“Oh Lord,” Warren said as he switched piloting controls to his own station. He got the ship under his control, at least for a moment, then he sounded the only alarm he had, his own voice.
“Corsair! Get your ass up here!” he shouted. “Ch’od’s out and we’re in major league trouble here!”
In seconds, Corsair had replaced Ch’od in the pilot’s seat. Turbulence was rocking the Starjammer hard. The only thing Warren could compare it to was flying a twin engine plane in a massive thunderstorm. Even if the heat shields held, he wasn’t at all sure that the Starjammer could take much more of the turbulence without shattering into a million pieces.
“Sitrep,” Corsair demanded.
“We’re in trouble,” Archangel said simply. “Hull integrity is in question. Life support’s being drained to support the heat shields, which are burning at 117 percent of capacity. They’ve gotta be melting, Corsair. I don’t think we’re going to make it.”
* * *
“WE’VE got a problem,” Jean said quietly, her voice trembling with the shuddering of the ship. “I can sense Corsair and Warren’s distress even without trying to read it. I don’t think we’re going to make it, Scott.”
Scott Summers was the only man she had ever really loved, the one part of her life she could literally not live without. Jean watched his eyes, hidden behind the ruby quartz lenses of his visor. She was looking for something to hang on to, some hope or idea or solution that would bring them out of this okay.
There was love there, no question. Undying and complete devotion the likes of which she knew most women searched for their entire lives but never found. She was fortunate in that, had always been fortunate. When most women might have gone for the playboy that Warren Worthington was in their first days at Xavier’s School, Jean wanted Scott. When most women might have fallen for the danger that seeped from Logan’s every pore when the second wave of X-Men came along, Jean wanted Scott.
He was strong, cute, tall, smart, sure enough. But he was never the strongest, the cutest, the tallest, or the smartest. He was quiet, with a fair to middling sense of humor and a total lack of confidence where girls were concerned. But he was, by unanimous unspoken consent, the heart of the X-Men. He was, second only to Professor Xavier, the team’s leader and its conscience. And in his eyes, Jean saw that he had silently become as devoted to her as he was to Xavier’s dream. She loved him then, at that very moment. For of all of them, in his way, he was the most passionate.
Now she searched those eyes again for a vision of the future. In them she found everything that had always been there, everything they meant to each other. But there was one thing in particular she sought: hope. At first she didn’t see it, then Scott squeezed her hands tightly in his own, and she heard his voice, the voice of his heart, speaking in her mind.
Don’t be afraid, Jean. We’re going to be okay.
There was no lying to a telepath. Jean knew Scott really believed they would be okay, that they would live through this. Silently, she struggled to believe him.
* * *
“HULL integrity is failing, Corsair!” Archangel shouted. “Heat shields at 123 percent capacity and barely holding. We’ve got about forty-five seconds until life support shuts down.”
The vibrations of the ship rattled his teeth in his skull so hard Warren thought he might actually have chipped a couple of them. He looked over at Corsair, whose entire body was locked in combat with the Starjammer’s throttle, trying to keep the ship on course without putting her into a nosedive out of which they could never recover.
“Corsair!” Warren shouted. “If we can’t slow this ship down we’ve got less than two minutes to live!”
There it was. He’d said it. And now that the words had come out of his mouth, Archangel realized that they were true and there was not a single thing within his power to change it. He only wished that he was in the cabin now with the others, that he could say goodbye to his friends, that he’d shared a proper goodbye with Bobby and Hank before leaving Earth. Sadly, he knew there were no last wishes when the reaper came to call. The best they could hope for was …
“Take the stick!” Corsair shouted. “Warren, take the goddamn stick!”
Suddenly the throttle came alive in his hands and he was piloting the Starjammer yet again. He pulled back on it as hard as he could and strained every muscle in his body, feeling once more the pain in his neck, trying to keep it straight on course.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” he screamed.
“I think I’ve figured out how to slow us down,” Corsair yelled as he dropped down to the deck and began fiddling with the exposed wiring of the console.
