The heavy hatches of the Fist-class Assault Boats slammed open with a resonant clang of pressurized metal.
In the next breath, the Carcharodons and Lamenters in full Terminator plate stepped out into the dimly lit corridors of the alien ship. Their armored boots struck the deck with the weight of certainty.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Storm bolters tracked left and right in ceramite fists, sweeping the eyepiece field of view, and then triggers were pulled. The sound was enormous in the enclosed space. Shells punched through Chitauri infantry in the mid-distance or drove through the heavy metal bulkheads beyond them, tearing apart creatures that had tried to press flat against the walls and wait.
Behind the Terminator squads, Chapter Master Tyberos ducked through the breach beside Nolan, the Warscythe humming softly in Nolan's grip. They exchanged a glance through their visors. No words were needed. Each turned and took a squad, moving into the branching passages at pace, carving separate paths through the interlocking warren of the ship's interior.
Chi chi chi chi.
Purple light strobed through the corridors. The Ten Rings left Nolan's fist in a tight horizontal spread, threading between bulkheads, and ten Chitauri infantrymen dropped in rapid succession, each punched through by a ring before they could raise a laser energy gun. The rings returned, circling slowly in the dim air around him.
The Chitauri mastermind felt none of it as loss. Somewhere in the ship's nervous system, a calculation ran, and the result was more infantry. More came, pressing into the passages, firing from corners and gantries and collapsed equipment bays.
Nolan watched them through the helmet's eyepiece. He raised one vibranium palm, and the Terminator squad behind him surged forward, their armor grinding against the corridor walls as they advanced and fired in controlled bursts.
On his helmet's inner screen, a stream of data scrolled and refreshed. Two weak life signals, faint but steady, pulsed among the noise. Jessica. Wanda. The positions sat in his eyepiece like beacons.
Tyberos's mission was the mothership: hold it, kill everything aboard it, seize the bridge.
Nolan's mission was one floor below the bridge, in a dead corner of a passage he could already see on the schematic.
He swung the Warscythe in a tight arc. The heavy bulkhead ahead split open along a line two meters wide, and the jagged metal panel folded inward with a crash. The Chitauri infantry in the next corridor had one moment of frozen recognition before the rings were already moving. Broken limbs and scattered fragments settled across the deck. Nolan stepped through without slowing.
Across the fleet, the same work was being done.
On a smaller escort vessel, lightning cracked through metal walls as Mjolnir punched through bulkhead after bulkhead like a living cannonball. Thor stood in the middle of what had once been a well-ordered cargo bay, boots planted in a carpet of Chitauri corpses blackened by arc discharge. The Carcharodons and Lamenters Terminators assigned to his ship had set their storm bolters aside. There was not much left that required one. They moved through the remaining bays with power swords and chainswords, their ceramic plate dark with ichor.
Inside a medium-sized ship in the cold void nearby, a vibranium shield bounced between metal walls with a precision that seemed almost architectural. Each ricochet was calculated. Each edge that caught a Chitauri skull cracked it cleanly before the shield arced back and snapped into Rogers's arm with a sharp thwack. His speed-pattern power armor's propulsion vents flared at the rear as he charged the next group, hitting them with the force of a battering ram. The Lamenters Terminators behind him raised automatic cannons and fired in steady rhythm, walking fire down the corridor ahead.
In the last small vessel, Tony was not fighting elegantly.
The Iron Centurion armor stood nearly as tall as the Chitauri giant apes crowding around it, and Tony fought them the way they fought, with fists, grapples, short smashing overhand strikes from arms thick enough to dent the deck plating. Every time one of the apes hit the ground and stopped moving, Tony straightened, raised both arms above his head, and let out a sound that was somewhere between a war cry and the call of a very satisfied primate.
The Terminator Astartes sweeping the corridors around him tilted their helmets very slightly without breaking stride.
Nolan closed his fist around a Chitauri infantryman's skull and felt the bones give. The body dropped. He stepped over it, shaking the vibranium gauntlet clean with a single practiced motion. Behind him, the Ten Rings swam in lazy orbits through the purple-lit air, their glow catching the edges of the wreckage that now filled the corridor from floor to ceiling: alien bodies, bent metal, sheared equipment housings.
Somewhere deep in the mothership's neural network, the Chitauri mastermind was in crisis. The arithmetic of the battle had stopped adding up. The infantry it sent did not return. The corridors it received data from had gone dark, one after another. What remained of its forces was being pulled inward toward the bridge in a last contraction of instinct.
For Tyberos, that was a minor inconvenience. A few more passes with the lightning claws.
Dong dong dong.
Nolan's magnetic boots rang on the deck as he rounded a corner. The life signals were just ahead, barely moving, close enough now that the faint green pulses on his visor felt almost warm.
A sickle dropped from above.
It was finely made, edged in azure light, and it came down fast toward the crown of his helmet. His arm was already rising before the thought had fully formed. He caught the blade in his vibranium palm, fingers closing around the edge without hesitation. The sickle stopped.
The dim passage held the sound of shallow breathing.
"Jessica." His voice was low through the helmet's vox. "It's me. Wake up."
A long pause.
Then Jessica's eyes opened. She lifted her face, pale and hollow-cheeked, smeared with alien blood, and looked at him. When recognition finally reached her expression, it broke into something that was not quite relief and not quite anger and was very much both.
"Teacher." Her voice came out small, dry, cracked at the edges. "Why did you come now?!"
Nolan released the sickle. He reached forward slowly and set his vibranium palm on the top of her head, pressing gently through the matted hair and dried blood.
"Come on, Jessica. I'll take you to kill all the aliens."