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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:10:00 GMT
Part 1 Prologue: We Found Krypton! And what else have we found? Jess expected to command an interstellar vessel in the newly created Juneon Space Force some time in the fairly near future, and she spent a LOT of time working with the Avenger's computer, learning as much as she could about the workings of the giant vessel. A day after they entered back into hyperspace after their misadventure on Thrann, she called them all together to make an exciting announcement. "As we have been making our various hyperspace jumps, the Avenger has been automatically rebuilding the navigational database. Each time we emerge into normal space, Avenger's sensors are programmed to make a map of the current view of the heavens and reconcile it with the existing database. This is default functionality built into the Avenger's computer; it stems from the Galactic Patrol era."
Valor nodded. "While Marnu wasn't involved in designing the algorithms required, that was one of his directives to the team that built the ships for the Galactic Patrol." He sounded so smug that the rest of the crew was sure that it was actually the always arrogant Lord of Order Marnu speaking to them directly, but no one even snickered.
"So anyway, every time we exit from a hyperspace transition, the information in our nav database is being updated, with information about the current position of every star within range of the Avenger's sensors, plus new information about the vector along which each star is moving. In our adventure on Xenon, we learned that Xenon's star, Raotun..." (editor's note: meaning 'New Rao') "...had passed near enough to Krypton's star, Rao, 100,000 years ago, that it was able to drag Juna's homeworld, the giant planet Xenon, out of orbit around Rao and capture it in a new orbit around Raotun. So, if we trace Raotun's vector back through time 100,000 years, and then trace back the vectors of other red giant stars 100,000 years, the one that is closest to Raotun at that time must be Rao. Ta DAH! Then we can trace the vector of Rao forward 100,000 years - and voila! In fact, that's what we're here for - the voila moment!"
She paused for a second when the ship's PA system made an unusual noise. To Jim, it sounded suspiciously like a human clearing his throat. Jess continued modestly: "Well, actually, Avenger did all the positioning and vector refining and tracing back through time. I just suggested an alternate way to locate Rao. So, thanks to the Avenger's diligent detective work, we've located the Rao system and the remains of Krypton. But we've also located an anomaly - there's a planet in that system that appears to have been a twin to Krypton."
That brought some exclamations of interest!
From Jim: "Of course, almost everyone knows the story of Krypton exploding, and Superman's parents sending him to Earth in an experimental rocket to escape the destruction, but nothing in the story I've ever heard suggests there was a sister planet." From Valor: My world, Xadam, also has a sister planet orbiting our brown star primary, the Sun, but it is not habitable. The Invincibles had a training base there." Then Valor's voice changed timbre, and this time they knew for sure it was Marnu, the ancient Lord of Order, speaking with the certainty that accompanied virtually everything he said. "Paired planets are not uncommon in planetary systems, though the members of the pair are usually significantly different in size, such the Terra/Luna pair. To find 'twin' planets is unusual." He paused for a moment of thought. "If this 'twin' was inhabited, most of the life on the planet would likely have been annihilated by asteroidal impacts with the space debris ejected by the explosion. In fact, it is somewhat surprising that this 'twin' actually survived intact." And Juna... "Xenonian legends, dating back to before our star Raotun was dragged away, actually speak of three worlds, as alike as... in human terms, 3 pearls, all circling Rao. Of course, with legends that old, no one can be sure of the truth. But it seems as if there really is truth at the base of these legends after all!" She considered for a second. "In our legends, that planet was named for a godling worshiped by our primitive ancestors as the ruler of storms. In English, I believe that the name might translate as 'Thoron', using the name of a similar godling." Jess touched a button, and the main view screen switched from an external view of space around them to a schematic of a star system. There seemed to be an odd shaped cloud encircling the star. It actually looked like a cheap human ring, the kind that doesn't entirely wrap around the finger with the gap allowing for alternate finger sizes, with an oddly shaped thickening where the stone would be, then long arms reaching each way around the star - with a significant gap exactly opposite from the 'stone'... and in that gap, a sphere representing Krypton's 'twin'. "That cloud is not really solid, of course, and the boundaries are much more tenuous than the schematic shows. It is composed of billions of chunks of planetary debris, ranging in size from dust particles to chunks as large as Luna, but it is shaded to give an approximate view of the current situation. The surviving planet, Thoron, was shielded from immediate devastation by orbiting diametrically opposite from Krypton, and while the debris has been spreading slowly along the shared orbit, the civilization on Thoron has developed the means to protect itself." She touched another control and the view zoomed in on the surviving planet, now named Thoron by silent consensus. It looked like a normal 'rocky planet with atmosphere' and had several visible moons, one of which even seemed to have its own sizeable satellite. Two of the satellites were orbiting Thoron directly opposite each other and were significantly larger than any of the others. In the thin tendril of the cloud closest to the planet, a glowing circle appeared, and the view zoomed in inside the circle to show a rocky mountain, tumbling through space.
Avenger's computer took over the narration. "This is a piece of the debris from the explosion, a chunk of rock approximately the size of the Avenger. Its orbit will eventually bring it into the clear zone around the planet." The planet rotated serenely as the asteroid approached more closely. "This view is false-color, shifted from the x-ray - the beam you see is invisible in the spectrum humans refer to as 'visible light'."
The approaching asteroid crossed some invisible boundary, and a bright blue white beam blasted-from one of the larger moons and speared the intruding asteroid, which almost instantly became engulfed in vapor and then exploded and all of the fragments flared brightly and vanished. And instants later, the bean vanished - and space around the planet was empty once again, except for the placidly circling moons. "There appear to be two such weapons on the moons with opposing orbits, so that at any given moment the entire sky is covered." "The power of that beam was... impressive. Even a Lord of Order rarely manipulates forces of that magnitude." The low rumble of Valor's voice indicated that it was Marnu speaking, and the stunned awe in his tone was almost as impressive as what they had just seen on the screen. Juna was trying to calculate exactly how much energy had been released and Jim was wondering just how much greater that energy had been than what he could command with the the Glove. Jess brightly made the comment that brought their attention back to the room. "Darn good thing we're outside that bubble!" They all looked at her approvingly; she had been the one to suggest caution in their future approaches to new star systems. "So, we think this star is Rao, right? Now we figure out how to change green kryptonite to white kryptonite and we can go back to Juneo and kill off that horrible jungle and save my world!" Avenger continued. "Preliminary scans do show that much of planetary debris is kryptonite - but as far as my sensors can determine, it is all of the standard Green variety. However, we will have no trouble finding enough for Juna to continue her experiments." Was that a bit of ironic understatement from the Avenger's sentient computer? While all the green kryptonite on Juna's home planet of Xenon had been converted to inert matter through shared radioactive decay with the planet's uranium core, there were clearly billions of tons of kryptonite in the former orbit of the planet Krypton. Enough for any conceivable experiments Juna would need to conduct. "So, do we contact the people on that planet, or just hang out on the opposite side of the star, do our research, collect as much K as we need, and get out of here?" Jim asked. Then he shrugged to acknowledge that it was really a rhetorical question and continued: "So how are we going to approach them without getting slagged like one of those floating mountains?" |
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:11:01 GMT
Part 2 First Contact
The Tiak Avenger hyper-jumped to a spot in space about a light-hour from Thoron, directly 'above' Rao with respect to the ecliptic of the Rao system, and began broadcasting a radio message. The message was repeated multiple times, in multiple languages, on multiple frequencies using both AM and FM modulation, at a power level carefully chosen so that it was easily distinguished from background radio noise but hopefully would not be construed as dangerous. Both the broadcasting strategy and the contents of the message itself were based on Galactic Patrol 'First Contact' protocol; in its heyday, the GP had regularly made 'First Contact' with unknown civilizations across the Galaxy. The selected languages were Kryptonian, English, Juneon, and the 'universal language' that had once been used by the Galactic Patrol. The message itself emphasized the peaceful intents of the mission of the Avenger's crew: establishing peaceful relations with the inhabitants of Rao's star system, exploration and research, and learning more about the destruction of Krypton and the element Kryptonite that had been created by the explosion. And it included cautious concern about not being blasted from space by one of Thoron's giant lasers if Avenger were to approach more closely. Privately, Jim was sure that the Galactic Patrol language was long dead and since Juneo had never had space travel, those two choices were extremely unlikely to get a response, but Valor and Jess both insisted. Based on where they were, Kryptonian seemed the language most likely to get a response. It took several hours before they received a return signal - which was in good, colloquial, grammatically correct American English, followed by the same message in Kryptonian. Accompanying the radio signal, in another frequency range, was a much more complex signal that Juna and Valor thought might be a video signal. Avengers' computers had endless algorithms for decrypting communications from hundreds of different civilizations (most of them probably fallen in the galaxy-wide cataclysm of a tiak ago). As the crew listened to the radio signal, the computer went to work trying to transform the secondary signal to a format that the ship's own video system could render. "Greetings, crew of the Tiak Avenger, from the people of Thoron. I have been chosen to respond to your message. My name is Halk Kar. I am the curator of Thoron's Krypton Memorial Museum, and I look forward to information sharing with you about the exploded planet and the element you call Kryptonite. Please consider attending a meeting with representatives of Thoron so we can learn more about each other. I would know more about you; I am curious to know how you came to speak English and Kryptonian." One of the secondary visual monitors on the ship's massive control panel had been flickering between static and very strange pictures as various video decryption algorithms were applied and discarded, and then suddenly the screen showed a blurred image that could have been a human being, which quickly sharpened as Avenger's sentient computer quickly tweaked the decryption parameters. The image was flipped up to the main monitor, and in seconds Avenger's crew were looking at the crystal clear image of a human male. He had the bulky build of a weightlifter, a square, handsome face with a stubborn jaw line and pug nose, short, bristly hair which had once been brown, now lined with streaks of gray, wearing a outfit that looked like a cross between a uniform and a three piece business suit, a formidable figure indeed. He was seated behind a desk in a room that resembled almost exactly an Earth office, perhaps from the 1950s, down to the old fashioned telephone and manual typewriter on the desk in front of him. On the wall behind him was a photographic portrait of a very attractive woman, wearing a green outfit and cap, her medium-length black hair in a center-cut style. Jim thought she looked familiar, but that had to be impossible. Halk Kar paused for an instant; perhaps his next words has not been part of the original script. "I personally learned English on the planet Earth, where it is one of the most important languages. I was taught by my friend, Superman."
Or perhaps those words had been part of the script; if the Avenger's crew had visited Earth and knew of Superman, this could be a warning not to mess with one of his friends. And suddenly Jim realized that he had seen that woman before, in photos in the Justice Society brownstone headquarters - that was a younger Lois Lane Kent! So Halk Kar probably really DID know Superman. Strange that a being from over 30 light years from Earth would have an Earth-style photograph of Lois in his Earth-style office... "The current two hour communication delay due to your position will grow cumbersome quickly. We are sending you suggested coordinates for our meeting. For now you should remain outside of the clear zone around our planet. The tracking computers of our Sky Defense Force, which protects our planet from impact from rubble from the Kryptoid Belt which surrounds our star, will not fire on Thoronese vessels, but it will take some time to adjust them to permit your own safe passage." Was that another warning? "Please reply when you have established a new location and we can set up an in-person meeting, and we will send emissaries to you. Please exercise caution if you enter the Kryptonoid Belt; it has become the habitat of a variety of space creatures, some of which can be dangerous to space vessels. Please reply on these frequencies. I look forward to meeting you in person!" Meet Apex, Thoron's Premier Super Hero
The message delivered, Halk Kar returned to work. And within a few seconds, he was interrupted again, by the troubalert signal set into the top of his desk. “Another job for Apex,” he sighed as he touched a button and the surface of his desk parted and a complex control panel rose up in front of him, including a video monitor. “I’m getting too old for this – it’s time to pass the torch – and the gear – along to someone younger.”
The face of Wom Bint, the Chief of Police of Thoronopolis, the capital city of Thoron which now covered more than half the continent, appeared on the screen. Halk knew his own image was being altered by his workstation computer so that Wom saw the public face of the superhero Apex, with no identifying details in the background. Bint got right to the point. “An alarm from the General Illumination factory. Someone is stealing zaser components.” The zaser, the public name for a giant x-ray laser, was the most deadly weapon every produced on Thoron, designed to instantly vaporize giant asteroids at planetary distances. A zaser in enemy or criminal hands could cause devastation beyond the worst nightmares of any Thoronion, whose simple existence over the last 60 years had often been worse than the ‘worst nightmare’! Another light flashed. The police had sent him their usual briefing; computer files that were now stored on a portable player. He could review the most important of these as he raced to the factory, almost 500 miles away and located in the crater of an earlier strike from a giant Kryptoid. The expenditure of resources that would be required to return the area to something approaching the normal Thoronese habitat was prohibitive, so an automated factory had been built on that location instead. He touched a band on his arm, resembling a wrist watch. A small compartment opened and some items were ejected, expanding on contact with the oxygen in the air. He removed his business uniform to reveal an off-red skin-tight uniform. One of the expanded items was a pair of goggles, similar to what world class swimmer might wear. He then donned a yellow cape, lined with green, emblazoned with the globe of Krypton, and a pair of yellow gloves. Finally, he donned a belt. A panel slid open in the ceiling above him, revealing the sky. "Always another a job for Apex!" he spoke sadly to the empty office as he rose into the air and them zoomed off to the southeast at super speed. He mused as he flew. "These inventions of Jor-L give me super powers and protect me when I wear them - but when I take them off I pay the price! And even my own invention, the force field belt, doesn't make me as invulnerable as Superman! The toll on my body is tremendous! I promised myself I'd retire after I was almost killed battling the followers of Chroma, and even though we altered time so that their invasion never happened, I'm still not able to walk without pain - even after 3 different surgeries!" He winced in memory of waking up, feeling more dead than alive, under the purple healing ray on Transformation Island - even Amazonian science had not been able to fully reverse his injuries. "I've promised myself dozens of times that I would retire from my Apex career - if only I could find someone I think I can trust with these powers... Maybe it is time to retire the gear, as well." He activated the player, and the contents of the police files were projected in a corner of the goggles. When he'd discovered the chest floating in the K-Belt, containing devices that Jor-L had created, they had looked like a pair of glasses he'd seen humans wearing in his short visit to Earth in the 1950s - but they had a tendency to fall off. He'd used his technical brilliance to rebuild them into their current more compact form, which never fell off! The briefing didn't quite prepare he for what he discovered when he arrived at the GI plant. *Jor-L created two such chests, one of which he had secreted in the rocket in which he sent his infant son Kal-L to Earth. The other was in his lab when Krypton exploded. The chest was composed of an almost indestructible metal alloy Jor-L had created and it survived the explosion. After he had returned to Thoron from his unexpected visit to Earth, Halk Kar had spent a number of years exploring the debris in the Kryptoid Belt left by the explosion of Krypton - and he'd found the chest, and figured out the combination. According to the notes Halk had found in the chest, this set of items had been the prototypes. Halk was something of a genius inventor himself, though not at the level of his deceased friend, and he had been steadily tinkering with these awesome artifacts of power through the year since his discovery.
