Three cruisers, a frigate, and a destroyer were instantly blasted open or directly apart as the missiles detonated. The remaining four ships immediately struck their formation and made to depart at all speed.

The Starholder finally did some maneuvering of its own, coming around at remarkable speed, and slammed right into the side of one of the ships, crippling its engines and part of its drive shield generators with exquisite skill.

Then, at scarcely a third the normal cooldown time, the main cannon went off again.

The Screaming Jaw’s engine block was basically a hundred yards away from Cyclops and I, and had a big ol’ rupture in its hull. Scott filled it up and expanded it with great precision as I drove all the juice I could into him, and pretty soon something big and exciting lit off inside as the ship tried to spin away, losing power as it fell away into hyperspace.

The destroyer Freedom’s End was directly annihilated by the Nova Cannon, leaving only two pirate vessels behind.

They tried to split up, but McCoy just proceeded after the Rivers of Blood, leaving the Mercy of the Sword to try and beat feet... and get nowhere near out of range before the big cannon fired again, and turned the back half of that ship into flying debris from fifty thousand miles away.

The Rivers of Blood could only stare in horror at the Xandaran ship looming over them in hyperspace, energy building up impossibly fast in the Nova Cannon which should be of no use, all their alarms blaring.

Someone panicked and put up their shields, and an FTL event occurred, multiple gravity spikes coalescing and circling into black holes as the shields tried to hold together in an environment they couldn’t exist in. The cruiser was ripped open and apart before its emitters collapsed, turned into a wreck and venting crew and atmosphere into the immateria in instant flaming glory. Then the killshot arrived, tore it apart, and left it all to disintegrate in the unforgiving flow of hyperspace as its drive shields failed.

“Jewel, Kismet, inside and help clean up the last of the invaders. Cyclops, Dynamo, finish sweeping the hull as we come around on the Conquest again,” Peggy ordered, voice as calm as the sea at dawn.

Kismet blew another lander off the hull, Jewel fit a shot into the blasted deployment hole to give it something to explode about, and they both jumped into the revealed bore-hole in the hull, already blasting at the pirates within.

I was zipping Cyclops between killshots, barely getting off any shots myself given his skill at the job. The landers were ripped open and blasted free of the hull, drive shields failing and tearing to flaming energy as they left the Starholder’s hull and hit hyperspace.

Soon enough the hulk of the star carrier flagship of Zorr’s pirate group was looming ahead of us, drifting and flaming, but somehow keeping its drive shield up. The last of the landers was blown free of the Starholder’s hull from four hundred meters away, its engines and power core exploding into random energy and hurling it off the gleaming metal, and the rest of the pirate vessel and its crew soon joined it.

There was a half-strength burst from the Nova Cannon, and the Endless Conquest found its complete end as it was precisely cut open along its power channels, and then its drive shield collapsed. FTL stresses began eroding materials made for reality away with spatial stresses and tearing dimensional winds in a great burning display we weren’t sticking around for.

The Starholder kept right on going, because there was a light pinnace fleeing over yonder, trying to tack and get away from us, and having some problems in the hyperspace storm right about now.

----------

“Terran!”

Richard Ryder smashed three armored pirates against the corridor wall, and struck out with a boxer’s hands, crushing their helmets and opening them to vacuum as they reeled with broken bones and carapaces.

A blast of energy destroyed the formation of another group, and the SHIELD defenders leapt in with precise armor-piercing shots, puncturing helmets and skulls and venting atmosphere.

He stared at the image of the pirate who had caused the death of his predecessor for a moment, and then his training took over. “This is Captain and Centurion Richard Ryder of the Starholder. What do you want, Zorr?” he asked calmly.

“So, you do know of my name.” The armored luphomoid smiled with nasty pride at that news. “I would like to surrender myself and my crew to the Nova Corps.”

“You are fully aware that the Nova Corps standing regulations are to administer death to the members of the Black Order and all affiliated pirate groups beneath it. Furthermore, assaults on Xandaran vessels by pirates are to be treated with extreme prejudice, while attacking a Nova Corps vessel is grounds for immediate execution.

“This ship does not have containment facilities, nor is it capable of sustaining you under tow in hyperspace.” He paused for a moment to strafe bolts into an oncoming group, and saw a swarm of drones sweep in from a side corridor, maglock to the suits of the stunned pirates, and detonate with precise charges that reduced those within the suits into steaming jelly.

The Fixer is testing out some innovations, he deduced, glancing at the main approach to Engineering behind himself.

“Furthermore, we’re not going to get within two hundred thousand miles of you. You’ve got approximately seventeen seconds to live, Zorr. Do you have any final words?”

The luphomoid’s face twisted in hate and fear. “My people will hear of this, as will the Black Order, Centurion! We will have our revenge!” he swore.

“Ten seconds. Anything else, Zorr?” Richard replied calmly.

“Mewling Xandaran slave! When the Black Order sweeps your world clean-”

“I am a Terran. Goodbye, Zorr,” Richard said, turning his attention back to a sensor showing one of the few surviving pirate teams trying to fight towards the hangar. They didn’t know Grimm was coming right for them.

