Brave and the Bold #201

"It was the dawn of the Second Age of Heroes, a few years after the Allies-Axis War. The Brave And The Bold was a dream given form. Their goal: to prevent more evil by creating places where humans would not be afraid of metahumans. It's a way of life, stopping evil and creating homes away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers: humans and metahumans, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, this new, metahuman-ridden Earth, but it's our last, best hope for peace. This is the story of the those times and those peoples. The years are 1948-1966. The name of the book, and the people in them, is The Brave And The Bold."

Rated PG for language.

Three figures streak across the German landscape tonight. On their backs they carry huge packs, stuffed to bursting. These figures are strong, though, and despite the weight their bodies do not complain. At the speeds they are going everything is reduced to zero motion, people and animals and vehicles mere still lifes for the figures to run by. Life at five miles a second is a long progression of statue-watching, and boredom comes quite easily. But these three figures are not bored; they're on a mission, and they do not know what they are facing, and so their usual boredom is replaced with alertness and a mild but ever-present sense of danger. But all three are experienced and confident, and so the danger acts only to spur them on.

Overhead fly multiple waves of airplanes. Most of them are USAF P-66 Hellstorms or RAF Dragonflies, flying escort for C-47 transports. A few others, though, are in different formations. Five, in a tight v-wing, roar ahead of the others, their special engines quietly humming and their distinctive, yellow-and-black emblem invisible in the darkness. Three of the planes, flying in a loose line, seem to flicker in and out of visibility, and something about their design, and the way the eye can't quite seem to focus on them, makes them seem unreal, and all that can definitely be made out is a red-and-black skull crest on each plane. Another one leads them all, a P-51 with the word "Jenny" painted on its side. It zooms ahead of the other planes, moving much faster than a P-51 should.

All of these are heading east, towards Berlin. Heading west towards the city are other planes, Soviet I-44s, and a number of other, vaguely-humanoid-shaped metal objects. And in the city tonight a number of figures are moving about, beneath and above the city.

And looking down on all of them, from another place far removed from Germany and from Earth, is an intellect vast and cold and cruel, and wise in its malignity. Its fingers, squat monstrosities with a strength beyond imagining, curl inward slightly, as if itching for a bone to break or a throat to strangle. Behind its yellow eyes awful energies burn. It glares down at an image of Germany for long moments without speaking.

Finally it glanced to its right and addressed the figure cringing there.

"DeSaad," it rumbled in an almost subsonic bass, "I have gazed upon the burning wastes of Apokolips and found only despair and death; from the firepits to the torture mills, all that is, looks to the skies with eyes devoid of hope, whispering my name as a substitute for hope or for gods long dead - for life itself. But I look upon you now, worm that you are, and find in your smile a note of glee. What is it that so possesses you to bring a smile of hope to me? Were another to smile so in front of me now, I would have him impaled and set in a garret above the Armagetto, to encourage and remind the others of who rules over them, whose will is life and death on Apokolips. What drives you now to set aside your habitual cowardice and risk the Omega Force?"

The figure rubbed its hands together and cackled nervously, then said, in a grating wheedle that would inspire thoughts of strangulation in even the most saintly of creatures, "Great Darkseid! I have directed your attention to this primitive mudball for a reason! There is in these hairless apes the seed of nobility and even greatness! Some on Apokolips - the Wild Talents, the sensitives among the Lowlies, those of your Mentat Battalion - have foreseen a flower blossoming there whose thorns will prick even you one day!"

Darkseid's hands, practiced for decades at throttling, seemed to twitch toward DeSaad for a moment before withdrawing. "And is this all you have to tell me - that which I have long known already?"

DeSaad hurriedly interjected, "No, Great One! What I...that is, what your informants on Earth have reported is that they have discovered the Anti-Life Equation. In this metropolis you look down upon now, that I have called your attention to - a place its inhabitants know as Berlin."

For the first time Darkseid showed signs of...life, turning quickly about to look full upon DeSaad, who cringed, his posture and expression reflecting equal parts fearful abasement and cunning hope for advancement. Darkseid's rumble increased in tone and volume. "If what you say is true, worm, you may yet live to see me reign triumphant. Dispatch the Furies, DeSaad, to bring the bearer of the Equation to me."

One hundred feet directly below the Brandenburg Gate, the ultimate border between communist East Berlin and democratic West Berlin, like thick, round sewage pipes and sanitation tunnels. They are part of Berlin's under-city, first laid down by order of Frederick the Great during the days following the Treaty of Hubersburg, and continually modified over the decades and centuries. Dotted with grates and partially walled up in many places, with short, stunted side-tunnel sprouting from the main tunnels like so many broken twigs off a main branch, the tunnels and pipes are mostly forgotten now, in the middle of 1948. Only the sewage workers venture down here, and even they have better things to do; these tunnels appear on only a few blueprints, and only the older sewer workers even know of their existence.

