“All right, listen,” Corsair said. “You guys are going to have to bail out over Jersey City. I’m afraid you won’t be getting any help from the Starjammers on this one. I’m going to get this ship back to Westchester and nursemaid my crew back to health, and maybe then we can stitch her together. I’m sorry, Scott. I wish I could be there to back you up.”
“Your team needs you, Dad,” Scott said warmly.
There was a moment of silence, as the two men reflected on their relationship, which was almost defined by long-term separation and individual effort. Still, they were alike in many ways. Often that similarity brought them into conflict, yet just as often it was a reason to rejoice.
“Whoa,” Corsair said, as an unwelcome thought entered his mind. “You’re so worried about protecting Charles Xavier’s secrets, what about explaining how the X-Men came to know of the situation in the first place, and how this ship contacted Val Cooper so she could give the word not to blow us out of the sky?”
Xavier and the X-Men’s Jean Grey were both telepaths. The communication had been mind to mind, but that would be difficult to explain to the proper authorities without revealing that Xavier was a mutant, which was, to Corsair’s way of thinking, one of the best kept secrets on Earth.
“Hey,” Scott said with a shrug, “the army doesn’t know our radio doesn’t work. I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Corsair smiled. It really was as simple as that. He needn’t have been worried. But Scott was his son, after all. Worrying was a parent’s job.
“Jersey City coming up,” he said, after a glance out of the cockpit. “Better get your team ready to go.”
Corsair took another look at Scott. It occurred to him that what was happening in Manhattan might really be the end. The odds were stacked incredibly high against the X-Men. It was conceivable that they might lose.
On the other hand, the odds seemed never to be in the X-Men’s favor. It was something else the team shared with the Starjammers, other than the fact that both were led by a man named Summers. No, Corsair wasn’t going to think about losing Scott.
During another moment of awkward silence, the two men, who had never been comfortable with expressions of affection, embraced warmly.
“You be careful,” Corsair said. “Otherwise, who’s gonna pull my butt out of the fire next time someone wants to execute me?”
“You’re right,” Scott answered. “Nobody else would bother. I guess I’ve got to survive this thing.”
The two men smiled and in that moment, Corsair finally saw the resemblance others had always noticed between himself and his son. It made him proud.
* * *
“LET’S go, people,” Cyclops snapped as he entered the main cabin. “ETA in about three minutes. Let’s not tax this old ship any more than is necessary.”
The years had given the X-Men an instinctive rhythm of teamwork. In almost any combination, they moved together like a family of aerialists, there to catch one another in a pinch, always a heartbeat away from that fatal fall. This particular combination had functioned well, Cyclops felt. He had worked with Jean Grey and Warren Worthington III since the first days of the X-Men. With Rogue and Gambit added to the mix, they had made a formidable team.
Scott only hoped they were up to the task ahead of them. The odds were, to say the least, daunting.
You’re worried, Jean’s telepathic “voice” said, inside Scott’s mind. That disturbs me.
“I’m always worried,” he said aloud.
She walked across the cabin toward him, her smile a comfort as always. She wore the blue-and-gold uniform she had recently adopted, and it fit her snugly, flattering her. Even as the thought crossed his mind, Jean’s smile widened. They shared a psychic rapport that put them in almost constant telepathic contact. Nothing was hidden between them. Not even the momentary whimsy that reminded him how long it had been since they’d had time alone together.
“Like an old married couple, aren’t we?” Jean asked.
“I don’t know about ‘old’,” Scott responded, granting her a rare smile. “But I get your point, and you’re right. Something always comes up, doesn’t it?”
“Let’s make each other a promise,” Jean said softly, sliding her arms around him and pulling him to her. “If we get out of this one with our skins, it’s time for a long vacation.”
“Hawaii?” he asked.
“Just what I was thinking,” she said.
“Funny how I knew that.”
