Avengers

by James A. Moore

  Wakanda’s defenders repelled the first attack on that African nation, and New York withstood the worst of the offensives thanks in large part to the weapons employed by Reed Richards and Tony Stark from Avengers Tower.

  The summons sent out, Black Bolt waited and looked to the stars. As a result, he was among the first to see the massive vessel come down and hover above his city, just out of range of the most powerful weapons. The ship that dropped from the larger vessel was a speck in comparison, but closer inspection revealed it was large enough to carry an alarming number of troops.

  The ship landed without incident in a broad courtyard and discharged its contents. Black Bolt recognized the creatures. These were of a kind with the thing that had invaded his bedchamber—indeed, the chambers of his mind. The thing had been tough enough to endure incredible damage, and now there were a dozen of the nightmares moving across the landing field and marching toward his throne room. Behind them strode armored aliens who looked more humanlike, led by a robed figure carrying a large, wicked blade.

  Black Bolt waited for them, and his family stood with him. Karnak, who could find any physical weakness in a foe, assessed the gathered intruders. Medusa, his wife, stood at his right hand, where she so rightly belonged. They were still not comfortable in their disagreement, but she spoke for him on all matters.

  Maximus stood on his left; next to him were Gorgon, the green-scaled water breather Triton, Crystal, and the massive canine Lockjaw. Around them gathered a hundred guards, all prepared to fight and even die if he commanded it.

  He had no intention of commanding anything of the sort.

  At least forty armored guards moved with the nightmare creatures. They appeared to be of different species. Some were humanoid; others were not. The creature carrying the massive weapon was draped in a cloak of funereal black. His face was pale gray, and his teeth were large and predatory. He smiled as he walked, but the expression carried no joy. Finally he stopped before the throne and looked around.

  “Speak.” Medusa’s command was not a request.

  The creature continued scanning the room, glancing everywhere but at Black Bolt. The insult was obvious.

  “I am Corvus Glaive, and I am here on behalf of my master,” he said. “I seek a king!” He gestured around the chamber. “Is there a king here? I hear stories of a great Inhuman king, but I look around and cannot seem to find one.” His wicked smile grew wider still. “I ask, for perhaps he is a king of small stature. A tiny king of a small, irrelevant kingdom.”

  Maximus spoke. “Building things to last ages does not seem a small thing to me,” he said. “Attilan stands while the world below crumbles.”

  When Medusa spoke again, her voice carried an air of authority and confidence that well suited a queen.

  “My husband, Black Bolt, is king. What are you?”

  “I am a servant of my master, Thanos—a destroyer of worlds. A breaker of kings.” Corvus Glaive held out his blade in a mockingly formal salute. “I am one of the five—Corvus Glaive, a member of the Cull Obsidian, the Midnight Slaughter.”

  Maximus yawned and crossed his arms. The gesture was not lost on Black Bolt or on the grinning beast before them. The smile faltered for an instant. He seemed disconcerted that no one cowered before him.

  “What do you and your Cull Obsidian want, Corvus Glaive?” Medusa asked.

  “Thanos named his generals in that way,” Glaive said. “We prefer the Black Order. It is less… foreboding. Our master allows us some indulgences.”

  Medusa waved away his speech.

  “Why are you here?” she demanded.

  “You have seen what we have done to this world,” he answered. “It is a purge, a gauntlet. We test the mettle of the people with a cleansing fire to separate the weak from the strong.” He waved to one side with a hand that boasted three grotesquely thin fingers ending in wicked claws. “It is what we do—it is our purpose.

  “We kill.”

  Glaive pointed at Black Bolt.

  Lockjaw let out a low growl of warning.

  “So it is no small miracle that Thanos sent me for another reason,” the creature of the Black Order continued. “I am to deliver a message to the Inhuman king. Thanos knows what you are hiding. He knows your secret. This knowledge has value, the result of which is influence. My master… has demands!”

  “I have a warning for you, Corvus Glaive,” Medusa said, her living hair whipping around her head like a nest of angry crimson serpents. “People have come before this throne many times with demands. It has often cost them their lives.”

