Undercurrent

“Grindostater units recommissioned for service on Nereynis,” were the words Psiona finally heaved out. “That’s the one.”

As holographic newspaper-clippings went it was a perfunctory two-paragraph job at best, but of all Psiona’s numerous team-mates clustered round her control-desk in the asteroidal headquarters’s monitoring-cave, no humanoid or mini-jeep felt in much of a position to start second-guessing. Ever since their empty-handed return from the Rings of Xandreth, Psiona had applied herself to nothing short of unstinting toil over the galaxy’s media-streams. Carmilla, though she knew from experience how stubborn and determined girls that age could be, had more than once been on the brink of treating Psiona like one of her own little sisters and insisting she stopped taxing herself thus.

Now our heroine gently helped the red-headed beauty up from her chair. “I’m psychic too, hon,” Carmilla advised. “And in your future there’s a nice long bubble-bath followed by bed.”

Psiona seemed ready to obey, but there was clearly something else she had to tell her friends first. She looked to them, flaming tresses a-tumble, still lovely despite her weariness.

“You need to know why it took me so long,” the girl said. “It’s not that there weren’t enough news items relevant to our mission. It was the opposite. After Xandreth, everything suddenly changed. It became almost infinitely harder for me to be sure any report was of significance to us, when all at once there was no headline, no story, no snippet from any planet or solar-system that wasn’t going to be connected in some way to Phoenix Prime’s deeds.”

Croldon Thragg, scientist and statistician, caught that Carmilla didn’t quite understand.

“When we failed to prevent your sister’s escape on the Rings of Xandreth,” he explained, “our situation escalated such that it now endangers the entire galaxy.”

“On a scale not witnessed since the First and Final War,” confirmed Psiona in a hollow voice.

It was only the tiniest comfort to Carmilla that she didn’t know what that was either. The sound of it alone was more than sufficient. Putting first things first however, she slipped an arm round Psiona’s shoulders and led the limp girl off to rest. It was some testament to the gravity prevailing in her wake that Sludge-Man didn’t even offer to scrub her back or fluff her pillows for her.

“So what’s our next move?” asked Carmilla, turning instinctively to Blaster-Track Commander. No sooner had she done so than she wished very much she hadn’t.

Carmilla had to keep reminding herself that she and the Commander were not as close as it so often felt. The intimate relationship she remembered sharing with him had in fact been no more than a deception, worked by a most convincing impostor. Even so, nothing she’d seen thus far of the real him accounted for how visibly shaken he stood in the aftermath of Psiona’s portent. He was neither a coward nor weak, and as weighty as this First and Final War-level event doubtless promised to be, the other men and even the jeeps were bearing its implications like the soldiers they were. Blaster-Track Commander’s chalk complexion and demeanour of dread were surely caused by some other factor, one our heroine saw well enough he had elected not to tell.

“Plain enough, friend Carmilla,” came back the terse reply. “Psiona concludes our path leads to Nereynis. We depart at once.”

Presently the Commander and his trusty red mini-jeep Blaster Track were alone. Slowly and in silence they trundled together down an empty tunnel, Blaster-Track’s four wheels steadily turning as the thoughts of he who rode upright atop him did likewise.

“Prince Agaric was in our power, faithful friend, and I set him free,” Blaster-Track Commander declared at last. “Now behold what harvest we reap for the galaxy I once swore to defend.”

“Boss, there’s no use my rolling out an I-told-you-so,” Blaster Track said supportively. “Trick now is to clean up this mess.”

“We might have done so on Xandreth Rings,” continued the bitter tirade. “How could I have been so foolish, so irresponsible, so self-motivated?”

“You know the answer to that,” Blaster-Track pointed out softly. When no words ensued from above, the jeep gave a sigh that sounded like radio-static.

“Look, boss, there’s something I maybe should have told you before,” said he. “I’m no expert, but what these humans and our own Mini-Flashes are into these days...well, from where I’m parked, foolish and irresponsible and self-motivated pretty much sums it up. And I’ll tell you something else, they only get like that for each other. Organic beings, I mean, not machines. Best thing too, because I couldn’t be doing with it.”

Blaster-Track Commander smiled in spite of himself.

