creeps across her face. Perhaps she's about to make some new friends after all. If these are the stealth aliens, may be she can convince them to lend them their ring. An Earth gesture, she crosses her fingers even as she continues to feel the cold of space seeping in to her bones. She's going to be very frosty when she finally gets back in to an oxygen environment.

Kian has posed:
    "I do not know," Kían admits to Gar.  "They speak of their "forever da'k" the way I might speak of my Gods.  I do not thin' they are doin' science.  *They* thin' they are, but I do not agree.  I belief in my Gods, but that is separate from hwen I do research.  It mus' be.  I--"
    He breaks off suddenly, his eyes clouding; gar may or may not recognize it as the look of someone focusing hard on mental contact.  Kían has had little opportunity to engage in pure mental contact in the months he's been on Earth.
    As for the /rut'yw/, the small, inquisitive animals... Kían has never considered them pests, and a small cadre of the ones inhabiting the copse of trees his home is strung through has learned that the birdman is an easy touch for treats, or just nice scritches behind the ear.  The idea of a /rut/ being a menace is laughable on the face of it, and the mental image of one armed is silly enough to squeeze a quiet chuckle out of the him.  He takes a moment to clear his thoughts before replying: {/I am with them because they have taken me in despite my being not of this world.  And if some are savage and primitive, many are not.  Especially my friends here.  I will tell you that a hole within a hole is probably what we're looking for, but we need more than your proprietary claim to the knowledge!  Surely you understand that./}
    Quietly, Kían explains the mental contact he's having to Gar -- he may have input that Kían doesn't.  He keeps the communications with Gar in the private corner of his mind, not thinking consciously about it, away from the contact with the aliens.  They don't need to know that, and he can probably use the advantage of two minds on his side of the contact.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Once back aboard Nadia begins rummaging through T-Jet storage for a spare space suit that Cassie can change into. <<Spare space suit is waiting.>> She informs Vivian.

Once that is done the Waspette straps back into her engineering station and with her fingers dancing across the holographic interface begins running diagnostics on the T-Jet to see what kind of battle damage it has received attempting to reroute power and systems to compensate as much as possible. She then produces some tools from somewhere and begins flitting around the ship attempt to fix things. <<What if whatever they're looking for that they say passed through here is connected to what happened somehow?>> She thinks out loud through her T-comm while she works.

Gar Logan has posed:
"I don't know what they're talking about," Gar admits, shaking his head. "I was just an actor on a show about a crew in space. They made up all the stories. I don't have any idea how to get through to them or ask them the right questions," he laments, and his eyes turn distant, looking past the ring, seemingly staring through Jupiter itself. He's struggling, freezing up. It's much easier to follow someone else's directions, or help by turning into some kind of creature.

Whether Kian is able to help or not with his own communications to Gar, it remains to be seen. Assuming the concept of a portal within a portal is understood, that could be something to go on. <<Maybe,>> he answers Nadia, keeping the answer to just their side of things.

Then, he asks over the frequency to the mysterious Seekers, <<Is that ring a place to another place? Is it something you activate? Would it open a way back if someone was lost on the other side?>>

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
Standing on the ring, Siobhan sorta breathes in. It's not that she needs to breathe at the moment, it's just a sort of thing she and many do to try to focus. Of course, nothing really happens but the gesture is real. She then glares around with those dead eyes more at the very idea of not being able to even do this simple thing. Her hands clench and she glares in the direction of the aliens, and then glares even at the T-Jet.

Her bare feet touch the ring as she starts to move along it, glaring down at the ring and going down to her hands to crawl along the thing. Her eyes scan over the surface as she moves. She leans down toward it, listening. One can argue that space is total silence but it really isn't. It just doesn't allow normal sound...but the Banshee is the queen of sound and so she listens, seeking out not only a way in but also for something that might give her a clue as to what this thing is.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Kara can see the patch of darkness, now she's looking for it. Shortly it resolves into the wedge-like shape of another stealth probe. It draws along side her and a part of the hull retracts, revealing a cramped but habitable area she can enter. It doesn't look comfortable, probably intended for cargo rather than people, but at least she can fit.

