Deep in the night sky on the far side of Ganymede, a few bright blips of light flashed and went out in less than the blink of an eye. At first, the various monitors of the celestial neighborhood continued on their rounds, blissfully unaware of the predator that had entered their midst. Yet as a trio of large, unidentified objects blasted away from the area where the flashes of light had gone off and rocketed from planet to planet, growing ever closer to the solar core, certain of the satellites, dishes, towers, and eventually the more expensive brands of backyard telescopes began pointing their opticals in the direction of the approaching strangers. As they drew near to the blue marble that was their destination, the powerful space monitoring devices put out by governments and space agencies sized them up. They were long, ridged looking planks made out of some undiscernible metallic looking substance that oscillated and shimmered as they reflected the sunlight. Two of the ships were smaller; almost half the size of the central ship they were flanking which, at that very moment, officials were starting to remark was almost the size of Manhattan. And aboard that central ship, in a recess deep within its cybernetic bowls, sat a hunched, brooding and sinister intellect who gazed through transparent vid screens showing the various planetary broadcasts all speculating on the nature of the craft. He saw through the screens at the blue marble that now took up most of the outer display used by the navigators in the pit below him as a visual reference in the vastness of space. He saw the blue marble and his brow furrowed in rage at the sight. Circling the planet in a tight, desperate arc was the comparatively ramshackle looking tower that housed his foes. Kal El the intellect thought. Where are you, last son of Krypton?
One of his servants, the gangly, gray skinned, cloaked figure of Desaad, looked up from his control panel station which was located near to wear his master was now seated. The robed humanoid turned to his master with a sweeping bow and declared in a voice that could have belonged to the serpent of Eden, "Your forces await your command, sire."
There was a tense pause, and then the intellect raised his hand into the air almost lazily. At this gesture, a grin split across the face of the servant Desaad, and he turned to the other beings in the pit with arms held wide and screeched, "Commence the attack!"
As the various Earthling news casts puzzled and speculated over the nature of the cosmic visitors, claxons were sounding on the Watchtower. Those who currently manned the perilous station knew all too well the nature of those ships and even now were bitterly cursing the Earth governments for disarming their most powerful weapons just before the arrival of such a dreaded nemesis. Then came the long streaking lines that originated from the strange ships and reached across the vastness of space towards the tower. In that vastness, it would have been nearly impossible to make out the tiny white pixels which broke off from the tower, but upon closer observation with higher power telescopes, one could see just enough to determine that these were, in fact, escape pods being jettisoned from the tower. Not all were able to make it away from the station in time before the beams of light from the ships reached the tower and disintegrated it, leaving those below in a mixture of shock and horror. Now the television programs broadcasting into the void speculated not on the nature of the ships, but on who among their greatest defenders did not make it off the station in time.
Desaad grinned maniacally as he watched the action unfold on his view screen, but when he turned and beheld the face of his dread master, he was surprised to find the same look of dour concentration carved thereupon. The dark mind lifted his hand a second time and Desaad gave the order to the other ship crews. Before long, a hundred smaller craft had begun detaching themselves from their places on the main craft like a school of fish clinging to the body of a great whale. Soon a red light came on above the head of the leader of the fleet and a metallic warning noise sounded. His throne descended into the floor, its progress through the bowels of his ship growing more and more rapid until it reached a pinnacle and suddenly slowed to a gentle rest at the center of the deck of his interdictor cruiser. The cruiser detached itself from the command ship and the master watched as his slaves carefully glided the ship through the thin, foreign atmosphere of the blue planet.
When the ship rocketed out of the clouds and descended towards the city of Metropolis, the once shining city was already littered with smoke and flames. The insignificant aircrafts of the natives crawled through the air and hurled their puny explosive weapons uselessly against the cruiser's power shields which disintegrated them a few feet from the shining hull of the ship in a spray of particulates. The master watched with satisfaction as his slaves intuited his order and used the cruisers ventral canons to swat the native ships from the sky with minimal effort.
As the ship passed over the main part of the city, energy beams sprayed out from the hull and raked the streets destroying vehicles, military weapons, and carving away the supports of buildings. The natives were in full retreat by the time the real competition arrived within scanning range. The master ordered his slaves to bring the ship down near the city's largest central park and they wasted no time in complying.
When the ship came down upon its freshly extended metal landing appendages, a ramp opened up before the throne. As the master rose from the chair it folded itself back into the floor. A long metal staff rose from that same floor and the hand of the sinister destroyer grabbed it in an iron grip before the ramp levitated him to the surface of the planet he had come to subjugate. He could feel the armored suit he was wearing begin to pressurize around his body to compensate with the change in atmosphere as he passed through an air lock. The slight green flicker of the atmospheric mask that encompassed his head danced at the edges of his vision.
As he set his first, giant booted step upon the mushy soil of this alien world, a soft world and a soft people, he heard his name called by a defiant sounding voice. He looked ahead to see the glimmering sight of the Queen of the Amazons, flanked by the warriors she had brought with her to this place to defy him. They looked imposing in their plated armor and winged helms, but the sight only gave the dark lord momentary pause. He listened halfheartedly to the woman's words of challenge and then waited for the inevitable charge, and before long his patience was rewarded.
As the Amazons rushed him in an encircling maneuver, the dark lord almost felt a little disappointed at the predictability of this encounter. Then he drove both his fists into the ground, creating a shockwave that threw the Amazons back just as they were about to reach him. Then, one by one, he proceeded to methodically break them; hurling them into distant buildings, cracking bones, eviscerating them with untold volts from his laser vision, and blasting them with shockwaves emanating from the power crystals located in the palms of his gauntlets.
The women tried nobly to defend their leader as they battled with the great, stone faced invader all across the city, smashing through cars and toppling over buildings, but in the end, it was just between the Queen Hippolyta and the nightmare Darkseid as the latter cast aside the last of the former's shield maidens.
Hippolyta sat hunched against a pile of rubble near the top of one of Metropolis's many spires. A great thicket of pipes and wiring sprayed and sputtered in a charged cloud of smoke before her, creating a menacing sight when Darkseid levitated through it. Wiping the blood from her mouth, Hippolyta raised her voice one last time, though now it had lost much of the defiance of earlier. Now it was a scratching, ragged sound as she formed the words, "Earth will never be yours. You've already lost. The thing you came for is already gone. There is nothing for you here. Go home or you will be destroyed. Whether it be today in battle or a hundred years of slow, steady resistance, you will come to regret the day you ever came here."
"It no longer matters if what I have come for is here or not," the dark lord replied in his low, cracking, rocky voice. "The people of Earth must know the price for defying Darkseid. There is only one possible outcome now."
Hippolyta cast a defeated look to the Earth before her. Then, seemingly with renewed resolve, she looked up into the eyes of her foe and spat, "Come on then, do you worst!"
She rose to her feet and barely had time to heft her sword one last time before Darkseid closed the distance between them and swatted the blade away. Then he picked up the Amazon by the neck. The woman flailed weakly as Darkseid finally began to crack a smile. Then he hurled the woman through an opening in the wall and watched with cool satisfaction as the woman's body plummeted dozens of stories down to disappear in a cloud of street dust. Then he turned his gaze back to the skyline of the city that his greatest enemy once so cherished. He breathed deep the filtered alien atmosphere and took in the distant screams and sounds of battle. He had returned after all these years to the one planet he could not conquer, and this time he was already starting to feel at home.