The Communique, Chapter Five

Phoenix Neetkins completed her hyperspeed jump and dropped the Star-Fighter Mark II into position. Greenish-blue clouds scudded above the curvature of a world. Spotlights breaking intermittently through this cover hinted at some open-air event about to kick off below.

A pop concert, concluded Phoenix as she undressed. Nothing did this galaxy’s young people love more.

Counting down in her head, and keeping one eye on the windshield, Phoenix was satisfied without surprise to confirm Dylan’s co-ordinates. She hoped the performers planetside had half his skill with cues. A scrabbling something both Mini-Flash and not was nosediving from space for the beams, drawn to them like a terrestrial moth.

Shedding the last of her lingerie, Phoenix tossed Parisienne lace and plush satin cups to the cockpit floor, and wearing her glasses rolled lithely over to the passenger side.

Autopilot. Then, seat recline.

The chair straightened out to a couch and the deck closed neatly before Phoenix’s cheeks. A great press clamped down and with a pneumatic hiss sealed her into her shrink-wrapped battle-suit, a scarlet second skin stretching from toecaps to jawline. Telescopic rods thrust gauntlets on either hand, a backpack fitted itself into place, and operational cables snaking from this latter connected automatically with Phoenix’s wrists. Then the interceptor unlatched its undercarriage and quite literally blew her into orbit.

Like a boldly-painted missile Phoenix described a line along the gaseous stratosphere, broaching its roils that the vapour churned to a whirling funnel as she passed. Six fluorescent wings flamed from apertures on her shoulder-armour to negotiate reentry, and there ahead was the mark, a gaunt white blur of descent upon which this augmented angel bore avenging.

Phoenix was on-target.

She always was.

Her fist collided with the creature’s chin as Cherry’s backing-singers below chorused:

Wait!

Then Cherry herself chimed in, as Phoenix closed with her reeling adversary and locked both gauntlets on its hide:

Oh! Yes! Wait a minute, Mr. Postman!

(Wait!)

And the skyborne combatants, by now flipped upside down amid the clouds, began to spiral in their headfirst clinch towards the planet’s crust.

As lyre and bass and percussion struck up, Phoenix warmed the heat-strips on her palms and gripped grimly on. Tres interessant. Evidently her captive did not like that. The purpose for which these thermal panels were designed had been to crack specially treated stone, which was what that chalky epidermis resembled. What was more, Dylan reported it had baffled scanners and sensors almost across the board.

The implications then were serious.

Dimension Borg technology? Or that of the Rock People?

What historian residing in this sector would have even heard of theories so esoteric, much less be equal to adapting them thus?

They were through the dark overcast arch. Phoenix glimpsed a well-equipped stage, and upon its forecourt some quantity of those small soft humanoids known as Meems, sequence-dancing in mixed couples. Marshmallowlike, the boys were sculpted without being chiselled and the girls twirled precisely in sugared-almond pastels. So intense was their concentration that if they even registered the deadly grapple which plummeted steaming at the vacant lot directly adjacent to their dancefloor, they didn’t allow it to throw off their step.

Phoenix was impressed to see such a rigidly regulated experiment, and was in fact rooting for the Meems to be first to fathom out the second gender.

It would validate science.

She and the beast made a booming landfall and rolled apart in an eruption of dust. Next second Phoenix was back on her two feet and her foe on its four, hackles up. Our heroine retracted her wings and cycled into existence the circular shield that shone with identical amber phosphorescence from her forearm.

The Meem boys span their partners around.

Phoenix’s sprang at her howling, as Cherry commenced the second verse.

So many days had passed her by, and while the Meems’ motion was all efficiency and discipline, far uglier were the interactions of the odd couple out as Phoenix rounded the pouncing one’s chops with the rim of her shield, bundling its jumble of limbs from her. She sought to pin it once again with her blistering finger-pads, but it didn’t stop to make her feel better, and a kicking sprawl righted itself with terrifying swiftness. The mad mutated Mini-Flash face flew at Phoenix’s own, black nostrils flaring, terrible-eyed, and as Cherry and her vocalists began to bounce the rhythm back and forth between them, a far more dire exchange commenced beyond the borderline.

(You've got to wait a minute, wait a minute,)

Oh yeah,

(Wait a minute, wait a minute,)

Please, please, Mr. Postman...

They had knocked lumps out of each other, but Phoenix, hair disarrayed and spectacles askew, was certain now she held the advantage in the palm of her hand.

The backing-girls smote theirs together.

Why don’t you check it and see?

The only way was for Phoenix to outmatch this animal when it came to clawing, and dash away at it with the open hands whence glowed its proven vulnerability.

Just one more time for me?

So this she did, not waiting a minute, even a minute. With gritted teeth and aching arms Phoenix piled it on, feeling the thing start to splinter under her smacks.

If it was pleading, she didn't hear.

Deliver the letter, the sooner the better!

An uppercut with a radiant heel finished the job. Over and over through the air tumbled the battered brute, and this time where it landed, there it lay.

You've got to wait a minute, wait a minute...

END OF CHAPTER FIVE