WARNING: This story is fictional and is not intended to portray any real persons, living or dead, nor is it at all intended to encourage the type of activity portrayed here. It is strictly a fantasy/parody, intended for the personal enjoyment of those who appreciate female costumed characters in fear for their life or the violation of their body. The story describes and/or hints at graphic sexual situations, including bondage, violence, non-consensual sex, and other elements unacceptable in certain communities. It is NOT intended, nor is it at all suitable, for minors. If you are under the age of 18, or if this type of thing offends you, you shouldn't be reading it. If you are a person who does find interesting the material described above, then I invite you to enjoy this story.
The story contains characters of my own creation, but also characters who are the property of various established comic book companies. Those characters are used without any permission by the owners of those characters and are included only to offer a fan's expression of those characters in a situation that would not be seen in mainstream comics. This story is strictly done for non-profit enjoyment by other fans interested in this adult genre. This story may not be moved to, or included in any website that requires payment for content.
There have been memorable days when people forever recalled just what they were doing that day. In 1945, everyone was was part of it later recalled what they were doing when the war ended. In the time after 1963 all of America recalled just where they were when they heard the President had been assassinated. Following 1968 people all over the world recalled the moment they saw man set foot on the moon. People after 2001 remembered the instant the heard about the attack on the twin towers. After 2008, they remembered when the Garaths invaded Earth.
A horrid, savage race that worshipped greed and lust, these aliens came to Earth for the same reason they had visited a hundred other worlds. To conquer and collect. To take beautiful women who they treated like sheep or cattle. A crop to harvest and rape. Over thousands of years they traveled the galaxy seeding humanoid races on worlds for future harvest. Their plantings would grow and eventually the Garaths would return to gather samalans [female captives] for sexual slavery and subjugation. On all those worlds, resistance was crushed and the people enslaved by the Great Garath Empire. But the conquerers made one mistake. A little clerical error occured and Earth was overlooked for centuries. The Garaths should have arrived in the Middle Ages and crushed Earth under their heels. Like all the planets before, Earth's freedoms would have died. And its loveliest women would have left to serve in the bordellos and harems of Garath worlds. But they were late. Very late. Earth's people had evolved to the point where they fought back. So many planets had done so, but those had been no match against laser weapons. Gas that caused people to lose all will to resist. Tranquilizer darts that knocked out the strongest fighters. Energy force fields that gave the Garath aircraft and even the soldiers immunity to projectile or energy weapons. Technology that made any primitive people easy to conquer. Technology that gave the Garath invaders, even arriving this late, an edge over the defenders that was too much to overcome.
But Earth was advanced enough that they could recognize the Garath advantages and work to overcome them. As they resisted, they were working to find ways to stop the Garath forces and save Earth from the fate of other enslaved worlds. And the Garath forces, invincible for centuries, began to see the spectre of defeat creeping up to them. They did not believe they could lose a war. But each of them began to wonder if they would live to see the victory.
In the Defense Response Facility in Gotham City, Batgirl walked down the corridor to the coffee machine. A young blonde woman in army fatigues turned from the machine and snapped a crisp salute. Barbara returned the salute and smiled. "Hi, Corporal Cooper. Is the coffee any good today?" Elizabeth Cooper took a sip, and replied. "It's a big improvement. Somebody made fresh, it's not the stuff that's been simmering forever. And they ordered a better blend. Not bad at all!" Batgirl filled her cup, savoured the coffee, and nodded in agreement. As the Gotham heroine turned to leave, the soldier wished she could say something else, engage in a conversation with the famous costumed heroine. But Elizabeth couldn't think of anything to say without sounding stupid. Betty was stunned that she had ended up posted to this unit, working with the heroes to defend against attacks by the Garaths. Since the Garath invaders had seized control of the skies by mercilessly burning down any human air power, the response to the allien raids had been too slow. Now response units were positioned in all major cities to try to get the defenders close enough to reach a scene before the attackers landed, took who they wanted, and escaped.
Elizabeth sipped her coffee and thought back a few years to her time in high school. She had planned to attend college and go into accounting. But when the Riverdale General Motors plant had closed down, her Dad lost his job, and coupled with her Mom's bout with breast cancer, the family had been financially wiped out. Medical bills were far in excess of their savings, so it appeared she would never be able to go to college. Her friend Ronnie's dad loaned them the money to cover the hospital bills, but Liz and her Dad could hardly earn enough to repay him -- payments Mr. Lodge insisted were not needed. The future was uncertain, and then in senior year an army recruiter came to speak at the school. Her friends were stunned to hear that Betty had decided to enlist and push her college plans back a couple of years. She ended up doing a tour in Afghanistan as a gunner on a transport truck. While over there, she had been fired on, and fired back at the enemy. Pretty heady stuff for a girl just out of high school. Then on one convoy the truck in front of hers hit an explosive device in the road and burst into flames. Betty ran up and pulled the driver and gunner out of the cab just in time. She burned her left arm a little doing this, and was sent stateside to recover. In the hospital she was presented with a medal for what she had done, and promoted to corporal. When she got leave to go home for a break, she nearly cried as she got off the plane and saw her father snap to attention and give her a prolonged salute. That instant told her how her Dad was really proud of her. She wondered if she would follow her leave with another tour in Afghanistan, or maybe in Iraq. But then the Garath invaders arrived, and American forces were pulled from the Middle East to fight at home. All over the world, the conflicts that had been going on were left behind. Muslims and Christians, Arabs and Jews were no longer at each others' throats when there was a threat to humanity that was so much worse.
Batgirl walked back to where Glory Girl, Black Hood and Daredevil sat in the ready room. Becky was flipping through a magazine, and the others were also trying to relax. But any minute an alert could be called, and the tension was a constant strain on the heroes. Kip Burland turned to Matt Murcock and spoke. "Has there been any word from the science geeks? I wish they could find a way to crack the alien shields. If we could get past those, this fight would really turn around." Daredevil nodded. "Yeah, they found ways to counter the gas and tranq darts the bastards use, but if they knock out the defensive shields, that would be nice. Did you hear about Black Terror?" Barbara Gordon looked over. "Bob Benton? He was in Canary's group on the island. What happened to him?" Matt turned to her and replied. "He was with a group down in Florida that tried to stop a raid at a spa near Miami Beach. The aliens were driven back and kept from getting any prisoners, but he was caught by the lazers and nearly lost a leg. The docs are hopeful he'll fully recover, but he'll be laid up for a long time." Black Hood sighed. "That's a damned shame. He did a really fine job on the big mission. You think he'd like to get a card? We could all sign it... it's too bad we can't get down there to see him." The others nodded, but suddenly a alarm began to yowl. The quartet jumped up and ran to the landing pad. There stood a captured Garath shuttle with a pair of Air Force pilots who had been trained to fly it. Ground crewmen were pulling down a camouflage tarp that had been set up to hide the shuttle. The four heroes joined two squads of heavily armed soldiers boarding the craft.
A monitor screen had been mounted in the flyer's cargo area, and from down in the bunker Major Dayton sent to the response force the details of the alert. "They have a shuttle we just tracked landing at Columbia Hospital. You are cleared to take off and hit them." All of the costumed characters and soldiers had been looking forward to this. The alien energy shields and fighter aircraft had kept earth aircraft out of the sky, which had prevented earth forces from responding swiftly to Garath attacks. Using this captured shuttle, for the first time a strike force was going to be rushed to where it was needed, getting there before the alien raiders were leaving. Within a minute, the shuttle took off and swiftly swooped to the medical complex. As it circled to land, they saw another shuttle parked in the street in front of the hospital. There were a couple of dozen Garath riparte {basic soldiers} leaving the craft to raid the facility. The aliens glanced up at the second shuttle, but did not react. They did not know that it was being used by Earthan forces.Two riparte stayed at the flyer while the rest entered the hospital. The Garaths had been attacking places like this and kidnapping doctors and nurses for some time. They were also seizing medical equipment and supplies. As they were enslaving beautiful women for their evil plans, the aliens had discovered many women had been artificially altered with breast implants. The Garath were unhappy with the inclusion of such impurities in their property, and had set in motion a large, complicated and bloody chain of events to try to remove the implants from the women they had in their hands.
As the defense attack group stormed out of their shuttle, the two Garath guards aimed their hand lazers and fired. Everyone tried to duck, but a couple of the marines were grazed and suffered minor wounds. The rest had gotten close enough to take on the aliens hand-to-hand, and the riparte were pummeled. Both went down and they were dragged to the side. The soldiers set up a defensive line, and one of the Air Force pilots went in the second shuttle as Black Hood and Daredevil cleaned out the two Garath pilots still inside. The human pilot then took off with the alien craft, and the shuttle used by the defense force also took off and flew to a secure location. Now the aliens who came out of the hospital would have no way to escape. As soon as the aliens began to herd their prisoners out of the building, they came under fire. Their personal electronic shields stopped any of the bullets from hitting them, and the Garaths moved up, firing their lasers at the soldiers. But a handful of men and women had taken cover and got up to attack the aliens from behind. They crept up to the gaunt raiders and placed their sidearms against the back of the enemy's skulls. As they fired, the weapons were close enough to blow out their brains without being stopped by the force shields. Other riparte spun to fire at these men, but the soldiers held the bodies of the dead aliens in front of themselves and were thus protected from the laser fire. In the confusion, Glory Girl, Batgirl, Daredevil and the Black Hood were able to rush up and close with the last of the enemy, using rough hand-to-hand fighting to put them down. Daredevil took a ray blast in his right shoulder and a half dozen of the soldiers had been hurt, one badly. But the defense force rejoiced, as this was the first time Garath raid had been totally stopped from doing its mission. The riparte had all been wiped out or captured, and the people they had seized were freed. A mission bonus was the capture of another shuttlecraft.
In the Atlantic, the attack submarine USS Gotham City cruised back to Cape Canaveral. In the wardroom, a group of people discussed their latest espionage visit to the Garath stronghold of San Juan. Nightshade, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler and Kim Possible talked about how each visit to the enemy city was getting harder and harder. "When we started doing this, the only bastards out at night were the ones visiting the buildings full of slaves." Eve Eden shook her head. "Now, there are guards on some buildings and patrols in the streets." Kitty Pryde groaned. "And the ones they guard are usually what we are trying to get into. They sure don't make it easy." But it was still pretty easy for the special squad. Eve Eden, code-named Nightshade, as a child had fled to Earth from a dark dimension. She used darkness as a cloak and a weapon. Kitty Pryde, now calling herself Shadowcat, could phase her body through solid objects, getting her into anyplace where secrets might be locked away. Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler) was also a graduate of Professor Xavier's school for mutants, and he had the ability to teleport. While this unit had been organized by army intelligence, two of its members were CIA stealth operatives who had been attached to the group. Kimberly Ann Possible and Ronald Stoppable were a pair of young people not long out of high school who had been trained to infiltrate and investigate troublespots. And the command of the group was now with Eels O'Brien, the stretchable costumed hero with a long career battling crime with the FBI. Plastic Man had been reluctant to take over the leadership of the group, but when they had been a part of an important raid on a Garath held island, the husband of their previous commander had died in battle. Granite City's Shady Lady had been allowed to take an indefinate leave to deal with her loss. Plas and Nightshade had traveled up to Granite City to visit with Donna Hooper and see how she was doing just a couple days earlier. He had thought she seemed to be recovering from the shock of her husband's death, and Eels hoped she would return to duty. He wasn't comfortable being the boss on these missions.
When the sub docked, the espionage unit prepared to disembark. Eve turned to Kim and spoke. "Hey, isn't that your Dad, Kimmie?" Kimberly looked out and saw that her dad was indeed down at the end of the gangplank, waiting for the passengers to come down. She thought it was great that he had the time to meet her, but wondered how he knew the group would be returning now. He had been a trained rocket scientist doing work at a Nasa research center in Middleton, but he had been asked to work down at the Cape with many other scientists going over captured Garath technology. After a couple of steps, Kimberly suddenly noticed General Alex Lawson, the base commander, was standing there with her dad. The pair looked up at her and something in their expressions scared the hell out of Kim. She stopped dead on the gangplank and knew she didn't want to hear whatever they had to tell her. Ron put his arm on his girl friend's shoulder. "KP, what's wrong?" After a heartbeat, she forced herself to resume walking down the gangplank, dreading the moment the men would speak to her. Sure enough, when she got to the base of the gangplank, she threw herself into her father's arms and he held her tight. General Lawson spoke. "Miss Possible, I regret I have some bad news for you. There was a Garath raid on the hospital in Middleton, and your mother was injured. Word is she isn't seriously hurt, but I have arranged transport for you and your father to go up and see her." Ron moved alongside of Kim and put a hand on her shoulder. "Ah, General... would it be possible for me to accompany them?" The General nodded, and the group moved to the waiting vehicles. The rest of the unit expressed their sympathies to Kimberly, telling her they hoped that her mom would be alright. With a brief stop to toss things in their suitcases, the trio were soon on their way to the train station. With Garath units controling the air, Amtrack was the best way to get around.
The trio arrived in Middleton, and Dr. Ann Possible and her sons were waiting on the platform. Kim's mom had her right arm in a sling and her right shoulder heavily bandaged, and when her husband quicky approached and put his arms around her, she winced a little. He jerked back, and murmured, "Oh! I'm sorry!" Ann shook her head. "That's nothing. I'm just a bit sore. It's not too bad, and I'll be alright. You... you remember Mary Koenig, on my surgical team?" James and Kim both nodded. They recalled socializing with the young women many times. Ann choked up a little as she spoke again. "Mary was with me... she... she didn't make it." Dr. James Possible moved to hold his wife again, and the tearful woman pressed herself into his arms. Ron held Kim, and saw she too was crying. Ron also recalled Mary Koenig from meeting her at the Possible home a few times. The nurse had been a close friend of the family. As Kimberly sobbed, she managed to speak. "Oh Mom... I should have been here. I might have been able to do something..." Ann pulled out of James' hold and turned to her daughter. She had a little anger in her voice as she responded. "Don't you dare say that, young lady! Officially I don't have any idea what you and your father are up to. But if security is so secret about it, what you are doing must be very important to the war. I want both of you down there doing all you can for us. All of us here in Middleton are going to be very proud when we do hear about what you've done." And after saying this, the wounded woman moved over and gave Kim a hug with her one good arm.
In a laboratory in New Jersey, two of the world's brightest research scientists were taking apart one of the Garath personal force shields. On a micro-examination table, the smallest components of the device were being slowly pulled apart under a high-powered video monitor. Reed Richards looked over the pieces on the screen and shook his head. "I don't see how this component provides enough power out of those two chips." The other man leaned back from the screen and pondered another question. Lex Luthor asked, "And how is that power transfered and transformed into an energy shield so efficiently? I can see it being operational with the bigger units on the Garath aircraft, but to make them so compact that every alien soldier carries one... it has to use something we aren't seeing." The two men continued to examine every part of the unit from every angle. Luthor pointed to a spot of the monitor, "This part doesn't make sense. Is it part of the power storage or does it help generate the shield?" Richards pointed at another component. "Well, it's hooked into this on one circuit. They must be related in some way. One may be designed to boost the power as it is transfered."
Lex Luthor turned his back to the problem and sipped a cup of tea as he thought it over. "This isn't going to be as easy as I thought, Richards. When they asked me to work on this project, I thought it would be a snap. We take these things apart and see exactly what it's made of. That's always been the easiest way to pin down unknown tech. But the alien technology and manufacturing that is involved here is maddening. I wish your wife was here. She's the one who is so experienced with force shields. Where is she?" Reed Richards leaned back and had an uncomfortable look on his face. "Sue and I were in Philly when there was a raid on a medical facility. During the fight, she tried to use her control of force shields to shut down their protection and allow our team to take out the raiding party. But when she concentrated on doing that, her own invisible shield also winked out. Before we could take the Garaths out, one fired at her and she took a laser blast in the chest. She went down and the Garath shields came back on line. They escaped with the people they came after and Sue had to be rushed into the emergency room. After a couple of hours on the operatiing table, she was stabilized, but she was in serious condition. I talked to her on the phone yesterday, and she hopes to get out of the hospital in a few days." Luthor put his hand on Richards' shoulder. "I'm sorry to hear that. I'm sure that is a very trying ordeal to you. I'm surprised to see you able to concentrate on our work here with that on your mind." Reed nodded. "Yes, it's been hard, but it's just given me one more personal reason to work to help defeat the aliens. But why are you here, Lex? You're supposed to be one of the bad guys, despite what your publicity department may be telling the public. Do you have a personal reason for doing this?"
The bald scientist scoffed. "Of course not! I merely am working in my own best interest. You know that I would never allow anyone else to take over control of Earth. I plan to do that myself someday, and I won't sit back and allow these ugly aliens to butt in." But Luthor's thoughts went to memories that revealed that Richards had picked up on something. Luthor's head assistant had always been a lovely young woman, Mercy Graves, who served him very well. He thought highly of her, and though he had never shown any romantic inclinations towards her, he came to realise that she had fallen in love with him and was devoted in her service. He began to feel very close to her and wondered if it was possible that he could grow to feel that way about her. Just the idea of such a possiblity was surprising to him, and he was waiting to see how things might develop when the time of the Garath invasion arrived. That day was one when Mercy had one of her occasional days off. She had mentioned her plans to Lex, but he had not really listened, with his attention on other matters. He knew she would have her cell phone with her if she was needed. Only later did he find out she had been sunning on the beach when the Garath collection forces arrived there and kidnapped scores of lovely young women. So Lex did find it personal as he worked to fight the alien invasion. Over and over his mind wondered, did he hate them for taking a valued employee of Lexcorp, or someone he might have developed personal feelings for?
On the island of Puerto Rico, in the city of San Juan that had been captured and taken over by the Garath forces, Dockaerzeon, the kherzageg {military commander} of the armed forces of the invader was sitting at a desk, a scowl of his face. He had read over the report of the raid into Gotham that had been wiped out. All the soldiers were lost and a shuttle had been destroyed. (He did not know that the Earthan forces had set up a pile of burned, twisted debris to simulate the destroyed shuttle. The planetary defenders wanted to keep secret the fact that they had seized another shuttlecraft to aid in the fight against the Garaths.) The kherzageg in a low voice cursed the short-sightedness of the Maganite {overall commander of the invasion}. The damned ztunk did not seem to realize that this expedition was unlike any that had been seen in the history of the Garath conquests. In nearly a thousand years, the Empire had never faced a native people who were not totally overmatched in technology and might. The Garaths rolled over anyone they encountered. But this world, this "Earth," was very different. It had the resources and the courage to put up an amazing resistance. The kherzageg resolved that no upstart world was going to stop the power of the Garath Empire. He would hit them hard with his forces, and if he had to, the Earth would be left a burned out cinder in this back-water area of space. He called his assistant and gave orders to use new policies when soldiers faced the natives. The Garath Empire still had something to show these pests.
