The three-man team had barely approached the Frost Giant's corpse when another giant suddenly appeared out of thin air.
The creature stood over six feet tall, its blue skin coated in frost.
Cold mist swirled around its lowered arms as ice rapidly condensed into two jagged blades nearly two feet long.
With a violent swing, the giant hurled them forward.
The air temperature dropped noticeably as the frozen weapons sliced through the night.
One of the blades struck a soldier square in the chest.
The impact lifted him completely off the ground.
Blood erupted from his back in a crimson spray, splashing across the dirt as his body was thrown several yards away.
"Damn it! These things can turn invisible!"
A soldier shouted into his radio.
"Activate thermal imaging!"
The remaining troops opened fire at point-blank range.
Inside the command center, thermal imaging systems immediately came online and began scanning the surrounding area.
The data streamed directly to several computers in Blonsky's operations room.
Technicians quickly processed the information into a real-time thermal map.
Six distinct cold zones appeared around the base.
Each one glowed blue against the warmer environment.
It looked as though someone had placed six industrial refrigeration units around the perimeter.
The only problem was that every cold zone was humanoid.
Then a deep roar echoed through the darkness.
All six signatures began moving.
They charged simultaneously toward the battle zone.
Observation posts and sniper nests immediately reported the development and requested orders.
Thermal data was transmitted directly to soldiers' helmet displays, ensuring they wouldn't be fighting blind against invisible enemies.
Blonsky glanced at the monitor.
The creatures could be killed with conventional weapons.
That meant he didn't need to get involved personally.
Picking up the radio, he calmly issued his orders.
"Positions One and Five, fall back."
"The rest of you hold your ground."
"Continue scanning for additional cold signatures."
A brief pause.
"Then engage at will."
A tracer round ripped through the darkness.
Traveling at such extreme velocity that it resembled a beam of light, it slammed into a Frost Giant's upper chest.
The impact detonated instantly.
BOOM!
Its left shoulder vanished.
Half its chest disappeared in an explosion of ice, blood, and shattered flesh.
Frozen fragments scattered across the battlefield.
The severed remains of its arm spun through the air.
Any human suffering that kind of injury would have died within seconds.
The Frost Giant barely slowed down.
It staggered backward, then resumed its charge.
Its remaining arm rose.
Ice formed around the hand and rapidly extended outward, creating a brutal spiked club resembling a frozen mace.
The sniper cursed under his breath.
He'd been hoping to disable the creature rather than kill it outright.
Capturing one alive would have been a career-making achievement.
Instead, the monster had shrugged off damage that should have ended the fight.
Meanwhile, soldiers engaged the remaining thermal contacts.
Bullets struck hidden Frost Giants and forced them out of camouflage.
The ice armor coating their bodies cracked apart under sustained fire, spiderwebs of fractures spreading across their frozen defenses.
Then the helicopters arrived.
Armed Apache gunships lifted off from the base and entered the battlefield.
Mounted beneath their noses, M230 chain guns opened fire.
Streams of 30Γ113mm cannon shells tore through the darkness.
The glowing tracers looked almost like energy weapons from a science-fiction film.
Explosions erupted across Frost Giant bodies.
Fire and ice collided in bursts of destruction.
Chunks of frozen flesh and shattered armor blasted outward in every direction.
Massive craters appeared in their bodies.
Then one shell struck a giant directly in the head.
The result resembled a watermelon hit by a sledgehammer.
Its skull simply ceased to exist.
Another Frost Giant was clipped by a burst from the chain gun.
Half its body disappeared instantly.
Bone, flesh, and ice were pulverized into fragments.
The battlefield changed completely.
The moment the Frost Giants realized the flying machines could rain death from above, panic spread through their ranks.
The remaining two giants watched a third companion get shredded into pieces by Apache fire.
Terror immediately replaced their earlier confidence.
Without hesitation, they turned and ran.
They finally understood the truth.
They were no match for these Midgardians.
Staying meant death.
Driven by pure survival instinct, the two Frost Giants sprinted faster than they ever had in their lives.
They fled toward the darkness beyond the town, abandoning every trace of their earlier arrogance.
Moments ago, they had seemed like unstoppable invaders.
Now they looked like hunted animals.
Unfortunately for them, running was pointless.
An Apache only needed a slight adjustment of its aim.
The chain gun fired again.
Both Frost Giants were torn apart.
Their supposedly durable bones shattered like brittle glass beneath the barrage.
Before the attack, many officials had been furious about the enormous amount of money and manpower the Bureau was spending on a hammer stuck in the desert.
Afterward, Drex Valen sent them the combat footage.
The complaints vanished.
The officials watched in stunned silence as Frost Giants emerged from nowhere and attacked a secured military installation.
Drex sat calmly at the head of the meeting table.
"It's pretty obvious the hammer is something valuable."
He folded his hands.
"Valuable enough to attract creatures like these."
"My people are already collecting biological samples for analysis."
Back at the site the following morning, teams wearing protective suits swarmed across the battlefield.
Some carried reinforced cases.
Others hauled portable refrigeration units.
They carefully collected every fragment of Frost Giant remains they could find.
Each piece was sealed away for transport and study.
After recovery operations concluded, sanitation teams began a full decontamination sweep.
Hundreds of personnel worked across the area.
Despite the scale of the operation, everything proceeded with military precision.
"My researchers have completed a preliminary examination."
Drex addressed the assembled officials.
"The biological structure of these creatures is completely unlike anything found on Earth."
He let the statement settle.
"No known species matches their physiology."
"They also appear to possess language, intelligence, and organized social behavior."
Expressions around the room changed immediately.
Several officials visibly stiffened.
Drex continued.
"Which means exactly what you're thinking."
His voice remained calm.
"They aren't native to Earth."
A brief silence followed.
Then he delivered the conclusion.
"The extraterrestrials we've been preparing for have finally arrived."
When the meeting ended, the Bureau received another massive funding increase.
Nick Fury nearly choked when he saw the numbers.
He spent endless hours manipulating budgets and navigating bureaucracy just to secure additional resources for S.H.I.E.L.D.
Yet everything he acquired combined wasn't even a fraction of what Drex Valen had just obtained.
Far away in Asgard, Heimdall stood watch upon the Bifrost.
A faint orange glow shone within his eyes.
Ignoring distance and space itself, he focused his vision on Thor's location on Earth.
Ten minutes passed.
Then fifteen.
Still, he found nothing.
No hidden passage.
No trace of how the Frost Giants had traveled from Jotunheim to Midgard.
The realization left him deeply unsettled.
Because it meant only one thing.
The Frost Giants might possess a method of bypassing his all-seeing vision.
For Asgard, that was terrible news.
For centuries, one of the greatest reasons Asgard maintained dominance over Jotunheim was Heimdall's sight.
The all-seeing eyes of the guardian revealed enemy movements before battles even began.
Combined with the Bifrost's ability to deploy armies anywhere in moments, Asgard held a tremendous strategic advantage.
Many realms equal to, or even stronger than, Asgard had fallen because of that combination.
And now, for the first time in centuries, Heimdall wondered whether that advantage might no longer be absolute.