Chapter 7
January 11th, 2029
A warning klaxon.
Flashes of red light flicker-flicker-flickered in and out of view.
Someone screamed.
Clint's body flung sideways, hit something, or someone, and rebounded off the cold floor.
The siren squealed.
Disoriented, Clint shifted up. The bed sheets were trapped around his ankles and he tripped trying to free himself from them. Something smelled strange, like sizzling wires and ozone. He tried to look around in the flash of the red warning lights. The klaxon continued to wail. Metal slammed into metal with the force of a colliding car. Clint's body pitched forward, hit the side of the bed, and threw himself back onto the mattress. Someone beside him screamed.
"Natasha!" Clint came to his senses and cried out for her, reaching blindly around with one hand. He felt something slick and bleeding, the side of her head. He followed her hair down, found her arm, and dragged her against him.
"Clint!" she shrieked.
The wall across from them exploded. Metal pealed apart like a blooming flower and suddenly the vacuum of space pulled at them with incredible speed. Clint tightened his grip on her waist and fished over the end of the bed for something, anything to grab onto. The ship lurched a third time and the open wall across from them pitched upward. Their bodies dangled in the air as the vacuum sucked against them, dragging the articles off the bed, prying open drawers, pulling everything out into the soundless void and death beyond the safety of the ship's hull.
"Hold on!" Clint cried.
The door across from them pried open and without warning the feeling of being pulled apart vanished. Natasha and Clint fell, hit the floor, and tumbled toward the far wall. Loki rushed further inside and slid his way toward them in his nightclothes.
"Get up!" he roared. "It won't hold long, get up!"
He grabbed Clint by the arm and dragged the archer to his feet. The hall door opened and in a mass of falling bodies they rolled out of the living quarter. The blast door automatically sealed the room off behind them. Slowly the ship leaned to its port side, leveling out the ground beneath their feet again.
Clint gasped to catch his breath as Loki collapsed against the wall and did the same.
"Tasha?" Barton asked.
"A cut, just a cut." She said, pushing his hand away from her. She tapped a few fingers to her temple and winced.
"What just happened?"
Loki leaned up and spread out his hands to the sides. "What do you think? I do believe someone has taken the initiative of shooting at us."
"Who would be that crazy and stupid?" Natasha questioned, looking up at Clint. She had a sizable five inch gash along her hairline.
"Loki, get her to Bruce in the medical bay. I'll find that out."
"I am not a subject to be ordered!"—"If you think I'm leaving because a cut—" Both protests came simultaneously as the two across from him struggled to find their footing. Natasha fainted sideways, directly into Loki's arms who, surprisingly enough, caught her. Clint rushed forward and helped cradle her down. The Gateway took another direct hit and the three of them flew off balance. Clint, poised over Natasha's body, attempted to keep her still.
"Tasha? Tasha wake up! Look at me!"
Loki scrambled to his knees and checked the woman's pulse. "She is unconscious, not dead."
Clint's heart let off the gas and began to slow. He pointed at Natasha, then at Loki, and lastly up the hall. "She does not faint. You take her to Bruce or else I'm making Thor send you to Svartalfheim and you won't be able to follow me at all."
Loki scowled at him. "You would not like the result of crossing me."
Barton moved passed him in the direction of the bridge. "Do what I said! And get my arrows! Oh, by the way, nice jammy-jays grease-lightning."
Loki's scowl deepened until it seemed his face would remain trapped that way but he reluctantly did as Clint asked and hoisted Natasha over his shoulder. He made his stumbling way down the corridor in the direction of the medical center only a floor away. Clint pushed on in the opposite direction. If Loki knew what was good for him, and he had no doubt the Frost Giant did, he would do as he'd been asked. Clint had to get to the command center.
