Part 9: The Worlds' Greatest Superheroes?
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"It all began with the rockets," Bruce Wayne said, looking at the four people sitting in front of him with the air of a scholar. "1945. The war was over and the allies brought in Werner von Braun and his men of the Mittelwerk, the rocket builders. Their signature brand of German engineering would in time birth the Apollo program and bring American astronauts to the moon.
"That's the part you can read in the history books. What's not in there are the other people brought over to the States by the Allies. The engineers and analysts Hitler secretly kept close to him in Berlin. No one knew their names or even what they were doing. They were at the highest level of Nazi security. These were the people who were going to put German astronauts on the moon in 1955 and aim space arks at Mars by '68.
"These people were geniuses, decades ahead of their time, outshining von Braun and his peers. And by 1945 they were in the States, working on space travel."
Helena looked at the man who was, for all intents and purposes, her father and managed to keep her face completely neutral.
"What has any of this got to do with us?"
He smiled, a smile that seemed to speak volumes and sent a shiver down Helena's spine. Her father never used to smile like that. He had been a hard man, his war on crime and the death of her mother had made him so, but the smile of this world's version of Bruce Wayne spoke of a man whom she didn't want to have at her back.
"Patience, my dear. I promised I would tell you how this world came to be as it is and I will. Some back story is necessary for that, though."
Kara watched this stranger with the familiar face and her thoughts drifted back half an hour, the time when he had first appeared on their doorstep. His appearance alone had been a shock, but it had only gotten worse when, after his initial introduction, he had come straight to the point of his visit:
"I know you're not from around here," he had said. "I know you're from what you call a parallel world, one where history took a different turn. I also know that you've been trying to figure out what went wrong in this world, why there are no people like you around." He had looked at Diana. "Why your people were slaughtered here."
Diana had looked at him with murder in her eyes, her fingers flexing with enough strength to grind solid rock into pebbles.
"What do you know about my sisters' death, Mr. Wayne?"
He had smiled that smile then, too. "I know who did it. Would you like to know?"
The electronic equipment he had brought in his briefcase had turned out to be a laptop computer and right now he was using it to show them several different images to go along with his lecture. Kara kept her superior senses trained on his heartbeat all the time, listening for any signs that he was lying to them.
There were none. So far, anyway.
"It took JFK," he continued, "and a hideous amount of money to bring Apollo into orbit. This was only the surface, though. Apollo served as the show, the cold war glamour, our brave boys working their best to stay ahead of the evil Communists who effortlessly hurled those Sputniks into space and threatened the safety of the free world.
"The real team, the secret team, worked under the call sign Artemis. They had a model comparable to the Saturn V booster ready to go by 1959 and used it to send the first men towards the moon by 1961. That was the work, the direct cold war, striking the kind of victories only the Russians and our government would ever know about.
"The front line was being pushed farther and farther outward and the kind of finances pumped into this project are beyond anything and everything you could ever dream of. The crew for this mission was handpicked at levels far above that of the President or any other elected official. They were the best of the best, heroes, warrior kings. Arrogant, righteous, and looking to strike a blow for the American way of life.
"On June 6, 1961 Artemis-Lunar launched with a crew of four. They never made it to the moon."
Bruce paused, clicking on his laptop to bring up the picture of a man with grey temples and a severe look on his face.
"The crew: Randall Dowling, physicist, engineer, you name it, he can do it. His list of disciplines is longer than my arm and he was rated with the highest IQ ever recorded on Earth. He was the project leader and flight commander."
The next picture showed a man of roughly the same age, muscled and stoic looking.
"Jacob Greene, the pilot. He flew missions during WW2 that no one ever learned about. Considered the greatest pilot of his generation. They said there wasn't a flying vehicle he couldn't learn to handle in a matter of minutes."
Another man, younger, almost an archetype for the blonde, blue-eyed American hunk.
"William Leather, flight engineer. He has some sort of history with exotic airplane design and there was a woman in Florida who swore to her dying day that she and Leather were the last people to ride aboard the Nautilus in 1959, but I'm rather sure that one is just a rumour."
The final picture showed a woman, also blonde, with Nordic features and not a smile to be found anywhere on her face.
"Kim Süskind was the daughter of one of the Nazi brain trust. A renowned geneticist in her own right, her job was to serve as medical officer and to study the effects space travel might have on the human physique."
He clicked on the laptop again and it showed a picture of a rocket taking off.
