Nebula in…

LADY NEBULA: ALIEN RESURRECTION

By Meriades Rai

— BREACH — BREACH — OUTER RADIAL SHIELD IMPAIRED —

— INCURSION, CODE SEVEN ZERO SIX — PLASMA DIFFUSION AT EIGHTY-FIVE PER CENT — BREACH — BREACH —

…GENETIC SEQUENCING ACTIVATED…

An early memory, from before the time she declared war upon the Skrulls:

When she was young, lonely and forgotten in one of the miserable fringe colony orphanages sparingly funded by the Universal Church of Truth, she’d lost herself in books of myth and fairytale and believed herself the abandoned progeny of royalty. It was a poignant dream, but even then she’d believed it would come true… and so it had.

Some years later, far from that orphanage, she could legitimately declare herself Queen. An intergalactic Pirate Queen no less, more the stuff of nightmares than romantic fiction. She’d dragged herself from the mire, through blood and nail and flayed flesh, and had embraced true power. They feared her now, these huddled masses, just as she’d once feared the older children who’d preyed upon her in the House of the Church; now they cowered in her shadow. She had been the bastard child of a bastard child, the unwanted litter of squandered Titan seed, and she would have perished in the cooling pool of her dead junkie mother’s blood if not for sheer happenstance: a stranger’s greed, seeing that he could trade this derelict newborn for one more narcotic fix. Born in filth, then, and never loved.

But she had endured. She had grown. She had conquered.

And she would never stop visiting her unrelenting wrath on this universe, this existence that had deemed that lonely child named Nebula so worthless. She had burned that torment-stained orphange to the ground, she had slaughtered all those who had caused her pain… and that was just the beginning.

Her younger self would have been delighted to know what she would become and what terror she would wreak…

…TRANSFERENCE PROCESS THIRTY PER CENT COMPLETE…

Later now, after the destruction of Xandar and the assault upon the Skrull homeworld:

She had known defeat, but she was unbowed. Champions from the world named Earth, heroes known as The Avengers, had thwarted her, coming to the Skrulls’ aid. But she would revenge herself upon them, even as she sought to add to her arsenal of powerful weapons and artifacts, accrued from the most distant corners of the galaxy.

She was a Kang now. A measure of genetic augmentation had allowed her to infiltrate the Council Of Cross-Time Kangs, a group comprised of multiple incarnations of a single being – the original Kang – assembled from the myriad threads of disparate timelines and dimensional alternities. Nebula, granddaughter of Thanos, was now also Kang Nebula, a counterfeit facet of the Kang congress; and, through means of telepathic seduction she corrupted the Avengers from within via their weakest link, a man named Druid, even as she manipulated the Council into seeking a weapon of immeasurable power hidden at the heart of time itself.

This was what she had dreamed of. She was unstoppable… unbreakable… she—

…TRANSFERENCE PROCESS SEVENTY PER CENT COMPLETE…

— BREACH — BREACH — OUTER RADIAL SHIELD FAILING — INTERIOR SHIELD AT FORTY PER CENT — BREACH — BREACH —

The final memory. The final degradation. Earth:

She was undone. Lost. Used and abandoned by her own bloodline once more, her body shattered, her latest rout shamefully witnessed by Earth’s mightiest yet again. How they must laugh. How they must rejoice. Nebula, granddaughter of Thanos, had burned bright for but an instant, and now she was reduced to common rabble.

She had eventually been rebuilt, as ever, but inferior to any previous incarnation. She was an experiment now, a curiosity. A cyborg: more metal and synthesis than flesh and life, her intellect dimmed, her purpose clouded. She had become a minion, a pet, a plaything for fate where once she had been sovereign. And then the greatest indignity of all, to find herself cast to that accursed Earth and recruited into one of their mindless factions: the Masters of Evil, a dissolute band of rogues unable to see beyond their own petty desires. Nebula, the Pirate Queen of old, had been rendered a shadow of her former self, and her apparent death at the sword of the one named Zemo had surely been a blessing, the ultimate mercy killing.

That young, lonely girl she’d once been would have wept to see herself fall so low again.

And yet…

— INCURSION, CODE SEVEN ZERO SIX — BREACH — BREACH — BREACH —

…TRANSFERENCE COMPLETE.

And yet, when one’s dreams of grandeur are so potent, surely life will always find a way.

She rose suddenly, gasping for breath and clasping at her throat, and she stilled only when she was confronted with an image of herself, reflected in the polished steel of the wall directly ahead. Her dusky eyes widened. Her hand moved tentatively to her hair, indigo-black – the hue of deepest space itself – and tumbling down about her shoulders in heavy coils and ringlets. Her flesh was cobalt, just a shade darker than her eyes, and it was smooth to the touch. And… warm.

