On Guilt
On Board The Statesman
“I must say, it’s getting a tad bit warm,” Jarvis stated. Tony immediately shut off the arc welder he’d been using. It hadn’t worked any better than the Oxy-Acetylene torch he’d previously tried anyway. The metal surrounding Jarvis seemed to have a remarkable ability to transfer heat.
“Damned magic metals,” he grumbled, snatching the various ground leads he’d attached to divert the current from his friend. Not that he was sure if someone built from yet another magic metal actually needed them.
“Make him phase out of it,” Rocket offered from where he was working on the installation of the new navigational console they’d received from the Xandarans.
Tony glared his frustration at the ceiling. “You’re absolutely right. Why didn’t I think of that?” he asked sarcastically. He was starting to regret moving Jarvis back to the bridge to work on the block, but the sad truth was that he and Rocket had found themselves needing the same tools. It just made sense to group the two projects.
Rocket shrugged. “Eh, you’re only human,” he offered absentmindedly from where he was working. Being around Quill so much, he normally would have caught Stark’s tone, but at the moment he was engrossed in an enigma of his own. He’d managed connect enough leads to plot a course and get them on their way, but this ship was a product of the Binary Dwarf shipyards.
That was not good.
Those shipyards had gone out of business nearly a hundred years ago, primarily due to their penchant for setting their prices far above their competitors. Their target audience were those ultra-rich fops who chose to flaunt their wealth by buying the most expensive version of everything they could find.
It didn’t surprise him at all that this Grandmaster whatever would own one. What did surprise him was that he’d kept it running this long. Aside from their exorbitant pricing policy the PD shipyards tended to design their ships . . . oddly. For one thing, they loved stringing feeds from every system to every other system. They claimed it was for the purposes of redundancy; Rocket figured it was more so they could jack up the materials cost of their ships.
Which wasn’t to say they’d built badly designed ships. On the whole, their ships ran as long as any other shipyard’s, maybe a little longer. But, that becomes a bit of a problem when the ships outlast their shipyard. Parts quickly became scarce. Of course, by this point most of the schematics for those parts were public domain.
They no doubt could have scrounged the appropriate schematic to build, if there had been enough of the original console left to identify it. And good luck finding a parts list organized by ship design; those were deleted when the shipyard went bankrupt. So, they’d been forced to take the closest thing the Xandarans had on hand, plug it in, and hope it worked. The closest thing being a hundred and fifty-year-old navigational console designed by an eccentric shipwright.
Rocket was currently adding any surviving members of those yards to his all-time enemies list.
“I did try that, you stupid goffer!” Tony barked at Rocket.
“Don’t call me that!” Rocket yelled back.
“Do you think maybe you could not alienate everyone on this ship Tony?” Banner asked from the doorway. Tony turned automatically, to snap at the intruder; somehow, he managed to refrain. After all, acting antagonistically towards a man who regularly became a big green rage beast was extra-special stupid.
Instead he closed his eyes and took a breath. “Bruce,” he said in a minutely calmer tone “what are you doing here?”
“I heard you hadn’t slept since coming back on board,” Banner replied evenly.
“You the ship’s nanny now too?” Tony asked, turning back to his work.
“You’d be surprised at how much crossover there is between nanny and ship’s physician,” Banner replied. “So?” he asked when Tony refused a reply.
Tony tried to avoid rolling his eyes. It was not the first time someone had badgered him about his sleeping habits. The most surprising badgerer had been Natasha.
“Yeah,” he said, grabbing a random tool and turning back to Jarvis’s semi-portable prison. “How’s Steve doing?” he asked as he tried to figure out exactly what he was going to do with a scanner. He’d already scanned the object. A holographic copy was currently floating over his portable workstation.
“Tony, you need sleep,” Bruce replied, refusing to be taken off topic.
“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” Tony replied. In truth, he was closer to the beginning than the middle. He also had no idea what to do. Every attempt to free Jarvis had failed magnificently, leaving him spinning circles around square one.
A part of him knew Bruce was right. It knew that the odds were very much against him solving a simple orbital dynamic in his current state, let alone the mysteries of a metal that defied any conventional understanding of chemistry or physics.
Neutronium was that metal dreamed up by science fiction writers who didn’t have the first clue what they were talking about. Sure, a substance made entirely of neutrons would be almost completely inert. And it would be incredibly dense, due to the lack of any charged particles in the nucleus or orbital shell to force the various atoms apart. But that very lack of charge meant there would be nothing to hold them together either. And even if you could, anything made of pure neutrons visible to the naked eye would be impossibly heavy.
By everything Tony knew about how the universe worked, this block of neutrons should have dissolved into a pile of individual atoms that would then have undergone beta decay. Within fifteen minutes each should have decayed into a hydrogen atom with a stray antineutrino for spice.
But that hadn’t happened. The best his fatigue and guilt addled mind could do was to assume that Thanos had done something to make the two nuclear forces work between neutrons, something no one on Earth had ever even dreamed of.
And the worst part was that there was a solution. He could feel it skulking around the back of his brain, like a rabbit eluding a wolf. A very tired wolf. With a thorn in its paw.
“You’ve been up for at least twenty-seven hours, twelve of them in this room,” Bruce said pointedly.
Tony stopped and looked back at him. “Has it really been that long?” he asked before turning back to the task at hand.
“You won’t help anyone if you collapse from exhaustion,” Banner insisted.
“Look, I promise, I’ll get some sleep just as soon as Jarvis can stand up, okay?” Tony snapped before snatching the scanner back up. Maybe if he could isolate the strong atomic force, he could find a way to counter it.
