Brave and the Bold #202

"It was the dawn of the Second Age of Heroes, a few years after the Allies-Axis War. The Brave & 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 and violence.

The area south of the Yalu river, almost eighty miles from the Yalu to Hamh ng, are prime example of why northern Korea has long been known as some of the most inhospitable land on Earth; hot and humid in the summer and frigid in the winter, full of harsh, jagged peaks and deep chasms, with little land available for farming, and that giving a poor yield, and only after much hard work. It is a wonder that anyone has ever chosen to live there, but tens of thousands have.

At this moment in time - November 28, 1950 - there are considerably more figures than that on the mountains and in the valleys and on the roads and paths that crawl along both. The night is lit by numerous flashes, large and small, and the bitter winter wind carries the scent of cordite and blood and feces and death.

Near the Yonhwa-san, along a path that twists and climbs and cuts back, almost every hundred feet, clinging to the side of an almost-vertical mountain, trudges a long line of green-clad men. They've been moving for four days, almost without end, and the panic in their hearts and minds has been dulled from sheer, endless fatigue; although they all fear imminent death, or worse, and want to run, they are simply too tired and cold and hungry to care very much about anything. Beneath the frozen mud and blood that spatters their uniforms can be seen eagles or the stars and stripes of the American flag.

About fifty yards to their rear of the troop column, moving slowly backwards along the trail, are seven figures, all holding weapons at the ready. On their mud- and camouflage-covered faces exhaustion is clear; the flesh on their faces is drawn taught, and their skin is exceptionally pale in the darkness, the combination of the cold and fear and fatigue making them seem almost like albinos, or ghosts.

One, whose peculiarly-shaped golden shield gleams dully, reflecting the stars shining through the crystal-clear skies, grips his automatic and concentrates on putting one foot in front of another. His body, still in excellent shape after almost ten years of fighting crime, had at first responded quite well to the demands his will placed upon it, but he has been awake and moving and fighting for four days and nights almost nonstop, and the full-on adrenal surge has turned to exhaustion. He is second from the rear of the line, and does not perceive how the others almost instinctively look to him for leadership; although he tries to keep a placid and unworried expression, and to act and look confident in front of the others, the endless movement and sense of danger has worn on him so much that he can't help but let his dread and lack of energy show, and this in turn makes the others feel worse, and right now he's so tired that he doesn't see that. Most of his purple and yellow costume is covered with a long, thick officer's overcoat, but every lick of the wind drives painful icicles down his spine, and were he not in a daze he would be frightened by the lack of feeling in his feet and ears and hands.

A shot whines out of the darkness, and without thinking, moving entirely on instinct, he raises his shield to deflect it and snaps three quick shots back in the rough direction of the sniper; he is in a daze and is not intellectualizing what he is doing, and his subconscious, trained to the height of martial skill, knew the bullet was coming in before his ears could hear its whine, and his subconscious also performed a rough triangulation based on the angle of the bullet's descent and the area where he saw the muzzle flash, and although his subconscious does not and cannot know for sure if his return fire hit its intended target, he is confident that he at least came close enough to make the sniper duck, if nothing else.

The rearmost figure in the line flinches at the sound of the bullets. He tries to locate the muzzle flash, but is too late, and almost fires blindly into the darkness before realizing what he is doing and holding his fire. Unlike the others, he does not feel the excruciating cold of the wind and the unforgiving hills; his powers rendered him immune to extremes of heat and cold, and for him the wind is only a cool and not-unwelcome breeze. The icicles coating his frozen mustache are only a pleasant and handy source of water for him. Which is why he still wears his costume, a blue t-shirt with a white star at its center, a crimson cloak, white tennis shorts, and blue sneakers; although the costume is covered with mud and blood (none of it his own), and torn and ripped in many places, he has not had the need to wear anything warmer, and so gave whatever boots and overcoats he found to the other six men with him.

His mood, before all this started, was good, and even the first day had not made him feel particularly horrible. He was effectively invulnerable, after all, and the bullets and grenades that came his way had no effect on him. He'd been more than happy to act as the rearguard and protect the others; although he'd never been in such a desperate situation before, his time fighting crime back home and the Germans and Japanese during The War had not been easy, either, and he'd been used to danger. Or so he'd thought. And although his life since the War had been relatively easy, and he'd lost his fighting trim and gained a few pounds around the middle, staying up and alert that first night had not proved difficult for him; the super-vitamin capsule that had granted him his powers had greatly lessened his need for sleep, and so where the others had been exhausted by the afternoon of the second day, he'd still been peppy.

But that was three long, long days and nights ago, and even his frame was feeling it now. Worse, his mood had continually worsened, to the point where he was now a jittery wreck. The only reason he didn't give in to the howling fantods is that he absolutely could not have borne the look in the eyes of the others. His confidence that the enemy had nothing that could hurt him had slowly eroded away and been replaced by the notion that they might - that their mass attack, when they must have known that he and others like him were in the field, would not have occurred without them possessing some kind of secret weapon, one that could kill the likes of Uncle Sam and the Human Bomb...and him.

This, to put it bluntly, terrifies the man. Before he'd swallowed the super-vitamin capsule he'd been meek and mild, a drugstore clerk so frightened of real life that he'd had to ask for help to kill even a mouse. Being given his powers had liberated him, and allowed him to play-act the carefree playboy superhero that he'd always dreamt of being. And as the months and years had passed, that mask had settled ever-deeper on his face, so that he'd become carefree and a wise-cracking, womanizing daredevil, always backstopped by the confidence that there was nothing anyone could do to him that would truly hurt him. He might not be immortal, but he was certainly indestructible.

Now that confidence was gone, replaced by a growing terror, and it takes a positive effort of will on the man's part not to give in to his panic and fear. (The others, though, when they are conscious enough to notice the man in the rear, are wonder struck that he can appear so calm and even insouciant in the face of the horrible, horrible cold, and so many of the enemy. At the last rest stop, when everyone else had dropped to the ground like so many bags of wet cement and had lain there as the dead, he'd quickly volunteered to do some scouting, and after he'd left the others had talked, in wondering tones, about him. They knew he was invulnerable, but none had known how brave he was; the more cynical of the six voiced the opinion that his powers were the source of his bravery, but even they were forced to acknowledge that he was always where the fighting was the worst, that he never even blinked at risking his own life to save others. The man with the shield swore up and down that, once they all got back to safety - and the man in the shield took care to make it sound like there was no question of it, something the others appreciated - the man with the star on his chest would get the D.S.C.)

The third man in line is wearing the green parka that most of the G.I.s wear. His hands are clenched tight on his M3 submachine gun, and frost is gathered on the stubble on his face; the hood of the parka is drawn tight over his head, and so the others in line with him cannot see the tics that flutter across his face or, for that matter, the tremor of his hands on the gun. He'd spent the years during the War in enemy territory, but even his worst moments in Yugoslavia and Greece had never brought him quite so much terror, and such an immediate knowledge and anticipation of death, as had the moment, days before, when he'd looked over the top of his foxhole and seen, in the flare-light, the endless waves of the enemy - what seemed like thousands of soldiers all charging towards his position.

He hadn't been sleeping particularly well before that moment; it had taken him years to stop having nightmares about The War and what he'd done during it, and being thrown back into another one had brought them back, worse than ever. Of course, this time he'd had the mass of the United States Army right behind him, as well as troops from other countries. And he'd been part of the commandos who'd been operating behind the front lines, but they'd only gone on limited, short-term search-and-destroy missions, and he'd known that pick-up wasn't far away, and he'd had very capable men with him, and so he hadn't quite gone back to the continual-adrenaline-edge that he'd had in Occupied Europe. But even with things being better than they had been 7 years and more before, he'd still had nightmares.

And then the human wave attacks had started, and they'd been forced into a continuous fighting retreat, with rest and food coming rarely, and the knowledge that they were in constant danger of being encircled and cut off always wearing on them. The other six were well-known costumes, or at least well-known among most of the troops, who took a great interest in the heroes, and who'd followed them, and in some cases fought beside them, during The War. But he...he'd been a guerrilla, and no one except the other costumes knew who he was - and even most of the costumes had never heard of him. For 99% of them, their only knowledge of him came from Commander Steel's recommendation, but thankfully that was usually enough.

Of course, that recommendation had landed him here, in the rearguard, as one of the first seven people that the enemy would reach. Four days ago he hadn't been thrilled with that idea, but had figured that, with the other six costumes beside him, he might stand a decent chance of survival. Now, four sleepless nights later, frozen, frostbitten, hungry (he'd only been able to eat quick bites out of a can, and almost all of the canned food that he'd tried to eat had been frozen), and with the beginnings of a fever (exacerbated by the raging bugs in his system and the diarrhea he was suffering from - some of the canned meat he'd eaten must have gone bad), he was a bundle of too-tightly-strung nerves, and if he hadn't known what the enemy did to their prisoners of war, he'd have seriously considered giving up.

The fourth man from the rear (he knows he could look at it as being the fourth man from the front, but all these days of marching and fighting have slowly made him see the glass as half-empty, and leaking, to boot), orange pilot's jumpsuit with the blue eagle on the chest covered with blood and frozen mud, limps along in a daze, his M3 almost dragging in the mud. Up until five days ago he'd had a good war; the Mig-15s he kept running up against were pretty hot machines, better than the F-86 that he'd been flying, but a plane is only as good as the man or woman inside it, and when it came to dogfighting the man was as good as they came, and better than anything the enemy had. Just like in The War, he'd been on a series of milk runs - doing bomber escort on the way to the Yalu, strafing enemy positions in Korea and China, taking out the enemy aircraft that tried to stop him, and then flying back to the airbases and the carriers of the Seventh Fleet. And in the five months that he'd been here, he'd had three two-week leaves, and he'd used those in Japan, where both his costume and his USAF stripes (not to mention his airman's pay) had quite an effect on the Japanese women. The man had come back from leave a week ago, cocky, satiated, and confident that this war would be over soon, and that everything would go well, that he wouldn't have to face what he did during The War, when he'd been shot down over Germany. He didn't even miss his old sidekicks; the boys from the Phoenix Squadron were in college now, and he thought that that's where they belonged - no need for them to have to endure another war. They'd been disappointed in him when he hadn't found the Chalice of Peace after The War, even though they'd tried to hide their reactions from him, and he suspected that they might be more disappointed in him if they knew he was back fighting again. But despite his lust for peace, he was a soldier and knew his duty...which hadn't been arduous or unpleasant, all things considered.

