by Greg Cox
She was dressed formally, wearing a silken red cloak over an elegant gown—in marked contrast to the humiliating prison garb to which he had been reduced. Zod tried to catch her eye, but she steadfastly refused to look at him.
“Have you any last words?” Lor-Em demanded.
Zod regarded the Council with scorn. He alone would speak the truth, even if these craven figureheads lacked the courage to do so.
“Krypton is dying,” he replied. “And you respond by clinging to protocol?” He scoffed at their farcical pretenses, and confronted them with the unpalatable reality they seemed unwilling to acknowledge. “The Phantom Zone is a death sentence! Who will be left to release us when our ‘conditioning’ is done?”
Lor-Em scowled down from his throne.
“We are discussing your punishment today, Zod. Not your release.”
Zod gave this cowardly evasion all of the derision it deserved.
“You won’t kill us,” he said. “You wouldn’t sully your hands... but you’ll damn us to a black hole for eternity.” He spit upon the floor. “Jor-El was right. You’re a pack of fools. Every last one of you!”
Apparently Lor-Em had heard enough. He signaled the master jailer to carry out the sentence. Cryostasis cells, composed of shimmering force fields, rose from the floor, encasing each of the conspirators in an individual sarcophagus.
Preservative gel began to fill the cells, spurring the condemned rebels to panic. Tor-An pounded uselessly at the translucent walls of his sarcophagus, while Faora screamed in rage. Nam-Ek required a larger cell than the others, but even his mammoth fists were unable to break through the rectangular force field that contained him.
Zod wheeled about to confront Lara while he still had the chance. He hadn’t forgotten her role in banishing the Codex to space, nor the child to which she had obscenely given birth...
“And you!” he snarled. “You believe your son is safe, but—” He took a menacing step toward her, but the energized walls of his cells held him back, even when he shoved against them with all his strength and fury. “—I will find him! I will reclaim what you’ve taken from us.”
She flinched at the vehemence of his words. Her hand went to her chest, which bore the emblem of the House of El.
The gel rose to choke him, stinging his eyes and throat, but he shouted over the screams of his fellow prisoners. He would not be silenced—not by the Council, and not by the accusing eyes of Jor-El’s beautiful partner in crime.
“I WILL FIND HIM, LARA! I WILL FIND HIM!”
The gel rose past the level of his face, filling the cell completely. He clenched his jaws, stubbornly fighting the effects of the gel, but it was a lost cause. It invaded his nose and lungs. An icy numbness spread through his body, while his senses dimmed. Unable to speak any longer, he could only stare at the translucent gel obscuring his vision.
His world went dark.
His last conscious thought was that he would never again set eyes on his beloved Krypton.
* * *
Within seconds, it was over.
Lara watched as the petrifying gel congealed, revealing the rebels, frozen within their cells—as immobile as statues. They were preserved in various states of fear and anger. A look of utter malice contorted Zod’s rigid features. His unmoving eyes glared balefully at his captors.
Lara shuddered. She derived little comfort from the awful spectacle that was unfolding before her. Banishing the renegades would not restore her husband or son to her, nor ease her fears regarding Kal-El’s uncertain future. She could only pray that the Zone would prevent Zod from carrying out his dreadful threats. The rebel leader had already murdered the love of her life.
She didn’t want him in the same universe as her son.
The next stage of the process began. With the prisoners secure in their solid-energy cells, the circular platform on which they stood lifted off from the floor, moving toward the prison barge that hung above the Council. An airlock opened in the underside of the Black Zero’s plated black hull. Craning her head back, Lara glimpsed the gloomy hibernation bay that was waiting for the new prisoners. Empty niches would hold the cryostasis cells, perhaps for all eternity.
Honest executions might have been kinder, Lara thought.
She shivered, and drew her crimson cloak more tightly about her. Had her own crimes been exposed, she could have easily found herself in a cell of her own, facing the same endless purgatory.
There but for the grace of Rao...