    There is a short delay before she hears a response. <<From Krypton? We though none alive. Sorrow. Sympathy. Correction: you did not cause fracture. Warp drive compresses, expands. Creates shock fractures. Not dangerous, not like wormhole technology. But to correct instruments, like path through space. Measurable. We saw you caught in compression field of bandit ship. Followed track of fracture in case you in danger.>>

    "We make no proprietary claim," the mind-voice replies to Kian. "Still you do not understand. None can claim the Forever Darkness, because it is everything. Space time, curved in on itself. The inside is the outside. Do you understand the consquence? Forever Darkness is all. To understand it is to understand all."

    The response to Gar is little better. <<Do not understand. Ring is instrument. Test space time at singular point. Do not understand lost on other side. Other side of what? One side of ring is same as other side.>>

    Sounds do not travel through space, because there are too few molecules for vibrations to be transmitted, but when you are in contact with something, you can still feel the vibrations. With her supernatural sensitivity to those vibrations, the ring is a complicated harmony to the silver banshee. There are deep, humming, brass-like notes, in clear synchronization with the movements of the huge robotic machines moving across its surface. There is a faint cycling hum of energy, like a delicate string section. Below it all, barely audible a cascade of delicate crystalline chimes play a music of vast complexity and beauty.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara spies the darkness covering up the edges of distant points of light and she focuses her vision in on that darkness, once again seeing the shape. It opens its maw and she peers at the small space. Better than nothing..... ish. She feels a shudder run down her body and her mouth go dry. The pit of her stomach feels like it's turning inside out.

Her oxygen usage jumps up as she tries to take in deep breath. Calm herself. She thinks of Earth things.. the big open blue skies. Her voice croaks as she tries to reply to the aliens offering her a ride. One hand rests upon the drone, <Thank you for your.. kind thoughts.. I attempted to follow the bandit ship but I am inexperienced in such travel>

There is a long pause as she looks at the inside and says, <Is it possible for me to hold on to the exterior of your drone and be drawn along with it as it flies. I.. would rather not get inside this small space>

There's a truth and earnestness to the way Kara speaks to most people, including these aliens. Someone so strong, she is not afraid to sometimes share her vulnerabilities too.

Kian has posed:
    "I am not sure either," Kían says.  "They talk about the Forefer-Dar' in a tone I woul' safe for my Gods, but they say they are not wor-ship it.  They are ta'k about basic physics, but they are ta'k about it in a weir' way."
    {/I am not trying to claim it.  I'm trying to understand it.  One of our teammates may have opened a hole too close to the hypermass, and that's probably what they disappeared into, and we want to get them out again.  I don't know the precise nature of the holes he creates, but they operate not unlike wormholes./}
    "I thin'," the birdman says to Gar, "we need to sen' the probe through where our frien's disappear, closer to Eart'.  The rin', I thin', iss only a tes' ins-trumen'.  It iss a guess, but it iss maybe a good guess.  I... will need he'p sendin' the probe back there."

Gar Logan has posed:
The frustration in Beast Boy's voice couldn't be clearer to those with him, but will the aliens understand? He hails one more time, <<Okay..I'm just going to try to explain everything from the start. The War World guys came through some kind of portal and attacked Earth. We fought them back...>> He pauses, blinking a few times at part of what Kian says about where the probe should have gone. Is that it? <<...back by Earth when some of our friends disappeared through a wormhole or whatever it was. We came back there because we were going to try to send a probe out that they might be able to find their way back to through a signal, but we found something back there that led us here to all this. So we tried sending the probe out because I guess we thought it'd go through that ring to another place, and it didn't, because that's not even what the ring is for, is it? And right now I'm feeling really stupid because I'm getting everything wrong and I don't know what else to say. We just want to find our friends. That's all.>>

Everyone in the group can hear this, and some on the T-Jet can see his eyes glistening with wetness as he turns away from the console and goes to sit down, tossing the helmet away to rub the palms of his hands over his eyes and brow, his head down. It's all getting to him in a big way, and he's not holding up well. "Why did we come all the way out here, again? I'm an idiot."