Tonight two figures trudge through them, splashing and, when necessary, wading through the rivers of sludge and filth, using small screwdrivers and prybars and mini-acetylene torches and even a pocket laser to pass by and through the various stone and metal obstacles.

Finally, as the two passed directly under the Brandenburg Gate, one, wearing a filth-spattered white shirt over blue pants and a red half-cloak with a pattern of stars along its edge, with a whip curled around his right shoulder, said to the other, in a low voice, "You sure know how to show a guy a good time on a first date, Alan."

The second, wearing a green and cloaked costume set off by a red cape, goggles and a red diamond on its chest, kept his revolver held in front of him as he sloshed forward, muttered, "Shut up."

The first matched the second's pace and said, "You sweet-talking bastard; I bet you think you'll be getting some skull off me for this."

The second didn't look behind him as he growled, "Shut up."

The first smiled and straightened his domino mask and smoothed his mustache and said, "I only go to first base on a first date, Alan."

The second, Alan, finally sighed and stopped and turned to the first and said, "Tex, did you talk this much during the war?"

Tex said, "Nah, of course not. The Resistance didn't much cotton to that. Well, except that one time in '44, on the Riviera..."

Alan took a swig of water from a small canteen from deep in his cloak and said, "And back when you were exploring in, I don't know, the Congo or the Yucatan or Australia, and were closing in on some lost city, did you talk this much?"

Tex said, "Only if I knew the natives would understand me."

Alan said, "Then why the hell are you talking now? This is as serious - more so, even - than those things."

Tex grinned. "'cause I didn't have any of the Big Guns backing me up then. Hell, Alan, we got the goddamned Flash on our side for this one. Even if we get captured, he'll still rescue us before we're halfway to Archangel."

Alan said, "Yeah, well, maybe. If the Commies don't have some speedsters of their own. We don't know what they've got. We--"

Tex shook his head. "Come on, Alan. Jay and Max and Johnny have been running supplies into the city for days now. If the Russkies had a speedster of their own, he'd have shown up by now."

Alan said, "They could be holding him in reserve. Now, y'wanna be quiet - for me? Please? The pick-up spot is around this bend and down a couple of hundred feet, and even if our packages did make it here without company, I still want to do this by the numbers."

Tex smiled and said, "Okay, but don't expect any tongue from me later."

Alan sighed and shook his head and continued forward. They followed the twists and turns of the tunnel, Alan proceeding more and more carefully around each corner and turn.

A few minutes later Alan poked his head around a corner and saw, a little way down the tunnel, a man and a woman, standing together. They were of average height and middle-aged, and were in faded clothing, the man holding a beaten leather suitcase and the woman a large carrying bag; both looked very tired and under a great deal of stress. Alan leaned backwards and nodded at Tex, then held up fingers and turned them down.

Both heroes came around the corner with guns in their hands, held vaguely in the direction of the two but not aimed at anything in particular. The faces of both the man and the women lit up in wide grins, and the man opened his mouth to speak, but Alan held his left index finger up to his lips as Tex sloshed by the two and went to the bend in the tunnel behind the man and the woman. A few seconds later Tex came back and quietly muttered to Alan, "Seems clear."

Alan nodded and said in a whisper to the man and the woman, "You're Heinrich and Phoebe Moeller?"

The man nodded eagerly and said in a British accent, "Yes. You're--"

Alan said, "I'm Spy Smasher, and this is the Americommando. We can get the other introductions and pleasantries out of the way later. Have you got the documents?"

Phoebe Moeller nodded and said, "Yes. The Colonel was not aware that we took them. Can we--"

Spy Smasher said, "No time for that now, ma'am. We need to hurry." With that he took her arm and began walking back the way he and the Americommando had come. Only a few seconds later streamers of dust began to tumble down just behind the four. Spy Smasher, intent on making getting the spies free, did not notice, but the Americommando did, and said, "Alan - company" as he swung his guns around and pointed them at the ceiling.

As the ceiling collapsed and the figure dropped into the tunnel, Spy Smasher shouted to the Moellers, "Get around the next bend and stay there!"

Stone and dust and sewage poured into the tunnel from the hole in the roof, and the figure in the middle of it hesitated, clearly waiting for the shower of refuse to diminish. The Americommando and Spy Smasher didn't wait, opening fire with their guns and scoring numerous hits on the figure's chest and head. The figure watched the bullets bounce off his chest, and then slowly walked forward, brushing stone dust and other things off of his body. He was a tall, muscular man with a long black mustache and a handsome, cruel face, and his face lit up in a hearty smile as he saw the Americommando and the Spy Smasher. He said jovially, "Ah! Not the Justice Society, but still as good as I'd hoped for!"

The Americommando and the Spy Smasher backed off slowly as he strode forward, always keeping a space of fifteen feet between him and them; the more they looked at him the bigger he got, and besides the rents in his workman's clothes there was no evidence that their bullets had had any effect on him. The man said, "You've no idea how dull it is, dealing with American spies and German traitors all the time - they come apart so easily in the hands. You two, though...you should pose a challenge. And I have been so very bored."