  Corvus Glaive laughed, and Black Bolt frowned. Few took the threats of the Inhumans so lightly.

  “I wonder, when you correct your children, do you threaten them with candy if they misbehave?” Glaive’s grin grew wider still, baring heavy fangs and dark gray gums.

  “Excuse me?” Medusa replied.

  Even Maximus seemed confused by the words.

  “You cannot threaten someone with what they want.” With those words, Glaive gestured—and the slaughter began. As one, his own soldiers—the forty men in armor—lifted their swords and drove the blades through their own throats. Glaive continued to smile as the honor guard died around him. When it was done, only the nightmare creatures and Thanos’ general remained standing. The blood of his soldiers gathered in a large black pool that spread as they bled out.

  Black Bolt did not move, though his fist was clenched so tightly it shook. Life was a sacred thing, a valued thing, not to be tossed aside so casually.

  “I am one of the five. I do not frighten,” Glaive said, his expression grim, pointing again with his ornate blade. “We are servants of Thanos. We embrace death. Yes, you could attempt to kill me—yet even if you could manage that feat, another would take my place with the same demands. My master will get whatever he desires.”

  “And what is that?” Medusa said.

  “So very little, my queen. A pittance, really. A portion.” He paused a moment and then smiled again. “A tribute.” His eyes were red embers in their sockets, and they seemed to glow more brightly at that moment.

  “Speak plainly, monster,” Medusa said.

  “The tribute is a show of acquiescence.” Glaive’s insufferable smile grew even broader. “Lord Thanos demands an offering of all Inhumans between the standard ages of sixteen and twenty-two.”

  “And what are they supposed to offer?”

  “Only their heads,” he replied. “Their families can have what remains.”

  “You would have us kill our children to appease your master?” Her composure gone, Medusa raised her fists, and her tresses whipped around more violently than ever. “What madness is this?”

  “It’s like Herod,” Maximus said, showing greater calm. “With the Christ, in the ancient times and the human holy books.”

  “No!” The smile was gone from Corvus Glaive, and he showed his teeth in a snarl of barely repressed rage. “Like Thanos of Titan in the now. Your people may die a little, or die a lot. The choice is yours—you have one day.” He spun on his heel and walked out through the unbelievably large pool of blood. The nightmare creatures dropped down and followed him, moving like hounds with bared fangs and snapping jaws.

  Black Bolt watched the creature go.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PYRRHIC VICTORY

  IN ORBIT around the planet Whaan Prime, the massive flagship of the Shi’ar Empire accepted a request to board.

  The much smaller quincruiser limped onboard the Lilandra before its engines gave their last gasp. It was a close thing.

  Isabel Kane—the first Earthling ever to become a member of the Shi’ar Imperial Guard—was there to meet the Avengers. Captain America nodded to her.

  “The quincruiser’s done, Smasher,” he said. With him stood Thor, Bruce Banner, and Spider-Woman. “The systems are fried, the drive’s given out, and we barely got here in one piece. Permission to come aboard?”

  Smasher smiled briefly. “Gladiator sai
d all courtesies were to be extended, Cap, so welcome aboard the Shi’ar flagship Lilandra.” They stepped across the threshold, followed by Manifold, Black Widow, and Shang-Chi.

  “Any news on the other Avengers?” Cap asked.

  Kane shook her head. “No, but they might have vectored out with the Brood or the Spartax.”

  Spider-Woman shook her head and muttered, “Long as it wasn’t the Skrulls.” Cap shot her a look, and she nodded.

  “The truth is,” Smasher continued, “if Captain Marvel’s carrier doesn’t show up here, we won’t know until we reach the secondary staging point. Right after the fleet retreated, the Shi’ar network, the Kree omnicast, and every other wideband communication system went dark. We don’t want to advertise anything to the Builders, and we don’t know enough about their abilities.”

  “So we’re blind and deaf,” Cap said. “You got any good news, Izzy?”

