Hidden in the shadow of the V-wing, Wagner rolled his eyes. Hauptmann Englande—as always, the master of tact... he thought sarcastically.
“Secondly,” the costumed warrior said, gesturing at his companions, “we are Lightning Force, the Empire’s greatest band of decorated agents, here on a mission for Reichsminister of Health Amim Zola himself.” He gazed past the elder, at the crowd of villagers who were standing well back from the jet. “We have come for the mutant—the one called Ororo Munroe!” he bellowed.
A loud murmur ran through the crowd as the citizens of Araouane talked amongst themselves. And yet, when the garbled conversation died down, none of them made a move to either point out the mission’s target, or move aside to allow her passage.
Englande frowned, and turned to the elder. “Tell her to step forward, old man, or we will be forced to find her ourselves ... in the rubble of your village.”
“There is no need for threats, Captain,” said a strong female voice from within the crowd. “These kind people merely sought to keep me from harm.”
The congregation parted, and a lithe, white-haired woman moved forward. She held her head high as she walked toward the team, as though she were royalty, or the goddess she had pretended to be for a time. Wagner had heard reports about this Ororo Munroe, and the mutant powers she had once wielded, but none of them had ever mentioned the obvious strength of her will... or her incredible beauty.
“And what sort of harm might that be, girl?” quipped Meggan. “You should feel honored that the Reichsminister has requested your presence.” It was clear to Nightcrawler from both her attitude and body language as she stepped closer to Englande that Meggan had been expecting to find a wizened hag instead of this dark-skinned lovely; now, she felt threatened. After all, Nightcrawler wasn’t the only one in Lightning Force with an eye for the ladies . . .
“I have already experienced Zola’s . . . hospitality on one occasion,” Munroe replied, “and hoped never to do so again.” She gestured at the small of her back, where Nightcrawler knew a neural inhibitor had been surgically attached. “He has already crippled me—what more could he possibly want?”
“It is not my place to ask such questions, mutant,” Englande said curtly. “Nor is it yours.” He jerked a thumb at the V-wing. “Get in the craft before I lose my patience.”
As Munroe approached the ladder that led up to the flight cabin, Wagner released his grip on the hull, executing a perfect three-toed landing. Ignoring the heat of the sand as it permeated through his leather boots, he stepped from the shadows to greet her, adjusting his sunglasses so they rested midway down his nose. He wanted the best possible view of her as she drew close.
The sight of a yellow-eyed demon materializing from beneath the plane obviously took her by surprise. Munroe gasped and stepped back, losing her balance as the sand shifted under her foot. Wagner’s tail flicked out, encircling her waist and pulling her into his arms.
“Gutten tag, Fraulein Munroe,” he said, gaining some pleasure from her touch, even though she was trying to push him away. Her skin was smooth, not yet weathered by the sun and sand, and he detected a hint of jasmine in the locks of her flowing mane. She really was an exquisite creature, even if she was—
He froze suddenly, then pulled her closer, until their noses were almost touching. He stared into her pupilless eyes, studied the curve of her cheekbones, the fullness of her lips, the cut of her hair. There was something about her, something familiar . . .
“Do I know you, Fraulein?” he asked.
“Of course you know her, Wagner,” Englande said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “She’s a. freak—like you. Your kind always recognizes each other. You’re much like the Jews in that—” he quickly rounded on the wraith-like Pryde “—isn’t that so, Shadowcat?”
The spectral woman flinched. “Y . . . yes . . . Hauptmann Englande ...” she said quietly. “That is so ..She acted as though afraid that the hulking brute might strike her, as impossible as that would have been, given her constant state of intangibility.
Wagner released their prisoner and took a step back. He shook his head, unable to make sense of the thoughts now racing through his head. “Strange as it may seem, Fraulein, I somehow feel as though I should know you. Have we met before—Tangiers, perhaps? Or Cairo?”
Munroe shook her head. “And yet I feel the same,” she said with a mixture of surprise and confusion. “But why should that be?”
