The Enemy Within, Chapter One

Neetra was lucky her new friend didn’t bother tidying up.

The first thing she did on finding Mini-Flash Robin’s bed empty and her assailants likewise absent was send forth her gold-glowing astral persona into the hotel room as before. That ephemeral Neetra immediately lowered her luminescent eyelids in relief. Scattered all over the carpet, the remains of two other robots she’d hitherto trashed still lay.

Powerful and mysterious as her new friend was, his arrogance was reassuringly familiar. That weakness was about to cost him.

All the same, Neetra’s psychic self could have done with Dylan or Croldon Thragg as she set about further dismantling the wrecks in search of whatever it was that allowed them to traverse different planes of reality at will. Once again our heroine was lucky that what she lacked in technological smarts she made up for in knowledge of psionics. It took way too long for her liking, but at last she figured it out.

Now that she was able to follow Robin’s abductors, Neetra slipped back into her body and took a brief teleport-detour to put on her pink feathers and heels.

Party-dress, check. Now let’s party.

There were times Neetra feared the little girl of The Four Heroes was an identity she’d never escape out from under, but also times like these when she was reassured by how far she’d come.

Her new friend liked heights. Huge already, he preferred to hold court atop a throne hewn from a mountain which rose from the rock of his barren blasted world. Where the elevations hadn’t been carved to sheer faces and rough flights of stairs suiting every scale, mechanisms almost as massive as he did duty. Their gleaming hides and forbidding features made up part of the monstrous peak. At the very foot of this heap of menace stood our heroine, looking up.

Because the thing was, when she’d started out with The Four Heroes, she’d quite literally been afraid of the dark.

These days, whether it was an Arcology teeming with Vernderernders or the present situation, she just strode in undaunted and got on with it.

Nearer to Neetra on the lowermost steps clustered a multitude of those smaller robots she’d encountered before – humanoids no taller than she was and various birds and beasts, including one particular pterodactyl with whom she had a score to settle. Our heroine likewise made a point of pinning at once the plateau where lay Mini-Flash Robin. He was too close to the summit for her to see, but her psychic powers told her he was manacled to a stone slab and still sleeping.

On which subject. A little telepathic amplification and Neetra hailed her other friend all the way up there.

“Thank you for the information,” said she. “However, I regret to inform you that what you claimed in exchange wasn’t mine to give. I wouldn’t have entered into our arrangement if I’d known, but the terms weren’t adequately explained to me at the time. This puts me in a difficult position, because I’ve already benefited from your help, and knowledge isn’t a commodity life-forms like mine are capable of returning unused.”

The spymaster robot, whose breast bore what looked like titanic reel-to-reel recorders, hummed to Neetra in a rhythmic voice something that fairly startled her.

“Have you been peering in at my window too?” she demanded.

The robot repeated itself.

“Oh,” said Neetra, embarrassed, “sorry, I didn’t hear you say ‘erase.’ No, I can’t push that button. I don’t have one.”

Again she addressed her new friend.

“Which means I can only beg your indulgence,” Neetra went on, “and in the spirit of what I feel has been a most promising collaboration thus far, ask that you release the boy you’ve taken. Call it a show of goodwill on your part, to smooth over this small misunderstanding.”

Might as well finish on a curtsey, Neetra decided. It’d do about as much good as the words. As usual she was sure to make it the prettiest she could.

While she was at it, might as well admit she just liked curtseying.

Bad influence, Mini-Flashes. Hanging round with them was only enabling the tendency.

At any rate, she’d barely freed her skirts from forefingers and thumbs when the one response there’d been any point predicting exploded down upon her.

In a teleport Neetra was gone from the dust-bowl of pulverized prairie and flying fragments wrought by a dozen energy-weapons, and next breath was high-stepping it up the rude stairway in her heels. Spies who attempted to obstruct her, either on foot or from the air, she telekinetically swatted into freefall. Early redirected salvos were starting up courtesy of the bigger boys and Neetra knew that against such firepower and odds she couldn’t hope to hold out long.

Our heroine gained the first ledge, whirled back about to face the way she’d come, and summoned once again her astral image.

