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The air between the two groups was so tense you could cut it with a knife even as the Emperor waxed amused at Harry and Ororo at the front of the group, with Jean and Hela walking behind them with the Emperor's sisters, Lilandra and Deathbird. Behind them, moving in almost single file across from one another in the hallway, the Custodes and Imperial Guard tried not to look at one another.
The Custodes were attempting to be diplomatic and professional, while more than a few of them, Ben and Alex foremost, were fighting back smirks at their relatively easy win over the Imperial Guard. The Imperial Guard resented the same thing and were angry that they needed the humans' aid.
For their part, D'ken's sisters seemed to be following his lead as best they could. Lilandra, who seemed to be the most diplomatic and polite of the trio, made small-talk with Jean, asking about how the Fantastic Four had become part of the Custodes, likening it to how the Praetorian Watch had grown to become the Imperial Guard. Next to her, Deathbird and Hela tried their best, but neither was mentally built to turn around and be nice to people who had moments earlier attacked them with intent to kill. And unlike Harry and D'ken, neither could act their way out of a paper bag.
Thankfully for everyone involved, it was at least a quick trip. The SOCC was where the magic of running a million system polity really happened, and much like the furiously paddling webs of a swan that moved majestically over the surface of a lake, it was buried directly underneath the palace. The doorways to it were guarded by two more Imperial Guard, both Shi'ar wearing their cut down version of power armor. And several hundred tiny dots in the wall indicated there was some other kind of defense waiting there for any interlopers.
And, once more like the feet of a swan, it was very busy. Thousands of people were spread out around the massive, football stadium-size, seven-story room; a vast cavernous space illuminated by numerous bits of lightning here and there with everything inside but the people being shades of grey. The people themselves wore blue or silver as they sat at their consoles or moved around the room. From Gladiator's memories, Harry knew that every single system that was part of the Shi'ar Empire was represented here. Every large military force, every outpost, every planet, every large scale production facility or shipyard which held strategic importance. All of them had their own dedicated communications system linked back to this one place, consoles covering every inch of wall, and each of them manned at all times.
If this place had been built by humans, Harry decided, they would probably have devised the room to be even larger. It might have been interspersed with bits of artwork, intervening walls, and areas of responsibility separated by runners to take reports to the higher-ups. They would possibly have made each segment circular, to give the impression that everyone was equal.
Here, that was not the case. The whole area was a single rectangle, and everything about it was simply, almost brutally, functional, even the bits at the far ends where the walls looked newer than the rest, likely additions made over centuries, were built in the same manner. The Shi'ar's own planets had a dedicated segment of the room, the topmost two floors. The other races of the empire were thus below the Shi'ar in every sense of the word, with interconnected walkways here and there at every level.
The doorway let them out from the side of the rectangular room's, and ahead of them, rising up from a central crossway between the walls, was a further raised area in the center of the room. It rose from a single steel pillar before spreading out to form a circular dais, almost like an eyrie.
And then there was the noise. A vast susurration of sound, filling the room from end to end. Everyone within was talking into a microphone intermittently, and every position seemed to have some kind of silencer so that the noise wouldn't be as loud as it should have been. Yet even though not everyone within the vast area was speaking, there were still so many people talking that it was like standing inside Camelot's main hall at lunch. The noise was just a massive amount of background noise hitting you the moment you entered.
That sound cut off the abruptness of the guillotine, as the guards on the door announced the Emperor's presence. "All hail his Imperial Highness D'ken!"
As one everyone within that vast room, Shi'ar or not, and there were a lot of other aliens around, stood up or stopped where they were walking to turn in the direction of the door, saluting with their fists to their heart and then raising them at an angle as they shouted, "Majestor Rex!"
The Emperor simply nodded his head once, then moved into the room. By the entrance to the room was a large circular portion cut out of the flooring. "Guardian, if you and your officers will join me, my people will create a presentation on our conflict with Galactus and his Herald."
Harry nodded and followed the man over, noticing that several of his Imperial Guard was also moving with them. "Ororo, Hela, and Mr. Richards and Jean, if you could join us, please?" Harry looked over at Strange, but the other magic user shook his head, indicating he was fine not being involved in the initial discussion. When it came down to planning out the ambush's magical side, he would have something to contribute, not before.
All of them save Jean nodded and moved to join them, but Jean waved him off. "If you're going to talk military matters, I'm not certain I would have anything to add."
Ororo and Hela also stopped before they could step onto the obvious hover device. "That looks rather too packed. I will provide my own transportation, thank you," Ororo said politely, while Hela simply rose into the air. The two flyers – or those currently flying anyway - waited until the circular dais lifted, then began to fly alongside it, joined by more of the Imperial Guard, Manta, Starbolt and Electron, whom Harry and the others knew was second-in-command of the Imperial Guard.
This was the only place in the room where there was anything that wasn't strictly utilitarian, holding comfortable cushions situated around a central area. The center was taken over by a hard light projection device.
As they settled down onto the cushions, Harry noted the Emperor was frowning and wondered why.
