I was in Wrecker mode at the moment, and standing next to Kismet; we made quite the impression. At least I was pretty sure none of the Shi’ar wanted to deal with me.

“Mixed loyalties are always the worst in Imperial politics. Did the retainers you ask for make contact?”

“They did.” The Shieldman and Black Widow sent by the Great Bear were there at his disposal. Their first loyalty was to Terra, not him, but if he used them well, they would be of great help here. “Sifting the loyal from the merely ambitious and opportunistic is proving to be quite a challenge, and as might be expected of an ancient culture, they have many ways of making the truth elusive.”

Read, protection against telepaths and Aura-readers. How unsurprising.

“Nice chair,” I offered. The power I could feel seething in the thing might be able to take on a small starship.

“It’s one of a pair,” he replied smoothly.

I nodded just slightly. I said silently into coms, “Ebersol, Spider, McCoy, Silk, we’re going to be disassembling and going over Xavier’s back-up hoverchair with a fine-tooth comb. Be ready for a long night.”

“Got it.” “Awww... sure, Dynamo.” “I shall be ready, never fear!” “There went my shopping spree!”

“Scott, I will be introducing you to your brother Gabriel. Your father and brothers Alex and Remy are naturally already here.”

“Thank you, Professor.” The armored glowing-eye figure marching next to Jewel in his black armor seamed in ruby light presented a truly impressive sight to the watching Shi’ar, who hadn’t yet matched him to the figure who had literally burned an entire army of Brood to death with one long stare yet. Indeed, I could tell the Professor probably wouldn’t have identified him without knowing him and the sight of his ruby quartz so well.

“The Shi’ar are naturally wondering if you come here representing the Nova Corps as well, Centurion Ryder,” Xavier inquired of him smoothly.

Rich had been closely warned about diplomatic faux pas. “I am here as Captain of the ship above and escort to the Terran delegation here, nothing more, Prince Consort. My coming here might not even be known to Nova Command, and I’m sure the Xandaran embassy here was surprised by the Starholder showing up here.”

“Yes, that did seem to be the case when inquiries were made. Also, I have heard that you had a rather remarkable set of escorts with you on your arrival.”

“We encountered a hyperspace storm en route and were dumped into Broodspace some distance short of Chandilar. There was a fortuitous encounter with the Acanti.” He let that hang in the air. “As a side note, how are Shi’ar relations with the Acanti?” he inquired.

“The Acanti?” Xavier sensed deeper meaning in Richard’s eyes and voice. “The Shi’ar generally think of them as benevolent and gentle primitives, unfortunately preyed upon the Brood with their inability to really defend themselves.” He paused for a moment. “Shi’ar do not appreciate art overmuch, and the songs of the Acanti they find offensive, but they do not hunt them for it.”

“Do you think they would be averse to trading some technology with the Acanti?” Richard asked after a thoughtful moment.

Xavier blinked. “That is... an interesting idea. Are the Acanti opening diplomatic relations as a spacefaring power?”

“Yes,” I interjected as Richard hesitated.

Xavier didn’t even look back at me. “I believe that Majestrix Lilandra would be MOST interested in what the Acanti would bring to the table.”

“Her relatively pacifistic and open-minded reputation is the only reason the Acanti were willing to initiate some talks with the Shi’ar. They have naturally watched the Empire for many years, and are aware of its nature,” Richard went on.

Xavier was naturally aware of the undertones. The Acanti had seen many things, many deeds of the Shi’ar, including many things they probably did not want others to know about... and things the Empress herself would be very interested in, indeed.

“So, they would be arranging matters with Lilandra, and not the Shi’ar Empire as a whole. I think she would find that even more interesting,” Xavier remarked thoughtfully.

I was screening his lips and the sound from any eavesdroppers, including the servants behind us. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the Majestrix, but I didn’t trust her people.

Shi’ar were anti-art? Interesting. I hadn’t noted the lack of music and musicians, but it made perfect sense for such a militaristic culture. Without art, they basically had no aspirations except militaristic goals.

I turned my eyes up to their buildings. All the same, save for those claimed by aliens. Only individualized, as any nest must of course be different from another in some way.

Huh. It was said that the Shi’ar did not naturally dream, and it was thought of as a type of madness to be purged if they did. Interesting...

Moreover, that Xavier was linked to one. Was he giving the Majestrix dreams, or was she removing them from him?

-------------

“Well, Norbert?” I asked him, as we all sat back on couches or chairs, staring at the very disassembled hoverchair in front of us.

He was ticking off items on his boxes, and called over to Silk and Beast, “What have you got?”

“The primary coding is as clean as the Xandaran tech can trace, as you expected. But, the upgrading coding filters...” Hank replied calmly. “They aren’t wrong, but they are, mmm, different.”

“They can insert coding into the primary programs?” Peter asked, still masked up, and holding onto some sort of phase modulator, eying the readouts.

