Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

by Kevin J. Anderson

  A man emerged from a hiding place among the ransacked furniture, staggering forward. He was much more haggard-looking than she had seen him in Radio City Music Hall. "It's Jennings!"

  The scientist had a dazed look on his face as he stumbled toward them, his hands outstretched in a wordless plea. Sky Captain reacted quickly as Jennings collapsed into his arms. "Got you!"

  He eased the scientist down to the cluttered floor, turning the other man's body to reveal a knife buried deep between his shoulder blades. Thick, fresh blood soaked the woolen fabric of his brown suit. His gold-rimmed glasses were askew on his pasty face.

  Dr. Jennings looked up, struggling to speak. With one hand, he clutched the zipper of the pilot's leather jacket. His voice was weak, barely audible. "You must stop him…"

  Sky Captain and Polly froze as they heard a stealthy noise in an upstairs room. Letting Polly support the dying scientist's head and shoulders, Sky Captain got back to his feet but remained in a wary crouch. "Stay here. Maybe we're not too late after all."

  Someone was moving quickly in the other room. He heard the sound of a window opening, the scrape of a wooden frame moving in the sash. He ran up the staircase and through the door into a smaller office. He arrived just in time to see the blur of a black-garbed figure climbing out the open window.

  "Stop!" Sky Captain lunged to grab the shadowy figure by the arm. With a vicious tug on the fabric sleeve, he spun the stranger around and found himself face-to-face with a stunning woman. Her face was perfect, her lips a dark ruby red. Her eyes were covered by large, round glasses with opaque lenses. It didn't seem possible that she could see through them.

  She wasn't what Sky Captain had expected at all. He loosed his grip, surprised. "Listen, I don't want to hurt you — "

  The dark woman moved with unbelievable speed, striking him with a backhand that had the force of a catapult. The blow knocked him against the wall, cracking plaster. Reeling, he slid to the floor, his legs turning into noodles. Sky Captain grabbed the back of his head and silently mouthed, "Owww."

  Before he could scramble to his feet, the strange and murderous woman leaped to the window again. Ignoring the hammers inside his skull, Sky Captain dove after her, managing to catch her wrist just as she jumped. His hand accidentally hit the window latch, which caused the window to drop with a thud. The pane of glass shattered, and he was forced to let go, ducking to avoid the flying shards. "Damn!"

  Anxious, he leaned through the empty frame. The black-swathed woman landed with uncanny grace in the alleyway below, bent her knees for the briefest pause, then sprinted with lightning speed around the corner. She was gone in a flash.

  With a disappointed sigh, Sky Captain withdrew from the window. "What the hell is going on?" He wondered what excuse he could tell Polly. His head still throbbed, and he could feel a few cuts on his face from the glass splinters.

  Before he left the office, he noticed a leather satchel lying on the floor, as if it had been tossed under a writing table. Curious, he picked it up. This could be something…

  In the cluttered laboratory room, Polly knelt over Dr. Jennings, trying to comfort him, but she could see he was dying. He had lost too much blood already, and the knife wound was deep. With his failing strength, the scientist struggled to speak. "Miss Perkins…"

  "I'm here, Doctor. I tracked you down."

  "If Totenkopf finds them… nothing will be able to stop him. Nothing…"

  Polly leaned closer to hear his faint words. "Finds what?"

  Jennings squirmed to reach inside the pocket of his jacket with a bloodied hand, then removed two small test tubes. "Once he gets these… the countdown will start."

  "The countdown for what?"

  "This world… will end." Before he could say anything more, before Polly could grasp the magnitude of what he had said, the scientist wheezed out his last rattling breath and died.

  "Dr. Jennings!" She tried to revive him, but it was no use. Polly gently pried the two test tubes from the scientist's hand and held them up. "The end of the world? In here?" Dumbfounded, she glanced up as Sky Captain reentered and knelt down beside her. "He's dead." With sluggish movements, Polly covered the body with a jacket.

  "Well, the murderer got away… but I think I found something." Sky Captain held out the satchel.

  Polly recognized it immediately. "Dr. Jennings had that case with him at the theater yesterday, just before the robots attacked." She took the satchel from him eagerly, even as she discreetly pocketed the test tubes. She decided to keep them hidden. Sky Captain didn't need to know everything — not yet.

