At that moment, fifteen hundred miles to the east, another supersonic plane blazed across the sky. Scott was at the controls of the Blackbird, piloting the spy plane to the Sargasso Sea for the second time in as many days.
In the copilot’s seat beside him was the imposing Russian, Peter Rasputin, while the blue-furred German, Kurt Wagner, crouched in the space between them, an arm draped over the back of each of their seats.
“What are you working on today, mein Freund, ” Kurt said, glancing at the sketchpad propped on Peter’s knee.
Peter blushed, his cheeks going a deep red, and Kurt for the millionth time was forced to resist the urge to mock his stalwart Russian friend. Even with all that they had seen and done these past years, the places they’d been and the foes they faced, still and all did Peter Rasputin so often seem like a little boy stuck in a man’s body. A towering, well-muscled man’s body, to be sure, but a little boy, for all of that.
So it came as no surprise that, having been caught sketching a devastatingly attractive woman with a Mohawk hairdo, in a state of casual undress, Peter would stammer like a school boy caught out by a scolding teacher.
“Who is she, then?” Kurt said. “The heroine from one of Katzchen’s fantasy novels? A fierce warrior princess or a maiden to be rescued?”
His hands still on the controls, Scott glanced over casually. “Those are Fall People markings, aren’t they?” Peter blushed deeper, the red of his cheeks intensifying, and nodded. “She is Nereel.”
“Ah,” Kurt said, understanding dawning. He reached over and, gesturing for permission, took the sketchbook from Peter’s hands. “That girl in the Savage Land. I remember her now.” He looked up at Peter, a lascivious grin on his lips, sharp canines exposed. ‘Am I mistaken, Herr Rasputin, or did you not spend some . . . quality time with this attractive young lady?”
Peter averted his eyes, suddenly finding something of great interest in the featureless waves passing beneath them. “Perhaps,” he finally replied.
Kurt’s grin widened, and he regarded the sketch admiringly. Then, casually, he flipped to the previous page. It was a drawing of the same woman, with the same Mohawk and lax dress code, only this time she was carrying a small child in her arms, its hair and eyes dark little more than an infant, really.
“A Savage Land Pieta,” Kurt said, nodding appreciatively. “A primordial Madonna and child. Peter, I believe you missed your calling when you chose world-saving as a vocation, and not the pursuit of art. But tell me...” He handed the sketchbook back to Peter, open to the picture of Nereel and the child. “Why portray Nereel with a child? I don’t recall her being a mother.”
Peter accepted the proffered sketchbook, and gazed at the drawing for a long moment, as though seeing something in it he recognized, but being unable to say precisely what. “I’m not sure,” he answered at length. “It just... felt right.”
“Okay, gentlemen,” Scott said, his tone pure business. “We’re coming up on our destination. We’re approaching from opposite Julienne Cay, and coming in so low they shouldn’t be able to spot us, but if they do, this could be a very short trip.”
Kurt returned to his seat, buckling the safety straps around him.
“There already?” he said. “But I was given to understand there would be beverage service on this flight, and I’ve yet to be given a drink.”
Scott didn’t answer, but kept his gaze focused as straight ahead as a laser, but Kurt was gratified to see that Peter smiled, if slightly, before returning his attention to his sketching.
It was midmoming when Vox Septimus and three other servitors, all wearing similar robes of varying shades and hues, all carrying identical crystal rods, came for Lee and the others.
“This one offers apologies,” Vox Septimus said as he stepped through the newly opened door. “But there are other uses to which this space will be put. Besides, now that the other specimens have been relocated here to Dis, it is simplest to relocate you and your companions to the general population.”
For a brief, futile moment, Merrick put up something resembling resistance, but it took only a minute gesture with one of the crystal rods for him to fall in line, with a guilty glance at Frank. For his part, Frank kept his eyes on the ground, and did everything he was told.
Vox Septimus walked in the lead, Lee and her crewmen following, and the other three servitors bringing up the rear.
“Where are you taking us?” Lee asked as they were ushered down a twisting corridor to a wide, sloping ramp that spiraled from the tower’s base to its crown. Lee and the others had been brought this way the day before—had it really only been a single day?—but in the excitement and fear of the moment, very little of their surroundings had registered with her. Now, more composed and aware, she took careful note of everything they passed, of all of the branching corridors, of the doorways and passages.
“As this one indicated,” Vox Septimus answered casually. “You are being relocated to the general population.”
They passed a broad landing, about halfway down the ramp, where a trio of strangely dressed individuals lingered. Silent, their mouths unmoving, they gestured dramatically with their hands, pulling broad expressions. Compared to Vox Septimus and his fellows, this trio were uniformly larger, more muscled, and the fabrics of their exotically cut clothing were ofbrighter hues.
