Justice League_Wings of War

by Michael Jan Friedman

  No, Batman told himself. There’s still something left. There’s still your anger.

  He had sworn never to let another innocent die if he could help it. And a mercenary like Bane did nothing but kill innocents.

  As the Venom-fueled marauder came hurtling toward his target again, Batman steeled himself. He would get only one shot at this, he told himself. And if his mental image of his surroundings was off even a little, it would be the last time he did anything at all.

  As Bane lowered his head to hit Batman with all the force he could muster, the detective leapt as high as he could and grabbed a long length of chain dangling above him—one of many chains hanging from the room’s exposed rafters.

  Normally, the chains were strung between stanchions to keep people waiting for the rides in an orderly line. But Batman used this one to impose a different type of order. He kicked high into the air and let go only after he had begun executing the first in a series of somersaults.

  By then Bane had gone plowing past him and was headed for a huge stack of steel tent poles positioned end-on. It was too late for the mercenary to slow down or change direction, but he still had a chance to get his hands up and ward off the worst of it.

  Or rather, he would have—had Batman not come out of his somersault arc to land directly on the back of Bane’s head, driving it unerringly into the lowermost poles in the stack.

  Bane hit the tent poles with a sound like wood cracking. It was clear to Batman that the impact had fractured his adversary’s skull.

  But remarkably, it didn’t put Bane out for the count. Somehow, he staggered to his feet, turned, and lunged at Batman all over again.

  But the Dark Knight knew he was only facing a shell of what Bane had been. With an uppercut, he straightened the mercenary up. Then, with every bit of strength he had left, he drove his fist into the point of Bane’s chin.

  The giant went flying backward, hit one of the horses on the merry-go-round, and lay still at the beast’s feet as if he had been trampled by it.

  Suddenly, Batman saw a flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye. Whirling in that direction, he braced himself for whichever of Bane’s henchmen was coming his way.

  But it wasn’t one of Bane’s men after all. It was Hawkgirl.

  All their adversaries were lying unconscious—the two of them were the only ones still standing.

  “You all right?” his partner asked.

  Batman realized his knees were trembling and willed them to stop. “Fine,” he told her. “You?”

  “Perfect,” Hawkgirl said, wiping some blood from the corner of her mouth. “Thanks to you. If you hadn’t gotten that gunman off my back—”

  He waved away the balance of the remark. “We’ve got to find Gorinski.”

  Hawkgirl jerked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating a door in the far wall of the storage area. “He’s in there. And he’s in better shape than we are.”

  Batman’s eyes narrowed with curiosity. “How do you know?”

  There weren’t any birds around. And he didn’t see how Hawkgirl could have deduced Gorinski’s location or condition from the evidence around them.

  “A girl’s got to have some secrets,” she told him.

  Under different circumstances, Batman would have pressed her for a better answer. But they still had to take care of Gorinski.

  And even then, their job wouldn’t be over. There was one quick stop they had to make before they could return to embattled Metropolis.

  Superman descended onto yet another in a long series of Kaznian tanks.

  Bringing his otherworldly muscles into play, he twisted the tank’s gun barrel up until it was pointing at the sky. Then he kept on twisting until he had put a 360-degree loop in the thing.

  That was one engine of destruction that wouldn’t be working again anytime soon, Superman told himself.

  But there were a hundred others just like it still covering the valley like an infestation of huge, gray bugs. In fact, there were more tanks on the Chemeltekov River’s fertile slopes than there were rocks or trees.

  Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter were doing their best to disarm the Luristanians, but they had a long way to go. And more than likely, additional combatants were on their way.

  Clearly, the League could only do so much here. Its only hope of averting a bloodbath lay half a world away, in the hands of Batman and Hawkgirl.

  Hawkgirl knew that both Melnikov and Sikander resented being called back to the World Assembly building. But with the help of the Assembly’s secretary -general, a rawboned Scotsman named Hightower, she called them back anyway.

  Once again, both delegations seated themselves around the diamond-shaped table. But this time, all eyes were on the Thanagarian.

  “The Justice League has conducted an investigation of President Gorinski’s kidnapping,” she said.

  “And what did you find out?” the secretary-general asked her.

  Hawkgirl eyed Melnikov. “That it was the Kaznians who hired Bane to raid the Metropolis Armory.”

