Captain Marvel

by Tess Sharpe

  “How can we see the planet through their shields?” Mantis asked.

  “The ship’s sensors penetrate them.” He’d brought a few cups of coffee with him from the mess and an array of granola bars. The breakfast of champions. Or in this case, super heroes.

  “Oh, you are my savior,” Mantis said, picking up a mug and sipping the brew.

  “Can they see us approaching?” Carol asked. “We won’t be picked up on any radar they’ve got?”

  Amadeus shook his head. “Scott and I disabled all the tracking tech we found on the ship. And we should be able to slide through undetected because of our own cloaking tech that I kludged into the system.”

  “Fingers crossed it holds.” Scott grabbed the final mug of coffee.

  “Oh!” Rhi’s startled voice made Carol turn. The girl was standing in the doorway of the deck, frozen, staring at the planet in the distance.

  “We’re here,” Carol said, trying to project calm and collected because Rhi was so pale she looked like she might keel over.

  The girl took a halting step forward, then another, until she stood by Carol’s side, surrounded by the rest of the team.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Mantis said, pressing a reassuring hand between Rhi’s shoulder blades.

  “We’re gonna kick some ass,” Amadeus added encouragingly.

  Carol remained silent because she knew no words would calm the girl’s fears. She could imagine the questions racing in Rhi’s head: What if it’s not enough? What if I have to leave someone behind? What if someone gets hurt? What if someone dies? What if I die?

  The questions that ran through anyone’s head before they went into a battle.

  The control panel started chirping, and Amadeus slipped on the heat glove and headed over to it, pressing his hand onto the sensor to gain access.

  “The suns have set over the continent,” Amadeus said. “Our window of night has just cracked open.”

  Carol’s stomach didn’t leap, and her adrenaline didn’t rush. Instead, a calm poured over her, a deep sense of rightness and readiness settling into her bones, a knowing: This is where I belong. This is what I do. This is who I am.

  “Gear up, team,” she said briskly. “We’re heading in.”

  * * *

  WITH A flurry of activity behind them as Scott and Mantis secured the equipment not bolted to the floor and Amadeus gathered all the supplies they needed, Carol and Rhi carefully piloted the approach trajectory toward the red haze that surrounded Damaria.

  The heat emanating from the gloves that powered the ship was so intense that even Carol’s skin prickled with it. Having secured their travel gear, Amadeus stayed glued to the window, making notes on his tablet, probably scribbling down hypotheses on the composition of the gas surrounding the planet, Rhi imagined. She was distracting herself for a moment from the tension of their imminent landing.

  Scott stood at the ready behind them in his Ant-Man suit, his helmet tucked under his arm because he complained that it made his forehead sweat. And Mantis was seated in the captain’s chair, her mouth set, her fingers digging into its arms, absorbing the team’s stress and anticipation.

  “So far, so good,” Carol said, as Rhi typed in the coordinates for the Maiden House and the ship circled, the solar rings whirring around the perimeter in a blur as it shifted into the landing stage. She checked the screen again. “Nothing on the radar. Let’s prep for landing.”

  As the ship entered the cloud of red that surrounded the planet, the haze engulfed it, and sirens instantly began to blare. Two dots lit up on the radar screen.

  “Pull back! Out of the gas!” Carol barked out as Rhi executed the code with shaking fingers. The ship’s windows faded from ruddy clouds to the blackness of space.

  But even as they spun away from the gas, it was too late. The missiles—they were too small for ships—were racing toward them.

  “The mist,” Amadeus said. “It’s not to protect from the suns’ radiation. It must be some sort of security net.”

  “Did this happen when you escaped?” Carol asked Rhi.

  She shook her head, her eyes wide. “I didn’t go through the haze,” Rhi said. “I tore a rip right after I got high enough in the air. Oh no. I’m so sorry. I should have…”

  “It’s okay,” Carol said, her eyes fixed on the missiles tracking toward them. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. With every klick, the missiles were closer.

  She stood up. “Rhi, you’ve got the ship. I’ve got the missiles.”

