Love in the Underground, Chapter One

From the steep-sided canyons between towering skyscrapers to the rubble-mounds strewn across the battlefield below, Nottingham City Centre reverberated as if in the aftermath of an electrical storm. Office-block exteriors seemed to ring with it, giving back upon the charged and tingling atmospherics all that the shockwave had laid upon them, while ongoing battle-noise gradually warped and echoed its way back from eerie distortions to the proper register and key. Even the air was swimming with residual frissons crackling out their last. Through this static-bath a single small figure moved on a determined course, like the first animal to venture from its hollow once the tempest was over.

It was Flashtease, quickly scampering and scrambling over the hummocky terrain. He looked more than a little scuffed, and the frequent bumps and flutters of his tunic were still tending to throw out sparks. Whenever his running and climbing allowed him a free hand he would use it to try and flatten back down the hair on his head, or hitch at certain other afflicted areas while he was at it. Talk about changing-room anxiety before the grand final. Flashtease suspected it would be weeks before everything about him was falling exactly the way he wanted it to.

By the rise of the last concrete ridge Flashtease drew to a cautious halt. Stretching ahead was a wide ruinous plain, on each of whose distant borders stood the huge shape of a Future Fighter robot facing outward, and above which the sky was all but filled with the ominous silver-blue light of a temporo-psionic anomaly ever growing in magnitude and menace. In this expanse the Solidity’s defensive circle of gigantic mechanical sentries had been breached, and the human army had reclaimed the land as their first foothold in the contested zone. Dotted all about it were collapsible barracks and perimeter-posts, whilst towards the foot of the hill that led to the remains of Nottingham Castle Flashtease could see tanks and planes regrouping and taking off from this temporary staging-ground.

He pressed himself against the rock and wriggled nearer, for once too preoccupied to fret over how anybody standing behind him would thereby enjoy the best view in Nottingham of just how agitated he was. Flashtease supposed that in a way, he and these Earthlings were on the same side – they were all fighting against the Solidity, at any rate – but all the same, he couldn’t allow himself to be captured or delayed. His personal mission was far too important for that. But before Flashtease could embark upon it, there was something he needed to know.

There at the heart of the Earth encampment lay Storm-Sky, spreadeagled in the foot-deep crater he had gouged into the concrete on landing. But his mighty breast steadily rose and fell, at which sight Storm-Sky’s young countryman Flashtease breathed a great sigh of thankfulness.

Three human soldiers were even now advancing, their rifles held at eye-level to throw darting red laser sight-lines across the slumberous muscular form. Flashtease had lived amongst the Earthlings so knew they did not mistreat their prisoners. In their custody Storm-Sky would receive the medical care he needed, and be kept safe from further harm. That at least was something, then. And now Flashtease’s conscience was easy on that score, it was surely time to be getting on with it. The boy slipped down from the ridge, took a moment to dust static electricity from the seat of his underpants, and shot away.

Lightning had managed to drag his molecules back together again after delivering the assault under which Nottingham still reeled. However, the effort of deploying a secret power to which he had never before resorted had taken a considerable toll. Now he was clawing his way along a deserted City Centre street, slowly, painfully, one groping gloved hand after the other. He had bested Storm-Sky, one of the few warriors who might have stood a chance against him, but been left with a problem.

Lightning, unlike Flashtease, was not experienced in the ways of humanity, and lived by a hard and fast rule of judging others by his own standards. He was thereby forced to assume his enemies were not of the merciful kind. No option existed for Lightning now besides escape, but all it took was a weary upturn of his eyes to survey the myriad fighter-jets and helicopters busily engaging spaceships of every description overhead. Grimly Lightning acknowledged that in his present condition he was never going to make it through such skyborne chaos to the orbiting Solidity fleet.

So in that case, what now? It was a good question. But Lightning told himself yet again that he had not risen to glory as founder and commander of The Flash Club, nor orchestrated this intergalactic offensive on the Solidity’s behalf, only to perish on some miserable world. There had to be another way.

A second passed, and Lightning knew what it was. He had caught a glimpse of it earlier in the battle. A trans-mat unit, of design originating in his own technologically-advanced galaxy, parked unattended in a derelict district not far away. What it was doing on Earth in the first place Lightning could not begin to imagine, but nor did he much care anymore. All that mattered was that there was a means by which he might quit this doomed planet while time remained for him to do so.

With newfound vigour Lightning lurched forward another yard, his fingers snagging pavement ahead of him. Those questing digits, however, discovered soon enough that a small pair of feet stood directly in their path. Slowly, Lightning looked up.

What he saw was vivid yellow underwear, and then above, the round blue eyes of Flashtease staring down upon him.

Below the city in the labyrinth of tunnels and mysterious caves, Phoenix and Phoenix Prime were making all possible haste for the exit that let out onto the Earth army’s camp. Though the latter of these near-identical girls sported fiery wings that might have suggested those of a devil, she nonetheless bore gently in her arms a dying angel named Carrie with whose safety she and her clone were charged. The huge rock-man Kral-it-Gor was bringing up the rear and together they had covered much ground on their merciful errand, but now were forced to draw to a halt as the catacombs disclosed an unexpected disturbance sprawling across their road.

