Unto the Breach, Chapter Four

Back on Mars, the Solidity patrolmen were safely tied-up beside the wreck of their ship while Bret and Max searched through the scrap for the distress-beacon. Meanwhile Amy was sitting on the sand with the Professors and Bendigo, rounding off the long story of how she and her friends came to be there.

She had just reached the part where Empress Ungus, bringing her fearsome powers to bear in a head-on confrontation atop the Solidity’s orbital communications hub, had delivered a devastating surprise attack upon the trio and their Flash Club companion Storm-Sky. The situation had never looked grimmer as a barrage of blue-green eldritch fire cannoned into our heroes and cast them flailing into the dark vacuum of space, breaking first through the bulkhead of a star-cruiser and flinging several of the hefty two-legged mechanisms known as Stumgaurs into the void alongside them.

“And that’s where our dumb luck kicked in,” Amy continued. “Turns out Stumgaurs aren’t the terrifying robot brutes their home galaxy thinks they are. They’re vehicles, each one operated by a tiny oxygen-breathing organism. Seems they prefer to keep that a secret, but they didn’t reckon on The Four Heroes’ psychic powers. In our last seconds of consciousness Bret sensed one whose pilot had died in the impact, leaving his filtration-unit online, and he managed to telekinetically drag the three of us inside.”

“Not much elbow-room, even with the kid in her cat form!” Max recalled with a chuckle, as he and Bret rejoined the group carrying the piece of equipment they had successfully salvaged. “But we wasn’t in there long. Solidity tractor-beamed in the lost Stumgaurs before they set off, so once we’d put the knuckles ta the cargo-bay goons all we hadta do was lay low and let ’em do the legwork haulin’ our butts home!”

“We lost sight of Storm-Sky somewhere in the attack,” Bret added. “But his people can breathe and fly in space, and he’s one tough guy to boot. No reason to write him off yet, wherever he is.”

“Anyhow, we knew things were going to hot up for us sooner or later once the fleet reached Earth and began their assault,” Amy went on. “So when they dispatched their interceptors to Mars we stowed away. After all, the minute we saw it was the Feeder Ray we just knew you guys would be involved! So a little more ship-swapping once we got there, listening in on the communications while they were tracking you, and that pretty much brings us to where we are now.”

“Not that you’ve exactly been skimping on the adventures yourselves!” remarked Bret. “And you don’t look any the worse for that little throw-down just now.”

“I’ll say,” Amy continued approvingly to Iskira. “I’ve never seen you with such a glow. The Martian air must be doing you good!”

“That, erm, will be it,” Isikra replied quickly. “And now perhaps it is time we made haste?”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Bret, and switched the homing-beacon on. “Admiral Kasei and his troops can follow the signal to these prisoners. Sorry, Zeldich,” he added to that one as an afterthought, “I really seem to be making a habit of this.”

“Gonna be more Solidity around though, so best bet is ta make it ta the Capital City,” declared Max. “Ya got wheels, so we stick together we should be fine.”

“I suspect we have little reason to fear the Solidity now, Mr. Bohenien,” Dr. Mendelssohn told his rescuers gratefully.

“Right, Bendigo’s a warrior again!” grinned Bret, clapping his gladsome friend on the bare shoulder. And the rest of his party quite agreed, though they tactfully left it unsaid, that neither the Solidity nor any other enemy in the universe could so much as begin to muster a threat to compare with that of Bendigo fighting on your side.

For long minutes the Nottingham drill-hole had echoed with the ugly noise of Space- Screamer’s guard pounding on their fallen angel. A dank ground-fog was steadily creeping across the cavern floor, casting its pall of murkiness over the deplorable scene. At great length, Space-Screamer signalled for his servants to stop.

“Let her live long enough to learn of my glorious design,” he commanded, sweeping majestically through the grey-white roils to assume an imaginary pulpit.

“Ah, Dimension Borg,” Space-Screamer commenced. “What a fool you were. True it is that in obliterating this world your Solidity shall indeed ensure our galaxy never suffers the ravages of the Foretold One, quite as you intended…but, ha! The supreme irony of that which shall follow! If you could only be there to stand by and witness, as everything you inaugurated meets its demise through the very powers of your most ancient enemies! Lightning and his Flash Club, that fungus and her conjuring-tricks, the entire Solidity of which you were so proud…none will stand against the one force even you were never able to defeat! Thus shall I rule my sector again, and thus shall you learn the price to pay for trusting me. You, and all those – ”

It took a great deal to interrupt Space-Screamer when one of his monologues was just hitting its stride. However, he had become aware he could no longer see his listeners.

“What is with this mist?” he burst out. “And underground? What kind of climate does this demented planet have?”

Then the cloudy vapours vanished at once. The quartet of mechanical bodyguards, the rocky walls of the drill-hole and the slumped semi-conscious Carrie were back in Space- Screamer’s vision. But that wasn’t all.

So too were the Dimension Borg robots Electromagnet, Breakpoint, Conduit and Technomancer, of whom the last named had summoned the fog under cover of which they arrived. There before the turncoats hulked that imposing foursome in their darkly burnished blue and bronze, each one leeching paranormal might from the human super-criminals locked inside their armour. They were the last soldiers of their late creator still functional on Planet Earth, loyal to the Solidity in their every tiniest circuit, and they had attended to all that Space-Screamer had had to say. Now eight narrow crimson eyes burned their fury directly upon him.

“Accusation,” Electromagnet said. “Traitor.”

Lightning was striding atop the long iron bars of what had been a extensive array of road-signs spanning a wide highway, using his formidable powers to either rain destruction on the City Centre below or target enemy copters and planes circling in the fumes overhead. When something alerted his keenly trained combat instincts, however, he held off the bombardment and turned around.