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:11:57 GMT
Part 3 Interlude: Astounding Discovery in the Kryptoid Belt
About 6 weeks ago, shortly after the Tiak Avenger left Juneo on the trip to Krypton:
"Avenger! Set course for the Rao star system." Valor commanded. "I'm afraid I can't do that. There is no current record of a star named Rao in the navigational database." the AI responded. "Diagnostics indicate that an unauthorized data erasure program began running in the database two minutes ago. Erasure program cancelled. Further diagnostic indicates that 27.32% of the navigational database has been erased. I am unable to determine the origin of the erasure program." Of course, the Avenger's crew had blamed the computer virus on the curse of Wotan, and had continued searching without aid from the missing data, and eventually had located the Rao star system.
In the Rao star system at about the same time, Fion Drim, a space prospector in the Kryptoid Belt, the ring of planetary debris left by the explosion of Krypton that now stretched most of the way around Rao, lowered power to most of the systems in her one-person prospecting spaceship, the Swarm Rider, and prepared to sleep. With almost the last of her energy, she'd fired anchor cables into a crevice on the surface of the largest asteroid she could find and winched her ship down into the protection the crevice offered from other asteroids. She was exhausted; it had been over 24 hours since her last sleep - and she was exceedingly depressed, as once again she'd found nothing worth taking back to Thoron. No valuable minerals, no artifacts of the Kryptonian civilization, not even any water ice that she could add to her own supplies and extend her current trip another couple of days before she had to return to her base and resupply. As she always did when she felt this low, she instructed her computer to play her favorite video, a documentary about how the legendary asteroid prospector, the dashing, heroic Ni Van, had discovered the almost indestructible endurite gems that were now used to power the giant x-ray rasers that protected Thoron from total destruction from the sky. She was sure she'd fall asleep before the end of the program, but that was OK, she knew it by heart anyway. Not far away, as interplanetary distances go, one of the smaller pieces of debris, roughly cylindrical, passed very close to a much larger piece, shaped roughly like a pear, which was spinning wildly. Almost like it was playing handball, the smaller end of the spinning mountain slapped the smaller object, which was broken into into several pieces which spun away on slightly different trajectories. A couple hours later, one of these fragments was gently sideswiped by another asteroid, again altering its trajectory, and by the time Fion awakened and had her instruments powered up again, it was in range - and all her instruments instantly alerted her that this object was special! As she adjusted the external camera to show the object on her main view screen, her eye was caught by one of the items reported from her sensors. "The spectroscope says it's... PLASTIC!" she exclaimed loudly, as thrilled as she had ever been in her life. "I'm going to be RICH!"
Artifacts from Krypton were the most rare discovery by the asteroid prospectors, and the Kryptonian Memorial Museum always offered exorbitant payment for these recovered artifacts. Her fatigue, boredom, and depression from last night were entirely swept away, replaced by exultation. She adjusted the focus and the zoom and received an even bigger surprise. "It looks... no, it can't be... but it IS! It's a MAN!" "It" was actually a transparent plastic shell, a bit larger than a man, with a man inside. He looked like any man from Thoron although his clothing would be considered eccentric, at least.
'That capsule looks like a casket!' she thought. 'Was he given a hero's funeral and launched into space? And then was far enough away from Krypton that his casket survived the explosion!'
The capsule would easily fit through the lock into her cargo hold. She put on her spacesuit and flew to the capsule; a few minutes of maneuvering with her suit's rocket thrusters, and she was able to shove it into the air lock. After she had her suit off, she inspected her new find more closely - and gasped in stunned astonishment a few seconds later, as inside the transparent capsule... "He... MOVED! He's ALIVE" She quickly redoubled her search, and she found a latch mechanism, which still worked. She popped open the capsule, and a few minutes later, the man opened his eyes and sat up with a pained groan. His head swiveled as he took in his surroundings; his face showed confusion and alarm.
Then he noticed her, and his head snapped around as he started at her. He asked her a question, in a language she didn't recognize. His voice indicated it was a demand.
She held up her hands to show that she was unarmed, and tried to project reassurance into her voice as she spoke. "You're safe now, I found you floating in space, but you're inside my ship now." She pointed at herself, and then indicated the cargo hold around her. "I guess we'll be going back to school, learning to speak to each other. You're sure going to cause a sensation back on Thoron!" |
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:12:59 GMT
Part 4 Complex Invasion An hour ago, something unusual happened at the base of the rim around the giant asteroid crater in which was the General Illumination Zaser Assemble Plant. A group of what looked like partially 'erased from existence' flying vehicles were floating in a cluster. Only pieces of these vehicles, mostly their front ends, were visible. They looked as if a giant paintbrush had been swiped across them, and the paintbrush had 'erased' or turned transparent, parts of the vehicles, less effective in the front, where the noses were fully visible, then in streaks streaming towards the rear of the vehicles, which were completely invisible. A hose floated in the air, pointing at each of the partially-visible vehicles in turn. An almost invisible distortion flowed from the nozzle of the hose and as it washed over each of the vehicles, they vanished. Although we can't see inside the vehicles, the men inside are similarly mostly invisible, speckled with tattered patches of visibility. They weren't concerned; those whose invisibility was critical to the mission would be sprayed one more time when they reached their goal. Finally the hose itself vanished as it was sprayed by a similar hose, already invisible itself.
The invisible commander spoke through the radios built into the outfits that all his invisible team were wearing. If we could see his face, we'd recognize the man rescued by Kryptoid Belt prospector Fion Drim in an earlier chapter, but we can't - he's invisible. Fortunately we CAN listen to his radio broadcast.
"You all have your instructions. Follow them, and you will be rewarded with riches. Fail and you will be punished."
At this, some of his invisible team shuddered. They'd seen what their leader, K-Pau, considered punishment. Pau looked like a skinny old man - but he was a native of Krypton, where the gravity had been MUCH greater than that of Thoron, and he was stronger than any 5 Thoronan men, at least. They had watched him beat a dozen men to death when he'd busted in on a meeting of 'The Operation', Thoronopolis's largest underworld organization, and demanded that everyone in 'The Operation' acknowledge him as the new Grand Leader. Not only was he supernally powerful, but no Thoronan could match his speed. Within a few minutes of his violent self-introduction to the underworld, there were none left alive who dared to even consider opposing him.
Meanwhile, K-Pau was thinking invisibly, "These inventions of Jor-L's that I reconstructed are going to make me the King of Thoron. The stupid Science Council thought they were punishing me for stealing the plans to his inventions by imprisoning me in my orbiting capsule in suspended animation, but they only allowed me to survive the explosion of Krypton, while they are long gone! Bwa ha ha ha!"
"Begin!" he commanded decisively over his radio link, and it began.
The invisible flying vessels cautiously rose higher, their positions closely coordinated by very low power short range radio. Several swooped into the crater and circled the clustered domes of the General Illumination factory, dumping a load of small pellets onto the bare rock until there was a ring entirely around the factory. These fliers retired and headed back to their base, their part of the attack finished. Another pair of invisible vessels circled the plant above the path of the pellets, with weird-colored rays flaring down under them. And where the rays struck these pellets, in reality plant seeds, the seeds instantly transformed into monstrous plants, growing at incredible speeds to incredible sizes - becoming full grown in seconds, as much as 100 times larger than they would normally have grown. The variety of seeds had been selected to produce an almost impenetrable barrier around the factory, tightly packed trees interlaced with tough vines and every variety of plant Thoron produced which had thorns, most of which were several inches long! Nothing was going to push through that barrier without heavy machinery to cut or burn. The roots of these mighty plants shattered the exposed bedrock beneath them, and then, shortly after the ray passed on, without the ray to sustain their unnatural growth and vitality, the mighty plants died - but the barricade remained! Nobody on foot was going to interrupt these invaders!
Two other vessels landed outside the loading dock of the factory, which had deliberately been left clear of plants. They were met at the door by a worker at the plant who had been convinced to bypass plant security through threats, some actual beatings, and promises of great rewards. And he received a great reward, instantly, when he was dispatched to meet the Supreme Being he worshiped. As they left their vehicles, the raiders were once again covered with the invisibility spray. Once they were inside, K-Pau flipped a switch and activated a device that had been placed outside, north of the complex, by one of the plant fliers. Every Thoronan in the complex was instantly dragged irresistibly to and then pinned against the wall closest to the device.
"The Animal Magnet has been activated!" K-Pau broadcast to his team. "Be sure not to damage your wrist neutralizer or you too will be captured by the irresistible Animal Magnetism - and we will not waste our efforts trying to free one stupid enough to be captured by our own trap!"
With all the other living beings in the complex pinned to the northernmost walls, Pau's raiders were free to loot the priceless endurite crystals...
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:13:38 GMT
Part 5 good news... and Bad News
A squad of Sky Defense troops on personal fliers (generally called Sky Knights) had been dispatched to deal with the factory raiders, but they'd had the bad luck of flying into the range of the Human Magnet, and all been pulled roughly from the sky. They had radioed frantic warnings back to their base, but it was already too late for Apex - as soon as he came in sight of the bottom of the crater, he found his speed increasing, despite his increasingly frantic efforts to reverse his course. He couldn't even see what it was that was generating the force - it was invisible! Then he realized... "But, this gives me a way to find the device quickly. This magnet will draw me to it, if I let it!" He stopped resisting, and instead started accelerating in the direction of the pull. In front of him he saw the Sky Defense troops, pinned against something invisible that was holding them a bit above the ground in awkward positions in sort of a cup shape. Then he smashed into and through something and into the ground, and he drilled almost halfway into the ground before he stopped. It only took a few seconds to free himself, but by the time he did, he heard the roar of a spaceship blasting off nearby. He still couldn't see it - but if he could follow it closely enough, he could follow it by sound! He raced in that direction... And was blasted by a lightning bolt from an invisible projector! It was so powerful it felt like it was solid, like he'd run into a solid steel battering ram! Even his force field belt wasn't enough to protect him - he was knocked unconscious instantly, thrown violently backward at least a quarter mile, and smashed into the wall of the crater, then rolled to the rocky floor where he remained motionless. Halk Kar awakened in a Space Defense Force hospital, the most advanced medical facility on Thoron. A good part of their recent advances in medical technology had come after the last time Halk had been treated here. The last time, he had only recently returned from Earth after the invasion of the followers of Chroma which no one but he remembered, and even treatment under Paula Gunther's Purple Healing Ray on Transformation Isle on Earth hadn't completely healed him. After he had returned to Thoron and went to a hospital for a check up with Thoronan medical technology (generally more advanced that Earth, though they had not yet developed a healing ray), the hospital's own diagnostic sensors had detected enough traces of purple radiation remaining in his body for analysis and reverse engineering - and the facility's research team had soon been able to develop their own prototype healing ray. It wasn't nearly as effective as the original - yet - but it was being quickly improved by Thoronan medical science and research. And, the hospital staff could be trusted to protect his secret identity! It was a good news/bad news situation. He'd been in much better shape when he was admitted this time than the last time he'd been here, and with their variety of advanced treatments, he'd be well enough to attend the meeting with the space explorers, but... The raiders had escaped with Thoron's entire supply of endurite gems from the zaser factory. No new zasers could be built until the gems were recovered - or a new supply was discovered in the Kryptoid Belt. Bit it seemed unlikely that a new source would be discovered, as only one of the thousands of Belt prospectors over the last 50 years had ever recovered endurite. Which was more than just 'bad news' - astronomers predicted that the bombardment by debris from the Kryptoid Belt would increase for at least the next 60 years, and not having more zasers for protection could lead to the catastrophic end of Thoronan civilization! |
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:14:17 GMT
Part 6 Ultimatum... and Response Halk Kar was out of the hospital (though still healing despite the best efforts of Thoronan medical science and the prototype Purple Healing Ray). He was preparing to fly to the meeting with the Tiak Avenger, in space above the North Pole of Thoron, a safe distance outside the "Z Zone", (the region of space covered by the existing moon-based asteroid-zapping zaser weapons) when K-Pau broadcast his demands to the world. K-Pau's Thoronian was stilted and he spoke slowly and with a harsh accent. It was clear that he was repeating a previously-prepared speech sent to him via a telepathic phonetic prompter, and that he barely knew Thoronian and hadn't practiced his delivery in advance... but he made his message clear. And the transcript of his pronouncements, delivered to all the media outlets seconds after his broadcast ended, confirmed that message for any who might have misunderstood.
