And the public had no idea. Not a single clue as to what was really happening. Certainly, the press had been spouting wild theories all day and night, but the truth had not yet been revealed. Xavier knew from experience that, if at all possible, the government would want to keep it that way. Keeping secrets … creating secrets was one of Washington’s favorite pastimes.
Charles psionically monitored the X-Men’s arrival in the hangar. When they had all emerged from the Blackbird, he stretched his mind out to touch each of their minds.
Welcome home, X-Men. Please hurry to the ready room immediately. We must prepare for Magneto’s next move, whatever it may be.
* * *
FIFTEEN minutes later, they gathered in the ready room. The mood was grim. Video monitors in the wall were tuned to the major networks and CNN, hoping that some news would be forthcoming. Xavier had the comm-system constantly dialing and redialing Val Cooper’s number, without luck. He didn’t expect an answer any time soon.
Storm had given the Professor a full accounting of the events that had taken place in Colorado. After which, a thoughtful silence descended upon the room, broken only by the chatter of television broadcasts.
“What do we do now, Professor?” Bishop asked. “We can’t just wait around for Magneto to make his move.”
“I’m grieved to say that is probably our singular option,” Hank sighed.
“It don’t sit well with me, but I got to agree with Hank,” Logan admitted.
“Hey, guys,” Bobby said, getting the team’s attention. “Are we forgetting who we’re dealing with here? Whatever Magneto’s got planned, we won’t have to wait very long. What worries me is, between him, the Acolytes, and the Sentinels, we’re going to need every bit of help we can get.”
“Which brings us to the rest of this team,” Storm said. “What of them, Professor? Any word from Cyclops?”
Xavier knew that he should have told them when they first arrived. But he simply had not wanted to think about it. Now, though, there was no avoiding it. His eyes narrowed as he considered his words.
“Professor, what is it?” Hank asked, and Xavier could sense his concern.
“I communicated with Lilandra a short time ago,” Xavier answered. “The Shi’ar hierarchy is in an uproar. Deathbird has been badly injured, and both the Starjammers and the X-Men escaped into the stargate. Of course, I was forced to deny any knowledge of the X-Men’s actions.”
“That’s phenomenal news, Professor!” Bobby said excitedly. “Not that I ever doubted they’d pull it off, but …”
“There’s more to it than that, Iceman,” Xavier interrupted. “Whatever happens with Magneto, you must be prepared to face it without your teammates.”
Professor Xavier swallowed. He could not have missed the anxiety that now filled all of the gathered X-Men, even without his psi powers.
“It has been several hours since the Starjammer entered the stargate, nearly that since they ought to have emerged,” Xavier said. “Yet, I have not been able to contact the vessel, nor have I received any communication from them.”
“Where are they?” Storm wondered aloud.
“God knows,” Xavier responded. “And I hope that he watches over them.”
Once more, silence draped the room like a sodden blanket, heavy with apprehension that was quickly evolving into dread. Xavier wished he had the words to comfort his friends, his former students, his X-Men, but for once, he could not think of a single thing to say.
“Professor,” Hank murmured, breaking the silence. “Professor.”
Xavier looked up. What is it, Hank? he thought, using telepathy to ask the question.
“Increase the volume,” the Beast whispered, and only then did Xavier notice that Hank was not looking at him, but past him, to the bank of video monitors on the far wall.
Professor Charles Xavier turned, and was startled to see the face of his oldest friend, and his greatest enemy, staring back at him from all four of the monitors. “Eric,” he mumbled to himself.
Then all they could do was listen.
“… am jamming all cable feeds and network broadcasts and supplementing them with my own signal,” Magneto said.
His face filled the screen. Framed by his crimson helmet, Magneto’s eyes glared with intensity under winter-white eyebrows that ought to have made him appear kindly. Instead, they made him look cruel and, somehow, sad as well. Or perhaps that was Xavier’s interpretation, for he knew Magneto to be both of those things.
