Hawkeye had not lost his ideals over the course of the day. He had lost something more specific: the image of the organization he had been serving, and the particular version of Nick Fury he had believed in, and to some degree the version of Captain America that had seemed large enough to hold everything together. Those were real losses. They had produced a real weight in him.
He looked at Nolan for a moment after the question.
"Mr. Nolan." He said it without the adjustment of tone that people used when they were speaking to someone they were afraid of. "I am not going to tell you that I fully understand your methods, because I do not. And I am not going to pretend to agree with things I have not decided how I feel about yet. What I can tell you is this: I believe Nat. And from what I have heard today, the future of this planet is considerably worse than I had calculated, and I would rather be doing something about it than not." He paused. "I also have a family. A real one, not a cover. They take up a significant portion of my attention, and that is not going to change. I need you to understand that going in."
Nolan nodded.
"I appreciate honesty more than enthusiasm," he said. "Work alongside Natasha for now. Assist with operational tasks as they come. If you find, after some time, that this team's approach is genuinely incompatible with what you can live with, you have the right to walk away. That offer does not expire." He held Hawkeye's gaze steadily. "Most people do not get it. You get it because you said something true."
Whether a single mortal agent stayed or went was, in the purely strategic calculation, a minor variable. Nolan could have applied the brainwashing protocols he had used on others and the problem of consent would have resolved itself neatly. He did not, and not only because of the diplomatic value of having an agent who chose to be there. There was something in the team's internal atmosphere, the way people moved around each other and the degree to which they would say hard things out loud, that was worth preserving. Brainwashing corroded that. He had seen what the Imperium of Man looked like when every institution operated on compelled loyalty rather than developed loyalty, and the result was not a model he wanted to replicate.
David, in the cockpit, had turned its metal head briefly when Hawkeye finished speaking. The blue light behind its optical sensors had shifted in a way that meant it had noted something, and then it had turned back to the instruments without speaking. There were things that were not yet suitable for someone who had been in the team for forty minutes to hear in full.
The Thunderhawk formation came to rest on the Imperial Heavy Industries platform several hours later.
Hawkeye needed to move his family before anyone in DC decided that a senior agent changing employers required a response. He was not wrong to be cautious. Rogers held S.H.I.E.L.D. now, but Rogers's authority over the organization's political relationships with American government structures was still being established, and a recently departed senior agent living at a known address was a lever that political actors would notice.
Natasha asked for leave to help with the relocation and meet the family. Nolan agreed and told her to pull a Stormtrooper team from reserves if the situation required additional support.
Doom took his assignment: two Astartes battle squads, temporary posting at Imperial Heavy Industries, covering the period before Nick Fury was located. Fury had lost his institutional protection, but he had been operating in hostile environments for decades and the American continent was large. He would not surface immediately. In the meantime, the perimeter needed holding.
David and Jarvis were both running searches. Jarvis, by this point, operated with enough of David's analytical approach that the two systems coordinating on a single problem produced substantially better coverage than either one alone. Fury would surface. The Space Stone inside the Cosmic Cube would not remain hidden.
Doom shook his helmet in Nolan's direction and left the cabin.
Nolan watched the hatch close and then looked toward the cockpit.
"David. You were about to say something earlier. Before you decided the room was wrong for it."
A pause from the cockpit.
"My lord. The matter is genuinely minor in isolation, and there were people present at the time whose full integration I was not confident of." The blue light shifted. "Sage Neil and Reditus had a conflict at the Twin Islands base while we were away. No production line was interrupted. No operational damage occurred. Both of them continued to meet their core responsibilities throughout. The conflict was between them personally, not a failure of the foundry."
Nolan exhaled.
"That means Reditus escalated something again."
"My lord, I would suggest reserving judgment until you have heard directly from both of them. On this occasion, I do not believe the primary fault sits with Reditus."
Nolan filed it. He closed his eyes.
"Then let's go home."
The formation came over Primogenitor Island and the transports dropped toward the landing platform one by one. Nolan's Thunderhawk did not descend. It banked and held altitude, continuing over the short water crossing to Second Son Island, and Nolan had his eyes closed and was collecting himself for the return to base logistics when the sound reached him.
Cyclone missile detonations.
His eyes opened.
"David."
"My lord." The blue light pulsed. "The foundry exterior. I believe it is Reditus and Sage Neil."
"Open the hatch."
He was standing before the hatch had finished cycling. The vibranium armor's mag-locks disengaged and he stepped to the edge and looked down.
The open ground outside the foundry had been rearranged by the engagement. Craters, scattered debris, the broken chassis of automatic servo robots distributed across the ground in a pattern that spoke to sustained combat rather than a single exchange. Two factions, clearly defined.
On one side: Sage Neil in red Mechanicus robes, both hands on a gear-shaped power axe, the device mounted along the axe's head firing continuous bursts of red laser energy. Her Kastellan mech moved with her, leading several dozen automatic servo robots in coordinated charges.
On the other side: Reditus.
The servo skull had, at some point between their departure and now, completed a project that had apparently been underway for considerably longer than Nolan had realized. The machine standing at the center of a ring of hundreds of automatic servo robots was approximately five meters tall. Its limbs and torso were cast from Antarctic vibranium, the joints articulated with a degree of mechanical complexity that spoke to serious engineering time. The servo skull shell that had always housed Reditus now sat at the apex of the construction, encased in original vibranium, the whole assembly moving with the shifting, transforming articulation of something that had been designed to change its configuration as the combat situation required.
The sound coming from the servo skull as Reditus directed the attack was audible even over the Thunderhawk's engines.
"Damned oil-worshipping heretic! Taste the wrath of the Machine God!"