The hatch to gyro slammed shut and it gracefully fell away from the building, arcing out and east, disappearing into the heavy cloud cover.

  The soldiers turned as one to the crowd and aimed their machine guns.

  The elevator doors opened with a ding and a tall dark figure stepped out, firing a volley from a large pistol. Six times the gun boomed and six of the armed soldiers fell dead around the mooring platform.

  The cowering civilians screamed and dropped to the floor, as more gunfire erupted above their heads. The dark figure ducked and rolled to one side, firing three more shots, his uncanny accuracy eliminating the last three gunmen.

  He stood and the people on the floor got a good look at their rescuer. He was tall, dressed in what looked like a stylized form-fitting black and tan flight suit. His head was entirely encased in a brass colored hawk-beaked helmet. Large glossy black eyes glared impassively at the people lying on the flight deck.

  The Harrier!

  The helmeted figure jerked its gaze to the left and then the right, looking for other threats and then bounded up the flight steps and disappeared into the zeppelin’s gondola.

  As they were picking themselves up off the tarmac, several of the passengers heard a groan from inside the elevator. Three of them rushed over and saw a man slumped on the floor inside, the outer glass of the elevator smashed out and the wind whistling dangerously. They pulled the man to his feet and got him safely onto the roof.

  “Hey, buddy, you ok?” one of them asked.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Hank mumbled, rubbing the back of his head. “Any of you mugs see who or what it was that crashed in on me and tried to crack my skull open?”

  *****

  Nate rushed into the cabin and took his helmet off, raking the interior with his gaze. He saw the professor lying in the aisle. He rushed over to him, tossed the helmet into a nearby seat and kneeling, gently pulled the scientist into his arms.

  “Professor! Heinrich!”

  The front of the man’s suit was sticky and wet with blood and more of the ruby liquid leaked from his mouth.

  His eyes fluttered open, his lips parted and closed spasmodically, like a fish gasping for oxygen.

  “Save your strength,” Nate breathed, trying to get the man into a comfortable position. “Stay with me, just stay with me.”

  “Nathaniel…” the professor gasped weakly. “Is…is that… you?”

  “Yes, yes it’s me! Now lie still, I’m gonna get you…”

  “No…time…at…quiet…limit….”

  Nate leaned in close, trying to catch the old man’s words.

  “What was that? Professor, the equation, do you have it? Was it stolen?”

  “Nathaniel,” Gessler wheezed “I am…at the quiet limit of the world now, my boy.”

  “Stop spouting poetry, you are….”

  “My time is… spent,” the old man grabbed Nate’s arm, pain flooding his features, the light fading from his eyes. “Listen… listen to me… all prob… all probabilities… my pocket… take… use… only… good….”

  With a final, slow exhale, Professor Henrich Gessler died in Nate’s arms.

  For several moments, Vance looked into the face of his dead friend, a mentor and a good man. He released him slowly from his arms, letting his head come to rest on the stained carpet of the gondola floor. He looked at the blood on his hand. Whoever was responsible would pay, and pay in kind.

  What was it the professor said? In his pocket? Nate patted both sides of the Professor’s suit jacket but felt nothing, and then he spied the rumpled trench coat. He snatched it up and in the right hand pocket he found something and withdrew it.

  They were safety glasses, plain and unassuming, not unlike a pair of welder’s or pilot’s goggles. On the outer rim of both eyepieces were small buttons, no bigger than a match head. Without hesitation, his instinct telling him to, Nate slipped them on. It was like putting on blinders, there was no light; he saw nothing. Just black.

  Hank’s black.

  Gooseflesh rippled along his arms.

  After a beat, he pressed the buttons on the eyepieces, and then…he saw everything.

  The world was laid bare.

  Swirling mists and silent spaces in between, atoms and molecules and the primordial essence of the cosmos, the shattering of oblivion, the birth pang of the universe, the gleaming halls of what had yet to come.

