Man of Steel: The Official Movie Novelization

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Zod piloted the captured scout ship. Despite its age, the venerable craft handled well, and its weapons proved more than sufficient to dispose of the primitive human aircraft that were harassing the Black Zero.

Having eliminated the jet fighters first, he turned his attention to the lumbering aircraft they had been guarding. He eyed the freighter suspiciously, wondering what the human pilots had died to protect. It was hard to imagine that any Terran weapon could pose a significant threat to the Black Zero, but it was best not to take chances— especially now that the gravity field had been disabled.

That had to be Kal-El’s doing, he thought darkly. If only he was in my sights instead.

“Target that aircraft,” he ordered the ship.

“Targeting, sir.”

A tactical overlay appeared upon the viewport as the weapon systems acquired the plane. Whatever the humans hoped to accomplish, they would soon be reduced to atoms.

Along with their future.

From the aft of the cargo bay, Lois saw the Kryptonian scout ship coming in for the kill. Having already watched the alien ship wipe out two of the jet fighters, she held little hope for the defenseless cargo plane.

Unless…

Her prayers were answered as an unmistakable blue-and-red figure came streaking down from the sky. Hope restored Lois’s spirits.

It’s about time, she thought. This looks like a job for Superman.

Superman slammed into the scout ship only seconds before it could fire on the C-17. He breached the hull, invading the bridge even as Zod rose from the pilot’s seat in surprise.

But he didn’t give the genocidal general a moment to recover from the attack. Out for blood, and determined not to let Zod hurt anyone else, he lunged at his father’s murderer, driving him back through a bulkhead and onto the floor. His fingers closed around Zod’s throat as he pinned him to the tiles. After what he had just seen of the damage inflicted on Metropolis, he figured the kid gloves were off.

“It’s over, Zod,” he said grimly. “I’m sending you back where you belong!”

Holding onto his enemy with one hand, he began tearing apart the craft’s lustrous interior panels and neural networks. Part of him regretted trashing his Kryptonian legacy like this, but he couldn’t risk Zod turning the scout ship and its technology against Earth again. Without the Genesis Chamber, Zod couldn’t use the missing Codex to spawn hordes of Kryptonian conquerors.

As he understood it, the exiled fanatics would sooner die off than breed the old-fashioned way.

Caught in Superman’s grasp, Zod fought to halt the destruction.

“You fool!” he ranted. “The Codex is inside you!”

Superman froze, caught off-guard by the revelation.

Is this some sort of trick? he wondered.

“All you need is the Genesis Chamber!” Zod insisted, half-pleading, half-threatening. He railed at Superman, frantic to get through to him. “If you destroy this ship, you destroy Krypton!”

“That’s what I’m banking on!” Superman said.

Heat rays shot from his eyes, incinerating a molded control module that was rooted to the ceiling. The bridge pitched beneath them as the ship went into a tailspin.

Zod’s face went pale as he felt the ship—and the Genesis Chamber—plummeting toward doom. An agonized cry tore itself from his throat.

“NO!!!”

The scout ship whirled past the C-17, barely missing the plane, before crashing into a skyscraper. Lois watched in horror from the back of the cargo hold as the Kryptonian ship ploughed through the building and kept on going, scraping against nearby high-rises and sending avalanches of glass and steel and stone into the streets below.

Peering out the open loading ramp, she saw that the Daily Planet building, with its trademark globe, was still standing, but for how much longer?

She was starting to wonder if there was going to be anything left of Metropolis before Zod and his troops were stopped.

Down on the street, Perry and his colleagues gaped at the aerial combat being waged overhead. They ducked for cover as a spiraling Kryptonian ship, which looked suspiciously like the one Lois had described in her article, took out two blocks of buildings before slamming into the streets far too close for comfort.

Lombard and Jenny both looked to Perry for leadership, but he figured all they could now was hunker down and hope for a miracle.

A lone C-17 had survived the alien ship’s attack. Perry tracked the cargo plane as it angled toward Zod’s mothership for reasons unknown. He offered a silent prayer for whatever brave souls were aboard that plane, taking the fight to the enemy.

Give ’em hell, Perry thought.

Explosions ripped through the bridge and Genesis Chamber, throwing Superman and Zod apart. Dormant creches crumbled to ash. Amniotic fluid boiled over, bursting the reservoir. Ripped umbilici bled into the chamber. Gouts of plasma sprayed from severed conduits.

Thunderous impacts battered the hull as the ship crashed to Earth. Flames roared through the Fortress, engulfing the two men in a fiery hell.

The escape pod arced away from the Black Zero, on an intercept course with the worrisome human aircraft. Inside the pod, Faora waited until she was within range of the plane, counting down the last few yards impatiently.

Almost… almost…

Now!

She tore open the pod’s entry hatch and cast it outside, then climbed out of the interior cavity, gripping the ragged doorframe. A foul Earthly wind blew past her as she leapt from pod toward the human’s aircraft.

Beware, humans, she thought. Your end is upon you.

Dr. Hamilton wedged himself beneath the space capsule, still trying to reach the broken coupling. Lois anxiously observed his progress, torn between the technical difficulties in the cargo hold and the apocalyptic battles outside the plane. The scientist muttered as his outstretched fingers brushed against the dangling fibers.

“Almost got it—”

Faora burst through the roof of the hold, tearing a gap in the C-17’s fuselage. Lois gasped as she recognized Zod’s pitiless lieutenant, whose explosive entrance caused the plane to rock wildly. The flight crew fought to keep them level, but the jolt sent Lois tumbling backward out the aft landing ramp.

