Burning Spear

The evening sun set over the city. Weak, blood coloured light shone
through a solitary pane of glass into the mean little room, revealing
discoloured paintwork, chipped furniture and a rotting, threadbare
carpet.

Schwartz sneezed, his sinuses irritated by the thick coating of dust
which clung to every available surface. He wiped his nose with a
handkerchief, then lit a cigarette.

Klein's apartment was situated in what had recently been the Jewish
quarter, a bomb-damaged remnant of the old Nuremberg that had been
decimated during the Great War. Situated on the outskirts of the city,
its cracked and decaying tenements seemed at odds with the rest of the
rebuilt, glittering metropolis.

Klein was standing by the window. He was the slum's sole inhabitant,
the rest of the Jewish community having been rounded up several months
previously by a hoard of black-uniformed soldiers.

Klein had eluded them by climbing into the water tank on the top of the
building. He lay there in the filthy water amongst the pigeons,
listening to the sounds of the massacre that was taking place all
around him. Now more than ever he found himself wishing that the SS had
found his hiding place and thrown him into the back of a van, or shot
him in the street as they had so many other people that day.

As he turned towards his guest, half his face became lost in shadow.
Sunlight transformed the rest into a scarlet nightmare of
radiation-scarred tissue.
"It's as if he's already dead." Noah thought as he gazed at Klein's
ruined face with its glass-eyed stare.

The left sleeve of Klein's shirt had been cut away at the elbow,
revealing the lower half of his "arm". Titanium ulna and radius bones
gleamed as Klein drummed skeletal metal fingers on the windowsill. He
looked through the glass, wondering if Schwartz had been
followed.

After a while he spoke: "I don't know why I bother hiding, the cancers
are eating me alive." With a metal finger he tapped a tumour that was
growing on his cheek. "It'll probably get you too, if you stay alive
for long enough." He paused for a moment. "So no one else
escaped."

Schwartz shook his head, "The Bat, Aqua and Ice Man are dead. Speed
might be alive, but the Gestapo have him. So it all came to nothing in
the end. I need the gun."

Klein leaned back against the window and absent-mindedly tugged the
skin of his face. He looked at Schwartz in silence for a moment,
realising that nothing he could say would make a difference.
He got up, went to a closet and came back with a small, leadlined
box.
"Don't be around this for too long Noah, or it won't matter what
happens to you, one way or another."

On a clear day the colossal concrete towers and spires of Nuremberg
were an awesome sight; a landscape of golden, curved and crenellated
chrome and glass, which stretched to the horizon.

But today the sun was a dimly perceived presence, seen only briefly
through the thick black clouds which had made the city a place of
shadows.

Jack-booted men lay in twisted heaps all around him as he crouched on
the rooftop, thirty storeys above the vast crowd, which filled the
streets. Moments ago the soldiers had burst through the access door and
rushed towards him like a dark tide - pistoned machinery dressed in
uniforms so black they seemed to absorb the weak sunlight, while their
bullets ripped into brickwork and imbedded themselves in the tarred
surface of the rooftop.

But the bright metal slugs had bounced harmlessly off the dark
mirror-surface of his costume as he punched, gouged and kicked them to
death. The field which covered him from head to foot had turned him
into a legend, it also kept his identity as secret as that of his
nemesis - Hitler's ultimate bodyguard.

The crowd roared as the man they worshipped goaded them into even
deeper levels of hysteria. The noise they made was deafening even on
the rooftop, which was four hundred feet above the vast rally.

The Fuhrer stood on a stage built in front of the Reich Stag, behind an
altar made of roughly hewn granite. On it was the remnant of a spear,
little more than an ancient stick with a piece of metal wedged into the
end.

Hitler was dressed in white robes, Eichmann and the other members of
The Inner Circle were similarly clothed. It was an unusual costume,
unlike their usual military uniforms. But somehow they didn't appear
ridiculous, perhaps because of their incredible aura of arrogance. Or
it may have been the thousand Schutzstaffe Black Wolf stormtroopers
arrayed in front of them.

But impressive as it all seemed to the multitude on the streets and
those who were hanging out of windows throwing streamers and confetti,
the display meant nothing to the man with the telescopic rifle.

He cursed at the difficulty he was having focusing his gun-sight on the
circular design painted onto Hitler's forehead. It seemed to crawl and
shift like a heat mirage, which was in stark contrast to the pin-sharp
details of the rest of his face. The assassin decided to aim instead at
the Fuhrer's small moustache, mainly because he still had a sense of
humour.

But an instant before he pulled the trigger the rifle was wrenched from
his diamond-hard fingers with such violence that they tore off the
trigger guard and he found himself in flight. He gouged a chunk out of
the short wall surrounding the roof as he fetched up at the far end of
the building.

Before him stood Hitler's ultimate vision of Aryan purity: Uberman.
Like a missile clad in brown and black he had appeared from nowhere,
the sonic boom of his passing thundering faintly in the sky
above.
"Jaguar!" He said, smiling.

The mirror-field obscured the assassin's face - an artist's sketch, the
briefest suggestion of eye and cheekbone above an unbroken plane. But
beneath it, his features twisted in despair.