Lee noted with interest that, as she and her crew were led by, the trio regarded them with something like disgust, laced with an almost naked hostility. This was hardly surprising, given their circumstance. However, what was surprising was the thinly veiled contempt with which they regarded Vox Septimus and the other three servitors.
As they drew near, Lee saw that Vox Septimus kept his eyes averted, not looking at the three. When their course brought them the closest they would come, only a few yards away, one of the trio pointed at Lee, scowling. In response, another pointed at Vox, whereupon the other two laughed out loud. Hearing their laughter was unsettling, after so long a silence, and Lee realized that they must have been communicating telepathically all along.
Without warning, the trio leapt into the air. Zipping past Vox Septimus, coming only inches from him, they jetted out to the empty space at the middle of the tower, and with a dark glance back in her direction—or in Vox’s?—they flew up toward the tower’s crown at speed.
Vox, startled by their close passage, faltered, almost stumbling and falling. So near the edge of the broad, rail-less ramp were they that he might any second tumble over the side, no doubt falling to his death, hundreds of feet below.
Lee acted without thinking, and reached out and grabbed hold of Vox Septimus’s elbow, righting him and preventing his fall.
“You will return to the line!” shouted one of the servitors at the rear of their train, waving his crystal rod menacingly.
“All is well,” Vox Septimus said, raising his hand. He seemed shaken, out of breath. His fellow servitor returned to the end of the line, and then Vox Septimus regarded Lee, a strange expression on his face. Finally, he said, his voice somewhat strained, ‘You have this one’s thanks.”
Lee shrugged, not failing to see the tight grip Vox Septimus retained on his crystal rod. “Don’t mention it.”
Vox Septimus nodded slowly, and then turned and continued on their course down the ramp. Lee followed behind, trying to work out the implications of what she’d just seen.
They reached the ground level, where she and the others had entered the tower the day before, and continued downward. Lee knew from her previous visits to the city that beneath its foundations were massive spaces, akin to giant natural caverns, but lined on all sides with strange shapes of metal and crystal, punctuated here and there with enormous statuary, the same massive, inhuman grotesqueries that decorated the city above.
The ramp on which they now trod continued down a sloped spiral toward one of those massive spaces. When they emerged into this cavernous space beneath the ground, the walls fell away on either side. The lights were somewhat dim, but even though Lee could see before and behind her with little trouble, she could not see a wall or barrier in any direction, no matter how hard she strained. The vast, empty spaces swallowed the sound of their footsteps, and it seemed to Lee for a moment that she must have gone deaf.
Finally, they reached another landing from which projected a narrow bridge or walkway. At Vox Septimus’s insistence, Lee and the others were marched across this narrow bridge, which could not have been more than three or four feet wide. Risking a quick glance over the side, Lee could not see any ground or floor below, only a crazed network of other ramps, landings, and walkways, with strange, bulbous structures here and there at the intersections. It was to one of these bulbous structures that they were being led. It resembled nothing so much as a human organ—a liver, say, or a kidney—constructed of steel and crystal and enlarged to an immense size. It was a huge structure, capable of fitting the trawler Arcadia a dozen times over.
At what appeared to be the structures’ entrance, three walkways met at a wide platform. As they drew near, Lee saw that another group of prisoners was being marched to the left, with crystal rod-wielding servitors before and after. But these were not the ordinary men and women she’d glimpsed down in the courtyard, just a short while before. These were super-heroes.
Their uniforms, though ripped, scorched, and dirtied, were those of costumed crime-fighters. Lee could see that at a glance, even if their stature and muscular profiles weren’t a give away, in and of themselves. At a distance, Lee didn’t recognize any of them, but as both their party and hers drew nearer the platform, and the bulbous structure beyond, one or two of them grew more familiar to her. One was dressed in red, white, and gold, and Lee recognized him as Sunfire. Two wore identical uniforms of red and black, a triangle emblem on their chests, and Lee remembered Magneto once describing uniforms matching that description, and saying that they belonged to students of the Massachusetts Academy. Finally, there were three wearing uniforms of yellow and black, and not only did Lee recognize the design, but also their faces; she remembered having seen pictures of them during a brief visit to see Magneto in New York, before she’d broken off their relationship. They were students at Xavier’s school, Scott Summers’s old alma mater.
For the briefest instant, Lee allowed herself to hope. She entertained the fleeting thought that, if students of the Xavier School were here, then that meant that Scott, and a rescue, could not be far behind. But then she saw the dispirited way that the Xavier students shuffled along the walkway—the same, listless gait adopted by Sunfire and all the others—and she recognized the way in which each of their uniforms differed from those she had seen before, or had described to her.
