The Death and Life of Superman (69 page)

The Cyborg went on-line with the master control but found himself blocked from shutting down the engine’s ignition sequence.
The fail-safe has been destroyed; I am locked out of those circuits!
The Cyborg shook with rage.
I shall have to attempt a manual shutdown.
Then he remembered Steel, and his anger turned to twisted laughter.
Or perhaps I will just let this little man do it for me!

“Good Lord, what have I gotten myself into?” Steel came to a halt in the middle of the vast Engine Room. The walls were lined with miles of wires, tubes, and conduits. Across the room was a long, gleaming cylinder bracketed by giant coils of shimmering, translucent wire. Through thick transparent ports set into the cylinder’s side, John Henry could see an eerie glow. Along an adjacent wall was what appeared to be a heavily shielded containment vessel. A maze of pipes and cables ran in and out of the shielding.

“What the hell
is
all this?” Parts of the assembly seemed vaguely familiar to John Henry, but the sheer scale of the room made it difficult to comprehend.
How do I shut this down, if I’m not even sure what I’m looking at?

“Impressive, isn’t it?” The voice was low, flat, and vaguely electronic.

Steel wheeled around to see a body taking shape along the wall behind him. Before his eyes, a mass of wires, circuits, and metal tubing extruded from the wall, taking on a vaguely human shape. It towered over him, twice his height; it even had a face of sorts. It was the face of the Cyborg, shorn of all humanity.

“Didn’t you hear me, ‘Man of Steel’?” There was a faint mechanical whir as the Cyborg’s construct gestured to the Engine Room. “I can’t believe that any ordinary mortal wouldn’t be impressed by all this!”

John Henry found his voice. “It’s big all right. But how does it work?”

“The drive engine?” The construct fairly tittered. “It’s powered by a fusion process, little one; confined by superconducting electromagnets. You could not hope to understand it.”

Controlled fusion, of course.
John Henry mentally kicked himself.
That cylinder must contain an ionized plasma. And those translucent coils must be the superconductive material.
“You’ve harnessed fusion to provide thrust?” He jerked his head toward the containment vessel. “That must be a fission reactor then—you must use its output to initiate the fusion process.”

The machine-man’s face almost looked pleased. “Very good, little one! Perhaps you
do
understand.” The construct reached out as if to pat him on the head. Steel drew back, but he was not fast enough; the machine-man grabbed him firmly in one hand and picked him up like a toy. John Henry raised his power gauntlet, emptying his supply of spikes into the construct.

The machine-man just chuckled. “Sorry, I haven’t any vital organs . . . unlike yourself. But you wanted a closer look at that engine; allow me to oblige you.” With Steel in hand, the construct strode across the floor of the chamber. “I suspect that you’ve come here to destroy my magnificent engine, haven’t you?” An absurd clucking sound came from the construct. “We mustn’t have that. On the other hand, I quite agree—for different reasons, of course—that we can’t let the engine tear this little planet apart. Fortunately, there’s a simple way to shut down the fusion process—we just shatter the electromagnets’ coils. I can always install more.” With a roar of laughter, the machine-man raised John Henry high overhead and threw him at one of the electromagnets.

Steel quickly wheeled about in midair and lit his rockets in a short burst, braking his speed. He fell far short of the construct’s intended goal, but he could feel the powerful electromagnets tugging at his armor.

“You little steel-plated worm!” The construct charged toward him. “Do you want to see the Earth destroyed? It’s your duty to die for it!”

“Not alone, I won’t.” Steel’s cape came loose in the machine-man’s grasp as the armored man dove between the construct’s legs. His armor scraped up sparks as he rebounded from the metal floor and launched himself back at the construct. He tackled the machine-man and fired his rockets, driving them both into the magnet’s coils.

Both the superconducting coils and the machine-man shattered in a brilliant flash of light. With the coils broken, the electromagnetic field dropped, and within the cylinder the awesome temperatures of the plasma fuel plunged. The eerie glow changed colors and then slowly faded, as the plasma fuel cooled, de-ionized and condensed back to normal matter.

John Henry staggered to his feet, his armor scorched and cracked.
How about that? I didn’t die after all.
In spite of his situation, he was intrigued by the design of the fusion system, and he reflexively picked up a strand of the translucent wire.
A room-temperature superconductor. Amazing.
The engineer in him hoped there would be time later to analyze the material, but the warrior in him picked up his hammer.
First, I have to make sure there
is
a later!’

