Biological Families

by a-delacroix

*!* COMPLETE *!* Clark, Lana, and Whitney travel to 1936 Nazi Germany to save their friends. Special Guest Stars: Dr. and Mrs. Indiana Jones and Var El of Krypton. Note: This is a sequel to 'The Portal'.

18. Biological Families Chapter 18

11/27/05

Biological Families - Chapter 18

The emergency light flickered several times before settling into a steady red glow. A few seconds later the other three emergency lights also kicked in and provided sufficient light to reveal the chaos filling the Deutschland's bridge. Cries of pain from the more seriously injured men punctuated the background noise of moans escaping from everyone else.

Chief Pilot Horst Treusch von Buttlar-Brandenfels tried, with only limited success, to suppress his own moans as he pressed himself up from the deck to a sitting position. After a couple quick breathes he grabbed the edge of the plot table and forced himself the rest of the way erect. As he stood on shaky legs, his first thought was that he was glad his head had missed the edge of the table on the way down. His mouth was full of blood from where his teeth had caught his lip, cheek, or tongue when he hit the deck, but at least he was still conscious.

As his thoughts started to come into focus, he realized the ship was still intact. The deck was level, so either the anti-gravity drive was functioning or the ship was floating in the ocean. He had made enough Atlantic crossing by ship to know the wallowing motion of a large ship at anchor in the open sea. Since he wasn't sensing it, they must still be in the air and under power.

Of course, there were no guarantees the ship could survive another hit at point blank range. He was turning to shout at the helmsman to get them clear of the Hitler's big guns when it registered he wasn't hearing anything but a loud ringing in his ears. He gave up attempting to shout directions to the helmsman and instead staggered over to the control station at his best possible speed. As he got near he could see through the dim light how all three of the men, who controlled the ship's altitude, direction, and speed, were sprawled on the floor; two were moving weakly, but one was definitely out cold.

Buttlar-Brandenfels reached the controls and gently eased the altitude control lever up a notch, not wanting to risk overstressing the drive system. All of the displays for altitude and airspeed were down, but he could feel the acceleration without them. Fortunately, the Deutschland was turning out to be as tough as it looked.

The next person to reach the control station was Admiral Falle. As Buttlar-Brandenfels motioned for the admiral to take over the altitude controls while he moved over to the helm controls, he couldn't help but notice how the two oldest men on the bridge were the first ones to recover and get back into action. But then the Great War had ended almost eighteen years earlier and most of the others of the bridge crew probably had barely been out of diapers then. He had been under fire on several occasions and from reading his public record, he knew Falle had been too. Sometimes, experience did matter.

However it wasn't more than thirty seconds later when some of the other men began returning to their posts. And about the same time Buttlar-Brandenfels noticed the worst of the ringing in his ears was starting to subside.

"Horst, I need a ship's status, now!" shouted Falle.

Buttlar-Brandenfels nodded and then looked over to communications desk. Smoke was curling out of the back of the console as he watched the two men stationed there work frantically to get the front panel off. It was going to be at least a few minutes before the internal phone system would be back on-line.

Quickly, Buttlar-Brandenfels waved over the nearest enlisted man. "Jennings, break out the backup portable radios. Then send runners to the engineering deck and the main gun decks to ensure they switch to the portable radios, too."

By force of habit, Jennings snapped off a quick salute before dashing off to set things in motion.

Buttlar-Brandenfels knew the man would do his duty, but at least for a few minutes finding out the ship's status was out of his hands. With nothing better to do while he waited, he strode over to the controls for the nearest periscope. Thankfully, these controls seemed to work and as the eyepiece lowered into position he could only hope its counterpart was rising from the upper surface of the central sphere. This periscope was located forward and to port of the main upper gun turret. It wouldn't provide a three hundred sixty degree view of their surrounds, but it was better than nothing.

Almost before it had stopped lowering into position, he thrust his face up to the eyepiece. At first all he saw was blue, but at least it was not the black of the periscope's protective sleeve. He quickly swiveled around but couldn't see anything but a lot of blue sky, a little blue water, and even more brilliant red paint from the seemingly endless upper hull of the saucer section. He had long wondered about the effectiveness of these periscopes during the ship's construction. And now he had his answer – they were practically worthless in their current position. With the broad sweeping hull of the saucer section, he couldn't see anything on the water's surface closer than ten kilometers. If they were going to be of any value in situations like this, they would need to be somehow positioned at the outer edge of the saucer section with their light output then relayed by mirrors to here on the bridge. Of course, for close in situations like this one with the Hitler, they really needed something similar located on the lower surface of the ship. Suddenly, he found himself wishing they had something like a real time movie camera that could send pictures from anywhere on the outer hull.

Buttlar-Brandenfels shook his head; he had definitely spent too much time on the alien's ship. He needed to focus on the tools they had rather than daydreaming about things they did not. Besides they had fought many wars before with spotters, observers, and runners, they could do it again this time, too.

As he straightened from his position at the periscope's eyepiece, the admiral was approaching from one direction while a crewman ran up from another with the portable radio. Although backpack radio would be a more descriptive title, thought Buttlar-Brandenfels.

When he was within reach, the crewman thrust the handset to the chief pilot.

"Go ahead, this is the bridge," said Buttlar-Brandenfels into the radio.

"Sir, this is Ensign Krause, the third engineer. The worst of the damage is on the port side of the lower sphere. Most of the power in that area of the ship is down. We are definitely not getting power to the port side battery and I don't know if those guns are damaged. We are getting power to the starboard lower turret, the upper turret and the ammo delivery mechanism. However I don't have any direct information on the status of those guns either."

"Status of the anti-grav drive, ensign?" asked the pilot.

"Everything appears to be fully functional, but we won't know for certain until chief engineer Sheffer completes his inspection."

"Very good, ensign. I expect another status report in five minutes. Bridge out."

Buttlar-Brandenfels handed the handset back to the radio operator with instructions to try and reach the starboard and upper turret control rooms. Then, as he was turning back to Admiral Falle to impart the gist of the engineer's message, the main lights for the bridge flicked back on.

"Sir, the power is down on the port side of the ship. Power is reaching the starboard and upper main batteries, but I haven't received word yet whether the guns themselves are operational."

As he waited for the admiral to respond, Buttlar-Brandenfels took in the nasty gash gracing Falle's left temple. Under the red emergency lights it had simply looked like a dark smudge. But now with the lights restored the vivid red of blood was obvious. The way his tongue hurt made Buttlar-Brandenfels wondered if his mouth was dripping blood as badly as the admiral's temple.

"Horst, this certainly proves the situation on the Hitler is as bad as the message which sent us out here indicated. Whatever is going on down there, we have to stop it. I am going to go look into the gun situation personally. While I am gone, I want you to get the ship into firing position. Now, assuming both the starboard and the upper guns turn out to be operational, which is the better choice for a counterattack?"

Buttlar-Brandenfels only needed a moment to mull the situation over. "I would recommend the starboard battery, sir. With the upper guns we will have to move off a significant distance and lob projectiles at them. And based on what was said earlier, we would have to be down at sea-level to achieve any accuracy. Being down at sea-level would seem to nullify our advantages, because if we are sitting at sea-level, the Hitler's shots are going to be just as accurate as ours and it would be their eight guns against our two.

"However if we use the starboard guns, we can stay in reasonably close and fire down at them. It should be easier for us to hit them by firing down than for them to hit us firing up. It's like my 'strategy and tactics' instructor back at the academy always said – 'you want to control the high ground'."

Falle nodded. "I went to a navel academy rather than one associate with the army, but I am familiar with the 'high ground' concept. Okay, I am headed for the starboard gun emplacement. Get us lined up for a shot. And try to find a position from which we can more easily hit them than they us."

As the admiral turn to leave, Buttlar-Brandenfels called out one last recommendation. "SIR! Stop by the storage area and get another radio in case theirs is not working."

Falle waved an acknowledgement and then grabbed one of the radio techs on his way out.

Buttlar-Brandenfels found himself wondering whether his assistant pilot, Erwin Prochnow, had survived the initial attack. He had been down at the lowest level of the central sphere providing directions as they had made their final approach on the Hitler. They hadn't been particularly close and it wasn't personal concern for the man that brought him to mind. No, Buttlar-Brandenfels' mind was strictly focused on the situation at hand. It would definitely improve the odds if someone on the lower hull was available to help with the coordination of their flight path and could provide ranging information for their shots.

His first choice for that dual job would be Prochnow, but until he heard if the man was still alive and functional, he would have to settle for someone else. One of the gunnery chiefs was the logical choice. Hurriedly, he dispatched more runners to the port and upper gun emplacements to locate one of the appropriate men and get them repositioned down in the lower hull.

- + - - +

It felt like it had taken at least thirty minutes of hard work to get them in position for their first shot at the Hitler, but when Buttlar-Brandenfels checked the clock, he saw it had really been less than five minutes. Extreme excitement, just as much as extreme boredom, seemed able to bring time to a halt.

"Fire," he heard Chief Gunnery officer Klaus Tauber order across the radio link from his observation position near the bottom of the lower half of the central sphere. Not from the actual bottom level of the sphere, but rather from one level up. Much of the damage from the Hitler's first salvo had been localized to the lowest level. Unfortunately, the assistant pilot and fourteen other men, who had been in the compartment from which the commandos had so recently departed the vessel, were all dead. Two large, three-meter wide holes had punched through the seventy centimeter thick hull. One of these had severely damaged one of the three large landing struts. Landing at the end of this mission was going to be a problem; assuming they survived the mission.

Buttlar-Brandenfels was tempted to cross his fingers as the jolt from the weapons' discharge was felt through the deck of the bridge. With almost no experience with the anti-grav drive, there was no telling what additional shock would be its undoing. And he tried really hard not to think about the consequences if the anti-grav failed at their current thousand meter height. The ship would drop like a giant stone and the impact with the water would be about the same as hitting solid rock.

"One hit just forward of the fantail and one miss," reported Tauber. "Increase speed by one knot and fire again when ready."

