Chapter 9
"I think we have our smoking gun," Sofia remarked as she walked into the war room, moving items on a thin electronic tablet. "I'll have to confess I don't feel particularly sorry for what's going to happen to Volstagg considering he took my arm."
"Osborn is consolidating his forces, and he had a meeting with the President last night; he means to move against Asgard," her father replied.
"And I think this is the perfect time to move forward. When the USSR fell apart, certain things went missing; a few dozen planes and tanks here and there, missiles, money of course. I think there are a few key places under HAMMER command that will be lacking in personnel to guard over the next few hours."
"What are your suggestions?" Doom inquired.
"We have a number of options; I know Osborn has a few covert facilities where he has been experimenting on and trying to create super-humans, the methods could be worth something; Project Pegasus is under his command and has several interesting artefacts worth considering, including the remains of a cosmic cube," swiping onto another file on her tablet she paused, before turning it round to show Doom, "and then there's this: the helicarrier Hercules. One and only constellation-class, designed by Stark and Richards as a response to the Atlantean threat, fully submersible as well as normal flight and stealth capability, only about a year old and never used. Officially, it doesn't exist, and in reality it sits in a hangar where Osborn's techs have been trying and failing to get around Stark's programming to even start the damn thing. If it were to disappear, no-one would be able to question it or raise concerns publically as technically it does not exist and no-one will want to admit they were creating weapons against the Atlanteans."
"A helicarrier could be very useful in the right situation."
"Our own aerial warship."
"We stand a chance of being recognised on camera if we attempt anything however, I believe it is time for these," the man replied, pulling a lever on the console in the middle of the room. A section of stone wall dropped away to reveal two things: the first was a slim black suit on a female mannequin with a visored helmet, roughly the same height and size as Sofia, and the second was a much larger black mechanical suit of armour with visible weaponry and powerful wide limbs.
"When did you make these?" Sofia inquired, walked over to the ebony suit, noting the belt and two small mounted guns on each outer wrist, and the technologically advanced helm.
"The suit is recent; based on the same designs used for the most recent Captain America's apparel it is interwoven with adamantium and custom designed to fit you. The other is an adapted design from when the USSR tried to invade a number of years ago, and I took the 'Crimson Dynamo' captive. I've since used the mechanics in various Doombot models, and this armour for when it might be useful."
Sofia ran a hand down the slick material of the suit, and grinned.
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With careful movements, Sofia pressed herself up against the grey wall by the corner in the corridor. Her black suit was skin-tight and very easy to move around silently in, with a small backpack slung secured on a bandolier from her belt to shoulder.
She looked around the area, her sight tinted green by the night vision in her helm. Said headgear picked out another camera up by the ceiling, and she fired a blast of electrical energy from one of the wrist mounted blasters to fry the circuits. While the power may be off, it would unlikely remain so for long, and the less footage of her the better.
Shuffling closer to the edge of the wall, her mind idly wandered to thoughts on how her father was doing securing the Hercules. She peered round the corner to see three armed men in HAMMER jumpsuits running down the corridor towards her.
She concealed herself back around the corner and waited for them to approach. As soon as the first one passed her line of sight she leapt into action.
Grabbing the barrel of the first man's gun, she whipped it up into his unsuspecting head, making a cracking noise as the scope collided with his grey helmet.
Even as he dropped from the force of the blow she was bringing the stolen gun around to point at the next nearest, who she shot in the thigh, causing him to give a cry of pain.
She pulled the weapon up again with both hands to defend against a shot from the last soldier, whose bullet shattered part of the gun. Sofia kicked out a leg at his gun, pushing off the aim of his next shot that ricocheted in the corridor. With her newly free right arm she popped off an electric shock at him from her own wrist mounted weapon, dropping him as arcs of electric energy covered his screaming form.
She brought the useless rifle up in her hands like a baseball bat, and swung at the last man standing who was just recovering from his injured leg, who dropped like a stone upon her impact into his head.
Giving a smile of satisfaction, she dropped the gun and prowled forwards into the facility that was three more guards down on its already low defensive force, many having been taken to their leader's hare-brained attack on Asgard.