“Two roads diverged into a wood,” Magneto began, using a quote from Robert Frost that made the moment all the more surreal. Xavier remembered that Eric Magnus Lehnsherr, the man who would become Magneto, had always loved Frost.
“Humanity has ever chosen the easy path. Like animals to the slaughter, you brainlessly trod together down the path of intolerance, bigotry and hate. All along, you might have chosen another path, and this day might have been averted. But perhaps you are animals after all. Perhaps you are without true awareness or nobility.
“For many years I have fought to make the world a safe place for my people, for mutantkind. Recently, I determined to create a haven, or sanctuary, where mutants could live undisturbed by the fear-inspired predations of the human animal.
“As of this moment, I have the means to create this haven here on Earth. And there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. The choice has been taken from your hands. I have forced the world onto the road less traveled, and you will find it a hard road indeed.”
The camera panned back to reveal two Sentinels, hovering in the air some distance behind Magneto. Beyond them, the skyline of New York City.
“Dear God,” Xavier said in astonishment.
“As of this moment,” Magneto continued, “Manhattan island is in my control. It is a haven for mutants, which will serve as the template for the world of peace that I have worked so long to bring about. All mutants are welcome, as are all humans. But mutants will rule here. No human being will be harmed so long as they adhere to the laws of the mutant government. Those who wish to leave will be allowed egress and relocation. The new laws, and the boundaries of the haven, will be enforced by the Sentinels, by my Acolytes, and of course, by myself.
“Manhattan island is the financial and cultural center of North America. Yet it is only the beginning. Very soon, the Mutant Empire will spread throughout the world.
“Earth will be at peace, or it will be destroyed. That is my promise to you.”
Magneto disappeared from the screens, and they erupted with a panicked meltdown of news coverage. As the X-Men began to discuss strategies, and looked to him for direction, bile rose in Xavier’s throat. For decades, he had dreamed of harmony between mutants and humans.
Xavier’s dream was about to be put to the ultimate test.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AS always, this wouldn’t have been possible without the love of my wife, Connie, the laughter of my son, Nicholas, and the support of my family.
Special thanks to my agent Lori Perkins, my editor Keith R.A. DeCandido, and to Ginjer Buchanan for the tip.
A debt of gratitude is owed to all those wonderful creators who have brought the X-universe to life over the years, particularly Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Dave Cockrum, and Chris Claremont.
Finally, profound thanks to those folks in the comic book industry who didn’t hold it against me that I’d only written, God forbid, novels before. They include: Scott Allee, Steve Bissette, Meloney Crawford Chadwick, Robert Conte, Glenn Greenberg, Bob Harras, Scott Lobdell, Ralph Macchio, Jeff Mariotte, Marcus McLaurin, Mike Mignola, Jimmy Palmiotti, Mark Paniccia, Ed Polgardy, Mark Powers, Ross Richie, Evan Skolnick, Tom Sniegoski, Billy Tucci, and Rick Veitch.
PROLOGUE
SCOTT Summers stood in the cockpit of the Starjammer and watched his father with growing dismay. Even as they had escaped through an Imperial stargate, the ship had been crippled in its battle with an armada of Shi’ar star cruisers. Now the Starjammer was dead, adrift near
Earth’s sun. Auxiliary power and life support systems were the only thing between the ship’s passengers and the fatal vacuum of space.
As his fellow Starjammers, Raza and Ch’od, worked furiously to repair the hyperburn engines in the rear of the ship, Major Christopher Summers, known as Corsair, attempted to get their communications rig up and running. Watching his father work, Scott admired the man’s hope, dignity, and courage. Corsair’s brow furrowed in concentration, then his right hand slipped and his knuckles rapped on the comm board. He swore, and set right back to work.
Scott looked out at the vastness of space that stretched before them. One side of the viewport was lit up with blinding peripheral sunlight, but Scott could still see the field of sable and stars to the other side. He could not help but wonder if the infinite dark beyond the viewport would soon become a crypt to hold nearly all that remained of the Summers family.