Then...well, then it had all gone wrong. Five days ago he'd been on just another run - small tit, really, flying parallel to the Yalu - and then something had hit his plane, and down he'd gone. It wasn't another pilot, he was sure of that; he'd knocked down the three Migs that had come up to stop him. And it wasn't AA fire, either. All he could remember was that there'd been this bright yellow flash and explosion, and then his right wing had been gone. His plane immediately went into a flaming spiral, and he'd barely had time to eject before his plane hit. He'd landed on the side of a hill somewhere, with only a compass and a .45, and he'd pulled a thigh muscle somewhere along the line, but somehow he'd made it back to the American troops....six hours before the Chinese came at them. After that it was one long, painful haze, always marching and shooting and marching and shooting, brief rest breaks not helping at all. If he'd been pressed he would have admitted that he was still proud to wear his costume and to be one of the seven in the rear guard, but right now he was out on his feet.

The third man from the front, in his green uniform, looks a lot like the man behind him; he, too, is unshaven, and his gloved hands tremble as they hold his machine gun. But his head slowly and steadily moves from left to right and back again, and an odd pair of goggles cover his eyes, and on his back he carries a long, thin burlap-covered cylinder. He is as tired as the rest of them, but there's a crucial difference between him and five of the other six men: he is a sniper. This means that he's used to staying awake for a long time, to concentrating intensely for long periods, and conversely to letting his consciousness wander as he automatically and subconsciously performs various tasks.

So the past four days and nights, while unpleasant, have not been as excruciatingly draining for him as they have for the others. His body is exhausted, but he became accustomed during The War to going into meditative states and to taking micro-sleeps, so his mind is almost as sharp as ever; when one can achieve an alpha state for an hour on end as one walks, the need for sleep and dreams and forgetfulness fades. Moreover, because he is a sniper, he has been used by the other six as a central point around which to operate during patrols and towards which to funnel the enemy during ambushes; so while the others are creeping around the rocks and hills and rivers and woods during the night and day, he sits still and waits, the only part of his body moving his eyes and, when necessary, his trigger finger and his hands. The last couple of times they tried that on the enemy, it didn't work, but the times before that it had, and he'd killed 25 or 30 of the gooks; they'd obviously learned to fear him, as the Germans and Japanese had during The War, and now they were being very careful.

So the man is awake and alert, and although his conscious mind is almost in a REM-sleep state, he is confident that his subconscious will wake him if it notices anything amiss.

The second from the front is wearing the gaudiest costume of the group: green pants and a yellow shirt with green sleeves, yellow boots, and a large orange X across his chest, with an orange pilot's cap with an X across the forehead. His costume, and the leather pilot's jacket over it, are coated with frozen mud. He holds on to his machine gun with both hands, and makes sure they do not tremble at all, despite his fatigue. He has not spoken in almost a day, since the rest stop where he and the others had argued. He'd tried to pull rank on all of them and take command. It wasn't that he was going to make them do anything differently; as the only costumes with the American troops, it was their job and their duty and their honor to be on the front lines (in this case, forming the rearguard), using their superior training and powers (if any) to protect and escort the rest of the troops.

But the others weren't having any of it, and they'd shut him out and deferred to the man with the shield, who the man with the Xs had somewhat idolized during the war but was now coming to despise - didn't he understand the necessity to follow orders? The man with the Xs shook his head (although he was relatively alert, his mind was roiling with resentment, and his attention was far away from the here and now); when he got back to the States, or even just got in touch with his contact with The Group, he'd see to it that the other six were properly chastised.

The first man in line quietly walks forward along the rocky trail, with no hint of a tremor in his hands or exhaustion in his body or face. He wears an Army uniform, and an officer's overcoat over it; his Major's stripes are well-hidden. Unlike the others there are only a few very small spatters of mud on his pants, and none on his coat.

The fact is that the first man in line unnerves the others, even the three who had worked with him in the months before this, and in The War years before. His face is ageless, caught somewhere between twenty and sixty, and there is no stubble on it, no scars, no frostbite, and no evidence of fatigue. (When asked by the others about it, he said, simply and quietly, that he'd grown up on the shores of the Baltic, which is where he'd learned to bear the cold, and so the winter of Korea was only a little bit colder than what he was used to). Although he has the special goggles that the sniper, two men back in line, wears, he has them on his forehead, rather than over his eyes; from what little the man had said, the goggles impaired his work rather than aided them. (What Mr. Terrific would say to that, none of them knew) Despite his thick, heavy boots, he makes no noise as he glides along the trail, and beneath his gloved hands he holds a thick long bow, one hand holding the wood of the bow and the other hand holding the arrow and the string, pulled back a few inches. The man had held the bow like that for hours without changing or shifting position, and he appeared able to continue holding it like that for hours or days more.

The archer doesn't say much, and his face - dignified and placid and expressionless - doesn't encourage small talk. During the rest stops, when he sits beside the others, he closes his eyes and lets their conversation wash over and around him. Most of the time, though, he uses the rest stops to check their back trail, silently disappearing into the brush and among the rocks, and more often then not he returns either with less arrows than he'd had when he'd set out (but seeming somehow satisfied despite that) or with skewered small game in his hands, which he promptly skins and guts, and then shares with the others; he'd said more than once that the best way to keep their energies and spirits up was through food, and since the canned stuff was both awful and frozen, the archer went out and got some - and damned if he wasn't right, especially about the liver, which gave them all an instant boost, as he said it would.

Worst of all, though, was the fact that he seemed to get better at night. The idea of bowhunting at night was scary enough, but the archer often went far back and infiltrated the enemy lines, then made his way back to the six costumes, leaving behind a dozen or two Chinese impaled or with their throats slit. All without a change in expression. It was...creepy.

The archer, padding quietly along, suddenly stiffened and stopped, raising his bow and holding it. A figure emerged out of the darkness in front of the seven, creeping along the path and trying, only semi-successfully, to be quiet. The form resolved itself into a private, who flinched as he saw the archer aiming at him, then drew himself up and saluted and said, "Major Povalski, sir! We're stopping for 60, sir!" The archer eased the bowstring back and saluted, and the private ran back up the path.

The other six men flopped on to the hard, cold ground on the path; Major Povalski turned and looked at the path behind the six, and on the ground above and below the path, and the hills around them, then slid the goggles over his face and slowly inspected the area - they'd reached a spot where the mountainside above and below them angled much more gently, and where the path was much wider - then took the goggles off and sat down on the ground. While the others lay as if stunned, he removed a cloth and bottle from a side pocket and began rubbing oil along the well-worn wood of his bow.

After a few minutes the six began to stir. The man with the shield leaned against a rock and sighed heavily. He slid his mask and hood off and rubbed his forehead and slapped his cheeks. He muttered, "...too damn cold...losing feeling in my face..." He exhaled, watching the steam from his breath, and then replaced his mask and said, quietly, "Sniper - anything out there?"

The Sniper, who had removed his Springfield rifle from its burlap and plastic covering and was holding it as he looked through his goggles at the trail behind them, did nothing for a few long moments, and then finally shook his head. "I think that last ambush frightened them off, Guardian."

The Guardian slapped his thighs and calves, trying to force feeling into them, and said, "You're sure the goggles are working? Someone took that shot at me."

The Sniper said, "These were invented by Mr. Terrific, Guardian. I'm sure the cold isn't affecting them."

Major Povalski quietly said, "You killed that last sniper, Guardian. With your second shot."

The others looked at the Major, the Guardian finally nodding. "Major, is there anything out there?"

Major Povalski, commonly known as "the Marksman," said, "No, Guardian. They are hanging back, for now."

Several minutes more passed as the six dug into their pockets and packs and took out cans of food, which they opened with their knives and dug into; those that were frozen, like the fruit dishes, they stirred with their knives, to break them into slush.

The man in the green parka said to the Guardian, "Do we get the whole sixty to ourselves, Guardian?"

The Guardian looked at the Marksman, who said, "I would like to try a probe."

The man with the Xs on his chest and head snapped, "Major Povalski is not in charge of this mission, Guardian."

The Guardian sighed and closed his eyes briefly, and the man in the green parka grunted with obvious annoyance. The man with the star on his chest said, "Uh...okay, Marksman. I'll go."

The Marksman nodded slightly. The Guardian said, "Do you want us to send up a field of fire and funnel point?"

The Marksman shook his head. "No. We will be gathering information, this time."

The man in the green parka looked up, wearily, and said, "What about?"

The Marksman said, "To find out what shot down Captain X and the Phantom Eagle, Sgt. Gibbs."

Gibbs nodded and laid back down. The Phantom Eagle, pointedly ignoring the fuming Captain X, said, "Do you want me to go with you? I might recognize--"

The Marksman shook his head. "You need your rest, Mr. Malone. I believe Mr. Foster and I myself shall be sufficient. The rest of you, rest, for now. If we are not back by the time the troops start to move again, leave without us."

The Marksman then began climbing up the hill over the path, quickly followed by Stormy Foster. As they moved out of sight of the others, they heard Captain X say, entirely too loudly for the surroundings, "Goddamit, Povalski's not in charge here, I am!" and Sgt. Gibbs respond with, "Shut up, Captain."

The Marksman crept forward, nimbly and silently making his way across the rocky and uneven hillside, gliding between clefts in the rocks and the stunted, skeletal trees as if he'd been born in the area. Stormy Foster tried to his best to follow him, but kept slipping; while his tennis shoes did give him a greater feel for the ground than normal army boots would have, they didn't provide nearly as much purchase on the icy, muddy ground. Foster didn't mind the slipping, since the falls didn't hurt him and the cold didn't affect him, but he did mind looking foolish in front of the Marksman, whose always-expressionless face intimidated the hell out of Foster. Every time the Marksman had to pause to wait for Foster to catch up with him, Stormy felt like he'd let the Marksman down again.

After fifteen minutes of careful walking, always making their way to the north and up the mountainside, and even running when they'd found a path, the Marksman, a few feet in front of Stormy, raised his right arm, his fist clenched. Stormy froze in place, and then carefully imitated the Major, crouching and scuttling forward when and where he did. The pair ended up kneeling behind a large boulder, high up on the mountainside. The Marksman gestured with his head, and Stormy slowly and carefully peeped over the top of the boulder.

Looking down, into the valley below him, he saw, a few yards away, a Chinese soldier, huddling within his overcoat, gloved hands holding on to his Soviet-built Tokarev rifle. Stormy thought he looked cold, and a little lonely, crouched there on guard duty this late into the night. Yards below him Stormy saw a campfire, and what looked like two dozen figures warming themselves around it. Stormy took a quick look across the rest of the valley, noticing several other fires, similarly occupied, in the valley below and behind them. The fire that Stormy was closest to, though, seemed to be the lead fire, the one closest to the American troops. Stormy took another quick look around the valley, confirming his observations and making sure that the Chinese sentry hadn't moved - he was looking off to Stormy's left, back where the Americans were - and then slid back down behind the boulder and huddled up close to the Marksman.

