Super-Stars of Space

Green Eggheads on the Lam

by Goose Gansler

The red sun had set once again on the trans-dimensional world of Rokyn. Night fell across the planet that had been settled by the former miniaturized citizens of the Bottle City of Kandor. It was a sparsely inhabited world but it did boast the largest concentration of survivors of the doomed planet Krypton. However, not all who walked the world of Rokyn were Kryptonian in nature. There were two in particular who had no drop of Kryptonian blood in them; though if they had their way, they would have that blood on their hands.

The capital city of New Kandor had expanded well beyond the dimensions of its former size on Krypton. The enlargement of the city had allowed the populace to expand beyond the limits into which the glass walls had formerly confined them.

New towns had also sprung up, such as New Argo and New Kryptonopolis. However, this still left a great percentage of Rokyn’s land mass untouched by Kryptonian hands or science. It was in these uninhabited, undeveloped areas that these two scoundrels had come to live their days. It was disgusting to them to need to put their sixth-level intellects towards the mundane tasks of survival. Nonetheless, it was necessary. It was either that or a return to a grahu cell in New Kandor. The years in a plastic prison had weighed on them.

In their underground cave near the outskirts of New Kandor, the devious duo plotted. The faint light of the campfire revealed the green hue of their rough skin. Without the creature comforts such as a laser-razor, it was difficult for them to maintain their bald pates – an homage to their leader, Brainiac. They were onetime members of cohort of criminals Coluans. Their names were Grumm and Boz.

Grumm stroked the fire with a stick. Based on the typical combustion rate of Rokynian wood, he mentally calculated that it would be another 1.23 standard galactic hours before the fire would extinguish itself. He wasn’t sure of Boz was making a similar calculation. He expected his comrade to do so, since their mutually-agreed upon schedule dictated that tonight was Boz’s responsibility.

Grumm looked up and met Boz’s gaze. “Well?”

“I know,” Boz sighed. “There’s 1.23 hours before refueling is imperative.” He was beginning to resent Grumm’s assumption of authority. The schedule wasn’t “Mutually-agreed upon” as Grumm claimed; it was dictated by Grumm. With his greater meteorological expertise, Grumm had calculated the days of the most inclement weather and assigned those days to Boz.

“Good. I want no interruptions in illumination. I will be working on a very delicate portion of our trans-cosmic radio presently. Our escape from this world is imminent.”

“Imminent,” Boz laughed to himself. Then again, after the years spent in a Kandorian prison, a matter of days or weeks could be considered imminent, relatively speaking. He turned his attention to his bowl of soup. He wasn’t sure which type of Rokynian beast Grumm had killed with which to flavor the soup, but it was as horrid in taste as any other before. How he longed for the micro-encapsulated compressed nutrition pellets of Colu – that was dining at its highest intellectual level.

“Finish your consumption and resume your duties,” Grumm ordered emotionlessly. “The Kandorians’ search parties may intersect this area. Signal if they come within visual contact and I will extinguish the flames.”

Such was the life of these two Coluans on the run from the Rokynian police force. They had been imprisoned in Kandor, back when it was still the Bottle City, after a foiled attempt to use Superman’s comrade in an attempt to destroy the hated Kryptonian. Since they were members of

Brainiac’s criminal organization, Superman felt it appropriate that they be tried and imprisoned in the micro-metropolis. They had been miniaturized and delivered to the Lilliputian citizens.

Kandorian justice was swift, but it was not necessarily harsh. They could have been sentenced to the Phantom Zone, but the sentence turned out to be 10 orbits in prison. The Kandorians had tried to rehabilitate Grumm and Boz, but the Coluans were adamant in their ways and their devotion to Brainiac. They waited patiently through he years, knowing that their master would come back. With a Coluan lifetime extending beyond 200 Terran years, a few years of imprisonment was a small inconvenience.

Their limited freedom had come a short while ago. A devastating attack had been launched on Rokyn. At first it was unknown who the invaders were. The skull-shaped ship was unfamiliar to the Rokynians. As the battle raged, Grumm and Boz learned from their jailers that Brainiac was

the mastermind.

The Coluans had watched with glee as the events unfolded in the tridimensional screens in their respective cells; only their master could have given a Kryptonian super-powers under a red sun – Rokyn had been beset by super-powered armored beings.

“Ah, the genius of the master,” Grumm had gloated. “Only he could devise a way to give a Kryptonian super powers under this red sun.”

“Agreed,” Boz had chimed on. “Those armored men must be Kandorians whom he has electronically converted to the cause.”

Their guard had approached on the other side of the energy bars. “Quiet in there.” Lor-Av, the aged jailer, had pointed his finger very nervously at them. He had been terrified by the devastation being displayed on the screen. He had been a raw rookie when Brainiac had stolen the city from Krypton. This had brought back all of the terrifying memories to the surface again.

