I get back to Mars by the time dusk is setting in over the autarch spires. No one cheers, and I don't put on a spectacle. The news has spread to the ground level: war is imminent, and preparations have begun. Production in many areas has halted completely, and the planetary defense batteries—weapons the size of cities that haven't seen use in millennia—are being prepped for the coming battle.

To Lovidicus, this war is inevitable. A lot of chapters have allied with Calgar—virtually all those descended from the Ultramarines over ten thousand years of foundings. And to top it off, the Imperium as a whole has officially chosen to ignore the conflict, meaning we'll receive no Guard support, no Inquisitorial support, no political support, and, most importantly, Battlefleet Solar will ignore the largest fleet action in its territory since the Horus Heresy.

The Mechanicus has a great deal of resources and a sizeable fleet, but with over five hundred chapters gunning for our homeworld, I doubt we will come out of this on top. We need allies, badly, and that will be my department. I've promised Lovidicus that Mars will be defended by Elseworlders, and I intend to keep my word.

But that's work for tomorrow, because tonight, I'm going to get terribly drunk and fall asleep in a puddle of my own sweat and piss.

What? These are dark times. Don't judge me.

Iron Knight

Chapter 7: The Hangover

The extremis just isn't hacking it this morning. Apparently, four bottles of amasec has too significant an effect to be handled by the tech-integration, as most of the extremis's concentration is on filtering the damage done to my liver. I'm thankful, of course, but that just makes this the most painful and uncoordinated planetary landing I've ever attempted.

The planet is called Iote Sybola. It is a dead world, the population of which was inhuman and has been dead since before the Great Crusade. The ruins of their civilization cover the world, a vast equatorial network of cities carved from the bedrock. Without any real weather patterns to contend with, the ruins have kept remarkably well, and I take care to make a soft landing.

I may be hungover, but I'm not an asshole. Besides, I want to talk with the people here, not get them riled over some broken pottery or whatever.

I walk through the streets of the largest of the ruin, sword sheathed, repulsors on standby. Scans return negative. As far as the suit's concerned, I'm totally alone. Then again, the suit could be picking up a lot of things—maybe it's just my mind that sees nothing. I installed psy-wards in my brain, but those were built do deal with Beta-level psykers. I have no way of knowing if they would stop an Elseworlder telepath.

Anthony.

The voice is warm, seductive, and very much inside my head. Guess that answers my psy-ward question.

I stop walking. "Emma?"

I sincerely hope you didn't come for a fight, Anthony.

"Check my thoughts. You can see I'm not, but if you want to tangle in another way, I'd be happy to oblige."

A beam of red flashes out of the darkness of a ruined house, hitting my chest with the concussive force of twenty dump trucks, knocking me off my feet and through a trio of smaller dwellings. I bounce off my head, snap a meme-servo in my right knee, and come to a stop in the middle of a dusty street.

"Well, I can see Cyclops is doing well…"

Summers shows up just as I pop the servo back into place. He stands atop a building with Emma, both dressed in the black robes of the Inquisition, though she is, as always, more revealing. Frost holds a boltgun. Summers is staring at me.

"That's just a sample, Stark!" he shouts. "Try anything and I'll lay on the rest!"

I pop my visor. Hopefully, he takes it as a sign of good faith. "Summers, quit aiming your face at me. I came here to talk."

"Prove it!"

"If I wanted to fight, you'd be dead right now."

I duck the next blast, roll aside, and boost right up into his face. I grab Summers by the neck and pull up, breaking Mach 2 in three seconds. If I can get him high enough, he won't be able to breathe in the thin air, and I'll—

The next blast hits me in the temple. My optics fuzz out, my repulsors cut off, and I fall as the suit's computer and my body try to deal with the sudden influx on my pain receptors. The impact strobes along my spinal link, hurting worse than anything I've felt in a long time. I scream, crying out into the darkness of my helmet.

There is a loud clang, and the wind stops blowing. When the suit powers back up, we're still eight hundred feet above the ground, but we aren't falling.

I regain my breath after a minute. "Good catch, Jarvis."

"Good for a stupid computer, sir?"

I want to respond, but Summers cuts me off, prying the helmet from my head and tossing it over the side. He grabs the edge of my collar armor and hauls me up. He thumps a device on my chest. Instantly, every electronic function in my suit shuts down.

