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#8
OCT 11 |
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Dark Tide Rising, Part Four:
“Clash of the Titans”
Kitty Pryde, well the clone of Kitty Pryde, lay dead at the feet of the Starjammers, brutally murdered by an alien menace known as the Sen’khan. The Quel’toth’s leader looked upon the group with his three emotionless yellow eyes, as if challenging them to attack.
Above them, looking through a hole in the crystal ceiling, stood the clone of Piotr Rasputin. Overcome with grief and rage, the iron giant leapt down from the level above directly onto the Sen’khan. The alien went down under the immense weight of the mutant; he was strong, but still not in the league of Colossus. Especially not a Colossus enraged beyond all reason.
The group could only watch on in horror as Peter pummelled his wife’s murderer. With each blow there was the sickening crunch of bones breaking and tissue ripping. Eventually the Sen’khan stopped struggling; he was surely dead. That didn’t stop Peter from pounding the alien’s corpse, splattering violet blood everywhere, until Kurt placed a hand on his shoulder.
“He’s dead, mein freund,” he said softly.
Piotr spun around, fist raised as if to strike his friend. Kurt would forever have that image burned into his memory: Piotr’s face, splattered with violet gore and almost unrecognisable with fury.
The rage seemed to evaporate from him as he returned to his flesh form and fell to his knees before Kitty’s body.
“Oh Kayta,” he stroked her soft brown hair. “I am so sorry I wasn’t the man you fell in love with.” He rubbed his own shorn head as if to remind himself of the man he had become. “I promise I will be a good father to Yana…” he looked up at Kurt with worried eyes. “Where is Yana?”
“She is safe on the Starjammer, friend.”
“Then let us go there, we have no need to be here anymore.” The large man rose and cradled his dead wife in his arms.
The ship rocked violently once again.
“Agreed. It sounds like Dragoon is taking care of the ship for us. Let’s get out of here,” said Corsair.
The Dasagroth’s Chamber
Boom! Dragoon’s energy blast missed the Dasagroth and destroyed yet another wall. Gigantic shards of crystal were raining down all around him as he charged the creature once again.
He was haggard; never since his transformation into a god had he endured such a battle. No matter how many times he attacked the creature it shrugged off the damage and regenerated. What’s more, every time it laid it’s tentacles on him he felt a little bit more of his godlike powers draining away. Unfortunately, when he tried to do the same to the creature it had no effect, and yet he could sense the enormous power buried deep within the Dasagroth.
Half a dozen smaller tendrils entangled his legs and lifted him off the ground like a prize chicken. Fighting against the energy drain, he ripped the vine like material to shreds with his bare hands and levitated magnetically.
Never had he been forced to use so much power before in battle, but there was no way he was going to bow down to some unseen master. His eyes flared white hot as his entire body crackled with intense white energy; dozens of bolts of lightning-like energy fired off in random directions, obliterating anything they touched.
“Now feel my divine wrath, demon!”
Dragoon’s Flagship
It was more than an hour after they arrived out of hyperspace before Tesk-Nor and the other clerics got the bridge door open. What they found inside was completely unexpected: absolutely nothing.
“Where is our Divine Lord?” asked one acolyte.
There was no trace of their mighty lord Dragoon or the one known as Fallout; in fact there wasn’t one piece of loose furniture either.
“Oh, I see, the Great One ascended to a higher plane of existence and took all the furniture with him,” said another acolyte.
“You don’t think a higher plane of existence already has chairs?” retorted the first.
“Imbeciles!” yelled Tesk-Nor.
The head priest stormed over to the nearest console and began scanning the solar system. A smile crept across his face as he noticed the rest of the fleet was just arriving. Something else caught his attention: a massive surge of energy around the other side of the gas giant they were docked near.
After transmitting orders to the rest of the armada, he brought the massive ship around the planet to better observe the energy signature and was shocked by what he saw...dozens of black crystal ships, each tapered to a needle nose point.
Once again he detected the energy spike; it matched Dragoon’s awesome power exactly. It was flaring dramatically within the largest ship!
