Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel (10 page)

“No,” she said. To be honest, she hadn’t even tried to pry more information out of him. Anything she got would be half-truths and misinformation. She learned long ago, before she became a superhero, that if you wanted the truth, you had to hunt it down yourself. “But the job’s ours. I charged him our standard retainer. We get the balance when we get the kid.”

“I can already taste that caviar and lobster. What are you going to spend your share on, Spook?”

Niobe shrugged and lit up a cigarette. She hadn’t told Solomon what happened to Gabby, or her plan to leave Earth. It was easier that way. Solomon was a good friend, but he still believed in the world. He thought there was still a place for metas here. But Gabby was right. The longer they stayed, the worse it would get. A one-way trip to the Moon was just what they needed. It was the only place they could be free.

After Gabby had run out of tears, she’d plunged herself back into some radio scrambler she was working on. The cut on her head was superficial, nothing serious. But that didn’t mean she was okay. She’d been mumbling in her sleep again, one of the few times she spoke. Whenever it happened, Niobe pulled her close and stroked her hair until the nightmare left her. It was the same nightmare Gabby always had. The day she lost her hearing.

It happened before the Seoul Accord, when Gabby had moved to Sydney for a couple of years to do some part-time crime-fighting work as the Silver Scarab. Occasionally, she went into the field wearing a suit of armour she’d crafted herself, but mainly she provided logistical support. There was no machine in the world that she couldn’t coax into doing her bidding, no matter how badly damaged. Every machine had a soul, she insisted, a soul she could talk to.

She’d been working late one night when the anarchist supercriminal Kiloton attacked her group’s base. The group was just a local initiative, poorly funded. They had no bomb-proof doors or advanced security systems, except for what Gabby had cobbled together. Kiloton and his flying bombs tore through the place. Gabby barely had time to suit up before he hit the main hall. A few civilians were inside, doing routine cleaning and maintenance work. Gabby tried to cover their escape. But she didn’t know Kiloton had maneuvered motorized bombs into position at the rear exit.

She was in combat with Kiloton when she heard the bombs go off, followed by the screams. For a moment, Gabby had frozen.

Kiloton saw his chance and tossed a grenade at her face. The armour prevented damage to her face, but the detonation blew out her inner ears. Kiloton left her for dead and continued his rampant destruction.

It was months before Gabby could stand without falling over. The balance centres in her inner ears were damaged, but with rehabilitation, she improved. Her hearing never returned, though, and neither did her desire to be a hero. And then the world changed, and she wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to be a hero anymore.

Niobe stubbed out her cigarette on the wall of the phone booth. She hadn’t told Gabby where she was going, just that she had to get onto the job. She couldn’t let her worry. The job was just something that had to be done. Otherwise, sooner or later, they’d end up like McClellan, dead at the hands of cape coppers. Niobe had avoided getting a kill switch, but Gabby had one. All it would take was one overzealous copper with the right radio frequency and Gabby would be lying in the street, the back of her head blown out, her blood leaking into the storm water drain.

Niobe couldn’t let that happen.

Solomon seemed to have picked up on her mood. With the help of some old friends, he’d got McClellan’s widow out of the Old City with a couple of hundred dollars. Hopefully the coppers wouldn’t have the resources for a full man-hunt. Anyway, they had what they wanted. Chances were the baby was already dead or kill-switched. Niobe swallowed. She had to save who she could. That was just the way things were now.

Niobe got behind the wheel in silence, Solomon in the passenger seat, and they started on their way. Frank Julius hadn’t been willing to give them the answers they needed to track down his nephew. Usually they dealt with stupider people, ones who’d give information away while they thought they were being secretive. Photographs on the mantelpiece showing lakeside cabins where they kept their important documents, or an extra pair of shoes at the door that could only belong to a jilted lover. The clues were there.

But Frank Julius was careful. Niobe tried to weasel some information out of the clerk at the Starlight Hotel when she called. After a sob story where she claimed she was Frank’s niece and his sister was sick, the clerk gave up the information he had. But it turned out to be little more than she already knew. The same name he’d given her—probably fake—and an American passport—another fake—was all the identification he’d left with the hotel. He’d paid in cash, and he was the only one staying in the room. That meant the kid had already been snatched before he took a room there. But other than that, they were in the dark.

