“Fifteen minutes, I want this wall done, and then we move to get full kit! Thirty minutes, I want everyone armed and armored and ready at the matter shifter! We’re the first ones in and the last ones out, and there ain’t gonna be an out! Get ready for it, you poozers!”

“BOO-RAH!” a thousand enthusiastic aliens from the Colosseum shouted back at The Mountain, and the workpace picked up even further. Spurts of sand erupted from the placed columns as Flint Marko cemented them all in place, and flashes of energy fused it all into an obdurate mass.

A flying figure zipped in from the distance; no, two, Hawkeye and his wingman the Angel flying up. Hawkeye was in a set of the Cyclone armor, straight off the Russian lines, while Angel was in his normal form, but could bulk up to his Avatar form nigh-instantly when it was time.

“Sergeant,” grinned Hawkeye as he landed in a swirl of winds. Warren Worthington’s softly glowing wings deposited him even more deftly next to the Aerie’s spotter.

“Lieutenant,” Mr. Hill saluted him casually. The two Aerie members had been assigned as spotters and aerial cover for the Brute Squad. The paramounts who could have performed both heavy and light functions either had special duties or were assigned to elite shock units for the fight, similar to the Crimson Guards and other armored units.

“Hill.” The Mountain turned around as seven figures in ‘custom’ armor, meaning some stylized mystical crap that appeased their masters, came up behind them. The eighth member of their number was down there heaving duracrete hexagon columns into place with the Abomination, setting the pace for everyone else.

The Octessence had helped with some of the defenses, the elemental powers of some of them having at least some capability for downtime usage. This battle had been designated the final fight for prestige for the Eight Great Idiots of the Mess, as Dealer had so kindly named them, and so they were here to spread the Names of their lords and masters and see who would make the greatest impression.

“Cassidy,” The Mountain returned affably, noting the arrogant little shit had at least got himself some sort of magical threads to complement the crazy sea captain look he had going. “You lot ready to see if you can outperform us?” he asked mildly.

They probably could, since most of them had decent area attacks. Of course, they were going to be hiding behind the brutes if anything truly tough came up, or at least behind the Juggernaut.

“We’ll be tearing them limb from limb!” Black Tom Cassidy assured him confidently, oozing bravado and confidence. He’d earned a name for himself as the most brutal of the Octessence’s Avatars, and in a lot empowered by demon gods, that was saying something.

“Glad to hear it. Cap, what’re we looking at?”

“The Great Bear has redirected all the hyperspace traffic for a massive area around us into this system. They won’t even know it’s happening, all roads lead to here. They’ll be hyperdicted out of higher space about twenty million miles out.

“Fighting will start immediately. Most of the troop transports will be slower, probably won’t get beyond .10c, and they’ll be in the mid to late sections of those coming.

“So, we won’t have landers probably for a good two to three hours. The first wave of those are going to hit the Goddess’ storm, and get popped like bugs hitting a shocklamp. They’ll come in with greater waves all over the planet after that, and some will hit the surface. They’ll disgorge whatever is going to fight, and that’ll be our time.

“On the other hand, they might have some big ships crash through the atmosphere and land, and given how many there are, that is a statistical given. They won’t be the committed combat specialist troops, but they’ll still be ready to invade, and they could hit at any of the killzones once the gravimetrics force them there.

“I figure,” Captain Harold glanced at his holo display flagrantly, “forty-three minutes, plus or minus thirty seconds, and we’ll be in combat.”

Nobody bothered to even question the Shielder. This kind of military fighting shit was what they did best, and why he was their Captain, despite being the least physically powerful of any of them. Of course, he had a Shield, and nobody was really willing to take him on because of it.

The light power armor and Ultraspecs were just some really lethal icing on the cake, as it were. It was a nod to their importance and destructive potential that they’d been assigned a Shielder at all.

“Mountain.” The deep voice made everyone turn, as the bulky figure of the lead officer for the Vanir Reserve Team walked up to them.

“Lieutentant Skurge,” Mr. Hill saluted him casually, glancing around him. “Where’s your pretty lady?”

Skurge had been ribbed enough about the matter that he didn’t even blush. “Our Healers are talking over there.” Everyone turned to look to the distance, where Dealer and Ursula were indeed conferring with several other people with healing gifts and powers, mostly other Terrans, but not a few Asgardian, pardon, Vanir Volunteers of the female persuasion who had been interested in what they were doing and capable of.

Calling on the All-Mother’s power to Heal their kinsmen was a fine use of a Shield-maiden’s time and energy, and Ursula had been more than willing to teach them how to do so. The massive Health totals of the Vanir made even rote Healing Reserve uses incredibly useful, and being semi-divine themselves, they skipped a lot of pre-reqs and rapidly became very good at employing it.

The injuries the Vanir and Brutes had sustained in their sparring and training had also helped loads in the Healers’ proficiency, and their skill at it had also engendered a wildly protective streak in the soldiers they were taking care of.

“Sensing anything weird, Lieutenant?” Mr. Hill asked calmly. He knew the other was semi-divine, and the gods had odd senses, especially gods of war, noses for conflict and stuff.

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Heck, Ares and Athena had both come down off Olympus to play, and were around somewhere. Hercules was commanding another group of Colosseum volunteers at another firebase, while Ares was working with the Greek Spartan volunteer troops, and Athena was with the superhumans of the Euroforce. Gods from at least nine Pantheons were here with the elite troops of Terra who had been sent to help, to support and buttress them for this fight.

