Incoming, Chapter One

Less than an hour had elapsed for Joe and Gala since receiving the horrendous news that they were already parents-to-be of Harbin, The Foretold One, whose adult life would be distinguished by a universe-wide reign of terror. Now amidst the grotesque greenery of The Back Garden, where living fungi of monstrous size snared whole planets in their twining grip, the first of The Four Heroes and the first of the Next Four braced for battle as that same son barrelled down upon them. Harbin, a grown man on his second time-travelling trip to the present day, was a gaunt blur of twilight wrapped in a ragged cloak as he alighted on the tangled stalks and stems that made up the flooring where his parents stood. Those two at once bore the piercing white light from Gala’s cutlass and the fiery blaze of Joe’s fists directly to the heart of Harbin’s preternatural dusk, as the family reunion made its less-than-promising start.

Flame, sword-slashes and flying spears of thunderous luminescence vanquished The Back Garden’s gloomy stagnation, while three bodies whirled and swung along the fungal plateau churning its fusty air with punches and kicks and jumps. Harbin had expended his stockpile of black-hole potency in propelling himself here from Planet Earth, so his power-level was not at the heights he had previously displayed in this timeline when it had taken two generations of The Four Heroes to overcome him. Nevertheless, this first fracas ably proved the offspring to be more than a match for his forbears. A lightning-fast strike dispatched Joe, and then in a swirl of his tattered cape Harbin rode out his own momentum and knocked Gala reeling behind him.

She tumbled to land upright in a crouch, the soles of her boots skidding on epidermis. From inside her long coat fell a hefty book, The Prophecy of the Flame, which Gala had made sure to pick up and bring with her as she and Joe raced to meet the imminent threat. With a soft thump the leather-bound volume hit the organic floor at Gala’s feet while she swept out her cutlass-arm, not in Harbin’s direction but instead to cleave a single bright arc through the nearest towering mushroom-trunk. That alien growth toppled like a mighty tree, compelling Harbin to raise his forearm and deflect it, whereat Joe made good on his swift recovery to blast his errant scion with both hands. Doubled-over and trailing flame from his torso Harbin flew backward.

“A woman in my condition,” muttered Gala, as she and Joe regrouped. “And cracking jokes in the middle of a fight, by the way, I blame wholly on long exposure to The Four Heroes.”

“There is a veritable wealth for this situation,” Joe agreed. “Bret and Dylan would scarcely have known where to begin on the subject of my child-rearing skills.”

Harbin was returning vengefully to the fray. Incandescent gold and dazzling white mingled anew as Gala and Joe leapt side-by-side for the second round, demonstrating that of everything they had ever tried together, this was the one they were best at.

Dawn was breaking over Nottingham, where in the City Centre a long-drawn-out war neared its end at last. Safe in the medical bay of an army camp on the fringes of this conflict Phoenix Neetkins was sitting up in bed, divested of her combat-suit but wearing her glasses and busy enough with the handheld monitor-screen in her lap. By her bedside stood Phoenix Prime, the girl from whom she was cloned, and both were surveying in playback the arrival of Harbin on present-day Earth which had occurred that night while they slept.

“Ze first conclusion we can confidently reach is zat ’e is from a point in ze future aftair ze last time ’e chose to inflict ’imself upon us,” Phoenix declared, as The Foretold One’s emergence from a time-portal and subsequent flight across the Nottingham sky into orbit beamed in continuous loop from her viewer. “Zat is to say, we are looking at a somewhat oldair ’Arbin zan ze one we fought togethair, and who remembairs our previous encountair in zis epoch.”

“What makes you say that, Phoenix?” asked the schoolgirl with white-feathered wings in the bed opposite.

“Rest, Carrie. Your injuries were far more severe zan mine,” Phoenix advised her kindly. “But to answair your question, ’Arbin on ’is prior voyage required an experimental time-unit which could only function at ze cost of widespread collateral damage. ’Ere, by contrast, we can see ’e is using far more efficient technology with no such destructive side-effects, more closely akin to ze Chancellor’s Time-Shifters.”

“It’s a sound hypothesis in terms of temporal theory,” Phoenix Prime concurred. “Further conjecture, then, would suggest Harbin’s had ample time and unlimited resources to improve on the near-future science he utilized before, possibly with this one purpose in mind. Which doesn’t imply the most hopeful tidings about how The Four Heroes’ line is going to fare in the course of coming events.”

Phoenix’s originator was characteristically blunt in her expression, but the clone could not help grimly nodding her head in agreement. “It can still be tentatively assumed, ’owevair, zat Monsieur undertook ’is journey without reliable means to return to ’is era,” she went on. “What we know of far-future ’istory indicates ze two-way time travel was nevair perfected.”

“He’s risked a good deal in venturing here,” Phoenix Prime mused aloud, “so whatever reason he had for doing so must be something important. Of course, that much is evident already.”

“Indeed,” said Phoenix, using her forefinger to rewind the footage to its start. “Behold ze manner in which, most unlike last time, ’e does nothing to interfere with what ’is ’appening on contemporary Earth. ’E merely subdues zose who would obstruct him and zen departs, exiting via ze extant Future Fightair breach instead of forging a route of ’is own. Written on Monsieur’s every motion is a mindfulness of ze butterfly effect.”

“Things down here are panning out exactly the way Harbin wants them to,” affirmed Phoenix Prime. “So the event he actually has come to interfere with must be occurring off-planet. His trajectory alone tells us that, but I suspect any further theorizing on just what he’s here to do would land us in the realm of guesswork.”

“Though we might easily guess it is nothing good,” Phoenix added. “Ze Four ’Eroes’ children informed us ’Arbin only evair acts according to ’is own immediate interests. As you stated earlier, whatevair it is zat ’as brought ’im ’ere will be a mattair of no inconsiderable bearing on ’is destiny, or per’aps even ’is very existence.”

The twin professors, satisfied, took a moment to reflect on their findings.

“Rest, she tells me,” Carrie then groaned. The girl was lying on her face and pulling her pillow down over her ears. “One last question – now the pair of you are getting along, is it always going to be like this?”

END OF CHAPTER ONE