4-H-N On The Trail, Chapter One

Every week when she wasn’t on duty, 4-H-N would go down to Prof’s lab and spend time with Robo-Petunia. That automated approximation of a pretty girl seemed to have somehow imprinted on her, perhaps because it was 4-H-N who’d dragged her out of the junkyard storeroom where she’d been stowed. Today they were sitting on the laboratory floor, pointing the soles of their feet at each other, and slowly rolling a yellow Flashball back and forth between them.

Along came Prof, a baggy face in a clacking multi-legged walking-machine.

“Excellent, 4-H-N,” said he. “Each of these sessions unlocks a little more of what’s left in those eroded memory-banks. It can only be a matter of time before she comes up with something that’ll lead Phoenix and Dylan to Phoenix Prime at last.”

“What have they been getting up to in the meantime?” asked 4-H-N, who missed her sister and the friend who was more like family now.

“Oh, following the leads we’ve been able to send so far,” replied Prof, “and keeping tabs on Moltron, you know the kind of thing.”

Robo-Petunia’s pass wasn’t the hardest of 4-H-N’s Flashball career, but still she fumbled it.

“You know where Moltron is?”

Next second she’d shot upright and was unpicking in indignant disbelief. “Then why hasn’t the Alliance gone there and arrested him?” 4-H-N went on. “He stole our ship, and put Dylan and Phoenix’s lives at risk, and there must be all sorts of information he…!”

Prof chuckled.

“It seems that neither in your galaxy nor mine, 4-H-N, you’ve had a great deal to do with mercenaries,” he observed. “One who’s good at his trade makes a point of knowing as little as possible. The employers Moltron and his kind work for find it generally safer to do things that way. On the job you refer to, as with any other, he’ll have received instructions and payment and nothing else. So there’s more to be gained from monitoring him, in case further work comes his way from the same source. Dylan was especially insistent on that, since all our conclusions point to Foretold One involvement, and he in the galactic vernacular is decidedly bigger than Moltron.”

None of which served to untwist what 4-H-N had just that minute hiked down. With effort she willed herself back, even though it meant she was going to need the same.

“Come on, Petunia,” she declared. “Let’s see if today’s when you finally get the hang of this.”

So saying 4-H-N tucked in the middle and touched her toes. Robo-Petunia sat where she was and looked at her wondering.

“Thought it might be asking a bit much,” 4-H-N’s knickers reported to Prof. “That said, the real Petunia probably can’t do this either.”

Just then there was the noise of elevator doors swishing open. 4-H-N’s knickers blanched, and although they needed it, their wearer wasn’t slow to straighten up and about-face.

She found herself staring at none other than Flashslip.

Which was neither the encounter nor the style of greeting 4-H-N could have quite wished for. Accompanying Flashslip was a girl she didn’t know, but who a second later she was able to place.

“Oh,” exclaimed 4-H-N. “Rubber pants advertising actress who wins at one-on-one?”

Flashslip began to take the lead in his and 4-H-N’s blushing contest.

“Celebrity romances now, Flashslip?” demanded the latter, hands on hips. “Turning into a proper galactic gangster, aren’t you?”

“Actualsis has been a great help,” pointed out Prof, in the interests of being fair. “She’s come through some troubles of her own just lately, and many of her safeguards are proving compatible with Robo-Petunia. It was young Flashslip who introduced them.”

How typical, fumed 4-H-N. Coming here to do something helpful and kind. It was just like his impertinence. The contest was by no means decided yet.

“Funny we were just talking about a friend of yours, Flashslip,” she proceeded to throw in his direction.

Prof looked from one Mini-Flash to the other.

“Who was that?” inquired Flashslip levelly, echoing the question Prof hadn’t voiced.

“Let’s just say that if our paths happen to cross, I’ll remember you to him,” 4-H-N declared, then with her little nose high swept stuffily out.

“This is why I try to never meet the viewing public,” commented Actualsis.

“What friend?” a baffled Flashslip asked again.

“I’m allowed to plead ignorance,” Prof smiled. “It’s first and second gender interaction. The galaxy’s still debating whether that’s a science.”

Not without a sense of déjà-vu 4-H-N exited her shuttle’s sonic shower cubicle, bone-dry and satisfyingly springy from the bombardment of soundwaves. The autopilot was rounding in spiral fashion a cone-shaped micro-moon, temple ruins and pavements of antiquity crowding its peak, while the geography steadily widened on its way to a flat-topped base which had been extensively modernized. This neon land swung nearer and nearer beneath 4-H-N’s viewscreen.

Over by the flight-console her beige tunic hung. This mission may not have been authorized, but it had everything to do with The Flash Club. 4-H-N would have liked to see them strip her of that uniform, even in their old-school nothing-but-literal sense, after she’d brought in the galaxy’s answer to Fagin. There were going to be a few red faces among the male Mini-Flash community, not that there usually weren’t.

The next reassuring glance went to the cargo deck’s compendious bank of equipment-lockers. That, however, turned into one which gave 4-H-N a pang.

True, she’d already plundered Prof’s database in order to be here at all, but local adages about being hanged for a Big Chief as for a Grindo Villager brought little comfort. Because the point had always been that 4-H-N was only pretending to be a delinquent, whereas stealing sounded more like something a real delinquent would do.

She meant to put all Prof’s experimental technology back when she was done. But that was what she’d meant to do with the camera.

Next-generation firepower had been indicated though. Moltron was a match for four Neetkins sisters loaded up with the standard kind. And he needn’t worry, 4-H-N added to herself, because even in the absence of her old power-arm there’d be something on show he’d seen before. A pair of somethings, rather. Courtesy of his other good buddy Flashfrond.

Moltron was about to discover Nemesis wore white stretchy-silk ones.

END OF CHAPTER ONE