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The SHIELD Codex: Escape Velocity

You are not a wolf, and this is a land of wolves now ~ Sicario
1. Scent Trail. . .It was difficult and tiresome to constantly explain things to outsiders, particularly when a specific matter is wrapped in a multitude of layers of meaning and intent, all of which were critically important to the full translation. It seemed plain enough as a concept in Okoye’s mind, anyway, but she’d grown up with these words. Izinja zemfazwe said the Xhosan loan-phrase, calling to mind the cleverness and mythic distance of the hyena, that beast so maligned by the West, and old Wakandan itself had the rougher title for this duty, Hatut Zeraze, which added a uniform undertone to the concept.But tell a white man your men and women that form your uniquely qualified special intelligence agency are called ‘war dogs’ and they became intensely stupid and simple about it. Too many foolish movies, she figured. Stereotypes. Colonialist propaganda. It was exhausting, that much naivety. Not all of it was benign.Fortunately, King T’Challa hadn’t bothered to be all that upfront about every little detail about their country during emergence. A good man with a full and open heart, but no idiot. These were not conversations that happened often.Okoye crossed her arms across her formal red armor and watched as the multi-feed streamed flawlessly from the ten men and women on active operation, their kimoyo beads heavily encrypted as they fed into the secure room she was observing from. As the general of the Dora Milaje, she was perfectly and technically aware of how the War Dogs operated, but they were not hers to command. They were more fractional than her warriors; they might have several operation commanders or one, and it may be that only certain trusted individuals knew what the current command structure was. Fortunately for Okoye that she was so trusted to know these things and to be involved, as this operation was being watched over by one of the greatest living War Dogs Wakanda yet knew. It was a pleasure to see her work, and such work was rare now. This was a matter that needed the keenest eyes, however.Queen Ramonda frowned as the three lead War Dogs infiltrated deeper into the target territory. She flicked a hand across the beads on her wrist, controlling the triple-encrypted stream and getting a panopticon-style view of the faraway outpost. A single pixel seemed to pop out, as if forced into sight by her will. “The material signature. Still mixed. On the flatbed.”“I see it,” said Nakia, low to not interrupt the Queen’s train of thought. She plucked a sub-stream from their view and expanded it for a detailed look, turning the pixel into a rough 3-d shape attached to a more recognizable F-450 vehicle, an import in that part of the world. She was second operations command in this room, though Nakia now seldom went afield the way she used to. It had been one of her former, still active colleagues that had gotten the first sniff of new trouble and called out to her, skipping to the top due to the nature of her intel. “Yes, it’s the one Phozisa tracked out of Morocco.” She looked up from the stream at the Queen. “It’s still an unstable signature.”Okoye shook her head. “One cannot change the nature of vibranium. It either is, or it is not. If they are moving vibranium, how can our tracking systems be confused? We know this material like none other. It cannot be masked, not by any normal means. Something is very strange here.”Ramonda continued to track the signature, cocking her head to listen as the closest Dog slipped through the crowd at the Jordanian dock. “There.” She tapped at the streams, focusing on the track signature of one of the men close to the vehicle. “Watch him move.”Nakia rolled her chair over to study the figure, watching layers of information turn the initial wireframe and heat identification into a person - a white man, rather generic looking, with a stony face and deep-set eyes. He had a slide to his gait. Like a limp, as if his body was heavy. “Previous injury.”“No, look closer.” Ramonda pulled the feed wider, her stare never leaving the man’s face. “Enhance the temperature overlay.”Okoye saw what her Queen did. “Armored suit. Lessened range of motion. Not a limp.”“Sabelo, I want another look at him.” Ramonda waited for the subvocal grunt of acknowledgement from the field operative. Shuri had shrunken the lag-time across oceans by another second, making the feed almost perfectly synched. She was still looking to better that almost. Half-seconds mattered in the field, sometimes more than life itself. Shuri understood that, though Ramonda would personally die to keep her from having to know it too intimately. “Very good. See if he gets distance from the truck. Keep tracking.”“What do you see, my Queen?” Now Okoye was out of her element. Ramonda was busy collating hunches, data, predictive probabilities. She was the finest operations tactician in a hundred years - but, she was quick to point out, she knew this was only because her information was so complete, given to her by the bravery and hard work of others.Ramonda studied in silence a minute longer. Then, coldly, “He is wearing vibranium weave. Poorly made, heavy, not of our make. Watch his posture. Cocksure. Proud. He has no fears left in him.”Okoye shook her head, believing in her queen, wanting to disbelieve the assessment. An unusual but frighteningly familiar material signature, and it was accompanied by processed material, no less. “That must be impossible. Scant material is unaccounted for across the globe. We have finished sweeping Klaue’s trail and reclaimed most of it. The rest is in hands we trust.”“Nonetheless.” The Queen let that hang there, a pedestal for the bad news she had concluded must be the truth. “There is now another source.” She turned away from the feed, to her son and king, who had watched in silence from a stool by the sealed door. “In uncontrolled and dangerous hands, T’Challa. Beyond simple reach.”T’Challa’s hands were steepled in front of his face as he thought. “Beyond simple Wakandan reach.” He lifted his chin, still thinking. “I have made the politics of this into something complicated. This may be a matter for several hands, not just our own.”Ramonda studied him. “I trust in you, my son.”“And I trust in Wakanda. Our dogs need to withdraw now, before we cause an incident.” T’Challa looked to her side. “Okoye. I must ask you to travel in my stead. On official business, of course.”Oh, dear. She bowed her head, keeping an amused but accepting roll of her eyes to herself. “Of course, my king.”. . .Okoye looked around the grey-walled room as her bead continued to project the information along the wall behind her. The current acting Director of SHIELD sat across from her on the other side of a long conference table. She did not know Phil Coulson well, but he seemed attentive, affable, and he was not looking at her. He was absorbing her report with lips pursed in deep thought. A good sign, a good man. The girl, Daisy, let her eyes flicker around. Harder to read. Clever enough. She had already asked several pointed, useful questions about the data given, and knew when not to ask too closely about their technology. Others were sitting on their questions, waiting for the right opening. Good people. Mostly.She disliked studying one of them overmuch. The god-man, Loki. An unnerving individual, even as he behaved with almost painful respect towards her and the holographic image of her king where he gleamed in the corner, observing the briefing. Too clever by half, and being not of Earth, not a creature of their grass and soil, she privately shuddered at the pure alienness of his presence. He stuck out, if one knew how to look. Most men let him slip among them, the illusion of humanity near perfect. To her, her entire life about dispelling illusions in order to protect the truth of her world, he gleamed falsely. But he knew this about himself, and his manner was good despite the weight of his past, so she simply dealt.The last man present that was worth noting at this point, well, that was a riddle King T’Challa had left for her to puzzle at. Of course it was useful to be multi-agency, so long as those agencies could be trusted within reason, and of course the CIA had plenty of practice with multi-national arms conspiracies. It had gotten a representative butt in the seat, anyway, without an argument with Wakanda’s king.But Agent Everett Ross seemed as out of place among this crowd as Loki, if for different, more innocent reasons. Yet this had been the king’s specific request, so, very well. He seemed to fidget somehow, Ross, even when sitting perfectly still. The information washed over him, absorbed, and he too had asked a few useful questions as befit the quality of his training. His face was equally rabbit-like, eyeballing the strangeness of his surroundings, uncomfortable. A cyberized leader, a genetically-changed girl imbued with massive power, an alien god, the captain of the Dora Milaje, and the image of a king who was his country’s Panther and protector.And one small, good-natured white man.Oh, he knew his place, said the look on his face, and he knew to his bones it wasn’t here.. . . Fitz took over the job of breaking the post-brief silence, his fingers steepled atop his tablet like it was a stack of professorial material. “Sorry if I’m treading on iffy terrain here, but I need to ask about the tracking mechanism you use to identify vibranium at distant range. I assume it’s sonic in nature, looking for the specific resonance absorption signature of the material? Sort of like tracking a black hole?”Okoye tilted her chin towards him, mildly impressed. “A good assumption.”“Okay, so, when you found this material’s track, and you say you’ve got something weird about it, about its potential sourcing, that means the resonance signature itself is wrong somehow. Unstable, the report said.” His fingers kept tapping, not looking at her. “What interferes with that sort of signature? Because we know from the reports on the London incident that Killmonger’s intel plus homebrew resonance tracking identified a vibranium axe of indeterminate age. It was plaqued with rust and other organic material, and they ID’d it fine. So it’s not as simple as throwing a weighted blanket on it. Vibranium, then, tracks easily if you know how.”“Correct.”“You didn’t know, either. Not for certain. But you’ve got a really good guess.” He looked up at Okoye, eyes bright with quick thoughts. “Something specific is different here.”“High energy ionized radiation.” Loki leaned back in his seat, saying aloud what Fitz had already concluded. Fitz was nodding along as Loki spoke. “This is half request, half test. Your ‘guess’ is more a highly educated theory looking for any unlikely flaw that might derail it.”Fitz picked up the thread to keep it going. “The radiation interference is muddying the signal. And that kind of radiation is very likely going to be cosmic.” He leaned forward, intellectually excited and momentarily forgetting that this was actually intensely bad news. “So it’s not Wakandan vibranium, because your meteor has been earthbound long enough to surpass any radioactive half-life. This is new material - new in the sense that it recently came down.” He whipped his head towards Coulson. “Have we tracked any unusual asteroids or other low-space events recently?”“Ran the search before Okoye got here, since His Majesty was good enough to zip me the heads-up for briefing prep. Nothing.” Coulson leaned back in his seat, listening to the plastic undercarriage squeak for emphasis. “Well, okay, not nothing. The annual Gemenid shower dropped a couple interesting sparks over the Philippines just last December, but we’ve got word everything burned up, as usual. No landfall.”“And since someone did something you might consider stupid almost a decade ago, Earth’s skybox is rather well observed these days. Far better than past years.” Loki’s drawl was perfectly sardonic, his self-deprecation draping on him like a silk cloak. “A vibranium meteor of any size would cause a stir. Even a very small portion would cause a trackable seismic event on impact.”“It’s possible something got missed. Maybe the grid’s got a blindspot, maybe someone with ambition calc’d the drop and netted it.” Coulson reached out to scroll the relevant bits of data back to look at. “It’s always possible.”“Nothing on international channels.” Ross murmured it, almost hesitant. He looked around as the more than half-dozen SHIELD agents present fixed their attention on him. “Usual uptick in arms deals because of increased tension in several regions.”“But nobody’s dropping vibranium bombs yet,” Daisy made it sound teasing. “CIA would notice.”Ross’s default option was to get defensive at that sort of tone. “If someone new had gone all District 9 pig launcher on Russian asses at the border with Ukraine, it’d get around.”“All right, man.” She leaned back with a cheerful smile, having taken her measure of the interloper. Secretly prickly. Had a temper under the bland nature. She looked to Okoye next, and then the hologram of T’Challa. “And taking a leap here, you’re coming to us because you can smell a few of the usual suspects getting squiffy about Wakanda interfering on the global field for Wakandan interests alone. Word gets around you guys are trying to track a new source of vibranium, and they’re going to have a big ol’ no-fair tantrum.”The holographic figure was life-perfect, carrying the small, sardonic quirk of his mouth across thousands of miles. “The irony of men who profit richly from war and politics crying out that we would treat them unfairly in both war and politics is not lost on us. A few years ago, it might be that we would attempt to resolve this privately. But we are not entirely private anymore, and appearances must matter - to a reasonable extent. Hence, we withdrew our on-site security services from the current location of the material, owing to the complex nature of the situation.“Fortunately for us, we have decided that there are those out there we may trust in difficult situations. Also to reasonable extents.” T’Challa took a step forward, commanding the room. “So now we will make our formal requests. We ask that SHIELD assist in picking up the trail and discovering the nature of this new acquisition and its processing. Okoye will, for now, remain with your HQ team to coordinate our tracking procedures with yours. A trapeze act, if you like, to pick up where we had to leave off. You will undoubtedly launch a field team, and there we do not wish to risk exposure of direct Wakandan interference in this operation. So we are asking CIA Agent Everett Ross to act as our advocate in that respect.”“What?” It came out of Ross flat and dead with surprise.“He will blend more naturally with any chosen team of yours, and for a multitude of reasons, I am confident in my trust in him.” The switch from the royal we to a personal I did not go unnoticed. Ross stared blankly at the hologram, honored but also slightly horrified. Loki hadn’t moved, but his aura all but screamed his silent grin at the human’s discomfort. It wasn’t easy to be favored by a royal house, he knew, but it almost always made for a good show.“We can work with that.” Phil slid easily back into command. “Agent Daisy Johnson, this is going to be a mess of intel and sudden political knots. You’re in charge of the field operation, do your best, I’m next on your food chain. Agent Loki, you’re with her on this. It meets the weird stuff threshold, and if someone’s gonna put on knock-off vibranium drop-kicker boots in front of you, I want you there to grab ankles and remind ‘em they don’t get to be badasses just because they’re fashionable.”“Acknowledged.” Loki sounded downright cheery about the fact about not being in charge on this one. Or about the high potential for tossing idiots. Maybe both. One seldom knew for sure with Loki.“Agent Ross, I’ll clear everything with your bosses and work with them as we bring in any international and inter-agency information of use. That’s my job. I’m gonna ask that you defer to Agent Johnson in the field, and if there’s any inter-agency strife that comes up out there, you guys also bring that to me.”“Errruhhh….Uhhh…” It came out in a reluctant gurgle. T’Challa’s hologram was also grinning. Okoye looked delighted. Ross’s expressions were precious. “Right?”“That makes a standard base team of three. Daisy, you’ll have backup on standby wherever you need it. Fitz, May. Fitz, you’re gonna work the lab, track and assess incoming sciencey stuff. If you don’t have Princess Shuri’s email yet, we’ll get you set. Is she still using email?” Phil abruptly looked at Okoye.“Technically.”“Don’t tell me more, I’ll get a headache. She’s probably using a homebrew Vine app to send messages because it’s funnier. Whatever. You guys can figure that out. May, you’ll work with Okoye here as liaison.”Melinda May inclined her head in the barest of nods. “Of course.”“Any questions?”Loki raised his hand.Phil paused, not sure if he wanted to walk into whatever was about to happen. Loki was oddly quite responsible when in charge, but place him in second and he could get cheeky in a hurry. Phil blamed his family, which was probably a dead on assumption. “Yeah?”“I’ve a ridiculous amount of mileage points stockpiled, I would like to be considered for authority on renting any vehicles we may need.”Okay. Unexpected, but not that bad. Phil leaned in and played along. “We’ve got plenty of SHIELD company cars on the lot. No bluetooth, manual windows, some still got a tape deck, and you can choose from exciting paint jobs like brown, browner, and sort of black!”The noise of disgust Loki made was indescribable.“Okay, but Daisy gets to override you if you gravitate towards a Maserati. Unless you can argue it is specifically operations necessary.” Honestly, it was giving Loki a bit too much rope, but whatever. If he did something terrible with the leeway granted, at least it would probably be funny - and Phil could always make Loki cover any accrued extra costs himself.Loki nodded once, probably thinking about the same. “Fair.”Phil pushed himself away from the table, unable to keep himself from enjoying the shellshocked look on Ross’s face. “All right, kids. Let’s get rolling. Agent Ross, welcome to the floor show.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Coulson took a well-educated guess and slowed down after stepping out of the briefing room, downright ambling his way towards the elevator that would take him to his office. It took three seconds longer than he figured.Ross’s voice came from behind him. “Can I talk to you?”“Sure,” said Coulson, turning around with an agreeable look on his face. “What’s on your mind, Agent Ross?”Ross looked around to be sure they were currently private, which they were, and then settled into the universal ‘I’m relaxed but also being extremely professional right now’ federal agent stance of slightly parted legs and arms crossed at just the right place across his chest. Not high enough to look fussy, not low enough to look like a slacker. “I’m not sure I’m going to be a good fit for your team, Director Coulson,” he said, and that too was in the patented I Am Very Much a Professional Agent cadence.Which told Coulson a lot of what he’d already assumed. He went for a laconic but casual tone. A tone matched with a word that drove most Very Professional Agents from other outfits batshit. He’d learned it from Fury. “Oh?”The first hint of deflation was subtle but instant. “I’m honored that King T’Challa thinks of me that highly, but…” Ross started to grasp around for the right words, foundering at the bland but expansive challenge.Coulson, who had seen the post-incident document Wakanda sent to the CIA, a document which talked about Agent Ross in glowing, outright fond terms, and which had probably saved his narrow ass from anything a superior could do to him as they realized that level of favoritism meant, politically, Ross would be forever ducking a full debrief on what he’d witnessed inside that secretive nation, smiled.“My work with the CIA is of a different, uh, nature than what I’m to understand of your teams.”“But you’re familiar with field work,” said Coulson. He kept smiling.“I am,” admitted Ross, which was extremely true to the best of Coulson’s knowledge.“You were personally chosen to head up the JCTC, the task force CIA set up to work with INTERPOL. Did pretty good handling the Vienna attack.”“Could have done better.”Fair enough. “You get a lot of crap from people that assume you got up the ladder quicker because you’re related to General Thaddeus Ross?”Something creased in Everett’s face, something close to puzzlement. Then it blended with irritation. A very prickly dude. “What? We’re not related. I went back down to field terrorism and operations because I felt the task force needed a fresh restart after we screwed up with Barnes. The general’s still rebuilding it himself.”“No, you’re not. And I agree, that was a good call. Covered hurt emotions from all corners, gives you time to regroup.” Coulson lifted his chin, considering the agent. “CIA field ops teams take on a pretty wide set of minds from the organizations they poach their guys from. Top level college grads, special ops, Quantico, etcetera. Good people, know when to take an order, when to strike out on a hunch. We pick out of the same pool. I’m not seeing a problem here, Ross.”Ross licked his lips. “I mean this in a completely generic way. I’m gonna sound like I’m adding connotation I don’t mean.”“All right.”“SHIELD ops teams tend to run more, well, loose.”“Loose.” Coulson was still smiling. Just a gentle, pleasant smile. One ratchet up from dead neutral. The tone he’d learned from Fury. That obnoxious, unreadable, potentially hostile smile in the face of any other useful expression? A good lesson from Loki himself. “I hear you.”Ross looked around as if grappling for support. It was easy to tell he was internally flailing, making sure he wasn’t telling the director of SHIELD that Ross felt like his operations were run like shit. “It works great for your teams, by all account. But it’s not a situation that I feel like I’m personally meant for.”“I disagree, Agent Ross.” Coulson shifted his weight, and he pushed himself a couple of inches forward on his heels. It was a subtle thing, but meant to feel like his shadow over Ross had grown. Ross recoiled, not aware that he had. “I don’t think my teams run looser than CIA’s. I think they’re flexible, and that’s not a synonym in this context. We need that flexibility, because what we run into in the field these days needs a mind stretchier than a good pizza dough. We need people that can work together, even when what they face is different, and nowadays they themselves are sometimes even more different.”He let that sit for a moment, then judo-kicked Phase Two of Ross’s objections in the neck before Ross could get there. “I’m kinda surprised you didn’t open with a tastefully worded concern about your teammates.”“Ah.” Ross shrugged, going for affable, looking uncomfortable. “You know. It’s pretty obvious…”“Bit of a step up from hiring the guy that hacked into the email of the Joint Chiefs for your cybersecurity team, I know. It’s worked out.” Phil looked up at the ceiling past Ross’s head, effectively lowering the pressure. “You’ll be answering to Agent Johnson, anyway. She’s more than proved herself, and you’ve seen that in her file. Agent Ross, you have a relationship with the King of Wakanda and his family that means you’re uniquely qualified to offer assistance to my field team when they come up across this bootleg vibranium and whoever’s shoveling it around. You’ve proven yourself to have the kind of flexibility we require in a situation like this one, and your long-term CIA experience means we get an external view at a situation that has serious political ramifications if we get blown out.” He looked back into Ross’s face, the smile now genuine, if a little steely. “I’ve already cleared it with your bosses. And so has King T’Challa. You’re on this job, Everett.”Ross, knowing defeat when he saw it, nodded slowly. “I’ll do my best.”“I know you will.” Coulson waited for him to take a step back. “Daisy and Loki are gonna be over on Three, running intel on where to catch up to Wakanda’s withdrawal. Go join them.”. . .Fitz left the connection open, glancing up to be sure the encoding he’d programmed and installed kept the tiny new network from so much as breathing on any other SHIELD in-house net. It wasn’t about trust, exactly. He wasn’t going to go rummaging around Wakandan servers, and probably couldn’t, and Princess Shuri was probably not going to waste her time on their comparatively dingy databases. Probably. Admittedly, Tony Stark hacked in on the surface level of their security every couple of months just for shiggles, but from what he’d heard, Shuri’s ideas of fun were a bit more cheekily safe for everyone involved.Mostly it was a system meant to keep anyone up the food chain from complaining at them about… whatever it was policy wonks that didn’t actually understand cybersecurity or cyberpolitics or cyberanything complained about.He had a minuscule pang of sympathy for the old and crotchety when the network chimed to tell him the permitted remote system had connected, and not five seconds later it got hijacked, upgraded, and installed an A/V package that should have been stopped by his doorbell program. It was not. His hand hovered over the keyboard, wondering what the hell he was going to do about this or if he should bother, when a small window popped open in the upper left of the dedicated monitor and he got his first look at a Wakandan science lab.Fitz went for not saying anything at all at first and then wondering if by selling his kidney he could afford a visit. Bargain for one through the bosses. Anything. “Er,” he heard himself say, finally, realizing Shuri was nowhere in the image. “Hello?”The connection was crystal clear. He could tell by the shadows Shuri was moving around somewhere in the back of the lab, behind some sort of… thing… that he couldn’t identify at first. “Hi, sorry, one moment, finishing a, well, ignore it. It’s just a toy.”Fitz stared blankly at the angular, colorful object, thinking that if the four-legged possible ‘droid was a toy, his usual jokes about roombas with duct tape knives were going to die in a hole. Also that Boston Dynamics was about to be on suicide watch. “Is that a quad wetnet you’re making?”“Oh, you’re good!” For a moment, Fitz saw the top of a head, ringed by neat bantu knots. “He’s going to be a good pup, environment-reactive. Not too far up the AI scale, you’re right, it’s a wetnet, but I’m going to keep him tethered pretty heavily. Anyway, the rhinos have been very hard on their toys lately, W’Kabi’s whole dumb thing made them feel pretty stressed. So this boy should be a good companion, get them a nice, durable running partner. Work off their steam. And I think I’ve got the leg joints reinforced well enough to take a bunch of bodyslams before they need recalibration!”The head peeked back up again, and Shuri tossed the monitor a wink. “But that’s not what you’re here for. Sorry, I multitask a lot.” She dusted her hands off, and Fitz watched her approach the monitor on her end and drop into a seat. There was an oil smear on the shoulder of her jersey-style shirt. It looked old. “So. I already got the message from Okoye and set up a few shows for you. We need to pass along a few datapoints to help you pick up where our people left off?”“We already guessed Wakanda tracks vibranium by sonic absence.”“Did you guess the bit why this particular batch is different?”“Cosmic radiation.” Fitz leaned back, able to feel proud that Shuri favored him with a brilliant grin. “Which still leaves us with the question of how it got down here without anyone picking up on it.”“You’d think the whole world would light up at the chance for a new vibranium source. Certainly I bet whoever’s got it is thinking about their future retirement and if they want a lot of gold in their mansion, or a disgusting amount of gold.” A look of disapproval crossed Shuri’s face. “So, first of all, you need a refresher on radioactive half-life as it applies to vibranium - it’s pretty short! Shorter than most colonizer scientists have figured out. Similar principle of sonic absorption, in effect the vibranium will eventually eat radiation. That’ll give you the time-range we think must likely apply to its arrival, and also how long we’ve got until we can’t differentiate it as easily from our source. That will become dangerously important if people start behaving badly with it.”Fitz was nodding along.“Then I’m going to give you a course on how to handle a hostile person with vibranium - we learned a few useful things just recently, and we’re going to have to have Okoye along for that bit - and we’re also going to go over a few methods of easier alloy processing, because it’s not just something people slap into a foundry and get good results. A shield? Not so difficult. Processed vibranium-nanographene alloy threading, that’s totally different. So that’s possibly going to help your people pick up our track and carry it on, while keeping them safe.”Fitz realized the creeping sensation at the nape of his neck was the same as the one he had the first day of college. Intimidation and awe in equal amounts, the giddy drop into the unknown. “Oh.”“So we’re going to start with a few basic notations you need to understand the physics principles of the material. Don’t think I’m talking down to you, we’ve just got centuries of in-house knowledge on this one particular thing.” Shuri took over the rest of the monitor and it began to fill with high-level derivatives of known equations. She stopped looking at him while her fingers began to fly over the keys. “Well, and a few others, but don’t worry. We won’t overload you. Too much.”Fitz began to sweat outright.. . .Daisy tugged a screen of data from Loki’s tablet onto the enhanced desk-set, pulling it out for a wider look and adding some notes of her own to it. “Okay, we’re up on the track from Morocco to Jordan, which is where the War Dogs stalled out and dropped the dime. According to their information, the vibranium is still out there. We don’t know how the stuff got to Morocco, and we don’t know where they’re going next.”“Two intelligence agents still in Jordan, but out of active range,” said Loki, mostly to himself. He was examining airplane routes in and out of the region, and another, messier feed listed cargo ships coming in and out of the Port of Aqaba. A static image linked to a massive intelligence document cataloguing inventory over the last six months of the container terminal’s operations. It was not guaranteed to be accurate. “No hits yet on the individual they scanned by the truck.”“We’ll get a beep if they move, but they’re not moving yet. It’s been longer than 72 hours, that’s pretty wild for a high-value target. You pull up a local events calendar, yet, see if they’ve got a reason to stay in the country?”“Nothing in a one week period, hadn’t gotten a chance to look wider, Daisy. Upstairs dumped all this into my files first. People greatly overestimate my ability to speed-read through uninteresting garbage.”“Look two weeks out.”Daisy and Loki both looked up at the intruding voice at the same time, finding Agent Ross standing uncomfortably in the doorway, hands in the pockets of his grey suit jacket. “Yeah?” said Daisy, trying to cadge a little more explanation out of him.“SOFEX.”“Ooooooooo,” blurted Daisy, getting it. Her hand flicked out and started insistently swatting at Loki’s bicep with the back of her palm. “Pull it, pull it, pull it, he’s right.”Wordlessly, Loki found the website with a fast search. The Special Operations Forces Exhibition and Conference, a semi-annual event in the Kingdom of Jordan. Where the world’s militaries went to shop for toys that kill in new and better ways. He leaned back, regarding the splash of info with mild disinterest.Ross glanced at the cloudy background image of the homepage, familiar with it. He shrugged, quick and jumpy. “Sitting at port for the conference two weeks out is a little weird, sure, but I know new vendors or buyers go through a few more hoops their first year at the show. Could easily be why. They’ll have a contact in Amman already, I’d guess.”Still silent, Loki flicked his hand across a row of data on his pad. A glance showed it was a list of long-time no-nation mercenaries, for-profit black ops teams, and PMC companies. He had notes on a lot of them, for various reasons. It went blank, then the screen refilled with a shorter list of newer or nearly unknown operations. None of them cross-checked a hit with the faces the War Dogs had, but he hadn’t expected it to be that easy. “That’s useful information,” he said neutrally.“You know any of those actors?” Ross asked him. He leaned into the room, gargoyling slightly. It was obvious where he was going with his question. It was always in this one direction, when someone who knew was confronted with Loki. New York.“Oh, that? I brainwashed a handful of SHIELD operatives who called up a few hostile organizations they knew about that could be useful on short notice.” Loki smiled back at him, that pleasant but blandly unreadable grin. Unlike Coulson, however, his smile showed the tiniest slip of an eyetooth. “The latter seemed to suffer an unfortunate bout of mortality when their small part was done. None of them are on the updated lists today.”“Unfortunate.” Equally bland.Daisy looked between the two men, knowing she should probably step in and be the leader and assigned grown-up here, but also wanting to see who got their ass kicked first, and was betting on Loki doing the kicking. She wasn’t going to claim to be perfect.“I was always taught to clean up after yourself.” Loki was still smiling, his voice almost gentle but the tooth and accompanying sneer was getting wolfier. “Anything else you’d like to ask me, Agent Ross?”Daisy braced for it, ready to try and stop the grenade before it blew.“You have any regrets for what you did?” The hostility was clear.“Not that the details are any business of yours at this time, but yes.” Loki inclined his head with painfully calm grace, the sneer fading like a ghost. He’d done this before, and found the fights tiresome, if understandable. Handling them quickly was a skill he’d had to master, unless he wanted to be at it for hours. Sometimes he did, but not right now. He watched the human blink, not expecting the response. “If you’ve got it at least temporarily out of your system, Agent Ross, and since you’ve worked extensively with counter-terrorism operations before, perhaps now you could be further useful and suggest some methods for quickly gaining entry to Jordan and this SOFEX.”The hostility gave way to doubt. Ross could be feisty, but he was also all business. “It’s gonna more complicated than that.”“Oh, it’s really not going to be, Ross.” The smile was back, becoming that feral, cheerful grin that was Loki’s speciality. “It’s a trade show at its core. I can do trade shows, if we can get an invitation.”“Oh god,” said Daisy, remembering. Years ago. Loki and Coulson, at the time not exactly what anyone would call friends. A tech fair, chaos, magic, and more. “Oh, no.”“Oh, yes.” It was Loki’s turn to reach over and pat Daisy’s arm. “About that luxury car rental I had in mind…”“Oh god.”“Not a Maserati, though. You wouldn’t be caught dead in a Maserati in Jordan, they know that brand is rubbish.”“What is he going on about?” Ross looked at Daisy. She looked back at him, momentarily helpless.“I would think a Bentley. Nothing too garish, it’s a defense expo. You want to be noticed, but not overly so.” Loki leaned back, satisfied. “No trouble getting a Bentley in Jordan, I’m sure there’s a luxury rental right there in the airport. Daisy, you know all we’ll really need is a set of IDs and an invitation. Best in pairs, although if we must we can do a trio. Do you want to come along, or shall we make the new guy deal with me alone?”“What. Is he. Going on about?” Creeping horror was on Ross’s face. This was escalating too fast for him to put together.Daisy managed to pull it back together, faking at least a layer of professionalism. She also decided an act of mercy would probably be good. “Agent Ross, Loki is really good at infiltration. I’m going to ask you to get into the country with us, act as another pair of eyes on scene to try and find our targets or even get some leads, see what they’re up to, see if you know them from CIA. Who they’re gonna sell to, etc. Get our own trace on the vibranium at SOFEX, if we can. See what’s what.” Professionalism only went so far. She finished with an affable shrug. “We’ve got almost two weeks to get in the area and get our faces known so we don’t stick out.”“Uh.”“I’ll get the overseas move going within a couple days. Ross, we need to be affiliated with someone that passes the smell test but doesn’t trace back to SHIELD, so if you know anyone on our side that can let a few people ride ID, that’d be a big help. Doesn’t hugely matter what the IDs themselves look like, Loki can handle that, and we shouldn’t be causing any trouble inside the expo itself. It’s strictly gonna be an observation op.” She looked dead straight at Loki. “Right?”“Of course!” Loki looked delighted with himself. “We’ll have fun, Agent Ross. Harmless, light fun. With plenty of time for all of us to get to know each other beforehand.”“Yeah, huh.” Ross took a chair on the other side of the desk, defeated for the second time in an hour. “Fun.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Daisy tugged her shades down with the hook of her finger, squinting against the sun to make out the fading silhouette of Loki booking it towards the open air rentals ahead of other first class luxury passengers. At least he’d paid for that part of the trip, overriding any need to dip into their otherwise decent expense spending wiggle room they’d been granted. She’d slept on the plane, meanwhile, not realizing how damn bright it was going to be when they landed. She pushed her sunglasses back up and sighed, enjoying the open warmth after the frozen canned air of the plane. Her face itched due to a light layer of long-term illusory enchantment, but she was used to it.“Ever been here before?” Ross looked more relaxed with the situation than she felt, grimacing up at the sky with as much casual bluster as a man in a tan linen suit could manage. Which, for Ross, was actually a fair amount. He looked mostly like himself, younger, with browner hair. Occasionally he reached up to scratch at a cheek. He’d taken the illusion stuff pretty well, at least. No prickly complaints. It made for a nice change after a week’s worth of successfully avoiding the team beyond daily brief and prep work as much as he could.“No. You have.” She didn’t have high level file access, and hadn’t bothered to get Ross’s details her other way yet, but Daisy was pretty good at reading people. He felt like he had an ease with the place, and had also grudgingly given Loki directions towards the concierge pavilion before they landed. With the shades on, she could still vaguely make out the dark splotch looming over the people around him. He’d get that Bentley. Even if they didn’t have one on hand, he was going to get a Bentley. Loki had a way of making things like that happen. “You’re in charge of the Fodor’s for this part of the trip.”Ross snorted, clearly unable to decide if it was a compliment or a dismissal or both.“It’s a compliment, dude. I’m assuming you’re gonna know the place way better than either of us, even with the briefing mats under our belts. And if you know a good place for dinner, you earn big points with Loki.”“I don’t want big points with- with him.” Ross’s face scrunched, the coiling mouth of a man who’d tasted out of whack yogurt and saw a night of yarktacular food poisoning ahead of him.It was going to be a long wait before the show if he stayed like this. It was pretty understandable, not everyone had the same context as her friends at SHIELD, but yikes. “Ross, it’s better than not having them, and bonus, you get some really tasty food out of it.” She felt his stare. Coulson pulled her aside and warned her how it was going to be that first evening after the brief. It was turning into so much more. He gave off the ultimate I Don’t Wanna vibe at all times. “I know. Yes, I really do know. Dude, I’m personally begging you, and not as mission lead. I don’t want to have this fight through the whole op. Listen. We’ve had him around for years. It’s weird. It doesn’t excuse stuff. But it works for the team. If you have, like, a real beef with him, come straight to me about it. He listens to me.”Ross didn’t say anything.“The Barnes thing. Mind control, forced to hang out with the wrong people, responsible for a bunch of awful crap, now spending his time trying to get his head screwed back on right. Escalate it like fifty times and add aliens. It’s a little similar, okay?”“I’m not sure I get you.”“Just…” Daisy looked up, almost getting the sun bang on into her eyes, and winced. “Make an effort, for T’Challa’s sake. You know he’s met Loki and not crapped a brick about it.”“T’Challa is a better man than I am.” It came in a defensive little mutter.“Wow.” Daisy laughed. “Suicide by words, my dude.”“Fakhreldin.” Agent Ross looked away, shrugging, still muttering. She thought he’d maybe sworn in Arabic or something at first. “Fakhreldin, here in Amman. Best place I ever ate in the Middle East, and I’ve been in a lot. The kibbeh is really… something.”“Yeah?”“Yeah, it’s… it’s in this neat old neighborhood. And around here old means old.” Ross abruptly grimaced again. She followed his stare and did the same. There was a car coming around the front of the rental pavilion. It was indeed a Bentley, but it was not just a Bentley. It was a goddamn Bentley Mulsanne, gleaming in the afternoon sun, polished and finished in a cool, bluish silver. The luxury vehicle, one of the final boss fights to be found in motorhead snobbery.“Loki,” Daisy breathed, horrified.Ross sounded just as stricken. “We’re not paying for that, right? Do you know what those cost? Do you know what the insurance costs?”“I’m not paying for that. Selling my kidney wouldn’t cover two months of just the rental insurance. I can’t even dream of owner’s insurance.”Loki wandered over to the driver’s side of the car, taking long and elegant strides. He lifted his head to scan the scraps of crowd around the airport exits, saw them almost instantly, grinned, and waved them over. There were two men with him, both extremely well dressed. Daisy assumed both were concierges. She also assumed at least one of them was probably doing an identity check on Loki at least five made-up credit histories deep. She grabbed Ross’s arm with probably more force than was warranted and practically dragged him towards the waiting hellshow.Ross followed along gamely, probably understanding the grab wasn’t about him. He sounded dry. “I’m still supposed to try, right?”She ignored him, fixed on her forward momentum. “Oh, god, Loki.”“There you are!” Loki practically sang it when they came into range, turning to one of the men with him. The other took off with a final bow. “Here’s my associates, like I was telling you.”The short man, crisply dressed in a hand-tailored suit with a thickly tasseled red and white shemagh, looked at Daisy and Ross and gave a courtly bow to each in turn. She still had a hand on Ross’s arm. He twitched his muscles, like he was trying to warn her. “Sir,” she said, politely, realizing this dude was a Big Shot of some kind. Then she looked at Loki.“Miss Jannsen, Mr. Ellis,” said Loki, using their cover names, “this is my new good friend, Mr. Zaidi Pashan.” He looked down at Pashan with a warm smile. “Pashan flew in from the other side of the country last week but needed to renew his rental in person, and we got to talking about how oddly inhospitable that was to him. For such a well-regarded company, I’d think they’d be more accommodating to such an even more successful CEO.”“In person!” Pashan shook his head, looking with real ruefulness at the two of them on the other side of the car. His English was impeccable, with only a light accent. “Your associate was good enough to come to my side in chiding the manager.”“To be fair to them, they can’t recognize everyone, sir.” Loki gave a heavy sigh, then matched it with a grin. “In fact, in our business, sometimes it’s even helpful.”Pashan laughed, hearty to the point he nearly slapped his own belly for emphasis. Instead the hand hovered, as if forever threatening to release that much gusto into an unsuspecting world. “True, true.” He then waved that broad hand at the Bentley. “Regardless, it’s the least I can do, Mr. Lochlan.”“Your least is still far too much,” said Loki, a paragon of modesty. His falsified face also looked generally like him under a shortened mop of curling dark hair, but a touch rounder, redder, and gentler, and it made his smiles look affable and even sometimes daft. Not bad for the traveling middleman of an up and coming arms development corporation.“It’s nothing,” said Pashan in a way that suggested that was true. A man that could afford luxury the way some people splurged on the extra french fry dollar menu deal. “But you simply have to come by our booth when the expo opens. I think your people will be most interested to see what we can offer.”Oh, gurgled the goblin in the back of Daisy’s mind while she continued to smile, mindless and polite. It was on-target business after all. And Loki had scammed them at least a week of a free Bentley doing it. It was hard to not be impressed.See, Ross, this is why we keep him. She snuck a glance at him, saw the minuscule widening of his eyes, and knew he may as well have heard her.“Naturally!” Loki beamed, extending a long-fingered hand to what was, at least temporarily, a fellow arms dealer. Pashan gripped it with that same exuberance, grinning up at him. “We’ll make it a point that you’re one of our very first stops.”. . .“Do you know who that was?” Ross was in the back seat, vibrating, damn near yelling at the back of Loki’s head. Daisy didn’t try to stop him. She was absorbing the database search she’d scanned and knew why he was yelling. There wasn’t any point to it, not with Loki, but she understood. “Do you know who that was?”“Obviously,” Loki drawled. He pulled the vehicle into a packed tunnel, and he looked completely unconcerned about the meltdown happening behind him. “Zaidi Pashan, CEO of Open Air Aerodynamics, a little known outfit among a world of Northrup Grummans and Raytheons, but rumored to be worth quite a few billion if only due to the equally rumored - unless you work for an organization like both of ours - profits Zaidi skims on the underground reseller’s market. OAA has never been raided, sanctioned, or sued, and certainly not because they are the most ethical arms manufacturer in the world. They can simply afford the bribes. But, as you and I know, they do get paid during almost every major conflict, whether on the books or not.” He looked into the rearview mirror, meeting Ross’s eyes. “Zaidi is rather like a reflection of our good Tony Stark. Without the, hm, marginally better bits and the redemption arc.”Ross fell back into his seat, driven into momentary silence. Then, bitter, “And you took a free car from him.”Loki laughed. “We’re not keeping it, Agent Ross. It’s not even a suggestion that I personally liked him. Frankly, Everett - can I call you that?”“No.”Loki clicked his tongue and changed lanes, picking up speed towards the greater Amman metro. “There’s no good annoying nicknames for an Everett, you luck out by default. Agent Ross, between us, I would like nothing less to dropkick someone like Zaidi Pashan across the Grand Canyon. I have feelings about dull, witless people who collect their riches off of pointlessly escalated conflicts, and it doesn’t matter to me if you don’t believe that. Here is something that is the inarguable truth: I will absolutely siphon off his money, his goodwill, and his access, and you, Wakanda, and SHIELD are going to benefit from it. And if I feel like it, before we leave Jordan, I will pay some idiot to take this car to the southern edge of the country and drive it into the Red Sea just for the sheer malignant shit of it.”Daisy sucked in her breath, whistling it across her teeth. Disney-style cartoon moneybags danced before her eyes, all of them on fire.“It’s not my name on the insurance agreement, anyway.”Ross blinked, still couched in the back cushions. He didn’t move. “You’re terrifying, you know that?”“I do.” He looked at Daisy with a grin. “Isn’t this wonderful?”Daisy rolled her eyes. “Are you gonna be like this at the hotel, too?”“Probably.”. . .The hotel was ridiculous. Loki had selected it, because of course, and offered a reasonable presentation to Coulson and the finance guys about why he had chosen it for their operations base in Jordan, because high-profit international arms dealers had social standards and whatnot, and Daisy had dozed off a third of the way through it, because she knew how it was going to end. Probably Coulson had, too.Over the years, Loki had perfected his technique when it came to wearing down humans that stood between him and something he wanted to do, generally so long as it was a: useful to the team or b: funny. It helped that it was usually point a. He stocked these moments up, like favors, so he could get away with point b lunacy when he felt like it mattered, which was not something anyone could predict reliably. Daisy didn’t mind his dramatic excessiveness creeping in on this job. She’d grown up in orphanages and slept in cars that rattled even when the engine was off. Someone was gonna put her up in a joint like this? Hey. Cool. Downright peachy, even.They had an enormous portion of a high level floor to themselves. Three stupidly big private luxury rooms that connected to an even bigger multi-room shared suite that had its own goddamn large hot tub nook and an entertainment package that would make James Cameron puke, the sort of thing traveling sheiks and CEOs put their families up in and then didn’t talk to each other.Daisy was laying on her bed, fully dressed, staring at a perfectly finished ceiling. The sheets under her were like eight hundred thread silk or something equally dumb, there was a handmade comforter under her legs, and her cellphone rested like a dogbone atop her limp palm. The suites were clean. No bugs, no hostile toys, nothing, except gold Monster Cables on all the entertainment stuff, which told her a lot about what rich people thought made for top quality technology.She realized she was tired. Not jet lag, but just… tired. The aura of tension that Everett Ross gave off as a point of his general existence was murderous. The man did not relax. She’d finally accessed his file and understood a little more about him, and it buttressed her feeling that he really was a competent, generally decent dude, but it said a lot that being around him sucked her life out when someone like Loki had long since started to cause the opposite effect.Daisy wrapped her hand around the phone, feeling the cool protective glass sheet on it as her fingers slipped along. Then she did something she never had the option to when she was growing up. She called home, to get an authority figure on the line that she cared for and respected and would fight to protect.Coulson picked up almost instantly. “That bad?”“Dude.” She let that hang, heavy and tired. “He’s going to make me insane.”“The weird thing is, I can tell you’re not talking about Loki.”“I know, right!” She let her gaze crawl along the ceiling. It was checkered with hand-placed stones, meaningless but beautiful mosaics. “Like, there’s moments Ross tries. I’ve asked him, he’s getting it, he’s trying to not be a bear about the big guy, I have no doubt he’s a good dude with a top shelf CIA history-““Yeah, I know, you read his file.”“I- dammit, you figured out my latest cracker.” She sighed. “I’ll patch it.”