Jean gave him a quick kiss, and they turned to face the rest of the team. Warren’s biometallic wings, which earned him the codename Archangel, spread out behind him. His uniform had been damaged during their rescue of Corsair, and through the slashes, blue skin could be seen. His hair and eyebrows were bright blond, and it was a stark contrast to the sky-blue hue of his face. Scott could still not get used to it.
Rogue wore green and gold, as usual. Her auburn hair, skunk-streaked with white, tumbled around her shoulders in a way that was inevitably fetching. Still, Scott felt more protective of her than anything else. The woman had been through a lot. He wondered what was going to come of her burgeoning relationship with Gambit.
His real name was Remy LeBeau, but unlike most of the others, Scott still called him Gambit. He wasn’t completely comfortable with the Cajun, not yet. On the other hand, Gambit was invaluable in a conflict. Even now, he had donned the floor-length brown duster that almost always covered his uniform. His eyes shone with a weird reddish energy, and even his most genuine smile was not without a trace of sarcasm.
“Good to see you’ve fully recovered, Gambit,” Scott said.
“Cajuns are hard to kill, mon ami,” Gambit replied with that slanted smile.
“Time to put that to the test,” Archangel said.
Scott took one last look around at the injured Starjammers, laid out on medislabs in the cabin. He wished the X-Men could have done more, but Corsair and his crew were on their own. The future of the world was hanging in the balance. The X-Men were needed.
“Let’s hit it,” Scott said, and moved toward the back of the ship, where the airlock doors were already wide open to the sky.
The Starjammer skimmed along about five hundred feet above Jersey City. Without a moment’s hesitation, Scott stepped to the open doorway and hurled himself out into the sky over the city. Without a parachute. In the distance, he could see the massive camp set up on the Jersey side of the Hudson River by the military, the press, and relief services. That was their destination.
He fell for several seconds more, his hands in the air above him. Cyclops didn’t even look up when Archangel grabbed his outstretched wrists, slowing his descent and moving him toward the encampment in Exchange Place. The move had not been discussed beforehand, but it had been executed so many times that Scott never for a moment considered the danger inherent in such a jump.
Slightly above him, Rogue carried Gambit with her as she flew, a simple feat for a woman of such extraordinary power. Jean Grey floated twenty yards behind the rest of the team, held aloft by a crackling telekinetic energy field. She could have carried them all, if necessary. But it wasn’t necessary, and Scott wanted her to conserve her power for the battle ahead.
Several moments later, Jean took the lead and, wordlessly, the X-Men followed. She was in telepathic contact with Professor Xavier, and led them toward him. Hundreds of cameras swung toward the sky when the first cries went up. They had been spotted. The military had been notified of their imminent arrival, but several of the officers and grunts swung their weapons skyward.
Scott, they can barely contain themselves, Jean said telepathically. The hatred is flowing from them in waves. I feel like I might be sick.
You’re okay, Jean. I know it’s hard, but try to ignore it. I’d hate us, too, if I were one of them. It doesn’t matter that we’re here to help.
There was no response. In truth, Scott had not expected one. The situation was grim, there was little argument about that.
A moment later he spotted Professor Xavier, sitting in his wheelchair, waiting for them to arrive. By his side stood Valerie Cooper, the government agent in charge of X-Factor, the federally sanctioned mutant team lead by Scott’s brother Alex.
As the X-Men touched down, Cyclops made the first move, a signal that the others followed. Rather than even acknowledge Charles Xavier at first, Cyclops approached Cooper directly. For the benefit of the cameras, and the federal agents who were watching their arrival closely, it was imperative that their contact appear to be Val Cooper.
“Cyclops; thank God you’re all finally here, and all right,” Cooper said. “I’d been concerned for your safety, given the dangers of your last mission.”
Scott caught a glance between Jean and the Professor, and realized they were conversing telepathically. He probably could have eavesdropped, given his rapport with Jean, but that wasn’t his style. Besides, he was playing for the audience now.
“We’re all lucky to have survived,” Scott replied. “Now we’ve got this fiasco to deal with. Out of the frying pan, I guess.”
“Indeed,” Cooper said. “I’m not sure if you know Professor Charles Xavier.”
