Chapter 7: Tony Is Not The Starship Enterprise
When the group returned to Westchester, Clint was waiting, nearly dancing in place, ready to go and get Natasha, but Kamala and Miles were there holding little Zoe.
"Morales babysitting service," Miles said with a little smirk.
"You can meet up with the Summers professional sitting services in just a minute," K told him. "We're feeding you this time."
"See, Kamala? I told you we'd get paid," Miles said without missing a beat as Kamala rolled her eyes at him.
"You're going to be at our cottage too — so no one will find you," Logan added.
"It's really that bad?" Kamala asked quietly over the top of a sleeping Zoe's head.
"Precautionary measures," Logan said with a wave. "They got into the school, but that cottage is a lot harder to find and a lot further off the grid."
"No pizza delivery, though," K said with a smirk. "So you have Annie the wonder cook instead."
"I was just about to complain, and then you said 'wonder cook' so I think I can survive," Miles promised with a crooked grin.
"Okay, great, but let's just feed 'em and go, because Nat and Thor were on rotation here, and nobody's seen 'em," Clint pointed out, still bouncing a bit as it was clear he was ready to go and get Natasha back.
"Right." K took a step forward and took Clint's arm to take him to where Noh had stashed his ship. "Good luck, kids." They barely got to it when K had to at least try to pick on him. "Okay, this flight is going to take a while, but no coffee for you."
Clint made a pained noise in the back of his throat. "You're trying to torture me."
"Just want to make sure you're good and mean by the time we get there."
"That… is not gonna be a problem no matter what depending on how and where we find Tasha," Clint said with a little glare.
"Even if I'm drinking it in front of you?"
"You want me to attack them and not you, right?"
"You can try to attack me, but someone is a little antsy after Creed worked me over," she said with a little shrug. "We have lots of food from Annie so some of us can heal up. Could sugar you up a little I suppose. Try and give you a fighting chance."
"Look, just give me coffee and a straight shot at whoever took my wife, and I swear I'll be fine."
"Don't I always try to do that for you?" she asked. "Try to hold it back a little until we get there. You're gonna wear yourself out from nerves before we hit their turf."
He glanced her way and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "That's what the coffee's for."
"Tell you what; I'll lock you and Kate in a room together with a coffee pot. When I come to check on you, if you're both acting like freakin' idiots, I'm gonna knock both your asses out until we get there. Deal?"
"It's only a deal if our sparkly son gets knocked out too. Or didn't you notice his 'my Jubilee' routine?" Clint said with the smallest of smirks.
"Oh, I noticed," K said. "But we need him to steer. Or yes, I'd knock his ass out too — and I'd do him first just so you could watch it."
Clint waved a hand. "Pshaw. You act like steering's so important," he joked. He took a deep, cleansing breath and made an obvious attempt to look calmer for her. "Slower build on the anger, right?"
"That's all I'm asking for. Slow burn ends up being a lot nastier on the other side. I swear I know what I'm talking about here."
"And seeing as these guys took my wife, I like nastier," Clint said with a look that K didn't usually see on him.
"Well, I can certainly give you ideas on more nasty," K said.
He nodded and readjusted his grip on his bow for a moment. "Sounds like good dinner conversation."
"It may well be," K said. "I'm sure Noh will have something to add to it. But until then, I'm taking some food and finding a private room to curl up and finish healing."
"I can grab the food if you wanna skip right to the sleeping — breakfast in bed, right?"
"Oh, but there are parts of the healing process that don't involve sleeping," she teased.
"Sounds like I'm gonna need one of those private rooms for later when we get my wife back," he agreed.
"Yes, you really should," K agreed.
Clint finally smirked and gave her a two-fingered salute before he headed off to go find such a room.
Although Noh's ship was, in fact, well-supplied with energy and was pushing speeds faster than Noh had seen it hit before, the trip to the Shi'ar homeworld was still a long one. It was made even longer by the fact that the Shi'ar had apparently been spreading the reach of their empire, meaning there were far more patrols to watch out for and detours to take to avoid detection than Noh was entirely happy with.
It required a lot more attentive steering, too, so despite the fact that some of the junior squad had offered to try to help steer. He really needed to stay on the stick or give it to either Kate or Logan or K — someone who knew the ship well and who had the training and reflexes to get them out of patrols, especially with Shi'ar shielding and cloaking making it hard to detect the patrols until they were almost right on top of them.
