The Last Days of Krypton

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The thrumming in the air grew more overbearing. Nam-Ek pulled back on the controls of the passenger craft, bringing them to a dead stop far outside of the city. In the distance Zod could hear the faint sounds of people crying out, crowds rushing from buildings and looking up into the sky. Although traffic was minimal this late at night, he still saw ground vehicles and illuminated floater rafts swirling in eddies at the edge of Kandor. Some groups of travelers tried to rush back to their homes, while others struggled to evacuate the city.

  Zod took the controls from Nam-Ek and accelerated the vessel forward again. “If this is an attack, the Council will never know what to do. I can rally the people to me, but only if I am there!” He suddenly saw this as a great and unexpected opportunity. “I can lead them—now!”

  Deeply alarmed, the big mute grabbed his master’s sleeve and shook his head, but Zod insisted on rushing toward the city, his city. “I know you want to keep me safe, but I have to try—”

  Bright sparkles along the edges of the huge spacecraft’s angled seams flared from orange to white, interrupting Zod’s words. The ship lowered itself until it hovered directly above the central ziggurat of the Council temple, where the throbbing hologram of Rao blazed into the night. The outer metal planes of the alien vessel folded and rearranged themselves like the images in a dimensional kaleidoscope, and the razor-edged flower opened to reveal a tiny core of searingly bright light.

  A moment of sickening silence hung in the air. Zod couldn’t even blink. His heartbeat pounded in his ears; the whole Kandor valley seemed to be holding its breath.

  A blinding pillar of solidified light dropped down to cover the small image of the red sun, as if using it as an anchor point. From the corners of the alien ship’s folded hull planes, three perfectly straight beams lashed out like deadly whips, extending over the building tops. Separated by equal angles, the beams struck the ground at the perimeter of Kandor, blasting and boring into the ground. The bright lights fanned outward, sweeping around like the blades of a container opener. With the ease of a stylus scraped across a piece of paper, the three equidistant rays gouged a deep furrow all the way around the city, scribing a perfect circle.

  Caught in the path of the piercing rays, several unfortunate ground-cars exploded. Outlying structures toppled, severed by the blast. The sounds of vaporizing rock and hissing steam roared like unending thunder. Bridges and roadways collapsed. Numerous hapless homes were simply erased in the path of destruction. A tethering field for Kandor’s private dirigible airships vanished as the wave of disintegration passed by; frantically, two pilots cut loose their airships and attempted to float away, but both were caught in the beam, incinerated in an instant.

  A city full of people screaming created an oddly operatic sound that rose into the air, but the alien ship continued its destruction, heedless of their cries. The beams cut a circular moat, encompassing most of Kandor, and then cut even deeper into the crust.

  Just as the slash of light passed in front of the passenger platform, Zod veered the flying vehicle aside. He barely avoided slamming into the high-intensity blast. The Commissioner struggled to reassert control over the wobbling vehicle while gale-force thermal currents slapped against him in the open vessel, and molten debris spattered the side of the hull. Nam-Ek turned sideways, intentionally shielding Zod with his burly body; tiny embers sizzled into the big man’s back, making his shirt smolder.

  Nam-Ek knocked Zod away from the controls and brought the raft down in a rapid descent, slamming them into the dirt. They skidded to a halt only meters away from the deep, smoking cut in the ground. From the angry turmoil on the mute’s face, Zod wondered whether Nam-Ek would physically drag him away if he persisted in trying to get back into Kandor.

  The Commissioner brushed himself off and stared in awe. “By the red heart of Rao!” He could smell the electric ozone in the air, felt a wash of heat sear his face like the exhalation of a blast oven.

  The three brilliant beams continued to wreak havoc, sweeping along the circumference again and again, cutting deeper into the crust with each pass. Streets were severed, outbuildings blasted into rubble. Dirt and smoke sprayed upward, accompanied by fountains of sparks and jets of steam from underground conduits.

