"Nova! Frankie!" Two people were looming over the prone form of Frankie Raye. Binary, also known as Carol Danvers, and Norrin Radd, the Silver Surfer. They were on the bridge of the Starjammer, and things seemed very wrong.
Nova had been unconscious, with Norrin and Carol just having brought her around, although Scott was nowhere to be seen.
The bridge itself was a wreck. Consoles were blown out, a support beam was sticking through the wall, having burst in from another room, and the ship seemed as though its pitch was off, listing to one side. Asteroids swirled erratically around the viewscreen.
Carol did not at all look happy, even though it was obvious Nova was all right.
Leaving Norrin to help her up, she'd stalked back to one of the few remaining panels, glancing over a few things before moving for the door, something about a stupid idiot being muttered somewhat furiously. "When you two are able, gimme a hand down in the engine room, we've gotta get moving ASAP."
"What the hell happened, B?"
Scott Summers had stormed onto the bridge, lurching with the ship, peppered brutally by Kree laser cannons.
"They came out of lightspeed right on top of us and opened up! That shuttle must've been leaking a signal this whole time!"
"How do our engines stand?"
"Fifty percent of maximum – they opened fire on them immediately."
Norrin Radd was watching the displays carefully, reporting status changes quickly, despite his usual silence.
"I took us into an asteroid field for some cover, but they're sending fighters in after us, Slim."
"What're those objects heading for us?" Scott was watching a pair of pods move towards the aft hull.
"There are lifeforms aboard. They are hull breaching pods."
Scott was out the door instantly, Binary and Nova behind him. The firefight was brutal and intense, and Nova was hit, rendering her unconscious.
Perhaps she would have vague memories of Scott and Binary yelling, a door slamming shut, and Binary yelling again, nearly howling in something akin to both anguish and fury.
Nova came to slowly, cursing her fragile physiology. Or her bad luck, either way. "Anyone get the number of that truck…?" she murmured weakly, forcing her eyes open… and then closing them again as the room was spinning. Leaving her eyes closed, she sat up a bit, propping herself on one elbow. Her last few minutes of consciousness were a blur, but she remembered the screaming, and forced her eyes open. "Hello?"
"It is good to see that you are awake again. You were injured during the battle, though not too seriously. Your body retains some of its durability that Galactus granted it – that shot would have killed a regular human, and perhaps even most mutants."
Norrin Radd was working calmly at one of the few remaining bridge stations, apparently coordinating with Binary, down in the engine room, on what systems were on top of the priority list, and running diagnostics to determine the problems with them.
"Then I guess I won't mope too much over getting my butt kicked," she said, somewhat crankily. "What did I miss during nappy time, Silverado? Did we win?"
Pacing herself, Nova worked her way to her feet a bit at a time, surveying the chaos that was the bridge. Things didn't look too good.
"The Kree attacked us. We believe they were somehow able to trace the shuttle here. They boarded the ship. We repelled them for a time, but more were on the way. Cyclops….removed the shuttle, drawing them away."
Scott had boarded the shuttle and shot his way out, even staging a few explosions to make the Starjammer look as though it was gone. He'd have to make a good 'fox', though, if he wanted to draw the 'hounds' far away from the nearly crippled ship.
Where he and the Kree had all gone was a mystery though. The ion trail was present, but dissipating.
"He would…" Nova said with a sigh. Her intended, Loren-inspired second conversation had never had the chance to take place. And now maybe it never would.
No sense in thinking like that.
"What can I do to help, Silverado?" she asked softly.
"Perhaps assisting Binary in the engine room. I believe I can handle all the necessary tasks here. I also believe Binary could use someone to assist in calming her down. Her tone is full of anger, she resents Scott taking on the risk solely onto himself, which drives her to hasten repairs."
And indeed Binary was pissed, storming around the engine room darkly, trying to get the critical systems back up so they could follow Scott's trail.
Nova nodded, and made her way down to the engine room. "B?" she called softly at the doorway, scanning the room's various niches for the other woman. It was mostly to announce her presence. The woman did look steamed. And that was an understatement. Moving across the room and surveying that damage too, she said, "Silverado sent me down to help with repairs, now that I finally got my butt out of bed… What can I do?"
