This time around, I wound up with two false starts I had to scrap. But I liked how the scenes were going enough that I wanted to rescue them here. The full story hasn't been posted online yet, but watch for it here.
Prologue 1
April 8, 1940
Clark Kent and Lois Lane, foreign correspondents, had been
expected in Poland a week ago – and they would have been, had they been able to
take the plane they had intended to from England. The interference of German
spies had thwarted that and Lois and Clark were smuggled out of Dover aboard
the British cargo steamer, the Collins,
bound for Norway.
The North Sea was a dangerous place to be. British and
German warships played a waiting game of seeing who would shoot first. Under
the waves, U-boats on both sides tried to trail the warships on the surface
unnoticed, or were busy trying to track each other.
It was 10:30 in the morning when Lois and Clark were
summoned to the bridge by Captain McFadden.
It was a foggy morning, and they discovered just how foggy when they
came up on deck.
“It’s a pea soup!” Lois exclaimed.
“Yes…” Superman said.
He could see through the fog better than Lois, likely better than anyone
on board, and what he saw to the east troubled him. Hopefully the captain
already knew of it and would have some information.
Though a lesser officer had the helm, Captain McFadden was
standing next to him on the bridge and nodded to Lois and Clark as they
entered. “Good, I need ta’ speak to you
Yanks,” the Captain said, waving for them to come closer. McFadden was not concerned enough about
privacy to discuss this away from his crew, but he still spoke in a low voice,
perhaps because of the grim news he carried.
“It was made plain ta’ me that I have ta’ take you as far east towards
Poland as I can manage, but our situation has taken a rather…dramatic
turn. We just had word by radio that
Denmark has fallen to Germany.”
“Fallen?” Lois asked, incredulous.
“You mean Germany has invaded…” Superman said.
“No, I mean fallen.
It just happened. It was all over
in six hours, they say.”
“Good Lord,” Superman said.
“Aye…it’s too dangerous ta’ continue on. I’m half-tempted
ta’ give the order ta’ turn us around now…but as close as we are ta’ Norway…I
suppose we could drop you off in the Port of Bergen.”
“Wait, Captain,” Lois said.
“Couldn’t you drop us off in Denmark instead?”
“Lois…” Superman began.
“No, can’t you see that, if this report is true, Poland’s
occupation is old news now?” Lois continued.
“We’ve got to go where the story is.”
“Lois, accommodations are waiting for us in Poland. We have
work visas for Poland,” Superman protested, but with Clark Kent’s level of
persuasiveness. “We don’t even have a
single Danish krone between us.”
The door to the bridge flew open, held by a worried-looking
sailor. “Captain!” the sailor
cried. “The HMS Glowworm has been sighted dead ahead. She’s sinking, Captain!”
That was the news Superman had been expecting.
“That’s one of ours,” McFadden explained for Lois and
Clark’s benefit. “Back ta’ your post and
tell the crew on the forecastle ta’ watch for life rafts in the water. Ensign, take us forward.” Moving to a speaker tube connected to the
engine room, McFadden yelled, “Engines ta’ half-speed!”
Everyone stared into the fog through the window of the
bridge, but it was Superman who let out a small gasp a minute before anyone
else would see what he saw.
Mistaking Superman’s utterance of surprise for fear, the
Captain said, “You two Yanks best head below deck now.”
“Captain, I—“ Lois began to protest.
“That’s an order,” Captain McFadden said sternly.
“We’d best do what the Captain says, Lois!” Superman said,
grabbing Lois by the shoulders and moving her as fast to the exit as Clark Kent
should be capable. He hid the concern
from his voice because no one else had yet seen the second closest ship that he
saw through the fog. It was a German
heavy cruiser.
“If we go back to our cabins we won’t see anything,” Lois
protested again.
“If you want to convince the Captain to drop us off in
Denmark, you’d best not make him angry,” Superman countered.
This, for the moment, seemed to work. Superman was able to move Lois back below
decks before anyone could shout about sighting the German cruiser on deck. It took an awfully long time to reach the
next deck down and take a long corridor back to their adjoining cabins, but had
Superman left her any sooner, he knew she would have just doubled back to the
bridge right away. He watched her go into her cabin, aware that she was
watching to make sure he went back to his cabin. They both went inside, fully
intending to leave and head back to the main deck. Lois, though, would have to sneak all the way
back to the stairs. Superman doffed his
clothes, revealing the Superman costume he wore underneath, opened his
porthole, slid his body through, then with what should have been an impossible
feat of acrobatics flipped all the way back up to the port side rail.
By now, the ship’s siren was sounding and the crew was well
aware of the German heavy cruiser on the other side of the sinking Glowworm. Captain McFadden was wisely turning the ship
around, hoping the Germans had not spotted them yet or would lose sight of them
in the fog. It seemed to Superman that they had been spotted, as the cruiser
looked to be coming around the Glowworm. The Glowworm
was still closer, just about one-sixth of a mile away. Superman was fairly confident he could jump
that. Superman ascertained all this in a second, then jumped back and made a
four-step run towards the railing before making his long jump to the sinking
ship. With luck, not much of the crew of the Collins would have glimpsed him in that short span of time, so
there would be few questions to answer on his return.
From mid-leap, Superman could see just how clearly the Glowworm had lost against the German
cruiser. The bow was broken and the sides of the hull were ruptured from the
inside out – either its boilers had exploded, its full payload of torpedoes had
exploded, or maybe even both. Superman could see at least three dozen men in
the water, clinging to wreckage.
Rescuing those men would have been Superman’s top priority,
but the German cruiser still posed too big a danger. From here, Superman could
read that the cruiser was the Hipper. If Superman seemed to be hesitating, it was
only because he was judging the distance and figuring if he needed to take a
step or two back before making a broad jump across to that ship.
She was the first of the line of the Admiral Hipper–class of
heavy cruisers. She had entered service before the War and already been active
in it. The Hipper had led the assault
on Trondheim during Operation Weserübung. Now her crew on deck were still
cheering at the sight of the HMS Glowworm
sinking after their engagement.
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