by Libbylawrence
In a comfortable home in Northern California, an attractive elderly woman suddenly stiffened as she placed a dish on a round table. A pretty blonde teen saw her mother’s reaction and hurried to steady her.
“Mom! Are you hurt?” asked Courtney Noble, helping her mother Joanne Noble to a chair.
“I’m fine, dear,” Joanne replied. “It’s my old weakness. I’ve had these sinking spells for as long as I can remember. Don’t let them worry you.”
Courtney nodded and thought, I once overheard Mom telling her old friend Mr. Healy that she started having these spells after she lost her old Miss America powers back in the early forties. I almost feel guilty about having inherited them. Of course, it’s not as if I robbed her of them. She calls them my birthright!”
Joanne Noble took a deep breath and calmed herself as her daughter took over setting the dinner table. She’s worried about me, I can tell, she thought. These sinking spells always bring me back to that fateful day when everything changed. She frowned as she recalled yet again how that last mission as Miss America had started, when Uncle Sam appeared and recruited her to join that first team of Freedom Fighters. So many wonderful heroes joined with me. How I still mourn those good brave men, she thought with a sigh.
***
At the now-destroyed passageways in Linz, while medics worked to revive some of the injured soldiers, an angry Braun — again in human form — stared off the bridge and chanted under his breath. “The rune stones have more magic within them. Those filthy Amerikaners will yet die! While we were made hosts to the Norse powers, we may also summon more savage remnants of that ancient culture!”
The waters churned into a miniature whirlpool, and then a massive creature erupted from beneath the waves. The creature was green with glistening scales and a segmented body. A huge head with dull eyes and a gaping mouth loomed over the shore.
Braun raised the rune stone over his head and shouted, “Find my enemies and kill them all!”
The sea monster towered over the neighboring structures before diving back into the waters and heading after the heroes at the mystical command of its master.
***
Back aboard the soaring Red Torpedo craft, Queen Klitra held Jim Lockhart’s hand as she explained the situation to the heroes while they ate. The lovely crew had served them assorted delicacies.
“Jim disappeared all those years ago, and I found no trace of him or of his ship,” she said. “My sisters scoured the seas in search of him. I had already attuned one of our bio-monitors to his metabolism, and to my grief I found no signal. I feared you were dead at the hands of the hated Axis Empire!”
“I can’t believe it,” said Red Torpedo. “I know you told me that your race doesn’t age, or ages so slowly it is beyond human comprehension, but you look exactly the same. I guess I do, too, though, huh?”
“The Nazi rats must have taken us directly to some kind of containment unit,” said the Invisible Hood. “I hate to think what they did to us during those years. It’s puzzling that they left both my invisible cloak and my gas-gun on me this whole time, instead of disarming me. All I can surmise is that they must’ve had a reason to preserve our original conditions. Perhaps they even experimented on us, and that’s why I suddenly was able to shift myself across a distance!”
“There was no trace of your vital signs on this world until you broke free of the machine you described,” Queen Klitra continued. “That infernal device must have preserved you for all those years! There’s something else you should know. During your absence, a Nazi agent used your name and a craft a lot like yours. In fact, I have heard that the Axis forces created counterparts for most of your friends here. We investigated as best we could, since we thought the false Torpedo might know of your whereabouts. The group called itself the SS Ubermenschen!” (*)
[(*) Editor’s note: See Freedom Fighters: The Fight Continues, Chapter 15: The SS Ubermenschen.]
“They obviously did more to us than keep us on ice,” said the Hood. “They copied our powers and, in my case, apparently duplicated the hood I wear! Who knows what they did to our missing friends?”
“I saw a wraith appear during the fight,” said Neon the Unknown. “I agree with what the Hood said. It looked like Miss America! When I tried to find her, I detected something with her essence near us, but I also felt an impulse from the USA!”
“I saw something like a ghost, too!” said Magno. “What does it mean?”
“You copied my ship, didn’t you?” the Torpedo asked Klitra. “I suppose its specifications must have been copied by some of your monitors, too.”
“My chief scientist Alkema added a device to turn air into water,” explained Queen Klitra. “It generated the waves that we used to flood those tunnels and kill your enemies!”
“Let me adjust the monitor,” said the Torpedo. “I’ve been itching to be behind the controls once more.” As he adjusted a series of dials, he grew increasingly grim. “Something is following us! We’ve been tracked right from those tunnels!”
“No Nazi ship could match this craft!” declared a pouting blonde crew person.
“Nevertheless, we are being chased!” said the Red Torpedo. As he made some swift adjustments, his scanner displayed the huge sea monster bearing down on them. “Another mythical monster!” he shouted.