Buttlar-Brandenfels relayed the instruction to the crewman at the speed controls. Then there was nothing more for him to do but wait for the next salvo or a response from the Hitler. It was a stroke of luck that the Deutschland could depress its lower guns two degrees more than the Hitler could elevate its guns. This left a narrow arc where the Deutschland could hit its opponent without them hitting back. As long as the Hitler stayed on a straight course and they ran on a parallel one, things would be okay. But it shouldn't take whoever was in control of the Hitler long to grasp the situation and change to a zigzag course. Then it would probably be impossible to stay in the tiny sweet spot and the advantage might swing back to the Hitler with its more numerous guns. They were certainly going to have a lot of suggestions for improvements and upgrades when they got back to the base. But then the battleship had had seventy years worth of improvements since the first ironclads had been used during the American Civil War whereas this first flying battleship had only seen thirty minutes of operation and five minutes of combat.

Twenty-five seconds after its opening salvo, the starboard turret fired again. They hadn't quite achieved their rated firing interval of eighteen seconds, but not bad under the circumstances, thought Buttlar-Brandenfels.

"Two hits just aft of the superstructure," reported Tauber. "I am seeing significant black smoke."

Buttlar-Brandenfels heard cheering coming from the comm-station where another portable radio was set up. He felt a moment of elation himself before Tauber continued.

"Wait. The Hitler is turning hard to port and the smoke I am seeing may not be from our shells. . . Shit!"

At this extremely short range, it only took several seconds from Tauber's shout of exclamation from seeing the flash of the Hitler's big aft guns until one of its shells detonated against the already damaged lower sphere.

This time they were more prepared and the thousand meter range rather than fifty meter range must have helped or perhaps it was being hit by only one projectile rather than four. Whatever the cause, the lights only flickered briefly on the bridge and no one was thrown to the deck.

Tauber's voice was suddenly a lot shakier, but he was still able to do his job. "Bridge - turn twenty-five degrees to port. Guns – raise angle four degrees and fire in ten seconds."

Tauber had been chosen for the Deutschland because he was one of the three best gunnery chiefs in the fleet; the other two were manning the starboard and upper turrets. Buttlar-Brandenfels hoped that was going to be good enough. Then he wondered if the fourth through seventh best were onboard the Hitler. And if they were, why were they helping whoever had taken over the ship? The report had said two women had taken control of the ship, but they could hardly being running the ship and firing the guns all by themselves. So who was helping them? And why?

- - + - - + -

Major Biberach not only felt the great battleship shudder, but heard the explosion and subsequent ripping and tearing of metal the second time it was hit. This time it had been a lot worse and closer than the first time. That one had been far enough away it wasn't much worse than when the battleship fired a broadside with all eight main guns. But this time it had thrown all three of them to the deck and based on the ongoing secondary explosions there was no question what it was. This attack had to be in response to their call for help. And now it was time for them to do their part.

"Hein, it is time for our diversion. Get that door open now," ordered Biberach, as he scrambled back to his feet.

In the eight minutes since the blowtorch had first burned through the door near the upper hinge, that blowtorch had nearly completed its task. A second torch had flared through the door near the lower hinge four minutes later and was now about halfway through the task of cutting out its target.

Hein stepped up to the door and reached for the twisted handle. Just before he started to bend it back into the position required to unlatch the door, Frenkel tapped his shoulder. Once he had Hein's attention, Frenkel used hand gestures to indicate Hein should stand to the side as he unlatched the door. Then Frenkel would take a running start and smash the door open. Hopefully with the weakened latches he would be able to rip the door loose and use it as a projectile to take out some of the men waiting outside.

For a moment a memory of how they had used similar tactics back at the hotel in Berlin to snatch Mrs. Jones and the others flashed through Hein's mind. He immediately tried to suppress that particular memory. He had thought about it too much already over the past couple of days. And frequently he had ended up wishing the door at the hotel had withstood their attack. Only terribly bad things seemed to have resulted from grabbing Marion Jones and that fucking girl, Lana Lang.

Quickly, Hein forced his attention back to the situation at hand, nodded his agreement with Frenkel's plan, and stepped to the side before putting his hand back on the door handle. When Frenkel had stepped back four paces and nodded he was ready, Hein used his incredible enhanced strength to rip the heavy iron handle completely off of the door.

Almost before the handle came free, Frenkel was using every ounce of energy his powerful legs could develop to drive himself at the door. Three hard strides and he lowered his right shoulder and slammed it into the door. With a screech that seemed even louder than the impact of the giant projectiles which had been hitting the ship, the remaining bits of steel holding the door in place tore free.

Frenkel's momentum and still driving legs pushed the thick, gray door into the corridor in much the same way the linemen pushed the practice tackle sled in American-style football. The engineering crews working on the door were quickly smashed out of the way. Only one of the armed crewmen managed to get off a shot with his carbine before Frenkel and his door were among them. And unfortunately for Frenkel and Hein's opponents, all the single bullet managed to do was ricochet off the door and take down one of their own men.

And then it was too late for guns. Frenkel tossed the door at the largest group of armed men. It smashed into them, knocking most of them to the floor, and pinning three of them under its three hundred kilo weight.

While the door was still sailing through the air, Frenkel was already moving to the nearest man still standing. Grabbing him, Frenkel tossed him hard at the next largest group of armed men.

As Frenkel swept his gaze around looking for any other armed men, as they were the only ones who posed a serious danger, he found Hein already tearing into the last group of three men. And so, in less then five seconds, all ten armed men were out of commission.

By the time Biberach stepped out into the corridor five seconds later, all their remaining opponents were also scattered on the floor – unconscious, dying, or already dead. Biberach paused to take in the carnage. Of their opposition only Marion Jones remained on her feet where she stood cowering with her back pressed firmly up against an exposed I-beam.

Biberach had hoped their sudden attack might have caught their primary opponent, the girl Lana Lang, off guard, but he saw no hint of her body among the casualties scattered on the floor.

With only one source of information currently available, Biberach marched over to Marion Jones and grabbed her arm, using the motion to take out at least a small portion of the frustration which had been building up in him over the past few hours.

"Where is the girl, Mrs. Jones?" He demanded without preamble.

Marion's heart was still pounding madly from the Nazis' sudden attack. She stared down into the face of this little man who had so viciously gunned down Lana's friend Whitney back at the chateau. And she was almost startled to realize she was less afraid of him or what he might do to her than she was of her supposed ally, Laura. He could hurt her or even kill her, but the girl could mess directly with her mind. And if she was so inclined, Laura could even torture her to death and then heal her and start all over again.

Marion couldn't suppress the shudder which ran through her body. Biberach might think it was in reaction to her fear of him, but he would have been wrong.

"The last I saw of her, I think she was headed towards the bridge," gasped Marion.

Before Biberach could respond, the Hitler heeled over at nearly a twenty degree angle as it executed a hard turn. Then almost before the ship had straightened back out, the aft main guns launched another salvo.

As soon as the noise damped out, Frenkel grabbed Biberach's free arm.

"Major, we are not doing any good standing around here. Besides, this is the first place they are going to come looking for us."

Biberach glanced briefly at Marion Jones before nodding. "We need to proceed to the bridge. Frenkel, you take point. Hein, watch the rear. Let's move."

"I wouldn't go there, if I were you," stated Marion with a calmness in her voice which surprised even her. When the others paused to look at her, she continued. "Whatever you think she is, she is way more powerful than that. She has gained control over most of the crew of the ship. And I mean complete control, I have seen it myself. Every single one of those men will gladly give his life for her. And if she touches you, you will become her slave, too."

Frenkel took in the expression in Mrs. Jones' face. At first he assumed she was just trying to delay them to give the girl more time to complete whatever plans she was working on. But her words and expression sank in; the woman was afraid of what the girl was doing. Really afraid. When he and the Major had been on the bridge earlier, they had witnessed the blood ceremony the girl had been performing. And he remembered the expression on the kneeling man's face; that man would definitely give his life for the girl. Was that what was in store for them? If they were forced to fight against the girl without some significant advantage, he suspected they might lose. But he had never considered what the girl could do to them in that situation. A chill ran down his spine as he contemplated becoming a slave who would have no choice but doing her bidding. Perhaps instead of trying to find the girl, they should be using this time to escape from this ship.

But before Frenkel could voice his concern, Biberach selected their course.

"Nice try, Mrs. Jones. However we have our duty to the Fatherland to consider. Your friend must be stopped before she can return to Germany. And we can't do that by cowering in some corner. No, the only way we can ensure she is stopped is by aiding those who are attacking this ship. Therefore we need to get to the bridge. So, move!"

Biberach savagely twisted Marion's arm to get her moving and then the party headed in the direction of the bridge.

- - + - - + - - +

Clark pushed open the large door which provided the exit to the hangar in which Var's ship had sat for the past two years. The hangar had, in fact, been built around the spot where the massive ship had crashed to earth and the door had yet to serve its primary function.

The door had been equipped with a large pair of electric motors, but Clark in his hurry hadn't taken the time to locate their controls. And even if he had found them, he didn't think he would have had the patience to wait as they slowly opened the wide door. Besides it had almost been a pleasure to have a large inanimate object on which he could vent some of his fury. It had been a long couple of days since Lana and Marion had been abducted, but at last their return was almost in sight.

When Clark had the doors all the way open, he turned and looked at the ship. He had expected the symbols engraved onto its surface to be glowing incandescently by now as a sign the ship was powering up. However he quickly remembered he was still functioning in 'speed-mode' and doubtlessly Var would have had to drop back to normal time to use the controls.

Clark raced back over to the ship and up the boarding ramp. At the top of the ramp he spent a 'speed-mode' minute studying the controls. Then he dropped out of 'speed-mode' long enough to press the switch which looked most likely to retract the gangway. After a couple of seconds his guess was confirmed by the beginning of the retraction cycle. He only waited a few more seconds to ensure the gangway was withdrawing properly before resuming his 'speed-mode' dash to the upper control room.

He flew up the grav-shaft and landed lightly on the deck of the command level. He did a quick glance around the room to ensure none of his companions were looking in his direction before dropping out of 'speed-mode'.

None of the others were looking in his direction, as he found them all clustered around the elevated command chair where Var was sitting. The travelogue style tour of Krypton, which had been displaying on the inner surface of the dome when he and Var had made the run outside to see what power source had registered on their senses, was gone. In its place most of the dome now seemed to be transparent, as most of the display was filled with the dark and gloomy view of the interior of the hangar and the parts of the base visible through the open hangar door in the predawn light.

The one portion of the dome not showing the interior of the hangar was instead showing a map of the area similar to the one which had been displaying on the wall in Var's cabin during his and Clark's aborted conversation. Only now, in addition to a red X at the location from Biberach's radio message, it was also showing a blinking symbol slowly moving across the map that could only be the warship they had just watched depart. As he watched, he could see the warship was arcing off to the east rather than taking the most direct path to the point referenced in the radio message. Clark tried to guess what they were up to.

