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'.

19. Biological Families Chapter 19

6/25/06

Biological Families

Chapter 19

Part 1

As Marion continued to watch, the malevolent look faded from the girl's face to be replaced with the blank expression Marion had come to associate with Laura's use of her gift to subjugate the crew's minds. God, if Laura was doing that to her own boyfriend, or Lana's boyfriend, or Lana's former boyfriend, or whatever term defined her current relationship with Whitney, would Hank and she be next?

Marion felt shivers, no, tremors start to ripple through her body and knew it was not from the just concluded fight with Biberach and his men. Hank apparently noticed her reaction too, as he quickly stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her once more.

"Mar, everything is going to be okay. I'm here now. The worst is over."

Marion knew the worst might not be over; it might not have even begun. Too afraid to turn her gaze away from the girl, she leaned her head back and whispered as quietly as she could, hoping only Hank could hear, "Please, Hank, you mustn't let her touch me. I think you are safe since you haven't shared blood, but if she touches me, she will take my mind."

Hank's hands momentarily tightened about Marion. What was she talking about? He had thought their problems were all over. Oh, they still needed to find a way off of the ship, but they had found the women which was the most important thing.

"What?" whispered Hank keeping his own voice low to match Marion's. They had been through a lot of tough, dangerous situations together and he instinctively trusted her judgment on the need for conversing at a whisper.

"I don't know exactly how she does it, but she can enslave the mind of anyone with whom she has shared blood. In the last twenty-four hours she has gained control over most of the crew, certainly all of the key officers. But I think the process is driving her mad."

"MAD?" mocked the girl.

Marion couldn't suppress the small gasp as she realized the girl had overheard the whispered remark. Laura's eyes still retained their generally vacant expression, as though most of her attention was still focused elsewhere, but the corners of her mouth lifted into a cruel smile.

"You really shouldn't talk about me in my presence as though I can't hear. My hearing may not be much better than you mortals, but lip-reading is no big challenge."

"Mortals?" echoed Hank in confusion.

Suddenly, the girl released the embrace in which she had been holding Whitney and took a half step back. In immediate response Whitney dropped to one knee and raised his right hand; offering the braid he had stripped from Frenkel. "For you, my Goddess."

As Hank and Marion watched the dark-haired girl accept the gift of power, they couldn't help but notice the expression of complete adoration on Whitney's face. Marion had never seen its like before arriving on the ship, but Hank was quickly reminded of the expressions on the faces of the followers of Mola Ram after they had drunk 'the blood of Kali Ma' as part of the Thuggee ceremonies back in India. Hank couldn't help but wonder at the coincidence of Marion mentioning the sharing of blood and the Thuggees' drinking of blood. Was there some connection?

A low moan escaped from Biberach where he lay slumped by the door. However neither Marion nor Hank reacted as they continued to watch Whitney and the girl. After the girl accepted the Samson braid and wound it around her right forearm, Whitney reached into his pant's pocket and pulled out his silver communication device, again offering it to the girl.

Once she had the device in her hand, she quickly strode over to the wall mounted inter-ship phone. Jabbing a button as she lifted the handset, she brusquely spoke in German, "Get me Captain Koenig."

After a pause of no more than five seconds, she continued, "Captain, execute Code Omega immediately."

Hank couldn't be certain what 'Code Omega' was, but omega was the last letter of the Greek alphabet. And from his few encounters with various military organizations around the world, it seemed to be invariably associated with some final, desperate, 'take your enemies with you' death spasm. What had the girl just set in motion?

However before Hank could follow through on that thought, his attention was drawn back to the girl by her slamming of the receiver back into its receptacle. She had just started to turn back towards them when the first pistol shot rang out.

Marion gasped as Laura's body was thrown forward hard against the bulkhead and a bloom of crimson red flowered on the back of her borrowed white sailor's uniform just below the left shoulder blade. She expected the girl to drop to the floor, but after only a moment, she watched Laura press herself back upright.

While Marion was frozen in place watching Laura, Hank and Whitney had both moved towards Biberach, the only person in the room armed with a pistol. When Marion finally wrenched her head around to look towards Biberach, she found Whitney in the middle of an impossibly long, flat dive towards the Nazi. Then, as she watched in horror, the gun went off a second time, its bullet catching Whitney in the stomach. The boy seemed to crumple in mid-air and collapsed to the ground ten feet short of his goal.

Then Hank too launched himself towards the German. Several more shots rang out, but they missed their mark and began ricocheting off the hard metal walls of the compartment. Marion dove to the floor after a seemingly narrow miss by one of the careening projectiles. As she lay there, she was forced to watch helplessly as her husband ended his mad rush on top of the Gestapo officer. Was he about to become a victim like Laura and Whitney?

Hank landed on top of Biberach; his two hundred pound frame seeming to crush the air out of the much smaller man's lungs. The shock of the impact caused the Nazi's hand to spasm and one more round went off just as Hank's hand closed on the other man's wrist. In a moment, Hank's braid-enhanced grip crushed the bones in the wrist and the gun flew out of Biberach's hand. As the gun went skittering and clattering across the deck and before the last echo of the final ricochet had died away, Hank was already scanning the room for Marion. Had any of the wild shots hit her?

From her prone position, Marion too was scanning the room as though her eyes were fast enough to follow a bullet's trajectory. Therefore both of them happened to be looking at Laura within moments of the final round's impact. Laura had turned once more to face the room and they could see the ugly results where the initial bullet had exited through her chest. The three inch diameter circle of blood adorning the back of her sailor's blouse was dwarfed by the six inch hole below her right breast. Through the ragged opening they could even make out the broken white edges of several exposed ribs. Hank couldn't understand how the girl could still be on her feet with a wound of that magnitude by a bullet which surely had taken out a large portion of her lung on its passage from back to front.

But the mortality of the first wound was no where near as certain as the second randomly aimed shot. No, the second shot had caught the girl a glancing blow in the throat. Hardly a quarter inch deep, but it had severed the carotid artery. The stream of blood, which geysered from her throat, sprayed a pattern on the wall reaching almost five feet above her head. With the next beat of her heart a second stream began to follow the first when the girl slapped a hand to her throat. The flow seemed to be reduced to a mere trickle through her fingers, but Hank knew it didn't matter. He had seen wounds like that before and within seconds the heart would pump out the body's entire supply of blood.

However the girl didn't collapse to the deck from shock or blood loss, but continued to walk to where Hank lay prone on top of the Nazi. When she reached them, she squatted down, pulled her hand away from her throat, and smeared its coating of blood across Biberach's face. This seemed to suddenly revitalize the man as he began to thrash violently in an attempt to throw off the large American.

"Tsk, tsk," began the girl, her voice calm and steady. "Biberach, you should have surrendered to me when you had the chance. It is not very smart to fuck with a God. I could have made all your wildest dreams come true, but, no, you had to keep trying to kill me. So, I think you have earned an eternity in your own personal hell instead."

From his position on top of the German, Hank's face was less than six inches from the girl's throat. It was coated with blood, but no additional blood continued to spurt or even gurgle from the neck wound. In fact, the skin looked almost unblemished. Then he glanced down at the gaping hole in her lower chest and could see the hole getting visibly smaller as he watched. What the fuck? He had seen Whitney coated with blood back at the chateau, but hadn't fully comprehended the magnitude of his wounds or the miraculous rate at which the healing had occurred. But now it was happening right in front of his face. Who was this girl? She couldn't possibly be a god like she claimed, but how was the healing he witnessed possible? It was like watching his father recover from the gunshot wound back in Palestine, but that had involved the Grail Cup. How could this girl achieve the same effect? Did she possess some other long lost relic?

For just a second or two his and Mar's desperate situation was brushed from the forethoughts of his mind by the memory of the adventure with his Dad in search of the Grail Cup three years earlier. It had ended so badly with Elisa dead and his father nearly killed. But some good had come of it, too; he and his father had at last talked and gotten some of the things out in the open which had separated them for so long. Oh, they weren't yet best friends, and might never be, but at least they were now talking.

And one of the things he now wanted to talk to his father about was Marion, whom Henry Senior hadn't yet met. When he and Marion had first gotten together back in college, he and his father had been going through one of their extended periods of estrangement. During the past four months since Marion had re-entered his life, his father had been in Rome working with the Papal Legate in charge of the Church's Antiquities Department on some 'top secret' project. Hank had warned his father against getting involved with relics again, but suddenly, being in the middle of his own third encounter with a biblical relic, it was like the pot calling the kettle black.

However on more mundane topics, he had at least sent a telegram to his father informing him of his marriage to Marion. When they had first arrived in Paris, he had hoped to make a side trip down to Rome to introduce his father to his bride, but that was before encountering Samson braids, secret Nazi battleships, alien spaceships, or a girl who could miraculously heal. Now, he was reduced to merely hoping to get Marion and himself home alive.

His ruminations about his father were interrupted by a massive explosion which shook the Hitler far worse than any of the hits by Germany's flying dreadnought. The deck on which he was sprawled felt like it heaved straight up at least twenty feet. If not for the effect of the Samson braid he was wearing, he was certain the shock would have killed him. Then, when the deck settled back down, it had taken on an alarming twenty degree list to port.

When he looked up, he found the girl had been thrown from her feet. Looking passed her, his eyes finally found Marion still prone on the deck, but at least twenty feet from where he had last seen her.

The girl was quickly back on her feet and once more looking down at where Biberach still lay pinned under Hank's body.

"Well, lucky for you, Biberach, at least Captain Koenig can follow orders," she began. "Now, it looks like you get a simple death rather than an eternity in hell."

Then she turned and swept her gaze around the room. Quickly, she moved over to a cleared area, raised Whitney's communicator to her lips, and said, "Back to the future."

Over the roar of secondary explosions, a quiet seemed to fall over the compartment as an eerie green glow appeared on the wall in front of the girl. In seconds the shape began to coalesce into a doorway.

As Hank continued to watch the girl, Marion scrambled across the heaving deck to where Whitney lay half under an overturned table. When she reached him she found him curled into a tight ball with his hands clenched to his stomach as though to staunch the steadily flowing blood. Feeling along his throat for his pulse, she found his skin cold and clammy. His pulse was so faint it took her several seconds to find it.

