"There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness."
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Dream’s announcement that the temporal anomaly that had drawn the Dragon’s Claws to 8162 was Ahab, and that the Hound Master was still alive, struck deeply at the heart of Pen Dragon, and, to a certain extent, at Kate Pryde-Rasputin.
“Oh shit,” said Pen, remembering the last time he’d come across the Hound Master and how they’d left him for dead. How he’d left him for dead. “I should have killed him when I had the chance…” He looked at Kate and she looked back at him and he shook his head. “I should have just killed him…”
“Who is this Hound-Master?” Dragon asked as he and his Claws dusted themselves down after the brief battle with the Pen Dragon’s Claws. “I’ve never heard of him, which means he’s kept a low profile while he’s been here.”
Pen quickly told everyone about Ahab, the man who, in the future, would be the bane of mutantkind, working for the sentinels that had enslaved the world. He had seen to the hunting and extermination of many mutants, and those he did not kill he turned in to hounds, altering people at the genetic level and bonding them to his will. These hounds would track their own kind, on his behalf, and kill. They lived and died for his every command and his punishments for non-compliance were swift, brutal and fatal. He was also not limited to mutants – he had eliminated many of the superhumans of his timeline and he was a threat of the highest magnitude.
He had first come to the attention of the heroes of Pen’s era by coming back in time to stop any alterations to the future and ensure it came to pass as it should, facing off against the combined forces of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four and he had obtained a draw against them, and it was questionable that the heroes would call it that. His future had come undone when Captain Britain and his Excalibur team had gone to the future and put an end to the Sentinel era, and Ahab had used the technology at his disposal to flee in to time, to escape retribution for his crimes but also to find a way to restore the glory of his world. In the meantime, it had been learnt that Ahab was known as Rory Campbell, a scientist who had worked with Excalibur shortly after they had defeated Ahab. Rory had tried to avoid his possible fate as Ahab, but he had been lost during the Martian Wars. Rory and Pen had not been exactly friends, but they’d had a respect for each other. Pen and Ahab, on the other hand, were enemies for life. It was the way it had to be.
“The last time I ran in to him,” Pen finished, “I was part of a team saving time from a being that planned to merge all the timelines in to one with himself as master. We got lost in the time-stream, and Ahab found us.” He looked at Kate. “I really thought we’d beaten him once and for all.”
“You shot him with a hot knife in his last good eye and left him to the Askani,” said Kate. “There’s no way he should be here.”
“If it’s the same one,” said Digit. “I have observed many variations in the timeline and he may be an alternate version of the man you knew, in the way you describe the man called Rory Campbell that you knew. Your future and the future of Ahab were markedly different.”
“Good point,” said Dragon. “Plus I want to know how he’s remained so well hidden.”
“While he’s here, your era will be a focal point for the Time War,” Kate said. “And it’s just one point of many.”
“Dream,” said Pen, looking at the young woman’s astral projection. “Stay out of sight. I’m not sure the powered down Phoenix force will be able to help against Ahab. It never did Rachel any good, and your mother had a lot more power.” Dream nodded and he knew she was afraid. In her future, her parents had died and he suspected Ahab’s hand. “We’re on our way, kiddo. Be strong.” The projection faded and he looked at the others. “You in?” he asked Dragon.
“We’re in.” The two men shook hands. “Let’s take out the trash.”
Rory Campbell sat bolt upright, a cold sweat ripping covering his body. It wasn’t often his nightmares plagued him, but it was happening more and more now he was trapped in this era, but he had made the most of what he had been left with. Above all he was a survivor and he would not let some ragged band of mutants break his spirit. He moved over to the basin and ran some water, which he then splashed on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. He remembered the man he had once been, the one who had worked with Moira MacTaggert on Muir Isle, before he had become disillusioned with the mutant race. He had been commissioned to track down and capture mutants, and he had used his hounds to do so.
He remembered Rachel the best, his greatest creation, but she had broken free of his controls and attacked him. His body had been destroyed and she had been put in to a concentration camp with her friends within the X-Men, many of whom she had been forced to hunt down. He knew it was a delicious torture for her, to be part of them yet also have the guilt of the knowledge she had put them all here and those who had not survived the hunt were dead because of her. Her psychological scars would last the rest of her life, while the scars of his ruined body had been repaired, rebuilt with living bionics, based on the techno-organics that had been part of the mutant Cable and Ahab had been born. The irony of using Cable, a man who should not have existed in that timeline, amused him greatly as Cable had been Rachel’s half-brother and using her relatives to save his life meant he would always have a victory over her, even a pyrrhic one. Rachel had, time and again, proven to be his undoing, and he knew that one day he would have his revenge on her. She had destroyed everything he had worked towards, and even after he had fled his time to escape, her agents from the future hunted him down. They had finally caught up to him after his last battle with a mutant group, a battle in which he had been left blind with the Askani closing in.
