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It took news of that debacle several hours to reach Sinister, simply because the MLF units on hand had to figure out how to respond and then to call in Scalphunter, who was able to get in contact with Sinister directly. When he heard, Sinister snarled as he slammed his hands down on the command interface in front of him, the tactical map of the island shivering in response. "Dammit!"
For a moment he thought about running the American blockade, Sinister's desire to live overriding his need to capture Gray and her unborn children. About possibly simply slaughtering his way through them and out the other side, free to scheme another day. Whatever those ships were armed with, Sinister doubted they could stop him. But doing so would take time, and Sinister knew that if Potter had not been seen yet, it meant he was waiting for a target to show itself. The means of the orbital base, wherever it was, to move troops around had proven decisive in Finland and China, though Potter himself had yet to appear. Sinister did not want to be that target away from his chosen battlefield, which meant…
"I'm stuck here," Sinister said aloud, clenching and unclenching his fists. "Very well. If I cannot run from this battle, than I mean to win it! And the Black Panther will be the first to feel my ire."
OOOOOOO
"We call these Mannerheim fortresses," said one of the locals, proudly gesturing to the large fortresses all around them. "What do you think?"
The fortress in question was a large, blocky construction built into the side of a protuberance of granite meters thick. It wasn't very tall, but it was squat, very wide, and marked by truly massive artillery pieces from the roofs along with a series of anti-air cannons. All of those were high tech, the anti-air being direct energy guns for the most part, and the artillery pieces able to fire the newest type of explosive munitions out there.
The fortress overlooked Pielinen Lake and was the central defensive position of the Juuka municipality's defense, marking the southern edge of a national park which had been something of an attraction, apparently. It was one of the secondary defensive zone of the Finns, the idea of a line really not being very applicable to the mobile small unit warfare the Finns favored thanks to the nature of taiga forests, scattered mountains, and lakes that dominated this area of Finland. These fortresses, according to the locals, served two purposes: they could serve as defense for young children and women, and they served as a visible target for attackers, funneling them into mine fields or onto frozen lakes where they would be sitting ducks.
"Have these walls been tested against energy weapons?" Scott asked as he worked his revealed jaw and face with one hand while still looking around with interest despite his tiredness and his stomach growling angrily at him. They had been in nonstop combat for more than ten hours, slowing the Russian advance as best they could. There were just so God damn many of them! The Russians were pushing through the Finns' defenses, losing four or five men and a tank for every Finn they killed, but he really hoped these scattered defensive fortresses allowed them to stop their advance.
Wherever his people were, the X-men halted the Russians stone cold, of course. The Russians hadn't brought forward any of their own Winter Guard or whatever they called their mutants and super soldiers into Finland just yet. But they couldn't be everywhere, and he refused to break the X-men up further because he knew it was only a matter of time before they did.
Already some reports had come in from the Finns about someone called Omega Red being released, but what that meant was up in the air. When he heard the news, Wolverine seemed to have some knowledge of the man and had disappeared last night, vanishing into the darkness and cold so easily it was kind of scary to think about it, but Scott hadn't bothered trying to stop him when his daughter stayed behind. Logan was a force of nature, really, and Scott wasn't going to waste time trying to corral the older man.
"They have, indeed," said the local commander, a Brigadier Milzumen, with a smile, handing the young man a large, piping hot cup of chocolate with some cinnamon added in. "What's even better is that we're beginning to get shipments of the weapons Magical Minds promised us. The bottleneck getting them to the actual front has been resolved, and our defenses are stiffening all across the board. The Russians might believe that this winter power of theirs is going to vanquish the lower countries, but until the Gulf of Finland freezes allowing them to simply march across to us from Latvia and the rest, it won't matter a damn to us. We've seen worse winters."
"And this time we have allies who have come through for us," an older man with a very rugged and scarred face muttered, sending Steve and the other X-men who were moving around behind him to grab their own food a nod. Warpath nodded formally as did Kurt and Laynia, but the others didn't notice, too busy trying to find food they liked.
Just then some of the artillery up in the fortresses around them began to open up, and the man scowled. "Even if we're being pressed a little too close for my personal liking, anyway."
Cyclops nodded, turning away for a moment to concentrate on an image that had just appeared in his heads up display, which was part of his visor. It showed what looked like a few individual units closing through the hail of artillery, while other, larger units began to form just outside of artillery range, including the Russian's own mobile artillery units. "I think we have incoming," he said softly, connecting to the rest of the X-Men. He looked around and then sighed, taking his cup of hot chocolate with him and moving behind Milzumen as he exited the officers' commissary, heading for the command room. So much for food, I guess.
OOOOOOO
Harry sat in a circle on the transfigured surface of the roof of Camelot's library tower, and around him in another smaller circle set around large runic array sat every other magic user that he had yet met in this world. Dr. Strange sat straight across from him, with Hela to one side, across from Clea, the four of them creating the four cardinal points of the sphere. Wanda, Kitty, Dr. Druid, and even Madame Harkness sat between them.
In the center of that circle lay Gaia, her head cradled in Ororo's lap as the weather witch held her hands in the air above the goddess, holding a position she had held for ten days straight down, her hands crackling, her eyes globes of power, that shone from underneath her eyelashes. She was the center of their defense, directing the energies of the rest of the wizards which flowed through Gaia via a link from Gaia to her. With the Earth Mother's aid she could then control both the magical aspects of what was going on and the weather aspect.
Magic and weather, especially weather on this scale, was just a very bad, bad combination. No one wizard could figure out all of the things that would change if he were to just add a bit of cold here, or take it away there. Ororo, thanks to her mutant power, could. It was why there was so little snow away from the front. It was why the ice of the South Pole hadn't grown overmuch. It was why much of the world below the equator had yet to truly feel the full brunt of the cold assault. Ororo's mental ability was, point blank, why the whole eco-structure of the planet hadn't just failed.
But the sad fact of the matter is that, even with my goddess leading us, and Gaia's help, of course, we're losing this fight, Harry thought. For all of his power and even Dr. Strange's, and Harry was under no illusions that the two of them were in any way weak, they were losing. Whatever was on the other end of this struggle, it wasn't a single magic user. As Hela had thought when they began, it almost felt like they were facing a monstrously sized gestalt of some kind, millions, perhaps billions of magic users all working together. And if I needed more proof that an alien race was involved here, that would be my proof right there, so many magic users all willing to work together like that.
