Well.
I still had my voice, didn’t I?
“FUTILE.” I boomed, as I crossed my arms, standing still and straight in midair. “LEARN NOW THE PRICE OF OPPOSING DIRE!”
And, timing my actions to match the taskbar, I uncrossed my arms, raising them on high as purple energy streamed around my gauntlets.
“DIE!” I roared, sweeping my gauntlets across in an arc, drawing an invisible line across the line of artillery.
The purple energy wasn’t, so to speak, the actual threat. It was the visual display, a dark matter exhaust. It was what happened when you took the laws of gravity, jerked them out of alignment for a split second, and then reversed them in the opposite direction just as fast.
Gravitic shear. The force of a collapsing star in miniature, a vibration in the cosmic strings sent rippling in a tightly-contained plane.
It wasn’t precisely an explosion. It was more of an implosion, though that wasn’t accurate either. Anyone studying the scene through a high-speed camera would have been able to slow the recording and make out the visual aftermath of the forces I’d unleashed.
For their trouble, they’d see the artillery trucks, the crew manning them, and about ten feet of ground in either direction instantly rise about a foot off the ground, as a new source of gravity pulled them up.
And then slammed them down, adding its own incredible force to the already existing gravity of the planet.
Then, after that split-second, if the camera was anywhere within about a hundred feet of the shear, it would probably be destroyed as a wave of shrapnel and human soup sprayed out in all directions along the horizontal plane.
The small arms fire stopped, as the surviving soldiers tried desperately to parse what had just happened. One second nothing, then, well, sploosh.
I stared down at them, lowering my arms like a maestro bringing down the orchestra, and laughed, laughed maniacally.
That did it. The survivors broke and fled. They hadn’t been many in the first place, just the artillery crews and some accompanying infantry, probably to guard them. More infantry than I’d expected, though.
Which meant there were still rebels active in the city. Which meant that there probably wasn’t a second punch coming against the Chamis. Corazon wouldn’t allocate massive forces to what was basically a combination of a clean-up operation and an opportunistic war crime.
Good. I hadn’t come to play defense. I’d come to render vengeance. I turned from the dripping and devastated remains of the beach, past the tourist hotels that lined it. My, hadn’t they gotten a show! I was probably being filmed by hundreds of phone cameras right now.
I ignored the thought, and turned my gaze East. Towards El Presidente’s palace.
“SHE’S COMING FOR YOU, CORAZON!” I roared, as I flew with the setting sun on my back. “YOUR FATE IS DIRE!”
And at that exact moment, my vox chimed. “Doctor, your captive wishes to speak with you.”
“Captive— ah. Right.” The smartframe. Now what did he want? “Can it wait?”
“He says no.”
Ruining my dramatic moment. “Fine, fine. Give her a minute to find a place to hold up.” I looked around, switched to thermal sight. Every one of the nearby buildings lit up, filled with people-shaped outlines, and I sighed. No place that wouldn’t have collateral, if Corazon’s troops decided to counterattack.
Well, when in doubt... I dove to the street, and smashed through it, burrowing deep into the old sewers that the English had put into place over a century ago. Cobblestones and sheared metal parted to either side of me, rattling off the suit with the sound of a heavy rainstorm. Once I broke into the tunnels proper, I turned and went a few hundred feet, wincing as waste got all over my armor. I’d have to fix that before I confronted Corazon. Couldn’t have a proper villainous showdown stinking of shit.
“Alright Suru, patch Alpha through.”
“Doctor. Thanks for listening to—”
“Get to the point, you’re killing the drama.”
“Right. So I have a few history books in my memory, from the future perspective. They’re losing cohesion the farther out we get from the timeline’s breaking point, but I have some information on Mariposa. Cliff’s notes on the events here.”
“Anything useful?”
“Maybe. The revolution was supposed to happen a week and five days from today. And it failed, hard.”
“Not unexpected. So what?”
“It failed because Corazon revealed two super teams he’d kept secret up until then. About ten more supers than anyone thought he had.”
