X-Men: The Last Stand (5 page)

Rogue wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines. On the far side of a nearby hill, Storm also watched him take his walk and confined her spoken comments to a single word:
“Logan!”

Thinking to herself, she used terms that would have given even him pause and made any telepath with access to those thoughts sever the connection instantly. He wasn’t supposed to be here, and while his presence was always welcome in a firefight, she really didn’t like surprises when lives were on the line.

Storm looked again through her binoculars, this time checking the integral display. Logan was fifty meters ahead, the bunker some two hundred plus beyond.

Twisting around, she used hand signals to alert the rest of her team, under cover of their own a few dozen meters back and to the side. Kitty Pryde was already on the move, body low to the ground as she sprinted in a zigzag towards Bobby Drake. The maneuvering wasn’t really necessary; of all the team, she was the closest to Wolverine in her practical invulnerability to harm. Not so much like Colossus, whose organic steel armor could actually be breached with the right weapons, but because neither bullets nor energy beams can have much effect on a girl who was essentially a ghost.

Storm could feel the tremors in the earth as well, could sense the displacement in the air that told her something massive was moving through the night, closing on them with every giant step. Time had just joined the opposition.

“You okay?” Kitty called to Bobby as she slid down to join him, misjudging her angle just enough that she arrived half sunk into the ground. He didn’t say anything, but his look was eloquent: she knew the casual way she walked through walls really creeped him out.

“Yeah,” he replied. “You?”

“A little dusty.”

He reached out and brushed her shoulder clean. She’d invited the contact, and he’d responded, both operating on instinct. That was as far as either was prepared to take things. Now.

Still, he couldn’t help giving her a smile. It was clear he liked her. Problem was, while Kitty was a free spirit, Bobby already had a girl—Rogue.

“Storm’s signaling; she wants us to catch up. Your lead?”

She grinned and took off, and Bobby had to scramble to keep up. She was as dangerously arrogant as Wolverine when it came to getting hurt. She didn’t believe it was possible. Kitty didn’t even have to worry much about being taken by surprise, because for the most part her power was always “on.” Her natural state, according to Professor Xavier, was to be phased; she stayed coherent by an act of will.

Laser pulses sought them out, and Bobby blocked them with a wall of ice that was porous enough to allow them through but filled with enough impurities—namely dirt—to diffuse the beam to the point of harmlessness.

But those beams weren’t the only threat. A brace of rockets shot in from another direction. Bobby was only aware of them after Kitty suddenly grabbed him, crushing her body against his in a hard embrace that allowed her to phase them both so the missiles passed through them as if they were air. His insides tingled as they did, reminding him of a joy buzzer–pen his brother had once blown his allowance for on Halloween.

Across the field, Rogue had also seen the approaching missiles—they’d passed her on the way—and in the moment before impact, when she saw Bobby so vulnerable and unaware, her heart stopped and leapt up to her throat. She was happy to see him survive unscathed, but a lot less so when she noted that it took way too many extra moments for him and Kitty to break apart.

“Keep movin’, kid,” Logan told her. He’d seen what she’d seen, damn him; he didn’t miss anything. “And keep your eyes dead ahead.”

Storm missed it all. She was focused on their objective, and the handheld display which presented her with a map of the battlefield, complete with the disposition of her team and a counter that was just passing ninety seconds.

“Time, people,” she told Kitty and Bobby as they arrived, using the comset clipped to her ear to alert the others. “No more margin for error. Iceman, Shadowcat—get in position.” This was to Bobby and Kitty directly, using their code names. “On my mark.”

They moved forward at a jog trot, quick but careful, in a V-formation led by Storm, with her younger teammates trailing by a couple of steps, covering her flanks while she concentrated on the way ahead.

The last bit of cover was a pile of junked cars; beyond was nothing but open ground, an ideal killing field. Somebody with a mortar got their range and began bracketing them with rounds as they approached the checkpoint, inching closer with every shot, the last forcing them to pitch forward in an undignified scramble that brought them with a crash down beside the other assault team, who’d gotten there first.

Logan was leaning against one of the cars, apparently without a care in the world.

“What are you doing here?” Storm flared at him, letting a bit more of her feelings show than she’d actually intended. High above, a complement to those emotions, came a blinding flash, gone almost before it had time to register, accompanied by a basso drum roll that was instantly recognized. A bolt of lightning, a trill of thunder; the elements were echoing Storm’s emotions.

That wasn’t good. The fact that she had to take a moment to master herself didn’t help her mood. Chances were, when this op was concluded, someone, somewhere might have to deal with some very nasty weather.

“Enjoying the scenery,” he suggested, choosing the completely wrong moment for levity and then making it significantly worse by using a piece of flaming debris to relight his cigar.

For a moment, Storm seriously considered going “Zeus” on his insubordinate ass and using her next bolt of lightning to knock him flat. Perhaps a very near miss would knock some sense into his thick Canadian skull. Or at least inspire a modicum of respect.

She dismissed the inspiration even before it was fully formed, because she knew it would do no good.

