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Supergirl: The Elegy of Stars
Chapter 6: Diminuendo
In her dreams, Kara Zor-El flew.
Well, not so much dreams, but memories.
And not so much flew, but plummeted.
She had made the leap off Hadred's Head as her gene-sire had instructed. To make the leap as every member of the House of El had before her. To fly, or to fall.
Right now, as she continued to call out to H'Melar, she was doing the latter.
Kara Zor-El had known nothing but the gravity of Krypton, but had a human observed this moment in time, they would have found her speed of descent unnatural, given that Krypton's gravity was three times greater than Earth's. Not long after this moment, Kara Zor-El would spend six months learning to breathe Earth's atmosphere, whereas the lungs of a human infant would have been crushed within hours had the roles been reversed.
Gravity was a harsh mistress, and from one side of the universe to the next, its laws remained the same. People fell, as did civilizations.
Kara fell, while her civilization stood ready to follow. And as she continued to plummet, as she continued to call out again and again to her father's war kite, the abyss loomed ever closer.
She had leapt off the cliff's face with as much grace as she could muster, but now, she frantically clawed at the air as the darkness waited to swallow her whole. She was afraid – any observer could have seen that – but her fear went beyond just the prospect of her death in of itself.
She feared she would fail her gene-sire.
She feared that Zor-El would be left with naught but his wife to comfort him in light of his brother's excommunication.
She feared she would be forgotten in the annals of the House of El, or worse, remembered as a blot upon its memory.
She feared that none of this would matter at all. That her uncle was right. That Krypton was indeed doomed, and that all of this, from the darkest canyon to the highest spire of Kandor, would be reduced to dust.
She feared so many things, and yet, fighting the urge to scream as gravity's blade loomed, she called out once more to H'Melar. To save her, if not for her own sake, then for her rider's honour.
Her request was sincere, and as the screech of a war kite echoed through the gorge, it was not ignored.
She fell. And as she landed atop H'Melar, at last, she flew.
She did not fly as a skimmer did, nor as a kryptonian might with a grav-belt. She flew atop a war kite, and that was an experience matched by no other in this galaxy. Indeed, they were like no other creature found in what humanity called the Milky Way, and what the children of Krypton called A'Maratha – the Sea of Stars. To a child of Earth, the four-limbed, four-winged creature would appear akin to a cross between a gargoyle and a dragonfly – if a dragonfly's wings extended three metres that was.
The namesake of "war kite" came from the Wars of Unification – when Jo-Mon the Uniter had brought all of Krypton under his banner. Knights had flown upon these creatures, carrying sword, spear, and banner, their conquest culminating in the defeat of the Children of Juru. Nowadays, what wars kryptonians had to fight, be it against foes like vrangs or tyrants like the Voice of Rao, were done through far more advanced instruments. However, the name "war kite" had stuck.
What their ancestors had called these magnificent beasts before the time of Jo-Mon was a mystery lost to the mists of time. They had diminished over the millennia, but they still existed, unlike the legendary dragons of old – great beasts whose wings could blot out the sun, who were found in the cultures of countless planets, even if Kara would never visit them. Fire-breathing leviathans that had eradicated the darkness of Urrika, and in so doing, saved her world.
For Kara, H'Melar was enough. Old, deadly, and wise, the war kite had been introduced to her scent when she was but a few rhels old. A mewling babe clad in white, H'Melar had sniffed the progeny of House El, and found her to her liking.
Right now however, little of that mattered. All that did was the sensation of flight.
She cried out again, not in fear, but in joy, as H'Melar skimmed the edge of the abyss. As creatures wormed within its depths, reaching out for the great beast through sheer instinct, unable to comprehend that H'Melar and her rider were beyond their fangs.
With a screech, H'Melar brought Kara Zor-El upwards. Above the Cliff of Fate and Faith, up into the sky. Above even the spires of Argo City itself.
She bathed in Rao's light. She threw out her hands, and let the dusty wind carry her hair. Above the earth which shook, above the politics of the Council of Five[1] above the arid sands of her homeworld. She, Kara Zor-El, was above all of it.
She was free. And she flew.
All had to come back to the ground eventually however, and so, H'Melar, faithful steed of the House of El for over eighty cycles, returned her final rider to the ground. To where her regular rider awaited her, along with the precious cargo she carried.
Zor-El was not a man given to emotion. He was a member of one of the Great Houses, and with his brother's recent excommunication, now the head of the House of El. Furthermore, he was a scientist of the Thinkers Guild. Krypton was a society that placed reason above all else, and the guild his house had served for generations was the pinnacle of that reason. Base emotion was for the Rankless, pride reserved for actual accomplishments. To not die at the Cliff of Fate and Faith was a rite of passage, nothing more.
And yet, as his daughter dismounted, he beamed.
He smiled, as she threw her arms around him.
"Did you see me father? I flew, father, I flew!"
"Of course I saw, Kara. How could I not see you take to wing with such grace?"
The war kite let out a snort.
"Nor you, H'Melar."
The war kite scratched her ear before returning to licking her paw. She paused for a moment as the ground shook again before returning to her grooming, as if nothing had happened.