The Americommando fired twice at the man's face, and although the bullets bounced off the man's skull with no effect he reflexively flinched and stopped walking forward. The Spy Smasher, seeing this, grabbed something from a pocket on the inside of his cloak and threw it at the wall next to the man, and then grabbed the Americommando and flung them both to the floor. A second later the grenade exploded, throwing the man sideways a few steps and causing the wall and floor to collapse. Spy Smasher immediately grabbed Americommando and dragged him away. Spy Smasher felt slightly stunned from the force of the explosion - the grenade had been modified by Mr. Terrific and packed much more power than a normal grenade - and although Tex didn't say anything, Spy Smasher could tell that he'd taken some shrapnel across his back and on his legs.

Behind them more of the wall and ceiling collapsed, making a still larger pile of rubble of wet, filthy sludge, and although the pile was already shifting from within, and the Russian's voice grew into an angered roar, both Spy Smasher and the Americommando speed-limped away. They reached the bend in the pipes and saw the Moellers, looking frightened and confused. Spy Smasher said, in a strained voice, "We've delayed him, but we must hurry" and then pulled ahead of them.

Tex said, in a low voice so the Moellers wouldn't hear, "Who...rgh...who was that?"

The Spy Smasher said, "CIA and ONI have him codenamed `Iron Wolf.' He's one of the Soviets' super-men. We don't know where he came from, and we're not sure about what he can do, but we know that invulnerability and superstrength are a part of it."

Tex finally let go of Alan's arm - he'd been leaning on him as they ran - and said, "I can...gah...make it on my own now. So, this Iron Wolf - got anything to...urg...stop him?"

Spy Smasher found that his breathing was beginning to come slightly labored, but put that out of his mind and said, "Nope. You?"

Tex took his hand away from his back and looked at the blood there and shook his head.

Spy Smasher said, "I think we can outdistance him, though."

The Americommando nodded, looked back to make sure the Moellers were keeping up with them, and concentrated on putting one foot in front of another, and quickly.

Two men crouched on a rooftop in East Berlin, within sight of the Brandenburg Gate, hiding behind a chimney as machine-gun fire spattered about them and richocheted off the chimney, sending shards of brick flying. One of the men, wearing a green costume with a large blue-and-white star on his chest, held a smoking automatic in one hand and clutched his bloody calf with his left hand. The other, in a costume of red pants and a shirt that seemed to have been made out of an American flag, held a small, black, metal box in both hands, occasionally blinking away the blood which was dripping onto his face and shirt from the wounds on his head.

The man in the green costume said, through gritted teeth, "How...many...do you...make it...Jack?"

Jack said, "Two 7.62s over there, and two--" he stopped to duck as a fresh wave of gunfire raked across the chimney and then said, "And two over there. Crossfire, Chase."

Chase said, "Okay...cover me...I'm...going to...oh, shit."

Jack's head jerked around, and he looked in the direction in which Chase was gazing. Coming at them at high speed at rooftop level were five hunks of metal and machinery in roughly humanoid form. Where their faces would be were large, smooth sheets of glass, and behind the glass could be seen the faces of angry men.

Jack said, "Damn it - Katyushas."

Chase opened fire on the flying men, but the bullets ricocheted off them with no effect. Jack said, "Hold on" and pointed the box at the rooftop beneath him. He depressed a button on its side, and a white beam flew from the box in a widening cone and disintegrated the roof and the floor below. Jack said, "We're clear - go!" and Chase leapt into the building. Jack snapped off a quick shot at the flying men, who swerved and avoided the beam, and then jumped in after Chase.

They limped through various empty offices and down the stairs and into the building's cellar, then made their way to the edge of the deepest room and stopped, waiting and listening as they caught their breath. Chase whispered, "So much...for the...pick-up."

Jack said, "Wild Bill ain't gonna be too happy about this. He wanted those papers bad."

Chase gasped, "He'd be...less happy...with us...in Russian...damn, this hurts...in Russian hands."

Jack finally got his breath and pointed the box at the wall of the cellar, at about a 50o angle, and pressed the button again, making a tunnel at a low angle up to the streets. As he did so he said, "How long before they get down here, you think?"

Chase, his gun pointed at the stair from which they'd reached the cellar, said, "A couple...of minutes...maybe."

Jack muttered, "I'd better hurry, then," and continued his aiming the ray as the two heard, from the floor above them, footsteps and urgently-whispered comments in Russian and German.

On the WilhelmstraBe the three speedsters dropped their loads in front of the main distribution terminal, where the American and British troops and German police were waiting for the clothes and food and coal in the packages, and then held a high-speed conversation.

The first and lead speedsters, a man in a red shirt with a lightning bolt down its front and wearing a winged metal helmet, said, "That's the last of it for tonight. Johnny, did you check the rivers?"

