This is a continuation of the prequel comic book from Man of Steel, which can be downloaded at this site:

/comics-news/man-of-steel-prequel-comic-stars-kara-zor-el/

The story picks up at the end of that comic book and continues

THE PREQUEL

20,000 Years before the events of the Man of Steel.

Kara looked around the ship, the cryo-chambers around her were all empty. "Hello?" Kara said, "Why didn't anyone wake me up?" Kara bent down, noticed a cryo-chamber has been sabotaged. All was quiet throughout the ship, Kara walked down the corridor leading to the ship's bridge, there she saw the suited figures of her crew manning their posts, all were motionless. Kara walked up behind the suit she recognized as Dac's. "Dac… Dac!" Kara said, she turned him around, "Dac, can you hear me… …!" Kara stared in horror at the mummified decomposed remains of Dac within his suit. Kara when over to Kex's suit and found another corpse in it, "Kex… No!" Kara gasped. "You've been a sleep for a long time," said a familiar voice from behind her. Kara turned around, "That voice… you.." "..But I'm glad your awake now," said an older Dec-Em, "Hello Kara." "You… you were to be executed, Dev-Em! The Law council gave you the Death Penalty!" Kara said. "Heh. Lets just say that well… Not everyone on the law council agreed with my execution…" dev-Em said, "Easier for them to help me escape than destroy the values Krypton had spent centuries cultivating. Even better to shoot the evidence into space." "And my crew?" Kara asked. "After the first day, I realized that the only way into the foodstores was by handprint," Dev-Em held out a severed hand, "Officer Kex put up quite the struggle, but in the end… the upper hand was mine." Dev-Em grinned.

"You've lost your mind," Kara said. "Is that how we talk to old friends, Kara?" Dev-Em said. "You're not my friend. You're a Murderer who tried to kill his way onto a starship…" Kara said. "And now I'm on a starship!" Dev-em added, "isn't the Lord Rao's plan glorious?" Kara ran away. "Hm, Where are you going?!" Dev_Em said, "I've had ten years to explore this ship Kara…" Dev pressed a button. The door leading out of the bridge slammed shut. "No!" said Kara. "Ten years to learn how to control it," Dev-Em added, "With Kex's handprint clearance, I had access to everything. I found food, a place to sleep. I had nothing to occupy my mind, not completely. So I just… watched the stars fly by. Watched you all sleep, Watched you dream. Your so pretty when you sleep Kara. Finally I realized I was lonely, so I made a few wake up calls. Dev-Em walked up to Ho-Paa's suit with her corpse in it. "Ho-Paa wasn't so sure about following my leadership at first, but…" Kara had removed Kex's helmet and smashed it on Dev-Em's head. Dev-Em was bleeding from where the glass cut him. "Stay down, Dev-Em. I don't want to fight.." "You you.. you hurt me!" Dev-Em said furiously. Dev-Em leaped at Kara saying, "You and I are meant to be together! We we're the only two left! We we're going to populate the Sol System with countless Kryptonians! We were.." Dev-Em threw a punch, Kara sidestepped it and Dev-Em put a dent in the wall, " …?" Dev-Em was shocked. Kara ripped off a piece of metal. "Sol's System was never our destination! Where have you brought us?" Kara slammed the metal on Dev-Em's head only denting the metal on it. "Where ever I wanted to go!" Dev-Em answered as he threw Kara aside. "You will follow me Kara…" Dev-Em insisted, "or you'll follow your crew into Rao's welcoming arms!" Kara leaned back, "I don't…" she gave him a kick, sending him flying, "think so!" Dev-Em smashed into some controls. There was an explosion, the alarm sounded. Kara fell backwards from the concusion "Aahh..!" she said. "Warning Stabilizers damaged!" Was the announcement from the ship's computer, "Navigational Systems Damaged! Control System Damaged! Searching for nearest Emergency Landing site!"

Dev-Em tried to grab Kara's throat. Kara pulled out her Sun crystal. "You won't see any of Krypton's future!" Kara said, and she stabbed Dev-Em with it, and for some reason it penetrated Dev-Em's skin where the metal shard would not. Dev-Em screamed. The broken shards under the skin of Dev-Ems hand were growing!