He’d been left for dead by Pete Wisdom and the techno-organics within him had rebuilt his lost eye, and as the Askani opened fire, he had risen and taken charge of the battle, fighting them off as best he could. The damage to the timeship had been severe and he had been cast out of time, landing in a desolate part of future, beyond his time, beyond even that of the Askani. They had followed him, wanting to ensure that he died but Ahab had won the battle, and those Askani who had survived had been turned in to a new generation of hounds. His ship was cloaked well enough from the scans of this era, but there was a problem with the ships. The Askani attackers couldn’t jump back in to the time-stream and his ship was similarly incapable of making a time jump. It was as if time had changed and he lacked the equipment to access it as he had once done.
He had roared in anger at this realisation, knowing he was more exiled than ever before and even further away from the restoration of his time to the glory he had worked for, but he could make a start in this era. He had worked, and worked hard, learning of what this time was, fitting in as best he could. Mutants were rare these days, and the planet had few champions. The stories of his era were no longer told, and the things that had once been familiar to him were gone and he knew it was a perfect era to stage his comeback. Time travellers would come, either randomly or hunting him, and he would be waiting, gathering a new brand of hounds. His Askani-Hounds became his elite, hunting down the former players of a great game that had been popular and making them his. Eventually he learnt of the Time War, and he knew why he was trapped here, but he knew escape would one day be possible, but it was only recently his dreams had been plagued by visions of his past. His past, and those of his alternate selves. It was very concerning to him.
“Master,” said one of his elite hounds. “We have determined one of the three prime energy signatures is present in this era.” Ahab turned to look at his hound. There were three prime signatures he was looking for – that of Cable, that of Askani and that of the Phoenix.
“Which?” he said.
“The Phoenix Force. The signature is diminished, but it is valid. We believe it to be close.”
Ahab pondered. Could it truly be her? No matter where or when, their paths always seemed to cross in time. “Bring me the Phoenix bearer,” he commanded. “I want the host alive, but to what degree is immaterial. Just make sure they are capable of communication.” The hound bowed to the hound master and went to gather the other elite. They were trained in the ways of the Askani and knew well of the Phoenix-Force, but their loyalty to the Mother Askani had long since been broken out of them. “Bring me the Phoenix,” he whispered. “Bring me my vengeance.”
The two sets of Dragon’s Claws joined with Dream Summers, who pointed the team in the direction of the timeship.
“I can feel him in my mind,” she said, speaking of Ahab. “The hatred, the malice…”
“Small point,” said Dragon. “I don’t see anything out there. It’s just… wasteland.”
Pen looked at him, then at the others, then back at him. “What do you mean, you can’t see it? It’s a big ruined ship, directly in front of us.” There were general murmurings, mostly agreeing with Dragon. Only three of them could see the time-ship – Pen, Meggan and Dream. “Oh, that’s just great,” Pen sighed. “It’s out of temporal alignment.”
“It’s fractionally adjusted,” said Meggan, looking at the craft, perceiving it not as an object but as the bound threads of order. “It has an almost invisible perception to anyone looking at it.”
“So, it’s like a shadow, just outside your gaze,” said Dragon. “Digit?”
“I’m adjusting my visuals to… Ah! I see it now.” He looked at Dragon. “I anticipate that the distortion of the local space/time field that renders it invisible to our eyes is also masking it to our detection. In essence, such a distortion should be showing up on our boards as a major disturbance, but we are looking at our local space/time field and not the space/time field in which it currently inhabits.”
“You’re saying the distortion is cloaking it,” said Dragon.
“You think the Timies knew it was there?” asked Scavenger and Dragon shrugged.
“More than likely,” he said. “Those we didn’t drive off soon vanished. Bet they’re in there.” His eyes narrowed. “Just hard to say what kind of condition they’d be in.”
“Incoming!” said Pen and they looked again. Out of them empty space, figures were emerging, lots of figures. “They’re hounds. He knows we’re here.”
“They picked a bad day to start with us,” said Dragon as both teams took up a defensive stance as the hounds attacked, producing psionic weapons and attacking the collected Claws as a team, swarming them and the Claws did their best to fight them off.
“This is very familiar,” said Pen as he grappled with one of them. “
“Their weapons are Psimitars,” Dream said. “The part of me that is the Phoenix knows of them, fears the power within them.”
“Askani weapons?” Kylun said.
“What’s an Askani?” asked Scavenger.
“Religious cult, created to overthrow a tyrannical empire,” Pen called back. “Are these hounds Askani?”
“Their minds are protected,” said Dream, reaching out with the Phoenix Force. “They also seem to be immune to my telekinesis.”