All of them, without exception, were wearing broad silver collars around their necks.
It didn’t take long to make the guess that the dispirited expressions and slow movements of the super-heroes—to say nothing of the fact that they willingly allowed themselves to be herded along like regular people, like her—had something to do with these strange, oversize silver collars. There was some property of the collars, Lee supposed, that was serving to dampen, if not completely nullify, the heroes’ powers.
All of which suggested several factors in rapid succession.
First, that the Kh’thon did possess the ability to nullify a mutant’s abilities.
Second, that things in the outside world were going worse than Lee might have imagined.
And lastly, that their chances for escape from the city of Dis had just grown much, much more complicated.
Kitty wasn’t sure at what point traveling into outer space had become so routine for her, much less what that said about her lifestyle. Most girls her age were worrying about what college they’d go to, or obsessing over some boy in their class, or anxious about whether they’d pass their midterm exams.
Not Kitty. She was strapped into a bleeding-edge space plane, rocketing into cislunar space, and finding the whole thing just a little boring. It was when she realized that she’d just as soon get the whole saving-the-world thing done and over with so she could get home and catch up on some much needed sleep that Kitty realized that her standards had shifted somewhat these last few years.
It wasn’t all that long ago that she’d been a regular suburban kid in Deerfield, Illinois. In the years since, she’d traveled in time, gone into space a time or two, adopted a dragon, kissed a boy, become a ninja, and saved the world more times than she could count. After a while, it all just got to be old hat. Kitty imagined this was how child stars must feel about Hollywood when they grow up; what seems magical and glamorous to outsiders is just another job to a kid who grew up doing it.
Of course, Kitty liked to hope that she’d be a little luckier when she grew up than most child stars. Assuming she grew up at all, that is. If she survived the next few hours, and the world didn’t get blown up in the process, she had no intention of ending up on the news, a few years down the line, having gotten arrested trying to knock over a Quick Stop.
But then, Kitty ruminated, if she put her mind to robbing a convenience store, she’d do it right.
“Approaching the alien fleet,” said Colonel Alysande Stuart over the ship’s communication system, interrupting Kitty’s reverie. “If you lot have a secret plan for keeping us from getting blown out of the sky as soon as these buggers notice we’re here, you might want to get it into motion.”
“Ah,” Betsy said, raising a gloved finger, like someone placing a bid at an auction. “That would be me.” Betsy struggled to unbuckle the straps that kept her secured to the acceleration chair.
“Today would be nice, I think,” said Raphael, his tone oily.
“Blasted ...” Betsy wrenched at the buckles and straps unsuccessfully. “I can’t...” She threw down her hands, and looked up, her expression through the helmet one of exasperation. Then, in a small voice, she said, “I’m stuck.”
“Hmph.” Logan, who’d been sitting with his eyes closed, his head lolled to the side of his helmet, made a noise somewhere between a grunt of annoyance and a bark of laughter. He raised his left hand, and a single adamantium blade slid out from the special pressurized seal Kitty had rigged in the glove of his suit shortly before take off. He reached over, bringing the razor-sharp tip of the claw near Betsy’s straps. “Lemme fix it. . .” “Logan!” Kitty batted Logan’s hand away, like a mother scolding a child for sampling a cake’s icing before it was time for dessert. “I’m sure there’s an easier way.” Kitty reached over and took hold of the strap, wrapping her hand around the buckle. Then, without any visible effort, she phased her hand, the buckle, and the straps to which it was attached. With the straps intangible, Betsy was able to climb out of the acceleration chair without difficulty.
Kitty solidified again, and when she released the buckle, it floated back toward the seat, moving with an unexpected grace in the cabin’s microgravity.
“See, Logan,” Kitty reproached. “Not everything has to be hack and slash, you know.”
“Hey, ldddo,” Logan grinned. “I’m gonna be making some cuts before this caper is over and done, so might as well get used to it now.”
Kitty blew Logan a raspberry, fogging up the inside of her helmet, while Betsy maneuvered with surprising elegance to the rear of the cabin. There, their Exemplar prisoner was secured by straps to a kind of gumey, in a pressure suit of her own.
“If what I was able to extract from our guest’s memories this morning was correct,” Betsy explained, her voice buzzing over the speaker’s in Kitty’s helmet, “then virtually all ship-to-ship communication in the
Kh’thonic fleet is done telepathically. The profile of our vessel matters, if it matters at all, far less than whether or not we respond with the appropriate telepathic call signs when contacted. If our guest’s identity is confirmed, and the call signs are accepted, then we’ll be able to approach the fleet without incident.”
