X Men Italy Sicily France Spain

Disclaimer: Characters portrayed in the following are not mine and I did not create them.

*

Italy, Sicily, France and Spain, all round England and back again:

They christened the starship "Old Faithful". Pieces of the left rotary axle had disintegrated when the homeworld imploded, causing a hundred and thirty percent burn in the starboard engines and tilting the ship off-axis. The Chapman-Jouguet shock-wave that levelled many of the celestial neighbours also helped propel the X-Men's ride out of Skrull territories and back to Milky Way nearspace. In the interim of stasis, the ship lost life-support two decks beneath Habitation and due to a faulty stasis coil let what food remained on board desiccate three years ahead of reanimation. Reaching the Oort cloud, a rogue comet pockmarked the port nacelle, crippling the ship and prolonging the journey time further. When the X-Men awoke, two million kilometres from Earth, they found the calculations for absolute trajectory had been too precise anyway, and had arrived ahead of schedule, despite sustained setbacks in exterior damage. On Earth, the United Nations was preparing to hand over sovereignty of Genosha to Magneto whom, unknown to them was in pitched battle attempting to damage the ambient magnetosphere. Hopes were raised at the prospect of saving Joseph's life, halting Magneto's designs and preventing global blackmail. The outcome was decidedly different. Reaching the Terminator, the starship was repulsed by an electromagnetic wave fusing the drive plate and further damaging the stasis coils. Plunged back into deep sleep with no autopilot, Old Faithful drifted out past the Kuiper Belt, life-support failing and with little hope of reanimation for those on board.

The saving grace came in the form of continuing breakdown. A spark in the stasis coils gave Storm's booth the overdue green light, ejecting her limp body onto the cold deck of starboard Habitation and sending sensory shock hurtling through her mind. Freezing and confused, she wondered Command initiating atmo warm-up and running inventory. To her chagrin, food was not plentiful. Although oxygen could last a further four weeks in real-time, bearings and survival tactics were required in order for her to get all of them anywhere other than nowhere. She decided to wake significant others, believing two or more heads better than one, and hoping quite honestly for some company in a cold ghost ship. Kurt, Kitty, Peter and Logan were her first choices, Xavier, a moment considered. Suffering from severe mental depression at the memory of a planet of Skrulls vanishing, he was probably the last person to take counsel from but being the single telepath on board and in possession of a celestial-spanning psychic form it seemed the logical thing to do. However when Xavier was released from suspended animation and body functions nominal he wouldn't wake up. The read-outs from the medical unit although cryptic and based in another language, were encouraging. Consciousness just wouldn't return to him. Storm had a great many doubts from ship-wide systemic damage but being the optimist held a meeting with the four who could walk and talk.

'My friends, we are some distance from Earth. Our options for food are restricted to synthetic recreation and our air will run down in a matter of weeks. The portside engines are damaged and we have few tools and Skrull starship operational knowledge to affect a cohesive repair. The stasis booths are faulty and unpredictable at best and the communications array is broadcasting a frequency to homeward-bound Skrull carriers -- not the direction we wish to go in. To make matters worse, Professor Xavier is comatose and does not seem inclined to wake any time soon.'

She made an apex of her hands on the round table, low-level white light casting shadow.

'I am open to suggestions.'

They sat in the ready room adjacent to command, auxiliary keeping the ship on its last thrusters and every so often bathing them in a red wash of alert light. Grim faces, stubbled, bleary-eyed and hungry stared across the smooth tabletop surface at one another, prep-screens and status consoles registering commands in characters none recognised. The air was stale, and piles of dust lay in random patterns like claymores. As the stasis coils had become increasingly defective, pockets of the ship were spasmodically subjected to real-time; particles of history floating in and out of suspended animation. The exact opposite was now occurring, albeit over an area of the ship none wandered into and to only small locales when it did, but the effect as Storm saw it was one of torture and ironically -- because she was leading the group and just had to be here of all places with them -- claustrophobia. Space travel was always a haunting mode of transport for her: cooped-up corridors, metal reflections, "ambient lighting" that was more fake than any lawn nightlight and an increased susceptibility to catching sickness through air recycling and worst of all the detachment from outside influences. Not people, or places or the absence of a phone; the total excommunication from freedom. The freedom of air in the atmosphere, the nitrogen, the carbon dioxide, the negative ions, the rain, the static up high, the cumulus mediocris, the glaze of the sun's rays. It was also a bias toward Earth air, not the mixture of recycled pure filtering through cavities and ducts and the bowels of the ship not affected by decaying technology.