The Marksman said, in his uninflected American English (Stormy, mind working almost normally now, wondered how a Pole learned to speak like a New Yorker), "What do you see?"

Stormy breathed in silently, trying to calm the quivering in his limbs; now that he was doing something more than one long, trudging retreat, he was feeling much calmer than before, and the sense of imminent panic and loss of control had faded. A large part of that, though, was also due to being so close to Major Povalski; there was something about "the Marksman" that made you feel safe when you were with him, like he'd be able to handle whatever the enemy threw at him, even if it was Baron Blitzkrieg himself. The Marksman was a legend in the US Army; stories of what he'd done during The War were numerous, and even discounting the more outlandish accounts, if even half of the stories were true,,, the Marksman was someone to beware of under any circumstances. And if he was on your side...well, you weren't just safe as houses, you were safe as the Carlton-Ritz. Stormy said, "Maybe 24, 25 at the fire down there, I don't know how many others at the other fires - a couple of hundred, maybe?"

The Marksman nodded and slid the strange-looking goggles off his head and handed them to Foster. He said, quietly (their conversation was quiet, of course, for both were acutely aware of the Chinese soldier down the slope, not far from them, but the Marksman kept lowering his voice, so that Foster was having to strain to hear him over the susurrus of the wind), "Look at the near campfire through these. Look at the Chinese troops. And then tell me again what you see."

Foster stood and peeked over the top of the boulder, adjusting the goggles' focus and concentrating on the nearby campfire. The world looked weird, through the goggles, everything in shades of blue; Foster had had some brief experience with Mr. Terrific and his...well, there was no other word for it, his terrific mind, and his many inventions and innovations, and Foster supposed that the goggles didn't reveal infrared so much as ultraviolet rays or some other scientific principle or reality that Foster had never heard of but that Mr. Terrific had invented or discovered during a lunch break.

Something behind the campfire caught Stormy Foster's attention, and he focussed on it; not getting enough detail from the goggles, he manipulated one of the controls on the side, increasing the magnification from 10x to 20x and then to 25x. Still, he couldn't quite understand what he was seeing; they looked like statues, but why would statues...? Then one of the statues moved, and things suddenly became clear for Stormy.

There were three of them, seated together away from the Chinese. They were tall and broad, easily eight feet tall with musculature to match, and except for the momentary shift in position they were stock-still. They weren't wearing overcoats, or in fact clothes that Stormy recognised, and their costumes were just strange enough to Stormy's eyes to make him stare at them for several seconds, making him forget about his fatigue and his mission while he tried to remember where he'd seen them. The three...things...had brown shirts with orange belts, brown shorts - very short shorts - and calf-high brown boots. Their legs were bare, but they seemed unaffected by the cold. On the hip of each of the creatures was a quiver, full of jagged yellow...Stormy wasn't sure what to call them. They almost looked like lightning bolts. Each of the three giants had a large yellow shield that they carried in their left hands; the shield was at least four feet in diameter, and looked very heavy. Oddest of all were the creatures' heads. They had orange helmets on, the sides of the helmets flaring high into the air, looking like a dog whose unnaturally tall ears were pricked all the way up. The middle of the helmets had a smaller white riff. Then one of the three creatures shifted again, looking towards the fire and the Chinese soldiers near it, and Stormy finally saw their faces.

Had he not been so tired, he might have gasped; as it was, he was surprised enough to simply stare and shrink back a little, forgetting that the creature was over fifty yards away and could not possibly see him. The thing wore an odd sort of opaque, yellow-tinged faceplate, that covered its nose and eyes and forehead. Stormy could see the thing's face and eyes well enough, however, and he didn't like what he saw. The eyes bulged out in what Stormy could only think of as an unnatural way. The skin along the thing's face was quite taut and pale, making it look almost as if its face was made only of bone. Odder still were the markings...tattoos?...along its forehead; they looked like jagged slashes running into its nose. The sum effect was to make the creature's face look alien and evil, and Stormy was filled with an instinctive loathing for it.

He stared at the other two for a few more seconds, confirming that they both looked like the first one, and then he slid back behind the rock and gave the goggles back to Povalski. He said, "Major...what are those things?"

The Marksman shrugged, so imperceptibly that Stormy's eyes might have been fooling him, and he said, "A pity. I was hoping you could tell me."

Stormy fought to quell the sense of disappointment and shame he felt at letting down the Marksman and said, "Me? But..."

The Marksman looked at him with an expression Stormy might have said, of anyone else, that was half-curious and half...envious?...and said, "You have so much more experience with the extraordinary than I, after all, Mr. Foster."

Stormy felt a flush of pleasure and squirmed inside, unable to take the compliment with any ease, and he said, "I...I'm sorry, Major, I don't recognize them. I've never seen anything like that, and none of the other All-Stars ever told me anything about them."

The Marksman took a small flask from an inner pocket and took a small swig, and then offered it to Stormy, who took it with a pleased nod and swallowed a mouthful, then covered his mouth to silence the coughing fit. He'd swallowed what seemed like a very pungent and strong caraway-flavored liqueur - much stronger than what he was used to. Stormy had never drunk much, as a drugstore clerk, and although he'd done his fair share of boozing and whoring since acquiring his powers (more than his fair share, Stormy was honest enough with himself to admit), he usually stuck to beer, wine, and whiskey. This stuff...once his coughing fit subsided he felt a fiery warmth in his gut and then in his limbs. He handed the flask back to the Major, who smiled slightly but honestly, seeing Stormy's querulous expression and blinking eyes. He clapped Stormy on the shoulder and said, "Perhaps I should have warned you...akvavit is not for the faint of heart, eh?" The Major tucked the flask away and smiled a little wider, and then picked up his bow, once again the Marksman, grim-faced and all business. Stormy, for his part, felt warmed, both by the booze and the Major's camaraderie. Stormy flexed his fingers twice and said, "What now, Major?"

The Marksman said, almost musing aloud, "I am curious about those three. The Chinese are not armed any differently than I would have expected, and they should not have been able to down Mr. Malone. I believe they are responsible for that. The question before us now becomes, who are they? And how many of them are there? What are they capable of? And why have we not heard of them before?"

Stormy said, "D'you want me to go down and see what they can do?"

The Marksman shook his head regretfully. "No...I don't believe that would be a good idea, Mr. Foster. We could perhaps kill some dozen of them, but not all of them without shots being fired, and that would bring the attentions of the other Chinese in the area, and that we do not want. No, I think we must content ourselves with simply seeing how those three creatures react. Watch them, Mr. Foster, and tell me how they react."

He handed Stormy the goggles, stood up, and took an arrow from the quiver he carried on his back, which he strung on his bow. Stormy stood up and focussed the goggles on the three. The Marksman pulled his bow all the way back and fired the arrow. Stormy saw something blur between the three and embed itself into the ground near them. Quicker than Stormy would have thought possible, the three were on their feet, yellow weapons drawn from their hip quivers and in hand, and then the three were looking around them, arms raised to throw. Stormy noticed that the three, after a quick check of the surroundings, examined the arrow and the angle at which it had landed, and then started looking in his direction.

Stormy slid down behind the rock and handed the goggles back to the Marksman. He said, "That got their attention, and I think they know where it came from."

The Marksman nodded and began creeping away from the boulder, notching another arrow on his string. Stormy, not without a sense of nervousness - he was gripped by the sudden feeling that the three creatures knew exactly what had happened and who was responsible, and were headed towards them at that second - followed.

They were a couple of hundred yards away from the rock when the Marksman said, "Quietly, if you would, Mr. Foster, tell me what they did."

Stormy said, "They got those yellow...spears or whatever they are...they got them out in under a second, Major. They've got good reflexes - I mean, really good. They were standing and ready to fight faster than I could follow. And they..." Stormy fell silent. His premonition - that the Chinese had come up with something that could harm even him - had returned, and he had a nasty feeling, crawling up his spine, that those three, and their yellow spears, were it. Stormy swallowed convulsively and said, "...and they held those spears like they were ready to use them. And they were real quick to check the trajectory of the arrow, Major - I think they figured out where it was fired from."

The Major nodded absent-mindedly. "So...well-trained, capable of rapid and correct decisions, not easily distracted, and armed with something powerful. Lieutenant General Walker must be made aware of them. This could well shift the balance of power here..."

His voice trailed off; Foster could see that he was deep in thought, calculating formulae of which Stormy knew nothing. Stormy held his silence for more than a minute as the Marksmen slowly and carefully walked along the mountainside and, for short distances, along paths that ran along and down the side of the ridge they were on. When a cloud floated across the moon the Major picked up the pace, but all too often the sky was pellucid and the two stood clearly against the landscape, making the Major and Stormy walk carefully along, always looking around them to make sure that there was no one watching them.

Finally Stormy said, "Do you...do you think this will bring the Justice Society into the war?"

The Major, intent on the landscape in front of him, said nothing for a long moment, and Stormy was about to repeat himself when the Major said, "Hmmm? Oh...perhaps. It will depend on what those creatures are. This may change...many things. I somehow do not believe that there will be another All-Star Squadron, or that the Justice Society will arrive en masse to end the conflict - the loss of the Seven Soldiers of Victory, I think, will have made them hesitant to enter a war like this. But perhaps President Truman will be more willing to allow--"

Stormy was listening intently to the Marksman's words, for he was extremely interested in the Marksman's musings, but he never found out what the Marksman thought, for Major Povalski fell silent and stopped in his tracks just then, raising his bow at the same moment that the figures emerged from the darkness on the path in front of them. Stormy, his perception speeded up as it always did during a fight, noticed that the path dipped over the side of the hill they were on, and so the lead figures had no more been able to see them as he or the Marksman had been able to see them. Stormy saw the lead figure start to raise his rifle when the Marksman fired, and then the figure fell over, the arrow thrilling in his breast.

