Pietro had become a spiritual leader somewhat by accident, circumstances pushing him into a role that suited him better than anyone would have predicted. The others on the team had arrived at their current positions more deliberately.
Reditus' elevation to Magos was the most straightforward to describe, though the path to it had involved Tony more than Reditus would freely admit. The assistance, or more accurately the series of technical exchanges that might charitably be called collaborative and less charitably called leverage, had apparently provided whatever final component Reditus needed to cross the threshold. The miniature Knight Titan prototype was complete and functional. The full production line was nearly finished. Given enough time and materials, the base would be producing Knight-scale armored units from local manufacturing.
The female Tech-Priest Neil who had been maintaining a longstanding professional friction with Reditus had, in the interim, finished something of her own: the first Helicarrier, completed before Nolan's return. She had subsequently brought the proposal for a Kastellan Robot production line to the Round Table and received approval. The rivalry between the two appeared to be producing results that exceeded what either would have managed operating without the other as a point of comparison.
Bucky had spent time in Japan and encountered Rogers there. Rogers had been found in a condition that could be described as recovered, or at least as re-engaged: he had apparently located enough internal clarity to resume meaningful function. He had acknowledged openly that Yukio was his partner, and had accepted David's arrangement to transfer to the mothership foundry on Hydra Island, where he was working through ship systems and navigation with the methodical application he brought to everything. Absent complications, Bucky was on course to become the Helicarrier's first acting captain.
The Naval Academy in Latveria had just admitted its first cadet intake, which meant it was years away from producing qualified crews. For now, the Helicarrier's control was delegated to automated servo-robot formations. The Antarctic airfield and the Cobra-class destroyers under construction were in the same situation: without drawing naval crews from Nolan's Imperium-side assets, local crew training would need time that had not passed yet.
David moved on to Connors and Banner.
Connors had been working in his characteristic isolation, studying Astartes enhancement surgery methodology alongside the gene-seed specimens from the Astral Knights. When Banner joined the team and reached the Twin Islands base, the two of them had discovered a convergence of interests and temperament that produced an immediate and apparently deep working partnership. Banner helped Connors work through the more difficult genetic analysis problems. Connors applied his own biological systems expertise to helping Banner map the specific mechanisms of gamma ray interaction with living tissue.
David noted, with the tone of someone who had exercised significant restraint, that without his intervention at several points, Banner would have progressed to injecting his own blood, carrying its full Hulk-derived regenerative properties, into inactivated gene-seeds to determine whether the regeneration factor could serve as an activation mechanism.
Nolan was quiet for a moment after hearing this.
His thoughts produced an image that was difficult to set aside: a cohort of Astartes in the Hulk's physical configuration, charging across a battlefield toward alien opposition. He considered it from several angles.
He did not tell David to shut the experiment down.
He told David, carefully and specifically, that Banner and Connors could continue pursuing whatever approaches their research suggested. The condition was absolute: no in-vivo human experimentation on Astartes candidates without Nolan's explicit personal authorization or a Round Table majority decision. No exceptions, no interpretations.
David recorded it and moved forward.
Then he paused.
It was a specific kind of pause, the kind David produced when he was organizing something that required more care than a simple status update. Nolan noticed it.
"David. If this is about the last order, I am not questioning your judgment."
"No, my lord. You have not misread anything on that account." David's eye-sockets pulsed once. "I understand that some things require difficult choices, and my position as your steward does not change regardless of where those choices land. What I want to discuss concerns Doom."
Nolan looked at him.
"What happened."
"I would prefer to give you the full account to avoid any misunderstanding, my lord." David settled his metal frame. "Before your departure, the last operational order you gave Doom was the recovery of the Cosmic Cube. He has been executing that order without interruption since then. Without any interruption."
"The difficulty is that the target has proven extremely difficult to pin. Nick Fury has been receiving assistance from a shapeshifting alien whose ability to change appearance has allowed him to stay ahead of surveillance consistently. Doctor Doom has located Fury's trail multiple times and closed the distance, but each time the target has slipped away through diversionary contacts. The direct results of the operation amount to the elimination of several individuals who were providing cover, nothing more."
He paused.
"Doom has allowed this situation to affect his judgment. He has retained half of the Lamenters on the American continent for an extended period to support the hunt. He has also brought his first student in the mystic arts, Miss Wanda, into active field operations alongside him. I do not object to practical instruction as a teaching method, but Doctor Doom appears to have temporarily set aside his responsibilities as a head of state and as a team commander."
"I have requested, multiple times while you were away, that he return to the base temporarily and resume operations only once a verified target location was confirmed. He has refused each request directly."
David's voice remained level.
"I want to be clear that I am not raising this as a complaint. I am raising it because Doom has revealed something in his character that is worth your attention: when he has fixed on achieving a particular outcome, he pursues it past the point where his broader responsibilities should take precedence. There may also be factors internal to his thinking that we are not aware of."
He added: "Before your arrival, I sent Miss Jessica to the area in person to put some constraints on his operational scope. I chose not to compel the Lamenters to physically return him, because forcing that confrontation without your presence seemed more likely to produce a serious internal rupture than to resolve the problem."
Nolan let the account settle. Of all the people on the team he might have expected to require this kind of conversation, Doom had not been high on the list.
"I don't like the pattern," he said. "An order to recover an asset is not an authorization to run an indefinite campaign that overrides every other responsibility."
He stood up from the floating throne.
"Where is he now."
David's eyes pulsed through a rapid sequence.
"Based on the last confirmed location of Nick Fury's movements, they should all be in New York City."
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