Looking up, Marion saw the same green doorway from the memories she had shared with Lana when the girl had first infected her. She instantly knew it was the time machine and that Laura intended to pass through and leave them behind.

"Laura," screamed Marion. "Whitney is dying. You have to save him."

The girl looked back over her shoulder. "Don't you get it yet, Marion? Laura is gone, just like Lana. Why should I care about this one mortal?"

What did she mean 'Laura is gone' wondered Marion. If the girl standing there no longer thought she was Lana or Laura, then who was she now? Remembering the strange encounter in Jaguar City and some of the other things the girl had mentioned, Marion could conjure up some very scary alternate personalities for the girl. And certainly her current derogatory use of the term 'mortals' and self-reference as a God was not something she would have expected from the Lana personality or even Laura, but it was consistent with some new, different, power-mad incarnation.

But confronting the girl about her change didn't seem to be an approach which would cause her to stop and help Whitney. No, to get the girl's help she would have to try and reach her emotional rather than logical side.

"He loves you," answered Marion carefully sweeping the hair back from Whitney's forehead to ensure the girl could see his pain-filled eyes.

"What is the love of one man against the adoration of millions where I am going?" The girl responded with a look that told Marion she wanted power more than love. And Marion knew Whitney's salvation, if there was to be one, would have to come from some other source.

As the girl turned back towards the almost completely formed portal, Marion could sense Hank was getting ready to try to stop her.

"Hank, don't," Marion said sharply, as her thoughts were forced from Whitney to the need to protect her own husband. He hadn't been through the past two days with her and the girl and therefore didn't have a clue of the girl's abilities.

When Hank looked at her questioningly, she continued. "She's too powerful; you don't stand a chance against her. I watched her take out Hein in a fight when she didn't even have one of the braids herself. And you have seen how she heals; she can fight and heal and continue to fight until you make a mistake and lose. You have to let her go."

Thoughts of his father must have been still playing heavily in his mind, because he was reminded of his father telling him almost the same thing as he hung dangling over the precipice trying to reach the cup.

He was just beginning to scramble over to help Marion with Whitney when he saw the girl, whom Marion had strangely called 'Laura', step through the green doorway which had formed in front of a blank section of wall. Less than two seconds later another massive explosion ripped through the Hitler and the twenty degree list to port quickly became thirty, forty-five, seventy, ninety-five, one hundred thirty, and finally one hundred eighty degrees as Hank realized the 'Omega Code' must have meant firing the ship's scuttling charges.

It felt like they had barely been thrown from the floor to the ceiling when they, along with all the other bodies and furniture, began sliding faster and faster towards the forward end of the compartment. With an agonizing series of creaks and groans, the ship's stern lifted from the water and rose until the massive eight hundred foot long ship was vertical and its giant rudder was over a hundred fifty feet in the air. But the Hitler was no Titanic, even with the whole bottom of the hull blown out the mighty ship did not break in two. Rather, it seemed to hang in space for several long seconds. Then, with a mighty whoosh of escaping air, the stricken ship began its deadly race down to the murky depths.

Hank instantly knew there was no longer any hope of escaping on the captain's launch or even reaching a life raft. This room was deep in the heart of the great ship and they had at most seconds to make good any escape before the battleship's descent took them down to a crushing depth.

Hoping for one more miracle from Clark, Hank quickly pulled out the backup communication device Clark had given him and thumbed it on.

"Clark, this is Hank," he began, unable to keep his rising panic out of his voice. "We are trapped in the bowels of the battleship, its keel has been blown out, and it is rapidly sinking. Lana is gone, and Whitney has been shot and may be dying. We need help!"

Part 2

Clark leaned out of the lower main hatch of Wegthor's Shadow and watched Whitney and Hank drop to the fore deck of the battleship. Before their feet even made contact, Var was already accelerating his ship hard to get clear of the big guns.

Turning his gaze from the battleship below, Clark began sweeping the skies for the brilliant red flying dreadnought where his own personal mission lay. Almost immediately he picked it out, although it was his ability to 'sense' its drive rather than his eyes which first pinpointed its location.

The ship was located almost a mile away and one of the first things he noticed were clouds of grayish-white smoke exploding from the pair of guns in one of its lower nacelles. It had just fired on the battleship again and Whitney and Hank were completely exposed on its deck. And Lana and Marion were also somewhere down there. He could only hope they were together and Lana had been able to protect Marion during the previous bombardment.

But it was up to him to stop these projectiles and protect the men. Clark launched himself out of the doorway and transitioned into speed-mode flight in mid-air. Immediately he accelerated his body deep into speed-mode to give himself plenty of time to locate the shells.

The fifteen inch diameter shells were not easy to spot from a mile away even if they were effectively frozen in place. With a moment's thought, Clark decided the simplest way to locate them was to start from down at the battleship and fly a reverse trajectory towards the source. Quickly he swooped down and spotted Whitney and Hank frozen in mid-stride as they sprinted across the deck towards one of the hatches.

Relocating the flying behemoth, Clark swept through a tight turn and accelerated back up. He climbed almost two-thirds of the way to the hovering ship before he finally came upon the shells. They were moving on parallel paths, one about seventy feet further along than the other. And the fact that they were moving and not frozen in place surprised Clark. Oh, they weren't moving very fast, no, it felt about like a fast jog, but they were among the first things he had ever encountered that weren't completely frozen when he was in speed mode. It definitely showed how fast the shells would move in 'normal' time.

Clark decelerated until he was pacing the first one at distance of less than ten feet. He stared at it for a moment, taking in the dull brass sheen and the rifling marks along the sides which allowed the gun barrel to spin the projectile for added stability and accuracy. As he examined it, he considered his options for disposing of the pair. He was seriously tempted for a moment to return them to their sender by jamming them back up the barrels of the guns and then exploding them with his heat vision. But after a moment he threw out that option, as tempting as it was. No, his goal was to eliminate the ship, but not harm any more of the ship's crew than was absolutely necessary. And exploding a shell in the barrel of the gun sounded extremely risky.

He next considered using his heat vision to explode them where they were, but quickly rejected that solution, too. Simple physics said most of the debris from the explosion would follow the original trajectory and some of it would rain down on the battleship below. And if Whitney and Hank were still exposed on the deck, they could be hurt.

So, in the end, Clark did the simplest, safest, albeit least satisfying thing – He gave them a hard shove to change their trajectories to land safely in open water, well away from the battleship.

Once he was back on course to his target, he reminded himself of the plan. He was going to commandeer the ship and fly it back to Peenemunde. Once they were again over land, he was going to off-load the crew to safety and then overload the grav-drive as he flew it into the base. The resulting explosion, which would be the equivalent of a small tactical nuke, should destroy the ship and hopefully most of its design records, thereby preserving the timeline. In the meantime, Var was supposed to break into the base's communication network and issue an evacuation order which would minimize casualties on the ground.

To allow time for Var's message to work and the evacuation to happen, the ship was going to have to return slowly in 'normal-mode'. If he was going to be on its bridge, there was still a risk the guns would continue to fire on the battleship while they remained within range. Therefore Clark decided he needed to neutralize the big guns before he proceeded to the command deck.

In speed-mode he flew, in a small fraction of a second, several leisurely loops around the ship inspecting the big guns both with his regular and x-ray visions. The ship had a total of six large guns mounted in three pairs of two. One pair was located on top of the large central sphere. The other two pairs were located on the lower side of the main saucer section to the left and right of the central sphere. Looking closer at the lower pairs, he realized they were completely separate from the main hull and drive units. In fact, if the main structural bearing surface at the juncture with the main hull was severed, the guns and their housings could be removed as complete units.

Clark grinned to himself as he decided the best way to ensure the guns stopped shooting at the battleship below was to simply cut them off and drop them straight into the ocean. He quickly did a more thorough examination with his x-ray vision and counted twenty-two men who would have to be relocated from each of the gun mounts to other parts of the ship before he could begin work with his heat vision.

As he made one more loop around the ship to determine how to best remove the men from guns mounts, he surveyed the damage the ship had sustained from its duel with the naval ship. The most obvious was located on the bottom of the sphere. The bottom-most level was almost completely gone, as seen through the large gaping holes in its several foot thick steel hull. The deck above was also a complete shambles with twisted beams and shattered internal walls everywhere. And Clark's powerful vision couldn't help but see the mangled body parts strewn throughout the area. If only he had gotten here sooner, he thought with a shake of his head, perhaps he could have averted all of this pointless death.

Putting aside useless thoughts of 'might have beens', Clark landed among the wreckage of the second-to-lowest level of the central sphere. Remaining in speed-mode, he made his way over to one of those steeply inclined crosses between ladders and stairs found on military ships and climbed further into the interior of the great ship. After a few minutes of exploring he found a fairly large, mostly vacant galley area; the perfect place to stash the men from the gun turrets.

It was the matter of a small fraction of a second in 'real' time before Clark had relocated the gun crews and was back outside working on cutting away the lower gun mounts. From his perspective the work was slow going – two-foot thick battle-hardened steel was much tougher to burn through than the granite he had encountered in the bedrock below the chateau. It felt like hours before the last connection of the first gun mount was severed. But when he finally finished work on the second, he discovered the first one had fallen less than three feet. Being deep in 'speed mode' certainly had its advantages, thought Clark.

Turning his attention to the upper mount, he knew severing its connection to the ship wouldn't be sufficient; gravity would hold it in place. The two giant guns and their supporting structure must be many times the weight of the obelisk he had tossed back in ancient Rome. But then he remembered his experience down in the driveshaft tunnel of Var's ship. If he could provide the power necessary to hold that mighty ship aloft, perhaps he could remove this gun mount.

Quickly Clark set to work burning through the upper turret's supports. Once the connections were severed, he selected a spot in the thickest, strongest section of armor plating and burned a pair of handholds about three feet apart similar to the handholds he and Var had formed on the driveshaft. No longer fearing damage to his hands, he jammed them into the white-hot, molten metal. Bracing his feet against the upper surface of the saucer, Clark flexed his knees – did the old 'lift with your legs and not your back' even apply for him, he wondered – and slowly hoisted the massive structure into the air until its lower edge was level with his waist. Then leaning back he heaved it away from his body with all of his strength.

As the gun turret started to move, it didn't feel like it had taken any more effort than the Roman obelisk, maybe even a little less. Clark was certain the gun turret was many times heavier than the obelisk. Had his abilities really grown that much in the past few weeks?