Something had happened, however. Something that caused Kara's smile to leave her lips, and for her eyes to leave her father's face, and look back at the abyss.
"What was it you said to my uncle, father?" she whispered. "There are more things in the heavens than are dreamt of in your philosophy?"
"Field," he corrected. "And yes, Kara. My brother was, I mean, is, a genius, but Jor-El's interests have always been more…provincial."
"Geology and biology," Kara said. "He seeks to make Krypton better, while your eyes are starward."
It was not an accusation, but even so, Kara feared she had slighted him. Certainly his brother had, in one of his many visits to Argo. Kara knew that her father and uncle were as close as twins could be, knew that whatever wounds their tongues inflicted would always heal, but sometimes, she wondered if a maverick had switched one of them in the pod.
Jor-El the radical. The man who never shied from challenging the Council of Five, the man who had dared father a child after genesis technology made the messy process of traditional reproduction redundant, the man who had got himself excommunicated for "threatening the public order," as if the Sword of Rao wasn't doing that already, despite the best efforts of General Dru-Zod to root them out.
And then her father, Zor-El. Zor-El the stargazer, Zor-El the dreamer, Zor-El who could catalogue a thousand facts about a hundred star systems, who could study the origins of the universe itself and theorize of universes beyond this one, yet not know the difference between Kandor and Kryptonopolis. Zor-El who had snuck to the planet's dark side when he was only even younger than his gene-scion was now, so he could behold the majesty of A'Maratha. Zor-El who stood by as Krypton was rent asunder.
Those were her uncle's words, not hers. But she knew how deep words could cut, given how often she had failed to live up to the expectations of her gene-sires. She had held her cousin close as her father and uncle had warred with words, and her mother and aunt watched on in despair as insults echoed through the Citadel of El.
The two headed back to their waiting skimmer. H'Melar would return on her own time, as many was the time she had flown over land or sea for the joy of it. Able to fit up to four passengers, the skimmer was the same colour as Kara's skinsuit, and sleeker than she could ever hope to be. She had flown, yes, but only after falling like a rock.
She went to open the side door, before with a wave of his hand, Zor-El opened the rear compartment. Before he took out a white cape with the silver Glyph of El upon its back.
Kara gasped – she knew completing the rite would give her the right to wear a cape such as this. For houses Great and Minor alike, it was tradition to wear a house glyph upon your skinsuit, and tradition to wear a cape bearing that same glyph at important events. Just as it was tradition for Rankless to wear headbands to mark their lower station[2] the Houses of Krypton were to be seen as well.
It would be many cycles before she could ever think to walk in the same circles as her gene-sires. At the age of seventeen, she would face the An'Deb'Nata – the Trials of Adulthood[3] which would test her candidacy to be a full member of the Thinker Caste. She would be allowed to wear attire not dissimilar from her current wear, but in the colours of her house as well.
But that might as well have been a lifetime away. For now, she saw a cape, and she wanted it. She reached out to grab it like a greedy child, yet looked up at her father in confusion when he withheld it.
"What is the meaning of this symbol, Kara?" he asked, putting his hand upon the cape's insignia.
Without hesitating, she recited the creed of her house. "This is the Glyph of Hope. The symbol of the House of El. Literally translated, it reads as el mayarah, – 'stronger together,' which is what has allowed House El to endure since the Wars of Unification. Embodied within this glyph is the fundamental belief in the potential of every person to be a force for good in this universe."
"And do you believe that, Kara Zor-El? Do you believe that force is indeed found in all living beings?"
"I…" Her answer was caught in her throat. Her first instinct was to say 'yes,' because no doubt it was the correct one, or at least, the answer her gene-sire expected her to give. But even at five cycles of age, despite (or perhaps because of) her below-average intelligence, she wondered.
Was the Council of Five a force for good? Was the Sword of Rao? They certainly weren't at the moment, and if they had the potential to be a force for good, they weren't showing it. The Sword of Rao claimed just as her uncle had that the Council was leading Krypton to the abyss, but unlike her uncle, they had gone beyond words, and gone into action that had already killed thousands of kryptonians.
And no matter what the Council said, Kara knew that the Sword was not an aberration. One-hundred cycles ago, the Voice of Rao had believed he was doing good for the people by imposing his religious dogma. Ten-thousand cycles ago, both sides of the Clone Wars had believed themselves to be in the right.[4] Forty-thousand cycles before that, the so-called Last War had been fought, which had devastated Krypton, and left it vulnerable to vrangs raiders. And fifty-thousand cycles before that, Jo-Mon the Uniter had brought all of Krypton under one banner, and saved it from the dark magics of the Children of Juru.
And that wasn't including other, more minor conflicts, whether it be with daxamites, thanagarians, or the two-hundred cycle war between Erkol and Xan which had led to the destruction of both city-states.
So many people in Krypton's history believed they had been doing the right thing, yet had been dammed by the opinion of time. So many people were willing to do the wrong thing to make things right. Perhaps everyone had to the potential to be a force for good in this universe, but how was she to judge?
She wished things could be simple. But as her heart shook as surely as the ground of Krypton did, she knew that things never could be as simple as she wished.