"The launch went ahead as scheduled. Everything worked just fine. Then something happened. No one could tell exactly what it was. I have read some transcripts from the final minutes of communication before radio contact with Artemis-L was lost. Whatever it was, the crew was every bit as surprised as the people on the ground.
"For five days Artemis-L vanished from all screens. Then it returned to Earth. It seems like it whipped around the moon, much like the Apollo 13 escape trajectory. The capsule was fished out of the ocean and all four crewmembers were accounted for.
"Only the Four weren't human anymore."
He snapped the laptop shut.
"Things get hazy after that. By 1964 Artemis officially didn't exist anymore and neither did the Four. The reason is that, by that year, they were running Artemis. They'd taken over the entire operation and were using its gigantic cash flow for their own agenda.
"We know of but a few incidents since then where they were definitely involved." He turned to look at Kara. "In 1967 a UFO crash-landed near Smallville, Kansas. The Four got there first. By the time government agencies arrived there was nothing there, not even a sign of the impact crater. Nothing."
He wasn't lying. His heartbeat was steady and even. Kara's was anything but. A rocket? In 1967? Smallville, Kansas? Kal? Rao, if there was even the slightest possibility he might be alive in this world ...
"A year later they nuked a hidden city somewhere in Turkey," Bruce continued. "There were rumours that the people living there were a separate branch of humanity, one hereditarily gifted with magical powers. There were no survivors."
Diana gritted her teeth. A hidden city with magically-enabled inhabitants? She had a pretty good idea who they might have been and, if she was right, her friend and fellow Justice Leaguer Zatanna had never been born on this world.
"In 1985," Bruce now looked at Diana, "the Four, apparently through use of some magical artefacts they had acquired, found a hidden civilization in the Mediterranean. What little they learned of it spoke of advanced technology and a philosophy of peace and cooperation that went contrary to their own design. They had orbital cannons trained on the island's location and, the moment the mystical barrier keeping it hidden opened, they annihilated it."
Diana rose to her feet, her entire body shaking with fury. Kara rose as well, not sure what her friend would do in a fit of rage. After everything Diana had been through she began to fear for her sanity.
"Mr. Wayne," Diana began. "You have come here, possessing knowledge about us, and give us this story of a group of conspirators who have murdered my sisters and done Hera alone knows what to this world. How do you know all this? Why should we believe you?"
Her body language screamed that, if she didn't like his answers, she would beat him into a bloody pulp.
"I am willing to answer your questions, Ms. ... Wonder Woman, I believe? I will answer your questions, but not here. You must understand, all of you, that the Four have a chokehold on this world. For the last forty years they have done everything in their power to ensure that no force strong enough to challenge them could arise. Everyone and everything that could possibly be a threat to them has been destroyed quickly and unmercifully.
"The only reason I am here today is because I'm careful. I was reluctant to bring an unknown quantity such as yourself in on our side, but a ... friend ... convinced me that you could be of tremendous help and would consider it your duty to bring down these people."
"Who is your friend?" Kara asked. "How does he or she know us?"
"Again, not here! The Four will be looking for you, ... Supergirl, correct? Our media has already begun calling you Angel after your little escapade with the airplane. You can be sure the Four have also seen it and are currently busy using every single resource at their disposal to locate you. Every second we stay here, in the open, is a tremendous risk."
The four misplaced heroes shared a brief look.
"Give us a moment, Mr. Wayne?" Dick finally said, nodding toward the exit.
"Fine. I'll wait for two minutes and then I'm gone. Make your choice quickly!"
Once he had left Kara was the first to speak. "He wasn't lying, at least not that I could tell. It's either true or he's the best liar I've ever encountered."
"If it is true," Helena continued, "then we might be the only people on this Earth with a chance of taking on these 'Four' he was talking about."
Diana was still bristling, but a dangerous calm had entered her eyes. Like a predator who had finally caught a whiff of its prey and knew it was just a matter of time now.
"I say we follow him for now. Even if it is some kind of trap, it's better than sitting around here doing nothing. This is the first solid lead we have. I say we go in with our eyes wide open and ready for anything."
"Agreed," Kara said, her thoughts swirling around what Bruce had said earlier. A rocket in Smallville, taken by the Four. She tried to imagine an innocent baby in the hands of people like the ones Bruce had described.
It filled her with a rage almost equal to that of Diana.
