The Milano had cleared Xandar's outer shipping lanes before anyone brought up Earth in a serious way.
Rocket was going through the bounty documentation when he looked up at Peter in the pilot's seat.
"Are we actually doing this? Going back to your dirt planet to find some balls worth a hundred million apiece?"
"It's my hometown," Peter said, without looking away from the navigation display. "And yes."
"You said it was a backwater."
"It is a backwater. Doesn't mean I don't know it."
Little Groot had claimed the seat nearest the viewport and was watching the star field with his chin on the armrest, eyes tracking every passing point of light.
Rocket slid the data pad across his knee and read on. "Here's what happened, in case anyone wants the actual story. Ronan the Accuser — full Accuser Legion, battleship, the works — went to Earth. Earth buried all of them." He looked up. "Ronan died. Bounty was filed through the Cosmic Bank before he went down."
Drax looked at Rocket with the careful expression he reserved for information he wasn't sure he'd processed correctly.
"Ronan is dead?"
"That's what I just said."
Drax was quiet for a moment. "Someone avenged the deaths of my wife and daughter before I could." He sat with that. "I owe them a debt of honor. I should find out who it was."
Rocket looked at him. "Your debt of honor is worth a lot, I'm sure."
Peter had turned around in the pilot's seat. "Hold on — Earth buried Ronan and the entire Accuser Legion? That's not the Earth I left."
Gamora glanced at him. "What's your memory of Earth like?"
Peter thought about it. "Music. Dancing." A beat. "Some sadness."
Rocket stared at him. "Nobody asked about the music. We're talking about military capability."
"I'm giving you context—"
"The context is that somehow a planet you described as pre-interstellar-travel just deleted a Kree Accuser and his entire fleet," Rocket said. "Figure out how to fit that into your context."
Peter turned back to the controls. He was quiet for a few seconds, which was unusual. "Okay. Yeah. That doesn't match anything I know about that place."
Gamora said: "Ronan going to Earth wasn't random. He and Thanos had an arrangement — Ronan would retrieve the Orb, Thanos would help Ronan destroy Xandar." She paused. "The attack on us in space was the Black Order and Nebula. Ronan went to Earth separately. That means Thanos directed him there specifically."
Rocket found the relevant section in the bounty file. "Cosmic Bank filing confirms it. The bounty condition for releasing the Dragon Balls from the bank was destruction of Xandar." He read it again. "Ronan filed that condition. Why would anyone agree to destroy an entire Nova Empire capital city in exchange for seven objects?"
Peter frowned. "How much is the bounty per ball?"
"Hundred million."
"Seven hundred million total." Peter did the math out loud. "Xandar's the capital of the Nova Empire. Its GDP alone—" He shook his head. "Seven hundred million Star Coins isn't in the same universe as the value of Xandar. What do these things actually do?"
Drax: "Something very valuable."
"That's helpful, Drax."
Peter looked at Gamora. "Thanos sent Ronan. Thanos knows what they're worth. Do you know?"
Gamora shook her head slowly. "He never told me. Whatever they are, he wanted them badly enough to point Ronan at an entire planet."
Rocket slapped the data pad against his thigh. "Doesn't matter what they are. We find out when we get there." He leaned forward and started calculating. "Star-Lord. How many jump nodes to Earth from our current position?"
Peter checked the nav chart. "Twenty-five."
Rocket grabbed the throttle controls. "Then let's move."
"Those are my controls—"
"Earth!"
The jumps were not comfortable.
After the fourth one, Rocket was leaning over the side of his seat. After the eighth, even Peter had gone a particular shade of pale that didn't suit him.
Drax happened to glance out the port viewport during a brief transit pause and went very still.
"There is a handsome old man standing on top of another ship."
Nobody moved for a second. Then everyone looked.
Outside, traveling alongside them at matching velocity — which was itself not a casual feat during a jump transit window — was a vessel shaped like nothing any of them had seen before. On top of it, standing on the hull in open vacuum without a suit, was a broad-shouldered man with silver hair who appeared to be enjoying the view.
