11: Blowback
With a new Helicarrier had come a new captain in charge of the day-to-day operations of the vast ship. Steve had appreciated Brandon Vance from their first meeting, both professionally and personally; the Navy captain had a cool head and the right mixture of experience and mental flexibility to make the transition to SHIELD successfully. Two months into the job and he had already demonstrated the ability to get the highest possible level of performance out of the ship and her crew.
Unfortunately, it didn't look like that was going to be enough. "Fire!" Vance ordered for the second time, and Steve watched as the Helicarrier's guns erupted with enough firepower to level a city block. Just as it had the first time, the incoming fire splashed harmlessly against the shields of the Sh'iar warbird, not slowing it for an instant in its descent towards New York. They might as well have fired a broadside of firecrackers, for all the good it had done.
Vance looked back at him with a grim shake of his head, and Steve heard a few scattered, muted reactions from various corners of the bridge occupied by more junior personnel - indrawn breaths, one soft curse. The more senior members of the bridge crew were focusing on their individual stations and responsibilities with the grim determination of soldiers who knew they were heading into a situation where they were overmatched.
"Closer?" Steve suggested to Vance, his voice tight. "Those shields can't be impenetrable." The warbird was shrugging off missiles from the fighters of the air wing just as easily, but they might be looking at a situation where both volume of fire and close proximity were required to do any good.
Vance nodded. "Helm, try and close the gap between us and the warbird," he ordered.
'Try' being the operative word, Steve thought as the great ship shuddered under him as its engines were pushed to their limits. The Helicarrier was slower and less manueverable the Shi'ar ship, and their chances of closing the distance in time weren't good. The second warbird was completely out of reach and clearly heading for SHIELD headquarters, but he'd had no choice but to let it go and leave them to their own defense. Protecting the city had to be a priority.
"We're not going to reach before they reach the city, sir," the senior officer at the helm said. "We just can't match their speed."
"If you can't get us on an intercept course, get us on a pursuit course for now," Steve said to Vance, who nodded brusquely and relayed the order. There was one other option, and they both knew it. Steve didn't want to take it, but if there was no other option, they could damned well try and ram the thing. For all of its disadvantages, the Helicarrier was much larger. They'd even be able to get the majority of the crew off in escape craft if they timed things just right...
"Sir!" It was close enough to a shout of alarm from the operations officer that Steve's head whipped around immediately. "We've got a massive energy signature taking shape over Jamaica Bay!"
Good God, what now? "Let's see it," Steve ordered, leaving it to Vance to manage the pursuit. His screens lit up, and he found himself staring down at a huge ball of incandescent light, almost like a miniature sun hanging over the water. It was nowhere near either of the Shi'ar ships, and it didn't appear to be moving...
An instant later, it broke into three parts. Like a flower with three petals opening, except they weren't petals, they were birds, giant birds of fire. Massive wings outstretched as they peeled away from each other and headed on different trajectories, blazing across the sky like comets.
Three Phoenix firebirds. Three of them. "Three in one," Steve whispered under his breath. Wanda had told him. None of the background material on the Phoenix had even hinted at the possibility, but somehow she'd known. They were going to need to talk about that more. If they all lived through this. "Get me a channel to Iron Man right now!" he snapped.
"Cap, we've got multiple squads of Shi'ar commandos down here," Tony said rapidly as the coms officer on the Helicarrier patched Steve through. It was chaos already, people running and screaming and the Shi'ar firing at everything that moved. He'd engaged one of the squads himself, but the aliens were demonstrating enough of a variety of power sets that he was having trouble keeping himself alive, let alone taking them down. He dodged a barrage of plasma blasts, and spun in mid-air to fire at the flier pursuing him. At least if he kept their attention on him, more of the civilians could get out of the area.
"There's no answer from the school," he went on hurriedly, ducking beneath more blasts and then pouring on the speed as he blasted skyward. A quick course change, one that his pursuer couldn't follow in time, and his next blast took the commando squarely in the chest, sending him (or her, it was hard to tell) spinning downwards to the street. "If you've got any more bright ideas for reinforcements, I'm all ears-"
"You've got the Phoenix incoming," was Steve's completely unexpected answer, and Tony nearly flew into, rather than around the building. "The Helicarrier's got eyes on three firebirds heading into New York."
"I'm sorry, did you just say-" He stopped talking, because there was something very large and very bright coming hurtling down West 52nd Street directly at him, and evasive action was all he had on his mind for a moment. He managed to avoid a collison - just - but the wake of the giant firebird's passage was enough to knock him out of the sky. He hit the ground hard enough to see stars, even in the armor, but launched himself back into the air almost on instinct, even as his head was clearing.