It took effort and concentration for Neetra to do so while remaining conscious herself, but when a real friend was in danger, she was nothing but both. Raiders swarmed from above and below but back-to-back the pair cut loose, their psionic swathes clipping wings and bursting bodywork until the upward path was clear. They proceeded at once, lest larger robots pick them off, Neetra taking to her toes while her golden likeness soared alongside.

Some of the enemies were like fighter-jets, and by now had started to swoop and riddle the stone. Neetra’s double drew their fire while she herself ducked and dodged. At last she scrambled to the windswept landing where Mini-Flash Robin languished.

A many-jointed metallic jaguar was crouching by his slab. Neetra countered its lightning pounce with a telekinetic shunt, then twirled and demolished Robin’s other guard as she’d done its predecessor.

That gaudy giant robot which looked like a storage-heater with legs was ascending on its boot-jets, and the twin X-ray cannons it had for hands targeted our heroine. She teleported and its barrage nailed the spy-captain, whose hulking carcass had been trying to take aim at her unnoticed. From his direction Neetra’s luminous alter-ego led the last of the planes to a screaming collision with the gun-wristed one then sailed to land beside her on the ledge.

They high-fived, and ran together to their sleeping prince. The corporeal Neetra with a wave of her arm popped Robin’s restraints at one stroke.

Now for the tricky part. Neetra’s psychic self wasn’t able to touch the prisoner, but nor was her physical self able to teleport between dimensions without the other serving as a bridge. The division of labour required for all three to make it home was going to test Neetra to her limits. She lifted up Mini-Flash Robin in her arms and said to herself: “Go.”

Directly the obedient glowing one made a sharp vertical exit.

Over the tableland a shadow fell. Neetra’s new friend had risen from his seat. The yellow eyes and heavy lips were terrible.

Far overhead Neetra’s mind continued to climb, even as the great automaton extended his like a clutching hand and locked her substance in what was best described as a telepathic arm-wrestling match.

Grimly that Neetra took the strain, still holding Mini-Flash Robin close to her.

She could see through her spectral eyes as well as her own, and by now the mechanical mountain was a dot beneath those tiny gold toes. All the same, greater altitude even than that was going to be called for. Neetra clenched her teeth and dug in, striving to buy herself the time she needed as her adversary bore down.

She’d thought before that behind the mystique, her new friend was tiresomely conventional. Never mind his sneaking deceptiveness in not telling her it was Mini-Flash Robin he was after. Never mind sending others to do his dirty work, preferably behind her back. Oh no, but when it came to macho stuff like this, it had to be one-on-one. They both had to play absolutely fair while his lackeys gaped from below at his awesome might. All the same, these evil robots.

Not that he was even playing fair, at that. Because with her attention –

Neetra gasped. Her legs began to buckle.

Her attention was divided. And to give her new friend his due –

She sank to her knees on the mountaintop.

Yep, he was really good at this. Couldn’t last out against him much longer. Neetra squeezed her eyes shut and saw her psychic self had skimmed the atmosphere’s cusp and begun to dip.

Our heroine gripped Robin tight. Another handful of heartbeats was all it would take. Only problem was, the very life was being crushed from her now…

One pair of yellow eyes glared down at her, merciless.

Another pair of golden eyes perceived the phantom facade of a Flaban hotel, incongruous amid that wasteland, barrelling near as ground impended at the severest angle of descent.

Neetra’s psychic double headed face-first for the window which was their way out of here.

Just like Jenny and the Fringers. See what your crew makes of this. With the last breath left in her body, Neetra teleported.

Unchecked psionic force ploughed past the point she had occupied and loosed a landslide on the lackeys below, while her new friend toppled helplessly forward and expended his own potential energy on driving that monolithic chin into the crumbling hillside. He’d not been ready for the tricks of the second gender. That was how Wodding would have put it, and his turn of phrase was good enough for Neetra. Reunited with the rest of her, leagues from the battlefield, our heroine let momentum carry her plunging through the window with Robin safe in her arms.

She bumped and thudded to the hotel room floor. First thing she did was kick out at the husk of one of the derelict spy-robots which she’d left propped up there to facilitate her transition between worlds. It collapsed, batteries dislodging from its frame, and the way behind was closed. The window was just a window again.

After that Neetra hadn’t strength enough even to raise her head, so there she rested, Mini-Flash Robin peaceful and still beside her.

Wow, that boy could sleep.

END OF CHAPTER ONE