The Girls From Space, Chapter Eight

Auntie Green had witnessed something like this before. At the Arch of Titus however, colour and light had moved as if they were alive. Here the blue lay heavy atop the pink like liquids of different density, stars swollen when seen through this veil, and all deepening to blood-red where three pairs of poised rooted feet surrounded a fourth on the gravel.

It made sense. Titus had been an engagement which the whole Special Program closed. This trio was up against altogether different odds, and the best they could muster was a standoff.

The Foretold One knew it too. They were holding him, for now, each directing to that end every drop of the mysterious energies that made up their being.

He in turn held them. They were but three. Yet he himself by now was weakened. Their own weakness needs must be his weapon.

So even as Special Program subtlety worked on his defences, Harbin probed theirs.

He found what he was looking for.

Experience did not necessarily mean fortitude. His enemies had been fools to entrust attack-priority to one so vulnerable.

Harbin’s scarlet eyes bored at Mini-Flash Juniper like embers, but it was not his hands whose touch she began to feel. Nor did hers move, any more than they had done since the commencement. Nevertheless, it was their soft palms and fingers stroking those sensations with which Mini-Flash Juniper lately had been all too preoccupied, gently at first, but relentless. As their work continued, ever building, so the sluggish light which enveloped this sinister exchange started to circle like slow gel. With mounting horror Mini-Flash Juniper realised that as her palpitations intensified, so with greater swiftness and magnitude would these whirlpool through the triangle made up of herself and her friends.

Flashshadow and Mini-Flash Splitsville would know she sometimes did that.

But they mustn’t. It wasn’t a thing Juniper was comfortable with them knowing about.

It wasn’t appropriate.

The moving fluid was a riptide now, and both the other Mini-Flashes were fighting for their footing amid its force. Juniper’s knees buckled. She couldn’t help it.

“Thomthar!”

That pleading cry was a last lash beyond even the vicious violations thus far endured, and it thrashed out the lurid vortex to froth and subsequent nothing. Stars resumed their pitiless glinting stare from the black as three girls lapsed strengthless upon hard stones, and The Foretold One stood hunched but tall above them.

It was an act worthy of his mother.

Not that Harbin underestimated for the barest moment what danger these girls posed to him. This matter he dwelled on with all gravity now. He could not afford to do but. His triumph today meant little, for the threat did not come of their combat potential. The Special Program were by and large a factor still to be decided. Most of them, Harbin could at least anticipate, maybe even control. He was doing so now, and all it had taken was a simple forcefield-sphere. That much boded well for the coming conflict.

But these three. They were a warning to Harbin that the Special Program might likewise pledge themselves to the cause he had vowed to eradicate.

If they did so in sufficient numbers, it would surely decide the outcome when the day came.

He needs must slay them. But not like this. Not as heroes on the field of battle. Harbin would be party to no crusade. He would take them with him, together with the one whose knowledge he sought. Then at very great length he would see to it that the galaxy beheld three shattered broken frames, and learned what their last hours had been. Specifically, of how they had wept and begged and recanted. He would make examples of them. Then they would be martyrs to no Mini-Flash. All they would inspire in their own kind was fear.

The old Flash Club woman on the other hand might with indifference be dispatched, and only that perfunctory task kept Harbin on this rock. He struck off in her direction.

Then he paused.

What was that noise?

TO BE CONTINUED