It was clear enough. He saw the firebird land, saw the red-haired young woman at the heart of it, and part of him reflected dimly that as pissed as Rachel Summers had been the last time they'd met, it was nothing compared to the incandescent rage boiling off her now. He could feel it. He didn't have so much as a flicker of telepathic ability, but the anger and the sheer hate was almost a physical thing, like he'd stepped too close to a blast furnace.
"You wanted a Phoenix host?" Rachel was utterly transformed, her hair turned to flame and her skin glowing from within. She seemed to be wearing... armor of some kind, glowing red and gold like the flames surrounding her. Tony was fairly sure she was speaking aloud, but her voice was echoing in his mind as well, carrying a resonance that wasn't quite human. "Come and get me, you murdering bastards."
And they did. They charged her, every single one of them, and every single one of them burst into flame, as if they'd spontaneously combusted inside their armor. Most of them fell immediately, writhing and shrieking. A couple kept trying to get to her, including the armored giant who'd seemed to be in charge of the group. Rachel merely reached out with fiery talons, snatching him up and tearing him in two, tossing the pieces aside almost casually.
Tony swallowed back the taste of bile and told himself that the remaining civilians needed to be out of here, now. He dove towards where a man was trying desperately to pull a woman from the wreckage of a car that had taken one of those plasma blasts a couple of minutes ago. With Tony's help, she was out in seconds. She didn't seem too badly hurt, so he handed her over to her agitated companion and instructed them both to get to shelter ASAP.
He turned back to Rachel just in time to see the last of the Shi'ar fall. "Hey!" he called warily, not entirely sure he wanted to draw her attention. Even less sure, when the firebird turned and eyes like burning emerald locked on him. "Rachel," he said cautiously, hovering and being sure to keep some distance between them. "Thanks for the assist. Are you-"
"I'm not finished," she said, aloud and in his head. "There are more of them to kill. I'm going to kill them all."
Keep her talking, he thought. He knew enough to know that a Phoenix talking about burning and killing was not a good thing, and if he could just reach her, get her to calm down a little, maybe she could get herself back under control. "Okay, taking out the rest of them is good, I'm fully on board with that, but we need to-"
And then the fiery talons were grabbing him, slamming him against the side of a building - not piercing or tearing or burning, but tightening just enough to remind him that they could. #No planning,# her voice thundered in his mind as those burning eyes bored into him, the firebird around her growing too bright to look at. #No cooperation. No mercy for them, and none for you if you get in our way, either!#
She flung him away like an angry child might fling a toy. He managed to right himself mid-air and avoid hitting the ground, but by then the firebird was soaring skyward, with a cry that shattered every intact window on the block.
"Cap," he said, breathing hard. The front of his armor was blackened, as if it had been charred. "We have a real problem down here."
Even with a starship on its way to bomb them to kingdom come, SHIELD headquarters had still managed to track teleportational signatures and send the likely coordinates of the Shi'ar ground troops to the Avengers. Clint had arrived at this particular scene in the nick of time; he wasn't sure how many people were actually pinned down in the Chinese restaurant, but there were nine Shi'ar commandos who appeared to be preparing to bring the place down on their heads. Yeah, can't have that...
Clint took two of them down with his first two arrows. But the third went right through another of the commandos as the alien suddenly... dissolved, shifting to some sort of gaseous form. Then the others were turning on him, realizing there was resistance here after all, and Clint leapt from his perch on the roof as energy blasts of at least three different types came his way. The fire escape on the side of the next building was what he was aiming for, and he caught it - but only briefly, as he lost his grip an instant later and started to fall.
Someone caught him well before he hit the ground. "I would have hated to see you try and stick that landing," Sam Wilson said, sounding only a little out of breath. Wherever he'd come from, Clint thought, Falcon had particularly brilliant timing today. "You want another roof?"
Tempting, but now that he had some backup, priorities needed to shift. "No, let's get that restaurant evaced," Clint said. There were several abandoned strollers lying in the street, which meant that at least a few of the people inside were carrying kids, which would make them more vulnerable if they made a run for it. Sam banked in the air, coming around the side of the building and back onto the street, and Clint swore as he saw what was flying towards them. "Oh, shit-"
Sam had excellent reflexes; he managed to turn on a dime and get them back around the corner of the building, which shielded them at least a little from the wake of the giant firebird. Even so, the shockwave sent them tumbling out of the air and into a tangled heap on the pavement. The sound of shattering glass was loud enough that a dazed Clint had to wonder if every window in the neighborhood had just exploded. Get up, Barton, he told himself, hauling himself back to his feet. Sam was doing the same. The Shi'ar had gotten the worst of it, they saw; the aliens had been tossed around like rag dolls, and a couple were very slow to get up.