TO BE CONTINUED
#
"It all began with the rockets," Bruce Wayne said, looking at the four people sitting in front of him with the air of a scholar. "1945. The war was over and the allies brought in Werner von Braun and his men of the Mittelwerk, the rocket builders. Their signature brand of German engineering would in time birth the Apollo program and bring American astronauts to the moon.
"That's the part you can read in the history books. What's not in there are the other people brought over to the States by the Allies. The engineers and analysts Hitler secretly kept close to him in Berlin. No one knew their names or even what they were doing. They were at the highest level of Nazi security. These were the people who were going to put German astronauts on the moon in 1955 and aim space arks at Mars by '68.
"These people were geniuses, decades ahead of their time, outshining von Braun and his peers. And by 1945 they were in the States, working on space travel."
Helena looked at the man who was, for all intents and purposes, her father and managed to keep her face completely neutral.
"What has any of this got to do with us?"
He smiled, a smile that seemed to speak volumes and sent a shiver down Helena's spine. Her father never used to smile like that. He had been a hard man, his war on crime and the death of her mother had made him so, but the smile of this world's version of Bruce Wayne spoke of a man whom she didn't want to have at her back.
"Patience, my dear. I promised I would tell you how this world came to be as it is and I will. Some back story is necessary for that, though."
Kara watched this stranger with the familiar face and her thoughts drifted back half an hour, the time when he had first appeared on their doorstep. His appearance alone had been a shock, but it had only gotten worse when, after his initial introduction, he had come straight to the point of his visit:
"I know you're not from around here," he had said. "I know you're from what you call a parallel world, one where history took a different turn. I also know that you've been trying to figure out what went wrong in this world, why there are no people like you around." He had looked at Diana. "Why your people were slaughtered here."
Diana had looked at him with murder in her eyes, her fingers flexing with enough strength to grind solid rock into pebbles.
"What do you know about my sisters' death, Mr. Wayne?"
He had smiled that smile then, too. "I know who did it. Would you like to know?"
The electronic equipment he had brought in his briefcase had turned out to be a laptop computer and right now he was using it to show them several different images to go along with his lecture. Kara kept her superior senses trained on his heartbeat all the time, listening for any signs that he was lying to them.
There were none. So far, anyway.
"It took JFK," he continued, "and a hideous amount of money to bring Apollo into orbit. This was only the surface, though. Apollo served as the show, the cold war glamour, our brave boys working their best to stay ahead of the evil Communists who effortlessly hurled those Sputniks into space and threatened the safety of the free world.
"The real team, the secret team, worked under the call sign Artemis. They had a model comparable to the Saturn V booster ready to go by 1959 and used it to send the first men towards the moon by 1961. That was the work, the direct cold war, striking the kind of victories only the Russians and our government would ever know about.
"The front line was being pushed farther and farther outward and the kind of finances pumped into this project are beyond anything and everything you could ever dream of. The crew for this mission was handpicked at levels far above that of the President or any other elected official. They were the best of the best, heroes, warrior kings. Arrogant, righteous, and looking to strike a blow for the American way of life.
"On June 6, 1961 Artemis-Lunar launched with a crew of four. They never made it to the moon."
Bruce paused, clicking on his laptop to bring up the picture of a man with grey temples and a severe look on his face.
"The crew: Randall Dowling, physicist, engineer, you name it, he can do it. His list of disciplines is longer than my arm and he was rated with the highest IQ ever recorded on Earth. He was the project leader and flight commander."
The next picture showed a man of roughly the same age, muscled and stoic looking.
"Jacob Greene, the pilot. He flew missions during WW2 that no one ever learned about. Considered the greatest pilot of his generation. They said there wasn't a flying vehicle he couldn't learn to handle in a matter of minutes."
Another man, younger, almost an archetype for the blonde, blue-eyed American hunk.
"William Leather, flight engineer. He has some sort of history with exotic airplane design and there was a woman in Florida who swore to her dying day that she and Leather were the last people to ride aboard the Nautilus in 1959, but I'm rather sure that one is just a rumour."
The final picture showed a woman, also blonde, with Nordic features and not a smile to be found anywhere on her face.
"Kim Süskind was the daughter of one of the Nazi brain trust. A renowned geneticist in her own right, her job was to serve as medical officer and to study the effects space travel might have on the human physique."
He clicked on the laptop again and it showed a picture of a rocket taking off.
