Alternate Histories: Amber Waves

by GeekSeven



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DOWNLOADED FROM
http://www.superwomenmania.com/storybank
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Author's Note: This story takes place in the same universe as 'Liberty
Belle'.



Part One

News on the move! The Nazi's western front collapses as Allied forces sweep
across the Rhine and race for Berlin. Leading the charge is America's mightiest
maid, the plucky super gal known as Liberty Belle!

Uh-oh Fritzy, it looks like your tank is no match for the iron fists of
Liberty Belle!

Ask not for whom the Belle tolls, Adolf; it tolls for thee. Hurry up and send
Hitler's lackeys packing, Liberty Belle! Our boys in the Pacific cannot wait to
meet you!

*****

October 25th 1944, The Philippines.

A powerful fleet of Japanese battleships, cruisers and destroyers emerged from
the San Bernadino Straits and sailed south, towards the southern island of
Leyte, where General MacArthur's forces were beginning their invasion. Due to a
series of missteps and miscommunications by the US Navy, the only thing in
front of them was a comparatively light force of escort carriers and
destroyers.

On paper, the Allied forces were heavily outgunned, but they had no intention
of letting the Japanese pass to harry the rest of 7th Fleet. They attacked with
such ferocity that the Japanese assumed that they were engaging a much larger
force.

Even if they had known the true composition of the Allied forces, the Japanese
would still not have read the situation correctly. One of the American ships,
the unassuming destroyer USS Haroldson, was carrying a secret weapon that
guaranteed the total defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Twenty feet below the surface of the ocean, Seaman Patience Monaghan,
codenamed 'Amber Waves', moved through the water at 200 knots. Moving five
times faster than a torpedo, she was the fastest thing on or under the water.
Her arms were held out straight in front of her, her hands formed into fists.
Her feet moved in a blur, propelling her through the water.

Her slender swimmer's body was clothed in a brief outfit of white shorts and
white tunic with blue piping. It was hardly standard US Navy issue, but then
she was hardly a standard US Navy sailor. Her long red hair flowed behind her.

Ahead, she could see her first target: a destroyer of the Imperial Japanese
Navy. Her eyes could see clearly through the dark water for twenty miles,
making it easy to recognize the ship silhouettes that she had diligently
memorized. Closing rapidly on the helpless vessel, she could make out
individual barnacles on the side of the hull.

She struck the destroyer hard beneath the waterline; so hard that not only did
she tear a ragged hole in the hull, but the force of the impact tipped the
small ship over onto its side and capsized it. The destroyer sank quickly
behind Patience as she altered her course and made for a light cruiser. 'Amber
Waves' had struck for the first time. Her uniform had caught on the sides of
the hole that she had made and was torn along one side; her tunic flapped in
the water.

Patience was able to stay underwater indefinitely, something that she doubted
even the great 'Liberty Belle' could do. She did not know whether she did not
need air, or whether she was somehow taking it from the water like a fish, but
either way she was able to stay submerged for as long as she needed to. The
surface ships of the Japanese Navy would never even see Patience coming.

The light cruiser IJN Yahagi was a much larger proposition than the destroyer
Patience had already sunk, with over three times the displacement and thicker
armor. Patience struck the back of the ship and passed straight through,
gouging a Patience-shaped hole in the hull, flooding the engine room.

She stopped and turned on a dime. She examined the submerged portion of the
cruiser hull in front of her. The ship was taking on water and was already
sitting lower in the water. She moved in closer and punched a pair of holes in
the center of the hull. She gripped the ragged edges of the small holes she had
made with her fists and rolled up the thick steel plates as if they were
unbaked pastry. Moving quickly, she was able to tear two parallel gashes all
the way to the front of the ship in under two minutes. Water rushed into the
Yahagi and it sank quickly.

Patience was on her way to the next ship in her sights, the heavy cruiser
Kumano, when she heard a squawk of sound. The science team that traveled with
her on the USS Haroldson had modified the sonar system so that it could be used
to communicate with Amber Waves when she was deployed. The compressed burst of
sound carried a long way under the water and was completely unintelligible to
anyone but Patience. Her incredibly sensitive ears had no trouble
distinguishing the communication from the cacophony of background sounds and
her super fast brain was able to slow down the message and interpret it.

