Alternate Histories: Liberty Belle 

By GeekSeven


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DOWNLOADED FROM
http://www.superwomenmania.com/storybank
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September 20th, 1944:

Lt. Angela Janowski of the Women's Army Corps saluted crisply as she entered
the office of General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe.
He was sitting at his desk, reading what looked like a decoded message. She
could not help but smile as she saluted; she had a feeling that the message was
very good news for her.

Eisenhower looked over the message and said, "Well I'll be damned."

He gestured to Angela to sit. "At ease, Lieutenant," he said.

Angela sat in a chair opposite Eisenhower's desk and held her breath in
anticipation, which had the effect of inflating her already generous chest.
Angela was 5 feet 2 inches tall, with golden hair that was currently tied back
under her cap, but which flowed down in thick curls otherwise. She had a sweet,
heart-shaped face with plump lips and big, green eyes. Her WAC uniform gave
little clue as to the stunning body that lay beneath, but every man at
headquarters had filled in the gaps with his imagination. Lt. Janowski was the
unofficial sweetheart of Allied Headquarters.

Eisenhower smiled broadly. "The President has given the order to activate
Liberty Belle."

Angela let her breath out slowly and closed her eyes for a moment; she had
been waiting for this moment for months and now that it was finally here, she
could hardly believe it. "Thank you, Sir. What are my orders, Sir?"

Eisenhower sighed. "Your orders are to pull Monty's balls out of the fire."

Angela had suspected as much. Everybody at headquarters had been following the
progress of Operation Market Garden, Field Marshall Montgomery's
uncharacteristically audacious plan to capture the Rhine bridges that lay
between the western Allies and the heart of Germany through a combined airborne
and ground assault. If the plan had worked, they would have been in a position
to end the war against Germany in 1944 and perhaps beat the Russians to Berlin.

"Market Garden has turned into a shambles," continued Eisenhower, "and I need
you to stop it from turning into a disaster."

Due to a combination of poor planning and bad luck, Operation Market Garden
had not gone smoothly. A small force of British paratroopers were desperately
holding onto the north end of the bridge at Arnhem, while the rest of their
division were pinned down in the suburbs of Arnhem. The mechanized thrust of
the XXX Corps which was supposed to have relieved the forces in Arnhem by now
was desperately trying to fight their way across the bridge at Nijmegen.

"I do not know if Montgomery and Churchill planned this; they are certainly
sneaky enough," said Eisenhower, "But the fact is that the situation with
Market Garden has forced FDR off the fence."

Liberty Belle had been ready for combat for two months now, but FDR's
administration had been split on when the best time for deployment was; always
with one eye on Stalin. Some wanted to scare the Russians into line as soon as
possible, while others wanted to avoid antagonizing them until after the war
was settled in both the European and Pacific theaters. The fact that it was an
election year and FDR's failing health both complicated the issue, leaving the
President torn. If Churchill and Montgomery really had planned Market Garden
with the intention that it would fail and force Roosevelt to unleash Liberty
Belle, then Angela was simultaneously glad and appalled.

Eisenhower gave Angela an update on the current strategic situation. "Since
your abilities are unlike anything we have any tactical experience with, you
have broad latitude in action. Just limit yourself to making Market Garden a
success. Do not try to fight your way to Berlin!" He looked at her, sternly.
"Or Warsaw," he added. Eisenhower was well aware that she was of Polish descent
and that Poland was already suffering under Soviet control.

Angela nodded. "Yes, sir!" she said. Eisenhower was one of the few people in
the Army who really understood what Liberty Belle was capable of. The other
generals had read the reports from her training, but they did not really
believe it. Eisenhower had always realized that she was America's deadliest
weapon, in addition to being her most secret.

"Your first priority will be to help the British paras hold the bridge in
Arnhem," said Eisenhower.

"Are there any airborne units that can be dropped nearby?" asked Angela.

Eisenhower thought for a moment. "Yes, the Polish brigades are itching to go,
but here are no safe drop sites right now, especially with the weather."

Angela smiled. "Perfect. Tell them to get the Poles in the air for a drop in
two hours. South of the bridge. I'll make sure that they get down safely," said
Angela.

Eisenhower was a little taken aback. As Supreme Commander, he was not used to
taking orders from female Lieutenants, but Angela Janowski was no ordinary
Lieutenant.

"I'll do what I can. Do you need transport to Eindhoven?" asked Eisenhower.

"No, Sir. I believe I can make it on my own," said Angela.