"The launch went ahead as scheduled. Everything worked just fine. Then something happened. No one could tell exactly what it was. I have read some transcripts from the final minutes of communication before radio contact with Artemis-L was lost. Whatever it was, the crew was every bit as surprised as the people on the ground.
"For five days Artemis-L vanished from all screens. Then it returned to Earth. It seems like it whipped around the moon, much like the Apollo 13 escape trajectory. The capsule was fished out of the ocean and all four crewmembers were accounted for.
"Only the Four weren't human anymore."
He snapped the laptop shut.
"Things get hazy after that. By 1964 Artemis officially didn't exist anymore and neither did the Four. The reason is that, by that year, they were running Artemis. They'd taken over the entire operation and were using its gigantic cash flow for their own agenda.
"We know of but a few incidents since then where they were definitely involved." He turned to look at Kara. "In 1967 a UFO crash-landed near Smallville, Kansas. The Four got there first. By the time government agencies arrived there was nothing there, not even a sign of the impact crater. Nothing."
He wasn't lying. His heartbeat was steady and even. Kara's was anything but. A rocket? In 1967? Smallville, Kansas? Kal? Rao, if there was even the slightest possibility he might be alive in this world ...
"A year later they nuked a hidden city somewhere in Turkey," Bruce continued. "There were rumours that the people living there were a separate branch of humanity, one hereditarily gifted with magical powers. There were no survivors."
Diana gritted her teeth. A hidden city with magically-enabled inhabitants? She had a pretty good idea who they might have been and, if she was right, her friend and fellow Justice Leaguer Zatanna had never been born on this world.
"In 1985," Bruce now looked at Diana, "the Four, apparently through use of some magical artefacts they had acquired, found a hidden civilization in the Mediterranean. What little they learned of it spoke of advanced technology and a philosophy of peace and cooperation that went contrary to their own design. They had orbital cannons trained on the island's location and, the moment the mystical barrier keeping it hidden opened, they annihilated it."
Diana rose to her feet, her entire body shaking with fury. Kara rose as well, not sure what her friend would do in a fit of rage. After everything Diana had been through she began to fear for her sanity.
"Mr. Wayne," Diana began. "You have come here, possessing knowledge about us, and give us this story of a group of conspirators who have murdered my sisters and done Hera alone knows what to this world. How do you know all this? Why should we believe you?"
Her body language screamed that, if she didn't like his answers, she would beat him into a bloody pulp.
"I am willing to answer your questions, Ms. ... Wonder Woman, I believe? I will answer your questions, but not here. You must understand, all of you, that the Four have a chokehold on this world. For the last forty years they have done everything in their power to ensure that no force strong enough to challenge them could arise. Everyone and everything that could possibly be a threat to them has been destroyed quickly and unmercifully.
"The only reason I am here today is because I'm careful. I was reluctant to bring an unknown quantity such as yourself in on our side, but a ... friend ... convinced me that you could be of tremendous help and would consider it your duty to bring down these people."
"Who is your friend?" Kara asked. "How does he or she know us?"
"Again, not here! The Four will be looking for you, ... Supergirl, correct? Our media has already begun calling you Angel after your little escapade with the airplane. You can be sure the Four have also seen it and are currently busy using every single resource at their disposal to locate you. Every second we stay here, in the open, is a tremendous risk."
The four misplaced heroes shared a brief look.
"Give us a moment, Mr. Wayne?" Dick finally said, nodding toward the exit.
"Fine. I'll wait for two minutes and then I'm gone. Make your choice quickly!"
Once he had left Kara was the first to speak. "He wasn't lying, at least not that I could tell. It's either true or he's the best liar I've ever encountered."
"If it is true," Helena continued, "then we might be the only people on this Earth with a chance of taking on these 'Four' he was talking about."
Diana was still bristling, but a dangerous calm had entered her eyes. Like a predator who had finally caught a whiff of its prey and knew it was just a matter of time now.
"I say we follow him for now. Even if it is some kind of trap, it's better than sitting around here doing nothing. This is the first solid lead we have. I say we go in with our eyes wide open and ready for anything."
"Agreed," Kara said, her thoughts swirling around what Bruce had said earlier. A rocket in Smallville, taken by the Four. She tried to imagine an innocent baby in the hands of people like the ones Bruce had described.
It filled her with a rage almost equal to that of Diana.
TO BE CONTINUED