The plasma pistol did not overheat. It never did.
Jessica held it level with both hands and walked the muzzle slowly along the wall's face, and the concrete simply ceased to exist wherever the plasma touched it. No impact, no crack, no drama. The material softened and gave way, folding inward in dark red tides that poured down the newly formed edges and collected on the floor in a spreading pool of orange-red heat. The hole that formed was roughly human-sized and ragged at the margins.
Then the air moved.
Telekinesis and scarlet energy arrived simultaneously from two different angles, the invisible pressure of Doom's focus and the winding threads of Wanda's power, and the hole expanded. The edges peeled back smoothly, concrete and rebar folding aside like paper, until the gap stood more than three meters tall and wide enough to drive a Rhino through. Beyond it: darkness, and the smell of old metal and stale air.
Jessica holstered the plasma pistol. She reached back over her shoulder and drew her power scythe, the blade catching the faint light for a moment before she angled it forward. Her helmet turned toward the others.
"The old base's layout isn't complicated," she said through the comm. "But most of the internal passages have probably collapsed since we left. Don't improvise routes. Don't change direction without reason. Stay behind me. I know this place."
"Jessica." Doom's cloak shifted as he raised one ceramite hand. "Don't underestimate the Lamenters."
His fingers moved through a sequence of precise gestures, and the two Lamenter assault teams behind him responded without a word. Power armor advanced into the dark entrance in careful formation, weapons up, moving with the practiced quiet of warriors who had been doing this longer than any living civilization on Earth had existed.
Jessica watched them go. She stood still for a moment, then raised her own hand and waved the Stormtroopers forward after them. They filed into the dim base without complaint.
A step behind Doom, Wanda's voice came low and uncertain through the comm.
"Teacher. These aliens can change their appearance perfectly. Our instruments can't separate them from the real thing. When we find the mission target, what are our rules of engagement? Do we leave anyone alive?"
Doom did not slow down or look back.
"The Cosmic Cube is the objective. Everything else is secondary. Fury can live or die, it makes no difference right now. Getting the Cube back is what matters."
A pause.
"Wanda. Do not feel sympathy for these aliens. They do not warrant it. I don't want a repeat of what happened last time. Do you understand me?"
Wanda's helmet dipped in a firm nod. She lifted both ceramite hands to either side as she walked, and scarlet energy began winding slowly around her fingertips, building quietly, waiting.
The team moved deeper.
Ten minutes in, the passage opened into a wider section where three routes diverged, all of them partially blocked. Rubble and broken metal structures covered the floors, some of the debris waist-high on an armored figure. Under Jessica's guidance, Doom and Wanda had already begun working to clear the most viable route, telekinesis shoving debris aside in chunks, scarlet energy threading through the narrower gaps and pulling.
The sound came without warning.
A high-pitched displacement in the air, multiple objects moving fast, and then a volley of metal spikes hammered across the passage directly at Wanda.
Scarlet energy snapped out instantly. The spikes stopped in midair, hanging in a loose cluster two meters from her faceplate, vibrating with the energy that had caught them. Wanda's posture steadied, hands rising, preparing to redirect.
She didn't get the chance.
Jessica was already moving.
The power scythe came forward as she accelerated, magnetic boots hammering the metal floor in a rhythm that sent loose gravel skittering across the corridor. The vibration was enough to make the debris piles sway. She covered the distance before the ambusher had time to fully process her approach.
A figure stepped out of cover: Nick Fury's face, Nick Fury's build, but wearing an expression that Fury had never worn in his life. The hands were already generating more spikes, metal condensing out of nothing in the open palms.
The power scythe arrived first.
The blade's decomposition field caught the blue light of the corridor's emergency strips as it swept across the figure's chest and abdomen in one uninterrupted arc. The sound of the cut was dull, not sharp, the kind of sound that came from significant resistance suddenly removed.
Blue blood spread across Jessica's ceramite plate in a wide fan. The two halves of the figure came apart and hit the floor separately. The disguise dropped with them: green skin, pointed ears, the facial structure of a Skrull who had been holding a human shape until the moment it no longer mattered.
Jessica straightened. She looked down at it.
"Green skin and pointed ears." She shook her helmet once and flicked the blue blood from her gauntlet. "That's the famous shapeshifting ability. Not particularly effective, as it turns out."
The corridor erupted.
Frost spikes materialized from three directions. A fireball detonated against the passage wall. Lightning cracked between a cluster of pipes overhead and grounded itself across two Stormtroopers' pauldrons, the auxiliary power armor absorbing the hit without dropping either of them. Energy attacks overlapped, continuous, coming from firing positions that were already shifting.
"Jessica." Doom's voice cut across the comm, sharp and immediate. "Watch the energy fire. Their armor-piercing loads will breach standard ceramite, especially at the helmet. Everyone, defensive formation. Find your angles and return fire."
Both of Doom's hands came up. Impact beams lanced from his palms into the nearest concealed positions, blowing cover apart. Behind him, the Lamenter assault teams and the Stormtroopers raised their grenade launchers in the same moment and pulled the triggers.
The detonations were close and sequential, shaped to clear without bringing the ceiling down. More than twenty Skrulls who had been crouched behind supply crates and structural debris were simply removed from the engagement. The ones with fast enough reactions got low and survived the first volley. They were already repositioning when the smoke cleared.
Then the floor started shaking.
Heavy footsteps, not one set but dozens, coming fast from the wide passage to the left, getting louder. Skrulls who had set aside the shapes of humans and taken on something else: broader, denser, built for impact, charging in a mass that filled the corridor shoulder to shoulder. Armor-piercing rounds preceded them, punching through the air in long bursts.
Every Astartes and every Stormtrooper reached over their shoulder at the same moment. Chainswords and power swords came off their backpack mounts and ignited. They kept firing with the other hand, moving forward into the charge rather than back, power armor carrying them like accelerating machinery.
"For Primarch—"
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