"Do you ever think we're doing the right thing?"
"What?"
"Nothing."
Getting the energy drills out of storage had been easy. Getting them to work again hadn't been difficult either. Smuggling them to Antarctica with a bare-bones crew to operate them? Harder.
The two HYDRA officers sipped their scalding watered-down coffee as they watched the massive drill in the distance continue to bore into the ice. The whine was deafening. Even in their ultra-padded tents, the noise was starting to have an affect on the overall irritability of the crowd.
"Think we can give the drill extra time to cool down?"
"Whatever heat is generated by drilling through permafrost, I'm sure the cursed wind chills it faster."
The hand not holding his coffee slipped underneath the strap holding up his assault rifle.
"I'd do anything for a few extra layers."
Near the drill, a quartet of hooded black figures were checking wires and monitoring equipment. They had kept the drill running for several hours more than it was supposed to. Safety mandated they turn it off. Time constraints had mandated otherwise.
50,000 feet above the Southern Ocean, Zephyr One rocked side to side as it was assailed by its attackers. The occupants of the craft were huddled in the cockpit, searching desperately for a way out of their precarious situation.
May groaned, "Fitz! What do we still have?"
"They managed to take out the comms, damaged hangar doors..." Fitz muttered as his eyes flew over the lights on the instrument panels, "Weapons compartments are sealed tight, radar was brought inside the plane..."
"What didn't we seal?" May said tersely.
Fitz froze as his eyes came across a single green light, "The Containment unit. We can still deploy it!" Fitz's mind started racing through the possibilities.
"We can't abandon the plane!" Simmons objected, shocked.
"We'll be an easy target," May added, as she kept a firmer grip over the plane's controls. She winced as the plane shuddered after the loss of a tertiary engine.
"Not as an escape pod. Our weapon doors are sealed, but the containment unit can still be dispatched. The project I was working on for Lincoln..we'd need to turn the Zephyr upside down to deploy it from the right angle but...but if we could get it right in the center of their squadron…it'd act as a massive EMP." Fitz explained as quickly as his speech would allow.
Lights continued to flash throughout the cabin. The sound of metal ricocheting metal had gone on for at least a minute. Zephyr One's flight stayed on course. So far. A testimony to the ingenuity of its design.
May gritted her teeth, considering. She tapped the joystick, "How can we get out the blast range?"
"The engines. We have more of them then they do, " Fitz said his voice growing even quicker, "They're stronger than the quinjets and they're flying right above and below them. Right now they're angled for horizontal flight but-"
May cut him off, understanding in a heartbeat, "Go!"
Fitz rushed out of the cockpit, Simmons following.
Fitz had his hands in his pocket walking out the door, his mind was working out radii, thrust, how to account for the plane's forward momentum. Literal rocket science, startled only by Simmons expectant look as they reached the back of the plane.
"We need to reverse the thrust so the Containment unit can still deploy after we make the flip." Fitz said with a tilt of his head as he kept walking past by the module.
Simmons took a deep breath, "Okay."
She knelt down and examined the four rockets with a nearby tool set and began to rotate them to fire in the opposite direction. Fitz had hurried over to his work station and pulled out a rectangular package about the size of a duffel bag full of exposed multicolored wires and metal. Simmons thought she saw him grin briefly before she cracked her fingers and got to work.
May glanced at the status report. They weren't far from breaching the outer skin of the plane. Let them breach it, she thought. It was a good thing the weapons compartments were sealed. If those explosives were hit while they were still on the plane…
Fitz ran over to the containment module, lugging the improvised EMP behind him. Simmons had just finished removing the hexagonal panels from the walls that would otherwise dampen the blast if not suppress it entirely. Fitz slotted the bag inside, tying it down with ropes and setting a detonation timer.
May's fingers gently adjusted the noggles as she worked out the right angles for the maneuver she was about to pull. Her shoulders were tense, the only thing about her posture that gave away her true emotions. The view straight ahead was all clouds and glimpses of the sea far below. Her line of sight was rocked sideways as something big hit the side of the plane. She cried out in surprise.
"Ready!" Came Fitz's voice.
More alarms blared. The cockpit was a fireworks display on Independence Day. Automatic status reports came pouring in. Several of the lower low-security storage areas had just been exposed to open air. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw the ghost of a missile trail. More would follow. She cracked her neck, and firmly pressed the master override for the alarms to turn them off. May didn't need any more motivation.
