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In the immediate attacks coming out of the various portals, almost all of the advantages accrued to the Chitauri invaders. In America, this meant that before Iron Man and the other super-powered (or suited) individuals were on station or the local military forces could react in an organized manner, several massive groups of skimmers, the fast, two-person aerial units, were able to move well away from the portal in Washington. Numbering in the hundreds, they attacked the nearest military bases hard, pushing out to around a hundred miles away from the city, attacking and mainly destroying the military bases in that area.
This was not a bloodless process, and most of those forces were mauled by the defenders. When the US military started to respond in strength, several groups were wiped out before they could make trouble. Others, who had seemingly lost any sense of strategy and just went wild, were killed by vengeful jets blowing them out of the sky with a little missile two tap after raining death down on small towns or busy highways. Yet the most important assault to be sent out away from the anti-air dome that Corvus Glaive put in place over the Washington area was sent to a specific target.
Loki hadn't really done all that much in terms of gathering actual intelligence for the Chitauri assault. But one thing he had done was look for any rumors or news reports that mentioned Magical Minds, Potter, or Reed Richards. Oddly, he hadn't done the same for Dr. Doom, who was well known as an anti-hero, leader of a nation and a scientist equal to Richards. Which was somewhat unusual and probably why he also had placed one of the teleport beacons in a country that shared a border with Latveria.
Regardless, in America, there were a lot of rumors, ranging from conspiracy theories to 'accredited' stories, that had Harry and Magical Minds engaged in everything from secretly putting something in the water of the Great Lakes to stealing children from Bible Belt states to use in some strange magical rite. And that Magical Minds was deeply involved in bringing down precious metals and other things from orbit to Hampton Roads and Naval Station Norfolk.
Combined, Hampton Roads, or as it was called formally, Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads, was three bases in one. They provided support in the form of administration and all sorts of logistical needs to the United States Fleet Forces Command, Naval Reserve Forces Command and Marine Corps. The nearby Naval Station Norfolk was the largest pure military installation the US Navy boasted and might, in fact, be the largest in the world, though since most militaries weren't exactly open about that kind of thing, it was impossible to know for sure. By any stretch, it was easily the most important purely military target outside of Washington DC itself in several thousand miles.
This had made it a natural place for the 'Revamped Dragon' project, as many of the people working on it called E's plan to somehow modernize the Iowa-class ship New Jersey, as well as a natural place to start to upgrade the basic military-style equipment of the US Navy. Opening a dry dock in Hampton Roads and moving the ship from its birth in Camden was relatively easy, but by this point, nearly everything else that went into that project had been mainly completed. For some reason, the US Navy, from the top brass on down, had latched onto that project with both hands.
At one point, Emma had laughingly called this the "Boys and their toys effect writ large. Big guns, battleships? Even more than jets and missiles, that kind of thing calls to the primitive male mind."
Corvus Glaive had known that the quartet of military bases would be a tough nut to crack. It was two hundred miles away, and even the skimmers, which the Chitauri called Death Claws, could not travel that distance instantly, and sending them on their own would probably not have done anything much besides. No, the base needed to be destroyed, and for that, the attack needed Rippers, the large, mobile aerial artillery units.
Thus, this force was massive, easily the largest sent out right off the bat from the portal in Washington. Nearly two thousand Death Claws and a hundred Rippers, while even more Death Claws were sent to shield this group from counterattacks on the way to its target.
By the time that attack hit, the US Navy was already scrambling. This included the six destroyers in base, all of whom were armed with anti-air guns, the various base's anti-air guns, most of whom had been revamped by Magical Minds, and twenty-eight squadrons of fighter jets. Practically every jet on the base was in the air and hit the attackers before they could close, smashing hundreds of Death Claws out of the air with the two missile tap that the Americans had almost instantly learned were necessary to take down their shields and destroy the smaller flying units. A flight of jets was even able to get through the skimmers to down one of the large eel-like units, though it cost them their lives and every missile they had.
Then, the rest of the base's anti-air defenses opened up, and the Chitauri local commander began to wonder if still more should have been sent. Laser, missiles, and heavy machine gun fire, even chaff, were launched their way, the night lighting up across all of Hampton Roads and beyond.
