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"Time to go," Hermione murmured.
Over the past stretch of time, she'd used the Space Stone to enhance the ship's jump engine. Now, in theory, the ship could perform continuous, precision spatial jumps.
She settled into the pilot's seat and activated the controls with practiced ease. Alongside the original Asgardian rune buttons on the control panel, her own additions glimmered beside them, touch interfaces she'd installed herself, pulsing with arcane light.
She plotted the destination on the star chart: Xandar, capital of the Nova Empire.
She was going to stake out a fool.
Directly robbing someone that gullible felt slightly beneath her usual mastermind aesthetic, but efficiency came first.
"Initiating spatial jump."
The engine answered with a low, resonant hum. Space itself began to warp around the hull, and the Asgardian landscape outside the viewport dissolved instantly into a rushing river of brilliant light. The ship punched through an invisible tunnel and emerged seconds later in the deep black of open space.
Hermione had just begun to think this trip would be uneventful.
Then the ship slammed to a halt.
BOOM.
A massive impact. The cockpit flooded red, alarms screaming. Hermione's body pitched forward and the seatbelt snapped taut, yanking her back. Outside, a pale gold magical shield had auto-deployed, absorbing the worst of the collision, but the shockwave still tore through the hull with enough force to freeze the ship dead in the void, as if it had run headlong into an invisible wall.
Hermione steadied herself and looked out the viewport.
A colossal warship hung directly in her path, like a ferocious steel beast filling the stars. It dwarfed a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier several times over, massive, graceless, all brute weight and dark plating, nothing like Asgard's elegant, rune-carved aesthetic.
She'd been in a fender-bender. In space.
Hermione checked the ship's status with a frown. Structure intact. Engine normal. Shield energy stable. The external monitors told a different story: some flying debris of unknown origin had scraped the port side, peeling off a patch of paint and exposing bare primer underneath.
Her expression went flat.
"My brand-new ship."
Before she could fully process her outrage, the other vessel was already sending a hail.
A gravelly voice crackled through, impatient, threatening. "Hey, tiny! Who the hell are you? Why'd you attack our ship?"
On the warship's hull, dozens of gun ports rotated slowly into position, locking onto her ship, energy cells glowing a hungry red.
Hermione swallowed her anger and answered in an even tone. "Open your hatch. I want to speak to whoever's in charge."
The other side clearly hadn't anticipated that response. A beat of silence. Then louder, angrier: "Hah? You want us to open up? Little girl, you've got a death wish. Fire!"
Red energy beams lanced across the gap. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. Direct hits. Blinding flashes erupted across her hull.
Her ship didn't move an inch. The pale gold shield rippled lazily, absorbed the whole volley, and went still.
"Fools."
Hermione's eyes went cold. She activated her own weapons. Energy beams shot from both flanks of her ship and hammered the warship's hull, only to splash harmlessly against the energy shield that materialized there in answer.
They traded fire back and forth. Neither made any progress.
The comm channel opened again.
"Get over here if you've got the guts!" the other voice bellowed.
"Get over here if you've got the guts," Hermione replied.
"You come here!"
"You come here."
"..."
"..."
The channel went dead quiet.
---
Inside the bridge of the giant warship, the atmosphere was grim.
Captain Yondu Udonta sat in his command chair, his blue face set like iron.
He'd carved his reputation across the stars through guts and sheer viciousness. Other ships changed course when they spotted his colors. In all his years of raiding, no one, no one, had ever had the nerve to bait him like this from a ship that small.
And the shield strength on that little junker was absurd. Their main cannons hadn't scratched it.
The Ravagers were a loose collection of the universe's cast-offs, criminals, drifters, mercenaries, running everything from smuggling to outright piracy across a dozen galaxies. Unruly. Unbound by anyone's law.
Yondu's crew were seasoned hands, all of them. Right now, they were glancing at each other, looking baffled.
"Boss." A crew member with a reptilian skull leaned toward the screen, squinting. "That ship... looks Asgardian."
"Asgard?!"
The name landed like a live grenade. The bridge erupted.
"Asgardians? Out here? What in the—"
"Damn it, those warriors are no joke. I've heard every single one of them hits like a freight shuttle—"
The murmuring spread fast, and a visible wariness crept into more than a few eyes. Asgard didn't usually meddle in affairs beyond the Nine Realms, but its reputation had traveled to every corner of the universe. Odin alone was someone even the Kree Empire and the Nova Corps were careful not to antagonize.
Yondu felt his gut drop.
Son of a bitch. How had he managed to bump into this kind of trouble?
He didn't let a trace of it show. He smacked the armrest hard enough to make everyone flinch.
"What are you panicking for?! So what if it's Asgard? This is the Taniya sector, we're a million miles from their precious Nine Realms!"
He swept his glare across the bridge.
"Even if it is Asgard — so what? It's one ship!"
Aside from the real juggernauts, Ronan the Accuser's Dark Aster, or that freak Thanos's Sanctuary II, when had the Ravagers ever flinched from a warship comparison? Never.
The crew caught the fire in his voice and straightened up. He had a point. This wasn't the Nine Realms. No matter how hard an Asgardian hit, they couldn't reach through the hull of a ship. The enemy's defense was solid, sure, but their firepower was nothing special. A war of attrition, and the Ravagers walked away winners.
"Boss is right!"
"Doesn't matter who she is, you mess with the Ravagers, you learn what that means!"
"Blow her apart!"
The mood on the bridge snapped back to dangerous.
Then the silent comm channel crackled on.
That same cool, unhurried female voice.
"Fine. I'll come to you."
Yondu blinked.
The Ravagers around him went still.
She'd come to them? How? In that little boat? Was she going to ram it into the hull?
They were still working through that when the air at the center of the bridge simply... folded.
No warning. No sound.
A figure stepped out of nothing and stood in the middle of the bridge.
Her gaze moved across the stunned, gaping Ravagers in a slow, unhurried sweep. Then it settled on Yondu's stunned blue face.
"I'm here."
➤ Next: Insurance Scam — The Conversation
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