The costume pictured here is the one that Supergirl wore during some of her years when operating out of Midvale. This story takes place after she graduated Stanhope College. I’ve taken liberties with some of the timing and realities of what occurred in the comics and set it in today’s technology but in this story she’s a young reporter on the Midvale Sentinel newspaper.
There are strong sexual elements in this story and you shouldn’t read this if you are offended by such material or you’re underage. This story is fan fiction only and no profit is being made from it.
Chapter 2
The Russian submarine glides silently through the dark blue waters off the coast of Hainan Island, just a few miles from the Chinese mainland. While dawn is breaking overhead, the craft plies ahead, not anywhere near where it is allowed to be. In truth, the sub is miles closer in from international waters than permitted for foreign vessels And the Chinese Navy knows it. What’s more, the Russian sub captain, Dimitri Molitov, knows that the Chinese know he is there.
Molitov doesn’t particularly care; his orders are to take depth soundings of the bay as well as pictures of the Yulin submarine base and that’s what he and his crew are doing. The base is spitting distance from the Strait of Malacca. About half of the world’s merchant fleet uses the strait to get to the South China Sea and important trading ports all along the coast of China as well as the rest of eastern Asia.
With rumors of the Chinese thinking to expand that base, the Russians are keen to know as much about what was going on as possible. Naturally, the Chinese are not happy about such spying. In fact, the radio chatter going from the Yulin base to Beijing has escalated in volume and vehemence considerably over the past hour.
Passing very high above the Chinese capital’s airspace, Supergirl picks up the urgent tones in her flyover and slows down from Mach 10 to a cruising speed of 300 miles per hour to listen in more carefully. Her Chinese is more than satisfactory and she realizes that she is hearing the potential prelude of a serious international incident.
Noting the location of the base in the transmission report, Supergirl turns south and fires up her “afterburners,” reaching an incredible speed that puts her at the location of the Russian sub nearly 1700 miles away in about 90 seconds. When she arrives, she finds a pair of Chinese sub hunter drone ships running search patterns for the offending Russian vessel. The drones use the same trimaran design favored by their U.S. counterparts. The three separate hulls provide great stability and the ships offer the same speed and maneuverability characteristics as the American version.
Having finished its reconnaissance mission, the Russian sub, though ready to leave, is now boxed in by the Chinese sub hunter ships. Standing at his command station, the dark-bearded Dimitri Molitov is thoughtfully tapping his forefinger against his lower lip while his ship hovers in the water unmoving for the moment.
“Chief Semenov, what is sonar saying about our new companions?”
“Closing in, Captain. These new ships are fast and they are circling like hungry wolves. Ensign Zilski in sonar is telling me their signature is not anything we’ve heard before. He’s our best man, sir, and he is certain that their pattern search will find us in just minutes, Captain.”
“There’s no gap we can sneak through?”
“Zilski says no. I have to agree.”
“And if we flood ballast and settle?”
“The water here is too shallow for us not to be spotted…even on the ocean floor. They will just wait. Possibly they will drop depth charges or use whatever new weaponry they’ve developed to keep themselves amused.”
“And naturally the survey data collected hasn't been transmitted yet to Moscow?”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
“I should have surfaced the second it was done!”
“It wouldn't have helped, Captain. Those ships above us arrived on scene about 15 minutes ago.... even before our survey was completed. Plus, as you're well aware, mission protocol states we not stream transmissions when in enemy waters but to send packets in separate timed bursts for security purposes. By the time the survey was completed and ready to send, the Chinese started sending jamming waves at us. We have the information, Captain, we just can’t get the packets out.”
“Nor ourselves it seems. Set a course through the strait, Chief. Speed 15 knots. Let’s see how resolute our Communist brethren are. Maybe we can bluff our way through this.”
“Yes sir,” the Chief replies, giving the order to the helmsman.
The pilot of the primary Chinese drone ship relays to the Admiral overseeing the drones that his equipment shows that the Russian target has been located and is moving at a slow but steady pace out to sea
“Launch warning depth charge 100 yards before their bow,” comes the brusque command from Admiral Bao Tse Xing. The steel barrel is launched off the deck of the drone ship, soars away from the craft and lands in the water with a great splash. Only 15 seconds later, it detonates with a thunderous explosion.
Aboard the submarine, a thumping boom shivers through the deck causing the Captain to order a full stop.
“They seem quite resolute,” he declares aloud, pulling down on his lower lip, his eyes glancing upward at the enemy somewhere on the surface overhead. His crew’s faces reflect the seriousness of their position, a cold grimness tightening them all. With no way to transmit a request for orders from Moscow, Captain Molitov is on his own.
“Go to periscope depth. Let’s see precisely what we’re dealing with, Chief.”
“Yes sir.”
Admiral Xing is informed that the sub is beginning to rise and gives the order to ready the deck-mounted cannons, machine guns and lasers. “And if a torpedo is launched, initiate countermeasures and sink that sub!”