He raised a hand in greeting.
Little Groot stood up on his seat. "Groot!"
Rocket's threat assessment ran fast and arrived somewhere uncomfortable. Standing on a ship hull at speed in vacuum without protection was not a thing ordinary people did. This man was doing it calmly and with what appeared to be mild good humor.
"Star-Lord," Rocket said, very quietly.
Peter hit the jump trigger.
The Milano dropped into the next transit node and the other ship disappeared.
Peter came out the other side, wiped his mouth, and turned to Rocket. "A little warning next time?"
"You saw it too. You made the same call."
"I'm just saying warn me."
"Star-Lord," Rocket said, with the patient tone of someone explaining something to a person who's not listening, "that man was standing on the outside of a spaceship in vacuum without a suit and he waved at us. We are going directly to Earth. Now."
Peter opened his mouth. Closed it. Turned back to the controls.
Outside, at a comfortable distance that suggested he'd been following them since before they'd noticed, the other ship adjusted its course and followed.
Ego noted the departure with the mild interest of a man who is not accustomed to being in a hurry. He'd found his target. The boy had his mother's impulsive energy, clearly, but that was fine. He could wait. He had practice.
Inside the Milano, once the immediate crisis had been managed, Gamora looked at Peter.
"Plan for when we arrive?"
Peter was clearly still thinking about the man on the ship but was doing his best to focus. "Assess the situation on the ground first. Find out how Ronan actually went down. Then we figure out the Dragon Balls."
Rocket was already building something from components he'd pulled out of a storage panel. "I'll put together a network tap — something that can pull data from their internet infrastructure. We find out what happened without showing our faces."
Peter glanced at him. "While you're doing that — you and Groot can't go out in public. You know that, right?"
Rocket's ears went flat. "Excuse me."
"Raccoons on Earth don't talk," Peter said. "And Groot is a walking tree. You'd both cause incidents." He looked at Groot, who was doing something that appeared to be calisthenics. "We put Groot in a pot. You stay on the ship and run the network tap."
"A pot."
"A nice pot."
Groot flexed. "Groot!"
Rocket pointed at Peter. "This is the worst plan I've heard in a month, and I have heard a lot of plans this month."
"Gamora and Drax are also staying aboard until I can find them something to wear," Peter said. "Neither of you looks human enough to walk around without a full conversation happening about it."
Drax looked down at himself and considered this with apparent equanimity.
Rocket held up the half-assembled network device. "I'm going to gather more intelligence from this ship than you will from walking around Earth looking confused for three days. Just so we both know where we stand."
Peter pressed the jump trigger again.
Everyone lurched. Rocket grabbed his device before it hit the floor. Groot said "Groot" with what might have been reproach.
The Milano fell toward Earth.
Smith Doyle's office was quieter than it had been in weeks.
The post-HYDRA administration was settling into its new shape — slower in some divisions, faster in others, and thoroughly understaffed everywhere. Bases that used to run at full capacity were holding on with skeleton crews. The arrested HYDRA personnel had left gaps that the Inspectorate was still measuring.
Coulson knocked and came in.
He stood in front of the desk with the posture of someone who has rehearsed being composed and has done a reasonably good job of it.
"Sir."
"Coulson." Smith looked up from the reports. "How's your team?"
"One vacancy. Ward. Everyone else is stable."
Smith nodded. "I saw your team's open case file — the Rose Manor super soldier investigation."
"We made no useful progress," Coulson said. "The trail was cold and the Ward situation was absorbing operational bandwidth. I suspect the reason we couldn't find anything is that we were never going to find anything, given who they actually were."
"The Winter Soldiers. Tony Stark dealt with them during the Insight operation." Smith set his pen down. "That case is closed. What's the Tahiti Project's current status?"