So she gave the only answer she could. "I don't know." She put her hands on the cape, its soft fabric soothing her, before she left it in her father's hands. "But when I do, perhaps I will be worthy of wearing this."
She expected to see disappointment in her gene-sire's eyes. But instead, for the second time this macrorhel, Zor-El's eyes shone with pride as he kissed his progeny upon her forehead.
"Sometimes, Kara, you are wise beyond your years."
He'd meant it as a compliment, but she felt no joy in it. She didn't want to be wise beyond her years, she just wanted to be as good as she was meant to be. She knew even now there was no going back to earlier cycles, when she could be a child playing superhero, but the endless tests, the endless studies, the perpetual disappointment in her parents' eyes as she struggled to perform as well as she should…
It weighed on her.
"Come," he said, as he opened the skimmer's side doors. "Your mother is making roast rokan for dinner tonight."
"Really?" Kara asked, perking up at the mention of food.
"Well, she was only going to make it for two of us, but I'll call ahead and let her know we have a third mouth to feed."
"Father!" she exclaimed, before realizing the jest. She hit her father's arm, but it was without malice, and for the first time in a long time, Zor-El laughed.
Father and daughter took to the sky as the skimmer returned them to Argo City. To the great spire that reached ever upward. Constructed by Iol-Ja, finished by Ae-Ja, for in the tradition of Houses Great and Minor, the son became the father, and the father became the son. It was not the first building ever constructed in Argo, but by far the tallest. A harkening to the lighthouses of old that kryptonians had constructed on the shores of their inland seas, when brave sailors such as Bur-El had braved the warm waters for reasons ranging from discovery to conquest.
And now, home, as Kara was reminded as she and her father flew under the light of a red sun. Beside the waters of a golden sea, in the glow of a silver city, carried aloft upon the air of a beautiful world.
A world that was falling apart, but still, beautiful.
So much so that Kara allowed herself to fall asleep within the skimmer, as she was carried through the dusty air and-
Kara woke up.
She didn't know how long she'd been unconscious, but given that the soldier was still standing there, looking on in horror, she guessed not that long. Brief flashes of a key few minutes in her life, compressed to a few seconds.
Or alternatively, much longer had passed in the real world, which meant that Igor Grom here had a death wish. Any sane person would have fled from her the moment she'd demonstrated her strength, flight, and the ability to shoot lasers from her eyes.
Right now, those abilities weren't as enjoyable as she might have once thought they'd be. She'd long dreamt of having had the strength to fight her way out of this facility, but the feeling of her hand around his neck, to feel his fragility?
Some kryptonians like Zod would have relished the thought. Some, like Jo-Mon, had done what was necessary.
She, however?
She was reminded of the fight she'd had with Zeta-Rhee. It had been in a function in the Infinity Gardens – where Houses Great and Minor mingled under the shade of red, black, and purple leaves, taken from Umlot in Krypton's far east, to Ansom in its far west. Kept alive through atmo-tech, so that people could eat, drink, and scheme beneath their branches.
Only Zeta-Rhee had not managed even a veneer of diplomacy. He had refused to leave Ta-Li alone (as a gene-scion of a House Minor, she should obey his wishes, or so he'd said), and Kara had stepped in. She, the runt child of House El, reminded of it, which had led her to attack him. Tackle Zeta-Rhee to the ground and hit him again and again until his nose broke, and she'd been pulled off by a pair of Argonautica.
She hadn't regretted her actions then, but nor had she felt joy in them, even when Ta-Li had timidly thanked her. One small triumph in a life where true accomplishment had always escaped her. Now, however? To have been on the verge of doing something far worse than a broken nose?
She felt ill. And she must have looked it as well, because much to her surprise, the soldier offered her his flask.
Kara looked at it, then the human, then back at the flask. Poison, she wondered? Considering they were in a lab, she couldn't put it past him.
She took it all the same, however gingerly. Murmured, "I nearly kill you, and you offer me water."
He remained silent. She could hear his heart pounding. Sense ripples within the very air as goosebumps spread across his skin. The powers that she'd developed over the first year of her life on Earth, now back with reinforcements. One concentrated blast of yellow solar waves had apparently overcome a decade's worth of waves simulating a red sun.
The took the flask and drank. And as if the universe was punishing Kara for her hubris, she spat the liquid out.
"What, aliens don't like vodka?" the soldier asked quietly.
She glared at him. He looked on as a mouse might a lion – he'd removed the thorn from her paw, but he was still clearly aware that her paw could break his neck in a microsecond.
She thought of doing it just to test her strength. Yet even the thought behind the thought made her stomach turn.
Her eyes lingered on his gun, now resting against a table. They then turned to his uniform – a mix of greens and blacks, like everyone else in this facility. On its left was a bold OVO, representing the Otdel vneplanetnykh operatsiy[5] which had kept her locked up in this dungeon for the last decade. On its right was his surname.
"Bratsk," she murmured.
He gave her a look.
"What?"
"Nothing," said the human. "It's just strange to hear you speak our language."
"One of them at least. I'm guessing from your accent that you're from Kaznia."
He remained silent – as if he was still processing that an alien could speak his language. Or, more likely, that the alien in question had shot lasers from her eyes and nearly killed him.
