The Battle for Earth (Teen Superheroes Book 3) (10 page)

Chapter Nineteen

The three Russian superheroes advanced on me. I didn’t want to fight them. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I only wanted to get on with my mission.

But none of that was possible.

The one in the blue outfit said something in Russian to me. I did my best to look dazed – which was easy under the circumstances – and closed my eyes. Taking a deep breath, I focused. A breath of air moved against my cheek.

The wind built slowly. At first it was simply a breeze in the trees; the branches shuffled slightly in the early morning air. Then it built up rapidly. I opened my eyes to see Red looking up at the trees in confusion.

Now
, I thought.
Now!

The hurricane hit with full ferocity. I kept myself and Chad at the heart of the storm as it swept around us. Red fired another bolt of electricity, but it went wild. Blue gave a single wave of his arms before he was lifted off his feet. He flew past us like something out of the Wizard of Oz. Trees were ripped out by the roots.

Chad slowly lifted his head. “What hit me?”

“Some guy in a red suit.”

“Who? Santa Claus?”

“I don’t think so. Anyway, he and his friends are out of the picture.”

Chad climbed to his feet as I brought the wind under control. It subsided to nothing. All around us lay the devastated forest, but there was no sign of the Russians. I doubted the storm had killed them, but it had probably left them incapacitated.

We hurried past the farmhouse and followed a road down into a small village. An old man stuck his head out from the upper window of a building and disappeared again just as quickly.

“We need to lay low,” I said.

“You need to lay low. I’m just a tourist here.”

“Fine.”

“No need to be snappy.”

“I’m not.”

“I was just wondering how you intend to get close to the Premier.”

It was a good question. Studying the compass, it appeared the Russian Premier was about two kilometres south of our position. He was probably visiting the area on a re-election tour. I remembered seeing references to the upcoming ballot on television. I could not fly. The Russian Defence Force was probably watching the skies. This was looking worse by the moment. My eyes settled on a manhole cover in the ground.

“That’s how we’ll do it,” I said.

“How’s that?”

I hurried across to the manhole cover and lifted it with a gust of air. A ladder led down into darkness, but I could vaguely make out a tunnel leading in the right direction. I turned to Chad.

“Do you have a torch?”

He produced a flame at the end of his finger.

“Okay,” I said. “Stupid question.”

We descended the ladder, dragging the cover back over behind us. This was a storm drain. Fortunately it had not rained for a while; only a thin line of water ran down the centre of the circular channel. I checked the map again as we started down the tunnel. Silence closed in around us. The world above was only a few feet away, yet it might as well have been miles away. The quiet was unnerving. The only sound was that of our steps in the passageway. Occasionally our feet would splash in the thin trail of water and it sounded like the breaking of glass.

We did not speak. I wondered what was going through Chad’s mind. A few days ago our lives had seemed set in stone. We were working at the behest of The Agency. We had a place to live and food to eat. Now I had thrown all that away. At least Chad still had his life. He could turn around and go back home. To stay with me was pure insanity.

“It looks like this tunnel will take us right into the centre of the town,” I said. “You should leave once we reach the surface.”

“How do you work that out?” Chad’s voice reverberated around the interior of the tunnel. “Do you think you can take on the entire Russian army yourself?”

“This isn’t your fight,” I said.

“Brodie’s in trouble,” he replied. “That makes it my fight.”

“But when I use the weapon –”

“I know.” He sounded angry. “It’s a fate worse than death. I get that. I don’t agree with how you’ve handled this whole –”

“I know I –”

“You should have trusted us,” he interrupted. “We could have worked together to save her.”

“Her life is at stake,” I said. “I’m in love with her.”

That shut him up for a moment. Then he said, “You don’t show it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Half the time, you ignore her,” he said. “The other half of the time you spend with Ebony.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” he said. “You spend more time with Ebony than with Brodie.”

