The Last Days of Krypton - Kevin J. Anderson [141]
“This is not why I helped you. It goes against all that I believe—”
Aethyr interrupted them smoothly. “The beam is ready, Zod. You may give the order.”
“It is given.”
“Stop!” Jor-El tried to push his way to the control shack, but two Sapphire Guards grabbed his arms. He thrashed against them. Even though he had sent out his most urgent warnings, even though he had begged Shor-Em to evacuate his people and Lara had continued to make calls, he knew for certain that there hadn’t been enough time. Many would have gotten away, believing the call of Krypton’s greatest scientist, but others would have tarried. He doubted Shor-Em had taken him seriously at all. “Commissioner, if you do this you are not the savior of Krypton, but its destroyer!”
Zod gestured across the mountains and into the eastern marshes. “Fire!”
Appalled, Jor-El yanked one arm free from the guards, struggled to drag himself toward the control shack, but the familiar whining hum sang up through the energy conduits of the derrick. At the last instant, he averted his eyes from the dazzling heat and from the horror.
The Rao-beam projectors spewed forth a gout of pure red light. Zod watched with clear contentment on his face as the scarlet lance shot toward the lowlands on the horizon. The beam, powerful enough to cut through a planet’s crust, slammed into Borga City.
From their vantage point in the distant mountains, Jor-El saw only a flash, but he knew exactly what was happening. The incinerating beam engulfed the huge balloons that supported the city’s interlocked platforms. The explosion would be instantaneous and terrific, igniting the giant cavities of volatile marsh gas that bubbled up from below. He hoped, prayed, that most of the people had already fled, racing to safety across the marshes.
But he knew they weren’t all safe. He couldn’t bear to think of the burning bodies falling from balloon platforms, the fiery eruptions raging across the swamp. He knew it signified thousands of deaths at the very least, people whose only crime was to disagree with Zod’s leadership.
Though the devastation was complete in moments, Zod let the beam continue to pound its target, minute after endless minute. Any evacuees who had remained in the area would be watching in horror at the horrific pummeling, the destruction of everything they had known.
When he was finally satisfied, Zod told No-Ton to shut down the apparatus.
Moving ponderously, as if weary beyond description, the other scientist shifted the prisms away from the focal point. The air still thrummed with vibrant energy. Leftover ripples of heat dissipated from the column of ionized air along the beam path.
“We have annihilated one nest of traitors,” Zod said. “Let us hope this ends the nonsense, once and for all.”
CHAPTER 66
While the foolish dissidents in other population centers were shocked and sickened by the obliteration of Borga City, Zod used the opportunity to strengthen his position. Even before his small victorious group paraded back into Kryptonopolis, he had made his preparations.
Aethyr raced ahead to distribute glorious propaganda so that his followers would learn of the event in exactly the way he wished. Towering information screens portrayed the retaliatory strike as reasonable and necessary. Most of the citizens of Kryptonopolis would already accept whatever Zod told them; anyone who expressed concern or seemed overly distressed—particularly if the person had connections to Borga City—was efficiently removed from the crowds and quietly reassigned far from the others.
Zod returned to his capital, bearded chin held high, eyes bright with victory. Nam-Ek strode boldly beside his master, his muscles bunched, his hands clenched into fists the size of large rocks.
No-Ton and the other technicians had also been recalled from the isolated mountain outpost; Zod didn’t want any of them near the Rao-beam generator, at least until the uproar had died down.
Riding among them all, watched carefully by