Search for a Sister, Chapter One

Phoenix Neetkins looked a little like Jean-Michel Jarre at his comeback concert, only her garage-load of old keyboards and monitors charted a timespan measurable not in decades but millennia. This antiquated array of technological table-tops was laid out in a square, enclosing a space of comparable area to that of a good-sized conference-hall. At the centre of this stood a forcefield-cage, within which paced a chalk-white creature.

Dylan Cook came in, accompanied by Professor Grindo, the latter a saggy elderly sponge-face tapping along in a walking-frame.

“I swear that machine left more of France in you than just the language,” remarked Dylan.

“You can be blasé about some performairs, cheri,” Phoenix told him with a note of warning.

“Just saying, I saved a school disco this way,” Dylan returned with a grin. “Guess the same methodology could be used to empty the dancefloor instead.”

“The Vernderernder High Command has registered its displeasure at the way you’re handling this,” Prof went on. “You know their approach to hostile intruders. When in doubt, kill it, and no need to bother about the first part.”

He spoke with nothing less than the arid humorousness that touched his tones whenever his people’s erstwhile enemies came up, but Phoenix wasn’t amused. Maybe it was because she too had been a wild animal once. At any rate, it was Dylan who spoke next.

“Political change may come at the end of a beak for some, Prof,” he agreed. “But Toothfire are Alliance members now, so they’re going to have to let us do this our way. Besides, there’s no guarantee even your oldest equipment would have been able to scan this life-form if it was no longer alive, and what we can learn from it seems to me a whole lot more important than ending its threat. Speaking of which, babe…?”

“Zere is no longair any doubt,” reported Phoenix. “All readouts confirm zis being was born of Dimension Borg’s mutagenic Energy-Warp theorem, as adapted via Rock-Men science by Phoenix Prime. My Papa and I completed ze first casework on zis,” she added for Prof’s benefit. “I could not mistake it.”

Dylan heaved a sigh of acceptance, troubled.

“And outside of our faction, if that’s the word these days, there are only two individuals who’d have the know-how to implement it like this,” said he. “Taking the worse-case scenario first, it makes perfect sense that Harbin would look to the technique sooner or later, since it’s one of the very few ever proven to negate Four Heroes powers. The second is Phoenix Prime herself, who invented the procedure for just that purpose.”

Phoenix acknowledged with the tiniest of nods, and Dylan thought to himself, yep. There it was. No way was it going to be easy for either of them to walk into an encounter with Phoenix Prime, who’d vanished at the end of the Nereynis Incident and left much unresolved. Nor did it help in the present situation that her view on Phoenix had at one time been that of Toothfire towards their present guest.

“Zen we must seek ’er out,” affirmed Phoenix at last, in a quiet voice. “We know nothing of my originator’s current objectives. Ze possibility exists zat she is behind zis.”

“If she is,” hinted Prof, “then don’t count on Toothfire maintaining that stance of armed neutrality. Phoenix Prime sprang Scientooth, their most notorious renegade. Under the Alliance Treaty the High Command may have to recognise his asylum in Nottingham, but they’ll jump at any pretext to settle old scores. Grinning and bearing it isn’t a Vernderernder trait.”

“Speaking of whom,” Phoenix continued, “we shall be taking our visitor with us. Lest a convenient accident should cross ze mechanical minds of ze fine fellow-signatories we glance at.”

“Then I’ll wish you a pleasant journey,” said Prof. “And if you run into Scientooth on your travels, do remember me to him.”

He clicked off about his business. Dylan and Phoenix joined hands, as they were wont to do whenever new adventures impended.

“One good thing about being who we are around here,” remarked Dylan. “We get to choose our own Mini-Flash assistant. Think a run-out would do a certain someone good?”

“Bien sur,” was Phoenix’s reply, “since I will strangle ’er if I ’ear one more dinner-table complaint on ze subject of mailroom duty.”

4-H-N had never been the sort of girl who was cruel to insects. That wasn’t what this was. In actual fact, Flashbee with his ability to walk up walls presented a unique challenge on the flight-simulator.

No, this had become part of their battle of wits.

Watching the male Mini-Flash while she glided on air-currents around middle height in the gigantic box of an arena, 4-H-N thought how funny it was that Flashbee was as much in awe of her as either of his two best friends. The problem was that he, unlike them, asked too many questions. Or to put it another way, he was onto her. That made Flashbee an unlooked-for complication in 4-H-N’s already-fraught Special Program issue.

Any second now. A fond smile touched 4-H-N’s lips as she watched the yellow-and-black figure scuttle into firing-position on the west perpendicular surface.

4-H-N was sorry to say Flashbee reminded her more of a snail, in terms of the time it took him to aim and draw back his catapult and fire. Arching her back, she easily described a clean loop-the-loop around the anaphasic ball he shot at her.

“Think you’re going to have to take the plunge, Flashbee!” sang 4-H-N, and turned another somersault just for the sake of showing off.

“Just remember our arrangement!” he blew back at her. “For every hit I land on you…”

“You get a 4-H-N’s secret,” she finished for him, thinking as she often did what a nice ring that had to it.

She looked on as Flashbee timidly loosed the adhesive grip of his fingertips and toes, to deposit himself whole upon the whims of rushing thermals and jets. 4-H-N however knew it wouldn’t be long before that initial fright was transmuted to the exhilaration of shearing unsupported through space, for that was how it went every time with boys.

You couldn’t blame them. Adulthood must have looked a tantalizing prospect to Flashbee. It was a little different for a girl who’d never fly again, unless it was this way.

