The Ultimates: Against All Enemies (24 page)

"I'd say it's part of the briefing to know what our odds are of being suckered in and incinerated, Nick. Wouldn't you?" Janet said dryly. Everyone in the room at least cracked a smile, and Tony laughed out loud.

"Our odds of being suckered in and incinerated are unknowable," Nick said. "We know they're there this time, because we've tracked them there. That's one thing that's different from Micronesia. Also, there's no place they could have gone. We've been watching that area in Antarctica since we found those first flights, and there's been a steady trickle of people—by which I mean Chitauri—coming in, but nobody's coming out. Does that make you feel better?" Nick paused to give Janet room to answer if she was going to. When she didn't, he said, "Fine. Now maybe we can get on to the actual mechanics of our operation."

"Why," Thor said, "when all of this sniping is so entertaining?" Ignoring him, Nick said, "Estimates of the number of Chitauri in this installation vary depending on whether you think we've tracked down all of the invisible flights. If we have, there are several dozen. If we haven't, there might be a lot more. And we must assume that they have been taking care to fortify the installation and anticipate our most likely actions. Tony, your satellites did most of the thermal imaging, so why don't you tell us what this set of images means?"

On the projector screen, they saw the same heat vent, only in infrared, with the ghost of a rectangular outline visible framing it. "It looks like there's at least one level," Tony said. "The level we're looking at is a couple hundred thousand square feet, and it's definitely got warm bodies in it. Now look at the sonar imaging."

The image flipped, and the outline became more precise. "You'll see here," Tony said, indicating a sharp line of cliffs just to the west of the heat vent, "that it appears they've built a big driveway up to the surface. There aren't a ton of tracks there, but the Antarctic winds make it hard for tracks to survive more than a couple of days. Katabatic winds at the base of those cliffs are probably sixty or seventy miles per hour on average. They're at least as strong near the vent, and around the other entrance that I was able to find. See here?" Tony pointed at a crack in the ice, visible only after he had enlarged the image. "That, lady and gentlemen, is the front entrance to the Chitauri South Pole Resort and Shape-Shifting Club. Admission, I'm sure I don't have to remind you, is very selective."

"So who goes in the front and who goes in the back?" Clint said. "Let's get this figured out and do it."

"My sentiments exactly," Nick said. "We'll be using approximately six hundred next-gens, and they'll be deployed to all three apparent entrances. We're going in hard, and fast, and without much care for whether they know we're coming or not. We'd prefer not to go in at all, but"—-he glanced at Tony—"the lesson of Micronesia is that you have to go look to make sure the enemy is present. Then you can worry about whether everything is booby-trapped. So we go. We hit all three entrances. Tony, I think the only one of us who can go through the heat vent is you, so that'll be you. Heat tolerances of Chitauri vary enough that some of them can probably come out that way, so a perimeter of next-gens will be set up around the heat vent. Other next-gens will act as support and infantry for a full-on frontal assault on the other two entrances. Thor and Janet lead one, me and Clint will lead the other."

"And whenever Steve gets there," Clint said with weary sarcasm, "he'll go ahead and do whatever he wants."

"Do you want to go through this again, Clint?" Nick asked. The tension in the room, Nick thought, was enough to give even him a heart attack.

"No, Nick, I don't. But I do want to know that we can count on Steve, because if we can't, I'd just as soon he wasn't there."

That hung in the air, and Nick could feel the room taking sides. The truth was, Nick figured he could count on Steve because of Steve's shame, which was one of the most powerful motivators a man could know. The problem with that truth was that Nick could only share so much of it with the team before the disclosures tore the group dynamic into even smaller shreds than currently flapped against each other. He was about to make a decision, and even he wasn't sure what it would be, when a Triskelion warning siren went off. Quickly others joined in, including one that Nick recognized as the new alarm system built on the dock where the bombing had occurred.

"All hands on deck, people," he said, and there was a huge impact against the side of the Triskelion. Everyone in the briefing room headed for the door, and a second impact threw them off balance. "What the hell?" Janet said. "Is Bruce out again?"

Nick's phone chirped and he answered it. After a pause, he said, "Thank you. Tell him we'll be right down."

