Justice League_In Blackest Night

by Michael Jan Friedman

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  It was my great pleasure to write this book because it features my favorite hero from childhood. I would never have gotten the opportunity were it not for the efforts of Sheldon Mayer, Bill Finger, and Mart Nodell, who breathed life into the first Green Lantern; Julie Schwartz, John Broome, and the great Gil Kane, who shepherded the Emerald Gladiator into the sixties; Alfred Bester, who came up with Green Lantern’s oath; the most excellent Denny O’Neil, who gave Green Lantern breadth and depth in the seventies; Neal Adams, who was the first to draw John Stewart; Dave Van Domelen and Inge Heyer, my science gurus; Justice League Producer Rich Fogel, who contributed this book’s gem of an outline; Bruce Timm and his team at Warner Bros. Animation, whose graphics make my son’s jaw drop; and the inestimable Charlie Kochman, who looked remarkably like Abin Sur as he sat in his spaceship and entrusted me with this assignment.

  Dave Van Domelen had always loved the stars.

  His childhood buddies had wanted to become firemen and baseball players, deep-sea divers and race car drivers. But Van Domelen had never been interested in any of those professions. For as long as he could remember, he had wanted to be an astronomer.

  And he did whatever he had to in order to become one. He studied astronomy in high school, college, and graduate school. He spent his summers visiting observatory after observatory. He taught. He helped conduct research.

  Finally, Van Domelen got a job at the kind of place he had always dreamed about. He was named assistant director of the prestigious Kane-Broome Institute for Space Studies in Coast City, California.

  Kane-Broome studied the galaxy with the help of an immense telescope that had been placed in orbit around the Earth. The telescope, known as Solarac, was able to do more than pick up light from other stars. Because it was located outside Earth’s atmosphere, Solarac was also able to detect gamma radiation and tiny particles that were constantly being ejected from Earth’s sun.

  The information gathered by Solarac was fed back to the Kane-Broome Institute, where it was stored and analyzed by a powerful computer. There Van Domelen and his fellow scientists had a chance to go over it, learning more about our sun, our solar system, and the rest of the universe in the process.

  But Van Domelen wasn’t content just to pore over computer data. Every night he took a turn at the bank of television monitors hooked up to the institute’s computer, watching and hoping that something interesting would happen while he was there.

  He did that for more than six months. But in all that time, nothing of interest took place. Nothing of even mild interest.

  All Van Domelen ever saw on the monitors was normal solar activity. Unusual events like flares—sudden leaps and spurts of fiery solar gases—always seemed to take place when somebody else was manning the monitors.

  And yet there he was again on a cool night in mid-October, sitting in front of the same gray mainframe computer and the same silent monitors, drinking the same black coffee out of the same kind of Styrofoam cup. But after more than six months of watching and hoping, Van Domelen was beginning to wonder if he was wasting his time.

  When am I finally going to see something? he asked himself. He leaned closer to the biggest of the screens, the one that displayed a picture of the entire sun. When am I going to witness something special?

  The scientist had barely completed the thought when he got his wish. Right before his eyes, the sun’s surface seemed to erupt with a flare that was bigger, brighter, and more powerful than anything he could ever have imagined. It climbed so far into space, it looked like a long, slender finger on a giant, golden hand.

  And the flare didn’t subside right away, either. It kept erupting for what must have been a full minute. Then, finally, it began to diminish in size and intensity. Eventually, it became just another part of the sun’s aura again.

  Feeling a thrill of excitement, the scientist checked some of the smaller monitors to find out the flare’s measurements. As it turned out, it was every bit as impressive as it had looked. Kane-Broome had been in operation for six and a half years and nothing ever recorded there had even come close to this.

  How lucky can I get? Van Domelen asked himself.

  All his patience had been worth it. He couldn’t wait to tell Dr. Giella, the director of the institute. He was sure his boss would be excited beyond words.

  But as he reached for the telephone, Van Domelen’s elbow hit his coffee cup and knocked it over. Hot, dark brown liquid spread across the table in front of him, threatening to damage its collection of keyboards and point-and-click mice.

  “Whoa!” he cried, frantically snatching up the equipment before it could get wet.

  He put it all on a shelf next to the table. Then he went to get some paper towels from the supply room down the hall. It took a few minutes for him to reach the supply room, a few more to find the paper towels, and a few more still to return to the control center.

  By then, the unexpected had turned into the unbelievable.

  The computer’s gray exterior was crackling with a web of blue energy that looked as if it were trying to eat the mainframe alive. The same thing was happening to the bank of monitors. Black plumes of smoke were rising here and there, and the room was filled with the acrid scent of superheated metal.

  “No!” Van Domelen roared, dropping his roll of paper towels.

  What had happened while he was gone? Surely a spilled cup of coffee hadn’t caused all this?