“Our great Lord Dragoon is battling these infidels! We must aid him!” exclaimed the fanatic.
Battling alongside their great lord Dragoon had been a dream of all the Vanguard so none argued when their high priest lead the fleet directly at the alien armada, guns blazing.
The Starjammer
“Waldo, this is Raza, we need you to teleport us out of here ASAP,” said the cyborg over his commlink.
“That might be easier said than done,” replied the AI.
Nearby, dozens of ships were engaged in brutal combat. It was unclear to Waldo who the Quel’toth’s assailants were but they were clearly a hodgepodge of various ships.
In order to teleport the crew back onboard the ship, Waldo needed to get the Starjammer within range, which meant having to take the ship within a veritable hornet’s nest of hostility.
Sighing to himself (digitally, because computers don’t breathe), the AI propelled the ship forward at breakneck speeds into the conflagration of enemy ships. Almost immediately he had to bank right to dodge a Skrull fighter and nearly crashed into a Quel’toth vessel. By veering up as hard as possible, the Starjammer’s lower fin just nicked the crystalline ship.
The computer registered that the Quel’toth’s formidable shields seemed to be inactive, but had no time to process this information; keeping the ship in one piece was more important.
After a few minutes of dodging and weaving, the Starjammer was almost within teleportation range. Unfortunately for Waldo, the Quel’toth’s defenses were the densest around the command ship, which just happened to be the current location of the Starjammers.
No matter how hard he tried to reach the ship, the other, smaller Quel’toth ships kept fighting him back; it was a miracle the ship wasn’t destroyed.
Aboard the Blood Pride
“Ummm Waldo, do you hear me?” Raza tapped his com device.
They were a battered group; all of them were hurt in some way, especially Z’Cann whose shoulder was bleeding profusely. All they wanted to do was get off the alien ship and recuperate.
Fallout huddled nearby in a corner, staring at his hands and mumbling. “It’s all my fault, I killed her,” he said softly to himself. No one else caught what he was saying.
Tssssseeeewww! A violet energy blast surged passed the group and struck a nearby wall. Quel’toth soldiers came charging down the hall in their direction firing off shots.
“Run!” yelled Scott as he fired an optic blast; the crimson beam scattered their assailants but more took their place.
The group ran around a sharp corner only to find themselves facing even more opposition...they were trapped. Dozens of crystalline rifles were trained on them; there was no way to avoid the deadly energy beams.
Corsair felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as the multitude of weapons fired, he even saw one particular beam about to strike him straight between the eyes…but it never hit him.
In an almost surreal moment, the octet were teleported away from the deadly crossfire, their molecules scattered and spread across space before being reformed in the relative safety of the Starjammer…except they didn’t manifest in the Starjammer, it was another ship.
“Welcome aboarrrd the Beautiful Hepzibah,” said a very familiar voice.
“Hepzibah!” exclaimed a stunned Corsair.
In the blink of an eye she was in his arms; no matter what had happened between them in the past week, they still loved each other greatly, there was no denying that.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Whose ship is this?”
Hepzibah, half expecting her former lover to be abusing her, returned to her senses and quickly jumped back into the pilot’s seat. Through the viewing screen the group could see a massive space battle going on between the Quel’toth and more conventional metal ships. The Mephistoid quickly flew them a safe distance from the battle, with a skill that almost rivalled Corsair’s; it was evident she’d learned a lot from the human over the past several decades.
Not until it was assured they were shielded from the battle behind Earth’s moon did she reply to Corsair.
“This is Hrrar’s ship. He...left…”
“He was using his pheromones on you,” said Corsair. It wasn’t a question or even an accusation; it was simply a statement of fact.
It was clear Hrrar had wounded her pride, as there was a moment of silence before she replied. “Yes, but I politely told him I was no man’s tool and afterrr much apologizing he left me this ship as a gift." She grinned maliciously. “I trracked the Starjammer’s signal using my emergency code, turrns out this was where we were headed anyway. As soon as I arrived, I tried to contact you and Waldo filled me in. That stupid computer couldn’t even get close enough to ‘porrt you, so I showed him how it’s done.”