Performing the same peeping tom arrangement at the end of the corridor, Sofia spied her goal across the empty room. The heavy reinforced door had the words 'Containment Room 001: Authorised Personnel Only' stamped in black on it.
She strolled over to it, casually shooting out another camera on the way without breaking step. She reached out a hand to touch the door, aware that under lockdown this was a secure room, and the door was locked with thick bars into its sliding place.
With a single thought, a silvery blade pierced through her suit from the underside of her wrist, and she maneuvered it to the side of the door, along where it met the frame. With a not unsubstantial push from her powerful artificial arm, the silvery blade slipped in at the top. Moving it down she encountered the resistance of the first steel bar keeping the door locked.
She quickly murmured a few words which made the mithril blade glow with a red aura, and she could feel the heat despite her protective garments. With a smile on her lips, she used the trusty blade that she had carried for so many years to melt away the metal of the door around the steel bolt. It was hard, slow work, and she had to physically pull the blazing edge down to get it through, before it eventually slipped down quickly, indicating the first bar was done. She repeated herself three more times on the remaining bars, all too aware of the ticking clock as she had spent at least ten minutes standing there, and it was only a matter of time before the power was reinstated or someone discovered her.
With a final twist, the final bar was cut, and she finished off the odd shaped line carved into the door, cutting off the spell as she did.
Sofia pulled her metal arm back, and delivered an almighty punch to the door, making the military-beige painted metal cave in slightly as it swung open on a hinge. She strolled into the room, noting the remains of the four inch thick bars in the doorframe.
Looking around the chamber, she noted several small devices that were presumably for laser beams that would have otherwise made her life difficult had she not disabled the power. Her attention was mainly on the transparent case in the centre of the room, and as she approached it she saw the shards of yellow crystal within.
Blade still unsheathed, Sofia pressed it to the glass and slid it round in a circle, engraving the scratched shape into the bullet-proof glass. She slipped the weapon back into her limb, and moved to withdraw something from a pouch on her belt. From within she took a piece of putty that she stuck in the centre of her circle, and then from a second pouch a small pointed diamond.
Sticking the diamond point first into the putty, she withdrew her arm back, then punched the metallic limb forward with all the might that its magic awarded her. It collided and made a sound cracking noise, a spider web moving out from the centre but not going far beyond her engraved circle. Her arm moved back once more, and upon slamming forwards, the glass smashed around that point into a small opening.
With the hole made, Sofia unclipped her backpack from the bandolier keeping it in place, opened it, and held it near the opening.
She made a gesture with her other hand, and whispered a few occult words that didn't make it out of her helmet so as not to allow any identification of her voice. As she maintained the spell, the yellow shards floated up one-by-one and fell into the open and waiting sack.
Sofia slung her prize back over her shoulder, deftly clipping it into place, and turned to walk out of the room when the lights flickered on. She flinched as light blinded her, the helmet still being on night vision. As it swiftly adjusted, she stared with annoyance at the sight: in front of her, the air suddenly buzzing with red laser beams criss-crossing the room.
She gave a sigh of exasperation as she realised that now cameras and recording devices were active, she couldn't teleport away lest her signature purple magic be identifiable.
Grimacing, she braced herself and ran forward, ignoring the immediate blaring of alarms in her ears as she broke the beams. She jumped and slid along the floor by the exit, just avoiding the steel shutter than slammed down behind her. She pulled herself back to her feet, and looked around at the corridor, considering the loud noise of sirens and the faint but unmistakable noise of booted feet running in her direction.
Giving another sigh, she braced herself to fight her way out of the facility.
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Sofia wheeled through the air, eyes trained solely downwards as she considered the helicarrier currently sitting in the large lake just to the north of where Doomstadt would stand in approximately eighteen hundred years. As she circled back down to land on the craft, she thought once again on how intelligent an idea it was really to hide the vessel in the past; after all, this country wasn't even due to be settled in for a few centuries.
She banished her shadowy wings as she stepped lightly onto the deck by her father, who was standing by his mechanized suit of black armour. She pulled off her ebony helmet as she approached; flicking her head slightly at the sudden freedom her long crimson locks were afforded.
"You're later than I expected," Doom stated.
"Had to fight my way out, took me a while to get away to a location far enough away to teleport and not stand a chance to be caught on camera," she replied, "did you face any issues?"