“And if they aren’t?” Colonel Stuart asked.
“In that case,” Raphael responded, “then I believe an incident would be in the offing, wouldn’t you say?”
As it happened, they needn’t have worried. Using the Exemplar as a kind of telepathic hand puppet, Betsy was able to interact with the fleet’s security protocols, and seemingly without ever raising suspicion. Betsy had managed to cloud the Exemplar’s perceptions, so that as far as the Exemplar knew, she was sitting aboard one of the Kh’thonic landers; and since Betsy had judiciously “edited” the Exemplar’s memories of the events of the day, the Exemplar had no recollection of ever being defeated in battle by the X-Men, or of being taken prisoner. So far as the Exemplar knew, following on the hypnotic suggestion implanted by Betsy, she was returning to the Kh’thonic fleet for minor medical attention, and to bring supplies back down to the Kh’thonic forces on the ground.
Alysande’s hands tightened on the controls, white-knuckled inside her heavy pressurized gloves. Not for the first time she wished that she’d been able to talk Bernard into incorporating weapons into the space plane’s design, but the head of the British Rocket Group had insisted that this was principally a vessel of science and exploration, and in the end he’d managed to convince the British authorities that his was the correct view Which was all well and good, if one lived on a plane of pure abstraction, in the selfless pursuit of knowledge, but Alysande lived in the real world, a place of conflict, danger, and menace. And right now, she’d have traded all the pure abstraction and hidden knowledge in the world for a few guided missiles with nuclear warheads. Oh, she knew that there was little chance of even nukes doing any damage to the shielded Kh’thon vessels, but still, she’d have felt better having the option.
Just when things looked their tensest, though, and Alysande and the others waited in an excruciating silence while the mind-fogged Exemplar communicated telepathically with Kh’thonic flight control, Betsy gave the others the high sign, all smiles.
“It worked,” Betsy said. “We’ve been given the green light to approach the Fathership.”
“Well,” Raphael said, forcing a smile. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Alysande looked over and saw the sweat glistening on the spy’s forehead. She suspected he’d been the most nervous of any of them.
“Bub,” said Logan from his acceleration chair. “That was the easy part. It’s all uphill from here.”
Even though Betsy had said they’d been given the all clear, Logan was sure they’d be looking at a fight as soon as they landed. But after Colonel Stuart had brought the space plane in, touching down in the Fathership itself, they’d stepped through the hatch
to find the landing bay almost completely deserted.
From the outside, the Fathership had looked like something out of a nightmare, all jagged angles, spires, and spikes, blacker still than the dark of space around it. On the inside, though, it was even stranger, more resembling the inside of a living being than something constructed by hand. Or more resembling a corpse, rather, since there was no way that anything living could survive, as twisted and wrong as the Fathership was. Even the light had a strange, unsettling quality to it, and the air, though breathable, carried with it the faintest hint of putrefaction and decay. This was like a grave, a corpse ship built from the rotting remains of some impossibly large, impossibly wrong monstrosity beyond human imagination.
Logan stripped off his pressure suit, revealing the brown-and-tan uniform of unstable molecules worn beneath. He tossed his suit back through the open hatch, and slid his claws in and out, experimentally. Then he hopped up in the air, a tiny movement, but one that allowed him to judge the gravity in the ship. He read it as being just a hair over one g, almost exactly standard Earth gravity. Good, Logan thought, nodding appreciably. That means we won’t be at a disadvantage. If it had been extremely high gravity, their muscles might not have been able to acclimate to the extra weight, and they might have been slowed down as a result. Ofcourse, it ain’t doin’ us any favors, either.
“I was expecting some kind of welcome wagon, at least,” Logan said, glancing around the cavernous landing bay. There were one or two figures moving in the far distance, but otherwise the enormous space was entirely empty.
“I don’t know.” Kitty smirked. “This lack of attention may just hurt my feelings.”
“The Kh’thon maintain close controls on the population levels of their slaves,” Betsy explained, sounding more like a schoolmarm every time she opened her mouth. Ever since she mind-melded with the telekine prisoner, Betsy had been the resident expert on all things Kth’thon. “There are humans here on the Fathership—and mutants, too—but most of them are busy servicing the needs ofthe Kh’thon. If we were really the minor functionary our prisoner purported to be, we’d just be another slave, no matter how powerful. And no one’s going to be pulled off their duties to see to the arrival of more slaves. We’d have been trained to know what we were doing, and where we were going, and if we got lost, it’d be our problem.” “Lucky for us we have an informed guide, yes?” Colonel Stuart checked the action on her automatic pistol. She had changed out of her pressure suit, and now wore standard Royal Marine fatigues of khaki and green, with a dark beret pulled down over her head.
