In the weeks following the destruction of Aks’lo, Quasar and Baroness S’bak make initial approaches to other Skrull warlords about allying to fight the Annihilation Wave. In-depth negotiations are arranged in neutral territory – the Rigellian space station Azimuth, which is on the border of local Rigellian space and Baroness S’Bak’s domain.

Quasar and Spirit accompany the Baroness to the negotiations, assisted by a personable Rigellian Recorder android named 808. When the station’s security systems detect that Quasar’s Quantum Bands contain anti-energy absorbed from the Harvester of Sorrow, he and Spirit are sidelined to be interviewed by Azimuth’s Rigellian managers. They are not the only ones concerned by the anti-energy – the Silver Surfer detects its traces and comes to the station to investigate. He and Quasar consult over the energy, before breaking up the angry, violent argument the Skrull negotiations have quickly become.

Before diplomatic progress can be made, Azimuth is hit by something at high speed and goes into security lockdown! The missile is in fact Air-Walker, a former Herald of Galactus, who is being pursued by two Negative Zone beings named Seekers and their packs of lizard-beast Currs. The Seekers channel the Opposing Force, the Negative Zone’s equivalent to the Power Cosmic, and have been sent by Annihilus (and their own leader, Ravenous) to hunt down sources of vast power – and both the Surfer and Quasar fit the bill! Although the Seekers are tough and deadly, the heroes realise that their Currs are the sources of the Opposing Force, and by cutting them off from their power are able to defeat them with minimal damage to the station.

In the wake of the attack, the Silver Surfer takes Air-Walker to safety and prepares to gather the other Heralds against this new danger, while Spirit and Quasar rejoin Baroness S’Bak’s forces – along with 808, who has been assigned to them by the RIgellians as an assistant.

No-one yet realises that Quasar’s bands have absorbed a worrying amount of the Opposing Force. And in deep space, near the Crunch, the Mad Titan Thanos encounters two Proemial Gods emerging from the ruins of the shattered Kyln…