I was about to protest, but there was some truth in what he was saying. If I was in love with Brodie, I had a funny way of showing it. It wasn’t that I had those sorts of feelings for Ebony. She was a friend. That was all. She had certainly not shown any romantic interest in me. So was I really in love with Brodie or was I –

A sound came from the tunnel behind us. I threw up a shield – and not a moment too soon. A shape raced toward us. It was Blue.  He hit my shield and the barrier held – but only just. He started pounding the shield so hard I thought he was about to break through it. Even Chad looked scared.

“Keep moving!” I yelled.

We backed up the tunnel away from him. Chad threw up a wall of ice several feet thick and we made a run for it. As we reached a bend in the passageway, I glanced back to see the icy wall being demolished.

He came charging at us again.

We sprinted down the tunnel with Blue in pursuit. I heard him accelerating on us. This tunnel was turning out to be a bad idea. It was too confining. To make matters worse, I didn’t want to harm Blue or the other superheroes. They were just doing their job.

I heard an explosion from behind me.

“That should stop him,” Chad said.

I turned to see a wall of fire behind us. Chad had formed it to stop Blue from pursuing us. At least it would –

Blue crashed straight through it as if it weren’t there and slammed into Chad. Hard. I heard Chad give a grunt of pain as he hit the ground. I threw a cannonball of air at Blue, but it didn’t slow him down. What was this guy? Indestructible? The man continued toward me and I threw up another invisible barrier. This slowed him down, but not much. He continued straining to reach me. Pounding the invisible barrier, he reminded me of some sort of enraged gorilla.

Chad somehow got to his feet and threw more ice at Blue, but this time he embedded the Russian inside. The problem now was that there was no room for Chad to join me; the solid block of man and ice was between me and him.

“Keep going!” Chad yelled.

“I can’t leave you behind!” I said.

“You’ve got to,” he said. “For Brodie.”

There was no time to argue. Chad was right. The longer I stayed here, the lesser the chance I would achieve my mission. I ran down the corridor. Within minutes I located a ladder to the surface. Just before I started to climb, I heard the sound of crashing ice.

Chad was on his own.

Chapter Twenty

We’re not going to make it
, Brodie thought.

They had headed in the direction of the landing bay and already encountered two groups of Tagaar warriors. Since gaining her superpowers, Brodie had faced some difficult opponents, but none were as formidable as the Tagaar. She had been forced to beat a number of them into unconsciousness during her one-on-one fights. Now she and the others faced the same sort of opposition as they now struggled to get to the landing bay.

Must be their thick skulls
, she thought.
They don’t know when to stop.

They rounded the corner and came face to face with another group of warriors. Ferdy had ripped an enormous piece of metal from the hull and now used it as a shield. They took refuge behind it as the Tagaar group fired and advanced. Finally they came face to face with the warriors and the aliens breached the shield and engaged in hand to hand combat. As Brodie fought one of the warriors, she saw all her friends – except Ferdy – engaged in similar battles. Ferdy simply stood by and watched the mayhem taking place around him.

Dan and Ebony used their combined powers to bring down one warrior. Zena and Bax took on a warrior each. Within seconds the Tagaar were defeated. Brodie and the others continued down the corridor, turned a corner – and were faced with another group of warriors.

“Are they making these things out of Lego?” Dan asked. “There are so many of them.”

“How far are we from the shuttle bay?” Ebony asked.

“Approximately half a kilometre,” Ferdy said. “If I were to calculate that in inches, it would be –”

“Later!” Brodie yelled.

A shot came from behind them.

“Gark!” Bax swore.

Another group of warriors were coming up the tunnel behind them. Brodie and the others opened fire, but one of the warriors let loose a volley at the same time and Ebony cried out. She hit the ground, gripping her shoulder. Dan quickly focused on the roof and tore loose a section. He propelled it toward the warriors and it slammed into them, knocking them over like bowling pins.

“I’m okay,” Ebony said through gritted teeth.

Brodie examined the wound. “The hell you are.”

“We’ve got to keep moving,” Zena said.

“We’re not going to make it to the shuttle bay,” Dan said. “There’s too many of them.”

Brodie examined Ebony’s wound. She had a bad burn across her right shoulder.