At first, as Clark watched, the gun turret moved briskly away from his body. Then, after traveling about six feet, it abruptly seemed to stop moving. Clark stared at it for a moment trying to imagine what had just happened. Then he remembered he was still in 'speed-mode'. When he had thrown the giant obelisk, he had not been in speed-mode and had watched it travel all the way to its target – the gate of the Praetorian's Fort. Next he remembered how Chloe, Lex, Lana, and all the others he had carried in 'speed-mode', whether running or flying, seemed to be in some protective bubble that surrounded him when he was moving so fast the friction should have burnt off everyone's clothes. That must be the explanation. While he was in physical contact with the object, even something as large as the gun turret, it joined him in this slightly phase-shifted dimension where normal laws of physics didn't apply. But without physical contact, his 'bubble' must extend only about six feet. So once the gun turret got beyond that range, it seemed to shift back to 'normal-mode' and was now moving so slowly relative to him to appear frozen in place. And perhaps the 'speed-mode' effect also explained why tossing the gun turret had felt easier than the obelisk. Maybe in 'speed mode' an object's inertia was somehow reduced. At the moment, Clark wasn't certain whether these newfound factors in the use of 'speed mode' were good or bad, but he would have to keep them in mind for the future.

With the threat of the big guns eliminated, Clark could finally focus on taking control of the ship. During his initial tour of the ship he had located the control room, which was in the central sphere three levels down from the upper gun mount. Rather than heading straight there, Clark made a quick detour to the galley where he had stashed the gun crews. Entering the large room, he found so little time had passed the men were all still in the same positions where he had left them. Quickly he located the man he was looking for. He still didn't know how to read German rank insignias but this man had more braid on his uniform than any other person he had seen. If the trip back to Peenemunde was going to take thirty to forty-five minutes in 'normal' time, he wanted the man where he could keep an eye on him rather than letting him run loose and potentially start causing trouble.

With the man tossed over one shoulder, Clark proceeded on to the control room. When he arrived he took a moment to survey the room before dropping out of 'speed-mode'. It was a large room, at least twenty-five by forty feet, and was currently staffed by seventeen men. The air was sort of hazy as though there had been a small electrical fire and the ventilation system wasn't working properly. Making a quick inspection of the various controls and control panels, Clark was quickly frustrated again by his inability to read any of the German labels. Some of the equipment was fairly obvious like the radioman's position, but most of it remained a cipher. For a moment he found himself wishing he had Chloe's language gifts, or even Var's. With luck, someday he might undergo the 'Purl Nous' treatment Var had mentioned. But for now he definitely was going to have to recruit some help. So the first thing he needed to do was find someone who spoke English.

Clark set the officer down he had been carrying on a chair next to a table covered with maps. Then he dropped out of speed-mode.

"Umm, excuse me. Does anyone speak English?"

- + - + - + - + - +

Chief Pilot Horst Treush von Buttlar-Brandedfels was on the headset talking to Chief Gunnery officer Klaus Tauber who was acting as observer down on the lowest level of the sphere. They had just fired their third volley from the lower starboard pair of guns. He felt the standard jolt run through the floor plates he had come to expect. Then, a few seconds later, he felt the ship give a different shudder. He didn't have any experience in the area, none of them did, but his intuition told him it was something important like a stutter in the anti-grav drive. Ever since the horrific damage they had sustained from the point-blank barrage by the Hitler, a failure in the anti-grav system had been his biggest fear.

He was just about to have the radioman change his equipment from the frequency Tauber was on to the one down in Engineering when a voice loudly called out:

"Umm, excuse me. Does anyone speak English?"

Buttlar-Brandedfels glanced around the room looking for the one who had spoken. The first strange thing he noticed was Admiral Falle sitting over by the chart table, his gaze rapidly swinging around the room. When had he returned from the gun turret? The next strange thing was the young man in the black Gestapo uniform. Oh, he didn't know everyone on the crew and there were Gestapo officers in a handful of positions. But it wasn't the uniform which was strange, but rather the man's long, unruly black hair. No, German officer would have hair like that and most certainly not a member of the Gestapo.

The one who spoke in English must have been the man in the Gestapo uniform, Buttlar-Brandedfels decided. But before he could do anything, he was interrupted by excited shouting at the comm-station.

"What? Are you crazy? That's not possible," shouted the chief radioman into his headset.

"Evans, what is going on?" Buttlar-Brandedfels asked in a forceful tone to be heard.

Evans ripped off his headset. "Sir, they are saying the main guns have just fallen away into the sea!"

Buttlar-Brandedfels found himself agreeing with the radio operator's initial assessment that whoever he was talking to must be crazy. How could the guns just fall off?

Before he could ask Evans who he was talking to, the man in the Gestapo uniform demanded the room's attention by slamming his fist down on the heavy wooden chart table and shattering it into small pieces.

"Now that I have your attention," the man began again in English. "Does anyone speak English?"

Buttlar-Brandedfels stared at the table for a moment. Without any need to worry about weight, unlike the old Zeppelins, the table was extremely heavy – at least three hundred kilos. How had the man destroyed it with a single blow?

But he quickly shook off the shock and realized with the time he had spent in America working on the Zeppelin-Goodyear joint venture, his was probably the best English in the room.

"I speak English," answered Buttlar-Brandedfels. "Who are you? And what do you want?"

As he watched, some of the tension seemed to drain out of the young man's face. And he did look extremely young, Buttlar-Brandedfels realized. He didn't look more than sixteen or seventeen, tops.

"Who I am is not important at the moment. What I want is important. Now, I want you to turn the ship around and take us back to Peenemunde. And you might as well do it; I removed the main guns, so this ship is now nearly toothless and there isn't much point in staying here anyway."

Buttlar-Brandedfels stared at the man or rather boy. Could what the radioman reported be true? Had the guns and turrets really been disconnected from the ship and then fallen into the sea? Was that the cause of the unexplained shutter he had felt? How could the guns have been removed and how could this boy have done it?

- + - + - + - + - +

Clark was finally glad to have identified somebody who could understand him. Hopefully, this would make things easier. But then he glanced around at the hard expressions on the faces of most of these professional soldiers. It was going to take more than breaking a table or claiming to have been responsible for the removal of the big guns to convince them to follow his orders.

He clearly heard the distinctive clicks of the safeties being removed from the weapons carried by the two guards stationed at the main hatchway. Clark didn't know if they had received a subtle order from one of the officers or were acting on their own initiative, but almost instantly they opened fire on him with their sub-machine guns.

Clark let the first half dozen rounds visibly strike him in the back and shoulder before accelerating back up into 'speed-mode'. Immediately the remaining bullets seemed to freeze in mid-air. Quickly, Clark plucked them out of the air until his hands were almost overflowing. Then he returned to his original position and dropped out of 'speed-mode'.

When the chattering echoes of the guns died down, Clark unclenched his hands and let the thirty or forty bullets he was holding fall to the deck.

"It's not nice to play with guns," Clark said with a grin, looking directly at the man who had responded in English.

Then Clark made a show of turning towards the two men with the submachine guns and waggled his right index finger at them. "You shouldn't have done that." Next Clark pulled his communicator out of his pocket and pointed it at the men. Since he had been using it to hide some of his abilities from Indy, Clark decided he might as well do the same thing with the Germans. Sure that all eyes in the room were watching, he made a show of pressing an imaginary button on the side of the cylinder.

Instantly Clark shifted back into 'speed-mode', grabbed the two men with guns, and transported them down to the galley where he had left the gun crews. Discovering in the thirty seconds of 'normal' time which had passed since he had deposited the others down here that some of the men had already departed for other areas of the ship, Clark rounded up as many as he could quickly find. Once they were back in the galley, he took a moment to tack-weld the doors closed with his heat vision before returning to his original position on the command deck.

Once he dropped out of speed-mode, Clark watched the eyes of the man who had spoken widen in shock. But then from his perspective Clark knew the two men with the guns would have seemed to have disappeared into thin air due to the action of the silver cylinder.

"Now, where were we?" began Clark. "Oh, yes. We were discussing my request that you turn the ship around and return to your base. Well, it would be best if you think of it as more of an order than a request. I have tried to be careful not to hurt anymore of your crew than has been absolutely necessary, at least those who haven't actively tried to kill me, but I don't have all day. If you don't start obeying me, I may be forced to vaporize more of your crew."

"Who are you?" whispered the man who had spoken earlier.

Clark thought about it for a moment then grinned. "Hmm, I guess you could call me Captain America."

Clark remembered finding a box of old comic books up in the attic when he was nine or ten. They had been so old they dated from World War II and must have belonged to Grandpa Kent. He had spent an exciting afternoon reading about the adventures of Captain America and his sidekick, Bucky Barnes, and their battles against Nazis and the Japanese.

Since he did have super-strength and was fighting Nazis, it just felt right to claim to be Captain America. Hmm, Clark wondered for a moment how Whitney would react if he found out he had been regulated to the role of sidekick.

Clark watched expectantly for a reaction from the officer who spoke English and was disappointed when there was no flash of recognition in the man's eyes. Shit, Clark thought, the Captain America comic must not have been around back in 1936 or at least this German apparently had never heard of it. Then he remembered an old movie serial he had seen once on the Sci-Fi Channel – Flash Gordon. He remembered it starred Buster Crabbe and definitely dated to before the Second World War. It had been set in the distance future, but it did have ray guns and rocket ships. Hmm, perhaps that would work.

Waggling the silver tube, Clark continued, "You may have heard of an associate of mine, Flash Gordon?"

The widening of the man's eyes indicated he did recognize that name. Of course, the look alone didn't necessarily mean the man believed him.

"Now, since we are going to be spending some time together, what is your name?" asked Clark.

- + - + - + - + - +

Buttlar-Brandedfels was trying to figure out who the intruder was, and if his claim of removing the guns was true, and why he wanted them to return to base, when he caught out of the corner of his eye the hand signal Admiral Falle directed at the guards by the exit. Within a couple of seconds they had their submachine guns unslung and had opened fire on the stranger.

