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 midair, 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 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,” Cyclops said 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.
“You know 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.
A few 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. Among the many things the X-Men had 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 was no match for the Starjarnmer’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.”
“Decision is out of your hands, X-Men,” Corsair said. “I’m the captain of this vessel. My ship, my conscience, my choice.”
He breathed deeply, then turned and strode into the cockpit. From where he sat, Cyclops could see his father drop into the copilot’s chair and strap in.
“Punch it, Ch’od,” Corsaid said. “Hit the hyperburners and let’s get out of here.”
“Aye, Captain,” Ch’od replied.
Scott couldn’t see the reptilian alien, but he knew Ch’od had followed Corsair’s instructions, because moments later they were all pressed against their seats as the hyperburners kicked in.
Several times as they left orbit, surface to air weaponry strafed the ship. It rocked, and Cyclops thought he heard something pop and fizzle. Perhaps an electrical short, he thought. He smelled sulfur, something burning.
“Is that fire?” he asked, not ready to panic yet.
“Stay in your seats!” Corsair yelled. “We’ll deal with it when we’re through the gate. We’ve got to slow down to get through, and that’s when the armada’s going to get their shot at us.”
With an abrupt jolt, Scott was thrown forward in his seat. He knew they were still moving, but it almost felt as if they had come to a complete stop.
“Oh God!” Jean cried next to him as an explosion on board the Starjammer threw them together. It must have been the armada, firing on them. Which meant they were entering the stargate.
“Just a few more seconds,” Scott said, but he was as unnerved as she was. As he imagined they all were. Sparks were flying somewhere off to his right, and there was definitely a fire on board, perhaps more than one.
They were hit again, and the ship seemed to drop with a nauseating suddenness. Scott’s stomach lurched. The interior lights went out, and the backup lights came on for a moment, then flickered out as well. The only light within the cabin came from the flicker of flames.
In silence, they all braced for another hit. They prepared themselves for what they expected would be the final strike against the Starjammer. You didn’t have to be a star pilot to know the ship couldn’t take much more. Scott thought he heard someone praying, a male voice, but he couldn’t begin to think about who it might be.
Every muscle in his body tensed, waiting for that last hit.
But it didn’t come.
“We’re in!” Corsair shouted. “Now put those damn fires out!”
Cyclops, Raza and Archangel went to work immediately, dousing
the flames with chemicals kept on board for that specific purpose. Minutes later, the fires were out and the emergency lights had been restored.
“We’re coming out of it, folks,” Corsair said quietly. But there was something in his tone. A hesitancy that Scott found particularly unsettling.
“Dad?” he asked, though he did not usually use the term in front of others. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Corsair stepped into the cabin and scanned his passengers. Finally, he looked at his son. Scott studied his father’s expression, his handsome, rugged features. He’d seen the look on Corsair’s face before. For a moment, Scott was a boy again, back on that burning plane with his brother Alex and his parents. But he’d lost his father once before. He was no longer a boy. He was a man now. No matter what, Scott Summers was not going to bail out again.
“What is it?” he asked again, and hearing the concern in his voice, they all froze, looking to Corsair for an answer.
“We’ve emerged into the Sol system, as planned,” Corsair said. “We’re almost home, people. But we’re not going to get there.”
Nobody moved, nobody spoke. Cyclops didn’t think, at that moment, that any of them even remembered to breathe.
“What are you saying?” he asked, finally.
“The only thing still functioning on this ship is backup power and life support,” Corsair answered, a hard set to his jaw.
“The Starjammer is drifting. For all intents and purposes, this ship is dead in space.”
EPILOGUE
FROM the window of his study, Charles Xavier watched with extraordinary relief as the Blackbird descended through the night sky over his home. He’d spoken to Val Cooper half a dozen times in the previous two hours, but there had been no word regarding Magneto, the Acolytes, or the Sentinels. The last time they’d spoken, Val had informed him that it might be some time before they would be in contact again. Washington, unsurprisingly, was in an uproar.
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