“Please do. Keep going.”
“And, like, I can’t stop feeling like I’m the one not giving a fair shake, because it’s not gonna be easy for a dude from an outside ‘normal’ agency who keeps getting thrown into these weird shit situations, like, full props for what he did alongside Wakanda, but Coulson, I gotta live here.”
“This still just from onsite?”
“No. He was tense on the plane. He took a vodka sour from the stewardess ‘cause we’re in first class, downed that thing like it was water, barely winced, and it had zero effect on him. He’s wired so tight on this job that he’s got ice in his blood. I called him on it when we got off, but Loki was already deep on his idea of operational process and it put Ross into orbit once we got in the rental. He’s still stuck at some sort of supersonic vibration. I can feel him on the other side of the hotel floor, just vibrating.”
“I’ll call Fitz over, we’ll wire him up and use him as our own vibranium tracker.”
Daisy laughed, shocked mostly out of her glum by the joke. She sobered fast. “Am I screwing up already?”
“Daisy, you’re old hand at this. Why are you doubting yourself now?”
She shrugged, as if he could see her. “I don’t usually work with normal people anymore.”“And you’re good when you do.” Coulson sighed. “You didn’t get his whole file. CIA’s like that. And they weren’t hiding any cool, deep, dark secrets, so don’t get hyped. He’s, really, a pilot first, a CIA guy second, and that’s why CIA grabbed him, because the mindset worked out for them. He was a really good pilot.”“I got the Wakandan bit. He’s pretty adaptable around new tech.” “He sat in planes the public still doesn’t know about. He sat in stuff that we don’t have full debrief on. Multiple combat ops, a lot classified. Not all of it great, because, well, Iraq.”“I gotcha.” “The tension works for him. The guy is wired and kind of a full on pain in the ass all the time because dicking around with high concept planes isn’t exactly a game of The Sims, and that tension and paranoia ended up being useful to him when dicking around with terrorists. The only reason JCTC didn’t handle Barnes and the Vienna mess on perfect target was because of how beyond operational norm it was, because it wasn’t just counterterrorism. It was specific, personal revenge. Ross did his best, he took his lumps to save other people some face, and he’s still trying to do his best. He passes psych. He’s just like that. We’re probably not going to change him with the sheer intensity of our charm, Daisy, and if we did, it wouldn’t benefit him. It’s not gonna be a John Hughes situation.”Daisy sighed, the sort of sigh that could pass for a corpse releasing its last breath. “So I should just meditate in between sesh with the guy, slow my roll.”
“Didn’t say that. T’Challa likes him. Okoye told me this afternoon she thinks he’s a good man. From her, that’s a lot. He can’t be that bad all the time if they’re vouching for him. I think it’s just a thing where he eases off when he gets used to the weird, and sometimes it takes things just getting so weird that he kicks over into rolling with it.”
“…So, be ourselves?” Hope crept back in.
“Be yourselves. Stay on mission, do your best, fold him in how you need. He’ll adapt, he’s good at it. You’re not in his head, Daisy, you don’t have to be. He’s his own problem.”
Daisy found her smile. “Thanks, Coulson. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.”“Course it was. I’m good like that. Go get a little rest, Agent Johnson, before Loki decides you guys need a full Michelin star dinner every night this week.” He clicked off a moment later, and Daisy stayed flopped on the stupidly luxurious bed, feeling a hell of a lot better.. . .Everett Ross did like to meditate, actually, although he wasn’t very good at it. His nightly sessions usually lasted about twenty minutes, ended with swearing out the name of whatever self-help guru he’d read about on the internet this time, and led to him flopping in a chair to read something off his e-reader app. It was a kind of meditation, anyway.Ross liked cheesy bestseller thrillers, in the sense that liking them meant he thought they were terrific comedy and he’d already read every LeCarre in existence. Three times each or more. But he also, secretly, enjoyed cheeseball fantasy or SF novels even more than bad thrillers, and those he ate up with earnest schoolboy glee.His current hidden delight was a wonky space opera series about a decaying cross-galaxy empire, whose royal leader was trying to save humanity from circling the toilet as their network of spacelanes collapsed.It beat worrying, all that reading. It beat worrying that he was going to let someone down, or fail a mission when it fatally mattered. People that he respected and liked a great deal put their trust in him in situations where he didn’t hardly know which fucking direction was up anymore, and he worried. Constantly. He knew it came off like prickliness, and his few past attempts to not sound prickly made him sound like an actual prick, so he stuck with what he knew and hoped people got that he was trying. At least it all came off like bricklike confidence. In the day anyway.A king got it. That threw the fuck out of him. Wakanda had been… well, he didn’t have words. Some of his favorite authors would have plenty, and they would have talked about the color and vibrancy and beauty of a world where people like him had never come in to fuck it all up. Never napalm’d their jungle, never flew rolling-thunder style operations over their hills to flush out whatever ‘other’ was a current enemy.Ross desperately loved working for the CIA, loved working counterterror. Because if he didn’t do it and love it, some other asshole would, and said asshole would forget he was trying to help others, not prop them up as bogeys to make people afraid. That was the point of his job, he felt. Stopping the fear. Not making it worse. It made him sweat nightly. He knew he wasn’t the majority on that sometimes. That made him dry heave a couple times a year, but he kept going.The king that liked him had put him in a situation with an evil alien prince that was maybe reformed, and a young woman that could upheave a city by flexing her wrists and thinking about it real hard. Everett read a lot of science fiction. This was a new one on him.He worried, Everett Ross did. He worried a lot. He worried he was going to let these two people, weird and terrifying but doing a job of a kind he understood, down because he wasn’t on their level and never would be.He read the same page of his novel over and over, not getting it, and stared nervously at a wall until the evil alien prince knocked politely at his door to tell him it was time for dinner.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Daisy watched Ross eat, noting this was at least one hour where he seemed perfectly content to pile a gob-ton of delicious food onto his plate. This was just some sort of hot appetizer, the aforementioned kibbeh. There was still a giant mixed grill meat platter on its way, and she could have just stopped where she was and sack out for the night feeling pleasantly full. But hey. Rock on.Loki was eating with his usual nimble mix of genteel nobility and lack of giving a rip, people-watching between bites in a way that made her think of the first Terminator movie, where the audience got to see through the cyborg’s eyes and read all the bits of tactical assessment and choice-making Schwarzenegger was doing. Since this place was a Place to Be for some reason, she felt like this was a good parallel. It’d make for an interesting report from him later.They hadn’t talked to each other much since reaching the restaurant, at least yet, and Daisy was glad for the faux-companionable silence. So she cringed in reflex self-defense when Loki opened his mouth.“How did you first come across this place, Agent Ross?” The question was calm, amiable even. They had a private nook, so even though they were still illusioned, there was no harm in using their real names.Oh god, he’s trying to make normal conversation. Daisy swallowed down hard on a piece of pita. It was, on the surface, actually weirdly nice of Loki to try and be pleasant at dinner, but he had to know it wasn’t going to be taken the right way.Ross paused, his eyes widening at his fork. Despite eating with gusto a second ago, he put the fork down, as if considering all the angles of his answer. As if the wrong answer meant Loki would unleash a hell of tabbouleh onto his life. “Um.”Daisy sat, watching Loki, who was watching Ross, and she had no way to rescue anyone.Time stretched into an awkward silence, then became a longer, greater silence that felt like a papercut on the brain. She snuck a look around, hoping a waiter would show up to refill the water pitcher, move the spice shakers around, anything.Then: “Counterterror meeting with the Jordan Special Forces, in 2013. Been back a few times since.”Relief hit Daisy like a balloon farting its way free from explosive pressure. “That’s cool,” she said. “That’s kinda neat. I read in the brief they’re a big deal in the Middle East.”“Some of the best operators in the business.” Each word dropped like a weight. Ross didn’t pick his fork back up. “Critical ally to the US.”“So, like, why the big defense expo? Why’s Jordan always hosting it? You probably read my file, I’m not that big on world powers trying to kill each other and stuff, and I always thought Jordan and its king were supposed to be, like, these guys that tried the hardest out here.”“They do try. It’s- It’s not exactly easy stuff, and there’s things going on here I’m not gonna say I agree with. Media, internet, you know.” Ross licked his lips and dropped his hands into his lap like he was done eating. “The King of Jordan is a huge fan of the military and special ops stuff, and it’s, yeah, it’s like taking your gun fan uncle to this insane level, and it’s… it’s not great stuff sometimes. Look-“ He faltered. “I’m not the guy to talk politics with. It’s a mess all over the world. All I do is try to make sure people hurt each other less.”Ross’s hand came up, waved at the table in a vague way. “SOFEX is above board. It’s freaky. I’ve been before, yeah. It’s all this high impact stuff and yes, I’ve read your file, and no, you are not gonna like this show. It is a comic con where the scariest guys you’ve ever met geek out about new ways to kill each other. But…” He hesitated again. “Here we know their names and faces, and who’s buying from who. It’s cheap comfort. We get to make lists. We watch other countries and what they do. It helps, long term, if it’s out in the day, and it’s fair if you don’t think it helps much. The problem, the problem is…” He began to trail, his face pinching.Loki, for whatever reason, helped him out. “The problem is, and it’s the very likely outcome, if our vibranium ‘clients’ use the show to make contacts, and then do their sales under the table later, illicitly. With fewer daylight records. Like many such men have, for decades here, for millennia elsewhere.”“….Yeah.” Ross sighed in a tight puff and picked up his fork. “Exactly.”The meat plate arrived. Daisy, who had gone through a brief fad of vegetarianism in her teens and still respected the concept in general, realized she was staring at the giant platter as if a new deity had been born right in front of her.Loki looked unusually pleased at it, spearing neatly a few choice bits with a small grin that looked less pointedly sardonic than his usual one. “That’s the most Asgardian thing I’ve seen outside of Asgard in ages.”“Coulson and I took you to that churruascario last year!” Daisy pointed her fork at him before digging in.“And it was quite good, but as I told you then, nobody wheels food around like that in Asgard. The only mealtime benefits to being in the palace is that there’s silverware on the table in case you’re feeling quaint and the servants don’t throw meat at you like you’re a bunch of wolves. Anyway. This was a good suggestion, Agent Ross. I’m enjoying this rather a lot.” Loki didn’t look at the man as he dropped the surprise compliment.Daisy managed not to stare at him. Apparently it was a major holiday in his own private Lokiworld?Ross was doing that frozen pause of his again at the compliment, as if freshly reminded how weird this whole thing was. Then, as Daisy watched him waver, grunt agreeably enough and then go for some perfectly charred beef, he seemed to relax again.They munched quietly for a while, distracted by their enormous dinner, until it was Ross’s turn to make Daisy nearly jump out of her skin. “I have a question.” It came out in a somehow lumpy staccato, jerking its way towards Loki.Loki didn’t miss a beat, still working along a piece of steak with delicate grace. There was a knife in his hand. It took Daisy this long to realize it wasn’t the restaurant’s offered knife. Of course Loki had his own eating knife. Of course he frickin’ did. Probably it was another compliment of some sort, this one towards the food itself. He didn’t look at the agent. “Certainly.”It was like Ross hadn’t expected the easy response. “Er.” He stared at the ceiling, recovering with a fast blink. “All right. You’re, uh, alien. We know vibranium doesn’t have a natural source on this planet. So do you know where it comes from, and why the whole galaxy isn’t dropping on us for Wakanda’s meteorite?”Loki looked oddly pleased again. This one, Daisy understood. He loved being put on the spot for scholarly things he could hold forth on. He put down his knife, leaning back to organize his thoughts. “These are good questions. There’s two answers to your latter question, and the first question is difficult and intertwines with the second answer to your latter. So, let’s start with the easy bit. Earth is under a layered set of rules that don’t impact it much from your view, but do help protect it meanwhile. Asgard itself looks over it, claiming galactic protectorate as one of our Nine Realms. And Nova Corp, let’s call it another organization like both of ours, Ross, only out there, has declared much of the solar system off limits until Earth puts itself ‘out there.’”“I doubt a pinned up notice stops everyone.” Ross put his elbow on the table, listening. “Doesn’t work like that here.”“Certainly not, but, and this isn’t meant to be insulting, Earth isn’t a huge draw for most civilizations at this time. So you’re fairly safe, by virtue of being essentially a distant village, and then there’s the other reason I need to explain.“So, very well. I’ll be brief, too much of anything is dull. You understand that vibranium is not a locally formed element. Here’s the dropped shoe: No one knows where vibranium is formed, not at all.”Ross blinked, rearing his head back slightly. Then he leaned back in, looking intrigued. “So it’s from far out?”“It seems.” Loki pushed his plate away and did something with his hands. A small sphere formed on the white tablecloth, a glowing, tennis-ball sized Earth. Wakanda flared green on the continent of Africa, and then Jordan elsewhere, and then the US. Then he pulled his hands out, and a stylized rendition of their solar system replaced it, the Earth shrinking into a small pea. Now the Sun was the tennis ball, with flecks of brightly lit planets spinning out across the table. Daisy, used to magic, found herself still gawking at the effect, staring at Saturn’s tiny rings. Then Loki pulled his hands again. Their sun shrank into the slowly spinning galaxy of the Milky Way, disappearing into one of the spindly ‘arms’ of the disc. Pinpricks of light, dancing together, eternally separated by the vast gulf of space. “We’re currently in the Orion Arm, as your scientists term it, which is a bit like pointing at the ocean and saying there’s a drop of water that you used to know floating over there.“Now, this galactic region in its entirety is quite busy. Hundreds of known civilizations sprinkled across this scrap of space alone. But, and I’m not trying to horrify anyone with the grandness of space, even this is barely your local neighborhood.”Loki pulled out again, and now the disc of their home galaxy disappeared into a strange, spongy cross-cut piece of space. Galaxies speckled within it, lone stars, slices of void that hurt to look at. “This is the local quadrant, and worse, it’s not even a bullion cube’s worth of known space itself. Known space - hear this and tremble. Even I do. None of us in this region can even imagine what’s in the universe just a scant couple of these ‘cubes’ worth of space away, and it will still take all of our lifetimes combined merely to explore fractions of the region we have. There are a few places beyond this quadrant that are known, of course, but at that point, this grows too confused to explain neatly. So let’s stay close to here.“Life is spread throughout this rough quadrant, some of it interconnected through spacelanes and jump technologies, or portals, or things it would take me hours to explain. Some of these areas are intensely isolated, truly alien. Not all of it is frightening and deadly, but all of it will be strange to you in some way. There are mysteries with answers being slowly picked away at by minds greater than mine, like why this specific region is populated by so many carbon-based humanoids, so much similar oxygenation on such a large number of life-bearing worlds, and so on. And in none of it that I know of, even in the great galactic library we name Omnipotence, because no one likes to admit that greater mystery when they’re trying to sleep at night, are there answers to every question we have. One thing is known that I can say. Vibranium is not natural here. Perhaps not anywhere.”Ross kept leaning forward. Daisy realized he was absolutely enthralled, his eyes huge. For a moment, he looked like an older, ruffled Luke Skywalker just now meeting a hologram that was telling him how intense things were about to get in his life. Daisy thought it was kinda cute, honestly.Loki fluttered a hand over the cube, zooming it in, meteor showers sparking gold throughout the galaxy. “Like other elements, and mysteries, and flecks of life, it’s from somewhere outside. Beyond what we’ve ever known. And it’s a remarkable material, Agent Ross, it truly is. There are a few books of esoteric theories about it, one suggesting it’s the leftovers of some long ago, tragically lost civilization. That its properties are so intense and easily harnessed because it is, in some sense we can’t understand yet, already processed.”“Memories of the dead,” muttered Ross, arguably a bit pale against the light coming from the illusory slice of the universe.“Maybe.” Loki inclined his head. “But all of this means vibranium, in the end, is so rare as to be virtually useless to the greater local quadrant. It’s invaluable to Earth, of course. It may well help all of you towards that future day when you step onto the galactic stage on your terms. But it simply isn’t available in any reliable quantity as to change anything greater than that. Ship fleets relying on it will one day fade into irrelevancy, unable to replace its parts. Weapons will always be countered sooner or later, though the Dwarves have made small artifacts to honor the material. Vibranium is too niche, Agent Ross. Everything it can do, another world has had to find more reliable ways to get some similar effect.“Your world was granted a marvelous gift, by the whim of an unknowable universe. But vibranium can never be the entire answer to the questions of your species. It has too many questions of its own.” The illusion of space vanished. With a small bow of his head, Loki pulled his plate back towards him and went back to eating as if he hadn’t just dropped a whole-ass special episode of Cosmos on his dinner company.Daisy and Ross found themselves looking at each other, temporarily blanked out. A shadow passed over them, startling Daisy out of thoughts of deep space mutants and more. “May I bring your table anything?” asked the waiter in his rich accent, innocent and unaware of the mysteries of existence that had just been dumped on the table like so much icewater.Ross sounded strangled. “Can we please get a to go box?”. . .Okoye lounged on the ratty linen chaise that ate up a comfortable corner of SHIELD’s common area, sipping at an oversugared chain-brewed coffee, and watching an episode of some Western reality television so awful she was pretty certain her frontal lobe was going to rot out right there. And yet, this was one of her own not so terrible secrets, a love for a little safe foolishness. “You’re never going to get a risotto done before the timer. In the name of Bast, every time I watch this show, you people make the same ridiculous mistakes.”She looked up as she sensed the approach of someone else, still relaxed, not sensing any threat from the shadow. “Agent May.”“Okoye.” A pause. “Oh god, tell me someone’s not doing another risotto.”“That’s what I said. You would think they would learn eventually.” Okoye leaned forward to turn down the volume. “Is something amiss?”“Nah, came down to make something to drink. Didn’t know you were back on site.”Okoye shrugged. It was a simple matter to return to Wakanda once a day, or check in at a local embassy if necessary. So far it rarely was, but she did it anyway. She didn’t care for being away from her country and her king for long, but at the same time she was aware she had been granted by T’Challa an opportunity for a sliver of light work - the same as a vacation for her - and she decided she was grateful for this gift. The people here were pleasant, businesslike, and she had few reasons to watch them intensely as their field team found their feet in Jordan.Oh, she still paid attention, of course. But there was no harm to be found here, so she came back with the disgusting coffees that she loved and stayed out of the way. She watched Agent May set off a cup for herself out of the cheap machine, and wished she’d thought to offer to bring back an extra drink. An interesting woman, Melinda May. “You are between shifts?” asked Okoye, making idle conversation by way of some personal apology. On the screen, a small round man had burned his risotto in trying to hurry it and was being shamed by the professional chefs, which she thought he thoroughly deserved.“Yeah, not on again until sometime tomorrow.” May puffed a sigh. “Her Highness is driving the science department into despair.”Okoye laughed. “She lives for such reactions.” She turned the TV off and leaned forward, her wrist flicking delicately for emphasis. “They shouldn’t feel that way. There’s little need, and mostly she is showing off for the Westerners. But it is also a compliment, in my experience. Shuri must believe your scientists can handle it.”May chuckled, pouring a small amount of cream into the bottom of her mug. “They can, they just gotta go through the soul-sucking despair first.” She leaned around the cabinets to tip Okoye a wink. “Which is fine with me, it keeps them in line.”Okoye dropped back into the chaise cushions with another laugh, delighted. Then she got up, wandering over to the beverage counter, out of the way of the business of coffee-brewing. She leaned her elbows on the cheap formica, her hands clasped together as the bracelets she often wore clinked lightly. “I am to understand you are a martial artist. What is your fighting style?”May smirked at her coffee as she stirred it. “Messy.”Bracelets chimed again as wrists wrung around in thought. Okoye’s eyes crinkled, otherwise amused. “Good answer. You’ve earned Eastern belts?”“Some, yeah. I’d call my style adaptive, if we were going to be serious.”“Spar me.” Okoye tipped a wink. “After your coffee, if you like.”May shook her head, but Okoye could tell it wasn’t in disagreement. “You’ll kick my ass.”“Kicking ass won’t be the point. I find a good match to be better than a conversation in many situations. Less useless meandering chitchat, more getting the measure of an actual person.”May kept stirring, nodding softly. She had caught the undertone, that it was another type of potential compliment. Good woman. “All right.”Okoye pointed at the mug and its picture of a grimacing cartoon cat. “Or we leave that nasty coffee here, and I buy you a better one after. Whether I kick your ass around the ring or not.”May put both her hands flat on the counter and laughed. “Okay, but I get to recommend a local coffee house that we actually like in this place. Especially if you kick my ass.”“I like an artfully bad coffee.” Okoye considered that. “But yes, I do like a good coffee better. It’s a deal. A fight and a better coffee. Lead the way, please.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The next several days in Jordan passed quickly. The field team stayed mostly out of each other’s way, getting together for food and to brief each other on any new information they’d uncovered while jaunting around town. Ross, for example, had to visit various government facilities to be sure they had the right setup to get into the expo without any drama or nasty surprise, Daisy monitored local communications and kept in contact with home for any updates or neat gossip - according to Coulson, May and Okoye had nearly beaten the crap out of each other and were now friends? All right, well, that sure sounded like May anyway - and Loki was wandering around making new ‘friends’ of his own and marking their hotels and popular routes for later follow-up.The contraband vibranium and its dealers were now moving north towards the capital, in a secure caravan from the Aqaba port. They were definitely on target to be at the expo. Wakandan intelligence, while heavily drawn back, had a satellite eye on the cargo and was sharing live data with SHIELD. There were no positive identifications on the people that had been with it, which was unusual but not impossible. There were a lot of ways to hide a positive ID, even with Starktech and the new paranoid era of observational intelligence on their side. Even Loki hadn’t marked who was already in Amman to arrange their entry to SOFEX, yet they all knew someone had to be there.All anyone could really do, meanwhile, was wait for the show’s open, and see what their targets would do.. . .A wing squadron of sleek black drones zipped through the blue Jordan sky, their propellors eerily silent. As one, they dipped towards their firing lane, releasing a cloud of smoke, chaff, and hissing white-noise suppressive grenades onto a mocked-up cluster of shipping containers meant to imitate a tight urban corridor. The men playing the ‘insurgents’ weren’t acting as they coughed and withdrew into a tighter knot to regroup and then trek back into new positions in the now-hostile territory.There were giant concert-style screens around the observation arena, a safe distance away from the show. As each new weapon entered the play fight, its maker’s logo splashed huge and glinty into everyone’s face, like a QVC channel for murder. Daisy looked around, saw the guy representing the new militarized drone tech. He was preening as his buddy slapped his shoulder, yelling in delight. She spotted his competitor, as marked by Loki a few days prior, a couple rows away. He was stone-faced, as if waiting for something.Red laser sights got caught in the smoke hanging in the still air as the ‘hero’ team - a private military corporation out of the United States who didn’t get out of bed for less than an absurd amount of money - began to carefully sweep into the combat zone. The crowd held its breath. The laser sights vanished as another logo scrolled by advertising new sights from an outfit in Eastern Europe. No LED laser. Nothing for inclement conditions to pick up. Great for assassins, black ops and snipers.Daisy grimaced. Ross gently elbowed her, which was fair. She smoothed her expression over into professional disinterest, which coincidentally seemed to match Loki’s face, waiting to see what happened next.The screens went black, then picked up a high-def motion and heat imaging feed from another set of drones now in place. Daisy looked up, squinting, saw nothing. Another logo flashed, this one with glitter effects. The competitor. Now stone-face was smirking as the audience went nuts. By military logic, anyone could drop smoke grenades. That tech came cheap and easy, most governments had a frickin’ warehouse or two of smoke grenades the way Wal-Mart had cans of corn. But a hard to counter, safe method to map a difficult combat arena like tight urban spaces? That would be super nifty for a lot of these guys.A small and freakily agile robot dropped another sonic grenade at the enemy flank, a new one that didn’t try for the famed brown note, but instead mimicked and upgraded the near-silent sonic warfare that had been deployed against embassies around the world for the last several years. No one else in the audience thought this was weird or potentially awful. They watched, intent. The screen flashed to the PMC’s spic and span operations room, where most of the proprietary screens were fuzzed out, but the gist was clear: they were trying to sell the audience the future of war. Clean, hands off, automated, right up until the kill shots. And even that could one day be optional. If the money was in it.The operations room murmured to each other through their headsets. It looked more like a video game tournament than combat ops in there. Daisy fixated on a vinyl bobblehead stuck on one of the observation stations. It was a stylized figure of the lead character from a popular shooter series, where men were men, and aliens were mercilessly blown up without hardly any character development to understand why they were being blown up.The PMC squad moved in on an insurgency team that wouldn’t be permanently deafened by the initial sonic burst, weren’t actually about to be neutralized, because this was all just a game for money, but Daisy had glazed over. Dozens of blank shot pops rang in her ears, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tatttt, shouts and howls of victory while she stared at nothing, and then the giant jumbotron screens suggested, via a pretty white lady in a flesh-tone tank top, that the crowd try something from the refreshments corridor to cool off after the show.SOFEX was now open for business.. . .“I should have stayed at the hotel. I should have taken the hint when we got into town.” Daisy shook her head at Loki’s back, feeling Ross watching her. “This is so not my scene. I’m not a pacifist, I mean, it’s just…” She trailed off, realizing Loki was sticking to his three-act play and heading dead on for the guy that had given him the keys to a friggin’ Bentley. “I don’t know. I’m not wimping here. It’s not about being dainty about a fight. I’ve held my own a lot of times, even when it sucked.”“For what it’s worth, I get it. These shows are intense.” Ross watched Loki slither his way through the crowd. Zaidi Pashan spotted him immediately, beaming with delight. He practically lunged towards Loki, both his pudgy hands reaching out to clasp Loki’s long one. Daisy looked away, towards an ammo manufacturer’s booth. It had a line of camo and red ribbon gift bags along the edge of the table. A tall man wearing a blue beret nodded to the halter-top girl watching over the booth, took one, and wandered off without listening to the spiel, presumably looking for more freebies to snag. “We’re supposed to think of war as this act of monumental last resort. Something you grimace at, strap in, and do your best because it’s all supposed to mean something when it’s over.”Ross waved his hand at the throng around him, much of it chattering happily. “And then you come to shows like these and see generals and warlords, side by side, discussing the benefits and drawbacks and cost-per-bullet of a new armor-piercer, as if the war they’ll be used in is actually the Super Bowl, and it’s, it’s nuts.” He shook his head. “You ever shoot a handheld rocket launcher?”“No.”“I have. The newest ones. Not even on the market yet. The Army has a pre-order for hundreds of them. They’re heavy, it hurts your shoulder, and there’s this thrill to it that you can’t ignore. For a minute you forget everything and your monkey brain thinks it’s fun as hell. I don’t know what it actually is. Probably a psych guy does. And then you come down from it, and you realize you just shot off a device that could kill every person in a reinforced three story building, and that building might as well be a memorial garden after, ‘cause they’re not ever gonna be able to rebuild after what you just did to it.”“You’re not making me feel better, dude.”Ross was watching Loki and Pashan talk, like old friends reborn in a new life. “You don’t want to feel better. You don’t ever want to feel better about this stuff.”Daisy pursed her lips, taking that in. “How many arms shows have you been to?”“A lot.” He frowned. “A hell of a lot. What is he doing?” Daisy looked back to see. Loki was now on the other side of the counter, clearly making pleasant mmhmm-mhmm noises at the gear he was being shown.Explosives, Daisy noticed. Pashan was promoting a new line of shape charges and other specialized explosives. She caught Loki’s glance for a split second, got the actual expression under the mask. Loki, for his own reasons, was about as entertained by all this crap as she was.“Sucking up. Pashan’s a big shark here, right? He’ll probably cut the amount of time we have to spend here today by hours. Trust me, he’s not thrilled.” She turned around, realized her other choice of a view was a massive swimsuit billboard. A woman with perfectly styled blonde hair was looking back at the expo audience over her bronzed shoulder. She held a fully automatic rifle aloft in her hands, the business end of it arcing in such a way that eventually the viewer’s eye was drawn to the photoshopped, gleaming, lens-flared, equally bronzed butt. “Ugh.”“Please tell me I don’t have to get into how the advertising around here works.”“No, man, I get that one. I don’t like that, either, but I got it.” Daisy gave up on that and turned back around just in time for Zaidi to notice them and wave. She waved back, looking at least as enthused as the average bank manager at a dinner party. It was good enough to satisfy him. Loki caught her eye again, and she was relieved to see they didn’t have to come over to gladhand with the guy, too. “Let’s go get a snack and peoplewatch, he’s got this part.”Ross’s face scrunched. “You sure you can leave him alone?”Daisy laughed. “Dude, it’s a super-long story, but the very first gig he did for us was a lot like this one, and he technically was still a full-time asshole at the time. It worked out. We don’t need to babysit him, we know his rules by now. I want a burger and a beer and to make fun of like forty crappy wannabe warrior goatees to make myself feel better.”That got a laugh out of Ross. “You think you’re only going to see forty? You’re gonna run out of material.”. . .The amount of shaved heads, bad goatees, jungle-man grit groomed to suspicious perfection, natty uniforms, and medallion bling was too damn high. Daisy did run out of material, flopping back in the oddly cheap plastic cafeteria seat in defeat, still eyeballing gun nuts from around the world, most of whom had government issued credit cards and were buying their new toys by the pallet-load. “How does this not end in clinical depression?”“Pharmaceutical expos are probably about as bad, you know. After you get depressed here, they make a few billion off the aftermath.” Ross sipped at a coffee that was so awful that it was almost crunchy. Daisy made a face at him. He didn’t notice, he was staring balefully at a fry basket. “The great mystery, really, is how every expo and show in the world has food this shitty. There has to be an exception. I’ve never found it.”“Get into the private lounge. This is where the punters eat.” Loki slid into a seat at the table without any other warning that he was arriving. “They’ve got gold foil wrapped bacon and scallop appetizers in there, the good ones, not those little punched ray substitutes people fob off on you. I think I met the King of Jordan himself for a second. Seemed nice enough.”Daisy stared at him. “And you didn’t bring us.”Loki inclined his head in apology. “Five minutes in, Daisy, you would have decked someone. I damn near did. Still might if I meet a bastard in an alley. You know how I am with… certain types. The food’s better there, to be sure. The company is otherwise generally terrible.”He rustled in his suit jacket and came up, absurdly, with a gift bag, one of the very ones she’d seen across the way from Pashan. “I stole you some candy, however,” he said, dumping the contents on the table. They weren’t ammo samples and business cards, not anymore. Chocolates from around the world tumbled out, fancy big name treats that came in tiny boxes at absurd prices. Loki had ripped off probably a thousand dollars worth of snacks under the noses of five star generals and their security teams.Daisy slapped at an Austrian gilt-wrapped truffle, her eyes huge. “You’re forgiven.”Ross said nothing, but he eagled his way towards some sort of godlike butter toffee imported from wherever the frick. He was chewing on it when he finally spoke. “Learn anything?”“I learned plenty, little of it worth a ruddy damn. I can discuss uniform companies, how to polish dress shoes in a combat zone, and listen pleasantly while these puerile fools discuss the merits of high impact shells and whether or not they should dig up the corpse of some idiot named Gerald Bull to finish some damn thing or another.”Ross swallowed the half-chewed toffee, hard. “Tell me they decided no.”“They decided no. Who was he? Is it important?”“He loved the idea of building a supergun so much that he was willing to do it for Saddam Hussein just to see if it worked. Got killed for it way back in ’90, probably by Mossad.”“Oh,” said Loki, waving a hand dismissively. “Then he’s a rattlebox of bones and liquid obsessed with something dull. Not worth any necromancer’s time.”Ross blinked rather a lot, not able to tell if Loki was joking. Daisy wasn’t quite sure, either. She finished her truffle, picking through the treasures to decide what she wanted next. Did one wrapper have a tiny diamond on it? She stared at it, getting her thoughts back in order. “Okay, but did you learn anything useful?”“Ahhh.” Loki grinned, all for the drama. Ross rolled his eyes, not enthused by Loki’s games. “There’s a few different, shall we say, afterparties in the days after the expo, not unlike any other convention. None of these are here in Amman, because to the country’s credit, they would be immediately raided for criminal dealings. So they spread out, to Aqaba if they’re feeling brave, or to the other side of the border, or to embassies and a few other possible shindigs. This is where many of the off-the-book deals happen, as previously suggested. This is where they corral interested mercenary groups and other outfits that have, mm, less valuable credentials. They don’t get into the lounge party, to be specific, so the loungers arrange these to make money off of them. And I have some of their locations, which I will helpfully forward to Ross’s email tonight so that the CIA can retask a satellite or whatnot to observe them.”Loki raised a finger, grinning in the unpleasant way he had when he was building to something no one was going to like. “But. There is another little party. And because the participants are rich and politically powerful enough to be fearless, it happens during the expo, right here in the city. It is strictly for the elite, for the discerning and interested. It is where the ugliest and newest deals happen. And it happens tonight, where these elites, I hear such a rumor, get first crack at what rare delight might make headlines at the next such expo.”Daisy kicked up a leg to rest the ankle of it across her knee, gently peeling a small square dark chocolate so that she could keep the diamond wrapper. “And you, because you’re you and I know how these things go with you, got an invite to this super elite gala so you can see if there’s a vibranium display counter run by some kinda familiar looking dudes.”“Daisy.” Loki drawled the name, sounding almost disappointed in her. “I arranged three invitations.” He grinned at her shock. “I’m not suffering this one alone. It’s going to be terrible. I already hate everyone and I can’t even fixate on one useless individual to help keep my temper. Ross will recognize their social patterns better than I will, and you can help remind me I’m not supposed to blow up things without excellent reason while you’re spying around. That’s not some half praise of your skills. I’m probably going to need the support while I run cover for you two. I hate these kind of parties.”“Can I ask?” Half of Ross’s face was tweaked. “Why do you hate a bunch of gun-runner scums so much?”“Because they’re boring, Agent Ross.” Loki leaned back in his seat. Another truffle appeared in his hands, not one from the pile he’d set out for the two of them. “Because given all this power and potentiality, these fools settle for the simplest path - pointless, excessive murder to greedily steal yet more power for themselves. I think that’s more than simply dull. I think it’s a waste, done in service to a meaningless goal that’s no goal at all. Have a point if you’re going to be a murdering despot. Believe in something.” A classic speech. Daisy faded out, enjoying her candy.“That… doesn’t make me feel better about you.”Loki snorted, focused on his own treat. “My murdering despot days are over, Ross, you may relax. It’s an easily met baseline, that’s all. If one has that much intensity and drive, do something with it. Evil is simple, so at least be usefully evil, or do better and challenge yourself.” He shrugged. “Men who kill for money, in my long experience, do neither.” He popped the truffle in his mouth, signifying he was done with the topic.For what it was worth, Ross did relax. Slightly.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The nice thing about being undercover as diamond-class VIPs was that it was super easy to find a nice dress. Daisy walked into an exclusive shop straight from the expo, waved a card bearing her fake ID, dropped Pashan’s name - since he’d helped sponsor their invitations, she could get away with that - and the staff fell all over themselves to help her. It was fun to be classy once in a while, so long as it was on her terms. Her shoes were beautifully decorated flats, for one thing, because life was too short to wear stilettos without a damn good reason, like her own frickin’ wedding. And her dress was a lovely layered red and gold silken thing that draped lightly across her head and one shoulder and left the other daringly bare. It was a sleek, professionally finished, and comfortable look. Bonus since it meant she could smooth and knot her own hair back and say the hell with professional styling.The guys had it simple, as men usually did. Ross had a nicer, dark linen suit packed specifically for this sort of just in case thing, and Loki had that uber-goth dead black bespoke London suit he was fond of trotting out at any given opportunity. You could tell him he looked like the world’s nattiest funeral director who then licked the corpses at night when the bereaved family had gone home (as Daisy once specifically had, causing him to not speak to her for a week until she slid a new book under his door to apologize. He cheerfully took a lot of cheek from her, but every once in a great while hitting his look got his back up and she would make it up to him), and he would still wear it. If anything, it got blacker over time, as if reflecting the sheer glamorous spite of its owner.At least they looked like they fit in with the crowd outside the ritzy looking joint. Daisy gave her go-bag one more sturdy kick where it was strapped under the driver’s seat, feeling the weight of her personal laptop and some other gear. Stuff that never got left behind for long. Then she slid out of the car, waving off Loki’s hand. She never got into the Asgardian nobility crap, wasn’t going to start now. “So what is this, some fancy restaurant they rented out?”“It’s a house.” Ross tugged once at the bottom of his jacket, straightening his look but still looking naturally disgruntled. “A house rented by another government. There’s gonna be people I know in there. Christ. These illusions of yours are gonna hold, right?”“They’ll hold.” Loki was scanning the crowd as he shut and locked the car.Daisy zeroed in on the flag plate set into the wall along the road, shadowed by dim streetlight. It belonged to a major US ally. “Wait. This is embassy property?”“Yep.”“One of our allies is gonna run an Avon gun party out of their house?”“I remember when I used to get startled by things like that.” Ross sighed. “Yeah. I’ve never seen it as blatant as this, but yeah. You remember Ollie North, right?”“Good point.” Daisy made a face just to get it out of her system. “Okay, let’s do this. See if we can get eyes on our guys.”“Our guys, Daisy.” Loki sounded mild. She couldn’t see his face, he was already leading their little troupe towards the checkpoint gate, where it was guarded by an absolutely enormous dude in a tuxedo. With a rifle strapped over his shoulder. “If we hang around to beat on every illicit dealmaker, we’ll be here for days.”. . .Loki went into some sort of deranged trance of suaveness and charm the moment he stepped over the threshold, schmoozing his way through the crowd like a cartoon shark wearing a monocle and top hat. Daisy mentally rolled her eyes and ignored it, knowing it was a kind of high art sarcasm that would pass by without its victims ever being aware Loki was mocking the crap out of everyone. She stayed in his wake, watching to see if he marked anyone to pay closer attention to, while Ross spun out a little further from the group to see if he could identify any possible knots of guests they needed to check on.Daisy nipped off once they got into range of the snack trays and free drinks, not interested the sumptuous fashion all around her. Much less the conversation, which stayed in its tight cliques. It meant anything they did was unnoticed by most, ignored as uninteresting or not someone else’s business.She decided she would keep herself at one glass of probably ridiculous champagne, but there were shrimp toasts and other delicacies she could graze on for hours, if she could go unnoticed long enough. She looked, mournful, at a giant silver bowl of cheese wrapped in delicately shaved charcuterie, knowing there was no way to hide half of the contents of that bowl in her dress. She settled for a couple of tasty-looking picks, then caught back up to Loki in time to be introduced to some other bigwig he’d been putting up with.