As his arms opened around the man, Dodge again felt the same subtle pressure that had flattened him beneath the airship. He recognized it now or at least was able to reconcile it with a known phenomenon. The closest likeness he could come up with was the effect of magnetic repulsion; two magnets, lined up a certain way, would push each other apart. But the strange corona of force around the men had proven capable of repelling bullets — lead slugs with no magnetic characteristics — and even human flesh. Dodge could think of only one explanation, and it wasn’t something he had read or heard about in the annals of science. Rather, it was the stuff of science fiction. The serials that shared the comics page with Falcon were always describing invisible force fields that could protect spaceships or superheroes. Dodge had always dismissed such stories as too fanciful to warrant serious consideration, but then again, he would have felt the same way about steel mitts that shot lightning bolts.
Whatever the cause, the energy field almost thwarted Dodge’s desperate attempt to restrain the escaping rogue; his arms couldn’t quite close together. He redoubled his efforts, hugging tightly to the shielded figure, but it was like trying to wrestle a greased pig. The force field seemed to squirm and ooze in his grip and for a fleeting second, Dodge knew he would fail. Then without any particular climax, the struggle ended and Dodge’s arms locked around the man’s metal shod ankles.
“Gotcha!” The momentum of his intended tackle maneuver had been lost, but Dodge had a taste of victory now. He tried to plant his feet, throwing his body weight to the side; but his shoes couldn’t find the ground. His legs thrashed about, trying to somehow gain a position of advantage, but terra firma eluded him. He didn’t have to look down for an explanation — somehow he knew with sickening certainty what had happened — but he looked anyway.
CHAPTER 2
SKY CHASE
The city was particularly beautiful from above. The midmorning sun gleamed off the white dome of the Capitol to his right, and was a blinding fiery dance on the surface of the Reflecting Pool to his left. Dodge had never flown in an airplane or zeppelin, so the aerial view of the city was a completely new experience. As glorious as it was though, the sudden realization that he was now soaring through the skies, with absolutely no safety net — literal or otherwise — sent a jolt through his veins that was easily the equal of anything produced by the invaders’ weapons. The pyramid-shaped capstone of the Washington monument appeared beneath his feet; he knew the monument to be over five hundred and fifty feet tall, which meant his current altitude had to be more than six hundred feet, and they were still ascending. Dodge clutched the man’s legs as if the Grim Reaper’s scythe were slicing the air beneath him.
Strangely, the scarred man had done nothing to shake off his stowaway. When this realization filtered through the primal panic confounding Dodge’s thinking process, he tore his gaze from the metropolitan landscape below to assess the situation above.
The man’s arms were stretched out away from his torso, raised over his head with hands pointing to the sky. Even his head was tilted back, nose pointed in the direction of travel, as if completely unaware that he had picked up a hitchhiker. Only his eyes, glaring down at an impossibly awkward angle, revealed both his awareness of and irritation at Dodge’s desperate heroics. The significance of this slowly filtered through the mental chaos.
Dodge thought about the way the flying raider had prepared to depart — bending at the knees as if to jump — and his current posture; every move mimicked the behavior of a creature capable of unaided flight. It was nothing like an airplane, where the controls were levers, pedals and switches; the apparatus that enabled this villain to move through the air was controlled by the movements of his body. The position of the man’s arms and legs, even the orientation of his head, were all integrated into the control mechanism. The scarred air pirate couldn’t do anything about his passenger because doing so would send them both spinning uncontrollably through the sky. It was the ultimate standoff, but Dodge knew that as long as his foe controlled their destination, he would wind up on the short end of the rope. All the man would have to do was rejoin his confederates and let them deal with the unarmed stowaway.
As if reading his thoughts, the man lowered one arm slightly, and banked to the south. The rest of the raiding party swarmed around the airship, following the course of the Potomac River, barely visible in the distance.
Dodge winced as they began to pick up speed. There was no breeze against his face — the force field evidently deflected the air mass as easily as it did bullets — but the sudden motion in three dimensions sent a fresh wave of vertigo rolling through his gut. Of course it didn’t help that he was now rushing toward what would almost certainly be his doom.
He couldn’t help thinking about the decision that had landed him in this mess; he should have known better than to try to imitate a man who existed only as ink on news pulp. Captain Falcon was going to get him killed. Behind the web of accusations, panic and self-pity however, was another voice defending his decision, or perhaps simply exonerating his fictional creation. You asked what Falcon would do, it said. He wouldn’t just hold on and wait for the end to come.
He glanced up at the raider, trying to read the situation through Falcon’s eyes, and immediately saw the only course of action. “Nope,” he whispered. “I can’t do that.”
As they drew closer to the retreating airship however, he realized that a better solution wasn’t going to appear out of thin air. His choice was simple; wait for the axe to fall, or die trying to do something. Let’s be smart about this, he told himself. If I slug this guy, we both go down.
He shook his head, trying to banish the voices of doubt. The only chance he had was putting his trust in uncertain luck; indecision would guarantee that all his luck would be bad. Without further deliberation, he relaxed the grip of his left arm and reached up for the rigid belt of the exoskeleton.
The scarred man saw the movement and immediately divined his intention. He brought his arms together in front of his chest in a downward arc, and suddenly Dodge’s world turned upside down.
If the man had hoped to shake him loose, he was disappointed. Their constant acceleration was more than enough to compensate for the inexorable pull of gravity. Dodge instinctively pulled himself higher and wrapped all of his limbs around the raider’s legs. The more they looped and swooped the tighter Dodge held, all the while advancing whenever a momentary opportunity presented itself. The struggle wasn’t much different than Dodge’s school wrestling matches, and he had always excelled on the mat.
In a few short seconds, he snaked his way behind the raider, finding a better grip on the metal rods of the exoskeleton than on the man’s clothes or extremities. He knew his foe was worried; the man hurled imprecations back at him in a foreign tongue — Dodge thought it sounded a little like German but couldn’t be sure — and had even slipped one of his hands free from the gauntlets in a futile attempt to pry loose his opponent’s grip.
Dodge meanwhile was paying close attention to how the man’s movements affected their flight. His confidence was increasing, but holding the advantage was different than winning. Victory would require the ultimate leap of faith. He endured another dizzying series of aerobatic maneuvers, and then when the raider leveled out to assess the results of his effort, he delivered a single closed-fisted blow to the base of the man’s neck. It was a blow worthy of Falcon himself.