Trainee Superhero (Book Two) (4 page)

“You’re alive! Any sign of
Never
Lies
?” he asks.

Never Lies
arrives a minute later, her
suit covered in burn marks and
Slow Learner
slung over her
shoulder. She lands next to the Comet and lowers
Slow
Learner
carefully to the ground. A medic runs over to him and
pulls his helmet off.

“He’ll be okay,” the medic calls out, and she
nods.

“
Gold Storm
is inbound,” says
Bad
Day
, “and they want us to leave. Nothing more we could have
done.”

Never Lies
shrugs angrily and opens
her helmet. She led her team where others had feared to go, took on
the biggest weapons the enemy could throw at her in the worst
conditions possible and led a disciplined retreat without losing
anyone. Most superheroes dream of being that good, but I can see by
her face that she's furious with herself.

Never Lies
climbs into the ranger,
powers down her suit and then punches the wall so hard she leaves a
dent in the metal.

I know exactly how she feels.

“As you know, we have our ‘A’ teams the
public know and love, and our ‘B’ teams that keep their visors down
and do most of the fighting. Despite our best efforts, the public
have noticed that the ‘B’ teams have high casualties. This has been
very bad for morale. We need to consider the proposal of a ‘C’ team
that the public doesn’t know about.”

-Superhero Corps, confidential memo.

“They told me that I would never be much good
in a fight, but that I would be excellent on TV. So I told them
that I would rather fight anonymously than preen on camera, and
then I hit my boss with a chair.”

-
One Trick
, interview quoted at her
trial.

I’m still not dead, although I’ve come close
a few times.

I’ve racked up eight missions so far, most of
them clean-ups after a saucer has gone down. I’ve been told they
were easy missions, but they didn’t feel easy. My shields are
keeping me alive, and my mutliblaster and egg launcher are earning
me some kills, but I’ve taken some heavy knocks.

Red Three
died on our last mission.
She was the third of my intake to die. The funerals for trainees
are brief, just a few words followed by the single firework rocket
that’s a tradition at superhero funerals.

I’m only on call a few hours a day, and I
spend most of my time in training. I train more than any of the
other trainees, because I’m determined to prove I belong here.

Life as a trainee superhero is hard, but
there are definite upsides. The food is incredible, and all this
training is really filling my skinny body out with muscle. The
experimental surgery probably helps.

I’m eating breakfast on the main deck after a
night-time of being on call when the loudspeaker rings out:

“All operators and trainees to briefing room
one. Repeat, all operators and trainees to briefing room one.”

Briefing room one is shaped like a lecture
hall or cinema with multiple levels of seats rising up from a
podium. There are perhaps three hundred seats, but less than fifty
operators and only a handful of surviving trainees. We spread
ourselves out in little clumps, although there are some that prefer
to sit in pairs. This is the first time I’ve seen all the operators
in the same room, and it is clear to me that there are groups and
alliances within this team. It’s just like high school, except much
more serious. I sit down next to
Bad Day
and
One
Trick
.

A group of four grim-looking men and women
walk past us and sit near the front of the hall. They don’t make
any attempt to talk to each other, or even make eye contact. Each
wears a thin black band on their left arms.

“What’s with them?” I ask
Bad Day
.

“The black bands? All supers who have lost
far, far too much. Not a friendly bunch. Don’t mess with them.”

I can just make out the names written on the
backs of the two black-banders closest to me: one is called
Three Brothers
the other is called
Perth Rose
. Their
deep depression annoys me a little; what makes them so special?

“We’ve all lost something to the saucers,” I
say.

Firestorm Commando
sits by himself in
the corner of the room. I heard that
Past Prime
had been
trying to get rid of him, but that
The General
had insisted
that he stayed in the unit.

