The Silver Age #3
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The Silver Age #3 |
"Assault On Challenger Island"
"Coming up on Challenger Island! Look sharp!"
Ace Morgan's powerful commanding voice filled the cabin of the cargo plane. Thanks to the soundproofing, he didn't have to raise his voice much above its usual level, but somehow; it still seemed awfully loud to the rest of The Challengers as they crowded the windows to look down at their island.
A crescent moon shaped island located some hundred miles east of the South Carolina coastline, the team had bought Challenger Island four years ago to serve as their own private prison for those criminals who styled themselves as The League Of Challenger Haters. No conventional prison could safely keep them and to be honest about it, the United States government at the time had neither the resources nor the funds to build a containment facility to hold them. The Challengers bought the island and set about the work to build special cells to hold their enemies. It was expensive to say the least, but it had gotten done. Everything on the island was automated. The only people on the island were four technicians who were on loan to The Challengers from The State Department who monitored the equipment and made sure it was in running order, but they lived on the northern tip of the island, far from the holding facility and had no contact with the prisoners.
"Somebody's got to go check out the camp and see if Harry and the others are okay." Ace said. He was looking right at Red Ryan. The plucky daredevil grinned and hastily scrambled into a parachute.
"I dunno, Ace. You really think you oughta land there and maybe give Pramble and them others a chance to get ready for us?" Rocky questioned.
"Who said anything about landing, Rockhead?" Red yelled from the hatch he had already opened. A rush of air filled the plane and Red yelled, "Cowabunga!" and leaped from the plane, falling toward the island below.
"Crazy kid!" Rocky snorted. "One day he's gonna kill himself with his fool stunts!"
"Hopefully he won't do it today," Prof said. "Ace, I'd like to bail out in the mini sub and go in through the undersea entrance. Maybe we can increase our chances by taking them by surprise with a two pronged attack."
Ace nodded. "But you take Rocky with you."
Prof grinned at his bigger teammate. "Wouldn't dream of hogging all the fun to myself. Want to go for a swim, big man?"
"It ain't Saturday night, but what the hell…let's go." Rocky scrambled out of the co-pilot's seat, to be replaced by June while he and Prof headed for the mini sub in the rear of the plane.
June made a visual check of the island below. Ace had already made one pass over to let Red bail out and he was coming around for another pass so that the mini sub could be dropped from a safe height. "They've got to know we're here by now. But I don't see any activity."
"They wouldn't have the resources to make any weapons. There's nothing on the island that could be used for that purpose. But they're still plenty dangerous."
June shuddered. "You don't have to tell me that." She was remembering the other times they'd encountered the Challenger Haters: Kra, the despotic living robot who hated all biological life forms. Multi-Man, who gained a new super power every time he died and was reborn. Volcano Man, a walking, living titan of lava. Drabny, the maniacal genius who was still a major threat even without his alchemical weapons and Multi-Woman, the thirty-foot android who had been created by Multi-Man during one of his incarnations when he had been gifted with super-intelligence.
"I'm worried about Harry and the other technicians on the island," Ace said quietly. "The standing order is that if the alarms go off for any reason, even if it's a false alarm, they're to evacuate at once and make for the mainland. The very fact that they didn't have a chance to do so tells me that they were taken by surprise."
"You think Multi-Man could have been awakened somehow and snuck up on them?" June asked.
Ace nodded. "Either that or Drabny figured out how to get past the force fields. But this kind of speculation doesn't mean a thing right now."
"Why?"
"Because we got problems!" Ace pointed at a huge ball of flaming rock that was streaking upwards from the island right at their plane.
Red Ryan popped his para-glider and it billowed open, halting his downward plummet and he angled his glide to take him a wide loop around the group of buildings where the technicians lived. Red knew them fairly well…he had to, since they all had to be hand picked by The Challengers before taking the job of maintaining the automated systems of the island prison. They all knew the risks, knew that there was a chance that someone could escape, but for it to have actually happened…
Red landed on the sandy beach and quickly shucked free of his chute. There was nothing that looked out of the ordinary. A glance at the dock was all he needed to visually confirm that the hovercraft was still moored there. Four pre-fabricated buildings which served as individual living quarters grouped around a fifth, larger building that served as the communications shack and main workshop. Red noted no signs of life, save for small birds pecking away for whatever insects and worms they could find. Red stayed low and ran toward the main building.
