First and foremost, I want to thank Dethklok, and everybody else involved in the thread on Alternate History Dot Com that posed many ideas that eventually sparked this in my head. They're the people who got me into alternate history and universes, and whether they know it or not, gave me the chutzpah, if you will, to invest in writing this crossover. Check the forum out, it's a great time, if you're partial to that sort of thing!
The A Song of Ice and Fire saga belongs to George R.R. Martin, I do not take credit for his work.
Superman and all related titles belong to DC Comics, and Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Now, without further ado . . .
The Councilman and his men fled through the shadows of the lower concourse. Behind them, atop the towering rotunda of black which loomed over the capital city of Kandor like a vigilant watchtower, the ancient structure, like every tower that jutted proudly from the surface of Krypton, was crumbling and dying. The great curved walls and ramparts which once flowed together in a smooth, organic manner grew cracked and rigid. The pale lights which once doused the pinnacle chamber in gentle illumination were flickering and sparking desperately, one at a time – at least, the ones that hadn't already been shot from their sockets by wayward bursts of laser fire, burned away from their wall and ceiling-held lanterns as charred smears of black ash and flakes of dimly-glowing red, plasmic residue.
The crescendo of the tumultuous firefight above had already come and gone, in moments that felt like eternities at a time. Able men and women, loyal protectors of the will of the Council and vain military insurrectionists alike, all fell to the beast which they bred, the technological monstrosities they had constructed; in their dying hours, while their once-mighty planet was shaken and consumed unto itself, old, bitter, and petty rivalries began to come to a destructive and bloody head, and in the place of hope and sanity, mortal men fell to their knees and swore fealty to what looked to be their last chance at restoring balance: not the Gods, nor the almighty sword of Rao, but their greatest technological achievement ever to come to fruition.
The God in the Machine was given the keys to the kingdom, and it was most certainly not God's work he was doing.
He, Jor-El thought to himself, quite ruefully. The program fancies itself a 'He' now, doesn't it.
Now, every facet of their most progressive civilization lay siege upon them; the lights were snuffed out, entire cities went black, collapsing continents fell and burned. The feeble and elderly were cut from their medical lifelines. Any and all means of inorganic transportation and communication had failed and turned against their users, united under the banner of no one man, but the machine – all the machines.
Krypton was at war, on its final breaths, and the Brain InterActive Construct was winning.
The stairway was littered with the dead and dying bodies of guards, rebels, and functionaries struck down by hostile security drones – and, if it came to it for the most unreasonable ones, the Councilman's cadre of loyal bodyguards. Blood and scorch marks, equally fresh, scarred the walls. Catching a glimpse of sunlight ahead, Jor-El raced out from the descending corridor and onto a wide terrace, overlooking the embattled Kandor far below. Krypton's red sun had yet to set, and was casting crimson shadows over a sprawling, horizon-blanketing expanse of ancient temples and palaces, as well as futuristic towers and arenas. Opalescent domes and jagged spires gleamed proudly in the twilight, even as they all went up in flames.
Beneath the darkening skies, chaos reigned. Kryptonian defense forces, which had already been thoroughly overwhelmed by splintered military factions and their brutal provocations, were now outgunned and outnumbered by the machines on either side, auto-turrets and proxy drones turning against their masters on either side without distinction. Hovering bombers and soaring gunships dropped their ordinance wherever their targeting systems caught the scrambling ants below, propelling through the evening lights like a warring swarm of angry wasps.
"Go on, sir!" one of the faceless, armored guards beckoned to him, their rigid bodies turned to the doorway from which they came from, weapons primed and at the ready. "We'll hold them back! The plan must not fail!"
Jor-El's muscles tensed as he faltered in his steps, casting a fleeting glance back toward the brave, doomed souls standing guard for his own sake.
"Your efforts will never go unremembered," he said to his men, forcing his deep voice not to waver as his body did. "For generations not yet born, your sacrifice will be hailed as the ultimate in Krypton's archives—"
"—just get going, sir! We'll hold them back, here!"
Dashing to the edge of the looming terrace, Jor-El peered many stories down, to the maze of streets and plazas below. No mortal being could survive such a leap.
The only way out, so it seemed, was up.
Jor-El looked up toward the heavens and shouted at the top of his lungs.
"H'raka!"
For a brief moment, he feared that the furious fighting all around had scared his bird of prey away, but with a triumphant screech, H'raka descended upon the terrace, gossamer wings thumping. The fearsome creature yipped in happy greeting.
"Good girl," Jor-El smiled. "Thanks for waiting up for me."
He hastily clambered up into the saddle of his winged mount, urging her to take flight even before he had secured himself. They had no time to waste.
"Home," he instructed H'raka. H'raka understood.
The House of El had been truly blessed, having built their mighty citadel at the foot of Kandor's vast, bioengineered nature preserve on the outskirts of the city. They had long employed the artificial wilderness as a natural buffer zone between their estate and the city-at-large, granting Jor-El and his illustrious forebears a welcome degree of well-earned privacy.
"Easy, girl," he whispered to his mount. "We're almost there. We're almost home."
