The Last Days of Krypton

by Kevin J. Anderson

  He pressed as close as he could. “I came to make sure you were still safe.”

  “She’s safe for now,” Koll-Em taunted from behind him.

  “May I have a moment of privacy with my wife?”

  “No, you may not. Who knows what secret information you two might exchange?”

  Jor-El placed his palm flat against the wall of interlocked crystal; behind the blurry barrier, Lara did the same. “Be strong, Lara. We’ll get through this.”

  “Tell me what’s happening out there. Is Argo City safe?”

  Koll-Em grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away. “She doesn’t need to know all that.” The Sapphire Guard began to manhandle Jor-El back out.

  “I love you!” he called to her.

  Lara’s voice vibrated through the facets. “Do what you have to, Jor-El!” She pressed herself against the crystal barrier, but he couldn’t see her clearly.

  He longed to look at her face, to touch her. “I don’t intend for my child to be born inside a cell.”

  “Then you’d better help this war end very soon,” Koll-Em said.

  The fear and suspicion that permeated Kryptonopolis now worked in Jor-El’s favor. He went about his plans, feigning bold confidence; any furtiveness would only invite suspicion, and he had no intention of explaining himself.

  The new devices he had secretly assembled were simple enough, remarkably brilliant in fact. He intended to pass along his appreciation to Zor-El—if they both survived the next few days.

  In a small pocket, he still held the fragment of a message crystal he’d received from a haggard-looking secret courier shortly before the army marched for Argo City. The hidden recording it held from Zor-El offered vital information: “Others might be uncertain of your loyalties, Jor-El, but you are my brother. I believe you’ll do the right thing with these designs.”

  He’d been saddened to learn that this was the third covert message Zor-El had tried to send him. None of the other volunteers had found him, and Jor-El never saw the haggard messenger again. Had he slipped away, been forcibly recruited into the army, or been killed? Every day, Jor-El expected to be thrown into a crystalline cell himself; he prayed at least it would be next to Lara’s.

  Moving as if he were walking on fragile glass, he determined an appropriate installation point on the perimeter of the city, another one in the Square of Hope, another outside the main offices. After slipping into the government palace, he measured carefully and found a hiding place to install the last small object in the large main chamber that Zod had been using as a kind of throne room.

  Just as he finished, Koll-Em stormed into the room. The man’s pointed face flushed upon seeing Jor-El there. His loose brown hair had a wild look. “What do you think you’re doing? This is a restricted area.”

  Jor-El stood up to him. “General Zod asked me to run a special scan. I am confirming that no assassination devices have been planted in his absence.”

  “The General told me nothing of this!”

  Jor-El let a mysterious smile creep across his face. “Precisely who do you think he’s worried about? You’ve made your ambitions clear, not even showing mercy to your own brother. The General has every right to be suspicious of you.” He pressed his point. “Shall we contact him now? We might be able to break through the interference caused by the solar storm. General Zod won’t be pleased by the interruption, of course, but he will confirm what I’m saying. The call will also give me a chance to inform him of certain suspicious items I found in your own quarters.”

  Koll-Em paled. “What items? You were in my quarters?”

  “I was doing my job.”

  The young man seethed for a long moment. “I don’t trust you, Jor-El.”

  “The feeling is very mutual. And Zod trusts neither of us.” Then he added with an ironic smile, “All hail, the new Krypton.”

  He walked out of the government palace, leaving Koll-Em fuming with helpless anger.

  CHAPTER 74

  Like a slap in the face, the force-field dome over Argo City made General Zod’s cheeks burn. He knew that Zor-El and his people must be laughing at him from inside the city. He did not find it intriguing at all. “Bring forth our weapons and blast through that barrier. Show these deluded fools that they cannot resist Zod.”

  Aethyr chose her words carefully. “Are you willing to destroy Argo City after all? How much do you think that force field can withstand?”

  “We shall see.”

