Shapeshifters, Chapter One

In the beleaguered city of Nottingham it was the height of day, but a preternatural still reigned over the streets. Invasion had banished traffic and emptied offices. Now the midday sun glinted silent and unstinting from the ring of gargantuan robots that surrounded the central area already ceded to the enemy. This hush however was deceptive. Most were hard at work, from the Solidity soldiers in their outposts and watchtowers peering ceaselessly over the war-zone in search of resistance, to the ones they sought biding their time in hollows and gullies amidst the rubble, to others in the free city striving to orchestrate rebellion of their own. But all played a waiting game, with with neither action nor word disclosed the ends of their diverse secret schemes.

Nowhere was this truer than of the twisted tendrils stretching down through the sky to root themselves deep beneath Nottingham’s pavements, with the stated intention of wrenching the planet apart. These were growing from a vast organic starcraft currently shrouding the rooftops in one round black shadow, and rooted to this mothership’s bridge was she who had biologically enmeshed herself with the mycological nightmare to mastermind it from within. However, if the whole of the City Centre appeared eerily static during this silent time, the giant creepers somehow seemed even more so.

Lightning, blond and chiselled Solidity chief, was with his triumvirate partner Empress Ungus on the flagship’s bridge.

“Going well, is it?” he demanded.

It was clear from his tone he was not asking out of idle curiosity. “You’re the expert now on how long this sort of thing takes, are you?” said Empress Ungus.

“I know what it looks like when someone’s stalling for time,” Lightning returned. “Maybe because her own gambit with the humans failed, and it’s left her some backtracking to do.”

“What you have to understand is that these ways aren’t yours, Lightning,” the Empress began patiently. “Technology may provide quick and easy solutions, but I deal in the gradual accumulation of fundamental presences, the steady building of primal irresistible force – ”

“Spare me the bio-civilizations’ supremacist tract,” Lightning interrupted. “Technology was how Space-Screamer and I divided the power-balance of our sector between us back in the old days, without recourse to skulking in a dark little hole like some. And while we’re on the subject of that astro-worm, this delay of yours is handing him the very opportunity he needs to start plotting against us. Him, and the Earthlings who are still out there in the areas we’ve not occupied. I don’t underestimate them. You tried that, and look where it got you.”

Wearily, Empress Ungus replied: “Go and bark some orders at someone, Lightning. You’ll achieve just as much as you’re achieving here, and you’ll feel better.”

Lightning swept over to the door. Then, before leaving, he turned.

“Oh, and by the way – step it up,” he rapped out. “That’s an order.”

Empress Ungus’s firstborn son Draxu was sitting by himself, in the detention unit of another discoid starcraft from his ghastly progenitor’s fleet. The dim red glow of his hooded eyes was all that lit the gloom in the plant-ship’s hollow cell.

Joe and Gala, leaders of the Collective to which most of the Solidity’s terrestrial opposition belonged, had shanghaied Draxu onto this vessel in the process of making their escape from Planet Earth. Having compelled him at cutlass-point to set a course for the murky dominions in his own galaxy that mushroom-creatures such as he and his mother called home, the two humans had located what they took to be the brig and bundled him inside. Now as he hunkered motionless on the protruding fleshy lip that served as a bench, securely penned behind a wall of transparent membrane, Draxu might have appeared as dormant and inactive as his strange half-brothers on the world now light-years distant.

But steadily, without so much as a flicker, the red eyes glowed.

Some distance above on the bridge, Gala and Joe stood before another clear membranous shield which made up the main viewscreen. Stars and solar systems were scrolling by in a luminous blur as with each passing second the autopilot brought ship and occupants closer to their objective. The prevailing mood was one of heightened emotion, even elation.

Finally Joe turned to Gala and smiled, as one who knew there were many good reasons not to do so but was unable to help himself.

“We should not be feeling as happy as this,” he declared.

“You’ve been telling yourself that your whole life,” Gala replied.

