Shiva: Unmanned Army

[x-maverick.livejournal.com]

While walking through the mansion, David finds an unexpectedly familiar face, and revisits a meeting nearly twenty years gone.




Dozens of mutants, living together. Training, teaching, becoming their own societal community. David North had of course known of Xavier's school for years - one couldn't work alongside William Stryker for long without knowing about Jason, after all - but to see it in person was something else entirely. He'd half-expected a cross between a religious movement and boot camp, but the Xavier Institute seemed to be neither. Even still, the presence of so many children unnerved him. He remembered one of Stryker's rants about "atom bombs in the hands of kindergarteners" in the latter days of Weapon X, and wondered idly if the Institute didn't represent a sort of arms race of its own, one more subtle than the black-ops world he himself had been a part of.

Still a part of, David reminded himself as he wandered through the halls, finding himself in an open sunroom. You're here because somehow from beyond the grave, your old boss is trying to make sure you wind up dead.

There was someone sitting in the sunroom already, who looked up at David as he walked in. Gray eyes narrowed immediately, and Nathan watched him, his expression neutral rather than suspicious.

"Ah, hello," North began, quickly perusing the other gentleman. "Excuse me, I was merely..."

A brief doubletake, and then recognition set in slowly. "Nicht glauben... Cable?"

Nathan just raised an eyebrow. "Yes," he said. "This is the nexus of the world and you do run into all sorts of old acquaintances." He almost smiled - almost - remembering Pete's surprise when he'd first turned up all those years ago.

"Almost twenty years..." David murmured, and remembered.


-- 1990, twenty miles northwest of the Kuwait-Iraq border --

The wadi was quiet, save for the desert wind occasionally blowing over the hardpacked clay walls like a child blowing over the mouth of a soda bottle, accompanied by the irregular staccato beats of a bird pecking at a patch of ground, trying to evoke the memory of a particularly tasty beetle.

Without the haze of oil fires smearing the horizon into a blur of darkness, and the occasional faraway scream of a jet fighter, the scene could almost be described as pastoral - if the word applied to such a barren landscape.

Idyllic or not, the peace was disrupted by a bearded man sliding feet-first into the wadi, assault rifle clenched in one hand and a tattered ankle-length thobe covering his body in the style of the Kuwaiti locals. Pressing himself against the wall of the shallow ravine, he looked up and readied his rifle, carefully crab-walking towards shade.

After a few tense minutes, he shifted his grip on his rifle and tore away the bullet-shredded garment covering dusty fatigues and well-used body armor. Unclipping a handmike from his shoulder harness, he extended an antenna from the slim pack he wore and keyed the mike three times.

"Maverick to Control, break. Objective Alpha is a bolo, hostiles encountered, over."

A burst of static answered Maverick's call, as he quickly reached back to adjust the gain on his radio. Soon the static resolved into the calm drawl of his commanding officer coming over the secure frequency.

"Maverick, this is Control. SITREP." Colonel William Stryker's orders were no less firm for being delivered in a friendly voice. Maverick knew from experience that the man would just as soon knock a subordinate on their ass as pardon them for substandard performance.

Keying the mike again, Maverick inched his way along the wadi's curve, angling for a spot where he could observe the plain he'd just fled across. His team had been inserted under cover of darkness into the middle of the northern Arabian Desert, looking for a purported cache of mutagenic chemicals stockpiled by the Iraqi Republican Guard. They'd found their target, certainly, and had been moving forward to set charges when an entire tank battalion had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Without Wolverine's enhanced senses giving them fair warning, they'd have been ripped apart by machine gun fire. Even now, the sound of a fifty-caliber machine gun rattling in the distance echoed across the open sand.

"Wolverine called for exfiltration. As per SOP, Wraith took all mission-critical materials, bugged out. Wolverine..." Maverick looked down to his wrist, watching the blinking LED on the perimeter of his wristwatch, counting the flashes as it moved slowly across its arc. "Wolverine is on the move to Objective Bravo, over."

