The Death and Life of Superman (67 page)

John Henry had far fewer good friends in Metropolis, but the thought that his city might suddenly be destroyed enraged him no less. He drove his hammer into the screen, shattering it into hundreds of sparking bits.

The smashing of the screen brought both men down to Earth. Superman grimly turned to the door. “Well, there’s nothing we can do for Superboy now; it’s all up to him. I just hope that he has the power to stop that thing. Right now, our job is to make sure this place never launches another attack.”

They stepped back out onto the catwalk. With the big missile gone, the silo seemed unending. John Henry peered down into its depths. “Looks like this drops all the way to hell. You think we should go farther down?”

“I do.” Superman looked around. “There’s no sense in waiting around here. See you at the bottom.” And then, to John Henry’s amazement, he stepped off the edge of the catwalk.

Steel followed after Superman and dove down the silo, firing his rockets to close the distance between himself and the falling man. Superman looked up at him almost stoically as he plunged down the silo. “Come on, Steel, there’s a long, hard road ahead!”

“You’re too much, man!”
He took a helluva risk with this jump. He’s nowhere near as strong as my armor makes me!
“Don’t worry, I’ll catch you.”

“Thanks, but that’s not necessary.”

Then, much to John Henry’s surprise, Superman’s rate of fall inexplicably slowed. Steel pulled up from the dive, his rockets braking his descent and bringing him safely to the ground. He was on his feet and waiting when Superman lightly touched down. “You holding out on me, man? You landed soft as a feather. I thought you couldn’t fly anymore. What gives?”

Superman glanced about, putting a finger to his lips. “Not now. The walls have ears . . . and eyes!”

As if on cue, a super-thick blast door irised open at the base of the silo and a squad of heavily armed alien troopers and combat robots came charging at them, guns blazing.

Steel again took the point, clearing a path with his swinging hammer and returning fire with his power gauntlet.
The kid said that the Cyborg was big on demanding blind obedience, but this is ridiculous! These troops are fighting stupid—crowding in, trying to overwhelm us. They’re just getting in their own way.

To his credit, Superman more than held up his part of the fight. He hadn’t been so physically vulnerable since he was twelve, and his strength was no more than a tenth of what it had been at its peak, but his reflexes remained nothing short of uncanny. With a clear eye and a steady hand, he took aim with his captured weapons and shot the guns right out of the hands of the alien troopers.

One trooper drew a bead on Superman’s head, but the ray blast from his weapon seemed to veer off at the last instant. Superman flinched back from the heat and glare of the near hit, and the alien who fired the shot mysteriously went flying backward, as if he’d been hit by something that wasn’t there.

Steel glanced back over his shoulder at Superman. “Hey, you doing okay?”

“So far! Yourself?” Superman rifle-butted a would-be attacker back, sending him skidding twenty feet away.

“Check.” John Henry swung his hammer wide, clearing a half dozen weapons from as many hands.

“Good!” Superman stared intently at their foes, peering through their armor, picking out the robots from among the living troopers. “These are just foot soldiers. Hit ’em hard, but choose your shots well.” He whipped around and blasted a hole clean through a charging robot; the resulting shrapnel sent troopers diving for cover. “We need to save our strength for the masterminds behind this; they’re the real enemy!” Superman laid down a withering hail of ray-fire that kept one whole line of troopers ducking, while Steel body-slammed another group.

“Hey, man, I believe we’ve got ’em on the run.” It was true; the Engine City forces were falling back, retreating through the blast doors. Superman and Steel followed close behind, keeping them on the run. “Think we’ve finally seen the last of them?” Steel paused, then answered his own question. “No, what am I saying? We couldn’t be that lucky.”

Superman’s brow was suddenly knit with concern. “I hope that Superboy’s been lucky.”

“The kid doesn’t like being called Superboy.”

“Well, whatever you call him, I pray that he comes through. Right now, he may be all that stands between Metropolis and total destruction!”

High above Metropolis, the huge missile came plunging down out of the heavens. Its thrusters had flung it too far and too fast for any army on Earth to shoot down.

