Sports Day, Chapter One

“Let me stop you right there.”

The two huge faces peered at Neetra through the Town Hall window, agleam with chrome and solemn in an imploring way and, our heroine couldn’t help adding to herself, fairly gormless.

“All I’ve ever had to do with your enemy is that he conned me once,” Neetra went on. “The first I heard of you was when you showed up here this morning, asking if I’d mind dragging Nottingham into your war against him. Has it occurred to you we might have troubles of our own, here on this plane of reality?”

Her visitors didn’t seem to be getting the message, and Neetra knew why. It was always windows with these giant robots. These ones needed busting out of their comfort-zone.

Rolling her eyes Neetra whirled and kicked off from the upper office to the stairs, not even caring about the glimpse of frilly white this afforded her guests. “It’s every time Joe’s away,” flung our heroine as she zoomed down the first flight. “Something always comes up…!” and she traversed the landing, nearly demolishing a startled female Mini-Flash who wore beige ribbons in her curls. “Cup of tea, Presh, I’m going to need it,” commanded Neetra as she thundered by. “I swear, one of these days,” reaching the next bottom and jumping over the banister to the next top, “going to leave him here to deal with it while I go gadding off,” she skipped the last few steps to the ground, “like I wasn’t already busy!”

Outside amid Nottingham sunshine the towering pair stood ill at ease, both white and blue and silver all over. Though tall, they weren’t in the same league as the one Neetra had come to know ironically as Her New Friend, and it was only at street-level she noticed the third robot who was smaller still. This one glittered a striking insectile green, vacuum-metallized for finish, and at less than twice Neetra’s height he’d not been big enough to look in through the upstairs arch.

“I didn’t see you,” Neetra said to him. “What’s your name?”

The answer that came back sounded like “Bourdon,” and our heroine wasn’t in any mood to ask him to repeat himself. She put her hands on her hips.

“Right. Bourdon, and you two,” said she. “You’ve heard my answer. Now go. Seriously. It’s Sports Day and I’ve enough on, without this.”

Shifting herself out of the window-frame had evidently done the trick. At once the larger duo transformed to space-cars commensurate with their bulk, big-boostered twenty-seaters, or what Neetra thought of as the pretentious people-carriers of the cosmos. Bourdon meanwhile triggered little jets under the soles of his feet and lifted off with his companions as he was. Away the trio roared until the only object in the sky was the blue ringed orb of Nereynis.

Presh trotted out of the Town Hall with Neetra’s cup of tea. Our heroine took it gratefully and drank, all the while shaking her head.

Neetra didn’t have long to wait before she saw Bourdon again, this time vehicle-formed and doing the worst job in recorded history of looking inconspicuous. It wasn’t just that his brilliant metallic green paint-job stood out a mile. You couldn’t have missed him among the parked racers and rods he’d tried to mingle in with, so compact was his chassis and so disproportionately balloonish his tyres that the front and back ones should surely have skinned each other on first spin had they been set any closer together.

“By the two moons,” said Neetra, stopping alongside. “Which part of the phrase Sports Day are you having trouble with?”

Bourdon’s nearer side-door unlatched itself and swung to her.

“Sorry,” Neetra returned. “Lindsay Lohan and Megan Fox both said no to joining us. They didn’t want to wear the Mini-Flash uniform.”

Still the door stood open. Neetra looked at it a little longer.

“Alright,” she declared at length, climbing inside and tucking her skirt under her as she sat. “Just for a bit though, and don’t tell my Mother I got into a strange car.”

The door slammed, and rubber squealed on road.

Portly Flashbuoy hurtled from the Town Hall the moment he heard, and bumbling down the stone steps all but measured his length but recovering proceeded to flail his arms along the pavement in a sweating straining race with he whose wheels already hugged the Nottingham highway a quarter of a mile off. Next agonizing breath Flashbuoy was smoothly overtaken by a sprinting Presh, who’d run all the way from her upper floor, then on her heels Mini-Flash Robin. The beige-clad boy and girl left their senior in the dust, but even they were eating Bourdon’s by the time they gained the curb.

Mini-Flash Robin began: “Fleetrope – ”

That was all he needed to say. There wasn’t time for either Mini-Flash to turn and behold the second cyclone bearing down on them from the other end of the street, before the young man making it sonic-boomed by and blasted both tunics high over Robin’s ordinary ones and Presh’s deep luxurious silky red. As modesty resettled its folds, the source of disarray long gone, Flashbuoy arrived wheezing and after about another minute told the neophytes they may stand at ease.

Fleetrope’s bare feet whittered on tar, and his sleek hair was styled after the mushroomlike contours of a speed-skating helmet. He wore the light-coloured robes of a warrior or farn, either of which he might have been, such was his devout belief in the Prophecy. However, while the sector’s ancient castes were typically firm adherents to Alliance ideology and Dylan, Fleetrope was a rare exception who’d heard his calling in Joe’s interpretation of the cause. Now like a blur he closed on Bourdon, and while that one commenced veering in frantic evasive manouevres, Fleetrope unfurled from his ceremonial gown the voluminous coils of cord which lent him the latter half of his name.

Neetra bumped about haphazardly in her passenger-seat. Something she hadn’t reckoned on was Bourdon’s interior being a pocket of his own dimension, or she’d have teleported out and they might have avoided this. Windows again, Neetra thought to herself, looking through the panes at Fleetrope as he drew abreast.

Matching Bourdon swerve for swerve, that one took the lead then executed a hairpin turn and plunged down the opposite lane. His winding line was like a contrail which Bourdon ran into fender-first, and though the latter bounded on all four tyres in a desperate bid to bounce out of this trap, Fleetrope had already described a circle and with a flick of the wrist sent it rising after him. The halo lashed Bourdon mid-metamorphosis and snared up his moving gears, while Fleetrope jumped with feet together and used both soles to push his captive bodily over the roadside cliff.

Past the escarpment plummeted the unfortunate one and crashed to rest in a mess of dead trees that bordered the desert below. Nimbly Fleetrope followed, using branches and Bourdon himself as stepping-stones for the steep descent and finishing off his knot as he did so, to cinch it tight the moment he landed. Neetra’s would-be abductor was trussed, kicking his legs helpless in a perfect tangle of wire and boughs.

These robots usually preferred psychic communication to the linguistic, but now Bourdon spluttered aloud: “Galloping Gaagan!”

Neetra thanked her hero as soon as she was free from Bourdon’s chest-cavity and back on solid ground. “But it’s fine, Fleetrope, really,” she went on. “You can let him go.”

“If you’re sure,” Fleetrope replied, sounding rather dubious. He jerked the hand which held his cord, and Bourdon made landfall with a colossal splintering crash.

“Galloping Gaagan!” that one blew again.

Neetra was sure. In fact, she’d been sure pretty much since Bourdon opened his door for her. The attempted kidnap had only been high spirits. You couldn’t check the exuberance of youth, and Bourdon was young, for an extra-dimensional entity. Besides, Neetra had noticed the road he’d struck off along was the one which led out of Nottingham to the site for that afternoon’s event. Bourdon had merely wished to be in time for the starting-pistol.

“What we could use though is an escort,” Neetra added to Fleetrope. Taking this as his cue, Bourdon humbly reverted to vehicle-mode.

As for why he wanted to come to Sports Day in the first place, well, Neetra had a feeling about that too.

END OF CHAPTER ONE