“A flawless exemplar of our tax dollars toiling vigorously,” Hank said, and they both laughed. As little as he would have liked to admit it, Hank knew that there had always been people like Gyrich in government, and there likely always would.
They were quiet for several minutes after that, the way old friends can sit together silently without feeling the pressure of having to keep a conversation going. Both had built reputations as wiseguys over the years, the Abbott and Costello of the mutant set. They were constantly ‘on.’ But there was never a need for that when it was just the two of them.
There had been a time when it would have been the three of them, including Warren Worthington, now called Archangel. He was just the Angel way back when, and maybe they were the Three Stooges instead of a vaudeville duo. But things had changed. Warren’s natural mutant wings had been destroyed and later replaced with his lethal artificial ones by one of their deadliest enemies. The Angel’s mind had changed with his body, putting a distance between him and his old friends that was only now beginning to dissipate.
As he sat there in comfortable silence with Bobby, Hank felt that distance from Warren acutely. A low wispy spider’s web of clouds hung above them, but the sun shone brightly in the cockpit and the sky was a pure, icy blue where it was free of that webbing. Several thousand feet down, a passenger jet was flying a similar path, but they passed it as if it were in reverse.
“It’s never going to get any better, is it Hank?” Bobby said suddenly, without looking away from the sky outside the window.
“What isn’t?” Hank asked, but he thought he knew already.
“All of it,” Bobby answered, his tone filled with an uncharacteristic gravity and maturity, as well as a resignation that surprised Hank. “I mean, I know we’re not fighting for the here and now, that we’re fighting for the future, for our children. But that’s part of it, too.
“I mean, God, other than Scott and Jean, none of us can sustain a relationship for more than a year, so chances are, most of us aren’t likely to have children to begin with.”
Hank didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing. Bobby was right, but there was so much more to it than his frustration would allow him to consider. Finally, Bobby looked over at him, raised eyebrows in place of an actual shrug. His body had filled out from the time he’d joined the X-Men as a teenager. These days he was muscular and fit. But Hank figured that tousled brown hair and open, genuinely handsome features would make him look like a college boy forever.
“Say something, Hank,” Bobby said, giving vent to an exhalation that was half sigh and half laugh. “Usually I can’t get you to shut up.”
“We didn’t request this existence, Bobby,” Hank said finally. “You’re correct about that. We didn’t ask to encounter one catastrophe after another, to be the focus of the world’s malice and repugnance, and the attacks of mutants with perverted priorities.”
“You can say that again,” Bobby nodded. “It keeps getting worse, Hank, that’s what I’m saying. In the old days, it all seemed like this big adventure, Huck Finn meets James Bond or something. But people have died, Hank. Thunderbird, Doug Ramsey, Candy Southern, Illyana. The whole Phoenix thing is part of it, and everything that’s happened to, well, to Warren …”
“I was pondering that as well,” Hank admitted, realizing finally that what had been bothering him had also been eating at Bobby. “But I believe he’s improving, don’t you? Not so reserved?”
“Maybe,” Bobby said, flopping back against the leather copilot’s seat. “But I have this fear that he’ll never be the same, that all the days we have behind us—as original X-Men, as members of the Defenders and the Champions, even just as friends, period—that everything we built in those days is just crumbling down around us. Warren is just part of it.”
“You recognize that your notoriety as a jovial, lighthearted fellow is in jeopardy, here, I trust?” Hank said, hoping to lift Bobby’s spirits, and was unsurprised when he felt ice form tightly around his huge feet, freezing them to the floor of the cockpit.
“I’m being serious, here,” Bobby said.
“Apparently not wholly,” Hank replied and pulled one foot after another out of their frozen shackles, sending shards of ice tinkling to the metal floor. “In some ways, we are fighting a war on many fronts. Tragically, in war there is no time for luxury. Simultaneously, we are fortunate to have Charles Xavier to offer us such a distinct focus, an objective which is not merely valorous, but essential for the entire world. And we have one another, not just you and I, but all of the X-Men and our extended family.”