“This is a fight worthy of gods, with foes beyond number, all deserving only death,” the Executioner said as he craned his thick neck at the heavens above, and his great Axe hummed agreement as they all glanced at it for judgement. It had been proven that the Axe would not harm the worthy, although it could certainly beat them around, and they were looking to see what true harm it could wreak on their foes. “Much is in chaos, and the shadow of the Great Bear falls across it all. I can offer no insight, save that we will be fighting soon, and the slaughter will be grimmer than any I have known.”

Mr. Hill just nodded. “You take care of your little lady, Lieutenant, and she’ll take care of you.”

“I shall do so.” It was probably his only real purpose in life, Mr. Hill guessed, and couldn’t say that was a bad decision. The Hierophant of the Church of Asgard was a fine woman by the standards of any man.

There were a few million Shi’ar emplaced on the planet, and millions more of vassal species. The Shi’ar were generally managing the vehicles, artillery, and point defenses, while the vassals would be taking up the infantry roles. That didn’t mean the Shi’ar were pushovers in personal combat, but they were better shooters and more familiar with their own technology.

Their objective wasn’t to win. It was to kill as many of the enemy as they could, to use everything and anything to slaughter, and to pile the bodies into mountains.

They were going to lose, and they were going to make the enemy pay for every square foot of ground that they took.

It was the kind of fight he could understand, grim and nasty, the underlying cause not something high and noble, but for pure survival.

He blew out a cloud of smoke. “Just confirming. The Brood were going for Terra, weren’t they?” he asked Captain Harold.

“Yes,” the Shielder replied, and everyone heard him, adding another grim note to the tally.

Going to an alien world to fight aliens was all well and good; the boys would kill without losing sleep over pulping these body-stealing enslaving genocidal bastards who had earned everything done to them.

But knowing the horde they were going to face had actually been heading for their homeworld, that changed things.

They weren’t just killing for fun and money, or to impress some Idiot demon gods. They were defending Terra, even way out here in another galaxy. The Great Bear was just staging the fight here, instead of back home, where the whole planet would have been devastated.

Yeah, the Terrans were going to stack the dead into mountains. The Colosseum warriors were here for a truly magnificent fight, and possibly earning a glorious warrior’s death on the grandest stage, while the Shi’ar and their vassals were fighting for vengeance and spite, knowing they had already lost.

The Terrans didn’t have to win, but they couldn’t afford to lose.

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Hyperspace compressed and they were shunted out of it by the hyperdiction, no need to whip up an exit. The Parker Luck flashed down into normal space, along with thousands of other ships, and immediately the computers started talking to one another over hyperwaves, getting ID’s and assigning them positions in the fighting to come.

Peter was in what looked like a globular command chair, with LCD projections of the surrounding space there, complementing the holographic overlays that were enhanced by the Markspace feed he was also getting.

His brothers were behind him to his right and left, John and Ben also looking around at the enormous numbers of ships already assembled here.

It didn’t impress them. They’d already been involved in dozens of fleet actions, as the scoring on the Parker Luck’s adamantium hull could attest to, and seen the sky filled with literally millions of ships, the vast majority of them belonging to the invaders.

This was the first time seeing so many from Sol, however.

“This is Captain Parker. I need a full resupply, top to bottom. I’ve got guns almost melting down and no other munitions, and a cryokinetic vent would be very appreciated.” The outer hull of the Luck was running at about two thousand degrees F at the moment, courtesy of a lot of blast radius impacts that no ship with mere durasteel would have been able to live through.

The self-repair systems were taking care of the stressed wiring and conduits, but they had simply been putting out too much for too long, and even adamantium couldn’t keep the more delicate field regulators and focusing circuitry from overloading from use.

“Captain Parker, you’re in line at the Green Mercy,” a smooth female voice replied in Interlac. The course snapped up in front of him, and he waved off control and let the systems take over with mechanical precision, finally relaxing for a moment as he listened to the calls from the squadron behind him also calling for resupply at the Whoberis vessel.

John groaned in the port seat, Ben doing the same in the starboard a moment later. “Drink it in, bros,” Peter sighed. “We got twenty minutes before the Brood get here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” John muttered, closing his eyes and starting the Meditative process that would begin refreshing mind, body, and soul, chasing away the stress of coming off of eighteen hours of fly-by-teeth space combat. Ben did the same, as did Peter, cycling spiritual energy around to settle down his frazzled thoughts and nerves from piloting through literally Hell.

He had shot through his entire load. When that included literally thousands of missiles and bombs Compressed via Sha Particles into his magazines, it added up to a lot of killing, and a lot of time in combat.

His job was to pilot and the forward and rear arcs, his devoted cannons set with a limited firing arc, and the rail guns immovable, while Eight Eyes, his Ultraspecs, gave him a 360-degree view of the battlespace. John had the port side and bottom arc, and Ben ran the starboard and topside, with either of them also shooting to the rear when the unwise swung in behind them. The 270-degrees of overlapping fire required incredible reflexes and coordination, which both of them had in spades.

The MF Buckler-Class gunboats were earning unholy reputations for speed, durability, and firepower. While the adamantium hulls wouldn’t prevent stuff inside from getting pulped or cooked if they were hit hard enough, they could endure nuclear-levels of heat and capital ship impacts without breaking, which meant a lot more power could be diverted to ablative insulating fields and concentrated on the shields around the guns and sensors, as well as inertial-shunting to survive any impacts.

They were also the first non-capital ships assigned Crystal Cores.