And the Emperor was indeed frowning. D'ken had hoped that the earlier moment with his welcome and the sheer size of the SOCC would have overawed the humans. Instead, they seemed to have taken it in stride. Hela had seen larger and more busy areas before. For a few, it was simply the fact that they were not overawed by numbers or size at all, like Ororo and Mr. Richards. For Harry, he acknowledged the size of the room, and thus the size of the Empire. But he also remembered the phrase 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall.' The larger the Empire, the more it becomes vulnerable.
A few moments of tense small talk passed before the humans and the royal trio was joined by a group of four military personnel. Each of them was dressed in a form-fitting outfit of white and silver uniforms of some kind. One, a Shi'ar, wore rank marks or medals on his shoulders and at his belt.
They all bowed to D'ken, then one of them, who looked like he belonged to the same species as Atra, moved over to the holographic device and began to fiddle with it, with Reed watching in interest. Looking at the aliens among them, the man who had been at the head of the group of four stepped forward. He was one of the two oldest Shi'ar Harry had yet met, much like the majordomo who had ushered them into the palace. But whereas the majordomo had seemed to carry with him sort of obsequious dignity, this man radiated grim purpose and military bearing to a level that Harry had seldom seen.
"Humans, I am Star Martial Vin'car, and I am the head of Naval Operations and Strategic Command. With me are specialists who have been involved in putting together all the data we have been able to gather from our battles against Galactus. This constitutes quite a bit in terms of recordings since neither Galactus nor his Herald, who goes by the name of Morg the Executioner, seem to care about us learning anything about them. This level of arrogance would be a weakness if it were not built on fact."
He paused to let his rank and words to sink in before continuing. "You must understand that this crisis is unprecedented in history, as far as we know. Galactus is a threat to any planet he comes across, but this is the first time that he seems to be deliberately heading into our Empire's core sector, rather than simply taking a planet and then disappearing into the depths of space."
"Point of order," Reed interrupting, raising his hand. "Do you have records of Galactus previously preying upon your Empire before this occurred?"
"We do not," Vin'car replied instantly, seemingly taking no umbrage at the interruption. "We do have records of previous empires, previous star-faring polities that were met by Galactus at some point, but no records of the actual battles against him."
"How exactly have you been attempting to fight him?" Ororo inquired. "And how often? How many planets have you lost?"
"We have lost four planets and around one hundred and forty billion people."
Harry gasped at that, shaking his head. "That's impossible. No planet could…"
The man held up a hand, smiling thinly at the foolishness of the people in front of him. "I was talking about total numbers. The planets themselves would have had several billion, upwards of 20 or so I believe for most. One of them had 40 billion. But it was a unique planet, a planet nearly the size of a gas giant but in the life-zone of its star and with several water-bearing moons, most of which were destroyed as the planet exploded. Beyond that, in each attack, Morg or Galactus have wiped out all the defenders in space, both system defense and true Imperial Navy fleets. Add in the local merchant fleets and Imperial Fleet units which ran into Morg between planets, and you come close to the one hundred and forty billion."
The worker by the hologram finished inputting commands, and a map of space appeared, far smaller than Harry knew the Shi'ar Empire to be. It was evident that these people understood the importance of information and were not going to share anything that they didn't have to. But on that map appeared a course, a check-mark almost moving in from the outer edge of the Empire deeper into Shi'ar territory. On the route, four dots pulsed a deeper blood-red light.
Staring at it, Harry asked, "Have you been able to track them through deep space?"
"We have been able to somewhat track the Herald for some time before he arrives in a system and after. But the instant Galactus leaves any star system, we lose him entirely." Another one of the Shi'ar spoke up. "We believe that he is traveling through real space, rather than hyperspace, but doing so far faster than any other real spaceship or design could go. Or he could be using some kind of hyperspace capability that is more similar to teleportation over solar-distances than actual travel between them."
"We believe…" the man stopped, looking over the Emperor, who just nodded once, tightly, indicating he should continue. "Given the last planet that Galactus ate and the route he took afterward, we fear that Morg is making for this star system."
"That does seem rather more pointed than I would have assumed," Reed, scowling. "But we have long assumed that the Herald would have a major impact on Galactus' eating habits. In which case, an analysis of the individual in question is mind might help."
"Beyond his name, we don't have much information about Morg. But we have a lot of information on how he fights and thinks by this point."
The holographic star map was placed quickly by several videos. First was of a streak in the sky of the solar system, then an image of the Herald himself. He was a massive man, easily as tall as Colossus or Warpath, with reddish skin that looked like a mix of skin and clay. He wore dark gray pants and had gray hair falling from the sides of his head, but was bald on the top. His eyes gleamed golden, crackling with power that rose from them in the video as he shouted something. A second later, a tinny audio recording joined the video. "I am the Herald of Galactus, the World Eater! Your planet has been chosen to feed his almighty hunger. Flee or die. Fight, and you will only die sooner."
"That does not match the announcement the Silver Surfer gave us," Mr. Fantastic shook his head in some dismay.
"We knew this one was more sadistic than the Silver Surfer. It stands to reason that he revels in it more than the Silver Surfer did," Harry replied.
Vin'car nodded. "This first time, we had nothing in the way of defenses ready. The local military did its best, but…"
The video again changed at this point, showing a fight in a city of some kind. Its buildings almost uniformly drab and utilitarian, bar a few examples of windows that looked as if they had been made into amazingly different shapes and images, like miniature sculptures almost, designed to not only let in the light, but also to add a certain amount of breathtaking beauty to what would otherwise have been a horribly dull landscape under normal circumstances.