There had to be something, some way to combat this, but magic power was definitely not the answer. They were able to slow the freezing cold weather, but they were not able to stop it, let alone reverse it. And, until they did, the Russians would have a significant advantage over everyone else, to say nothing of the Subterraneans. And so long as they had that advantage, Harry couldn't pull back his own Custodes from helping local armies to try to help the Black Panther and the Marines.
In Harry's mind, Jean and Emma continued to update him on what was going on, and he replied with terse suggestions, but he didn't have a good enough idea of the entire picture from this far removed to give out real orders. The only order he had given was that Steve needed to wait until the American military could transport some ready units into Poland: they couldn't let small reinforcements be trickled in and then be ground up by the front. That would never do against the numbers Russia could bring to bear. They needed to bring their own numbers up, if not to parity, then to as close as possible. Steve hadn't liked it, but with Polaris tearing up entire tank armies with the help of Rogue and E, he couldn't argue.
It had been Harry who had realized right away that, while the EDF couldn't get involved, that didn't mean that they couldn't use magic-based travel to bring in troops from other nations. The Canadians were the first, the Americans were going to be next, then the British and the French, although their aid would have to remain simply infantry at this point rather than tanks and such like. Those still had to be transported the old-fashioned way, and the Germans had opted to move into Poland in the same manner. But once those fronts had stabilized, then they would even help the Chinese move troops from their southern provinces up into the area around Shenyang if need be.
"It's becoming a meat grinder, Harry," Jean said, following his line of thought. "The Chinese are losing thirteen to four in tanks and waaay worse in infantry. The cold's killing even more than the combat there and around the Black Sea. But China's getting really ugly. The Northern Theater Command is pulling in troops to the front, but their infrastructure just isn't there."
"Are the Chinese in danger of collapsing?" he asked in return, grunting as the magic within him continued to be pulled out into the coven spell focused on Gaia.
"I don't think so, they still seem to be determined that they can beat this assault off. But I think that they got a major shock to their system when their vaunted airpower wasn't able to really get involved. The NTC doesn't have any more air force units at this point, they threw them all away for very little gain. Thankfully the other theater commands learned from that and are husbanding their air forces," Jean replied.
Harry just grunted in reply, feeling his magic slowly draining out of them into the circle. He and Dr. Strange were the only ones that hadn't switched out. Hell, even Hela had switched out momentarily, if only to stretch her muscles and take a bite to eat. Harry and Strange had had one of the house elves feed them Pepper-up potions.
"This isn't working," Dr. Strange said, the strain showing in his voice now as Gaia shuddered, her body spasming in Ororo's lap. "We are only slowing it down, and that infinitesimally. We need to come up with another solution or they will simply overpower us eventually. This is not a position I wish to be in."
Unlike Harry who only had a few lightning based spells, he had real weather spells and had been throwing them into the gestalt at first to see if they could impact this cold spell. But it hadn't worked. For all his monstrous strength, Strange couldn't break the spell or find where it was even coming from, nor could he figure out where, or rather how, to cut it loose, as it were, from the leylines where it infected Gaia. All of it was hidden under a powerful obfuscation spell which none of his spells or items could see through. (The fact that the Eye of Agamoto had failed was still bothering the heck out of the Sorcerer Supreme.)
Harry, however, had realized this same thing days ago and had since been trying to figure out what to do. By this point he had both an idea and a plan. "I agree," he said aloud, with Jean listening in. "And I think I might have an idea, but the problem is, I don't think you or I can leave this. We might have finally created some kind of balance here, but if we don't keep our magical thumb on it, that cold front is going to expand to the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in seconds. And I mean with enough force to possibly freeze those oceans in large chunks!
"Then what's your plan?" Dr. Strange asked even as a house elf appeared nearby and helped him drink a Pepper-up Potion. He sipped it, but he didn't turn away from his work.
"Kitty," Harry said, looking over at the girl who barely nodded as her entire attention was focused on channeling power into the coven spell. "I need you to break off as soon as Wanda is back in."
Wanda grimaced at that, but the food she'd just eaten along with yet another Pepper-up Potion was already doing her some good, and nibbling on a large hoagie, she finished it quickly before stepping back into the runic array, sitting down and trying to get comfortable again. A second later her power joined the rest of the coven connection, and Kitty slowly began to peel herself out of it.
Soon she was standing on wobbly legs, her face gaunt and tired. "What do you need?" she asked, her exhaustion leaching her normal upbeat air out of her. How long've we been doing this? When was the last time I actually slept?
"Hela and I have been working on something," he said with a grunt. "You know about the giant doorways? Well I want you to take one of the unassigned doorways we've been saving up and head to fortress Mars with Sunfire..."
Listening to the plan, Kitty's eyes widened. "Um… Harry, if this goes wrong, I mean, the power of the sun could bake the earth even faster than this cold is freezing it."
"I know, Kitty, but if you have another plan, I'd be happy to hear it," Harry replied calmly. "And I trust you."
That brought up Kitty short, and she looked between him and Ororo for a moment before thrusting back her shoulders and nodding firmly.
Despite how calm he seemed as he sent Kitty off on her new job, Harry was mildly furious about all this, but he was right about this. Without a target, which they seemingly could not find, most of his power was next to useless. It made him angry, but he couldn't do anything about it. He had a choice: try to outright attack Russia himself, almost undoubtedly kill millions of somewhat innocent soldiers and citizens in an effort to find the source of the spell, or keep trying to fight the cold. He had to keep doing what he was doing.
Jean quickly began to get in touch with the Japanese government, reaching out to them swiftly and asking for the loan of Sunfire. At first they were going to refuse. The Japanese military was putting together a force to intervene in the conflict occurring over in China, but the Chinese were very much against this. No Chinese wanted Japan involved in any shape or form with their country ever again.
Soon enough, Sunfire was connected via Emma, and Harry was able to talk through her. The extremely patriarchal Japanese man shook his head, staring at Jean, who had just said she could speak for Harry. "This is unseemly," he said coldly. "If Harry Potter wishes something of me, he should have the decency to demand it of me in person."