If they didn’t make it, there would be no funeral, no grave, no marker of any kind that would enable people to know they had existed, had lived and died. Though he’d done his best to stave it off, doubt was beginning to creep up on him. More than that. It was threatening to overwhelm him. The realization unnerved him.
As Cyclops, the leader of the X-Men, Scott had been in more tight spots, close calls, and rough scrapes than any five career soldiers. But there had nearly always been the possibility of retreat, if it came to that.
There was no retreat here. If they were lucky, they would live. If not, they would die. A chillingly simple formula.
Slowly, however, Scott began to realize that his growing fear was not for his own life. He had regrets, certainly. Though he had never been overzealous in showing his passions, those whom he loved were aware of his feelings. That was vital. But there was so much more to life, and death. There were those left behind on Earth who would mourn him, and he grieved for their loss in advance.
The worst of it, however, was that there were far too many people he cared about on board the Starjammer, sharing his fate: Corsair, Raza, Ch’od, and the fourth Starjammer, his father’s lover Hepzibah, who was injured in their battle on Hala, the Kree homeworld. That would be hard enough. But there were four other X-Men on board as well. Rogue, who always made him smile, was tending to the injured Gambit. Warren Worthington, whose field name was Archangel, was one of Scott’s oldest friends in the world.
Then there was Jean Grey. Scott had loved her from the moment, all those years earlier, when he had first seen her standing in the foyer of Charles Xavier’s mansion. To his neverending astonishment, she had loved him in return, and still did. They were part of a greater family, a group of Earth-born mutants fighting for harmony between their race and humanity. They gave of themselves every day as X-Men, to the dream of their mentor Charles Xavier, and to each other. They had risked their lives on a quest to rescue his father from execution. And they had succeeded.
But if the cost was an ignoble death while lost in space, and grieving loved ones on Earth who would never really know what happened to them … it was too great. The others had come because they cared for him, and now they would all die because of it. Because of him. As Cyclops, the leader of the X-Men, they looked to him for answers. He wasn’t about to let them down.
“Scott?” Corsair asked quietly. “What is it, son?”
Scott turned toward his father, taking a deep, cleansing breath, and then he chuckled. He thought about telling Corsair about the weight of space and hopelessness that had pressed down on him, about his fears, and his new determination to see them through this, no matter what. But he didn’t. They just never had that kind of relationship.
“Nothing,” he finally answered. “Just trying to figure out if we have some kind of alternate power source.”
“Not unless you want to hang your head out the loading bay and use your optic beams to give us some momentum,” Corsair laughed. “Your head would explode after the first millisecond or so, but at least we’d be pointed in the right direction.”
Scott pretended to think about it, then declined. He shared a laugh with his father that cleared the last cobweb of trepidation from his mind. That was for the best. He needed all his wits about him, now more than ever.
“How’s it coming with the comm-rig?” he asked.
Corsair grimaced, then stood, brushing himself off.
“It’s totally fried,” he answered glumly. “We could be here for months, if we lived that long, and never fix it. If we’re going to get home, we’re going to have to do it on our own.” Then his eyes widened, and he tilted his head slightly as he said, “Unless …”
“Unless?” Scott asked.
Corsair leaned over the communications board that he had dismantled and rummaged around in its guts for a moment.
“Yes,” he said, almost to himself, “I think it might work.”
He pressed his lips tightly together as he spliced two charred wires together.
“What is it?” Scott persisted. “Have you fixed it?”
“No,” Corsair said finally, looking up with a wry grin. “But at least I’ve got the emergency call beacon going. There isn’t much interstellar travel in this sector other than would-be world conquerors, but you never know. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Better than nothing, I suppose,” Scott answered. “I’m going to go back and look in on the others. Are you through here?”
“No, but you go ahead,” Corsair waved his son on. “I’m going to see if the navigational computers are in any better shape than the comm-rig. I don’t want to drain what little auxiliary power we have, but it would be good to keep some kind of flight path to Earth logged in, just in case we actually do repair the warp-drive, or even the hyperburners.”
