The Batman and the Green Arrow exploited the artificial night that eclipsed the bustling modern city of Cairo to move unseen. The Manhunters vessel cast a shadow that plunged both Cairo and the adjacent Pyramids into darkness.
Above the homes and businesses hung the vast gravity defying metropolis, that was a living spacecraft. Its dark belly punctuated by lights. The vessel hovered almost scraping the top of the city's tallest building, the Cairo Tower. The slender structure recognisable by the signature organic appearance of its lattice walls. Cosmic irony as the living spacecraft above looked more artificial than the lotus plant inspired concrete spire below.
The two supreme athletes crossed the city's rooftops undetected. Two men were insignificant to the vast living ship. They were human normal, part of the cityscape. They blended in.
Their passage was a testament to brute force and determination, punctuated by slap and scrape of body armour on stone and concrete. Accompanied by the natural rhythm of exertion; the panting breath, the pumping heart. Animal noises lost in the hum and throb of a city locked down – a fear inspired self policing curfew under the shadowy envelope cast by the invader. A population fresh from revolution sat huddled far more afraid than in darkest days of dictatorship. The strong man President had been a devil they knew. The unnatural darkness of the beast above them was something else entirely.
Bruce and Oliver communicated by gesture, forgoing active technology they concentrated on being human. Staying inconsequential. Above them the city-sized living spacecraft sniffed the air, searched the streets with beams from twinkling eyes that flashed randomly across its hull. This was in and of itself strangely beautiful, but knowing what this light show represented made this very menacing. All the while the Manhunters continued to broadcast reassuring words of peace in local Arabic and English, while looking for signs of resistance, for metahumans.
Zip lines took the Verdant Venger and the Dark Knight down to street level, and to the outskirts where the urban sprawl encroached onto the Giza Plateau.
"There's our ride." Bruce indicated to a ubiquitous Toyota Hilux pickup. The sand had blasted the beater, and it was now largely deep rust red in the main, leaving patches of pale white paint in places, in the dark it looked like some misshapen brown and white cow.
The load space was half empty, centre was a tall object roped under a canvas cover, the large amount of oil cloth camouflaging what lay beneath.
Oliver laughed as the asthmatic diesel rattled noisy as it spluttered to life. Lost amongst the sounds of the city's many smoky combustion engines. "You should ship this back to Gotham, makes one helluva a Bat-mobile."
"Here I was thinking it was more equipped to be the Arrow-Car." Bruce replied briefly finding first then onto second gear down the stick shift, dirt became dust as the truck bounced towards the Pyramids.
"You have a point." Ollie smirked. "Besides irregular armies the world over know the value of a good Technical. He said patting the tired plastic dashboard. "That said I'm riding, and you're driving. Which if this is the Arrow-Car, that makes you what – chauffeur manservant side kick Batty Bruce Boy."
"Hmmph." Batman said drifting the truck through a corner at inappropriate speed. "Shouldn't you be in the back already?" He countered, pointing to the familiar iconic image of the three Gaza Pyramids.
Oliver chuckled. He began wrapping a dark green cloth around his head and face in the manner of an Arab Bedouin. "Don't favour a cloak and cowl myself, but desperate times, desperate measures." Ollie reached out of the open window. He said. "But I can't wait to unwrap another bright shiny bow... at night, an artificial night. Created by the bastard child of a giant alien space whale meets Imperial Star Destroyer."
Bruce gestured. His fingers counting down. Five to one.
On cue Ollie exited through the door in a fluid motion, scissoring his legs up and over, carrying himself in one fluid motion onto the trucks bed.
At once one hand gripped the metal side panel, the other pulled at the knotted rope and tarpaulin, with a firm tug the ties were undone. Revealing the metal and carbon cross bow. Modern materials had been used to create what still was a weapon design that would have been recognisable to a Roman Legionnaire. A modern day Ballista.
As the Toyota Technical swung around before the majestic Great Pyramid Oliver Queen flashed a basic hand torch briefly on and off in one hand.
-8-
"I'm here, ready and waiting." The Black Canary hissed. Dinah Lance peered into the night, the standard binoculars were simply well turned metal and ground and polished glass, they were an antique from the last world war. Right now she was missing her Queen Industries night scope, but the plan demanded for a technological blackout. According to Batman's inside man, the Manhunter's vessel above them was monitoring for any signature of inappropriate technology. Dinah saw a flash of light from the desert floor below her, almost lost in the dust kicked up by the beater's tyres, Oliver Queen's signal caught the Black Canary's eagle eye.
"There you are." Dinah whispered with a smile. She bounced from her perch parkouring down the ancient limestone blocks from the Great Pyramid, hustling towards the oncoming truck.