Seeing this, Stormy leapt forward. His mind was still on the alcohol high from the stuff that the Marksman had given him, and was noticing many things - the sight of his breath hanging in the air, the starlight reflected off of it - the moon shining high in the sky - the sparse and somehow beautiful mountainside they were on, bare of all but the lowliest grass or shrub, covered with ice and snow and frozen mud, but somehow beautiful for all of that - but Stormy could never explain how he'd known, so quickly, what was going on. When asked about it, later, he just said that he figured that if the Marksman was going to shoot at someone, then it must be one of the enemy, and that where you found one Chinese, you likely found a dozen, and that, since he and the Major were most of the way back to the American positions when they ran into the enemy, then they must have encountered an enemy patrol on their way back to their campfires. But that line of reasoning took a little while to construct; at the time, Stormy's body did its reasoning for him, and he was running down the path towards the enemy before his mind truly knew what it was doing.

As he leapt over the crest of the hill and saw the other figures on the path scattering for cover - there must have been 15 of them, easily, and one, he noted with some dismay, was one of those large creatures - part of his brain heard the Major start to say, "Mr. Foster! We should--" The rest of the Marksman's words were cut off as Stormy reached the enemy and they began firing on him.

Stormy felt his blood begin to sing, and he ignored the bullets ricocheting off his body as he dove towards the nearest clump of Chinese. One he killed with an open-handed snap which broke the man's neck, throwing him several feet to the side. A second, charging towards him with a long, well-used bayonet, was grabbed on the arm and neck, Stormy's hands sinking into the flesh of the man and crushing the femur and the windpipe as easily as another man might pull apart a wet paper bag. Stormy then swung the body around in a great arc, catching the third enemy soldier with the foot of his former comrade and knocking him senseless.

Stormy threw the body across the path, towards three more Chinese, and then, ignoring the machine-gun fire they were concentrating on him, jumped at them. As always, it was during the combat itself that Stormy's fear fell away, and he truly became the carefree hero that he longed to be. Sometimes Stormy wondered about this, and felt a mild worry, that he was only truly alive when he was in danger and when he was fighting, and killing, other beings; he wondered what this said about him as a person, and dreaded the answer. But while he was fighting, such concerns didn't bother him.

Stormy killed the next three Chinese equally quickly, and then stood for a moment, drenched in blood, grinning at the remaining dozen soldiers and ignoring the grenades that the Chinese were throwing at him. Arrows began hitting the Chinese, each one a killshot, and Stormy picked up a 7.62 mm machine-gun that one of the now-dead Chinese had dropped, and gunned down the other Chinese. His breathing slowed somewhat, and he was suddenly nagged by the feeling that he'd forgotten something. The thought hit him - "the giant creature! I forgot about him" - at the same time that the thing's fist did.

The blow threw him twenty feet through the air, over the crest of the hill, and he skidded to a halt near and behind where the Marksman, bow held ready, was crouched, looking for more human-shaped targets on whom to practice. The Marksman said, with obvious concern, "Mr. Foster - are you--?"

Stormy rolled to his feet, rubbing the side of his head, and quickly nodded, "Yeah, yeah - I'm fine, Major. Got a new dancing partner, is all." He ran forward down the path, towards where the thing would be waiting for him. The blow had instantly sobered him up, the akvavit buzz now gone; the punch had hurt him, and he was sure he'd be purpled with bruises come the morning. A part of him - a large part of him - desperately wanted to run in the opposite direction, wanted to drag the Major away, to tell him, "This thing is too much for us!" and let more powerful heroes deal with it. But Stormy couldn't bear the thought of the others, especially the Marksman, knowing that he was a coward, deep down, and so he ran at the creature despite his fear, the only thing comforting him at all was the knowledge that it had hit and hurt him - but not that badly. He could take a lot more punches like that, and Stormy hadn't had the chance to show the creature what he could do.

Stormy reached the spot where the thing had been, but it wasn't there any more. Stormy looked around, quickly, seeing only the corpses of the Chinese. Some sixth sense alerted him and he threw himself flat. There was a yellow streak and a loud, bright explosion right behind him, and Stormy was flung several feet in the air. He gave out a short bark of pain and then landed and rolled to his feet, looking around. He clutched at his left side, his hand coming away bloody. His veins ran cold as he realized his premonition had come true. Again something warned him, and he ducked. The bolt streaked over him, coming within an inch of parting his hair, and again the explosion, too near and too strong, threw him to the side, giving him a new set of wounds along his back and making his ears ring (an unpleasant and long-forgotten sensation to Stormy, whose senses had been protected by his power for several years). Stormy looked around desperately, realizing that what he'd seen both times was the yellow bolt that the three creatures by the Chinese campfire, back in the valley, had carried in the quiver.

Something yellow flew at him, and without thinking he grabbed it in front of him. It exploded, and he was thrown thirty feet backwards, his hands and chest and face screaming a discordant symphony of pain. He lay on his back, in a daze, for a moment, before shaking his head and slowly rising to his feet. He shook his head again, still only partially successful in clearing it, and then he knelt, looking around. He couldn't see the Marksman anywhere, and although he could see the path, and the smoking craters where those yellow bolts had exploded, he couldn't see the creature throwing them at him.

For a long minute Stormy knelt, motionless, and looked around; the pain in his hands and arms and chest and face was already fading, a little, decreasing from agony to a painful throb, but Stormy somehow knew that the pain wasn't going to be going away for a long time. He tried to dismiss the pain, just not think about it, and to concentrate on other, more important things. What should he do? He couldn't just run and leave that thing there. But he couldn't kill it, not while it was throwing those bolts. And he and the Major had to make it back to where the others were, to let them know what they faced. And if he ran everyone would know he was afraid, that he wasn't a hero, just a sham.

Stormy was undecided, and was never sure how he would have decided. Something zipped through the air, drawing his attention, and he heard a grunt of pain. Then another yellow bolt streaked across the landscape, and Stormy flinched, but this one was headed towards the top of the hill, where the path went over it. It blew up again with another great show of light and heat and sound. Stormy tried to follow the bolt's path back to where it had originated from; for a moment he saw nothing, just more landscape, lit up by the moon's light, and then saw what he'd taken for a boulder move. It was the thing, and one of the Marksman's arrows had embedded itself deep in one arm. The creature didn't seem to pay much attention to it, or to the blood slowly oozing from the wound; it just held a bolt in one hand and waited and watched.

Stormy gazed at it, not moving, and then saw another arrow thunk into the thing's belly. It leapt up and half-turned and threw the jagged yellow spear, causing another explosion. It drew another bolt from its quiver and then, almost ashamedly, touched the arrow. It yanked the arrow out, and Stormy heard it growl to itself, and then the thing stopped and resumed waiting.

Stormy watched it for a few more seconds, the pain from his hands and face lulling him, and then he shook his head and snapped out of the daze. He had to help the Major. There was no way he could take the creature by himself. (As if in confirmation of that thought, an arrow flew at the creature and shattered on the thing's faceplate. The creature responded with another bolt-cast, and although the explosion was frightening, as usual, Stormy was somehow comforted by the fact that the Major was still out there, prowling around.)

Stormy, trying desperately to calm himself - he was starting to hyperventilate, the fear in his throat was so thick - thought hard. He finally realized what he should do and gave a short nod, then slowly and carefully went on his belly, feeling around on the ground. A few feet off to the side he found what he was looking for - a rock. It was about five feet wide, and Stormy's fingers sank into it as he grabbed it and heaved, but for someone as strong as Stormy Foster leverage was not an issue, and in one fluid motion he picked it up and threw it at the creature.

Stormy, worn down by fatigue and wounded by the explosions of the thing's bolts, was not in top shape, and his throwing accuracy, even as a child, had never been that good - he'd always been picked last on the neighborhood stickball teams - and so the boulder did not hit the creature. However, even the largest and toughest of beings will instinctively and reflexively duck and roll aside at the sight of a five-foot-diameter boulder flying through the air at its face, and that's what the creature did, dropping the yellow bolt it had been holding.

The rock hit the hillside on which the creature had been standing, driving itself several feet into the mud and dirt of the hill and throwing mud in all directions. The creature was, for a short moment, disgusted with being covered with mud, and then it noticed, flying through the air at it, the costumed human it thought it had killed before. He hurled his arm forward, and then noticed it had dropped the qwa-bolt. His right hand flew to its quiver, and then yet another of the arrows hit him on the side of his helmet. The helmet held, shattering against it, but it distracted him for a crucial moment, and when by the time he got the qwa-bolt from its quiver the costumed human was on him.

Neither was in top shape; Stormy's hands and face throbbed with pain, and the wounds in the creature's belly and arm did not help the creature. Stormy punched the thing as he landed, feeling momentarily gratified as it flew backwards several feet, dropping the yellow spear. He took two quick steps forward and then threw another punch; this time the creature had braced itself and got its shield up, and Stormy's fist rebounded off the shield with a loud bong. The thing drew another spear and moved to throw it at Stormy, but he took another step forward, crowding the thing, and then grabbed its throwing arm with his left arm. The creature instinctively tried to pull free, but found that its strength was no match for Stormy's.

Stormy started reaching over the shield for the thing's face when it kicked him between the legs. His body took over, reflexively curling him up, and by the time he forced himself to straighten up the thing had drawn another of the yellow bolts and was aiming it at Stormy.

An arrow thrummed into and through the thing's throwing hand, and it gave a short, guttural cry of pain and dropped the yellow spear. Stormy saw, lying at his feet, the spear the thing had dropped earlier, and he picked it up and hurled it at the creature, who was distracted, looking at its now-ruined hand.

The explosion threw Stormy off his feet and made his face and chest feel considerably worse; in a daze he reminded himself not to do that again at such short range. When he looked up he saw the smoking corpse of the thing, lying on its back several feet from him. Stormy slowly and painfully stood, and limped forward to the corpse of the creature. In seconds he was joined by the Marksman, who said, "This exchange will have drawn many unfriendly eyes to us, Mr. Foster - we must hurry away from here, before the creature's brothers join us. If you can, carry it with us."

Stormy, still in a daze and no longer thinking of doing much except getting away from there and doing as the Major said, heaved the body of the creature on to his shoulders, making certain that the shield and quiver did not fall off the body, and followed the Marksman, who was moving with a greater speed and with less concern for being seen by the enemy than Stormy had seen from him.

Two minutes later they were back among the other five, who had been hiding, guns at the ready, as the pair had run into the stop-site. Stormy had led the way on to the place on the path where they'd stopped; a bullet had spanged off the star on his chest as he'd rounded the corner of the hill and entered the stop-site, but then the Sniper had seen that it really was Stormy, and had shouted, "Hold your fire!"

