Jack Mariotte was a brave man. He’d always prided himself on that. The Mariottes had always been a courageous family. All the way back to his grandfather, who’d been with the French underground during German occupation. Jack was brave, all right.
But the Sentinels scared the hell out of him. It was only natural, then, that he wanted very badly to destroy them.
One of the reasons the squad was so isolated was that the plasma cannons were a new technology. The media had long since lost any nationality, and coverage shown in one country was shown around the world, if it was important enough. Colonel Tomko had orders to attempt to keep the new tech off camera, to avoid letting any potential foreign enemies get a good look at it. Jack Mariotte thought that was foolishness. Espionage was alive and well—especially in the area of technology. Anyone who wanted to build a plasma cannon could get hold of the plans if they knew who to pay.
But those were his orders.
Coincidentally, their location also meant that Lieutenant Mariotte and his squad were the first, and possibly the only, people to get a good look at the boatload of mutants that was, at that moment, sailing across the Hudson River toward Manhattan.
“Look at that,” Ray Keane said. “I’m tellin’ ya, guys, that just ain’t right.”
“You ain’t kidding,” Bernie Tarver agreed. “We just sit here and do nothing while the muties get constant reinforcements? Why, all the people on that boat are traitors to their country. They’re declaring war on us just by being there.”
“We ought to blow those mutie traitors out of the water,” Keane shot back. “Jesus, I can’t stand just sitting here.”
Lieutenant Mariotte heard all of this. He did not chastise his men, however, but rather remained silent. In fact, he agreed with them completely, but could never say so. It irked him to no end that they had to sit there, under the threatening glare of the Sentinels, and do nothing as Magneto continued to build his army.
“Traitors!” Tarver screamed across the water to the mutants on the boat, which was, even now, passing less than eighty yards away from them.
“Tarver!” Jack snapped. “Belay that crap!”
“But, Loot, those guys—” Tarver began.
“I gave you an order, Corporal!”
“Yes, sir!” Corporal Tarver replied, and offered a stiff salute.
It might have been over then, but Tarver’s cry had not been overlooked by the mutants on the boat, who began taunting them immediately.
“What’s wrong, soldier boys?” called one of the mutants, a woman whose hair and skin glowed with a weird blue light. “You flatscans worried that you’ll be out of a job once the Mutant Empire starts to spread?”
“Nobody respond!” Jack ordered, and his men complied with obvious reluctance. He didn’t blame them. In fact, he figured none of them wanted to scream back at the traitors more than he did.
“No answer, kids?” the woman screamed. “Well, I’m through being ignored!”
A flash of blue light arced across the surface of the water and fried Corporal Bernie Tarver where he stood. The entire squad shielded their eyes from the flash, and when they looked up, Bernie was a memory. The only thing left was a black scar on the shore of the Hudson.
“Mutie freaks!” Keane shouted as he cranked the plasma cannon around to sight on the boat.
“Take cover!” Lieutenant Mariotte ordered. “Do not return fire! Sergeant Keane, do you hear me? I said do not return—”
But Keane didn’t hear Jack Mariotte’s order. His own screams were too loud. The lieutenant could only watch as a massive plasma burst lanced out toward the boat, and the vessel exploded in a shower of wood, metal and flesh.
“Jesus,” the lieutenant whispered.
“Lieutenant!” a green private named Carlos Mattei shouted, and pointed south, across the river.
Before he turned his head, Lieutenant Mariotte felt the nausea rising in his stomach. He knew exactly what Mattei was looking at. The only thing he could be looking at.
Across the river, just to the south, the massive robot head of the Sentinel had turned in their direction. Its red eyes glowed, even though the sun was shining above. It seemed unnatural, impossible somehow, and all the more frightening because of that.
The Sentinel’s upper body turned. It lifted an arm, palm up, aiming its weapons systems directly at them. Whether or not it planned to fire was a question that never even occurred to Lieutenant Jack Mariotte. Armageddon was riding down on them hard, and they’d no time to leap from its path, no way to avoid being trampled. Save one. Fight back.