“They’re feeding off it,” said Meggan, seeing the hounds through her Alshra perceptions. “I sense them though, the hound forms are suppressing their true selves, they’re trapped within their own bodies, turned against their wills.” She looked at her friends. “Yet, they also have a sense of calm at the situation. Dream, link with me. Maybe we can use my empathy to break their psychic defences. ”
“Keep them secure!” called Dragon.
“Easier said than done,” Steel answered. “They seem to be heading for Dream.”
“Over my dead body,” Pen said, and fired off hot knife after hot knife after hot knife. He knew enough of the hounds to know that whoever they had once been, they were trapped in those forms and in most cases they preferred death to what they had become.
“They are Askani!” Dream called, as her powers and Meggan’s worked in tandem to gain the knowledge they needed. “They’ve been turned by Ahab.” Dream’s anger began to rise within her, knowing that the hound master had done this to desecrate the legacy and the honour of the woman who could have been her mother. The firebird raptor began to grow around her and her eyes began to glint with the emblem of the phoenix within her.
“Dream!” called Meggan, fearful of the young girl’s wrath. There was much anger and pain within her and, as it had been during the Dark Phoenix episode, she was finding it difficult to master her emotions, and it was certain that the power within her responded to those emotions and it was fortunate for them all that with only a third of the Phoenix Force within her, Dream was not able to do everything – but she was able to do things that the enemy could barely contemplate and she lashed out, seizing the Psimitar blades and overloading them with psionic energy, causing them to explode. The hounds cried out and the Claws combined to finish them off quickly and the hounds were beaten at their feet as the firebird raged around them.
“I want Ahab!” she said, looking directly at where his time-ship was. “The blood of my mother calls out to me.”
“Easy!” said Pen, putting his hand on her shoulder. “His turn is coming, I promise you.” Dream then caught a glance of his memories, how he had left Ahab alive on the ruined time-ship as the Askani came.
“This is your fault,” she said, softly. “You could have killed him, you could have ended his life and avenged the deaths of so many of my friends, my family…”
“I thought he was going to pay for his crimes,” Pen said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t know this was going to happen…”
“NO!” said Dream and telekinetically flattened everyone in the area. “You don’t know what he did, what we lived through because of him. You were weak, he should have died. He…”
“He has waited a long time for this,” said a voice and Dream turned as Ahab ran his psionic lance through her chest. “You’re not Rachel, you’re not baby-Phoenix.”
“I am Dream… I am Phoenix,” Dream said as pain coursed through her, her nervous system burnt out and her powers beyond her ability to control.
“The Dream Phoenix,” Ahab said, with a smile. “I have waited so long to make the Phoenix in to the greatest of my hounds. Now, I shall accomplish my life’s work!” He picked her up and slung her over his shoulder before turning to Pen Dragon, who was only just beginning to get control of himself after Dream’s telekinetic whammy and he slammed his cybernetic foot in to his head. “See ya, Pete,” he whispered before looking to the skies. “Or maybe not.” Then Ahab vanished, taking Dream with him as Pen tried to stay conscious, but he had to close his eyes, knowing that the others were also starting to come round. His heart was breaking inside, knowing that Ahab now had Dream and she had been right – this was all his fault. He had fractured time to stop the aliens, creating the problems with the Time War. He had let Ahab live and he had brought Dream with him, taken her with the Claws to bring the Time War to an end.
“PEN!” said a voice. “PEN!” He didn’t want to wake up. “Dammnit Wisdom wake the hell up!”
“You’d think after all these years, you’d know a much nicer way of waking me up, Pryde,” he muttered as they helped him up.
Wynter looked at the man. “He took Dream.” Pen closed his eyes and ground his teeth. “He has the Phoenix, Pen, he took her. We can’t let her be turned like…” He gestured at the fallen Hounds. “Like them!”
“We’ll get her back, mage” said Dragon and his Claws nodded in agreement. “We don’t leave people behind.”
“He left us though,” said Elsa. “He had to know we’d come after him.” Then there was a strange whirring sound.
“Dragon!” Digit called. “We have multiple temporal incursions!”
Wynter rubbed his chin. “Doesn’t that sound a lot like…”
“TARDISes,” said Kate. “It’s the Time Lords!” In moments they were surrounded by TARDIS capsules and armed Pantopticon guards as the new Castellan stepped forwards.
“Peter Wisdom, also known as Pen Dragon – you and your companions are to stand down and hand yourself in to the custody of the Time Lords for transportation to Gallifrey where you will stand trial for crimes against the universe!” The guards readied their weapons, which clicked and whined. “Make our day. Try and escape. Please.”
Pen sighed and put up his hands. “This just isn’t our day.”