  Searching for a clue, his eyes were drawn to the monitor screens—the big one in particular. It wasn’t showing him a picture of the sun anymore. It was scrolling a series of bright red codes that looked like the commands found in a computer program.

  Van Domelen understood enough of it to know what the commands meant. It was a repair sequence.

  Solarac had been designed with the ability to take any part that might have gotten damaged and reconstruct it so it would work again. That was what it was doing now.

  But what could have caused so much damage? Solarac had been working fine until a few moments ago.

  Van Domelen studied the information on another monitor until he got an answer to his question. Apparently, the telescope had been hit with a burst of radiation—and not the kind that normally came out of the sun. This was a kind of radiation the computer couldn’t seem to identify.

  The flare, the scientist thought. Was it possible that it had been more than just big and impressive-looking? Had it released a wave of mysterious energy powerful enough to damage Solarac?

  Van Domelen squinted as he watched the electric-blue web sizzle across the face of the computer. Whatever had hit the telescope, it hadn’t stopped there. It had detected Solarac’s data stream and sent an energy charge all the way back to Kane-Broome.

  The scientist had never heard of anything like that before. But then, he had never seen a solar flare of such huge proportions either.

  By then, Solarac had gone a long way toward rebuilding itself. But if the codes Van Domelen was reading were correct, it wasn’t just rebuilding a little. It was rebuilding everything.

  Solarac wasn’t even a telescope anymore, he realized. A chill went up his spine. It was becoming some other kind of dev
ice entirely.

  Then the scientist realized something else. Solarac’s position in space was changing. It wasn’t staying in orbit the way it was supposed to. It was coming back to Earth—and at a frightening speed.

  A machine as powerful and complex as Solarac with a new body and a new mission? Van Domelen couldn’t imagine what it would look like when it got there. He couldn’t even begin to guess what kind of behavior it might exhibit.

  But he found himself shivering at the thought of it.

  John Stewart knew he was having trouble with his memory again when he saw the collection of pale, orange fruit sitting in its crude wooden box.

  He stopped in front of the fruit stand and stared at the fruit for a while. Then, as cars and trucks and people streamed past him, each making a particular kind of noise, he took a piece out of the box.

  He held it up to the sunlight. He turned it over in his hand. He even tried smelling it, which wasn’t an easy task with all the other interesting smells in his old neighborhood competing for his attention.

  But even after John had done all that, he shook his head. He was sure he had once known the name of this fruit. But for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was.

  It didn’t alarm him that his memory had some gaps in it. After all, he had patrolled space for years as a Green Lantern, fighting threats to the peaceful inhabitants of world after far-flung world. Only recently had he decided to return to Earth, the place of his birth.

  In the time John had spent among the stars, he had become familiar with a hundred or more different species. He could say “Get back, I’ll protect you!” in the languages of six dozen planets. He had filed away at least a thousand alien names, some of which he could barely wrap his mouth around.

  But he had forgotten a few of the words he had used on Earth—simple words that he used to say without even thinking. And one of them was the name of a pale, orange fruit with a sweet smell and a soft, yielding kind of flesh.

  “Something wrong?” asked the plump little woman who ran the fruit stand.

  The Green Lantern shook his head. “Nothing.”

  He had always been the independent type. He felt uncomfortable asking for help from others.

  “Yes, there is,” the woman told him.

  He looked at her. “There is?”

  “Yes indeed.” She took his left hand in both of hers. “There’s no wedding ring on this finger. I’d say there’s something wrong when a big, handsome man like yourself doesn’t have a wife.”

  John frowned. “I’ve . . . been away on business a lot. Haven’t had much time for a social life.”

  It was true. Green Lanterns dedicated themselves to their work. There was no room for anything else in their lives. It was a lonely existence at times, but some one had to do it.

  “Well, then,” said the woman, “you should make time. If I were you, I’d—”

  John didn’t hear the rest of her advice because an alarm had gone off in his ear—an alarm none of the neighborhood people around him could hear.

  “John,” said a deep, haunting voice, “this is—”

  “I know who it is,” John interrupted.

  His name was J’onn J’onzz, and he was calling from a place in orbit around the Earth—a Watchtower set up by the Justice League. John and J’onn were both charter members of the group. J’onn lived in the Watchtower because he was the last surviving member of his Martian species.

  To some people, J’onn might have seemed strange and maybe even frightening, with his green skin and his deep-set red eyes. But not to a Green Lantern. John had seen a lot stranger and a lot more frightening aliens in his travels.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked the Martian Manhunter.

  “You’ve heard of Solarac?”

  “Of course,” John replied. He and his fellow Justice Leaguers could see it sometimes from their Watchtower, its lenses glinting in the unfiltered sunlight.

  “Of course what?” asked the fruit stand lady.

  John ignored her. “What about it?” he asked J’onn.

  “Something has happened to it. The device has somehow reconfigured itself and is attacking Coast City.”