"This was a planet colonized by the Mi'asich people. As you can see, their normal 'artwork' on display," the Shi'ar to an individual looked disgusted, before Vin'car went on. "They are known for being amazing farmers and agricultural experts, so we have allowed them their inadequacies."
The video began once more, showing several hover tanks, planes, and simple infantryman fighting it out with Morg until the video changed, showing Galactus's arrival. Dozens of orbital platforms opened fire on him, but Galactus didn't even notice their fire, moving through them like so much rain hitting a tank's roof. Harry frowned, touching his lightning Starbolt scar thoughtfully. "While I know you won't give me any information on the weapons those platforms mount, could you estimate how much kinetic impact they impart to their target?"
He figured kinetic impact would be something so low-tech that the Shi'ar wouldn't mind sharing it, and would also be a somewhat universal theorem.
This took a few minutes to calculate, but eventually, a number was given. In terms of what Steven, Jean, Hela, Ororo using her magic, or Harry himself could dish out, it wasn't much. But it was a lot more than say Warpath or anyone not in full juggernaut armor would be able to take. The armor would be a great equalizer, though.
When Galactus landed, the orbital defenses attempted to use purely kinetic and even what appeared to be nuclear strikes. It didn't work.
"That's not good," Ororo murmured.
"We weren't actually expecting conventional weapons to be of much use against Galactus regardless," Harry demurred, shaking his head.
"Did those strikes injure Morg at all?" Mr. Richards questioned in a tone that implied he knew the answer.
"No. The orbital strikes didn't hurt Morg at all," Vin'car ground out through clenched teeth.
The video continued to show Galactus creating his energy siphon, the parts coming together out of nowhere.
"Our scientists speculate that he has access to some kind of internal hyper-dimensional shipyard or construction facility that he can call upon it need."
"What we would call an expanded space," Harry nodded thoughtfully, while Reed added that he had seen Galactus do much the same thing.
Throughout this, the orbital defenses, which had mostly been left intact, had continued to fire down at Galactus. Although they didn't hurt the giant himself, this bombardment eventually hit something in the machinery. At that point, Galactus finally took notice of their activities. He barked out a word, and Morg finished toying with a few of the ground forces, rocketing up into the orbit.
The Shi'ar believed in heavily defending their planets via orbital structures. Few systems apparently had much in the way of an actual fleet, but their fixed defenses were normally more than enough to guarantee the planet's safety until the nearest fleet unit could arrive against any normal enemy, a classic example of the hammer and anvil strategy, which Emma had passed on to the others after she had shredded Gladiator's mind, that the Shi'ar were fond of.
But Morg was too fast. He dodged at least four out of five attempts to hit him, and those that did strike him didn't do any damage. Unlike with Galactus, they did knock Morg back, and once spun him around entirely in space. But they couldn't seem to do any real damage. He mouthed something as he brought down his axe, cleaving a space station in two with a blast of energy from its edge. "It took a long while for us to figure out what he was saying bear, but he was shouting, "I am Morg, the Executioner! All of you will die to feed my Master!"
"I wonder how Galactus chooses his Heralds. I would've thought before this that there was some kind of process, but I would've also said that Galactus was not the type to use an executioner as his servant," Reed murmured.
"Let us move on," Storm interjected. "We all know what happens to the planet after that machinery goes active. The planet dies from the inside out. But I have no wish to actually see it occur."
Harry nodded. "There doesn't seem to be anything we can learn here."
The second and third battles were different. Elements of the Imperial Guard Subguardians were able to arrive and battle Morg. These were men or women from races who already had a representative in the Royal Guard or Borderer units, the Imperial Guard's two chief sub-groups. The Praetors were the guards of the Emperor, the group that acted solely on his whim and in extreme situations. The Borderers were smaller units of Imperial Guardsmen who were stationed in varying strength along the border of the Empire, the first line of superpowered defense against alien empires.
"In this case, of course, they were completely bypassed," Vin'car shrugged. "But due to this battle, we have a decent idea of the Herald's abilities."
As he finished speaking, a new video began to play, showing a mid-space battle between Morg and what looked like more than a dozen Imperial Guardsmen. Most of them were of the same variety: the Smasher type of alien, which wore blue and white suits with helmets that had red visors. From down below, Jean reminded Harry that the suit was apparently only useable by this one species, although Gladiator didn't know why. "The man thought they were among the more useless and expendable members of the Imperial Guard if I remember right."
"I think we're about to get a lesson as to why," Harry drawled back, a moment of dark humor flashing across his mind as he looked at what he somehow knew was going to be a massacre.
The other Guardsmen in the video were more varied, composed of a few of the individuals could increase their size dramatically like Titan, and several Shi'ar wearing battle suits like Electron, although none of the battle suits came close to what Harry had seen Iron Man or his own Coyote or Ghigau do. They seemed to rely primarily on flight and energy attacks rather than durability.