She stood up, saluted the General and then executed the move that she had
waited for since arriving at the front. She stood on one foot like a ballerina
and spun herself around so fast that she appeared to be a blur. When she
stopped spinning, her WAC uniform had been replaced by a pair of Khaki shorts
and a cropped khaki jacket that extended a couple of inches below her bust. The
gleaming gold buttons of the jacket strained to contain her generous chest.

Her cut-down uniform was not mere vanity or titillation; it was almost all
that was left of the uniform that she had been wearing when the accident had
occurred. Most of that standard WAC uniform had been destroyed in the blast,
but the scraps that remained had been transformed into a material that was
nearly impervious to damage. The only thing that could work the cloth was
Angela. She had fashioned the uniform herself and given the leftover scraps to
the scientists at Los Alamos for study.

Angela saluted again. "Liberty Belle, reporting for duty, Sir!" With that, she
turned, ran out of Eisenhower's office and launched herself into the air. When
she reached an altitude of 10,000 feet, she banked and made for Holland.

As she flew across the war-ravaged fields of Europe, moving faster than a V2
rocket, Angela was filled with exhilaration. She had been impatient to enter
the war and start kicking some Nazi butt for some time now. Her parents had
emigrated from Poland in the 1920's and Angela had many relatives that she had
not heard from since the invasion in 1939.

Angela remembered the horror of that day, she had been a teenager, listening
to the news reports on the family radio, and crying. By the time she had
graduated, America had entered the war and she eagerly joined up. Her desire to
be near the front lines had been thwarted by her assignment to a research
facility in Los Alamos.

Her duties as a communications officer for the Manhattan Project had been
boring, until the day of the accident.

Her memories of were hazy. She remembered the heat of a blast, the burn of
radiation, and a strange sensation as if she were being taken apart, piece by
piece and that those pieces were then reassembled in a different order. She
remembered screaming so hard that she thought she would never stop. She
remembered waking up on a hospital bed inside a concrete bunker, being treated
by nurses with cotton stuffed into their ears who were extremely wary of
touching her. She later found out that a dozen people had been permanently
deafened by her screaming and that she had crushed the hand of the first doctor
who had tried to treat her.

After a slow recovery and the dawning realization of how the accident had
changed her, came a determination to join the fight. Months of training had
followed. She had served in Allied Headquarters for the last two months as a
logistics officer, discharging her duties efficiently, but always hoping for
the day when she would get the order to put the cover story aside and go into
action.

That day was now and Lt. Angela Janowski, aka Liberty Belle, intended to take
full advantage. She had reached the town of Arnhem and she began her descent
towards the north end of the bridge, the sounds of the ongoing battle ringing
in her ears.

According to Eisenhower's briefing, the position of the British paratroopers
in Arnhem was tenuous. A single brigade of around 700 men had reached the
bridge and dug in. They had held out for longer, against far heavier
opposition, than the original plan had expected a full division to; but they
were running low on ammo and their lack of effective anti-tank weaponry was
being exploited by the German panzers. Well, thought Angela as she dived
towards the battleground, they had an effective anti-tank weapon now: her.

From the looks of things, she had arrived just in the nick of time. There was
a sustained German assault underway, featuring tanks and infantry.

Liberty Belle landed on her feet in front of a German Tiger tank that was
about to overrun a British barricade. She reached out with both hands and
brought the giant vehicle to a standstill, bracing her bare feet against the
ground. Smoke began to rise from the sides of the tank as the engine strained
against the immovable one-woman barricade. She grasped the front of the tank
firmly and threw her arms up, flipping the vehicle onto its back. Two German
soldiers who had been running behind the tank were crushed by its giant bulk.

Angela paused for a moment. She had killed in battle now. It was no longer a
theoretical possibility, but a pair of cold hard facts that lay crushed beneath
tonnes of German steel. She looked down at her slender hands and marveled at
what they could do. It was easier than she had expected to kill; her heart had
been hardened against the Nazis for a long time.

"Schießen das Mädchen!" shouted a German officer.

A squad of infantry had been advancing alongside the tank and had been left
exposed when the tank had suddenly halted and then been flipped over. The
British paratroopers had taken advantage of their confusion to shoot some of
them, but the rest took cover and opened fire on the diminutive figure of
Liberty Belle.

Angela had been shot at before. During the time that she had been training to
use her powers effectively, she had spent a lot of time on the firing range,
finding out just how bulletproof she really was. Now she appreciated that it
was one thing to stand on a firing range with a friendly soldier shooting at
you, it was quite another to be in the chaos of battle, the target of a hail of
hostile bullets. It was disconcerting at first, but then Angela began to
realize that their bullets were bouncing off her invulnerable skin just as the
ones on the firing range had. They tickled slightly, but were otherwise
harmless.