Bruce hesitated. “Fine,” he said in a tone of voice that suggested less agreement than understanding that that was the best he was going to get. “I just don’t need you getting rushed to the infirmary. I’m busy enough already, thank you.”
“In furtherance of both of those goals” Jarvis said “I believe Rocket may have had a point.”
Tony seemed less than convinced. “What, having you phase out of the block?” he asked. “We tried it. You were there, remember?”
“Yes,” Jarvis replied seeming less than amused. “Nevertheless, he may have had a point.”
“Besides the one on top of his head?” Tony muttered, causing Rocket to feel the top of his head in confusion. He was fairly certain he’d been insulted. The problem was he wasn’t sure how.
“Tony,” Banner said warningly.
Tony turned back to the doorway. “Are you really going to stand there till I go to bed?” he asked.
“I have always felt,” Jarvis went on, ignoring the byplay “that the stone did not grant the abilities to fly or phase through matter so much as assist with the mental control required for such exacting tasks.”
“In other words, he needs to will himself out,” Rocket replied snidely.
“The density of neutronium isn’t exactly going to make it easy,” Tony pointed out.
“Well,” Banner interjected “meditative states have been known to help people control autonomic reflexes.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have any texts on the subject, would you?” Jarvis asked.
“No, but after my accident I spent quite a bit of time studying various meditative techniques,” he offered.
Tony turned a tired, yet incredulous expression on the biologist. “Great, we’ll have him ‘ohm’ himself out,” he said sarcastically. Before anyone could respond he cocked his head. “Maybe, that’s not bad,” he said almost to himself as he stepped back up to his portable bench. He pulled up a representation of the Jarvis’s brain to replace the hologram of the stocks themselves.
“What?” Banner asked curiously.
Tony glanced over at him before returning his attention to the bench. “Meditation is just a way of achieving a certain mental state, right?” he asked. “And a mental state is just an electro-chemical reaction,” he added as he started designing what looked to be a skullcap next to the brain simulation. “That means we should be able to generate a field that could impose a shift in the mental state.”
“And the moment he starts to phase the cap falls off,” Rocket said pointedly from behind him.
Tony stopped suddenly, cursing the fact that he hadn’t caught on to that little wrinkle himself. He pinched his nose as he tried to work out a way to adapt the base concept to avoid using a helmet of any kind. Unfortunately, pushing the magnets further away required more power. He’d already seen how neutronium futzed with magnetic fields. There was no way he was going to be able to account for its interference right now.
“Fine,” he said at last before opening his eyes to look at Banner. “He’s all yours Bruce,” he added, walking out of the room.
“Where are you going?” Banner asked.
“The land of Nod,” Tony said over his shoulder. “I’ll figure something out tomorrow. Assuming, that is, that eastern medicine proves to be less than successful,” he added before turning a corner.
>>
“Well kid, how are you feeling?” Steve asked. His face was still bruised from the previous day’s activities, but he seemed otherwise fine, which was impressive seeing as it had only been about fourteen hours since he’d suffered the more recent of his injuries.
Peter opened his eyes and focused on Steve’s face. “Like you look, but on the inside,” the kid replied before closing his eyes again. “And all over,” he added as his stomach cramped.
“So, what’s going on with him?” Steve asked.
“Well,” Banner started slowly “best I can guess is that this serum you guys concocted accelerated more than just his regenerative abilities. All of his body’s processes: metabolism, cellular differentiation, heartbeat, even growth must have doubled at the least.”
“Excretion too, from the smell of this place,” Stark put in from the back. He’d immediately distanced himself from the other two as they’d entered Parker’s room to check on him. Since then he’d maintained the uncharacteristically quiet demeanor that he’d portrayed ever since his six-hour nap.
“Aw, and I was thinking I’d be able sell it as Spiderman’s special musk,” Peter replied sarcastically.
“Well,” Steve said, ignoring the little byplay “at least we don’t have to worry about him getting addicted to the stuff.”
“No way,” Peter replied. “Never again.”
Steve shrugged. “Beats being dead. Beats the rest of us being dead too,” he added pointedly.
Peter hesitated. “Yeah, I guess,” he replied, as if he wasn’t so sure. He’d never felt this bad in his life. The strange pains he’d experienced as the spider’s venom had wrought its changes on his body had been nothing compared to this.
“I’m pretty sure he’s over the worst of it,” Banner continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Biggest issue was the way the stuff affected his adrenal glands.”
“How’s that?” Steve asked, glancing back at Tony.
“Based on scans taken by his suit, it looks like his adrenal glands were hyper stimulated to a greater extent -and for a longer period- than the rest of his body.”
“What does that mean?” Steve asked, a confused look on his face.
Bruce countered with a confused look of his own before remembering that he was dealing with someone who was only a few years out of nineteen forty-five. “Okay, the Adrenal Glands do a lot of things. But in a high stress situation they release adrenaline and noradrenaline into the body. Okay?” he asked, making sure he hadn’t lost his audience.
“Okay,” Steve replied gamely.
“Okay,” Bruce repeated “so normally when you encounter a high stress situation-”
“-like being pummeled by a giant space gorilla-” Tony put in.
“Yeah,” Bruce replied shooting an irritated glance at Tony “as a random, nonspecific example. Anyway, the adrenal gland dumps a large amount of these chemicals into your blood stream. Together they increase: pupil dilation, release of sodium retention in the kidneys, arterial constriction, an increase in glucose production, heart rate and blood flow, blood flow to muscles, and activates the sympathetic nervous system.”
