Greg Cox: Man of Steel

Now that the crisis was over, he was of a mind to beef up NORTHCOM’s deep space surveillance operations. Zod and his fellow Kryptonians may have been defeated, but who knew what other threats were hiding out among the stars? The universe was a smaller and much scarier place these days.

Hell, he knew of at least one rogue alien who was still at large.

A flaming wad of crumpled metal suddenly dropped out of the sky, directly in their path. Farris swerved to avoid it, braking hard. Swanwick scrambled out of the jeep to get a closer look at the object. A few thousand pounds of mangled metal and circuitry sparked and sputtered in the middle of the road. A US flag insignia could be glimpsed on a broken wing.

“What the hell—?”

“It’s one of your surveillance drones,” a familiar voice stated.

The startled officers spun around to find Superman hovering in the air behind them. Swanwick’s temper flared.

“That’s a twelve million dollar piece of hardware!”

“Was,” Superman corrected him, before adopting a more serious tone. “Stop harassing me, General. I know you’re trying to figure out where I hang my cape. You won’t.”

Swanwick didn’t deny the accusation. He wasn’t ashamed of doing his job.

“Then I’ll ask you the obvious question,” he countered. “How do we know you won’t one day act against America’s interests?”

“I grew up in Kansas, General. For an alien, I’m about as American as you can get. But Superman has to be more than that. Do you understand?”

Swanwick listened, but didn’t commit himself. Right now he was more interested in hearing what Superman had to say.

“I’m here to help,” the Man of Steel continued. “It just has to be on my terms. You need to convince Washington of that.”

Swanwick wanted to believe him. Lord knows the man had saved the entire human race from extinction, which ought to entitle him to the benefit of the doubt. But he had also shown the entire world just how unbelievably powerful he was, which was bound to make people nervous.

“Even if I was willing to try, what makes you think they’d listen?”

“I don’t know, General. I guess I’ll just have to trust you.”

With that Superman lifted off into the sky, not like a rocket, but leisurely and at his own pace. Swanwick tilted his head back to watch him ascend, as amazed now as he had been the first time he had seen the alien floating above the gate at NORTHCOM Command. He glanced at Farris, and was surprised to see a huge grin across the young woman’s face. He scowled for form’s sake.

“What are you smiling about, Captain?”

“Nothing, sir,” she said with a shrug, visibly struggling to keep a straight face. “I just think he’s kinda hot.”

You’re probably not the only one, he thought.

“He always believed you were meant for greater things,” Martha said. “That when the day came, your shoulders would be able to bear the weight.”

She and Clark stood before Jonathan Kent’s grave. It was a clear, sunny day, free of the smoke that had blackened the sky during Zod’s attack. A copy of the Daily Planet was folded beneath her arm. No surprise, the epic conflict in Metropolis had pushed the earlier skirmish in Smallville off the front page, which was probably just as well, Martha mused. His roots didn’t need that kind of attention.

A poignant memory came back to her, of watching Jonathan watch Clark as their young son played in the grass with his dog. A red sheet, borrowed from the laundry drying on a nearby clothesline, billowed from Clark’s small shoulders like a cape. Observing Jonathan’s pensive expression as he contemplated the boy, she knew that—like her—he had to be thinking of the long journey ahead for their son, of the perils he would surely face, and the hope he might bring to the world…

“I just wish he could’ve been here to see it finally happen,” Clark said.

“You weren’t ready before now,” she told him. “The world wasn’t. But he had faith you’d know when it was.”

He nodded, remembering the grateful people who had accepted him in Metropolis, right before his final battle with Zod, as well as the trust he had received from Lois and Colonel Hardy, and many others.

Even the talk-show hosts were no longer calling for him to reveal his true identity. Well, not most of them.

“I’m sorry you had to make a choice like that, between us and your own people.” She squeezed his hand. “It must have been hard.”

“I don’t remember that other world,” he assured her. “It’s just as alien to me as it would be to you.”

He lifted his eyes and gazed out over the town and farmlands below. Smallville had already started rebuilding. There was a lot of work of work to do, and fresh crops to be planted in the spring, but he had faith in the town and its people. Pete Ross and the others weren’t going to let a little thing like an alien invasion keep them down for long. Smallville was stronger than that.

And so was Clark.

“Growing up here, with you and dad, that’s home . Not Krypton.” He looked up at the sky he had fallen from so long ago, and wondered if somewhere, countless light-years away, a swollen red sun still burned. “Jor-El died so I’d have a choice. But Dad taught me how to actually make one.”

His mom unfolded her newspaper, revealing a frontpage photo of a caped hero with a bright red “S” on his chest. A headline boldly christened Metropolis’s mysterious savior.

“‘Superman,’” Martha read aloud, bemused. “Well, I guess the cat’s out of the bag now, isn’t it?”

Clark nodded, but he had no regrets.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve had to hide what I can do. Now I don’t have to.”

It was a good feeling.

“Well, you can’t be Superman all the time,” his mom pointed out. “What are you going to do when you’re not saving the world? Have you given any thought to that?”

“Actually, I have,” he admitted. “I need a job where I can keep my ear to the ground. Where people won’t look twice if I want to head somewhere dangerous and start asking questions.”

His mom raised a quizzical eyebrow.

Lois pounded away at her keyboard, rushing to file a story. In the wake of Zod’s aborted invasion, there seemed to be about a million follow-up stories that needed telling. Right now she was struggling to figure out a way to explain the Phantom Zone in layman’s terms, which was no easy task, especially since she barely understood the freaky alien science herself.

“C’mon, Lois.” Lombard interrupted her. He perched on the corner of her desk, nursing a cup of coffee. “When are you going to throw me a bone? I’ve got courtside seats to the Jacks tonight. What do you say?”

She kept on typing, not even bothering to look up.

“I say you should go back to trolling the intern pool, Lombard,” she said. “You’ll probably have better luck.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him give Jenny a speculative look. The pretty intern rolled her eyes and made a hasty escape.

Lois chuckled.

To be fair, she’d heard that Lombard had actually conducted himself fairly well while Metropolis was under attack, but that didn’t mean she had any interest in dating him. She could do better.

A lot better.

“Lane, Lombard,” Perry called out. Lois noted absently that he had somebody with him. Focused on her story, she vaguely registered the presence of a tall, dark-haired guy wheeling a bike into the office. “I want to introduce you to our new stringer. I was hoping you could show him the ropes.”