DIRE : TIME (The Dire Saga Book 3)

by Andrew Seiple

  I was rather glad we’d kept him alive. Once Henri had gotten his mind control power from Monsieur Égalité, Mitternacht hadn’t had a chance at concealing information from us. He told us about the truck in the converted stables down the road, waiting to haul the Tzadikim to their final destination. Mitternacht was thoroughly enthralled by Henri’s hypnotic suggestions, off in a world where everything was going his way.

  Bryson and Unstoppable rode in the back, garbed as prisoners. Makeup smeared their faces to give them the appearance of bruises and lesions, like the others. A bit of hair dye to blacken Grant's brown hair, and we figured he’d pass muster. For as long as we needed, anyway. If everything worked out properly, we’d enter quiet, run silent for as long as possible, and go loud during the final stage of the operation.

  Henri drove, focusing on keeping Mitternacht delusional. I rode next to Mitternacht, heavy robes concealing my body, and an iron mask over my face. A wig of red hair, a mane almost, spilled down my back and I wore heavy manacles on my wrists.

  The god Loge had taken great amusement in helping me with the disguise, and thought it a fine piece of trickery. After checking with Mitternacht to make sure that nobody in the order had personally seen Loge, we agreed that it would be a fine substitution. Best chance I had of acting unhindered, really. Who would stop a god? Especially one bound by a master sorcerer, and sworn to aid the Reich with all his power?

  I had no clue where Loge was. He told us he’d find his way in and play things as he found them, and we did our best to hide our sighs of relief. He was a fickle ally at best, and the less contact we had with him the less chance we’d end up on the pointed end of one of his tricks.

  One of those tricks had almost been rather disgusting. Fortunately, all was well that ended well.

  I shifted, feeling the rather-pleasant ache in my nethers as I adjusted my rump on the seat. I’d almost fucked Loge. If he hadn’t said just the wrong thing, I would have had a lousy evening with him, instead of a four-alarm, screaming-at-the-top-of-my-lungs, full hour or two of enjoyable caution-thrown-to-the-wind sex with Grant.

  Okay, so I was running on only a couple of hours of sleep, but dammit, it had been worth it. No regrets.

  I still felt bad about leaving my name unspoken. But on this, and this alone, I trusted Timetripper’s instincts.

  Besides, at the end of the day, Grant was as heroic as heroic could be, and I couldn’t see that changing, really. I didn’t want to run into him later as Dire, and face his disappointment. I got enough of that from regular heroes.

  The last few buildings disappeared behind us, as we entered a wide stretch of road along the river. The buildings here had been bombed or deliberately collapsed, I couldn’t tell which and it didn’t much matter.

  What mattered lay ahead of us: Burg Wallenstein.

  The brooding bastion sat on the banks of the river, old and sturdy brick walls climbing up from the water like the hands of a drowning man grasping for the built-up berm of what had to be an artificial hill. A big hill, that covered several city blocks worth of area. On it, two rings of walls climbed upward, studded with watch towers along its lengths. A central keep squatted at the high point of the hill, glaring down at the river below. The remains of an old bridge, now reduced to crumbling pylons, paid little heed to the flowing waters below. Soldiers in black greatcoats walked the walls, kept watch from the towers in the predawn light.

  It had taken us over an hour to reach this point, to drive the truck as scheduled and planned by the Thulites’ timetables, to the gates of the castle. We’d be cutting this one close, very close.

  Hitler would be arriving soon. We had perhaps twenty minutes to get into position.

  The outer gate guards stopped us, and I studied the high barbican, complete with murder holes and arrow slits. Lights from inside showed they were manned, probably with guns and grenades instead of boiling oil. It was as effective a killzone as it had been in the ancient days, I had little doubt of that.

  Good.

  Mitternacht gave them his ID cards, and beside him Henri muttered, and Mitternacht muttered as well, insisting that there was no time for a full inspection, just look in the back you damned idiots.

  The damned idiots did, and seemed satisfied to see so many miserable-looking Jews. My lips curled under my mask as they made crude jokes about them, taking joy in their misery. Bullies. Bullies never changed, whether it was past, present, or future.