“Okay,” Steve said. His mind immediately recorded that data as physical changes, but he got the gist. “And his didn’t do that?” he asked.
“No, it did,” Bruce corrected him. “Then it kept doing it.”
“And that’s . . . bad,” Steve said.
“Normally the adrenals dump their load at the beginning of a high stress situation and that’s it,” Tony put in from the back. “By the time they could produce more the high stress situation should have been resolved one way or another. That’s so your body doesn’t burn itself out in its fanatical effort to save itself.”
“Burn itself out?” Steve asked.
“Yeah,” Tony said, trying to figure out exactly how to explain it. Then, inspiration. “Look, have you heard of nitrous oxide?”
“Yeah, I saw Fast and Furious,” Steve said. “It’s Scott’s favorite movie,” he added.
“Right,” Tony replied dismissively “well adrenaline is like throwing nitrous into an aging Chevelle and flooring it; the engine might survive it once, but if you keep going, you’ll cause serious damage.”
“Who you calling an aging Chevelle you rusted old El-Camino?” Peter muttered earning a grin from those assembled. Even Tony’s face cracked slightly.
“So that’s what happened here,” Banner said, taking back control of the Q and A. “When Peter’s adrenal gland became hyper-stimulated it continued to release both hormones. Not in as big a supply as the initial dump, but enough to do some light damage to most of his organs.”
“Is there anything you can give him for that?” Steve asked.
Bruce shrugged. “The problem is that his biochemistry is even more altered than yours,” he replied. “His own regenerative powers seem to be doing fine. I’d rather not start messing with a system I barely understand in normal humans if I don’t have to. Maybe a real doctor could,” he added self-deprecatingly.
“No, you’re doing great Bruce,” Steve said, placing one hand on the petite scientist’s shoulder.
Said petite scientist glanced uncomfortably away, clearly unused to fulsome praise. “Anyway,” he said a moment later “I think he’ll be fine by tomorrow. The best I can recommend is that he eat and get some sleep, in that order.”
“What’s on the menu?” Peter asked.
“Jarvis and Wanda are making some sort of Russian pancake and ham steaks,” Tony said.
“Sounds good?” Peter replied, sounding less than entirely certain. For some reason his mental image of a Russian Pancake involved something with a consistency very close to stone that probably tasted much the same.
“In fact, I think I’ll go get you a plate,” Bruce said standing up.
Tony and Steve made eye contact. “We should probably let him rest,” Steve said. They followed Banner out.
Tony stopped just inside the door, the others waiting on the other side. “Look, I’m really sorry kid,” he said, turning to look back towards the bed.
“Huh?” Peter asked. Then “Mr. Rogers is right; it beats being dead.” Tony’s face twitched at calling Steve Mr. Rogers, but let it slide. Odds were Steve wouldn’t have known the reference anyways.
“Do you need anything?” he asked instead. “A magazine? Flat Screen?”
Peter shrugged. “A sponge bath from Natasha would be swell,” he said, a grin peeking through the pain still evident on his face.
The three at the door gave a surprised laugh. “I bet it would,” Tony said “but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”
“Hey, you guys are the ones complaining about the smell,” Peter pointed out.
“See, he’s perking up already,” Steve commented as the door closed.
>>
Thor sat at Brunnhilde’s bed as guilt and anger warred for dominance over his mind. It would have been easier if he’d retained no memory of what Supergiant had forced him to do. But he remembered everything that had happened as she’d used his body against his friends, everything that he’d done. Including everything he’d done to the woman resting in the bed.
He'd always prided himself on his strength and martial prowess. He’d spent centuries honing his body into the perfect weapon. Initially that had been to create a weapon of war for his people, but later it had become the instrument of their defense. He’d never truly considered that another could take those very abilities and shape them against his will. It had been a mental rape, one that had affected those around him far more than he.
He was thankful, in a morbid way, that Brunnhilde was the only one he’d managed to do any serious damage too; Asgardians healed incredibly quickly. The machinery in this room had greatly helped that process along once Bruce had been able to read the manual. Thor snorted, giving a tight grin, as he recalled the diminutive man’s stream of complaints about ‘practicing medicine from a cookbook’.
Brunnhilde stirred from the sleep that had taken her over since reaching the infirmary. She had no idea what Banner had jabbed her with, and there hadn’t been time to ask before sleep had overtaken her. Not that she would have complained.
A slight sound informed her that she wasn’t entirely alone. She opened her eyes and reflexively lurched away from Thor’s form. It was purely a reaction to what had happened. She’d known at the time that his actions had not been of his design, but of another’s will forced upon him. Yet, despite that, she couldn’t stop herself.
Thor darted to the other side of the bed, catching her. She groaned as his arms contacted still sore parts of her body.
“Thor,” she gasped as he eased her back onto the bed. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Thor said, locking eyes with her, allowing her to see his sincerity. The intensity of his look stopped her from saying anything else. There was a message conveyed in that a look. A message that he wasn’t sure how to convey with words, but one that she understood perfectly. How does one apologize for trying to kill someone close to them?
She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault. But she knew he already knew that. If he didn’t believe it coming from himself then why would he believe it if the message came from her? In the end she just nodded, accepting both the spoken and unspoken message alike.
They sat there for a short time in silence. There seemed to be nothing more to say, yet neither seemed to want to end the moment.
Then Brunnhilde gave a short laugh that ended in a pained expression.
“What?” Thor asked.
“It just occurred to me,” she replied once her ribs stopped their punitive measures “we’re even now.”
“What?” Thor asked again.