  “But—”

  Carol didn’t have time to explain or stop. She needed to get those missiles away from the ship—now.

  “Mantis, come with me. I need your help.”

  Carol spun on her heel and sprinted to the end of the deck and the ladder that led up to the escape hatch and down to the lower level of the ship. Carol climbed down, to the guts of the ship, where the engine room lay.

  “The missiles are minutes away,” Mantis said, following close behind her. “There are evacuation pods—”

  “They’ll just shoot more missiles at those, and we can’t maneuver the pods like we can the ship.” Carol shook her head as her feet hit the floor. The clanging engine core took up most of the space, but behind it was a door leading to the airlock. She headed toward it, her mission steady in her mind: Draw the missiles away.

  Exactly how she was going to do that was still up in the air. Soon, she would be, too. She grabbed the wheel that sealed the airlock, clicked the safety latch and spun it counterclockwise. Mantis hopped down from the ladder and joined her.

  “Seriously?” she asked when she realized what Carol was doing.

  “Any better ideas than launching a decoy to distract the missiles?” Carol asked.

  Mantis worried at her bottom lip as the comm above them repeated Proximity alert! Proximity alert! “Not really,” she admitted.

  Carol stepped inside the airlock. “Me neither,” she shrugged, and closed the door behind her.

  Mantis turned the wheel, sealing the airlock shut from the inside. Through the window, she stared at Carol and said through the comm, “I know you’re invulnerable and everything, but this is a scene in basically every good and bad sci-fi movie ever.”

  Carol grinned. “Come on, haven’t you ever wanted to put Rocket in an airlock when he’s getting annoying?”

  Mantis shot her a half-annoyed, half-amused look, as if she’d have laughed had the situation been different.

  “You’ve got the team?” Carol asked. Even though she knew the answer, a part of her needed to hear it.

  “I’ve got the team,” Mantis said, locking eyes with her captain. Carol nodded and held her gaze as Mantis pressed her gloved hand against the sensor that activated the airlock.

  The floor beneath Carol’s feet slid back like a trap door and she fell into open air, spinning out of the ship and into the cold embrace of the stars. She flipped and tumbled through the air, moving away from the vessel, and there—she could see them, breaking through the mist—two flaming spheres zooming toward her.

  Time to generate some heat and light. With the deep cold stinging her cheeks, Carol powered up, her hands beginning to pulse and glow with the energy stored inside her. Lit up like a monumental firework, she streamed her power behind her like a trail of tiny stars as she soared up and away from the ship, a bright streak of heat and light and movement across the sky.

  As she’d hoped, the missiles changed course and spun after her, attracted to this sudden new source of energy.

  The darkness of space surrounding her and the red haze at her back, Carol gathered speed, her body straining as she pushed forward toward the burning lights ahead.

  Those damn suns that circled so close to the planet. She grinned, an idea forming in her head, as she looked over her shoulder to make sure the missiles were still on her trail.

  They’d detoured from their course toward the ship completely, drawn to her power signature. It said something about the technology that it wasn’t sma
rt enough to tell the difference between a person and a ship. Or maybe it said something about her, about the power inside her, the potential that she’d never been kept from fulfilling, unlike the Inhuman girls who awaited rescue below.

  You haven’t seen anything like me, she thought, glancing down at the planet. Just you wait, President Patriarchy.

  Everything else fell away as she raced past the stars, the missiles following her like ravenous wolves. Her arms thrust forward, legs tight, toes pointed, she jetted through the atmosphere, a bright ray of earthly energy come to bring some hard lessons to Damaria.

  The profound, echoing silence associated with free flight in space was something that you got used to, or so she told herself. It was the kind of silence that was spooky to someone raised on Earth. She could remember the first time she stepped into it—back then, she’d needed a spacesuit—but still, even through all the gear, it was the type of vacuum that hit you emotionally almost as much as physically. It wove deep down inside you, into the lonely places, infiltrating them, filling them. In time, she came not just to accept it, but to respect and use it as another tool to hone her power.

