AHAB: Page 4 of 4

BIOGRAPHY - Page 4

The X-Men have always fought an uphill battle against hatred and fear. Although the original impetus for the Days of Future Past timeline was prevented years ago, that dark future where mutantkind is penned in concentration camps like animals by a fearful mankind continues to resurface. Bishop's timeline, Days of Future Tense, Weapon X: Days of Future Now, Years of Future Past... each a slight variation on the theme that the worst possible future for mutantkind may be inevitable. A version of Ahab emerged in yet another of these timelines, the future of the Red Onslaught.

On second glance, however, which version of Ahab he is becomes more difficult to answer. The horrors of the Red Onslaught were a possible future, but not years or decades from now. When it was first glimpsed at, this future and Ahab's part in it came from a flash-forward of a mere three months. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #4] No contemporary version of Ahab is known to exist yet in the Earth-616 timeline. Could a possible future really have produced this Ahab in that short a span of time? When last we saw Rory Campbell, he was at worst a morally ambiguous researcher. When last we saw Famine, he was a brainwashed Horseman of Apocalypse. Admittedly, it had been years since either of them appeared, but it seems unlikely they could have evolved into such an archetypical Ahab in such a short time or behind the scenes. It's possible the Red Onslaught's Ahab is the original Ahab from Earth-811, a known time and dimension-hopper last seen teleporting away and swearing his revenge. Of course, with Kang as his patron, this Ahab could literally have come from anywhere in time and space. The cybernetic armor of yet another Ahab was found on Kang's wall of trophies taken from fallen foes. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #8AU]

This Ahab was Houndmaster and warden of the pens in this future, overseeing the mutant population subjugated by the Red Skull after his propaganda and telepathic abilities turned humanity against the mutants. Ahab was also an agent of the conqueror Kang, who had kidnapped and raised the mutant twins Uriel and Eimin, heirs to Apocalypse. As part of his Machiavellian plotting, Kang wished to convince the twins that man and mutant could never live together in harmony, and they must one day lead mutantkind in a mass exodus from Earth (thereby freeing Kang from potential rivals for power in domination of the planet). To drive this point home, Kang left Uriel and Eimin in Ahab's future for years at a time as children, hardening them against humanity.

On one occasion, Uriel and Eimin tried to escape from the camps, but were betrayed by a human ally and caught by Ahab and his Hounds. Eimin tried to take responsibility to protect her brother, claiming she saw an opening and took it. Ahab took this turn of phrase as an opportunity to terrorize the twins further. He ordered Uriel to cut out Eimin's eyes with his wings (so she wouldn't "see" openings in the future), or else Ahab would kill her. Uriel reluctantly mutilated his sister in order to save her life. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #12]

The Apocalypse Twins were eventually released on the present day by Kang, and carried out their plan to rapture Earth's mutant population. However, they also provoked the Celestials by killing one of their number with Kang's trophy, the Asgardian axe Jarnbjorn. Thus the Celestial Executioner arrived at Earth and destroyed the planet just as the mutant exodus was completed, wiping out humanity. Additionally, because of the tachyon dam they established, the Apocalypse Twins ensured no time travelers could visit this moment while all future timelines were bound to it, denying Kang his future dynasty as future Earths crumbled from existence around him. To counter this catastrophe, Kang recruited allies from seven future Earths as their realities disintegrated, including Ahab from the Red Onslaught future. The Red Skull was left behind to evaporate in the crumbling timeline as Ahab returned to his true benefactor. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #14]

Several years later, the surviving members of the Avengers Unity Squad finally brought down the tachyon dam on the new mutant homeworld, allowing Kang, Ahab and their Chronos Corps to reach back to that point in the timeline. In this uneasy alliance, Kang worked with the Avengers to send their consciousnesses back in time to destroy the tachyon dam at an even earlier point, allowing the Chronos Corps to skip back further and help prevent the destruction of Earth. However, Kang then revealed to the Avengers this had been part of his plan all along, setting up the players to give him a chance at stealing the power of the Celestial Executioner itself. The Unity Squad defeated him and his Chronos Corps and saved the Earth, so Kang sent most of his Corps back to their home realities. Ahab, though, he left behind as revenge against the heroes to help instigate the Red Onslaught future he came from. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #18-22]

(Thinking fourth-dimensionally, this veers close to an ontological paradox. If Ahab succeeded in helping Red Skull create the future he came from, then where did Ahab come from originally? If Ahab was inserted in the timeline by Kang, removed to join the Chronos Corps, then returned to the past and inserted into the timeline by Kang, isn't his whole existence a loop? Fortunately, these existential questions are avoided because Ahab does not succeed, as seen below. In any case, this does seem to be further evidence that Ahab was planted in the original Red Onslaught timeline he came from, and was not a native.)

Ahab presented himself to the Red Skull and allowed the villain to read his mind.  Although the Skull chaffed at being used by Kang as an instrument of his revenge, he recognized that Ahab believed in subjugating mutants more than he did in serving Kang, and welcomed his help. In particular, the Red Skull enjoyed Ahab's addition of adding concentration camps for mutants at his base in Genosha, wondering why he didn't think of the idea first. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #23]

Ahab joined the Red Skull's S-Men in attacking the Avengers Unity Squad and Magneto. The Master of Magnetism was deliberately provoked by the villains by the hatred and imagery they embraced. When Magneto struck at the Skull to kill him, he inadvertently recreated the circumstances that led to the birth of the original Onslaught: Magneto's rage mixed with Xavier's telepathic mind. The Red Skull used this mixture of elements to not only survive Magneto's killing blow, but evolve into an immensely more powerful psychic entity as the Red Onslaught. [Uncanny Avengers (1st series) #24-25]

The S-Men were sacrificed as victims to Magneto's rage, but Ahab survived and continued fighting alongside the Red Onslaught. He held his own against Cyclops, Havok, Magneto, Genesis and Quentin Quire, but eventually succumbed when a force of additional X-Men and Avengers arrived. With the rise of the Stark Sentinels, the super-villain counterassault and the Inversion effect that followed, Ahab's disappearance from Genosha went unremarked on. [Avengers & X-Men: AXIS #1]

Ahab has become emblematic of the hatred man feels towards mutant, and has proven to be a persistent meme across multiple realities. In one form or another, he will someday return to menace the X-Men and mutantkind in general. It's only a matter of time.