  Unable to control the anger he felt on behalf of his master, Nam-Ek marched forward, fists balled, and pounded against the crackling barrier. His strongest blows barely elicited a humming sound. Frustrated, the mute stepped back, scowling at his knuckles and flexing his tingling hands.

  “Pull back! Prepare for our first bombardment.”

  When the initial rounds exploded against the golden dome, the shock waves blew backward with such force that the sound nearly deafened the soldiers who stood too close to watch; holding their ringing ears, the men staggered away. The most powerful detonations produced little more than ripples of color across the force field.

  Zod’s army cheered hopefully as the next group of demolitions experts planted even more powerful bombs. They unleashed a truly apocalyptic chain of explosions, also to no effect.

  “Try the bridges. Maybe those are weak points.” He still couldn’t believe Zor-El had actually cut off the magnificent spans that had been the pride of the city for many centuries. The remaining superstructure, half out of the water outside the protective dome, resembled the skeleton of a beached sea beast. Zod fumed, incensed that he’d underestimated the sheer irrationality of Jor-El’s brother.

  Taking a different approach, he ordered his construction engineers to dig tunnels under the narrow neck of the peninsula. If they could get under the protective dome, they would come up from beneath. But no matter how deep they dug with their best tunneling apparatus, they still encountered the shimmering barrier many meters underground; the force field had sliced easily through dirt and stone. His diggers emerged from their tunnels, dirty and discouraged.

  The General now began to grow impatient. Sensing his mood, Aethyr pushed him. “You are the savior of Krypton, my love. You don’t take half measures, and no one thwarts your will with impunity.”

  “Correct on all counts.” The two of them stepped back onto the command platform, cruised back over the troops, and turned to survey Argo City. Under the seething red sun, the very intactness of the defiant city mocked him. “Bring forth our heaviest weapons. The city is forfeit. Let loose a bombardment that will make even the ghost of Jax-Ur shudder! I want a complete and utter holocaust here.”

  Argo City remained silent behind the faint hum of the force field.

  His army lined up seventeen wide-bore thermal cannons, pointing the flame launchers’ muzzles toward one section of the barrier. Conventional crystal-tipped penetrators were loaded into field guns on the bottleneck of land. Catapults, vibrational thundershocks, flash-enhanced mortars—everything was aimed toward the thrumming dome.

  When General Zod gave the command, every weapon fired at once. The sound and the fury roared through the skies. Flames and flashes billowed upward in blinding intensity. Aethyr watched the furious explosions; their colors and heat reflected off her skin, as if suffusing her with energy. Nam-Ek wore an expression of boyish delight. Zod didn’t blink, refusing to miss a moment of the spectacle.

  Raging flames and caustic smoke surrounded the golden dome. The General tried to will the force field to collapse. His armies kept launching their weapons, exhausting half of his arsenal.

  But when the smoke cleared, the dome remained intact.

  A sickening sense of failure assailed Zod, threatening to overwhelm him. Finally, he barked orders for the attack to cease. Continuing the pointless waste of firepower would simply make him look like more of a fool. He could lay siege to Argo City and starve them out, though that might well take months or years, depending on their stockpiles.
And all the while, his military would be embroiled here, squandering valuable time, as other towns took advantage of the situation for their own petty rebellions. By remaining entrenched, waiting for the shield to flicker and come down, Zod himself—the great ruler of Krypton—would appear weak, ineffectual. He would be a laughingstock.

  Though the words burned like bile in his throat, he said, “We return to Kryptonopolis. Immediately.”

  Aethyr was shocked. “No! We cannot retreat. Think of how history—”

  “We are not retreating. We are modifying our tactics. If these weapons are ineffective, we must resort to something more powerful.”

  Zod’s great military force loaded up the troop-transport platforms and turned around the heavy weapons and field artillery. He was sure the people of Argo City understood that he meant to come at them again with a vengeance. They could stew over that while he made his final preparations.