“You saved us all, Hepz, thanks,” said Ch’od.
“Yeah…thank you Hepzibah…I…” started Corsair.
“Captain, we really need to get Z’Cann some medical attention,” Raza interrupted. The Skrull was hanging off the cyborg weakly and looked a very pale shade of green; her blood was flowing freely through Raza’s fingers as he tried to stem the flow.
Corsair snapped back to captain mode. “Hepzibah, do you have medical supplies on this ship?”
“Nothing for anything that serious, I’ll have to get herrr to bug brain on the Starrrjammerr." This was easier said than done as, according to the ship’s sensors, the Starjammer was on the other side of the battlezone.
“Everyone hold onto something, we’rrrre going in!”
With an audible whoosh the Beautiful Hepzibah launched forward towards the immense space battle. Of course they could simply go around the war zone, but this was much more fun.
“Oh Jesus, look out!” yelled Scott as a small shuttle crossed their path; Hepzibah dodged it easily.
“Relax, little Summerrrs. What arre you doing here anyway?” asked Hepzibah
“Long story,” replied Scott dryly.
“Long storrries are borrring, I preferrr doing THIS!” The Mephistoid took the ship into a sudden nosedive, slipping between two ships like threading a needle and blew a sizeable chunk out of a frigate.
“Relax, theirrr Dragoon’s fleet,” said Hepzibah before Corsair could even reprimand her.
Christopher turned to Fallout. “Why is Dragoon attacking the Quel’toth?”
“I…I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “Dragoon sensed a power and dragged the fleet after it. He’s completely insane.”
“Well, insane or not, he’s doing the galaxy a big favor by taking out the Quel’toth and getting his own army destroyed in the process,” stated Corsair grimly as the ship lurched suddenly to port.
“I sssee Waldo,” stated Cho’od, leaning over a console. “Fifteen degrees sstarboard,”
As suddenly as the ship jerked to port it jerked to starboard and the Starjammer came into view. Despite the ship’s reputation for being one of the fastest in the galaxy, the two Quel’toth ships on its tail were giving it a run for its money. Waldo was doing his best to avoid the alien’s strange blaster fire, but the ship was still sustaining damage.
“My daughter’s on that ship! Do something!” shouted the massive Piotr; he still held Kitty’s dead body in his arms.
“Stupid pushy men,” muttered the cat woman as she fired multiple quantum missiles at the twin enemy ships.
Apparently the Quel’toth were too occupied with the Starjammer to detect the missiles in time; all of them found their mark, exploding in spectacular fashion over the planet Earth. One enemy ship was blown to pieces by the quantum energy unleashed by the missiles, but the second remained in one piece. Thankfully its systems appeared to be shut down as it listed lifelessly towards the Earth’s southern pole. Hopefully it would burn up in the planet’s atmosphere.
Both the Starjammer and Hepzibah’s travelled to relative safety behind Earth’s moon before the crew teleported onto the more familiar ship for medical attention.
The Blood Pride, Dasagroth’s chamber
It was incomprehensible...the mighty god-king Dragoon was losing the battle. With each strike the mighty black creature landed on him, he felt more of his strength drain away. Slowly he was slipping back to the pathetic mortal he had once been, and he would fight with the fury of a thousand souls to stop that from happening.
Most of his savage armor had been ripped from his body during the battle, leaving his upper body fully exposed to the monster’s life draining touch. With a ferocious cry of rage he charged the Dasagroth, leaping at its massive body.
As he tore into the black flesh of the creature with his bare hands he felt his life-force rapidly draining away, but he soldiered on, trying to reach the source of sheer power buried deep within the monster. Fine black tendrils were penetrating his flesh, pushing between his very cells, infecting him, but still he fought on.
Finally, when he thought he couldn’t fight on any longer, he reached his prize: deep within the Dasagroth’s body was an intense white light, radiating a power so strong he could feel his flesh start to burn.
It was a gateway to a source of amazing power, a power older than time itself. Without hesitation he reached within the light and felt the power flood into him. In five hundred years of stealing strength from other people he’d never felt a thousandth of the power he was feeling now; it was raw, primal and the flow wasn’t slowing down.