Body heat. How long was it since she’d felt that? A natural warmth, not the by-product of artificial mechanisms brutally interlaced about her own damaged organs. How long since she’d possessed real hair, eyes, lips…? How long since she’d been this beautiful?

“Lady Nebula, we need your guidance.”

Nebula turned, her expression vague as she gazed upon three familiar beings loitering beside the table where she was sitting. The first individual was a towering brute with orange, rocky crust for skin; the second a diminutive humanoid with sallow green skin and an oversized head, clad in sleek silver armor; and the last was a smaller still fellow with pointed features and russet hair and beard. Respectively: Kehl, of the Taurian race; Gunthar, a Rigellian; and Skunge, a Laxidazian troll. Three intergalactic freebooters loyal to Nebula since she’d first taken to space piracy a number of years before, but whom she’d been separated from in recent times. Nebula felt herself smile, an uncommon sensation.

Friends? No, not as such. Trusted colleagues, however; that was enough.

Her good humor evaporated quickly when she glanced across at a second table alongside her own, where an inert body lay. Familiar again, even more so: this body was her. Or, at least, the abomination she’d become at the fevered hands of an insane geneticist and bioengineer by the name of Doctor Mandibus. Mandibus had taken advantage of Nebula after a particularly debilitating defeat and had changed her; his experiments had left her a malfunctioning cyborg, stripped of all dignity and identity, and he’d cursed her with a deteriorating mind, splintered with false memories of abuse at the hands of a family she’d never truly known.

But if this creature on the next table was her, then who was she…?

— BREACH — BREACH —

“Why is that infernal alarm sounding?” Nebula snapped, rounding on Gunthar. It was the Rigellian who’d requested her guidance a few moments earlier, but she wasn’t in any position to offer leadership when nothing made sense.

Gunthar bobbed nervously, his outsized head rolling on his shoulders. “The ship’s under attack,” he reported. “The shields have held long enough to resurrect you, but-”

“I was… dead.”

Not a question, but a statement. Nebula raised a hand to her neck again, her heart hammering. “He cut my throat, the human named Zemo…”

She glanced across to her cyborg self and saw that the construct was indeed exhibiting lethal damage to the neck region, as well as missing a hand. Zemo had sliced that off too.

“My Lady, Mandibus inserted a transmitter into your bio-core when he reconstructed you,” Gunthar said, showing admirable patience considering the alarm still ringing in their ears. “We tracked it to Earth, located your inactive corpse in a human morgue. You were dead, in human terms, but they hadn’t known how to dispose of you. We retrieved you and isolated your enhanced memory cell, then uploaded your essence into your new body.”

“New body?” Nebula said with a scowl. “Some manner of clone, then?”

“No.”

“Then what am I? What is this body?”

“You, my Lady,” Gunthar said. “To be specific: a chronally displaced you. After you infiltrated the Council of Cross-Time Kangs, and the interference of the Avengers resulted in fluctuations in the timestream, a number of flesh and blood duplicates – shadows of the real you, but sentient fragments nonetheless – were scattered throughout time. Most perished, unable to function without your essence, but we utilized a vortex warp to rescue this one, the nearest one in terms of chronal data; she’d been cast back just over one hundred years into Earth’s recent past, which they term their nineteenth century.”

Nebula gazed down at her clothes, an elegant yet mismatched assortment of stitched leathers, silks and velvets in violet, red, black and white. She was wearing a shirt and ankle-length skirt, with a tweed blazer and waistcoat, replete with pocket watch. It was all a far cry from her standard attire of environmentally-synthesized battlesuit and under other circumstances she would have considered it ridiculously capricious, but instead she felt strangely comfortable in this period dress, perhaps due to the residual familiarity of how her shadow-self had existed in the Earth of an earlier time.

“I’m whole again,” she breathed, her smile flickering once more. “No wires, no robotics, no implants. Not even the inferior synthesis of cloned cells… oh, Gunthar, you’ve surpassed yourself!”

The alarm continued to blare. Nebula’s three companions glanced among themselves in trepidation, even the characteristically blithe Skunge, and their newly reborn leader noted their concern.

“So. Who is attacking us, exactly?” she asked sharply. “And why? Don’t they understand who this vessel belongs to, or that I’m harboring a collection of the most virulent weapons of universal disruption ever recorded? I am the scourge of galaxies. What manner of imbecile would-”

“You’ve been gone a long time, Captain,” Skunge spoke up. “The real you. People got short memories.”

“And in the time you been away, things have changed,” the hulking Kehl snarled. “Universe has gone to hell… and worse.”

