Marvel's Secret Invasion Prose Novel, page 18
Thor squared his shoulders and made his gaze meet that of the leader of the horde, who now stepped forward from it. She looked, ridiculously, like Jessica Drew, the Spider-Woman. Beside her was a fellow alien with the face of Henry Pym; beside them also was a green-faced Skrull who wore what Thor himself had worn in battle during his first years on Earth a hero. Thor smiled at that one. He was wiser now and much, much older and had died, and these would die in turn for their defilement and slaughter.
From his own ranks stepped forward Reed Richards. “You… you killed my family!” he shouted. “You say you’re here to ‘save us,’ but not one thing you have done has spoken to that.”
Thor understood the wisdom of the man’s words, though they sounded lost in anger. He was sowing doubt in any Skrulls who had believed their blarings. Or Thor hoped that was what he did now. Richards’ voice had sounded maybe a touch too passionate for such calculated tactics. “You’re here to… to punish us!”
“Well,” replied the alien queen, proud and parrying, playing to her party, “maybe you should have thought about what might happen all those years ago when you took the first party of Skrulls you met and turned them into farm animals!”
Thor saw movement over his shoulder, and turned to see that two new groups were assembling on their side of the parkland. The dishonorable villain called Norman Osborn led beside him a group whose ranks included some Thor recognized as valorous, but some he did not note with honor. Beside them, as if they had now chosen to reveal themselves for Osborn, came also an army of declared villains, including many Thor himself had faced in combat, led by some hooded churl. These unworthy foes had taken advantage of innocence and weakness, and were doubtless only here because the end of all things meant the end of their own profits. Better, though, they stand at the last than flee the conflict. Some might prove themselves of slight worth. Perhaps he would raise a flagon with those that gave their all in battle.
Perhaps he’d raise it in New York, or perhaps he’d raise it in Valhalla.
Tony Stark had stepped forward to stand beside his comrade Richards. Thor found his heart was full of anger at the sight of such a spokesman. It was not well that he felt this, yet there it was. He could not help it. There had been a time when he, Rogers and Stark had been the axis about which spun the world of heroes. And now he could not bring himself to stand beside the man, and this “Captain” at his side had not the way to so step forward. All was still lost here in hearts, that could not be won in this battle. “Leave now!” shouted Stark to the Skrull Queen, pointing, his finger shaking as his voice did. “Last warning!”
“Interesting!” the Skrull responded. “And no!” There was enormous laughter from the ranks of gathered aliens, a wave of it catching and heartening them for miles in all directions.
Stark lowered his hand, looking sick and lost and desperate.
“I don’t mean to poop on the parade,” said a fair maid, her hair as green as vegetation, “but we still don’t know who we can trust here.”
“Yes, we do,” said Reed Richards, wise in words. “I figured out what they did. They used our harvested DNA to build individual biostructures, even including genetic memory and neurons, that mimicked every trait we looked for with our scanners and special senses. They took the knowledge they needed to make that technology directly from my brain. They hacked us. But it was a hack. And hacks can be traced, their paths reconstructed.” He took another device from his belt. “This is a beam that will at least show us the natural form of whoever it’s pointed at, that’ll reveal who’s a Skrull. I’ve thrown together as many as I could make in the time. I’ll start handing them out in a second.” His voice stood stark against Stark’s weakness, full of focused anger. “They have worked on this with considerable skill and tenacity. Their only mistake was failing to kill me.”
“Of course, you figured us out!” called the Queen, indicating in that moment that she could hear their conversations. “You, all of you, you invented everything it took to bring humanity to its knees!”
“What does that mean?” said Luke Cage, stepping up to join them.
“Who cares?” sighed Logan. The Wolverine weight was in his words.
“Exactly,” said Janet Van Dyne, her Wasp wings already beating a blur.
“What you’re facing here is a product of your own hubris,” called the Queen. “The hate and judgment you face is what you have inflicted on others, you and all humanity. You addressed us earlier, Richards, as if we were hypocrites, as if we had no intention of saving your race. Wouldn’t that make things easier for you? But no. We are here to save you. We are here to change you. Those humans left under our rule will be happier and they will know their every action is always for the greater good. They will be told what those actions must be. We will all, together, actually save this world you have neglected to save. We will have to save it, because it will be our new home. Those humans that remain will finally be safe here. We will do all that despite what you have done to our Empire, because He loves you.”
“Uh, he who?” asked the Spider-Man, exact as ever, meaning in mocking.
“God,” said the Queen.
From the bushes beside Thor stepped Nicholas Fury, and with him there came the giant Cassie Lang, Kate Bishop, the Vision, the youthful Avengers and others Thor did not know the name of, including a child who seemed Olympian. From their own ranks Ares jogged now and stared in wonder at this arrival. “My son,” he whispered. “I… did not know you.”
“I am going to fight this battle, Daddy,” said the boy, calm and measured.
“Oh, of course,” nodded rough Ares, “you absolutely should. Talk later, all right? We’ll catch up. If we survive.” He slapped the boy heartily on the shoulder, shuddering it, and jogged back, cheerful.