Instead of switching from vertical to horizontal flight, something she'd done hundreds of times, she was going to use the engines as a weapon. Same set of actions though. In one fluid movement she surged power to the engines, rapidly flipping up switches and skillfully angling all dozen of the Zephyr's secondary engines. May allowed herself a small smile as she heard the satisfying sound of the fans winding up from the very heart of the plane.
A huge WOOMPH! followed, directly aimed at the unfortunate tailgaters.
The Quinjets were pushed backward in a starburst pattern, some, May noted with a grim satisfaction, colliding into one another.
Zephyr One flipped in a matter of seconds with the sudden power of the additional engines. May blinked to regain her bearings, correcting her posture. She glanced down at the control panel screen, navigating through the menu upside down, hoping FitzSimmons had done their part, before activating the containment unit's launch sequence.
FitzSimmons had been thrown a half dozen feet against what had been their roof when the plane had flipped. The workstations were scattered, sending hand tools and lab samples everywhere. The grey metal walls amplified the noise, and provided a contrast to the two white lab coated bodies on the floor. The containment unit fell with a heavy thump next to them, upside down with the rest of the room. The floor, above it now, was sliding open, ready to receive the improvised bomb.
Had this been any normal day, the large rectangular box-not unlike a shipping container- would have dropped with gravity towards the earth below before flying back on board later with its onboard rockets.
But with the rockets reversed and the plane itself upside down, the module was preparing to launch straight up into the air.
Fitz climbed over Simmons, protecting her with his body as the inverted rockets of the containment unit fired, launching upward and leaving scorch marks across the 'floor'.
Fitz thought he could see a glimpse of blue sky and clouds above him as the EMP detonated amongst the regrouping Quinjets.
"Gideon's claiming insurance funds." Coulson spoke softly from the edge of his desk at the Playground.
Talbot glanced at the news playing in the background, showing a burning building and falling stock prices.
"Think there's anything I can do about it?" Talbot remarked with an uncharacteristic somber tone.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't a legitimate organization anymore. We don't have the resources and we don't have the manpower. All I'm saying is, whatever he's about to do, it'll be big. We need all the assistance we can get."
"As much fun as it would be we can't just roll in tanks to every residential hotel on the continent, Coulson. It's not even our continent! You want to file a report of insider trading, that ain't my department. I make a move at him unsubstantiated and I am done for."
An old fashioned cord phone next to Coulson's sleeve rung twice. He picked up the red handset and listened for a few moments.
"We could certainly do something about the military aircraft that just crash landed off the coast of Australia, with flight plans for the last known location of six of my agents."
Talbot shook his head, "Lack of resources my ass!"
The Secret Warriors crawled on their bellies in the snow, trying to minimize the chances of them breaking the ice. Daisy first, followed by Lincoln and Joey, had felt the ground rumble underneath their feet an hour earlier. When they both looked expectantly to those nut-brown eyes, she could only reply that it wasn't her.
They were 150 meters out, when Lincoln spoke under his breath.
"Someone was drilling through the ice."
"Bit too close for comfort." muttered Joey.
"Zephyr's scans reported this are clear, right Daisy? Daisy?"
"Daisy?"
The two looked at each other over there binoculars.
"I thought she was lying next to you."
A loud crack echoed behind them, sending both of them reaching for their ICERs and jumping to their feet. Their backs inched towards each other as they aimed into the darkness infused falling snow.
Two bodies slid toward them, HYDRA's symbol prominent on their chest. Their breathing was shallow, their hands were bound.
"They were coming around us. Felt them coming and sent their snowmobiles into the water and Iced them." Daisy emerged into Joey and Lincoln's' vision, hands raised.
"What's our play here?"
"We were the only ones this half of the continent!"
"Clearly not."
The team bickered about what to do, keeping their faces low to protect from the wind.
"Why would they have been here?"
"I doubt it was to build a snowman." Daisy commented half-heartedly. Her operation was going downhill fast.
"Any contact with Coulson?"
"No connection."
"Zephyr One?"
"Nada."
"Let's assume the worst. What would they want with Donnie Gill?" Lincoln questioned.
"He was HYDRA's guy when I shot him," Daisy confessed, "They can reactivate his brainwashing if they find him."
The team grew somber at the implications of the statement.
Joey gestured to the resting figures beside them, "If they were here they must have known something."
Lincoln cracked his neck before letting a small charge arc across his palm as he loomed over the quivering agents.
"Why don't we find out?"