***
"Without endurite to power your zasers, the so-called civilization of Thoron will die a long and painful death, with millions dying instantly in frequent and unstoppable asteroid impacts and the billions who survive the impacts will starve or freeze to death in the resulting nuclear winter that follows. You all already KNOW this will happen without more zasers; your current rulers have told you so, repeatedly, for years. Within a hundred years of today, you will all be dead and the Thoron species extinct. Unless I am immediately proclaimed and installed as the Supreme Absolute Monarch of Thoron!!
As your benevolent Supreme Absolute Monarch, I will provide endurite crystals to construct the new zasers required for survival. Or I will leave the Rao system and take the endurite with me.
Your choice is simple - confirm me as the Monarch Supreme of Thoron, or die, and as you die painfully of starvation or frigid cold, curse the idiotic foolishness of those who rejected my offer! Only I can save you!"
***
He went on, to paint a graphic picture of the last desperate survivors, living huddled in caves as the very air outside their pathetic shelters froze, savagely fighting over their dwindling reserves of preserved food, finishing their lives in hopeless despair. He had a very good speech writer, and his harsh voice and accent, delivered in an angry and menacing tone, was very convincing, evoking panic in many listeners. By the time he had finished his speech, many Thoronans were already contacting the highest government officials they could reach, urging Thoron's rulers to accept this offer. The Avenger's crew heard the broadcast as well, as the Avenger cautiously navigated through the K Belt to the meeting coordinates, and there was only a short discussion about what they should do. It was a foregone conclusion: they would help the people of Thoron. They were already on a mission to save an entire people from extinction, how could they not help another people fighting for their own existence? They discussed what they thought Thoron's delegation might ask of them as well as what they had to offer, in preparation for their meeting. Shortly afterward, at the designated coordinates, the crew of the Tiak Avenger was welcoming aboard the Thoronan delegation: Halk Kar, the Curator of the Krypton Memorial Museum, was the nominal leader of the delegation. He was the only Thoronian who had direct experience dealing with people from other worlds, except those now under the domination of K-Pau. As well as his official position as Curator, he was a brilliant inventor in his own right, who would likely be world-renowned as 'the Father of Space Flight' on Thoron if he and the spaceship he had invented had not been lost in space for years after the explosion of Krypton. Sav Ont, the Krypton Memorial Museum's leading research scientist, who was fascinated by Kryptonite. Kryptonite was a new element which as far as researchers could determine had never existed anywhere in the universe before the explosion of Krypton. Space exploration over the last 50 years found no evidence of Kryptonite anywhere in the Rao star system prior to the explosion, and extensive astronomical spectranalysis of the sky showed no traces of the element anywhere else in the universe. What were the unique conditions of the explosion of Krypton that had produced this unique element? He hoped to work closely with Juna Dondwar, Xenon's leading expert on Kryptonite, to learn more about this mysterious element. Syra Tute, a high ranking officer from the Sky Defense Force. He hoped to enlist the aid of the Avenger's crew in locating and defeating K-Pau and recovering the vital endurite. Syra's background was surprisingly similar to that of Jessiat Gazil; both had grown up as leading warriors fighting the deadly threats to the survival of their entire civilizations and were renowned for their bravery, resourcefulness, - and yet, neither had any prior training in fighting other humans, as their lifelong wars had always been against threats of nature. Bita Gil, a ranking official from the Thoronan equivalent of the 'State Department' and Nexa Lind, a trusted direct assistant to the Chancellor of Thoron, were direct representatives of of Thoron's government and were seeking to establish friendly relations, first with Avenger's crew - Avenger was a very large space ship armed with deadly weapons, after all - and then with the other civilizations represented by Avenger's crew. Thoron might have no choice soon but to evacuate as much of the population as possible - it would be nice to have some friends to supply aid, and friendly places to go as a backup plan. They also brought with them about an Earth metric ton of Green Kryptonite for Juna's research. There were numerous meteor craters on the surface of Thoron littered with Green K, and literally millions of metric tones just floating around in the K Belt and so far, nobody had found any real uses for it, other than night lights, pet rocks and glowing paperweights. The spirits of the Thoronan representatives were low and depressed; they were still trying to cope with the fall-out from the recent theft of the endurite gems and K-Pau's ultimatum. "Many of the people of Thoron want to give in to K-Pau's demand," Halk reported sadly. "We all remember the disastrous devastation falling asteroids wreaked before the current zasers were put in place to temporarily stem the tide. No one wants to go through that again, knowing the inevitable ending if we don't have enough zasers." Syra added: "We've already dispatched every ship available to scour the K Belt for more endurite, but can't count on that search. And in 60 years of determined research, we have not yet been able to develop effective alternate methods of protecting Thoron from asteroid impacts. We have used demountable rocket thrusters to change the orbits of some asteroids, but that's not scalable - we estimate that this method might protect us from less than 10% of projected impacts over the next 50 years. Blowing them up with powerful explosives isn't useful; it just changes the threat from a single massive impact to a rain of smaller debris which will do equally as much damage. The only option we have so far found to be effective is to totally vaporize each incoming asteroid with powerful zazers." "We may be able to help," Valor replied. "If we had a sample of endurite we might be able to tune the Avenger's sensors to locate other 'deposits'. And we may be able to help you stop K-Pau." Sav did have a small sample of endurite which he'd used in his research for years, so they settled on a 3 prong plan...
- Valor and Strobe would return to Thoron with the delegation and work with the Thoronan efforts to locate and capture K-Pau,
- Jess and Syra would pilot the Avenger and scour the K-Belt for endurite - and likewise for White Kryptonite. After all, Jess still had her own mission!
- Juna and Sav Ont would remain with the Avenger and use the advanced laboratory facilities on the ship to learn it were possible to artificially synthesize either endurite or white kryptonite.
The 3 prong plan was put into action - the Thoronan carrier returned to Thoron with Apex, Bita, Nexa, Vic Valor and Strobe, while the Avenger moved cautiously deeper into the thickest regions of the K-Belt, all sensors activated to check every asteroid in the rubble within a thousand miles of the ship. |
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:14:56 GMT
Part 7 Kryptonite - Search and Research
Juna and Sav quickly retired to the Avengers' Engineering and Lab Deck, which Juna had been rebuilding during the crew's down time in hyperspace, bringing with them a few pounds of kryptonite and Sav's single endurite gem. As they tuned the Avengers' long range sensors to the composition of endurite, they eagerly began a highly theoretical discussion of the task facing them. "I've discovered that endurite is also an isotope of kryptonite, which I call 'Jewel Kryptonite'," Sav told her. "I believe that the nuclear reaction that caused Krypton to explode produced an unusual type of radiation, probably because Krypton's core had an unusually high concentration of exotic matter, and that regular matter exposed to this unique radiation was somehow converted to the type of exotic matter that we call 'Kryptonite'." "I've actually studied kryptonite from 'the other end' as it were," she replied, intrigued. "You have been studying the origin of Kryptonite, the conversion of ordinary matter into Kryptonite, while I've been studying the 'end' of Kryptonite, the radioactive decay of kryptonite back to ordinary matter in the presence of large quantities of uranium. During the decay process, it passes through various isotopic phases, some of which last for only nanoseconds before they further decay. One of those intermediate, momentary states is white - perhaps jewel k is another isotope which I have not yet observed. I'm attempting to find a way to stabilize the 'white k' state indefinitely. Your sample of the jewel k isotope should give us some useful hints!" Sav said softly, musingly, "It's very ironic that we are searching the shattered remains of a destroyed world looking for secrets that we hope will save two other worlds from destruction!" Juna was almost annoyed when Avenger interrupted their discussion. "Sensor calibration is completed. I estimate that the sensors will now be able to detect and locate a metric ton of endurite at a distance of a thousand miles. Positive detection of smaller quantities is of course possible, at shorter distances." A metric ton of endurite would be enough for the construction of around a dozen or so additional super powerful zazers - which was theoretically enough to protect Thoron for at least the next 2 hundred Thoronan years. Juna touched the intercom and notified Jess of their results, and then dove back into her discussion with Sav. Neither scientist noticed the tiny jolt of acceleration as the massive ship altered course following directions from the bridge. ***~~~***
On the control deck, Jess and Syra were discussing the parameters of the upcoming search. "Unfortunately, the early K Belt prospectors didn't always keep detailed records of where their discoveries were made. Ni Van searched millions of cubic miles of the Belt, both before he discovered endurite and then more before he finally returned to a base, and as a result, we have only a vague guess as to where he located it." Syra was very demonstrative as he spoke, waving his hands and shaking his head with disapproval at Ni Van's careless navigational practices. He touched the navigation view screen and traced a rough circle on the Rao system schematic, about halfway around the orbit from where Krypton had been and the location of Thoron. Avenger changed the image to show a ghost sphere on the three dimensional display. "He was about 90 degrees anti-spinward of the heaviest part of the Belt, which still centers on the former location of Krypton." He shrugged. "Thousands of prospectors have since searched in that general area with no success." "That sphere is approximately a million miles in circumference. The random distribution of asteroids in the K Belt will make it difficult to search efficiently. It is impossible to currently predict the time required to search that whole region," Avenger's sentient computer joined in the conversation. Syra was a little annoyed at the interruption from a computer, but Jess had come to think of Avenger's computer as another member of the crew - who always had something important and useful to contribute when it spoke up. Syra continued, a little crossly. "Our scientists have tried to build theoretical models of the explosion and the spreading of the debris, and the best models suggest searching closer to the original orbit rather than at the outer fringes of the expanding debris cloud. Of course..." he held up both hands to indicate uncertainty, "...in this case, 'best models' mean 'their best guess as to which of hundreds of different models is best'." He traced out another region, a tube that passed through the center of the sphere. "The indicated volume is approximately 10% of the initial volume," Avenger chimed in again. "If there is endurite in that volume, we shall find it." Neither missed the 'if' statement, but both were heartened. "OK, Avenger, take us here," Jess touched the screen. "And given the range of the sensors, work out the most efficient search pattern to cover that entire volume in the shortest possible time, while exercising extreme caution to avoid asteroid collisions." "That level of basic caution is included in my programming at the lowest levels," Avenger commented. Jess knew she was being gently reprimanded, but she'd actually made her statement deliberately, so there would be no question about the safety of the search in her new colleague's mind. Both Jess and Syra knew that the hand drawn figures on the screen provided Avenger's computer with extremely vague coordinates, at best - but all thee of them knew that the best coordinates they could calculate were only approximations based on theories based on human-designed approximations trying to make sense of the chaotic aftermath of the extremely violent explosion that had occurred around 70 years ago. But they had to start somewhere! |
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:16:01 GMT
Part 8 Where in the World is K-Pau?
When the shuttle reached Thoron, everyone piled out except Jim. Gravity on Thoron was about 10 times the gravity of Earth, and no Earth human could survive very long with gravity that powerful. Ancient information stored in his Glove's AI suggested a way to deal with this - turn his flying power on at low level and leave it on continually. His initial movements were awkward, as this was a use of his power he'd never before considered. He hoped he'd get better with time, but for the moment he resolved to move slowly and carefully until he grew more adept. Soon, Vic Valor and Strobe, along with Halk Kar, in his Apex identity, were meeting with Lar Mida, the Commander of Sky Defense, in his Sky Defense Headquarters office. Valor was asking some important questions. "From what you told us, this K-Pau has some way to make his people and his vessels invisible. We need to figure out how to find him." He turned to Lar Mida. "Were you able to track his transmission?" This kind of investigation was something that Valor was good at, from his prior life as an Invincible, while super villains were totally unknown on Thoron before now. Apex had some experience battling unpowered criminals using the most advanced Thoronan technology, but K-Pau was much more powerful than a normal Thoronan. Mida half shook his head "The broadcast was recorded, delivered from a satellite. We have Sky Watch recordings of a Kryptoid Belt prospector's ship dropping off the satellite just a few hours before the broadcast, and the satellite exploded immediately after the transmission. Spectranalysis of record of the vessel's exhaust shows that it belongs to a Belt prospector named Fion Drim. There's nothing unusual in her history, but we discovered that her apartment had been converted into a rough prison, and it's now abandoned. Nobody has seen Fion Drim in over a month, but that's not unusual for prospectors. So she had done nothing to arouse suspicion before we traced the satellite to her ship." He paused. The next part was a disappointment to him. "But we have been able to find out exactly NOTHING about K-Pau. There is no trace of him in any public records. A totally opaque background! I would not have thought this possible! We are seriously considering that K-Pau may not be from Thoron." "You said Fion Drim is a Belt prospector. Maybe she found him drifting in the K Belt somewhere. It may seem impossible, but maybe he's a survivor of Krypton," Halk Kar suggested hesitantly, then continued more strongly. "I saw some pretty strange things, the couple of years I spent prospecting the Belt. Once I found an entire building which appeared to be totally intact. That was REALLY spooky, let me tell you! And from meeting Superman, I know that Kryptonians are VERY tough..." He was speaking slowly, thinking it out as he talked. "If he really is a survivor of Krypton, that will make our job even more difficult," he continued. "On Earth, even though I had super powers, Superman was many times more powerful than I was. Even more powerful than I am as Apex. If he is Kryptonian, he can probably defeat any Thoronan force we can muster against him." "Actually, if he's really Kryptonian, we have the means at hand to defeat him easily," Jim confidentially contradicted the Thoronan hero flatly. Both Lar and Halk turned to stare at him incredulously. "He's not only the most powerful man on the planet, he's got invisible forces and unstoppable weapons!" Mida argued. "I've seen nothing that suggests defeating him will be easy." "Ummm... you've got thousands of TONS of Kryptonite on hand, don't you? Just floating around in the sky, right? You delivered a ton to the Avenger - and I'm pretty sure you've got more, I think?" Both men looked at him in disbelief. Kryptonite was a novelty, sure, but it was useful only for no-power nightlights, paperweights, and pet rocks. Suddenly it dawned on Jim. "You don't know the effect Kryptonite has on Kryptonians?" He couldn't believe it! EVERYONE knew Superman's weakness - and Halk Kar had even met Superman! There was a confused babble for a few minutes until they'd put the story together. In his short visit to Earth in the early 50s, Halk Kar had met Superman but the two of them had not encountered Kryptonite, so Superman had never given him the story. Jim was stunned - growing up with first Superman and now Power Girl in the news every day, EVERYONE knew they were vulnerable to Kryptonite. But, of course, none of those in the office with him was from Earth! Even Valor had never heard of Superman's weakness, during the short periods of time he'd been active on Earth. When the Thoronans and Valor were convinced that Kryptonite might be a useful weapon against K-Pau, Lar Mida gave orders the sent all of Sky Defense into a whirlwind of activity. He called in his aides and issued orders that were going to make a lot of members of Sky Defense scratch their collective heads. "Within a few hours, we will begin equipping every Sky Defense member with Kryptonite emblems for our uniforms, and our armorers are working on weapons that can fire Kryptonite bullets and shoot focused beams of Kryptonite radiation." Halk Kar reminded everyone... "It still won't be easy. If he's NOT Kryptonian, the new weapons won't help us much. And, we don't know how large his forces are, but we do know that they can be invisible, and they have advanced weapons never before seen on Thoron." Jim spoke up again. "I won't be much help if I am hanging around with a bunch of folks carrying Kryptonite - K Radiation disrupts my Glove's ability to control the energy constructs I make with the Glow. But I can face K-Pau's other forces instead." "So, all we have to do now is find him!" Lar Mida summed it all up. Or, for K-Pau to find them, but nobody voiced that thought. |
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:16:44 GMT
Part 9 A few weeks back, aboard the Swarm Rider In the small 'sick bay' on Swarm Rider, Fion Drim's new passenger tried to sit up, but instead moaned in pain and collapsed. She held him down on the bunk and strapped him in - unlike some of the very successful prospectors, she couldn't afford artificial gravity in the Swarm Rider. Like many prospectors, her budget was so tight she skimped on power whenever she could, even lighting, with a decades-old prospector trick - small chips of green glowing kryptonite and strips of double-sided tape made adequate, and free, night lights.
