“That is not who is getting the most attention,” Belladonna pointed out, scanning through the holo feeds off the complex systems of Xandar. Mentor had been nice enough to supply program interfaces for our inferior Terran tech to hook into their internet equivalent.
Remy’s lady love brought up a whole array of videos showing Jessica at work. Apparently, her whirling, airborne-kicking style of combat while dumping shots in every direction had drawn a lot of attention from the Nova Corpsmen, especially since she’d been down there in the infantry grind.
“The Jewel of the Terrans!” Cindy exclaimed, clapping her hands, and Jessica blushed hotly, even as she couldn’t keep a smile off her lips as her Specs glittered proudly.
“Well done,” I told her, flexing my hands as tingles of feeling returned. She had put in a lot of time and work to get her kicking style down, and seeing it pay off was nice. “I see why the Novas wear buckets now...”
Everyone laughed. “How did your hunting go, Bella?” I asked cordially. The daughter of the Assassin’s Guildmaster of New Orleans was a trained hunter and killer, and getting her off the planet was pretty much the only way she could have escaped her fate of being roped into the organization. She was enjoying her freedom, totally jiving into the Jean Lafitte feel of being a swashbuckler... and she had powers of her own.
“My astral form can see Skrulls for what they truly are. I will return to hunting them shortly,” she nodded to me. The Baneskull I had given the Nova Corps was also capable of leading the Xandarans to them, much to the dismay of the Skrulls, but had a much wider area of coverage. The arcologies were being swept multiple times at speed with it, and any Skrulls popping up were noted, surrounded, and carefully hunted down. Bella’s astral form could zero in on them swiftly and save a lot of time testing random objects to find the hiding Skrull.
Skrulls were basically Kill On Sight back on Terra. They didn’t have more than a single ambassador, and he had to be collared to not shapechange in San Francisco. Every time Skrulls had been discovered invading, the ambassadorial staff had been purged as accomplices. Eventually the ambassador was left on his own, as no Skrulls wanted to be terminated when one of their infiltration missions elsewhere was discovered... especially since they weren’t usually told such a mission was happening.
Associating with or giving aid to a Skrull was akin to saving the life of a vampire in the eyes of most of the world governments... or at least, they pretended so. There were always those willing to deal for short-term benefits after all, and if it meant the Great Bear or the Hag came in and swept your government and family away when it was discovered, that was for the future, enjoy your personal power and the benefits of being a traitor to humanity and tyrant today!
Naturally enough the Xandarans didn’t think much better of them at this point. While casualties had not been all that bad, mostly due to how good the force field defenses were and the valor of the Nova Corps, the latter had definitely taken another blow, and was recruiting once more.
Finding a Terran wearing their uniform, with the power of a full Five Nova Core, and returning the lost Starholder to them, was definitely something of an event. Communications with the ambassador to the Shi’ar had also come through, and the data archives from the Starholder were also naturally at their disposal. Seeing what the Acanti had accomplished, and the Terran crew on the ship, only drove the point home that exceptional things had happened.
They were less than enthusiastic when they found all the purloined Shi’ar lances installed onto the Starholder, but after reviewing the battle records of their performance, found themselves coming around to the idea of having secondary guns with some punch behind them on the ship... especially since they had power to spare, and wouldn’t always have a massively powerful cryokinetic around to cool things off and accelerate the main cannon’s firing.
“Well, good hunting.” It was clean-up work, but the best kind, and for all their scientific advancement, the Xandarans didn’t really have a lot of psionic knowledge, and pitifully little magical lore.
Their Akashic manipulation, however, was off the charts. The Nova Force was an effect generated by the Xandaran Worldmind, the network of all the uploaded minds of Xandarans for multiple millennia. Effectively, every Xandaran who had died since the Worldmind came online was still alive in there, and could be cloned back to life when they had the time and space.
Their main problem was both, at the moment. While growing clones was much faster than childbirth, it still took time, and so casualties weren’t replaced overnight. On top of that, you didn’t instantly get another shot at life when you died. Naturally there was a queue for those who wanted another go round. While those who had died young via accidents were given priority, that was still a lot of dead to work through.
They also lived in an arcology, which meant a definite population cap.
“There is little good about it. They are finding the areas to hunt in when the Skrulls murder unprepared civilians.” Her lips turned up in scorn. “Spreading fear and terror, nothing more. We will have them all cleared off these space cities in a day or two!”
I just nodded. The Skrulls wanted to live, and that wasn’t going to happen. While they might surrender and so end locked up in stasis cages, if they had killed any civilians, they would be tried and found guilty of war crimes, and summarily incinerated. Getting repatriated would also be an event, as the most likely ones they would be traded for were Nova Corpsmen, and the Skrulls made a point of killing Xandar’s primary defenders when possible.
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“How’s the wine here?” I asked them, certain someone would have discovered that.
“It’s blah,” Hank McCoy reported as he wandered in, looking tired. He’d been helping with a lot of the rebuilding, enjoying working with higher tech and the average very-experienced Xandarans made it a joy. “They don’t have the room for grape fields, so they rely on replicators or imports. It’s good replications, but if you’ve any profound sensitivity, it’s blah.”
And they all had profound sensitivity, since I’d Opened up the ki dantians on pretty much all of them, Awakened Soul Magic, and/or they had Psense and active Cores and whatnot.