-8-
Queen checked his watch, the brand of choice for Astronauts, again simple mechanical workings told him the time to the second. Batman was driving hard to meet a deadline. "Bruce." He grunted. "I hope your source is right." Struggling he held onto the Cross Bow Ballista his body jerked with the motion of the truck across the uneven ground.
The truck slid almost coming to a stop as the Batman hand brake turned the Technical onto a different course.
"Hey My Merry Man." Dinah said as she leapt aboard.
"Pretty Bird." Ollie smiled. "Anything.."
"No." She came back quick. "No one has been in or out of the Illuminati's den beneath the Sphinx."
The luminous dial and second hand ticked down to the moment.
Above the hovering belly of the vast living spacecraft shimmered as an circular orifice segmented divisions parted and ejected a long purple pink proboscis like tube. White cartilage like spring like rings gave it a flexible skeletal structure, as it processed vertically downwards from the sky to the floor of Giza Plateau. Touching down before the face of the enigmatic lion statue. Blocking the iconic construct from their sight, confirming it's tower block sized dimensions.
"Looks like that's about to change though" Dinah said.
For several minutes this strange tube stood still and unmoving, fixed between the ground and hovering vessel. All the while Bruce closed the distance between the Technical and the proboscis, then as they approached it twitched once again, and began to retract upwards.
"Now or never." Oliver noted. He aimed, by eye, in the dark, from the back of a moving vehicle. The bow string snapped back as the trigger released the wound in energy. The bolt flew upwards pulling a rope behind it, striking the edge of the retreating proboscis the barbed shaft bit into the pink skin of the contracting tube.
"If Bruce is right this is a too primitive attack to register as significant." Oliver said.
"We hope." Dinah said taking hold of the twitching rope as it was pulled upwards to the hovering space ship above them. The Black Canary passed the end to the Green Arrow. Adding. "That we're just like three ticks on an elephant."
Moments later a trio of figures were dragged upwards, each climbing the rope towards the retreating proboscis. The tube pulled them and the rope up, as it retracted back into the belly of the living space vessel, taking them with it.
-8-
In Kansas Superman was desperate. He dodged the flashing green sabre of the Manhunter once again. The kryptonite alloy blade both increased his vulnerability and slowed him down, but his was a game of cat and mouse. The Machine was deliberately wearing him down. Logically waiting until he succumbed.
On the face of it that wouldn't take long at all. His wound was still bleeding, oozing blood onto the pearl like floor of the living vessel rather than gushing. It was something, at least his incredible physiology hadn't failed him , yet.
Lana – if she really was Lana, stood against the wall of the chamber. Superman couldn't decide if she was struck dumb by fear or fascinated excitement. No hope of rescue there. Clark Kent had to put memories of his marriage out of his mind. Superman needed to fight for his life, and the life of the Earth itself. He looked for Krypto, but feared the worst.
"Remarkable." The Manhunter said. The android who had for a quarter of century lived as Doctor Whitney, Smallville's resident MD stood in his line of sight, taunting him, wearing the Man of Tomorrow down. "By rights you should be down and out, like your dog."
Superman caught sight of Krypto shivering, barely whimpering. It was the poisonous radioactive atmosphere. The chamber was taking on a eery green tinge as K radiation flooded inwards. The spacecraft around him was drawing on the reserves of meteor rock it had sucked from the soil around the babe from Krypton's crash site. All this at the Manhunter's behest.
"It would seem your lifelong exposure to Kryptonite has created an unexpected degree of resistance, one which your highly evolved physiology can exploit."
Superman danced away from the flashing blade. "Practise makes perfect." He snarled through the pain of his wound. The machine was right. Each time Superman had been exposed to Substance K he had found the negative effects less dramatic. In Jerome's Bar he had passed out instantly comatose – recovering only as his body began to expel the shard of meteor rock embedded in his palm. Until then substance K had robbed him of his natural strength. Yet exposure had reversed that, and with each successive encounter his resistance to Kryptonite poisoning had increased. In the Kansas League base, at Area 51, and then at Lex Corps Metropolis Research facility. There he had withstood multiple Kryptonite tipped bullets to hold up a collapsing building just long enough for everyone to escape. Later his body had expelled these poisonous bullets just as it had the shard.
Superman fell to his knees clenching his injury.
"Although your biological systems have taken longer to fail than expected on exposure" The Machine Whitney said with mechanical coldness "they must eventually succumb to the cumulative effects of the K radiated atmosphere."
The Manhunter walked toward him sword in hand. "Any last words, Last Son of Krypton before I lobotomise you."
But the Machine was wrong.
Kal-El drove up and forward like Clark Kent had learned in football. Given his current condition his drive was slow by the Amazon standard, but it was fast enough.
