Suddenly, a volley of projectiles slammed into the shuttle's side, jolting everyone. The lights flickered. "Brace, brace, brace!" yelled the pilot. An alarm klaxon blared as the shuttle lost altitude faster than intended. Carol gripped a support rail tightly. Through the windows, she saw they were descending directly into a war zone. Below, the Corpus defensive lines lit up with muzzle flashes and energy beams. Antiair cannons mounted on the fortress swiveled to track them. Before the pilot could even announce it, Carol shouted, "Go! Everyone, jump!" She slapped the emergency release by the ramp. One by one, the members of Alpha Team leapt out of the still-falling craft into open air, trusting their training and armor.
Gamora, as the Zen-Whoberi assassin she was born to be, plunged downward, using her sword's anti-grav hilt to stabilize her descent. Next was Thor, who dove out with zero hesitation, hammer-first, bellowing a battle cry that was lost in the wind. Valkyrie leapt after him gracefully, spear in hand. Steve jumped after them in tandem, Rogers with his shield raised overhead to deflect incoming fire. Bruce simply stepped out, plummeting like a green meteor and yawning in boredom, cloaked by a thin veil of gamma shielding generated by his gauntlets' gamma reserves. Carol was last, she sprinted down the ramp and dived into the smoky sky, her HUD lighting up with the schematics of her team, tracking their positions and showing their landing spot.
On the other ship, Spider-Man shot out a web-line to the shuttle's ceiling and used it to catapult himself outwards while scanning his surroundings midair. Rocket clung to T'Challa's back, who went after Peter while he activated the jetpacks on his team to make the landing as unnoticeable as possible.
For a heart-stopping moment, Carol was in free fall. Icy wind whipped past her, carrying the metallic taste of Galor IV's atmosphere. Her stomach lurched as the ground rushed up alarmingly fast. Normally, she'd simply fly or use her energy output to cushion such a landing, but under the null-field, her flight power was now non-functional. The Black Nova helmet provided some assistance, its onboard grav-thrusters kicked in to slow her descent, but the field interference made them sputter. Carol gritted her teeth. "Come on, come on…" At the last hundred feet, the thrusters finally fired in short bursts. It wasn't enough to make it a soft landing, but it turned a lethal crash into something survivable.
She hit the ground in a rough roll, knee digging into dirt, one hand catching herself. Even through her suit's padding, she felt the jolt rattle her bones. Carol sucked in a breath, pain flared in her shoulder, but nothing felt broken. Around her, the others were also touching down. Thor and Hulk had left small craters where they impacted, standing like nothing happened. But while Thor was already striding out of his, unharmed, Bruce, of course, activated his nano scouting drones, swarming out of his gauntlets, and started to map the surroundings. Always the precautionary scientist at heart. Steve Rogers landed in a three-point stance, shield still raised, while Valkyrie and Gamora made it down together, Gamora sliding off a building's broken side. Valkyrie braced her fall just like her fellow Asgardian, feet first into the ground, taking the impact with her leg muscles.
They had made it, Alpha Team was on the ground, right on the outskirts of the shield generator fortress. But there was no time for relief. The moment the squat landed, Corpus forces converged on their position. An alert klaxon sounded over the barren plain, and in the dim twilight dozens of illuminated visor slits and robotic optics appeared in the distance. The enemy soldiers, like ghostly silhouettes, came from all sides. Corpus crewmen in tan and white enviro-suits, carrying high-tech rifles, and their robotic proxies, bipedal MOA walkers clanking forward and birdlike drones skittering in the air. The Corpus infantry opened fire with a hail of blue plasma bolts.
"Cover and keep moving!" Carol shouted, ducking behind a half-crumbled concrete barricade, likely debris from a previous failed assault, while continuously striding towards their target. Cap and Gamora dove behind an overturned supply skiff. Bruce simply pressed forwards and let the plasma scorch his shields, getting angrier and angrier, summoning forth more and more energy that way, which he could use for his gauntlet's multiple gadgets. Thor raised Mjölnir and attempted to summon lightning, naive as he was, but nothing happened. The thunder god scowled at the unresponsive skies, realizing the Void shield's effect. "No storm today," he muttered, "so be it," and charged forward on foot, meeting the oncoming Corpus with pure brute strength and kinetic force.
The battle erupted even further. Corpus plasma fire and magnetic disrupter blasts filled the air, forcing the unit to move faster. In the span of a heartbeat, Carol assessed the situation, they had landed about 500 meters from the shield generator's outer wall. Between them and the wall lay a blasted killing field of trenches and barricades, now swarming with Corpus troops. Anti-personnel turrets swiveled toward the invaders as well, beginning to spit red-hot tracers. It was as if the entire fortress came alive to greet them, ignoring all the other assaults from all over the premises.
Carol tapped her helmet comm, speaking quickly while popping up to fire a few shots from her sidearm. "Alpha Team, defensive pattern Delta! We push through their line in waves." She had drilled with her troops for months as a unit, even without most of their powers, they were still her best soldiers. At her order, they moved like a well-oiled machine.