From where he stood he could see the fabric of the black uniform jerk and twitch where the first bullets struck the boy's upper back and left shoulder. But amazingly the body beneath the uniform didn't seem to react at all. Buttlar-Brandedfels had seen enough combat during the Great War to know the steady stream of bullets should have knocked the boy off of his feet and he should have been on the floor, dying.

But the boy just seemed to stand there until the guards' weapons were exhausted and the deafening roar in the enclosed metal compartment ground to a halt. Then he watched as the apparently uninjured boy raised his suddenly cupped hands and released a stream of spent bullets which pinged like a bunch of children's marbles as they bounced off the floor in suddenly silent chamber.

"It's not nice to play with guns," the boy in the black uniform calmly stated while staring Buttlar-Brandedfels in the eye.

Who was this kid? Buttlar-Brandedfels wondered. How come the bullets didn't hurt him? And what was with all the bullets in his hands? It was almost like he had caught them in mid-air.

He watched as the boy turned to face the two guards standing by the door, who were frantically trying to load the next clips into their weapons. Like they would do any more good than the first clips, thought Buttlar-Brandedfels.

"You shouldn't have done that," admonished the boy with a waggle of his finger. Then Buttlar-Brandedfels watched as the boy extracted a silver metal tube from his pocket. The ornately carved tube suddenly reminded him of the cigar case he had seen John Rockefeller pull from his suit coat pocket at the Rockefeller Center Grand Opening celebration in New York that he had attended back in '33. But thoughts of cigar cases were quickly torn from his mind as he watched the boy wave the tube in the direction of the guards and they simply vanished!

"Now, where were we?" began the boy in a calm voice, as though nothing more exciting was going on than ordering dinner in a nice restaurant. "Oh, yes. We were discussing my request that you turn the ship around and return to your base. Well, it would be best if you think of it as more of an order than a request. I have tried to be careful not to hurt anymore of your crew than has been absolutely necessary, at least those who haven't actively tried to kill me, but I don't have all day. If you don't start obeying me, I may be forced to vaporize more of your crew."

Buttlar-Brandedfels stared at the boy. Vaporize the crew? While it sounded like something from the movies, it did accurately describe what had just happened to the two guards.

"Who are you?" Buttlar-Brandedfels thought out loud.

The boy seemed to think about it for a minute and then his face broke out in a big grin as though the whole situation was some big joke. "Hmm, I guess you could call me Captain America."

America, thought Buttlar-Brandedfels. It certainly agreed with the boy's accent. But how could the Americans have gotten wind of this project? It was the most closely guarded secret in the Third Reich. And where did he get the ray gun? Of course, was it any more impossible to believe than the anti-gravity drive system which was propelling this ship?

As these thoughts ran through his head, Buttlar-Brandedfels kept his eyes on the youth. And the kid was looking at him with this expectant stare as though he thought Buttlar-Brandedfels would recognize the name he had given. Buttlar-Brandedfels thought about the name again, but 'Captain America' held no significance to him beyond the reference to the United States.

For a moment a look of disappointment flashed across the boy's face, but then it brighten again. "You may have heard of an associate of mine, Flash Gordon?"

Buttlar-Brandedfels immediately recognized the name – Flash Gordon. And it was straight from the movie serials. Back in March he had been part of a team sent to Stanford University on the west coast of the United States. The primary purpose of the trip had been to procure, by whatever means necessary, some prototype neutron physics equipment to help overcome several design difficulties with the anti-matter drive. He didn't have a strong background in physics, but had been included on the team because of his previous experience in dealing with Americans. During his earlier stays in the America, he had developed a taste for their cinema. So while the scientist types had been working at the University, he had slipped away frequently to see movies. And during their month long stay in California, he had seen four episodes of the Flash Gordon serial.

Before he could complete the thought about Flash Gordon or how this kid could possibly be associated with him, the boy continued speaking, "Now, since we are going to be spending some time together, what is your name?"

Buttlar-Brandedfels stared at the kid in the black Gestapo uniform for a moment, his mind suddenly overwhelmed by everything and feeling a nervous need to laugh at the craziness of the situation. Here he stood as chief pilot on a craft which put all of the ships in the Flash Gordon serial to shame. And he was facing a man with a ray gun who had just vaporized two of the crew and who also claimed to have removed three gun turrets which each weighed several hundred thousand kilograms. The whole situation was just as outrageous as any episode of Flash Gordon. But then the gravity of the situation came back to mind, the innocuous term 'vaporized' still meant the two guards were DEAD.

"I am Chief Pilot Horst Treush von Buttlar-Brandedfels," began Buttlar-Brandedfels. Then he noticed Admiral Falle climbing to his feet and decided he had better introduce the Admiral and hopefully forestall his being vaporized, too. With a gesture towards the Admiral he quickly continued, "This is Admiral Victor Falle. He is in command of this vessel. Would it be okay if I take a moment to explain the situation to him? It will make things easier."

The boy looked at the Admiral and then nodded. "Yeah, Horst, I guessed as much from his uniform and that's why I brought him up here before I cut away the gun turret."

Buttlar-Brandedfels stared at the silver tube still in the boy's hand. It had sufficient power to vaporize two crewmen, but could it really cut through the nearly meter thick steel housing of the turrets? And not just in one local spot, but around the entire perimeter? Or did the kid have some heavier duty weapons? Of course, who said he was even working alone.

After a few seconds Buttlar-Brandedfels forced his mind to stop running in pointless circles due to insufficient data and turned towards his commander and switched back to German. "Admiral, this man claims to have removed the guns just like the radioman reported. And after seeing how the guards' weapons had no effect on him and then the way he vaporized them, well I think we have to give credence to what he says."

Falle stared at the young man for a moment and then seemed to mutter to himself, "One moment I was down in the turret and the next I was sitting up here on the bridge. How is that possible?"

Then as Buttlar-Brandedfels watched, the admiral once more pulled himself together. "Horst, what does he want?"

"Sir, he demands that we return to Peenemunde."

"Why does he want that?" asked Falle. "If he truly has removed our guns, why not destroy us here? And if he is trying to steal this ship and its technology, why not demand we fly him somewhere else?"

"I don't know, sir. He didn't explain. But if he has the technology to get aboard this ship in mid-flight and cut away all three gun turrets undetected, well, I have a feeling this isn't about simply stealing the anti-grav drive system."

Buttlar-Brandedfels watched as the admiral turned to stare at the boy for a moment. Then suddenly he cocked his head to the side before glancing back towards his chief pilot. "Horst, does he remind you of a younger Var-El? Do you think a rescue mission to retrieve the alien has finally shown up after all of these years? And it just happened to arrive in the middle of this situation with the Hitler?"

The pilot turned back to look at the kid again himself. And suddenly what the admiral said started making a lot of sense, certainly more sense than the kid's story about Flash Gordon and Captain America. Oh, it didn't explain why the kid spoke perfect American English, but no German. Or why he was dressed in a Gestapo uniform. But after a couple years around Var-El, he knew the alien had the technology to do seemingly impossible things, certainly in the range of stopping bullets or vaporizing men.

While he was pondering the current situation, the radio headset he had pulled off at the youth's arrival and which he was still holding in his hands began to squawk. The volume was set high enough that in the suddenly quiet room he could clearly make out that it was the voice of the chief radioman Evans, currently seated a mere twenty-five feet away.

"Sir, I was just listening in on the observers' channel. They have been trying to report that one minute ago the alien's ship shot into view from the south at high speed. It swung down low over the Hitler, slowed for a moment right over the battleship's foredeck, and then rose back to altitude. It is currently due west of us about three kilometers and is matching our speed and course."

Buttlar-Brandedfels glanced over at Evans and saw him watching even as he spoke. He gave the radioman one short nod of acknowledgement and then turned his attention back to the admiral.

"Admiral, the alien's ship is on the scene and it just made a brief pass right over the Hitler. I think this supports your theory about this boy being part of some mission to retrieve Var-El. I think we also need to consider if the two women who have supposedly taken control of the Hitler are also part of the same group."

Falle nodded slowly. "It makes some sense, however what I still don't understand is what about the Hitler could interest them. If they have the technology to build these anti-gravity powered vehicles, what could the Hitler have that they want?"

"I don't know, sir," responded Buttlar-Brandedfels. "But whatever it is, it must be important. I mean they had the Hitler engage us until help could arrive. And then when help does arrive they immediately disarm us."

At this point Buttlar-Brandedfels' conversation with the Falle was interrupted by the boy. "Enough talking already, are you ready to take this ship back to Peenemunde?"

Buttlar-Brandedfels looked at the boy and then back to Falle. "Sir, I think the boy is getting impatient. We need to do something soon, before he does something drastic."

Falle sighed. "Horst, I don't see any option at the moment, but doing what he says. However try to buy what time you can, I have this feeling we really need to come up with a plan before we return to the base."

Buttlar-Brandedfels nodded. Then he turned back to the boy in black and addressed him in English. "We will comply with your request. I will however need to issue instructions to the crew, both here on the bridge and down in Engineering, in German."

The boy nodded in turn. Then he again held up the silver tube. "Fine. Just be aware this is more than a simple weapon; with it I can determine this ship's position. If you don't maintain a course directly towards the base, I will know it and well, I think I will just leave my response to your imagination."

"We won't give you any problems," responded Buttlar-Brandedfels in a tone he hoped would be reassuring. And he meant it, at least until they came up with a plan that had some hope of success. Although at the moment he had no idea what they could come up with to stop a man who seemed to be impervious to bullets.

Stalling for time, Buttlar-Brandedfels pointed to the ruined remains of the chart table. "I will need to use the maps to determine the appropriate heading."

The boy looked at the jumble of maps, slide rules, compasses, protractors, and assorted other implements used to chart a ship's course that were scattered all over the deck around the collapsed table. For a moment he looked like he was going to interfere, but then he simply said. "Okay, but let's see a little hustle. I expect us to be underway within five minutes."

Buttlar-Brandedfels nodded and then set the men still standing around the table to work clearing away the broken remains so they would have some cleared space on the deck to work. He knew he could have set a preliminary course, correct within a few degrees, based on the information already in his head, but he intended to stall for the full five minutes and then try to stretch it for a couple minutes longer.

