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  On the Master Ship;

  22,300 Miles Above Soton Three;

  “Our attack is faltering,” said one of the admiral’s two remaining heads. “Our attack craft are mostly gone and our few remaining soldiers are outnumbered by the natives.”

  “Who would have thought they would fight so fiercely for this dirtball,” growled the Empress.

  “Well, the weather is nice and they have the yellow sun.”

  The Empress of 61 Cygni ripped off his rightmost head and sucked out the insides.

  “Scorch the planet!”

  * * * * *

  Beams of high energy shot out of the enormous disk-shaped spacecraft. One of them glanced off Stella and sent her tumbling end over end to smash face-first into the corner of the IBM Plaza. Others cut great holes through buildings or burnt vast tracks of the ground. Air Force jets fired missiles at the great mothership, but they exploded against the vessel’s force field, well away from its hull.

  Dynagirl landed next to Stella and helped her to her feet.

  “This is not good,” she said.

  A second later, Skygirl zipped down next to them. She hovered a few feet above the ground.

  “What’s the plan?” she asked.

  “You’re the strongest of the three of us, Skygirl,” said Dina. “The three of us will go in together. We go in assault pattern beta. Stella and I will draw fire and you can hit them dead on. Just fly on through and do as much damage as you can.”

  “Alright.”

  “Let’s go!” called Dynagirl, and the three superheroines shot into the sky toward the alien mothership.

  They wove in and out of each other’s flight paths as they flew, winding through the sky in a pattern very much like little girls used when braiding one another’s hair. The large beam weapons shot from the alien ship still cut through cars, streets, and buildings on the ground, while smaller beams and missiles shot downward at fighters and superheroes. The gunners from 61 Cygni had a much greater difficulty hitting the three flying women than they did the slow moving targets on the ground.

  When they were within a few thousand feet of the mothership, the three women split apart. All American Girl cut left, Dynagirl cut right, and Skygirl shot straight ahead accelerating to full speed. Stella tucked and rolled in the air just in time to avoid a laser. When she did, she saw a large missile shooting in her general direction. She grabbed it and spun around throwing it at the giant spacecraft. This put her in a perfect position to watch the other women.

  Skygirl easily hit mach two before she plowed into the force field. Stella was no expert, but if she had to guess, the force of Skyman’s daughter hitting the barrier must have measured in the millions of pounds per square inch. The invisible shield didn’t give way an inch. Stella had the horrible impression of a bug splattering against a windshield. Linda was already falling limply toward the ground when the shockwave from her impact buffeted All American Girl, sending her flipping around several times before she could stop herself.

  Regaining her composure, Stella looked down to find the falling Skygirl, but she was lost amid the falling debris, flying missiles, and crashing aircraft. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dynagirl flying toward her and started to call her for help. Suddenly a great yellow bolt of energy shot down engulfing the other super. In a flash, Dina was reduced to ashes, which spread quickly in the Chicago breeze and disappeared.

  * * * * *

  Linda didn’t ever remember hitting or being hit by anything that hard in her entire life. She was conscious only long enough for her mind to register pain and then everything went black. When she came to, she was still falling. Somewhere down in the depths of her mind, she knew that she had to do something. She was going to hit the ground soon. But she just couldn’t make herself move. On the periphery of her vision, she saw the tops of building shoot past, then the tops of trees. Then there was a gentle thump and she found herself in a pair of enormous arms.

  “Got’cha!” said Behemoth.

  “Golly,” said Skygirl. “That was a pretty lucky catch.”

  “No luck involved,” replied the big man. “I had to run three blocks to make it.”

  “I’m glad you did.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and closed her eyes, for a moment reliving what it was like to be held by someone so much larger than herself.

  “What are we going to do now?” asked Behemoth. “It looks like they’re going to scorch the whole city.”

  “I don’t know. I flew as fast as I could, but I still couldn’t make it through the force field.”

  “If I could fly, I could get through,” said Behemoth. “Once I get going, I can’t be stopped.”

  Skygirl climbed down out of his hands.

  “I’ll throw you. You go right on through and knock out their shield generator.”

  “How am I supposed to know where it is?” he asked.

  “We’ll just do the best we can. Try to knock out as much stuff as you can.” She bent down and cupped her hand. “Step here.”

  Behemoth stepped onto her hand, holding onto her head to balance. Skygirl easily hefted the monstrous supervillain, five times her own size, and took aim at the alien mothership which was still spewing death and destruction down onto Chicago. She had never thrown a human being before, but she had once knocked out an errant missile by throwing a Volkswagen Bug, so that had to be pretty similar. Using her telescopic vision, she located a section of the spacecraft brimming with what looked like antennae, aimed, and threw as hard as she could.

  * * * * *

  All American Girl did what she could. She stayed out of the way of the bombarding death beams and dodged the missiles. She knocked out any remaining alien fighters or bombers that she could get her hands on. The problem was that there weren’t many of them left. Most of the smaller invading craft had already been eliminated. There was only the great looming mothership, spitting out death from on high like Zeus himself.

