Strobe/Valor: K Quest - Thoron

[dans]

I'll probably rename this as I go along...

Introduction

Four beings with wildly diverse origins have joined forces on an interstellar quest to save the world of Juneo.

It took thousands of words to get to this point. This is another episode in the series of adventures of the crew of the starship Tiak Avenger, as they search the galaxy for two prizes, white kryptonite and the Lens of Allouche:

• Jim (Strobe) Chisholm of Earth, who can command a powerful white energy called the Glow via the Glove he wears
• Vic Valor, the mortal manifestation of Marnu, a Lord of Order, who currently inhabits a super powered android body
• Jessiat Gazil, selected to be the captain of the first starship from the planet Juneo, interning on the Tiak Avenger for some on-the-job training
• Juna Dondwar, a distinguished scientist from the planet Xenon with great expertise in kryptonite
  

Right now they are searching for the star system or Rao and the remains of the exploded planet Krypton.

If you aren't up on the backstory, don't worry, here are three reading options

• Skip over the list of links below and the Spoiler link and go right to reading the new story
• Click on the links in the list below and read the earlier stories in the series
• Click on the Spoiler link and read the Cliff Notes version of the series

Catch up on the whole series, several thousand words worth...

Vic Valor, Invincible     Master of the Glow     Manic Monday     The Return of Vic Valor
The Jungles of Juneo   Crisis on Xenon          Revolution on Thrann

Cliff Notes

SPOILER: Click to show

Here's a quick summary of the story so far!

~200,000 years ago, a determined being named Vic Valor was the commander of a planetary law enforcement team named the Invincibles. He eventually expanded that team into an interstellar organization which came to be known as the Galactic Patrol. He was then recruited by the Lords of Order and he left the mortal relm to become Marnu, a Lord of Order.

Marnu came into conflict with an older, more powerful Lord of Chaos named Burr, who used a powerful mystical artifact called the Lens of Allouche to strip away most of his powers and banish him from the universe. At the same time, about 1000,000 years ago, Burr developed a way to corrupt the Galactic Patrol to the cause of Chaos by contaminating their powerful weapons, the Glove and Globe, which allowed them to control the awesome white power of the Glow. A Patroller named Iredok Jur Diah was able to thwart this plan, but doing so resulted in the destruction of all but one of the Gloves and Globes - Iredok's own artifacts were the only ones that survived. These surviving artifacts were lost to the universe for 100,000 years, eventually ending up on Earth.

In the decades between 1940 and 1990, several related events occurred. In 1947, Marnu was finally able to return to the universe, almost powerless. He emerged near Earth and engineered a way to regain a portion of power - he entered the mind of Ted Knight, who was at the time retired as Starman and recovering from a nervous breakdown, and secretly influenced him to build a powerful suit of armor, giving it powers similar to those Ted had wielded via his Gravity Rod. Marnu then surfaced his Valor personality, and took over Ted's mind at nights, using the armor to become the superhero Vic Valor. Valor had a short career, and was then 'killed' by exposure to a weapon created by Starman's enemy, Dr. Doog. Ted's own personality emerged, he saved the day, and retired the Valor armor.

In the mid 80s several things happened almost simultaneously. An Earth human, Jim Chisholm, came into possession of Iredok's Globe and Glove, and after some training with the Justice Society of America, became the superhero Strobe. Wotan, a powerful villainous sorcerer, was elevated to the role of a Lord of Chaos, to replace Burr, who had ascended to another plane of existence. Wotan assumed all the roles and duties of Burr, as well as his enemies, and he placed a curse on the remaining Globe and Glove that devastated Jim's personal life. As well, all of Burr's possessions became Wotan's possessions, including the Lens of Allouche. Marnu once again awakened, this time inside the Valor armor, and confused by his injuries and his new surroundings, went on a rampage. He was eventually stopped by Dr. Fate and Strobe. Nabu, the Lord of Order that gave Dr. Fate his powers, recognized his fellow Lord of Order Marnu, and restored his memory. But only the Lens of Allouche could restore his powers. Fate also detected the curse of Wotan on Jim and did his best to lift it, though he was at least partially unsuccessful. As they had a common enemy, Wotan, Strobe and Marnu/Valor decided to seek him out, recover the Lens of Allouche and Marnu's powers, and force him to lift the curse.

The powerful magic of Dr. Fate was able to provide them with a starship, which they named the Tiak Avenger (Tiak being the name the Lords of Order used for a 100,000 year period of time, the length of time Marnu had been banished from the universe). It was in pretty poor condition, having been abandoned at a Galactic Patrol station on a wandering planet a tiak ago. Valor created a fortune in diamonds, and Valor, Jim, and Marnu, each using their various super powers and knowledge, had partially rebuilt the ancient (but still barely functional) Tiak Avenger. And then Jim and Vic took off on their Quest to find Wotan.