This was shown rather graphically when one of them was sliced in half across the waist by Morg's axe. Morg was then grabbed from behind by several of the Titans, but shrugged them off, burning one badly by a blast of the Power Cosmic from one hand, causing Harry to lean forward and stare at the energy thus released. It was the clearest picture they'd seen so far of that, the FF not having had any images to pass on, and he asked intently, "Do we have a reading on the power of that energy?"
While sneering somewhat good-naturedly at the use of the word 'we,' Vin'car shook his head. "No. None of the battling Imperial Guard had such sensor equipment on them, and the local space stations weren't close enough. This entire battle was being recorded by remote control drones after all, which Morg seemingly ignored."
Grunting, Harry turned his attention back to the video, watching as another blast from Morg cut the head off one of the Smashers, and sent another tumbling away through space with its chest burned to a crisp. Two more of the Imperial Guard were thrown away, then Morg hurled his axe at a third, the weapon crashing into him and sinking deeply into the Titan's chest despite his armor.
Thank goodness most of my people are armed with Juggernaut armor or the lighter version, Harry reflected. That axe at least should be stopped by their armor. However, he did not put too much weight on that, since he knew from Jean that Morg had at some point acquired a Phoenix Force-imbued blade. The original Juggernaut armor, which Harry had appropriated for Warpath for this mission, would stop such a blade, and Harry felt the heavier versions of the Orichalcum armor might do the same. But he doubted the lighter armor, based on the armor he had taken from Balthaak, would be up to the task.
One of the Imperial Guard, another Smasher, got in a blow that rang Morg's head for a moment, while another grabbed him, and then activated some kind of booster device. It seemed to overwhelm Morg's own ability to move in space, and they soon slammed into the atmosphere, descending rapidly, both of them turning red from the heat.
But whereas the Imperial Guardsmen began to cry out in pain, Morg simply took it, twisting in his grip. When the Guardsman, a Titan, tried to get away, Morg grabbed the man in a bear hug. He then began laughing wildly as the heat of reentry continued to grow. By the time that Morg slammed into the surface of the planet, another heavily industrialized world, although this one seems to be more factory-based, there was nothing left of the Imperial Guardsmen but a charred crisp. Morg tossed the corpse aside and then screamed as he lifted his hands towards the camera.
The video cut out, and Vin'car explained that the orbital space station which had been recording the device via drone recorders had been annihilated at that point. "It took the locals a truly unconscionable amount of time to put more drones into action under the command of another space station, but that space station had been the center of the command-and-control network for the orbitals."
When the video did come back, the rest of the Imperial Guard had been dealt with. Morg stood among their bodies, howling his laughter to the sky. Seeing this, Storm shook her head. "He is most obviously insane, I would say. It also seems that using only a few types of the same troops hampered the Imperial Guard's ability to combat him. They all had to face him in close combat, where this Morg obviously feels most at home."
"We assumed much the same thing. Normally we have Subgaurdian companies stationed on their homeworlds training, as was the case here. The homeworlds of the Ti'an and the Sh'tral were close to Sethesk Prime. In the next battle, we were able to better bring together a good synergy of abilities. But…" Vin'car paused, looking over the Emperor.
The Emperor scowled but then waved one hand airily before using that same hand to point to one of his sisters. Lilandra grimaced but took up the tale. "You must understand that Sethesk 5 was at one point a very important planet to our people, the homeworld of the rightful heir of the Empire when he was ousted by a corrupt cabal of his father's ministers. It was home to many of our history museums, and the site of an Imperial Vault called the Vault of Shame. Things had been put there which our race wished to forget, but which could not be destroyed either due to their importance to our lineage, or simply because we lacked the means to do so. One of them was a sword, imbued with power from some kind of fell hyper-spatial entity, one which our people banished long ago."
"She's either lying or no one ever actually realized that Rook'shir was an avatar of the Phoenix Force. I'm not certain that's believable at all, or where this whole hyperspatial entity thing came from. Although considering how they believe that imagination is a sign of madness, perhaps they just don't like the idea of any force as primal as the Phoenix Force existing," Jean mused, still listening in via Harry's senses.
Sending Jean back a feeling of agreement through their connection, Harry nodded blandly to Lilandra even as he felt Jean turn her attention to something else. "I presume then that this Vault of Shame was then found, and this sword discovered. And that Morg can use it?"
"Correct. We had protected the sword as best we could, creating a death trap within the vault, but Morg survived it all easily. As easily as Gladiator would have. It was that act which made us realize that even the full might of the Imperial Guard with Gladiator at its head couldn't face off against Galactus and his Herald. We then made the decision to send Gladiator to the Fantastic Four, but our conflicts with Galactus and Morg did not end there."
The video began again, showing groups of tanks, flights of planes, and dug-in infantry attempting to fight Morg. This was an exercise in futility. Morg, coming out of a giant crater with his skin marked only here and there by burn marks and with his new sword in hand, simply ignored their fire. Closing quickly, he laughed as he cut tanks in half, split jet fighters, or simply stomped or pounded infantrymen into so much paste.
Storm looked away, shaking her head sadly. Taking her hand, Harry kept watching, staring hard at the sword and noting that Morg seemed to use it just as well as his axe. The sword was even larger than Morg's axe. Indeed, it looked like what Harry had heard called a Buster Sword, a sword equivalent of a BFG. The weapon seemed almost as long as a polearm, and the blade was at least as wide as Morg's two hands pressed end to end.