Her patient seemed to settle down somewhat when she lowered the lights in the bunk room. It quickly occurred to her: 'Maybe his condition, whatever it is, makes him sensitive to light.' During her occasional migraine, even the dim glow of her night lights could be painful. So she moved throughout the small room, pulling down several of the sticky lights until the room was in total darkness and returned them to storage. He seemed to be resting more easily when she returned, though he was still tossing and turning and letting out moans of pain from time to time. She'd never seen the need for soundproofing in a single-ship before, but if he moaned and groaned like this for long, she was going to regret the lack!
She cautiously set course back to Thoron; she couldn't just zoom through the Kryptoid Belt at high speed, so it would take her almost 2 weeks. She hoped she could keep him alive during that time! Though even if he died, she could probably sell the body to some big research university for enough to retire on.
She initially assumed he was suffering side effects of his long ordeal in suspended animation. About a day later, it occurred to her that he might be suffering some alien illness that might affect her and she almost panicked and spaced him, but then realized that if he really was contagious, it was probably too late. But she was practically frantic about her own health for days, until her onboard medical monitor - not top of the line, but the best she could afford! - showed that she remained healthy. He, on the other hand didn't get any better and even in total darkness gradually got worse; he developed a fever and was delirious much of the time, he remained in continuous pain, and after a few days, when she'd turned on the bunk light to examine him, she noticed that his skin had started showing tinges of green...
Even when he wasn't tossing in troubled sleep or lost in deliriums, he was in too much pain to learn any Thoronian; she forced herself to try to learn his language and picked up a few words, which were mostly demands for food or meds or some other kind of attention. He didn't seem to know how to be gracious. Fion was tolerant person by nature; she assumed it was his condition that made him so demanding and short tempered, but she was having increasing difficulty remaining tolerant.
Within a few days they discovered that the beer she carried on board relieved his pain. Fion was something of a connoisseur and she only stocked a limited supply of the most expensive Thoronan beer, and she strictly rationed her consumption to stretch it out over her 6 month-long prospecting trips, but at his current rate, he was going to consume all of her limited supply before they got back to Thoron. Still, she considered it a good trade off; him heedlessly chugging her very expensive beer for the periods of silence when he 'slept it off'.
She had an acquaintance on Thoron who was a doctor with flexible ethics. She called him on the radio and gave him the details, and her plans to get rich from her discovery (a traveling show, was her tentative plan - "The Last Survivor of Krypton!" should make an exhibit everyone would pay to see!), and he agreed to meet them at the spaceport and care for her passenger rather than turning him over to the authorities until they could finalize their plans. And when the Kryptonian recovered quickly in her apartment, they began congratulating themselves. But as he recovered, he quickly realized he was incredibly more powerful than any Thoronan - and he had plans of his own. Plans that were disastrous for Fion and her doctor friend.
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:17:23 GMT
Part 10 About a week ago...
Fion Drim was shoved violently into the refresher compartment of her own prospecting single-ship Swarm Rider by Lea Thall, one of the members of the Thoronan underworld group ‘The Operation” who worked for the new boss, K-Pau, voluntarily. She was one of his favorites, one of the few underlings he didn’t constantly abuse. “You will remain here, and silent, unless I require your service!” Thall ordered. Fion was unable to resist or complain; she was restrained and gagged while Lea Thall was heavily armed with some of the new super-scientific weapons Kau Pau had developed. Though she was battered and listless, Fion felt a twinge of comfort and hope, being back aboard her own vessel after almost a month of being confined in a tiny closet in her apartment in pitch darkness. Except for the temporary exception of the Swarm Rider's bunk compartment on her most recent prospecting flight, even with all the ship's power shut off, none of the compartments in Swarm Rider were ever truly dark, as they were all illuminated by a dim green glow of the 'night lights' she had created from fragments of a kryptonite asteroid and sticky tape. She truly hoped Thall WOULD need her 'services' to pilot the Swarm Rider; she had spent the last hour planning the exact sequence of control settings she'd have to alter to cause the little ship's rocket motor to instantly explode! As Thrall was carrying her onboard, Fion berated herself for not choosing a more reputable shipyard as her home port. This one was cheap and she'd known in advance that it was cheap because it was shady, sheltering smugglers, drug runners, and various other illicit activities that required spaceships. But it was also the home port for hundreds of K-Belt prospectors who, like Fion, couldn't afford anything better. Lea Thall was herself a pilot based in this shipyard - she had been a smuggler for 'The Operation' prior to K-Pau taking over. So Thall knew all the ins and outs of this port's routines, including how to drag a bound prisoner aboard her own ship without anyone seeing anything they felt they needed to report, as well as how to load off-the-record cargo without being observed. Thall sent a prearranged signal back to the Operation and then took off. Fion's secret hope that her piloting assistance would be required was dashed; Thall was a competent pilot. An hour later, in orbit, Thall made some final adjustments to the ship's attitude, opened the Swarm Rider’s cargo bay door by remote control and sent a quick signal that activated the compressed gas thruster built into the communication satellite that Swarm Rider was carrying. With a gentle burst of gas, it floated out into orbit, Thall maneuvered the small ship carefully away, and then dropped back down to a safe landing at the port. If anyone had cared, they probably figured she'd delivered a shipment of something illegal to one of the space stations circling Thoron. As she felt the ship begin the deorbit maneuver, a sudden thought sent Fion into a panic. They were going to take her back to her prison!! She'd once again be imprisoned in total darkness! After being in the light again, this was intolerable - she would surely lose her sanity. And then she realized that she might have an easy solution at hand. She wriggled into a corner and struggled to pry one of the kryptonite fragments free of the tape and then shoved it deep into one of her pockets. The refresher didn't have cushioning to protect the occupant from the acceleration and deceleration of takeoffs or landings, and Fion was battered almost to unconsciousness when Swarm Rider entered the atmosphere. If it had been up to her, Thall would have tossed Fion out the airlock while Swarm Rider was still in orbit, but K-Pau thought she might still be of some use to him in the future. So Thall dragged her from the little ship, dumped her into the back of her flying car, and they flew to the Operation’s headquarters, where the still unconscious prisoner was placed in a new cell. When she awakened, Fion was instantly filled again with the terror that had been with her from the instant she’d seen K-Pau easily dismember her doctor friend with his bare hands while laughing at the man's agony. Even the mild green illumination her ‘souvenir’ now provided barely lessened her anguish. |
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:18:17 GMT
Part 11 The Adventures of Avenger and her Crew Encounter in the Kryptoid Belt!
Thar She Blows!Avenger rose up above the plane of the ecliptic in a giant arc which cut a chord across the orbit of Thoron, then arced back down into the target section of the Kryptoid Belt, moving much more slowly the closer the ship came to the center of the Belt. Avenger’s computer estimated that on average, there was probably one kitchen-stove-sized chunk of debris in any given 3000 mile cube of volume even in the thickest part of the belt, but that was only an average. There were pieces MUCH larger than that, and there were millions of smaller fragments in that same cube of space. Many chunks would be moving much faster or slower than Avenger, and impacting them could be dangerous, regardless of their size. Their computer-generated search pattern moved toward spinward from their starting position, to further minimize any dangerous velocity differences with the debris – and the computer was closely monitoring every sensor on board for anything that might even pass close by. Whenever they encountered anything unusual – a fragment as large or larger than Avenger herself, a group of larger fragments bunched close together, a cloud of smaller debris, or anything with a shape or chemical composition that even vaguely hinted that it might be artificial, they would approach the anomalies and investigate. So far, they had found nothing that matched the spectranalysis of endurite. They only rarely encountered debris which spectranalysis, or even visual inspection, showed to be ‘man-made’ rather than natural, and they always collected samples of these, but never anything they could recognize – everything was crushed, twisted and melted beyond identification. They found no trace of any organic material – the scientists theorized that the tremendous energy released by the explosion had instantly vaporized everything as fragile as living things. While their discoveries were often exhilarating, these samples which might have been man-made much too frequently reminded them of the magnitude of what they were doing – sifting through the rubble of a destroyed world, which had once been the home of trillions of living creatures, rich with natural wonders and the miracles of an advanced civilization. Even the urgency of their mission, to save 2 other planets from destruction, often wasn't enough to distract them from their sad thoughts. A few days into their explorations, during dinner, Avenger made a stunning announcement. “I've discovered another anomaly," Avenger announced. They all turned to the console where the computer’s voice originated in this room. After a pause that the human crew would later swear had to be 'theatrical', Avenger continued. “A Space Dragon!” Another, somewhat shorter pause. “And it may be dangerous to the ship!" A Quick Fable!
For the last hundred thousand years, give or take a few, a small population of 'space dragons' lived in the Oort Cloud surrounding the red giant star Rao. No one is sure where they came from, and for most of that time, no one even knew they were there, as the civilizations on the worlds orbiting Rao never reached the stage of space flight where they explored the Oort Cloud. These space dragons appear to be genetically related to the now extinct Kryptonian species of flame dragons and snagriffs; perhaps, during the chaos and destruction caused by the close passage of the wandering star that eventually dragged the planet Xenon away from Rao orbit at that time, a common ancestor to flame dragons and snagriffs was somehow dragged from the surface of Krypton into space, where it mutated in order to survive. In any case, these fantastic animals are able to live in cold and vacuum and somehow propel themselves through space. They survive by eating matter - generally the chunks of rock that make up any star's Oort Cloud, but they can eat anything solid.
For most of this time, this small colony of space dragons remained in Rao's Oort Cloud, in limited numbers. There was never a time when the nearby food supply could support a larger population, and, if any of them strayed outside the Oort Cloud, they probably starved to death before they could reach other stars. But the explosion of Krypton helped spread the species to other stars - they could fly away from Roa inside the clouds of planetary debris that had been thrown into interplanetary space and travel in culinary style until they reached another system! Superman and Kell-Orr encountered one of these traveling space dragons far from Rao in Superman #119 (around 1953), and they certainly spread in all directions after the explosion. But the one encountered by the Avenger remained in the Rao system - but not the Oort Cloud!
One Kryptonian Space Dragon didn't grow as large as her peers. She was always smaller, and weaker, and was almost always chased away from any food source by the larger members of her species. Eventually she fled inward, towards Rao, desperately searching for a food supply where other, larger and more greedy dragons wouldn't simply shoulder her aside and eat everything before she could even eat anything. And eventually, she made a stupendous discovery. The Kryptoid Belt, trillions and trillions of tons of food, just waiting for her! With not a single other space dragon within a light year to drive her away from this massive, incredible, limitless buffet!
For the first time in her life, she was able to eat as much as she wanted. The density of matter in the K Belt was much higher than in the Oort Cloud, so she never had to go hungry searching for food, and she ate as none of her species had ever been able to eat before! And a good portion of what she ate was radioactive - and as she ate, her body was changed as it adapted to the radiation... and she grew, and grew, and grew, and grew! When she finally encountered the Tiak Avenger, this once tiny dragon was even larger than the mighty ship!  |
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:18:58 GMT
Part 12 What's a Dragon? Avenger's four current crew members looked at each other in confusion. "Umm... sorry, Avenger, but... what's a dragon?"
Avengers' instant translators, worn by all four, had been developed and refined by the Galactic Patrol over centuries of use among thousands of species during the GP era, and they made communication so seamless that normally one wearing the device totally forgot that the others might be using speaking different languages. The default 'ship's language' was English. The AI in the Galactic Patrol Glove Jim wore had learned English from Jim and absorbing the contents of the Justice Society's multitudes of databases (stored in English) when Jim was learning to use the Glove, and Avenger's AI had learned English from the Glove's AI, and the longer Avenger was in contact with people who spoke other languages, the better the translations became. But 'dragon' is a highly visual reference that really requires seeing one to understand.