“All stations fire,” Jack Mariotte cried, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “And may God have mercy on us all.”
SEVEN
THE foundation of Haven was going extremely well. There were dozens of Alpha-level mutants, and more than a hundred Betas, who had already joined the empire’s ranks. However, Magneto was even more pleased by the number of nonpowered—and therefore most likely noncombatant— mutants who had either emerged from lives of ridicule in New York, or traveled some distance to the welcoming arms of a real home.
Some had intellects accelerated by the mutant x-factor in their genetic codes. Others had minor abilities, enhanced senses, light psi talents. And quite a few of those were also monstrous or bestial in appearance. These misfits and outcasts were the real reason Magneto had created Haven. They needed sanctuary quite badly indeed.
He had gathered these noncombatants so that he might address them, explain that Haven was for them. While some were nervous and flip, most were honored to be in his presence. Several could not contain their need to speak of their pasts, their pitiful existences before Magneto became their savior, and he allowed them the opportunity.
One by one, more than a dozen mutants testified, like sinners at a tent revival, about their suffering, and about their undying gratitude that they had finally found a home.
“Thank you, Emperor Magneto,” said a large man whose enhanced senses of smell, taste, and hearing were not enough to compensate for the ferociously canine structure of his face. “I have waited my whole life for salvation, and I’d almost given up until a couple of days ago. We owe you a debt that can never be paid.”
Magneto was about to respond when Amelia Voght entered, followed by Unuscione, Cargil, Javits, and the Kleinstock Brothers.
“Voght,” he said sternly. “What did I say about—”
“It’s begun, my lord,” Voght snapped, cutting him off. “The military and the Sentinels have begun firing upon one another all around the island.”
Magneto stared at her, brow furrowed in anger and amazement.
“I wish you were joking,” he said. “They must be out of their minds, to think they might win such a conflict! The arrogant fools!”
“Is it possible, my lord, that the Sentinels attacked first?” Unuscione asked.
Magneto sneered at her.
“Not at all,” he said. “They were programmed to attack only on my order, or in retaliation for a mass attack on mutants.”
He paused, listened for the sounds of battle, but could hear nothing so far from the action.
“It’s war, then,” he said finally. “The Sentinels should be sufficient to destroy any opposition, but I need to be in a position from which to monitor the progress of the conflict. I must go.”
Without so much as a wave to acknowledge the Acolytes, or the gathered noncombatant mutants, Magneto was suddenly enveloped in a sphere of crackling energy. Eighteen inches from the floor, he floated toward the huge row of windows. At his approach, glass exploded outward in a spray of jagged shards.
Then he was gone.
Gone to war.
* * *
“ALL right, then,” Voght began. “To work.”
She looked around the room at the noncombatant mutants gathered within and, for the first time, truly wondered if Magneto had done them a service by bringing them all together. If Haven survived, of course, they had a wonderful new home. But if
Haven collapsed, all they had done was uproot themselves, and many of them had revealed their mutant nature for the first time in their lives. They had had enough faith to believe in Magneto, though, and Voght realized she would have to do the same.
If Haven fell, life would become even more difficult for those mutants who had gathered on the island.
Voght shook her head a moment, gathering her thoughts and her plans.
“What’s wrong, Amelia, haven’t got the stomach for a real fight, now that one’s knockin’ at our door?” Unuscione said, a sneer slashing her face. “Cowardice rears its ugly head every time, eh?”
Fighting the urge to snap or strike out at Unuscione, Voght instead simply ignored her.
“Cargil,” she said, “go down and relieve whoever is guarding the X-Men. I want one of the Acolytes’ inner circle there, looking after our prize catch like your life depended on it. Which, of course, it may.”
Before Voght had even finished issuing her instructions, Joanna Cargil was out the door and headed for the elevator. Cargil might not have been on her side, as it were, in the personality conflict she had going with Unuscione, but she knew enough not to jeopardize a combat situation because of individual gripes. She was a soldier.
“Javits, how do you feel?” she asked.
