The Return

by Unknown Author

  Kh’thonic fleet is done telepathically. The profile of our vessel matters, if it matters at all, far less than whether or not we respond with the appropriate telepathic call signs when contacted. If our guest’s identity is confirmed, and the call signs are accepted, then we’ll be able to approach the fleet without incident.”

  “And if they aren’t?” Colonel Stuart asked.

  “In that case,” Raphael responded, “then I believe an incident would be in the offing, wouldn’t you say?”

  As it happened, they needn’t have worried. Using the Exemplar as a kind of telepathic hand puppet, Betsy was able to interact with the fleet’s security protocols, and seemingly without ever raising suspicion. Betsy had managed to cloud the Exemplar’s perceptions, so that as far as the Exemplar knew, she was sitting aboard one of the Kh’thonic landers; and since Betsy had judiciously “edited” the Exemplar’s memories of the events of the day, the Exemplar had no recollection of ever being defeated in battle by the X-Men, or of being taken prisoner. So far as the Exemplar knew, following on the hypnotic suggestion implanted by Betsy, she was returning to the Kh’thonic fleet for minor medical attention, and to bring supplies back down to the Kh’thonic forces on the ground.

  Alysande’s hands tightened on the controls, white-knuckled inside her heavy pressurized gloves. Not for the first time she wished that she’d been able to talk Bernard into incorporating weapons into the space plane’s design, but the head of the British Rocket Group had insisted that this was principally a vessel of science and exploration, and in the end he’d managed to convince the British authorities that his was the correct view Which was all well and good, if one lived on a plane of pure abstraction, in the selfless pursuit of knowledge, but Alysande lived in the real world, a place of conflict, danger, and menace. And right now, she’d have traded all the pure abstraction and hidden knowledge in the world for a few guided missiles with nuclear warheads. Oh, she knew that there was little chance of even nukes doing any damage to the shielded Kh’thon vessels, but still, she’d have felt better having the option.

  Just when things looked their tensest, though, and Alysande and the others waited in an excruciating silence while the mind-fogged Exemplar communicated telepathically with Kh’thonic flight control, Betsy gave the others the high sign, all smiles.

  “It worked,” Betsy said. “We’ve been given the green light to approach the Fathership.”

  “Well,” Raphael said, forcing a smile. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Alysande looked over and saw the sweat glistening on the spy’s forehead. She suspected he’d been the most nervous of any of them.

  “Bub,” said Logan from his acceleration chair. “That was the easy part. It’s all uphill from here.”

  Even though Betsy had said they’d been given the all clear, Logan was sure they’d be looking at a fight as soon as they landed. But after Colonel Stuart had brought the space plane in, touching down in the Fathership itself, they’d stepped through the hatch

  to find the landing bay almost completely deserted.

  From the outside, the Fathership had looked like something out of a nightmare, all jagged angles, spires, and spikes, blacker still than the dark of space around it. On the inside, though, it was even stranger, more resembling the inside of a living being than something constructed by hand. Or more resembling a corpse, rather, since there was no way that anything living could survive, as twisted and wrong as the Fathership was. Even the light had a strange, unsettling quality to it, and the air, though breathable, carried with it the faintest hint of putrefaction and decay. This was like a grave, a corpse ship built from the rotting remains of some impossibly large, impossibly wrong monstrosity beyond human imagination.

  Logan stripped off his pressure suit, revealing the brown-and-tan uniform of unstable molecules worn beneath. He tossed his suit back through the open hatch, and slid his claws in and out, experimentally. Then he hopped up in the air, a tiny movement, but one that allowed him to judge the gravity in the ship. He read it as being just a hair over one g, almost exactly standard Earth gravity. Good, Logan thought, nodding appreciably. That means we won’t be at a disadvantage. If it had been extremely high gravity, their muscles might not have been able to acclimate to the extra weight, and they might have been slowed down as a result. Ofcourse, it ain’t doin’ us any favors, either.

  “I was expecting some kind of welcome wagon, at least,” Logan said, glancing around the cavernous landing bay. There were one or two figures moving in the far distance, but otherwise the enormous space was entirely empty.

