The Last Days of Krypton

by Kevin J. Anderson

  With a whistling sound, four huge chunks of lava rock that had been ejected in a nearby volcanic blast slammed like bombs into the ground around them. One smashed entirely through the ceiling and skylights of the research building.

  “He’ll be safe, Lara.” They stood bravely together watching the starship’s automated systems lift the craft gently off the ground. “He will be the last son of Krypton.”

  The levitating ship turned on its central axis until it locked onto its optimal trajectory. The crystals on its hull shone in the red sunlight. The craft paused for just an instant, and then it rose up and away from the ugly-looking storms that approached from the east and north. Lara caught her breath and reached upward in a final gesture of farewell.

  With a sudden flash of acceleration, the craft shot away, and Kal-El was gone.

  CHAPTER 88

  To Zor-El, the impending loss of Argo City, of Krypton, made everything seem more beautiful, all details crystalline sharp, each memory vivid with meaning.

  His mother sat on a broad, flower-filled terrace and absorbed the world around her, all too aware of the approaching end. In a way, Charys seemed oddly contented. Zor-El said his goodbyes and left her alone.

  He wanted to walk with Alura through her greenhouses, to hold her one last time and just wait together. Zor-El had always been an impatient man, insisting on action rather than complacency, but now there was nothing left to do. He understood vividly what was happening far beneath his feet. He stood on a ticking bomb and could not find a way to defuse it.

  Another city might have reacted with wild riots, frantic last-moment hedonism, rampant vandalism, but Argo City was brave. The people had accepted the news with remarkable stoicism. He was proud of them.

  Zor-El and Alura had walked along the streets, enjoying the gardens that hung like verdant curtains from the balconies and walls. Unaware of the catastrophe about to occur, the blossoms spread their petals wide to entice flying insects to pollinate them. Every breath tasted sweet. Even with the solar storms, the red sunlight felt warm and nourishing. Zor-El’s dark eyes sparkled with tears.

  Some stubborn fishermen had taken their boats out onto the water, as if this were any other day. Soon, Zor-El would have no choice but to activate the force-field dome, for whatever protection it might offer. It was likely to be a futile gesture, but it was all the protection he had to offer.

  He returned to his tower and watched the readings come in from his distant seismic devices. Deep in the core, the singularity must be on the verge of its sudden, critical expansion. By the time the seismic signals reached his detectors, as soon as the acoustic waves could travel up through the mantle and resonate in the planet’s crust, the fatal shock wave would already be on its way.

  As he watched, the needles jumped, shuddered, and went off the scale. His heart leapt in tandem with the traces. “It’s happened, Alura. Krypton’s core just vanished into the Phantom Zone.” He drew a deep breath. “Our world is about to implode.”

  Even now, huge portions of the interior were rushing to fill the void. The crust itself would crack and crumble, falling inward under its own immense gravity.

  Loud sirens shrieked through the city. People rushed back inside the perimeter that the force-field dome would cover. Gondolas and powered sailing craft plunged through the city’s canals to reach the protected area. Several large fishing boats, either unaware of the alarm or purposely ignoring it, remained where they were.

  Zor-El remembered how peaceful it had been that night out on the water with his wife, spreading their gossamer sails and drifting under the starlight. If the world was going to end, he could understand why those fishermen were content to spend their last moments out on the ocean.

  One final craft raced into the mouth of the largest canal; sailors jumped from their small vessel and ran along the docks and up the stairs on the seawall. Their abandoned craft floated away.

  Zor-El was amazed at how swiftly the knotted black clouds converged overhead. The ground bucked and lurched, and the sea became suddenly stormy, stirred from deep below. Waves crashed into one another, building higher and stampeding toward the coastline. Already a series of enormous waves approached, much larger than the tsunami that had caused so much damage almost a year earlier. Waterspouts, giant pillars of silvery foam, whirled about, careening toward the coastline.

  “I’m activating the dome.”

  From the control bank, he powered the generators, and the crackling shield appeared, sweeping over the boundaries of Argo City like a huge umbrella and slamming into the ground. Now they were completely isolated. This shield had held against General Zod’s weapons, but Zor-El had no way of testing or calculating whether it would be sufficient to save them now. And even if this chunk of land somehow managed to remain intact, how could Argo City possibly survive if all the rest of Krypton were demolished?

  The waterspouts circled like predators searching for anything to devour. An assault of waves obliterated the small gooseneck of land connecting the Argo City peninsula to the mainland, turning them into an island at last.

  Tidal waves raced toward them, as if pursued by some terrible demon. A waterfall appeared in a line across the ocean as the deep crust broke open, leaving an enormous fissure, an empty hole that all the seas of Krypton could not fill. The first line of giant waves stumbled upon the fissure and poured down into the inconceivable depths. As the ocean struck the hot magma, an endless army of cannons seemed to fire shot after shot.

  Another eruption vomited plumes of emerald-green lava, strangely altered minerals that proved to Zor-El that the transformation in Krypton’s unstable core had continued even after he and his brother had released the pressure.