So that meant Noh was in the pilot's chair more often than not, about ten different holograms pulled up at any given time as he kept an eye out for danger. Tony was down in the observation deck with a rotating frequency emitter that would mimic Shi'ar cloaking, but that would only keep them from being detected at long distances. Visual range meant the Shi'ar could see the Kree-based ship, so… he, too, was being careful.
"So… these guys. They're not real friendly with the Kree, right?"
Noh turned in his seat slightly to see that Jana was leaning with her arms crossed in the doorway and trying to make sense of the diagrams and such that he had up in front of him. "No, they are not," Noh agreed, gesturing for her to take a seat nearby. "But they are not very friendly with most beings outside their empire — generally speaking."
"There should really be a class about all this stuff," Jana said, still looking over the holograms. "I mean, we learn about the tech, but there's all sorts of history and conflicts and stuff — and if we're gonna get caught up in it half the time, we should know about it, right?"
"The intention is not to get caught up in it," Noh pointed out with a small smile.
"Oh yeah, that's worked out great so far," Jana deadpanned without even looking his way. "I'm not even old enough to drive and I've lived through, like, three huge invasions — and those are just the ones we all know about."
"You should be proud of your homeworld. To stand free despite invasion attempts from the Kree, the Shi'ar, and the Skrulls — that's a feat unmatched by any other world that I know of." He smiled her way. "And I've seen many worlds."
"Yeah, you're some kind of explorer, right?" Jana asked. She didn't wait for much of an answer before she indicated one of the holograms. "This kind of looks like a deployment pattern from tactics class, but I can't read Kree well enough to tell if I'm right."
"You can read Kree?" he asked, surprised.
She shrugged. "I… I can't really power through people with the superpower I got, so I'm trying to learn more things. You know ... languages, tactics, and how to throw people over my shoulder…"
He had to smile at that. "Well, you are one of the best students in my technology class," he assured her.
"One of?"
"Ziggy is a technopath; she has quite the advantage over you," Noh said with a little teasing smile before his attention was distracted again, this time by an incoming patrol. He quickly fell silent and inputted the changes into their flight, seizing the controls to steer them out of the way.
For a moment, there was silence in the cockpit before Jana looked his way with wide eyes. "That happen often?"
"Yes. More often the closer we get to our destination. I'm trying to find an approach that will not bring down an army on our heads upon arrival," he explained, indicating the deployment patterns and other holograms.
"Well… you could always just ask Sophia to tell the Shi'ar not to pay us any attention," Jana offered. "It's not as good as being invisible, and we'd still have to get down to the planet, but she's pretty darn convincing."
Noh looked her way with a sort of smirk as he nodded. "That's not a bad idea," he agreed. "Once we get to the surface, our little Siren would definitely help to keep us out of their notice. We aren't exactly typical of what you would see on the Shi'ar homeworld." He gestured to himself and Jana with a little chuckle. "Well ... you are not. I'm sure they have a few Kree there."
"I'll go tell Soph to warm up her pipes," Jana offered, and Noh nodded her way.
"And if you could ... why don't you bring Logan back here," he said thoughtfully. "He has an excellent tactical mind too… and it seems you could offer some insights as well."
She flushed with pleasure for a moment before she nodded and rushed off to do just that, leaving Noh to his thoughts and his diagrams once more.
When Jana found Sophia, the little mermaid was gently looking out for Rico and trying to keep him from drooling over space too much — though that was hard when he was in space and wanted to be an astronaut since he was three years old.
"It's just… other people train for years and years and have to wear suits and train in zero G and here we are in another solar system and all I had to do was walk on board and we are so behind in the space race and seriously…!" Rico was gushing as he looked out over the stars.
"Well. The government is behind on the space race, let's be real," Tony said as he watched the young man. "The Avengers and the X-Men have always been ahead of that curve."
"Yeah, but come on. We should be intergalactic explorers with half the alien tech on Earth!"
"You really think that having the governments of our world wandering around pissing off even more alien species is a good idea?"
"... I guess not?" Rico let out all his breath. "But come on!"
"Face it kid; if you want to do space travel, you've already got the posh gig worked out."
"But … astronauts."
"If it makes you feel any better, I bet Noh has the 'Space Oddity' record he can play for you," Jana said as she arrived on the observation deck, and Sophia had to giggle at that.
"Noh is a space oddity," Tony replied with a little smirk. "But we like him that way."
"He really is," Sophia laughed.
"Yeah, I was just up talking with him," Jana said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. "We were talking about a plan once we get there — think you could sing the Shi'ar into ignoring us?" she asked Sophia.