Stormy dumped the creature's body on the ground and then went looking for the first aid kit that Sgt. Gibbs had been carrying. The Marksman appeared as the five others gathered around the creature, their exhausted faces showing some curiosity at the sight of the thing. Oddly enough, Stormy thought, none were particularly amazed at it; Stormy supposed that the Guardian and the Phantom Eagle and Captain X might have seen stuff this strange and stranger during The War, but Sgt. Gibbs? The Sniper? They weren't members of the All-Star Squadron, and as far as he knew they hadn't gone up against any of the enemy's big guns during The War. After a few seconds Stormy gave up wondering about it and concentrated on applying antiseptic to his hands and chest and face, and then bandaging them; who knew what they might have run into? The Nazis and Japanese got desperate, in the final months of the war, and started cranking out all sorts of monsters...and Stormy had heard a lot of bizarre rumors, in the chaos at the end of the war. He'd even heard that the Guardian and his sidekick had been killed, trying to stop a buzzbomb...which was pretty silly, since the Guardian didn't have a sidekick.

Captain X was looking down at the creature's corpse, stroking his jaw thoughtfully. The Marksman looked at him, and then at the others; the sounds of the explosions and the sudden arrival back in the camp of himself and Mr. Foster had jolted them from their topor, and the sight of the body of the...thing...had seemed to make them forget their fatigue. Good.

The Marksman quickly and tersely explained what he and Stormy Foster had been up to, and while he spoke he unloaded his special titanium-alloy metal arrows from his pack; his wooden arrows were almost exhausted, and he had an intuition that he would need the special arrows to deal with the creatures. Seeing one of his shafts break on the creature's facemask had been a discouraging thing, and the Marksman aimed to see that it didn't happen again.

When he finished he turned to Captain X and said, "You understand the severity of this situation, Captain?" Major Povalski kept his voice respectful and serious; he had previously been more amused than anything by Captain Dare's obvious jealousy of the Guardian and the respect and awe that the others held for the Guardian, and when it had suited the Major's purposes he'd played on that, but just then the Major needed Captain X to do as what he wanted, and the only way to achieve that was to play him subtly. As the Major had expected, Captain X responded well; he nodded, almost eagerly, and said, "I do, Major. Well done."

He stared at the thing a moment longer, clearly lost in thought. The Major looked around him, and removed his pocket watch from his breast pocket and checked the time; in a few minutes a runner from the American troops would be reaching them and telling them that the troops were moving on again. They had to be gone when that happened. The Major decided to prod the Captain again. He said, "Captain? If I might offer some advice...?" His voice was courteous and deferential, and again Captain X responded to it. He nodded and said, "Yes, please, Major." He slapped his cheeks and said, "Damn cold's making my mind muzzy. Not thinking straight."

The Marksman said, "Captain, Lt. General Walker must know of this creature and its compatriots. We can defeat the Chinese, given time, but masses of these brutes could tip the balance of the war. You are in charge of the seven of us; you will be believed, more than the rest of us, if you deliver this news. You must take evidence of the creature with you and join the troop column; the six of us will fight a delaying action to give you time to deliver the news."

Captain X stared at him for a long moment, slowly nodding. "Yes...I think you're right. But...I can't carry this thing. What should--"

He blinked and stopped speaking as the Marksman unsheathed a long, wicked dagger. Major Povalski looked at it for a moment, admiring its bone handle and the engraving along the top of its blade; it had been in his family for six generations, and it had never failed him. He wasn't sure what the creature's body would do to the edge of the blade, but he had to try. He knelt and sawed at the thing's head, and was relieved to find that the knife went through it with nearly as much ease as it had severed the heads of boars and deers, generations ago when the Major's ancestors had gone out hunting on their baronial estates.

Major Povalski held the dripping head aloft for a moment, then used his knife on the cloth of the creature's shirt; it had a surprising amount of resistance, but eventually gave. The Major wrapped the head in the shirt, then took one of the jagged yellow spears and handed it and the head to Captain X, who took them with some surprise. Major Povalski said, "Captain, here is the proof you will need to convince them of the reality of which you speak. Now, I think you must go, and quickly; this creature's comrades, as well as the Chinese, will surely have been drawn here by the explosions."

Captain X, staring at the head and the spear in its hands, nodded and turned to walk down the path towards the rest of the American troops. Seconds later a soldier ran into him, and then saluted, saying, "Captain, sir! The Colonel says--"

Captain X nodded peremptorily and said, "Ignore that, Private. Come with me." He looked back at the six, nodded at Major Povalski, and then started jogging down the path towards the American troops, followed by the confused Private.

Major Povalski waited until the pair were out of sight and out of hearing range, and then turned to the other five and said, "Good. Now that Captain X is gone, doing his duty, here is what I believe we should do..."

Ninety minutes later the six were still waiting for the anticipated attack. The Guardian crept forward from his perch and squatted next to Major Povalski. He leaned forward and whispered in his ear, "Major, I don't like this. It's been too long; if they were going to come this way, they would have already, I think."

The Marksman looked at the Guardian and slowly nodded in assent. He stood up slightly and gestured the other five men over, and they huddled together. The Marksman said, "Gentlemen, the Guardian makes a good point. He says that if they were going to come this way, they would have. I am forced to agree with him. So that leaves one of two options for us, I think: either we hurry back to catch up with the troops, or we can go looking for the enemy. I have always preferred to be on the attack, rather than to spend my time in a fighting withdrawal, but I leave it up to you."

Sgt. Gibbs sighed and let the muzzle of his M3 dip. He looked at the Guardian and said, "Your orders?"

The Guardian said nothing for a moment. Finally, "I'm not going to tell you all what to do, not when it might mean all of our deaths. We vote on this."

Sgt. Gibbs said, "Okay. What do you want us to do?"

The Guardian looked at the others and said, "I vote we go out looking for them."

Sgt. Gibbs said, "I'm with the Guardian."

The Phantom Eagle shuddered slightly, hoping the others would chalk it up to the cold. He said, "I...whatever you all want is fine with me."

Stormy realized they were waiting for him to speak. He hurriedly said, "I say we go hunting for them - I'm itching for another crack at the monsters, and I think the Commies aren't afraid enough of us." The light, carefree notes he tried to put in his voice as he spoke rang completely hollow to his ears, and he quickly glanced at the faces of the others, trying to see if they could tell how frightened he was. But they were all looking at the Sniper, who eventually shrugged and said, "It's all one to me."

The Guardian nodded and grinned and said, "I knew I could rely on you." Turning to the Marksman, he said, "Major Povalski, did you have any ideas?"

The Marksman said, "Yes, I do. The Sniper and I will lead the way. The rest of you, follow behind us, single-file. Mr. Foster, we will be returning the way we came." Stormy quickly nodded and stood up, determined not to let his fear show. The others glanced up at him and wearily rose. The Marksman and the Sniper both slid their goggles on to their face and began walking. Stormy, struck by a sudden thought, grabbed the quiver of the creature and slung it over his shoulder, so that it lay against his hip. Holding on to it, he hurried forward to lead the way.

They had only taken a few steps, and the Marksman and the Sniper were still visible to them, when both stopped and crouched, their weapons coming up. Stormy and the other three instantly dove for cover, crawling into firing positions above and below the path.

Seconds later the first of the Chinese soldiers became visible in the darkness. The six froze in place, willing the soldier to walk forward, but he was being very careful, his head slowly turning around, looking from horizon to horizon, before he stepped forward, and every five or six steps he repeated himself. Stormy, squinting at him through darkness, noticed that the rifle he was carrying was shaped differently than the normal 7.62s that the Chinese used. Stormy stared more intently; the rifle was longer, and seemed to have tubes running along its exterior.

The soldier raised his hand and waved it forward, and was cautiously padding along, the silhouettes of his companions becoming visible, when he froze. He quickly raised his "rifle," and then fell backwards at the same time that Stormy heard the thrum of the Marksman's bowstring. Immediately after that the Sniper and Sgt. Gibbs and the rest opened fire, raking the path and the hillside around it with fire. Stormy would usually have been running forward, into the teeth of the firefight; that was the arrangement they'd worked out, when he'd joined them. Before the Chinese attack, he'd been on a good-will tour of the front lines, designed to pick up the troops' morale, and he hadn't had to do any actual fighting, and his experience back in The War had been different; he'd been operating alongside the other All-Stars, and so tactics had been somewhat beside the point. But after the Chinese attacked he'd been forced into action. When his position had been overrun he'd simply jumped into the battle and started wading through the enemy, laughing at their bullets and grenades, but eventually he'd realized that he wasn't turning the battle around, that the Chinese were just moving around him and swarming forward, and so he'd retreated, leaping hundreds of yards backwards at a time, looking for American troops he could help shepherd to safety. When he'd run into Major Povalski and the others, and they'd started the fighting retreat, he'd expected that he'd be doing more the same thing - just running towards the enemy and swatting them around until they fled. Sgt. Gibbs (who'd obviously had experience with this sort of thing during The War) and the Major had set him straight on that. Squad-level tactics with someone like him apparently called for him to charge the enemy positions and for the American troops to provide fire support; since he was invulnerable, he would draw the fire, and his own side would continue to fire into the enemy lines - he couldn't be hurt by friendly fire, either.

And that's what he should have been doing, as soon as the others opened up on the Chinese - running up the path at them, Chinese bullets bouncing off his chest and American bullets ricocheting off his back, the impacts feeling to him like raindrops pattering on his head. But something held him back, and he merely crouched, motionless, in the frozen mud of the Korean mountainside, trying to keep his rapid breathing as quiet as possible. Reflecting on the moment later, he came to the conclusion that he had been frightened, and gripped with the knowledge that, somehow, the enemy now had weapons that could hurt him - but that it had been more than that. Somehow he'd had an intuition that the odd-looking rifles the enemy soldiers were holding were much more dangerous than anything he'd faced so far, and that if he ran straight at them he'd die, and that the wise thing to do was to watch, rather than attack. Until the day he died Stormy was never positive that his decision at that moment was anything more than cowardice, but he desperately wanted it to be.

Stormy, eyes all the way open to see better in the dark, was caught by surprise by the thin beams of light that streaked through the air, and it was only because he was crouched, low to the ground, that the explosions didn't throw him on to his back. There were numerous, successive flashes, coming from where Stormy thought the Chinese soldiers would be, and going off where Stormy thought the Marksman and the others were; the Chinese were probably looking for muzzle flashes, the same as the Americans did. Stormy, whose eyes were still dazzled by the brightness of the explosions, couldn't see if Sgt. Gibbs and the Marksman and the others were okay or not; none of them were returning fire, though, and the Chinese were raking the area with...whatever it was they were firing. A shot blew up close to him, and without thinking he went flat on the ground and let the mud, hot from the explosion, spatter across him. For a moment he felt completely exhausted, every moment of the last week catching up to him, and his fear making him want to curl up...but he knew if that happened the others would die, and he'd be shamed forever, and he couldn't let that happen. So he thought for several moments, thought hard, concentrating through the fog of exhaustion. He had an idea, and began pushing himself backwards in the mud, down the slope of the hill, and when he was out of sight, he thought, from the Chinese, he got up into a crouch and scuttled down the hill, then over, towards the Chinese side, for a couple of hundred yards, and then back up the hill.

