The Andromeda Galaxy, home system of the Skrulls...

I could’ve watched from the distance, but I didn’t. I zipped into the system to give the people an eyeful.

The Surfer preceded the arrival of the Worldship by only a day. It didn’t allow the Skrulls to get into place any grand machines that might be able to stop Galactus, because the World-Eater wasn’t a fool. Also, He knew we weren’t going to be helping the Skrulls with the biomagnetic methods we had, and the Skrull Homeworld was, if not wholly built over like that of the Kree, massively mechanized in certain areas, with several massive geothermal taps for power that would have rendered our methods useless.

In short, the Skrulls had time to panic wildly, call out the local defensive fleet to fruitlessly attempt to slow the Worldship, scream for the fleets to evacuate as many people as possible, and try to vacate the world in time.

There were too many Skrulls to get them all off, although there were tens of thousands of ships who tried.

Without our biomagnetic resonator, Galactus went back to His old induction device. A forcefield of pure willpower guarded it from desperate Skrull attacks as He methodically assembled the thing, but enough pure brutal firepower got through from their wild and desperate fleet bombardment to destroy it.

Galactus simply glanced up at the jubilant attackers emotionlessly, and reverted to His most inefficient method of world-eating: doing it all Himself.

The whole surface of the planet shattered in the same instant as He grabbed it with His power, and began to draw all the celestial energy out of it. The plant life of the biosphere died in an instant; all the remaining animal life followed within the next minute. The entire population of Skrulls on the planet screamed together as their lives were sucked away, while Galactus sank into the molten field of the planet around Him, both drawing up on the Celestial energy below and being drawn to it by its attempt to resist Him in turn.

As He fell, the cracks on the mantle of the planet widened as He was drawn deeper and deeper into the world. The world was pulsing and expanding, breaking apart as the waste heat from below was vented aside while He took in the deep, rich Celestial energy that had been down there for so long, and seized hold of the nearly mature Celestial Seed below.

The Skrulls who were dumb or shocked enough to stick close by in space got to eat the destruction of the entire planet as it exploded, and became another part of His meal. Without His Inductor, the planet simply would not survive His feeding. He used the machine so as not to destroy the worlds he devoured, as much as to make the feeding more efficient. It wasn’t there to speed things up. The Skrulls had done nothing but waste the planet and any chance of reseeding it by attacking Him.

-------

“Do not think this action of yours will allow you to manipulate Galactus. There have been many forces over the eons who sought to harness Him to devour their enemies, Dynamo. It did not end well for them.”

I was sitting next to the Surfer out in the void, watching the seething remnants of the Skrull homeworld. Galactus was still inside it, feasting in the remnants of its core. I didn’t pop up on normal scans, so the Skrulls floating around basically couldn’t see me, only watch despairing with the quietly grim Surfer as Galactus finished His meal.

“Mmm. I imagine Galactus is also going to be undertaking more exacting genetic scans in the future to ascertain if certain races have signs of Celestial mutation. I know of at least six, who are non-violent and which we are working with in attempting to get proper biomagnetic data feeds in place to work with Galactus on His inevitable arrival.

“As a matter of fact, once we get the required amount of data in place, we believe it might be wisest to contact Galactus directly to remove the Seed before unforeseen circumstances arise.”

The Surfer looked at me, digesting the fact that more intelligent races might actually call the World-Eater to come to their own world. But then, if He could remove the Seed without harming their world, weren’t they saving it from the Celestials, in turn?

In the end, it would be not that different from Galador. Prepared worlds might very well be lining up to supply Galactus with Celestial Seeds!

“The Celestials might not look kindly on such blatant destruction of their seeds, Dynamo,” the Surfer warned me.

“Then they can’t do basic math.” His silvery eyes blinked. “How long does a fat Seed last Galactus? How about one that’s sitting in some primitive world, doing nothing, not growing with the advance of sapients on its surface?

“The Black Nebula lasted Galactus almost eighteen months, did it not? Galador was only a handful of months, yet still better than some primitive world, yes?”

“That is all true, but what difference does that make?” he asked me with a frown.

“It means He’s eating fat and happy Seeds, at a slower pace, instead of young and weak Seeds at an accelerated pace. Indeed, the biomagnetic resonator allows Him to harvest more energy, which in turns slows down His eating speed.

“If you had a fixed amount of your Seeds out there, which scenario would you rather see?”

The Surfer blinked his silver eyes, shocked. “They... should support the discovery of this method, as it means Galactus will consume fewer of their Seeds over time, allowing more to grow...”

“Galactus would have to make a conscious decision to start going after the younger Seeds again, and pace Himself against the newest sources. In the longer term, He will be bent to slow His pace, and the chance of new Celestials being born actually increases. He’s going to have to become something of a glutton in surges to do otherwise... but then, He might well start getting involved in cosmic events and require the energy...”

