Captain Mar-Vell #3

[fan4]

Captain Mar-Vell #3

Written by mallet
Edited by Aaron Martel

Mar-Vell hadn’t slept in three days, nor had he come out of his motel room; he was far too busy. Hunched over on the floor, he was trying to rig the veritable "stone age" computer in his lap top to the core of the advanced Kree Sentry he had destroyed. It was slow going as human technology was so far behind its closest Kree counterpart, but progress was being made as the lights of the core finally began to glow. He had barely broken the surface of the command chain for the central computer, but it was enough to give him access to what he wanted: the Sentry’s historical data. He knew the core had been damaged, but not only was that not possible while its armor was intact, it also had known where to find him. He was a deep scout and his identity was a secret kept only by the Kree Over-Mind. Something had happened to cause the Sentry to come after him and he wanted to know what.

He looked down at his screen, racing through for information. Then he found it, and he could only stare at his screen in horror. A video clip had activated, under the title of “The New Kree Empire”. Before his eyes he saw the planets of the Kree Empire going up in flames, wholesale slaughter of entire Kree settlements, and that’s when the voice over started.

“The Kree are dead.”

He saw the capital dome over the Over-Mind destroyed by a beam from the heavens.

“Their resources and what’s left of their military has been added to my legions’ ranks.”

The screen went black for a moment.

“I have sent my Sentries out to retrieve and eliminate all outstanding soldiers left. If you or your forces have managed to retrieve this core you have impeded that mission, so upon deactivation a signal was sent out. I will come for you and come for your planet.”

And the video feed stopped.

Mar-Vell stared at the lap top, wondering what the hell he had just seen. The Kree were the most powerful race in the galaxy. They had been simultaneously fighting a war against three separate races for the past hundred years, but they had been brought down to defeat by a lone being? That was impossible. It had to be some sort of grand hoax; maybe an enemy of the Kree, trying to demoralize them?

That was possible until Mar-Vell stopped to truly consider it. Why go to all the trouble of recreating the Sentry technology just to use as propaganda? No, the video was right. The Kree had to have fallen. The Sentry was programmed to find any soldier who may resist. The Kree had been broken.

But by who?! That was the raging question, because it wasn’t certainly those green skinned frogs, or the damnable birds. They’d have named themselves and gotten the glory of it, and would have attacked the other races left. No, the creature at the helm here was far more manipulating…

[fan4]

Carol Danvers had been busy the last three days, rarely leaving her underground office, and barely answering calls. General Wolfton had let her be though; she had lost her fiancé in the attack, but not only that, he reckoned she was doing some fine work on how to beat Captain Marvel. And that was fine by him. It would allow her to work out some issues, he thought. He was obviously doing her a favor in the end. In one sense the General was right. He was doing her a favor, by leaving her alone so she could finish planning.

Carol had searched for something that could help her get the justice she deserved, and thus she found the blueprints to the Warbird project. It was a weapon design so secret that only a few top ranking generals, including General Wolfton, even knew of its existence. The Warbird was a project to insure that the U.S. always had an answer to the ever-growing superhuman population. Scientists had created a modified virus to alter the DNA of a subject; it would give the subject the powers of flight, invulnerability, limited energy powers, and superhuman strength. They had wanted another Captain America: a soldier symbol that would make the public feel safer. It worked, too. All of the subjects were given superpowers, along with a healthy dose of mental instability.

They hushed the program up and sent the last dosage off to a lab in Nevada to be sealed in a back room somewhere. The lab was housed in an old research base, and had been used to store things that people wanted forgotten, more often then not crank UFO materials. But she had spent the last three days pulling all the strings she could and finally she had been signed up as the last recipient of the Warbird project. Now she was finally going to be able to deal with Marvel on his own terms and make him pay. But first she had to get to Nevada, and take care of her little procedure.