"He can't," Jean growled, the urge to tear this idiot's body apart atom by atom going through her head. "He's busy." The Japanese man bristled angrily at that, but Jean just did not have the time, or control, to deal with it. I, at least, have had some sleep over the past ten days. Harry and the others haven't. Fuck, he can barely talk to me; no way am I going to let him talk to you, you arrogant ass. "Listen, how hot can you take it?"
"What?" the Japanese man asked, his anger at speaking to Jean disappearing under a wave of confusion. "What do you mean?"
"How close to the sun can you get it for us?" Jean asked.
Once Sunfire had agreed to aid the plan, Jean cut him off and checked in with the Americans and French being sent into Poland. They had finally gathered up the needed material, in particular food, to finally make a real difference. Instantly she was on the line with Steve and his team. "It's go time, boys and girls!"
OOOOOOO
"I hope you know what you're doing, Cap'n," Rogue said as she looked down to where Captain America was 'flying' below her. Around them Polaris and E flew all of the other Custodes members who had been detailed to the battles in Poland. Those not encased in metal—the Black Widow, Hawkeye, Avalanche, the Captain himself, and Vanguard—sat on small, makeshift metal surfboards, holding on for dear life while Polaris used her powers to keep them flying. More than one of them looked like they wanted to scream
"So do I, but if this is the only way to get to the front lines, then it's a small price to pay." Steve had to shout to be heard over the wind, but he still made himself understood easily enough.
The term 'front line' in a war is always a bit of a misnomer, at least in a war of movement and constant repositioning, since it was so fluid and mixed. It had begun to be used more during World War I, where the front lines were very well defined. But in this war they most certainly were not, and so first Jean had to find the minds of the largest concentration of currently fighting troops and then direct Rogue, Polaris, and the others to it, coming down from High Note rather than through any runic doorway here on the ground. The runic doorways they were currently using to ferry in more troops were well behind, several hours travel even through the air at the speeds Rogue and Polaris could move (about half that of a commercial flight) from where the Russians were currently pushing forward, the initial NATO bases having been overrun and taken or simply destroyed outright thanks to Sputnik.
But the American and other forces were finally ready to move forward and engage the Russians, and Steve and his team had been let loose from their leashes. Their mission: destroy any Russian special units and start rallying the defenders, then work with the reinforcements to stop the Russian assaults.
This particular Russian army group was being led by one of the Crimson Dynamos. The Poles had their own homegrown mutants, and one of them had joined the fight nearby, destroying several conventional tank companies. The Crimson Dynamo in question had come in, and his energy weapons had made short work of the mutant in question, who had apparently been able to control rocks but didn't actually have any added durability himself.
Jean and the others knew the use of plural here for the Dynamos was accurate. There were apparently three more involved in the Ukraine and one Red guardian somewhere between Estonia and Latvia. More of the Russian superpowered community had yet to make themselves known, but Jean and Harry both believed it was only a matter of time and which front was seen as most important. Jean thought that that was a given: the Ukraine against Doom. Harry disagreed, seeing that as an almost incidental front in comparison to the one down in Georgia and Azerbaijan, but, oddly enough, that one didn't have any sightings just yet of any superpowered individuals.
Soon Steve began to see smoke in the distance and sighed. War, smoke, and fire. Damn, but this almost feels like home. How sad is that? Moments later he could see tanks beginning to fire on them in the distance along with anti-air guns. The Russians here in Poland had gotten back into the habit of taking those with them far too quickly to his mind, thanks to Rogue and Polaris's previous work.
At the same time, Rogue, with a visor over her eyes that not only protected her eyes from the wind but could act as range finders, saw the Crimson Dynamo they were here to naturalize. He turned toward them from exhorting four tanks to hammer a defensive position where perhaps a hundred infantrymen were dug into the snow and ice, stubbornly refusing to give way, firing back methodically at the incoming Russians. Nearby a single Russian tank was sitting, its tracks blown off by a mine, and a goodly number of Russians lay dead, their blood a pattern on the snow.
The arriving Custodes zoomed over the fight, none of them stopping long enough to let the Dynamo or the hellishly effective lightning guns range on them. Even Polaris had learned that her electromagnetic shield couldn't stop those for long. but just as they were about to pass, Steve tapped his check, activating his combead. "I think this is where I get, off ma'am. Thanks for the ride!"
With that Steve hopped off his shield, the move so fast it took everyone aback, both his allies and the enemy, who couldn't range on him in time. Steve fell, bouncing lightly off the top of a tank and flipping himself up and over to smash feet first into the Crimson Dynamo. The armored man was knocked sideways, the momentum of Steve's fall having added to the impact, and Steve flipped up and away, landing between several Russians, who suddenly found themselves flying away, unconscious.
Steve's shield swiftly followed his descent, Polaris pulling her power back from around it. The thing nearly took the Crimson Dynamo in the head, but he reached up and caught it only to find Steve in his face, a hard punch smashing into his visor. Steve wasn't strong enough to break steel, but the heavy reinforced plastic of the visor did crack, and the Dynamo fell back, the shield released into Steve's waiting hand. He then brought the edge of it up underneath one of the Dynamo's arms, crushing the metal there.
The man's other hand came up, blasting out a bolt of energy, but Steve ducked, and it hit one of the Russian tanks to one side as the tanks turned, trying to bring their machine guns to bear, the fight far too close for their main guns. Grabbing that arm, Steve twisted and twirled, hurling the armored man into another tank before leaping after him, smashing his shield's edge into the man's head twice before being pushed away by the panicking man. He spouted something in Russian, but Steve didn't bother trying to translate.
Instead he backed away, twitching to one side and rolling as the man's under arm weapons began to go to rapid fire, stitching up the side of yet another anti-air piece.
Then the others were there. With the Russians too busy to fire on her, Polaris dropped off the team easily, each of them releasing the metal surfboards they'd been holding. Husk, in her metal form, whooped as Polaris used her like a cannonball, hurling her into another tank and watching as she slammed down like an artillery shell, shattering its top and driving deep into its superstructure, where she began to tear her way out with a cackling laugh that was certain to make people begin to question her general sanity. The fact the crew of the tank were undoubtedly dead around her only added to that concern.