Had the message been in code? Immediately a scene from the second Star Trek movie, 'The Wrath of Khan' had flashed through his head. It was the scene where Kirk and Spock explained to Saavik that when the enemy was monitoring your transmissions, 'by the book' you were supposed to use code – like saying days, but meaning hours. Had Biberach and the Nazis been doing something similar? Was the ship's true position off-set by a predetermined number of degrees to the east?

Hurriedly, Clark strode over to the command chair arriving just as Var was climbing back down.

"What's happening?" asked Clark. "Why isn't the ship powering up?"

"We are having a small problem, but I think I know what it is," stated Var. "It should only take a couple of minutes to fix."

"Do we have a couple of minutes?" asked Clark while raising an eyebrow that he hoped Var would correctly interpret as saying 'it would be nice to take the ship and the others, but if there wasn't time the two of us should just fly to save Lana and Marion'.

Var gave a small nod of his head to indicate he understood Clark's unspoken message. Then he turned and looked at the map for a moment.

"I think we have time. The other ship we saw is not proceeding very fast. This has to be the first time they powered up it up or I would have known. It looks to me like they aren't expecting pursuit and are moving slowly to give themselves time to shake out any glitches."

Then Var paused for a moment and switched to the voice he used to communicate with his ship. "SHIP – how long until the ship you are tracking reaches the indicated spot?"

"AT THEIR CURRENT SPEED, THEY SHOULD REACH THE TARGET IN TWENTY-SIX MINUTES."

"Why aren't they heading directly to the spot on the map?" asked Clark. "Could the location given in the radio message have been a decoy?"

Var's brow furrowed for a moment as though he was deep in thought. Then his face relaxed as he responded. "I don't think so. It will be dawn about the time the ship reaches the location from the message. I think whoever is in command of that ship is trying to approach out of the sun to allow them to see their target before the target sees them. At least that would be the logical strategy since these Germans don't have 'Lumix'. Hmm, what is the earth term for long range sensors operating in the short wavelength portion of the electro-magnetic range?"

Clark reflected on Var's interpretation of the Germans' strategy for a moment and decided it was consistent what he remembered from a lot of old movies about the air war during the Second World War. They did always talking about flying 'out of the sun'. While he was lost in thought, he almost absent-mindedly answered Var's question with the word – 'Radar'.

Var was heading towards the grav-shaft as he responded to Clark's original question. "So, anyway, you can see we have plenty of time. Without pushing my ship too hard, we can cover the distance from here to the target in less than two minutes. Therefore we have a good twenty minutes to get my ship running before we need to leave."

At the entrance to the grav-shaft, Var paused and turned back to the others who were still clustered around the command chair. "Please wait here. And don't touch any of the controls unless I request it."

Then Var quickly disappeared down the dark shaft.

- + - - + - - +

Unfortunately, Var's estimate of the time to solve the problem with his ship turned out to be optimistic. Over twenty-three minutes passed before he finally reached them over the ship's intercom.

"This is Var. I have finally figured out what the problem is and I should be finished in about five more minutes. What is the status of Germans' flying ship?"

Clark looked once more at the map being displayed on the inner surface of the dome. Although it was hardly necessary, it didn't seem like his eyes had left it for more than ten seconds at a time since Var had left the command level.

"It is just like you predicted, they are arcing back to the west and have now almost reached the spot indicated in the radio message. I would guess they will be in sight of the target in less than two minutes. If we are going to get there in time, we have to hurry."

"I will do my best," answered Var with extra emphasis on the last word to indicate to Clark he was using his 'special' gifts to get the job completed as swiftly as possible. Then he signed off with a simple "Var, out."

Clark drummed his fingers against the armrest of the command chair as he watched Whitney restlessly pace the length of the command deck. This time when his path took him back to where Clark and the others stood, he asked the question which was on all of their minds.

"Exactly what are we going to do when we get out there?"

Clark began with the obvious. "We are going to rescue Lana and Marion." Then it struck home what else they were going to have to do; they had to come up with a way to destroy the giant flying weapon the Germans had created by copying the design of Var's ship. The history books had never indicated the Nazis had such a device, so it had to be eliminated, but how?

The thing was outfitted with guns that looked to be straight from a battleship. And if their drive system was capable of lifting those massive guns, it probably had a hull that was many inches thick just like Var's ship, too. If Var's ship didn't have any weapons, that just left his abilities. Could he possibly be a match for that great ship? It had to be a hundred, maybe a thousand times the weight of the giant obelisk he had tossed back in ancient Rome.

Clark experienced a moment of doubt. But then he forced himself to give a small positive nod of the head, he would find a way, he had too.

Looking at Whitney, he continued. "After getting the girls, we are going to have to deal with this ship the Germans have built."

He and Clark had had enough conversations since this adventure had begun about the importance of protecting the timeline that Whitney immediately understood Clark's comment. He just hoped, with all of the high tech stuff stashed away in this ship that Var had a solution to the potential time paradox the Germans' flying copy posed.

"Clark, if the Germans' ship has the same drive system as Var's ship, do you think it can travel to other planets, too?"

Clark stared at Whitney for a moment. That thought had never occurred to him. If they failed to stop the Nazis, they could use ships like the one they had already built to not only conquer the earth, but possibly expand out into the galaxy. If they enslaved the whole planet and turned it into slave labor like they had done to so much of Europe during the Second World War, they could churn out those ships by the thousands.

Clark shrugged. "I don't know. We will have to ask Var. But can you imagine letting the Nazis run loose with that technology?"

Whitney nodded. He only had Lana's description of how viscously that Nazi, Biberach, had killed him, but it was enough to provide proof of what they were capable of.

"Perhaps your Vulcan friends can help," interjected Indy.

Clark felt a hysterical laugh trying to make its way to the surface. He had almost forgotten the cover story he had been feeding Indy about the crashed alien spaceship and the United Federation of Planets. If only it was true and the Enterprise was about to come warping in to save the day. But the solution wasn't going to be phasers; his speed, strength, and heat vision would have to suffice.

"Spock is currently in America and I don't know what he could do to help even if he was here. And we haven't yet received any response to the Mayday signal we have sent to his people. It could be months or years. No, Hank, we need to stop these Germans today and it will be up to us."

Indy was slowly nodding as Var reappeared at the top of the grav-shaft.

Var was moving at just short of a 'normal-mode' run as he crossed over to the command chair and then quickly dropped into the seat. Between flipping a few switches and issuing short verbal commands to the ship's brain, he commented. "I don't understand it, I tried four replacement . . . ah, capacitors in the control interface to the anti-grav system. All of them failed within three seconds of applying a load. Finally, I had to steal one from the backup life-support system to get things working."

"Where did you get these 'replacement' parts?" asked Whitney.

"Oh, the Germans fabricated them for me. Why?" responded Var.

"Ah, I thought so."

Var looked up from the control panel which had been holding his attention as the anti-grav drive system finally started to power up. "I don't understand. The part wasn't that difficult to fabricate using current technology. Why do you think it matters that it was the Germans who fabricated this particular part?"

Whitney shook his head. Despite all of his advanced scientific knowledge, Var didn't seem to understand the Nazis at all. And that was after living among them for two years. "Var, the Nazis have no incentive to let you go until they have sucked every bit of technical knowledge from you that they can. Oh, they might let you appear to be making progress towards getting your ship operational, but they will never let you be successful. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised, if they left a few other 'booby-traps' scattered in other components buried throughout your ship."

Var glanced over at Clark, who shrugged briefly and then nodded his head slowly to indicate he agreed with Whitney's assessment.

Var hadn't ever considered the situation before from the Germans' perspective. He had thought the few parts they had helped fabricate would have only made a modest impact on the level of their technological capabilities. He never would have dreamed they had gleaned enough information from him or his ship to have built their own ship in a mere two years. Suddenly, the logic of Whitney's statement was obvious. And when he thought about it, the Germans had been involved in recreating a surprisingly large array of parts.

"SHIP – develop a list of all the parts the Germans have fabricated. Rank them by which ones will have the most detrimental impact on the safe operation of the ship. Then evaluate if we can cannibalize replacement parts from non-essential systems the Germans haven't touched."

"Working," responded the ship.

Before the ship could respond further to Var's instructions, they all felt the slight shifting in the gravity field which indicated the drive was coming on line. This sensation was quickly followed by a faint whine and then by the much louder metallic thud of the three main struts retracting into the hull.

Immediately most of Var's attention was back on the controls as the ship began easing out of the hangar. A hangar, Var quickly realized, which had been as much a prison cell for him as a place to repair his ship. Why hadn't he followed through on his original main goal of finding a refuge for his family and all of the other citizens of Krypton? Had the Germans been manipulating him since the very beginning?

Focus, thought Var, as he found he was chastising himself for all of the wasted time. There would be time for self-incriminations later.

The sun had just cleared the horizon as the ship moved out of the hanger. The seemly transparent dome of the command level made it feel like they were standing in the center of a metallic bronze platform. The only thing missing was the feeling of wind rushing passed their bodies as the ship accelerated up and away from the German base.

In only seconds Wegthor's Shadow was clearing the coastline. It could have been accelerating much harder, but Var was being careful to keep it down to a level his human guests could easily handle.

"SHIP, how long until we reach the target?" asked Var.

"WE WILL REACH THE TARGET LOCATION IN THRE . . ." began the Ship's brain when abruptly its voice was cut off by a blaring alarm and a cascade of purple warning lights on the command chair's control panels.

It only took a brief glance for Var to recognize the problem and understand they had just been the recipients of another little present from the Germans. Oh, the ship wasn't going to blow up, but it would come crashing back down to the ground very hard in less than ten seconds. Or in this case, crashing into the ocean. Obviously, whoever had come up with latest method of sabotage had timed it carefully. They just hadn't expected Var to go barreling out of the hangar in quite this much of a rush.

Once more Var was forced to jump down from the command chair and rush to the exit in route to some hasty repairs. But this time he was going to need some help if he was to be in time to save his ship from destruction.

"Clark, with me," Var yelled as he dived into the grav-shaft.

Clark looked from Whitney, Indy, and Gretchen, and then to flashing lights all over the controls before heading to the grav-shaft at just short of superspeed, at least until he was out of sight of the others.

