"But we will," Archangel insisted. "When we're up close and personal with it, you'll scan it with those high-powered, sophisticated instruments of yours and figure out what makes it tick."

"Even so," said Picard, "the friction created by its pa.s.sage through the atmosphere will render it too hot to handle."

"Can you slow it down?" the mutant asked.

Picard glared at him. "Yes, with a tractor beam. But if you make a mistake? And the device explodes in your face?"

Archangel smiled a taut smile. "Then you'll have one less annoying X-Man flying around your ship."

"This is not a laughing matter," said the captain.

His eyes blazing, the mutant pounded his fist against the side of the lift. "Listen to me," he demanded. "I know we've had our differences. And believe me, I'm not apologizing for anything. But we both know there's liable to be fallout from that cl.u.s.ter. Even if you detonate it in the air, every Xhaldian within a hundred miles could be caught in its drift."

Picard wished Archangel was wrong about that. But there was a chance that what he was describing would come to pa.s.s.

There could be fallout. In that case, the captain's sacrifice would have been for nothing. And the worst part was, he would never know if he had succeeded in saving Verdeen.

As he regarded the winged man, the muscles rippled in Picard's temples. "We have had our differences-you're right about that. Unfortunately, I don't have so many options that I can afford to turn one down."

"Then you'll accept my offer?" asked Archangel.

The captain grunted. "Don't make me regret it."

The lift doors opened a moment later, revealing Shuttlebay One. Together, Picard and the mutant headed for the nearest pod.

Chapter Twenty-eight.

SOVAR WATCHED HIS brother walk away under the silvergray sky. For just a moment, he was tempted to let Erid have his way. Then he realized he couldn't do that.

Overtaking his brother, he placed himself in the youth's path. "Blood of the ancients," he pleaded, "just listen to me for a moment."

"Go away," said Erid.

"I won't," the lieutenant insisted.

"You had no trouble going away before," his brother reminded him, shifting the weight of the half-conscious woman in his arms.

"That was different," said Sovar. "It was something I had to do. But I can't leave you here like this, at the mercy of those Draa'kon. Come with me, brother. I can help you."

Erid shook his head. "I don't need your help."

"You do," the security officer insisted. "You don't know what you're up against in these aliens."

"Don't you think I've seen what they can do?" his brother railed at him. "Don't you think I've seen the transformed they've dragged into their vehicles?"

"Then what are you waiting for?" Sovar wondered. "Let me take you someplace safe. Let me-"

"There is no place safe for me," Erid spat.

He held his chin up, displaying the purple veins popping out of his neck. He wriggled the fingers that were glowing with a soft, yellow light.

"I'm a freak, can't you see that?" he demanded. "I'm a monster. Just ask the government that put me in a prison when I hadn't done anything wrong, or the guards who looked at me from their battlements with pity and disgust ..."

"No," said the lieutenant. "You're Erid Sovar. You're blood of my blood. And for the ancients' sake, you've got to-"

Before Sovar could finish his plea, he saw his brother's eyes grow wide. He watched Erid drop his friend's legs with one hand, then raise his glowing fingers and point them in the lieutenant's direction. And he saw the burst of deadly white light that sprang from those fingers.

Sovar closed his eyes, certain that his brother had decided to destroy him after all in a fit of rage and resentment. But as it turned out, he was wrong about that.

The bolt of energy never touched him. Instead, it leaped right past him ... and struck a Draa'kon soldier who had recovered his weapon, sending him sprawling backward in the street.

The invader didn't move. And for a moment, neither did the security officer, as he realized how close he had come to death. Turning, he looked at his brother again.

"He was going to blast you in the back," Erid said, still holding his friend in his arms. He shook his head, tears welling in his eyes. "I couldn't let him do that."

"Of course you couldn't," Sovar replied. "No more than I could let anyone hurt you. You're my brother, after all-no matter what's happened to either one of us."

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Then the lieutenant held out his hand. Erid clasped it.

"Come on," Sovar told him, clapping him on the shoulder. "We've got to get you someplace safe."

