Mayhem, Chapter Three

Four awesome Grindo war-vehicles, adapted by Dylan for humanoid use, were led by a gigantic mobile rig whose double-barrelled cannon still steamed from delivering the warning-blast. Dylan himself manned this one, while Phoenix was behind the wheel of a sleek streamlined sky-fighter. The Mini-Flashes meanwhile stood ready to supplement firepower and force with speed and manoeuvrability from their respective rocket-bikes, Flashlight’s a vivid green and Mini-Flash Bloomer’s in gaudy orange as they had hitherto agreed. In terms of combat potential it was an altogether more convincing line-up than Joe’s pair of space-rods and one single-seat racer.

Dylan was looking straight at him, so there was little point in continuing to conceal his psychic presence. He therefore dropped the barrier that they might converse telepathically.

Nice place you’ve got here, Joe, was Dylan’s salutation. 4-H-N’s friend Micro-Mallet had to show us where it was, of course, as we didn’t seem to get our invite to the housewarming. Speaking of 4-H-N, how’s she enjoying her stay?

She is free to leave at any time, Joe responded. All I ask is that she first surrender a certain confidential communication she attempted to misappropriate.

Yeah, Micro-Mallet mentioned that too, Dylan informed Joe levelly. The kind of confidential communication that was meant as much for me as you, right?

When Neetra recorded her message she did not yet know Phoenix would choose to subvert our cause in the one galaxy where it matters most, commented Joe, nor that you would choose to defend her.

Remember how the cause also used to be about protecting the public, and working alongside the authorities instead of against them? Dylan fired back. I’m still doing that, Joe! The Alliance needs to learn what’s contained in that message if it’s going to continue governing this quadrant justly and well. But you, investing final authority in yourself, deciding everyone’s got to do what you tell them…that’s not any Four Heroes’ cause I know. Sounds more like General Banthal, or even Dimension Borg. In fact it’s not all that different to Harbin, so maybe the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.

Flashtease was unable to hear the back-and-forth playing out between his companion and his erstwhile friend, but even so the Mini-Flash could tell how Dylan’s last had affected Joe. Nor could Flashtease descry that after a silence of several long seconds, Joe beamed back tersely towards the battle-lines:

That notwithstanding, Dylan, you know this is how it must be.

Or that his addressee replied thus:

I had a feeling you were going to say that, Joe.

But when the former flung himself over the edge of the roof and proceeded on the most direct path to where his own modest fleet was stabled, Flashtease required not a split-second in following his lead.

These days, Joe reflected as he leapt from ledge to ledge down the mansion’s face and so distributed the momentum which would otherwise have meant a lethal drop, it was something to be thankful for that Dylan wasn’t already letting him have it with both barrels. He didn’t know when it became an uncertain wager that that one wouldn’t blow away the brickwork he happened to be traversing, at the risk of harm to 4-H-N and any others who might be inside, but it surely said much about the present era that such possibilities now had to be considered. Even as it was, when Joe hit the concrete and set off at a sprint with the tunic-flipping Flashtease hot on his heels, he did so aware that Dylan and his raiders were at that moment regrouping with every intent of bringing back the big guns just as soon as he broke cover.

At the stables Joe and Flashtease found Mini-Flash Splitsville, already throwing open the door of her ebony chariot and swinging inside to take the wheel. “About the silky-drawers square I’m horizontal, heart-throb, only shouldn’t someone be guarding her?” she said to Joe.

“It is my hope 4-H-N boasts common sense enough to remain in the compound while all without becomes a field of open war, though I grant you nothing else she has done today suggests it,” was Joe’s grim reply, as he and Flashtease swiftly took their seats in the scarlet space-rod. Flashshadow was beside Mini-Flash Splitsville, though no-one quite saw her arrive, while Contamination bounded like a blue-white blur into his single-seater and sluiced its cylinders with nucleonic lifeblood. Together the trio of vindicating vehicles blasted forth through the mansion gates, and for the second time in the long and sad history of the planet once called Drenthis, brother took up arms against brother for hostilities the galaxy would one day have reason to rue.

The racers roared up the sand-dune’s slope, parting and swerving to dodge early barrages from Dylan’s formation. Joe launched at once into attempts at flying the gauntlet, so to put his enemy’s front-facing primary weapons behind him, but these twin giant muzzles rotated a full three-sixty on specially-designed tracks which ran the length of the vehicle atop which they sat. A well-aimed second salvo therewith clipped Joe’s crimson wing and sent him and Flashtease wheeling, while the other Mini-Flashes of conflicted loyalties each engaged a partner in their respective pairs. Splitsville and Flashshadow locked with Phoenix for a sub-stratospheric bout, as Flashlight and Bloomer knuckled down to tackle Contamination who was making a headlong charge straight at them.

With one clawed hand on the gearstick he hurled from his other radioactive bolts which charred the airspace between him and his targets. Gripping their saddles between their bare thighs the Mini-Flashes swung sharply in opposite directions, opening a channel for Contamination to burgeon through while they steered their rocket-cycles about and took aim in turn at the foe’s tailpipes. Dual plasma-blasters fired off by Flashlight and pyrokinetic shocking-pink bursts emitted zealously from Mini-Flash Bloomer compelled Contamination to evasive action instead of another chicken-race. Meanwhile Mini-Flash Splitsville was endeavouring to adapt her speedway skills for military applications, and fast finding this was no mean feat in an unarmed vehicle pitted against a pilot and sharpshooter such as Phoenix. Shafts of staser-fire from her fin-mounted railguns proved as tough to circumnavigate as any deadman’s curve, and though earnest efforts were made to pothole Phoenix’s path with portals, the high-tech fighter took each of these in its course-correcting stride.