“Heh, heh.” Grumm had shown his contempt for the veteran guar. “I wonder what Brainiac will do this time. Perhaps he will put the entire planet in a bottle.”

“After he frees us, of course.” Boz had added.

“Of course,” Grumm had nodded. “That must be his prime motivation in this endeavor.” What other reason could there be for Brainiac being here? It would only be a matter of time before the master’s minions located and freed them. Grumm and Boz had started discussing probability functions to estimate how soon they would be freed.

However, neither Brainiac nor the super-powered Madaxites in his employ had come to liberate the Coluans, at least not deliberately. After the battle had turned against the insidious android due to the efforts if Superman, Nightwing, Flamebird, Valor, the Rondor and the Green Lantern of Rokyn, a terminator switch had been activated in the armored suits of the Madaxites. The distant relatives of the Daxamites dropped from the sky, adding to the destruction of Rokyn.

One of the lifeless had Madaxites happened to fall on the prison that had housed Grumm and Boz. In fact, he had crashed through the outer wall of their cell.

Grumm and Boz had immediately seized the opportunity. They had rushed outside before their dumbfounded guard could do anything. They had clambered over the mangled body of the Madaxite, expecting to see some type of transport awaiting them, perhaps Brainiac himself in his crimson saucer. They had been astounded to see that nothing awaited them. They had looked up into the sky in hopes of seeing a teleportation beam, but nothing descended from the sky. This result had not arisen from their probability calculations.

“It seems that we are in error,” Grumm had declared downheartedly. They were out of prison, but they were still trapped on Rokyn.

“The conflict seems to have terminated. We would be well-served to exit the city before forces can be mustered to close off our escape.” Boz had surveyed the wreckage and the battle had wrought.

The chaos had helped to mask their escape, but they had needed to stay out of the open – their green skin made them markedly different.

The following days had found Grumm and Boz on the run from the Kandorian police intent on reapprehending them. Their sixth-level intelligence had made them (at least in their own opinion) superior to the advanced Kryptonians, but the Kandorians had weapons and telepathic hounds while the Coluans had nothing at their disposal. It took a few days of circuitous movements to completely confuse the police. It was only then that they had been able to establish their ‘base’ in the cave. The next few nights had been filled with stealthy raids on the remote farms for technology – a weather control monitor here, and servo-rob’s head there, etc.

Now Grumm was ready to make the final adjustments on their signaling device. It would transmit in a manner that only Brainiac would detect, wherever in space he might be. It would also be undetectable by the Kryptonians, at least that’s what the Coluans assumed.

Boz dutifully stoked the fire while Grumm delicately adjusted a series of capacitors. Watching the construction more than the fire, Boz analyzed Grumm’s handiwork. “The task appears to be completed, assuming that you compensated for the phase shift instability.”

“Of course I did,” Grumm answered sharply. He put down the electronic screwdriver and glowered at Boz. “What do you take me for? One of those simpletons back at the academy on Colu?”

“Those … simpletons … managed to maintain their enrollment,” Boz said snidely. “You, on the other hand, …”

Rage at those painful memories swelled up within Grumm. “I, on the other hand, could not be bound by the incessant debate and theorizing. I had grander schemes – dreams of action and power. Dreams which will once again become reality once the master arrives.” He pushed the large button atop the machine. It whirred to life and started emitting a trans-cosmic signal for one intended recipient.

That signal would go unheeded by its true intended recipient. Thousands of light-years away, the skull-shaped ship of Brainiac hovered near a collapsing dwarf-star. The master inside was busily gathering certain emitted particles from the cosmic event with the intent of using it in a future stratagem. His computer mind did not detect the hyperwave signal. Brainiac had changed much since Grumm and Boz had last served him. He had been disassembled to a subatomic level and reconstructed into a cold emotionless machine that could have never passed for humanoid as the Computer Tyrants had originally intended. He had since rebuilt himself again, taking a green –skinned humanoid form once again and even adopted a blond facial hair. However, the changes were more drastic within than without. His electronic neural pathways were completely different than original Computer Tyrant design. As such, the signal went unnoticed by him.

Elsewhere, in the Alpha-Zed system, there was one being who could receive the signal. Sitting at the controls of his purple saucer-shaped craft, he could not help but acknowledge the annoying transmission. The electromagnetic wave bounced painfully about his circuitry to the extent that arcs formed between the synaptic nodes on his green-skinned head.

His hands quickly went to the controls as his saucer’s sensors locked on the vector of the signal. Estimating the distance to the source was impossible at this point, but as the ship began to speed along the beam, his computer mind was able to calculate the increase in signal strength as the light-years passed by. Cross-referencing the direction and distance with the holographic three-dimensional star chart that he brought up, he was able to locate the source.

“Rokyn?” he noted with a smile. “If that’s the case, then I’d best investigate carefully. One look at my face, and the local citizenry would likely respond in a hostile fashion.”

