The Last Days of Krypton

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Zod’s resentment toward the eleven inept blowhards had been building for a long time. He saw them for what they were: mere symbols. Though they had power available to them, they did nothing with it.

  He was the son of the great Council Head Cor-Zod, who had ruled well, married late, and lived to a ripe old age. The man had taught his son the nuances of power and government, how to get things done and take satisfaction in his accomplishments. In his younger years, Zod had always assumed he would have a Council seat of his own when one became available; in fact, he had expected to step in when his father died.

  But the other Council members had snubbed him. Rather than offer him a seat equal to their own, they had appointed Zod to the relatively unimportant Commission for Technology Acceptance. It was a humiliating blow at the time, a consolation prize. The supercilious leaders claimed he was “too young, not yet ready to become a Council member.” Mastering his temper, Zod had listened to their excuses and rationalizations. To fill his father’s seat, the Council appointed a wealthy nobleman named Al-An. Zod soon realized that Al-An had extravagantly bribed the Council.

  Until that moment, Zod had been so confident in his legitimate claim that he had never considered paying off the other members. He’d been too naïve to see how corrupt the Council was. He had believed in fairness, in a sense of duty and achievement, and now his expected career had been destroyed because of it. Though he felt outraged and cheated, he contained his fury.

  Zod had learned a valuable lesson from his father, though. “Power lies not in a name or title, but in what one does with it.” And, oh, he intended to do something with what power he had.

  Taking that to heart, he had once mused aloud to Nam-Ek, “They could have given me a meaningless appointment as a Council member, and I would have accomplished nothing beyond wearing a fine white robe with my family symbol. I could have endlessly debated issues that would never be decided. Instead, they gave me something far more valuable: a position I can use.”

  Rather than throwing a tantrum upon being bypassed, Zod stoically accepted his work in the Commission. Unlike the Council members, he understood how much power that position could generate, if handled properly.

  Even for routine daily business, the eleven-member Council required a unanimous vote to enact any law…virtually assuring that no meaningful decision could ever be made. As a recalcitrant member he would have indeed had power, since a single dissenting vote could derail any new project, law, or proclamation. But that was only the power to stall, not to succeed. Zod believed he had a much greater destiny. He wanted to leave his mark on Krypton.

  Over the years, he had quietly made the Commission for Technology Acceptance one of the most powerful and important entities in all of Kandor. The Council didn’t even realize what they had allowed to grow right under their noses. Now, looking at all the wondrous devices he had collected, Zod felt quite satisfied.

  Before long, Nam-Ek returned, practically hauling a wide-eyed servant into the hidden chamber. Though his shoulders were bowed, the servant looked in amazement at the exotic technological artifacts before noticing Zod. “Oh, Commissioner! How may I help you?”

  “What is your name?”

  “Hopk-Ins, sir.” Zod had never even heard of his family…one of the lower classes, certainly. The man continued to gawk. “I’ve worked here for fifteen years and never suspected—”

  “Of course you never suspected.” Zod turned to Nam-Ek. “Throw him into the Phantom Zone. I want to observe what happens.”

  Nam-Ek grabbed the scrawny man by the back of the collar and hoisted him into the air. Hopk-Ins began kicking and squirming. “What are you doing?”

  The mute threw the much smaller man like a rag doll into the middle of the silver rings. Hopk-Ins wailed—then abruptly vanished.

  After being sucked into the void, the servant looked as if he had been squashed between two thin panes of crystal. He was flattened but still alive, and frantically trying to get back out. The silence was absolute.

  Zod clapped his hands together. “Even better than I had hoped! Most intriguing.” He could think of several ways to use this device.

  The hapless Hopk-Ins was lost forever inside the Phantom Zone, unless someone reversed the polarity in the control array, as Jor-El had explained. Zod had no intention of doing so. For him, the benefit of the Phantom Zone would be to get rid of inconvenient people; he didn’t need to worry about how they could be brought back. It was much cleaner than murder.