Superboy clung plastered to the nose of the missile like a bug on a windshield. He’d torn apart or disabled over half of the explosive modules and ripped into the warhead, but he hadn’t changed the missile’s course a single degree. His wild talent was useless here; the missile was just too big for him to rip open.

He looked down, his eyes tearing from the punishing wind. Below, the city was rushing up toward him; he seemed just seconds from impact with the globe of the
Daily Planet
Building.

The Boy of Steel strained against the giant missile, every muscle tensing. “Turn, you overgrown firecracker! C’mon—turn!”

In frustrated desperation, he hauled off and struck the nose cone, catching it at a right angle to the missile’s ballistic path. Suddenly the missile veered off and shot over the city, heading out to sea.

But Superboy had no time to enjoy his victory. His fist had sunk into the metal of the nose cone from the force of his blow, and he was being pulled along with the missile. The Boy of Steel finally yanked himself loose as the missile spiraled past the outer borough of Hell’s Gate and rose out over the Atlantic.

Superboy was about eight hundred feet above the mouth of Metropolis Harbor when a blinding explosion filled the eastern sky. The shock wave hit him, hurling him down into the Hell’s Gate sanitary landfill.

Long, painful minutes later, the Boy of Steel crawled up out of a deep crater as a LexCorp helicopter hovered overhead. The craft dropped down for a landing, and Lex Luthor himself came running up. “Superboy! What in blazes is going on?!”

“Hey . . . don’ call me S’perboy. I’m S’per
man
!” He rose slowly to his hands and knees. “Where
am
I? An’ why’s it smell so bad?”

“You little punk!” Luthor grabbed the Boy of Steel and hauled him to his feet. “I don’t care what you call yourself! Where is my Supergirl?! Answer me!”

“Huh? S’pergirl? How sh’d I know?”

“She disappeared right around the time that you three Supermen left for the coast, and there’s been no sign of her since! Where is she?!”

Superboy shoved Luthor away from him. “Hey, lower th’ volume, okay? I haven’t seen ’er. But if I did, I’d tell ’er to head f’r Engine City. Engine City—oh, man! Superman an’ the Steelster—I gotta get back an’ help ’em!”

The Boy of Steel took a running leap into the air—only to fall flat on his face, unconscious.

In Engine City’s master control, the Cyborg railed at a row of video screens showing various broadcast reports of Metropolis’s brush with disaster.

“This cannot be—no finer plan was ever devised! How could that puny teenage clone have deflected my missile? How, Mongul? How?!”

The warlord stood rigidly erect. “I am at a loss, Master. Your plan indeed appeared flawless.”

The Cyborg whirled and poked an accusing finger at a closed-circuit surveillance screen that featured a freeze-frame shot of Superman, an image captured just seconds before its camera had gone black. “And now there is a new Superman imposter with which to contend—a ridiculous man in black, like a figure out of the cinema! And he and that armored lout have routed our forces! Routed them! It defies all belief!”

Mongul could hardly contain his contempt. “It does indeed.”
Just as it defies belief that I, who have conquered entire star systems, should be allied with one who is proving so inept.

The Cyborg paced back and forth; so hard did he gnash his metal teeth that sparks actually flew. “Only seconds more, and the bombs would have leveled Metropolis, clearing the way for a second Engine City! It should have worked—it would have, if not for that accursed clone!”

“That
was
unexpected. We both greatly underestimated the boy.”
I’d planned to use him against you, you arrogant fool, but his success against the bomb threatens my own plans as well.

One of the broadcast news transmissions cut suddenly to a candid shot of the Man in Black. “Reports of a fifth Superman—seen here in camcorder footage recorded by a WMET amateur newshound earlier today at O’Hara Regional Airport—have now been confirmed by
Daily Planet
reporter Lois Lane. Ms. Lane, who years ago popularized the name ‘Superman,’ says she’s convinced that this newest arrival is the original hero of Metropolis—miraculously recovered from what appeared to be his death.”

“No!” In one swift movement, the Cyborg deployed his arm cannon and blasted the broadcast monitor apart. “No, he’s dead—dead and gone!” He wheeled about to stare again at the image frozen on the closed-circuit screen. “The real Superman can’t possibly be alive—can he?”

