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One of the things that Harry had found very little time to do since he had begun to create his own faction around Camelot and the Custodes Mundi, let alone everything else was to study history: specifically, the history of this dimension, and how it differed from his own. Of course, he already knew of one difference: that Queen Elizabeth had been born a man in this dimension, the now-extremely elderly gentleman having become Harry's first political ally. But reading through a few history books over the last few days Harry had found that difference was only one of many, though it had a severe impact when multiplied by one other.
That one other being that King William's father had died during World War I through the simple means of falling off his horse when visiting the front, which was quite possibly the most ignominious death of a monarch Harry had ever read about. His horse had spooked at the sound of distant gunfire: not even artillery fire, just regular gunfire. The King had been dumped off his horse and had broken his neck.
This had an immediate impact on the war effort. Not by causing much of the British army to become demoralized, or anything like that of course. The king's death didn't actually impact the men at the front, who couldn't care less about some toff at the back being offed by his own stupidity, and the trenches were still there.
No, the impact came at sea when one William Windsor, Ensign second class, His Majesty's Navy, became the actual His Majesty to which that navy was sworn. And, to the shock of many pundits, William had immediately acted in his new position as overall commander in chief. William's sitting on Winston Churchill was not the only reason why King William was near idolized in the British military. No, that adoration began when he took command of HMS Iron Duke, which he had been assigned to, and then the High Seas Fleet around it, overruling a maneuver being done to turn away from the shores of the Jutland. Instead of breaking back out to sea and accidentally avoiding battle in such a way that, afterwards, Admiral Jellicoe would be accused of cowardice in Harry's world, in this world the British High Seas Fleet brought the main German fleet to battle for a second time, and that decisively, successfully cutting them off from their home ports. The battle of Jutland became, not a costly draw (if that), but an outright, if bloody, victory for the British Navy.
The High Seas Fleet lost six dreadnoughts sunk out of a possible twenty-eight, along with eight battlecruisers out of nine—something which would impact shipbuilding after the war—three armored cruisers, fifteen light cruisers, and fourteen destroyers. But the German fleet had been practically wiped out to a ship: sixteen battleships, five battlecruisers, all their pre-dreadnoughts, and the large majority of their light cruisers and torpedo boats, the remainder of which were mostly captured. The dead had included Scheer and Hipper, the two German admirals, and many of their finest officers. In a battle much like the battle of Tsukishima Straits, in which Japan had beaten Russia, it was decisive and broke the back of the German Fleet, allowing the British to put more destroyers on convoy duty, which also had an impact on the submarine war.
The morale boost this victory caused was tremendous, both within the Armed Forces and in the isles. With the surface navy smashed, the German government, with Ludendorff and the manic Kaiser in charge, pulled a lot of their resources from their navy, and the embargo around the islands soon ceased to matter in any appreciable way, with the British building more anti-sub destroyers to protect their shipping against fewer subs. Those resources and men pulled back from the navy helped the various fronts on the ground for the Germans, it was true, making the war in the east end earlier than it had in Harry's world. But ultimately the British Empire came out of the war in a much better place monetarily than they had in Harry's world.
From there, Harry's reading had skipped to the next world war. He wasn't actually reading this for his own amusement, after all. He needed to get more of a handle on the European picture before the next boot fell.
"Or should that be before the next tank rolls?" Harry mused to himself as he leaned back in his chair, reading his latest history book.
Despite the fact that William was in full control of Britain's military and its logistics, foreign policy was then and remained now under the control of the Prime Minister. Beyond the military William concentrated his social energies on backing women's suffrage in the isles, as well as pushing for more rights for his 'foreign subjects.' "…Who, despite being foreign, are still my subjects and thus equal under the law." Neither of these policies made him any friends among the powerful or even a lot of normal people in the British Isles, especially after he ordered a Colonel Dire executed for ordering a massacre of Egyptian nationals, which led to worse issues later.
Beyond this, William had also been extremely leery of getting into another war, both internally and externally, so had no issues with Chamberlain and his policies when it came to Europe. The losses of World War I would've horrified anyone, even if Britain had come out of it more intact as an empire in this world than in Harry's own.
During the intervening years William had devoted himself to naval matters and, specifically, anti-sub warfare, since, before the battle of Jutland, the German subs had been wreaking havoc on the British maritime fleet and, indeed, would have continued to do so if not for the idiocy of the Kaiser and Ludendorff's obsession with the Eastern Front. William refused to not learn from the mistakes of the past, and, because of that, sonar had been developed much more quickly, as had weapons like depth charges and hedgehogs.
Thus the Germans' attempts to cut Britain off from America and Canada were far bloodier for the first few months on both sides but in the long term the blockade didn't come close to the level it had in Harry's world. Britain had had to deal with a lot more internal terrorists, thanks to the Red Skull and his puppet, Lord Hampshire and other local issues caused by William's policeies. The UK's friendship with America suffered in comparison to Harry's old world, too, because, unlike Churchill, William never created a friendship with Roosevelt. Then-ambassador Kennedy also clandestinely helped the British Nazi party, which he certainly didn't do in Harry's world, despite being anti-Semitic and believing that Britain could never win.
However, their anti-sub warfare was such that there was no raid on Scapa Flow, and no Courageous sunk. They still lost ships, of course, many of them, and the destroyers and Flower class ships paid a deadly toll. On top of that, William, like many others, was slow to realize the efficacy of carrier warfare, which allowed America, both during WW2 and after, to become the preeminent carrier power in the world. And Harry was amused to find that William had made other mistakes. His biggest mistake was in personnel, and it could well have forced the UK out of the war.
In Harry's world, General Montgomery became known as the winner of the battle of El Alamein, defeating Erwin Rommel at that 'set piece' battle. After that the Desert Fox had been in retreat. Eventually, though not easily, he was pushed out of Africa entirely as America joined the war, dipping their toe in, as it were, in Africa to learn how to fight the monstrously efficient German war machine. Rommel would go on to be implicated in a plot to kill Hitler and would commit suicide rather than face that shame.