Steve was first up, he vaulted over his cover with that uncanny agility, hurling his vibranium shield ahead of him. The disc clanged off a Corpus MOA robot with a flash of sparks, knocking the mechanical walker off-balance. Immediately, Gamora leapt over Cap's shoulders, whipping twin hook shots from her sleeves that snagged the top of a barricade. With a mighty tug, she yanked the heavy cover down onto several Corpus riflemen before they could get off another shot. "Heads up, coming through!" Bruce quipped as he landed a heavy fist on a Corpus crewman trying to stand, who got blasted into a wall, through which the armored opponent went down with a grunt.
Carol scampered up a boulder to get a vantage point, then unleashed a burst from her plasma cannons. BOOM! The blue-white blast blew apart a cluster of Corpus drones that had been flanking left. "Hah! How'd you like that?!" only to have return fire pepper her position. A magnetic energy net whooshed overhead, narrowly missing her. "Whoa!" she went as she dove for cover.
Thor, meanwhile, crashed into the enemy's right flank like an enraged bull. Unable to call lightning, he wielded Mjolnir purely as a blunt weapon, which was still devastating. One swing crushed an autotron's chassis into scrap. A second swing sent a hapless Corpus soldier flying. "For Asgard, the nine realms, and the Nova Corps!" Thor roared, shrugging off a salvo of plasma that scorched his cape.
On the left flank, Valkyrie and Gamora fought back-to-back in a deadly dance of blades. Valkyrie's Asgardian dragonfang sword sliced cleanly through the legs of a charging MOA walker, sending the machine toppling. Gamora leapt onto a Corpus heavy gunner, using his shoulders as a springboard to flip forward and drive her sword into a hovering attack drone that was harassing them. The drone exploded in a shower of sparks. "Nice moves," Val called to her, parrying a shock baton strike and headbutting the Corpus attacker wielding it, denting his helmet in the process. Gamora only grunted, compliments could wait until the enemy was finished.
The Hulk provided the anchor at the center they all needed, as he was the only one mostly not affected by the null-field. With a primal roar, he ripped a metal barricade out of the ground and hoisted it before throwing it into a group of shield-drones behind cover like a curveball. Plasma bolts splashed off his surface as he plodded forward, a seemingly unstoppable green battering ram. "Hulk SMASH!" he bellowed and proceeded to do exactly that, swinging his large fists into the ground, swatting aside Corpus machines like gnats, and the following gamma shockwave deactivating the Corpus shields for a short time. One Corpus elite, a burly armored trooper wielding an electrified hammer, rushed Hulk head-on. The soldier slammed the hammer into Dr. Hulk's midsection with a burst of energy discharge. Banner snarled, slightly pained but far from beaten, as most of the brunt was absorbed by the shield, only making him angrier. He wrapped one of his massive hands around the hammer's head, yanked it away, and backhanded the trooper with enough force to send him skidding across the dirt.
Carol advanced with her team, heart pounding. A Corpus Nullifier Crewman emerged from a trench just yards ahead, carrying a bulky backpack device. She recognized it too late, the trooper triggered it, and a shimmering bubble of Void energy expanded around him. As it washed over Carol, she felt a sudden heaviness, like an invisible pressure trying to crush her strength. Her knees buckled slightly, and the energy of her Nova-suit flickered, while its weight pressed down on her weak, human body. That bubble was a localized null-field, an extra layer of suppression beyond the planetary shield. Inside it, even one's physical strength could wane. The Nullifier leveled a sniper rifle at Carol, his face invisible behind a glowing visor. "Target acquired," he intoned coldly.
Before he could fire, a red, white, and blue blur intervened. Rogers shield whirled in, slamming into the Nullifier's helmet with a clang. The sniper shot went wide, discharging harmlessly into the ground. Steve barreled in after his shield, catching it on the rebound. Within the Nullifier's bubble, Carol saw Steve grit his teeth, even he felt the dampening effect as his enhanced strength faltered. But Rogers was nothing if not resourceful, even at normal human strength, he was a master fighter. He drove his shoulder into the Corpus trooper's chest, knocking the wind out of him, then followed with an uppercut that laid the man out flat. The flickering null-bubble collapsed as the device on the trooper's back shorted as he fell onto it. Carol's strength immediately returned to normal, and her suit was back online. She flashed Cap a thankful thumbs-up, he gave a quick salute in reply before charging off to assist Valkyrie against a grouping of Corpus shock troops.
Carol took a second to take stock. Alpha Team was making progress, they had punched a hole through the first defensive line. Smoking wrecks of Corpus proxies littered the ground. The surviving enemy forces were pulling back toward the fortress wall, attempting to regroup at the gate. "Push forward! Don't give them time to breathe!" Carol commanded over comms. The team pressed on, moving from cover to cover as enemy fire continued to rain around them.
