A/N: Review responses are in my forums as normal. Thank you to those who've read and reviewed. And now we come to the penultimate chapter of part 1. Ladies and gentlemen, I present:
Chapter Thirteen: The Battle of Houston
Swan did not know the hierarchy of the nation state. She did not know where, precisely, Fury fit within the local power structure. But hearing him on his headset, she quickly understood that he had superiors he answered to, and they were no more happy about the crashed helicarrier than he was.
Rotary aircraft buzzed overhead like vultures and some of the approaching boats looked larger and more martial in nature than the leisure boats of the civilians. And in the far distance, the portal was creating a cloudbank.
"And I'm telling you that we don't have any resources!" Fury spoke with grim anger. "We lost all our birds in the crash, along with almost thirty-five percent of my crew. The Avengers Initiative is ready, but we have no other resources. And frankly, ladies and gentlemen, in the face of an extraterrestrial invasion, trying to keep the US government in the dark is stupid. So, yes, I understand your orders, but they're stupid orders and I'm disregarding them. Fury out."
He glanced at Swan and his champions, then turned to a bleeding, stocky man nearby. "Sanchez, you get a channel to the Pentagon yet?"
"Yes, sir. I have the secretary to General Joe Greller."
"Put him on the monitor," Fury said. "I want face-to-face." While speaking, he pointed at Swan and motioned her over. He had a bulky computer sitting on a sealed crate, with thick wires running to a dish nearby. As Swan stepped into view of the small monitor, she saw a face appear.
The man reminded her of Korath the Kree, with his deep, rich dark skin. He had sharper, more compact features, though, and his dark eyes blazed with anger. "Nick, what the hell is Shield doing with a flying aircraft carrier?"
"We were trying to save the goddamned planet, Joe," Fury said. "Didn't work out. Joe, meet Swan. She's an alien from outer space. Swan, meet General of the Army Joe Greller. He's two men below the president of the United States."
"Greeting, General of the Army Joe Greller," Swan said with a somber nod.
Greller blinked at her, and leaned forward as if to see better through the monitor. "Director Fury, I have a lot of people demanding to know what is happening in Houston right now. My home town. I don't have time for games."
Fury motioned for Swan. "You gave your word to help? It starts here. Answer the man."
Swan lifted her chin. "Very well. An army of two and a half million cybernetically enhanced, genetically engineered Chitauri war drones are about to start invading your world through an artificial wormhole. If we cannot close the portal, then your world will die."
"They killed over three hundred of my people, General," Fury said. "And just knocked about $30 billion in equipment out of the sky. This is not a joke. Swan here's going to be joining my first contact team, but this is bigger than SHIELD can handle with my helicarrier down. I need coordination at every level to evacuate civilians and get a cordon around the city."
On the monitor, the man ground his jaw. "Fine. We'll talk consequences after we save the world. Tell me what you need."
The red headed woman, Romanov, appeared at Swan's side as Fury and the General spoke. She was limping heavily and her calf and right hand were wrapped in filthy, bloody linens. "Here," she said, handing a slim device over. "A communications headpiece."
Swan took it and held it over her vambrace. "I have the network and encryptions now," she said as she handed it back. Stark stood nearby in his armor, faceplate open, and stared out at the distant portal. She moved to stand between him and Thor.
"When Vers ripped the controller from my mind, she made me realize the horror I committed against Ahl-Agulla," Swan said, as much to herself as anyone. "Even now, I can't escape the feeling of their blood on my hands. I do not want this world to share its fate."
"Then we will fight!" Thor declared. "Together!"
Her eyes drifted to Roger's shield. "You will need more than that," she said. "The Chitauri weapons are not gene-coded. Take one, each weapon has the energy for a thousand shots before it needs to be recharged."
"How are we going to get there?" Rogers asked. "We don't have any more planes."
Swan looked across the tarmac where Hulk was punching a hole for a group of stunned survivors who were trapped below. "We fly. I will take the Hulk."
Rogers blinked. "You think you can carry him?"
Swan shook her head. "If I had the proper leverage, hold and thrust, I could carry this ship. There was a reason Thanos wanted me."
