Generation X - Genogoths

by Unknown Author

  “Monet,” she yelled, “are you sure you can survive this explosion?”

  “No,” said Monet, “and you?”

  “No,” she said.

  The doors loomed a few meters ahead. Paige covered her eyes with her forearm and flipped the switch an instant before impact.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Though the handcuffs restricted his movements, Jono used his fingers to explore the inhibitor collar they’d put on him to shut down his powers. He and Catfish had been thrown into the cell together with some haste. Judging from the recent rush of activity he’d observed, and now the lack of it, something big was going on out there. He could only hope it was bad for their captors.

  The collar was a Genosian model that he’d seen before, during one of Forge’s guest lectures back at Xavier’s school. Something of a bargain basement model, too. The electronic key lock was the sort of thing that Storm or Wolverine could have picked in a minute flat. Unfortunately, he wasn’t Storm or Wolverine, he was Jonothan Starsmore, and they hadn’t gotten to that lecture in school yet.

  He dropped his hands and looked at his cellmate. This was really the first time the two of them had been in close proximity and alone, but Jono couldn’t talk because of the collar, and Catfish just didn’t seem inclined. He cowered in the back comer of the little cell, clearly terrified and completely out of his element. From what they’d heard from Smokey Ashe, he’d never been away from the little town he’d been bom in. All he knew of the outside world came from video-tapes and satellite TV.

  This was a bloody poor introduction to the big, wonderful, wide.

  Wish you could hear me, mate.

  Catfish suddenly looked up in surprise. He slid closer. “Did—did you say somethin’?”

  Jono jumped up off the bunk and moved closer to Catfish. The young man jumped a little, but held his ground.

  Jono knew that his powers hasn’t been totally shut down, but neither Sharpe nor any of the others here seemed to be able to hear him. He hadn’t even bothered to try with Catfish. But maybe he was projecting just a little, and Catfish, for some reason, was sensitive enough to pick it up. Maybe his aquatic mutation somehow made him telepathically receptive. “Can you hear me, mate?”

  Catfish nodded. “You’re talking in my head. That never happened before.”

  “I’m a mutant, like you.”

  Catfish hung his head. “They keep saying that I’m a mutant, but I ain’t. Ain’t no such thing.”

  “You’re wrong there, friend. Mutants are people like us who are bom different. There are lots of us. I’d like for you to meet my mates from Xavier’s School some time.”

  Catfish looked at him with a mixture of suspicion and wonder. “Others? Like me? I thought I was the only one that God made like this.” But his eyes dropped. “But I won’t never meet them. Won’t never get out of here.”

  “Chin up, mate. My mates are outside with your mate Smokey and his crew. They’ll get us out of here.”

  There was a huge roar and the whole room rocked as though by an earthquake. The light flickered, and they could hear glass shattering somewhere outside in the hall.

  Jono looked over to find Catfish trying to climb under the bunk. “Whoa, whoa, calm down! I think that’s just our friends come calling. We’ll be out of here before you know it!” Catfish looked up at him hopefully. “Smokey is here?” There was a sudden rattling at the door. “What are you prattling about, mutant?” It was Sharpe, unlocking the cell door with a ring of keys. That immediately had Jono’s attention. He looked closely, and spotted a number of electronic keys like the one that would fit his collar, and others that might work on his cuffs. He also saw that Sharpe had a pistol in his hand. “You, frog boy, come out of there. I need a hostage to get safely past our attackers.”

  Jono stepped to the back of the cell, and pretended not to be interested in Sharpe. “Sharp is a wanker,” he said, as loudly as he could. Sharpe showed no sign of hearing him, although Catfish

  looked at him with a puzzled expression. “Catfish, do something to get this guy’s attention. I’m going to try and get his keys.” Catfish looked fearful, but he suddenly grabbed at the metal mesh wall of the cell and started wailing that he was afraid.

  Jono lunged forward, used his shoulder to knock Sharpe’s aim safely away from Catfish, then grabbed the keys.