Every cell of his body was supercharged with energy, so much so that he was radiating an intense light which burned away the flesh of the Dasagroth around him. Quickly he realized that the power was too much, even for a god; it was burning him up from the inside and if he didn’t release it soon it would destroy him.
The energy was reaching breaking point now, the burning white light shone intensely from his eyes and mouth as he prepared to let the power forth and hopefully destroy the Dasagroth in the process. Nothing prepared him for what came next.
A final, incredible surge or energy flowed through the gateway and into his body, pushing it beyond what it could handle. The explosion was immense, encompassing not only the Dasagroth’s chamber, or even the command ship, but the entire battlefield.
Every ship, Quel’toth and Dragoon’s fleet, were destroyed by a devastating explosion of pure white energy.
The Baxter Building, New York
“Reed, what’s going on?” asked a concerned Susan Richards AKA the Invisible Woman.
All around Reed Richard’s lab, various gadgets and devices were going crazy sounding alarms, flashing lights and printing baffling reports.
Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic, urgently grabbed a printout from the other side of the room and read it. His brow furrowed in concern as he looked to his wife.
“My satellites have detected a massive surge of energy in space, rivalling the power cosmic."
“Galactus?” asked Sue
“I don’t think so…”
“Reed, Suzie, you might wanna come check this out!” shouted Ben Grimm from the balcony.
The husband and wife rushed outside to see what all the fuss was about and stopped dead in their tracks. The night was lit as bright as day by an intense white halo of energy in the night sky, which rapidly dispersed.
The Moon
Uatu, the Watcher, had observed the alien battle from the moment it began. It was his duty, to watch and record anything that effected the Earth, as so he looked on as the epic battle drew ever closer to the opal planet.
With his advanced senses he could detect something otherworldly about the sleek crystalline ships; a strange and powerful energy he had never felt before.
Despite his advanced sight, he did not flinch as the massive explosion of energy engulfed both fleets. Instead he gazed deep within the heart of the bright, burning supernova of energy and caught a glimpse of something that shook him to the core; a gigantic crystalline entity which radiated pure malevolence.
As quickly as it was there it was gone, the doorway to this creature’s world shut, but Uatu shuddered in fear. For a brief second, the creature had looked upon him with pure malice. He was sure dark times were ahead.
Outside time and space
Axel Asher looked upon the two slumbering brothers in awe. Of course he knew they didn’t actually look like two gigantic humanoid beings, it was just his subconscious’ way of coping with viewing two multiverses from outside time and space, but he still always saw them that way anyway.
He often enjoyed stepping away from his duties as the Access and looking down upon all of creation; his dad had his old fishing hole for 'quiet time', and he had the place outside time and space.
Here and there light sparkled like little pink stars. In fact they were Panoptichron’s: multidimensional viewing stations built by some long forgotten alien race. One light shone more intensely than the rest though, and Axel teleported closer to investigate.
What he found was a massive tear in reality to a dimension of primal white energy. Through the tear he saw a gigantic cluster of glistening black crystals, as big as a sun and radiating just as much power.
“Oh god no, it exists! The omniverse isn’t…arrrggghh!”
A blast of crackling white energy struck the young man, sending him hurtling through realities, possibly dead.
Hours later, above Earth
The Starjammers and their companions had watched in awe as both the Quel’toth and Dragoon’s fleet were destroyed in a spectacular fashion by the immense explosion. The energy wave released by the detonation briefly sent the systems on the Starjammer and Hepzibah’s ship haywire, but Ch’od quickly resolved any problems.
With Sikorsky’s aid, Z’Cann’s wound was patched up, along with all the other minor injuries the group had received. Scott had suffered the most at the hands of the Quel’toth and although he would be forever scarred from the alien’s tests, his body would heal.
Peter had placed Kitty’s body in stasis until the remaining X-clones could decide how best to lay her to rest. He now bounced the infant Yana on his gargantuan knee, she seemed oblivious to all the death and trauma that had taken place in her life over the past few weeks.
