When the Man Comes Around: A SHIELD Codex
. . .
Part One: The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree
I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think, and novelists to see what I could get away with. And in the end, I distilled everything to one wonderfully simple principle: Win or die. ~ Dangerous Liaisons
. . .
1. Till Armageddon
. . .
It was a border world, an isolated sanctum, a primitive near-utopia with Nova Watchpost Station 108 glinting high above the lush green surface and diamond-glitter sands in such a perfect orbit that the pre-industrial species that called the planet home knew it only as a tiny and distant odd-shaped moon. All but forgettable among the other orbiting detritus and three other larger moons that controlled its tides and seasons. Nova Corp did not bother them, using the vantage to keep a distanced eye not only on the outer rim of the local galaxy, but also to run a decades long science project on the implications of fluctuating temperature changes in the local void zone. Not as cold as the Eridanus, but remarkable to the scientists all the same. They sent probes out into it, knowing they might not get a response from the machinery until their distant descendants might one day patrol by.
For light, they had distant twin stars conjoined in a near eternal dance. For entertainment, they had a 100% uptime fatline connection to the central Nova Corp terminus and all the feeds they could piggyback, legit and black market both. For the Corpsmen assigned, the locale was bucolic and uninteresting, the kind of job often given to the tired or the older officers or the ones with enough of a scientific and slow bent to help out in the mid-rings of the facility. The handful of younger personnel were the brash ones, sent out into the wilderness to ease their more bloodthirsty instincts by solitude and enforced temperance. This included their command staff; well-intentioned but fiery. They were given time to learn patience.
None of them went to the planet below. None of them would, until the planet itself initiated contact or at least broke the riddle of space travel. They were, according to top estimates, at least five hundred years from that threshold with planetary calculations suggesting the civilizations had thousands of years of natural resources to help them. The scientists were optimistic they were observing a world with many millennia of vibrant life ahead of them, and a chance for many more.
Not a single one suggested the end could be soon. There was simply no reason to think the unthinkable.
. . .
The black ship fell into low planetary orbit from what seemed to the watchpost's sensors as literally nowhere, the sleek and organically grown length of the war-vessel casting a shadow across the world below that blacked out a continent. Sirens screamed throughout the facility, ordering all hands to combat-ready positions, and defense squadrons into the hangars for possible launch. Automated scanners indicated this was one of several worst-case scenarios; a situation so immediately threatening that it might require lighting up the sky of the world below on their behalf. An interloper, one visibly an imminent and deadly threat.
The invading ship was absolutely that. Corpsman K'var's gnarled, purple-pink fingers grabbed the console he stood at, pitching his voice for the entire command deck to hear. "Ship's profile identified. Verification: Dreadnaught-class. Chassis type: Seems to be customized Chitauri. Sub-type... ahhh... subtype is..." He stopped himself, swallowing once. "Titanian Eternal. It's one of Thanos's, sir. It might even be a flagship, scanners are still assessing data."
Corp Command Gervan didn't budge from where he stood at the central command station, though his shoulders tensed tight enough to cause his sleek uniform to squeak softly. That couldn't be possible. According to all confirmed reports, Thanos was on the other side of the galaxy. He shook his head once, sharp. That didn't matter. What was before them did. "All hands, we are in immediate threat vector. Brace for combat, initiate full response. Defensive line, get the shield probes up across the surface and ready them for activation. Prepare assault launch on a two minute mark or less."
"Where'd it come from?" The startled question wavered up from somewhere in the front of the room.
Gervan snapped back his reply. "Doesn't matter right now. Get those fighters in the sky."
"Sir!" The new shout came from a console on the other side of the deck a moment later. "We have motion from the ship."
"Bring it up." Gervan's thin, birdlike hands rested on the ice cold plas and steel bar of his console as the live images poured across the wall screen and then automatically zoomed in to ensure he saw the horror plain. Wormlike monstrosities, dozens of them, each one small compared to the size of the vessel currently trespassing. Each one still the size of a destroyer-class vessel. He recognized them from central Corp briefings. The Leviathans, typically troop carriers with extra destructive capabilities. These ones looked upgraded from the ones that hit Sol Sector a little over three years prior, the ones that violated that world's no-contact policy. Now that planet – Earth – got cut in on the line whenever Thanos came up. The rest was above his pay grade.
Gervan swore, a single brutish word that cracked out from the slight beak. He glared down at the appropriate officer. "Get those shields up!"
"They're already past the barricades, sir."