And suddenly, there was no time for conscious thought at all as she sensed movement in the air—that same massive shape she’d noticed before, only much,
much
closer.
How had it crept up on them so unawares?
Realization and action came as one as she grabbed for her friend and teammate and yanked him bodily clear of the car, just as a massive armored foot the size of a semitrailer squashed it flat.

They ended up face-to-face, tight against each other, and for that briefest of moments
that
was all that mattered.

“I got this,” said Storm, as the foot moved on. Through the smoke and the shadows, the literal fog of battle, none of them was in a position to see what it was attached to. The younger X-Men weren’t sure they wanted to.

“Watch my back, okay?” she told him.

“Not a problem,” he replied.

It was a spectacular back, Logan thought, even masked as it was by the cloak of her uniform. To call Ororo Munroe beautiful was merely to state the obvious. There was no one—among the X-Men, in the world—who even came close. Except, the thought came to him, a memory of a wound still fresh enough to hurt: Jean Grey.

“Hey, bub,” Rogue chided gently, “eyes front, right?”

He slid a look her way, which made her grin. Logan subvocalized a warning growl that set hackles rising on the backs of the necks of both the boys and Kitty, but seemed to make Rogue’s grin grow even wider.

Storm, all business, brought them back to the task at hand.

“Stay in formation,” she instructed. “Wait to make your move.”

They knew whatever cues she was talking about, but Storm knew Logan didn’t. She grabbed him as he stood to make a move of his own.

“Logan,” she snapped, “we work as a team!”

He smiled tolerantly and she thought more seriously this time about that lightning bolt. “You let me know how that works out for you, darlin’,” he replied, and resumed his evening stroll, complete with cigar.

So obvious a target couldn’t be ignored. Their adversaries opened up with everything they had.

So foolhardy a friend couldn’t be abandoned. Bobby and Peter exchanged quick glances. Then Peter rose to follow.

“Peter!” Storm snapped, genuinely furious now. “Get back here!”

The raw edge of command in her voice actually got through to him, and to Bobby as well, who’d been caught halfway to his feet. Peter stopped, torn between wanting to follow the Wolverine and his responsibility to Storm as mission commander.

As Logan knew, as the others were about to learn, in battle a single moment can swing the balance. Thus far, they’d operated mainly in shadow and anonymity. Their foes had occasional glimpses of them, and a general sense of where they were, but no clearly defined fix on their position.

Right then, right there, that changed.

Bobby was the first to see the light, attracted by the commotion. He screamed a warning.

“Peter!”

Too late. Even as Colossus turned, the searchlight found him, and that contact brought all its fellows to bear. Just like that, the team’s position was illuminated in a flood of light that defined the scene as bright as day.

A moment later, the bad guys opened fire. With everything they had.

“Move out,” Storm yelled. “Stay
together!
”

Instead, they scattered.

Momentarily forgotten amidst the suddenly target-rich environment, Logan kept walking, the personification of calm amidst growing chaos.

With a multitude of small, fast-moving targets to choose from, however, the gunners found themselves facing a completely different challenge than when the teams had been clustered together. The X-Men couldn’t share their abilities to cover one another, but at the same time, they were individually facing a smaller array of weapons. They all began making quick progress towards their final objective.

In the lead, Storm’s glance kept flicking between the battlefield and the countdown clock strapped to her wrist. Time was the inflexible adversary here, not the guys with the guns. The X-Men had a deadline, and they couldn’t be late.

“Storm,” called Bobby, indicating the bunker, like the kid with the winning touchdown in hand, a step from the goal line, “we’re almost there!”

It blew up in his face.

She wasn’t sure whether it was a shell from outside or some hidden sapper charge; what mattered was the spectacular explosion that would have knocked her off her feet had she not used her own innate control of the winds to shunt the pressure wave around her. Bobby wasn’t so fortunate. He not only went flying, he got clipped by debris for his trouble. Bad landing as well, that left him in a twisted, crumpled, unmoving heap.

Something passed over Colossus, moving on the bunker and Bobby. He wrenched the door off a ruined car and hurled it like a discus at the oncoming figure. Metal clanged on metal…

…and the door, suitably crushed, thudded back to Earth at his feet.

Logan, still playing the role of nonchalant observer, was impressed.

“Good arm.”

He looked the other way, saw Bobby fallen, Storm unable to reach him, the remaining two girls isolated and under considerable and growing fire. Things were out of hand.

Kitty summed it up, from her perspective: “We’re screwed.”

Logan had other ideas.

“Throw me,” he told Colossus.

“Shto?”
replied the young Russian. He didn’t get it.

“Logan,” Storm called, racing to join them.
“Wait—”

“Y’understand baseball?” Logan demanded, popping his claws, darting quick, repeated glances over his shoulder at the source of the mighty footsteps, which could now be heard as well as felt. Colossus nodded. “Y’know, like a fastball?” Again, he nodded. “Then follow where I point and
throw me
!
Now!
”

The armored Russian scooped him up, cocked his arm and let fly.

Logan disappeared into the low cloud of smoke that provided a quasi-roof over the town roughly a hundred feet overhead.