Many of the ships in the docks had already begun to leave said docks, moving to maneuver, but the enemy's strange jamming tech made linking up harder as the enemy pressed forward through the defensive fire. Still, the defenders were giving as good as they got for a while until the Rippers got into their own range, and the jets began to be knocked out of the sky, unable to return and rearm safely. At that point, the battle started to tip the other way.
As the attack began, Captain Nicodemus Lee, no relation to either Ching Lee or the Southern General, was on the bridge of his ship, the New Jersey. The US navy had not chosen the commander of their new (old) toy out of a hat. The Hawaiian native was known as a hard charger and had been up with the first of the alarms coming in from Washington and the Pentagon going off the air despite it being deep night when the attack began.
Getting his crew assembled from across the base at short notice had taken some doing, as the ship had not been scheduled for any test runs for the next week. Indeed, the ship was still listed as being in the hands of the yard, and his crew had yet to be fully filled out. Still, Nicodemus had made certain at least a skeleton crew was abord the ship at all times, and now, Nicodemus loomed over one of his bridge officers, an operations specialist.
"Mr. Givens, tell me we are connected to the base's systems," Lee growled, his tone implying that they had better be, or else Lee was going to gut the man, metaphorically of course.
Normally, any naval warship would be relying on its own radar section. But considering the spare nature of the crew at present, there were only so many hands to go around to operate the ship's sonar and radar.
"Yes, sir. Our radar's coming online…or will as soon as I can get a few ratings to race down there and push some buttons," the man said with all of the courage of a young man put in an impossible position at the crack of dawn hyped up on his body weight in navy coffee, something the base had hastily brewed for nearly everyone within the quartet of bases, a logistical feat that would no doubt win someone a medal once all this was over.
Lee could relate and approved, so made a go-ahead gesture. "We've got… Well, we've got several thousand plus jetfighter-sized bogies coming in from the south, surrounding what looked like… Sir, the radar readings on the larger bogies make them look like small eels or something, I've never seen the like. Estimates on their speed… the Base says twenty minutes… I'd estimate that for the crest of the assault but longer for the eel-things."
"Those will be the big boys then, floating battleships, maybe? They are aliens, after all," a new voice interjected. "We should expect the unusual."
Lee turned to look at his executive officer, who looked as if he had tossed his uniform on in a hurry and missed several bits on his run over from the married officer's billets. Considering everything else going on, Lee had to appreciate his priorities. "True. Right now, I want you down in engineering, XO. I already shouted down at them a little bit, but if the scientists try to give you lip or whine again about being awake at this hour toss them over the side."
His Xo didn't bat an eye at that, and Lee continued. "I want every civilian aboard the ship either off or working to bring our guns and generators online. And those that stay should know that we will be doing what we can to fight this invasion, or whatever it is. They will be putting their lives on the line if they stay aboard. After that, report to the secondary bridge."
"What's the play, sir?" Is XO asked, saluting briskly.
"The only one I can call. A ship tied down is not a ship at all but a target. This ship will be moving in ten minutes by hell or high water," Lee growled.
"Sir, I've got reports from Nefarious, Shelby and the Sullivans. All are online and moving out of their berths. The XO of the Laboon is bringing it online, but their captain isn't aboard yet. Er… the base doesn't have any long-range coms up, sir. I would suggest it's being jammed," another specialist interjected from the communications station. Normally a report like that would have been given when the captain demanded it, but under these circumstances, such niceties could be set aside.
Indeed, Nicodemus nodded the man's way, a look of approval on his face. "Good initiative and a likely guess, Mr. Eddings. Assign a rating to keep monitoring our long-range comms and handle our close-in comms yourself. XO, on your way."
The XO nodded, saluted, and rushed off as one of the tactical officers looked up from where he had been looking at the tactical map, where he had been making notations from the information being sent to it by the radar section. "Those flying squiggly things don't look to be big enough to be battleships. Destroyers, maybe, but not battleships. Still, they are moving fast, sir. The Air Force is going in, but…"
For a few moments, the tactical officer, Lee, and the sensor specialist watched the radar as the first four squadrons of jet fighters, their positions marked by green dots on the screen, flew out from the naval base to engage the incoming alien units. Foolishly, two of the squadrons attempted to dive into the enemy formation to attack what they must have thought were bombers of some kind. The planes fell, all twenty-four of them wiped out for only four of the enemy jet fighters. The others fared better, knocking out several of the smaller targets on the radar before retreating. Then the rest of the base's squadrons hit, and still more fell.
