High above the battlefield, old King T'Chaka guided his fighter through the smoke-choked sky, preparing to strike at the coalition artillery and tank positions below. He had intended to smash the enemy's heavy weapons first and relieve the pressure on Wakanda's ground forces, but the moment Shuri's warning reached him through the comms, he changed his plan without hesitation.
The first priority was no longer the artillery.
It was the incoming missiles and enemy aircraft.
…
In the second wave of the coalition's attack formation, Rhodey flew in full combat armor.
He wasn't alone. Two more armored suits flew beside him, the three of them forming a compact strike unit in the middle of the larger fighter screen. These were the War Machine models the Pentagon had purchased from Stark at a painful, almost absurd price. Even with the "friendly" discount Rhodey had personally pushed for, each suit still cost a billion dollars. And that number didn't even include the endless maintenance, ammunition replenishment, software upgrades, and repair costs that would follow.
Buy them or don't.
That had essentially been Stark's attitude.
Even with the Pentagon's appetite, it had only dared buy three for testing. This was their first real combat deployment, and both the military and Stark himself were hoping for something dramatic. A perfect debut. A dazzling success. A battlefield performance that justified the price tag.
On Stark's side, there was another quiet benefit.
After a very productive conversation with the president, Locke had gotten his hands on the adamantium alloy formula. He had reluctantly removed his vibranium underlayer long enough to produce a fresh batch of adamantium rounds. Now those rounds were being loaded into the rotary cannons mounted on Rhodey's armor and the other two suits.
That ammunition would become the deadliest weapon in the sky against Wakanda's forces.
On the other side, Wakanda encountered the coalition's second missile wave almost immediately.
T'Chaka's voice thundered through the communications channel. "Destroy every missile!"
Dozens of Wakandan fighters formed up at once and opened fire at maximum output. Interceptor missiles streaked upward. Laser batteries carved glowing lines through the sky. Aircraft cannons roared in overlapping bursts. Within moments, most of the incoming missiles had been destroyed, and only a small handful slipped through the net. Those few, at least, should have been manageable for Wakanda's remaining ground-based laser cannons.
For the first time in several brutal minutes, T'Chaka allowed himself a breath.
Then he saw them.
Dozens of enemy fighters were angling toward him specifically.
His eyes hardened with fury. He shoved the controls forward and accelerated straight into them. "Everyone, with me!"
The old king was still fearless.
Unfortunately for him, Rhodey and the other two armored suits had already locked onto his aircraft.
Maybe Wakanda had gone too long without a real war. Maybe generations of isolation and technical superiority had dulled their sense of battlefield caution. Among the many Wakandan fighters in the sky, Rhodey recognized the royal plane almost instantly. It was larger, cleaner, and more refined than the rest. It carried itself like command even before you knew who was inside.
So he fired without hesitation.
Three streams of blazing tracer rounds slashed across the air and hammered into the frontmost Wakandan jet.
At first, T'Chaka barely reacted.
His aircraft was built from vibranium, from the frame to the plating to the reinforced canopy glass. He was also wearing the Black Panther suit inside the cockpit. Between the fighter's construction and the armor on his body, he had every reason to believe he was untouchable. American rounds shouldn't have been able to do much more than spark harmlessly off the surface.
Then the sound changed.
The impacts became sharper, uglier, heavier.
The canopy in front of him abruptly spiderwebbed with fractures and deep white stress marks. In the flickering bursts of muzzle flash, he saw one bullet lodged in the glass—and realized it had gone much farther than it should have.
A strange pain bloomed in his chest.
Then his strength started to drain away.
In the next instant, more rounds tore through the damaged front section and slammed into him in rapid succession. The Black Panther suit stopped many of them, but not all. Several punched through weak points, drove into flesh, and ripped the breath from his lungs.
His hand slipped off the controls.
And then the fighter began to fall.
Inside Wakanda's command room, Shuri saw it immediately.
Her father's aircraft had broken from formation and was dropping fast, too fast, spiraling downward in a deadly plunge. She snatched up the communicator at once, panic slicing through her voice. "King! King, what happened?"
There was no answer.
Behind her, Queen Ramonda stood frozen, staring at the tactical display as if refusing to understand what it was telling her.
Shuri's voice cracked. "King… Father?"
Only static came back.
Then Okoye's voice burst through the channel, ragged and disbelieving. "The King has fallen. The King… has fallen!"
Silence swallowed the command room.
For a few heartbeats, no one moved.
How could that be possible?
Shuri's face went pale with disbelief. That had been Wakanda's finest aircraft, their most advanced systems, their strongest protective technology. Her father had been inside it wearing the Black Panther suit. He should have survived. He should have been untouchable.
But the tactical display didn't care what should have happened.
With the king's fall, the Wakandan air formation descended into chaos. Some pilots wanted to keep fighting. Some broke off to search for the crash site. Others tried to withdraw and regroup. Confusion spread faster than fire, and Rhodey seized the opening mercilessly.
He and the other two armored suits turned the disorganized retreat into a hunt.
…
On the ground, the battlefield was no less savage.
After the shield collapsed, the tank columns and armored brigades of the coalition began pushing forward in force. What they hadn't expected to see was something that looked as though it had marched out of a much older century.
Beast cavalry.
Several armored elephants and rhinos stood on the field, plated in dark protection and advancing beside ranks of Wakandan infantry. Those soldiers carried spears, short staffs, and defensive cloaks, arranged in disciplined formations that looked almost medieval against the steel and thunder of a modern army.
The American tank commander stared in bafflement.
Did nobody tell these people that modern armies did not fight at spear range?
He raised one hand, and the advancing armor halted in unison. "All tanks. All howitzers. Fire."
The bombardment that followed swallowed the neatly arranged Wakandan front line in smoke and flame.
