Panicked, she snagged the nylon cargo netting and held onto it for dear life, dangling out of the rear of plane, thousands of feet above Metropolis.
She screamed over the roaring wind.
Hamilton moaned beneath the mounted space capsule. A flying metal fragment had sliced into his side, causing him to bleed over the deck. Cold air rushed in through the torn fuselage. Biting down on his lip to keep from crying out, he watched helplessly as the woman surveyed the hold.
Her eyes widened at the sight of the Kryptonian space capsule. She stalked forward to investigate, even as the loadmaster scrambled to keep her from getting her hands on it. He hastily unlocked the cargo rails and elevated the deck beneath the capsule, trying to dump it out the back of the plane.
The starcraft rolled away from Hamilton toward the open ramp, but she caught it with one hand and shoved the nearly eight-ton capsule back up into the hold. It bounced off the rollers, lodging near the front.
Faora nodded, apparently satisfied that the capsule was secure, before spotting Lois hanging out the back of the plane. Her expression darkened, suggesting that there was no love lost between the two women. It seemed as if she still held a grudge over Lois’s escape from the Black Zero.
But Hardy and his men had their own scores to settle. They opened fire on Faora in a determined effort that was more impressive than effective. The Kryptonian female marched unscathed through the hail of gunfire, batting the soldiers aside without a second glance as she made her way toward the cockpit.
She stalked past Hamilton, dismissing the wounded scientist with a scornful glance. He guessed that she intended to seize control of the plane and hijack Superman’s starcraft.
Which meant that he needed to activate the Phantom Drive now, before the capsule fell into the hands of Zod.
Despite his injuries, Hamilton dragged himself across the floor of the cargo bay, over to the capsule. In a lucky break, the craft had shifted in position, exposing more of the severed coupling. His torn flesh hurt like blazes, but he ignored the pain and forced himself to concentrate on the vital task at hand.
He stretched his arm out. Trembling fingers reached for the coupling. Grimacing, he reconnected the fibers.
The effect was immediate. With the key in place, the craft’s dormant engines began booting up. A prismatic distortion field enveloped the capsule as Hamilton sagged against it. He gasped his relief, clutching his wounded side. Blood seeped through his fingers.
He had done his part. The rest was up to the same Kryptonian technology that Zod had deployed against them.
When in doubt, he thought, fight fire with fire.
Even if it means getting burned.
Hardy saw the craft come alive. The fuse had been lit, he realized. Now they just needed to deliver the bomb before Faora destroyed mankind’s last hope of stopping Zod. Abandoning the cargo bay, he raced back up the stairs to the cockpit, only a few steps ahead of the unstoppable Kryptonian invader.
He sealed the hatch behind him, but Faora tore through it as though it was made of tissue paper. She knocked Brubaker out of the copilot’s seat with a backhanded swipe. He smashed into the wall, then slid unconscious onto the floor. His protective flight helmet cracked.
Hardy realized they only had seconds left. He dived for the controls and forced the crippled plane into a power dive—straight at the Black Zero. The ugly Kryptonian prison ship seemed to rush toward the C-17’s windshield. Faora shrieked in rage, unable to prevent the inevitable collision.
Hardy shot her a triumphant grin, knowing he wasn’t going to survive this crash.
“A good death is its own reward,” he said.
The plane’s fatal dive was bad news for Lois. She lost her grip on the cargo netting and went tumbling into the air. For the second time in as many days, she found herself falling to her death, even as she saw the C-17 smash into the bulbous mantle of the Black Zero with catastrophic force.
Explosions rocked the Kryptonian vessel, blowing open its armored plating. Space-time rippled around the injured ship, bleeding unnatural lights and colors into the dusky sky.
A doorway to the Phantom Zone began to open.
Stress fractures spread throughout the Black Zero, beginning at the impact site and branching out from there. Prismatic colors, shining through from the Zone, cast an eldritch glow over the ship’s sprawling interior.
Dark, claustrophobic corridors contracted like shrinking veins. Structural ribs cracked and bled. Catwalks tore away from cellblocks. Viewports splintered, venting atmosphere into the void.
Faora, at ground zero, was the first casualty. She stared aghast as her hand dissolved before her eyes, unraveling at the quantum level. A spectral glow emanated from every cell of her body, lighting her up from the inside out. The lifeless bodies of the human soldiers lay crumpled at her feet as they took their vengeance on her from beyond the grave.
No! she thought furiously. This world was ours!
In a heartbeat, she vanished from the universe, sucked back into the Zone for an eternity.
The Phantom effect raced through the ship, claiming ever more victims. On the bridge, Jax-Ur, Tor-An, Nam-Ek, and Commander Gor exchanged terrified looks as the Zone began to reclaim them. Only Jax-Ur truly understood what was undoing them.
Of course, he reasoned. Kal-El’s original starcraft. They’re using it as a weapon against us. He smiled thinly. How ingenious.
The Black Zero had been designed to make the transition to the Zone in one piece, but only under strictly controlled conditions. The ship was meant to pass through the Projector, not have a Phantom Drive rip open the continuum right in the middle of the ship. Violent dimensional fluxes were already taking it apart before his fading eyes.
Solid bulkheads and supports sublimed away, causing the ship’s myriad chambers and corridors to cave in on themselves. Matter phased into energy, sliding between dimensions. The entire ship was collapsing into a singularity, or so he theorized.
His calculations did not spare him—or any of the others.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The Black Zero imploded above Metropolis.
Its mantle crumbled, while its hanging tendrils were sucked back into the roiling mass of compacted matter the ship had become. Disturbing colors from an alien spectrum strobed the atmosphere, spilling over to distort reality. Actinic flashes hurt the eyes of anyone who dared to gaze upon the hellish spectacle.
Lois glimpsed the ship’s destruction as she plunged through the air, accelerating toward the ravaged cityscape hundreds of feet below. Broken buildings and shattered streets seemed to barrel toward her. Within seconds, she’d just be another piece of wreckage among the many.
But we did it! she thought. We blew up that damn spaceship!
Too bad she wouldn’t live to write the story
The wind howled past her face, blowing her hair back. Resigned to her fate, she took comfort in the fact that it hadn’t been in vain—and that the end would be quick and painless.
Good-bye, Clark, she thought. I wish we—
A blur of blue and red came streaking in from the east, catching her before she hit the ground. She felt a familiar pair of arms wrap around her, holding her close. A bright red cape streamed behind her rescuer.