4-H-N Fireworks, Chapter One

From an archway across the busy street by the shuttle-port 4-H-N looked in dismay.

Stripped to her knickers, barefooted on concrete, she was still reeling from the Ritual of Demand and her subsequent expulsion from Flash Club Headquarters. It had been worse than she’d imagined, and the Drenthis feeling shuddered within her. Staying out of sight in the alleys and shadows had kept it from intensifying any further, at least. Half the galaxy was aflame, and the conurbation reminded 4-H-N of afternoons on Earth when bad news had broken. The passersby may not have been human beings, but all were distracted and afraid. Keyed to the sudden eruption of violence they expected any second, a half-naked hiding girl hadn’t crossed their minds, and consequently most of them didn’t register her on sight. That had ironically been the one point in 4-H-N’s favour as she made her way, creeping under walls, one arm thrown over her torso.

But…now.

On the steps at the shuttle-port entrance stood a boy she knew, round-faced and copper-haired, dressed in the blue tunic of a Mini-Flash senior.

It was Flashfrond.

He was talking to two others of his sex and grade, and 4-H-N could tell at a glance they weren’t there to catch a shuttle. Indeed, but for their short skirts they might have been boys back home, loitering outside the train station late one Saturday. Exactly the sort of trio a girl on her own would want to avoid. Even if she wasn’t topless.

4-H-N shrank further into her place of concealment.

The token was useless to her now. Mini-Flash Phytolith must have mobilized the movement. They’d be watching every public place she might go.

She’d underestimated him. It was obvious now that leaking the video had been his work.

And if skulking boys obedient to her enemy were at this moment on the lookout for her, it wasn’t a pleasant thought just what that might entail, if a gang of them were to run her to ground in some lonely spot while she was like this. Her ultimate destination would be The Foretold One, but she guessed the boys wouldn’t be in any hurry about that.

They’d take their time.

Take it in turns.

Flashfrond and his cronies continued to laugh and leer. There was no point in 4-H-N sticking around to watch them any longer.

She had to get off these streets. These streets weren’t safe.

Overhead, the conurbation’s atmospheric condensers were grumbling ominously near to their daily purge. It made 4-H-N wonder what was next. She spied a ramshackle old galactic call-box in what she very much hoped was a deserted alley, and scrambled inside just as the first slashes of surplus moisture began to streak its panes.

It should have been a quiet time, the downpour drumming steadily on the roof. 4-H-N however couldn’t afford to be reflective. Rain wouldn’t long deter the ones who were after her.

And there was more besides.

Just look at where specifically she’d ended up sheltering.

Wasn’t it supposed to be every girl’s privilege, on Earth at least, where things were sane? Calling the parents or a big sister to beg a ride home?

Here however her parents were on another planet, and all her sisters farther away still than Grindotron. Never even mind that 4-H-N had nothing about her person to pay for the call with. Just a shuttle-port token down her knickers which wouldn’t fit in the slot.

Was the old saying true, that sometimes you had to laugh?

Apparently not in this situation. For what 4-H-N felt instead was the Drenthis feeling surging to rise.

Her family wasn’t around when she needed them, and they never had been lately.

That was closer to how it was.

And as for Storm-Sky. Had Auntie Green overstepped her authority, or had she been acting under his instruction? Earlier 4-H-N had given him the benefit of the doubt, but was in rather less of a mood to do so now. Because one thing she knew for certain was that if Storm-Sky had granted her advancement at the time she’d earned it, she wouldn’t be in her present predicament.

Flashbee’s theory as to why he hadn’t granted it tallied with 4-H-N’s own discoveries, and what Storm-Sky had practically told her himself.

You see, there was this old man who’d decided she was dangerous. An old man whose mind, by his own admission, was already going. He’d said those things about her and Storm-Sky without so much as a thought had taken him at his word. It all but choked 4-H-N now to look over what that had led to.

She’d helped save that old man’s life at the Arch of Titus!

If she’d known what passed for gratitude in this galaxy, she’d have let him take another spin on Harbin’s machine.

See if he reeled off any words of wisdom to get him out of that.

The condensers were turning over to restart, and their thunder rolled on high and all around. 4-H-N breathed hard in the call-box’s confines. There. As the other saying went, she’d said it. Did she feel better for doing so? Even saying it to herself?

Thunder rumbled and rolled.

Couldn’t stay here long. 4-H-N kept having to remind herself. Yet it felt as if there was something to do first. Her eyes lingered on the holocommunications unit affixed to the wall.

Something to do? Or was it more a case of having started, she might as well go on?

END OF CHAPTER ONE