The Conceptual Deck

Chapter 80: The storm

I woke up the next morning feeling marginally rested, but still tense. After a quick breakfast from the cafeteria I found an empty room on the floor below the flight deck and set up the travel landing pad. I could recover it in a few seconds should I need to move it somewhere else after all. With that set up I headed out into the hallways, making my way out to the top deck and into the sunshine.

The flight deck looked nothing like it had the day before.

What was once an open area with quinjets and normal jets lined up, ready for take off, was now a fully fortified position. Shield soldiers stood ready, fully armed and armored, prepared to fight. There were gun emplacements, anti-air turrets, all connected with plates of deployable cover, some of it even bolted to the floor.

All of the jets were cleared as well, either sent out during the night or stored below in the interior of the ship while I was asleep. I could see Bucky and Steve not far away, talking to their two squads of enhanced soldiers, the newest additions going through what looked like practice drills, probably to get used to their new abilities.

I kept scanning the area, finally seeing who I was looking for.

"Fury!" I called out, jogging over to the Director.

"What is it?" He responded after taking a sip from his coffee. "This is the first break I've had since Loki kicked down our door, what do you want?"

"Permission to deploy some of my own equipment?" I said, unable to hide my smirk.

"...Fine," He said, almost reluctantly."But I reserve the right to push them off my ship."

"Fair enough."

I turned and headed to the closest clear space, which happened to be about twenty feet away. I pushed out the five black metallic trunks, lining them up in a row, unlatching each one after I pushed it from their card. Instead of the top opening, the front wall did, slapping to the ground. Steve, Bucky, and Fury all stepped up behind me as my army slid out onto the deck.

Droids pushed out of the crate two at a time, side by side. They started as compacted cubes, unfolding once they were clear and looking around before walking forward. This repeated until ten robots had stepped out of each trunk, all in almost perfect sync.

The first of the robots from each trunk were two caduceus droids, still painted white, marked as medics and completely unarmed. After them came six battle bots, each one coming armed with the final versions of my infantry weapons, including one with a combo cannon, strapped to their backs. The battle bots were a dark blue with gold highlights, though that coloring could shift to various forms of camouflage as well. They were slightly taller than the caduceus droids, each one seven feet tall and heavily armored with my ultra metal. They honestly looked like science fiction knights, all they needed were swords and cloaks.

The last two droids out of storage were even larger than the other two types. Where the first two had been more or less cubes in their compact state and slid out side by side, these slid out on their own. As they unfolded to their full height of eight feet, it was immediately apparent what made these ones special. The newest members of the squads looked like a combination of the battle bots and the Destroyer armor, with connected bands of metal running under plate armor, all of it colored a dark purple with gold highlights. They were also completely unarmed. Instead, these droids were mobile cover, capable of projecting the most powerful energy shield I could make. Each one had several Destroyer armors woven in, with a heart containing a completely maxed out, singular shield generator.

I was calling them behemoths

With my own mini army deployed I turned to look at my audience, finding wide eyes, dropped jaws and concerned looks. With a smirk I turned back, focusing on my droids.

"Alright! Spread out along the deck, keep scanning for anything unusual. Caduceus droids I want you to spread out around the squishy Shield agents. Behemoths, I want you guys working together to get as much of the defenses covered as possible, try and double up if it's possible. Follow basic orders from Shield agents for the next twenty four hours. "

The fifty droids moved as one, separating quickly to spread out to the fortifications, heads on a swivel as they scanned around, keeping an eye on the water and the sky.

"What the fuck Maker?" Fury asked as I walked back, smirking slightly. "How long have you had them?"

"About two months now?" I answered. "I wanted a force multiplier that I could deploy whenever, wherever I needed them. With some help from Tony and some Deck creativity"

"How effective are they?" Steve asked, Bucky already jogging back to their squads to help coordinate with my additions.

"I mean you've seen the guns," I reminded him with a shrug, Fury giving the super soldier a harsh look. "The battle bots are a bit literal when instructed to do non military things, and caduceus droids take the hippocratic oath seriously for humans, unless I order them not to directly. The behemoths well there wasn't much to build with when it came to them, not a lot of human shield training to use. They understand the basics of shields and cover from some books on shield walls and stuff like that, but their programming is pretty basic."

"That doesn't answer the question," Fury pointed out. "Are they effective?"

"Of course they are effective Fury, not to toot my own horn but have I ever fielded something that wasn't? They have the playbooks of a dozen different types of special forces, including Navy Seals, Spetsnaz and Delta Force. They can be instructed to follow other orders, but I would only give out basic order rights like I just did."

