Superman: The Ark of Krypton

By

Jason Richard

Kara flew through space as fast as she could, wearing two black gloves with machinery running through them. These were the teleportation receivers that Brainiac constructed, and would allow her to receive weapons built by Brainiac. With these, she hoped to take down the Colu Ship.

She only hoped she was in time.

…

The Colu have technology for almost every situation, that was true, but it seemed that even that could only get them so far. As Superman destroyed any probes that attempted to leave the massive ship, their ability to resist his attacks ceased getting stronger. Even billions of types of technology, it seemed, was no match for the sheer amount of power a Kryptonian could put out.

This was the good news. The bad news was that the Colu's scanners figured out how Superman's powers worked, and the countermeasures came swiftly.

The Colu began firing blasts of red sun energy.

Superman dodged the red blasts, but this put him on the defensive big time, forcing him to be even more careful. It was one thing if that energy took away his powers on Earth. If he lost his abilities in the vacuum of space...

Superman kept hitting the spheres with everything he had but more and more started to get through. To top things off Luthor's robot no longer seemed able to damage them at all. Apparently, he had exhausted all his weapons and the Colu had found defenses for all of them.

Eventually, a red aura began to grow out from the ship, pushing Superman backward. If he entered that field he'd lose his power in minutes. The ship was beyond his reach now. Superman's mind raced furiously. There had to be something he could do. There just had to be.

And then, with his enhanced hearing, he heard someone flying through space toward him. He was distracted from the fact that hearing anything in space should have been physically impossible by the other fact that it was Kara he saw with his x-ray vision.

Before he could do anything Kara, dressed in her Supergirl costume, flew in and held up gloved hands. Both gloves began to glow with a soft white light and two devices materialized in her hands, both in the shape of guns. She raised them and began firing. Each used a different type of energy, one long and white, while the other was spiraling and blue.

She targeted the spheres first, blasting half of them to smithereens. The other half, it seemed, tried to adapt to the technology, their surfaces shimmering. It sort of worked, but with only one blast. When both blasts hit the sphere built up energy and then imploded from within.

Superman didn't know how they'd done it, but they'd found a way to fight Colu technology. Lex Luthor, watching back on Earth, using his robot's sensors, figured out what she'd done quickly. Turning the Colu's different types of defenses against each other was clever. He wished he'd thought of it. If they had more technology, however, there was bound to be a sequence that could take the entire ship down. He immediately began thinking it through.

Kara, meanwhile, kept shooting at the ship now that the spheres escaping from it were taken care of. She aimed at the Colu ship but was confronted with a barrage of energy projectiles. She hesitated, then flew away, trying to get to a place where she could line up a shot without getting hit, but there were so many. Even with Kryptonian speed, she couldn't find an opening.

And got hit by a time-slowing field.

As Kara inevitably slowed down, the dangerous enemy blasts zeroed in on her, leaving her no avenue for escape. Her eyes grew wide at the sight, but Superman flew in at high speed and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her away. Within moments they were a safe distance from the ship, and Kara felt miserable.

She didn't feel like a Supergirl at all.

"Are you alright?" asked Superman, pulling away from her.

"No," said Kara, gripping the weapons in her hands in frustration. "Here I thought I could come in and finish all this and I still need you to pull me out. Why couldn't I react in time?"

"I wondered that for a second," said Superman. "But I think we're both forgetting that you haven't had these powers for very long. I got my powers about the same age as you, but it was years before I had to deal with anything close to this. I had time to learn how to use these powers, while you've had them for little more than a month. You'll get better at this. You just need time."

"But we don't have time!" said Kara. "These Colu are heading for Earth now!"

"So we'll make do," said Superman, turning around. "Follow me. Fly where I fly. I'll worry about dodging the projectiles, you just hit the Colu ship with everything you have. Can you do that?"

Kara thought about it, then nodded silently. Superman turned around and smiled at her. Kara then strengthened her resolve, and then both turned forward. They waited a moment for the time field slowing Kara to slow down, and then they flew off and full speed, Kara tailing Superman's red cape.

The moment they got close the ship began firing, energy projectiles. Kara kept behind Superman as he began to weave through the enemy blasts. He had to account for the fact that Kara was behind him, but he managed to lead her on a safe path through the battlefield, even with red sun blasts all around them.

Kara, meanwhile, began shooting with the weapons in her hands, destroying Colu spheres left and right. Soon all the spheres outside the ship were destroyed. Then Kara turned the weapons on the ship but didn't get far. The Colu Ship managed to optimize their systems for that combination, making the energy projectiles bounce off the hull.

Kara, still sticking close to Superman as energy blasts flew all around them, threw the two weapons away and tapped a button on her gloves. Two new weapons materialized in her hands, and she began firing at the ship again. This time it was a red sphere from one pistol and a green ripple from the hit the ship and the entire thing shook as parts of it went dead.

"It's working!" cried Kara.

"Good!" cried Superman. "Keep going!"

Kara and Superman kept weaving through energy blasts as Kara kept shooting. Pieces of the ship were actually falling away and floating lifelessly in space. It was able to repair what was left, the Colu vessel wasn't even trying to release spheres anymore. It was now focused entirely on shooting down Superman and Kara.

The ship did eventually reconfigure it's systems to deal with this combination, causing Kara's shots to be deflected, but she simply through the two energy pistols away and summon another pair, this time each shooting two missiles the size of bullets. The small explosions, one orange and one white, took out even larger chunks of the ship.

Every time the Colu would figure out a defense against whatever method they were using, Kara, staying right behind Superman, would throw away whatever weapons she was using and teleport in another pair, and each one wreaked havoc on the Colu ship. Despite its massive size, it seemed to be getter smaller after having to repair entire sections coming off of it. For a moment, it seemed like they had this in the bag.

And then the Colu changed tactics.

All the projectiles stopped firing, and then two fields appeared around the ship. One, directly around the ship, sped up the repair process so that it was whole instantaneously. The outer field slowed the projectiles Kara fired at it. They moved slow slowly one had to look incredibly closely to see any movement at all.

A slowing field to stop the projectiles, and quickening field to speed up the repairs. By the time the fields came down, the Colu would likely have a countermeasure for what Kara was doing. Kara and Superman looked at each other in dismay.

Now what?