Kriemhild gasped. “That is not just any monster! It looks like the offspring of the Midgard Serpent! It could be a smaller version of Jörmungandr!”
“The Midgard Serpent was said to be larger than the planet itself,” said the Hood. “Luckily, this version is smaller. I guess it skipped its vitamins!”
“Can the Torpedo harm it?” asked Magno.
“My old ship couldn’t have done a lot to something that big,” said Red Torpedo. “I can release a few torpedoes!”
“We have added something that might help!” said Klitra. “The ship now has a powerful laser!”
The Red Torpedo grinned almost boyishly and said, “Okay, darling! Show me how to fire this thing!”
Neon shook his head and said, “I’m still trouble by the apparition we saw. My own mental scan failed to locate Miss America with any certainty. We’ve all dealt with the supernatural before. Could it be that she exists trapped in some weird limbo between realms?”
“Easy, pal,” said Magno. “We can only handle one problem at a time, and right now that means frying up that Kong-sized fish!”
The amazing craft moved to confront the sea monster while the Red Torpedo’s hands raced skillfully across the controls. He still knew this ship better than anyone. For all its apparent modifications, it was still based on his creation. He felt a certain pride of ownership and a confidence that his workmanship was able to withstand any challenge.
As Navy Lieutenant Jim Lockhart he had brought plans for such a craft to his superior officer Captain Wells, but his ideas had been deemed impractical. He was so passionate about his invention that he resigned from the service and used every cent he had to finance the construction of the Red Torpedo. He performed all the work himself in a secluded cove near his small home in Maine.
Recalling his fiancée Peggy Norse and how she had shared in all the work, he felt anew a pang of grief. She had died suddenly from a previously unknown heart ailment, and he had buried his pain in his work, eventually abandoning his Maine home for a secret island base in the South Seas. His burgeoning long-distance relationship with Queen Klitra had also done much to ease his mourning. (*)
[(*) Editor’s note: This refers to the Earth-X Peggy Norse; the Earth-Two version of Peggy Norse survived to marry Jim Lockhart and bear his son, who became the father of Kelli Lockhart and inherited the original Red Torpedo craft; see Doctor Occult and the Seven: Forgotten Legacies, Chapter 1: The Torpedo. In order to understand how there could simultaneously be two versions of Peggy Norse, one dead and one alive, see the upcoming story DC Universe: The Secret Origin of Earth-X.]
As the Red Torpedo, he had explored the world and fought countless groups of Axis agents, petty crooks, and ruthless pirates. He had also repeatedly battled against a man who quickly became his most deadly foe — the Black Shark. I can’t imagine even that grinning fiend coming up with a terror like this one! he thought.
Shaking his head again, he reminded himself that the Shark must be dead now. Surely he was dead after so long. If not, the scheming pirate would be an old man by now. Too bad, he mused. I would like to have had one more chance at him!
The Torpedo opened fire on the monster and nodded in approval as twin bolts of red energy blazed out to strike the huge beast. The laser hit its mark, but seemingly left no damage on the scaly creature. “Direct hit — and no good!” he muttered.
“I’d better get out there!” said Neon the Unknown.
Magno agreed. “I’m with you.”
As the two heroes rushed forward, Valkyrie leaped to her feet and cried, “My blade is yours as well! We shall slay yon creature or die gloriously!”
Magno grinned. “You were a cheerleader back where you came from, weren’t you?”
What good is a man who can fade out of view in this kind of fight? pondered the Hood. My gas-gun couldn’t even cause that thing to yawn!
“Hood, come over here,” said the Red Torpedo. “I may need your help. Just be ready at the co-pilot chair, and follow my lead!”
The Hood smiled. “He also serves who sits!”
As the Red Torpedo lifted upward, the trio emerged from its tower and prepared for battle.
“Get me within reach of the serpent,” said Valkyrie, “and my good blade will sing such a song of death that the skalds will ever celebrate my name!”
“I wager they will at that!” said Neon, scooping up the blonde warrior woman and flying into the air until they were above the hideous serpent.
“Release me!” she said. “Odin will guide my aim!”
Neon carefully released the Valkryie above the monster’s skull, and she landed gracefully on top of its ridged brow. She planted her sandal-shod feet and plunged her sword down between a scale and a narrow groove. The creature roared in pain, and in its agony it almost flung Valkyrie across the waters, but she gripped her blade firmly and remained anchored in place.
Diving out of the air, Neon struck the monster’s left eye with all of his considerable might, blasting away with bolt after bolt of neonic energy.
Having propelled himself onto the monster’s neck, Magno released bolts of magnetic power in the monster’s ear as he fought to remain in range of the hulking beast without being caught by its lurching head. I don’t know if magical dragons have metal in their scales or not, he mused, but I sure can try to repel this scale from my own force-field!