“Miss Jannsen, this is a friend of Pashan’s, Mr. Ramone,” said Loki, waving her towards a man in an equally expensive looking suit. “He was interested in our business. I felt I would be remiss if I didn’t direct him towards you.”Daisy looked at the man, trying to figure out the angle here.“Ehrm.” The man laughed nervously. “She’s lovely, Mr. Lochlan, but I was asking about communications code.”“And you kept looking towards my associate while you did. I assumed you’d possibly heard of her.”Oh. She caught the undertone. A jerk. Tee’d up neatly for her. Daisy smiled, almost seductive, and reached out to place her hand warmly on Ramone’s arm. “Mr. Ramone?”“Miss, terribly sorry, I was asking about intranet protocol security and-“Daisy cut him off, moving towards him smoothly. “And you were naturally wondering about the dangers of injectable packets designed to mimic normal loss to cover the intrusion. It’s happened before, of course, but now we’ve got something that’s airgapping its way in without foreign USBs.” Her smile grew wider. “A good friend of mine wrote the original security document. Not that I can say anything more, for their sake.” It was her. She wrote the document, under top secret clearance to hide her name. It was the hot topic in computer security. “Now, the counter to this is tricky. You know how the current standard OSI operates, of course.” She rambled on a bit, just surface level stuff, really.“Eeeerhmmm…” Ramone was dying inside, revealed to be fully out of his depth. Loki beamed. “Oh, my god, is that Frank? Please excuse me, I just saw a good friend of mine.”“Of course, of course.” Loki and Daisy watched him go, departing at a near run. “I thought you’d enjoy that.”“Honestly, I can live my life without knowing about every dumb dickhead that crosses my path, but yeah, hey, free roast in the millionaire club.” Daisy worked her champagne and shrugged.“Certainly. Then I admit, he was also annoyingly stuck to me and I needed him gone so we could talk.” Loki flicked a hand towards the far side of the room, a subtle motion meant just for her. “There’s a second room past that curtain.”She pretended to sip at her glass and made as if she were looking around the crowd, actually studying the area he indicated through the corner of her eye. There was a guy near it watching the crowd. “Velvet rope club?”“I believe so. I’ve eavesdropped a few people talking about it, and it’s very clearly not a first year debutante’s show. Even I’m probably not going to get in the front way, not on my charm alone.”Daisy flicked her gaze around, studying the layout of the room and the placement of the staircases. “Think there’s a bathroom above it?”“If there is, there’s going to be a large man with annoyingly competent equipment in it, foxing people like us.”“Yeah, point.” She looked around for Ross, seeing him grimace his way through a conversation with some dude in a dress uniform. She stared at him until he caught the look, untangling himself with what looked like relief and coming towards them. She waited until he got into range. “How well known is our cover corporation?”“Middling.” Ross looked past them, at the guard near the curtain, then away again. He got it. “Professionally, it’s not going to get anyone further in than you’ve already gotten us.”She looked at Loki. “Okay. We can now entertain dicier options.”He flicked a look at the stairs. “Sensibility forces me to start with your previous idea of setting up observation upstairs, but with the twist of removing any individual or equipment in our way.”“Which’ll set off an alert sooner or later anyway. Probably sooner.” Daisy licked her lips, realizing she was out of champagne. “You comfortable walking in invisible?”“No. I’ve got my face locked in too many eyes right now, it’ll intensify the strain of the spell, and further, someone will notice I’ve gone too quickly.” Loki grimaced in an all-too-human way, looking past her before his face smoothed back over. All that was left was a muttered, surprisingly hostile, “Oh, shit.”Daisy managed to keep a straight face as she turned around. Zaidi Pashan, the new bestie, who apparently was one of those super clingy guys, was slogging towards them with friends in tow. He had his hands around two other men’s arms, dragging them along, one a drunk European singing something she bet twenty dollars was filthy under his breath, and the other was instantly recognizable.Ian. Goddamn. Quinn. The disgraced tech industrialist, the one that had been in cahoots with a lot of old enemies back when Daisy first got on board with Coulson and the team. A human Loki decided he hated with particular ferocity, and for a number of relevant reasons. No one at SHIELD had gotten a whiff of him since the thing with Latveria years ago. It had been great, not caring. Daisy had fantasies he’d gotten crushed to death in a lab somewhere, an asterisk on a yearly ‘they are missed’ corporate blotter. It wasn’t nice, but she reckoned it was understandable.Ross couldn’t help blurting his question. “Do you know that jerk?”“Oh, god,” whispered Daisy, realizing as Loki had that this meant things could go sideways very fast. Unless they kept hard control of the situation.“You do. Do you know much shit we have on him? How much crap he sells-”“Ross, we get it,” she hissed at him. “Just-just-just, crap, just go with whatever Loki does.”“He seems kinda thrown, too!”“Fake it!” She looped her arm around his and whirled on the approaching team with a bright LED beam of a smile, taking the guy aback for a second. “Mr. Pashan!”That was Loki’s cue to get back into character. He turned, sleek and regal, freshly full of bubbly charm, his hand reaching for Pashan’s as the human untangled himself from the drunk one. “Again we meet! How fine.”Ian Quinn, having been cornered by Loki often enough to either not be fooled by a light illusion anymore, or was now completely paranoid that all charming pale dudes would happily shot-put him to the moon with a smile, physically recoiled.Pashan was too enamored to notice. “Mr. Lochlan! I’m so glad you made it this early.”Quinn mouthed the fake name, blood draining from his face. If he’d guessed before, he was certain now. Daisy locked eyes with him, then tilted her head to be sure she had his full attention. She grinned like Loki could, a big, hungry, ‘screw this up for us and you die first, I swear to God I can do it and you know it’ smile with eyes at just the right micro-expression of hostile. “Ian Quinn, holy hell, I haven’t seen you in ages.” It came out cheerfully enough to hurt her own ears.Not a complete idiot, Quinn forced out a friendly chuckle. “Years and years. You know how it is, getting your feet back under you after a little setback. I’ve been working myself back up to the top the old fashioned way since we last met. You’re with, uh, Overstatic now, Miss Jo- oh, I never pronounce it right, I’m so sorry.”“Jannsen.” She reached out and hugged his side, old friends reunited by fate. “Yes, I am. And you remember Lochlan, of course.”“Of course.” She could feel his heartbeat fluttering like a terrified rabbit. “And this is-“She squeezed his arm, a pure threat. “Ellis. Mr. Ellis, our logistics guy. I don’t know if you’ve met him?”Ross, as if realizing there were benefits to being thrown into the thorn bushes like this, reached out his hand to Quinn. “Quinn and I met briefly, too, but I wasn’t with Overstatic then.” A thin-lipped smile, a fast quirk of the head Daisy realized she already associated with the real face of Agent Everett Ross.“Oh yeah…” The words came out limp, the vocal equivalent of shredded seaweed. “I think I do remember.”“I bet,” said Ross, like an in-joke. “You always knew I’d catch up with you again.”Nice, Daisy thought. Game recognized game. She smiled at Ross, a real one.Quinn laughed. Sort of.Pashan looked delighted, the hidden conversation going unnoticed. “This is perfect. We’re already fast friends. Well, except for Heinrich, here. Heinrich needs a nap.” He looked up at Loki, apologetic. “I had to rescue him from a bit too sinful a situation, and now he’ll have to recover from it.”“Any true friend would do no differently.” Loki smiled so broadly that all it did was remind Daisy that Loki would leave Pashan in a ditch and steal his wallet in a heartbeat.“I’m sure he’ll be delighted to meet you and remember you another time.” Pashan waved over a member of the house staff, who took careful charge of the drunk guy. Pashan clapped his hands together, as if mock cleaning them. “Tell me you’ve been by the tables.”Daisy hoisted her glass. “I’m staying light tonight.”“A shame. The embassy treats its guests so fine. But at the same, I must respect your discipline. Alas, we all have that friend who has none.”Discipline, her ass. She was going to dream of those cheese treats. “I didn’t realize we were so early,” she said instead.“Quite. There are a few special events later on tonight, for the very lucky, looking to make names for the future. And of course the company is the gift that lasts for as long as our stamina holds out.” Pashan turned to Loki. “I don’t know if you’re staying in Jordan long past the expo’s close, but if you get a chance, you must come to dinner at my estate, along the southern border. My wife’s family has been visiting this month, it would be an honor to share hospitality.”“Our schedule is woefully tight, but I’ll have to see what I can do.” Loki smiled, but with a hint of that good cheer fading under it. This was getting to be too much even for him. The worst part was that underneath the whole arms dealer thing, Pashan seemed like an individually almost decent guy, if a lot socially. Which made the whole arms dealer thing that much shittier. She thought of Tony Stark in comparison again, realizing how wild a life change it had really been for him. “But we’ve tonight for now.”“You’ve been around, I hope? Oh.” He looked past Loki, turning serious. There was a uniformed man on the staircase. Daisy couldn’t identify him, but her guess was either embassy security or someone on Pashan’s personal force. “I need to step off for a moment. It happens a lot at these parties, I’m afraid.”“We’ll keep Quinn company for you,” chirped Daisy, still holding him in place.Pashan turned to give her a brilliant smile, reaching for her hand to squeeze it before wandering off towards the stairs.Loki didn’t waste a second. He swept in close to Quinn, not touching him, just infecting his air. “Some of tonight’s special events are in that room beyond the curtain, Quinn. You’re going to get us in there, aren’t you? And you’re going to do it without a whimper, an alert to some other worthless vermin friend, or any other sort of annoying drama. Because you know what will happen, otherwise.”Quinn swallowed so hard that his throat clicked like a trigger, his eyes stuttering up towards Loki’s face. “This is my punishment in Hell, isn’t it? I’m already there. I died in a car crash, probably something crappy like an old Fiat, and you’re my boatman taking me down the river so I can get flayed for a million years.”“Quinn. Hell will be nicer to you than I would ever be, if you don’t do exactly what I tell you. If you do, I’m out of your life once more, and you can keep living your small, pointless life.” Loki grinned down at him, his mouth like a cage of fangs. “I didn’t intend to be in it again, funny enough, but here we are.”“And this time you’ve got the CIA in your pocket. Strange, small world.” Eyelashes flickered towards Ross, sudden bravery making him lash out. “You didn’t have me on shit.”Ross stared at him, dead faced. “If you don’t play our game tonight, Quinn, I will destroy your life tomorrow. I don’t know what the big guy’s threatened you with before, clearly you’re scared. And I know you should be. But cross me and I’ll make sure you never outrun him, or your previous business partners, or the guys you fucked over on the Madagascar coast back in ’13.”Quinn’s throat worked silently, quivering up and down.“I will make you give up everything. And then I’ll sit back and watch when Loki finishes the job.”Goddamn, Ross. Daisy stared at him, actually pretty impressed at this point. She didn’t know how much was bluff, but it didn’t matter. Quinn had that acidic onion smell of fear and defeat on him.“It’s an auction, you assholes. I know you guessed that. I’m going to have to get you into the secret auction.”Loki stayed where he was, disrupting the man’s very aura with the pressure of his hostility. “Very good, Quinn. You’re playing the right move. Would you like some hors d’oeuvres while we wait for the opening bids?”“I’m not hungry.” It had to be the truth. Ian sounded like he wanted to throw up.“That’s a shame,” said Daisy, turning him towards the snack bar anyway with her fingers jabbed hard in his muscles. “The shrimp toasts are awesome.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Life around the world, around most worlds, even, was barricaded by financial walls. There was the grim reality of homelessness, poverty, instability, and then, for the lucky, escape into multiple ideas or levels of comfort, all of them based on that delicate, hazy need for stability. Then you passed into luxury, and on into being one of the truly elite, where stability was a welcome fact of daily life.And then there was that dark place where too much money cushions the psychic weight of taboo, making instability something to be courted all over again, something to make all that cushion feel less safe. Where the danger of most people’s real lives became a game.On one side of the dark curtain, powerful men and women held a sedate party, talking shop, making connections, passing quiet data to each other over drinks to sell their wares at another time. On the other, the room could hurt one’s ears with silence, yet just as full. Some were paid to be there, high quality escorts paid more to never speak of their time in this room than for any company they shared, whether chaste or otherwise. It was a waste of money, anyway. Few in the room cared about who stood next to them. It was the displays along the walls that spoke to them more.There were less than a half dozen such displays, none of them with the sexual garishness found at the expo during the day. These were attended to by minimal staff, men of power themselves, guarding their riches like dragons and only grudgingly trotting them out to show. All of them were armed. None of them stood at readiness. It was a warning, a message, a promise.Nowhere in the expo did anyone bother to flash weapons. All that bravado, and save for the testing areas, they had a limit. But here, weapons danced in the light like waiting for a duel. It was immediately clear that people could die in this room, be taken out into the night. Disappeared. Because the dragons would protect their own.There weren’t countries in this room. There were only those who looked forward to the future of war like they thought they were the emissaries of Death Itself.Loki suspected She would disapprove, but it wouldn’t matter. Not to these faces. It was whisperingly cultlike, on this side of the curtain. Truth didn’t matter nearly as much as the cost of a bullet. Truth could hurt the unprepared, but the bullet was real and could kill.It was hard to identify most of the wares, not from where in the room Loki was staked out. In this room, in this crowd, with his hand wrapped like steel around Ian Quinn’s arm, he was almost invisible. Just another man, with his face towards that deadly future. Daisy hung back, keeping to the shadows with Ross, realizing instantly there was a lot of secure observation equipment deployed in here. It would be iffy to even do short-range comms, unless something went dangerously wrong. So they relied on him edging his way further in, his height and posture sending passive information until he returned to them.Getting closer gave him certain clues. He saw a ‘new’ explosive first, actually a design document with the device itself getting the kinks worked out. What was on display was a prop. He ignored it, realizing on a glance the project would sputter out before becoming something truly frightening. The display crew would get their money, do their best, and one day try to fade away before the debts came due.This was a crowd that would remember them, though.Other displays were more concerning, and he filed away brisk mental notes for later, but what they had come for filled his attention. The vibranium was in the center of the display wall, a handful of raw samples watched over by a handful of men. Probably more in waiting somewhere. All of them looked humorless, their faces so devoid of casual human interest they looked rubbery somehow. They didn’t care that they were the stars of the show, that they drew all the interest. Loki stared at each with his eyes half-lidded, not drawing attention even as his skin prickled, still not finding a match with anything or anyone he had seen in SHIELD’s files.The men at the vibranium display grunted to each other occasionally. One was studying a device, probably a dedicated smartphone that let them know if there were any threats in the room. Each display had someone doing that. Loki kept marking them, watching how they moved, seeing the same burdened gait and watching the device in one man’s hand.They simply weren’t on the main stage of the world. They were nobody. And yet, the odds of a bunch of new meat, people that hadn’t even gotten caught robbing a mafia game for guns, would stumble across and know where to sell vibranium was so low as to be impossible. They had to have a connection.“Who are they?” He hissed his question at Quinn, lowering his head until the whisper caused a tickle along the man’s brow. The human winced in his grasp. “Name them.”“I can’t,” snapped Quinn. “I’ve never seen these guys before in my life.”That sounded truthful. “Do you know anything about this room? Anyone else?”Quinn’s bicep tensed under his hand, flexing like he wanted to struggle. “I can ID some of the players, yeah. The losers trying to fob off a non-working bomb, I did business with them. They float a lot of bullshit credit. The ammo guys, fine, I’ll give them up. Your rock hounds-““Don’t play cute with me. Don’t ever play that with me, Quinn. You know what they’re selling.” His voice was liquid threat.Quinn swore at him. “If I knew where a bunch of fresh assholes were getting vibranium, I’d either be on the other side of the planet from their source, because that isn’t going to end well, or, in better days, I’d have already stolen it from under them for a gig of my own. Instead, I’m stuck here with you, wishing I hadn’t taken an invite to this thing from an old friend.”“You should go back to college, Quinn. Take a new trade. This industry doesn’t like you much.” Loki squeezed, harder than he needed, not taking much enjoyment from the way Quinn sucked his breath in. “Pity invitations and grifting free food.”“Tell me about grift, your gal pal ate half a Costco’s worth of shrimp out there. Fuck.” The pressure on his arm was intensifying. “Okay, fine, your esteemed co worker, whatever, man, ease off.”Loki did. Too much and he’d break the man’s arm, cause a scene. He realized he was on edge, his instincts beginning to react to some external threat he hadn’t identified yet. He looked at the man monitoring the room, watched his face, realized there were new micro-expressions there. Discomfort. Alarm. Something was disturbing him. Something in the room, maybe someone else wanting to make a move on their rare treasure.He continued to watch, seeming to look at and talk only to Quinn, his shoulders surely tense enough to alert Daisy that something was already off here. The man with the phone looked up at the crowd fast, scanning it, and then leaned over to talk to one of his companions, his face shadowed out of Loki’s view.The prickling grew stronger as Loki saw what could have been easily missed. That wasn’t a phone in the man’s hand. It passed for one, a small and thin rectangle that wouldn’t be out of place on a mall display. But he realized it was a slight bit too thin, enough to be actually flexible. Too new looking. Off somehow. Loki suddenly realized why. And what it had to be doing.The man being spoken to looked up at the crowd. And then, as if to emphasize what Loki realized, stared directly at him.A rattlesnake slithered down Loki’s back. He let go of Quinn and activated the short range hidden in his jacket. “Daisy, I’ve been made. We need to move.”“What?! How?”“They’re not monitoring channels in here. They’re scanning the audience, looking for any potential threat. Gene tech, maybe simple temperature scan. I can’t see the program from here, but I know the device. Daisy, they’ve scanned me and know I’m not human. They’re going to act.” He started gently pushing his way backward out of the crowd as the men started to rustle and move around their display. No point in causing a full massacre in here, not like this. Not if it could be helped. “And they know this because they’re not human either. That’s offworld tech in the watcher’s hand. That’s why we never got an ID on our searches.”“Oh, crap.” Daisy sounded like she was moving. “Ross and I are already at the exit to this room.” Something else unintelligible happened on the other end of the line.“One of you need to get out there and get a trail on their departure vehicle. They’re either going to fight, or run, or, likely, do both. We need to know where they run.”“Way ahead of you.”Loki slapped the comm off, realizing Quinn was somehow still close to him. “We’re done, Quinn, and it’s probably going to get loud in here. Run while you can.”Quinn was staring at him with an almost feral expression. The coming blowout was not going to be his first rodeo and he was in full fight or flight mode. “In this room? They’ve got twenty cameras that see me with you from the moment you entered. I get left behind, someone is going to ask me all about you guys, and they’re going to do it with power tools.”Loki swiveled his head as the front of the crowd started to rumble, knowing it meant the hostiles were about to make their play. He saw the exit, knew he was going to have to decide how he handled this fast. “That’s not really my problem.”“I’m going to die if you leave me here.”“I really do hate repeating myself.”“You asshole, I know how SHIELD works, and I know they got into your head. If you leave me here, you might not feel a lot of guilt, but you might feel a little, especially since you left an intelligence asset behind for someone else to drill - literally - and I will live forever in the back of your head as the time you screwed up a job.”“Quinn, I’ll forget you existed the day after your obituary gets printed. Assuming you rate one.” He grabbed Quinn’s shoulder, hard, hauling the man around to his other side as the ripple of discontent in the crowd started to become a howl. “But you get a point for realizing in which direction lays survival. Get behind me, and don’t leave my shadow.”“Great. Story of my last decade.”. . .Fitz skipped the elevator for being too slow, hauled ass up the staircase, and pounded down the hall toward’s Coulson’s office. His hand was sweaty around the phone, where he still had an emergency vidcall with Princess Shuri going. He didn’t knock, didn’t bother checking to see if anyone else was in there, he just barged in and hoped for the best.It was only Coulson, luckily, a mug of coffee halfway to his mouth, and he was now staring at Fitz. Fitz realized he was busy gasping for breath, trying to put words together.Shuri screamed out from the palm of his hand, saving him from having to recover faster than he could handle. “We’ve got a unique aerospace disturbance over the initial catch site in Morocco, my prediction says it’s heading straight to Jordan!”The mug splashed down as Coulson hauled out of his chair, activating the incident wall in mid-lunge. “Shuri, connect in to my system, and then don’t ever tell anyone else that you did.”The datascreen blanked, then his whole wall filled with the nu-tech satellite track of thousands of aircraft. Not tracked normally, but by heat signatures and air disturbance. Top secret methods of catching even hidden aircraft. The trails peeled away until Shuri highlighted one - far too fast for civilian craft. The track pulled in on a subscreen, revealing a secret. The track was doubled. Two unnaturally fast bogeys, not just one.“What am I looking at?” Coulson began scrolling through the obscure data, not gleaning anything except estimated airspeed. “Someone connect this together for me.”The door slammed open again. Okoye and May were in the room before it finished swinging. Okoye took over on instinct upon realizing Shuri was online, nodding in a short, sharp burst towards the screen. “The field team reported in. Your agents identify the vibranium merchants as unknown aliens, but they’re on low communication. They’re in active conflict right now.”“And the hostiles just phoned up their emergency escape route. Got it.” Coulson turned back towards the wall, thinking. “May, Okoye, get to Jordan. Whatever’s going down, I want immediate control and cleanup. Pull the backup team over, the one we’ve got sitting on their butts in the capital.”“We will use my vessel.” Okoye’s tone brooked no argument. “Can be there within two hours, undetected.”Shuri spoke up. “The unknown ships will be landing in Jordan within a half hour.”“And they’re not coming up on any other kind of tracker, are they.” He expected what was next.“No, Mr. Coulson, they are not.”Fitz broke in. “May, send Daisy our last ditch file. The one I marked for you.” He looked at Coulson. “Daisy can impact vibranium, slightly, if she can hold a quake at the right sonic frequency. Shuri and I have a program to help her do that, a guide system for her gauntlets.”Coulson looked at Fitz, realizing that they’d just been handed a lot of trust by Wakanda without a second thought. “She can’t sustain something like that for long.”“Long enough for Loki to blindside whoever’s armored up, if that’s what happens. Or Ross takes the shot.” May finished tapping at her phone. “On its way, Fitz.”. . .Daisy whirled around at the screech of the Bentley, having done what she could to toss a high-tech tracker onto a heavily armored truck that peeled out of the emptying lot ninety seconds after she extracted from the private party. Most people at the shindig had hauled ass at the first sound of a gunshot, which was the right thing to do even if it wasn’t more like roaches scattering in this case. She had no idea where Pashan had gone. If he was smart, he was in one of the first cars out. Ross tumbled out of the driver’s seat, armed, staring at the building where gunshots were still happening. She dug into her go-bag under the driver’s seat, getting her gauntlets out and slapping them onto her wrists. Didn’t go with the dress, but whatever. Ross spoke in her ear as she finished suiting up. “We only targeted six guys in there.”“Had to be a couple we didn’t see out back. I made five getting in the truck. Doesn’t ever take Loki this long to wind up one dude. Has to be more trying to take him on.” Daisy turned towards the embassy, wondering how bad it was gonna suck, all the paperwork for a blow-out in a government building. Then she realized no government on earth was going to admit to an illegal pre-release weapons party in the back of their house and felt better. A little bit. The update she’d just pushed into her gauntlets over her phone connection meant more to her, though. “I’m gonna head in, make-“The door fell open under the force of a wedge of blue ice, which instantly melted onto the concrete porch. A night this hot, even that would be gone in a few minutes. Loki artlessly pushed a figure in front of him as the whining crack of another shot went past his head and embedded in the brick wall lining the embassy home. Loki, otherwise, didn’t twitch.“Loki!”He barely spared her a look while she checked to see if he was wounded or immediately being chased. He was untouched. Hair was a little messier. Looked angry. Honestly, it was kinda unfair. “Shooters aren’t the primary targets!” He punctuated this with a wave of his hand, another, hardier wall of almost blackish ice blocking the door behind him. She watched another gunshot crackle into it, then speckle its way into a splintering spider-web. The wall held.Oh, good. Just the remaining pissed off gun nuts taking shots at whoever messed up their party. She realized his human cargo was Ian Quinn, and that for whatever reason, he hadn’t been left for dead. Fine. “Get in the back of the car, Quinn.”“Of a Bentley?” He moved even while he was complaining, hands over his head. There was a bullethole in his jacket. The rest of him seemed fine.“Of the Bentley.” She ignored him as he shoved by, paying attention to Loki. “I got a tracker on their truck. Base got unknown craft zooming this way. They’re gonna meet up with their ship.”“Ross, move. I’m driving.” Ross didn’t move, even as Loki marched relentlessly towards him. “My reflexes are better. Take passenger.”Daisy watched Ross give up and do what he was told. “I gotta ride with Sir laDouche?”“You can roll him into a freeway ditch in a minute, Daisy, I don’t care.”“Neither do I,” said Quinn. “I can hit dirt while rolling. It beats whatever laser bullshit they were firing!”“Won’t be your first time, huh?” Daisy opened the door on her side. Loki was already revving the engine, impatient. “So what the hell did you two get up to in there?”

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Quinn kept his face towards the window, fogging it with his breath while he occasionally got whacked with a leg or something. Daisy was changing into better fight gear, and Quinn wasn’t that kind of idiot. “So I get behind Loki, and mostly I’m going on what I heard from there. These guys with your vibranium are yelling something I can’t understand. I thought it was because it was loud in there. Shit acoustics. House that nice and the architecture is actually pure horsesh-““You couldn’t understand them, Quinn, because you don’t have a translation patch. Shi’ar galactic dialect, it’s the base language for a lot of mercenary pidgin. Spacelane creole.” Loki had the Bentley at 115mph and rising, watching the pinpoint of their target, staying at least a mile ahead. There was a tunnel coming up.“Whatever. They start firing this, this, hard light laser crap at us over the crowd. At him. Why are they wasting their time selling vibranium? Just dump the schematics for whatever the hell those guns are. I’d max out two credit cards and sell my left testicle for that thing-““Dude!” Daisy kicked him, and not because she was wiggling into her pants this time.“It’s the truth! I’m not exactly the type to get a job in the food industry, sweetheart.” Quinn rubbed at his thigh, where he’d gotten the brunt of her boot heel. It was a fair shot. “Anyway, the lasers don’t last for long because your guy here does some of that juju shit he does and now the shots are reflecting back. Meanwhile, of course the creep’s got knives like a Williams-Sonoma to follow up the fantasy light show. Now I’m hearing the sort of death gurgles you get at the movies, which I assure you reminds me every single second I’m sitting here that I could be dead and you could throw me on the road any time, and I’m actually pretty grateful that you’re not doing that.”“Start as a line cook, Quinn. You’ll make bulk buyer for a good eatery in no time,” Ross deadpanned. “Less shooting. Same amount of drugs, though.”“I hate cooking. I like technology. I like the money that’s in technology, which means I can pay people to cook for me.” Quinn shook his head. “Maybe I’ll go back into medical if you guys don’t drop me in the ocean. Less shooting in med tech, too. Still get the drugs, and better quality to boot. So anyway, I’m counting three guys that start trying to get into the shit with Loki, two are down in a bloody, and I mean bloody, minute while he’s frog-marching me on our way to you guys out the door-”Loki jacked into another lane, speeding up as he entered the tunnel.Quinn flung a hand into the air, palm up, fingers curled to illustrate his rather frantic followup. “Scratch that, toss me, could I please not die in the coming fireball you’re going to make if you do that cute NASCAR shit in here?”“It’s under control.” Loki said it with the kind of frozen acid that suggested not only was it under control, but another remark that thought it wasn’t and a man would be eating a whole Bentley, starting from the rear bumper.Quinn flung both his hands in the air now and turned to sit normally, guessing Daisy was done with her refit. She was. Gauntlets were back in place, and a sidearm sat at her hip. He took the hint. “Lot of confusion starting at this point. A few of the others in the party didn’t like what was going on, so they’re just shooting at the problem. Me, Loki, the last alien standing. Don’t blame them, honestly. I’d have done the same. So, the last guy is ripped, knows the shots aren’t getting him anywhere. He makes a physical charge, but whatever they guessed about your guy, they didn’t get full deets, because he practically bounces right off.”“More magic.”“Not surprising, Gandick the Goth. The guy lands in a table. Through it, rather. Our room’s emptied out at that point, all that’s left are the people trying to get out of the civ party. Last guy gets back up, I don’t know how. Adrenaline. I get a sight of what’s about to go down before I’m out the room. And it involves a knife and a big green flash and those guys aren’t your problem anymore but I’m still waiting for a good moment to puke. Spare a thought for your cleanup crew. How many in the truck ahead?”“A few,” said Daisy, not willing to give him the actual number, make him feel like part of the team. She’d marked five, but it was probably total six or more inside. It was a decent-sized truck. “None of these guys were kitted in that vibranium suit we got on intel?”“No. The two I saw that may have been, including the man from the War Dog feed, are ahead. It’s increasingly likely there’s only the one suit, however. I think the other man was simply durable.” Loki whipped around two more vehicles, pushing the car tight enough along the wall to nearly crawl up it. Quinn was turning green. Ross looked a touch pale, himself.“Weird they didn’t stay to fight with that. That’s really weird.” Daisy shook her head.“They didn’t expect to fight. They were frantic. I didn’t catch everything they said, but it was something about how this was supposed to be little more than a delivery job. They were shouting at each other, not me. Not experienced mercenaries, foolish men even for local galaxy. They were not difficult to kill. If I’d realized more quickly, I would have left them alive to question. Happened too fast. I will be rectifying that.”“But they’re not supposed to be here. You said local stays out of our business.” Ross sounded frustrated. “We’re not a big deal out there in the galaxy.”“I said that, and it’s true. I don’t know what their play is supposed to be here. I don’t know what’s going on.” Loki sounded increasingly pissed off. “This is an anomaly, Ross. A brief one.”Daisy finished studying her phone. “Think they’re en route to an abandoned oil field, little further east. Shuri and Fitz got the craft slowing down on approach to it.” She leaned up, between the front seats to watch the truck, no longer a distant pixel. “They got eye on us?”“No, they’re driving erratic. I think they’re panicking.” Loki kicked down a gear, hitting a smoother 90 mph to keep pace. “No thought to what’s around them.”“They hit a bug-out call on their flight and want to run before anyone catches up to them. You’re right, that’s not experience. That’s messy.” Daisy flicked her hair, thinking. “If they get away, we don’t get answers.”“They’re not getting away.” The wheel squeaked under Loki’s hand. “But they’re going to become dangerous when cornered. Even if inexperienced. Especially because.”. . .The Bentley’s wheels didn’t squeal when it pulled onto the soft-pack asphalt. Ruined dig equipment broke the purpling line of the evening sky, casting shadows on the half dozen people surrounding a heavy white truck. There were rusting cargo bays just beyond them, truck graveyards left behind and gradually torn open by hostile wind. The fronts of the buildings were gone. The roof beams fell inwards. It didn’t pass Loki’s notice as he slammed the door of the car that the edges of a few rusting girders were a fading red hot. Temporary cover for illegal alien aircraft.This wasn’t Ross’s first operation gone bad. He didn’t tumble out the passenger side to be live fire bait. He stayed low and tunneled through the car, shoving out of it on the driver’s side, slipping past Loki until he had cover he could shoot from. Daisy did the same in the back. Quinn hit the dirt behind a tire, no newborn fool, either.One of the men screamed, unintelligible alien fear. He took a shot that went wild and panged off a rock far to the team’s left, one last ditch attempt to warn off their pursuers. Ross had his service weapon already in his hands, up and ready, finger on the trigger. Another shot - he returned fire, popping a tire on the truck. The truck sped out of the way as one of the aliens juked back around to the driver’s side and did something to it. Loki could have said why, but there wasn’t time. They were making a short runway, meaning these weren’t full vertical-lift ships inside the two bays. Cheap ships. That told him a bit.Ross ducked return fire, realizing all of it then bent around them, rippling in an eerie way, when Daisy shoved at their attackers with a quake. The truck toppled over and then slid, but it was out of the aliens’ way by then. A snap from Loki cased it in ice, stopping a fire that would confuse their vision. The aliens withstood the quake, but not easily. One was sturdier than the rest.“Target,” said Loki as he fixed on that one, as if that meant everything. It was clear enough for Daisy. That was the one in the vibranium suit. The one that would take a chance for the others as they ran towards the bay.The man growled and Daisy got a look at the face under the human illusion, grey and riddled like the surface of the moon before the vibranium-alloy nanofabric rolled over the rest of him. Then he charged, unnaturally fast, defiantly not passing for human now. She raised her arms and focused on him, ignoring the other aliens as they ran, focused on how the quake felt as it surged through her muscles, listening to a musical thrum from her gauntlets as she sharpened the sonic wave that shaped her assault until - yes!The alien fell back, if only a little, the fabric over his torso peeling haphazardly away to reveal more of that moonlike skin. “Got him!”Loki had a spell in the air before she finished speaking. Not just ice, but something limned in green fire slammed into their attacker, piercing through the exposed torso. The fabric pulled back around the new wound as her quake finished, and the alien screamed. Not a fatal shot, Loki knew. Not for a Badoon. But now he was pinned to the earth by a rod of brutally shaped metal and magic. They were going to get at least one to question.The others were almost to the leftmost bay. One of them peeled off to the right, something glittering in his hand. Loki saw what he was trying to do, and began to tear off from the group to intercept him. “Hit the others, Daisy, slow them down!”“With what?”He snapped a look over his shoulder. She blinked, then blinked again, her arms wavering as she realized what he was suggesting. “Dude!”“It’s not on our credit histories!”“I’m gonna pay for this in the afterlife,” she muttered, steadying. “Quinn, Ross, get behind me. Now.”Ross bodied Quinn down onto the ground behind her, looking up in time to see the brand new, beautifully silvered, softly leather-seated Bentley Mulsanne begin to lift and slide along the ground. “Oh, no,” he said, his voice wobbling.Quinn was on his back, looking up at him with a wild expression. “Do you know what one of those cost?”The Bentley rose a full two meters in the air and spun forward, slow and heavy and with all the grace of a cement duck winging its way to a joyless winter in Hell, until it had the momentum Daisy wanted. Then it finished its parabolic arc, bounding towards the fleeing aliens. Watching it disintegrate as it tumbled towards them was the physical avatar of a bad rock opera, doors breaking off and crumpling, a glass headlight shattering outwards from the compression caused by impact, the cab crunching inwards like so much lunchtime tinfoil. Seats ripped out and tumbled across the asphalt, acrylic foam splattering apart and fluttering into the night. Chunks of it slammed into sturdy alien bodies, slowing them down but not stopping them.It took less than a minute for Daisy to destroy over three hundred thousand dollars worth of premium luxury vehicle, and less than a second for her to realize, hey, why feel bad about it, after all? It was just a stupid car, anyway. And not hers. Dude had a point.Loki slapped down the high-impact explosive his target was about to roll into the second bay, surrounding it with a miniaturized mageshield that shattered into etheric shards of white flame when it blew. The man swore at him, flung a hand out that bore an ornamental thumb talon-ring, getting one small scratch along Loki’s cheek. An Ergon under his illusion, ruby-skinned and broad. A little like the Badoon, a powerful race that ended up doing heavy lifting for other species, legal or illegal. Strong enough to pull off an injury like that, smart enough to realize that managing only that tiny gouge was going to end badly for him. He braced for the counter-assault. Loki delivered.The Ergon was flung back, hard, bouncing off the asphalt and tumbling towards the ruins of the Bentley. He scrambled back to his feet and had to make a decision. Renew his assault on Loki and try to salvage the escape of his allies, or run like hell to try to catch up with them?He would do neither. The next spell Loki cast dropped several pieces of car on him, Bentley lasagna, with him as an unconventional bottom meat layer. Two to question. At least they would have that much victory.That left four, and Loki realized he could feel the heat of the engines screaming into life. Daisy was running towards the bay to try and keep up on her part of the action, and he put a hand up to stop her before she got crisped. It was too late to stop their departure. In their panic, they’d moved too fast for even the team’s good work. Fight or flight, and flight won the day.“Dammit!” Daisy slowed down, pulling right to end up where Loki indicated it was safe. A second later, the small ship pulled out past her whipping up new, outrageously hot wind. It needed runway, but not much. “God dammit!” She whirled on Loki, frustrated. “We lost them. That’s it.”Loki looked at her, somber, making sure what he said wasn’t a joke. It was an option, and he knew what he would do on his own. But he also knew he wasn’t the one in command here. “We’re about to lose them.” He pointed at the second bay. “They weren’t in a mind to take both of their ships. I stopped the destruction of the other one.”She gaped at him, then looked at the black mouth of the second bay.“It’s your call, Daisy. They’re not going to come back. I can get word out to the Corp, get a trail on what happened here, who they were. We’ve got two we can identify, run trace on their activities. They’ll give up some details of their operation if we work them over. But we’ll never figure out all of it, not from here. Nova Corp won’t give me that much. It won’t be that large of a case for them, it won’t matter like it does for us. It can’t, unfortunately.”“I-“ She faltered, despite knowing she was going to have to decide fast. “I don’t know if I’m up for a deep space trip.”“We move quickly, we catch them local and get right back.” Loki raised an eyebrow, realizing what he was doing. Pushing too hard. This wasn’t his decision, and not only his risk to take. “Probably. I have to remind that it’s not a guarantee. A lot can go wrong in a near-space dogfight. It might be a mistake to chase.”“But.” She was running out of time. She thought of the conversation Loki had with Ross. Their place on the galactic stage. A future where Earth was going to have to stick up for itself. Maybe it wasn’t the right decision. Maybe she was about to order the team into a lot of trouble.But Daisy didn’t like to back down from a fight she still felt like she could win. Something inside her hardened up. “They’re our guys. They’re messing with our planet and I want to know why. I want them to know we’re not sitting here waiting to get scared.”“You don’t have to tell me that, Daisy.”“I want to scare them back. I assume you can fly whatever’s in there?” At his nod, Daisy turned her head to look at Ross. “Hey! We’re gonna do something incredibly stupid and hopefully kinda cool. And we’re gonna do it for the Earth Defense Force. Which I just made up.”“I’ll, uh, stay here, if you don’t mind.” Ross gave up that rubbery, pleasant smile. It probably beat an anxiety attack. That was fair.“The vessel in the bay is optimized for a two-person flight team. A third for weapons.” Loki cleared his throat. It was true. The short-ranger could be run single-pilot, but it was an emergency option, typically.“Ross, you’re in. We need three.” She pointed at Quinn. “You’re gonna sit here with the two we caught, and you’re gonna tell the SHIELD team that’s going to be here within about an hour everything that happened, and you’ll tell them the truth. If you don’t? If you get up or pull something cute?” She pointed first at Loki, then at Ross. “We cool?”Quinn pulled himself into a cross-legged position, looking exhausted. He stared up at Ross, who was looking a little bug-eyed himself. “Yeah, fine. Like I say, I think I’m gonna go back into civilian med anyway. Half that crap is a racket these days, I’ll fit in.”“Ross! We gotta go!” Daisy disappeared into the bay.“Oh, hell.” Ross holstered his gun and took a large swallow. “Hell, it’s what Han would do.”Quinn watched Ross jog towards the bay and its remaining ship, his own hands limp in his lap. “Bunch of nerds,” he said.But more importantly, he didn’t move.