On the west edge of the city, Czarkageort walked along on his patrol. He'd been stuck with this duty since the aliens had taken over the city, and found it really boring. Early on he had regretted not being in the gathering units who went out to collect samalans. They had the excitement, and the first shot at the sweetest pussy. But as things had progressed, rumors had spread about the resistance the Earthans were putting up. Harvesting units went out and came back missing men. That had surprised everyone. But now, there were rumors that a group went out and none of them came back. Could such a thing really be happening? Could these human primitives really be resisting the unstoppable Garath Empire? The sentry suddenly saw movement nearby and aimed his weapon in that direction and carefully moved to check. He was startled to see a lovely young nude woman, who stood there with long dark hair. She turned to him and smiled. "Hello! How can I serve you, master?" Czarkageort's jaw dropped. One of the samalans had wandered all the way out here? It was probably the pacification gas. The sweet-smelling pink vapor would make the females do anything they were told to do. If a soldier ordered a slave to get something, and she didn't know where to get it, she would just wander around. He walked over to the samalan and liked her looks. He was on duty, but no Garath ever passed up a chance to dip his wick. Just to be safe, he took a canister from his belt and gave her a spritz of the pink gas. He told her to get down on the grass and spread her legs, and she did so, smiling. He pulled down his trousers and knelt to fuck the slave. As he pushing into her he felt how tight and pleasant her pussy felt. The samalans who were kept in the city to service the riparte were getting worn down, and a fresh pussy really was wonderful. He pushed his cock into her again, and as he did so, he arched his body, closed his eyes and bent his head back in pure pleasure. That was what Jill Stacy had been waiting for. She reached to the scabbard that was taped to her back between her shouder blades and pulled the big hunters knife out from where her long black hair had hidden it. In a quick arc, she brought the blade up to slash deep across the alien's throat. He opened his eyes and had only an instant to look into the hate-filled eyes of the woman before he collapsed to the ground. Jill got up and looked down at the dead alien. She spat at him, then knelt down and plunged the knife over and over into his face turning it into a bloody pulp. Breathing hard, she got up, turned, and went back to the area of trees where she'd hidden her clothes. She pulled out a couple of moist towelette paks from her backpack and used them to clean the blood off her body, then dressed. Jillian had a sister and a couple of close cousins who had been taken by the aliens early in the war. When the government had released the medical lozenges that were an antidote to the pacification gas, both Jill and her mother had been very careful to always have a lozenge in their mouth or handy. But her mother Nancy had been at a mall in New York when another raid had occured. She'd fled the aliens only to die when she was hit by a car driven by another panicked woman trying to get away from the Garaths. That was when Jill swore she would find a way to make the enemy pay for what they had done. She thought of joining the army, but they didn't seem to be doing much good. She couldn't trust the costumed heroes to take on the aliens. It was through the reckless actions of one of those damned masked characters that one of her other cousins, Gwen, had died many years ago. Then she heard a story of how a woman had killed a Garath attacker just by getting really close to him. And she resolved she would do that. She made her way to Florida, rented a small boat and sailed to the west end of Puerto Rico. Then she made her way to the edge of the city of San Juan and started hunting. This was the second sentry she'd lured and killed. It would not be the last.
At a veteran's hospital in Virginia, Bat Girl and Glory Girl entered the special security wing. In this area under heavy guard there were the twenty Amazons and two Kryptonians who had been rescued from the Garath medical experiments facility on the island of Little Helena. Kal-El and Kara had been seized because the aliens had a deep interest in the last two remaining members of the Kryptonian race, a valued line of slaves before the destruction of Krypton had caused the death of its people all over that side of the galaxy. The invaders had also kept twenty of their Amazon captives earthbound after the conquest of Paradise Island to use for breeding purposes. The Maganite had directed that some of the hardy Amazon stock would be artificially impregnated with Superman's sperm to produce half-Kryptonian offspring for future profits. Half of these ladies were carrying twins, the rest triplets. The fifty children, all girls, were going to come to term in about half the time of a normal pregnancy due to drugs and radiation treatments that were given to speed up the production process. When Supergirl had been captured, she too had been impregnated by the Garath medical scientists. They had moved with more care on her pregnancy, not giving her the treatments that the Amazons had to endure. There was no kindness in this decision, the Garaths merely were more careful with their most valuable slave, the last known Kryptonian female. Kara was also now carrying a pair of female fetuses in her belly, and after her rescue the doctors watched over her to see if the Garaths had done anything that might be a problem. The Amazons were suffering from the treatments that had damaged their bodies. The accelerated development of their fetuses had come at a severe price.
Kara lay on her hospital bed, trying to live with the boredom that was driving her crazy. The doctors all told her she had to stay still, to allow her body to manage what the aliens had done to her. She ran her hand over her tummy and wondered what it was going to be like, having two little girls to raise, to actually be a mother. It was weird, she'd dreamed of, but never expected such an event. Then a knock at the door was followed by the entrance of Barbara Gordon and Rebecca Hooper. "Babs! Oh, am I ever glad to see you! And you too, Becky! How did you get a chance to get down here? I thought you were both working up in Gotham." Barbara walked over to the bed and hugged her dearest friend. "Becky had a chance to come down to Washington and see her Mom, who is going back to work at the Pentagon. I got them to let me come down with her to see you. How are you doing?" Kara smiled. "I'm doing pretty well. Starting to accept what's going to happen. I can't begin to tell you how weird it is to think about being pregnant. The docs are after me to stay put. They won't let me do anything. I'd give anything to take off and shoot a quick flight around the moon and back! Ahh... Becky, how's your Mom coping with..." Rebecca's head sagged a mite as she replied. "She's trying to keep going like before, but it's hard. They offered her time off when we got back, but when she went home it was too hard to cope there. I went to see her one day. Mom has an old hair dryer that keeps konking out. I've told her a dozen times she should just toss it and get a new one. But for a long time, whenever it went out, Dad would fiddle with it and get it working again. I got to the house a week ago and found Mom sitting by Dad's workbench in the basement, holding that old hair-dryer. Tears were streaming down her face and she muttered, 'I need him to fix it... I need him so bad...' I just went over and held her while she sat there and cried." Kara and Barbara saw their friend's eyes moisten, and they knew Becky was describing a time when she too had been overcome by tears. Supergirl reached out and took Becky's hand. "I'm so sorry for you and your Mom, Beck. If not for her efforts, my cousin and I would still be trapped in the hands of the Garaths. We owe your family so much!" Becky wiped at her eyes. "Oh, gee... we just did what had to be done. No more than what you and Superman have done for so many people. Mom has gone back to Washington, and I think she'll be back with the espionage squad she was running. It's gotta be better for her than sitting home with her loss."
At a defense complex in Tokyo, Doctor Light sat in a ready room reading though a scientific text as she waited for any alarm that might sound. Dr, Kimiyo Hoshi had wanted to remain at work in her lab, but after the success of the attack on the island of Little Helena, she knew her place was going out to fight the aliens who were ravishing her world. Thousands of women had been seized in the Pacific rim and were prisoners of the Garaths. She had to try to help any attempt to stop the aliens. A report that just arrived about the use of the captured shuttle in Gotham was very encouraging. Defense forces were advised to give the highest priority to getting their hands of more of the craft. Kimiyo sighed. That was not going to be easy. The klaxon began to sound, and Doctor Light leapt to her feet. The Japanese Defence Force did not have a shuttle to quickly respond to any attack, so Kimiyo and the other Tokyo-based superhero, Rising Sun, would have to rush to the spot where the aliens were attacking and try to hold them until specially trained Nipponese Commandoes arrived at the scene. Izumi Yasunari rushed in from a side corridor to join her. He had been taking a nap, as they had to grab a little rest when they could. Kimiyo smiled as she saw another man in a yellow and black costume dart out of the Commander's office. "Logan-san! You pick an opportune time to visit us once again!" Wolverine smiled. "Always enjoy my visits here, Kimiyo. I trust you won't mind me giving you a hand with this batch of pests." At the exit, the two Japanese super-powered individuals each grabbed one of Logan's arms and they went skyward towards towards the Haganari district, where the Garath shuttle had landed. Kimiyo knew that the trio of heroes had to hold the Garaths down for at least five minutes to give the commandos time to respond. She hoped that addition of Wolverine to the group would be enough to make their fight successful. They flew low and watched for any Garath fighter craft that would try to shoot down Earthan forces in the air. Then they saw the shuttle parked in a street, and swooped to the attack. A dozen Garath soldiers ringed the craft, and others were herding groups of young women into the vehicle. They landed near the craft and Wolverine charged forward, ignoring the wounds he received from the lazers that hit him. His claws tore apart any Garath soldier he came near. Rising Sun's blasts of flame could not penetrate the force shields the Garath used, but they were as blinding as Doctor Light's energy bursts if fired at the faces of the enemy. This was meant to hold them while the two Japanese heroes got close enough to inflict damage. Then two of the Garath riparte aimed a different kind of electronic weapon and triggered it. Unusual sonic pulses emerged, and while the Garaths ignored them, they overcame all the senses of the three heroes. The prisoners in the area also trembled and clapped their hands over their ears, but it did no good. Every non-Garath individual in the area dropped to the ground in excruciating pain, totally disorientated. The riparte moved to the side of the heroes. Rising Sun and Wolverine each had a lazer burst directly into their forehead. Doctor Light was examined by one of the Garaths. He shredded the front of her costume, then picked her up and carried her into the shuttle. The other riparte loaded more of the women who had been captured into the shuttle and it prepared to leave. The trucks loaded with Nipponese Commandoes pulled up and they began to attack, but another burst of the sonic device rendered these men just as incapacitated. The shuttle took off, and as it did so the body of Wolverine twitched and moved a bit. Soon he rolled over and sat up. Even that horrid wound had not been fatal to his regenerative body. But he saw the corpse of Izumi Yasunari near, and cursed himself for being fated to always see the mortality of friends and companions. Then he looked about for Kimiyo and really felt sick as he knew that the Garaths had taken her.
On the Garath home world, there was excitement in the air. The members of the high families of the Empire listened to the gossip that buzzed about the latest Garath conquest. It was said this world, called Earth, was extremely rich in especially beautiful women who were being harvested for the use of the conquerers. They spoke with interest about the huge numbers of samalans {female slaves} who would be arriving in about a month's time. The massive transport ships, even with their star-warp capabilities, took some time to move across the galaxy. So far only one sample of the Earthan harvesting had been brought back to Garath-Prime. A fast scout cruiser had sped back with a single morsel, the Queen of Earth, named Hippolyta. She had been delivered as a prize to the court of Rezachachodain the Twenty-Eighth, most august Emperor of the Universe. The Queen had been presented to his harem of women that included slaves from all the worlds that were subject to the Empire. Holograms had been distributed by the family of Lord Derahor, who had financed the expedition to conquer Earth. Presentations of the Queen in her native costume as well as her appearance in the nude were sent out with added pictures of samples of the other beauties of Earth, including a number of scarlet-haired samalans, a commodity that the Garaths found most invigorating. Interest was really growing, and Lord Derahor knew that when the first loads of earth women arrived, the auctions would bring record sales to pay back far more than what the expedition had cost. Then, each year another couple of transports would bring more of the Earth samalans back for the auctions. This world was going to make family Derahor very rich!
In the secured complex of the Emperor's harem, Queen Hippolyta lay face down on a bench while a green-skinned women massaged her back. Lyta's previous night had been spent in service to one of the Emperor's many sons, and the bastard had been nasty in his treatment of her, twisting her body into excrutiatingly painful positions. The many sons of the imperial family had been raised to challenge each other in brutality and fierceness, and they demonstrated it on the women in the harem. As Lyta had been the newest addition to the group, she was receiving most of their attention. She sighed, and felt the pain in her body lessen from the soft touch of the hands that went over her. She rolled over, and smiled up at the fellow prisoner. "Thank you, Anelle, for your help." The Skrull princess nodded. "I am glad to have a chance to ease your misery. We are together here in this hell and can only live if we assist each other, to balance the pain and sorrow we get from those who enslave us."
Alanna, the young woman who had been sent to the harem from her enslaved planet of Rann, approached Lyta with a grim expression. "You're in for it tonight. Ysedokazachodain, the Crown Prince has asked for you to be made available to him again." Queen Hippolyta shuddered, as she recalled the other night the monster had tortured her. He was evil and sadistic and wanted nothing less than a high level of pain in his nightly companions. Lyta had tried to resist him the first night, and the Prince had taken this as a challenge. She had been badly treated that night, and she expected the same treatment or worse from the creature this time.
In San Juan, the kherzageg left his office and moved to a special recreational club where he spent time unwinding. There were very many buildings in the city that were full of samalans who serviced the aliens, but this was a place that catered to the special desires of high ranking Garath personnel. As Dockaerzeon entered the main entertainment room, he admired the dozen nude females who were restrained along two of the walls. Each of them had her ankles manacled to the floor with her legs pulled far apart, her crotch spread and open to attack. The framework they were attached to was set out slightly from the wall so that they were bent at the waist, their backs arched to allow their chest to be forced out, with their wrists chained to the wall above their heads. But beyond the fact that these women were all restrained in very uncomfortable positions, they suffered greatly from what the Garath medical scientists had done to them. Drugs and hormones had been injected into their breasts, and the women's mammaries, which had been large to begin with, were now huge. More than doubled in size, the globes that were painfully swollen with milk were the playthings for the aliens who came to this club. The commander moved to a red-haired slave who was his favorite. A technician moved to disconnect the straps that had attached tubes to the woman's nipples. This was the policy here, when the victims were not being raped by one of the visitors, she was being milked by the machinery. Natalia Alianovna Romanova groaned as the straps were removed. She glanced up and saw it was the kherzageg who was there once again to take advantage of her. The woman who had once been know as the Black Widow screamed as the alien forced his cock inside her and used his hands to squeeze her tender, painful breasts. His mouth came down and he sucked on first one tit, than the other, drawing her fluids out for his pleasure. He plunged his cock roughly in and out of her, and his teeth pinched her nipples to roughly nuzzle her chest. After he came inside her, Dockaerzeon moved away from his toy and went to sit and just watch the red-haired slave hanging there. He looked over her body and sipped a glass of fresh besalm {milk}. As he savored his refreshment, he saw her face come up to look over at him. He was disturbed when after all this time he still saw not fear or subserviance in the slave's eyes, just pure hatred for the creature who was making her suffer so. The kherzageg slowly shook his head. Why were these foolish Earthans so stubborn? What would it take to teach them their place? He prepared to get up and have another go at the red-haired samalan. The night was still young and his loins were ready to conquer once again. But a junior officer came into the service room and approached. "Sir, I beg your indulgeance for disrupting your leisure, but the officer on duty has requested you attend to an interrogation. He feels you would prefer to see first hand what has come up."
Dockaerzeon's curiosity overcame his anger at being interrupted at his fun. What could the officer on duty have found that would prompt him to call in his commander? He followed the messenger back to the headquarters offices, and went up to an interrogation room. Tied down on the table was a good looking young woman with long black hair. The officer on duty snapped to attention and saluted. "Kherzageg! This female was captured in the wild brush just west of the city. We increased patrols out there because two sentries had vanished and a third was found with his throat cut. When a patrol found her, they sprayed her with the pacification gas, searched her and found she had this." He held up a long-bladed, nasty looking hunting knife. "As they tried to march her back here, she bolted and tied to escape. They had to restrain her." The commander snorted. Indeed! He could see the bruising on her arms, legs and face. "She resisted the gas? How could she be immune to it?" The officer held out a hand with a half-inch diameter clear disk in it. And he pointed to a nearby table-top where the woman's clothes, backpack and other gear were spread. "Sir, she had this in her mouth. And when we searched the nearby area, we found her equipment. In the pocket of her things there was several rolls of these discs." He handed the roll to Dockaerzeon. Another Garath standing nearby spoke up. "Intelligence translated the text on that. It says the contents are to be taken to offer immunity to the pacification gas." Surprise showed a little on the kherzageg's face. There had been discussions about the gas losing its effectiveness. Now they knew why. He looked into the face of the young woman, and saw the hatred in her eyes that he had seen in the eyes of Natalia Alianovna Romanova. Another rebellious female! What was it about this Earth that bred trouble? He would have to devise policies that would continue to replace that hatred with fear. He took the knife and felt the edge. Razor sharp. He bent close to the woman and jabbed the blade twice, gashing both of her eyes. Blood oozed out of her eye sockets as Jillian Stacy screamed in pain and terror. Dockaerzeon tossed the knife to the tabletop. "Have a medical tech sew closed her eyes and stop the bleeding on this blind bitch. Sew closed her mouth too. Then put her in a service building where she is to be raped until she starves to death. And no pacification gas for her."
Wonder Woman encountered Barbara and Rebecca as they were leaving their visit with Supergirl. Diana was overjoyed for the chance to see the two heroines once again, and asked about their success in Gotham. She agreed it was a major step forward in the resistance against the Garaths, and hoped that the technical experts analysing Garath equipment would find more ways to swing the battles in their favor. Diana also asked how Becky's mother was faring, and promised to visit her when she had a chance. The Amazon Princess got the impression that Rebecca was holding up pretty well considering the fact that her young friend had just lost her father. They spoke further for just a short time, then the two young ladies said they had to get moving to return to Gotham, and Wonder Woman said she too needed to move along and check on the progress of her sister Amazons.
It was an complete surprise to Princess Diana when she encountered her first crisis as ruler of the Amazons. She walked down the hall at Langhardt Verterans Hospital in Newport News to reach the room where her rescued sisters were being cared for. She was there every day to see them, and she was happy that the women seemed to be getting better as the traces of the Garath drugs were flushed from their system and the care in the hospital allowed them to recover their strength. Dr. Lynda Carter, who had been put in charge of the wing of the hospital that had been set aside for the pregnant ladies, gave better and better reports to Diana every time she spoke to her. So Wonder Woman was a little relieved as she went through the ward, seeing the ladies still had some discomfort from their advanced stage of pregnancy, but they looked much better then when they had been first seen on Little Helena. Diana stopped at the bedside of Dasilia and took her hand. The lady whose belly was swollen with two daughters who would very soon be delivered asked Diana, "Your majesty, they say my time is very near. I hope you will be here to greet my two little girls when they are born. I plan to name them after you and your mother, Diana and Hippolyta." Diana smiled at this statement. "That would be nice..." But her thoughts were interupted by a shout. Nasarriene on the other side of the room spoke with agitation. "NO! Mydaughters will be named Diana and Hippolyta!" The other Amazons who were paying attention to the conversation added their raised voices to the argument. Each began to insist that they were to have the right to name their offspring after the missing Queen of Themyscira and the Amazon Warrior Princess. They shifted in their beds, some trying to get up as they shouted back and forth. The nurses on duty sprang to restrain the patients and keep them from getting up. But the room was suddenly a mass of confusion.