He sailed through the first level, brushing through crowds of disoriented Terran heroes along the way. Gambit caught his arm instantly and the two bum-rushed a path through the others. They cut right, took the stairs up as hordes of others rushed down, and met a sealed set of blast doors. Gambit threw a card into it with little affect. The X-man indicated a different direction, and the both of them headed up an opened corridor. They sailed through the side doors of the command center. Half of the windows were locked down with the outer protective shielding. Clint could see the torpedo-sized holes in their massive sheeting and the dents over the outer doors that somehow found a way to hold. Blaster fire cut a diagonal path across the bridge, taking a straight line of monitors and controls with it. Floor vents blasted upward with clouds of fire-choking dust to keep the entire bridge from going up in flames.
Steve stood behind the controls with a team of Terran fighter pilots around him forcing the ship to stay afloat. Deputies from other realms manned the battle stations and tried to salvage what remained of the ship's navigation system. Just outside the center windows, the crest of another ship brushed over their bow and dove into Vanaheim airspace. Clint watched in confusion as the massive destroyer suddenly, and inexplicably faded into nothing at all.
"What hit us?!" Gambit cried, mounting the catwalk to stand beside Clint.
"A Kree ship. We never even saw it coming!" Steve declared, struggling against the ship's controls to bring her out of the dive into the planet's atmosphere.
"I have seen this before." Thor whispered, watching three, four, and then five more Kree ships both appear and disappear on the journey into the atmosphere.
Clint closed in on him. "Thor, what is it?"
"It is not possible. I know it cannot be."
Clint grabbed the Asgardian and forced their eyes to meet. "WHAT IS IT?!" he demanded.
"What they have done—" Thor pulled away from him, strode across the walkway and pointed into the fleet of invisible ships. "That technology. I have only seen such a thing on the ships of the Dark Elves. How could they have achieved this?"
Clint looked at the Nova Core officer behind the navigation console. "You! How close was the Kree army to Svartalfhem?"
The technician's face paled as he brought up the globular map Bruce created. Sure enough, the last dregs of Kree airspace came incredibly close, too close, to that dead world where the last known dark elf ship crashed into. Clint cursed and slammed the palm of his hand against the metal console. He spun around to face Nova Prime.
"They've been playing us since day one to get themselves right where they want. Is that armada operational?" Nova Prime asked, looking to Steve.
"We're trying to scramble now but no one can reach them! They're sitting ducks down there."
Clint's mind snapped at the sudden thought. "Oh my God—Alfheimr! Steve, they're down there! All of them! They have no idea what's coming! Are communications online?"
"That was the first of our devices destroyed." A technician appeared over the side of a smoldering metal heap, holding a mass of fried wires. He shook his head hopelessly.
"I'm going down there." Clint announced.
"Clint!" Steve exclaimed. He tried to release the ship's controls, but the Gateway's nose took a steep dive, throwing all of them across the catwalk. He grabbed them again and threw a desperate look after Barton. "Don't! You won't get there in time!"
"I'm not sitting here and watching all of them get slaughtered either!" Clint shouted back. There was no way he could do that, not after all Haladarrel sacrificed for him in the past. He took a fading look at the beautiful Vanaheim landscape. Soon, the entire surface would be on fire. Clint left the bridge and ran headlong into Loki at the same time. Before he could ask, the Frost Giant held up Clint's quiver and shoved it into Barton's chest.
"She is safely deposited as requested. Now the next time you demean me to such a task as errand boy—"
"Talk later, run now!" Clint told him, pushing away and tearing off down the corridor again. Loki rolled his eyes heavenward, wondered whether he had actually made the best decision after all, and caught up to the Avenger. They had to change routes a second time as before them a third blast door came down with a crash. The people were being funneled away from the outer edges of the ship and into the center where their protection was more readily guaranteed. Every single life was precious in the war to come, if they happened to live so long. Clint lead them down another passage, slid down level after level of stairs, and dropped onto a landing before shoving through another door. It closed them in.
"May I ask what it is you are trying to find?" Loki asked. Even after sprinting over half the ship he still didn't seem winded in the least.
"Hanger." Clint replied over his shoulder, yanking the next submarine-style door inward. He crouched, stepped in, and waited for Loki before sealing them both inside.
