Trainee Superhero (Book Two) (6 page)

“This is something big,” says
Bad Day
,
“we should call it in.”

“No. This is my find; I'm not going to let
anyone take it off me. Get in there.”

Bad Day
stands his ground until
Firestorm Commando
touches a control on his arm and my whole
body spasms in pain. I fall over and roll in the snow until the
pain subsides.
Firestorm Commando
must have hit the collar
trigger pretty hard, because that's the worst pain I've ever felt.
I get clumsily to my feet and see the other four members of my team
doing the same.
Firestorm Commando
had hit all of us, all at
once, just because
Bad Day
had questioned him.

What a triclops-face.

“Get. In. There,”
Firestorm Commando
whispers, pointing down the tunnel.

Bad Day
shakes his head and
Firestorm Commando
douses us all with a second round of pain
that lasts longer this time. It's enough to convince us to follow
orders. We head down the tunnel, our courageous leader bringing up
the rear with his finger on the pain trigger.

“I have a bad feeling about this,”
Bad
Day
whispers to himself.

We walk down a dark, narrow tunnel in single
file. The rock here has been melted into smooth walls frosted with
ice. We shine lights down the tunnel, but we can only see as far as
the next turn. I’m feeling pretty claustrophobic but
Firestorm
Commando
forces us forward. He brings up the rear, pushing us
further. The tunnel opens up quickly, widening until we can float
side by side.

“What is this place?” asks
Loud
Mouth
.

His voice echoes down the tunnel, and we
freeze in place.

“Shush,” says
One Trick
nervously.

“Idiot,” adds
Firestorm Commando
.

More tunnels join up with ours, but they are
narrow and steep. We pass about a dozen of them before we come
across an insectoid alien of a type I’ve never seen before. It
lunges at my chest, but
Bad Day
destroys it with a blast
from a plasma pistol.

“Looks like a giant red ant,” says
Wrong
Answer
, poking its remains with her foot.

The alien has a dozen long and segmented legs
and its head is covered in oval eyes that glitter in the darkness.
A cruel hook hangs beneath its head. It looks like an insect that
crawled right out of my nightmares and onto the ice.

“We need to call this in,” says
Bad
Day
again, “I can do it and be back here in five minutes.”

“You’re just a coward. Shut up and do what
you are told.”

Bad Day
isn’t a coward, not at all.
It's protocol to call report in whenever a new alien form is found,
but we can’t radio out from here.
Firestorm Commando
pushes
us further down the icy tunnels until we enter a huge cave filled
with more of the strange alien ants. They are using the hooks
beneath their heads to carve out the ice and rock. The hooks pass
through the thick ice like butter, carving the tunnel out piece by
piece. I have a sudden premonition of what those hooks could do to
a person.

I can see hundreds, possibly thousands of the
ants. Even I'm not stupid enough to suggest we can take them on.
Bad Day
waves us back, and we start retreating.

“I order you to go on!”
Firestorm
Commando
hisses from behind us, but we ignore him.

“Do it!” screams
Firestorm Commando
,
and sends a plasma ball right past me and into the hall.

We watch in horror as it hits an ant and
melts it in a shower of sparks. That attracts the attention of
every ant in the tunnel. They look at the broken ant still steaming
in the ice, and then they look at us. Heads shake and hooks snap
together, and then the giant ants start moving towards us.

“Retreat?” suggests
One Trick
, but
Firestorm Commando
blocks off the tunnel behind us.

“Fight!” he orders.

The ants are too close to argue, so we start
shooting. The six of us have a lot of firepower and for a few
minutes it seems we might win, but there are too many ants and they
are moving too fast. One grabs my foot and I kick it away. Another
and grabs
Bad Day
by the wrist, but I blast is head.
Bad
Day
kills another pair of ants, and for a moment it looks like
we might win.

Then one of
Bad Day
’s pistols misfires
and explodes into a fireball that takes most of his armored glove
with it. He looks down at his ruined hand in shock and tries to
lift it but can't. Blood pours down from his arm and then stops
suddenly.

