by Greg Cox
Lombard and Jenny both looked to Perry for leadership, but he figured all they could now was hunker down and hope for a miracle.
A lone C-17 had survived the alien ship’s attack. Perry tracked the cargo plane as it angled toward Zod’s mothership for reasons unknown. He offered a silent prayer for whatever brave souls were aboard that plane, taking the fight to the enemy.
Give ’em hell, Perry thought.
* * *
Explosions ripped through the bridge and Genesis Chamber, throwing Superman and Zod apart. Dormant creches crumbled to ash. Amniotic fluid boiled over, bursting the reservoir. Ripped umbilici bled into the chamber. Gouts of plasma sprayed from severed conduits.
Thunderous impacts battered the hull as the ship crashed to Earth. Flames roared through the Fortress, engulfing the two men in a fiery hell.
* * *
The escape pod arced away from the Black Zero, on an intercept course with the worrisome human aircraft. Inside the pod, Faora waited until she was within range of the plane, counting down the last few yards impatiently.
Almost... almost...
Now!
She tore open the pod’s entry hatch and cast it outside, then climbed out of the interior cavity, gripping the ragged doorframe. A foul Earthly wind blew past her as she leapt from pod toward the human’s aircraft.
Beware, humans, she thought. Your end is upon you.
* * *
Dr. Hamilton wedged himself beneath the space capsule, still trying to reach the broken coupling. Lois anxiously observed his progress, torn between the technical difficulties in the cargo hold and the apocalyptic battles outside the plane. The scientist muttered as his outstretched fingers brushed against the dangling fibers.
“Almost got it—”
Faora burst through the roof of the hold, tearing a gap in the C-17’s fuselage. Lois gasped as she recognized Zod’s pitiless lieutenant, whose explosive entrance caused the plane to rock wildly. The flight crew fought to keep them level, but the jolt sent Lois tumbling backward out the aft landing ramp.
Panicked, she snagged the nylon cargo netting and held onto it for dear life, dangling out of the rear of plane, thousands of feet above Metropolis.
She screamed over the roaring wind.
* * *
Hamilton moaned beneath the mounted space capsule. A flying metal fragment had sliced into his side, causing him to bleed over the deck. Cold air rushed in through the torn fuselage. Biting down on his lip to keep from crying out, he watched helplessly as the woman surveyed the hold.
Her eyes widened at the sight of the Kryptonian space capsule. She stalked forward to investigate, even as the loadmaster scrambled to keep her from getting her hands on it. He hastily unlocked the cargo rails and elevated the deck beneath the capsule, trying to dump it out the back of the plane.
The starcraft rolled away from Hamilton toward the open ramp, but she caught it with one hand and shoved the nearly eight-ton capsule back up into the hold. It bounced off the rollers, lodging near the front.
Faora nodded, apparently satisfied that the capsule was secure, before spotting Lois hanging out the back of the plane. Her expression darkened, suggesting that there was no love lost between the two women. It seemed as if she still held a grudge over Lois’s escape from the Black Zero.
But Hardy and his men had their own scores to settle. They opened fire on Faora in a determined effort that was more impressive than effective. The Kryptonian female marched unscathed through the hail of gunfire, batting the soldiers aside without a second glance as she made her way toward the cockpit.
She stalked past Hamilton, dismissing the wounded scientist with a scornful glance. He guessed that she intended to seize control of the plane and hijack Superman’s starcraft.
Which meant that he needed to activate the Phantom Drive now, before the capsule fell into the hands of Zod.
Despite his injuries, Hamilton dragged himself across the floor of the cargo bay, over to the capsule. In a lucky break, the craft had shifted in position, exposing more of the severed coupling. His torn flesh hurt like blazes, but he ignored the pain and forced himself to concentrate on the vital task at hand.
He stretched his arm out. Trembling fingers reached for the coupling. Grimacing, he reconnected the fibers.
