Part 21
Keep the home fires burning,
While your hearts are yearning,
Though your lads are far away they dream of home.
There's a silver lining, through the dark clouds shining,
Turn the dark cloud inside out, 'til the boys come home.
-- Lena Guilbert Ford, 1915
Batman crouched on his favorite gargoyle, watching the (relatively) peaceful Gotham streets below. Snow had been falling heavily for most of the day, discouraging all but the most desperate of last-minute Christmas shoppers. It had also discouraged all but the most desperate of criminals, as well, much to Batman's disappointment. Ever since he had spoken with Admiral Mueller last night, he had felt the overwhelming desire to beat something -- or someone -- to a pulp.
Mueller had admitted that the mission to kidnap the queen was a smokescreen. It was designed to be Luthor's revenge against one Lt. Commander Richard Grayson and one Lt. Colonel Edmond Marchant. Mueller hadn't known about Dick's role in the Barracuda scam, so he didn't know why Luthor had a grudge against Richard Grayson, but he knew that Marchant had had a part in the scandal that had caused Luthor to resign from office. Luthor had designed the mission profile and selected the team members. Mueller was ordered to sell the mission to the Joint Chiefs. Once he had done so, Luthor ordered him to go along and make sure that neither Grayson nor Marchant returned.
It wasn't enough that Mueller gave the team deliberately altered building schematics, Batman thought savagely. The terrified admiral eventually revealed that before he boarded the Chaffee, he had sent a translated message to Ch'ton, giving the enemy the team's attack plans. And Dick had flown right into the trap!
The feel of a not-quite-natural breeze behind him interrupted Batman's musings.
"You'd think, by now, you'd realize you can't sneak up on me," he growled to the red-and-blue-clad figure he knew was behind him.
"Hope springs eternal," replied the deep voice of Superman, good-humoredly.
Batman turned his head to see his friend hovering above the roof, a few feet from his gargoyle.
"Not anymore, it doesn't," he replied flatly.
A beat of silence, then Superman said, "I heard about Mueller. I think Luthor's actually getting nervous. There were certainly enough naval investigators poking around LexCorp earlier this afternoon, even it if is two days before Christmas." When Batman didn't respond, he continued, "Oracle said you wanted to see me?"
Batman nodded and stepped from his gargoyle back onto the roof. Reaching into one of his belt pouches, he drew out a folded envelope addressed simply "Clark." He handed it to Superman.
"Dick's ... effects arrived today," he ground out. "There were several letters that he'd left behind in case ... anything happened."
"Have you read yours yet?" Superman asked gently.
Batman shook his head. In a hoarse voice he whispered, "I can almost pretend sometimes that he's still out there, and I'm just waiting for him to come home. To read his last letter would ..." His voice trailed off.
"You owe it to him, you know."
"I know."
"I've got an idea. Why don't we go up to the observation room on the satellite and read them there?"
"Now?"
"Now. Waiting won't make it any easier."
"All right," Batman sighed.
The "observation room" on the JLA's satellite was a transparent bubble that made the occupant feel as if he were really standing out in the vastness of space. Before the war, or rather, before Dick joined the Navy, Batman had never really spent much time up there. His concerns were Gotham City and Earth, not space. That had changed when Dick left. Now one of his most important concerns was out there in space, beyond his reach. The observation room was as close as Batman could get to his son, and it had become something of a habit of his to take Dick's letters up there to read. Somehow, he wasn't surprised that Superman knew about that.
The two men stood in the chamber looking out at the serene and colorful lights of the distant stars. Even now, Batman felt the calm of the room start to seep into his soul. In the midst of the stillness, Superman began speaking, and Batman let the words flow into him.
"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.' And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."
"Genesis?" asked Batman.
"And Apollo 8. It seemed appropriate on what's now the day before Christmas."17
Eventually, Batman realized he couldn't put off the inevitable any longer. Reaching into his belt pouch, he drew out another folded envelope. It had been hard enough maintaining his composure when Barbara had told him about the letters. But when he saw the envelope, it had taken every ounce of self-control to keep from weeping. It was addressed, "Dad."
Bruce pulled the cowl back from his head and opened the envelope. Inside were two separately folded sheets of paper. On one was written in large letters, "READ THIS FIRST." The letter started abruptly, with no date or salutation:
If you're reading this letter, that means the mission we were on went south just as I expected it to. I've had a hinky feeling about this operation from the beginning, so I'm going in expecting more than the usual amount of trouble. I've also made what preparations I could beforehand.