In this world, however, William had overridden Churchill's recommendation of Montgomery to take command of the British forces in Egypt. Furious at the debacle in Greece which the man had led, Montgomery was pulled back to the home islands, and the original commanders of the British Army in Africa remained there. The Desert Foxe's response to this was predictable, in Harry's opinion. He ran roughshod over them, and much of the rest of Africa, even cutting off Britain from the Suez Canal, which had been the major source of the oil needed to keep the British war machine running. For a time it indeed looked as if Rommel would do what the Luftwaffe had been unable to do: force Britain to stop fighting for lack of gas.
The battle to kick them out was much harder, and Rommel bloodied the Americans' noses several times when they started to enter the war in earnest. Not just the once that he did in Harry's world, at the battle of the Kasserine Pass, but several dozen times, making the wars for Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia far more costly. There was even a belief today that, had Rommel still been able to get the supplies from Germany through the Mediterranean that he needed to keep fighting, he and Kesselring could well have beaten Patton and Eisenhower.
But eventually, through naval legerdemain from the British and the Americans, Malta was reinforced and the Italian navy was ravaged, losing all its capital ships. With Malta a now unsinkable carrier, that supply route was cut off, both by land and by sea, and the Afrika Korps was forced to surrender almost intact in Tunisia when they ran out of gas and bullets. And, unlike in Harry's world, Rommel had never left his army to plea in person that they be pulled back to Europe, which would eventually lead to his suicide.
This proved to be a very good thing for the allies after the war, because Rommel was a hero to the German people, and he was even acceptable to the allies. He had never allowed the Nazi SS to perform their normal function of organized genocide. There had been no internment camps or murder squads in any army that he had commanded.
Harry's opinion was rather jaundiced on that point: after all, while he didn't let any such occur under his command, that was a far cry from actually protesting them, and the man had commanded Hitler's guard detail before the invasion of France. Still, most of Rommel's army was still, technically speaking, intact when the war had ended, and the man was extremely well-respected, being one of the four best known fathers of modern tank warfare, the others being Guderian, Patton, and Zhukov.
Yet that ending was far bloodier than in Harry's universe. The Nazi super weapons in his world were the V2 rockets, jet fighters, and super heavy tanks and guns, none of which were ever created in sufficient quantity or were generally good enough to really turn the tide of the war (and were prone to a lot of mechanical issues even when they worked). In this world, however, the Germans had several mad scientists, among whom was the Red Skull. And the Red Skull and his super soldier program had developed weapons of war that kept the Germans ahead of the allies for a good long while: lasers, explosives of immense power, and heavy armor for their tanks that were practically impossible to penetrate. They ground the Russian advances down into bloody ruin and halted the American and British in their tracks in France for more than a year longer than in Harry's world.
Not until the gas started to run out thanks to Russia's Balkan campaigns and Captain America took the Red Skull down with him (as had been believed at the time) did the war on the continent really turn against the Germans. It turned against them very rapidly at that point, but, even so, they went down swinging.
I could almost respect that if they hadn't been fighting for a madman and his murderous genocidal regime. A regime which spawned the neo-Nazi movement, HYDRA, the Red Skull's resurgent terrorist group, whatever its name was, even AIM and a plethora of other problems that SHIELD, Doom, and I have occasionally had to deal with since.
Because the fact remained that every one of those scientists had believed in the Nazi dogma of their being a super race, with all others, especially the Jews and gypsies, being inferior scum that should be wiped out.I am always horrified at how low humanity can reach…
In Harry's world Poland had lost about six million, something over fifteen percent of its population or so, during the course of the war. In total, more than six million Jews and seven million people of other religions or minorities would die in the Holocaust. In this universe the number killed in the death camps was closer to twenty-eight million, a truly horrifying total. In total, Poland had lost more than seventy percent of its population and had almost become the land of the dead, and, to this day had one of the lowest populations per area of any industrialized nation. The Jewish people had lost around eighty percent of their European population. The Roma had been nearly wiped out. People with genetic diseases or mental issues were executed with impunity. Mutants, who had begun to appear after World War I, were killed wherever they were found in Axis territories.
For a moment, just a moment, Harry let himself sink into despair and raw rage at what Hitler and those who had followed him had done. How Hitler's thoughts and beliefs were still around today. But he couldn't let himself dwell on it and purposefully turned to what occurred after the war, where things became more pertinent to Harry's current issues.
Thanks to a quick move by the Allies, Erwin Rommel and his army had been brought back to Germany before the Russians could push for Berlin, and it had been a force led by Captain America who had killed Hitler instead of his dying by suicide. With Berlin in his power, Rommel had become the second Fuhrer instead of Doenitz and had brokered a peace with the Allies, up to and including helping them hunting down every SS officer from Himmler on down. None of them escaped justice for very long, although Rommel himself was assassinated by a zealous former Hitler Youth several years after the war ended.
Of course Stalin saw this as a betrayal, but since he had reneged on every agreement made about the countries Russia had conquered during the war, no one was willing to bend over backwards for him any more than they already had to ignore his own atrocities. The fact that his forces had killed even more people than Hitler's Nazis in the Ukraine and the Baltic states—and, indeed, even in Russia—was another factor, of course.
The two sides had glared across the Iron Curtain at one another for about fifteen years in this world before the curtain collapsed in far less time than in Harry's world. The reasons for its quicker collapse inundated the books Harry had been reading, but Harry wasn't so interested in them. He was more interested in what he could expect from the Russians in war, which he got a far better idea about reading the books from the two world wars.
The reason for his interest was that things with Russia were coming to a head in a very bad way. There had been a lot of saber-rattling. several pro-Russian groups in Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan had been ostensibly attacked by other locals, and Russia had begun moving troops towards its borders. There was talk of military intervention to protect their fellow Slavs, talk about getting their own back, talk about other nations reneging on deals for oil and other resources. Deals Harry was certain that, if they had ever actually been made, had been made at gunpoint.
"I wish I could figure out if this was all because of the aliens, the Skrull or whoever they are, hiding among them or simply ambition," Harry said with a sigh, leaning back. He wasn't actually talking to anyone else since there was no one else around, but, for a moment, he needed to speak aloud for a few minutes. "The Russian people can't be that belligerent to their neighbors naturally, can they?" As he spoke the words aloud, Harry winced a little, then sighed and nodded to himself. "I suppose that human nature says they can be. Just look at the Americans and how they treated the Native Americans, The Greeks and Turks, or China and its relationship with its neighbors. Whatever the reason, trouble is certainly stirring from that quarter."