“We’ve got to go sideways,” Dan said. “Like in Star Wars.”

“Huh?” Brodie said. “Which one?”

“The first one,” Dan said. “It’s when they rescue Princess Leia and they are trying to escape from the storm troopers.”

He pointed at a piece of panelling on the wall and tore it loose. A shaft, descending into darkness, lay beyond. Brodie didn’t feel comfortable about jumping into the unknown, but the Tagaar troops were growing closer with every second.

“All right.” She made a snap decision. “Let’s do it.”

Bax and Zena went first. They were followed by Dan and Ebony. Brodie grabbed Ferdy’s arm and pointed down the tube.

“Okay, Ferdy,” she said. “It’s your turn.”

He looked down the shaft. “It is very dark.”

“Now is not the time to be a scaredy cat.”

“I am not any sort of feline. Cats are descended from –”

“Take my hand.” Brodie dragged him to the gap. “We’re going at the count of three. One, two –”

She jumped, dragging Ferdy down the tube behind her. The shaft closed in around them. It fell straight down for several metres before they hit a bump and it angled out into a steep incline. A stench hit her. It smelt like garbage.

It’s just like Star Wars
, she thought.
We’re going to land in a garbage dump. Wait a second. Wasn’t there a monster in –

A red glare appeared ahead of them and in the next instant they fell through a gap. For an instant they were in mid-air. Then they rebounded off some kind of roof and fell through a hole into what appeared to be the living room of some sort of shanty hut. Brodie looked up to see everyone standing around, rubbing their bumps and bruises. Ebony helped her to her feet.

“Ferdy was in the air,” Ferdy said. “Ferdy was flying.”

“You were indeed,” Brodie said. “Now, where are we?”

“You are in Sartaria,” a voice said from behind them.

The man in the doorway was humanoid in shape, but he was covered in a fine light brown fur. He had a snub nose and eyes set widely apart.

“I have heard of this place,” Zena said. “It is the slave section of this Tagaar ship.”

He nodded.

“There are people from a hundred different worlds in this place,” he said. “My name is Tomay. I am a member of the Council.”

“You said this is the slave section,” Ebony said. “What do you do down here?”

“We work in the foundries for the Tagaar,” Tomay said. “We build parts for cannons and other equipment.”

For the first time, Brodie noticed the heat. It was stifling, and the smell in the air –

Her thoughts about the garbage dump were not so far from being true. She peered upward, realising they had smashed through the roof of a makeshift home. The darkened shaft lay behind them. Returning through it would prove impossible; it was too steep to climb.

“We need to get out of here,” Brodie said. “Can you help us?”

Tomay shook his head sadly. “There is no escaping from Sartaria.”

“The guards must come down here sometimes,” Dan said. “Surely we can overpower them –”

“They have weapons,” Tomay said. “They will simply kill anyone who stands against them. Sometimes they kill someone at random to simply set an example.”

That’s terrible
, Brodie thought.
The Tagaar are monsters!

A chill ran down her spine. Now they intended to do the same thing to Earth! What role did the Bakari play in all this? Wasn’t there supposed to be a Union of Planets? What was the Union doing?

She asked Tomay about this and was surprised by his response.

“The Union is mostly ineffectual,” he said. “They meet and set rules and make laws, but they lack the military might to enforce their rulings.”

“So they’re like a toothless tiger,” Brodie said.

Tomay looked at her in confusion.

“It sounds tough,” Brodie explained. “But it has no bite.”

The alien nodded. “And now you’re in Sartaria. The land of the slaves.”

They followed him out of the dwelling. They stood in a narrow alley with similar falling-down buildings lining both sides of it. The roof curved high above them; its highest reaches lay in complete darkness. They had been lucky to fall through an air shaft where the ceiling almost met the floor. Casting her eye across the chaotic landscape, Brodie saw various light sources illuminating the gloom. A shower of bright yellow sparks erupted from somewhere to their left.

That must be a furnace
, Brodie thought.
One of the places where they build Tagaar equipment.

The air was thick with smoke and strange odours. A family walked past them, giving them a curious look.