  Through the lenses Nate saw all the possibilities, all the pathways and lines, every outcome and every solution, every success and every failure.

  He saw all the moments that led up to Gessler’s death, the seventeen possible ways he was destined to die. He saw six possible villains, each worse than the other, each who could have brought about Gessler’s death. He saw all the lines stretching back and that ultimately lead to that moment, and then he saw the one who had chosen to act, the monster that had brought about this reality. He saw the monster’s face, knew the monster’s name, saw the hand that squeezed the finger that pulled the trigger; saw the bullets ripping through the Professor’s chest and snuffing out his light.

  He saw the thirty-eight possible paths he could take from the moment he put on the goggles. He saw the ones that would fail, the ones that would end in stalemate and the one that would lead him straight to Von Kleist and to victory.

  He knew what to do, when to do it and how long it would take.

  Von Kleist had much to pay for, and the Harrier would be there to collect the bill.

  Reluctantly, Nate touched the button on the side of the Professor’s specs and his vision returned to normal. He removed the eyewear and gave it a hard look. They were unique, not another pair like them in the world. This is what Gessler wanted to protect, this is why he had come to New York. And still, Nate was too late to save him.

  But, as he had seen, it was the best of all possible paths, this was the path Gessler had chosen, the path that would end a greater threat. The vision that Nate had seen in the probability matrix may have faded from his sight, but the knowledge remained: his course of action was set.

  He stood, took a final look at his friend, and slipped the hawk-helm over his head. He adjusted the band on the goggles and then put them on over the helm, taking a moment to fix them over his eyepieces. When he had time, he would have to figure out a way to integrate the goggles into the helmet, but that was an easy problem.

  “Rest easy, my friend. I understand now what you could not tell me before. I will not fail.”

  He turned and sprinted for the exit.

  *****

  Hank sat on the steps of the gangplank, rubbing the imaginary bump on his head and surreptitiously eyeing the scene around him. All of them were waiting for the authorities, for the army, for someone. Phone calls and a frantic radio exchange had assured them that help was now on the way up. The black and silver gyrocopters had buzzed out right before Nate had burst from the elevator and once the armed guards had been eliminated, the threat was over. Of those who were not yammering or sobbing with relief, there were several cool-headed people examining the bodies. As of yet, no one had made a move to follow after the masked figure or enter the gondola of the zeppelin.

  “What are these guys are dressed in? Are those Empire uniforms?”

  “Is this an attack? Are we at war with ‘em again?”

  The questions were flying thick and fast, and it was only a matter of minutes before someone got around to asking about the mystery man who had blown through the soldiers. Hank looked around, searching. Was the threat over? Or was something worse about to be unleashed? That feeling he’d had earlier was still there on the edge of his perception, not strong but mildly prevalent; the dull throb of a headache.

  Hank got to his feet, hand to the back of his neck, still feigning injury. Not that anyone was looking him, still, better to keep up the ruse. He glanced back toward the open door of the zeppelin’s passenger deck, but there was no sign of Nate. He made his way to where three business types were examining one of the dead soldiers.

  “Can you figure how dhey breathe in dhem helmets?” one of them was exclaiming. He had a strong Brooklyn cadence. “I can’t see how dhey get ‘em off.”

  Hank bent down to examine the uniform and insignia.

  Nate had been right. At well over 500 yards his keen eyesight had been able to pick out the difference between the Empire’s Crest and the one that was painted on the stabilizer wings of the gyros as they sped past at 400 miles an hour. And now, bending over the dead man, Hank could see that difference was also stitched into the patch on the arm of the dead man.

  At a glance, it did look like the Empire Crest. They were very similar in outline and shape, and almost the same composition. But where the Empire’s was an eagle displayed sable, with only one head, this one was a double-headed black eagle.

  Hank scratched his temple, his brow furrowed. That dull ache of feeling throbbed on the edge of his perception and everywhere Hank could see its awful color. On uniforms, on planes, on guns. The color of the void, the tint of death.

