Author's Note: Hello, all. It's been a while since I posted anything Sky Captain, and I've been playing around with this piece for a while now, so I thought I'd go ahead and start putting it up. For anyone who is following my original fiction as well as my fan fiction, I have a new short story up on my website (jleehazlett dot com) and will be posting some travel writing as well as fan fiction updates over the coming weeks.

Happy reading!

They were high above the gray clouds that had been blanketing western Europe for days, but Joe's mood was far from bright. "Norton, where the hell do you think you're going?" he radioed irritably. "You're off your heading by thirty degrees."

A beat passed before he received a response. "Sorry about that, sir."

Joe sighed and rolled his eyes. It was miserable work tagging along with cargo carriers between England and France. Usually he wouldn't have touched such a chore. Dex was on board the C-47 that Norton was piloting, though, and that changed everything. There hadn't been a Luftwaffe plane spotted near Paris in several weeks, but that didn't mean that Joe was going to let his best friend go winging across the Channel without an armed escort. Since Frankie was somewhere over the Mediterranean and there was no one else he trusted to ensure Dex's safety so close to the front, the task fell to him.

"Just correct it," he ordered now. The sooner they got on the ground the better. Once they touched down the directions from which an attack could come would be far fewer, and could be mitigated with less risk. Up here the enemy might appear from anywhere. Even if they stayed away, the dangers inherent in simply being airborne were numerous. Joe regretted for the dozenth time that he hadn't forced Dex to ride with him rather than with the top-secret force field generator that the engineer was taking to present to Allied command. Norton was good at what he did, but he was no Sky Captain.

In fact, at the moment Norton wasn't being impressive at all. The nose of his C-47 was still pointed stubbornly off-course, and there didn't appear to be any reason for it. "I presume you know where Paris is, Norton?" Joe barked into his handset.

"Yes, captain."

"Would you care to explain why you don't seem to be headed there, then? It's just that you're more on course for Berlin right now. I'm sure you gather why that's problematic."

The line opened from the other end as if a reply was imminent, but all Joe heard was a scuffle in the background. When Norton finally spoke, he repeated himself. "Yes, captain."

Joe's eyes narrowed. Was the other pilot saying that he understood the problem and wold fix it, or – god forbid – that he knew he was about to overshoot his target and head straight for Nazi Germany? "...Norton," he said slowly, "turn the plane."

"Sorry, sir. I can't do that."

"You can't, or you won't?"

"I won't."

An icy trickle of fear rolled down Joe's spine. "Let me speak to Overmeyer or Dixon." Norton was clearly out of his mind, but maybe his co-pilot and navigator were still sane.

"They'll tell you the same thing, captain."

It took Joe a minute to peel his suddenly-dry tongue from the roof of his mouth. "Then let me speak to Dex."

"He's a bit tied up for that. So are the wrench-monkeys he brought with him."

Joe thought fast. Norton and his crew had turned traitor and were busy carting Dex and two others into enemy territory. He was the only person who was free and not part of the plan who knew what was going on, but he could do nothing about it. There was no way for him to move from his plane to Norton's in order to take it back, and no way to force the other man to land without purposefully damaging the C-47 and risking everyone on board. Calling for back-up wasn't an option, as the rest of the Legion was too far away to help and the RAF and Army-Air Force would think opening fire was a grand solution to a rogue air crew. Telling them what and who was being held captive would only make them more keen to ensure neither man nor machine fell into German hands. He was stuck, and he saw no way out.

"Not much you can do, captain," Norton said. "We've thought it all out. Your only options are to let us go or knock us out of the sky, and I know you won't shoot at us."

"Do you think so, Norton? Because you're wrong." It was a lie, but Joe made it sound like a threat. "Turn around. I'm warning you."

"You're bluffing. You know we have Dex, and you won't touch us so long as he's on board and alive."

"And how do I know he's still alive? I haven't heard from him since we took off. You might have murdered him the instant you left the ground."

Nothing came through for a long, terrible moment. Then, miraculously; "...Cap?"

Joe gripped the radio so tight that his knuckles whitened. "Dex. Are you-?"

The engineer cut him off. "Cap, you've got to shoot us down."

"Watch your mouth!" Norton commanded nearby.

"Dex-"

"You can't let the Nazis have what we're carrying. You know what it is. You know it will change everything." His voice grew distant, and Joe surmised that he was being dragged away from the radio. "Shoot us down, Joe! You have to-"

The transmission broke for a moment. When it came back it was Norton on the other end. "There. You know he's alive, and that's all you're getting out of us." A beat passed. "Your move, captain."

The line went dead once more. Joe tried to get Norton to pick up again, but it was no good. Flummoxed, he buried his face in his hands. The three crew members on the C-47 were good men, known to both him and Dex; how could things have gone so wrong with them?

That question plagued Joe as they slipped over the invisible line that marked the beginning of enemy airspace. He had no answer for it, and his indecision about what to do now deepened as he ran through scenarios in his head. If Dex was delivered to the Nazis and they managed to figure out his machine – or, he shuddered, if they managed to torture its function out of him – the Allies would be thrown back into the Atlantic for good. But at least in German hands Dex would be alive. They might try and force him to work on some dark project of their own, but they weren't likely to kill him. If the C-47 went down with him in it, though, Dex could easily end up dead or irreparably injured. Even if he walked away from the crash there was still a good chance that he would be captured, thus making the whole effort useless.

One man versus the course of the war. It should have been an easy choice, but so long as Dex was that one man and Joe was making the decision it couldn't be. Dex had told him to take down the C-47, but that didn't matter because it was exactly what Sky Captain had expected him to say. No, he couldn't do it, even if it was what he ought to do. Not so long as there was even the slightest hope of getting his engineer back alive and in more or less one piece.

The larger plane lurched without warning. For a moment it seemed as if it had meant to turn, and had then changed its mind. Joe watched closely, hope and terror mingling in his chest. Maybe Norton or his cronies had had a change of heart. Maybe the captives had broken free and were trying to take control. The thought of Dex trying to take on three men with guns in an enclosed space wasn't pleasant, but-

Another twitch came, this one so violent that the C-47's wings went almost perpendicular to the flat cloud bank below. "Watch you don't roll it," Joe advised through his handset. The sun's glare kept him from seeing through the windshield of the other plane, but he was now almost certain that there was a battle being waged inside the cockpit. Dex could fly well enough when he needed to; if he could just get behind the yoke, everything might still be okay. They could turn around nice and easy and get back to Paris, where Joe would ensure that Dex never left the ground in a plane piloted by anyone else again.

There was no time for him to indulge in that daydream now, though. The C-47 had leveled out, and at its new angle the light's reflection off of the windows wasn't as bad as it had been. Someone in khaki had slipped into the pilot's seat, and Joe strained his ears towards the radio. He couldn't vouch for either of the technicians, but if it was Dex flying there would be a transmission as soon as the situation was stable. Let it be Dex, and let this nightmare be over...

The person in the cockpit reached towards the handset. Before he could pick it up he was pitched forward onto the control boards. A broad splash of red hit the glass. Then the plane's nose tilted downward into a dive, and the body – it was a body now, not a living person, Sky Captain felt that much in his guts – tumbled backwards and out of sight.

The hopeful breath that Joe had taken in rushed back out as a scream of denial. Surely, surely he hadn't just watched his best friend be murdered. Norton would be a fool to blow out the very brains he had promised to deliver to the Nazis. Alive or not, though, nobody was likely to walk away from the plunge to earth that had just been initiated. "Pull up, damn it!" he shouted uselessly. "Somebody down there pull up!"

But the C-47 sank into the clouds and vanished.