The Black Widow was dropped off directly in front of a group of charging Russian infantry who had been storming the defensive position. She lashed out, kicking and punching, her new stingers flaring in little bursts from her wrists and ankles, taking men out. Seeing the Black Widow in action, several dozen of the infantry who had been grimly certain they were going to die gave a ragged cheer, and came out of their fox holes into a charge to help her.
Hawkeye too was released a second later, a little bit behind the dug in troops, and he began to fire downhill, each shot slamming into a different officer that he could spot in the distance at the head of a larger column of mechanized infantry they hadn't seen on their approach due to the terrain.
E too was used as a projectile, hurled well back of the front lines to slam into a few artillery pieces being pulled along by half-tracks. "I find it very amusing to be used in this manner, yet also I find myself thankful that I do not have any pain receptors any longer. This would be immensely irritating if so," the android muttered as he pushed his way out of one of the large cannons, looking around him as the infantry all around began to point guns at him and more moved to attack his fellows.
Only a fifth of these men had energy weapons, however, and even as he stepped forward his nanites were released from the special slits in both his ankles and wrists. They began to gobble up the artillery piece behind him, changing it into weapons which fell into his hands. One shot plasma bolts which sliced into men and other artillery pieces with ease.
"I believe that this is when you realize that—what is that phrase?—that the shit has hit the fan, and run. Not," he went on, as he shot one man in the head who had been taking a bead on him from behind, a gun appearing in the middle of the nanites' swarm and firing almost at once, "that this would save you. By the time we are done with you, Russian will be only spoken in hell!"
Hearing this from above, Rogue shuddered even as two lightning guns fired on her, weapons blaring. She shook her head and took the shots, landing on one and tearing it apart as she shouted to E, "Sugah, that line of yours is really not as useful as you seem to think it should be."
Then Nikolai and Carol were there, landing on either side of the column, taking it under fire with their long ranged plasma rifles. Soon enough the Russians were in full retreat, more than half this column dead, and the Crimson Dynamo knocked into unconsciousness by the American super-soldier.
As the remaining surviving Russians began to retreat, Steve moved over, dragging the unconscious remains of the Soviet super soldier and smirking just a little as he made his way over to where the locals were. "Gentlemen, the name's Captain America. We're here to help. Can I ask who's in charge here?"
As one the infantrymen in front of him, from the lowest soldier to the highest, saluted. One of them, a major by his rank tabs, what was visible under dirt, grime and blood, spoke up. "Sir, damn glad to see you! And, as of this moment, I'd say that's you and yours!"
OOOOOOO
To the surprise of the Canadians, then the Americans, and then the British and French land-based forces, the doorways did work. None of them were large enough to take armored divisions, but full brigades of various winter trained forces were on the move as soon as Emma was able to stop by their bases to get the process started. They still had to get from those bases to the front, which took time, but not nearly as much as it would have otherwise.
Those forces came trained for winter, fully kitted out, with an understanding of the weather they were going into, how to fight it, and how to move across the land with their own supplies. They immediately bolstered the NATO forces within Poland, Finland, Norway, and Latvia, along with Georgia, aiding the Turkish and American forces who were already pitching in there. In Georgia and Azerbaijan the reinforcements arrived in time to halt the complete rout of the local forces. They still were falling back, but it was an orderly, extremely slow retreat now, stiffened by American and Australian forces and marked by destroying key strategic bridges as they went.
At the same time German forces were being sent over their shared border with Poland, and they used the more advanced road and train network in the west of the nation to cross swiftly. This further hampered the Russian advance into that country at a speed that took the Russian generals aback. Not a week after the War of Reclamation, as they had termed it, their armies had begun to slow in their pell-mell advance everywhere, and not just in Finland as had quickly become the case.
Of course there were other problems, those problems that neither magic nor superpowers could truly conquer. One of those problems was simple manpower. The Russians were matching the allies, man for man, and then exceeding them by ten times more. Whatever Jean and the others could do, they couldn't bring tanks or heavy artillery through the runic doorways. None of the magic users could be spared to enlarge the runic doors, bar Kitty, who had her own project now, and none of them had been already made that large. Enlarging them further would take a lot of time and effort, as Kitty explained at length to Jean. And she certainly wasn't going to come away from her own project to work on them.
Then there was the issue of getting men and women trained on the plasma weapons and the railgun rifles. The kick of the gauss rifles was an issue, and many personal wound up wounded from the surprising kick or hurting themselves in combat because they hadn't completely read the instruction manual on the plasma weapons, which proved to be very finicky in the immensely cold weather, creating steam and heat that could often freeze a second later on the individual firing it.
Further, this was not World War II or World War I. The Russians troopers were not poorly trained, poorly equipped, or poorly led. They were not relying solely on massive amounts of firepower. Their tanks were still superlative, and the Allies had yet to win a single tank battle that did not involve one of the superpowered individuals on their side taking part. The battle was still one of maneuver in the Baltic and Poland theaters, and the Russian tanks were still giving everyone fits. As for the Ukraine…
"Why don't they break down?" one man groused to another as he stared at the tanks ahead of them as they ran roughshod around several tanks whose treads and other pieces had simply failed, shattering in the cold, their electronics just dying on their creators and leaving them unable to fire effectively.
"I heard a story once about that very thing, actually," the other man said somewhat conversationally even as they began to take shell fire from the tanks. "In World War II, Russian tanks would break down but be easy to fix. Whereas something like ours, which are made not to break down in the first place, are very hard to fix at all."
"That's disgusting and disturbing and makes far too much sense to possibly be true," the other man groused, then blinked and looked at his companion. "Did you hear that?"
"There are so many things I'm hearing right now, you'll have to be a little more specific," the other man replied dryly. The two men had been involved in many of the battles of this war up to this point and had begun to be rather blasé about it. If they died, they died. Until then they wouldn't let that certainty get them down beyond a certain point.
"Smart ass. No, I mean, do you hear that hum?"
They stared up into the sky as a figure flashed over the head. Dr. Doom had arrived, and with him came fear.
OOOOOOO
It had taken Dr. Doom a little bit of time to recalibrate his suit in order to deal with the lack of visibility while flying and to make certain Latveria's army was equipped to handle it as best they could. Dr. Doom had gotten used to flying at high altitudes in order to get anywhere, and the inability to see where he was going was very irritating. Now, however, he had arrived on the Ukrainian front, where several dozen NATO infantry battalions and ill-equipped Ukrainian infantry and tanks were in full retreat from a far larger Russian army. Much of the Ukrainian Army had ceased to exist within a few hours of this war beginning, having been stationed too close to the front along with NATO forces. They had been completely surprised and overwhelmed by the speed of the Russians and the coming of the winter.