I whistled. That was weird. Every country, no matter how small, had a super or two. But ten? Haiti had three known costumes that had survived the years. Mariposa was smaller than Haiti, had about a quarter of the population, give or take. True, it was pretty stressful, plenty of power surges, but... still, ten was about twice as many as I expected. Of course there were other ways to make costumes, but those were rarer. Experiments and augments and obsessed natural talents. Still, two full teams worth...
I thought back to the beach. “Dire ran into a telekinetic already. Guy in green and gold. He one of the teammates?”
“No. Sounds like a local government-sponsored hero, according to my data. Agarro Verde? Yes, that’s probably him.”
“Was probably him.” He made Eleven. Okay, something was definitely up, here. “Run the teams down.”
“One of the teams surfaced in Putnam’s Providence, so they’re probably not a factor assuming that’s where they’re based. The other though, defended Mariposa City. Without army support.”
I had to assume I’d run into them. “Okay. What are we dealing with?”
“If the timelines haven’t been altered, and assuming they’re all the same as recorded—”
“Get on with it!”
“Right, sorry. You’ve got a powerhouse, a mind controller, a woman who can summon snakes, a woman who throws icicles, and a man who can turn light into lasers. Their names are—”
“Don’t tell her the names,” I interrupted. “Probably going to have to kill them if they’re around. No names makes it easier.”
“All right, but my point is at least three of the five might be able to injure or kill you.”
I considered, for all of half a second. “Okay. Is that all?”
“Is that all? Are you serious?”
“Is she laughing?” I fired up the gravitics, and burst through the street above. A group of bystanders scattered, shouting. I ignored them and dove into the ocean, moving fast to clear my armor of filth. Also taking a long, leisurely loop around to come at the palace from the East.
“Doctor, there’s at least three of them that possess the possibility of injuring or incapacitating you, by themselves! Working together, their threat potential is unknown. Don’t you think that calls for a little caution?”
I grinned. “Are you kidding? This is a perfect chance to test out the suit to its fullest!”
“Or you could die!”
The palace came into view, and I arced out of the water, then accelerated. “Alpha? Heroes happen. No matter what you do, no matter what you plan, heroes happen. Best to get it over with.”
And then I was smashing through the loose stone outer wall, sending seashell-mortared rocks flying. I used the next wall to help myself brake, crashing through it as well. My outer shell was starting to look a little dented, but I didn’t care. More layers where those came from.
Besides, if it got too badly damaged, I had an ace up my sleeve. We’d see what the fight would bring.
“CORAZON!” I bellowed, “COME OUT AND FACE YOUR RECKONING!”
Then I paused, and looked around. I’d broken through into a storeroom. Nobody else was in here. Well, that was embarrassing.
I shrugged and demolished another wall with the sweep of one arm. Now that I was in the interior, they were mostly wood and plaster. Where I could, I used the door, but many of them weren’t sized to my suit, and
I refused to kneel on general principle.
The first hero found me before I’d gotten three rooms in. The sunlight that streamed through the windows whitened and my sensors started throwing thermal warnings. I threw myself out of the light, my armor orange and sizzling as molten steel dripped to the floor. Five percent damage, from less than a second of exposure.
Maybe Alpha had a point.
I switched to thermal, glared around through the nearby walls. Plenty of moving heat signatures, but no way of telling which one was the offending metahuman. I could annihilate everyone within a few hundred yards...
But no, I was no butcher. No indiscriminate killer. This was war, yes, but not everyone in here would be a combatant. I was Dire, and such careless bloodshed was beneath me. What is the point of supergenius, if you took the easy way out?
So then, a strategic change was in order. I’d draw him out.
“Smoke,” I commanded, and vents opened up on the suit’s side, puffing out a cloud that filled the window-lined antechamber I’d entered. Lasers didn’t do well in smoke. The particles diffused the focused energy to the point they became ineffective. I jogged through, moved into the next room, and did a lazy circuit around this side of the building, jumped up to the second floor occasionally, and took note of every time that a window’s light stabbed into me. It took about twenty percent of my armor, all told, but I finally got a bead on the guy.
