The conference room was bright and warm, which made the state of the people sitting in it mildly absurd.
Nolan's power armour was streaked with water from a hurried clean, ceramite still pocked and scorched from the night's fighting. He ate from a ration pack without particular attention, working through it methodically between sentences. Tyberos sat at the far end of the table with a bowl of something dense and grey, protein paste mixed with ceramite powder ground fine, eating it with the steady deliberate pace of a man who viewed food entirely as fuel. Thor had managed to acquire barbecue from somewhere in the base kitchen, a full rack of it, and was working through it with considerably more satisfaction than either of the other two.
He caught Tyberos's bowl out of the corner of his eye and paused.
"Is that..." He leaned slightly. "Metal powder? In the food?"
"Ceramite," Nolan said, without looking up. "Ground. High mineral density. Astartes physiology processes it differently."
Thor looked at Tyberos with the expression of a man recalibrating several assumptions simultaneously. Tyberos continued eating, solid black eyes forward, entirely indifferent to the attention. The admiration on Thor's face was genuine, if slightly unsettled.
The meal ended quickly. David had been waiting near the wall with the patience of something that did not experience waiting as a cost, and the moment the last ration pack was set aside, he raised one metal palm toward the screen on the far wall.
Tony's face appeared. He was in motion, the background shifting behind him in the way that meant he was on a flight, the screen occasionally shuddering with turbulence. His tie was loosened and his expression was fully present despite the connection lag.
"Good afternoon. I'm currently airborne. Rather than delay the meeting I thought video was the more efficient option."
"Appreciated," Nolan said. He looked around the table once. Tyberos. Thor. David. Tony on the screen. "Doom is still managing the Sokovia aftermath. Everyone else is here."
He nodded to David.
The room's lights adjusted automatically as David's eye sockets shifted to a deeper blue. A translucent three-dimensional map expanded into being at the centre of the table, the Pacific Ocean rendered in pale light, latitude and longitude lines running beneath it. David's hands moved and the projection tightened, pulling one location into focus.
The island sat in the middle of open ocean. Its coastline was irregular and folded back on itself in the way of old volcanic formations, and from above the overall silhouette was close enough to a skull that the nickname was obvious.
"Hydra Island," David said. "Designated 'Red Skull Island' by Hydra's own personnel. Originally constructed as a submarine manufacturing facility during the Second World War. It subsequently became the seat of the Hydra Supreme Council, and is now the primary residence of the entity known as the Hive."
The projection expanded, layers of the island's interior unfolding in translucent cross-section.
"The defensive profile is extensive. Working from the data recovered from Arnim Zola's systems before his destruction, we have identified substantial ground armour concentrations, integrated anti-aircraft batteries covering all approach vectors, and a submarine force capable of interdicting surface vessels in the surrounding waters." David paused. "The Hive has also contributed alien technology to the island's defences. The large mechanical constructions of serpentine design that my lord encountered previously are among the finished products of that technology. Accounting for reasonable uncertainty, we should expect to face several such units, potentially more. Total personnel on the island, including logistics and support, is estimated at no fewer than ten thousand."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Tony's image on the screen showed a slight frown. The silence at the table had a particular quality to it, the quality of people doing geography in their heads and not enjoying the results.
The island's position was the core of the problem. Any surface approach ran directly into the submarine force. Any air approach ran into the anti-aircraft coverage. Any large-scale ground operation was impossible to stage from the nearest landmass, which was not near. Every conventional option had a layer of defence built specifically to discourage it, and the Hive had presumably had decades to refine those layers.
Nolan looked at the projection and turned the problem over for a moment.
"Warships are out," he said. "Purchasing them on short notice or stealing them from another country's port causes more problems than it solves." He looked around the table. "I want to put a direct option on the table. The island has no civilian population. The nearest inhabited territory is far enough out that dispersal risk is limited. We have Phosphex charges that have proven effective in enclosed environments. We also have access to medium-yield nuclear munitions." He held the pause for a beat. "Set it on fire. Drop enough of one or the other to make the island inhospitable, then move in with the Intelligent Control Corps and the Iron Legion to clear whatever survives."
Tyberos's expression did not change. It rarely did. But the angle of his shoulders shifted fractionally in the way that had come to mean agreement.
Thor did not speak. He had been present for what Phosphex did in the slums, and he understood enough about nuclear yields to have an informed opinion about both. He sat with his arms folded and looked at Nolan for a long moment, then nodded once, slowly.
Tony recovered first. He leaned toward his camera with the expression of someone who had just been given permission to solve a problem the way he actually wanted to solve it.
"I'm with Nolan on this. The geography alone argues against a conventional assault, and a conventional assault at that scale means casualties we don't need to accept." He thought for a moment. "Nuclear contamination is a problem. The radioactive signature would be detectable internationally and the cleanup alone would create disputes that could run for years. But a large-scale firestorm catalyst is different. No lasting contamination, and the combustion chemistry in an enclosed island environment would be devastating. Whatever the Hive and its defences can survive the initial burn, the Intelligent Control Corps and the Iron Legion go in behind it and finish the accounting." He sat back. "I vote for the plan."
The vote was unanimous. Tyberos included.
The meeting's focus shifted to logistics. Tony and Raditus would handle the technical preparation jointly, which meant the next task was getting Raditus to the Latveria base before the planning fell apart waiting for components.
About an hour after the meeting ended, Tony's Iron Legion descended onto the parking platform in sequence, the suits landing with the particular efficiency of systems that had done this enough times to have developed something approaching muscle memory. The last suit down was Tony himself, faceplate retracting as he stepped off the pad.
Simultaneously, two Thunderhawks came in from the northeast. These had been retrofitted with Cogitator systems, enough autonomous processing to handle their own navigation, because their pilot was not seated in any cockpit. Raditus had spent the flight in the cargo bay with the supplies.
The cabin door of the lead Thunderhawk opened and Raditus emerged, riding its anti-gravity field in the tilting, slightly-off-centre way it always moved when it had been stationary too long, servo arms extended for balance, the engine under its chassis sputtering a complaint about the cold air. It descended the ramp muttering under its breath in a mixture of cant and something that was not quite any language, occasionally switching to a frequency that made the nearest Defence Force soldiers' equipment tick.
The Defence Force personnel who had not seen Raditus before watched it cross the platform with expressions ranging from alarm to theological uncertainty. A servo skull that could fly, run, wield tools with four independent arms, and apparently hold opinions loudly was not something their training had covered. Several of them looked at Nolan for guidance.
Nolan and Tony were already walking. Thor, who had encountered stranger things than a mechanical skull with a personality, observed it with mild interest and moved on.
Raditus spotted Nolan, produced a greeting that included his formal title, a brief status report on the promethium canisters it had transported, and a complaint about the flight, in that order, all delivered in roughly four seconds. Then it turned toward Tony with the particular energy it reserved for interactions it considered professionally meaningful, and Tony matched it with the energy of someone who had found an unexpected peer.
They were directed toward a quieter section of the base, away from the main logistics flow. The promethium canisters were being offloaded from the second Thunderhawk under servo-robot supervision, along with the raw materials for the catalyst compound.
Within minutes of finding a clear workspace, Raditus and Tony were deep into it, bent over a portable workspace together, the sound of rapid technical exchange carrying back across the platform as they began configuring the firestorm catalyst.
Around them, the base continued its work. The platform teams cleared landing areas. David coordinated supply manifests from inside the command structure. The Defence Force companies that had come back from Sokovia were cycling through maintenance and rest rotations.
Hydra Island waited in the middle of the Pacific, twelve thousand kilometres away, and entirely unaware of what was being built for it in a Latverian parking bay.
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