Hearing a sudden roaring, he looked up and saw the cargo plane arc away to the right, narrowly missing a flaming sphere that had undoubtedly been thrown by Volcano Man. Despite the overwhelming danger, Red couldn't help but grin. Maybe even more than the others, he lived for that familiar hot rush of adrenaline that seemed to make his every nerve tingle with fire. Red needed this life. When he wasn't doing something dangerous, life seemed bland and every minute stretched into an eternity of boredom. Give him an adventure. Give him a risk to life and limb. Give him a challenge.
Red entered the main building. Nothing seemed out of place. Certainly there weren't any signs of a struggle as far as he could see. The communications system looked to be untouched. Briefly, he wondered if he should contact the plane; make sure the others were okay. But no…he had his job to do, to find the technicians and make sure they were okay. Ace, Rocky, Prof and June could handle themselves just fine. Red quickly searched the building and found nothing. Whatever had happened to the technicians, it had happened damned fast if they hadn't even had time to get out a warning. Red decided to take two minutes to search the rest of the buildings and if he found nothing, make his way to the holding facility so as to hook up with the others and-
The entire building shook as if an earthquake had suddenly struck the island. Red was thrown off his feet and he rolled and hit a workbench, papers, manila folders, a couple of Palm Pilots and laptop computers falling around him. He covered his head from the falling debris from the roof as it was being ripped in half by two monstrous hands. Red coughed and scrambled to all fours, heading for the door to the outside, leaping outside just as the roof collapsed inwards.
Red rolled on his back and looked up at the giantess who brushed her hands together. Dressed in red tights and a blue sleeveless, tight fitting blouse with a cape, her beehive hairdo looked almost comical. Red wouldn't have believed that he would see a beehive on any woman outside of I Love Lucy reruns on 'Nick At Night'. It was also hard not to notice that the giantess was actually quite beautiful with an extremely well endowed bust. Red and his teammates had wondered in the past just what kind of sexual fantasies Duncan Pramble, the eternally dying Multi-Man entertained that had compelled him to create the android giantess he named Multi-Woman.
Multi-Woman had seen Red's escape. Her beautiful face smiled wickedly and her amplified voice boomed; "Very good, little Challenger! I was hoping you wouldn't make this too easy! I owe you and your teammates much slow agony for my imprisonment."
"Blow it out your bossanova, baby!" Red yelled back and reached his belt for two apple-sized spheres clipped at the small of his back. He pulled the pins with his thumbs and tossed the two grenades at Multi-Woman, then turned and ran for the forest.
Ace wrestled with the controls and yelled into his headset microphone; "Prof? You and Rocky ready?"
"Yeah! What the blazes is going on up there?"
"Volcano Man's wants to play catch!"
"Drop us and get out of range!"
"See you on the beach!" Ace yanked the release lever and the bomb bay door swung open and the two man mini sub of Prof's own design dropped like an oversized bullet toward the blue waters a thousand feet below.
Rocky tightened the straps holding him in the seat. His big frame was painfully cramped in the confines of the sub that had admittedly been constructed for men who were not as outrageously muscled as Rocky, but right now, noting the speed at which they were falling, that didn't seem all that important right about now. "Prof! This thing's gonna crack like a stepped on egg when we hit the drink!"
"Not a chance," Prof said coolly. That was one thing about Prof that drove Rocky right up the wall. The hairier and more risky a situation got, the calmer and more relaxed Prof became. "I've designed this sub to take a considerable pounding and-"
The mini-sub hit the water with a bone rattling impact that made Rocky see stars. He looked up through the canopy, watching the light fade as the mini sub dropped deeper into the water. "I wouldn't have given a red cent that we would have survived that," he breathed.
"Ye of little faith." Prof chided gently and his hands flew over the control board, flipping switches. Rocky couldn't help but notice that the mini-sub was continuing its descent and it was getting darker and harder to see.
"Prof? Don't mean to tell ya how to work yer toy here…but we seem not to be moving in any direction but down, buddy."
Prof was still working controls that were having no effect. No tell tales were lighting up, nothing was coming on. They might as well have been sitting in a bathtub.
"Prof? Anything you wanta tell me?"
