Composite had utterly failed in his redemption, his loyalty so interwound into his personality that he committed spiritual suicide rather than be without it.
Loki had done his work well.
Composite’s Bound and Sealed body was simply integrated in through the Unimerge, having no resistance to the effect with his soul gone off to wherever enslaved dog-killers go. All my Dupes and Clone got the benefits thereof, just like they did Sersi, which would be nothing but useful as needed for the Voice of Thunder Casting.
Callie had kept Composite’s Template slotted for twelve decades, and was definitely better at pure Voice usage than I was, as well as all the other powers she’d been wielding. People back home were going to get a big surprise when she and Primus returned.
Me, not so much, although the year here certainly hadn’t hurt in other respects. All of the Karma basically went into Golden Child Racial Levels.
Magical time travel was actually harder than scientific in physical form, but this was now planar travel, and magical means for that were actually easier. Chronal flows realigned, and we headed home on astral currents, the former temporal currents basically shunted aside as they lined up.
We appeared out by Neptune, but that didn’t mean anything. One Portal shunt, and an hour-long flight was unnecessary as we came out a light-second out from LaGrange, Cosmic Awareness tyvm for the perfect mapping function.
---
Back in the Present Day...
-Briggs, can you generate a closed time loop?- I /asked him as we headed into LaGrange. To everyone there, it had only been an hour since the Guardians left; we could basically have been running a patrol route, none of the normal employees and visitors realizing we’d taken a time trip, only that our Mark presence had been absent for a short time.
His mental /eyes turned my way. -Why would I need to, Dyna?- he /asked reasonably.
-Primus used his knowledge of the things Thanos was going to do to save the Zen-Whoberis from genocide by the Badoon. I was wondering if you could arrange for a temporal jump for at least some of them to Venus, leaving some artificial bodies behind to cover for them, and bringing them forward to the current time so there’s no causality resistance.-
Cleansed of the other less advanced race, the Badoon had seized the Whoberis homeworld and turned it into another of their colonies. Gamora was literally the last member of her race left alive.
That could be changed, so why not do so?
He contemplated it for a minute or two. -Preparations should be made for this ahead of time. I will instruct the Xandarans to prepare a suitable biome habitat for those I can save without upsetting causality,- he finally /replied.
I clenched my fist. Excellent!
-You’re not getting off scott-free for this,- he /went on grimly.
-Yes?- I dumped work on him, of course he was going to reciprocate.
-Wipe every single Badoon from that system, and every Badoon in the crecheworld system of the Badoon faction responsible.-
Genocide returned with genocide. I sighed, but this was the result of the Badoon’s regard for other races.
Thanos’ favorite pet conquerors were about to get a truly rude awakening to the implications of consequences for their actions.
-You know I’m going to go looking for other races they’ve wiped, right?-
-Heaven employs busybodies,- was his only /reply.
That was true enough...
-------
Massacre still didn’t get any easier, even if it was the enemy’s civilians. Return the honor you are given, and there is no honor in genocide. Therefore, you grant the enemy none.
Being aware of every life I took was still very uncomfortable, but killing them for the sins of their people that they had profited from and tacitly condoned meant my guilt for wiping them away was minimized. I was angrier about having to do the deed than I was actually doing it, applying to the extinction of these Badoon here and their imported ecosystem exactly the same mindset they’d applied to get rid of the Zen-Whoberis.
I atomized every settlement over a few thousand, and Seeking Shards that could drill through duracrete took out any smaller places. Megaplexes, supply towns, and everything in between, including great herds of imported herd saurials, were atomized, and vivic fires fed them and what they’d imported here to the Land as they died in vivic fire.
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Once I reached a certain saturation point, the Cosmic Sublime Chord went out, and the Land was Empowered to rise up.
Stones and grasses became lances and spikes to alien lifeforms that had not evolved here. Whole cities screamed as they sank into the ground like it was water, and were buried forever and wiped away.
It took about a day to politely scour the Badoon and any trace of them off Whoberis, without just flaming the whole planet to do the job.
There was no comm traffic alerting the Badoon elsewhere in the system as to what was going on. Interference ‘from sunspots’ was sweeping the area, and none of the screams for help got off the planet, while all the orbital and near-space assets were wiped out.
Grimly, I moved on to clearing off the rest of the system. None of the other planets were habitable, which concentrated the population in biomes and made the job much easier for me. Within another day, the home system of the Zen-Whoberis had only a few cooling pits left of the Badoon presence that had wiped them out of it a generation earlier.
The crecheworld of Mvinj and its billions of eggs would soon follow. The matriarchs of the Badoon might not have approved of the conquests and ruthlessness of the males of the race, but since they supplied the soldiers for them, they were just as responsible for their actions as the other half of their race. I had exactly as much sympathy for them as they did for the races that the Badoon had extinguished, but as they were going to find out, sympathy wasn’t going to bring back the dead.
