Pandemonium

“All ready?” Prof asked sotto voce with a smile. Dylan and Phoenix were.

We’re just coming up on quarter-phase in the present solar cycle. This is the Interplanetary Broadcasting Service, handing you live to Grindotron for that mystery announcement the whole galaxy’s been waiting for...

Momentous music swelled on cue throughout halls and headquarters and habitation-domes across the populous quadrant. A myriad species of sentient beings before their holo-screens witnessed three silhouettes colouring to definition amid the orchestral prelude, male and female humanoids on either side of the aged yellowing face in eye-visor and mechanized walking-frame. It was he who delivered the opening line to an audience spanning the stars.

This is Professor Grindo. A warm welcome to all of you watching from home, including and perhaps especially certain of our Alliance partners, for whom I have particular hopes this will prove to be an enlightening and instructive broadcast. As I speak, Grindotron mega-freighters on the far side of the galaxy are entering orbit around Planet Nereynis, which as you might already know was purchased by the Grindoes at the start of this cycle. From the looks of things we’re about ready to switch to our cameras on location...

Remote video-pods had indeed been prompt in deploying from the enormous haulers’ hulls, and were spinning swiftly into an array of angles high above Nereynis’s blue shining disc. Tele-receivers sector-wide blinked to a view of that azure orb, and the slow bulky ships turning purposefully in its arnosphere. This was likewise emblazoned over the cinema-sized projection walls girdling the Grindotron studio, such that when a second collection of altogether different bodies detached themselves from the fleet, Phoenix’s sharp eyes caught a glimpse.

Dead air was the outcome, for when this unexpected silence gave Dylan cause to turn his head, he found his loved one already physically absent from the cone of her spotlight. Dylan hurried over to deliver Phoenix’s scripted line in her stead, while she herself was nearing completion in her impromptu work offstage. With an expression of the greatest intensity Phoenix patched the footage through via a private channel to her family’s own living-quarters at Prof’s laboratory.

From then it was a matter of minutes at most before Phoenix’s creators James and Iskria Neetkins sat riveted at one of the viewers in their living-room, watching and re-watching that same snippet of breaking news. Neither parent could fail to recognise the flitter of golden and crimson uniform in the corner of a camera-satellite’s lens, nor the girl who was wearing it as atop a green-painted space-jeep she wheeled free of one of the freighters and vanished from shot.

“Our Carmilla,” Iskira whispered to her husband, gripping his hand and replaying the clip of their eldest daughter who up until now had been drawing close to long-lost status.

Erm, Grindostater units then, Dylan extemporised, striving to bring the interrupted commentary back into synch as the otherworldly translucent colossi to which he referred dropped feet-first from cargo-bays to Nereynis airspace and the filming-drones held level with them on the way down. These big guys are veterans of the Grindotron-Toothfire wars, but today they’re being called upon for a very different kind of service to their original military application. Ah, let’s take a look as they come in to land and initiate the first stage of their directive…

The Grindostater units were making splashdown, each accompanied by a tidal event that battered the rocky shores of Nereynis’s islands. Towards the one from which smoke and straggling ships were still escaping several of the giants began to wade, negotiating the rolling ocean as men might a shallow flooded stretch of lakeside track, perhaps on a humid evening clouded with gnats for which the flying cameras here did duty. Prof resumed:

Our first task is to ensure the evacuation of an area from which, regrettably, there have been reports of trespassing and even hostile resistance. The Grindostater units will establish for good and all that this unlikely party-site is devoid of innocent life, and no remaining bystanders are going to be accidentally harmed when the day’s work commences in earnest…

Phoenix’s genetic originator Phoenix Prime watched the cyclopean security-guards approach the coastline opposite hers, perpendicular forms whose heads touched heaven. Even allowing for the jungled acres between them and where she and several of Joe’s faction stood, there was no time to go hunting through undergrowth for Schiss-Zazz’s slumberous self. These Grindostater units evidently meant business, and Phoenix Prime guessed correctly Big Grin had set course for the galactic vanishing-point on first sight of them, while neither of the two hot-rods parked haphazardly on the beach looked to her in spaceworthy condition.

