Doc Sherwood
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Iskira and Joe
Joe held his solitude some time at the Castle Jaw site, attended on only by a number of increasingly turbid thoughts. The suns had begun to dip, and in this shaded space the uncut grass was already wearing its coat of dusk when Joe heard someone join him. He looked up from where he sat, and saw Iskira.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Lost Friends, Chapter Five
The Four Heroes and friends hurried the refugees back to the hideout, beneath a thunderous black sky that was now torn every minute by furious flashes of lightning. Their arrival was greeted with a hundred happy reunions as the former prisoners ran to loved ones and relatives they’d feared they would never see again. Proteus made his way over to his comrades through the joyful laughing crowd, beaming and exclaiming: “You did it, guys! I knew you would!”
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Lost Friends, Chapter Two
The Four Heroes Ultimate Cycle climbed into Earth-orbit, Dylan piloting, Phoenix and Neetra strapped into the side-seats, Bret manning the guns at the rear and Joe in his preferred place crouching on the drive-section. All five were wearing satellite link-up headsets and microphones that connected them to Doctor Mendelssohn in his laboratory on Mars. Planets glittered coldly in the black emptiness above as they reached the desired altitude and Dylan brought them back about, so that the prow was pointing directly down. Before our heroes’ eyes glowed the blue-green topography of their homeworld, thousands of feet below.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Lost Friends, Chapter Three
Even as Kumiko spoke, those she referred to stepped into the main room together. One was an alien with a white and dark-blue humanlike form, and the other a short schoolboy whose body was shaped exactly like a rubber ball. If, as Kumiko said, they were happy to see The Four Heroes, the emotion was more than reciprocal. Neetra ran to the boy at once and joyously swept his rotund form up in her arms.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Lost Friends, Chapter Four
A short jog through the ruinous neighbourhood brought Dylan, Bret, Joe, Phoenix, Jeffrey and Kumiko to the monolith of concrete and chrome that was the Mekanikron building. Gone was the bright sunshine and clear blue sky of earlier that day. A preternatural twilight was throwing all into oppressive gloom, and in the heavens beyond the skyscraper’s peak the clouds were circling as if caught in the beginnings of a hurricane. Dylan was wearing his satellite headset, and said into its microphone: “Talk to me, Doctor Mendelssohn, how much longer do we have until the rift opens?”
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Lost Friends, Chapter One
“Here’s the situation,” said Dylan. Behind him the many viewscreens of the meeting room in The Four Heroes’ house flashed into life, readouts and graphs and schematics blinking into being across their luminous many-coloured surfaces. All those assembled around the long table looked attentively on, as Dylan indicated the main monitor that bore an electronic aerial map of Nottingham. Over a part of it, a red-glowing circle blinked insistently.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Heredity, Chapter Five
The seven heroes abandoned the assault as one and rocketed to the safety of their vehicles. Tidshaw, the fastest flier, scrambled upside-down into the Hero Cart’s pilot chair and reconfigured the passenger half into shield mode, while his fellows converged on one or other of the vehicles and Dylan threw the Ultimate Cycle’s forcefield generator into life. At that instant Harbin made his free hand into a fist, and the Baax freighter crunched like a can. Blinding white light and raw howling force enveloped the universe.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
After the Flood, Chapter Three
They climbed back onto the F.P. Lightspeed, and Joe brought the platform through the time-portal Gala opened and forward several years. The day they emerged upon was a rare one for the first Dark Advent, with sunlight of a somewhat purer quality than the usual pinkish-yellow murk breaking through the black sky in a few shafts that made ripping golden patches upon the ocean. Below the travellers on the deck of the plague-ship was Gala, by now grown to a small girl in a simple white dress. She was playing with a ginger kitten, while her mother sat close by in a wooden chair and watched her with a sad smile full of love. She looked to Joe to be in her mid-twenties, though the plague’s ravages had made her as much like a weak old woman as an early adult. Our hero remembered what Gala had told him about the life-span of all that sickness’ victims, and knew at once the impending sorrow that overshadowed this apparently happy scene.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
After the Flood, Chapter Two
Gala directed Joe to steer the Lightspeed beyond the tumbledown walls of Nottingham and out across the ocean. Soon the island lay far behind, and they were streaking over boundless roils. At long last a row of ships began to draw into view, all of them standing at anchor, and all of them long overdue a watery grave. Their black sodden timbers creaked and dripped, seeming to decay even as Joe and Gala watched, while frayed and patched sails flapped sadly in the breeze. Off the bow of one of these skeletal hulks Gala had Joe bring the flying platform to rest, and told him to psychically shield himself again.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
After the Flood, Chapter Five
“Take the Burghermeister and his collection of mountebanks to the dungeons,” Gala ordered her friends, who were only too glad to oblige. Meanwhile, citizens all around the courtyard were slowly creeping out into view, to gaze with breathless happiness at the girl who had overthrown their dread oppressor. A hush descended.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Heredity, Chapter Four
Neetra and Autumn scrambled to their feet and ran forward to where Tidshaw was standing. Dead ahead lay an astrological vista The Four Heroes remembered well, having been instrumental in bringing about its existence. A great belt of asteroids and wrecked spaceships both terrestrial and alien, caught forever in the black hole’s gravitational field, revolved steadily in a circle around its fiery rim while within that broiling periphery was a portal of nothingness so absolute that our heroes could almost feel light and time accelerating past them to be sucked in and swallowed by the darkness in its depths. At the centre of this void stood Harbin, who it seemed neither the singularity nor the vacuum of space could harm. His twilight body, suffused with elemental energies drawn from the dark heart of the hole, cast seething emanations across the universe as an unholy symphony of cosmic forces neared its crescendo. Clutched in his hand was the Time-Shifting Device, and the rectangular buttons on its face, usually red, now flared and leapt with the same grey glow that flooded from Harbin as his monstrous orchestrations swelled its power levels to the new and terrible pitch he demanded.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