"You want to talk?" he growls, visor smoking with pent-up energy. "Then talk now, on my terms."

((' '))

Everyone always underestimated Scott Summers. For years, people poked fun at him, at the fact that he led the X-Men from behind Charles Xavier's pantleg. People joked that when it came to mutant leaders, Cyclops was fourth, behind Xavier, Magneto, and Storm, and whenever the discussion turned to the X-Men's combat ability, everyone talked about Wolverine. After all, who was better: the clawed veteran of every war since 1890, or the kid with the laser face?

Thing is, if it wasn't for the decade and a half of slim-jokes and dying girlfriends, I don't think Summers would be what he is today. But what is he today? Well, to me, he's the scariest damn person in the universe, that's what.

"Jarvis, set us down," he says.

"Mr. Summers, I don't believe you're qualified to—"

"I will vaporize his head. Set. Us. Down."

"Complying."

We land in the ruins. Summers pulls me off the Starhopper. I thud into the dirt.

"I didn't want to fight, Scott."

"Yeah, we'll see about that. Emma?"

Frost walks out of the ruins to meet us. I can feel her in my mind, worming around in my consciousness like a bad memory. After a moment, she pulls out. I expect her to tell Summers what she's found, but she doesn't speak. For a long minute, I'm left in the dark as the two have a psy-chat. Neither one gives away a thing. Summers' facial expressions are hidden by the visor, while Emma—well, her last name is suitable, to say the least.

It's Summers who finally speaks. "Nate's in the Ghoul Stars. If you want to make contact with him, head that way. I can't and won't guarantee that he'll help you, but you can at least ask him."

He steps up and pulls the device from my chest. Immediately, power floods back into my limbs and I can stand again.

I pop the visor. "Summers, the Ghoul Stars cover over 8,000 lightyears of space. How do you—"

"Go there and Nate will find you, if he wants to talk to you at all. Otherwise, I don't care."

"Good talking to you, too."

"Again, don't care." Cyclops turns and walks away. "Get off this planet."

Emma lingers a second before following him, leaving me with a wink and a blown kiss. I watch her walk away, and then there's nothing left to watch. She's masked their appearance. That went about as well as I'd figured.

"Damn Cyclops."

"Sir?"

"Nothing, Jarvis."

"Very well. Shall we go, then?"

I climb back aboard the Starhopper. We're spaceborne in seconds.

((' '))

For the record, I don't like Cable. I don't like his techno-organic cyber arm. I don't like his one urine-yellow laser eye. I don't like his giant guns, future-soldier bad attitude, unwarranted superiority, bottomless power set, thick neck, broad shoulders, cropped gray hair, older-than-my-father ironic twist, or his God damn dumb mutant space nation.

But I especially don't like how I have to just wait for him to find me in this stupid mess of gas in the Ghoul Stars.

"How long have we been waiting, Jarvis?"

"Three hours and forty-two minutes, sir."

"Shit," I mutter and sit down on the Starhopper's rear end.

I've got enough air in the suit to last a day or so in the vacuum, and I wasn't about to just wait inside the carriage, cooped up like beans in a can. Laying out and stretching a bit feels good, but now even that's boring. I'm beginning to think Scott just sent me for a goose chase.

A proximity alarm jerks me out of it, and I look up in time to see a starship tear overhead. Jarvis starts babbling off statistics and I tell him to shut up so I can think straight. The ship is huge, easily the tonnage of an Emperor-class battleship, but with none of the gothicness. As it decelerates out of its light jump, it turns to come abeam of my location. It's smooth surface bristles with point-to-point laser turrets and shield generators, all lightyears ahead of Imperial tech.

Its nameplate reads Graymalkyn II. Yup, Cable.

Six more ships decelerate alongside the first. They fall into an offensive encirclement. Targeting signatures ping in my helmet.

A channel opens in my visor. "Iron Knight, this is Prime Minister Nathan Summers speaking. Welcome to Xavier Nation."

((' '))

Xavier Nation, named in the honor of you-know-who, is a collective of twelve planets in the Ghoul Stars devoted to providing sanctuary from the Imperium of Man. This sanctuary is given to any and all who seek it, so long as they are not criminals as judged by the Nation's court system. It is a utopia, or at least that's how Cable totes it.