  Nam-Ek was amazed, and a broad grin spread across his face. Zod again felt a paternal warmth in his chest. From the moment he’d taken Nam-Ek under his wing as a boy, they had trusted each other. “And now I have another job for you.”

  No one was supposed to know about this secret chamber, and he was annoyed that a simpleton such as Bur-Al had discovered its existence. What if the fourth-level assistant had left some sort of proof or testament for others to find? That worried Zod, and he did not intend to lose his toys.

  He handed Nam-Ek a map. “Years ago, I set up a bunker in the Redcliff Mountains. I want you to secretly move these treasures. There’s too great a chance they could be discovered here. Take as many days as you require, but do it yourself. I can rely on no one but you.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The arena stables were Nam-Ek’s own place, and he enjoyed spending as much time there as he could. He had liked animals since he was a child. Commissioner Zod often gave him expensive and exotic pets that no one else in Kandor owned, but Nam-Ek didn’t really care how rare they were or how special their breeding might be. He just liked the animals. Any animals.

  At least once a year, the Commissioner would set aside a day on which he took Nam-Ek to the extravagant zoo in Kandor so that he could see the incredible creatures. The big man wished he could share that excitement with his beloved mentor. Zod simply didn’t see the same wonder, but even so he did this for Nam-Ek, and the mute couldn’t imagine a greater gift.

  Now in the dim shadows of the stables, he hunkered down in the dry, sweet-smelling hay. Now that the black hrakkas were gone, four heavyset, slow-moving gurns had become his pets. Though gurns were as common as dirt, Nam-Ek had a special fondness for them. The stocky creatures were covered with matted gray fur that gave off a pungent musk; their stubby horns were little more than knobs. Others considered the herd creatures to be stupid, saw them as nothing more than walking meat, but Nam-Ek saw them as friends…friends from childhood. He loved them.

  He had also loved his black hrakkas—trained them, fed them, oiled their scales…but they were gone now, taken from him. Nam-Ek understood that they were dead. Just because he could not speak didn’t mean he was thick-witted. Because the hrakkas had killed that man after the chariot races, they’d been “destroyed” or “euthanized.”

  Nam-Ek had stood with tears in his eyes and his huge fists clenched at his sides as Sapphire Guards had muzzled the reptilian beasts and dragged them away. He had wanted to oil their scales one last time, to clean the blood from their teeth, but the guards wouldn’t let him. Nam-Ek felt sickened to think about what had happened to the black lizards. Had the guards clubbed their skulls, or simply given them poison as a “humane” way of killing them?

  Through it all, Zod had never belittled Nam-Ek’s misery, did not try to brush aside his grief. Later, though, he had offered him more pets. He had shown Nam-Ek pictures of strange specimens, unusual animals that he had never seen before. Instead, the mute picked simple, common gurns. Zod had tried to talk him into something more special, but Nam-Ek thrust an imperious finger toward the picture. Gurns. He wanted gurns.

  Zod gave him four of the herd creatures and would probably have provided a thousand if Nam-Ek had truly wanted them.

  Gurns made him think of good times in his youth, but also nightmarish ones. Alone in the stables he stroked their shaggy, thick heads and rubbed the rounded ends of their horns. The gurns made him feel like he was a little boy again—a normal boy, before all the terrible th
ings had happened….

  Nam-Ek had been brought up on a gurn farm. He’d had a mother, a father, and two older sisters, and he’d led an uneventful life cultivating thick lichen fields on a rocky plateau. The gurns stripped the old tough lichen from the rocks and provided fertilizer for the fresh tender crop.

  He’d been ten years old when it all changed, when Bel-Ek, his father, went berserk. Nam-Ek had been too young to know what might have shattered the older man’s psyche. All he remembered was that one night Bel-Ek had murdered his wife, strangled his two daughters, then came after him.