That said, the Shi'ar seemed... kind of secondary at the moment. "Jesus," Clint said, staring at the firebird as it hovered above the street. Somehow the file footage hadn't done it justice.
"... damn. That's the girl, isn't it?" Sam said from behind him, sounding stunned. "I thought the Phoenix wasn't here yet?"
"So did I." But that was definitely Hope Summers, floating in the heart of the giant firebird, wearing some kind of shining green and gold... armor? It looked like armor. For all that she was recognizable, there wasn't much human left about her. It was like she was some sort of... translucent shell, holding nothing but fire. "That's fucking terrifying, actually," Clint muttered aloud, more to himself than to Sam. But they still had civilians pinned down in that restaurant, and if she was going to keep the Shi'ar busy...
The pavement underneath the firebird erupted upwards, a giant hand that seemed to be made of rock and dirt reaching upwards and grabbing at Hope. She didn't even bother moving; the hand disintegrated into ash, everywhere that it came into contact with the flames. Clint heard a strange, grinding scream that seemed to vibrate through the ground beneath his feet, and then Hope was moving, the talons of the firebird stabbing into the earth and pulling out a vaguely bipedal, rock-like form that thrashed and screamed as it started to melt.
"This isn't going anywhere good. We've got to get those people out of here," Clint grated, and took off at a run across the street. Just getting the civilians, just the civilians, he thought over and over, on the chance Hope would hear him. Phoenix hosts were telepathic, or so the briefing material had said. Though even if she could hear him, he didn't know if she would; all the Shi'ar were focused on her now, the energy-projectors who'd been trying to take him out now directing all their fire at her. She made for one hell of a distraction.
Sam flew ahead of him with a quick shout that he was going to check for a back exit. Clint nodded and headed into the restaurant, calling out immediately reassurances as his sudden entrance was greeted with screams.
"It's all right - I'm with the Avengers, I'm here to get you out!" He was counting rapidly, even as he spoke. Nearly two dozen people, including the mothers with small children that he'd expected and a number of elderly people, a couple of whom worried him with how unwell they looked. Fortunately, the handful of construction workers who'd probably been on their lunch when the attack had started were amenable to being delegated. Sam called to him from the rear of the restaurant, and between the two of them, they got the whole group moving even as the sounds of energy blasts from outside on the street were turning into screams instead. It sounded like the Shi'ar were good and occupied.
They almost made it. They'd gotten everyone out of the building and all but the stragglers moving rapidly in a direction away from the fighting when an armored Shi'ar commando abruptly shimmered into view, as if he'd just decloaked himself. He raised the staff in his hands, and a blast of emerald light cut through two of the construction workers and the elderly woman they were half-carrying down the street. One shot, and three civilians dead in an instant. Despite the rage Clint felt, his hands were absolutely steady; the arrow he sent back at the Shi'ar went right through his armor at the shoulder. If he'd been human, it would have gone right through his heart. Sam dove and snatched the woman with the baby who'd been only a step ahead of the other three, getting her out of the line of fire. Clint notched another arrow, ready to finish the Shi'ar off, but then the air was on fire as the Phoenix came screaming towards them - literally screaming, sounding enraged and anguished at the same time.
"No!" Hope howled at the downed Shi'ar, tears of fire pouring down her cheeks. "Stop it, stop killing people!" The firebird's claws grabbed him, and then smashed him against the ground, again and again, enough to turn flesh and blood into pulp inside the armor.
Clint glanced back in time to see Sam hustle the last of the civilians around the corner of another building and out of sight. He turned back to the Phoenix, keeping the arrow notched, and was rewarded by new targets - more Shi'ar, not the ones from the street, advancing on Hope from behind. The arrow took the one in the lead through the throat, and it seemed to snap Hope out of her blind rage.
She dropped the corpse and whirled on the new Shi'ar with another scream. The cry sounded more like it came from some giant, unearthly hawk than a girl. "Why?" She was still crying, and part of Clint reflected that the only thing more frightening than a teenaged girl with cosmic power was a distraught teenaged girl with cosmic power. "Why can't you leave them alone, what did they ever do to you-"
"Stand down, Starchilde!" another of the commandos shouted in accented English. He had balls, Clint had to give him that. "If you want to avoid further casualties-"
"GO TO HELL!" The words ripped through Clint's brain like knives, and he sagged to his knees on the pavement, blood streaming from his nose as if she'd just punched him in the face. But like with the shockwave that had knocked him and Sam out of the air, he was just collateral damage. All she wanted was the Shi'ar, and even with his eyes watering with pain from the screaming headache that was trying to blow up his skull from the inside, he saw what she did with them.