  When the sizzling boundary circle was finally complete and the smoke began to clear from the air, Zod could once again hear screams and panicked shouts, mingled with a cacophony of internal alarms. Sapphire Guards from their training barracks outside the city must be rushing into position, calling all reinforcements.

  But the ominous alien ship wasn’t finished yet. With the deep gouge ringing the core of Krypton’s capital city in a perfect circle, a shimmering curtain spilled out of the invading ship and dropped until it enveloped the metropolis under a hemispherical bubble that sealed itself inside the mammoth groove.

  Zod reeled, staring at the enormous artificial dome that now covered Kandor. “It’s like a child’s dollhouse in a terrarium.” Everyone in the city was imprisoned, specimens in a gigantic zoo. Zod’s mind raced, wondering if this might indeed be a retribution force of Donodon’s people, or the powerful police force the alien had mentioned…or something entirely different.

  Feeling isolated and helpless, Zod looked at the stranded citizens and vehicles on the nearest main thoroughfare outside of Kandor. A squad of Sapphire Guards rushed forward, firing their weapons to no effect. He wondered if he should take command of that guard contingent and tell them what to do. But he didn’t know what to do, either.

  “How do we free them? How do we drive away that enemy ship?” For the first time he could remember, Zod felt completely out of control, unable to do anything. He should never have let Jor-El go to the arctic. Not now.

  Suddenly Zod swallowed as he realized that if he had not stayed to perform the wedding, or even if he had left Jor-El and Lara’s estate one hour earlier, then he and Nam-Ek would also be trapped beneath that impenetrable dome. By sheer fortunate coincidence, they had been away from Kandor.

  The dome throbbed, and the gigantic angled ship hung overhead, just waiting. He heard the pulse of energy from the containment dome mix with the still-sizzling sound of melted dirt and rock. Every breath he drew was filled with cold static electricity and metallic ozone. Despite his instinctive fear, he couldn’t help but admire the incalculable power the craft possessed. Zod feared that something even worse might be in store.

  Finally, after a long moment of building tension, the air itself groaned. The terrarium dome flared and began to contract, like a tightening noose. At first Zod couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Nam-Ek stared, then shielded his eyes.

  The dome pressed inward, encapsulating Kandor within a smaller and smaller boundary. Zod realized that the whole enclosed skyline was shrinking. Exotic lenses or condensing fields inside the projected dome reduced the size of the capital city, leaving behind only a ragged crater. As the boundary retracted, the alien ship followed it down above the containment dome.

  Nam-Ek urgently tried to convince Zod to fly away to safety, but the Commissioner would hear none of it. Instead, he placed his hand on the mute’s chest, easing him off the landed raft. Nam-Ek retreated onto the open ground, looking forlorn.

  Zod’s entire life was there in the capital city: his Commission, his strings of power, his connections, his home. None of the people there were his friends—in fact, he genuinely despised the Council members and many other bureaucrats who had stood against him over the years. Nam-Ek was the only one he really cared about, and the big mute was here with him.

  But how could he stand by and simply watch this unprecedented act? He was angry, afraid, and almost wild to realize that he was utterly helpless in the face of this strange attack. Zod grabbed the controls of the flying platform, tried to take off, but Nam-Ek defiantly stood on the ground and gripped the side rail of the raft, holding back the vehicle with brute strength.

  Zod spoke sharply from the control pedestal. “Do not challenge me, Nam-Ek! I am going clos
er, but I cannot do what I must do unless you are out of harm’s way. Otherwise, I will be too worried about you.” He softened his tone. “Besides, if I don’t leave you here, then who will come and rescue me if I need it?”

  Unable to argue with that, the big man reluctantly released his grip. He seemed convinced he would never see his mentor again, but Zod tried to sound reassuring. “I will be careful.” He took one last glance at Nam-Ek’s forlorn expression, then focused on the millions of Kryptonians trapped inside the shrinking city. Maybe he could get close enough, ram the invader ship, find some way to undo this disaster. He could save them all.