“I love you too, furball,” Bobby said with a chuckle, then he shook his head. “Sometimes it gets overwhelming, though. It’s nice to be needed, believe me, but at the end of the day, does that really count for much?”
“What do you think?” Hank asked.
Bobby really, truly smiled at that, as if a cloud had passed across his face and was gone now.
“You’re no psychiatrist, McCoy,” Bobby said. “But I guess you’re right. I guess it counts for something after all. It’s enough, I suppose.”
“It must be,” Hank said quietly, and they fell back into that reflective silence, blue sky whipping by and sun shining warm on their faces.
* * *
DESPITE her wealth of experience, and the proud, almost regal air that combined with her white mane of hair and her height—she was nearly six feet tall—to make her heartstoppingly beautiful, Ororo Munroe was a young woman. She had to remind herself of this from time to time, because she thought of herself as having lived so long, done so much. She was wise enough to believe in her own wisdom. Jean had once said she had an “old soul,” and perhaps that was true.
Then again, perhaps the woman she was today had been created by the many other lives she had led within her current lifespan. She had been orphaned as a child, left to fend for herself in the dirty streets of Cairo, Egypt, and became a thief. An excellent thief. As she grew older, she wandered the continent of Africa.
When she developed her mutant ability to control the weather, when she became Storm, she also became a goddess. For most women that was wishful thinking, but for Ororo it was true. When Professor Xavier had approached her about joining the X-Men, she had become a deity for a small African tribe who called her “beautiful windrider.” It was a name she cherished as she cherished the memories of Kenya and Tanzania, the grassy plains and the wide open sky.
The open sky most particularly. It was not until she was forced to confront the problem that she realized she was severely claustrophobic. Even now, sitting in the Blackbird, with the open sky only feet from her, she felt the walls closing in, the air rushing from her lungs. She fought it with every passing heartbeat. They had no idea what they might encounter when they arrived in Colorado, so it would be foolish of her to expend her energy by attempting to fly along with the plane. No matter how much she hated being inside it.
“You’re a barrel o’ laughs, Bish,” Wolverine said caustically, then moved away from where he and Bishop had been talking and came toward Storm.
“I thought I was the life o’ the party, ’Roro,” he said as he dropped into the chair beside her, “but Bishop’s got me beat, no contest.”
“You cannot blame him, Logan,” Storm said quietly. “He was born into a world where all of us had already died, where the word ‘Sentinel’ evoked the same horror as the word ‘Nazi’ does for us. The thought that whatever is happening in Colorado might set the world on course for that future must be terrifying for him.”
“The thought don’t make me jump for joy, either, but I get yer meanin’,” Wolverine admitted.
Storm smiled. Of the “second generation” of X-Men, only she and Logan remained. John Proudstar was dead, and the others had all gone to other teams, or other ideologies. She cared deeply for them all, but there was a bond between herself and Logan that she would never have imagined when she first arrived at Xavier’s mansion.
He had been more feral then, an angry man looking for a fight, and never happier than when he found one. These days, Wolverine was as dangerous as ever, but he had become a bit wiser himself. As for older, it was hard to tell. Other than his incredible senses, and his enhanced speed and agility, the gift he had received from the mutant x-factor in his genes had been invaluable, and unique. Wolverine had a healing factor that not only made him nearly impossible to kill because of how quickly wounds disappeared, but also slowed his aging tremendously.
How old was he? Storm couldn’t even begin to guess, but if she had to, she would probably have started with a century and worked her way up. He’d had even more lives than she—soldier, spy, wildman, tavern owner, a million other things—but somewhere in the middle of it all, his life had been taken away. His memories had been erased, replaced, complicated, created. Then, of course, there was the adamantium.
Under the guise of the Weapon X project, a group of scientists had found a way to fuse the most powerful, unbreakable metal in the world with Wolverine’s skeleton, making his bones themselves unbreakable and giving him claws that popped out from between his knuckles on instinct or command. He was a cunning, savage fighter, the best there was at what he did. But as he was so fond of saying, oftentimes what he did was not very nice.