  I’d take joy in killing these men, if I could.

  Satisfied by Mitternacht’s credentials, and giving us only the quickest of glances, they waved us through.

  The second gate was more strict. They insisted on checking Henri’s papers... fortunately the possibility had come up when we questioned Mitternacht under mind control this morning. The ink was barely dry on the papers the sorcerer had scratched up, but they seemed to pass muster.

  And one of them took an interest in me.

  “And who is this then, Herr Mitternacht?”

  I put my best sneer into my voice. “The father of wolves and serpents, the mother of foals and monsters. Fire and lies and poisonous pain, and the laughter at the end of the world.”

  He was stepping back now, face paling.

  “Do not talk to him!” Mitternacht snapped. “Do not listen to him, do not look at him. Just go man, and hope you never see him again.”

  The soldier’s mouth opened and shut, until a few barked orders from his officer got him scrambling through a sally door. I heard sounds of retching from beyond, and let my laughter fill the barbican, echoing and reverberating.

  Even Henri was a little shocked, I think. For my part I was pretty happy with the acoustics. I'd try to put them to good use later.

  Then we were through, and the gate was sealing behind us. Unlike the outer gate, it was mechanized, with what appeared to be clockwork, pistons, and cables disappearing back into the walls. I analyzed the technology as fast as I saw it, reading the nuances and meaning of every cylinder, every exposed gear, every rivet. The gate wasn’t controlled from the barbican. The set of the cables indicated they ran into the central keep. I turned forward as the truck crept through the courtyard, and studied the looming building. No cable supports on the outside, and the construction appeared new. Underground chamber? That would be easiest. I would have guessed a simple but crude broadcast application, but what I’d seen of the place so far indicated they had gone low-tech, with wires and cables. Which meant they were hardened against jammers and disruptors at the cost of losing functionality if the wires took damage.

  The roof still had collector antennae, I noted. Probably necessary for the radio and Vox communications.

  Good. I could use those, too.

  We pulled up in what had once been a converted stables, and was now a motor pool, and I gasped under the mask to see three heavy treaded vehicles parked in among several staff cars.

  Lowë tanks. The crazy bastards had brought early-model Lowën.

  Each had the body of a Tiger tank, but in lieu of a turret, they were fitted with an early-model sonic amplification cannon. Crude, powerful, and going by the specs I recalled with my nigh-flawless memory, enough to blast through these walls given enough time.

  And with three of them, enough time was minutes or less.

  Idiotic to put these in here. But they were the most powerful land weapon in the Nazi armament right now, and brand-spanking new. According to what I’d read they wouldn’t be fielded for months yet, so that made these prototypes. Somebody wanted to show them off to Der Füehrer, I thought.

  I adjusted my plans a bit, to include these new variables. Time was tight, but we still had a good fifteen minutes, give or take.

  Probably take. Nazis were punctual.

  A squad of guards took charge of the prisoners, hauling them off none-too-gently. One of them raised a rifle butt to club Bryson and I hissed. He paused, and Mitternacht screamed at him, took him to task for trying to damage the subjects. As entertaining as it was, w
e were burning time, so I caught Henri’s eye and jerked my head toward the main doors of the keep. He nodded and concentrated, and Mitternacht wound down, seemed to lose most of his animating energy. Henri took his elbow and steered him towards the doors, with the chastened guards leading the ‘prisoners’ to a smaller door around the side.

  That was fine. The plan accounted for separation.

  The entry chamber resembled nothing so much as a mini-barbican, complete with murder holes. Movement and shadows above indicated that these, too, were manned. Heavy oaken doors were shut behind us, again through automated pistons set in the walls. We were now locked tight behind three heavy walls worth of security, with hundreds of Nazis and assorted heavy weapons all around us. I couldn’t have been happier.