Diana's voice rang out, louder than any of the others. "All of you, be quiet! THAT IS A ROYAL ORDER! Lay back down in your beds and listen to me without any more arguments!" She stood with arms akimbo, her face flush in anger. "All you medical personnel, leave the room at once! I have to speak to my subjects." As the ladies settled down, they stared sheepishly at Princess Diana. Their own anger had been blasted away by the outburst from their ruler. They recalled in the past how Queen Hippolyta's rage had been awesome in power when she had been given reason. The nurses checked on a few things, then seeing Diana's ugly glare, left the ward. Diana went up and down the rows of beds, stopping at each one and giving each one of the twenty women an angry look that made the person cringe. She got back to the head of the row of beds and finally spoke.
"You are no longer Amazon warriors, you have been changed into a flock of sheep. You argue over names for your children. You fight amongst yourselves? How will these children grow to be resolute, confident young women if their mothers no long believe in the loving sisterhood of the Amazon cause? You are at each other's throats for something as petty as this? I am ashamed to be your leader! You feel that Diana and Hippolyta are the only names worthly for your children? HOW DARE YOU! You would not even be here if not for the valiant help that was provided by many people who risked their lives to fight for your rescue on the island." Diana again glared around the room, and each of the women looked down, unable to return the irate gaze of the Amazon ruler. "Nearly half of those people were women who were brave and who deserve your unending gratitude. The entire operation was organized and commanded by a fine woman, Donna Hooper, who saw things through to conclusion despite that fact that her husband of over twenty years, her one true love, died on the mission. I personally was given the task of carrying his body off the island and I wept openly as I did so. Rebecca, her daughter, was also on the mission and she fought hand to hand with the Garaths as a brave warrior, even after she knew of her father's death. Katherine Conners was a heroine from the plains of America who came to that island to fight for your freedom and left it strapped to a stretcher with very serious wounds. Kimberly Possible is a brave young woman whose espionage efforts discovered the secret of where you were being held. She was also on the mission and fought bravely. Zinda Blake was a woman without any exceptional physical powers who came along and piloted the alien craft that got you to this hospital fast enough to keep many of you alive. Barbara Gordon and Dinah Lance are skilled warrior heroines who each were team leaders in the effort. And many other women were in the fight, battling the alien forces to help you and all of mankind. Do you think that Eve Eden, Wanda Maximoff, Helena Bertinelli, Constance D'Aramis, Jennifer Walters, Nelvana of the North, Beatriz da Costa and Katherine Pryde were women who did not deserve to have their names considered for the children you carry?"
The Amazon Princess stood their in silence for a few minutes, still too angry to speak further. The pregnant women all still had their heads tilted down, too ashamed to face her. Finally Diana spoke again. "I can see that you all have a wish to see my mother's name and mine carried on in this new generation of Amazons. I think I will place your names in a container, and then I will pull one name out at a time. That person will have the right to choose a name for one of the children she will bear. One by one, you will be picked, and you each will choose names. That will be fair to all of you. Do you agree?" The women looked up and all of them nodded. Kleio spoke hesitantly from her bed. "We... we apologize for our foolishness, your majesty. We have acted like children, not Amazons. Would... would you tell us more of these brave women? They sound like valiant warriors I would be proud to have as my girls' namesakes." Diana smiled. "Many years ago young Donna Gilbert reached puberty and discovered she had developed powers that allowed her to control the consistancy of her form. She could turn to mist and pass through the slightest gap in solid objects. She was nearly indetectable in darkness. She fought bravely against evil in Granite City, becoming one of their most famed masked champions as the Shady Lady. She met another costumed hero, Patrick Hooper, who fought crime as Mr. Patriot. They fell in love and married..."
Diana spent much of her time in the next few days describing the lives of the women who had been on the mission to Little Helena to rescue the Garath captives. The Amazon Princess knew these facts because after the mission, she had asked to read through the personnel records Donna had from the mission. Wonder Woman wanted to know everything about the people she felt so endebted to. She had resolved that not one of those individuals would ever ask a favor of her that she could refuse. She had been a lonely, miserable, solitary survivor of the Amazon sisterhood before all those people helped to get at least a small part of her family back.
After speaking with Wonder Woman, Glory Girl and Batgirl had gotten back on their bikes to return to duty in Gotham. But as they rode along, near Atherton they were pulled over by a police cruiser. Rebecca turned to the officer as he rushed up. "Hey! You got a speed trap here?" The cop ignored her comment. "Ladies! We have an alien raid happening at a mall near here. A truckload of national guardsmen was being rushed over, but they got cut off in an intersection and their truck flipped over. A few squad cars of police are trying to react and do something... but we could use any help that we can get." The heroines glanced at each other and Batgirl spoke up. "We're here, we'll help." The two bikes roared off at top speed, following the cruiser. They rode along for only a short distance and saw a large shopping complex, with a Garath shuttle resting in the back parking lot. There was sporatic gunfire, but the officers shooting from behind their police cars were not doing any good against the the aliens who were safe behind their personal force shields. Barbara looked over the scene and wondered what they could do to help. These men were not trained to react to the Garath tactics. They did not have the knowledge of what the alien's weaknesses were, so the resistance to this raid didn't have much of a chance. She turned to the officer who had escorted them there. "We have to get behind them and get close. The guns only work if you have them at point blank range. Glory Girl and I will circle around, send some of your men to follow us while the rest keep the Garath's attention out here." He nodded, and the two heroines moved to the side, using parked cars for cover. Using some landscaping they were able to get to the truck loading dock where the Garaths had entered the mall. Batgirl hoped to catch the aliens by surprise when they were coming back out with their prisoners. If they could catch them unawares... Sure enough, a few riparte came out, herding a half-dozen terrified young women. Glory Girl and Batgirl waited until the group passed close by, then sprang out and knocked out a pair of the scum. They went at the third Garath, who fired his laser at them. But Rebecca ducked under the shot and Barbara got to the soldier, knocking him down and giving him a smash to the skull that put him out. Glory Girl had pulled the frightened women to the side and was telling them to run for cover. But Barbara saw another group of riparte were approaching them from the direction of the shuttle. The heroines tried to hurry the rescued ladies, but they were spotted by the aliens. One of them raised a weapon, and suddenly all the females heard a noise that seemed to clamp into their mind and shut down all sensation of the outside world. They dropped to the ground and whimpered at the misery they suddenly felt. By the edge of a loading dock, Glory Girl just managed to throw herself sideways and roll under a large truck that was parked nearby before she succumbed to the sound. Batgirl was overcome by the sonics and dropped to the ground, unable to try to get to any cover. The Garaths came over and picked up Batgirl and all of the women they had brought out of the mall and carried them to the shuttle. With their prisoners, the shuttle took off.
Queen Hippolyta's day went quietly, as she waited to leave for her audience with the dreaded Crown Prince of the Gareth Empire. As was the custom, two other ladies of the harem accompanied her as handmaidens. Tonight, Alanna of Rann and Sonaral of Thanagar walked with her to the building where the slaves of the court were subject to the whims of the aged Emperor and his many vile sons. She entered the room of submission and saw Ysedokazachodain standing there, next to the huge bed. "So, you are here to serve me once again, slave. I am interested in coupling with you and teaching you another lesson. When last you spent the night here with me, I seemed to get the impression that you had not yet learned your place. That you did not realise you are less than dirt, a whore whose existence is only meant to service the cocks of your masters. Strip her and tie her face down on the bed." Lyta hung her head and offered no resistance. The pain she had endured during her trip to Garath Prime and the brutal training she had been given in sexual service before she had arrived at the harem seemed to have broken her spirit. Her two handmaidens quickly moved to obey the orders of the Garath lord. Their years in the harem had eliminated any thoughts of opposing the whim of their masters. Hippolyta lay there as he punished her for being a slave. His fists pounded into her shoulders and back until every bit of her torso screamed in pain. He took his bare palm and smacked the cheeks of bottom until they were bright red and painfully tender. Then he climbed on her, pushing his weight down on her pain-wracked torso and forcing his cock into her ass. He pounded her with his attack, listening to her moan and squeal with each pounding of his crotch into her sore backside. She cried and cried out at the torture the evil Prince enjoyed inflicting on her.
He then had her untied and turned over, and ordered her to suck the fluids from his cock until he grew stiff once again. Tears ran down her cheeks as she complied to the horrid task. She cursed herself for falling into such a position. She wished she had died on Paradise Island, so that she would never have faced these terrors. When the dick of Ysedokazachodain was long and hard again, he plunged it into her pussy and began to pound her there. He grabbed and dug his fingers into her breasts, pulling and twisting. Lyta screamed at the pain that was being inflicted on her by the beastial, sadistic Garthan Prince. The Prince released one of her breasts and brought his hand up. It smashed across her face, knocking her head to one side. "So, Earthan Queen, do you finally realize you are the lowest of the low while you are here? You must obey any command and allow any indignation in your total service to the Garath Imperial Family. You are a slave. Your children shall be slaves. Your subjects will be slaves. On all the worlds we visit, that is what the females learn. Or they die. Are you too stupid to live, slave?" Hippolyta looked up into the man's face and was ready to admit she was defeated. But in the back of her mind a small point of fire burst up. A rage nibbled at the edge of her thoughts and grew. Something in the way he glared down at her, the way he spoke of these indignities for her daughter and her subjects. They were her family and did not deserve to be treated like this. And she could not force herself to admit they did. So when the Garath brought his dick up and moved it to her mouth, she opened wide and took it in. But he was not expecting her to bite down hard on the member. He cried out, then brought a fist down hard on the side of her head. Stunned, her teeth released the cock and she fell backwards. He screamed out curses and smashed his fist into her face. He kicked her in the crotch and the stomach, furious at her act of resistence. One harsh blow from his fist sent her spinning sideways, crashing out of the bed to the floor. She tried to get up, but her body was wracked with pain from his blows. She brought up her head and saw him moving towards her. Her face was battered, and blood streamed from her broken nose.
The two handmaidens had backed away in horror as they watched this conflict explode in front of them. Alanna suddenly turned and dashed to the door, where she cried out into the corridor. "Masters, alert the Emperor! There is a foul and grevious attack on he and his!" One of the guards outside the door moved off, as the other stared in and revealed shock on his face at the sight of the bloodied samalan. Soon the master of the harem, Chardah (the head eunuch) arrived, also paused for a few seconds in the doorway and stared with amazement before he entered the bedchamber, trailed by a half dozen eunuch guards. He spoke to the Prince. "Your Majesty, you have gone too far. You must..." Ysedokazachodain turned in anger, covered in his own sweat and spattered with Lyta's blood. He held her hair in one hand and the other hand was a fist that had been battering her face brutally. "How dare you interrupt me! I am the Crown Prince, a heartbeat away from being the Emperor of the Garath Empire! No damned eunuch will ever tell me what to do!" All in the room turned as they heard a low, rasping voice at the doorway. "You will listen to me, Ysedokazachodain. I selected you as my heir as I thought you strong and willful enough to head the Empire. But to be my successor, you must also show me that you can control yourself. Only a fool allows rage to take over his actions." Chardah moved to approach the Emperor and dropped to a knee. "Your Great Majesty, I regret to inform you of a trangression of the laws of ownership. A member of your harem has suffered grevious bodily harm from a member of the court who requested no permission from you to do so. An attack on your property is to be treated as an attack on you." The Prince cried out. "Father... you cannot take this incident as an attack on the Emperor. I beg you to be leniant..." But the Emperor looked up and slowly spoke. "The rules of the Emperor's harem are sacred. Property of the ruler is treated as part of his person. Any shedding of the blood of my property without the arrangement for permission in advance is a attack on me. Ysedokazachodain, you are stripped of your title and sentenced to be castrated." The Ruler turned to look at Hippolyta. "And you, sweet one. you did something to set Ysedokazachodain on the path to his destruction. Chain her in the courtyard. She gets water but no food for a hagairne {six days}. And strap a pain module on her while she learns what she can expect if she ever acts up again."
Back on Earth, The Shady Lady entered the Pentagon office of General Max Knowlen. He got up from his desk and walked around to shake her hand. "You decided to come back to duty, ehhh? I wasn't sure if you were up to it, and I knew you had to make the decision yourself. I want to add my personal condolences to all the others you have received. A long time ago I commanded men on the front line, and I know the pain of losing someone you led into battle. I had people who were close friends that I lost, but for you to lose your... well, I just know the pain you suffered was even more severe than I can imagine." Donna took a seat by the desk. "Thanks, General. Has the espionage squad still been going into San Juan to snoop?" Knowlen sat back behind his desk. "Yes. They are seeing highly increased security down there. They have to be really sneaky now, but they still get into the various facilities and scavenge computer files and bits of equipment that our tech geeks are trying to figure out. You never know when we may get a lead on something really important like we did with the medical experiments complex. The Joint Chiefs has decided to give you a commission in the Army as a bird colonel. It would allow you to have a measure of authority when dealing with other members of the armed forces. And we have a special mission in the works that needs your fine touch. You are their choice to organize Operation Pinball." Donna cocked her head and replied. "What's that all about? And why me?" The General smiled. "Only a dozen people know about this plan, and you will make lucky thirteen. You are getting it because you did so well on the mission to Little Helena. That's how the military works. If you do a job well, you get a harder job. And this is a lot harder. The plan calls for..."
They were interrupted as a captain rapped once on the door and entered. The general turned to glance that way, about to chastize the man for bursting in. But the lesser officer exclaimed, "Sir, a combat report just came in from Tokyo. It's marked extreme urgent!" Knowlen snatched the paper from the officer's hand and skimmed it. He murmured, "Oh shit... Hooper, you'd better look this over." She took the paper from him and read the concise description of the results of the Garath raid on a Tokyo college district. Donna read it quickly and as soon as she glanced up from the page, the general spoke. "They've changed their tactics and caught us flat-footed. Did your work in the past ever run across any mention of a sonic weapon like this?" Shady Lady shook her head, and the general made a quick decision on a course of action. "I'm having the captured shuttle from the Cape run up here just to get you. Tonight I want you to take your crew into San Juan and either find out something about this gizmo, or steal us one." Donna got up. "Now that I am a commissioned officer, will I have to wear a uniform?" Knowlen shook his head. "Your gray and black costume is just fine. Good luck tonight... and be careful!"
In San Juan, Dockaerzeon had a meeting with the Maganite. "We have distributed the sonic disrupter weapons to all units. It's an old weapon, but the Earthans were caught by surprise and could not resist it. This may get us back on track... if they don't find a way to counter this too. I would like your permission to use thermalizer bombs. If we vaporize a few of their cities..." The Maganite was horrified at the idea. "No! We are here to take women, not to incinerate them randomly. You would be destroying valuable product. Even though those weapons use fusion power and do not leave the radiation by-product of the Earthan's nuclear weapons, they still would destroy huge areas. They have not been used for centuries, and during an expedition only with the authorization of the appointed Maganite can they be used. I don't want such a thing done. I am sure you will find other methods to turn things around. The sonics were an excellent first step." The military commander managed to avoid telling the leader how stupid he thought the man was. "Great Sir, I shall try. Have you passed on to Garath-Prime my request for more riparte? Our losses have been heavy, and we are being stretched thin." The Maganite shook his head. "I am still considering that option. But the recruiting and shipment of further soldiers would be very expensive, and cut into the profits of this expedition, profits that are distributed to all, including you. Instead, there are all those transports in orbit that are not very busy with loading, due to the slow pace of collection. Some of their people are probably ex-soldiers, so pull surplus personnel off the transports and use them to re-inforce your riparte. I will authorize that, but the transport commanders are going to raise a hell of a stink." Dockaerzeon bowed a bit to the leader, and thanked him. As he left, he mulled over this idea. The men would not all be trained soldiers, but they would be adequete. And even if they had no military backround, just an infusion of fresh bodies would help.
Barbara Gordon woke tightly stapped down on a metal table. Her costume, and even her underwear was gone, and a pair of Garaths were standing over her. One of them stepped close, wrapped the fingers of one hand around her throat and squeezed. He cut off her air for a minute, then released her and smashed his hand across her face. "So, red-hair. You are the warrior woman called the Bat. I have had many reports of your attacks on my riparte. You are now in our hands and you will be our slave..." Barbara snarled. "Never!" She finally recognized the alien -- it was the one they had in charge, the Maganite. He smiled down at her. "Foolish human. You will see your world a conquered farm producing a supply of samalans for the Garath Empire. And you will tell me now... Where are the Kryptonians? Where are the impregnated cows who were taken from the medical facility? You destroyed the island to hide them from me, but my people have gotten intelligence that all of these ones are still alive and hidden away." Batgirl kept her mouth closed, refusing to say anything. But the other Garath moved to her and reached towards her crotch. She winced as a small electronic unit was attached by a staple stitcher directly to her labia. She gasped and winced as the pain of that attachment came over her. The Maganite repeated his questions and she still refused to speak. Then the medical tech activated the pain module that he had clipped to her, and she stiffened and screamed as the worst pain she could ever imagine was multiplied a hundredfold and ran in waves over her entire body. She thought she felt her clitoris and lower lips were being torn away from her body, one cell at a time. The fire of misery that filled every part of her body was sharpest and most intense in her crotch. The few minutes she endured this seemed to be an eternity. Then the sensation ceased and she saw the Garath leader bend down close to her. Again he asked where Kara, Kal-el and the twenty Amazons women were being hidden. Barbara's mind went back to the raid at the mall where she had seen Kara captured and taken away by the aliens. She remembered what those women had been going through when the rescue raid found them. She recalled how happy she had been to get Kara out of their hands. She resolved she would never give the enemy anything that might cause her best friend to end up back in their hands. So she looked up at the Maganite and choked out a whisper. "I won't tell you!" He looked down at her and sighed. Then he turned to the technician. "Activate the pain module. Keep it at the highest setting. Every few hours, turn it off and repeat the questions. Advise me if she answers. Or if she dies." He walked to the exit, then paused and turned to add something before leaving. "Oh... and every time she is awake, I want a riparte to rape her. She is to be taught her place."
And late that night, off the beach near San Juan a US Navy attack submarine surfaced and let some passengers take inflatable rafts to paddle their way ashore. The Shady Lady led her group of espionage experts into the occupied city where the Garaths had set up their planet-side base. Donna, along with Plastic Man, Nightshade, Shadowcat, Nightcawler, Kimberly Possible and Ronald Stoppable moved along the side streets and back alleys of the city of misery, listening to the sounds of all the suffering women who were being kept prisoner here. Some were there to serve the sexual urges of the aliens, others were being subjected to forced surgery to remove any artificial body parts they had -- what the Garaths considered contaminants in their property. Each person of the espionage force had to struggle to maintain their composure and their concentration with everything that was going on around them. They wanted to rescue the poor souls, but how could they do so, when many thousands were there? All the espionage squad could do was try to find out enough about the Garaths in their recon missions that they would end this war and get some of their poor women out of here.