The levitating platform approached the open airlock. Robotic loading arms received the frozen prisoners. Zod was the last of the rebels to be loaded aboard the Black Zero. The airlock door shut, sealing the prisoners from view, while the transport platform descended to its original position on the floor of the amphitheater.
It’s almost over, Lara thought. He’s almost gone.
A ceremonial klaxon blared, proclaiming to all of Kandor that the rebels’ banishment was underway. The Black Zero rose vertically into the sky, its lower tentacles still pointing down toward the planet. The fully loaded prison barge ascended into orbit, where the Phantom Zone projector awaited.
The projector had been devised by Jor-El. He had done so back when he was still in the Council’s good graces, and acclaimed as Krypton’s greatest scientist. It was a triangular, shield-shaped jump-gate kept in geosynchronous orbit above Kandor. When dormant, the gate consisted of a single satellite. But as the Black Zero rose toward the it, the device split into three parts, with each point of the triangle heading off in its own direction.
Lines of energy connected the points so that they formed a much larger triangle over a far greater expanse. A distortion field manifested within the triangle. Phase-shifting colors blurred together like the prismatic optics of a soap bubble. Space-time rippled and fractured, forming a gateway to another plane of reality.
The Phantom Zone.
The Black Zero rose into the distortion field, threading the needle between the points of the triangle. The distortion effect washed over the ship. Solid matter particularized before vanishing into the two-dimensional plane of the portal. Within moments the entire ship had vanished, removed from the universe, taking its condemned cargo with it.
The three points of the projector converged once again, closing the gateway as the device powered down. The shield-shaped satellite floated silently in orbit once again.
The klaxon sounded again, signaling the end of the ritual. In theory, every exile was to be released— eventually—after cycles of solitude and subliminal conditioning had curbed their antisocial tendencies. But Lara knew this was unlikely to happen before Krypton perished. Zod had been right about that at least. He and his people had been condemned to the Zone for all time.
Or so Lara prayed.
C H A P T E R S I X
Lara lingered in the Citadel’s armory, where Jor-El’s battle-scarred armor now hung in tribute to his memory. Dents, scratches, and scorch marks testified to his last, heroic efforts on behalf of their departed child. She intended to carry the memory of his sacrifice for as long a time as remained to her. It struck her as cosmically unjust that this tribute—along with the rest of Krypton—would soon be ashes.
It’s not fair, she thought. We should have grown old together.
Her finger traced the crest embossed upon the damaged breastplate. Although scarred, the sinuous glyph was still legible, reminding her of Kal-El’s heritage—and his future beyond the stars.
Hope, she thought. As long as he lives, there is always hope.
She had lost her ability to track her son’s starcraft once its phantom drives had activated. The drives warped both space and time, taking the tiny ship beyond the scope of her instruments. By the time it reached its destination on the other side of the galaxy, millennia would have passed from her perspective.
That ice age she had glimpsed would be ancient history long before Kal-El arrived at his new home. And those primitive savages should have progressed considerably.
> Will they accept you, my son... she wondered. Or will you always be alone?
Another tremor shook the Citadel, reminding her that her own time was short. She turned away from the armory and sought out the upper terrace. She had draped a fur-lined cloak over her shoulders, despite the heat of the evening. Lara found that she was often cold these days, regardless of the temperature. Grief and solitude brought little warmth.
She stepped out onto the terrace, which had also been marked by the battle against Zod and his terrorists. Kelor had started to coordinate the necessary repairs, but Lara had not seen the point. The damage inflicted by the war was nothing compared to what was upon them now.
An apocalyptic vista stretched as far as the eye could see as she gazed out upon the end of her world. Volcanic eruptions, spewing radioactive green magma, tore apart the landscape. Kandor’s distant towers toppled as the capital was flattened by never-ending quakes. A pyroclastic cloud large enough to engulf an entire city surged across the veldt, setting the grasslands ablaze. Panicked wildlife stampeded for their lives, but there was nowhere to run—all of Krypton was ripped asunder by cataclysmic convulsions.