  CHAPTER 75

  General Zod’s army swept back into Kryptonopolis like a swarm of hungry chewerbugs from the Neejon plains. Some of the soldiers were outraged, some ashamed. All had been thrown off balance. Even the most devoted followers could not believe Zod had been so easily defeated.

  As soon as Jor-El saw their expressions, he knew that the tyrant had failed to conquer Argo City, that his warning had arrived in time, and that Zor-El’s shield dome must have held. His relief was tempered, however, by the certainty that the General would try something even worse.

  Immediately upon his return, Zod shut himself inside his government palace. During the days it had taken him to move his troops back across the continent, the General’s anger had not cooled. In the meantime, fully seventeen other cities and towns had declared their independence and arrested Zod’s supporters. Dealing with them all would force Zod to stretch his armies much too thin.

  The flustered soldiers flooded through the streets and hurried to their communal habitation structures. Exhausted and uncomfortable, many of them stripped off their uniforms. Jor-El could tell that most of the civilian population was unnerved by what they had seen during the brief siege. And they all knew that the conflict wasn’t over.

  In the meantime, feeling lost without any concrete, objective information about what had happened at Argo City—and completely cut off from his brother—Jor-El checked an anomalous reading from his distant early-warning array, only to discover that his brother had sent him a coded message, disguised as an astronomical signal. Chuckling at the unorthodox method, Jor-El learned that Argo City had deactivated the shield as soon as the invading army retreated. While the dissidents were preparing their response, Jor-El saw how he could help, and he secretly transmitted his idea to Zor-El. Now, if the separate pieces could fit together…

  Finally, after leaving Kryptonopolis in tense uncertainty for half a day, Zod emerged from his headquarters looking taller, harder, a whirlwind contained within a crisp new uniform. He seemed more indomitable than ever.

  Jor-El noticed that the most dedicated groups of soldiers and Sapphire Guards were strategically stationed throughout the streets in a determined show of strength. Zod’s planned announcement must be so calamitous that the General himself feared his own people might rise up against him. Tensions were at a breaking point. By now public opinion in Kryptonopolis was turning against him, though the Ring of Strength held any criticism in check with intimidation. For now, at least, their tactics were sufficient, but Jor-El could see that Zod’s hold on the people was starting to crumble.

  Anger made the General’s razor-edged voice loud enough that he no longer needed special amplifiers. “We must show those backward thinkers of Argo City that General Zod will not be trifled with. Clear the Square of Hope!”

  Jor-El felt utterly alone in the huge crowd. How he longed for Lara to be there beside him. Watching the General’s expression, he knew that his worst fears were about to be realized. Zod was about to step off a cliff into damnation.

  “The people of Argo City have made their choice. I will launch one of the nova javelins against them,” he announced with finality. “May Zor-El and his people find mercy under the red light of Rao, for they will find none from me.”

  As he issued his fateful order, General Zod experienced neither guilt nor glee. Only satisfaction and liberation.

  Based on what had happened to the moon of Koron long ago, Zod had a healthy respect for Jax-Ur’s warheads. By his best guess, even one of the javelins would disintegrate the whole peninsula and vaporize part of the continent around Argo City, shield or no shield. It would leave a scar a hundred times more vast than the crater of Kandor.

  Zor-El would get what he deserved.

  The General envisioned what might happen as the nova javelin struck. The force-field dome would collapse, and waves of incinerating heat would reduce the population of Argo City to ash. Even if the dome somehow held, the ground all around would be flash-melted. Quakes would rip apart the surface, flatten the buildings into piles of rubble. The sea would boil, and molten lava would roar up from beneath Argo City. Zod could imagine the cacophony of terrified screams in the brief instant before they were cut off. Those deeply satisfying thoughts had finally convinced him to take this terrible action.

  And so he gave the order.

  In the Square of Hope, one of the circular coverplates hummed, vibrated, and split apart to reveal the weapon underground. Slowly, one of the golden warheads rose out of the pit like a rapidly growing spike-weed. Coolant steam curled around the golden shaft; the fuel tanks had been fully charged.