  If he remembered his history–which he had to admit had never been his best subject–the double-headed eagle was an ancient symbol dating all the way back to the Sumerians. But when he looked at the image, there were other differences as well. The Empire coat of arms showed the eagle with a necklace of sorts, but this one did not. Instead it had a scroll with what looked like Latin in flowing gothic script, three separate words or a phrase of some sort.

  Ordo Templi Orientis.

  Now Hank really cursed himself. If he had been worse at anything in school besides history, Latin was it. He had no idea what it said, let alone what it might mean.

  Just then, one of the men standing about let out a whoop and pointed out away from the building. Hank heard the familiar roar of Allied fighters and the first squadron sped by overhead, giving chase to the mysterious black gyros. The crowd let out a collective cheer.

  And then, someone else cried out.

  “Look there! It’s him!”

  Hank spun around to see Nate’s tall, dark figure standing in the hatchway of the passenger car.

  A man next to him snatched up a machine gun but Hank grabbed the barrel with his hand, his eyes blazing.

  “He done saved you from these goons and you want to gun him down?”

  The man relaxed his grip on the gun and looked away, ashamed.

  Hank raked his gaze back to where Nate was standing. Nate was still as a statue, his hawk-helmeted features looking up at the dozens of war planes zooming by. Then, he took off running down the gangplank and thrust his arms out to his sides.

  When he did, the great articulated wings of the suit unfurled. Fifteen feet of dark brown leather on each arm, veins of fine copper and brass rigging snapping into place and giving them stability. This close, and from where folks were getting a once-in-a-lifetime view, it was an impressive sight.

  Hank knew the intricacies of the winged suit and always marveled at the engineering and design Nate had put into it. He could only imagine what it looked like to the frightened hoods Nate swooped in on from out of the night.

  Another two steps and Hank saw Nate launch himself into the air, the wings lifting him up and up and up, and then he was soaring away from the mooring platform.

  Hank grinned in spite of himself.

  “Go get ‘em boy!”

  acdb

  Once he was clear of the mooring platform, Nate banked south and east, looking for the updraft. It wasn’t hard to miss. He caught the wind, and rode it. In seconds he had spied what he needed. One of the Allied warplanes was above him and slightly to the left. With three hard flaps he was beneath it and grabbed the struts, allowing the powerful plane to pull him along. He should conserve his strength.

  Less than five miles ahead, the snarl of the aerial battle was under way, insect-like planes and gyros looping and swarming, filling the sky with black oily smoke and the chatter of machine guns.

  Beyond the angry fighters, he could see the larger tilt-rotor transport plane pulling away, already altering its direction, heading northeast to the ice and cold.

  The pilot of the warplane, unaware that Nate was hanging from his undercarriage and eager to join the fight, pushed the throttle and roared forward.

  Nate had already seen this, the path he needed to follow spooling out just as it should. He counted a slow twenty before he let loose his grip and dropped down into the path of one of the gyros. In a panic, the man yanked hard right, allowing Nate to blast the rotors with his pistol and send the craft plummeting into the frigid waters of the Hudson. From there he swooped down and then up, a graceful arc that brought him up underneath another Allied fighter. Again he hitched himself to the undercarriage, hung for a time and counted off once more, letting go when the plane performed a rollover to avoid gunfire.

  From there to the next, he hop-scotched closer and closer to the fleeing transport; smaller and more maneuverable than the planes, he wreaked havoc among the enemy fighters, blasting their rotors and sending them flaming to earth far below.

  Nate was higher up than he had ever been before, and found himself grinning like a mad fool. The suit and wings were performing perfectly, just as they had been designed to, aerodynamically flawless. He soared higher and higher, his strong arms pushing him further into the atmosphere and then at the apex, turned and shot down toward the transport, which was now directly beneath him.