The second, wearing a red shirt with yellow gauntlets, said, "Remembered I'd forgotten it just now and took a quick detour; the defenses are still the same, and they still aren't letting any ships through. You wanna take those on tomorrow, Jay? We could tow the ships ourselves, easy."

The third speedster, a white-haired man wearing the clothes of a German worker, said, "That would not be wise, John."

Johnny, clearly irritated, said, "Maybe you aren't that sure of your speed, Max, but I am, and I say we can do it, no sweat."

Max said, with a placid expression, "It would slow us down enough for the Russian mystery-men to find us."

Jay said, with the air of one who is having to interrupt a quarrel for the hundredth time, "Speaking of which, Jay, Max, where are they? Johnny, did you find anything last time you searched the perimeter?"

Johnny shook his head. "Sorry, Jay, there was nothing there but Commie soldiers."

Max said, slowly, "I have not felt any other speedsters...and I would have, if they existed."

Jay and Johnny looked at Max, and then exchanged glances, both finally shrugging. Jay said, "ONI said we might run into someone, and told Hop and the others that they'd definitely find something special in the air, but I haven't seen anything to--"

He stopped and looked in the direction that Max was pointing - towards the center of Berlin, near the Brandenburg Gate, about a half-mile away. There were flashes of weird lights and the faint sounds of explosions and dull booms coming from that area. Jay said, "Super-men" and was gone, quickly followed by Max and Johnny.

In the air over the center of Berlin the C-47s unloaded their cargos and spun away, heading for the sanctuary of various German airfields, the pilots well aware of the irony that they were making use of airstrips first laid down for the Wehrmacht's use. Although nervous, they were not yet hysterical; the Soviets were sending their best new fighters at them, the I-44s, and they were of a quality that the C-47 pilots had never seen before, and so far the Russkies had shown themselves to be willing to start a war, just to stop the transports from giving the Germans in Berlin the supplies they needed. But the transport pilots had high-quality escorts on their own side, and they were proving to be equal to the Soviets. Moreover, although many of the American and British pilots were rusty, and less skilled than their Soviet counterparts - recent budget cuts had left the American and British air forces below would they should have been, especially in combat readiness - there were a few flyers who were clearly more skilled than the Soviets they were jousting with, and they were the ones who kept the transport pilots from completely losing their nerve.

And now those flyers were doing their jobs, covering the transports' 6s. The oddly-shaped XF5 F1s with the yellow-and-black hawk crests were zooming down from high up in the sky, descending at high-speed at a 45o angle, their machine-guns chewing the lead I-44s up before they could come within shooting range of the C-47s. The P-51 with the word "Jenny" painted on the side is some miles ahead of the other Allied planes and banking and rolling in the midst of a cloud of Soviet fighters, its guns spitting in every direction as it executes high-G turns that few pilots and fewer planes could withstand. And near the Jenny, in the middle of the main force of Soviet planes, float three the near-invisible planes with the skull crests. They move at a deceptive speed, seeming to be slower than the Soviet planes but somehow never where the pilots aim at, and somehow always appearing above and behind most of the Soviet fighters, spitting out curiously brief bursts of machine gun fire and then turning away as other fighters turn and aim at them.

The combat ranges for many miles in every direction, but somehow the fighting always returns to the center of Berlin, over the Brandenburg Gate, and after some short time the lights of their combat and the flames of the downed and burning planes are outshone by the light from below them. Although all the pilots are occupied with trying to save their own skins and kill their opponents, they can't help but notice, and try to catch brief glimpses of, the strange events unfolding below them.

The three speedsters arrived at the source of the explosions and lights before the sound of Jay's "super-men" faded away at the WilhelmstraBe. What they saw pulled them up short for a moment of their time - approximately one micro-second - while they took the scene in.

Standing around the rubble and ruins of what had shortly before been the Brandenburg Gate were several dozen American and Soviet soldiers. Around them lay the corpses of numbers of their comrades. They were not aiming their guns at each other, though, but rather at the five of the figures standing in what was left of the Gate.

Directly around the five figures, and exchanging fire and blows with them, were costumed individuals that the speedsters recognized: Spy-Smasher, Mister America, Minuteman, Commando Yank, the "Iron Wolf," and the Katyushas. The five figures themselves, however, were nobody the speedsters recognized or had ever heard of. The five were all women, as far as the speedsters could tell, but all were much taller and more muscular than most women the speedsters knew (with the exception of Hippolyte, who'd been a member of the All-Star Squadron with all three of the speedsters). They each wore costumes, in garish combinations of orange, yellow, blue and green, and each carried a variety of weapons and wore at least one item of armor.