She walked towards the soldiers shooting at her from behind the upturned tank.
They continued firing at her with no effect. She reached the closest of the
soldiers and leaned down so that the end of his rifle was nestled in her
cleavage. He was young, probably younger than her, and he looked terrified. He
pulled the trigger and fell to the ground as the rifle recoiled backwards into
his shoulder, her bare skin having stopped the bullet cold.

An officer stepped forward, holding a pistol. He fired at her head from a
distance of two feet, hitting her squarely between the eyes. The astonishment
on his face as he watched the mashed bullet fall to the ground, having left no
mark on her skin, made Angela smile. Quicker than he could react, she closed
the distance between them, reached out and grabbed him by the throat. With a
sharp twist of her wrist, she snapped the officer's neck. She released her grip
and let his lifeless body fall to the ground.

That was another first for Angela; now she had taken a life with her bare
hands. Again, it did not affect her as much as she thought it would. The
officer had been so fragile, so easy to break with her impossible strength that
he did not seem quite real to her. It was as if she had killed the shadow of a
human being.

The rest of the squad looked at the body and then looked at her. They had seen
her take bullets at almost point blank range and not even blink and they had
seen her snap their squad leader's neck like he was a chicken bound for the
dinner pot. They ran.

Angela decided to prioritize the German armor first. There were several Tiger
tanks bearing down on British positions, with German infantry advancing behind
them. She ran across the battleground to the nearest of them and stopped,
facing the tank. She pulled her arm back, formed her hand into a fist and
punched the front of the tank as hard as she could. The thick armor at the
front of the vehicle shattered into shards of steel and the rest of the vehicle
flew backwards through the air, crushing more infantry and scattering the rest.
She repeated the move with the rest of the tanks that she could see, blunting
the thrust of the immediate assault.

The Germans began to pull back to their lines and started shelling the British
positions. Angela flew straight up so that she had a better view of where the
Germans had set up their panzers and artillery. As she was scanning the
terrain, she heard the hum of approaching aircraft. She looked up and noticed a
trio of German Messerschmitt 109s approaching from the east. They must have
been out hunting for Allied planes attempting to drop supplies to the British
Airborne troops north of the river.

Angela rapidly flew towards the planes, faster than the pilots could follow.
When she reached the first fighter, she flipped and lowered herself onto the
nose of the plane, wrapping her legs around the the steel fuselage and giving
the pilot a splendid view of her posterior. The vibration of the engine between
her legs felt wonderful, but she did not have time for pleasure. She reached
forward with one arm until her hand interrupted the path of the spinning
propeller at the front of the plane. The metal blades shattered as they
impacted her invulnerable hand. The plane was now without power.

Angela made sure that her grip on the fighter was firm, squeezing her thighs
together so as not to lose hold. Her power of flight was now the only thing
keeping the aircraft from plummeting to the ground. She banked gently, trying
to keep the plane intact as she steered it towards the positions from which the
Germans were shelling the British. She and the plane dove towards the ground,
moving faster and faster. A few feet from impact, Angela released her grip on
the plane and flew up and away. Behind her the plane smashed into the ground
and exploded, sending artillery and gunners flying.

She set course for the other fighters, who were trying to escape. She was a
lot faster and a lot more maneuverable than they were, so they had little
chance of evading her. She snagged them between her thighs in the same way as
she had their comrade and steered them into the ground where they would cause
the most damage to the German positions.

A number of tanks were on fire and the Germans were in almost complete panic.
The shelling had stopped for now. Angela made for the British troops dug in
near the Arnhem bridge and gently alighted on the ground in front of a pair of
haggard, unshaven paratroopers.

"Hello, boys!" she said, pleasantly.

"Blimey! I must be dreamin'," said one.

"'Ello darlin', didn't I see you painted on the nose of a bomber the other
week?" said the other.

A British officer stepped forward. "Please excuse these reprobates," he said
in a crisp upper-class British accent, "I think they lost their manners in the
airdrop." He saluted and then held out his hand to shake. "Lieutenant Colonel
Frost, at your service."

Angela returned his salute and took his hand. She shook it firmly enough to
get the point across that she was a lot stronger than she looked, but not so
strong that she broke any bones. "Good to meet you, Sir. Liberty Belle,
America's most secret weapon, at your service." Angela gave a slightly crooked
smile. "The name was not my idea," she added.

Frost returned her smile. "Not so secret now, I wager. I am afraid of you
catching a cold, running around dressed like that."