"A dragon is a mythical terrestrial animal, generally described as a giant scaled lizard, usually having wings, and often able to breath fire," Avenger eventually responded. This quieted three of them for a second, but Jess replied instantly.
"OK, so what's a lizard?"
The voracious jungle on her home planet of Juneo had long ago wiped out every animal species except humans and some highly-prized, closely guarded pet species. There probably hadn't been a living lizard on Juneo in tens of thousands of years, and the Juneons were too busy desperately fighting the jungle to maintain their own existence to look for fossil or skeletal evidence of vanished animal species.
There was some discussion. Avenger seemed miffed because the theatrical revelation of 'a giant space dragon who could potentially menace us!" had been wrecked, but in a short time, the AI found some appropriate images in the ship's memory banks and displayed them on the various monitors in the room. By then, only Jess really needed the images to have formed her own frame of reference.
"Ah, similar to a snagriff," Juan finally announced in satisfaction. "One of the several animal species that inhabited both Xenon and Krypton, and still exists on Xenon, though the remaining population is quite small. They are very dangerous when roused, though there are legends of people who lived peacefully among herds of snagriff. They can fly, though not well or for great distances, and can snort methane flame from their nostrils."
Sav and Syra nodded in satisfaction. "There once was a similar species on Thoron, the Raktagorn, which are now extinct but which survived into historical times. The greatest hero in the history of Thoron, Jonit Rehr, was said to have ridden the largest Raktagorn that ever lived into the battle in which he defeated the evil world emperor Valk Doth, after which he established the enlightened government which still reigns over Thoron today."
"Alright, so, there's a space dragon out there..." Jess was still mystified. "Where is it - and why is it dangerous to the Avenger?"
"Lucky for us, it's over three light seconds away and doesn't appear to know we are here!" Was Avenger being a little snarky? "Check the main monitor."
On the largest monitor in the room, they could see a large, lizard-like winged animal. "This animal is perhaps 40% as large as the Avenger." The resolution wasn't great; it took a lot of computer enhancement to produce a useful picture of something that size from almost 600,000 miles away. The computer placed a ghost image of Avenger in the display for reference. "The size is approximate; the estimate will be revised as we get closer. As to why it is dangerous, continue to watch."
The space dragon was not far from a large asteroid, which suddenly exploded. "Initial analysis indicates that the dragon projected an energy beam of some kind - and that beam may be able to affect Avenger in the same way, even through our force fields." The dragon then floated into the cloud of smaller fragments from the exploded asteroid and began eating the smaller meteors.
"Well, I'm convince of the danger from this Matter-Eater Beast," Jess agreed. She was the nominal captain of the Avenger, and took the ship's safety very seriously. "So why do we need to 'get closer'? Why not just avoid it completely. The KBelt in incredibly large, after all."
Was Avenger's reply the slightest bit sardonic, as this next revelation elicited the startled reaction it had hoped for when revealing the presence of a space dragon? "Spectranalysis indicates that the asteroid that was just destroyed was at least partially composed of endurite."
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:19:53 GMT
Part 13 On Avenger's bridge, the view on the main monitor flickered. "This is in near-real time, with the 3 second light-speed delay," Avenger announced. "The space dragon appears to feed on the rubble it creates by exploding the larger fragments." The dragon had a chunk of rubble, perhaps the size of the globe of Earth from the 1964 World's Fair in New York, held in its front claws, and they watched it take a bite and then pause to chew. Then it looked like it had received an electric shock, jerking from the relaxed posture of having a snack into full alertness. The view zoomed out significantly and a flashing oval appeared on the edge of it. The oval was rapidly approaching the dragon. Avenger expanded the contents of the oval - and they could see a prospector's single-ship, moving at exceptionally high velocity, especially for something navigating through the K-Belt. With incredible acceleration, the dragon gave chase, its wings flapping as if the beast were flying in an atmosphere, and within a few minutes, the dragon caught up with the rocket, grabbed it, and swallowed it in a single gulp! Desperate Escape Where did the dragon's latest meal come from? To answer that, we need to go back in time yet again... A Few Hours After K-Pau's Broadcast Ultimatum
Suddenly a light came on in the hall outside Fion's prison, reflected under the door. She instantly shoved her 'nightlight' deep into her pocket, and then the light in the room came on - revealing that her impromptu cell had once been a restroom, with the sink ripped out and a cot shoved in. She'd explored the room thoroughly with her hands and she already knew this, but she'd never actually seen it before. The door pushed open and K-Pau entered the room - and immediately fell to the floor, moaning in pain as he had on board the Swarm Rider.
'Something in Swarm Rider made him sick!' Fion thought in astonishment, as she watched him writhe weakly in pain. 'And something in this room is now doing the same! It isn't me, and whatever it was, wasn't in this room the last time K-Pau came to visit* me.' (*For 'visit', substitute 'torture'...) 'It MUST be the kryptonite!' These thoughts flashed through her mind much faster than you can read them - and almost instantly, she had her escape fully planned!
K-Pau was not carrying any weapons - he was so much stronger and durable than any Thoronan that they were redundant to him. There was nothing in the room that could be used as a weapon to kill him, or restraints in which to bind him. Instead, she pulled out her kryptonite fragment, which she'd whittled into a small disk years ago for shipboard use, forced it into a corner of the room and smiled in satisfaction when a smaller part broke off.
'I'll keep the big piece of it with me for protection, just in case he recovers,' she thought. "Time to take your medicine, you horrid evil monster! Hopefully, it will kill you!" she snarled aloud, with a satisfied bark of laughter. She dropped the chunk of kryptonite (about the size of a dime) into K-Pau's mouth. He coughed and swallowed, and moaned again. His moans were so weak that even she, in the same room as he, could barely hear him.
She struggled to pull off his outfit, styled on a military uniform with bizarrely excessive decoration, medals, and braid, and pulled it on over her own now ragged and dirty shipboard outfit. He was barely larger than she; over her own clothing the uniform was a fairly good fit. Then she opened the door, peered cautiously down the corridor, and started making her way to the exit.
Her prison was in the sub-cellar of a warehouse owned by the Operation, which had normally been deserted (except for her) since K-Pau had taken over. She didn't know it, but the warehouse had originally been owned by a legitimate shipping company near Thoronopolis whose headquarters had been destroyed and most of the employees killed by the asteroid smash years ago. A shell company for the Operation, created to launder money, had purchased it, and in fact, that shell corporation had done a decent legitimate business, with the profits swelled tremendously by the laundered funds. K-Pau didn't care about the Operation's profits or former activities but he'd decided that this place would make a good prison to keep his foes. All her modest needs had been tended to by some reprogrammed maintenance robots, so the only time recently there had been people other than her in the building were when K-Pau had come round to taunt and torture his prisoner, or when Lea Thall had dragged her away for the short satellite launch flight in Swarm Rider.
Apparently K-Pau had again come alone this time, as was his usual practice. Hopefully, she'd never know why he'd decided to 'call' on his prisoner!
Once outside she located K-Pau's air car, and not long after that, she'd reached the port and Swarm Rider. She was desperate to get far away from Thoron as fast as she could; she launched as quickly as possible and set the autopilot for Thalon, one of the system's inner planets which orbited Rao more closely than Thoron. Thalon was completely covered by oceans, and the food and fuel synthesizers on Swarm Rider used water as their base component. She could survive there indefinitely. Once in space, she set her drive to the highest acceleration she could handle, and blasted away.
Fion had been running on adrenaline and desperation; she had been poorly fed and penned up in darkness for months, and finally exhaustion and her sickly physical condition caught up with her. She staggered to the medical console and was barely able to don the automatic 'diagnostic and treatment' vest before she passed out. The autodoc decided that rest was the best immediate treatment for her and administered a sedative. She never had a moment to consider that when she'd programmed the autopilot, she'd accidentally selected 'fastest route' rather than 'safest route', and so she was blissfully unaware when, instead of arcing high out of the ecliptic to avoid the K-Belt, Swarm Rider instead dove right in!
Back on Thorn, a couple of hours later, K-Pau awakened alone in the empty cell, fully recovered and with no remaining signs of his temporary seizure. The small chip of green kryptonite Fion had forced him to swallow had been dissolved in his stomach by his digestive enzymes. He had no idea what had happened to him, but was determined that none of his peons would ever know of this seizure, as he thought of it. When they never saw Fion again, his minions assumed he'd killed her and disposed of her body. Their fear of him grew, and with fear, their absolute obedience... and he was satisfied that he turned his secret weakness into a 'good thing'!
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:20:39 GMT
Part 14
Avenger's crew was horrified. But there wasn't much they could do; 3 light seconds is almost 600,000 miles and it would take them at least 6 hours to reach that location. Still, Jess ordered Avenger to proceed to the area at 'Level Yellow' emergency power, and to start increased scanning for dangerous debris that they would need to avoid as they raced to the scene. And then Syra Tute, who had continued to watch the monitor, called for their attention: "Something strange is happening to the dragon!"
***
In the Swarm Rider, the still dazed Fion was jolted into awareness by every alarm the tiny ship had, all blaring at once. Imminent collision alarm, cabin air leak, electrical system failure, and several she'd never heard before... She looked disbelievingly at the main external view screen which showed... a giant mouth wider than a house, with flat teeth as big as air cars? In space, a monstrous mouth? She'd never even heard of any animal that lived in space, except maybe when closing down a bar and swapping yarns with other prospectors... much less, one that was large enough to swallow the Swarm Rider! If the alarms hadn't been blaring so loud she would have guessed she was hallucinating, but nobody could possibly dream up a racket like her ship was making!
And then the mouth closed, and she was jolted and bounced around as the beast swallowed. Finally there were a few moments of relative peace, but almost instantly, the ship was being jostled by something. In fact, a LOT of solid somethings, things that kept smashing into the full length of the hull with pounding, grinding noises. She gasped in horror at what she saw on the monitor. Inside a giant beast, she would have expected total darkness but instead, Swarm Rider was surrounded by... thousands of glowing white rocks? Ranging in size from pebbles to chunks larger than her head, all tumbling at random through the limited space in the space monster's gullet. Even though none of these rocks was moving very fast relative to her poor ship, the constant battering was sure to grind the small spaceship into rubble - and it wouldn't take very long! Already she could hear external equipment being broken loose, and she could feel the tough hull material shuddering as it started to stretch and tear.
Swarm Rider was being destroyed! Fion struggled to reach the emergency control that changed the pilot cockpit into an escape capsule. As she was tumbled around, her hand slapped against the bars of the sturdy cage that protected that switch from being activated accidentally - and the she strained to grab onto the cage with both hands, and finally managed to click the release and finally frantically slapped the uncovered button. The hatches to the refresher and the sleeping area automatically slid closed and locked, and all connections between the control compartment and the rest of the ship were severed and armored covers slid into place over the severed connections. A panel covering a hidden storage compartment in the capsule slid aside revealing a space helmet; Fion struggled to pull it over her head and it automatically sealed to her vacuum-proof ship suit. Then the compartment started filling with foam that was intended to protect her from expected upcoming violent battering. Already the foam was protecting her somewhat from the shake, rattle and roll her poor ship was enduring - but not enduring very well!
Prospector ships weren't armed, exactly. But a prospecting laser could punch a head-sized hole in a rocky asteroid a thousand miles away and was bright enough that the light reflected from the flash could be captured by the Swarm Rider's spectranalyzer and determine with amazing precision the mineral makeup of the asteroid. While she could still reach the panel, she fired the laser, and there followed almost instantly a series of explosions as the white rocks close to the bow of Swarm Rider exploded as they were struck by the powerful beam. There was an additional explosion from the rear of the small vessel as the storage tank holding compressed air for a three-month prospecting trip was ruptured, releasing about 2000 cubic feet of densely compressed atmosphere in the space monster's stomach. At the same time, yet more explosions, as a series of small charges blew up inside the ship, separating the armored escape capsule from the rear half of Swarm Rider.
The poor space dragon suddenly had the worst case of indigestion any dragon had ever had! Several different types of explosions in her gullet, a couple of thousand cubic feet of highly compressed air expanding explosively insider her... and suddenly, she hurled. The entire contents of her stomach came up and were blasted away in front of her. Even surrounded by the foam padding, Fion was knocked unconscious again inside her armored capsule as the wreckage of the Swarm Rider was spewed violently back into space, tumbling away from the dragon in a cloud of glowing white rocks. The dragon was sick and bewildered - she hadn't felt pain or weakness in all the years since she'd abandoned the other dragons in the Oort cloud for the K-Belt. She turned from her receding spew and flew weakly away in the other direction, looking for someplace safe to land and hide.
***
Back on the Tiak Avenger, Sav Ont turned away from Avengers' long range sensors. "Now we've got another reason to get there in a hurry! The sensors show that the cloud of stuff shrouding the destroyed ship appears to be... White Kryptonite!"
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:25:16 GMT
Part 15 (New Stuff!) Battle of the Moons and Research Facility
Hopeful Announcement... and OminousThreat!