'Do you know you've got a black mark on your forehead?'

Ororo licked her finger and rubbed above the eyebrow.

'Thank you Kitten.'

'So basically what you're sayin' is: we're in a royal jam, an' if we don't get our act together, we can kiss our lungs n' stomachs goodbye, right?'

'Yes.'

Logan reached into the pocket of his flightsuit and pulled out a cheap cigar.

'Starting with that.' Ororo said.

He put it back.

'Go over the problems again? We have only one engine running?' Kurt asked.

'Not exactly, but good enough,' she replied 'the Nacelle took a hit from some local astronomical body, I don't know what. The readout from the main drive computer indicates a purely mechanical malfunction, a driver for the core material out of joint. I reconnoitred the area, but engineering is quite large compared to the other decks, and I must admit I was cold and somewhat lost. My natural temperate defence is not in tune in a contained atmosphere such as this, and time was of the essence.'

'Why?'

'I did not know what I was doing. Anything moved or toyed with might further the problems faced already.'

'I may have been a rudimentary mechanic during my original tenure, but Ororo,' Kurt said 'what makes you think I will understand any better than you? All the instructions and scripture and directions are written in Skrull.'

She held up her hands. 'I have nothing to go on but faith, my friends. You were the resident mechanic for the blackbird and danger room some years ago, and I daresay time spent in Excalibur furthered that expertise, did it not? It is for that reason alone that I place you in charge of the engines Kurt.'

'If anyone can figger out how ta get the ticker runnin' again elf it'd be you.'

'Ja, well, that is a lot of faith in my abilities.'

'Whatever you do'll be enough for us.' Logan gave his shoulder a hug.

'And the rest of our duties, Ororo? What of them?' Peter asked.

She sighed and scratched her scalp. 'There are several scenarios otherwise involved, X-Men. Xavier under the influence of his own mental coma, this does not help matters. The communications array is signalling a looped message. I assume it is a mayday hail.'

'Yeah, I read it myself.' Kitty said.

'The Skrull homeworld is dead. Nothing we did or did not do would have changed that, it was inevitable. A beacon to ghosts does us little help while we are stranded on the edge of the solar system. We need to turn the array around and broadcast a mayday in English.'

'I can do that.' Kitty said. 'I absorbed a fraction of Skrull speech and phrasing before we left. I can decipher any encrypted messages the satellite is shooting back and try to send our position to Earth.'

'The rest of the X-Men might pick it up!' Peter said. 'If not, we might contact the Avengers or even Reed Richards.'

'Yeah, but one problem in that it might take longer for the broadcast to get from here to there and then for them to get there to here than we have air for. They might get here and we're all suffocated.'

'Then we just go into suspended animation again, katzchen.'

'No,' Ororo said 'the stasis booths are also part of the problem. When I could not revive Charles, I tried to place him back into the booth and the readings were positive, but when I checked the actual effect -- the fog and the light that comes on inside the booth -- neither were functioning correctly. I have a terrible feeling that the entire system has been compromised by whatever fault awoke me.'

'Serendipity.'

'Yes, and --'

'Well we gotta get Gambit and Marrow outta there now!'

'No, Logan, I understand that the booths cannot reset themselves. I looked in upon each of you whilst you were in hibernation and all the readings were correct.'

'If they were correct, how come you woke at all?' Kurt asked.

'I... don't know.' She felt very tired indeed. 'Would any of you like refreshment?'

'Perhaps,' Kitty mused 'if the reason those dust piles and decaying food and everything exist because of loss of stasis in-transit, (and now the ship is "awake" the reverse is happening in the decks beneath us); isn't it entirely possible that a pocket of non-stasis occurred inside your booth while we were adrift and it's just blind luck that you woke up when you did?'

'Possibly. The work of the Goddess, even out in space. Though it shouldn't happen in a contained booth...'

'C'mon, if your goddess has her hands dirty in this why're we stuck out in here in the dark at all?'

'Wolverine, you are not helping.' Peter said flatly.

'The point is: we shall leave the others in the state in which they are at because our air is restricted and I am not sure how long the power cells for the synthetic food processor will last. We have one month's air.'