  Young Nam-Ek had climbed through a window and fled across the dewy grasses. He made it to the stables, where he hid among the restless animals. For hours, Bel-Ek had searched for him, stalking through the night, bellowing his son’s name. His father held a long cruel knife in his hand. The sharp curved blade, designed for harvesting lichen from the rocks, dripped with blood in the light of Krypton’s two remaining moons. Nam-Ek had crouched among the warm and shaggy beasts, holding his breath, afraid to utter a sound.

  The door to the stable building smashed open, and his muscular father stood there silhouetted against the night. The shaggy gurns were restless, but the boy hid among them, trying to be small and silent. He held on to their matted fur, buried his face in the thick animal smell to keep himself from whimpering. Even so, Bel-Ek had spotted him. With a roar, the man strode forward, raising the killing blade…just before a group of Sapphire Guards had shot him down.

  Later, he learned that his mother had sounded an alarm before she died. The security troops had responded too late for the rest of his massacred family, but they had saved Nam-Ek. The boy was so traumatized he’d never spoken again.

  That had not deterred ambitious young Commissioner Zod from protecting the speechless orphan. Aware of the horrors Nam-Ek had endured, Zod took the boy and sheltered him. Yes, Zod had tried to get him to talk, but did not press, did not grow impatient and shout. Most important of all, the Commissioner accepted Nam-Ek, gave him a home, made him feel safe again. Nam-Ek could never repay his mentor for that. For years he had believed he would never again feel safe in his life. But Zod made him safe.

  Nam-Ek was angry when he heard criticisms of his mentor. Even the Commissioner didn’t know that Nam-Ek had secretly killed four people who had spoken out against Zod. He felt it was the least he could do.

  Now he would dutifully take away all the precious items stored in the chamber beneath the Commission headquarters, as Zod had commanded him. But first Nam-Ek had another important task, something he had to do.

  The halls of Kandor’s prison levels were sparsely populated even during the day, and only a few token Sapphire Guards remained in place at night, as a formality. Kryptonians had a lax and contented view of security, and even the Butcher of Kandor had not shaken them enough to make fundamental changes.

  Though he was a large man, Nam-Ek could move with predatory stealth. Anyone who recognized him as Zod’s ward would no doubt assume he was on an important task for the Commissioner.

  Using Zod’s access codes, the big mute could easily manipulate the systems. He understood much more than most people gave him credit for. In the sleepy stillness, he passed underground and descended winding staircases into the intake level of holding cells. He glided along as smoothly as a rain droplet trickling down a polished window. His first task at a substation panel was to deactivate the security imagers. Assuming it to be nothing more than a routine malfunction, the night staff would request that it be fixed during the next work shift.

  As he came closer to his quarry, Nam-Ek’s big fists bunched and released, bunched and released. He thought of the Kandor zoo, remembering how much joy those animals had given him—the drang and its amusing antics, the ferocious-looking snagriff, the lumbering rondors. Zod had taken him to the zoo only two months earlier, and now Nam-Ek would never see those creatures again.

  Extinct. What could possibly be a severe enough punishment for such an unspeakable crime? He had brought a long knife and a pulse scalpel, though he hoped he could do most of this work with his bare hands.

  When he was in position, he used Zod’s access crystal to send a signal that called away the two guards stationed at the Butcher’s holding cell: a hint of smoke detected in a records complex three levels up. Nam-Ek lurked around the corner in a recessed doorway as the two armored guards jogged off down the hall, chattering with excitement and surprise at having something to do for a change.

  As soon as they were gone, Nam-Ek moved in. He wasn’t sure how much time he would have, but he intended to accomplish as much as possible.

  Using the guards’ controls, he unsealed the armored cell door and blocked the opening with his massive body. The Butcher of Kandor sat in the chamber, looking up with mad, bloodshot eyes and a deranged grin on his face. “Come to free me?” He sprang to his feet. “Shall we go on a hunt?”

  Nam-Ek stalked forward, grabbed the Butcher by his clumpy blond hair, and yanked his head back. It would have been easy just to snap his neck and be done, but that would not be satisfying. Not satisfying at all.

