I stepped onto the Teleport Seal of the Starjammer, said device there more as a convenience and focus for people who knew the ship. Intruders would try and come in pretty much anywhere else but this room off a passageway doing nothing, and that would trigger a bunch of dimension-shunting and other defenses.

Xandaran tech for the win. Those people without common Interdiction defenses were crazy.

I hit the button on the wall. “Dynamo here.”

The door slid open, and Ch’od greeted me, our Specs verifying each to be the other. Skrulls were on board, so that was a thing, but I had Function up with Detect Shapechanger at X+1, so there was no chance of them infiltrating anywhere.

We strolled towards the meeting as I shifted into ‘dress uniform’, which had more casual lines than my usuals. “Are they shooting one another yet?” I asked the big reptilian Varunan, as I extended a hand-up to give his squirrel-esque pet Ch’reee a careful petting.

He laughed gently. “They were practicing politics until a few minutes ago,” he said diplomatically. “Also, Gambit put on a wonderful display of exploding cards and marbles, and they have noticed there’s a lot of little iron balls spread around the area for some reason, and cards sticking in the ceiling.”

Remy was such a clever brat at times... although I imagined his wife Bella was the one being clever. She ran security for special events like this, assassin training making her more than qualified to do so.

I turned my head sideways. “Hey, you operators from K’vk’try’s ships. Yeah, you. Go ahead and just turn back. You were about to be blasted out of space by the point defenses, and you probably don’t want to die, right? If you can’t turn around, just head to the port hangar and turn yourselves in, and we’ll chalk it up to inept commanders on your part, okay?”

There was a pause as the stealthed commandos gliding up on the ship conferred among themselves, and decided to keep going rather than turn around. After all, being caught proved they had been sensed, and if it was because they walked into the open hangar deck with a cordial security team waiting for them, that was fine. ‘Knew we were coming’ didn’t have to mean caught coming in through a radiator vent, or something.

“Ho!” Ch’od put his hand to his ear. “Raza is annoyed with you interrupting his target practice, but that’s fine. A display of competency is always good at these things, yes?”

“Indeed. I see you caught the ‘rats’ coming off the Duchess’ shuttle...”

“Miss Polaris is watching the ships very carefully,” Ch’od agreed affably.

There were five major factions of Skrulls right now, three major ones and two allied minors who were basically the king-makers. All were jockeying for political position, and polite assassinations, trade disputes, and some border actions were the rule of the day as they maneuvered for position.

They’d been told to bring some military advisors along, who’d all just received some massive file downloads, mostly compiled by Yours Truly.

I entered the meeting area, where the five delegations and their representatives were now clustered in separate circles while urgently looking over the holo-files, any of their pithy remarks kept restricted to themselves. They were also glancing at the other parties after realizing there was a Big Problem.

“Good afternoon!” I announced as I walked in, and a lot of green eyes turned my way. “I’m the one who compiled most of the information you are looking at! Feel free to ask me any questions you may have.

“If you don’t know who I am, I am Dynamo of Terra’s High Guard. I have fought a lot of Skrulls in the past, including you, Kl’rt, I see you there,” with Kallark/Gladiator of the Imperial Guard standing nearby in case the Super-Skrull wanted to try something, “so feel free to ask any questions you may have about what you are looking at.”

Said Super-Skrull was one of the main supporters of Princess Vl’Drik, one of the many members of the royal family who’d managed to flee the Skrull homeworld before it was devoured by Galactus.

“You!” Kl’rt blurted out, stepping forwards as the other Skrulls present let the mightiest Skrull warrior take the lead. “How long have you known of this?” he demanded.

“Several years,” I admitted easily, walking past him to the central podium, before turning and facing the lot of them. “Do you remember that maneuver by the Supremor a couple years ago, using the Skrulls to start a Kree-Shi’ar war, and there was a nega-bomb blast?” Despite himself, he nodded, not realizing immediately that it meant that we had figured out there actually was Skrull involvement. The Skrulls behind it all flinched as they realized it, glancing at Kallark... whose utterly unsurprised expression assured them that the top levels of the Shi’ar knew it, as well. “The majority of that nega-bomb’s effect was actually vented into the Negative Zone, and actually obliterated most of the original invasion force.

“What you are seeing here is what has built up since that time.”

They sucked breaths into their green faces, because the numbers were BIG.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“There are rumors that the Shi’ar, Kree, and Badoon all have knowledge of this,” one of the other analysts spoke up hesitantly.

“The Badoon learned it indirectly through an exiled character called the Maestro on the planet Whoberis, who I understood is now an acting warlord as they are madly trying to build up their forces to face the coming invasion,” I confirmed. “The Shi’ar were informed of it back in the wake of the nega-bomb explosion, the Kree learned about it when their homeworld was being devoured by Galactus. A tidbit of information from the World-Eater for not being pissy about the planet, possibly.”

They all mottled yellow at the implied idiocy on their part.

Kl’rt’s eyes were narrow as he stared at me. “And why are you telling us this now?” he demanded to know.