  Then out of the corner of her eye, she saw a very large man flying up toward the vessel. She started to call out a warning and then realized who it was. Behemoth? He couldn’t fly. He must have found some way of launching himself up several thousand feet. Well, if he wanted to take a go at the big time, good for him. Stella was aware of Behemoth’s powers. She’d fought him three times now. He had that momentum thing going for him, but she didn’t really think that he stood any chance of piercing the Cynian defenses. Still, he was the only game in town. As he zipped by her, she followed in his wake, staying as close to him as possible.

  When Behemoth hit the invisible barrier, he slowed noticeably, and All American Girl braced to have him tossed back at her. But then suddenly he continued on. She followed. As she crossed the same barrier that had swatted Skygirl out of the air, she could feel her ears pop. She paused for a moment to watch the gold-clad supervillain crash into the bottom of the spaceship, and continue on through. Though she couldn’t see it, she expected that he would crash out the top in just a few seconds. She shot into the hole he had made.

  With no heat vision or death ray, Stella had only her fists with which to engage the enemy, but she didn’t hesitate. She smashed anything that looked important—ripping out pipes and wires, punching through generators, and destroying support structures. She saw relatively few of the bizarre aliens, but when she did, she wasn’t shy about taking out her wrath on them. In a few minutes she began to feel explosions rocking the mighty vessel. She wasn’t sure whether they were caused by something she was doing or by others attacking from outside now that the force field was gone, and she didn’t care. She destroyed a few more throbbing, glowing machines and then began making her way back out the way she had gone in. By the time she emerged from the wound in the ship’s skin, all hell had broken loose.

  * * * * *

  On the Master Ship;

  22,300 Miles Above Soton Three;

  “Your Majesty!” squealed the admiral’s single remaining head. “We are defeated!”

  The viewsc
reen showed the mothership which had attacked the central northern continental city. It was completely engulfed in flame, and shook with explosions as it slid down over the city and into the great freshwater lake nearby.

  “That’s seventeen of our Destruction Class Battlecruisers destroyed and the others are taking heavy fire. We have only three squadrons of attack fighters and all of our strategic bombers have been destroyed.”

  The empress grabbed the admiral and ripped him in two, quickly consuming the lower half.

  “Sub-Admiral,” she called.

  “Yes, Your Majesty?” The underling, noticeably pale, stepped forward.

  “You are promoted to admiral.”

  “Thank you, Majesty.”

  “Begin our withdrawal. This planet is not worth our time and resources.”

  Chapter Eight

  Tanya Everson;

  Live Action News Update;

  “New information coming in from across the globe report the aliens in retreat. It will no doubt take some time to completely assess the damage. Early indications are that some cities like Paris are almost entirely destroyed, while others like New York suffered little damage. As we know here, Chicago has fallen somewhere in the middle. Early estimates put the number of casualties around the world in the millions. We can only… Oh, ladies and gentlemen, we take you now to the White House where the President is addressing the country…”

  “…time in the span of three years, the nations of Earth have united to stand against invaders from beyond our solar system. We have suffered the loss of many of our friends and neighbors—maybe millions. We will soon mourn them. We will soon mourn them and we will soon go about rebuilding our world—rebuilding the destruction of war beyond anything mankind has faced since the end of World War III. But the time for mourning and rebuilding is not yet here. The alien invaders are withdrawing, but they are still in a position to strike at us.

  “After consulting with our military experts, the leaders of our world have decided that these monstrous invaders cannot be allowed to simply walk away. We will strike back. With God as our witness, we will strike back.”

  * * * * *

  Skygirl, carrying two secretaries rescued from atop the Aon Center, dropped to the pavement in front of the command post. Professional EMS and volunteers from all over the city were setting up a network of first aid tents, shelters and information stations. She started to take off again, but a police captain came running toward her.

  “Skygirl!”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “I have a message for you from the Pentagon. They left a number for you to call. You can use the satellite phone in there.”

  He pointed toward a large green tent next to the white first aid station.

  “Thanks.” She let him guide her. “Have you heard where All American Girl is?”

  “No.”

  “Behemoth?”

  He shook his head.

  “Dynagirl?”

  “I’m sorry. The Atomic Twins are on the East Side. The boy is injured. Other than that, I don’t have any information on any of the supers.”

  “Alright, thanks.” They stepped inside and Linda dialed the number given to her.

  “Hello,” she said when the other end of the line was picked up. “This is Skygirl.”

  “Skygirl honey, it’s good to hear you. This is the Secretary a’ Defence.”

  “Yes sir. What can I do for you?”

  “Girl, the Justice Brigade is goin’ on a mission, and they’re a little undermanned. Captain Hero said you might be willin’ to join on.”

  “Yes sir,” replied Linda.

  “How fast can ya’ll get down to Cape Kennedy?”

  “Forty-nine minutes, sir. I’ll leave right now.”

  “Now that’s what I like to hear.”

  * * * * *

  Feeling the sun on her face and the cool grass on her cheek and hands, Stella could imagine that she was lying in the Elysian Fields. Opening her eyes, it didn’t take her too long to figure out where she was—Lincoln Park. She seemed to be crashing there a lot lately. Standing up, she looked out over the lake, to see the gigantic spaceship from 61 Cygni, half submerged. The portion sticking up above the waves was covered with flames.

