Planet X - Michael Jan Friedman [93]
The one called Unus didn’t smile, but his eyes seemed to twinkle. “That’s right,” he said. “We owe you and your friends. Big time.”
He had barely finished speaking when there was a commotion to Worf’s right. A flight of birds took off screaming into the blood-red sky, followed by a pounding that made the ground shake beneath the Klingon’s feet.
A pounding that sounded oddly like … footsteps. And they were getting closer moment by moment.
Finally, another gigantic figure shouldered his way into the clearing. But this one wasn’t grotesquely flabby like the Blob. He was a mass of corded muscle encased in brown and crimson body armor, his headgear more a dome than an actual helmet.
Wolverine grinned. “Hey, Juggernaut. Glad ya could make it.”
The behemoth’s eyes flashed like blue fire. “You won’t be glad for long,” he thundered.
Wolverine glanced at Worf. “Looks like they’re all here, lieutenant. But don’t let ‘em fool ya. They’re actually a lot tougher than they look.”
Eyeing his adversaries, the Klingon shifted his batt’leth from hand to hand. “Tougher, you say?”
“Yup.”
Worf smiled. “Good.”
Perhaps this wouldn’t be such a disappointment after all.
Picard looked around the table in his observation lounge, which had never been so crowded before. Not only were Worf, Riker, Troi, Crusher, Data, and La Forge present, but all the X-Men as well.
“Thank you for coming,” he told them. “As I noted, we have a number of subjects to cover.” He turned to his first officer. “Commander?”
Riker launched into his briefing. “When we first saw the Draa’kon in orbit around Xhaldia, we wondered what they were doing there. Now we know. They weren’t just there to kidnap Xhaldia’s budding superbeings. In point of fact, they had created them.”
“Created them?” La Forge repeated.
“That’s right,” said the first officer. “You see, as many as thirty years ago, Draa’kon geneticists found a genome that would produce certain combat abilities in breeding stock.”
“To support Draa’kon aggression against other species,” Crusher noted.
“Exactly, Doctor—just as Khan and others engineered human genes in the twentieth century. But the Draa’kon ran into a stumbling block. Their DNA rejected the genome.”
The captain saw where Riker was going with this. “So they sought out a gene pool without that particular problem—one that would bring forth a crop of super-powered warriors.”
“Apparently,” said the first officer. “Finally, they found such a gene pool on Xhaldia—though it was a tiny fraction of the population. After that, it was simply a matter of introducing an airborne virus that would sow the right genetic seeds—and produce a sprinkling of mutant Xhaldians some twenty-two years later.”
La Forge grunted. “Incredible!”
“However,” Riker said, “once the transformed learned to use their powers, they would become difficult to capture. Therefore, the Draa’kon would only have a limited window of opportunity to harvest their crop.”
“A window,” Picard continued, “that we have managed to shut.” He eyed his first officer. “But tell me, Number One … how did you learn all this?”
The first officer shifted in his seat. “Actually, sir, it was Wolverine who obtained the information.”
“Wolverine?” the captain echoed, turning to the mutant.
The man in the mask just grinned at him.
“Yes, sir,” Riker confirmed. “In an … er, interview with one of the captured Draa’kon.”
Picard frowned. “An interview in which Wolverine no doubt employed his own, unique brand of persuasion.”
This time, Riker smiled along with the mutant. “No doubt,” he said.
The captain sighed. It wasn’t always easy dealing with these X-Men—and Wolverine especially. Still, he could hardly argue with the results.
“Thank you,” he told his first officer. He turned to La Forge. “You have the floor, Commander.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the chief engineer. He looked around the table at the X-Men. “You’ll be interested to know I’ve figured out what went wrong with your timespace transport.”
“Excellent,” replied Shadowcat.