Mongul thought that unlikely. He had, after all, dispatched billions of sentients in his life, and none of them had ever returned from the dead. This did, however, present an opening to exploit the Cyborg’s madness, and the warlord seized it.

“Superman once thought
you
dead. You’ve spoken to me so eloquently of how he callously abandoned you to the vacuum of space. If he
is
truly alive, your revenge can be even sweeter than before.”

“Yes—yes, you are correct, Mongul.” The Cyborg cupped a hand under the rim of his metal jaw. “When I learned of Superman’s death, I thought I had to content myself with conquering the Earth in his guise, destroying his good name. But now, if he truly lives, Superman can discover that the scientist he abandoned has survived, that the intellect of Hank Henshaw lives on! I will show him how I have mastered the art of cybernetic transmorphing and take my final revenge on him while cloaked in his own image. I shall destroy him with my own hands.”

The Cyborg turned and strode out of the chamber, leaving Mongul free at last to shake his head in disgust.
The real Superman was foolishly honorable. I know full well that, whatever occurred between them, it was nothing like what the Cyborg imagines. He’s lost all reason, living in a world of his own pathetic delusions.

And then, Mongul smiled.
Perfect.

Within the Antarctic Fortress, the Eradicator was now fully conscious inside his life-support capsule, and robots scrambled to meet his increasingly impatient demands.

“The Cyborg pretender attacked me while I wore the shield of Krypton’s Last Son! He thought me destroyed. I must again be made whole! I must live to avenge both myself and the name of Superman! I must have more power, more data, if I am to persevere! Attend me!”

One robot tried to calm the encapsulated being. “Master, we have already brought you on-line with all Fortress power and information systems. Absorption of either energy or data at an increased rate could result in irreparable harm. It is advised that you heal slowly and completely.”

“There is no time.” The Eradicator’s ravaged face twisted in fury and frustration. “Current broadcasts indicate that the other Supermen—the young clone, the armored one, even Kal-El
himself
—have allied against the Cyborg. But their power is insufficient. The Cyborg must
not
triumph! I must prevail! I must have more power!
Now
!”

The fluid in the life-support capsule began to bubble and froth.

“Master, no! All systems are responding to your demands. If you persist in this energy drain, the Fortress itself may suffer!”

Within the capsule, the Eradicator glowed with energy, his eyes squeezed shut, his teeth clenched in pain. “This Fortress was my creation! It is mine to do with as I will!”

As the Eradicator drew the vast energy reserves of the Fortress into himself, the capsule glowed as white as the sun. The robots began falling powerless to the floor. Raw energy crackled off the capsule, and the Fortress itself shook, its walls and floors cracking open as its reinforcing structural fields shunted their energy into the Eradicator.

On the surface, a wide section of ice suddenly heaved up from the force of a powerful underground explosion, then collapsed as if subsiding into a great sinkhole. A plume of energy hundreds of feet high erupted from the center of the depression.

Within that plume arose the Eradicator, his arms outstretched as if in prayer to the cosmos. He no longer bore even a passing resemblance to Kal-El. His profile was aquiline; his hair had turned a dark gray; and his red eyes crackled with energy.

Throughout the millennia that he had existed as an artificial intelligence, the Eradicator had known only logic and data. Even when that intelligence had first assumed humanoid form and sought to remake the Earth in the image of Krypton, it looked upon this planet as little more than raw materials.

The Eradicator had none of the passion, none of the love that Superman felt for the Earth. All emotions, whether human or Kryptonian, were alien. But all that began to change when he was reborn in the image of Superman. His mind became opened to new thoughts and newer, more complex ways of thinking, and for the first time, to ways of feeling. He learned the ways of passion and of rage, and was changed by them.

Now all the vast energies of the Fortress churned and flowed within the Eradicator. He felt no regrets over sacrificing the Fortress; a monument to a dead world was of no importance to him now. The Cyborg, he knew, had killed millions of people and had done it all in the guise of Superman.

The Eradicator leapt into the sky, rocketing northward for the former Coast City. A living world stretched out before him, and he would not see it endangered by a usurper. The Cyborg would fall by his power—the power of Krypton.

As Superman and Steel ran across sublevel six of Engine City, Superman suddenly raised one of his weapons and fired at a section of blank wall.