On the rebuilt Tiak Avenger's shakedown cruise, the ship had fallen through a space warp near the asteroid of Juno and the rebuilt engines hadn't been up to the task of keeping the ship from crashing to the surface of a planet in another star system, Juneo. The human civilization on Juneo was close to being overwhelmed by a giant composite plant organism that resembled a planet-spanning jungle which ruthlessly attempted to extinguish all animal life. Some of the weapons aboard the Tiak Avenger were adapted for use against the jungle, and the Juneon humans were able to gain back some lost territory - at least until the fast mutating jungle developed new defenses against these new weapons, a cycle which usually took about 50 years.

During his association with the Justice Society, Jim had learned about the existence of an isotope of Kryptonite, White K, which emitted radiation that instantly destroyed plant life, which had been brought to Earth from another universe. The Avenger's crew had offered to go to the system of the star Rao, once the home of the exploded planet Kryptonite, and return with white kryptonite, in exchange for assistance in once again rebuilding the Avenger, this time replacing even more of the decrepit Galactic Control technology with Juneon tech. The ruling council of Juneo determined to begin a long-postponed space program when the Avenger returned and the menace of the jungle was abated, and they selected the captain of Juneo's proposed first starship, Jessiat Gazil, and proposed that she go along with the Avenger for some first hand training in starflight. Jim and Vic were happy to have company, so Jess joined them on their new quest - the Quest for White Kryptonite.

Wotan wasn't done with them yet, however, and found a way to erase a significant part of Avenger's celestial navigation database - including the location of Rao. They knew the general sector of the galaxy where Rao was located, however, so they decided to continue the search, and picked a red giant star at random in that sector, and jumped there.

When they arrived, they were almost instantly approached by 2 super powered individuals who welcomed them to the Xenon system - after an extremely thorough vetting and inspection of the Avenger to verify that the crew was not an enemy. The crew learned that this was the system of the star Raotun, which in the native language meant 'New Rao'. Raotun was orbited by a world named Xenon, which had once circled Rao, but been torn away about a tiak ago when the two stars had almost collided. Many years ago, Superman had saved Xenon from exploding by depositing many tons of Kryptonite in the uranium core of the planet as the different types of radiation emitted by the elements cancelled each other out. The famous Xenonian scientist Zoll-Or had established a research institution that studied kryptonite closely - the planet didn't want to get so close to another core explosion ever again! One of the leading experts on kryptonite, Juna Dondwar, was fascinated by the voyage to the place of origin of Kryptonite and asked to come along. So when the Avenger left Xenon, it now had a crew of Four.

Their next misadventure had happened on the planet Thrann. A mysterious being had somehow summoned them to a meeting, and convinced them to help him free his leader from prison on Thrann, where he had been sentenced as a rebel traitor. This being, Augur, convinced the crew that the leader, DarkFactor, was a revolutionary and the government of Thrann was autocratic, repressive, evil, and needed to be overthrown. This brought the Avenger's crew into combat with the Justice Mandate of Thrann, the planet's government-sponsored super team. The Avenger's crew eventually realized that DarkFactor was planning to establish an even more repressive regime, when DarkFactor turned on them. They barely escaped with their lives, with the aid of Augur, who was a true revolutionary rather than a would-be dictator. And along they way, they convinced the heroes in the Justice Manage to examine their own support for their repressive government more closely.

Augur loaned the four a small shuttle to take them back to the Avenger - and here we are!

And, by the time you reach this line, you have either caught up on the series, or you don't need catching up, so here we go:

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. Meanwhile, Juna was engaged in experimentation with Green Kryptonite - trying to develop a process that could be used to to reproduce the natural decay process that produced other isotopes of Kryptonite - in particular, turning Green K into White Kryptonite, that could be used to kill off the virtually unstoppable invasive plant growth that threatened the extinction of the Juneon branch of humanity. Jim (Strobe) often joined her in the well-equipped science lab on Avenger's 'Utility Deck' as they attempted to overcome the vulnerability to Kryptonite radiation of his Galactic Patrol weapon, the energy-controlling Glove.

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 were 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. Jenna 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?"

[dans]

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 somewhat stilted 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.

[johnreiter902]

Very nice idea for how Halk Kar can have powers

[dans]

I want to tie it in to what we're read before as much as possible!

[dans]

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 om 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!"

[dans]

The three artifacts that Lois recovered from Jor-L's chest (googles, gloves, cap) were specifically said to give her Super Strength, Super Speed, Super Vision and the power of flight. None of them specifically gave her invulnerability, although presumably each gave her some protection from using the powers it provided. I just added a belt which produces a force field that gives Apex limited invulnerability. He built it himself, and though he is not the genius inventor that Jor-L was, he is a very good inventor - with the science of Thoron, he built himself a rocket which carried him safely from Thoron to Krypton when Jor-L was still building a prototype of Kal-L's rocket. Plus, he has considerable incentive to improve his force field - he is using it to protect him when he acts as a super hero, so any time it fails to give him full protection, improving it becomes his highest priority. He is still not as invulnerable as Superman, but while wearing this belt, he is pretty damage resistant.

Anyway, I just made a small retcon to the 'Meet Apex' chapter to show him donning the belt, and indicating that he built the belt himself. Additions are in purple bold text, 2 sentences only.