The emergency tourniquet system must have
kicked in.

One of the ants lunges at
Bad Day
,
slashing at his armor. He tries to teleport, but the creature stops
him.
One Trick
blasts it off him, but the ants are too close
now.
Bad Day
keeps fighting with his good hand, but his
shots start missing their mark and he reloads slowly.
Loud
Mouth
sends a sonic wave of down the tunnel to buy us some time
and we retreat.
Firestorm Commando
is at the back of the
group, and he tries to prevent us leaving.

“Behind us!” yells
Wrong Answer
as
ants start attacking
Firestorm Commando
. The ants are
everywhere and the fight becomes a close combat nightmare of hooks
and legs as ants drop from holes in the ceiling. An ant grabs
One Trick
and cuts through her shield and into her leg. She
falls, and ants swarm over her.

“Get her and get out,
Day
!” screams
Wrong Answer
.

I can tell that
Bad Day
doesn’t want
to leave us, but
Loud Mouth
pushes him towards
One
Trick
.

“I’ll come back,” says
Day
, and then
he and
One Trick
are gone.

I expect
Firestorm Commando
to be
angry, but I can’t see him. I don’t know if he has run or died, but
I don’t care either way. I blast a dozen ants apart, but it’s not
enough.

“We need to get out of here!” shouts
Wrong
Answer
.

A huge worm bursts out of the tunnel wall and
grabs
Wrong Answer
. She screams, and it drags her back the
way it came. I try and follow her, but the ants block the tunnel
and I lose sight of her in a second.

“Saucer!” I scream.

The ground shakes and part of the ceiling
collapses on us, shielding us from the ants. I’m fine, but
Loud
Mouth
is trapped by falling ice. He’s in a bad way, and his
shields are gone. I try to pull him free, but I can’t.

“She must have triggered her self-destruct,”
he says as I try to pull him free.

He’s weak, and can barely move. I do my best,
but I doubt I can get him free.

“I’m not going to make it,” says
Loud
Mouth
suddenly, “I can feel the ants digging near my legs. Get
going, kid, save yourself.”

I burn at the ice with my mutiblaster, trying
to cut him free.

“Go, kid!” he shouts, but I just work
faster.

An ant head breaks through the ice above him,
and I blast it. More ants push their way through the hole.

Loud Mouth
grabs my suit and pulls me
face to face with him. His eyes are beginning to glaze over, and we
both know that these will be the last words he ever says.

“Fly!” he whispers.

So I fly. I fly faster than I ever have
before, dodging between stalactites and scraping across icy walls.
I fly straight, I fly true and I leave this lost battle behind me.
I'm hurt, but I'm alive. My alarms ring out in a chorus of
waaahs
and
beeps
that merge together, but I’ve grown
used to them. I flip past a fallen column of ice and speed past the
set of holes cut into the ice walls. It's only a few hundred yards
from here to the exit, and I'm flying well. I'm almost there. I'm
going to make it.

Bang
.
Bang
.

I’m not worried; nothing can catch me
now.

Bang. Bangbangbang
.

The
beeps
,
bangs
and
waaaahs
are joined by the
tick-tick
of a weapons
lock. The alarms merge into one overpowering
bloop
that will
probably be the last thing I ever hear. I look back over my
shoulder and see a nightmare mouth full of razor teeth and diamond
drills like the worm that took
Wrong Answer
. The mouth is
all I can see: it fills the tunnel and it is getting closer.

I clip my arm on a stalactite and the alarms
cut out. The only sound I can hear inside my helmet is my desperate
hyperventilating. The creature behind me must be getting closer. I
never thought I'd miss those damn alarms. Something deep in the
tunnel explodes, and air whooshes past me. The tunnel is collapsing
around me, huge chunks of ice falling in sheets. I look over my
shoulder and see flames approaching.

So close.