'That's loadsa time.'

'No, Logan, it's not.' Kitty replied. 'We would have to be travelling minimum... ten to twenty million kilometres an hour in order to be there not dead. Anything less and we couldn't make it. And that's taking into account our food would last that long.'

'How do we know that synthetic gizmo ain't gonna give up the ghost too?'

'We don't.' Ororo said.

'I can try my hand at the communications side, and Kurt,' he looked up 'if you need a translator for the drive information I could come down to see you two.'

'What happens Kitty,' Peter started 'if we lead Galactus to our home via the communications between us and the remnants of the Skrull planet?'

'Galactus has been to Earth before, hasn't he? Logan?' Kitty asked.

'Don't look at me, kid, I can't remember.'

'Storm?'

'... Yes, Kitten. Yes he has. Do you not remember Logan?' She stared at him blankly.

Logan shrugged and got out of his seat. 'Darlin', if I remembered everything I've seen over all my life, my brain'd be one giant squashed donut or somethin'...'

He stretched.

Kitty stood as well, catching Ororo's eye quickly. '...'kay. What are you going to do, Storm?'

'First -- Peter -- you should assist Nightcrawler; I have a feeling much of the problem in Engineering will require your physical prowess.'

'Hercules.' Kitty said.

'I on the other hand shall attempt to reorient the ship so that we are at least facing the right way.'

'How you gonna do that without the engines runnin'?'

'We are situated just in the interior of the Kuiper Belt -- the band of celestial debris in orbit between Pluto and the other outer solar system planets. From our position, we have been buffeted by asteroids into a very lazy orbit around Uranus, similar to the Centaur planetoids.'

'The what?'

'Not big enough to be planets, not small enough to be asteroids, and in no accompanying orbit of a planet.' Kitty stated. 'They're mainly constructed of ice, carbon, methanol... frozen liquids and dust collected via interstellar hoboism.'

'Thank you Kitten.'

'You're welcome!'

'If indeed we are in orbit then it is certainly an advantage to our situation.' Ororo pointed to the images received on the screen her side of the table. They each looked into the view. 'That I believe to be 60558 Echeclus. It holds a small tail, a coma, made of the same elements. They liquefy nearer the sun producing the streak in the sky, but at this distance I may be able to influence any particle winds, turning the ship on its side and possibly even creating positive inertia.'

'How positive we talking?' Logan asked.

'Without the engines to boost, I don't think the ship would hit Earth in a billion years. And I mean that literally.' Kitty said.

Logan grunted, and stared out of a starboard viewport. Low light in the ship meant little to see outside, but as he strained his eyes brilliant little tiny dots of kaleidoscopic colour smiled back at him. Kurt watched from over his shoulder. It reminded him that from their miniscule perspective, the universe was vast and infinite, and simply validated the existence of god in all his complex glory; simultaneously proving the great uniqueness of humanity and their achievements whilst displaying how insignificant they were and how much distance there was for races to blossom and eventually share and become one.

'Quite the view? Not what we see when we stare at the bottom of a brew.'

'I don't know, elf. We're such a small thing anyway. If we don't all kill ourselves someone else prob'ly will. I don't need religion to iron that one out.'

'But you need religion to believe in the reformation of man.'

'No; a man turns his back on his hate the day he sees he's about to die. Most times they see it right before they die. They say there ain't no atheists in foxholes, but it ain't necessarily god they're looking at, it's their whole life. Everythin' from good to bad, all of it weighed up and them looking back down on themselves judging an' executing themselves. But people don't realise it right up until that moment. Once you seen enough men lookin' that way -- like you drowned their cat -- you know it takes right till the last second. The act committed, their life the forfeit.'

'You must find it very frustrating if you see them escape. If it cannot be you that executes them -- you, whom stands for those who cannot stand for themselves -- then how do you feel if they live to hate another day? That would make me very lonely, mein freund. If I didn't think man could see the error of his ways I would stop trying.'

Logan about-faced and stared into Kurt's eyes. Deep yellow eyes of a demon. 'You feel that way when that mob was after you in Winzeldorf? All those pitchforks and torches they was branding? "Burn the evil outta him" they was shoutin', even the kids holding clubs and knives?' He gazed back at the approaching shimmering mass of Echeclus, colossal in the viewport. 'S'why the one who got away doesn't get away, elf. I never let one slip by.'

