Issues, Chapter Four

“Talk to me, Prof.”

Every screen along the corridor blinked to the direct line, so that Dylan and Phoenix were marching past image after image of the same aged face.

Prof looked busy. “If this is about anything other than the obvious – ” he began.

“We’re on it,” Dylan confirmed, hitting the launch-bay stairs. “But unless the Vernderernder High Command can explain exactly why a Toothfire weapon was just deployed against Grindopolis, we’re looking at a resumption of hostilities right here on home soil. Phoenix and I may find ourselves heading up a second front if fighting breaks out on the twin planets too.”

“That mustn’t be allowed to happen,” warned Prof from the launch-bay’s main monitor.

“Zen per’aps ze outspoken displays of belligerence were ill-advised, Professeur,” Phoenix couldn’t help remarking. “Zis determination to count coup suffused your every public broadcast, and if off-worlders such as we detected it, you may be sure your old enemies did. You ’ave ze look of a gambling Grindo who did not expect ’is bluff to be called.”

The humanoids scaled the embarkation-ladder of the sleekest high-tech interceptor in the showroom. From its drive-section the arms of a great pulley were withdrawing after having lowered some weighty upgrade into place. Robotic engineers were finishing off the weld and leaping down to the deck while squashy overseers yelled commands and Dylan at the control-stick made ready for take-off.

“Our fault,” he muttered as he did so, shaking his head. “Never should have told him what was in Neet’s message. Experimental within-atmosphere hyperspace booster coming online.”

“When was it advanced to experimental status?” inquired Phoenix from her co-pilot chair.

“This is the experiment,” Dylan grinned back. “Hold on tight, babe.”

He had based this invention on memories of the long-jump at school. Several thousand mega-kilos of propulsive afterburner thrust, spiriting the star-fighter along the ramp and past dullivian blast-doors to lance through dual shafts of sun in a golden Grindotronian sky, were but the soles of sneakers pounding the run-up. That expenditure on which everything depended, that all-or-nothing push and lurch into the unknown, came when the booster kicked in. Dylan and Phoenix were plastered back against their seat-cushions by a body-blitzing force which summarily shoved afternoon languidness out of sight, and propelled two interstellar athletes over light-years of open galaxy which neither of them ever saw. For no sooner was Grindotron’s track behind them than the pit of their destination loomed in the suddenly rain-lashed windshield, ocean and tempest and some monster from the deep flinging its phantasmagoric mass against a brave but defenceless island city.

If it had been a disorienting jaunt, Dylan didn’t show it. His thumbs flipped open the caps of his handgrips to hammer down on the buttons beneath, and double missiles ripping through the deluge reacquainted the sea-ghost with its watery grave amid flying fragments and fire and foam.

The silver liberator was settling on a swirl of air-jets as Grindo colonials flocked thankfully to its landing-site. Nearby on the sodden promenade a pair of space hot-rods slewed likewise to rest.

“This is one Alliance intervention we can’t really complain about,” declared Flashtease. “But you all picked up that telepathic message a minute ago, right? Means being delayed by a lot of questioning’s the last thing we can afford.”

Phoenix and Dylan were clambering down the ladder. Phoenix Prime saw them, and her decision was made.

“Go,” she said to Flashtease. “I’ll take care of this. It was getting to be time I did.”

The Mini-Flash nodded, understanding somewhat and respecting Phoenix Prime for it. “Not you kids, though,” he added to Petunia and Plunder Dacks. “I’ve been to one of these big Four Heroes playoffs, and Joe’s going to want you both here in Grindopolis where it’s at least a tiny bit safer.”

Of girl and boy it was she who looked considerably the more disappointed, but there was to be no twisting her snigglybobbles round her little finger on this occasion. Flashtease had borne authority beyond that of a trusted sidekick ever since Joe was taken from his circle. Now the familiar freckles bounded behind the wheel of the red-painted racer and led the way, Flashshadow and Mini-Flash Splitsville in their onyx thunderbird following fearlessly.

Even through slightly misted glasses Phoenix knew her own likeness, standing a way off by two unknown youngsters with her flame-wings cloudy from the last of the downpour. A heartbeat later clone and original were face-to-face, staring, neither one able to start. Dylan hurried after the former and finished up standing between them.

That, he concluded, had been the problem long enough.

“So you ladies have got a lot to talk about,” proceeded Dylan. “Did one of you put me in a coma? Did the other compromise Four Heroes principles to bring me out of it? Yep, on both counts. But in under an hour we might all be living one of those old Grindo blockbusters on the Toothfire wars, unless somebody traces the weapon that was used here and shuts it the heck down!”

“I can show you to its source,” Phoenix Prime told him haltingly. She always went to pieces at times like this.

Dylan smiled. “Then it sounds to me like your education in the cause is going just fine,” said he. “Saving the day and bizarre Neetkins family dynamics. You’ve got the basics down already.”

As the trio made to set off, Phoenix Prime turned to Petunia and took a deep breath. “For all the danger I put you in,” she began, “all the lies I told you...”

But Petunia reached through the rain and gripped her hand, assuring her without words that apologies didn’t matter now. All she asked was that Phoenix Prime try her best to come back alive, that a friendship which had sprung from the least likely soil might have a chance to bloom. They looked at each other, dotted by gentle droplets, and there and then resolved on it.

“Keep her safe,” Phoenix Prime instructed Plunder Dacks. “Think you can handle that, knight in shining rubber?”

“Yeepy yee!” Dacks screamed.

Down in Scientooth’s dungeon on Drenthis, four warriors and five mini-jeeps were escorted from spiral staircase to laboratory floor by Moltron, Magnolia and Prince Agaric’s mushroom-men troops. Under this sinister stewardship they joined Carmilla Neetkins, Blaster-Track and his Commander. Their faction had been winning when the game abruptly changed.

“The prompt ceasefire is much appreciated, Commander,” burred Scientooth. “And your soldiers shall thank you for it too. Soon this will be the one safe spot our galaxy allows.”

Adjacent to the hovering green metal skull and Agaric’s hideous leer of triumph stood Joe. “Ready the etherium actualizor,” he instructed this pair, who to each other were two of a kind but the last beings with whom our hero might have been expected to collaborate.

“Whatever means this monstrous betrayal, you’ll never get away with it!” Blaster-Track Commander cried.

Neetra caught Joe’s hand and they teleported together in a burst of yellow light. For Carmilla the action was a hint of the olden days transplanted to an unrecognizably different present, or rather the familiar fragment by which a dreamer knows for certain all the rest of their world is nightmare. Nevertheless, she placed her own hand on the Commander’s arm and wordlessly urged him to be still. It was not meant as a reminder that he himself had ground to make up before he could start shouting about betrayals, and nor did Carmilla entertain any further illusions about her ability to anticipate the first of The Four Heroes. What she could not forget however was that during the Solidity War she had denounced Joe, only to find herself later on Grindotron defending him to Phoenix and her other sisters. No matter how things looked, benefit of the doubt this time around had to be his. Carmilla could but admit to a secret hope that that was her psychic trace-residue talking, because if it wasn’t, they were surely beyond the help of any interpretation of the cause.

END OF CHAPTER FOUR