"Uh…I would have to say that when we hit the water, it knocked something out of whack."
"Out of whack…is that an egghead term for 'we ain't got no power?'"
"Uh…yeah."
"Great."
The mini sub continued its plunge into the depths.
Ace skewed the plane upwards, back over Challenger Island. "See if you can spot Volcano Man. We've got canisters of liquid nitrogen we can hit him with if he's a position where we can get a good shot at him."
June was already looking through a pair of binoculars. "I don't see him!" she cried out in frustration. "How can something that big hide, anyway?"
June had a point. Although fully half of the island was covered with thick, lush forest, the other half was mostly barren, mountainous rock and that was where the flaming sphere had come from. Volcano Man should have stood out like a roach on a wedding cake, but-
"June! Hold on!" Ace yelled. June lowered her binoculars and turned her head to see another flaming ball of rock flying at them. Volcano Man had emerged from a cavern large enough to accommodate his size and caught them unawares. June yelled in surprise as Ace hit her ejector seat and the canopy's explosive bolts blew and her chair was pushed from the plane by the ejector chair's rockets. Additional restraints clamped around her waist and shoulders and control arms flipped out and around from the rear of the chair. June laid hold of the controls as her ejector chair's rockets stabilized and she was now flying a modified jet powered escape chair. She could see that the cargo plane's left wing had been sheared off by the flaming rock but Ace had managed to steer the plane right at Volcano Man in a screaming dive.
"Get out, Ace!" June screamed. "For God's sake, GET OUT!"
The grenades had had no effect of Multi-Woman, but they HAD slowed her up enough for Red to gain ground on her. Multi-Woman's terrific strides could eat up tremendous footage and only the distraction of the grenades provided Red with enough time to make it to the forest, where he would be harder to spot.
Multi-Woman came after him, tearing up trees as easily as a destructive child ripped up a neighbor's prize azaleas. She flung the trees willy-nilly to and fro as she screamed her hatred. "I WILL find you, little Challenger! And when I do, I will use your bones for toothpicks!"
Red ignored the rantings of Multi-Woman. She couldn't find him among the trees and he was heading in the direction of the holding facility. There was nothing to be gained by trying to tackle Multi-Woman by himself and in any case, it was more important to find out exactly was going on at the holding facility. Red ran on, hearing the thooming footfalls of Multi-Woman as she unknowingly followed in the same direction Red was heading in.
Prof's head broke the surface of the water ten seconds before Rocky's. The two men took in great lungfulls of air. They'd had to swim upwards quite a ways after abandoning the powerless mini sub but it wasn't as if they weren't used to long swims. Prof practically lived in the water and Rocky himself swam a mile almost everyday, providing there was an Olympic sized pool handy. The problem was that they hadn't had much chance to get decent lungfulls of air before cracking open the canopy, but they hadn't wanted to delay getting out of the mini sub any longer than they had to.
"Well, that was a good idea gone bust," Rocky said, wiping water from his face. "Got any more bright ideas, genius?"
"We can still swim in through the underwater passage, Rock…we don't need the sub for that. The plan's still a good one and maybe if we're lucky, Pramble and the others will think we went down with the sub."
"Y'know, Prof, if I didn't love you like a brother, I'd get real pissed off 'bout you being right alla time."
Prof grinned. "Stick close to me."
"Like white on rice, buddy."
Ace Morgan ejected from the cargo plane mere moments before it impacted into Volcano Man and ripped him apart in a gigantic fireball of orange and red that rolled outwards in all directions like a storm of living flame and chunks of molten rock. Volcano Man's arms whipped around in a frenzy of inhuman agony as what was left of the fiery colossus tumbled over and over, rolling down the side of the mountain, setting trees afire, leaving a wide burning path of blazing destruction.
June maneuvered her chair over to where Ace hovered, watching Volcano Man's spectacular demise. He grinned at her through his soot-streaked face. "Hell of a blast, wasn't it?"
"You big dummy! You scared ten years off my life with that stunt! Just what did you think you were doing?"
"Had to make sure the plane stayed on course, June. I didn't want to take a chance that it would miss Volcano Man." Ace looked like some big goofy kid who had just set off a dozen M-80's in the mailbox of a disliked neighbor. But Volcano Man's demise had done considerably more damage than M-80's. Most of the forest was now on fire, thanks to Volcano Man's burning corpse having rolled to a stop. The tremendous heat had set the trees ablaze and was spreading quickly, turning much of Challenger Island into a roaring inferno.
