“And what about those that don’t prove to be of use?” Lee asked, eyes narrowed.
“Oh,” Vox Septimus said with a casual shrug, “their remains will be disposed of quickly.” He paused, and then gestured to the bowls of green sludge they were all eating, helpfully adding, “Possibly even reconstituted into nutritional supplements.”
Lee looked down at the half-finished bowl of gunk in horror.
24
Betsy Braddock was stretched out on a couch in the day room, as the first light of dawn pinked the sky in the east. Here in the west wing of the Xavier mansion, it was still dark the only illumination from a green-shaded floor lamp, and the lights leaking in from the kitchen, where Doug Ramsey was fixing them a fresh pot of coffee.
They had spent the night with their bodies in the Cerebro chamber, their minds roaming the astral plane. For the moment, Betsy had decided, both body and mind could use a break.
Betsy had always considered herself well traveled. She’d been all over the UK and Ireland, and spent a summer in France, and vacationed once on the island of Malta. Now that she’d come to the States—with a horizon-expanding side trip into another dimension along the way—she felt that she’d hit the highlights. And yet, in the last hours, her astral projection had roamed the four corners of the globe, seeing through the eyes of others places Betsy had never imagined she’d see for herself.
And now, all that Betsy wanted to see was darkness. In the low light, she lay with her eyes squeezed shut, seeing only a red-lidded darkness, one arm thrown over her face, the other across her beily. She realized that she’d been wearing the same clothes for the last twenty-four hours, and that her hair must look a state. Not that it mattered, really. Not here at the end of the world.
She heard the X-Men with her mind before the sound of their approach reached her ears. Their thoughts, as weary and disordered as her own, wafted through the ether like distant shouts echoing in a vast, dark cave.
“Better get some more mugs, Doug,” she said without opening her eyes.
When the others barreled through the door, Peter Rasputin in the lead carrying the unconscious form of an Exemplar invader, Betsy was standing near the front window, a steaming cup of coffee in hand, watching as the light of the rising sun slowly swept across the Xavier estate from east to west, the long shadows slowly emerging from the gloom as the light brightened sufficient to give them definition. Betsy mused as to whether the shadows had been there all along, hidden in the gloaming, or if the light had created them in the first place.
Don’t be daft, girl, Betsy said, and took a long sip of her scalding hot coffee to wake herself. Of course the light makes the shadows. That’s what lights do.
It came of being up all night, and taxing body, mind, and spirit to the limits, thinking such foolish thoughts when there was more important work to be done. Determining just what the X-Men intended with their prisoner, for one.
“Put her there,” Scott Summer said, all business, pointing toward the couch where Betsy had been only a short while before.
As Peter deposited his burden on the cushions, surprisingly gentle, taking great care not to jostle the Exemplar unnecessarily, Scott strode right up to Betsy, his expression set.
“I need you to read her mind,” he said simply, without so much as a by-your-leave.
“And good morning to you, as well, Mr. Summers,” Betsy said, eyeing him over the lip of her coffee mug. “I trust the day finds you passing well?”
Twin lights flared behind the ruby-quartz visor, and Scott’s hands stiffened at his sides. “Look, we don’t have time for games ..
“No, Scott, we don’t,” Betsy shot back, cutting him off with a wave of her hand. “And while I appreciate that you and yours have been busy safeguarding lives all night, it’s been none too pleasant or easy for me and Doug here at home base, I can assure you. Now,” she set her coffee cup down, harder than planned, some of it jostling over onto the polished wood of the side table. “I’m perfectly willing to do as you ask, but I’d remind you that I’m not formally a member of your little merry band yet, and respond much better to requests than to command. And come to that, so far as I’m aware, you’re not exactly a member in good standing at the moment, are you? So if it’s all the same to you, Scott, I’d ask that you keep things civil, and I’m sure the end of the world will just go swimmingly.”
“I like her, Cyke,” the man called Logan said, collapsing into an upholstered chair and propping his feet on a Louis Quatorze table, taking a long pull on the beer he’d already fetched from the kitchen. “She reminds me of me, at that age.”