The problem was that, while Harry could interfere in matters dealing with mutants and aliens and not be roundly accused of imperialism, expansionism, and all around arseholery, he couldn't turn around and say that this country is being invaded by aliens without take-it-to-the-bank proof. If he didn't have that proof there would be a lot of questions asked, because doing so would set a precedent, a precedent that Harry wasn't certain he wanted to set. He did not want the Earth Defense Force to become a tool to keep the peace on Earth. They would lose the vast majority of their public approval and aid in an instant.
But, to his dismay, NATO was still turning aside all of his offers of aid in terms of intelligence. They didn't like him; they didn't like the fact that the creation of the EDF had pulled resources away from NATO. They didn't like the fact that the US, the United Kingdom, China, and most of the other UN Security council members were taking part in its creation, except for Russia, further excluding and causing tensions to rise with that giant nation. Russia, in turn, was still screaming about weaponizing space against Mother Russia and imprecations about imperialist capitalism once more. Which was quite ironic since they too were supposedly a capitalist country now and often used their economic clout against their smaller neighbors.
You can take the Soviet out of a person but not the country, Harry thought, shaking his head. Thank God Andrew Weber had been a military history buff, though. That had been the SAS man who had, besides forcing him through Hell Week, given Harry a good grounding in history of his own world, which he would not have had had if left to his own devices and magical education.
At that moment another person's voice sounded out inside his head in a manner that, while still somewhat startling, was no longer so jarring. "Yeah, and remember that, at least in this conflict, the countries that are going to get hit not only have NATO forces already in place but Doom nearby, too, at least near to the Ukraine," Jean supplied. "Now stop reading and brooding like a curmudgeon, come down and say hi to the future mother of your children, and then go get something to eat. If you can't tell your body needs some fuel, Harry, I sure can."
Harry chuckled at that, and even more when Jean's astral projection appeared in his mental domain and began to tap her foot impatiently. Jean had just entered the seventh month of her pregnancy and only had two more months or so to go, she hoped. And at this point she was not a very happy camper about being pregnant at all, calling Harry all sorts of nasty names and threatening his boy bits every other day before tearfully apologizing not ten minutes later.
Her telepathic and telekinetic powers continued to be wonky because of the hormonal imbalance within her body, and nothing anyone but Emma could do could help with that. Emma, when she was around the redhead, could use her telepathic powers and inside knowledge on how the female body worked to control Jean's hormone levels for her. This was something she had to concentrate on, however, not change and leave in place, so it only worked when she was around the redhead or linked to her telepathically, which she refused to do 24/7, preferring to be alone in her own head.
That was why Jean was in Harry's head right now. She was using the permanent highway she had created between herself and Harry's mind, pouring as much power as she could into that so that her telepathic powers didn't accidentally reach out and rummage in the minds of everyone else around her. If she hadn't, the only ones who would be able to be near here were her lovers, for various reasons, Dr. Strange, Hela, and Xavier. None of the other magic users or telepaths had mental defenses strong enough to keep Jean's wild, yet still monstrously powerful telepathy, out. This concentration allowed Jean to keep her telepathy at bay. That meant it only went wonky twice a day rather than constantly.
Again Jean felt that thought and the dry, loving amusement behind it, and Harry earned his mental projection another laugh and a kiss. Kissing here wasn't as powerful a feeling as it was physically, but Jean still loved it, so Harry kissed her back just as fervently.
Despite her interruption, however, Harry didn't let Jean's presence take his attention away from what he was contemplating at the moment, though she was right: Doom was most certainly just as ready for trouble from Russia as Harry was.
The now expanded Latveria was located between the borders of Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the now smaller Ukraine, thanks to his taking over those portions of the country between him and the final hiding place of the Red Skull. Doom had a firm grasp of the politics of the area as well as an understanding of how much he did not want Russia as a neighbor. If Russia invaded the Ukraine or even Poland, eventually they would run into Dr. Doom and everything the not-at-all good doctor could do to them.
Elsewhere there were the preexisting alliances to consider too. None of those allowed for full EDF military intervention, but they did allow for material transfers. Harry had a tremendous amount of resources ready to fly down to Finland, Poland, and elsewhere at need. The bits of Ozcorp Emma had taken over, as well as her original resources in Cold Steel, had been very helpful there in creating the weapons and body armor—not very advanced in comparison to those that the Custodes wore, but better than what most soldiers received—as had the growing industrial might of Fortress Mars. Even allocating only three robots and a single cavern to a factory had allowed Harry to turn out artillery pieces of various sizes, both direct energy beams and ballistic projectile types.
So yes, in a way they were prepared, but the Russians' method of modern-day human waves attacks was something you really couldn't prepare for without having already faced it. That was one aspect every book he read about from both world wars agreed on: the Russians had an appalling lack of concern for the lives of their troops; the goal was everything. That was an aspect of warfare that would no doubt be exacerbated by the alien shapeshifters hiding among them. Setting that topic to the side for now, Harry picked up a small report from spymaster, Sir Dennis, and his various spies, sighing as Jean's astral projection actually began to hum off-key inside his head, trying to force him up and out of his chair with all the subtlety of a kick to the head.
It had been two weeks since the attack on Earth from the Badoon, and, while Harry had seen a lot of work being done on the space end of things, Dennis's efforts in finding Mr. Sinister and thus letting Harry turn him into a fine red mist had not succeeded in letting that happy outcome occur just yet. Work was ongoing to integrate with all the pre-existing espionage agencies the world over. Dennis had gotten very good at convincing the spies of other nations to pass on anything they felt pertinent about mutant kind and the Mutant Liberation Front to him, mostly by convincing them or their superiors that it was a good way to win some points with the ever-growing Potter faction.
Harry still had his spies, Mystique and Morph, within the Mutant Liberation Front, but no other spy agency had been able to do the same, which wasn't good. And the Mutant Liberation Front had been quiet of late. No major attacks, no large displays, not even any sanctioned robberies or anything, just quiet recruitment and setting up some kind of transportation network, gathering his forces in a few, larger bases.
It was surprising and very worrying. Sinister being quiet like this meant he was preparing for something big but Harry didn't have any idea where the man was or what that something big could be. Still, despite their knowing where at least one of his now-larger bases were, Harry wasn't willing to act just yet, not until Sinister was sighted, and couldn't get away. If he survived, the bastard could just retreat and start over.