  Zod could not tear his eyes from the beautiful weapon. “Set the coordinates for Argo City.”

  “Set coordinates for Argo City!” Koll-Em snapped.

  No-Ton, still down in the control room, responded that the weapon was ready. His voice held a faint quaver.

  Zod spotted a shaken-looking Jor-El standing alone in the crowd, his pale hair in disarray. Good. “Prepare to launch.” His heart pounded with anticipation, and he watched with fire in his eyes and in his mind. He felt very alive.

  But before the javelin could launch in a plume of exhaust and flames, the circular door of a second weapons pit split open. Another nova javelin rose slowly into the open air.

  The already nervous crowd began to mutter. Aethyr looked at Zod in alarm. “You can’t launch two of them. You could crack open the whole planet.”

  “I did not order this,” Zod shouted. “Abort the second launch!”

  Instead of retracting, though, the second nova javelin continued to rise until the lift platform also locked into place. Then, unexpectedly, a third pit opened.

  And a fourth.

  Zod’s soldiers shouted in dismay. Even they could grasp the terrifying consequences of launching so many doomsday weapons. Every person on Krypton had seen the smashed moon in the night sky.

  “Stop this! Abort the launch!”

  Another coverplate opened, and another, until finally all fifteen nova javelins stood starkly in the open air like a hideous forest of death. The golden rockets pivoted slightly on their launch rods, acquiring their target.

  This could not be happening. Zod knew only one person who could help. He bellowed into the crowd. “Jor-El, I command you to stop this!”

  But the scientist simply spread his hands. “The controls were old and unreliable, the systems deteriorated. You’ve brought about your own downfall, General Zod. And now you’ve doomed the rest of us with you.”

  “No!” With an ineffectual shout, Zod ran toward the access doorway that led down into the control tunnels, knocking aside the terrified people who stood in his way.

  Before he could get inside, all fifteen nova javelins launched.

  CHAPTER 76

  Blinding shafts of yellow light and fire spat from exhaust cones. With an earsplitting rumble and a high-pitched whine, the doomsday weapons hurtled into Krypton’s sky.

  “Stop!” Zod yelled at the air, as if the ancient devices might obey his order.

  The trails of fire and smoke
climbed upward, scribing Krypton’s epitaph upon the heavens. The General paused and stood white-faced, unable to tear his eyes away. Nam-Ek stared in fascination at the exhaust plumes and vapor trails, apparently thinking they were beautiful. Aethyr fell to her knees. The streaking missiles raced high across the sky. The end was surely coming.

  Zod pushed his way down the stairs and raced along the sterile, white-walled halls to the control chamber. There, No-Ton and four technicians stood in pasty-faced helplessness before the banks of guidance systems. Zod stormed in and hammered at the controls, trying to realign the target vectors. The systems did not respond.

  He grabbed No-Ton by the front of his laboratory tunic. “We’ve got to stop this! Destroy the weapons. They must have a self-destruct mechanism.”

  No-Ton lashed out at Zod, no longer intimidated by the man. “After the incident at the Rao-beam installation, you specifically ordered us to deactivate any systems that could be used to sabotage the nova javelins. You instructed us to disconnect the self-destruct capability because you were afraid someone might stop you from launching them.”

  Zod cursed. “Then change their course! Get rid of them somehow. They will blow up all of Krypton.”

  “General, there is nothing we can do!” Frantic technicians yanked out crystal after crystal from control decks, but it did no good.

  Filmscreens transmitted high-resolution images from the telescopes and monitoring dishes in Jor-El’s distant early-warning array. The nova javelins continued to burn, thrusting higher.

  “They should reach the zenith soon and begin their plunge to Argo City,” the scientist said, his voice oddly brittle. “After that, the whole planet will break apart. The chain reaction could take minutes, it could take a month. This is uncharted scientific territory for me.” Zod didn’t like the flare of defiance in No-Ton’s eyes. The scientist sniffed. “If there’s anything you wish to say to your followers, now may be your last chance to do it.”