Yet when the smoke began to clear, the commander's jaw tightened in disbelief. Several armored rhinos were still charging forward, apparently unharmed. They hit the line like freight trains, and behind them the Wakandan infantry had raised their cloaks into a layered blue barrier that had actually absorbed much of the frontal blast.
For one brief second, the tank commander almost thought he was looking at a fantasy battlefield.
Then training kicked back in.
He grabbed the radio. "Request artillery saturation, coordinates transmitting now."
A moment later, shells came down from above in great shrieking arcs.
That changed everything.
Wakandan defenses could absorb attacks from one direction, maybe even hold against a disciplined frontal assault, but they were far less effective against explosions raining from every angle. Their cloak barriers started losing power, their formations broke, and without large numbers or heavy armored support, their infantry began to suffer badly. Wakanda's tiny population had been enough to build elite strike teams and an advanced air force, but not enough to support large mechanized ground divisions with endless reserves.
Without air cover and without their shield, their soldiers became terribly vulnerable.
The armored elephants and rhinos still overturned several tanks in a display of raw force that shocked the coalition troops, but even those beasts couldn't endure endless saturation fire. One by one, they were broken, driven back, or buried beneath overlapping detonations.
Flames were now spreading deeper into the city itself.
And at last, American boots touched Wakandan soil.
…
Aboard the USS George H. W. Bush, the mood in the command section had changed dramatically.
The losses had been ugly, but no one with real authority cared. Everyone understood the wager. If Wakanda could be taken, America's global dominance might be extended for another century. Compared to that possibility, a few hundred dead servicemen were a line item, not a tragedy.
General Ross took a leisurely sip of champagne and reported to President Obama, whose image flickered across the secure screen.
"It seems," Ross said, smiling faintly, "our earlier preparations may have been more than necessary."
Obama flashed a wide grin, his teeth bright under the lights. "Try not to get so creative in the future, General Ross."
Ross laughed.
And the president laughed with him.
…
Wakanda, meanwhile, was falling apart.
T'Challa had only just awakened from the Heart-Shaped Herb trial when the cascade of disaster crashed into him. His body had changed. Strength flooded his muscles. His senses sharpened beyond anything he had known before. Reflexes, speed, perception—everything had risen to the next level.
But before he could even process the power in his veins, the bad news came one after another.
The king had crashed.
The ground army was collapsing.
The fires were spreading toward the palace.
By the time T'Challa burst into the command room and heard the full report, rage had already swallowed the grief in his chest. His eyes burned. His fists clenched so tightly his knuckles ached.
"I'm going to avenge my father."
…
In the air battle, Rhodey and the other two armored suits had spent almost all their ammunition. Even so, they had only managed to bring down seven or eight Wakandan fighters. It wasn't a poor showing—far from it. The real problem was that Wakanda's aircraft, built from vibranium and advanced composite materials, were absurdly tough.
Even combined, dozens of ordinary American fighters had only downed three.
And they themselves had lost nearly half their number in return.
At this stage of the battle, both sides were beginning to run low on ammunition and options. Then, without warning, the remaining Wakandan fighters suddenly disengaged and pulled back.
Rhodey frowned.
A second later, alarms began screaming through his radar system.
More than a dozen fresh Wakandan fighters were approaching at terrifying speed.
He and the other two armored pilots immediately panicked and veered away, trying to retreat, but the speed difference became obvious almost at once. The Wakandan aircraft closed the distance effortlessly. Then, instead of slowing to engage them, they accelerated past so hard and so fast that they left the armored trio behind in mere seconds.
Most of the American pilots were stunned.
Rhodey, however, felt his stomach drop.
They weren't coming for the stragglers.
They were heading for the carriers.
…
Inside the lead Wakandan fighter, T'Challa gripped the controls so tightly his fingers hurt.
The fury inside him had become a physical thing.
The Americans had invaded his homeland, butchered his people, and killed his father. They had come with greed in their mouths and fire in their hands, and now they expected Wakanda to kneel. Fine. Then they would learn what loss felt like too.
He led more than a dozen escort pilots away from the continent and out over the water.
According to the radar, the enemy warship group was two hundred kilometers away.
"Lower altitude," he ordered.
One by one, the fighters dropped until they were skimming just above the waves. At that speed, touching the ocean would have been like slamming into solid stone, but Wakandan engineering and pilot discipline carried them safely forward.
The fleet drew closer.
T'Challa gave his final command. "Hit the American carriers first. After that, I'll take the largest ship in the formation. I want these shameless invaders to pay the heaviest price possible."
A chorus of voices answered him through the comms. "Yes!"
…
Inside the carrier command room, General Ross was no longer drinking.
He was sweating.
Hard.
He had not expected Wakanda, with death closing in around it, to abandon the struggle in the sky over the continent and strike directly at the naval formation instead. It was the kind of desperate, intelligent move that made men like him deeply uncomfortable.
So that was it?
They were willing to lose the land if they could gut the fleet first.
Ross already knew what he would do if they survived the next few minutes. The moment this attack ended, he would call the president and demand nuclear authorization.
He slammed a hand against the console. "You useless idiots! Have you found them yet or not?"
The radar operator's face was slick with sweat. He knew exactly what failure meant right now.
"No, sir! Nothing clean on the radar. They must be hugging the surface!"
"Damn it!"
At that exact moment, the communicator crackled to life. "Commander, this is the USS Kentucky. Our sonar has detected a massive high-speed disturbance approaching. Prepare yourselves, prepare—"
The transmission cut off under a shrill series of warning tones.
Every alarm in the command room began screaming.
Ross jerked his head toward the forward windows.
Out beyond the glass, several fighter aircraft suddenly burst up into the air not far from the fleet, rising from near sea level like demons leaping out of the water.
....
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