“Well,” said Raphael, dressed incongruously in a black business suit and tie, carrying a brief case. He looked like a bank manager who’d gotten lost on the way to the office and ended up by accident on the flagship of an invading armada. “Shall we be off, then?” “Yes, let’s,” Logan growled. “The sooner we’re done and out of here the better.”
So they set off, Logan in lead, Betsy and the others following close behind, moving ever deeper into the strange, unearthly ship.
As the Quinjet flew over the border with Santo Marco, and entered Ecuadorian airspace, the automated Avengers call sign broadcast on all frequencies immediately granted them the clearances they’d need to approach and land. From there, it was a matter of minutes before they’d reach the point in the jungle indicated on Hank’s surveillance photos.
Rogue tried to stifle a yawn, and failed. She’d caught a quick nap, but it had done little more than serve to remind her how tired she was, rather than making her feel any more rested. She stretched her arms to either side, and rolled her head around in slow circles, trying to work the kinks out of her neck.
That’s the problem with being invulnerable on the one hand, with power-sucking skin on t’other, Rogue mused. Nobody’s linin’ up to give you a neck rub or back massage. Heck, I don’t even know if I couldfeel it, if they did.
Rogue blinked sleepily, yawned again, and leaned forward, sticking her head and shoulders between Hank and Doug. “We there yet?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Hank said with a friendly smile. “Is the end of the world interfering with your beauty sleep?”
“Well, now that you mention it..Rogue grinned, and punched Hank lightly on the upper arm. “Though I do seem to recall puttin’ in for a wake-up call at a quarter till Apocalypse.”
“In that case,” Doug said, “I think you’re right on time.”
Rogue looked in the direction that Doug was pointing, and Hank obliged by bringing up an enhanced telescopic view on the Quinjet’s monitors, set in the control panel just before them.
“What the ...” Rogue shook her head in amazement.
From this distance, it looked like nothing more mysterious than a man sitting in a chair. Or a statue of a man in a chair, perhaps, his legs out straight before him, knees bent at precisely ninety degrees, his arms lying on the chair’s armrests.
But the scale was all wrong. Even without distance cues, it would be impossible to miss the fact that the statue towered over the lush greenery around it. So perhaps it was something like the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.
Except no, it was bigger even than that. The greenery on all sides was not shrubs and bushes. No, they were the towering trees of the rain forest. One hundred copies of the Lincoln Memorial statue, stacked one atop the other, would not be quite so tall.
And there was, of course, the fact that Abraham Lincoln was not sculpted in hues of purple and gray, with a strange, imposing helmet sculpted around his face.
But then, no one had ever been freed on the word of the Master Mold, either, so it should have come as no surprise.
The Master Mold was so large it would simply not fit into Doug Ramsey’s mind. It was as though the sight of it hit his eyeballs and bounced right back, without registering on the rods and cones. His mind refused to accept that it could be real.
In the open space before the seated statue there was a clearing, beyond which was a steep drop-off, where a waterfall plunged to the jungle floor far below.
Rogue was the first out of the Quinjet door, and Doug wasn’t about to complain. Virtually invulnerable, super-strong, and blindingly fast, there was little doubt that she’d be the best suited to handle any unforeseen difficulties. But, as Beast climbed to the ground, and Doug followed, it seemed that the biggest danger facing them at the moment came in the form of mosquitoes.
“Yeesh,” Rogue said, wrinkling her nose. “What is that smell?”
Hank smiled. “That, my dear, is the bouquet of nature, the humble aroma of the jungle, the scent of the cycle of life inexorably turning and turning..
“Crap,” Doug said.
“Exactly,” Hank answered with a broad smile.
“No.” Doug shook his head, and pointed.
Hank turned, and looked in the direction Doug indicated. “Oh, crap, indeed.”
Rogue smiled. “Finally,” she said, cracking her knuckles. “And here I was worried this trip would be boring.”
• • • .
They looked, and moved, like chickens, but chickens made out of old motorcycle parts, and toasters, and refrigerator coils. Most chickens, naturally, did not come equipped with rapid-fire automatic weaponry, but then allowances had to be made for form and function.
Even as he worried that they might extinguish his life at any moment, Hank could not help admiring the genius of the mechanisms design. These were Sentinels, that much was clear, but Sentinels unlike any he had encountered before. These seemed more like wild creatures than the giant, stoic behemoths he and the other X-Men had faced time and again. These diminutive things were feral Sentinels, their designs run wild.
