Trainee Superhero (Book Two) (7 page)

-
Cold Comet
arguing with
The
General
, caught on tape and played at
Dark Fire
’s
trial.

Loud Mouth
had five kids by three
different women, and
Wrong Answer
was married.

I hadn’t known that about them. I hadn’t
known anything about them, really, not even why they had been
assigned to the
Cerberus Brawlers
. A steward called
Bag
Pipes
played at the funeral to a small crowd of operators and
support staff. A few people read eulogies; both
Loud Mouth
and
Wrong Answer
had been difficult people to live with, but
they had their friends.

I wheeled
Bad Day
to the operators
only area to watch the two single fireworks launched for the two
fallen. Each rocket was beautiful, bright, and short-lived.

“And I damn near joined them,”
Bad Day
says to me.

He lost two fingers when his gun exploded,
and he’s still in a wheelchair. He was lucky to survive.

My alarm beeps; it’s my shift in armory.

“I’m going to kill
Firestorm Commando
if I ever see him again,” I say seriously.

“You will have to get in line…the boss will
get there first, I assure you. But I heard he’s gone back to
The
General
, so we can’t do anything about him.”

“I better get going,” I say.

The squad is
Past Prime
,
Home
Brew
,
Zoo Prank
and another rookie who is even more
junior that me. She looks terrified.

“We are still having problems with cannons
two and three. Old reliable is still firing, but slowly,” I hear
Bad Memories
saying to
Past Prime
.

“We’ll have to make do,” says
Prime
.

He doesn’t seem worried, but then he never
does.

I put my helmet on, but there’s something
wrong with it and all the alarms ring out at once. My visor slams
down on my nose. It hurts.

“Hey! Uncool!” I shout, but I don’t think
anyone can hear me.

I try and pull my helmet off, but it seems
locked down. The alarms are hurting my ears, and I’m pretty sure my
nose is broken.

“I. Am. Having. Problems!” I shout, each word
punctuated by my visor flicking open and shut.

I flail around for a few seconds and hit
someone by mistake. A strong arm grabs me and forces me to the
ground. I sit on the ground and try to relax.

“
Red Five
is a no-go,” says a
technician over my radio.

A red alarm starts ringing and
Past
Prime
turns to the monitors.

“Small saucer over the Australian outback. No
civilians in the area, but a couple of important mines. Let’s
go.”

The team walks towards the capsules, but my
helmet is still broken.

“We’ll see you when we get back,”
Past
Prime
shouts over his shoulder.

My team leave in a slow
thud-thud
of
cannon fire. I want to be with them, but I can’t fight if I can’t
see. I hear a whine of a drill starting then feel vibrations right
in my skull.

I hope they stop before they hit my
brain.

The drill stops. My helmet pops off and a
technician examines it with a scanning tool. She pulls out a set of
screwdrivers and opens up the back. A medic checks me over: my nose
isn’t broken, but I put some ice on it anyway.

“Can I catch up with my team?” I ask.

“Negative. This repair will take a few
minutes, so you’ve been added to the next team to head out.”

“Oh. Can I get a sandwich, then?” I ask.

I’m always hungry.

“Sure, what kind?”

“Salami and tomato. On rye.”

Free Man
and
Never Lies
walk
into the armory and start suiting up. There is no rush; it’s rare
for a second attack to follow close behind the first. The rest of
the team arrives a few minutes later, as does my sandwich.

A yellow alarm starts ringing, indicating a
saucer attack outside of our jurisdiction. It's a big one, too.

“Where is it?” asks
One Trick
.

“A little town called Bottle Falls, Southern
USA. That rings a bell… oh, saucerhat.”

Small Talk
runs into the armory and
starts suiting up in a rush. A few of the technicians try to help
him, but he is impatient and pushes them away.
Never Lies
is
getting suited up as quickly as she can, but her suit has a lot of
complicated connections to her heavy gun platforms.
Small
Talk
gets dressed in record-breaking time and starts walking
towards the delivery capsules.

“I need the dog whistle!” he yells.