“Oh, ick,” Kitty said, coming around the hallway from the foyer. “A beer? This early? Really, Logan?” “Heck pun’kin, it ain’t early,” Logan said with a wan smile. “It’s just really, really late.”
Kitty scowled at him, but then caught sight of the coffee service out of the corner of her eye, and her scowl turned into a hungry smile. “Java!” she said, and pounced on the cart.
With a puff of brimstone and an almost imperceptible bamf, Kurt teleported into the room, and perched on the mantel over the fireplace. Doug came in from the kitchen, and then Rogue entered from-the foyer, with a man in a disheveled business suit and tie askew following close behind. Betsy was not sure which fact was most remarkable, that his feet were bare, or that each was easily twice the size of a normal foot.
Kitty gulped her coffee, and then winced as the scalding liquid hit the back of her throat, but quickly went back for another sip. Swallowing it loudly, she glanced over at the newcomer, then to Betsy.
“Betsy Braddock, Hank McCoy. Hank McCoy, Betsy Braddock.”
“Charmed, my dear Ms. Braddock” the gentleman said, stepping across the rug in a couple of long strides and taking Betsy’s hand in his. “I’m sorry we weren’t able to meet under better circumstances.”
“Dr. McCoy was one of the founding X-Men, along with Mr. Summers,” Doug put in, helpfully, and Betsy couldn’t help but detect a note ofjealousy hidden in his tone. “His code name is Beast.”
Betsy glanced at Doug, nodding, and then back to Hank. She smiled, shaking his hand. “What a desperately inappropriate name for such a refined gentleman.” Hank beamed. “Ah, a lady of exacting tastes, that much is obvious. You’ll have to excuse my cognomen, dear lady. It was chosen for me by our teacher, Professor Charles Xavier, and I’m afraid that tact was never one of his strong suits.”
From across the room, Betsy could hear Doug mutter, ‘You can say that again.”
Scott cleared his throat loudly, and got everyone’s attention.
“Okay, so now everyone knows everyone, and we’ve all been reminded to be on our best behavior. Now, seeing that we’re staring down the barrel of Armageddon here, would anyone mind if we got on with the business at hand?”
“Nah, sugah,” Rogue said, sitting cross-legged on the floor, her clothes and hair disheveled. ‘You go right on ahead.”
Scott sighed, and then turned to look at the unconscious Exemplar stretched out on the couch.
“Rogue, you touched minds with this woman when you absorbed her powers, didn’t you? What can you tell us about her masters, the Kh’thon?”
“Well,” Rogue said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully with a gloved hand. “Most of what I absorbed’s already gone, I’m afraid, but little impressions remain.”
“What kind of impressions?” Hank said, holding a coffee cup in a dainty grip, his pinky extended.
“Bad ones,” Rogue said, brows lowered. “Whatever these Kh’thon yahoos are, it ain’t good.”
Scott turned back to Betsy. “So,” he said wearily. “Can you read her mind or not?”
“Well,” Betsy said, her lips pursed, “all you had to do was ask.'”
Doug wanted to do something, wanted to help, but all he could do was watch. Even though he’d spent the whole night at Betsy’s side, guiding her when necessary, lending her his strength when possible, now that the X-Men had reentered the picture
, he was shoved back into the background again, just another article of furniture.
Betsy sat at the end of the couch, the head of the unconscious Exemplar cradled in her lap. She had her hands on either side of the strange woman’s smooth, hairless head, one on each temple, and her eyes were closed in concentration.
“She’s not going to wake up during this, is she?” Betsy said uneasily, opening her eyes a fraction and glancing around the room.
“We’re right here if she does, darlin’,” Logan said, giving a little salute with his half-empty bottle of beer.
“Hmph.” Betsy gave a little smirk. “I must say, that simply fills me with confidence.”
With a final glance and a quick wink at Doug, she closed her eyes again.
Then, nothing.
Betsy sat still as a statue, her hands frozen in place, her mouth hanging slightly open but immobile. The only sign of life that came from her was the slight rising and falling of her chest.