They found the one of the buildings where the aliens stored and maintained their weapons. At one time there would have been no guards present, but now the place had several riparte patrolling outside. The group snuck up and killed the guards silently, then entered the building. They searched amongst the gear and printed repair manuals for anything that might relate to the sonic device that had been used recently. Kim and Ron went to the alien computers and downloaded files onto some memory sticks that had been converted to work with the alien data processing systems. Then Kitty Pryde hissed out, "Hey, I think these are a couple of those gizmos. I found them on this workbench with a manual that details how to bring them into operation when they are taken out of storage." Donna glanced over what Shadowcat had found. "O.K. This is what we had to find. Let's get them back to the sub so the tech boys can figure how to counteract them." The group packed the stuff up carefully, along with other gear that had looked important, and they left the building and started back to the beach. They moved carefully, stopping when Garath patrols moved near their route. Nightwing scouted a little ahead of the group, making sure their path was clear. Suddenly he dropped back to the others. "Fraulein Hooper! I overheard a couple of them talking. They spoke of just having been ordered to rape a prisoner to try to force her to talk. They... they were saying how much they enjoyed it..." Donna felt sick to her stomach at this, but tried to remain composed. "Kurt, we know it happens here. We can't stop to help these people, no matter how much we want to. We have to do our job and..." Nightcrawler interruped. "But... they said it was the Bat samalan!" Donna was shocked to hear this. "Oh God. They captured Batgirl? We've got to find her. Get her out of here." Plastic Man spoke up. "Donna, come on... you just said that we can't stop for stuff. We are here to do a job!" The Shady Lady sobbed, and shook her head. "I can't this time. Barbara Gordon is my daughter's best friend. She's been to my home for dinner dozens of times. I've known her closely for years. When I set up the raid into Little Helena, she was one of the first people I called on. I can't leave her here, the same way I could not leave any of you people behind." The rest of her crew stared into her eyes and saw there was no way they could talk her out of this. Donna turned to Kim and Ron. "You two take the material we found and get to the beach. That stuff has to go out to the sub. We'll follow later. But if you don't see us in a few hours, have Captain Storm take the sub home." She watched the pair move off, then asked the others, "Are you all in? I don't want to order you to do something if you think it's stupid." But all of them signaled they would back her up. They had known the frustration of leaving behind all these prisoners in the hands of the Garaths, and for once wanted to leave San Juan with a rescue.
As Ron and Kim moved quietly through the back alleys and deserted parts of the city, they moved northwest to reach the beach where the group had left their rafts. But when they turned a corner, a half dozen riparte encountered them. Two began punching Ron and knocked him back hard against a wall, where he slumped to the ground. The others came at Kim who fought back at their attack. She was holding two at bay, and glancing over at the two aliens who had knocked out Ron, when one of the others came up behind her and smashed her on the back of her skull with the butt of his pistol. She slumped to her knees, stunned, and was unable to stop the soldier who grabbed at the front of her shirt and tore it away. The alien smiled. "Ohh, this is going to be fun! She'll be a sweet red-haired fuck!" She tried to shake the cobwebs that confused her brain, but could hardly move. And the enemy grabbed at her, a pair holding her arms while another ripped at her pants, tearing them down to totally expose her to their lust. She shuddered at the realization that it might be all over for her in the hands of the enemy. But suddenly, beyond the aliens who planned to rape her, she saw her partner get back to his feet. Ron looked with horrible rage at the danger his girl friend was in and took a deep breath. He concentrated, mumured a brief chant, and was suddenly surrounded by a low blue glow. He was filled with the power of the mystic Monkey God. The alien shield tech energies caused most magic on Earth to be disrupted or severely lessened. There had been rare exceptions where the magical energy had resisted and stayed intact, like Wonder Woman's enchanted shield and spear. Ron's energy also seemed to be immune to the interference. Ron spun forward, with his fists, elbows, knees and feet striking out at the riparte. He went through them quickly and soon had them all knocked out on the ground. He went to Kim and found her barely able to regain her feet, sobbing hysterically. "Oh, Ron! They had me... They would have..." He held her close for a minute, and she seemed to recover a little. He peeled off his t-shirt, and gave it to her to replace the top the aliens had ripped away. "Come on, KP, we had better get moving towards the beach." She nodded and followed him.
The rest of the group moved to the part of town where medical workplaces were set up in a cluster of buildings. They would have to try to discover where Batgirl was being held. Roving bands of armed riparte were patrolling here, and it was getting more and more difficult to avoid detection, even with their stealth oriented powers. Suddenly, while avoiding one patrol, the group stumbled into the path of another batch of aliens. They were seen, and they tried to fight their way out. Plastic Man's arms shot out and grabbed a pair of the opposing soldiers. Nightshade formed a scimitar of blackest night in her hand and carved through the enemy. Shadowcat phased into the ground, coming up under the enemy and tripping them up. But then one of the Garaths triggered a sonic disrupter he carried, and the raiders all dropped to the ground, unable to concentrate on their fight. In a matter of seconds, Plastic Man got back up and shot forward to knock the riparte with the disrupter down. The sonic attack stopped, and the others struggled to get up. They could hear commotion all around them. More patrols were closing. Donna was forced to a decision. "Everyone! Get back to the beach! NOW!" Kurt shook his head to clear the confusion left from the disrupter. He wrapped his arms around Kitty, who was closest to him, and the pair disappeared, to reform on the beach where Ron and Kim were just about to launch the raft. That pair were surprised by the sudden appearance of their friends, but Nightcrawler did not stop to explain. He teleported back to where he had left the rest of the group. He dropped to the ground at once, as another disrupter was covering the area with the nasty sonic effect. Again, seemingly unaffected by the weapon, Plastic Man extended pliable fists at the ripate holding it and knocked him down to stop the sonics. He turned to his friends and shouted to Kurt. "Get them out! I'll meet you on the beach!" Nightcrawler stumbled over to where Eve and Donna were on the ground, trying to shake off the throbbing in their heads. He wrapped one arm around each woman and teleported back to the beach. It only took a short time for the stretching superhero to join them, and they launched the raft to get back out to the sub. Nightcrawler asked his friend, "Eels, how is it you were not effected by that weapon?" Plas grinned. "I can mold and reshape any part of my body, even my ears. I just adjusted the parts of my inner ear and closed off the ear canal so that I couldn't hear anything." On the other side of the raft, Eve Eden, Kitty Pryde and Kimberly Possible were seated, close together. Kitty leaned over and whispered, "He can change the size and shape of any part of his body... even... you know, that part?" She giggled. Kim, recovering from what had happened to her, smiled a little. But Eve grinned and murmured to the other two, "Oh, yes, girls, especially that part." Kimberly and Kitty stared at each other and finally they both went, "Wow!" Ron had moved next to the Shady Lady and noticed her head was slumped forward, and she was crying. "Ms. Hooper? Are you alright?" Donna brought her head up and nodded. "I'm not hurt. It's just that Batgirl was a really close friend and I didn't like having to leave her back there. We've left too many people in the hands of the enemy, and when I finally resolved to save someone... failure really is hard to take." Eve heard this and moved over to hold her commander close, to help her cope with one more torment the war had brought to her life.
Back at their base at Cape Canaveral, Eve snuggled close to Eels in his quarters. They had made love and were just laying there, and she sobbed a bit and spoke. "Eels, all those women we've heard and seen in our missions in San Juan... I thought that was so bad. But to know that Batgirl, someone we both know so well is now one of their prisoners..." Plastic Man held her close and kissed her on the forehead. "Yes, of course. As bad as it was, this makes it worse. And if they ever got their hands on you... I don't know how I would possibly handle that." He didn't say a word about her staying where it was safe and avoiding going into danger. He knew she would not agree to such a thing, and she sensed he wanted that but he respected her enough to allow her to decide what she should do. She was keeping a secret from him that might change his mind. He could not be told that she had recently discovered she was pregnant. With this news he would probably insist she stay behind, and she could not do that. Eve knew she had to keep up her work on the squad to make sure the child would be born in a world where the Garaths would not be his... or (she took a deep breath) her masters.
The time finally came for the pregnant Amazons, and Dr. Carter had arranged for a large number of doctors and nurses to be ready for it. As she had feared, three of the women went into labor at the same time, and even as these were being taken care of, the others soon followed in quick succession. The damage to their systems that had been caused by the accelerated fetus growth was serious, and four of the women nearly died in the operating rooms during the deliveries. Only the highly skilled people and elaborate equipment that was on hand managed to pull these women through. Wonder Woman was in the waiting room, pacing furiously in her anxiety over the conditions of her sisters. It was days later when the Doctor was able to tell her that all of the women were going to pull through. When Diana moved to the natal care area and saw the fifty baby girls being cared for, she was amazed. They were so tiny, so helpless. And it would be up to her to rule over the land where these children would grow up. She would want them to be true Amazons, believing in friendship, honor and love. It would be a daunting task, but she thought back on how her mother raised her to be the champion of justice she was now, and resolved she had to do the same, fifty times over. Within days, Diana went to Dr. Carter and announced the women and the children would be relocating to Paradise Island. The doctor protested, insisting that the women were better off in the hospital. "If they need anything, Dr. Carter, we will take it with us. They spent too much time as prisoners of the Garaths, and even here they are not where they really want to be. They want to return to their home." The doctor finally agreed, on the condition that she would be allowed to accompany the amazons with a large medical contingent to help if any complications came up.
In a laboratory, Reed Richards triggered a machine gun that sprayed bullets at a mannequin on the other end of the hall. The slugs deflected away from the target, as a Garath force field unit was strapped to its waist and turned on. Lex Luthor stood at a console nearby, and he cried out to Richards, "O.K. here goes." He activated the mechanism the two had been developing, but another burst of gunfire was stopped short of the target. With a glance at the monitor, Richards yelled out, "Lex, move the modulation up a little. One of these settings has to work!" Sure enough, when Luthor adjusted the transmitter, suddenly the shield emitter on the target gave off a purple shimmering glow and stopped protecting the dummy. Bullets smashed into and shattered the mannequin. The two scientists smiled at each other with big grins. Luthor stepped over and shook Reed's hand furiously. Richards spoke. "Perfect! We can make a signal emitter that will jam the shields and make them vulnerable to our weapons. This will totally turn the war around! Now we just have to get industry to start making..." Luthor cut him off. "Don't worry about that. Four LexCorp plants have been preparing production lines to make these shield jammers. I was just waiting for this test to confirm what we had was going to work. The units will be coming off the production line in a matter of a day or two, then we can get them to the troops. But we still have to work on miniaturizing this unit. If we can get it small enough, we can put it in the guidance system of a surface to air missle and blast those Garath craft out of the sky. The command of the air can be back in our hands and that will be the next big step in the war."
But the two men were alerted as a chime sounded. They went to a video-conferencing area, where a number of monitors lit up with the faces of other scientists who were also working on ideas to fight the Garath invaders. One of the screens showed Tony Stark, but he was in bad shape. Richards commented, "Tony, I'd heard you really took it on the chin when Iron Man fought the aliens." Stark smiled. "Yes, I got shot out of the sky. Landed in a mess. Broke both arms, lost an eye and both legs beneath the knees. The docs said I was going to die, but I was too damn stubborn to give up. I've been so busy lately, I haven't had much chance to rebuild myself. Got some ideas for some artificial legs that will work just fine." The chatting was interrupted as another person broke it. Doctor William Magnus spoke. "Gentlemen, ladies. We've put this conference call together to try to help find a solution for the latest Garath problem. Their sonic units make resistence impossible, and they will be attacking and collecting prisoners once again unless we can find a way to counteract this. We have sonic units and data files that our espionage people were able to collect, but how do we help our forces resist the knockout effect?" Dr. Moira McTaggert, an English scientist, spoke. "We've been testing a variety of earplugs and earmuffs, but none of them block the sound effectively. Can anyone give us an idea on how to improve them?" Richards spoke. "Back in the Baxter Building, I have a small sample of an element I obtained from King T'Challa of Wakanda. The material, called vibrainium, has exceptional effects on sound and vibrations. The addition of this might work. But the material is in very limited supply, and exceptionally hard to work with. Could we really produce any kind of earplugs with vibrainium that would be available in a large enough supply?"
On another monitor, they were interrupted by Lawrence Jordan, who ran a west coast firm that dealt with electronics and sound equipment. "Excuse me, but I think we could also try to counter this with a different line of attack..." Luthor glanced down at a fax sheet on the desk in front of him. It listed backround information on the people who had been connected for this conference call. "Mr. Jordon, please. We do not need to listen to someone whose expertize lies in the area of building sound equipment for rock bands. This is serious!" But Jordon didn't back down. "Yes, that's my business. But it doesn't mean I don't have more experience with sound and electronics than many of you people. I propose we isolate the sound frequency the Garath weapon is set on and produce a unit that can broadcast a reverse sound wave that would cancel the weapon's sound out. It would be damn noisy, but the people would not be imobilized." Doc Magnus stroked his chin. "Yes... like sound-cancelling headphones work, but on a larger scale. Damn... it would work!" Jordan smiled. "I have sketches of a preliminary design that are based on what I got from your analysis of their weapon. I will be sending all of you copies so we can work out the best way to implement this and get counter-sound units manufactured and distributed." Lex Luthor revealed a sly smile on his face. "I under-estimated you, Jordon. A mistake I try not to repeat. Once the details are worked out, LexCorp and Wayne Industries plants will be ready to go into production." After the call ended, Reed turned to Lex. "LexCorp and Wayne Industries? I'm surprised you'll share the business." Lex shrugged. "I have the shield jammers taking up a lot of my production capabilities. These sound units are really needed, so my biggest competitor will have to be called in."
On San Juan, Batgirl had settled into a long, extended hellish existence. The periods when the pain module was activated were a blur as the only thing her mind could take in was more pain than she ever thought possible. Every muscle, every joint in her body was being torn to shreds, over and over. And she had little relief when the sadistic alien switched off the unit and questioned her. Every time he asked her what they wanted, she would refuse and then a riparte was allowed to manhandle and fuck her. Their attacks were not nearly as painful as the treatment she got from the electronic torture, but the shame of being used in such a degrading way ground at her mind. And every time the aliens stopped raping her, she knew the module would be switched on and put her back in that god-damned hell. She began to try to think about her situation during the times her mind was working. Not even sure how long she'd been a prisoner, she had to do something about this. But what were her options? She could tell them what they wanted to know... no, that wasn't a viable course of action. She would never tell them the women they wanted were at the hospital in Virginia.
But what else could she do? Finally, she thought of just lying to them. Telling them that Kara, Diana and the pregnant Amazon women were somewhere else. Would they give here a small measure of relief while they went to check? More importantly, what would the Maganite do when he discovered she'd sent them on a wild goose chase? He obviously had a nasty temper. Would he get mad enough to kill her? Barbara really hoped he would...
Then she considered what the lie would be. She could send them to Gotham City, San Francisco, the wilds of Africa, the middle of the Amazon. But wherever she sent them would be attacked by a huge contingent of Garath riparte, and people would get killed. She couldn't do that. She would have to send them somewhere they would accept as a possible hiding place for the ones they were after, but that was remote and deserted. It took her a while to finally think of the only place to fit that criteria. Then she turned to the alien who was torturing her and spoke. "All right... I'll tell you where they are..." When the Maganite came to the room she was being held, he bent close, and with feigned reluctance, she told him the Kryptonians and the pregnant Amazons had been hidden on Paradise Island. The alien leader gave this information a bit of thought, then turned to act on the tip. But as he left, he ordered Barbara's pain module turned on once again. Just before the pain drove her mind to maddening convulsions, he spoke. "We shall see, slave. But I did not like your resistance. You should have spoken sooner!"
When Batgirl had visited the hospital and spoken with Supergirl and Wonder Woman, the conversation had never gotten as far as the Amazons' plans to relocate after the children were born. So Barbara was unaware that she had unwittingly given up the hiding place of her friends to the enemy. And knowing that would have hurt her nearly as much as the alien pain device.
At the same time, another woman of Earth was suffering greatly from Garath torture on the other side of the universe. On Garath-Prime, in the courtyard of the harem quarters, there was a large metal framework in the configurattion of an "x." Queen Hippolyta was secured on this stand, where her nude body was baked by the sun during the day and chilled by the night winds after dark. A cuff on her right arm held a pain unit that shot torment through the nerves of her body. Every few hours she was allowed a cup of water, and she relished these small breaks in her agony. During one visit by her friend Alanna she gulped the water greedily but then found the Rannian slipped a handful of minced meat into her mouth. Alanna whispered, "Swallow it quickly, my friend!" Then she went back to her assigned building. From that time on, the women slipped her nourishment to help her keep her strength up though her punishment. Sometimes the cup of water was really thin soup, or she would be slipped something soft she could swallow quickly. It was never anything that would have to be chewed. If the guards saw that, it would be disasterous. Lyta was sure that the women would have been punished nearly as seriously if the acts were detected. But they still helped her. Even in their imprisonment, after generations of being the Garath's slaves, they were warriors. She was proud she knew these women, and resolved to keep her spirits up. She had to do it for her daughter and for the Amazons. She hoped Diana was still alive, and a little bit of her soul hoped her girl was still free. But would Lyta wondered if she would ever know her daughter's fate?...
Princess Diana, ruler of Paradise Isle, walked along, looking over the efforts to repair the damage that had been done to Themyscira when the Garaths attacked and captured the residents. The handful of Amazons who had returned with her to the island were a meager workforce, and some of the women were still too weak from the strain of childbirth and the treatments the Garaths had inflicted on them to do much. First priority had been to care for the fifty infants. A large number of doctors and nurses had been brought along to the island to help. Because of the danger of the Garaths trying to retrieve the results of their breeding program, a unit of just over a hundred soldiers gathered from all over the globe also were stationed on the island, with the best equipment. All of these were women, and the fighting females had been picked from volunteers from every country. These women had asked to help in the rebuilding, but Wonder Woman insisted they were on the island only for defense, not as laborers. She ordered them to patrol and stand guard, ready at any time to repel an attack. But still she occasionally saw those women in their spare time pitching in to help clean up the debris left from the battle.
She approached the largest undamaged building in Themyscira, which had been transformed into a nursery. Every day Diana spent time in there, enjoying seeing the fifty infant girls who were going to be a new generation of Amazons. The children had been the result of an alien medical breeding program where Kal-el's sperm had been placed in the Amazon prisoners to produce half-Kyptonian female children. Garaths had caused what they believed was the extinction of the Kryptonian race. When they found a single man and woman from that group still lived here on Earth, they had moved to produce infant girls of this line for their slave market. Having been part of the group who rescued Superman, Supergirl and her twenty impregnated Amazon sisters from the hellish Garath facility, Diana resolved that they must never allow the aliens to get their hands on the children.
