Cycles, Chapter Three

Heroes they were. If Dylan and his command had ever been called upon to prove it, they did so in the second or two when each of the six saw with absolute clarity what route lay ahead for them now. They could neither prevail nor flee, but still, not one among them entertained for an instant any notion of throwing themselves on Harbin’s non-existent mercy. They would fight, until they could fight no more. Even in the absence of hope, that much honour they might yet do the reverend quartet they had striven in vain to save.

Between The Foretold One and the farns they made of themselves a defensive line, from Dylan and Phoenix to the two Mini-Flashes to 4-H-N on her small valiant Micro-Mallet, and stood ready. Harbin alighted as if to shroud the land in folds of shadow, marshalling his jarring disharmonies for an orchestration of chaos and carnage.

Then suddenly, battleships teemed in the Arch of Titus.

It was the Alliance fleet, exiting hyperspace within the planetoid’s bounds that their multitudinous materialization took only a twinkling. No tardier were the pilots of each dauntless dreadnought in venting their torpedo-tubes, whose cigar-shaped ordnance roared down on The Foretold One from every tactical vantage-point in the firmament’s black canopy. These iron projectiles were not missiles however but warriors, non-sentient Grindo robots programmed only with the protocols of war. They uncoupled arms and legs mid-flight and ended their ballistic run in hand-to-hand forays against the irradiating individual poised at ground zero.

Harbin went to work. With flying fists caving in chrome-plated crania and fingertips plunging through armoured chests he swiftly reduced the vanguard to torn pieces piled at his feet, but the cannon-bores overhead continued their chugging in rapid-fire, and powerful as Harbin was, he was nevertheless as subject to being buried by an avalanche as any other lone combatant would have been. Retreat from the impact-zone was The Foretold One’s only practical option, so this he chose, still duelling ferociously with robotic hordes all the while. In quest for the high ground he proceeded to back up a rough-hewn spiral stair which wound to the summit of a nearby flat-topped crag, the metallic tide surging to mount this gradient in pursuit of him. Harbin met each breaker full-on, and his arms were scythes of impure light cleaving chassis and propelling heads high into the skies, whilst dusky luminescent javelins hurled from his hands spitted steel soldiers in their tens and amid chain-reaction explosions decimated the ranks.

Dylan and the others, surveying this savage spectacle, gradually discovered they were free to breathe again. “So where’s our lot got to?” Mini-Flash Bloomer pondered aloud, first to recover her faculty of speech. “Since when does The Flash Club leave it to Grindotron to sort out a bit of bother?”

“No, Bloomer, the Alliance has figured it out,” said Dylan approvingly. “This is the only way to tackle Harbin under these conditions – by letting him expend as much of that stored-up energy as possible on opponents who don’t live or feel. Those Grindo robots won’t defeat him, but with a little luck they’ll bring him back down to the kind of power-level where somebody else can finish the job.”

There was no need for Dylan to indicate who was in line for this task. He and Phoenix had only to share the smallest of glances and it was decided. They did not leave each other behind anymore. That much they had been through already, and resolved, prior to their arrival in this galaxy. With a gesture Dylan opened his rig’s rear bulkhead, disclosing berths where the farns might recuperate.

“Get them back to our freighter, kids,” he instructed. “Then go to the fleet where it’s safe. There’s a chance to end Harbin’s menace once and for all, and Phoenix and I don’t plan on passing it up.”

4-H-N knew this was no time to argue, but she couldn’t stop herself. Not with every sister besides Phoenix already lost to her. “That’d call for a whole lot of robots, though,” she pointed out, her voice not quite steady. “Which we’ve got, but I mean, to go from needing Four Heroes powers times eight to it taking just the one…”

Phoenix gave a brave smile.

“Seven and a half, if you round down,” she told her fellow clone confidentially. “No-one evair remembairs to factor-in Thassal.”

Side-by-side in the star-fighter she and Dylan blasted off, leaving 4-H-N to join her Mini-Flash friends in helping the farns inside. This done, the youngsters were on their way too, escorting the rumbling rig by rocket-bike or robot to sanctuary behind their own battle-lines.

Harbin gained the highland, where tribesmen long ago had hammered and scraped a primitive amphitheatre to stage their brutal sports. One or two swift dashes flattened the automaton army’s remnants, just as the sleek fuselage of Phoenix’s fighter shot past the ridge and flipped its front-end forward to bear down on Harbin with both railguns blazing. As he stepped back ready to meet this new challenge, deflecting staser-fire with his palms all the while, Dylan triggered a pre-prepared compartment between his and Phoenix’s armrests which swung open and pushed out its contents hilt and handle-first. It was a replica of the crystal sword Dylan had wielded during the second half of his stay in 2596, and drawing this weapon free of its sheath in a sonorous slice of beaming brilliance he leapt from the moving interceptor and struck fountains of sparks from Harbin’s hide.

Phoenix set the sky-fighter’s autopilot to turn and turn about the arena’s edge, then standing sidelong in her seat pinned Harbin with long-range energy-beams zipping from her upraised gauntlet. Brilliant radii flashed into fleeting existence and found their mark at the centre, which Dylan was striving to hold. Grimly he and The Foretold One continued their trade of blows, one instant dodging, the next driving hard, Dylan’s bright blade parrying and defending and endeavouring to make it through retaliations which resonated discord.

It shouldn’t be just him. Don’t intervene? Dylan hadn’t even had a chance yet to think over what that might be all about. Why would the farns want to throw him into this without back-up?

Tilting into her gyre at a forty-five degree angle, Phoenix was soon throwing not lines but lashes, speed and momentum dragging her wrist-emissions into the slipstream that they impacted like whipcracks. Was all this her fault? She’d done wrong and she knew it. No, the battle, concentrate. With one such chord she flayed The Foretold One across the back of his tattered cape. Mais non, though. There was no arguing with what Carmilla had said there and then, that bringing Scientooth in under those circumstances wasn’t The Four Heroes’ way. Then Phoenix had said what she’d said, let herself blurt it out to Phoenix Prime, the real reason she’d done what she did. Phoenix Prime, who was already in agony over having kept Dylan from Phoenix’s arms so long. And then Phoenix Prime fled. And Carmilla went after her. And 4-H-N blamed herself. And Joe and Dylan fought, as the Prophecy warned they would. The Prophecy that spoke of doom for this quadrant.

Apparently Harbin was drained enough by now to take note of Phoenix’s foray. But he was still dazzlingly fast, all too fast. Under Dylan’s sword-swing he shot a dusky lance, anticipating the star-fighter’s flightpath, and all vanished in a giant fireball.

That for Dylan was the culmination. Now he had taken more than he could stand. Don’t intervene. No Neetra to help him. Mini-Flashes flocking to Joe. He, Dylan, had done so much for this galaxy, and so had the Neetkinses and Prof, practical things that made a difference. Yet still they were helpless before a few sentimental anecdotes in some candlelit space-shack, which among these crazy constellations apparently passed for an equally valid version of the cause. Helpless. Like needing to be carted round in a life-support tank, or when The Four Heroes had had no choice but to throw in with the Next Four. All Dylan’s powers, all his genius, counting for nothing. And now his comforter and saviour of both instances, Phoenix, his love, had moments ago been consigned to the conflagration by none other than Joe’s firstborn. All this Dylan would have sluiced from his heart through his arm and his fingertips to lavishly envenom the crystal blade, as with a terrible yell he bore his rage and hatred cleaving down upon The Foretold One.

END OF CHAPTER THREE