"Right. Tony, a lift?"
"You asked for it."
Stark closed his faceplate, gripped Rogers under his armpits, and moments later they were flying. Thor spun his enchanted hammer and soaring after. She walked toward the Hulk, who seemed to be enjoying breaking things for a good cause.
"Bird girl! Hulk smash!"
He sounded like a child, pointing to his work proudly.
"Monsters are coming, will you fly with me to fight them?"
"Hulk fly?"
Swan spread her wings and held out her hands. "I will carry you. We'll fight monsters together!"
The beast nodded and came to her. His hand was so large it took both of hers to grip it. But he was strong enough she had no doubt he would be fine. She extended the nullgrav field as far as she could out of her armor, not for her sake, but for her thruster's, and in moments both were flying through the air toward the distant portal.
As she and the Hulk flew into the sky, she heard Roger's voice carry through her helm system. "Coms check."
"I hear," she called.
Below her, Hulk was roaring joyfully into the wind. "Hulk fly!"
Signs of civilization grew more dense as they approached the city center. "How many people live in Kemah?" she asked.
Stark responded. "What the hell's Kemah?"
"The sign near the crash said this place was Kemah," Swan said.
"Sweetheart, this is Houston," Stark said. "Over two million people live here."
"Not for long, not if we don't stop Loki."
"Point."
"This is Fury. We have a squadron inbound from Kingsville, 20 minutes out. National guard units have mobilized and we have a battalion on the way down from Fort Hood, but they're hours away."
"Copy that," Rogers said, shouting over the wind of their passage. "Fliers, we need to find and take out the Tesseract!"
Flying closer, Swan saw how far the invasion had already come. Four leviathans had already passed through the portal, and the air swam with unopposed warsleds. The humans did not seem to have any defenses at all in place around the city. And if the Chitauri had command of the air, that meant there should have been…
The first dagger-like drop-ship stabbed down through the portal, angled itself away and then pierced the side of a thirty-story building before embedding its point into the ground. As the building collapsed in a cloud of powdered concrete and twisted steel, hordes of Chitauri spilled out.
"What the hell is that?" Stark shouted.
"Drop ship, for ground troops," Swan told them. "Each drop ship holds ten thousand war drones. Summon your armies, Fury. The Chitauri eat their prisoners."
Loki would have no need to tell Thanos of Swan's betrayal. The moment a Chitauri war drone saw her, the hive ship queens would know. And when they knew, no matter how far they were from Sanctuary, the Other would know.
Thanos would know.
They reached the edge of the densest part of the city. Below, Swan could see Chitauri swarming the streets and killing anything that moved with determined, deliberate efficiency. "Hulk smash!" the beast roared. He pulled at his hand, and at that urging Swan let him go even though she was a hundred meters high.
The green monster sounded almost joyous as he fell into the midst of the swarm and began wreaking havoc. She didn't see where Stark let Rogers off, but moments later she saw the red-gold armor streaking toward the portal and unleashing his surprisingly effective weapons.
"Swan, Thor, the Tesseract!" The armored man shouted the words as he tried slowing the influx of invaders.
Swan swerved toward where the blue stream of portal energy shot up. It was atop one of the tallest buildings in the city. She fired her vambrace blasters at any warsleds that drew too close. She saw a streak of red from beside her where Thor also approached the tesseract.
He reached it first, and without a moment's hesitation threw his enchanted hammer at the device that Eric Selvig built.
The hammer struck a shield of spatial distortion that sent Mjolnir flying off at an angle. The Asgardian held out his hand until the hammer diverted course and returned to his palm. By then, Swan landed beside him.
She drew her sword and tried to drive it more slowly into the field. She felt the tip penetrate, but the resistance grew exponentially until the surface below her feet began to bend and groan.
"Odinson! The surface! Break the surface, maybe the portal will fall!"
The Asgardian met her gaze with a nod. "It is worth a try!"
He jumped into the air; his hammer seemed to explode with raw electrical energy as he slammed it into the roof of the building.
Swan had to go into flight mode as the top level of the structure collapsed. She watched as concrete, steel and glass fell to the streets below. What she did not see, however, was what she wanted.
