Thunderous, Chapter One

On a flat-topped mountain overlooking a gulley which served as an outer space drive-in cinema sat Joe, an hour or so subsequent to Flashshadow’s mysterious interview with Flashthunder. Joe had frequently been to this spot before, as it was his preferred vantage-point for surveying the galactic newsreels by night, but this evening’s feature presentation was not set to begin until later. The rocky ravine far below was bereft of twin-seat spacecraft, and the towering holo-screen which closed off its far end was dull and blank in the asteroid’s perpetual deep blue night. Where motion and action were the accustomed state, all at present was lifeless, but for the turmoil reigning within our hero’s breast.

He held in his hand the scale model of the Daylight Jewel, which Flashshadow had returned to him with a report that her mission was not accomplished. Much as Joe had reason to be sorry for this, it brought a greater and guiltier pang that he had also caught himself feeling relieved at the news. Far too many innocent lives rested on his hearing Neetra’s message for him to allow emotional responses to interfere. But Joe had since forced himself to confront the truth that a part of him had been privately hoping against hope that Neetra’s chosen key-holder would not turn out to be Flashthunder. Even if it had been unavoidable for her, it would have seemed cruel. It would not have been the Neetra he knew.

Of course, Joe understood why she had made it impossible for either himself or Dylan to open the cleverly-crafted container. There would have been too great a risk in that, when Four Heroes business bore such heavy implications on this entire quadrant. If the message had fallen into the wrong hands, it could only have remained safe if the two obvious recipients were as much in the dark as anyone else about how to access it. However, now that the miniature starship rested securely in Joe’s care, he was left with a puzzle to which up until now, Flashthunder had seemed the likeliest if least-desired answer.

Who else in this galaxy, after all, had shared such intimacies with Joe’s loved one as to be in any position to know whatever snippet of knowledge or private password was required to bid this time-capsule open? Joe heaved a sigh. There was the part he had not much liked to confront. Indeed, our hero was not even sure whether Flashthunder’s very identity was something Neetra had meant for him to learn. Certainly she had seemed to go out of her way to avoid mentioning him by name when she introduced the topic of this Mini-Flash boy and the solace she had found in him while she and Joe were apart. Had it been by genuine accident that a little later on in their walk across Nottingham she had said “Flashthunder” aloud, inadvertently slipping Joe the chance to put two and two together?

For that, he had done. Joe burned with shame at the memory of how his ears pricked up at that moment without any conscious command from him, as small-minded opportunistic jealousy effortlessly overrode any sentiments that might have been worthy of The Four Heroes’ founder. More shaming still to Joe was that since arriving in the populated regions of this galaxy he had not been able to let it rest, but instead turned his knowledge to use, surreptitiously finding out just as much as he could about this Flashthunder. On discovering the latter was now romantically involved with somebody else Joe had been gladdened at first, then immediately wracked with self-reproach once again. It had made him feel less like an heroic prophet striving to save the universe from devastation, and more like some skulking schoolyard misfit in the kind of junior high experience he had heard of but never known.

Yet try as he might, Joe had proved powerless to stop himself taking these repeated dips in the mire of envy and doubt. For at a time when he had been emphatically not ready to meet Neetra’s growing need of him, she had turned to Flashthunder and seen, on whatever level, someone who apparently was. Joe was not certain he could make that boast even now. It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried his best when it came to it, but Joe and Flashthunder had more in common than either of them realised. The way our hero was starting to feel about that particular subject was akin to how the latter felt about Flashball.

Joe sighed again, and looked down at the fragment of his and Neetra’s past to which he tightly held. Glinting from that gilt-edged sapphire orb were a million memories of the little girl who had piloted its full-sized functional iteration, most of them to do with how her sweetness had so flurried the awkwardly verbose early teen he was then. Joe remembered that boy, and looking back, he might have been somewhat prone to pretences of noble self-sacrifice intended to fool even himself. There was no point in Joe doing now as he would have done then. Tonight he was in a better mood than he had been now he knew Flashthunder wasn’t the one to open the capsule, and there it was.