“No,” Joe went on, trying hard to inject some sobriety into his tone. “It should grieve me far more that I am turning my back on Nottingham at such a time of need. And The Chancellor...you maimed him, Gala! Yes, he betrayed us. But such an act as yours is not easy for one of conscience to forgive.”

“He was a dangerous man, Joe,” said Gala. “And his feelings for me were what made him dangerous. If I hadn’t put him out of action for good, maybe I’d still be walking around right now. But do you really think you’d be?”

“Perhaps, extreme measures were necessary,” Joe conceded. “But even so...”

“Why don’t we call it my casting-off of a few ill-advised early decisions,” suggested Gala. “My moving on. Maybe even to better things.”

This set a frisson of a whole new kind of excitement tingling like electricity between the pair.

“We have grounds to be thankful, despite all,” Joe continued with a sigh of happy acceptance. “At last the Prophecy is within our grasp. The mission that brought us together and began the Collective, which so long seemed hopeless, now draws near to its fulfillment. Soon we will hold the secrets that can save Nottingham and the Earth. And, more even than this...”

Joe paused. One of the many truths about Gala he had come to accept was that there were few in his acquaintance to whom he had ever been able to speak so openly, and that he had only ever received the profoundest understanding and empathy from her in return.

“There has been so much,” he confided. “Dylan...that oldest of friendships broken, mere moments before he suffered an injury so severe that all my hopes of making amends may be in vain. Other friends, so many of them, who turned on me for the choices I made. And then...Neetra. Confronting the discovery she loves me no more was a pain almost too terrible to bear. I felt as if all was at an end, Gala. It was as much as I could do to go on. But now, we have purpose. Now our Collective stands on the brink of accomplishing its goal. Now we know we were right.”

Gala was looking at him, and slowly shaking her head with an expression of the uttermost fondness.

“‘Grounds to be thankful, despite all,’” she repeated. “Old beyond your years in almost every respect, and yet an absolute innocent. It’s one the things about you I’ve come to – ”

She started again.

“What you’re describing is the most natural thing in the world, Joe,” she told him. “When you reach the age you are, things like your old home and the girl you loved as a child...they stop meaning what they used to mean, and they go away. What takes their place is something better, something wonderful, new sensations that are deeper, more complex, and which lead you to happiness you can’t even imagine. I told you once before, don’t deny yourself the treasures that are rightfully yours.”

By now, Gala and Joe were touching.

“There’s nothing wrong with feeling the way we do,” she finished. “Or with seeing where it leads us.”

Neetra and eight other young people were starting to notice that somewhere along the line, a road trip had changed into the Children’s Crusade. This was conspicuous as they ploughed through open cosmos on a determined course to the Arcology that had once been the Solidity’s base of operations, their well-travelled spacecraft bearing not only themselves but also the last hopes of sentient beings all across the sector. For this small Flash Club was on a desperate mission to make peace with the Vernderernders, lords of Toothfire, ruthless mechanical megalomaniacs that had seized absolute power in the Solidity’s absence. Thus did Neetra seek to restore order to the galaxy that had become her new home, and also prevent the apocalypse impending over her old one.

At terminals directly adjacent to the captain’s chair in which Neetra sat were three senior Mini-Flashes, the boys Flashlight and Flashthunder and the misty ephemeral girl Flashshadow. Elsewhere in the capacious cockpit were five slightly younger neophytes, Mini-Flashes Luna, Bloomer, Brace, Socket and Frill, each one poised at a different post. The seated youngsters ready at their workstations, the uniform short skirts tucked neatly out of the way, and the mood of anxious anticipation charging the ozone all combined to suggest the final few minutes before an all-important high school exam.

It was Mini-Flash Frill whose radar-scope first began to register. Into the waiting hush she announced: “Incoming.”

Then it was nine o’ clock on the dot, and the invigilator had told them they may turn their papers over.

Words such as Joe had never before spoken to anyone were spilling from his lips faster than he could stop them. He and Gala were now standing too close for this to be anything other than exactly what it felt like.

