School for Sidekicks (34 page)

“Spartanicus is here somewhere?” I asked, and my voice squeaked embarrassingly when I said his name.

“Not yet. HeartBurn is the one who killed the lights. But he's on his way there now. There aren't many Masks still on Earth, but nearly all of them are either at OSIRIS headquarters or en route, and hitting them while they're still dazed from that orbital strike is Spartanicus's best chance at taking over Heropolis.”

“How bad is the damage?” asked Speedslick.

“Bad,” replied Foxman, “but it could have been a lot worse. The impact-protection system focused much of the force back up into the sky—that's why the landing well is shaped the way it is, to channel blasts upward. But the city still got hit with something like a magnitude-six earthquake and it's not built for that. A lot of people died today.”

I felt my throat clench. “My parents?” I couldn't help but ask.

“Are fine, I checked.”

“Good.” I didn't ask for the others. Neither NightHowl nor Speedslick were local to Heropolis, and we already knew where Burnish's dad was, to say nothing of her mother—OMG!

My speaker made a strange crackling noise followed by Foxman's voice saying, “Uh-oh.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“The OSIRIS air defense systems just locked a phalanx of surface-to-air missiles on the
Flying Fox
, and my computer tap is detecting multiple launch orders.”

“Can you dodge them?”

“Not a chance. I'll be bailing out with my suit cold to avoid retargeting in about seventeen seconds here.”

“What should
I
do?”

“Hold there, I'm going to launch your armor pod on ballistic with a homing beacon when I bail out. You are not to move from the spot or do anything at all until you are fully suited up. That's a direct order.”

“You're not going to tell me to sit this out?”

“Of course not, you're my sidekick. You belong at my si—”

Denmother's voice cut in, “Pod launched, eject, eject, eject!”

Then the line went dead.

“Now what?” asked Speedslick, who had started bouncing off the walls—literally.

“We get in the game,” I said.

Someone had shot down my hero, and they were going to pay. My childhood Mask dreams had never put me in the role of sidekick, and I'd been horribly disappointed when Speedslick first explained the situation at the AMO. Even more so when I was assigned to Foxman. But over the past few months I'd come to like and respect the man. If he needed me, I owed it to him to be there.

“I'll see if I can't find us a way out,” said Burnish. “And hope I don't run into my mother.”

“About that—” I said.

“Don't ask.” Burnish's shoulders slumped. “She was very young, my dad is a jerk, and she never wanted anything to do with me because of him. She dropped me off at the doorway to OSIRIS about ten hours after she gave birth to me. We don't talk. We don't write. We simply don't.” Then she flashed into plasma and slid into another conduit end.

I tapped the phone key on my cowl. “Denmother, can you tell me anything about Foxman?”

“He went into the river suit cold and then went to stealth mode. I have no further information.”

“What about my armor pod?”

“Initial launch was ballistic and it avoided all missiles before engaging rocket and activating nap-of-Earth flight mode. It should be at your location”—a tremendous
whung
noise from somewhere above cut Denmother off for a moment—“now, Master Quick.”

One corner of the fractured ceiling bulged downward and fell in as a coffin-size steel lozenge dropped into the other end of the hall with a metallic
clang
. Burnish was riding it like a bucking bronco, and she jumped free as it rolled to a stop a few yards away from me.

She grinned at all of us through the fresh wave of dust. “Saw this coming in fast, and figured it'd make the perfect door knocker if I gave it a little boost.”

NightHowl shook her head. “I'm sure glad my sonic powers come with major ear protection.”

I'd wondered about that, and Speedslick as well—Burnish in steel form was practically indestructible. But I didn't have time to indulge my curiosity. I had to get into my armor so I could get to where I needed to be—backing up Foxman, because he was my hero and that's what sidekicks do. I reached over and put my thumb on the locking panel of the armor pod.

It split open like a clamshell, with the front half of my armor in the top and the back in the bottom. The armor itself was likewise blown open, rather like an unfurled flower. I quickly laid down in the pod and let the servo motors close me up. Ten seconds later, I had six hundred pounds of protection wrapped around me and it was time to move.

