The Incursion, Chapter Four

Picking up speed the Silver Cat Lord seemed to tense its suspension-springs. Powerful pneumatic hind-legs slammed tarmac and in one phenomenal pounce the mobile mass careened clear over beachside apartment complexes, its spinning tank-treads passing penthouse gardens while a purposeful prow and flying forepaws pointed to the path of inevitable descent. Landing in an explosion of sand the Silver Cat Lord growled about to face across open shore the stalking Grindostater unit, for the etherium actualizor had replicated geography as faithfully as it had architecture, and an inland sea shimmered as far as this new Nottingham’s crest. Above the waves Heaven’s arch was all but taken up by the orb of Nereynis, like a moon far nearer than Earth’s own, and whose celestial ring made the Mini-Flashes think of Xandreth while Joe’s reflections, as they had done earlier that day, ran on Saturn. A relatively recent astronomical feature, it was made of rubble which had been a sister-world called Drenthis before Dylan cracked that planet.

Mini-Flash Splitsville threw a lever on her control-board. The jointed body of the red space-rod blew from its launcher on the Silver Cat Lord’s flank, while the strange sidelong wheel of its car-mode tail-section stayed where it was and showed itself for a spool of tightly-wound titanium cable unfurling behind the business-end. Thus this two-seater turned grappling-hook circled the Grindostater unit three times, trailing tensile strength round and about its tremendous trunk to bind it fast.

Such Grindo-maunfactured colossi however were flexible in ways a humanoid skeletal structure was not, and even with its upper arms pinned there was play enough for the unit to flex its elbows and grasp with both hands the taut line that ensnared it. Next second the Silver Cat Lord had been hoisted from its treads in a seemingly effortless deadlift and was whirling like a weight on the end of its own line. Flashtease’s yellow and Mini-Flash Splitsville’s white were fleetingly part of the onboard décor as each wearer tumbled into centrifugal chaos, and Joe hammered down on retract.

The constricting loops loosened about the Grindostater unit and swiftly the cord began to slide against the grain of its grip, razing unfeeling finger-pads until they lost traction and relinquished their prize. As the grapple snapped back onto its sprue the catlike citadel to which that was attached banged and bashed to earth, its bolts having taken a shaking but its four feet firmly planted.

In a far-flung corner of the cockpit the Mini-Flashes lay with little legs splayed. Flashtease slipped his arms round Mini-Flash Splitsville and helped her up at once, then after seeing her to her seat quickly resumed his own.

Joe gave it both barrels. Bombardment from the Silver Cat Lord’s dual cannon drove the Grindostater unit back, sending it splashing for tidal shallows. Once it had waded out of range however it briefly hunkered down, and then a spray of droplets glinted in Nereynis’s light as all at once the gaunt gargantuan threw its leaping silhouette to impossible velocities. Its speed and agility defied belief for something built on such a scale. A cacophonous impact trembled the coast and its surrounding chalets, whereat the unit kneeling atop the Silver Cat Lord commenced a volley of slaps and backhands which maxed-out the latter’s shock-absorbers on every blow.

“This isn’t going quite as well as we’d normally have liked!” Flashtease pointed out.

“Flipped-out freakozoid’s real original,” Mini-Flash Splitsville agreed. “We’re putting him on a slow train to nowhere! Make with the altitude, Boy-Scout!”

Flashtease whacked the button for another back-legs bound, pounding the sand that the Silver Cat Lord shot straight up while Splitsville fired the grappling-hook again. This time its tungsten cord tuned in on itself, describing clear spirals round its own hulls of origin so that when it tightened, it lashed the Grindostater unit flat to the fuselage on which it preyed. With long arms and legs jutting at otherworldly attitudes it looked like the galaxy’s most bizarre hunting-trophy as Joe triggered the Cat’s belly-jets, boosting its jump to a rapid stratospheric ascension. Through the viewscreen glass the Grindostater unit’s great upside-down globe of a head peered eyeless on our heroes.

Broaching the periphery of Nottingham’s atmosphere Joe disengaged the grappling-hook and returned it to its launcher. As calculated, their prodigious passenger floated free, but on doing so it swung out a shin and booted the Silver Cat Lord mightily in the undercarriage. For a perilous moment the metal feline and the Grindostater unit’s jumble of limbs teetered together on the uppermost cusp of gravity’s bubble. Then momentum tipped both into orbital space where helpless they began to drift.

It was a tangled realm of flailing arms and legs where Mini-Flash underwear seemed the only outer garments as Joe battled his own weightlessness on the bridge’s ceiling. Seatbelts, he made a mental note to himself, as the catseye windshield at what was now the bottom of a vault presented a desperate glimpse of sanctuary. An island which sailed the stars, Nottingham’s twinkling sprawl and ocean and woodland and mountain-peaks arrayed atop an inverted pyramid of bedrock which on that day had uprooted itself from Nereynis’s crust. In the parlance of his homeworld, Joe thought to himself grimly, so near and yet so far.