Loki looked over the countless modified quinjets below them. Few had been dispatched to fight off the surprise attack. Too many people had already been funneled into the ship's center to man what remained. Skeptically, Loki considered the options.
"Are we planning to destroy the entire Kree fleet ourselves?"
Clint didn't stay on the landing to chit-chat, he was already heading down to pick out a fighter that seemed capable of immediate lift-off. "We don't need to take them out. We just have to reach the Vanaheim hangers before they do." Clint found one he liked, threw open the pilot's hatch, and lifted himself in. He didn't bother to wait for Loki who paused outside for a moment and again considered the sanity of his decision. He'd come this far already, though. Using his long fingers, he grasped the edges of the hatch and pulled up. He hadn't even managed to hoist his legs inside before Clint was already guiding the ship into the open air. Faster, Loki tucked his legs in and slammed the hatch lid shut. The hiss of the vacuum seal attested to its proper placement.
"You might have waited until I was inside." He said angrily.
"You could be faster." Clint shot back. He grabbed the co-pilot's head set and handed it backward. "Now if I'm stuck with you, you better make yourself useful. Get up here and strap in."
"Why yes, my most esteemed and annoying pest of a companion." Loki replied. He glared at the headset, affixed it with trepidation over his ears and strode forward to drop into the co-pilot's seat. He fished around for the harness, considered against it, and glanced over at Barton. "Some pair this makes. Do you realize you have nothing on."
Clint looked down at himself. Sure enough he wasn't wearing any clothes save for his boxers. He threw the disgruntled look right back at Loki. "Look who's talking. I never fancied you for long underwear. And for the record, all of my clothes are now hurtling through Vanaheim's atmosphere. What's your excuse?"
"I have no need to keep such trivialities." Loki replied haughtily. He closed his eyes to concentrate for a moment on the state of his physical appearance in order to manifest a proper wardrobe. The quinjet bucked, sending the Frost Giant up about two feet before he came back down on his rump. Clint cut the jet sideways to make it through the open docking bay door, and they blasted into open space at last. Behind them the Gateway's defense systems finally fired to life. Streams of laser shots and torpedoes blasted out with expert targeting systems Tony had designed for the smaller fighters. The few remaining Kree warships that hadn't gone under cloak began to take heavy fire, despite their shielding systems.
"I thought you were manifesting jeans over there." Clint interrupted Loki's thoughts.
Loki grabbed at the restraints and buckled them into place. "It does take a deal of concentration and you do not exactly sport the steadiest hand on this infernal ship!"
"Hey, talk like that means you sit in the back of the ship. Now hush up and make with the concentrating."
"If you would silence your blathering jaw for twelve seconds I might!" Loki shot back. A few seconds later, he looked over into the face of Natasha Romanov and smiled. "Oh, well that sight does make me feel a tad better."
Clint (or Natasha's) face scrunched up and pulled back at the strange come-hither look on the adopted Asgardian. It didn't make any sense to Clint until he looked down at himself and realized what Loki had done. Clint grabbed the steering wheel a little tighter.
"I said you would rue the day you crossed me." Loki replied, shifting his form to add a decent layer of clothing to himself. He allowed Barton to stay in Natasha's form too, despite the heavy protestations, all the way to the surface of Vanaheim.
:(:):(:):
The city's spires had yet to see the full brunt of the Kree's surprise attack. Clint had no way of knowing how close the enemy ships were, but he did know that the thrusters on his smaller quinjet had the ability to out-maneuver the much larger and slower destroyers. The minute he broke atmosphere, he threw the navigation control's to Loki's console and grasped for the ship-to-ship coms.
"This is Hawkeye calling the Battle Docks, can you hear me? If anyone is there, come in!"
"The controls on this machine are simply in a deplorable state." Loki complained.
"Next time why don't you decide to build it yourself?" Clint fired back. He motioned to himself and the tight leather cat suit Loki put him in. "Spare me, please."
"Ugh, well, all right." He sighed, settling on Clint's old SHIELD uniform to put the Avenger in.
"You weren't this mean when you took out my mind and played with it."