"Emergency landing site found…" The ship's computer announced, "Damage to ship is incalculable. Starting Landing procedure now. Kara sat in the pilot's seat. "Computer, this is Captain Kara Zor-El! Release the controls to me!" she said.

"Emergency landing procedure aborted. Controls are now active," the computer replied. Kara said, "Thank you! Now reconfigure our trajectory to…" "Alert! Alert! Fire in the control pan…" the computer said. "No!" Kara screamed as her controls shorted out. "Self-Repair Initiated," The computer announced. The ship plummeted through the planet's atmosphere. Kara wrestled with the controls as they caught on fire. The Alarm sounded. "Move move! Kell, Help me…" Kara said. "Warning," the computer announced, "Impact in 5…, 4…, 3…" Kara screamed as she saw the white landscape out the window draw nearer. There was a big Kaboom as the ship impacted on the ice. The ship landed hard, Kara was thrown violently across the bridge, she should have been injured if not killed by the impact, but she was not. The ship settled on the ice Dev-Em was dead, the red sun crystal expanded within his body The hatch was blown open, the windows were smashed by the impact. Cold air howled inside the cabin as snow was blown in. Kara was hyperventilating as she breathed in too much oxygen. The yellow sun hung low in the horizon. Kara was seeing through the walls of the ship, hearing every sound from outside the ice cracking. It was too much! Kara put on her suit and walked outside. It was freezing, the wind whipped by blowing snow all about reducing visibility to zero.

Kara wandered, the ice sheets for weeks in her environmental suit. The yellow Sun rose in the east and set in the west as Kara headed south, she left a transponder in the scout ship so she could find it again, as this planet had no GPS system. Using her suit cameras, she could get a fix on the star patterns of the night sky, her suit chronometer timed when the Sun rose and set, so she could determine how far east or west she went. So far endless expanses of ice was all she saw. Kara Zor-El had come to explore the planet Earth, what she hadn't counted on was that she would have to do it alone.

"Oh Rao, I miss you Kell," Kara said aloud just to hear her voice, for she had no one to talk to. Also the suit's energy reserves were running low, it could endlessly recycle Kryptonian air so long as there was power, but the suit's power was running low, the Scout ship, was as far north as it could possibly be on this planet and still be on dry land, and this endless ice sheet was huge! Finally she could see the end of the ice sheet.

It was a desolate landscape, some grass growing on the shores of a lake, the water fed by the melt of the endless glacier that Kara just got off of. The suit issued its final low power warning and then shut down. Now Kara had no choice but to breathe the native air. "Oh Rao, Here I go!" Kara said. Kara broke the seal of her helmet, and the native air rushed in. Kara felt dizzy, there was too much oxygen in this air, the gravity was too low, and the sights and sounds of her enhanced senses assaulted her brain, it was too much, the chirping of crickets in the grass, the crack and thunder of the ice sheets, the lapping of waves against the shore. Kara lay down in the grass, covering her ears, closing her eyes trying to shut out the World because it was all too much and too big. She had to focus on one little thing, she chose a single cricket in the grass.

After a time, the world seemed smaller, she didn't have to hear every sound or see through objects if she didn't want to. It was toward the end of the day, when she finally got her senses together. Kara got out her suit, it consisted of a blue jump suit with an 'S' on it, her family emblem, and a red cape, She had red boots and a red belt, not exactly cold weather gear, and she felt the cold, but for some reason it didn't bother her, she wasn't shivering, she just felt cool. The wind howled from the glacier carrying her body heat away, but her body just replaced it, Kara was not getting cold, her limbs weren't getting numb, she stuck her hand in the icy water of the lake, it felt refreshing.

Kara took a drink, she saw some fish swimming in the lake, Kara was not looking forward to having to kill things in order to eat. Kara examined the fish, they did not look like intelligent creatures. Krypton had fish too. In the water were some birds. Kara walked slowly towards a group of them, she could see their webbed feet they swam with, and apparently their body fat made them light enough to float on water, as she suspected those wings were for flying, as she got within a certain distance they flew away flapping their wings and making a strange honking sound as they flew. "What a fascinating planet," Kara said, again she wanted to hear her own voice, as there was no one to talk to, "Damn that Dev-Em, you killed my whole crew!" Kara shouted to the waves, her voice echoed off the glacier nearby, a large chunk of it fell into the lake with a loud boom. Tears came to Kara's eyes, "I am not supposed to be on this planet!" she shouted, to anyone who would listen, but there was no one here. "You know," Kara said, "This might not be a bad place to live, once you got used to it." The question that came to Kara's mind was whether the planet was inhabited or not, she did not know.

