Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman

Chapter 374: Chapter 374 — Kree Cruiser

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Out in space, Black Super arrived just outside Earth’s atmosphere ahead of everyone else. Aside from basking for a moment in the unfiltered yellow sunlight—no longer attenuated by the atmosphere—he was simply waiting for Carol Danvers to pilot the Quadjet into space.

After all, following an aircraft in broad daylight while wearing a stealth suit would be about as subtle as announcing, ”There’s a fly here, please take a look.”

Although flying with his own body wouldn’t be picked up by conventional radar, it could still be seen with the naked eye. So Black Super chose to get into position early rather than expose himself by doing something stupid.

In fact, he wasn’t the only one waiting in space. The Kree pursuers had already arrived. They were parked in Earth’s orbital zone, holding position and not making any overt moves.

What surprised Black Super somewhat was that the Kree had dispatched only a single spacecraft—he couldn’t tell whether it counted as medium-sized or small by Kree standards, nor what its precise classification was.

Its silhouette was a boomerang-like curved design, rather than the spindle or spherical shapes that Earth physicists theorized were most efficient for space travel.

The reason for the Kree warship’s design was simple: it allowed for the maximum number of engines to be mounted laterally, producing greater thrust. Combined with their black-tech artificial gravity systems, there was no need to rely on rotating sections to simulate gravity.

Since Black Super had no idea how the Kree ship’s external sensors or detection systems were configured, he didn’t dare approach too closely and risk drawing attention.

Using Earth’s high-orbit artificial satellites as cover, he edged closer to the Kree vessel, observing it cautiously.

Fortunately, his Kryptonian X-ray vision still worked—good news. He could see roughly one hundred to one hundred fifty humanoid lifeforms moving about inside the ship.

Accounting for flight crew and necessary support personnel, he estimated that perhaps one-half to one-third of them could be deployed for a boarding operation.

In other words, Nick Fury and the others might soon be facing more than fifty Kree soldiers—far more than what the movie had depicted. And that didn’t even include Yon-Rogg’s elite team.

Perhaps because they didn’t yet know where their target was on Earth, the Kree ship didn’t act aggressively. Instead, it launched only a single one-man landing craft toward the surface.

Not long after that Kree pod descended, Carol Danvers’s Quadjet blasted free of Earth’s gravity well like a rocket at full thrust, reaching a hovering position in space.

Still using satellites as cover, Black Super moved closer to the Quadjet. In the direction its nose was pointing, a concealed spacecraft shed its camouflage and revealed itself in the void.

Based on his memory of the movie, this had to be Mar-Vell’s laboratory—a Kree cruiser.

Its shape was unlike the boomerang-style Kree warship. Instead, it resembled a long, cargo-focused vessel. Not perfectly boxy, but far larger in volume.

The Quadjet entered the cruiser through an opening concealed by a force field, and at the same time, the distant Kree warship began to move.

The Kree vessel didn’t rush in immediately. Instead, it deployed small attack craft and a larger sub-vessel, forming up in space.

Judging by its size and configuration, that sub-vessel was likely an assault landing ship or troop transport.

Even so, they didn’t advance on the Kree cruiser right away. They were waiting for the surface team to return and regroup.

Taking advantage of this window, Black Super avoided the docking port and the obvious observation windows near the bow, approaching the cruiser from its underside.

Fortunately, Kryptonian flight produced no flashy sound or light effects—unlike Captain Marvel, who practically announced her arrival to the universe. Black Super silently attached himself to the ship’s belly, pressing all ten fingers against the hull.

Back when he had used sonar-like vibration principles to acquire the full design of the U.S. Navy’s Iowa-class battleship Missouri, he had learned how effective such methods could be.

In the vacuum of space, there was no air to carry sound—but vibrations through solid matter worked much the same.

Combining that technique with his X-ray vision, Black Super quickly mapped out the cruiser’s overall structure in his mind. Still, that was a long way from truly understanding or reverse-engineering the ship.

Unlike the Missouri, which followed a technological lineage familiar to Earth, this vessel was built on a completely different tech tree. He could see the structures of most systems, but not their functions—let alone the materials involved.

That said, he could infer the purposes of certain compartments from their contents.

Living quarters and cargo bays were obvious enough. Beyond the engine rooms and power sections, the most numerous spaces were illuminated cultivation chambers—greenhouses filled with plants Earth had never seen before.

As for the Skrulls being sheltered aboard Mar-Vell’s cruiser, there were fewer than expected—only around ten. Possibly even fewer than the number General Talos had brought to Earth.

That made sense. With no external resupply and the need to remain self-sufficient aboard the ship for an unknown duration, it simply couldn’t support a large population.

Now that Carol Danvers and the others had boarded the cruiser, not only had they recovered the Tesseract, but General Talos had also reunited with the Skrulls hiding aboard.

Seeing that object, Black Super suddenly understood why Nick Fury might have involved himself so deeply in this affair.

According to the Avengers: Endgame timeline, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers traveled back to a 1970s U.S. military base to retrieve the Tesseract—meaning it had remained in U.S. military custody, not S.H.I.E.L.D.’s.

Then, in 1989—six years ago—the Pegasus Project incident occurred. Chief scientist Wendy Lawson died, and test pilot Carol Danvers went missing.

Nick Fury had claimed that the Air Force was merely covering up a billion-dollar loss. But the real catastrophe they dared not disclose was the loss of the Tesseract—originally seized from Hydra during World War II.

So it was quite possible that Nick Fury already knew all this, and planned to pull a double-cross once the Skrulls obtained the light-speed engine’s energy core. Transferring the artifact from the U.S. military to S.H.I.E.L.D. would be a major coup.

Until the prize was in hand, though, there was no need to eliminate potentially useful allies—so he kept his true intentions to himself.

Truly worthy of the name ”Black Nick Fury.” If you cut him open, his insides would probably be just as dark as his skin.

The Space Stone carried consequences far too great—it was a red-hot potato coveted by countless parties. Even if you managed to seize it, without a viable way to use it, holding it was pointless. So it wasn’t Black Super’s objective.

What he wanted was the data storage systems aboard this research vessel.

Kree technology—that was what truly interested him.

People often said Tony Stark wasn’t as smart as Rocket Raccoon, and the reason was simple: their starting points were worlds apart. One began with advanced galactic civilization; the other with a planetary one.

Though Black Super had now been confirmed to be Kryptonian, he was an exiled infant with no Kryptonian technology to his name. There was little chance a Fortress of Solitude was waiting for him at the North Pole.

So how could the knowledge archive of a Kree scientist not be tempting?

If that database contained information on other cosmic civilizations—even something as basic as a universal ”elementary school history textbook”—Black Super wanted to know whether it included anything about Krypton.

Not because he wanted to go back and see what Krypton in this universe was like, but because he wanted to understand the weaknesses and flaws that had been exposed by a defeated interstellar power.

And besides, the information he had so far came only from Skrull oral accounts. Would the Kree version tell a different story?

That, too, was something Black Super wanted to find out.

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