Peter's great hand landed on Kurt's shoulder. 'Are we ready?' He asked.

They left Command and made their way into the depths of the ship.

By the time they got to Engineering, Kitty was already at the engine sector, fiddling with a bowl of mechanically separated synthsauce. It was viscous and mealy, much like porridge but tasting of an indistinct grainy moisture. She ate with a utensil in the shape of a flute, bathing the blowhole in the mixture and sucking it up. There was a single note along the length of the implement, Kitty finding that it did little to enhance the overall experience of sucking chickeney vomit through a straw in a cold climate. 'What is that hole under your finger for?' Peter asked, resting a harness of untested ex-Skrull repair tools against the sliding metal door.

'It varies the speed at which you chug the goo.' She made a whistling sound through it.

'What does it taste like?' He asked.

Kitty thought for a moment.

'Like a battery hen farted into cottage cheese and left it out too long.'

Kurt stared at the readout flashing in big red letters on the side of a wide pipe. It disappeared into the ceiling, bolted in place with huge screws, and listed at the top and bottom various yellow shapes, presumably warning of heat, explosion, hazard, all bad things. What followed on-screen was a thinly sketched outline of circuit boards and keypads to press and the order in which to a) find them and b) press them. A box appeared last thing, yellow and black stripes emanating from within. The sequence reset.

Kurt wondered how long the few frames had been cycling for. With no attention paid they could assume it was non-lethal whatever the malfunction was, as the ship had been drifting for some time. Nothing Storm indicated led him to believe they were venting whatever this craft used for fuel, and through the metal doors opening out to the port engine control he could see no cascades, no spillages, no puddles or absence of floor where said substances could have corroded through to space. He wondered how long it would take for Earth to catch up to this level of automated design.

'Nothing is perfect Kurt.' Peter said making his way through the doors and toward the control booth inside. 'Except for Katya, of course.'

She followed them in. 'Aw, shaddup Pete. Do you want to finish off my stodgy goop?'

He looked at the bowl.

'No.'

The port engine sector was a huge cavernous area, the same pipes Kurt had been observing the readouts on continuing up through here, hugged to the wall and trailing along the ceiling. He followed the path as it fed into a large piston the size of a house. Vapour was drawing from the top, and the movement of the piston, though loud, was undermined by the lack of frictionless contact. It grated on the downward swing, circling up to rotate all over again. A giant shining muscle.

'Look,' Kurt sighted 'the bulkhead behind the top of the piston is ballooning in. You see?'

From a restricted viewpoint they could make out a cancerous bulge shrouded in darkness, a ripple in the outer hull having nudged the piston out of its moorings.

Kitty perused the information in the control booth. 'It's running at seventy percent efficiency. Whatever caused that' she pointed with her voice raised 'has caused the ship to list and use up a third more fuel starboard side.'

'Can we hammer it back into shape? Affix the piston housing firmly? If our fuel is truly limited we cannot afford to end up flying in circles, chasing our tail.'

'Hah! Imagine... I don't see why not. Kurt, you'd have to get Peter up there with a piece of sheet metal and seal it in place while he flattens the whole area.'

'I'd have to be extra careful not to rupture the hull or we'd be sucked full blown into space.' Peter said. He walked over to a batch of crates, rummaged about and lifted several of the lids off, depositing them on the deck.

'It's very tight for space up there.' Kurt said. It looked enough for one person, and Colossus in metal form was mass enough for two.

'Have we got access to space suits and a bolt gun? I could always try from the outside.' The Russian said.

They all looked at each other in inspiration.

***

When Mikhail Rasputin enlisted in the Roskosmos, Peter was very jealous. Little of a dreamer amongst foreign lands and especially the vastness of space, the young farmer's son devoted most of his time to terrestrial fancies: those of art and culture -- what little access there was in remote Siberia -- and the care of his family. The Ust-Ordynski collective was Peter's home and landscape; golden meadows of barley and rye, vast mud-brown ploughed fields of potatoes and in the distance where the hills receded into mist acres of trees growing anew for the logging seasons. Often when he was young, his father would take Mikhail and he into Irkutsk, several times a year, and Peter could sketch out the coasts of Lake Baikal from far away while the head of the family bartered in the high street jewel traders for mineral deposits and flecks of gold and lead.