“I want to thank you,Kurt, for keeping my child safe. She’s all I have left now,” said Peter.
The blue furred mutant laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder, “No, mein fruend, you still have me, and Scott. We’re all family,”
Fallout stood off to the side, he hadn’t spoken a word since arriving on the Starjammer. The guilt of causing Kitty’s death would likely haunt him for the rest of his life. It was evident to Corsair that the young Australian was a good kid who had just got mixed in with the wrong kind of people.
“What’s your real name kid?” asked Corsair.
“It…its Sebastian…Seb Millar,” replied the mutant. “Are you going to lock me up? I mean, it’s my fault that girl died.”
Christopher glanced at Piotr on the other side of the bridge; it was best if the giant man didn’t know Fallout’s role in Kitty’s death. He spoke softly, “What happened to Kitty was a tragic accident; I understand that you were only trying to help.”
“When she died, she looked at me, right at me, and I knew she was thinking I killed her.”
“The guilt will fade Seb, I promise you. Maybe you should try and do some good, helping people might help ease your burden. There’s a place on the Starjammer, if you’d like it.”
“I appreciate the offer, sir, you’re an amazingly good person to make it, but I have to say no. All I want to do is go home, to Earth…although I have nowhere to go.”
“What about your parents?” asked Chris.
“They’re both dead, radiation poisoning…oh god I should just go to the farthest reaches of space where I can’t hurt anyone.” From the sound of his voice the younger man was crying inside his helmet.
“I think I know some people on Earth that can help you. How do you feel about living in the U.S.?”
“I’m fine with it, I guess…”
“Good, I’ll fill you in shortly.”
“The Beautiful Hepzibah…do I have to call it that?...iss prepped and ready for travel,” said Ch’od as he entered the bridge.
“Thank you so much for the gift of the ship Hepzibah. It’s very generous,” said Scott.
All he got was sulky grumble in reply; Corsair elbowed her in the ribs. “What she means is you’re more than welcome. Are you sure you can’t stay longer? It’s not every day I find out I have a long lost son.”
Scott rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, the inner conflict evident on his face. "I’m not your son, Corsair; he’s down there on Earth with his own life, a life that you’re part of." He paced the room uncomfortably. “We can’t be here; we can't go to Earth. It…it reminds us too much of what we don’t have. We need…I need to get as far away from Earth, and as far away from you, as I can. I’m sorry.”
“I understand, but no matter what you say, you’re still my son and I’ll always be here if you need me."
“Thank you, thank you for everything Corsair." The younger man reached out for a handshake, but Corsair wrapped his arms around him in a warm embrace. Only Hepzibah noticed the tears welling in Scott’s eyes.
As he pulled away from the embrace, the young clone asked, “Can you please ask you’re A.I. to ‘port us to our ship? We’re ready to go?”
“Of course, Scott. Waldo, do it,”
“Initiating transfer, mind your knees and elbows…bzzt…error 226,” said the erratic computer.
Solemnly, they each said their goodbyes, promising to keep in touch and report if they encountered any trouble. The clones also asked that they don’t tell anyone on Earth of their existence, to which the Starjammers agreed. And then, in a flash of golden light they were gone, teleported to their own new ship.
Corsair watched through the viewing screen as their ship accelerated away into hyperspace. He was sad to see them go, especially Scott. Despite the hardships of the past few weeks, he seemed somehow happier than the man he was cloned from.
“Good bye, son,”
Hepzibah placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. He wasn’t sure if their relationship would ever be the same again, but he hoped so. The problem was, no matter how sure he was that it was Hrrar’s pheromones that made her leave, there would always be the small doubt that she went to him of her own free will.
“So what do we do now, Captain?” asked Raza.
Corsair smiled when he noticed the Cyborg was holding Z’Cann’s hand but said nothing of it, instead he replied. “Well first, I’d like to go spend some time with my family. I’ve definitely been away from them for too long. And we need to drop Fallout off at Xavier’s anyway.”