The scales under Sophia's eyes turned a bit pink for a moment before she nodded. "Yeah, I can try," she said. "I don't think I've ever tried to use my powers on Shi'ar before, though."
"As long as they can hear you sing, it should work, right?" Jana offered.
"Don't think of them as Shi'ar," Tony advised. "Think of them as really, really ugly bad guys. Makes it easier if you're not letting the whole 'alien' thing get in your head."
"Yeah, focus more on keeping the commands really specific," Rico chimed in. "So they don't end up catching us. Because that would be bad." When Tony chuckled at that, it only got Rico to grin.
"Not helping," Jana shot Rico's way with a glare, and he quavered a bit and then shrugged.
"It would be, though," he muttered.
Jana glared at him again and then looked them over. "Anyway, we're getting closer, so you guys should probably head for the bridge. I'm gonna go grab Logan for Noh—"
"Woah, wait … you're going to go get Logan? By yourself?" Tony asked. "Is that strictly wise?"
"Noh asked me to," Jana said with a shrug.
"And Logan and K have been tucked away doing God-knows-what this entire flight," Tony pointed out. "Haven't seen them since dinner — and that seemed to be just for K to get Clint started on the best ways to disembowel a Shi'ar."
"Yeah, thanks for reminding us," Sophia muttered at the floor. "I still haven't gotten my appetite back."
"Didn't seem to bother them in the least," Tony said, smirking her way.
"That's because they're both crazy," Sophia pointed out. "And they literally refer to each other as 'torture spouses', so…"
"No, Clint refers to them that way," Tony said. "I'm not sure who started that, but I'm going to hope it wasn't her."
"This is the same woman who calls Noh her sparkly darling in vinyl wrapping," Jana pointed out with a smirk.
"Okay you can stop," Tony said as he got up. "I don't want to know what she calls Logan. Good luck, by the way, with that."
"I'll knock," Jana promised, though she did look a bit more apprehensive than she had when she arrived, and she just seemed to get a bit more nervous all the way down the hall to where Logan and K were hidden away.
She paused for a second before she knocked a few times and called out, "Um ... we're almost there, and Noh asked me to get you?"
There was a short pause before Logan rumbled out to come in. "What does he want?" Logan asked when she stepped inside. The scene was nowhere near as bad as Stark had made it out to be, since really, it looked more like Jana had simply woken them up. The two of them were half-wrapped around each other but sleepy looking.
"He's trying to find a way to get past the Shi'ar patrols to get to the planet, I think. Wanted to get your input… and… and mine, I think," she said, looking a bit pink.
"Mmhmm," Logan replied as the two little ferals stretched out and made their way upright. He helped K to her feet and pushed her ahead of him as they headed to the door. When they stepped through, Jana had taken a few steps back, and K grabbed her arm and pulled her over to wrap an arm around the girl's shoulders.
"Don't lie, honey, even if you're not sure about what's going on," K whispered. "Unsureness shows."
"I'm not… I'm not trying to lie," Jana assured her.
"You don't know what they want," K said reasonably. "He wanted to go up to help make the plan anyhow, so you didn't really need to bait him. He just wanted to see if you'd answer him. To see what you knew — or if you were just a messenger."
"Noh really did say he wanted me to help," Jana insisted with a bit of a frown.
"He wants you to learn. You don't have anything to offer yet with this scenario — unless you get lucky and find an angle those two won't see. Don't hold your breath."
"Okay, but I wasn't lying," Jana said quickly.
"I didn't say you were," K pointed out.
"You need to stop while you're ahead, kiddo," Logan said from the other side of K.
She shot him a glare before she immediately tried to soften it and just … sighed. "I'm not trying to lie," she muttered out.
"Good. Keep it that way," Logan advised as they came up on the bridge.
Kate was seated at the controls for the ship now, and Noh was pacing back and forth over a few holograms. He glanced up when the three of them arrived and waved them over to start explaining, mostly for Jana's benefit.
"Their planetary defenses are readjusting," he said as he showed the layout of ships around the planet. "While that will create a temporary opening that I believe we can exploit, my concern is that it bodes ill for our friends."
"What do you mean?" Jana asked, since Noh's gaze was on her and he seemed to be waiting for her to response.
"Their defenses are concentrating near the capital city." Noh let out a long and heavy sigh. "Their formation is not offensive, either. And while it is defensive, it is more… ceremonial than anything else."