Staying beneath the surface was ideal for attacking and sinking enemy ships,
but it meant that Patience did not have a good view of the battle as a whole.
She relied on the crew of the Haroldson to let her know of any orders from
Fleet Command, or suggestions from their own tactical team, otherwise she would
just continue attacking targets of opportunity.

The message was brief: "Show them what you can do. Take out Yamato." A compass
bearing and distance for the Yamato followed, based on the location of the
Yahagi, which she had just sunk.

The Yamato was the giant Japanese battleship that sat at the heart of the
Imperial Japanese Navy. IJN Yamato was a monster of steel and ordnance that
dwarfed anything else afloat. The thinnest armor on the ship was over a foot
thick, her nine enormous main guns could fire an armor-piercing shell the
length of a marathon race, she was over 800 feet long and massed over 70,000
tonnes.

The 19-year old Patience Monaghan was 5 feet and 6 inches tall and weighed 130
pounds. She intended to sink the Yamato single-handed.

She checked her watch/compass and oriented herself on the correct bearing. She
swam faster than normal, hitting 300 knots easily. There were a pair of tin
cans (destroyers) between her and the Yamato, but she paid them no mind. She
hit the first one towards the stern and punched straight through the hull and
out the other side as if it was made of tissue paper.

Patience was moving fast enough to leave a wake on the surface of the water,
which the quick-witted crew of the second destroyer had noticed. They had fired
a series of depth charges directly along the path that Patience was taking. By
calculation or luck, the charges detonated just as Patience was swimming
through their midst. Two charges detonated close to Patience on either side.
Intersecting shock waves that would have cracked the hull of a submarine like
an egg washed over her body. She was pushed off course slightly, but otherwise
she hardly felt the explosions. When submerged in the water, Patience was so
tough that she had yet to find anything that could hurt her. She could survive
the crushing pressure at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, so a couple of depth
charges were nothing.

Unfortunately, the same invulnerability did not apply to her uniform, which
became even more ragged and torn as a result of the depth charges. The remains
of the outfit were soon torn from her body by her rapid motion through the
water, until she was completely naked. It felt good to be free of the uniform,
but Patience did not relish the teasing she would get from the crew of the
Haroldson when she returned.

She quickly closed the distance to the destroyer that had hit her with the
lucky depth charges and smashed into its hull. Rather than keeping her arms
together, she held them out to either side to increase her cross section as she
passed through the thin armor plating. The pressure exerted on her outstretched
arms as she hit the steel was incredible, but the steel proved less durable
than her shoulder joints. She cut through the hull and emerged on the other
side like a hot knife cutting through butter. As she left the destroyer in her
wake, an explosion ripped through the ship; Patience had passed through one of
the magazine storage areas and her rapid passage had ignited a number of
high-explosive shells, which had in turn set off a larger explosion.

There was nothing between Amber Waves and the battleship Yamato but clear,
blue ocean; and Patience reigned supreme in the ocean.

*****

Three Months Earlier...

Captain Mortimer Graves stood with Professor Judith Sparks on an observation
platform, built high on one side of an old U.S. Navy warehouse. The floor of
the warehouse was filled with a mixture of fitness equipment, medical
equipment, and a large, circular steel tank, 75 feet across and ten feet deep,
filled almost to the brim with water.

A pretty young woman with red hair, dressed in a navy blue swimsuit, was
currently lifting weights on the warehouse floor. A Navy nurse was monitoring
her blood pressure and pulse rate as she completed repetition after repetition,
curling her arms up and down as she held the large dumbbell.

"How strong is she?" asked the Captain.

"Right now, she is about four times as strong as an Olympic weight lifter,
with about ten times the endurance," replied the Professor.

The Captain snorted. "Impressive, but hardly in the same league as Liberty
Belle," he said.

Captain Graves was in the Office of Naval Intelligence, and was one of the few
Navy officers cleared to know about the United States' Superwoman Project,
which had been kicked off by the accidental creation of the world's first
superwoman: Liberty Belle. The project was controlled by the Army, and the Navy
was frustrated that they were shut out.

Liberty Belle had yet to be deployed in battle, although it was only a matter
of time. Captain Graves had seen some of her field trials, and the
possibilities were incredible, and incredibly frightening. If the Navy did not
want to become completely irrelevant, it badly needed a superwoman of its own.