“Now, the robot replica of you, boss,” Blaster-Track went on frankly. “It fooled me. That’s saying something, when you consider how far back the pair of us go. No way Carmilla was able to see through that thing’s disguise. Dimension Borg’s plan hinged on duplicating everything real and alive about you, accurately enough for The Four Heroes to fall for it. Those traits one living life-form looks for in another are all the kid found in your double. She finds the same in you.”

“Friend Carmilla also informed us that true to its programming, my doppelgänger betrayed all those loyal to her cause,” Blaster-Track Commander added rigidly. “She will detect another resemblance then, on learning I have lied to her.”

“There you go again,” chuckled the fond jeep. “Boss, you’re not getting it. Honour and integrity were everything when we were staging a galactic rebellion against Space-Screamer’s tyranny. You and Carmilla though, that’s a whole other contest. You’ve got to adapt to the different way it’s played. Darn it, it’s a good thing you never joined The Flash Club. You’re not much on learning the rules of the game.”

Blaster-Track hesitated, wondering whether he should hint any further as to what he’d seen developing between Carmilla and the copy before he left Earth. Or, indeed, that he’d observed the new generation doing some amusingly crazy things, and not always telling each other the absolute truth was neither as rare nor as shocking as his constant companion seemed to think.

“All I’m saying is, boss, credit her with a little more savvy,” Blaster-Track declared at length. “That old foolishness, irresponsibility and self-motivation might be more familiar to her than you know.”

There she was. Blaster-Track Commander turned and beheld that sight he had come to long for when absent, a vision in ruby and gold, her shining face framed by sumptuous tresses of brown. The graceful motion with which she sat, smoothing the pleats of her skirt beneath her, all but unmanned him. In this day and age the galaxy boasted an abundant supply of girls, but precious few women of Carmilla’s stature.

“A leader who cannot remain strong before his troops deserves your finest reprimand, fair one,” he anticipated humbly.

“I can see something’s the matter. I knew the fake you well enough for that,” replied Carmilla, and like Blaster-Track mere moments before pondered how much she should reveal of the very same theme which had given the jeep pause. “But I can’t force you to tell me what’s wrong, Commander. In fact, what I came to say is that if it helps at all, then as far as I’m concerned we’re going about this right.”

Earnestly she took the astonished one’s hand in hers.

“When we learned The Back Garden was involved, we all agreed we had no choice but to fight this battle below the line of common sight,” Carmilla went on. “If the Alliance discovered Prince Agaric and his powers were in league with Scientooth, Toothfire was certain to declare all-out war. The message we just received may not have been quite as pretty as the messenger, but it proved our decision was correct. Now we know for sure there could be major consequences to what Phoenix Prime did. Psiona’s insights also give us a chance to avert this calamity ahead of it actually happening.”

Blaster-Track Commander had to admit he’d not thought of it that way. More than ever he marvelled at Carmilla’s seemingly inexhaustible capacity for bringing him hope.

“I mean, pitched hostilities between this quadrant’s two most merciless armies?” continued Carmilla. “That’s got to be at least in the same ball-park as what Psiona was warning us about.”

The Commander looked solemn.

“Even so dread a conflict as that which we must by all means prevent would not jeopardise the whole sector as did the First and Final War,” was his response. “There is some piece of this puzzle we are missing yet. Perhaps the clue lies in the mysterious nomenclature of our destination. Nereynis, and Drenthis her twin...only of late, when Professor Grindo purchased the former, did he announce these worlds had in some bygone age been dubbed thus. If so, the names are ancient enough to be meaningless even for such seasoned campaigners as Blaster-Track and I. How then did the Professor learn of them? Were we to unravel that enigma, my instincts tell me the truths we seek should duly be disclosed.”

She squeezed his hand. “This is one heck of a responsibility I’ve heaped onto you and your team by coming to you in the first place, Commander,” said she. “I can’t apologise enough for that. Finding my sister was never supposed to change into saving the quadrant. But we can save it. Just as long as we put everything else aside.”

That was easier said than done, so Carmilla grinned broadly and bravely. If there was one thing she and her sisters did well, she suspected it was that.

“As for the mysteries and enigmas – all of them,” concluded Carmilla, mindful again she was telling Blaster-Track Commander maybe less than she ought, “those we can figure out as we go along.”