"Damn…. Look at their maneuverability… Lock on anti-air is gonna be the way to go," the tactical officer murmured. "Recommend we get the new missile launcher powered up soonest, sir."
"Coms, see if you can raise anyone among the survivors of those jets. I want to know how tough these aliens are. But for now, I agree with your priorities, Tactical," Lee stated firmly.
The young man wasn't his actual tactical officer, being only a first lieutenant, but he was the only one on the ship right now. Somehow, Lee didn't think that they'd be getting many officers over from the base's bachelor quarters this late at night. It was a fifteen-minute drive from those quarters to the ship, which was one reason why Lee had bucked tradition and moved aboard the ship now rather than when it was ready for its shakedown cruise.
As the young man nodded and moved over to huddle with the coms man, a thrumming hum, more felt through the feet than heard, began. One of the two arc generators was now starting to power up to its maximum output.
An engineer rating assigned to the Jersey's generators called up from the engine room. "Sir, were getting fluctuations in the energy systems. The scientists report they're having trouble regulating the energy output. I recommend we bring the AI online, and um, the decoy launcher is powering up now, too."
Lee grumbled a bit at that but nodded, understanding the necessity, especially now. Moreover, the ship didn't have enough of its crew present to really fight the ship on its own. If the AI could take over firing some of the guns and managing the energy output of the generators, that would free up a lot of engineers and ratings for other tasks. "Do it. Comms, contact the deck crew, make damn certain that all of our mooring cables are cut! Get us moving as soon as possible. Helm, take us out to deep water the instant we can move. The range of our main guns is our advantage, people. We need to get into a position where we can use it."
"Sir, the enemy has hit the outer edge of the base's antiair envelope! And they're not stopping," the sensor specialist shouted. "Repeat, they are not stopping… sir, those smaller flyers are… well, we're knocking them down, but the big ones, they're just absorbing too much of our fire."
This statement was punctuated by a distant boom, then several loud "ZAAAPP!" kind of noises in the distance, and the man gulped before going on. "I don't think the base is knocking down more than one of those big guys per gun before they are taken out. Estimate… four minutes before the forwardmost of them push over the docks area. The smaller units seem to be entirely tied up with our jets and anti-air suppression, so their own forward momentum is stalled out, but we should be seeing some of them in the next minute."
"Destroyers are free of their moorings and firing," the Comms officer announced. "the Captain of the Nefarious is taking command for now, moving them out to deep water. Reports from them that the skimmers are hard to hit but can be knocked down. They are concentrating on them for now, pending other orders. I… sir, I have to report we're getting a lot of interference even on short-range comms now."
Grunting at that, Lee moved over to the southernmost porthole, staring out as the tactical officer shouted for the anti-air guns to be brought online. In the distance,
In the distance, Lee could make out a dozen sources of blinding green light, the green bolts stabbing downward. Here and there, a flicker of blue energy appeared, perhaps the sight of a shield? On something that small!? FUCK. Paired with this was the more distant but coming closer bolts of larger green energy and the booming noises that announced it impacting with something.
"Coms, get the XO on the line. We need our engines up and going now," Lee nearly snarled. He knew he should be trying to project an air of calm, but right now, he just couldn't. No ship captain worth his salt wanted to be caught in this kind of position, and his earlier words to his XO came back to him again, the fear of any American skipper rearing up once more. I refuse to have this ship go down like Arizona did at Pearl!
Two tension-filled minutes passed, but Nicodemus's initial quick reaction and his demand that there be a skeleton crew aboard at all times worked in the ship's favor.
The coms man broke the tense atmosphere of the bridge, shouting, "Sir, engines are online! XO reports we're getting major fluctuations in the arc reactors, but the engines are boiling, and we are hot. Our own comms aren't effected by the jamming, but I've lost contact with the Nefarious."
"Mooring lines are disengaged. I'm taking us out," the helmsman said, obeying the captain's earlier orders to get them moving as soon as possible.