The blade glowed a dark, pulsing red and black as Morg used it to hack and slice his enemies apart, enjoying himself immensely as the blade turned darker and more pulsing with each life taken. It was an orgy of destruction, of blood being spilled for no purpose other than to sate Morg's hunger for blood and strife.
"He could have simply called in Galactus, and attacked those people who came after him or attempted to interfere with his master," Hela scoffed. "Tis a bad servant who puts his own desires ahead of those of his master."
"Agreed. Instead, Morg uses the time before Galactus arrived to basically wipe out every military base on the planet. When Galactus did finally show up, Morg had just begun to target the orbital stations." Deathbird of all people spoke up. The most warlike member of the Imperial Family stood there white-knuckled and fingering her odd claw-like weapons as she stared into the video.
"As horrifying as this is, it does give insight on Morg's personality. Do you have any illusionists among the Imperial Guard? People who could play with his senses?" Harry asked. He knew they did, but he didn't want to give away the fact they had telepaths strong enough to break Gladiator's natural mental defenses.
"We have one or two individuals with limited telepathic abilities, like Oracle, who you apparently dealt with earlier," Vin'car interjected, taking over the meeting again at the Emperor's nod. None of the Shi'ar looked very comfortable with that idea, which Harry felt was fair enough - many humans were wary of telepaths. "But whatever power Galactus has given him has made Morg immune to mental attack."
"Damn," Mr. Richards scowled, shaking his head. "I had hoped that that was an ability that only the Silver Surfer retained. He had a low-key empathic or telepathic ability of his own. But I suppose it makes sense that those abilities come included with the Power Cosmic, as Galactus calls it."
"It might even explain something of this Morg's lust for battle and blood." When the others looked at her, Hela shrugged her shoulders, reaching upwards to tap her half-mask thoughtfully. "If he is a psychopath, someone who enjoys causing pain and death to other people, then his ability to actually feel those emotions more, to feel their fear or despair in agony, would simply push him to ever-higher levels of barbarity."
Everyone there, even the Emperor, looked a little sick at that thought, although Harry knew that the Emperor himself had quite a few psychopathic tendencies. Still, Harry kept his mind on the important things. "But you don't have anyone who can create, say hard light illusions? I know that you have that one girl who tried to blind us earlier during the fracas. Has Morg dealt with that kind of attack before?"
At the mention of the recent battle in the throne room, D'ken's seeming concentration on the matter at hand slipped. He glared hard at Harry and the other humans, while Deathbird's teeth bared as she knelt down slightly, her arms to either side as her claw-weapons slid over her fingers. But Vin'car just kept speaking, and as he did, the royals' anger started to ebb away once more. "No, but it is an interesting line of speculation. This next video covers the third battle, the one where we put up the best fight we could against Morg."
The video began with Morg closing in on another planet. This one was home to an Imperial fleet and a Subguardian training cadre. Dozens of Imperial Guard were there, and the fleet and the Imperial Guardsmen who could operate in space met Morg before he could gain atmosphere. These included many of the types of attackers that Harry and the others had fought earlier, but none from the race as the girl who had attempted to create a blackout for all of them, nor the one with blue hair and skin who Harry knew to be Oracle.
Physical assaults didn't do much at all to Morg, imbued with the Power Cosmic as he was. But they did knock him backward, holding him in place, and eventually even beginning to wound him slightly. But at the same time, the Imperial Guard didn't close with him with other super-strong members, and without that, couldn't pin Morg down. Space was a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree environment, and thanks to the Power Cosmic, Morg could fly a bit faster than most of the Imperial Guard, bar the group of aliens from the same species as Manta. The Imperial Guard also came under counterbattery fire from Morg using beams of energy from one hand while sending out cutting waves of force from his sword.
That attack was very different from the normal energy attacks that Morg could launch from his offhand. The blasts of Power Cosmic were mostly white and silver, blooms of diffuse energy. The energy blasts from the blade were far more concentrated, thin cutting beams of energy that gleamed purple and blood red.
Jean hissed internally as she saw the blade through Harry's eyes, shaking her head. Those kinds of blasts were close to those she could use as an Avatar of the Phoenix Force, but they didn't have any of the light red or pink hue of her own original telepathic powers to augment them. They were a brute force thing, without any of the control Jean brought to the powers of the Phoenix Force, but that was about all Jean could tell via a video recording from a camera drone.
Despite that lack, the blade's energy was certainly potent. As Harry watched, the energy attack slashed right through a Shi'ar battleship and an Imperial Guardsman in one go while Morg raced in. Despite giving as good as he got long-range, Morg wanted to close with his attackers. Harry made a note of that, then, watching closely, frowned. "Hold it there!"
The command in his voice had the Shi'ar tech obeying before he even realized it, and when he looked up in chagrin, Harry smirked at him before asking, "Can you rewind it thirty seconds, please?"
Somewhat bemused, the man did so, and Harry and the others gathered on the Imperial Dais watched. Vin'car instantly saw what Harry had noticed and nodded sharply. "Neutron's Zeta's ability."
