The numbers began to soften up.

The Annihilation Waves had swept out for tens of thousands of light years, rolling over millions of star systems inhabited and otherwise. Any species that could not flee fast enough from them were slaughtered, and their worlds taken by the desperate immigrants.

Each such world and system settled represented the removal of billions of Zoners from the fight, madly fortifying their new homes against not only those who would punish them for taking it, but those coming in behind who would steal it for themselves.

Billions of beings and millions of systems added up to trillions leaving the Waves.

Too, the fighting and the slaughter had been apocalyptic. Whole systems were nothing but mass graveyards, and despite being warned that it was better not to do so, worlds had been shattered and stars cracked open in scorn and rage upon the invaders from another reality, taking more billions with them when they became brief flares of light among the cosmos.

More trillions had fallen in the war, entire species on both sides extinguished from the cosmos forever, their time in the history of Eternity done.

The Wave came to the edges of three galaxies in particular, and looked out into the void at the small galaxy beyond, beckoning to them.

The Badoon had been aggressive, zealous attackers against the Annihilation Wave, focusing their attention in the Magellanic Cloud and the worlds of the Kree Empire. They had lost multiple fleets, tens of thousands of ships, and hundreds of millions of their troops. They excelled in attacking civilian transports and supply convoys, making them much reviled among the Zoners, but their attacks had made outsized contributions to slowing the Wave and encouraging the invaders to fortify what they had just managed to take, instead of advancing to conquer as much as possible.

Now they were here with the largest remnant of their fleets, crackling with energy and readiness and some truly nasty weapons. The system itself was nothing, one of the last stars in the Milky Way Galaxy before you hit intergalactic space, but it had something here.

It had a Crimson Tower rising defiant, daring them to come, existing only to challenge their courage and kill them all.

The gargantuan Annihilation Fleet was gathered on the edges of the system, a motley yet immense collection of ships from over a hundred species, gathered here from three streams of the Wave, poised to leap forwards, and... waiting.

Waiting and watching. Watching as ships of the Galactus Fleets warped into position around the Badoon, one more every minute. The terrifying Nova Ships with their humanoid starfighters also teleported into other locations, one every two minutes.

I was waiting there, with Primus, Kismet, Comet and her Carol Corps members, and Prima. Lanterns were scattered around, each of the members of the Watchful Order equal to at least a dreadnought.

Space seethed with a solar storm. Lightning crackled from the tip of a Crimson Tower, daring them to come and take it, and see just how vaunted and determined they were.

-They won’t take it. The most martial and fanatic of the races were chewed up too much in the Crimson systems. The wiser ones just want to bypass this, but our show of strength and increasing forces is really unsettling them.-

A new Galactus Fleet ship was being dropped from Taa II every minute. Barb was an opportunist and had decided that since the whole fleet was going to be mothballed at some point, having some place for all those millions of crewmembers to go was appropriate. Whistling, she’d set up a production line for straight Xandaran-tech Nova ships, and started rolling out the much smaller vessels of the Xandarans, too.

The net result was that the Xandarans were now in possession of a fleet larger than they’d ever had in their entire history, and it was literally getting bigger by the minute.

It hadn’t gone unnoticed, either. The Skrulls were particularly unsettled by the RISING numbers of Xandaran vessels as their own empire fell and their fleets died in murderous holding actions. They were experiencing what it had been like for Xandar to defend itself from the Skrull fleets for all those years.

But they, the Kree, and the Shi’ar had lost their galaxies and their empires with them, retreating to the Sanctuary Ringworlds made for them. Their civilians, their legacies, and their technology was intact, and they were gearing up for an existential war to reclaim what they had lost, bit by bit. But for now, they could only rebuild and seethe with anger at what had been taken from them.

Primus was using his Ultraspecs to watch the whole thing, too. Although he didn’t have Cosmic Awareness, his Ultrasight was basically instant clairvoyance at this point. Shifts in position indicated many things as we tracked them. -I concur. They all want someone else to go first and throw themselves on the fire. Their formation is changing as the ships on our side grow, too. While they have reinforcements trickling in, they are not the same steady, inexorable tide. They are nervous.-

Callie /agreed. -They’re going to go around us, and maybe even split up, even if it risks being annihilated piecemeal.-

-The numbers say if they do that, they’ll head for the Badoon homeworld to cut the head off the snake.- I /paused so everyone could consider that.

-That’s only forty light years from Earth and Galador. Practically next door.- The new voice came from Rom, now a Great Centurion of the Golden Corps of Galador, and wearing some Galadoran power armor on top of it all. Despite the extreme formidability of the Spaceknights of the Golden Corps, they weren’t dumb enough to think they could defend Galador from the numbers here. A Sanctuary Ship could certainly get all the people away, but the system itself would be ravaged.

The same was true for Terra, although the Acanti could potentially swing that if we asked them... not that we would. We didn’t want them dragged into wars and suddenly getting them reclassified as potential mercenaries by the many forces watching this fight across the universe.

Eating biotech races was about food, not fighting. Even the Zoner races realized it, as the Acanti didn’t bother them if they weren’t bothered in turn... and their infinite appetites had been noticed and were respected. By now, trillions of dead Negative Zoners had vanished down the gullets of the Acanti, cleaning up space and systems of bodies and the debris of war slowly and surely.