Her face gained something of an impish grin. “Well,” she said slowly “I mean I did sell you into slavery,” she added pointedly. Then it was Thor’s turn to bark in laughter.
>>
The alarm sounded, as all alarms do, at two in the morning. The first person out of their stateroom was Tony, heading for the engineering deck. He beat Rocket by about half a second. The talking rodent could be excused that lapse considering that Friday had woken Tony up a minute earlier to discuss some disturbing drive readings.
Whereas Tony only knew there was something wrong with the drive, Rocket had been able to identify the problem by the sound it made; it was not a good sound.
>>
“Alright, we’re all here,” Quill said, allowing a level of irritation to slip into his voice. He could probably be forgiven that; the alarm had roused the occupants of the entire ship, few of which had been able to return to sleep until they got some answers. Those working on the problem had been infuriatingly vague in their responses.
“How bad is it?” Gamora asked, politely, casting a meaningful glance at the space rogue. Somehow, she of all people had been cast in the role of peacemaker between these two groups. She was honestly tired of playing referee; and since Quill was responsible for a good portion of that friction her patience with him was very nearly exhausted.
No one seemed to want to answer Gamora’s question, which hardly qualified as a good sign. She raised an eyebrow Rocket’s direction. Instead of answering he seemed to shrink further in his seat.
Steve surveyed the room carefully. They’d readjourned in the mess hall for this update. In many ways he felt a sense of déjà vu from their earlier meeting. The same tension was there, like an undercurrent of . . . not hostility exactly. Distrust maybe, and with just a tinge of unwillingness to cooperate. Everyone was pretty much in the same spot, besides the fact that Vision -no, Jarvis he had to keep reminding himself- was able to actually sit at the table.
The only real difference was just how crowded the room was. A good portion of the group hadn’t been able to attend that first meeting due to injury, or duties involving caring for those injured. Now, everyone was here. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was an improvement; the way tension kept rising they’d have a riot on their hands. More people were just more fuel for the fire, and fewer people manning the firehoses.
“It’s bad,” Steve guessed into the silence.
That animated Rocket. “It’s bad,” he mocked, trying to lower his voice to match Steve’s. “You sir, are a master of understatement!”
Steve didn’t reply, unless you count a very slight upward quirking at the end of one side of his lips; he’d achieved his goal of breaking the silence and prodding one of those in the know to talk.
“Rocket!” Gamora hissed, falling back into diplomat mode.
“Well, uh exactly how masterful is he?” Quill asked, sounding slightly amused. He’d caught Steve’s quirk of the lips, and was pretty sure he knew what the soldier was up to. He’d also caught Gamora’s glare; mending fences was not exactly in his wheel house, but keeping her from ripping him in half had started to be.
A nervous chuckle worked its way through the room at Quill’s question, but still no answers were forthcoming. Rocket had clammed up again at Gamora’s warning, leaving them back at nervous silence.
“The hyperspace force attenuation field stabilizers are severely damaged,” Friday announced finally, over the intercom. Those familiar with hyperdrives emitted an array of crestfallen sounds, which did not make those unfamiliar with hyperdrives feel any better.
Falcon glanced amongst his peers before speaking. “Um, could we get that in English?” he asked.
“It was in English,” Parker grumbled from one end of the table. He wasn’t exactly fully recovered from the hell juice he’d helped create. Then he’d been pulled out of bed for a crash course in intergalactic hyperdrive function and repair, mainly because whomever had built this monstrosity of a ship had clearly expected it to be maintained by either small Japanese persons or Keebler Elves.
“Well in that case, could you dumb it down a little?” Lang replied whimsically, holding his hand flat to the floor at eye level before bringing it down to chest height.
Of all those present Thor was the one to respond. “A ship’s hull is subjected to phenomenal pressures while in hyperspace,” he explained. “The faster you go, the greater the force. To counteract this, all hyperdrive equipped ships are equipped with hyperspace force attenuators.”
“And those attenuators are damaged?” Scott asked.
“I wish,” Rocket replied bitterly. “Attenuators go out all the time,” he explained to the volley of confused looks from the other side of the table. “We’ve got plenty of spares. What we don’t have any spares of are the field stabilizers.”
“And those are . . . what?” Sam asked.
“Hyperspace forces are chaotic,” Brunnhilde replied from Thor’s side. “They fluctuate wildly, which causes the attenuators to go out of calibration. The field stabilizers keep them aligned.”
The room went silent, as the other half came to grips with just how screwed they were.
“You said ‘severely damaged’,” T’Challa prompted. “Can they still function?”
“Theoretically yes,” Jarvis replied “but we’d have to minimize the fluctuations inherent in the hyperspace force.”
“And how exactly do we do that?” Widow asked.
“By reducing our speed to that of a stellar moth,” Nebula said bitterly from what was becoming her usual position: slouched against a bulkhead.
“She’s right,” Gamora put in. “There’s a direct relation between the strength of the hyperspace force and its variance. The slower we go the less hyperspace force the hull is subjected to, and the less it will vary.”
“How slow do we have to go?” Steve asked.
Again, the room seemed to brace itself for bad news. No one wanted to be the one to deliver it. No one really wanted to hear it. The silence seemed to stretch for at least five minutes.
“One percent of maximum,” Tony stated bluntly. The occupants of the room shifted uncomfortably. Even Nebula -she who normally presented nothing more than an icy, unmoving exterior- winced.
Bruce cleared his throat. “So, um . . . how long will it take us to get to Earth?” he asked uncertainly.
“Just shy of thirty days,” Stark replied somberly.