The winter wasn't bothering them so much any longer. After all, they were mostly locals, who knew how to deal with winter. But they had lost a lot of material those first few days, including the vast majority of their tanks. And the Russians had exploited that weakness brutally, using their own tank battalions to cut and slice off chunks of the retreating Ukrainian Army until all of them were running scared in moves that were taken straight from the rule book the Germans had used on them in World War II.
Floating in midair over the battlefield, Doom smacked away a few errant shells, ignoring the rest of them with disdain as he raised his hands, pushing them forward. From his hands came beams of power, something that looked almost like a laser except for the intensity of the light, but they did not dissipate like plasma would in bolts as it fired. These beams didn't hit and punch through like plasma, searing through only in one place and imparting a certain amount of kinetic force. Instead they followed the lines of his hands, slicing into tanks, people, and anything else they touched leaving them in pieces behind him.
Flying forward, Dr. Doom once more calmly batted aside a single tank round came towards them, gesturing with the other hand. That tank rose off the ground, trapped in its own little gravity field, and then was crushed as Dr. Doom closed his gauntlet.
He then tossed it aside into three more tanks, while his other hand continued to send a beam of energy, now slicing into a group of infantry, cutting them in twain. Their remains instantly began to steam in the cold, and their fellows, tough soldiers though they might be, started to flee in every direction. They even ignored the fire still coming from their previously retreating foes.
"I am Dr. Doom," he declared in a loud, if sepulchral, voice. "Your invasion of my neighbor has angered me. Prepare to deal with the consequences."
Just then his systems began to warn him of someone trying to take them over, and he scowled angrily, quickly activating a field of energy around him. It was based off of the UV ray's spectrum and was intended to disrupt both technical and mental assaults.
Coming towards him, flying nape of the earth, was a silver armored looking individual followed by four Crimson Dynamos. At the sight Dr. Doom allowed a sneer to appear on his face underneath his mask. The Crimson Dynamos were Russia's answer to Iron Man, but Dr. Doom was not impressed.
Three of them were already firing on him, small rockets blasting out from the wrist guards towards him. The other Dynamo was still oncoming, passing the silver man, who was seemingly now pulling back and staring at Dr. Doom in shock.
"That one must be the one that attempted to take over my armor," Dr. Doom mused to himself. That would not do.
With a flick of his wrist Dr. Doom cycled the laser weapon he had been using a moment ago into a far narrower, far longer-ranged beam. He then pointed his hand almost lazily towards that individual as he tried to fly away. The beam struck and sliced into and out of the man, sending him falling to the ground in a welter of sparks, shattered circuitry, and blood instead of just blood and tissue. Despite that, the man was most certainly in two pieces now. "Interesting… A self-replicating cyborg," he mused, flying towards the Crimson Dynamos. Perhaps four of them might give him a challenge, but he doubted it.
Then, as he watched, all four Dynamos started to retreat, firing off all of their rockets as they escorted the silver-skinned individual back, his being alive somewhat surprising Doom. Below, the Russian army began to advance once more, forcing Doom to break off his pursuit. But even so, it was clear that the Russians had learned their lesson. Now to drive it home.
OOOOOOO
The war in China had proved to be a sideshow, as Psylocke had discovered. Once the Russians had smashed any forces of China which could have crossed the border in any semblance of time, they retreated, destroying bridges, train tracks and any other means of swiftly moving troops through the battered, bloody remains of the Shenyang province, and then took up well-fortified positions just on the Chinese side of the border in the one town there, which had served more as an off-duty center for the border army, and at Zhenbao Island.
Betsy, Amara, and Piotr had pushed them every step of that retreat using Betsy's ability to telepathically invade people's minds to figure out where best to hit them, who were the officers, and where they were going to go, gutting the officer corps and more than a few whole divisions. Eventually even two of the three Titanium Men that they had been fighting had retreated. One of them had not survived a follow up battle between Piotr and Wyatt, who had shot through the man's visor, not cracking the reinforced transparent aluminum but weakening it so Piotr's fist did the rest. The other two had been pulled back quickly after that, taking the damaged suit with them.
But, all in all, the Russians were content to pull back and let the Chinese try to come after them in those positions and then further back into Russia. For now that threat was minimal, and most of the forces there had already begun moving around Russia to join the armies massing in what was being called the Caspian Theater.
"Where do you want us, Miss Jean?" Piotr asked as he and his teammates were lifted into the air by Jean. The redhead had simply reached down from orbit and plucked them off the ground, pulling them up and through the atmosphere in a telekinetic bubble of space. It was a sign of power and strength that should have taken many of the people on the ground aback, but after seeing what the Phoenix could do in full fury, most of the people on the team simply took it for granted. Still, such power demanded a certain amount of respect, regardless of anything else, like her being pregnant and the emotional issues it caused.
Jean smiled at them, gesturing to a few screens were several dozen Chinese generals were arguing. "Once they figure out what they want to do I'll get back to you," she said with a sigh. "It looks as if the Chinese ruling Committee is torn. A third of them wants to attack immediately, another third of them realize that that would play into the Russians' hands and cost lives for next to nothing, and the other third wants to make war on the Russians, but move troops to the Caspian front to do it. And they are still having trouble preparing their troops for winter."
She smirked then. "Still, it looks as if we're starting to turn the corner all around."
The doorways and the technology that Magical Minds provided was proving decisive even against the growing snow and winter closing roads and even trains. Slowly but surely the fronts were stabilizing the world over. People were still dying, thousands from the cold, thousands from the war, but it was slowly stabilizing.
OOOOOOO
Captain America couldn't be everywhere at once. And while he spoke somewhat passable German and fluent French, he'd never been able to learn Polish, the Russians having never wanted anyone else involved in their war in that nation, Stalin having wanted to add it into the USSR without further conflict. So he had to keep Carol. But after the first five or six large, splash type fights, the other members of his team were split up, scattered to hell and back across the ever widening battle front. And with them came both hope and renewed defiance.