  As he watched, Polly unfastened the satchel's catch. Inside, she found a stack of papers. Her brows knitted as she leafed through them, understanding only snippets. "They're in German."

  "We can translate them. At least five members of the Flying Legion — "

  Suddenly the frightening wail of air-raid sirens filled the air for the second time in as many days. The bone-rattling tone echoed off houses and buildings. In the neighborhood, some residents frantically switched on lights, while others did exactly the opposite.

  "Not again!" Polly said as she and Sky Captain raced to the laboratory window, looking up as searchlights crisscrossed the cloudy sky. They could both hear an ominous droning sound in the distance. Something powerful was approaching fast.

  "I have to get back to the base," Sky Captain said.

  Forced to leave the dead scientist behind, Polly grabbed the satchel and stuffed the papers inside. "I'm coming with you, Joe."

  10

  The Fearful Flying Wings. An Unwelcome Passenger. A Signal Located

  Back at the Flying Legion's base in the distant hills, Polly's Packard roared onto the airstrip, covered with mud from skidding along the dirt roads. Before she screeched to a complete stop, Sky Captain had already jumped out of the car.

  Receiving the alert signal even before New York's air-raid sirens activated, his flight crew had prepped the P-40 Warhawk. They sprinted along with him to the waiting airplane. "Didn't have time to touch up the paint job on the nose, Cap. Sorry. Looks like one of the painted fangs is chipped."

  "At least tell me you fueled her up and reloaded the ammo."

  The crewman impatiently rolled his eyes. "Of course we did that, Cap!"

  On the airstrips, other planes thrummed, their props spinning, engines warming up. Several members of the Flying Legion had taken off and now patrolled the skies. The surveillance zeppelins lifted higher on their tethers.

  Sky Captain shouted questions as he ran, leaving Polly behind. He did not want to be at the tail end of the other mercenary fighters. "So what is it? What's happening up there?"

  "Reconnaissance picked up something on radar traveling at over five hundred knots — and coming straight for us."

  "How soon before it gets here?"

  Suddenly, in the sky above, a dozen shapes emerged from the sunset-tinged clouds. The crewman pointed upward. "Right about now, I'd say, Cap." Slanted daylight splashed across the sleek metal hulls of flying craft that looked like mechanical vultures.

  Obscured by a rippling haze of air distortion, the shapes took on the form of giant silver bats. Perfectly streamlined, as if made of quicksilver, the graceful yet deadly flyers flapped long and narrow wings like mechanized pterodactyls. They made a shrill whistling sound like a pipe sliding through a metal sleeve. The enemy Flying Wings dove forward, blunt noses marred by clusters of 50mm cannons. The black gun barrels extended, then began to spit fire.

  Sky Captain scrambled for his plane, stepping up onto the wing and sliding the cockpit canopy aside. "Time to get going! Remove the wheel blocks."

  The enemy wings swooped down like hawks upon the Legion's airfield. Crewmen ran for shelter into the hangars. Two of the Legion's warplanes screamed down runways and took off. Swooping along with mechanical grace, the fearful enemy flyers spat out heavy machine gun fire. The ammunition struck home in a searing hailstorm that blew up a row of unoccupied aircraft parked
on the field. As the Flying Wings rose upward again with an eerie whistle, they left a firestorm in their wake. Row after row of Legion airplanes detonated after the strafing barrage.

  "Does everybody know where our secret base is?" Sky Captain muttered as he swung himself into the Warhawk's cockpit. He raced through the takeoff checklist, glancing at the dials and controls as he fastened his helmet and seated his goggles over his eyes.

  "Wait a minute, Joe."

  As the enemy Flying Wings raced past for another attack, engaging the Legion fighters already in the air, Sky Captain looked down in astonishment to see Polly climbing the narrow fuselage ladder up after him. "What are you doing?" He had to shout over the deafening roar of the P-40's engine.

  "I'm coming with you!" Another volley of explosions ripped through one of the supply hangars, igniting barrels of aircraft fuel.

  "Don't be stupid, Polly. Remember what happened the last time you flew with me?" The chaos and noise all around them made it impossible for him to manage a reasonable tone.