Mongul grabbed hold of Superman’s weapons and swung the hero hard into the wall of the corridor. Before Superman could recover, the warlord was on top of him, seizing him in a crushing bear hug. “You are weaker by far than when last we fought, Kryptonian. This time, I will not fail to slay you!”

His head swimming, Superman brought both fists up, driving them hard against Mongul’s ears. The stunned warlord fell back, shaking his head.

“You will die slowly for that, Superman!”

But before Mongul could make another move, he was suddenly struck hard by something that couldn’t be seen. A series of sharp blows rained down upon the surprised warlord, forcing him into a defensive posture. Then a powerful blast of psychokinetic energy hurled him backward with such force that he became embedded in the metal wall.

With her opponent incapacitated, Supergirl shimmered to visibility and crouched down to check on Superman. “Are you all right?”

“I think so.” He gingerly felt his side. “Ribs are a little sore, but I don’t think anything’s really broken.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, but there was this building vibration and—hey, it’s stopped.”

“John Henry.” Superman grinned through the pain. “He did it. He stopped the
—look out!”

The warning came too late. Mongul sprang at the two heroes, striking Supergirl from behind and stunning her. And then a vicious kick sent Superman rolling, skidding down the corridor.

“Your ally should have remained invisible, Superman. Now I must kill her as well. Perhaps I shall cripple you first, and make you watch her die.”

The Eradicator flew in over the ocean, speeding toward Engine City. As he passed through the lingering ash cloud, he had a sudden mental flash of Superman in pain. In that instant, he sensed his fellow Kryptonian’s location and predicament, and he acted. Power-diving through the city’s central dome, the Eradicator smashed his way through to the lower corridors.

Mongul jumped back as a dark blur came crashing down through the ceiling ahead of him. The Eradicator stood boldly before the warlord, holding out a hand in warning and blocking the path to Superman. So changed in appearance was he that, shorn of cape and shield, Mongul did not recognize him as the visored being that the Cyborg had supposedly slain.

Through his tenuous mental link with Superman, the Eradicator recognized Mongul all too well. “Come no further, alien. To threaten Krypton’s Last Son is to threaten the Eradicator!”

“And to defy Mongul is to court death, fool!” The angry warlord leapt at the Eradicator—squarely into the terrible, withering blast of energy that erupted from his hands. Mongul dropped to the floor of the corridor, most of his chest and part of his head gone. The warlord hadn’t even had time to scream.

“Oh, my God!” Supergirl pul a hand to her mouth as the Eradicator nudged Mongul’s body aside with his foot.

“You are Supergirl? Yes, I recognize you from the Fortress monitors.” The Eradicator glanced down at Mongul. “Do not mourn for him. He would have done much worse to all of us. His death, at least, was fast.”

The Eradicator turned toward the groggy Superman. “Are you all right, Kal-El?”

“All right? I hope so.” Superman leaned against the wall and tried to catch his breath. “We’re not finished here yet.”

“Hey, what’s going on?” Steel arrived on the run, stopping dead at the sight of the Eradicator and Mongul’s body. “Whoa! I wasn’t expecting this.”

Weird laughter echoed throughout the corridor. “It’s always the unexpected that’s the most deadly!” Then the Cyborg was upon them. He swooped down through the hole created by the Eradicator’s impromptu entrance and flung himself headlong at the four heroes, knocking them off their feet.

The Cyborg then shot down the corridor. Steel watched him take off in dismay. “Damn, I thought I’d aced him back in the engine room. How’d he get back in that body?”

“He can switch bodies as well?” The Eradicator regained his footing and helped the others up. “Then he is doubly dangerous. He must be stopped.”

“Well, sure.” Supergirl kept a cautious eye on him. She knew of the Eradicator, but only as a dangerous artificial intelligence; she wasn’t sure what to make of this stranger. “But where’s he headed?”

“Back to the Engine Room is my bet.” Steel smacked his hammer against his palm. “And he won’t be very happy when he sees what I did to it.”

“The Eradicator’s right, we have to stop him.” Superman gathered up his weapons and shoved in the last of his clips. “But let’s be careful and keep our eyes open. We don’t know what he’s up to, but he clearly wants us to follow him. That could mean a trap.”