Jaguar went into a rolling dive, drawing Klein's snub-nosed pistol from
the holster on his thigh. He came up on one knee and aimed at Uberman's
slab-like chest. He fired the gun, and Uberman became a blur.

Stepping to the side, the green bullet missed him by inches. Before
Jaguar could pull the trigger again Uberman's eyes glowed and his heat
vision burst the gun. Red hot metal bounced off Jaguar's chest and
face, the green bullets exploding in the gun's chamber, spraying molten
metal across his hand, which ran off the frictionless surface in an
instant.
The glowing eyes next target were the controls housed on Jaguar's belt.
They burned through the metal casing on the solid state buckle and
fused its circuitry. Jaguar's stasis field winked out in an instant and
the buckle exploded, driving shrapnel deep into his stomach.

He staggered back and fell against a wall. As he slid into a sitting
position in his tattered and smoking bodystocking, Uberman strode
towards him, black cape fluttering in a gust of wind, huge muscles
making the brown costume ripple as he squatted down beside the
man.

Uberman smiled. "Hello Noah," He said, "I always thought it was you in
there. Of course I couldn't see beneath the stasis field." He pointed
to his eyes, "Even with these things."
Uberman stared at the splatters of emerald matter, which were
congealing on the surface of the rooftop. "I'm curious about the gun.
Where did you get it? There isn't much of that green stuff left."

Schwartz ignored the question, a moment later he couldn't have answered
even if he'd wanted to. The numbness in his middle had worn off. His
face went white, his breath became a series of short, agonised gasps.
He toppled onto his side and curled up in agony.

Uberman stared through Schwartz's skin, saw torn blood vessels and
organs. Quickly he heat-sealed a nicked artery which was about to
rupture, and burned out the pain centres in his brain so that they
would be able to talk.

As the pain ceased Schwartz relaxed, and his head sank onto the surface
of the rooftop. Uberman sat him up against the wall, gently wiping bits
of gravel and dirt off Schwartz's face.

Noah had felt the heat inside him and guessed the other man's
intent.
"Leave me alone." he said.
"I could stop the bleeding."
"Why bother?"
"I know, there isn't much point. Better you to die up here, much
kinder than handing you over to the Gestapo."
"How did He find out about us?"
"He says that he knew about your plan from the beginning. He says he
can see a week into the future now, sometimes even more."

Uberman waved his hand dismissively at the corpses. "He knew they'd be
no match for you, but Eichmann insisted. He's fallen out of favour you
know, this is all the excuse needed to discredit him. The Fuhrer would
never trust his life to anyone but me." Uberman smiled.
"That must be so comforting. Just out of curiosity though, what's it
like working for the biggest lunatic in the world?"
"Very soon there'll be peace all over the world for the first time in
history."
"Yeah, won't that be great." Schwartz coughed. "I could use a
cigarette."
"I don't suppose it'll do you any harm now."
Uberman stood up, hands on hips, and looked around him. Standing there
with his blue black hair and granite jaw he looked the epitome of the
tasteless statues being erected by the Nazis everywhere throughout the
occupied territories. "Hmmm. Let me see . . ."
Casually Uberman's eyes scanned the dead bodies of the SS guards until
he spied what he wanted. He took a pack of Camels from a corpse's
pocket. Uberman drew a cigarette from the packet and put it in his
mouth. His eyes crossed comically as he lit the tip of the cigarette
with his heat vision, then he put the cigarette in Noah's mouth, and
squatted down to be at eye level with him.

Schwartz breathed out smoke, stared at the man in front of him. Except
he had to remember that this wasn't a man at all. Uberman's spacecraft
had travelled for thousands of light years before falling into the
earth's atmosphere. Any resemblance that this creature bore to humanity
was entirely coincidental. Seen up close Uberman couldn't really pass
for human, the impossibly wide shoulders and tiny waist were almost
absurd, as if a sketch of a ridiculously exaggerated masculine figure
had been brought to life.

Noah flicked ash off the tip of his cigarette and watched it blow
across the surface of the rooftop. "You could change all of this, right
now."
Uberman acted as if he hadn't heard.
"How can you live with yourself, with the things he makes you
do?"

Uberman's jaw began to clench. When he spoke he sounded hesitant. "I
know that I've done . . . questionable things, like punching a hole
through the British orbital. I wanted to say no, but I couldn't. I
can't explain it, you have to be in His presence to understand. No one
can refuse Him."

Uberman's head whipped around as his ultra-sensitive hearing brought
the noise of machinery to his ears. Away in the distance several
spectators wearing lift-belts were hovering high above the crowd. But
as they were flying at the specified distance from the stage Uberman
turned back, ignoring them.

Before the interruption Schwartz had been about to say something, but
now it was gone. He was finding it harder and harder to think. In the
meantime Uberman had erased the look of hesitancy from his face.
"Anyway," he said leaning in close, "maybe you get the Hitler you
deserve."
Schwartz sighed. "I don't understand you."