No-one was at all comfortable with Psiona’s insistence she stay behind and return to her control-desk as soon as she recovered. The girl was a proven battlefield asset, and moreover her official duties had already exacted such a toll that it preyed on her friends to consign her anew to gruelling labour which they were unable to lighten. This last factor though, as Psiona herself argued persuasively, was the very reason she was most needed back at base. Another across-the-board shift in the prognostic implications of current events would inform her at once their mission was accomplished. Equally, it was imperative Psiona should be able to notify her team as to changes for the worse, not that anybody much cared to speculate on what form it might still be possible for these to take.

So it was that Carmilla and five men, each on his or her speeding jeep, blasted from the asteroid and surfed starwards to where Grindotron’s reinforcements were scheduled to make their hyperspace jump. It was no trouble making out this destination even from a distance. The ships were square slabs of stupefying size, less suggestive of mobile craft than a conurbation of flat-roofed cities hanging in space.

Croldon Thragg ran a series of swift analyses on his Wonder-Tool. “The vessels are too structurally dense for me to be able to scan their cargo, but from the proportions alone it’s clear they’re carrying more than Grindostater units,” he reported. “Large as those are, they wouldn’t require haulage on such a scale.”

“It is well, friend Thragg,” said Blaster-Track Commander. “So prodigious a convoy will scarcely expect hitch-hikers travelling by our chosen means. Latch on and set yourselves!”

On that instruction the warrior Zeldich and bestial Grey Bag took point, swooping low over bulkheads that stretched beneath like endless barren flatlands. Zeldich whirled his grappling-iron above his head and threw, while Grey Bag’s sturdy steed fired off its winch-and-claw. The business-ends of each clamped down upon the hull, and thus the two friends with their respective lines at a taut diagonal fixing them to the Grindo ship proceeded to match its moving mass at pace, still surfing the spaceways only now it was more like waterskiing the vast vessel’s slipstream.

Following their lead Croldon Thragg projected from the Wonder-Tool a magnetic ray upon the next-nearest hulk, then gripping his prized invention in both hands secured a place for himself and the jeep Computero on this journey. Sludge-Man enthusiastically sluiced from his outstretched palms sufficient gluey greenish-brown glop to adhere himself and yellow-painted Little-Track likewise, which left only Blaster-Track and green-hued Runalong to trigger their tractor-beam headlamps that Carmilla and the Commander might complete the crew. Six strange parascenders, anchored by their various means to the gigantic Grindo scows, glided side-by-side and braced for the first blasting billow that would herald their embarkation unto hyperspace. Just as Phoenix Prime had ventured to the twin planets by taking advantage of an Alliance fleet bound in that direction, so was her sister now retracing those steps in the name of bringing her home.

Sisters they were. No thought besides that was on Carmilla’s mind as Runalong at her feet gently rode out cosmic currents and she swayed accordingly with the flow, her pleats holding to vertical and stacking first one way then the next. Phoenix Prime had meant well. Though of all her siblings Carmilla had spent by far the shortest time in her presence, she nevertheless knew her as family did, and that much was painfully clear. Springing Scientooth from his own people’s clutches had been Phoenix Prime’s confused attempt at putting right an injustice for which all the daughters Neetkins bore some blame. These noble intentions had however put the galaxy at risk, as Psiona established beyond all doubt. Thus Carmilla’s duty both to her immediate kin and innocent life across this quadrant was, as Blaster-Track Commander had said, plain enough.

It began. Soft undulations of solar wind were summarily replaced by a mighty juddering lurch communicated along tethers of energy and matter alike, and within that same split-second Carmilla’s hemline blew back as instantaneous acceleration to lightspeed pulled six travellers from their familiar universe and plunged them into realms of vertiginous phantasmagorical rush. The band of voyagers battened down on jeep-back to weather the dizzying psychedelia of this open-air interstellar joyride, and none clung so fast nor so dauntlessly as Carmilla at their formation’s arrowhead. Her steady gaze dwelt not on that chaos through which she forged, but rather on the destination and the mission awaiting her beyond it.

To Nereynis, and once there, to see this out.

NEXT: 'PANDEMONIUM'