Ch.2 "BIRDS OF PREY"
There was a 747 cruised in high circles high and wide over the eastern seaboard. Inside the Plane, the engine volume rose, so there'd be little talking inside the cabin. Barbara Gordon sat in the window seat staring glumly out the window. Blasts of sunlight came through the gaps in the clouds and into the cabin only to vanish a split second later.
In the back of the plane, a woman placed an Xbox 360 gaming console on her lap. She unscrewed the face plate from the Xbox and extracted several items that were wrapped in a reflective foil created to pass through security X-ray machines.
The foil packets were slit open and the dark components contained within fell to her lap. When the components were assembled, the woman held a .38 caliber pistol in her hand. From the Xbox she extracted more packets, and from these she assembled a perforated cylinder silencer.
Next she took a package of Skittles from her pocket, cut it open, and dumped five high-density plastic bullets onto her lap. The plastic bullets fit perfectly into the clip, which she shoved into her pistol. She chambered the round and screwed on the silencer, checked the balance and aim and then slid the weapon into her flight attendant uniform. The agent was ready to execute her mission.
Smuggling the weapon through the airport security had not been easy, but the time for stealth was almost over. Her blonde hair neatly tied up in a bun, she closed the woman's restroom and slipped into the cabin area. Nobody gave her a second look.
There had been a time when Barbara Gordon actually enjoyed flying, boarding an airplane in Gotham City, en route to Star City, or flying by private jet from Metropolis to Star City on one hour's notice, represented freedom from the confines of society. It meant being light, unbound by the strictures and structures of a "normal" life.
Barb has spent the better part of the past couple years traveling. And since it was useful in her business to refrain from forming close personal times, constant travel was a way of staying a few steps ahead of that feeling that life was happening all around her, but she could never quite reach out and touch it.
She studied life in all its forms: she copied it, imitated it, faked it, and sometimes change the course other's lives. But that was all business. As Batgirl, a global agent of chaos battling against criminal interests and threats to Wayne Enterprises.
The last couple of years of Barb's life had been lived in the shadows of other people's lives. What a strange way to live, Gordon mused, to be like a constant shadow, floating over the Earth in a ceaseless orbit. She pulled her mind away from such depressing notions to concentrate on the business at hand.
A cheery flight attendant began making rounds in first-class cabin, passing out peanuts and drinks. When she reached Barbara, her demeanor remained light and cheery, but she looked her steadily in the eye in and smiled. "Would you like anything, Ms. Gordon?"
Barb gave the flight attendant a closer look. She was a toned young woman with long blonde hair. She seemed shockingly pleasant, fresh-faced, but Barbara recognized a cold look in the woman's eyes. Call it a Cop's instinct that she inherited from her father, but something told her that this woman wasn't what she claimed to be.
"No, thank you."
The flight attendant's whole demeanor changed in an instant. She dropped the pleasant act and took on a cockier, more confident posture. She reached for something in her pocket and Barbara felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck.
"Ms. Gordon," she smiled coolly. "Intergang says Hello-"
Barbara bristled, her hands in fists and stood her ground like she knew how to handle herself, just in time to see the agent drawing a .38 caliber pistol.
She dove behind the seats, which suddenly took a bullet, down and cotton fluttered in the air as she ducked and craned her neck to see three more rounds punch a sore of holes into the cabin wall. . .
Reacting quickly. Barb dove for the assassin and knocked the gun from her arm as the next shot was fired. The gun went skidding away. An expert jab to a crucial nerve center dropped the Intergang assassin to the floor.
Shrieking matched shrieking voices as the puncture holes expanded. Decompression did the rest, blowing out a major section, the plane's own velocity wrenching the piece away.
The entire cabin tilted forward at an almost ninety-degree angle, passengers were thrown from their seats and tumbled into the aisle in a tangle of limbs. Loose baggage and debris tumbled outward on top of them.
Barb tried to catch herself, but it happened too fast. She went flying head over heels into the aisle, ending up flat on her back. Looking up, she saw her world turned upside down. . .
Pandemonium erupted aboard. People screaming trying frantically to get to their feet. Hurricane winds roared as the back of the plane's atmosphere was sucked out into the vacuum of blue sky.
The breach expanded, and loose luggage vanished through it.
The big plane bucked downward under the impact of the pressure wave. Having been thrown hard to the aisle by an earlier concussion, the Intergang assassin finally managed to pull herself up.
Without warning, she flew backwards as if she'd been shot from a catapult, sucked up and out the hole, into the teeth of howling wind.
Under the relentless pull of escaping air, desperate screaming passengers clung to seats and instruments . . . anything that remained fastened to a wall or the floor.
Barb grabbed for a handhold as her feet momentarily left the floor and she started to slide up near the wall.
Her whole world turned upside down in a wild arc, and she battled to hold on.
Barbara clutched onto a seat to keep from falling, but screaming passengers plunged through the upended cabin, plummeting past Smoak who remained strapped to her seat.
The momentum swung Barb to the side, the wind got under her and tossed her over the seats towards the cabin below, tumbling end over end. She flailed in panic, unable to grab onto anything to halt her fall.