Once he was in the grav-shaft, Clark shifted into speed-mode and accelerated down the shaft. Halfway down the shaft he saw light leaking into the shaft from a level which had never been lit during his previous passages through the shaft. Assuming this is where Var had gone; Clark dropped out of the grav-shaft and landed lightly on the deck, although he stayed in speed-mode. He guessed from all of the warnings going off that time was of the essence.

Quickly scanning the area, he saw heavy equipment everywhere. This level, located in the center of the ship, was obviously part of the drive system of the great ship. Finally, Clark saw Var near the end of one of the long passages which headed out radially from the centrally located grav-shaft at even thirty degree intervals. As he ran to where he could see Var, Clark realized the passage was way too long to stay within the confines of the central sphere and must extend a good distance out into the surrounding saucer section.

When he reached Var, he found Var was also operating in 'speed-mode'. He watched as Var ripped through a two inch thick metal wall with his bare hands. Apparently, there wasn't time for normal access procedures, whatever they might be.

As Var stepped through the newly created opening, he glanced at Clark. "Clark, follow me."

Clark did as Var asked and found himself in a long narrow passage which was almost completely filled with a giant cylindrical shaft at least five feet in diameter. The passage was coated with dust as though it hadn't been accessed in many years.

Var had squeezed to the left upon entering and instructed Clark to move to the right. Then as Clark watched he saw Var was concentrating his heat vision on one local spot on the shaft. When the spot had gone from orange to yellow to incandescent white, Var slammed the fingers of his left hand straight into the molten metal. Immediately he turned his heat vision on another spot eight inches to the right and a foot higher up.

"Clark, start burning handholds into the shaft. We are going to have to spin it up manually."

Clark was still staring at where Var's fingers were jammed into the cylinder. In 'speed-mode' the metal surrounding them was still glowing an impossible white hot. Could his fingers really survive exposure to molten metal?

"Clark, do it now!" commanded Var.

Var's powerful voice shook Clark from his reverie and he turned his own heat vision against the shaft. While he was waiting for the first spot to reach a white-hot state, he asked. "What does this shaft do?"

"The power source for the ship is self-sustaining, once it is brought up to speed. But the first time it is started, external power is required to initiate the system. This shaft is driven by an external power source during the initial startup sequence. After that, it is almost never needed again. So it just sits here."

Var paused a moment as he completed his second handhold. Then he used his incredible strength to slowly rotate the shaft until he was in position to start burning a third handhold in line with the first.

"Under normal circumstances it can't generate sufficient power to run the anti-grav system by itself, rather it just supplies enough supplemental power to initialize the system. But then, in normal operations it is limited to a maximum speed of about two thousand revolutions per minute. I think if we can get it up to a hundred twenty thousand revolutions per minute, it should be able to generate enough power to keep the anti-grav system online."

The initial spot Clark had been working on reached white-hot. He took a deep breath and then followed Var's example and jammed his fingers into the molten metal. Surprisingly, it didn't feel much different from the scalding hot water his Mom used while doing the dishes. He was thankful it didn't feel like his skin was being burned off down to the bones.

Experimentally, he used his fingers to try to rotate the shaft. It took a lot of effort, but slowly it began to turn. Then he felt Var add his own effort and the shaft started turning a little faster and easier.

"Keep at it, Clark," directed Var.

Clark turned his attention to burning his second handhold while Var was already working on his fourth.

"So, are we going to fly all the way out to the ship by manually powering the anti-grav system?" asked Clark.

"Not we, Clark. You. The Germans sabotaged another component necessary to transfer power from the generator to anti-grav mechanism. I need to disconnect the power source to replace it. You will need to keep the ship from crashing while I work."

Clark remembered the massively thick hull they had seen down at the entrance to the ship. How much did this ship weigh? How much power did it take to keep it suspended thousands of feet up in the air? What if he couldn't do it?

Clark felt the power shaft spin a little faster under his hands as Var finished his current handhold and rotated the shaft to work on his next. Quickly Clark turned his attention back to the task of burning his own handholds. If Var thought he could do this, he would try his best not to disappoint the older man.

To distract his mind while he worked, Clark asked. "These Nazis are incredibly dark, vile men. It is very scary to think they have access to this kind of technology. Can they use their ship to reach other star systems? Because Nazis with interstellar drive technology is one of the scariest things I can imagine."

"I don't think they have access. The anti-grav drive and the interstellar drive are two completely different systems. Only my anti-grav system was damaged during my trip here, so I only gave items related to it to the Germans for assistance. So they shouldn't have had access to the interstellar drive. However I never would have guessed they would have been able to create an operational anti-grav system either. So I will have to investigate the interstellar system carefully before I use it as well."

Clark let out a small sigh of relief. He didn't understand why it seemed so important that the Nazis couldn't reach the stars. Did it have something to do with Krypton? He had no personal memories of Krypton, so why did he suddenly feel so protective of it?

For the next few 'speed-mode' minutes the two men worked in silence, each lost in his thoughts. Finally, they completed the task of creating finger-holds around the entire circumference of the solid metal shaft.

"Okay, Clark, let's see if we can get this thing up to speed."

Together they started spinning the shaft faster and faster. Clark felt like he was moving his arms as fast as he possibly could, but it didn't seem like it would be enough. As he worked, he tried running the numbers through his head. One hundred twenty thousand revolutions per minute equaled two thousand revolutions per second. He had created fifteen hand-holds around the circumference, so he needed to do thirty thousand hand motions per second. Thirty thousand?

That's when the solution hit him. It wasn't about moving his arms faster, it was about moving deeper into 'speed-mode' just like during the destruction of the chateau where he was moving so fast that what felt like twenty-four hours to him was less than a second in 'real' time.

So with that thought in mind, Clark slowed his arms to a more comfortable pace while simultaneously accelerating his special 'speed-mode' ability for a significant net increase in the speed of the shaft.

Steadily the two men worked to accelerate the massive shaft. As he pushed the limits of his 'speed-mode' capabilities further and further, Clark wondered how Var would know when they had reached the required speed. In this tight, enclosed space with no visible frame of reference, Clark had no idea whether the shaft was spinning at four thousand RPM, forty thousand RPM, or even four hundred thousand RPM. But whether Var was using some special Kryptonian equipment which functioned in speed mode, or knowledge of this location which permitted him to estimate the shaft's speed, or maybe his 'Purl Nous' experience gave him the equivalent of ESP, he eventually informed Clark the shaft was going at the required speed.

"So, Clark, can you hold the shaft at this speed while I go make the repair?"

Clark felt the shaft spinning under the pressure from his fingers. It took a lot of effort to keep the shaft humming at its current speed, but that wasn't the hardest part. No, keeping himself this deep into 'speed-mode' was the real drain on his stamina.

"Yeah, I think so," replied Clark.

"Okay, then I 'm going to stop helping," said Var.

Steadily the amount of effort Clark was expending increased until Var sat with his hands resting in his lap.

Once Var had some confidence Clark would be able to maintain the pace, he slowly moved to the exit he had torn through the wall earlier. As he moved, he paused at the threshold and looked back at Clark.

"Oh, and Clark, the shaft is in a 'free-spinning mode' at the moment. When I tie it into anti-grav system so I can do the repairs, the resistance of the shaft is going to increase. Good luck."

Now he tells me, thought Clark, as he sat there trapped into being a human dynamo to power the entire massive ship.

For what felt like an hour Clark sat there spinning the shaft without any noticeable change. He was starting to wonder if Var had needed to drop all the way down to 'normal-mode' to perform the repair. If that was the case, it might seem like days from his perspective before anything happened. Just as the thought settled in, was when the change occurred. Over the relatively brief period of three rotations of the shaft, the level of effort required to maintain the shaft's speed seemed to increase by an order of magnitude. Now it was not just the mental strain he was feeling from holding himself so far into 'speed-mode', but physical strain as well.

He experimented with moving even a little deeper into 'speed-mode' to see if it would help. It did allow him to move his arms at a perceptively slower pace, but it did nothing to decrease the effort it took to keep the shaft in motion.

Gamely, Clark continued to rotate the shaft at the same incredible speed. After what felt like another hour from his accelerated perspective, he noticed that the passageway seemed to be getting slowly brighter. As he looked down along the length of the shaft, he noticed a faint orange glow. After another hour, the glow was distinctly brighter and seemed to be emanating along the length of the shaft. At the same time he also realized the metal inside the handholds was starting to feel a little spongy. And was it getting a little warmer, too? Could his actions be causing this effect?

With nothing better to do, Clark tried to run some math in his head. It was not easy and he had to round off a lot of the numbers. If the shaft was five feet in diameter, then its circumference would be roughly fifteen feet. Fifteen feet times one hundred twenty thousand revolutions per minute meant a spot on the surface of the shaft was moving one million eight hundred thousand feet per minute. Approximating a mile as five thousand feet converted the number to three hundred sixty miles per minute. Finally, multiplying by sixty minutes per hour came up with a surface speed of over twenty thousand miles per hour or roughly thirty times the speed of sound.

Clark remembered this was in the ballpark of the speed at which the shuttle re-entered the atmosphere. And the leading edges of the shuttle glowed white hot during re-entry. Was the whole shaft going to turn white hot, too? Or would it reach some equilibrium state before that? In the real world only a fraction of a second had passed since they had started to seriously spin the massive shaft. Hopefully, Var would finish his work and Clark could stop spinning the shaft before it really had time to heat up.

Clark's attention went back to his recently completed math problem. It hadn't really been that hard, but it had pressed his limits for number-crunching without a calculator or at least pencil and paper. From what Var had said, Clark figured if he ever managed to complete the 'Purl Nous' procedure, math problems like this would truly become child's play.

Of course, from what Chloe had explained about her 'bot system, she would barely have to think about a problem like this and the 'bots incredible computational powers would instantly provide the answer, almost like magic.

Then it struck him that since discovering Var and his ship, he had hardly thought about Chloe at all. And she was the whole reason he was back here in Nazi Germany. Oh, it was good to finally learn a little about his heritage, but he had gone his whole life without knowing it. At this moment he would still gladly trade everything he had learned about Krypton to have Chloe back healthy, safe, and whole.

