-That looks like something worthy of being LaGrange’s main cannon, I should think?- Paragon /broke in on the chat thoughtfully. -After we reverse-engineer the shit out of it and destroy the original, I propose?-

Everyone who was listening in /concurred.

I /yawned extravagantly. -I’m feeling lazy, and don’t want to drag a multi-ton corpse of a cyborg alien destroyer-mech all the way here. How about we wait for it to get within a light-hour or less, and then butcher it, saving us some work?-

-Having the other party pay the delivery charges to the solar furnace sounds like good business practice!- Comet /called out from back near LaGrange, and there were grim /laughs all around.

--------

‘Terminus’ lost the fight about a microsecond after the fight started.

It was incoming at speed, slowing down as it passed Mars’ orbit, and it was hit five times in that tiny little interval of time, everyone involved moving at half-light speed or better as they struck it.

I came in straight down the length of it, Function’s Blade out and screaming as it Sundered through over two feet of armor in one long 100,000 km/second cut, and the kinetic energy dump tore it open like paper-mâché. The Argent Savant feedback blew its navigation shields wide open, clearing the way for everyone else.

Callie went through the wrist that was gripping its lance. It blew apart, not having enough time to react to the incoming attacks and throw up another shield.

Comet exploded through the rent in front of its head, and exited out the back of said appendage. Primus went right through the central part of its chest.

Lantern whipped up a great golden spike for the rupturing corpse to impale itself upon, although we didn’t slacken its forward momentum. The skull of the Terminus was punched through irresistibly, and then golden spikes drove out from within it in all directions.

Any sense of power, intelligence, or life faded in under a second as the shockwaves and kinetic waves blew through it. It looked a little surprised as it died, maybe wondering what the heck was going on as its organic parts basically liquefied under the impact shockwaves, and amazingly it didn’t blow into superheated atoms.

It still had its inertia, too, although the navigation shields about it were gone now.

Callie and Primus looped around to grab the lance and stop it from drifting off-course, shoving it back in this direction. A Featherweight or Inertial Shunt could take care of the momentum after it drifted closer to Terra.

-This wanted to claim Terra?- Comet /snorted scornfully, spraying down the organic parts that were starting to slough off and leak everywhere with a stream of vivic-enhanced energy. The mechanical shell almost exploded with unwhite fire leaping around to feast on everything there.

-To be fair, it seems to be a hundred years behind the times,- Paragon /pointed out calmly. -Imagine if it came here and the Celestials were still present...-

-This lance is in no way up to the task of taking on a Celestial,- I /confirmed, able to scan it much more precisely now. -It’s definitely a cosmic-class artifact, and we are so going to take it apart, but a Celestial would laugh at it.-

-Are there any other of these things out there, Dyna? If so, we should dispose of them on general principle,- Comet /asked directly.

I glided down to touch that lance and feel directly the energies seething in it, getting a sense for them and the powers they wielded, including the interference to Awareness that kept the thing below the notice of Celestials, who would doubtless pop it like a zit if they sensed it.

I went looking for similar signatures, even as I drove backwards along its timeline and looked at what this thing had done.

-Blargh!- I /spit. -Okay, the bastards who designed this are extinct, dead at the hands of the Celestials, conquerors who thought they could fuck with Space Gods and found out otherwise. This cyborg thing is like their revenge against the universe for being killed. By wiping planets of life, they make it impossible for new Celestials to be born. This thing is like a Galactus for all the wrong reasons, as it can’t destroy a Celestial Seed by itself.

-It killed over a thousand worlds, some inhabited by sapients, some not. It’s not that awesome at the task, given how redoubtable it is, and it’s actually been destroyed several times, only to rebuild itself, and in some cases get even bigger, although the larger form has energy requirements it can’t sustain long term.

-Its makers were idiots. It can’t individually replicate itself. Any doubles it makes are meant to be joined with and form a larger whole together for greater strength, not to set off separately. I don’t sense any others in our galaxy, Andromeda, Shi’ar... although I can’t say for sure beyond that. There’s just too much damn space to do a search like that, and I don’t see any tangential lines from this one off its timestream.

-If the original race built more than one, I can’t see it now. There’s a hefty load of Awareness obfuscation over the matter, courtesy of the Celestials.

-Zhuli, passing on the specs to your Corps is probably a good idea, and we’ll make known the data on a stellar level to all our trading partners, I assume?-

-No reason not to,- Briggs /broke in from wherever he was listening from, -and it will give our non-trading partners something to consider when they realize we slaughtered it.-

-Mere disinformation and propaganda!- I promptly /sniffed in a very good Skrull accent. -The Terrans are primitive barbarians! That they would attempt to fool us so openly is laughable!-

-Exactly. Our trading partners will believe, and the others can do as they wish. The odds there is NOT another one of these things out there somewhere?...- Sama /trailed off.