If they were bringing a lot of that debris to Terra or Taa II, well, that was just too bad, wasn’t it?

“Mass reconfiguration of their fleet. They are preparing to shift to hyperspace.” I turned my head to confirm Primus’ observations. “They’re going for the Badoon homeworld.”

“I guess it’s time the Badoon got what is coming to them.” I smiled slightly, and put two fingers to my temples, both glowing slightly. “Great Elder? One of those worlds we told you about some time ago is about to be taken by the Annihilation Wave. It looks like something has discerned there is a cosmic power source at its core.”

With ripples of space-time, the massive invasion fleet began to shift into hyperspace, splitting in several directions, but the main thrust of it headed for the Badoon homeworld orbiting Capella.

The Badoon were at first incensed, and then started to panic, rivals and nobles shouting at one another over their private coms, while also turning their ships around to try and launch a doomed effort to save their homeworld.

“Do not bother attempting to save your homeworld.” My Voice cut across all their coms to their entire fleet, and even the most fervent members of the race paused to hear it. “It is doomed. The primary crecheworld and homeworld of the Badoon has a Celestial Seed within it. It has long been marked by Galactus, and now the Annihilation Wave, in addition to their prior insult of capturing and attempting to enslave Him, is taking His food from Him?

“Galactus comes to feed, and all who attempt to stop Him will die.”

The cries of the Badoon all faded into existential dread at my words, and nobody jumped into hyperspace in pursuit. They remained floating in space, torn between the horror of losing their homeworld and the nasty, grimly ironic schadenfreude at what was about to happen to the invaders.

“If you wish to save the remains of your empires, we can offer deployment suggestions, now that the enemy has thoughtfully divided themselves into smaller fleets.” The Galactus Fleet and the Nova Ships began to move out, Portals shifting up and the Galactus Fleet moving through them calmly, while the Nova Ships simply built up power and teleported away, crossing half the galaxy to the intended destinations of the remnants of the Zoner Wave, and would be there to greet them when they emerged from hyperspace.

A circle of the most prominent Badoon nobles popped up in my coms. I had been supplying information to everyone and fighting against the Negative Zone directly longer than any of them, and they could not discount my words. I had never lied to them, even if I didn’t much like them. “This,” the Archduke Zuk’Ryzz spoke up. “How long have you known of the Celestial Seed there?! We were not aware of it!...”

“You are all Celestial Deviants. Once Galactus noticed it, the fact you had a Seed was as plain as the Kree and the Skrulls having one, and we could naturally deduce the same.”

One of the others stuck the console in front of him with his fist. “And you did not think to inform us of this?” he demanded angrily. “We could have vacated the planet, saved those upon it!...”

“Such actions would have drawn the attention of the Celestials, which may have resulted in a planet-wipe and removal of the Seed, and Galactus Himself, now that He was aware of it. If both of them moved, the planet would have been destroyed entirely, and Galactus’ meal likely destroyed as well. If only the Celestials acted, well, if they could accelerate its birth, it would have taken out the entire local star cluster, which MIGHT have included Terra and Galador.” I paused for just a cold moment for them to consider our perspective. “So, tell me, which of you would have liked to be responsible for taking from Galactus His meal, or birthing a new Celestial?”

There was awkward silence as the Badoon commanders looked at one another.

“Your homeworld itself was doomed the instant the Celestials placed their Seed in it all those millennia ago. Either it would hatch and consume your entire race and more, or Galactus would find it and devour it.

“Happily, its sacrifice is now going to be a great weapon, for a trillion Zoners are going to get in Galactus’ way as Lotiara dies, and then He is going to dispose of them.”

They considered that in their cold, reptilian way, turning over the logic and finding nothing wrong with it. They had other crecheworlds, and if Lotiara was the first and greatest of them, it would not destroy the Badoon to see it fall.

“The other fleets of the Zoners are headed for your other Crecheworlds. You may want to get moving. Grand Admiral Rogers, if you could give the deployment orders?”

THAT got them panicking. Battle plans were downloaded, and within a minute the entire Badoon force was streaking urgently through different Portals formed by the Galactus ships, heading forth to intercept the Zoner fleets, and this time, there would be no waiting to take the fight to them!

Primus glanced at the download through his Specs, and nodded. “We’ve got our orders. A shame we’re going to miss the smackdown of their homeworld.” He had no more love now for Badoon than he had in the timeline he and Callie had made for their family.

I pumped juice through my suit, and built up our own Portal in seconds. Everyone zipped on through it promptly, emerging next to the Galactus Fleet already taking up position in Prostican.

I smirked at the hyperdiction zone already in place. The Zoners were going to come down out of hyperspace right into a killzone, and the Badoon were taking up their places with vengeful eagerness.

“Killing off their homeworld, and they can only thank us for it,” I mused quietly to the High Guard, and they nodded in grim satisfaction along with me.

The sun was setting on the Badoon Empire, and it was certainly rising on the Pentad Alliance, but that was the whole plan. The Badoon had already basically abandoned all their vassal states and races to save themselves and their key worlds, and to whom would those worlds turn to next for leadership?