One of the problems with all power sources was fuel and modulation. Quantum Cores, Zero Point energy, White Holes, fusion, antimatter... all those devices needed something to start them up, the power and equipment to open, sustain, and control the reactions, and then the equipment to tap it all and feed it into the various systems on the ship, in addition to any fuel that might be required on the simpler systems.

A Crystal Core just needed to be tapped, saving a lot of that.

He’d seen it when they installed it, a sliver of almost-invisible pink crystal a few molecules thick and smaller than his little fingernail. The Core itself was designed to maintain its connection to the M’Kraan Crystal it had been sliced from. The M’Kraan Crystal itself was a Cosmic Device designed to contain the M’Kraan Cluster, what he had been informed was basically a super-galaxy full of quasar-level stars. If the M’Kraan Crystal broke, the resulting energy surge and gravimetric collapse would destroy the universe and precipitate another Big Bang.

The energy coming into his ship was from the amount of power that sliver would nominally restrain. Peter had done the math and realized that the systems on the ship simply couldn’t handle the total amount of power that delicate-looking slice of crystal could let through, so his power supply was not a problem, ever. If the Core was breached and failed, the sliver would simply vanish and reappear on the M’Kraan Crystal it had been removed from, probably with a boom that would nuke anything behind it within who knew how large an area, but no Core had failed yet that he knew of.

-How’s it feel to be a Claw of the Phoenix, husband-mine?- Red MJ /piped up through their Marks.

He thought about that, and how alive the ship felt when it was pumping out death. It was subliminal, not coherent thought, but he could feel the pulsing of the energy, and the sense that something was feeling every single erg being thrown out there to destroy, reveling in every joule thrusting them towards the next fight, and exulting in the whole process.

The M’Kraan Crystal held the power of the Phoenix Force, the power to create or destroy. He’d been quietly told that the reason that they’d been allowed to create the Crystal Cores was the exact opposite of the reason the Ultra Corps tapped it.

The Crystal Cores were only allowed in engines and ships of war. Their purpose was to destroy, and destroy alone, venting the other half of the Phoenix Force’s dual mandates of Creation and Destruction. At the same time, releasing that energy into the general universe, however infinitesimally small a fraction of the source it was, also lessened the stress upon the interior of the M’Kraan Crystal, so it was a win-win for the Phoenix Force.

-Good to have a break from it,- he /admitted. He knew the reveling in the destruction from the Phoenix Force was taking a lot of his guilt away as he did it, which was helpful, but it was also something he would have to come to terms with at some point.

On the other hand, he had seen the forces descending on worlds and systems, and what they were doing to them. This wasn’t about good or bad; it was about survival on both sides, and you either fought or you died.

His job was to cut down the numbers. He’d seen that math, too, and knew there was a lot of cutting down to do...

-We’re all just waiting down here.- Red MJ was assigned to a fast-moving striker unit of Nulls that would be tasked to deal with anything with special powers, or just to reinforce an infantry line with their exceptional melee prowess. That didn’t mean she wasn’t toting around an Autobow with some nasty explosive quarrels, however. -Shielders say some big ships will tumble through the defense and land despite themselves.-

-We can kill a bunch of them, but not all of them,- Peter /agreed, dearly wishing he could have been enjoying a massage from his wife instead. That ki and those fingers of hers hit all the right spots.

-Oh, had some good news from Doc Richards. They worked out the algorithms for your data, he designed and built a production prototype, and Tony and Howard Stark got a production line set up as soon as the testing was done. They said there’s at least three generations of improvements to be made, but they are dispersing Venom loads. You might even be getting set up with them!- Her pride in her man’s work getting all that started shone right through, and Peter basked in it despite himself.

-Really? So soon?- Sometimes he forgot he was dealing with some of the smartest people in the universe. Reed wasn’t the kind to enter a war and start killing things, but doing the intellectual back-line support and giving the warriors the weapons and defenses they needed to win? Reed was all over that.

Reed had posited that there might be some unique vulnerabilities among the Negative Zoner races after it was proven that a Baneskull to Negative Zoners was a completely viable item. The data from the Zone indicated that such Baneskulls didn’t actually function in the Zone itself, only when they crossed over to this universe.

They were outsiders, invaders, and the transition through the Crunch basically had to transform them from Negative Zone natives living on that set of universal physics to ones who existed here. It was just like going from -1832 to the Negative Zone required a translation, and they would be outsiders there regardless, their powers working oh-so-slightly differently there.

Naturally, the appropriate data couldn’t be gained in the Negative Zone, only among myriad examples of Zoner races after they arrived here.

That was what his squadron was doing, the other Gunboats supporting the Parkers as they faced down dozens of different races one after another, collecting the data, while their Spider-Senses directed them on the least dangerous path to completing all this, i.e., avoiding research dead ends and keeping them focused on the appropriate line of data.

It was all down at the gluon and quark level, and how the life forces and psychic energies of the races were holding them together after their translation here. Whatever translation paradigm was used applied to all of them, and the irregularity that made them Zoners in -1832 applied to every single one of them as an identifier... and a weakness!

That was the common point the Baneskulls were keying off of. It was common to every single Negative Zone species, their weapons, and any materials they brought into this universe.

Common weaknesses could be exploited!