The portal device hung perfectly suspended in the air, completely surrounded by the spatial distortion. Before she could speak again, something clinked ineffectually against her armor before exploding.
The explosion blinded her for a moment, but barely contained enough power to move her flight. She looked up to see Agent Barton perched on a raised part of what remained of the roof. He held a primitive string-driven projectile device.
She raised her vambrace to remove the threat, but paused when she thought of George Tso. Did Barton also have a family?
Thor must have been having similar thoughts when he was interrupted not with an arrow, but with an energy blast that sent him sprawling against the portal device's shields. He struck and then fell into the rubble of the lower floor.
Loki shimmered into existence and smirked up at Swan. "Oh, dear. I wonder if Daddy is coming to spank you? The Other is quite disappointed in you."
Swan fired her vambrace. The blast struck the roof rather than Loki. The illusion of him faded as he continued to smirk at her.
In the meantime, Barton fired another of the primitive projectiles. She flew toward him, but the man jumped backward from his perch into open air. As Swan cleared the roof, the madman fired an arrow with a rope against the wall and then used the momentum to swing toward the building. With one hand clinging to the arrow, he used his other to draw a weapon and fire at a window until he weakened it enough that his momentum broke through.
Overhead, Swan saw a second dropship emerge. She lifted her arms and fired both vambraces, but even as powerful as her weapons were, they were not enough to pierce the ship's armor. It tilted away from the portal before slamming into a second of elevated roadway. The sides opened and thousands more Chitauri poured out.
"We can't close the portal!" She cried into her helm.
"Swan! Here!"
At Thor's call, she sank down into the open, lower level of the building exposed by Thor's hammer. Within the wreckage, she saw a bleeding Eric Selvig. The man stared up at her with clear eyes.
"The device can't defend itself against itself," he told her. "The scepter!"
"The scepter isn't part of the Tesseract, it has its own power source," Swan said.
Selvig shook his bleeding head weakly. "But they're of a kind. Water douses fire. Wind tosses water. The scepter can shut it down. It told me so."
Swan met the Asgardian's eyes. He nodded to her before touching his human earpiece. "This is Thor. Loki's scepter can shut the portal down!"
The air roared as ungainly, primitive airships flew in formation toward the portal as another dropship came through. The airships fired a dense volley of missiles. Their targeting systems could not properly lock onto the deflective chita-stone hull, though. One or two struck by chance with no effect; most flew on having missed entirely. The dropship continued to pierce another building and bring the ground troops up to 30,000.
Warsleds had no need to follow ballistic flight. They swarmed by the hundreds toward the interlopers. Even if Swan wanted to help them, the warsleds made such quick work of the five aircraft Swan had no chance to stop them.
"These mortals are not equipped for this type of war," Thor said. "What were they thinking, to play with a power as great as the Tesseract?"
Swan had no answer. "Our only hope is to close the portal, or destroy the hive ship."
A pair of warsleds approached. Swan blasted them from the air with her vambraces. "With Loki's magic, he could be anywhere!"
Another drop ship pierced the portal. Thor swung his hammer. "Let us see what these infernal devices can withstand!"
The hammer pulled him into the air; with no way to pierce the portal device, she followed. Lighting blasted down from the swirling cloud head into his hammer as he flew right toward the falling drop-ship. With a mighty roar, the hammer struck the chita-stone hull.
Suddenly Swan understood why her father feared Asgard.
The blow was so powerful it warped the drop ship's stabilizers and ruptured its hull. Swan followed with her vambraces, firing into the exposed drive systems.
The dropship exploded in a blinding burst of white light that darkened the sky around them. She had only a moment to shield her eyes before the shockwave struck both she and Thor. Those buildings under it turned to dust as the fusion explosion destroyed not just the ten thousand Chitauri within, but everything for a four-block radius.
Swan did not have time to recover her flight before she slammed into a partially crushed vehicle on the streets below. She blinked but did not immediately see Thor. However, all around she heard angry Chitauri screams. With a drop ship destroyed, the Chitauri would not send any more until the warsleds controlled the air again.
Though at terrible cost, she and Thor bought them time.