Cooper gestured to the Professor, and Cyclops exchanged pleasantries with the man. It was strange. Xavier was like a father to him in ways Corsair had never been. The charade made both men uncomfortable, and the rest of the team as well, Scott thought.
“Care to give us an update?” he asked, though he was certain Jean had already gotten the latest information through her psionic conversation with Professor Xavier.
“Magneto seems to be going about his business,” Cooper began. “Mutants are pouring into Manhattan from just about every corner. The army has skirmished with some of them, attempting to keep them from joining Magneto’s ‘empire.’ Mutants going into Manhattan are considered terrorists.” “Dat don’t include us, oui?” Gambit asked.
“Excluding the X-Men, yes, of course,” Cooper responded. “While Magneto seems, at the moment, to be consolidating his power in Manhattan, we have no doubt that his plans are much broader. We’ve got to stop him here, or we might not be able to stop him at all. As more mutants arrive, his strength is increased dramatically.”
“I don’t guess he needs more mutants,” Rogue said. “With all them Sentinels, and the Acolytes he has, he was pretty near unbeatable already.”
“Any news of the rest of the team?” Archangel asked.
Cooper and Xavier looked at each other. Scott understood the look. Most of what they knew was from the Professor’s psi abilities. The other X-Men had been captured by Magneto, they knew that. Iceman’s whereabouts were still something of a mystery. The media knew they’d been captured from the video that had already come out of the city.
“Nothing new,” Cooper said. “You five are all we’ve got.”
“So, Valerie,” Jean said, “are you going to tell us your plan sometime soon?”
There was a long moment where nobody spoke. Helicopters chopped the air above, the drone of many voices and the crackle of radios surrounded them. Cyclops saw that a nearby camera operator seemed to have focused on him, and wished he didn’t have to wear the ruby quartz visor that controlled his optic beams, so that he might pull off an annoyed glare. That was one of the problems with having his eyes covered—it cut down on what you could communicate with a look.
“Mademoiselle,” Gambit said, breaking the silence, “you don’ got to tell us dis t’ing is pretty near suicide. Just us five little mutants gon’ go up against a whole cityful. Dat’s what we do. Let’s just get on with it now. The longer we wait, de harder it’s goin’ to be.”
“You’re right, on all counts,” Cooper said. “So here it is. The only way we’re going to win this thing is to take the Sentinels out of the picture. As long as Magneto can call them in, you guys haven’t got a chance in hell.”
“How do we do that?” Jean asked.
“Two teams. One goes after Magneto and the other X-Men. The other hunts down the Alpha Sentinel, gets into its command center, and reprograms it with Magneto as priority target,” Cooper explained.
“So the odds go from hopeless to worse than hopeless,” Rogue said. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”
“She’s right,” Scott said, finally speaking up. “It’s the only way. We need to take the Alpha Sentinel down and keep Magneto distracted at the same time. The only problem I see in this whole plan, and it’s a big one, is how we’re expected to reprogram the Sentinel with anything like expediency.”
“You don’t have to, Cyclops,” Professor Xavier said, and the X-Men looked at their mentor, who had been silent during the discussion.
“Ms. Cooper will be accompanying the team searching for the Alpha Sentinel,” Xavier said.
“Wait a minute,” Archangel said, a confused look crossing his features, “I thought the Sentinels had been programmed not to let humans near the city.”
“We’ve worked it out, Mr. Worthington,” Cooper said.
Cyclops was about to request further details, particularly about the division of the team for the dual mission to come, but he never got his next question out. Instead, what little privacy they had was breached by the arrival of Henry Peter Gyrich, the man who had been ostensibly in charge of Operation: Wideawake when the Sentinels were stolen.
Gyrich was a bigot. Hated mutants. Hated paranormal humans of all kinds. Hated a lot of things, as far as Cyclops could tell. He was the proverbial snake in the grass, the kind of man the government didn’t want to admit it employed. A necessary evil, some would say. As far as Cyclops was concerned, Gyrich was just another egomaniac trying to impress his own agenda on a world spinning out of control.