“Which means by the time we’ve arrived Thanos will have been there for what, four weeks?” Gamora asked, an edge of fatalism creeping into her voice.
“How could this have happened?” Quill growled desperately. “Stabilizers almost never go out,” he added.
No one responded, unless you counted everyone who’d been working the problem for the last four hours turning to Rocket; Rocket, who was currently attempting to achieve oneness with the chair he was sitting in. The rest of the room quickly followed suite.
“Rocket?” Gamora prompted.
Rocket glanced around the room as if looking for an escape. “Look, it’s not my fault,” he insisted in such a way that suggested the corollary was probably closer to the truth.
“What, exactly, isn’t your fault?” Thor insisted in such a way as to suggest that his patience was being well and truly tried.
Rocket opened his muzzle to say something snarky, but Thor’s gaze caught his, silencing him. Normally he didn’t fear much, and when he did, he ignored it. But ‘normally’ did not include annoying a god currently gripping his magic hammer who could easily cast lightning bolts at him as an object lesson.
So instead he sighed in resignation. “The ship doesn’t have a drive feedback monitor,” he explained sullenly.
“Oh, good,” Lang said sarcastically “more technobabble.”
“It’s what tells the field stabilizers that an attenuator is out of alignment,” Gamora supplied.
“And without this feedback monitor?” Steve asked.
“A normal ship would never have let us even enter hyperspace without one,” Rocket growled. “But this designer’s flit induced delusion was engineered to feed data to the attenuators from a massive array of hyperspace sensors lining the hull from the navigational computer via a feed I didn’t even know about.”
“I’ve heard of that design,” Quill said. “It’s more temperamental and it costs more.”
“A definite plus for people building luxury yachts for the ultra-rich,” Sam said pointedly.
Drax ignored that insight to turn on Rocket. “How could you not know?” he demanded.
“Like you even knew what a drive feedback monitor was before now,” he retorted.
Drax started to give a hot reply but thought better of it. “I’m not an engineer,” he muttered, turning away from the talking rodent.
“You want to place blame, blame him!” Rocket added, pointing across the table.
“Me?” Thor asked in a tone somewhere between confusion and humor.
“Yeah, you guys just had to steal a ship that had been built by Binary Dwarf Shipyards!” Rocket yelled. “Like I’m supposed to know how those whack jobs would design their ships.”
“There wasn’t exactly time to check the Kelly Blue Book,” Thor replied, gaining quite a few blank stares from those who hadn’t spent any time on Earth.
“Look,” Steve cut in forcefully “it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. This is the situation we have to deal with.”
“Oh sure,” Rocket griped “it doesn’t matter when it’s one of your friends being blamed.”
“Rocket,” Gamora said seriously, making eye contact with him “we only asked how it happened. No one here blames you, but you,” she added.
“But-” Rocket started before getting cut off by a look from Gamora.
“No one,” she repeated in a no-nonsense tone.
“Well, except Drax,” Quill pointed out not so helpfully. He earned a few half grins spread amongst the assembled, and yet another glare from Gamora.
“Gamora’s right,” Steve continued into the silence. “Looking for somewhere to place the blame is a waste of time, assuming anyone even deserves that honor. What’s important is that its fixed, right?” he said, asking two questions at once.
Then something completely unprecedented happened: Rocket set that inappropriately sized chip he carried around on his shoulder down, just for a moment. With a sigh he said “The lady in the box and I have written a program that should be able to manage the data. We’ll have to keep an eye on it for a few days to make sure it works.”
Scott frowned at that. “Lady in the box?” he asked. There was a slight silence as everyone waited for Tony to explain.
“He means Friday,” Parker answered when no other was forthcoming. “She’s currently controlling some bots that are stringing the data cables.”
“How long?” Steve asked. Peter shrugged noncommittally.
“Five more minutes give or take twelve point three two seconds,” Friday replied over the speaker system.
“Good,” Steve said. “The important thing now is to use this time as best we can.”
“Oh, not this again,” Quill objected immediately.
“Look, either Clint disables Thanos’s ship or Thanos beats us to Earth by something like a month,” he continued, dreadfully seriously. “Thanks to Parker’s quick thinking we can still get there before then. But, no matter what, we are going to have another fight on our hands. Without the suits.
“And this time, we have to win,” he continued. “We can’t afford the mistakes that were made on Xandar. That means training. It’s the only way we’ll learn to work together as a team.”
“I think it’s a very good idea,” Drax replied. Quill motioned to the berserker with both hands, as if that statement alone had made his point.
“It’s a waste of time,” Nebula cut in gratingly.
“Oh, you have something more pressing to do for the next month?” Sam asked. “Your hair perhaps?” he added, earning a glare from the two-toned woman. Nebula pushed off of the wall she’d been slouching against, squaring herself away.
“Nebula, please,” Gamora pleaded.
Nebula glanced quickly over to her sister, almost against her will. She seemed to think about it for far too long. “Fine,” she said eventually. Then she stalked to the nearest exit and out of the room.
“Hating to agree with the Indigo Psycho,” Quill started “but what good will that actually accomplish?”
“It will give us a chance to become accustomed to each other’s styles of fighting,” T’Challa explained. “It will allow us to anticipate how any one of us might react in a given situation, and plan our own moves accordingly,” he elaborated.
“In short, it will keep us from bumping into each other in the next fight,” Scott translated.
“Or stepping into each other’s line of fire,” Sam added.
Quill considered that for a moment. Lord knew he’d had to abort more than one shot because an ally had jumped in the way during the running battle on Xandar. But some part of him, deep down, kept screaming ‘no!’. He wasn’t sure why.