"You weren't this fun when I took your mind and played with it."
"Battle Docks reading you loud and clear. Repeat—"
"Hello?" Clint put the mic back to his mouth and radioed into it. "This is Hawkeye, now listen up! I need you to mobilize anything that can fly and what you can't get off the ground, I need you to tighten up better than a nun's corset! We have hostiles, I repeat, we have multiple hostiles on their way. They are going to level the city. This is an immediate evacuation, got me?"
The other line faltered for half a second, no doubt absorbing the depths of what Clint conveyed. "Ho—How much time?"
"None! Get out of there, NOW!" Barton exclaimed. He switched comm channels, trying to get in touch with the underground training base.
"Since we have just flown into the midst of a great onslaught to come, how exactly do you wish to proceed?" Loki asked flashing a curious expression at him.
"We need to get to the training center. Alfheimr's king is there and he's our top priority." Clint replied.
Loki nodded once and adjusted their course. The ship howled to life, a red and green light streaming over the switchboard. He leaned over, flicked a blinking switch and a backward relay camera centered on Clint's half of the view screen. "It seems out friends have entered the atmosphere without their clever disguise."
"We must have knocked it out on one of them. The others we're not so lucky with." Clint replied. He tapped the relay switches again, finally breaking through the lines of code to reach someone on the other end. He passed along the message again, ordered an immediate evacuation, and called for the bay doors to be opened. He planned to land the quinjet even if they went down in a hail of bullets and jet fuel fire.
"Two minutes out. Pass me the controls." Clint said, pulling back on his steering yoke. Loki swiped his hand on the liquid screen between them and the controls went back to Clint's side. The rear view screen flipped to Loki's where he began to manipulate it.
"They are opening fire." Loki announced.
Clint braced himself, spun left, climbed, and then went into a nose-first dive that brought them right through the center of the city. They hid beneath the gilded archways and towering spires from the Kree warships directly above him. The city itself was not so lucky. Four more Kree destroyers appeared in the sky, their cloaked shielding peeling back like a second skin to reveal the massive warship hidden beneath. The sight of them blackening out the crescent moon gave Clint a temporary pause. He'd never seen something that large in his life, not since Galactus first came to Earth in his humanoid form and nearly turned the planet inside out.
"I believe speed, in this case, would be quite wise." Loki told him.
His temporary glance over, Clint returned to the task at hand. He hit the thrusters, pushing the ship to its very limits and beyond. Beside him Loki plastered back against his seat and breathed a little faster. His long white fingers clung to his arm rests as Clint made impossibly fast turns in the city streets. When they encountered an endless wall that seemed to stretch forever, he pulled back on the controls, the ship lurched straight up and rolled wing-over-wing until they got clear. That's when the barrage started. The Kree ships coordinated their attack in a blanket-wide destruction of the entire city. Escape ships already began to climb into the sky. The less experienced pilots were frantically fighting to find free air, only to be cut in half under the volley of blaster fire. Clint couldn't think of that. He had a single mission. He had to get their pilots off the ground and save as much of the armada as he could.
The quinjet responded expertly to his touch as he swung around the open training center dock and began to put the ship down. Unexpectedly and new wave of canon fire rained down on them from above. The ship lurched out of Clint's hands and before he could regain control they went into a cutting arc and landed sideways into the wing of another ship. A volley of firepower followed them in. Pilots were scrambling around them to get into cockpits only to be blown apart under the ready Kree guns. Some, at least, managed to get out. They swarmed the air like kicked hornets, flooding the Kree ships in return fire.
Clint lost consciousness for a moment when the ships collided. He came awake very suddenly strapped into the seat of his smoldering quinjet with Loki fighting out of his restraints beside him. Barton thumbed his own jump seat and fell forward against the front panel chest-first. He gasped, touching a finger against his side. Something was bleeding there.
At the sound of his voice, Loki threw him a sharp glance. "You are injured?"
"Not bad." Clint lied. He had no idea how bad he was. He tugged himself up with the back of his chair and swung over the center instrument panel. He held a hand against his side and indicated the hatch. "Get that open before we burn to death in here."