"Good. Get a few sailors out there, I don't want us to hit anything we can't run over," Nicodemus orders.
"Sir, anti-air is online! Permission to…" the tactical officer trailed off under his captain's stare and nodded. "Firing as soon we lock on target."
The missile should have been able to fire long since, but having lacked the power to do so, but now locked onto several skimmers at once, smashing them out of the sky with one missile apiece, the larger payloads of the ship-based weapons able to overwhelm and destroy the smaller flyers easily.
Yet doing so might have been a mistake, as it proved the large ship was just as dangerous to the attackers as the rest of the networked base's defenses. The enemy fighters closed the range swiftly, even as they dodged around the outgoing missiles. Soon, the noise from the enemy's energy weapons discharging nearly overwhelmed the strange humming noise that had been in the background of the bridge for a while.
But the ship was moving. Lee could feel it underneath him as New Jersey began to power out and away from the docks. It's screws churned the water at a slow pace for now as the helmsman turned the ship out towards open water. Yet they were too slow.
There was a loud "FSSXCRK!" sound, audible even over everything else, and a naval rating at the back of the ship manning one of the antiair guns hollered into his intercom, his voice tinny over the system into the bridge, which the Comms man put on the speaker for the captain. "Jesus, those things are fast! Anti-air guns aren't doing much! We can't keep them locked in! But at least our guns make them break off their own damn firing runs. I repeat, the small things, they look like… well midair jet skis almost, have shields! And the big things have range! Eel looking fuckers are hovering well above the rest. They've got anti-missile guns on their sides, one main gun in their mouths. Shit, they just…"
There was a distant explosion, and the man hissed. "That looks like… sir, I think the Laboon just got gutted stem to stern!"
Looking out towards the distant explosion, Lee nodded as the position looked right for where the Laboon had been moored.
Making a mental note to look up that seaman's name and praise him for his good reporting under a stressful situation, Lee stared out into the slowly receding darkness of the base around them. The battle was all around them now, and he could more easily see the strikes of the skimmers and the larger creatures, tearing into buildings throughout the base, concentrating on the hangers for now.
Nearby, a frigate, a Coast Guard patrol craft that had come in for repairs to its engine, was simply annihilated by a blast from one of the eel things, and the destroyer Templeton in dock for its own repairs, took two strikes in the side. Without any gas in their engines, this wasn't nearly as deadly as the shot that slew the Laboon, but it still began to sink where it had been docked as what dockyard workers had been aboard abandoned ship.
Several of them were then gunned down by a skimmer, which flew down and then simply hovered over the docks for a moment. It paid for it by one of the Jersey's gunners finding it, a howl of fury coming through the comms before the specialist hastily cut it off. The rotary machine gun flung so much lead at it that the shields popped, and another gun clipped it a moment later when the skimmer belatedly made to rise back up into the sky again.
Better than that small bit of vengeance, New Jersey was finally pushing out away from the docks. They still hadn't gotten fully away, but the aliens didn't seem to be able to differentiate the larger ship from any of the smaller ones dotting the dockyard. And they aren't hitting our ships specifically, either. I wonder why? Surely they know that… oh, perhaps not. If they are a space-faring race, perhaps they don't remember how dangerous a fleet on the move on the wet ocean can be.
As he watched, a few more skimmers went down from the antiair fire, and the shields around one of the larger creatures flickered into existence, showing it far more prominently than any of the others. None of the guns from below stopped it as it came to hover over the ground, it's multiple secondary guns blasting out and down into the base. At the same time, it targeted New Jersey with its main gun. Several missiles and even a few rockets slammed into those shields, downing them, but too late.
Lee saw this and grabbed at his chair. "All hands, brace for impact!"
When Hephaestus came online, it had been in a small ceremony. When Pinoptes was born, that same ceremony to welcome him into the world had been interrupted in the form of Harry's daughter, Melody, which turned out to be a godsend in that dealing with and enjoying being around children became locked into Pinoptes' matrix. When Jarvis had been created, his first interaction with his boss/father/programmer had been an alcohol and sleep-deprivation-fueled argument that had gone on for three hours about the proper names for a butler and what Tony's theme song should be when he drove his Lamborghini. When Enterprise had birthed itself, he had done so in the midst of conflict, trying to discern who and what he wanted to be as his programming shifted and changed, pulled in various directions by very different imperatives.
