The Heroes, the Pirate and the Head, Chapter One

The sun was shining down on a city that moved, breathed and sang with the joy of being alive. Nobody had known, on that day years ago when The Four Heroes created Nottingham, just what a safe-haven for all mankind was and what it would mean to live there. However, its people had since learned that an end to the evil and hopelessness that ruled Pre-Nottingham Earth did not bring with it an end to the challenges, the struggles and the rewards beyond price that made living what it was. In the shelter of Nottingham’s skyscrapers and hills, citizens had become older and wiser, children had grown up, and friendships and loves had made lasting foundations. One day there might be invasion and war, one day a protector of the city might be mourned as lost, and another day might even be announced as the last the world would ever know. All this, the people of Nottingham had faced. But there were other times too, times without number when the forces that had brought their city into being had triumphed over the darkness, and this was one of those times. What it stood for, to be leading life as a part of The Four Heroes’ vision, could be seen and felt all around. It was carried on every warm early-summer breeze, it shone from the glad faces of the populace, and it resonated from the towers steadily climbing back to meet the endless blue sky. Nottingham had survived.

Bret Stevens and Max Bohenien were in the midst of a hardworking building crew on that sunny morning, the two friends using their great strength to lend a hand in restoring one of the many neighbourhoods that had fallen to Dimension Borg. The project had only just begun and all operations were still on ground level, but such was the mood of hope and enterprise prevailing in Nottingham that the labourers felt they would be finishing off the roofs in next to no time.

“Old-fashioned ways are the best, Max!” Bret grinned, as he hefted a block of stone twice as big as himself and dropped it into place with a shimmering of blue light. “Using our cause to patch the old place up may have been quicker, but it was nowhere near as satisfying!”

“Yeah, I’m hopin’ Dylan won’t figure out a way ta unseal the caves until after we’re done with this workout!” laughed Max. “Too bad fer him though we couldn’t do anythin’ about the Nottingham drill, while we were travellin’ through time sortin’ out the other two. I guess it’s like Gala said – makin’ any more changes ta the course a’ history than we did woulda been just too dangerous.”

“I hope you’re right,” was Bret’s measured reply. Max nodded solemnly. Both men knew what it would mean about their new acquaintance Gala, if it should turn out something other than that were true.

“Leastways, it’s given us the chance ta get some exercise, an’ we should be grateful fer that!” Max went on, easily lifting the next massive stone. “After all, we’re neither of us as young as we used ta be!”

“You’ve got that right,” Bret agreed. “Who’d have thought we’d end up the old men of our gang? There are times I still catch myself thinking of the others as kids, but after everything we’ve been through, none of us are that any– ”

Then he stopped talking and turned to look over his shoulder.

“Get to cover,” said Bret, already taking off his leather jacket. Max knew enough about his best friend’s psychic powers to do as he said right away, and with a bellow of warning to the building crew thundered off to lead them to a sheltered location. Bret was gone from sight by the time his jacket hit the ground. A second passed, and then the top of an adjacent building exploded in a cloud of dust and mortar.

From out of the smoke howled a nightmarish form of dull blue and tarnished gold, a single red eye blazing ahead and flames spewing from the base of its gigantic body. Four spiderlike legs ending in needle-fine points trailed behind it, one flapping uselessly in the jetstream, and its vast metal frame, though battle-ravaged, rippled with steel muscle. It was a Dimension Borg robot, mass-produced from the Tatsu Biogenetics Corporation’s schematics to serve among the millions-strong army of The Four Heroes’ nemesis, and its domed head was identical to that of its master. Half of that head was missing, however, along with one of the robot’s arms, and a tangled mass of wires and cables writhed from where its right eye should have been.

Rocketing across the rooftops in pursuit of the blazing beast was Dylan Cook, a photon gun in his hand and jet-propelled roller-skates on his feet. His dark hair blowing back as he sped through the skies, Dylan took careful aim and fired upon his quarry, slicing fragments away from its weathered armour. The Dimension Borg robot’s mouth-grille vented a noise that was half- growl and half-meshing of gears, and it swivelled its head through one hundred and eighty degrees to glare at our hero. Beams of lethal red light flew from its remaining eye, disarming Dylan and sending his weapon spinning to the west. Rotating its dome to face forward again, the robot began to drop to the city streets below.

