The Last Days of Krypton - Kevin J. Anderson [186]
A zigzag split appeared across the center of the square, widening until it swallowed both halves of the fallen statue of General Zod. The dictator’s carved stone face slid over the edge and vanished into the depths of the dying planet.
Inside the government palace, the remaining Council members wailed for help. Pillars buckled. Walls slid down into rubble. Tyr-Us finally shouted, though no one was listening, “We were wrong!”
Moments later, the whole imposing building collapsed, burying them in an avalanche.
Outside the city, the giant frameworks of half-completed arkships trembled and thrummed, amplifying the tremors in the ground. No-Ton shook his head in sad dismay. There was no way he could get the work done any faster.
The ships had been constructed with remarkable speed. His work crews had labored with a breathless anxiety, knowing their very lives were at stake. They had believed Jor-El’s dire predictions. Using ready materials and structural components ripped whole from existing buildings, they had raced to erect the frameworks.
Two of the arkships were mostly covered with metal plating, like the scales of a giant reptile, but their interiors were incomplete. The ships had no life-support systems and scant food supplies. The teams had worked independently, chaotically, without an overall plan.
No-Ton wept. Seven hours ago he had withdrawn all the construction teams and ordered them to focus all efforts on completing a single arkship. Just one…
With a powerful seismic shift, one of the frameworks shuddered, looking like the metal skeleton of an enormous prehistoric beast. Letting out a chorus of groans, one of its sides buckled. A girder gave way, pulling in hundreds of huge rectangles of hull plating to collapse in a roar of metallic thunder. Thousands of workers were trapped inside. Teams abandoned their posts, rushing to the rescue, hoping to pull the injured from the wreckage.
A sharper quake knocked over a levitating crane. Another ship collapsed. Even the most secure armored compartments could offer no shelter from an imploding world.
A wide, dark fissure tore the surface of the planet and swallowed the well-meaning rescue crews; more and more dirt and rock collapsed into the depths. Red and yellow sulfurous steam blasted upward from the hot, exposed wound.
With a shrieking cry of distressed metal, the last of the huge arkships collapsed, slumping over next to No-Ton. The arks—the last chance for him and all these people—would never fly.
Jor-El and Lara watched the lone spacecraft dwindle to a speck in the sky until it finally vanished. “Kal-El is safe.”
“At least one of us escaped.” Lara took his hand. “And at least we’re here together.” Though Jor-El could conceptualize the scope of the disaster, the staggering number of deaths, right now his heart held only his wife and his son.
A line of emerald-tinged lava gushed from a newly opened crack in the estate grounds. The plains were on fire from the initial eruptions. Whole mountains were being swallowed up.
Holding each other, he and Lara watched the collapse of the structures around them.
The milky corkscrew tower trembled and swayed. Jor-El was astonished by how much material strain the structure endured before it finally crashed down. Its apex grazed the side of Jor-El’s main laboratory, bringing down another section of the building.
The long walls shattered, ruining the ambitious murals that Lara’s parents had painted. To Jor-El it symbolized how easily Krypton’s history was erased. Would anyone remember them? Out in the entire galaxy, would Krypton simply be forgotten?
Eleven of the twelve obelisk stones collapsed, dropping facedown onto the purple lawn or the neatly manicured hedges. All of Lara’s carefully thought-out artwork now fell into dust and shards. Feeling the ache in his heart, Jor-El realized just how much those works had meant to him.
The last flat stone, the one containing the perceptive portrait of Jor-El with his finely chiseled features, white hair, and far-seeing gaze, toppled over.
As the