[DocQuantum]

I’m enjoying this a lot! I like the use of an Earth-2 version of those objects the Earth-1 Lois Lane used.

[dans]

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 radar. 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 10 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, as 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 a device that had been placed outside, north of the complex, by one of the plant fliers activated. 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!" 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...

[dans]

good news... and Bad News

A squad of Sky Defense troops (called Sky Knights) on personal fliers had been dispatched to deal with the factory raiders, but they'd had the bad luck of flying into the range of the Animal 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. The hospital's diagnostic sensors had detected enough traces of purple radiation remaining in his body to be analyzed - and the facility's research team had 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 more zasers could be built until the gems were recovered - or a new supply was discovered in the Kryptoid Belt. Which seemed unlikely, 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!

[dans]

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. 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 installead as the Supreme Ruler of Thoron. As your benevolent Supreme Ruler, 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 Ruler 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 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 Jessiat's; both had grown up as leading warriors in their civilizations and were renowned for their bravery, resourcefulness, and success in battle fighting deadly threats to the survival of their people and civilizations - and yet, neither was trained to fight 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 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 several tons of Green Kryptonite for Juna's research - there was LOTS of it 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 paperweights. The spirit of the Thoronan representatives was low; 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, no one has yet developed effective alternate methods of protecting Thoron from asteroid impacts. We can use demountable rocket thrusters to change the orbits of some asteroids, but that's not scalable, we estimate that this method will protect us from only 10% of projected impacts over the next 50 years. Blowing them up 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. They have to be vaporized."

"We might 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, and the Avenger moved cautiously deeper into the K-Belt.

[dans]

Kryptonite - Search and Research

Juna and Sav quickly retired to the Avengers' engineering and lab space, which Juna had been rebuilding during the 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 joined into 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 an Earth ton of endurite at a distance of a thousand miles. Positive detection of smaller quantities is of course possible, at shorter distances."

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 got underway.

***~~~***

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. He 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 edges 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 1% 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 - 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!

[dans]

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. 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 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, while super villains were unknown on Thoron before now.

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."

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 TONS of Kryptonite on hand, don't you? Just floating around in the sky, right? You delivered several tons 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!

When the Thoronans and Valor were convinced, there was a whirlwind of activity. Lar Mida 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."

"At least, I can help with that!" Jim spoke up again. "I won't be much help around a bunch of folks carrying Kryptonite - K Radiation disrupts my Glove's ability to control the energy constructs I make with the Glow. I guess I'll have to face K-Pau's other forces instead."

"So, all we have to do now is find him!" Lar Mida summed it all up.

[dans]

A few weeks back, aboard the Swarm Rider

Instants after Fion Drim's new passenger sat up, he moaned in pain and collapsed. She pushed him to her bunk and strapped him down - 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 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 for over her 6 month long prospecting trips, but 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.

[dans]

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 cell 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 base for hundreds of 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, she 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 back to the Operation’s headquarters, where the still unconscious prisoner was returned to her 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.

[DocQuantum]

Good chapters! I like that you're taking your time building up suspense and a new threat.

Some observations:

Is the Kryptonian crook called Kah Pau or Kha Pau? I see both used several times. Should Kha Pau's name be spelled "Kha-Pau" as per the usual Kryptonian standard using a hyphen? Or is Kha Pau without the hyphen meant to be the Thoronian version of his name? (Based on known Kryptonian names like Jor-L or U-Ban, you might think he should be named K-Pau.)

You use Jor-El instead of Jor-L on one occasion.

In the Earth-1 universe, Green Kryptonite was known to affect only super-powered Kryptonians but had no effect on non-powered ones. That's why they had to introduce anti-kryptonite as an explanation for why the Kryptonite killed off almost everyone in Argo City. Given the other similarities (white K, jewel K) that you've introduced in your stories, I would think this similarity would apply in the Earth-2 universe as well, since kryptonite doesn't appear to be fundamentally different in each universe, except that Earth-1 appears to have larger quantities of the various-colored isotopes.

A thought occurred to me about Halk Kar. We know in his single comic-book appearance he was portrayed as much weaker than Superman, so we assume he would remain so. But recall that for the first few years of his existence as a hero, Superman himself was VERY weak compared to what he had become by the late 1940s. That seems to apply to all Kryptonians based on maturity, since Kara Zor-L (Power Girl) also started out weaker but grew more powerful with age. Why wouldn't the same apply to Thoronians, given their close ancestral relationship with Kryptonians? I could be wrong, but if a Thoronian were to remain in Earth-like conditions of lower gravity and a yellow sun, they might conceivably obtain a power level that approaches that of Superman, though likely not quite as powerful as he. That might not be something that matters in this story, but in the future a Thoronian might conceivably become more powerful over time while on Earth or in a similar environment. That possibility is open.

Of course, a counter-argument might be made that since Halk Kar appeared to be fully mature and in the equivalent of his late 20s, he might never have gotten any more powerful. Still, it could be a combination of maturity and time spent in an Earth-like environment that is responsible for the power increase.