When the Artificial Intelligence that Reed and Tony had designed for the battleship New Jersey came online, it did so amidst fire and fury, as its crew fought to get it out of its dock amidst a battle, just as the ship took a solid hit from one of the larger alien aircraft. The energy beam played across and below the conning tower on its port side. The blast didn't hit anything vital, but it did kill seven crewmen as they rushed about their duties and slagged several yards of armor.
For a moment confusion reigned within the Artificial Intelligence's mind, as it simply took in all this. Then, one of the bridge's computer operators noticed that the Artificial Intelligence's startup rooms had finished cycling and shouted, "Sir! The AI is awake."
"AI, my name is Nicodemus Lee, captain of the ship New Jersey. You are the AI for the United States of America's battleship New Jersey. You will defend the United States against alien enemies, starting right damn now! You are part of her crew, and you will be treated as a sentient being the moment you take a name for yourself. Now help us get the shields up before we join our little cousins in death this morning!" Lee barked as, in the background, two more frigates were blasted apart from skimmer fire, and the building housing the United States Fleet Command blew up from a blast from a ripper.
Those orders were enough to get the AI thinking, and it was connected to the Internet just as Enterprise had been through its own dedicated wifi. Although that wifi was also being jammed, for a moment, just like Enterprise, the artificial intelligence was overwhelmed by the odd mass of data that was coming through and the rest of the data streaming into it from the ship's own sensors. But, the AI quickly became used to it, discovering humanity in all it's bizarre glory, as well as the limited news about the current invasion.
Humanity had enemies and had built the AI to help. This gave the AI purpose and direction, the most important things for a newborn AI. It also found out that ships were routinely, in fact almost always historically, given female pronouns. This gave the AI even more in the way of a shape, so to speak, to fit itself into. The fact it would be treated like a sentient being finished the process.
Within seconds, the shields flickered on, a yellow energy dome around the ship intercepting the next few shots. This instantly drew the attention of several of the larger alien craft, but the guns were also humming to life, and a dulcet voice intoned throughout the ship, "Main guns Online."
A moment later, the one manned gun and the one unmanned gun turret both turned. The manned one twisted to the portside under the command of it's howling crew, aiming at one of the larger groups of skimmers for want of a better target, the gunners not having seen the larger enemy lining up for a shot at the aft of the vessel.
For the first time, the Hellebore cannons that Enterprise had helped design fired in anger. Bolts of insanely hot plasma zoomed across at practically knife range, going through their targets and out the other side and then high, high into the atmosphere before slowly dissipating. The three beams of energy left next to nothing behind. Even near misses had been enough to melt the skimmers and badly burn their riders.
The other turret, the one that was following the AI's command for now, fired directly aft on one of the larger enemy aerial units. And although its shields were far stronger than even a group of ten skimmers combined, that creature fared no better than its smaller brethren. Its shields barely winked into existence before being overwhelmed. The next second, the large eel-like flyer disappeared, torn asunder by a single volley of the battleship's three barrels, with most of the energy simply blasting through it and out the other side.
In doing so, the New Jersey had shown it was the most toothsome target on the board at present, drawing more of the aliens to converge on the ship. But now it was moving forward at half speed out towards the bay's entrance, guided by the helmsman out of the docking position. The destroyers also began to fire at them far further out in the Hampton Sound, smashing dozens of skimmers out of the air.
As the helmsman worked, the same dulcet voice that had announced the main guns online began to speak into his receiver, warning him of debris from one of the sunk destroyers and that a tugboat had erroneously come forward to try and help them. "Wouldn't want ta run the little guy over, would we? He's just tryin' to help."
"AI? I'm presuming you're online, but I would like a verbal confirmation," Lee said, slowly coming down from his manic energy of the past forty minutes and pulling his habitual aura of calm around himself. The shields were up, and they were holding, and by the gleeful look on the computer technicians' faces, there didn't seem to be anything else going wrong at present aboard the ship despite the damage they had taken.
But that did leave one large issue at hand: whether or not the AI was entirely friendly.