So now they had no choice but to go to more extreme measures to get information. The plastic bag in her pocket creaked every time she shifted gears. It contained a single hair, taken from the gold watch she’d examined in Julius’s room. The hair was short and brown, probably an arm hair. Frank’s body hair had gone prematurely white, and besides, the watch was too fancy to be something he’d wear. Despite his high-class accommodation, the man seemed to travel light and unornamented. Everything he’d brought with him had been simple, functional. The watch belonged to Sam. And so did the hair. Or so she hoped.

The roads grew more damaged as they drove. They weren’t going south this time. They made their way east, deeper into the Old City. Through Greenlane and Remuera, and on towards Meadowbank. There was someone they needed to see, someone who could point them in the right direction. For a price.

The surviving buildings became fewer and farther between, and uncleared debris lay scattered across the road. After the nuke hit Auckland back in ’51, not much remained standing. That was nearly a decade before the Seoul Accord, when the Americans were still in Korea eyeing up the Commies. The supercriminal Red Bear was flying around causing trouble when someone got the bright idea to fire a nuke at him. But they miscalculated. Red Bear deflected the bomb. Right into Auckland.

The rest of the world seemed to think it was no big deal. Everyone was getting nuked in those days. Warsaw got it worse. That didn’t make it easier.

As Niobe and Solomon drove closer to the sea, she spotted gulls perching on the surviving lamp posts. Solomon was as quiet as her. She knew him well enough to recognise his moods even behind a mask. He’d never say it, but the McClellan thing had rocked him. It had rocked both of them. They hadn’t been able to get the baby back. Hell, they couldn’t even convince Brightlance to help them out.
We couldn’t even save one damn baby.

She drove on in silence.

They had to abandon the car after a few miles. The roads became impassable except on foot, so Niobe activated the car’s security measures and they continued on.

She kept her eyes on the ruined houses around her as they walked. She didn’t like moving during the day. Too exposed. The Carpenter kept his wide-brimmed hat low as well, casting glances out from under his half-mask. He’d brought along a wooden quarterstaff that he kept half-concealed by his shoulder cape. It didn’t look like much, but she’d seen the broken bones sticking out of supercriminals after Solomon’s fights.

“The wife’d kill me if she knew I was out here,” he said after a while.

“Where’d you tell her you were going?”

“Didn’t.” A small smile grew on his face. “We’ve got an understanding. She doesn’t ask what dumb place I’m going, and that way she doesn’t have to beat me over the head with a rolling pin. It’d be a bad example for the kids.”

Niobe shook her head. “You’ve got a screwy family, Carpenter.”

“Not their fault. I’m just a bad influence.”

They walked in silence. Packs of stray dogs watched from the shadows, sniffing the air. Her neck prickled. What she wouldn’t give for some darkness. But they couldn’t wait for night. The man they were meeting was powerful, but he couldn’t work miracles. The longer they waited, the colder the kid’s trail would become. They’d already failed one child today. She wasn’t going to fail this one too.

“I’m not enamoured by this idea of yours, Spook,” Solomon said after a while. “You know how I feel about psychics. You can never be sure the thoughts you’re thinking are your own.”

Niobe cast a look around. The wind was picking up, and there were fewer surviving buildings here to shelter them. “Technically, you’re a psychic.”

“That’s different,” he said. “Trees don’t tend to have much in the way of private thoughts. But there’s all sorts of things in my head that shouldn’t see the light of day.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re talking dirty?”

“
Moi
? I’m just an innocent old man.”

“A family man,” Niobe said.

“Pillar of the community.”

She smiled in spite of herself. To be honest, she wasn’t keen on the psychic idea either. She didn’t trust information she didn’t obtain herself. But the job demanded what the job demanded.

A shadow flickered in the window of a ruined townhouse. She gave no outward sign that she’d seen it, but she lowered her voice and spoke to Solomon. “We’re being watched.”

“Yep. I can sense wood moving behind us.” He adjusted his mask and pointed with the barest movement of his pinky finger. “Probably from rifles. Three of them.”