“Yes sir,” respond the pilots of both Chinese drones simultaneously.
Hovering high in the clouds over the tense naval engagement, Supergirl, whose ability to understand and speak Russian is as strong as her Chinese, hears the orders given by both sides and decides to take matters in her own hands. She dives down to the water, plunging into the cold ocean swells three miles behind the stern of the Russian sub. At a depth of 20 feet, she propels herself forward at a rapid clip, faster than any torpedo until she arrives at the midpoint of the submarine’s keel and rises up, putting her palms against the bottom of the vessel and slowly but surely applying pressure to lift the sub upward, pushing it toward the surface.
Onboard the sub, the unexpected sensation of quick upward movement, quite a bit faster than the normal feeling of rising to periscope depth, throws a few men off balance.
“What’s going on? I didn’t order emergency surfacing!” Captain Molitov yells to his chief, bracing against the command table.
“No sir, it’s not us.”
“What then, some sort of tractor beam? A claw? Pressure wave from beneath? WHAT?!!”
“I don’t know sir but I’m being told the depth gauge says, uhmm, we’re now out of the water, sir. We’re in the air!”
“That’s impossible. I didn’t feel anything clamp onto us!”
Bracing himself against the bulkhead with one hand, the Russian captain grabs onto the periscope with his other and then pulls his face close to the eyepiece and looks through. He sees the buildings of the sub base before him but they are dropping out of sight even as the sub gains altitude.
“DIRMO!” He shouts, the Russian equivalent of ‘Shit!’
From the command building at the sub base, Admiral Xing looks through the wide window out at sea while his drone pilots watch their monitors showing the scene from the deck mounted cameras. The huge Russian submarine rises up out of the ocean and into the air, 10, 30, now 50 feet off the water’s surface and climbing steadily.
“Should I fire cannons at them, Admiral?” The pilot of the primary drone ship asks, his face turned toward his shocked superior.
“Definitely not! If you miss we’d have inbound ordinance coming right at us!”
“There is someone beneath the sub, sir,” says the pilot of the second drone pointing at the scene through the plate glass window. “I recognize the uniform colors. It’s Superman!”
“Uuhhmmm…not Superman, Han,” corrects the first pilot. “That’s Supergirl.”
“Where is she going with my enemy submarine,” barks the Admiral. “That’s what I want to know. Is she working for the Russians?!”
The pilot of the primary drone ship, swivels his camera and tracks the girl carrying the immense sub over 100 feet above the ocean’s surface as she flies it three miles away, just over international waters, supporting its hull with both hands as evenly balanced as possible. Zooming in, the camera catches the girl beneath the sub disappearing beneath the waves as she gently lowers the 48,000-ton vessel onto the surface of the South China Sea.
Just as the sub sinks to the midpoint of its conning tower, the Chinese drone pilot watches on his monitor as the female figure bursts out of the water and lands beside a small antenna array mounted to the conning tower. She quickly pulls off a small satellite dish and flings it several hundred yards across the ocean like a Frisbee. Then she grabs hold of the top of the conning tower and prevents the sub from submerging. Her body hovers in the air and just waits. In under a minute, a hatch in the sub swings upward and a bearded man comes halfway out of the hole. There is a lot of angry gesticulating on his part and simple head shakes from the blonde keeping the sub from submerging with just one arm.
When the drone pilot tells the Admiral what is occurring, the commanding officer smiles.
“Well, that will stop them from transmitting whatever information they got when spying on us. I believe I will put in a call to Japan. We need an unbiased international arbitration on this. They’re running joint naval exercises off the Philippines, they can come in and keep the sub quarantined until matters are worked out. I know I don’t want to be the moron to start a world war. Leave that to the Americans. Stand down, pilots. Return the ships to base and write a full report on the incident and I’ll do the same. I have to go see the Japanese. I will bet there are a lot of pictures I’ll need to get back from the Russians.”
Two hours later, with the Russian sub surrounded by Japanese frigates, more than capable of dealing with the submarine, Supergirl is able to finally leave the area. She hadn’t minded the wait since it had given her a chance to rest and recharge. Not only had lifting that sub and carrying it about four and a half miles through the air taken quite a bit of effort, but the rest of her patrol had been taxing as well. She had dealt with a forest fire in Yosemite, California that she’d blown out, saved a jet from nearly crashing near the Canary Islands and rescued a dozen diamond miners in a tunnel collapse in Botswana.
At 9:20 a.m. in China, the Maid of Steel takes off for her 7:30 p.m. appointment back in Midvale, offering a quick wave to the Japanese seamen lined on their ships’ rails. She only has 10 minutes to get halfway around the globe. In order to make it in time, she pours on her blazing speed, leaving a bright white contrail across the azure blue sky and astonished faces far behind.