This planet was not supposed to be the target of colonization or terraforming, the Sun was too yellow for one thing, unlike the Krypton Sun which was red. Kara jumped 100 feet into the air, and then fell back down. A fall like this would have killed her on Krypton, and for some reason, Kara didn't think this world's low gravity explained all of it. "This Sun's radiation is doing something to me!" Kara realized, she picked up a rock and threw it, it went off into the sky and disappeared like a bullet. Kara picked up another rock and crushed it with her bare hands. "I knew there was some reason I was putting some dents in the walls of my ship, as I fought him. The red sun crystal I stabbed him with seemed to negate his ability, which was strange!" "Kara, you got to stop talking to yourself!' Kara added. A week later Kara was in a forest, it was a pine forest, Krypton had similar trees. Kara also saw flowers, they were pretty, and they smelled nice too. Out in a clearing were some deer, they didn't seem to mind her, unless she got to close. Kara had a few fish for dinner. Kara found that if she stared at an object and really focused on it, she could make it hot, she ignited a pile of wood to cook the fish that she grabbed out of the nearby stream, it was a little tricky catching the fish, as the water made the fish look closer than they were, but she could go after the fish, she could run on top of the water and catch up with the fish as it swam away, then dove down and grabbed it. Kara noted that her speed and agility here were incredible. A large brown bear then stood on its hind legs and roared, it was enormous, and a creature this size on Krypton would have been frightening. The creature pounced on her, Kara simply threw it off, the bear lunged again, tried to bite her arm, but its teeth would not penetrate her skin. Kara shoved it away again, the bear ran into the forest. Kara headed west now, there was a huge ocean on the western end of this continent, Kara wanted to go check it out.

A few weeks later the countryside was drier, the vegetation was sparser, the sun even felt hot, some prickly leafless plants dotted the landscape. Kara drilled a few times with her bare hands to obtain some ground water, she even bore through some rock, didn't hurt her a bit. Kara cupped some water and drank it. Kara scrambled out of the hole she dug and soared in the air, she didn't leap, she flew, this was fantastic, she had dreamed of flying, and now she could actually do it! There were lots of animals here, no intelligent company. Kara was lonely, she wished there was some alien creature she could talk to, but it looked like this continent was uninhabited. None of the animals she encountered looked like they spoke a language, Kara was good at picking up languages, one of the reasons the Kryptonian council picked her for this mission. Most animals she'd met only made a single repeated sound or a couple of them, none of them looked to be tool using, but now Kara learned she could fly, she could cover ground more quickly now. Kara took off towards the sky.

After a time, Kara flew over a huge Canyon, Kara landed on the bank of the river that flowed down its bottom. The canyon was huge. Kara yelled, "Hello!" in Kryptonian, her voice echoed across the canyon walls, but no one answered her. Kara checked her communications device, her scout ship was still under self-repair, and the main reactor had started again. Maybe, Kara thought, her mission could be carried out here, she wondered what that would be like, especially raising a bunch of Kryptonian kids with superpowers, she had the feeling they would destroy the scout ship in no time. Kara looked around at the various rock strata on the canyon walls, with her x-ray vision, she noticed that some contained fossils, some of some rather large creatures with teeth. Kara decided to come back here once the scout ship was fully operational so she could record her observations for posterity, part of her mission was to do science after all. Kara flew out of the canyon, flying west.

