“I think I see where this is going, Mr. President,” Val said, shaking her head and sitting up straight in her seat. “Before you continue, if you don’t mind, I have a few suggestions of my own.”
The President raised his eyebrows at her interruption, but lifted his hand to urge her on. “By all means,” he said.
“Impose a curfew if you like, sir, if you feel it might have some effect,” she began. “But I don’t think any mutant aligned with Magneto would pay any attention to your instructions. They see him as their lord and master, their only authority.
“I do have a number of suggestions regarding the tracking and capture of Magneto, the Acolytes, and the missing Sentinels,” she said, “but there is one suggestion that eclipses them all.”
“And that is?” the Director asked.
“Don’t let Gyrich give the orders.”
SIXTEEN
THE hallway was close quarters for battle, but the X-Men and the Starjammers made do. Rogue had point, with Cyclops and Corsair right behind her. Cyclops was pumped, exhilarated in a way he had not experienced for quite some time. They were in grave danger, that could not be denied, particularly with the risky escape they had been forced to attempt. But Scott was confident they would make it.
As he ran, shoulder to shoulder with his father, he sensed an electric charge between them. They moved as one, Christopher Summers and his son, Scott. They were a force to be reckoned with. Despite the gravity of their situation, Cyclops savored the moment. In his life, there had been far too few of them.
The sentries responsible for security on the prison level, and the soldiers who had come down from upper floors, had not presented much of a challenge—it had taken less than half a minute to overcome their resistance outside the cell where he and his father had been kept captive. Deathbird’s personal guard and most of her soldiers were involved in repelling the Kree uprising that was being staged in the Great Hall.
“Looks like smooth sailing from here,” Corsair grinned at his side.
“Dreams are for dreamers, Dad,” Cyclops replied. “We’ve still got to face the Imperial Guard.”
“You’re far too serious, Scott,” his father said, shaking his head. “You told us already that the Guard wasn’t fighting full strength when they came after the X-Men.”
“That was before we raised the stakes,” Cyclops answered. “Gladiator and the others know the X-Men only showed up here to bail you out. But as far as they’re concerned, you, Hepzibah, and Candide belong in here. They’re not going to just let us go.”
“Not need to let us go, they,” Hepzibah hissed behind them. “When to leave, Starjammers want, hold us back nothing can!”
“I wish I felt your confidence, Hepzibah,” Rogue said from the point position. “But the Guard knows little Miss Candide is really a black marketeer working with the Kree rebels. That makes her a legitimate political prisoner.”
“I’d choose your words more carefully, girl,” Corsair grunted. “Nothing about what the Shi’ar have done here on Hala is legitimate, especially putting Deathbird in the driver’s seat!”
Rogue cast a glance back at Cyclops and Corsair, then continued ahead without another word. Scott was glad she didn’t respond. Rogue had dealt with more volatile personalities than Corsair’s many times, and knew better than to let such bitterness offend her. Still, Scott felt something needed to be said.
“You knew she didn’t mean it like that,” he told his father. “Why were you so harsh with her?”
Corsair raised his head, his jaw thrust out in a contemplative look that Cyclops recognized from his own, personal repertoire.
“This godforsaken planet is getting to me, Scott,” the leader of the Starjammers said, finally. “We backed Lilandra’s play many times, been part of the Shi’ar’s galactic games when, just maybe, we should have been paying closer attention. I’ve got to wonder, after all that’s happened, if we were really on the side of the angels all those times, or just helping to make hell a little hotter for a bunch of other grunts like us.”
“Intergalactic war and diplomacy are a lot bigger than we are, Dad,” Cyclops replied. “If things haven’t worked out the way we expected, it’s because not everyone defines nobility and honor the same way, or even cares to define it to begin with. You’ve always been on the side of the angels.”
Corsair cast a sidelong glance at Cyclops, then slowly shook his head.
“That’s a good son talking about his old man, Scott,” he said. “Doesn’t mean it’s true. But I hope to hell it is.”
“Cyclops!” Rogue shouted.
