Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel (46 page)

She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. At least the fighting hadn’t touched the Old City. If Gabby was still there, she had time to get out. Part of Niobe screamed at her to rush back home, that Gabby would surely be waiting there, ready to accept all her apologies and take her back. Even if she wasn’t there, maybe Niobe could leave a message for her. It was so clear now, so clear what was really important.

But she couldn’t. Her place was here.
Sorry, Carpenter. We were too slow. I wasn’t smart enough, and you…you were too damn heroic for your own good.
She was alone against a psychopath now. No, not a psychopath. Worse. An extremist. A zealot. A man who could rationalise the torture and exploitation of a boy whose only crime was having the wrong father. How could she fight that kind of dedication?

Quanta’s airship slowed again. Half an hour ago she’d seen the flash of a miniature rocket engine as a small vehicle landed in the airship loading bay. It was Quanta. It had to be. He was sitting up there, watching the carnage he’d unleashed. And now he was using the airship to transport groups of his metas from one part of the city to the other. It made sense; the streets were so packed with cars and civilians that moving by ground was damn near impossible. She upped the magnification on her goggles and watched five supercriminals as they clung to the ropes that dangled from the airship. The rocket engines flared, carrying the airship up to float above a department store rooftop half a mile from her. The metas disembarked and disappeared from view, probably regrouping and gathering their strength.

Wait a minute. They’d dropped metas off on that same rooftop before, maybe twenty minutes ago. That meant they were using specific roofs as dedicated staging areas. The airship moved on, with a pair of fliers in support. She ran back through the movements of the ship in her mind. It had definitely stopped there before, and before that, at the offices for the Bank of Australasia. They were moving in a pattern. A circuit.
The next building….
She pushed her hat back and pressed her fingers to her forehead, picturing the airship’s movements in her head.

The Unity Corporation building.

Ice hardened her heart and cooled her fear. She drew her gun, checked the cylinder, and pulled the darkness around her. The world went flat, split into easy divisions. Light and dark. Black and white. Safety and danger. She darted down the side of the Starlight Hotel and onto the street. The airship let out another blast, but it was far enough away that the light only prickled her. She slipped out of the shadow running, tossed away her cigarette, took another breath, and dived back into darkness.

She could feel the vibrations of ten thousand panicking civilians running from their doom. Off to her right, the surface of a building became indistinct as it crumbled. On she went, slipping up walls and creeping along windows to go places no normal human could reach.

Her lungs started to burn again, so she threw off the shadow on an apartment balcony and breathed deep. She was in the heart of the city now, her view of the surroundings cut off by tightly-packed towers, but she could still glimpse the majesty of the airship as it tracked across the city. It was nearly in position. She took a lungful of air and let the shadow take her again.

She slipped off the building, crossed a street littered with the rubble of a fallen tower, and zipped up the side of the thirty-floor Unity Corporation building. The light from the airship’s rocket engines stung, but she steeled herself and continued up. The Auckland arm of Unity Corporation had designed their office building as a twisting glass behemoth, the upper floors rotated forty-five degrees with respect to the bottom floors. The roof tapered to a tall spire on one side with the Unity Corporation logo displayed in huge glowing letters. The other end of the roof was flat, dotted with exotic plants and paved with tile walkways. It was probably a lovely place for the corporation’s workers to take their smoko break, but more importantly, the rooftop gardens gave her cover.

She came out of the shadow behind a short row of hedges just as the group of battle-worn metas touched down on the roof. She pressed herself flat against the ground to keep out of sight and wriggled forwards, gun in hand. The ropes hanging from the airship’s gondola each ended in a small metal platform, wide enough to allow someone to stand. Three male and two female metas rested on the ground. She recognised two from the attack on the warehouse: a man with fire licking his skin and another with smoke seeping from his lips. None of them so much as glanced in her direction. They’d be tired; shooting fire around in combat was no cake-walk. The airship’s engines roared again as it started to move away. Now was her chance.