Their programming, sadly, had not drifted nearly so far from the ideal.
“Mutants,” came the high-pitched, clattering voice of the chicken Sentinels, several of them speaking at once in rough harmony. “You are advised to surrender or face immediate termination. This is your only warning. ”
“I think they look kinda cute,” Rogue said, glancing over her shoulder at Doug and Hank, who’d cautiously taken up a position behind her.
Before Hank or Doug could answer, the chicken Sentinels opened fire. The roar of their muzzle fire was deafening, but the slugs flattened harmlessly against Rogue, the kinetic energy of the impact absorbed by her nigh invulnerable skin without leaving mark or blemish. Some of the slugs, hitting at more oblique angles, ricocheted off lancing through the foliage nearby, shredding leaves and branches from the trees.
Somewhere nearby, a flock of tropical birds, alarmed by the noise of the gunfire, squawked loudly in protest and then, as one, took wing. The smell of burning gunpowder reached Hank’s nostrils, wafted on the light jungle breeze. And suddenly, Rogue was gone.
She moved so fast she blurred practically into invisibility. It took all of Hank’s concentration and not-inconsiderable visual acuity to follow her motions at all, and even then he was tracking her progress more by the destruction in her wake than by any glimpse of her movement.
Where before eight chicken Sentinels had perched before them, none taller than three and a half or four feet tall, now there was only a gently raining shower of debris, falling in a rough line from left to right, clouds of dust drifting languidly on the light breeze.
In less time than it took to blink Rogue was standing before them once again, smoothing back her white-streaked hair with a gloved hand. Only then did the last of the dismantled Sentinels strike the ground. The whole operation had taken on the order of a few seconds.
“I gotta say, I feel a little guilty ’bout that,” Rogue said, smiling sheepishly. “Poor little fellahs.”
Doug grinned broadly, looking up at Rogue, eyes full of hero worship. Hank didn’t know that he could blame him. As a kid who was good at little more than reading, and then got to be good at running and jumping and swinging, to say nothing of clinging with his bare (and now oversize) feet, Hank had still felt flatly amazed the first time he saw Scott let loose with one of his optic blasts. To say nothing of Jean with her telekinesis, or Bobby with his ability to extract all the heat from a limited region of space. And Warren, who couldfly? Forget about it. Doug seemed like a nice kid, but Hank knew from experience that having a more sedate power like the ability to read and write in any language left one feeling more than a little inadequate in the face of some of the more demonstrative mutant abilities.
Which was not to say that Hank had not shown off with his acrobatics, from time to time. But one always had to try to get one’s own back, whenever possible.
“Come on,” Hank said, pointing toward the large opening in the wall between the Master Mold’s feet. From this distance, it seemed about the dimensions of a typical house’s garage door, but he knew that it was actually large enough to admit the Blackbird with room to spare—sideways, even. “These little feral Sentinels could well be just the first line of defense, and we might run into more interference once we’re inside.”
They set off across the clearing, which rose at a gentle slope toward the base of the Master Mold facilities.
“Um, Mister McCoy... that is, Hank?” Doug hurried his pace to keep abreast of Hank, while Rogue trotted a few steps ahead. “I’ve never heard anything about Sentinels of that configuration before. Had you?”
Hank shook his head. “No. But then, I’m not sure that anybody has.”
Doug tilted his head to one side, confused, and tightened his grip on the leather satchel over his shoulder. “Sir?”
“That is to say,” Hank continued, “that this Master Mold facility has been sitting disused for some time. And while the central core might have been off-line throughout that time, there would doubtless have been Sentinels in operation throughout, if only for automated defense systems like those we’ve just encountered. And absent any additional instructions, they’d have continued to carry out their functions. And, knowing what I do about their programming, Sentinels are equipped with the ability to repair themselves, as needed, using whatever resources are at hand; likewise, each is instilled with the instinct to adapt and improve whenever possible. Over the years, they’d have needed to repair themselves for any number of reasons, whether routine wear and tear, or environmental damage, or accidents, or what-have-you. And when they repaired themselves, with an ever-dwindling supply of resources and parts, the second imperative would have come to the fore, and naturally...”
Hank paused, and glanced over at Doug, who was nodding in dawning understanding.
“They would have evolved,” Doug said, a trace of wonderment in his tone. “Adapted to their environment, eliminated unnecessary design elements, introduced novel designs and features to see whether they improved their efficiency. Perhaps even reproduced, in a sense, experimenting by creating duplicates with varying characteristics.”
“Exactly.” Hank sounded like a schoolteacher praising a star pupil.