Before Wagner could reply, Meggan stepped forward and gave the white-haired mutant a brutal shove between the shoulder blades, sending her bouncing off the armored plating of the V-wing. The woman turned to face her attacker, but wisely made no attempt to retaliate.
“I am certain we will have plenty of time to discuss it on our way to Genosha, as fascinating a topic as it may be,” Meggan said caustically. “But the Reichsminister is a very busy, very important man, and should not be kept waiting, Nightcrawler—” she pointed an accusatory finger at him “—while you try to determine in which port of call you may have picked up this African trollop.” She gave Munroe another shove, and pointed at the ladder. “Now, get into the verdamnt plane, cow, before I finish the job of ‘crippling’ you that the Ministry started!”
Wordlessly, Munroe clambered up the rungs, Meggan close behind. Not needing to be told what to do, Shadowcat quietly floated upward, phasing through the V-wing’s hull on her way back to her cramped quarters, apparently eager to put some distance between herself and their volatile leader.
Wagner turned to face him. “What about the others?” he asked, pointing toward the villagers.
Englande shrugged. “My orders say nothing about razing this sty, or exterminating the filth living within its walls. No doubt the Emperor has some use for these dregs, astounding as it seems.”
“And what that might be—”
“Is none of our business.”
Wagner nodded. “I thought as much.”
The sound of Meggan barking orders at their prisoner caused both men to look at the cabin’s hatchway, as though expecting one or both of the women to come tumbling out of the craft, locked in combat. There was a loud crack, as from someone being brutally slapped across the face, followed by a throaty chuckle.
Englande smiled. “I believe Meggan has matters well in hand,” he commented. “Women, eh?” he added with a wink.
The smile that had started to form on Wagner’s face was wiped away as his superior officer pushed him aside and began climbing the ladder.
Sitting on his tail on the hot sand, feeling the coarse grains working their way into his uniform, Wagner vented his frustrations by pounding the ground with his fists. Aware that the villagers were watching him with a degree of amusement, he stood up and adjusted his clothing, only to scrape his jaw along the starched collar. He grunted angrily, turning his back to the crowd, and made his way up the ladder.
“If it were up to me, I would turn this craft around and return to England ...” he muttered.
7
SHE WAS burning.
Flames licked at her body, her face, scorching her hair and . flesh, filling the air with the pungent odor of overcooked meat. She rolled across the tiled floor, beating at the fire with her hands, trying to extinguish it as it charred her skin, melting the leather bodysuit until it was welded to her, the metal zippers branding her with small serrated patterns as they bonded with bubbling flesh through torrents of blood. She pulled frantically at the material, shrieking in agony as each piece she tore came away with another layer of blackened skin, a small part of her mind begging, praying, for the torment to end.
Her ears filled with blood, her eyes began to boil away. And yet she could still hear the laughs of the green-skinned monsters standing around her, still see the oversized weapons they carried—the bringers of flames, of death.
And then the fire roared higher, brighter, hotter, consuming all she was, all she had been . . .
Rogue sat up on the cold deck where she had collapsed,
her screams still echoing along the smooth metal walls of the small chamber. Her breath caught in her throat—the nauseating smell of burnt flesh still clung to her clothes, her hair, still filled her nostrils—and she coughed raggedly. She spat black-flecked phlegm into a comer, the taste of bile thick on her tongue, then yanked at the leather hood encasing her head until the zipper finally gave.
Her face was dirty and streaked with tears, her eyes thoroughly bloodshot; she hadn’t stopped crying until fatigue had gently, finally, wrapped her in darkness soon after she’d been returned to the battle-cruiser.
She’d failed them: the High Council of Ishla’non. Watched in horror as the Skrull warriors butchered them, using flamethrowers to exterminate the pacifistic creatures instead of the powerful sidearms they wore strapped to their thighs—all the better to prolong their victims’ pain . . . and the Skrulls’ pleasure. She had still been linked to the hivemind when the one called Geer’lak was set alight; theirs had been a shared agony, one that continued to build with frightening intensity until it consumed every member of the lion assembled in the council chamber.