Ahab foresaw the vulnerability of the mutant race caused by the Original Five X-Men taking an extended vacation from the past to live in the present. If just one of these O5 members could be exterminated before returning home, the temporal loop would never close and the X-Men’s history would be irrevocably altered. In order to prepare a surgical strike against the X-Men, Ahab revolutionized his Hound process. In the near future, he abducted two young mutants from the Xavier Institute named Maxime and Manon, twins with the power of emotion and memory manipulation. Once they were brainwashed into his service, the twins could psionically recreate the years of torture and behavioral programming used to create Hounds in an instant. They would prove deviously useful in the days to come.

Before making his first strike, Ahab planted the twins where the X-Men would find them in the present, two young cuckoos to be brought back into Xavier’s nest. Ahab made an attack against young Cyclops and murdered his teammate Bloodstorm. Although he failed to kill Cyclops as well,  the attack had a second purpose of driving the X-Men teams together, where Manon and Maxime could easily reach them. Ahab struck at the Xavier Institute and reclaimed Rachel Summers as a Hound, while the twins covertly reprogrammed Old Man Logan, Nightcrawler and Shatterstar as new recruits. These Hounds suddenly turned against their fellow X-Men, trying to kill the O5.

However, Ahab still failed to secure any of his targets, and he realized another time traveler was  working against him. Kid Cable came back from the future to fix what his adult counterpart failed to do and was already snatching up O5 members when Ahab struck against Cyclops. The teenaged Dayspring snared Iceman, Angel and Beast as Ahab guided his ship the Pequod to Jean Grey’s undersea base, Searebro. Ahab killed Mimic, thinking he was Cyclops and, with Manon and Maxime at his side, the X-Men were rapidly losing members to the other side and more Hounds were created.

Kid Cable convinced the O5 to return to the past before Ahab could get to them, but young Jean Grey refused to close the time loop and leave the X-Men facing the new Hounds without help.  Before taking them to the past, Cable brought the O5 to the near future, where Manon and Maxime were still innocent students. Jean had them teach her how their psionic powers worked, and how to reverse the effects. Ahab and the Pequod pursued them to that time period, but Cyclops and Cable managed to destroy the ship while Jean worked with the twins, and with it Ahab’s time machine.

Cable sent the O5 back to the past and time slipped with Ahab back into the present. Thanks to Manon and Maxime, Jean Grey now knew how to “bottle” the O5’s memories so they would not remember visiting the future and the timeline would be preserved. However, she also set a mental timer so their memories would spontaneously return to their older selves during Ahab’s attack. As a result, the adult Jean Grey suddenly regained her teenage counterpart’s memories, including how to reverse the Hound process. Jean saved the X-Men and reversed the Hound programming from all the new mutants. Cable seriously wounded Ahab, forcing him to teleport away with only Rachel and his original Hounds. Without the Pequod, he could only move through space, not time, and was now trapped in this era.  [Extermination #1-5]

Injured and desperate, Ahab teleported with Rachel and his two remaining Hounds towards the small Balkan nation of Transia. His remaining sensors detected some form of time travel technology in the country, and he hoped to make use of it. However, the weakened cyborg was quickly captured by Commandant Constantin of the Transian military, who killed one of his Hounds. Transia had become a safe haven for mutants under the rule of President Nicolae Brancoveneau. Stryfe and his Mutant Liberation Army made contact from the future, offering Transia advanced weapons and technology in exchange for keeping local mutants safe and bringing them to the time portal. Brancoveneau gladly accepted this deal on behalf of his nation, but Constantin hated mutants and secretly worked against his President within the military. Rachel and the Hounds were turned over to the MLA, but Constantin kept Ahab for his own purposes. [X-Force (5th series) #6]

Commandant Constantin’s own son had a truly horrific mutation, and the ignorant soldier had convinced himself that mutants were an infection that could be cured. Ahab saw an advantage  and promised to develop a cure for mutants, so Constantin provided him with a private lab to work. Soldiers loyal to Constantin used the MLA’s weapons to round up immigrating mutants in the countryside and bring them to Ahab for experimentation. Ahab believed the only true cure for mutants was death, but he slowly co-opted the mechanical equipment Constantin provided him to rebuild his damaged cybernetics.

Ahab’s timetable moved up considerably when Kid Cable, Deathlok and X-Force entered Transia,  looking for him and Rachel. Constantin took the opportunity to murder President Brancovenau and seize power, blaming the mutants for the deed. Ahab used the chaos to escape his guards, murdering Constantin’s bedridden son as he went. Ahab got the drop on Deathlok and incorporation the cyborg’s tachyon probability generator into his own circuits, giving him an algorithm for predicting the future. Ahab felt confident enough to face X-Force, but he also had to contend with Constantin in future mech armor. Thanks to the probability generator, Ahab knew he was 93.74% certain to die. Even so, he spent his last moments laughing in Cable’s face, knowing he wouldn’t learn where Rachel Summers was. His own life was less important to Ahab than one more moment of causing mutants pain. [X-Force (5th series) #1-4]