She dropped back into shadow, the dim light stinging her, and raced past the exhausted metas. The platforms at the ends of each rope scraped along the tiles and started to lift as the airship gained altitude. She raced after it as the ropes neared the glass barrier that surrounded the edge of the building.

Now. She slipped out of the shadow, planted a foot on the top of the glass barrier, and leapt. There was nothing but a thirty-floor drop below her. Someone shouted behind her, and she could hear the metas scrambling to their feet. Everything sounded hollow compared to the blood rushing in her ears.

Her free hand looped around the rope and her foot hit the platform. The momentum carried her forwards. Her stomach lurched as her foot slipped and the rope twisted out of her grip. Her muscles clenched instinctively. That was the only thing that kept her from dropping her gun. She caught the rope again in her elbow, and her knee came down heavily on the platform. The rope stretched and recoiled a little under her weight, and for a moment, she was sure it would snap.
Don’t be stupid. It’s held heavier people than you
. Then she was steady, kneeling on the platform with the city spread out beneath her.

She blinked the sweat out of her eyes in time to see a flutter of wings bearing down on her. A screech pierced the air. For a split second, she froze like a mouse being hunted by a hawk. Then she saw Avin’s face against the night, and suppressed rage bubbled up inside her. The bird-woman stretched her claws in front of her.

Niobe fired from the hip. The stun round struck the meta just below her left collarbone. Her eyes went wide and her wings stiffened. Niobe shifted her weight on the platform and rocked herself out of the way just as Avin went soaring past her. With a strangled groan, the bird-woman glided past and slammed into the rooftop garden, wings twisting and popping as she hit. For a moment, guilt touched Niobe’s heart. She hadn’t meant to cause Avin that much damage. Then Niobe put her hand to her cheek, where the scratches still hadn’t healed.
Bugger the bitch. She took my goddamn picture.

The wind whistled around her as she perched on the platform. She could make out flashes of gunfire and blue light against the glass buildings. The streets surged with civilians. Heights didn’t normally bother her, but the adrenaline was still pumping from the jump, and a slick sense of nausea sloshed in her stomach every time the rope twisted in the wind.

She shook her head and looked up. The ropes hung down from an opening at the rear of the airship’s gondola.
I guess asking them to winch me in is out of the question.
She holstered her gun and pushed her hat down tight on her head.
I’m coming, Morgan.

It had been a long time since she’d practiced climbing a rope, but she fell back into the rhythm quickly.
Pull yourself up, press the rope between your insteps, repeat
. The wound in her thigh stabbed at her with every movement. She was breathing hard by the time she was halfway up. She’d gotten used to using shadow to slip up walls, but a rope by itself didn’t hold enough surface area to contain her entire shadow. So she pulled herself up, inch by inch, only looking down to make sure the airship hadn’t yet picked up any more passengers.

Finally, her hand touched metal. Panting, she dug her fingers into the grooved floor of the bay and hauled herself up. Her arms protested, but then she was on her hands and knees in a loading bay stacked with crates and webbing. A white motorbike with a bubble of glass to protect the rider was strapped to one wall. Scorch marks marred the floor beneath the bike. She could smell the rocket fuel from here.

She touched her goggles to adjust for the brighter light. A figure stood motionless in the centre of the loading bay. Niobe had seen this meta before, sitting in one of the getaway vans from Quanta’s raid on the TV station.

“My lord has been expecting you,” the figure of glistening black stone shouted over the sound of the engines.

Niobe drew her revolver and fired twice. Two spots of blue sparks flared up in the meta’s chest, dead centre. Kill shots. Except they didn’t even make her stumble.

The stone woman charged, and the bay shook with every step. Niobe’s vision narrowed, her breathing shallow. Behind her, the bay doors stood open to the air. She couldn’t back away.

The meta swung a fist. Niobe threw herself forwards, feeling the fist skim past. She rolled and came up behind the meta. The stone woman stood at the edge of the loading bay, her back to Niobe.

Now!
Niobe planted her feet, changed direction, and threw her shoulder into the small of the meta’s back.