“I started my morning giving a lecture on the subject of trust,” Phoenix Prime said to the five youngsters alongside her. “There’s an irony to that, since I now have to beg for yours. We’re faced with a choice between Alliance custody or going to ground here on Nereynis, and we’ll stand a better chance of achieving the latter if we combine our efforts. Can I ask you then to believe me when I say I’m not your enemy? I’ll admit to several quite major errors of judgement, but are you able to take me at my word if I tell you I’ve at least been trying to do the same as yourselves, which is follow Joe’s interpretation of the cause?”

This was addressed mostly to Petunia, who saw accordingly her four companions were in no position but to defer to her verdict. The ensuing seconds therefore called upon the girl to weigh together all that had transpired since her first encounter with Phoenix Prime on the Rings of Xandreth, all she had come to suspect and was now more or less confirmed, and all that an unexpected blossoming friendship had imparted to those places deeper within that dealt with faith rather than memory.

“I’ll vouch for her,” was the quietly-voiced outcome of Petunia’s deliberations.

“Then that’ll have to do for now,” Flashtease declared with unconcealed reluctance, and as Phoenix Prime spread her fiery wings the two female Mini-Flashes flung into Splitsville’s racer while the boys correspondingly revved up the red. With Petunia sitting on Plunder Dacks’s knee the mismatched procession roared forth in a swirling of sand, ahead of the advancing Grindostater units, though the same could not quite be said of their smaller and speedier companions.

“Mum! Dad!” yelled 4-H-N, from over by a different screen in the living-room which was tuned not to the recording which had so occupied her parents but rather the live feed. In no time at all however this too was switched to playback mode, that 4-H-N might present to James and Iskira the flame-pinions of Phoenix Prime captured fleetingly on film after the fashion of her elder sibling.

Husband and wife alike looked faint. Their firstborn’s stated intention on leaving Grindotron had been to seek that particular half of their missing twins. Now after months without word, and in a manner somehow entangled with the planetary project of Prof, Carmilla’s quest was apparently closing in on its culmination.

4-H-N had left an inset open on her monitor which continued to transmit the main broadcast. From this crackled Dylan’s voice:

I’m now going to change over to another camera and zoom in, because we’ve just this minute come across a perfect example of what our boys are here to do. From the looks of things, this guy partied a little too hard! But he doesn’t want to be snoozing there when we get underway for real…

The evening’s entertainments had one surprise left for 4-H-N. Suddenly alerted by the thumbnail image she enlarged her secondary picture back to full-screen, then out of enormous eyes beheld the near-naked frame of Schiss-Zazz prone and insensible on Nereynis greensward.

“I know him!” 4-H-N gawped. “He works for Scientooth! We fought him at Nebula Seven!”

“It wouldnae be easy fuir us to forget him either, me dear,” added James, thinking back on his own near-fatal brush with the shears-wielder. “He and his lassie stole a Grindo ship the very night Scientooth was freed by persons unknown. In me educated opinion we can mair or less rule oot coincidence.”

As my Four Heroes friend rightly says, we’re not waging a war, Prof went on. This young man, along with anyone else unable to leave the island under their own power, will be safely conveyed to more civilised regions of the galaxy on our returning ships. After questioning he’ll be free to go on his way, always provided he had nothing to do with the violent disturbance. Which I’ve no doubt will be the case, suggesting as he does the very model of a decent law-abiding fellow.

The Grindostater unit scooped Schiss-Zazz up in one palm, then inclining its great spherical head not one degree from the woodland turf raised that arm to stratospheric altitudes and slid the slumped body into an ambulance-shuttle which hovered to hand. 4-H-N’s own gaze meanwhile had shot to her bedroom door, behind which waited a large postal package. Previously she had debated with herself whether or not to don its contents and pay a call on The Flash Club. Now that her good reason for doing so was supplemented by the knowledge that two of her sisters’ destinies were bound up with Alliance affairs, not to mention the duty of identifying a wanted war-criminal’s accomplice, 4-H-N’s mind was made up. She and the galaxy were about to find out just how good she looked in beige.

Party-wagons and astral woodies were by now distant dots, and the Grindostater units which had cleared the island were forging out to sea again. So much for ze B-movie, Phoenix announced, having resumed the stage. Messieurs et dames, please take your seats for ze premiere.