  The suns were brilliant, burning red and orange in orbit, and she could feel the radiation, the energy, exploding off them. The human part of her, the one that had been just Carol Danvers, warned Danger, while the Kree part of her screamed Opportunity!

  She flew around the twin suns, a dizzying loop-the-loop, changing course and direction, dancing around one, then another as the missiles spun, trying to pin down her heat signature under all the radiation. It was like her training days, when student pilots were run through all sorts of vomit-inducing exercises to test their mettle. The flash of the solar flares was enough to send spots dancing along her line of sight, and the heat was almost unbearable, even for her, radiating down her arms and back, sinking through her suit. She could feel her Hala Star glowing over her heart. And still, the missiles followed, closer and closer to her with each orbit around the suns.

  But with each loop she completed, the more energy she drew from the suns’ flares and the more searing power raced through her veins, pooling beneath her skin, until she felt stretched too tight, too thin, too full—as if she might go pure Binary, right then and there.

  It was time.

  She sped off, away from the suns, and the missiles latched on once again, following. Carol flipped, screeching to a halt, turning to greet the glow of the suns in front of her. The missiles were in sight, one fifty feet behind the other, barreling toward their target: her.

  She kept still, waiting—the ultimate game of chicken, as her old buddy Monica would call it. Her heart thumped and her world narrowed to the space between her heartbeats, the silence, the waiting, the mounting pressure of the sun’s energy and the knowledge that it wanted out. It wanted out now.

  Even after all these years—even after knowing she was invulnerable, and even after surviving so many epic battles and super villains and such monstrous torture—her fight-or-flight instinct still kicked in during these moments when she pulled off a do-or-die move.

  She breathed around it because she knew what that made her. It made her someone who remembered where she came from, who she’d been… and who she had become. Because now she was someone who didn’t need to choose between fight or flight. She was someone who flew toward the fight.

  The first missile was a hundred feet away. Fifty feet. Twenty. Fifteen. Ten. And still, Carol waited.

  Five. Four. Three…

  Choosing the right split second, she lashed out, her fist striking the missile’s nose with all of her might. The impact cracked her knuckles—and crunched the missile’s base like paper—and she spun upward, out of range, and watched as the missile caromed and hit the second missile behind it. Bam. The collision was a brilliant smash of metal and weaponry, crushed by her timing and strength.

  The explosion sent solar flares glittering in all directions as debris went flying toward the suns—and Carol. Dodging the flotsam and jetsam, she barely noticed when a piece of hull plating sliced her arm; she propelled herself forward, away from the blowback, away from the debris and the twin suns, down through the upper atmosphere, down toward her ship and her team, hovering right above the red fog.

  The airlock was still open, and she twirled up inside it. Holding herself up by the handrail and slamming a gloved palm against the sensor, she felt the airlock floor snap together beneath her feet and seal in place with a hiss. She echoed it with a sigh of relief, and opened the interior door to duck out of the airlock into the control room, calling up the stairs, “I’m back on board—let’s get out of the air before they lob some more missiles after us.”

  “On it!” Rhi yelled back, her voice upbeat with relief at her safe return.

  Carol had just put a foot on the ladder when a sizzling sound filled the air.

  She yelled for Rhi, for Mantis, for Scott or Amadeus—any of them—but her shouts were drowned out by a deafening metallic screech. Then the ship jerked to the side, knocking her onto the engine-room floor as the lights cut out abruptly.

  “The ring!” she heard someone—Amadeus, her mind supplied—yell. “Oh my God, Scott! Watch out!”

  The backup lights flickered on weakly, casting everything in a muddy red glow. A slamming sound. Someone moaned; someone else screamed. Carol leaped off the floor, scrambled up the ladder, and dashed toward the bridge as the ship tilted at a steep angle, jerking her off balance. To avoid a fall, she flew upward, her stomach brushing the floor as she half climbed her way up toward the bridge. What had happened—another missile? She should have stayed longer on guard out in space. She’d been careless…

  “Are we hit?” she called out. “Report!”