Other groups of operators sit in pairs or
trios, some quiet and others laughing. A few join
Bad Day
and me;
Day
seems well liked. A young man called
Die
Laughing
jumps into the seat next to me, gives me a broad smile
and then focusses on folding a paper airplane. He sends it looping
through the room as soon as it’s finished, and it hits
Firestorm
Commando
right in the back of the head.

“He won’t like that,” says
Pet Shark
from right behind me.

Firestorm Commando
looks around
furiously, but
Die Laughing
just waves back and starts on
another plane.

There are a few operators that sit alone. A
man two rows in front of us seems particularly unpopular. He looks
strange, even for an operator, and is humming loudly to himself.
The loner is skinny with short white hair. A pair of huge men with
tattoos on their faces are about to sit next to him when they see
him and abruptly jump a few rows away.

“What’s with that guy?” I ask
Bad
Day
.

“That’s
Extremely Dangerous
,” whispers
Bad Day
.

Wow. All of the operators are dangerous on
and off the battlefield. They are some of the most egotistical,
aggressive and temperamental men and women I have ever met. For one
man to be singled out as
Extremely Dangerous
worries me.

Extremely Dangerous
turns around and
gives us a thin smile. His eyes are grey and his face is
frighteningly pale.

“Call me
Simon Smith
,” he says
quietly.

My whole body shivers and even
Bad Day
seems shaken. The superheroes around us all turn to look at
Bad
Day
;
Die Laughing
stops playing with his paper
plane.

“Of course, Simon. No offense meant,” says
Bad Day
quickly.

“
Simon Smith
,” corrects
Extremely
Dangerous
.

“
Simon Smith
,” I say.

Extremely Dangerous
nods, turns away
and starts humming again. All the superheroes around me relax a
little. Someone mutters a curse.

“Nutcase,” whispers
Pet Shark
, but
very, very quietly.

“He’s good in a fight,” says
Die
Laughing
as if that is all that matters to him.

He finishes his plane and launches it with a
flourish. The plane floats in the air, over the heads of all the
superheroes and down towards the stage. I’m so busy watching it
that I don’t notice when
Past Prime
walks up to the lectern.
He catches the plane as it passes him, crumples it up and drops it
to the floor.

“Let’s get started.”

The room falls silent, and we all lean
forwards in our seats. I’ve never been to an all-operators meeting
before, but I bet it’s important.
Past Prime
waves at the
screen and a map of Korea appears.

“Three years ago the
Asian Fury
team
damaged a saucer over South Korea. The saucer flew into North Korea
before crashing. As you know, we are not welcome in that part of
the world. It was decided not to confirm the kill. In hindsight
this was a mistake. Last week our satellites reported these in an
airbase deep in the North's borders.”

The view screen behind
Past Prime
glows into life to show a satellite image of three huge airships in
a maze of scaffolding. They look like the offspring of world war
one battleships and an amateur's version of a saucer: all gun
turrets and short wings, missile packs and heavy armor. They don’t
look like they could possibly fly.

“Last week the airships had disappeared from
the base. All three have turned up again today. One is in South
Korea, and
Asian Fury
is handling it. The second is
currently over the ocean on its way to Japan, ETA four hours.”

Everybody groans. Superhero shields don’t
work well over water for some reason, which means that intercepting
the craft before it hits land is risky work. Too risky for the
other teams… but probably not for us.

“Command has ordered us to take it down,”
confirms
Past Prime
, “and this is how we are going to do it:
we drop in a grid around the ship’s expected course. The course is
hard to predict, so we will have to throw everyone we have at it.
Those who miss will be picked up in Comets. Anyone who has an
acceptable intercept will latch onto the enemy with grappling hooks
and take it down. Questions?”

“Where’s the boss?” yells someone.

“Taking out the third saucer. Now, are we
set?”

There is a lot of complaining, but we really
don’t have much choice. People form a line into the armory based on
team hierarchy, with the most experienced at the front and me right
at the back. Even the other trainees from my intake are in the line
in front of me, which is a little insulting. I can’t even see the
front of the line. The technician dresses me with quick efficiency
and arms me with my multiblaster and a short ranged melting ray for
cutting into the ship. Then he hands me a long, thin tube with a
cord connected to its tail. The cord runs into a large orange box
which one of the technicians straps to my chest.