Harry was grimly certain, however, that Sinister was waiting for the party to start from Russia before doing anything. Still, if he thinks that that's going to distract me, he's got another think coming. I haven't seen anything from the Russians which could indicate that NATO and our allies can't halt them on most fronts with the weapons we can provide and at least slow them down enough before Doom can get involved in the Ukraine. And I think Doom would be a little irritated with me if I thought I needed to stick my oar in that area. That means I'll be free to handle Sinister and bring the hammer down in no uncertain terms.
Harry was very much looking forward to that. Generally speaking, he'd had enough of dealing with terrorists, especially mutant-type terrorists or anti-mutant terrorists, both types pissing him off for much the same reason: they thought that because they were different that meant they could dictate to those that weren't like them, setting aside any other questions of morality in order to attack and abuse those they saw as beneath them.
But Sinister, Sinister bothered him on a personal level. Harry's hands clenched as he thought about how Sinister had been so interested in trying to capture Jean. Jean or the baby you and she have made, a voice whispered inside of his head. He's a mad scientist type, a geneticist who believes in purity and experimentation in equal parts. Who's to say what he could do with a baby?
Of course, Jean heard that tone and responded by pulling his mental self into a hug, her mental voice both soothing and somewhat surly, a very odd combination, but one she pulled off despite that. "Yeah, well, if Sinister was after me, Harry, he's waited far too long."
There was indeed a certain waspishness to Jean's mental tone at that thought, since she was no longer allowed out of Camelot at all. Of course, Jean wasn't bored or anything of that nature. Despite staying in the castle, she had more than enough to concentrate on. She was still working on helping Carol and her think tanks occasionally despite her pregnancy. She spent time with the kids, all of whom were getting a kick out of her pregnancy, especially Melody. Melody was always laying her ears against Jean's belly these days. And Jean had also taken over some more of Harry's organizational duties with the EDF, working with Sage, Carol, Murphy, and Powers.
Still, there was no denying that she still felt irritated at not being allowed to go anywhere physically, and she often glared or pouted at Harry and Ororo about it. Emma and Hela…not so much. Emma would simply tease her into a right frothing fury over her incarceration being all Jean's fault in the first place, and Hela would tell her to woman-up. Both ladies lacked a certain amount of empathy when dealing with Jean's mood swings.
At that thought Harry decided he'd had enough serious thoughts and stood up, intent on following Jean's earlier orders. As he walked downstairs, Harry felt Jean's mental self recede slightly. A second later he heard the sounds of feminine laughter and shouting from the small adult-only sitting room. This had been a new addition to the castle created for the adults when Nikolai's sister had finally moved out into the X-mansion. It was basically a place where they could come, eat, talk, or just hang out and not have to deal with the hustle and bustle that was a prominent feature of the main dining hall regardless of time of day. There were always classes, people eating, talking, Dennis working with the hard light system on various communiques, or Pinoptes and several dozen people playing games of all sorts.
Entering, Harry found Jean, Carol, and Mary Jane sharing what looked like a giant Caesar salad—about as wide as Harry's outstretched arms—popcorn, and watching what looked like an old sci-fi movie. "Ladies ,what is the occasion of your merriment?" he asked, going down to his knees and gently laying his head sideways in Jean's lap, looking up at his pregnant lady with adoration in his eyes.
"Hey, boss," MJ said chirpily, pointing at Carol, unmindful of the fact that her sleepwear put her body on display for his male eyes, considering he hadn't looked away from Jean since entering. Daww, they're so cute! "This is Carol's shindig; ask her. Although I can tell you the movie's one of those old B-rated movies, the Hordes of Mars or something. So awful it's good, or at least hilarious."
Carol grinned at Harry, flashing him the victory sign and equally uncaring of the fact that she was wearing a sports bra and panties in his presence. "NASA is now officially being shut down! The powers that be in the US have decided that NASA no longer fits the profile of its original mission of exploring space and must heretofore be replaced. They've ended their funding and thus the world's most moribund space bureaucracy is cut off at the knees. It's only a matter of time and reallocation before it's all, aaall gone~~." She ended in a singsong tone.
"Since I never had to work with them, I will bow to your judgment on how this is a good thing," Harry said dryly, addressing Carol despite not looking away from Jean's face.
"You really should, Harry," Jean said, sighing theatrically and breaking their locked gazes to lean down and kiss Harry, feeling his arms snaking around her waist for a moment before she leaned back, her tone shifting from loving to angry. "I watched a recording of a discussion they had not two weeks ago about plans for America to get back into the 'space race,'" she said, holding up quote signs. "Harry, they were still talking about rocket technology! 'Repulsor technology is unproven and unfounded and could not be expected to work on a larger scale without further experimentation under proven auspices.' Pathetic!"
"Ouch," Harry said with a nod. "That does sound both painfully stupid and embarrassingly slow. Do you think I should have recruiters in place to headhunt anyone?"
"Not from NASA," Carol said, looking disgusted at the very idea. "Oh, they've got a few decent brains. In fact, I'd wager if you could get them all to sign on, you could give Reed Richards or Tony Stark a run for their money when it came to space or space-based physics. But you wouldn't be able to. All of those minds, they're just as concerned about the bureaucracy side of things as they are the scientific side. Many of those people really did believe that malarkey that Jean was just saying, that repulsor and arc technology are not suitable for spaceflights because they personally haven't been a part of its development."
"Where in the world have they been living for the past few months?" Harry asked softly, shaking his head.
"There is no one who can stick their heads further up their asses than a bureaucrat, especially one who's been shown up professionally," Mary Jane said with a grin.
"And did you come here just for this party of yours, or did you come for something else too, MJ?" Harry asked, looking at the non-pregnant redhead for the first time since entering the room. He did not, MJ noticed, remove his head from Jean's lap or his arms from around her.
She winced a little, looking away. "Let's just say, well, that I had a rough day and wanted to chill out a bit. We're still getting some fallout about the Badoon from Europe and South America and how their unaimed scattershot approach could have gotten through that magical illusion spell of yours, something a lot of pundits had been calling an unbeatable first line of defense."