That was Jim's nature, of course. The undisputable center of the Weapon X field operation, Jim "Wolverine" Logan was the epitome of "Charlie Mike" - Continue the Mission. Maverick was just relieved that he hadn't tried to take out the entire tank battalion on his own.

"Maverick, Control. What is your location relative to Objective Alpha, over?" Stryker's voice remained calm, even as the whine of an anti-personnel tank shell screamed in the air, and a geyser of sand exploded further down the wadi. Of course Stryker sounded calm, Maverick cursed silently. The commanding officer of the Weapon X team was ensconced in a State Department office in Incirlik, hundreds of miles away from the shooting.

Checking his compass, Maverick lowered the handset and elbow-crawled up to the edge of the ravine. Through the heat haze, he could see the telltale dust columns that meant armor - T-72s by the looks of the turrets - advancing on him. Adrenalin flooded his system, and a sudden flash of precognitive images flooded his vision - screams of fire coming out of the sun//men in black, dealers of death//a sea of glass - and he dropped back into the wadi, gasping for breath.

"Maverick, Control," Stryker's voice repeated, more tersely this time. "What is your location relative to the objective, over?"

Glancing at his compass, Maverick keyed the mike, eyes still closed. "Fifteen hundred meters, one seven five degrees south. I have armor incoming my position, repeat, armor incoming. Request orders, over."

The response was quick, but unexpected. "Expect reinforcements, danger close. Control out."

Danger close? That was an artillery term, which generally meant friendly rounds were about to come down on your head. Maverick opened his eyes and dropped his radio, checking his rifle and rolling into a firing position on the rim of the wadi. Whatever kind of reinforcements were coming, there was no way they were going to arrive in time.

The sound of the C-130, a rumble beneath the noise of the gunfire, proved him wrong. As it passed by overhead, light exploded from its doors, like two fireballs of subtly different shades of gold. One plunged straight downwards, and as it hit the ground, it resolved into what looked like a twenty-foot tall exoskeleton made of light. There was a dark-clad, human-sized figure floating at its heart, but it charged the tanks without so much as looking back at Maverick.

The other took a little more time in landing, and as the bubble of light collapsed, there were four figures standing there. Three men, one woman, all in black body armor.

One, a weasel-faced blond man, shook his head as he gazed after the running exoskeleton. "Yeah. I think Tim's lost his grip on the whole concept of tactics again."

"Shut up, John," the woman said with a sigh, as the air around her hands started to shimmer. "Orders?" That was directed to the taller of the two dark-haired men.

Cold gray eyes focused on her for a moment before returning to the oncoming tanks. "Around to the left, Valeri," he told her. "Lense, you'll support her. Foley and I will take the right."

Maverick froze, keeping his covering position in the wadi as the four individuals spread out, flanking to either side of the approaching tanks while the giant glowing exoskeleton - Mein Gott, is that thing picking up a tank?, he asked himself. The muffled whump of an exploding diesel fuel tank followed by the popcorn detonations of burning anti-armor rounds answered the unspoken question as Stryker's promised "reinforcements" engaged the Republican Guard column.

Movement to the other side of the wadi caught Maverick's attention, and another precognitive flash gripped him - rattle of a Soviet-made assault rifle//bullets ripping through black armor--

Snapping around and thumbing the selector switch on his rifle to full auto, Maverick braced himself and began laying down suppressive fire on the group of Iraqi soldiers trying to circle around behind his rescuers. A small moment of disorientation, not unlike deja vu, washed through his brain - the side effect of precognition meant that changing the immediate future always seemed wrong in some way.

"Covering your six!" he shouted to the tallest of the black-suited men, the one who had given the orders. Bolting from the wadi and slamming another magazine into his weapon, Maverick dashed across the sand, twisting out of the way of machine gun rounds and returning fire one-handed until he skidded to a stop behind a small outcropping next to the two - mutants, obviously, he deduced.

"Who in the hell are you people?" he asked over the gunfire. "Americans?"