The Professor smiled. "She is only that weak because it has been twelve hours
since she was last in the water," she said.

She shouted down to the warehouse floor. "Patience! Do you want to jump in the
water and show our visitor what you can do?"

The young woman put her weights down. When the nurse had removed the blood
pressure monitor, she ran over to the tank of water and leaped from the ground,
caught the edge of the tank with one hand and vaulted herself over the side and
into the water.

"As you can see, even when she is at her weakest, she is still capable of
great feats of athleticism," said Professor Sparks.

The Captain noted that there was a winch over the tank, at the end of which
was suspended a large hunk of metal. The winch began to lower the metal weight
while Patience waited underneath, treading water.

"That weight masses around 5 tonnes," said Professor Sparks.

When the weight had been lowered to around 5 feet above the swimming woman, a
mechanic yanked on a release and the weight dropped. At first it looked as if
the weight had crushed the young woman, because both her and the weight
dropped. The Captain gripped the railing with anxiety. Then he noticed that the
weight had only fallen a couple of feet into the water. The young woman was
immersed in the water with her feet on the bottom of the tank and her arms
above her head, easily supporting the massive weight.

As the Captain watched, his eyes widening in surprise, the weight began to
lift out of the water. Soon the young woman's arms and heads were above the
water as well. Her legs were moving rapidly beneath her, violently churning the
water. She flexed her arms slightly and tossed the weight up and to one side.
It landed on the floor of the warehouse with a crash, smashing a hole in the
concrete.

"Very impressive," said the Captain.

"When she is in the water, she is at least as strong as Liberty Belle," said
the Professor. "Five tonnes is just the tip of the iceberg."

The young woman dived under the water and turned and tucked in her legs so
that she was sitting on the bottom of the tank. She continued sitting there
until a minute had passed, then two minutes, then five... She exhibited no
discomfort whatsoever.

"How long?" asked the Captain.

"Undetermined," replied the Professor. "The longest we have measured is 24
hours completely submerged. We do not know how she does it, but it appears that
she can remain underwater indefinitely."

The young woman moved off the bottom and began to swim around the edge of the
tank. As she swam, the water began to move in a circular motion. She swam
faster and faster, forcing the water into a whirlpool. She was swimming so fast
that she was only visible as a blur of pink and blue under the water. The
whirlpool became so deep and so fast that water sprayed over the sides of the
tank, and the bottom of the tank was completely exposed at the center.

"How fast?" asked the Captain.

"At least 250 knots," replied the Professor. "She is the fastest thing in the
water by an order of magnitude. She is also incredibly maneuverable, as you can
see."

"Holy crap," said the Captain.

The young woman stopped her motion suddenly, going from full speed to
perfectly still in a moment. She knelt down, pushed her legs against the bottom
of the tank and leaped out of the water and into the air. She glided down to
the floor of the warehouse like a leaf in autumn.

"She cannot fly, as such," said the Professor. "She can leap out of the water
and glide, like a flying fish. Now that she is out of the water, her powers
will begin to fade. In ten minutes, she will no longer be bulletproof. In half
an hour, she will be back to her base level of strength, which is where she was
when you came in."

The Captain shook his head and grinned broadly. "She is perfect for the Navy.
Even if the Army tried to pull her into the Superwoman Project, it would make
no sense; her powers are tied to the water."

"Exactly," said the Professor.

"Who is she?" asked the Captain.

"Her name is Patience Monaghan," replied the Professor. "She is... was a
student at Berkley University. She has just finished her Freshman year,
majoring in Physics. She is a smart cookie by all accounts. She and a couple of
friends were celebrating the beginning of summer by sailing a yacht around the
bay. Something fell out of the sky and destroyed the boat."

"Do we know what it was?" asked the Captain.

"No idea," replied the Professor. "Our best guess is that it was
extra-terrestrial in origin. Some kind of toxic space junk. The men on the boat
survived the initial impact, but died of radiation poisoning before Patience
could get them back to the shore. She swam a mile, dragging both of their
bodies, in under two minutes."

"Once again, the men die and the woman gets superpowers. Just like with
Liberty Belle," said the Captain.

"My working hypothesis is that there is something in the male genome that
makes men incompatible with superpowers. It is as if their bodies violently
reject being remade," said the Professor.