"I never said it was unbeatable," Harry said with a sigh. "Although, honestly, the Badoon's weapons came as a nasty surprise, as well as how profligate they were. Simply launching enough hyperspace kinetic weapons to saturate the area of space around the Earth they saw without even knowing that Earth was a fake was far too effective for my liking. Although, now that we've finished reverse-engineering them, Fortress Mars has a new primary offensive weapon, and the Verdun defense platforms in conjunction with the hyperspace trap should be able to deal with further such attacks."
"I know that, you know that, hell, the slick bastards in power know that," MJ groaned, grabbing up a drink that was very obviously alcoholic, however fruity and colorful it was. "The public, not so much. Once something is stuck in their brain, it's really hard to get them to realize that they were misinformed. And some of those same slick bastards are still trying to make you out as a hack who should be handing the EDF over wholesale to the UN."
"Maybe, but you're getting really good at getting those political speeches, right," Jean said admiringly of the younger redhead.
Actually, MJ was two years older than Jean, but, thanks to the changes pregnancy was having on her body, Jean now looked a little older than her actual age. At that thought, Harry's eyes strayed down and stayed on her chest, where two large prominent changes were on display despite her baggy clothing.
This won him a mental laugh from Jean but also a rather rueful reply. "I know you love 'em Harry, and after last night I can…see some positives in how sensitive my tits are now. But they are so not worth the back pain, trust me."
"I bow to your superior knowledge in that area, my love. You know I'd love them…er, you, whatever you looked like," Harry replied in turn down the mental highway Jean's powers had created. The loving humor and, yes, the lust hidden in his words and appreciation of her made Jean smile.
"Ugh, so not by choice, though," MJ said before smirking. "But at least misery loves company, and Harry here gets to go out there and give the public the speeches I've had to write up again on this matter. Coming from you it might actually stick in too."
She laughed wickedly as Harry groaned, closing his eyes.
"Yeah, well, that's nice and all, but actually the new think tank that might take over the US's future space-going ambitions is going to be more ambitious at least, if just as independently-minded. I've got a friend who's already been approached for them. He says they are thinking about the space elevator concept, or perhaps mass teleporters. Anything but old fashioned fission rockets!" she groused. "But anyway, Stark is going to be part of it, but not the leader. Someone I don't know, a chemist of some kind named McCoy, is going to be in charge of making sure all these cats march in lock step."
"Huh…" For a moment the name McCoy jarred some memory in Harry's head, a conversation he'd had with Xavier months back. But something more important occurred to him then. "Is that why America pushed for the right to create their own base on Mars?"
The US had pushed hard for that in the discussions directly after the Badoon attack, but they hadn't been willing to meet Harry's demands on the resources he required, his demands for payment as they went, stemming from their needs in terms of his aid in transportation and everything else, all of which they would have needed to have before they could even start work on a base on Mars. And Harry had stomped hard on turning over a portion of his growing space-based industrial capacity.
He was most certainly not going to let America create its own space navy. There would be one navy represented by everyone, united to defend the planet. Harry was willing to take from their traditions, sign their admirals and officers on, and so forth, but would not allow them to take some of the Kree vessels or build their own. Unfortunately, that meant that the EDF has to remain neutral in land based warfare.
"Probably. By the time they had it up and running they might have created their own teleportation device. Although the power requirements to reach Mars are just…"
"Scientifically impossible," Jean said dryly. "Trust me, I tried to work it out with Pinoptes after Harry here and Hela began work on their latest project. No, the best way to do it, if you didn't have the resources to actually use ships, would be to create something like a hyperspace slingshot. Create a simple 'shot,' an unpowered ship or series of airtight containers, then slap a hyperspace engine on it, shoot it off to Mars and then back and forth. It would be fast as heck but still energy intensive."
That latest project was, in point of fact, not very new. Indeed, it was an old accomplishment, only done on a truly unimaginable scale: the runic doorways. Harry and Hela had begun working on larger versions of the runic gateways, in this case giant, mountain sized circles with the same sort of spells on them. They would create a web of doorways for Ravens to travel throughout the system. The idea was to create several per planet. They would take time to design, but, once designed, they might be able to be mass-produced.
That way Raven attacks could come from any angle at any time at any strength they wanted. And since the construction bots had begun to mass-produce the things recently, well, that would certainly be a force multiplier. Yet the mathematics of the amount of power that web of gates would use boggled the mind, even magically. Harry had recently been delving into local magic more with Camelot's library, Hela, Kitty, and Dr. Strange in order to create a runic array that could siphon power from solar panels. They could be built to flare out like sails and then tuck back in after use, an amazing collaboration of magic and science, but they were still a week at best away from being where they could create a first prototype.
Carol looked interested, as did Harry, at Jean's words, but MJ waved her hands like an angry conductor. "Enough of that! Come on, let's just watch the movie! Trust me, it was just getting to the really hilarious parts."
Harry shook his head and reluctantly stood up, his hands trailing up Jean's back as he did so, tangling in her hair, and, as his head reached head height, he kissed her thoroughly. She smiled against his lips and then watched him leave, shaking her head. Gods, I love that man.
Harry headed downstairs to find some food and to see if Ororo, Hela, or Emma were around. He would have stayed with the trio above, but he wasn't in the mood for B-grade sci-fi fun. "I'm in a steak mood, I think," he said to himself.
After telling one of the house-elves on cooking duty what he wanted, Harry found Ororo sitting by herself, her eyes closed in seeming meditation. She opened them as Harry approached, smiling at him warmly. Harry smiled back, swooping down to give her a lingering kiss on the lips as he had Jean a moment ago. While Jean had taken the kiss almost docilely, if still lovingly, thanks to her body's gravid state, Ororo quickly deepened the kiss, licking and sucking at Harry's tongue and pulling him down to sit next to her. It had been a few days since the two of them had been able to have time alone. Alas, being too busy was starting to become all too common, and both were starting to feel a bit needy.
Ending the kiss, Harry leaned back, one arm going around her waist and holding Ororo against him. "What's wrong?"
"I do not know if anything is wrong…" Ororo said slowly. "It is just an odd feeling."
"Is that another way of saying your women's intuition is trying to tell you something?" Harry asked, trying to make light of it, although his eyes were serious as he looked at her.
