Man of Steel: The Official Movie Novelization

CHAPTER THIRTY

The F-35s bore down on the Black Zero, which hovered above Metropolis atop a pulsating energy beam. Captain Douglas Pavlinko, the pilot of the lead fighter, radioed command. Despite the urgency of the situation, he still required authorization before firing his missiles in a civilian area.

“NORTHCOM, Lightning-1 is tally the target. Requesting permission to unleash the hounds.”

“NORTHCOM, Lightning-1,” General Swanwick replied. “You are cleared to engage. Call complete and send battle damage assessment when able.”

“Lightning-1 copies.”

There it was, Pavlinko thought. A city boy who had grown up in the outer boroughs, the pilot was anxious to defend his hometown from the alien invader who was pounding Metropolis into dust. He led the way.

Sidewinder missiles rocketed at the Black Zero. Each of the heat-seeking projectiles carried a high-explosive warhead with enough punch to bring down an enemy plane or chopper. Pavlinko hoped they would put a dent in the Kryptonian mothership.

But he never got a chance to find out. As the missiles approached the rings of debris orbiting the Black Zero, a gravitational field captured them, dragging them down to the flattened city blocks below. The pilot cursed inwardly as the Sidewinders detonated far beneath their intended target.

Smoking fragments were sucked up into the Black Zero’s dusty halo.

A second salvo of missile fire met a similar fate.

“Inertial guidance and ATR on our missiles is going haywire,” the pilot reported. “We’re losing them! They’re dropping like stones!”

Damn it, Perry thought.

Transfixed by the battle unfolding outside of the Planet’s windows, he had dared to hope that the F-35s and their missiles would bring the Kryptonian ship down before its destructive beam reached the Daily Planet building, but as he watched the Sidewinders going haywire, spinning off in errant trajectories instead of striking their target, he realized that time was running out.

The deflected missiles spent themselves uselessly across the city, adding to the devastation rather than halting it. Fiery explosions blossomed in the streets, outside the perimeter of the alien ship. Perry’s heart sank. If the US Armed Forces couldn’t stop Zod, who could?

Only a few blocks away, a shimmering curtain of energy—resembling a slow-motion tsunami—was grinding its way outward. Stretching higher than the tallest skyscraper, the wall of destruction chewed up everything in its path. Before his eyes, the Hotel Metropolis was pancaked to its foundations, followed by several other venerable office and apartment buildings. Perry hoped to God that the buildings’ residents had escaped the doomed edifices in time.

“We need to get out of here now.”

He raised his voice to be heard over the nervous chatter in the bullpen, not to mention the sounds of collapsing buildings and runaway missiles outside.

“Everyone, we need to head for the street! Take the stairs. Don’t take the elevators.” Hanging back to make sure no one was left behind, he hustled Steve and Jenny and the rest of the staff toward the stairwell. Conspicuously missing was Lois Lane, who had been AWOL since going on the run from the Feds. Perry hadn’t heard from her since, but almost hoped that she was securely tucked away in a detention cell somewhere, far away from Metropolis.

She’d be safer there, assuming that anyone on Earth was actually safe at the moment. And that was looking more and more dubious with each passing second.

Maybe he should have run that crazy story of hers, after all.

Dawn was just a glimmer on the horizon as the World Engine hammered the island with its gravity beam. An expanding haze of alien particulates blackened the sky, changing the very composition of the atmosphere at an accelerating rate. Already the air around the island was more Kryptonian than Earthly.

Superman took a deep breath before diving into the toxic cloud.

Another sonic boom heralded his arrival. Hoping to take out the World Engine quickly, before it could irreparably cripple the planet, he streaked down from the sky with his fists out in front of him. He targeted the venting head of the huge machine, aiming to plough right through the Engine, decapitating it once and for all.

Then he could get back to Metropolis and deal with Zod directly.

One solid blow, he thought, and Earth is safe.

But the Engine detected the threat before he made impact. Reacting in self defense, it unfurled tendrils of magnetized geological fragments that lashed out at him, entwining themselves around him like the stinging tentacles of a Portuguese man-o’-war.

Superman’s face contorted with pain as the molten tendrils squeezed his ribs. They were hundreds of time more powerful than the plasma whips that had attacked him when he first discovered the frozen scout ship.

Too bad he couldn’t turn these off with a command key!

The C-17 cargo plane trailed behind the jet fighters. It made a wide loop around the Black Zero, with the goal of letting the F-35s soften up the Kryptonians first.

Up in the cockpit, Lois shared a worried look with Colonel Hardy as the diverted missiles dropped onto Metropolis, and not Zod’s ship. The sight of the Sidewinders, blowing up her city in advance of the gravity column, made her sick to her stomach. Metropolis was taking a beating, with worse to come.

Giving up on the missiles, the fighters closed in on the Black Zero and opened fire with their 25mm GAU rotary cannons. They fought the effects of the gravity vortex every inch of the way. A hail of armor-piercing rounds targeted the Kryptonian ship, only be deflected by the same forces that had sent the Sidewinders astray.

Thousands of rounds of ammo went flying away from the Black Zero, much of it captured by the halo of debris spinning around the vessel. Lois imagined Faora and Car-Vex and the other Kryptonians sneering at the humans’ pitiful efforts.

“Lightning-1 is Winchester!” the lead fighter pilot reported. A former army brat, Lois knew that “Winchester” was military slang for out of ammo. “Our guns are ineffective.”

Worse yet, the F-35s themselves were being caught in the gravity field. Unable to get clear of the Black Zero, the fighters began to spiral out of control. An edge of panic rattled the pilot’s voice.

“My whole bird’s being pulled off course!” His plane plummeted toward the city. “Mayday! Mayday! Lightning-1 has lost control! Bailing out! Bulls-eye three-six-zero, for twenty!”

Lois held her breath as the pilot ejected from the fighter only seconds before it crashed into downtown Metropolis. She couldn’t see what happened to him, but had a feeling that he, too, had been caught in the inescapable destructive forces. She didn’t like to think of what they did to an unprotected human body.

A second jet slammed into the city streets a few blocks away. That pilot didn’t even make it out in time.

A fireball mushroomed up from the wreckage.

So much for our escort, Lois thought.

But the C-17 did not turn back. Instead the cargo plane edged closer to the Black Zero and the voracious gravity field. The cockpit vibrated violently, as though they were flying into a hurricane. Hardy gripped the controls, fighting to keep the plane on course. Lois held on tightly to the armrests of her jump seat. The plane’s entire airframe was shaking.

“Gravity field is pulling down our planes!” Hardy notified NORTHCOM. “If we don’t fall back, we’re going to get sucked in with them. Request permission to hold south-east of enemy’s position.”

“Roger that, Guardian,” Swanwick replied. “Widen your perimeter. Alpha hold-point until further notice!”

The violent shaking subsided as the plane pulled away from the Black Zero and began circling the Kryptonian ship at a safer distance. Lois appreciated not crashing, but wondered how on Earth they were going to complete their mission.

“If Superman doesn’t bring down that ‘World Engine,’” Hardy said, spelling it out for her, “we’ll never get close enough to their ship to deliver the package.”

Lois put her faith in Superman.

“If he said he can do it,” she said, “he’ll do it.”

“And what happens then?” Hardy asked. “Wasn’t he exposed to the same energies as the rest of them on their way to Earth? We open up this Phantom Zone thing… won’t he be pulled back with them?”

That ghastly possibility had already crossed her mind.

“I don’t know, Colonel. But it wouldn’t be the first time he’s risked his life for us.”