While that information had K and Logan frowning hard, Jana didn't quite follow whatever it was that Noh wasn't saying. "Ceremonial?" she repeated.
"I can't tell you for sure," Noh said with a slow frown. "I only know that in my studies back home, in my universe, such formations were considered to be an omen of public humiliation at the least, execution at the worst — and the celebrations that followed thereafter." He ran a hand through his hair as he added, "But that was in my universe, and we had long ago conquered the Shi'ar, so my records and training were more historical than anything else."
"Wouldn't surprise me if that's exactly what they're doin'," Logan rumbled out as he looked over the formation Noh had shown him. "After how fast we kicked 'em out last time they came to Earth, they'll want to gloat."
Noh nodded quietly. "The problem is: the opening created by the formation will allow us unfettered access to the planet for a short time, and I have our resident Hawkeye waiting to take advantage of the opening as soon as it presents itself… but it is far from the capital city." He looked up at Logan and K. "Tommy and I can take a few people with us to run across the continent and into the city — but we cannot get the entire rescue party there in time to stop whatever ceremony this is. And if we interrupt them, I worry about what they will do to our friends who are not part of their… celebrations."
"So the rest of the team will go after them," Jana said in what she hoped was a reassuring tone. "I mean, we've got a couple Avengers, plus the whole junior squad and Kate … maybe Iron Man can scan for Earth life forms or … can you do that?" she asked Tony's way.
Tony glanced her way and gave her a sideways smirk. "I'm not the Enterprise, kiddo. I can look for Earth tech, but seeing as they've probably taken their comms and badges, I doubt I'll find anything."
"Yeah, but …" K paused as the turned to Tony for a moment. "The first time I was at the Avenger's tower, you made a point to do a full body scan of me. Did you do that for the others too?" Logan turned to half glare at Tony at that.
"Ah, no. Not everyone," Tony admitted. "Not everyone was moonlighting as a secretive secretary and asking for new tech, though."
"Nice cover," Logan grumbled.
"Yeah, but … do you have any of the ones that are missing? Some way to search out their bio-signature?" K asked, largely ignoring her grumpy husband's glare toward Tony.
"I've got some scans from Spidey last time he was having power issues," Tony said with a little nod.
"So … do that, genius," Logan rumbled with a touch of a growl.
"Sure, I'll just reroute my entire sensor array to scan for bio-signatures," Tony grumbled a bit, though he was already starting to make some adjustments. "I'll only need to refigure about half of the data. No problem."
"Wow, you really are stupid when you're flustered," K said with a grin. "Why not send the data to Noh's ship?"
"To be fair to him," Noh said, though he was smirking at Tony's expression, "I've been particularly strict about how much I do not want his suit interfacing with my ship."
"Pretty sure there's a spot somewhere we can jam a flash drive on that suit," Logan muttered.
Noh laughed. "Nothing so crude," he said. "I can purge my system afterward and keep him out of mine — it's more the principal of the thing," he explained as he waved Tony over and gave him a few whispered commands on where he could interface with the ship, though the ship seemed reluctant to work with Tony, moving her controls around when he got close.
Noh smacked a hand on her console. "Be nice," he hissed out, and the ship finally interfaced with Tony for a moment, though as soon as it had what it wanted, the floor actually tilted and dumped Tony on his back to get rid of him.
"I guess she's done with you," K said with a very amused smirk before Tony could stand up again.
"I feel so used," Tony said as he picked himself up and made a bit of a face.
"Aw, poor Tony," K chuckled as she offered him a hand up. "I'm told that's hard to swallow the first time around. How many times is this now for you?"
"Consider your response carefully, and remember how young some of our members are," Noh said quickly when he saw the look on Tony's face. Which had K cackling, since she knew where Tony was headed, and the fact that he couldn't say what he wanted was just ... too good.
"So, is this the scan?" Jana cut in as a new hologram lit up the bridge screen, and Noh looked over at her with an encouraging smile and a nod as he pulled it from the main screen to in front of them where the rest were. "How do we know if it worked?"
Noh smiled and pointed her attention to the results being filtered through the system. "When this stops spitting out negative responses, it will show the positive one," he explained, and a few moments later, the hologram did just that, showing a position a little further removed from the capital city but still close enough that there would be plenty of security.
"Yeah, this isn't really a good sign," Logan said quietly.
Noh nodded his agreement as he started to input a few other pieces of data into the scan, his frown deepening. "If he is not in the capital, they've separated our friends… I may be able to find one more."