"Get them up anyway! Slow the d'ast advance!"
The officer did as he was told, his face telling the commander what he didn't want to hear. It was already too late. Gervan swore again. "Tactical assessment of the troops?"
"There's no lifesigns except for the worms, sir. They're not carrying troops. We're running grid on the changes. Statistics due to report in at the thirty second mark."
"Get the launch vessels on the Leviathans, ASAP. Slow it all down, however we can." A note of tension entered his voice. The words gave it away – this was happening too fast. Too goddamn fast. First they came from nowhere, now the organic dropships with no troops loaded in defiance of previous intel. What the hell was going on?
He got his answer as the live feed gained a sub-image. The shield probes doubled as intel satellites, picking up vid from the surface. The first two Leviathans broke cloud barrier and came into view of the shadowed populace below. His skin crawled under the suit as the chitinous armor of the massive worm-beasts went hot, first a blacksmith's garish red and then sparking white fire. He spoke his thoughts aloud, his voice cold and clacking against his lower bill as he understood what he was seeing. "They're going to scorch the surface clean. Full sanitization. Haven't seen that since the Dril Wars."
A genocide protocol so cold-hearted it received uncontested intergalactic outlawing after it was all over but for the screaming of the few off-world survivors.
"What's the d'ast goal?" K'var muttered the question from his console. "Statistics coming in. They're backing you, sir. They're dead down there if we can't get ahead of this. Four more Leviathans breaching low atmosphere. They're going to get to the next continent in three minutes. First low-orbit combat reports coming in."
"Pull the skirmish up on the other feed."
"It's already over." K'var ran his gnarled hand along the side of his face in lieu of letting unprofessional panic enter his voice, pulling up the debris field for his commander to look at. Behind him, other personnel ran back and forth at the almost mundane work of trying to manage a global disaster. "We took a full loss; they're using short range fire from smaller skiffs sticking close to the central vessel. Dreadnaught's powering up mid-range defenses. Second launch preparing on our end. Statistics doesn't think we can catch up. They're running recovery and retreat options in the free cycles."
Gervan tore at the steel bar in frustration, looking at the strewn steel and leaking drive fluids of almost fifty destroyed fighters against the black of space and the gleaming aura of the planetary atmosphere below. "Get a data package out on the feeds, now! All emergency lines, give them everything we've got up to the millisecond! Keep it going!" He turned to K'var, struggling for a calmer tone. "Do they make any projections as to the goal? The planet's of no major strategic value at all."
"With the information they can get, not y-"
He was interrupted with a different answer, a different suggestion for the primary mission target. Klaxons screamed throughout the facility, a high-pitched screech designed to drag even the deepest sleeper into immediate wakefulness. A siren that indicated a hostile boarding party. By trained instinct, hands flew immediately to combat sidearms. K'var changed priorities and flung the data from the internal sensors of the watchpost up to fill the screen instead.
They were being swarmed. Gervan blanched at the coldly mathematical sight of forty heavily armed Chitauri troops just outside the command deck's door. "No hull breach. Just popped in somehow, like the ship. Gods. Fight them off as best we can!"
The resounding thud against the deck's sealed door put a doubt in his mind as to how long they could realistically hold the line. He braced himself, laser weapon at the ready. "Keep the feeds outgoing! No matter what, Nova Prime needs to know what happened here!"
"Sir!" Voices chorused from the entire deck, frightened and furious.
The door blew open and they poured in, shrieking gray murder.
. . .
Thanos stood on the bony bridge of the Mortalus, that great black dreadnaught of his own specialized design, watching the planet's surface boil away into purified ash only to be followed by the silent implosion of Watchpost Station 108. His bulky arms were clasped behind him, the pose deceptively easy and his smile toothy and well-pleased within the golden helm. "The point, Amora, was to send a message. One so clear as to ensure its intent cannot be mistaken." He turned his broad head slightly to regard the small Asgardian woman posed delicately at his side. "Space has been tamed and made my own. There is no hiding from me. All the universe has left is fleeting time, and the mercies of my whim. And I am not a whimsical man." He turned away again to regard the poetry of destruction, his latest love letter to Her, his only chosen mistress, that dead figure still just outside his reach. "They may be permitted to know the shape of my approach, so they may learn to tremble. This is the first hour of a becoming, when at the end I will be as a new God at my love's side."
"My lord," murmured Amora, regarding the now-burning atmosphere of the harmless world with only a chill inside where her soul should be. "I am ever foolish to question thy method. I submit again to our future."
