Doc Sherwood
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Heredity, Chapter One
Across a flat expanse of rubble that had until recently been a derelict city neighbourhood, Joe, Bret, Dylan, Neetra and her sister Phoenix stared at the quartet of newcomers standing before them. There were two young men and a teenage boy and girl, all of them clad in black uniforms with a flash of a different colour. On the breast of each shone the crimson and gold insignia of The Four Heroes.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Heredity, Chapter Three
Gala stepped into the ancestral hall at Nottingham Castle, clad as always in her long black coat and black hat with a scarlet plume. Work in the City Centre was proceeding apace, and most of the refugees saved from the Ring of Fire by The Four Heroes had received medical attention or been reunited with their families. Gala had therefore delegated the remainder of these duties to the other three members of the team she led, and returned home.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Heredity, Chapter Two
For nearly two hours Joe and Neetra conducted a systematic search of their allocated districts, focusing rigidly on locating their quarry and keeping such conversation as there was to that subject alone. Both, however, were aware the whole time that that which they were delaying talking about could not be held off indefinitely. At last, when they reached the riverbank and agreed to take a short rest from their labours, it was Joe who broke the ensuing silence with a tentative:
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Flashtease
Aloysius Moynihan and Gussy Green had had a mildly trying morning showing Flashtease the sights of Nottingham. From the outset their small companion had confounded them by politely declining any offers to lend him some ordinary human clothes to wear and insisting on going to town in his customary Flash Club uniform instead, which consisted of a short-skirted grey tunic with a yellow lightning-bolt on the front and very little else. This alone had resulted in the three boys receiving more than a few funny looks from the public, but it wasn’t all. Though Flashtease physically resembled a boy of Aloysius and Gussy’s age, he had given both Earthlings reason to doubt that that was what he was from his truly awe-inspiring appetite for snack foods, takeaways, soft drinks and anything else that was dangerously high in sugar or fat. This constant energy intake was apparently necessary to fuel his overexcited fidgeting and dancing about, for it seemed impossible for him to stay still, so much so that Gussy and Aloysius were exhausted after just an hour of trying to keep up with him. To top it all, Flashtease was abjectly incapable of controlling himself in the presence of girls, and as it was rather too much to hope that there wouldn’t be any in a crowded city centre on a sunny Saturday, his enthusiasm for his subject had embarrassed the trio on several dozen occasions. Understandably then, the pair of human boys were beginning to regret telling their friend Neetra they’d look after Flashtease for the day, and to question the wisdom of ever agreeing to do anything for her again.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Resolutions
Empress Ungus had recalled her own offspring to the mothership for this final crucial thrust of the long drawn-out battle. Now several hundred feet above Nottingham’s Town Hall they stood assembled, a panoply of hideous spawn half-fungus and half-demon but none so vast and vile as the towering parent. She remained rooted to the floor and therefrom to the bulging living tentacles spanning craft and ground beneath, and thus with her foul family clustered about her she stared out through the clear membranous view screen that encircled half the bridge. Outside were the blasts and bursts of endgame dancing their luminous dance ever on, and the din of continuing carnage was muffled background-noise echoing through the fleshy walls and upon this grim audience while they watched as one.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
The Grindotron Faction
“You should have called me in sooner,” Dylan declared. The subterranean temple on Planet Eshcaton was by its very nature a quiet place, but today sadly bereft of that mystic murmuring calm amid whose stillness the wisest men might divine whispers of destiny not yet fulfilled. Much was amiss in the galaxy’s holiest of sanctums, and the stern silence which resounded at present from its gloomy obsidian walls would have been welcoming only to forensic scientists. It was the sterile inimical hush of a crime-scene, which was what the temple had lately become.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Battleground
In the aftermath of a grim battle, Phoenix Prime’s legions had resorted to a scorched-earth rampage that would crush all beneath it and wrest victory in the only way rock-men knew. Between the bellowing mindless berserkers and the bustling nightlife of Nottingham stood the Next Four, poised half-way up the hill at whose foot lay the Town Hall. With The Chancellor and D’Carthage in the vanguard and Gala and Steam holding back they waited, staring down the horde as it thundered upon them, each knowing they must contain this enemy within unpopulated regions and turn the tide lest chaos consume the city.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Automaton Zero
Neetra turned to Dimension Borg. “So, the intergalactic war Harbin starts is somehow the Next Four’s doing,” said she. “You told us it’s what will happen if Gala’s plans are completed. That fits with the Prophecy, because the Next Four come from the Dark Advents, and the final conflict’s described as the culmination of those time-periods. But Gala showed Joe she was the saviour of the first Dark Advent. She freed Nottingham, and cured the plague that was responsible for all the suffering.”
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Search Terms
The Four Heroes, their companions and the Next Four were steadily striking out across the sprawling surface of Nottingham, while Dylan and Phoenix used their scanners and computers from the control room at home to facilitate the search. Neetra meanwhile looked deep in thought as she stood on the roof of Nottingham’s Town Hall and gazed out across the city. Beneath the tempestuous clouds lay a skyline our heroine felt well accustomed to seeing from this lofty vantage point, but at the same time she knew that because of the one she was here to find, she was really looking at new reconstructions of the familiar towers punctuated by gaps in the landscape where building work was still going on. A faraway expression was in Neetra’s large eyes, and her long tresses billowed in the stormy wind. Accompanying her was Degris, who stood close to the great clock-face on the Town Hall’s dome.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
March of the Machines, Chapter One
Dylan was glad of something new for him and Phoenix to direct their energies towards, after the harsh words and recriminations of before. They set down to their task side-by-side, and the results were immediate and mind-boggling. It seemed the unrestored sectors positively abounded with the phenomenon Neetra had identified. Coordinating at once with their comrades and Next Four members in the field, Dylan and Phoenix transmitted psychic or electronic messages guiding each operative to the signal nearest them. Presently Joe and Gala had tracked down an outboard motor that was pushing itself through the ruins, Carmilla reported a fleet of vacuum cleaners trundling on their bumpy way like a strange stunted hot-rod gang, while Bret, Amy and Max, who’d stopped off for coffee and a Danish, picked up the trail of a gas cooker full of telephone parts that was heaving itself along with its oven door. There were many others besides.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
March of the Machines, Chapter Two
In a single flare of narrow crimson eyes, an electronic relay lanced across the scene and the entire factory began to explode. Our heroes, who had been expecting a fight, were taken by surprise and forced to fall back on emergency escape manoeuvres at once. The place had been so strategically mined, however, as to cut each intruder off from their fellows, making it impossible for those who could fly or teleport to reach the others in time. Even Steam and Degris were penned in by the factory roof and unable to venture skyward, and as the last explosive detonated and the floor gave way beneath our heroes’ feet, Neetra saw she had no choice but to teleport to safety alone.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
March of the Machines, Chapter Three
Dinner proceeded as others of its kind had done. Three of the Next Four were wholly absent, leaving Joe and Gala alone by candlelight at a table for two in Nottingham Castle’s vast shadowy banquet hall. Over a luxuriously fulsome meal, Joe related to Gala as much of the news from the previous day as he and his team-mates had agreed it was safe for her to hear. To Joe’s surprise, Gala did not react with the anger he had anticipated when he told her her last Time-Shifter had been lost. She simply took the information in and asked Joe to continue, listening to each word of the story as if thoroughly absorbed, then when he was done she fell to considering it all in deep silence. For long minutes Gala was lost in thought.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