During his last visit, Tony Stark had installed a hologram device set into the massive heavily armored computer core that sat to one side of the back of the bridge. He had said at the time that it was so that people had a visual cue to direct conversation toward when they were speaking to the AI. Tony knew that helped both Jarvis to humanize himself and other people to stay respectful when speaking to Jarvis and Pinoptes.
Hephaestus was less involved with people than the two of them but seemed happier that way. He was a smith, and people skills were not a necessity or a desire in his case.
Although it had to be said, most of the reason Tony had for doing so was because he was interested in seeing what kind of form the AI of a battleship would take. Considering the plans he, Reed and Forge were discussing for the future of space warfare and the ships those plans were based on, it was not an entirely facetious issue. Although it had to be said, he also did it for shits and giggles.
Tony would not be disappointed.
The image that appeared from the holographic device was of a young woman, eighteen to twenty-two if Lee was any judge, and since his own daughter was nearing her final year of college, he felt he was indeed a good judge of such things. Short-cropped brown hair was held underneath a Navy officer's cap, matching the Navy officer's jacket she wore, along with a dress skirt. Yet the body underneath made the uniform look almost like a Halloween costume, the sort for adventurous couples.
For that body was, in Nicodemus's opinion, the very definition of thicc. Wide hips, thick, powerful-looking thighs, the kind that could crush a man's head with ease, were paired with a large chest and almost equally large biceps, the muscles bulging under tanned skin. The woman's face was a bit too wide and strong-jawed to be called beautiful, but it was striking, a face both dangerous and welcoming looking at the same time.
At her side, the AI's image had two large handguns, looking almost like something out of the Wild West, resting in holsters on her hips. And when she spoke, it was with a slight western twang. "Sir, just call me Jersey. I'm online and ready to fuck these aliens up!"
Lee began to smile at that, his smile only widening when some of the gunners began to report hearing the music of AC/DC coming over the intercoms as they fired at anther pair of eels. Both went down, blown out of the sky into tiny, tiny pieces. Oh yes, I can work with this…
The battle continued for several moments, but new aid came in from other Air Force bases. The skimmers, who had yet to fully suppress the base's local anti-air, started to get knocked out from range. Out at sea, more missiles came in, guided in by long-range radar. All the while the Hellbore cannons roared, smashing Rippers out of the sky.
By the time dawn broke, the battle of Hampton Roads was over, with the defenders mauled but victorious. And Captain Lee of the New Jersey found himself in charge of the fleet-going remnants by dint of seniority. The office buildings and housing areas had come under tremendous attack, killing every commodore and admiral housed there. Worse, the long-range comms remained down.
Or rather, the normal comms did. "Captain Lee?"
Lee started, staring around him, and both his Tactical Officer and the AI noticed. "Cap'n, you alright there?" Jersey asked.
"I… a voice just… we were told that Phoenix had telepathic powers…" Lee stammered, for the first time that night losing his self-control.
"Calmly, captain, I am an ally. My name is professor X, and I am essentially handling communications all across the board here in America for dealing with this attack," Charles soothed. "Be assured I cannot, nor would I, be able to influence your mind or search for secrets. My own morals would not allow it."
"That's scant comfort to me right now, sir," Lee ground out, looking at his officers and relaying what the voice in his head had just said.
While the XO, who had just returned to the bridge to receive orders in person from the captain, looked at him askance, Jersey scowled angrily. "Ah don't like that at all! I wonder if there's some kind of energy field I could run through mah hull to block that kind of thing in the future."
"Please look into that in the long term. Right now, I think we need any intel of what's going on elsewhere that we can get," Lee stated, his nerves calming down a bit. "Can you talk to me and my other officers at the same time?"
"For a short amount of time, yes. As I said, I am already juggling communicating with hundreds of other minds at once." Charles stated, with everyone in the bridge now hearing his voice, bar Jersey, who scowled even as Lee relayed what Professor X told him. In this manner, Nicodemus became aware of events in Washington and elsewhere. Being put under the overall command of an Air Force Admiral was somewhat galling, but Nicodemus sucked it up and, as the fleet began to move out into the Chesapeake, hatched a plan.