  Through one last set of double doors, and our feet fell on marble tiles, echoing through the pillared, high-ceilinged chamber of the great hall. Stained glass windows faced east; they were the first point of weakness I’d seen in this place. They glowed with the pre-dawn light throwing bas-reliefs of valiant knights, dragonslayers, and holy warriors down onto the floor below.

  Black-coated men awaited us, four of them, the youngest among them pushing fifty. Monocles considered us, as they adjusted gold-sigiled stoles and shawls, and watched our group approach with eager curiosity.

  “Ah, Hulbert.” The white-bearded man in the middle stepped forward, arms raised in greeting. Mitternacht smiled absent-mindedly, and snapped his fingers. Henri opened the garment bag he’d been carrying since we left the truck, and draped Mitternacht’s stole around his shoulders.

  Mitternacht accepted the embrace, muttering words I couldn’t quite catch as the old man muttered back.

  A few of the younger ones were studying Henri, with disdain. Then they looked to me, and their eyes lit up as they approached, circling almost like a pack of predatory fish approaching a potential meal.

  “This is the god then, Hulbert?” the tallest one asked, in a nasal voice.

  A swift step forward, catching his arm and he started. I was in his face, glaring at him through the eyes of the iron mask, letting my full scorn for these pathetic child-killers show through. He stared back, frozen like a deer in the headlights, mouth open and face paling.

  “Say the name,” I hissed. “Do it and see what happens.”

  “It’s touching me. How is it touching me?”

  The others drew back, reaching into their pockets and pulling out various talismans... and Mitternacht barked laughter. Behind him I saw Henri, sweating, fingers weaving in an odd pattern.

  “Fools! You have nothing to fear. Loge. Release him.”

  Slowly, exhibiting every bit of reluctance I could, I turned his arm loose. He fell back, gasping. “The strength of that thing!”

  Strength? I stifled a chuckle. His imagination was fooling him. He believed me to be a god, and so his own senses worked to fool him.

  “He is bound by the strongest measure of my skill.” Mitternacht boasted. “He will patrol the castle while we enact the crowning triumph of the Reich.”

  “And this one?” The older man nodded at Henri, who saluted flawlessly back.

  “My bodyguard. He shall ensure that I am not killed, and my binding of Loge is not loosened.”

  Fearful glances my way. I narrowed my eyes in amusement. Oh, if only they knew the thing they feared was already free. To see their faces then—

  A chill ran up my spine.

  Loge would want to do exactly that. Knowing him as I did now, he’d want to reveal himself to them at the funniest moment.

  This was a problem. I’d have to get a move on.

  Well, they thought I was a god, didn’t they? Gods didn’t have to explain themselves, I was pretty sure of that. I turned my back on them as they chattered, and headed toward the most likely looking door in the back of the room.

  “Hulbert—”

  “Give it a rest, Albrecht. He will cause mischief today, but only to our foes. Now, let us discuss the rite—”

  I left the room, and prowled down stone hallways, my boots clicking on the bare tiles. I passed by suits of armor, ignored ancient tapestries, and didn’t bother to give more than the barest of glances at patrolling guards.

  They slid to the wall out of my way as I passed, watching me go with nervous eyes. Evidently they’d been briefed on the thing in the iron mask.

  Given time I could have played this to my advantage, but knowing Loge’s motivations, I knew I had perhaps ten minutes, at most.

  So I looked for the cables.

  I knew where they entered the castle, and I worked my way around to the front, and studied the sockets and brass pipes stapled to the walls. The castle had only recently been modernized in these last few years. They hadn’t time to completely renovate and hide their upgrades; there was a war on after all.

  And as I went, I noticed soft clicking sounds in junction boxes split off from the main cables. Each box was holed, with something fluttering in the middle of it, like a trapped insect in a cage. I cast my mind out, stretched my power to analyze what in the world these things might be...

  ...and realized that I was looking at a crude camera system. A pinhole shutter arrangement, on treated memory-silver film tied into Tesla’s basic visual transmission system.

  Impressive that they managed to get the mechanisms for each one so small, more impressive that they tied it to an iron cable-based transmission medium, rather than a broadcaster. But by doing that, they limited the distance that their signal could travel without severe distortion.