“I think it’s a bad idea,” he said slowly.
“Do you have a reason to go with that, or is this just a feeling?” Sam asked.
“He’s just afraid of losing,” Scott opined.
“Maybe he’s afraid of a little discomfort,” Wade added.
“I’m afraid of creating a culture of competition,” Quill stated. “We don’t need everyone fighting for some stupid prize and worrying about getting stabbed in the back. Tell ‘em Gamora,” he added, turning to the emerald woman.
Gamora glanced between him and the rest of the table. “I’m sorry, Peter, but I can’t,” she said apologetically. “I think they’re right. We have to learn how to fight together. Unless you want to go find some war we can get used to each other in,” she added. Quill lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
“Then we’re agreed?” Steve asked, scanning the table’s occupants. The looks he got could hardly have been categorized as enthusiastic, but there seemed to be a general agreement. Until he got to Tony. The engineer seemed completely absorbed in his own private Hell. He wasn’t even sure Tony had heard his proposal.
He wasn’t the only one either; it seemed that everyone was waiting for Stark’s approval. In a way it made sense; he was one of the group leaders, short as his group had become. Unfortunately, Steve’s reference to their previous fight with Insanity and Co. had served to remind Tony of his perceived mistakes, and the cost that had come with them. The normally hyper observant tinkerer was too absorbed in his mental self-flagellations to even notice.
“Tony?” Steve prompted.
Stark seemed to give a small shake, as if suddenly remembering where he was. “What?” he asked reflexively before dredging up his memory’s record of events. “Yeah, pit fights,” he said shortly. “Whatever,” he added as if it didn’t really matter.
It was hardly a ringing endorsement, but Steve knew better than to press the issue. “Can you build a ring for us to use?” he asked instead.
“What?” Tony asked again. “Friday?” he asked with a glance at the ceiling before anyone could respond.
“Construction is under way,” the AI reported. “I’m placing it on the cargo deck. I assume you’ll want a viewing area?”
“Please,” Steve said, casting worried glances at his friend. Normally the man jumped with both feet at a building project. Now he seemed barely aware that one was in progress. “And could you make it raised? It’ll lower the chances of debris hitting the spectators.”
“Do I look like an I-Pad?” the AI replied tartly.
“Sorry,” Steve said automatically. There was a slight pause. She was used to bantering with Tony. He’d have had some smartass comment about her looking more like an Atari or some such. In truth she rather enjoyed those interchanges.
“I’ll have to cut into the deck above to provide enough space for Mr. Lang,” she said instead.
“As long as it doesn’t interfere with ship functionality,” Steve said.
There was another pause. “I should be able to find a spot on the cargo deck that won’t interfere,” she said. “I will have to use the cargo containers and quite a bit of our available raw materials to construct it,” she added.
“That would be the same material set aside to make replacement suits?” Quill asked pointedly.
“Most of the materials involved can also be used to make the shell of powered armor suits,” she agreed.
“Yeah, I don’t think any of us will be wearing those again,” Gamora replied with a slight shudder.
“Why not?” Drax asked. “The black suit worked fine,” he continued with his trademark lack of tact. “Could we not make more like it?”
All eyes turned to Tony who, again, had to backtrack the conversation. Once replayed he shook his head. “I didn’t think I’d need large quantities of highly conductive materials,” he explained. “A Faraday cage requires large amounts. If I stripped and melted my entire stock of wiring, I might be able to protect two suits. And I don’t have the materials I used to shield the AI cores, or anymore AIs for that matter.”
“That’s it?” Quill asked with a frown.
“Unless you’d prefer I didn’t fix your blasters, boots, or helmet, or any other tech damaged in the last fight,” Tony replied sharply. There was no response.
“What about ship’s stores,” Sam asked.
“It’s a rich guy’s luxury yacht, not a warship,” Tony replied pointedly. “They don’t fix something when it breaks down. They call Triple A.”
“Most of what was available has already been used in repairs to the ship,” Jarvis supplied.
“Well, that’s settled then,” Steve said. “Out of curiosity,” he added as a thought occurred to him “just how much of the materials you’re planning to use will be left over?”
“Between twenty and fifty pounds depending on the material,” Friday replied.
“I’m sure we can find something constructive to do with that,” Jarvis said. “We’ll certainly have the time,” he added wistfully.
>>
On Board The Sanctuary 2
Clint couldn’t believe how long he’d managed to go undetected. For the last two days he’d managed to skulk around the ship seemingly undetected. A couple of times he’d actually managed to blend into large groups as they moved along the corridors in whatever this warped version of a family did when they weren’t slaughtering innocents.
He’d been discovered on three separate occasions. None of those sentries had lasted long enough to sound the alarm. He had no doubt that their bodies had been discovered; he simply hadn’t had the time to hide them, nor the resources to clean the evidence up. Yet there had been no alarm, no general search at all. It had seemed . . . odd.
But, considering that the father of this fucked up family would have sent Charles Manson running to the authorities, perhaps Thanos’s ‘children’ routinely killed each other for sport. Whatever the reason, he’d managed to successfully dodge and parry with the army of misfit monsters on this ship far longer than he’d have imagined possible.
Now his time was growing short. If he didn’t find a way to the engine room in the next twelve hours all his skulking around would be wasted.
“You know, you have got to be the worst infiltrator I’ve ever seen,” a very familiar voice said from behind him. A voice he still had nightmares about.
Clint reflexively flipped around and fired a bolt from his sleeve launcher directly at Loki’s chest. The bolt sailed through the image making a horrendous PRANGGG as it impacted the wall behind him. The echo filled the storeroom he’d hidden in.
