Several hours earlier. Primogenitor Isle.
The base was buried under wind and snow, the kind of Antarctic weather that came in without announcement and settled in for days. The landing platform was clear, maintained by servo-robots that worked through any conditions, and the Thunderhawk sitting on it had already begun its startup cycle, engines producing a deep, building roar that the wind took and spread across the ice fields.
Inside the cockpit, David ran his preflight sequence without haste. Every instrument confirmed, every system responsive. He was ready to lift the moment Nolan boarded.
The magnetic boots on the cabin floor announced him before the hatch did. A steady, unhurried rhythm, and then Nolan stepped through into the dim interior, his vibranium power armor carrying the cold of the base with it for a moment before the cabin's ambient warmth reclaimed the air.
He had just come from the foundry. Raditus had received the metal module, the one containing the weapons and heavy vehicle design blueprints, and the reaction had been everything Nolan expected and more. The servo skull's enthusiasm had been visible even through its usual mechanical composure, a barely contained state of something approaching reverence. The compliments had been extensive and, for once, not exaggerated.
Then, after the excitement had settled somewhat, Raditus had admitted, with an uncharacteristic mixture of sheepishness and self-importance, that it had also prepared a gift in return. Something to mark its promotion to Magos. It simply was not finished yet. There were details still being refined. It would be delivered when it was ready, not before.
Nolan had told it to take its time.
He settled into the metal seat, the power armor fitting against the frame with a low clunk. His hand moved in a casual arc, and the ten rings that had been resting on the rack behind the backpack unit rose and slid over his forearms, settling into position one by one.
"My lord." David's voice came from the cockpit without turning. "Based on the data feeds from the Lamenters, Doom, and Jessica, they appear to have located Fury's hiding place. Several combat teams are inside now."
A brief pause.
"The location, as it happens, is the ruins of our original underground base on Manhattan Island. One has to acknowledge a certain boldness in the choice."
Nolan let his head rest back against the seat. He closed his eyes.
"Boldness isn't the word. It's the only place left that could conceal them. Smart, in its way. The only option a cornered man had." He exhaled slowly. "Take us up, David. By the time we reach New York, Doom and the others will have the Cube ready to hand over. After which I will have a conversation with him about the meaning of a standing order."
The engine roar deepened and filled the cabin. Above the platform, the deck panels drew back, opening a rectangle of dark sky cut through with driving snow. The Thunderhawk rose into it and turned south, the base lights shrinking below until the storm swallowed them entirely.
The underground passage was blue.
Not lit blue, but stained: every surface that had been within range of the fighting bore the mark of it. Blue blood across the metal walls in long arcing patterns, pooling in the joints between floor panels, collecting in the depressions left by fallen debris. The Lamenters moved through it without acknowledgment, chain swords still cycling, power armor tracking for movement.
A Skrull holding Nick Fury's shape came at the nearest battle brother from behind a collapsed ceiling section. The Lamenter turned without breaking stride and drove the chain sword into the figure's chest. The serrated teeth did not cut cleanly, they tore, and the face the Skrull had been wearing dissolved through a rapid, involuntary sequence of other faces as it lost coherence, flickering through shapes it had stored until the body's ability to maintain any of them gave out. Green skin, pointed ears, the stillness of something that was no longer pretending to be anything.
Another Skrull dropped from an overhead pipe rack, going directly for a helmet seam where the ceramite was thinnest. A ceramite fist intercepted it mid-drop, the impact producing a sound like a bolter casing striking deck plating, and the Skrull did not get up.
The ones with energy-based abilities had caused the most problems. Frost formation, lightning discharge, concentrated heat projection: these had found gaps in the armor that the physical attackers could not. Several Lamenters bore fresh scoring across their pauldrons and gorgets where the ceramite had taken sustained hits and begun to give. But the Skrulls had not understood the margin they were working with. What they could damage, they could not stop, and the Lamenters did not stop.
Armor-piercing rounds came in a sweeping burst from a position deep in the passage, aimed at the engaged Lamenters from an angle designed to catch them while they were occupied. The rounds crossed the distance and met a barrier of scarlet energy that had spread across the width of the corridor before any of them arrived. Wanda held it without visible effort, the energy forming a solid interference layer that stripped the rounds of their velocity before they reached anyone's helmet.
Above the fight, Jessica had left the floor entirely.
She came down from altitude in a steep, fast line, the power scythe held ahead of her, the decomposition field along the blade casting its blue light across the walls as she fell. She hit the far firing position before the Skrulls there had finished reloading, and what followed in the next few seconds was less a combat and more a geometric problem. She moved through the space and nothing that occupied it remained standing.
The overlapping sounds of broken bodies and the scream of her power scythe's energy field eventually overwhelmed even the chainsaw whine of the Lamenters' weapons. Then that too stopped.
Silence, except for the low hum of power armor and the faint crackle of Doom's hellfire as it moved through the field of blue-stained corpses, burning them efficiently, leaving no material that could be used against them later. He did not look at the work. He raised one hand and pointed at the passage from which the last Skrull charge had come.
The Lamenters moved without being told twice.
Jessica dropped back to the floor and followed, power scythe still in hand, the blue blood on its blade catching the light from the few intact lamps that appeared as the team advanced. The passage widened as they went deeper, the ceiling rising, the occasional undamaged light giving the space a dim, functional appearance that felt increasingly familiar.
They slowed.
They came around a corner, and the passage opened into a larger space.
The alien device sat against the far wall, several meters tall, its exterior components still active, faint energy moving through the cable bundles that connected it to something out of sight deeper in. Around it, a dozen Skrulls stood in a loose perimeter, and in the center of them, neither armed nor armored, was a middle-aged black man in a worn leather coat, his bald head catching the lamplight.
Nick Fury. His expression was not the expression of a man who had given up.
"People of the Guardians of Terra." His voice was controlled, projecting clearly across the space between them. "Stop. Every action. Right now."
He did not wait for a response.
"You can see this device. Skrull technology, connected directly to the Cosmic Cube. The missing parts mean it cannot transport us off this planet. That part is gone." His jaw was set. "But the Cube is fully powered. If I activate it from here, the energy release will be enough to kill everyone in this space. Every one of you. Every one of us."
His eyes moved across the armored figures in the passage entrance.
"Once the Cosmic Cube as an energy source is fully activated by me, the terrifying energy shock generated by it will kill everyone present!"