There was a deeper hum beneath our feet. Ebersol looked at an arm display he had attached to the shuttle’s sensors. “The main power core is coming online,” he reported to us.

All around us, the soft emergency lights faded as the primary bridge lighting flicked on, station by station. Field filters and infrared washes streamed through the air, removing any traces of condensation, adjusting humidity level, and bringing the air temperature up rapidly to something approaching human normal.

There were beeps from suits all around, and masks peeled back and away to take in the somewhat sterile air.

Nova reached out to touch the golden helmet of the fallen Centurion, electricity sparking and dissimilar particle effects lighting up at the contact.

“His final log recordings are intact,” Mentor said softly. “I am registering temporary command crew designations.”

The Starholder’s voice spoke up on coms, “Benjamin Grimm, Pilot.

“Henry McCoy, Navigator.

“Director Sharon Carter, Security Chief and second in command.

“Jewel, Personnel Director.

“Dynamo, Medical.

“Fixer, Primary Engineer.

“Beetle, Primary Maintenance.

“Cyclops, Weapons Officer.

“Iceman, Logistics.

“Spider-Man, Science Officer.”

“YES!” Peter blurted out, sneaking a glance at me and McCoy. I promptly held out my hand, and Hank dropped a ten in it. Peter blushed hotly.

“Spider-Woman, Signals.

“Silk, Sensors and Information Systems.

“Nova Corpsman Richard Ryder, Captain.”

The Starholder was humming quietly now, and everyone exhaled softly.

Well, not me. “Captain?” I inquired pointedly.

Richard Ryder took a long, deep breath. Yeah, he’d been training for this. “Silk, Webs, Director, full freaking internal sweep on this thing. The odds something is not in here are slim to none.” The three women hopped right to their stations and began to coordinate the first sweep of the ship. “Dynamo, Spidey, escort Fixer and Beetle down to Engineering. Ice, inventory, let us know what they have, dump to whoever is relevant. McCoy, Grimm; systems checks. Jewel and I will do an exterior spacewalk and verify external damage. Cyke, full Weapon Systems check, starting with the internals.”

I held up a hand. “Fast check, Mentor. What were they facing here?”

Mentor paused a moment before replying, “A multi-species hijacking attempt led by an infamous luphomoid pirate styling himself Zorr the Conqueror...” Mentor ran through the logs quickly. “Ah. The pirate raid was called off, as towards the end there was interference from the Brood.”

I slowly put my hand up to my forehead, while everyone there pursed their lips. Ebersol and Jenkins had also received a crash course in alien races, and the Brood kinda stood out.

“No bodies anywhere...” Peter’s whisper pointed out for us in the silence.

“Zorr probably had infected crew and realized it, and cut and ran before he was killed from within,” Director Carter said grimly. “The specs I read indicate they can hibernate. We just warmed up the ship and alerted them we were here!”

“The odds they haven’t subverted the scanners and internal defenses by now are slim to none, and they’ve probably crippled the power systems and drive,” Richard said, his eyes flashing. “They’ll investigate the hangar and the bridge as soon as they can.

“Belay all previous orders. Establish what link to the internal scanners you can for remote work. Assume all internal defenses and self-repair are offline, and we’ve hostiles. Ben, can you remote the shuttle out of the hangar, just in case?

“I’ll shut down the bridge until the ship is purged. Dynamo, if you would. There’s a stateroom in the rear.” Rich gestured towards the silent remains of Centurion Dhey.

Everyone moved to their bridge stations, even the Beetle. Maintenance kept the ship running, and following the lines of junk, shit, and organic detritus was actually a good way to find something.

I used Vier’s Telekinesis to respectfully lift the remains of the fallen Centurion onto a Disk, and walked him back to the multi-purpose rooms and chambers at the back of the bridge, while the bridge buzzed urgently behind me, and universal translators chirped as they translated from Xandaran.

--------

“I’ve got increased oxygen consumption in multiple chambers ship-wide!” Beetle reported grimly as we move down the main fall tube, everyone with weapons out and hot, ready to do lethal damage.

That even included Peter and the Spiders. Something had happened in Boston when they stared at those rows and rows of sheets, and some of the half-size remains under them, then they watched people screaming as Curse-magic from werewolf bites and claws boiled off them under Dealer’s Purifying Ritual. Then they had to go looking for dead people hauled off and buried, so they would not Animate as vampires in three days...

And they hadn’t found everyone. We’d had to go back three days after the fight and put down a hundred and fourteen newly-risen starving vampires. The murdered becoming murderers of their own was a feat repeated all across the country, and one of the reasons why the foreign troops hadn’t left more quickly.