My helmet buzzes loudly and I feel my suit's
power getting out of control. Sparks arc across my body and I don't
try to control them, letting them shoot out as they will. The arcs
get longer, burning the ice around me. I clap my hands together and
a blue shield envelopes my body, absorbing the worst of the
explosion.

“Argh!”

I'm shot out of the tunnel like a bullet from
a gun, high into the sky. The worm bursts out of the tunnel after
me, its sharp teeth nipping at my heels. I see a set of flashes the
corner of my eyes as someone flies toward us, but they are too far
away and the worm’s teeth close on my leg as my shields die.

Bad Day
grabs me as the worm bites
down.

The world spins. I black out and wake up in a
snow bank. I'm in a perfectly spherical crater about eight feet
wide.

Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep
!

Ironically it seems that the damage alarm is
the only part of my suit still working. My shields took the worst
of the landing, but
Bad Day
isn't as lucky. He hits the
ground with a sickening thud. His shields - which are never
particularly strong - flicker and die. We are lying next to
One
Trick
, who is breathing but not moving much.

I pull out a rescue flare and throw it
downwind. It won't make much difference, because if our rescuers
haven't already seen us then we are going to freeze to death.

I limp over to
Bad Day
and flip his
helmet open. His breath comes out in a long, white cloud.

Thank goodness.

Then he stops breathing. I panic, and try to
do CPR but his suit is too thick and doesn't bend as I push against
it.
Bad Day
jerks, spasms and starts breathing again. I hear
engines and look up to see a big aircraft, a Meteor, landing about
ten feet from me. I don't know why I didn't hear it earlier. It's
white and red, the colors of
Team Mercy
.

The back opens and people jump out and run
towards me. They place
Bad Day
and
One Trick
on the
two operating tables in the Meteor. One of the nurses helps me into
a seat, and I can see the concern in his face. He asks me a
question, but I just shake my head. The jet takes off gently as
medics strip away portions of
One Trick
's armor. She doesn't
wake up as they place needles in her arms, doesn't even flinch when
one of the medics flips open one of her eyelids.
Bad Day
is
doing even worse: the medical team clears the space around him as
his body spasms again.

The time is passing strangely, people moving
in blurs as they work. I close my eyes for a second, and when I
open them
Bad Day
is looking right at me. He waves me over,
so I unstrap and lurch unsteadily to sit beside him. He has a dozen
tubes in his neck and chest. Some are pumping blood into his body,
some are removing it. I don't know what the rest are doing, but I
hope they are helping.

“Okay, kid?” he says, although his voice
sounds like a whisper from far away.

I nod, although I'm not okay and might never
be again.

“
Wrong Answer
and
Loud Mouth
?”
he asks, and all I can do is shake my head.

“Not your fault,” he says, “not your fault. I
saw
Firestorm Commando
coming out of the tunnel as I was
trying to get back in. He was trying to collapse the tunnel. That’s
why I was late.”

“You shouldn't have come back for me,” I
manage, “you could have stayed away and been fine.”

Bad Day
cracks a smile, but even that
seems to bring him pain. He reaches over and grabs my shoulder,
pulling me close.

“Listen, kid, I never had a tenth of the
potential you have. You are tough and smart, and we need more like
you. If the last thing I ever do is keep you alive... it will be
enough. It will be enough.”

One of the medics pulls me gently away as
Bad Day
's eyes lose focus. She sits me down and straps me
into one of the seats. She gives me a worried look and the chair
starts to scan me for injuries. A nurse picks up my arm and
examines it with soft hands, but I don't feel any pain. She shakes
her head and calls a doctor who injects something into my arm. The
doctor starts talking to me but I hear nothing, feel nothing, see
nothing but
Bad Day
and the medics working on his broken
body.

I am going to kill
Firestorm Commando
the next time I see him.

“Everything for Earth.”

-Superhero Corps Motto.

“
Dark Fire
believes that this mission
could save the Earth. How can you say no to that? I’d rather die
trying than live in defeat!”