"And what are those?" Steve asked, seemingly beating Fury by a second.

"Positioning, camp instructions like 'help me lift this' or 'help me set up a barricade'," I explained. "They can be ordered to hold their fire, and automatically return fire if they or someone designated as an ally are attacked. The battle bots are soldiers, they will act like soldiers, just under someone else's command. The caduceus droids will act like a cross between doctors and army medics."

"Are they sentient?"

"Not in the slightest. I'm not going to create life for the express purpose of being soldiers, or slaves." I assured them, shaking my head. "They are extremely well built VI's, not capable of independent thought, self determination or complicated learning."

"Are they like you?" Fury asked.

"No. Well they are like me without my armor, but tougher," I explained. "They are about as strong as me without armor though, so about Steve's level."

"Dammit Maker, this is going to change a lot," Fury said, shaking his head. "We thought it was just you and Emerald, but with these guys"

All I could do was shrug.

We watched Shield and my soldiers mingle, my bots getting into position and not moving, Shield agents and soldiers watching them closely, inspecting the machines. A few people even touched them, rapping on their metal chests or feeling their equipment. Steve opened his mouth to call out to them, but I stopped him.

"They are machines, Steve, just another piece of equipment. You wouldn't stop them from kicking the tires of a new humvee would you?"

"No, but they should have more respect."

"I don't want them to." I explained, shaking my head. "Their effectiveness will get them some, but I want as little personification going on as possible. They are tools to use and throw away if necessary, no risking themselves to drag them out of harm, no getting worried when one takes a hit meant for them, just disposable tools. The only reason they are even bipedal is because I want them to be able to use normal equipment if they have to."

"I alright."

"So Any news?"

"None. I have agents in every city in the world, watching the skies, listening to police scanners," Fury responded, his hands in his pockets as he watched my robots. "Nothing so far. Is there anything you could do to help?"

"Not unless Thor has a few things that belong to Loki, or a sample of Loki's blood," I responded. "I could use books on mythology but I would need some sort of anchor to actual Loki."

"Forget Loki, I'm worried about what might be coming with him," He countered, shaking his head. "Who knows what he will bring with him, I'm-"

Before Fury could finish his thought, we both noticed a low rumbling. A Shield soldier about thirty feet away started shouting, pointing up into the sky, my soldier robots immediately aiming up. Both Fury and I looked up to see a churning dark cloud and sparks of energy, the power of the Tesseract, spreading high in the air. For a moment it looked like the sky was being poured into space through a small hole before it opened into a wide dark disk.

"Looks like we are about to find out," I said, my armor deploying around my body, my revolvers on my hips.

As the portal grew Fury reached for his radio, bringing it to his lips. I took out my phone, preparing to call Tony when instead I got a text message from him, simply saying that he was on his way. Steve ran back to his squad, preparing for the coming fight.

"All hands, this is Director Fury! Battlestations! Repeat, all hands to battlestations!" Fury shouted into his radio, his words getting sent out across the ship. "Hold your fire until fired upon! Repeat, hold your fire!"

The portal kept growing, and though it was hard to tell with how far in the air it was, it had to be at least fifty feet wide. It pulsed with energy before seaming to stabilize. Moments later they began pouring through.

Small flying craft, no bigger than a sedan, flew through the portal, directly down. Dozens of them made a beeline to the ships below. For a long moment everyone watched, the aliens plummet towards us. A single streak of pale blue energy fired from one of the small vehicles, slamming into a nearby destroyer. And with that, the moment was over.

All at once, dozens of anti air weapons opened fire, tracer rounds streaking up to eviscerate the flying vehicles. They exploded in balls of fire, scrap and shrapnel exploding out, some even setting off secondary explosions. More and more of them poured in from the portal, all of them getting immediately destroyed. My attention was pulled away from the massacre by the approaching subtle clunks of metal.

Tony, suited up in his full armor, had joined us on the flight deck, his helmet pulled back and his face exposed. His new armor looked impressive, and nothing like his original. His chest now contained three glowing triangles arranged in a vertical line, the largest on the top and the smallest on the bottom, just above where his belly button would be. His color scheme was still red and gold, but now included a silver highlight coming from behind the metal plating. As I looked closer I could see the silver highlight was a taught mass of metallic fibers wrapped into cables, like some sort of artificial muscle. It shared a few similarities to his TinMan Armor from the comics. This was mostly covered with his more traditional plated armor design, which appeared to be

"What happened to not using that as armor plating?" I asked, stopping just short of admitting to giving him vibranium in front of Nick Fury.

