Black Zero's main control room.
Clark and Zod went straight into combat without testing each other. The collision of their bodies of steel shook the entire warship.
Zod was a veteran of countless battles, and Kryptonian Military Hand-to-Hand Combat had long since become instinct. He sidestepped Clark's straight punch and drove a devastating knee into his abdomen.
His metal combat boot struck the Kryptonian Battle Suit with a dull metallic clang.
Clark retreated half a step and took the blow head-on. Twenty-five years of yellow sun radiation had tempered his cells to a physical limit that even Kryptonians could not comprehend.
He grabbed Zod's shoulder and hurled him away.
Zod's two-hundred-plus-pound body flew backward into the thick alloy bulkhead, punching a massive, human-shaped dent into it. Internal wiring shorted out in a shower of sparks.
Zod landed and shook out his numb wrist, staring at Clark as he assessed the gap between their combat capabilities.
Hand-to-hand combat alone would never subdue this Earth-raised aberration quickly enough.
"Faora!" Zod issued an order over the built-in communications channel, his tone cold.
"Go to Smallville, Kansas, in North America. Bring me the native couple who raised him. Kill anyone who gets in your way."
Clark's Super Hearing picked up every word of the order on the encrypted frequency.
"Don't touch them!" A terrifying red glow flared in Clark's eyes, and two high-energy beams of Heat Vision shot straight at Zod.
Zod rolled aside. The beams sliced the main console in half, melting its edges into glaring streams of molten metal.
Clark did not pursue him. He turned, drove off with both legs, and smashed straight through Black Zero's observation window.
Glass shards and metal debris scattered through the vacuum as Clark charged into space and plunged toward Earth.
The atmosphere scraped fiercely against