DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) (14 page)

I glanced back, to find Skye and Nash off a ways, speaking in low voices. Skye had her jacket drawn back, and a hand on the butt of a gun. I wondered at that. Seemed a bit of a one-eighty, from their previously stated goals and wishes.

My amusement grew as I saw Minna slip up behind them, her hand on the hilt of her bowie knife. Looked like she'd found it in the aftermath of the fight, good.

Nash glanced up, caught me looking. He flushed, and said “Hey. Can we at least take his body? Give it a proper funeral? He was a hero.”

I nodded. “OF COURSE. MINNA, CAN YOU HELP THEM?”

“Huh?”

He let out a yelp as Minna glided out from behind him, and Skye froze. She moved her hand away from her gun, and Minna slid the two inches of steel blade she'd half-drawn back into its sheath. Without another word Minna stooped, and picked up Scrapper's corpse.

“Lighter now,” She observed.

“THANK YOU FOR YOUR OFFER,” I told the two Militants. Or was it Militiaman and Militiawoman?

“Sure. Yeah, no problem.” Nash nodded, and left. Minna followed behind, and I watched them load Scrapper's remains into their pickup, and throw a tarp over him.

Ah, what a night it had been.

And it wasn't over yet. I looked at the armor, and waited until Minna approached. “GOOD. THANK YOU FOR HELPING SO FAR. ARE YOU WILLING TO HELP A BIT MORE?”

“What you need?”

“A SHOWER, SOME COFFEE IF WE HAVE ANY, AND HELP SCRUBBING THIS SUIT. IN THAT ORDER.”

She grunted, and we got to work hauling the armor over to the showerhouse. She set to work scrubbing while I peeled down and washed, trying to ignore the chill of the air.

What was I doing here?

What was I really doing?

I'd come out of the tunnel barely a few days ago with only a few devices, some fake ID cards, and a lot of questions. I had been too busy surviving to do much about finding answers.

Now I'd made enemies of the most vicious gang around, gotten invested in the fate of a bunch of people who'd been pleasant enough company, but had no answers for me either. I'd lost some money, lost the fake IDs, and lost time. On top of it I was sticking around here, putting myself at risk, all for some vague notion of it being the right thing to do.

I rinsed my hair, getting the blood out. I'd been running off of my instincts, and after the slaughterfest tonight, I wondered if I was still on the right track. I'd killed or been responsible for killing a fair amount of people, either via shotgun or by setting Scrapper loose.

And upon reflection, I felt little guilt for it. For Scrapper? A bit, but I couldn't have saved him. The rest? Nothing. They would have done the same to me in a heartbeat, or worse.

Sangre... he'd stated that I had been worth money to some group he hadn't bothered to identify. WEB? Possibly. Couldn't ask him now.

I breathed in warm steam, and let the water course down my chest.

That bit of information seemed to indicate a reason for me to stick around. If Sangre hadn't been mistaken, then the Black Bloods were in contact with people who did have answers. If I kept whomping them, then sooner or later the true threat would reveal itself.

Also... the camp had taken me in, and asked very few questions. Their supplies had been raided because I'd stood up to the Black Bloods. Our negotiation had failed because the Black Bloods had a use for me. While I was in no way taking responsibility for the actions of those sick little gangers, the truth of the matter was that my presence had unintentionally exacerbated the situation.

I felt responsibility toward these people, toward Roy and Sparky and the rest of the crew if nothing else. While I didn't know everyone in the camp, with one or two exceptions they seemed like decent enough people. And I had no doubts that the Bloods would mow them down to the last child if they could.

I shut off the water, exited the stall. I looked toward my stained and dirty clothes and paused. A dark shape hung next to them, unfamiliar and fluffy. Upon investigation it turned out to be a ratty, hideous fur coat, with some sweat pants folded under it. I glanced around, and found Minna in a far stall. She was taking a scrubbing rag to the inside of the armor, letting the water sluice filth away.

“Minna, is this yours?”

I held up the clothes. She shook her head, and pointed at me. “You keep. Until we wash your clothes.”