Harry supposed the number designation was meant to signify one individual of that odd race serving in the Imperial Guard from another.
On the video, the Imperial Guardsman Neutron reeled back, before twisting in space, his arms thrust out toward the enemy. The resulting blow crashed into Morg, sending him tumbling through space for a time as his mouth opened in a cry of pain. But then he righted himself and slew another Imperial Guardsman at long-range, and when Neutron Zeta attempted to charge forward, Morg used the Phoenix Force-imbued sword to cut him in two. Whatever ability to absorb and reflect energy the Imperial Guardsman contained was overcome in an instant.
"Ouch. Still, that's a start," Harry murmured, and the video resumed. Soon, the defenders' inability to actually hurt Morg became apparent, and the battle turned against them. They couldn't stop Morg from hitting the atmosphere, and he soon landed on the planet. Once on the ground, Morg did whatever it was that Heralds did to attract Galactus. A spherical silver ship flashed into being in midair over Morg, and a moment later, Galactus descended on a staircase of golden light.
After that, the battle became academic. The defenders tried. They tried their best, and despite his loathing for D'ken and the Shi'ar Empire, Harry had to mentally salute their courage, with Hela going so far as to do so physically. Imperial Guard or local military, they all fought their hardest, trying everything up to and including orbital bombardment on Galactus. But nothing they had could even slow Galactus going about his business of creating the energy siphon, which would allow him to feed on the planet's raw energy.
"Do we have any videos or scans of Galactus actually fighting? It just seems as if you couldn't even get his attention," Storm questioned, her tone commiserating as they watched the video continue to its macabre conclusion. "Mr. Fantastic has given us an idea of his defensive capabilities, but not so much his offensive ones, beyond energy projection."
"Only at the end of the next battle." Vin'car nodded to the technician, and soon another battle began to play in front of them. "Although I will warn you, we don't have much more than that."
The fourth battle was solely against a portion of the Imperial Guard. Like the third battle, a group of Guardsman with various abilities had been brought together. They included several like Mammoth and Smasher, who took the battle to Morg in close combat. But this basically played into his hands, and Morg cut through them, his mouth open in a soundless laugh caught by the many camera drones.
The rest of the Subguardian team fared little better, not having any member of the odd, space-black and star-spangled species that Neutron represented in the Imperial Guard. Without that ability to absorb the Power Cosmic, none of the Guard could fight Morg on an even footing. Many had a surprising amount of durability, but not enough to take more than a few blasts of the diffuse Power Cosmic strikes which Morg could send out from his hands, and none could stand against Rook'shir's blade. However, they retreated in a planned maneuver rather than in a panic.
The drones continued to watch as Morg moved on the planet. There he destroyed several of the orbital stations, both defensive and civilian, before landing. Once more, he made the speech, and then Galactus' ship appeared.
However, this was the point where the battle began to differ from the previous fights. First, the Imperial Guard began to attack Galactus while the local ground forces took up Morg's attention. More, Harry felt, because he simply wanted to kill them all rather than because they were a real threat. At the same time, groups of ships which had, according to Vin'car, retreated out of the way of Morg the moment he entered the system came back. And they were Imperial Fleet battleships, just like the ones in the previous battle.
These ships were nowhere near as large or bulky as their Kree counterparts, built for speed as everything the Shi'ar built seemed to be. They had sleek lines, looking like a mix between a falcon in flight in terms of their wings, but wider of body, with guns extended forward from wide, gaping 'mouths' which thrust forward and up from the rest of the ship's superstructure, with a minimal amount of broadside capability.
The battleships started to rain fire down on, not Galactus, but the slowly appearing energy siphon. This did make Galactus notice them, but that proved to be a very bad idea. First, Galactus raised a hand from where he had been directing the bits of technology creating the siphon from bits stored in his ship. Then from each finger flashed a beam of Power Cosmic, each of which hit a different member of the Imperial Guard around him, incinerating them all. Then he turned his attention to the fleet in orbit. His eyes flashed white, and the video instantly went to static.
"The entire fleet was incinerated, as was the planet's moon, all of the orbital industry and the few Imperial Guard who had remained in space. All in an instant," Vin'car declared coldly. With the briefing over, the Star Marshall now directed a sneer toward the humans. "There is a reason we felt that even with Gladiator at its head, we could do nothing to Galactus. Galactus is a force of nature. He can only be endured. Killing the Herald might be possible, but even that will not be easy."
"Agreed. However, I think we can do it. Or else me and my Custodes would not be here." Harry held Vin'car's eyes for a time, then, when the Shi'ar man looked away, gestured for Reed to speak. "Reed, tell them what you've learned about Galactus and his thought processes."
Reed nodded, then moved forward, gesturing to the hard light projector. "May I?" he requested politely. When the technician nodded, Reed used the device to put Morg and Galactus's images side by side. "I am going to start by explaining what I have discovered about Galactus. You are quite correct in that he is more correctly thought of as a force of nature. However, that does not mean that he cannot be beaten off or tricked. Because he has the one thing that such forces of nature don't often have: a mind and self-preservation instincts."