  “Damn,” she said. “I’m beginning to hate this park.

  With a quick push off, she was soaring skyward, ready to take on any more aliens she could find. The thing was, she couldn’t find any. There were however, many people that needed help. The power was off all over the city and those who worked in high rises downtown were having difficulty getting to the ground forty, fifty, or sixty floors below their offices. Adding to the trouble was the damage that many of the downtown buildings had taken during the attack. Stella made several dozen flights from the upper reaches of tall buildings to the parking lots below, giving priority to the injured and the disabled.

  She was just making her second trip to the top of Two Prudential Plaza, when a flash of gold caught her eye. Behemoth was hanging unconscious from one of the offices. He was lying on his back with both feet dangling through the broken wall. A swift wind might have pulled him out; though falling to the pavement was probably less of a threat to him than to anyone standing below. Stella grabbed hold of one leg and pulled him out. Then flipping him over her shoulder, she flew to the nearest white tent with a red cross emblazoned across it.

  Stella had to carry the big guy into the infirmary, because any six of the attendants wouldn’t have been able to lift him. They spread a couple of blankets out on the pavement because the cots which contained all the other injured would never have supported him.

  “Take care of him,” she told the nurse, as she laid him down. “He’s the one that took down the big ship.”

  “Yes ma’am, we’ll take care of him.”

  Outside again, All American Girl had scarcely flown a block when she spotted two policemen dressed in bomb squad gear standing next to a large missile that was half sticking out of the ground. She dropped down next to them.

  “Hey guys. Is that one of ours or one of theirs?”

  “Theirs,” said one of the cops, pointing to the writing on the device. “See, it’s all in alienese.”

  “How can you disarm it without being able to read that?”

  “Oh that’s not really the problem. We disarmed stuff in Iraq all the time without being able to read the writing on it. The problem is this.” He pointed to a small panel held shut with six tiny screws. “It’s bad enough that we have five different kinds of screwdriver—standard, Philips, Torx, etc. But look at this. It’s got two triangle holes, one on each side of the screw head.”

  “Alien assholes,” said the other cop.

  “Preaching to the choir, brother,” said Stella.

  Suddenly a shrill squeal sounded from somewhere inside the bomb. Both bomb squad men dived for cover. Stella yanked the missile from the ground and tossed it up into the sky. At about four thousand feet, it exploded. A few windows in the upper reaches of nearby buildings shattered.

  “Nice,” said one of the cops, getting back to his feet. “Well, only about a thousand more just like that.”

  “Do you guys know Glenn King?” asked Stella. “Do you know if he’s okay?”

  “Oh yeah,” replied the second cop. “We know him. Last we heard he was okay. He was working the Streeterville area. You want to borrow a radio to call him?”

  “Um, no. That’s okay.”

  “Speaking of which,” said the first cop. “The captain said that if any of us were to run into any of you, you know, supers, we were to tell you to check in at headquarters. They’ve got it set up over on Jackson and Wacker.”

  It took Stella about two minutes to get to the aforementioned headquarters. Police Captain John Melker welcomed her in.

  “Glad to see you’re still with us,” he said.

  “I’m still here. Have you heard from Skygirl?”

  “She’s alright. At least she was when she left here a few hours ago
. The Pentagon called her and she took off.”

  “The Pentagon, huh?”

  “Skygirl’s accounted for, and the Atomic Twins—the boy’s going to lose an arm, I’m afraid. Do you know anything about Dynagirl? The Detroit people keep calling.”

  “Dynagirl didn’t make it,” said Stella. “She was vaporized by one of those beams.”

  “That’s too bad,” replied the captain. “She wasn’t alone either. We’re going to have a lot of people on the dead and missing lists when they come out. Alright, I’ll let you go. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  * * * * *

  Smithson Building Penthouse Apartment;

  Wabash Avenue;

  Stella landed on the balcony of her bedroom, totally exhausted. The sun’s morning rays were just reaching over the eastern skyline, which always made her feel like it was bedtime. She’d spent the last twelve hours in rescue and recovery mode. She hadn’t tried to count how many people she’d ferried from buildings to the ground, how many bodies, living and dead, she’d recovered from rubble piles, and how many bombs she’d helped defuse, usually by setting them off accidently herself. It was a good thing too. She would have lost count.

  As tired as she was, she was more hungry. She flipped on the TV as she walked through the living room to the kitchen, where she went right for the refrigerator. There was a fine new selection of fresh fruits that Linda had bought at the Farmer’s Market as well as a new bag of ready-made salad, but Stella hadn’t fought aliens from space and saved no doubt thousands of Americans to eat a vegetable. There was a frozen lasagna in the freezer which she tossed into the oven. It was going to take two hours to cook, but there was nothing she could do about that. There weren’t any restaurants or fast food joints open. There was a curfew on, not that it would have come between All American Girl and a deep dish pizza or a really good pastrami sandwich.