While Nycos Aristides has been dragged into Dimension 11 by Tana Nile, Beta Ray Bill and the Xandarian Worldmind (in the body of RIchard Rider), the Aakonian colony is far from safe – Annihilus’ flagship, 20km long and bristling with weapons, is raining destruction down upon the alien city and its inhabitants!

Bill attempts to summon a storm to repel the ship, but the local atmosphere – indeed, all of local space-time – has been disrupted by the dimensional shift, and he is unable to take control of the weather. Instead, for his trouble, the Wave invaders identify his hammer Stormbreaker as a powerful energy source, and the ship’s batteries open fire upon him. As he evades their fire, Tana Nile reroutes the power generated by the colony’s geothermal tap into the Nova Force, and the Worldmind uses the energy of fire a massive gravimetric blast at the ship, smashing through its shield – and attracting the personal wrath of Annihilus, who flies from the ship to launch an attack!

Battling on two fronts, the defenders find themselves outmatched – Annihilus’ physical power is incredibly enhanced by his Cosmic Control Rod, a device containing a naked singularity that he uses to drain away almost all of the Worldmind’s energy (and Richard’s vitality). Meanwhile, Bill takes the fight to the flagship, smashing his way onto the bridge and laying about with Stormbreaker, but is pinned down by battalions of Wave marines onboard.

A desperate Tana Nile hatches a new and even bolder plan – she channels the strange energy at the heart of Nycos Aristedes into the Worldmind, hoping to cause a dimensional shockwave that will throw everyone back to their native universes. The shockwave erupts through the Worldmind, and Annihilus falls back to his ship – where he engages Beta Ray Bill in savage combat. The power of the Cosmic Control Rod is too strong, and the alien warlord not only overwhelms Bill but wrests away control of Stormbreaker – moments before he and the flagship are shunted back to the Negative Zone, leaving Bill to fall back to the ground (and be rescued by the Worldmind).

Nycos Aristedes and its inhabitants are restored to their own universe, but not their own galaxy – the planet now orbits a star in the Greater Magellanic Cloud, far away (for now) from the predations of the Wave. In this place of relative safety, Beta Ray Bill begins enacting ancient magic rites, trying to find an Asgardian weapon that will help him regain Stormbreaker; the Worldmind returns control of its vessel to Richard RIder; Drax the Destroyer and Cammi look for a way to get off-planet; and Tana Nile decides to stay and assist the Aakonian colony and find a new path – and a new love – among its people.

And in the depths of the Negative Zone, Annihilus’s flagship sets a course for the breach back through the Crunch into the positive matter universe. The Annihilation Wave’s master may not be present for the moment, but his forces continue to swarm and destroy in his absence – and he will not be gone for long.

This war is far from over.

In the wake of Glorian’s reality machinations, the frontier town of Abyss on Godthab Omega is largely ruined. Gamora and Cerise have returned to Mount Virago, and Ronan pulls back to the Spaceport to attempt to fix a working ship, leaving Korath and Stellaris to clean up the mess – and to observe the floating red-and-gold energy matrix that Glorian has become. The Glorian Matrix is also of interest to Nebula, who seeks a way off this planet and to regain her fearsome reputation.

But Moondragon has other concerns – she returns to Godthab Omega to warn her occasional allies, the Graces, that the Annihilation Wave is coming. Sadly she is too late – Wave forces, led by a 15km long flagship, land nearby and disgorge a vast swarm of uncontrollable insectoids that advance on Abyss and Mount Virago! Led by Eradica, one of Annihilus’ monstrous Queens, the swarm seeks the Matrix’s power for the Wave.

Gamora prepares to defend Mount Virago and sends Moondragon to Abyss to collect the Matrix. She arrives just as Nebula attempts to steal it, and as Korath creates a trans-dimensional stasis cell to sageguard and transport it. Along with Stellaris, the group agree to put aside their differences in an effort to escape – but as the swarm attacks Abyss, Korath is forced to abandon the Kree soldiers he has led to this point.

The four return to Mount VIrago, stasis cell in hand, to find it overrun with giant mutant bugs – including flying bugs, who force Nebula to crash their transport into the side of Gamora’s headquarters. The four fight against the swarm, but they are too badly outnumbered. After injuring Nebula even more than before, Eradica overpowers Korath and Moondragon and makes off with the Matrix. Faced with overwhelming odds, the Graces (and Korath) evacuate in Moondragon’s ship, and watch the mindless swarm destroy everything left on Godthab Omega.

In the aftermath, the Graces pick up Ronan (who made it to orbit in an evacuation pod), Moondragon sets a course to meet up with her lover Phylla-Vell and other resistance forces, Gamora disbands the Graces – and Korath reveals that he set a psychic tracer on the Matrix, allowing him to follow it anywhere.