She took another sip of the vodka – her adoptive father had despised the stuff, and had explained to her that there was no shortage of men in Russia who'd drunk themselves into early graves.
Kara wasn't unfamiliar with the concept of alcohol, and many had been the night when she'd seen her father and uncle drinking ambronisia, but unlike Earth, they had access to cleansers able to remove all alcohol from their system within minutes.
That, and unlike Russia, unlike Earth as a whole, Krypton had never known the despair that drove so many humans to drink. At least, not within her lifetime. She'd heard from her gene-sire that Seg-El had drowned his sorrows for cycles in the slums of Kandor before rising up to overthrow the Voice of Rao, but that had been over a hundred cycles ago. There was the Rankless, true, who could be found in the slums Seg-El had once resided in (Argo included), but when she'd asked Zaltar about his past life before indenturing himself to her house, he had mostly remained mum.
"My life is to serve House El now," he had said once. "Through this life of service, I live."
"My grandsires didn't live," Kara had pointed out.
"Not through alcohol poisoning, but by the lingering wounds of the Sun Knights' spears, may Rao take them into His light. Now stop trying to distract me and give me your analysis on Belief, and Those Men That Fly."
She took a third sip of the vodka, remembering how she'd failed to do any such thing that day. Maybe there was something to drinking away your sorrows, but the taste burnt her tongue, despite having been granted the gift of golden sunlight. Not like the tips of the Sun Knights' blades tipped with Green Death, that had ensured Seg-El and Nyssa-Vex had died before her parents had even wed.
Stories she had no desire to tell the human before her – she had told them to the human parents who had taken in, but they had earned her confidence. They, unlike this grunt, had not tried to shoot her, and she in turn had not nearly killed them.
She still felt ill, in light of that. And the man/boy/whatever continued to stare at her.
"What?" she asked.
He remained silent.
"What?" Kara repeated. "You're telling me you didn't know a kryptonoid alien was being kept here?"
"Kryp…to…"
"Kryptonoid, humanoid, whatever. I look like you, you look like me, and we came first, and right now, all I see is a poor imitation." She tapped her prison garb, and the letters on it. "Most dangerous. Think it's here for a joke?"
"Are you the most dangerous?" he whispered.
There was a 'thump' from higher above.
"Was," she whispered.
Two pairs of eyes looked to the ceiling. Kara with her browns, the human with his baby blues. Clearly he could hear something of what was going on, but with her enhanced healing, Kara could hear a lot more.
Bullets. Detonations. Not just explosives, but the red sun grenades, or whatever they were called.
She could hear the beating of men's hearts, and pinpoint the moment when they fell silent.
She tried to use her x-ray vision to see through the lab's roof, but to no avail. Perhaps there was something in the facility's structure that prevented her from seeing that far. Perhaps it had yet to return.
Her eyes smarted, and she closed them for a few seconds. She could feel something else behind those eyes – heat. And opening them again, looking around the lab, she could see what damage they'd wrought.
The lab still lay in ruins. Small fires danced in its corners. It would take weeks to get it back into working order, and yet, judging by what she could hear, the damage she'd inflicted here paled to what was going on above.
But that didn't matter. She was never coming back to this place. The woman with golden hair could kill every OVO trooper in this Rao-forsaken fortress, and it would just make her job easier.
She headed for the door.
"Where are you going?" the soldier asked.
"Out."
"Great!" exclaimed the soldier, a little too eagerly. "I'll show you the way."
Kara scoffed. "Piece of advice? Stay here."
"While you do what? Go up there? Face that…thing?"
"That thing showed me more kindness than any of you people did, so yes, I'll take my chances with that thing sooner than any of you."
The human had the sense to remain silent, just as Kara had the sense to not add that kindness was not the word that should have been used. But at worst, her cellmate had shown her contempt, which was still better than cruelty.
So she began to walk. With any luck, her doppelganger would kill everyone here, she could make her way to freedom, and emerge with clean hands in doing so. Simple.
"Wait."
Or not so simple, as she glared at the soldier.
"I didn't do anything," the soldier protested. "I was stationed here two weeks ago. I knew there was an alien, or at least, people told me there was an alien, and that they were taking your blood to make super-soldiers, and-"
"And when another alien arrived you came down here to inject yourself with it?"
"No! I…ran."
Kara couldn't tell if he was lying or not – neither option was that appealing to her. And she told herself it didn't matter as she again attempted to exit.
"Please take me with you," he begged, interceding like a moon frog standing up to a rondor. "I can tell you're not like her. I can guide you to the surface, then we never have to see each other again."
Tempting as that was, Kara asked him why he knew she wasn't like her counterpart.
"Because if you were, you would have killed me."
Kara's eyes narrowed. "What makes you think I won't kill you now?"
He didn't answer.
"How old are you anyway?"
"Nineteen," the soldier whispered.
She wasn't surprised, but it still rankled Kara that this twerp was older than her, not to mention taller. Rankled her that he was only one year younger than Aleksander would have been had he still been alive when she'd arrived on this world.