Thor saw on the boy his true expression and for a moment he was angry at gods as well as these fool mortals.
“You say ‘God’ wants you to do this?” called Fury, stepping forward to point at the alien Queen, all angered. “Well, you can go stick yer god where the sun don’t shine.” He turned and nodded toward Thor, a stalwart. “Because our god has a hammer.”
Thor found in his heart a smile then, for the valorous veteran, made in pain, forged in fury unto his own name. He had decided he would be drawn, as a hero back to humans, just to save them and to tell them of the folly of their actions. And yet to fight in human folly, this would lead to no good ending.
Still. There was a battle. The words of Skrulls bore no weight for him. He had seen them with a baby.
He raised on high his godhood’s hammer. He raised it so his foes could see it. He raised it so he might bind friendship, in this slight moment of divided allies who could not weave their fates in folded hands together.
From their ranks came howls and shouts. It had always been thus before battle.
Clint Barton walked up to Kate Bishop, gave her a bear hug, and her weapons. “These are yours now,” he said to her.
From the sky dropped Carol Danvers, battered around head and body, her gaze alighting upon Fury. “You were wrong,” she said to him curtly. “I woke up ten minutes ago. A woman called Diamondback saved me from the Skrulls in Times Square. She threw this tiny stone at just the right moment. The Super-Skrull pounding me looked up and the Initiative piled in on him. They got me away. They lost three of their number. Diamondback lost her right arm.”
Fury looked at Richards’ scanner. “Yep, looks like I was wrong,” he returned in all good humor and raised his thumb, reckless to her wrath. “Go get ’em, Major.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“That’s me,” said Fury, his smile unfaltering, “reliable.”
“And hey,” Carol pointed across the field toward where the Skrulls were massing, “Henry Pym’s a Skrull.”
“Thanks for the intel,” returned Fury.
“My guys are gone,” said Gauntlet, gathering, “except a few who’re on their way here.”
“What he said,” said Taskmaster, beside him.
“Who’s gonna say it?” said Kate Bishop, stepping back from her reunion with Clint and looking between Thor, Stark, Luke Cage and this new Captain America.
“You are, kid,” said Fury, certain.
Kate Bishop took to her a deep breath, wiped some of the grime from bloodied visage and raised her voice. “Avengers… Assemble!”
And humans rushed to human battle, the God of Thunder right beside them, with hammer high and heart not nearly for all that he stood alongside.
The battle joined. The ranks collided. The legend wrote itself in bloodshed.
From this moment all stories sundered.
THIRTY-SEVEN
JANET VAN DYNE
OKAY, SO Janet Van Dyne was very ticked off.
Right now, she was buzzing at Wasp size through the battle, picking her targets, blasting Skrulls in the eyes and ears wherever they reared up before her. Idiots, she kept thinking, they had all been such idiots! She had been an idiot in the last year or so to prioritize the arguments of her former partner, Tony Stark, over the heroic aspirations of Steve Rogers. She had been an idiot to think that the schism that had resulted had been because the culture of super heroes had ceased to be enough about the law. She had, instead, like the heiress she was, fallen into stereotype and prioritized mere order. And she’d known she’d misstepped as she’d done it, and she’d still gone right ahead and done it. And so had they all!
She had been such a young woman when Henry had experimented on her as well as himself, giving her the power to shrink, the power to grow wings and actually fly—an amazing fairy dream of flying under one’s own power. That power fit entirely with her love of fashion too, her love of the glamour that her money had bought. She’d been a founder member of the Avengers, damn it, when it had just been her, Thor, Tony, Henry and, err, the Hulk. Talk about shattered alliances. She’d been the one, after they’d accidentally got together to fight Loki, who’d suggested their name. It had been such a ridiculous moment. She’d said hey, this group of what were only just starting to be called “super heroes,” who’d found themselves fighting alongside each other and wanted to stay together should have a name that was something colorful and dramatic, like The Avengers, or—
And at that moment Henry, her ex-husband, who’d just been someone at that time that she’d admired from afar, had leapt up and down and pointed at her and had said yes, that’s it, that’s what they should be called, and Tony Stark, Thor and the Hulk had all joined in, and, wow, her contribution was being acknowledged by all these huge guys, by a Norse god! She hadn’t really liked the name that much. It had sounded too dramatic. She’d only meant they should be called something like it. But that reaction had pleased her so much she hadn’t argued.
But now it felt kind of like she’d even founded them wrongly. That damn name. The wrong foundation. And yet, you heard Kate Bishop shout it, and suddenly there it was again, so, no, no, that was just how her mind had been eating at her over the last few months. It had become a fine name.
That first group changed so quickly. She couldn’t really look down at this battlefield and lament the changes that had led the Avengers to weakness, because change was part of their DNA. Hey, literally in her case. But what she could lament were specific choices that had brought them to this moment—hers most of all. Historians would look for the one moment where the culture of super heroes had started to crumble and led to alien invasion. They’d probably pick Tony coming up with the Superhuman Registration Act, but right now, as her thoughts were taking flight alongside her body, and she was motoring along entirely on her training and vast experience, Janet had started to believe that maybe it was way earlier.