Humans screamed. Swan ripped free of the twisted metal that held her and emerged into a street in front of a solid wall of Chitauri. Behind her, hundreds of terrified, dust-covered humans fled for some hope of safety.
Her vambraces only had five hundred shots each. She needed to save them for warsleds. For those on the ground?
She drew her sword and charged the line of Chitauri war drones. They knew who and what she was; they did not care. Chitauri had no fear-death in battle was an honor to be celebrated with song and joy.
Swan spun into the first wave with her sword and wings extended, and sang her own Chitauri to their deaths. As happened at Ahl-Agulla, everything else fell away as she cut her way through the enemies of this world. Blood sprayed across her face and her armor, but her hand was steady and her wings sharp.
The Chitauri tried to overwhelm her several times-first with sheer numbers and then with firepower. The numbers wilted so fast she had to jump over mounds of the dead, while her armor easily absorbed the punishment from the warsleds while her vambraces picked them off.
Abruptly, the horde ended. She spun through the last few bodies using her wings and blade, and no more came. Wiping away blue Chitauri blood from her face, she looked around at the streets until she saw a crew of mortals in a strange vehicle staring at her in shock. They wore uniforms and carried primitive weapons that would be all but useless against the Chitauri.
She leaned down to one of the many, many Chitauri she'd killed and removed the arm-cannon. "Which of you leads?" she called to the mortals.
One of the soldiers stepped forward. "Captain Donaldson, Texas National Guard," the man said.
"I am Swan. I am helping. Your weapons are useless against the Chitauri. This is a Chitauri arm cannon. I've just liberated several for you. Come, let me show you how to fire it."
The captain seemed unsure, but stepped to her side as she showed him how to slide his arm in. It was too large for him, but otherwise easy enough to use. "Each of you take one. If you have others of your kind, find them weapons like this as best you can. The Chitauri are relentless and will kill until killed. Do not let them shoot first. If they capture you...they eat their prisoners. So don't let them capture you."
The air thrummed; Stark came down in a rough landing. His armor looked ragged. "Swan, what was that explosion?"
"Thor ruptured the hull of a Drop ship and exposed their fusion core. It buys us time before they launch more. Have we found Loki?"
"You probably killed a thousand people!" Stark shouted angrily.
"How many people are on this world, Stark?" Swan answered. "With the Tesseract Thanos can open a portal anywhere he chooses, and sweep a hundred million Chitauri and Outriders across this world. The hiveship that attacks is just one of dozens! I gave my oath to the Odinson I will help. But I do not fight for this one city-I know what Thanos does to captured worlds. One half of the surviving population will be summarily executed. It's how all worlds fair under his conquest."
The armored man stared with his emotionless mask a moment before shooting into the sky. Swan turned back to the startled soldiers. "Millions of Chitauri come," she said. "Use their weapons, save as many people as you can. Arm your civilians if they are willing. I will gather as many weapons for them as I can."
War sleds flew around the corner. She looked up, and glimpsed a flash of green and bronze. "Everyone, I've spotted Loki!" She launched herself into the air, flying after the Asgardian as fast as her thruster could take her.
Loki stood on the back of a sled; he turned and sent that infuriating smirk at her.
She had only a second of movement from her left to prepare as the massive metal dagger teeth of a Leviathan slammed down on her armor. Realizing Loki tricked her again, she screamed and plunged her neutronium-alloy sword up through the jaws of the leviathan and into its braincase.
With brute force and sharp wings, she slashed free as the huge creature tumbled dead into another building. Below, she was pleased to see that the small squad of defenders had taken her advice and were firing the Chitauri weapons against the enemy.
Unfortunately, the squad of twenty was facing another horde of two hundred.
She flew into position and dropped both her thrusters and her nullgrav. Gravity seized her heavy armor and pulled her down. When she struck the road, her impact formed a crater that sent Chitauri flying. Her nullgrav returned at a thought, and as the small handful of brave but overwhelmed defenders fired their stolen weapon, Swan freed more weapons with blade and sword.
"Where's Loki?" Thor said over the com.
"It was a trick," she said, even as she continued to cut through the enemy. "He got away. He was riding a warsled!"