Slowly, with more high-tech weaponry coming in and more infantry arriving, the Russians ground to a halt. Then, as the Germans arrived, they fell back here and there.
A sign of this occurred in one battle in which Nikolai took part, about four days after they had arrived at the front. He and two companies of infantry were dug into a copse of trees, having created a very decent defensible position in a bare few hours, which included one piece of towed artillery they had scavenged from a Polish base nearby. It was quite heavy, and the tracks had finally broken, but they had been able to lug into the woods. And, unlike all of the weapons they had built based on it, Nikolai's own personal rifle was still unique thanks to the bio energy draining enlargement array on the barrel.
He watched as the Russian tanks came on, six of them this time, with at least four companies of infantry and two trucks following on. These were the hover tanks the Russians had started to field, able to go where no amount of tires could allow them to.
I might have to insist we sell Jean's hover-tech, the stuff she created after reverse engineering from Mojoworld. Getting, what was it, over forty thousand hover-ambulances out here was a godsend, and thank Jean for thinking about it, but our own hover tanks would be a true godsend. Too many of the allied tanks were proving to be finicky in cold they were dealing with now, a cold that meant that Vanguard was wearing a heavy snow outfit over his normal Custodes uniform, gloves, visors, and everything else he could. But there were just some bits and pieces of most tanks that seemed to have issues: simple to solve ones, but still issues. And the need to rush them forward meant only the local Polish tanks had winter camo paint. Not good.
"Wait until they cross over that last snowdrift," he said into his mic, aiming towards the central tank.
"Yes sir," the local infantrymen, a Pole himself, replied. After the past few days none of them had any trouble working with someone with a slight Russian accent. They had all seen Vanguard in play by this point and knew where his loyalties lay. A few might still have doubts, but given the fact he arrived with the Captain they stayed silent.
When the enemy infantry passed over or around the snowdrift he had indicated, all around him the defenders started to fire, cutting down the Russians.
The Russians, of course, were no fools, and after four of their men fell the rest went to the ground, digging into the snow and firing back from prone positions. Only idiots or people with personal force fields ever fired from standing position in battle. Others behind them began to spread out on their skis, trying to encircle the defensive position around the small copse, and more and more of his men began to fire at them in turn, forcing them to stop and drop out of their skis with the ease of long practice.
Behind the infantry the tanks had stopped, and that was enough for the former Russian Super-soldier. Vanguard fired one shot first, the gauss bullet enlarging into the size of a cannon round and punching straight through the frontal armor of one of those tanks. The next second the big artillery piece opened up, but it lacked the penetrating power, and the enemy tank was still in one piece, firing. The cannon round exploded in the woods, killing two men but missing the artillery piece, which was already loaded and firing again.
Seeing that his troops had the rest of this fight well in hand, Vanguard stood in full view, hopping onto his skis and racing out of the trees towards the tanks, firing normal gauss bullets at the infantry between him and his true target, killing them easily and, in fact, killing two at one point when the bullet passed through his initial target's head and hit the man behind him in the back. His mutation-given shield activated instantly and began to absorb the impetus of the bullets from the Russian infantry. The surviving tanks, too, started to fire on him before they realized that that was precisely the wrong idea. One of them didn't learn the lesson at all, its turret blown off by an artillery blast.
About twenty feet away from the shield tank, Nikolai decided he'd absorbed enough energy, and released it all at once. The shield around the last, largest tank immediately flickered into life, absorbing the kinetic energy even as they whined and flickered to do it. Then, behind him, the artillery piece opened up for a third time, and the shield shattered, breaking like glass. Of course the tank underneath was still armored and came on, swerving away from Nikolai and no longer aiming at him, instead lobbing shells into the woods, killing more men within.
But Vanguard was still a threat, and he pointed his rifle at the tank, flipping the switch which would activate the enlargement array on the muzzle of the rifle once more. Instead of the tiny bullet that had been flashing out a moment before like any normal gauss rifle, which would have been scant real threat against the heavy shield tank, what came out was once more as large as a cannon round. It slammed into the side of the enemy tank, smashing into its magazine and exploding.
An instant later Nikolai switched his attention to the other tank only to stare as it began to retreat, and more infantry began to come up, trying to encircle his position again.
But at the same time more of his ally's own infantry were arriving from further west, coming in on large trucks, and halftracks. The Russians realized this quickly and, further, seemed to realize they didn't have reinforcements nearby. With that awareness they began to retreat.
Nikolai watch them go silently. It looked as if the Russians were no longer willing to just pour in men, but whether or not this was a change in policy or simply a response to this one fight, he didn't know. Regardless, he would have to report it.
Captain America got other reports like that, putting them all together. The Russians were still pushing hard, but the emptiness of Poland as a result of World War II and the Russians' own policies against the Polish when it was part of the Iron Curtain, had worked against them badly. It had given the defenders the same kind of room to maneuver that the Russians had always enjoyed when fighting on their own ground.
Thanks in part to Jean bringing in those ambulances to first transport civilians anyway and then the wounded. Damn, that was a brilliant move, even if she had to take the entire first production run to do it. And, we still have more infantry incoming. We don't have enough armor or trucks, but our infantry weapons can turn the tide against their tanks, and I think the Russians are learning that.
Over the next two days Captain America and the generals who had slowly begun to reform the front saw a marked difference in how the Russians were coming on. No longer were the tanks just barreling ahead almost entirely on their own, instead they were always accompanied by infantryman.
OOOOOOO
Fighting the urge to assume her normal form and eat his brain, Samantha scowled as Dr. Volkh burst through the doors and moved towards her, anger practically evaporating off him. "What?" she barked. "Can't you see we're busy?"
The man slowed, taking in the number of scientists in the room, all of whom were bustling about. His eyes narrowed slightly, and for a moment Samantha saw something in one of them, a glint of circuitry? Before she could concentrate on that he had calmed down and backed away from her, taking in more of the lab. "I can see that. I take it you are having trouble here somehow?"
"Someone is fighting the Ever Winter process," she said in a low undertone. Of all the humans here, he was the only one who understood the true nature of the planetary soul absorber and the fact that it was magical instead of scientific, although he had no idea of the Dire Wraiths or how they had infiltrated the Russian government and military. Or does he?