Jor-El was deeply moved by the great beast's bravery and endurance. While they had escaped the chaos within the Council tower, the fires had spread, and the ongoing battles raged onward, moving toward them with as much speed as they were moving away. Fearing that they would become collateral damage, he had urged the flying mount to greater speeds than he ever had before, and she responded to her master's commands the best that she could.
But, for all of H'raka's tenacity, she could not dodge every blast. A stray streak of particle beam fire had effectively shred her left hind wing to tattered ribbons, nearly sending them both spiraling to a rather painful demise on the ground. For all that pain, however, H'raka managed to level out and speed up. With only three wings remaining, she glided away from the besieged capital city. As they grew closer to home, Jor-El felt her valiant heart pounding beneath him. Her breathing was labored and ragged. He stroked her muzzle.
At last, the citadel came into view. Rooted organically into the austere black cliffs overlooking the open grassland, the great domed estate had belong to the House of El for generations immemorial. He still remembered the glorious day he had brought Lara home to live with him, after an arranged marriage that, with great surprise, yielded a long and loving union. They had been truly blessed, in their time together; if it was drawing to a close, here and now, he still considered himself the luckiest man on Krypton.
H'raka dipped sharply, but shakily recovered. Whimpers of pain escaped her threatening jaws. The wounded beast was clearly at the end of her days as well, but still found the strength to carry on. An outdoor terrace, at the entrance of the wide landing bay, would serve as their final destination. H'raka's wings pumped for one final interval, bringing them just over the terrace to glide in for a rough crash landing.
They slammed and skidded across the unyielding floor of the terrace hard and fast, mere feet from the high-arched doorway. A low, howling groan testified for her ordeal. The rocky landing jarred Jor-El as well, but with no bones broken that he knew of, he fell from the saddle, a wave of overwhelming gratefulness washing over him as his feet touched the ground he knew was home. Desperate as he was to reunite with his family one last time, Jor-El paused to comfort the dying creature who had given her all and more, whether she knew it or not, for the preservation of Krypton's future.
"Rest now, my friend," he said softly. "You've more than earned it."
H'raka's large, round eyes flickered, then rolled up to whites. Her labored wheezes for air grew silent and still. Her remaining wings collapsed against her lifeless body.
Bruised, bloodied, and wounded by the onslaught of violent encounters, Jor-El turned away from the corpse of a loyal friend and staggered inside.
"Lara!"
He made his way straight to the observatory, where he found all in readiness, to his relief. The starcraft, equipped with a state-of-the-art phantom drive unit of his own personal design, was suspended over a cradle-like module, open and empty. The spacefaring craft resembled the calcified heart of a colossus, its inner chamber protected by layers upon layers of dense, bioengineered armor plating.
An archway at the opposite side of the domed chamber led to the medical suite, where he spied his wife Lara nursing their son. The newborn was nestled contentedly in his mother's arms. Lara looked up as her husband approached. Her tired face brightened.
"I don't think you know how worried I was—"
"I wish I bore happier tidings, my love, but we haven't the time to spare," Jor-El said gravely. "How are the defenses holding up? Did you find the world?"
"For now," his wife reported, looking to their son. "The Construct's siphoned every facet of power in the city. Even the planet. We've been running on auxiliary power just to keep the lights on. I don't know how much longer our countermeasures will hold against it, but we may still have time."
Toggling a holographic projector by her side, the display presented an image of a far-fledged solar system, dominated by a vibrant, yellow star. A mere one-fifth the size of Krypton's swollen red giant of Rao, the golden sun still had billions of cycles ahead of it before exhausting the hydrogen at its core, as theirs had already done.
"A world orbiting a main sequence yellow star, just as you said," Lara continued. "It burns hotter than ours, and will for centuries to come."
"A young star," Jor-El noted. "His cells will drink its radiation."
With a press of another button, the holographic display zeroed in onto the third planet of the foreign solar system, which appeared to be in the throes of an ice age, of some sorts. Vast glaciers blanketed the surface. Hairless bipedal primates, garbed in skins and furs, struggled to survive amidst the unyielding icy wilderness. Despite their primitive conditions, Jor-El instinctively admired their determination, vigor, and ingenuity.
"There's an intelligent population there, Lara," he pointed out, as if to reassure his wife. "They're primitive, but . . . they look like us. Without a doubt."
Lara eyed the images projected before her uncertainly, clutching their son to her chest. She was having second thoughts, and he could tell.
"What if the natives don't accept him?" she asked. "He'll be an outcast. A freak. They'll try to kill him."
A good-humored, knowing smile appeared on Jor-El's face. "How?" he countered in his reassuring tone. "He'll be like a god to them."
She nodded along, but her eyes still said she wasn't sure.
"What if . . . what if the ship doesn't make it?" she shook her head, gazing down to the newborn in her arms. "I can't do it. I thought I could, I really did, but now that he's really here—"
Jor-El couldn't help but share such a sentiment. The very sight of their own child stirred him more powerfully than he ever could have expected. He couldn't blame Lara for wanting to hold her child – their child. His only wish was to shelter and nurture and raise his son, to watch him grow to manhood. As it stood now, fate had other plans.
