About half an hour later, the carrier arrived above K-9852.
Unlike Earth's blues and whites, this planet was washed in red. There were no oceans in sight, only vast landmasses covered in crimson vegetation and veins of exposed mineral deposits. It should have been vibrant.
Instead, it was ruined.
Laser impacts scarred the surface, gouging deep craters into the soil. Entire forests had been burned down to ash. Scattered across the land were countless bodies, gray-skinned humanoids marked with red stripes. The natives.
People always talked about Thanos killing half a planet's population as if it were just a statistic.
Seeing it firsthand was different.
Billions of corpses stretched across the surface. Not millions. Billions. Even Earth's bloodiest wars had never reached numbers like this.
"This is sick," Quill muttered, fists clenched as he stared through the viewport. "There are kids down there. Babies."
Ravagers killed for money, not ideology. Quill, especially, still clung to a warped kind of hero fantasy. This wasn't theft or piracy.
This was slaughter.
"They've always been monsters," Gamora said through clenched teeth.
She had seen this before. Lived through it. The sight dragged her straight back to the day her own world died.
Rocket slowly pulled out a newly assembled weapon, its barrel humming with unstable energy.
"I swear," he growled, "I really want to shove this quantum launcher straight up Thanos's—"
"If you want to," Rowan said calmly, "you probably can."
He was smiling.
But there was no warmth in it.
The others felt a chill crawl up their spines. That smile carried no humor, only quiet certainty and a killing intent so dense it pressed against the room.
Rowan wasn't a saint. He operated on reason more than sentiment. Until now, Thanos had been a problem to eliminate, a threat tied to future outcomes and cosmic balance.
Standing over this world changed that.
Whatever Thanos once believed, whatever excuse he told himself, none of it justified this.
Someone who did this deserved to die.
Repeatedly.
"Headmaster," Yondu said carefully, eyes locked on the battlefield below, "you said you had a solid plan. Going in head-on like this feels… reckless."
Below them hovered Ronan's Dark Aster, immense and angular, surrounded by fleets of warships. Nearby loomed Sanctuary II, its sheer scale dwarfing everything around it. Even the smallest escort craft drifting from its bays could have rammed Yondu's carrier into scrap.
Seeing them in person erased any illusions.
This wasn't a fight between equals.
Ronan's forces alone were terrifying. Thanos's army was something else entirely. Chitauri legions. Leviathans. Vanguard shock troops. Hover tanks. Titan war beasts.
This wasn't a battlefield.
It was an execution ground.
"You're not planning to fight all of that, are you?" Yondu asked, swallowing hard.
Rowan shrugged.
"That is the plan."
Silence.
Every single person on the bridge froze.
"That's not a plan," Quill blurted. "That's suicide."
Even Gamora and Rocket, still burning with rage, felt their heads cool instantly.
Quill stepped forward quickly.
"Okay, hear me out. We send Gamora down with the Tesseract. She meets Thanos and Ronan. When they show up, we ambush them. Take them out fast, grab the bounty, and run. No leaders, their forces scatter. We escape clean."
Everyone nodded at once.
It wasn't elegant, but it was survivable.
"No need," Rowan replied. "You stay here and watch. I modified the ship. You're safe."
He glanced at the viewport.
"If you get bored, feel free to fire at anything you like."
Then he looked up slightly.
"Activate the Fivefold Kabbalah Defense Array."
"Yes, Master," the ship replied.
The bridge went silent.
Arcane patterns bloomed across the carrier's hull. Five colossal elemental figures rose into existence around it, formed of metal, wood, water, flame, and stone. Together, they locked into place, weaving a massive defensive barrier.
Attacks from outside would be absorbed.
Fire from within would pass straight through.
This wasn't a containment seal. It was a fortress.
Even Rowan himself would have to work to break it.
"When did the ship get an AI?" Yondu asked slowly.
"And why does it listen to you?"
No one answered him.
They just stared at the glowing runes and the elemental giants circling the hull, and felt, for the first time, that maybe Rowan Mercer hadn't been exaggerating at all.
...
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