The woman didn’t budge.

An elbow came out of nowhere and connected with Niobe’s sternum. Something cracked, and she went falling back, gasping. Spots swam in her eyes.
No, get up!

She blinked. The meta’s foot loomed above her, poised to strike. With a surge of adrenaline, Niobe rolled to the side. The foot slammed into the bay floor, denting the metal. Niobe scrambled to her feet and backed away. There wasn’t enough room to manoeuver in here. And there was sure as hell no way she could go toe-to-toe with this woman.

The meta charged and swung again. Niobe grabbed hold of a tall crate and pulled herself on top an instant before the fist landed. The crate splintered beneath her, but by that time she was leaping to the next one along, trying to put some space between them. The loading bay was too bright. It was time to do something about that.

She fired at one of the lights, shattering it, then leapt to the next crate before the meta could catch her. Two more lights to go. She fired again, and another bulb shattered.

Something hard and cold gripped her ankle for a second. She kicked and got free, but it was too late. Her stomach lurched as she slipped off the crate and landed hard on the ground.

“You can’t get away,” the meta said. Her footsteps clanged as she approached. Niobe scrambled along the ground, away from the woman. “The door is sealed shut. There’s nowhere to run.”

“Who says I’m running?”

Niobe fired once more, and the loading bay fell into darkness. Now it was her turn.

A fist came for her, but she was already part of the shadow. In one quick move she slid across the floor of the loading bay.

“My lord respects you, you know,” the meta said as Niobe came out of the shadow and adjusted the contrast on her goggles.

“Your lord is bonkers, you know that?”
Where was it? There.
She slipped her pocket knife out of her utility belt and sliced through a pair of loading straps.

The footsteps turned back towards her and started approaching. “He is a great man.”

“Yeah?” She holstered her gun and tried to judge the position of the footsteps while she searched for an on-switch. “You believe in his cause?”

“I’d die for it.”

“That’ll make this easier.”

Niobe turned the ignition, and the rocket-bike’s engine rumbled to life. Perfect.

“What is…?” The footsteps stopped.

Niobe flicked the switch, and blue flame lit up the loading bay. The meta’s stone features displayed nothing as she stood silhouetted against the open doors.

Niobe pulled the clutch, stomped on the gear lever, and twisted the throttle. The rocket-bike shot forwards like a missile. Niobe dived out of the way to avoid the heat of the rocket engines.

The bike slammed into the meta. Without slowing, it went flying out the open door and into the darkness, carrying the stone meta with it. The woman’s shouts were drowned out by the screaming engines.

Niobe put her back against a crate, panting. The woman looked like she’d be tough enough to survive the fall. She certainly packed a hell of a punch. Niobe prodded herself just below her left breast and winced. Cracked rib, probably. Most likely it hadn’t punctured anything vital. She needed to keep moving.

The ropes the metas were using for transport were attached to a set of motorised winches set into the ceiling. After a few moments of searching, she found the panel that controlled them and punched buttons at random until she figured out how to reel them in. She had no intention of letting anyone climb up behind her. When she’d set all the winches going, she moved quickly to the only door out of the loading bay, using the walls and crates to give her cover in case someone came to investigate.

The door resembled something off a submarine, with a locking system that sealed the entire door in place when the handle was turned. She wrenched the handle down, pain stabbing through her chest. The door didn’t budge. Damn it, the stone woman was telling the truth. It really was sealed.

Plan B it was, then.
Fucking great
. Sucking in another breath, she dived back into shadow and made for the bay doors. Pricks of light from the city stabbed at her as she slipped out the door and over the outer surface of the airship’s gondola.
This day’s getting worse by the minute
.

She couldn’t feel the wind as a shadow, but she could sense the way the airship shuddered, and it did nothing for her confidence. She’d had enough heights already this evening. She slid along the outside of the gondola, looking for a good place. She stopped by a window.
Here, this will have to do
. For a moment, she mentally prepared herself, trying to ignore the blackness creeping through her.