There was more to him than all of that, though, as Storm had learned over the years. They had been X-Men together, had traveled some hard roads together, just the two of them. In his years he’d learned to offer respect due to ability rather than age, and so he was more of a brother than a father figure. They’d loved and lost, and stood by each other. Though he projected the image of a loner, needing no one and having a true distaste for being needed by anyone, that couldn’t be further from the truth. His love for and loyalty to his friends was as fierce and unbending as his will.
“How you holdin’ up?” he asked, referring to her claustrophobia. The others all knew, and assumed she was dealing with it, which she was. Logan was the only one who could tell when it was getting to her.
“I’m all right,” she answered, and found that she was.
Wolverine looked at her a moment, then nodded, accepting her response. For no reason other than the tilt of his head, the narrowing of his eyes, she was reminded of a time they’d been to dinner together in Manhattan. Even in the melting pot, they made the oddest of couples, she with her milk chocolate skin and silver white hair, and he, more than half a foot shorter and very Caucasian. She was young, slender and stylish, while he was obviously older, with a mess of black hair and mutton chop sideburns, in leather jacket, jeans, and pointed toe cowboy boots.
If anyone in that restaurant had been able to simply look in their eyes, however, they would have seen the most important similarity: these were dangerous people. Storm wondered when that had happened to her, when she had become one of the dangerous people. She didn’t wonder why, though. The answer was all around her, every day, and had been since the moment she met Charles Xavier. As Logan might put it, there were “things needed doin’,” and they did them.
“Logan, let me ask you something,” she began, suddenly thinking of something that had struck her as odd earlier that day. “You know that Cyclops and his team could have used you on Hala. Why didn’t you volunteer for that mission?”
“I been to space, Ororo,” Wolverine answered. “Ain’t nothin’ special. Anyhow, way I got it figured, Scotty and the gang know exactly what they’re goin’ up against. They get smoked anyway, won’t be nothin’ I could have done for ’em.”
He leaned back and put a cigarillo in his mouth, then pulled out a silver lighter. They all hated the stench of the things, which looked like something out of an old Clint Eastwood western, but Wolverine insisted on smoking them. Besides, his healing factor negated any dangers. He bit the end off, spit it onto the floor as Storm rolled her eyes in disgust, and the lighter flared to life.
“The other hand,” he said, smoke puffing from his mouth with every word. “We got no idea what’s happenin’ here in Colorado. Plus I ain’t been out here for a while and I surely do love the mountains. Not to mention could be Bishop’s right about all this, and we gotta put a stop to it. If you’re headin’ for trouble, I’d like to be there to back your action.
“Then again, it don’t hurt that I’d rather call you ‘boss’ than Scott. He sort of expects it, but it surprises you every time, boss,” he said, and smiled with the cigarillo pinched between his teeth.
Storm couldn’t help but laugh, the grin looked so silly. She knew that all of his reasons were at least partially true, but decided that none of them mattered. She was just happy he had chosen to come along.
They heard the whine of the landing gear beginning to descend, and Bishop snapped to attention, stood and shouldered an enormous plasma rifle that was merely one of the weapons he had brought along. He reached a hand up and held on to the Blackbird’s frame, nearly quivering with the tension in his muscles.
“I’m concerned about him,” Storm said softly.
“Him an’ us both,” Wolverine answered, his voice a low growl. “Guy’s wired to blow, Storm. We gotta watch that doesn’t happen, or at least that nobody gets caught in the shrapnel.”
Storm walked down the exit ramp even as it descended from the belly of the Blackbird. Wolverine and Bishop flanked her, then set about scanning the perimeter of their landing zone as she waited for Iceman and the Beast to emerge from the plane. It was still early afternoon in Colorado, and the day was cool and breezy. Almost perfect.