One, an elderly-seeming woman in an armored, pine-green costume, was whirling a glowing chain-weapon and looking down at Commando Yank, who was crouched in front of her, holding a long commando knife point-down, Marine-style, at his side. Behind the woman stood three others, forming with the lead woman a diamond; in the middle of the diamond a tall, burly, black-haired figure looked at a sphere she held in both hands.

The black-haired figure, who under different circumstances would have been seen as stunningly beautiful, shouted, "Harridan! It's not here!"

The figure behind her, a tall, seemingly-shriveled woman in black and yellow, holding a glowing black spiked mace, snarled, "What? The Dread Lord said it would be here! Check it again!"

The elderly woman facing off against Commando Yank, sneered, "Where is the Formula, bug? Tell us, and we will let you live!"

Commando Yank, favoring his mangled left calf, said, "Wouldn't tell you even if I knew what you--"

The woman swung her arm forward, the end of the chain - a foot-long cylinder spiked in every direction - spinning in a lethal arc towards Commando Yank's head. He jumped forward, rolled, and came up by her right side; as she swung the chain around at him he slashed her on the waist and then jumped and rolled behind her. As she shouted in pain the Minuteman aimed the box at her and fired. The white beam struck her face and chest and began to strip the flesh from it. She screamed and whirled away from the beam, and as the Minuteman corrected his aim the shriveled woman in black and yellow shouted, "Furies, forward!" The two figures flanking the black-haired woman leapt forward, swinging and firing their weapons in all directions. The black-haired woman said, "The Formula?" and the shriveled woman said, "After we've killed these worms!" and ran forward, swinging her mace.

Commando Yank moved to intercept the shriveled woman, but her mace came around with the unstoppable momentum of a falling redwood and he, slowed by his wounded leg, which his rolls had worsened, was unable to get out of the way in time; the mace flung him thirty feet to the side, and he landed with a loud thump against a nearby wall. The Minuteman corrected his aim with the box and hit the chest of the closest of the woman, somehow seeming to be short, squat, and almost monstrous despite her height. The woman did not cry but merely gritted her teeth and pointed her spiked glove at the Minuteman; small missiles flew from the glove at him. He dodged, and they exploded harmlessly beside him, but then the fifth woman, buxom but disfigured with a vast number of scars on her face, head, and the bare skin of her four arms, pointed a cylinder at him, and he was unable to dodge out of the way of the red beam in time. It hit him and sent him flying backwards, knocking the box from his hand and burning him where it hit.

Then, as if the others had been waiting for that moment, everyone acted at once. The American and Soviet soldiers opened fire, their bullets bouncing off the women's armor and ricocheting in every direction. Spy Smasher produced more grenades from his cape and began throwing them at the women, and Mister America ran and grabbed the box from where the Minuteman had dropped it. The three speedsters, standing side by side, began whirling their hands in unison, creating small but powerful circular tornados of wind aimed at the hands and heads of the five women. And the Katyushas, hovering in the air fifty feet over the street, opened fire with the machine guns and rpg launchers in their armor.

The five women paused, clearly unaffected by the hail of bullets and explosions on and around them, and smiles crossed their faces. Then the one who'd been called "Harridan" grinned and shouted, "Nice try, scum, but now we show you what Granny's orphanage produces!" The five then pointed their weapons at those firing on them and opened fire themselves, their arms unmoved by the winds the speedsters were sending at them. In seconds the various beams and missiles had wiped out the American and Soviet soldiers, and the explosions had taken knocked down the Spy Smasher and Mister America. Then three of the five women leapt forward, moving to close with the various costumed figures, while the other two opened fire on the Katyushas, who began dodging but were often too slow to avoid the beams.

Mister America climbed to his feet, rolled out of the way of Harridan's glowing mace, and quickly unfurled his whip. He ducked under a blow that would have decapitated him and began snapping it with all his strength at her face. Somewhat to his surprise, this seemed to drive her backwards, and quickly a duel developed between the two, with his whip leaving bloody welts on her face and her mace never quite connecting with him but often brushing his body, which was enough to make him ache.

Iron Wolf, who'd been smirking through the initial actions, leapt with a surprising speed at the four-armed woman who was killing the Katyushas, and grabbed and threw her against a nearby pile of rubble. She smiled as she rose from the brick and stone, and with her top two arms brushed herself off as she drew two glowing knives from hidden sheathes with her bottom two arms. She said, "You're strong, for a mud-crawler, worm; let's see if you've got what it takes to survive the orphanage. Who knows, I might take you with me when I leave this place, as a toy."

Iron Wolf spat an epithet in Russian and jumped forward, feinting and then landing a kick on the four-armed woman that rocked her backwards. He ducked under one knife blow but then took two punches on the jaw and face, from her top arms, and fell to one knee. She sneered, "I guess not," to which he spat blood and a tooth, and then jumped forward, tackling her around the waist and bearing her to the ground, where they rolled about, exchanging super-powered punches.

The black-haired woman aimed the sphere at the three speedsters, and a yellow beam leapt out, but her actions were in slow-motion to them, and by the time the yellow beam struck the ground and exploded with a surprising amount of force the three were many yards away.