If not Flashthunder, however, then who? The next-most probable candidates stood out palpably to Joe, since Neetra had known her closest relatives were in this sector. For the hundredth time our hero yearned for it to be merely a matter of swallowing his pride and boarding the nearest Grindotron shuttle. It grieved him to the heart that circumstances had compelled him to snatch Neetra’s message away from parents and sisters who cared about her, all of whom Joe had not long ago called friends. He reminded himself, also for the hundredth time, that he and Dylan were at odds these days and the Neetkinses had elected to side with the latter. Joe was firm in his belief that the future of this galaxy depended on his guiding its younger generation in the ways of The Four Heroes’ cause. As long as Dylan posited an interpretation of that cause which Joe knew to be wrong, this quest to unlock Neetra’s message must remain a race between two ideologically opposed factions. Of all this, Joe was well aware. It was just that the price to pay for upholding his cause was steadily becoming higher than he could ever have reckoned.

More to the immediate purpose, if a member of Neetra’s family had indeed been entrusted with the elusive codeword then Joe was faced with a stumbling-block he as yet knew not how to overcome. There had to be some alternative avenue, he told himself again, some other option he had not thus far thought to explore, whereby he might find means of unlocking those secrets hidden in the shell of the Daylight Jewel.

A bluish-white light suffused the scene, and a voice spoke to Joe.

“Let me guess,” commenced the high-pitched sneer. “Neetra’s Mini-Flash lover took pity on you, as do we all, and has helped us to the revelation that we hold in our hands some sort of poorly-tuned music-box?”

Joe grinned as a gaunt figure with luminescent skin, pointed ears and sizzling red eyes stalked into view. “Forgive me, Contamination,” our hero said to him. “I was singing again. It seems I have done little else since setting foot on Eshcaton.”

“We’re all painfully aware of that, Earthling,” said Contamination.

Joe looked down at the model spaceship as it twinkled in the radiance cast by his companion. It was quite true that from the moment he laid eyes on this nostalgic object nestled innocuously amongst the relics on the temple shelf, one particular melody had seldom been far from his meditations or lips. He wished as ever he could remember a little more of it, beyond the few bars which kept returning to him. Even the title would have been a start. Most likely it was some forgotten chart-single which had been on the airwaves when he and Neetra were in 2596. The particular shape in which her communication came packaged had, after all, brought back to Joe so much else about that time.

Not all of which our hero would have been quite comfortable talking about, least of all with Contamination. For bound up in the song was that which once had meant incipient tingles sparked in him by Neetra’s smile or darting contact with her huge brown eyes, and now meant a sunset stretch both timeless and all too short after which Joe had never again breathed in the presence of his love or his home.

“Ah, and it looks like I was wrong,” Contamination went on airily. “There in your hand I see the fruits of today’s productive labour. I’m sure that if I were an abducted farn, it would bring me endless comfort in my final days to know my captor’s avenging father had devoted every last precious second that remains to sitting around caterwauling and feeling sorry for himself.”

“You are wise, Contamination, in your vicious unkindness,” Joe told him, and stood. “We know more than we did, but our quest is none the closer to completion for it, and some diversion from this task would be well-received.”

“Fool,” Contamination comforted him. “I suppose now you’re going to ask me again to show you where the galactimarket is?”

“I would esteem it a great favour,” Joe replied, “if you are still certain the visit would be worth my while?”

“I thought of you the minute I saw the pathetic place,” affirmed Contamination, this time without any sarcasm at all. “Because for reasons which are beyond me, your planet’s greasy revolting food proved popular among Solidity soldiers stationed in Nottingham City Centre. More of it than you can imagine was smuggled back here through the Toothfire warp-gate, to be studied and replicated. Gastronomically speaking it’s become quite the underground vogue. Where we’re going is not what you’d call the high street, human, but I guarantee you’ll find the ingredients you’re looking for.”

Joe clapped him on the shoulder, releasing a crackly blue flare, and set off at once for where they were parked. As he did so he launched directly into the song again, without the slightest indication he was conscious of it.

“It’s going to be a long ride,” Contamination remarked to himself.

END OF CHAPTER ONE