From Sgt. Gibbs' position it had all gone wrong, and quickly. They'd been ready to ambush the gooks, like always, and even though they hadn't had time to set up a proper field of fire everyone still went, instinctively, behind the best cover. But then somehow the lead gook had discovered something was wrong, and even though Major Povalski had taken him out, and everyone had opened fire on the enemy, they hadn't killed anywhere near enough; they were going to have to fall back. Then the Chinese had opened up with those weapons, whatever they were, and the streaks of yellow light and those hot, loud explosions were pinning down Gibbs and everyone else. He couldn't see the others, and didn't even know if they were still alive; one explosion had been awfully close to the Guardian's position. And the gooks, true to form, were making their way around and above Gibbs and the others, and they were in danger of being completely encircled, one of them at the crest of the hill above them and firing down at them, and with those new weapons of theirs, Gibbs didn't dare raise his head or return fire. And he felt oddly disconnected from the scene, somehow; maybe it was his fever, getting suddenly worse, but most times, during combat, he felt alive, the adrenaline rushing his blood around and making all his senses incredibly acute. But now he felt almost like he was watching everything from far away, his body under the control of someone else. He wanted to crawl away from there, to pull back to somewhere, anywhere, but he couldn't make his body move.

Then, suddenly, the explosions around Gibbs stopped. He looked up, and then ducked as another yellow ray split the air and exploded behind him, but there was no longer such an overwhelming fusillade of them. Blinking his eyes to clear the spots from them, he squinted, looking for the enemy. He saw another yellow ray hit the ground some yards below him on the hill, but it was the only one, and he was able to see where it had come from, and he got up, on his knees, and fired with his machine gun in the direction from which it had come. He saw that at least two of the others were firing in that direction, too.

Then came more explosions, but this time from where the Chinese troops were (or so Gibbs thought). There was one explosion, louder than the rest, and then several seconds of silence. Finally Gibbs and the others heard Stormy Foster's voice, saying, "All clear over here!" The others heard the Marksman say, "The one on the ridge above us is dead, as well."

The five slowly got up from their cover and, looking around, crab-walked forward, weapons at the ready. About fifty yards ahead they found Foster, surrounded by a dozen dead and smoking Chinese corpses and the body of another of the tall creatures. Panting and grinning, Foster was holding one of the new, strange-looking rifles in his left hand, and a giant yellow shield in the other. He said, "I got around behind them - they weren't expecting that."

Major Povalski briefly inspected the corpse of the giant creatures, nodded and grunted softly to himself, and said, "You used their own weapons against them?" Stormy nodded, grinning wider. "The yellow spears, they explode on impact, and I can throw them as well as they can."

The Marksman said, "Good thinking, Mr. Foster."

Stormy looked at the other five - they were obviously nicked and bruised a bit, but none seemed to be badly wounded - and then down at the rifle he held. He said, "This is what they were using against us - they all have them. But I'm damned if I know what they are."

The others picked up the rifles from where the Chinese had dropped them and looked closely at them. The tubes ran on both sides and the top of the 7.62s; they were made of a translucent substance that looked and felt like some bizarre form of plastic, and they blinked palely from within. It wasn't clear where they were attached to the rifle; they seemed almost to have been glued there. But apart from them, the rifles seemed normal.

The Guardian closely examined the rifle, then slung it over his shoulder and said to Major Povalski and to Stormy Foster, "How many of these creatures did you say you saw?"

Stormy said, "I saw three of them, Jim."

Major Povalski said, "I, as well, but there might easily have been many more that were not visible from where we were."

The Phantom Eagle, eyeing the rifle, said, in a quiet voice, "What now, Guardian?"

The Marksman looked at the Guardian, who glanced pensively at him, then looked down at the rifle. He finally said, "Someone has to let General Walker know that the Chinese have these in addition to the....the creatures. Eagle, I think you'd better take one of these and go find Captain Dare. We'll try to get more information on these things."

The Eagle, trying not to let his relief show, nodded and ran back towards the path and the American troops.

Major Povalski quietly said, "And then there were five..."

The Guardian looked sharply at the Marksman, but saw there was no criticism in his face, and then shrugged. "I know I'm reducing our forces faster than the enemy is, but I have no choice in this, Major. We're in bad enough shape as it is; if they attack us with these, and we aren't ready for it..."

The Major nodded. "I realize that, Mr. Harper. And sending Mr. Malone away was the best possible move; he was quite tired, and I think his combat effectiveness was...well, I think he needs his rest."

The others did not respond, but the truth of the Marksman's words was evident to all of them. The five stood there, silent, for several moments, until finally the Marksman coughed quietly and said, "Mr. Harper...?"

The Guardian shook himself out of the daze he'd fallen into and said, "Yes, of course. Sorry about that, Major. We need to know more about what they've got, and there's only one way to do that. Let's go. Sniper, Major, you lead the way."

The Sniper, following behind and to the left of the Marksman, kept his silence, as he usually did. Back home he was a farmer in southern Indiana, and was used to following the rhythms of the land, and to keeping his peace for hours at a time; although the land around Depauw was rich, farming was not an easy occupation, and it required long, silent hours of backbreaking work, and it bred into a farmer a quiet, patient watchfulness, a quality of working to the rhythms and pace of nature, and not man. That was part of the reason why he'd been a natural as a sniper, back when he'd been drafted for The War. The other reason was his reflexes and shooting eye; even as a boy he'd brought back more birds and game to his ma and pa than any other kid in the area. Some weeks he'd been the only one putting food on their table.

Since joining up he'd never looked back, not even during the bad times in The War, when he'd been in the Balkans or in Greece, having to wonder when the Resistance was going to sell him out to the Nazis or betray him. And if going forward seemed a little suicidal, well, he'd done stupider things in The War.

So the Sniper said nothing, just kept using his goggles to scan the landscape ahead. The Marksman was leading them up the mountainside, off the path, towards the crest of the hill, and although the Sniper had his Springfield out (he'd decided that he'd use the special rifle they'd scavenged from the Chinese in a close-quarters fight, but that for long-distance work he'd stick with what he used best) he never had to use it; the Marksman had his bow at the ready, and as usual saw everything before the Sniper did. The Marksman was uncanny, both in his perception and his aim, but the Sniper didn't mind; he found it comforting, instead, to know that he didn't have to be the first to see anything.

Fifteen minutes went by as the five climbed farther up the side of the mountain; they were at the point where the slope broadened, so the climbing was easier. When a long string of clouds crossed over the moon the Marksman stepped up the pace, and the Sniper did his best to match it; without the moonlight visibility was much lower (at least, for those without the goggles; again, as he had numerous times since the war had begun, the Sniper sent a prayer of thanks up to Mr. Terrific for inventing them) and so the five could walk that much faster, and dash along the top of ridges without being seen.

The five reached the point where the ridge started soaring up, at a 75o angle, and the Marksman, carefully picking his across the bleak and trackless terrain, started leading them down. He reached a spot where glaciers, long ago, had dumped a number of man-sized boulders while digging grooves across the mountains, and then stopped. The boulders were the only notable cover on the mountainside for hundreds of yards in any direction, and the path on which the five had walked, following the American troops hours ago, snaked its way along the side of the hill, a hundred yards up from the bottom of the defile, about ten yards below the boulders. Major Povalski gestured for the others to sit down behind the boulders, which were strung out for twenty yards, making the space behind them a natural trench. Major Povalski climbed on top of the lead boulder and lay flat and began examining the terrain below; the Sniper, seeing what he was planning, joined him. The others sat against the boulders without speaking, enjoying the break from the ever-present wind.

Five minutes later the Marksman looked up, at the sky, and then slowly shook his head and returned to inspecting the path. Shortly thereafter the clouds, which had been steadily gathering, began emptying themselves, and while the Sniper pulled up his collar against the snow he could hear Sgt. Gibbs utter one low, fervent curse.

The Sniper felt the Marksman grab his arm, and then point off, two hundred yards to their right, at the spot where the path emerged from between a gap in the mountain's ridges. Using his goggles - how did the Marksman see everything so well, when he never used the goggles? - the Sniper focussed, and saw a Chinese soldier creeping along the path. The soldier paused, then made a hand gesture, and he moved forward and what looked like dozens more emerged on to the path. They were accompanied by at least two dozen of the large creatures. The Marksman quietly snapped his fingers, and the Guardian jerked out of his doze, nudged Sgt. Gibbs and Stormy, and they spread out, the Chinese rifles at the ready, aiming down at the path from between the edges of the boulders.

Slowly, the enemy column filed forward, drawing closer and closer to the point directly beneath the boulder. The Sniper, finger on the trigger of his rifle, tracked the lead creature, trusting that the Marksman would give him a sign at the right time. Never moving his head, he cleared the goggles of snow every few seconds, waiting for the Marksman's signal; although the snow was now falling thick and fast, he still had a clear line of fire.

From almost directly behind him he heard the whine of a bullet ricocheting off stone, immediately followed by the flat crack of a 7.62 mm. A second later a light from behind him cast him momentarily in shadow, and then he heard, from above and behind him, the loud explosion of one of the Chinese weapons' beams, hitting its target. Without hesitating the Sniper opened fire, killing the first of the large creatures and then, hands blurring as he brought another bullet into the chamber of his rifle, gunning down another of the large monsters, his bullets moving most gratifyingly (to him) through the strange helmets they wore. As he fired he saw the monsters and the Chinese soldiers look up, at the boulders on the slope above them, and he saw more of the monsters falling over as the Marksman's shafts hit their marks.

Then Sgt. Gibbs and Stormy and the Guardian began firing down the slope, the yellow beams of their captured weapons flaring through the air and leaving an actinic glare in the eyes of the watchers. Where the beams hit, they exploded, throwing bodies in all directions. Sgt. Gibbs said, over the roar of the detonating beams, "Sorry to ruin your surprise, Major, but one of the gooks got on top of the ridge and took a potshot at us - I had to take him out."