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Loki already had half the bridge controls lit up when Ross pushed his way into the smallish cabin. It was a cone-shaped pilot’s nest, open to a larger space behind them for a scant amount of extra cargo or a standing team. Weapons were below, in the ship’s belly, with the guts of the short-range ship armored behind it. He could hear Daisy getting into the control chair for the jumper’s short-range guns. “Right seat, Ross.”“I don’t- This is an alien craft.” Ross tried to not sound frantic, watching the pale hands slap deftly at gears and gauges that didn’t make sense to him. His head immediately felt swimmy. This was worse than being holo-dropped into a Wakandan jet. Far worse. This was real, and there were letters scratched into the console that made no sense to his eyes. They weren’t Arabic, or kanji, or anything he’d ever seen. He had no point of reference. Maybe they were even just random scratches. Panic bubbled anew.“Ross.” Loki had the rest of the board up, dropped into the seat and leaned forward to examine how much space they had to maneuver in to avoid scraping the bay. “I don’t mean this to be insulting, I actually and truly don’t. This is a Badoon short-range jumper with light combat ability. It is a ship that has gone unchanged in three hundred years, save for some fuel efficiency upgrades. It is beloved by pirates, mercenaries, and poverty-stricken children who want something to learn on. You can buy one of these with a handful of iffy credits and a promise. It is designed for idiots to fly. And Ross, not to shock you further, but I don’t think you’re an idiot. Sit down, take a breath, and look at the controls.”Ross did, his hands shaking hard enough that he could feel sweat trickle and drop from his palms. He breathed, deep, with his eyes closed as Loki fired the engines up. A thousand self-help gurus screamed deep within his mind, begging for focus, until he told them all to fuck off. For a single second, he swam for eternity in a blessed and meditative silence. Then he opened his eyes again, looking only at the controls in front of him, and saw a pilot’s stick, a speed gauge he couldn’t read but got the gist of - as it was currently zero - and a bunch of bright, non-flickering lights.“I’m going to be doing most of the piloting, Ross. You’re going to handle velocity and any incoming information. Can you see?”He shuffled in the seat, realizing how that would work. A monitor set into the console graphically showed him a close impact solid - the walls of the bay. He realized it would also pick up weapons fire, or space debris. And the stick was rigged with another key for hard brakes and to facilitate turns. “Got it.”Loki pushed on a set of controls of his own, kicking the engine into full. “Then I need speed. Don’t slam on it, pretend it’s just a car with one hell of an engine.”“Or a T-38.” Ross leaned forward, remembering logging time in the supersonic jet. Remembering testing its replacement a couple years ago, a still-classified craft that was going to scare the shit out of people when it went public. His mind cleared as he wrapped his hand around the control. He definitely had this now. Probably. Maybe.The jumper pulled smoothly forward, out of the bay in the flash of a second and gaining verticality fast. Ross looked at the graphical display, saw the bump-pixel of what was probably Ian Quinn still sitting on the ground, and chose to believe the disgraced merchant was flinging them the middle finger as they rose into Earth’s atmosphere.. . .Ian Quinn put his hand down, knowing they couldn’t see him flick them off, happy to do it on principle. He wondered for a moment if there was still some vibranium left in the disregarded truck currently tipped on its side, or maybe one of those laser guns the big aliens had used. He thought about this for a long time, as nothing joined him but the sound of the night wind whipping along the ruined facility, and then, realizing he really was just as exhausted as he’d sounded, decided to stay as he was told, and wait for the next SHIELD agent to come kick his ass around for a while.Then maybe he’d take a vacation, if they didn’t lock him up somewhere. Preferably on big pharma’s dime. Of course, this was all going to depend on his luck, and whoever SHIELD sent to clean this up.Ian Quinn’s luck was not usually terrific. He knew this now, and he laid back on the sand, defeated.. .Ross ramped the acceleration when Loki told him to, watching the window shift tints as they pushed hard through the atmosphere. The ship dodged through thinning clouds, rising, rising, and then, he couldn’t stop a faint choking noise of surprise when the purpling sky gave way to the endless black and the sea of stars beyond. This was no tabletop illusion any longer, and the pressure and vastness of what lay beyond the blue dot thudded into him like stone. He craned forward, seeing the curving aura of his planet, forgetting for a moment that they were still speeding up, trying to catch an alien invader.“Ross, the target console is the one on your right.”He shook his head, clearing his thoughts again. “I can’t read alien, but I’m reading a lot of distance between us and them.” He stared at the gauge indicated, realizing that, yes, it was tracking a distant object. Loki must have gotten a lock-on before he sat down. “If I’ve got this right… uh, miles between us. Kilometers. Uh… five kilometers?” That didn’t sound right. He couldn’t even see the enemy ship through the window.“Fifty thousandish. five standard klicks. It’s not exact math between the galactic standard and Earth’s measurements, but that’s a usable estimate.” Loki leaned over. “Does that look like an arcing path to you?”Ross reached out, his hand wavering, to turn the gauge. He’d realized it spun to simulate a 3-D read of the space around them. “Yeah, they’re on a parabolic arc and accelerating towards… uh.” He looked up, knowing a compass had no real use here. He shut his eyes and took another breath, winnowing out a lot of currently useless knowledge. Back to real basics. “If I’m assuming this thing is based on a local solar map, then it’s gotta be on a parabolic approach towards our moon. Current port-side to us.” He opened his eyes again, double-checking. Yes, that had to be right. But. “Oh god, don’t tell me there’s moon bases and other shit, too?”“Not that I’ve known, but who knows anymore.” Loki grimaced. “No, more likely they’re arcing just past the moon. A stabilized lunarsynch would hide their launch vessel.”“Launch vessel?” Oh, this was getting out of hand.Loki gestured for more acceleration, steering them into a sharper, speedier arc that would let them catch up with the fleeing ship within five to ten minutes, if Ross’s mental napkin math was right. Loki sounded calm. “These are short-range jumpers, as I previously said. They themselves can’t actually jump, it’s a paradox in the name.”That meant nothing to Ross. He kept blinking at gauges, his brain emptied out.“There’s no legal established bases in this solar system, it’s off-limits, and anything that close, even illicitly, there would at least be a conspiracy theory about an eleventh planet or some damned thing as some trail of it would appear on telescopes or probes. So, they’ve got another ship waiting for them, one that is jump-capable.” Loki licked his lips. “They aren’t smart, or well organized. Better odds it’s a small cruiser.”“And can we take a small cruiser?” Ross stared at him, not knowing what to feel.“Yes. They’re not much bigger, not on the mercenary lanes these idiots would use. They carry a couple of these small ships, some light weapons, and a decent engine to get them in and out of long range space. Softer targets, Ross, meant for landfall operations. That’s why they hide their cruisers behind moons.”“What if you’re wrong?”Loki didn’t say anything. He looked down at his console, adjusting the path of their ship.“What if you’re wrong?!” . . .Melinda May jogged back to Okoye from the ruined bays, hiding the wobble in her legs from the Wakandan jet. Okoye had shaved well over a half hour off the flight time, getting them to site while the ruined bays were still warm from the departed ships. May had no idea how and was not going to ask. “We’ve got a sample of the vibranium secured and on its way to Wakanda, get an idea of the half-life on it. Amazed they didn’t take off with it.” She jutted her chin at the man sitting on the ground. “Anything else out of him?”“I’ve told you the story four times.” Ian Quinn ran a hand through his hair. “It’s the same story. It’ll be the same on the fifth pass. I give up, okay?”As if he didn’t exist, Okoye looked at Melinda over crossed arms. “No change in his details. They are in pursuit, the team, and we do not have a motivation.” She inclined her head. “But yes, at least we’ve secured their cargo now. It will give us some ideas about where all this came from. If not answers as to how aliens infiltrated our human markets. I am expecting the two prisoners to not talk very much. It’s not in their interests.”“Agreed.”Quinn narrowed his eyes as a SHIELD chopper rose into the air, blazing a searchlight across the area to get a scan of the scene. He sounded resigned. “Talk to Pashan. Zaidi Pashan, you’ve got an in with him if you drop your guy’s undercover name.”“And what does that get us, Quinn?” May bent down to stare him in the face, not impressed. “We get an agent shot because you think it’s funny to send them in on a guy that was at a blown-out party?”“Pashan left before it all went down. He survives because he keeps his fingers cleaner than most. He left on purpose, getting out before the party got into full swing, but he didn’t play it off like that. He always does that, your guys wouldn’t have known. He would have met up with them at the show again next day, all apologies and bringing gifts. Now, he’s not going to know the details of what happened tonight, and he’s a trusting guy. Too trusting for the business, okay? He’s helped me out a bunch of times when he shouldn’t have. He’s the arms dealer that treats you like his own kid, unless you really screw him over.” Quinn jutted a thumb at the ruined Bentley. “Now, that’s gonna get on his bad side, but play it like the other guys did it. Also, push on the rental agency, they can comp the car. They can, they’ll scream about it, but it’ll get off of Pashan’s insurance in the end. I know that biz. They’ve got a huge slush fund for Dubai rich kids on vacay doing stupid shit with their cars.”May kept staring at him. “That’s not trustworthy information. Not from you.”“Wait till your psycho alien comes home, send him. Pashan genuinely liked his act, and he doesn’t die in one shot. He won’t die, and he won’t get out of my life.” Quinn flung his hands up. “I’m not screwing you here, okay? I’m done.”“Doubtful,” said Okoye, her nostrils wrinkling in dislike.“Do I know you?” Quinn shot her a look, then went back to May. “Every single goddamn time I crawl out of my hole and try to restart my business, he somehow shows up. Even before him, it was hell. I have gone through so much shit because of SHIELD. I’ve lost my company. I built it up from nothing, okay? Straight from college. I made that. Then I got thrown in with mercenaries and psychos and-and-and mutants. First time I meet you guys face to face, that Daisy girl screws everything up for me. That’s a fun few years. Then he shows, that Loki. Then I get vampires, demons, that lunatic that runs Latveria probably knows who I am because I gave up some shit that pointed his way. In my life, there’s so many unique variables that hate me personally, I am shocked I’m alive.”Quinn put up a hand, still ranting and whining. “Yeah, do it, go on, tell me the sob story that a lot of this is on me. Fine, whatever, it is. My life is worse either way. Once upon a time a mild-mannered rich tech guy could just do his thing and get out of the business by forty, and fuck it, someone else would replace him. Circle of life. I’m pushing fifty and I’m going to die in a dumpster, and there’s probably five other rich assholes replacing me already. Congratulations, you slowed down ammo sales for a day.”May looked unmoved.Quinn looked away in disgust. “Just leave me here, okay? My passport is good. I’ll go crawl to Moscow and die in a gulag. Would that make you happy?”“Honestly, yeah, that would be a pretty nice way to kick off a weekend.” May straightened up. Then a look crossed her face. It combined a slight, almost malicious smile, with a thoughtful crinkle at the corner of her eyes. Her hands flexed, like she could pop out a straight deck and lay Quinn out, but then they went limp. “I have a better idea.”“Put me on one of your boats and hand deliver me to a gulag of your choice?”“No, Quinn.” The smile widened, a rare thing from Melinda May. “I think you need to repay your debts to society in a different way.”“You’re gonna cut my giblets off?” Quinn sounded cagey, leaning back on the sand.May grimaced. Of course a man like him would go there. “No, Quinn. We’re going to stick you in holding for a while, and then you’re going to help us make contact with Pashan.” She looked up at the night sky, thinking. “Have you set things up with the rental company, sort out the Bentley claim. You know the language. That’d put you back in play.” She smiled. “And if we need to sell you a little more, think you need some more safety, well. We send you to the meeting with him with ‘Mr. Lochlan.’ When he gets back, of course.”An expression of abject horror began to crawl over Ian Quinn’s face, undulating along his eyebrows and drawing his mouth agape. “Oh, fuck no. No. I’m not working with you guys. Not with him. I am not going to sell out to SHIELD.”She reached down to pat his shoulder. “There’s worse fates, Quinn. Much worse.”“I had a different plan!”May smiled, sweet and light. It looked strange compared to her normal severity. “But Quinn, you just finished telling us how all your plans get screwed up.”Okoye lifted up a hand to tap at her chin with a speculative finger. “You make a fine point, Agent May. He could be a useful mole to anyone, wouldn’t he?”“Again, lady, do I know you?”She gave him a withering look. “South Africa, 2014. You were dealing off the back of an airplane to a group of central African mercenaries. It did not go well for your buyers. But you survived. By our allowance. To be watched.”Quinn went dead white. “Ah, shit, that was Wakanda that hit us.”Okoye smiled. “Your antics have been dull since. I think you should consider May’s… request.”“Try something new, Quinn. Everything else has sucked for you.” May reached out and patted his shoulder again, this time with enough gentle, firm force to remind him that he was forever surrounded by people that could break him in half.Ian Quinn stared at both women in turn, knowing there was nowhere left to run to, and nothing left in his life. He gave up all over again and stared at the sand, but then blinked, perking up slightly. “You know Loki’s going to hate the idea of working with me on an undercover gig just as much as I do, right?”May grinned. “He owes me fifty bucks, anyway.”. . .Roughly twenty-five standard klicks from the earth to the moon, if a little more. Loki adjusted their trajectory, taking them on a smooth glide past the grey pitted surface, close enough to see the shadows of the largest crater rims spilling into the smoothed regolith pits. Like a ghostly blackwater sea. Ross leaned forward to watch them go by, a mixture of awe and raw terror making his eyes water. He kept blinking it away so he could keep looking at something only a handful of humans had yet been given the privilege to personally see.Daisy’s voice came over the ship’s intercom, just as stricken by it. “Now that was worth the trip, right there. God, that’s beautiful.”Loki didn’t say anything. He was busy picking up interference from the lunar surface, reflective dust and radiation to help add to the ship’s own shield systems, an old pilot’s trick. If he was letting them get that long look, understanding somehow what it might mean to them, it was done without any hint.The sun boundary approached, the ship console uttering a soft beep as they passed into the dark side of the moon. Ross sat back down, watching the target grid. “They’re slowing.”Loki changed trajectories. They wouldn’t be able to cut them off, but they would be able to get some surprise shots in. “Daisy, the weapons system will hunt automatically for propulsion systems and weapons if you hit the blue.”“Got it.”“Ross.”Ross kept his eye on the grid, pushing the ship into its upper limits. The pixel of the other ship formed into a larger, recognizable ship. And then something else entered the grid-view. “Second contact. It’s bigger. Is that the cruiser?”Loki still didn’t say anything. Ross saw him taking peeks at the grid-view, but mostly staying focused on piloting the ship.Ross kept watching the grid himself, slowly increasing speed until he was told not to. The second contact grew larger, a blotch that began to overshadow the image of the other jumper. As if consuming it. “Jesus Christ.” He stopped looking at the grid and changed to the window. “Loki!”The ships came into view. In the foreground, the small grey image of the short-ranger. In the background - “Loki, that can’t be a fucking cruiser!”Loki said something uninterpretable, harsh and guttural and probably obscene. He wrenched the pilot controls, moving them sharply in an angle off their original flightplan as something began to scream a warning siren into his ear.“What is that?”“Battleship.” Loki reached over and took the speed control away from him, beginning a complicated series of evasive maneuvers. Ross kept staring at the huge vessel, ignoring the arm in front of him. Without a real frame of reference, he couldn’t get an idea of how big it actually was. Maybe a thousand meters long. Maybe. It was lumpy, not elegant, the sort of ship that never worried about entering atmosphere, never worried about the aerodynamics. It lived and died going from spaceport to spaceport. It hung blackly in space, lights speckled across it, all of them dim and greenish. “That’s a godsdamned decommissioned Shi’ar battleship, but a battleship nonetheless. I haven’t seen one of those things in centuries. Some fool must have dug it up from a junkyard and built a mercenary crew around it. Wonderful. A bunch of children with megaweapons behind them.” He kept pushing hard, getting them off any course that would take them near it. His voice raised in a warrior’s commanding shout. “Daisy, we are leaving!”Ross watched as the hunk of metal grew in his view by inches, realizing it was coming towards them. The smaller ship must have already docked. He pushed to his right, watching the targeting grid, watching some new data come in. He couldn’t read, but he could understand certain familiar things. Old instincts overrode, his voice going cold and dead. Combat voice. “They’re targeting us.”“I know.”“Loki, they already took a shot, not energy based.” Years of reading science fiction kicked in, matched with an dim but useful understanding of the proposed science. He knew. “Mass driver. Jesus, you guys out here have mass driver railcannons. Did they already calc-““Yes.” Loki pushed hard on the pilot’s control as the klaxon got louder. “Daisy, get out of the gun cage! Get into the engine hold, now!”Ross clapped his hands to his ears for a second as the klaxon’s scream mixed with a horrible scraping sound. He almost missed Loki bolting out of his seat. He whipped partway around, realizing he was alone in the pilot’s nest, and slid quickly over to the abandoned seat. Something important must to have happened. Ross didn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it. Birds and boats both needed hands. His own went instinctively towards the main pilot controls.“Hard left!” Loki’s voice carried to him, sounding drowned somehow. “Get back into the moonshadow, but don’t curve too hard into it!”The grid flashed. “They’re firing again!”“Ignore the shot, just do what I tell you, and do it as fa-“Ross was already on it. He never heard the shout from behind him, he knew what to do. He juked the ship, feeling it glide smoother than anything he’d ever flown. His other hand stretched hard out to adjust the speed, taking him paradoxically down to a crawl for a moment as he mentally planned out the ship’s spin along the moon’s natural but low gravity.“Daisy!” Another drowning call. “Status!”“I’m out! I’m in the engine room. Shit is sparking like nuts in here. I got it under control. Okay, it isn’t yet, but I will!”Another scream of metal. Ross felt panic tighten a band around his chest and arms, realizing they’d taken that first hit and he didn’t know how bad it was. Realizing he was barely dodging the second, taking a scrape from at least the pressure of a high velocity near-hit. He gritted his teeth and ignored his body, his mind going empty as he focused entirely on the spin he was pushing the ship into. He glided right, ignoring a newly persistent flicker from the console. Something was busted. Of course something was busted. And it felt like the ship’s speed was becoming less consistent.Ross shook his head and kept going, pulling up hard when the arc of the moon changed. He saw the sun for a moment, the ship’s glass auto-tinting to protect a viewer’s eyes, saw the distant threadlike corona through the black glass, saw it rise as they spun away from the moon and into deeper space, and he saw, as if from a thousand miles away, a third shot miss them completely as the battleship peeled away and suddenly vanished in a flash of blurry light. “They’re gone.” He swallowed vomit he didn’t realize was burning his throat and let go of the speed control. It wasn’t doing anything, anyway. “They’re gone! Jumped, or whatever!”“Good.” Loki sounded strained. “That’s excellent, Ross. Now, I need you to look at the console, and activate exactly what I tell you.”Ross hesitated, afraid to know why he sounded like that. “Okay.”“There is a wide switch next to your left hand. Press it to the upward position.” He did. “Good. Now. In the center, there’s a small blue key with a button. I need you to activate it in a moment. Twist it and then press. It will say something to you that you won’t understand. You are going to repeat exactly what I tell you.”“I’m listening.”“When the voice finishes, you’ll say this: This is a Badoon short-range vessel off Lane 616, and we are requesting immediate assistance. We are on critical life support, and we have no engines. We are aware we are in restricted territory. Crew is civilian, emphasis, this is a civilian crew. Personal code 856219. Coordinates are being auto-transmitted with this message. This is an emergency message.” Loki inhaled, still sounding strained.Ross stared at the switch, realizing that was the first thing he’d done. Transferred as much as he could to the emergency life support. They were badly hit, then. How bad? His hand was steady as he held the button, and he repeated Loki’s words exactly.“Very good, Ross. Daisy! Keep working the engines as best you can! See if you can get them online.”“Everything okay up there?”“I’ve got it,” said Loki, and Ross realized that wasn’t an answer.Trembling, Ross stood up from the pilot’s seat. He left his hand on the headcushion for balance, and turned around to see why Loki had bolted so quickly into the main cabin. He licked his lips, his mouth going instantly dry. Those first views of space had been beautiful, their potential terror kept away from them by virtue of steel and science. Space, now, frightened him deeply.Loki was standing in the center of the cabin, both arms outstretched towards a violent gap in the ship. Steel curled both inward and outward in chaotic design, scattered debris floating along its edges without the rules of gravity to hold it in place. Green light flickered, faded but solid. Beyond the magical shield was emptiness. Only the gaping emptiness of all of space itself.“Oh, my god,” whispered Ross. He couldn’t say anything else.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Ross.” Loki didn’t look at Ross where he was frozen between the pilot seats, and he sounded oddly calm considering the circumstances. His fingers were stretched out as far as they could go. “I’m afraid I’m going to need most of my attention. And my energy. Do not scream.”Ross felt hot fire in his throat, reached up to rub anxiously along it, ending with a scrape of his palm along his jaw. “You. You’re doing that. You’re…” He faltered, regaining control. They were alive. The ship’s systems weren’t screaming anymore. All right. Let’s start there, said the cold pilot part of his mind. “You don’t want to panic anyone.”Loki nodded. “We have time, Ross. We’ve got hours of life support, and that was a long distance emergency transmission. There is no need to be frightened.” There was a not yet hanging in the air, despite his attempt to veil it. Ross saw it anyway, because it was a given. It was always a given.Curiosity warred with the fear. More magic in front of him, more than he’d ever really known existed. “What exactly are you doing?”“I am, in effect, telling countless shards of metal that they are still one cohesive wall.” Loki swallowed, belying the amount of effort this was taking. “I can do this for some time, and for probably longer than even I think, if I have to. I rather hope I don’t have to. It will grow unpleasant for me.”“Guys?” Daisy’s voice filtered up, closer.Ross took over. “It’s okay,” he called back, with a confidence he didn’t feel. It felt like plastic in his mouth. “We’re dead in the water, but we’re working on it up here. Got a call for help on the, the whatever systems. Comm lines.” He watched a shard of metal dance in the middle of nothingness, watched a star beyond it move like a slow moonfall. Dead in the water wasn’t quite it. They still had momentum, drifting past the moon and outwards. How fast were they going? He didn’t know for certain. The engine had cut out at a relatively slow fifteen klicks a minute, but the solar system was so vast that he couldn’t math it, not the way his head currently was. Would they pass Mars? Would they end up lost forever in the asteroid belt beyond?He caught back up to the moment, sensed that Daisy was still hovering just beyond the cubby hallway that led to the belowdeck systems. “How are the engines?”“Screwed. Like, I don’t speak space, but I know a fried nest of wires when I see one. Trying to untangle what I can, maybe goose some energy back into the ship.” Daisy’s steps drifted back down. “I’ll get back to it. You guys let me know if anything changes up there.”“Yeah, no problem,” said Ross, and the lie came serenely out of him. He waited until he couldn’t hear her anymore. “You don’t want to scare her?”“She can take a scare. She doesn’t need my condescension towards her feelings.” Loki’s fingers flexed slightly. Ross watched them move. That was going to cramp. He might have the power to keep up whatever he was doing, but it was going to hurt him eventually. “I don’t want her guilt.” A quick glance came his way. “This was my idea. I pushed for it. But she made the decision, and she’ll tear herself apart over it. She should not. This is on me.”Ross looked at him, the realization hitting him hard. “She’s really your friend, isn’t she?”A look of displeasure crawled across Loki’s face and he resumed his focus on the savaged curve of the ship.“She’s going to come up here eventually. It’s just a delay.” Ross chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment, thinking. “If we’re really off-limits, is anyone gonna risk coming in to help us? I mean, what if they think they’ll get in trouble for it? Why would they?”There was silence, longer than a minute. That one distant star spun beyond where Ross could see, lost again among billions of others. He wondered if it was part of anything, if it gave warmth to one of those unknown civilizations. Loki broke into his thoughts. “Not everyone is like what you’ve seen so far, Agent Ross. Many people, even across the galaxy, tend towards trying to be better than you expect. Your world feels like it has been unfortunate in that respect, I know. Today has done nothing for that belief. But for every one of me, there are a hundred… Thors, I suppose you could say.” His voice trailed off before strengthening again. “There are countless people out there whose first instinct is to help. All we have to do is wait for one of them to hear our signal.”Ross thought of the illusion of their galaxy, of the quadrant beyond them, and all that empty space. “But it’s possible no one will.”“Anything, Ross, is possible.” It came out heavily.“Like someone like you immediately moving to save our lives, and keeping us calm.” Ross nodded, watching the shoulders tense. Prickly recognized prickly. “Jesus.” He looked away with a laugh. “Jesus, I’m so far out of my fucking element, Jesus Christ, I should have… I don’t know. I don’t even know. I shouldn’t be here.” He took a deep breath, realizing he was about to give in to panic. “That’s not helping anything. Okay.” He took another, centering himself. “What can I do to help right now, besides leave you the hell alone for a while to focus on telling space to go fuck itself?”“Mostly that, Ross, although I am actually rather enjoying the invective company. It’s good for a chuckle. Monitor the grid. If you spin the lower ring, you’ll widen the range that it’s scanning. If Daisy succeeds at firing the engines, which is unlikely, but, with her, possible, I’ll try to help you right the ship. We’re technically off the only Corp lane in this region, and I’m sure you’ve guessed we’re tumbling out.”Ross nodded. His mind cleared, and he gave actual thought a shot. “About fifteen klicks a minute.” He thought some more, then grinned, wry. “About a thousand odd klicks to Mars, if we match up with its orbit?”Loki couldn’t help a small laugh at a small question. “Roughly that, yes.”“So about two hours. We’ll pick up Matt Damon when we go by. A bag of potatoes. We’ll be fine.” It was sarcasm, the final refuge. Ross felt a little better.The laugh went silent, but stronger now. “Go watch a map, Ross, now you’re distracting me.”“You actually saw that movie.” Ross stared at the ceiling of the ship, realizing they’d shared a moment. “What a universe,” he said, before heading back into the pilot’s nest.. . .May hovered over Fitz with the same tense expression she had since hurrying off the Wakandan transport. The lack of contact from the field team was now a real concern. Amusement at the team’s snap decision had turned into worry. Shuri was on the channel, looking at the same information they had. “Anything?”Fitz shook his head. It was Shuri that spoke. “You’ve seen what we have. Two vessels, the same signature as what left Morocco. Both enter the atmosphere. After two minutes, they leave the range of all of our satellites. One is the team in pursuit. The other is hostile. Neither are on our sensors any longer. Mr. Fitz?”“I’m trying to get access to some of the restricted mirrors and other telescopes, bounce some shots around. But that’s going to take time, and it’s looking for a single glimmery needle in a very dark, very large haystack, May. Even if we focus on the likely paths based on atmospheric trajectory-““Quinn said Loki thought these guys were panicked. It’s a good trajectory. They went straight out.” May’s hand was gripping the table next to Fitz, her knuckles white. Two hours without a contact from the team. Even if they’d gone hard on the chase, they would have sent a message back by now. If they could. “Focus on that.”“Then they would be going towards the Moon, and if they curve around that, or land on it, or anything, we lose them again. Even focusing in that area, there’s much that will be left unscanned.” Shuri sounded frustrated. “I think we would have seen-“May’s other palm banged on the desk, flat and loud. “Dammit!” She straightened up, calming herself down. She looked back towards Coulson. “Anything?”Coulson shook his head. “I tried the old device we used a couple years ago during the Thanos mess. It’s shut down, like Nova Prime said it would be. I tossed Loki’s room, which I’m gonna have to pay for later. Nothing. I can’t get contact with the Nova Corp. Not with what we’ve got on hand.”“What about those weird friends of his? The raccoon and the plant-guy?”“The who?” Shuri leaned into her camera. “A raccoon and a what?”Coulson glanced at Fitz’s monitor. “Long story.” He shook his head at May, concerned but still serene. “If he’s got something to jingle them, I can’t find it or I can’t figure it out. I did find my old copy of Master and Commander, which has been missing for at least a month. Would not take Loki for a guy into seafaring naval war stories. Maybe he isn’t, he only had the first book.”“So what do we do?”“We wait, mostly.” Coulson gave his most calming smile, knowing its effects were mild when there was this much unknown to counter. “It’s all we can do right now, but we’ll keep working scopes and see if we can get a message out deep. But we’ve got three smart people in the air, and one of them’s always at home in his old stomping grounds. Loki won’t let anything happen to our people. I know that. You know that. So, let’s focus on what else we can do, meanwhile. May, grab Okoye, see if you can get anything out of those two guys in our brig. Fitz, keep on it. Okay?”Fitz nodded.“Shuri, thank you for staying on the line. You get that sample?”“It’s secured now. I’ve already got someone studying it. First scans were completed just before I logged in.” Shuri leaned back from the monitor, seeming to shrink from their view. “I can tell you this much so far - the cosmic and solar radiation still coming off of it is not from our sun.”Coulson frowned, then glanced at May. “Work that into your questioning, if you can. If they know anything.”Having something concrete to do was always a plus. May nodded, her fingers relaxing where they still gripped the table. “Will do.”. . .The silent jumper passed Mars, but it was too far away on its own long and lonely orbit for Ross to do anything but admire its own polar ice caps from closer than anyone else on Earth. There were no potatoes, and nothing but the soft beeps of the console and the faint sound of strained breathing behind him. Daisy was still working the engines, eating time in her way. She still didn’t know how bad it was. The longer that knowledge waited, the harder she was going to take it. Ross considered going down to tell her, but this was, ultimately, between the two SHIELD agents. He wasn’t the one to create extra strain. It wasn’t his place.The beep changed after a while. Then there was an intermittent frantic streak. The ship seemed to vibrate, so soft Ross thought he imagined it. But Loki did not. “What was that?”“Dammit!” Footsteps came up from the engine cubby, closer this time. “I almost had something.”Ross got out of the pilot’s seat again, meaning to only glance at what stood between them and the vacuum of space on his way towards her, but stopping to look at Loki instead. Sweat was already beading on his forehead. The strain on him was growing fast. Loki didn’t bother to look at him. He seemed fixated on the ruins, but he could still talk. “What was that, on the console?”“Five rapid beeps from the second left red, two from a red above them.”Loki swore under his breath. “Daisy?”“There was something under stress between the two main engine connections, it was going to pop eventually. Part of why we lost power in the first place, it’s kinked out. I was trying to get the pressure off of that, but it full on broke. Was too cracked for me to recover it. Felt the ship shimmy. I covered up some holes, so it’s not leaking much anymore. But I can’t stop all of it.”Loki licked his lips. Ross read the expression. It was bad. Whatever it was, it was bad news. The footsteps came closer, along with the voice. “Any idea what that did?”Ross tilted his head at Loki. It was up to him to answer. “Can you rig something back into that space?”“No. I already did what I could.” Closer yet. “You okay up there? You haven’t come down to check it yourself, this stuff isn’t exactly labeled, dude.”“I can’t, Daisy.” A grimace. The game was over. “The engine connection that snapped is a power modulator.”“And what does that mean?”Loki closed his eyes. “We’re going to lose life support faster than I estimated.”Ross heard Daisy scrambling up the metal ladder. “I can maybe get something off the console,” she started, in emergency mode. He watched the top of her head come up, not wanting to be here, not having anywhere else to go. “But I-“ She stopped.Loki didn’t look back at her. He couldn’t. Ross met her stare, raising his hands, palms up, looking helpless.“You asshole,” said Daisy at Loki’s back. Her eyes were wide, her hands clenching. The words came in a furious hiss. Ross saw Loki flinch, tried to tell himself he hadn’t actually seen that. But he had. “You should have told me.”“There was nothing you could do, Daisy. If you can get the engine going-“Daisy cut him off, not impressed with Loki’s attempt to sound calm. “I can’t. I tried and I can’t, and all I did, apparently, was help nuke the support. Which is just great, huh? I’m doing great at this.” She whirled on Ross, fury and guilt and upset mixed on her face. “Why didn’t you come get me?”“I don’t know,” said Ross, quiet. He didn’t, not at first. Then something occurred to him. “I think I agreed with him.”“That, what, I’m supposed to be cut out of this for whatever dumb Asgard noble bullshit reason? This is my operation. I need to know, not get treated like some little kid. This is my responsibility. We got blown to shit, and you guys are… God. Loki, I swear to-““No. No.” Ross stepped toward her, his hands still up and helpless. “That you shouldn’t feel guilty about this.”She stared at him, stricken into silence. Then the anger came back. “Excuse me?”“I.” He stared at the gap in the ship. “You know, in your place, I think I might have eventually made the same call. We know he would have.” Ross shrugged. “It was the right call. I know I wasn’t lining up at first, but it is. We’ve got to look out for ourselves eventually. Whoever this Corp is, you know, nobody can be everywhere. So it’s not your fault. Sometimes you’re just in the shit, even… when you did everything right.”“I still should have been told right away.”“Yes. You should have.” Ross shrugged, paradoxical. “I told him that, but…”“He has no reason to get into a fight between us. He was already with us against his original wish.” Ross could see Loki’s hands shake. What he was doing seemed unimpressive to someone raised on overwrought fantasy novels. But this small thing, life-saving defiance against all natural physics, was taking a very clear toll. He was tiring, but he was also holding steady. “He’s doing his best, considering. And he did well avoiding any further damage. I’m sorry I didn’t come down to help with the engines, Daisy. I am sorry.”Daisy continued to stare at his back, still visibly angry. “Fine. I’m gonna hold this against you for a month.” She inhaled. “Once we get out of this. Assuming we do.”“We will,” said Loki, in a way that suggested he would argue with the fabric of reality itself if it had other plans. “We are going to survive this.”“Good, because I am so goddamn mad at you right now.”“I know.” It came out oddly quiet.“Okay.” She turned to Ross and gestured to the pilot’s nest, her expression going all-business. “Think there’s anything left we can divert to life support?”“I hit a big shiny switch that presumably slapped everything over.”“Comm system. You can get a little more from the comm.” Loki sounded reluctant. “Smaller switch on its left.”“That’ll kill the emergency message, won’t it?” Ross frowned, not liking the sound of that.“It will, but the message is already echoing on comm systems everywhere in the local region. It lasts, Ross, it just won’t add updated repeats.”“I still don’t like the idea.”Daisy shook her head. “If nobody’s heard that message by now, nobody’s going to. It’s been, what, three hours?”“At least, yeah.”“And switching over gives us how much more life support?”“Maybe an extra hour or two, with luck.” Loki shifted his weight. A touch of wryness came back. “Efficiency upgrades. As I said.”“Okay. I’ll take that trade.” Daisy nodded to Ross. “Let’s do that, and keep hoping. See if I can do anything else to the systems. Anything at all.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Ross sat on the floor in the cabin near Loki, his back against a patch of intact wall. That endless space waited inches away from him had become a sort of bland fact, a terrible thing that he couldn’t do anything about, so, he dealt. Mostly by ignoring it, and continuing to breathe in defiance. Daisy was to his right, her back resting on the half-step up into the pilot nest. They were taking it easy now, slowing the drain on life support. A button flashed insistently on the console. They ignored it and what it meant, and kept each other company instead.“I went down a few times,” Ross said after a while, breaking the companionable enough silence that landed after Daisy yelled at Loki a little more. Not much. It was easy to see it was just a way to keep herself from falling into pointless worry. “In a plane, I mean. It’s my last time in combat I think about. It was enough.”Daisy lifted her head to look at him, curious. “Yeah?”Ross nodded. “My wizzo and I were, uh, on a combat run in Iraq. Ron.” Daisy gave him a scrunched look, confused. “WSO, weapons system officer. Two seater jets have one. That’s what I flew in the war. Anyway. His name was Ronald. We called him McNugget. I was Carbon. Kuwait to Karbala to Baghdad, going wide around the lake and keeping over the desert.”“Why were you Carbon?” Daisy cocked her head.Ross froze, then laughed, an honest laugh. “The other guys thought I was so uptight that if you put some up my ass you’d get a nice rock to take home to your wife.”Daisy gawked at him, her face wrenching around as she tried not to laugh. “…Dude,” she half-squeaked. “Dude.”“We’re not always real imaginative with nicknames in the military. But it was a compliment, too.” Ross dipped his head, looking sheepish. “The guys knew I wasn’t going to freak out on them. Uptight, but steady. So, yeah. It wasn’t a bad thing.” He looked up at the ceiling of the ship. “McNugget was uptight, too, and he’d been in the service longer. He was in that stage where going home was something he wanted to do, but had no idea what it looked like anymore, and was constantly afraid he wasn’t going to get to find out. Tweaky. He was the tweaky one. But he was great on target, and he never pulled his crap on me. Not yet, anyway. That changed.“We’d logged a lot of flight time together. This wasn’t our first combat run. So we’re in an F-15E, and we’re over the east edge of the Thamil. Thamil is… a lot of empty space. People don’t live out there, not that far out past the Habbinyah, or the rivers. A few people. Stray families, trying to stay out of the war, caravanning back in towards the water when it dies down. Stuff like that. And we’re off the books. We’re not supposed to be out there, right? You look at any official rundown of combat operations, you won’t see anything along this side of the water.” Ross licked his lips. “It’s a black bag op. We’re supposed to do a fast surgery on Saddam’s guys west of the capital, then get out. But it doesn’t happen like that. Karbala’s got an encampment that wasn’t on the map. And they’ve got long-range, and they pick us up. Perfect op. Shit happened.“We lose an engine, spin out, and we’re hard off course west of the lake. We eject. It’s three in the morning local time, McNugget is screaming, and the air is the… the coldest thing I’ve ever felt. It’s so cold that I thought I’d died, but I’m clear of my seat and the cockpit dome, and I’ve already popped my parachute. My head’s playing my funeral and my body’s doing its job. I see the blink of fire somewhere. It’s the jet, total fireball. Never recovered the wreck. It’s still out there, somewhere.”Ross paused, feeling that cold again in his memory, his eyes half-lidded. He looked unbothered. “I don’t remember hitting ground. I did, obviously. I was standing up, my parachute already snapped off, that’s the next thing I remember. I’m sore, my legs are rubber, but I’m there. And McNugget lands a few hundred yards away from me, and he’s full on having a panic attack. I don’t blame him, but I remember thinking, yeah, he’s out. This is his last ride. He’s going home. And he’s… screaming, like he hasn’t figured out he’s alive.“If you can, you shelter in place, wait for your guys to come pick you up. Dawn’s on its way, next I remember. Dawn, and probably a bunch of Iraqi military in jeeps coming to look for us. No choppers from our guys. Not yet. The sun’s just kissing the purple morning, I remember that, and I remember the clank of a metal bell. It’s a herder that finds us first. One of the oldest men I’ve ever seen. McNugget’s asleep, and I’m glad he is. This ancient old guy and his six belled-up goats come across us holed up by some bushes, like that’s gonna protect us. Him in his cloak and dishdasha. He asks if we’re all right. Rough dialect, but I understand it. He doesn’t ask what we were doing, or who we are, or are we here to kill other guys. Are we all right?“I have to wake up McNugget, keep him calm. But the old man, Rahim, he coaxes us to follow him. McNugget is still having a panic attack, or rather he wakes up into a new one. He thinks the old guy’s gonna kill us. Like…” Ross trailed off, shaking his head. “It’s not even a village that we end up. This guy lives in an old stone home, off a path that goes towards a small water source. Him, six goats, and his son is there. Rahim’s wife is gone, the son tells me. The son comes by every week from a village twenty miles away to make sure his father is okay. But he and his father are welcoming us in. Hospitality. You know it’s, it’s a big thing. The son is a religious scholar, they’re Shia. And they are… they are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. To this day.”Daisy leaned back against the seat, watching him. He smiled, his head cocking awkwardly. “McNugget almost causes us a problem. I don’t want to get into it, I tamped it down. He’s in Washington now, by the way. The state, I mean. He’s still in therapy, which is good, because for a while there he was… not. I haven’t talked to him in a while, but I try. Christmas, usually. And the son. Fadil. He teaches. A university in Baghdad. He sends me letters, and my Arabic’s even better today, mostly because of him. Rahim passed away five years ago, which, I’m not kidding, that guy had the secret of life in him. He had to be over ninety when I met him. But besides that, you know, we were in his house a day and a half. I met his goats, I helped milk them. They had names. Cute names. One was named Cookie. Baskuit. Because his wife liked that. They fed us rice and warm flatbread, and our guys came to pick us up, and it got a little tense. I got in the middle of it. I wanted to try to make sure no one left that farm as an enemy. I think I did okay. I think about that little house a lot.“McNugget got shipped home. Got an award and an honorable discharge. Medical wouldn’t pass him on psych, and I never told him but he knew I said something when they asked. I spoke up. I was never going to sit in a jet with him again. Not the way he popped, the things he said.” Ross tapped his palms atop his knees, still remembering. “Chiefs didn’t like that about me, being that honest. I took the hit. My next flights were on desks for a while, and then they shipped me home to the test programs. That was fine with me. Got me to CIA, eventually. I got asked about that incident a lot, coming in. The guy that recruited me wanted me for my Arabic, and for my hands on knowledge of Iraq. He liked what he thought my file looked like. But I ended up in my counterterror team instead, working diplomatic side sometimes, working more like a cop the rest. I wasn’t going to go back to Baghdad, not in the way he wanted. Got in a fight over it, but I won. Other CT teams in the agency got wind of me, picked me up. They had a different view on how to stop fear, one I liked. Here I am.”Ross smiled, looking rueful. “He never got a chance to send me to Abu Ghraib, the recruiter. That was the original plan, what he wanted, what he thought I’d be good for. I told him no. I said a lot of things, some of which almost made me miss my chance. I can fight just fine. When I have to.” He shrugged. “Sometimes I wish I could do more. Change some of what we do, stop what should be stopped. But one voice is… pretty small.”“It matters, though, dude.” Daisy sighed, capable of hearing a lot of the undertone. “Damn.”“So, well, yeah.” Ross chuckled, looking at the gap in the ship just a couple feet away from him, looked up at Loki, locked into dead focus, but still listening. “This isn’t the first hot crock pot of shit I’ve landed in. Not by far.” The chuckle turned into a grin, an odd, almost secretive one. “Honestly, this is probably the part that feels the most normal to me.”. . .More silence, warm despite the coldness of space creeping its way into the ship. The console was beeping with new intensity, suggesting time was growing thin, very thin. Neither Daisy or Ross bothered to look at it. There was no point. Better to keep each other company, and entertain the last man standing between them and the vacuum. Loki was not in any condition to talk more than he had to. The greenish shield had pulled in a few inches, but he said nothing about it. There were shadows under his eyes, a pallor in his cheeks. He was lost somewhere in a dead field beyond tired, but he wouldn’t say a word about that, either.“Wish we had a pack of cards,” said Ross. The console was beeping now, soft, an oddly musical chime for the worst news. “Maybe a magazine.”“There are suits. In the engine bay. Behind the panels. At least one or two of them.” Each sentence from Loki was a strain. “Get the faceplates on, they’ll fit. They’ll adapt to your biology. That’s a little more time.”“What about you?” Daisy got up and then stepped towards him, her face taut.“Don’t… worry about me. I can take exposure for some time. You cannot.” His lips were pulling back in a grimace. “Go.”“I don’t want to, unless I know you’re going to be all right, too.” The console was still beeping. Daisy ignored it. “I need you to be okay, so I can keep kicking your ass over this.”“Daisy.”Ross listened to the beep, realizing there had been a change under it. Something else was chiming. Maybe just another alert from the dead engines, but something tugged at his brain, telling him to go look at it. He stepped up into the nest, listening to the SHIELD agents bicker, even as Daisy, reluctantly, was moving towards the engine bay.“Don’t get all noble self-sacrifice on me. And don’t say anything else, either. You look half dead.” Ross listened to her shout at Loki, realizing there was no heat in it. She was encouraging him to keep going, in her way. But he was busy studying the console, trying to understand what it was telling him. What it wanted him to see.“I look half dead every few months, it’s a phase.” Exhausted but sardonic. Selling off his foundering energy to keep her going as well. “Get the damned suits.”