First Knights

Nancy Berman and Noah Dudley

"Which way were they headed?" Tom Hadley twisted the wheel hard as he veered around a slower car, then pressed the accelerator to make up speed. An angry horn marked his wake. Behind them, cars no sooner reclaimed the Pacific Coast Highway than Phil Sutro blazed through on Hadley's tail; somehow they all avoided a major wreck.

"North, up the beach," Charlie replied, leaning out of the window on her side. The wind off the ocean whipped her hair lose from its expensive coiffure. "I can still see them, but we're going to lose them in the fog pretty quickly!"

"That's their plan." Hadley pinned the pedal to the floor, honking like a crazy man. "Thank God there's never a cop around when you don't need one."

While Tom had rounded up the other pilots, Charlie had watched helplessly the kidnapping unfold with white-knuckled suspense. There was nothing she could do but hope that the raiders wouldn't have to shoot anyone this time. Her hopes were realized; events moved so quickly the bride's father had no time to make a futile, doomed attempt to protect his daughter. Like Charlie, he could only watch as hopelessly while the young bride was dragged, screaming, aboard one of the autogyros and flown away. Once she noted the direction of flight, she ran back to the church where the men were already piling into their cars. The same thought was on every man's mind: Their secret base was only a few miles up the road--the Sky Slavers weren't going to escape this time!

Turning inland, they lost sight of their quarry, but made up for it by bouncing over dirt road and shallow creeks with an abandon that hurt them almost as much as their cars. Sliding and fishtailing onto the field, they left their cars where they sat, keys in the ignition, motors running, and with a quick explanation thrown in Norm's general direction, they were in the air in minutes. Like a swarm of angry bees, they buzzed northward, spreading out to catch their quarry in an armed net.

"Slavers to starboard!" The radio crackled with the words they had prayed to hear, and the entire wing swooped inland. Up ahead, at 1200 feet altitude, two awful, familiar metal bugs chattered across the mountains. Charlie took command.

"Spread out," she ordered. "We can't open fire until we know which gyro she's in. We've got to try to force them down." Under her orders, half the squadron shot ahead, curling in ahead of the raiders, who seemed to hesitate at the sight of them.

"They're slowing down, Charlie," Hadley reported. "Maybe they're going to make this easy."

Suspicion chilled the girl's heart like an ice cube down the spine. This wasn't how they had acted last time, not until...

"Break off! Break off!" she screamed into her radio. "It's a trap!" And with no further warning she pulled up on the throttle, fighting and praying to gain altitude before the inevitable occurred.

"Bandits at ten o'clock!" Even as she heard that, Charlie saw them, a half-dozen black shapes diving out of the sun from 5000 feet. Shark-like in their mono-winged sleekness, she knew from desperate experience how out-gunned she and her people were, despite their numbers. Alone--even Jimmy Vega had been caught unaware by her sudden change in direction--she took the only road she knew, charging straight into the heart of a superior enemy to give her pilots time to react. With any luck they could avenge her death if necessary, but the Slavers weren't about to give her that satisfaction. Before she could get within range, they split, diving all about her, ignoring her for the greater prizes down below. Only one plane remained up above, taunting her, waiting for her to come to him so they could play their deadly dance one-on-one. Charlie quickly assessed her choices: should she continue to climb, facing personal combat with a better armed and armored opponent, or turn to aid her comrades, leaving her back wide open to the enemy above?

The numbers below were already unbalanced; she could do little good down there, but if she could keep one-sixth of the Slavers out of the battle for even a few minutes, it might help. She might not defeat, but she could delay, and toward that end she flattened her rate of climb. Every second might be crucial. Above her the metal spider awaited the fly.

Suddenly another fly whizzed past her, climbing furiously. Charlie recognized Jimmy Vega in the cockpit, bent over his guns. A fear that surpassed the concern for her own life flashed through her.

"Jimmy! Break off! They need you below!"

"I'm your wingman, Charlie. Where you go, I go!"

Before Charlie could protest further, the Sky Slaver broke out of his lazy circle and dove toward her, the sound of his motor growing louder in her ears. She gunned her own engine, but it was too little, too late. He had a bead on her, and he was coming fast. Jimmy, taken by surprise, pulled back in an aerial loop, but he would be too late to come up on the Slaver's tail.

She wrenched her stick sideways, sliding across the enemy's path, slowing him as he compensated, but it was only a matter of time. If she could only dip underneath him, she might turn the tables, but he was too fast, too maneuverable. They were head-on, with the Slaver above her. She tried to pull up and bring her guns to bear, but her crate was too slow. The other plane's guns began to flash, reaching for her as Jimmy came out of his loop between them! The hungry bullets chewed into his wings, his fuselage, and as Charlie watched in horror, her wingman jerked and slumped over his controls. His plane stalled and then fell in a sickening spiral.

