Overture, Chapter Two

The Solidity fleet’s Communications Hub was a miniature moon of black metal hanging at the heart of the massed battleships. From every point on its smooth mantle protruded towering antennae topped with smaller steel spheres, from which millions of megahertz in radiowaves were beamed every minute to coordinate fight-paths and prepare the vessels for their imminent departure. This strange pincushion even boasted its own artificially-generated gravity and atmosphere, to safeguard the non-robotic Solidity members who worked in its pods.

The ships from The Back Garden did not look out of place as they descended upon the forest of tall round-headed stalks. Looming ever nearer the foremost mushroomlike disc touched its rim to the Hub’s lifeless curvature, and the patch of hide that was in contact bulged and pursed and clamped itself around the airlock door like a sucking mouth.

On the other side of the entryway waited Lightning, the one-time friend and commander of Storm-Sky, and Space-Screamer, his thin form clad in blood-red cybernetic regalia. Both Solidity chiefs bowed, Lightning rather stiffly, as the airlock swished open and a reeking cloud of spores vented into the Hub’s sterile hall.

Most of this was puffing and spewing from the very body of she whose hugeness even now proceeded onboard, the profusion of twisted tendrils at her base wriggling and writhing to bear in stately fashion the heap that was the rest of her. Empress Ungus, most redoubtable of all The Back Garden’s vile aristocracy, surveyed her new environs from the minuscule bud of a head that bobbed on a stringy neck some yards above the rancid mass on which it grew. By her side was one of her many sons, more humanoid than she and all in fungal shades of black and brown, not ill-favoured by Back Garden standards although malice exuded from every slit of him. Behind them, in the dim and eerie green-blue light of their ship’s interior, moved shapes that suggested the many horror stories and space-tavern yarns regarding The Back Garden’s ghastly residents all had their basis in fact.

“Your majesty honours us with her presence,” Space-Screamer greeted the Empress, still prostrating himself.

Empress Ungus turned to her son. “Ready the ships for departure, Draxu,” she ordered him, in a voice that might have risen up from a decaying woodland bog. Draxu bowed himself out, and the airlock slid closed.

“How I have dreamed of this day,” Space-Screamer went on in the unctuous tones of before. “So many times I pondered what it would be for The Back Garden and my mighty empire to unite. No force in this galaxy could have resisted us!”

“Indeed,” Empress Ungus returned. “But knowing I’d have turned your tin minions to scrap, you wisely refrained from troubling me during your so-called rule.”

She dismissively oozed and belched past him to turn her attention to Lightning.

“And you wished to conquer me too,” she continued. “You at least were open about it, but same difference.”

“This is war,” rapped out Lightning, who lacked even Space-Screamer’s brand of diplomacy. “We share the same objective now – making sure our galaxy survives. Your powers are all that matter just as long as they serve that end.”

“Spoken like the adequate military general you are,” said Empress Ungus, “and true to that form, you know nothing of the real reason we fight. You’re aware, by the way, that you have visitors?”

“More than aware,” Lightning bristled back. “Steps have already been taken to ensure they’ll make it no further. In addition, our troops are keeping us apprised with step-by-step reports.”

For the first time since her embarkation, something flickered in the beady eyes of Empress Ungus. It was an eager look, maybe even a hungry one.

“Then you’ll lead me to your monitoring suite at once,” she decreed. “It pleases me to see them.”

Dawn was breaking over the Martian Capital City but Professor Iskria Neetkins had been hard at work for hours, even though she was still in her nightdresss. The door of the computer-lab opened and Doctor Mendelssohn came in, wearing his dressing-gown and carrying two cups of coffee.

“Iskira?” he began, still half-asleep. “You weren’t in your room. What is this?”

“It wasn’t a dream, Irwin!” she flung back at him by way of a good-morning. Then, as her companion was still very much in the dark, Iskira held off her determined work at the mainframe and took a deep breath to compose herself.

“Neetra contacted me telepathically last night,” she declared, her wide purple eyes luminous and intent. “I know not how. We watched The Four Heroes’ battle with the Next Four, saw my small daughter swept away to the other end of the universe, an impossible distance even for her psychic powers...but a mother knows, Irwin.”

Doctor Mendelssohn had first met Iskira when she was eighteen years old, and in the time since then he had learned how to tell when she was sure of something. So he put the coffee cups down and listened while she told him the gist of Neetra’s message. When she was done, the Doctor concurred with typical scientific objectivity that it was quite bad news.

“But what has been your night’s work here, Iskira?” Mendelssohn continued, indicating the disarray of the laboratory. “Surely if this Solidity seeks to destroy the Earth we must contact King Crosius, or Admiral Kasei for military assistance?”