Loki grinned. “I rest my case” he said mockingly. “Natasha would have been a far better choice for this mission, don’t you think?”
Clint immediately flipped back around, firing a pattern of bolts designed to catch the invisible Loki who was probably sneaking up behind him. He’d seen firsthand the insane god’s penchant for just that tactic several times during his short, yet memorable, service to him.
Each bolt sailed through the air unimpeded. A series of prangs reported their impacts at the walls. A moment later the apparition of Loki appeared right in the center of the pattern of dents in the walls.
“I’m not really here, Clint,” he said. “It’s probably best you not be here either, considering your antics have drawn the entire ship’s attention.” His observation was followed immediately by the sound of boots in the passageway outside. A lot of boots. “Oh, it would seem that’s not an option anymore,” he added pleasantly.
Clint ignored him, heading for the door. The boots weren’t that close. If he was lucky he’d be able to find a side passage, perhaps blend into one of the groups converging on him. And if he couldn’t, he’d rather have room to maneuver than be stuck in that deathtrap of a room. True, it had only one entrance to defend. But he had no doubt that some of the . . . things he’d seen could make their own entrances if they wanted to.
Loki’s apparition appeared between him and the doorway. “You can’t seriously be planning to go out there,” he said.
“I’ve blended in with them before,” Clint said, stepping through the apparition.
“You couldn’t have blended into one of your quaint science fiction movies, let alone Thanos’s children, without my help,” Loki said harshly. “Who do think made it look like the children that stumbled upon you had simply killed each other?”
Clint stopped at that. He turned back to the apparition. “Bullshit,” he said savagely. “You’re the reason I didn’t make it to the engine room in time to kill Thanos,” he added. He’d figured out why none of the corridors on the ship didn’t align correctly within a few hours. The fact that they’d started aligning after he’d missed the window had left little doubt. He should have seen it coming. Thor had told them there was a chance that Loki had been captured by Thanos. He doubted it had even taken that much convincing for the Norse god to join them, really.
Loki shrugged off the accusation. “Can you blame a guy for not wanting to be vaporized?” he asked innocently. “Oh,” he added as the mass of approaching boot, or pincer, or whatever pod the various creatures of Thanos’s menagerie used to hold themselves up, stopped just outside the door “It would appear you’ve run out of time.”
Cint stared at the door as he grappled with the concept of Loki being on his side, even nominally. “Bullshit,” he said again as he flipped back around. “Why would you help me?”
The apparition gave a sigh. “Barton, you always were a simpleton,” he said, a thick layer of disappointment covering his voice.
“And you always were a liar,” Clint shot back, scanning the room for something he might use to get out of this.
“As I said,” Loki replied “Natasha would have been far better suited to this mission.” Barton didn’t reply. No matter how hard he tried he simply could not imagine Loki doing anything that did not directly help Loki. And yet, Loki had known Clint was onboard since he embarked, and in all that time no more than a score of Thanos’s minions had found him. And they’d all perished with that knowledge.
“Fine,” Clint ground out. It went against his nature to ask Loki for help, but he had no choice. “Help me blend in until I get to the engine room.”
Loki shook his head. “I am not the only psycho-projective magician on this ship, though I am the best if I do say so myself.”
“What’s your point?” Clint demanded. “With less back patting if you don’t mind,” he added.
Loki frowned. “While none of Thanos’s magicians can see through one of my illusions, they don’t have to, to know it is an illusion. Do you suppose there isn’t at least one of them in that mass of bodies in the corridor?” he asked pointedly. Clint remained silent, searching frantically for a way out. They weren’t quite to the time he’d set for his sabotage.
“Any moment now they will come crashing through that door,” Loki stated. “They will crash through every wall. Your mission is a failure,” he said. “They really should have sent Natasha,” he added, almost wistfully.
Clint barely even registered that last. His mind had latched on to the previous comment. They will crash through the walls. It was so simple he wasn’t sure how he’d missed it. He himself had seen how week the interior walls in this place were. He’d considered that Thanos’s children would probably come through the walls himself. That was why he’d wanted to avoid fighting so many in such a relatively small space.
And they weren’t the only ones that could go through the walls. He commanded the suit’s operating system to display the location of engineering on his HUD. An arrow appeared pointing up and to the left. He looked the indicated direction to see a pulsing beacon at thirty-seven degrees by seventy-six degrees.
“Thanks for all your help,” he called to the apparition, not nearly as sardonically as he’d intended. Then launched himself at the ceiling. He held his arms out with his forearms perpendicular to his path, creating a barrier between the walls he was crashing through and the suit’s helmet.
It protected his head, but did little in the way of cushioning the impacts themselves. WHAM, WHAm, WHam, Wham. The impacts started out feeling almost like he was being hit with a massive drop hammer. But as he picked up speed, they became less intense. The distance number next to the beacon began to shrink.
Unfortunately, he was also getting damage indicators from the suit. Most of the damage was confined to the forearms that were taking the brunt of the impacts, but the back of the suit and the lower legs were also showing signs of increased wear.
He was just starting to toy with the idea of setting the suit’s self-destruct on a timer when he struck a structural member. It wasn’t a direct hit, but it was close enough to send him careening through several other walls.
He crashed to a stop, already cursing his bone headedness. Of course a ship this size would have structural members running throughout their frame. But even worse, it made sense that those members would be more plentiful near engineering in order to support the heavier machinery there. He couldn’t help but think that may just have been right; stealth and sabotage certainly didn’t seem to be his strong suits.