He returned the phone to his pocket and said, "Ultimates, we have a visitor. His name is Hank Pym, and I believe he's come to plead his case. We will now go downstairs and listen to what he has to say." 36

Hank had his speech all prepared before he jumped off the back of the Statue of Liberty ferry. He'd wanted to grow while underwater, but figured that the sudden expansion of his lungs without corresponding increase in the amount of air in them would create a vacuum, and the last thing in the world he needed was for his lungs to collapse while he was underwater. He'd never get Nick to listen to him that way. So he jumped, listened to the screams of his fellow passengers, and then popped his head up out of the water to shout, "I'm okay! Everything's fine! Enjoy the statue!" Then he grew, bam, to a full sixty feet. The sounds of the transformation echoed in his newly expanded inner ears, where suddenly his anvils were the size of real anvils and the grind of his bones growing sounded like a rock slide—especially underwater, where sound was transmitted so much more intensely. He'd never grown underwater before, and for a moment he could feel the water resisting him, before the force of the Pym particles overcame the water's density. His increase in width and girth caused a Shockwave that propagated outward with a receding thrum, and his tenfold increase in height momentarily stood him on a pillar of pressurized water. Shrouded in an explosion of foam, most of Hank's body burst upward above the surface, as a huge bulge in the meniscus of the Upper Bay crested and rolled away to roil the ferry's wake and slap against its stern. Then Hank sank down again, rolling over like a whale to flash his ass at the gawkers on the ferry, loving the feeling of the cold water on his skin even though he knew that he might as well be swimming through the containment lagoon at a chemical plant. That, though, was part of the point. He did it because he could. Hell, what was the point of being a Super Hero if you didn't get to do stuff like this once in a while?

One thing, Plank thought as he started swimming toward the Triskelion. He would never forget the looks on the faces of the people who had gathered around the ferry's back railing. Open mouths, wide eyes, pure slack-jawed amazement. Hank wanted everyone to look at him like that. Awe. Hank wanted awe. And he got it, at least when he boomed out of the water at the edge of the Triskelion and climbed up onto its main pier. "Hey, Nick!" he shouted, his voice strong enough to send ripples through the American flag hanging above the front door. "Come on out!" Hank banged his elbow into the wall near the front door, SHIELD security people looked at him but made no move to stop him.

"Shoot if you want," he told them with a gigantic grin. "Really. Fire when ready. I won't even hit you." They didn't, and Hank shot another elbow into the wall. One of the windows, designed to withstand explosive impact, cracked. "Hey, Nick!" he shouted again. "I've got an idea for you!" Looking back down at the door guards, Hank said, "One of you mind going to get him? He's not answering the door."

All of the guards disappeared, and Hank sat down to wait. It was a lovely sunny day, and he enjoyed the feeling of the sun on his back. When there was so much more of him, the warming effect seemed much larger. He knew it wasn't—in fact, it was probably smaller since his mass had increased so much more than his surface area—but it seemed that way, possibly because even when he was sixty feet tall, Hank's perceptual framework still was that of someone who stood six-one. The discontinuity there made for all kinds of strange sensory effects. However the effect happened, though, Hank liked it. He basked like a crocodile on the Triskelion's deck, between the VIP helipad and the ceremonial front door. Someone ought to draw me, he thought. It was almost a shame when Nick showed up, followed by Clint, Thor, Tony... and Janet.

"Hey, babe," he said.

The way she nodded at him made him feel kind of like they were on opposite sides of the fence at the O.K. Corral, but even that couldn't bring him down right then. "So, here I am," he said. "It's about time we let bygones be bygones, right? My hit rate's gone way down, which I'm guessing means that the ants have the Chitauri on the run. Am I right?"

Nick raised a hand as a couple of the others started to speak. "Two things, Hank. One, we're not going to discuss things like what the Chitauri are doing. Two, you're trespassing."

"I'll add a third," Tony said. "Isn't there some kind of SHIELD bylaw about showing up to a meeting naked? I mean really, Hank."

