Man of Steel: The Official Movie Novelization (7 page)

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.

L
ara 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...

S
urging 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.