Sanctuary (29 page)

Corsair appeared from the cockpit, checked on Hepzibah briefly, then turned to address the X-Men.

"We're getting close, folks," he said. "We'll be scratching the atmosphere in just under four minutes. Time to get strapped in."

Gambit looked at Rogue, saw anxiety and regret in her eyes and realized that, with all her power, she must be feeling as helpless as he was. Probably more so. He squeezed her gloved hands between his own and realized, finally, that there really wasn't anything either of them could do except hold on tight to one another.

Just hold on.

• • •

Once he was certain that Scott, Jean, Gambit, and Rogue were strapped in, Corsair returned to the medi-slab where Hepzibah lay. He stood over her prone form and looked, for just a moment, at her peacefully unconscious face. For a moment, he wished his lover could find such peace in her waking times. More often than not, she could barely rein in her ferocity, her hostility.

Corsair had been fascinated with Hepzibah the first time he had seen her, when they had been slave-prisoners of the Shi'ar Empire together. She had already formed an unbreakable bond with Raza and Ch'od, and when Corsair met the three of them, despite their differences, it felt as though the last pieces of a puzzle had been put in place. And a big part of that feeling had to do with Hepzibah.

Not that he did not have his misgivings. In truth, Christopher Summers had always worried that Hepzibah had returned his affections because it was convenient, because they were a team. He believed that she loved him, but he could never quite understand why. Beyond that, however, was something more. Something perhaps more troubling.

Corsair had led them to become the Starjammers, interstellar pirates, out of need. Certainly they needed to survive in a system still ruled by the Shi'ar emperor D'Ken, who had murdered Corsair's wife. There was that need. But it was more than that. He had fancied himself some kind of galactic Robin Hood, a rogue hero. It felt good. Necessary.

For Hepzibah, however, Corsair had come to suspect more and more over the years that the fight itself was the thing. She seemed to thrive on combat, to hold eternal grudges. There were times when he believed she incited battle where it had not been necessary. It was all far from the way he wanted to live his life, from the philosophy to which he had attempted to remain faithful.

There were things about this woman that Christopher Summers did not like very much at all. But when he heard her soft, trilling laugh or her intimate purr, when he saw those blue feline eyes sparking, when they surged into battle side by side, he knew beyond any doubt that he loved her. It was a conundrum, but such was the nature of love, he believed.

Corsair ran his fingers over the light fur on Hepzibah's face, just as he felt the first rumble of atmospheric turbulence beneath his feet. The ride was about to get very rough, and he cursed himself for delaying so long. Quickly he turned his attention to the medical readouts on the display above Hepzibah's chest. He entered a series of commands that would introduce adrenaline into Hepzibah's system, eliminating the sedative.

The
Starjammer
shimmied slightly.

"Corsair," his son warned from the other side of the cabin. "Get strapped in, now. You don't have time for anything else."

"I just need a moment," he responded.

The adrenaline kicked in, and Hepzibah opened her eyes with a feline hiss of anger.

"Sorry, m'love," Corsair said gently, even as Hepzibah's features softened with affection at the sight of him. "We need you up and around now."

"What's happening?" she asked, obviously confused. "Where are we?"

"Entering the atmosphere of Sol-3," Corsair answered. "Hyperburners only, and they're so fried we can't slow down or they might shut down. Just stay there and hold on tight."

"Set ... VTOL ... for landing," she muttered.

Corsair had thought Hepzibah still seemed disoriented, and her nonsense words confirmed it. She seemed to drift away slightly, but did not lose consciousness. That was good enough, he thought. As long as they didn't have to carry her in an emergency. Though, of course, if it came to that Corsair would accept the burden of her weight without a second thought.

The Starjammer lurched, as though it had slammed into a barrier and broken through, and Corsair stumbled several steps toward the cockpit. Before anything further could happen, he pulled himself along the cabin to his seat, right by the medi-slab, and strapped in.