  Sharpe recovered quickly, bringing the butt of the gun painfully down on Jono’s head. He pushed Jono back, spun and side-kicked him, sending him crashing into the far wall of the cell. But he still had the keys!

  Jono grabbed one of the electronic keys at random and fumbled it into the lock. If he gave it a little twist, it should either open, or not. He looked up and saw Sharpe, his left arm around Catfish’s neck, the pistol pushed against his temple, “Catfish, tell him that if I turn this key, I can blow his head off with a bio-blast.”

  'Catfish hesitated.

  “Tell him!”

  Catfish nervously parroted Jono’s words as his own.

  Sharpe laughed harshly. “If that’s the right key,” he said to Catfish, “and if he doesn’t manage to blow your head off before I do.” Then to Jono. “Put the keys down and slide them over to me. I’m only going to count to three. One—”

  He tried to tune out Sharpe, speaking over the top of him. “Catfish, he isn’t afraid of you because to him, you’re just a power, not a person, and he doesn’t see your power as a threat.” “Two—” '

  “But you’re a man, Catfish, tough country stock, a top woodsman and a crack shot, from what Smokey tells me.” “Three—”

  Jono took the key out of the lock and slowly lowered the ring to the cell floor. The gun drifted away from Catfish’s head. “You wouldn’t be afraid if you were back there instead of here, in this strange place. Make him afraid. Show him, Catfish. Show him what you’re made of!”

  The expression on Catfish’s face changed. His wide jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed. He took a deep breath.

  Catfish’s right elbow smashed back into Sharpe’s ribs, at the same time that his left hand pushed the gun up and away from his head. The gun went off and ricocheted off the back of the cell.

  Jono felt the bullet whiz past as he frantically shoved the key back in the lock and turned. Nothing.

  Catfish grabbed Sharpe’s gun arm, shoved it under his own arm, turned and twisted. Sharpe gasped, and the gun clattered to the floor.

  Jono tried another key. It turned with a click, followed by an electronic beep as the collar turned off. Jono felt the bioenergy furnace in the center of his body powering up. He struggled to remove the collar.

  Sharpe turned, saw the collar coming loose. His eyes were wide. For a fraction of a second, he eyed the gun sitting on the floor, then abandoned hope of recovering it.

  Jono wrenched the collar free, but Sharpe was already gone.

  Catfish stared at the hole where his face and chest used to be, surprised, but not horrified. “You’re strange,” he said. “Were you in HellraiserT

  Jono rubbed the bump on his head. “We’re all strange, mate. Help me up.”

  As the Genogoth commandos filed past them through the ruined gates of the Foxhole, Jubilee, Angelo, and Ev looked through the rubble for some sign of Monet and Paige. There were only small, almost unrecognizable bits of the Xabago left among the twisted metal, fallen rock, and hunks of shattered concrete. Ev suddenly slapped himself on the forehead. “What am I thinking? Let me see if I can tune in on their auras.”

  He turned slowly. “There!” He suddenly pointed to a huge pile of rubble at the side of the entrance. He trotted up and studied the truck-sized boulder that had fallen from the ceiling and was now on top of the pile. “Oh, man,” he said.

  The rock moved. They all scrambled back as the rock wobbled, slowly tilted, and rolled down the pile with a tremendous rumble. Monet emerged from the top of the pile, her costume, hair, and skin caked with dust. She paused, reached down, and pulled Paige from among the piled rocks.

  Paige
sat up, coughed, and waved weekly.

  “I hate,” said Monet, shaking her head to cast off some of the dust, “bad-hair days.”

  Recall, Chill and Pound came trotting up, followed closely by the cyber-hounds. Recall whooped when he saw Paige. Chill reached up and high-fived Monet. Only Pound wasn’t distracted. “We gotta find Jono fast,” he said, sending the cyber-hounds ahead to look for them.

  “I’ll guide you,” said Recall.

  Sharpe ran up the spiral stairs towards the anti-aircraft battery, but stopped half-way up. He swung open a service panel, climbed inside and closed it after him. The narrow passage behind was lit with small service lights at infrequent intervals, and'lined with conduits and pipes.