  Lifting the floating raft again, he accelerated toward the ever-growing crater as Kandor continued to shrink. By the time he reached the edge, Zod could no longer see the alien vessel. The city had all but vanished deep inside the giant ragged hole, shrunk down to an unimaginably small size, and the enemy ship had followed it down into the depths.

  Zod brought the craft to a lurching halt just before the abrupt drop-off, smelling the smoke and sulfur rising up into his face. He felt disoriented by the unreality of what he had just witnessed. Kandor…gone! He stepped off the landed platform and walked cautiously toward the edge, then stared down.

  He was so shaken that at first he didn’t see the bright light sweeping up toward him. Having done its awful work, the ominous alien ship began to climb out of the great pit. Zod staggered, pinwheeling his arms to get back from the edge.

  As the ship rose above him, Zod stared up into the white light that still shone from the bottom of the complex craft. Dangling by an invisible thread beneath its hull, miniaturized Kandor hung like an absurd toy, a city in a bottle. The flat metal surfaces of the outer armor shifted and opened again like geometric petals, showing the interior of the strange vessel. Zod watched it draw tiny Kandor up through the gap, and then the plates folded shut like mandibles, swallowing the capital city.

  Far off, other survivors milled about where severed bridges and roads led only to the smoking hole. But Zod had not followed the main route back home, taking his own path, as always. And now he seemed painfully vulnerable and obvious out in the open. He stood alone.

  And after slowly circling the deep crater, the ominous vessel came toward him.

  CHAPTER 32

  The palace of solitude in the arctic snowfields was breathtaking. Seeing it, Jor-El was reminded of his father’s original genius and creative imagination, before he had degenerated into forgetfulness.

  As their enclosed two-person skimmer raced over the icy wasteland, he and Lara came over a line of jagged black peaks buried in glaciers. Various shades of red sunlight dappled the textures of blown snow and polished ice. They saw the exotic angled structure of the palace nestled against a cliff, like a spiny bush grown out of precious gems. Steam wafted up from a fissure where volcanic heat created a warm oasis even in the ice cap.

  Lara caught her breath. “Everyone says Yar-El was such a brilliant scientist—but he was an artist, too! Just like my father said at the wedding. It’s beautiful.”

  Lara’s parents and her little brother had rushed away from the dacha immediately after the ceremony, called back to their sensitive project in the city. Apparently the crystalsilk weavings had to be monitored precisely, or else the whole web would unravel and they would be forced to start over. Lara insisted that she understood why they had to leave so soon; after all, she had grown up in a family of artists.

  “My father was a mathematical artist.” Jor-El knew, however, that simple equations without inspiration could not account for the marvel he saw in the mountains of ice. Thin crystal sheets balanced against one another at low angles, green and white structural columns that at first looked like a randomly stacked pile of broken glass, but further study showed a complex order. As a counterpoint to the low angles, straight pinnacles like watchtowers jutted vertically above, yielding a perfect view of the clean, pristine arctic.

  The fortress had remained untouched in the cold, white wasteland for years. He and Lara had the ice cap all to themselves in perfect peace, perfect shelter. They would keep each other warm.

  Jor-El landed in a snow-swept area near a majestic front gate guarded by long spearlike crystals. Huge angled shards had grown out of the glaciers themselves, reinforced by metallic and polymer overlays to form the main structure of the palace. The pointed spires interlocked in a geometric tapestry more amazing than any architecture he had ever seen.

  The two stepped out into the brittle cold air and stood at the palace’s cold gateway, watching white breath curl from their nostrils and mouths. Peering through the hood of her parka, Lara gazed at the white and emerald spires with absolute delight. When Jor-El pulled her close, she felt very much at home in his arms. Here, for a brief while, they could hide from the rest of Krypton, ignore the Council and its accusations.

  Once they had passed through the crystal-fenced entrance, the passageways of the palace were made of blue flowing ice, stabilized with polymer films. As soon as he and Lara entered, thermal gems began to raise the internal temperature, making the chambers comfortable.

  She drank in the dazzling light that reflected from everywhere, and basked in the sheer sense of safety and privacy. “I couldn’t ask for a more magical place for our wedding trip.”