--------
The Kree scoutship Subdue Infinity found this an almost ridiculously easy mission, and good money for it. The Badoon had asked them to investigate the Whoberis system, as any ships they sent in soon went silent, including their homing beacons.
That didn’t mean the Kree weren’t nervous. Their scans were mostly clear, only the occasional cooling remnants of Badoon bases on planetoids and moons coming up. It looked like concentrated fusion flames had burned down on them and reduced everything at those locations to ashes and slag.
Of ships and orbital assets, they didn’t find anything, which raised their hackles. No satellites, wreckage, cargoes, even scraps of hull from fighting. It had all been swept away cleanly.
But there were four local beacons turning about Whoberis, the only faint signals in the entire system. In addition, there was an intact starport down on the planet’s surface beneath one of the beacons, the rest of the cities having been seared off the planet, or were simply... missing, somehow.
Captain Kon-Farr ordered a standard recognition code to be beamed at the beacons, which read as simple automated buoys, and the broadcast download in Interlac came back instantly.
“The Whoberis system is Interdicted to the Badoon, who exterminated the Zen-Whoberis natives who once inhabited the planet below. All Badoon who enter this system will be expunged, without exception,” an emotionless computerized voice droned at them. “For their act of genocide, the creche system of Mvinj was similarly genocided.
“The Badoon’s former slaves are concentrated about the starport directly below Beacon Two. They are not allowed to expand off the peninsula. Any further expansion or further colonial efforts by invading powers will be expunged, without exception.”
There was a beep as a very simple world-map was downloaded to the ship, showing exactly the starport the Kree had already noticed.
“Mvinj has been wiped?” Captain Konn-Farr asked sharply, looking to his comms. The signals officer quickly went through the updates always coming through the hyperfeed.
Mvinj was a Badoon crecheworld. While it wasn’t a fortress world, the system defenses would have required several fleets at the very least to punch through, and by that time, the Badoon reinforcements would have completely encircled any invaders!
“There is no news on Mvinj at all, Captain,” the signalman assured him, which didn’t reassure the captain in the slightest.
“Contact them and let them know this,” he directed the soldier, who promptly bent to his task.
The Badoon were waiting outside the solar boundary, practically next door with hyperwave coms. Captain Konn-Farr waited for the ugly reptilian visage of Captain Rakzazz to pop up in front of him, and when thirty seconds passed with that not happening, he turned his head to his signals officer again.
The Pink Kree soldier caught his Blue captain’s eye. “Captain, there is no response or acknowledgement coming from the Badoon...”
Standard protocol was at least a triple attempt before relaying that news. Captain Konn-Farr considered the eerie silence of the system, and the total lack of the Badoon, or any trace of them, and had a sudden foreboding premonition.
“Prepare a short hyperjump to the holding coordinates of the Badoon frigate,” he ordered calmly, and his navigator instantly set to the task. “Jump when ready!”
“Yes, sir!” the pilot responded alertly, waiting for the calculations to be completed by his compatriot.
It was a short jump, and the calculations were done in less than five breaths. “Engaging hyperdrive, Captain!” the pilot relayed as he cycled the hyperdrive forward, and they warped on out of there.
---
There was no Badoon frigate or its escorts at the rendezvous coordinates where they had set up station.
“Supremor,” his tactical officer swore, fine-tuning his sensors. “Sir, the area has been gravity-swept. The vacuum is measurably lower in residual gasses in the local area than a light-second out. Something came by, swept up the Badoon, and departed. I’m not reading any drive residues, however.”
Captain Konn-Farr considered that, and a word rose in his head. “Could this have been done by the Acanti?” he asked, reports on the recent surges of activity and interactions with the space whales springing to mind.
“The Acanti travel by gravimetric manipulation, and also use that for their salvaging sweeps,” the female Pink, Noh-mel, confirmed. “There are no records of them attacking the Badoon, but they have been sweeping up after many of the conflicts the Badoon have been engaged in recently.”
“Being in position to do so means they have either been informed ahead of time of such things, or they take notice and gather with frightening speed to such opportunities.” Captain Konn-Farr also recalled the reports and estimations of the new firepower wielded by the Acanti, and had been told to steer clear of the space whales unless Kree forces were directly under attack by them.
Whatever that boosted Xandaran technology was capable of, it had spooked Kree Command something fierce. Thankfully the space whales didn’t seem to be too irritated with the Kree...
“Set course for the nearest common starport. We can report our findings to central command and relay them to the Badoon at the same time.”
“Yes, sir!” Navigator Po-Ella confirmed. “Setting course for common starport in Illitri!”