James watched as "Old Mr. Howlett" put away his pipe and coughed a few times. A redwood chair materialized behind him, and he slowly sat down before speaking with earnest confidence:
"Wolf Emperor, you know very well that without me, the Kree Empire would immediately descend into chaos. All your strategic plans are aimed at destroying me, because you know that neither your own forces nor even all of humanity on Earth could truly destroy an interstellar empire with vast territories spanning hundreds of planets and star systems, guarded by legions of soldiers."
The "Supreme Intelligence" had begun addressing James with honorifics. The wrinkles on its face kept relaxing, and its expression had taken on a hint of restrained, ingratiating meekness.
"After I disappear, the Kree Emperor and the pure-blooded nobility will try to reclaim their power. But the fair-skinned Kree and the blue-skinned hybrids, whose share of the population has grown over the past thousand years, will never accept that outcome. The Kree will fall into civil strife and war, while also facing rebellions on their colonial worlds across the star systems."
James nodded slightly, interested enough to hear more.
From the very start of the war, he had resolved to eliminate the Kree Empire's threat once and for all—not merely drive back the expeditionary force that had come to seize the Tesseract, only to let the formidable enemy recover again and again and return for another assault.
Within James's reach, the only method he could try—and the only one with any chance of solving the problem—was to destroy the supercomputer that had driven and controlled the Kree Empire's civilization for over a thousand years.
That would plunge them into their long-festering conflicts between internal factions and races, unleashing the enormous social threat at the heart of their "militaristic"