"Will she sign up?" asked the Captain. The President had signed an executive
order that gave him the power to draft Patience Monaghan on the spot, but when
dealing with a woman who could punch through armor-plated steel, it was
regarded as good policy to ask politely first.

The Professor nodded, briskly. "I think so. Her father was in the Navy during
the Great War, and she has a brother in the Marines right now. Joining the
armed forces is not what she saw herself doing, but she will adapt. She is a
good woman. This is going to make a lot of people in the Navy very happy."

The Captain nodded. "It is also going to make a lot of other people in the
Navy very upset."

"How come?" asked the Professor.

"Because that young woman," he gestured to the warehouse floor where Patience
was toweling herself off, "has just made every military ship and submarine in
the world obsolete."

*****

October 25th 1944, The Philippines.

The Imperial Japanese Navy had a lot of prestige invested the Yamato. In spite
of her theoretical power, she was rarely risked in pitched battle. She had
barely become engaged in the battle before she turned and steamed away at full
speed.

The Yamato was a large and powerful ship, but she had eventually yielded to
Patience's power. The first thing she had done was to tear off the massive
propellers at the rear of the ship. The Yamato was dead in the water and her
engines were destroyed from straining against Patience's firm grip.

Starting at the back of the ship, she punched into the armor plated hull and
tore great chunks of metal out of the side of the ship, digging her way towards
the inside. When she had made a hole in the hull, she positioned herself inside
it, ignoring the water streaming over her into the ship. She pulled hard and
began to peel back the steel, curling it away from the ship like removing the
skin from an orange. As she widened the gaping wound in the side of the Yamato,
it began to list to one side as the mighty ship filled with water.

Sailors lined the side of the ship, shooting into the water with their rifles.
The bullets came apart as soon as they hit the water. A destroyer moved in
close to the Yamato and began launching depth charges over the side, but they
did more damage to the Japanese ships than they did to Patience.

Quicker than it might have seemed possible, given the enormous size of the
ship, the Yamato began to sink beneath the waves. The young woman had tested
herself against the biggest, toughest, nastiest ship that any navy had ever
launched and she had sunk it, single-handed, in the space of ten minutes.

Patience had time to sink one more battleship and a pair of light cruisers
before she was ordered back to the Haroldson. When she reached the old
destroyer and dipped her head above the water, the crew were lined along the
sides of the ship. When they spotted her they started to cheer.

"Seaman Monaghan! The Captain wants to see you right away!" shouted Lieutenant
Savidge.

"I'm not quite decent," she shouted back. "Could one of you boys throw me down
a shirt?"

There was a small riot as the crew scrambled to take off their shirts. A dozen
of the white garments went over the side and into the water around Patience.
She grabbed the nearest two and dived under the ship. Safely out of sight, she
pulled the two shirts over her torso. She hoped that two shirts might protect
her dignity where one would not, even when wet.

She swam to the back of the ship and leaped out of the water. She delicately
glided down onto the deck of the ship, holding the shirt down with her hands to
keep it from flying up and revealing more than she would like. She alighted on
the deck with an otherworldly grace and saluted the gathered crew.

"Hello, boys!" she said.

Lt. Savidge rushed over to her and escorted her in the direction of the
bridge. "The Captain would like to congratulate you in person, Seaman," he
said.

"That's great, Jim. What are the brass saying?" she asked.

Savidge laughed. "Depends on the brass. Word is that Admiral Halsey is pissed
that you got the Yamato instead of him. He left you behind with 7th Fleet
because he thought it would keep you away from the fighting, now he looks
pretty stupid. Admiral Nimitz is just pleased as punch that you gave the Japs
another bloody nose. Making Halsey look stupid is probably a bonus as far as
he's concerned. MacArthur wants to know why you aren't storming the beaches."

"I would like to know that as well," said Patience.

"You know that we can't risk that. If you're out of the water for too long,
the Japs might get lucky. Can you imagine the blow to morale if they managed to
shoot 'Amber Waves'?"

They reached the bridge. Patience saluted the Captain, crisply.

"Apologies for the inappropriate attire, Sir," she said. "I took a couple of
close depth charges."

"At ease, Seaman. No apology necessary; I understand that you require a
certain informality in dress. At least until we can find a suit that can keep
up with you!" said the Captain. "You did good work out there, Seaman."

"Thank you, Sir," replied Patience. "What now?"