As a magnetic field enveloped him, the hero in red and blue raised his wrist band induction coils and focused his energies on driving an opening between the scale and the neck of the beast. As a ridged area broke loose from the segment, Magno generated a fiery electrical blast that scorched the beast, but failed to stop it from knocking him into the sea.
Neon whirled to follow his friend’s fall, but the monster snapped at him and engulfed him in its mouth. Some kind of toxin! I can’t see! he realized as the fumes threatened to overwhelm him. Turning into a comet of neonic energy, he surged down the throat of the monster until he reached its stomach. There he exploded and plunged into the water as a wound opened up in his wake.
Within the craft, the Invisible Hood slammed his fist on the control panel and said, “Both of them are down! Can you locate them?”
“I’ll try!” said the Torpedo.
“No need — my Mermazons will save them!” said Klitra, and dispatched a squad of the lovely crew into the waters.
True to their ruler’s word, the lovely aquatic soldiers retrieved the fallen heroes with remarkable speed. Magno was unhurt, since he had managed to surround himself with a shield at the last minute. Neon was equally unfazed, although he realized that if his best attack could only wound the monster, it would surely take a powerful force to slay it.
Valkyrie was still slashing furiously at the monster, and her innate prowess as perhaps one of the finest fighters to ever walk the planet served her well. She also had the benefit of a magical weapon forged by the very beings whose cosmology gave birth to the monster.
As it thrashed up and down, sending waves crashing over the Torpedo’s ship, the serpent bled an acidic substance that boiled the waters in its wake.
Neon and Magno each returned fire at the beast as the Valkyrie somehow managed to retain her position atop its skull.
“I could ram it with the ship!” suggested the Red Torpedo.
“You may not have to!” replied the Hood. “Look!” He pointed skyward to where a beautiful woman with long black hair suddenly materialized.
The figure was familiar to all of the males as their missing fellow Freedom Fighter, Miss America.
“It’s Joan!” cried Magno. “She was that phantom we saw earlier! Somehow she’s managed to reach us!”
Neon nodded eagerly and said, “Her power over matter may be exactly what we need!”
Watching the lovely woman closely, the Hood noticed more than one strange thing in her aspect. She’s not talking! he thought. She’s not showing any emotion whatsoever, in fact. What’s happened to her?
Miss America made no verbal response to her friends, but merely gestured at the serpent, which began to shrink as she converted its molecules to air.
With a final convulsing heave, the monster plunged into the depths where the Red Torpedo met it with a barrage of laser fire. The reduced monster erupted into flames and sank to the ocean floor.
As the heroes assembled once more on the surfacing craft, Miss America landed and looked at each one.
“You saved the day, legs!” said Magno as he rushed over to hug Miss America.
Although she allowed herself to be embraced by each of her partners, she did not return the warmth of their greetings, nor did she show any emotion. “I am glad you are safe,” she said softly. “I know this much, but I do not know who you are, or how I came to be watching you — first as a wraith, and then as a woman of flesh and blood.”
“Do you know who you are?” asked the Hood.
Miss America looked at him with wide blue eyes and shook her head. “I know I have powers, and I know how to use them, as if it is an instinct. But I can’t tell you my own name or how I gained these abilities!”
“Come inside with us,” said Magno. “We’ll talk it all out and find the answers you need. You can trust us, honey.”
Miss America nodded solemnly and followed the group inside the submarine.
“We are safe from additional pursuit,” said Neon. “The monster was the final weapon our foes had in their arsenal that could harm us from a distance. I think we should stop at Klitra’s homeland and rest and learn what we may about how the world has changed since we were last together. Then we can plan our next move. The Nazi scientists robbed us of the lives we knew, but we can use the time we have left to make them pay!”
“You are all welcome as long as you wish to stay!” said Queen Klitra. “We may offer you safety and shelter!”
“I’d like to meet up with the Axis copies Klitra mentioned, too!” said the Torpedo. “We could teach them not to tarnish good American names!”
“And we all need time to learn how we’ve changed ourselves as well,” said the Hood. He glanced at the vacant-eyed Miss America and thought about his own strange new power.
“We all need some time to come to grips with what Huxley called a brave new world,” said Magno, “but when we do, we already know our purpose, right? Hourman named us, and Uncle Sam approved it. We’re Freedom Fighters! That’s who we are, and what we’re going to do is liberate this world from the Nazi menace!”
They chimed in their agreement as Kriemhild the Valkyrie added her own support.
It was indeed a brave new world for these mystery-men and women of yesterday, but they were determined to forge a better and brighter future for themselves and the values they cherished.
Continued in Freedom Fighters: The Führer Came From Brooklyn