Herds of frantic Rondors tumbled headlong into gaping chasms that cracked open the surface of the planet. Desperate birds took flight, only to burst into flame as blasts of super-heated air ignited their wings. Artificial ponds and reservoirs boiled over, sending scalding plumes of steam high into the dark night sky. Lara watched stoically as the devastation spread toward the Citadel, which was already being rocked to its foundations.
Bioengineered masonry that had withstood the passage of centuries broke away and tumbled down the sides of crumbling granite cliffs. Avalanches spilled havoc and death on the burning natural preserve below. Clouds of ash and smoke blotted out the moons’ light.
“Lady Lara.” Kelor joined her on the terrace. “Shouldn’t you find refuge?”
Lara valued the robot’s concern, but she shook her head sadly
“There is no refuge, Kelor,” she said, then she looked out again. “Jor-El was right. This is the end.” She turned her gaze upward, away from the catastrophe, toward the stars that lay beyond the storm. Her words were a prayer.
“Build a better world than ours, Kal.”
A nuclear volcano, eradicating Kandor in an instant, sent a tidal wave of heat and sound screaming toward the Citadel, which was instantly reduced to atoms by the ferocious blast. No eyes survived to witness the destruction.
Not a single relic endured.
* * *
Krypton itself soon followed. Vast tectonic plates buckled, venting mountainous sheets of glowing ejecta into the upper atmosphere and beyond. Continents crumbled and seas boiled over, as the planet’s contaminated core built to a critical mass. A series of global detonations overcame the tremendous gravity that held the planet together.
And then Krypton blew apart in a final, apocalyptic paroxysm that could be seen from light-years away.
Doomsday had come.
The blast-wave from the planet’s destruction extended out into the surrounding solar system. What remained of the atmosphere spread in all directions, buffeting the Phantom Zone projector and sending it spinning end over end. Krypton’s moons were knocked loose from their orbits, becoming cosmic orphans. Lifeless satellites without a world to call their own.
Sparks flared from the projector. Space-time rippled around it.
* * *
Light-years and millennia of relativistic time away, a forgotten starcraft re-entered the universe.
Following a preprogrammed course, it sped past a large ringed gas giant toward the local system’s inner planets, which were warmed by the radiance of a shining yellow star. Although many times smaller than Rao, the young sun burned much hotter. It was still in the prime of its existence, which would last for another five billion years or so.
The rocketing vessel passed through an asteroid belt, successfully avoiding any collisions with the orbiting space debris. Then it arrived at the third planet from the sun—a medium-sized blue world distinguished by two ice caps, expansive oceans, and several continents, as well as an atmosphere conducive to organic life.
Electromagnetic signals, radiating from the planet’s surface, indicated the presence of a rudimentary degree of technology
The planet’s gravitational pull was significantly lighter than Krypton’s, but proved sufficient to capture the approaching starcraft. Ceramic heat shields boiled away as the ship entered the atmosphere, blazing through the upper reaches like a falling star.
It hurtled above a sizable landmass—at present enveloped in darkness—located in the planet’s northern hemisphere, then descended toward the wide central plains found in the mid-western region of the continent.
Elements of the terrain below registered on the craft’s sensors as it searched for a suitable landing site. Winding rivers of fresh water cut through vast stretches of undulating prairies. Population centers dotted the surface. Primitive radar transmissions bounced off the ship’s protective plating.
The craft slowed as it dropped lower in the night sky. The light of a single moon shone down on fields of cultivated plants. The rush of its passage spun the sails of a modest wooden windmill.
Finally the capsule came in for a landing, bearing an alien gift...
C H A P T E R S E V E N
THIRTY-THREE YEARS LATER
Surging waves washed over the ice-covered rails of the Debbie Sue, a two-hundred-foot fishing boat rolling atop the frigid waters of the Bering Sea, just off the coast of Alaska.