"You can help me find Scott's common sense. He's lost his." She slammed the panel where she'd been working shut perhaps a bit too hard, rising. She took a deep breath. "I figure Norrin's told you how I was down here blowing my stack, and I was, but I've calmed down…..mostly. I think I'm just worried now. Scott just did what the rest of us would do in his place."
She started moving for the heavier engine parts, though making a stop in the storage room to collect some heavy lifting equipment. "Norrin says I've gotten all of the fused circuits in the systems we'll need to get going, but there are some ruptured conduits and cylinders in the power and cooling systems we'll have to fix."
Looking a bit relieved that Binary wasn't quite as extreme as the Surfer had made her out to be, Nova moved to help the other woman shift things around. "He'll be okay, B…" she said softly after a while. "I mean… Loren would had to have seen it coming if he wouldn't be, right? And I'm sure he would have said something… He seemed pretty hooked on the fact that we should drag the boss back to Karatoth soon, so…" It was the most concrete thing she had to offer. It sounded a little better to her than 'he'll be all right because he has to be', anyway.
Binary just stopped, exhaling again. "Loren can't always see everything, and I'm still not sure the future is so set in stone….it's just nice to have hope sometimes."
With that, she worked in silence, just trying to finish as quickly as she could.
Roughly three hours later, she was back on the bridge. She seemed to have a bit of the edge taken off her temper seeing that Norrin had not been idle either, repairing a few consoles and routing the major functions through them.
"Still got a trace on their ion trails?"
Suddenly, Carol swung around, fixing Nova in an intent stare. "Or maybe you have a more direct path?"
Nova nodded slightly. "I can put us in the right direction, but if he's still moving around…" It would take them a while to find him, though she supposed it would either way. Moving to the console Norrin had repaired for piloting, she leaned against it, closing her eyes, trying to get her cosmic bearings, so to speak.
She was hesitant at first, but after about a minute, she swung the ship around several degrees. It was a markedly different direction than the ion trail. Her eyes flickered open.
Coming upon a planet several hours later showed definite promise. There was a Kree warship in orbit on the far side of the planet.
"They do not seem to have noticed us yet," intoned the neutral voice of Norrin Radd.
"Take us down quickly, Nova, I don't want that changing." Binary scowled. The sensor reports were already coming up. Near where the warship was, a shuttle had gone down a bit violently, cutting a large swath through the trees. There were several smaller Kree fighters parked near it. The shuttle seemed intact, though it's engines were fairly damaged, and it was unlikely that it still had the power to escape the atmosphere, let alone outfly anything.
Binary eyed the arrangement carefully with a scrutinizing eye. "He's still alive, and they had to go after him on foot." That was the only reason for those fighters to be there at all.
Taking the ship down and settling it where nearby ore deposits would help to conceal it from orbital sensors, Nova exhaled softly, reminding herself not to worry. Scott would be fine, and, in short order, would be on the ship again. "I should go search for him… You two should keep the ship running and ready for us," she offered. She was the only one who could still fly, after all, and that coupled with her ability to find things seemed to make her the best candidate for getting them in and out quickly.
Binary studied her a moment. She clearly didn't like the idea of her going out by herself, but Nova was right. She and Norrin would just slow her down.
"See you when you get back."
There was a definitive tone that she expected nothing less.
Nova gave a quick salute and a reassuring grin as she sprinted off the bridge, stopping only to grab a backpack with some first aid gear – just in case – and some explosives, also just in case.
Giving herself a moment outside the ship to get her bearings again, she sprung into the air, moving up as high as the atmosphere would allow her to safely burn to minimize her risk of being seen by those on the ground. "Come out, come out, wherever you are…" she murmured, scanning for signs of Scott.
Scott Summers was roused to find he was still stretched against the same tree, his arms painfully stretched behind him, bound to the trunk. He'd gone on foot ever since the Kree had shot down the shuttle in the forest.
They'd caught him late in the day yesterday. They's already found about his power, and their computers had deduced the usage of ruby quartz to keep it in check, which explained the headset locked over his eyes.
After a meeting via holocom with their mothership, they'd began questioning him about what he'd done with the communications module. After insisting he figured it should have been in the shuttle, they got a bit more rough.
He'd pieced together the communications module had some kind of backup system for some important military documents, and they weren't so much concerned about getting the shuttle back as they were about protecting their secrets.
It had been a few hours ago that he recalled pulling it out on the Starjammer for analysis.
Angered, they hadn't believed him.