“Girl,” snarled Mini-Flash Splitsville, “you bug me.”

Clasping the steering-wheel tight in both hands she broke away from the dogfight, and with shoulders back commenced an apparently suicidal dive at the nearest mountain-face. Phoenix, not fooled but perceiving her opportunity to end this, gave chase all the while pinning Splitsville with staser fire. She was more than ready for the Mini-Flash’s last-minute pull-out, but less so for Flashshadow to discretely lay her hands on Splitsville’s passenger-seat armrests and the whole of the black-painted racer to sink smoothly into the cliffside. It was Phoenix who therewith had to achieve escape-velocity in the manner she had anticipated, scraping loose a dozen fragments of her fighter’s undercarriage in the resultant clangour.

Joe, compensating for the battle-damage to his own transportation, overflew Dylan’s rig again this time hitting the approach-vector obliquely. “Flashtease – ” he commanded, at which his small co-pilot vaulted for the slipstream while tucking himself up into a scintillating spin until he resembled some incandescent spare-tyre jettisoned hurly-burly from Joe’s trunk. In this invulnerable energy-state the Mini-Flash boy bashed Dylan’s artillery-apparatus with a precision-strike, leaving its operator unharmed but drastically reducing the emplacement’s mobility.

With power-reserves exhausted Flashtease dropped to his feet on the desert floor, shaking residual crackles of static from where they were most felt, and gathering up his skirts scampered to intercept Joe’s ground-hugging swoop which scooped him up again. Just as 4-H-N earlier had regretted what this conflict spelled for her friendship with Flashtease, so was he himself all too aware that on Earth he had lived and worked with Dylan, and not long ago was among the first well-wishers to celebrate his return to health. Likewise, though Flashtease had always been rather in awe of Phoenix he had helped her too when both were members of the Four Heroes-Next Four Collective, and never even mind the two other close friends striving against him elsewhere on the battlefield. So much had changed so quickly. What did not change however was Flashtease’s faith in Joe and his cause, which was why the Mini-Flash bore down now and resolved he would see this confrontation through.

With the double-barrelled cannon jammed in one direction only, it was a different skirmish. Joe wasted no time in going after the two sky-cycles Dylan was no longer capable of covering, and with flames hurtling from his outstretched hand slagged Mini-Flash Bloomer’s turbines and forced her into an emergency landing. Before Joe could do something similar to Flashlight however he was driven back by railgun fire rattling down from above, as Phoenix nosedived into close-quarters to settle old scores. While that duel proceeded Contamination barrelled past, pouring on the irradiated impetus to deliver a megaton air-burst against the armoured hull of Dylan’s rig which fairly rocked it on its heavy-duty shocks.

“Planning to crawl out of your tin can and fight, Earthling, or do I just boil you to a fine turn inside it?” screeched Contamination.

Such challenges, however, Dylan was more than equal to. An elevator-panel on the rig slid open and through it he uprose, whereat with a single sweep of his arm the powers of The Four Heroes took sway over Contamination’s supercharged engine. Next second the aggressor was helplessly spiralling radiator-over-rockets to a far corner of the war-zone, while Dylan turned his attention to Mini-Flash Splitsville and grounded her space-rod likewise on Drenthis’s gravelly lanes. Reaching back inside the rig with his special abilities Dylan lowered that vehicle’s fearsome plough of case-hardened dullivian, and striking up a steady grumbling advance set about churning the rocks ahead into a landslide that would bury the fallen vehicle.

Mini-Flash Splitsville left off her furious and futile revving of the accelerator, to whirl round in her seat and throw portal after portal at the boulders which tumbled her way. An instant later these were raining thunderously on the rig’s rooftop, and as Dylan scrambled for shelter his powers lost their hold. Splitsville and Flashshadow made a break for open skies but were suddenly dazzled by a burst of brilliance which flooded their flightpath and consigned them crashing back to the planet’s crust. There was no satisfaction however for Flashlight as he looked down from his green jet-bike at Flashshadow slumped and unconscious on the space-rod’s seat. It was rare enough among his people for a male Mini-Flash to get the better of two girls, but if that meant using the unique talent for which he was named to deliver sneak attacks upon an old friend, then Flashlight felt he’d just as soon have done without the distinction.

Dylan had repaired to the rig’s control-cabin to dodge the shower of stone, and was bringing his plough-end about when a movement on hand alerted him. It was Micro-Mallet, lifting off in the direction of one of the exit-tubes.

“Whoa there, little buddy, not even I can patch you up again if you’re blown to bits!” Dylan cried.

“Sorry, Dylan, but 4-H-N got me into this so it’s my duty to get her out!” responded the robot, then shot from the hatch like a determined discus. Weaving in and out of fiery explosions and shrapnel-scatter Micro-Mallet drove his diminutive self the length of the fray, to make it at last through the known mansion window behind which waited his loved one.

“I thought you were never going to get here!” giggled 4-H-N as she skipped atop him, her skirt bumping in back over where the message-capsule was still stored.

Joe and Phoenix’s contretemps had left both their vehicles barely operational, but as she landed under Dylan’s protective lee and disembarked, Joe was readying his worn-out space-rod for a final pass at the rig. He could do it, but only if he and his flames struck for real. That was no light undertaking when the target was a fellow member of The Four Heroes, on this ill-starred planet of all those that span in the cosmos. Strange to think the fate of galaxies should rest on Joe’s popping the clutch, but it was only as he reached to do so that he spied in his rear-view mirror 4-H-N and Micro-Mallet, surfing the home stretch at maximum burn.

They might all walk away yet. Joe hit the brakes.

END OF CHAPTER THREE