  He already missed Jor-El, and he wished he’d had the chance to see their newborn baby. Shortly before all communication cut off, his brother had told him his desperate plan to send the baby off to an unknown planet. Sadly, Zor-El wished he and Alura had had a son or a daughter of their own, if only for a few years….

  He wished many things, and now it was too late.

  A gargantuan wave crashed over the top of the protective dome, sending up spume and mist all around. Ironically, Zor-El saw a rainbow overhead cast by Rao’s bright light. The chunk of land holding Argo City rose above sea level, broken free as some force from beneath pushed them away.

  The catastrophe continued.

  CHAPTER 89

  Kryptonopolis began to fall. The people in the glorious new capital had witnessed the loss of Kandor, then the rise and fall of the power-hungry Zod. But they could not grasp the magnitude of what was happening to them, to their world.

  Tyr-Us called all members of the reconstituted Council for an emergency session, but the handful who showed up merely sat at the table, stuck with awe and disbelief. No-Ton, Or-Om, and Gal-Eth had gone to pursue their own last-minute plan for survival. Thunder rumbled both from the sky and from the ground beneath their feet.

  As wide cracks opened in the newly paved streets, the remaining Council members began to blame one another for not listening to Jor-El, back when they could have prevented the disaster. The others had heard, and ignored, Jor-El’s distraught pleas before throwing the Phantom Zone into the core shaft. Preoccupied with their own concerns, they had dismissed the warnings. They had not believed something so terrible could happen.

  “Contact Jor-El again!” Gil-Ex wailed. “Give him anything he wants. The Council will support him now, so long as he tells us how to save ourselves.”

  “It is too late,” Korth-Or said. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “It is never too late,” cried Tyr-Us. “We are the people of Krypton.”

  But if even Jor-El could save them, what chance did they have?

  The five rapidly grown crystal spires of Kryptonopolis began to shake. Fissures shot like lightning bolts through the transparent facets. Due to their accelerated growth, which Zod had insisted on, the crystalline towers had been unstable from the outset, filled with impurities and s
tructural weaknesses.

  High turrets broke and fell under their own weight, sending a rain of razor-sharp fragments into the panicked crowds below. Those who could not flee swiftly enough stood transfixed as huge blocks of transparent stone fell down onto them and shattered on the ground with an explosive impact.

  On Lookout Hill outside of Kryptonopolis, the tallest spire, which Zod had insisted on naming the Tower of Yar-El, withstood the wrenching shock waves for several minutes longer than the other structures, but it too broke in half and collapsed in a sparkling blast.

  In the Square of Hope, the coverplates on the now-empty nova javelin pits crumbled and fell inward like trapdoors; panicked Kryptonians dropped screaming into the pits.

  A zigzag split appeared across the center of the square, widening until it swallowed both halves of the fallen statue of General Zod. The dictator’s carved stone face slid over the edge and vanished into the depths of the dying planet.

  Inside the government palace, the remaining Council members wailed for help. Pillars buckled. Walls slid down into rubble. Tyr-Us finally shouted, though no one was listening, “We were wrong!”

  Moments later, the whole imposing building collapsed, burying them in an avalanche.

  Outside the city, the giant frameworks of half-completed arkships trembled and thrummed, amplifying the tremors in the ground. No-Ton shook his head in sad dismay. There was no way he could get the work done any faster.

  The ships had been constructed with remarkable speed. His work crews had labored with a breathless anxiety, knowing their very lives were at stake. They had believed Jor-El’s dire predictions. Using ready materials and structural components ripped whole from existing buildings, they had raced to erect the frameworks.

  Two of the arkships were mostly covered with metal plating, like the scales of a giant reptile, but their interiors were incomplete. The ships had no life-support systems and scant food supplies. The teams had worked independently, chaotically, without an overall plan.

  No-Ton wept. Seven hours ago he had withdrawn all the construction teams and ordered them to focus all efforts on completing a single arkship. Just one…

  With a powerful seismic shift, one of the frameworks shuddered, looking like the metal skeleton of an enormous prehistoric beast. Letting out a chorus of groans, one of its sides buckled. A girder gave way, pulling in hundreds of huge rectangles of hull plating to collapse in a roar of metallic thunder. Thousands of workers were trapped inside. Teams abandoned their posts, rushing to the rescue, hoping to pull the injured from the wreckage.

  A sharper quake knocked over a levitating crane. Another ship collapsed. Even the most secure armored compartments could offer no shelter from an imploding world.

  A wide, dark fissure tore the surface of the planet and swallowed the well-meaning rescue crews; more and more dirt and rock collapsed into the depths. Red and yellow sulfurous steam blasted upward from the hot, exposed wound.

  With a shrieking cry of distressed metal, the last of the huge arkships collapsed, slumping over next to No-Ton. The arks—the last chance for him and all these people—would never fly.

  Jor-El and Lara watched the lone spacecraft dwindle to a speck in the sky until it finally vanished. “Kal-El is safe.”

  “At least one of us escaped.” Lara took his hand. “And at least we’re here together.” Though Jor-El could conceptualize the scope of the disaster, the staggering number of deaths, right now his heart held only his wife and his son.