“Whatever you’re doing, do it fast,” Archangel responded. “We’ve got about ninety seconds here before we lose life support or the heat shields melt, one or the other.”
For a moment, the ship seemed to take on a life of its own, pulling down and away from him like a dog trying to escape its leash. Warren held on tight, then looked back to where sparks were flying as Corsair worked feverishly.
“Well?” he asked. “What exactly are you doing?”
“I thought she was delirious,” Corsair called up to him. “But Hepzibah said something about the VTOL, the vertical takeoff and landing program. It was knocked out with the navigational program, but I’m bypassing that right now.”
Sparks flew, landing on Corsair’s arms. He cursed, but kept working.
“The program the computer goes through includes retro thrusters that reroute energy from the hyperburners to the front of the ship. It’s supposed to stop the Starjammer in midair so the VTOL can take effect, lowering us to the ground,” Corsair explained.
Archangel was stumped.
“I thought we couldn’t cut power to slow down or the engines might flare out and drop us to Earth like a stone?” he said, shaking along with the ship as he tried with all his might to keep the ship on course.
“We can’t, but this doesn’t cut the power,” Corsair explained, cursing several more times as sparks landed on his exposed flesh. “The engines are firing at maximum, but a portion of the power is diverted in the opposite direction.”
“Can you do it?” Archangel asked.
“Done!” Corsair announced and nearly jumped into the pilot’s seat once more. “Now all we have to worry about is whether or not the hull can take the pressure. It’s going to be like hitting a brick wall.”
“Hey, X-Men!” Warren cried back to the cabin. “Hang on, back there! The ride’s about to get a whole lot worse!” Turning back to Corsair, he asked, “Can I give you back the stick now?”
“Nope,” Corsair responded, punching up some data on the command control display. “You’re going to have to pilot us until we’re into blue skies, Warren. The only way we’re going to be able to do this is if I turn the VTOL retros on and off and on and off in sequence, timed perfectly, otherwise we’ll be torn apart for sure.”
Archangel was silent.
“Can I count on you, ’Angel?” Corsair asked. “Come on, now. We’re going to die here!”
“Do it,” Warren said.
“Hang on,” Corsair whispered, and flipped a toggle switch on the console.
Archangel shouted in agony as his head whipped forward once again, this time with much more force. He felt the harness cutting into his flesh and all the air rushed from his body. The hull of the Starjammer shrieked with the pressure and for a moment he pictured it simply shattering to pieces and all of its passengers being blown out into space.
Corsair was so far forward in Ch’od’s harness that he was nearly pinned to the console. He flipped the toggle switch again and they were slammed back into their seats so hard that Archangel felt his wings embed themselves in the soft leathery material.
“Again!” Corsair shouted, and turned on the retros.
They were all thrown forward once more as the ship fought its own momentum. But this time wasn’t quite as traumatic. Half a dozen times Corsair fired
the retros, and each time the ship slowed even more.
“Life support systems at 70 percent, heat shields suffering only 46 percent capacity,” Archangel happily reported. “Corsair, I think you did it. I think we’re going to be okay.”
“Huh,” Corsair grunted in response. “Hepzibah did it, saved us all, and she doesn’t even know it.”
“We’re all right!” Warren shouted, and he could hear the others cheering in the cabin.
Then the Starjammer broke through a layer of clouds into blue sky.
The X-Men were home.
FIFTEEN
“WHAT about that deli?” Lamarre asked.
Gabriela rolled her eyes.
“What’s the matter with you, Lamarre?” she asked. “Most of the stuff in there is fresh, or already cooked. What’s it gonna last, a few days maybe? Let somebody else worry about tonight’s dinner, we’re looking for non-perishables, long-term stuff. Cans, boxes, frozen foods if we can get that damn cooler working. What we don’t need is sushi and Caesar salad!”
“Hey Gabi, just chill okay? We’re all doing the best we can under the circumstances,” Michael said, and the entire hunting party fell into silence.
