Kevin Anderson - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Franky finally had the good grace to look flustered. "I believe I've had enough of this." She turned to the pilot. "All engines reverse full. Get us out of here. My apologies, Joseph, but I have no choice but to retreat. The better part of valor and all that."

Sky Captain staggered to the chart table and looked down at the map, determined. "Franky, you've got to get me onto that island."

She did not seem amused. "You don't ask for much, do you?"

An undersea crab walker fired another volley of explosive rockets. Detonations rocked the flying fortress, ripping a huge hole through the armored deck. Now smoke began to fill the conning tower. Emergency crews ran about, spraying fire extinguisher foam.

"Commander, we've lost power in the forward rotors! We're losing altitude!" said the executive officer. They could all feel the stomach-lurching plunge as Manta Station began to fall.

Polly grabbed for something to keep her balance. She was careful not to bump any controls this time.

Franky shook her head. "I'm very sorry, Joseph. You know I've never said no to you, but it's impossible. If we stay here any longer, we're dead — "

Sky Captain gazed into her single bright eye, giving the only explanation that mattered: "He's got Dex, Franky."

She looked at him, suddenly understanding. He had known that would be the trump card for Franky Cook.

Dexter Dearborn Jr. had developed Manta Station after reading a Jules Verne novel called Clipper of the Clouds. At first glance, the design had made no aerodynamic sense at all, but Dex had insisted on it. Then he built models and proved his idea would work. Franky Cook had taken a great risk to support the young genius, advocating the strategic importance of flying runways that could deliver a squadron of aircraft to any battlefield in the world.

And Dex had not let her down. He had overseen the construction of Manta Station, checked all the engineering himself, and flown on the maiden voyage. The young man had managed to endear himself to Franky, just as he had done with the rest of the Flying Legion.

Sky Captain knew that Dex had an impossible crush on the lovely Royal Navy captain. He found the thought of it amusing, but Franky actually seemed to take the young man's advances seriously. She did owe him her life and her career, after all.

On the huge station's second flight, Dex had been uneasy just from listening to the engines. He'd nosed around in the casing for the number three engine, though it had repeatedly passed inspection. At the last moment, though, Dex found a saboteur's bomb and deactivated it, preventing the destruction of the flying fortress and saving the lives of everyone aboard.

Yes, Franky Cook would take any necessary risks to rescue him now.

"Commander!" the executive officer called.

She no longer seemed to hear the continuing explosions around them. "Do whatever you must, Major Slater, but get this platform stabilized. We've got work to do — serious work."

Not noticing or caring about anything else, Franky and Sky Captain bent over the map with equal resolve. "Under this bombardment, you'll never make it to that island from the air, Joseph," she said. "We'll have to find another way in."

Smoke continued to pour into the bridge station. Outside, the huge rotors roared in an attempt to keep the damaged flying fortress aloft, but the leviathan crab walkers continued to fire missile after missile out of the water.

Holding on to the chart table as detonations made them lurch from side to side, Franky and Sky Captain continued to scour the map for options. Behind them, Polly couldn't help feeling a jealous pang at seeing the other two work so closely as a team.

Sky Captain jabbed his finger on a discoloration marked on the chart. "Look here. There's a tidal flow along the eastern face of the island. Maybe we could — "

Franky shook her head, adjusting the neat cap atop her dark hair. "It's too deep. None of our vessels is rated past three hundred meters." She leaned closer. "Wait, this area here…"

She yanked a clear overlay from the adjacent navigation table, placing it across the map of the ocean to match a crude hand-drawn outline of the newly discovered island. "We just spotted this with one of Dex's sonar mapping probes." She paused, letting out a brief sigh. Good old Dex. Then she cleared her throat and continued. "There's an undersea inlet at the southern tip of the island here. It runs beneath the entire length of the island."

Just as she was using a grease pencil to mark an area on the map, the bridge took another hit, and a hammer blow of vibrations shuddered through the deck. Franky held the grease pencil so firmly, though, that her line showed only the tiniest fluctuation. "That's your only way in. Everything else is sheer rock to the edge of the water."

"But you saw the twenty crab walkers down there. What about them?" Polly had to raise her voice over the din of the continuing attack. "How do we get past those machines?"

With a tone of dismissal, Franky said, "Leave that to me." She turned to her executive officer and gave the order. "Major Slater, alert the amphibious squadron. In the meantime, Joseph, you'd better get your Warhawk ready."

The air around the smoking airborne base was a tapestry of tracer fire and diving aircraft. Fighter squadrons swarmed around the flying fortress, machine guns ratcheting as they intercepted the explosive rockets that climbed up to the vulnerable target. The turret gunners below the main framework continued to take aim, but deep water protected the submerged crab walkers. One of the gun turrets had been struck by a missile, leaving only a mangled framework of broken glass and melted struts to mark where a man had died.

On top, the flight deck was alive with activity. Over the wailing sirens and the roar of emergency equipment, loudspeakers summoned the Royal Navy's special operations forces. "Manta Team, report to main staging area! Manta Team, report to main staging area."

At a separate runway, circular hatches opened and elevated platforms rose from maintenance hangars beneath the runway. A row of strange-looking planes emerged into the open air. Each Manta vessel had a streamlined, sharklike appearance and camouflage marking in oceanic shades of blue. The canopy over each cockpit was a bubble of thick glass. Mirrored spotlights shone like eyes from the blunt noses of the craft; scooped propellers were mounted in the rear of the boomerang wings.

Royal Navy crewmen prepped the aircraft. Their precision movements demonstrated how often they drilled and trained for emergencies such as this. With a rattle of questions and responses, they raced through checklists in record time. The lead crewman waved a colored flashlight, signaling to one of the low buildings next to the conning tower. He whistled. "All ready!"

Emerging from the status room, a jumble of black-suited pilots raced down the narrow corridor. Shouting encouragement to one another, they charged into an equipment room, ready to go. They grabbed gloves, tanks, and air hoses. On a rack hung a long row of transparent bubble helmets that looked like fishbowls, each clearly marked with a person's name.

Once again, Dex had been influenced by Buck Rogers.

The pilots of the elite amphibious squadron had all been handpicked by Captain Francesca Cook. The unit was made up entirely of women.

The members of the Royal Navy's special underwater flying squadron wore identical black, formfitting flight suits — part bomber jacket and part scuba outfit, with a silver breathing apparatus secured to their backs. The clinging uniforms left no doubt as to the sex of the amphibious pilots.

Once suited up, the women wasted no time. They dashed to their waiting underwater planes and climbed inside. Crewmen helped seal the cockpit bubbles, checked to make sure they were airtight, then slapped the sides of the craft. Engines thrummed and powered up. The Manta vehicles levitated slightly, ready for takeoff…