  The prisoner snarled and thrashed like an animal in a trap. Nam-Ek hauled out the pulse scalpel and jammed it into the criminal’s throat, dispensing a burst just deep enough to mangle his larynx, severing the vocal cords and cauterizing the wound at the same time. The man would die soon enough, but not until Nam-Ek allowed him to. Now they were both speechless.

  Though the Butcher writhed and clawed, the big mute easily held him in place. Using the blunt fingers of his left hand, Nam-Ek scooped out one of the man’s eyes, plucking it free and setting the bloody orb on the cell’s cold, hard bench where it could be a lone witness to what happened next. He wanted to let the Butcher keep his other eye, for now, so he could see what would happen to him next…like the animals in the zoo had seen their bloody fates.

  The Butcher snapped his teeth together and spat, but only hollow wheezing noises came from his mangled throat. When he clawed Nam-Ek’s cheek, the bearded mute grabbed the prisoner’s hand and broke all of his fingers—a small, petulant gesture.

  And it was just the first step. Nam-Ek took out the knife.

  In the end, what this heinous man had done to the poor zoo animals seemed gentle compared to Nam-Ek’s savage artistry….

  Afterward, with justice and revenge served, he thought no more about the rare creatures or the man who had killed them. There would be an uproar about the shocking murder in the prison cell, but Nam-Ek did not worry. No one would suspect him.

  CHAPTER 10

  When his battered silver flyer finally arrived back in Argo City, Zor-El was burned, exhausted, and greatly disturbed by what he had seen on the southern continent.

  While on approach to the lovely city, which sparkled with lights in the darkness, he considered calling for a medical team to meet him on the landing pad. His burns were excruciating, and he could feel hardened pebbles of lava inside the meat of his arm and his left side. But Zor-El did not want his people to see him staggering and weak, hauled off to a hospital. During the return flight across the ocean, he had used the medkit in the cockpit to apply basic first aid.

  Landing at night, he left his ash-dusted craft on an empty pad not far from his villa and staggered away before anyone could see him. With unsteady but determined steps, he headed toward his wife, his home. Just smelling the cool, salty air that blew in from the ocean rejuvenated him.

  Chains of lights looped between the graceful spires of the five golden bridges that connected the peninsula to the mainland. From the terminus of the bridges, roads led out to the farmlands, the mountains, and the lake district. Cross-country highways led off to Borga City, Ilonia, Orvai, Corril, Kandor, and other villages and mountain communities.

  But nothing could compare with Argo City. The Kandor snobs could have their capital, as far as he was concerned. Here the warm, tropical climate made for pleasant days and balmy nights. Ocean mists rolled in regularly to irrigate the lush plant
life that graced the streets, buildings, and arboretums. He loved it here.

  The city’s circulatory system—a network of glassy-smooth irrigation canals—carried as much traffic as did the paved streets and pedestrian paths. At regular intervals, small bridges arched over the flowing water; each bridge was owned, tended, and decorated by a different family. Hanging vines, flowers, and berries adorned every structure. The city itself—his city—gave Zor-El strength.

  He walked through darkness to his villa with its colonnaded entrance and Alura’s two brightly lit geodesic greenhouses. Only a few more steps. His wife was trained well enough in medicine; she could tend him.

  He stood at the door, opened it—and somehow she was there to greet him. Alura had shoulder-length black hair even darker than his own, arched eyebrows, and a high forehead, which often showed her focused concentration. Zor-El had always considered her a counterpoint for his passion and energy. Before she could say anything, he collapsed in her arms.

  Alura responded in a calm and professional manner, immediately getting to work—exactly as he had known she would react.

  “Volcanoes,” he said. “Instability in the core.”

  “Quiet, now. Let me tend your injuries. Explanations later.”

  “But it’s important…”

  Holding him up, she helped him walk down the vine-draped corridors toward their living chambers. “Telling me won’t do any good now. Whatever the emergency is, you’ll have to stay alive to do something about it.” She let him drop onto their foamweave bed as if he were a lightning-struck tree falling in the forest.