"So," he turns to me as he completes his little explanation. We're on the bridge of Graymalkyn II, standing on a raised dais that he seems to favor for command. The dais, like the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and every other basic structure on the ship, is made of the same twisting, gray metal. Cable's suit is made the same way: a suit of curled, intricate armor extending from his own body.

The techno-organic virus. He has it under control.

"Have you come here to join us?" His question is blunt, without any of the conversational jockeying one would expect from a country's leader. I've come to expect that from soldiers. I'm a businessman—Cable couldn't outtalk me if he tried.

Plus, the question told me one thing. Either the virus is still restricting his telepathy, or he can't get through my psi-shields. I don't have to worry about him faking it. That's not how Nate works.

"Uh, no. Sorry." I project a hologram from my gauntlet showing Mars. "I work for them now."

His eyes narrow, ever so slightly, but the hint is there: Cable really, really doesn't like the Imperium. That's good. I can play to that.

"Don't worry, I'm not so friendly with the government either. In fact, we're kind of in a tight spot with them right now." He asks what I mean, and I tell him about Logan, Calgar's pact with the successor chapters, the impending doom of Mars, and the Imperium's hands-off policy.

He is silent for a long moment. Finally, he looks up at me. "You want my help."

I collapse the hologram. "If you don't mind. I figure it's up to us Elseworlders to scratch each others' backs, right?"

"I do mind," he says. "But I'm open to negotiation. How can you scratch my back, exactly?"

I try not to smirk. Now we're getting to the fun part, where we put things on the table and try to screw each other over. Backstabbing. Deal-making. Offers and counter-offers. Call me corporate, but this stuff gets me happy. I haven't had to do it in a while, and I'm all over this opportunity.

"I'm in a powerful position within the Mechanicus, Cable. With all probability I'll be in charge within five years, but even as it stands, I can reroute and control the flow of supplies we ship in and out of Mars." I look at him. "So, if you ever had some Imperial trouble, I can make sure that any crusade launched against you would be caught in plenty of red tape."

"We have weapons," he says. "War isn't a problem with us."

"Don't lie to me, Nathan. It's insulting to both our intelligences. I've scanned your ship, and even if I can't build some of it, neither can you. Half of the weapons on these ships are Kree knock-offs. We both know their limitations."

"Are you threatening me?"

"No, no I'm not. However, if you were to refuse an alliance… well, like I said, I control the supply flow in the Mechanicus. I can just as easily give them some of my stuff and send them your way as I could keep your little nation a secret."

He smiles at me. "Keeping one hand cocked back, right, Stark? Fine. We'll help. But I can't commit a lot of our resources, only what you see here."

"Six ships?"

"Six ships and a hell of a mutant."

I'm about to ask what he means when the dais vibrates under my feet. A force pulls at the decking, and yanks on my suit and brings me to a hover. The same happens to Nate, and we end up floating in front of each other, our bodies immobile. The suit beeps, recognizing the pattern.

"Sir," says Jarvis, "you are caught in a—"

"Magnetic field, yeah, I got that." I look around, trying to source the bastard. "Erik, what the hell is this?"

Someone laughs. The voice is high, feminine, and very much not Magneto. I look back and see her step into the bridge, her green cloak spilling across the decking as she moves. Damn, but she grew up well.

"I am not my father," she says. "That's kind of insulting, Tony."

The grip releases and we hit the ground. "Sorry, Lorna."

"Forget it." Polaris grins, and in that moment she looks strangely like her dad. I don't know what's weirder, her looking like Magneto or me still wanting to do naughty things with her.

Next to me, Cable laughs. I almost ask what when I realize: he is reading my thoughts. Maybe he's a better bluffer than I give him credit for. Clever.

"So," says Lorna, "when are we leaving?"

I shrug. "Anytime you want."

"Now, then."

So I follow her out to the hanger and hop in the Starhopper. She climbs into the second seat and yawns. Jarvis speaks into my helmet as I clamp in.

"Are you trying to collect all the Lensherrs, sir?"

"Shut up, Jarvis."

Author's Note: Okay, so this chapter was short and heavy on the exposition, but that's OK, because I'm just happy to get it out. Production on this story slowed to a crawl, and that really wasn't my idea. Things just keep leaping in the way.

Hopefully, it'll be back on track now, with more regular updates to follow the above. I have ideas beyond this story, so there might be either a continuation of this story, or a new story in the Marvel/40k section. Not sure. More on that later.

More fun next time. Ave Excelsior.