“Here’s your rocket harpoon. It has its own
radar, so just activate it, throw it and hope it hits. If it does,
it will reel you in.”

“And if it doesn’t hit?” I ask, but the
technicians are already pushing me towards a capsule.

“This is going to put a lot of strain on the
cannons,”
Bad Memories
says as he straps me in place, “they
were designed for six at a time, not fifty. Good luck, kid.”

The capsule clicks shut before I can answer.
I doubt he would want to hear my opinion, anyway. I wait in the
darkness with the harpoon pressed awkwardly against my chest.

Every few seconds I hear a
thunk-thunk-thunk
as the capsules before me launch. My own
capsule is warm, uncomfortably so. It’s a strange life being a
superhero: this morning I was being pampered, but now I’m so
crushed in my capsule that my legs are starting to cramp up and my
eyes are full of sweat.

“
Red Five
, status check,” says a voice
in my helmet.

“Hot in here… I’ve got sweat in my eyes.
Otherwise I’m just fine.”

The capsule pops open and a technician leans
in. He pulls my helmet off, mops my forehead with a towel and ties
a sweat band around my head. My helmet goes back on, the technician
gets pulled out and the capsule closes again less than a minute
after it opened.

“Set,
Red Five
?” says my helmet.

“Set,” I say, although it wasn’t really a
question.

The harness slams into me, and I wake up in
the sky.

The capsule ejects me far higher than I’ve
ever been. The air is thin up here, and below me is water
stretching out between the horizons. I check my shield: it says
20%, but that drops to 17% as I watch. I can’t see the hybrid
saucer below me, so I guess I’ll just hover above the water until
someone comes to pick me up.

“Come in,
Red Five
,” says my radio,
startling me.

“Yup,” I say.

“
Red Five
, you have an intercept path.
Prepare to follow trajectory instructions.”

“What? Where?”

“Fly north-north-west as fast as you can,
horizontal.”

I start flying, the wind buffeting my body.
The cold is already sneaking through my suit; they weren’t designed
to fly so high. I don’t know how fast I’m flying, but it feels
fast.

“Slow down,
Red
Five
. Angle
downwards.”

I follow a list of instructions about my
flying, and I feel like I’m being used as a guided missile. Am I
expected to fight this saucer or just impact on its side?

“Shield check,
Red Five
,” says my
radio.

I’ve got used to being independent on
missions, and this level of micromanaging is getting plenty
annoying. I don’t like it at all. The fact that my shield says 14%
is not helping my mood.

“Does it make a difference?” I answer into my
radio. “It’s not like you will cancel the mission because my shield
is low.”

There is a long pause.

“Fair enough,” says the radio, “prep your
harpoon now.”

I get my harpoon and hit the big red button
on its side. The harpoon searches in the air like a live thing,
little jets around the harpoon’s barrel pointing it at the target.
It stops when it’s pointing down and to my left, and the missile
roars out of the barrel and downwards. I follow it, and see the
hybrid saucer for the first time. It’s travelling fast, but so am
I. Its eclectic collection of turrets and missile pods don’t look
as funny as they did on the satellite image, particularly when they
start shooting at me. I’m a small target and most miss, but a few
impact painfully on my chest and head. Shields down to 11%.

The harpoon line on my chest goes taut and
starts reeling me in. For a horrible minute I'm dragged behind the
battleship like rope trailing from a helicopter, whipping around
and spinning in the wind. One of the spheroid turrets locks onto me
and opens up on me with a trio of machine guns. The sound of the
bullets thudding against my armor is disconcerting, but not
damaging. I shoot back, but then I’m past the defenses and being
held right against my harpoon embedded in the metal armor.