Scott could have ended it there. One, quick, optic blast would have taken Oracle down and ended the fight. For several reasons, he chose not to do that. His energy was depleted, and he needed to conserve what he had left. It would be over in a moment regardless. And, most importantly, Jean would not take kindly to him interfering in her fights. She hated the thought that he ever needed to protect her. Which amused Scott, because more often than not, it was he who needed her help, their current situation a case in point.
As Cyclops watched, Jean gave an exasperated sigh, walked the few paces that separated her from Oracle, and simply decked the other woman. When she looked up at Scott, she was smiling. But her smile quickly faded as she looked past him.
Turning instantly, Scott saw that Gambit was having trouble against Warstar once more. The symbiotic mechanoids were going to be a problem. Their regenerative powers meant that the only way to stop them was to kill them. If they could be killed. Scott was happy to realize that they didn't need to stop Warstar, only buy themselves some time.
Scott let loose with a weak optic blast that yet managed to free Gambit, for the moment, from Warstar's clutches.
"That's about all I've got, Remy!" he called. "Make it count."
"C'Cil's mind is almost too dense for me to manipulate," Jean said as she jogged to his side. "But I might be able to confuse B'Nee for a few moments."
She focused on Warstar, and B'Nee, the smaller bio-mechanoid who rode C'Cil's back, shrieked with panic and begin to look wildly around.
"Rogue!" Scott called, pointing to where Gambit was still trying to get close enough to the flailing Warstar to do some damage. Rogue swooped low toward Remy and Wars tar, but Gambit didn't see her coming. He dodged a blow from C'Cil,popped up behind Warstar, and reached out for B'Nee's back, both hands already glowing with an explosive charge.
"Gambit, no!" Cyclops yelled, but neither his warning nor Rogue's aid arrived in time.
Remy's hands landed on B'Nee's back, and he was immediately electrocuted. His entire body was stiff, every muscle taut, and he shook from head to toe as electricity coursed through him. The charge passed from his hands to B'Nee's body, and B'Nee shrieked once more as he began to glow.
"Remy!" Rogue cried as she pulled him away from Warstar, still jittering with the electricity induced seizure.
In a shadowy corner of the Great Hall, B'Nee exploded, throwing C'Cil forward onto the marble floor. Warstar had been separated. B'Nee's head rolled toward Scott and Jean. Ashe stared at it in horror, Scott realized that where the head lay, debris and marble were being absorbed and subtly changed. Already, B'Nee was reconstructing himself. It was an extraordinary example of alien life unlike anything he had seen before. And C'Cil was already rising, prepared to help his other half with repairs.
It was only a matter of time.
"Surrender, X-Men, or you will die! You have done enough damage this day!" Gladiator shouted from the shattered balcony above.
"What does it take to put this guy down?" Jean asked next to him.
Scott was about to reply that he didn't think Gladiator could be put down. But another voice, crying out with pain, anger, and hatred, interrupted him. It was the voice of his father.
"Murderer!" Corsiar screamed. "How dare you, Gladiator? How dare you?"
Scott turned to see Corsair, Raza, Hepzibah, and the Kree rebel Kam-Lorr, coming toward them. Corsair was carrying someone in his arms, but it took Scott a moment to realize that it was Candide. And what had Corsair said. Murderer? Which would mean that Candide was dead.
Scott Summers had never truly understood war. In his mind, he could still not comprehend it. But in his belly, where nausea and dread roiled into a terrible, noxious brew, he finally knew what war was.
The knowledge was unwelcome.
• • •
Only his speed had saved him thus far, but Archangel was tiring. He let off another flurry of wingknives, desperately hoping that several might slip past Deathbird's enhanced body armor and tag her face or hands. The paralyzing effects of the knives might be his only chance. They cut the armor, but apparently did not make it all the way through. Several times, he'd cut her wings, but the paralyzing chemicals in his wing-knives seemed to have no effect there. Archangel had bombarded Deathbird with so many, they jutted from her body armor like the quills of a porcupine.