Coulson shifted slightly. "Ongoing, sir. The Kree blood serum has healing properties — significant ones — but we've identified a consistent side effect. Recipients develop what appears to be a compulsive need to record a specific set of symbols. Involuntary. Unconnected to the patient's conscious behavior. We're still trying to understand the mechanism."
"Has Fury ever received the Tahiti treatment?"
Coulson considered the question with visible care. "Our records show no agent from Project Tahiti was ever used on a named individual outside the program. The serum volume in storage is consistent with that — no unexplained withdrawals. But I can't confirm what Fury may or may not have arranged outside official channels."
Smith sat back.
That left one interesting possibility. The man who had walked off that quinjet — alive, recognizable, biometrically consistent with Nick Fury — either hadn't died when Smith had watched him be carried out, or had died and been replaced by something designed to pass as him. Not a Skrull — Skrulls reverted on death. Not the Tahiti serum, apparently.
Which left: cloning.
Nick Fury had arranged exactly that for Dum Dum Dugan. A series of bodies, memories synchronized to a remote archive, each one waking up with the complete history of the one before it. The real Dugan had died years ago by any biological accounting. What existed now was a clone with access to a life's worth of memory. Whether that constituted the same person was a philosophical question Fury had apparently decided not to worry about.
If Fury had run the same program on himself — and given the man's documented paranoia and his evident survival, it wasn't a leap — then the version currently building a space station was technically a clone with Nick Fury's complete memory set. Which meant he was, for all practical purposes, Nick Fury.
Smith decided to stop thinking about it. It didn't change anything operational.
"Tahiti is suspended," he said. "Recall the field agents. For medical treatment going forward, the Fraternity will license their healing pod technology to S.H.I.E.L.D. at standard consulting rates."
Coulson processed that. The healing pods had become something of a legend inside the organization after the Dragon Ball tournament arc — the Fraternity used them routinely, with no reported side effects. "The agents will appreciate that, sir."
"They'll appreciate it at standard billing," Smith said without inflection. "SHIELD pays per use, same as any external contractor. Now—" He pulled a stack of folders from the left side of his desk and set them in front of Coulson. The stack was thick. Coulson's eyes moved over it without touching it. Twenty folders at minimum. Possibly more.
"These are your team's active assignments. Priority sequencing is your call. Work through them at whatever pace your current strength allows."
Coulson picked the stack up. "Understood, sir."
"Recruitment," Smith added. "You can bring in four new people. External only — no transfers from existing SHIELD personnel. Submit names for headquarters approval before anyone's brought aboard."
Coulson nodded. "And if I have candidates in mind already?"
"Submit the list. We'll review it." Smith looked at him levelly. "Choose carefully this time. One Ward per career is already one too many."
Coulson took the folders and stood straight. "Yes, sir. I'll be careful."
He left.
Outside the Triskelion, Coulson transferred the folder stack to May with the expression of a man distributing a problem he has accepted responsibility for. May took them without comment and went to find the team's transport.
Coulson pulled out his phone.
He dialed from memory.
"Skye. It's Coulson." He walked toward the parking structure as he talked, keeping his voice easy. "Quick question — have you been following the SHIELD situation in the news? Right. Well, here's something not in the news yet: Smith is the new director. Official appointment, not acting. It went through the Council." A pause while he listened. "I know. I thought that might interest you."
He pushed through the parking structure door.
"Here's why I'm calling. We have four recruitment slots, external candidates only. Your file was already on my desk before today's meeting — you've been on my list for a while." He let that sit for a second. "And I happen to know you've followed Smith's career fairly closely. The tournament, the Kree thing. You'd be working in the same building." Another pause. "That's not the pitch. The pitch is that you're good and we need good people. The proximity is just a bonus."
He found his car and leaned against it.
"New York. Let's find somewhere to sit down and talk it through properly." He checked his watch. "I'll come to you." A beat, and then something that was almost a smile. "And Skye — between us — the director does technically not have a dedicated secretary yet. Just noting that for context. See you soon."
He hung up, got in the car, and pulled out of the structure into the gray D.C. afternoon.