Skull Ship

Skull Ship
General Information
Type	Spacecraft
Occupants	Brainiac
Status	Inactive

"Possibly sentient spaceships shaped like giant skulls: are they all the rage where Brainiac comes from, or is it a him thing? Either way, hard to think of a bigger red flag than this guy pulling up in your atmosphere."

—Codex Entry

The Skull Ship is an interstellar warship commanded by Brainiac. In fact, the ship can be considered an extension of Brainiac's body, as it's hooked directly into his brain. There have been many variations of the Skull Ship, although they mostly seem to share the form of a humanoid skull with tentacles.

About

Most of the ship’s armaments seem to stem from the tentacles. The tentacles can scan any surface to gather information, and teleport anything that Brainiac may wish to be deployed. Its known offensive capabilities include deadly laser cannons built into the tentacles, which are powerful enough that, if they hit any member of Task Force X, the beams will inflict significant levels of damage, to such a point where only a few successful hits would be enough to incapacitate a single squad member. The beams, however, do not seem powerful enough to penetrate a promethium force field, as shown by the tentacles attempting to fire their laser cannons at the promethium shield, to no avail. In addition, the ship can also release a deadly energy pulse which is powerful enough to wipe out any form of life within a wide radius. This is demonstrated during Skull Ship jamming missions, when, if any squad member takes too long to kill enough enemies to satisfy the stated requirements within the round, the Skull Ship will release a deadly energy pulse which will incapacitate all squad members, effectively causing a Game Over to occur. The only way to avoid this is to defeat enough enemies in time and take shelter within the provided energy shield.

As each iteration of Brainiac died, the ship became damaged until all but one iteration of Brainiac were killed. At that point, the ship was barely holding itself together, and purple lights could be seen emanating from the "forehead". As the 13th Brainiac was captured rather than killed, the ship, though gravely damaged, survived only to be stolen by the Suicide Squad who used it to journey to the Elseworlds to continue cleaning up what remains of Brainiac's forces.

Trivia

• When Amanda Waller uses Lex-2's data spike to siphon off part of the ship's Coluan data, a fire bursts out of it and damaged a section. Notably the ship keeps getting damaged and explodes from one side to the next; rather than just happening all over. However, the ship remains active due to the last Brainiac being captured rather than killed.
• Some of the corrupted enemies comment about the Skull Ship:
  • One wondered why the ship wasn't a full body, curiously asking why it wasn't completed.
  • Another wondered if Brainiac would repair the damage from the destruction of his first body before commenting that the damage gives the Skull ship a sort of ambience.
  • Another taking part in the same conversation above expresses doubt that Brainiac would halt the invasion simply to make repairs to the ship.