• • •

Archangel knew he was a hell of a pilot. He'd trained on planes at the age of nine, flown solo at thirteen, and had his own jet when he turned eighteen. All thanks to the Worthington family fortune. Part of his mutant gift, so that he could understand how to use his wings, was an instinctual comprehension of the laws of flight. He had flown the X-Men's
Blackbird
dozens of times, had a higher performance rating on it than anyone else on the team. But this was much different.

Once, in a crisis, he had flown a Starcore space shuttIe. But that had been several years earlier, and the
Starjammer
was a much bigger ship. Still, as co-pilot, which meant watching the instruments and backing up the pilot's judgement calls, he seemed to be doing okay. Just as long as Ch' od held it together.

"You're doing great, big guy," Archangel said. "How are you feeling?"

"To be honest, my friend, not so well," Ch'od admitted. "I am afraid the explosion during my spacewalk might have left me with what you would call a concussion."

Warren felt slightly nauseous.

"You can't be serious," he said.

"Of course I can," Ch'od replied, unaware of the sarcasm in Archangel's voice. "Though I urge you not to worry. I am confident that I will be able to complete this mission without succumbing to disorientation."

"Oh," Warren said; raising his eyebrows, "that makes me feel so much better."

An alarm sounded on the command control readout. A red light began to flash rapidly, then burnt out with a small puff of smoke.

"What the hell was that?" he asked, then proceeded to check the instruments himself. Ch'od was busy trying to keep them on course, and Warren didn't dare interrupt him again.

He scanned the instruments, and was appalled by how fast things had gone from bad to worse. The communication system had never been repaired, but it had been left on. The resulting power drain had gone unnoticed until, with maximum demands placed on the ship, the comm system had shorted out, taking the navigational computer with it. When he informed Ch'od, the reptilian alien only nodded his huge head and kept glancing back and forth from the space-window to the readouts still on his display board.

"More good news," Archangel said. "Heat shields are at 91 percent capacity, but they're already placing a drain on life support."

"Brace yourself," was all Ch'od said by way of an answer.

The
Starjammer
lurched as if it had smashed into the ocean. The seat harness was the only thing that kept Archangel from smashing his face into the command control unit. Momentum threw him forward, whipping his head toward the viewport, then back with a tearing of muscle tissue. Warren felt the pain immediately, and held his neck as straight as possible. After a moment, when the worst of it had subsided, he turned his head from side to side and found that only a little pain remained.

Then he noticed the instruments, flashing lights, warning him of impending danger.

"Ch'od," he said softly.

There was no response. Archangel turned his head gingerly, so as not to exacerbate his injury, and saw that Ch'od was limp in his harness. The pressure, the whipcrack of striking Earth's outer atmosphere at that speed had taken its toll. He was unconscious.

"Oh Lord," Warren said as he switched piloting controls to his own station. He got the ship under his control, at least for a moment, then he sounded the only alarm he had, his own voice.

"Corsair! Get your ass up here!" he shouted. "Ch'od's out and we're in major league trouble here!"

In seconds, Corsair had replaced Ch' od in the pilot's seat. Turbulence was rocking the
Starjammer
hard. The only thing Warren could compare it to was flying a twin engine plane ina massive thunderstorm. Even if the heat shields held, he wasn't at all sure that the
Starjammer
could take much more of the turbulence without shattering into a million pieces.

"Sitrep," Corsair demanded.

"We're in trouble," Archangel said simply. "Hull integrity is in question. Life support's being drained to support the heat shields, which are burning at 117 percent of capacity. They've gotta be melting, Corsair. I don't think we're going to make it."

• • •

"We've got a problem," Jean said quietly, her voice trembling with the shuddering of the ship. "I can sense Corsair and Warren's distress even without trying to read it. I don't think we're going to make it, Scott."

Scott Summers was the only man she had ever really loved, the one part of her life she could literally not live without. Jean watched his eyes, hidden behind the ruby quartz lenses of his visor. She was looking for something to hang on to, some hope or idea or solution that would bring them out of this okay.