No place for bittersweetness in a battle of wits. 4-H-N shrugged it off and ducked below her adversary while he was still gaining his bearings. She had no illusions about her ability to outwit Flashbee’s glitteringly intricate intelligence in a straight interrogation, and only here on the simulator had 4-H-N thrashed out a means of encouraging his curiosity while maintaining control over the truth.

He was getting the hang of it. The soles of his boots were kicking him clumsily along the horizontal funnel, his skirt a billowing circle above 4-H-N.

She took aim, unable to resist. But not his stinger. For all she knew, even an anaphasic ball would hurt him if it connected there.

“Was it like this when you were learning to fly?” Flashbee gasped aloud.

The second-most tempting target, then. And 4-H-N had to admit, as she loosed her ball with a smirk, it was tempting.

She thwacked him in the pants. “Oh!”

Pushing into a spurt 4-H-N overtook the boy, and as she ascended by him, giggled her reply into his scarlet face: “Kind of, except I’d grasped the importance of modesty!”

Which was a massive fib, as it happened, from what 4-H-N could recall of the Avion Girls Task Force’s early popularity. Flashbee had drawn to a halt in the eddy between two contraflows into which he’d bumbled, so to speak, so 4-H-N sounded out a place where she might stop likewise and did so, right in front of him, pointing her toes at the distant floor.

Affecting carelessness she flicked her ponytail over her shoulder where it belonged, and putting her back to Flashbee let the breezes flutter her beige tunic-skirts.

Come on, cutie. Turnabout is fair play in any galaxy.

Let’s see you try and ping that particular pair of 4-H-N’s secrets.

She stepped neatly out of his projectile’s path the minute she heard the slingshot’s anticipated twang. Dangerously bright when he wanted to be, and brainless with bubbling boy-hormones when given half a chance. 4-H-N meanwhile had caught the nearest updraft, priming her own catapult, and Flashbee was indignantly rubbing his arm before he’d even pulled it back in after firing.

Two-nil. The escape-route lay along a staircase of stepping-stones, spouts of air whose turbid summits might briefly support a Mini-Flash’s weight. Thus in hops the chase continued, 4-H-N now leading her fuming pursuer, both their skirts flipping inside-out as each elevation was achieved. The more 4-H-N considered it, the more her line on modesty while flying seemed a gross distortion.

“One of these days,” panted Flashbee from behind, hauling in breath on every bound, “I’ll zap your neophyte knickers so bad…!”

“Can’t wait,” 4-H-N returned sweetly, then instead of going up again propelled herself like a diagonal arrow the way she’d come, underneath Flashbee’s feet. She snatched an upside-down glimpse of his startled splutters before the top of her head parted the column on which he rested, rippling it to wisps and vapours. It was only a fleeting interruption, but long enough for Flashbee to find himself stranded atop hundreds of metrons of nothing.

“Waah!”

4-H-N righted herself with a tuck and roll, followed by an aim and fire, and at her leisure clinched the game on Flashbee’s pants once more. This was just ahead of that one’s safe but ignominious finish, splatting straight into a waiting tentacle-trap.

“You showed a definite improvement that time,” 4-H-N declared, dabbing the bare bits of her with her sports towel.

Sadly for Flashbee, that was true. Yet he never failed to be good-natured in defeat, which was refreshingly unlike many a male and female Mini-Flash of 4-H-N’s acquaintance.

“One of these days,” Flashbee repeated gamely.

The flushed friends shared a grin as they dabbed away at themselves, smelling.

Flashbee’s hopeful bright-eyed smile wasn’t one 4-H-N could in all fairness class as absolutely devoid of the adorable. He’d tried hard, and he had done well. This was what she meant about not being mean to bugs. It was the bug who had her wrapped around his little mandible, not vice versa.

“You’ve earned one,” conceded 4-H-N, and he had, even if it wasn’t going to be Special Program-related. “So here it is. I’m heading out on a top-secret Flash Club mission!”

“Really?” exclaimed Flashbee.

“Entry-level assistant,” boasted the girl, parking both hands importantly on the rear of her tunic-skirt. “That’s got to beat the mailroom, not that I ever say anything about that.”

“It’s a heck of an assignment,” concurred Flashbee. “So what will you be doing?”

4-H-N couldn’t help it. She’d already said too much, not to mention shown off too much. But there was no getting away from it ­– it really did beat the mailroom.

“It’s to do with the creature you and Flashslip fought,” she told Flashbee confidentially. “Dylan and my sister Phoenix have discovered something really important about it. So we’re taking it with us and going to find Phoenix Prime, who ­– ”

Only when the flight-simulator doors hissed open did 4-H-N and Flashbee realise they’d not been alone as they’d thought. Of course, a Mini-Flash boy in a beige tunic the same as 4-H-N’s had as much right to be there as she did, but to study the manner of his speedy exit was to be put in mind of such words as “skulking.” 4-H-N lost the thread of her conversation and stood a moment in annoyance.

“Now there’s the one I can’t figure out,” she muttered.

“That new kid?” queried Flashbee. “Mini-Flash Phytolith? To be honest, I only barely know who he even is.”

“I didn’t either, until the other day when he came in to collect a package,” said 4-H-N. “That was definitely the first time we talked, if you can call it that. But since then I’ve started to notice he’s been sticking to me like a tentacle-trap for I don’t know how long. Like just now. Did you get the feeling he was paying close attention to every word we said?”

Flashbee put his hands on his hips. You couldn’t tell male Mini-Flashes about that.

“We’ll know,” was his reasoned response. “If your secret mission’s all over Headquarters by tomorrow morning, then I guess.”

TO BE CONTINUED