Episode 133: Counterpunched
Takes place 14-18 January 2013.
Short version
While Paul fights off a Reach fleet, NEMO retrieves a Citizenry ship where Jade was undercover, capturing a boom tube generator and the Apokoliptian soldier Knockout.
Longer version
The war against the Reach is escalating, with N.E.M.O. deciding to launch an assault that goes deeper into Reach territory than they've ever gone before. Most of the episode focuses on a stealth ship investigating Reach territory and their conflict with Grayven, while Paul tackles the actual fleet.
The stealth mission discovers a ship of the cannibalistic Citizenry, minions of Grayven, which the Reach have disabled but not yet destroyed, apparently intending to capture it intact, and it turns out that Jade is on board, having infiltrated the Citizenry to gather intelligence. Working with her, they are able to retrieve the hulk of the ship, including its boom tube generator, and also capture Knockout, who was working for Grayven on Darkseid's behalf. Grayven contacts them to let them know that he's pleased to be rid of Knockout, and stops the Reach from pursuing them.
- Alternate Universe: We get to see the Warhammer 40K SI, who's name is revealed to be P'ol, interact with a powerful demon and convince it that working with him is in their best interest.
- Batman Gambit: The fact that the ship that Knockout was on is the one that ended up getting stranded in Reach space is revealed to have been due to Grayven wanting to get rid of the spy Darkseid foisted upon him. As such, he's fine with the OLC taking her when they come across her ship.
- Expendable Clone: The Reach engineered the population of entire planets for specific purposes. As a side effect of this, the populations has no inherent survival instinct nor weaponry and defenses; so if an invader were to attack, they have no way to defend themselves.
- Given Name Reveal: This episode reveals that the Warhammer 40K SI's chosen name is P'ol.
- Immune to Mind Control: Mister Atom is not perfectly immune to the Anti-Life, but he has greater awareness of his own thought processes than humans generally do, including error logging and auditing, and can edit them at will, allowing him to literally delete the Anti-Life's intrusions.No source found.
Which means that either his track and trace system is damaged, or the thought had an external origin.
[Delete: Y/N?]
Y
[Mood=More Irritated]
Those intrusions were taking up a vexatious amount of runtime. - Locked Out of the Loop: Darkstar Ferrin Colos is a little annoyed when he learns that another Darkstar is on the Citizenry ship he and his team come across while infiltrating Reach space, though he understands that they didn't expect to run into any Citizenry ship in their current mission.
- The Mole: It's revealed that Jade infiltrated the Citizenry and has been with them for some time before the ship she's in gets stranded deep in Reach territory.
- Skewed Priorities: Mister Atom's reaction to the Anti-Life Equation affecting the entire Earth is to go to the building that prints his newspaper and ask one of the employees why have they stopped delivering his papers.
- Slasher Smile: P'ol of Warhammer 40k mentions that his friend Tsu'am has a much nicer smile (to human eyes) than she used to have before they met.More subdued, less axe murdering meth-head.
- Switching P.O.V.: We see how the war against the Reach is progressing through the eyes of various N.E.M.O. members and how Earth is combating the effects of the Anti-Life Equation through the eyes of several people who can resist it.