She had asked her adoptive parents if they thought that their son could still be alive somehow. If, one day, he might walk through the front doors of their farmstead, and discover he had a sister. The Zaryanovas had given her an answer – the same answer she gave the soldier now as to whether she'd let him come with her.
"No," said the Last Daughter of Krypton as she began to walk out of the lab.
"What?"
"Use your ears, human."
It felt good to say that. To just once have the power in her life. To stick it to her captors. To-
The soldier grabbed her wrist. "Listen, I know you've been imprisoned, but-"
Kara shoved him. Hard. He hit the wall with enough force to briefly knock the wind out of him.
She could hear the air leaving his lungs. And temptation flared within her breast to stop him breathing altogether.
"Listen to me," Kara hissed. "You are scum. You don't get to touch me. I should kill you where you stand, and…oh, wait. You're not standing."
She'd imagined that would have felt better to say. Instead, the words cut her tongue as surely as they cut the air.
"I didn't do anything," the soldier rasped, pleading. "The people upstairs, I know they've done things to you, but-"
"You have no idea," Kara whispered. "Ten years. You think blood is the worst they did?"
"But I didn't do that!"
"Your uniform. Your army. Your world. Stay here, and by whatever god you pray to, do not follow me, or…" She swallowed. "Well, use your imagination."
She turned and began to walk again. Ignoring the pleas of the human behind her.
And the unease festering within her heart.
Kara Zor-El walked.
And walked.
And walked.
And walked.
The seventh level of the facility was a maze of grey, featureless corridors. Corridors that she was able to stride through confidently, as the golden solar waves she'd been exposed to had not just given her some of her powers back but had offset the effects of Earth's lower gravity.
Her muscles were brimming with solar energy. Pressing her finger against her cheeks, she was barely able to make an indent. The skin itself, while flushed red akin to when she had first arrived on this world, was unblemished by blood or bruise. The scars on her arms, inflicted by a decade of tests, had disappeared, her epidermis akin to a porcelain doll.
And it went further than that even. Her long dark hair was no longer lank, but lush – if the other woman's golden mane had been like Earth's sun, Kara's was like a waterfall of midnight.
There was, of course, one scar remaining. But as she felt it, she was not surprised – she had never expected that one to heal. She could stand in the light of Rho Cassiopeiae itself and not be rid of it, let alone the pain that had lingered beneath for a decade.
She was, Kara Zor-El reflected, free. Or at least as close to free as she'd ever been since being dragged into this place.
Yet free or not, she wasn't alone, as she heard the tip-tip-tap of footsteps behind her. The idiot that she'd left alive was still following her – like Stree-Kee had followed her whenever she was feeling down (which had been most of the time in Argo), settling on her lap and purring until Kara relented and gave him food. However, while Soldier Boy might fancy himself some kind of super-pet, he had only half of Stree-Kee's charm, and only one tenth of his hair.
And yet part of her welcomed it. Because she could no longer hear the sounds of battle up above. Perhaps it had ended with her doppelganger's defeat. Perhaps it had ended with her reaching the surface. Kara tried to tell herself that it didn't matter. All that mattered was getting to the surface herself and…
She sighed, and stopped. "It's one thing to follow me. It's another thing to have a gun with you."
There was no answer, so she looked around. Soldier Boy was still there – only unlike the Soldier Boy of the comic she'd read once, where an American soldier defected to the Soviet Union after accepting the truth of communism (those comics were weird), the little twerp could barely hold his rifle.
"You know that thing is useless against me, right?" I hope.
"If it's useless, why worry about it?"
"Because…" She bit her lip, turned, and kept walking. "Because I've been shot once before."
"When you arrived at this place?"
"No. Before." She put a hand to her stomach, and closed her eyes. The scar notwithstanding, the physical wound from that day had healed, even without the benefits of a yellow sun The emotional wound, not so much. Natalya had once said that time healed all wounds, but as much as she'd come to love her adoptive mother, she wasn't right about everything.
Ten years on, the wounds of two worlds lingered. And the idiot's presence wasn't helping.
She kept walking. Until, at last, she came to a door marked ВЕШАЛКА.
"A hanger?" she murmured.
"More like a holding area," said Soldier Boy.
Sweet Rao, was he still here? She looked at the door (iron) and at the keycard reader.
"Oh look at that, a locked door," said the idiot. "Shame you don't have a keycard."
Kara glared at him. "Is this where you tell me that you have one? And that you'll only give it to me if I agree to be your bodyguard?"
"Something like that."
Kara rolled her eyes. "Keep dreaming."
"But I just-"
Kara thumped the door with her fist, forming an indent. Soldier Boy took the hint and fell silent.
The unspoken truth was that she could take the keycard off him – possibly without ripping out his arm in the process if she was careful enough. But as tempting a notion as that was, it was also tempting to swallow her pride after ten years of its reduction, and just accept his offer.
But she didn't want to owe the twerp anything. There were only two people on this Earth she owed anything to, one of whom she'd never be able to see again, and the other…she didn't know if they were still alive. And if she got out of here, the first thing she would do was…
What?