"None, there was barely a skeleton crew in the hangar; Osborn had somewhat given up trying to break into this machine."
"Quite the machine it is; it seems bigger in person," she commented, looking around at the deck. "Though we have a lot of renovations to do; starting with eight turbines instead of six methinks, maybe use some repulsor technology on them instead as well."
"We face much the same three main issues as in Tank creation."
"Oh, what are they?"
"Speed and maneuverability, armour and firepower."
"Mm," she replied, slinging her rucksack off her shoulder. "I dare say it may require a bit heavier ordinance; a railgun here or there wouldn't hurt. In other news however; these may lead us to some developments in power sources." She held the bag open, allowing the golden glow to seep from its depths.
"Do you think you could utilise them in your heavy particle fusion reactor designs?"
"That is…not a bad idea, in fact that may be just the thing to get it to work," Sofia said contemplatively, thinking of the various reactor design attempts she had made from the calculations and thesis that recently earned her a PhD in nuclear physics from Cambridge University; having wanted to be on equal qualifications level as her girlfriend. Nothing had worked so far with the present level of technology available to her; she had even tried utilising one of Tony Stark's Arc reactor designs at her partner's suggestion, but it simply didn't have the right capability for heavy fusion replication; every scenario and permutation she fed into her computer came out as a failure for the self-sustainable reactor design she had hypothesised. "Theoretically I may be able to use its unique properties to stabilise the quantum tunnelling effect."
"How small can the design be exactly?"
"Depends on the power output; obviously it increases exponentially with size, but even the smaller designs should still generate a large amount of power."
"Then I think this helicarrier is perhaps the perfect test subject; it already has a fairly large engine room, that's the space you have to work with. I'll work on the armaments and armour."
"Sounds like a plan," Sofia smiled as ideas for harnessing the latent power in the shards whipped through her head. She was so distracted, she didn't notice her father's spell work until orange light suffused them, and she looked up to be back in the war room. "Oh, that reminds me; what happened at Asgard anyway? I didn't have time to check," she inquired curiously, regarding the monitors on the wall that were flicking on to various news channels as Doom turned the system on. Her jaw dropped at the sight of the city of Asgard lying on the ground, many of the buildings crumbled. Another screen flicked to live footage of someone falling from the sky, swiftly followed by numerous other shapes.
Sofia watched as the God of Thunder tried to stand and was swiftly beaten down with energy fired from that Ms. Marvel of Osborn's, swiftly followed by the man himself, gaudy armour and all.
As she watched the man get beaten into the ground, she started suddenly as the shard of metal around her neck heated up suddenly against her skin.
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Sofia stepped out of purple light into the open living area of the Baxter Building in somewhat of a hurry, still pulling on her left vambrace over her bare arm.
"I told you she'd come," said a voice, and Sofia was knocked back slightly by a body that slammed into her, hugging firmly. She looked down at Valeria, her quick heartbeat calming slightly upon seeing her girlfriend unharmed.
"If you're coming, we need to go now," said an unfamiliar voice, and she looked up to see a dark skinned man in what looked distinctly like a SHIELD jumpsuit, minus the insignia.
"Okay, sure, make the jump now," Valeria said to the man.
"No," Susan said from beside him, gathered with the rest of the Four suited up in blue, "you're too young, you're not coming."
"No Mom. We've already got knighthoods for gallantry in this same situation and we're old enough to make our own decisions; Eden, punch it," the blonde replied. The man, now identified as Eden, shrugged and made some gestures with his hands. Sofia looked around at the circular orange tunnel they now floated in, watching as the various members of the group moved up and down relative to each other. She felt a slight falling sensation as they dropped out of the tunnel into a large darkened room.
"Good job Eden, just the X-Men left, though I'm not sure how many you'll get," said a man nearby, and Sofia blinked upon seeing the infamous eyepatch wearing grizzled veteran Nick Fury. Eden popped out of space again, and she turned to survey the large room they now stood in; her heart froze upon seeing the sight of numerous well known costumes-and some she didn't know- from various Avengers teams.
"Val," she said softly, feeling suddenly as if the sheep in the den of wolves.