"We'd better get inside, Ace!"
The pilot nodded and the two teammates turned their flying chairs toward the holding facilities and kicked in the propulsion turbos and speeded on their way.
Kra's metal body trembled with a rage that was decidedly more passionately human than Kra would have liked to have had pointed out to him by his companions.
Drabny was looking from the robot to the other man who stood over by the door. Duncan Pramble still looked out of it, as if in a hypnotic stupor. As Multi-Man, Duncan Pramble gained a new super-power every time he died, thanks to the miraculous 'liquid light' formula. The only way to keep Multi-Man from killing himself was to keep him constantly asleep, which The Challengers had done with some assistance from Niles Caulder, the majestically aloof and undeniably brilliant Chief of The Doom Patrol.
The Challengers of The Unknown and The Doom Patrol had worked together on several occasions in the past and one of those occasions had seen the two groups teaming up to battle The League of Challenger Hater. Caulder had been the one to come up with a device that induced deep sleep. Once Multi-Man was connected to it, he would be in complete and total dreamless sleep. The thought of dreamless sleep had seemed a little harsh and this was pointed out to The Chief who merely answered; "What happens if he dreams that he dies?"
Kra had only unhooked Duncan Pramble from the deep sleep machine only an hour ago and Drabny well knew why: Pramble and Kra maintained only the most tenuous of alliances. They were likely to turn on each other at the slightest provocation. They only thing that united them was their boundless and everlasting hatred for The Challengers. Drabny had no doubt that Kra would have been perfectly happy to have left Pramble in his state of living death if it wasn't for the fact that the situation had just gotten worse. But Pramble looked in no position to be much help to anyone. Drabny was willing to bet that being deprived of the necessary dream stage of sleep that all humans needed had worked some pretty weird doings up in Pramble's oversized brain. Brilliant as Niles Caulder was, he'd overlooked one thing: humans needed to dream. Dreams were the way the subconscious sorted out all the day's information. It was quite possible that being deprived of his dreams had done something to Duncan Pramble. Something real nasty.
Drabny himself had only been free of his cell maybe a day now. Kra had no fear of him if Drabny didn't possess the three alchemical weapons that had given him power enough make even Multi-Man watch carefully what he said and did. Kra had needed Drabny's scientific genius to help in converting the engines of the Freedom's Light. Drabny held no illusions about Kra's intentions. He had only freed the others simply to distract The Challengers and buy some time so that the engine conversions could be finished and he could leave Earth.
<Drabny! Motion detectors indicate that two Challengers are swimming in through the underwater channel! Go and delay them!>
Drabny snorted in disgusted disbelief. "With what? My good looks? I've got no weapons and-"
<GO!> Kra roared, lifted a huge metal fist over his head. Drabny ran without a backwards look.
Kra had been monitoring the various failures of the other Challenger Haters he had released from their cells. Volcano Man lay in a pile of smoldering rock and ash. Multi-Woman was laboriously climbing after Red Ryan, who was ascending the side of the mountain as if he was being hauled up on a rope. Kra held no illusions that Drabny would be able to stop the two Challengers swimming through the underwater channel. In fact, Kra had only one last pawn to throw at The Challengers.
Kra walked over to where Duncan Pramble stood. Pramble's eyes were vacant, dull. A glistening thread of saliva hung from his lower lip. The once intelligent, arrogant features were now slack and devoid of anything resembling thought. But shortly, that would all change.
Kra laid metal hands on Duncan Pramble and the room was filled with sickening, meaty snaps as Kra effortlessly crushed Duncan Pramble to death and let his body fall to the cold metal floor. Kra looked at the fresh blood on his silver hands and even though Kra hated all biological life with every silicon based cell of his unfeeling body for one brief nanosecond, he wished that he possessed the capacity to smell the blood of the man he had just killed.
Prof and Rocky hauled themselves out of the submarine pen inside the holding facility, water pooling around their booted feet as they looked around them. Nothing. Not a sound. Rocky pushed his wet hair back out of his eyes. "I don't like it. They shouldn't have let us get that far."