Back on the planet, Grumm and Boz waited for a response. “How much longer do you think it will be?” Boz asked.

“The master could be anywhere in space,” Grumm shot back. How many times would this simpleton ask? “He might be engaged in some scheme against the Kryptonian even now. He will come. This is the manner in which he told us to contact him, if our circumstances were brought to this. He will come.”

It was a few days of travel before the saucer had traversed the light-years to Rokyn. In the meantime, the master of the ship had used his Coluan technological skills to build a positronic neural shield. The device filtered out most the intensity of the signal before it could reach his neural circuitry. When he reached Rokyn’s red star system, he engaged the saucer’s cloaking shield. He calculated that it would prove effective against the Rokynians’ technology, although that was primarily based upon assumption. The Kryptonians in his collection did not have much in the way of technology.

After assuming an orbit around Rokyn, her pinpointed the exact location of the signal origin. It was just outside of an urban center. Intercepted electronic communication waves identified it as Kandor.

“So, this is what it looked like,” he mused. “Much more impressive than my Jerat.” He could see the allure of such a place, but his interests were not collecting for collecting’s sake.

He approached a multicolored control panel on a bulkhead. Punching in a hundred-digit access code, a door slid open. He took down a rifle from the wall and checked its power source.

“Illium-346 certainly isn’t easy to come by,” he noted. “But there should be enough to deal with this situation.”

After closing the hatch to the crimson saucer, he activated his personal force field and descended down into the atmosphere of Rokyn. The lack of oxygen was completely irrelevant to him. The force field would protect him from the friction of reentry. The addition of certain harmonic frequencies from his micro-stealth generator was intended to protect him from any type of electromagnetic detection. The only way for him to be noticed would be visually, and the information being relayed to him from his saucer indicated that there were no Rokynian air patrols near his descent vector.

Employing his rocket pack, he braked his descent gradually. He touched down on the ground as light as a feather, even with Rokyn’s prodigious gravity. His sensors relays told him that the origin of the signal of interest was less than one kilometer away. Visual inspection of the area suggested that the network of caves here at the outskirts of one of the Rokynian settlements was a likely candidate. Reorienting his sensors in that direction verified the assumption.

Quickly covering the distance, he arrived at the mouth of the cave. Flicking a safety, he energized his Illium-346 powered weapon. Two shapes emerged from inside at the sound.

“Master, you have finally come for us,” Grumm gushed as he indicated for all three to go into the cave. He looked around warily to make sure that there were no Kandorians in the area.

“We never gave up hope, Master,” Boz said once they were all inside of the cave. “It has been so long.”

“Has it now?” The jury-rigged equipment garnered a touch of respect for the work of Grumm and Boz.

“Many sun-cycles now. But that is all immaterial now,” Grumm noted. “Now we can be at your side once again. We can once again be of assistance in the quest to destroy the Kryptonian and make the entire universe ours for the taking.”

“Obedient sentients, aren’t you?” The comment was marked with a almost imperceptible sarcasm.

“Master?” Boz was taken aback by the tone of the comment. “You are here to free us, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I will remove you from this planet of Kryptonian survivors.” He leveled the weapon at them. “I have a much better place for you. A city of ruthless and depraved Kryptonians – the city of Jerrat, the prize of my collection.”

“Master, isn’t that a shrinking ray device?” Grumm finally recognized the design.

“Indeed.” The trigger was pulled, and the weapon fired. The ray bathed the two Coluans in yellow. They began to shrink almost immediately.

“Master Brainiac!” Boz shouted. The frequency of his voice changed as he shrank.

“That was the error in your calculations,” was the reply. “You assumed that only your master could detect your signal. Had he never told you of the prototype that the Computer Tyrants had built before him? The android whose mental patterns had been based on a kindhearted Coluan? The renegade who went good?”

Seeing a confused look on the shrinking faces, he deduced that they had not. “It is in keeping with his android pride that Brainiac never mentioned me. He would hate to admit that he was not the first. I was first. I, Brainiac A.”

One the Coluans had reached microscopic size while suspended in the beam, Brainiac A changed the setting on his weapon. Deactivating the Illium-346 power energy source, he engaged a tractor beam which drew the pair into a storage area inside of the rifle.

Brainiac A took to the air once he was certain that the containment fields of the storage area were secure. It would be a long journey to his planetoid base where his collection of depraved cities was kept, and it wouldn’t be humane to keep his captives inside of the weapon any longer than necessary. His lack of inhumanity certainly separated him from his namesake.

“Perhaps more than philosophy and principles should separate us,” he mused as he blasted through the atmosphere. “His actions have sullied the name ‘Brainiac’. Even if I were to function for a thousand years, I might not redeem the name. Perhaps a new sobriquet would be appropriate.” His android mind churned through a few million possibilities in the space of a second. “Cerebrac. That has good tonal qualities to it.”