A senior technician runs up to him and tries
to calm him down, but
Small Talk
picks him up off the ground
and screams in his face.

“My wife and kids live there! Bring me the
saucerhat dog whistle!”

The technicians seem too frozen to move, so
Small Talk
walks over to a locker, breaks its door off and
pulls out a big metal box.

“Even you can’t take on a saucer this size
alone,” shouts out
Never Lies
, but
Small Talk
doesn’t
care.

He jumps into a free capsule. I grab my
helmet from the technician and make a move to follow him, but
Never Lies
holds me back.

“Don’t. You won’t survive where he’s going.
Give me a few minutes and I’ll follow him.”

But
Small Talk
isn’t going to wait,
and I don’t think it’s right to let him leave alone. I break free
of
Never Lies
and strap myself into the next capsule. My
helmet alarms are offline, but my radio still works.

“Saucer,”
Never Lies
says over my
radio, “just hang in there, kid. We’re right behind you.”

She sounds genuinely worried. Why do I have
this feeling that I’ve made a terrible mistake?

The capsule shoots off with a bang, and I
wake up above the town of Bottle Falls. It’s not a big place. I see
Small Talk
is crouched in the middle of a grass plain
between the town and the incoming saucer. The saucer is larger than
any I’ve ever seen, and it's already dropping screamers and
octo-apes from its hangars.

The saucer might fly right past the town, but
its creatures are going to rip this place to shreds.

I land next to
Small Talk
. He’s
crouched over the bag, the thing he called the dog whistle.

“Hey!” I scream, “What are you-”

The box screams like a banshee, a wail that
hurts my ears, shakes me to the bone. I land next to
Small
Talk
and clutch at my ears as the sound bursts through my
helmet. The sound gets higher until I can’t hear it, but I swear I
can still feel it vibrating in my teeth.

The sound seems to be getting some attention:
a rocktopus shoots over towards us, all flames and tentacles and
giant red eyes.
Small Talk
blasts it from the sky and it
bursts into a cloud of fragments that fall out of the sky and drift
towards us. They coat
Small Talk
in flakes of metal as if he
were a magnet. A second rocktopus lands beside him and tries to
wrap its metal tentacles around his neck but
Small Talk
rips
it apart. The tentacles coil around his arms like thick metal
bracelets.

The smaller, faster aliens are approaching us
in waves. A couple of scouts drop out of the sky and land next to
the dog whistle, but I blast them both down with a single shot. I
hear a roar as a small Godzilla-like creature sprints straight
towards us.
Small Talk
charges right back at it, kicking it
in the face and then ripping it apart with his spare hands. Chunks
of metal and shards of wire leap out of the monster’s guts and
attach themselves to
Small Talk
. It doesn’t seem to slow him
down at all. The imposing bulk of a cubetank rolls into the park,
all sharp edges and giant guns.
Small Talk
jumps onto it and
starts ripping through the thick armor as if it were wrapping
paper. He pulls a plasma cannon out of its turret and uses it to
blast a second tank.

My own multiblaster is getting a good
workout, cutting down the smaller aliens by the dozen. A rain of
lasers catches me, and little green discs form a protective skin
around me, popping and exploding in quick succession. I can barely
see past my pulsing shield but I lash out wildly with my
multiblaster until I’m not being attacked anymore. My shield
clears, and I find myself surrounded by a pile of triclops, scouts
and octo-apes. Their ruined parts lift into the air and fly towards
Small Talk
, wrapping themselves around him until all I can
see of him is his head. The laser guns gather around his right arm
and shoulder until he looks like an artillery piece on legs. A
blast of purple plasma streaks out of the air and catches him in
the chest, breaking off part of his metal skin.

A three-winged dragon flashes overhead, all
spikes and wicked talons.
Small Talk
brings it down with a
volley of laser blasts. Two more dragons land on the ground and
engulf
Small Talk
in flames.

“No!” I yell.