Scott looked up to see that she was flying back down the hall toward them, an urgent expression on her face. Past her, he saw that the hallway ended in a T-junction, with only left or right as options.
“More’a Deathbird’s shock troops up ahead!” she said. “We can go through them, but we ain’t makin’ any upward progress.”
“God help Ch’od if he gets to the dome of the building before we do,” Corsair said, echoing Rogue’s concern. There was a sort of apology in his tone, and Rogue nodded, almost imperceptibly, in acknowledgment and acceptance of this.
“We go through them,” Cyclops answered. “But we’ve got to find stairs, or an outer wall, and I mean now!”
“Scott, wait!” Jean said, coming up past Gambit and Hepzibah.
“These new troops aren’t alone,” she said. “The Guard is with them. Not all of them, but at the very least Oracle and Gladiator, maybe Starbolt as well, though it’s hard to read him from here.”
Cyclops glanced quickly back to the T-junction ahead.
“It’s not a problem, Scott,” Corsair said. “Only three of them against nine of us. No contest.”
It had taken Scott a long time to resolve his conflicted feelings about his father. For a long time, he was angry that Corsair had never tried to find him and his brother Alex, though he knew that was irrational given the distance to Earth and the fact that their father had thought them dead. Then he had struggled with the seemingly free-spirited life Corsair led as an interstellar pirate. But he’d gotten over all of that. Now he was merely happy that his father still lived. And he hoped that Chris Summers was proud of his oldest boy.
That boy that lived inside him screamed in terror at the decision that Cyclops was in the process of making. He had to fight, and valiantly, so that his father would be proud of his skill and courage. But Scott had not been made leader of the X-Men without reason. There wasn’t a warrior among them who was cooler under fire. And as far as he was concerned, there was only one logical course of action. No matter what his father thought.
“In these close quarters, anything can happen,” he said. “And if we slip up, even a little, and if he wanted to, Gladiator could kill us all without help from anyone.”
Cyclops turned to face his extended crew.
“All of you, listen up,” he snapped. “We’re in full retreat. Forget the Guard. From this moment on, we concentrate on avoiding confrontation, and making it to the roof with our lives. Fan out and find us an egress from this hotspot. Now!”
They moved instantly, even Candide and the Starjammers. Even his father. The Starjammers had a tendency to fly by the seat of their pants. Cyclops believed that the others saw his Dad’s willingness to defer to him in such dire straits, and acted in kind. There was no room for maverick decision-making in this scenario, he knew. It was obvious to him that they all did.
They ran, full steam, back the way they had come. All of them pounded on the walls to the left or right as they ran, hoping to find some kind of passageway they might have missed. It seemed useless. Any moment, the Imperial Guard would arrive, and they would never make it to the dome before Ch’od arrived. Cyclops wasn’t willing to accept that fate.
“Stop!” he screamed. “We’ve only got one option now! Up!”
He tilted back his head and let loose with a full power blast of destructive force. His optic beams vaporized the ceiling above them. R
ogue followed his lead, shattering a huge section next to the hole he had made. Metal and marble tumbled down into the hall.
“Go, go, go!” he ordered, even as Warren, Jean, and Rogue helped the rest of the group through the hole in the ceiling.
In seconds, they stood in a darkened foyer of marble and wood. Dim light emanated from an archway to one side, which appeared to be the entrance to a wide stairwell.
“Dis look maybe like its Deathbird’s private passage,” Gambit observed. “Maybe de lady like to sneak down an’ look at her prisoners in de middle of de night?”
“Who cares what it is?” Candide snapped. “It leads up.”
“Mine heart doth cringe at the call to retreat,” Raza said. “Yet whither go the Starjammers, so there must I also go. Lead on, Cyclops.”
Scott was way ahead of them all. In seconds, they were pounding up the wide, winding, marble staircase. The dim light they had seen was filtering in through heavy glass windows set deep in the wall at intervals each time they circled round to the outer wall. Though it was night outside, the city and the stars shone brightly enough so that they could see the steps at least. The red glow of Scott’s ruby quartz visor led the way like a torch.