Shortly after Avenger departed for her search for more endurite, Thoron Planetary Councilor Lom Atar appeared on a worldwide broadcast. He may have embellished some of the details in his broadcast somewhat, in an attempt to quell the growing unease of the populace before it turned into panic, and perhaps he had another motive… ***
“People of Thoron… researchers at the Thoronan Institute of Technology and Science have discovered a process for synthesizing endurite, which will allow us to complete construction and deployment of a hundred new Zasers over the next ten years.” He got straight to the point to quell the rising sense of panic that was growing around the world over the loss of endurite. “In addition, Sky Defense has equipped elite rapid response teams on sky sleds with advanced weapons to guard against any further depredations by the villain who calls himself K-Pau. These teams can be deployed to anywhere on Thoron in a matter of minutes.” He went on to explain that the researchers at the Institute were working with the staff of General Illumination to convert a mothballed facility for full-scale production of synthetic endurite, with the first batch expected in a few months. He reassured the populace that the current pair of zasers were capable of dealing with the expected gradual increase of space debris for at least another 3 years, and the first of the new zasers was expected to be put into service before the end of the current year (all times translated from Thoronan). In his hideout, K-Pau only laughed. “Fools! Now that I am aware of this new process, I will personally destroy it and this new factory! And my minions will destroy the current pair of zasers – and we’ll see how brave you sound then!”
It was a really bad day to be a super hero on Thoron… Jim (Strobe) Chisholm was flying patrol over and around the Sky Defense 1 Zaser installation on the surface of Thoron’s moon named Thunar, which supported one of the giant weapons that kept Thoron’s sky clear of Kryptonoids. Suddenly he received a communication alert from the base that mass detectors were detecting a meteor shower, but none of the photon-based instrumentation (eyeballs, radar and cameras in various wavelengths) showed anything! And then, there were dozens of massive green explosions battering the meteor protection force field surrounding the zaser. Instantly the radiation detector built into his Glove began blaring, trying to tell him they detected near-lethal levels of ultra-intense Green Kryptonite radiation, but the pain from the feedback battered Jim unconscious before he could even register the alarm, leaving him helpless and drifting in space. ***
Vic Valor was flying patrol over and around the Sky Defense 2 Zaser installation on the surface of Thoron’s moon named Donar. Without warning, an incredibly powerful lightning bolt, thousands of times more powerful than anything he’d encountered in the past blasted him, knocking him unconscious and throwing him hundreds of miles away, leaving him drifting unconsciousness through space. *** Several squads of Space Defense Space Knights on their personal filers patrolled near the mothballed General Illumination plant, which was located in another asteroid crater in a devastated section of Thoron’s surface. Suddenly something began destroying the facilities, and within seconds, the spray-on invisibility dust coating K-Pau was compromised, revealing that it was he who was demolishing the facility. The Space Knights patrolling nearby attacked, firing beams of kryptonite radiation and projectiles made of Kryptonite at the invader. They were stunned and dismayed when their Kryptonite weapons failed – K-Pau merely laughed and ignored the deadly storm and continued destroying buildings. Then from high above, half a dozen beams flashed out from an invisible flier, each targeting a different flying squad, and the Knights caught in the beam were instantly paralyzed! Meanwhile, Apex had rushed from his own nearby patrol to confront K-Pau! “Time to surrender, K-Pau! I’m arresting you on order of the Thoronan High Council!” The villain only laughed again. “If those laughable things you call weapons are the best you have to offer, you’re dead!” He leaped forward and delivered a powerful blow, and Thoron’s hero was smashed backward and into the building behind him – which collapsed on top of him! “I’ve learned that you get your so-called ‘super powers’ from feeble inventions of that dead fraud, Jor-L! You’re no match for my natural powers!” K-Pau was stunned when the debris burying Apex exploded outward and the hero rose from the new crater and returned to the fight. It was a terrible battle! Within minutes, the whole complex was wrecked – and K-Pau was furious when he realized that the entire facility was still in mothballs, with no signs that it was being put back on line to synthesize endurite! “So the speech was a trap all along! You – and Thoron – will PAY!” he screamed, launching an even more vicious attack. He was unable to fly, so he made a long flat leap using all his speed and power, and zoomed towards Apex like an avenging missile! But Jor-L’s cape allowed Apex to fly, and he simple lifted above the villain’s ballistic flight path, and then slammed back down into K-Pau’s back. They smashed to the ground and the villain’s own speed threw him forward smashing through debris until he came to a halt, severely battered but still defiant. He reached to his belt, and before Apex could stop him, he popped something into his mouth – and instantly regained his feet, somehow now looking much larger and more powerful than his normal skinny aged appearance. “My latest invention - these radioactive capsules will increase my natural powers to awesome levels. I am now easily the most powerful being on Thoron and perhaps in the Universe!” He returned to the fight, but it was no longer an even match. K-Pau strength and speed were increased to awesome levels by the capsules (which were not actually K-Pau's invention, Apex found out later) and now he could even fly! He demonstrated heat vision as well, toying with the valiant but now over-matched Apex, taunting him as he battered him. “Even those toys of Jor-L that give you your vaunted powers are useless now. How does it feel to be as helpless as a child in the explosion of Krypton?!” He paused his battering for a second; Apex was pretty much out on his feet. “You and your doomed planet will hear my final ultimatum, when you recover – if you live through this!” Then he put all his natural power and the temporary power provided by Jor-L’s capsule into a single blow, a tremendous uppercut that slammed into Apex’s invulnerable force field and sent him rocketing up into orbit, where he floated in space, unconscious. |
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:26:34 GMT
Part 15 (New Stuff, Rescue of Fion) Rescue!
It was a tense flight to rescue the damaged escape capsule. They kept the long range sensors on high alert and the ship’s beam weapons were constantly firing to keep their flight path free of asteroidal debris. Syra Tute worked with Avenger’s computers to monitor some specific radio frequencies - ‘disaster frequencies’ reserved for K-Belt prospectors, and they discovered that the damaged escape capsule was broadcasting an automated distress call, including information about the ship and the pilot. “It’s the escape capsule from a ship named the Swarm Rider – the same ship that launched the satellite that broadcast K-Pau's’s ultimatum,” Syra Tute announced. “Telemetry shows that the pilot is a K-Belt prospector named Fion Drim, and she is still alive, though she’s in the autodoc. If we can get there before the capsule and autodoc fail, we should be able to save her.” The Level Yellow emergency allowed Avenger’s computer to bypass some of the safety restrictions built into the ancient programming, and the estimated arrival time was a few hours. A quick radio request to Sky Defense HQ, and everything the Sky Defense Force knew about Fion Drim and the Swarm Rider was downloaded to the Avenger. Nothing new was known about Fion; all the records confirmed that she had returned from a K-Belt prospecting expedition about a month ago and had then vanished, and that Swarm Rider had made 2 unauthorized launches recently – once to launch the satellite which had broadcast the ultimatum and the second which had presumably led to the encounter with the space dragon. The rescue of Fion Drim by Avenger and her crew was fairly anti-climactic. Avenger used tractor beams to separate the emergency capsule from the gastroliths that had been 'expelled' from the space dragon’s stomach, drawing the white kryptonite gastroliths into one hold and the capsule into another, and then they also onloaded as many of the endurite asteroids as they could locate into yet another cargo hold. Fion had not been injured badly; the rest of Avenger’s crew was on the bridge listening to the devastating reports about the disastrous defeats of their crewmates Vic Valor and Strobe, and Thoron’s greatest hero Apex, when Jess brought her to the bridge. “Not only were Apex, Strobe, and Vic Valor abjectly defeated, with Apex being seriously injured...” the Sky Defense communications officer was reporting, “but the moon-based Zasers were totally destroyed. And perhaps the worst news of all was that the Kryptonite-based weapons that were supposed to stop K-Pau were totally ineffective! In fact, he laughed at them!” “There must be some mistake!” burst from Fion. “Why, I managed to stop him with just a tiny sliver of Green Kryptonite!” The excited babel on the bridge calmed down after a couple of minutes, and Fion told her story. Juna was thinking furiously, and when Fion was finished, she spoke up. “Do you have any more of this Kryptonite that stopped K-Pau?” "I need to get a piece from the escape cabin of my poor wrecked Swarm Rider," she said sadly. "It's only about this big." She indicated a piece the size of a poker chip. She didn't want to give up her personal chip, so she was glad she could point them to another. "There was maybe a pound more of similar chips in the rest of the ship. I used them as night lights to save power - but the main lights are always on in the control room, so I only had one small piece in there when I ejected. Too bad we couldn't recover the rest of the ship..." She was still very sad; Swarm Rider had been her de facto home for a long time... "We can use Avenger's sensors to track down and then overtake that dragon, but that might take a long time. Would one small chip be enough for what you need?" Jess asked the scientists, offering a potential alternative to working with just that one chip.
Juna and Sav Ont reassured them both that a single piece that size was more than adequate for their research. Which reassured Fion, who had not wanted to turn over the other piece of green Kryptonite that was in her belt pouch - this had become her personal good luck charm, and protection against K-Pau, and she didn't want to give it up, though she would have, if the Kryptonite experts had really needed more to work with.
The universe’s two greatest experts on Kryptonite quickly headed for Juna’s lab with the green chip recovered from Swarm Rider. Meanwhile, Jess commanded Avenger to return to Thoron as quickly as possible, upgrading the emergency situation to 'Level Violet', which overrode still more of the computer's safety protocols, and the Avenger's speed was increased a bit. Meanwhile, Fion asked Syra Tute to get more news from Sky Defense via the radio on the condition of Apex. She was relieved when Syra told her that: "He's expected to live, but..." followed by some bad news "...his injuries are severe. Even with the best possible care and the most recent advances in healing technology, doctors expect him to be in a mobility suit for the rest of his life." This good news/bad news hit Fion hard - when she heard he would live she was visibly elated, and then when she heard about him probably being disabled for the rest of his life, she started crying. As Jess and Syra attempted to comfort her, she gave them more details. "Years ago, on my first prospecting expedition, before he began his career as Apex, he and I were partners. After we made a minor strike that made me some money, I bought the Swarm Rider and then we split up. I haven't seen him for years - but he was like a big brother to me on our expeditions together - and he even saved my life a few times!" She didn't tell them that one component of their 'minor' strike had been the cape, glasses, and gloves, which her partner at the time, Halk Kar, had kept, and which now gave Apex his powers. She'd sworn to keep his secret then, and she would!
Syra was a bit puzzled about this unrevealed history behind Apex. He had first appeared about 15 years ago (Earth time) and up until just now, nobody had any clues about his life before then. Certainly, there had been no hints that he had been a K-Belt prospector before becoming a super hero!
Fion added an ask for Syra... "Can you arrange for me to get in to see him?" "He's in a secure Sky Defense facility to help conceal his secret identity, which even I don't know..." Syra replied. "I doubt if they would let you in." "Ask them to tell him that Fion Drim would like to see him - I'll bet he says OK!" she answered.
"I can arrange that, I'll let you know!" A few hours later they had an answer - Apex was thrilled to hear the request. In fact, his doctors noted that it had energized him a bit and that new energy was helping in his recovery.
***~~~***
A day later, Avenger was approaching Thoron, and Juna called the crew together for a summary of the furious research she and Save Ont had been conducting: “We’ve discovered that the Green Kryptonite Fion used to subdue K-Pau is a different, and likely extremely rare isotope, different from the more common Green Kryptonite that was used in the Sky Defense weapons,” Juna told them. “As we speak, using a quick test that Sav and I devised, scientists and Sky Defense forces back on Thoron are frantically testing every piece of Green Kryptonite they can find, whether it is in a lab, museum, or in one of the asteroid impact craters speckling Thoron, trying to find more samples of this isotope. We have tentatively named this isotope Anti-Kryptonite, as its effects on Kryptonians seem to be the opposite of those of Green Kryptonite. Fortunately, neither variety of green Kryptonite seems to have any affect on Thoronans. Additionally, we've discovered that unlike 'regular' Green Kryptonite, Anti-K does not seem to affect the operation of Jim's glove." Jim gave a mental order, and a white hand appeared in the air, connected to his Glove by a thin white ribbon. Juna dropped the green chip and the hand caught it.
"A similar sized chip of Green Kryptonite would have totally stopped the Glove from working," he agreed, then gave the chip back to Juna.
She continued, “We are fortunate to have aboard samples of several different isotopes of Kryptonite – a ton of the most common Green Kryptonite, the small chip of the very rare green anti-K provided by Fion, the White Kryptonite gastroliths expelled by the dragon, and Jewel Kryptonite, which is also called ‘endurite’ on Thoron. Our experiments show the theoretical possibility of many other Kryptonite isotopes, each of which may have different colors, and the radiation emitted by each isotope is significantly different from each of the others. Our theory already predicts the potential existence of Red Kryptonite, Gold Kryptonite, and Blue Kryptonite, and also hints at other isotopes that might be silver, purple, and periwinkle.” Sav Ont added, “Now all we have to do is develop a process to convert common Green Kryptonite into each of the other isotopes we have available. That's all! To start, we are prioritizing Anti-K, but it may be years or even decades before we can convert even a small amount. As of right now, the only effective weapon we have for fighting K-Pau seems to be the small piece of Anti-K which Fion brought us. Sky Defense is figuring out how to best use this weapon; we have to hope that some one of our operatives can get close enough to K-Pau to incapacitate him using this small sample."
And Syra Tute added, "We've sent Avenger's sensor and tracking data to Sky Defense - they've assigned a few ships to trying to locate the dragon, since the synthesis process for Anti-K may take such a long time. But nobody is hopeful for a quick recovery. We've discovered that the normal human digestive process will dissolve Anti-K, along with every other type we've tested so far. There is probably none left inside the dragon. For now, at least, we'll have to try to make do with what we've got." Because she'd retained her 'good luck chip', Fion now had a secret weapon! She promised herself she would give it to Apex when she visited him in the hospital - Thoron's greatest hero, secretly armed with her chip of Anti-K, seemed to her to be Thoron's best hope. |
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:28:20 GMT
Part 16 (New Stuff - Apex in hospital)
"Hey, Halk - you look awful!" Fion greeted Halk (Apex) Kar as she bounced into his hospital room and gave him a strong, long hug. In fact, though, he looked pretty normal except that he was wearing a form-fitting jump suit, and she could hear a very faint whirring sound whenever he moved - and his movements were often clumsy and jerky. It would take a lot of practice with the artificial 'muscles' of the exoskeleton mobility suit to become as graceful as he had once been - but there were literally hundreds of thousands of Thoronans whose mobility had been restored by these suits, and usually, unless a suit-wearer told people they were wearing a mobility suit under their clothes, most people never knew.
