Paladin Business (Part Four)

The idea of traveling through space seems novel, right? You're getting an up close and personal look at the very cosmos themselves. Things you've only seen from a distance with your feet firmly planted on the relatively safe surface of Earth. Flying past these heavenly bodies must seem like something out of a dream.

The reality is, space travel is boring. It's like being on a plane, only with less to do most of the time.

The earliest space flights in recorded human history? That was real hardcore shit. Those flights were done with less technology onboard than what you could find in your modern smartphone. Every bit of the mission had to be carefully calculated for months before the rocket ever even launched. Every moment of the shuttle's flight itself had to be monitored on the chance that anything went wrong, that any anomaly would screw up everything.

Fast forward 60 years, give or take, and with technology pilfered from aliens over the decades, things are pretty mundane. Once you get free of a planet's atmosphere, the ship does most of the work itself. Yes, there are still tons of dangers, but it's a lot like a long car trip or a long flight, just on a way bigger scale.

Now, I know what you're saying; 'But Bellamy, you get to see the real planets close. You get a better look than anyone else on Earth ever would,' and, sure, you would have a point, I guess, if we were actually going in the direction of any other local planets. But we weren't. We passed Mars, got a good look at it, got a half-assed view of Jupiter, and that was it. This isn't just me being a jaded asshole spoiled by superhero life. Compared to other places in the universe, the Milky Way galaxy is empty as fuck. There weren't even any comets or asteroid belts to look out for. The other galaxies were the ones with all of the cool, dangerous shit. Until we got to those places, there wasn't much for us.

To that end, for us, it was just a lot of hanging around and waiting as we made sure the ship was still following the coordinates we originally set. You can imagine how boring this became after half a day of flying.

To fight the boredom, one of the things I demanded everyone on the Paladins do when we were getting everything ready, Mister Rasputin included, was download an entire massive playlist of their music. Specifically download, because it wasn't like we were going to be getting standard wi-fi as far away from home as we were going. Streaming would not be a reliable option.

The teenagers among us wound up playing a game where whenever a new song came on, we would try to figure out whose playlist it came from. It helped kill a few hours.

You see? These are the kinds of dumb ideas you can count on for mundane entertainment if you ever find yourself stuck with me and my crew.

"Anyone know what in particular we need to be on the lookout for?" Eddie eventually asked during a down moment, "Like, stuff that could go after us for poking around out here?"

Let's see. Skrulls, Shi'ar Empire, Nova Corps, Brood, Chitauri… just to name a handful. I'm definitely missing countless more that I'd been aware of through studying. Those ones are just off the top of my head.

However...

"Nothing I'd worry about," I said.

Hisako and Laura immediately gave me looks as if to say they knew I was full of shit, but neither said anything – because they knew what I knew. Those names meant nothing without a long, scary explanation, and if we stepped on any of those toes, knowing about them in advance wouldn't do much beyond needlessly freaking out the more neurotic among us. It wasn't like we planned on rocking up to anyone's doorstep for a fight, just the eight of us.

Worrying about crossing paths with any dangerous space folk was like worrying about the sun coming up. There wasn't much we could do about preventing it but keep our heads down, so I wasn't about to wild out over the possibility.

And yes, there was a distinct possibility.

It took two days for us to pick up the bullet's trail. The instruments onboard helped us try and figure out its trajectory, so we did our best to try and plot a course meant to head it off, or at least shorten the distance between us and it. Magneto was the one that alerted us he could feel something akin to the tiny sample I had given him back on Genosha. What followed was a conversation that reminded me that there were levels to this.

"I believe I may be able to bring it closer," Magneto said.

...Excuse me?

"-Or at least slow it down enough for the ship to catch up," he continued to Colossus, "What say you?"

"Whatever you can do, Erik," Colossus replied, "Please."

Magneto simply nodded and took up a stance, getting to work on just that. The audacity of these men, to speak of something so nonchalantly, as if it wasn't fucking absurd that Magneto could catch a satellite-sized bullet hurtling through space, who knew how far away, with nothing more than his powers. Master of Magnetism clearly wasn't just a sick-ass title.

I sat and watched Magneto put his powers to work. It was hard to tell if it was working, how much power he was throwing around, anything really. Unlike something like, say, Julian's telekinesis, there wasn't any glowing or sound to accompany Magneto using his powers. The only sound that came with his powers being thrown around in my experience was the screech of metal being torn apart and crashing around as he threw it at you.

Only the tenseness of his entire body, and the sweat beading on his face told me of the sheer amount of effort this feat required. His arms started to shake as minutes continued to pass. I would have called the effort herculean, but as far as I knew, Hercules was a god or something, not a mutant. I tried to help by steering the ship in a direction that would allow us to better move to meet the bullet.

While everyone waited tensely in their seat for any kind of update on the situation, Ruth sat in the corner of the cockpit, sequestered by herself, "Something is coming, yes," She whispered, "Something big. Something very, very big. She did not see it until it was too late."

"Holy shit..." I heard Eddie quietly say. He'd been in the co-pilot chair next to me, eyes peeled for any sign that we were getting close. He couldn't point out on the navigation instruments fast enough that we were coming up on something, "Something is coming out way. Is he actually reeling it in?"

It seemed like it. As I could feel the excitement creep into my stomach, there was a new question. It was like the adage of a dog chasing a car. What did we do once we caught it?

Magneto, beast that he was, kept up his work. Eventually, after the better part of an hour, he somehow got the bullet to slow enough that we could stay alongside it at cruising speed. At that point, he damn near collapsed on the floor from fatigue.

"Bel-Bel, use the tractor beam to bring it in," Megan suggested.

I looked at her oddly, "We don't... Pix, we don't have that. I don't think that's really a thing."

Hisako chimed in, "It probably is a thing. We just don't have it."

Colossus peered out the side window, his hands pressed to the only barrier between him and the infernal silver prison that had contained his lover for the better part of the year, "We are so close..." He lamented, "Hold on, Katya. Just a little while longer."

Ruth sat, knees pulled to her chest, "Sorry. It is here," She said quietly, frowning as she did so, "She does not know what to do..."

After a moment, Magneto rose from the floor, "Solaris, can you keep course with the bullet for a while? I just need a little time to rest. Then I can keep hold of it while you begin returning us to Earth."

So, tow the damn thing back home? Hey, that worked for me. We could figure out how to get Miss Pryde out of the bullet at our leisure once we had it on the ground.

"Can do," I told him. This was good. It was excellent actually, "Dandy," I said to myself, "Dandy-dandy-dandy-dandy," I repeated in the hopes that things would stay that way.

For once, things were going off without a hitch. Maybe Eddie was right? Maybe I was the plan guy?

Unfortunately, I could not plan for what happened as a result of this. We brought the bullet back to Earth, but something else wound up tagging along for the ride.