"You gave me so much I ran out of places to use it." Tony fired back before looking up at the portal. " That's terrifying."

"I recommend staying low if you're going to fly around." Fury said, not looking away from the portal.

"Yeah, good idea."

For at least three minutes the fleet's anti air weapons held off the incoming vehicles with ease, completely halting any advance. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the portal shrank, small enough that I had to engage my enhanced vision to see it. A few cheers echoed out across the water, a few even originating from the Helicarriers flight deck as it disappeared from most people's sight. Before I could open my mouth to correct anyone, someone spoke from beside me.

"This isn't over." Natasha said, having arrived without anyone noticing, with Clint right beside her.

I looked back up at where the portal had been a moment before, but now I couldn't find it. Before I could say anything a voice called out from the radio.

"North East! Portal opening just above sea level to the North East!"

Sure enough, only a few hundred feet away, the portal was opening again, this time only a few dozen feet above the water. Immediately the same flying vehicles poured out the disk of black space. I could just barely see something, something big, further into the portal.

"Here they come!"

The vehicles reached the ships arrayed around the Helicarrier in seconds, zipping by and hammering them with blasts of energy. Plenty of the vehicles were destroyed, but the anti-air facing inward stayed silent as they couldn't risk hitting friendlies.

"Alright, time to go to work." Tony said, his repulsors firing as he launched into the sky.

"I'm going to join him, make sure they know not to shoot anything with wings." I said to Fury, my wings spreading out as I tapped a communicator that was attached to my wrist. "Squad five and four, split in half and start heading to the other ships! Help where you can!"

I rocketed into the air after Tony, vaguely acknowledging that twenty of my droids took to the air as well, splitting up and heading to the four other destroyers. I was much more focused on pulling out my revolvers, cranking up their power setting a few levels and focusing on incoming vehicles.

As I got closer, I could see the vehicles more clearly. They each had two bipedal aliens on them, one in the back firing some sort of energy weapon, while another alien drove. The whole thing looked a bit like a chariot.

"Are you going to help or just stare?" Tony asked, his voice coming from my internal communicator.

"Right, yeah!" I said, continuing to blast away at the alien chariots.

Slowly but surely we started to push the invaders back. There were hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, but once Tony and I got into the groove, and the soldiers and droids on the ships got into better positions, very few of the chariots made it to the fleet. After a few minutes it got even easier when Ema joined us, as did Thor. Together, backed up by the firepower of the fleet, we held off the incoming swarm.

Until the portal grew and the massive space whales came through.

They were huge, spined, horrible looking creatures, making wailing noises as they pushed through the enlarged portal, three at a time until there were twelve of them. One managed to smash into Tony, knocking him off course and into Ema, who only barely managed to keep herself from lashing out at the sudden impact.

I holstered one of my revolvers and shifted the other into its shotgun form, racing after the massive spined and armored abominations, landing on its back. I pumped a half dozen shots into the top of its head, softening up its armor before cranking my weapon up to full power. The gun kicked and blasted a beam of pure fiery energy into the top of its head, where I held it for the full four second blast. The flying creature let out a roar as the horrific smell of cooked and burnt meat spread, before it cut off with gurgle. The space monstrosity started to list and fall from the sky, smashing into the water as I flew up higher.

A quick look around saw that everyone else had managed to take down one by themselves as well. I looked just in time to see Tony's erupt in fire and gore, Ema's fall into two pieces as she decapitated it with a massive slice and Thor's get blasted by all of the lightning.

Unfortunately, even as we each took down our own monster space whale, eight more made it past us, as well as dozens if not hundreds of chariots, which harried the ships and kept them from taking down the massive flying monsters. Oddly enough no more reinforcements came through, through the portal remained open.

As the massive space whales got closer to the ships, one of them slammed into a destroyer's bridge, tearing and crushing it, continuing on to their main target. They circled the Helicarrier, launching scores of aliens down and onto the flight deck, revealing themselves as carriers for ground troops. Only about half of the alien soldiers even made it to the deck, but those that died were quickly replaced by the next waves. The AA made quick work of the space whales as they turned back around, but there were just too many.

Before I could accelerate towards the Helicarrier my danger sense screamed at me, in a way it never had before. On pure adrenaline fueled instinct I dove down, slamming into Tony, pulling him down about twenty feet. Where we had both just been, a thick beam of blue energy fired through the portal, streaked across the ocean and slammed into one of the destroyers. The resulting orange and red explosion engulfed almost half the ship, splitting it in two with enough force that the front end rose out of the water before slamming back down. Fire and black smoke billowed from the broken ship as the reverberations of the blue beam shook the air around us.

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