Engagement

Three interplanetary hot-rods, crimson, cobalt and black, were parked together at a rocky corner of the island’s coast. Flashtease, standing in his shoes, thrust arms and head into his short-sleeved tunic and finished with a purposeful two-handed tug on its hem, then turning to the first of his team-mates made a masterful gesture of leadership which immediately put his bright yellow underwear on display again.

“These friends of yours you just mentioned, Contamination,” said he. “If there’s a chance they might be willing to help us, then I really wish you’d go ask.”

“I don’t recall ever using the word ‘friends,’ Mini-Flash,” advised Contamination in his shrill voice.

“Even so,” was Flashtease’s response. “The rest of Joe’s circle’s a long way off. We’re not exactly in a position to hold tryouts.”

Contamination swung his luminous radioactive frame into the blue-painted racer and howled off for outer space. Meanwhile the two female Mini-Flashes had put their tunics on over their bikinis and were pulling their knee-boots up.

“It’ll be our job to track down that blonde girl,” Flashtease continued, “or her boyfriend who went after Joe. The Four Heroes’ old enemy Phoenix Prime’s behind all this. She obviously tricked Petunia, and because of that we fell right into her trap. Both our friends must be in Phoenix Prime’s hands by now, but if we can find which way her accomplices went, they’ll lead us to her base and then – ”

“Um, I think Petunia’s still on this planet,” a new little voice slipped in.

It belonged to Plunder Dacks, a boy wearing pants of inch-thick rubber. “What makes you so certain, kid?” Flashtease asked at once.

“Well, Petunia and I share a special and intimate bond,” explained Dacks, primly, though all three Mini-Flashes were of the opinion there were special and intimate rubber items not far from them which might be in need of adjustment. “At one of her recent beach-parties for example, it was crowded like it always was, but as soon as she walked into the glade I just knew it was her, even though I was sitting down next to Oblong so the most I could see round him was her calves.”

“I’m not sure that necessarily indicates some sort of heightened awareness, Dacks, I mean she’s got quite distinctive ones,” Flashtease felt it only reasonable to point out, calling to mind the milk-bottly appendages in question. Immediately Flashshadow added requisite murmurous politeness on how nice Petunia’s legs were though.

Mini-Flash Splitsville burst forth: “We’re all popping chicanes around it but besides the square, cats hip to where Bad Surfing Sally’s taken Joe number in total zero. So if by a long shot our little chick’s here, and we got us a real-gone radar attuned to her pins, let’s close this coffee-shop and hit the strip!”

“Anything’s worth a try,” Flashtease agreed and the youngsters saddled-up, girls in the black car and boys in the red. Anti-gravity engines pulsated as both vehicles rose from the beach.

“Guess I’ll have an unfair advantage,” remarked Flashtease to the females, not without a smile. “But that’s the obsolete gender for you, we’re always having to keep up. Now as Joe would say, let’s do it.”

Joe might also have said he was no stranger to premonitions, particularly those forecasting doom, and on one other occasion a comatose state had granted him intuitive astral prescience such as would have greatly interested Plunder Dacks. Our hero’s current slumbers however were wrought merely by injuries incurred during a duel with Schiss-Zazz, rather than the telepathic suppressions of a purpose-built Martian neuro-device. Possibly then all Joe saw as he lay feverish beneath the surface of Drenthis, watched over by three of Phoenix Prime’s faction in a Toothfire repair-bay jury-rigged for organic patients, was no more than a dream. If so, it was the kind in which the many threads that link acquaintances, times, places and meanings appear with universal clarity and sharpness, making up an interwoven matrix of such complexity as to hopelessly stymie the observer by day, but which within the dream speaks only of irrefutable logic and absolute inevitability.

He was at the old Flash Club archive. So too was Gala, though she couldn’t have been there before.

I knew you, Joe said to her. No sooner were the words out than he saw his mistake.

True, but you didn’t know me well, Gala returned witheringly, and her innuendo wounded Joe as it could only have done in a dream, where every secret self-doubt lay open in the raw.

Added to that was a new anxiety because Joe could tell Flashtease was trembling and trying to hide. Our hero turned from black-garbed Gala’s splendid scarlet feather and cruel scarlet lips to kneel with his arms shielding the Mini-Flash.

She may hurt me, Joe reassured him. So long as she does not hurt you again.