- + - + - + - +

Seven minutes later and Buttlar-Brandedfels was running out of things to do without too obviously stalling, not that the kid had made any objectives to having already exceed his original deadline. No, the kid seemed fascinated with the whole process of charting the ship's position and course. But Buttlar-Brandedfels didn't want to risk upsetting things since they had been going smoothly so far. And besides, he had a few thoughts to keep the progress to a snail's pace. Hopefully, Admiral Falle was also having a few thoughts on how to regain control of the ship. He had seen the admiral talking discreetly on one of the headsets.

"Helmsman, set a course of one seventy four degrees," said Buttlar-Brandedfels, rising to his feet from where he had been crouched by the chairs. "Evans, call Engineering and see if they are ready to increase speed by twenty kilometers per hour."

Once he received an acknowledgement from the radioman, Buttlar-Brandedfels strode over to one of the periscopes and hit the control lever which caused it to descend. Once it was down and locked, he flipped down the handles which controlled the focus and zoom. He was leaning towards the eyepiece when he sensed the youth following him over.

He had just started to scan the empty ocean in front of them when he heard the silver tube in the boy's hand start to emit a voice – apparently the device was a radio in addition to being a weapon.

"Clark, this is Hank," the voice began in English with an almost hysterical note. "We are trapped in the bowels of the battleship, its keel has been blown out, and it is rapidly sinking. Lana is gone, and Whitney has been shot and may be dying. We need help!"

Buttlar-Brandedfels jerked his face away from the periscope and turned towards the boy. One second he found him rapidly scanning the floor as though he was looking for something, and in the next boy vanished as quickly and completely as the two guards he had vaporized earlier.

Well, perhaps not as cleanly as the guards, thought Buttlar-Brandedfels as he noticed the one and a half meter diameter hole which had appeared in the deck near where the boy had been standing. Buttlar-Brandedfels walked over to the hole and met Admiral Falle approaching from the other direction. Once they reached the hole they both stopped and stared. The hole appeared to have been burned through the deck; its edges still glowing white hot.

Buttlar-Brandedfels could feel a distinct breeze blowing up out of the hole. Taking a half step closer, he slowly leaned over the edge and discovered a line of matching holes burned in a slightly diagonal direction down through every lower deck of the ship. And then leaning out slightly further, he discovered to his horror that the holes were perfectly aligned on the mighty battleship, Hitler. And, as the voice from the silver cylinder had said, the great ship was obviously near the end of its death throes for it was down by the head standing nearly vertical with no more than forty meters of its stern still above the surface of the choppy waves.

Part 3

At least clocks were the same in English or German, thought Clark, as he watched the minute hand on the big clock mounted on the far wall tick over to 6:44 AM. It was several minutes passed his stated deadline of five minutes for the Germans to get underway towards their base at Peenemunde. He knew they were attempting to stall for time, but he wasn't in that big of a hurry so he played along. Var was going to need some time for his evacuation plan to work and with this ship's main weapons neutralized the time could be spent here just as well as on the way back to the base.

Clark watched as the German officer with the impossibly long name, who he simply thought of as 'Horst', walked over to one of the periscope type devices hung from the ceiling a few feet away from the improvised chart table. He followed the man over, thinking how fortunate it was that this ship contained very little lead to impede his own vision. Suddenly, Hank's voice sprang from his communicator so abruptly and with such intensity for a moment he was afraid he was going to drop the device.

"Clark, this is Hank. We are trapped in the bowels of the battleship, its keel has been blown out, and it is rapidly sinking. Lana is gone, and Whitney has been shot and may be dying. We need help!"

Here he had been thinking about how he could see right through this great flying ship and yet he hadn't even bothered to keep an eye on what had been going on with the battleship below, Clark chastised himself. With the big guns gone, he had thought the danger to the battleship and his friends on board it was over. But he should have known everything had seemed to be going too smoothly. Since they had been back here in Nazi Germany, when had anything ever gone smoothly?

Before Hank's message had even finished, Clark was already scanning the ocean below for the battleship. And what he found almost froze him in horror; he had imagined from Hank's words the ship would be slowly settling in the water. But what he saw was the ship seeming to hang vertically in the air, its three giant propellers spinning madly and its twin large rudder planes skewed at unnatural angles.

Instantly Clark wanted to transition to 'speed-mode', but Hank was still talking and what he had to say might be equally important as the initial part of the message about the ship sinking. And then came the far bigger shock – 'Lana was gone and Whitney was dying'. What did Hank mean by Lana was gone? If he meant she was dead, surely he would have said so. Besides she had Chloe's gift, unless she had taken a direct hit from one of the big shells, she should be able to survive anything the Nazis could throw at her. Had she been in the wrong place during the initial exchange between the two great ships? And if she wasn't dead, where could she have gone on a ship out in the middle of the ocean?

The final comment about Whitney dying barely had time to registered in Clark's mind; he abruptly pushed himself deep into speed mode without waiting to see if Hank had any more incomprehensibly bad news. Whatever was going on down on the battleship, he needed to be there immediately. Knowing a straight line was the shortest distance between two points, Clark didn't even consider wasting the tiniest fraction of a second it would take to wend his way through the corridors of the ship down to his initial entry point on the lowest level of the ship, but instead shifted directly from his x-ray vision to his most intense heat vision. And with the adrenaline surge caused by Hank's message, his power level seemed to be ten times what he had achieved while removing the gun turrets.

Even in speed mode, where things ordinarily seemed to happen at a slow, leisurely pace, it felt like only an instant before the relatively thin deck of the control room was turned to vapor. In the time it took him to dive through the opening, his incredible heat vision had already ripped through the next three levels as well. Forcing his body to accelerate towards the battleship as hard as he could, he raced down through level after level of the flying dreadnought. It was only as he approached the thick outer hull that his flying speed almost outpaced his heat vision's ability to burn through steel. Whereas his heat vision had removed the interior decks many feet before he reached them, his face was within inches of the outer hull before his heat vision finally punched through to the clear open air beyond the ship. In fact, if not for the protective barrier that seemed to surround him when he was in speed-mode, his broad shoulders would have touched the molten edges of hole and finished the destruction of his already much abused black Gestapo jacket.

Clark burst out into the brisk, fresh air below the flying behemoth. After the closed confines of the ship's control room with its air almost choked with the smoke from burned electrical panels and the Nazi guards' gunfire, the early morning light felt blindingly clean and bright. For a second it was enough to improve Clark's dark mood; he had single-handedly disarmed this great and powerful ship, surely he could handle whatever was going on down on the battleship below. But then his gaze was drawn back to the battleship. Due to the speed-mode effect its giant propellers seemed to have ground to a halt and a great churning mound of foaming white water over what had to be the underwater location of its primary exhaust stack stood frozen in place. How many seconds in 'normal' time would it be, he wondered, before the ship fully slipped beneath the surface and would be lost from sight forever?

Pushing himself hard, he managed to increase the rate of his mad descent even further. As he rocketed down towards the exposed portion of the ship, he started scanning its vast interior to find Hank and the others. Immediately he realized how futile it was to use his eyes to pick out four specific individuals among the hundreds he could see trapped in various locations within the ship. Perhaps a search with his x-ray vision might not be ultimately futile, but it would definitely consume more time than he dared to spare. With the frozen ship seeming to race up towards him, Clark forced himself to close his eyes for a moment to better concentrate on his recently discovered ability to sense electro-magnetic sources. Even if Hank had stopped talking, his radio should still be powered up and transmitting.

The battleship had seventeen small generators and radios still functioning, but Clark had no trouble picking out the one he wanted. When he had given Hank his backup communicator back on Var's ship, he had turned it on to demonstrate how to use it. And now he could make out its distinctive flavor like tasting a scoop of raspberry sherbet mixed in with a large bowl of vanilla ice cream. It must be the unique frequency range the radio used, he decided.

When Clark reopened his eyes, the location of Hank's radio remained overlaid on his field of view, a view which was almost completely filled with the light gray of the ship's broad stern. During the short time he had closed his eyes his rapid descent had brought him within forty feet of the hull. Quickly he cranked his heat vision back up to his maximum intensity. He was approaching a spot on the surface of the stern about fifteen feet above the central propeller and as it turned molten white, Clark wondered for a moment what would happen if he slammed into the ship's hull without burning a hole through it first. As deep as he was in 'speed-mode', he must be traveling the equivalent of two hundred thousand miles an hour in the 'real' world. What would happen if a two hundred pound projectile hit a two-foot thick steel plate at two hundred thousand miles an hour? Suddenly, his mind dredged up a tidbit from a TV show on the Discovery Channel about battleships. It was an animated sequence showing what happened when a sixteen inch projectile hit the armored side of another battleship. It wasn't the projectile itself or its payload of high explosive that did the most damage. No, it was the shockwave which did the most damage. He was moving at least a hundred times as fast as a normal projectile and based on the old E equals m v squared equation, his kinetic energy would be on the order of a thousand times as much as a 2000 lb shell. Would the shockwave from his impact kill all the survivors on the ship? Might it even shatter the entire ship? He didn't know, but the risk certainly seemed high. Therefore he focused his attention on burning a passage through the hull before he hit it.

As with his departure from the Nazis' flying ship, Clark was within inches of the reinforced hull before his heat vision finally burned a hole completely through. Then without pausing, he commenced burning through the numerous compartment walls which separated him from Hank's radio signal.

His destination was almost halfway down the length of the great ship. The first few compartments contained the steerage gear and propeller drive shafts and had been only lightly manned when the ship had been underway. Therefore it was relatively easy to maintain a straight course without the risk of vaporizing any of the bodies. As he had been approaching the great ship, he had decided it was best to just avoid them all since he didn't want to waste time determining which ones were living and which ones were already dead. But as he penetrated into the more populated areas, he was forced to steadily slow down and follow a fairly erratic course to avoid injuring any possible survivors. After what seemed like long minutes of continuous use of his heat vision, he reached a location where he could sense only one final wall remained between himself and Hank's communicator. Being especially careful, he burned through the last wall and drop into the compartment.

The room was relatively large; Clark guessed it was some kind of mess-hall or lounge although it was difficult to tell at a glance with it standing on end and with all of the furnishings pile in a jumble at the bottom. In amongst the tables and chairs he quickly counted a dozen bodies frozen due to the 'speed-mode' effect. As he glided gently down, he spotted Hank and Marion and then Whitney partially hidden under their bodies. Before returning to normal mode, he cleared away enough debris to leave some open space around the others. And as he worked, he couldn't help but see the large, ugly red stain spreading across the front of Whitney's 'borrowed' uniform. He definitely looked in very bad shape.