“Is the shuttle clear?” I asked Ben as we all stood in the fall tube, waiting for things to come to us. He gave me a grim nod.

Then we’d have to hunt the survivors through the ship. Maybe.

A quarter-mile down the shaft, lumps of ice were scattered around here, there, and everywhere. The pattern didn’t look like much, but if you wanted to cling to the wall, they kind of directed flow this way and that, and into clear lines of fire.

Also, they concealed Bobby Drake, who didn’t need to breathe at all in Iceman form, and was fully capable of icing off this whole corridor and any paths out of it.

In addition, there webs out here and there, the Spiders doing their thing as well. These alien bugs were going to get a lesson about hunter-killer pattern predators running into ambush predators.

Jewel had deCompressed two cannons as long as her arms from her bracelets, feeding from her Masspack, rather impressing the two engineers along with us. The Beetle had two modified Shi’ar plasma swords mounted on his arms and ready to go, and pulse-blasters adapted from Shocker’s emitters for ranged combat.

I was sure the Fixer was going for sonics for range, and his waldos were ready to snap over with little rotary saws ready to intercept and cut with adamantium-edged blades. If they made it to where he was standing on a Disk, I was going to be very disappointed with us.

Director Carter had assembled an electric Gatling gun out of box so fast even Ebersol couldn’t help but stare and watch in awe as she fit everything together. She was on a Disk, too, holding the mini-gun casually with one hand as she stared down the shaft with the calm of someone who’d done this kind of thing before.

Scott was sitting high in the middle next to me as I floated there. Cyclops, the Fixer, the Beetle, and Director Carter also happened to be six inches taller and quite a bit heavier at the minute, which they were all quite delighted about. The extra energy resistance from the Wrecker Buffs would protect them from lucky shots, and they were all now totally strong enough to rip apart Brood drones in personal combat.

Hank and Nova were watching the external corridors with their own sensory kits.

“Ben, putcher foot down,” I spoke down to him.

In his rocky form now, Grimm began to walk in place.

Each step rang through the hull like fifty tons of stones moving up and down. It echoed through the metal, impossible to miss.

“I’ve got motion in points A and B,” murmured Silk, sitting up above us, with lines of silk extending out in all directions. The Spiders had moved very fast to gossamer the corridors that led the length of the ship within a quarter-mile of our position.

“Skittering down the shaft,” the Fixer reported, multiple contact feeds sticking against the tube, and sensors placed in the distance. “Numbers spiking rapidly...”

“Small movements in secondary tunnels,” Hank’s precise enunciation came from outside, echoed by Silk.

“Visuals down the middle?” I asked, as a droning sound began to come from the distance. “We’ve got airborne. Overcharge the Floorium.”

Beetle hit his interface, and upped the power draw along one axis of the tube, instantly creating a floor.

There were echoes of hisses in the distance at this development.

Scott was crouched, staring down the center of the tube, only partially occluded by webbing. “I have first visuals.”

Devasight and x50 mag did the same for me. “Confirmed.” I needed to get better long-range options. All my firepower outside spells was medium range or less, and I wasn’t revealing my Shards.

“Start sniping,” Richard ordered.

The first ruby needle beam punched out, going between the strands of webbing easily, laser-straight, and went through something down in the distance.

The sounds all around us increased an order of magnitude instantly.

“McCoy, withdraw.”

“Coming!”

The locks cycled a hundred yards beyond us, and both Nova and Hank came through smoothly, sealing the locks behind them.

Scott calmly started picking off Brood most of us couldn’t see, while the rest waited.

“Damn, that’s a lot of them. What did they do, unload a whole fleet of them into here?”

“Probably expecting a much bigger harvest than they got,” Peggy offered.

The first energy beams came flying randomly in, but they were too dispersed at this range to actually hurt anyone, although they did tear into the webs some.

“Some tech beams, some biological,” Nova reported quickly, accessing databanks.

“Any of it Nova-killers?” I asked sharply. You don’t fight energy absorbers with energy weapons unless you can do something about it. Those hadn’t been kinetic hits that had killed the Centurion.

“None yet. If you see violet and green particle effects, call it,” he replied quickly. He also had a pair of Shi’ar energy swords ready, which had come in pretty useful against the vampires. The morphing quicksilver swords he’d used against the werewolves were on backup, but he kept one hand free so he could use energy blasts point-blank, since he was going into melee one way or another.

Ben was still walking in place, and also had a pair of big meat cleavers in his hands, ready for use. There was no question where he would be in what was coming.

===========

Author’s Note: Nobody wants to call her Spider-woman or Spider-girl except the media, so Gwen Stacey is usually just called Webs (counterpart to Silk) when in costume. Note they are mostly using Hero names with Fixer and Beetle present.