I understood what you meant, replied Flashtease, and the light in his blue eyes was pure. You knew what sort of person she was, just as well as you know yourself. That’s how you know the way Harbin thinks. That’s how you figured out where he must have taken the farns.

Flashtease pointed at the holographic star-chart they had consulted that day, his small finger directly on target for Drenthis. Next instant he and Joe were there.

The battle was raging, Joe’s three vehicles barely holding their own against Dylan’s formidable Grindo hardware which pounded the desert plains. But even this was no more than the beginning, Flashtease, Joe rued aloud, surveying his and Flashtease’s younger selves striving behind the red racer’s wheel. The evil extents of my son’s vile design may be revealed to your galaxy yet, for despite our every effort it is clear Dylan somehow discovered the contents of Neetra’s message. How this was achieved defeats me still, for you watched as I saw to it that 4-H-N should not –

But Joe shrank from this, suddenly, certain once again he had said more than he ought. There were feelings here he didn’t want Flashtease to know anything about. He couldn’t even share with the Mini-Flash all of how he responded whenever Neetra or her message were mentioned, but so much worse that Flashtease should receive any inkling it was not unconnected to where 4-H-N had kept the capsule itself. This last was thumbscrews twisted tight inside Joe. Flashtease however, who knew everything, was kind.

She really looks like her, he told Joe sympathetically. So does Phoenix. No wonder there’s so much pain in it for you.

How am I to know I am correct, Flashtease? Joe flung out, transported by those passions he fought the whole of his waking hours to beat down. I would never raise my voice to you. But when nothing can be separate from what her absence works upon me, who is to say Dylan did not hit it right?

And there that one was before our hero, cold, unforgiving, speaking a sentence that had never left Joe since first it was uttered at the end of that altercation:

The best you can offer on what he’s up to is personal hypothesis and conjecture, all of it influenced by your own agendas.

Terrible as this was, Joe was already able to detect another presence which was fast supplanting that of his erstwhile friend, and the emotions this newcomer wrought in our hero were altogether different. Comfort would have been going too far, for it was not a comforting dream, but there was at least some species of stern hope. Sure enough, as Dylan’s silhouette receded before one considerably larger, so dwindled Joe’s shame and regret as a swell of awe such as he felt for few individuals across the known universe took their place.

It was Intelligentsor, clad as ever in containment-suit with fully masked helmet. Around his booted feet clustered a ring of rapt Mini-Flashes, wearing their beige and gazing up. Joe was back at the archive building, this time not to revisit his recent memoires of the place, but rather to glimpse a long-ago he knew only from Flashtease’s description. Perhaps that was why our hero was seeing this as if he were one of the Mini-Flashes, catching his breath at the wonder of Intelligentsor’s words, each of which charted out expanses in a new cosmos above. Dark ceiling-vaults were coming alive with roiling nebulae of purple and red, each star a soft-glowing sphere illumining with its own sonorous chime. The intricate harmonies and breathtaking beauties were those of a Christmas tree marvelled at in childhood, but for all this it was still to Joe’s sorrow he could not be part of the happy group. There the Mini-Flashes sat content at the heart of creation, their worlds taking on form as Intelligentsor’s story continued, while he himself stood apart somewhere in the blackness which dawning reality was yet to touch.

Once again though, Flashtease had other ideas. He of course was among the assembly, which was to say another younger version of him was, this one predating the familiar grey tunic and every bit as sweet in his neophyte uniform as Joe had imagined. Now this novice Flashtease shifted his sitting self round in a half-circle so that with his back to Intelligentsor he faced our hero.

You’re wrong, the Mini-Flash told him, feet together. This is all for you.

Joe looked up and saw what his friend meant. Intelligentsor’s mirrored visage was no longer inclined benignly on his little listeners, but had lifted its commanding lustre to fix upon him.

Pay heed, young human, said Intelligentsor, and shoulder your burden. For I will not be there when it happens again.

On Drenthis the war was done, and night was falling over those palls of smoke which lingered after Joe’s clash with Dylan. What began here was by now underway everywhere else. For as Joe stared from growing shadow on the blasted wastes, Intelligentsor and even Flashtease gone, our hero knew with the most dread assuredness that lights for the second time were going out all across the galaxy.

Then I was correct, breathed Joe, even though there was nothing left but dead planets to hear him.

