The reports from Mvinj came trickling in almost as the Kree report on Whoberis was distributed.

There was incredible real and hyperspatial turbulence around the system, as if the sun had suddenly flared up and gotten ornery, just to annoy communications. By the time anyone escaped the system to relay what was happening, it was already too late to save the crecheworld.

As a matter of fact, it was so unduly quiet that it was obvious the beacons on Whoberis had been put in place only after the crecheworld had been annihilated.

Those who surveyed the crecheworld relayed back the images. It looked like something had smacked the planet; it had distorted like it was made of clay, completely flattened on one side. The atmosphere had been stripped away by the force of impact, and the planet’s mantle was basically shattered and spilling into space around the crushed planet.

The billions of eggs and Badoon females who lived there were naturally dead as well.

The whole system was full of shattered, ruptured, crushed, and exploded Badoon ships, killed by various methods, but always completely and thoroughly, as were the many supply bases and incidental mining areas spread throughout the system.

The scale of the devastation was incredible, something that would take multiple fleets to inflict, but it had been done literally faster than the Badoon could respond to it. By the time the first incoming transport ship arrived to find the creche-system in ruins, it was already far, far too late to do anything.

Having it suddenly tied to the destruction of the Zen-Whoberis made hackles rise on the backs of the other Badoon factions who had not participated in that action. After all, they had all committed similar atrocities in the past. Was there a major extra-galactic power that was using their past deeds as an excuse to take action against them?

--------

The Badoon will learn nothing from this, except that their defenses are too weak.

Billions of souls paraded past me, sacrificed to a simple principle their leaders could understand: dissuasion. When they went overboard, retaliation would come in equal measure.

Instead of prompting a reflection on their path, all it did was ignite a desire for more power and strength, so they’d be above such responses in the future. Naturally, they were also turning the galaxy upside-down trying to find who was responsible, too.

I could sense Thanos sending out his feelers. The Badoon were useful minions, and he also wanted to know who dared do this to them. He didn’t care a whit about their losses, of course. More death was more food for his mistress, in his mind.

The Composite Template was extremely useful. In this case, Karnak’s ability to sense weak points, when hooked into Cosmic Awareness, turned the worlds and systems into complex structures just waiting to fall apart when hit thus and so.

And I had all the power to hit them with now.

What happens when you supercharge a Great Shout at IX with a Voice of Thunder and the Sublime Chord? You get a play-doh planet...

Importantly, as long as I didn’t use the Voice of Thunder in normal circumstances, my energy signature had nothing to show for it. Couldn’t be me turning a planet into a ruptured ball of molten clay, right?

War on Evil without Remittance or Mercy was fully allowable within the context of Good behavior. Willing genocide was one of the greatest of Evils, and the Badoon did it casually, callously, and repeatedly. It was why Thanos liked working with them.

Sure, those I’d killed had mostly not engaged in such actions themselves. But that was the rub, wasn’t it? Standing aside while Evil was done on that level, and doing nothing to stop it, yet profiting from it.

Neutrals. They made the Galaxy a grim place, and naturally it was the Good places like Xandar that got picked on, with nobody coming to their aid since it wasn’t to their benefit to do so...

I looked out at the unfriendly stars. Eternity watched the dramas going on across the universe impassively, and Death’s hollow eyes just mocked a Courtier who couldn’t deal with what needed to be done.

For life to grow, sometimes there needed to be a culling. Frequently, those doing the culling didn’t realize they were the ones who needed to be culled.

I looked at the bright river of Human Destiny being forged with every breath and heartbeat, and how much murk there was in the potential paths ahead. There was no timesighting this flow, there were no alternate futures. There was one path ahead, and one behind, that was it.

So much crazy stuff coming, and the job wasn’t going to get much easier.

Be so nice to not have to worry about galactic empires and mad gods and all the crazy shit coming our way. Like, to have comic book logic behind it that we’d remain untouched if it wasn’t convenient.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Which reminded me that we needed to have some form of intelligence in the Negative Zone full-time now... or I was going to have to add it to my regular rotations of Cosmic Awareness spy stuff going on.

I was keeping Reed out of the place, but unfortunately spritzer geniuses were all up and raring to go plane-delving for fun and profit. It was convenient that some of the Isotopes you needed to do so were quite rare, and so much easier to track than those building dimensional transfer gates were expecting.

Felicia was a master at messing with such things and having them end in devastating and expensive explosions. Scanning for idiots undertaking such things was another thing I had to do...

Mmm, yeah, Cosmic Awareness used to be cool...

Ben Parker sat down next to me again. I sighed into the vacuum, “Saw you watching...”

He just nodded once, a dark light in his gentle eyes. “Briggs is snatching the people and things from the past that he can and moving them to Venus right now.” I glanced that way with my Awareness, and saw Zen-Whoberis natives popping out of the timestream by the hundreds and thousands, looking around in astonishment at the grasslands they were in, and the great biome extending above them, an unfriendly yellow-purple sky above and scoured stone visible outside the edges of the dome.