I stood there for a second, naked and dripping. Then I nodded. “Thank you.” She merely grunted, and got back to work. I dried off using the cleaner parts of my dirty clothing, and folded the coat around me, before easing my legs into the pants. Dear heavens they felt good...

She helped me carry the armor off to the laundry shack, afterwards. By then a gentle snow was falling, and I shivered until I got into the scrap-metal room, and turned on a space heater. Joan was waiting with a thermos of coffee, bless her soul, and I downed it as I pulled out my toolkit and got to work. Minutes folded into hours, and I worked on the armor. The core was a cascading wave generator, a surprisingly good one at that. The rest of the armor must have been kitbashed from whatever he had lying around, but this part had to have come from something fairly expensive.

If I'd had time, I would  have peeled it apart piece by piece, taking notes every step of the way and conducting some thoroughly enjoyable research. I'd found an unexpected joy in utilizing my skills and talents to crack it open and study this rag-tag suit of armor. But necessity was driving this bus, and I had to see it through. So instead of researching, I repurposed. Instead of studying, I repaired. At one point I wandered outside and cracked the hood of the SUV, started taking parts from there to replace the bits of the suit I couldn't fix. Two or three trips back and forth, and I thought I had all I needed. During the last one, Martin caught my eye, followed me into the shack as I went. “Shit. You still up?”

“Hm?” I  blinked. “What do you mean?”

“It's like five in the morning. Most of us got some sleep.”

I blinked. Time had flown. I picked up the thermos of coffee, and gave it a shake. Empty. Well, that explained the ache from the direction of my bladder. “Give her a second,” I said, and visited the port-a-john. On my way back I noticed my red hoodie hanging from a makeshift clothesline, cleaned of blood beyond a few dubious stains, and rimed with a faint layer of frost. It was about the right size... I snagged it and headed back into the shack. Martin was examining the repair job I'd done on the armor. I joined him, smiling.

“God damn.” He shook his head, looking impressed. I'd replaced most of the bullet-dented and scored armor plating with metal from the SUV. I'd slimmed it down at the same time, which necessitated cutting down the hydraulics. The helmet had been mostly a wash... I'd kept the back of it, but the faceplate was quite thoroughly wrecked, had been before I'd detonated the phone inside of it. So I'd replaced it with my mask, welding it into the shell of the helmet, and using wires from the SUV to provide an unhackable manual linkage to the armor's subsystems. It wasn't a perfect join, and the back of the helmet had holes in it. But I'd just found a temporary solution to that.

I moved around behind the armor, and settled the red hood of my recently-retrieved-garment over the helmet. It stretched but fit, and a couple of rivets secured it for the time being. I tied the arms around the neck of the suit, and let the rest hang loose, somewhat like a cape or a mantle. Not exactly elegant, but the rest of the armor looked like a pile of repurposed junk, anyway, so I wasn't too upset with the end result.

I'd integrated the force field generator and universal remote, tying their power to the armor's core. Not a problem for the remote, but I'd have to watch the generator. While that had fixed the problem of its limited charge, excessive amounts of damage within a short time would have a chance of causing feedback within the core's wave particle processes. Mind you, if it was blocking that much damage all at once I'd have other things to worry about.

I'd also tucked the ball drone into a storage compartment in the armor's back. It'd make for faster deployment. I left space for a couple of others. I didn't have the materials to make more right now, but that might change.

But the thing I was proudest of wasn't obvious to the eye. I shed my coat, feeling air hit my bare skin. And as Martin stepped away, shaking his head, I unsealed the armor and climbed in.

“Hey! Warn a brother, all right?” He turned away from my partial nudity, but I didn't particularly care.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “Got no time—” The armor sealed over me with a hiss, the mask sliding down over my face. “—FOR MODESTY. GET READY TO STAND CLEAR.”

He backed up, as I ran the basic control systems through their checks. The newly-programmed heads-up-display of my mask flared with green letters, informing me that systems were synching at twenty... forty... sixty... seventy-four percent. I frowned and tried rerouting a few subroutines, but it held fast at seventy-four percent efficiency. Well, no matter, I could work on perfecting it later.