“Yes. Especially into certain areas of the code which, individually, don’t matter. Once they are all combined...” Silk made an exploding motion with her hands. “That chair could go up like a nuke. A combination of factors to weaken its internal shielding, spike its power demands, and destabilize its modulation factors, and boom, it’s gone.”

“All under the disguise of regularly scheduled updates to security codes, if I’m reading this right,” Hank agreed with a nod.

I picked up the field emitter for its external shields. “That’s a much, much subtler hand than a submolecular bond vulnerable to a particular energy frequency in these things.”

“Or a spin timer in the cannons,” Jenkins agreed, having wandered in with Ebersol and helped with the disassembly. He was a bit out of sorts working with Spider-Man after getting beaten up by him so many times, but they got over it. The coding would destabilize and blow up the guns, accelerated greatly as the guns were fired.

“Reactants in the oil on the leather, that was pretty good,” Ebersol muttered. Peter had caught that one. On first glance, they could just be seen as the natural oils of whatever species the leather came from. Reactants in aerosol form could turn the seat into a flesh-eating nightmare.

“That makes seventeen different ways to kill whoever rides in this thing, and those around him,” the Fixer counted off. “That microwave burst from the com system, wow, these guys are ruthless.”

“I thought the grav spike in the antigrav was pretty splot-worthy myself,” I commented, having found that early. Mr. Hill was an inspiration, I guess.

“Made by the most trusted artisans of the Imperial Palace,” Hank murmured, staring at the mess and shaking his furry head.

“To be absolutely fair, the only thing which absolutely has to involve an internal traitor is the coding,” the Fixer pointed out. “Most of this stuff is materials and settings. If all you are doing is assembling parts, nothing is out of place here.”

“Making them patsies and cut-outs, definitely to be sacrificed once something happens,” I agreed. “So, the trick here is to find out where the parts came from, and who arranged for them.”

“And now we’ve got to neutralize all this stuff, and put this all back together!” the Beetle pointed out, sighing at the mess.

I waved my hand. “Except for the coding, I can handle materials. Of course, I’m the mean and vengeful type. I want those setting this shit off to reveal themselves. What do we put in here to do that?”

A bunch of really smart people stared at the alien tech in front of us with speculative eyes, and some nasty turns of thought.

Ebersol was naturally the first to speak. “You know, setting up a feedback loop into the coms system for that particular activation wouldn’t be that hard...”

“I can probably make a neutralizer that will react with the activation agent for the leather and render it visible...” Peter murmured.

“It will take some REALLY fancy coding, but if we palm off some counter-programming into the handshake protocol for specific downloads, we should be able to follow them back to the source...” Silk muttered, and began to type again. She’d had to master the Xandaran language to use the tech she was, but the coding capabilities were so robust she didn’t want to give the stuff up now. That she could understand code at least a thousand years ahead of us was pretty impressive, too.

“What do you think the odds are that different codes come from different sources?” Hank muttered into the air, starting his breakdown of that task.

I smiled and began fixing the tech’s vulnerabilities with alchemical precision. “What do you think the chances are that his primary chair has more kill switches than this one does?”

Everyone paused for a moment in what they were doing, and groaned.

-Kismet, ask Professor Xavier to stop by our chambers as soon as possible. We’ll have his second chair ready to go, but we’ve got to disassemble his main one now.- I /Sent over to her. She was following Webs, MJ, Sif, Brunhilda, and Peggy around, the six of them a fine distraction everywhere they went. They were enjoying a great dance and ballroom now before the ceremony tomorrow, all the aliens vying to take a turn with them.

-Oh, okay! Is he in danger?- she /asked back.

-He’s sitting on a twentyfold bomb. You may want to inform him very quietly. Touch telepathy.-

-Got it. I’ll have Peggy make an excuse for us to talk to him!-

-Good move!- Very bright nine-year-old, indeed.

Murmuring quietly and talking to one another, the gathered brains here started fixing the problems, and adding some counter-problems of their own.

--------

I tapped his bald head as he sat down in the reassembled Chair Two, and downloaded everything we’d found wrong, everything we’d fixed, and everything we’d gone on the offensive with. “Shunt all that to your Widow and Shield,” I said softly. The two were not present, having not taken up official positions with him quite yet.

Despite himself, he grimaced at what I had downloaded. “A telepathic resonance implosion echo chamber out of the psi-wards,” he murmured. “It seems there are quite a few factions which do not like my impending marriage,” he noted with a sigh. “Allow me to return the favor.”

I gave him a wary eye, but nodded as he touched my temple. There was a burst of information, downloaded into a memory node I kept open and separate just for these purposes. I eyed the entirety of the psionic knowledge he had managed to acquire so far, and that without actually going into the minds of random passersby.

Into the minds of hostile passersby, yes.

I simply nodded. It was somewhat useful to me, helping expand my Psicraft body of knowledge and specifically that related to the Shi’ar, but I wasn’t a psion at all, a Nova Core being largely useless for those purposes. I’d shunt it all off to Kismet, who could dump it on her mother, and Kwannon for processing.