The conference room was easy. Star-Lord had a natural gift for it — the kind of storytelling that moved fast and hit the right beats, self-deprecating when it needed to be, specific when specificity was funny. Coulson laughed twice, which for Coulson was the equivalent of a standing ovation. Skye laughed freely and often. Ego sat at the end of the table with the mild, interested attention of a man who has seen a great deal and still finds novelty in other people's accounts of the universe.
They heard Smith Doyle come in before they saw him — not footsteps, because he hadn't used the stairs, but the slight shift of air pressure that preceded someone arriving by means other than doors.
Coulson stood and made the introduction.
Smith looked around the table — Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Groot examining the windowsill, Coulson, Skye, and Ego — and then his phone rang.
He looked at the screen. Insight Center emergency line.
"I'll have to postpone this conversation," he said, and stepped into the corridor.
The Insight Center's main display showed orbital space from six different satellite angles, and every angle showed the same thing: ships arriving through jump points in clusters, then individually, then in numbers that made the display look like a badly placed star field.
The styles were entirely inconsistent — no matching hulls, no uniform markings. One ship had visible graffiti across its port side. Another was running lights that didn't match any registered configuration in SHIELD's contact database. A third was painted in the stylized death imagery common to certain outer-system pirate organizations.
Hand stood in front of the display and kept her voice professionally level.
"Chief Smith. Large number of unregistered spacecraft arriving in Earth orbit. Mixed origin — no unified faction markings. First arrivals have begun atmospheric descent. Insight satellites have broadcast the standard warning on all open frequencies. No response. I've ordered the helicarriers to maintain fire discipline pending your authorization."
"Good call," Smith said. "Keep them from firing. I'll handle it directly." A pause. "The helicarriers don't have shields. If those ships return fire, we lose the carriers before we accomplish anything."
"Understood."
He disconnected and went back into the conference room.
Everyone looked at him.
"A large number of ships have just arrived in Earth orbit," he said. "Different factions — no unified markings." He looked at Star-Lord. "Does that suggest anything to you?"
Star-Lord frowned. "Large number? Not one ship?"
"The current count is in the dozens and still increasing."
Star-Lord shook his head slowly. "The Ravagers fly one large ship, not a fleet. This isn't them." He thought about it. "Dozens of different ships, no common markings — that's bounty hunters. Independent operators. Not organized."
"All coming to Earth at the same time," Gamora said.
Smith looked at her.
"The Dragon Ball bounty," Rocket said, from the doorway — he'd appeared at some point during the conversation, tools still on his back. "Ronan filed it through the Cosmic Bank before he died. Seven hundred million Star Coins, retrieve condition: destroy Xandar. The bounty's still active. If word got around that the Cosmic Bank has been sitting on a seven hundred million payout and nobody's claimed it—" He spread his hands. "Eventually someone tries."
Smith considered that for a moment. "Everyone with a ship and no particular ethical framework deciding to try their luck."
"More or less."
Smith stood. "Let's go outside."
The base yard was flat and open, which gave everyone a clear line of sight to the sky. They came out of the warehouse in a loose group and looked up.
The first ships were already in atmosphere — visible as bright points of re-entry heat, trailing plasma, descending in the confident manner of vessels whose crews had not received the warning or had received it and decided the Dragon Ball bounty outweighed the risk.
Smith looked at them for a moment.
Then he left the ground.
He didn't build up to it — no crouch, no windup, no theatrical pause. He was simply there and then he was three hundred meters up, and a second after that he was at altitude, between Earth's surface and the descending ships, facing them.
Below, Star-Lord squinted against the sky. Beside him, Drax had crossed his arms and was watching with the assessing attention of a man calibrating what he's looking at.
Smith's voice came down from the altitude, clear and carrying, the way voices carry on cold days when the air is still.
"Unauthorized invasion of Earth is punishable by death."
Nobody in the convoy had time to respond.
He raised one hand.
The ki blasts went out in a wide spread — not aimed at any single ship, aimed at the formation. The impacts were simultaneous, overlapping, each one finding a hull. The ships didn't break apart so much as they ceased to be ships, becoming in the same instant a dozen separate fireballs at varying altitudes, burning as they fell.
From the ground, it looked like a meteor shower. A very localized, very symmetrical one.
Gamora watched it happen and said nothing for a moment.
"We came down through that same approach corridor," she said.
Drax nodded. "We were fortunate."
"We weren't shot at," Rocket said. "There's a difference."
Coulson was already pulling out his tablet — Insight Center was transmitting real-time imagery. He looked at the feed and then showed it to Star-Lord. "Can you identify these? By hull markings or configuration?"
Star-Lord looked at the imagery. He pointed at one — still intact, having arrived at the edge of the engagement. "That's a Flying Scythe configuration. Space pirates. Decent regional reputation, not major players." He scrolled. "These others — bounty hunters, independent operators. None of them are coordinated."
"Then they all came for the same thing independently," Coulson said.
"The Cosmic Bank posting," Star-Lord said. "It's public. Anyone with a license and a ship saw it."
Above them, Smith had climbed further — past the atmosphere now, the air around him replaced by the energy field he'd developed to sustain himself in vacuum. From orbit, the remaining ships that hadn't yet committed to atmospheric entry were visible as a loose, unordered cluster — the stragglers, the cautious ones, the ones who had watched the first group go down in flames and were running a rapid cost-benefit analysis.
He looked at the cluster.
"You've seen the outcome for the ones ahead of you," he said, and his voice carried in ways that physics didn't fully explain. "Leave now."
Three ships jumped immediately.
The rest hesitated.
Smith raised both hands.
The ki wave expanded outward from his position in all directions — not targeted blasts this time, a single expanding pulse at the frequency and intensity required to hull a ship without detonating its drive. The ships caught in it crumpled or vented atmosphere or simply came apart at the seams, depending on their construction quality. The ones on the outer edge of the wave caught enough of it to lose drive capability and begin the long, slow drift that would eventually become their problem.
The ships that had jumped in time were gone.
Smith descended.
He came back through the atmosphere cleanly, slowed without ceremony, and landed in the base yard. The energy field dissipated. He looked entirely as he had when he'd left, which was somehow the most striking part.
At the Insight Center, Hand was watching the satellite feed with an expression she was maintaining through force of professional habit.
"That," said the agent beside her, after a moment, "is what Chief Smith's power looks like."
Hand kept watching the display, where the orbital cluster had gone from dozens of returns to approximately six, all of them drifting, none of them descending.
"Yes," she said. "It is."
Back in the base yard, Rocket looked at the last of the re-entry plasma trails fading against the afternoon sky.
He looked at Smith.
He looked back at the sky.
"Okay," he said. "That explains Ronan."
Star-Lord was standing with his head tilted back, watching where the ships had been. He lowered his head and looked at Drax. "Could you see anything from down here?"
Drax considered. "No. But I could estimate." He paused. "My estimate is that it was significant."
Star-Lord looked at Smith Doyle, who was already talking to Coulson in a low voice, apparently moving directly back to whatever conversation he'd been interrupted from.
Peter Quill had grown up in space. He had a decent working knowledge of what capable looked like. He'd been in rooms with Yondu and the Ravager leadership. He'd met Thanos's agents. He'd been in a prison with beings that could tear standard alloys with their hands.
None of that was a useful reference point for what he'd just watched.
He glanced at Gamora.
"The Dragon Balls," she said quietly. "We need to find them first."
"Yeah," Star-Lord said. "Yeah, we really do."