  “You see?” Sikander erupted. “I was right! The Kaznians were behind this all along!”

  “A lie!” Melnikov shouted back at him.

  “Not at all,” said Hawkgirl. “The Kaznians were after a supply of thermite bombs. We have proof of that, which I’ll get to in a minute. But according to the Metropolis police, the bombs that destroyed the bridge weren’t thermite. They came from somewhere else.”

  Hightower frowned. “Then why raid the armory?”

  Hawkgirl shrugged. “The Kaznians are a country involved in an ongoing military conflict. They wanted to add thermite technology to their nation’s arsenal.” “Then who destroyed the bridge?” asked the secretary-general. “And who hired Bane to kidnap President Gorinski?”

  Hawkgirl smiled. “Someone else asked me that question recently. I think he’ll want to be present when I tell you what I told him.” She turned to the guard standing by the door. “If you please?”

  The guard opened the door—and in walked Boris Gorinski, a scratch on his forehead the only evidence of his hair-raising ordeal.

  “Boris!” said Sikander. “Thank heaven!”

  Gorinski didn’t say anything. He just looked at the general.

  “You seem awfully glad to see your president,” Hawkgirl told Sikander, “considering it was you who had him kidnapped.”

  Sikander sputtered and shot to his feet. “Are you out of your mind? President Gorinski has been my friend for twenty years. Why would I want him kidnapped?”

  “So you could fill the gap in leadership by becoming provisional military dictator,” Hawkgirl explained. “And your people would be a lot quicker to accept that situation if Luristan and Kaznia were at war.”

  Gorinski regarded his associate. “Tell me there is no truth to this accusation, Leonid.”

  Sikander stuck his chin out. “Not a word, Boris. I swear it on my mother’s grave.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Hawkgirl told him. “We have proof to back up our accusation.”

  “What kind of proof?” Sikander demanded.

  “After we freed President Gorinski,” she said, “we went back to a building owned by Big City Warehousing and Distribution, where a meeting had taken place between Bane and his employer. And guess what we found? Pipe ashes.”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing,” said Sikander. “Lots of people smoke pipes.”

  “But you have a special blend made up,” Hawkgirl pointed out. “And the ashes we recovered contained traces of that blend. So we knew you were in that office with Bane even before an eyewitness at Big City identified your picture.”

  Suddenly, there was a gun in Sikander’s hand. It had the dull look of plastic to it, which explained how he had gotten it past the security stations. “Stay where you are,” he growled.

  “Leonid,” said Gorinski, “you’re only making it worse for yourself.”

  The general glared at him. “Shut up, you weak old man. You
’re not telling me what to do. Not anymore.”

  “Leonid . . . ,” Gorinski said again.

  Ignoring him, Sikander grabbed one of his fellow Luristanians to use as a hostage and started edging toward the door. “Don’t try to stop me,” he told the guard, “or you’ll be responsible for this man’s death.” Suddenly, Hawkgirl saw something dark flash across the room. Sikander cried out in pain and dropped his gun.

  And before he could recover it, she had swooped past him and scooped it up.

  Seeing that Sikander had been disarmed, the guard at the door came over and arrested him. The general didn’t look too happy about it. The penalty for treason couldn’t be a pleasant one.

  “What’s this?” asked Melnikov. He used his cane to point to something dark and scallop-edged that was lying on the floor.

  One of the Luristanians picked it up. “It looks like a bat,” he said.

  Actually, thought Hawkgirl, it’s called a Batarang. And she had never been happier to see one.

  She glanced at Hightower, who wasn’t really Hightower at all, and winked. The man didn’t return the gesture, of course.

  But then, Batman, master of disguise, wasn’t much of a winker.

  J’onn J’onzz had been doing his part in the Chemeltekov Valley to keep casualties to a minimum. But as he ascended into the air to seek another target, he regretted that he couldn’t do as much as the red-and-blue figure now working alongside him.

  With a blurry burst of speed, Superman intercepted a tank shell and allowed it to explode against the S symbol on his chest. The concussion jerked him backward and made him wince with pain, but it didn’t do any damage to his unearthly skin.

  J’onn wasn’t from Earth either, but he wasn’t tough enough to absorb that kind of a blast. He had to bring a different set of powers to bear.