“What reason could I give for them to believe me?” Iskira replied frankly. “And besides, there is no time to wait for official clearance. I have here the only means by which we may bear assistance to our Earthbound friends.”

She was already unplugging her portable data-file.

“We’ll require swift land-based transportation – your ATV will serve,” the Professor began, then halted and turned her gaze fully upon her old mentor. From the round silver face and deep lilac orbs shone the breathtaking beauty Iskira had never lost, which her daughters had inherited from her, and which the Doctor had fallen in love with all those years ago.

“You do trust me, don’t you, Irwin?” she asked softly.

In reply Mendelssohn took up a little silver bell, and rang it.

The wall of the computer-lab gave explosive way to dust and mortar before the hurtling body of a massive man resplendent in button-fronted livery with black knee-high boots, matching gauntleted gloves and a peaked cap. “Bendigo, are you still my chauffeur as you were last week?” Doctor Mendelssohn inquired.

“Aye, learned one!” came back the booming response.

“Then I’ll drive. It’s important we get there in one piece,” said Mendelssohn. “Come, both of you!”

“Time’s running out, guys!” Amy declared, as she, Bret, Max and Storm-Sky pelted along the flagship’s corridors together. “Those things from The Back Garden were last on the guest-list. This whole fleet’s going to be ready to move any minute now!”

“Plan’s still good,” said Bret. “Knock out the Communications Hub and they’ll never be able to organize a hyperspace jump with that many ships. This is the quickest route to the observation concourse, and afterwards we’re there.”

It had become apparent that the quickest route included a solid wall directly in their path. “Six feet of reinforced dullivian,” Storm-Sky reported, not slackening his pace. “Stand clear!”

He swept out his arm, and the wall vanished before the unleashed fundamental force of the universe. When the dust cleared however there was a new wall facing our heroes, and this one made them skid to a stop at last.

It was composed of gleaming grey aluminium and burnished bronze, sculpted into the likeness of muscle and sinew adorning four enormous robotic forms. Two of them Bret had previously become acquainted with – the streamlined powerhouse Steelstreak, and Drilldome who boasted a great drill-bit atop his head. Accompanied by sleek Cyclotor and hulking Audio-Wave, this quartet of automata made up Space-Screamer’s elite guard.

The observation concourse, a great circular expanse domed in plexiglass and surrounded by pillared arches and winding stairways, had been cleared of all obstructions but the robots four. Our humanoid heroes supposed it had been swept and watered too. At all events, it was clear enough to them what came next.

Carmilla Neetkins’s nightgown was considerably smaller than her mother’s, but nevertheless she could not have known how like Iskira she looked and sounded as she pressed her hands on Blaster-Track Commander’s bare chest and whispered to him: “I wasn’t dreaming. It was a psychic message from Neetra. You believe me, don’t you?”

They were sitting up in bed in their latest hideout, moonlight slanting at angles through the windowpanes and falling on their street-clothes which hung on chairs about the room. Blaster-Track Commander took Carmilla in his embrace.

“It is only too believable, my fair one,” he replied seriously. “Dimension Borg’s servants were in the process of contacting that far-off galaxy when we interfered with their schemes at Du Bates. Now we learn that an entire army assembled by their master is on its way here to destroy your world. This is without doubt the dark culmination of events we have hitherto but glimpsed.”

Carmilla sighed helplessly. “We have to track them down,” she declared. “The Dimension Borg robots, the ones here on Earth that have taken over the six supervillains. Whatever their plan is, it’s part of this invasion, and it’s got to be bad news for us.”

“We are destined to close with them soon,” the Commander assured her, tightening his hold. “For now we know for certain we cannot afford to draw out this hunt any longer.”

Carmilla’s arms found out his slim body in turn, and now her head was resting beside her hands on his chest. Raising her lips to his she kissed him, and moved closer still.

“Again?” exclaimed Blaster-Track Commander, though he sounded more incredulous than unhappy about it.

“If this is the end of the world,” Carmilla told him in a quiet voice, “I want to spend it with you.”

As the young woman clad in her wisp of pink silk looked up into Blaster-Track Commander’s handsome face, she was transformed once again into a double for her Martian mother. Of this not even Iskira herself was aware, but the same light that was Carmilla’s eyes now had shone from hers when she stood in the laboratory wearing her negligee and turned her gaze upon Doctor Mendelssohn.

Iskira would have been unsettled to know this. It wouldn’t have exactly made Carmilla’s day either.

END OF CHAPTER TWO