It was fast. That was about the only consolation any of them probably had; the firebird touched them, and they burned. Hope was still weeping fire as she launched herself back into the air, Clint could see that much. If the Shi'ar had any sense, he thought, hauling himself back to his feet and shaking his head in a dogged attempt to clear it, they'd be teleporting back to their ships and getting the fuck out of Dodge. Promptly.
Headquarters had gotten a reprieve. The other warbird had turned around as soon as the three Phoenix firebirds had appeared, and was on it way back. Its sister ship was already engaging the firebird that hadn't headed directly into New York, and Steve raised a hand to shield his eyes as it opened fire with a broadside that dwarfed the volume of fire the Helicarrier was capable of producing. He heard Vance ordering their planes to fall back to defend the Helicarrier, getting them out of potential crossfire they couldn't possibly survive.
"Cap!" It was Tony in his ear again, still sounding out of breath. "The other firebird is Hope. Hawkeye says she just took down two squads of commandos and flew off looking for more. Who's the third?"
Hope. Of course it's Hope. This was all starting to make a certain amount of sense. Still, Steve glanced down at his screens again almost involuntarily, as if to remind himself that yes, he was seeing what he was seeing. Despite the massive interference this much energy was causing, the Helicarrier's sensors had managed to get a clear view of the figure at the heart of the firebird. There was no mistaking their third Phoenix's identity.
"It's Cable," he said tightly, and heard Tony swear.
"What the fuck is going on? How are there three of them, and what the fuck is it with that family and that damned bird?"
"No idea. Do what you can to keep things together down there," Steve said. One problem at a time. They had to get New York through this first. If the Phoenix had decided to be an ally today, he'd take it. "As long as they keep targeting those commandos, just stay out of their way. Things are about to go critical up here."
The warbird fired again, another colossal explosion of heat and light. It sent the Phoenix reeling backwards in the air, the firebird-form briefly losing cohesion. The Shi'ar ship banked, coming back around to take another shot - and in doing so, made the mistake of giving Cable a moment to recover. The raptor-scream was audible in the mind and the ears alike, and everyone on the bridge was deafened by it, a couple of people falling right out of their chairs as they grabbed at their skulls with screams of pain of their own.
Steve caught at the console to support himself, forcing his watering eyes to focus as the firebird reformed - and grew, swelling into immensity. It had been big already. Now it was half the size of the Helicarrier, bigger than the Sh'iar warbird. Its flames were more red than gold now - angrier, a distant part of Steve somehow recognized - and it let out another one of those shattering screams as it dove towards the starship, fiery talons outstretched.
The warbird tried to fire again, but this time, the broadside was as ineffectual as the Helicarrier's had been. The Phoenix flew right through and grabbed the Shi'ar ship, breaking its back like a dry stick. Hull plating shattered, debris raining down into the water as secondary explosions tore through the warbird. The drives went an instant later, and the remains of the ship detonated in a blinding explosion of white light.
The shockwave reached the Helicarrier and Steve braced himself as the great ship lurched, its engines screaming. Threatening to stall. He heard Vance calling out orders almost calmly, absolutely focused on what needed to be done to keep his ship flying. Steve left him to it. He watched, waiting for the afterimage of the explosion to fade. It did just in time for him to see the firebird arrest its tumble backwards, righting itself in the air. The second warbird was incoming, barely clearing the tops of buildings as it shot over the city.
Cable waited, let the second warbird come to him. Then, floating almost calmly at the center of the firebird, he raised a hand - and the starship froze in mid-air. Its drives flared brightly as it tried to break the telekinetic grip, but it was futile. "My God," Steve heard Vance breathe as the warbird's hull plating started to peel away.
The first warbird had died quickly. This one wasn't destroyed but... disassembled, piece by piece. First the hull, then the bulkheads. Then Cable went deck by deck, like the ship was an onion and he was separating the layers carefully, almost meticulously. There were no secondary explosions, just the odd flicker of energy discharge from carefully severed conduits.
And the crew was still alive. Steve could see them on his screens, floating high above the water in Cable's telekinetic grip as their ship disintegrated around them. Then, one at a time, they each went up like Roman candles. And the whole time, the Helicarrier's sensors showed Cable looking skyward rather than at what he was doing. His gaze seemed locked on something far beyond the atmosphere, and he wore one of the most implacable looks of hatred that Steve had ever seen.