"This is Stark. We've got more incoming."
Swan paused in her slaughter to look up, and saw with a sinking heart that thousands more warsleds and the remaining leviathans had come through, and drop ships hung just on the other side of the portal.
Grinding her teeth, she returned her attention to the horde. The defenders nearby helped a great deal while she distracted Chitauri. When the horde was dead, Swan shot into the air. "Fury, do you hear me?"
"I hear you."
"Loki knows we can only delay. He will remain hidden until it is too late. Neither I nor Thor could destroy the portal. Our only other option is to destroy the hive ship itself."
"I'm listening."
"It will take a very large explosion placed perfectly to destroy a hive ship. It is the size of the city we fight over. Do you have any weapons with such power?"
Fury didn't answer at first. She suspected he was speaking to those he answered to. When he came back, he said, "If we did, what would you suggest? We don't have any space-capable delivery systems."
"I would be the delivery system, Fury. My armor functions very well in vacuum, and I can go weeks on a single breath."
"Could you survive something like that?"
"I...am not sure. But what I am sure is that I helped murder sixty million innocent beings. If by my death I can save six billion, then I will account it a good trade."
"General Greller wants to know if we could fire a missile through the portal?"
"You could fire a thousand. There are ten thousand warsleds protecting the hive ship, and each could destroy your weapon. And in the meantime, more Chitauri come."
"Return to the helicarrier," Fury said. "We'll figure something out."
Swan turned and started back. Below, she had to focus to see Captain Rogers with shield in one hand, and a hand-cannon in the other, fighting effectively with another group of local defenders against a horde. They were fighting to protect a group of civilians.
A narrow rotary craft roared into the fray, unleashing large caliber projectiles and missiles into the horde. It broke the formation sufficiently for Rogers and those men he led to finish them off. With that small horde dead, they began desperately evacuating civilians.
Further in the distance, she saw a large green brute arcing through the sky to slap a pair of warsleds from the air. She pushed her thrusters to full power and flew back to the helicarrier. More helicopters were hovering around it as she arrived, and there were people in similar uniforms to those soldiers Swan assisted on the deck.
Fury walked out from his tent when she flared her wings to cut speed and landed.
"Come with me," he told her grimly as he walked quickly toward the bent bay doors. Within, their war machines were shattered by the impact. He led her down a set of stairs to a secondary bay where tall, solid crates were so well secured the crash did not seem to have affected them.
Four men were standing over an open grate-and within it a missile longer than she was tall. The head of the device had been disconnected. "That's a W84 Variable Yield thermonuclear warhead," Fury said. "Dialed up to full yield, it can unleash 250 kilotons of explosive force. Enough to vaporize the city of Houston. It can be set to explode on a timer or…"
"Fifteen minutes," Swan said without hesitation. "It took six minutes to get here, and it will be at least another nine to reach the hive ship. But we can't wait too long."
"Are you sure about this? This could kill Vers."
Swan opened her mouth to answer, but paused and thought about it. "This is my fault, Fury," she finally admitted. "I saved Loki. I went along with this plan thinking it would get me to Thor and Asgard. I could have stopped him easily, but I didn't. I have to fix this."
The mortal stared intently at her before nodding. "Donahue, set the time for 15 minutes."
"Yes, director. Timer is set. Countdown starts on your mark."
Swan stepped past Fury and lifted the barrel-shaped weapon easily.
"Begin," she told Donahue.
The man glanced briefly at Fury before starting the countdown.
There was no more need for words. She ran back up the steps and was flying even while still inside the hangar.
"Thor, Stark, this is Swan."
"We hear you," Stark said.
"I am coming with a thermonuclear weapon. I will go through the portal and destroy the hive ship. Make sure I have a clear path."
"We'll make a path, kid," Stark said.
The sound of more burning roars filled the air. She looked to her left and saw that another formation of the primitive jets had arrived to her left. To her right, five more arrived. She could see the humans in their cockpits-the one she looked at saluted her.
These men were going to die, Swan had no doubt. But their courage helped the wind make her eyes water.