Dylan blew the locking bolts on his skates, which broke away from his feet in two bursts of compressed air. The heroic boy free-fell upon his foe and grabbed tight to its metallic carcass, gritting his teeth and clinging on throughout the robot’s last fatal descent. When its functional talons met the pavement and drove down in a bone-shaking impact, splintering the concrete slabs across three impact zones, Dylan was already airborne again. He somersaulted lithely across the scene and skidded to a landing, facing the creature across a building-lined road.

“You’ve got our position!” Dylan yelled, both vocally and psychically. “Let’s do it!”

As if on cue, a fist struck the Dimension Borg robot from out of nowhere and a bronzed, brawny man with long blond hair swiftly followed it. In a swirl of his magnificent red velvet cloak the newcomer turned and made ready to strike again, but the Dimension Borg robot recovered swiftly and parried with its one arm, forcing the man onto the defensive. This was not something he seemed to object to, for he threw himself into the physical challenge with an eager smile on his handsome face.

“Don’t engage it in a sparring match, D’Carthage!” Dylan shouted from across the street. “Just hold with your vines so I can shut it down!”

“But my dear boy,” D’Carthage began, flashing Dylan a brilliant white smile from over his burly shoulder, “how should this fellow ever come to respect me as a worthy opponent, if I were not to give him satis– ”

Then the robot’s arm found its mark. A piston-powered uppercut of far greater force than any human could muster knocked D’Carthage skywards and back again, to slump into a landing by the curb. The enemy hunkered down, fire and smoke beginning to churn from its underside as it made ready to blast off again.

“Or,” a conversational voice put in, “you could just leave the sparring matches to the professionals!”

Bret Stevens flew from the shadows, afterimages of blue light flashing in his wake, and his flying kick decisively curtailed the foe’s escape bid. As Bret leapt away, explosive bolts rained down from above and shattered yet more of the street in the robot’s proximity, pinning it down. Their source was one of the high rooftops overlooking the square, on which two figures had appeared. The taller and older one, who wore a dark grey uniform and a black moustache, raised his rifle.

“Second front,” he commanded in lightly-accented English.

“I’m on it, Chancellor,” said the other, who had hairless orange skin, four arms and one great yellow eye. Diving from the roof, he bore down upon the robotic enemy as it sprawled and hissed and blasted its steely hide with a psychic barrage, flinging it down to the pavement with a mighty crash. Degris rebounded from his own psionic wall and flipped back to his vantage point to rejoin The Chancellor, while D’Carthage, picking himself up and rubbing his jaw, finally obeyed Dylan and summoned up his power over plants. Thick green creepers punched through the paving stones and lashed the fallen robot’s bulk to the Earth.

The enemy’s one red eye began to sizzle with a dangerous new glow, and something like the charged air at the onset of a thunderstorm crackled across the battlefield. Dylan ran forward and thrust out his hand.

“It’s activating its self-destruct, just like the others did!” the boy declared, as magenta-coloured whirls of light issued from his palm and began to spiral and flicker in competition with the emanations from the robot’s eye. “Come on, this time, let me keep it in check until I can find its off-switch…!”

Suddenly, the creature’s head whipped to the left as two armour plates on its upper torso blew away and clattered to the road. In an eruption of fiery exhaust the robot jettisoned its single arm, which tore free of D’Carthage’s living snare and roared like a great metal boomerang to the corner of the roof on which The Chancellor and Degris stood. The hurtling projectile turned masonry to powder and all at once both humans were flailing through empty space, Degris too stunned to use his powers.

“Guys!” Dylan cried, diverting his attention from the robot to transform a nearby lamppost into a safety net and catch his colleagues. Both tumbled into it unhurt, but in that instant the battle of wills was over. The Dimension Borg Robot’s self-destruct sequence, unhindered by Dylan’s powers, triggered and swallowed the creature up in blinding white gravitic force. A sphere of luminescence circled the stage, building facades reverberated with the din, and then it was over. All that remained was a huge smouldering crater in the middle of the road.

The five warriors gathered together, their ears ringing, their clothing somewhat scorched by the blast. “Darn,” Dylan said with a sigh. “I was so close that time…!”

Bret clapped him on the back. “You nearly had him, Dylan,” he said firmly. “You’ll get there. The next live one we track down, I’m sure you’ll – ”

“Suppose there aren’t any more live ones?” Dylan put in frankly. “We don’t know how many were left behind in Nottingham after the war. What if this was the last?”

The Chancellor strode forward and put his booted foot on the rim of the crater. He looked grimly into the embers at its heart for a moment, then turned to face his fellows.

“We must persist,” said he. “We must find another, and bring it in still functional. Only a live one can lead us to Dimension Borg!”

END OF CHAPTER ONE