Magneto had ordered humans to either bow to the new order or evacuate the city. For Gabriela Frigerio and her brother Michael, neither option had been acceptable. So they had created a third. They had stuffed what they could of their vital belongings and some food from the kitchenette in Michael’s apartment, and gone underground. Via the subway, they had descended into a new world where they could set up a resistance to Magneto’s rule.
It wasn’t long before they realized that they weren’t the only humans either brave or foolish enough to flout the will of the new “emperor.” A short Puerto Rican man they all called Miguelito had become their de facto leader. He and Lamarre had been two of the first people Gabi and Michael had run into. Though their instincts told them to run, Gabriela had insisted they work together. That was the only way they had a chance of making any real stand against the mutant onslaught.
There were well over one hundred of them now. They’d split up into groups and gone above ground to gather what supplies they could find. Now was the best time, before the new regime was firmly entrenched, before the humans who had stayed had the courage enough to return to their businesses. Gabriela wasn’t comfortable with looting, but at least they were looting for a reason, unlike the anarchist idiots they had already seen too much of.
It was a gorgeous day, by Manhattan standards, but its beauty was marred not only by the sudden outbreak of genetic war, but by the smashed shop windows, the burning buildings, and the shattered glass, garbage, abandoned cars, and abandoned lives that littered the streets.
Gabriela’ s group consisted of herself, her brother Michael, Lamarre, and a recently married couple named Steve and Joyce, who mostly kept to themselves. They’d been sent on a food run, maybe the most important job they’d ever undertake. Gabi wasn’t about to let them screw it up.
“Look,” she said. “There’s a little market a few blocks from here. Let’s hit that, then if we get the cooler working, we’ll come back topside and hit a steak house or something, take all the frozen meat back. How’s that sound?”
Everyone seemed to agree that was a sound plan, even Lamarre, whom Gabriela had taken an instant dislike to when they had first met. He seemed to want to turn everything into a military exercise out of one bad movie or another. The man had obviously watched way too much cable in his life. He had a couch potato body, which was too bad because Gabi thought he had a handsome face. He was no Denzel, but then, who was?
“Hey, Gabi, check this out,” Michael said, overexcited about something, as usual. He was a handsome guy, her brother. Auburn hair and hazel eyes, chiseled features. And he was her twin. Strange thing was, though she was happy to think of him as handsome, she would never allow that she herself was equally attractive. “Poor self image,” he’d always tell her. She’d retort that it was easy to see how her esteem had dropped so low when the only man who ever told her she was pretty with any amount of sincerity was her brother.
He never had an answer for that, except “Move out of Manhattan.” As if you couldn’t have a real life or real relationship in the city. Maybe he’d been right. But it looked like it was going to be too late to find out.
“What is it?” she asked, her attitude tempered by her obvious fondness for her brother.
“It’s a guy,” Michael said. “Hurt. Maybe dead.”
Gabriela picked up her pace, and the others did so as well. They reached the spot where Michael stood, and on the other side of a badly banged up Cutlass, they saw him.
He was young, that’s the first thing that Gabriela noticed. Not a kid, but young just the same. Early twenties at most. Maybe younger, maybe younger than she was even. He had brown hair, and through the smear of blood on his cheek and forehead, she thought he might actually be pretty good looking.
And he sure wasn’t dead. Gabi had noticed right away that his chest was rising and falling, that he was breathing. It was just like Michael to overdramatize. But then, in their current situation, Gabriela had to wonder if it was possible to be too dramatic.
The guy lay on the ground in a large pool of water. In fact, the whole street seemed dotted with puddles and, in the distance, she thought she could see some kind of ice sculpture. He wore a very tight fitting uniform of light and dark blue, and she couldn’t help but notice what good physical condition he was in. Beyond that, she wondered what the uniform meant, if it was some military thing, if he was part of a team sent in to reclaim the island for America.
“What’s he wearing?” she asked.