Standing at the entrance, a young blonde woman came to attention and gave a crisp salute. Wonder Woman straightened and returned the courtesy. "Good morning Corporal... no, wait... I see it's Sergeant Cooper now! Congratulations on your promotion." Betty smiled. "Yes, your majesty, I got bumped up a grade. And now they are asking me to transfer to officer candidate school, but I requested that I stay here on duty. I want to be in on the front line. And I'd be a little nervous as an officer, telling others what to do." Diana shook her head. "You don't realize that anyone giving orders has to be aprehensive about being in charge. It's a part of the job. But you have to concentrate on being the best leader your people can hope for." Diana chuckled. "At least that's what I expect of myself." Wonder Woman moved into the building and went through the nurseries. She spoke with the doctors, nurses, and Amazons who were caring for the infants and she picked up and cuddled a child here and there as she went along. Each baby girl was beautiful and perfect. Diana resolved to give them a perfect place to grow up, and to do anything to protect them from harm. Perhaps one day she could have a child of her own. But that was something she would consider only after this war was over.
The phone in the nursery rang, and Doctor Carter answered. She turned to Diana and spoke. "Your majesty, they need you in the communications building. They have a red level emergency message on the secure land line for you alone." Wonder Woman nodded, and left to see what the latest crisis could be. She stepped out the doorway, nodded to Sgt. Cooper and launched herself skyward, flying swiftly across the compound to the small building that held an assortment of communications gear. There were a large number of radio units, but there also was a special viewscreen that was connected to a underwater cable that had been run on the ocean floor. This had been done to assure that there was a method of contact with the Pentagon that could not be intercepted by the enemy. Diana sat at the screen, then asked all the others to exit the room. A message of this importance was for her alone. The screen lit up with the face of the Shady Lady. "Hola, Donna! What is wrong?" The Granite City crimebuster who was now working at the Pentagon to stop the Garath invaders had a concerned expression that worried the Amazon leader. "Diana, our intelligence intercepts and observers have passed us word of a big Garath raid that is coming down. They are loading now and will be airborne to hit their target with minutes. They..." The Princess interrupted her friend, fearful about the answer to what she was about to ask. "Wh...where are they going?" Donna had the gravest of faces as she gave the one answer Diana didn't want to hear. "They are coming back to Paradise Island, Diana. You can expect them in fifteen, twenty minutes at the most. They're going all out. You probably will face several hundred of them." Wonder Woman shuddered. That meant they would be badly outnumbered... unless... "Well, we have a chance if we can knock some of the shuttles out of the sky before they land. That could even the odds to the point where we will have a chance. We have the latest equipment here. Surface-to-air Stinger missles that can penetrate their shields. Radio jammers that will knock out the shields the ground forces use. We just got in the new sonic blockers that will project a pulse to cancel out their audio weapon. We will have to do what we can..." But she was not as confident as she tried to sound. What if the Garaths unveiled a new weapon, something that the Earth forces didn't have a counter-weapon for? This could be a disaster. Then Donna spoke. "Diana, after the Little Helena raid, you said you would do anything for me. I need to ask a big favor of you. Earth desperately needs those shuttles captured intact. All of them. I need you to allow them to land. You will have to take on the enemy on the ground. I would not ask this of you except it means a lot to the future of the war." Wonder Woman slumped back in her chair and stared at the screen for a bit. "Donna, you want me to take that big a risk with the lives of my sisters, the infants, and all these brave soldiers who came here? Can anything be that important? I am sorry, but I don't see how I can..." Shady Lady cut her off and told the full reason for the needed shuttles. Since she was on a secure land line, she told Wonder Woman about Operation Pinball and told her it was the biggest secret on the face of the Earth. Diana's jaw dropped at the news, and she gulped in a breath. "OK, Donna. I have to get ready for an important battle to try save the people here on Paradise Island. I hope I will survive to talk to you again."
Wonder Woman tried to calm the fear she felt in her mind, and she reached to the adjoining desk to grab a microphone. Flipping a switch, she spoke, with her voice booming out over loudspeakers set up thoughout the ruined city of Themyscira. "Attention! We have a red alert, the enemy has been reported on the way to attack us. All of you assemble at once in the main courtyard for a briefing." As soon as she exited the communications building she saw the women rushing to the area to hear details of the threat. "Everyone who can, dig in and set up defense positions. We are going to be overrun by a huge Garath attack very soon, and the only advantage we have is that we have been warned they are coming. Let's make the second battle of Themyscira a fight the historians will relate with pride to the children growing up here." Lt. Helen Dalton, a U.S. Ranger spoke up. "Well, we have everyone trained to use the shoulder mount Stinger missles that have been modified to take out Garath aircraft. As soon as we see those shuttles approach, we can pick some of them off and reduce their numbers before they..." Diana interrupted. "No!... the shuttles are not to be fired upon. They are to be allowed to land, and we will take on the Garaths..." The Lieutenant, and several others in the crowd, gasped. Dalton spoke. "Wonder Woman, that's madness! We have to..." Diana cut the argument off. "You have to follow orders, young woman. I am, by the right of inheritance and by the choice of the remaining Amazons, ruler of this island. You were told this fact when you came here and agreed to be subject to my authority. As a trained officer in the armed forces, I would expect you to follow orders. If you cannot do so, I will give you an inflatable raft and point you to the beach. You are welcome to paddle your way home." The officer's face reddened. "I... I apologize, your majesty. I spoke out of turn and will stay to help in the defense of this island." With this, the soldiers all nodded their heads and began planning where they would dig in to make their stand. Supergirl had been in the front of the crowd in her wheelchair, and she started to move to stand up. "The time has come for me to fight too..." But Dr. Carter moved over to Kara and put a hand on her shoulder. "No, you can't. The embryos in your body were implanted artificially and are not in a natural position. You were meant to be restrained all though the pregnancy and they didn't worry about you losing the children. But any kind of strain, even walking, might make you lose the fetuses." Kara sat back, dejected. She didn't want to do anything to jepeoadize the two girls she was carrying, but she didn't want to be kept out of this fight. Diana turned to a couple of her Amazon sisters. "Kieko, Nasarriene, join our sisters at the nursery. Pack the children up and move them down into the catacombs below the city. If things go badly, I want you to open the doorway to the Underworld and move the group down..." Nasarriene gasped. "My liege, you would place the children at the mercy of the horrors of the creatures in the lower depths?" Diana's head hung low as she answered. "I would hand the children over to those monsters before I would let the aliens get their hands on them!" Kieko and Nasarriene looked at each other, considered this, and nodded. But both of them gave a silent prayer that this option would not come to be their only path.
The women dug in, and were watching as the shuttles approached, circled, and began to land on the island. The Amazon Princess looked up and counted eleven shuttles and winced at the thought of how many enemy soldiers were sure to be on those craft. When the riparte formed up and began to advance on the city, the fighting swiftly became very intense. Although badly outnumbered, the women used the terrain to their advantage. The many partially destroyed structures left from the first battle of Themyscira offered the best possible cover. The Garath lasers would have ignited fires in wooden structures, and melted quickly therough metal. But the heavy stone work of the ancient Greek architecture afforded protection and resistence to laser fire. Transmitter units sent out a signal that jammed and knocked out the alien ground soldier's personal shields, so the attackers had to move very slowly. Any time they tried to get in too fast, when they were exposed they came under the fire of the women and went down. The Garaths tried to use their sonic disabler, but Paradise Island had received several on the new countermeasure audio machines that worked to perfection. Their wave of sound interferred and cancelled out the harmful sonics that would have incapacitated the women. But with all these things going well, the defenders still faced the fact that they were badly outnumbered.
Suddenly a Garath fighter aircraft swooped over the area, and using its extremely potent high-power laser fire, the pilot blasted the spot where the women had a heavy machine-gun emplacement holding back the Garath advance. The gun that was set up there was destroyed, along with a handful of soldiers manning it. The fighter swung out to the east, turned, and came back to attack another of the defenders' strongpoints. But in the ruins of a nearby building, Sgt. Elizabeth Cooper stood up with a missle tube resting on her shoulder. She sighted in on the approaching craft and flipped a switch. The Stinger roared to life and shot at the threat. The attacking pilot looked down for a few brief seconds and snorted, feeling himself immune to any such attack. But the modified Stinger missle had a small electronic transmitter built into the guidance system. Just before the thing struck, its signals jammed and turned off the shield the fighter had. The impact blew out the side of the fighter and crippled the engine. It spun down and exploded before it even reached the ground. The defenders gave out a joyous cheer at the sight. It was the first time a Garath fighter had been taken out in the months of the conflict, and it signified one more step in swinging the fortunes of war in Earth's favor. But it came at a terrible price. Transfixed by the sight of the enemy craft she'd destroyed, Sgt. Cooper had hesitated a little too long before ducking back behind cover. A Garath laser burst hit her flush in the chest and burned through her. She gasped in pain as she dropped to the ground. A number of the doctors on the island had been serving as medics among the fighting. One slithered down to where Betty had fallen, but found the severe wound had been instantly fatal for the young soldier.
A couple more of the Garath fighters were blasted from the sky, but the alien soldiers were still advancing slowly into the city and wounding or killing more and more of the defenders. The situation was getting critical and Diana knew they could not hold out much longer. She never even considered the idea of surrender, and she knew none of the women fighting here would allow herself to be taken by the Garaths. They all knew they would rather die than fall into the hands of the aliens. The Princess was about to send word to move the children into the Underworld, when she saw a pair of shuttles in the sky, approaching from the west. "Oh Great Hera!" She thought, "We can't take on even more of them." An Israeli officer who was in the trench near her also saw the new threat and nodded towards a crate of Stinger missles. But Diana shook her head. "No, I swore I would not fire on the shuttles." The soldier groaned, but obeyed orders. And they saw the two new shuttles land near the edge of the city.
But when the hatches opened on these craft, it was reinforcements for the islanders who streamed out. Star Girl, Azure Angel, Brazil's Fire and Atlanta's Brite Star swooped over the battle scene and blasted their powers at the Garath forces who were no longer immune to the powerful blasts. She Hulk, Black Canary, Vixen, Hellcat, Nightshade, Huntress and Glory Girl lead nearly a hundred heavily armed female soldiers to attack the rear of the Garath positions. Now the aliens were the ones overwhelmed and hard pressed by multiple attacks. Their resistance slowly crumbled under the new fervor of the Earth forces. A group of five Garaths moved to one side, trying to get out from the trap between the original island defenders and the reinforcements that had arrived. When they came to a small building, they burst in to find a young blonde woman sitting in her wheelchair. They rushed at her, and Kara resisted the thought of getting up and taking them on hand to hand. Instead she concentrated and broad red beams of searing hot light came from her eyes and blasted at the two closest to her. The riparte burst into flames and screamed. The other three turned in horror and ran back out of the shelter, where a group of advancing soldiers gunned them down. Before the last of the Garaths were wiped out, Earthan groups swept over and boarded all the other shuttles and captured them, killing or imprisoning the control crews. But afterwards, Diana moved about the ruins of the city and saw that dozens of the defenders, including two of her Amazon sisters, had died in the fighting, and many more were badly wounded. She shed tears and once again cursed the aliens for coming to Earth.
Dockaerzeon knocked on the door to the Maganite's quarters, then entered. The alien leader turned to ask in an agitated tone about the news he was most interested in. "Any word? Have they re-captured the Kryptonians or the pregnant sows? Why have we not been advised of their progress!" The kherzageg responded calmly. "Their early reports mentioned fierce resistence by those on the island. Then we lost contact. They are not replying to our messages. Visual recon from the transports in orbit report signs of very heavy fighting. The fact that we have lost contact this long means that our forces have probably been wiped out..." The Maganite took the glass of besalm he had been holding and threw it hard against the wall. It shattered, and the alien screamed. "NO! Get another batch of riparte packed into shuttles and get them out there!" The military commander was calm as he replied. "I won't do that. The enemy are alert and ready. We would be sending troops into a meat grinder and we no longer have soldiers to waste. I warned you we have a limited number of riparte. We must get more, and be cautious with the ones we have." The Maganite took a step towards Dockaerzeon and yelled, "What?... You will do as I say..." He brought up his hand and formed a fist. But he stopped as he saw the kherzageg put a hand on the handle of the handgun on his belt. Both of them froze at this act. The military commander did not pull the weapon from its holster. But he was signalling to his superior that he was not going to kowtow to the Maganite like all others had.
The Maganite tried to calm himself and turned away from his companion. He growled, "What are your suggestions?" Dockaerzeon accepted this. If he was making "suggestions," that meant the Maganite was still in charge. "We had barely enough soldiers to operate on this planet. With this defeat, we are in dire need. Get the home world to ship us reinforcements at all possible speed. The ones we have left will have to be held back for defense. If we get weakened much more, the Earthans will attack us here." The face of the Maganite visibly reacted to this. The kherzageg continued. "To continue to impose our will on the natives without endangering our soldiers, we can use the thermalizers. There are billions on this planet. Killing a few hundred million will teach them who their masters are." The Maganite nodded and sighed deeply. The huge profits he had seen on this expedition continued to diminish. "I will contact Garath-Prime about having soldiers rushed here. And... do up a detailed report on how the themalizers will be used." The kherzageg, having gotten these conditions from the alien who was his superior, bowed his head and turned to go. He thought of the fact that he was second in command on the expedition, and if anything happened to the Maganite... but no, that would no longer work. Any convenient death would look too suspicious, and when he returned to Garath-Prime the family Korevetar would challenge the death as wrongful. He would probably lose such a trial. That family did have political conections. A shame...
Batgirl tried to resist the crushing effect of the pain module as it inflicted continuing suffering to her entire body. While it was switched on, her eyes were shut tight and she was unable to hear or sense anything that was around her in the room. She lay there and endured the agony in every muscle, every nerve of her body. Suddenly, the pain stopped as the unit was switched off. Barbara gasped as her body still reverberated with the agony. But she opened her eyes and saw the Maganite standing over the table, leaning down to stare into her face. "Damn you, slave bitch, you tricked me! The forces I sent to regain the breeders fell into a trap and were wiped out.You will pay for this, god-damn it!" Batgirl tried to focus her mind, to shift the fog that still confused her. What could he be talking about? What had happened? Who had fought whom? Her muddled thoughts were interrupted as the angered alien leader grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head up from the table. She screamed as her neck, still sore, was wrenched to an severe angle. He bent his head close to her and she felt his hot breath against the side of her face. Could she be about to get what she'd prayed for? Would he kill her and end this misery? Her hopes were dashed as he muttered in her ear. "Oh, I see what you want. But no death will release you from my revenge, slave bitch!" He smashed her head back down against the table and moved to her left side.
"Let me tell you of the home world of the Empire. It is a wondrous place, with crowds of beautiful young samalans on display for the pleasure of the populace. And more slaves are shipped in every day, from all the worlds we have conquered. A new supply to refresh our enjoyment. But you never see old samalans about. You want to know why? Because when they start to age, when they are past their prime, they are taken away to the processing plants. And chopped up for food!" Barbara gasped at the horror of this statement. Thousands of Earth's women were on their way to that hellhole, and they would have to face years of rape and torture from their tormentors when they arrived. But to know that their fate was then to be butchered like livestock... That was too horrible to contemplate. She felt the Garath's hand on her left leg, and he slid a slab of wood under her calf. She looked down and saw he was holding a long, sharp weapon that looked like a machete. The restraint on her ankle kept her from moving her leg, so she was forced to watch as he swung the weapon high and brought it down at her. It went right through her leg at mid-calf, severing skin, muscle and bone easily. She screamed as she felt the quick amputation of a part of her body. The alien medical tech had been standing nearby and he jumped forward, using his equipment to tie off the severed artery and vein of the limb. In that short time, blood had
spurted out and covered part of the table and an area of the floor. The tech murmured "Great Sir, the damage is severe. She may not survive this attack..." The Maganite turned and growled at his lackey. "You will make sure she does stay alive, or you will die minutes after she does!" The tech kept working swiftly using a probe to sear and cauterize the stump of the severed limb. It stopped the bleeding, but also seared the nerve endings there. Barbara's screams grew louder and fiercer at the new agony she suffered. And she knew that this was not artificial pain fed into her mind and body by the module. This was true brutal punishment her body was enduring.
She looked down at the bloody stump of her leg and gasped and shuddered at the horror of what he had done to her. Then she saw the Maganite had moved to another table nearby, where the foot and portion of her leg he had removed were being carved by a third Garath individual. That one cut strips of muscle from her leg and laid them in a pan where she saw they were being seared. She could scarcely believe that the creature was actually cooking part of her flesh! The cook offered a plate of the material to the Maganite. The evil alien took a fork and moved a bit of the meat to his mouth. She saw him chew, savoring the mouthful of her flesh. He smiled. "Ahhh. If the slave is young, and the meat is fresh, the taste is the best. Most of Garath-Prime don't even care for the flesh of processed samalans. Tough. Stringy. Not very flavorful. They only eat it as ground meat. But after I was selected to lead this expedition, I was invited to the home of Lord Derahor to attend a birthday feast. When I saw them butchering the young samalans and preparing the delicacy for the guests, I found how the proper preparation can make this the finest of foods." He stepped closer to her and extended the fork with a bit of the meat on it. "But you should see for yourself. Would you like to taste it?"
As a prisoner, Barbara had not eaten. Her body was sustained by an intravenous solution that was given to her. So she had nothing in her stomach, but her body still tried to throw up. She gasped and screamed as she contorted her body with dry heaves. The smell of her own seared flesh waved in front of her face nauseated her more than she thought possible. The Maganite laughed at her misery, then finished his plate of samalan flesh. Batgirl fought to regain control, and finally managed to speak. "I... I won't tell you anything!" He chuckled at this, and leaned his face down near hers. She fought the gagging in her throat as she could smell her own roasted flesh on his breath. "It's too late for that, slave. I don't want you to talk anymore. I just want you to suffer." He turned from her and started to move towards the door. "I must go now. I will see you again, tomorrow... for supper."
Barbara broke down and sobbed as she contemplated her future, thinking of how she was to be slowly cut to pieces and the bastard would consume her flesh as she watched. She heard something, and opened her eyes again to glance over at the cook, who had carved more slices off her severed leg and had them sizzling in the pan. The medical tech looked over, and finally asked, "Is...is it really that good?" The cook nodded. "Fresh meat, seasoned correctly and prepared with care. You'll never taste anything better. Care to try a little?" The tech was taken aback at the suggestion. "Do we dare? Won't the Maganite want that for himself?' The cook shook his head. "No, he'll carve a fresh bit off tomorrow for his dinner. We can eat this, or it'll go to waste." So Barbara closed her eyes tight, but she shuddered as she could smell the cooked meat, and still heard the damned aliens enjoying their consumption of her body.
