Somersaulting in the air, Remy LeBeau threw four playing cards into the group, which exploded with a minor charge on impact, clearing a spot for him to land and clearing the mob away from the mutants. A moment later, Archangel landed on the other side of the bloody and beaten mutants, and the mob cleared off even further, then began to close once more.
“Just a couple more muties,” one man shouted. “No problem.” ' Archangel took him down with a flash of silver knives, which flew from his wings and sliced into the big man, immediately and temporarily paralyzing him. The musclehead went down like a sinking stone.
“What the hel) is the matter with you people?” Archangel yelled.
“You!” a woman screamed back. “You’re what’s wrong. All of you muties playing stormtrooper for Magneto. We caught these three on their own, figured it was time for some payback, a little vengeance for the Big Apple!”
Gambit looked back at the trio of mutants, the winged one and two others whose mutant powers or enhancements were not immediately visible.
“I was bom and raised in New York,” one of them said, his accent proving his claim. “We was just tryin’ to leave, ’cause we didn’t want no part of what Magneto’s doin’ here!” “Yeah, right!” a slim Latino man cried, and tossed a hammer he’d been waving right at the mutant who had spoken.
Gambit telescoped out his bo-stick and knocked the hammer from the air, then stepped forward and whacked the Latino man on the shoulder. He hit a nerve cluster, and the man grunted in pain and fell to his knees.
“We’re not afraid of you!” another man shouted.
“You idiots!” Gambit hissed. “Don’ you even pay attention? You may not be afraid of us, but de t’ree mutants you attackin’, dey very afraid of you, vous comprenezl Don’ you t’ink you should maybe make sure you fightin’ the enemy before you waste your time beatin’ on innocent people?”
“They’re muties, they’re not innocent!” the same man cried.
“That’s their curse,” Archangel said. “They’re mutants. Your curse is that you’re a bigot. Unfortunately for them, they can’t change what they are. The question is, can you?”
The man started to bluster something else, when a teenaged boy spoke up.
“I’m no bigot, mister,” he said. “We live here. Magneto and the rest, they’re trying to take our homes away.”
“But these people were trying to leave, they don’t want to live under Magneto any more than you do,” Archangel said.
The boy was quiet then, they all were, except the bigot in the back, who grumbled under his breath but dared not say anything. The mood of the group had changed.
“Me an’ Archangel, we mutants too,” Gambit said. “But we come ’ere, to Manhattan, jus’ to try an stop Magneto. We puttin’ our lives on de line for a city dat ain’t even home to us. You goin’ to stomp us a little bit, too, mes amisT’
Even the bigot was quiet, then.
The three injured mutants said nothing as they got up and continued on their way out of the city. The Sentinels would not stop them. Gambit only hoped they did not run into any other overzealous citizens.
After they were out of sight, Gambit turned to the mob again. Nobody would look at him. When he wasn’t paying attention, the bigot had slipped away, and Remy couldn’t help but think he had instigated the beating. He wished he could think of something more to say, but he was disgusted, and they had no time for preaching.
Warren lifted him. As they flew off, he thought he heard the teenaged boy say something that might have been, ‘ ‘Thank you,” and might have been something else entirely, something vile.
Gambit wished he could have been sure, or that he had faith enough in humanity to merely assume the best.
But he couldn’t. Not today.
« ft *
Lieutenant Jack Mariotte was a career soldier. The Army had put him through college, and by the time he’d finished paying them back with his service, he realized he had forgotten how to be anything else. He was old enough to know he’d never be a general, but young enough to believe if enough conflicts presented themselves, he might retire as a colonel, which meant a sweet pension and all the respect that came with the rank.
But he’d never counted on fighting Sentinels.
His squad stood ready at a battery of plasma cannons on the Jersey side of the Hudson, slightly north of the Holland Tunnel but well within range of the Sentinel who towered in silent menace over the river far below. Lieutenant Mariotte had stared at that Sentinel through part of the night, into the dawn, and throughout the morning and early afternoon. He was intimate with it now, knew every contour of its cold and sinister form.
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 Bemie 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.”
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 fife she had saved only days earlier, was not speaking up for her.
“We’re not following you anymore, Voght,” Harlan Klein-stock 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.
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