"You idiots blew your damned secrets to hell when you took out Starjammer!"
The Captain of the Kree squad hadn't liked Scott's show of insolence, which had yielded the sharp blow to Scott's head, rendering him unconscious.
Skip to his waking up just now.
The Kree, upon finding he was awake, was apparently at the end of his rope.
Scott found a handful of his hair seized and yanked back, a sharp blade pressing against his throat.
"This is your last chance, Terran. What have you done with the module?! Who are you selling it to?! Answer me!"
Dropping down into the trees, Nova wasn't pleased to find him in less than ideal conditions. In fact, she was feeling a little vengeful. But he was still alive, at least. She wasn't entirely certain what the best way to diffuse the situation without getting him killed was. No point in brooding over the days when matter transmutation would have gotten rid of the knife. She'd just have to try and distract him.
"I could tell you where the module is…" she said in accented Kree, shifting noisily in the tree branch a few paces above and behind the Kree. When the alien jerked his attention towards the unexpected voice, Nova unleashed a slightly-more-vengeful-than-necessary fireball towards him. It sent him flying a few paces, and also set him nicely aflame. "If I wanted to," she finished, unleashing a more tame flame onto Scott's bindings.
She didn't pause to watch him get himself free, turning her attentions onto driving away the other Kree in the area. The forest was a relatively dry one, and it didn't take too much work on her part to get a real inferno going around her and Scott. "Anyone who doesn't want to be extra crispy," she remarked loudly in the Kree language, "Better start running."
Pulling the restraint from his head found Scott what he was classifying as the most beautiful sight he'd seen. Certainly he was of biased feelings, and the situation had emotional levels running high, but even so, he wasn't going to analyze it.
He smiled in Frankie's direction. "Thanks, Frankie."
Though the rapidly spreading blaze caught his attentions without much difficulty.
"Don't suppose you've got us a quick way out?"
His powers could potentially put out fires, though he'd have to level half the forest to do so effectively.
She wasn't looking at him, focused on the fire instead, as she really didn't want to leave it to spread and rampage. "That would be up, boss," Nova replied after a moment, extending her hands towards the fire to cool it down. Working at it for a minute, she managed to draw the heat completely out of it. It wouldn't take too long for it to burn itself out. That was the best she could do.
Turning to Scott, she smirked slightly, realizing what she was about to do classified as a bit of long-due revenge. "Sorry for this – actually, no, I'm not." Even if she couldn't bench tons upon tons any more, it wasn't too much to hoist Scott over her shoulder in a fireman's lift and get them both airborne.
"What the-?!" Scott was quite surprised, at least until he remembered the day he'd met her, tossing her over his shoulder and swinging over the patrons' heads in a cavalier, almost Indiana Jones-type fashion.
He could even be heard to laugh a bit as they took off. He just silently prayed Binary never saw this. She'd howl again, only this time from laughter rather than outrage.
"We'll need to get back to our shuttle, Nova. I can probably get it into the hangar bay. After what we did to get it, I don't want to lose it just yet. If you've still got your communicator, tell B to get the Starjammer moving, and head towards us."
Nova dropped her hand to her communicator. "Found him, guys. Get the ship in the air…" she said. "We'll be right with you after the boss picks up his souvenir…"
After receiving an acknowledgement from the Sufer, she switched off the communicator. "You sure you wouldn't rather stay with your new Kree friends, boss? B's not happy with you." She paused as they reached the swath of destruction left by the shuttle's landing. "Want me to take out those fighters?"
"Already on that, Nova," He been plotting a careful bead, raining several crimson blasts down on the grounded fighters, blowing off cockpits, destroying engines, and otherwise rendering them all useless.
"And B is never happy with me. I think it's conditioned behavior."
He smirked weakly. He hadn't liked his choice anymore than she did, but there was no other way to make sure the rest of the Starjammers survived.
The shuttle was the same wreck he'd expected, though the Kree had made some slight repairs to the engine, making sure it was safe at least, preparing it to be moved.
"I'll have to send them a thank you note," he noted, lifting a bit shakily into the air.
He headed for the Starjammer, but the Starjammer was already moving towards them at a fairly high speed. The Kree warship had apparently been apprised of the situation as well, as laser bolts were descending from the skies like lightning.
"You're in deep trouble, Scott Summers," came the voice of Carol Danvers over the radio. Apparently Norrin was in the hangar, already operating the bay's tractor beam, pulling the faltering shuttle inside.