A day later, on Garath-Prime, Lord Derahor sat at his desk, reading and re-reading the printout of the message from the Maganite. He looked up to his secretary. "Ozadhark, did you see what these volcka crap have done? How am I to show a profit when the Maganite and the Kherzageg on this mission are such ztunk. They allow half of their riparte to be wiped out and beg for more. The cost will be horrid, but I will have to do it..." The alien's assistant nodded, then spoke. "There is an option you have available that may save money, your grace. The great expense will be in hiring transports. There are always many riparte on hand interested in going out to gather fresh pussy, but with the large number of transports that were contracted for this mission, and the normal collection runs being done at this time to other planets, transports are at a premium, and the transport guild would certainly demand an exhorbitant rate for a hire now when we need them badly. But if we delay a couple of weeks... the transports with the first shipments from Earth will arrive then. We can use our option to extend those contracts at the same rate..." Lord Derahor smiled. "Yes... an excellent suggestion. They will have to hold on a little longer."
TheGrand Hosavolar was one of the massive Garath transport ships in orbit over Earth, its crew waiting to add captured samalans to the long rows of hibernation chambers in the cargo bays. Delays in getting adequate females from the planet's surface were frustrating for Korgesovek, the officer in charge of the cargo. Early in the harvesting, he thought the ship would be filled and on its way back home so fast... but the trouble with contaminated slaves and then the stiff resistance from the Earthans meant the spaceship was stuck here, partially loaded, waiting to finish its job. Korgesovek was in the communications office when he heard the call come in. "Grand Hosavolar, this is shuttle CG786VR, can we drop a load of samalans?" The comm officer activated his microphone to reply. "CG786VR, we don't have any loads scheduled this morning, what the hell are you doing up here?" There was a moment of static before the reply came. "We had a rendevous set up with the Grand Zeckovasan, but they have a glitch in their shuttle landing guidance programming, and the god-damn volka crap told me to sit out here until he figured out how to get the program to work. Fuck, I'm not going to sit out here in orbit in a shuttle full of wailing samalans while he goes over every program module looking for the burnout. Can't you guys use a nice batch of fresh pussy? They're from the beaches of the place called Brazil, and they are all really sweet fucks." Korgesovek tapped the comm officer on the shoulder and gave him a positive nod, so the shuttle was advised to approach for automatic docking. The cargo officer smiled, as he relished getting more pussy stowed away and ready to ship. And the best part of his job was that he got to sample the sweetest cunts that came on board.
A cargo handler in the shuttle bay moved up to the craft that had just pulled in. He stood and waited as the hatch began to open, anxious to see the lovlies that were going to be added to their cargo. His nerves were on edge, he'd been waiting for a new shipment to come up from the surface. Maybe someone on the craft would have some of the choca for him to buy. It had been excruciating going without the material for the past week, and he wanted more of it so bad! But suddenly a gloved hand reached out, grabbed him and pulled him into the craft. He had the briefest of glimpses of a short, muscular male figure clad in yellow and black before a set of razor sharp claws raked his throat and quickly, silently ended his life. Logan glanced out the hatch and saw a few other Garath workers in the shuttlebay, and he charged out to attack and silence them swiftly. In the cargo bay control center, the jedant (officer) in charge had been looking over the readouts to make sure the automated docking systems had properly brought the shuttle into the parking cradle when he glanced up through the window and saw Wolverine take out the last of the Garaths who were near the craft. He was stunned at the sight of this, and reached towards the console to hit the alarm button. But a young woman phased right through the wall near him and smashed him over the head with a weighted club. Kitty Pryde looked out the window and gave Logan the thumbs up symbol when he looked over at her, and he returned a grin. Thirty Japanese commandoes exited the shuttle and moved to the doorway that led into the corridors to the transport interior. Wolverine took the lead as they moved through the corridors to the command center. They knew exactly what path to take, as the files that Earth espionage units had stolen had included a full set of plans for the huge transport.
A dozen more soldiers and Shadowcat stayed in the cargo bay to secure that area. Captain Zinda Blake came out of the shuttle the Earth forces had used to sneak into the transport and saw there were five other shuttles parked in the huge bay. She turned to the three men behind her. "O.K. boys. You've each been trained how to do this. Each of you take one of those other shuttles and get it activated and ready to go." Back at their original shuttle's controls, a communications expert sent a message back to Earth. "Pinball Wizard, this is Unit Rose Red. We are in. We are rolling to the bumpers and have nothing but flashing lights on our board. Will be able to rack up points with the five bonus balls we have earned!" These coded words would let the people in charge of the mission back on the surface know that everything was going well, and that five more shuttles had been seized up here. In the corridors, Wolverine and the men he lead occasionally ran into Garath workers or crew members. But most of them were unarmed. There was hardly any need to carry a sidearm up here! These were killed or subdued. They did run into a couple of riparte who were armed with lasers, but the aliens were hesitant to fire. They had been trained over and over that weapons should not be discharged while on the transports. A wayward shot could easily breach the hull and cause the area to decompress, resulting in the death of the person who fired the weapon and anyone in the vicinity. The commandoes had no reason to hesitate, as they had been equipped with modified tazer units. When they ran into an enemy, they fired their weapons which sent out a small dart that trailed a fine wire. As it hit the target, a huge charge of electricity jolted the target and knocked him out. Logan's group soon burst into the transport command center and captured the command crew. None of these Garaths did anything to resist, as an attack here by a group of bloodthirsty Earthans was the last thing they expected. One of the commandoes moved to a microphone at the console and made an announcement in the Garath tongue that rang through the entire ship. "This ship has been seized by the armed forces of Earth. Half of the compartments are under our control and any Garaths remaining at large are advised to surrender themselves at once. Any resistance we encounter will be dealt with most harshly. Any of you who resist us will be castrated upon capture." Logan smiled. That statement would terrify the Garaths on the transport. He could see it in the eyes of the ones that were prisoners here in the command center. The psych officers on Earth who had questioned the captured Garaths down there had soon discovered the horny bastards were totally terrified of castration. They would not do anything to resist if they thought they might end up minus their balls.
In a situation room deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, the President of the United States, members of Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and many other high-ranking officers of the United States and other countries were observing the unfolding elements of Operation Pinball. Banks of communications desks were monitoring the reports coming in and a large digital screen showed the status of the fourteen attack groups. A captain at one of the desks turned to Colonel Donna Hooper, who was in charge of the operation. "Maam, the group code-named Emerald Green just reported in. They are on their transport, proceeding with little resistance from the enemy. They have the command center and report finding four shuttles." Donna let out a breath she had been holding in. That was the last group to report in, and she had been worried as her daughter, Glory Girl, had been in that group, along with Dynamo, Plastic Man and forty-six Army Rangers. She turned to her high-ranking audience and spoke. "Mr. President, ladies, gentlemen. All fourteen of our groups have reported in. They have captured scores of shuttlecraft on the transports, and have all encounted minimal resistance from the Garaths up there..." A Commander Nigel Ascot who was there as a representative of the Military Attache of the British Embassy interrupted. "Good heavens, why is this going so well? Even with the super-powered individuals in each group, there are less than fifty people in each of the attack groups. How can they be taking out the transport crews so easily?" The Shady Lady waited to see if any of her superior officers would reply, and when they didn't, she spoke. "We can thank all those times on the surface when our people all over the world fought hard even when totally outmatched. The losses the aliens have sustained down here resulted in the Garath military commander calling up to service anyone on the transports with any prior experience as a soldier. They gutted what little defenses they had up there. And the element of surprise has always served us well against these creatures. Anytime we do something they don't expect of us, we totally kick their butts." She turned back to take a report from one of the radio men. "Unit Royal Blue reports they have started freeing the women on their transport from the hibernation chambers and are loading them on the shuttles to return them to Earth. They report three shuttles will depart within minutes for Millenium Stadium in Cardiff." Commander Ascot smiled at this report. Royal Blue was one of two raiding groups made up of British commandoes involved in Operation Pinball. Each of the fourteen groups had been assigned a huge domed sports facility on Earth. That was where they would move their rescued women. The women would be kept in these facilities until they were identified, given full medical checkups, and then given a chance to go home.
On another one of the transports, the attack group codenamed Canary Yellow had subdued the alien crew and were moving the rescued women from the hibernation chambers to the shuttles. Captured Garaths were being sent to the chambers to be placed into statis sleep. This would be the easiest way to imprison them and would require minimal guarding. Azure Angel, Sasquatch and forty-five members of a crack Canadian anti-terrorism military unit had moved smoothly in their attack and taken control of the spacecraft. Angelica was excited. Down deep she had worried that something might go wrong, and she was trying to let the total success of what they had attempted sink in. Suddenly the Garath she was marching down the corridor encountered one of the freed women. The blonde ex-slave looked over at the Garath crewman and stopped. "You... you raped me! Over and over!" She came at the alien, flailing away with her fists. But she was still weakened from being revived from the sleep chamber, and her blows were light and not capable of harming the Garath. He reached up and pushed her away, and she fell back to the floor. Angelica sprang towards the woman and dropped to a knee to make sure she had not been injured. When she saw the lady was alright, Azure Angel got up and spun to face the Garath. She put her left hand out and pushed him back against the bulkhead. Her right arm came up and she pressed her forearm against his neck, pinning him to the wall. She shouted in his face, "ASSHOLE, YOU WILL NEVER DO ANYTHING TO HARM A HUMAN FEMALE AGAIN!" The alien looked back into her eyes, and she could see he was terrified. He gasped out a reply. "But... I was only protecting myself... she came at me and..." Angel pushed hard at the thing's neck, cutting off his speech. "That doesn't matter. You ever raise a hand against one of our women again, and I'll tear your balls off with my bare hands." She released him and pushed him down the corridor towards the sleep bays. She followed him for about thirty feet, as he slunk along, glancing back at her and trembling all over from abject terror. Angelica paused finally as she realised that she was shaking a little herself from the anger that had taken over her. For a second she'd wanted to kill that scum, and she knew she would never have regretted it if she'd gone through with it. That stunned her. A couple of months ago she would have never thought herself capable of such a thing. She took several deep breaths to calm down. Looking down the corridor, the alien was out of sight. A couple of women were moving towards her, and she wondered if she could help them to the shuttle bay. A young auburn haired girl was limping along, and a dark haired, ruddy complexioned young woman was helping her along. Angelica looked closer at their faces and suddenly was shocked. "Hollie!" The native american woman, Angelica's college room-mate looked up to see her best friend. "Ang... Angie? Oh my God..." The two girls ran towards each other in the corridor and embraced. Tears were running down Angelica's face as she stammered. "Oh, Hollie. I never thought I'd ever see you again!" Holaki Meoquanee also had tears on her face as she tried to speak. "I... I never... I never thought I would ever... You came up here to save me? Holy shit..." She was smiling, and she suddenly chuckled. "What, is it time for midterms already? Did you come up here to get me so I could help you cram for Professor Alderson's physics exam?" The two friends went back to help the girl with the limp, and moved to the shuttlebay as Angelica amazed her friend with tales of the recent events of the war.
In the corridors of the Grand Fezashclan, Fire, J'onn J'onzz and thirty US Marines had cleared out the Garath defenders of the transport as part of unit Crystal Blue. Kimberly Possible, her partner Ron and another dozen leathernecks had held the shuttle bay and now were preparing to send the shuttles they captured Earthward with the women that were being freed from the sleep chambers. One of the men who had been trained to fly the alien shuttlecraft was Hal Jordan, a test pilot from California. He'd worked hard to concentrate on the mission, which had not been easy. Growing up, he dreamed someday of traveling in outer space, and here he was! He forced himself to calm down, and watched the console gauges on the shuttle he'd been assigned to pilot. Behind the cockpit, he heard the women, babbling about their good fortune. He smiled at the thought of all these poor victims getting their lives back. Then he tapped a control a might to improve the power settings on the engines. He allowed the automated controls to lift the shuttle out of the docking bay and push it out into space. Just as he had on the way up, Hal gasped in amazement at the sight of Earth from orbit. Then he took the control yoke and moved the shuttle into a trajectory to return to Earth and take the rescued women to Minute Maid Park in Houston where help was waiting for them.
Since the transport was secure, Ron and Kim moved down one of the corridors to help the women along to the shuttle bay. They passed the groups of young ladies who were moving along quickly, for the most part. Occasionally there would be a lady who was still weak from the awakening or a little hysterical, but these people had companions who were helping them along. The women all wore a long pullover shirt that had been distributed to each one as they were freed. In the planning for these raids, it had been thought of early that the women would be naked and the bit of clothing would do a lot to lift their spirits. Kim stopped suddenly, shocked at whom she encountered. "Well, it's about god-damned fuckin' time you got her, Kimberly Ann! Where the shit have you been? I have been stuck in this god-damned hell for I don't know how long..." Kim stared at the angry brown-haired young lady and stammered at the girl who had been a bitch towards her all through high school... "Bonnie? You were up here? We..." Bonnie Rockwaller stormed over and started poking her finger in Kim's chest. "You're supposed to be the big honking hero, coming to the rescue of everybody. Fuck, you probably took you own sweet-ass time getting around to me, you ass-hole bitch! Acck!" Bonnie suddenly gave a jerk and crumpled to the floor. Kim looked down and saw the dart sticking in her rump, with the fine wire trailing back to the tazer unit in Ron's hand. With a horrified look, she gasped out, "Ron, how could you do that?" Ron Stoppable had a sly grin as he bent down, picked up Bonnie's slim figure, and swung her over his shoulder. "Gee whiz, KP. She could have just said thank you. But she seemed to be hysterical, and why don't we just describe it as an accidental weapons discharge? Do we take her back to the sleep chamber?" Kim quickly gasped out, "NO! But I suppose it won't hurt to just load her on the shuttle and let the people back on Earth wake her up. I think she's more sociable when she's knocked out!" Kim turned, and looked to see if anyone else needed a hand. Ron turned to go back to the shuttlebay, and shifted the weight on his shoulder. He put his other hand up to steady the weight, and it slid under the shirt and came to rest on Bonnie's nice, firm, shapely ass. He couldn't help notice she had as fine a rump as KP did. Well, they wereboth ex-cheerleaders. As he walked back down the corridor, his hand stayed up in intimate contact with the butt-cheeks of the woman. Merely to keep her secure. At least that's what he would have told Kim.
Back at the Pentagon Command Center, reports were streaming in about loads of rescued women being moved to the holding areas on the surface. More trained pilots had been sent up to use the captured shuttles. Tens of thousands of women would have to be identified, debriefed and helped to recover from their ordeal. Their injuries, both physical and mental, would require a lot of care. Donna finally found herself with a break in the frantic action, and went to a communications desk. She activated the secure comm link to Themyscira and Princess Diana was waiting for her call. Diana had wanted to go on one of the raiding units, but knew she had to stay on Paradise Island to protect the women and infants who now depended on her. Wonder Woman spoke anxiously. "Well, how did things go?" Donna smiled. "Everthing went smoothly. It's as big a success as we hoped it would be. Thanks to the eleven shuttles we captured on their Paradise Island raid, we were able to send up fourteen attack groups and they each captured one of the twenty-six transports that are in orbit. Thousands of women are being freed from the hibernation chambers they were in and are being returned to Earth." On the screen, Donna Hooper saw the Amazon ruler was very pleased to hear this news. "And there's more, Diana. I have just early reports with no exact figures, but several of the attack groups mentioned that they found some of your Amazon sisters among the rescued." At this, Diana was shocked. She thought her family had all been sent back to Garath-Prime already on the batches of transports that had departed earlier. She could scarely contain the immense joy she felt at this news. "Oh Donna... thank you, thank you again for doing this for me. I will never forget... If there is ever anything I can do..." The Shady Lady smiled. "Yes, Diana, I know. Well, I have to get back to covering the operation here. I will speak with you more later, when I have details about your people." Ending the call, Donna knew that people all over the world were going to be just as happy as their wives, mothers, daughters and sisters were returned to them. The war was not over, but this was the most triumphant day yet!
But there was no celebrating that day in Riverdale. In a light drizzle, Hal and Alice Cooper stood in the cemetary as a military contingent laid to rest Sgt. Elizabeth Cooper. Her brother Chic and her sister Polly were there to shed tears and to support their parents in their time of grief. The priest said a few words about how Betty had been a fine young woman, loved by everyone who knew her as she grew up, and how proud everyone was about what she had done while in the service. The Vice President was there to hand to her parents the Silver Star she had been awarded posthumously. The honor guard fired their rifles in the air in salute as a bugler played "Taps." And two of the honor guard folded up the flag on her casket and handed it to Alice Cooper, who sobbed heavily and had to be helped to stay upright. The crowds thinned and left the cemetary to go to a reception where friends and family could help each other come to terms with their loss. But for awhile after the others left, one young man still stayed and stood in the rain next to Betty's grave. The red-haired fellow dropped a single red rose in the dirt and mourned deeply the loss of his best friend.
The commander of the transport fleet had been in San Juan when word came about the Earthan attacks. He hurried to the Maganite's quarters where he found the Great One and the kherzageg in heated discussion about this new disaster. "Great Sir! I must be allowed to move the remaining transports out of Earth orbit. They cannot be left where the enemy can get at them!" The Maganite turned to reply with rage in his voice. "NO! You will stay here where you are needed. You are under my command, and if you leave orbit it will be considered an act of mutiny. When you returned to Garath-Prime, the officers of any offending ship would be executed!" Then Dockaerzeon spoke up, calmly. "The transports fell because their crews were not using any precautions at all. They allowed the attackers to walk right in, the ztunk. If your ships set up high security, they should be fine. They are armed with high power lasers to take out space debris in their path..." The panicked trade commander broke in. "But the shuttles have our force shields, the lasers would be ineffective!" Dockaerzeon sighed. "Think, you fool. When a shuttle approaches for docking, it can only come on board through the automatic system. And part of that procedure shuts off the shields before bringing the unit into the docking bay. If any shuttle tries to get on board, you can blast it to pieces. All you have to do is take great care about which shuttles you allow to dock." This calmed down the merchant and he bowed, announcing he would get back up to his craft and be sure the transports that were still in Garath hands would implement the high security measures. Dockaerzeon turned to the Maganite. "Great sir, have you received word that the added troops are on their way here?" The alien shook his head. "I have not gotten word, but I am sure the troops are en route." The kherzageg hoped that was the case. "The policy I spoke to you about will have to be implemented now. The first strikes will be three thermalizers that will take out the urban centers designated Los Angeles, Tokyo and Rome. They are high population areas located around the globe. Then every few days we shall take out another city until the humans beg us to stop. We can start this within a day or two..." The Maganite interrupted. "No, we will hold off for a short time. The Conquest Day celebration and the initial sales of Earth Samalans on Garath-Prime will occur very soon, and if we use the weapons before then, it will be news back home, and it may disturb the auctions. The day after the ceremony you can start your massacres." Dockaerzeon considered this, and thought it would not be a problem. He wanted to start wiping out the stubborn humans, but he was dependent on the profits of this endeavor. "Very well, Great Sir."