Nebula scoffed. “Worse than me? I obliterated Xandar!”

Gunthar bowed his enormous head, then reached for a computer console. “Things… have changed, Lady,” he said, quietly. “Request: Information Download.”

At his vocal command, an orb of translucent energy appeared about Nebula’s head and her cerebellum immediately began processing streams of information fed directly to her brain. Her jaw slackened and her eyes widened.

She saw the rise of Annihilus and the devastation of the Annihilation Wave, not least the genocide of the Celestials… she saw the massacre of the newest incarnation of the Nova Corps… she saw the emergence of The Black Thread, and the prospective threat of universal degradation should the First Universe gain the chance to invade… she saw the ascendancy of the Universal Church of Truth and the siege of Sarka by legions of hideous Uncreated… and she saw ripples beginning to spread through the nether realms of Death itself, as witnessed through tender eyes of shining, ocean blue, staring into the glassy waters of an ancient oracle. *

* Events that can be revisited in full in Marvel Omega’s cosmic titles Quasar, Silver Surfer and Guardians of the Galaxy, and, in the latter instance, Heralds. Go read ’em, tiger!

When the download was complete, Nebula swayed. Kehl moved forward to support her, but after a moment to catch her breath she waved him away in irritation and slid from the table. She wasn’t one for displays of weakness. Where I came from, weakness was something the stronger ones never forgot, or forgave, she thought to herself. Then she grimaced and shook her head to free herself of such strange and inappropriate reverie.

“Broadcast,” she commanded, stalking forward in high leather boots replete with polished buckles. “Show me my enemies.” Instantly a three-dimensional screen shimmered into life in the air directly ahead, transmitting a vision of what was occurring beyond the outer hull of her interstellar starcraft. There were dozens of ships out there, all different. An alliance. Nebula’s dark eyes narrowed shrewdly, flitting from one familiar design to another.

“Klklk,” she said, in dismay. “Fomalhauti, Kronan, Majesdane, Dreollnians… even Gonk, for the love of Eros. Habitually unsociable races, now united by a common sentiment, the one great universal constant. Fear.”

“We received an ultimatum,” Gunthar said. “They want our – your – artifacts. After all, any one of the weapons in our vault could offer more protection than a lone planet’s standard arsenal.”

“Protection,” Nebula mused. “It’s fair enough; they’re scared of what’s coming for them. They suspect that this… Annihilation Wave, whilst apocalyptic, was still only a prelude to something more. But to raid my cache, their fear must be all-consuming…”

“I say we give them what they want and haul our pretty little asses off to the hindquarters of Andromeda,” Skunge declared, scratching his pointy beard. “As in, the galaxy, not the Goddess. Although, you know, thinking about it-”

“I agree with the troll,” Kehl grumbled. “Why fight and risk our lives?”

Gunthar said nothing. Nebula glanced at each of her pirates in turn, her eyes still narrowed. Her gaze lingered on Kehl for a fraction longer than the others but then moved on. Her crew, always loyal. The great constant in her life. Abruptly she nodded.

“Send a message, Gunthar,” she said, carefully. “Tell them they can take their pick… anything but the Black Casket.”

Gunthar’s thin eyes flickered with surprise. “My Lady…? The Black Casket? But-”

“Trust me,” Nebula said, in a voice that brooked no argument. “Given the disorder that’s beset the universe, it wouldn’t be prudent to leave ourselves defenseless, correct? So we keep our most powerful weapon, the one that’s worth more than everything else put together, and we let these insects squabble over the rest. Do it! Now!”

Gunthar remained reluctant but offered nothing more, instead opening a mid-distance particle-wave communication link to the assembled armada outside Nebula’s vessel. The legion of besieging starcraft, which had up until that moment been concentrating on weakening their victim’s outer radial shields with a steady barrage of laserfire, now ceased their attack as they accepted the communiqué. Gunthar repeated what Nebula had decreed, with Skunge hovering in the background offering a humorless grin and a thumbs up, and Kehl nodding sagely.

In mid-air, the three-dimensional viewscreen fragmented into numerous smaller apertures, each depicting a representative of a different extraterrestrial species. Nebula turned away as Gunthar commenced negotiation, a relief for the Rigellian for his captain’s expression was tempestuous indeed. She had spent close to a decade accumulating her cache, a veritable she-dragon’s hoard, and she didn’t relinquish it lightly. But what choice did she have…?