  Attacking Coast City? A telescope? John thought he had heard it all, but that was a new one on him.

  “How could that happen?” he asked.

  “From what I can gather, Solarac is absorbing energy. Coast City has that in great abundance.”

  It was as good an explanation as any.

  “Superman is out in space,” the Martian continued, “but I’m alerting the rest of the League.”

  “I’m on it,” John said. “See you in Coast City.”

  By then, the fruit stand lady was staring at him good and hard. “Coast City?” she echoed. “Why would you want to see me there?”

  John didn’t have time to explain. He just willed his ring—the one on the middle finger of his right hand—to turn his street clothes back into his Green Lantern uniform.

  But before he left the stand, he had to ask a question. “That fruit,” he said, pointing to the one that had baffled him, “what’s it called?”

  The fruit stand lady was staring at him with eyes as wide as Frisbees. No doubt she had never seen a super hero up close before. “A mango,” she muttered. “It’s called a mango.”

  “Mango,” John repeated. He made a sound of disgust. How could he have forgotten something so simple?

  With a burst of willpower, he rose into the air and rocketed off in the direction of Coast City.

  John was more than a mile out of town when he remembered—he hadn’t charged his ring in some time. The ring was the source of his power. Under his guidance, it could project beams and barriers of seething green energy. The last thing he wanted to do was run out of that energy during a brawl with a powerful enemy.

  He looped back to the neighborhood, shot through a narrow space between two buildings, and entered the window he had left open in his apartment. It was a simple place, not much furniture or anything. But then, he had gotten used to traveling light during his days of patrolling space with the Green Lantern Corps.

  Besides, there was really only one piece of furniture that mattered to John—and at the moment, it was invisible. Moving his hand over what appeared to be an empty table, he found it with his fingertips.

  The thing was smooth like metal and cold to the touch, with both flat and rounded surfaces. When he pressed his ring against it, the contact made it appear before his eyes.

  It was a lantern, glowing with an emerald light that bathed the entire room in its splendor. A green lantern.

  John knew he didn’t have to say anything while he was charging his ring. Just pressing it against the lantern would do the trick. But he always said something anyway.

  “In brightest day, in darkest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might, beware my power . . . Green Lantern’s light.”

  It was the motto of the Green Lantern Corps, a reminder to every being who had been given a ring by the mysterious Guardians of the Universe that it was his or her duty to stand up to evil in all its forms. And not just sometimes . . . all the time.

  That was the most difficult part of being a Green Lantern—the need to be on guard twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He could never just relax the way other people did. He always had to be ready to fly off at a moment’s notice.

  Sometimes John wondered what it would be like to have a family like other guys his age. He would picture himself barbecuing in the backyard, watching his kids play ball while his wife hugged him and told him what a terrific cook he was.

  Then he would get wind of someone in need of help and his daydream bubble would pop, and he would find himself streaking through the sky to stop some monster from destroying some city.

  Just as he was about to do now.

  John frowned. Family barbecues were for other people. He was a Green Lantern. With that thought in mind, he took off to meet his teammates in Coast
City.

  On the planet Aoran, the woman called Maleen gazed at the huge, dark form of the machine in front of her. It looked like a giant seashell made of some strange metal, its gentle but complicated curves leading to a dark, shadowy opening in its center.

  “Extraordinary,” she said, her voice echoing like a chorus of ghosts in the ancient underground chamber.

  “Yes, it is,” Jerred agreed. He draped his arm around Maleen’s shoulders. “In fact, it is perhaps the most extraordinary device our ancestors ever created.”

  Jerred wasn’t just Maleen’s uncle. He was also one of the six elders who sat on the exalted High Council of Escraya.

  All six of them were present at that moment. Maleen glanced at the elders, impressed by how calm they looked—even though their stomachs had to be churning with nervousness.

  Most of the time, the Council ruled on practical matters—who owed what to whom, and so on. But these days, they were forced to do a great deal more than that. They were forced to take desperate measures in the name of their nation’s uncertain future.

  That’s why they had gathered in this room beneath the capital city of Escrayana, a room that hadn’t been opened in hundreds of years. And it was with good reason that it hadn’t been opened. The machines made by Maleen’s ancestors were too powerful to be tampered with.

  It might have been different if any of her people still understood how the devices worked. But not even the wisest of them, the members of the Council, had any knowledge of that.

  It was only because of the careful records the Escrayans had kept that they still knew two important things about the machines—what they could do and how to operate them. For the time being, that was all the information they needed.

  Abruptly, the seashell-shaped machine came alive. A ruby red light chased the shadows from the open space in its center.

  “Hard to believe,” said Maleen, “that this was built more than a thousand years ago.”

  Jerred stroked his white wisp of a beard. “And it still functions as well as the day it was first activated—a tribute to the expertise of those who came before us.”