Major Povalski said nothing, concentrating on his fire. The Sniper was chambering and firing as fast as he could, and the others were doing horrible damage to the Chinese column, who were momentarily thrown into confusion by the sudden attack, but any moment--

Just as the Sniper had anticipated and feared, the Chinese didn't break and run under the onslaught, but instead dove for cover and returned fire. As their beams flew up the hill and exploded around the boulders, and the Americans poured on the fire, the beams forming a glowing yellow net over the bleak Korean landscape, the Sniper saw two squads of Chinese break to the left and the right and start circling around, obviously trying to flank the Americans' position from above. The Sniper shouted, "Major--" but the Marksman was already on it, raising himself up and loosing three arrows in as many seconds, each finding a Chinese head or neck or chest to bury itself in.

Then a stray or lucky or accurate shot hit the boulder on which the Marksman kneeled, and the explosion threw the Marksman into the trench. The Sniper spared a moment to look down into the trench while the others kept raking the path below them. The Marksman's side was bloody, and he wasn't moving; the Sniper couldn't even be sure if he was breathing. Another shot hit the boulder next to his, and he ducked, pulling a muscle in his upper back, and then turned back to the enemy, wincing at the new pain; there would be time to bandage the Major, or to bury him, later.

All too soon, however, the superior numbers of the Chinese came into play, and the Sniper and the other Americans were forced to take cover behind the boulder and fire to their sides; the Chinese were pouring so much fire onto their position that even poking a head out for more than a glimpse would be suicide, and the best they could do was shooting from behind the boulders, which cut down on their accuracy and the area into which they could fire. The Sniper saw the remaining Chinese and creatures - three, maybe four dozen of the enemy in all - split in two, half providing covering fire as the others made their way, by the numbers, up the slope, through the snow, which was falling thick and fast. The Sniper was about to shout out a suggestion to the other three that they surrender - they'd all heard about what the Chinese did to prisoners of war - torture and brainwashing - but even those were preferable to death - when he heard Stormy Foster inhale, deeply and raggedly, and then shout, in a surprisingly (to the Sniper) loud voice, "U.S.A.!"

The Sniper didn't see what Foster was doing, but heard him shout it again, and then turned in time to see Foster leap high into the air, in a high, tight arc, and then land most of the way down the slope, just above the path and between those troops moving up the hill, towards the Americans, and those of the enemy who'd stayed behind to cover their comrades' advance. The Sniper, holding in his left hand the giant shield that he'd taken from the monster's body, and holding the rifle in his right hand, jumped again, shorter and quicker this time, down the slope towards the mass of the enemy, holding the trigger of the rifle and spraying beams at the enemy from the air.

As he landed several of the beams hit his shield, but despite the force of the explosions - the Sniper could feel them from behind the boulders, many yards above Foster - Stormy was not blown backwards, and kept his feet, holding the shield in front of him as he charged forward into the mass of the troops. Those Chinese soldiers and giants on the slope above him, having halted at the sound of his shouts and the sight of him flying through the air and shouting, started to fire at him but were forced to halt for fear of hitting their own troops.

The Sniper, hearing the explosions from down the slope but not hearing or feeling any near him, poked his head around the corner and saw Stormy in the center of what seemed to be a ring of explosions. Instantly upping the magnification on the goggles, he saw Stormy, the large shield covering all of his body except for his head and feet, whirling around in a circle, firing in every direction and scattering the Chinese and the creatures. The Sniper watched as the soldiers and the giants fired at him, but their shots seemed to explode harmlessly against the shield, detonating with a great deal of light and heat and force but somehow not penetrating through the yellow metal of the shield.

The Guardian, looking around the corner of one boulder, blinked rapidly and shook his head and said, "What are we doing? Help him!" and immediately began firing at the troops and the creatures halfway up the slope. Sgt. Gibbs and the Sniper opened fire, and the enemy on the slope, caught from behind, were quickly slaughtered.

Stormy Foster, meanwhile, got caught up in the moment and pulled too hard on the trigger of his rifle, snapping it off. He instantly threw it at one of the giant creatures and then began throwing the jagged yellow spears he'd taken off the body of the dead monster. Although the few surviving Chinese soldiers, finding their new weapons could not kill this new opponent, and that he was cutting them down at an alarming rate, broke and fled up the path, the remaining monsters stood, using their shields to protect themselves against the yellow bolts, which had no more effect on their shields than the yellow beams of the Chinese rifles had had on Stormy's shield. Stormy, seeing this, began charging at them, throwing the jagged bolts as he ran. They crouched behind their shields, and in seconds he was among them.

The Guardian and Sgt. Gibbs and the Sniper began running down the slope towards Stormy, but stopped when they saw what he was doing. As soon as he reached them he dropped the shield and spun between two of them. He grabbed one around the thighs and picked him up and quickly bashed him on the ground, then used him as a weapon and a shield against the others. The Sniper, seeing this, dropped to his knees and took aim with his Springfield and began picking off those who were hanging back, waiting to strike with their jagged bolts.

It was over in seconds; despite their size, the giants were no match for Stormy's strength, and he, driven by a fading adrenaline surge and the half-conscious knowledge that if he slowed down they'd kill him, was a brutal whirlwind, using every bit of his strength (something he'd trained himself never to do, for if he hit a normal man with all of his strength there'd be little left of the man except goo) to snap bones and break necks.

Panting, Stormy watched and waved once as the others ran down the slope. He grinned and said, "I thought that might work."

The Guardian, squatting beside the burning, smoking bodies around Stormy and inspecting them, said, "What's that?"

Stormy said, "It stood to reason that their own shields would protect them against their weapons. Glad I was right..."

Sgt. Gibbs looked at the Guardian and said, "What now?"

The Guardian looked up at Gibbs and said, "Now? We keep going."

Stormy grin faded, and his shoulders slumped. Sgt. Gibbs groaned, and the Sniper slowly shook his head. The Guardian said, "What? We aren't done here - we need to know how many of these giants they've got."

The Sniper said, "No, sir."

The Guardian said, not so much irritated as surprised, said, "What? No,' what?"

The Sniper slung his Springfield over his shoulder and said, "No, we ain't going any farther. Look, Guardian, we're down to four people. The Marksman, if he's still alive, needs a medic. And we've been lucky twice now; that ain't gonna last. Sooner or later - sooner, I'm betting - one of them is going to get Stormy in the back, and then we're gonna get killed or captured. We've learned enough for one night; let's take what we've got and go home."

The Guardian stared at him for a moment, then looked at Gibbs and Foster. "Do both of you feel that way?"

Gibbs nodded; now that the adrenaline was wearing off he felt worse than ever, and somehow some mud had gotten inside his boots, making his feet feel colder and wetter. Stormy's eyes jerked from Gibbs to the Guardian, and his breathing increased somewhat. He finally said, "I...uh...yes, I do, Jim. We....yeah, I do. Let's...let's get out of here. We've done enough."

The Guardian looked at the three of them, then shrugged and smiled and said, "I guess I'm out-voted, then. Sergeant, you and the Sniper gather up some of these yellow spears and some of those rifles - we'll want to bring those back to General Walker, see if they can be duplicated. Stormy, take one of those shields and go get Major Povalski. I..."

His voice trailed off as he, and then the others, looked behind them, at the light growing from over the mountain, from where the Chinese had fled to; the air suddenly seemed to crackle with static electricity, and the four smelled ozone in the air. Without speaking they dove for cover, behind the bodies of the giants, and aimed the Chinese rifles at the tops of the mountains.

The light grew in intensity, and then the source of it flew over the mountain and zoomed down at them. They quickly fired on it, but the beams seemed to somehow evaporate before they reached the source of the light, which quickly resolved itself into a man. Wreathed in a white corona against which the snow fizzed as it landed on it, the man hovered over the four Americans, arms crossed, face contorted in an angry snarl, glaring down at them; he wore a red costume with a green cape, his blue skin set off by his red hair (which curled up into two points, making him look like he had horns) and his forked red beard.

He waited until the four stopped shooting, and then gestured with both hands. The ground seemed to leap up, and arms of stone wrapped themselves around the four, holding them with painful force and immobilizing them. He stared angrily at them, his breathing becoming increasingly labored and his face acquiring a purplish tinge, until he finally burst out with "You WORMS! Have you any IDEA what you've done here today?"

Stormy opened his mouth to speak, and the man gestured irritably and more stone arms wrapped themselves over the faces of the four. The man floated down so they could see him, and he said, "Qward will NEVER forgive this! You've RUINED the treaty! All my plans...GONE!"

He glowered at them for a moment, and then said, "For this you will die horrible deaths...as horrible as I can make them...and it will still never be...e...nough..." His voice trailed away as a far-off humming sound grew. The four, held fast by the stone arms, tried to find the source of the sound, but the arms wrapped around their heads allowed for little movement, not without tearing their flesh, and all they could do was roll their eyes upwards and to follow the man's face as he looked around.

The humming sound grew in volume, and as it suddenly increased in clarity the four each recognized it: B-29s and F-86s. The anger left the man's face and was replaced by a sudden fear, and he turned to flee as the first bombs landed and exploded.

Ten nights later, in a darkened room deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, a shadowy man tsked to himself and shook his head as he finished reading a bundle of papers, of various sizes, shapes, and conditions, all stamped "Top Secret." The man replaced the papers in the file folder from which he'd taken them, clicked off his flashlight, and left the room, patting the cooling corpse of room's guard as he exited. During the long, laborious journey from the depths of the Pentagon to its parking lot, where his Ford sat, he tried not to let his irritation make him sloppy; it would not do to let any of the soldiers discover his presence, especially in light of how careful he'd been in the weeks preceding this. He was not completely successful, and two sentries near the outer doors were too awake when he'd been anticipating their being the opposite.

The man wiped their blood from his hands with a lace handkerchief as started the car. As he made his way back to his hotel in Alexandria, he uttered one pungent curse. It had seemed so simple to him, weeks ago. Wotan had been angling to establish his own private demesne, far away from the Americas, where Fate would not be aware of it. The Chinese had been angling for something to neutralize the American super-men. Qward had been angling for a way into this universe. Wotan had been dabbling in anti-matter weapons. A simple, anonymous note had informed Wotan of the Qwardians, and of the gateway which would open if a large enough anti-matter explosion was set off.

As the man had planned, Wotan had negotiated an alliance with the Chinese and the Weaponers, and had supplied the Chinese with anti-matter weapons, and had brought through a few of the Thunderers, to aid the Chinese and to show that Wotan was acting in good faith. That should have proven sufficient; they should have encountered and slaughtered the American troops, the Thunderers should have been blooded, and then Wotan would have set off an anti-matter explosion which would bring through the armies of the Qwardians. With hundreds of thousands of Thunderers rampaging across the region, massacring Chinese and American troops, the death toll would have soared into the millions...and that sacrifice would have been enough to save the man.