Prof didn't seem to care. "We've got to find Dora. Come on, we'll-"
But Rocky reached out a sinewy hand to clasp his partner's shoulder. "Hold on there, Prof. First thing's first. We find Pramble and the rest of his posse and take 'em down and secure the island. THEN we find your girlfriend."
"Dammit, Rocky, I've not going to stand here and argue with you when not only Dora's life but the life of the others are in the balance! You do what you want but I'm going to find Dora!" Prof yanked his arm out of Rocky's grip and turned to go but the big man's quiet, soft question stopped him.
"You in love with her, Prof?"
Prof turned back to face his friend. "I guess when you put it that bluntly, Rock…there's nothing left for me to say but…yes."
"Hell, why didn't you say so? C'mon, let's go find her."
"Hey! Challengers!" Drabny entered the submarine pen, holding his hands high above his head. "Don't hurt me! I'm not armed!"
Rocky was on Drabny with a quickness that belied his bulk. He gleefully wrapped his hands around Drabny's neck. The scientist squawked like a turkey and tried to tear Rocky's hands free with no success at all. "Let me go you oaf!"
"Oaf is it?" Rocky lifted Drabny clean off his feet and held him up in the air and shook him until Drabny cried for mercy. "I oughta snap your rotten head right off your worthless neck! You know how much I could save by not havin' ta help pay for the upkeep of this place?" Rocky shook Drabny again. A LOT harder this time. Drabny was bawling like a six year old who's just learned that there is no Santa Claus and he looked pleadingly at Prof.
"Professor Haley! Call him off! Please! He's going to kill me!"
"And I'm going to help him," Prof promised grimly. "Where's the Freedom's Light crew? Where's Multi-Man? What's his scheme this time?"
"Pramble? You think HE'S behind this?"
"You mean he ain't?" Rocky asked suspiciously, relaxing his grip slightly and lowering Drabny back down to the floor.
"Pramble's only two steps away from being a turnip's cousin. It's KRA who's stolen the space station and it was Kra who let us go."
"But how'd Kra get free?" Prof demanded.
"I don't know! Kra only set the rest of us free so that we would distract you so that he could take off in the space station! He's converted the engines to a faster-than-light stardrive!" Drabny looked at Prof with terror in his eyes. "You know what that would mean if he activates those engines within a gravitational field!"
Prof's face was hard and remote as he said, "I do indeed. Turn him loose, Rocky."
Rocky obliged and Prof's fist swung out in a beautiful haymaker than laid Drabny out cold.
Rocky looked on in admiration. "Not bad, Prof. But you pulled your punch some. You only knocked him ten feet. And by the way, why DID you slug him? Not that he don't deserve it."
Prof motioned for Rocky to follow and the two Challengers broke into a side-by-side run. "We don't time to waste with him and he would only slow us up if we brought him along. We've got to find Kra and stop him."
"Well, hell, Prof, ain't that what this whole delightful afternoon's outing has been about?"
"You don't understand. A faster-than-light stardrive isn't supposed to be used within an inhabited planet's gravitational field. The results could be…unthinkable."
"I guess we're talkin' end of the world unthinkable, huh?"
"Damn right."
Rocky increased his speed. "Then we better find that walkin' erector set and find it NOW."
Red Ryan stopped when he had found what he was looking for: an access hatch that would get him inside the holding facility. He looked back down the mountain and saw Multi-Woman still laboriously climbing up after him.
"I'm coming for you, little Challenger! You cannot escape me!"
"Gotta give her major points for sheer persistence," Red muttered. He reached into a pouch on his belt and withdrew a small battery powered screwdriver no bigger than his pinkie and soon had the hatch off.
"AH-HA!"
Red looked up and around in shock. How the hell did something that big move so quickly? She'd covered the final nine hundred feet separating them in seconds and a hand seemingly large enough to blot out the sky reached for him. Red hopped feet first into the open hatch and was soon cannonballing down a square metal service tunnel. Once again Red had to hand it to Ace. Red was the only Challenger who could have fit into these service tunnels so easily. Even the rapier slim Prof Haley would have had a difficult time in these tunnels.
Multi-Woman's hand ripped through rock and metal easily as she dug after Red, screaming and laughing and promising all manner of dire fates. Red hit a corner and twisted his body, using the same techniques he used in street luge competitions to pick up speed and outrun the gigantic hands tearing after him. The world was filled with the sounds of the insane android's bellowing and the tearing of metal and the rending of rock.