Only Smoak's rapid reaction in getting a hand on Barb's forearm saved her from her plunge. Smoak was supporting the dangling woman's weight with one arm. Smoak's grip was firm, but she felt her own strength ebbing.
Barb could see Smoak straining. She didn't want to a burden to anyone. "Let go. Now."
The cockpit door was no more than twenty feet deep. Without hesitation, she dropped downward tumbling off the aisle and landed hard when she hit the cockpit doors. She closed her eyes, tasting the harsh gunmetal of blood from her nose.
She climbed back to her feet, threw open the cockpit doors exposing howling winds that tore at her hair and clothing.
Empty brown hills stretched to infinity beneath the powder blue sky. Piercing brown eyes gazed out from a beautiful face. Cold wind whipped against her as she peered warily down a heart-stopping drop to what might be a closed-casket funeral for Barbara Gordon.
Then something caught her eye. . .
Something that glinted far off on the white horizon. Under the thick layer of cumulus clouds was a vast city rising out of nowhere.
Eyes widened with fear as Barb recognized that it was National City. Looming larger by every passing moment.
Her body had seemed to realize the grave danger she was in before her mind had fully processed it. Pangs of fear shuddered through her like a chill breeze turning her legs to mush, her muscles to Jell-O, and her heart pounding against her ribs.
Her brief inconsequential life raced before her eyes as she feared that she had fallen victim to a cruel joke. . .
She pulled her eyes reluctantly from the daunting sight, fighting to control her panic. She squeezed them shut, drew a sharp intake of breath and held it for a while. Exhaled, and did it once more. As a means of zazen meditation and practiced skill, her heart rate seemed to slow dramatically.
Time seemed to skip a beat and her world blurred out for a moment. . .
She heard a voice from the back of her mind, swooping up at her from depths unknown, flying wildly in the dark caverns of her imagination, poking and prodding at her from the velvety darkness. A voice that sounded ever-so-distantly like Bruce Wayne. . .
"Fear is irrational – not reality," the voice spoke. "Whenever it begins to build, Barbara, keep in mind that it's only a hallucination. And as with any hallucination, you have to look past it and deal with what's real and tangible. . . Push past it, Babs . . ."
". . . focus on the here and now,"
Reaching deep, deep into her imagination, Barb caught sight of herself in the glare of the cockpit window . . . and there was Batgirl, a dark brooding figure reflected before her, looking back with icy eyes peering out from a shadowy cowl.
Then she felt it. Climbing out of despair, almost as clear as day, pushing past the illusions, her mind's eye intensified to "detective mode". Forcing herself to the present, she instantly zeroed in on what mattered most: People will die, innocent people who have nothing to do with Intergang.
". . .focus on the here and now,"
Fear gave way to adrenaline and in a heartbeat, she felt it pushing through her veins like rivers of molten flame. She knew it wouldn't last, but she knew how to make it count.
Barb had let out a breath, unaware that she'd been holding it all this while, trolling her gaze of the cockpit.
An unconscious pilot, knocked cold by a flying chunk of debris, lay sprawled in his seat. His seat-belt and shoulder strap dug into him, holding him to his seat. His head drooped limply. Blood dripped from his face.
Her eyes went to the instrument panel that had been punctured and broken. Someone had clearly sabotaged it. Who? What? How?
Working swiftly, she swung in under the panel, and removed the outer face plate exposing a mass of cabling and optical connections that now pulsed with intensity. Probing eyes spied a beautiful, intricate, fiber-optic core that was suspended underneath. Without hesitation, she began digging through it.
As her arms interrupted the opticals, there were flashes of light and a few sparks. But she didn't retreat or remove her probing fingers.
Working on borrowed time, a couple of clicks here and a few buttons pressed there, she took a step back. A brief flash was followed by a puff of smoke, and in no-time, the panel hummed back to life. Smoke and the smell of burning circuitry pervaded the air. Colored telltales blinking all around.
The man's headset appeared to have survived and Barb plucked it from his head. Straining, Barbara managed to activate the radio when a burst of static hit her ears. She chucked it.
Working fast, she unbuckled the dead pilot from his harness, shoved him aside, crawled into the now vacant seat. Gripping the controls tightly until her knuckles whitened in both hands, she wrenched its throttle past the firewall in an attempt to stabilize the plane's spiraling descent.
Fear gave quickly to anger as she fought to pull the plane way beyond its intended limits. Her body shaking from the strain, but making good progress. "Dammit. C'mon, C'mon," she muttered anxiously.
Doubling her efforts, she was making progress. Wind howled through the shattered windows like a soul in torment. Staring through broken glass, she saw the right wing shear off before her eyes and into the clouds. Gravity tightened its grip, vertigo assailed her and the plane spun like a carnival ride.
For all the passion of her indomitable will, Barb was still constrained by natural forces. Which made the act of easing the controls or pulling on the yoke or pressing the rudder pedals akin to bench-pressing a fully loaded semi-trailer.
The plane was shedding altitude. Fast.