There was shouting far below, and Cyclops knew Gladiator and the Imperial Guard were on to them. They would already be in pursuit. He could only hope that, though Oracle could signal the other Guards wherever they might be, she would have no idea what the winding stairway was or where it might lead.
Then the sounds from below were joined by the sounds of battle from above. The Great Hall was close by, though Scott knew they had to be approaching it from the end opposite where Jean and the others had first infiltrated the building. The stairs wound around twice more, and there it was, stretched out before them behind a gossamer curtain of some unknown substance which allowed them to view the entire scene. Cyclops assumed that, from the other side, the curtain or gate must be opaque.
It was an ugly scene. With reinforcements and Titan and Warstar, Deathbird’s forces were routing the Kree rebels. It was going badly for them. Even as they watched, Warstar cut down a pair of blue-skinned Kree soldiers, one male and one female, who lay together in death the way they ought to have lain together in life.
The Kree had been one of the most feared, warmongering races in the universe before the Shi’ar defeated them. They were proud and vicious, but this time, their rebellion was going to fail. It was horrific. It was war. But as much as he wished the X-Men could right the wrongs, erase the atrocities, that had taken place and were still taking place, there on Hala, Cyclops knew the X-Men could not win a war with the Shi’ar Empire. Nor was it their place to do so. But no matter the logic, it was one of the hardest commands he had ever given.
“Keep moving,” he said, and turned back to the stairs.
“No!” Candide shouted. She leveled her stolen blaster at the panoramic curtain, and obliterated it.
“There!” Deathbird screeched from somewhere above. “The prisoners have escaped. Destroy them all!”
“X-Men!” Gladiator shouted from the stairwell beneath them. “Surrender or we will be forced to attack!”
“So much for dat whole retreat business, eh?” Gambit said with a wry grin.
All eyes were on Cyclops as he looked around, finally locking on Archangel’s blue-tinted features. Warren raised his right eyebrow, his whole face dedicated to the question, “What now?” that he had asked so many times without ever speaking the words.
“Let’s cover the Kree for their evac,” he decided. “Good,” Warren said, and shook his head in disbelief before taking to the air in the Great Hall.
He headed straight for Deathbird.
* * *
HIS rows of razor sharp teeth clamped tightly together, Ch’od piloted the cloaked Starjammer through the maze of Shi’ar battle cruisers and vessels co-opted from other planetary governments within the Shi’ar Empire. It was more than a challenge, more than simply running a gauntlet. It was foolhardy, near suicidal.
Each ship in the Shi’ar armada that hung in orbit around Hala was equipped with the most advanced technology in the galaxy. It was a miracle the sensitive equipment had not picked up the Starjammer’s cloaking signal yet. Even worse, if Ch’od piloted too close to one of the ships, he would set off proximity sensors that no cloaking system, no matter how advanced, could deceive.
A slick sheen of moisture began to build up on his scaly flesh. Not because of the spatial labyrinth he was currently flying, but because of what was to come. So far, he’d had it easy. Once he entered Hala’s atmosphere, things would be different. The moment the Starjammer burned through the planet’s cloud cover, he’d be visible to every sensor on the surface of the planet. De-cloaked. Or, as Corsair would have put it, screwed.
The Starjammer might as well be a brightly painted target. Any sane pilot, any sane pirate, would turn tail and run. But the Starjammers were the only family Ch’od had. There was no way he was leaving Hala without them.
On the other hand, he really didn’t relish the thought of dying. He had a plan, of course. He was too good a pilot not to have a plan. It was dangerous, almost ridiculously so. If anyone had suggested to him even days earlier that he might attempt such a feat, he would have laughed heartily and honestly. But he would rather take his chances with his own skills, take his life into his own hands, than offer himself up as target practice for ground-to-air gunners and armada captains all bucking for a promotion.
Even as Ch’od considered again the lunacy of his plan, the Starjammer slipped between two battle cruisers and into open space just shy of the high, thin layer of clouds that marked Hala’s outer atmosphere.