There stood a familiar freckled boy, wearing on his flittering tunic an emblem identical to Lightning’s own. For a short while that one-time leader and his one-time devotee merely faced each other thus, high on a narrow bridge between one point and the next, while below them tumult and irreversible change played out all along the road.

“Flashtease,” Lightning said. “Still here, and still alive. I’ve been hearing a little about your exploits on this world. Some of it, I was hoping was mere rumour…”

Briefly he scrutinized Flashtease’s unflinching scowl, whereat a look of resignation and some genuine regret crossed Lightning’s own features.

“But now I know,” he continued. “You’ve gone native. A pity. I suppose it’s only to be expected, though. Blaster-Track Commander always did have some funny ideas, even before he struck up his friendship with these aliens. It’s the very reason I limited the work-experience programme to a single day, for all the good that ever did.”

“Shows how much you know,” Flashtease returned scornfully. “It wasn’t even the real Blaster-Track Commander. Dimension Borg played you right from the start.”

“I had hopes for you, Flashtease,” Lightning told him. To his credit, there was nothing insincere or supercilious about the statement. The reaction it worked in Flashtease however was to bring a yet fiercer colour mounting to his cheeks, such that his freckles stood out hotly on the bridge of his nose.

“What, as your little cute sports-star?” he demanded. “Some poster-boy for your Flash Club, the one and only team of real heroes in the sector? Look around you, Lightning! Innocent people from our galaxy and this one are dying because you’ve betrayed all that!”

“Wrong. This war is an affirmation of everything we ever were,” declared Lightning. “It’s about power, Flashtease. If you think our galaxy was ever anything different, then you’re the one who’s been played. The Flash Club, Space-Screamer, the Back Garden, Toothfire…all just bodies which wanted power, which took it by any means, and which used it. There’s a beautiful clarity, a beautiful uncomplicatedness, about our way of doing things. And while the Earthlings agonize over their witless, endlessly recursive, self-imposed moral debates regarding the coming time of crisis, we take the one approach that’s actually going to help matters. We turn our power to protecting our way of life. That’s no betrayal, Flashtease. That’s the fundamental principle on which our galaxy was built.”

When his addressee replied, it was in a quiet voice patiently imploring Lightning to try and understand.

“That was fine then,” Flashtease began. “It was fine back when you started up The Flash Club. But Lightning, why can’t you see what’s happening? You know what’s going on back home, all the changes. We all know it. It’s like…”

Speech-making had never been Flashtease’s strongest suit. For a second or two he cast about for vocabulary that would serve.

“Like the galaxy’s coming of age,” was what sprang to his lips, as though he were speaking the words of another. “And it all starts around the very moment we learn the ancient Prophecy’s true. Do you think that’s coincidence, Lightning? We won’t defeat the Foretold One by doing the exact same thing he’s going to do. There’s another way, a better way. And this planet, Lightning, these people, their...their cause…that’s where we’ll find it. That’s where the secret is. That’s where all the answers are.”

Lightning had not wanted to be dragged into a debate on this, but now his lip gave a characteristic curl. “Just what is it you’re championing, Flashtease?” he inquired. “An as-yet unexplained upswing in the distribution of some obscure gender sub-group. Your generation of Mini-Flashes suddenly imagining they find meaning in arcane spirituality or the drivelling noise you call modern music, when you’re not too busy nauseating the rest of us with your sentimental affections for each other. Forgive me,” Lightning continued with a callous laugh, “but I don’t quite see how that’s better than what my Flash Club stood for.”

At this, Flashtease could not even say whether he pitied or envied Lightning the more his ignorance. Not so long ago in a purpose-built cell beneath Nottingham Castle, that which the latter was so ready to dismiss had been revealed to Flashtease for all it truly was. There the boy had experienced physical tortures too, but they paled to insignificance before pain of the kind that this new presence in The Flash Cub’s galaxy was capable of bringing. When Flashtease thought on this, and looked back at the man he had once worshipped without question, he was sadder for Lightning than he had ever been for anyone in his life.

“I’ve seen the real face of what you’re talking about,” Flashtease told him. His voice was steady and his gaze was firm. “The old ways won’t survive it, Lightning. You just have to change with it instead. That’s your only shot at keeping on going. If you don’t, it’ll destroy you.”

No-one was more surprised than Lightning when his own eyes severed contact with those of Flashtease. Incredible as it seemed, the erstwhile leader had found himself unable to continue meeting that which was in the Mini-Flash’s gaze. Lightning at that moment could not but concede that Flashtease was correct. It seemed there were indeed more things on this planet called Earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy.

Deciding it was time to shake off these doubts and uncertainties the best way he knew how, Lightning drew back his hand. “The only mystery and wonder, Flashtease, is that you were ever serious about this,” he declared, preparing to unleash such an energy-burst as to spread the small form before him over a very large area.

Then Lightning froze. A look of horror and disbelief was dawning on his face.

The situation was something of a puzzle for Flashtease too, who was enough of a realist to have entertained no illusions about how this part of the confrontation was likely to go. Whatever was holding Lightning up couldn’t anything he’d done. The Mini-Flash chanced a quick glimpse over his shoulder.

Rising up behind him from the flame-tinted banks of battle-smoke were rippling ebony muscles and windswept robes flung out in graceful motion. A yellow lightning-bolt shone from the massive chest, and within the shadowy folds of a deep cowl two jet-black eyes stared sternly down on the tableau.

It was Storm-Sky, noblest and wisest of Lightning’s Flash Club, and as a warrior one of the very few whose prowess compared to that of the commander himself.

“Lightning,” Storm-Sky said. “It is past time you and I had words.”

NEXT: 'WHEN FLASHES CLASH'