  The bigger plane’s guns were chewing up the allied planes able to get close. Nate pulled his wings in and dropped like a stone, landing on the fuselage. To aid in his flights in the city, Nate carried a grappling gun and tether, allowing him to use his momentum to swoop around tight corners and alleyways. He used it now, firing it into the plating of the tilt-rotor’s body. Using the grapple for leverage, he leaned to starboard and blasted at the soldier mounting one of the side guns. The man screamed, clutching his chest and then fell away from the plane.

  Nate gained his balance and in a crouching run he dove over the side, using the tether to swing himself in through the empty gun port. As soon as his feet touched on the metal flooring of the interior, he blasted away with his pistol, sending slugs into four gape-mouthed soldiers. Nate, watching their lifeless bodies crumple, barely had time to jerk to the right before Von Kleist’s mechanical arm slammed into his helmet, sending him spinning to the back of the cabin.

  The Commandant’s head was tilted with curiosity as he glared down at Nate, the Professor’s briefcase shackled to one wrist, and his machine pistol centered on the hero’s chest.

  “A valiant effort, for one dressed so oddly,” Von Kleist sneered, raising his voice over the thrum of the rotors.

  “You might want to take a look in the mirror, pal!” Nate shot back.

  “As I said, a valiant effort, but alas a pointless one. You vill die, like all the rest.”

  Von Kleist fired, but Nate rolled out of the way, the bullets smacking off the floor and ricocheting about the small space. Von Kleist raised the arm with the briefcase to shield himself and Nate took that moment to scramble to his feet and throw himself at the mad General. Von Kleist got off two more shots before Nate crashed into him, both men slamming into the wall and wrestling over the gun.

  Outside, a trio of warplanes screamed by, their machine guns raking the transport, slicing through the cabin and piercing the cockpit. The pilot jerked as the rounds tore through him and shattered the flight panel. Then he slumped forward, dead, sending the plane into a dive.

  One of Von Kleist’s bullets had torn through his shoulder, but Nate knew it would, just as he knew that the man would bring that mechanical arm up and slam it into him three times before he fell back.

  “You see!” the General sneered. “I have the vill and ze strength! I vill conquer! I vill triumph!”

  Nate rolled over and stared up at the madman.

  “Maybe so,” he breathed through the pain in his shoulder. “But you won’t be doing it with this.”

  He held up Gessler’s briefcase, the snapped chain dangling from the handle. He saw Von Kleist’s one eye go wide before he tossed it out the opening.

  Von Kleist screamed with rage and then leveled his pistol, firing wildly, but Nate had already followed the case out into the void, unfurling his wings and swooping through the clouds. He turned to look, watching as the burning transport and Von Kleist nosedived into the sea thousands of feet below.

  He stared for a while longer as he glided on the thermals, watched as the fireball blossomed on the water; knowing Von Kleist would not succumb so easily, knowing the madman’s end would not come in fire.

  And then he lifted his left wing and wheeled south, and began the slow, lonely flight back to the city.

  acdb

  Hank turned the goggles over and over in his hands, examining them, soaking up every detail. His brow had that furrow again.

  “You are gonna blow a fuse if you’re not careful,” Nate chuckled.

  “Ah, stow it, flyboy,” Hank retorted.

  Nate examined the dressing on his shoulder one last time before buttoning up his shirt and checking himself in the mirror. He had a date with Betty tonight at Spago’s and he had better not be late, or there would be hell to pay.

  “I would try and take these things apart, but I don’t want to mess up what they do.”

  “Don’t fiddle with them more than you have to,” Nate commented as he slipped his jacket on and headed for the door. He patted his friend on the shoulder as he walked past. “Those are the only ones in existence.”

  Hank frowned.

  “Yeah, and you had to go and drop the blueprints for ‘em in the drink.”

  “Well, look at it this way, Hank,” Nate said, walking out but then turning back with a smile.

  “It was probably for the best.”