  But when she made it up to the bridge, she saw it before anyone could answer. Half of the solar ring had broken off in a jagged semicircle and was spinning off into the red fog.

  The red cloud that surrounded the planet wasn’t just a warning system, it was a toxic gas—and the further they descended into it, the more toxic it got. It was eating their ship alive, starting with the power rings that kept it in the air.

  “The other half ’s gonna go!” Amadeus yelled. “Grab onto something!”

  15

  WHEN THE ship lurched like an unruly colt, jerking equipment loose and scattering it across the floor like confetti, Carol knew from too much experience they were nearing midair breakup. The team members scrambled to avoid flying fixtures and keep their footing while the sphere shuddered like a beast trying to shake off a flea—but this flea was one of the solar rings that powered the ship.

  The second part of the ring snapped off; the jagged crescent moon of tech and metal floated away into the void, following its other half. The ship convulsed again, and after a few sickening swoops, began to hurtle downward through the darkness. As black faded into the thick red gas of Damaria’s outer atmosphere, Carol lost sight of the second ring out the window—was it still hanging on, or had it cleaved off, too?

  “Impact in five thousand feet,” the warning system kicked in, echoing through the intercom. “Correct course immediately.”

  There was no time for another fast-and-loose flying feat. The gas surrounding them that served as the Damarians’ security shield was too toxic. They had to do this the old-school way: a controlled crash landing.

  “Amadeus, slow us down!” she shouted. “I don’t care how, just do it!”

  Struggling to his feet, he grabbed the control panel with one hand, his hacking tablet in the other. “On it, Captain!” he said in a shaky voice.

  “Impact in four thousand feet.”

  “Rhi!” Carol called, trying to spot her in the chaos.

  “I’ve got her!” Scott yelled, waving a hand from behind a pile of crates. “We’re okay.”

  “Mantis?” Carol turned in a careful circle, looking for black hair and finding nothing. Where was she? “Mantis!”

  “Impact in three thousand feet.”

  Carol’s
stomach tightened. She’d survive the crash. So would Scott because of his suit, and Amadeus, too, because the big guy wouldn’t let something like a crash landing get him down, but Mantis? Rhi?

  “Mantis!” she called out again, her voice echoing in the silence. No answer. No time to look.

  “Impact in two thousand feet. Proceed immediately to evacuation pods.”

  The lighting panels in the ceiling flickered, and some sparks rained down on their shoulders. She turned to Amadeus. “Figure something out now!”

  “In progress!” he shouted, dodging the sparks. Then he jerked his head back and stared upward, his face illuminated in the shower. Carol smiled, recognizing his sudden breakthrough expression.

  Amadeus shook off the sparks and turned back to her. “If we ditch the remaining solar ring, the ship will be forced to reroute any residual backup energy to power—and that’ll slow us down, maybe even enough to keep us from smashing up… if it doesn’t blow us up.”

  Carol stared at him. “That’s our best option?”

  “I didn’t say it was a good idea… but it’s the only one I’ve got,” he shrugged.

  “Impact in one thousand feet. Evacuate immediately.”

  Impossible decisions against impossible odds. Amadeus looked at Carol hopefully, awaiting her orders. Because she was the leader here; responsible for them—and for what would happen next, not only to them but to the planet below.

  “Do it,” she told Amadeus.

  His hands flew over the tablet, typing in strings of code. “Better hold onto something.”

  “Brace for landing!” Carol shouted. She ran over to Scott and Rhi, who were already taking cover in an empty corner. The girl mustered up a strained smile, and Carol smiled back and knelt between them, her arms encircling their shoulders, as Amadeus executed the final line of code and hit the Send button.

  “Here we go!” he called out, curling up in a recess.

  The solar ring released from its housing, clicking free in one piece. For a few moments, the ship veered into a slow spin, free of the ring. Power ebbing, it swooped haphazardly across the red sky. Then they began to drop, but slower this time. Would it be enough?