They were now approaching the wide opening of the factory itself, the space beyond the threshold dark and foreboding.
“But an evolutionary process,” Doug went on, “suggests evolutionary niches. Designs adapting to perform specific tasks, adapted to specific environments.”
“Yes,” Hank said, raising an eyebrow. “What of it?” They passed through the threshold, into the dark, cavernous space beyond.
“Well, then what if the chicken Sentinels were just scavengers, or something else at the lower levels of the pecking order. What if there was a top predator, higher up the chain?”
Just then, lights flared high above them. They looked up and saw what appeared to be a Sentinel’s helmet, lacking a face, perched atop eight immensely long, segmented legs. Where the helmet and the legs met, huge pincers clacked open and closed, like the mouth of some enormous animal.
“Well,” Hank said, taking off his glasses and slipping them carefully into his shirt pocket. “There’s a fine contender for top predator, if ever I saw one.”
“Ah, don’t go givin’ away any blue ribbons just yet,” Rogue said, and pointed toward the shadows.
Another feral Sentinel, this one looking like a giant snake with arms, slithered toward them, undulating across the pitted concrete of the factory floor, the arms which jutted from beneath its Sentinel helmet on either side bristling with weaponry.
“Fans,” Rogue said with a thin smile, “we just might have a horse race on our hands.”
The Blackbird skimmed over the waves for the last few miles, approaching from the west. By the time Scott nosed her forward, touching down for an amphibious landing on the far side of Julienne Cay, the fuselage had been gliding bare inches above the waves, more like a cigarette boat at high speed than a supersonic spy plane puttering along at a fraction of its top acceleration.
Scott’s gamble was that the foliage of the atoll, and the gentle curve of its sandy hills, would hide them from the sight of the alien city, positioned as it was on the eastern side of Julienne Cay. That they were not surrounded by super-powered Exemplar troops on hover-platforms the moment they stepped out of the Blackbird and into the shallow surf at the shore’s edge suggested Scott’s gamble had paid off
It was approaching the middle of the afternoon, local time, and the sun bore down on them from behind, sending long shadows angling across the pure white sands of the atoll as they walked inland. All three X-Men—Scott, Kurt, and Peter—were dressed for action in their uniforms, and carried nothing with them but the small handheld device that Scott had tucked into his belt. The Blackbird, its hatch securely closed, idled silently on the waves, anchored in place, the autopilot at ready.
“Let’s go,” Scott said, setting off for the tree line. “And keep out of sight. If they spot us, this’ll all have been for nothing.”
“Splendid motivational tactics, Scott.” Kurt smiled, showing razor-sharp canines. “Perhaps you should do a lecture tour, hmm?”
Peter smiled, but Scott said nothing, plowing into the underground, a man on a mission.
A short while later, they reached the opposite shore, keeping well hidden behind the trees and underground, peering at the alien city from cover.
“Are you sure this is going to work, Scott?”
“What are you worried about, Peter?” Kurt laughed, mirthlessly. “I’m the one that’s got to do all the heavy lifting here, nicht wahr?”
Peter shook his head, far from convinced. Hank McCoy had drawn up their plan of attack that morning, around the kitchen table in the Xavier mansion. It was simple and straightforward, but for all that he was a simple man, who preferred matters straightforward whenever possible, Peter had long since learned that the circuitous and devious was often the more effective strategy. That was one of the things he admired about Logan and Kurt. Even Katya, to some extent, had a penchant for approaching a problem from strange angles, of doing what was least expected, at the most unlikely moment, and turning it to her advantage.
That was not Peter’s way. He was a farmer, not a strategist. If there was a stump in the path of your plow, you didn’t change the plow’s course to account for it. You simply pulled up the stump and got on with business.
The problem was, of course, that few problems in life were solved as simply as was a stump in the path of a plow. Would that they were. Then men like Peter would run the world, making sensible, straightforward decisions, ones that required no contemplation or additional scrutiny. But this was not that world.
In this instance, the problem was a simple one. There was an impenetrable dome surrounding the alien city, and they needed to penetrate it. Peter’s solution, were it up to him, would be simply to punch a hole in the dome. Which, of course, was not possible; or, at least, not directly.
The hallmark of Hank’s plan was its simplicity. They would poke a hole in the dome, it was true. But where Hank’s plan differed from Peter’s simpler approach was in where they would punch it.
Hank had theorized that it was unlikely that the invaders, these Kh’thon would have the energy resources necessary to maintain a completely impenetrable level of force at all points on the dome at all times. Therefore, he reasoned, there must be some mechanism that redirected the energy as needed. A concentrated, persistent attack on one point, then, would necessitate a momentary weakening of other points. That was were the Blackbird came in.