Angela looked down at her bare legs and stomach. "Don't worry, Sir; the cold
doesn't bother me."

"Neither do bullets, apparently," said Frost. "What exactly can you do?"

Angela looked at him, frankly. "I can fly, I'm bulletproof and I have a punch
like a howitzer. I've given the Germans a bloody nose, but they'll be back for
more once they get organized. What do you need?"

Frost sighed. "We need supplies and reinforcements. We have been holding this
bridge with one brigade against most of a panzer division and we are almost
spent. If you had not turned up, I think that last attack might have finished
us. Some of the lads are down to three bullets each. We will keep fighting,
with knives if we have to, but we cannot hold the bridge much longer on our
own. The rest of the 1st Airborne are dug in to the east and they say they
cannot get to us. Do you know where XXX Corps are?"

"Trying to fight their way across Nijmegen," replied Angela. "The Germans
still hold the bridge there. I'm going to see what I can do about that, once
I've helped you get things under control here. I'm hoping to get the Polish
Airborne to you in a couple of hours. Have they been trying to drop supplies?"

Frost nodded. "Yes, but we are a bloody small target and they have not managed
to get anything near us. It looked like they dropped a lot to the east
yesterday afternoon. We cannot get to them, though."

"I'll see what I can do," said Angela.

Suddenly, Angela heard a sniper rifle fire from half a mile away and
instinctively reached out with her hand and caught the bullet, stopping it
inches from Frost's head; even she was surprised by the speed of her reflexes.
She quickly turned in the direction the bullet had come from. Her eyesight had
been enhanced along with her strength and speed, so she was easily able to
locate the sniper's position on the third floor of a bombed out building. She
threw the bullet at the distant sniper, faster than it had arrived from the
rifle, and saw a splatter of blood as the sniper's head exploded.

Frost looked a little shaken, but recovered quickly.

Angela reached into a small pocket in her tiny shorts and pulled out a red
whistle. She handed it to Frost. "If you need me, blow on this whistle. It's
inaudible to the normal human ear, but I'll be able to hear it within 50 miles.
Blow on it and I'll come as quick as I can. I'm going to see if I can find you
some supplies."

Frost took the whistle and looked at it with a slightly bemused expression on
his face. "Excellent. Godspeed, Liberty Belle. We will try to, erm, keep our
heads down here."

Angela launched herself in the air and headed east. She scanned the terrain
with her superior vision and quickly spotted a number of supply crates in a
field outside the town. The Germans had posted a few bored-looking guards, but
had otherwise left the supplies alone. She dived towards the field.

She flew with both arms held out in front of her, with her hands formed into
fists. She swooped low and closed the distance between her and the first of the
guards flying at the same height as his head. She struck the guard with both
fists, moving as fast as a bullet; his head flew away from his shoulders and
the rest of his body tumbled through the air several times, scattering a spiral
of blood over the surrounding area, before coming to a rest in the muddy field.

Angela turned on a dime and headed straight for the next guard. She was moving
so fast that the German soldiers did not really know what was happening. All
they could see was a blur that left death in its wake. The last pair ran as
fast as they could, but Angela showed them no mercy, picking them off with her
flying fists of fury as they stumbled across the damp ground.

The parachutes had been cut away from the supply crates, but enough strapping
remained for Angela to be able to grab a bundle of straps in each hand and lift
a dozen crates in total. She flew up and towards the Arnhem bridge, moving
slowly so as not to damage the crates or the strapping.

When she reached the British positions in Arnhem, dragging a dozen crates of
much-needed supplies through the air, she was met by a ragged cheer from the
paratroopers. She gently lowered the crates to the ground. As she was doing
this, from a distance of a mile, an enterprising German gunnery crew landed a
lucky shot on her from a 75mm field cannon. The shell struck Angela in the
dimple of her lower back. Angela dropped the rest of the crates in shock.

It was the largest piece of ordnance that Angela had ever been hit by and she
was momentarily stunned. She felt the impact as a distant ache, but the tip of
the shell could not penetrate her diamond-hard skin. The shell exploded; heat,
pressure and shrapnel flooded over her in a wave of damage that would have left
a normal human in small pieces. When the smoke cleared, Angela was relieved to
find that she was unharmed.

The watching British paratroopers were stunned at first, but they cheered
again when Angela turned in the direction that the shot had come from. As she
began to move, the field cannon fired again. Angela could see the shell
approaching on a ballistic trajectory and this time she was ready for it. She
flew towards the shell while it was still in flight and gently caught it
between her hands; it did not explode. She increased her altitude until she had
a good view of the German gun, pulled her arm back like a quarterback and threw
the shell. When it hit the German position, it exploded, leaving the field
artillery destroyed and the gunnery crew dead or wounded.

