Sidekick by Carl Stubblefield (10 best novels of all time .txt) 📗

sent coordinates for her room and other unlocked facilities to her display.

A prompt showed up on the screen:

Enable communication mode? (Y/N)

Shrugging, Gus entered yes.

“…you could really make a difference, Aurora—”

“Hello?” Gus thought, hearing a woman’s voice other than Aurora.

“Oh, how do you do?” the not-Aurora voice replied, sultry and seductive.

“Sorry, I just enabled communications between us. Should I turn it off? I didn’t mean to invade your privacy.”

“That’s odd. Usually to communicate in a party the party leader has to send an invite and I have to accept it. Can we filter this, or is it always on?” Aurora asked warily.

Gus found that he could toggle the comms on and off on his display.

“There’s a little microphone icon on the bottom left corner, I can turn it off and on.”

“Oh, I see it now.” Aurora turned the mic off, which put a big circle with a slash over the mic. “Can you hear this, Gus?” His expression stayed passive. “Gus, your fly is down.” Still no response.

It was a joke that always worked on the noobs at the academy, which were not-so-lovingly referred to as ‘fawns.’ The jumpsuits they wore had no fly that could be unzipped, and still the fawns would always look.

A lot of her fellow supers in training complained that there should be a minimum time being a super before they were allowed into the academy, but most instructors thought it was better to get them fresh before they learned any bad habits they had to train away. In light of them keeping Nth and leveling a secret, she wondered what else was not what it seemed, as far as her training was concerned.

She repeated herself more emphatically and still, Gus was unflappable. He didn’t even check. “I’m convinced,” she thought and clicked the mic back on. She heard Nick’s voice say, “She sounds like Blanche. I’d prefer Bea Arthur, but you take what you can get—”

“Okay, I’m back,” Aurora said, trying the manor’s communication link, pretending she hadn’t heard Nick.

“Well, this should make things easier to plan,” Gus thought and said. “What should we call your N.I.C., Aurora?”

“We haven’t really discussed it. Did you have any preferences?”

“Who me?” Gus and the female voice asked in unison.

“I’ve always been partial to Daphne,” the voice purred.

“Okay, Daphne it is! Well, now that’s settled, we need to plan,” Aurora said.

“What do you think they are going to do next?” Gus asked.

“Well, with their scouts not coming back to give them intel, I think Basileus will send a small group to suss out what happened on the island. They still think they’re going to encounter a large prepared force here, so we need to maintain that façade.”

“I was thinking that same thing. Here, let me check something.” Gus opened the defensive measures menu. There they were, at Tier 2, just what he needed. Gus checked his available FP, recalling that it should be around 1,200 with his recent level up. His eyes bugged out a bit when he saw 48,675 FP available to use. He had to restrain himself from grabbing his wish list and buying everything as Aurora elaborated on how Manticorps would most likely proceed.

“I estimate Basileus, their leader, will give them a day or two before he sends someone else but it could be sooner. If they find out it’s just us, the jig is up and things will get more difficult. They will most likely send drones or wear cameras for recon that will transmit live, to determine threat levels. After that, we will have lost some of the element of surprise, and they will be on guard and harder to catch unaware. I imagine that they will be cagey, ordered to retreat if they meet a superior force.”

“I can unlock some things in the Foundry that I think will help us give that impression.”

“Good. Another advantage we have is that these guys are mercs. They are not a cohesive team that has worked together often for common goals. We can use that against them. If we play it right, they will get overconfident and overcommit. Maybe even get them to compete against each other for bragging rights of who beats us.”

“That’s not as encouraging as you may think,” Gus murmured.

Aurora continued as if she didn’t hear him. “I don’t know who they will send first, but I’m hoping that there will be some abilities that you can use against them. I only got a brief look at them but there are all types of different supers with different specializations.”

“Do you have any idea of what they have available?”

“Only a general idea of some of their abilities, but nothing specific, I’m afraid.” Aurora shrugged. “There are a lot of them, more than forty supers, give or take.”

Gus massaged his temples as Aurora continued speaking. That many? Yikes. That’s much more than we can handle at one time if they all attacked at once.

“…we just have to stay focused and we should be fine. Do you have any problems using your Leech ability on them again?”

“Oh, I have no problem with that. We’re outnumbered and are going to need any advantage we can get. I will need you to cover for me though; I’m a sitting duck while it’s activating. I’ve absorbed two stealth abilities, but I have no idea what they do, so why don’t we train with those tomorrow? Did I tell you about the training arena? It’s really helped me since it’s mostly virtual and can simulate a lot of things, provided you have Nth.”

“It’s probably pretty standard compared to what we had at the academy, but I can join you. It would give me a better idea of where your skills are at, and I can give you advice and we can learn how to coordinate our attacks. If you’ve never had any training, I’m sure I could show you a lot about working as a team.”

“Okay, I’m liking where this is going. How much time do you think we have?” Gus rubbed