Panicked, she snagged the nylon cargo netting and held onto it for dear life, dangling out of the rear of plane, thousands of feet above Metropolis.

She screamed over the roaring wind.

Hamilton moaned beneath the mounted space capsule. A flying metal fragment had sliced into his side, causing him to bleed over the deck. Cold air rushed in through the torn fuselage. Biting down on his lip to keep from crying out, he watched helplessly as the woman surveyed the hold.

Her eyes widened at the sight of the Kryptonian space capsule. She stalked forward to investigate, even as the loadmaster scrambled to keep her from getting her hands on it. He hastily unlocked the cargo rails and elevated the deck beneath the capsule, trying to dump it out the back of the plane.

The starcraft rolled away from Hamilton toward the open ramp, but she caught it with one hand and shoved the nearly eight-ton capsule back up into the hold. It bounced off the rollers, lodging near the front.

Faora nodded, apparently satisfied that the capsule was secure, before spotting Lois hanging out the back of the plane. Her expression darkened, suggesting that there was no love lost between the two women. It seemed as if she still held a grudge over Lois’s escape from the Black Zero.

But Hardy and his men had their own scores to settle. They opened fire on Faora in a determined effort that was more impressive than effective. The Kryptonian female marched unscathed through the hail of gunfire, batting the soldiers aside without a second glance as she made her way toward the cockpit.

She stalked past Hamilton, dismissing the wounded scientist with a scornful glance. He guessed that she intended to seize control of the plane and hijack Superman’s starcraft.

Which meant that he needed to activate the Phantom Drive now, before the capsule fell into the hands of Zod.

Despite his injuries, Hamilton dragged himself across the floor of the cargo bay, over to the capsule. In a lucky break, the craft had shifted in position, exposing more of the severed coupling. His torn flesh hurt like blazes, but he ignored the pain and forced himself to concentrate on the vital task at hand.

He stretched his arm out. Trembling fingers reached for the coupling. Grimacing, he reconnected the fibers.

The effect was immediate. With the key in place, the craft’s dormant engines began booting up. A prismatic distortion field enveloped the capsule as Hamilton sagged against it. He gasped his relief, clutching his wounded side. Blood seeped through his fingers.

He had done his part. The rest was up to the same Kryptonian technology that Zod had deployed against them.

When in doubt, he thought, fight fire with fire.

Even if it means getting burned.

Hardy saw the craft come alive. The fuse had been lit, he realized. Now they just needed to deliver the bomb before Faora destroyed mankind’s last hope of stopping Zod. Abandoning the cargo bay, he raced back up the stairs to the cockpit, only a few steps ahead of the unstoppable Kryptonian invader.

He sealed the hatch behind him, but Faora tore through it as though it was made of tissue paper. She knocked Brubaker out of the copilot’s seat with a backhanded swipe. He smashed into the wall, then slid unconscious onto the floor. His protective flight helmet cracked.

Hardy realized they only had seconds left. He dived for the controls and forced the crippled plane into a power dive—straight at the Black Zero. The ugly Kryptonian prison ship seemed to rush toward the C-17’s windshield. Faora shrieked in rage, unable to prevent the inevitable collision.

Hardy shot her a triumphant grin, knowing he wasn’t going to survive this crash.

“A good death is its own reward,” he said.

The plane’s fatal dive was bad news for Lois. She lost her grip on the cargo netting and went tumbling into the air. For the second time in as many days, she found herself falling to her death, even as she saw the C-17 smash into the bulbous mantle of the Black Zero with catastrophic force.

Explosions rocked the Kryptonian vessel, blowing open its armored plating. Space-time rippled around the injured ship, bleeding unnatural lights and colors into the dusky sky.

A doorway to the Phantom Zone began to open.

Stress fractures spread throughout the Black Zero, beginning at the impact site and branching out from there. Prismatic colors, shining through from the Zone, cast an eldritch glow over the ship’s sprawling interior.

Dark, claustrophobic corridors contracted like shrinking veins. Structural ribs cracked and bled. Catwalks tore away from cellblocks. Viewports splintered, venting atmosphere into the void.

Faora, at ground zero, was the first casualty. She stared aghast as her hand dissolved before her eyes, unraveling at the quantum level. A spectral glow emanated from every cell of her body, lighting her up from the inside out. The lifeless bodies of the human soldiers lay crumpled at her feet as they took their vengeance on her from beyond the grave.

No! she thought furiously. This world was ours!

In a heartbeat, she vanished from the universe, sucked back into the Zone for an eternity.

The Phantom effect raced through the ship, claiming ever more victims. On the bridge, Jax-Ur, Tor-An, Nam-Ek, and Commander Gor exchanged terrified looks as the Zone began to reclaim them. Only Jax-Ur truly understood what was undoing them.

Of course, he reasoned. Kal-El’s original starcraft. They’re using it as a weapon against us. He smiled thinly. How ingenious.

The Black Zero had been designed to make the transition to the Zone in one piece, but only under strictly controlled conditions. The ship was meant to pass through the Projector, not have a Phantom Drive rip open the continuum right in the middle of the ship. Violent dimensional fluxes were already taking it apart before his fading eyes.

Solid bulkheads and supports sublimed away, causing the ship’s myriad chambers and corridors to cave in on themselves. Matter phased into energy, sliding between dimensions. The entire ship was collapsing into a singularity, or so he theorized.

His calculations did not spare him—or any of the others.