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
A look around and Siobhan considers what she discovered. She then frowns at her inability to do...well, much. She's tough and strong and that's about it right now. The voice in her head then speaks up, <"Ye're a fool..."> and she shoos it away with a silent grumble. She at least doesn't feel any unnatural urges this deep into space. Maybe not enough people about? Who knows. She just knows now that whoever fired that probe also probably made this ring...or it is at least related.

<And how are ye gonna get out of dis one?> She thinks to herself, <And how are we bein' so rational about it...> She sighs and shakes her head as she can't even hear her own sigh. It's all very disconcerting but she'll have to figure this out later. For now, she simply looks slowly around for options.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia floats up behind Beast Boy between repairs and places a hand on his shoulder reassuringly, "You're doing fine." She smiles at him. "The T-Jet seems largely okay, just a few more repairs. No major breaches or anything thankfully." She then floats off to replace a few more overloaded components in another panel.

Nadia's voice then crackles across the general comms as she works, adding to what Beast Boy already said. <<We're getting our friends back, if your intentions are peaceful then help us and maybe we can help you. But this is our solar system and we've had a lot of bad experiences with outsiders lately, so a sign of good faith would be nice.>>

Donna Troy has posed:
    The probe by Kara closes up again, and goes still. After a few moments the skin seems to shudder, and then starts slowly reforming itself. Parts of the surface extrude, lengthen, curve in on themselves and meet. After a few moments, it has formed into a servicable brace for Kara to ride on. <<We will have to extend field further from exterior. Slower. But safe. Tell when ready.>>

    Slower perhaps, but these things are relative. The silvery ship took only seconds to bring Kara this far out. When Kara signals her willingness for the journey to start, it will take her only a couple of minutes to return to the vicinity of the T-Jet.

    Siobhan, still standing on the surface of the ring, soon finds herself accompanied by another of the stealth drones. This one already has the same brace-structure that formed on Karas all those millions of miles away; presumably the Seekers have decided this is the way people prefer to be offered rides. Whether or not she'll know she is being offered a ride is another matter; Siobhan's T-Com had been destroyed earlier, when she had violently transformed, and the Seekers have no way to communicate their intent to her. At least the probe is just sitting there and not /acting/ hostile.

    The response to Kian has overtones of sadness. "If your friends were drawn into the Forever Darkness, it is unlikely they can return. We believe that opening a wormhole inside it would curve back on itself. Beyond a certain range, a wormhole would always return to its origin."

    The response to Gar, and to Nadia, is much slower. <<You are hurt. We sorry. Ring is to measure disruption caused by War World. Clean wormhole, opened on arrival. We measure to understand War World technology. Compare to measurements of failed wormhole. Then we understand nature of failure. If your friends in failed wormhole, this is wrong. For probe.>>

    There's another long pause, then <<We cannot offer hope. If friends pulled into failed wormhole, friends likely gone. But give probe to us. When we have finished tests, we can place probe in hyperspace at point of fracture. Cannot do more. Sorrow.>>

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan grunts a non-committal response to Nadia, his shoulders tense to the touch. This is weighing on him heavily. At least, at long last, there is something in the messaging from the Seekers that indicates the right things were said. He ignores the talk from them indicating their friends are probably gone, for he knows better, but all he says over the T-Comm is, <<Can..someone else deal with that? Give them the probe, let them put it where it's supposed to go, then let's make sure we get everyone back here and go home. I don't want to be here any more.>> He rises and goes to seek a spot on the ship far from everyone else, shutting a part of himself away.