“I’m going. Ross-““Wait.” Ross stared at the console, ignoring the silence that fell behind him. “Wait, wait.” There was motion. Something new. He caught it out of the corner of his eye, realizing it was the grid-view. Seeing the first edge of something physical, coming up close behind them. He spun the grid, pulling it in, seeing the outline of a larger, intact ship. “Someone’s here…” He whipped around and shoved his head between the pilot seats. “Someone’s showing up!”His yell came with a shadow passing over the ship, filling the gap in its side, and pouring over the cockpit window. Ross turned around and leaned forward, looking at the underside of the new ship. It was painted an earthly brown, or maybe that was just how it was made, or how it was rusted. Bulky body, but not like the battleship, and definitely not as large. Boxy, angular, and yet a little trace of elegance in its fat bird shape. A pilot’s nest like theirs, wider, and set up high. It was matching their speed at first, then pulling in front of them. Ross squinted, thinking he saw tentacles unfurling from the rear of it, before realizing the mundane was more likely. Straps. Straps rolling out of the open bay of the new arrival. “What, no tractor beams?”Daisy ran up into the cockpit, almost shoving into him in excitement. “Oh, wow, oh thank god.” She looked back, towards Loki, joy lighting up her face. “It’s real!”. . .The larger ship matched their speed again, keeping pace less than a kilometer ahead. Then it began to slow, the surprisingly heavy straps bumping and sliding along the surface of the ruined jumper, causing new scraping sounds to echo all through the interior. Then heavier, steely thuds as the magnets affixed to the end of each strap activated, all of them now wrapped tight around the dead ship. The larger vessel began to slow in time with them being winched inward, towards an open, dimly lit bay in its back. Ross leaned forward, not seeing any silhouettes, wondering if he’d even recognize a living figure out here. But he also saw the faint, iridescent shimmer of another field. A kind of temporary energy-based airlock, perhaps. He pulled back out of the pilot’s nest, going to Loki’s side to see it eventually overlap the green magic. Sounds rushed in, the sound of firing engines and clanking steel, the smell of some sort of fuel source, the sound of more metal scraping, soft and normal. New air enveloped him. He breathed, deep and full. Canned and recycled air, but it felt virtually tropical to Ross. In comparison to the reality they’d faced of no air, everything seemed that little bit grander now.Loki didn’t quite collapse. His ego wouldn’t allow that. But he sagged, hard and abrupt, landing a shoulder against the ruined cabin wall. His breath came ragged, and his eyes were half lidded. Beyond, shards of metal fell like stones, dropping out of the airspace and into the void to be lost, their part in his magic now done. He nodded to Ross, though, a slight smile at the corner of his mouth. It was okay now. One way or another, it was all right.Ross stayed by him, watching out the gap as the stars eventually gave way to the geometric stability of the bay’s entry, looking at new metal walls and secured shelves full of equipment and tools that wouldn’t have been out of place in a truck repair garage. He looked at things, wondering if that was really something like a wrench he was seeing, a fire extinguisher, or if it was just his mind looking for human patterns.The ship settled on the floor of the bay, and he heard another buzz just before the bay doors started closing in. Lights flickered on to compensate, no longer dim and rustic, but spartan clean and all but neon-lit.Loki shoved away from the wall and beckoned to Daisy, who had watched the whole docking procedure from the cockpit. There was no point in bothering with the embarkment ramp in the rear. He led the way, stepping carefully through the wreckage, stepping down hard to the bay, and studying the scarred and scuffed floor of the ship. Not a new vessel. One that had gone through a lot of mileage of its own. But also well-cared for, all the same.Daisy and Ross came up on either side of him. He rustled in a pocket, but not one of his mundane suit pockets. A little puff of magical space where he kept a small emergency gear kit. He came up with two tiny discs, each one smaller than a dime, and he pressed one to each human neck, just below an ear.Ross slapped a hand to it, his immediate response to the slight sting to yell in affront at Loki. Daisy grimaced, but seemed to guess it was something necessary.“Translator patches,” said Loki, ignoring his offense and continuing to study the bay around them. “Not fancy, and not meant for long-term use, but good enough for now.”“You have one?” Ross’s hand fell away, curious again.“I don’t need one.” He looked past them at the first trace of new sound, a sliding door beyond the bay entrance. “Hold fast. We’re about to meet someone new.” He smiled, wry. “Let’s hope this one is nicer than our last few close encounters.”“For real.” Daisy braced herself, her eyes both wide and exhausted.The door to the bay opened. A figure bent to pass through the already fairly high doorway, then straightened. Humanoid, in a wide shouldered and furry-collared coffee-cream coat of indeterminate fabric, hooded, and tall. Seven foot, reckoned Ross at first glance, before he realized he underestimated. Probably closer to eight. He saw dark eyes glinting at them under the brim, and then gloved hands came up to push the velvety hood back.She looked… almost perfectly human, despite her size. Her skin was a bronzed and rich dark brown with a strangely cool undertone to it, and her hair was tied back in neatly braided cords decorated with silvered metal bands. There were white marks along her brow that didn’t resemble anything to Ross. Just marks. Perhaps they were scars. She looked at them in turn, a curious smile on a wide mouth in an angular, tough, but elegant face, and then she looked at the ship behind them. “I’d have been a mite quicker, but your co-ord updates cut out a while back. Had to follow the vapor trail the engine left. Damn, but that’s a mess you’ve got yourself into there.”Her accent was like nothing Ross had ever heard before. There was a clip to it, almost like a languid Cockney, more musical than snappy. Lighter and happier than what he would have guessed from the huge figure, but with a deeper undertone rolling through the words. A beautiful voice, like nothing he could place. He shared a glance with Daisy. She didn’t know, either.The woman took another step into the bay, clearly seeing their worn out faces and the damage to the ship. She kept her hands up, open and unarmed. “I’m Tam. Just Tam, then.”“What’s your business, Lady Tam?” Loki straightened up to take her focus, staying by the pair of humans, and the question was mild and unthreatening.Tam put her hands down, looking him over. A glint passed across her face. It might have been recognition. It might have been the lights of the bay. Whatever it was, something uncomfortable entered the air. She glanced away, the corner of her mouth twisting. She jutted her chin towards the ship, now reticent. “Guess we should talk this over a few, aye?”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Loki didn’t move from where he was, seeming to loom protectively over the two humans while he continued to study their rescuer. It was clear he was the sticking point. “I’m not looking to cause you trouble, Lady Tam. Whatever your business is, it’s yours and I’m not about to stir it. I only want to know what we’re in.”Tam’s face tweaked, a wrinkle at an eye. Then she shoved her hands brusquely into the pockets of the thick coat. Her voice was dour and grudging now, her elbows flapping to make her point. “Aghhh. I’m a blockade runner, aye? I go to the wrong side of the line and make my deliveries.” She seemed to flow with the new tension, smiling with less good cheer than before. “Food, medicine, mostly. Things some people can’t get easily when others are pressing down.”“Arms?” Ross’s voice was quiet.“No.” Tam’s jaw set, the look of someone that knows offense couldn’t have been intended, but still felt stung. “I won’t run weapons. All I do is help those that are trying to survive, survive that much longer.” She looked at Loki, her eyes hard. “And if you don’t mind, my reasons are personal. But they’re true.”Loki nodded, knowing how to test boundaries without crossing them. “You’d need support if you’re doing that, long term. What outfit are you with? You don’t fly Ravager colors. Or anyone I recognize, to be honest.”“Family fleet. We’re small. I range pretty far from our roost.” Still grudging, still brusque, but sounding truthful enough. She gestured at the door behind her. “Look, I’m not a fan of lightfooting it, Your Highness.” Daisy jerked, the question of tension now answered. Tam shot her a glance. “It’s not rare knowledge out here, miss. He’s known, and not for good reason. Your face is new, though, and your third, and I want to assume the best of you all. So let me put this plain. I’m in between runs when I catch your distress. My muscle is off-ship. It’s just me, my engine crew, and my luggage, so to speak. If you want to rustle me, take my ship, you can do that. Rather you didn’t. I came out because I don’t like standing by when someone yells for help. Not to start a fight with your kind. I wouldn’t win.”Loki dipped his head, conciliatory. “I’m not looking to fight. I don’t want to steal your ship, Lady Tam, and I appreciate your rescue. These two are humans, under the protectorate of the Nine Realms. No matter what you’ve heard, you should at least believe that I’m obliged to prioritize that.”Tam stared at him, her eyes widening slightly. “Earthlings.” She glanced at the pair, intrigued. “I’ll be damned, then. That’s an unusual crew. And definitely civilian, aye?”“I’d like to get them back home without trouble.” Loki gestured at the ruined jumper, ignoring the look Daisy was giving him. “If you can help get this online again, or if you’ve got a shuttle that we can borrow, that would be enough.”Tam snorted, with the snort trying to evolve into a laugh. She took a hand out of her pocket to tap the palm to her nose, calming herself, then put the palm out, waving it back and forth. “I’m sorry, that was rude.” She pointed at the ship. “That thing isn’t hardly worth more than its remaining metal.”“A shuttle, then. Or some other transport you could help arrange.”“Wait.” Daisy cut in front of him, her shoulder nearly jabbing him in the chest. “Do you know this area, Tam? Like, general space area?”Tam studied her, puzzled. “I’m prone to staying in this arm of the galaxy lately, yes. There’s been a fair few conflicts. I get plenty of work.”“Kree,” said Daisy, nodding at the blink. “And mercs, moving into the power vacuum after Thanos. Lots of business out here, for all kinds.”“Better informed than I’d have guessed of Earthlings.” Tam inclined her head, amused but not condescending. “Aye, fair assessments. There’s a number of spacelanes outside your region that are getting increased activity. It’s not all because of your world.”“And some of that activity stays under the wire.” Daisy took another step towards her.“Daisy,” said Loki, like a warning.She kept ignoring him. “I believe you. You don’t run weapons. But do you know who does, who operates around here? Where they go, who they deal with?”Tam kept looking at her, and now her expression was unreadable.“Daisy.”She half-turned on him. “Listen to me. I could pull rank, say I’m in charge, but I don’t want to. I’m gonna tell you how I feel. These guys got onto our planet, made their time trying to sell bootleg vibranium to a bunch of jerks, and we don’t know why. We took a chance, followed them, and they tried to kill us. We still don’t know why, not for certain. We know they’re a crap team. We know they panicked. But these guys had a freakin’ battleship, and they came at us, and I want to know why. You told me I had a choice. I made it. Maybe you didn’t want me to feel guilty about it, fine, but I also haven’t changed my mind.”“You got shot at by what?” Tam swept past the group as if completely forgetting the tension a minute ago, examining the ruined gap in the ship. “You took a broadside from a battleship and came away with just that and your lives after?” She pointed at the torn metal, looking at the three of them in turn. “That’s some frellin’ fantastic flying, whichever of you was on stick. What was the make of your combatant?”Loki didn’t say anything. It was Ross that spoke up. “Decommissioned Shi’ar? I don’t know what that-““Fuck!” Tam laughed, startled. “How did you survive? No, never mind, tell me later.” She shook her head. “Battleships… oi.” She looked up, realizing something. “You’re right. I may have a little information, after all. I think you got hit by some of the local meat boys.”Ross cocked his head forward and on an angle, looking for all the world like a deeply befuddled rooster. “I’m sorry, we got hit by what now?”Tam looked at the gap, then settled herself down to lean back on an intact portion of the wreck, bringing her down a few inches. Still not quite eye level to the humans, but there was an attempt. She palmed her hands together, looking wry. “Take a mercenary or three that maybe did all right on their own careers. They get older, they’re missing some fingers or tendrils, maybe can’t take a full breath anymore, who knows. But years on, they’ve got enough rep to still pull the jobs in. They establish a corp. Get themselves a base of operations - maybe it’s a stable asteroid base if they’re fancy, maybe they pull together a bigger ship to live in. A rusty old battleship, say. From here, these kinds of operators go a few different ways. All of them have to start recruiting, keep the business fresh. Your guys go the easy way. The greedy way.“They doll up their base nice. Make it known as if they’re a good corp to start brand new mercenary careers. They sop up the bottom feeders, actually, the ones that honest corps look at and decided they wouldn’t make it in a real operation. And the corp head will take any job that’ll pay so long as at least a partial completion happens, tell the feeders they’ll get a good cut. If they make it back, which is the unspoken part. A few make it out this way, save up some cred, maybe move on to better crews who still look at their history with distrust for a long time. Because most of their last crew didn’t come home.” Tam gave Ross a grim smile. “The money comes in. The bodies go out. Meat boys. Throw them at the grinder and pocket what’s left.”Ross swallowed hard.Tam looked at Daisy, apologetic. “The man’s right. The smart move is to go home. These folk live fast and messy lives, and whatever they were supposed to do on your world, they’ve already cashed in on it. The money’s been spent. The survivors will party for a day or two, then get shipped out on another bad job. Probably die.”“That doesn’t tell me what I want to know.” Daisy kept looking at Tam. “We’re not important, not yet. We’re a kid planet. But someone came up with a good idea on how to hit us. Like I said, they shipped vibranium to us, put it out there on our markets. Do you know why?”Tam shook her head. “Expect you’re not actually asking me, miss.”“I’ve got a theory, and I want to know how close I am. They did this to shake us up. Throw some chaos out there. Make a mess. Someone figured out this one specific way to come at our whole planet. And they threw a bunch of expendable guys at us to do it. They wanted to not leave a trail, but the crew did anyway because they panicked. I think that’s the big thing here. We can still catch up. Maybe.” Daisy looked pleading. “Do you know where this crew might’ve gone?”Tam shared a look with Loki, who might as well have turned to stone. Whatever she was looking for in his face, she didn’t find it. Instead, she looked at the floor of her bay, scuffling a soft boot-heel across it. “If they were skirting along the closest lane to here, taking jobs in restricted space, then…” She sighed. “There’s a ring of junkers lashed up into a station in the next nearest system, orbiting the red dwarf star. Proxima Centauri. It’s the sort of barely habitable nest we call one of the Ends. Because sure as shit, nothing good starts there.”Daisy gave a startled little laugh. “Good place for meat boys and old battleships?”“Very good.” Tam looked away, her lips curling with distaste. “I know this one, personal. Been there for refueling, picking up a few spare parts. Not a nice place to stay long.”“I wouldn’t plan on doing that.” Daisy walked towards Tam, then leaned next to her on the wreck. “Could you please take us there?”Tam looked at her, then at Loki. “Miss-““I agree with her,” said Ross, abruptly. He looked around, feeling everyone’s eyes on him. “I think she’s right. It’s what Loki said, when I asked. Vibranium is unnaturally rare. It doesn’t really matter to anyone but us on Earth. And we’ve only got the one major source. But that’s enough for us. And then… even one shield, in the hand of an Avenger, is enough to change a fight. The play was to use imported vibranium to disrupt the balance of power across a number of countries. Simple. We do it to each other all the time.” He grimaced. “Even us. Bring new weapons into a region ready for instability, push one side against another…” He spread his hands, mimicking a pow!Ross looked around, but didn’t meet Loki’s stare. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “If we don’t figure out the source, or make sure this really is a one-off job, then… then we could be looking at more operations like this one. Until someone gets the result they want. Chaos. Worldwide war. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “We need at least some kind of answer. Or to send a clear response: Don’t mess with Earth. We can and will push back.”Loki sighed, walking away from the two humans towards the large bay door. His shoulders were tense as he moved. Then they relaxed. A little. “I can offer financing.” He looked back, at Tam, and he looked resigned, somehow. “Not a bribe, but an offer. To the local End, so we can finish our business, and then transport back to Earth. I’ll also handle any legal and Nova Corp issues that creates, that’s a given. I will transfer you enough funding to cover your next several deliveries, as I know such aid is often hampered by money, and to cover your operating costs. All I need is an estimate, not a line by line. I’d trust in your helpful nature.”Tam looked at the floor of her ship, scuffing her heel again.It wasn’t clear if Loki was gauging her refusal or not. “The wreck of the jumper is also yours. That’s throwing a cheap coin after, but it’s one of the better optimized short range ships I’ve seen. It’s worth a little scrap, yes, or to fix and give to another group that could use even the barest vessel.”“Fine.” Tam put her hand up before he kept going. “It’s fine. That’s fine, I’m sold.” She looked up, then rolled her eyes, as if finding something personally hilarious. “The newsfeed report I saw on you sure got some shit wrong.” Both hands came up in a full surrender. “All right! I’m your ride. Better or worse.” She looked down at Daisy, still leaning next to her. “Guess you’re boss on this trip, huh?”“I keep trying.”“Good girl. Keep the men in line. Right. I’m going to bring my crew in, since we’re all on the same track now. They’ll be working the junker over while we do our business. I do know someone that could use a cheap scout, as it happens. They’ll be thrilled at my surprise stock.” Tam shoved away from the wreck, then gave a short, sharp whistle along her lower lip. Something scrabbled along the outside corridor, then the door opened again.Ross did that cockeyed rooster thing again, now with a faint choking noise. Daisy, somewhat more hardened by exposure to a stranger universe than he, still blinked twice and whispered a stunned ‘dude’ under her breath.Half a dozen basketball-sized black roly-poly furballs tumbled into the bay. They half-circled around Tam, an odd little churring noise rumbling out of them. She clicked back, obviously talking to them in some language the basic translator patches couldn’t catch. Even Loki had an odd look on his face. Tam nodded to one of the furs. “Yeah. But use the short can, from the Trosco job. Don’t go overboard. Ill’ish can finish the refit himself.”More churring, rising into a satisfied and happy purr. The furballs bounced for a few seconds, and then unfurled long, spindly, black-furred limbs. Six each. Two legs, bringing the core of the fuzz up about two feet, and four unnervingly bendy arms. Stretchy enough to reach the toolkits and high shelves scattered around the bay. One of them grabbed what was sort of but also entirely unlike a can of WD-40, turning towards the wrecked ship. There were eyes deep in the fuzz. Small, gleaming eyes in a brackish sea blue, with no whites. The chirp it made at Daisy was friendly, but also capable of getting across a request for her to move her butt from the ship. She did, watching the creature shake the can and aim at it the gap.“Uh,” said Daisy to herself. The gap was somehow regrowing new steel? “…Right.”Tam looked at the trio, pretending to ignore their confusion but also clearly enjoying it. “The crew has it from here. Come on up. I’ve got food I can spare. Won’t be fancy, hopefully won’t be too strange for your stomachs. But after a day like you’ve had, you should probably eat and rest while I plot the trip.”. . .Tam, like a concerned but not particularly overbearing mother hen, had opened up a number of secure cupboards to reveal an awe-inspiring amount of storage-stable food, put utensils and bowls on the table while waving at the cleaning cabinet, and let them at it before disappearing up a shallow gangway to begin prep for the Centauri Ends.Daisy, sitting at the table and taking what she realized was an absurdly long time to eat what seemed to be vaguely fruity-flavored Grape-Nuts gravel with what was not milk but was also tasty, let out the heaviest sigh of her life. “She’s right. I need rest. I’m frickin’ exhausted.”She looked around at the fairly small meal nook, all of it as brightly lit and clean as the bay. The table was spartan. Nothing left out to be lost if the ship had to do some fancy maneuvering. It also reminded her, prickling, of something. “Does this look a little like the mess room in-““Alien.” Loki kept staring into his stirred bowl of whatever the hell, equally tired. Actually, probably more so. Maybe, Daisy realized, that’s part of how she actually fought him down. “Brute industrialism is a galactic standard. I was startled at how well that film got that across. No corporation anywhere is going to pretty up a workhorse vessel without charging out the arse for it.”Ross looked between the two of them, then down at himself, poking once at his chest to see if anything was about to wriggle inside his ribcage. He was fine. He expected he would be, but it was hard to resist. Hoping no one had seen him do it, he went back to chewing on some sort of jerky. He didn’t know if it was meat or fruit or even maybe just some weird flatbread, but it was also pretty good. Filling, strangely, for how narrow the strip was. Space lembas, said his brain, and hell, he went with it.Daisy clacked her spoon along the bottom of her bowl, thinking. “How would you play it, at End? If it was just you, going for revenge or whatever?”Loki made a soft noise, not quite a sigh, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Daisy… I’m not the right person to ask that.”She kept stirring the remaining not-milk, watching it take a soft blue dye. “Yes, you are. I’d like an answer. You’re the one that fits out here. I’ve gotta take being a human into this. So tell me what you’d do, and I’ll decide what parts of that work for us.”He shook his head. “My decisions are part of what got us into this today. I suggest other counsel. It may be that Tam-”Daisy slammed the spoon onto the table, making a loud bang. Loki didn’t blink, but a flinch traveled across his shoulders, brief as a shadow. Her hand stayed atop the spoon. “Stop that. You do that, you know that? You make one mistake and suddenly you think you’ve sentenced everyone around you to death.” She put her hand up and then rested her forehead in the palm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t need to snap.”Tam poked her head into the mess hall, studying the group. “Everything all right?”“We’re all right,” said Loki, looking at the top of Daisy’s head with a mixed expression that didn’t lead to easy reading. “Only worn out.”“Yeah, that scans.” She frowned, then jutted her chin at Ross. “Hey, you. Hot shot pilot guy.”Ross winced. The story had briefly come out when Tam set the food, with him realizing that yes, he had managed to dodge two more potentially fatal shots from the battleship. He still didn’t think his piloting was worth that much interest. “Just Ross, thanks.”“Ross the pilot-guy. Come on up to the nest. I’ll show you how bigger ships prep for jump. Then everyone’s got a couple hours to nap. We could go right after we set the flight plan, but I want to run some systems checks, let the crew secure the junker.”He had a choice. It wasn’t a difficult one. He looked down at the jerky he was eating, then at two agents too tired to fight but giving it their best. “Got a no-eating rule in the cockpit?”“Technically, but since I break it every day m’self, I can’t hardly pass judgment on a guest.” She jerked her head towards the gangway. Ross went.“He’s taking this way better than I would have dreamed,” said Daisy from behind her palm. She followed it up with a sigh. “I’m really sorry I yelled at you. I’m punching above my weight here, but I honestly feel like we need to do this. Like there’s going to be a lot of moments, big and small, that tell the universe where Earth stands. And this is a small one, but it matters. It matters because it’s our law, and it’s space law, and right now we’re the only ones who can take care of it.“So my stress is out there. And you… like. I know. You get wrapped tight if you think you make a mistake, and I get where that comes from. You know I do. I’m not going to get into a big therapy talk. But I don’t feel like you screwed up today. It was my call, and you and Ross held the job together when it went bad. So really, it came down to whether or not you guys think I’m taking us in the wrong direction.”“Ross has taken your side.” Loki leaned back in his seat, apparently giving up and pushing his bowl away from him. “His logic is good. And on the whole, Daisy, I can’t say I have an argument against further investigation, either. I’m currently invested in ensuring both of you return to Earth safe and alive. I told Lady Tam the truth. That, necessarily, is my priority.”Daisy dropped her palm, tucking it under her chin to look at him instead. “Okay. I want to do this, and you want to keep us breathing. Both goals can work together. So, back to my question. The three of us can’t take on a battleship straight on, and we’re not going to ask the nice huge lady to do it for us, either. Is she Kree? I know some of them can pass for human. But. Like… she’s huge.”Loki mustered a faint smile. “I actually don’t know for certain, Daisy, and it would be rude to ask. Many little fleets like the one she mentions live lives similar to those people of no country on your world. Out here they rarely like the topic, and for her kindness, I’m not going to push. Regardless. This is not much of a warship, I’m afraid.” He flicked a hand. “I think even her crew are outcast. They seem to be Druffs, or rather a unique offshoot of them. I’ve never seen quite their like before. They are clearly not warriors. It’s unusual to see a species like them as engineers.”Daisy rubbed at her forehead. “Yeah… I can’t even handle the puff guys. So, we know where our guys probably are. Let’s take this back to the beginning. How would you go at it from here?”Loki looked up at the ceiling of the mess, but not by way of dismissal. She knew that look. He mentally edited every thesis or speech at the speed of light. “Reconnaissance, intelligence, and pressure. Similar to certain of our SHIELD operations, but escalated for purpose of rapid results. This is far safer if one doesn’t hang around for long.”He pulled his bowl back towards him, recovering his appetite. “I arrive at the port and proceed to blend with the local color as quickly as possible. Everything I hear matters. Details lead to specific individuals. Move closer in, and begin to collate information about my central targets. I am operating without backup, so that information is itself my primary weapon. They’re mercenaries, that’s already a useful starting point. I take what I’m learning and begin to press on their contacts, their buyers, their alliances, their competition. If I’ve focused correctly on my intel, the cracks appear swiftly. Chaos enters the organization. Vulnerable strike points appear. I will abuse those. If I have to make someone disappear, this is where that happens. Until I get access to my desired target.”He looked at Daisy, wry. “My plans at this stage typically either end with a necessary amount of dead people, something useful exploding, or the target now fully convinced I can and will destroy them if they cross me again. I can provide multiple documented examples of these results, if you like.”“Jesus, dude.” Daisy didn’t sound that surprised, though. “Alright, we’re… probably going to dial some of the end bits back.”“I would assume that, yes.” An actual, if dry, smile crept back onto his face. “All this will hinge on our first impression of that port ring, of course.”Daisy nodded, then looked into her empty bowl. It was now completely stained blue. “What the hell was I eating?”“I’m definitely not going to answer that. You’ll thank me someday.” He jerked his chin towards a different hallway. “Meanwhile, I endorse getting some rest. We’re all exhausted, and I’m going to need some of my strength back for the port.”“Cosigned.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

May lifted her chin when Phil entered the room, but stayed where she was otherwise. Her whole body was tense, watching Okoye on the other side of the one-way glass, arms crossed against her jacket. Her usual stance, only more strained than usual. “Anything?”“No. Not yet.” For his part, Phil still didn’t sound worried. Then again, it was his job not to. His faith in his team was unshakeable, because it had to be. “Getting anywhere with our new guests?”Her fingers clenched slightly against the thick leather sleeves. “They were pretending they don’t speak English when I was in there. Both are wearing those translator patches, and one of them’s just clever enough to point at it. Pretend like it got broken when they were pinned by our guys.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “No sign of damage to the device, of course. Not that we’re going to fall for the wounded bird trick. And besides, you can get them to flinch by saying the right thing.”Phil frowned. “What’s the right thing?”“Lunch, usually.” She snorted. “Can get anyone’s attention with food.” She shook her head. “We’re treating them more like guests at this point. Okoye seems to think that might work, and since I’ve run out of ideas, I’ve deferred to her. It’s worth a shot. I left her in there with them at her request. She’s just been talking to them for the last half hour.” She watched Okoye stand up and turn towards the door. She’d been sitting on a chair, playing the good cop. “You might be in time for her to wrap up whatever she’s doing.”A moment later, Okoye let herself into the observation room. “They are practically children,” she said, unimpressed. “Young. Inexperienced. Working at the whims of others.”“Great,” said May. That figured. “They up for talking?”“They claim to know little, and to an extent I believe them. They are hungry and confused and growing angry. This was supposed to be an easy job, their masters told them. That it would be fine and they would be paid for their efforts. They are questioning the truthfulness of that. Others of their team got themselves killed. The rest fled without these two, never looked back. No idea of actual teamwork. Increasingly, they are not so upset with us. We are treating them comparatively well.”May arched an eyebrow. “You got through to them fast.”Okoye smiled. “I have a good voice. Unruly children always answer to me.” She leaned against the door. “I have suggested I might bring them dinner, if they continue to behave. Whatever they have left to give up, I think they will then.” She gestured to the pair of SHIELD agents. “Cheap Chinese.”Phil arched an eyebrow. “You think that’s what they’d go for?”“I think that’s what I’d go for.” Okoye tipped a wink. “In my experience, many people may come together over a good bowl of rice.”May rolled her eyes towards Phil. “She’s got the spirit of a late shift city detective in her.”Phil shrugged, not surprised by much anymore. “Hey, whatever works.”. . .Ross peered out the cockpit glass, feeling the deja vu wash over him. This was a much broader view, with more intricate controls splayed across a console. This ship was clearly designed for one main pilot, and its seat looked like a custom job meant for Tam’s size. The seat he was in seemed again permitted some secondary controls. He took a shot, recognizing what he thought was a closed vid screen and maybe a speaker. “This a comms chair?”“Yeah.” Tam didn’t look at him, but she sounded impressed at his guesswork. “I stay pretty quiet on the lines so I don’t need much from it. It’s a decent package, though. Fatline, transponder, wave signal, etcetera. Few other doodads. These kinds of ships are small package haulers, usually, and I suppose that’s another way of describing what I do.”“Most of that just washed right over me.” Ross flushed a hand over his head, ruffling his own hair to make his point.She chuckled. “They’re just different ways for us to talk out here. Some are more reliable than others, longer range, stable channels, whatlike. Get all the shitty shows streaming in on a long run. Now.” She gestured at the screen inset on her side. “Contact-controlled graphene tab. This lets me talk to the ship and tell it what I want to do. Because I’m not some sort of insane math genius, it calculates any trip I have to take that’s more complicated than your average planet-to-satellite jaunt. Close range even leading up towards docking can be run manual, although my girl here is a mite more complex than the shortie you got here in.”Ross leaned over to look at it, sussing out the numbers and realizing his translator patch was somehow interacting with his vision. Neurological implantation. He could read now. “Velocity, axis, distance… wow, that’s a lot of distance.”“It is.” Tam pointed towards an icon in the upper right. “It licks at your brain sometimes. Flick that into the center of the screen for me.” She nodded when he did, leaning back so he could see the annotated deep field image. “Now, the notes you’re seeing are places I’ve been or can go in this region of space. I can program in new locations at any time, but I usually don’t have to. Okay. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf.” She indicated the legend scrolling along the side. “Spot them?”Ross had enough astronomy knowledge to think he could identify the label without looking for something to read. He reached across and tapped what he thought was the right dot, glancing at the label to cheat. He was right. The deep field thinned out - now it only showed known locations of red dwarf ports of call. “And… the Alpha Centauri system is still really close to us, in the Orion arm.” He studied the star map, realizing he could see an icon that indicated their current location. Near it was a marked star. He poked at it, leaning back as the image zoomed in. “Christ. That’s neat.” He looked up to see Tam grinning down at him. “What?”“I like new people. New people seeing new things that throw them for a loop. Reminds me of anyone’s place out here. It’s like hanging out with kids, but I don’t mean that to be insulting.” Tam shrugged. “It’s a good thing to remember, is all. It keeps the air in here fresh.” She gestured to the panel. “It doesn’t take all that long to set up a jump program, but like I told your friends, I want to run a check-up panel before we hit it. So, how about I show you that bit, and you can get some rest, too.”Ross laughed. “I’m… actually not tired anymore. This is way too interesting.” He gently reached out to tap at the data inset for Centauri, absorbing it. “…Wow.”Tam shook her head, but with a real smile. “Yeah, you’re a pilot, alright. Okay. Then I’m going to leave you up here once we’re locked for flight, you can nudge around and see what’s what. Can I trust you to not start moving the ship?”“You’re the captain, ma’am.”“All right. Enjoy scoping it out. Just don’t hit the launch key you see there.” She reached up and flicked an intercom panel key. “Two hours to jump. If you want a nap, now’s the time to bed down. Next alert, anyone that wants to catch the arrival, get to the cockpit. Captain out.” She leaned back in her seat. “All right, pilot guy. So, this is how you program a jump…”. . .Daisy didn’t need military experience to master two of the most useful life skills the service had to offer: falling asleep on command and waking up at the sound of an ant fart. She managed to conk out for almost the entire two hours, and when the comm chimed again to let them know they were about to drop into warp or whatever in a few minutes, she’d stolen enough rest to feel nearly refreshed again.The ship had small bays to sleep in, practically a miniature barracks. She suspected there were one or two actual rooms stashed somewhere, but since they were guests and it seemed like Tam and that weird puffball crew lived in here full-time, it made sense that she’d keep those private. The bunks themselves had surprisingly nice cushioning, and a little lip on the side to keep a sleeper from falling out too easily, so it wasn’t an issue. She saw Loki’s feet drop to the floor from another bunk kitty-corner from hers, but didn’t hear them. She called out to him, trying to not sound worried. He usually hated being fawned at by humans, even friends. “You feeling better, dude?”“I’m not going to win a magical marathon for a few days yet, Daisy, but yes. Thank you.” He did sound better. The lazy but sometimes gentle sardonicism was back. Weird how that had become so comforting over the years.She guessed the last hour or so of him holding the ship together was probably done mostly on pure spite and his bone-deep refusal to die, and that kept making her feel bad for snapping at him. He was probably already over it. Either things slid off him or he held a grudge for a thousand years, no in-between. And she never got a grudge off him, not for real. His shadow drifted past her bunk. “You’ve never seen a trans-space jump. You should. I doubt this will be the best resultant view, but it’s one of the better examples of what life out here can be like. It’s always an unusual experience.”Daisy finished sitting up and watched him finish stretching in the hall. Yeah, one catnap and probably a slap of magic, and he looked fresh as a flower field. The suit was gone, replaced with something generically space. Still black, but she guessed it was some sort of Asgardian casual gear, or, more likely, something even less recognizable than that. A jacket a little like Tam’s, dark pants, a layered shirt with that strappy green braiding he liked at the collar. Rude. She felt like she needed a shower and a new wardrobe. Maybe she could at least snag a wash as they docked. “Did Ross come down for a rest?”“Never did. Expect he’s still up there, prodding at dials.”She palmed her hands together between her knees, looking down at the scuffs on her boots. “Can I ask you something real quick?”“Mmm.”“You haven’t been, like, hard on him at all. Not from the moment he got assigned to us. It’s not bad, but it’s a little weird for you. Usually you don’t exactly take to new people.” She looked up to catch one of his silent laughs. “What?”“I like him.”Daisy went for the double-eyebrows as far up her forehead as she could get, her voice equally shocked. “You like him?” She put her hand up. “Not that I don’t, he really is an all right dude. But since we left base?”Loki kept grinning, one of his unusually genuine and cheery ones, if still sometimes unnerving. “He reminds me of what I expect Coulson may have been like when less experienced. Grimacing, secretly confused, consistently stressed, but he does his best regardless and shows as little of all that as he thinks he can. I terrified him, Daisy, might still, but his first reaction was to shout at me. You know I’m always fond of stupid human bravery.” He gestured, a vague wave of his hand. “And when something must be done, he has little hesitation in him. I am simply not the one that saved the ship, Daisy. I had a choice. Continue to pilot while our systems drained dry, or shore up the damage and hope our attackers missed their next shot. I chose the latter, to keep the systems going for as long as I could. I did not expect the third option. He immediately took over and dodged the remaining fire. No questions. No time for fear. He simply did the job. We are alive because of that reaction.”She frowned, thoughtful. Competence was another thing that endeared someone to Loki. “Guess that makes sense.”Loki beckoned. “Come on. Let’s go see our local smuggler’s hellhole.”. . .Ross glanced over his shoulder as the agents arrived, then went back to scrolling through some sort of intensely dense ship owner’s manual. Daisy could see Tam looking at him with something like affection. “God, I wish I’d had this translation implant when you threw us onto the jumper.”Loki sounded mildly apologetic, resting a hand on the back of his chair. “It hadn’t occurred to me then, as I was hoping this would be a short trip. By the time it would have become truly useful, I was unfortunately extremely occupied.”“I know. Not yelling at you about it.”Daisy stared at the side of the man’s head. He seemed reborn into his element here. A frickin’ spaceship, sure, but it flew, and now he seemed at home with the console. So, that’s weird. She shook her head, still kind of charmed by his doofy ease.Tam looked at them next. “Miss, this your first jump?”“Yeah, been on a couple ships, but…” She shrugged. “It’s a messy story. I’ve never done anything like this.”“All right. So, like I said. Jumps are programmed in stages based on distance and complexity of the journey, and also based on what your ship can handle.” She pointed at her console. “I’ve walked Ross through what we’re about to do. This is a three-jump, a lot for this area of space. Usually a pop like this is a oner. But that’s not because our trip is long, but because we’re moving past a lot of celestial objects and into a junk zone. The fewer jumps in a plan, the more smooth the ride. You push your ship past what it can handle, you start straining. And not just the ship. It can mess with you.”Ross closed the manual and leaned over to study the jump-program. “It’s like a gravity-wave process combined with a network of extremely small wormholes. We’re starting to mess with the former on Earth, but we don’t have the energy system to keep it steady. I saw a guy trying to brainstorm an engine like that in the late 90’s at the skunkworks, real headcase but smart as hell. I was thankful I never had to test it. But anyway, something like that bypasses the need for engine-based FTL, because it’s so damn hard to break lightspeed in the real world-”“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sulu. First, what? And second, do I gotta know this?”Ross stopped himself. “I mean, maybe not. But it’s the neatest thing I’ve ever seen. And we’re just not there yet. I’ve been in stuff that tells me we’re definitely gonna get there someday, but we are missing crucial things.”“Hell, we haven’t even punched to jump yet, and he’s starry-eyed.” Tam laughed.Daisy shared a look with Loki, which was no help, because he looked just as amused by all this. “Okay,” she said, making an offering. “So what happens if you jump too far? Like, what’s too much for this ship?”“My ship tops about thirty jumps per plan before things get dicey. It’s not a fancy ride, but I can push past that. I’ve had to, a couple times. Emergencies. Heard tell of some Ravager idiots doing several hundred at a jump once in a ship rated for fifty. Probably still missing some of their brain matter. Surprised they didn’t come out of that stunt looking like a bowlful of rubber.” Tam bobbed her head to emphasize what she said next. “You will vomit your last week’s worth of food, at the very least. Your brain feels like it’s being juggled by time and space itself, stretched out in a bunch of very uncomfortable ways.”“Nice,” said Daisy, in that tone of voice that meant the absolute opposite. “Cool to hear we’re not doing that.”Tam laughed again. “All right. Pilot Ross, you want to do the honors?”Didn’t have to tell him twice. Ross scanned the board to doublecheck everything was still in the green, then leaned over to tap the upper right of the console screen. Daisy saw a READY icon flash white before replacing itself with TRANSIT.And then she felt like her stomach was left in a subway trash can on the other side of the universe.. . .Jumpspace feels like the universe turns into a honeycomb of completely illogical, almost cartoonish nonsense. The usual physics presence of redshift and blueshift to suggest the rate of speed are mere options left in a box somewhere and then crapped on. If the stars are visible, they’re afterimages. Memories. They’re not really there, not during jump. Instead, colors stretch and blend around the ship, the fabric of reality itself bunches around the traveler, and reality dips off for coffee.Billions of people across the known quadrants have experience jump travel. The scientists have tried to explain that their minds experience only quick flashes of it, their minds otherwise shutting down and ignoring the improbability of what they’re experiencing. Between the honeycomb structures are void-like wisps of quantum space and layered universes. The mind can’t handle what’s in there, not easily. Not safely.A little like a human moving their eyes and not ever consciously realizing that their brains shut their vision off as the eyeball moves, almost no species in this universe wholly experiences jumpspace as it really happens.If they did, they would go utterly, irrevocably, batshit insane.One jump - stars blink into being for a shattered second, like fireworks glancing across the surface of the cornea, before rushing into the mess of color. There may have been an unknown celestial object next to the ship. Its passengers never know it’s there.Two jumps - into an empty space between solar systems, the blackness so total it’s oppressive. This too is immediately gone, filled with the impossible.Three jumps - out of the black and into the light.And then:. . .It was Ross that blurted the obvious. “Holy shit, that’s ugly.”The Centauri Ends circled a sun-blasted planet forever caught in the hard glare of the red dwarf star, itself seeming pockmarked and eternally flaring beyond the hard tint of the cockpit. The Centauri Ends was, on the whole, a garbage ring under a half-assed shield projection, as if Saturn were owned and operated by a bribed waste disposal corporation. Space Sopranos, but without the rugged charm. The ring itself was made up of thousands of massive and dead ships jerry-rigged together into an allegedly habitable structure. He could see holes in it, ripped out pieces of wreckage sort of like what their own jumper had gone through, but now several miles wide and clearly fatal to somebody.It looked like the physical incarnation of every shitty biker bar he’d ever gone through, with a light science fiction layer to keep it interesting. It was, hands down, the biggest letdown of his space adventure Ross had seen so far.Tam snorted. “Warned you.”“Oh my God, Phil told me about this place he had to go to once to save Loki’s ass, like, this crappy spaceport out in I guess Badoon space? He called it the nastiest little truckstop in the galaxy. That’s worse. It’s gotta be. Man, we always get to see the nicest stuff with you around.” Daisy reared back, not catching another one of Loki’s silent jackal laughs as she elbowed him. She forgot she was holding her belly with her other hand, the nausea of her first jump already fading. “It looks like I can smell it.”“Oh, you’re gonna just love when we dock, then.” Tam took over manual control, bringing them in slow towards to their destination. “Good portion of the ring is made up of a fleet of dead scows got junked a couple systems over.” She looked over at the humans. “Biological waste scows. That’s a real fact.”“Ew.”Tam grinned, not at all malicious. The smile of someone that knows this was going to suck, but was going to make the absolute best of it for the sheer hell of it. “You’re going to want to take a scrub before we dock. And you’ll want to take another one about five minutes after. Go back down to the bunk level, look for the sliding door.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