Loki, having no desire to die himself, shoved the seal on the jump hatch aside and kicked it downward. He stepped back, letting Clint slide down first. If anyone was going to be accidentally shot while entering the under-attack base, it would be the first one to leave the ship. He wanted to cover all his bases of personal preservation. When Clint was clear, he lowered down beside him and took in their surroundings. A few Elves began pouring out of a smoke-filled hall. Clint made for them, but another wave of firebombs cut off their path. Loki and he dove to the side as the world around them exploded. Ships peeled back with the force and tumbled end-over-end like missiles of their own. A wing sheared off, coming within a few feet of the pair before it imbedded in the solid rock floor. Clint and Loki looked down at it, then at each other, and decided to make a run for it.
The hall the Elves had been running down sealed off in the second explosion. The survivors limped away, trying to find cover wherever it may be had. Clint knelt beside the closest one and quickly demanded where Haladarrel and the other pilots were. The elf lifted his hand and pointed down an adjacent corridor. "We were pushed back! The entry has sealed and our king has gone in for them! He may not escape!"
Clint bounded to his feet and followed Loki around the mounting rubble and blazing fires. The edges of the hanger above their heads crumbled under the continued attack. A massive shake rocked the entire compound, and suddenly those edges came loose. Concrete, two tons in weight, dropped from the sky and smashed into the ground. Loki pulled up short outside the tunnel leading underground. He cast a glance at Clint.
"This boarders on the suicidal." He said.
Clint called his Asgardian bow to his fingers. "I'm going in there."
"You might have a death date over your head but I do not. I could very well not survive this encounter." Loki growled back.
Clint left him, sprinting down the tunnel alone. "I didn't ask you to come!"
:(:):(:):
The tunnel was a death trap. Walls collapsed together as the bombardment shook the foundation of the land above them. Concrete and metal struts dropped into the open passage threatening to bury him beneath them. A few Elves hadn't been lucky enough to escape. He paused by their crushed bodies, checking their pulses to be sure whether they were alive or not. Ahead of him he heard the shouts of frantic men rushing back and forth in their attempt to free something or someone. Clint called forward and tried to get their attention but another blast from above destroyed the entryway across from him. Adrenaline flooded through him, pumping his heart like a jackhammer as he crushed sideways to squeeze through the minor passage left to enter.
"Hello!" Clint called again. "Can anyone hear me?"
Arriving through the other side of the partition, Clint fell into the back of an Elven man. The creature turned. His face was covered in sweat, dust, and fresh blood. He and the twelve others beside him were trying to fight their way through a solid blast door. Wires from a circuit panel were in one of the Elves' hands. He threw a look over his shoulder and Clint realized it was Linnor.
"Ackarae!" He shouted the Elven word for archer with shock. "What are you doing here? How did you come here?"
"Where is Haladarrel?!" Clint demanded, pushing his way through them. Some tried to clear the path back up the hallway and the safety beyond.
Linnor worked swiftly on the door. "Beyond here! He came back for them. The doors have sealed him in. He cannot get out! Are the other entries free?"
"Everything's collapsed." Clint told him, shoving forward in the space. "This is the only hall left open into the base." He stared through the small porthole. In the next room he could see a center room full of rubble. Overhead a gas line blew out fire like a flamethrower across what remained of the exposed conduits. Blood and bodies both littered the floor. What he could not see was the king of Alfheimr. Clint looked back the way they came and considered the wall set in their path. Even if he could get Haladarrel out, it was impossible to move them through the small space before the walls came right down on everyone.
"Alright, everyone out! Back down the hall, I have a plan! Linnor, come on!"
"I will never abandon my king!" Linnor spat fiercely, refusing to be moved.