As he sat there steadily driving the shaft with endless repetitive motions of his arms like he was merely one more small cog in some mighty machine, his thoughts wandered back to the last time he had seen Chloe, when she had seemed so far from being healthy, safe, or whole. She had lain in his arms with her body jerking and shuttering in a spasmodic motion completely outside of her control. And her eyes had been rotated so far up into her head only white spheres remained.

Suddenly, her eyes in his mental image rolled back down and, as she stared up at him, she smiled.

"Clark."

"Chloe?" asked Clark in surprise. He could still feel his arms churning away in the background, yet she felt so real. He knew he must be hallucinating, but at the moment he didn't care. He might be trapped here for what would feel like hours more with nothing else to occupy his time. And it felt so good to be with her again.

"Hi, Clark. Miss me?" asked Chloe in the special voice she only used when they were alone. And before Clark could respond, Chloe wiggled up so her mouth could cover his.

Clark pulled her tight for a long, slow kiss he had been so desperately missing. When it finally broke, Chloe pulled back just enough so they could stare into each other's eyes. Clark felt his right hand come up and gently brush her hair back off of her forehead.

"So, what has been happening while I have been away?" she asked.

"I have met someone from my home planet. His name is Var-El."

Chloe rose to her feet and then reached a hand down to Clark. "I would like to meet him, too."

Clark could still feel his hands and arms toiling away at their task, yet in his current dream-state he was able to reach up and take Chloe's hand at the same time. When he reached his feet, he discovered they were no longer down in the root cellar on his parents' farm. Nor were they in the tight enclosed space of the drive shaft tunnel. Instead Clark realized they were standing in the ship's control room just outside the door to Var's private quarters. Not fully understanding why, but following his instincts, Clark reached out and rapped his knuckles on the closed door three times.

Immediately, the door slid open to reveal Var. However Var looked subtly different: a little taller, a little more imposing, a little . . . or maybe a lot . . . wiser. Clark realized this dream-state Var was a stand-in for the biological father he had always secretly dreamed of meeting.

"Hello, Chloe," said Var with the perfect amount of warmth in his voice. Reaching out his hand, he continued. "I am so glad I have finally gotten to meet you."

Var turned to look at Clark and smiled. "Are you ready to go now?"

Clark felt a moment of confusion. "Go where?"

"Why Krypton, of course." Var gestured towards the brilliant white control chair. "You just need to climb into the seat and before you know it, we will be there."

Clark looked down at Chloe and her eyes were shining. "Go ahead, Clark. I know you have been waiting for this moment your whole life."

Clark returned her smile and knew she was right; he had been waiting his whole life to discover his origins. Taking Chloe's hand, he walked over to the command chair. As soon as he was seated, all of the control panels came alive and the hull of the upper sphere of the ship became transparent. Looking out, Clark discovered the ship was no longer in the hangar in Nazi Germany, but was instead sitting in the field behind his house in Smallville. Straight ahead sat the big red barn and the warm yellow farmhouse he had known his entire life.

Standing on the porch looking back at him were his parents. He tried to read the expressions on their faces. They looked both sad and a little scared like they might never see him again. Or if they did see him again, somehow everything would be changed. Clark somehow knew that in this hallucination his parents were just a manifestation of his own internal feelings. Finding out about his origins scared him a little as he wondered how it would change him and change his feelings for his parents, his friends, maybe even towards Chloe.

Without noticing Var's approach, he was suddenly standing by Clark's side. "Clark, to go to Krypton, all you have to do is push this red button."

Clark looked to where Var was pointing and then he looked back at his parents. He could see his Mom fighting back tears and reaching over to squeeze his Dad's fingers. She forced a smile and gave a small nod of her head.

Clark could feel tears welling up in his own eyes as Chloe's right hand found his left.

"Whatever you do, Clark, it will be okay."

Clark closed his eyes for a few seconds, but when he opened them, nothing had changed. With one last glance to his parents, he slowly reached out and pushed the red button.

Instantly the view through the transparent dome changed from an idyllic spring day in Smallville to the harsh alien environment of Krypton. All around them stood weather-beaten, craggy mountains under a deep green sky. The only thing interrupting the desolate skyline was a magnificent domed city visible in the distance. Clark knew what he was seeing was based on jumbled together bits of the paintings hung throughout Var's ship and also on the glimpses he had seen of the travelogue Var had used to entertain Whitney, Indy, and Gretchen. Yet, now, it all seemed so vivid and real.

"Come, let me show you your home world," said Var.

Clark swung his legs down from the command chair. As he rose to his feet, he found they were no longer on the bridge of the ship, but standing on the plain just within the shadow of the great ship. He drew in a deep breath and the air felt subtly different. He couldn't explain it exactly, except somehow it was the fragrance of home.

Var pointed at the city on the horizon. "Kryptonopolis. Your home." Then Var started walking down the gentle slope in the direction of the city.

Clark took Chloe's hand and followed after Var. Like so many other aspects of this dream, the hike to the city seemed to take both many hours and only seconds. Along the way, Var regaled them with many stories of the planet's history, yet later Clark wouldn't be able to remember any of the details.

After hours or maybe seconds, they reached a spot at base of the giant dome. From where they stood, the dome filled half the sky and stretched from horizon to horizon. Immediately in front of them it was pierced by an open portal large enough to pass Var's great ship. They walked through the portal and found themselves looking on a vista as lush as the plain they had just crossed had been desolate. Wide fields with a scattering of large homes stretched out in both directions, sweeping around until they completely encircled the urban center of the city. And everywhere they could see people, children playing in parks, couples strolling through wooded areas, teens participating in several unknown sporting events.

As they walked in the direction of the town proper, Clark's head tried to swivel in all directions at once, lest he miss some detail he might never see again.

After walking about a mile, Var led them to a large crystalline structure. "Welcome to my home."

Waiting at the entrance were Var's wife and three children, whom Clark recognized from the painting in Var's quarters. When Var saw them, he broke into a run and quickly pulled them all into a hug. Clark and Chloe proceeded more slowly to give Var a moment with his family.

When Clark and Chloe reached Var's family, Var quickly made the introductions before motioning them inside. They moved directly to a large dining hall where a feast was already laid out. Until he saw the food Clark hadn't realized how hungry he was. He didn't recognize a single dish, but every bite he took seemed more delicious than the last.

The meal went on for hours yet the conversation never flagged and Clark and Chloe quickly felt like they were part of Var's family. Clark felt more relaxed than he could ever remember. For here there were no secrets to hide, no cover stories to tell. He could simply be himself.

Finally, as all things must, the meal ended. Salva, Var's wife, led Clark and Chloe to the room they would be using during their stay on Krypton.

The room was large and airy with a panoramic view of the town's central spires. But Clark hardly gave any of it a glance as he turned his attention to Chloe. There was so much more he wanted to see and learn about Krypton, but for the past few minutes his thoughts had been focused more and more on her. Quickly he drew her into an embrace as his mouth sought out hers.

It seemed like his lips had barely touched hers when he was interrupted by someone prodding at his shoulder. He tried to ignore it, but the prodding became ever more insistent. Finally, he had to break the feather-light caress his lips had been performing on Chloe's as a prelude to so much more.

Looking to his side, he saw Var's face, but it was so brilliantly lit, he almost didn't recognize him. He saw Var's mouth moving before his voice completely sank in.

"Clark, the repairs are completely. You can stop now."

Clark looked back to where Chloe had been standing before him, but all he now saw were his hands still madly driving a shaft that glowed almost as white hot as a new star. He was back in the power-drive tunnel and it sank in that everything he had been experiencing for the past few hours had been a dream: Var's family, Krypton, and most sadly, Chloe.

As his hands gradually slowed, the 'real' world returned. They were in 1936 Germany on their way to rescue Lana and Marion Jones and along the way needing to discover a way of eliminating a giant, flying battleship. As the enormity of their on-going task sank in, he found himself wishing he could retreat back into the dream.

But wishing wasn't going to help get them out of their current situation and Clark forced himself to focus on the real world. Pulling his hands away from their seemingly endless task, Clark paused for a moment to stretch the aching muscles of his arms while he watched the shaft continue to speed from its inertia. How long would it take to spin down from one hundred twenty thousand revolutions per minute, he wondered.

After a moment's rest, Clark eased his way along the shaft until he was in the opening to the corridor. Stepping out, he noticed the smell of scorched wool. Looking down he saw small curls of smoking rising from the front of his 'borrowed' German uniform. With the intensity of the heat coming from the shaft, he was almost surprised the condition of the uniform wasn't even worse than it was. Patting out the traces of smoke, Clark tried to count the number of sets of clothing he had destroyed over the course of the past year. He really needed to find something better suited to his lifestyle.

Once the worst of it was under control, Clark stepped over to where Var was waiting. Var turned towards the central shaft of the ship and headed out at a leisurely walk. Although since they remained deep in 'speed mode' their actual pace was still far faster than any human eye would be able to follow.

Clark glanced over at Var. "Var, how do we stop the Nazis' flying ship? There is no record of a ship like that in the history books of my time. So it is necessary we destroy it before I and my friends can return home."

Var walked in silence for a moment. "If that's true, it is not just the ship we will have to destroy. No, we will have to destroy enough of their blueprints and design notes to keep them from just building another one."

Clark looked over at Var and knew he was right. "But the plans . . . they could be anywhere."

"Oh, I think, based on their love of security and secrets, most, if not all, the critical information is kept right at this same base. This, in turn, suggests a solution to your question about how to destroy their ship. It is possible to overload the drive system. The resulting gravity wave as the drive implodes will devastate everything within a couple kilometers of the ship. If we can force an overload when the ship is right over the base, the blast should be sufficient to wipe out any stored records."

Clark's thoughts quickly flickered back to his flight over Peenemunde when they had first arrived. He had been looking for a place to start their search for any messages from Biberach, which might have pointed them to where he was holding Lana and Marion. But now, all that came to mind was all of the barracks and other living quarters he had seen. There must be at least twenty thousand people living and working on this base.

"Var, there are thousands of people living here. There must be a solution which doesn't require killing all of them."

Var stared at Clark as though he had said the stupidest thing. "Clark, I am not from some planet filled with crazed killers. I don't want to hurt anymore people than necessary." Var paused as though he was deep in thought for a moment. "I just need to come up with some message to transmit which will force most of them to evacuate. There will still be casualties, but that is the best suggestion I came come up with at the moment short of spending years here trying to track down the plans one by one.

"Okay," answered Clark, feeling somewhat mollified. "So how do I overload a ship's drive?"