She didn't know. There was a human saying her adoptive father had mentioned once – "you can't go home again." Certainly that was true of Krypton, but even on the cusp of freedom, of seeing the surface again, the Zaryanova farmstead felt as distant as ever. Sergei and Natalya had taken a child into their lives, but now, she had reached childhood's end. She couldn't be sure which month it was, let alone her birthday (Terran or Kryptonian), but by her estimate, she was nearly seventeen. Had she been on Krypton, she'd be preparing for An'Deb'Nata by now.
She looked back at the intent she had made. She could probably batter this door down in time, but she was a daughter of the Thinker Guild, taught to use brain rather than brawn to solve her problems. Even if her parents were long gone, even if this wannabe pet could never live up to her old isix, she owed it to her house to at least try and suss it out.
She stared at the keypad – there was a card reader, as well as a keypad. First option was to attempt to crack the code through deduction (oh who was she kidding, sheer luck), and hope there wasn't a lockdown system. Option two was to attempt to smash through the door, but she still wanted to avoid that. Option three was to ask for the keycard from Soldier Boy and that was completely out of the question.
4-4-3-1.
The scanner buzzed.
1-0-0-6.
The scanner buzzed.
"Keycard?" offered Soldier Boy.
"Keep dreaming," she murmured. She stared at the reader, blinking her eyes. Hoping her x-ray vision would kick in and reveal its inside workings. Of course, even if that happened, it wouldn't help much, because she had no idea how to work with wires. Krypton had moved beyond such tech millennia ago and-
"Keycard?"
She cursed and her heat vision (for lack of a better term) kicked in. Not the ability to see through surfaces, but instead, two small laser beams that fried the scanner…and in so doing, caused the door to open.
She smirked and looked at Soldier Boy. "What was that about keycards?"
To his credit, the primitive remained silent. Her credit, however, was waning…she'd still used force in the end. If there was an afterlife as Natalya had believed, if her gene-sires were looking down at her alongside angels (which looked a lot like thanagarians from what she'd been able to tell), Kara suspected they'd be looking down with disappointment.
Well, wouldn't that be a change? Fuming, Kara stepped through into the hanger…and to her irritation, Soldier Boy followed.
There was a 'thump' from upstairs that caused both of them to stumble. An explosion? Or something more…kinetic?
Kara looked back at Soldier Boy. He was trying to hold it together, but the sound of his heartbeat told her that he was fighting a losing battle.
"You should really wait down here," she whispered.
"And be buried?" With Kara providing no response, he said, "the other prisoner…she did things…"
"I know. I saw them."
"I hid, you know," he whispered. "Guns weren't doing anything. Grenades only slowed her down. I saw people be ripped apart, and I hid, and I-"
"Stop," Kara snapped. "I don't care."
He looked at her, those baby blue eyes wide in shock.
"I don't care," she repeated. "Don't you understand? You're aliens. My people were exploring space while yours were still digging in the dirt for grubs. A thousand of your lives wouldn't be worth one of mine. And do you know why?" Her eyes flashed with the glow of twin suns. "Because when you try chaining gods, it's fitting the jailers get burnt."
Soldier Boy didn't say anything, despite wishing that he would do so. An attack of words or fists, even bullets…anything would have been welcome right now.
Instead, silence. And the sinking feeling in her gut that came not from triumph, but from guilt.
"Stop following me," Kara whispered, as she walked into the hanger. The sooner she could get to the surface, the sooner these aliens could stop dragging her into the mud that still clung to them.
The structure was shaped like a giant metal box, as if one had been thrust into the ground itself. At its far roof, seven levels up, was a pair of blast doors, large enough to fit a helicopter inside. However, none was parked, and reflecting on Soldier Boy's earlier comments, Kara noted that "storage area" was indeed the better term for it. Around its perimeter was a walkway, the one on which she currently stood up. Below was an esoteric collection of alien craft – some of them designs she recognized, many of them not, not helped by the fact that some were covered in great white sheets.
Clearly the OVO had been collecting the detritus of the galaxy for some time – alcorian to zaguron, and everything in-between.
I could go home. If I could just…
She trailed off, her heart falling as swiftly as it had risen. None of the craft were larger than a helicopter, and none of them looked spaceworthy. Getting any of them into space would be a miracle with this planet's level of technology, and that wasn't even including their FTL capabilities. And more importantly, what was home to her?
She'd had a home. It was gone forever. She'd sooner die than beg a daxamite for help, and while Rado was still out there, she would…
She clenched the iron bar of the walkway as her mind raced. Murmured, "you've got quite a collection, don't you?"
Soldier Boy was still following her.
"Any other aliens you know of?" Kara whispered. "Or is it just me?"
"Until the other one turned up? Just you."
"Why should I believe a word you say?"
He gave her no answer. She released her hands from the bar, leaving it twisted in her palms' wake. She followed Soldier Boy's eyes to the ships below.
"Some of this stuff goes back to the forties," he said. "Or at least, that's what I heard when I first arrived."
She scoffed. "Do aliens only land in Russia, or is Earth an equal opportunity dumping ground?"
"Russia's pretty big. Even bigger when it was the USSR."
"Of course." She sighed. "Aliens fall from the heavens, and they end up in this place of hell."
He gave no answer. Kara readied another response, but instead, leant across the bar and sighed.