Jay said, "Any ideas?"

Max said, "I think we should--"

Johnny said, "They're dying as we talk - I'm going in!"

Jay shouted, "Johnny, no - wait!" but his words fell on deaf ears. Johnny, kicking his feet fast enough to achieve flight, zoomed at the black-haired woman and began raining punches on her. After a few seconds she touched a button on the side of the sphere and sent a wave of force flowing out from the sphere in every direction; the wave caught Johnny in mid-punch and sent him flying through the air and over the rooftops, to land hard several streets away.

Jay vibrated through the wave of force and shook his head. "He's gonna get himself killed some day."

Max said, "He needs to learn that emotion and speed does not overcome the enemy - thought and stillness does." He almost absent-mindedly dodged out of the way of another wave of force sent at him by the black-haired woman and then said, "The first thing we must do is get that out of her hands. We can't close with her until we do."

Jay nodded and vanished. The black-haired woman looked around, a little surprised - these humans had so far shown themselves to be courageous, despite their physical limitations - and sneered at Max, "Your friend has deserted you, scum, and now you are--"

A boom overrode her words; she looked in its direction and caught the iron girder, carried on his shoulders by Jay at supersonic speeds, flush in the face. The blow separated her from the sphere and threw her into and through a nearby building across the street and into a building on its other side. Jay dropped the girder, grimaced at its end, crumpled from where it had hit the black-haired woman, and then reappeared at Max's side and said, grinning, "Will that do?"

Max said, "I--" then broke off, listening to the growing hum, and pulled Jay to the side. The others in the square looked up, and then the humans rolled to the sides as wave on wave of fighters, both Soviet and other, dove on the square and unloaded every gun they had on the four alien women still standing there. The women laughed and fired back with their weapons, damaging several of the planes but not destroying any of them.

Jay said, "We gotta stop this, Max, before the Russkies get nervous and think this is an American trick and do something stupid. I'm not going to be able to get all five of them with the girder."

Max said, "Perhaps not, Jay. I've an idea, though."

As the last wave of planes banked away Max vanished, and then Harridan disappeared, too. The four-armed woman fired two final shots at the ghostly planes as they climbed into the sky and then took a right cross flush on the chin from Iron Wolf, who'd used the distraction of the planes to draw close to the woman without her noticing. She tottered backwards a step, and he closed with her, landing a flurry of blows without ceasing, finally knocking her down and out with a leaping sidekick.

The elderly woman wounded by the Minuteman shouted in anger and began spinning her chain weapon, but then Mister America's whip wrapped around her arm, slowing her down. Her face contorted still further and she yank on the whip, pulling Mister America off his feet at her. He used his momentum to somersault in mid-air and lash out with both feet at her face. She grunted and her head jerked backwards, and he landed and yanked his whip free of her. She spun the chain and threw its end at Mister America, who dodged and lashed back at her with his whip. She sneered at the welt it left on her cheek and raised the chain again, then fell over as the Flash, carrying the girder, hit her with it at 800 miles an hour. He muttered, "Maybe I can take care of them, after all" and turned to find the fifth woman aiming her gloves at him. He barely dodged the gouts of liquid flame, but their passing was enough to raise blisters on his skin and to singe his uniform.

Mister America slapped his forehead and picked up the box from where he'd dropped it and began firing it at the fifth woman, who dodged its beam and fired back. She was quick enough to scatter her fire between the Flash and Mister America and keep them both from closing with her.

Suddenly Max and the Harridan reappeared, the sphere in her hand, and the Harridan shouted, "Shrew! Enough! We're leaving this mudball." The fifth woman scowled at the Flash and Mister America and then nodded. She picked up the four-armed woman and the elderly woman and walked back to Harridan as a glowing circular tunnel appeared behind Harridan with a thunderous boom. The black-haired woman staggered back into the square, her face a bloody mess, and then limped over to Harridan. Harridan glowered down at Max and said, "Your tongue is as fast as your feet, worm, and you've convinced me - but we may be back anyhow, and in much greater numbers."

Max, his face expressionless, said, "We'll be here. And in greater numbers, too; tell your master that."

Harridan glared, and then with the other women walked into the tunnel, which disappeared with another loud boom.

Jay and Mister America and Iron Wolf all looked at Max, who shrugged and said, "They were looking for something, and it wasn't here - that black-haired woman said as much. I just had to convince Harridan to pay attention to that, rather than give in to the love of battle."

Iron Wolf crossed his arms and glowered at the Flash. "You do not expect us to believe this, do you? I know you engineered this, to destroy the Gate. First you provoke us by breaking our quarantine of this city, and now you kill our soldiers and destroy our checkpoint. We are not the fools you take us for, Flash. We have the atomic bomb, and if you do not expect us to use it you are the fool."