But somehow...somehow his plans, so carefully laid, went awry. Several of the American super-men had been at the flashpoint, protecting their comrades' retreat, and it had been the Qwardians, and not the Americans, who had died. According to the testimony of the super-men, Wotan, though injured by the final bombing, had survived and fled. No doubt, seeing his plans in ruins and those Qwardians, the ones he'd relied upon to bring proof of his good faith back to Qward, dead, Wotan, ever-crafty, had decided to cut his losses and start again somewhere else. The Qwardians, seeing that their troops had been killed, severed ties with Wotan. (Or so the shadowy figure supposed; none of that was in the files he'd just read, but it would only have made sense) The American super-men, though injured by the bombing, had survived. And the American troops had successfully eluded the Chinese.

The man sighed as he parked his car at the Marriott and made his way to his room. His plans had come to nothing, Wotan was lost to him as a pawn, none of the super-men had died, and the hotel's selection of wines was atrocious.

As the shadowy man lay down and closed his eyes, he tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that tomorrow was another day and 1951 another year, and that there would always be more super-powered pawns with which to achieve his salvation. But it was almost two years before another opportunity presented itself...

Author's Notes:

The date is November 28-29th, 1950, and the place is North Korea, somewhere on the retreat to H ngnam. As with the rest of the issues of Twenty Years, the historical setting is accurate.

All references to "The War" are, of course, to World War Two, The Big One. While Korea was a major event in the lives of all those who fought there, WW2 was much more of a defining moment, not just in the lives of those who fought, but in the lives of those too young to fight. Korea is the forgotten war, and those vets who fought there deserve our respect, but on a symbolic scale WW2 is much larger than Korea, and for good reasons. Which is why the Korean war has to be specified as "the Korean War," while WW2 is simply "The War."

The "DSC" is the Distinguished Service Cross, which is one of the highest commands the US military can give.

The Seven Soldiers of Victory, of course, fought the Nebula-Man in the summer of 1950, and were cast through time, with Wing dying to destroy the creature but the rest of the Soldiers emerging, healthy and safe, years in the future. But the JSA wouldn't have known that in November of 1950, nor would anyone else; they would simply have thought that their comrades-in-arms had died in battle. Although this has never, to the best of my knowledge, been made clear anywhere, or even alluded to at all, I think the deaths of the Soldiers would have had a dampening influence on the JSA, which might in turn have contributed to their decision to resign the following winter. Even assuming that a couple of the All-Star Squadron died during WW2 (something we don't know for sure - as far as any of us know none of the All-Stars died during WW2, something I find unlikely to the highest degree - I think the rate of death would have been much higher, closer to what I've done and will do in Liberators), I don't think any of the JSA would have been mentally or emotionally prepared to lose eight of their friends and fellow heroes at once. I think it would have been sobering for them, to say the least, and might have cast a pall over their enthusiasm for heroing, and would have made them more amenable to resigning.

What happened to the anti-matter weaponry and to the qwa-bolts and to the special shields, after all of this was over? Why didn't they change the course of history? I could have explained that, too, but this story went on for long enough. Let's just say that I think they're all tucked away in a CIA warehouse somewhere, next to a big crate marked "Ark of the Covenant."

Our Cast:

Captain X (Captain Dare) - another somewhat obscure Golden Age character, but not nearly so much as some of the others on this list. He was real, and had a decent run, and was a decent enough character, but was forgotten about after the war...until the writer of Firestorm, for some reason, decided to make Captain X the grandfather of Firestorm, and to give Captain X a background in espionage after the war. ("The Group" is the name of the spook shop for whom Captain X worked) Captain X was light-hearted, originally, but anyone who was a spook during the Cold War, and especially one who worked behind enemy lines, as we know Captain X did, was bound to be a pretty hard individual, which is why Captain X, here, is so different from, and so much less likable than, the original Captain X.

Sgt. Gibbs - perhaps the most obscure character in this issue, but a real one nonetheless. Mike Gibbs appeared in Adventure Comics #84, long, long ago. His story lasted until Adventure #102 (March 1946), which, if you think about it, is a much longer run than characters like Prez and Brother Power the Geek ever managed - yet Mike Gibbs is not just forgotten and unknown, he's a character that even keepers of the arcane and obscure don't know. He was a guerrilla operating in Germany during WW2, and Adventure #102 was his last appearance anywhere.

Guardian - Jack Kirby's pseudo-Captain America, done for DC after The King and Joe Simon left Marvel for much better money at DC. Probably the most famous of the heroes seen here - no, definitely the most famous. And unlike the others his post-war history is more-or-less well-mapped out; we know that he eventually retired and was killed, then cloned. But the "eventually" has never, to my knowledge, been exactly delineated, and I think that someone as patriotic and generally heroic as the Guardian wouldn't have stood around when the "police action" in Korea occurred. He'd have volunteered, and I think he'd have done so as the Guardian - he'd get to use the shield, and it'd be better for rallying the troops and for propaganda purposes. And I think his effect on others would be something of the same thing as Captain America's - he'd be viewed in a very good light by everyone around him. He might not be as awe-inspiring or beloved as someone like the Flash or Uncle Sam, but I think the general troops would like someone like him.

Marksman - aka Major Povalski. Another of the forgotten heroes I do so love, The Marksman first appeared in Smash Comics #33. He was a Polish noble who waged a one-man war against the Nazis; he posed as the German "Major Hurtz" and used a bow and arrow against the Germans. His last appearance was in Smash #65, and has not been seen since. Like Sgt. Gibbs, he's not so much a forgotten character as one that nobody knew about to begin with - which is another reason (besides the intrinsic quality of the character) that I'm using him.

Phantom Eagle - aka Mickey Malone. Another Fawcett Comics stalwart, but in what you might call the third tier of their heroes. The first tier was, obviously, the Marvel Family, and Bulletman/Bulletgirl, who were really quite popular back in the day. After that you had your Spy Smashers and Mister Americas and Ibises and Golden Arrows. Then you get to the third tier, which is where the obscurities lie - Commando Yank and Master Man...and the Phantom Eagle. Back in the Golden Age it was almost a requirement that a comic book company had to have a costumed airman or four. Everyone from the Blackhawks to Timely's K-4 & the Skysharks to Airboy to Hop Harrigan, and, obviously, Fawcett, with the Phantom Eagle. The Eagle wasn't particularly well done, though, and he only outlasted the war by 18 issues or so. That bit about the Phoenix Squadron and the Chalice of Peace are from the comics - I didn't make them up; the Phoenix Squadron were his Dead-End-Kid-style sidekicks, and the Chalice of Peace was an ongoing motif in the Eagle's series - it was the key to world peace.

Sniper - yes, there really was a hero by that name during the Golden Age. He was found in Military Comics #5-34. Military gave the world the Blackhawks and Miss America, and was very war-oriented - no surprise, of course, given the time it was published. The Sniper appeared in a back-up strip, and like Mike Gibbs has remained in utter obscurity since the Golden Age.

Stormy Foster - late of Hit Comics and not much else. Poor Stormy; he wasn't a bad Golden Age hero - really, he wasn't. Certainly far more lame characters have been revived and revamped, or at least given attention. But somehow he's been ignored. Oh, yeah, sure, he had a cameo in The Golden Age - who didn't? But so many other Golden Age heroes have been given at least some attention in recent years...but not Stormy.

Weaponers of Qward - Qward, for those of you not up on the arcana of DC's continuity, is the planet in the anti-matter universe which was created as a result of the forbidden experiment of Krona, a member of the Oans (who later became the Guardians of the Universe). Qward became the counterpart to Oa, and was taken over by the Anti-Monitor. From there Qward became a threat to everyone, and especially to Oa, the Guardians, and to the Green Lantern Corps. The Weaponers of Qward took over Qward (wonderful name for an alien planet, that) and the Thunderers - the tall, jagged-yellow-spear-throwing geeks that served as the heavies for this story - became their prize warriors.

Wotan - the mysterious & evil scientist-sorcerer, first seen in the Golden Age, who bedeviled Dr. Fate, but has been seen all-too-rarely over the years. (I did like how he was handled in the DeMatteis Dr. Fate series, but then, I've always been a sucker for happy endings and bad guys repenting of their evil ways) He's a major-league badguy, but has never been given his due.

And, of course, our mystery villain, the orchestrator of all this. Again, I'm not going to tell you who he is.

Letter Column:

Our own Barry Reese wrote:

> Very, very nice. I liked the opening Alan/Tex scene a lot, especially
> the 'we're working with the FLASH' line. Great stuff. The Female Furies
> and Darkseid being involved was interesting -- wasn't expecting that. As
> for the mystery villain, I was thinking Vandal Savage until I saw that
> the mystery guy had only appeared once. I'm thinking...

> I still disagree with you over the quality of Roy Thomas, but ah well.
> :)

:-) Fair enough. I'm in the vast minority about Roy Thomas, I know, and as a lover of the Golden Age I should appreciate his work more than I do...but I look at it, and all I see are the flaws...

Anyhow - thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. It wasn't as strenuous a write as many others that I've written, but it was still fun.

The Alan Tex interplay was enjoyable to write; pairing a grim character with someone who was (originally) pretty light-hearted usually produces some fun interaction.

I'm glad you didn't expect Darkseid et al - one of the things I'm going to do with this series is throw some very disparate and unexpected elements of the DC universe together and see how they work. And I couldn't pass up the chance to make use of Old Stone Face. :-)

As for the mystery villain...no comment. :-)

Eric Northcutt wrote:

> Jess,

> I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this first issue. This is a dream
> series for someone like me, a fan of the Golden Age of DC, to read. I
> can't tell you how much I enjoy seeing some of the more obscure and
> forgotten heroes showing up, especially Americommando and Commando Yank.

Hey, thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. Keep reading, of course - every issue of "Twenty Years" is going to have obscure characters - not just from the Golden Age, but from every era of DC's history. It was certainly a pleasure for me to be able to write both Tex Thomson & the Yank.

> A couple of comments of your author's notes:

> 1) I'm not really sure about this, but I seem to remember Tex showing
> up in the Hero Hotline mini-series.

Really? Cool - I'll have to check that out!

> 2) Quicksilver DID rate one cameo appearance in an early issue of
> Young All-Stars, either #2 or #3.

I couldn't remember whether he'd just been mentioned or whether he'd actually appeared - was it in the "Day In The Life" issue?

Thanks for writing, of course!

Next Issue: Twenty Years #3: By Any Means Necessary