  “How about better circumstances?”

  “You and I are married now, and that is a wonderful circumstance,” she said with absolute conviction. “We’re together, for better or worse. Your problems are mine, and I’ll stand beside you just as I stand with you now.” She nestled against him. “No matter what happens. As dark as it seems, we will overcome this.”

  He nodded. “Even if the whole Council is against me, Commissioner Zod promised his help. Let’s see if he’s true to his word. And if he can’t help after all, we will have to do it ourselves.”

  The palace’s master suite was as large as a throne room. Light sparkled through the faceted walls. Neither of them could imagine any Kryptonian resort being more appropriate. Lara gave him a mischievous smile. “We’ll make do.” She pulled him toward her for a long kiss.

  All around them the cold arctic exulted in their union. Yar-El had had the foresight to include warm furs and soft sleeping pallets. Lara held her husband, delighting in every second with him, never wanting to let go. She didn’t care about what might be happening in Kandor. In this place, Jor-El was hers alone, and she would lift the weight of the outside world from his shoulders.

  Though only a scant few days remained before his trial, Jor-El and Lara managed to distract each other from their worries. Entirely.

  CHAPTER 33

  Zod stood by himself on the edge of the vast pit, realizing that he couldn’t run. Any being with the power to reduce an entire city to a mere plaything could easily catch one man, and he knew that the alien vessel had spotted him.

  So he didn’t try to flee. He stood with his hands at his sides, glaring up at the ship, showing no fear. Defiant. He had always believed that as the son of Cor-Zod, he had a great destiny. But now, before his very eyes, his dreams of power, his home, his possessions—all had been stolen away.

  The mechanical, razor-edged ship descended to the flat ground outside the yawning crater, still glowing with residual energy. Finally, two of the metal planes shifted and folded inward to reveal a hatch that spilled out hazy yellow light. Silhouetted against the interior of his ship, a manlike figure emerged—an entirely different sort of visitor from the diminutive tentacle-faced Donodon.

  The stranger stood with his hands on his sides, facing Zod. Tall and muscular, with sickly looking olive-green skin, he wore a tight body suit and matching boots. The alien was completely hairless, his skin so smooth it seemed to be coated with wax. Across his skull, several glowing red and gold disks were connected with silver lines, like circuitry paths that mapped out the constellation of his brain. The visitor’s face showed no emotion, nor did he speak; he simply assessed the Commissioner.

  Finally Zod shouted, �
��What are you waiting for? Are you not going to take me as well?”

  “No. I have Kandor.” The alien spoke in a matter-of-fact voice, not gloating over what he had done.

  “And what do you intend to do with it?”

  The alien seemed perplexed by Zod’s anger. “As part of my collection, Kandor will be forever safe. I mean no harm.”

  No harm? Zod looked at the huge, deep crater. Even if the population inside the shrunken metropolis somehow remained uninjured, hundreds if not thousands of Kryptonians had been slaughtered in the process of uprooting the city. On the alien’s skull, the red-and-gold disks gleamed, as if amplifying his thoughts. The ship’s hatch opened wider, and the stranger gestured behind him. “You are welcome to see for yourself, if it reassures you.”

  Some distance away, Nam-Ek emerged from where he had hidden in the upthrust rubble. He stormed toward the edge of the crater in a misguided attempt to protect Zod. When the green-skinned alien turned swiftly, reacting to the threat, Zod shouted to the big mute. Without thinking, he placed himself between the alien and his big-shouldered friend. “Nam-Ek! Stop! I don’t want you hurt.”

  At Zod’s command, the burly bodyguard halted abruptly, as if he had reached the end of a leash. His expressive face was an agony of indecision, ready to tear the alien and his ship to pieces should his master be harmed.

  Zod could tell that the fate not just of Kandor but all of Krypton might depend on what he did next. His thoughts raced ahead, calculating, assessing possibilities and discarding them. The eleven members of the Council were trapped in Kandor, completely cut off. Only he, the Commissioner, remained outside. Therefore, this was all up to him.