A five minute wash and Daisy and Ross were both back in the cockpit in time for final approach. The ring of garbage was much closer now, and the space around them was full of ships in countless varieties popping in and out of jump. Like confetti, but trashier.Loki had taken over the comms chair, mostly by way of having someplace to sit while the humans sped off to do their own thing while they still had time. He was content to let Tam handle docking. She kept glancing at the speaker set into the console near him, where a light flickered intermittently. She’d done her part and sent in a request for acknowledgement a few moments ago. Now it was time for the Ends to pick up.The speaker finally popped into life. A surly voice filled the air of the cockpit, gurgling slightly. “Hauler 771943, request?”“I want to dock.” Tam sounded equally surly, rolling her eyes for emphasis. “Not here for the scenery, mate, just point me to an open bay and get out of my ears.”“We’s busy today. You got anything good?”“My business is always good.”A low, rolling grunt. It didn’t sound impressed with her flat-toned boast. “You got authorization? Backing? Sponsor?”Tam leaned in close to the comm, pitching her voice so that all those low, bass-like notes under her accent came tumbling out with so much hostility that it veered back around into something like stone-cold professionalism. “Sponsor. First name: Fuck. Second name: You. Point me to a bay, you worm-faced bastard, I know where you live and I can make your life extremely problematic.” She hissed the rest, a barbed threat. “Run my hauler number if you don’t believe me.”The comm crackled and went dead. Tam leaned comfortably back in her seat and looked at her shocked passengers with a look of sweet serenity. She folded her palms on her lap like a monk, and, just to really dig it in, began to hum.The comm crackled back half a minute later. The gurgling voice sounded contrite. But still gurgly. Apparently that was a natural feature for whoever was on the other end of the line. “Miss Tam, that’ll be Dock #9694, Blue Ring Ridge. Sending docking information to your ship. Welcome, uh, back.” There was a pregnant, deeply meaningful pause. “So… Your security with you today, ma’am?”Tam smiled. It looked carnivorous. “How about this for a suggestion? No matter what you think your guess is today, instead you assume they are, or else the next time I have to come here, they will be.”Whoever they were, they sounded terrified. “Yes ma’am. Docking out.”She coughed delicately into her hand, not looking at her dead-silent guests. “I never like these places. Not much a fan of being here today without the muscle on standby, but hey. A good reputation sells for more’n gold. It’ll keep me safe enough.” She took control of the ship again, setting it on a course for a small opening hatch off to the portside of the ship, gliding until auto-dock procedures took over.. . .They disembarked off the back bay of the ship, the blockade runner now docked and sealed in place in a semi-umblical bay that opened into a haphazard airlock watched over by a large, slug-like attendant. Tam had gone another step and found a couple of extra layers to throw over the humans, jackets and kerchiefs and a few other scraps left behind that were ill-fitted but gave them the same sort of shiftless, anonymous look the locals would have. She walked them into the umbilical, keeping in front so that the attendant had to deal with her.By the look in his wet, gimlet eyes, the docking authority had called ahead. “M’em,” the creature rumbled at her, gradually realizing he had to look up. Very far up. “I offer-““Whatever it is, I don’t need it. Take off, Jeraxis. And you and I have a polite understanding, of course - nobody comes in this bay without dealing directly with me. Clear?”The attendant froze at her authoritative tone, then bent so that his neckless head approximated a bow. His voice was cordial. “M’em,” he said, and then he took off in a lumbering hustle.Tam rolled her eyes. “Jer isn’t the worst person here, but he will take a bribe to let some other asshole rummage your ship. So. I’m staying here, with my stuff, to make sure you’ve got your ride back out. This isn’t my show, anyway.” She jutted her chin at Loki. “You know these kinda places, I’m sure.”“Well enough.” The laconic response held worlds within it. So did his next. “Thank you.”“Yeah.” She held her palm out. Hesitant, Loki offered his hand and found a comm device slapped into it. “Emergency calls, shit like that. I might check in, make sure you’re not in the brig or gotten yourselves dead. Maybe I hear something useful on the feed. Otherwise I plan on napping and waking up at any loud noises, because it’ll be some jackass cutting his way into my rig. It will happen at least once.” Ignoring his look, she turned to the two humans. Her voice lilted into a wry but lilting chirp, the sarcastically delivered song of the Cool Mom. “You kids have fun!”Daisy blinked. “Uh, thanks?”Tam snapped a wave, tipped Ross a more honest-looking wink, and disappeared back into the bay.. . .They split up. Not the smartest move, but the fastest for the amount of information scouring they needed to do on short notice. Loki broke trail towards one of the upper rings, where buyers and slick dealers moved along cleaner walkways looking down on the throngs with whatever they were trying to move. Here he could keep a weather eye on the humans, and keep his ear towards the voices that were going to be the loudest. They were staying in the arrival hubzones first, no breaking off all the way into the darker depths of the ring until they had the first scraps of a real action-plan together.Loki snatched a canister of some overpriced liquid off a passing vendor’s tray, daring the small lizardlike man to say something to him. He wore a different face here, too, but unlike Earth’s little expo, now his features took on a crueler, shadowy sharpness. The look on his face told the alien it wasn’t worth a life dunning someone like him for coin. It’d be better to doublecharge a fresher fish, one that didn’t know any better, didn’t wear the faintest scar on his face to show he meant business and dealt business - a good use of the fading wound the mercenary idiot on Earth had tried to give him. And he could hear dozens of those fresh fish without moving.He drank from the can, grimacing at the acid-sweet taste of cargo-jumper hashwine, and watched Daisy creep around a knot of new arrivals, studying them, eavesdropping, and doing it without making a scene. She palmed fruit as she went by. Nothing edible. Just a common action for show.Over in the other direction, Ross was studying cargo crates and the brutes delivering them, stepping out of the way and looking like nothing of interest. He wondered what Ross thought he would get there, but the human didn’t look frightened. Ross seemed to be noting what came through this part of the port. The daily shipments of weapons, food, drugs, and the rare bit of luxury. Perhaps if they could at least get wind of where in the Ends their guys and their cut-rate battleship were, it would be a start. Crews might gossip. Loki suspected they’d both taken his general idea of reconnaissance close to heart. Almost touching, that much faith.“What’re ya buying?” The question rattled into Loki’s ear, hostile and curious both. There was a blatant challenge in it, in the sudden raised aura of tension in the air behind him. If he was a competitor, they were going to try to throw him down into the crowd, shame him out immediately to others if it worked. If he wasn’t a competitor, that might snare him a chance at a useful conversation.“Expendable tools.” Loki didn’t budge from where he leaned against the already haphazard railing, the word as coldly spoken as the hint demanded.Harsh, cawing laughter spat into his ear. “Good place for it. Good fucking place.” A hearty hand clapped onto his shoulder and the tension eased off.He could have cut that hand off, if he thought it necessary. Almost did. Still, he didn’t move. He’d already chosen a persona to show off up here, and it didn’t have to be a charming one. It matched his false face, bladed and unpleasant. “Get your hand off of me,” he said instead, making sure the sneer on his face could be heard. He turned his face, slightly, to make sure the other man could see murder in his eyes. A Quist. Tall, built like one of their laborers. Very humanlike, one of many reasons no one would look too closely at the two humans in the crowd. Loki’s jaw set. This one was probably not one of that race’s powerful telepaths, then. They all stayed in the arcane castes, fated for better lives than what was struggled for at this port, but still possible. His mind was closed by magic as a rule, because he knew his own weaknesses. Now he made certain he felt nothing attempt to lick at its shielding.The hand slipped away as the Quist studied him. He hadn’t taken offense, it seemed. In this crowd, offense had to be earned by more than a crass word or two. “All business, then?”“Always.” He turned away from the Quist and resumed watching the crowd. He caught Daisy glancing his way, having witnessed the movement. She didn’t watch him long, she was smart enough to know he was in his element, that the mask was only that. He was in no danger among these people.No, he’d been here before and knew the music around him. Maybe not this exact gangway, this particular rotted port with its unsavory hidden society. But he’d been here. He could feel the lines of his face drawing tight. Bad years, those were. In the shadow of a warlord and his shattered children. But still useful enough to him, in their bitter old way. “Are you selling?”Something in the way he’d asked, that intentional, slithering undertone, had hit its mark. The Quist sounded quieter now, his boisterousness vanished. Business in his voice, too. “Not that, no. I run hard goods.” Yet another weapons man, or stolen steel. It was almost like being trapped. Loki knew he no longer cared for this sort of life, and even playing the game with it had become tiresome. And yet there was so much of it in the universe, all of it hard to change.“Then go away.” Another half-turn, making it less of a slap and opening next with the invitation, hiding his very real dislike. “Or sell me information on what I need.”A glint, a crease along the angular, whitish face. Not a particularly tall Quist, only about Loki’s own height, if maybe having another inch or so on him. Another tell, another reason why the man had a life among the throwaways here. No innate magic, brute, and short. He could be a thrall in a satellite community, or he could be free among the stars. So long as he claimed no home and no Queen. So an offer to buy anything was not something a man like this could easily toss away. “I might know a thing or three.”“Package deals only. I’m not going to stand around and barter for all.” Loki nursed the canned wine, scowling. It made for a good effect on his visitor, but ye gods and burned-out stars, it was a bad drink. “Tell me what you know, and I’ll pay well for it.”The Quist hesitated, then rattled off a number. “Pay that first. Then I’ll talk.” That got him another look from Loki, a speculative one. “Nothing for free in the Ends. Nothing but a bad death.” He inclined his head. “And that preferably someone else.”“Fair,” said Loki, and with a rustle at his pocket, he transferred the credits. The answering chime from the Quint’s jacket came a second later, and then the Quint began to talk.. . .Daisy watched the illusion melt from Loki’s face. Normally he would have left it on, but instead he rubbed at his cheek with his palm, as if his flesh irritated him. She knew it wasn’t the itch that came with illusions. Whatever was bugging him, it wasn’t skin deep. She looked around them, wrinkling her nose at what passed for a ruined little alley, a gutted out passage with exposed oily conduits and the faint scent of mummified garbage. “You okay?”Loki shrugged. “I lose my taste and my patience for these sorts today,” he said, sounding grudging at his own perceived flaws. “They tire me. Small and weak and looking to gain power over something even smaller than themselves.”She cocked her head, looking him over. He was fine, obviously, but he indeed still looked worn from the shipwreck. She knew what he could be like when overloaded past his usual limits. Tired, snappish, and not in a mood to play his usual games. It would probably last a while. She teased at him instead, it usually, paradoxically, helped. “I think we’re a bad influence on you. Got you too used to places that aren’t scummy all the time. With toilets that work. I never thought I’d find a place with a public bathroom worse than the one at the Newark airport.” She pondered going for full tackiness, but only for a second. “I also have questions about some of the nozzles and stuff in there, but I’m pretty sure I can guess. Washed my hands, though.”He snorted, and a glint of his wryness came back. “I’ll trust you not to lie about that, but forgive me if I don’t want you serving food for a while. Anyway. Ends is a good place for mercenaries although even here the blatantly expendable kinds are somewhat frowned upon. I found that curious, but a nice surprise. They operate quietly, when these meat grinders do, and they work in ring sectors that are, by requirement, difficult to easily recognize for their more illicit work. I have some access to their networking now. I can likely arrange some interviews, get access those ways.”Daisy nodded. “I got a name,” she said. Then she grinned at his surprise. “Okay, I’ve got like three names, but only one might be connected to the Shi’ar so I’m focusing on that one first. I’ll skim info on the other two as I come across it, just in case. But my gut says I’m right. He’s got a surface operation. Legitimate crew. But if you need a dirty job, he’s got lots of the other kind, too. The meat boys. Supposedly. If it overlaps with what you have, then I think it’s our guy.”Loki leaned his shoulder against a jutting piece of old and plasticky conduit, genuinely and visibly impressed. “And how did you get all that?”“Same way you do, but with the bonus of looking like some homeless chick buying cheap food. Noticed probably even less, which kinda pisses me off but hey we’ll work with it. So. I eavesdropped on a couple big dudes moving stuff out of a new arrival, then they yapped with some more guys, so I listened to them, until I got to the guys that tried to whisper their gossip.” She grinned. “Also I borrowed a deck off Tam so I could start splicing in on some of the worse intercom networks here. These are pretty easy security systems to figure out. Guess that happens when it’s a bunch of hashed together stuff. The easy crap is more reliable for everyone to work with.”Loki licked his lips and stared at the low ceiling of their alley. “When you say ‘borrowed,’ Daisy-““I mean actually borrowed.” She pulled it out of her coat to show him. It was a compact black case that showed the scratches and dings of hard use. “I guess blockade runners gotta know a bunch of sideshow intel tricks, too.”“That they do.” Loki shook his head, now pretending to be not impressed, because that was the sort of thing he did. “When lane work grows lean, they often sell information to keep fuel in the ships. What name did you get?”“Sovel, some longtime pirate guy. I don’t think he’s welcome back home. Runs a scavenger operation, the Redhands. Heard of them?”Loki shook his head. “I have not.”“He stays quiet, so I’m not certain yet that he lives in a battleship. But he’s been around, he runs a steady business, and he’s got enough reputation that if he’s got an underground op that’s about as well liked as like you describe, he gets away with it. A total hardass, way I heard it.” She looked past him. “There’s Ross.”Ross ambled his way into the alley, looking annoyed. It was hard to tell if it was specific annoyance, or if he liked ambling with his hands in his jacket pockets and didn’t have anything like that in the borrowed clothes. “I got shoved around a lot. Only managed one useful thing, but it’s pretty useful, at least. You two get anything?”“Daisy has a name. I have my debonair charm and constant hostility. And credits. It’ll get me into buyer’s groups.” Loki shoved over and leaned somewhere else, effectively bringing Ross into the group. Daisy rolled her eyes and grinned at his theatrical delivery. “What usefulness did you manage?”“Turns out everybody likes a pilot here. Even a bad pilot, or a new pilot. I picked up enough good sounding words on that runner to bullshit my way through a bunch of conversations. Almost every ship here is looking for someone at least vaguely competent, and they’ll talk to you for hours if you know your port from your starboard. I got no useful stuff by way of intel, but I can get anywhere in this place.” Ross grimaced instead of smiling, trying to not look like he was slightly proud of himself.“Excellent.” It sounded genuine.The comm in Loki’s pocket crackled to life. “Not to be a nosy bitch, but your battleship’s parked in the 9th sector.”Loki looked down at his pocket, and then at the two humans, his eyes narrowing in hot and genuine annoyance. “You’re eavesdropping.”“I’m bored, your highnessnessy. I already scared off a scouting skid crew and it’s been dead silent since, I think I overdid it. Sovel, right? I ran the name.”“Yeah,” said Daisy, trying not to laugh. Loki looked like he was fighting with the small comm device.“Hardass is right. I might’ve said a few worse things, personally, but then that’s me. I’m impolite sometimes. Also might’ve chosen ‘eccentric,’ which is a hell of a thing to say about Shi’ar, who are already so uptight and twitchy that call’n ‘em eccentric is probably a good way to get an ass kicked. Anyway, yeah, he’s pretty much the boss of his little slice of ring when he’s in dock, what I hear. And he is. Recently. I’m backing out, mate. Don’t piss yourself in rage, there.”“Don’t be spying on us, then.” Loki still sounded irritated.“I’m not spying, great and mighty prince. I’m helping. You’re welcome. Tam, out.”“Thank you!” Daisy hoped she got the blurt out before Loki started digging around the back of the device to turn it all the way off. He gave her a near-murderous look. “I like her.”It was his turn to roll his eyes, but he didn’t have a leg to stand on in a fight like that one. “No one around here has any taste.” The comm was shoved away again. “Very well. I suggest we go take a look at this hostile little kingdom.”“Good suggestion. Let’s go do that.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Loki broke off from the humans after their first look at Redhand territory, muttering something about potentially drawing too much attention until he was ready to make a move. It was another mood shift from him, but easily figured out. He was getting tired of the usual scum, and probably had another idea on making a useful play while they worked on the intelligence phase of their loose plan. Daisy couldn’t get answers out of him beyond that, except to say he would still be in contact, close by. He was good for that, too. He’d shoved the comm link into her hand, saying he’d cut himself into it through some device of his own. Spaceship partyline phones. Everything old was new again.This sector of the port was old, the air systems gone dry and acrid with a whole sub-ring area for people that didn’t breathe oxygen. Less human figures slipped through the shadows around here, and mercenaries that didn’t give the two humans a second glance. If you found your way here here, said their looks, you knew your business. Stay out of someone else’s and you’d be safe enough. Nobody cared about them.Daisy used that anonymity to her advantage, slipping into the narrow channels where the bigger fighters couldn’t go. She replaced her space hobo costume with one that she’d stolen out of a cargo container pointed out to her by Ross. It didn’t fit well, but it made her look like an ordinary, disheveled tech junkie, which was perfect. She kept her hair in her face and cut into the wires, trying to work her way through their jury-rigged comm systems so she could keep an ear out on Ross’s behalf later, who was now scouting deeper into the ring where people fought each other for work. They’d lose eyes on him eventually, but for right now he was safe enough, getting his face known.“Daisy.” Loki’s voice came in over the hacked comm in her pocket, soft. “Ross almost has his path in. I’m going to lose eyes on him soon. Are you into the systems here?”“One second. I’m almost into the local comms grid, at least.” She frowned, looking at the tangled wires. “I am, right?”“Looks like it to me. I’m getting static on the tuner. That’s a good thing.” Tam sounded like she was laying down, eating chips out of a bag. For all Daisy knew, she was. Space chips, from space potatoes. She realized she was getting kind of loopy about all this, and shook her head to try to get serious. “Your next wire bundle, don’t cut it. Loop the metal transceiver band around the whole thing and press it in tight. It’ll jimmy the whole bundle into a cohesive signal set.”Daisy did, and listened to the faint crackle turn into raw, chaotic noise spilling into her ears. She tore the device out of her ear and reared back from the wall. “Dammit!”“Well, that worked better’n I guessed.” Tam’s voice had a wince in it, too. “Hang on, I can get a channel split in there.”“Thanks. You’re being really helpful. I appreciate it.”“Boredom is my weakness. Helps that I don’t like this place much and you’re there to give ‘em a bad day.” The chaos settled down. “Okay, now I’ve got you sorted. Should pull back to the bay and help me give it a stress test before we get into the vids. You know you’re not the only people to cut into the feeds here, right?”“I… didn’t even think of that.” Daisy frowned at the wall. “Really?”“Kid, if this hadn’t worked, I know three other ways into the channels. All you had to do was ask.” Tam yawned into the line. “Everybody listens to everybody in a place like this. But this area’s a mite more secure, so you’ll be doing the next guy with a grudge a favor.”Daisy shook her head. “Loki, how come I don’t get to go to the nice parts of the galaxy?”“You’ve been to Asgard.”“Yeah, point. It’s been a while, though.” Daisy picked up the slab of thin metal that had been hiding the comm wires, looking to see that she was going to slot it back in correctly. “And you keep trying to tell me it’s not that great.”Tam started laughing into the line. She backed out before Loki could say anything sarcastic at her.. . .There was no peppy alien cantina band. Ross tried to not feel disappointed about that, especially since that scene went pretty downhill from there. To be fair, his own random version of a Wookie was basically a bunch of crazy puffballs in a trench coat, and that was almost as good. Instead, the local flavor filled the air of the open aired bar with grunts, shouts, profanity, a cornucopia of questionable smells, and remarkably loud conversation, as countless bodies thronged through the area, squeezing past each other to refill their drinks.There were several bartenders, each a different species. Only two of them were ‘normally’ humanoid. In the center was what Loki informed him via a brief commlink interruption was an A’askavarian. Bipedal, light green, and where arms would be, each rippling bicep trailed into three flexible, paddle-ended tentacles. He was the one in charge, and he was capable of deftly wrangling multiple drinks a minute. The beret-style hat adorned with a couple jinglies and balanced jauntily on his scaled head was doing nothing for Ross’s existential whiplash.He knew he looked exactly like what he wanted - exploitable fresh meat. He tried to get over saying ‘excuse me’ every couple of seconds and instead allowed himself to get grumpy. He wouldn’t win a fistfight in here, but a good sour look got him some short streaks of not getting his feet stepped on. It was something, and he wended his own way towards the bar with borrowed credits in hand. Another device palmed to him from Loki, with a shell account arranged and spliced out from his own. Plus some advice on what Ross could actually drink out here.He made it close enough to get a hand placed onto the filthy recycled steel surface of the bar itself, a signal he wanted to be served. Someone else shoved into the space next to him with a hard grunt and an elbow waving in his face. Hot irritation sparking to life, Ross didn’t move his hand and shoved his own knee, roughly, into what might have been the large, bulbous-headed creature’s hip.They looked down at him and spat something that probably wasn’t a compliment about his mother. The translator didn’t pick it up, but he got the gist. Ross stared back up, his hand still on the bar. “Was here first,” he said, glowering and not in an act. There came a point where he always remembered that he had a mild temper problem. He tried to make it useful when it came up. This was apparently going to be that point.Another spit, this time with some actual spit included. Ross leaned forward, hand still on the bar. “Go screw,” he snapped, ferociously unimpressed with his fellow bar companion.The creature reared back, recognizable horror spreading across his reddish face. Clearly he didn’t usually get talked back to like that. One arm raised, meaty and muscled like ivy ropes.“He was there first. Just cause he’s small, you don’t get to frig around with him. You know the bar rules.” A voice called over from behind Ross. “Besides, you know you can’t drink the shit on this end. Go down four keepers.”Ross glanced over his shoulder at the man. A light tinge of blue skin stretched across a bald, humanoid head, and metal implants along his face that looked to him more like the war paint of a Celt. “Thanks,” he said, not making more out of it than he should. Then he turned towards the A’skavarian and gestured towards the tall black bottle with a name he recognized from Loki. “Shot of the Racassone.”One tentacle slipped by him with a credit reader. He flashed his palm across it, like he did this all the time. A second later, he had his drink. It looked like motor oil, down to the rainbow shimmer across the surface. He looked at it, wondering what the hell he’d just gotten himself into.“Heavy drink.” His backup got something clear in a mug, dropping both his elbows onto the bar as if claiming expansive territory for an extra, illicit second.Ross shrugged, still in character. “Had a rough ride in, little extra money from my last job. Never know when the next one is, especially right now, so hell, treat yourself while you’re alive.”The man snorted. “Good philosophy.” He slid his mug over to clink it against Ross’s glass. “I’ll drink to it.”Having already committed to his performance, Ross braced himself and downed his shot like a champ while the other man chugged his. He didn’t know what he expected, maybe something to hit him like a train or taste like it was brewed in a boot. Instead it was one of the smoothest, thickest drinks he’d ever had. Black honey and something almost fruity filled his mouth, and he felt every muscle in his mouth all the way down to his belly reflexively relax. For a moment he wanted to know how much a whole bottle cost so he could take it home. But that wouldn’t fit the scene, so he settled for gently tapping the empty shot onto the bar and backing away so someone else could take their turn.Not entirely to his surprise, the other man followed him. “Said you’re in between.”“Yeah,” said Ross. Not rude, just non-committal. “You?”“Same.” The man sighed. “My last gig ended rough, they put it on me, now my reputation is ass and, well, I’m here. Been here a few days already.”Ross flicked a glance at him. “What kinda gig?”“Just a lookout. I’ve got upgraded perceptors installed, plus a technopath package.” The man tapped the side of his face, just below the temples. Ross blinked, watching the man’s irises spin and refocus. “Not a lot of us cyberskilled Kree out there, but my mum didn’t like me being born blind, so…” He trailed off, the silence holding a lot of personal meaning. “Anyway, fuck the fanatics.”Ross didn’t know much about the Kree except as another alien word that came up more than the others, but he got the sentiment. “If I still had my glass, I’d hoist to that, too.” He sighed. Troubles the same everywhere, just like home.“Anyway, I’ve got good coverage, but I can’t see through a fuckin’ warship parked on the job site, y’know? I’m not that kind of psychic.” The man looked around, awkward and genuine, covering himself with a laugh. Ross realized he kind of liked this fellow loser already. This was another guy that absolutely did not belong in a place like the Ends. No wonder he’d warmed up to Ross equally fast. “I’m Jat.”“Ross.” No, there was no point in fancying up a fake name. Loki had said it was fine.Jat looked him over. “Not to pry. Xandarian? I’d almost think you’re one of mine, but with all respect, you’re a bit short.”“Someone in the family might be. I just got everyone’s generic look.” Nobody questioned a mutt much. “I’m a pilot. Not a fancy pilot, but decent.”Jat laughed. New and naive, but not stupid. “I’m sticking by you. Maybe some of that luck’ll rub off. You’ll be loose for maybe a day before a crew picks you up here.”“Maybe.” Ross looked around, emphasizing his own lost place. “I got shot out of my jumper, so, that’s not great on my record, either. Wasn’t my fault. Just like you. Have a good op, but sometimes something still goes upside down. Gonna have to fix my own rep because of it. And I’m better at low atmosphere flying, so…” He trailed off with a shrug. Great way to tell the truth. “Here I am at a spaceport. They’ll test me backing out. I hate backing out.”Jat laughed again, harder. “Yeah, but these outfits are always looking for someone that can run a strafer. You’ll be fine if you don’t rip off a whole engine during the test.”Ross cocked his head. “But what if I don’t like them and I do it on purpose?”“The next crew’ll probably give you a raise for screwing the competition!” Jat clapped his hands together, delighted. “Gods, you’re funny. Most everyone else here is a rat in a leather coat.”“Well, look where we’re stuck. Ass end of Shitsville.” Ross grimaced. “Probably no money in a comedy routine. Can’t even get a decent band here.”“I know, right?” Jat sobered. “Listen, I got a line on a couple of jobs, but like I say, I’m not going to be any crew’s first pick. I haven’t gotten to their dealers yet. They’ll think I’m the most expendable, least valuable. But a package deal with a pilot…” He stopped himself. “I know that sounds like I’m already trying to parasite off you. Maybe it’s even a little true. But.” He looked upset with himself. “I’ve got reasons to try.”Ross had a weakness for lost puppies. “Yeah, but two losers might get at least as much of a paycheck as one decent crewie. It’s a start. Gets us out of the hole.” He grinned and clapped Jat on his upper arm. “Then maybe we both get a shot of Racassone at a better port after.”. . .Loki stared at his eavesdropping comm device from where he was hunkered, high in the almost airless skeletal rafters overseeing a massive, somewhat decaying Shi’ar battleship. His expression was one of raw and open astonishment, and he spoke only to himself, the words not carrying far in the thin air. “How in hells is he already that good at this?”He shook his head and resumed watching the ship, tracking its departures and new arrivals, mostly off the grid otherwise and realizing the humans were handling this, so far, perfectly fine.It was comforting, oddly, knowing he had no reason to hover. It let him do stupid but useful things, like crawl around in exposed space with that woman, Tam, occasionally hacking into the line to tell him he was going to glow from all the radiation he was taking in. He supposed he understood her annoyance. Not that it mattered. Solar radiation had about the same long-term effect on his jotun health and his surroundings as a set of deeply questionable but tasty street tacos, which is to say none at all.He picked his way closer, careful along the ruined metal, wanting to get an eye on the pirate captain himself and whichever local heavies he did personal business with. He had a suspicion Sovel was too smart to leave the safety of his kingdom without good cause, but he might at least come out to the bay for business. If he could get a fix on that, he could begin working on what would draw the man out for confrontation. And if he couldn’t, Daisy was listening in.If one couldn’t personally destroy a battleship, one killed the brain running it. Simple enough, he knew. This matter would resolve, one way or another.. . .Ross kept an eye on Jat as he negotiated with a few random groups, mostly looking disappointed. He kept his own eye on one in particular - the group wearing Redhand flash, the splash of ruby paint in a three-pronged bird claw. Now that they knew what they were looking for, it was easy enough to spot the scavenger team in a crowd.He could sense the comm link go live in his ear. Nobody was going to put him at risk by talking to him, as for right now his job was to sit there and look competent while Jat did the gladhanding. He kept his voice low, not moving his lips much so he didn’t look like he was talking to himself. “Anything I should know about the Shi’ar? There’s a couple more of them in the Redhand crew. Might be this Sovel has a preference towards his own for regular teams, though it looks like he wouldn’t care about throwaways.”Loki’s voice sounded tinny, like he wasn’t getting much air to carry sound where he was. “Not worth a major brief, but I suppose they’re interestingly different. Different world, different gravity, different evolutionary line-““Yeah, you guys are, what, descended from some little mammal, right?” Tam cut in. “Uh, I don’t recall. Mice?”“Monkeys.” Ross snorted.“Right, those.” A noise of distaste came across the line. “I hate those creepy little things, no offense. It’s the teeth. Anyway, Shi’ar are avian descendant. Bird people.”Ross hid his look, catching a few of the recruiters glancing his way. “No shit?”“She’s correct.” However Loki managed it, the dour, irritable tone came through just fine. “Their hair is actually made up of microfeathers, and their musculature is different to compensate for a hollow bone structure. Their society is also complicated. They disregard most of what we consider culture, preferring other forms of personal expression. Art as you define it is considered a disgusting heresy there. Further, they genetically bred out any ability to dream in an era long before I was born, mostly successfully. And their dominant religion has certain cultish factions in parts of its region of space that are troubling. These things are apparently connected.”“Yeah?”Loki sounded bored. “Supposedly at some point their worlds were overtaken by dreams of a supernatural figure wreathed in fire. Their religion had a schism over it as supposed prophets began to overtake the social conversation, and their society almost shattered entirely. Creative expression was bled out of their lives, the dreamers were repressed. Now their remaining phoenix-addled fanatics keep to themselves, studying the history, looking for signs. If they dream, and they’re wise, they’ll lie about it. I have no opinions on their faith otherwise.”“Any reason some of them go off and become space pirates?”“Usual nonsense. Money. Boredom. Stupidity. Fell out with the family.” A thoughtful hum. “Suppose they are moderately humanlike, actually.”“Oh, hey, thanks.” Ross found a reason to look behind him so he could roll his eyes. “Any advice?”“Don’t push your new companion too hard towards your target. It sounds to me like that’s where you’ll end up easily enough. It’s regrettable, but a scavenger crew like them would look at him as the perfect double-use skid. Expendable on a team, and salvageable for uniquely valuable parts. And you for a potentially useful bonus. Wager if your new little team gets another bid, they’ll raise it. Your friend will have no choice but to go for the bait, even if he suspects the darker motive.”“Jesus.” He couldn’t keep the distaste out of his voice. “That’s cynical.”“That’s right, unfortunately, lad.” Tam cutting back in. “Seen it before, and I’m sorry to see it again.” . . .Daisy sat on her butt in the bay connecting to Tam’s runner, using the borrowed tech deck to scan the comms feeding through the worker bay Ross and his new pal were in. Lots of noise, lots of untranslatable garble. Tam was nearby, leaning on a piece of spare rigging used for patch-up jobs. Sometimes a hand with a crinkly bag full of something vaguely like wasabi peas waved towards her, and she’d dip her own hand in to snack. She kept scrolling, trying to pick up something useful.“Keep on the sub-150 channels. Those usually go port to ship.”Daisy nodded, still listening in with the jack still resting in her left ear. “Got some dude bitching about his takeout order. Like, how boring.”“All mortal lives the same.”“I mean, in his defense, his argument is that the wormsoup was mostly dead when it got to him and they don’t squiggle along his krill-feeders right unless they’re fresh and alive, which is novel, but still.”“No feeders on earth?”“Well we’ve got whales, but that’s not quite the same thing.” She pondered. “Unless this dude I’m listening in on is a space whale yelling at the Uber Eats guy from his tank.” She looked up at Tam. “Is that what I’m listening to?”Tam shrugged, obviously not having trouble parsing her lingo. “Yeah, probably.”“All right, then.” Daisy blinked rapidly, taking that in. She had the machine on scan, but lunged at it to stop at a new voice entering the channels. “Ho- I got someone.” She popped it onto speaker and took the jack out of her ear.“Cyberfilaments go for lots of credits, all we have to do is make sure we get the body back,” said a low, gravely voice. “Hire him. We won’t have to be the one stripping the corpse, not our problem. Take the pilot, too, we’re down one from the last useless waste of a job. Least we still got paid. I’ve got the right match for them both, if I can get the middleman to sign on. If not, well, there’s other stuff coming up, too.” The man on the line cleared his throat. “I’ve got a couple guys coming down to meet with me now. Pick up their licenses, get them acclimated. Get them in the mess we use, treat ‘em nice, okay?”Someone else made his yes boss noise, and cut out.“That sounds likely.” Daisy locked in on the channel and reached for another handful of space peas. “We’ll wait for the next time they talk. Loki, you still in?”“I am, Daisy.” He sounded somber. “This is quite the paranoid individual. I haven’t laid eyes on him yet, and I assure you, I’ve been doing my best to try.”“What’re you heading for next?”“Back to working the buyer’s market. I want to know who’s offering this ‘good match’ of a job, see what I can get in the middle of, start poking the bilgesnipe from there to turn a phrase. I’m cutting out for now. And don’t eat while you’re live, my gods, Daisy. It’s barbaric.”She chewed harder on the savory nugget. “Okay. Happy hunting.”Loki sighed heavily into his side of the comm link, knowing he’d lost this one. “Always.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Finding where the other buyers holed up was seldom a hard business even in rough territory. Perhaps especially. They kept a posse with them for security and for dramatic flair, and flashed a little more in the way of personal expense to get sellers to bid for their attention. Loki didn’t bother with any pretense at the former, although he left his turned-off comm link pinned and visible at his shoulder to show that he did, in fact, have ‘people’ at his beck and call. Walking freely otherwise through the corridors would mean more to the ones that mattered to him - he was a heavy hitter in his own right, and feared nothing. To the latter, another alteration to his appearance was called for.His hair was now sleek and neatly layered back into a mane, his casually anonymous blacks traded in for a little more sturdy leather in lighter browns and a glint of fine but practical metal underneath. Not Asgardian style, never here, but he looked classy and costly enough. And the face was one he borrowed from others, a harder, stranger illusion that gave him features more like an actual fox-cat hybrid, tabby’d with light streaks of black cutting through the short white fur until it blended with the jet mane. To all eyes, he was now a Calurnian, of which he’d met a few in his time and could pass well enough in the short term.Gods willing, Loki would not have to discuss with the others why he now planned to take this extra step for most of their time in the Ends. It was a minor issue, and not one worth making a fuss about. Still, it had been an unpleasant surprise to find mercenaries he vaguely recognized among the throng in the Redhand sector of the ring. His stomach had lazily flip-flopped at the realization, an instinctive reaction to old and pointless stress, an annoyance he could have lived without. Further annoyance, he should have expected it and been prepared for it. It made sense. It certainly wasn’t why he’d reordered his plans and slipped off. The humans were fine, they didn’t need him henning about. This methodology simply became more efficient, of course. And safer for all concerned, his primary duty here.When Thanos ravaged his way across their galaxies, thousands of such mercenaries had sworn fealty to him for a chance at a little money, a way to thrive in his devouring shadow. Many of these Loki had known, seen in the halls of Sanctuary at their work while his own memories lay in disarray, himself bound in the warlord’s service. And for those not brave enough to be under Thanos’s eye, even more floated silent in his wake. Small fish waiting for the shark to pass by so they could feed on what was left. Opportunists. Salvagers. Desperate men. And when Thanos fell, all of that would have fallen apart. Some would have been stuck near Earth, with no future, no money, no scrap to collect. And so they straggled their way to places like this one.A predictable outcome. He had no sympathy for them. And yet his instincts had screamed high alert at the first sight of a man he recognized, emotions still taut from those darker times. So, very well. A tactical readjustment, for the sake of mission security. It had nothing to do with his experiences at the hands of the warlord, not really. Meanwhile, he had faith that Daisy’s deduction was the right one, making this worry of his a diversion to be ignored. Someone had paid for expendables to toy with Earth. That someone would in all likelihood not be here, if they had even arranged this in person or through a middleman - but Sovel, who would have taken the credits, was. Loki would be perfectly happy to remove him, to send the message onward.Painfully, if necessary. And for certain wounds, pain began in the pocketbook.His muzzle creaked wide in a sly smile as he slipped past a few uninteresting knots of dealers and buyers, looking for a man his new Quist contact suggested liked collecting high-tech valuables. Preferably off a living donor. It was a rare hobby, particularly around these parts. There wouldn’t be many like that, if even one. And that one would certainly already have been assured of a potential sale by the Redhand crew.There he was. Even without the purchased information, he would have riddled this one out. Dexam was his name. A fetishist who had already replaced more than half of his body with cybernetic enhancements. He liked to show them off, gleaming steel wrapped across his body in a mockery of musculature, an arm made of black power wire and detailed damascene metal resting on the table in front of him like a trophy. The rest of him was another pinkish humanoid, generic, hairless, draped in a plain tunic. He sat like a stone at a private booth. Loki was already unimpressed, seeing a bland intelligence in the one brown-irised eye. Microchips couldn’t install a personality. He kept his opinion off his face and slid into the booth across, ignoring the tears in its fabric seat.“Hey,” said Dexam, even his initial utterance sounding dull in Loki’s ears. He was startled out of some pointless reverie. Two brutes turned around at the sound of his voice, drinks in their organic hands.Loki fixed the cyberfreak with a look, his voice rolling deep in his throat like a cat. “Sovel going to play you, merr Dexam. Pay me, I do you a favor worth the money. Save you credit in the long term.”One organic eye narrowed. The other, its lens turned a cold robotic red. “You don’t know what I’m looking for.”Loki looked him up and down, green eyes momentarily retreating behind the unearthly veil of an iridescent third eyelid. A mystic appearance, and one that among Calurnians could be intended as sarcastic, too. “It is not exactly hard to guess, merr. Not many here looking for your brand of collectible. I heard on the wire what he is trying to sell, and I know what you should know.”Dexam studied him, that red eye locusing in and out. Loki didn’t move and didn’t break his gaze, a common game of chicken. The two muscle came within arm’s reach, and still he didn’t move. Dexam took the hint, put up a hand to stop his visitor from being bodily picked up and thrown away from their boss - a move which would have eventually ended poorly for the pair. Not right away, not for the sake of his cover. But it would be paid back in full, and then some.A ripple ran along the illusive muzzle, a fang flashed. “For your courtesy, a cheap offer.” He named his price, a small one. Essentially a token, leaving the door open for a real offer of business at another time. More cover. Dexam paid it with a tap of his cybernetic arm atop the table, and Loki leaned back and put his credit chit device away, acting satisfied. “Sovel charges high and puts low-cost into the effort. For what you pay, he does nothing with it worth your trust. Puts throwaways on the job, lets others make mess and he pockets the rest.”“That doesn’t matter to me.”“It does when those jobs fail.” The muzzle rippled in a sneer. “Do you know he could not even bother getting a job right on Earth?” He barked a dour laugh at the organic eye widening at him. “Lost a part of his crew, failed the operation, still took the money. Little children world, and he cannot get a small job right. I hear things, I tell things. No time in my business for men like that.”“Go on.”“What else to tell, merr? So he has something you want.” Another sneer as he stretched and turned his neck like a predator gently shaking blood from its mane. “Take it if you must, I care none. But his reputation built on feathers and lies, it goes on too long. If he will not do one part of his job true, why would you trust his salvage? Reputation matters. He does not care about his, or he would not cheat a buyer so.”Dexam leaned back, pursed lips thinning into a frown. He was smart enough to know no one went out of their way without a cause. “What do you get out of this, foxface?”“One less bit of scum clogging my bids.” A small, hyena chortle as Loki ignored the pointless insult. “All I want. All I need. If I must have competition, let it not be some vermin. It is unnatural, letting prey get your better.” He bobbed his head, watching Dexam’s face relax. “I take enough of your time. Decision is your own. But I think you can spend money better elsewhere. Good bid, good information, yes?”“You’ve given me something to think about.” Dexam leaned forward, hostility turning into consideration. “I’ll be looking into this myself.”“Good.” Loki nodded, pleased and genuinely so. The truth could be as useful as a lie, if presented correctly. “Good.”. . .Loki listened in as Daisy tracked who Dexam spoke to, getting another web of contacts he could push on. The credit exchange had been doubly useful, giving them a way to track his unique communication signature, since it was intertwined with the rest of his ident data. Every convenience had a drawback that could be exploited. From there, Loki’s work was easy. He wore new faces, sometimes twice an hour, and spent a lazily enjoyable third shift pushing on the connections that knew the proof of Sovel’s previous mistake, finding new ones he could exploit - further examples of ‘meat boys’ left behind, former crewmates accidentally telling more of the truth than they might’ve previous, a scavenge job half-done when Sovel bugged out when it might’ve put his personal crew at risk instead of the feeders - and, in a lucky moment, finding a creditor in a somewhat more respectable sector who was tired of floating Sovel advance money previous to his larger gigs. His account was locked in an eternal cycle of payoffs and advancements.Daisy referred to it as ‘I will pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today’ accounting. Without understanding the reference, Loki found the implication to be perfectly on point. Sovel was on the edge of horrifically bad credit. Luck, personality, and a steady flow of work had kept him afloat. Loki was taking that luck away. The rest would naturally collapse in short order.The cracks were already visible to the naked eye. The pressure had begun to rise. Without any further input from Loki, the word was spreading fast across the Ends: Sovel’s Redhands weren’t a reliable business. He operated a ghostshow, an illusion, a scam, hiding himself from retribution within the depths of his probably illicitly acquired battleship. Angry conversations were bubbling up from ship to port all around the ring, amplified by the knowledge of how long he’d been among them. How long he’d pretended to be better.And it was all true. Delightful! Rare! And it was all the sort of hands-off mayhem Loki didn’t get to be a part of as often anymore. He almost missed it. Almost.All right, perhaps a little.It was unfortunate that Loki wouldn’t get a front row seat to watch the fun part. He’d had the foresight to warn Ross that it might get hot shortly. To the human’s credit, he seemed unconcerned by this possibility. A charming attitude, decided Loki, but if need be, the team would come to assist him as promptly as necessary.. . .Ross wasn’t a master at keeping his head down in undercover situations, but he felt he did more than alright in a pinch. He kept his face towards the drink between his hands, studying the mesh-topped table that was at least marginally cleaner than the public halls. This was one of the Redhand’s private messes, a section of ring with a direct if rugged path to the battleship, and it was clear it was intended to impress new hires. There was even a clean, secured set of tint-windows that let them look out towards the blazing dwarf star. It made some of the cocky youths feel like they could be masters one day, even in dangerous, untamable space.The view gave him the wibblies.Ross saw the handful of longtimers keeping to themselves near the secured doors towards the heart of their little kingdom, the ‘real’ crew in service to their captain. Saw their faces, the dismissal and the uncaring blandness. Yeah. More lies. They saw the ‘meat boys’ as exactly that, and Ross made sure they didn’t see him staring.Jat kept craning his head around, seeing mercenaries that were cleaner and better dressed than most, trying not to gawk and mostly failing. The perfect new recruit, so eager to please it was going to trip him up. Ross hadn’t realized how young the guy was at first, not knowing anything about his people. Young, and definitely not as closely tied to his homeworld as he could have been.He’d watched, and Jat missed, one other merc pass them in the hall on their way towards here. A large warrior in black overlapping scale armor. His skin was a deep lapis blue, and Ross watched his eyes flicker towards the young cyborg, painted black lips beginning to curl into a look of real and hateful disgust. Ross didn’t feel the need to ask anyone what he’d seen. Another Kree. One with more familiar opinions. Like the young man’s tone had implied.Jat had been too busy to notice, talking to him happily about their new crew, about how eager they’d been to sign them both. Talking about that future drink of Racassone. It had hurt a little. Seeing that much hate on one face, and so much hope on this one. The kid had found a new friend and a new job in the space of hours, and he was clinging to it with an earnest light on his face.Ross hated this part of being undercover, the undertone of betrayal. Sometimes you were forgiven for it. Usually not. He was almost grateful when the shouts started at the entryway, not far from where they sat. The newest meat stayed close to the exit, the metaphorical bottom rung of the ladder.Someone barged their way past the two guards, themselves half-asleep. No one dared screw around in here, so they’d gotten soft over time. They reached for the bulky figure’s layered biceps, the broad red face - another Badoon? - bellowing incoherently at first. He punched one of the guards, then seemed to regather his voice. “I want Sovel!”The second guard tried to barrel into him. No sell. Now some of the other new hires were scrambling up from their seats and backing up, eyes huge.“Sovel, now! He doesn’t get away with this!”“Gorthan,” said one of the regular crew. He got up, spindly green hands up and out, conciliatory. “Gorthan, man, we’re good business-““Fuck you are! I want accounting! I want my money!” He swung at the longtimer, not pulling the shot. The crewman ducked and grasped at the arm with surprising strength, the fingers curling and biting down into the arm. Ross saw liquid seep from the fingers, some sort of chemical defense. The man, Gorthan, began to howl and jerked away, still swinging. “Sovel is a cheat! You’re all cheats! I hear it on the feeds! Can’t even get a nobody job right!”The recruits started looking at each other nervously. One elbowed another, giving his table companion the universal glance of ‘what in the fresh hell?’ Next to him, Jat was breathing shakily. Not a combat guy. Ross was holding his drink, sipping occasionally as all this went down a few meters away from him, and he blinked when Jat hissed into his ear. “How are you so calm?”“Not my first brawl,” said Ross, which was, to be fair, an honest fact. “Think this guy’s got a real complaint?”Jat didn’t say anything.Gorthan took a shot high above an ear and staggered back, panting. He swept an accusing look through the entire mess. “Look at all of you. Look at you. Not worth an ounce of the scrap I paid to-“A flash of arcing white light interrupted his rant. Ross dropped his drink and armed Jat back and behind their table, narrowly missing getting juiced by the remains of Gorthan’s insides. He saw droplets spatter across the table instead, and falling to the floor. Gasps of horror rippled through the room.One of the regular crew stepped forward, his face hard. “Now. I know what you thought you heard. I don’t know what got up this man’s ass, why he acted the way he did. We’re going to find out. But the Redhands are an old, proud crew, and whatever’s going around is a pack of lies.”