The effect was immediate. With the key in place, the craft’s dormant engines began booting up. A prismatic distortion field enveloped the capsule as Hamilton sagged against it. He gasped his relief, clutching his wounded side. Blood seeped through his fingers.
He had done his part. The rest was up to the same Kryptonian technology that Zod had deployed against them.
When in doubt, he thought, fight fire with fire.
Even if it means getting burned.
* * *
Hardy saw the craft come alive. The fuse had been lit, he realized. Now they just needed to deliver the bomb before Faora destroyed mankind’s last hope of stopping Zod. Abandoning the cargo bay, he raced back up the stairs to the cockpit, only a few steps ahead of the unstoppable Kryptonian invader.
He sealed the hatch behind him, but Faora tore through it as though it was made of tissue paper. She knocked Brubaker out of the copilot’s seat with a backhanded swipe. He smashed into the wall, then slid unconscious onto the floor. His protective flight helmet cracked.
Hardy realized they only had seconds left. He dived for the controls and forced the crippled plane into a power dive—straight at the Black Zero. The ugly Kryptonian prison ship seemed to rush toward the C-17’s windshield. Faora shrieked in rage, unable to prevent the inevitable collision.
Hardy shot her a triumphant grin, knowing he wasn’t going to survive this crash.
“A good death is its own reward,” he said.
* * *
The plane’s fatal dive was bad news for Lois. She lost her grip on the cargo netting and went tumbling into the air. For the second time in as many days, she found herself falling to her death, even as she saw the C-17 smash into the bulbous mantle of the Black Zero with catastrophic force.
Explosions rocked the Kryptonian vessel, blowing open its armored plating. Space-time rippled around the injured ship, bleeding unnatural lights and colors into the dusky sky.
A doorway to the Phantom Zone began to open.
* * *
Stress fractures spread throughout the Black Zero, beginning at the impact site and branching out from there. Prismatic colors, shining through from the Zone, cast an eldritch glow over the ship’s sprawling interior.
Dark, claustrophobic corridors contracted like shrinking veins. Structural ribs cracked and bled. Catwalks tore away from cellblocks. Viewports splintered, venting atmosphere into the void.
Faora, at ground zero, was the first casualty. She stared aghast as her hand dissolved before her eyes, unraveling at the quantum level. A spectral glow emanated from every cell of her body, lighting her up from the inside out. The lifeless bodies of the human soldiers lay crumpled at her feet as they took their vengeance on her from beyond the grave.
No! she thought furiously. This world was ours!
In a heartbeat, she vanished from the universe, sucked back into the Zone for an eternity.
* * *
The Phantom effect raced through the ship, claiming ever more victims. On the bridge, Jax-Ur, Tor-An, Nam-Ek, and Commander Gor exchanged terrified looks as the Zone began to reclaim them. Only Jax-Ur truly understood what was undoing them.
Of course, he reasoned. Kal-El’s original starcraft. They’re using it as a weapon against us. He smiled thinly. How ingenious.
The Black Zero had been designed to make the transition to the Zone in one piece, but only under strictly controlled conditions. The ship was meant to pass through the Projector, not have a Phantom Drive rip open the continuum right in the middle of the ship. Violent dimensional fluxes were already taking it apart before his fading eyes.
Solid bulkheads and supports sublimed away, causing the ship’s myriad chambers and corridors
to cave in on themselves. Matter phased into energy, sliding between dimensions. The entire ship was collapsing into a singularity, or so he theorized.
His calculations did not spare him—or any of the others.
C H A P T E R T H I R T Y - F O U R
The Black Zero imploded above Metropolis.
Its mantle crumbled, while its hanging tendrils were sucked back into the roiling mass of compacted matter the ship had become. Disturbing colors from an alien spectrum strobed the atmosphere, spilling over to distort reality. Actinic flashes hurt the eyes of anyone who dared to gaze upon the hellish spectacle.