Naturally weapons modified to prey upon that weakness would be less effective against things made up of atoms native to this universe, but that was a feature, not a bug. For now, the various empires weren’t fighting one another, so the calibrations and devising of weapons to that effect was a bonus, a defensive and offensive adaptation that the Zoners could not use in return, relying only upon their unorthodox energies and sciences to exploit weaknesses of their own.

Staying calm, Peter queued up the resupply situation, watching the corvette ahead of him receiving its modular payloads, helped along by both drones under computer command and fast-moving Emerald Corpsmen shifting multi-ton munitions with speed and skill. The Whoberis were the least aggressive of the races in the Pentad Alliance, but they took their logistical reinforcement duties extremely seriously, as well as Search and Recovery and healing duties.

Their work would be done in minutes. His own MF Gunboat would be done even faster, modular as its re-arming situation was. They’d already allocated for total removal of the turrets and were slapping new ones in for him, and an Emerald Corpsman was venting away the heat from the Parker Luck’s hull in a faintly burning line out into space.

“They got the Venom loads out here in time. Wow, gotta say I’m impressed,” John’s gruff voice broke in, watching the same thing and included in Red’s /tell. He was looking at the same work order. “Look, they got a modular disposable Macross Missile box there. Guess we know what we’re going to be using first.” It was designed to be fit to one of the attachment nodes, which were currently sporting the advanced sensor equipment the Parkers could now dispense with.

Peter’s fingers danced over the controls as he made the quick adjustments to the configuration for all of them. “Any toys you want, Ben?”

“Goddess Cleo’s filled the whole area up with a solar storm ready to go off. How about some of those nodes we can use to set up a moving wall of annihilation for her? Just gotta lay ‘em in the right place, time, and angle, and she’ll be able to dance a wall of solar lightning between them. We can lay ‘em down inside a fleet formation, unlike the capital ships, so their point defenses won’t have time to pick them off.”

“That’s a good idea. Spiders all hear that?” he asked over coms.

“Dumping the eyeballs and loading weapons of divine intervention!” came the immediate callback from ‘Daddy Longlegs’ Gustav, the most experienced of his Squadron. The wing of MF Gunboats of the Spider Squadron was made up largely of wire-reflexed cyborgs with plenty of combat flying experience, now on the biggest stage ever. Most of them had been zoning out for the past hour in hyperspace, Meditating to recover and center themselves after their last outing. Cybernetics weren’t any better for dealing with stress than super-powers, after all, but telepathy, Heartsong, and the destructive revelry of the Phoenix Force sure helped matters.

Peter eyed the timer counting down, flipped over to the tracking screens for the approaching Brood fleet, and regarded the system-spanning size of the incoming fleet without emotion. Dynamo was pacing the lead elements, and the amount of data she was dumping into the system feeds was enormous.

The Shielders were savaging it all, too. Subtle redeployments were already taking place across the spheres and grids of ships in position. He’d seen the effects of those subtle shifts on enemy coherency, unity, and morale. Shielder tactical ability was no joke.

There would be other fleets coming in, too, diverted by the Great Bear, and they’d be no friends of the Brood, being rival biotech species.

Which meant the Acanti could feed on them, too.

A thought, and the deployment of the millions of space whales was made apparent to him. He had seen their formation attacks, guided by Shielders specifically devoted to their pod movements and Sublime Chord firepower. If he couldn’t grasp the subtleties of what was going to go down, he could appreciate that they were very much ready to feed en masse.

Over there was the Galactus fleet of ominous wedges of death, seething with the highest-possible energies and technology that might exist below the cosmic forces the Zoners could shut down. He’d seen their firepower, and just how deadly a toll they could take on any enemy. He also knew that more were still being made, dropping off the lines at Taa II, getting staffed, and firing up to head out to the fight as soon as they were done. Supposedly there were hundreds of thousands of crewman being trained at any one time, finishing up and dashing off to crew their ship even as it likewise finished being assembled.

There were twenty Galaxies worth of Galactus fleets, split up into different sub-fleets as the Shielders deemed proper and necessary. They were the most unrelenting and dangerous of the star navies, as losing them wasn’t a material loss; Taa II would just make more. Subspace evacuation protocols exited right back on Taa II, and the crew of a destroyed ship could just be issued the next one to come off the line.

If ships needed to be sacrificed to complete an objective, the Galactus Fleet was down for the job. Their firepower and means were quite conventional and incredibly formidable, their job to provide a core of raw muscle that would draw fire and lessen the loads on the diverse fleets helping them out.

That willingness to be destroyed and take out huge numbers of the enemy with them had made them dreaded by the Zoners. The cannons that could become a devouring maw able to swallow ships and convert them into more firepower had led them to being called the ‘Ship-Eater’ fleets by the Zoners, and their numbers and firepower were giving even the massive numbers of Zoners something to worry about.

Galactus’ rep of dread was spreading to His contributions to the defense, even if He was not contributing Himself...

--------

Twenty minutes later, the Spider Squadron was in place, their Deep Study configuration swapped out for the pure killing Wolf Spider format, bristling with armaments in place of sensor nodes.

The Panther Squadrons, the Widow Squadron, the Scarlet Squadrons, the Angel Squadron, and the other squadrons of MF Gunboats were deployed nearby, all of them humming with Crystal Cores, all waiting as the timer clicked down, and the Brood hurtled towards hyperdicted space.