CHAPTER 63-THE VOID HUNTS
The rocket shuddered like a dying beast. Metal screamed as an energy beam tore across its hull. Lights flickered red, alarms howled. The crew jolted in their seats, oxygen lines rattling loose.
"Contact-SENTINELS!" Scott's voice
thundered over comms.
Through the viewport, hulking silhouettes glided out of the black, wings glowing faint with thruster light. Their eyes blazed red, scanning.
"Mutant signatures confirmed. TERMINATION engaged."
One blast hit dead on. The rocket's skin split, a ragged hole yawning open. Air rushed out in a violent howl.
Storm was closest to the breach. The tether snapped. Her body was wrenched from her seat, spun like a leaf.
"ORORO!" Scott roared.
Her lifeline flailed, then snapped clean. She was gone, tumbling out into the black.
For one heartbeat, panic owned her. The void swallowed every sound. Stars whirled. Her lungs screamed. The cold chewed at her bones.
'I will die as Mikhail did... drifting into nothing...
But then-light.
The Sun. Golden, relentless, infinite. Its fire poured into her. She spread her arms wide, eyes blazing white.
"NO!" Her voice thundered inside her own skull. "I AM THE STORM!"
She drank deep of solar fire, drew the cosmic wind into her veins. Invisible currents surged, unseen rivers of energy flowing between stars. She bent them to her will.
A gale erupted in the void, her body anchoring to nothing but her own conviction. The winds became a storm across nothingness, her cape snapping like a banner.
The Sentinels turned, registering anomaly.
She struck.
Bolts of lightning, pure solar-fed fury, leapt from her fingers. Each crack was brighter than dawn, hotter than fire. The first Sentinel's head burst like a burning bulb. The second spun, wings shredded in a gale that had no air to ride. The third tried to flee, only to be caught in a cyclone born from solar breath, ripped apart in silence.
Storm drifted, panting, tetherless but
triumphant. Her eyes burned like twin stars. "The vold cannot claim me. I am Its master."
Inside the rocket, chaos.
Nightcrawler scrambled to seal the breach with emergency panels, his body bamfing in and out of thin air, smoke tralls filling the chamber. Colossus braced his shoulders against the cracking frame, holding the hull together with sheer steel muscle. Thunderbird and Sunfire lashed down equipment, shouting curses in their own tongues.
Scott strapped himself tighter, eyes narrow, his visor glowing. "Ram it!"
Corbeau's hands shook on the controls. "What
-?"
"RAM THE DAMN STATION!"
The rocket lurched, engines screaming.
Ahead, the Starcore station gleamed cold, its steel arms stretched out like a spider waiting for prey.
Another blast rocked the ship, but it didn't stop. The nose of the rocket carved fire across the void.
And then it hit.
Steel crumpled. The rocket punched into the side of Starcore with a roar that never echoed in space. The station shook, air hissing
through shattered bulkheads.
The X-Men unstrapped, scrambling into the breach. Sentinels surged inside, claws out, eyes burning red.
Scott's visor snapped open, ruby fury cutting the first machine in half. Thunderbird roared, fists smashing into steel jaws. Colossus's
metal skin blazed in the firelight as he
charged. Nightcrawler bamfed from one machine to another, claws tearing circuits. Sunfire's flames turned the corridor into an inferno.
And then through the shattered hull, riding on solar wind - Storm returned. She landed among them, her eyes glowing white, her cape billowing, lightning still dancing from her fingertips.
"We finish this," she said, her voice like thunder.
The Sentinels screamed. The X-Men
screamed louder. And battle raged in the heart of the station.