"The Voice of Rao would have loved this," she murmured.
"Who?"
She looked at the alien. "Over a hundred years ago, before I was born, Krypton was caught up in a religious movement. A man who called himself the Voice of Rao took control of the city-state of Kandor, and in less than five cycles, had secured religious dominance over every other city-state on my homeworld. He believed that our kind had forsaken our spirituality, put reason and science above all else. He spoke of the follies of the Age of Expansion. Declared that even the mention of alien life beyond Krypton was heresy, despite our knowledge that it existed. Daxamites, vrangs, czarnians, even the Green Lantern Corps – contact was forbidden, even mentioning them was deemed blasphemous."
Soldier Boy remained silent, but Kara could tell he was listening. She was briefly reminded of her adoptive parents – how they too listened to their ward tell the stories of the universe.
"He put the worship of the Sun God Rao above all others – only the moons that bore the gods' namesake were allowed to even be mentioned, and our lunar colonies were dismantled – a sullying of the gods, he called it. But he only cared for some old gods and not others – even mentioning deities such as Great Deon was punishable by somatic reconditioning."
"That's interesting," the human said, trying to hide what Kara recognized as genuine interest. "But why are you telling me this?"
Why indeed? she wondered. She looked out over the hanger once more – in one corner, a thanagarian scout ship, in another, a tamaranean survey probe. As tempting as it was to take the moral high ground, less than two centuries ago, her people had been doing much the same. Even after the Voice had been overthrown, aliens had never been made welcome on Krypton, and those who arrived didn't go back. What had happened to them, Kara hadn't asked, but now?
"Maybe I'm telling you this because…because I look at things on Earth, and don't find them alien enough," she whispered. She scoffed. "Isn't that pathetic?"
"Reality not matching ideology? I know a lot about that actually."
She gave Soldier Boy a look. Tried not to smile.
"So what happened?" the human asked. "To the Voice, I mean."
"He was overthrown in a revolution led by my grandfather, Seg-El, with allies of the Houses Em, Zod, and others among the great and good. His rule was replaced by the Council of Five – one from each of Krypton's mightiest city-states. They sought to rebuild our world, and yet, a hundred cycles later, it was doomed. The Voice had turned our eyes away from the stars, and we never sought again to explore them. Not until it was too late, by which point, we had exhausted our planet's core. Green Death rose to the surface, as if our motherworld was begging us to cease our abuses, but we ignored it. Ignored the groundquakes. We had torn out the heart of our world in order to rebuild it, and so doing, damned ourselves."
"So…fracking?"
Kara smiled, despite the heaviness in her heart. "Great Deon," she whispered. "It's been ages since I've been able to share this with anyone."
"The people here?"
"No," Kara snapped, familiarity replaced by rage. "The people here didn't care. They wanted me. Me, you understand? Not my knowledge, not my culture, just me."
She could hear Soldier Boy's heartbeat begin to pick up.
"But what do you care?" she snapped. "You're here, aren't you? You stood aside, let them do things to me, and-"
There was another sound from above. One that impacted the hanger doors.
Explosion, impact, Kara couldn't say. But such was its force it caused her to stumble.
She regained her balance. But no such luck with Soldier Boy as he stumbled into the railing she had grasped earlier.
A railing that she had weakened as the bar collapsed under his weight, leaving him to tumble to the ground below.
He screamed. And for one moment, Kara watched him fall. Welcomed watching him fall. Savoured the idea of seeing his body go splat. A weak creature in Earth's weak gravity, at a height of twenty metres, the fall would kill him.
And why should she not let him fall? These people had imprisoned her. Tortured her. Even if he'd only just arrived (and that was providing she believed him at all), she had no reason to save him.
"This is the Glyph of Hope. This is the symbol of the House of El. Embodied within that hope is the fundamental belief in the potential of every person to be a force for good in this universe."
The creed of the House of El, spoken upon Hadred's Head, was unbidden.
"Jump, Kara. Sometimes all it takes…is a leap of faith."
But not unwelcome, as she leapt off herself. Just as she had all those years ago.
The worlds were different. The gravity was different. The circumstances were different. And yet, she jumped.
She flailed at first as she willed the ability to fly. She had levitated above the ground once, could she not fly now?
Not at first, as she fell and flailed, like a war kite with clipped wings. She would fall, she would fail, and she feared she would never again rise.
Oh my little Snowbird, you will never be alone.
Never see her mother again.
You are a miracle, my little Snowbird, my daughter from the stars.
She closed her eyes as the ground neared. Clenched her fist, feeling the gravity of the world, channelling her body's bio-electric field to create levitation…
She flew.
She dashed downward.
She caught the man in her arms and shot upward, with such speed and force that some of the alien craft keeled over. White cloths were lifted into the air, like the tunics of angels summoned unto Heaven.
In those moments, she did not feel the weight of her passenger. For in those moments, even in this place beneath the surface of her adopted world…
She felt at peace.
She felt she could do anything, go anywhere. Be anyone. Some kind of superwoman
Or given her age, a supergirl.
But for now, a descending angel, as she drifted back to the surface of the hanger. The human was taller and heavier than she, but blessed with the strength of a golden sun, he felt as light as a child.