Up on the bridge, Peggy pushed the firing control one last time.

The pinnace could not put up any resistance, but when the blast hit it, there was a huge eruption from the ship, far brighter and larger than then any of the other vessels that had been targeted.

“Trillionic warhead,” Cindy reported after looking at the sensor feed. “That blast could have blown Jupiter apart.”

“The Black Order does not surrender,” Peggy quoted from her reading of numerous files concerning this Zorr character and his affiliates while looking at the rapidly declining numbers of red dots spread through the ship, and the blues and whites moving to intercept them or waiting patiently for them to come into range.

The Beetle was accompanied by a small swarm of drones; Jewel, Kismet, and Spider-man were punching through four of the pirate squads with speed that was either brutal or terrifyingly graceful. Nova was shifting to the last desperate band trying to sneak into Engineering, but Ebersol sprayed the whole band with Trapster’s immobilizing compound, and then sheared through their helmets with an adamantium rotary saw from his waldo one by one as they were trapped helplessly in solidified goo, unable to move.

The fighting would be over as soon as Grimm finished crushing the ones trying to make it to the hangar, and given the girder in his rocky hands, that wouldn’t take too long.

-------

“Final tally?” Richard Ryder asked from his Captain’s seat at the conference table.

“Five fatalities currently being shaken off and recovering in the med bay,” I reported. Life Diamonds, easy come, easy go; Cosmic Power Source ‘Rantha Daughter’ ftw! “Numerous incidents of penetration wounds, excessive bleeding and limb loss. The sealer patches with Plugz-All proved excellent at patching up suits and penetration wounds alike in battlefield conditions.” Petruski’s concoctions, coming through!

“Mere flesh wounds and blood loss or penetration injuries were taken care of quickly. Limb loss or complete organ removals were treated with Mass Regeneration and a lot of protein-rich stew.”

Even Peggy Carter was amazed. “Only five deaths? And they were all brought back?” She was shocked despite herself.

“Heaven was amenable to rewarding heroes with another chance at life with enough cosmic energy around to recover them,” I replied to that. Kismet being here was literally a godsend, as her Cosmic energy powered the Spells and got around any magical resistance to the deed. “I’m not going to complain about favorable treatment,” I said, and Peggy clamped up. “A once-a-day Mass Regeneration was enough to treat everyone with lost arms, legs, eyes, and ears, as it were.”

Rich bowed his head, his hands clasped in front of him. “I really didn’t want to write those death notices,” he breathed out gratefully.

“You should,” I told him, and he flinched in surprise, as did everyone else. “Then give them to the men who died to commemorate their second chance. Also, they all deserve medals, and I think dying in the line of duty earns a special commendation even in the Nova Corps, although I understand it also means a new life in a clone and the end of active duty.”

He looked at me thoughtfully, as everyone else considered how the Xandarans who downloaded into new bodies handled this problem. Having magic that could return the dead to functional life wasn’t that much different.

“Peggy?” he asked.

“That is a marvelous idea,” our super-soldier tactician stated without reservation. “Died in the line of duty, and continuing in your duty thereafter is literally the highest commitment a soldier can possibly show. A medal is the least of things to show our acknowledgement of that fact.”

“A Crimson Heart?” Peter offered, for once uncharacteristically serious. He still had a runaway mouth, but a whole shitload of the crew had seen him in lethal killing action now, and the boyish college nerd was getting a whole lot of respect from everyone after the display of killing skill and speed he’d put on. He’d been bouncing over and through groups of pirates and leaving them dead or dying in his wake with handfang moves so fast it was hard to see them, whipping them around like clubs to use against their fellows, or just slamming them into bulkheads with sufficient force to crush their insides against their own armor.

Killing vampires and werewolves had walked him over that edge, and now he realized that there were times you just had to kill things to get rid of them. It wasn’t heroic in the slightest, it just had to be done.

“That sounds like a wonderful term for it. I suggest you make it so, Captain, and I will put in a formal request that SHIELD set it as a standard award, and recommend it for the American and European militaries, too. I believe Russia and the Tribes already have something similar.”

The Great Spirit and All Seasons awards, if I remembered correctly. Given the rarity and expensive nature of Life Diamonds and literal Divine favor or Cosmic energy required, not many people received the awards...

“Any idea of our location?” Richard asked after approving the request.

“We’re heading in the general direction of the Shi’ar galaxy, based on a subspace buoy we dropped, but that’s all we can ascertain. The storm will drop us when it drops us,” Hank McCoy shrugged. “We’ll have to immediately drop out to get a position fix at that time, but we shouldn’t lose too much time.”

“Ship repairs, then?...” The self-sealing hull had rather quickly dealt with the breaches, but those areas still had to be reinforced once again. Most of the damage was internal, and the maintenance crews and bots were dealing with it quickly.

More mundane matters were resolved, and the table split up to get back to clean-up and mundane record-keeping. I headed back to medical to make sure all the Regenerations were taking place as needed.