When she finally exited her office, she said nothing, looked at no one, and slipped out. For all intents and purposes, she just disappeared. This was new to Carol; she had been in a military structure virtually all her life, she knew the code she had to live by, and she knew she was breaking its rules. You don’t have personal vendettas or “missions of justice”. Those got in the way and complicated things. She was prepared for the consequences. And there would be consequences. She had only gotten the agreement to get the procedure by promising to go through years of psych testing and training before receiving any field work. Of course, she wasn’t going to do that. No, she was going to get powers and escape. She’d be a wanted criminal the rest of her life, but it’d be worth it.

[fan4]

Mar-Vell sat on his bed staring at the wall, contemplating. He needed to get home, or at least get off the planet. Not for himself, he needed to head off the planet to meet the force being sent after the signal cause by the destruction of the Sentry. Hopefully they would leave Earth alone once they found that he had destroyed the Sentry; he’d lie and say he had been returning home. But the first problem was getting off the planet. The pod he had come in was the only way he could think of, but it had been captured by the military shortly after he landed. If he could find it he might be able to get off planet in time, assuming it hadn’t been too dismantled. Even if it was, if he could find it fast enough he might be able to rig it together.

He searched through his memories, hoping to recall a piece of useful information, when he recalled something: a base in Nevada. That’s the place where out of date, no longer used, or things that just needed to go away were sent to. If the military was through with it, it would have ended up there. Mar-Vell didn’t have many options left and grabbed his gear. His alter ego was dead, after all; he might as well go whole hog. Plus, he needed to get there fast. When he had changed he was out the window and into the air.

[fan4]

Carol had boarded her plane without incident, her mind drifting to thoughts of her dead lover. He had loved flying but said he hated heights; it always made her laugh when he wouldn’t be able to climb back down a ladder. She stared out the window to the clouds below. Briefly, she thought she saw a tint of green move by but then it was gone. She laughed out loud, and the other passengers stared at her, but she didn’t care. She just thought it was funny that they were worried about her going crazy, when she’s already seeing things.

[fan4]

Mar-Vell made great time hitting the barren sands, but now came the hard part. He only knew the general area the base was in, and that most of it was underground. His search was tedious, having to stay at such a high altitude or low altitude so as not to be spotted by radar. It was literally hours flying in the desert sun before he got a clue. The thing that tipped him off was a jeep driving through the desert. Alone and so far out, it was a dead give away. The top was up primarily to keep out the sun, but it also gave Mar-Vell a handy place to hover over as he followed them.

[fan4]

Carol’s plane had landed and as she stepped into the airport she saw two men in camo, her escorts.

“Lets go,” she told them, to which the younger replied, “Your bags, Ms.?”

“I didn’t bring any. Let’s go.”

At first the two men seemed confused, but then they shrugged and took her out to an old military jeep, its top up to give them shade on their long drive.

[fan4]

Mar-Vell hovered as close as he could to the jeep until he could see the tiny above ground part of the compound: no more than several MP shacks, miles of fence, and a hangar. The hangar ostensibly would lead underground, to the rest of this base, but he wanted to make sure the guards wouldn’t see him. He rose to what he assumed to be a safe altitude.

[fan4]

Carol had been silent the entire drive out to the desert, keeping her eyes on the desert sands outside her window, and she was glad to finally see the approaching base in the distance. Above ground it didn’t look like much, just a hangar, fence and guards, but it was inside that hangar where she needed to go. It was down deep into the earth where the laboratory rested, and where she’d be given the strength to carry on her new mission. Getting in was as simple as showing her credentials, and then the doors of the hangar opened in front and closed behind her. The jeep pulled onto a platform that sunk into the ground, an elevator used to bring materials into the lab.

[fan4]

Mar-Vell watched the jeep enter as he considered the best course of action. He didn’t want to just flat out attack the base, but he didn’t have many options. He needed his ship to save the world. Mar-Vell grimaced under his helmet and streaked towards the base.

To be continued