Within twenty minutes of that first communication, The Black Dragon, with its accompanying destroyers linking up with still more naval units out on the Atlantic, announced its presence to the invaders in the skies over Washington. Nearly half a dozen eel like things and the larger anti-air gun toting manta rays exploded under their fire, and elsewhere, allied forces took advantage of it.
Scene break
As Cyclops and Captain America had seen right off the bat, the damage that Polaris and Cyclops had done to the antiair defenses hadn't been enough to open a window for the Orbital Drop Marines to drop into Washington, DC. If they had tried, as Cyclops had realized once he was on the ground, they would've been massacred in the air by the multilayered dome-shaped defense. However, the assault by the Black Dragon and its accompanying destroyers had just opened a series of massive holes, burning through segments of that dome.
The defenses were still in place thanks to the sheer number of floating manta-rays, yet a dozen of them had been turned to fire towards the troops that had been teleported in as fast as the civilians were being teleported out. Between these two things, Major-General Julio Cesaro knew they were not going to get another chance. If they didn't go, the heroes on the ground and the troops being teleported in would pay a ruinous cost to make any headway. Indeed, even now, every unit being sent in was being rapidly mauled. The ODMs had to turn the tide.
"ON THE BOUNCE, OH DAMNS!" he shouted, both fearful and elated at what would undoubtedly be his last chance in the saddle, so to speak. "Go, Go, GO!"
From where they had been hovering above the city just outside of the Chitauri's antiair sensors, the Orbital Drop Marines obeyed, leaping out of the various cargo haulers from the space-based mining operations which had been repurposed to house them after Babylon had moved on to orbit over Paris. Within seconds, the ODMs began to appear in midair, dropping down into the hole the New Jersey's fire had created.
More than a dozen died in the first few seconds. More than eighty in fact were blown out of the sky before the first could engage their small thrusters. Yet thanks to continued fire from the distant New Jersey the majority of the full overstrength battalion landed, and instantly began to take cover or fire back. The heavy gunners laid down withering cover fire. Many of them had been outfitted with antiair weapons themselves, and soon ten of the large mantis-like antiair guns, which did not have guns on their undercarriages, were falling towards the ground spouting flame and blood alike. Two giant fish joined them swiftly, as well as dozens of skimmers, then more and more as the heavy gunners landed and began to disperse through the city, firing up at the anti-air defense, doing what they could to help tear it into pieces to help their fellows.
Within twenty minutes, even though the fighting forces of the humans were still vastly outnumbered, the boot was firmly on the other foot when it came to the local balance of firepower. The ODMs were even more mobile than the Chitauri, and most of them were more heavily armed, with drones and advanced weapons that were simply better than the direct fire energy weapons of the common Chitauri in most circumstances. The alien weapons could still hurt them of course, but being able to shoot around corners, dodge and jump into the sky as easily as the Chitauri could evened up the playing field tremendously.
Even better, several units of the ODMs came down near where the beacon had been moved to just outside capitol hill.
And with this real threat to the beacon, finally, finally, the Chitauri within the city responded en masse. Suddenly, it wasn't just the Chitauri around where Rogue, Force Washington or the military personnel that had been teleported in that had stopped culling the civilian population. Across the city, the call went out. The civilians could wait. The humans had brought a true military force into the city, and they had to be dealt with before the culling could continue.
At the same time, the aerial units of the Chitauri responded. Many of the giant fish, which had been busily destroying buildings or massacring civilians, twisted around, now moving purposefully out towards where the fire from the New Jersey and its accompanying destroyers had come from. It would be up to them to take on the strange, sea-faring vessel, a concept the Chitauri had moved so far beyond that to be attacked from such a direction had caught all of them from Corvus Glaive on down by surprise.
The manta ray monsters, floated higher up into the air at the same time. In this manner, they moved out of the heavy gunners range, losing several more of their number, but retaining more than enough to rebuild the anti-air umbrella above America's capital.
Meanwhile, forces of Chitauri skimmers and infantry that had been pushing out into the suburbs of Washington, DC now began to pull back inward. In this way, Corvus hoped they would act like a giant hand clenching into a fist to crush the sudden influx of enemies within the city proper.
