Superman: The Ark of Krypton
Chapter 114
by
Jason Richard
"It's very simple," said Lytener testily as they flew in a military chopper. "It's a neural interface. Just think what you want to happen, and it will happen. We've already gone over the abilities of that suit."
"I'm trying," said the soldier wearing Lytener's suit. "It's not working. Why couldn't this technology have been put into a tank?"
"I couldn't make a program complicated enough to control some of these functions," said Lytener, growing impatient. "A neural interface was the only system I could come up with."
Lytener's readings were all wrong as well. The suit should be working, but it couldn't translate this soldier's brain waves. It didn't make sense. Apart from a few upgrades, it was virtually identical to his last suit, and that had worked flawlessly.
And that suit had been allocated to his brain waves...specifically Edward Lytener's brainwaves.
It hit him like a punch to the gut. His last suit had been calibrated to his brain and no one else's. He hadn't bothered to test it with anyone else because he hadn't intended anyone else to wear it. If he'd wanted someone else to wear this new suit, of course, the neural interface would have needed slight adjustments in its creation. After all the calibrations he had gone over, hours and hours spent going over the design, how could he have overlooked such a simple thing?
And the worst part of it all? He didn't have time to readjust it now. If he wanted the suit to help, he'd had to do the unthinkable. He'd have to wear it himself.
And fight the Kryptonian army personally.
...
The last time Kara had flown in one of these pods her entire planet had exploded behind her. It wasn't a pleasant memory, but she stifled her emotions as she held the rifle like device. All she had to do was close the portal before the Kryptonian criminals. She had her new powers, and this pod had Kryptonian probes to protect it, each of them controlled by JLAI 13 (she still refused to call it Brainiac) but despite telling herself these things she couldn't help but feel a little nervous. She'd already closed the portal once.
And General Zod would be expecting her this time.
...
John Corbyn still couldn't get used to how this mechanical body felt. He knew the synthetic skin was replaceable, and would inevitably need to be, given the kind of fights he'd be getting into, but everything still felt off. As he sat in this first-class jet drinking the wine Lex Luthor so generously provided it still tasted like some sort of diet wine to him.
Also, he apparently couldn't get drunk anymore. He wasn't sure how he felt about that.
Hopefully showing some superpowered aliens who was boss would make him feel better. Probably. He was feeling better just thinking about it.
...
The red blasts left him in a daze for a moment. As Superman stood up, sand falling from his clothes, he saw the Kryptonians gaining ground, jumping over the red shields to hit the banks behind them. He was about to fly to help but had to turn around when he heard Ursa flying at him at full speed.
He punched back, their fists colliding, the shockwave kicking up sand around them and making Ursa wince. The gap between their power had closed a little, but Superman wasn't quite to her level yet.
She'd have to fix that.
Superman threw out a barrage of punches, which Ursa dodged. Though Superman was still faster, Ursa's military training gave her something that Superman had never needed. Immaculate precision. Ursa could move only as much as necessary to get out of the way of each punch, allowing her to shift into her next movement immediately. Superman, however, tended to overshoot his punches and was unable to correct his momentum to change his fists direction, meaning the punch kept a split second after Superman needed to pull it back.
While a fraction of a second of lost time didn't seem like much most of the time, when one was battling at those speeds even a microsecond was everything, and Ursa was just barely able to keep from getting hit as she bobbed and weaved around Superman's blows gracefully.
And when an opening finally appeared, she took it, punching Superman in the face with a thunderous crack and sending him flying backward over the Sand. Superman, stopping his momentum and rubbing his sore face, knew he couldn't deal with the other Kryptonians with this one on his back, so he attacked again, but with different tactics.
He once again launched a barrage of punches, which she danced around as they flew in the air, but Superman shot a blast of heat vision at her eyes, blinding her for a second, before punching her with so much force she fell to the sand and left a crater.
Ursa recovered quickly and flew up, but Superman launched another barrage of punches before blasting her heat vision again. Ursa blocked it with her arm and prepared to block another punch, but Superman threw a kick to her gut instead, sending her flying once more.
When Ursa flew back up this time, she started shooting heat vision of her own. Superman dodged, but Ursa knew how to hit a moving target, and Superman got struck and thrown backward more than he would have liked. Even so, Superman wanted her to use heat vision. When he'd first started using that power, the beams were ragged and wild, which wasted more energy than necessary. Ursa's blasts were like that, a stark contrast to the straight, precise heat blasts Superman had spent years honing.
If Ursa kept shooting heat vision like that, she'd drain herself too fast to keep up, and sure enough, Ursa found herself falling for just a second.
It was all Superman needed. He hit her with one more blow, sending her sliding through the sands. This time she clutched her stomach in pain, unable to stand. Superman winced, thinking that he might have taken this too far. Even so, he was prepared to throw her back towards the portal and start keeping the rest of the Kryptonians out as well.
But before he got within ten feet of Ursa, something came flying out of nowhere, knocking Superman through the sky.
Superman recovered and turned around in the air to see the last thing he wanted to. Zod and Non were flying as well, Zod being the one who had punched him from the side. The Kryptonian general grinned, loving every ounce of the power he'd managed to absorb, while Non just grunted, happy for a fight.
Even Ursa flew up to join them, making this three on one while the Kryptonian army started to edge their way out of the portal and push the red sun tanks back. Superman realized that the odds were turning out of his favor, and he didn't know how to turn them back.