---------

The Skrull homeworld wasn’t the Throneworld, but it didn’t need to be. It still had a massive population, and its destruction was a massive blow to the morale of the entire Skrull Empire.

Having to resettle hundreds of millions of refugees was also an enormous strain, and the destruction of some of the finest universities and manufactories of the Skrull Empire was no small loss, either. Galactus had mostly ignored their attempts at self-defense, but the Silver Surfer wasn’t quite as invulnerable as his boss, so he had destroyed any Skrulls who had attacked him.

With this blow, the spikes we’d been making into different parts of the Skrull Empire exploded, as the combination of the economic blow, the resettling, the destroyed trade lines, the blame politics, and rivalries between sectors erupted over who would pay what and take the refugees.

Within a matter of months, this had degenerated into a shooting war between rival powerful noble families and that of the Emperor, who had totally managed to inherit the blame for something that was not his fault at all. Soon enough he was assassinated, goodbye to the bastard, and then the real fun began as all the rivals for the Imperial Throne started vying for it in something that wasn’t quite a civil war, but was definitely violent enough to keep all their attention focused on one another and not on Terra.

I’d been careful to keep our attention focused on those elements who were not directly responsible for countering the Kree, as we didn’t particularly like the Kree or want them wandering around, either.

But that was fine, because the Kree were going to get theirs, too. Unfortunately for them, Hala was both their capital AND their homeworld, and it was an ecumenopolis, with not a shred of green life on it, so intertwined with machinery it was impossible to do anything bio-magnetic on it, which likely meant Hala was also going down the hard way.

The Kree were also capable of putting up a nasty fight if given enough time to do so, but they also had a far more efficient military system and more starships per capita.

The Badoon were also going to get it bad, as their homeworld was still their primary crecheworld and home of their largest female population. While the whole Badoon population of males would work together to get those eggs and women off their homeworld, the stuff we were doing was specifically designed to make that increasingly more difficult without compromising the males’ own security... and we were totally willing to let their enemies know once it happened, and arrange for them to strike some pretty nasty blows against the next generation of the Badoon.

Depending on how long it took for Galactus to make His way there, when the blow came, it was going to be heavier and heavier as the stress on the Badoon only increased.

And then there was the Brood.

-------

Chandilar, in Shi’ar space...

“How are you doing, Professor?” I greeted him, shaking his hand. He was still in his chair, and if it might be known as an affection to the truly interested now, the chain of assassination attempts and attacks on him and Lilandra had also brought out the fact that the thing was devastatingly dangerous.

I knew, because we constantly sent along upgrades for the original systems for his bodyguards and himself to install on the sly. Couldn’t have the Terran Consort to a space empress looking vulnerable now, right?

I also shook hands with his Shield Imahd, who was escorting him. The Widow Fatima was naturally somewhere doing something dangerous that I was a sure a great many unscrupulous Shi’ar didn’t want her to be doing, and Lilandra’s personal Harriers were trying to emulate.

“Finding myself in the unusual position of acting as middleman to discussions between the Brood and the Acanti.” He shook his head with a sigh. “An alien in an alien empire brokering talks between two alien races.”

“What is Terra coming to?” I wondered aloud, and the three of us all smiled. Terra might not have a true space navy per se, but our interstellar stock was still rising.

There was a Combicha to Ten! branch just outside the Imperial Palace now, too. It had a taken a year or two of work by Dealer and Julia to work out the menu using native sources, but the place was always jammed, and the t-shirts worn proudly by Shi’ar of all levels. The underclasses went to the much humbler Terran Spicy Food branch below.

Most of the workers were Mexican Tribals, Chef Alchemists making Galactic Credits hand over fist with great excitement, and their alterations to the traditional Shi’ar dishes, especially kliyr’ritz, had fanatic followers. The stuff even had a following back on Terra when the Starjammer came back in-system with its loads of cargo.

The spice trade never dies, after all!

If there just happened to be an emergency Portal back to Luna in the back of that shop in case of emergency, well, that was what it was.

“What do the Brood even trade to the Shi’ar for? Slaves?” I asked derisively.

“Yes,” Xavier agreed softly. “It is completely illegal, given the fate of those slaves, but there are still certain lords who get rid of their excess slaves in such a manner, and get valuable resources in return. There is also trade in basic resources as normal under the table, but the slave trade is the important one.”

Brood eggs could grow out of any sizable animal, but sapient ones had the most intelligent results, and the possibility of inheriting abilities from their hosts was an important consideration. It was one of the reasons they were looking at human Powered and mutants the same way.

I noted that the Deviant races made by the Celestials gave no such benefits, or the Brood would have been more aggressive towards the shape-changing Skrulls. Alas, no swarms of shape-shifting Brood in the stars...

The door to the audience chamber hissed open, and I immediately paused. Abdul’s Shield lit up warningly, and he yanked the Professor to an immediate stop, bringing up the chair’s force field at the same time.

My head sparked once.