Lois glimpsed the ship’s destruction as she plunged through the air, accelerating toward the ravaged cityscape hundreds of feet below. Broken buildings and shattered streets seemed to barrel toward her. Within seconds, she’d just be another piece of wreckage among the many.
But we did it! she thought. We blew up that damn spaceship!
Too bad she wouldn’t live to write the story
The wind howled past her face, blowing her hair back. Resigned to her fate, she took comfort in the fact that it hadn’t been in vain—and that the end would be quick and painless.
Good-bye, Clark, she thought. I wish we—
A blur of blue and red came streaking in from the east, catching her before she hit the ground. She felt a familiar pair of arms wrap around her, holding her close. A bright red cape streamed behind her rescuer.
She clung to him with all her strength, her heart pounding wildly. An overwhelming sense of gratitude washed over her, along with a few other emotions, but Superman’s intense expression told her at once that the danger wasn’t over.
The singularity was approaching critical mass, pulsating above the city like a voracious black sun. The Kryptonian prison ship had been crushed into subatomic particles, leaving behind a sucking wound in the fabric of reality.
A deafening roar, like an extra-dimensional tornado, bellowed from the depths of the aperture. Blinding flashes of phantasmal light offered glimpses of a weird, purgatorial realm that was never meant to intersect with ordinary space. It made Lois queasy just looking at it.
Superman flew away from the vortex, pulling against the relentless forces that were trying to suck him back into the Phantom Zone with the other Kryptonians. Spectral colors glowed beneath his skin. His face rippled and distorted alarmingly; Lois could tell he was fighting with all his might to get them both clear of the singularity’s event horizon, before he was lost forever.
She buried her face against the “S” on his chest, squeezing him tightly.
Don’t give up, she urged him silently. The world needs you.
He strained against the pull of the black hole, barely making any headway. Lois feared the Zone would never them go, but then, just as she was on the verge of losing hope, the vortex began to collapse in on itself.
The eldritch glare faded, retreating back into the rift, while the thundering clamor quieted.
Superman gasped in relief as the Zone’s ravenous pull slackened enough for him to break free at last.
No longer tethered, he coasted to a stop high above the city. He rotated in the air so that he and Lois could watch the singularity’s death throes from a position of safety. Cradled in his arms, she watched it diminish to a pinpoint, and then blink out of existence.
Not with a bang, but a whimper, she thought, already composing the story in her head. Or is that too cliché?
The wounded sky rushed back to repair itself.
Smoke and flames wafted up from the war-torn city, as the sun sank toward the horizon.
Was it finally over?
Descending to street level, he gently set her down at the center of a battered intersection, strewn with rubble and trashed vehicles. Relatively few casualties littered the pavement, although she shuddered to imagine what the final body count would be once all those demolished buildings were excavated. She thought of Hardy and Dr. Hamilton and all the heroes who had sacrificed themselves to halt the Black Zero’s attack on Metropolis.
Their stories would not go untold, not if she had anything to say about it.
“Lois—” Superman said, and his voice was hoarse.
She looked up at him. To her dismay, she saw that his face was still suffused with an unearthly radiance, as though the Zone maintained a hold on him. Spectral colors leaked from his skin, the last lingering vestiges of the exotic energies he been exposed to as a child, during his long journey from Krypton. His alien past bled into the present, threatening the future.
For a moment, she feared that she was going to lose him to the Zone after all, but he came through for her once again. With a determined expression, he kept himself rooted to the Earth—and reality.
A warm smile promised that he wasn’t going anywhere.
They kissed amidst the ruins, seizing the moment after all they had been through together. The phantom glow subsided, and a much more earthly warmth enveloped them. Lois savored the kiss, grateful that they had finally made it this far. Thank God he kept saving her life—she would have hated to have missed it.
The sun was still setting when their lips finally came apart.
“You know,” she quipped, “they say it’s all downhill after the first kiss.”
Superman smiled.
“I’m pretty sure that only counts if you’re kissing a human.”
Here’s hoping, she thought.