"How is that possible? Surely they would need to find Crystal itself in order to combat it?"
"No, they can fight us for access to the ley-lines and push us back by attempting to wrest control of the weather from us. It is… Think of it as being locked in a tug of war rather than a real fight. Neither of us can find the other to attack directly, but we can both tug on the rope, trying to mitigate or overcome one another's influence over the temperature of the world and its weather."
His eyes narrowed at that, and Samantha snarled. "We're winning, never fear! Whoever it is, they can't fight over one billion magic users all at once. The cold will remain where it is, just don't expect any more help from me and mine."
After a long fulminating minute, Volkh nodded. "That is fine, I suppose. What of the Mole Man? He has not reported on his advances into Kazakhstan. But the Caspian Sea is freezing slowly. If we can send troops around from there into Azerbaijan and then into Georgia, we can break through the allies there and into Turkey." He grinned viciously. "In point of fact, the other fronts hardly matter if we can conquer Turkey. Russia will finally have access to the Mediterranean Sea! Even the oil fields of Azerbaijan, the coal and steel of Finland or Poland, pales in comparison to that."
Samantha barely hid a wince. It had been her fellow Dire Wraiths who had pushed for the invasion of the more northern countries in the first place. Norway, Finland, and Estonia were the only nations where Ocetite had been found just yet, so they were the major targets of her own people.
But Russia had wanted access to the Mediterranean Sea since the time of the Tsars. She knew that the forces sent into China had been originally supposed to go to that front, but, once more, her sisters had convinced the Russians to create a buffer zone within China's border before pulling those troops back and around to the distant front. But even with their aid in creating underground railroads and depots, those forces were too far away to be of any use in the foreseeable future.
Still, they tied down a few of the Custodes at least, thanks to the three Titanium Men on that front. We must convince the Russians to release more of their special troopers up in the northwest against the X-men. It might seem like bashing our heads against them, strength to strength, but the payoff for my people will be worth it.
Shaking her head from those thoughts, Samantha allowed a pensive moue to appear on her face. Since it had been one of Samantha's ilk who had gotten the Mole Man involved as well, convincing him to join the war and to be a surface power as well as a subterranean one, it made sense that Volkh would ask her about contacting him. Of course, that wasn't really what had happened. The Mole Man the world had known was dead. He had been replaced by a one of her crèche sisters.
"I will contact him directly. I know that his forces are bogged down in Kazakhstan against the Fantastic Four, but I believe he could free a large portion of his men to push out of the steppes and to the east. What target should they aim for?" she asked.
The doctor paused a moment and then flicked out a wrist. On his wrist he had a wide bracelet of steel which emitted lights from several dozen tiny globes. The image of a keyboard appeared in front of him, and, after a few seconds typing, the hard light image shifted to that of a map. "Have them aim for this Ural River's mouth; it is the target of the 15th Army Group. If he can take the river's mouth, the 15th will push over the Caspian at once. They have the resources to do it with their organic supply train. Once they have broken entirely through Azerbaijan and the allies are in retreat, we can resupply them with the resources already tagged to the four army groups already fighting there."
Samantha nodded. "I'll see to it," she promised. "So long as you do something for me. The news from the front in Finland and Norway concerns me, and I think we need to offset the X-men's presence. Can you see to releasing the Omega Clan?"
"That and more, my dear. Russia's Winter Guard are going to become involved soon, on all the more important fronts," Volkh replied with a grim smile.
OOOOOOO
At the end of two weeks the various campaigns on the ground had turned into a series of costly, very bloody stalemates. This war of attrition was slowly but surely turning against the NATO forces in Poland, the Baltic states, and in Georgia and Azerbaijan, with the Russians pouring in more troops and more tanks and rockets and everything in particular, while the allies were slowly running out of forces trained in winter warfare. America had begun to produce winter gear, but experience and training counted for a lot, and no democratic government could survive simply sending unprepared soldiers into that kind of meat grinder.
Talks were ongoing with other nations, specifically Sweden and the Balkan states, to send their own winter trained troops in. But they had basically refused so far, citing, to Harry's anger when it was relayed to him, the fact they couldn't afford to do so because of their commitments to the European Union, the European organizational body that helped control and create agreements between the EDF and Europe. As such, that body was fracturing, and Harry couldn't bring himself to care.
Thankfully the war on the ocean was a different matter entirely. There Russia was losing and losing badly. Russia's information about the Americans subs had been spotty at best, and those submarines had been turned loose in wolf packs to go after the Russian subs and ships of all kinds. Within fifteen days of the commencement of the war, the Russian submarines were almost utterly destroyed, beaten back, or were no longer a factor at all.
The surface war took a bit longer, and there America's reliance on carriers for long-range hitting power hampered their ability to make a difference. After all, when you launched a fighter and knew point blank that it would not return, there was no way any American officer would launch their fighters except under the direst of circumstances.
Yet even if you took carriers out of the equation, the American fleets were able to go toe with the Russian Pacific Fleet and come out ahead. Their destroyers made the difference against the too top-heavy Russian fleet. The Russians might have had more battlecruisers and even two actual battleships, whereas the Iowa class battleships had not been brought out of mothballs. But despite all the advancements in armor and maneuverability that had been made in the years since World War II, torpedoes were still the best ship killers in any navy.
The British too had handled the battles in the Norwegian Sea with aplomb, aided by American subs and French warships. They had fought a war of maneuver and then cut off the Russian fleets from the Barents Sea, using the weather to their advantage and then overwhelming the Russian fleets by pinning them between three different fleets in a two day long running battle.
Neither victory was bloodless, but the Russians had lost any hope of projecting power over the waves. The American submarines even began to sneak around the tip of Russia and began to hammer their minimal seaborne trade. Of course, Russia had never really evolved into a mercantile power, most of its infrastructure was internal, which meant that its logistics remained intact.
In the same manner the sea battles were a sideshow to what was going on in Eastern Europe. The Russians were being stymied on every front, but stymied wasn't the same as being beaten back. Eventually their numbers would win out, or the morale of the opposing units would break under the combined pressure of the cold and their numbers. It had happened before, and it would happen again. It was simple fact that the Russian people and the Russian military was prepared to absorb casualties that no other military in the world could. But the allies were about to get another reprieve, as Harry's decision to bet on Kitty was about to bear fruit.