They flew straight toward the portal. Another five of the planes joined the formation, making fifteen in all. The machines were large, and the formation impressive, except that a single war sled could destroy the entire formation in minutes, and they were flying toward thousands of war sleds.
She did not slow as they entered the worst of the devastation below. Already the majority of the towers in the central area of the city were damaged or collapsed. Since she left, another drop ship had landed and Chitauri were quickly overrunning the entire city. More soldiers had arrived, and true to her advice had armed themselves as best they could with Chitauri weapons, but it would not be enough. The defenders numbered in the low thousands-the Chitauri already had 60,000 landed and far more coming.
Warsleds saw her and began to attack.
The fifteen fighters responded with a cloud of missiles and a barrage of heavy caliber projectiles that made the air shake. The first wave of warsleds exploded under the barrage and they pierced through the perimeter drawing even closer to the portal.
The warsleds could accelerate easily to the speed of the fighters, and were not constrained to ballistic motion. The Chitauri drones quickly shifted from frontal attacks to attacking from the side and rear, and one by one the brave mortals in their primitive war machines began to fall.
A blast far too powerful to have come from a hand cannon struck Swan's wing. She tumbled through the air, clutching the nuclear weapon desperately, before she stabilized. She turned and saw Loki himself flying after her. He was no longer grinning; he looked furious. He must have known what she intended, somehow.
But for all Loki's power, he'd made one terrible mistake.
Thor slammed into the other Asgardian's war sled so hard the sled vaporized and the two brothers went spinning into the claw-like remnant of a partially destroyed tower. She left them to their fight, pushed her thruster to full power, and rushed toward the portal.
The last two human fighters broke their formation and managed to destroy three more warsleds before they were in turn destroyed. Other war sleds closed on her when Stark appeared. Like the war sleds, his armor allowed for non-ballistic flight. He fired the last of his missiles and his repulsor blasts. "Give 'em hell, kid!"
She curved her wings and shot straight up toward the portal. The last leviathans and drop ships hung just beyond, ready to bring more death to the human world.
The passage from atmosphere to space was as shocking as it was moving from the air of Sanctuary into the void. She curled her wings tight to her back now that they served no purpose, and increased her thrust to full power again. She used her helm's HUD to direct her flight between the drop ships and the war sleds.
The Queens knew she was coming, but it looked as if all the war sleds were deployed by the portal. Dodging between the leviathans to avoid the hand cannon fire, she broke free from the cloud of dense attackers into the open space. The hive ship dominated the space before her, only a few kilometers away.
The hundreds of warsleds left their queue in line for the portal and flew after her
The thruster burned beyond capacity in a constant acceleration. She glanced down and saw that it took her longer than she hoped to reach the portal. Ninety seconds remained.
"I refuse to be a monster," she whispered into the small pocket of air her helm provided for speech. "Never again!"
She came within reach of the joining of the two hemispheres of the hive, and with a scream she hurled the device with all her strength toward the massive ship. The warsleds that followed ignored her as they tried to reach the warhead. She spun without trying to flee and fired her vambraces at the incoming horde, slowing them and buying time for the warhead to reach its target.
A flash of agonizing radiation swept over her. The Chitauri sled drivers, deprived of their queen's commands, automatically shut down their nervous systems. It was a cybernetic enhancement the queens designed into their armies to ensure that Thanos would never just kill the queens and steal their drones. They worshipped him, but also knew him.
Watching the drones lose formation and drift away; listening to the Leviathans sing one last mournful note before dying, Swan felt a strange, confused welling of grief at how terribly she had betrayed her father. Bathed in radiation and agony, she didn't weep for her pain, but for the look of disappointment Thanos undoubted had.
Abruptly everything was lost in a blur of rainbow color.
A second later, somehow, she found herself on a smooth, polished floor. Steam and radiation poured from her body and armor as she held herself up with trembling arms. "What…?"
Trembling with weakness, confusion and pain, she looked up and saw a great giant of a man with bright yellow eyes and a golden, horned helm staring down at her. "Welcome to Asgard, Daughter of Thanos."
She fell back to her seat, her eyes growing moist, and then laid entirely back on the floor where she gave into the hysterical laughter. Five seconds later, they became sobs.