Each time he would launch a new barrage, she would block and then attempt a physical attack. And each time she would fail. With her need to keep her arms extended, her every blow was telegraphed long before it would reach him. With his far superior speed, Warren was not an easy target. Each time Deathbird attempted to strike and failed, she would go into a dive. Twice he had tried to get her during these moments, but she recovered in time to go at him again. She'd almost had him last time.
Where he was growing tired, slowing down, it seemed as though she could keep up the battle forever.
"Your attack has only proven that I was right all along," Deathbird squealed, madness in her eyes. "Lilandra and the cripple Xavier are plotting my downfall. They have sent you to test my mettle. You will find me more difficult to defeat than you imagined, X-Man. I will send them that message with your corpse!"
She lunged at him again. This time, Warren wasn't fast enough. Deathbird's closed fist caught him a glancing blow in the back of the head. Dazed, Warren began to fall, thinking dimly about how lucky he was that she'd struck with closed hand rather than her talons. Otherwise, his brains would have spilled out in midair.
Screeching, Deathbird dove after him. Warren didn't really see her coming, but he could hear her. It was the sound of the reaper come to claim him, but Archangel wasn't ready yet. He shook off his disorientation, and switched direction in an instant.
"That's it!" he shouted. "Now you've really pissed me off!"
At three times the speed with which she was diving toward him, Archangel flashed upward at Deathbird. With all his speed and strength, he flew toward her, then turned away at the last moment. His left wing lashed out, lightning fast, and sliced open her body armor. Deathbird shrieked in pain, reaching for the eight-inch-long wound that had suddenly appeared in her side.
And, lowering her arms, she began to fall.
After a moment, she recovered. But the tyrant was wounded, now, and Archangel was filled with rage and a thirst for vengeance. He did not so much embrace the things Apocalypse had wanted of him when he'd received his new wings. Rather, he took up the reins of the savagery within him, and wielded it as the most terrible of weapons. He did not become the fury, he mastered it.
Further maddened by pain, yet slowed and confounded by her wounds, Deathbird was no match for him. Again and again, Archangel attacked, lured her into committing herself to a lunge for her throat. Then he struck. Once, twice, three and four times, he slashed through her body armor.
Finally, she went down.
Warren was triumphant, not merely over his enemy, but over himself. He was proud of both victories. Archangel had not struck to kill, but to incapacitate. And despite her poisoned soul, the depth of her evil, he would not let her fall to her death. In mid-air, he snagged Deathbird around the waist.
Suddenly, Archangel was blinded by the glare of a powerful light from above. The courtyard and the outside of the Capitol Building lit up as if it were day. Shielding his eyes with one hand, Warren saw that it was not merely one light, but several that spotlit the building.
The Starjammer had arrived.
• • •
The Imperial Guard was almost beaten. But Cyclops knew that, as the Beast was fond of saying, almost only counted in horseshoes and hand grenades. Gladiator was still standing. It wasn't over yet.
Cyclops stood with Jean and Rogue, who carried the unconscious, severely injured Gambit over her shoulder. The Kree rebel leader, Kam-Lorr, and the Starjammers came up to stand with them. Corsair laid Candide's ravaged corpse at his feet, and stood to shake his fist at Gladiator in defiance.
"You're just following
orders, right?" Corsair screamed. "I know that's what you're going to say, Gladiator. You're a good soldier, aren't you? Well, old friend, I've heard it all before."
Gladiator did not fly so much as float from the balcony, slowly dropping to the rubble-strewn floor. He landed perhaps twenty feet from them, but did not approach.
"I am sorry you have lost your friend, Corsair," Gladiator began, "but she was a political prisoner. She knew what she was getting into here. It is war, after all. Even the innocent are sacrificed to the machine of war."
Corsair hung his head, and Cyclops felt his father's pain.
"How can you so blindly follow the orders of a ruler you know is despicable?" Corsair demanded. "How can you simply let all of this happen?"
"I am not blind," Gladiator said coldly.
"Which is all the worse!" Corsair cried. "If you were simply ignorant, at least I could pity you. But you have a soul, you have a conscience. You are not blind, no, not at all. You simply choose to close your eyes."