Rising above the ocean the Grindostater units assembled in a ring, which wheel-like began to revolve as though the giants were participating in some playground dance. Never before however had so light a pursuit flung back fathoms of frothing deep through the turbulence it generated, such that a circle of bedrock crust which for eons had lain unseen beneath ice and then spent a comparable span underwater was for the first time since its geological formation thrown open to the galaxy’s view. So broad in radius was the expanse that it became visible from orbit, a barren dot against Nereynis’s blue, and this was what a multitude of televisual spectators saw as those camera-drones which had stayed by their ships of origin took up the relay.

At that tiny target on the planetary mantle the cargo-craft began to fire, or at any rate that was it looked like at first. The bombs however were square-shaped like the vessels that had launched them, and of a range of different sizes, such that they suggested equipment sooner than they did armament. The latter had of necessity been Grindotron’s second string, but only that world’s unparalleled finesse at their original forte could account for what ensued once the video-satellites had tracked the plummeting blocks to the end of their descent.

For each Grindostater unit was calibrated to field a catch, as and when its unending revolutions brought it to that spot where gravity would drop a bundle from on high into its two enormous hands. Having snatched a prize thus the colossi swept on in their round-and-round dance, never faltering for pace even as they followed up by hurling their hefty loads one by one at the centre of the ambit, where a primordial seabed lay between immense walls of rushing aqua. Nor did the intricate technical coordination stop there, for as the projectiles span face-over-face towards inevitable collision they began to transform, sending out tendrils that sought one another and intertwined as the flat planes from which they had grown steadily unfolded. Almost at once a galactic general public recognised that what had seemed to be questing feelers were in fact roads, and train-tracks, and around and within their winding courses what was left of the chunks were locking together and assembling into sheer vertical facades.

One slip, one mistimed throw by any of the Grindostater units, would have reduced the operation to ruin. Grindotron technology however was not prone to such lapses. Task accomplished the towering ones whirled apart, letting the waves crash unchecked against the sturdy flood-defences they had raised. Atop these, where before had been only skyline and sea, a city stood.

Dylan took a deep breath. Here came the line in the script he’d had reservations about from the very beginning. Nothing left to do now though but deliver it.

What The Four Heroes’ powers achieved on Earth, Grindo engineering has achieved on Nereynis. The near-instantaneous creation of a safe-haven city for an entire race.

Grindopolis, Prof went on. Capital of Grindotron’s first colony-planet, whose entire surface will ultimately be terraformed to the same specifications. Denizens of our quadrant, behold the Grindo promised land. Here at long last my people will be free from threat. Not that visitors won’t always be welcome, regardless of species or allegiance. If however you belong to one which finds itself unable to accept this invitation, due to – shall we say – an existing commitment, rest assured we understand.

Enigmatic as these closing words were to all but a few among the audience they addressed, none among that vast number was able to neglect that what was spoken like some kind of in-joke communicated significantly more than Prof’s trademark wry humour. Written on the wise old features was unmistakable defiance, which held until after the credits had rolled and the transmission faded to the familiar network logo.

Well, don’t forget you saw it here first on the Interplanetary Broadcasting Service! From Owioo to Grindotron, Dexon to Merehpolis, Acheldama to Mnulx, it’s where we live and where we make our lives. Just gone quarter-phase in the present solar cycle, so let’s take a quick look at what else is on this evening…

The dim studio echoed with silence now that the deed was done. Dylan and Phoenix were alone amid this heaviest of hushes.

“Wherever in the galaxy he is,” the former declared with a sigh, “Joe’s not going to like my last bit.”

Phoenix said nothing.

“Oh sure, that’s OK because he’s either gone crazy or gone bad,” Dylan pressed on. “Only you and I were his friends long enough to know deep down that that convenient excuse is a whole lot easier said than believed in. Joe was prepared to take 4-H-N prisoner, even destroy the one message Neetra’s sent him since they parted, just to keep us from reporting back to the Alliance on its contents. Everything that just happened was the direct result of our telling Prof what was in the message anyway. Which we only did before Harbin said what he said to me at the Arch of Titus.”

“’E is Joe’s son,” Phoenix reminded him gently. Dylan touched her hand but did not appear comforted.

“He is, babe,” that one agreed. “But there’s just a little too much in the prophecies about him opening up the gates to the dark dimensions, and flying round the universe on planets of doom which he pilots from out of their greatest cities. We built a city today, Phoenix. It’s almost enough to make you wonder what Grindopolis is really going to be the capital of...”