The towering, hugely muscled mutant merely shrugged, raising his eyebrows. Enough of an indication that he was ready for battle, despite wounds he had recently received from Wolverine. It made Voght realize just how many of them Wolverine had injured in the past couple of days, including the Kleinstock brothers. Sven and Harlan had been uncharacteristically silent since their battle with Wolverine. A newly arrived mutant who’d used her healing powers on the evangelical circuit before getting the call—not from God but from Magneto—had healed them both. It hadn’t improved their dispositions any.
No question, Wolverine was a dangerous man. Voght was glad he was already their prisoner. Things would go a lot more smoothly with him in a basement cell.
“Okay,” she said. “The rookies will be gathering in the lobby and on the street even as we speak. Unuscione, you and Javits head down there and get them moving. I want to touch base with Skolnick at City Hall. Then I’ll join you.”
“What about us?” Harlan Kleinstock asked. “What are we supposed to do?”
“You two are going to see that the noncombatants get down to street level and on their way as quickly as possible. We want them back in their new homes and out of the way ASAP. Then you’re with me,” Voght explained.
Which didn’t go over well at all.
“You think you’re something else, don’t you?” Sven Kleinstock said. “Magneto appoints you field leader and you get to believing that makes you good at it.”
“It doesn’t really matter what I think, Sven,” Voght said sharply. “And it matters even less what you think. Magneto gave me the job, and I’m going to do it. You have a problem with that, why don’t you take it up with him? I’ve got work to do. We all do.”
Harlan Kleinstock started to speak, perhaps, Amelia considered, because Sven was not bright enough to reply on his own. But Unuscione took a step forward, a cruel smile curling her lip into an unattractive scowl.
“You’ve made your last mistake, Amelia,” Unuscione said, pleasantly enough for a woman with murder in her eyes.
“Back off, Carmela,” Voght snapped. “Now is not the time. Haven is in jeopardy.”
“The hell with that,” Unuscione said coolly. “We’ve got the Sentinels to protect us, and Lord Magneto watching out for the big robots. If he needs us at all, it won’t be right away.”
Voght sighed. She had never despised anyone as fervently as she hated Carmela Unuscione. She wanted very badly to give Unuscione the lesson the woman had been begging for since Amelia was first made field leader. But now was simply not the time.
Yet, that might not be her call. With Cargil already gone to guard the captured X-Men, and Senyaka down at City Hall with Major Skolnick … hell, even the Blob, Toad, and Pyro weren’t around. But she supposed she should be grateful for that. Given their appreciation for Unuscione’s father, Voght assumed they’d come down on the other woman’s side in a conflict, despite their supposed fealty to Magneto.
Cargil and Senyaka, while by no means her friends, would have fulfilled their obligations as Magneto’s Acolytes, would have put Haven first. Milan was in the nerve center of the new empire, and he was her only real friend in the ranks of the Acolytes. Even Javits, whose life she had saved only days earlier, was not speaking up for her.
“We’re not following you anymore, Voght,” Harlan Kleinstock said. “Every time you’re in charge, we take a beating. Wolverine almost killed me and my brother last time. You can’t be trusted.”
“That’s how it is?” Voght asked.
There was no response from any of them, save for the widening smile on Unuscione’s face.
“We’re electing a new field leader, Amelia,” Unuscione said. “Namely, me. See, you were killed in the line of duty. I had to take over.”
Sven Kleinstock and Javits both started slightly at her mention of killing.
“You didn’t say anything about killing her, Unuscione,” Sven warned. “She may be a pain, but she’s still one of us.” “Shut up, Sven,” Voght ordered.
“Fine,” Sven said with a shrug. “The hell with you. Die if you want to.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Voght said, and took two steps back, giving herself room to maneuver. “You wanted it, Unuscione? Well, now you’ve got it. Come and get me. It’s time you found out what it means to be in pain.”
“Back off, boys,” Unuscione motioned to the others to give them room. “This is just between the two of us.”