The Flash gingerly touched the blistered flesh on his side, then sighed, took off his helmet, and pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting hard. Finally he said, in Russian, "<Look around you. If this was something we did, would we have killed our own soldiers?>" He gestured at the medics tending to the Spy Smasher and Minuteman and Johnny Quick and Commando Yank. "<Would we have risked our own heroes?>"

Iron Wolf said, "Yes. To beat us, to kill our soldiers, you would do anything."

The Flash sighed again and shook his head. "No, we wouldn't."

Iron Wolf said nothing this time, simply glaring at the Flash. Finally Max said, one arm on the Flash's arm and looking at Iron Wolf, "Enough. We have wounded and dead to tend to. So do you. If you wish to pursue this, do so through the United Nations. Or contact Uncle Sam. He'll have some answers for you, Iron Wolf. Just ones you won't like."

In a darkened room not far from what had been the Brandenburg Gate a shadowy figure sighed heavily and let the blinds slip back into place over his window. He'd had such hopes for this; the two sides had seemed so unstable to him that the slightest push should have sent them careening into war. Thousands or tens of thousands lost...the blackened and soiled pit of what had been the figure's soul yearned for it, ached for the salvation it would have brought him. A nuclear exchange would have been even better. But somehow it had all gone wrong; the whispers in the right ears had echoed all the way to Apokolips, as the figure had known they would, and the response had been the arrival of a strong force, as the figure had anticipated, and there'd been a battle, with lives lost, but somehow...somehow even that hadn't been enough. The metahumans had saved the situation, and destroyed the figure's plans; what should have accelerated out of control...didn't.

The figure sighed again and helped himself to the last of his dwindling stock of absinthe. He'd have to wait some time before trying something like this again; manipulating events and people, as the figure had found out over the years, was easy, but leaving no trace of your tampering was not so simple, and attempting to pull the strings of unaware puppets too soon would lead them to you. The figure poured his absinthe over his sugar cubes and inhaled the fumes. Very well; he had some few decades to play with...and perhaps other events would turn to his advantage...

Author's Notes:

Welcome to "Twenty Years," my ten-issue maxi-series in the past of the DC Universe. It will run from 1948 to 1966, and star a wide range of characters, many you'll have heard of and many only fans of the arcane and obscure will have heard of. I think it'll be fun, and I hope to give some of you new respect for characters you might otherwise have scoffed at.

The Berlin Airlift really happened, of course, and during the period shown here. One of my goals with "Twenty Years" is to show what probably would have happened, in the DC Universe - how the course of events would or wouldn't have been changed because of the presence and/or absence of superheroes and supervillains. It makes sense to me that the government would have recruited heroes, during obvious flashpoints like the Berlin airlift; it makes more sense that the heroes would have volunteered.

One might object that I'm not showing these characters in the heroic light of the Golden Age. That is true, as far as it goes, but, as I said over at MV1's page about Liberators (another book I write, this one set during WW2 and using Marvel's characters), there are two kinds of books you can write about characters from the 1940s: a Golden Age book set in the 1930s/1940s/1950s, or a book set in the Thirties/Forties/Fifties that stars Golden Age characters. The two have very different settings and assumptions - about the times and about the characters - and I'm doing the latter and not the former. I'm sorry if that offends you - there are a great number of fans even now who find the very notion of their beloved GA characters killing to be repugnant - but I'm making use, for the most part, of their original portrayals, in which they did kill, rather than the (to me, contemptible) 1970s & 1980s revisions of them, in which modern moralities were imposed on those characters. I find that bad history as well as bad writing - one more reason I dislike Roy "the hack" Thomas' work (although in fairness I should add that there's no way of knowing how much of the end product was his and how much was imposed on him by his editors).

ONI was the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Navy's version of the CIA; they predated the CIA & OSS and were the main intelligence-gathering department for the US government before WW2.

As those of you who are familiar with the history of air power are undoubtedly aware, there was no Soviet fighter called the I-44. There were some late 1930s/early 1940s planes with the "I-" designation in the Soviet air force, but nothing later in the war, and certainly nothing after the war. The best Soviet fighters circa 1948 were the studly jets the Mig-15s. Similarly, there was no American plane called the P-66 Hellstorm, and the RAF never had a fighter called the Dragonfly. There is a reason for this, and that reason is that I made them up. Why I made them up...well, this is tampering with history somewhat, but logic, and historical tradition, dictates that if an invention is discovered it is usually pressed into service of the military. So how are we to imagine the course of the DC Universe, with various super-brilliant inventors appearing during WW2, except as being somewhat different from our own? Which is to say that someone like the Thinker or Hop Harrigan would have changed at least some aspects of history - in this case, the quality of the planes that both sides during the Cold War would have been using. How this will affect the Korean War will be seen in later issues of "Twenty Years."

"Covering the transports' 6s" just means covering the rears of the transports - think of it from the perspective of being at the center of a horizontal clock, facing 12. It's pilots' lingo.