"MacArthur wants us covering the landings on Leyte. Halsey can hunt down the
rest of the Japanese fleet," he said.

*****

Part Two

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 17th 1944

Patience sat with her legs dangling over the side of USS Haroldson, which was
currently anchored in Pearl Harbor. They had been recalled so that the Navy
could run tests on a new costume that they had developed for her. The ship had
arrived way ahead of schedule, thanks to Patience swimming behind and pushing
it at over 200 knots.

She was reading a newspaper dated December 15th 1944 that declared the end of
the war in Europe. "Germany Surrenders! Hitler Captured! Victory in Europe!"
read the headlines.

Lt. Jim Savidge came up behind her and reached down to place one hand on her
shoulder. "Hard to believe, isn't it? That Liberty Belle is quite a girl."

Patience put the newspaper to one side. "She certainly is. According to the
paper, she snatched Hitler right out of his bunker during the Battle of Berlin
and delivered him to General Eisenhower."

"Are you jealous?" asked Lt. Savidge.

Patience sighed. "A little bit, I guess. Maybe if I could fly like her, then
I'd be 'America's Super-Sweetheart'."

"You can fly, Patience."

"It's different, Jack. I can... leap. Like a flying fish," said Patience.

"How long has it been since you were last in the water?" asked the young
Lieutenant.

Patience checked her wristwatch, the latest underwater model from the Naval
Research Laboratory. "About thirty minutes," she said.

"How are you feeling?" asked Jack.

Patience lifted her legs and spun around. She got to her feet and faced Jim
Savidge. The Lieutenant never wasted an opportunity to look over the lovely
young woman. Her uniform was not exactly US Navy regulation issue. She wore a
pair of brief white shorts with blue piping on the waistband and legs. Her
midriff was exposed by her short white tunic, which clung to her full breasts.
Wearing a uniform that left most of her golden, tanned skin bare was actually
practical, since she spent so much time in the water. The skimpy outfit did not
get in the way of her swimming and the thin fabric dried quickly. The crew of
the ship had taken a little while to get used to having a nubile 19-year-old
running around dressed like a pin-up star, but her sweet nature and incredible
powers had won them over and they were now very protective of her. That did not
stop them from enjoying the view, however.

She smiled when she saw that Jim was running his eye along the curve of her
hips. She crouched and jumped straight up twelve feet into the air. She landed
with a loud thud.

"I would say that I'm at about three times baseline," said Patience. That
meant that she was currently twelve times stronger than an Olympic
weightlifter. That was close to the bottom of her range. After another five
minutes out of the water, she would be no more than four times as strong as a
weightlifter, which was her weakest "baseline" state.

"That's good," said Jim, "Your powers are not fading as quickly as they used
to when you're out of the water."

When Patience was in the water, ocean or fresh, she was probably as strong,
fast and tough as Liberty Belle; she could stay submerged indefinitely, she
could swim faster than any ship afloat and she could "fly" short distances by
leaping out of the water. The problem was that her powers faded rapidly when
she dried out. That was why she had spent the last three months assigned to a
destroyer in the Pacific Ocean, the largest body of water in the world, rather
than the plains of Western Europe, where Liberty Belle had spearheaded the
western Allies' rapid advance into Germany.

The existence of a second American superwoman in the Pacific Theater had been
kept quiet. Her official code name was 'Amber Waves', a patriotic nod to her
red hair and the aquatic nature of her powers. In spite of the low profile, she
had contributed significantly to the war effort. Twenty ships of the Imperial
Japanese Navy, including the giant battleship Yamato, were now on the bottom of
the Pacific with Patience Monaghan-shaped holes in their hulls. She had also
saved many Allied lives by intercepting Kamikaze attacks on their ships, and
had hunted down and sunk a dozen Japanese submarines.

A strong gust of wind sprung out of nowhere, sending Patience's abandoned
newspaper tumbling over the side of the ship and into the water. Patience ran
to fetch it, but stopped when she saw a young woman floating in the air next to
the ship. The new arrival wore khaki shorts, a cut down khaki jacket, and she
had one of the most famous smiles in the world.

"Captain Angela Janowski, requesting permission to come aboard!" said Liberty
Belle.

Lt. Savidge saluted. "Please do, Captain!" he said. The presence of the two
most powerful women in the world at the same time was almost more than he could
handle.