There were some snow-capped mountains up ahead, Kara flew over them, from her geology studies, Kara knew the mountains and their rain shadow effect was what caused the desert that she flew over previously. The mountains were high, but Kara flew over them without too much trouble, she spotted a pack of wolves chasing down a deer. The mountain range was wide, finally after a while she was over the continental divide. She passed over some lush valleys fed by streams and rivers from the mountain meltwaters. Kara landed and caught herself some trout from one of the nearby rivers, there were berries in the nearby bushes, Kara gorged herself on them, particularly the blackberries that she loved. Kara spent the night under the stars, it rained a few times, but she didn't mind. Kara got up and flew further to the west, there she spotted a huge ocean with waves crashing over the white sandy beaches. Kara landed on the white sand. There were some palm trees growing nearby. Kara looked around, still no sign of habitation, Kara wished there were somebody she could talk to. "Hello," Kara said in Kryptonian, "Anybody here?" Kara received no answer but the crashing of the waves and the shrill cry of the seagulls. Kara walked along the beach for a bit. Krypton had beaches of course, no lifeguards here of course, the vegetation was somewhat arid here, she had a feeling it would be better to build a settlement further north. Kara took off and followed the coastline north. In some places the mountains went right up to the shore and plummeted down to the ocean where huge waves crashed against the rocks, Kara flew low enough to feel some of the spray on her face.

Kara was on the beach of this lonely cold planet, and there he spotted it, a boxy spaceship, there were two long engine pods underneath, a dirty blonde haired man in a yellow shirt with insignia and black pants was discussing something with another taller fellow with dark hair who was wearing a blue shirt it insignia and similar pants, Kara noticed he had pointed ears. Who were these people, Kara wondered, they looked like Kryptonians. Obviously they were in uniform. Another fellow in a red shirt and insignia was holding a device warily in such a manner which suggested it was a weapon. Kara's super hearing picked up the conversation, but it was not in a language she was familiar with. Kara decided she had enough of this planet, obviously some of these people were from her homeworld, though much seems to have changed while she hibernated in her cryochamber, could it be that some means of faster than light travel was developed? That would mean her whole mission to this planet was superfluous. Kara lost her crew to this stoleaway madman, and her starship was wrecked, and she developed these powers that she could not explain. Perhaps it would be best not to advertise them to these people until she can get a ride off this planet and perhaps learn their language.

Spock held his tricorder out, "Captain," he said, I'm picking up a life form at 400 meters and closing!"

"Is it human?" Kirk asked. "It reads as humanoid," replied Spock, "of a species that I am not familiar with." A blonde haired girl stepped out from behind a rocky outcropping from the craggy weather beaten cliff. The girl had crystal blue eyes and appeared to wear a uniform consisting of a red cape, a blue shirt with a large 'S' insignia entrapped in a red diamond on her chest, and she wore a red miniskirt and long red boots. The security officer Pete Carlson held his phaser warily as the blonde woman approached. "Hello miss, we mean you know harm." The young woman continued to approach Kirk. "Captain," Spock warned, "I'm getting incredible density readings from this woman …" But before he could continue, the strange woman kissed Kirk. Kirk noticed that this girl's grip was incredibly strong, he could not break her embrace if he wanted to, but it felt good, so he just let it continue until she let go. The girl released Kirk, the security officer held his phaser up nervously. The girl proceeded towards the shuttlecraft. Kirk's communicator chimed, "Scott here, the engines are ready to make the slingshot maneuver, though I must admit, it will be sometime before we can get the transporter back online. "That's good to hear Mr. Scott, I think we are done here, and we are bringing a visitor, I don't think she belongs here either." The girl said something which the Universal Translator wouldn't translate. McCoy was examining some plant specimens as the girl stepped inside, "What the Devil, who is she?" McCoy exclaimed. "I don't know apologized Kirk, we'd best take her with us however, it doesn't look like she belongs in Earth's Ice Age, and she is obviously from an advanced culture. I'm willing to bet she took a ride in that same black hole which flung us back 20,000 years, and in the mean time we can get the Universal Translator to work on that mysterious language of hers.

Kara Zor El was grateful to have company once again, being marooned on this planet was too much, maybe after she learned this new language she can find out what has been happening back on Krypton during her long voyage. Kara liked the guy in the yellow shirt, from the way the others were addressing him, she thought his name was Kirk. Kara pointed to herself and said, "Kara Zor El" to indicate that was her name, the others seemed to understand that and nodded their heads, the one in the yellow shirt said something and indicated his name was Kirk, just as she suspected, the other two were McCoy, Spock, and they nervous looking guy in the red shirt was named Carlson. Kara smiled at them all, she was grateful to have company at last, and where ever they were going, that was fine with her, and it would do a lot better than staying here!