Burnish was first out of our little slice of tunnel, since she was by far the toughest. Speedslick bolted after her. I'd planned on going second, but it's hard to outmaneuver a speedster. But just as I started up through the passage opened by the armor pod, Speedslick came tumbling right back down again and I barely caught him. He was unconscious, with blood streaming from his nose and ears. Shaking him didn't wake him, but he seemed otherwise unhurt and we had to move on. So, I set him on the ground and headed up to see what the heck had happened to Burnish.

Things got a little blurry after that as I plunged into the maelstrom of a full-on metawar. There were dozens of Hoods and about a third as many Masks, all blasting away at each other with every kind of bioweapon you could imagine, and quite a few that you probably can't, to say nothing of the various guns, lasers, swords, and other more conventional weapons.

I wish I could describe it in any detail, but it was so loud and crazy and bright that I couldn't force the scene to make any sense at all. All I can say is that it was like the opening minutes of a really complex, new first-person Mask game, where you get flashes and bits, but you know that you're not going to stay alive for long if you try to do anything besides keep your head down.

I'd have been KO'd quick if Denmother hadn't started feeding me tactical info as soon as I hit the surface. And this wasn't a game where I'd get a respawn; this was real. She started with the fact that some of the Hoods I'd missed at the M-Day festivities up on Deimos had arrived on the scene—mostly the ones from the nearest metamax.

Despite the danger, I knew we had to head for the thickest fighting. That was where we'd find Spartanicus and, with him, Foxman. We started moving immediately, though we did take the circuitous route Denmother recommended. That meant backing away from the central building and circling behind three towers that might once have been grain elevators.

Somewhere along the way NightHowl ended up with a twenty-inch spike of synthetic ivory driven through her thigh and went down with a bone-shattering shriek. Literally. She pulverized the bones in her attacker's legs with her scream.

“'Howl!” I yelled, kneeling beside my fallen friend.

“I'll get her clear,” said Burnish. “You go find Foxman.” Then she picked up NightHowl and started running back the way we'd come.

I was alone.

And getting very close to the center of the fighting. I slowed down and activated Foxameleon mode on my armor once I saw the open campus that centered the OSIRIS compound. The supercapacitors in my suit couldn't sustain active Foxouflage for long, or I'd have done it sooner. The armor-glass roof over the sunken plaza of the central building had mostly caved in. It was a surreal view. The remaining shards maintained their camouflage, making a sharp contrast to the view down into the plaza below.

Flareup came roaring in over the featureless black cube that anchored the northern edge of the campus just then, surfing an incandescent wave of plasma. She slowed down as she soared over the open well of the plaza and fired off a series of energy blasts, then started to accelerate away again. Before she could clear the edge of the giant hole, three precisely placed bolts of green lightning hit her in the chest and face.

The plasma wave died and Flareup tumbled through the air, spiking herself on a long spear of armor glass at the lip of the pit. She didn't even scream. She simply stopped moving, and I had to look away.

I crept toward the nearest edge of the fallen-in roof, moving as quietly as I ever had. The green lightning told me all I needed to know about where Spartanicus was and the danger I was about to face. I was shaking inside my armor, but I didn't let that stop me. I didn't want to die again, but Foxman would be somewhere around here. I was his sidekick, and together we could do this.

When I reached the lip, I turned sideways and cautiously edged one eye out over a long crack between two jagged pieces of glass. Spartanicus stood in the exact center of the plaza below. Dozens of dead or unconscious Masks and Hoods lay scattered around him, including his henchmen Bagger and Mempulse, the former almost certainly dead. There was no sign of HeartBurn, the Fluffinator, or Mr. Implausible. I figured they were off implementing other elements of his plan, though there was more than enough rubble to hide any number of bodies.

Spartanicus was the only figure still upright, though he had a long bloody gash running from his right collarbone down to his left hip, and the Armex on the back of his cowl was visibly smoking. His head was whipping from side to side, as though he were looking for more enemies. I hadn't decided what to do next when a hand caught me by the ankle and yanked me back from the edge.