"It really is great to see you," she continued brightly. "I'm truly sorry you had such an awful encounter with K-Pau. And it's kinda my fault, too... I found him in the K-Belt and brought him back to Thoron..." That second part was not nearly as bright and cheery as the first part - in fact, she sounded so distressed that Halk was immediately worried about her. "If we can't stop him, it could be the end of the world, and my fault! I wish there was something more I could do." Now, she was just about crying...
He stood up a gave her a careful hug - because of his prior experience mentally controlling the artifacts that gave him his super powers, he was more easily adapting to controlling the mobility suit than an 'average' patient, but still very cautious, especially around other people.
"Hey, Fi! It is really great to see you! I probably look worse than I feel! I feel better than normal, in fact - the Purple Healing Ray has some lingering euphoric properties that pretty much mask any pain. But what's that you said about you bringing K-Pau to Thoron? Does Sky Defense know about that?"
"I guess they didn't tell you because they don't want you being aggravated in your condition, but a few weeks ago I found him drifting in the Belt - and brought him back to Thoron. And then he killed my friend, and then he took over the Organization... and you know the rest." She sobbed again. "I spent the last day sitting in an Analyzer Beam Machine under the Mind Prober Ray recording the whole story! By now Sky Defense knows more about him than I do!"
The Analyzer Machine was normally used to test student achievements when Thoronans were still in school - after each course was completed, the Mind Prober Ray read their memories to determine if they had absorbed enough knowledge to begin the next course. And eventually, before graduation, the Analyzer (sometimes called the 'Life Machine' when used for this purpose) was used to determine if they were fully prepared for the profession the Analyzer chose for them based on probing the state of the student's progress.
"But I want to be the one who stops him! I've got this..." she pulled out her secret lucky Anti-K chip "and if I could just get it close to him, it might be enough to stop him. I don't know how I'll get close enough, but I'll stop him, or die trying!" Then she shook her head and tried to shake off her depression. "So enough about me - how are you really?"
He smiled sadly. "Honestly, pretty damned depressed, really. Even though a mobility suit will let me continue Halk Kar's life, my condition means the end of my career as Apex. And Thoron needs Apex, now, more than ever! Not just to stop K-Pau, but also the remaining members of the Organization, who now have unknown and incredibly powerful weapons at their disposal..." He paused for a few seconds, and his next words were so quiet she had to move closer to hear him. "It feels like the end of the world..."
Both were silent for a few minutes with their own worries and fears about the end of the world, visible to both of them, and then suddenly, Halk spoke up again, and there was a bit of enthusiasm in his voice, mixed with the grim determination that had made him a super hero. "Hey, kid! I've got some ideas - tell me what you think!"
"I've been planning to retire as Apex anyway... but I don't want to leave Thoron without a hero. You are one of the few who know how Apex got his powers, and the only one who knows that my tools are Kryptonian - would you be interested in the Apex gear?" Fion's jaw dropped practically to the floor. "And your mentioning the Mind Prober Ray may be the clue we need to overcome all those secret weapons!"
To say that Fion was intrigued with the suggestion of taking over the mantle of Apex, Protector of Thoron, is like saying an ocean is a 'big pond'. They discussed Halk's proposals excitedly for a few minutes, and then he made calls to Bita Gil, Nexa Lind, Syra Tute, Sav Ont, and the crew of the Avenger to bring the government, Sky Defense, Thoron's scientific establishment, and their new allies in on their planning.
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:28:58 GMT
Part 17 (New Stuff - Halk in the Learning Center) Halk was being treated in a Sky Defense medical facility, which currently had custody of the 'Apex gear' (the belt, gloves, cape and goggles that gave Halk super powers). After Halk and Fion confirmed the 'passing of the guard', Syra quickly ordered the hospital security to turn the Apex gear over to Fion. Strobe, who not too long ago had received some very condensed training using his own powers from Green Lantern and other members of the Justice Society, as well as more recently teaching Jess and Juna akido, suggested she not don any of it yet and offered to help her get started. The two of them left for some training. Not long after, Halk's hospital room underwent an astonishing transformation. A team of technicians installed a bulky computer with a complicated control panel and a large Visi-Screen, attached to a padded reclining chair with a half-helmet that would cover part of the head of anyone sitting in the chair and leaning back. This was an 'Analyzer-Beam' machine, also known as a Memory Prober Ray or 'Life Machine'. When they were finished, Strobe and Vic Valor entered, using their powers to carry another complicated device, which the technicians quickly mounted in the ceiling, assisted by an almost overwhelming stream of advice from Valor. This was a 'Yellow Sun Environment Simulator'. Valor (or more likely Marnu, who claimed to be the device's inventor) explained that the ancient Galactic Patrol had been comprised of a wide variety of species who had evolved under pretty much every variety of star (and some had even evolved without a star!) and a wide range of environmental simulators had been included on the living quarters decks in every Patrol vessel - and this one had been dismounted from the Tiak Avenger, which had them all! Halk Kar explained further that just before he'd left Earth in 1952, in an attempt to take some of the sting out of being weaker than his supposed 'younger brother', Superman had explained to him that some of his powers came from yellow solar radiation - including his super photographic memory. Halk was hoping that the Mind Prober Ray would allow him to remember his time on Krypton in greater detail - because he recalled hearing Jor-L talk about some of his inventions - and the weapons K-Pau's forces were using, in particular the 'super power pills', reminded him of some of those inventions. "I was super impressed with Jor-L, and he let me review some of the schematics, blueprints, and formulae for his inventions when we weren't working to fix my rocket. Maybe we can reconstruct them, figure out how they work - and come up defenses against them! And maybe a night under the yellow radiation will help improve my memory!" The next day, an expert in the use of the Analyzer Beam showed up early, accompanied by half a dozen of Thoron's top research scientists and inventors, eager to see what the Memory Prober Ray would help Halk Kar remember! *** Along with still being battered and bruised from being pummeled by K-Pau, Apex (Halk Kar) currently felt ridiculous and helpless... and much younger - like 'back in high school' young! “I know it was MY suggestion. After K-Pau’s comment about Jor-L confirmed he is a survivor of Krypton, I realized I recognized all his weapons from my time on Krypton, and that maybe here on Thoron there was a way to help me learn more about them. But I never realized it would make me feel like a school kid taking his first set of finals!” he groused. “It’s like I’m just a nervous student all over again!” Thoron’s hero was sitting in the cramped chair in front of the Analyzer Beam machine. He was surrounded by dozens of eager scientists and engineers intently watching everything he did, most of them ready to make notes. Normally the Analyzer Beam was used to determine if a student had successfully learned the course material from last semester, and eventually to determine which profession a student would follow as an adult. But now, the monitor screen on the Analyzer Beam control console was flicking through the blueprints of many of Jor-L’s inventions, drawn from Halk Kar’s enhanced memories of his short visit to Krypton, long ago. “We spent several days together fixing my spaceship, and during breaks and rest periods Jor-L allowed me to study the designs of many of his inventions. He was incredibly brilliant and prolific; it is a great tragedy that his own people wouldn’t listen to him! I’m sure I recognize some of the devices K-Pau and his criminal minions are using as being inventions of Jor-L. If I can recall the blueprints, we may be able to figure out ways to counter each of them!” As he thought back over his time on Krypton, the Mind Prober Ray focused on and clarified specific memories and project them onto the video monitor, where the advanced video recording equipment attached to the console monitor screen was able to capture on tape the details of many of the inventions Halk had studied during his brief time on Krypton. Here is a quick summery of the inventions that were captured by Halk Kar concentrating on his experience on Krypton, enhanced by the Mind Prober Ray. You can see more details about each invention by clicking on the Spoiler link below the list. The Cape of Flight and Speed, Glasses of Enhanced Vision and Gloves of Strength. 'I discovered these in the Kryptoid Belt and these 3 give me my own powers, and using the principles of the force fields generated by the Cape and Gloves, I built a force field belt. Lucky for me Jor put those into a vault that survived Krypton’s explosion!” "Great Rao! The sonic screwdriver, room temperature superconductors and inexpensive tabletop cold fusion. If only Krypton had not exploded, Jor would have been the driving force in transforming Krypton into a paradise!" “The super powerful lightning projector, that was used to blast Vic Valor from the skies and then destroy Zaser 2 on Donar…" "The paralysis ray, the spray-on invisibility gun, the plant growth ray, all of which K-Pau has used against us already!"
"The matter-radio, which Jor-L only used twice, and the dimensional traveler, which he never actually built…" "His most famous invention, the flying personal vehicle that came to be known as the Jor-L. Almost everyone on Krypton had one!” “I’m glad this stuff is being recorded – the process is painful and I wouldn’t want to do it again!” he mentioned to the attending technicians, then returned his attention to his visit to Krypton. “Ah – here’s the ‘human magnet’ he used against the Sky Police when he stole the endurite! And the missile projector that can throw anything at any target at superspeed, which his minions used to destroy Zaser 1 on Thunar with warheads laced with Kryptonite…"
"FINALLY!!" he shouted in satisfaction. "The ‘temporary super power radioactive capsules’ that K-Pau used to overpower me! Discovering how to duplicate or counter those may be the most important of all!”
He and the scientists who were watching and taking notes spent almost half an hour discussing these, diving into the formulae and extrapolating primary effects, weaknesses, and side effects. "A more concise description of the way the 'super power' capsules work would be 'Proton Energy Pills," one of the researchers for the Thoronan Institute of Technology and Science commented. "I remember Jor-L telling me that they were supposed to be used in emergencies in case something deprived Kal-L of his natural powers, and the effects would last for several hours." Halk contributed to the discussion. He frowned as he brought up an anomaly. "They appear to be designed to work under a yellow star, not a red star like Rao - why did they work for K-Pau?" Another of the researchers had been trying to figure out that very point, using some compact, very advances analytical instrumentation. "It appears that the protonic components of the capsule actually interact with yellow solar radiation, which greatly increases the potency compared with the effects under a red sun. They are much more powerful, and last longer, when used under a yellow star - and they confer powers for several hours, while under a red star, they wear off in only about 20 minutes."
Another spoke up: "While we would have to do some actual live testing, I think there are some potentially devastating side effects after the powers wear off, regardless of the sun's color. So K-Pau DOES have some weaknesses, even when he is actually using a Proton Energy Pill - on Thoron, at least. I hope he hasn't figured out a way to counteract them!'
Finally, he moved on to the next memory, “a crystal for emitting iron-destroying radiation… “ and then the screen stopped showing new memories of inventions. Either Halk hadn’t seen any other of Jor-L's inventions, or the enhancing power of the Mind Prober Ray wasn’t adequate to reconstruct any more of these distant and fragmented memories…
Click the Spoiler link below to see more details about each of Jor-L's fantastic inventions mentioned above! As Halk was mentally reviewing each of Jor-L's inventions, in most cases, the Mind Prober Ray enabled him to remember abundant details: blueprints, schematics, diagrams, and Jor-L's notes about each - and these were captured on the video tape. As well, he dictated everything he knew about each invention from his discussions with the inventor. A room temperature superconductor - This was one of Jor-L's most useful inventions. He had used it to overcome the effects of gravity via magnetic repulsion. It involved exotic matter, which Jor-L had only recently discovered, and he would have utilized superconductors in dozens of other inventions if his work had not been interrupted by the explosion of Krypton.
The cape of flight - a green and yellow cape emblazoned with a globe of Krypton. Using a woven room-temperature superconductor and magnetic repulsion, the cape gives the user the ability to fly, and the flight is mentally controlled. It also endows the wearer with super speed, allowing the wearer to move at speeds approaching the speed of sound on Earth (about 700 mph). Plus it surrounds the user with a force field that protects from the buffeting of wind and the heat of air friction when moving at high speeds. The gloves of strength - green gloves trimmed in the same yellow as the cape that provide the user with enhanced strength. The theoretical basis behind the gloves was still unknown to Thoronan science, though Jor-L's notes indicated that it produced some kind of force field that wrapped around the wearer's body and which duplicated the movements of that body, acting to supplement the strength of the wearer. The glasses of enhanced vision - they originally looked like standard 1950's era male glasses with thick lenses and a heavy frame, but the pair Halk Kar wore had been modified to look like swimming goggles. The glasses provide the wearer with telescopic and microscopic vision, as well as heat and x-ray vision. (When adapting the original glasses to his own use, Halk had added a miniaturized long range communicator of his own design). The sonic screwdriver - one of Jor-L's earliest inventions. A handheld device that could be voice-programmed to duplicate the functionality of almost any hand tool (screwdriver, knife, pliers, clippers, hammer, wrench, saw, drill, pry bar, flashlight, laser, radio scanner, compass, etc) which also has some basic medical capabilities (thermometer, scalpel, pulse oximeter, sphygmomanometer, etc). Jor-L was constantly adding functionality to this tool, and used it to work on virtually everything he invented after the sonic screwdriver. An inexpensive tabletop cold fusion reactor - this invention also utilized room temperature super conductors, and would have provided virtually endless supplies of electrical power. But Jor had just begun development on it when he was forced to turn his attention full time to completing and testing the escape rocket for baby Kal-L. The super powerful lightning projector - could direct lightning thousands of times more powerful that the strongest natural lightning bolt at a specific target. It required a stupendously powerful super capacitor to store the electricity require for the lightning discharge and then a fairly long time to recharge. It would have become a much more useful weapon once the cold fusion reactor had been completed. As it was, it was a terrific weapon but was vulnerable while charging. The paralysis ray - produced a ray that instantly paralyzed any living thing even partially inside the cone of the beam. Paralysis ended instantly as soon as a target was entirely out of the beam. In most cases, the paralyzed victim was not even aware of being paralyzed after being released from the beam's effects - it was as if time stopped/started again for that target for the duration of the exposure. A spray-on invisibility gun- produced a stream of ultra-refractive sub microscopic particles which aligned on contact with a solid surface in such a way as to capture incoming light, carry it instantly to the other side of the sprayed object, and release it on the same vector with identical energy. In essence the light beam was not interrupted by the solid object coated with the spray. However, the particles are not highly adhesive and it is fairly easy to 'blow them away' revealing the untreated surface beneath. A ray that causes plants to grow at fantastic speed to fantastic sizes, as much as a hundred times their normal size, in only seconds. Unfortunately after about a second of exposure the plant will die. The matter-radio was an invention that would break a person down into radio waves, beam them to a designated location, and then reassemble that person in the new location. Jor-L had once beamed an Earth scientist to Krypton and back through a temporary space warp using this device. Unfortunately radio waves travel at the speed of light, and disperse as they travel. Once the warp was closed, it would have taken upwards of 30 years for a person from Krypton to reach Earth, and the radio waves would be so dispersed and weak that reconstitution on Earth would have been impossible without a specially-built receiver. So Jor couldn't save himself and his family that way. He had no way of knowing that another temporary warp would open after the destruction of Krypton that would save his son many years of travel time... The dimensional traveler moved a person, and the device itself, from a planet in <this> dimension to a planet in the 'same location' in another dimension. The displaced device could then be reversed, returning both person and device to the original dimension and planet. Jor had devised a fail safe so the device would not transport into a dimension that didn't have a planet in the right spot - but other than the existence of that safe landing planet, nothing about the target was known. The target could have been a super-Jovian planet or something the size of Pluto. This was all theoretical, however - Jor-L had never actually built even a prototype.