Angela flew back to the bridge and found Lt. Col. Frost. "I'm going to pick up
some more supplies and fly them over to the rest of the 1st Airborne. Whistle
if you need me."

As she turned to fly to the west, every British soldier began to whistle.

*****

Major-General Urquhart and the rest of the 1st Airborne Division, dug in
around Oosterbeek to the west of Arnhem, were astonished and relieved to
receive fresh supplies from a flying American woman. They also appreciated her
smashing a good portion of the German armor into small pieces and scattering
the German artillery.

After a hasty introduction, she left to examine the potential Polish drop zone
south of Arnhem. She could not hear any approaching aircraft, so she still had
time to make sure that the Polish Brigade would have a safe drop. She scanned
the area for anti-aircraft guns and machine-gun emplacements that could pick
off airborne soldiers with ease.

Word of her exploits had obviously been communicated to the rest of the German
forces, because the first anti-aircraft crew she targeted were quick to spot
her approach and greeted her with a hail of flak. She flew right through the
thick of it, letting most of the shells explode harmlessly against her
outstretched fists as she dove towards the guns. A few hit the top of her head,
but were just as useless. Her hairdo was a little mussed, but each strand of
her hair was almost indestructible.

Angela smashed into the anti-aircraft gun and sent pieces of it flying around
the Dutch countryside, along with pieces of the crew. She executed a 180-degree
spin moments before flying into the ground and rocketed back into the air in
search of new targets.

By the time she heard the drone of approaching air transports, the area was
clean of German opposition. She watched as the Polish paratroopers jumped from
their planes and slowly descended to the ground, unmolested. She groaned when
she saw that the supply drops were not as accurate; the crates were drifting
miles to the west of where the paratroopers were landing. She flew over and
gathered as many of the supply crates as she could, bundling the parachute
cords into her arms so that she could haul several dozen at a time. She ferried
them over to the drop zone.

She quickly introduced herself to the Polish commander, Major-General
Sosabowski, and gave him a white whistle. "You should be able to fight your way
to the south end of the bridge, but if you run into any serious resistance,
give me a whistle and I'll come as soon as I can." Before she left the Polish
forces, she added, "Oh and it's good to see more Poles in the fight.
Powodzenia!"

*****

The Germans were dug in pretty well in Nijmegen, even though their supply and
reinforcement lines had been cut by the British holding part of the bridge in
Arnhem. British, American and Canadian forces had been trying to dislodge them
in order to get the offensive back on track, but it had been slow going.

Angela threw herself into battle, eagerly. This time the battle was on a
smaller scale and far more bloody. She charged from entrenchment to
entrenchment and removed the defending Germans by hand, able to make faster
progress than regular troops because she was bullet proof. She tried using a
machine gun for a little while, holding the large weapon that was designed to
be deployed in a fixed defensive position with one hand and spraying the enemy
with bullets, but she found it was faster and more effective to simply run up
and crack a man's neck with a swift chop of her super-strong hands.

Eventually she had done enough damage to the German's defensive positions that
the Allied forces were able to break through and secure the bridge. Angela's
legs were coated in mud and her arms were covered in blood. Now she felt like a
soldier.

Over the din of Allied tanks on the move, she heard the red whistle. Angela
launched herself into the air and made for Arnhem and the next stage of the
battle. Surrounded by death, much of it caused by her slender hands, Angela had
never felt more alive.

*****

Epilogue:

As Allied forces streamed across the Rhine, German High Command dismissed
reports of an invulnerable flying girl as the delusional ramblings of field
officers desperate to avoid the responsibility of having lost such a vital
battle. In Moscow, however, the reports were taken a lot more seriously.

Stalin looked over the plain folder that contained information that his spies
had gleaned from the Americans. The first item in the folder was a photograph
of 'Liberty Belle', taken near the end of her training, posing with one hand on
her hip and the other hand holding a Sherman tank above her head.

"We cannot allow Mother Russia to be threatened by such a tiny being," he
said.

The shadowy spy-master who had brought the folder to Stalin nodded his head.
"The Nazi scientists we captured claim that they were only a month from
creating an 'Uber-Madchen' of their own. They can be made to continue their
work for us, but the cost of the research will be high. A lot of people will
die."

"It will be a price worth paying if it gives us the means to destroy this
'Liberty Belle'!" shouted Stalin. "We must have our own superwoman and she must
be stronger, faster and deadlier!"

"As you command, sir."