DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) (19 page)

And I glared at him. “Tugs.”

“m'sorry.”

“You stole from Dire.”

“m'sorry.”

“You sold what you stole from Dire.”

“m'sorry.”

“And then you have the nerve to show your face here again.”

“I...” He was crying.

I drew my gun.

“Oh shit.” Martin had found his voice. “Dire. Dire, look. He's a junkie, all right? He's not in control. Does dumbass things.”

“That's nice, he can do them somewhere else before Dire finishes counting down from thirty,” I said. “Start running, Tugs.”

He didn't. “m'sorry, m'sorry, m'sorry...”

“He's got nowhere to go,” said Martin. “Bloods have a bounty on anyone from this camp now. You kick his ass out he dies before the day's done.”

“Or he can die here with a bullet in his head. Twenty-five.”

“Look! Look... Shit. Look, I'll pay for whatever he took.”

“What he got away with doesn't matter, but he almost took the mask, Martin. We would have died in that church if he'd succeeded. Fifteen.”

“Dire. Fuck. Dire, please listen, I.. I'll take responsibility for his shit. I'll watch his ass.”

“What is he to you Martin? A valued customer? Ten.”

“Jesus, fuck, just stop okay! No I never sold to him. He's into the harder, cheaper shit that I don't sell. He doesn't have a choice now he's fucking hooked. Just I don't care, break his legs or something but don't fucking kill the guy. Not like this. Fuck man, not like this.”

I moved forward. I put the gun's muzzle against Tugs' forehead, and his sobs grew, loud and rough and horrible to hear. A sudden pungent smell and a dark stain on the snow below him, and I knew he'd wet himself.

“Zero,” I said. And I saw his head sag, as his eyes closed.

We stood there for a second, all watching us. I raised my voice. “This man was guilty of theft!”

“Oh thank fucking god,” whispered Martin.

“Don't be thankful,” I muttered, lips close, out of the side of my mouth. “Your work will be hard.” I raised my voice again. “But we're giving him one more chance. Tugs, if you steal again, if you work against the camp, if you harm anyone here, then you die. This is your last chance. Use it well.” I replaced the gun in its holster. I hadn't even taken the safety off, during all of that, tempting though it had been. I'd expected Tugs to run. When it became clear that he wasn't going to do that, Martin's offer had been the only good option. Though I had the feeling this would come back to bite him, in the end.

I turned to face the crowd. “Same thing goes for everyone else. We're all in this together now, and we're all going to help each other survive this. Anyone doesn't, or anyone decides to steal, I'll hear. Anyone hurts others here, or causes trouble, you tell Joan, Martin, or Sparky. They'll tell Dire. If you're really unlucky, you'll have a talk with Dire about it. If you're really, really unlucky, the talk will involve bullets.” Somewhere in the crowd a child started to wail. A bit disheartening, but I couldn't afford to be misunderstood, here. “The Black Bloods own the police, so we have to police ourselves. Be good. That's all.”

The crowd parted for me as I strode toward my armor, and climbed into it. I'd had enough of people to last me for a while. Time to blow off some steam with a proper weapons test.

The coilgun tested decently. The added drag of the barrel and acceleration apparatus made flight a little trickier, and the ammunition canister and feeder broke up the lines of the armor. Made it look inelegant, awkward. No help for it though, this was the time for functionality rather than form. More awkward were the facts that each coilgun shot disrupted my forcefield temporarily. They involved two different applications of electromagnetism, which didn't play well together at all. The long and short of it? I couldn't have both going at the same time. Not optimal, but I'd have to live with it for now.

When I hovered back to shore, I noticed one of the newcomers waving me down. She was a small, dark-skinned young woman in coveralls and glasses. I steered toward her, cut the gravitics about ten feet away, and kicked up a spray of snow when I landed. “Hey. Doc Dire, right?”

“DOCTOR DIRE, YES.” My voice caused screams from the camp, hastily cut off when the original members started laughing at newcomers. With much chagrin on the faces I could see, they resumed their activities. The young woman, for her part, was grinning wide. I noticed she had one or two silvery teeth.

“That's bitchin'”, she said. “Always wanted to work for a supervill. You hiring?”

“SUPERVILL?”

“Villain. Look, I'm a wicked sweet mechanic. Customized my own ride. Your power armor? I can fix it. Do maintenance and stuff.”

I considered her, letting the villain label pass. I didn't particularly care what people thought about me. “YOU THINK YOU HAVE THE MECHANICAL SKILL TO MATCH DIRE?”

“Hell no. But I can do little stuff so you don't have to.”

It was tempting. “ONE MINUTE.” I decanted from the armor, headed into the women's tent, and retrieved my backpack. Also retrieved the fur coat, that someone had returned to my sleeping quarters. The day was still chilly, after all, even if it had warmed up sometime during my rest.

When I got back out, the 'bitchin' mechanic' was standing up on a chair, having dragged it over to peer down the open chest of my armor. I smirked, and tossed her the backpack. To her credit she managed to twist around and catch it without falling off the chair. “There's a toolkit inside. Crack it open, carefully, and tell Dire the name of each tool and how they are used.”