From there, Mr. Fantastic described how he and Fantastic Four had been able to trick their way aboard Galactus's ship thanks to the Silver Surfer's help. There they found the power source that they used to create a weapon Reed threatened Galactus with. "And as we told your Emperor, we don't have that power source any longer. However, that is where Harry and his special abilities will come into play."
D'ken scoffed, shaking his head. "Superstrength has proven to be less than useless against the Herald, let alone Galactus himself. And while your ability to create some kind of robot from the ground is interesting, that does not convince me you could harm Galactus."
"My power goes far beyond that," Harry answered simply, smiling thinly.
"And what exactly is this power?" D'ken barked.
"You won't believe me if I use my name for it." When the Emperor simply kept on glaring at him, Harry sighed. "I call it magic."
The Shi'ar all looked at one another in confusion, their translation software giving them a translation of that term, but the meaning of the word was so far outside of their own understanding of the universe that none of them could figure out what he really meant. No one in the Shi'ar Empire had ever heard of magic. Indeed if someone had, they would well have been killed due since imagination was seen as a sign of insanity among them.
Harry watched the Shi'ar work at it for a moment, then shook his head. "Nevermind. Suffice it to say that I have an energy power within me that I can use in various ways, which allows me to match powerful beings up to and including enemies like Galactus. Facing him will be the task of myself, our telepath/telekinetic, and others. But before that, we need to defeat the Herald. And I think given what you have told us, we can make a plan for that, and a way to drag Galactus into a battle which will be to our advantage."
While this discussion had been going on, Jean had been doing some careful telepathic investigation. The first thing she had discovered was that, while Oracle did, as they had known from Gladiator's mind, have telepathic powers, from what Jean sensed from her, the woman's powers were paltry in comparison to her own. Indeed, even Betsy would be a match for the woman. Moreover, while many of the courtiers had technology-based defenses against telepathy, the Imperial Guard did not. They seemed to trust Oracle for that task, which, given the woman's power, was more a statement of the kind of enemy they normally dealt with than anything else.
Among the Imperial Guard was one woman that Jean was kind of interested in - the woman that Hedwig had dealt with so quickly, Nightside. She was a young woman, somewhere between Jean and Ororo's age perhaps, with the trim, fit build of a soldier, which carried up into her chest, which, while at least the same size as Jean's were even tighter. her skin was slightly greenish, and her eyes opaque white, like Ororo when she used her mutant power, marked out on a thin, but lively face by black tattoos of some kind.
And from what they had seen in Gladiator's mind, Nightside's powers looked ideal for helping them trap Morg, and possibly even Galactus himself. If, that is, the World-Eater had other things to contend with at the same time. Moreover, Emma had passed on the fact the woman was seen as a problem by Gladiator for not going along with the Emperor's desire to bed her.
Slowly, hesitantly, Jean reached out to her mind. First, she made certain to shut down the woman's mouth, after all, a shriek or gasp at hearing a mental voice that wasn't your own was a perfectly understandable reaction, but one that she could not allow at the moment. "Hello, my name is Phoenix, what's yours?"
The woman at the other end of this dialogue responded far faster than Jean had expected. Her eyes widened, then she looked away from her fellow Imperial Guard, staring up at the Imperial Dais instead of letting any of them notice her shock. "Since I don't even know what a Phoenix is, can I assume this is some kind of telepathic communication? You don't sound like Oracle, either."
"No, I'm not Oracle. I'm the one dressed all in red and gold. It goes with the full Phoenix theme, seeing as that is a firebird, a mythological creature on my world."
"And you're also keeping me from shrieking in shock, interesting trick," the woman replied, her mental voice now a growl. "What the fuck do you want?"
"I just think that you and your Emperor don't seem to be on the best of terms, that's all. I'm mostly an empath before I'm a telepath. I felt your revulsion at him when we were in the hallway earlier. The fact that you've kept at least two of your Imperial Guard between you and him at all times is another kind of clue," Jean replied drolly. It was sort of a lie since Jean hadn't felt the other woman's emotions at the time, being unwilling to test the range of the royals' telepathic protection. But her observation of the distance was true.
At that, the woman stilled, then barked harshly, "What's it to you?"
"Your powers are going to be important for the plan Harry and the others are evolving," Jean replied. "I want to know if your head will be in the game frankly."
"What do you mean you need my powers? Won't you all be doing most of the fighting?" Nightside questioned, her interest piqued.
"Even the most powerful people have to see," Jean teased gently. "And whatever else the Power Cosmic does to people, it doesn't give them extra senses outside of a bit of telepathy. And trust me, I'm going to be blocking whatever telepathy that guy has very quickly. So yes, you're going to be a major part in that battle, provided you can project your powers far enough."
Nightside hummed in thought, then sent the mental equivalent of a nod. "I can see that, I guess. As for range, I can only project Dark Force around four hundred feet away from me."
"That's going to be annoying, but we can work with it, I think. And the fact you're talking to me at all makes me think I was all too accurate about why you are so uneasy about the Emperor," Jean replied gently.
Nightside twitched at that, then sent a shrug sort of image back along the link that Jean had created. "I suppose it doesn't take a genius, does it? The Emperor has an entire harem full of women who are eager to see to his desires, and yet he's lusting after me and keeps on doing it despite my continued refusals. And my co-workers don't seem to care enough to speak up for me. It's enough to make me wonder about my place in the Imperial Guard."