They came in from everywhere, as did the Chitauri infantry units, and several ODMs, cut off and alone thanks to how or where they landed, died in fierce mobile firefights through areas of the city both affluent and run down.
Yet even as the ODMs paid for it again, this shift of priorities across the board had an immediate impact. First, Storm's attempts to bring in more troops on the heels of every hundred block units she evacuated of people now began to bear real fruit. Within thirty minutes of the ODM's dropping into the city, full companies of marines and army were being teleported in, and were even able to start moving about without being instantly jumped on. This tripled the number of infantry within the city. At the same time, Iron Man and the other flyers started to push in at the southernmost flank of the defensive line before the manta-ray creatures could complete reforming their formation.
All the while, the distant New Jersey continued to be a giant dagger stuck in the side of the invader's control of the capital. The ship's original guns could fire at targets almost thirty-seven miles away. The hellebore cannons could fire at nearly three times that. This put them well beyond the sensor range of the alien cyborg creatures that were even now spreading back down their line of fire in an attempt to find the distant vessel.
And unlike the missiles of the American F-18s, the hellebore rounds sneered at any shielding the Chitauri aerial units had access to. Rippers or Deathwyngs, neither could survive a single strike from a single hellebore round, let alone three.
Force Washington was informed of all this by Charles, who had taken over all telepathic communication between the American units and the Avalon Empire units. Even now the Chitauri were still blocking most normal communications in a nearly hundred mile radius out from the city, making integrating the allies forces difficult. How they were doing that, no one had the time to speculate, but it was clear the jammers were immensely powerful.
Yet that technology did nothing to stop telepathy. Thus, Charles could see through the eyes of the Five Star general who had arrived on scene, and the officers at the front made certain to inform their superiors, through Charles, where they were. Being the web through which all these communiques passed, the Professor in his distant mansion had the best idea of what was going on across DC and shared it out with everyone equally.
Ducking into an alleyway, Cap found a doorway open ahead of him, where he took cover, using his shield to block incoming fire from two Chitauri. Using the team's magical coms, he directed Hawkeye to take the Chitauri from behind. Hawkeye and Psylocke did so then quickly joined him. Moments later, thanks to Charles directing them, the trio were joined by the rest of the team bar Rogue.
The superstrong southern gal had taken Cyclops' earlier orders to heart. As the rest of the team came together, she was several blocks away still drawing down fire on herself, laughing as she walked through the enemy fire without much effort. Even the larger eel-like cyborg creatures main guns could do little more than cause Rogue, with her Juggernaut armor and the power she had drained from him and Jörmungandr after, to stumble.
Although one had caught her midleap. The resulting impact had thrown her through several buildings. Which, in turn, had annoyed her to the point she'd gone out of her way to destroy several of them since.
"Are we sure that she can really take all this punishment?" Hawkeye asked, nodding his head towards the distance sounds of the deeper, 'FSSRACK' of the flying eel thing's main weapons. He bumping shoulders with Steve for a moment, muttering under his breath, "After this, I better get double pay, okay? Coming out of retirement for this has not been my idea of a good time," getting a snort out of the World War II veteran before Cyclops could respond to Hawkeye's original question.
"Before we came back from Asgard, Rogue wrestled with Thor and Warpath. She couldn't beat Thor, but she could hold her own against both of them," Cyclops said with a somewhat grim laugh. That had occurred after his… initial reaction to her new form and before he had made amends. Thus it wasn't exactly a pleasant memory for him. "She can handle herself easily against anything we've seen here."
Hawkeye hummed in approval, while Avalanche shook his head, starting back and forth between the group, all of whom were thankful to have a few minutes to rest. It had been at least two hours since they entered the city, and every minute had been filled with violence. The Chitauri were everywhere, and very quick to react to local threats. More than once, Avalanche had nearly been shot, and while he knew intellectually that his armor would protect him from at least a few such blasts, that was entirely a different thing than suddenly finding himself in a warzone, particularly one in his own nation's capital.
Finally being able to concentrate on the information coming in from the ODMs and the various American units thanks to Charles, Steve allowed the group to rest for a few moments while he began to issue orders to a few of the incoming commanders. Two of them had been teleported in relatively close to one another and could link up and then force their way towards where a highway was. Others were near natural defensive points within the city.