In the weeks since the destruction of the Kyln, Reed Richards has attempted to convince his fellow Earth heroes of the danger of the Annihilation Wave, but they remain focused on their own issues – the so-called ‘Civil War’ around registration and monitoring of superhumans. To assist with this, Reed has been working with Tony Stark on a plan to create a prison in the Negative Zone, and the two of them (plus pro-registration ally Ms Marvel) are about to activate the portal – when word comes from orbit that a damaged spaceship has entered Earth’s atmosphere and is headed straight for the Fantastic Four’s headquarters, the Baxter Building!

The spaceship is piloted by Star-Lord, who seeks Reed’s help in reaching the Negative Zone and finding a way to stop the Harvester of Sorrow. Ms Marvel is suspicious and sees through the deception – the visitor is actually the Super-Skrull! Despite his ruse, the Skrull is sincere in his desire to reach the Negative Zone, and the heroes decide to assist him in finding the source of the super-weapon. They repair the ship and launch it through the portal into the bizarre Negative Zone, then begin scanning and searching the pocket universe – not realising that Mister Fantastic has closed the portal behind them to protect Earth from further incursion.

After three days of awkward travel in a small space, Reed’s scanning instruments lead them to an vast field of mined asteroids and broken spaceships – a shipyard for creating and mobilising the superweapons of the Annihilation Wave. At its heart is a prison planetoid where slaves mine and labour under guard, protected by a force field that destroys organic matter. The heroes manage to shut down the field momentarily, but it comes back up as they fly through, damaging the ship and leading to a crash landing.

The Super-Skrull immediately abandons his allies in order to attack the prison and find his quarry, leaving the Earthlings to fight off a wave of Annihilus’ drone soldiers. They manage to collapse the mine and kill the mindless drones, but Ms Marvel is badly injured in the fight, their spaceship is destroyed, and they have no way of getting home…

The survivors of the Annihilation Wave’s assault on the Nova Corps – Beta Ray Bill, Tana Nile and Richard Ryder, Nova Prime – emerge from the hasty stargate Richard created with the help of the Xandarian Worldmind. Because Skuttlebutt’s warp drives were damaged in the attack, they limp at sublight speed for a week before reaching Nycos Aristedes, a colony planet of the Aakonian race.

But there is no help to be had there – 18 million colonists are desperate for assistance and the Aakonian authorities are unable to maintain order. Meanwhile, refugee ships keep coming through the local stargate – as does a Omega Core prison transport ship that dumps all its passengers (which include Drax the Destroyer and his young sidekick Cammi) rather than take them to the now-destroyed Kyln.

While Bill attempts repairs to Skuttlebutt, Nova Prime and Tana Nile connect with the Aakonian authorities, who demand to know when the Nova Corps will arrive. Richard sidesteps the issue while Tana plunders the local datanet to develop a full info-picture of local conditions. She also patches into the datafeed from the stargate – and finds that an Annihilation Wave scouting force is coming through and attacking the Aakonian fleet!

Nova Prime and Beta Ray Bill head into space to attack the scouting force – but some ground assault forces get past them, and Drax and Tana work to fight them off. Disobeying the orders of the Worldmind, Richard shuts down the stargate with a gravimetric pulse – this stops any more Wave forces from entering the system, but the Wave commanders send a subspace signal to tell Annihilus they have found the Nova Force! His confidence overcharged by his growing power, Richard attacks the remaining Wave forces and is overwhelmed, thrown unconscious back down to Nycos Aristedes.

On the ground, Drax slaughters his way through the Wave forces while Tana Nile reviews all the data she has gathered, looking for some way to evacuate the millions of colonists. Instead, noting that the planet has some unusual energies at its core, she hits upon an impossible plan – to draw those energies through the colony’s geothermal tap power system and create a planet-sized dimensional portal, pulling all of Nycos Aristedes through to Dimension Eleven!

Following Tana’s plan, Beta Ray Bill flies back to the planet, channelling the power of the geothermal core while opening a rainbow bridge to Dimension 11 using his magical hammer Stormbreaker. Bill’s power alone is not enough to open the portal before Wave forces overwhelm the planet – so Drax fights his way over to the badly-injured Nova Prime and rouses him so that he can assist. Richard attempts to stabilise the portal, but he can’t manage it – so rather than fail, he gives control of his consciousness over to the Worldmind, which takes over his body and mind and completes the portal with Bill.

The rainbow light of Asgard washes over all of Nycos Aristedes, blackening with the energies of Dimension 11 and drawing the whole planet out of this universe and away from the Wave. But before the portal can close, an intruder smashes into it – Annihilus’ gigantic flagship, clawing open its own negative-energy stargate and opening fire upon the colony even as the portal closes behind it!