Niobe adjusted her shoulder slightly to feel the weight of her revolver in its holster. It was set to stun rounds at the moment. She could draw and fire in 0.7 seconds. She’d timed it. But she still wished it was dark.

Something crunched on concrete. A gull took flight.

“Spook…” Solomon said.

“They won’t attack without a challenge. Probably.”

“Confidence,” he said. “That’s why you never made an inspiring leader. You need more confidence.”

“Shut up and keep your eyes open.”

Movement at the corner of her vision.

Solomon’s free hand moved slowly to the hatchet at his side. “Plan?”

She ran through the items in her utility belt. “If they attack, I’ll deploy smoke pellets while you disarm them. No deaths.”

“Us or them?”

“We can’t afford enemies. We play it clean.”

He grunted. “I can deal with any gun-toting normals. But the Blind Man has metas.”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

“How set are you on doing this job?” he asked.

“Very.”

He nodded. “Just making sure.”

A streak of white flashed along the road towards them. It was the only warning they had.

Something slammed into Niobe’s shoulder as the streak collided with her. She was on the ground before she knew it, her bowler flying off in the thing’s wake. The streak flew down the street and disappeared.

“Speedster!” she yelled as she grabbed her hat and scrambled back to her feet, but Solomon was already in action. He turned, spread his legs, and cast his arms out to the side like some pagan shaman. Shouts of surprise came from the buildings around them and three bolt-action rifles came flying from the windows. The wooden stocks of the weapons snapped in mid-air and floated there.

Niobe came up with her gun drawn. Her ears were ringing, and her shoulder stung like all buggery where the speeding meta had struck her. Bloody hell. This wasn’t part of the plan. She touched a button on her goggles and slipped a coloured filter into place to try and see where that damn speedster had got to.

“You see him?” the Carpenter asked. The broken fragments of the guns swirled around him. The brim of his hat billowed in the breeze, and beneath, she could make out the darting shadows of his eyes.

The streak flashed back into view. “Two o’clock, incoming.” She tracked it down her gun sights.

The Carpenter thrust his hands forwards, and the rifle fragments followed. The wood hurtled at the speeding figure, slamming into it. The streak wavered like a spinning top losing momentum.

Niobe turned and sprinted for the narrow shadow of a ruined building, tossing down a smoke pellet as she moved. She glanced back as the wobbling speedster swept past Solomon and hurtled towards her.

She spun, brought the gun up, fired. Blue light flashed, accompanied by an electric crack that split the air. The shot went a foot wide of the streak.
Calm
, she thought. She brought the sights up again and focussed.
Calm.

She squeezed the trigger.

The shock round struck the speedster full on. The only sign the meta gave was a strained scream, and then he was toppling, still moving at top speed. Right towards Niobe.

She sucked in air and dived into the shadow. The figure hit the ground where she’d been standing moments before. His white bodysuit took most of the punishment as he finally slid to a halt. In her shadow-state, she could feel the thick elastic fabric scraping along the concrete, shredding the top layer of the suit.

Niobe shifted out of the shadow and ran to the downed speedster, revolver raised. “How’s it looking, Carpenter?” she yelled.

“Peachy. Made some new friends.” Solomon still stood in the road, facing away from her. His shoulder cape billowed in the wind. Broken pieces of wood whirled down the street, prodding other figures out of hiding in the ruined buildings. There were five young men, three Caucasian and two Maori. Swirling fragments of wood kept each of them in his own temporary prison. They scowled at Niobe and Solomon.

Niobe reached the speedster as he lay groaning on the ground. She put her boot under him and rolled him onto his back.

“Be still,” she said. She couldn’t tell if he was conscious enough to hear her.

The white suit covered him head to toe. A pair of black lenses covered his eyes, and a streak of red ran down each side of his bodysuit.
Racing stripes. Cute.

She didn’t recognise the costume. Metas with super-speed weren’t uncommon, but they rarely survived long enough to make effective use of their powers. Getting yourself killed was a lot easier when you could run a hundred miles per hour. This guy was probably young, too young to have been a hero.
And too hot-headed.