And then the slaughter began . . .
Rogue shivered, rising uneasily to her feet, using a wall to support her. She had experienced every one of their deaths, unable to disengage herself from the psychic connection until the last councilor had succumbed to the terrible flames, leaving her once again broken in mind and spirit. But the pain hadn’t ended there, for the images continued to replay again and again in her thoughts until her mind had finally shut down. She couldn’t even remember how or when she’d been returned to her cell.
She stumbled over to her bunk—a small metal platform bolted to another wall, its furnishings nothing more than a tattered mattress, a lumpy pillow, and a threadbare sheet—and sat on its edge, waiting for the tremors running through her body to come to an end. She rubbed her sweat-drenched face with leather-wrapped hands, grateful that at least one of the brutish Skrulls had taken a moment to put back the glove Reichsmajor Sommers had removed when he forced her to have direct contact with the lion. Without it, she would have spent every moment fearful of making even the most casual of contacts with anyone on the ship—human, Skrull, or mutant. And after her nightmarish experience on Ishla’non, she could never handle accessing someone else’s mind—not right now. She’d go irrevocably mad; she was sure of it.
“Contacts with anyone.” She almost had to laugh. Here she was, locked away on the lowest level of the starship Nuremburg, allowed to step outside the confines of her cell on the rare occasion when she was needed for a mission—and only under the heaviest of guard—and she was worried about accidentally touching someone and leeching both their memories and their strength. The chances of that under normal circumstances were pretty much nil: the humans treated her like she carried a plague, while the Skrulls looked upon her with contempt, so neither were about to come anywhere close to her unless ordered to do so. And, following the events on Bloodstone Crater six months ago, when her last escape attempt had almost succeeded, the life-forces of
twelve Skrull warriors coursing through her supercharged body, even the few mutants among the crew had taken to giving her a wide berth.
A freak even t’my own kind. . . she thought darkly. If it wasn’t so outright pathetic, it’d almost be funny—in a mean-spirited sorta way.
Rogue sighed and lay back across the bunk, staring at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the hyperdrive engines three decks below. Ordinarily, the sound lulled to her to dreamless sleep, providing her with some peace of mind. Now, though, each pulse of the warp system was like the roar of a Skrull flamethrower to her ears, each squeal of the deckplates like the anguished cries of a hundred lion as death claimed each of them. Sounds that would be with her for the rest of her life.
Placing her hands over her ears, Rogue curled up on the bed and screwed her eyes tightly shut, wishing, hoping, for it all to just go away.
It did nothing to clear away the awful smell that lingered in her nostrils—or ease the screams that echoed and re-echoed in her mind ...
Reichsmajor Scott Sommers reclined on the bed in his quarters, pillows propped up behind his head, and studied a copy of the latest mission report—his idea of light reading before turning in for the night.
He had exchanged his battle visor for a far more comfortable pair of glasses fitted with ruby quartz lenses, though the lighter spectacles did nothing to alleviate the dull ache in his eyes that was always present during his waking hours—a constant reminder of the terrible power that lay just behind the corneas. The only times he no longer felt the nagging pressure of the extradimensional energy that sought release whenever he opened his eyes were when he slept, and when his thoughts were focused on other matters—like a mission gone well.
The one on Ishla’non, as the report indicated, had gone exceedingly well: the Kree spies had been hunted down and executed, the High Council exterminated like the bugs they so grotesquely resembled, the planet secured as the latest colony of the ever-expanding Empire. And with the task of setting up a new government left to the warships of the Ministry of Imperial Bureaucracy, Sommers and his crew had been rewarded for their latest victory with an early shore leave—back home on Earth.