Superman and Steel charged down the corridor together, with Supergirl and the Eradicator providing close air support. They were halfway to the Engine Room when the walls came alive, and a cluster of power cables twisted themselves into a semblance of the Cyborg’s face.

The Eradicator fired a searing blast into the face, but it just re-formed itself from another set of cables a few feet further away.

The Cyborg’s voice crackled from the face with a disturbing electrical sibilance. “Superman, tell this fool that he’s wasting his time. He can destroy my visage all he wants, but as long as I remain on-line, I can reconstruct it indefinitely.”

“Who
are
you?” Superman felt like blasting the taunting face himself, but he didn’t want to waste the ammunition.

“You still don’t know me, Superman?” The cables twisted and smoothed until they formed a more human-looking face—a man’s face with short, closely cropped hair and clean, angular features. “I can’t believe you’ve forgotten Commander Hank Henshaw.”

“Henshaw?!” Superman’s eyes opened wide. “But why in God’s name have you done this? Why the impersonation? The killing—?”

“For revenge!” Henshaw’s voice fairly sizzled. “You conspired to kill my crew. You tried to make me look incompetent.”

“Your crew? What are you talking about? I tried to save them. I tried to save you!”

“Lies! You drove me away from this world.”

“That’s not true. Leaving Earth was your idea.”

“More lies!” Henshaw was raving now. “You wanted me gone because you feared my power. Well, now I have given you reason to fear me! I will kill you yet and make the world see you for the villain you are!”

The face on the wall reverted to the Cyborg’s image. “From the knowledge I gathered within your birthing matrix, I found the power to destroy you. Ironic, isn’t it?”

The cables of the face suddenly uncoiled and were joined by huge pipes, shooting out at the four heroes from all sides. Superman dove to the floor, rolling under the deadly metal tentacles, and the Eradicator soared above them, flying on down the corridor. Supergirl and Steel were ensnared and held fast. The cables holding Steel arced wildly and fused to his armor, threatening to cook him within his metal shell.

With a blast of psychokinetic force, Supergirl shattered her bonds and leapt to help John Henry. “I’ll get Steel free, Superman—you go after the Eradicator. I don’t fully trust him.”

Neither do I, Supergirl. Neither do I.
Superman caught up to the Eradicator around a bend in the tunnel; he was firing his energy blasts, burning through a mass of metal tubing that had blocked off the Engine Room.

“I fear that this Cyborg is quite beyond reason.” The Eradicator gave Superman the briefest of glances. “His mind was not able to accept the gift of rebirth as was yours.”

“Oh?” Superman looked askance at the Eradicator. “And just what do you know about Henshaw?”

“I know what you recorded in the Fortress archives. I know what you know.” The Eradicator stopped and stared at Superman with haunted eyes. “We are linked, you and I.”

“Don’t remind me. You nearly killed me once.”

“I was in error. I have tried to make amends. I helped restore you to life. I transferred your body to the Regeneration Matrix.”

“Yes, and you left me there, like a spare battery in the refrigerator.” Superman eyes narrowed. “I was really dead? Not in a coma?”

“From all indications, yes. But your body retained enough of its stores of solar energy. Had that not been the case, and had your spirit not proven so resilient, I would not have been able to effect your revival.”

Superman had more questions, but he put them aside. Together, they broke into the Engine Room. All surviving systems had gone off-line, leaving the chamber very dark. From the light that filtered in from the outer corridor, they could see evidence of Steel’s handiwork; the floor around them was strewn with wreckage.

“Welcome, gentlemen! I’m so glad you saw fit to join me here.” The Cyborg’s voice cut through the darkness, echoing seemingly from everywhere. The big chamber was suddenly bathed in light, and the Cyborg dropped down from atop the fission reactor. “After all, there’s really only one way a Superman should die. And that’s from kryptonite poisoning!”

With a sweep of his metal arm, the Cyborg smashed open the reactor’s shielding, exposing the kryptonite fuel rods. Radiation flooded the chamber. In his weakened state, the radiation affected Superman immediately, and he crumpled to the floor, writhing in agony. The Eradicator staggered back, his Kryptonian-based tissue itself vulnerable to the deadly ore, and the Cyborg tackled him.