Small Talk
emerges from the flames
like a robot from hell and blasts the dragons into pieces. The body
bursts into a cloud of burning vapors that
Small Talk
walks
through without any care. He picks up the dragon’s head and presses
it into his shoulder. His entire body is covered in strange alien
components that seem to be boosting his strength. He looks over at
me; I can’t see his face beneath the metal, but I think he’s
surprised to see me.

A triclops lands beside him, and he punches
it right through the chest in a shower of sparks and melting metal.
Small Talk
is one scary man.

There is a temporary moment of peace, and I
use it to check my shields. 78%: not bad. My combat clock says we
have been fighting for less than three minutes, but it feels much
longer.
Small Talk
sheds some of the burnt metal that makes
up his strange armor, losing some of his bulk but moving easier for
it. I’ve never heard of anyone having powers like his. He pulls off
the metal around his head and opens his visor, breathing in deeply.
We have a moment of respite.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says.

“So? Neither should you!”

Something heavy hits me on the back of my
head. I shoot out again, hoping to hit something, anything at all.
I rise into the air but something strong catches my leg and throws
me face first into the ground. I bounce, roll, and come face to
face with a steel monstrosity that’s all teeth and spikes. My
multiblaster barely grazes the thing, so I dodge past it.

I can see parachutes in the air,
reinforcements perhaps. One bursts into flame and drops towards
me.

A fireball shoots out of the sky and strikes
the steel monster in the chest, melting it instantly. The fireball
rises into the air. The flames are dark, almost black, but they
aren't producing any smoke. I can see a figure floating in the
flames. It spins towards the cluster of triclops and holds its arms
out like cannons. Each hand spits out a stream of flames that melt
the triclops in an instant. I've never seen power like that.

The fireball is attracting attention: a
squadron of screamers come flying in. I raise my gloves and wing
two, but the fireball gets all of the others with one stream of
fire.

The fireball shrinks down to the shape of a
small man. His suit is black and bulky, with dozens of pockets, but
he is only four feet high. He isn't carrying any weapons. I suppose
he doesn't need to. He hovers over me and flicks open his helmet.
Hungry flames are burning over his arms and fists, hot enough to
vaporize steel but not harming this man, not this legend.

Dark Fire
.

He’s dead, officially, but the conspiracy
nuts always said that the other supers had considered him so
dangerous that they had ganged up on him to force him into
retirement.

The flames on his body flicker and retreat to
his feet and hands. He’s shorter than I expected, although it’s
hard to tell while he’s still in the air. His power suit is black
and charred. I can’t believe that he’s alive, that he’s here, and
that he’s on my side.

Actually, that’s exactly how I felt about
The General
. I drop behind
Small Talk
’s massive form
so I’m not such an obvious target.

Dark Fire
flips his helmet open and
looks around at the chaos of broken bodies around the dog
whistle.

“What the hell?” he says pointedly. “I was
only gone for a day.”

“My family live here,”
Small Talk
answers unapologetically.

“I know. But why did you bring the
trainee?”

“I was suited up, and it seemed wrong to let
Small Talk
go alone,” I shout out from behind cover.

“You sure are living up to your reputation,
Red Five
. Try and not die, I still want to talk to you.”

Dark Fire
’s arrival has bought us a
little time, but the dog whistle is still calling out.
Small
Talk
pats my shoulder and points at a flight of screamers
heading our way.

“I’m glad you joined me,” he says.

Never Lies
lands beside us.

“I’ll be the last for a while, the cannons
are down. I see the dog whistle is working, so this should be
interesting.”

“I’m still alive,” I call out.

“And still stupid,” she retorts.

“He shouldn’t have come,” says
Dark
Fire
, “you two should have stopped him. He isn’t ready.”

“There’s no stopping this one,” says
Small
Talk
.

“And is anyone ever ready for this?” adds
Never Lies
.

The ground rumbles, and we take off into the
air, all arguments forgotten in the face of a new attack. A huge
red oblong shape floats towards us, unfolding long arms that end in
blades and claws as it approaches. The screamers arrive, and
octo-apes drop down onto us.