A squadron of Luftwaffe gyroscopes flew overhead, spraying the Fuhrer's
praises into the sky in huge letters of gold, silver and black.
"They're pulling out all the stops aren't they?" Noah said.
"Don't you know what day it is?"
"Funny, I didn't look at my calendar this morning."
"This is All Hallows Eve."
"Is that what this is all about?" Noah laughed, "Jesus!"
"I thought your people didn't believe in Jesus."
Noah didn't bother to reply.
"The Fuhrer thinks the spear was used to pierce Christ's side as he
hung on the Cross." Uberman seemed embarrassed. "It was in the Hapsburg
Collection. He had it brought here after he invaded Austria. He
believes the Grail is buried somewhere in England. Soon he'll be
pulling the country apart looking for it."
"Well what do you expect," Noah replied, "he's fucking mad."
Uberman's face flushed ominously but Schwartz didn't notice.

A projector had been set on top of a nearby building, which presently
threw a huge swastika across the surface of the clouds hovering over
the city.

For a moment Noah's eyes rested on the one woven into the
indestructible material of Uberman's costume, slightly distorted by the
massive muscles of his chest. With difficulty, because Schwartz was
very weak, he pointed to it. "From the Sanskrit. "Su asti". It means,
"Good, he is." Don't you think that's funny?"

Noah's face began to go slack, like a balloon that was running out of
air. He closed his eyes and murmured, "I was just thinking about when
you were a baby. Things would've been so different if you'd crashed in
Tibet, or the United States. None of this would be happening."
Uberman shrugged. "Who knows?"

For several minutes neither of them spoke. Then Uberman noticed that
Noah was trying to speak. By now Noah was far away in a peaceful place.
Nothing remained of his family apart from their ashes, scattered
somewhere in Dachau, but in his mind he was playing with his daughter,
one last time. He smiled. "Puppy," he said and died.

Uberman looked regretfully at him for a moment, then turned towards the
stage. The man with the ridiculous moustache was staring fixedly at his
spear.

Uberman examined the object. At some stage in its existence the spear
had been broken, and the two halves repaired by a sheath of silver,
with two gold crosses inlaid into the base, near the haft. Uberman
thought the spear was unremarkable. Broken, rusted weapons like this
could be seen in any third rate museum in the world.

He returned his attention to the Fuhrer. The crowd had become silent,
as if they were waiting for something momentous to happen. And it
did.

Uberman saw the tip of the lance begin to vibrate, then it burst into
flames. It threw a blinding beam of light up into the air, which left
purple after-images dancing before the streaming eyes of the
crowd.

Uberman watched the explosion of light as it tore into the sky,
tracking it through the clouds, up past the planet's sheath of air and
out into the hard vacuum of space. But not very far. It was pouring
into a point exactly ten feet outside the atmosphere, directly over the
city of Nuremberg. Dimly, Uberman could perceive that it was travelling
further, but even his incredible senses could not see beyond the point
at which the signal exited the universe.

Suddenly his attention was brought back to his immediate environment.
Accompanying the light was a gradually increasing wall of sound. At
first Uberman had felt a slight vibration in his boots, then the
building beneath him began to tremble visibly. All the buildings in the
city were throbbing so hard that this was perceptible even to the eyes
of the multitude. They stared into the sky above them as a sound that
could be felt rather than heard filled the air. Uberman felt it in his
super-dense blood and bone. Behind him and to the left, the Jewish
quarter shook itself into rubble.

Even the Black Wolves' iron discipline was beginning to waver. Many of
them were looking over their shoulders to see what was occurring on the
altar behind them, an expression forming on their faces which up until
that time had only been seen on their victims.

On-stage the acolytes were kneeling, and all but one looked terrified.
Perhaps until this moment they had believed that the blood sacrifices
and atrocities committed specifically to make this happen had merely
been a game.

Only Hitler remained standing, and he wore a look of triumph, as if he
had been in no doubt that this was going to occur. The crowd began to
scream and cheer, they went on and on as if they were afraid to stop.
As they cheered the vibration became stronger, the air darker.

Uberman knew that to the mind of an occultist, an article like the
spear, which had been once been used to such fateful ends, would in
itself become the focus of incredible energies. The spear was an object
that could be used to summon up . . . well, what exactly?

Uberman had a feeling that he was going to find out any moment now, for
the clouds were rapidly boiling away from the sky above Nuremberg as if
they were making way for something that was truly vast.

As a child his spacecraft had crashed into a world eagerly awaiting the
coming of rocketships and atom-splitting. Where Galileo, Newton, and
Einstein were the new gods, and the majority of people conditioned to
believe that everything would come to those who believed the
irrefutable truths of science.
Uberman had come to symbolise these ideals.

Concepts which had just been sacrificed on the alter below him. For
unknown to Uberman, his beloved Fuhrer had harboured a hidden agenda,
had begun to dream of and create a new world. Uberman watched as the
man on the stage collapsed frothing and raving into the arms of his
deciples.

The Man of Iron wondered if there would be a place for him in this new
era of dark and unnatural marvels, a time perhaps when gods spoke from
the sky, and bright, burning creatures walked the streets. And for the
first time in his life he felt afraid.