In a wide low gully beyond the tunnelmouth, two quartets of rampaging robots were thrashing out their brutal final battle. Each of the regiments did so in the name of a creator now dead, but that was no matter when absolute loyalty was encoded into the programming. These lifeless combatants would fight until the last drop of power in their battery-cells was gone. Now as the trio of rescuers looked on unseen, the blue-and-bronze-armoured Electromagnet wrenched Steelstreak’s right arm free of his body in a single savage action, while elsewhere on the battlefield Steelstreak’s grey-and-gold comrade Drilldome drove the spinning corkscrew-point atop his head deep into the belly of Breakpoint and pieces of the latter’s internal gears and cables splattered like guts against the craggy walls. Cyclotor, a gilt whirlwind in flight, struck a critical blow upon the bulky Conduit and successfully detonated his head and half his boxlike body. The twin coffin-shaped capsules that had ridden on Conduit’s back fell to the floor amid the explosion and both cracked open, disgorging the comatose villains Hydrus and Icer from whose superhuman powers the parasitic cyborg had leeched his strength.

It was clear these robots were playing for keeps. Not that that prevented either Phoenix Prime or Kral-it-Gor from making as if to wade into their midst and forge a path through, but Phoenix laid a hand on each one.

“Carrie,” she reminded them in a whisper. “Zere is anothair route around. Follow – ”

She was halfway through when Cyclotor landed lightly having delivered his killing strike. The next second, from out of the shadows behind him where surely had been nothing before, rose up an apparition of twisting mushroom-stalk necks and sinewy gill-slitted body so hideous that Phoenix’s words choked themselves into silence. Without preamble one of the three toadstool heads plunged downward on its stem and crunched gleaming fangs into Cyclotor’s aluminium thigh, while a pair of mighty claws gripped the robot’s torso fast and one of the other heads clamped its mouth around his throat. Then a mighty flex of the fungal muscles summarily ripped Cyclotor into three hunks of dead metal amid a spurting deluge of oil.

It was Mucidor, and melting out of the darkness by his shoulders a horde of demonic kin only slightly less horrendous than he. Cyclotor had as a matter of fact been an accomplice in treasonable acts against the Solidity, whereas Mucidor was loyal to Empress Ungus, by now the healthiest member of that faction’s supreme triumvirate. Arguably then the unlucky robot’s fate might have passed for summary justice, but as Mucidor’s six burning red eyes shot their lustful light across the war-zone and directly into those of Phoenix and Phoenix Prime, both girls knew that down here in the underground such allegiances meant nothing. Mucidor would tear his way through friend and foe alike just to reach the blood of the fleshly female trio before him.

Phoenix had sense enough to react in time. Tightening her grip on Phoenix Prime’s and Kral-it-Gor’s arms she dragged the pair of them back, and bringing Carrie along they tumbled together past a tunnel-lip behind them. The terrible scene was swiftly screened from view, first by rock and then by subterranean blackness.

As he surveyed Flashtease from down on the pavement, Lightning could see this was going to call for all his powers of persuasion. But Lightning also knew from experience that these, when turned to full use, had ever been among his trustiest tools.

“I’m prepared to forgive anything that might have gone before, Flashtease,” he commenced. “Words were said on both sides. But it’s nothing we can’t put behind us.”

When the Mini-Flash did not reply, Lightning went on:

“I’ve found a way off this planet, Flashtease. Back to our own galaxy. Help me get there, and we can leave together. We’ll escape with our lives and go home. And once we are home, we can start to rebuild. Make the Flash Club into everything it used to be, everything you loved. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

His keen eyes probed the lightning-bolt insignia on the little chest above. “All your talk about new beginnings, but I don’t see you turning in your tunic,” continued the fallen leader, not unkindly. “What that symbol stood for in the old days is exactly what I’m offering you. Everything you thought was gone. Everything that deep down you never stopped longing for. All of it put back the way you want it to be.”

The ever-observant Lightning had deduced more about Flashtease than this. Now he added softly:

“Who was it who hurt you, Flashtease? Tell me about him. Unless…you talked about seeing the true face of the changes occurring in our sector. So am I right that perhaps I should have said, tell me about her?”

These words could not fail to summon the dark-clad apparition of Gala before Flashtease’s eyes, together with all she had done to him. He blinked, and for the first time averted his gaze. Lightning’s features were taking on a satisfied smile.

“Such was my guess,” said he. “Too much of that in our galaxy these days, and this world seems to have invented it. Flashtease, I taught you myself that any opponent of a kind you’ve never faced before stands a chance of catching you unawares. I know that to a young Mini-Flash like yourself, what she did seems so painful right now that you feel you’ll never overcome it. But you tell me this – do you really think a pack of little giggling girls would be a match for our Flash Club restored to its former glory?”

Flashtease’s head was still lowered, and long had his stare ceased to meet that of Lightning. The latter pressed on:

“We’ll track her down, Flashtease, and we’ll hurt her every bit as badly as she hurt you. We’ll show her what being hurt’s all about. I’d consider it my duty as leader of The Flash Club to make any female sorry if she so much as looked at one of my Mini-Flashes in a funny manner.”

After leaving this proposal with his listener for a significant second or two, Lightning concluded:

“So how about it, Flashtease?”

Evidently a spoken response was some distance off, for none was forthcoming from the Mini-Flash addressed. He replied with action instead of words.

In silence Flashtease stooped, slipped his arms around Lightning’s far greater mass, and hauled him to his feet. Then with the smaller figure supporting the heavier weight, they proceeded.

“I knew I wasn’t wrong about you, Flashtease,” Lightning declared. “Straight ahead. I knew we’d end up going the same way.”

END OF CHAPTER ONE