She chuckled at the joke but responded seriously. "No, it's not that. I do not honestly know what it is I'm feeling. It began but ten minutes ago and feels almost like having an itch you cannot scratch, and yet…it is in my head, I think. I don't know where it is coming from. At first I thought it had something to do with my mutant powers, but I cannot say that that is the truth at this point. When I concentrate on my link to the weather I am not getting any-more information than normal."
"That seems strange," Harry thought aloud. "Hmm, I hate to say it, but could that be Jean's out of control telepathy trying to get through your 'electric storm' defenses?"
"No, I know the touch of telepathy, and this is nothing like that. I…"
She was interrupted by Dennis coming over, his fingers flicking over a hard light keyboard. He had obviously heard what they had been saying as he said, "I think I might, good lady." He finished typing, and small screens appeared in the air in front of Ororo and Harry, some of them meteorological data, others news reports from the world over. "What do you think of this?"
Harry looked at it, frowning. "What am I looking at here? The cold is dropping too fast, is that right?"
Ororo however got it instantly. "That is not a natural phenomenon!" she said swiftly, stepping to her feet and staring at the screens. "The temperature shouldn't drop so precipitously even if we are in winter right now, and look at the reports from near the equator!"
At that Harry too stood up and frowned, cursing inwardly as he leaped ahead of Ororo, taking in the areas most affected and where the cold front must have begun. That area of the world was the Finnish border with Russia, all of North Eastern Europe, and then through Russia down into China and Kazakhstan. And the temperatures were still dropping rapidly. Far too rapidly to be natural and far too cold, hitting minus forty degrees and showing no signs of stopping.. Even worse, the cold fronts were spreading outward rapidly, both from within Russia and from the poles.
Just as he was wondering what was causing this and if Ororo should talk to Gaia, the goddess herself appeared in front of them. But everyone who saw her knew instantly that there was something wrong, for her form wasn't the normal, middle-aged matronly form she routinely took. Even a few days ago when Harry had last seen her, Hela and Ororo arguing about some point of ancient history, she had seemed energetic and lively for all that she had assumed a mantle of winter, a heavy white skirt, a gray dress, and a wimple.
But now she was not a middle-aged woman with a bright look in her eyes. No, she was an old woman, bent and crooked in a way that no one else had ever seen her. Her eyes were nearly closed, and her hands were thin and palsied.
This appearance caused many a gasp to go around the dining hall, and a quickly widening cone of silence spread with more than one person heading rapidly towards the Earth Mother. She, in turn, only had eyes for a suddenly very worried Harry and a truly horrified Ororo. "Help me," the goddess moaned, collapsing forward into Harry's arms.
OOOOOOO
It was called the Crystal of Ever Winter by the Russians, but whatever the Russians scientists around them might think, it was not, in fact, a naturally occurring phenomenon which they had harnessed through their science to produce the effect they wanted on the weather of the Earth. It was, in fact, a magical creation of nearly incalculable power. And, in a similar vein, its real name was the Planetary Soul Constrictor.
What it did was simple to explain, if horrendously difficult to achieve, having taken several generations to create and then dozens of years to duplicate. The crystal would slowly wrest control of the forces of winter, ice, snow, and, above all, cold from a planet's normal cycle, mutating it horribly and bringing about an Ice Age over the course of a month or less. If the planet had a spirit, that spirit would only be aware of the effect if the users of the crystal were foolish and went too quickly. If not, they could keep it a secret for quite a long time until it was too late. And they had. This process had begun months ago and had not stopped since until tipping over that invisible moment where the speed of the change like that moment when a few small pebbles had come together to form an avalanche.
This was what Samantha Orlonova—or that was her name among humans, anyway—had been working towards ever since she had come to this planet over thirty years ago. She had been young woman then, one of the first hundred who had been sent to Earth to take on the guise of humans and explore the planet in order to see if it was worth the effort of taking over for the Dire Wraiths.
During their explorations they had seen phenomenal changes among humans, so much that it had somewhat scared them all. These humans were advancing so quickly in terms of technology it was frightening, especially to the magic-using Dire Wraiths, who could well remember the civil war they'd had with their Skrull brethren who preferred science over magic.
That had made deciding on a single country to concentrate their invasion on very difficult and had made them think that, perhaps even with the ability to weaken them from the inside, this planet might be more trouble than it was worth. While the higher ups had been debating that, Samantha and her crèche sisters had decided to use Russia, something that began before the second world war. The fact that it had never been invaded successfully made Russia a perfect staging ground for their eventual takeover world of humanity, something that had been proven in the next world war when, even without their aid, the Russians were able to fight off the Germans and their horribly effective war machine.
And those foolish Americans believe anyone would invade them? HAH! A few lights in their tiny deserts and suddenly everyone thinks that their nation is the natural place for aliens to invade first? Although I would say that the Fantastic Four and their adventures have certainly shown that our former brothers and their Kree enemies lack our vision.
Yet for all their success in suborning the Russians, a process that had only accelerated after Stalin's death, Earth wasn't really worth all that much to her people, and there were those among the Dire Wraiths that believed that simply pouring more wealth into this mission was foolish, something the Skrull would do, and which they could not afford to continue to do. This was made worse by the fact the humans were now growing out into space and creating their own space navy. Samantha was all prepared to be ordered back home and would have been grateful to have been so ordered.
But then something had been discovered in on this planet that made all of the effort worthwhile, first in Norway, then in other places. The mineral, Ocetite, was a naturally occurring crystalline mineral that had a slight orange hue which could be confused with odd-colored quartz. It was a mineral that the sisterhood had believed only existed on their own homeworld and had long been mined out there. It was important because it resonated with their brand of magic to a degree, adding to their power in the physical realm more than was normal. For example, the local magic user, Potter, was far stronger than any of her people could become, as strong as any five thousand of them at any one time, maybe more. With enough Ocetite, that disparity could be corrected.
Samantha didn't know if the crystals had magical properties the other magic users could use, and, given recent events with Harry Potter/Guardian and the fact that he didn't seem to be aware of its importance, she suspected not. But to the Dire Wraiths it was a pearl beyond price. Agitating the Russians and using them to conquer the nations which had begun to find Ocetite was child's play and well worth the cost.