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…

On the rim of the Andromeda Galaxy, the planet Godthab Omega is a refuge for outcasts, exiles and space-criminals, a world of shanty towns governed by the blade and fist of Gamora and her Graces. Into this hotspot comes Ronan, disgraced Supreme Accuser of the Kree Empire, looking for Tana Nile. Instead he finds his old ally Korath the Pursuer, along with a lost troop of Kree Star Corps, holed up in the town of Abyss – a town overflowing with random violence and conflict.

Gamora sets her agents in town, the space pirate Nebula and the armoured Stellaris, to keep tabs on Ronan – but instead Nebula starts a fight! She is soon overpowered by Ronan and the Star Corps, while Korath is thrown from town and buried under the desert sands by Stellaris, who then grabs the injured Nebula and flies back to Mt Virago. Korath wakes up to find himself in… a 1950s diner from Earth, occupied by a red-and-gold figure who asks him what he thinks of ‘the art’. Called Glorian, the mysterious being seeks validation for shaping Godthab Omega and stoking the flames of conflict; when Korath rejects his requests, he angrily teleports the Kree back to Abyss to rejoin Ronan.

Seeking vengeance on Ronan, Gamora gathers her Graces and enters Abyss, only for Nebula to turn on her and attempt to convince the Graces to become her new pirate crew. She is humiliated by Gamora and spurned by the Graces, and angrily leaves on her own path as the women join battle in Abyss. Ronan throws down with Gamora, but first sends Korath to investigate Mt Virago and find information on Tana Nile. The geneticist flies off, seeing that Abyss is surrounded by a growing bubble of energy, within which reality is starting to warp and shift, but continues to Mt Virago and copies data from Tana’s computer – which then transforms into a Rigellian Recorder android and attacks her!

Within the increasingly hallucinatory landscape of Abyss, Glorian laughs and reshapes reality as Ronan and Gamora engage in epic battle. Nebula tries to steal Ronan’s ship, but the energy field activates its security functions and the ship chases her back to town, shooting at her all the way! She sees Glorian and manoeuvres the ship to crash into him – but he’s unhurt and furiously blasts her, leaving her almost dead. Realising that they are being manipulated, Ronan and Gamora cease fighting, and Ronan (assisted by the returning Korath, who defeated the android) uses his Universal Weapon to enclose Glorian in a field of order, counteracting his chaos and forcing the mad godling into a dormant state (a giant floating cube).

In the aftermath, the battle over, Gamora points a gun at Ronan’s head – and an Annihilation Wave fleet, commanded by one of Annihilus’ queens, approaches the planet in search of this source of reality-warping energy…

The Annihilation Wave spreads across the Andromeda Galaxy, its huge fleets tearing apart civilisations and setting worlds aflame. Most of these worlds belong to the remnants of the Skrull Empire, now a collection of rival fiefdoms led by petty warlords. One such world is Aks’lo, formerly a idyllic forest retreat for the Skrull Empress, now under the control of Baroness S’Bak and her followers – and under attack by the Annihilation Wave.

As the Wave’s fleet engages with the Baroness’ ships in orbit, Kl’rt the Super-Skrull commands Skrull ground forces to repel the invader’s troops and protect the planet’s anti-air defences. Also in the battle is the Luphomoid warrior Spirit, who’s come to Aks’lo in her quest to find a glorious death. Meanwhile, the cosmic hero Quasar warps into orbit and discovers that the Wave fleet is protecting something massive – a starship the size of a moon on a collision course with the planet!

Spirit battles a Wave commander, who says (before she kills him) that the Harvester of Sorrow will destroy the entire world and everyone on it. Quasar flies into the core of the Harvester (the vast ship) and tries to absorb the anti-energy storm within it, but fails and is repelled into deep space. The Harvester attaches itself to Aks’lo’s atmosphere and fires anti-energy into the planet’s core; the Super-Skrull rallies his forces to their ships and escapes before the whole planet is converted to a mass of high-energy plasma.

In the aftermath of Aks’lo’s destruction, the Super-Skrull is confronted by Baroness S’Bak, who tries to blame him for the loss of the planet; Kl’rt reacts angrily to her accusations and declares that he is done with working in the service of the Empire’s broken nobility, and will follow his own plans from now on. The Baroness’ staff tell her that Quasar is hailing them and requesting an audience, and that they have captured Spirit’s ship; both of them are brought to the bridge of her ship. Quasar argues that a united front is needed to fight back against the Wave, but the Baroness plans to retreat entirely from the conflict and look after her own fiefdom; with the help of Kl’rt, Quasar manages to convince her to reach out to her rivals and start forming allegiances.