His brother picked up his friend's legs and turned to the other transformed standing in the street with them. "You've got to get us all someplace safe," he said.

"Amen to that," remarked Shadowcat.

Taking the lead, Sovar showed them the way to his shuttle.

Troi walked down yet another gray, abandoned street, listening to the sound of shouts in the distance, probing past the oval windows on either side of her for evidence of a Draa'kon trap.

Colossus walked beside her, doing his best to remain wary also. But his emotions were still roiling over the three Xhaldians they had rescued minutes earlier-or more to the point, what the Xhaldians had said.

About the transformed being monsters-freaks-who didn't belong among decent people. About them not being the only ones who thought so.

Naturally, Colossus had taken offense at their remarks. After all, in his mind, there wasn't much difference between the transformed and the mutants of his Earth.

The counselor recalled the looks on the Xhaldians' faces when they saw who had rescued them. Without saying a word of thanks, they had taken off-no doubt afraid they had exchanged one captor for another.

It was just as well, Troi thought. Colossus had been filled with so much heartache, so much animosity, he might have done something to the Xhaldians he would regret later on.

Suddenly, her thoughts were interrupted by another set of cries-more immediate than any of the others they had heard. Instinctively, the counselor broke into a run, her destination the intersection ahead of them. The mutant caught up with her after a moment or two, then forged ahead.

When they reached the cross-street, Troi's attention was drawn to the next intersection on her right. A handful of the transformed had stopped dead in their tracks there-apparently, to pick up one of their number who had fallen.

But as they pulled their comrade to her feet, a barrage of energy beams sliced the air around them. What's more, they weren't the green disruptor bolts of the Draa'kon. They were blue in color and a lot narrower.

But who ... ?

A moment later, the counselor got her answer. The transformed ran away and left Troi's line of sight. But they were replaced by a large mob of Xhaldians, many of them wearing blue uniforms-and all of them armed with energy weapons.

The city guards, the counselor thought, and some citizens who had rallied around them. And they were firing at the transformed, when the Draa'kon were the real threat.

Troi could feel the Xhaldians' fear and hatred burning themselves into her consciousness. The civilians in the group, more wide-eyed than the others, brandished their weapons and yelled for their enemies to go back where they came from.

It alarmed and annoyed the counselor to see it. But as she found out, Colossus was more than annoyed ... he was livid.

As the mutant had told her, he had seen crowds react this way against his kind before. It was no wonder he was full of anger and resentment at seeing it now.

Suddenly, his outrage rose to a crescendo. "No!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

And with unmitigated disgust for those who would persecute society's outcasts, the mutant raced down the street. His fury was so great, so terrible, Troi was rooted to the ground.

But only for a second. Then she went after him, not knowing whether she should fire her phaser at the Xhaldians or at Colossus.

With his long strides, the mutant reached the intersection before the mob had completely pa.s.sed through it. By then, he had drawn the attention of the city guards, who pointed their weapons at him and ordered him to stop.

They might as well have asked a sun not to blaze. Condemning the Xhaldians for their narrow-minded stupidity, Colossus plowed into their midst.

Grabbing the barrel of a weapon, he ripped it from a guard's grasp and hurled it down the street. Then he grabbed another weapon and did the same with it.

Some of the Xhaldians tried to batter him or bear him to the ground, but the mutant took hold of them and tossed them away. Before long, five or six of them lay in the street, stunned and disarmed.

"That's enough!" Troi cried as she arrived on the scene, worried that someone might get killed in the melee.

Of course, the transformed had been running that risk at the hands of the guards all along, but she had to face one problem at a time.

Suddenly, she saw the transformed who had fled the guards before. But they weren't running away anymore. They were rushing into the guards' midst.

As if for ... protection? Troi thought.

More confusing yet, the guards were still firing their weapons. But, as the counselor realized in the next instant, they weren't aiming at the transformed. They were aiming past them-at a squadron of Draa'kon.

The invaders were their targets all along, Troi told herself. The transformed had only been caught between the mob and its adversaries.