"I am not whimsical, but I am capable of forgiveness when the trespass is... minor." He flicked a hand towards her, a move that was oddly elegant despite his great size. The hand was still bare, that sickly raw purple of his mutation. It was not time for the gauntlet to be worn in full glory and promise. Not yet. "Come. I wish to behold my returning troops. They sing for me when they are victorious. I find it pleasing, their discordant chitter. The noise is ugly to the ear, but the intent is pure, and thus beautiful. From a certain point of view."
Amora bowed her head, letting her golden hair spill along her arms. She loathed the insectoid beasts, and they her. The Chitauri, being his, did not fear death. They only misliked being wasted, as she had done in her fury against Asgard's defenses, and their opinion of her was well-known. It did not matter, ultimately. She knelt close to the golden knee and not any of them. She and her sister, who was below with the scientists and the torturers as she was most hours.
They were at last together again at Thanos's side, and now sweet Lorelei preferred to stay away.
. . .
Her name was Nebula, and she lived in hate and hunger between the stitch-surgery blued scraps of herself. Hidden away in the dregs of the galaxy, forcing what free life she could on the coin-sparse margins of what the remaining Kree fanatics that served under Ronan owed her and what she could beat from the bodies of mercenaries who thought themselves up to her challenges. Her sanctuary was dirty and grim, unlike the antiseptically gloomy chambers of 'home.' What a laugh. Home. That prison and training yard Thanos called his 'Sanctuary', there at the edge of some private wisp of space that stored his less important toys and his murder ships. Her priorities were now set only for the stockpile of weaponry she collected in the hidden storehouses below her tiny rooms, and the cutting edge spy-rig she stole and tweaked to keep an eye on dear old 'Dad.'
She'd set up an Omega Protocol program inside its works in a fit of whimsy driven by what had to have been a half-gallon of stolen Shi'ar firewater. Top proof, just a cup guaranteed to get a lightweight drunk for three days. It'd done her for a good night's sleep, anyway. If Thanos actually died without any help from her and the news went across the public wires, the damn thing was supposed to go up in a series of sparks intended to look like fireworks. Nebula was certain the good news was never going to come that easily.
The flicker of the jacked feed pulled her from a dream where everything she'd ever known was dead and she stood among their corpses with a smile that hurt her face, unwanted wakefulness forcing her to glance up and see what he'd done to some pointless planet on the Outer Rim. She lifted herself up on her cybernetic elbow, reaching out with her other hand to scroll through the relevant intel already screaming along hundreds of inter-related security lines. "I see you. So what's the game?"
The feeds didn't tell her anything she couldn't already know. "Flashing your muscles already." She snorted and pulled the ratty blanket into a pool on her lap as she sat up. "Got your new pets in line, got your rock doing what you tell it. Guess that means all the little toy soldiers are gonna start lining up against you to try to tear off a piece." She looked up at the rivet ceiling, considering. "Guess I need to make some final decisions about where I am in that scene."
Nebula's hand reached out again to pull up the disorganized files she'd been mulling over for months. What gamble to back, essentially. Who to go to, with what she had, she knew, and what she could aim right at the throat of the man that made her and then remade her. A replacement for Ronan, whose defiance had been like a open flame. She gave up an ugly smile as she pulled open the file of her top contender, the closest thing to a dark horse bet.
Not him, of course. Loki was already on the board on his own terms, another one of Thanos's broken pets rummaging around in the wreckage. She'd sniffed his trail elsewhere and didn't have too many hopes for whatever he was up to. Didn't like him, either. Pretty, dangerous, but also unstable. She was unstable enough for everyone, embraced it as a strength. She needed something to balance that out. But this one, now. Also currently on Earth. Not a bad option. Another true believer, according to what encoded broadcasts she managed to skim off their local chatter. A would-be God King, with ambition and drive.
She pulled up the only picture she had, a quick-skim snapshot of a figure that had been allowed to go on the air of the small country's dominant propaganda network. A technopriest in a metal suit of silver and steel, not Titan's gold. The parallel delighted her and she studied the blurry mask just barely visible under the green hood. She flashed white teeth at the picture. Perfect teeth; the best the scientists could make. She remembered the replacement of every one, the agonizing cauterization that followed when they flashed each new nerve into place. Daddy's orders. Start good, make it better. His definition of better, of course. The smile spread fit to match her dreams, becoming a hateful sneer. "I like you. Let's get ready to find out if you'll like me. Don't worry, lover. I'll set the date and make all the dinner arrangements."