  “I don’t know.” Kitty smirked. “This lack of attention may just hurt my feelings.”

  “The Kh’thon maintain close controls on the population levels of their slaves,” Betsy explained, sounding more like a schoolmarm every time she opened her mouth. Ever since she mind-melded with the telekine prisoner, Betsy had been the resident expert on all things Kth’thon. “There are humans here on the Fathership—and mutants, too—but most of them are busy servicing the needs ofthe Kh’thon. If we were really the minor functionary our prisoner purported to be, we’d just be another slave, no matter how powerful. And no one’s going to be pulled off their duties to see to the arrival of more slaves. We’d have been trained to know what we were doing, and where we were going, and if we got lost, it’d be our problem.” “Lucky for us we have an informed guide, yes?” Colonel Stuart checked the action on her automatic pistol. She had changed out of her pressure suit, and now wore standard Royal Marine fatigues of khaki and green, with a dark beret pulled down over her head.

  “Well,” said Raphael, dressed incongruously in a black business suit and tie, carrying a brief case. He looked like a bank manager who’d gotten lost on the way to the office and ended up by accident on the flagship of an invading armada. “Shall we be off, then?” “Yes, let’s,” Logan growled. “The sooner we’re done and out of here the better.”

  So they set off, Logan in lead, Betsy and the others following close behind, moving ever deeper into the strange, unearthly ship.

  32

  As the Quinjet flew over the border with Santo Marco, and entered Ecuadorian airspace, the automated Avengers call sign broadcast on all frequencies immediately granted them the clearances they’d need to approach and land. From there, it was a matter of minutes before they’d reach the point in the jungle indicated on Hank’s surveillance photos.

  Rogue tried to stifle a yawn, and failed. She’d caught a quick nap, but it had done little more than serve to remind her how tired she was, rather than making her feel any more rested. She stretched her arms to either side, and rolled her head around in slow circles, trying to work the kinks out of her neck.

  That’s the problem with being invulnerable on the one hand, with power-sucking skin on t’other, Rogue mused. Nobody’s linin’ up to give you a neck rub or back massage. Heck, I don’t even know if I couldfeel it, if they did.

  Rogue blinked sleepily, yawned again, and leaned forward, sticking her head and shoulders between Hank and Doug. “We there yet?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Hank said with a friendly smile. “Is the end of the world interfering with your beauty sleep?”

  “Well, now that you mention it..Rogue grinned, and punched Hank lightly on the upper arm. “Though I do seem to recall puttin’ in for a wake-up call at a quarter till Apocalypse.”

  “In that case,” Doug said, “I think you’re right on time.”

  Rogue looked in the direction that Doug was pointing, and Hank obliged by bringing up an enhanced telescopic view on the Quinjet’s monitors, set in the control panel just before them.

  “What the ...” Rogue shook her head in amazement.

  From this distance, it looked like nothing more mysterious than a man sitting in a chair. Or a statue of a man in a chair, perhaps, his legs out straight before him, knees bent at precisely ninety degrees, his arms lying on the chair’s armrests.

  But the scale was all wrong. Even
without distance cues, it would be impossible to miss the fact that the statue towered over the lush greenery around it. So perhaps it was something like the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.

  Except no, it was bigger even than that. The greenery on all sides was not shrubs and bushes. No, they were the towering trees of the rain forest. One hundred copies of the Lincoln Memorial statue, stacked one atop the other, would not be quite so tall.

  And there was, of course, the fact that Abraham Lincoln was not sculpted in hues of purple and gray, with a strange, imposing helmet sculpted around his face.

  But then, no one had ever been freed on the word of the Master Mold, either, so it should have come as no surprise.

  The Master Mold was so large it would simply not fit into Doug Ramsey’s mind. It was as though the sight of it hit his eyeballs and bounced right back, without registering on the rods and cones. His mind refused to accept that it could be real.

  In the open space before the seated statue there was a clearing, beyond which was a steep drop-off, where a waterfall plunged to the jungle floor far below.