Iron Man's voice crackled in Carol's ear again, cutting through the chaos: "Nova Prime, the fleet battle is under control topside. Gamma Team has the enemy's air support tied up. But I'm seeing power spikes from that main generator, it looks like they're trying to widen the null field or boost something. You might have more interference incoming." Carol ducked as an auto-turret sprayed slugs her way, then responded, "Understood. Any word from Beta Team?" A brief pause, then T'Challa's voice came on, calm but strained, "Secondary shields are going down one after the other… one more to go." He punctuated his report with a grunt of effort and the sound of metal slicing metal. Carol allowed herself a hopeful grin. Beta Team's sabotage was working, perhaps the main shield would weaken soon.
As if on cue, the sky above flickered. The oppressive, static feeling that had blanketed everything since they landed seemed to lessen just a bit. Strange's voice came through next: "Nova Prime, we detect a fluctuation in the Void field. Whatever your people did, it's affecting the primary shield." Carol peeked upward. The shimmering dome looked a tad thinner now, patchy in places. Wanda Maximoff added, "If you can knock it out even briefly, Stephen and I would be able to teleport the troops around the planet and even fight against it on our own."
Carol acknowledged, "Copy that. We're almost at the generator. Stand by." She motioned Thor and Iron Man, who had now landed to join them on foot, over to her cover position under a concrete overhang. "Tony, Thor, we need to take out that fortress gate and get to the generator control. Suggestions?" Iron Man's armor was scuffed with burn marks, and he was manually reloading a cartridge of physical micro-missiles, as his energy repulsors were unreliable this close to the field. "They built this place tough. I've got some demo charges left. Could fly up and plant 'em, but that flak…" He gestured at the defensive cannons still firing into the air at occasional strafing fighters. It was risky. Thor, breathing hard but ever determined, gripped Mjolnir. "Or we knock," he said with a fierce grin. "Together, shell and thunder."
Carol considered it quickly. A direct brute force breach might work, especially as the shield faltered. "Do it," she decided. "We'll cover you." Immediately, she rallied the others. Bruce, Gamora, and Valkyrie drew the remaining ground troops' attention with a fresh offensive, while Rogers targeted the turret emplacements to keep their fire off Thor and Tony.
Thor twirled Mjölnir, building momentum. Iron Man locked onto the massive blast doors of the fortress gate and fired a full salvo of his shoulder rockets. "KRAKOOM!" The rockets struck in a tight cluster, blowing open a jagged hole in the outer gate. "Now, Odinson!" Tony shouted. With a mighty roar, Thor hurled Mjolnir straight into the damaged gate. At that same instant, he summoned whatever vestige of the All-Father's power he could, just enough spark crackled along the hammer despite the dampening field. Mjolnir hit the gates like a divine wrecking ball, blasting them inward off their hinges. The fortress entrance was laid bare with an echoing crash. A cheer went up from some Nova Corps troopers who were pinned down further back, the squat had broken the wall.
"Move, move!" Carol ordered, surging ahead with Alpha Team through the ruined gate. Inside was a wide courtyard dominated by the base of the colossal shield generator tower. The generator itself loomed like a metallic mountain, a central spire crackling with Void energy conduits. Catwalks and control stations ringed its base. Corpus engineers and techs scattered at the sudden incursion. Some Corpus security mechs turned to engage the intruders, but the team didn't slow. They had to disable that generator at all costs.
Carol sprinted across the courtyard alongside Steve and Gamora, deflecting a stream of laser fire with quick movements. She noticed with satisfaction that her speed was improving, the null-field's intensity was indeed dropping thanks to Beta Team's work. Perhaps she could risk a small energy blast? Carol raised a fist instinctively, willing her photon energy to gather. Nothing. A fizzle of golden light sparked and then died. She frowned. Her innate power was still suppressed. So be it. They'd do this the hard way.
Up ahead, a squad of Corpus proxies formed a defensive line, heavy bipedal robots with arm-mounted cannons, supported by more Nullifier crew with glowing backpacks. They unleashed a barrage toward the charging squad. One energy blast caught Valkyrie's shoulder, spinning her around. Gamora dragged her to cover behind a pillar. Another knocked Rogers flat, cursing and singed but alive. Banner took two hits and roared angrily. Slowed but trudging forward, he went over to them and started shielding his downed team members while taking the brunt force of the attack, being an easy target because of his size after all.
Seeing her team in trouble, Carol felt a surge of frustration. "We need an edge now." She glanced down at the golden Nega-Bands clasped on her wrists, artifacts of Kree heritage. They felt warm, almost humming with potential energy. An idea sparked. The Nega-Bands drew on energies from the Negative Zone, a different dimension entirely. Would that energy be affected by the Void null-field, even now that it was weakened? Perhaps not. It was a long shot, but the situation was dire.
Taking cover behind a steel column, Carol pressed her back to it and brought her wrists together. Clanging the bands against each other, like the Wakandans, she focused her will. Come on, Marvel… show me some magic. At first, nothing obvious happened. The battle raged around her. Then she felt it, a sudden welling of energy flooding through her veins, emanating from the bands. Her body responded, drinking it in. Carol stepped out from behind the pillar, fists clenched. She could feel a familiar strength returning, like an engine revving up inside her. The faint aura of binary cosmic energy ignited around her form, finally illuminating her in the dusk.