  The interior of Foxhole was divided into two roughly equal sections. He was at one edge of the section that held the labs, containment and holding cells, command center, and training areas. In the middle was a huge gallery, with the main entrance at the front end. The gallery was a garage for service vehicles, and allowed trucks with supplies and heavy equipment to be driven completely inside. Beyond was the section that housed living quarters, mess hall, mechanical services, air conditioning, and, of course, the hangar that offered his best chance of a clean get-away.

  By now, the gallery was full of enemy troops, and he’d been counting on a hostage to get him across. Now he’d have to rely on stealth and his superior knowledge of the installation. At the top of the gallery, huge overhead cranes moved along heavy beams. He should be able to crawl over one of them undetected, especially if he had a distraction. He pushed open another service panel, one connected to the computers in Namik’s office.

  Jono and Catfish stopped dead in the corridor, eyeing the cyber-hound that blocked their way. First they were lost, and now this. “Get behind me,” instructed Jono, “if I have to blast it in this confined space, things could get dicey.”

  Then the cyber-hound opened its nasty-looking jaws, and Pound's voice came out of it. “Follow me,” he said, and the cyber-hound turned and loped away.

  Jono looked at Catfish, shrugged. “Bloody, hell,” he said. Then they both trotted off after it.

  Black poked his way though the abandoned corridors of the Foxhole, reading the place like a book. Control center there, power conduits there, microwave wave-guides there. Optical data buss there. He listened to the chatter in his ear. The technicians had been cornered in the living quarters on the other side of the complex, but the former General Sharpe hadn’t been among them.

  They’d gone to this much trouble, this much risk, this much public exposure. He wasn’t about to let Sharpe get away with the data from this hellish project. Styx’s virus should take care of any computer files, but the Xavier children had been right. The information was too dangerous to survive, even in Sharpe’s head.

  If Sharpe tried to get out on foot or hide in the complex, his people would find him, but Black knew there was another way out. And if he were Sharpe, that’s where he'd be heading right now. But he wasn’t Sharpe, he was Black, and he had his own destination. He remembered where he’d seen the missile streaking away from its launcher earlier. He stopped in front of the spiral staircase. The surrounding wiring, conduits, and the location all fit. He climbed towards the top.

  Smokey Ashe led the troops that surrounded and sealed off the aircraft hangar. They’d already turned back most of Sharpe’s people, who were now holed up two floors below in the living quarters. Black had warned them to be expecting Sharpe as well, but if the bad-man should show up now, it would only be to be captured.

  Smokey walked past the big VTOL transport plane and the much smaller helicopter, wishing he could go down to see Catfish, who’d just been found alive and well.

  There was a loud, metallic bang. He jumped, but nobody was around except two of his own people, already alert for danger. Still, there was no way Sharpe could have gotten past the people stationed outside.

  Then there was a loud whirring of electric motors, and a sudden influx of light into the hangar. Smokey looked up. The hangar's outside doors were opening, and as he watched, hundreds of crab-like defense drones began to clamor over the edge and climb down the hangar’s exposed girders.

  Jono and Catfish followed the cyber-hound to the central gallery, where the rest of Gen X and the Musketeers were waiting. Everyone cheered when they appeared on an upper balcony and climbed down the stairs to join the others.

  One of the Genogoths outside began shouting, then another. The reunion was going to have to wait. The blasted crab robots were back, and they were storming through the front entrance of the base.

  Sharpe pulled back the ceiling tile and dropped down into the mechanic’s storage room next to the hangar. Outside he could hear the confusion that the defense robots were causing. He only hoped that they hadn't damaged the remaining helicopter.

  He slipped out though the door and dashed for the ’copter. The Genogoths ignored him because they were busy. The defense drones ignored him because they were programmed to. He opened the helicopter door and slipped inside, then punched in a random set of coordinates into the autopilot.

  Anywhere away from here would do just fine.

  Jono kept blasting robots, and more kept appearing to replace them. He shot a bio-blast and scragged another one. It felt good to cut loose, even if he wasn’t making much headway.