It wasn't as if we needed to stoke the flame of conquest all that much. The Russians were already primed to attack most of the countries around them, she thought. Too many people in the government still pined for the days of the Russia-dominated USSR, for all its problems. Honestly, only humans would think that socialism could ever work. Perhaps my sisters are right: the humans have some kind of deep-seated desire to become a hive mind race. Regardless, it makes them easy to manipulate.
She looked over at Dr. Volkh, who was smoking on a pipe at the moment with truly horrible tobacco in it, an affectation he apparently had picked up in homage of Josef Stalin. He was the Russian equivalent of Reed Richards and led his own group of the Bogatyri, who the Russians thought could stand up against that particular superhero group.
They were not mutants. Each of them had gotten their powers through various scientific experiments or mishaps and so had not been subjected to the amount of public ridicule and hatred that mutants were in Russia, a hatred that was totally homegrown, nothing Samantha or her sister had egged on. With him and with various of her crèche sisters having assumed positions of high command among the Russian government, preparing them to launch a world war was easy, especially considering how paranoid the common Russian individual was beginning to get about how Harry Potter had been excluding them from the united space defense force. I still wonder about the why of that. Could he perhaps have some inkling of our involvement?
Regardless, Samantha knew that even Potter and his EDF could not know the true strength of the Russian army any longer. Not with what is hidden underneath the very ground thanks to Mole Man and our alliance with the Subterraneans.
And if Potter believes that he can overcome the Planetary Soul Constrictor magically, well, I would love to see him try, she thought. For a moment Samantha's eyes flashed behind their glasses, and she saw the magical gateway within the crystal. That pathway connected it magically to not just hundreds of her crèche sisters here on Earth but to the Dire Wraiths homeworld and millions of magic users there, all of whom were currently linked into this one overarching gestalt, working to a single goal, a single object: Cold! Cold! Let the Earth freeze. And while it did, they would take command of the Ocetite in Norway, Finland, and Estonia.
"It is done," Dr. Volkh said to the others, looking at the monitors around the Planetary Soul Constrictor, which were whirring and buzzing away electronically, enough to satisfy the few true human scientists among those around it.
"Good," grunted another man, this one wearing the full uniform of a Field Marshall, with a smile that was both humorous and grim at the same time, a true Russian smile. "It is high time that Mother Russia shows the world that General Winter is still and always on our side!"
With that he turned away, moving over to a series of other generals and army group commanders who were clustered to one side of the room. He nodded to them all and said simply, "Field Marshals, we are ready to begin."
They all smiled, turned to one another, and shook hands before moving out. And it was only Samantha and her fellows who would know that among them were four of her own people.
OOOOOOO
Looking over at his lady from where he had gone to one knee with the avatar of the Earth in his arms, Harry could only stare as her mutant powers started to swirl around her, visible arcs of lighting and wind appearing. He could tell she was trying to combat whatever was going on now but was having no luck. As he looked at her he saw sweat begin to bead on her forehead, and she growled, shaking her head, her hands rising as if to push against an unseen barrier, crackling with power. "This, I cannot…" Her eyes flew open, having shifted into the opaque white they assumed when she used her mutant power and locked onto Harry's. "They are… It is… Whatever this is, it is taking control of the Earth's weather, and it is gaining momentum! If this continues the world might enter a second ice age!"
"How can I help, love?" Harry asked still kneeling there as the Custodes pushed through the crowd around them.
"I don't know, but, this attack it is not a mutant; I can tell that much. And the speed…"
"The speed means the attack is most likely magical in origin." With that Harry quickly leaped into action. "Cory!" he shouted. An instant later his favorite elf stood before him. "Take a message to Dr. Strange and everyone who lives with him. Get them all here as soon as possible. Someone else get Dr. Druid up here too." Not being very sociable, Dr. Druid spent most of his down time in his own quarters working on potions and reading through the Camelot library. "Ororo, you're with me. Piotr, could you…"
Piotr was already moving, though, kneeling down next to the slumped over goddess, and lifting her out of Harry's arms. "Where do you wish me to take her, tovarishch?" he asked.
At that moment Hela came in, scowling angrily as she wiped down her hair with a towel, her hair and the bottom half of her face gleaming as she had just come out of the bath. Hela always took extremely long baths, enjoying the sheer sensual pleasure of it, of the far larger baths than she had ever been used before and all of the hair and skincare products humans had come up with. "I felt something shiver in the ether. I…" She paused in shock, staring at the small and frail form of Gaia, her eyes noticeably hardening behind her half mask as her jaw clenched. "What has happened here?!"
"I don't know, but whatever it is, we need to start fighting it. Dennis, you and…" Harry broke off as Jean appeared, floating down the stairs via her telepathic power. Her worried expression told Harry that she had been listening into what had been going on via his ears, and he nodded at her. "Good. Jean, get in contact with Emma. You two are going to be our coordinators. I want the two of you to get in touch with everyone who works for us, everyone we're allied with. I want every team member we can get up and ready for combat as soon as possible, but to wait until we know more about what's going on. That includes Wolverine, his little girl, and that partner of hers. Roust them out from the Savage Lands; we need all hands on deck for this. Get them up to High Note and prepare from there, Dennis work with them. Hela, if you could come with me, please."
She nodded and took his arm and Ororo's as Harry touched Piotr on the shoulder. A second later the four of them and the near-comatose form of Gaia apparated away from the dining hall, reappearing in the air above the topmost floor of the library tower, where they hovered. With a single gesture Harry flattened the roof into a perfect circle, complete with balustrades around the edge. The trio alighted down onto the rooftop, and Harry moved to the center of the roof, setting Piotr down. "Piotr, let Gaia down there. Hela, Ororo, what we need right now is, I think, a ritual, perhaps one based around a coven link."
Hela nodded slowly. "While I personally have never worked with covens, I know the type of spellwork you are speaking of. But that is only one half of this battle, you must know."
But Ororo shook her head, swaying where she stood. "C, can't concentrate on, on both… Harry, I'm sorry…" Her hands rose again, thrusting out as her eyes closed, and some kind of unseen energy flashed out from her again as she gritted her teeth and bore down on the fight with whatever was causing this attack.
"No worries, love. We've got this," Harry said, keeping his voice upbeat with difficulty. All my power, and I can't affect the weather as she can and can't add my magical power into her mutant power either. Fuck, I hate this!