Hank and Bobby were talking quietly as they hurried down the ramp to the high grass of the field. As soon as his feet touched earth, Bobby iced up, and Storm couldn’t help noticing how his once smooth ice-form had changed, gaining jagged edges and sharp icicles that represented his hair. There’d been a time when those changes would have looked foolish on Bobby Drake, but inside the shell of his humor and boyish charm, even Iceman had hardened somewhat over the years.
“Report, please, Hank?” Storm asked calmly.
“Mission objective is on the other side of that expanse of forest, perhaps half a kilometer,” the Beast answered. “The aerial view reveals it to be surrounded by some form of energy, likely a force field. There do appear to be mutants within, but something from the base is jamming the mini-Cerebro unit on the Blackbird, so we can’t pinpoint their energy signatures specifically enough to ascertain who it might be.”
“Mutants?” Storm asked, taken aback by the news. “If they’re mutants, this might not be a theft attempt as much as a sabotage mission, a mutant terrorist attack.”
“Mutant Liberation Front, you think?” Iceman asked, also curious.
“There are too many candidates to contemplate,” the Beast answered. “We haven’t been confronted by Sinister for some time. It might well be him, or any number of others.”
“We won’t know until we get there,” Storm said. “Any sign of the military?”
“There’s definitely something happening in the woods outside the fence, but that jamming signal I mentioned defeated every endeavor to pin down details,” Hank answered, stroking the blue fur at his chin. “We must presuppose that they’ve arrived before us, particularly since Val Cooper has informed us that she believed they would.”
Storm considered his words, but there was really only one way to go about this operation with prudence.
“Bishop, Wolverine,” she called, and in a moment the two had returned to the center of the clearing in which they’d landed. “We move out now, as a unit, non-threatening. Shoulder that weapon, Bishop. Bobby, power down. Logan, take point but only by a few yards. If the army is here, we want at least the opportunity to cooperate.”
“And if they don’t accommodate us with that opportunity, Storm?” the Beast asked.
“Simple, Henry,” she replied. “We assert ourselves.” The Beast hung his head, sighed and said, “I was afraid of that.”
“Wind’s at our backs,” Wolverine said as they entered the forest
. “Could be anything up ahead and I wouldn’t smell it.”
“Lions and tigers and bears,” Bobby said softly, to which Hank replied, “Oh, my.”
Though there was no real path, they kept very rigidly to the trail blazed by Wolverine. Less than ten minutes later they could see the brightening of the sun that told them they were approaching the open field where the installation that housed Operation: Wideawake lay. Beyond the sunlight, there was a dim green glow that could only be the energy field the Beast had warned them about.
Without warning, Wolverine stopped dead in his tracks.
“Logan, what is it?” Storm asked.
“Wind’s finally shifted,” he answered. “And just in time. We got a sizable welcome wagon up ahead, Ororo.”
Without a word, Bishop slung the plasma rifle off his shoulder and ratcheted back the safety. It was the kind of reaction Storm had both dreaded and expected.
“Shoulder that weapon, Bishop,” she said, spinning on him. “Were you not listening when I said we’d go in non-threatening?”
His eyes scanned the woods ahead for a moment longer, then snapped toward Storm. He tried to stare her down but she knew he would capitulate. He’d been a soldier and a lawman in his future, so authority meant something to him. Add to that the fact that, in his lifetime, the X-Men had been nothing more or less than wondrous legends, and she knew his loyalty was unquestionable.
His ability to remain calm, on the other hand, was unpredictable.
“Move together,” she said, and as a group, they walked into the lion’s den. At the last minute, she began to worry that their welcome wagon wouldn’t be the military at all, but part of the group that had taken over the base. She said nothing, however. It was too late for such concerns, and her gut told her that her first instinct was right.
It had to be the army.
And it was.
Wolverine stepped out of the woods a half dozen yards from the fence and energy field that surrounded the base. To their great surprise, it was little more than a shattered one-story concrete structure, and they realized that the base itself must have been underground.
Marvel Classic Novels--X-Men Page 9