  "We had a deal!" She didn't even slow, but kept climbing.

  "This isn't a game, Polly. People are going to die! In fact, some of my best men probably already have."

  Determined and beautiful, Polly refused to let go of the rungs, even though the airfield was exploding around her. Howling alarms and roaring engines increased the racket during the bombardment. "You're not leaving without me, Joe! Not this time! It's my story."

  Sky Captain curled his gloved fist, anxious to go and considering just how much more time Polly could waste with her incessant arguing.

  Wings flapping briskly, the alien-looking machines circled around and struck again and again until they succeeded in blowing up the main hangar from which the P-40 had just emerged. Ducking from the backwash of the explosion, he shielded his head from the debris and shrapnel pelting all around them. The tiny impacts on his plane's fuselage sounded like a hailstorm on a metal roof.

  Like a swarm of alloy-plated bats, even more of the Flying Wings converged on the Legion's hidden base. Sky Captain gritted his teeth, fuming. No time to argue. "Get in!"

  Polly scrambled up behind him and threw herself into the cockpit's backseat. Sky Captain didn't waste even a second checking on her as he slid the canopy shut. The Warhawk's engine seemed to be screaming a challenge as he accelerated forward, taxiing down the nearest runway.

  In the sheltered map room, Dex sprinted toward a massive, blinking communications array. He pushed past several of the radio operators who were frantically trying to coordinate the defense of the base. Taking control, Dex began to flip a series of buttons, causing a jagged signal to appear on another oscilloscope display. He stared at the bouncing radio signal expectantly, adjusting dials to triangulate. An oddly melodic Morse code tone came through the small speaker, sounding similar to what he had heard earlier — only closer.

  "There you are!" Dex made a victory fist. "This'll do it!" He grabbed a headset microphone from one of the pasty-faced radio operators and hurriedly spoke into it. "Cap, do you read me?"

  The sounds of emergency sirens and explosions continued in the background. The lights dimmed briefly from the attack going on outside. It was only a matter of time before the Flying Wings leveled the control hangar — if Sky Captain didn't stop them first.

  The Warhawk streaked through the sky in fast pursuit of three Flying Wings. Like superfast metal vultures, the enemy aircraft flapped furiously, pumping with pistons and powerful whistling engines. They wheeled and evaded, reminding Sky Captain of crows on the wing.

  "Dodge all you want," he muttered, forgetting that Polly was sitting behind him, "but you can't outrun this." He lined up the nearest quicksilver machine in his crosshairs. His finger hovered over the trigger on his flight stick.

  A voice burst over the radio set. "Cap, this is Dex! Come in!"

  He lifted his microphone. "Hang on, Dex. I'm a little busy."

  Sky Captain locked his sights on one of the machines. His gloved finger flipped open the safety latch on his trigger, and with complete coolness he squeezed. A stream of machine gun fire embroidered with intermittent tracers stitched across the sky, intersecting the Flying Wing. Gunfire penetrated the smooth quicksilver hull, making the enemy craft explode in a massive fireball.

  With a satisfied sigh, Sky Captain lifted his microphone. "Go ahead, Dex."

  "Whatever you do, Cap, don't shoot!"

  Sky Captain frowned sheepishly at the expanding cloud of smoke and tumbling shrapnel that had been the Flying Wing. "Uh, okay."

  Dex sounded disappointed. "You shot it, didn't you?"

  "Yeah. I thought that was the point."

  "Listen, Cap, you asked me to track down the command signal, and I did. The signal is coming from one of those machines. It must be the leader. You've got to keep them in one piece, or I'll never be able to get to the bottom of this."

  Sky Captain groaned, but he had never found reason to disbelieve Dex. "You sure know how to make a job harder, Dex. Which machine is it?" Ahead of him and all around the smoldering Flying Legion base, dozens of the flapping aircraft swooped and dove, continuing their attack.

  Dex did not sound reassuring over the radio set. "No way of telling. It could be any one of them. Wait… I'm losing the signal." The younger man groaned. "Now it's getting fainter."

  Sky Captain saw that one of the Flying Wings had veered off from the others and headed back toward the New York skyline. The rest of the mechanical attackers concentrated their firepower on the hangars and runways below. "I think I found it, Dex. It's heading for the city."