Liberty Belle alighted on the deck next to Patience. Patience saluted.
"Captain?"

Angela smiled. "Apparently, capturing Hitler is worth a promotion," she said.

"Good work," said Patience. She was uneasy in the presence of the original
superwoman. "Why are you here?"

"I'm on my way to the Philippines to help MacArthur finish up the invasion,"
replied Liberty Belle, "I hear you've done a lot of the heavy lifting already."

Patience sighed. "I would have done more if the Admirals would let me. I've
sunk half of the Japanese surface Navy, protected ships against kamikaze
attacks and gone after submarines, but I could have crushed most of the Jap
fortifications if they would let me hit the beach."

Liberty Belle nodded. "The reason I stopped here is that I think we need to
talk. Can you ask your Captain for a few hours shore leave? I think you've
earned it."

*****

Half an hour later, the two women were sitting at a small table in the corner
of a dive bar in Honolulu. The bartender had refused to take Liberty Belle's
money in exchange for their beers.

"You're frustrated that the Navy isn't letting you do as much as you can,"
said Angela. She kept her voice low so that they would not be overheard.

Patience nodded, causing the curls of her hair to bounce. "They change their
minds about what they want me to be doing all the time, but the one thing they
won't let me do is hit dry land. I could do a lot of damage before I need to go
back into the sea."

"The Navy has a couple of issues," said Angela. "The first is that they are
terrified of the Army coming in and taking you away. If you prove that you can
be effective on land, then they think that they will lose control of you."

"That's ridiculous!" shouted Patience. "We could be in Manila by now if they
would let me loose."

"I know," said Angela. "It's all politics. The other problem they have is that
they don't see you as a person, they see you as a weapon. That's why they keep
changing your mission: they're field-testing you to see what you can do. Just
like they would with a new torpedo, or aircraft."

Patience's shoulders slumped. She felt deflated. "I know. I know. I didn't
think it would be like this. But what can I do?"

"Right now, nothing," said Liberty Belle. "Just be patient and make a lot of
friends. I'm working on the political angle with Eisenhower and some others,
trying to protect the status of superwomen. There are more of us coming and
they need to understand that they cannot treat us as tools, or weapons. It's
hard enough to keep a grip on our humanity as it is, without them pushing us
further away."

"I've hit a brick wall with the Navy, but I did force them to make one
concession. You're the most powerful sailor in the fleet, but you're just a
Seaman, because they want you to feel controlled. As of today, you're
commissioned as an Ensign. Your Captain should have the paperwork by now."

Patience was shocked. "Wow. Really?"

Angela smiled. "Really. I wish I could do more, but I have faith that you'll
make the best of it."

"How do you do it?" asked Patience. "How do you stay in touch with your
humanity when you can bench press a battleship?"

Angela took a deep swig of beer. "It's hard. It's really hard. I'm just a kid
from Brooklyn and all of a sudden I'm some kind of demi-goddess. In three
months, I've killed more enemy soldiers than anybody else in the Army."

"I know what you mean," said Patience. "I sank the Yamato. I tore her hull to
pieces with just my hands. 2,500 men on board and she went down so fast that
hardly any of them made it out alive. I wonder if I am just a weapon."

"You can't think like that. If we start to think of ourselves like that, then
who knows what we could become capable of?" said Angela. She paused. "I was
given a week of leave before transferring to the Pacific. I went home to
Brooklyn. My parents were proud of me, but I could tell that they were also
afraid of how strong I am."

"I'm sorry," said Patience.

"I went to a movie with my old sweetheart," continued Angela. "He walked me
home and kissed me on the stoop of our building. I kissed him back and I broke
his jaw. I didn't realize until he started screaming. He looked at me like I
was some kind of monster and he ran away from me. I decided to cut my leave
short and get back to the killing."

Patience reached over the table and took Angela's hand. She could never have
imagined the pain that lay behind the cheery, heroic face that Liberty Belle
presented to the world.

"I'm jealous of you," said Angela. "When you're out of the water, you are
almost a normal human. You can be intimate with a man without hurting him."

"Maybe one day they'll make a super-man?" asked Patience. "He could be with
you."

Angela shook her head. "The eggheads say that's impossible. Only women are
able to become super."

