Heredity, Chapter Four

Neetra and Autumn scrambled to their feet and ran forward to where Tidshaw was standing. Dead ahead lay an astrological vista The Four Heroes remembered well, having been instrumental in bringing about its existence. A great belt of asteroids and wrecked spaceships both terrestrial and alien, caught forever in the black hole’s gravitational field, revolved steadily in a circle around its fiery rim while within that broiling periphery was a portal of nothingness so absolute that our heroes could almost feel light and time accelerating past them to be sucked in and swallowed by the darkness in its depths. At the centre of this void stood Harbin, who it seemed neither the singularity nor the vacuum of space could harm. His twilight body, suffused with elemental energies drawn from the dark heart of the hole, cast seething emanations across the universe as an unholy symphony of cosmic forces neared its crescendo. Clutched in his hand was the Time-Shifting Device, and the rectangular buttons on its face, usually red, now flared and leapt with the same grey glow that flooded from Harbin as his monstrous orchestrations swelled its power levels to the new and terrible pitch he demanded.

“Let’s do it!” shouted Joe.

Thassal, piloting the Hero Cart, switched the configuration of the passenger section to its static laser cannon mode and Ned gripped the trigger. Bret took aim likewise with the guns of the Ultimate Cycle, and as our heroes closed the distance between themselves and Harbin they set the interstitial space alight with a thunderous twin barrage. Explosions coursed across the black hole’s face, not reaching the foe himself for he had shielded himself with some invisible barrier, but successfully seizing his attention. His head shot up, and his ruby eyes glared at the two vehicles hurtling towards him.

Harbin brought both his hands together. His telekinetic strength, formidable in the first place and currently raised to monumental magnitude by his synthesis with the black hole, grasped the orbiting ring of rocks and wrecks and dragged it to him. The masses of metal and stone slammed into a crashing collision at their central point, making a mountainside of hulls, bulkheads and meteors that hung in the path of our onrushing heroes. Thassal, undaunted, switched the Cart’s cannons to the battering-ram and reinforced by further artillery fire from Bret he took the lead, punching straight into the heart of the blockade. The gleaming silver steel ploughed sure and true, and with the Ultimate Cycle hot on its afterburners the Hero Cart burst forth on the other side, flinging chunks of rocks and ships to the starry distance.

Our heroes were racing into close quarters now, the powerful retro-rockets of their craft working in overdrive to fight the black hole’s suction, and crouching on the Cycle’s drive unit Joe let fly with the first salvo. His swift firebolts pierced the ring of darkness, but the foe, having previously spoken six more words than were common for him, clearly felt the time for discussion and debate was past. Like a lightning bolt he was gone from his stationary stance, his barrier disappearing, and Joe’s projectiles were extinguished as they vanished into the singularity.

Harbin, his grey cloak streaming behind him, hurtled at his adversaries. Donning jet-packs and breathing apparatus, six of those eight leapt from their vehicles to meet his fearsome challenge while Dylan and Thassal brought their respective craft into a steep climb above the battlefield. Tidshaw needed only an oxygen mask as he could fly faster than any equipment could propel him, but even so, he was not quick enough to intercept Harbin whose powers were at an unprecedented peak. The teenage boy in pink overshot the mark, and as Joe sped after him to save him from tumbling into the black hole, it fell next to Neetra and Autumn to halt Harbin’s advance. Putting her palms together, the latter girl opened her arms wide and generated a slim circle of dazzling light which she could hold aloft in her hands.

“This is my power – a type of energy-projection!” Autumn grinned to Neetra, spinning the circle on her arm like a hula-hoop while she summoned a second one. “I call them my diamond rings!”

She flung the first ring at Harbin and with perfect aim dropped it over his head and shoulders. The ring tightened, pinning his arms to his side and forcing him to slew to a halt, whereat Autumn hurled her second ring which exploded on Harbin’s hide. Neetra, who was wearing the pink flight-pack she used in outer space, opened fire with the photon blaster on her right arm while Autumn formed another diamond ring. Their pincer movement was thwarted before she could throw it, however, for Harbin shrugged off Neetra’s darting beams and threw out his arms to tear free of the ring that bound him. It dissolved into luminous mist and he took off at once, scattering Autumn and Neetra helplessly aside with the aftershock of his ascent.