He wasn’t in the palace at all. He was outside. And from the angle I’d determined, he was up in one of the towers by the gate.
Makes sense they’d have him up there, where he could get a good angle on the rest of the city below. You get a guy with photonic amplification ability, you want to put him in a place where he can nuke things from above. Only way to be sure, sometimes.
I debated on the tools available, ruled out the gravitic shear. Again, too much collateral, and from this angle there was no way to tell what was behind the tower. Particle beams were an old, reliable favorite, but the beam part of it might be something he could sense or affect.
Railgun it was, then.
I punched out the wall behind me to gain some space, ignored the shouting, screaming people running away from me, and popped the railgun tube out of my shoulder with a hiss of hydraulics. With repeated slams of metal on metal the barrel unfolded, and I crouched. A few seconds was all I needed to drill him through the wall without any risk to myself.
So of course that’s when the powerhouse caught up to me.
One second I was adjusting my aim and lining up a kill-shot, the next second my proximity alarms were blaring, and my HUD’s back armor report lit up with yellow lights as something went crashing into it.
Everything went head over heels, and I rode it as best I could, crashing through the outer wall, skipping off the ground, cracking the cobblestones along the way with rattling snaps. I fetched up lying on my side against the outer wall, with the display flickering as it rerouted circuit damage until I had a clear picture.
A bald man wearing a simple wife-beater and loose sweat pants stood in the hole I’d made in the wall. His head jerked back and forth, and drool escaped his slack mouth, as it opened and closed like a fish gasping for air. One ear was gone, simply a crusted scab against his head.
There was something on his face. I zoomed in until I could see it clearly.
Stitches. He had stitches across his temples. And then I got a good close-up look at his eyes, as he locked his gaze onto my helmet. Glazed and dilated. He was out of it, I knew. I’d seen the look in many insane and drugged unfortunates before.
Problem was, most of those unfortunates didn’t have superstrength. He did.
I barely got to my feet before he was on me, swinging wide punches with incredible force. I dodged what I could, but the Brute suit wasn’t made to be nimble. Drawing upon rudimentary boxing training from a friend I’d lost last year, I blocked some of the punches with the armor’s wide forearms. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it gave me some breathing space.
“STAND DOWN OR FALL BEFORE DIRE!” I told him. But he didn’t give any indication of hearing it, just kept on attacking like a wild thing, with no thought to his own defense.
Well, fine.
I kicked him in the groin with a foot as wide around as his scrawny torso, and sent him flying backward. His wiry frame cracked the wall when it hit, and for a second he seemed stunned.
Then my thermal sensors screamed, as my right shoulderpad started to melt.
The laser guy! I snapped a glance over, saw a figure leaning out of the southernmost tower. The lenses of a pair of binoculars gleamed, as he focused on me.
I moved to cover, scooping up an ornamental cannon and winging it at him one handed. He ducked back as it knocked bricks out of the tower—
—and then the insane powerhouse was on me again, ringing my armor with flailing punches.
I drilled him point-blank with a particle beam, and it knocked him off for a second, but then the laser guy was out and taking potshots at me again. I’d turn to the laser guy, and the powerhouse would use the opportunity to charge. It was rather frustrating, and my armor chipped away as they went at it.
But while this was going on, while my armor was fragmenting piece by piece, layer by layer, I was analyzing their attacks and figuring out the most efficient tactic for the situation. And after three quick skirmishes with the powerhouse, I had it.
“CHECKMATE IN THREE!” I roared.
One: I feinted, pretending to turn to the laser guy. Naturally the powerhouse charged.
Two: I grabbed the powerhouse. Couldn’t hold him for long, not with his insane strength. Didn’t need to.
Three: I took off flying towards the laser guy, using the powerhouse as a shield.