Var threw one arm across the younger man's shoulder before beginning to fill him in on how one destroys an anti-matter drive.

+ - + - +

With the ship's drive repaired it took them less than ninety seconds to catch up with the giant flying Nazi warship. The long range radar system on Var's ship had told them the flying ship and the surface ship had already rendezvoused, but it wasn't until they were in visual range that it became apparent the two vessels were locked in mortal combat. Clark could easily see with his enhanced vision how the lower sphere of the flying ship was all torn up and trailing a little smoke from some internal damage.

But the surface ship, where Lana and Marion were to be found if the message had been true, was in far worse shape. Huge billowing black clouds were pouring up from holes in its afterdeck and at least the aft most pair of big guns was hanging all askew and looked to be out-of-action.

Even as he watched, another pair of projectiles from the flying craft exploded against the surface ship in twin balls of fire which completely obscured the aft half of the battleship for several seconds. Clark felt a sharp stab of fear knowing Lana and Marion were somewhere down there.

As Var's ship continued its rapid approach, Clark turned to Whitney and Indy. "If the radio message Var intercepted is true, Lana and Marion are down there on that ship. Are you ready to go aboard and find the women and get them to safety?"

They were close enough now so even Whitney could make out some of the details of the damage the two ships were inflicting on each other. Ever since he had received the Samson braid, Whitney had been burning to use his new found abilities to kick some Nazi butt as payback for their killing him and kidnapping Lana. In his mind he had pictured himself wading through dozens of Nazi soldiers as though they were nothing more than a collection of the inflatable punching bags like the one of Bozo the Clown he had had as a kid.

But the battle he had imagined never included being under fire at the same time from battleship projectiles. For a moment his mind flashed back to Mr. Lewis' history class on the day when he had been discussing World War II battleships and how Mr. Lewis had described the projectiles as weighing the same as Volkswagen Bugs. Just like in the old Monty Python movie where they catapulted a dead cow over the wall into the castle, Whitney pictured these two great dueling ships launching Volkswagens at each other, except these Volkswagens would be a lot more immediately lethal than a plague-filled cow. And no way could he imagine the Samson braid being proof against a direct hit from a Volkswagen composed entirely of high explosives.

Whitney swallowed hard and then ran a hand nervously through his blonde hair as he looked back at Clark. From the inflection in his voice when he had asked his question, it was apparent Clark wasn't intending to go with them. And knowing a little of Clark's abilities, it seemed like having Clark along would be a very good idea.

"You're not coming along?" asked Whitney.

Clark shook his head and then used it to point towards the other flying ship. "No. Var and I are going to be dealing with that. Hopefully, once they are focused on us, they will stop shelling the other one."

Whitney nodded. If Clark could stop the shelling, it would eliminate his biggest concern. "Once we have found the girls, what do we do?"

"Get them to safety."

"How?"

Indy broke into the conversation. "A ship of that size will have a Captain's launch and numerous lifeboats and inflatable rafts. I am sure we can improvise something."

Whitney glanced at Indy and for a moment the glint in the man's eyes really reminded him of the Harrison Ford version of Indy in the movies. Here was a man who had been through numerous tight situations in the past and who wouldn't panic in the clutch. Whitney hoped he would be the same.

"So, what's the plan?" asked Whitney.

Var looked up from his control panels for a moment and met the other men's eyes. "You need to get down to the main access hatch. When you are ready, I will swing down and pause long enough for you to jump down. I don't want to stay under the Nazi's guns any longer than necessary. With all of the sabotage they have done to my ship, I don't want to risk a direct hit; the automated repair system might not be up to the task."

Var paused for a second to study Whitney and Indy before continuing. "You can handle a forty foot drop, right?"

Whitney was forced to raise an eyebrow. He knew if Var was from the same place as Clark and had similar abilities, then a forty foot drop would be nothing to him. But Var had been around humans for two years and he was hardly stupid, so he must know that was well outside of the safe zone for humans. They had never talked about the Samson braids, but Var had been alone with Clark for a few minutes, so Whitney finally concluded Clark must have mentioned them.

"Yeah, I think I am good with that. How about you, Hank?" responded Whitney. But when he turned to look at Indy, he found the man was already heading to the grav-shaft leading to the lower levels and their intended exit point. Well, I guess that answers my question, thought Whitney, as he turned to follow the other man's lead.

It took only seconds for Whitney to reach the grav-shaft. He stepped off the edge into nothingness without even thinking about it. Looking down past his feet, he experienced a moment of vertigo as he saw Indy floating gently down the shaft below him. When he had traveled up this amazing shaft earlier, it had seemed like a game. But now he couldn't get the image of the two great ships shooting at each other out of his head. When they reached bottom the shaft this time, they would be stepping straight into a battle zone.

By the time he reached the bottom of the shaft and then walked down the corridor to doorway through which he had entered this ship less than two hours earlier, Whitney could feel his fear really start to climb. He had thought the scariest moment in his life, at least that he could remember since both of his 'deaths' were pretty vague, had been during the destruction of the chateau when the ballroom had started to collapse and Clark had pushed him out into freefall. But then, things had happened so fast he hadn't had time to think about it. Now, he found he had too much time to think. And it just made things worse.

Just has Indy and he reached the external doorway, Whitney almost jumped out of his skin as Clark seemed to materialize out of nowhere, as he seemed to do more and more often lately.

"Geez, Clark, are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

Clark looked at Whitney and shrugged a small apology.

Var must have been monitoring their progress because immediately his voice came over the intercom system. "Clark, I am beginning the run to drop Whitney and Henry off. Next to the large red button which opens the door is another switch. Flip it first as it will prevent the gangway from deploying. Then press the red button."

Clark did as he was directed and the heavy metallic door slid slowly open. A blast of frigid air swept in through the opening. It might be mid-summer in Berlin, but it didn't feeling it here on the Baltic Sea. Fortunately, Whitney found the bracing air refreshing; it seemed to calm him and helped to drive the fear back from the forefront of his thoughts.

Getting a firm grip with his right hand, Whitney leaned a little ways out the open door. They were now less than three hundred feet above the water and steadily descending. The blast of air had been startling, but it was apparent their forward speed was less than thirty miles an hour.

Leaning out a little further, Whitney could see their target. They were making a head-on approach to the battleship. The battleship was still traveling at high speed and Whitney had expected Var to make a stern approach. But from the masses of smoke still pouring from its stern, he realized that would have been impossible. However with this head-on maneuver they were only going to get one short shot at hitting their target. And from the way the ship's wake was all twists and turns, Var had better be a great pilot, too.

Whitney leaned back in, turned, and then shouted to be heard. "About ten seconds. Indy, ahh, I mean Hank, get ready. We are only going to have one shot at this."

Indy gave him a questioning look about the 'Indy' comment, but then nodded his head.

Clark reached out his hand to Whitney. "Good luck. Get Lana to safety."

Whitney took Clark's hand and nodded his head.

Clark turned to shake Indy's hand as Whitney leaned back out the door.

They were much closer now. Var had slowed their forward velocity until it felt like they were standing still in mid-air and the great battleship was about to pass directly below them. The vertical drop to the battleship's deck might only be forty feet, but it suddenly seemed more like four hundred.

'You can do this,' thought Whitney to himself. He had seen the Nazis do incredible things while wearing the Samson braid and he could feel its power coursing through him. 'You CAN do this.'

Whitney reached back and grabbed Indy's arm pulling him into the opening. Then, without any further hesitation, he leapt out of the open doorway.

For a moment it felt just like traveling down the grav-shaft. Then the battleship seemed to come rushing up towards him and the sense of floating was replaced with a strong sense of falling.

A scream was just starting to escape his throat when his feet contacted the wood planked deck. His legs automatically flexed until he came to a stop crouched down with one stabilizing hand resting on the deck. A flicker of motion in his peripheral vision showed Indy landing six feet to his right. The older man executed a roll at impact like Whitney had seen used by paratroopers in many old war movies. It looked like Indy had been through situations like this before.

With the Samson braid the roll may not have been necessary, but it didn't slow Indy down. Somehow as Whitney watched, the other man went straight from the roll to a run heading aft. Without thinking anymore about his fear, Whitney sprinted after him.

They had landed on the long, extended forward deck of the battleship. Quickly their path took them towards the first mighty pair of guns. At this moment this pair of guns was in the process of swiveling to the starboard in the general direction of their nemesis. Whitney spared a glance in that direction and saw the brilliant red flying ship hovering about three thousand feet away and maybe two thousand feet up in the air. Before he had a chance to spot where Var's ship had gone, Indy reached a heavy door, ripped it open, and disappeared inside.

Whitney knew the time for sightseeing was over. Lana might be trapped somewhere beyond that door. Quickly, Whitney followed Indy into the dark interior of the ship.

As soon as he passed through the door, it was like going from day to night. All of the primary lighting was out in at least this part of the ship. The only illumination was provided by red emergency lights spaced out about every twelve feet.

Indy was only about fifteen feet ahead of him, but in the maze-like interior of the battleship even this was almost enough to end up with them getting separated. After one particularly abrupt left turn followed by an immediate descent down a steep ladder, Whitney finally called out for Indy to pause a moment to let him catch up.

Indy did pause and Whitney quickly overtook him. Whitney was about to ask him if his brisk pace meant he really knew where he was going when they heard voices approaching from the blind right corner just in front of them. Whitney was psyching himself up for a fight when Indy suddenly motioned for Whitney to step behind him. Then as Whitney watched, Indy turned to face in the direction of the voices and stiffened into an 'At Attention' pose. Whitney wasn't certain of the plan, but decided to mimic Indy's posture. As he stood there frozen in place, he realized if he hadn't taken this detour back in time, he might have been in this pose anyway as part of his upcoming Marine training. For a moment the absurdity of his current situation almost brought a smile to his lips. How many of his fellow Marine recruits would be able to truthfully say they had combat experience against Nazi soldiers?

A squad of five sailors, two armed with rifles, rounded the corner right in front of Indy. They all froze in their tracks at the unexpected appearance of two officers blocking the corridor. Two Luftwaffe officers, no less. Before they could overcome their surprise, Indy started addressing them in loud, forceful German. Whitney didn't understand a word of what Indy was saying, but tried to be supportive by maintaining his most menacing stare. Indy's tirade went on for at least fifteen seconds before he paused for breath. Immediately one of the sailors filled the void by pointing in the direction from which they had just come and rolling out his own long response in German. Whitney might not understand this man's words either, but he could tell the man's tone of voice was much more respectful then the one Indy had been using.