“Ah, the prodigal mutants return,” Gyrich said as he approached.
He didn’t even try to hide his sneer. The sun glinted off his mirrored glasses and lit up his red hair like fire. The effect wasn’t at all flattering.
“Do you have news, Mr. Gyrich?” Cooper asked. “If not, I would ask that you remove yourself from this discussion. This is my operation here, and, frankly, you’re not welcome.”
Cyclops was surprised by the undisguised hatred and anger in Cooper’s voice and entire manner. Gyrich, however, did not seem taken aback in the least. Apparently, the crisis had stripped bare the lines of tension that had always existed between the two.
“Don’t worry, Cooper, this won’t take long,” Gyrich said with a smirk.
He turned slightly, to address them all. Scott, who considered himself level headed to the point of boredom at times, felt a nearly irrational hatred of Gyrich growing in him. The man’s smugness was intolerable.
“Say your piece, Gyrich,” he said. “Then why don’t you let us mutants get on with the job you normal folks can’t seem to handle on your own?”
Cooper stared at him, mouth open slightly. Professor Xavier raised one eyebrow. Jean, Gambit, Rogue, and Warren all looked on in stunned silence. All of them were taken aback by his words, and not without reason. Cyclops had always left the attitude to Gambit, or Wolverine, or Bishop, even Warren from time to time. But he was angry now, and a little bitter. He wanted to be with Corsair, making sure his father was all right. Instead, he and the X-Men were once again putting their lives on the line for a society, the majority of whom would have spit on them if they got close enough.
Scott Summers, the quiet one, the stable one, was on the verge of losing his cool. Cooper, Xavier, the other X-Men, were all surprised. But when Cyclops turned to look at Gyrich, he found that the man was not surprised at all. Rather, there was a smile of perverse pleasure on his face. He had riled the leader of the X-Men, and he was happy about it.
Scott felt so stupid he wanted to punch Gyrich, but that would only make matters worse. It was completely unlike him, but he supposed, given the extraordinary crisis at hand, extraordinary reactions would be the order of the day.
“Just because I’m a nice guy, Cyclops,” Gyrich said, “I’ll get righ
t to the point. The Director of Operation: Wideawake has asked me to pass along this information to you, otherwise I would not have put you even at the bottom of my need-to-know list.”
Cooper visibly stiffened. Scott assumed she was irritated that Wideawake’s Director had not communicated Gyrich’s message directly to her. He himself was annoyed that Cooper would allow such petty concerns as her competition with Gyrich to distract her at such a perilous time.
“In my opinion,” Gyrich said, “a full military assault is the only way to end Magneto’s terrorist occupation of Manhattan. Sadly, the President does not agree. He has faith in Ms. Cooper’s opinion. She has faith in mutants, specifically the X-Men. In any case, he has agreed that your interdiction may proceed.”
“That’s news?” Cooper asked.
“I’m not finished,” Gyrich said, biting off the words with snapping teeth, which finally revealed the extent of his disdain for the woman.
“The President has also ordered the joint armed forces assembled around Manhattan to a full alert. On his word, they are to invade and retake Manhattan island,” Gyrich said.
“What?” Professor Xavier asked, astounded. “No simple military assault will be sufficient to destroy the Sentinels, you know as much from your participation in Operation: Wideawake. Not to mention that Magneto has destroyed entire armies before, and will not shrink from doing so again. What you suggest is madness!”
“De hell wit’ dat!” Gambit said. “What about de X-Men? De President, he wants us to waltz right into Magneto’s home base, and den he gon’ to start bombing us all to hell? Je suis désolé, but non. Ça ne me plaît pas.”
Gyrich glared at Gambit for half a second.
“You’re in America, X-Man,” Gyrich said with a sneer. “Speak English not French.”
“I was born in America, me,” Gambit said angrily. “But I’m a Cajun. I speak Cajun, English, French, Creole, but me, maybe I got another language you understand better, eh?”
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