Kian has posed:
    {/Or it creates a sub-universe.  The math is not absolute,/} Kían replies to the aliens with the certainty of someone who has run the numbers.  "We have much work to do.  Please do not bein our way./}
    He watches Gar retreat to a more isolated space.  "I do not recommen' gifin' them our proble.  There iss more data we can get from it.

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara lets out another long breath and then takes the hand as the surface reforms itself. Programmable matter. Crystaline computers. These aliens, whoever they are, are far more relatable than most of Earth technology. She gives a nod and says <I am ready, please proceed>

She lifts her other hand out before her, fingers splayed and smiles.. ready for faster than light travel again. Though this time at least the drone is designed for it and she's not bouncing along the wake of another ship. <Wormhole technology was outlawed on Krypton because it was so destructive and dangerous,> she comments relating back to the conversation they were having.

<We are not all gone, but most of us are. I am glad to know you exist. I am glad to see your advances in technology. We are searching for friends, one has the ability to open two dimensional portals; the four dimensional manifold of the event horizon was pierced by a two dimensional manifold - as best as I could see from my readings near Earth orbit. I have never seen anything like that before. I am guessing that my friend and the wormhole made have interacted in impossible ways. Impossible is his speciality. What should I call you?> she asks chattily to the friendly and helpful aliens.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia puts down the laser spot welder she was using and taps her T-comm, <<I think what we should do is give them the probe and observe while they make their scans and then place it in hyperspace to be sure that they follow through, then we can go our seperate ways. Worst case scenario I can make another one.>>

Siobhan Smythe has posed:
Looking over at the probe, Siobhan stares at it carefully for a moment, ready to destroy it if need be. She then stares at the handhold for a long moment before reaching out and grabbing on. She isn't sure what is happening but right now, she hasn't got a ton of options. So, away she goes.

Donna Troy has posed:
    <<We Seekers of Forever Darkness,>> the aliens reply to Kara. << Long ago, we had another name. Now this is all. Our purpose, to study. Forever Darkness contains all. Inside is outside. Artificial construction, do not know creator. Believe was created in /future/. Two singularities placed to fold space through fractal dimensions. Manifold folds in on itself, so inside is our universe frozen in moment of time relative to outside. We do not know what is in outside. We detected two-dimensional portal. Very strange. But this was not the cause of collapse. The two-dimensional manifold is the hypersurface of the wormhole. Forever-Darkness adrift in hyperspace, this causes the four-dimensional disruption. Wormhole opened without precautions, without analyzing peturbation of hyperspace. Is possible your friends two-dimensional portal created entry point to Forever Darkness. Fascinating, but only speculation. Many calculations required.>>

    Siobhan's probe brings her alongside the T-Jet and Nadia and Kian maneuver the probe around, and a few moments later Kara's probe comes alongside too. With Vivian helping Cassie get into a new space suit inside, the team is all back.

    Once Kara and Siobhan are off their respective rides, the two stealth probes draw alongside the Titan's hyperspace probe, and again the surfaces shimmer and start to reform, arms shaping around the Titan's probe to clamp it between the two probes, and then the probes drift off into the darkness, soon lost to sight.

    <<We will deliver your device as promised. If we learn more that can help, we will relay on this channel. We wish you luck, humans and friends of humans.>>

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara watches the light around her grow as they shoot forward faster than light and are once again returned back to Jupiter. She nods her head and says, <Then I wish you luck, observing your universe. If I can help in any way in the future please don't hesitate to ask. You show me a kindness that won't be forgotten. There are many spaces to observe and this one is important to you>.

Her thoughts go briefly to the phantom zone, a similarly described construct, though one not reached via wormholes. She says over comms to the team, <It's me Supergirl, I'm back. The Seekers of Forever Darkness gave me a lift. They're very helpful and nice>.

She flies over to Siobhan who is near by and offers her a hand, <Silver Banshee, allow me..> to fly them both back on board the T-Jet. She really wants some fresh oxygen at this point anyway and there has been enough adventure here today. Pirates! who knew?