Doc Sherwood
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Love in the Underground, Chapter One
From the steep-sided canyons between towering skyscrapers to the rubble-mounds strewn across the battlefield below, Nottingham City Centre reverberated as if in the aftermath of an electrical storm. Office-block exteriors seemed to ring with it, giving back upon the charged and tingling atmospherics all that the shockwave had laid upon them, while ongoing battle-noise gradually warped and echoed its way back from eerie distortions to the proper register and key. Even the air was swimming with residual frissons crackling out their last. Through this static-bath a single small figure moved on a determined course, like the first animal to venture from its hollow once the tempest was over.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
When Flashes Clash, Chapter Three
Figures were moving, hastening along the tunnel towards the shaft. Most of their faces were those of friends, but this did not stop Phoenix and Phoenix Prime immediately training an energy-weapon and a blazing hand on the one exception.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Love in the Underground, Chapter Three
Lightning for his part had been only too aware of the Henry Martin overhead, and immediately prior to entering the alleyway between warehouses had glimpsed her tacking off in obvious search of a landing-place. “Company’s coming, Flashtease,” he muttered grimly to his companion and prop. “Every second’s going to be crucial now.”
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Shapeshifters, Chapter Three
Professor Iskira Neetkins looked down at the face of Dr. Mendelssohn and thought exactly what her daughter was thinking. Then she eased the control lever back into its housings and brought the all-terrain vehicle to a grateful juddering halt. They had arrived at a long-abandoned mineral processing mill, a solitary pillar of old pitted stone perched high atop a desert ridge. Ancient conveyor-belts, their gears and pulleys corroded together into single metal masses that would never move again, slanted from the precipice into deep empty quarries through which the wind sang an endless lonely song. An edifice of such apparent age could only date back to before the Venusian exodus. Iskira could imagine it out here in this remote place, weathering the day when destruction came to the first Martian civilization. Though the past was crumbled and gone, fragments of it were standing yet.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Shapeshifters, Chapter Four
Joe and Gala, having broken out of the cell, were proceeding through the dark tubes of the fungus-ship’s innards on their way back to the bridge. A smooth jolt ran through the organic walls and floor, followed by an unmistakable feeling of increased inertia.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Shapeshifters, Chapter One
In the beleaguered city of Nottingham it was the height of day, but a preternatural still reigned over the streets. Invasion had banished traffic and emptied offices. Now the midday sun glinted silent and unstinting from the ring of gargantuan robots that surrounded the central area already ceded to the enemy. This hush however was deceptive. Most were hard at work, from the Solidity soldiers in their outposts and watchtowers peering ceaselessly over the war-zone in search of resistance, to the ones they sought biding their time in hollows and gullies amidst the rubble, to others in the free city striving to orchestrate rebellion of their own. But all played a waiting game, with with neither action nor word disclosed the ends of their diverse secret schemes.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Shapeshifters, Chapter Two
Interplanetary space had been struck alight. Energy-emissions, the kind that looked like highways made of pulsating death, were roaring from the vanishing-point and cascading into the black yonder while deadly missiles and rockets buzzed endlessly by like outriders in their slipstream. In and out of this chaos the Flash Club ship swerved and rolled as it made its dauntless way ever onward. Neetra, who had done her homework on this galaxy’s weapons before embarking, gripped the twin handles of her steering-stick yet tighter and hollered aloud:
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Avalon, Chapter Two
Flashshadow’s talent for going quietly unseen was put under rather more of a strain at a well-lit outdoor rumbustification, but it helped that Petunia subsequent to her opening number had daintily descended the stage and taken things down a notch. Most of the guests were dancing to her pre-recorded backing-tracks, their attention safely on each other, while Petunia herself held court among just a small proportion of the party’s complement. Flashshadow, though keeping a discreet distance, looked on curiously.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Avalon, Chapter Three
The party was still only just getting started when sandstorms whipped all at once round bare ankles and legs, searchlights swept the clearing, and live music was summarily supplanted by burgeoning engine-din. Girls and boys and other creatures ceased their spirited wriggles to gape skyward at the looming pig-backed crowd-control cruiser which had elbowed itself into the airspace above them.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Target Harbour
Target Harbour was a known jumping-off point for several different solar systems where Alliance extradition-orders were not yet all they might have been. A crescent-shaped hunk of a far larger moon which exploded eons ago, its curved outer ridge was encrusted with low-rent temporary residences whose neon stained space. The towers of the taller hotels were interlinked by a monorail network, while within the great hollow of this rocky arc had collected purplish fluorescent gases which lay like the waters of a bay. Reflected upside-down in these seething depths, the gaudiness of advertisments and train-tracks and a million window-lights shone a longstanding invitation to the weary traveller whose recent deeds might preclude him from more reputable places to stay.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
The Back Garden
Overgrown twisted dominions and lurking supernatural forces had conspired to lend The Back Garden its curious nomenclature, which began life as a nickname that stuck. If some of that dread space-expanse’s mystique had faded after the vanquishing of its beldame Empress Ungus by The Four Heroes, it nevertheless afforded fearsome enough vistas for Zeldich and Grey Bag as they stepped down from the two flying jeeps which had carried them there. Progress in this place was on foot, along the tops of tendrils distorted to terrifying size which stretched tangled fingers through the black void between worlds and so bridged the spheres they ensnared. Though Grey Bag and Zeldich stood in interplanetary space they did not require oxygen-masks, for there was no cosmic vacuum in The Back Garden, just a universal moist stagnancy suggestive of cellars at midnight. This fusty fug teemed with nutrients and microbes on which thrived the gargantuan plants and the denizens that crawled and slithered among them.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
