Twin Island Base.
The people who had just returned held a round table barbecue to celebrate. The smell of food and the low hum of conversation filled the space, and for a few hours it was possible to believe the crisis was fully behind them.
Then, gradually, everyone returned to their own path.
Rogers had been gifted a set of speed-pattern power armor by Nolan, and he needed it. He had a congressional gauntlet to run: statements, reports, formal explanations of Captain America's role in an alien invasion that had been broadcast to most of the planet. S.H.I.E.L.D. still needed leading, and the men in suits would not wait.
Tony's obligations ran in the other direction. As Grand Master of the Inquisition, he had a mostly empty institution to actually build. More superpowered individuals needed to be recruited. The organization required structure beyond its name. And threading through all of it was the planetary defense problem, which Tony had been turning over since before the fleet had even reached Mars.
His initial thoughts, shared with Nolan and the others over the barbecue, were characteristically large. He wanted to use the Space Stone's teleportation capability to establish early warning fortresses and unmanned weapons platforms on the major planets of the solar system. The final version of the plan, he admitted, was to hollow out every terrestrial planet entirely and convert each one into a weapons installation capable of defending the whole solar system.
Nolan had given that a thumbs up without hesitation.
If Tony had ever found his way to the Warhammer universe, the Adeptus Mechanicus and the greenskin Ork warbosses would have competed over him. Honorary titles would have been invented specifically for the occasion.
As things stood, the plan was feasible in principle. It would simply require time and resources on a scale that made it a long-term project rather than an immediate one. The more pressing need was a large-scale augur reconnaissance array in low-Earth orbit, something capable of scanning the entire solar system and the approaches beyond it, built soon enough to matter.
Nolan thought about it and concluded he could not carry this one alone. He had David reach out to Niwa of S.P.E.A.R., and passed along a full accounting of the invasion: everything that had happened, in detail.
Twenty-four hours later, Niwa had obtained expanded authority from her superiors. In a secure location somewhere in Asia, she received a Tech-Priest dispatched from the Twin Islands base and the blueprint the Tech-Priest carried. Asia would become the designated manufacturing partner for the reconnaissance array, and upon completion the finished intelligence feed would be shared directly with Twin Islands.
As for the fragment of Imperial technology deliberately included in what was handed over, Nolan regarded it the way a fisherman regards bait. If matters developed as expected, a region long accustomed to the technology of the Imperium of Man, and far more prosperous for it than the Imperium itself had ever managed, would find its own reasons to draw closer.
A few days later, Thor said his goodbyes.
The reluctance was genuine, but Nolan observed that what Thor actually grieved was not his brother-in-arms. It was money. Before leading part of the Asgardian Legion to the Atrium, Thor had made an impulsive oath before the All-Father: aside from a small number of magical weapons that could be resupplied through Asgard, all material costs of the campaign would be borne by Thor personally.
The drunken version of this story, as Thor had told it himself over several cups, was somewhat worse. His personal treasury was nearly empty. Frigga occasionally slipped him pocket money. To cover the appetites of hundreds of Asgardian warriors who each ate like a small army, he had been quietly performing at commercial opening ceremonies as a superhero for hire.
He had told none of this to Nolan or Tony. Dignity did not permit it. The future God-King of Asgard, the mythological God of Thunder, could not be seen unable to feed his own men. The story, if it spread, would circle the Nine Realms indefinitely.
Nolan watched Thor lift off from the Twin Islands with a mildly dumbfounded expression, then quietly had David arrange a supply transfer and a sum of money sent after him. A reasonable reward for contributions made. No ceremony attached.
He had been calculating the timing carefully.
The plan was to lead the Carcharodons back to the Warhammer universe within the coming days. They had been stationed at the Twin Islands long enough, and Tyberos was not a patient man by nature or by chapter culture.
Then Reditus found him.
"The gift is finished?" Nolan raised an eyebrow.
He was already moving, driving his vibranium power armor toward the foundry on Primogenitor Isle. Reditus drifted alongside him in the air, mechadendrites swaying.
"Lord Primarch, this is the finest work I have produced since the miniature Knight Titan. I would go further: it is the piece through which I first sensed, however faintly, the boundary of master-level craft."
The red light in Reditus's optical sensors pulsed with something that, in a Tech-Priest, passed for barely contained excitement.
Nolan kept his expression level, but curiosity was there.
Ten minutes later, they stood in the casting hall of the foundry. The servo robots raised their mechanical tentacles and pulled the white dust cloth from the display stand in a single motion.
The armor beneath it was not what Nolan had expected.
The chest and abdominal plates were engraved with the Emperor's prayer scriptures, dense lines of devotional text worked into the metal with a precision that made them look grown rather than carved. The limbs carried a pale gold metallic sheen that caught the foundry light and held it. One shoulder guard was standard in profile; the other had been shaped into an eagle's head, beak forward, the detail sharp enough to count individual feathers. The power backpack had been redesigned to a lower, flatter profile, almost invisible against the back plate.
From each shoulder blade, a pair of enormous wings extended outward, each feather a leaf of layered gold worked into the next, row upon row, so that the whole structure seemed less like fabricated metal and more like something that had molted from a living thing.
The helmet was last. Round in form, but the front had been replaced by a human skull rendered in the armor's pale gold, hideous and exact, the cheekbones sharp, the teeth defined. It sat where a breathing grille would normally be, looking out from beneath the dark red lenses of the eyepieces like something that had been stripped of skin and set there to watch.
"Respected Primarch!" Reditus was already hovering several centimeters higher than usual, his mechanical voice carrying overlapping harmonics of enthusiasm he was not bothering to suppress. "Are you stunned? This is the gift I have been preparing for you!"
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