Fire rained from on high. Schiss-Zazz, poised to plunge his steely points deep into Petunia’s well-stuffed sweater, turned too late. Already he had hounded the helpless girl to the prow of a rockpile overlooking treetops, and now was the victim of his own cruel sport as the flame-bolts strafed him clear of the summit. He crashed careening through branches and boughs and was lost from view.

Phoenix Prime alighted and folded her fire-wings. Next instant Petunia was in her arms.

“Oh, Phoenix Prime, am I glad to see you!” she exclaimed tearfully. “What happened? Why has Schiss-Zazz turned against us?”

The wretchedness Phoenix Prime felt was all the more so for its familiarity. Misdeeds weren’t just an agony in and of themselves. Her last one had also entailed giving account of herself before her father, Phoenix, Kumiko and everybody else who loved Dylan and she’d hurt by hurting him. Now here she was all over again. Phoenix Prime felt a rare urge to reciprocate Petunia’s embrace with every iota of the latter’s fond fierceness, but resisted it, knowing she lacked the right.

“It’s my fault, Petunia,” were her words, and hollow indeed they sounded to the speaker. “I wasn’t honest with you when I should have been. You see, back on the Rings of Xandreth...”

But Phoenix Prime, already stumbling through these few sentences, fell all of a hush when she saw how Petunia was looking at her. She did not wear the expression of utter bafflement which had been anticipated. Sadness, yes, but no shock. Phoenix Prime’s heart lurched. Did Petunia know?

A roaring motor jolted them both back to the moment. They whipped round and beheld a red space-racer with which one of the pair was well-acquainted, barrelling at full burn to bear down on their position. Upright in the driver’s seat rode a Flashtease who was no dream-phantom, his wholly material grey riding up likewise above vivid yellow as he tensed to spring.

“I take it all back, kid,” this one told his co-pilot approvingly. “Now grab the wheel!”

“Yoopy yoo!” shrieked Dacks, instead of mentioning he didn’t know how to drive. The Mini-Flash however had departed long seconds before and was sparking and spinning at Phoenix Prime like a firework, compelling her to move away from Petunia which had been his unspoken intention. As Flashtease bashed out splinters of stone Phoenix Prime vaulted clear on flaming wings, while her prior addressee judiciously fled back down to the beach.

Uncurling and resolving into his boy-self again Flashtease faced Phoenix Prime, who had assumed a tactical stance below him on the rockside. “Didn’t realise you were gracing us with your presence,” he declared, “but since you’re doing your own fighting for a change, I’ll make this clear in person. Leave Petunia alone already, and while you’re at it, release Joe!”

“You’re Flashtease,” Phoenix Prime deduced. “For what it’s worth, my family’s forever singing your praises.”

Plunder Dacks made the best landing that might have been expected and at once quit the somewhat crumpled car to manfully press Petunia to him, one protective hand doing an especially thorough job of keeping her Four Heroes insignia safe. Meanwhile round the headland swung the black-hued hot-rod, its performance slightly hampered by damage from the Grindotron skirmish but still equal to responding with all deliberate speed to Flashtease’s radio-signal. Flashshadow leapt from its passenger-side to seize a vantage-point on the cliff-face adjacent to that of her male comrade, while Mini-Flash Splitsville yanked on the handbrake and at a surface-to-air hover completed their pincer movement. The two girls, being of the Special Program, were not rated for conventional combat, and each of the youthful trio was all too aware there existed better matches for one of Phoenix Prime’s potential than their modest powers even combined. Nevertheless they bravely braced themselves, and in accordance with the Mini-Flash colloquialism prepared to show everything they could do, as well as their pants.

That was when something far bigger than the differences at issue intruded.

It began with a swirling in the clouds, indicative of bodies entering Nereynis’s atmosphere from orbit as Phoenix Prime had done earlier. This disturbance however spoke of no single human-sized form, for it was on a scale that portended climatic chaos across half the hemisphere. Then through the rents in the cirrus-cover they came, describing perpendicular plumb-lines to the planet’s surface. They were too alien and otherworldly for it to be said they resembled men, though they had arms and legs, together with strange hands which they held out palms-downward over the ocean. Each was translucent and tall, so tall even from this distance that the spirit quailed to conceive of their height as it must appear to one meeting them face-to-toe.

Phoenix Prime had to admit she was at something of a loss. The five young people native to this galaxy however had seen every Grindo historical blockbuster, so knew these shapes for what they were.

Flashtease whispered: “Grindostater units.”

NEXT: 'UNDERCURRENT'