OOOOOOO
The Dire Wraith, Samantha, had been very correct. None of Russia's enemies understood the true strength that Russia could bring to bear because of their alliance with the mole man and a trick they had taken from the allies before D-Day: they had created dummy armies, complete with blow up tanks and army reserve troops moving around the bases in order to fool the spy satellites and few spy planes that could get into Russian territory.
Everything else had been moved underground. Tunnels of immense size and complexity linked several forward bunkers along the various borders Russia shared with its targets and other nations along its borders, with bases hundreds of miles to the rear. These tunnels were complete with trains which could take whole armies that distance very quickly. Now, from out of the secret holes in those forward bases, came, not the forces that NATO had worried were ready to cross the border, but three times that number, and far closer than NATO had realized, too. Hundreds of thousands of tanks and nearly a million soldiers punched out into Poland in four large armies of disparate sizes from what, in Harry's world, had been the country of Belorussia. Another army group of close to five hundred thousand, with another hundred thousand Subterraneans and their artillery, attacked across the border into Finland.
Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and even China faced army groups far larger than they had thought. Mongolia faced a pittance, a bare four second-tier tank regiments and accompanying second-tier troops. China faced a full army group, larger even than the forces assaulting into Poland and the Ukraine, with two groups of 'Special Powers' groups. Kazakhstan, oddly, faced an army almost entirely composed of the Mole Man's Subterraneans. Still another army group was waiting in Siberia in the hopes of storming across into Alaska if possible.
And with these armies came the cold. Indeed, the cold struck first, unmanning Russia's enemies, who, unlike the Russian troops and mechanized units, were not prepared for it.
OOOOOOO
In Kazakhstan, the border with Russia was not nearly as defended or built up as it was in Poland, Finland, China, or even the Ukraine. For one thing, no one in their right mind would think of invading a country that had so little to offer as Kazakhstan. It was barely an industrialized country, and even then most people would argue the point. Like Afghanistan, its terrain was rocky, mountainous, and not very forgiving. The people were much like the country, being still based upon tribes and each little tribe seeing to its own devices. Therefore it should be no surprise that there was no organized defense or even response to just the cold front coming down from Russia.
"It's shit cold," said one tribesman to another as he came out from his small house built into the side of a mountain.
"Sukabi, your mastery of the obvious is amazing. What next, you will say the steppes are stony, the mountains high?" said another man, shaking his head as he began to pull on his long, makeshift jacket, pulling it up over his mouth. A second later he pulled his turban further down to cover the tips of his ears. "But I agree with you: it is getting far too cold out. Still, it shouldn't last. It'll go up soon enough to a more normal level."
"Maybe, although I… Do you hear that?" This first man broke his words off to look around him in confusion, shaking his head. "What is that noise?"
The second man paused too, cocking his head as, around them, the rest of the small town—village, really—began to awaken. "Avalanche? No, it's too regular for that."
Their breath now steaming, and more people coming out and exclaiming about the cold, the two men who had been the first to wake up moved to replace the night's watchmen, asking them about the noise. "It just started a few moments ago, but whatever it is, it's coming closer," said one of them, pointing to the north. "It's coming from over that way."
"Some new tool of the Russians, then?" scowled one of the newcomers. All of them, about fifty, all told, who had gathered by this point, scowled and muttered, spitting to the side and making curses. Everyone in this neck of the woods could remember times when Russia had been enemy or overlord, and there was a very thin line between those two things. And, of course, there was the cold too, beginning to get so bad people's fingers were starting to freeze.
"Out of everywhere those bastards could be going, why would they be coming here?" asked one of the first two awake, somewhat more equably than the others. This intelligent comment brought scowls and grimaces from the others, and the general reply was, why would they go anywher? They were grasping Russians.
Five men volunteered to head out towards the noise, which now all of them could perceive was coming closer. But they needn't have bothered. Because, just as they were about to leave, a nearby fissure in the earth suddenly began to widen, the edges collapsing inwards. All of the men turned to stare at it and then looked at one another. "Perhaps we were wrong. It is not the Russians but an earthquake?
"We haven't seen a real earthquake in this area for about four years," said one of them, shaking his head. "Besides, that sounds far too regular. Like a drumbeat."
As they all stared at it, from out of the fissure of the rock came creatures. That was the only way any of the locals could describe them. They looked something like a few of the mutants that they had seen on posters around the nearest town, when they went to barter for food and clothing. Humans touched by Satan, or so many of the mullahs would tell you. They were large, heavily muscled creatures, or at least the first two coming out were. They stood ten feet tall, wide at the shoulders and even wider at the hips. Their eyes were bulbous, silvery looking balls stuck into the front of their heads like tennis balls with no iris to see. They wore masks over the bottom of their mouths, and what looked like some kind of thin body armor covered their entire forms.
Behind them, however, came dozens of smaller creatures, all as alike to the giants as one man was to another. They all have the same features: bulbous eyes, small heads, and wearing the same kind of armor. The smaller creatures didn't wear the masks over the bottom of their faces, and all of them were armed with guns, although they looked nothing at all like any guns any of the locals had ever seen. The first two giants seemed to be armed with large hammers with axes on the back of them.
That tore it for the locals, who instantly raised their own weapons, old fashioned single shot or semi-automatics, and began to fire. Whatever these things were, they were not Kazakhstani, and that was enough.
However, their bullets just bounced off the attackers, who calmly opened fire in turn, cutting down the vast majority of the men facing them within seconds. Nearby, the womenfolk of the village saw this and screamed, turning to run away in their burqas. Children screamed as well, racing away, while the Subterranean attack continued even as more fissures opened, and the sound of the rumbling got close.
That rumbling soon revealed itself to the few scattered survivors as a column of other subterranean creatures looking like large stag beetles and a rhino. These were towing large cannons, and a few of the smaller attackers were sitting in what were obviously tiny tanks. At their head was a short, misshapen man wearing a visor over his eyes, a cape on his back, and a staff in his hand. "Go forth!" he shouted. "Go forth and conquer! We will have our own nation on the surface! We will force the surface dwellers to realize that we are here, and that this Earth is as much ours as the others'! Now go!"
"Conquer!" shouted thousands of throats, thrusting their hands up in the air.