Maybe it had been the moment her then-husband, Henry, had slapped her across the face.
Because from that point it became crystal clear that she and the guys weren’t going to be a schoolyard gang of friends who always caught up with each other, always came together again. From that moment on it had been utterly obvious that, like everyone else, they were just a bunch of vulnerable human beings—and vulnerable, you know, deities—who could fall apart like anyone else. Divorce, breakdowns, psychoses, recriminations, bitterness… not all for one and one for all. Though Henry kept trying for that, had wrecked himself on the rocks of that, time after time.
And here was an awful, wicked hope inside her: What if… that hadn’t been Henry? What if he’d been replaced by a Skrull before that? She desperately wanted the real Henry to be alive somewhere, of course she did, no matter what he’d done. But there was also that awful idea that maybe the Henry they could find in a spaceship cell somewhere was the real one, the good one, the one who would never have laid a finger on her because he was a super hero, damn it.
That was almost certainly not true. That was to believe in an Avengers that were mythologically perfect, like nothing was, neither the Knights of the Round Table nor the Gods of Asgard—and hey, the Avengers had had the chance to directly compare themselves to both.
But that was the sort of Avengers that she’d always kept wishing for, that she’d always held in her heart.
That thought, of their own humanity, their own flawed natures, kept dragging on her as she flew in combat mode, hitting and running, adding additional force to the right-side dozens of times a minute, her form a blur.
She blamed herself, of course she did. It was what she did. She had been the Chair of the Avengers so many times, had been the one Cap, especially, looked to for orders, and that had been a hell of a thing when he’d first done that, entirely deliberately, to underline her credentials. But since she’d sided with Tony in the “Civil War,” she found she’d been hanging back, completely uncertain, feeling the ache of both sides. So why hadn’t she done what Ben Grimm had, and stayed apart from both sides? So many times she’d wanted to call Luke Cage. But that would be literally treachery, and an heiress just couldn’t do that sort of thing, could she? Even just now, with some sort of substitute Cap suddenly appearing and being willing to pitch in to this fight—which was just as damn well, or she’d have kicked his ass for wearing that costume—even now she had not stepped forward to join that rough leadership group of Tony, Luke and Thor. They had not looked to her. They had not looked to Natasha either, and she’d led the Avengers for over a year, back in the day. Of course they hadn’t. Women. Small. Very small in her case. Didn’t get looked to. Had to speak up. Hadn’t.
If she’d been determining their strategy for this battle she’d have told Thor to get into the air and bring the lightning down, at moment one. Before moment one. But that Skrull Queen had pretty much immediately closed with her enemies, seemed for a moment like she might parley, and had started to exchange taunts, digging into the egos of Tony and the like. Within minutes the other army had been too close for that obvious first play.
Damn it. Damn it.
At least they now had Carol as well as Thor and Simon and Ares, so that was some heavy tanks in the field. And they had Reed’s gadget, so they’d finally be able to know what they were hitting. But this was still going to be a hell of a fight, and it could go either way. Even if they won this, that would be just them freeing New York. Then there’d just be the rest of the entire world to liberate.
Zap, zap, zap she went. Fluttering at supersonic speed. She should have said something. She should have said something. On so many occasions.
There were so many of them. She dodged through an endless super-powered horde. There was Daredevil, of all people, who usually fought ninjas in Hell’s Kitchen, only his wits and a couple of sticks to defend himself, living up to his name in the thick of it, having joined the battle without any particular loyalty to anything here except his city and the human race in general. The blue light of Reed’s Skrull detectors kept flaring across the battlefield and illuminating Skrulls in their true form, but that didn’t stop them using their copied power sets.
They were getting kind of overwhelmed here, from what she could see. The Skrulls kept arriving from all sides, in numbers. Damn it, Thor had called this battle here, because he thought a pitched battle was their best hope and because it was away from civilians, but the Skrulls had clearly been hoping for a set-piece battle too. Her side wasn’t going to win this.
No. No. Put that out of your head, Jan. You’ve been in worse.
When?
“Get to the Queen!” Reed, bruised and bloody, shouted at anyone around him who would listen. “Get to the Skrull Queen Jessica Drew. Take out the leader!”
“Everyone with a Skrull detector,” Tony was shouting, only a few feet from him, “keep it covering the field!”
“Simon, Ares, stand with me!” Thor shouted. “We shall take down their front line if we stand together!”
“Keep the battle moving forward!” Ares was shouting. “Do not yield them the advantage!”
“They could get more advantage?!” cried out Simon Williams, his beloved leather jacket in tatters, his passing guise of an everyday human looking even more out of place than it did on the street. His rosy glasses had been shattered, energy flaring behind them. He was becoming more Wonder Man and less his own special creation every second. He’d spent the last few months hanging back like she had, undecided like she’d been, yet always certain when he spoke, playing the part of a loyalist, decided, a bystander. And now he was paying for it like she was, like they all were.
All these men bellowed in different directions, ignoring each other. Maybe only she, throwing herself from target to target, bio-electricity flaring from her hands every millisecond, could hear them all.