She gently let him down, and for a moment, hovered in the air before allowing her bare feet to touch the ground. Once, she had known the chill of cold metal, but now, she felt nothing, as her arms were around him, and his her.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Nothing physical at least.
"You're welcome," she murmured, turning away. This feeling…Rao, why did she feel joy in her heart? She'd felt something similar when Ta-Li had thanked her, when they'd been able to meet again as rare an opportunity as that was between the houses of El and Li, but this was different.
Men like him had done things to her. She couldn't afford to let down her guard with any kind of human – they were primitive, they were savage, they were quite light to carry, and there was no shortage of people in the world who needed rescuing and-
Stop it!
Seeking a distraction, her attention to the scattered craft within the hanger. She was the offspring of scientists, and science was her field, not…whatever this was. It had been the job of Argonautica to fly through the air being heroes, not little runts like her. As a scientist, she could evaluate the technology before her and not be…distracted.
Only she wasn't succeeding there, as she felt her body continue to brim with energy. These spacecraft…right now, they seemed so…small. Many of them were keeled over, such was the force and speed of her swoop. She, a golden goddess, had upended the technology of mortals.
Yet pride came before a fall, or so her human parents had claimed. And while her abilities made falling a not-so-lethal proposition, the worth of the saying remained true. Dru-Zod, the Voice of Rao, Dar-Nx, the Children of Juru…history and experience both had shown her what power could do to people, be they human or kryptonian.
This was crazy. She was wasting time. She…looked at the human standing beside her, looking at her like Kometa did when they'd first met.
"What?" she asked irritably.
He remained silent.
"What?!"
"Why did you save me?" the human asked. "After everything we, I mean they, did, I mean-"
"We, they…which are you?"
He said nothing. Shame, perhaps? Or a lack of knowing? She could never forgive what the people of this place had done to her, mankind would always be a "they" to her on some level, but…
But she remembered the face of a kind man much older than Mister Bratsk. She remembered the feeling of a kind woman's arms around her. She remembered the day when bullets had pierced her, when human kindness and human cruelty collided, with Krypton's last child in the centre. And as memories and the present warred, she whispered something.
"I saved you because it was the right thing to do, Soldier Boy. That's all."
The trooper murmured something about having a name. Which was true, of course, his name tag read "Bratsk," but Kara had no desire to be on a first name basis with him, or anyone else. There were only two humans whose names she'd ever learnt, and one of them was dead.
But as her eyes shifted from Soldier Boy, names meant little to her. What mattered was not what was spoken, but what she saw.
She walked past him towards one of the ships – a great white sheet had been swept off it when she had soared upwards. Where it had landed, she did not know, nor did it matter. Because the sheet had been covering too objects.
One, a glass case, containing a black kryptonian skinsuit. One that bore a silver sigil of the House of El.
And beside it? The spacecraft?
"Great Deon," Kara whispered as she pressed her hands against its frame.
"What is it?" asked the soldier.
"This…this is my pod," she stammered. "And it's operational."
Footnotes
[1]: The Council of Five, based in the planetary capital of Kandor, was the successor body to the Council of Elders, which had been superseded by the Voice of Rao. While the Council of Elders had been composed of representatives from Krypton's various guilds, the Council of Elders was composed of one representative from the five mightiest city-states at any given point in time. In Krypton's last years, some, such as Jor-El, decried the Council's ineptitude and infighting, as many city-states sought representation at the cost of effective governance. At the time of the planet's destruction, the five city-states represented were Kandor, Argo, Janthassa, Orval, and Valdunia.
[2]: A rule that was rarely enforced, but a rule that existed all the same. Rankless were assigned to wear headbands in order to make identification easier. According to hearsay, the practice allowed Rankless to be pulled by the head by law enforcement groups such as the Sagitari, but there was little to indicate that this claim had any truth to it historically.
[3]: The Trials of Adulthood were reserved for members of the Great and Minor Houses, and tailored to the genetic profile of every kryptonian. For instance, a child born into a Warrior Caste house (e.g. House Zod) would have faced a trial primarily consisting of physical strength, tactics, etc., with a jot of science upon the side. For a child destined to be a member of the Thinker Caste (e.g. House El), the opposite would be true. No Rankless was ever allowed to undergo the An'Deb'Nata, though plenty of similar traditions could be found in the depths of Krypton's city-states – unsanctioned, but tolerated by the Council of Five and similar bodies preceding it.
[4]: The War of Clone Rights, more colloquially known as the Clone Wars, was one of the most bitter conflicts in kryptonian history. At this point in time, every kryptonian of a Great House was given three clones through which body parts could be harvested in order to extend their lifespans. The pro-clone faction, known as the League of Life, argued for the clones' sapience, while the anti-clone faction fought to keep the status quo. In the end, the League of Life, led by Van-El, triumphed, and cloning technology was forbidden on Krypton. Without the use of clones to extend their lifespans, kryptonians turned to extending their own natural life cycles. Technology that developed during in the time afterwards included skinsuits and genesis chambers, which in turn steadily eradicated natural kryptonian reproduction.
[5]: Or "Department of Extraplanetary Operations" (DEO) in English.