I lifted my arms, and the armor moved with me. There was a slight lag, but with practice I wouldn't notice it. Or if I refined the interface, got better components and raised the synchronization rate, that should fix it. But for now, I could probably work with it. I flexed the fingers of the gauntlets, and they flexed with me. I took my first step—

And promptly fell over.

Hrm.

Martin tried to help me up, started swearing. “Jesus H. Christ. Armor's like half the size it was on Scrapper, how the hell is it as heavy?”

“TWO-THIRDS OF THE SIZE, ACTUALLY. AND THE MOST VITAL COMPONENTS DIDN'T CHANGE.” I pushed myself up, leaned on Martin, then tried another step. This one went without too much trouble, and the second and third ones after it were manageable. “ALL RIGHT. GOING TO NEED TO GO OUTSIDE FOR THE NEXT TEST.”

“Probably a good idea, you gonna bust the floor if you fall again.”

I walked outside, in the dim light of pre-dawn, and looked around. No one was out yet. Good. Fewer witnesses if this failed. I didn't want to get people's hopes up and then fail to deliver. I moved down the beach, to a clear spot. Martin started to follow, but I waved him back. Didn't quite know how much pressure the grav units would exert, and I didn't want him injured.

Finally, I was ready. This had been the hardest part of the project. The rest had been repair work, with a side order of consolidating my devices into the larger structure of the armor. But the part that had taken the most work was the most crucial, and it had involved building and integrating something entirely new. In theory, it should work, but if it didn't... no, it would work. It had to. Banishing the last of my doubts, I muted the voice modulator on my mask, and breathed the words I'd programmed to activate flight mode.

“Icarus ascends.”

Turbines in my sides snapped out. They were stabilizers, really, while the gravitic oscillators in the legs did the important work, venting red light on the ground below. Tiny rotors whirred to life...

...And I rose. Just a few feet off the ground, but I flew. I flew!

As I did, I wobbled, and I fought with the armor, kept myself stable with great effort. If I toppled now, I'd plow through the beach, cause a huge mess, and inflict enough damage to the suit to necessitate serious repairs. And maybe damage myself, too. Failure was not an option here! Fortunately, I'd accounted for this. And as I held it stable, the crude gyroscopes I'd built into the suit finished synching up. After a minute, I could relax enough to put my arms down. After another minute, I let the suit take over fully. I sat there a bit longer, then grinned. I was flying! Well, hovering.

It was time to go all out, I decided, and switched control over to the rudimentary system I'd rigged through my heads-up-display. If this worked properly, I could control my flight through leg and head motions, leaving my arms mostly free. As I did so, I noticed people starting to emerge from the tents, drawn by the whining noise of the turbines. They stared at me, and though they couldn't see my face, I grinned back under my mask.

“You ain't seen nothing yet,” I whispered, too low to trigger my mask's amplification. And with a whirl of snow and sand as the turbines went to maximum thrust, I pushed into the sky, arms thrust out like a smackbrawl wrestler performing a double clothesline.

After a minute of practicing, I had the basics down. It was with great regret that I steered back toward the ground, and came in for a landing. Flying was fun, dammit! But I had more pressing priorities.

Also, the night was starting to catch up with me, now that I'd run out of coffee. Between the adrenaline crash, the lack of sleep, and recovering from whatever the hell that smoke in Sangre's room had been, I was starting to lose steam. I needed to get this done while I was still mostly coherent.

I descended to the beach with a whir of sand and snow. Light flurries were falling again, but not enough to hinder me in any capacity.

“ALL RIGHT. MARTIN, DO HER A FAVOR?”

“Uh. Yeah, sure. What you need?”

“GET THE OTHERS TO HELP YOU AND BRING ROY OUT HERE, COT AND ALL. TIE HIM TO IT IF YOU CAN. WE HAVE SOME ROPE AROUND HERE, RIGHT?”

“The hell you planning?”

“SARA'S MERCY, THAT'S THE NAME OF THE HOSPITAL, YES? DIRE CAN PROBABLY GET HIM THERE IN TWENTY MINUTES IF SHE TAKES IT SLOW.”