OOOOOOO
Kitty looked over at Polaris, who sighed tiredly, her hands slowly twitching. Fighting on the front line for more than a week with only Rogue as company had taken it out of her mentally and physically, and the younger girl smiled gently at the green haired girl, pushing her shoulder playfully. "So, looks to me as if you're kind of out of shape there, Green. Maybe you should join the X-Men or the Custodes for some other training?" she teased, hoping to cheer the other girl up.
"Hell no," Polaris said, shaking her head. "I already had my time in the saddle. I have no desire to become a frontline combatant again, not now, not ever. In fact, if Harry and Jean hadn't convinced me to get involved, I would sure still cheerfully be up on Fortress Mars, helping the locals continue to expand the fortress." Indeed, once this operation was over Lorna had basically demanded to be taken off frontline work and had gotten it: instead she would be flying wounded out of the warzones for the rest of the conflict.
"But you get that was for good of all," Kitty said quietly, her good humor evaporating. "And at least you were able to contribute at all. That's something I haven't been able to do yet."
"Your time will come," Lorna replied wanly. "I imagine that once this works, Harry's going to hunt down the people involved, right, and you'll help him?"
"I believe you can take that to the bank," Kitty said grimly. The death toll of those first few days of violence had broken armies, and whoever was behind this had a lot to answer for. She still hated the idea of killing, herself, but right now she was more than willing to make enough exceptions to get at the minds of those behind this war.
Polaris just nodded to that when Kitty said it aloud and watched as Kitty went to work, moving around the giant stone disc and examining each rune as she went. She was gazing between several dozen pieces of paper in her hand and the ones she had carved out, her attention so intense that Lorna could practically see it like a shimmer in the air around her, making Kitty's already frizzy hair even puffier. Kitty had been given this job by her boss, her friend and leader, and she would not fail.
"Is it ready?" she asked as Kitty seemed to finish.
Kitty was silent for a moment before visibly gulping and nodding. "It's ready," she said firmly.
Polaris nodded too and lifted her hand, gesturing to the giant titanium and vibranium cage around the stone circle. With this cage she lifted the circle up into the air and, once the doors opened, out of the hangar bay, up into the atmosphere of Fortress Mars, and then out into space. At the same time, Kitty moved over to a nearby shuttle, following after the magnetic mutans.
There she found Sunfire nodding to her, his entire being glowing even brighter than the distant sun. He had been flying close to the sun and soaking in the rays for this moment. "Well? Is it done?"
Polaris scowled at the arrogant asshole but nodded. "It's done," she said curtly.
Sunfire nodded back and then gestured, some of his solar-based power blasting into the sphere. He kept on trying for several solid minutes, but the circle didn't show any sign of even heating up; it was completely inert. He grunted, canceling his attack, and, with the help of it being now weightless in space, the two of them pushed the cage through space into the nearby destroyer, a former Kree vessel (of course) which had been renamed Firefly.
The three of them took the ship deep into the system, as close to the sun as the ship could take them, before the two of them exited the ship. On the bridge, Kitty watched as Polaris and Sunfire worked together to drag the giant disc closer and closer to the sun. They flew together with it until it was hovering close enough that Polaris began to feel the heat through her electromagnetic shielding, retreating and letting Sunfire go forward alone.
Sunfire once more began to glow with the energy he was absorbing, and the disk too began to slowly start showing molten bits and pieces here and there as the runic arrays that Kitty had implanted began to absorb the heat. The cage, even with the perfect mix of vibranium and titanium, started to melt, and he quickly backed away to just where the metal had started to glow.
Once back on Fortress Mars, Kitty transferred to Earth and activated the other end of the runic doorway. That doorway was situated in an empty little area of the border between the Ukraine and Poland, well away from the battles going on and, indeed, any human being. Rogue had been pulled from Poland to help with it before heading up to Poland. Another doorway, more of a window, really, had been very carefully placed within the runic arrays and the coven enchantment on the tower at Camelot.
This part was the trickiest of his plan. Using their magic, Harry and the other wizards had worked on slowly shifting the coven spell while continuing to battle against the influence of the expanding cold in order to take in actual heat and spread it through the leylines. Now they slowly began to work the heat into their defenses, and Gaia, her physical form still comatose, began to take command of it.
The change wasn't instantaneous, but an hour or so later Gaia's eyes fluttered open and she smiled. Over the rest of that day her entire body changed slowly from that of a crone to that of a middle-aged woman in the bloom of life. "I can feel the energy of the sun within me, Harry Potter, closer, more powerful, more heated than I have ever felt in all my existence!" she nearly moaned. "How have you done this thing!?"
"A bit of an expansion of the runic doorway concept, milady," Harry said, sighing and bowing his head formally to her and then looking at Ororo, his face pained as he saw the look of utter exhaustion on her face. So stark was it that she looked like she had aged ten years over the last two weeks. "Can you…"
"Say no more," the goddess said, slowly standing up and pulling Ororo up as well, then hugging the woman tightly. "Well done, daughter. Now, loose the tension; I will handle it from here."
Ororo slowly complied and then simply collapsed, her will no longer able to keep her body going. Harry and Hela both broke from their positions to catch her and then slowly helped her to one side of the runic array. Then Gaia was there, her hand over Ororo's eyes. "She will sleep for a full day, mayhap more. After that she will be back to normal. I have healed her mind both physically and mentally, but her exhaustion needs to be seen to in the normal manner."
A second later Hela endured a hug from the goddess as she stepped around the circle, hugging all of them one after another. By the time she finished the heat was almost literally beginning to boil off her, and she resumed her position in the center. She then gestured, and the heat dissipated out from her visibly into the ground and from there into the Leylines, from where it would circulate around the Earth. Harry could even see a haze of heat joining the air leylines, which he knew that he or any of the others would have had trouble using it all.
The effect around them was immediate. The temperature around them instantly began to rise, and he smiled, thinking about the effect this would have worldwide. They had held the line. The militaries of the world had stopped Russia when it had the power of winter behind it. His Custodes had held the line, Polaris had routed an army and Doom had done the same to another.
Now, however, now is the time, Harry thought to himself as he stood up, leaving the goddess to continue her part of the battle. Now it is time to fight back!