  “Jono!” It was Recall, who waved at him from a stair landing above. One of the robots appeared behind him, but Recall ducked under its lunging claws and vaulted over the railing. He landed heavily next to Jono, stood, and yelled close to his ear so he could be sure to be heard. “There’s a conduit up there,” he pointed, “just above the bank of yellow pipes.”

  Jono nodded. “I see it!”

  “Blast it,” said Recall. “Blast it good!”

  Jono complied, directing a sledgehammer beam of orange energy from his chest, taking out at least five meters of the conduit and leaving a sizable crater in the wall behind it. Suddenly all the robots froze.

  Recall grinned. “Some kind of central control circuit for these things. It’s amazing what you’ll find if you put your mind to it.”

  Smokey stood on top of a large, rolling toolbox hammering at a robot with a piece of pipe. He was starting to think about the Alamo when the robots suddenly stopped. It would have been .very quiet, if not for the roar of the helicopter lifting off through the now completely open doors.

  Black climbed into the seat of the missile control panel. As he’d expected, it was Soviet surplus, probably another excuse for the government to deny that they knew this place ever existed. Terrorists, they’d say, or super-villains, or perhaps even blame it on “evil” mutants.

  Well, it wouldn’t matter what they said, as long as this place’s secrets died with it. He activated the panel, and as the radar screen came to life, he immediately saw a target, outbound, perhaps two miles away. Fortunately, these missiles should have an effective range of over thirty-five miles.

  He 'fired one. Two. Hell, fire them all. The seven remaining missiles in the salvo streaked across the screen towards their target. One missed. The second one didn’t. Or the third. The blip on the screen flared and disappeared. There was nothing left for four through seven to hit.

  The kids had seen the fleeing helicopter fly over, heard Smokey on the radio saying that Sharpe was escaping. It was going too fast for Jono to take a shot at it.

  Monet looked at Ev. “Come on, baldie, let’s go bring him back!”

  The helicopter appeared briefly above the distant trees. A swarm of somethings shot across the sky with a crackling roar, leaving trails of fire and smoke. The helicopter exploded into tiny fragments.

  “Sharpe,” said Black’s voice in their ears, “has been terminated.”

  Paige stared up at the spreading cloud of black smoke in the sky. “Yeah, he was a creep,” she said, “but Black shot him down in cold blood.”

  The staff at Little Latveria wasn’t exactly thrilled to see Generation X and thei
r friends again, but as soon as Black started spreading money around, they weren’t exactly upset either. It didn’t hurt that the army of Genogoths didn’t come with them this time, just a few key players.

  Once again they were in the now-repaired Razorback suite, but this time it was just a staging area for people headed out in various directions.

  The great majority of the Genogoth army had begun to disperse in all directions the moment the Hound project had been shut down for good. The prisoners had gone with them. Smokey had assured the kids that none of the prisoners would be hurt, but they couldn’t be released to the authorities until the Genogoths knew just how much they knew. “Styx managed to rustle one of them memory gizmos before the base blew,” he said. “Could be, once he’s through figuring it out, ■eyen if they remember something, they won’t remember nothing.”

  It was time for Smokey and Catfish to leave. Catfish said his reluctant farewells, especially with Jono, and promised to come visit the school, but only if he could get Smokey to come with him.

  “That’ll happen when hell freezes over,” said Angelo, once they were out of earshot.

  “You never know,” said Paige. “Times, they are a changing.” Next, it was time for the Musketeers to leave. That was the hardest goodbye. They’d barely gotten their friends back safe and well, and already they were going their separate ways.

  “I’ve got to get back to Chicago,” said Recall, chuckling, “before Walt Norman gets our show canceled. You know, the hardest part of this will be going back on the air and not being able to talk about any of this.”

  Paige looked at Chill and Pound. “What about you two? Back to Pacific U?”

  Pound shook his head. “Well, long enough to pick up our stuff, then we’re headed for Fontane College, outside Boston. They’ve rebuilt the original M.O.N.S.T.E.R. house there, and