Xandarans were busy at work putting up shelters and getting machinery in place to start the hydroponics for them. The Zen-Whoberis were a spacefaring civilization, but not the aggressive sort, and had been totally unprepared for the assault of the Badoon. They would know of the Xandarans and the Nova Corps, and if the horror of being the last of their people was going to be a huge kick in the gut, there was also no doubt that they’d also have a major bone to pick with the Badoon.

The Xandarans were totally sympathetic.

“Sama says the Badoon are a type 2 civilization, with the technology and resources to harness the full power of a star, if they had the unity to do so.”

“The Xandarans can do the same, with considerably fewer people. Worried you can’t take the force of a star?” I smiled slightly. “You could reach out and turn Sol right off, Mr. Parker.”

He looked over that way, and he just sighed. “That is not an encouraging thought, Dyna. Well, I suppose it is, given some of the beings and people out there...”

“Like me?” I asked him knowingly.

He sighed again. “How do you withstand the psychic impact of feeling all of those deaths?” he had to ask. “I can see you’re not ignoring or isolating them, you’re recognizing all of them...”

“There are three reasons. The first is that I’m immune to the effects of fear, so the anxiety, worry, and despair associated with all those deaths slides right off me. It’s there, but it has no effect on me.

“The second is simply having a highly advanced mind capable of dealing with the impact of so many deaths.

“The third is being exposed to Divine mindsets. The timelessness and overarching viewpoint of a god turns the uncounted deaths of the ages into one more tick on the wheel of time. In time, all things die, so these things will always happen, and there is no escaping them, only going on.” My fingers fiddled. “Of course, the mindsets I was reliving had very little empathy about them, concerned only with things on their own levels. Having no empathy is a great help in such situations, too, rather like being unconcerned about a mass extermination of ants.”

“That point of view seems rather common among the truly powerful,” he pointed out, looking out into the stars at so many of the lethal things out there.

“Empathy and mercy are inventions of the sapient striving towards a higher cause, not natural in the slightest,” I agreed calmly. “If you don’t strive, they don’t happen.”

“So you are forcing yourself to face all those you’ve killed.” There was deep respect in his voice.

“Yes. Recognition means closure. You can contrast it with Thanos, who cares nothing for those he massacres, only harvesting their rage, resentment, and deaths for his own purposes... or simply leaving them to seethe, and other opportunists to do so in his stead. There is tremendous power in slaughter, as any necromancer can tell you. Likewise, there is power in putting souls to rest.”

Ben Parker was silent again for a time. “Is it strange to still be thinking about God at this level of power?” he finally asked. “I can catch glimpses of Eternity itself at times now. I can wield power at a level beyond any of Terra’s pantheons...”

“The Creator stands beyond and above them all. Even your power had to come from somewhere. If there is intelligent design beyond that, who knows how many scales it rises through? I don’t think that’s out of line at all. Indeed, with Cosmic Awareness, you don’t need Faith to believe in the Creator. It’s evident something is out there...”

“Not a servant of God?” he asked me, amused.

“No. I set my sights a notch lower. I’m just a servant of Heaven.”

“There’s a difference?” he blinked at me.

“Yes. The Creator has to embody Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, and thus be above and beyond them all. Heaven is only one part of the Creator’s designs, and certainly does not encompass all that It is.”

“That’s...” he hesitated, but could not refute that. “Huh. So my image of a benevolent and merciful God...”

“Just one face of the Creator. You need only look at the universe and the multiverse, and you will realize the Creator is far more.”

His lips twitched. “So, God embodies Evil as well... Some would say that means He is far less...”

“Saying that Good and Evil together is less than Good alone is logical idiocy, although it is an argument the self-righteous who have no understanding of either would certainly make.”

“That...” He sighed again, deflating. “So, one could say that emulating God is doing whatever you wanted to?”

“The Creator put a system in place for sapients to follow. Transcending the system is nigh-impossible for non-cosmic beings, and those tend to end up embodying mere aspects of the system. I’m not so pretentious, and I’m a part of existence, not trying to leave it behind me.

“Mortals doing whatever they want to as justification for their actions is Anarchic and a sign of Chaos, not transcendence.

“I planted my flag on the side of Heaven, and I’m trying to be a Good person. It is a far harder road than the other paths, but the rewards it gives are, in the end, far more satisfying.” I frowned and shook my head. “Which doesn’t mean that some of the things that have to be done on that road aren’t very painful to do.”

“Some would say there is no justification for extinction or genocide...” he murmured.

“Heaven is opposed to neither, as long as the purpose is true. Merciless war on Evil is part of the remit of Heaven. Good does not accept the shackles on behavior others try to heap upon it to weaken it. Slaughter for slaughter’s sake is a great Evil. Genocide for the sake of removing Evil is perfectly acceptable in the eyes of Heaven.”

“So it comes down to who gets to judge what is evil...”