The sailor couldn't have spoken for more than seven or eight seconds when Indy cut him off with a curt 'Danke' and started to push past him. Quickly, the sailors all flatten themselves against the wall and Indy strode imperiously passed them. Whitney followed Indy doing the best he could to maintain a hard expression on his face. As soon as they were past the sailors, his back started to itch as he imagined the sailors penetrating their ruse and deciding to shoot him in the back. It wasn't until the corridor made another turn that he allowed his shoulders to sag just a little.

"What was that conversation about?" whispered Whitney.

"I merely explained we had urgent business with the captain and asked the quickest route. The sailor was kind enough to point us in the direction of the bridge."

"All of that was just for directions to the bridge?"

"For my part, yes. Of course, I did flower it up a little for their benefit. However the sailor was kind enough to include a warning to be on the lookout for several renegade Gestapo men. Two bits says one of those 'renegade' Gestapo men is my old buddy, Major Biberach."

Whitney nodded as he tried to remember what 'two bits' would have meant back in Indy's era. It didn't seem like it had anything to do with computer bits.

- - + - - + - - +

They proceeded on their way for another five minutes and Indy managed to bluff them past two more groups of sailors. But then their luck ran out and the next group of six sailors they met didn't believe what Indy said or perhaps word of the two mysterious German air force officers had filtered ahead. Either way, this next group of men wasn't going to let them by without a fight.

Whitney took a quick glance at their surroundings and thought at least they had space to move. They were passing through what he guessed was an officers' wardroom. At least the room had several tables, lots of chairs, racks of magazines and newspapers, and a large coffeemaker mounted to one wall.

Like the earlier parties, two of these men were armed with rifles. When it became obvious where this was heading, Indy took a step forward and to the side to get closer to the men with guns, as they would have to be taken out first. Whitney was just stepping forward when Indy made his move.

Indy threw a fast, hard jab at the nearest man with a gun. The blow didn't knock the man to the floor as would be expected, but sent him sailing across the room to crash into the opposite wall nearly twenty feet away.

As the comrades of Indy's first victim watched in surprise, Whitney lowered his shoulder and charged the four in front of him just the way Coach Arnold was always trying to pound into the thick skulls of his linemen. And he knew his old coach would have been proud of his effort. Well, he would have been proud if he was still alive and hadn't mysteriously burned to death in the locker room during what was supposed to be his big 200th win. Just for a second, Whitney wondered what Clark knew about the coach's death. During their train ride to Dresden to see Chloe, Clark had explained his involvement with several of the other strange deaths in Smallville during the past year. So perhaps he knew something about this, too.

Forcing his attention back to the current situation; Whitney spread his arms trying to force all of his opponents back. He managed to keep three of them moving until he slammed them into the wall. It wasn't until he heard the sickening sound of multiple bones snapping that his true strength while wearing the braid really sank in. Fighting these men suddenly wasn't like some football game, nor was beating up a bunch of lowly sailors, who were just doing their jobs, nearly as fun or satisfying as he had imagined. These were real people he was hurting and, if he wasn't careful, maybe even killing. Was he really ready to do that?

As he stepped back from wall, he could see all the fight was gone from these three. Turning, he saw Indy had taken out both of the men with rifles and was holding the last man clear of the floor with a hand around his throat. Indy was just starting to interrogate the man when Whitney caught, out of the corner of his eye, motion in the doorway at the far side of the room.

Swiveling his head, he was just in time to see the two men in black from the Marion's hotel room back in Berlin take two steps into the room before freezing in shock when they saw and recognized him. Before either of them moved, a short, skinny man in a Gestapo uniform followed them in with his left hand firmly grasping Marion Jones' upper arm. He, too, frozen upon finding Whitney and Indy in the room.

Ultimately, it was Marion who broke the silence by excitedly shouting, "Hank!"

+ - - - +

Christoph Frenkel was leading their small party towards the bridge when they all heard the sounds of men fighting up ahead. Quickly Wolfgang Hein forced his way past Major Biberach and Mrs. Jones to join him. If there was going to be trouble, they would be able to handle it faster working as a team.

When Hein nodded he was ready, they quickly slide through the open doorway together. Frenkel could only speculate on what they would find, who would be fighting in this room. It had to be either men still loyal to the Fatherland fighting against the girl's subjugated minions or else whoever it was that had responded to their emergency call had managed to get men on board this ship. Either way, they might find allies in their battle against the girl in this room. Hopefully, if the silence meant the fighting was over, their new allies would have been the winners. But, if not, he and Hein would take carry of any opposition like they had done before.

So, hoping for the best, but with confidence in his strength and abilities, Frenkel stepped into the room and received the shock of his life. Standing before him wearing a German Luftwaffe uniform was the kid Major Biberach had killed back at the chateau. And the kid hadn't suffered a single bullet wound from which he might have recovered. No, Frenkel still had a vivid memory of how the boy's body had jerked and twisted as round after round from the MP-40 found their mark and particularly of how the final three rounds had slammed straight into the face of the already dying youth.

So, how could the kid show up here, in the middle of the fucking ocean, without a mark on him? First, the girl does the impossible and gains control of a ship filled with thousands of loyal German sailors and now out of nowhere a dead man shows up in their midst. What in the fucking hell had they gotten mixed up in?

Frenkel felt Hein step up beside him and then Hein, too, froze in recognition. It was just registering that the other man in the German Air Force officer's uniform was Dr. Henry Jones, who he had also last seen at the chateau, when Major Biberach and Mrs. Jones followed them into the room.

The shorter Biberach had just edged between his two guards to see why they had paused when the taller woman called out with a startled, "Hank!"

+ - - +

Marion was just as surprised as the Germans, who were holding her prisoner, to discover her husband was aboard the Hitler. Although she quickly realized what had shocked them the most was not Hank, but the presence of Lana's friend, Whitney. When Lana had first told her that Whitney was still alive, she had had a hard time believing the girl. But after all of the other things she had experienced in the past few days, finding the boy here, healthy and alive, wasn't the shock it might have been.

But to Marion, the boy's presence was hardly worthy of note; her full attention was focused on her husband. Since they had made their escape from the secret Nazi base on the remote Greek island during the adventure to acquire the Ark, this had been their longest separation. And during the past few hours, she had really started to become afraid she wouldn't survive this voyage. Or if she physically survived, it would only be to serve the machinations of the girl and she no longer was convinced the girl wouldn't do to her mind what she had already done to the minds of so many of the crew.

Therefore she had such a profound sense of relief at her husband's unexpected arrival; she couldn't help but shout his name.

"Hank!"

Hank had been facing away from her, but at the sound of her voice he released the man he had been holding and quickly spun around. As soon as he saw her, a wide smile graced his face and he started moving across the room.

"Are you okay, Marion?" Hank asked, pausing five feet from where Hein and Frenkel stood blocking his approach.

"Yeah, I have been enjoying this idyllic ocean cruise. How about you? I see you have been recruited into the German military again," she continued with a glance down at his gray uniform. It was amazing how just his presence lightened her mood.

Hank followed her glance and then, as his eyes returned to her, he shrugged. "You know me, I like to blend in."

Marion felt a small chuckle escaping her lips. "Ah, I think a naval officer's uniform might have been a more logical choice."

"Well, I was at an air force installation thirty minutes ago working on a ride, if that helps."

Then Marion watched as Hank turned his attention to Hein, who was standing most directly between himself and his wife.

"I don't know what happened to your eye, Hein, but if you don't want to lose the other one, I suggest you get out of my way."

Marion didn't know how Hank knew the man's name, but decided they must have crossed paths after Hank had first disappeared and before she had arrived at the chateau.

From the pasty, white appearance of Hein's face and the way he had continued to stare at Whitney until his own name was mentioned, it was like he was looking at a ghost. But at his name, he turned towards Hank and some of his old arrogance returned.

"Dr. Jones, I don't know how you got here, but things are going to go just like the last time we met."

Hank simply smiled.

Hein took a quick step forward and threw a solid right hook to Indy's jaw. Whenever he had connected with a blow like this since receiving his braid, his opponent had always gone sailing across the room as a result. But this time the only effect was to spin Jones' head to the side.

Marion had seen Hein's incredible strength and had felt her heart freeze when the man swung at Hank. She didn't know how Hank withstood the blow, but numbly watched as he turned back working his lower jaw as though checking for any damage.

Hein, too, was staring at Hank in disbelief at the man's ability to absorb the supposedly unstoppable punch.

Abruptly he saw Jones break into a grin.

"Is that the best you got, Hein?" asked Hank.

Then, before the man could respond, Hank grabbed the front of his shirt before collapsing backwards to the floor, dragging the other man down with him. As he fell, Hank drew his knees up to his chest and positioned his feet against Hein's chest. Rocking back onto his shoulders, Hank used the strength of his legs to send Hein flying back across the length of the room away from where Marion and the others stood. Hein hit the wall so hard the entire room seemed to shake and the two-inch thick steel wall bent almost three inches. Even Hein's enhanced body couldn't quickly shake off a below of that force and he slumped to the floor momentarily stunned into unconsciousness.

Marion stared at Hank in surprise as he climbed back to his feet. She had no idea how Hein and Frenkel had gained their incredible strength. But obviously Hank had not only figured it out; he had also learned how to duplicate it, too.

Frenkel and Biberach had been caught off guard by Hank's exhibition, too. They were staring at where Hein lay crumpled on the floor and didn't notice Whitney's approach until he was almost upon them. As one, they turned their heads in his direction.

Whitney paused just out of reach and shot a quick glance at Indy. "Hank, it hardly seems fair that you get to have all of the fun. I mean, they only tortured you. I am the one they killed."

Indy said, "Sorry," and then made a show of taking half a step back.

Whitney turned back towards Frenkel, gave a small nod, and raised his fists into a semblance of boxer's pose. The injuries he had caused to the three men he had just fought still bothered him, but this was different. The man standing before him had the same Samson braid enhanced strength he did and he had apparently been present at Whitney's earlier death. No, Whitney knew he wouldn't have any problem with his conscience, if he pounded this man to a pulp.

Whitney watched as his opponent returned the nod and raised his own hands. Then, faster than Whitney thought was humanly possible; Frenkel threw a fast jab with his left fist. The punch caught Whitney on the side of the face and he staggered back a couple of paces.