-Significantly less than a hundred percent,- Wrench /supplied, already on the way to get stuff ready with Barb. -I have a huge desire to shoot one with a better version of its own gun.-

-I’d pay to see that.-

-Me, too.-

-Thirded!-

-Unlikely unless you can build a dedicated portable version and put it in something,- Sama /pointed out.

-The energy specs on that thing are significantly better than any Shi’ar, Kree, or Skrull design we’ve seen. For the size, it’s as good or better than Xandaran tech,- Paragon /pointed out thoughtfully.

-The Terminus Lance Cannon sounds like it’s gonna be someone’s pet project. I got the math!- I /laughed for everyone, and promptly began the preliminary in-depth scans while basically gliding alongside the thing at half-light speed, heading for Terra on its final voyage.

Its creators had dared fight the Celestials, so there was nothing wrong with the tech. They simply didn’t have access to enough raw power to do anything to the space gods.

Seriously, Celestials took out entire star systems when they were born. That was a LOT of power, literally devouring a star and more to birth one of themselves, and enough sapient souls in the vicinity was also important to bring their own to self-awareness. Just having the tech wasn’t good enough without a mobile power source, which Celestials had, and the Termini had not.

Too bad, so sad. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of warmongering conquerors of all existence, slaughtered by a bunch of space gods who would eventually consume all of existence...

==============

“A Galadoran?”

My eyebrow rose. Hasbro’s space knight toy had become a major Marvel character, and then almost fallen out of continuity when copyright tiffs arose between the two companies and he was basically written out and never referenced again. Galador itself became only a background force... at least, until the Phalanx happened.

Still, the Space Knights had a record for nobility that equaled the Nova Force... and their own set of enemies in the Dire Wraiths.

I swooped in beside the cyborg’s ship as it dropped out of hyperspace along the Delta lane, rather startling the fellow by the way his robotic head jerked around in surprise. “Hey, there, Spaceknight. You are a LONG way from Galador, but the reputation of your people precedes you. What brings you to the Sol System? I’m Dynamo, a member of the Terran High Guard. We do most of the patrolling for the system, such as it is.”

Universal translators did the job on coms. “Greetings, Guardian Dynamo! I am Rom, a Spaceknight of Galador, as you have ascertained. I have come to your system in pursuit of a great danger whose evil nearly destroyed my homeworld, and who has come to yours!”

“I don’t mean to be snide, Spaceknight, but which one?” I actually knew, but no reason to make it obvious. Well, wait, that’s what access to galactic news was for. “Are you referring to the Dire Wraiths who besieged your homeworld?”

He seemed startled I knew of it. “You are more well-informed than I was led to believe, Guardian Dynamo. The Dire Wraiths have indeed been tracked here, and have great plans made reaching out from their Dark Nebula for your world...”

“They must have been arriving interdimensionally, because they weren’t coming by starship. We’ve been killing them alongside their Skrull cousins for decades here,” I informed him, and he flinched in surprise again.

“Wraiths... are related to the Skrulls?!” His glowing red eyes could almost have popped out.

“Wraiths are Skrulls whose base forms have been changed after exposure to the necroic effects of Dark Magic, especially the Dark Nebula’s radiations. Skrulls are extremely conformist in certain ways, and so consider the Dire Wraiths a heretical and blasphemous philosophy that needs to be exterminated, so they are not friends.

“That being said, they basically use the same tactics through different means: infiltration, subversion, and destruction via assimilation.”

He was amazed at this. “My records are extremely out of date, then, Guardian Dynamo. I had no idea your people were aware of either species!”

“We encountered a Dire Wraith infestation on the Shi’ar Throneworld of Chandilar. We managed to stop them from annihilating the capital city and potentially dumping the whole planet into a netherworld. Actually, we’ve got a soul-state Dire Wraith working on the station. Are you aware of their ability to soul-suck others, claiming their souls and memories for themselves as they shapechange to take their place?”

“That is an ability among the more magically-inclined of the Dire Wraiths,” Rom confirmed urgently.

“Well, if you rip out the Wraith’s soul and send it off to Hell, there’s a double reversion. The controlling mind ends up that of the previous victim, and the default body guise ends up that of the victim before them.

“So, be aware that Corpsman Cherise looks like a Shi’ar agent, has the mind of a Terran engineer, and will scan as a Dire Wraith if you penetrate her Veils.”

“You are certain of their loyalties?” the somewhat astounded Spaceknight asked.

“I sent the Wraith off to Hell myself. I’ve had extensive contact with the slaughtered souls once imprisoned inside the creature. Many of them have been sent off to their spiritual destinies, but some have stayed behind to fight.

“No, they are not particularly sympathetic to the horrors that murdered and replaced them, Spaceknight.”

He made a gesture of acquiescence through the window of his ship. “It is so noted. Please allow me to ascertain if there is a difference from a Wraith who is one of these emancipated souls and those of others.”

“Well, she’s an Ultra Corpsman now, so there’s going to be some differences regardless. She’s between missions now, so I’ll have you meet her at LaGrange station, along with Centurion Prime Lygaete.”