There was love there, no question. Undying and complete devotion the likes of which she knew most women searched for their entire lives but never found. She was fortunate in that, had always been fortunate. When most women might have gone for the playboy that Warren Worthington was in their first days at Xavier's School, Jean wanted Scott. When most women might have fallen for the danger that seeped from Logan's every pore when the second wave of X-Men came along, Jean wanted Scott.

He was strong, cute, tall, smart, sure enough. But he was never the strongest, the cutest, the tallest, or the smartest. He was quiet, with a fair to middling sense of humor and a total lack of confidence where girls were concerned. But he was, by unanimous unspoken consent, the heart of the X-Men. He was, second only to Professor Xavier, the team's leader and its conscience. And in his eyes, Jean saw that he had silently become as devoted to her as he was to Xavier's dream. She loved him then, at that very moment. For of all of them, in his way, he was the most passionate.

Now she searched those eyes again for a vision of the future. In them she found everything that had always been there, everything they meant to each other. But there was one thing in particular she sought: hope. At first she didn't see it, then Scott squeezed her hands tightly in his own, and she heard his voice, the voice of his heart, speaking in her mind.

Don't be afraid, Jean. We're going to be okay.

There was no lying to a telepath. Jean knew Scott really believed they would be okay, that they would live through this. Silently, she struggled to believe him.

• • •

"Hull integrity is failing, Corsair!" Archangel shouted.

"Heat shields at 123 percent capacity and barely holding. We've got about forty-five seconds until life support shuts down."

The vibrations of the ship rattled his teeth in his skull so hard Warren thought he might actually have chipped a couple of them. He looked over at Corsair, whose entire body was locked in combat with the
Starjammer's
throttle, trying to keep the ship on course without putting her into a nosedive out of which they could never recover.

"Corsair!" Warren shouted. "If we can't slow this ship down we've got less than two minutes to live!"

There it was. He'd said it. And now that the words had come out of his mouth, Archangel realized that they were true and there was not a single thing within his power to change it. He only wished that he was in the cabin now with the others, that he could say goodbye to his friends, that he'd shared a proper goodbye with Bobby and Hank before leaving Earth. Sadly, he knew there were no last wishes when the reaper came to call.

The best they could hope for was ...

"Take the stick!" Corsair shouted. "Warren, take the goddamn stick!"

Suddenly the throttle came alive in his hands and he was piloting the
Starjammer
yet again. He pulled back on it as hard as he could and strained every muscle in his body, feeling once more the pain in his neck, trying to keep it straight on course.

"What in God's name are you doing?" he screamed.

"I think I've figured out how to slow us down," Corsair yelled as he dropped down to the deck and began fiddling with the exposed wiring of the console.

"Whatever you're doing, do it fast," Archangel responded. "We've got about ninety seconds here before we lose life support or the heat shields melt, one or the other."

For a moment, the ship seemed to take on a life of its own, pulling down and away from him like a dog trying to escape its leash. Warren held on tight, then looked back to where sparks were flying as Corsair worked feverishly.

"Well?" he asked. "What exactly are you doing?"

"I thought she was delirious," Corsair called up to him. "But Hepzibah said something about the VTOL, the vertical takeoff and landing program. It was knocked out with the navigational program, but I'm bypassing that right now."

Sparks flew, landing on Corsair's arms. He cursed, but kept working.

"The program the computer goes through includes retro thrusters that reroute energy from the hyperburners to the front of the ship. It's supposed to stop the
Starjammer
in midair so the VTOL can take effect, lowering us to the ground," Corsair explained.

Archangel was stumped.

"I thought we couldn't cut power to slow down or the engines might flare out and drop us to Earth like a stone?" he said, shaking along with the ship as he tried with all his might to keep the ship on course.

"We can't, but this doesn't cut the power," Corsair explained, cursing several more times as sparks landed on his exposed flesh. "The engines are firing at maximum, but a portion of the power is diverted in the opposite direction."

"Can you do it?" Archangel asked.

"Done!" Corsair announced and nearly jumped into the pilot's seat once more. "Now all we have to worry about is whether or not the hull can take the pressure. It's going to be like hitting a brick wall."