"Colossus!" she cried, seeing him wrench yet another weapon from its owner's grasp. "Stop and look around-they're not the enemy!"

Hearing the counselor's voice cut through the din, the mutant turned and saw her point to something. Following her gesture, he caught sight of the Draa'kon just in time to avoid a bright green energy bolt.

It wasn't the only one, either. The invaders were unleashing a barrage calculated to bring the Xhaldians to their knees.

Colossus was open-mouthed with surprise and embarra.s.sment, but he wasn't the type to give up so easily-and neither was Troi. As she leveled blast after blast at the Draa'kon, the mutant picked up one of the guards' weapons and squeezed off an energy burst of his own.

The guards untouched by Colossus continued to fire as well. But one after the other, they went down, unconscious, under the weight of the invaders' attack. The tide was turning against the retreating Xhaldians-in part because of the mutant's costly blunder.

In effect, the counselor thought, Colossus was guilty of the same kind of rash judgment he had always detested in others. It was an irony he seemed destined to regret.

However, just as it appeared the Draa'kon would overrun them, a phaser barrage struck the aliens from behind. Two of them went down, then two more.

Before the Draa'kon could whirl and return fire, a blue and yellow dervish was among them, kicking and striking and slicing with long, sharp claws. Ignoring the Xhaldians, they attended to this new threat.

But attending to Wolverine and stopping him were two different things.

The mutant displayed none of the bl.u.s.ter that had gotten him in trouble at Starbase 88. He conducted himself like a warrior, as devastatingly efficient as Worf on his best days, and Troi was unutterably pleased he was on their side.

Then, just in case the Draa'kon weren't beleaguered enough, the gargantuan Colossus waded into them as well. That gave the rest of them-the counselor, the security officers, and the city guards-the luxury of picking off the enemy almost at will.

It wasn't long before the Draa'kon succ.u.mbed.

Standing knee-deep in fallen adversaries, Wolverine retracted his claws and tossed a grin in Troi's direction. "Thanks fer leavin' a few few me, Darlin'."

She chuckled wearily. "My pleasure."

However, Colossus was feeling anything but pleased. Finding a couple of the city guards, he made a point of apologizing to them for his mistake.

No doubt, the counselor thought, it would be a long time before the mutant forgot this lesson.

Picard plunged through Xhaldia's upper atmosphere at the controls of his shuttlepod, making adjustments every few seconds as the vessel bucked another wave of energy-laced turbulence.

Archangel was hanging on to the back of the captain's seat, as intent on Picard's monitor screens as he was. No doubt, he could see the red blip on the one that tracked the cl.u.s.ter missile's progress.

"How are we doing?" the mutant asked.

"So far, so good," the captain told him without turning around. "At this rate, we will overtake our target in slightly more than a minute."

What he didn't say was that they were proceeding at a speed faster than the pod was designed for. But then, even after they caught up with the missile, Archangel would need time to reach it and disarm it.

"It's getting warm in here," the mutant noted.

"So it is," Picard confirmed.

That was what happened when one pushed the limits of one's shielding against the increasing friction of descent. The physics were simple-the denser the atmosphere, the more quickly a vehicle would burn up. Or at the very least, bake anyone inside it to a crisp.

The pod shuddered and threatened to veer off course, so the captain directed more power to the stabilizers. A bead of perspiration traced a path down the side of his face. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

Archangel pointed to the screen with the red blip. Another blip had joined it and was approaching it steadily, though its progress belied the difficulty of piloting the pod.

"Looks like we're in the ballpark," the mutant observed.

Picard wasn't a fan of 20th-century sports, but he understood the reference. Seeing no need to reply, he tried scanning the cl.u.s.ter missile. After all, Archangel couldn't disarm it if the captain couldn't determine how it worked.

Unfortunately, his sensors couldn't tell him much about the missile's inner workings yet. The energy permeating the atmosphere was getting in the way, giving Picard a distorted and incomplete picture.

And it was getting hotter. Much hotter.