  Rogue was the first out of the Quinjet door, and Doug wasn’t about to complain. Virtually invulnerable, super-strong, and blindingly fast, there was little doubt that she’d be the best suited to handle any unforeseen difficulties. But, as Beast climbed to the ground, and Doug followed, it seemed that the biggest danger facing them at the moment came in the form of mosquitoes.

  “Yeesh,” Rogue said, wrinkling her nose. “What is that smell?”

  Hank smiled. “That, my dear, is the bouquet of nature, the humble aroma of the jungle, the scent of the cycle of life inexorably turning and turning..

  “Crap,” Doug said.

  “Exactly,” Hank answered with a broad smile.

  “No.” Doug shook his head, and pointed.

  Hank turned, and looked in the direction Doug indicated. “Oh, crap, indeed.”

  Rogue smiled. “Finally,” she said, cracking her knuckles. “And here I was worried this trip would be boring.”

  • • • .

  They looked, and moved, like chickens, but chickens made out of old motorcycle parts, and toasters, and refrigerator coils. Most chickens, naturally, did not come equipped with rapid-fire automatic weaponry, but then allowances had to be made for form and function.

  Even as he worried that they might extinguish his life at any moment, Hank could not help admiring the genius of the mechanisms design. These were Sentinels, that much was clear, but Sentinels unlike any he had encountered before. These seemed more like wild creatures than the giant, stoic behemoths he and the other X-Men had faced time and again. These diminutive things were feral Sentinels, their designs run wild.

  Their programming, sadly, had not drifted nearly so far from the ideal.

  “Mutants,” came the high-pitched, clattering voice of the chicken Sentinels, several of them speaking at once in rough harmony. “You are advised to surrender or face immediate termination. This is your only warning. ”

  “I think they look kinda cute,” Rogue said, glancing over her shoulder at Doug and Hank, who’d cautiously taken up a position behind her.

  Before Hank or Doug could answer, the chicken Sentinels opened fire. The roar of their muzzle fire was deafening, but the slugs flattened harmlessly against Rogue, the kinetic energy of the impact absorbed by her nigh invulnerable skin without leaving mark or blemish. Some of the slugs, hitting at more oblique angles, ricocheted off lancing through the foliage nearby, shredding leaves and branches from the trees.

  Somewhere nearby, a flock of tropical birds, alarmed by the noise of the gunfire, squawked loudly in protest and then, as one, took wing. The smell of burning gunpowder reached Hank’s nostrils, wafted on the light jungle breeze. And suddenly, Rogue was gone.

  She moved so fast she blurred practically into invisibility. It took all of Hank’s concentration and not-inconsiderable visual acuity to follow her motions at all, and even then he was tracking her progress more by the destruction in her wake than by any glimpse of her movement.

  Where before eight chicken Sentinels had perched before them, none taller than three and a half or four feet tall, now there was only a gently raining shower of debris, falling in a rough line from left to right, clouds of dust drifting languidly on the light breeze.

  In less time than it took to blink Rogue was standing before them once again, smoothing back her white-streaked hair with a gloved hand. Only then did the last of the dismantled Sentinels strike the ground. The whole operation had taken on the order of a few seconds.

  “I gotta say, I feel a little guilty ’bout that,” Rogue said, smiling sheepishly. “Poor little fellahs.”

  Doug grinned broadly, looking up at Rogue, eyes full of hero worship. Hank didn’t know that he could blame him. As a kid who was good at little more than reading, and then got to be good at running and jumping and swinging, to say nothing of clinging with his bare (and now oversize) feet, Hank had still felt flatly amazed the first time he saw Scott let loose with one of his optic blasts. To say nothing of Jean with her telekinesis, or Bobby with his ability to extract all the heat from a limited region of space. And Warren, who couldfly? Forget about it. Doug seemed like a nice kid, but Hank knew from experience that having a more sedate power like the ability to read and write in any language left one feeling more than a little inadequate in the face of some of the more demonstrative mutant abilities.

  Which was not to say that Hank had not shown off with his acrobatics, from time to time. But one always had to try to get one’s own back, whenever possible.