  “Well… I think I’m falling in love with someone.” She was silent, waiting for his reaction, wondering if he would disapprove. But his expression didn’t really change.

  “That’s some timing, kiddo,” Cap remarked.

  She led them toward the ship’s command center. Gladiator sat in a ceremonial throne and looked roughly as comfortable with his position as a barefoot man dancing on broken glass. He was the ruler of the once-fragmented empire not because he had sought the position, but because the responsibility had been placed on his shoulders. His birth name was Kallark, his skin had a violet-gray hue, and his hair formed a Mohawk. Cap didn’t know a lot about his people—only that most of them were gone, destroyed.

  As they approached the throne, the Imperial Guard member called Oracle was speaking with him in an urgent tone.

  “Majestor, I must insist… we cannot wait any longer.” She stood at his right hand. “We need to make for Behemoth and the fleet staging area. The sooner we reassemble the council, the sooner we can strike back.”

  Gladiator turned to the man at his left hand—the leader of the Imperial Guard since Kallark had been appointed Majestor.

  “Mentor?”

  “What Oracle is saying has merit,” Mentor said in soft tones, “but we chose this rendezvous point for a reason. This farming colony is of no strategic value and far enough away from the path of the Builders that we felt it a safe—” Abruptly he was interrupted by a crewmember who stood at a holographic display.

  “Proximity alert!” the man said. “Majestor, we have incoming vessels arriving at the inner system. A Spartax light frigate with four unknown vessels in pursuit. They look to be Builder vessels.” He kept a tight view on what each of the ships was doing. “The frigate has a failing reactor and is bleeding radiation. They aren’t going to make it.”

  Oracle reacted quickly. “Send out word to the other ships,” she said. “Have them spool up their drives and prepare to jump.”

  Mentor shook his head. “We currently have seven ships unable to make the jump. We could feint an attack—draw them off, and mount a rescue mission.”

  “No.”

  The Majestor shook his head and pushed himself up from the throne. “They want to make us scatter. They want us to run so they can chase us down. I will not allow that. I will not be beaten again this day.” He took in a deep breath, and then called out, “Warriors of the Shi’ar! Do you see how they hound us? How they hope to hunt us to extinction?” He drew up to his full height. “Well, I am no longer in the mood for running.” He paced across the floor of the command center. “You know me as Gladiator, Superguardian, Majestor of the Empire… but soon you will call me victor, because I will win here today, or die in the effort. Who will join me?”

  A chant arose, growing louder by the moment.

  “Majestor! Majestor! Majestor!”

  “Are there warriors here who would fight alongside me?” Gladiator asked, looking to his visitors. Smasher turned to one in particular.

  Bruce Banner looked back. “You guys have those devices that let you fly in the vacuum without dying?”

  “Flight patches. Yeah,” Smasher said.

  “I’m going to need one.”

  “Are you saying you want to fight the Builders?”

  “No. I’m saying the Hulk wants out, and it would be best if he was directed toward the enemy as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll get right on that.”

  It took her two minutes to get what he requested. By then most of the Avengers capable of flying through the void had already joined the Imperial Guard outside of the ship.

  * * *

  EX NIHILO stood at a large port alongside Mentor and a Shi’ar technician, watching the carnage that took place outside the vessel.

  “Your Gladiator said I was not to join them.”

  “I’m sure you can understand the Majestor’s caution, Ex Nihilo,” Mentor responded. “These cursed Builders created you, did they not?”

  “And who do you think made you?” Ex Nihilo replied. “Those are gods you battle out there.”

  “We have all heard your stories, Ex Nihilo,” Mentor said. “How your Builders and you Gardeners traveled from world to world as agents of evolution, how you held us in your hand and gave us a push where you saw fit. How you made us so much more than we were. Well, look what we have become.

  “Your kind may have been as gods once,” he continued, “but we no longer need you or want you.”

  Gladiator, Hyperion, and Thor flew together, their bodies plowing through a ship and destroying it. Heat flashed from Gladiator’s eyes, and Hyperion sent similar energies from his own. Two enemy ships exploded in flames and shards of debris. Closer in, the Falcon and Captain America took on the Alephs in hand-to-hand combat.

