The Last Days of Krypton - Kevin J. Anderson [76]
Zod took the controls from Nam-Ek and accelerated the vessel forward again. “If this is an attack, the Council will never know what to do. I can rally the people to me, but only if I am there!” He suddenly saw this as a great and unexpected opportunity. “I can lead them—now!”
Deeply alarmed, the big mute grabbed his master’s sleeve and shook his head, but Zod insisted on rushing toward the city, his city. “I know you want to keep me safe, but I have to try—”
Bright sparkles along the edges of the huge spacecraft’s angled seams flared from orange to white, interrupting Zod’s words. The ship lowered itself until it hovered directly above the central ziggurat of the Council temple, where the throbbing hologram of Rao blazed into the night. The outer metal planes of the alien vessel folded and rearranged themselves like the images in a dimensional kaleidoscope, and the razor-edged flower opened to reveal a tiny core of searingly bright light.
A moment of sickening silence hung in the air. Zod couldn’t even blink. His heartbeat pounded in his ears; the whole Kandor valley seemed to be holding its breath.
A blinding pillar of solidified light dropped down to cover the small image of the red sun, as if using it as an anchor point. From the corners of the alien ship’s folded hull planes, three perfectly straight beams lashed out like deadly whips, extending over the building tops. Separated by equal angles, the beams struck the ground at the perimeter of Kandor, blasting and boring into the ground. The bright lights fanned outward, sweeping around like the blades of a container opener. With the ease of a stylus scraped across a piece of paper, the three equidistant rays gouged a deep furrow all the way around the city, scribing a perfect circle.
Caught in the path of the piercing rays, several unfortunate ground-cars exploded. Outlying structures toppled, severed by the blast. The sounds of vaporizing rock and hissing steam roared like unending thunder. Bridges and roadways collapsed. Numerous hapless homes were simply erased in the path of destruction. A tethering field for Kandor’s private dirigible airships vanished as the wave of disintegration passed by; frantically, two pilots cut loose their airships and attempted to float away, but both were caught in the beam, incinerated in an instant.
A city full of people screaming created an oddly operatic sound that rose into the air, but the alien ship continued its destruction, heedless of their cries. The beams cut a circular moat, encompassing most of Kandor, and then cut even deeper into the crust.
Just as the slash of light passed in front of the passenger platform, Zod veered the flying vehicle aside. He barely avoided slamming into the high-intensity blast. The Commissioner struggled to reassert control over the wobbling vehicle while gale-force thermal currents slapped against him in the open vessel, and molten debris spattered the side of the hull. Nam-Ek turned sideways, intentionally shielding Zod with his burly body; tiny embers sizzled into the big man’s back, making his shirt smolder.
Nam-Ek knocked Zod away from the controls and brought the raft down in a rapid descent, slamming them into the dirt. They skidded to a halt only meters away from the deep, smoking cut in the ground. From the angry turmoil on the mute’s face, Zod wondered whether Nam-Ek would physically drag him away if he persisted in trying to get back into Kandor.
The Commissioner brushed himself off and stared in awe. “By the red heart of Rao!” He could smell the electric ozone in the air, felt a wash of heat sear his face like the exhalation of a blast oven.
The three brilliant beams continued to wreak havoc, sweeping along the circumference again and again, cutting deeper into the crust with each pass. Streets were severed, outbuildings blasted into rubble. Dirt and smoke sprayed upward, accompanied by fountains of sparks and jets of steam from underground conduits.
When the sizzling boundary circle was finally complete and the smoke began to clear from the air, Zod