“Sounds sensible to me,” Scott answered. He took a last look at his father, deep in concentration again, and realized that he had never seen Corsair more serious. Even when he was a boy, and Major Christopher Summers was one of America’s greatest test pilots. Those times were long ago, but there were moments, looking at his father, when they were fresh as yesterday.
* * *
ARCHANGEL hated to be confined. No matter that there was plenty of room for them all in the main cabin of the Starjammer. The simple knowledge that he could not spread his bio-metallic wings and take to the air was stifling. When he considered that there was no air beyond the ship’s hull in which to soar, the atmosphere became oppressive.
Even as a boy, Warren Worthington III had been a little claustrophobic. Not enough to affect his life, merely enough to unnerve him in cramped quarters, or bustling crowds. When he had reached puberty, and his original, natural wings had quickly grown from his back, he had at first been repulsed. But he quickly realized that his wings gave him freedom, that flight provided an ecstasy which was the complete antithesis of his claustrophobia.
The wings were a mutation, of course. All of the X-Men were mutants, homo superior, the next stage in human evolution. They were made so by an unknown variable, an x-factor, in their genetic constitution. Mutants were like snowflakes, the x-factor never creating the same variant mutation twice, save for rare cases when genetic heritage played a role.
The greatest scientific minds on Earth had never been able to discover precisely what influenced the x-factor, what defined a specific mutation. His own, angelic wings, had been in his genetic makeup from conception. While he had once believed the wings were a response to his need for freedom, Warren had realized that it was more likely that his claustrophobia was an awareness, on a cellular level, that he was not meant to be confined. That he was meant to soar the blue skies, above the world.
Though his natural wings had been mutilated and amputated, and replaced with the deadly bio-metallic, razor-feathered appendages that now sprouted from his back, he still felt that urge. Confinement aboard the dead spacecraft gnawed at him. His muscles tensed, unable to relax, and Warren began to wonder exactly what the real symptoms of “cabin fever” were.
The cabin was still pressurized, they sti
ll had artificial gravity, but his body felt lighter, and chilly. He wondered if that was the first sign that the life support systems were going to give out.
“Jesus,” he hissed under his breath. “Get a grip, man.”
He stood and began to pace the cabin. Rogue sat on the edge of her seat next to a medi-slab, upon which Gambit lay unconscious. The Cajun had been electrocuted in battle with the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, and they had not yet been able to ascertain the extent of his injuries. He was still out like a light though, and Warren figured that could only be bad. Jean Grey was on the other side of the medi-slab, her hand on Gambit’s pallid forehead. Her eyes were closed as she psi-scanned him, and Warren envied her calm.
He breathed deeply, methodically, and pushed the suffocating atmosphere of the ship from his mind. After a moment, he stepped to where Rogue kept her vigil. It had been no secret amongst the X-Men that she and Gambit had been semi-involved for some time, but Warren had always wondered how serious it was. The terror, pain, and nausea visible on her face revealed that her feelings were very serious indeed.
“How is he?” Warren asked, as he slid into the seat next to Rogue.
She looked up, a little lost at first. Or maybe shell-shocked, Warren thought. Then Rogue smiled, grateful for the question, and the respite from the silence, and the worry.
“Hi, Warren,” she said in a library whisper, her southern belle accent even raspier than usual. “Remy’s okay, as far as we can tell. Jean’s scannin’ him again, seein’ if she can find anything else wrong. He needs medical attention, that’s for sure. But if we can’t get movin’ again, it ain’t gonna matter one little bit.”
She leaned against the wall behind her and pushed her hands up through her auburn hair, and the white skunk-streak that ran through it. They were only friends, no doubt, but at that moment Warren could not help but notice how tragically beautiful she was. Rogue was a good, strong, decent woman. Once, she had been terribly misguided, trapped in her fear and the manipulations of others. Warren refused to believe that she had come out of all of that, that he had overcome his emotions regarding his own transformation, that they had all come so far together, only to die in the middle of nowhere.
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