Discussions were heated but agreements were reached with remarkable speed once Gunthar informed all parties of Nebula’s concession. Envoys – or, to be more particular, raiders – from each offensive race were allowed to board Nebula’s craft, via transmat, warp or airlock, without being executed by security system, and to select a medley of artifacts from the vault at the heart of the ship. Nebula could have refused access, of course, and defended the vault to the death, and Gunthar privately wondered why she’d chosen otherwise. Was it simply that, having returned to a true flesh-and-blood existence after a prolonged period of non-life, Nebula now preferred to renounce her possessions rather than risk obliteration? Had the fear that had driven these species to such drastic measures also infected the granddaughter of a Titan? The Rigellian knew better than to ask; he was under no illusion that, regardless of having been the person responsible for the captain’s resurrection, she wouldn’t hesitate to discipline him – or worse – if her already brittle patience was tested.

The last race to visit Nebula’s ship was the amoeba-like Fomalhauti, but when their turn came there was to be no representative dispatched. Instead, the insidious face that filled the three-dimensional viewscreen – all sickly yellow protoplasm and pustulous tentacles, and a single, milky eye – seemed to be throbbing with delight at its victory.

“We do not need to inspect your collection to make our choice, Pirate Queen,” the alien rasped. “Nor do we need to send a herald to obtain what we want. We request one item only: the Black Casket. And our agent shall bring the treasure to us…”

Time seemed to freeze. Nebula cocked her head, her expression alarmed.

“Agent…?”

Gunthar gasped, nonplussed. Skunge was furious, and expected a similar reaction from Nebula – which was duly forthcoming, as she clenched her fists and turned her icy stare upon the last of the quartet, Kehl. The crust-fleshed Taurian didn’t meet her gaze, instead looking off into the middle distance, entranced.

“Kehl?” Skunge barked. “Kehl!”

“Don’t waste your breath, troll,” Nebula hissed. “He’s being mind-controlled.”

She glanced over at the viewscreen, and the victorious Fomalhauti. “Telepathy?” she asked.

“Psychiscopsia,” the creature retorted, with a derisive snort. “We have a personal alliance with the Ovoid. Their highly effective capability for complete mental transference is such a tremendous boon, as I’m sure you can appreciate. This particular conveyance was executed whilst your ship’s defenses were concentrated on the physical bombardment. We knew you would have suspected such subterfuge if you’d been visually confronted with an Ovoid, so we acted as camouflage…”

“…knowing that, faced with prospective negotiation, I’d be inclined to keep our most powerful artifact in check,” Nebula said with a sigh. “And you, through Kehl’s eyes – and mind – would learn the identity of said artifact. Clever.”

“Yes. So, Titan half-breed, do we complete our deal… or do I detonate the annihilation device my agent has clandestinely concealed aboard your vessel, in the event hubris persauded you to refuse our request?”

Gunthar gasped again. Nebula’s eyes darkened. “You’ve thought of everything, it seems.”

“Indeed!” the Fomalhauti rejoiced. “Oh, you could still refuse at the last, and commit to that suicidal urge you death-worshippers embrace so readily… we accept this, for no endgame is without risk. But it would be such a shame not to enjoy this new, second life you’ve been gifted, no…?”

Nebula turned away, head bowed. Skunge stared after her, mute. He’d never seen the captain so… defeated. He’d believed Gunthar’s promises when the Rigellian had said they’d be getting the old Nebula back. Nebula the she-demon, Nebula the conqueror, Nebula the star destroyer. But this? This was almost as bad as the cybernetic puppet she’d become at Doctor Mandibus’ whim.

Kehl departed then, completely under Ovoid psychiscopsic thrall, and Nebula refused to speak another word as the alleged keystone of her treasures, the infamous Black Casket, was pillaged from her ship’s vault and transported to the Fomalhauti craft. Skunge slumped in a corner, mournfully smoking a Centaurian cigarette. Gunthar maintained his own respectful silence. When the operation was complete, the psychically released Kehl was returned to the crew, bewildered and feeble after his ordeal. When he asked for an explanation as to what had occurred in the past few hours – the time he’d been under outside control – no one seemed in the mood to answer.

Out in space, the extraterrestrial alliance began to quit the scene with indecent haste, heading out into the depths of the universe in all directions, the Fomalhauti ship included.

Only when she was sure that every last trace of the Ovoid influence had been purged did Nebula allow herself a malevolent smile…

Skunge had expected impotent fury from his captain, even shame, but this was more a mark of triumph. Lady Nebula, he recalled with fondness, had always been more than a violent savage. She’d been intelligent. Cunning. The troll flicked away his cigarette, suddenly alert but also perplexed. Kehl still seemed dazed. Gunthar, on the other hand, was regarding his captain with a respect so heartfelt it bordered on adoration.

“Okay, I give,” Skunge said, slowly. “Why all the grinning? What’d I miss?”