While Quasar and Spirit stay with the Baroness’ fleet to help gather allies, the Super-Skrull decides that he needs intelligence on the Annihilation Wave and its super-weapon – and that means entering the Negative Zone. The best place to find entrance to that dimension: Earth, and the scientific genius of Reed Richards. The Baroness gives him a ship to make the journey, and assigns him an assistant – R’Kin, a diminutive Skrull engineer whose father once served under the Super-Skrull.

Seven standard days after the destruction of the Kyln, the Nova Corps summon all active Corps members, including human Centurion Richard Rider, to the Corps headquarters – the interconnected remnants of the planet Xandar in the Andromeda Galaxy. The full force of the Corps are to deployed in response to the current crisis brought on by the incursion from the Negative Zone – two hundred planetary systems are without power and reports are flooding in about the massive invasion fleet destroying (annihilating) all in its path. Also present are Rigellian infiltrator Tana Nile, disguised as a Corpsman, investigating the Corps’ response to the crisis, and intergalactic adventurer Beta Ray Bill, who has brought news about the invasion’s progress. Corps techs retrieve data from the flight recorder Bill recovered and predict the fleet is still two star systems away, giving the Xandarian forces time to put their plans into action.

Unfortunately, the techs are wrong – the enemy is here! The massive incursion fleet bursts from hyperspace and attacks the Xandarian habitat network and the Nova Corps forces. Tana Nile attempts to rally ground forces to repel attacks on the Corps starport, which is under fire from both enemy ships and hordes of insect-like forces. Meanwhile, Richard Rider and Beta Ray Bill, along with many other Nova Centurions, fly out into space to take on the enemy ships. While all three fight valiantly, the fleet is too massive and powerful to stop; the habitat network is torn apart and the starport smashes into the huge Corps command centre.

Some time after the enemy fleet has departed, Rich Rider regains consciousness in the ruins of the command centre with the Xandarian Worldmind – the AI that commands the Nova Corps and controls the Nova Force – signalling for his help. All other Corps members are dead, and the Worldmind needs to be retrieved before the command centre falls into the Sun! Moving across the vast ruins, Rich encounters the injured Beta Ray Bill, who is searching for his intelligent ship Skuttlebutt – which Tana Nile has discovered in the wreckage of the starport.

Digging down to the core of the command centre, Rich and Bill find the Worldmind – a massive sphere of intelligent energy, too gigantic to transport. Instead, the Worldmind downloads itself into Rich, filling him with the immense power of the Nova Force – and in the process alerting the enemy fleet of the Worldmind’s presence! Reeling from the transformation, Rich – now the Nova Prime of the Nova Corps – and Bill rocket off to find Skuttlebutt. Tana tells them the ship was badly damaged in the attack and its warp drives don’t work, so Rich uses his new powers and the Worldmind’s assistance to briefly tear open a wormhole. Skuttlebutt and its passengers slip through and escape just before the fleet returns – to the immense rage of its master, Annihilus, who commands his forces to find them!

It’s a normal wake cycle on the Kyln, the series of ancient artificial moons that draw and distribute power from the Crunch – and that act as a maximum-security prison for some of the Local Group’s worst criminals and troublemakers.

Reed Richards, a human recognised throughout the universe as a genius, comes to the Kyln to consult with Omega Core and the alien Clerics about how to boost the station’s energy output. Meanwhile, three prisoners – failed hero Peter ‘Star-Lord’ Quill, genocidal madman Devos and Skrull spy Paibok – get back to work maintaining the station, kept in line by the nano-wardens in their bodies.

But suddenly the AIs controlling the Kyln power conduits disengage from the Crunch, and something comes through the energy cascade separating the positive-matter universe from the anti-matter Negative Zone – a starship. And then another. And another. And an entire armada, the greatest force of battleships the universe has ever seen, pouring out of the Crunch – and opening fire upon the Kyln!

As the moons of the Kyln rupture and explode from the armada’s assault, Devos and Paibok attempt to escape in the confusion, while Richards gathers data on the fleet and Star-Lord tries to rescue surviving prisoners and Omega Core guards. Devos attacks Richards and almost kills him, but ‘Mister Fantastic’ manages to reprogram and energise the Devastator’s nano-wardens to immobilise him. Star-Lord teams up with Richards and tries to fend off the armada, but fails and instead draws their attention. Only with the assistance of Paibok, who failed to escape on his own, are the three able to escort the survivors to Richards’ ship before the last Kyln moon is destroyed.

Injured and overwhelmed, Richards’ ship escapes through the local stargate – followed by Devos, who restarted his battlesuit’s systems and got out of the Kyln just in time. As they jump to another system, only Paibok sees the mysterious armada activate warp drives and spill out into the Andromeda Galaxy – and two armoured giants slowly emerge from the Kyln moon in which they were imprisoned…