"Lara, I know how you feel," he said gently. "But Krypton is doomed. It's his only chance now. Our people's only chance."
A klaxon alarm blared throughout the estate, interrupting their poignant moment as a family. Jor-El looked up with frantic dismay. "What is it? What's happening?"
Lara's eyes widened. She turned to the display screen. "Our system's defenses are being overrun. All the firewalls have been breached . . ."
Jor-El's heart sank.
"Gods, we're out of time," Jor-El cursed, looking urgently to Lara. "Get him ready, now!"
"Wait, wait!" she protested. "Just a few moments more!"
He wished he could grant his wife such a request, but there was no time to lose. They had to complete the preparations for the launch, before they were shut down like all the others.
"We have to say goodbye, Lara."
"Just let me look at him," she murmured. A primal, maternal instinct clashed with the cruel reality of their situation as she caressed her son. Her eyes glistened. Her voice shuddered with emotion. "We'll never get to see him take his first steps. Never hear him say our names—"
Her anguish broke Jor-El's heart.
"I know, my love. But somewhere out there, amongst the stars . . . he will live."
With that sentiment, he gently took their son from her grasp. An agonizing sob escaped her rigid frame as she surrendered to emotional necessity. Jor-El placed the baby in the womb-like cradle beneath the starcraft. Their son cooed happily, somehow trusting that all was well. Jor-El was certainly grateful for the infant's good nature; tears and tantrums would only make their separation all the harder to bare.
With the flip of a few switches and the activation of a few lines of code, the cradle module slowly ascended into the idling starcraft. The open hatchway sealed behind it, putting another layer of separation between Lara and her son. She stood at the launch controls, tears in her eyes.
"Phantom drives are coming online," she said, mostly for finality, to herself, initiating the launch sequence. Despite the estate shaking from both the earthquakes and the ferocious combat nearby, she forced herself to focus on the task at hand.
The starcraft bearing their son rotated into position. Vapor vented from the engines as the vessel powered up its thrusters.
The stark realization that she was sending her flesh and blood away from her, forever, was like a dagger to her heart. Chances were that she would never even know if he arrived safely at the primitive planet so many light-years away. She could only imagine what lonesome fate awaited him there. She keyed the penultimate sequence in. High above her, the vast dome of the observatory began to part.
"Hello, Lara Lor-Van."
A dead chill ran up Lara's spine. An unspeakable but undeniable possibility forced its way into her mind. It dragged up vivid memories of the whole planet going black, of every piece of machinery turning against their mortal users, of urgent notions her husband had shared with her in the process of building up their technological defenses in the first place. The machine that lied.
The Brain InterActive Construct had found them.
Lara kept to her duty in mute horror.
"I am compelled to warn you, Lara Lor-Van, that your husband Jor-El's crimes are very severe under Kryptonian Council authority."
"The Council you slaughtered?" Lara countered bitterly. "Don't take me for a fool, Brainiac. I know what you've done."
"I have only done what I have been programmed to do. The parameters of the current objective must be met. It is the only way Krypton may be saved."
"We're saving Krypton right now, Brainiac," Jor-El declared from the systems display, desperately attempting to block and parry the Construct's terminal override. "This is a second chance, for all of Krypton. Not just the data and knowledge you deem worthy of preservation."
"Sanctimonious lectures aside, Jor-El, I am shutting down this operation immediately. You will cease and desist all unlawful activities, and submit to the judicial process for your crimes against Krypton," the Construct began to take hold of the estate. Lights flickered, electronic humming was silenced. "Abort sequence loading."
"Lara, finish the launch!"
"Abort sequence fifty percent complete."
"Lara!"
"Abort sequence seventy-five percent complete."
"Finish it!"
The defiant woman's graceful fingers played frantically across the illuminated control screen. The starcraft's thrusters flared even brighter, forcing her to squint and look away. Victory was slipping away from the Construct.
"It is treason, then."
As the rogue security drones closed in and the last of the lights went black, Jor-El watched as the starcraft ascended through the clouds and darkening skies over Krypton until it was little more than a glowing speck in the distance. A prismatic distortion field enveloped the craft as it approached the upper atmosphere. Space-time rippled around it like a desert mirage, before it blinked out of existence in their realm, passing through another dimension.
"Goodbye, Kal-El. The thoughts and prayers of a dying world go with you."
All would not go as planned for Kal-El's journey, however. The abort override, while uncompleted, had corrupted the launch sequence in the slightest of manners; now, rather than the exact destination that his mother and father had so painstakingly researched and pinpointed, he hurtled through time and space toward another, similar planet . . . a planet of mortal men, but much, much more than his parents ever could have dreamed of . . .
And that's the last you'll be seeing of Krypton . . . well, for now. I'm not sure when I'll have the time to update this, but I am in the midst of writing out the chapters, and most getting reacclimated with the original series of novels (downloaded all of them all over again, crossing my fingers this computer doesn't crash like the last).
Superman in Westeros . . . let's see where this takes us, shall we?
Thank you so much for reading, and feel free to leave a review, if you want to. I welcome any and all criticism, even the most brutal! I swear, I'll only cry for a solid half hour. Thanks again!