“Some kind of uniform,” Joyce said, and she was surprised that the other woman in their group had spoken at all.
“I can see that,” Gabi responded, somewhat testily. “But what is it?”
“You’re all fools,” Lamarre said, pushing past them to stand by the injured man. “You don’t recognize that insignia?”
He pointed at the unconscious man’s belt, where a black ‘X’ on a field of red was affixed. Then Lamarre did something that astonished Gabi. He pulled a pistol from a holster under his arm and aimed the gun at the injured man’s head.
“Lamarre, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
Lamarre looked at her, then back at the man on the pavement, and Gabriela thought he was deciding whether to explain himself before shooting the poor man. Finally, Lamarre looked up again.
“He’s a mutie,” Lamarre sneered. “One of the X-Men. That’s what that thing on his belt stands for, X-Men.”
Lamarre knelt and touched his hand to the puddle of water around the prone man, and pulled his fingers back quickly.
“It’s gotta be near on ninety,” Lamarre said, standing up again. “That water’s cold still. This has gotta be Iceman.”
He smiled at her, and Gabriela felt a chill in her bones.
“We finally bagged one,” Lamarre said with perverse glee. “One of Magneto’s mutie crew. An’ I’d say it’s time to ice the Iceman.”
He pointed the pistol at Iceman’s face. Part of Gabriela wanted to turn away, to hide from the violence, from the reality that had reared up around them. But another part of her knew that the only solution, the only way to survive in that new world, was to act. She stepped forward and batted Lamarre’s hand away.
“Girl, what the hell you think you …” he started, but she got up in his face, waving a finger at him.
“No killing!” she said. “I mean that, Lamarre. That’s not what we’re here for. If it’s us or them, fine, but this guy needs help more than we do right now. You want to leave him here, fine, but we don’t kill him. We’ve got no way of knowing if he’s who you say or not, nothing but your opinion. And I’m not going to be accomplice to some murder just because you’ve seen Red Dawn one too many times.”
“You’re starting to get on my nerves,” Lamarre said in a low, angry voice.
“Good, then we’re even,” Gabi snapped, unwilling to be frightened off. “Now, let’s take a vote on what to do with your Iceman, here. Killing isn’t an option. Then do we leave him or bring him back and let Miguelito decide what’s to be done.”
“Let’s bring him back to Miguelito,” Lamarre said happily. “He’s only going to tell me to kill the mutie anyway.”
“I think we should leave him,” Steve said. “If he’s a mutant, all we’ll be doing is bringing them right into our headquarters. It’s suicide.”
“There are a hundred of us, Steve,” Joyce said. “And what if he’s really injured? He could die because of us. I don’t want to live like that.”
“I agree,” Michael said. “Let’s take him back to the tunnels.”
“Do it then,” Gabi said. “Who gets to carry him?” “I’ll take him,” Michael said. “He doesn’t look too heavy.”
And, apparently, he was not. Michael, who tipped the scales at more than two hundred twenty pounds and was over six feet tall, lifted the smaller man, mutant, whatever he was, over his shoulder with relative ease.
“Steve, Joyce, you two hit that market and then rendezvous with us,” Gabriela said. “We’ll see what’s to be done about this Iceman character.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Lamarre said disparagingly as she fell into step with her brother. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Me too.”
* * *
IT was already mid-morning, and despite the psychic barriers he had placed in his own mind, Charles Xavier could not shut out the overwhelming sense of imminent catastrophe that enveloped all of Exchange Place. Whatever was going to happen, the gathered civilians, media, and military all believed it would happen today. There was an all-encompassing feeling of dread, as if the thousands of people crowded into the area were collectively holding their breath.
It might have been calm before the storm, Xavier thought grimly, but the sky became awfully dark. All of which was little more than metaphor. The sun was beating hot upon the pavement and the people, its heat only slightly diminished by the light breeze off the Hudson River. It should have been a glorious day, but it was devoid of pleasure.
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