The floundering Mini-Flashes by now were having at least as much trouble with oxygen depletion as they were with as their inside-out tunics. Joe focused his Four Heroes powers on the distant instrument-panel. He wasn’t Dylan. Try to telekinetically snag that stick and he’d likely wrench it from the dashboard. So instead Joe anchored himself to his seat’s study pillar where it was fixed to the floor, and proceeded to painstakingly pull himself at it through the thinning air. It was less like an invigorating swim and more like clawing along solid rock inch by weary inch. Joe’s last breath was leaving his lungs as he felt his fingers close round the hard-fought-for handle, and with all his remaining might he wrested it down.

The grappling-hook blew and made a beeline for Nottingham below. Its bumper boomed deep into the beach and found purchase, then strong reels struck up their rotations and the Silver Cat Lord with its thankful occupants winched itself back to breathable climes. At its hindquarters the Grindostater unit was heading in the opposite direction, its ungainly frame tinged with the first fires of reentry as Nereynis reclaimed its wayward son. Joe and his young friends bade their adversary goodbye as they watched it embark for the colonial environs of Grindopolis whence it and the other invaders came, though the return journey was what Mini-Flash Splitsville would have called a one-way trip. Then silver paws and tank-treads secured a sandy touchdown, and while three heroes within the Cat’s head drew huge appreciative inhalations and rejoiced to be alive, a chiselled and inscrutable leonine visage stared steadfastly out on Nottingham.

The first Town Hall on Nottingham, Earth was never a place of residence. Here however, Joe and Neetra had adopted the large round recess encircled by stone columns directly underneath the dome, and flooring it in bed-linen converted the roofspace to an open-air retreat sufficiently out of the way for their privacy. This meant they lived in close relation to Nereynis, and on a nightly basis watched that world as it waxed and waned through its various phases over Nottingham’s horizon. Our heroes had chosen their first place together for more than romantic reclusiveness. In 2596 it had been prudent to keep a close eye on a proximitous ringed planet, and these days the same policy seemed sound.

The seclusion of this spot was appreciated however, especially when one of them had had a long day like this one was for Joe. Now they lay touching and at rest, ephemeral vestiges of physical consummation mingling pleasantly with the still-warm night, and read together the latest issue of the comic which was propped open on Neetra’s contours. She was a big fan of Sludge-Man’s work and positively devoured the handicrafts and recipes. Her enthusiasm for the weekly publication equalled that of any Mini-Flash, and but for her state of undress she looked to Joe so like one, lying there intent on it, that he was moved to tell her she was sweeter than any among their present intake. The sweet smile she returned was so put-on and irreverent that Joe felt ten times the love for her that a sincere article might have prompted.

“Just knowing they’re out there now,” Neetra then murmured. “Sleeping under those roofs. Every day discovering more about the cause. What you did for me, we’re doing for them.”

Joe lifted a lock of the slightly damp hair he loved, and kissed it.

Neetra closed her comic. “So was that enough from the psychic girls on what happened today?” she asked. “They’re not the most detailed. We could really use Carmilla’s friend Psiona, she’s by far the best at it. But if she’s determined to be a little Alliance-knickers,” and this unfinished sentence Neetra punctuated by crinkling her nose. “Oh, and there was something Sludge-Man missed off his puzzle-page which my girls managed to get.”

She giggled and moved her face affectingly close to Joe’s. “Who can you think of who’s small and stuffy and almost as cute as me?” Neetra teased. “Sounds an awful lot like 4-H-N, doesn’t it.” She batted her eyes. “It’d be just like her to be involved in this somehow. But she’s not gone off the rails,” Neetra added with conviction. “Despite what it looks like. There’s more to it than that.”

“Did the psychic girls say so?” Joe inquired.

“A sister knows, Joe,” Neetra replied primly, sounding just like her Mother.

Joe drew her close. “Your students have excelled themselves,” he declared. “They share every truth they uncover, which is more than Scientooth will ever do. That one knew from the outset Grindopolis was making no attack. A diversion and a fact-finding mission, for the Alliance is well aware their present crisis is one in which we hold a stake.”

“They were checking if we had anything to do with it,” Neetra confirmed. “Which we didn’t, but from here on in I guess we’re going to have to. They’ve been doing a good job hushing it up, but apparently the problem started not long after the Arch of Titus mission. They’re losing control of the Special Program. The Flash Club just doesn’t understand well enough what they are.”

“And control they lose is control my son can as easily take,” said Joe in solemn concurrence. “For the sake of the galaxy then, we must demand that The Flash Club surrender the Special Program to our stewardship.”

From their satin sheets Neetra and Joe surveyed the Grindo-owned globe which awaited that portentous petition.

“We knew this time would come,” she reminded him.

“It has done so sooner rather than later,” Joe remarked. “In the parlance of our homeworld.”

END OF CHAPTER FOUR