Clint grabbed his arm, not because he knew he could strongman him away, Elves were much too powerful for him to try that, but he could move him mentally. "I'm not asking you to abandon him. I'm asking you to let me save him, now come on! We're out of time!" Linnor's terrified eyes focused on Clint. There was trust between them. One fought for long and hard in times and wars past. Finally Linnor let go. He left the work on the door's circuitry and the two followed the others on their way through the small hole. They vaulted through the hurdles in their path and when Clint thought they were at least a decent space away, he pulled out his bow and arrow. He changed tips, set it on his string, and shouted back to the others.
"Everyone get down! This'll either save us or bury us. So start praying." Clint set his arrow on the string. Pulled the nock back against his face and lined up his shot. The arrow rushed off the string, through the obstacle course, and hit the blast doors on the other side. Clint ducked down. An Elven arm came over his back and tucked his head in. They all waited as the man-made explosion rocketed down the hall toward them. Clint felt shrapnel and concrete skitter across their bodies. When he looked up, the path was clear again. He scampered to his feet and headed back for the blast doors. He knew they didn't open; they were designed to withstand a bigger explosion than what Clint's arrows could manage but the wall beside it crumbled just enough to fit a small man through. The Elves may have been too large, but Clint could certainly get inside.
"Stay here, I'll get him out!" Clint told them, already passing through the other side before a single one of them had a chance to protest. He slid his quiver off and left it on the outside of the wall, should they require more firepower again, and slipped inside. He had to keep low, left, and avoid the rocket of flames bearing down from the gas line above him. Through the dust and smoke, the ashes and fire he felt around for any sign of Haladarrel Bywater. Clint slid his hands forward, feeling his way like a firefighter until he came across the first lump of something. It was a bed roll. He must be in one of the living quarters. He moved over the bed, felt passed another one, and was pushing forward toward the closest access way when something beneath him moaned. He stopped and retraced his steps back. His eyes were watering, making it difficult to see what lay beneath him. Clint felt something that might have been an arm and traced it up. Apparently it was Haladarrel's leg, flattened and crushed beneath the weight of a boulder. He kept following up Haladarrel's chest, shoving debris hundreds of pounds in weight away. Lastly he discovered Haladarrel's face through the smoke and ash.
"Hal!" Clint exclaimed. He set a hand beside his face and tapped him gently. Trying to bring the Elf around. "Wake up for me, come on. Wake up."
"Ackarae, have you found him?" Linnor shouted through the hole.
"I have him!" Clint shouted back. "Get that door open, I have to drag him out."
"It is coming. Hurry, please!"
Clint's lungs felt the heavy weight of the gas and smoke trying to overrun him. He reached down and wrapped his arms beneath Haladarrel and crawled backwards as he dragged the king toward safety. The door sprang open and half a dozen hands reached inside to help him.
"Easy with him! I think his head's bleeding. His whole side's crushed in. Is he breathing? Linnor, check on him!"
The Elves eased Haladarrel in the hallway and tried rousing him.
"Is he breathing?" Clint asked again desperately.
Linnor looked up. His voice fluttered. "I believe so. He may be . . . he needs help urgently."
"Get him up. I saw another door, I want to check it. You three get him down the hall. Loki is there, find a ship, and get him on it! I'll be right back—"
"Ackarae!" Linnor cried.
Clint stood to go back into the depths of the inferno. An explosion shot above them and it was all he could do to fall sideways and out from under the sinking metal struts. The Elves screamed for him again, but it was too late. He was on the other side of the rubble already and far beyond their reach. Linnor rushed the fallen concrete and instantly set to lifting chunks of rock away. He turned on his compatriots.
"Kinmae en tema geli! Rechae! Rechae!" Get the king to safety! Hurry, Hurry!
A few of the Elves tended their king while the others threw themselves at the pile of fallen rock. The world was crumbling around them. They had to get out, now, or risk being buried alive with Clint. After watching the man risk his very life to save their beloved ruler, nothing on heaven or earth could move Linnor from what he must do to get Clint out. They dug until their fingers bled, desperate to uproot the archer just a wall away from them.
Holy cow! How exciting! What will happen next? Will Loki rush in to save him? Will Clint be buried alive? Stay tuned!
-Please review! I'm slaving away on this one for sure:)