The flying vehicle that became the most popular personal vehicle on Krypton and eventually came to be known as the Jor-L - used the same superconducting magnetic repulsion principle as the Cape of Flight. It was simple to operate and virtually maintenance-free - and by the time Krypton exploded, there were only very few families who didn't own at least two.
‘Levitation bombs’ which also used magnetic repulsion, and could be programmed to fly to anywhere on Krypton. They were the equivalent of killer drones - but fortunately Krypton was generally peaceful and these flying bombs were never actually used. Jor-L worked directly for the Kryptonian government before Lara was pregnant, but when government scientists had adapted his invention to become a deadly weapon, he quit and worked on his own for the rest of his life. If Thoron industry could ramp up to build these in bulk, they might be useful fighting against the forces of K-Pau - they were small, hard to shoot down, and deadly! The ‘human magnet’ ray - was also a result of the room temperature super conductor. This ray attracted iron, the way all magnets do, but it was 'tunable'. It was tuned to only attract iron that was included in an organic compound - and could be finer tuned to actually attract only specific compounds. As an example, it could be tuned to attract only the Kryptonian equivalent of human hemoglobin - so it would attract Kryptonian humans and not apes, dogs, cats, snagriffs, rondors, or thought-beasts. The missile projector that can throw 'anything' at any target at super speed. 'Anything' was an exaggeration, the 'ammunition' for this projector was actually limited to being approximately the size of a bowling ball or smaller. The object to be fired would be placed on the 'launch stage', then a beam would throw it at hyper-sonic velocity along a very specific vector. Generally the vector was obtained via a 'line of sight' 'bomb sight', though it was possible to 'type in' the vector components when line of sight was not available. The projectile would move at relativistic speeds, so even a small object could case massive damage to the target. Temporary super power radioactive capsules, now renamed 'Proton Energy Pills' - that gave the person using them powers and power levels similar to a Kryptonian under a yellow sun for several hours, or somewhat more limited powers for about 20 minutes under a red sun. The pills could produce serious side effects when used too often.
A crystal for emitting iron-destroying radiation, that was mounted on the outside of baby Kal-L's rocket to dissolve any iron-bearing meteorites in the capsule's path. ***~~~*** “I know he invented other things, but I must not have studied them. I only hope K-Pau didn’t either!!!” Halk summarized the session. Then something occurred to him – “If we’d known earlier that the missiles used on Thunar had Green Kryptonite in the warheads, we would have realized that K-Pau must have helped his crew develop and test the devices, and already discovered that he wasn't vulnerable to Green Kryptonite. Knowing that going in to our fight might have saved me from an awful beating! Oh, well – we know it now. And now we have Anti-K!” With the knowledge gained from the Mind Prober Ray and the Anti-K and the new supply of endurite found by Avenger's crew, things were starting to look a little more hopeful! Now, Juna, Sav Ont, and the team of scientists and engineers from the Thoronan Institute of Technology and Science had their work cut out for them, figuring out how to counter or neutralize all of these inventions. They got ready to dig in and get to work.
But they weren't going to get any research in today - at that instant, a red alert siren blasted through the building, a warning from Sky Defense that K-Pau was attacking again! |
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 13:29:58 GMT
Part 18 (Strobe begins training the new Apex) Halk Kar had spent some time describing how to use his power-giving artifacts to Fion Drim before the memory probing began. Jor-L had designed them to be incredibly simple to control - you put them on, thought about what you wanted to happen, and bingo - they carried out your orders. He did mention that when he had initially donned the gear, it had taken him some time to learn to control his powers and use them safely. Because Jim's artifact of power, the Glove of the Galactic Patrol, worked similarly, he was pretty sure he might be able to help Fion learn to use her own artifacts of power... So, while Halk Kar was reliving final exams, Fion Drim was also going back to school... But Fion was already thinking ahead. Before they even started, she had a suggestion. "Say, Jim... Apex has been around for 15 years and he has a really good reputation. People trust him. And right now, we're in a situation where people are close to panic because of K-Pau. If people all of a sudden realize that someone has replaced their trusted hero when we are all still facing the most dangerous foe in history, it might tip them over the edge. I think that, at least until we vanquish K-Pau, we shouldn't let them know that I'm not the Apex they know. What do you think?" Strobe wasn't sure about this. "If you're somehow outed, wouldn't that make things worse?" They discussed it for a while - if Apex, Sky Defense, and their new allies, Avenger and crew, were unable to defeat K-Pau, it wouldn't matter anyway. Fion suggested that after they defeated K-Pau, she would convince Halk Kar to have Apex make an official public announcement about his retirement and 'passing the torch' to his replacement, who would also be known as Apex. And during the battle with K-Pau, if any of their allies felt she wasn't up to the job, she would return the 'Apex artifacts' to Halk Kar and he could find another successor. But she also insisted they get started with the training as soon as possible - "K-Pau is NOT going to wait on US!" So their first stop was a high end costume store in Thoronopolis, where the purchased a padded 'Apex' costume and full head mask. Fion was happy because it had some internal pockets, where she could store her secret weapon, her good luck Anti-K chip. If the belt of invulnerability could protect both Fion and her Apex costume during training, hopefully the disguise would last until one side or the other won the upcoming confrontation. If the costume was damaged during training, she would just forget it. And then,they got on with the task at hand...
They trained on the super vision goggles first, which was pretty simple, followed by the gloves that provided her with super strength. It took a while, but she finally got used to picking things up without crushing them, and completing other everyday tasks such as opening a door, or even pressing a button, without disasters. They spent a little time getting her used to hearing him speaking to her through the communicator in her goggles, and then he conceded that it was time to learn to fly.
"The training slogan of the Galactic Patrol was 'When wearing the Glove, to think is to act!', and the goal of your training is to train your mind, and your gear, to recognize your commands as separate from your normal thoughts," Strobe told the new Apex as she was donning the cape, which Jim had insisted she leave for last.
"For example..." he mentally commanded the Glove to be prepared for instant high speed flight. "...you have to learn that whenever you think about flight..." suddenly Fion, and an instant later Strobe, were rocketing high into the air at rocket speeds, but Jim never stopped talking calmly. "You don't want to suddenly be zooming away." His tone changed to a command. "Think about hovering right in this spot and not moving!" Even though he was ready for her to stop, he still overshot by at least a mile, but he was quickly back at her side, still talking calmly. "If it's OK with you, I'm going to put a force field around you for a few minutes to try to keep you from zooming away," he suggested. "Then we are going to fly some patterns - but wait until I tell you what to do before trying anything." She was OK with that. "So, fly slowly in that direction," he pointed. "SLOWLY!" Even with his force field dragging on her, she was shooting away, then instantly slowed on his command. "Could you feel my field trying to restrain you? From now on, try to give commands that don't cause you to bump into it. Every time you can actually feel it, think about slowing down a bit."
So they began flying simple patterns across the sky, with him giving her directions - 'slow down' 'go faster' 'turn that way' etc, until they both became fairly confident with her ability to control her flying power with direct mental orders. By now Jim's directions had led them well away from Thoronopolis, above one of the ubiquitous asteroid craters scattered all over the planet.
"OK - now I want you to continue to fly slowly and straight ahead, and talk with me about flying at the same time. We want to train you so your surface thoughts don't interfere with what you want to be doing with your powers. So we'll talk about flying maneuvers while we're flying straight ahead, and then about flying low and straight and slow while we are actually flying fast maneuvers way up high - until you are able to easily fly the course you want, and your surface thoughts won't interfere with your flying."
Once again they flew ever more complex patterns across the sky, while they conversed about flying faster or slower or higher or lower. Initially, whenever they talked about flying maneuvers that were different than their current plans, the cape kept trying to take her all over the place, but eventually, she started getting better at it. "It may take some time, but eventually it will become second-nature," he reassured her. A while ago, she wouldn't have believed it, but she was starting to regain some of her confidence. Finally, the tried to see how high she cold go. The rocketed upward until they were high enough to see the curve of the planet below them, staying close together. Strobe quickly turned it into another training exercise. "No air here, but you're still breathing!" he noted. "Must be something in your force field that protects you from cold and vacuum. We'll need to get more information from Halk when we're done - it wouldn't do to depend on it and then have your air run out after 15 minutes!" Fion was on the verge of being overwhelmed by her new powers and the almost constant near-disasters her inexperience was causing. "I need a break! Then I'd like to spend some time refining my control..." But they weren't going to get back to training today... at that instant, each received a red alert from Sky Defense, Strobe through the Glove and Apex through a communicator built into her goggles. K-Pau was attacking again! The location was nearer to Thoronopolis - Jim pointed the way, and they zoomed off in that direction!
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Post by Admin on Oct 10, 2023 18:44:49 GMT
Part 19 (New, K_Pau attacks) Sky Defense forces were scrambling and emergency shelter warnings were blaring throughout the Thoronopolis District of the Planetary Council as K-Pau and his own forces attacked the House of the People, where the elected representatives of Thoron were working on emergency plans to defend their planet from the newly unleashed 'Menace From the Skies' - the slow but steady 'rain' of Kryptoids from the K-Belt - a rain that had been largely under control before K-Pau had destroyed the Zasers on Thoron's moons. (as much as any natural phenomenon can be 'under control' - at least the danger had been somewhat mitigated...) All of the elected representatives were terrified of K-Pau and his raiders, but they needed to leave stopping them forces to Sky Defense and their planetary hero Apex, and concentrate on civilian issues. Once again, gravity-based mass detectors had noted an invisible flying vessel, this time a mile high over the Peoples' House. Instantly, a large number of missiles carrying unusual warheads were launched from the ground. They were not aimed at a specific target, but the general area of the flying anomaly, and when they all reached a designated height, their warheads automatically detonated, blasting thousands of gallons of water and vapor across the sky, a large amount of which washed over the invisible invading spaceship. The random streaks of solid visibility revealed a large boxy shape which gave the impression of hasty construction, perhaps from crudely welding the shells of several junked spacecraft and ocean ships together with super strength and heat vision by someone who didn't really care about esthetics. As the now-visible invader circled over the city, millions of seeds were spewed out of vents in the bottom of the box. But Sky Defense was ready for this as well - and a dozen flying vehicles carrying tanks filled with powdered White Kryptonite raced across the city, spraying the dust behind them, which killed most of the seeds before the super-growth ray could activate them. Instead of totally preventing travel in the city, instead there were some scattered giant plants that could well become tourist attractions - once this invasion attempt was thwarted!
A couple of squads of Sky Knights on fliers scrambled to intercept the invader, heartened by the news that Apex and the alien heroes were on the way as well. Their sky sleds (personal fliers) had been pre-programmed for evasive action in the case that their pilots became paralyzed, as victims of the paralysis beam immediately regained their mobility as soon as they were out of the beam.
Then the human magnets were launched in missiles, drawing the Sky Knights irresistibly along in their paths. Sky Defense had also prepare for this - every sky sled was equipped with two small homing missiles tipped with powerful warheads, while the homing mechanisms contained small 'guidance capsules'. Each capsule contained a Thoronan tissue sample, produced by cloning, kept alive by a small life support system, surrounded by delicate pressure sensors. The samples were pulled toward the magnet; the pressure sensors guided the missiles unerringly to the human magnet generators, and then exploded!
Within instants, a whole wave of K-Pau's advanced weapons had been wiped out or rendered useless. Before Avenger had returned with White Kryptonite, Sky Defense had been baffled about combating the plants, but the other tactics had been developed after intensive review of the records of the earlier attacks, and had not depended on the information gathered from Halk Kar's 'interview' with the Mind Prober Ray. It remained to be seen if Thoron's defenses could deal with the 'missile projector' which threw objects at hypersonic velocity, or with K-Pau himself. Hopefully, after more than 50 years of 'evacuate to an emergency shelter instantly' warnings related to the constant bombardment from the sky, civilians would hurry to the nearest shelter. And hopefully, the shelters would prove to be effective against attacks from the other Kryptonian weapons.
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