As the shuttle was secured in the bay and the bay doors closed behind them, it gave them a minute or so of hanging by the door waiting to get out. Impulsively, Nova stood on her toes and brushed her lips lightly against Scott's cheek. It wasn't really the time for the finishing of the conversation, however, so all she said as the craft's door finally agreed to swing open was, "If the Kree don't manage to kill us… and if B doesn't kill you… well… I get next dibs on your time." Not waiting for a reply, she sprung out into the bay and made for her post.
B didn't comment much as Scott made his way onto the bridge. She didn't have the luxury of time right then.
Settling into the pilot's seat, Scott was pleasantly surprised. Apparently Nova and Binary had done a lot of work towards repairing the engines. The Kree warship was hot on their heels, firing away.
"B, Nova, I want both of you to man the guns. Fire as fast as you can in their general direction, try to keep those fighters off our backs if possible, but mostly I want their sensors confused with all the laserfire."
As for the captain and his pilot….well, Scott planned on playing a game of cat and mouse, and he was playing the mouse…only this mouse got steer through atmospheres. The 'cat' here could not.
Nova was already at the weapons console, and so opened fire just as he'd asked, occasionally targeting on instinct and managing to nail or clip a fighter. Norrin had lost himself down in the engine room, trying to keep their already battered systems running. All this, for a shuttle. Once they got it up and running again, however, it would be well worth it.
Apparently the data they had was worth that much, as the captain charged his ship forward relentlessly, and it wasn't too long before the Starjammer angled up, away from the gravity well, leaving the warship to flounder, its lifepods pouring out of its sides as the ship sank.
A bit more laserfire dispersed the last of the fighters, allowing an escape to lightspeed. After escaping the Kree, Binary crossed the room to where Scott was just rising from his seat, first slapping him across the face.
"You're a damned bastard, Scott Summers."
She followed this by pulling him into a tight hug.
"Don't ever do that again."
Scott had gone to the medical bay, his bruises and other injuries sustained in the crash and interrogation tended to fairly easily by their medical droid.
It was in the evening when he dropped by Nova's quarters, told she was there for now. The next few days would be insanely busy, trying to scrape the mess of shrapnel and wires back into a working ship again, and he wouldn't have time to talk to her then.
Nova's quarters were only mildly disheveled, there not being too much in the way of personal effects to have been scattered about in the past few days of conflict. She was straightening up what little there was, and was working on repairing the room's small control panel which had overloaded when the other systems had gotten abused.
"Heya, boss," she said in greeting. "All patched up now, huh?" Nova asked, looking him over a few moments as she stepped away from the console. Biting her lip, she figured she might as well try to be straightforward.
"The other day – what I said… Well, I'm sorry…" Nova rubbed the back of her neck, not quite looking at him any more. "I was a little surprised, but mostly I was just scared. Things in my life have always been so… fleeting. And, I know, a lot of that's my fault for being so… random, I guess. I've always been sort of looking for where I belonged…" She sighed at getting off track from where she wanted to go. "I really do like you, Scott. I was just scared that in the end, you'll push me away too. It wasn't fair of me to just lump you in with everyone else… So. Sorry…" She trailed off.
Scott nodded, understanding where she was coming from. "My life being the way it has been, I'd never let myself care about anyone the way I do about you. I've never had anything really 'permanent' to hang onto myself. And then there you were…." He trailed off, grinning slightly at how goofy he was sounding even to his own ears.
The funny thing was, both of them had been running scared. She was scared he would push her away like so many others had, and he'd been scared that he would find she cared nothing for him.
Maybe something less drastic than professions of love might be easier to swallow. "Can I get your help realigning the targeting scanners tomorrow? Could be a little tricky, but I think we can manage."
It was both a way to accept her apology, and as a way to spend time around her. Loren had told him not to give up. He wouldn't.
Relieved that he wasn't too upset with her, Nova nodded to his request, almost eagerly. No, this girl didn't ask for much when it came to dates. "I'd be glad to, boss." Displaying her typical impulsiveness, she wrapped her arms around his neck, giving him something only slightly warmer than the typical friendly hugs that everyone got from her when she was feeling cheery. And she was feeling quite cheery now. They had their captain back, had recovered their stolen shuttle, and, if Loren was right, she'd finally stumbled across where she belonged.