"Let me take a wild guess as to who's apart from the group," Logan said before he let out a sigh.
"I'd say you'd be right, but let me confirm it first," Noh said as he started up a new scan and Jana was looking wide-eyed between the two of them, clearly not following them.
"If we can get her out first, she can more or less level the rest of them," Logan said thoughtfully, before the scan was finished. "They can't fight her."
"Who?" Jana asked at last.
"Rachel," K said quietly. "She's carrying the Phoenix force." She watched the girls' lack of response before she explained very shortly. "The Phoenix can destroy entire planets in an instant. They can't defend against her."
"Oh." Jana stared at K for a moment. "I… I've never actually touched Rachel, so I didn't know... I thought she just didn't like me ... after the Sinister thing with her dad..."
"Forget the Sinister thing," Logan growled out. "You should learn about what your teammates are capable of."
"I know, but she's never really let me touch her," Jana said.
"You do know how to read, don't you?" Logan snapped her way.
Jana blinked at him for a moment and took a slight step back. "Sorry," she said quickly.
"You're doin' the same damn thing everyone your age does and forgetting the basics. Use your head instead of your abilities."
Jana bit her lip and fell silent, just nodding at that as Noh frowned the slightest bit and let out a sigh, pushing another hologram Logan's way. "I can take you and K — Tommy can help me — to where Rachel is," he suggested. "If we can disrupt whatever it is they are doing to contain and destroy her, you're right — the fight will be over quickly, and we can move on to help the others."
"Make sure Tony can navigate to the others," Logan said before he turned to Jana. "Get the rest of the junior team together. You all need to hear the plan, and I'm not about to repeat myself."
"Okay," Jana squeaked before she very quickly nodded and rushed off of the bridge to do just that.
"She thinks you're mad at her," K told him quietly while they waited for the kids to return.
"Good. Maybe she'll try harder to pull her head out before she gets hurt," Logan replied.
"She's a good student; she just lacks… what's the phrase? Common senses, yes?" Noh said.
"Yeah, that's close enough," Logan said with a nod, and K made a point to try and settle him out a bit before he could bite anyone else's head off.
By the time the junior squad — and Clint — arrived at the bridge, they were just about ready to make their approach, and Noh had taken over flying the ship for the time being to get them through the temporary opening. Kate was standing behind him watching a bit nervously, and Clint tipped his head K's way.
"What kinda landing we making?" he asked.
"Well, I was expecting something slick and on the down low that no one will see, but …" K paused and shot Clint a grin. "Our dramatic shimmering sparkle bonanza is flying, so …. Maybe hockey stop, sideways skid and burst out guns ablazing? Would that make you feel better?"
"K, I'll take whatever landing we get long as we walk away from it and you can point me to where Tasha is," Clint said, though he was smirking the slightest bit her way.
"Jana said you guys had a plan?" Cassie offered, and it didn't escape K's notice that the older girl was half standing in front of Jana, so she had likely noticed that Jana was a bit thrown off by getting snapped at by Logan.
"Yeah, real simple," Logan said her way, though he looked ready to tear the planet apart himself. "You guys follow Stark. He's gonna take you to where most of our friends are. The four of us..." he said, gesturing to himself, Noh, K, and Tommy, "...are headed to Rachel. For now."
"With a little luck, that'll be the end of it — but if it doesn't work out, we'll head your way fast," K promised. "Find our guys and get them freed."
"How come they're separated?" Brye asked. "I mean ... why just her?"
"Our best guess is the Shi'ar want to publicly execute the Phoenix," Logan said frankly. "There's a lot of bad blood there — from long before the Phoenix chose Rachel for a host."
"That could be bad," Tyler said with a little frown.
"And … the last time we had Phoenix issues this big ... " Logan looked down a bit and shook his head. "Let's not repeat that."
"So we'll get there before it gets out of hand," Kate called out from where she was helping Noh navigate. "Have a little faith."
"Yeah, I'm tryin', Chicken Hawk," he replied. "Just trying to prep for if there needs to be a repeat."
"And anyway, you kids'll be with me," Tony put in. "We're rounding up the rest of the team. And Ty — I'm probably gonna need your help with fixing them up, so stick close. If we can get everyone on their feet and up to snuff, this will go much faster and smoother."
"Until then — quiet please," Noh called over his shoulder. "I'm trying to concentrate."
Kate smirked his way for a second and then leaned back over his shoulder to help with the navigation as the little blue and white ship carefully snuck behind enemy lines.