“Betsy,” Scott said, gently. “Can you hear ...”
Suddenly, Betsy sat bolt upright, her eyes wide and white. Her mouth opened in a wide “o” of surprise, and she gasped.
However, Doug noticed that at no time did her hands break contact with the Exemplar’s temples.
“See . . .” Betsy said, her voice rough and ragged. “Feel...”
She threw her head from one side to the other, eyes darting, as though trying to escape from something, but finding herself unable to move.
“I don’t like this, Cyke,” Logan said guardedly.
“Neither do I,” Doug said louder than he’d intended.
“Just hang on a second, everybody,” Kitty said, keeping her eyes on Betsy. “Give her a chance to ...”
“I see it!” Betsy shouted, looking straight forward, her eyes opened so wide that white showed all around.
“See what, Ms. Braddock?” Hank asked gently.
“The fleet. The Kh’thon. The fleet of the Kh’thon. Oh dear, oh dear. It’s bigger, bigger, so much bigger than I’d imagined. Ships as large as moons, and without count. And more, and more, and more of them. Coming, coming, coming.”
“What about the Kh’thon?” Scott said, his tone level but insistent. “What about the Kh’thon themselves?” “I can ... I can’t... I can ...” Betsy shook her head again, and closed her eyes tight. “Hard to see. There are . . . ‘fingerprints’ . . . telepathic traces of their presence, of their passage, all over this woman’s mind. And even these small traces are . . . inhuman. Unhuman. Notjust alien, but utterly alien, incomprehensibly alien. We’ve never experienced anything like these before.” “I don’t like this,” Doug repeated, lips drawn and white.
“Show us,” Scott insisted, reaching forward a hand, gently touching Betsy’s shoulder. “Can you share with us what you’re feeling, what you’re seeing?”
“Hey, now,” Rogue said, sitting upright. “I don’t know about all this.”
“Yes,” Betsy said before anyone could respond. “Here. See.”
Suddenly, Doug’s mind opened up, and pure evil poured in.
Betsy had been right. They had never experienced anything like these creatures before. No one had, in living memory. Except for the Exemplar and the other servitors of the Kh’thon, of course, but they had been so fundamentally altered by the exposure, so deeply changed, that they weren’t really human anymore, at least not at their core. Genetically, to be sure, and biologically, but their minds, their minds, had been twisted into shapes that no human should have to endure. These were brief glimpses which Betsy had caught, and which she was now sharing with the others. Little more than fingerprints, glancing traces, but even brushing up against them made one feel an unease that seeped down to the core of their being. These were not natural things, these beings who claimed to come from Earth’s unimaginably distant past. They were monsters, fiends far stranger than anything dreamt by H. R Love-craft, the truth behind humanity’s darkest nightmares.
And they were coming to Earth.
Betsy broke contact, pulling her hands away from the woman’s temples, looking at her fingertips as if she’d never seen them before.
“Mein Gott, ” Kurt said, his hand over his eyes.
“Flamin’ heck,” Logan agreed, nodding.
Hank rubbed his lower lip with one of his massive fingers, his expression thoughtful. “Well, it was certainly ... instructive.”
“Yeah?” Kitty said, her mouth a moue of distaste. “How do you figure?”
“Well,” Hank answered, “if at least part of the Kh’thon’s claim is true, and they were present on Earth at some time in prehistory, then we could be looking at the roots of some of mankind’s oldest mythologies. It may well be that the legends of demons and devils in all the world’s cultures might devolve from dim racial memories of the Kh’thonic beings from humanity’s distant past.”
“Which is flamin’ fascinatin’, I’m sure,” Logan scoffed, “but that don’t get us any closer to stavin’ off doomsday, now does it?”
“Actually,” Betsy said, her voice sounding strained, “I was able to glean something useful, I think.”
All eyes turned on her, and no one spoke.
“There is a flaw in the defenses of the Kh’thonic Collective, it seems,” Betsy went on, labored. “This Exemplar was aware of the problem, though she knew it was heresy ever to voice it to her superiors.”
“What is it?” Peter asked, wide eyed.