* * *
Nervous survivors began to creep from the ruins, cautiously checking to see if it was safe. Bedraggled civilians, along with police officers and National Guardsmen, eyed the couple curiously. Superman’s colorful attire attracted plenty of attention. One soldier’s eyes bulged.
“Whoa,” he whispered. “It’s Superman.”
Searching the growing crowd for familiar faces, Lois was relieved to spot Perry, Steve, Jenny, and a few other scattered Planet staffers among the survivors. Perry and Lombard helped Jenny clamber over a heap of rubble. The plucky intern was limping, but managed to make her way toward Lois and Superman. She glanced up at the twilight sky, where the Black Zero no longer hung above the city.
“Are they gone?” she asked.
Perry peered at the empty sky, as well.
“I think so,” he said.
Jenny turned her gaze toward Superman and Lois. Blushing slightly, Lois wondered if Perry and the others had seen the kiss, and whether she could keep that part out of the papers.
“He saved us,” Jenny said.
* * *
Superman heard what the girl said. He smiled at her, pleased to get such a warm reception. He scanned her discreetly, making certain that her injuries didn’t require immediate attention. To his relief, she appeared to have come through the attack with only a few minor sprains and abrasions.
More survivors emerged from hiding. They milled about, gazing in amazement at the colorful hero and taking pictures with their cell phones. After keeping a low profile for his entire life, his first instinct was to flee all the attention, but instead he lingered among the people like a man with nothing to hide anymore.
He smiled warmly at the bystanders, seeking to put them at ease. It felt odd, but great, as well. Maybe he didn’t have to lurk in the shadows from now on.
Maybe the world was finally ready for Superman.
A tremendous boom wiped the smile from his face and threw the crowd into a panic. The noise came from the demolished building where the Kryptonian scout had crashed.
An armored figure burst from the wreckage.
Zod!
Apparently Zod had been too far away from the Black Zero to be captured by the Phantom Drive, which meant that the war was far from over.
“Everyone get back!” Superman shouted. He spotted injured people in danger of being trampled by the frightened crowd. “Move the others to safety!”
His urgent instructions had the desired effect. Courageous soldiers and civilians scrambled to assist the wounded as the crowd fled in terror. Lois tried to l
inger, but was dragged away by her friends.
Confident that no one would be left behind, Superman launched himself into the air.
It seemed that he and Zod still had business to settle.
C H A P T E R T H I R T Y - F I V E
Zod landed in an empty wasteland that had been flattened by the gravity beam. A circle of desolation surrounded him, bordered by the standing ruins of buildings partially sheared away by the column. The carved-up skyscrapers formed a sort of bowl around a blasted region several blocks across. Compressed matter, ground to a fine powder, blew across what had once been a thriving business district.
Superman could only imagine how many lives had been lost while he had been fighting the World Engine on the other side of the world.
Now it was Zod’s turn to be stopped.
The exiled Kryptonian looked up as Superman approached. Wet eyes betrayed his sorrow. He knelt and picked up a handful of dust. He let the gritty powder run through his fingers.
“Look at this,” he said. “We could have built a new Krypton in this squalor.” He flicked the last of the dust from his fingers. “But you chose the humans over us.”
Any doubts Superman might have had concerning that decision were dispelled by the widespread death and devastation that surrounded them. Zod and his people had brought nothing but pain and fear to the planet.
“Krypton had its chance,” Superman replied, and he gestured toward the humans. “This is their world. And we have no right to take it from them.”
Zod shook his head ruefully.
“On Krypton, I committed unspeakable acts of violence,” he said. “I waged war. I tortured people. I performed countless executions. But there was never any malice behind my actions,” he insisted. “I did them because my people asked me to. But now I have no people. And for the first time in my life, I find myself contemplating violence simply because I want to.”
He rose to his feet and leveled his gaze at Superman.
“I’m going to make them suffer, Kal. These humans you’ve adopted. I’m going to take every one of them away from you. One by one.”