Captain Ivar Heraldson watched from the wheelhouse as the soaked deckhands scrambled atop the slippery deck below, racing the fading daylight as they hauled heavy metal cages, laden with captured crabs, onto the deck. It was October, king crab season, which meant that they only had four or five hours of daylight this far north.
Crabbers wearing wet-weather gear and rubber boots defied biting winds to hook the pots to a sturdy metal crane, which then swung the cages over the deck, where hundreds of pounds of crustaceans were dumped onto the sorting table. Rider crabs clung to the sides of the cages.
Heraldson kept a close eye on the proceedings. Theirs was a dangerous vocation, and a moment’s carelessness—or just cussed back luck—could lead to injury or death. The captain had lost men to drowning and hypothermia, and had seen skulls fractured by swinging hooks or cages. Manipulating several hundred pounds of cage and crabs was difficult enough. Throw in choppy seas, heavy winds, lack of sleep, and an icy deck littered with ropes, coils, buoys, and other hazards, and you had a recipe for disaster.
It was estimated that at least one man a week was killed every season. Heraldson sometimes marveled that the number wasn’t higher.
At the moment, however, everything seemed to going smoothly, despite the massive swells that were tossing the Debbie Sue about. Most of his crew consisted of veterans who knew the ropes well enough.
Then his wary eyes sought out the sole exception.
A greenhorn kid who had joined the crew in Dutch Harbor stood off to one side, coiling the buoy lines while the more experienced crewmen hauled in the pots. The hood of his insulated rain slicker partially obscured his face, but Heraldson glimpsed a rugged young face hidden behind a scruffy black beard. The youngster’s thoughtful blue eyes took in the hectic activity on deck. As a greenhorn, he was entitled to a smaller share of the profits, yet so far he had handled the long hours, backbreaking work, hellish conditions, and merciless hazing without complaint.
Which was more than could be said of plenty of first-time crabbers who found the job more than they could handle. Heraldson had been impressed by the young man’s strength and endurance. The kid didn’t even seem to mind the cold.
A wrenching noise yanked the captain’s attention over to the crane, which was swinging another pot over the rail. The jarring din came from the hydraulic winch, where a tangled rope had caught. Smoke rose from the straining block and, with a sound like a cannon going off,
the line snapped abruptly, sending more than a thousand pounds of cage and crab plummeting toward the oblivious greenhorn. Directly below, the young man was staring off into space, as though his thoughts were miles away. He was only a heartbeat away from being flattened.
At the last possible moment the boat’s deckboss—a burly fisherman named Byrne—shoved the greenhorn out the way. The loose pot crashed onto the deck. Frantic crabs scrambled inside the cage, climbing over each other as they sought a way out. Heraldson let out a sigh of relief. For a moment there, he’d thought the greenhorn was a goner.
“Watch it, dumbass!” Byrne barked. “Keep your eyes open or you’re gonna get squashed!”
The greenhorn accepted the rebuke. His deep voice held a hint of the Midwest.
“Sorry.”
“Where the hell’d they find you anyway?” Byrne stormed off, shaking his head. The crew went back to work, scrambling to salvage the haul from the fallen cage. Crab season was getting shorter ever year, and they couldn’t take time off just because a rookie almost got killed. Even the greenhorn returned to coiling the lines, seemingly unshaken by his near brush with death.
Didn’t he realize how close a call that had been?
The captain contemplated the young man, who radiated a quiet confidence that belied his age and inexperience. Not for the first time, he wondered what had possessed him to sign on a green young kid who never talked about his past. Byrne was right for questioning why the kid was on the boat in the first place.
Where had he come from anyway?
MAY, 1981
“Martha Kent?”
The nurse escorted Martha and her husband into the examination room. It was a busy day at the Smallville pediatrics clinic, and the waiting room was packed. An anxious-looking brunette in her late twenties, Martha cradled her adopted son in her arms. The baby looked like any other infant. He bawled noisily