  I paused, replayed my steps in my mind, checked the surrounding corridors in my memory, and super-imposed my view of the castle.

  And I deduced the most likely area for a security room.

  That was the easy part. Finding it took two more minutes, half of which were spent pacing around a dining hall. Up until the point I glanced over at the fireplace, and saw the elaborate candlesticks to either side of it.

  Say this for Nazis, they were predictable. The fourth candlestick twisted in my grasp, and the fireplace rotated, revealing a narrow stairwell descending into the floor.

  Shouts from outside drifted through the high, narrow windows, and I tensed. Had that tripped some distant alarm?

  I listened, and realized that no, it was worse than that.

  The Füehrer was here early.

  Fortunately, by all reports, he was a stickler for security. Something about a few hundred inept-but-powerful assassins trying for his life over the last few days. But Timetripper’s bungles were my gain, ironically. He’d have to go through the two gates and the front door before moving upstairs to the audience chamber, and each of those steps would take time, formal greetings, and ceremony.

  I hurried down the stairs, taking them two at a time, into a musty and cramped corridor. Old castles had holdfasts, places to retreat into when all else was lost. This must be Burg Wallenstein’s holdfast, now repurposed to integrate the glory of technology: The cables hanging from the ceiling seemed a dead giveaway. No brass here, just dull iron cables and humming current.

  Dark down here. I dug out the monocle, lifted my mask, and put it to my eye. The time for caution was over. I hastened down the dark tunnel, following the pipes overhead as the tunnel twisted and branched off, until finally I came to a steel door. Solid, modern, full of rivets and unless I missed my guess, thoroughly electrified.

  Well.

  I’d come prepared for that, hadn’t I?

  I unfastened my robes and threw them aside. From the crossed harnesses around my chest I withdrew the depolarizer, and snapped a battery pack into the thing. I had more gadgets than I had batteries, so I’d gone modular with everything.

  The device whined, until it flickered with green charge, and I leveled it at the security door.

  ZZZZAAARK!

  Static electricity sizzled in all directions, a few flickering strobes flashing towards me and falling short. For a few precious moments the door was incapable of holding a charge. My loc
kpicks did the rest, and I took a breath, slipped my borrowed Luger from its holster. I heaved the door open and stormed in, gun low, ready to kill the first Nazi I saw.

  But I saw nobody inside.

  The room’s ceilings jumped in height, curving upward, lined with old stone and support pillars lined with copper cabling and grounded steel supports. The air smelled of ozone, and bare lightbulbs glowed and flashed in the close darkness. The chamber spread out to my left and right, and my breath hissed between my teeth as I saw a pile of red and gray metal under several spotlights at the far end.

  The Direnaut!

  I didn’t know how they’d got it here so fast, but evidently they’d been working on reconstructing it. I was both impressed and appalled. Here Bryson had been worried about the minor inventions I’d built to give us an edge, and this was under Burg Wallenstein, being picked to pieces by the most brilliant engineer the Reich could muster.

  For I had no doubt at all that I was inside von Katzen’s workshop. Sadly, I didn’t have time to linger. My eyes traced the cables that carried the visual signals from the pinhole shutter cameras, and I followed them to a vast heap of steel and wood, inset with flip-token displays and vacuum tubes studding its entire length.

  I gasped as I realized it for what it was; a computer. One of the first of its kind, no doubt, and one I’d never read about during my research into the subject. There weren’t supposed to be any computers now.

  “Well. Let’s see what you can do...” I muttered, sliding up to what looked like an interface terminal, that looked like a typewriter, down to the jumbo-sized roll of paper in the top of it.

  No sooner had I placed my fingers on the keys, when the typewriter rattled, and printed letters on the paper.

  YOU ARE LOGE THE GOD, YES?

  “She has been called that, yes.” Technically true. About as close as I could get to fibbing without my speech impediments getting in the way. Who was I talking with? I craned my neck, looking for more cameras, and found them, and the grainy, crude screens on which they displayed. But nobody was here to read them but me.