Following up on the girls’ sortie came Bret and Ned, side-by-side with rocket-packs blazing as they mustered their superhuman strength. Bret left luminous blue afterimages behind him as he moved and Ned’s powers produced a similar effect, except the light that shone from his trail was as green as his sparkling eyes. In two blurs of scintillating motion they closed with Harbin in hand-to-hand combat while the enemy, never losing his grip on the Time-Shifter, met their advances in kind. A whirlwind of glowing colour, blue and green flashing about purple-grey, scaled to the star-decked vaults.

“This…what you were hoping for…when you came here?” Bret asked Ned over their intercom, his smile gleaming amid the dizzying furore of fists and feet.

“Ho…yes!” Ned replied in enormous satisfaction. On and on they duelled but at length our heroes were forced to break off the engagement, the black hole having bestowed upon Harbin such endurance that they could only dent his defences and not defeat him outright. The two men fell back to a nearby asteroid and hunkered down upon it, regaining their breath.

In the Hero Cart far above, Thassal fitted a breathing-mask to his face and sprang from the pilot’s chair while Dylan deployed the Ultimate Cycle’s towing cable to keep the other craft abreast of him. The half-Martian had eschewed the use of a jet-pack like his team-mate Tidshaw, preferring to free-fall towards the mouth of the black hole where Harbin was waiting. As he plunged, Thassal began to aim himself at the lumps of stellar debris and rebounded from each one in turn, the soles of his blue boots touching down for an instant before he propelled himself out into space again. The resultant build-up of kinetic energy began to surround him with an aura of searing crackling light reminiscent of that which two members of his mother’s side of the family could also control, and the speed and ferocity of his descent increased rapidly.

Harbin thrust out the hand that was not holding the Time-Shifter and began to throw shafts of lethal light at the advancing form, but with incredible agility Thassal span and somersaulted to avoid the onslaught, using meteors and metallic scrap as stepping-stones. Such shots that he did not manage to evade with his acrobatics he simply weathered, for his cocoon of vibrant luminescence absorbed the worst of the impact while also granting him enhanced physical prowess. Too fast in the air for Harbin to stop, our hero plummeted like a comet upon the foe and as he neared he whipped out and activated a purple-glowing energy-trident that none of The Four Heroes were surprised to see. They remembered well who its original owner was, and that the Thassal they had previously encountered likewise carried it as an heirloom. This Thassal now, his burning dive at an end, clashed the triple points of his weapon against Harbin’s shadowy body while declaiming to the heavens:

“Would one such as you defy my noble lineage, Harbin? This day you face the bloodline that conquered Nottingham and ruled Earth and Mars!”

“There’s still something of his father in him, then,” Bret remarked, as he and Ned looked on from their asteroid.

“Yeah, bit too much at times, but you’ve got to love him for it,” Ned said back.

“It was more of a problem in the last Thassal we met,” the other observed fairly. “Well, what are we waiting for, boy, let’s go lend him a…whoa!”

The attack came with terrifying speed. Harbin cast Thassal asunder with his awesome might and in the same swinging motion of his arm fired off another of his power shots, which arrowed into the rock at Bret and Ned’s feet and in a roaring eruption of orange-red flame turned the whole meteor into shards and dust. Bret and Ned barely had time to trigger their flight-packs and make a hasty escape. All across the war-zone, Harbin began to repeat this maneuver and kept his regrouping opponents on the run, using either his beams of light or his psionic powers to shatter and crush the hulks and stones. No sooner had one of our heroes alighted on an island of solid matter than it detonated, forcing them into flight again, while yet more of the detritus around succumbed and joined the dreadful chorus of booms and crashes.

Looming at hand was the ruined aft section of a Baax freighter, a veritable planetoid of massy colourless iron whose black dead boosters yawned like massive mouths. As it drifted sluggishly into Harbin’s psychic range, Dylan in the Ultimate Cycle stretched out desperately with his powers and in a split-second confirmed that which he dreaded most.

“Its neutron drive’s still active!” he yelled to his comrades across the wavelength. “Form on me!”

END OF CHAPTER FOUR