Soon Dockaerzeon was on a shuttle approaching the Grand Dezolianian to pick up the destructive weapons he wanted. As the shuttle hovered nearby, signals went back and forth, verifying the people inside were Garath personnel and not attacking humans. This took some time, but the kherzageg was patient. These procedures were necessary, and should have been implemented earlier. When the craft finally docked, the hatch opened to allow the officer to see a line of ship's personnel with guns drawn to cover the inhabitants of the shuttle as they disembarked. Good, he thought. This is the way things should be done. With the captain of the transport, the kherzageg went deep to the center of the ship. They approached a massive titanium vault. On this expedition, only the Maganite had authorization to open the repository. Dockaerzeon took the keycard that the Maganite had given him and slipped it into the proper slot. He punched a code sequence into a keypad, and the vault checked the information on the card, the exact metallic composition of the card, and the sequence on the keypad. Once all of these were verified, the massive door began to slowly open. Inside were rows and rows of metal tubes, each about half the size of a coffin. There were hundreds, and Dockaerzeon ordered a dozen of them moved to his shuttle. As one moved out, he ran his hand over its sleek finish and enjoyed the sensation of death incarnate. As the load was secured, he told the shuttle pilot to move quickly. He wanted to get back to San Juan.
Just after that shuttle left the Grand Dezolianian, the crew on another transport that was still in Garath hands was also on high security alert. They constantly scanned the area around their craft. One of the scanner crew looked at his screen and thought he saw a ripple in the viewscreen. But it was only there for an instant. It was gone, and it could not have been anything. It was close enough that the crewmen in the view ports who were on duty would had spotted it, whatever it was. But out in space, a short distance from the Grand Tochobezorrd, there was a shuttle slowly closing. Designed to carry fifty, there were nearly seventy packed into this craft. Just behind pilot Zinda Blake sat Sue Richards. The Invisible Woman was under severe strain as she used her powers to cloak the shuttle from view. It was easy to make it invisible, but she had to labor to use her powers to shield the craft from detection by the radar and other scanners the aliens used. Zinda moved the shuttle close to the transport and lightly touched down, with every person of the craft jumping a mite as the two craft clicked together. The pilot flipped a switch that would magnetically bond the two ships together. Sue groaned as she brought up a force field bubble to enclose the shuttle area. Sweat dripped down her face and she winced as she felt pain in the part of her chest where her wounds had not totally healed. A combat medic took a moist towel and wiped the heroine's face. "Hold on a little more, Ms. Richards. We're nearly ready to go." Zinda flipped another switch and air from a reserve tank hissed into the vacuum in the bubble that surrounded the craft. Inside the shuttle, Kitty Pryde grasped Wolverine with her right hand, and Eve Eden with her left. Shadowcat moved through the hull of the shuttle to the hull of the transport. She pulled her companions through the walls into a corridor inside their target. Wolverine took a sniff of the air. "We're clear. There's no scent of anyone close by." Nightshade gestured, and the corridor became very dark. Quickly, Kitty moved back and forth, bringing a couple of Army Rangers over from the shuttle on each trip. When the attack group had all been moved inside, Wolverine and Nightshade led them down the corridors to the command center. Eve materialized a scimtar of pure darkness in her hand, and Logan extended his claws. Bursting into the bridge of the ship, they cut the individuals there to ribbons. The soldiers who followed dragged the bodies to the side and took their places at the control panels. Everyone had been carefully briefed on what each control panel was for. They flipped switches, and lights bgan to flicker and go dark all over the ship. One of the Rangers, trained in the Garath tongue, announced over the ship's intercom. "We have a slight problem with the electrical system. All personnel are to remain at their duty stations and to keep intercoms clear for emergency traffic." Most of the rest of the Rangers donned infra-red goggles and spread through the ship, creeping up and knocking out the Garaths with their tasers. Some of the soldiers went with Logan and Eve to seize the docking bay. It would have been difficult, but all the Garaths on alert there had been watching for an attack from outside, not from behind. Once the bay was in the hands of the Earth forces, the shuttle was brought on board. Not one of the attackers had been injured, so the medics concentrated on finding a spot where Sue Richards could lay down and try to regain her strength.
Once a coded signal was sent to Earth, another pair of shuttles arrived at the Grand Tochobezorrd and brought further soldiers to garrison the ship and extra pilots to man the shuttles in the docking bay. Prisoners were released from the hibernation bays and prepared to go back to Earth. The original attack force re-assembled in the bay. Plans called for the procedure to be repeated against another target if they were successful. But Logan looked over at the Invisible Woman. "Sue, are you alright? You don't look very well, and we need you to pull this off." Sue Richards took a deep breath. "I've been better. But I'm good to go." So the shuttle moved out, and unseen, came up to the Grand Dezolianian. Again the plan went off without a hitch, and the Earth forces seized another one of the massive Garath transports. The medic again spent his time looking over Ms. Richards, who was very pale and in obvious pain. Nightshade put a hand on the woman's shoulder. "Take it easy, Sue. You're in no shape to do this again. We'll let you rest a while, then see what kind of shape you are in. We've done enough for one day." But a short time later, one of the Rangers trained to converse in the Garath language overheard a frightening statement. As the freed women were moving from the hibernation units and the Garath prisoners were being put into the sleep chambers, one riparte made a comment. The soldier grabbed the alien and pushing him against the bulkhead. A knife was pressed against the alien's neck. "What did you just say?" The riparte kept his mouth shut. So the Ranger moved the knife down and slashed open the thing's trousers. He put the knife alongside the thing's balls and repeated his question. The riparte grew terror-stricken, and spoke. "I... I said you humans would be incinerated, an entire city at a time!" Pulling the details of this out of the prisoner, the soldier rushed to the command deck and spoke to Eve Eden. She at once broke radio silence and contacted the Shady Lady at the Pentagon. "Donna! They have some kind of super-nukes up here on the transports, and the Garath military commander just transfered a dozen to their surface base. From what they say up here one bomb vaporizes an area nearly 300 miles in diameter."
A group of people assembled at the Pentagon to go over the material that the raid had found on Grand Dezolianian. General Knowlen asked, "Are we sure this information is correct? Is there any way it could have been translated incorrectly or planted to confuse us?" Donna Hooper shook her head. "No, they didn't expect us to take the transport, so they wouldn't have planted anything that way. And the linguistics people are sure that they correctly got what the log entries said." The President cursed. "God-damn it! Earth in the past has had times where terror was used to conquer, I guess we should not be surprised to see these damned aliens are capable of doing the same. Are these figures that estimate the destruction really possible?" The group looked up at a large teleconferencing screen where Reed Richards and Lex Luthor were connected to the meeting. Luthor answered. "It looks all too possible, Mr. President. They have a weapon based on fusion, unlike our nukes that use nuclear fission. The destruction is exponentially higher." The President sat for a minute, contemplating how the conflict had suddenly taken a horrible turn. "The Garath forces have stopped sending out raids, and are hunkering down in San Juan. Long range scans have shown the transports that were still in Garath hands have suddenly left Earth orbit and are moving away. The Maganite has not evacuated his forces, so they are not giving up. With these new bombs, they will try to force us to surrender. Can we do that? Right now, all of you agree that we can't. But what are we going to do if our major cities, with millions of people, get wiped off the map? Could that break us? General, we have to take San Juan!"
The general paused a minute before he replied. "OK, Mr. President. That's obvious. But if we see that we have to do this, so does the enemy. They are going to dig in and fortify that city and wait for us. When we go into the city, it will be a meat grinder. Can we just nuke the place?" The President just shook his head. "They have thousands of prisoners there, and if we did that, the enemy may still survive enough to send out those super-bombs in retaliation. Those energy shields might protect them from even an atomic blast. We have to go in, and we have to do it soon. If we wait, somewhere a city will disappear." General Knowlen turned to Donna Hooper. "Colonel, what are your first thoughts about this course of action?" The Shady Lady shivered as she contemplated the problem. "We will need to get huge numbers of powered individuals and regular troops into the area in a big massive strike. Our aircraft are still vulnerable to their fighters, so we would have to use the Garath shuttles we've captured to land our people on the island and into the city. We can stage forces to Florida, the Carribean and South America before we run them in to the attack. There is one thing we can take advantage of. It will take time for us to get this attack ready. In seven days the Garaths have a plan to do something called a Conquest Day celebration. It marks the day when the first shipments of Earth women will arrive on Garath-Prime and the event includes a communications hookup from here out to the other Garath worlds. Part of San Juan will be occupied that day with those events. Plus if we strike at that time, all of the Garath Empire will see what we are made of." The men about the table nodded in agreement at her suggestions. Another of the tele-coferencing monitors had the face of Princess Diana, who was also part of the meeting. "If that is the case, I would like to propose that the central location where the Maganite will be holding his little event be assaulted by a select group of individuals. I would like to lead this attack myself, and have it consist of powered heroines leading female soldiers." The President broke in. "Your Majesty, I know you have suffered greatly and have many reasons to hate the enemy. But you cannot forget we are all in this struggle together. Why should this particular task be yours alone?" Diana replied. "This battle is to take back our world, sir. And it will also show the Garaths that we are not put here to be their slaves. If part of this is to be broadcast out to the other worlds of their evil empire, we can send them an even more impressive message if the see Earth femalestake out that final stongpoint." The President thought this over, and nodded. "Makes sense, your Majesty. We'll include that in our plans. Colonel Hooper, you've done very well in the past. You won't have a lot of time, but get this operation ready to go and give us a chance to bring freedom back to Earth. Dismissed."
Down in the target city of San Juan, another meeting was being held. The Maganite stormed about the conference room, screaming and smashing anything he picked up. "How could those damned transports all abandon us! Every one of those ztunk will get their punishment when they get back to Garath-Prime! I hope they all suffer the tortures of hell!" The rest of the members of his staff cringed as they sat around the table, fearful to speak when the Maganite was so enraged. An exception was the kherzageg who stood on one side. Dockaerzeon was also mad at the transport captains for running out on them, but he held his anger in, unlike the idiot who was in charge. "Great One, they used an obscure rule that says they can pull their craft back in cases of extreme danger. When they get home, the courts will have to determine if their actions were proper, and the political connections of the transport guild will certainly come into play. That is something in the future. We have other events that are much more important. The Earthans have us trapped here, and they will certainly attack us. I will strive to fortify this city to hold out for the riparte that are on their way to reinforce us. The themalizers we have will stike a sharp blow to the Earthans. If enough of them die, their resistance may vanish." For an instant, Dockaerzeon thought of asking the Maganite if he could send out the bombing missions early, instead of waiting until after the Conquest Day. But seeing the mood the fool was in, he didn't think he would get the idiot to agree to this. And what difference would a fews days make?
The force that attacked the city of San Juan was very international. Every soldier in every military unit in every country begged to be part of the fight, as the battle was to determine the fate of Earth's future. Although the organization and planning for the campaign were handled by the United States, the politicians used their voices to make sure units from all over the world were going to be allowed to go into the assault. American, British, Japanese, Russian, French and Chinese soldiers were only a part of the millions of men and women who were moved to temporary quarters in Florida, Haiti, Venezuala and Cuba where they staged for the attack. Earth aircraft were still vulnerable to the Garath fighters, so all of the forces were going to be carried into Puerto Rico via the many shuttles that had been captured during the assaults on the alien transport ships. The Earth forces now had quite a few of the shuttles, and plans called for the craft to drop off attacking units in and around San Juan, then keep shuttling back and forth, throwing more and more men into the fight. Despite all the losses the aliens had taken in their past encounters with Earth defenders, they still had a sizeable presence and in this battle they would be the ones using defense positions. The fight would be hard, and very bloody. But still millions of servicemen and women from all over the globe begged to be part of the attack.
The first attack waves were dropped on the outskirts of the city. They formed up and readied to move in. Garath attack fighters were launched at Luiz Munoz Marin International Airport, but they could not penetrate the protective force shields on the shuttles. The Garaths had never planned on battling a foe that was capable of using the Garath defensive powers. When the attack fighters moved to fire their lazers at the troops on the ground, the craft were blown to pieces. Shoulder mounted anti-aircraft missles deployed to the attack units all featured guidance units that had been modified to jam and eliminate the Garath force shields. American FIM-92 Stingers, Chinese Anzas, French Mistrals and Russian Sa-16 Gimlets all roared skyward and smashed into the Garath fighters, blowing them out of the sky. When the highly maneuverable fighters tried to dodge the missles they could hardly do so as the weapons steaked through the sky at them from three or four different angles.
Dockaerzeon began looking over the reports as soon as the Earthans started landing around the city. He saw the enemy were countering the attack fighters and they would soon hugely outnumber the forces defending the city. He knew quickly that his position was hopeless. He resolved that the enemy would not capture him, he would make sure he died in battle, as a professional soldier should. He would be reviled in days to come as the Garath military leader who suffered the worst defeat in the history of the Empire, but he would not be a prisoner. He put a call through to the jidante in charge of the fighters based at the airport. "Get the attack craft that are loaded with the thermalizers into the air. Instead of tomorrow, I want them to go now!" The jidante agreed, and promised they would launch at once. But after he hung up, he checked and found the fighters were ready to go, but only one of the special pilots assigned and briefed for the missions was at the airport. Since the flights had been scheduled for the next day, two of them had gone into town to join in the Conquest Day celebrations. The officer sent riparte to find the missing fliers and summoned the pilot who was available. "Take your aircraft readied for the strike mission and proceed to your target. Strike and teach these Earthans what kind of destruction their resistance will bring to them!" The pilot went to the attack craft and took off, pulling back and streaking high into the sky before he turned west. The officer reported to the kherzageg that one of the three craft were on their way, and said the others would fly as soon as the needed pilots reported to the airport. Dockaerzeon smiled. If he was fated to die this day, millions of these damned Earthans would follow hm to the next life. But then he considered the problem of finding the two missing pilots in the city. In the confusion, that might not be possible. If these two bombs were not going to be deployed... as a command officer, he had been briefed on thermalizer use. The nine bombs still down in the bunker were not armed for use, but the two on the other planes were. Using a special control sequence, he could set one of them on a timer detonation procedure. With a five second countdown, he could destroy the entire island and take all these damned Earthans with him!
Wave after wave of captured Garath shuttles poured into the outskirts of San Juan and disgorged costumed characters and military units that entered the streets of the city, killing or capturing any of the aliens who got in their way. Resistence varied from area to area. Trained riparte took advantage of the cover they had and fought hard, resisting the invaders and fighting to hold the area they controlled. But the aliens who had been pressed into service from the transport crews had less steel in their spines. Many of these fought for only a little while before throwing down their weapons and surrendering. The Earthans who moved in never knew what kind of resistence they would encounter around the next corner. Wendigo, alongside the Green Lama, led a unit of Spanish marine commandos into an area on the west edge of the city. They'd faced a couple of stiff pockets of resistence and taken heavy casualties, but they had also sent plenty of prisoners back to a holding area that had been set up for Garaths who surrendered. They broke through the Garath riparte and seized a few buildings where dozens of women were confined, serving as slaves to the Garath occupation. The radio operator passed word back to the tactical hq and another unit of soldiers was sent up to escort the freed women back to safety.
Nightwing and the Huntress led a force of sixty Mexican soldiers as one of the many groups fighting to clear the Garath invaders from San Juan. Helena Bertinelli had been disappointed to learn she had given this assignment. She had hoped to be part of Wonder Woman's special attack force that would be targeting the main hall to face the Maganite. But Huntress had reconciled herself to the fact that there were many jobs to be done to crush the last of the Garath occupation, and she had looked forward to working alongside Dick Grayson once more. Alongside an attack group made up of the Thing, Plastic Man and fifty U.S. Navy Seals, they smashed through riparte fighting on the north edge of downtown San Juan. The two groups split to clean out a pair of buildings devoted to medical purposes, and they were able to free many doctors and nurses forced into service by the aliens, as well as prisoners who were there waiting to be operated on. Garaths they captured were sent to the one part of the city where a holding area had been set up for prisoners, and the people rescued were moved out to an area where they would be safe until they were transferred to outgoing shuttles to get them part way home. Every shuttle that came in with a load of troops left with freed women or some of the many casualties that the invaders were sustaining. Dick and Helena moved into the upper floors of the building they were clearing, trying to control the anger they felt as they saw what kind of horrid treatment the prisoners had endured.
Nightwing came to a doorway and paused to check it. He heard some activity inside, and waited for a few of the soldiers to catch up before he kicked open the door. Inside was a room with an assortment of medical equipment lining the walls, and a sight that caused Dick to pause. In the
center of the room was a young nude woman bound to the top of a padded table. A Garath dressed as a medical tech was standing by her, and Dick was horrified to see the woman, whose disheveled red hair was obscuring her face, had both legs amputated at mid-thigh. A small plastic unit, the size of a cigarette pack, was on her crotch, with wires running to a control panel held by the alien medic. The lights on the unit blinked, it vibrated,and the victim twitched and moaned. Dick pointed and spoke angrily to the Garath. "Turn that damned thing off! My God, what have you done to this poor woman?" The frightened tech obeyed, and Nightwing slowly moved towards him, keeping careful watch on the fellow in case he tried anything. As he did so, the tortured woman opened her eyes and gasped out. "Dick... Is that you. Oh god... I never thought there was a chance I'd ever see you again..." Nightwing stopped suddenly, in shock at those words. The only person this could be was... "Barbara? Oh Jeez, what did they do to you?" Batgirl groaned before answering, as it hurt so much to breathe, let alone speak. "They did every horrible thing you could imagine... and more. They cut off my legs, a bit at a time, and made me watch while they cooked and ate them..." Nightwing's body sagged as he tried to contemplate such a horror. He could not bring himself to react to what she'd told him. But in the doorway, Huntress had also heard Barbara's words, and the Gotham Avenger's anger grew and consumed her. She moved to the Garath and began to punch and pummel him mercilessly. After a minute, the bloodied alien slumped to the floor and crouched in fear. Huntress stepped back, drew her crossbow from its belt pouch, and flipped a catch. The crossarms popped out and a bolt slid into place, ready to fire. She aimed it at the torturer and her finger went to the trigger. Nightwing turned around and saw what she planned. He stepped over, between Helana and her target, and as he did so he yelled out into the corridor. "We need some medics in here! RIGHT NOW!" He looked into Huntress' eyes and fought to be calm as he spoke. "He's down. I won't let you do that, damnit! We don't play by those rules. We are better than they are!" For a couple of minutes, the two Gotham crimefighters stared into each other's eyes. A pair of medics came in, saw Batgirl and hurried to try to help her. Finally, Helena lowered the crossbow to her side. Nightwing let out the breath he'd been holding in, and moved to the doorway. "Come on. There's still a battle going on out here." He stepped out, and Huntress moved to follow. But as Dick Grayson moved down the corridor, Huntress paused in the doorway, looked back and snapped a shot off with her crossbow. The shaft struck into the Garath's neck and nicked an artery as it cut through the windpipe. She looked at the medics, who were staring in shock at the execution, and spoke. "Sometimes, people... or things... deserve to die." Then she left, to catch up with Nightwing. One of the medics took a step towards the alien, but his partner put out a hand on the man's shoulder to pull him back. "She's right. This woman's the only one here who deserves our help." The medic gave Batgirl a heavy dose of drugs to ease her pain. Then they detached the module from Barbara's crotch, released her restraints, and loaded her onto a stretcher. Meanwhile the alien had his hands at his throat, trying to stop the blood spurting from the wound. But he could not stop the fluid that was flowing into his trachea and down to his lungs. In a few minutes, he died as he drowned in his own blood.
