Centered on Stark Tower, the sky above Manhattan had become a different kind of war.
The Iron Legion filled it. Armors of different configurations and sizes moved in overlapping patterns, some of them banking low over the streets to scatter volleys of micro-missiles into clusters of Chitauri infantry, others cutting across the Chitauri hover vehicles with concentrated shock beam fire that opened them up from above. The largest and heaviest frames in the formation had descended to street level, where Jarvis held them steady against the pressure of Chitauri infantry charges, their bulk functioning as moving barriers behind which crowds of civilians were still trying to find a direction that did not lead directly into the fighting.
Several hundred meters above all of it, the portals opened.
Not one. A series of them, circular, edged with heat and the displaced air of transition, appearing across the sky at staggered intervals. The first Thunderhawk came through with its lascannons already cycling, and the rest followed it in quick succession, the formation assembling in the seconds after emergence with the practiced efficiency of a force that had drilled this deployment repeatedly.
The Chitauri hover vehicles over Manhattan had been operating without serious aerial opposition. That situation ended in the first pass.
The Thunderhawks worked across the sky in coordinated strafing patterns, and the hover vehicles burned and fragmented in long descending arcs, the wreckage coming down in cascades of metal and vapor across the streets below. Some of the Thunderhawk hulls broke from the main formation and leveled out, flying slowly, drawing fire: the Thinker-controlled frames acting as high-value decoys while the piloted craft worked the flanks. The Chitauri flying Leviathans shifted toward the decoys and the piloted Thunderhawks repositioned behind them.
The cabin doors opened.
Lamenters in Terminator plate dropped from the open bays, one after another, falling in pairs and small groups, the weight of Tactical Dreadnought armor absorbing the landing impacts as they hit the streets below. They came up already moving, autocannons and storm bolters rising to engage the moment their feet found the pavement. The assault teams coordinated with the heavy firepower elements without spoken instruction, each group moving to its assigned function as though the chaos of the invasion was simply background noise against a plan they had already internalized.
Heavy teams pushed forward, clearing infantry. Assault teams covered the airspace above them, tracking the Chitauri vehicles that continued to strafe at low altitude. Between them, Lamenter squads broke off toward the buildings, toward the civilians still trapped in the upper floors of structures that were no longer entirely structurally sound.
More portals appeared, lower, at street level and just above it.
Rhino personnel carriers rolled out first, engines already running, exhausts trailing as they cleared the portal thresholds. Behind them, moving with unhurried mechanical weight, Land Raiders, the column led by a Crusader variant whose sponson-mounted weapons were already indexed to the sky. The vehicles spread into the streets and held their positions long enough for what came next.
The Wehrmacht Defense Force came out in formation: green carapace armor, lasguns at the shoulder, moving in disciplined column behind the vehicles. The orders were brief and already understood. The vehicles formed a moving line and the infantry kept pace behind them, working up the avenues in the direction of the heaviest Chitauri presence, clearing as they went, pulling civilians into the column's protected interior whenever they encountered them alive.
The Cyclone missile launchers mounted on the Rhinos and Land Raiders elevated and began tracking the Leviathans moving above the city. The missile trails left white lines across the sky before the detonations came, each one expanding into a fireball that the surrounding Chitauri formations had no answer to at close range.
As the Lamenters and the Defense Force pushed into the urban battlefield from their insertion points, a portal appeared above the roof platform of a nearby building. It opened without ceremony, and through it came the Inquisition, one by one, in streamlined power armor or carried on their own abilities, dropping off the platform's edge or launching into the air and integrating immediately into the fight around them.
Tony was already coordinating, the suit's systems managing multiple data channels simultaneously, feeding and receiving from David's network in a rolling exchange of positional data and priority targeting.
He glanced toward Strange.
"You're not coming down?"
Strange was watching the Thunderhawks engage the Leviathans, his expression still and focused.
"The Sanctum Sanctorum is a magical defense node. It covers the entire planet." He did not look away from the sky. "If the Chitauri destroy it while I am not there, the consequences will extend well beyond one city. Every mortal in New York would die alongside the rest."
Tony absorbed this.
"Right. Go protect it. If you need the Inquisition for anything, you know how to reach us." A half-beat. "See you on the other side, Strange."
A group of medical drones came through the portal behind them and dispersed into the streets below. Tony nodded once in Strange's direction without turning his head, and then the suit's propulsion carried him in a fast arc toward Stark Tower.
Strange watched him go.
"May the power of the Emperor bless you," he said quietly, "the heroes fighting for mankind."
The red cloak across his shoulders stirred, caught the air, and lifted him. The portal took him through.
On the street below, the last of it was already over.
The spiral storm of Ten Rings contracted, and when it dissipated, what it left behind was distributed across a radius of dozens of meters in small, even fragments that no longer resembled anything that had been alive. The sound of the rings settling back into orbit around Nolan's forearms was the loudest thing on that block for a moment.
He crossed to where Doom was sitting against the wall and looked down at him.
Doom had one arm. The power armor he was wearing had cracks running across almost every plate. The child in his remaining arm had its face pressed against his damaged breastplate and had stopped trembling in the way that indicated exhaustion rather than calm.
"Doom." Nolan's voice was not warm. "Was it worth it? If you had run this mission according to David's plan, you would not be sitting in a street with half an arm."
He looked at the child for a moment. Then back at Doom.
"Where are Jessica and Wanda?"
Doom reached up and took his helmet off. His face was pale in a way that the panacea had not been able to fully correct, and the expression on it was not the expression of someone making excuses.
"I sent them ahead and held the position to cover their retreat. I do not know where they are now." He looked up at Nolan directly. "I apologize, Lord Primarch. I was not a qualified commander in this."
"Stop." Nolan cut across it. "Save the reflection for when there is time for it." His eyes moved toward the portals beginning to appear in the distance, the next wave of assets arriving. "Can you fight? If not, I am sending you back to the Twin Islands base for treatment. Answer honestly."
Doom considered the question without trying to minimize it.
"Given a short interval to stabilize, I can still function. But Lord Primarch, there is something else you need to know." He steadied his voice. "In addition to the Blood Brothers, there was a third figure. Short, cloaked in black, silver-faced. He took the Cosmic Cube before any engagement occurred. His abilities are illusion and mind control. And it was he who opened the large portal that brought the Chitauri army here, using the Cube's power as the catalyst."