Final Sanction, Part 2: "The Phalanx Sanction"
Part 9 of "The Phalanx Covenant"
Cyclops, Phoenix, Wolverine and Cable, using a low-tech, all sensors shut down aircraft not expected by the Phalanx, fly over the Phalanx citadel undetected. They crash the airplane into the citadel after they jump out of it. Cameron Hodge, now a Phalanx, checks if their core consciousness, Steven Lang and the captured X-Men are alright after the explosion caused by the crash. Unknown to Hodge, Lang is against the Phalanx's aspirations of assimilating the entire planet into their collective and is working silently with Psylocke to devise a plan to stop them. At the North Face, a side of the mountain (where the citadel is located) too steep to be climbed by normal humans, the four mutants avoid using their powers for fear of being sensed by the Phalanx, but they climb stressfully nontheless. At a point in the mountain where it curves to the point where it is totally unclimbable, Cyclops asks Jean to give Cable a little telekinetic push, one so faint it could not be detected but enough to bring him to the edge. Jean refuses but Cable eventually convinces her. His grip on the edge is unstable but with Wolverine's help, the other three manage to get to the top and he is pulled up by Logan himself. As soon as they reach the entrance of the citadel, Cyclops, Phoenix and Cable attack the Phalanx while Wolverine goes in search of the X-Men, whom he finds and frees. The X-Men join the fight against the Phalanx and when Hodge orders Psylocke to attack Cable, the override system implanted by Lang is triggered and she is able to help the X-Men. She channels Cable and Jean's psychic energy into herself and uses it to destroy the Phalanx's collective consciousness. Then Hodge learns of Lang's betrayal by reading Psylocke's mind, left opened by her during her psi-attack. Hodge accesses all the energy source from other Phalanx nests around the world, thereby destroying the other entities within them. He channels those energies to the citadel to use as a power source and keep things together but he forgot that it's actually Lang's psionic task to keep the citadel together, which he ceases to do and it collapses. The X-Men survive, but Hodge took Lang with him and both are caught in the explosion of the citadel.