The hull heated with atmospheric friction and bucked like a mule as the plane started the started the transition to the deeper atmosphere.
She began randomly flipping switches on the instruments. When she had exhausted all options she activated her own crash harness.
Quickly she threw open the doors of the cockpit and shouted to everyone to fasten their crash harnesses. She wasn't entirely sure what that was good that would do.
All around the plane the same smart snap was repeated as one set of emergency braces after another was fastened into place. Eyes squeezed shut in anticipation of imminent impact. The plane felt like a cork being tossed upon the ocean, and the passengers began to wail. Feverish prayers rose like a litany of the demand.
Clouds boiled away above National City as the plane plummeted Earthward like a fallen star, with bright orange flames trailing black smoke . . . falling fast and furious into the breathable atmosphere.
Disheveled blonde hair flapping in the breeze stirred up by her flying. Supergirl pits her titanic strength against the might of the plane, fighting gravity and thousands of pounds of red-hot steel. The plane lurched savagely with a heart-stopping force that passengers braced themselves between seats for dear life.
Supergirl peered at the nose of the plane and it seemed to dissolve away as she focused past it to the cabin beyond. Her vision shifted along the electromagnetic spectrum as dozens of passengers trapped inside appeared to her as living X-Rays.
While scanning the men and women, Supergirl found memories swirling to the surface of her mind, dark remembrances of that fateful night when she fled from Krypton via an escape pod. She remembered how it got hotter and hotter in that confined space and dangerously so.
She remembers being soaked in perspiration. Clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. Alarms squealing in her ears. Warning lights blinking frantically all over. Frightened and in pain. Not knowing if she would survive the crash landing.
She remembered how she felt lost and alone . . . . But this time, it was different. This time, Supergirl was here to save them.
Supergirl could hear their collective screams, their curses, and their prayers. She could hear their hearts pounding in fear.
Her red cape streaming behind her like the tail of a meteor, and her blue-and red uniform withstood the heat of the plane. .the morning air rushed past her, the world spinning around her, roaring in her ears as gravity seized her to her doom. Drawing strength from the golden daylight, her every muscle tensed as solid steel screamed beneath her bare fingers.
National City spread beneath her in a blur as her mind raced, trying to figure a way to park a runaway plane. She knew that people were looking out of office windows, pointing and shouting. As the plane neared the heart of the city, a colorful cross section of humanity stood on the sidewalks, watching it unfold.
Warning cries rose from the crowd as they scrambled for protection, covering their heads from raining debris.
Miles sped by in seconds and the cabin rattled and rocked in the turbulent air. Barbara stared straight ahead from inside the cockpit, which felt like an endless roller coaster. All the plane's wild and unpredictable moves forced her to spend most of the time just hanging on, to keep from making like a hockey puck against the walls and ceiling.
The sun was riding high overhead, stretching its arms on the east horizon. In the hazy distance to the north skyscrapers loomed suddenly before them. Figures! Supergirl thought as her frustration started to swell, and yet she would not relent. Clung plastered to the nose of the plane like a bug on a windshield, her face a mask of concentrated effort, her whole body shook as if seized by a convulsion.
Straining, she inclined the plane just enough to match the slender vertical opening just ahead, clearing the skyscrapers with mere centimeters to spare.
The cement streets opened up to grassy Plaines. The field emptied out onto an ocean. Two large cliffs rose up on either side.
The great sea heaved beneath her, its power like her own – vast, incalculable, mysterious in origin and destiny.
With the impact of a locomotive, both her and the plane plunged into the bay with a momentum sufficient enough to send it through the water and slashing into the city bay-front.
The containment wave that rose out of the harbor swept across the low-lying harbor front, inundating facilities, smashing apart landscaping, and tossing vehicles about like toys. Building after building succumbed to the same sickening impact of water.
Lord Industries. National City. . .
Maxwell Lord took a small trip to the R&D level of Lord Industries just in time to hear his head scientist embark on a detailed explanation of a new discovery. "Some kind of power source beyond anything developed on earth," the scientist told him. "If we could understand the technology, it could potentially solve the planet's energy crisis."
With a nod, Max signaled his armed guards to wait outside. And they did as they were told.
Gesturing towards a glass wall isolation chamber on the other side of the lab, the scientist started toward it, speaking as he went. "Plato once said, you can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy in life . . . are men who are afraid of the light."
Working up a nerve, Maxwell stalked forward, feeling every step before he committed himself to it. He yanked off the tarp, exposing. . . an alien object, which was the size of a tractor, looked like a cross between a space capsule and a car. The flat-paneled monitors to his left were already displaying the status of . . . a space craft.
A being rested inside the bulbous shell, molded out of a slick, pearly material. The outer plates were scorched and blackened, as though they had been through hell and back.
A canopy slid open and a haze of heated vapor filled the room. The being glowed with an unnatural light, casting shadows over the men's faces.
"What'd you plan to do Mr. Lord?"
A smirk grew on Maxwell's face. "Protect our investment."
NEXT CHAPTER: "IN BRIGHTEST DAY"