He shook his head to clear it and realized he felt very little pain. Apparently, the braid did more than just enhance his strength.

Quickly, Whitney stepped forward and threw a strong punch with his right hand, but Frenkel brought up his arm to absorb most of the blow.

Immediately, Whitney followed up with a blow to the man's ribs with his left hand, but it felt like he was hitting solid stone. Then before Whitney could step clear, Frenkel delivered a quick series of punches to the boy's abdomen.

They continued to exchange another group of blows to the body with Frenkel connecting more often than Whitney. It was quickly apparent to Frenkel that the kid and Jones had somewhere acquired several of the other braids. It was also obvious he was a better, more experienced fighter than the kid. But the braids seemed to enhance every wearer by the same percent and the kid looked to out weigh him by at least twenty-five kilos and all of it was muscle. If he couldn't beat him soon, the kid's size and weight might be the deciding factor.

Whitney managed to break free from the other man for a moment. His body was sending faint signals of pain from where his opponent had landed blows, but it was barely any more of an annoyance than the blood dripping from his broken nose. He was breathing hard and trying to formulate some sort of a strategy. He found himself wishing that he had taken some martial arts training, or maybe even better, wishing this whole thing had happened after his stint in the Marines. Certainly, they would have provided him the means to quickly take out an opponent, braids or no braids.

But wishing for fighting skills he didn't have wasn't going to do him any good. No, he was going to have to make do with what he knew and that pretty much boiled down to football.

Whitney stepped forward and threw a couple of quick punches to keep his opponent off guard as he tried to figure out how football was going to help him win this battle. Nothing in his repertoire as a quarterback seemed immediately useful, as his assignment on the field was to avoid being hit, not to deliver blows. Of course, thinking about avoiding getting hit brought back the painful memories of his biggest failure on that account – the clipping incident which had blown out the Meniscus cartilage in his right knee. It had left him rolling around on the turf in extreme agony with his knee bending forward rather than back. The emergency surgery and two follow-up operations had restored most of his mobility, but the injury's aftermath had ultimately cost him his college scholarship. It wasn't until Lana had introduced her 'bots into his body after the tornado back in Smallville that his knee had finally returned to one hundred percent.

Thinking about how that one illegal play had wrecked all of his plans for the future always got Whitney's blood boiling and this time was no exception. When his opponent threw his next punch, Whitney grabbed the extended arm and threw the man to the side. Frenkel flew a short ten feet through the air until he collided with the nearest wall.

The throw hadn't been nearly as hard as the blow Indy had delivered to Hein, but it was sufficient to distract Frenkel for a couple of seconds as he fought to regain his balance. Just as he got his feet fully under himself, Whitney came diving in right at knee level. Everyone in the room, who was still conscious, heard the loud 'pop' as the cartilage in Frenkel's left knee exploded.

The blinding agony Frenkel felt was beyond anything he had ever imaged as he stared down to where his leg was bent completely backwards. It was said that the only thing more painful then a knee injury that a human could experience was childbirth. And as Frenkel collapsed to the floor and began to scream, he tried to imagine how much worse it could possible feel without the attenuating effects of the braid.

As Frenkel lay twisting in agony on the floor, he was almost grateful when Whitney finally managed to deliver a blow which knocked him into oblivion.

Whitney felt sick in his gut and was afraid he was going to hurl as he stood up from Frenkel's finally still form. It took all of his effort to look away from the man's obscenely twisted leg and turn his attention to the short man in the black uniform, who was still holding Marion's arm.

Whitney had no direct recollection of the man who had killed him back at the chateau as his memories of the last ten minutes before his death were lost forever. But since he knew his killer had departed with Marion and Lana and since this man was with Marion and the two men he did remember, he suspected they were one and the same. If this was the man who had gunned him down, he wanted to cause him a level of pain which would make what the man lying at his feet was feeling seem downright pleasant in comparison. But there were more important matters than his personal need for revenge.

Looking the Gestapo officer in the eye, Whitney said, almost at a growl. "Where the FUCK is my girlfriend?"

Biberach's eyes darted from one of his suddenly unconscious champions to the other. How could they have been defeated so completely? Then he remembered the comment from Captain Hoffman which had instigated his hasty departure from the chateau. Hoffman had said a man was down in the dungeon battling Schultz and Jaeger, the two other men at the chateau with the braids, and that man appeared to be winning. If the man had ultimately defeated Schultz and Jaeger, then he must have given their braids to Jones and this boy. Well, that would explain how they had the strength to defeat Hein and Frenkel, even if it didn't explain how the boy could be suddenly alive and well after taking a full clip from the sub-machine gun.

Thinking about the events from the ballroom at the chateau reminded Biberach of how he had gotten away from the tense situation there – by putting his gun to Marion Jones' head. After seeing Frenkel suffer a wound earlier from a bullet which had ricocheted from the thick walls of this ship, he had kept his own pistol holstered and had depended on Hein and Frenkel to handle any opposition. But now his hand went to the heavy black leather flap which covered the handle of the gun and kept it in place.

Marion felt Biberach's abrupt movement and knew he was going for his gun. She wasn't ready to have it thrust back against her temple or worst, used on her husband. She still didn't understand how Hank and Whitney had been able to defeat Biberach's incredibly strong henchmen, but she wasn't about to see of they could survive being shot either.

Marion had tried to act the part of a lady since she had reconnected with Henry Jones, but now she unleashed the inner strength which had kept her alive in Tibet during the terrible years after her father's death.

"Not again, you asshole," Marion whispered fiercely into Biberach's ear as she pivoted around in his grip. Then before he could react, she cocked back her free fist and slammed it into his face with all of the pent up fury the last few days had created.

The little man crashed back into the heavy door frame behind him and Marion heard the satisfying crunch as his head made hard contact. She watched in satisfaction as his limp body slid down to a sitting position before slumping to one side. The single blow she had landed hadn't fully vented her rage so with a muttered 'motherfucker' in Tibetan Gtsang dialect she kicked him in the kidneys with every ounce of her strength. His body jerked in a most satisfying way, but otherwise the unconscious Biberach gave no response.

When Marion looked up from his body and swept her eyes towards Hank, she expected to find him racing over to sweep her up into his arms. But instead he was racing over to where Hein still lay against the far wall.

As Hank ran, he shouted over his shoulder, "Whitney, get his braid."

'Get his braid?' repeated Marion in her head as she began walking over to where her husband was now busily ripping at his opponent's shirt.

By the time she reached him and rested a hand on Hank's shoulder she could see the exposed rope of brown hair wrapped around Hein's waist. As she watched, Hank quickly worked the braid free and then rose to his feet.

Marion went to throw her arms around her husband, but he stopped her with a raised hand.

"Marion, get this around your waist under your blouse first."

Marion glanced down at the braid in Hank's hand and then back up into Hank's eyes.

"Samson's hair," was all Hank said, as though that was enough.

And as she reached out and touched the braid and instantly felt the strength and power begin to course through her body, she realized those two words were explanation enough.

Quickly Marion pulled the tails of her blouse out of her skirt and worked to wrap the braid securely about her waist. She had just finished tucking her blouse back in when Whitney walked up with another braid dangling from his hand.

But at that moment Marion's full attention was on her husband and with the power of the Samson braid filling her, she literally leapt into Hank's arms. She gave him a powerful squeeze as she felt his arms wrap about her. She finally felt happy and safe for the first time in days.

"Ah, Marion, dear," gasped Hank. "Are you trying to kill me?"

Marion recognized the playful tone in his voice and knew he was only kidding. "No, dear, but I am so glad to finally be back in your arms. You have no idea what I have been through. Now, shut up and kiss me."

Hank didn't need to be asked twice, as he lowered his face to her upturned lips.

Whitney tried to wait patiently, but after the kiss seemed to have gone on for at least a minute, he finally couldn't stop himself from interrupting.

"Marion, where is Lana?"

After about five more seconds Marion ended the kiss and then disentangled herself from Hank's arms. Quickly she turned and gave Whitney a hug. "Lana said you were okay, but after seeing your body lying on that floor shot full of holes, it is still hard to believe."

Whitney returned the hug for a moment before repeating the single word which was burning in his heart, "Lana?"

From the doorway on the far side of the room he suddenly heard the achingly familiar voice.

"Did someone mention my name?"

Whitney looked over Marion's shoulder and saw Lana standing there dressed in a white German sailor's uniform. It was way too big with both the sleeves and the cuffs of the pants rolled up, but he couldn't careless about her attire. The important thing was that she was alive and well.

Before he could do anything but stare at her, Whitney felt Marion stiffen in his embrace.

As Marion pulled away from him, she tightened her grip on his hand to force his attention back to her. "Don't let her touch you," she said, trying to keep her voice low and calm.

Whitney gave her strange look like he had no idea what she was talking about. And of course, since he hadn't witnessed the events on this ship during the past twenty-four hours, how could he? He would assume the girl running across the room towards them was the same girl who had been with him back at the chateau.

Therefore Marion couldn't do anything but stare with dread as Whitney turned and swept the girl up into his arms. A feeling that only grew more intense as the girl looked past Whitney's shoulder at her with the most malevolent stare Marion had ever experienced. Marion could do nothing but shrink back into Hank's welcoming, but unsuspecting embrace.

End of Chapter 18

+ - - + - + - +

Author's Notes

Whew, that has been intense. I may have to take a few days off before starting work on the remainder of the climax. What is going to happen to Whitney now that he is in Sliviuh's clutches? How is Clark going to stop the giant flying German juggernaut? So much is left to write!

On to other things - Based on the recent comments fanfiction has put on their homepage, they seemed to be serious about not allowing individual replies to reader reviews within the chapters. I will give their new 'reply' feature a try, but at least for now, I plan to also copy my responses to the link on my author's page. I, for one, find the exchange of ideas with the readers useful and I think my responses may be of interest to more than just the specific reviewer. Generally, if a reviewer makes a comment about something in the story not being clear, I try to work something into the next chapter or two to make things clearer for all the readers. But lots of time people ask questions about where the story is going that I don't intend to address until months or years downstream, so the only answer I give is in the reviewer response. So if you are interested in where I intend to take this story long-term, you might want to read the reviewer feedback section. (Or if you are not a registered member of the site – and why not since it is free? – my reviewer feedback section is my only remaining route to give you a response.)

Have a great day!

Duane