"Stay in Hawaii for the rest of your leave," said Patience. "They gave it to
you already. We're here a few days ahead of schedule. We can spend some time
together."

"That sounds nice," said Liberty Belle. "Thank you."

*****

Epilogue:

Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, sat at his desk cradling a
glass of brandy. There was a knock at the door.

"Enter!" he shouted.

A thin man in a gray suit entered. Reginald Hoskins headed up an intelligence
task force that had been put together to deal with the superwomen issue.

"The strike team just reported in. Looks like Ultra laid another golden egg,
Prime Minister," said Hoskins.

"Excellent, excellent," said Churchill. Ultra was the top-secret code breaking
operation out of Bletchley Park that had done a lot to shorten the war by
breaking the German's encrypted communications. In the dying days of the war,
it had been invaluable in tracking the Nazi regime's efforts to put their
artistic and technological treasures out of reach of the Allies.

"All of the materials and personnel on U-478 were captured intact. Looks like
pretty much everything of any importance from the Hamburg lab. However..."

Churchill harrumphed. He did not like the word "however", since it usually
indicated a turd in the punchbowl.

Hoskins continued. "...however, the documents indicate that the Hamburg
facility was one of three locations engaged in Übermädchen research."

"Bloody hell," said Churchill. He, more than anyone, knew how lucky the Allies
were that Hitler had waited until the tide of war had turned against Germany
before funding Professor Ernst Käufer's apparently hare-brained research into
creating 'Das Übermädchen'. The Allies had dismissed Käufer's work as the
ramblings of a madman, until the accident at Los Alamos had created Liberty
Belle. After that, they had taken it very seriously indeed.

If the war had lasted only a few monthes longer, then the Germans would almost
certainly have succeeded in their quest to create an Übermädchen, and god only
knew how things would have turned out then.

Churchill had nightmares about what would have happened if Hitler had taken
Käufer seriously in the 1930's, when the eccentric Professor had first came up
with the Übermädchen theory. The night before, Churchill had dreamed of an
alternate Battle of Britain, where the Spitfires and Hurricanes of the RAF fell
like autumn leaves against the power of a single, relentless Übermädchen. The
night before that he had dreamed of the Battle of El Alamein, turned on its
head by a pair of young German women with the powers of goddesses. Before that
he had dreamed of "D-Day" turned into "Death-Day" as a hundred thousand allied
troops were torn apart by a half dozen unstoppable Übermädchen in short, black
skirts. Another nightmare had been of the London Blitz; but instead of hundreds
of German aircraft, the attacking forces were hundreds of flying women, turning 
the city of London to ash with powerful beams of fire projected from their eyes.

He snapped himself out of his reverie. "What happened to the other locations?"

Hoskins nodded. He knew how the emergence of superwomen had shaken Churchill.
"One was in occupied Poland. We think that the Russians overran the facility
before they had a chance to evacuate."

Churchill snorted. "Stalin has them? Damn it!" He smashed his fist on the
table. He did not like Stalin and he did not care for the Russian leader's
plans to dominate Eastern Europe. At least Liberty Belle had allowed them to
keep most of Germany and Czechoslovakia out of Stalin's hands, but he dreaded
to think what Stalin would do with a superwoman, or superwomen, of his own.
Maybe Churchill's nightmare of England crushed beneath the high heels of
unstoppable foreign vixens would come to pass after all; only they would be
speaking Russian instead of German.

"The third location was in Norway. They were evacuated by a separate route
that was not discussed in any Ultra traffic. We don't know where they went to.
Professor Käufer was part of that facility," said Hoskins.

"Any chance that the Americans nabbed them and just forgot to tell us?" asked
Churchill.

"I don't think so. The yanks are really focused on their own research. We
think that some of the Nazi inner circle are making for South America. That's
where U-478 was going. Maybe Käufer is going there as well," said Hoskins.

"Well, we need to focus on what we have. Can we do it?" asked Churchill.

Hoskins shrugged. "That depends on Turing and the rest of his team. They seem
pretty confident that we can have a British supergirl in a year or two."

Churchill nodded. The balance of power in the world was changing in
frightening and unpredictable ways. Armies and natural resources would not
determine who came out on top; the only way to ensure Britain's future in the
world was to have superwomen.

"Tell Alan he has nine months," said Churchill. "Britain's survival depends on
it."