Battleground

In the aftermath of a grim battle, Phoenix Prime’s legions had resorted to a scorched-earth rampage that would crush all beneath it and wrest victory in the only way rock-men knew. Between the bellowing mindless berserkers and the bustling nightlife of Nottingham stood the Next Four, poised half-way up the hill at whose foot lay the Town Hall. With The Chancellor and D’Carthage in the vanguard and Gala and Steam holding back they waited, staring down the horde as it thundered upon them, each knowing they must contain this enemy within unpopulated regions and turn the tide lest chaos consume the city.

The Chancellor’s leather-gloved hand was upraised. Seconds passed as the rock-men neared. Then he made his hand into a fist and let it fall.

D’Carthage sprang forward, arms outspread, and ahead of the army’s pounding stone feet the paving-slabs cracked apart. Huge creepers as thick as tree-trunks thrust out of the soil and ploughed into the troops from below, ensnaring whole clutches of them at once and squeezing until they shattered, or entwining themselves around burly bodies and flinging them away into the night. Meanwhile The Chancellor swung into position twin heavy cannons he wore strapped to his back, and the low staccato thudding from both barrels was like a physical presence as the street whirled into a sandstorm. Rock-men charged headlong into the wall of bullets and became flying gravel, only for the ranks behind them to take their place.

For the Next Four were all too aware that this first sortie was no more than a lowering of the odds in preparation for what would follow. Weapons and plantlife could not halt such an advance as this, any more than they could turn back an avalanche that had gravity on its side. With ammunition finally exhausted The Chancellor flexed his arms in two brisk motions, unlocking his guns from their long-range mode and resetting them for close-up work.

“Stand by for hand-to-to hand combat,” he commanded.

Steam’s lower body erupted into a fireball. Gala lifted her white shining cutlass above her head.

There was a moment when gaping chasm-mouths and dead graven eyes and the jagged edges of granite blades filled the Next Four’s world, before the quartet cut loose and annihilated the front line in an awesome deployment of power. They were a living blockade, one that clove and blasted and pulverized even as the soldiers fell upon it in an unending wave. Gala and her men knew however that for all their superhuman capabilities, this was to be a test of endurance not might. A foe that far outnumbered them and did not tire would make them pay for every minute they held their line. Nevertheless the Next Four stove on, as terrible in battle as the pitiless stone-hearted enemy they fought.

The war was far-off but audible at The Four Heroes’ house. While 4-H-N kept watch outside, Phoenix and James Neetkins were in the medical bay lit by the eerie green glow of a stasis tube. Inside its luminous liquid the motionless body of Dylan Cook was suspended upright. A monitor affixed to the bulky apparatus blipped faintly.

“We’ll have tae get him oot o’ here juist as soon as his condition stabilises enough fuir him tae be moved,” said James. “This is the first place any o’ them, Phoenix Prime or the Next Four, would look for us.”

Phoenix said nothing. She placed one hand on the glass barrier that curved between her and her love.

“He’ll live, Phoenix,” James told her. “We ken that already. Ye saw that in the future he designs new equipment, engineers Thassal’s powers...”

“Say it all, Papa,” Phoenix put in tonelessly. “We are both scientists. I undairstood ze results as well as you.”

James sighed and hung his head, defeated.

“Taking intae account the severity o’ the damage done tae his nervous system by Phoenix Prime,” he went on, “we cannae hope he’ll make a full recovery.”

“And technical work can be done from a wheelchair, or a life-support machine,” Phoenix continued. “For zat, zere is no need for ’im to evair return to a normal life. For zat, zere is no need – ”

Her voice quavered.

“Zere is no need for ’im to be able to ’ave children. A mystery from ze future is finally solved.”

Then she broke down completely and fell into James’s arms. He held her and let her weep.

“Think on how Dylan would see it, me dear,” James whispered to her at last. “Ye heard what oor Neetra had tae say in her psychic message. The Solidity’s on the way tae finish all o’ this, and it seems tae me we’ve the ainly means o’ preventing that right here.”

He put his hand on the stone gauntlet beside him on the bench.

“I dinnae ken as much aboot The Four Heroes’ cause as some, but unsealing the caves is surely the one way tae save Earth from Dimension Borg now,” James declared. “Dylan made his sacrifice tae gie us a chance at that. ’Tis what he would have wanted, Phoenix. We cannae let him doon.”

She drew back for a moment to look at him, and in her brimming eyes was no longer despair but agreement and resolution. Then they held each other again, a father and daughter recognising that the time had come to be strong.