Elsewhere

The mining town was in ruins. Fires burned on both sides of the main drag of the prefabricated shopping mall perched in a crater of a larger than average asteroid. Above them, the net-like satellite in synchronous orbit that confined the town's artificial gravity field glinted in the faint sun-light.

A massive figure grinned and cracked his knuckles as he bore down on Thresher. The cyborg stood his ground.

With a well-practiced movement, Thresher fired a tether at Leviathan.

On board the Nightstalker, the Eye was startled by a premonition. "Jolt? I'm gonna throttle up the engines. Now!"

"Everybody to stations! Here we go!" Jolt gripped the arms of the command chair.

Leviathan's arms were bound to his sides. He grabbed the trailing end of the tether daintily, looked at it, and began to laugh. Thresher fired the other end of the tether at a cable lying on the ground behind him.

Leviathan advanced -- and the cable suddenly pulled taut as the Nightstalker streaked overhead. His vast bulk was jerked off the surface of the asteroid into the vacuum of space.

Thresher waved as Leviathan disappeared in the black distance. He triggered his comm implants. "Any chance you can take me with you? I wanna see this."

A fraction of a second later, the cyborg hero dematerialized. Townspeople crawled from the rubble and set to work putting out the fires consuming precious oxygen.

The Nightstalker keel-hauled Leviathan far away from the mining colony.

Thresher entered the bridge, and say Leviathan's scowling face on the main monitors. "Reporting for duty, Captain."

"Take your station, Thresher." Jolt leaned back into the command chair. "We're about to release the tow line and throw him into the sun."

Victor looked up from the sensor console. "Captain? Asteroid 423 has just left its orbit. It's approaching our position at relativistic speed-"

Jolt smiled. "I'm picking up Arsenal's implants on the comms board. Looks like he remembered them this time."

The Eye looked up from her navigation console. "You're kidding me! Leviathan punched his head clean off!"

Jolt looked tense. "Come on guys. Enough distractions -- let's get turned around and send Lynnie on a vector into the sun."

The Eye laid in the new course, and the Nightstalker swung around on a course approaching the sun. On the big screen, Leviathan grimaced, and spat out two silent words into the vacuum of space.

Jolt thought for a moment. "What did he say? 'SCREW PHYSICS?'"

The Eye remarked, "I don't think that was 'screw'..."

Lights flickered as Leviathan relaxed the screen that protected normal space from his enormous gravitational field. The bridge of the star-ship shook.

Victor looked up from the engineering console. "Ma'am... hyperdrive is down. We're stuck on a course into the sun."

Jolt gritted her teeth. "Cut the damned tether. Try to get us some distance--"

"But that won't help us--" Victor stopped talking as Asteroid 423 loomed into the field of view. "Whoa."

The kilometer-wide rock slammed into Leviathan. The Nightstalker shuddered as his gravitational field fluctuated.

"Get that on screen!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Victor's fingers raced over his engineering console. "I think I have it--"

Leviathan lay face down in an impact crater on the surface of the asteroid. He picked himself up and dusted himself off.

A streak appeared over the truncated horizon, and set down just outside the crater. Two beams struck Leviathan in the chest, and the massive Fe Arran reeled as the two bolts lit up finger-tip sized patches on his invulnerable chest.

Arsenal's voice came in on the comms. "What's my output?"

Victor examined the sensor readouts. "You're at 2 megatons yield apiece. That won't--"

"Get ready for an emergency jump. I'm gonna tighten the focus and cross beams."

Victor's jaw dropped. He recovered in less than a second. "On it."

Leviathan bore down on Arsenal's position as the beams narrowed and slowly approached each other.

"What's he--"

"No time."

The beams touched. The energy flux in at the intersection point exceeded the Planck energy by several orders of magnitude, and space and time began to violently expand from the impact point.

As the Nightstalker dematerialized, a violent gravity wave disintegrated Asteroid 423.

The star-ship rematerialized not far from where it tried to escape the destruction.

"What just happened--"

"Just a minute, Ma'am."

"Did he just--"

"I have his signal."

"What!?"

Arsenal appeared on the screen, towing Leviathan's unconscious form from the turmoil of boulders converging on the former center of mass of Asteroid 423.

"He exceeded the maximum energy flux for a unit of space. Space-time exploded in Leviathan's face."

"Open the cargo bay doors." Jolt rubbed her forehead as she watched Arsenal drag the unconscious Leviathan towards the Nightstalker.

A moment later, Honor Guard gathered to watch as Arsenal dragged Leviathan into the hold.

"You- you did it. You knocked him out."

"Ma'am." Arsenal addressed Jolt. "I need to go back to the colony."

Jolt nodded. "I understand."

A few moments later, Arsenal touched down just outside the perimeter of a field hospital hastily erected to deal with the casualties of Leviathan's mindless rampage. He pushed through doctors and nurses, and headed towards a tent that had been turned into a field hospital.

Soon he found the one he was looking for.

"Come with me. You're not safe here."

Jinx looked up at him, holding a bundle of sterilizing gauze in her arms. "Give me a minute. These people need my help."

He smiled and nodded. "All right. What can I do?"