Man of Steel: The Official Movie Novelization by Greg Cox Read Free Book Online Page A

cover.
    A blinding searchlight found them where they crouched. Peering up into the glare, shielding his eyes with one hand, he spied a huge hammerhead frigate descending toward them. The immense ship dwarfed his smaller fighters. A commanding voice boomed from the behemoth.
    “SAPPHIRE GUARDS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS!”
    Platoons of heavily armed guardsmen and women dropped from the hammerhead onto the debris-strewn terrace. Faora leapt forward, ready to fight to the death, but Zod held her back. A wise general did not waste his forces on suicidal displays of bravado.
    Glancing around at what remained of his band of rebels, he realized that the game was up... for now. Surrender was the only option. Slowly he raised his hands above his head.
    Peering past the searchlight, he watched grimly as the fleeing starcraft carried the Codex away. By now, the vessel was only a glowing speck high in the sky.
    A prismatic distortion field enveloped it as it reached the upper atmosphere. Space-time rippled around the craft, wavering like a mirage, before it blinked out of existence, passing into another dimension.
    Gone, Zod thought. But to where?
    He offered no resistance as the guards took him into custody. Without the Codex, Krypton’s future was lost. There was no point in fighting for a doomed world.
    Not today.
    But perhaps someday, a new battle might be waged...

C H A P T E R   F I V E
    T he walls of the Council Chamber opened like the petals of an enormous ceramic flower, revealing the night sky—and the ominous prison barge hanging just above the exposed amphitheater.
    The Black Zero resembled a gargantuan cephalopod, with three huge tentacles hanging down from its bulbous black mantle. Each tentacle was nearly as long as the council tower was high. The ship’s massive shadow fell over the arena where Zod and his top lieutenants awaited judgment.
    The prisoners had been stripped of their armor and uniforms, so that they wore only stark black skinsuits. Energized shackles bound their wrists and ankles. They stood before the Council of Five, much as Jor-El had done only a few days before.
    A new solon had been elevated to replace the martyred Ro-Zar. Lor-Em had taken his predecessor’s place as High Eminence. His saturnine countenance offered no promise of mercy.
    “General Zod,” he said with stentorian gravity. “For the crimes of murder and high treason, the Council has sentenced you and your fellow insurgents to three hundred cycles of somatic reconditioning.”
    Gasps arose from some of the prisoners, as well as from a small party of onlookers gathered at the perimeter of the amphitheater. Zod spotted Lara among them, representing the House of El. In the tumult surrounding the aborted insurrection, Jor-El’s own transgressions— including the theft of the Codex—had been hushed up in order to avoid troubling the populace any further. Even the existence of his unnatural offspring had been kept from the public. Lara herself had escaped prosecution, so far.
    She was dressed formally, wearing a silken red cloak over an elegant gown—in marked contrast to the humiliating prison garb to which he had been reduced. Zod tried to catch her eye, but she steadfastly refused to look at him.
    “Have you any last words?” Lor-Em demanded.
    Zod regarded the Council with scorn. He alone would speak the truth, even if these craven figureheads lacked the courage to do so.
    “Krypton is dying,” he replied. “And you respond by clinging to protocol?” He scoffed at their farcical pretenses, and confronted them with the unpalatable reality they seemed unwilling to acknowledge. “The Phantom Zone is a death sentence! Who will be left to release us when our ‘conditioning’ is done?”
    Lor-Em scowled down from his throne.
    “We are discussing your punishment today, Zod. Not your release.”
    Zod gave this cowardly evasion all of the derision it deserved.
    “You won’t kill us,” he said. “You wouldn’t sully your