Planet X - Michael Jan Friedman [67]
Crusher saw where he was going with this. “We’ll help them,” she reassured him. “And we’ll do fine, with or without you.”
He grunted. “You’re just saying that to keep me from leaping out of bed.”
“If you could leap out of bed,” she countered, “I’d be the first to give you my blessing. But you can’t, and we both know it.”
Archangel scowled, his frustration showing. “Then at least let me sit on the bridge. I know my teammates, Doctor. At any given moment, I know what they’ll do and how they’ll do it. I can’t imagine your captain wouldn’t want to know it, too.”
Crusher considered the mutant’s request. Certainly, there was a big difference between sitting on the bridge and going into combat—and it would be a big help to have an X-Man at the captain’s side.
“I’ll ask the captain,” she promised. “After that, it’s in his hands.”
“Fair enough,” Archangel said.
The doctor started to move away—but he grabbed her hand. And while he didn’t quite have the strength to hold her there, he was a lot closer to it than he had a right to be.
“Thank you,” he told her.
She looked into the mutant’s face and saw the determination there—the need to be a part of what was happening on Xhaldia. She would try to communicate that to the captain as well.
Still, there were no guarantees. “Don’t thank me yet,” the doctor said.
With a thrust of his arms, Sovar muscled himself up onto the roof. Then he reached back for Shadowcat, only to find her already floating up to him.
Together on the roof, they looked around at the surrounding area, all of it blanketed in a premature twilight by the dense cloud cover overhead.
A green flash from off to the north caught Sovar’s eye. He turned that way and saw another one.
At the far end of a narrow, twisting alley, the lieutenant spotted what he was looking for—a handful of young Xhaldians. Perhaps four or five of them, running for their lives from a half-dozen well-armed Draa’kon.
At this distance, the Xhaldians looked as normal as he was, though the invaders’ interest in them plainly suggested otherwise. Then Sovar got a glimpse of one particular youth, and his suspicion was confirmed.
He pointed for Shadowcat’s benefit. “Look,” he said, wincing in sympathy. “The poor boy.”
The mutant looked, her hazel eyes narrowing at the sight. “I wonder if it hurts.”
Sovar wondered, too. After all, the Xhaldian’s bare arms, visible through large rips in his sleeves, were ridged over with huge, purple blood vessels. His legs seemed so heavy he could hardly run and there was barely any brush left on his head.
Then the lieutenant saw another directed-energy flash and remembered what he was doing there. His job was to stop the Draa’kon and he was determined to do that.
“None of those kids seem to be using their powers,” Shadowcat commented. “They’re too scared or they don’t know how.”
Sovar nodded in agreement. He could easily imagine their being frightened. If he had been transformed, persecuted, and hunted as they were, he would have been scared half out of his wits.
Unfortunately, the Draa’kon outnumbered the lieutenant and his partner, so it wouldn’t do much good to go toe-to-toe with the brutes. Clearly, they had to take a different tack.
One thing was in their favor, Sovar noticed. The alley seemed to work its way around a row of buildings and return on the other side of the roof he was standing on. With a little luck, he might be able to plant himself there and pick off the Draa’kon as they went by.
Of course, the transformed had to elude the invaders for another minute or so for the trap to work. And even then, there was no guarantee Sovar wouldn’t be spotted after his first shot and destroyed. But in his line of work, there was never a guarantee.
The lieutenant turned to Shadowcat to tell her his plan—and realized he was standing on the rooftop all alone. He glanced this way and that, wondering what could have happened to her. Then he heard shouts and realized the chase was coming his way sooner than he’d thought.
Sovar couldn’t afford to worry about the mutant