Babs should have already received a message giving her the details of the mission and asking her to pass this information along to some of our mutual friends. I also asked her not to tell you. Now, before you crumple this letter up in disgust
A crinkling of the paper prompted Bruce to look at his hand, which was already trying to "crumple this letter up in disgust." He felt genuinely amused for the first time since Dinah's phone call. Anticipating my reaction again, chum? He continued reading.
and go badger my wife, I want to explain why I asked her not to tell you. First and foremost, Vic and his team have experience at this sort of recovery mission; you don't. Vic doesn't need you looking over his shoulder. Second, although I certainly have hopes that I am still alive and that Vic and his team will be able to bring me home, I want you to understand that it is still likely that I am dead. We both know that going in expecting a trap doesn't always keep the trap from closing.
I need you to stay behind, Bruce. You are the only person I know who can possibly out-stubborn Babs, should it be necessary. If you truly care about me, take care of my wife and my daughter and let someone else do the rescuing. That's my final request of you.
Enclosed with this is my standard, "in case I don't make it home" letter. You can read it now, or you can wait until Vic confirms whether I'm really dead. Either way, the letter just states things we've always known but never put into words.
Latcho Drom, Dat
Dick
The Romany phrase caught Bruce by surprise, and he had to think for a moment to translate what it meant. He remembered "Latcho Drom" meant "Good Journey" and that it was a traditional farewell phrase. "Dat" puzzled him for a little longer until he remembered. It meant "Father."
~~~~~~~~~~
"I need to speak to Barbara," Batman ordered sternly. He had called Oracle expecting Barbara to answer; instead, Tim's face appeared on the monitor in the satellite's communications room.
"Sorry, boss. No can do. She's asleep."
"I need to speak to Barbara," Batman repeated.
"Bruce, you know as well as I do that Dr. Leslie wants her to rest. She's asleep, and the doc would have my hide if I woke her. Besides, I can answer your questions as well as she can."
"Not in this."
"Wanna bet? I was the one who found the email message from Dick to send the Titans out."
"And you didn't tell me, Robin?" Batman thundered.
"That's the way Dick wanted it," Tim replied calmly. "I happened to agree with his reasons, but that's beside the point. Dick wanted to tell you himself." Tim glanced around the room checking out something. "Look, everything's pretty quiet here. Why don't I come up to the satellite and fill you in?"
"All right," he growled.
A few minutes later, Tim, now dressed in his Robin costume, followed Batman into one of the JLA's briefing rooms. Superman had had to leave to take care of some sort of emergency. Tim laid out the papers he had brought with him.
"Okay, first of all, here's Dick's message to Barbara. Then, we've got the original mission plans, which I gave you to use to investigate Mueller." Tim handed the papers to Bruce as he spoke. "Now here is Dick's plan for the Titans. He wants them to use one of their existing scenarios -- uh, HR-704b -- with a couple of variations. From what Babs told me, Raven will be going along in order to locate and extract Dick and aid in the kidnapping attempt. After that, the plan is to bring her straight back to Fleet Headquarters up at Heinlein Station."
After studying the documents for several minutes, Batman had to acknowledge that Dick's plan made sense. However comforting it would have been for Bruce to tag along on the mission, he really wasn't needed. He also realized that underneath his bravado, Tim was slightly apprehensive about having kept this information a secret. Bruce sighed. He squeezed the younger man's shoulder reassuringly.
"Thank you, Tim. I think I want to study these a little longer. You should probably head back to the clocktower now."
"Okay. I'll see you tonight at the manor." Tim walked out of the room.
Bruce sighed again. Although none of them had felt like celebrating Christmas this year, Dinah and Tim had decided there should be some acknowledgement of the season. They had persuaded Alfred to put together a small dinner party of just "family": Bruce, Barbara, Tim, Leslie, Jim Gordon, Dinah, and Cassandra Cain, the current Batgirl. They would attend a candlelight service and then go back to the manor for a late dinner.
Bruce went back to the observation room to spend some time with his son.
~~~~~~~~~~
That evening, when Bruce came downstairs after having changed into a suit, he found Alfred just walking out of the study.
"Ah, Master Bruce! Master Tim and Miss Barbara wish you to call them as soon as possible, sir."
Bruce nodded and walked into the study and down into the Batcave. He activated the video monitor and called the clocktower. An excited-looking Tim answered the call.
"Bruce! We got it! We figured out those files of Luthor's!"
At the mention of Luthor's name, a scowl appeared on Bruce's face. "What do they say?" he asked harshly.
"I'm routing them over to you right now. It's some really nasty stuff, Bruce," said Tim, his excitement draining away as the meaning of what he was reading took over.
"What kind of stuff?"
"I know it's gonna sound hard to believe, but ... Luthor helped instigate the whole war."