Red's feet hit another access panel, popping it loose forcefully and he fell some ten feet to land on…bodies?
"Dammit, Red! Where th' HELL did you come from?" Rocky boomed.
"So help me, Ryan, if you don't get yourself OFF of my aching back, I'll-" Prof snarled.
"Hi, guys. How's that for luck, huh? Thanks for breaking my fall!" Red scrambled to his feet and helped his teammates to theirs. Rocky and Prof glowered at the grinning Red.
"Only you would be lucky enough to land on us at just th' right time we were runnin' by," Rocky groused. "Where'd you come from, anyway?"
Red jerked a thumb upwards at the hatch. "I've been playing tag with Multi-Woman all over the mountainside. Saw Volcano Man throwing rocks at the plane. I guess that means the rest of 'em got loose?"
Rocky nodded. "Prof an' I ran into Drabny back at the sub pen. He told us that-"
Prof interrupted Rocky with a harshly barked; "Explain to him on the way, Rocky! We've got to hook up with June and Ace and find Kra!"
Ace and June had abandoned their escape chairs at the entrance of the holding facility and boldly entered through the front. There didn't seem to be much use in sneaking in. The League Of Challenger Haters were all loose by now and they knew The Challengers were on the island. And Ace and June had other things in common besides the blond hair and diamond blue eyes that both shared. They both preferred straight head on confrontation to sneaking around. So they walked right into the main building that had once held The Challenger Haters and was now, amazingly, a hangar that contained the space station Freedom's Light.
"My God," June breathed. "Ace…they must have been loose for months to have converted all this!"
"And we never knew a thing." Ace Morgan's face was set in puritanical lines as he took in the gigantic space station filling the interior of the building. "Dammit, June, we've gotten sloppy. We've been worrying more about our marketing contracts and movie deals and merchandising action figures more than taking care of business and this is what happens!"
<Indeed!> Kra lunged from the concealing shadows and wrapped his metal hands around the throats of Ace Morgan and June Robbins and lifted them high above the floor. <But how could mere meat bags such as yourselves even hope to have dreamed of holding Kra! Shortly, the engines of the space station will be charged with energy enough to escape the gravitational field of this planet and I will be on my way home at last>
Ace was trying to pull the metal fingers from his throat but it was no use. The world was becoming hazily and dim and it looked as if June had already fallen unconscious, her air shut off by fingers tight as a vise.
"Kill…us…and…the others will…still.. stop..you.." Ace croaked.
Kra chuckled. It sounded like a Caribbean steel drum band tuning up. <I'll keep you and the female alive. Just long enough to keep your friends at bay! Once we're on the ship…>
"Turn 'em loose, Kra!" Rocky Davis charged in low, fast and hard and hit Kra in the crook of his left knee. Taken by surprise, the robot dropped to one knee with a tremendous KLANG! Dropping Ace and June as he did so. Rocky scrambled up Kra's back and yelled to Red, who tossed him something that Rocky slapped onto the back of Kra's neck and then he leaped for cover.
Kra whirled about, turning around to watch Prof and Red help Ace and June to their feet. <Miserable animals! I will NOT allow you to watch my final triumph! I will simply..>
Kra's voice was cut off by the plastic explosives Rocky had placed on the back of his neck. The insane construct's head blew apart, littering the room with metal shards and destroyed circuitry. Kra's body weaved and slowly sank to its knees, where it sagged to the side to finally topple over with a THOOM!
Rocky brushed his hands together and grinned. "When in doubt, blow 'em up."
Ace grinned at his partners, massaging his sore neck as he asked hoarsely, "Where'd the explosives come from? I thought everything had went down with the plane?"
Prof jerked a thumb at Rocky. "Never underestimate the Rockhead. He was the only one to have thought to snatch up some before we got in the mini sub and he held onto it when we abandoned it."
"If you thought I was gonna go up against Kra without an equalizer…" Rocky began but a chilling new voice cut him off.
"So. You remain as invincibly resourceful as ever, Challengers."
"Uh-oh." Red said quietly as The Challengers Of The Unknown turned as one to face the newest and most lethal form of Duncan Pramble, the newly reborn Multi-Man.