Madam Gao was dead.
A single sniper round had taken her, clean through the head, leaving nothing that panacea could work with. The vial that David had ensured every senior Imperial Heavy Industries personnel carried had not been enough. Could not have been enough. There are wounds that close on their own, and there are wounds that simply end things, and this had been the latter.
The managent structure of Imperial Heavy Industries had always been quietly unusual. After the previous chief executive had been removed by David on grounds of insufficient loyalty, the search for a replacent had produced a young woman: highly educated, professionally capable, and completely without the kind of organizational weight that would have made her dangerous. She sat in the visible chair. She signed what she was directed to sign. She attended functions and presented well and understood, at so level, that her role was to be the face of sothing that had a different face in private.
That private face had been Madam Gao. Loyal, experienced, discreet, and genuinely effective. Under David's remote coordination, she had been the actual operating authority of Imperial Heavy Industries for months. The company had run smoothly because of her.
Now she was gone, and the shot had been precise enough that it felt like a ssage.
Nolan had been at the tal round table when David inford him. He was still in the vibranium power armor, and he stood slowly, the servos in the suit moving with a low hum, and looked at David with eyes that were not showing much of what was happening behind them.
"Madam Gao is dead," he said. Not a question. Processing.
Then: "Inform the Lanters Company. I want an assault team and a Stormtrooper team ready to move. Notify Natasha. She is to accompany us."
"As you command, my lord."
David's eyes flickered with blue light as it began coordinating the deploynt. If there was sothing in its bearing that went beyond duty into sothing closer to anger, it did not say so. But the efficiency with which it moved was sharper than usual, the kind of precision that a man of iron applied when it had sothing to prove to itself about its own competence.
Half an hour later, two Thunderhawk transports lifted off the platform in a deep rumble that shook the air above Second Son Island, nosed upward through the low cloud layer, and accelerated northeast toward the Aricas.
Inside the cabin, the light was dim and the vibration of the displacent engines was constant. The Lanters in Terminator plate occupied most of the available floor space; in the low cabin lighting, with their bulk and their silence, they resembled a row of tal monoliths bolted to the deck.
Natasha had tied her red hair back without ceremony and taken a seat across the aisle. She had been given the summary of the situation in a few sentences. She sat with it for a mont, then looked across at Nolan.
"Lord Primarch. Do you have a theory?"
Nolan kept his eyes forward, half-closed. He took a slow breath before answering.
"The last senior Hydra leader on the continent was found dead in his ho not long ago. Heart attack. Tony attended the proceedings personally, as required by the tribunal, and notified as agreed. Hydra's operational capacity has been stripped nearly to nothing by Tony and Thor. They do not have the remaining manpower to mount sothing like this."
A pause.
"David's recent reports on S.H.I.E.L.D. indicate internal instability. Rogers and Fury are contesting legitimate authority within the organization. At the mont, Rogers holds the advantage due to the weight of the Captain Arica identity. Based on that situation, my working suspicion is that soone is attempting to draw us into a direct conflict with official forces. An escalation they can point to."
He turned his head slightly.
"But that conclusion only holds if the other party already knows that Imperial Heavy Industries is connected to us. Which ans they have done intelligence work on us. And they have concluded that the assassination of Madam Gao would produce a visible operational response from our side. Possibly a response that puts us at odds with S.H.I.E.L.D. or the authorities."
Natasha was quiet for a mont, her thumb pressed against her lower lip. Then she shook her head once.
"I know Fury's thods well enough. He likes indirect approaches and unconventional angles, but not this. Assassination of organizational leadership to provoke a reaction is not how he operates. It is not how he thinks." She paused. "I cannot explain exactly why I am confident in that. Put it down to the kind of instinct an agent develops after years in the field. Sothing else is at work here."
"These are still guesses," Nolan said. "We look at the scene first. Then we investigate."
He closed his eyes again. Natasha pressed her fingers to her forehead and thought.
Imperial Heavy Industries' headquarters occupied a substantial portion of rebuilt Staten Island. The island had been transford in the years since the reconstruction: the comrcial district surrounding the headquarters was prosperous in the specific way that followed when a single well-resourced entity decided to invest seriously in a place and then stayed. Property rights in the surrounding area were largely held by Imperial Heavy Industries, the arrangent that had erged from rebuilding hos that the local population had not been able to rebuild themselves. The local police station was funded through the headquarters' security division. The island functioned, to a aningful degree, as Nolan's private territory wearing the face of a corporation.
The Thunderhawks set down on the approach to the headquarters building with the kind of ground-shaking heaviness that twenty-five ter transports produced regardless of how carefully they landed. The cabin doors opened.
The Lanters stepped out.
The reception staff on duty absorbed this with the slightly stunned resilience of people who worked near a building that occasionally had unusual things arrive at it. Tony Stark had been doing what Tony Stark did for long enough that New Yorkers had recalibrated their baseline for strange. The uniford reception team recovered within a few seconds, straightened up, and moved forward to greet the delegation with professionally maintained smiles.
Nolan and Natasha ca out behind the Lanters.
A woman in a mink coat was already waiting at the edge of the reception group. Silver hair, precise posture, the way of standing that said she was trained for situations where the wrong movent produced consequences. She had been watching the transports co in.
"My lord," David said, stepping forward. "This is Silver Sablinova, the director of Imperial Heavy Industries' security departnt. Designation: Silver Sable."
Silver Sable's eyes moved across David's tal fra with professional care, then settled on Nolan. She extended a hand and offered a smile that was correct in every technical detail.
"Mr. David. Mr. Nolan. Welco to Imperial Heavy Industries."
Nolan's gaze had already drifted to the nearest cluster of employees with their phones raised, trying for an angle on the Lanters.
"Appreciated." He turned his chin toward David without looking at Silver Sable. "Clear the area. All non-essential personnel. Full radius."
Every mobile device within a kiloter went dark in the sa instant. The employees blinked at dead screens, then at each other. Silver Sable had already read the room. She lifted a hand toward her security team, and the well-trained n moved imdiately, efficiently redirecting every civilian employee away from the reception area without making it look like the force it technically was.
"My apologies," Silver Sable said. "Our employees are civilians. The security team can only ask so much of them in a mont like this." A brief pause. "And I deeply regret what happened to Madam Gao."
She turned and gestured toward the building entrance.
"Please follow . The scene has been secured since the incident. Nothing has been disturbed."
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