Trainee Superhero (Book Two) Read Online Free Page B

should be dead, kid, but you did well.”
    We fly over to the ruins of the deathtower to
have a look. The storm is fading. Bad Day picks up a gun
turret and holds it over his head.
    “Pew-pew!” he says.
    Never Lies laughs and picks up a sheet
of green metal.
    “There must be a ton of good stuff in here,”
she says, and then freezes.
    The strange tentacled alien is watching us
from beyond the wreck. It doesn’t flee or make any move to
attack.
    “Move slowly. Close and capture. We can do
this,” Never Lies says.
    And my helmet goes bang-bang-bang as a
second deathtower drops through the clouds and falls right onto
us.
    “Go!” yells Never Lies .
    Bad Day grabs me and we escape.
    “East!” I say, remembering the briefing.
    The compass on my arm swings wildly and I
can't see the sun. Bad Day grabs me and my stomach lurches
as we teleport some distance away from the fight.
    “Just go!” he shouts, and disappears
again.
    Good advice. I fly with the storm at my back.
I get pretty lost, so I fly high to find my ride out of here. I see
a Comet hovering above the trees near me and circle down to it. Bad Day and the others are already there.
    Bad Day is talking urgently into a
radio set as I land.
    “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.
     

Lesson
Eight: Anonymous Heroes Are Disposable Heroes
     
    “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