“It would be good to see Charles again,” said Z’Cann, “but what about after that? Will the Starjammers go back to ferrying Kree refugees?”
“I don’t know, Z’Cann, I feel like we’ve been handed a new purpose. With the Kree, Skrull and Shi’ar galaxies all in a shambles, everybody’s vying for power in the universe, each one trying to gain more territory and resources before the others. Dragoon and the Quel’toth were just the first in what’s going to be a long line of would-be dominators who want to call the Milky Way their own, and that’s why we need to be here. I’m not going let this galaxy become a part of another corrupted empire,”
“What are you proposing?” asked Raza.
“We patrol the galaxy, making alliances, so that when the next Dragoon or Sen’khan shows up we’re ready to send them packing,”
“Even the Birrrdies?” Fire burned in Hepzibah’s eyes as it always did when she spoke of the Shi’ar.
“Yes, even the Shi’ar, no-one’s laying a claim to this galaxy,”
“Sticking it to the Birrrdies, I like that,” grinned Hepzibah.
“Starjammers: Protectors of the Galaxy,” joked Ch’od with false bravado.
“It truly is a noble cause, Captain,” said Raza.
“And you’ll be much closer to your family,” smiled Z’Cann, tapping her temple. “I knew you had an ulterior motive.”
“Pickles…bzzt…error 226!” Waldo chipped in.
Corsair couldn’t help but smile; he was never happier than when his life had purpose, and protecting his family was the greatest purpose a man’s life could have. Although, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the universe had dark times ahead.
In orbit above Standing Still, Shi’ar Galaxy
General F’Dor looked down upon the capital of the Clench Union with disdain. For some unfathomable reason, Empress Lilandra allowed this world of dissidents, and many others, to exist.
In D’Ken’s day, anyone who fled the Shi’ar’s empire would be hunted down and thrown in prison, or executed. No one was allowed to insult the noble sacrifice Sharra and K’ythri made when they married, thus giving rise to the Shi’ar’s concept of 'marrying' worlds. If D’Ken had found a world full of dissidents such as this, he wouldn’t have thought twice about reducing it to a charred memory.
What’s more, the Clench had harbored known criminals, the Starjammers. Above anything else this was unforgivable to F’Dor.
Thankfully, some unknown crisis had called away the majority of the Clench’s fleet, leaving them virtually undefended. His Apocalypse class Destroyer had easily picked off the remaining defences.
“Prime the weapons for a full scale assault on the planet’s surface,” he ordered his second in command, a runt of a man named D’Nell.
“Sir, we’re receiving a transmission,” said D’Nell.
“I don’t want to hear anything the Clench has to say,” replied the General.
“It’s not coming from the Clench sir; it’s coming from deep space. The transmission code is Crimson.”
F’Dor whirled around suddenly, as if that was the last thing he was expecting to hear.
“Put it up on screen,”
A familiar Shi’ar face appeared on the large viewing screen: Davan Shakari.
“Shakari! You’re supposed to be dead!” exclaimed F’Dor.
“You and everyone else in the Empire think that, old friend, and I like it that way,” replied Shakari, the man better known on Earth as Erik the Red.
“What do you want from me, Sharaki?”
“Many things, F’Dor, many things. At the moment you’re classed as a rogue general by the empire, a criminal, but open fire upon that planet and break a treaty the Empress has so diligently enforced, and you’ll be branded an outright traitor. The full weight of the empire come shall down upon you,”
“And you’re Lilandra’s spokesperson now?”
“Oh no no, you misunderstand me,” replied Shakari greasily. “I have a much better use for you that would be best achieved without the entire empire hunting you. Leave Standing Still be and come meet me at the co-ordinates I’m transmitting you now. We have much to discuss.”
“Such as?”
“Such as bringing an end to Lilandra’s rule and returning to the glory days of the empire,”
F’Dor smiled wickedly. “So be it, Davan, it’s a deal.”
“Excellent, I look forward to a long and fulfilling partnership,”
F’Dor laughed quietly to himself. Fate had handed him the resources to bring down the empress and to finally destroy the Starjammers. It was a good day indeed.
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The End...
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