Corsair paused, and Scott looked over to see a ferocity in his father's countenance that he had never before witnessed. Disgust, rage and agony, all were clearly visible in every twitch, every motion. He crossed the space separating him from Gladiator, a mere human face to face with one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy.
"You pride yourself on your honor," Corsair sneered. "But you have none. You are a coward, Gladiator. Afraid to have a will of your own. Afraid to express principles that might differ from those you so ignorantly consider your betters."
Gladiator stiffened, breathed in slowly, then spoke through gritted teeth.
"I order you all to surrender," he said. "You will not be allowed to leave Hala."
Corsair stepped even closer, and Scott winced. Gladiator could kill his father with one blow. But Corsair was not to be deterred. He leaned forward so that his forehead was nearly touching Gladiator's.
"Get out of my way, Praetor," Corsair said. "You have caused enough death and misery this day."
The words cut deep. Gladiator blinked, twice, and a look that spoke of uncertainty, even regret, crossed his face.
Then the room glaring white light bathed the room, and they all turned toward the huge window shattered by Archangel's clash with Deathbird long minutes earlier. After a moment, that pair returned through the window. They looked far different now, however, than when they had gone out.
"Warren?" Jean murmured at Scott's side, and Scott was taken aback as well. For Archangel carried the tyrant Deathbird under one arm, like a sack of groceries. Blood flowed from the injured despot, and Warren's wings spread to their full sixteen foot span as he landed several feet from the blazing but unconscious Starbolt.
Unceremoniously, he dropped Deathbird to the ground near Starbolt.
"Let's go X-Men," Archangel said, breaking the silence that had descended upon the room. "Our ride's here."
"Is she dead?" Gladiator asked quietly, and for once, Scott could not read his tone.
"Certainly not," Warren replied. "But she may well be if she does not get attention soon."
"Scott," Jean said softly. "I scan a whole host of minds massing outside the building. Reinforcements, getting ready to storm the place."
The loud crack of devastating weapons fire punctuated her words.
"Surface-to-air weaponry, that is," Hepzibah said.
"Time to go, folks," Rogue added.
"I cannot allow you to leave," Gladiator said, staring, unmoving, at the bleeding form of Deathbird.
But his heart wasn't in the words. Cyclops knew that, and stepped forward to confront him, but without the anger that his father had shown. Instead, he felt only sadness. He laid a hand on Corsair's shoulder and, much to his surprise, Corsair turned away and went back to where Candide's body lay.
"Gladiator," Cyclopssaid in a comforting voice. "You are one man, yet I think it very possible you could actually prevent us from leaving here. But not without further death.
"Youknow that, despite your orders from Deathbird, this is not what your Majestrix would want. There is no one here to see that you follow your Majestrix's wishes over her mad sister's orders, which is as it should be were it not for governmental etiquette. Let us pass."
Behind them, Corsair lifted Candide's corpse and handed it to Kam-Lorr.
"Take her," Scott heard his father say. "Bury her with the people she fought to avenge. But go now before your escape is cut off. But know this, Kam-Lorr. She willingly gave her life for your cause. I have seen the results of your war with the Shi'ar, and though I blame you both, I cannot live with the thought of Deathbird poisoning your planet further. Something must be done before you are all dead.
"As a great Terran soldier once said, 'I shall return.' "
"That would be unwise," Gladiator said quickly, and it took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in.
He was not going to stop them.
"Tend to your injured, Praetor," Cyclops said. "We will tend to ours and bury our dead."
Gladiator glanced around the room, a sad but bemused expression on his face.
"It is very strange," he said, to no one in particular. "For a moment I thought I heard someone speaking to me."
Cyclops turned to find the rest of the X-Men and the gathered Starjammers staring at him expectantly. Kam-Lorr had already disappeared with Candide's corpse, and Cyclops realized he hadn't known the woman long enough even to mourn. He could, however, grieve for his father, who had lost a friend that day.
"What are you waiting for?" he asked. "We can't use the front door, so we go back to that marble staircase."