“The ships of the Kh’thonic fleet are heavily shielded and armed,” Betsy answered, “and individually would be far beyond Earth’s ability to defeat. But the systems on each are slaved to a master control within the Kh’thonic Fathership. It seems that the Kh’thon themselves, who all ride in the master vessel, prefer to retain a final control over their slaves, in the rare chance that a group of them might prefer freedom to servitude and rise up against them.”
“And this helps us how, exactly?” Rogue asked. “Well,” Hank said, before Betsy could answer, “I would have thought that much to be obvious.” Everyone looked at him expectantly.
Hank sighed. “Simply put, if we were to find a way to disable the ships’ defenses from within the Fathership itself, then the fleet would be vulnerable to attack” Peter shook his head, the thought clearly overwhelming him.
“And just what kind of attack would that be?” Logan asked.
Hank gave a sly smile. “I have a suggestion,” he said. “Which, while suitably ironic, is something I suspect that none of you is going to like very much.”
25
“Sentinels?!”
Everyone looked at Hank McCoy as though he’d just sprouted horns from his head.
“I told you that you wouldn’t like it,” he said.
They were gathered in the kitchen, eating a hastily prepared breakfast, and making plans. Betsy had managed to telepathically switch their Exemplar prisoner “off,” rendering her unconscious until such time as Betsy delivered a psionic wake-up call, and they’d installed the prisoner in a secured room down in the medical facilities in sub-basement one.
“Okay, Hank,” Scott said, warily, fork poised over a half-eaten plate of eggs. “I think you’re going to need to sell us on this one.”
Hank smiled. Always the cautious one, was Scott. He had been, ever since they were kids. Not that Scott was ever a kid, not really. They’d been teenagers when they’d met, years ago, but Scott had already thought and acted like an old man. Oh, he had the insecurities of childhood lingering about him like a fog, to be sure; Hank thought it possible that Scott would never leave those completely behind. But in his manner, his style of dress, in his attitudes, Scott always seemed as old as Professor Xavier, if not even older.
At least the professor could manage a smile, now and again. Not so dour old Scott. Hank felt as close to him as a brother, closer than anyone in his biological family, but in many ways they couldn’t have been more different. Hank, who since childhood had looked like a shaved ape but had the brain of an Einstein, and who sp
ent years at a time as blue and furry as a Muppet, couldn’t help but see the humor in any situation. For him, being a mutant wasn’t some kind of curse, or burden. As far as Hank was concerned, being a mutant was fun. If he’d been a regular guy, a workaday joe like his father had been, would he have been an X-Man, or an Avenger, would he have been able to travel through space and time, to other worlds and other dimensions, having adventures all the while? Not hardly...
Hank dragged himself back to the present moment as he noticed the incredulous stares of the other X-Men gathered around the long table.
“Look,” he said at length, his tone jaunty, “based on the images that Betsy shared telepathically”—he spared a nod toward the British telepath at the table’s far end, who looked a bit worse for wear—“I’ve made some back-of-a-napkin calculations regarding the size and capacities of the Kh’thonic Collective’s flotilla. And I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that the ships are simply too large for any conventional weapons to do much damage, assuming on the one hand that we were able to get the weapons into orbit in the first place, and on the other that we were somehow able to disable the flotilla’s defense systems on the Kh’thonic Fathership.” Hank paused for a moment to let that sink in. Even if they were to do the impossible, and render the ships vulnerable, their chances of actually doing the ships any harm with conventional weapons were virtually nil.
“That said,” he continued, “there are large, adaptable weapons on Earth, capable of reaching escape velocity under their own power, with sufficient armament to make a considerable dent in the Kh’thonic fleet.”
He glanced around the table. It was Kitty who said what everyone was thinking.
“The Sentinels.”
“Precisely, Kitty,” Hank said, like a teacher commending a promising student.
He could tell from the expressions around the table that none of the X-Men were very pleased at the idea of using Sentinels, giant robots designed to hunt and kill mutants. Each of them had faced the metallic menaces at one time or another and barely survived to tell the tale.
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