“What was he talking about?” A shout came from the back of the group. Someone with a lick of wisdom had latched onto the timing of the shot. The voice was tinny through the alien’s translator, the real voice underneath coming in wild insectoid chirps. “Why’d you shoot him? He was angry, sure, but y’all had him under control!”Uncertainty flickered across the Redhand’s face, fast but enough to get noticed. They usually didn’t get pushback. “Not your business. It’s protocol. All I need to say.”A different voice rattled out, shaky under the alien reverb. “Protocol to headshot a customer? All he did was get angry! Did he have a reason to be?”“He was out of control!” The Redhand snapped the words, looking around in defiance. A yellow-tinted flush ran up the thin scales on his face, not making him look much better, emotionally, than the recently-departed Gorthan. The effect was not lost on the new hires, some of whom began repeating similar questions loudly.Ross saw one of the other regular crewmen tap his way into a commlink, having a hurried conversation with somebody. The man nodded, tapped his link off again, and stepped forward to back up the shooter. “I’ve got direct word from the captain.”A near-groan came up from the crowd, already unimpressed. The crewman seemed to falter, but then buckled up and kept going. “We’re going to go into lockdown. Secure our halls, send out some people to ask questions. Find out what’s going on, who’s telling tales.”“But you’re gonna keep us here?” More shouts.The Redhand tried to harden up. It didn’t make much impact. “You’re crew now, same as the rest of us-““Not according to the dead guy!”“Why’d you shoot him?”“What in the seventeen small hells, mate!”Ross shook his head, impressed and also growing nervous at the tension building in the air. At a guess, whatever Loki set off had lit up like wildfire around the station, hitting a wave of waiting stress like compression snapping on a faultline. One angry man hit his upper limit, and a house of cards went scattering. The Redhands had never dealt with something like this, not to this extent. Not publicly.“I want to ask my own questions!”“Where’s the captain?”“Are we being used, man?”More questions shotgunned around the large hall. The two crewmembers began to look stressed. A third was now manning the comm lines, and he was looking increasingly desperate. Ross noticed the windows were rolling shut, noticed the guards were studying the now-sealed door to the main halls. The lockdown, whether anyone liked it or not, was already in place.“Ross?” Jat still sounded frightened.“Come on. I want to get us away from all the doors. It’s not going to get any quieter in here. Not soon. I just hope more shooting doesn’t happen.” He looked around. It was a large, oval hall, with not a lot in the way of strategic choke, much less defensible positions. He settled on a space relatively equidistant, behind a calmer but still angry-looking bunch of new hires. “Let’s sidle over here. Move calm, don’t draw attention, and try to stop looking so freaked out.”“I am freaked out. You aren’t?”“Jat, this looks bad. Nobody pops off like that without a good reason. And nobody pops a man in the head like that without something to hide.” He looked past the young Kree, making sure they weren’t getting looks. “You scan these guys in the system before you signed us on? Get their reputation?”“Yeah! They’ve been here for years, rolling scrap and odd jobs. No complaints.”“None?” Ross sounded disbelieving, because he was. He might have walked into this on purpose, but Jat? Naive was not the right word. This kid needed a handler.“None!” Jat almost stumbled at the tone in Ross’s voice. “Is that strange?”“Yes it’s strange!” He didn’t increase his grip or make any other gesture. The kid felt bad enough. They were almost to relative safety, the others still shouting at the two Redhands in the center of the room. He fumbled around for a way to put it that didn’t scream Earth. “If nobody’s complaining, that means someone’s covering up! You don’t get a 100% approval rating from a business on Asgard, kid!”Jat choked a breath, clearly and increasingly frightened. “Fuck. Fuck! No wonder I don’t get the right kind of work. I’m an idiot! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, I got you into this! Man, maybe we shouldn’t be in here.”“We’re kinda past that point. Doors are already locked.” He pushed Jat, gently, behind one of the tables before taking a seat himself. “So for now, we keep our heads together, stay low, let everyone else scream themselves hoarse. We just watch out for each other, okay?”Jat was staring into his face, earnest. Ross wanted to call his mother and maybe a social worker at this point. Unbelievable. “Do you think the captain will show up, try to settle this down? Think there’s any way this’ll be all right?”Ross watched the third Redhand, realizing from what he’d overheard on the link with the team earlier that this was exactly what Loki wanted. Enough chaos until it required drastic action. “Don’t know. Probably. If Sovel wants to keep control, he’s going to have to do something to prove he can.” He nodded, realizing the next step. “He’s gonna have to, honestly. Come down, make the big ‘we’re all in this together’ play. But when he does…”Jat was naive, but he could follow a logical thread. “I don’t think people are going to be that happy to see him right now.”The trap was fated to slam shut, one way or another. Ross looked somber. “No, Jat. I don’t think anybody is.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Loki was back in the ruins of the bay, just high enough above the gangways and airlocks to not be seen in the shadows. He was back in black, wearing his own face, and he knew where all his knives were. He meant Sovel to talk before this was over, which wasn’t the part that called for the knives. As shadowy as the man had been thus far, however, he expected him to finally emerge from the ship with a full security detail. For that, Loki might have to get active.He heard the soft chime of the ship’s bay opening before he saw it, there in a cubby that held more air than his previous roost. A scanner swept the area around the ship, a secure wave looking for organic threat or hostile weaponry. A corner of Loki’s mouth curled in a smirk. His guess had been right, and he was in a dead zone. The scan missed him by inches, and a few moments later, a tall Shi’ar man disembarked, four men around him in a standard defensive position. They didn’t bother to double-check the scan with their own eyes, they’d gotten too confident for that.He let them leave, silently dropping down a previously chosen path to keep a distant and well-shadowed pace behind them, letting them go about their business until their guard dropped even more. He could even hear them, if faintly. Nothing important, just angry mutters and curses from the guards about how their crew in the hall couldn’t keep the situation together. Wondering where this had all come from. Nothing too pertinent or useful.Until Sovel spoke up, his voice low and bitter. It had a flanging undertone to it, like a faint trill under the words. Old blood Shi’ar, then. One with a little bit more bird in his genes than some. Their kind usually stayed close to home, often hailed as historians or elites. It told Loki there was drama here, some old family story, some reason this one had gone outcast. He didn’t care. “I want to know who’s smoking us. I want to know who’s after what I’ve made here.”One of the guards grunted in generic assent.“Who the hell got the bank information? That’s not even relevant. I pay what I owe.” Now a snarl, rattling low in the alien throat. The usual self-serving lies. Loki had seen a few more illicitly obtained credit reports since that first push, all of them supporting his original information. Sovel had spent years favored with a good reputation by burying every detail of him actually being a cheat. Loki suspected he did have money, actually. Elsewhere, protected, and not even disclosed to these trusted lackeys. The skims he took from the expendables, results of soft accounting. A personal cushion. Everywhere else, he acted like he was poor, doing his best. No, he was merely cheap. “So much bullshit. Now I gotta clean it up. It’s not safe.” A hand came out to smack at the haphazard steel wall, making it rattle.Far behind, Loki’s smirk only grew.“And who leaked on the Earth job? I swear, I find out it was that little skid came back all nervous, I’ll choke him out myself.” One of the guard grunted. Loki’s smile was now manic. “Even worse. Better not have been the buyer, trying to play me. I hear things about them.”Loki’s entire being was focused on listening, trying to mentally cadge his target to say the name. Unfortunately, he was not much of an innate psychic and Sovel resumed his hostile muttering under his breath. Loki’s smile faded, but only a little. They were making progress, and at a rate that exceeded his usual expectations. Perhaps they would even be returning home by the end of the day.. . .Ross kept his hand on Jat’s arm when the door opened. His first impression of Captain Sovel was almost disappointing. He’d seen a few Shi’ar already and accepted they were human-looking enough, but he expected something more striking about this one.Sovel was unusually short for a Shi’ar, but he’d built enough wiry muscle around his light skeleton to give him some bulk, granting him some sense of presence. The face was narrow and angular with a wide brow, and it took a moment for Ross’s eyes to realize the crown of jet black ‘hair’ really was an almost triangular pompadour of long, tiny feathers, a bit like emu but finer. He didn’t wear the facial marks Ross had seen on the others, that ornate black paint curling under the eyes. He didn’t know if that meant anything important. Beyond that, he wore leather armor and pins declaring his status as a captain, and he stared angrily at each knot of confused new recruits.The rumbling quieted, if slightly, as the crowd assessed their new arrival. There were more of them than there were the loyalists, but presence mattered, and Sovel’s aura of irritation and threat gave him at least some temporary push against their fury. “I’m Captain Sovel. Now, I’m told confidence in my Redhands has been shaken by some outside force. I don’t know where where these rumors came from, but I personally assure each of you that I’m going to find out.”Ross watched his face. There was real fury there whenever he looked at the new recruits. The captain was taking this personally. Not just the accusations, but the near-mutiny spiking through the mess hall. Ross felt himself leaning back, recognizing the type. They were his. Not much better than property, a vicious mentality similar to those of cult leaders and almost sociopathic CEOs. Dangerous men who only showed anger, all too familiar to him. He kept his hand on Jat’s arm, glancing over to see the young man was trying to look hopeful. Looking for someone to take control.“I’m to understand some of you here are feeling nervous about this. That these rumors have gotten to you, shaken your confidence in us. In me.” Something twisted along the captain’s brow. “You signed on because of our reputation, and because we saw something in you other corps didn’t. Has that changed?”Uncertainty flickered through the room. The undertone - who else would take on these fresh-faced would-be mercs? Who else would give them anything?“We’re still here. We’re still your crew and I’m still your captain.” Threat entered the voice, not overt, but clear enough. I already own you. It prickled at Ross. He felt his own face get hot, the temper coming back in the face of commanders he’d known and commanders he’d hated. “Now, if you’ve got some of the stress out of your systems, I’d like to remind you that we’re going to be continuing on our business. Some of you are already lined up for work. Others-““How’d the Earth job go wrong?” Ross stood up, unaware he was doing it at first. His hands had balled into tight and sweaty knots, his first response to confrontation. “Why’d the crew shoot Gorthan instead of showing him the real work we’re supposed to be doing?”The uncertainty rippled fresh, the recruits reminded of why they were mad. Ross felt Sovel’s gaze turn towards him, implacable and laser-hot. It was Jat’s turn to grab at his arm, fingers flexing in panic. Sovel’s face contorted, that fury coming back plain. Not a man that liked a direct challenge. The exact sort of man that set off Ross’s temper all the rest of the way. “Who in the name of Sharra are you?”“Who the hell shoots a customer first instead of sorting out his problems? What kind of business is that, Captain?”Sovel barked his response, irate. “How did you know about the Earth job?”The same recruit that had twigged quickly to how wrong the shooting was picked up on the classic fumble, scrambling to his thorny feet. Mandibles clacked under the chirp-fired accusation. “You mean he’s right?”A roar went up among the crowd, their anger refreshed. Shouts aimed directly at Sovel panged off him almost physically, the captain flinching at some of the direct challenges. Tellingly, he backed up a step. His attention was off Ross again.“Ross, what are you doing?” Jat tugged at his arm, increasingly frantic. “When did you hear about this?”“Heard some stuff coming in.” That was true, at least. “Jat, this is a really bad scene.”“So why make it worse?”Ross didn’t have time to answer. Sovel backed up again, his face gone so hard a red it darkened in every wrinkle and feature. He roared his final command. “If you’ve any bravery, any intent of following my crew and getting jobs anywhere else in this sector, you better quiet down and follow me right now.” A fist raised, more threat. “Because if this gets any louder around here, the Redhands shoot back and we shoot to kill. I will set a world afire just to catch a fool in the inferno, do you mongrels hear me? Come with me now, work for us, or you can fuck off to hell with the rest of my enemies!”“This guy is not completely sane.” Ross shook his head, forgetting himself. “Christ.”“Who?” Jat pulled away. “How’d you know about the job?”“Jat, don’t go with that guy. He’s bad news.”Jat looked at him, disbelieving. He stepped further away, the thronging crowd threatening to swallow him if he moved again.Desperation crawled over Ross’s skin. “Jat. If you go with him, you will die. He’ll use you up and throw you away. That’s what’s going on here.”“Will he pay my family?” Something blank and horrified crossed the kid’s face. “I don’t have much of a choice!”“You’ve got a choice. Don’t go with him. We’ll figure something else out.” Ross put out a hand. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a few other panicked-looking recruits give in and file past the four guards that had come in with Sovel. Same stories. Same lack of options. He didn’t blame them, but he wanted to save them. There weren’t a lot of ways, so he stayed focused on Jat. Get at least one to change his mind.“Unlock the door, Sovel, let us out of here. We’ll come back if we want.” Thorn-foot had taken Ross’s place as primary challenger. “You can’t hold us prisoner.”“I already have your contracts,” Sovel snarled. “If you don’t come by choice, you’re mutineers. And I can do what I want with mutineers.”Ross swore under his breath. Thorn-foot didn’t look too pleased, either. He stepped forward. “We can legally renegotiate if the contract’s proven to-““Call a fuckin’ lawyer from here, weed-dick.” Sovel picked up a chair and threw it at the alien, who dodged it neatly. “Serve or die. What’s it going to be?”Thorn-foot said something that had to be obscene, his mandibles set wide in hostility. He muttered something to his companions, and they started eyeing the opposite door.Time to stop being cute. Ross tapped at his hidden comm to be sure it was on. “Daisy, we need extraction down here right now, this is gonna end badly very soon.”“Now who the hell is Daisy?” Jat’s eyes were huge.“A friend.” He reached out and tried to grab an arm as a response tune chimed in his ear. Jat pulled away. “Stick with me, and we get out of this.”Jat seemed frozen. “I don’t know. I don’t know, man, you don’t know how much I need this. I can’t give up here, I can’t, my mot-““Your mother wouldn’t want you to die and get cut up into spare parts for an asshole like this. That’s not what she gave you your sight for.” It was personal, harsh, and probably uncalled for, but it machine-gunned out of Ross’s mouth anyway. Jat looked like he was going to cry. “Whatever you’re thinking of me right now, the main thing is, I want as few people dead out of this as possible. That’s not what the captain wants, you know it, and that’s not how he’s making his money. You know that, too.”It was enough to get Jat to stop and think, every inch of him looking uncomfortable as hell. Sovel was already withdrawing from the fight. Two of his guards were staying, shouting down the mutiny that the thorn-footed bug alien was now leading.. . .Loki heard the melee starting from where he lay in wait, a finger up near the comm. He’d heard the concern rising in Ross’s voice. “Do I need to change target?”Nothing. Not even static. His eyes widened just a smidge, not in worry, but in a hunter’s ready wariness.“Daisy. Do I need to go after Ross?”A crackle, then her hurried-sounding voice. “I’ve got that under control. Stay on Sovel. He’s gonna have more with him.”“I know. Expendables. I’m not concerned. Comm is staying on. If you need me in the mess hall, you chime.”“Will do. Go get ‘im.” The crackle faded out again. In the silence, Loki crept to the lee of a jutting piece of steel, waiting for more shadows to join him. Waiting for the captain to flee the chaos that, really, his own sordid mistakes had prepared for him. All Loki was was a catalyst.A good one, he would modestly suggest. He lifted his head as the steps began to echo down the hall again, hurried this time. They were not thinking now, he wagered. Not looking for further trouble. Not ready for what was waiting for them.He let them get a little closer, until he saw boots and the remaining now-nervous guards with their heads down, and the small crowd behind the captain, and then Loki stepped into the center of the hall, armored, armed, and ready.Sovel saw him first, his instincts no small part of how he’d gotten this far in his life. He put up a hand to stop the guard on his right, and his lips were immediately curled in a sneer at the sight of Loki. “Get out of our way.”Loki didn’t move, nor blink. He stared, cold and hostile, right through Sovel’s skull.It had the intended effect. Sovel went incandescently feral with rage, his question howling out. “Who in the name of the Flame are you?”A single corner of Loki’s mouth turned up into a curling, dismissive sneer.Sovel stepped forward, away from his guards, towards Loki. His hands were going for a weapon at his hip, but a simple mortal Shi’ar, no longer granted a magistrix’s favor, no longer trained like some of their better ilk, was far too slow. Before the weapon was unlatched, before the two guards could move to match him, twin knives flicked out from Loki’s hands.Sovel stood alone, the weapon hovering half out of its holster, and the group of now doubly-frightened recruits were shrinking back. The warning from Daisy was well-meant but meaningless. They had no part in this fight. It was only Sovel, and Loki.Loki remained where he was. All he’d moved so far was an arm. Sovel stared back at him, the rage tempered into survivalist caution, and he saw the dark pupils dilate when he decided it was time to speak. “Who paid you for your game on Earth? For you to throw expendables at the job, to pocket their wages, to leave corpses upon that world?”The eyes widened further yet as Sovel’s face began to contort. It was difficult to gauge his hysteria until the contortions began to ripple across his lips and down his throat, becoming strange and rising laughter. “That’s really what this is all for? Everyone coming at me all of a sudden? Earth. Getting pushed back on because of Earth. I should have guessed when the pinkie called me out on it. Maybe even a human itself. A bunch of little nobodies on that planet. Nobodies that don’t deserve what we have. And you’re all out here trying to be big at us because of what you are. At me. You stupid f-”“I am Loki, of Asgard and of Jotunheim. Earth is a realm of the Nine.” Loki’s quiet recitation hit Sovel like a cannonball. “What a pity that your actions drew me and not my brother. That there are far more protectors upon that world than your estimates suggested.” He inclined his head, polite. “You will tell me who gave you this job, or I will kill you, the rest of your men, and I will ensure that your ship is destroyed. All of this will then be sent back to your Magistrix, with a formal note to reassure her that we hold sympathy and respect for their civilization, and that we hold them to no account for your shame. Your family, should any remain, will forget your face.”Sovel went deathly still, the weapon dropping back into its holster. He said nothing, and then, as Loki studied him, trying to figure out what his response would be, his hand leaped to his throat for a reason Loki couldn’t guess at.A second later a rush of black fabric poured over every inch of exposed Shi’ar flesh, as the frisson of mingled tension and recognition struck Loki like icewater.
The vibranium suit!
Loki’s teeth bared. It would be difficult to rip it from Sovel’s flesh without Daisy to help disrupt it, but by the Gods, he was about to try. He was ready to lunge forward, his shoulders tensing, when Sovel spoke, mocking and still furious, as he reached for something else on his belt. “Make a choice, ‘protector of Earth.’ And make it fast.” He pressed a tiny button as Loki realized the man’s play and attempted to change his own trajectory, seeing the ripple of sundering forces behind the walls of the station like rising gooseflesh. He was fast, but even he couldn’t outrun physics.The explosion blew Loki backwards. Shadowed against the flames, he saw Sovel safely ride the momentum of the burst, shrouded in vibranium, all but flying past him in escape. Beyond the rushing emptiness of the new wound in the junker ring, he saw the panicking, air-starving recruits Sovel left behind.. . .Ross grabbed Jat and threw both of them down to the floor as the ripple of the explosion shook everything in the locked down mess hall. Tables clattered and the far wall with its arrogant portholes, worryingly, shuddered visibly under the new stress. Jat’s skin was cold. He was frozen in a full panic. Ross knew his voice was too loud, couldn’t help it because his ears rang from percussive force. “Daisy, what the hell was that?”“I can’t get Loki on the line, not sure yet. I think Sovel is way more crazy than we guessed, though.”“He’s definitely not sane. I saw that when he strolled up in here.” Jat wasn’t moving under his hand. “Where are we on extraction?”“Working on it. Wor-“ A secondary explosion must have cut off local comms. Ross dropped the device back into his collar and looked around. Another shudder ran through the mess hall, this one under their feet. Shouts filled the mess.“Jat, you okay? Keep breathing, we’re going to be fine.”He could hear the breathing. It didn’t sound convinced.Thorn-feet was shouting out orders. To the guy’s credit, he was more of a leader in a pinch than the Redhand guards had been. Ross vaguely wondered how he’d ended up in such hard straits that he ended up with a crew like this, watching him chivvy the two remaining guards, their loyalties cut off with the sound of the explosion, towards the door between them and whatever had exploded. They were going to try to shore up their end, keep the void out until stationmasters got repair crew out there. “Extraction is on its way.”Jat didn’t say anything at first. But he scrambled up, tight, at the sound of a bang on the other door. Then another, scraping and hellishly loud. “Ross?” Jat’s voice wavered.Ross shook his head. He didn’t know. He hoped it wasn’t more of the station buckling around them, the place looked haphazard enough that it could be a chain reaction type thing about to hit. He kept his hand on the young Kree, waiting, unable to do anything but wait.Another chaotic thud. And then the door bent inward, just a few centimeters. Whoever was working on the lockdown slab was clearly enthused by this development and began whaling on the door in earnest for a couple of minutes, until the metal cracked entirely. Apparently this caused a failsafe to trip, quite probably the attacker’s goal, and the door unlocked.Ross scrambled up, dragging Jat with him, expecting to see Daisy and one hell of a battering ram in her hands. He realized a second later that who he was looking at was a great deal taller.One of the recruits absolutely could not help himself, blurting in his shock probably the most unadvisable thing in the quadrant. “You’re a big bitch, aint’cha?”Tam gave him a look fit to wither an entire green planet. “Biggest you’ve ever met, jackass.” She jutted her chin towards Ross. “It’s about to get worse, pilot guy. Grip your britches and let’s go.”Ross tugged at Jat. “Come on.” He looked around the mess, the rest of them somewhat more wisely staring at their rescue in silent awe. “What can we do for everyone else?”“They can follow us.” She raised her voice, commanding the room. Thorn-foot was no fool. He had his tarsal claws out, holding people back behind him, and he looked at her while waiting for the word. “Sovel is aboard his battleship and they are pulling out in a hot launch. He’s continuing to destabilize this part of the ring doing it, and he’s transmitting some pretty fucking worrying threats on the official comms. Now, I can’t take everyone aboard with me, I’m just a runner. Get yourselves to the central and main ring territories, I know they’re ugly but they can also take a lot more’n the station crew let on. If you know anybody you can get aboard with, get aboard and evac now.”She finished with another glance at Ross, and at his cargo. He caught the brief, bemused roll of her eyes, but she said nothing. If he wanted to bring another stray, it was on him. Her hands clapped, like chivvying pups into action. “Let’s get on this, lads. Time’s not a friend today.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The ringing in Loki’s ears lasted long and aching seconds after the fire itself winked out due to a lack of air in the blown out hull section, but the headache it inflicted onto him was going to stick around a lot longer. It gave him an excuse to be less gentle than the survivors of Sovel’s ridiculous escape gambit probably deserved.He kept the magical bubble of air in a fairly wide sphere around him, the ten or so expendable recruits filling that air with the acrid smells of fear and sweat. Understandable, but gods, he was already annoyed with the whole thing. He flung a hand out to try and wrap a green ‘cord’ of magic around the last survivor he needed to corral, a young hot-pink Xandarian who, in his opinion, should have known better than to be in this mess in the first place. Much less every other young, frightened idiot here. Then again, he knew he was being particularly tetchy and held his tongue more than he might have a century ago. The man was wrapped, trembling, around a fragile rod of metal that wasn’t going to hold his weight much longer. He was also apparently caught in a puff of breathable air coming from a ruined vent, which didn’t help Loki much. “Grab on,” he snapped.The man looked up at the translucent scrap of magic trying to worm its way around him, and down at the emptiness of space that threatened to take his fall, and continued to quiver. His known safety seemed far kinder than the man screaming at him.Loki took a deep breath that managed to increase the pressure behind his eyes, grimaced, and then tried again. “I promise you, my magic won’t dump you into the waiting star beyond. That rod you’re betting your life on absolutely will.” One of the men behind him wailed. That was useful. His headache increased in severity in tune with the wailing. A vision flashed across his mind, his hand slapping the frightened boy into the next week so swiftly that his passage contained an afterimage. He held onto it for a moment, reminded himself that he was the one being an arse, and let the vision go.At least his threat got both him and his last rescue both somewhere. With a tremble, the Xandarian let go of the rod and allowed the magic cord to secure him and haul him up to a stable hand-hold. He panicked for a moment, realizing he was now without the comfort of oxygen, and Loki reached down to pull him into the orb of air he’d gathered, trying to not make a face when the boy started gasping frantically to refill his lungs. It was increasing the strain on him, but very well, again, it was understandable. He tried to keep himself from growling, settling for a fairly sedate rattle. “Get up, slow your breathing. You’re going to be fine. You’re all going to be fine.”One of the men started to cry. Loki tapped his comm, letting them balance themselves while he waited for the device to finally reconnect to the others. The blast meant it took a second for it to cycle back into life. “I’ve wrangled this mess somewhat back under control. Assume you know Sovel got away from me. The idiot kept that damned vibranium suit, then blew a rather effective pocket explosive. I’ve been gathering survivors. Ross, is the mess hall stable?”“Was when I left. Tam’s warming the ship’s engines, we need to get moving. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do next, but we’ve gotta unhook. Tell your kids to get to safety once you’re on solid turf, evac or get into the center rings. Sovel’s going to be a hell of a problem real soon. Hold on. Tam?” Loki didn’t hear what he said next. “I’m gonna, uh, we’re gonna feed you some of what he’s screaming on the local comm.”Loki waited for it, glancing at the survivors to see them watching him with a mix of relief and something like religious terror. He winced when the comm resumed, the Shi’ar’s rattling voice becoming ever more flanging and furious as he ranted.“My business, my time, my authority, all this are at the heart of this station’s business, and your accusations are what’s flung at me in gratitude. By the fire of the phoenix, I will scourge you for your insolence! I will raze apart what I’ve made, I will burn you out, and I will-““Right. I think I’ve already quite got the shape in mind.” Loki couldn’t keep the weariness out of his voice. The ranting cut off. “That’s terrific. A jumped-up Shi’ar with a bit of fanatic in his blood, thinks he’s the burning soul of a backwater hellhole and is entitled to be its maker and unmaker. Do I about have it? Is it as typical as it sounds?”“Yeah,” said Daisy, cutting in on the comm. She sounded just as tired. “Did you get him to give up his contact before he went blooey?”“Of course I ruddy didn’t. I must have offended his kingly soul too deeply. Why is every space fanatic so godsdamned boring about their perceived realms of influence? Has he actually seen this place? I wouldn’t claim ownership of it for any price. Odin could get on his knees and tell me I was secretly his favorite all this time in exchange for taking control of this place for a week and I wouldn’t do it.”Daisy laughed into the comm. “You have taste, dude, and you’re not a screaming fanatic. Anymore.”Loki rolled his eyes and started to shoo his charges down the hall towards safety.. . .Daisy met Loki at the umbilical to Tam’s runner, the intel deck still stuffed under her arm. Her eyes were wide and Loki knew why before she told him. He’d felt the tremble through the deck under his feet. “Sovel’s already taken another set of shots at the station. Glad we evac’d his bit of the ring, a chunk of it’s already fallen off. Tam says there’s a huge gravity well around, which I didn’t get-““It’s because of the star. Red dwarfs greatly change the mathematics from what you’re used to under the gaze of your yellow sun. The station generates a ‘safe’ space for their illicit visitors to drop in and out of, all of it around the local jump points, which is the bulk of its job. The rubble drops out of that space, gravity eventually wins again. We’re too close to it for any stable orbit, otherwise.” Loki shut the airlock behind him and tapped rapidly at the panel, ensuring for the sake of their take-off that the proper undocking pressurization program was set. Nobody needed another blow-out today. “Is he saying anything else?”“He wants heads or he’s gonna start aiming for the control ring. He wants whoever else was screwing with his reputation or he’s killing everyone. So. He wants us, specifically.”Loki finished the program and shook his head. “All right, I confess. I’ve never liked the Shi’ar, and I’ve come around to rather hating this one, specifically and with great enthusiasm.”“Tam thinks he’s going to get a fix on her ship because of the timing of all this starting. She’s yelling stuff at the puffs I can’t understand and Ross is scrambling around the cockpit doing whatever she tells him, but I think this is going to get bumpy.”“Yes, that’s usually why these operations I suggested to you are best summarized as ‘commit murder and run.’” He gently tugged at Daisy’s arm, pulling them both into a fast jog through the umbilical towards the runner’s port entry. “We are at the part where we run very fast.”Daisy made a face. “If we run he’s going to kill everyone here, and probably still try to take us on.”Loki nodded, not bothering to hide his unhappiness as he was about to slide open the door. “This could be going better.”The door slammed open, nearly taking the skin off his palm. “Well, it gets worse!” Tam snapped the words, her eyes huge. “That arsewit, Jeraxis, sold that crazy fuck our docking vid in exchange for safety on a buddy’s ship. He’s already gone, so I can’t even kick him to death for it right away. He thinks I won’t, since he dropped a message to me warning that he did it, but by all the gods I promise you he’s wrong. But more importantly, Sovel definitely has his eye on us now. Way it looks, he’s going to blow the station up, and us, and pick our frozen corpses out of the void for toiletry later.”A nervous-looking blue face poked up from behind Tam’s shoulder, as if hopping for a look at the new arrivals. Loki blinked. “Who is he?”“Pilot Ross found himself a stray. And I have a feeble heart for that shit, as you know.” Tam pulled out of the port so they could get by her and barked at the kid. “Jat, go secure what I told you and quit hovering around me.”The kid made a noise and booked it out of sight as Loki realized Ross had in fact all but adopted the cybernetic Kree he’d been using to get closer to the crew. He didn’t have much time to think about that before Tam was whirling on him again. “Your Highness, if you’ve got another plan, I am just made of ears right now.”“Thinking.” He had nothing yet. Running was usually his first choice. Running had large, battleship-shaped complications right now.“Think fast.” Tam barely waited for Daisy to finish boarding before slamming the port shut and securing the locks. “I have got to undock within minutes here, or we’re going to take structural damage from his next assault on the station that I can’t afford. Sovel’s been working his way towards us just to show how pissed off he is. And once we undock, we’re a slow-moving target. So, you can imagine my stress.”Daisy grabbed at Loki to shove past him. “We can’t jump instantly?”Tam looked down at her and shook her head. “No, and not this close to the station, either.”The ship’s comm blared into life, Ross’s voice coming through way too loud. “I’ve got an idea! It is an astoundingly stupid idea, so you need come tell me it’s impossible!” Tam looked, wild-eyed, at Loki. Then she whipped on her heel and led them on a run towards the cockpit.. . .Ross was standing up, pointing at the glare of the red dwarf star, not waiting on ceremony to start shotgunning his stupid idea. “We did this with the moon. It’s kind of like how I dodged that last shot, wasn’t even thinking but that’s what I did. Captain, if we go towards it, can we curve back out of the star’s gravity?”Tam looked at him, then at her cockpit glass, then at him, then at Loki. She looked unnerved. “All right, I know I like him as a pilot, but you could have warned me he had a slight issue upstairs.”“He’s a pilot, it comes with the territory.” Loki sounded comparatively mild. “Escape velocity outside of the station’s generated arrival zone is a pleasant 65 kilometers a second, Ross. That’s rather a lot. And just for the record, trying to hit jump from that would quite likely tear apart any ship I can think of.”“All right, noted. Can this runner hit the star’s escape velocity or not?” Ross stared at Tam, looking desperate. “If we zip towards the star and draw the battleship after us, can we get back out?”Tam blinked. The marks along her brow were a harsher white against her dark skin, gone paler to show her stress. “That’s fucking mad, Ross.”“Can we?!” He practically yowled the question. “Can we, and can Sovel?”“No known godsdamned battleship has enough fuel or goose in its jets to get out of-“ Tam shook herself, not yelling back anymore. “He can’t be that foolhardy.”“Oh yeah, he is,” said Daisy from the back of the group. “You heard the guy on the lines. He wants our asses for breakfast toast. He’ll fixate until he gets the right shot lined up.”Tam looked down at her, something bright dawning in her eyes. “This is the stupidest bloody idea I have ever heard, and we won’t even talk about the time my security decided knifing a fleeing ship was the best course of action.”Loki couldn’t keep from cocking his head, fascinated by this new bit of trivia. “They did what?”“It worked, that’s the hell of it. Cut into the fuel lines through four inches of hard weld, dropped the bitch right back onto the landing pad. Never tell a crazy person you can’t stab a ship to death, because by the gods, they will do it.” Tam shook herself again, sharp like a shivering cat, getting back into the moment. She dropped into the pilot’s seat, shooing Ross into the other one. “Your arses are so lucky I’m in between runs and got hardly anything aboard. I can just barely hit the baseline if I scorch the engines on a hot pop. And because of that, I would still tell you to fuck yourselves, except that if this works I get to say I killed a battleship, and you can’t put a price on that sort of brag.”“We can do this?” Ross was melting into his seat, the adrenaline that gave him his idea visibly draining out of his skin. Now he looked like he was regretting the plan.“Maybe. If Sovel takes the bait. If he doesn’t, I don’t know what the hell we’re gonna do.” Tam’s hands flew across the console, then almost absently flicked the intercom above her. “Strap in and hold on, gang. If you thought today was already a ballser, we’re about to go full to the wall.” She clicked it back off, her gaze never leaving the console. “Undocking. Brace your buns, kids. I am.”. . .The birdlike outline of the runner was nothing but a black pixel in front of the star as it pulled free of the Ends. It adjusted course swiftly, hitting a sharp angle towards and then past the slower-turning battleship, coming in underneath it and pushing fast towards the reddish glare. Mass and momentum had hard rules to them, and that much was already in the runner’s favor.The battleship, all blackened steel and insensate machinery, still seemed as if it hesitated, lost in thought. Then, lumbering but implacable, it turned and began to match course after the comparatively tiny runner. A final array of mass driver shots left its weapon bays and arced towards the station, silent explosions peppering hot fire along the bay that had dared let the runner free. Ruined chunks of steel and the emptied corpses of station-bound ships fell away and then, bound by fate and physics, they began to pull slowly but inexorably inwards towards the nearby star.Perhaps at one point that had even been a draw for the pirate lair - an easy disposal, a permanent looming threat. Turn against us, and fall into a literal fiery hell. The message was an easy enough one, and it could be assumed Sovel knew it by heart. Perhaps that eternal fire was its own awful lure, with him a moth trembling before it, forever without a shadow. The Shi’ar legends of the phoenix, Loki could have explained, had a terrible undertone to them. For as much of that forbidden prophecy spoke of power and renewal, it always birthed from destruction.For some of the fanatics, it was the latter that held a greater pull. Perhaps that, too, had drawn Sovel here. The promise of a grand and unstoppable burning, the eventual end of any life that dared live in its lee. The burned-out hollow of a dark phoenix. Loki could have explained that it didn’t matter, and he didn’t care. Neither would such a godlike power.Proxima Centauri burned low and relentless, ignorant of mortal dreams, and the two ships drew close enough to it - yet millions of miles away from the first hellfire lick of its corona - that their hulls began to gain a hot, dangerous gleam of their own.. . .“I can’t believe he’s actually come after us,” said Tam through gritted teeth. Her knuckles were pallid on the pilot’s stick, the dark skin pulled taut enough to outline the bones underneath. “I cannot believe I am not the only idiot piloting a ship this close to a star.”“If he gains much more, he’s gonna get a targeting solution on us before he’s completely caught in the well.” Ross swept the screen he was studying like a pro, reading the data and looking coldly, professionally unhappy about it. “We got any chaff we can drop, Captain? Targeting fuzz? A big banner ad?”“If the gods were kind, and they are, in my experience, deaf little bastards,” said Tam, “they’d pop a solar flare right now and give him an EMP tickle for the sake of our souls. But that’s not going to bloody happen. So no.” She finished her statement with an attempt to alter their course through brute force. Every inch of the ship vibrated around them, as if aware of their potential fate. “I’ve got nothing.”Daisy had her hand on Ross’s headrest, and he felt her clench it at a realization. “I could mess them up a little.” She looked at Loki, bracing himself behind Tam’s chair. “Maybe add a little drag.”Loki was already shaking his head. “Daisy, I don’t know what adding any vibra-““Coefficient drag? Turbulence? Throw me in the back, strap me in, and I throw the biggest goddamn quake out our butt I can manage. Just a big wide swath of messy space, make the quake wave as big as I can so it messes up their dynamics. Because it’s not really a void out there, exactly, there’s always force a ship’s gotta deal with, right? It’s just not like atmosphere. So. Between that and, like, the gravitational forces, maybe that slows them down and messes up their targeting just enough. Even a little chaos is gonna throw them off. It could help.”“That’s a leap.” He looked unconvinced.Tam had fewer obvious problems with the hypothesis. She didn’t bother looking over her shoulder as she yelped, “Let her try!”Loki opened his mouth and then thought better of arguing it. Something pinched across his face. “You’re going to need my assistance to even consider pulling it off.”“I kinda assumed.” Daisy let go of the headrest, ready to bolt down to the cargo.“Well, for one thing, did you assume that if I don’t set up a shield, you’re going to roast when we open the bay?”“…Ooo.” Daisy’s foot wavered in midair, realizing she was setting herself up for a face full of hardcore alien sunbathing.“And for another, a few straps aren’t going to be enough on their own to keep you from being pulled out the back of a ship going this fast. I’ll have to do that, too.”“So…Anyone have other ideas?” It sounded meek.“None! Go throw your quake-magic!” Tam was louder. “And don’t fall out!”. . .Tam took her stare off her controls long enough to notice the inset cargo display telling her that, against all sanity in the universe and the fact that she was currently cruising at a ship-keening 55mps, the rear bay of her runner was opening. As if they were mooning a sun-god on a driveby. The heretical cheek of the idea gave her a brief grimace as she saw the outline of the little human woman framed in the doorway. The green shimmer of magic and straps securing her in place by both the mad prince and the Kree kid did nothing for the drop in her stomach. The straps were set up as a kind of extra wall around the girl, holding her firmly in place, and other straps, now licked with green, added more shielding. The girl had her hands out and Tam could barely see the start of the air shimmering and changing before her.“Your friends are utterly batshit,” she said to Ross, sounding conversational and also not a little like she was going to throw up. “How did you all meet?”“I just end up in situations I don’t really understand.” Ross sounded resigned. “It’s getting to be a regular thing.”“Alright.” The ship shuddered again, threateningly. “Maybe this isn’t a good time for small talk. How’s the battleship?”“Still gaining. No changes yet.” Ross was hunched over his display. “Quake’s coming up on the screen, though, like a real big cylinder or something. That’s… Jesus, how much energy is she putting out?”“That better be rhetorical, because I don’t know what the hell is going on.” Tam saw a light that made her unhappy flick on, reached out to smack the stabilizer controls into high power mode. Then she hit the intercom to the cargo. “Jat, what the shit is going on back there?”“Girl is doing a thingy, man is doing a thingy, the Druffs are screaming in a closet. I think I need to puke.” Jat sounded shaken. “Am I having a nightmare?”“Just hold it together, kid.” Ross did his best to sound reassuring.“This doesn’t exactly feel safer than the station, Ross.” It came out like the chide of a dying bird.Ross muttered something under his breath Tam didn’t catch. “Yeah, fair,” he said instead. “We’re still getting out of this.”“Are we, though?”“Jat, pull it together.” The light that originally made her unhappy flicked on again. “Fuck,” she blurted into the open comm, which wasn’t the right move.“WHAT HAPPENED?” Jat was clearly going to be wound a little tight for probably the next century. Ross looked like he had a headache.“I’m losing structural stability because my ass is unzipped like this. We’ll tear up if this lasts. Look, you need to wrap it up down there so I can shut that bay and keep this ship together!”“She’s ramping up, not wrapping it up!” Something clanked in the cargo bay, large and loud. “Fuck!”“What was that?” Tam couldn’t see. Something fell against the cam and shifted its position, giving her a nice view of a rattling floor-grate instead.“Fuck! Fuck! Fu-“She shut off the comm, already half out of her seat. “I’m going to go look.” Ross looked up at her, aghast. “Ross, keep us on this course. Don’t juke the ship unless I tell you. Don’t do anything unless I tell you, just hold us steady. Just like you did around the moon, or whatever.”She didn’t look back, but she heard him slip into the pilot’s seat without argument.. . .Jat peeled himself off the wall when the airlock popped with an odd, depressurizing bang to let Tam into the bay. She froze for a second, primal and helpless, at the blaring sight of a star way too goddamn close for anyone’s comfort first, and then, second, at the sight of a few of the large straps flapping loose. The battleship, visible and dead black against the light, barely rated a glance. Near the girl, herself lost in total concentration, Loki was starting to flag, the green light enveloping the rear of the ship already flickering. A strap was threatening to tear out of his grasp, too, losing its green light and the end of it whipping free. He was carrying two heavy-duty spells on his back, and the physical bits that had been helping him were no longer up to snuff.Tam yelled something at Jat he couldn’t hear, but he understood the gestures she flapped at him. Get the straps wound back into place without losing himself out the bay. Easier said than done - with Loki weakening, the rush of space threatened to tear them away. So the job, really, was to shore him back up.Jat followed Tam’s lead, using jutting chunks of bay structure to keep himself in place, his eye on a wide ship-strap that wasn’t all the way loose yet. If he could get to its control, he could fix the tension easily enough. Tam did the crazier bit, dropping to the floor and sliding down the center of the bay to grab one of the loose straps that had the job of being an extra shield. When it had been knocked awry by another strap and slipped Loki’s leash, it unfurled out the back, knocked over a bunch of stuff, and wreaked enough havoc in the bay to lose her cargo cam and probably more supplies than she wanted to think about right now.It took either a minute or an hour, but she bodied a portion of it into position long enough for Loki to magically curl it back under control. When she rolled onto her back, she saw that Jat had not only gotten the one loose strap, but was also running around freely to try and secure anything else that looked iffy. Something had switched over in the kid’s head, finally. Well, near death experiences had a way of doing that. She scrambled to her knees and used the now-calm strap to haul herself back into the deeper part of the bay, looking back to see that, yes, the battleship was much closer now.The girl, Daisy, was still concentrating. Tam slapped at the comm, screaming to be heard over the consistent chaotic rattle of the bay. “Sorry for the distraction, how’s their targeting?”“Getting shakier!”“Hells, yeah,” she said under her breath. She caught Loki’s eye, glazing in pain but alert, and gave him a thumb’s up.“We are deep in the gravity well. So are they.” Ross sounded panicked but also triumphant. “I think that’s it. I don’t think they can get back out, and I don’t think they’ve realized that ye- oh.”“Oh?”“Uh, Captain, how do I tell if they’re about to shoot everything they have at us?”Tam blinked at the dead sound of his voice. “The way you just did. That much shit, they won’t miss every shot if we don’t get out of here now.” She thought fast, rapped her command fast. “Ross. Bolt us to e-velo, 55-66mps hard, do it now, you saw me ready the code, just hit it and get us to the jump point zone. Then, program a one point jump and transit, give me a two second warning. I don’t give a shit where, just pick something off the board. We’ll figure it out after.”“Cap-““That’s an order, Ross!” She snapped it with every scrap of authoritative spirit in her body and soul.“Yes’m,” he said automatically.She let go of the comm and screamed over her shoulder as she slammed at the emergency seal panel, hoping Daisy could shut off her quake on the spin of a coin. “Cargo closing, cargo is closing now!”. . .It doesn’t look that impressive, but mathematically, it is. The small ship shuddered once, then again as engines boosted so hot they flared bluish-white against the redness of the star, pushing it enough, just enough to begin to peel out of its curve and up into the welcome of a cold black sea. It took only ten seconds to do it, even as the battleship behind them found itself enveloped and slowed down in the already fading turbulence of a space-quake. It fired as its prey reached near-impossible acceleration, a few of the heavy shots having the potential to make it, shatter those defiant engines, and the rest faltered and went just as awry as the mind that had commanded it. A few missiles, ironically, lost velocity too quickly, shots spent wildly and just as wildly threatening to eventually return towards the ship as gravity took control.The runner wouldn’t know what would take the battleship first. Its crew was busy as it shuddered again, the engines sputtering dead - and then, just past the lip of no return, as two ship’s captains screamed for very different reasons, one in triumph and command, the other realizing his prophesied death by flame was inevitable, the tiny ship blinked out into the impossible, having done the impossible.Left behind, the battleship and its captain had no choice but to wait to die.