  “Come on,” Hank said, pointing toward the large opening in the wall between the Master Mold’s feet. From this distance, it seemed about the dimensions of a typical house’s garage door, but he knew that it was actually large enough to admit the Blackbird with room to spare—sideways, even. “These little feral Sentinels could well be just the first line of defense, and we might run into more interference once we’re inside.”

  They set off across the clearing, which rose at a gentle slope toward the base of the Master Mold facilities.

  “Um, Mister McCoy... that is, Hank?” Doug hurried his pace to keep abreast of Hank, while Rogue trotted a few steps ahead. “I’ve never heard anything about Sentinels of that configuration before. Had you?”

  Hank shook his head. “No. But then, I’m not sure that anybody has.”

  Doug tilted his head to one side, confused, and tightened his grip on the leather satchel over his shoulder. “Sir?”

  “That is to say,” Hank continued, “that this Master Mold facility has been sitting disused for some time. And while the central core might have been off-line throughout that time, there would doubtless have been Sentinels in operation throughout, if only for automated defense systems like those we’ve just encountered. And absent any additional instructions, they’d have continued to carry out their functions. And, knowing what I do about their programming, Sentinels are equipped with the ability to repair themselves, as needed, using whatever resources are at hand; likewise, each is instilled with the instinct to adapt and improve whenever possible. Over the years, they’d have needed to repair themselves for any number of reasons, whether routine wear and tear, or environmental damage, or accidents, or what-have-you. And when they repaired themselves, with an ever-dwindling supply of resources and parts, the second imperative would have come to the fore, and naturally...”

  Hank paused, and glanced over at Doug, who was nodding in dawning understanding.

  “They would have evolved,” Doug said, a trace of wonderment in his tone. “Adapted to their environment, eliminated unnecessary design elements, introduced novel designs and features to see whether they improved their efficiency. Perhaps even reproduced, in a sense, experimenting by creating duplicates with varying characteristics.”

  “Exactly.” Hank sounded like a schoolteacher praising a star pupil.

  They were now approaching the wide opening of th
e factory itself, the space beyond the threshold dark and foreboding.

  “But an evolutionary process,” Doug went on, “suggests evolutionary niches. Designs adapting to perform specific tasks, adapted to specific environments.”

  “Yes,” Hank said, raising an eyebrow. “What of it?” They passed through the threshold, into the dark, cavernous space beyond.

  “Well, then what if the chicken Sentinels were just scavengers, or something else at the lower levels of the pecking order. What if there was a top predator, higher up the chain?”

  Just then, lights flared high above them. They looked up and saw what appeared to be a Sentinel’s helmet, lacking a face, perched atop eight immensely long, segmented legs. Where the helmet and the legs met, huge pincers clacked open and closed, like the mouth of some enormous animal.

  “Well,” Hank said, taking off his glasses and slipping them carefully into his shirt pocket. “There’s a fine contender for top predator, if ever I saw one.”

  “Ah, don’t go givin’ away any blue ribbons just yet,” Rogue said, and pointed toward the shadows.

  Another feral Sentinel, this one looking like a giant snake with arms, slithered toward them, undulating across the pitted concrete of the factory floor, the arms which jutted from beneath its Sentinel helmet on either side bristling with weaponry.

  “Fans,” Rogue said with a thin smile, “we just might have a horse race on our hands.”

  33

  The Blackbird skimmed over the waves for the last few miles, approaching from the west. By the time Scott nosed her forward, touching down for an amphibious landing on the far side of Julienne Cay, the fuselage had been gliding bare inches above the waves, more like a cigarette boat at high speed than a supersonic spy plane puttering along at a fraction of its top acceleration.

  Scott’s gamble was that the foliage of the atoll, and the gentle curve of its sandy hills, would hide them from the sight of the alien city, positioned as it was on the eastern side of Julienne Cay. That they were not surrounded by super-powered Exemplar troops on hover-platforms the moment they stepped out of the Blackbird and into the shallow surf at the shore’s edge suggested Scott’s gamble had paid off