“Well, one of your people was making plans to attempt another infiltration of Terra, and we kind of rolled our eyes and decided to distract you. You’ll probably need to put some plasma in her skull, because she’s a religious fanatic and all.” There were glances about as they all deduced who I was thinking about. “Regardless, today is the first day of the last days of the Skrull Empire.” I lifted a wicked eyebrow at them. “So, who is going to be the last Emperor of the Skrull Empire? Because I can guarantee you’re going to lose it all.”

There was a hubbub of defiant voices and challenges, and I just flicked up holos around me of the numbers of the invaders, and comparative strengths of the Badoon, Skrulls, Kree, and Shi’ar combined.

There was more than a magnitude of difference between them. The Skrulls all shut up, staring at the numbers, the smarter ones turning even more yellow as they understood the differences.

“You’re going to lose the fight,” I told them. “Even if the Badoon come to help you, which they won’t, you’ll lose. The Badoon are going to help the Kree, because the biggest fraction of the invading force in the four galaxies is going to Andromeda. Oh, and before I go on...” The numbers shifted an order of magnitude higher, and they all gasped and paled, “There’s twenty other neighboring galaxies also going to be suffering invasions, and they’ve all been warned and are arming as rapidly as they might. Actually, there’s about a hundred different galaxies going to be gathering to the fights out there, but this is what our four have to worry about.”

The numbers went back to the originals, and the Skrulls all stared at them blankly.

“The original invasion routes are planned in the Kree, Shi’ar, and Skrull Empires because you three are the most numerous and dangerous, of course. The remaining forces will then converge on the Milky Way and the Badoon, and sweep it clean.” The holos indicated the approximated mustering points, paths of conquest, and systems taken in their hundreds, thousands, and millions.

“You will lose this fight. You have no hope of winning it, and that is after you unleash everything you can to attack them.

“You have nova bombs! Great, time to use them. Singularity weapons? It’s time to employ them. Dimensional destabilizers, quantum imbalancers, fluorine combiners, spatial rupturers? Great, time to use them all!” I said cheerfully. “Your enemies have knowledge of how to fight and destroy cosmic-class entities at least as powerful as the Celestials, as there are no such beings left in their cosmos.

“So if you’ve got the tricks, now’s the time to trot them out and show them what you are made of.

“You are still going to lose, and your Empire is still going to die,” I stated flatly. A broad panorama of just one star system, filled with hundreds of different variations of ships from scores of races, materialized behind me. “This one system alone has warships equal to those of any of your factions, and there are dozens of these systems. All with different species, different ships, different capabilities.

“This will be the greatest test of the Skrulls ever, for you are now facing extinction, as you’ve brought to so many before.” I didn’t hide my ironic appreciation for the fact.

“And why have you informed us of this now?” Kl’rt ground out, his face grim as he stared at the numbers, the maps, and the display behind me of the alien, even for space, nature of the Negative Zone ships.

“Because if you fight with everything now, we can probably prevent the Annihilation Wave from getting too far into the Milky Way. If we wait longer, things could get much more problematic, especially since by then the Badoon will be gasping for strength, and will have to evacuate their own conquered worlds.”

“This...” Kl’rt ground out, and I just stared at them.

“Were you expecting goodwill, soldier?” I asked him softly. “Something you have never once shown my homeworld?”

He grit his teeth, and remained silent. I was using the entire Skrull Empire, and he could do nothing but go along with it.

“Your advantage versus the Kree and the Shi’ar is that the Skrulls dominate the vast majority of Andromeda, and have cleansed it of most other species. Thus, you can bypass racial politics and knuckle down to command the entire Skrull species.

“This means something very simple. You control a lot of worlds. The creatures and species coming from the Negative Zone want those worlds, plain and simple. They are fleeing a dying universe, and somehow think our own is suitable.” I rolled my eyes. “They are used to defying cosmic powers. They are a universe full of desperate species looking to survive, going up against a few minor galaxies... but they want those homes.

“So, they won’t destroy those planets. They want to take them.

“You are Skrulls, shape-changers. Your numbers are vast, and you can and will expand your military to the greatest it has ever been, for they are pretty much all going to die as they buy time and cut down the invaders.

“This is how our analysts predict the fight will go.”

From the initial invasion points, with fleets waiting for them, system-destroying traps, bombardments, and a murderous defense net, the N-Zoners broke through with their own devastating technology and sheer weight of numbers.

They spread across world after world, where Skrull ground forces and infantry were waiting for them, and bloody slaughter rolled across worlds after worlds as Skrulls died, and their worlds were seized.

And as the worlds were taken, the species that took them naturally quit the fight to defend their new territory against the other races desperate for worlds of their own coming in behind, and the Wave rolled on.

Desperate deaths in combat and the need to guard and populate the conquered worlds drained away the strength of the Annihilation Wave as species after species quit the Wave and turned to frenzied defense of their new worlds.

When it reached the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy, the Wave was a tiny fraction of its strength, scattered between many stars.

“This is a level of strength the surviving Skrulls and minor players of the Four Galaxies can defy.”

The Skrulls stared at the final results grimly. The population numbers alone were terrifying. Tens of trillions of Skrulls were going to die in combat to make this happen!