  Before the tank could fire a second time, the Martian plummeted toward it. Anyone watching might have reasonably concluded that he intended to destroy the vehicle—and perhaps himself at the same time.

  But he didn’t crash into the tank. He made himself immaterial and plunged right through it.

  There were three men inside. All of them recoiled and cried out in fear and surprise as they saw the Martian appear in their midst.

  “Wh-what are you?” one of them demanded in his native tongue—which J’onn could understand perfectly, thanks to his talent for telepathy.

  He didn’t answer the question in so many words. Instead, he ripped out the tank’s control panel, creating a geyser of sparks and preventing its crew from participating in any further bombardments.

  Then, with a last disapproving glance at the Luristanians, the Martian made himself insubstantial again and left the confines of the tank.

  He was all ready to go after another vehicle, all ready to disable it as he had disabled the others, when he realized the shelling had stopped.

  J’onn looked at Superman, who shrugged as he hovered over the slope. Wonder Woman didn’t seem to have any answers either.

  Using his power of telepathy, the Martian plumbed the minds of the soldiers all around him—and came to a startling if utterly welcome conclusion.

  “They have called a cease-fire,” he said out loud. “Who has?” Wonder Woman asked as she approached him.

  J’onn wondered at the likelihood of the answer even as he gave it: “Premier Melnikov . . . and President Gorinski!”

  From their rooftop, Batman and Hawkgirl gazed across the city at the World Assembly building. It glinted in the sun, a promise of peace for all.

  Batman was pleased that Superman would return to find a more serene city than the one he had left. It couldn’t have been easy for the Man of Steel to leave his beloved Metropolis in such turmoil.

  “So,” said Hawkgirl, “it looks like Kaznia and Luristan may work out their differences after all.”

  “So it does,” Batman agreed. “And all it took was a schemer like Sikander to show them how greedy they were being. Both of them.”

  “Speaking of greedy,” said Hawkgirl, “that guard at the World Assembly will regret working for Bane.”

  Batman nodded. “Even a professional mercenary will give up his informant if he’s looking at a long enough jail term.”

  “Funny,” said Hawkgirl. “Who would ever have thought that Bane was working both sides of the fence—stealing bombs for Melnikov and then turning around and kidnapping Gorinski for Sikander?”

  Batman grunted. “Who indeed?”

  The wind picked up, snapping the detective’s cape and ruffling his partner’s pinfeathers.

  “I owe you,” Hawkgirl said finally.

  Batman looked at her, surprised. “I think it’s the other way around. You were the one who got us going again when we hit a dead end with Murtaugh.”

  “But,” said Hawkgirl, “you were the one who realized the chop shop guy was lying to us. If we’d gone the way he told us to, we would have run straight into a trap.”

  It was true. The police had found a nest of gunmen at Susser Field waiting for two costumed heroes to stumble into their sights.

  “Pretty good,” Hawkgirl added, “for a guy who hadn’t slept in days.”

  “How did you know that?” Batman asked. He had thought he hid it well.

  “Well,” said his partner, “the first thing that tipped me off was the snoring.”

  Batman felt his face flush beneath the fabric of his mask. He hadn’t snored . . . had he?

  Then he saw the beginnings of a smile on Hawkgirl’s face and realized she was kidding.

  “In any case,” she said, “we did all right together.” Batman had to agree.

  “Although,” Hawkgirl added quickly, “when it comes to detective work, I still prefer to work alone.”

  “As do I,” Batman said.

  Flashing a grin at him, she beat her great gray wings a few times and took off into the sky.

  But, Batman added silently as he watched her go, if I had to work with someone, I’d just as soon it was you.

  MICHAEL JAN FRIEDMAN is the author of more than fifty books of fantasy and science fiction, eight of which have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. His most recent work is In Darkest Night, one of the earlier adventures in the Justice League series.

  For years Friedman has been a mainstay of the Star Trek publishing program, contributing critically acclaimed novels that have been translated around the world. He also wrote the novelization of the 1997 film Batman & Robin (Warner Books) and a series of original novels based on Lois & Clark: The New Adven tures of Superman (HarperCollins, 1996). In 1995, Friedman co-wrote the Star Trek: Voyager television episode “Resistance,” which series star Kate Mulgrew cited as her favorite. He has also written more than 160 comic books for DC Comics and Marvel Comics.

  Friedman lives on Long Island, New York, with his wife and two sons.