Sommers closed the report cover and tossed the folder on his desk, pleased with the summation of the mission; if there was one thing his yeoman, Gwendolyn Stacy, was good at, it was finding just the right dramatic tone for mission statements that were guaranteed to impress his superiors. He swung his feet onto the deck, stood, and stretched, smiling as his vertebrae popped back into place. He should be resting, he knew; the voyage home, even at maximum hyperspatial speeds, would still take more than a day to complete. The problem was, he didn’t feel tired; in fact, he felt just the opposite. But that was to be expected—as with any successful mission, the hours afterward were never spent sleeping, but in finding ways to bum off the adrenaline still coursing through his system.
He considered his options. He could turn off the cabin lights and lie down, try to fall asleep, but he knew he’d only wind up either staring at the ceiling or, should he remove his glasses, watching the bursts of energy that exploded like fireworks within his closed eyelids. He could dress and go up to the bridge, but then he’d start hanging over his officers’ shoulders, checking their readings, adjusting courses—generally getting in the way; not that he cared how they felt about the intrusion, but it would only show the men how restless he was, and a fidgety commander runs the risk of losing his crew’s respect. He could go to the gymnasium on E-Deck, to challenge Security Chief Horst Buckholz to a game of racquetball, or perhaps get a good rubdown from masseuse Wanda Maximoff—the woman might be a gypsy, but she was a lovely creature, he had to admit; her touch would certainly help him to relax!
Or he could call Jean.
Sommers smiled—now that was an idea! A glass of schnapps, a bit of conversation with his wife to discuss the day’s efforts ... If hers was anything like the last time they’d spoken, she’d probably lull him to sleep with some boring tale of what dresses she’d bought and the conversations she’d had with her girlfriends while buying them, or how she spent hours scrubbing the kitchen and they really should hire a maid . . . Why, he could almost feel himself nodding off already!
He glanced at the ship’s chronometer: It should just be after eight A.M. in New York; Jean would have been up for at least an hour by this point.
Sommers opened the mini-bar that was bolted to the wall on the far side of his cabin, and withdrew a glass snifter and a small bottle of mint schnapps. He poured himself a liberal dollop of the liquor, then locked up the decanter and settled into the plush leather chair situated before his desk.
Pressing a small stud built into the mahogany surface, he activated a ten-inch-wide screen that rose from the desk. As it hummed to life, he used a built-in keypad to enter his personal identification code, making certain the signal would be scrambled so no one would be able to eavesdrop on his convers
ation. With that accomplished, he punched in the transmission coordinates that would connect him with the communications set in the apartment, then hit send.
It took some time for the call to go through; longer than he would have imagined, since Jean was usually so prompt in answering the signal. He drummed his fingers on the desk, gazing at the screen through narrowed eyes, as though daring it to remain blank. It wasn’t that he felt any sort of concern over her lack of response—after all who would be foolish enough to attack the wife of a high-ranking Imperial officer? Besides, where would that silly woman go to put herself in any danger? She hardly ever left the apartment when he wasn’t there! No, he wasn’t concerned for her safety; rather, he was angry for being kept waiting.
Finally, though, there was a small spark of light within the depths of the screen, and an image began to take form, growing larger as it sharpened, until it filled the frame. Jean stood just to the left of the picture, the camera mounted on the bureau in their bedroom; behind her, through the open windows, he could see the sun rising above the Manhattan skyline. Her face was hidden by her bright-red hair as she bent over to put on an open-toed, high-heeled shoe.
“Just a minute,” she muttered, adjusting the ankle strap. That done, she snapped her head back, allowing the hair to billow around her face as it settled onto her shoulders. Sommers noted the high-collared white blouse and black leather skirt she was wearing—she looked as though she were getting ready to go out.
“Yes?” she said, picking up a small diamond earring from the bureau and pinning it to her right lobe. When no answer was forthcoming, she stopped primping and leaned forward, until her face was mere inches from the camera. Her eyes widened in surprise. “Scott?”
“Of course it’s Scott, you imbecile!” he snapped. “Who else would it be, calling at this hour?”
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