“These many months at the castle, as I lay alone each night in my tower room,” he whispered to her. “Thinking of you, a mere few floors below, no more than staircases between us. It was endless anguish to wait, to do nothing, when everything in me longed to act on what I felt. And when I allowed myself to dream that perhaps you were as restless as I, and might even share the desire that had long consumed me...”

Gala did not reply with words. Joe however heard her answer, as surely as if she had voiced it.

“Then you did,” he breathed in tones of awe.

She slid her hand under his long hair and gripped the back of his neck, pulling him nearer still. “How can you have had the confidence to save Nottingham so many times,” she murmured, “and yet be unable to believe anyone else could feel that way for you?”

“You never told me,” Joe breathed.

“I did,” said Gala. “Many, many times. But you were only listening for her. Even though you were so unlike she could never speak to you that way.”

Gala laid her head beside his, her dark scented locks brushing his cheek. Both their bodies had started talking the language to which she referred.

“But I’ve told you over and over, we’re the same,” she went on softly. “You saw that when I showed you my childhood. There’s nothing in her life that could make her understand what you went through when you faced what I did, losing your own parents. And to lose them that way...”

Gala was too absorbed in this to notice the change fast coming over Joe. With her eyes still closed and her face against him she continued:

“Only I could know how it felt for you, as you walked into sight of your house and saw your neighbour in his front room, talking on the telephone. He never went into that room, or used that phone. That was when you knew something was wrong. That was when you started to run the last stretch home. The wind was blowing hard across the fens, trees stooping almost to touch the ground. And you didn’t stop running until you’d thrown open the living-room door, and seen – ”

Suddenly Joe drew back, putting cold distance between them. Gala blinked and stared at him.

“I have never told that story to you,” he declared, slowly and with absolute conviction.

“Yes you have,” said Gala, puzzled. “How else would I know?”

Rushing back upon Joe all at once were recent fears, somehow forgotten until this moment, that in certain other matters Gala had not been entirely honest with him. It was this, as much as the intimate nature of the memory on which she had unexpectedly intruded, that made him fling abruptly at her: “A strange question, for one whose research of my life was so thorough!”

“Do you really think I’d do that?” Gala cried. “Yes, it was necessary to find out as much as I could about your origins prior to our making contact. But why would I travel back in time to the moment itself, then telepathically read you as you lived it?”

The many emotions raging within Joe made it no easy task to consider this question objectively. Even he, however, was able to see the one point about it that was irrefutable.

“You cannot have done,” Joe returned slowly, and though he was agreeing with Gala his voice was portentous indeed. “It would have been impossible to psychically shield yourself from me whilst also scanning my mind in such detail.”

“Then you must have told me,” said Gala, not understanding his ominous tone. “At one of our dinners, perhaps. What other explanation is there?”

“We are not alone on this ship,” Joe reminded her quietly.

Gala’s eyes widened. “The prince? Draxu?” she exclaimed. “You think he’s somehow doing this?”

“Did I not maintain that nothing of our behaviour was right!” Joe burst out. “If Draxu has some manner of psychic ability he may have been exercising it on us from the outset, manipulating our minds, surreptitiously granting us access to each other’s thoughts and emotions. Our conduct, our disregard of our priorities and principles, and now the knowledge you have somehow gained as to my most closely-guarded secret...there is no other way to account for it!”

Gala sighed. “That’s not what you were saying a minute ago,” she remarked. “I’ve heard of getting cold feet, but I’ll admit the excuse is a new one on me.”

“When did I tell you about my parents?” demanded Joe. It was clear Gala could not answer.

“I have never told that story,” he said again. “Not to Degris. Not to Neetra. Not to you.”

“Fine,” Gala conceded at last. “Then we’ll go and check on Draxu. You never know, it might end up being just as much fun.”

In her irony was a cumbrous truth for both of them. Physically neither was quite prepared yet to shift to this new task, and put aside the one for which they had been gearing up. There was nothing for it however but to try and shoulder the vexatious burden as they set off below decks, Gala strapping her sword-belt back on.

END OF CHAPTER ONE