Dropping out of 'speed-mode', Clark was shocked by the intensity of the noise and vibrations in the heart of the dying ship. Explosions seemed to be going off continuously all around them and the screeching and screaming of tearing metal was almost deafening.

Clark tried to be gentle as he shook Hank's shoulder to get his attention. "Hank, where's Lana?"

Hank, who had only stopped speaking into the communicator one second earlier, did drop the device in shock. "Clark, my god, how did you get here so fast?"

Clark shook his head. There was no time for making up stories. Almost shouting to be sure Hank understood him, he repeated, "Where's Lana?"

Hank stared at Clark standing over them in his jet-black uniform. The boy's eyes seeming to glow a feral red, whether with rage or something else, Hank didn't know. But whatever the source, Clark stood there amongst the ruin of the room and simply radiated power. Ever since Hank had met the kid there was something different about him, something beyond the stories about magical alien devices always ready to get him out of any jam. But now it was like the true Clark was standing before him – a warrior, no, an actual honest–to-god Hero.

Pulling his thoughts back to Clark's question, Hank answered at almost a shout of his own, "I don't know. She gave the command to have the ship scuttled. Then she somehow caused this green doorway thing to appear and she disappeared through it."

"Clark, it was the time machine," added Marion from where she still hovered over Whitney's body.

Hank turned and stared at his wife. Had she actually said 'time machine'? But one look at her face convinced him she wouldn't be playing games at a time like this, not with Whitney's or maybe all of their lives on the line. After Clark's stories about Vulcans and other aliens he had been at least somewhat mentally prepared for Var's giant spaceship when they had discovered it a few hours earlier. But a 'time machine'? Then Hank remembered Lana's accelerated healing abilities he had just witnessed. At the time he thought she possessed some unknown biblical relic with properties similar to the Grail Cup. But if she was from the distant future, perhaps there was an alternate, technologically-based explanation. And as the word 'technology' raced through his mind, he couldn't help remembering his first encounter with Clark down in the dungeon below the chateau where he had first glimpsed his wondrous communication device with its almost magical paper-thin color display and all the other things he had seen Clark do with the device. Yes, if these kids were from the distant future, a lot of the things he had seen over the past couple of days suddenly made a lot more sense.

As Hank tried to get his head around the time machine concept, Clark was trying to understand why Lana had departed via the device. Oh, he understood if she thought their position on the ship was untenable, it might be necessary to retreat to the future to come back and try again since this ship wasn't even part of their main reason for being in 1936 Germany. But if she thought a retreat was necessary, he couldn't for the life of him understand why she would have left the others behind. And then there was Hank's comment about how it had been Lana who had ordered the scuttling of the ship and therefore causing the precarious situation they were now all in. It didn't make any sense.

Then Whitney let out a moan and Clark's attention was drawn to him. Why would Lana have left Whitney behind? Was she planning to return soon?

"How long ago did Lana leave? Did she say anything before she left? When was Whitney shot?" asked Clark. Many more questions were trying to burst forth, but Clark held his tongue so Hank or Marion or someone would have a chance to explain what was going on.

Even though Marion had only meet Clark briefly back at her hotel at the start of this whole adventure, she still was able to recognize the confusion on his face.

"Clark, at least since the time when we left the chateau, there has been another girl in Lana's head, a girl named Laura. Ever since we have been on this ship, I think it has been mostly this Laura who has been controlling her body and dealing with the Germans. But, now, from her actions and what she said, I think there is someone else who is controlling Lana's body. And this new personality is . . . is . . . I think it is evil."

Marion might have said more, but abruptly the ship was shaken by the most intense explosions since the original scuttling charges; explosions so severe even Clark was thrown to the floor. The small part of Clark's mind that was still aware of his surroundings guessed it was all of the shells stored in one of the weapons' magazines cooking off. But most of his attention while he struggled up to a kneeling position was focused on what Marion had said. What was Laura doing here? Because the 'Laura' Marion referred to had to be the Chloe-copy which had possessed Lana's body for several weeks back in ancient Rome. But Clark knew she had wiped herself from Lana's 'bot system when they had returned to Metropolis University so Lana could have her body back. So how could she be back in Lana's body now? And even if she was, Clark couldn't imagine her abandoning the others here any more than he could imagine Lana doing it.

When the explosions died down enough to where they go once more communicate at a mere shout, Marion continued. "Clark, Whitney was shot before Lana left. I begged her to save him, but she almost laughed in my face and said 'What is the love of one man compared to the adoration of millions where she was going.'"

Clark heard Marion's words, but found himself feeling more confused than before she had started speaking. Why wouldn't Lana have saved Whitney? For years it seemed like Whitney had been the center of her whole life. Okay, she had Lex now, but still he couldn't imagine her leaving a wounded and dying Whitney. Hadn't she brought him back from the dead after the encounter with the tornado and again when he had been gunned down at the chateau?

Suddenly Clark felt something tugging at this leg. When he looked down he discovered it was Whitney's hand. His eyes traced their way up his arm until they reached his face. Whitney's face was a grimace of pain, but his eyes were mostly focused on Clark and Clark heard him whisper his name. With his powerful hearing Clark could hear Whitney from where he knelt, but he quickly moved forward until he was crouched over Whitney's face to reduce Whitney's strain. As he lowered his head, Marion lowered hers also from the other side.

"Whitney, buddy, I'm here. I'll get you out of here, just hang on."

For a moment Whitney's gaze seemed to turn inward and Clark heard him whisper to himself, "I failed her. I failed her."

Then Whitney's gaze found Clark once more. He reached up and with the Samson Braid he wore still amplifying his meager remaining strength, he tore the lapel almost completely off of Clark's jacket as he tried to pull him even closer.

"Clark, I failed her. My goddess, Sliviuh. I failed her. Clark, you have to promise me you will protect her."

Clark almost pulled back in shock. He had only heard that name once before during a conversation on a sun-filled terrace back in Rome. The conversation had taken place almost a month earlier from his perspective and at the time it seemed like most of his attention had been on the destruction he had wrought in the arena or on what had happened to Lana's mind when she had been brought back from the dead. But suddenly the highlights of that conversation seemed crystal-clear in his mind and he felt his mouth go dry.

Then he felt Whitney give one last tug at the remains of his lapel before his hand started to go slack. Quickly, Clark looked back down into Whitney's face. His next words were so soft no one in the world except Clark could have heard them. "Promise me."

Clark saw the pain which had been contorting Whitney's face start to smooth away and then light in his eyes began to fade. With tears filling his eyes, Clark grabbed Whitney's hand in a tight grip.

"I promise," Clark whispered, as Whitney's last breath shuddered out.

Clark lowered Whitney's hand and then wiped at the tears in his eyes. Whitney was dead and he didn't know what to do. Whitney had been dead twice before, but both times Lana had been able to revive him within the magic 'five minute window'. But Lana was nowhere around this time.

For a moment Clark considered opening a doorway of his own back to the future, but what would be the point? It was unlikely he would able to locate Lana within the next five minutes and even if he did, if she was really possessed by Sliviuh, he probably wouldn't have any more success at convincing her to save Whitney than Marion had had.

And he couldn't take Whitney's body back to Chloe. She was still lying in the storm cellar near death herself. And if he didn't retrieve the mysterious artifact from the opening ceremonies, he didn't have a chance of saving her either.

He knelt there staring at Whitney's lifeless body, his mind going in futile circles trying to come up with a way of saving his friend. Finally, one of the nearly constant streams of shockwaves rolling through the stricken ship broke a latch on a cupboard mounted on a wall well above their current position. The resulting rain of china didn't hurt Clark or even Hank or Marion due to gift of their Samson braids, but it did finally make Clark once more aware of his surroundings.

The first thing he noticed was the low moans coming from several of the other survivors in this compartment. Then he became aware of a faint roaring sound coming from somewhere above. When he looked up with his x-ray vision he saw the ship was now completely below the surface and seawater was roaring in the large hole he had burned through the stern. The first three chambers he had passed through were already completely filled. If he had burned a straight path to his present location, some of the water would already be there. But the erratic course he had followed on his way down through the ship was causing the seawater to mostly fill each chamber before moving on to the next. However they had at most ten seconds before the water would reach their current location.

Clark looked across Whitney's body to where Marion still knelt. Hank had joined her and now sat with his arm around slowly rocking her as she wept. Clark knew he could fly Marion and Hank back to Var's ship, but could he leave behind the sailors moaning in the background. And if he came back for the men in this compartment, what about the other survivors still scattered around the ship? Which military group was it with the slogan 'No one gets left behind, everyone comes home'? Just like back at the chateau, Clark knew he couldn't leave any of the survivors to their fate. Most of them weren't even 'bad' guys by anyone's standards. No, they were just sailors doing their jobs. In fact, if there were any 'bad' guys in the current situation, it was probably his own people. Hadn't it been Lana, albeit under the control of Sliviuh, who had caused the destruction of this ship? So it was definitely his responsibility to save as many of the crew as he could. He knew he wouldn't quit until the only ones remaining would be Whitney and an honor guard of his fellow dead.

And then as Clark rose to his feet to ferry Hank and Marion to safety first, something in his chain of thoughts suddenly 'clicked'. There was still one way to potentially save Whitney. Taking him to the future now wouldn't work, but it might be possible to come back for him later. Once he had either revived Chloe or restored Lana to control of her body, not that he had the slightest idea how to accomplish either of those goals at the moment, he could use the time machine to retrieve Whitney's body, not unlike the way Chloe had resurrected Lana's parents or Lex's mom. He just needed to return within five minutes of Whitney's death.

The clock on the bridge of the flying ship had said it was 6:44 AM when he had left. He wondered how accurate it was. Since then, not more than one or two minutes could have elapsed. Was that going to be good enough to know when to retrieve Whitney? Then he realized it was not only a question of time, but place. How would they relocate this exact spot when the whole ship was below the surface of the ocean? And given its great length, this compartment itself was hundreds of feet down.

He briefly considered bringing Whitney's body back up to Var's ship, but then decided that had a high potential of causing a time paradox. They had never determined what would happen if you came back through the portal when you were already there. At a minimum it would give him knowledge about his future he probably shouldn't know. So it seemed best to leave Whitney's body on this ship so he wouldn't know the results of his actions before he should.