The laser-wielder only fired upon me when the powerhouse was safely out of range. Which suggested the powerhouse was vulnerable to friendly fire.
Midway through the flight the Powerhouse screamed, as my upper half lit up with thermal warnings. But compared to the rest of my suit, it had taken the least amount of his laser focus.
My visual sensors filled with an overwhelming brightness... he’d burned right through the powerhouse, and his largest blasts yet were burning into my mask.
But I had other senses.
When my proximity alarm chimed I whipped out an arm, and something screamed as it broke. The glare in my optics faded, and when I could see again the shattered remnants of a man in a gold and white costume choking and bleeding on the rocky shelf below the guard tower. The waves licked at his shattered legs.
I saw a scab on the side of his head. He was sans an ear as well. Why?
I looked to the charred, barely-recognizable torso of the powerhouse, and chucked it at the dying laser guy, knocking him into the surf. Then I put particle beams into them both until I was sure they were dead.
Funny, really. Back in the US, and in most of the northern hemisphere, there were rules against this sort of thing. Unwritten rules, that stipulated a ban against deliberate killing.
But this was different. The rules were different down here. I had no doubt that these two were doing their best to kill me. And they were working for a man who had no compunctions about killing innocents, if it got him what he wanted. Couldn’t properly call them heroes, just a powerful gang, really.
And I’d dealt with gangs before, oh yes.
Back on task. “YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF HEROES, CORAZON,” I bellowed, as I hopped down from the wall, shattering cobblestones beneath my weight, and went stomping back toward the palace. I noticed idly that soldiers in the courtyard were hosing me down with bullets. When did they start that up again? None of them were doing a damned thing to my armor, so it hadn’t attracted my attention.
Still, it bespoke a foolishness that deserved punishment. As I moved back into the palace I switched to autotargeting, started drilling the ones out of cover with thirty-percent charged particle beams, sending them flying. It was enough force to shatter bone. They might live th
rough it, I didn’t particularly care. That did the trick, as the soldiers broke and fled before me, clearing my path as I resumed my search.
“Two of the five down,” I reported to Alpha with some smugness. “Just got the mind controller to go.”
“He’s the most dangerous of them!”
“Bah! Let him come, and try his will against Dire!” I sneered, descending a flight of stone stairs, into the bowels of the original Spanish fort. “Besides, even if he succeeds—”
That’s about the point something punched me in the brain.
Maybe a touch of hyperbole, but not much. That’s exactly what it felt like, a sudden pressure that stopped me cold, froze me mid-step. My armor started to topple, but the gyroscopic override cut in and my foot hit the ground, stabilizing me.
Brain freeze. It was like a triple-strength ice-cream headache that didn’t go away. I tried to fight back, but there was nothing for my mind to get a hold on. Nothing to focus on, or fight against, just an overwhelming numb, terrible pressure.
“Ow,” I managed, and it felt a major victory to get even that much.
“Query? Verification? Thirty seconds,” my suit whispered in my ears.
And then I was moving forward, my legs flexing without my input. Shuffling down the stairs, and up to a steel door that opened to me, nervous-looking soldiers standing to either side as I walked through.
“Verification? Twenty seconds,” my armor asked.
My steps ended in what looked like an armory, standing before a tanned man leaning on a cane. Middle-aged, a bit overweight, he smiled as he took a cigar out of his mouth, and ground it out against my armor. “They all obey El Jefe,” he said, looking me up and down. A rummaging sensation, in the back of my mind. “A woman? Huh, didn’t expect that.” The squad of soldiers at his back kept weapons trained on me
“Verification?” Ten seconds.” my armor spoke again. It meant something, but I couldn’t think. Couldn’t remember.
“Now come out of there so I can shoot you in the head,” El Jefe told me.
I fought that command, tried to stop it. My hand rose in its sleeve, scrabbled for the manual release... and I found the will to resist. I stopped my fingers, before they could pull the lever.
Dire : Wars (The Dire Saga Book 4) Page 9