"Stay behind us," the tall man answered, and the reason why became obvious an instant later. His companion raised his hands, expression set in a look of concentration - and what could only be described as a sonic boom sent one of the tanks spinning through the air like a child's toy. On the left, the woman put her hands together and shimmering waves of force exploded outwards, melting the tank in its path.

The leader glanced briefly at Maverick, and then looked in the direction of the group of Iraqis. More gunfire came his way - and bounced, off an invisible shield. "I could ask you the same thing," he said, and the gunfire fell silent as every single one of the soldier dropped in an instant, blood coming from their noses and ears.

The sudden silence was disconcerting, leaving only a persistent ringing in Maverick's ears from the close gunfire, broken by the occasional boom of another exploding tank. Glancing down at his wrist, he saw the lights on his watch moving, indicating Wolverine's position as well as Wraith's. Red-green-green-red. Romeo Charlie Mike -regroup and continue mission.

"And I'm sure you couldn't tell me any more than I could tell you," he replied, flashing a grin behind his three-week beard. "If I had to hazard a guess, Wild Bill called in a favor from one of our sister agencies. One hand washing the other and all that."

Halting for a moment, he stuck a hand out to the taller man. "Maverick," he said by way of a brief introduction.

The tall man eyed the hand as if he wasn't sure what the gesture meant. "Cable," he said, not taking it. His hand went to his temple for a moment, his eyes going in and out of focus. His companion -Foley - looked up at him sharply, and Cable shrugged. "Calling them in," he said, and sure enough, the other three were regrouping. The exoskeleton collapsed inwards, revealing a bearded, square-jawed man nearly the same height as his leader. "We'll be moving on as soon as our ride gets here. We have to cover a certain amount of ground before dark - we're clearing a path."

"Can't have the flatscans running into too much resistance," the blond man said with an idle sort of malice as he approached in time to hear the end of that. "Doesn't look good on TV-" He stopped, his head jerking backwards as if someone had just punched him in the jaw.

Cable's eyes were locked on him. "Enough with the commentary," he said, his voice a low, threatening growl, and tapped the headset he was wearing. #We're being monitored.# The telepathic projection reached even Maverick, and Lense went pale, his jaw clamping shut.

Maverick's head reeled slightly from the telepathic contact, the sudden mental disorientation broken by the noise from his radio.

"Maverick, Control. SITREP, over."

He reached up instinctively to key the mike. "Control, Maverick. Hostile threat is off the board. Proceeding to Objective Bravo, ETA five mikes, over."

"Maverick, Control. Roger, out."

The radio hissed once more then went silent. Maverick looked at the five mutants who'd pulled his bacon out of the fire and gave a nod of encouragement. "Whoever you are, Cable, you and yours have one hell of a sense of timing. Perhaps another time, yes?"

A quick check of his compass and a survey of the horizon, and then Maverick was off, the wind across the open sand covering his tracks behind him.

Nathan Dayspring watched him go, and shook his head slightly. Beside him, Mick Foley raised an eyebrow, and Nathan shrugged. #Just odd to be treated like...# He trailed off, then shrugged. #He was almost friendly. It's just odd.#

2009

"Twenty years," David repeated, looking over at Nathan. "And here I am being rescued again, in a way."

With a slow smile, Maverick stepped forward and held out his hand. "My name," he said, "is David North. It's nice to finally meet you."

Nathan eyed the hand for a moment, but then took it this time. "Nathan Dayspring," he said, lips twitching in an odd smile as he reflected that the only other survivor of the group who'd rescued this man all those years ago was Lense. What irony. "Long way from the Iraqi border."

"We've both seen better days, I'll wager," North replied, taking in Nathan's appearance. "Tell me, does Charles Xavier keep any bourbon on hand? I've got a sudden urge to drink to absent friends."

Nathan surprised himself with a brief laugh. "I might have to take a raincheck on that - alcohol and I are not on speaking terms this week. I appreciate the sentiment, though."

"All the more for me, then."