Between curses he ordered the suit to scan for high density objects and superimpose them on his HUD. Suddenly his vision was filled with glowing yellow structures forming a three-dimensional spider web. He scanned the structures looking for a path through. As he’d surmised, they were indeed more abundant the closer he got to his destination. One of said structures happened to be directly between him and his goal.
He flipped back the way he’d come as the noises of scrambling bodies reached him. Apparently, few of Thanos’s minions were flight capable, but they seemed to be able to climb like geckos. Clint blasted off again, angling around the first structure and continuing on. The going was much rougher than before. The need to maneuver kept his speed down, which in turn kept the violence of his impacts up.
The suit’s forearms were flashing red on his screen, which he was fairly certain was bad. He was starting to wish Tony had included one of those handy arm lasers with this suit, but he figured there probably hadn’t been room after the addition of the rail gun like crossbow bolt launchers. He still wasn’t exactly sure where the bolts were being kept, or how they were being fed to the launcher.
About thirty meters from his destination the left forearm’s armor finally gave out. Clint growled in pain as a rebar shaped piece of metal jammed itself through that forearm. He instinctively held the damaged arm to his chest, leaving only one to absorb the impact of the next wall. Which meant the hole it carved was not big enough for the entire suit. Again, he careened in an unexpected direction.
He slid to a stop twenty-seven meters from the engine room. He considered detonating the suit right then. He was probably close enough, he knew. But, if there was any serious shielding around the engine room, or even protecting its various components, the destruction would not be as complete as possible. He had to disable the ship for the maximum amount of time possible.
That meant point blank, which meant continuing his battering ram impression through at least four more walls. He reached down to grip the shard impaling his arm and tried to pull it free. His gauntlet slipped off and slammed into the right thigh of his suit with a clang. He examined the piece of shrapnel, only to see a drop of his blood slip from it to the ground. His own blood had slicked the metal rod, making it impossible to simply pull free. If it had been larger, not something most people suffering from impalement wished for, the gauntlets could have gotten a better grip. But its diameter was just too small for the human hand.
He tried to bend it into a ninety-degree angle, but without a second point of contact with the suit all that accomplished was to carve a larger hole in his arm. He groaned in pain, clutching his forearm around the breach, as if he could put pressure on the wound through the suit.
Again, the sounds of pursuit drew his attention back the way he’d come. Part of him couldn’t believe that any non-flyer could have kept up as well as they had. Then again, they didn’t have to make the holes they were using.
He threw a snarl in their general direction and launched once more. Again, he placed both arms in front of him. He ordered the suit to lock his upper body in place and gritted his teeth in anticipation of the coming pain.
Even still, he was not prepared when it came. He nearly lost consciousness as the impact seemed to make the shrapnel dance around in his forearm. A part of him couldn’t help reflecting that now he knew what the wood felt like when he nailed it together. The rest of him focused on staying conscious.
After the second impact he began to emit a long bellow that mixed anger, pain, and determination all in one. Anger at the walls for being so stubborn. Pain from what felt like the shredding of his entire forearm. And determination to finish what he’d started.
On impact with the fourth wall the piece of metal was hammered through the other side of the rent armor of his left forearm.
Three walls later he made it to his destination. Such was his focus on reaching the objective that he was half way across the cavernous room before he remembered why he’d come. There was a moment’s hesitation before he accessed the appropriate commands. Then he, the room’s occupants, indeed the room itself, were consumed in a massive detonation.
>>
Thanos stopped a meter from where Loki was sitting. The god of deception was sitting Indian style with his back to the entrance of his small sleeping quarters, apparently meditating. He showed no sign of knowing about his visitor, though he most certainly did.
Thanos flicked a hologram from a device on his palm outward. It expanded as it passed Loki and stopped a meter to the other side of him. Loki opened his eyes to see footage from the storeroom security camera.
“You have betrayed me,” Thanos rumbled balefully as the footage ended.
Loki took a moment to choose his words. “If I were to betray you, why would I do it in my own form?” he asked pointedly.
“You suggest one of my children would be capable of such treachery?” Thanos demanded.
“As the imposter pointed out, I’m hardly the only being on this ship with psycho projective powers,” Loki replied, a small amount of tension leaking out from his façade of calm.
“And of course, you have a suspect,” Thanos prompted, voice tinged in superiority.
Loki shrugged. “Cresto hasn’t forgiven me for besting him in the arena,” he offered.
Thanos took a step forward and leaned down until his face was directly over Loki’s head. “Cresto cannot project imagery through walls,” he said menacingly.
A spasm of fear passed over Loki’s face before he could get himself back under control. “Of course, it could have been someone else,” he said smoothly. “Perhaps Cresto manipulated someone else to frame me.”
“None of my children can project complex visual/auditory illusions through walls,” Thanos rumbled. “Except you,” he added.
Loki twisted around to look Thanos in the eye. “I,” he started before realizing there was nothing he could say. So instead he offered one of those smiles that had disarmed so many in his past.
Thanos was not one of those people. “Come. Take your punishment like a man,” he said before standing back up. He pivoted and began marching down the hall.
Loki followed him back to that terrible room. Experience had shown that he had little choice in the matter; running had never done anything but make things worse, and Thanos had seen through every illusion he’d mustered against him.
Despite that history, his feet stopped when Thanos pointed to the instrument of his correction. He didn’t want to go in there. Every fiber of his being screamed to run from this room, try to evade Thanos again. Somehow his mind overrode that impulse, for as much as he didn’t want to be here, he’d come to recognize that it was necessary.