“It really ought to work,” Ch’od said aloud.
There was a loud chittering noise behind him, and he allowed himself a moment to turn and face his longtime companion, Cr+eeee. The small, mammalian creature had his long tail straight up in distress. His head turned slightly, and he brought one foot up to itch the gentle curve of his proboscis. Cr+eeee stared at him, still chittering in his own, unintelligible language. There was no mistaking his message. Cr+eeee thought that his old friend had gone entirely mad.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” Ch’od responded, though he really could not understand Cr+eeee’s words. “I wish you were not with me now. In that way, I could make this decision only for myself, and not endanger you as well. Sadly, there is no other choice for me. I hope you understand.”
Cr+eeee’s eyes closed and he nodded, slowly, in resignation.
Ch’od turned back to the view of Hala that presented itself before him.
“It really ought to work,” he said again, and he knew it was true. He had calculated to the most radical decimal the location of the Capitol Building. The hyper drive was burning hot, but the warp engines were offline. By firing the hyperburners, he ought to be able to both draw and divert attention. Planetary sensors would pick him up immediately, but they would see the trace energies of the hyperdrive kicked up to full thrust, and automatically assume the ship was gone.
That should give him at least one full minute before they realized the Starjammer was still within the planet’s atmosphere. Their disbelief would carry him for several more minutes, and even after that, it would take a few minutes to actually find him.
It should work. With the warp engines down, he’d be on hyperburn, but never make the jump. The trick was going to be pulling the Starjammer out of hyperburn before it hit the surface of the planet, with gravity working against him. If he couldn’t do that, and he wasn’t at all sure that he could, then the Starjammer would be obliterated, and he along with it. But if he didn’t go in after them, the others were as good as dead. Ch’od preferred death to the knowledge that he had abandoned his friends, his family.
The fins on his head and forearms folded back against his scales, an instinctive reaction to danger. He had not prayed since he was a child, but he said a silent prayer to the gods of Timor, his home planet. The fingers of his
right hand found the control panel and he snapped a glowing yellow switch, the safety on the hyperdrive, which now lit up red. Beneath it was a green button that would kick the Starjammer into hyperburn.
Ch’od checked his coordinates one, final time.
“It should work,” he told himself again.
Then he hit the button.
* * *
ABOVE the massive doors to the Great Hall was a huge octagonal window in a swirling spider web of frame. Deathbird rose above the melee, holding one of the two-and-a-half-foot javelin-quills that she was so expert at wielding. Her wings were attached to her wrists, forcing her to use her arms in flight. Yet she had so mastered the art of it that she was able to hurl the javelin, spin into a dive and then glide back to her previous height. And her weapon found its mark.
A Kree warrior let loose her final battle cry, and Archangel winced at the keening wail that followed.
Deathbird wore twin armbands which housed eight-inch quills that, once removed, telescoped to four times that length. Her talons could score steel, and Warren didn’t want to even think about what they might do to human flesh. In strength and endurance, she was his superior by far. But Archangel didn’t think she was much faster than he was.
It didn’t matter, though. None of it. If they were going to get off Hala, somebody had to take Deathbird down. With Rogue and Gladiator a natural match-up, that left Deathbird for him.
Archangel was terrified. Not of Deathbird, despite her savagery and greater power. No, Warren Worthington was afraid of himself. When his natural, mutant wings had been destroyed, and Apocalypse had given him bio-organic replacements, had significantly changed him, it was not the act of a Samaritan. Apocalypse had been creating an engine of death, a killing machine. Warren had struggled for a long time to be certain he would never become what Apocalypse had envisioned.
But sometimes he felt that bloodlust surge to the surface of his mind. More often than not, he felt the phantom twitch of muscles he no longer had, muscles that were now bio-organic steel. That twitch sent paralyzing wing-knives flying at the merest whim, even at a subconscious order. Controlling them took an intense concentration that he had not dared reveal to the other X-Men.
Marvel Classic Novels--X-Men Page 24