But that still left the problem of locating the submerged ship in the future. It seemed like it would be easier to relocate it if the ship was back at the surface. And he realized it would also simplify moving the other survivors to the flying German vessel if the battleship was closer. The question was, could he raise the battleship back to the surface? He had held Var's ship aloft by spinning its great drive shaft. If he could hold that ship aloft, could he lift this ship by a more direct application of his strength and flying abilities?

All these thoughts had raced through his head in the fraction of the second it had taken to rise back to his feet. Clark hesitated for only a moment; if he was going to try to lift the ship every second he delayed would just make the task more difficult. And every second he delayed would result in more survivors drowning. If he was going to do this, it was going to have to be in 'speed-mode'. Then he remembered tossing the massive upper turret of the Nazis battleship. While he was in speed-mode the normal laws of physics didn't seem to apply to things he touched and things were therefore easier to move.

Quickly deciding it would be, at least psychologically, easier to push from the bottom than pull from the top, Clark knew he needed to reach the prow of the ship. Scanning around with his x-ray vision, it looked faster and easier to burn a path out through the ship's superstructure and proceed down along the outside of the ship then to burn through all of the intervening compartments on a direct path to the prow. His selected route would give the ocean water a straight-line path to this compartment, but if everything happened in speed-mode, it all should be over before this area was flooded.

Without a second glance at Hank or Marion, Clark shifted into speed mode and launched himself at the opposite wall of the compartment, aiming at a spot about a third of the way up. Instantly he cranked his heat vision back up and started the process of burning through another series of walls.

After burning through seven walls, none of them near the two foot thickness of the main hull, Clark punched through an exterior wall at the aft edge of the superstructure just forward of the number three main turret. He had never tried to fly in 'speed mode' underwater before, not that he could fly in any other way but in 'speed mode'. He discovered the bubble of space which seemed to travel with him into the altered physics state seemed to act as a barrier keeping a bubble of air around him – at least he didn't immediately get wet when he entered the water.

Quickly he swung left around the superstructure and then turned down towards the front of the ship. The damage to the exterior of the ship was just as horrific as the damage he had experienced on the interior. Some of the damage was from the shelling by the flying dreadnought, but most of it seemed to be a result of internal explosions based on the way the decking and exterior walls were ripped outward. The water he passed through was flooded with air bubbles from the countless torn open compartments. For a moment the density of the 'frozen in-place' bubbles made him think he was moving through a giant container of Alka-Seltzer.

The water near the center of the ship was brilliantly lit by the on-going internal explosions, but when he looked towards the prow, now nearly a thousand feet below the surface, the water became as black as night. Down into those forbidding depths Clark raced.

Almost before he knew it, Clark had flown down passed the prow and had to make a big loop to come up at it from below. As he flew upwards he discovered both of the large anchors had fallen free somewhere during the preceding events and now the massive chains disappeared down into the even further depths. Deciding these anchors and chains represented hundreds of tons of useless weight, he took a moment to burn through the chains near where they disappeared into the hull.

Then turning his attention to the prow he selected a point about ten feet above the red paint line which represented the old waterline. Hoping he was at least somewhat in line with the center of gravity of the great ship, Clark moved forward until his hands were pressed against the cold metal of the ship. Once he had a firm grip, he started a combination of pushing and flying upwards. He strained for what felt like almost a minute in his accelerated state, but it seemed like nothing was happening.

Pausing for a moment he tried to think through the situation. He had thrown the large turret from the flying battleship without too much effort. Was the problem the huge increase in weight of the ship versus the turret? But no, he had managed to hold Var's ship aloft by spinning the giant drive shaft, so the amount of energy he needed to expend shouldn't be a limiting factor. Then he remembered how in both instances he had burned handholds into the structure he was trying to move. Was that the answer? Did he need the more solid contact of his hands in the metal to cause his personal bubble of altered physics to expand to encompass the object he wanted to move?

It certainly seemed worth a try since his current approach didn't seem to be working. Turning his heat vision gaze onto the hull, Clark started burning handholds on either side of the prow about three feet apart. Then when the metal reached a molten white hot, he jammed his hands into the selected locations.

Forcing himself to once more start flying upwards, this time he sensed an immediate response. Slowly at first, but then at an ever accelerating pace, the giant battleship started moving up towards the surface.

After about two minutes of 'speed-mode' time, the amount of effort required suddenly took an abrupt step down and the rate at which ship was accelerating significantly increased. Looking up with his x-ray vision, Clark could see the stern of the ship had just broken clear of the surface. He quickly realized he had been working against the column of water above the ship, but the air above the ship didn't provide the same resistance. Therefore another thirty seconds of 'speed-mode' time saw the rest of the mighty, eight hundred foot long ship rise clear of the water as well.

For a moment Clark almost paused, as he reached his original goal. But then he saw the German's flying ship still almost a mile above his current water level location. If he could lift the battleship clear of the water, why not lift it all the way up to the other ship's level? It would make transferring the survivors quicker and it would give them more time to retrieve Whitney's body before the ship once more plunged to the depths. Therefore Clark continued to lift the ship higher until it was at the same altitude as the other great ship. Then carefully continuing to balance the ship on its nose, he slowly moved it laterally until it hovered barely eighty feet from the brilliant red saucer of the Nazis' other wonder weapon.

Pulling his hands free of the molten metal, Clark allowed himself to drop away until he was well clear and he was certain his 'alternate' dimension bubble was no longer acting on the ship. Then he flew back up passed the long wood covered foredeck, passed the two mighty forward gun turrets, passed the towering superstructure. Now fully exposed to the dawn's light, the ship looked so much bigger and more massive than it had down in the dark depths of the ocean. Had he really lifted this giant battleship from its submerged location to this spot a mile above the surface of the water? For an instant a smile crossed Clark's face and then he allowed himself to fly a big loop around the battleship before getting back to work. It wasn't really a victory loop for having managed to hoist a 50,000 ton ship a mile into the air, no, of course not.

Then using the same series of holes he had used to exit the ship, Clark returned to the compartment where he had left Hank and Marion although he did, along the way, open the holes up further to make it easier to pass through while carrying the others. On his arrival, he found nothing in the compartment had changed; Marion and Hank were still kneeling beside Whitney's body. Clark noticed his spare communication device was still in Hank's hand and still turned on. Guessing they might need every advantage to locate Whitney's body in the future, Clark pulled the device from Hank's hand and stuffed it into Whitney's breast pocket. With no more than one lingering glance at Whitney's body, Clark swept the Jones up into his arms. After exiting the ship he flew them over to Var's ship for safety rather than to the Germans' flying ship. Besides, Clark wanted to talk to Var before beginning the long, arduous task of finding and moving all of the German survivors to their other ship.

Arriving at Var's ship, which was holding a pacing position a little over a mile from its German counterpart, Clark found the main hatch at the bottom of the lower central hemisphere still standing open. Flying inside, he landed and then proceeded to walk down the corridor to the central grav-shaft before resuming flight mode to reach Var's command deck. Landing, he found Gretchen frozen in place next to Var, who was seated in his command chair. Carefully lowering Hank and Marion to the deck, he then strode over to the command chair.

Whether Var had already been in 'speed-mode' or he somehow sensed Clark's presence, either way Var turned to face Clark.

"Very impressive, Clark," began Var with a nod of his head towards the view through the seemingly transparent dome of his upper hull.

Clark looked in the indicated direction and for the first time got a good look at his handiwork from a distance. The long, slender battleship hung directly in front of the wide, saucer-shaped flying ship. It looked as though some long, invisible cord was stretched down from the distant heavens and attached to its stern. The light coating of water from its recent sojourn in the ocean depths glittered red, orange, and yellow in the early dawn's light. From this distance and position, the giant battleship looked like a glimmering jewel rather than the lethal weapon of destruction it really was.

Clark gave an only slightly embarrassed shrug. "It seemed like it would be easier to move the survivors to the Germans' other ship if they were closer together. And it is going to take a lot of time and effort to locate all of them. I was hoping you would be willing to help."

Var nodded. "Yeah, I will be happy to help; there has been enough death already this morning." Then Var glanced over at where Hank and Marion were frozen in a kneeling position on the floor. "What about Whitney and the other girl?"

Clark felt his eyes start to tear up again at the mention of Whitney and Lana. "Oh, Var, I really screwed up. I never should have let Hank and Whitney go after the girls while I handled the other flying ship. Since they both had the braids, I thought it was okay and right for them to be the ones to save the girls. But I should have just gone over there in 'speed-mode' and retrieved the girls before taking care of the other ship. It is all my fault."

Var saw the boy was in tears and knew something bad must have happened to the others. He quickly climbed down from the command chair and pulled Clark into a hug like he had done many times before with his children back on Krypton.

"Clark, tell me what happened. Perhaps getting it out will help."

Clark returned the hug, as Var suddenly felt like the closest thing to his own Mom and Dad he had experienced in weeks. Slowly, haltingly with many pauses for tears, Clark got out the events which had transpired on the two other great ships. For what felt like almost an hour the two Kryptonians sat on the couch with their arms around each other's shoulders.

Finally, Var spoke up. "Come on, Clark. We still have a lot of work to do today, a lot of people to rescue. I have always found keeping busy helps at times like this."

Clark nodded and then rose to his feet. As he turned towards the grav-shaft, he asked, "Did you send the message to get them to evacuate from Peenemunde? Did it work?"

Var sighed as he stood to join the younger man. "I hope so. I sent a message on all the radio frequencies they use about a release of lethal gases from the rocket fuel factory and how it was drifting towards the main residential areas of the base. Hopefully, it will get most of the people out of the facility, but I think we are going to have to hunt down and remove stragglers before we can self-destruct the German ship."

Clark nodded in agreement to Var's earlier comment – it was shaping up to be a very long day in 'speed-mode'.

- + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - +

Var dropped out of 'speed-mode' back on the bridge of his ship. Since coming to earth and discovering his unique abilities, he had never spent such an extended period 'down under'. Working as a team, it had taken him and Clark almost a subjective thirty four hours to located and remove all five hundred forty seven survivors from the Hitler's crew. Thirty four hours of almost constant use of their heat vision to cut through the seemingly endless steel walls and bulkheads of the great ship. Turning to gaze at the battleship still suspended next to the other flying craft, Var could see how its superstructure was riddled with holes not unlike that earth delicacy - Swiss cheese. The main hull with its super-thick steel skin didn't show much evidence from their activity. No, they had quickly found it was faster and easier to bring everyone out through the holes in the thinner superstructure than to waste a lot of time and effort burning holes through the hull.

As Var looked at the scene visible a mile away through the transparent viewport, he heard a sharp 'God in Heaven' exclamation in German from Gretchen. He spared her only a brief glance before turning his attention forward again. It was not everyday, even on Krypton that you got to see a great ship like the Hitler crash down into the ocean from such a great height.

Slowly the battleship began its final descent. At first its superstructure had been on the same level as the nearby bright red flying dreadnought. Then it fell to where the first aft gun turret was parallel and then the second gun turret was parallel. Finally, after about five seconds the very stern of the battleship was parallel with the other ship. Var quickly did the math in his head and knew it would only take about eighteen more seconds for the earth's gravity to finish the job of pulling the great battleship down to the ocean's surface as it completed its ultimate death plunge.

Var heard Hank and Marion rise to their feet, but after Gretchen's initial remark no one broke the silence while the great ship was still visible.

From its initial vertical position, the Hitler knifed straight down to its doom. Still prow first, it entered the water like an Olympic high-diver. Almost no splash was visible until the mighty ship was gone and then a fountain of water almost a thousand feet tall briefly marked its finally resting place.

The four people on the bridge of Var's ship continued to stare down at the ocean for a few seconds until all traces of the ship were gone and the natural pattern of waves once more marched unbroken across the surface of the sea.

Marion, who had been deep below decks during the entire exchange between the German battleships and had never heard of the magnificent flying ships, stared around herself in wonder. She also had never experienced Clark's 'speed-mode' before either. Oh, she had undergone sudden shifts while in the mind-link thing with Lana and Laura, but this she knew was real. One moment they had been down in the sinking battleship and now they were here, apparently flying high above the ocean.

Marion clutched Hank's hand and whispered. "Where are we?"

Hank introduced Gretchen and Var-El and explained how they had come to be on the alien's ship out here over the Baltic. He also explained briefly about Clark's Vulcan transported device and how it could move people instantly from place to place.

Var listened to Hank's explanation and found himself slowly shaking his head. If only the device Hank was describing really existed, he thought, it would have been much easier to rescue all of the survivors from the battleship then all of the hard work he and Clark had gone through. But then he understood Clark's desire to not reveal all of his abilities, Var wished he hadn't revealed any of his 'gifts' to the Germans either.

As Hank's explanation to Marion wound down, he turned to Var. "Does the Vulcan race really exist on another planet? I know now that Clark arrived here via a time machine. Is his transporter device really from the future?"

Var shrugged. "You are going to have to ask Clark. If he brought the device with him from the future and didn't want to admit it, I am sure he has a very good reason."

Hank glanced around. "Where is Clark? He was down in the battleship with us."

Hank gestured over to the only other thing visible in the sky. "He is over there. We raised the battleship to make it easier to off-load the survivors onto the other ship. Once we have transported everyone back to land, we are going to destroy that German vessel. The Nazis are not supposed to have the technology found on that ship."

Hank looked back out at the bright red flying ship holding position about a mile away. When the battleship had been suspended adjacent to it, he had been able to get a sense of its size. And it was big. Oh the shape was completely different, but the total size was similar to the battleship. If it was anything like a normal battleship, it would have a crew in the hundreds plus all of the survivors from the sunken ship. How could one man maintain control against that many hostile men? But then he remembered it was Clark he was thinking about, the boy with all of the remarkable toys.

After staring at the other ship for a few minutes, they all saw it start to move off. Quickly, Var climbed back into the command chair and directed his ship to follow the course Clark was setting back to land.

Part 4

Clark stood beside Hank, Marion, and Gretchen on the bridge of Var's ship and, god, did he feel tired. Var's plan to cause the evacuation of Peenemunde hadn't been nearly as successful as he had hoped. When they arrived over the base after off-loading the Deutschland's crew and the Hitler's survivors ten miles down the coast, they had discovered there were still several thousand people on the base. It had taken what felt like over a week of continuous effort in 'speed-mode' to get all of those people to safety. The only highlight of that whole time was coming across a very young Wernher von Braun on one of the rocket test stands. With all the death and destruction his V-1 and V-2 rockets would cause during the upcoming war, it had been very tempting to leave him behind. But Clark's whole purpose was to not screw up the timeline. Besides which Braun would later play an important part in the American space program. But other than that one brief bit of excitement, it had been long, dull time trapped in 'speed-mode'. Now at least it was all almost over.

Var had moved his ship back out over the ocean about five miles from the base, but had raised their position to almost twenty thousand feet so they would have a good view. Clark had just flown back from the German's ship and knew its end was only five seconds away.

"Five . . . Four . . . Three . . . Two . . . One," counted down Clark quietly. Then a brilliant flash lit the sky as the earth experienced it most powerful man-made explosion until the development of the atomic bomb still nine years in the future. The flash of light was followed by a massive shockwave and then by the giant mushroom cloud typical of all large explosions.

It only took a few seconds for the shockwave to reach their position but the Wegthor's Shadow's powerful anti-gravity drive allowed only the smallest buffet through before damping it out entirely.

"Well, hopefully all technical knowledge the Germans had about my ship was just destroyed," stated Var as he perused the readings from his ship's sensors. On the human measurement scale the blast had measured 6.7 kilotons.

Clark merely nodded. He didn't have access to Var's sensitive equipment, but his powerful vision told him most of the base had been destroyed. It would take the Germans months to rebuild.

This was the first time Clark had been in their presence since Whitney's death back aboard the battleship. Marion turned to him and quietly asked, "Who is Sliviuh? I know when Whitney mentioned the name you recognized it."

Clark turned and looked at her. She knew about the time machine and must have gotten the information from Lana. He had been careful to avoid revealing that over the past few days he had spent with Hank, but suddenly it didn't seem to matter. Who would believe them if they told of recent events? And they surely believed he was from a much more distant future than a mere sixty-five years. Hank and Marion both looked close to forty which would make them over one hundred if they survived to his time. The only one present who might survive until then was Gretchen and even she would eighty. So Clark decided after everything they had been through, they had earned a little of the truth.

"You know about Laura, but did Lana ever explain about Laura and Chloe?"

"Just that Chloe has lived almost forever and that Laura is sort of a copy of her mind that coexists in Lana's mind," answered Marion.

Clark nodded as he noticed the suddenly curious expressions on Hank's, Gretchen's, and even Var's faces. "Chloe was born 17,000 years ago and is the last survivor of a long forgotten advanced civilization which existed before the last ice age. Some kind of man-made accident occurred which wiped out that civilization. Chloe had just been given an experimental treatment when the end came – a treatment which made her effectively immortal – never aging beyond sixteen years old and with the ability to instantly heal from any injury.

"But she was effectively left alone. The subsequent ice age dropped the worldwide population from billions to only the low millions. As mankind slowly rose back from the abyss, Chloe's vast experience general kept her near the top of any civilization she joined. But over time as she continually outlived her families and friends, it took a toll on her mental state. Near the end of the ice age, when the Atlantis civilization was at its peak, something happened to her and her family and well, something snapped."

Clark hated thinking about this aspect of Chloe as it was so unlike the girl he knew and loved. But if he was going to figure out a way to help Lana, he was going to have to admit to himself that it was true.

"At the time Chloe was going by the name, Sliviuh. She used her gifts of instant healing and the ability to take control of anyone's mind she had shared blood with to take control of the Atlantian civilization. Then she proceeded to subjugate the whole world. And apparently she thought of herself as a god or at least so far above normal men that she felt it was her right to do anything she wanted to them. She killed and tortured individuals. She wiped out whole cities and nations. For three hundred years she ruled the planet with an iron fist."

Marion felt her skin suddenly go all cold and clammy. "What stopped her in the end?"

Clark thought back to the conversation they had had in Rome and realized Chloe never explained what had ended her reign of terror and returned her to normal. "I don't know, Marion. At the time she mentioned Sliviuh to me, Chloe never explained that part of the story and other things were going on that were more urgent and I never asked. The important thing is that if Lana thinks she is Sliviuh, then she is probably the most power-mad person who has ever existed. And she has all Chloe's abilities to life forever and instantly heal plus 17,000 years worth of experience on which to draw."

"And," interjected Hank. "She has one of the Samson braids. So she is also one of the strongest people ever."

Damn, thought Clark. He hadn't known about the braid. But he had defeated men with braids before. It might make them strong, but it didn't give them his great speed. Of course, the men with Samson braids he had come up against didn't know about all of his abilities, but Lana/Laura/Sliviuh did. How was he going to stop her? And more importantly, how was he going to force the Sliviuh personality out of her mind and restore Lana?

Clark stared out at the devastated remains of Peenemunde and suddenly felt all alone. Chloe and Lex were lying back in his storm cellar near death and he still didn't know how to save them. Whitney was dead and probably lying at the bottom of the ocean in the wreckage of the battleship unless he could figure out how to use the time machine to retrieve him. And Lana, the girl he had dreamed about for years, might suddenly be the most powerful, dangerous opponent he had ever faced. With her gifts and knowledge, all the meteor freaks he had come up against, combined, would be like nothing compared to her.

His shoulders slumping under the enormous weight he suddenly felt, Clark glanced over to Hank.

"How long until the opening ceremonies?"

Doctor Henry Jones, Jr. glanced down at his watch which had miraculously survived the day's events. "Four hours."

End of Chapter 19

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Author's Notes

Whew! I had set myself the goal that I was going to have this chapter finished before the new Superman movie comes out. To meet that goal I ended up writing over 6,000 words in the past two days – way over my normal output. Fortunately, this chapter has been gestating in my head for a long time and therefore writing it went easier than many of the chapters.

So what does everyone think? Did I achieve an action sequence on the scale of what the best minds of Hollywood could do with millions of dollars at their disposal? I guess I will find out on Friday, as I already have my tickets for the IMAX. (Superman in 3-D, does it get any better than that?)

Have a great day,

Duane