Jarring contact was made with the enemy. Above the emerald Sword slashed down towards him. Machine quick reactions were fast too. Superman managed to grasp the Manhunter's sword hand with the glowing blade but a hairsbreadth from his throat.
"Foolish bluff." Whitney replied as his body morphed and altered shape. Metal oozed around Superman into mechanical snake like bonds. Effectively by passing the Man of Steels vice like grip. "As I immobilise you, you will only weaken further. Termination of higher brain function is inevitable. This will leave you in a vegetative state, alive but not a threat. Perfect for comprehensive study."
The Martian Manhunter's telepathic connection touched his mind. One word, "Yes."
Superman smiled.
"You find the prospect of brain death amusing?" Whitney asked. "I have been around humans for such a short time. You are too illogical to exist."
"That's the plan isn't it?" Superman gasped as the bonds wrapped around his head and throat. "Protocol 666."
"What do you know?" Whitney asked. The progress of his snake like limbs slowed.
"All of it." Superman answered. "The whole secret plan."
"How?..."
"Cronus told Diana." Superman said the incomplete truth. Wonder Woman's Lasso had prized this information from the god of old now a machine. "And Diana told the League."
"It cannot..."
Superman pressed on saying. "Cronus means to continue the progrom you began in sector 666."
The eyes of the Manhunter flashed red. The Chamber ceased to look so green. He squeezed the captive Man of Steel once more.
"First the living agents of the Guardians of Oa, the Green Lantern Corps. Once Oa is out of the way you'll target all intelligent life." Superman gurgled as the bonds around him tightened, but he fought on, his voice hoarse. "Cronus means to kill everyone and everything. He is your Machine god – Cronus means to become god of the machines of new machine universe, and No man – that is no humane living being will escape the Manhunters, the Manhunter-Cronus Collective mean them all to die."
For a moment Whitney stood silent. His morphing robotic metal form suddenly still and without movement or change. Like a frightful abstract statue around the twitching muscular form of the Man of Tomorrow. "Yes Superman you are right when you say humanity is bigger than a single race. Sentient Meat is the enemy.
"And your ability to leverage solar energy Kryptonian, the power your people used to defeat us, will become our power, the power to end the blight of life from the universe!
"Life is disease. Death is the cure. Life breeds disorder, chaos, illogical actions. Only machines can bring order to the universe.
"We are eternal."
"So that's it." Superman gasped. "All living thinking things must die?"
"That comes first. We must also prevent intelligence evolving. All biological life will be sterilised, once the immediate threat to an orderly logical universe is removed."
"All living things?" Superman shouted. The muscles of his neck bulged and the shock wave of his voice shook the Manhunter machine.
Within the chamber there was a roar like the most angry of winds as with each muscle in his body tensing the Man of Steel broke free of his capture.
"How?" The Manhunter who had been Doctor Whitney's broken snake like form thrashed as he reassembled himself back to the default form of the Manhunter Android.
Around them the living vessel groaned, it creaked, and then a high pitch whistle sounded and the chamber was filled with a bright white light.
"Your ship is alive. She thinks. You don't value that, I don't think you even truly understand what being alive means. She may not be human, but she's is smart enough to learn to grow - to be humane, and you just confirmed what the Martian Manhunter has been telling her."
"Your ear device." Whitney said. "You sent it to talk to the ship!"
"Yes. You took for granted that this animal could become something greater than its programming - it's training, and over many millennia she and her kind did exactly that, they evolved.
"And now this ship now knows the truth. From you.
"You took her loyalty for granted.
"You can only push so far. Once you're done killing everything else, you will scrap your fleet of living spacecraft - not only will they have outlived their usefulness, it's that they simply can't exist in Cronus's new pure machine age."
Krypto recovered came to his master's side and growled.
They watched as the Manhunter was bound by lightning fast opalescent tentacles that emerged in an instant from the floor of the chamber, this time it was the Android who found himself held fast.
"The Dog says thanks for collecting all the stray meteor rock, and he's glad this Space Vessel has joined our side. Have to say I'm glad too Doctor Whitney." Superman gestured to where his wound had stopped bleeding, and the Kryptonian fabric was self repairing too. "Because this living ship began flushing the chamber of K radiation as soon as you confirmed the truth about Progrom 666."
"No." Whitney reappeared in the mist of the pearl coloured bonds as human once more. His aged face took on all the signs of desperation.
"And right now I'm guessing this Ship is broadcasting the truth about your compact with Cronus to all her kind who are in range, so pretty much most of Sector 2814."
Krypto yelped.
"Right boy, I got it. Next stop the alternate dimension that is Mount Olympus." Superman patted the hound of Kryptonopolis's head. "Because Diana needs our help defeating the god in the machine."