The color scheme is my attempt to reproduce the color scheme of the logo of the old Brave and the Bold book.

Our Cast:

Americommando (aka Mr. America) - Tex Thompson. A little-known DC hero with a very interesting history; he started out as an playboy explorer & adventurer named Tex Thompson, but when the vogue for heroes came around he put on a costume and with his sidekick Bob Daley (aka Fatman) became Mr. America. Then, when the war started, he became the Americommando and parachuted into Germany. Near the end of the war, in the original, GA comics, he hijacked a German super-jet and took it back to America. And that was his last appearance, except for a cameo or two in the pages of All-Star Squadron, until James Robinson made him the central villain of The Golden Age. I loved The Golden Age, but in continuity Tex was a hero, relatively light-hearted and wisecracking, and that's how I'm writing him here. As far as I'm concerned, The Golden Age isn't in continuity, and - as with so many of these other characters - Mr. America's fate after the war remains unknown. Which is why I'm using him here.

Blackhawks - A group of international airmen who started out at Quality's Military Comics, fighting against the Nazi threat. Although they later turned comic-booky in the hands of DC's writers, they started out as quite gritty and relatively realistic, as well as sporting lovely art by Reed Crandall.

Commando Yank - Chase Yale. The forgotten hero of the Fawcett stable, Commando Yank was sort of like Fawcett's Captain America, except he was grittier; CY was a frontline soldier who never hesitated to use a gun. Cap killed during WW2, of course, but he still had the bright costume, and that lovely Kirby art. Commando Yank was more like a real soldier than Cap ever was.

Darkseid - DC's most memorable crossdresser and snake fetishist. Enemy of the New Gods and lord of the wasted planet Apokolips. Perhaps the major DC villain.

DeSaad - Darkseid's chief torturer.

The Female Furies - An all-female group of Apokoliptian shock troops. This being a good 20-40 years (depending on continuity) before their continuity debut, the Female Furies here have a completely different membership than the Furies that have appeared in the modern day. The five seen here are Virago, Harridan, Shrew, Big Bertha, and Kaly-ma.

The Flash - Jay Garrick. First and foremost of DC's speedsters, and the first of the Flash lineage.

Ghost Patrol - a group of three airmen who were killed in action and returned as ghosts to haunt the Nazis. Like a few of the other characters here, the Ghost Patrol's post-war fate has never been delineated.

Hop Harrigan - the youthful air ace. I think it quite in character for him to have continued to fight evil after the war is over, in the form of the Soviets; something like the Berlin airlift is a natural for Hop.

"Iron Wolf" - he later appeared in the pages of the late & lamented Suicide Squad as Stalnoivolk. One of the few Soviet metahumans that we know of from this era; he is a modern creation but is described as having been created at Stalin's orders.

Johnny Quick - John Chambers. The heroic GA speedster.

Katyushas - a "katyusha" was a Russian bazooka during WW2. In this context it is the name of an early version of the Soviet Rocket Reds, the government force of power-armored men that showed up in the late 1980s. The Katyushas are my own invention, with no precedent in DC continuity, but it makes sense to me that the Soviets, seeing the vast number of American heroes, would take drastic steps to equalize matters, and making power armor would be the simplest way to do so.

Max Mercury - Known as Quicksilver during this era; originally a Quality hero, he was forgotten about after WW2 (not even rating a cameo in the All-Star Squadron) until Mark Waid brought him back in the pages of Flash and gave him a substantially more interesting history than he had during the 1940s. His adventures here are his last, more or less, before he jumps forward in time.

Minuteman - Jack Weston. One of the Fawcett stable of characters, the Minuteman was one of the first patriotic heroes, being introduced a month before Captain America. What happened to him after the war remained unknown (the rights to the Fawcett characters not being owned by DC when All-Star Squadron was published) until only the mid-1990s, when he and Spy-Smasher were shown active in the late 1940s in the pages of The Power of Shazam.

Spy Smasher - Alan Armstrong. One of Fawcett's best-executed strips, the Spy-Smasher was a kick-butt anti-fascist during the war who, unfortunately, lost his goal in life once the fascists were conquered. He became "Crime Smasher," but it wasn't the same, and he was cancelled. Which was a shame, since at his best he was very cool, even taking on Captain Marvel in a memorable series.

And finally....

Our Mystery Villain: I won't name him until the very last issue (which, since I just thought of one more story I want to do, for a Brave and the Bold annual, may be Twenty Years #0), but here are a couple of clues: a) he is a continuity character; b) he only ever appeared for one story arc; c) he is around during this time period; d) he was an exceedingly well-written villain in his lone appearance; e) the hero he fought does not appear in this story.

Letter Column:

No letters to print so far, but I hope to get some and I will print them - so let me know what you think, folks - both letters of criticism and praise will be printed and responded to!

Next Issue: Twenty Years #2: Midnight On The Firing Line