  “We have new gods now,” Mentor said.

  The Hulk came into view and leapt toward the battle. The patch worked as it was meant to, and he hurtled toward his target. Once he reached the vessel, his massive hands tore into the hull and easily ripped it open. Smasher followed after him and used his breach as her doorway into the enemy’s craft. The Hulk continued to his next target, barreling through a vessel that exploded into utter ruin.

  One by one the enemy ships were destroyed.

  “Sharra and K’ythri be praised,” the Shi’ar technician said. “We have won.”

  “Perhaps.” Ex Nihilo pointed. “Look there, breaking the shadow of the planet. It’s not just Alephs you face today, but my kind, as well. Ex Nihili. Life itself.”

  * * *

  AS THE war raged above, an Aleph and Jerran Ko, the Gardener to which it had given birth, landed on the planet. Whaan Prime was already fertile. In all of their time traveling together, the golden-skinned Jerran Ko had never seen a planet as lush and green.

  “Look at this—a planet of sustenance.” he said. “A garden! Do you believe in an afterlife, Aleph?”

  “DECLARATIVE: MY SHARED CODE CONTINUES ON IN THE OTHER ALEPHS. THE CODE IS ETERNAL.”

  “Well, when I die I will be gone forever,” Jerran Ko said. “And it seems that in death, our masters make a mockery of all I have done, and all that I am.”

  The robot looked to him. “DECLARATIVE: TRIUMPH BEFORE ALL, JERRAN KO. COMPLETE YOUR MAKER’S COMMANDS. IN DEATH WE WOUND OUR ENEMIES.”

  The Gardener sighed. “There was a time when the symbol on my chest meant life.” He plucked some stalks of the golden grain among which he stood. “Record those words for your code, Aleph. Tell everyone that Jerran Ko said those were better days. It is a pity that they are now long gone.”

  As he spoke his body changed. The golden skin boiled with black pustules that soon covered his entire body. Those blisters ruptured and leaked darkness that poured upward into the air, into the atmosphere. The blackness flowed like a waterspout, up into the atmosphere. It began to spread across the planet’s surface.

  The Aleph stood with the Gardener throughout the entire process. It did not move. It did not speak. It merely witnessed the death of a world.

  * * *

  “NO! HE… he couldn’t
have.” Standing with Mentor and the Shi’ar, Ex Nihilo looked on in horror.

  Peering down at the planet, he had followed the debris trail from one of the ships that had plunged down into the atmosphere and crashed. Abruptly a wave of emotion washed over him, and he knew instinctively something profound had occurred below.

  “Get everyone back here,” he said. “You must sound a retreat. Something unthinkable has happened.”

  Mentor looked toward him and frowned. “What?”

  “I am a Gardener,” Ex Nihilo explained. “I carry both life and death within me. The Builders have decided to use foul death in the fight against your attempts. One of mine has killed himself, and in the process poisons the world below us. The planet is already dead, and much as I wish I could change that, I cannot.”

  Mentor moved over to a sensor array. “Speak to me. What am I looking for on the surface?”

  “You are looking for death.” Ex Nihilo watched him. “Entropy. Decay. Get as many people as you can off the planet. All too soon it will bear no signs of life.”

  Mentor looked carefully. “There is a growing patch of rot… decay. It’s moving very fast.”

  “It will cover this planet in a matter of hours. Get all of the people you can to safety, or you will lose them all to this plague of darkness.”

  * * *

  THE EVACUATION began immediately. Those who had been sent down to the medical facilities were brought back to their ships. Those living on the planet were gathered as quickly as could be managed. Those who wished to stay were convinced to leave when they saw footage of the devastation. Where plants and life had existed, death and rot spread rapidly as the black cloud moved through each area.

  Less than a tenth of the population of Whaan Prime was spared. Hundreds of thousands escaped, but millions died.

  The collected forces had destroyed the Builder ships. This was the allies’ first victory. The taste was bitter, indeed.