Scott had already programmed the attack patterns into the autopilot. Once he sent the signal with the remote device on his belt, the Blackbird would lift off, circle around to the north at a considerable distance, and then approach the alien city from the east. Then, as soon as it was in range, the Blackbird would concentrate its fire on a single point, pouring out a maelstrom of firepower for a span of several minutes.
When the attack reached its peak, at the moment when Hank theorized that the opposite side of the dome would be at its weakest, the X-Men would make their move.
“I’m not so sure about this.” Kurt narrowed his yellow eyes, rapping on the trunk of a palm tree with his knuckles.
“We’ve been over the math, Kurt,” Scott said, a hint of impatience underlying his words. “It’s well within your tolerances.”
“Well, Scott,” Kurt said, his tone sharp, “it isn’t my tolerances that concern me.”
The distance from the shore of the atoll to the edge of the alien city was no more than a mile. Kurt could easily teleport twice that distance... if he was traveling alone. But the plan called for him to teleport himself and both his fellow X-Men. The strain of displacing himself and two others, considering their respective masses, would leave all three of them feeling weakened and profoundly ill on their arrival. It would likely be some minutes before they’d be in a position to move.
Kurt could only teleport to a place he’d seen before. And while he’d visited the strange city years before, with the rest of the X-Men, the only locale he could bring to mind with any clarity was a sort of artificial grotto or pool near the city’s center. There was a long, irregularly shaped body of water, lined with varicolored stones, beneath a towering statue of some inhuman creature, a man and a woman draped in postures of worshipfulness at its feet. The image of the place had stuck with Kurt all this time, since he’d never been able to puzzle out just what the relationship between the creature and the humans was—were they slaves, pets, supplicants, or worse?
This was to be their destination, then. Provided Hank’s theory was correct. If it wasn’t... ?
Kurt tried not to think about that.
Scott held the remote in his hands, tracking its miniature readouts and tells carefully. It had been close to ten minutes since he’d sent the Blackbird’s autopilot the signal to begin, and if all was proceeding according to the plans he’d input, the attack should begin at any minute.
“Um, friends?” Peter began, uneasily. He shuffled nervously from foot to foot, kicking up little clouds of sand, his expression that of a child worried about an impending visit to the dentist. “Just what will happen if Hank’s theory isn’t correct?”
Scott pursed his lips, but didn’t answer, preferring instead to concentrate his attention on the remote.
Beside him, Kurt sighed heavily. “Mein Freund, if Hank’s theory is incorrect, and the force field is active when we attempt to traverse it, then we will most likely be repelled, pushed back into the under dimension through which my teleports take me.”
“Then we will simply teleport back here?” Peter asked hopefully.
Kurt shook his head. “Displacing as much mass as you and Scott combined represent, I won’t be able to ’port for another few minutes. But the dimension to which we’ll be shunted is a timeless limbo, in which there is no perception of the passage of one moment to the next. Though we will never realize it, frozen always in that single instant, we’ll be stranded in that sunless void forever.”
Peter shuddered, but Scott shook his head sharply. He tucked the remote back into his belt.
“That’s not happening.”
Scott reached out, and took Kurt’s hand in his. It so resembled a pantomime of an affectionate gesture that Kurt had to stifle a laugh.
“Come on,” Scott continued. “It’s time to go.”
Kurt nodded once. Holding Scott’s hand with his left, Kurt took Peter’s hand with his right.
“Okay, gentlemen,” Kurt said with a sly smile. “I will see you on the other side.” He paused, and then added, “And if I don’t happen to see you again, allow me to say what a pleasure it has been knowing you both.”
“And I you, tovarisch.” Peter smiled sheepishly, and it looked for an instant as though he might begin to cry.
“Come on, you old women,” Scott said with a bravado he clearly didn’t feel. “We’re not getting any younger.”
Bamf.
Bamf.
Kurt had miscalculated, but only slightly. They arrived a few feet in the air. And while he and Scott fell unceremoniously onto the hard, unforgiving stone at the pool’s edge, Peter plunged with a huge splash and spray into the clear blue waters themselves, sinking like a stone.
No one could have faulted Kurt for that. It was otherwise a flawless bit of teleportation.
Nor, to be fair, could he be faulted for the fact that they were, to a man, exhausted, haggard, and ill, able to do little more than lift their heads and moan. He had warned them, after all.
And if anyone was to blame for the fact that they’d teleported in, in full view of the quartet of Exemplar who lounged at the water’s edge only a few short yards away, it wasn’t Kurt. But then, by that point, the determination of blame was farthest from anyone’s mind.