  A line of emerald-tinged lava gushed from a newly opened crack in the estate grounds. The plains were on fire from the initial eruptions. Whole mountains were being swallowed up.

  Holding each other, he and Lara watched the collapse of the structures around them.

  The milky corkscrew tower trembled and swayed. Jor-El was astonished by how much material strain the structure endured before it finally crashed down. Its apex grazed the side of Jor-El’s main laboratory, bringing down another section of the building.

  The long walls shattered, ruining the ambitious murals that Lara’s parents had painted. To Jor-El it symbolized how easily Krypton’s history was erased. Would anyone remember them? Out in the entire galaxy, would Krypton simply be forgotten?

  Eleven of the twelve obelisk stones collapsed, dropping facedown onto the purple lawn or the neatly manicured hedges. All of Lara’s carefully thought-out artwork now fell into dust and shards. Feeling the ache in his heart, Jor-El realized just how much those works had meant to him.

  The last flat stone, the one containing the perceptive portrait of Jor-El with his finely chiseled features, white hair, and far-seeing gaze, toppled over.

  As the quakes increased in violence, giant sinkholes opened up. The manor house itself slid down into an ever-widening crater, and liquid fire sprayed higher and higher. Hot winds laden with ash and dust tore at them like a hurricane from hell.

  Jor-El and Lara held each other tightly. He caressed her face, her amber hair so beautiful as it danced around her eyes, her cheeks. “How I wish I could have had more time with you.”

  Her tears were gone now as she faced him in their last moments. “The time we had was filled with as much joy as I could have asked for. I have no regrets. I love you.”

  His blue eyes were clear, and even with all of Krypton in uproar around them, he saw only Lara, only her face. “I love you.” She seemed to glow in the red sunlight filtered through the sheen of his tears. He wanted this moment to last forever.

  He leaned forward to kiss her, shutting out even the catastrophe with their love. They closed their eyes, and the world ended around them.

  CHAPTER 90

  The lone crystal-studded ship sailed off into space, escaping Krypton’s atmosphere and leaving the dying planet behind. Inside the small vessel, a single baby, warm and protected in the blankets his parents had given him, blinked his innocent blue eyes.

  The crystals around him contained all the memories and knowledge of Krypton, though Kal-El didn’t know it yet. He had few experiences, but they were sharp and bright in his hungry mind. Through circular observation panels, the boy could watch. Though he did not understand what he saw, the spectacle would be forever burned into his memory.

  With its core now gone, Krypton became a red and brown sphere laced with cracks of fire, like a partially extinguished ember. It began to collapse slowly, even gracefully, drawn together by the invisible hand of gravity, the empty rind of a fruit being crushed inward.

  When all of the infalling mass slammed together at the center, the shock waves set up an equal but opposite reaction. The mortally wounded world began to rebound. Broken shards of continents and the flying remnants of oceans tore apart what remained of the gauzy atmosphere.

  Krypton exploded with a flash of red and a flare of emerald green. Fragments hurtled outward in all directions.

  Even as Kal-El’s ship raced onward, the vessel’s hull resounded with hundreds of impacts. The automated systems compensated, taking evasive action, increasing speed. The remnants of the baby’s dead planet cooled into a handful of strewn glitter in the icy void of space.

  The alien stardrive activated, accelerating beyond lightspeed, rippling space and drawing much of the planet’s debris into a vortex behind it.

  The ship raced away until Rao was no more than a very bright star in the firmament. Safe and alone, the last son of Krypton sailed toward a blue planet orbiting an average yellow star.

  Earth.

  Kal-El’s new home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Destroying a world is not an easy job (although my wife tells me I do have a “high celestial body count” in my novels). Among the many people who helped me with The Last Days of Krypton, I would like to thank in particular Paul Levitz, John Nee, and Steve Korté at DC Comics, all of whom immediately saw the potential in this project as soon as I suggested it. Chris Cerasi at DC and Mauro DiPreta at HarperEntertainment did a terrific job as tag-team editors, using their expertise from both the comi
cs and literary sides to help me polish this book into its final form. My agent, John Silbersack at Trident Media Group, ran interference through the various contracts and licensing challenges. At WordFire, Inc., the team of Diane Jones, Louis Moesta, and Catherine Sidor assisted greatly with the preparation, development, and proofreading of the manuscript, and my wife, Rebecca Moesta, did what she always does…which is far more than I could possibly list here.

  About the Author

  One of today’s most popular sf writers, KEVIN J. ANDERSON is the author of the internationally bestselling and award-winning Dune prequels (coauthored with Brian Herbert) and numerous Star Wars novels, and has carved an indisputable niche for himself with science fiction epics featuring his own highly successful Saga of Seven Suns series. His critically acclaimed work has won or been nominated for numerous major awards. He lives in Colorado.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Credits

  Jacket design by James L. Iacobelli

  Jacket illustration by James Jean

  Copyright

  THE LAST DAYS OF KRYPTON. Copyright © 2007 by kevin J. anderson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.