At the airport, Kim Possible, Ron Stoppable and force of Slovenian soldiers moved to take the area. There was heavy fighting in spots, but the men slowly went ahead, cleaning the area out. As they got close to the area, one of the Garath fighters had roared down the runway and taken off, climbing steeply, then swung west. Vodnik [sergeant] Franc Kuselj ordered a couple of his men to ready their Strela 2 surface to air missles in case the craft came around to attack, but it kept climbing, then turned west. Ron looked up at the craft and murmured to KP, "Wonder where he's going?" She shugged. "Just so he's not after us!" It was slow crossing the runways, as the area was open ground. Several men were wounded and the vodnik made sure these men were moved back to a safe location where the medics could handle them. The Slovenians moved around the hangers, trying to get to the control tower. They heard fire to the east, and knew a South African group lead by Crimson Fox and Steel Sterling was attacking the airport from the other direction. Vojak [private] Johan Brelich moved up and suddenly saw a Garath moving. He brought up his gun, but the alien was moving in the other direction. Johan didn't want to shoot him in the back... Vodnik Kuselj then saw the enemy and swung his assault rifle to bear. He thought of his wife and sister who vanished on a beach on the Adriatic the day the aliens arrived. He had no regrets about shooting a Garath in the back and put a spray of 5.56mm's into the creature. The vodnik yelled at Brelich. "God-damn you, you fool! He was headed for that craft in the hanger. You want him to turn the weapons on that thing towards us? If you see these fuckers, shoot, don't stop to think." They moved up, passing the alien who still had a very faint heartbeat. Dockaerzeon had mixed feelings. He was happy to die in combat, but he looked over at the attack craft that held the thermalizer in its bomb bay. He'd almost gotten to it...
The group fought its way into the control tower and up to the vantage point where they could see the entire area. A Slovenian radio operator fluent in english, russian and chinese began contacting nearby units to report on where pockets of Garaths were still holding out. An officer next to him used a periscope to examine the surrounding area without exposing himself to any snipers. Ron and Kim crouched low and moved to the ofiice and grabbed paperwork from the desk. They needed to find out if there were any clues about where those super-weapons were being kept. Ron groaned. "KP, that aircraft that took off when we were getting here... I found it entered in the log. It says here the mission is to deliver a thermalizer to Los Angeles. OH FUCKIN' SHIT!" Kim didn't begrudge her friend his language. She agreed the situation called for it. She moved low over to the radio man, keeping down so that any Garath in the area didn't see there were Earth forces up in the tower. She contacted the invasion commander, based on an aircraft carrier just offshore, and asked to be patched through to the intelligence officer. While she did, Ron found a notation about the other two craft that were loaded with armed thermalizers. He told the officer commanding the Slovenians to get men over to guard those craft to be sure no one got to them.
Offshore on the USS Enterprise, General Thunderbolt Ross went over the reports that were coming in about the ground fighting in and around San Juan. It would have been confusing enough, but thanks to those damned politicians, he had forces from nearly a hundred different countries fighting here and the linguistics problem was horrendeous. He barely could keep up with the grasp of the situation, and now some civilian bitch in the fighting zone was on the radio insisting to speak to Colonel Hooper. He summoned the woman who had planned the attack and opened a channel. "Donna? This is Kimberly. We found a log at the airport tower that says the last craft that left here is on its way to Los Angeles with one of the Garath super-bombs. Can we stop it?" The Shady Lady went pale as she bent to the microphone. "We'll... we'll have to!" General Ross looked horrified. "One of those thermal thing-a-ma-jigs? Do we have anything in the air besides the shuttles? Are they fast enough?" Donna shook her head. A shuttle could never catch up. She was trying to remember anything about aircraft that might help this crisis... She grabbed the mike again and told the tech to connect her with Patrick Air Force Base back at the Cape. Soon she spoke to General Alex Lawson, at the base. "General, a NASA science group were working on adapting some XF-22D Raptors up there. What is their current status? How soon could they be in the air?" It took a couple of minutes, but then the officer came back on accompanied by Dr. James Possible, who was working on the program. "Colonel Hooper, we have not been able to build the captured force shields into the three Raptors we have here. But they are flight ready and have been armed with a pair of improved AIM-120 Slammers on each that can penetrate the enemy force shields. But we don't have any pilots who can fly these birds. They are improved experimental fighters that need someone familiar with the complicated controls. All the pilots we had here are out flying shuttles for the attack." Donna groaned. "Check your records. Find three qualified pilots in the air and order them to detour to Patrick at once. Get the birds ready to fly. A Garath attack craft is headed west to drop a thermalizer on Los Angeles. Can we catch it?" Dr. Possible answered. "Yes! Their craft were designed to be maneuverable, but not nearly as fast as a Raptor."
Three shuttles dropped to the runway and at once the pilots popped out running for the hanger where the Raptors were being readied. Crewmen had flight pressure suits and the trio donned them and then hurried inside. General Dawson and Dr. Possible met them, and were introduced to Major Kyle "Ace" Morgan, Captain Zilda "Lady Blackhawk" Blake and Hal Jordon. The Major turned to Hal Jordan. "Wait a minute, I don't see how a civilian pilot can handle one of these birds..." Hal smiled. "I'm a test pilot at Ferris Air. I had a hundred hours in one of these babies before you even saw one!" The trio prepared to leave as the General explained about the Garath craft they had to catch before it got cross-country. The three sealed themselves into their planes, moved out to the runway and shot up into the sky, turning west. Ground radar plots from airports across the country told them where their target was and they hurried to catch up to it. They were burning fuel quickly and Ace asked for refueling flights to be put in the air across the country, up and ready if needed. Finally, over Louisiana they were getting close enough for the alien craft to be picked up on their radar screens. Ace took point in a "vee" formation, and as they got close enough to see the enemy he triggered one of his missles. It streaked towards the target and exploded. Zinda gave a yelp. "You got'em, Major!" But after a moment, Hal broke in. "Hold it. I'm still getting him on my radar. The missle didn't penetrate the shield!" Morgan reported the problem back to Patrick Air Force Base. As they waited for a reply, Zinda spoke. "Should we fire again? Or try to ram it?" Ace spoke. "No. Save the missles. They just might need some kind of adjustment. And if the shield stops a missle, it'll stop an attempt to ram."
Back in Florida, Dr. Possible was stunned by the news. He decided to contact the New Jersey lab where Reed Richards and Lex Luthor had designed the jammers. While he waited for them to come online, he asked the flight to check something. "Gentlemen.. and young lady... the Raptors have full data comm links with their ordanance to allow reprogramming of smart-bombs even in flight. The AIM-120 Slammers are plugged in. On your ordanace monitor screen, you can do a complete systems check to see if they are fully operational." All three pilots did so and reported their weapons were green and go in all categories. Now the other scientists were in the loop and up to speed on the problem. Reed Richards asked, "Can you read the energy signature your sensors are picking up?" Hal Jordan read off the readings he had, then said, "Wait. The frequency is wavering. It's not steady." Lex Luthor spoke up. "Of course! We've been reacting to what they do, and they have done the same. This craft has a modified shield emitter that uses a variable frequency instead of the set one we discovered. Hmmm. We can beat this. You have five missles left? Morgan, leave your missle on the original frequency. Blake, program one of your missles up 10 mhrz and the other up 20 mhrz. Jordan, do yours down 10 and 20 mhrz. Then fire all five at once. When they hit, at least one will be at a matching setting that will penetrate." Morgan replied. "Are you sure this will work? If not, we won't have left any missles." Luthor came back on. "Am I positive... no. But if I was in Los Angeles right now, it's what I would want you to do." The trio were running low on fuel, and had to slow to allow tankers in the air over a Texas Air Force Reserve base to rendevous. Then they kicked their afterburners in once more and closed on the target over northern New Mexico.
They approached the target, getting in close visual range. Zinda spoke. "We were always taught that a if bomber with a nuke crashes or gets shot down, the nuke won't go off. Am I the only one wondering if this thing might go off?" Hal Jordan groaned. "Shit, Captain. I didn't think of that! Guess we'll find out." Ace broke in. "Just in case, after we fire shoot past him as fast as hell and keep your pedal to the metal. Maybe we can overshoot the blast, if there is one." The trio lined up, and triggered the launch of all five Slammers. They saw the huge explosion ahead of their flight and curved to go right or left of the spot. As they went by, Zinda looked over. "WE GOT HIM! One side is blasted away and he is spinning down. Let's get out of here!" They punched their afterburners to full and felt the acceleration crushing them back into their seats. After a few moments, the Garath ship smashed into the desert and a massive explosion blossomed on the desert floor. A huge section of the American southwest was suddenly vaporised. Edges of Grand Junction, Colorado; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Flagstaff, Arizona vanished. In the air, the three Raptors were buffeted by turbulance the likes of which the three pilots had never thought possible. They rode the wave of the blast for what seemed like forever, until it finally fell behind them. Ace Morgan called out. "How are you two? Still there? My radar and a few other systems are out. But I can still fly this thing." Hal Jordan spoke up. "I'm down to one engine and half my screens are blank. We gotta find a place to land." Zinda Blake cut in. "My plane, bless her heart, is still flying, even though it's bent up a hell of a lot. Follow me boys. We just saved the entire city of Los Angeles, and we need to celebrate a job very well done. We're aimed at the nearest air force base -- Nellis. Wen we get down there, I plan on showing you two how a person can really bust loose in Las Vegas!"
Princess Diana's force of women pushed through the city to the ampitheatre in the middle of San Juan. Wonder Woman, Star Girl and Azure Angel flew low overhead to point out and swoop down into pockets of Garath resistence. Scarlet Witch blasted and She Hulk smashed enemy soldiers who blocked their path. Crimson Fox, Glory Girl and many of the hardened lady soldiers who had fought on Themyscira pushed through the defenses to approach the hall where the Maganite was putting on his little show to proclaim that Earth had been conquered and was now ruled by the alien empire. The attack squad burst into the Maganite's hall and took on the guards. With the element of surprise, they closed on the riparte and ripped through the startled Garath. Wonder Woman plunged the Spear of Athena through the chest of any guard who got in her way. She worked her way towards the podium, where the Garath leader stood. The guards kept getting in her way, trying to shield their leader. The Maganite pulled a raygun from his belt and aimed it at Diana. He regreted destroying this one. With repairs and training, she would have been his finest samalan. But she was too... rebellious. The Garath tightened his finger on the trigger. But as he did so a hand grabbed at his arm and the searing beam of light passed inches to the right of where Wonder Woman stood. The Maganite spun about and saw who had foiled him. "Thanagarian! How dare you oppose the wishes of your Garathian Master. You will burn for this!" His arm came over and he aimed the weapon point-blank at the forehead of Shayera Hol. She cringed as she waited for the blast that would burn the flesh from her bones. But his finger never had the chance to pull the trigger. Horrible pain appeared in his back, and he gasped at the sensation as it grew in his chest. His head slumped forward, and he saw the point of the spear burst through his body, as Diana had plunged the enchanted weapon clean through him. He gasped his last breath, and as Wonder Woman pulled the spear back out of her victim, his lifeless body collapsed on the floor. Shayera looked up at the armor-clad woman, and knew who she was. Shayera had groveled at the feet of the Garath leader during many briefings, and she had heard about, but never truly believed, the stories of the Amazon Princess. And now the famed Earthan warrior stood in front of her. The Thanagarian dropped down and placed her forehead against the floor. "Wonderous Princess! I beg you to spare me and allow me to serve you in any way you see fit. I am Shayera Hol, born on the planet Thanagar to the lineage of the Noble Gray Hawk."
Diana looked around the room. Star Girl, Scarlet Witch, Azure Angel, Crimson Fox, She Hulk, and Glory Girl were standing over the last of the Garaths to fall. Female soldiers who were following up on the attack group's path spread out to see if anymore ripatre were left in the area. The room was secured. The samalans who had been there for display had stayed out of the way of the fighting, and now that it was over, they sobbed and cried for joy at their deliverence. Then Wonder Woman saw the automated camera unit, still facing the podium where she stood over the body of the Maganite. Above the lens, a blue light was blinking. This meant the scene was still being transmitted out through space, to a hundred Garath-controlled worlds. The Amazon Princess faced the camera and brandished her spear, with the red-orange blood still dripping off it. "Aliens! Take what you have witnessed here as proof that Earth is not a world subject to your domination. We are a free and mighty people who will fight and destroy anyone who tries to take away our freedoms. Your attack on us has been stopped. Do not return... OR ELSE!" At this, she threw the spear into the lens. The unit was smashed and gave off sparks as it ceased to operate. Diana then reached down to the alien woman at her feet. She grasped her hand and pulled the winged female to her feet. "Yes, I saved you, Shayera Hol. But you struck out and stopped the Garath who was about to fire on me. I also need to express my gratitude to you, Hawkwoman"
On the planet Gareth-Prime, far across the galaxy, alien technology had delivered the broadcast of the celebration of the conquest of Earth. The Emperor, many of the highest members of the nobility, and all the women of the Royal Harem were present in a great hall to witness a expression of the invinciblility of the Garath Empire. Instead they saw the Maganite and his men slaughtered by Earth fighters. Female Earth fighters. They sat there and stared, dumbstruck by the amazing images. They saw the Spear of Athena smash into the equipment and all of them flinched as the point seemed to come right at them. The broadcast ended and for a minute, no one moved or spoke. Then Hippolyta stood up. She went to a table, and brushed her arm out, knocking the plates of delicacies to the floor. She pulled off the white tablecloth and wrapped it around her upper torso. Then she walked up to the Emperor. "I am Queen Hippolyta of Earth. I am your prisoner and you hold me captive. But I am not now and never will be your slave. That woman you saw defeat your forces is my daughter. Beware her wrath! She will come for me, and any of you who get in her way will die!"
EPILOGUE
With the capture or destruction of the all the Garaths on Earth, the celebration was long and rowdy. Rescued women were given the chance to get their lives back, and the heroes of the war were appreciated. Donna Hooper was presented the highest honors by a grateful America and by governments all over the world. Barbara Gordon, in her wheelchair, was invited to the White House to be presented with a medal for her work. She then decided to devote herself to champion the rights of the veterans and victims of the war. She spoke to the President and other politicians about this and soon was elected to the Senate. Another of her causes was the need for Earth to prepare itself for future conflicts with the rest of the universe. For Barbara knew that the scum would be back. Both political parties approached Donna Hooper, knowing that the people would elect her easily to any position she strove for. But she wanted to return to a quiet life, and turned them down. On Paradise Island, with the lessening of Garath energy on Earth, Diana was able to re-establish contact with Olympus and confer with the gods and goddesses about the new life of the Amazons. It was decided to open the secret island to outsiders. Wonder Woman convinced the dieties that the world now needed to unite to face the future. Seven months after World Victory Day, sensor posts on the outskirts of the solar system detected eleven Garath transports approaching the solar system. They were warned to turn back, but the Garath commander laughed at the threat from these primitives. Earth forces had gone over the alien technology they'd captured and three American space shuttles had been retro-fitted with Garath engines that greatly enhanced their speed and range. The defenders met the invading force beyond the orbit of Mars where they launched nuclear tipped cruise missles that vaporised six of the transports. The other five turned and fled. It took several years, but the Garath Empire finally learned that Earth could hold their own against them. Earth built fast scout cruisers that were even better than the Garaths had. Several traveled to Garth-Prime and attacked and thermalized the space-ship construction and repair facity that orbited the planet. Earth ships remained in orbit and threatened to rain thermalizers down on the Garath cities. With that threat, a peace treaty was arranged between the combatants. Many thousands of earth women (but not all of them) were returned to Earth, including Hippolyta, ex-queen of the Amazons. After her ordeal, Lyta abdicated her position of Queen, and let her daughter continue to rule Paradise Isle. The ex-ruler returned to Themyscira and spent happy days helping to care for the new generation of Amazons. On Paradise Island, Shayera Hol learned the Amazon philosophy and with the friends she gained lobbied for help to bring freedom to her world. Earth eventually sent an expeditionary force to Thanagar and helped them fight to cast off the slavery they had been suffering for many years. It was the first of many expeditions that cut away at the Garath Empire. Soon a new force in the Galaxy, the Federation of Free Planets, was headed by Earth. And part of the force that protected these planets was made up of a military unit comprised partially of the daughters of the Amazons, grown up and warriors in their own right. If the Garaths tried to seize any prisoners, they were stopped by the Amazon Star Patrol. And in part of the galaxy, justice prevailed.
THE END(?)
And so concludes my take on a war between the heroines of Earth and a horrid sex crazed invading race from out there. I hope some of you enjoyed this story. I allowed things to get really nasty as the horrors of the Garaths are further revealed. But you may wonder, why is THE END followed by a question mark? It's because the story of THE CONQUERED EARTH has concluded, but I will eventually follow with material I will call THE CONQUERING EARTH. These will be set in a future where Earth and the Federation continue to fight the good fight. The Garaths want to rmaintain control and there are many worlds still under their rule. Earth could not allow this to be ignored, and Earth forces will fight to bring freedom to the Galaxy. A new generation of young women, raised on Paradise Island, will volunteer to serve, and be the best fighters in the Amazon Star Patrol. Supergirl's daughters will face the challenge of avenging the Kryptonian race that was nearly pushed to extinction by the Garath horde. Shayera Hol will lead Thanagarian forces in their fight against the remnants of the Garath Empire in a much more savage and bloodthirsty manner. Other worlds will be helped to throw off the yoke of Garath slavery as a confederation of free planets emerges to oppose the Garath slavery.
In this episode, Batgirl, Supergirl, Queen Hippolyta and Wonder Woman continue to have major parts in the storyline, as they have since the very beginning. My own creations, the Shady Lady, Azure Angel and Glory Girl are mixed in very large or medium sized roles to make it interesting. Others like Plastic Man and Nightshade, Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable, Kitty Pryde and Wolverine are written in the mix. From over at Archie I even brought the blonde teen, Betty Cooper, in as a tragic heroine. In establishing the Garaths as true evil, I had to show what they were capable of, and did so with varied members of the Garath horde, but with a closer look at the Royal Family back on Garath-Prime, more from the Maganite, and the emerging role of Dockaerzeon, the commander who felt things would go so well if he would be allowed to wipe out a few hundred million people.
I would very much like to hear from any of my readers with their opinions about my work. Please drop a line to therat4040@yahoo.com with your comments.