“Volstagg shared some mead, and they went nuts over it. He’s negotiating for some trade, with discretion. Apprentice barrels and stuff.” Bobby raised his hands as he walked in behind Hank, the Summers Brothers following behind.
Bella immediately hopped up to slide into Remy’s arms, while Alex and Lorna were obviously a couple, and Scott was alone, taking up the back.
“No Vulcan?” Gwen asked with a knowing smile.
“As I understand it, he’s getting a royal tour,” Scott half-smiled.
“I don’t see MJ,” Cindy lilted, and all the Summers Brothers glanced at one another.
“She terrifies him,” Alex grinned. “Here he was, starting to act all pompous and important, maids under each arm, and she walks up, grabs him by the ear, hauls him into the next room minus the girls, and tears him a new one for his attitude. He went on the tour just to get away from her.”
“Yeah, I think she and Peter are taking a tour of the place, too,” Bobby mentioned.
“What a good idea. Hank, Bobby; Cindy and Gwen haven’t seen the place, and I understand there’s a lot of celebrating and dancing going on. The lot of you, shoo.” I waved them off with an emphatic gesture. They looked at one another, Hank made a gallant show of an elbow for Cindy to latch onto, Bobby followed up with a sweeping bow for Gwen, and the energy level notably picked up as they swept back out of the room. Jessica was already messaging Rich to see if he was free and could join them, heading out with them.
Scott sat down across from me, sighing. He really looked ominous in his red-veined black armor, definitely standing out the most of the brothers, despite Vulcan’s cape and attitude. Also, he was the oldest and tallest, so there was that.
His Visor flowed away, connecting around the back of his head and continuing to give him 360 awareness, but revealing his face and brown eyes. People would be somewhat startled to learn he could shoot out in all directions when his Visor was fully deployed, looking more like a skullcap grabbing onto him than a mere set of goggles now.
“Viz is awesome, if I haven’t told you a dozen times by now,” he told me as he sat down.
“Yeah, Specs and its kids definitely are,” I agreed. I made a show of looking around him. “The only one without arm candy, and you aren’t being mobbed? I heard the Nova Corps women are particularly taken with you. That noble one-eyed warrior of doom and all.”
He knew me more than well enough to laugh at that. “MJ might have let it slip that I was the personal property of the Avatar of the Phoenix. Their interest kind of dried up.”
“Pish. Jean wouldn’t care in the slightest. But you would, I know, I know,” I waved it off before he could speak. “What did they have you doing?”
“Shoving debris around, mostly, either with optics or by hand.” He gestured at his face. “Nice to have some options other than shooting stuff. Makes me feel more useful.”
“I hear that. How’s your dad?”
“He’s in his glory. The Acanti are gathering up megatons of Skrull ships as salvage material, and the Xandarans are really interested in some of the proposals the whales are coming up with.”
“I heard they are potentially willing to recruit Xandaran colonists and crews for dermal cities?” It had been an idea tossed out to the space whales, and especially now that they were so large, it had started to gain some traction among them.
The Xandarans had an almost distressingly noble reputation. Having a crew of symbiotic bipeds aboard them, helping maintain some very high technology, had appealed to some of the Acanti who had seen how dangerous it made the brood-slaved members of their people.
“We already sent over all the stuff Peter, Hank, and the Fixer were working on for adapting the Brood tech. Xandaran science is incredible. I think they already have some very unintrusive adaptations of the tech that can evolve and grow with the Acanti, and even add the equivalent of subdermal armor, adding to their energy absorption and ablation capabilities. The full force of that Worldmind of theirs holds a lot of stuff!”
I laughed softly. “Did they trance out when they heard the Novasong the whales came up with?” I had to ask, and he smiled.
“Yeah, totally. Started throwing out things like ‘This must be fate!’ and ‘We were meant to work together!’, ‘This is the start of a glorious relationship!’. It was like watching a bad cartoon, except they were all crying and totally serious about it all.”
“Well, they are a good people, if a bit stuffy.”
“Good things should happen to good people,” he nodded. “I hear Peggy is seeing their Queen Aurora?”
“Yes. The Hag would like to set up an Xandaran colony in the Blue Area of the moon, I’ve been told, and we’d like to have a better relationship with the Xandarans, while getting them out of their rut and helping them to start expanding away from their home system. I expect Rich will get a formal commission and serve as a liaison there after he gets a couple years of Corps service under his belt.”
“Are they going to reveal the alternate Ultra Core?” Its existence was not talked about, but the crew had all been told it was there. The chance to earn an Ultra Core from the Hag was a stunning possibility for the SHIELD crew, among other things.
“Yes. I expect it will blow their minds that another civilization managed to duplicate something so essential to their identity, yet along a different path, and not requiring the Worldmind.” I tapped my Mask, a gesture he half-made as well. “The Masks subbing for their uniforms will also blow them away.”
“Vulcan didn’t sense any similarity to their Exospex,” he told me quietly, his eyes crinkling as his Viz tingled, just like Specs did for me. “That was well-played. Speaking of which,” he looked around theatrically, “where’s your golden shadow?” Everyone had noticed that Kismet basically followed me everywhere.
“She’s with the Fixer and the Beetle, doing reconstruction of key systems,” I smirked. He gave me an odd look. “She’s totally taunting them by looking fabulous and forcing them to be very polite, and they are learning how to talk to a very precocious neo-ten-year-old with the world’s most dangerous mother, who can also transmute matter at will.”