"How do you all choose who is going to be among the Imperial Guard anyway? I understand that there is an organization called the Borderers, then the Subguardians, and then all of you Praetors, but how do you make the jump from one group to another?"
"By being the best at your species' special ability. I'm the best when it comes to my people's connection to the Dark Force."
"The Dark Force? You named it that earlier, but what is it?"
"It is an energy source, an energy source of pure darkness. Strangely enough, I think that the bird who disabled me somehow used it to teleport. I've never heard of the like for a living being, but it felt sort of familiar. We can use it for multiple things such as displacing projectile attacks or blinding our enemies. If the enemy has a weak mind, the Dark Force will instill hallucinations in the target's mind so long as they stay engulfed," Nightside replied, one hand moving up to gently rub at the raccoon-like markings on her face for a moment.
"Is it just blindness, or is it total sensory deprivation?"
Nightside shook her head. "I can't block out hearing. But if the person has eyes or any kind of optical receptors, the Dark Force will blind them. Beyond that, you already have that one fellow who was throwing out sonic sounds, and we have someone with a similar power. His codename is White Noise. Between us, I bet we could easily block the Herald from seeing or hearing anything that we didn't want him to!"
"That's amazing and proves that you'll be almost invaluable against Morg. Heck, that kind of thing might even work on Galactus for a certain value," Jean enthused, glad the woman was willing to work to them.
Jean then paused, pulling back from Nightside's mind for a moment, as Oracle looked in her direction. Nightside nodded to the other woman, who nodded back, then looked up towards where the discussions were going on. The woman practically radiated grief and anger in equal measure, which Jean supposed was fair enough. From Gladiator's mind, they had learned that he and Oracle had been lovers, although Emma had thought it was mostly a physical thing from his perspective. But from Oracle's emotions, it certainly didn't seem that way.
She watched Nightside closely, but as Jean had predicted the woman would, she made no effort to signal Oracle or any of the others that she had just been contacted by one of the humans. Instead, she waited for Jean to reconnect.
The first words out of the telepath's mental mouth addressed this. "And you didn't tell Oracle about me. Interesting."
"I'm waiting for you to get to the real point about why you're contacting me," Nightside replied in a mental drawl.
"All right, let me ask, how loyal to the Empire are you? If we gave you a way out, a way to leave the Imperial Guard, maybe even leave the Empire behind… would you take it?"
"If you had asked me before I was part of the Praetor, I would've been certain my loyalty to the Empire was absolute. But that was before I was ordered to bed the man by my own comrades!" Nightside almost shuddered before getting control of herself.
Jean got the impression that she had even been ordered by someone else but wasn't going to inquire further, seeing as it was very obviously a touchy subject. "Good, stay alive, and when the time comes, we might be able to, well abscond with you if you want."
"I want!" Nightside growled, her mental voice firm, almost desperate before she gave Jean a bit of a shock by admitting what Jean had only suspected. "When my own family believes it's a high honor to sleep with the man, and my mother practically orders me to, I think it's time for me to leave."
Jean soothed the woman, promised that they would get her away and that Nightside wouldn't have to fight her fellow guardsmen, which she would still have a problem with. After that, Jean pulled back from Nigthside's mind.
Instead, she began to feel out the emotions of the people around her subtly to get a better overview of the rest of the Imperial Guard. The two androids Jean couldn't get anything from, but everyone else had quite a bit of anger as well as a feeling of slowly ebbing humiliation going through their minds. They didn't like how they had been manhandled. This was accompanied by some arrogance. In particular, Manta and Oracle felt that if the full Imperial Guard had been there, they could've overwhelmed the Custodes.
Given their powers, Jean didn't think they would have much of a chance. They didn't seem to have anything that could deal with her, Hela, Ororo, or Harry.
The main problem came from the Praetor's leaders. First, Electron, his anger and growing annoyance with the humans' very presence there. Then there was Oracle, whose grief was broadcasting out from her thanks to her telepathy. Those two are completely set against us, Jean thought. Something we're going to have to take into account during our battle plan, let alone afterward.
She reported this to Storm, who was no longer taking part in the conversation above them. She didn't want to risk jogging Harry or Hela's elbows by contacting them or risk the telepathic defenses detecting her use of her powers somehow. After all, alien technology might be more advanced or more sensitive than the human equivalent.
"One convert is enough, Jean," Storm replied, warning Jean to stop her probing of the guard. "Still, it's good to know that the Imperial Guard might be looking for a way to stab us in the back even before they are ordered to. That could make the fighting against Morg and Galactus difficult."
"You become certain of that too, I take it?" Jean sent back with a mental image of a scowl. "I have to admit that I am somewhat less than happy about Harry's overall plan now that I've met and talked to Nightside. There are some good people in this Empire."
"You haven't even seen how they fight for their own planets," Storm replied. "There are certainly good people among the Empire, but the Empire itself is corrupt, racist, and evil. Regardless of what Emperor or Empress sits on the throne, that's not going to change. And they will turn on us the moment Galactus is dealt with. I can't even blame them beyond the Emperor himself. It's simply realpolitik as they understand the term."