“Careful there, Meerkat,” Foxman's voice whispered into my earpiece. “Your armor won't stand up to a direct hit from Spartanicus. Even with your Foxouflage that was a risky move. That armor glass is clear from below. Or, had you forgotten that?”

I felt my face flush and admitted, “Actually, I had.”

I rolled over onto my back and looked up at Foxman. Well, looked for him, might be closer to the truth. He'd activated Foxameleon mode, too, so he mostly registered as a human-shaped blurry patch.

“Do we have a plan?” I asked.

“Not as such, no. And we have a serious problem. I had to fight my way here and that's burned off a big chunk of my suit's charge. With the whole compound powered down, and the
Flying Fox
a thin smear of flaming wreckage scattered across the river side of downtown, I can't recharge either. So I figure I've got about three minutes and change to take down Spartanicus once I actually engage him.”

That was ugly. “Can you pull the remaining power from my armor?”

“I could, but that would leave you completely out of the fight, and only add eleven seconds of operational time to my suit. I think you're more valuable as you than playing battery for me. Also, I'd prefer it if you stayed in Foxameleon mode. Regardless of what Backflash knows or figures out, if there's any chance of you getting out of here without OSIRIS having to officially notice that you've been sidekicking without a permit, that'd be optimum.”

“I'm not afraid of the consequences,” I said defiantly.

“I am, and you should be, but I appreciate the sentiment. Look, we're running on draining batteries right now, so we don't have time to talk this out. I want you to stay up here. I'm going to give you the Foxblaster, but your capacitors will only sustain two, maybe three, shots at max power, so you have to make them count. Spartanicus is going to pound the living daylights out of me once I get in close, but I want you to hold fire until you get a clean shot at the back of his head. The Armex back there looks like it's sustained a lot of damage, and a head shot is the only way I know to be sure to take him down.”

“Will it kill him?” My voice came out very small and squeaky, and I mentally kicked myself.

Foxman didn't seem to notice. “I wish. But, no, he's even tougher than Captain Commanding, if not as strong. It should knock him out though. I don't know if that will win us the fight, but taking down the general will sure as heck help. You ready?”

“Anytime you are, boss!” I chirruped.

Chirruped?
Oh no, my overconfident banter superpowers seemed to be kicking in again. Wait, was that really a thing? Had becoming meta given my vocal cords a sort of suicidal life of their own? It would explain so very much. Or was it just narrative expectation built up by reading too many Mask comics?

“You hit him low, and I'll hit him high, Foxman!
Bam, pow,
and he's down!” No, my vocal cords were
definitely
out to get me.

“That's the spirit, Meerkat!” Foxman sounded more than a little like a man touched with superbanter himself. Maybe it was a thing. “Now, I'm on my way. Don't poke your head over the edge until he starts beating the stuffing out of me, and make sure that you hit him hard when you fire.”

Then he was gone, and it was too late to do anything except wait for the fight below to start, and line up my shot.

Foxman went in smart and silent, taking a running jump, and then simply falling straight down toward Spartanicus. But somehow, despite his Foxouflage, the big Hood detected Foxman's presence. He stepped out of the way at the last minute and swung his sword around to bat Foxman halfway across the plaza. The blade bit into the armor over Foxman's hip. By luck or design-forethought the broken edges of the armor clamped down on the sword, wrenching it free of Spartanicus's grip.

Foxman landed hard and bounced, the Foxouflage flickering and shutting down as he smashed into a huge concrete planter. He staggered to his feet, pausing only long enough to snap the hilt off the sword embedded in his hip before charging back toward Spartanicus. I slid forward on my belly, carefully bringing the Foxblaster into position. But they moved so fast and hit each other with such force that I had real trouble following things, both in terms of what was going on and with the scope of the Foxblaster.

Then, almost as fast as it had begun, the fight seemed to be over. Spartanicus caught Foxman by thigh and shoulder, lifted him high over his head, and smashed him into the pavement hard enough to create a shallow Foxman-shaped crater. As Spartanicus raised his right foot high over Foxman's helmet I finally got my sights lined up and took my shot.