  "Don't let him get away, Cap!"

  Sky Captain hated to leave the rest of the Legion to the greater battle, but he knew he needed to win the war against this sinister enemy. "You better be right, Dex."

  "Keep after it! I need you to bounce that signal back to me. If we lose it now, we may never get it back."

  With a heavy heart, Sky Captain raced after the primary Flying Wing. "Just let me know when you've got something, Dex. The very instant you have it."

  "I'll let you know. Out!"

  While Polly clutched her seat in the back of the cockpit, Sky Captain veered off in pursuit of the lone enemy craft racing back toward Manhattan.

  11. A Dogfight over Manhattan. Thieves from the Sky

  Polly's Shortcut

  Inside the map room, Dex unrolled a large chart across the main table. He didn't even flinch as a nearby detonation rocked the Legion's control center. Oily smoke began to fill the hangar, and the lights flickered again.

  Undaunted, Dex unwrapped a wad of bubble gum and popped it into his mouth. Debris sifted from above like a fine rain. Overhead, the Flying Wings continued to bombard the base, while brave Legion fighters mounted their best defense.

  Dex yelled to the communications operators beside him. "I want a full-spectrum sweep of every incoming signal."

  Two men huddled under tables for shelter from falling chunks of the roof, while other grim operators went about their duties, hunched over dials and transmitters. A Legion warplane zoomed overhead, unleashing a crackle of machine gun fire.

  "Amplify any variant frequency cycle and route it to me!" Dex bent over the screen, staring so hard his eyes hurt, willing the answer to come in time to save Sky Captain and drive off the attack on the base.

  Explosions continued outside. Orange-and-black fireballs spewed upward from destroyed planes on the runways. The attacking Wings targeted the tethered observation zeppelins. Though soldiers fired their rifles from the ground and warplanes dove in to protect the lighter-than-air vessels, they could not drive the Flying Wings from the dirigibles.

  Incendiary projectiles tore through the thick fabric hulls, igniting the volatile hydrogen inside. Like the tragic end of the first Hindenburg, the Legion's zeppelins were engulfed in an inferno. Their blackened skeletons collapsed with slow grace to the tarmac as ground personnel fled.

  Legion planes continued to attack the Flying Wings. A volley of ven
geful shots sheared off the razor-thin wing of an enemy aircraft, and the quicksilver batlike form scraped across the main hangar's roof, showering sparks. It tumbled into a heap of wreckage on the tarmac outside the tall doors.

  Inside the control hangar, Dex allowed nothing to break his concentration.

  Streaking above the terrain on their way to New York City, Sky Captain kept his P-40 close behind the primary Flying Wing. The enemy craft flapped its powerful metal wings like a hawk swooping in for the kill.

  They sped along the spine of Long Island, covering distance at an insane speed. The flight path of the fleeing attacker took them over Queens and the site of the soon-to-open 1939 World's Fair, billed as the largest international exhibition in history. Sky Captain looked down at the distinctive Trylon, a seven-hundred-foot-tall obelisk pointing toward the sky, and the two-hundred-foot globe of the Perisphere. President Roosevelt himself would give the kickoff speech, "Building the World of Tomorrow."

  First, though, Sky Captain had to save the world of today.

  The speeding aircraft crossed the East River in a flash, diving toward Midtown Manhattan. "If that Flying Wing thinks he can lose me among the skyscrapers, we'll see just who's better in an obstacle course."

  "It's sweet, but you don't have to show off for me, Joe," Polly said from the rear of the cockpit.

  He banked hard, barely keeping his annoyance in check. "I have absolutely no intention of showing off for you."

  Weaving an erratic course, the Flying Wing dipped among the tall buildings, diving to street level, where taxicabs and buses swerved to avoid a collision. Sky Captain clung like glue to the enemy's exhaust.

  Pulling up in a steep climb, they shot above the rooftops. Polly peered out the cockpit canopy, surprised to see six more Flying Wings engaged in furious activity below them. "Joe, there's another half dozen of them!"

  He looked from side to side, but the goggles blocked his peripheral view. "Are they after us?"