“Everything, as usual,” Nebula murmured, admiring her reflection in the polished wall before her. She seemed delighted to find her new self in possession of a wide-brimmed cloth hat, which she now placed upon her head at a rakish angle. Her smiled broadened. Gorgeous.

Skunge stamped a foot in frustration. “What? Ganymede’s arse, just tell me!”

“The alarm?” Nebula said, with a raised eyebrow. “Outer radial shields failing, plasma diffusion… but also: incursion, code seven zero six. I heard the report just as I was awakening, but I didn’t make the connection until Kehl spoke.”

“Seven zero six?”

“For Death’s sake, you lazy wretch, do you never read your ship’s manuals? Seven zero six is the code for a Psychiscopsic breach. I’m not a novice, troll. You think I wouldn’t have all kinds of security on this ship, not just physical shields? I knew there’d been psychic violation long before the Fomalhauti played their hand.” Nebula smiled wickedly. “When you suggested we let the bastards take what they wanted, that was only to be expected. You’re cowardly scum at heart, Skunge.”

The troll pouted, then shrugged. “True ’nuff.”

“Kehl, however… a Taurian, surrendering plunder? Not a chance. When he agreed with your strategy I knew he’d been psychically compromised. So I planted the suggestionthat the Black Casket was the most potent artifact in our possession.”

“And… that’s not true?” Skunge ventured. Gunthar snorted.

“Oh, it is powerful. Just not what the Fomalhauti or their Ovoid dogs are expecting. I personally wasn’t sure what Lady Nebula was planning until it all fell into place. There was no special reason for us to keep the Casket over anything else, as she seemed to be suggesting – but when it became apparent that she secretly wanted the Fomalhauti to take it…”

“…and to then immediately go meddling with it, as they’re undoubtedly doing now…”

Nebula nodded towards the viewscreen, currently showing the Fomalhauti craft receding into the distant starlight. Everyone watched. For a few minutes, nothing happened.

And then, someone on that other craft – perhaps one of the Ovoid, or the smug Fomalhauti who’d foolishly believed that he’d outwitted Lady Nebula herself – must have succeeded in opening the Black Casket and releasing the infernal power that was contained within, power that Nebula herself knew should never, ever be set free. The Fomalhauti believed they’d secured the ultimate weapon. In a sense, they had. They just had no idea it was a weapon that couldn’t be aimed.

“I heard of a legend during my time on Earth,” Nebula said, delightedly. “One of their many myths based upon truths they could never understand. It’s called Pandora’s Box, about a casket containing all the horrors of hell and as such should never be opened, even though one will forever be consumed with curiosity at what lurks within.

“It seems apparent that the Fomalhauti don’t have their own version of such a story…”

In the darkness of space there were silent flashes of light, of myriad colors, and a sequence of cellular detonations. All organic matter in the immediate vicinity of the casket was purged, from space and time alike. In that instant, the Fomalhauti ceased to exist in every conceivable way. Uncannily, even Nebula and her crew barely remembered them; they knew only that something had happened, and that this something was followed by nothing. They remembered that there’d been other craft, however, and that these had fled the scene with their plundered weapons, artifacts and sundry items of immeasurable power. But that was acceptable, for the moment. Now that the most urgent threat had passed, Nebula knew that she could track down these other enemies and eliminate them – eliminate their whole stinking species in each instance, in fact. She was the bastard granddaughter of Thanos, after all. This was what she did.

Perhaps, deep down, she was even glad to be presented with such a delightful task as her first job in her brand new body.

She would gather her private collection once more, piece by piece, and she would enjoy the process. And then, when she was done, and when the galaxy ran dark with the blood of a million slaughtered souls who thought they could steal from her, then she turn her attention to a far more important matter.

Earth.

One day soon, she would have a date with destiny… and, more specifically, with a man named Zemo.

I have endured, she told her younger self, conjuring the memory once more. And now, once more, I rise to conquer. In time all our dreams will come true again, and on this occasion there’ll be no defeat and no surrender.

“Commence shield repairs and then fire us up, Gunthar,” said Lady Nebula, the intergalactic Pirate Queen, as she slid a sensual finger along the brim of her hat and smiled. “We’ve got work to do…”

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Nebula was always one of my favorite villains – in her original galactic star pirate incarnation, at least, as envisioned by her creator Roger Stern. Regrettably she was royally abused throughout the 90s, and her demise in Marvel Omega’s Thunderbolts truly was a mercy killing. It also gave me the perfect opportunity to bring her back much as she was first intended, replete with some spanking new steampunk stylings, as alluded to in this story.

~ Meriades