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Tam looked out the cockpit glass at where Ross had taken them, patting his limp shoulder as she smiled at the view. A hazy orb made up of countless lights a trillion miles away, woven out of impossible colors. The clouds of the nebula twined around each other, giving the heart of it almost an hourglass shape. Around it all wound a wispy, thin iris. It was the color of smoke over sacred water. “That’s the Eye,” she said. “That’s what we call it. Pretty thing. I think you might call it the Owl? Saw that in a file somewhere, I guess. But to me it’s always been the eye of a gentle god, one that gives half a rip. Maybe even the one that let us get away with this absolute daft nonsense. It’s a pretty young nebula, probably not much older than your civilization. What’s that, a few thousand years, then?”She looked down, saw how wiped out and shellshocked the human looked, and dropped into the too-small comm chair next to him, ignoring the way it cramped her hips. “You did great, pilot. Hold onto that. For the second time this week, your flying saved everyone’s arse.”“I don’t-“ Ross licked his lips. He looked like he was near tears, coming down from the madness of a few minutes prior. A normal response. “I shouldn’t even have been out here.”“Damn good thing you were, that those two nuts hauled you along, aye? For their sakes.” She settled back in the seat, feeling it pinch well under her shoulder-blades. It was very common, having to recover like that. It wasn’t the first pep talk she’d had to deliver under rough circumstances. She wasn’t worried about the human. They were a flexible people, and she liked them more than she let on. “Pull up your pants, lad. Look at the sight your instincts picked out. There’s something to look at, remind you you’re alive.”Ross came out of himself a little and looked out the window, wincing for a moment at how it seemed like the still distant but massive nebula was looking back at him. Lined in a soft blue, never blinking. Just watching everything, for as long as the nebula would hold together. For another billion years, maybe. An eternity to any mortal mind.“Look at all that. How it hangs there in the dark, seeming like she’s alone.” Tam bumped the underside of the console with her knee, contemplating the view, as she had many times before. No doubt part of why it’d been an easy pick for a frantic Ross, sitting right there at the top of a nice, short list of single-point jumps. “It isn’t, though. Look again, look hard at that dark, and let me tell you something important, pilot.”He looked at her, a slight frown creasing his face.“It looks dark, it does, and it looks cold because that’s what our bodies know of space.” Tam smiled, looking now through the nebula at something she wouldn’t describe aloud. “Beyond what we see, near about every inch of that darkness holds a star. Somewhere, out in the deep, flickering just about forever.” She tilted her head to look at him, still smiling a faint, unreadable smile. “Your world is not alone out here. It’s never been alone, pilot, and I, personally, think that’s nothing to fear.”Ross nodded, a little life coming back into his face. He seemed to get what she was trying to tell him, although it would take time for it to absorb. She knew that, too. Then he licked his lips, thinking of others first yet again. “Hey, um. About Jat-““Eh, he can work with me for a bit, get him some creds to sort out whatever skinny he’s got himself wrapped up in. Medical debts, I’d say. What he’s got isn’t cheap, and I wager his family’s yet on the hooks for it.” She shrugged. “Won’t be the first time I take on a temp ride, won’t be the last. Maybe he sticks, even. He’s a good kid inside, he’ll work out. I can tell.”“How can you tell that?”“Well. I decided I trust your stupid instincts, and you dragged him here.” She gave him a cheeky grin, enjoying his confused, weak, but genuinely touched laugh.. . .Loki was in a narrow hall along a different part of the bays, ignoring the Druffs as they puttered back and forth, humming to themselves in lilting burrs, busy working on sorting out everything that had gotten knocked around during their hasty departure. They seemed content like this, used to the variables of a life in deep space. A part of him almost envied it, their natural way of accepting a rootless life.He had his hands clasped behind his back as he watched out a porthole, visibly tired by yet more magical exertion, but his eyes were sharp and thoughtful. He heard the captain well before she entered the hall, keeping his eyes on the gleaming blue curve of Earth, wondering vaguely how Coulson was going to react to their unusually extra-judicial journey. Probably upsettingly well, honestly. His friend had grown long-used to such things in this last decade, and he wasn’t exactly the flappable sort before. What mattered, and what would matter to him, is that they were safe, and a portion of their mission had worked out. A small portion, Loki felt.Loki forgot that he wasn’t alone for a moment, and the corner of his lip twisted in annoyance.“Eh, nothing ever goes totally true to plan.” Tam jammed her shoulder against the porthole, looking down at him with that glimmer of odd, dry amusement she had.“No,” he said. “It does not.” He let that simmer for a moment, then added the next bit as casually as he could. “You’re good at this.”She arched an eyebrow at him. A glint of suspicion entered her study of him, like it had at the first, but softened now.He gestured vaguely, an attempt to indicate the ship around him. “What sort of engine do you have buried in this rustbucket? What is it actually? It’s no cheap build, and only now can I tell. You poured no small amount of value into disguising its real capabilities.” His lip twisted again, but this time in the secretive smile of one who knows he had something pulled over him, and feels no ire over the game. “If it were such a cheap and scrappy thing, we wouldn’t have been able to make that jump. Much less push so quickly out of gravitational pull. I know my business, and I said, outright, almost any ship would have torn asunder. That’s a fact we both know. And we should have, even cutting engines just before transit. Yet you gave Ross that dangerous order, and we survived.”Tam clicked her tongue, shifting up against the wall and staring at her ceiling. “Now, you know I’m not going to start talking about my business.”“I know. I don’t suppose I ever expect otherwise, Captain. Anything we asked outright at the start, you told your answer true. So I suppose the smart move here and now would be to know what to not ask. Call it a rhetorical by way of compliment, then.” He sighed as he felt her gaze return. “That’s the part that matters. You did exactly what Daisy and I asked, and then you did a great deal more. You’ve my gratitude for that. And money, though I won’t insult you by making more of that fact. You’ll get what you’re owed and then some, that’s a promise.”Tam puffed through her nostrils, back to giving him that careful study. “There’s a lot out here, still think of you what they know from the stories that came out of the warlord’s rampage. And they are not kind tales, your highness. I expect a man like you, you’re well aware.”Loki nodded.“What I know of Asgard, I’d might have thought someone would recommend a little public relations work if’n you’re not that kind of dirt any longer.” She grinned at his snort. “All right, ought’ve guessed by now that’d be out of character.” She shifted again, looking out the window at the blue world beneath them. “And off what I guessed and seen as I arrived, wager you’re not a bit upset you didn’t catch the full money trail. As I say, it’s like that, sometimes. You’ve been around, you know that, too.”“Regrettably well.”“The word will get around, though. Who did Sovel and why. What it can cost, thinking you can underestimate this new Earth. The Ends will talk as they rebuild the ring. Those lads you pulled out of the void’ll talk, and they’ll talk a lot.” She didn’t bother to look at him for this part. “I’m a pretty bloody good gossip myself, and I’ll do that for free. Nobody’s going to take a job like that again, and certainly not soon. So there’s your win, prince. Earth’s name is safe. Heroes there to protect, and enough righteous anger to go out’n attack. It’s not all of what you wanted, but it’s something.” She pulled a tiny flask out of her pocket and passed it over to him. “Gonna be trouble at home for running off on after a murder crew?”“Strongly doubtful.” He sniffed the flask, recognizing it as a common but decently potent bit of whisky. Every corner of space figured out how to press and boozify their grains, and they all did it a little differently. This had a pleasant, almost cinnamon smell to it, and he took a sip. Quite satisfactory, and almost hauntingly familiar. He let that go, for courtesy. “My reputation among these few humans is markedly different than elsewhere. So long as everyone comes home safe, they’ll say, ‘well, that’s a day out with Loki,’ and close the file.”Tam laughed, taking her flask back. “Sounded like this isn’t even the first time their kind’s been out here on your behalf.”“No. No it is not.”“Far be it from me to suggest anything out of my line. But. I reckon, were it me in that place, I might owe these kin a trip to a nice bit of the galaxy, where nothing happens and the sunsets are pretty. Just a couple of days that don’t smell like a baked garbage scow.” She took a knock off the flask herself, a large one that made her grimace. “Gods, but I hate the Centauri Ends.”“Did Daisy tell you to suggest that?”“She did not.” Tam grinned. “Ought do it herself though, while she’s got command.” She shoved away from the wall, straightening up. “Well, here’s the hard part, all them pleasant goodbyes. I’ve got a low profile skim, as you no doubt guessed. Wouldn’t run many blockades if I didn’t. If you want to call your people and give me a safe trajectory so I don’t give any humans a heart attack, I’ll drop you on the surface right where I’m told.” She gestured towards the cockpit, giving him a last chuckle. “I’d ask if I could keep the pilot, but I think, looking him over, he’s ready for some quiet at home. Well, then. After you.”“Thank you,” said Loki, and he meant it.. . .Okoye stood with Coulson and May, the only sign of relief she showed as the trio departed the hovering craft being a tremor of tension leaving her shoulders. The tension in May’s face faded slightly, and Coulson, being Coulson, rolled his eyes at the team as they approached the old, deserted tarmac miles away from the city that hid SHIELD’s current lair. He stepped forward as the strange ship silently lifted off again, glancing up as he realized he probably did, in fact, see a hand flap in the window in a familiar kind of goodbye. “So, how crazy is this report gonna be?”Daisy locked eyes with him, her face showing that soul-deep exhaustion that said she’d gotten a good nap before getting home but needed at least a week-long mental vacation. “Dude, do we even have forms for a situation like this?”“Yeah, probably.” He grinned, rarely thrown for a loop. “If not, we’ll generate new ones. For the next time.”“Oh god, not a next time.” She put her face in her hands for a second before coming back up for air. “Our trip sucked. Do you know what the Ends are? Because I’m going to tell you. It’ll take a while. Let’s start with the easy bit. It’s Jersey, but with rockets.”“Think I can guess from there.” Coulson glanced at Ross bringing up the rear of the returning group. “How’d our great cross-agency dealie go?”Ross didn’t look at him. He made a trudging, exhausted beeline for Okoye, his body language screaming for a comforting hug. With an eyebrow half to her freshly shaved scalp, she decided she permitted it, giving the small man an awkward pat on his shoulder for good measure. “Welcome back, Agent Ross. My King will be pleased to see that you are safely returned.”“Ma’am.” Then, sheepishly, “Sorry about that. I’m just… kinda glad to be on the ground. Thanks.”She looked him over, all business again. “You look healthy enough. I think the trip might have been good for you.” She glanced back to Loki before Ross could sputter a denial. “Shuri has assessed the vibranium samples left behind. I assume we will have a full brief to come on both of our sides, but for the sake of expediency, I will tell you now. She believes it did not come from this solar system. Quite possibly not this galaxy at all, though that is a wilder guess, she says. The radiation signature is wrong for it to have ever been exposed to our star.”Loki frowned. “Did she identify the nature of the signature? We were local to a red dwarf, that’s where the mercenary part of this operation originated from.”Okoye shook her head. “And we continue to hold two of those mercenaries. You may find their reports of some minor interest. Shuri suggested a subgiant’s greater exposure, and even so, it is a theoretical. I would trust a theoretical from my princess, but of course, she must insist on scientific caution as she attempts further checking. Your man Fitz is continuing to assist. I think it may take some time, but it is a worthy place to start.”His lip twisted, contemplating the news. “Well. That… narrows it down to a few billion stars.”Daisy cut in. “The important thing is, we’re not going to get another operation like this one played on us anytime soon. I think we can pretty safely promise that.” She nodded to Okoye. “I want to hear what the two we left behind have to say, make sure it matches up with what we got. We shut down a crappy mercenary crew using kids for basically suicide jobs. That’s going to have some real effect in the area, though hopefully for the better.”“That is very much in line with some of what they told us.” Okoye looked pleased. “I think they will not miss their commander, although they are worried about being eventually handed over to other authorities.”May rolled her eyes, affectionately enough. “And almost nobody lies over shrimp fried rice.”Daisy flailed, mock-distressed. “From the good place on Ridge Road? Oh my god, I was eating space grape-nuts cereal, and you’re getting takeout.”“They were not grape-nuts,” said Loki, studying the golden gleam of the evening sky with a casualness that belied the fact that he had been waiting for just such a fine moment. “They were absolutely not that.”She froze, recognizing that liquid tone. “You wouldn’t tell me what I was eating.”“Not then.” He didn’t bother to wind up for the pitch any more than that. “There’s a species of small, hard-shell beetle that-““OH GOD.” The grimace she made was real and spectacular.He kept talking while she screamed, not bothering to hide his amusement. “They are excellent protein when roasted, even rather tasty when matched with pasturized f’lell pus, and-““Ohgodohgodohgodohgod- PUS??““Pasteurized. Extremely shelf-stable. The blue tint is a good indicator of quality, releasing plenty of minerals as it warms in open air and…” He paused, watching her start pacing the tarmac, clearly trying to decide if it was worth gagging up the bowl she scarfed down before landing. “I am not joking with you, this is the truth.”Ross leaned over. “What was the fruit jerky I was eating?”“Dried meulle fruit.”Ross quietly punched his fist. “I won that one.”“Yes, but I didn’t tell you where it grows.” Loki arched his eyebrow. “Probably shouldn’t.”“Tell him!” Daisy yelled as Ross’s cheer faded.“Mmm. It’s not important.” He ignored them both, turning to Coulson. “I should apologize for this matter getting somewhat out of hand. I will of course handle a transmission to the Nova Corp, so they may take custody of the mercenaries. I expect, given our combined reports, they’ll see dismissed charges and sent into services to rehabilitate them towards better careers.”Coulson shrugged, just the way Loki knew he would. “Looks like it worked out okay, then. Come on, let’s get everyone inside. Start working on piecing this thing together from both ends and put a nice little bow on it for paperwork.” He grinned, cheerfully accepting a little bit of the heavy mantle of being Team Dad. “We already ordered more takeout. Can munch on some good ol’ Earth cuisine while we do our briefing.”The change in Daisy was like a lightswitch. “Noodles?”“Curry street style.”“Yessssss.” She wandered back over towards the group, then paused, moving over to Ross and putting her hand on his upper arm. “By the way, I just want it known before we make it formal in the reports, that Agent Ross was an amazing help to the team. I’m really grateful we had him along.”Ross clearly had nothing to say to that. He looked helpless in the face of the honest compliment.For the sake of his withered ego, it got worse when Loki spoke up. “I will second that, of course.”Coulson gave the stricken Ross a professional smile with the barest edge of knowing, gleefully, he was still the biggest shark in the tank here. “Well. I told you I knew you’d do your best.”“Er.”“Glad to see it paid off.” As if releasing him, he turned to lead everyone towards the vans, and back on to base.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Coulson closed the last tab on his director-level data entry page, an anticlimactic but formal enough way of sealing the file on the Sovel matter. He was satisfied enough for business hours, seeing that Daisy had led the team through another hugely unconventional situation with enough firmness and sense of duty that it left him, as ever, proud of her.Wakanda was also satisfied enough to consider the matter finished. The vibranium that attempted to enter the market was secure and there was a low probability of another incident. The King offered both SHIELD and the CIA another glowing recommendation on Agent Ross, which meant the poor guy was probably going to have some wicked heartburn for another month. Coulson could read the same undertone as Ross, and had done so with no small amount of joy. If more SHIELD/CIA interagency hijinks happened - or they needed a guy who could pilot weird shit on extremely short notice - they had a phone number they could call. Whether Ross acted like he wanted it or not.Deep down, Coulson suspected he was touched by all this in a way that made it difficult for the man to emotionally handle. He also knew it would be a bad idea to request a transfer of the agent to his own crew, which Coulson had considered for at least an hour. Ross was, certainly for now, at his best where he was. A trusted, feisty, intensely reliable member of the CIA. They needed that, thought Coulson. They needed that very much.Loki sat across from him, his face saying that, no, the matter wasn’t formally closed. Not for him. And that there was little either of them could do about that fact for now, except deal with it. Coulson understood. That’s just how it was, sometimes. He would have agreed with Tam, and suspected he would have liked the cagey blockade runner much the way Daisy had. There was a lot of room in the universe for colorful ruffians, and that, Coulson decided, was the way he liked it.Loki pulled Coulson aside after the briefing a couple of days prior, saying it would be necessary for them to talk. After the file’s close, he specified. Coulson, able to read the barest bit of tension on the smooth forehead, hadn’t forgotten. There was a bottle on the desk, with two shots of whiskey already poured. He looked up from the screen and studied his weird, old friend, seeing the same tension under the surface of his skin. He closed the lid of his laptop and reached out to push one of the shots across the desk. “Okay, hit me. What’s the dark secret you’re sitting on?”The whiskey was drunk first, downed in a smooth swallow. The white face’s tension read more easily now, like an animal being freed to pace around. “We talked over the holidays, I’m certain you recall.”“I did. You said you would tell me what was bothering you if and when something actually, firmly did. If you thought it needed to come up. I’m paraphrasing, but you know I heard you.” Coulson leaned back in his seat, still holding his glass. He didn’t need it yet. “We there?”“I’m wondering how close we are.” Loki set the glass down with a soft thunk, contemplating the flaws in its glass with narrowed eyes. “Today it’s nothing more than a hunch. At the Ends, it was a whisper. I thought it was only my own… weariness. The recognition that so much of the rubble from Thanos’s fall still lingers around us, haunting us. Me. But. I cannot shake the sensation that we are being targeted in a terribly direct way.” He looked up at Coulson, no longer dancing with his words. “At Halloween, assisting Strange, I discovered that a very specific distant acquaintance has been monitoring this world. Monitoring me. I left it alone to consider, hence part of my distance at Christmastime. And now? A strangely specific operation designed to scatter and upset this very same world, directed by people that would have no interest or care in this planet otherwise. That were paid to - and we lost the trail that would say by whom, but I cannot stop my hunch that there’s something dangerous growing here.”This was a good time for a drink. Coulson bolted his, then poured them both a second one. “At this point, I trust your hunches more than I do some official reports. Who’d you nail behind the Strange thing?”“An enemy sorcerer.” Loki looked away, visibly and nakedly uncomfortable. “Not a being I knew personally. Thanos…” He trailed off, the name still difficult to speak aloud. “Thanos stole all of his children to serve his own ends. A rare few of them, I have since discovered, grew, I suppose you could say. He felt no need to keep these weapons close, granting them freedom to range free so long as they ravaged faithfully under his name. His generals. A dark order of most favored servants. Some pieces of this were in the Nova Prime’s report to us after the fall at Sanctuary. I didn’t have all of this then - you asked me about Corvus Glaive’s widowed mate at the time. I didn’t know about her. I should have, perhaps, but Thanos kept certain things compartmentalized. Some of this, I have been quietly seeking information on my own in the years since. It is not easy. I didn’t expect it would be. And I hoped it wouldn’t be relevant.”He was still looking away. “The Maw left an eye on Earth until Strange blinded it with my help. I’m to understand he’s true fanatic, a master of pain. I heard a whisper of him when I was bound to service. That sometimes he went ahead to evangelize, and to scourge no few civilizations of his own. I barely remember the name from then, it’s lost in memories I don’t fully have and would prefer not to plunder. But an unpleasant, sibilant whisper tells me I know he existed. And there are others, Coulson. The widow, Proxima. The Cull. The Maw. I know of those. There may be more. They keep secrets well.”“And you think one of them may have financed the hit on Earth.”Loki arched an eyebrow, downing his second shot without any other expression. “I don’t know. Maybe. Likely.”Coulson nodded. “Is there anyone that would know?”Loki shook his head. “I wish I had the answer to that. If there is such a person, may we cross their paths before it’s too late and I am again proven correct in the worst of ways.”Coulson put his empty glass down and folded his hands atop his desk. “Then for now we’ll do what we always do, Loki. We’ll do our best, and we’ll watch the skies.” He smiled, knowing that his endless optimism drove Loki crazy while also being a comfort. “Keep your ears open. When we know we’ve got to do something, you know we will.”“I know,” said Loki. He looked out the window again, somewhere else for a moment. “But I can’t help but wish that these old haunts would stop before we reach that point.”“They never do. We just keep marching on. Surviving. Kicking ass.” Coulson took a gamble and reached out to pat at the back of Loki’s hand. He smiled, wry, at the surprised glance. “You’ve gotten used to that part of humans, so you might as well keep trusting in it.”A faint smile crossed Loki’s face, not a willing acknowledgment, but an understanding all the same.One last detail occurred to Coulson and he cocked his head, curious. “Ross got his package, by the way. What was it?”Loki gave one of his silent laughs. “A bottle of Racassone, a blood rum from one of the rim worlds. He seemed to like it. I decided it would be fitting, for a memento. Perhaps we’ll need him again sometime.”“Maybe.” Coulson snorted. “Probably.” . . .
The planet Sakaar
High above the vulgar tower hung an array of worryingly visible wormholes, sundered space, and floating garbage that ensured any normal transit to this distant world was unpleasantly difficult. Beyond all that gleamed Tayo, a subgiant star cooling its way towards its next great phase of existence. The master of the palace could remember when the star was smaller and brighter, a cute little bit of button light in a gleaming and heavenly clear sky, but nowadays he barely bothered to glance up to it at all, much less down to the litter and mud that covered the once-green fields that had been there when he took his first steps through a young universe.The Grandmaster was busy enjoying a hot foot massage, chortling gleefully as stony tentacles further exfoliated his already perfectly soft, aristocratic heels with deliberately tickly gentleness. The row of attendants stared dutifully ahead, waiting to be needed. The newest girl stood close by the gold-robed elbow, a stack of clean towels resting in her arms as she did her best to ignore the immortal’s delighted writhing. Probably with the same dead-eyed expression as the person on the other side of the Grandmaster’s call. It was not an empathetic moment she cared to share.Yes, the attendant groaned internally as the giggling continued. Grandmaster En Dwi Gast was absolutely the kind of man to sit distractedly on an important business call, making everyone in hearing range suffer.“Yes, but, sweetie, consider this,” said the Grandmaster into his handheld comm. “It was boring. I’m, I’m bored. I financed your little game just the way you wanted, and even threw in a bunch of rocks I didn’t care about, and, well, you get what you pay for.” He started laughing again, anyone’s guess as to whether it was at his conversation, or the way the tentacles were slithering between his toes, or both.The attendant decided she didn’t need lunch that badly, and also a meteor wiping out the entire damned trash planet would be pretty good right now. Her face remained professionally blank, made-up to the point where if she smiled, it would crack like a plate.“I know you didn’t get the results you wanted. That’s, uhhhhh, that’s just how it is sometimes. Topaz? Topaz, darling, baby, go tell my guys I want to take the party ship out later.” He looked up from the comm to flap a wave of dismissal at the implacable, unsmiling tank of a woman. Topaz was the only person that seemed to legitimately care for the man and was happy to execute his commands. She left without hesitation, content to have something to do. “So you try something else. Have a little fun. Change it up. No, I don’t care. I won’t care, exactly, until you tell me I’m going to get what I want. Which is my money back. My win. My… moment.”Heat entered the Grandmaster’s voice for a single second, flaring and hostile. Then it was gone as quick as it arrived, drowning in that affable, half-mad giggle. He fluttered his hand off to the side, beckoning for a towel.The attendant peeled one off and handed it to him with a bow that showed off her cleavage nicely enough. He beamed approvingly at her and then promptly forgot she existed. On the screen, the attendant stole a glance as the already semi-permanent frown crease more deeply across Proxima Midnight’s face. She was looking away, to mutter to someone else. The attendant didn’t know to whom.“So, uhh…. Unless you have something else you want to set up today, I want to finish my spongy bubbles here and take some me time. I think you should do the same, sweetheart, you’ve got so many wrinkles coming in. I know… I know you grieve him, he was a hell of a guy, but-“Proxima said something the attendant didn’t catch.“Well, look, I already told you, I’m… I’m not going to fight my brother like that. He’s your problem. We’ve got rules, in this mixed up little family we made. Just like you.” He half turned around and began flapping at his attendants, freshly irritated. “Do you have another game? Then we’re done for now, bye-bye.” He silenced the comm and threw it across the floor with a disgusted sigh. “Harsh my vibe, honestly, the woman has no taste.” He flapped at his attendants again, the fingers whipping fast. “This is the go away signal. I know lots of you are new, so I’m not going yell or get the angry stick this time. Go away. I’ll call you when it’s time to come back, okay? All right? Mwah!” He blew an air kiss towards them and then flopped hard into his chair with a giant uggghh. The tentacled masseuse delicately resumed its work, a longtimer that knew the Grandmaster’s dramatic turns of emotion well.The attendants collectively looked at each other, sharing a single moment of exhausted sisterhood. And then they scattered, as ordered.. . .An attendant in the Grandmaster’s hedonistic court barely rated a name, much less the acknowledgement of some individual identity. Regardless, the newest attendant had one she kept tightly to herself. It was Kara, and she loathed the job, frankly, having no small amount of previous and much superior handmaiden experience to compare it to. Fortunately, her engagement was going to be extremely temporary.The one ‘nice’ thing about Sakaar was that its general trash planet attitude gave one an unusual amount of privacy. Mostly because nobody gave a good godsdamn about anyone else. Letting herself into the small private quarters she’d been assigned gave her a rare amount of freedom most infiltration jobs didn’t allow. She snapped the gilded band out of her hair, tore off the stupid metallic shift that itched in places no loving deity would permit, and threw on a comfortable tunic of fine-woven Asgardian cotton, the only item she’d brought that could give her ruse away, yet she risked it happily. After that, she poured herself a glass of bad wine and dug up the hidden deck from where she’d stashed it in a weak portion of the wall.It took half the glass and a good facial scrub before she got connection, the vidfeed coming in nice and clear for all the effort. “Tam?” She smiled at her old friend, slumped and equally tired looking in her captain’s chair. “So, how was your week?”“They took me to the local Ends, Kara. I couldn’t say no. The girl’s got that puppy eye thing humans do.” Tam’s eyes rolled around the cockpit for dramatic flair. “You know how I get involved for a good sob story and a beer.”Kara put her glass down, turning deadly serious. “Tam, it was a rescue call. Just a rescue. What in the hells…” She pinched at the bridge of her nose, worried and annoyed all at once. “Did you have to lie to them? Gods, I’m sorry, you didn’t have to-”“No, no. They were great. The man himself’s truly unfucked a bit, so I glossed over a ton and nobody called me on dip. Got a new hire out of the deal, too. A good one.” Kara looked up at the sound of the giantess shifting comfortably in her seat. “I actually had a pretty terrific time. It’s just…” Tam shrugged. “I might’ve come close to outing the game once or twice.”“Tam!”“I think the Daisy gal just assumed stuff translated, like, how do I tell her I know what Uber Eats is? And, well, I might’ve let on that I know a ‘security’ person with a little bit of reputation.”Kara, with slow and dramatic effect, dropped her face into her hands.“I didn’t name names! I’m not some blazin’ arse murderspy to noble houses, woman! That’s your job!” Kara could see the flailing through her fingers. “And nobody else in the galaxy can make a good pizza! We don’t have pepperoni back home.”“Oh, my gods.”“Anyway, it’s still a damned good thing you got wind of the play out there, that call what came in. I picked up the distress the moment I got into local Earth space.” Tam sighed. “Sixty godsdamn jumps from start. Sixty. You know, it took me twenty minutes to find their vapor trail from signal cutout, and it was a close thing for their sakes, and yet I’m a little tiny bit glad, because they never guessed I was busy chundering hot soup the whole time. I have never envied a Druff more. They don’t have stomachs like we do, so they’re not hosing down Engineering every time I do something crazy.”“Tam. I am so sorry.” Kara still had her face in her hands.“Made me look a little more standoffish than usual at first, so that worked out, too. Your prince forgot to question me about that bit, when he later tweaked my ship’s a good one under the rust. Aghhhhh. It was worth it, I think. Anyway, our end got tied off best as it could. They’re back home safe. Gods, get your hands off your face, is Sakaar that bad?”“I hate it.” Kara took her hands off of her cheeks and picked up the wine, feeling freshly exhausted all over again.“The Ends miss you. You’d like it right now, big new feckin’ hole in the side of the scum ring. Docking teams remember you.”“I hate them and the Ends, too.”“Yeah, they know. Okay, Sakaar sucks, but where you at with the big show?” Tam leaned forward into the vidscreen view, curious. “We lost trail here, and I didn’t tell them anything because I didn’t know anything. You get payoff after the call?”Kara reached over to splice in the recording she’d stolen out of the docking files. Wordlessly, she let Tam watch what she’d already studied more than a dozen times. The arrival of the anonymous looking shuttle through one of the wormholes, a couple of months ago. The departure of its cargo - two women, side by side. One was immediately recognizable as Proxima Midnight, the current leader of Thanos’s remaining generals. The other, the look on Tam’s face said she didn’t recognize her. She seemed cut from dead white marble from hair to toe, swathed in a thin layer of black, with a cold and clinically beautiful face.She waited until Tam leaned back. “They stayed for four days, striking up a deal with the Grandmaster to send some of his vibranium to Earth in the hands of a disposable mercenary crew. It wasn’t a difficult meeting, apparently, but he wanted the other one to stay a while.”“Can see why. Not to my basic bee hot buns preferences, but she’s a looker. He’d never pass that up, not from what you’ve told me.” Tam frowned. “Who is she?”“Not entirely certain. I think she’s the Swan, she fits a profile I found that suggested Thanos had a secret, well, counterpart to the Maw.” Kara made a seesaw gesture to illustrate. “An actual diplomat, not merely his final messenger.”“Someone with the temperament to handle the Grandmaster.”Kara nodded. “And I finally know how they pushed him.” She gave up one of her rare smiles at Tam’s look. “Prince Loki’s never been what we’d call impoverished, but we also know he financed part of his final push against Thanos out of some secret pocket that’s not on Asgard’s books. Proxima figured out at least part of how, and went to the Grandmaster to pressure him to her side with it.” She leaned forward, almost grinning. “The sly bastard caught wind of a major arena game a few years back, a set-up between the Grandmaster and the Collector. The Collector arranged for a Makluan space dragon to break a winning streak in the Arcade, was supposed to be this big secret twist. Reset the whole arena season. The Grandmaster stood to make millions of credits off the turn, refresh his reputation throughout the quadrant. But someone set up a shell account and played the longest odds, swiping the majority of the winnings and taking off with it all before the money got traced.”Tam stared at her, then began to slowly shake her head back and forth. “You know, after a point, you can’t help but admire the madman.”Kara rolled her eyes, refusing to ever admit such a thing. “In any case, the one thing you never want to suggest on this world is that the Grandmaster can lose.” She leaned back and finished off the dregs of her wine. “He doesn’t focus easily. But Proxima’s given him an actual enemy. And having any immortal as an enemy is bad ruddy news, much less one of these elders.”Tam pursed her lips. Then she dropped back into her chair again, scratching a finger along her tight hairline. “All right. I’m picking you up yet?”“Give me another week out here. I’ve got a few loose ends I want to chase.” Kara shrugged at the look she got. “I still don’t know why Prince Thor took a holiday here of all places. I know who he talked to, sure, but not why.”“Right, the scrapper woman.” Tam looked at her fingernail before dropping her hand to the console. “Is it important?”“Don’t know.” Kara sighed. “But if I do know anything, it’s that when the princes move, the galaxy follows. Whether it’s important right now or no, it’ll matter. I don’t want to be caught flatfooted when it does.”“Don’t get too caught up looking for clues when the trail suddenly wends behind you.” Tam put a hand up before Kara could protest. “I know. I know you’ve done this work a long time. But this is gone personal for you, and personal means the color of things change.”Kara grimaced. “It’s hardly personal, Tam-““It’s personal when the King of Asgard, a man I know damn well you’ve never loved, apologizes directly to you and asks you to keep his prodigal son out of the deep end of the shit.” Tam relaxed, knowing she sounded too forceful. “It’s personal. Watch your ass, little systir.”Kara understood well the things that weren’t being said, softening a little. “Why? You’re always watching it for me.”Tam smirked. “Yeah, I suppose I am.” She jutted her chin at the screen. “All right. Ping me when you’re ready to get out of that mess.”“I’ll be at the dock with my travel kit and a gang of angry shooters behind me.”Tam laughed, reaching for her comm control. “Every time, systir. Every damn time.” She tipped a wink. “More fun that way, eh?”“Always. Safe flight, Tam. Pet the lass for me when you get back to the fleet.”Tam copped a salute and canceled the feed, leaving Kara in relative peace and the company of the rest of a bad bottle of wine. She kicked her feet up onto the desk and stared at the ceiling for a while, wondering, as she did, why every choice in her road sooner or later led right back to home. A wish from a lost Queen, maybe, a sorceress’s final unbreakable spell. To see her family safe, whatever weapon it took to ensure it.Well, reckoned Kara to herself. She could be that.~Fin
Confidence is about knowing you can make it right.
~ John Scalzi, The Consuming Fire
. . .
03-12-19, all rights to Marvel, etc, and all blame to relevant parties.