They ran for the stairs that had brought them up from below, and Cyclops hoped they would go to the top of the building. Warstar was nearly rebuilt, but Oracle and Titan were still unconscious, and Starbolt and Deathbird were gravely wounded. The last thing he saw before he followed Rogue, who was still carrying the unconscious Gambit, up the stairs, was Gladiator lifting Starbolt and Deathbird and heading for the front door.
Afew moments later, as they pounded up the stairs, he heard Gladiator's shouts of command.
"Quickly!" Praetor cried. "The prisoners are escaping! After them! You there, help me tend to the Viceroy!"
Cyclops smiled. Either Gladiator had had a change of heart or, more likely, he wanted to be sure none of the soldiers would even be able to conceive of the idea that he might have let them go.Amongthe many things the X-Menhad learned in the past day, one of the most shameful had been that Gladiator was far more intelligent, and far more noble than any of them had ever given him credit for.
Several minutes later, with blaster fire and shouted voices echoing through the winding stairwell beneath them, they emerged in a short hallway that led to a single door. Without waiting for the X-Men to remove it with their natural mutant abilities, the Starjammers obliterated it in an assault with their own weapons.
"Nice digs," Archangel said, whistling in admiration.
"Must be Deathbird's private aerie," Corsair observed.
"Y'know, I feel like trashing the place, but I'm just too damn tired."
"Alas,we have not the time," Raza said grimly, "or 'tis certain I wouldst trash the place with mine own hands."
"Ch'od," Corsair said, tapping the comm-badge on his breast.
"Aye,Captain?" Ch'od responded.
"Glad to see you made it in one piece, my friend," Corsair said wistfully. "Now let's just hope we can all make it out. We're near the top. Look around for our blaster fire as we clear ourselves an exit."
The long, beautifully appointed outer wall of the aerie, with arched windows that looked down on the courtyard, was completely incinerated by blaster fire and optic bursts. Seconds later, the Starjammer hovered in place of the disintegrated wall, its side hatch open and a short ramp extended out.
They hustled aboard, the shouts of soldiers getting closer and closer. As Ch'od closed the hatch, Shi'ar warriors burst through the door and began firing on the ship. Such small arms fire wa
s no match for the Starjammer's hull, however.
Cyclops helped Rogue get Gambit strapped to a medi-slab. They rigged his lifesign monitors. Only when they went to strap in with the rest of the passengers, and saw Raza assisting a staggering Hepzibah, did Cyclops realize his father's lover was also injured. He admired her courage, for Hepzibah had never uttered a word of complaint.
Just as Scott snapped his belt into place, Corsair appeared in the door to the cockpit.
"Bad news, team," he said grimly. "Warp engines are out. Even if we make it out of Hala's orbit, we'll never outrun the armada up there. We have to use the stargate."
"But Earth's sun can't take too many 'gates in such a brief period," Jean said. "You know that, Corsair. It becomes unstable."
"Nothing is certain, Jean," Warren argued. "From everything I've read or heard the Professor and Hank say, I think it would have to be a high concentration of stargates over a long period of time to actually destabilize the sun. That's what they were afraid of when the Shi'ar originally placed the stargate there. This is different."
"Is it really, Warren?" Cyclops asked, brow furrowed with concern, brain muddled with exhaustion. "Twice was bad enough, but now a third stargate in less than a day? As you said, nothing is certain. We can't take that chance,"
"So what are you sayin', sugar?" Rogue asked. "We just give up and let 'em shoot us out of the sky? That doesn't get my vote."
"A handful of us versus the whole population of Earth, the planet itself, Rogue," Jean added. "We can't risk that."
"Look," Warren snapped. "It's like this. We use the gate, there's a slim possibility that we may endanger Earth. We don't use it, we are absolutely going to die. No contest."
"Corsair!" Ch'od called from the cockpit. "My ruse with the hyperdrive has allowed us to elude the armada this long. We have perhaps a few seconds before they find us. We need that time to reverse the process, or there's no way we'll make it to the stargate. The argument would be moot, at that point."
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