With an electric crackle, Unuscione’s psionic exoskeleton appeared in a flash of green light. Voght leaped aside as Unuscione attacked, barely escaping the huge fist of psionic energy that devastated the podium behind her. The noncombatants scattered as Voght landed, knocking chairs aside as she turned to face her attacker.
“You have no idea who or what you’re dealing with,” Voght said.
“Sure I do,” Unuscione said. “A dead woman.”
She lunged for Voght again, her exoskeleton stretching out even farther this time. Once more, Amelia barely escaped. Quickly, she tried to grab on to the green force shield that surrounded Unuscione’s body.
“Oh, come on,” Unuscione yelled, retracting her exoskeleton instantly. “You didn’t think I’d let you do that to me again, did you?”
Voght smiled grimly.
“No,” she said, and teleported.
Even as she appeared back in her bedroom, and grabbed up the taser gun lying on the desk that functioned as her bedside table, she smiled at the picture in her head. In it, Unuscione and her cronies looked around the room in astonishment for three or four seconds as it began to come into their dim brains that she had actually left.
Then she ’ported back into the room in an instant. Without an enemy to attack, Unuscione had let her guard down, had dropped her exoskeleton in confusion. When Voght appeared in front of her, Unuscione was too stunned to react immediately. She barely saw the taser coming.
Voght fired the taser at Unuscione. Its projectiles popped out and snagged themselves on her uniform, and she jerked around in agony as electricity flooded through her.
“Hey, no fair!” one of the Kleinstocks, or perhaps both—Voght wasn’t sure—called out. They reminded her of little boys in the schoolyard. Little boys she had always trounced for pulling her hair. They used to shout “no fair” as well.
Children. That’s what they were. Sometimes she wondered if that was what they all were, in the end.
Unuscione was still jerking madly, and Voght yanked back the taser’s wired projectiles. Unuscione stopped jerking and glared at her, a twitch on her face that hadn’t been there before. A side effect, Voght guessed, of being electroshocked.
“You should have killed me, Amelia,” Un
uscione said. “It’s over for you now.”
Unuscione lifted her arms to guide her exoskeleton, but it did not appear. Voght saw the confusion on her face. She knew that the taser had momentarily shorted out the other woman’s powers, just for a heartbeat, but she wasn’t going to be the one to explain.
She was going to be busy.
“What the …?” Unuscione said.
Voght hit her. She felt a couple of the bones in her hand crack as her fist slammed into Unuscione’s face, but it didn’t hurt at all. It felt kind of good, actually.
Good enough that she hit Unuscione again.
Fifteen seconds or so later, when she had hit Unuscione many more times, the Kleinstock brothers pulled her off. She teleported them away, dropping them onto the metal chairs from near the ceiling of the room. Unuscione was rising from the ground, blood streaming from her nose and mouth. She still had that snarl that so infuriated Voght. Her exoskeleton was weakly shimmering into being.
Voght kicked her in the gut and Unuscione went down hard, the smirking scowl gone from her face.
“You’re out of here,” she said, and teleported Unuscione away.
Away.
“What the hell have you done with her?” Harlan Kleinstock demanded angrily.
“I’ve sent her back to Avalon,” Voght responded evenly. “The space station has medical facilities, and Exodus has personnel who can deal with her. She is no longer a part of this mission. Magneto will be very disappointed.”
Sven Kleinstock started to move forward, but Harlan stopped him.
“What, Sven?” Voght snapped. “You want to try me too? You don’t think much of me as leader, but, by God, you follow orders or I’ll teleport your numbskull head right off your shoulders. I don’t think either of us wants that, now do we?”
No answer.
“Get moving, all of you,” Voght commanded. “Magneto has made a home for all of us. The least you can do is defend it!”
* * *
MAGNETO rose above the Empire State Building and propelled himself, effortlessly, toward the Hudson River. The pessimist in him had always assumed that the Mutant Empire could not succeed unless the military had tested his power, and the power of the Sentinels, and realized that they could not be overcome by any conventional means.
Marvel Classic Novels--X-Men Page 63