That was too much, even for Batman's legendary control. Bruce could feel his jaw drop and his eyebrows try to climb off his forehead.
"Um, where's Barbara? And how did you end up cracking his code?" he thought to ask finally.
"She's getting ready for tonight. Did Babs ever show you what the two files looked like?" Bruce barely had time to shake his head before Tim continued. "It was just a whole jumble of letters strung together. No spaces, no punctuation, nothin'. I think Babs and I must have run them through every ciphering and code breaking scheme known to man and then some. This afternoon, I had pulled them up again, and for some reason, I just started 'reading' it aloud; you know, just nonsense sounds. Babs said it sounded oddly familiar and asked me to have her speech synthesizer program read it aloud as best it could. It sounded even more familiar to her, and then she remembered some translation work she had done for S.T.A.R. Labs on Ch'ton technical data."
Tim took a deep breath. "So we ran the synthesizer reading through her Ch'ton translation program. It came out in English!"
"Good job, son! Both of you!" said Bruce. He read the messages between Luthor and the Ch'ton Warlord. His expression grew grimmer and grimmer as he realized what Luthor had intended.
The first message contained Luthor and the Ch'ton Warlord's plan to assassinate the Ch'ton queen and place the blame on Earth. The second message ...
"As soon as this Warlord character signaled that he was in power, Luthor was going to get himself named to the peace talks committee," Bruce summarized to Superman, whom he had called as soon as he finished talking to Tim.
"Which he could have done, in the tradition of ex-U.S. presidents before him," interjected Clark.
"Right. Once Luthor was on the committee, the Ch'ton would suddenly be amenable to peace. After some token negotiating, a peace treaty would be signed, and Luthor would be declared the Great Peacemaker," Bruce said sarcastically. "Here's where the plan starts to get a little strange. Luthor would then push for the U.S. to colonize the worlds we took from the Ch'ton, with him as the leader. The Warlord has left a large cache of weapons behind and gave Luthor the location. All of a sudden, Luthor's got his very own planet, with his very own army to back him up." Bruce shook his head in disgust.
"But why did Luthor save the files? Even encrypted, he had to realize how incriminating they were," wondered Clark.
"You know the man better than I do," Bruce replied, "but my guess is that he kept them as insurance against the Warlord. I doubt either of them completely trusts the other. And for all we know, one or the other may have been planning a double-cross anyway. I'm not completely convinced Luthor would settle for ruling his own planet instead of Earth."
"Neither am I. I assume you would like for me to bring these files to the Navy's attention?"
"Yes. Oracle has confirmed that the files still exist on Luthor's system."
"I'll try this evening, but it may have to wait until after Christmas. I'll keep you posted."
"Thank you." Bruce hung up before Clark could be tempted to wish him a "Merry Christmas." The possibility that Dick might still be alive was hovering at the back of his mind, but Bruce had purposefully not let himself hope too much. He didn't want to go through that pain again. He now understood why Barbara's expression recently had seemed to be a mixture of despair, hope, and fear.
The snow had finally let up outside when Bruce and Alfred left the manor. They would pick up Barbara, Dinah, and Tim from the clocktower and then meet the others at the church. Bruce knocked on the door and was surprised at how long it took for Dinah to answer. When she did, the first thing he noticed was that she was crying.
"Dinah?! Is Barbara all right?"
Dinah just stood there crying and waving her arms and making incoherent noises.
"Alfred!" Bruce yelled. "See if you can reach Leslie and get her here, and then I need you up here on the double!" He gently steered Dinah back into the room, steeling himself against every catastrophe he could think of. Barbara and Tim were huddled in front of one of her monitoring stations, staring intently at the screen. Tears were streaming down both of their faces, but they were oblivious. They certainly seemed unhurt.
"Tim! What's going on?"
Tim jerked, turned around, and looked at Bruce. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Finally, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried again.
"Dick's alive!" he said hoarsely. "We just got a message from him and the Titans. There are some complications, but essentially they've got the queen, and Dick's all right."
Bruce tried to swallow the lump that had formed in his throat, but he didn't have much luck. He walked over to Barbara, who absently rubbed her hand over her stomach as she watched her husband speak. Bruce rested his hands on her shoulders and pressed a feather-light kiss on top of her head.
"Merry Christmas, Barbara," he whispered.
** End Part 21 **
__________
17 The crew of Apollo 8, which was the first mission to orbit the moon, read the first ten verses of Genesis as part of their television broadcast to Earth on December 24, 1968. After William Anders and Jim Lovell said the verses listed above, mission commander Frank Borman said, "And God said, 'Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear'; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas; and saw that it was good." Borman then added, "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you -- all of you on the good Earth."