Doc Sherwood
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Stories (497/0)
Lost Friends, Chapter Four
A short jog through the ruinous neighbourhood brought Dylan, Bret, Joe, Phoenix, Jeffrey and Kumiko to the monolith of concrete and chrome that was the Mekanikron building. Gone was the bright sunshine and clear blue sky of earlier that day. A preternatural twilight was throwing all into oppressive gloom, and in the heavens beyond the skyscraper’s peak the clouds were circling as if caught in the beginnings of a hurricane. Dylan was wearing his satellite headset, and said into its microphone: “Talk to me, Doctor Mendelssohn, how much longer do we have until the rift opens?”
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Lost Friends, Chapter One
“Here’s the situation,” said Dylan. Behind him the many viewscreens of the meeting room in The Four Heroes’ house flashed into life, readouts and graphs and schematics blinking into being across their luminous many-coloured surfaces. All those assembled around the long table looked attentively on, as Dylan indicated the main monitor that bore an electronic aerial map of Nottingham. Over a part of it, a red-glowing circle blinked insistently.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Heredity, Chapter Five
The seven heroes abandoned the assault as one and rocketed to the safety of their vehicles. Tidshaw, the fastest flier, scrambled upside-down into the Hero Cart’s pilot chair and reconfigured the passenger half into shield mode, while his fellows converged on one or other of the vehicles and Dylan threw the Ultimate Cycle’s forcefield generator into life. At that instant Harbin made his free hand into a fist, and the Baax freighter crunched like a can. Blinding white light and raw howling force enveloped the universe.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
After the Flood, Chapter Three
They climbed back onto the F.P. Lightspeed, and Joe brought the platform through the time-portal Gala opened and forward several years. The day they emerged upon was a rare one for the first Dark Advent, with sunlight of a somewhat purer quality than the usual pinkish-yellow murk breaking through the black sky in a few shafts that made ripping golden patches upon the ocean. Below the travellers on the deck of the plague-ship was Gala, by now grown to a small girl in a simple white dress. She was playing with a ginger kitten, while her mother sat close by in a wooden chair and watched her with a sad smile full of love. She looked to Joe to be in her mid-twenties, though the plague’s ravages had made her as much like a weak old woman as an early adult. Our hero remembered what Gala had told him about the life-span of all that sickness’ victims, and knew at once the impending sorrow that overshadowed this apparently happy scene.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
After the Flood, Chapter Two
Gala directed Joe to steer the Lightspeed beyond the tumbledown walls of Nottingham and out across the ocean. Soon the island lay far behind, and they were streaking over boundless roils. At long last a row of ships began to draw into view, all of them standing at anchor, and all of them long overdue a watery grave. Their black sodden timbers creaked and dripped, seeming to decay even as Joe and Gala watched, while frayed and patched sails flapped sadly in the breeze. Off the bow of one of these skeletal hulks Gala had Joe bring the flying platform to rest, and told him to psychically shield himself again.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
After the Flood, Chapter Five
“Take the Burghermeister and his collection of mountebanks to the dungeons,” Gala ordered her friends, who were only too glad to oblige. Meanwhile, citizens all around the courtyard were slowly creeping out into view, to gaze with breathless happiness at the girl who had overthrown their dread oppressor. A hush descended.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Heredity, Chapter Four
Neetra and Autumn scrambled to their feet and ran forward to where Tidshaw was standing. Dead ahead lay an astrological vista The Four Heroes remembered well, having been instrumental in bringing about its existence. A great belt of asteroids and wrecked spaceships both terrestrial and alien, caught forever in the black hole’s gravitational field, revolved steadily in a circle around its fiery rim while within that broiling periphery was a portal of nothingness so absolute that our heroes could almost feel light and time accelerating past them to be sucked in and swallowed by the darkness in its depths. At the centre of this void stood Harbin, who it seemed neither the singularity nor the vacuum of space could harm. His twilight body, suffused with elemental energies drawn from the dark heart of the hole, cast seething emanations across the universe as an unholy symphony of cosmic forces neared its crescendo. Clutched in his hand was the Time-Shifting Device, and the rectangular buttons on its face, usually red, now flared and leapt with the same grey glow that flooded from Harbin as his monstrous orchestrations swelled its power levels to the new and terrible pitch he demanded.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
After the Flood, Chapter One
City lights were sparkling far below a jet-black sky, outside the high arched windows of Nottingham Castle’s ancestral hall. Inside the enormous vaulted space, its shadows dispelled only by a few flickering candles, stood Joe of The Four Heroes and Gala of the Next Four. Both looked just as they always did, he in dark clothing with his black hat upon his long brown hair, and she in a black hat too, though hers had a scarlet plume and the rest of her clothing likewise suggested a pirate, especially the cutlass at her belt. On the polished oaken boards by their feet sat a large silver disc fitted with flight controls and a motor.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Heredity, Chapter One
Across a flat expanse of rubble that had until recently been a derelict city neighbourhood, Joe, Bret, Dylan, Neetra and her sister Phoenix stared at the quartet of newcomers standing before them. There were two young men and a teenage boy and girl, all of them clad in black uniforms with a flash of a different colour. On the breast of each shone the crimson and gold insignia of The Four Heroes.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Heredity, Chapter Three
Gala stepped into the ancestral hall at Nottingham Castle, clad as always in her long black coat and black hat with a scarlet plume. Work in the City Centre was proceeding apace, and most of the refugees saved from the Ring of Fire by The Four Heroes had received medical attention or been reunited with their families. Gala had therefore delegated the remainder of these duties to the other three members of the team she led, and returned home.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Heredity, Chapter Two
For nearly two hours Joe and Neetra conducted a systematic search of their allocated districts, focusing rigidly on locating their quarry and keeping such conversation as there was to that subject alone. Both, however, were aware the whole time that that which they were delaying talking about could not be held off indefinitely. At last, when they reached the riverbank and agreed to take a short rest from their labours, it was Joe who broke the ensuing silence with a tentative:
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction