The air in the circular plaza changed before anything became visible.
A cold spread outward from the center of the space, frost forming in thin lines across the metal floor, and the sound that accompanied it was a low vibration felt more in the chest than heard. Ukari stood before the Emperor's statue with both hands extended, the psychic energy leaving him in measured, careful increments, the concentration visible in every line of his posture.
The crack appeared slowly: a vertical tear in the air, widening from a hairline to something a figure could step through, the edges of it edged with the cold light that Warp transit always carried.
A shape filled it.
Tyberos in Terminator plate was large in any space. In the circular plaza, stepping through a psychic portal, he filled the threshold entirely, and the magnetic boots coming down on the metal floor produced a sound that echoed off every surface simultaneously. He stepped clear of the crack without hurrying and moved two paces to give room.
Behind him, one by one, the Carcharodons came through.
Ancient Terminator armor, every plate of it carrying the marks of engagements that had never been officially recorded. They moved with the economy of warriors who had been doing this across centuries and found nothing remarkable about it. The plaza filled steadily and quietly.
Tyberos came to Nolan. The slight bow was brief, functional, the gesture of someone acknowledging a relationship rather than performing one.
"Lord Primarch. The Carcharodons answered your call from the void." A pause. "Who do you intend to kill?"
"A local alien fleet." Nolan was already looking past Tyberos at the Astartes filling the plaza, counting without appearing to count. "We have one Cobra-class destroyer, several combatants with solid capability, and a Lamenters Terminator company." He brought his eyes back. "And you. All of which accounts for a substantial operation against a fleet of this scale."
He stopped.
There were more than he had expected. Veterans in archaic plate, more than a company, still emerging from the narrowing crack behind Tyberos.
"Tyberos. Did you bring your Terminator company in addition to what I requested?"
Tyberos did not answer immediately. The helmet angled toward him with something in it that, on a face, might have been patience.
"Your order carries the authority of the Father of the Void, Lord Primarch. The protection of your person is not optional for us." He straightened slightly. "The Ghoul Stars have been quiet. The void brothers were consuming resources in the fleet. It is more appropriate that they be used."
Nolan looked at him.
"I had assumed the Terminator armor was for your first company veterans."
The silence that followed was brief and very specific in its quality.
Tyberos nodded once.
"That understanding is also correct. The Carcharodons thank the Lord Primarch for his generous gift."
Something crossed Nolan's expression that did not quite reach the surface. He raised one hand and patted the ceramite forearm.
"Continue your preparations. You know the base. For material allocation, speak to Procellas directly."
He turned and walked back toward the passage.
Primogenitor Isle moved into war preparation tempo.
The foundry warehouses opened and the servo robots began the long work of moving ammunition, weapons, and supply stocks to the loading points. David brought the Lamenters Terminator company back through the base's portal network in stages, and as they arrived, the Carcharodons and Lamenters found each other on the training grounds and began the joint work of running void boarding drills. The Chitauri fleet was not a Tyranid hive fleet, but in void combat the situation shifted faster than any plan accounted for, and no one who had survived long enough to wear ancient Terminator armor made the mistake of assuming a lesser enemy was a simple one.
Doom arrived with Reed Richards before the first joint training session had finished.
Nolan looked at the man Doom had brought. Gray at the temples, a build that suggested someone who had spent a great deal of time at a desk and found it satisfying, and an expression of such complete and unperformed calm that it immediately required reassessment.
Reed spoke first.
"Mr. Nolan. You don't need to find the right approach for this conversation. I'm familiar with the Guardians of Terra's operations, and I've formed my own view of them. It's more nuanced than the official position." A slight pause. "More to the point, your Lamenters pulled my wife Susan and her research team out of a collapsed building in lower Manhattan this afternoon. If they had not been in that section of the city, I would be having a very different day. I owe a debt, and I prefer to pay debts."
He met Nolan's eyes with the directness of someone who was used to the universe operating at a level that required precision to navigate.
"Doom briefed me on the specific situation during transit. Given the time constraints, I suggest we move directly to the technical problem."
Nolan looked at him for a moment. Then he nodded and gave the instruction to the nearest servo robot.
The portal to the Antarctic base opened in the sub-level corridor shortly afterward, and the scientific team, Tony included, stepped through into the cold of the deep storage facility.
The Cobra-class destroyer occupied the super-large platform in a way that communicated its nature without any supplementary explanation. A kilometer and a half of human-built void warship, dormant and waiting, the scale of it requiring the eye to work through in sections rather than all at once. The ceiling of the platform chamber had been engineered specifically to accommodate it, and even so the bow cleared the upper infrastructure by margins that the builders had clearly considered carefully.
Everyone stopped.
Reed retracted his gaze first.
He moved to Nolan's side with a slightly quickened pace and the expression of someone in whom a great deal of processing was occurring in parallel with normal conversation.
"Human manufacture. The aesthetic signatures are unmistakable once you know what to look for. Alien design philosophy distributes mass differently." He was already looking at the drive section. "And a superluminal drive capable of galactic transit. Do you understand what this represents for Earth's developmental trajectory? Access to resources in systems beyond this one. Colonization on a scale that removes the population pressure ceiling entirely. The formal opening of the interstellar era for the human species." He looked at Nolan. "The fact that your organization built this is, frankly, remarkable."
Nolan exhaled through his nose.
"Reed. The human race cannot yet handle a conflict at cosmic scale. There is not a unified planetary government capable of coordinating the resources a serious interstellar posture requires. That is part of what I am working to change, and it is part of why the Guardians of Terra have had to operate the way they have." He looked at the drive section himself. "The superluminal system on this ship is also not a straightforward technology. It operates in ways that are conditional on a specific environment to function correctly. The details require direct examination to characterize. My own understanding of the underlying principles does not go much deeper than the conceptual level."
Reed absorbed this without any indication of disappointment.
"That is the honest answer of someone who knows the limits of their expertise." A faint smile. "Your body language also suggests you are substantially more comfortable with close-range violence than with extended mathematical derivation. Both are useful. They tend not to overlap."
He looked at the drive section one more time.
"Doom and Mr. Stark are competent. With the three of us working the problem directly, and with access to the physical systems rather than secondary documentation, I can commit to having a functional operational understanding of the drive within a timeframe that makes your mission viable."
He turned to face Nolan fully.
"I give you my word, in the name of Mr. Reed, this ship will take you to your enemy's fleet."
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