"Naked, shmaked," Hank said. "The Chitauri headed out, didn't they? Maybe I should say bugged out." He couldn't help but laugh at his own joke. "Where did they go? My money's on the Himalayas. Talk about remote. They could hide out up there forever, and by the time we tracked them down they might have figured out something to counter the ants. At least temporarily. I don't think there's any permanent way around the ants for them, especially if someone can cook up some way to broadcast the signals over a wider area. Tony, you're probably working on that, right?"

"Confidential, old boy," Tony said with a wink and a grin.

"Okay, sure. I get it," Hank said. "That's not what I came for, anyway. I'm not here to talk science. I'm here to squash lizards. Let's do it."

"We are doing it," Janet said. "But you aren't."

Hank stood up and stretched. God, the sun felt good. "Jan, come on," he said. "People work together after a divorce all the time. Let's be adults about this."

"People don't work together after one of them has tried to kill the other one," she said. "Get the hell out of here, Hank."

"Well, now, wait a minute," Tony said. "Weren't you the one who was saying a little while ago that if we needed Hank to fight the Chitauri, that was more important than personal issues?"

"She said that?" Hank asked. He couldn't believe it.

Janet spun on Tony and jabbed a finger in his face. "That was a private conversation, Tony. How the hell do you know about it, and where do you get off bringing it up right now?" Tony looked over at Hank. "Private conversation with Steve, is the part she didn't mention. And I bring it up right now, darling, because you said it and it's germane to the current conversation."

"No, it isn't," Nick said, in a tone that shut them all up. "Janet doesn't make those kinds of decisions around here. I do, and the decision was made a while ago. Hank, I'm going to tell you again. "You need to leave the Triskelion, and you need to leave it now. Whatever anybody said or didn't say before is irrelevant. Get gone. You did the work with the ants, and we'll tip our caps to you for that. In fact, we managed to squash a whole lot of media interest in the way you put away your former lab assistant, so we did you a little favor, too. And now it's time for you to move along." Hank folded his arms and looked down on the five of them. "Clint? Thor?" he said. 'You guys have nothing to add?"

"They have nothing to add to this discussion," Nick said. "It's not their call. It's mine, and I made it."

"There is one thing I'd like to say," Clint put in. "I've done a lot of things I'd rather not remember, but I never hit a woman. Killed a bunch, but never hit one who wasn't an enemy in a fair fight. You're a punk, Hank. I wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire, and if you don't get the hell out of here right now, Nick's going to have to reprimand me for undisciplined use of force."

"What are you going to do, poke my eyes out with paint chips?" Hank chuckled. "Sever my jugular with your wedding ring? Give me a break, Clint. If I was worried about you, I'd squeeze you until I felt you pop."

Hank had always known that he was prone to mood swings, and long before doctors had begun strafing him with terms like
bipolar
and
manic-depressive
, he had also known when the shift was about to happen. In retrospect,

it had always seemed to him that an external stimulus did it: a sound, an odor, a color. The shifts didn't seem to have much to do with his particular emotional responses to the particular actions of other people. He remembered once being moved nearly to ecstasy, from a depression as black as any he'd ever experienced, by the glint of sunlight off the surface of a car windshield—and he remembered falling into an emotional black hole because of the way
Soknopsis invicta
articulated its antennae. This time, it was the word
pop
. The way it felt in his mouth and echoed in his ears, it was like the first minute shift in a mile-wide cliff of snow. Invisibly it began an avalanche.

Janet hated him. The team scorned him. He was standing naked at the front of the Triskelion, with news helicopters probably circling overhead waiting to tell the viewers at home what a ridiculous buffoon Plank Pym had again proved himself to be.

"Piss on me if I was on fire, Clint?" Hank said. "If I pissed on you right now, bucko, you'd drown." He bent over and scooped Clint up in his left hand. "Or maybe I could squeeze you until you went pop.
Pop
!

How does that sound, Clint? You going to put my eyes out with both of your arms pinned? Who's a punk now, Clint?"

He had Clint held up in front of his face, close enough that sharp consonants out of Hank's mouth carried enough punch to make Clint involuntarily flinch.

"Put him down, Hank," Fury said. Janet said it almost simultaneously, their two contrasting voices making a strange chord of disapproval.