The sound of the Sky Slaver's motor passing close over her head brought her back to her own danger. Banking furiously, she used her enemy's superior speed against him as it enabled her to come up on his tail before he knew he was being followed. For the first time she could see it clearly, black like the others but with red diamonds like a black widow spider on its wings. At the same instant she jammed down on her triggers, urging the bullets into his wings, his body. Holes began to appear in his control surfaces, but he twisted out of the way, falling faster than she could follow. Away from her, he zoomed off in a straight line at a speed she could never match. Below her, she saw his squadron break off their dogfights and follow--four of them, not five. At any other time she would have cheered, but now she could think only of Jimmy.

A small fire and a column of smoke marked his grave.

The Sky Slavers' autogyros had escaped during the dogfight, and their planes were much too fast for Charlie and the others to pursue. As they began to circle slowly the spot where their comrade had gone down, one plane broke from the pack, making a beeline for home.

Thinking she had some new plan, the others followed in Charlie's wake, touching down in time to see her leap from her plane and run to one of the waiting cars. By the time they had shut down their engines, Charlie was nothing but a cloud of dust settling on the road.

Norm Houston counted them as they came in. He needed no one to tell him the awful news. Relying on sad experience gained before any of these boys were born, he called the local authorities, then organized a team to guard the crash site until they arrived.

Charlie didn't know where she was, or how long she had driven. The day had started with a wedding, a happy if short vacation from the new direction her life had taken, and ended with a double tragedy. Phil Sutro had lost a sister-in-law, and she--the team--had lost Jimmy. She had taken Tom's car and aimlessly wandered down the coast. As if from a fog, she slowed down, taking stock of her surroundings.

It was dark; she must have been driving for hours. To her right she could see a ship at anchor, to her left a line of working oil rigs, bobbing in maddening asymmetry. The latter told her nothing--oil rigs were endemic to Los Angeles--but the ship and her depleted gas gauge told her she was in the harbor area of San Pedro.

It was not a neighborhood for a young woman after dark, but she didn't give a damn. As she looked around, she realized she didn't even know what time it was. Her father was accustomed to her odd hours, but Norm would be worried, not to mention Tom Hadley, whose car she had borrowed. She stopped outside an all-night drugstore and went inside to use the telephone.

"Charlie! Where have you been?" Norm didn't need to ask if it was her; less than ten people in the world knew his unlisted number.

"I've been driving, Norm. And thinking. I'm going to disband the group."

"What? Because one man died? Charlie, you yourself told these boys the risks before you signed them up! You can't quit now just because you were right!"

"Norm, a man died saving me from the Sky Slavers the day they raided Beverly Hills. Another man died today--again saving me from the damned Slavers. I can't fight them. I can't even keep the people around me from dying trying to save me!"

"Charlie, Jimmy was your wingman. His job was to watch your back, and that's what he did. If you had been in his place, you'd have done the same and he'd be crying over you. But he wouldn't be quitting. You can't quit. There's too much at stake. You said yourself, not two months ago, that somebody had to stand up to the Sky Slavers because if they don't, Hollywood is finished before it signs its own constitution."

Charlie laid her head against the door of the booth. The coolness of the glass did little to ease her pain, or her guilt.

"Norm, this was a fantasy, the dream of a little girl who thought that fairy tales could come true. But it's not a dream, it's not a fairy tale, and real men are dying. I can't go on with this."

"It's not your fault. You did the best you could."

"Yes! That's right. I did the best I could: I found the best pilots, with the best planes, but it wasn't good enough! The Sky Slavers have better planes, better pilots, better guns. If we keep this up, we're all going to end like Jimmy, and I'm not going to let Tom or Phil or anybody else die because that was the best I could do!"

"Charlie, you can't do this. There's got to be another way."

"No, Norm, this is the only way. I'm selling the planes and the land. We're finished." She hung up the phone before he could answer.

She left the drugstore knowing she'd done the right thing. She'd done the only thing. As she pulled away from the curb, a pair of headlights flahsed on behind her and followed her path.

Within two blocks her engine began to sputter. With an unladylike exclamation, Charlie threatened, but to no avail. She barely got the car to the side of the street before it died completely.

"Great," she thought, surveying the dark street. "I guess I could walk back to the drugstore and use their telephone again."

She got out of the car and started to walk back. She didn't see the car, its lights dimmed, until it pulled up next to her. Suddenly two men jumped out, grabbed her, and pulled her inside!