“For real? Shit, that's baby stuff. Might as well ask me to do a freaking book rep— Oh. Oh my.” She had the toolkit open by that point, and was looking at the power tools. “Is that a real plasma cutter? Ohmigod.”

She didn't know the name of every tool, but she managed to discern the purpose of all of them, save for the quantum wave analyzer. I nodded, and reclaimed the empty backpack. “You have a name?”

“Wilma. Wilma Abernathy.” She made a face. “Don't blame me for that. Friends call me Abes.”

“Well, Wilma, friendship is yet to be determined, but you're in.”

She pounded the air. “Hell yeah! So what's the first job, boss? Buffing? Recalibration? Maybe some nitrous? I got a system at the garage, we can cut it down to size—”

“Ammo.” I tugged on her hand, guided her to the half-salvaged SUV. “Right now she's short. Here...” I cracked the armor's ammo hopper open, took out one of the makeshift beanbag rounds, and one of the spike rounds. “We'll need both in equal measure. Cut up the seat foam, mold it into balls around a coin or two. Add smooth rocks throughout to give it weight, but make sure not to bunch them up. Then duct tape the whole mess. These are the nonlethal option, they'll batter and bruise and maybe break, but they shouldn't kill if used properly.”

She nodded, held up the spike round. A tapering fold of metal, peeled from the SUV's panels with a long nail from the camp's stores embedded at the front. “And these?”

“Oh, those are lethal. Also they're pretty much constructed as they appear. Any questions?”

She shook her head, and got to work. I paused, then dug in the backpack again, pulled out a stack of hundreds and handed it over. She took it with a funny look. “What's this for?”

“You wanted to be hired, yes?”

“Well, yeah, but I didn't ex... pect... wait a minute, I don't know the president on these. And these aren't ones. These aren't ones at all. Ohmigawd.”

“So your wages are agreeable?”

“Ohmigawd.”

“She'll take that as a yes. Get to work, hm?”

She did, and I clambered into the armor. Enough testing, enough drama, time to get to work.

CHAPTER 12: More Heroes, more Harassment

“I had a chance to stop her, early in her career. I failed. It's on me, I'll have to live with that for the rest of my life. Jesus Maria, if I'd known  then how she'd turn out I would have gone lethal, and damn the consequences.”

--Comment accredited to Ballista, independent hero active in Icon City from 1999-2008.

Today's main task: ammunition. Not for my coilgun this time, but for the various firearms that we'd liberated from the Black Bloods. I took the time to check with Martin.

“There's gun shops, but most of them been hit already by looters or Bloods, guarantee it. Same thing for Q-Marts, or hunting places. Pawn shops you might maybe get some shells, but most people don't pawn ammo, just guns.”

I chewed my lip under my mask. “SO WHAT'S THAT LEAVE?”

“Police station, but from what my customers tell me, they holed up and waiting for the 'pocalypse. And hitting them would be bad. We already in the shit for that stuff yesterday. But... hm. Now that I think of it...” He rubbed his fingers together, smiled. “I might know a place after all. There's this guy I know, Willis. He's a dealer too. Paranoid son of a bitch. Thinks the government's after his ass. I've seen his safe room. He's got enough of an ammo stash to hold off a fuckin' army.”

“SOUNDS LIKE A START. THINK HE'LL SELL IT?”

“All of it? Shit, no. But even a tenth of it would be enough for us. And I got some stuff you can trade for it. Hang on.” He headed back into his tent, came out with a fanny pack. He opened it, showed me the brick of white, plastic-wrapped substance inside. “This is Nuevacoke. The good shit, straight outta Guatemala. You got more than enough here, don't settle for nothing less than fifty thousand rounds of nine mil.”

“WHAT COMPENSATION DO YOU WANT FOR THIS?” I asked.

He looked at me like I'd said something monumentally stupid. “I want to survive this. So this one's on the house. Now if you'll excuse me, I got to go make sure Tugs ain't getting into my mouthwash. Fucker's a fiend for that shit.”

I shook my head. “WHY DID YOU STAND UP FOR HIM, ANYWAY?”

He looked away, looked back. “He reminds me of someone. But... not now, aight? Ask me that sometime when you ain't in the shouty suit, I'll tell you.”

“FAIR ENOUGH.” I secured the fanny pack inside my cargo compartment, next to the ball drone, got the directions I needed from Martin, and headed out.

Willis had a lair in what used to be a student dormitory before the adjacent University went out of business. The campus buildings were in the midst of being demolished before Y2K hit, and the construction site should be easy enough to find, just north of Downtown proper.

It was smaller than I'd expected. From there, it was only a few blocks west, to find the rows of large old houses with various Greek letters faded and peeling across the front of them. When I came to the one tucked back in its own cul-de-sac, I knew I'd found the place. But it wasn't as I'd hoped. I felt my heart sink as I saw the shattered glass glinting in the snow of the street, and tracked the bullet holes in the walls. Trouble had found this place. The main door shifted in the wind, broken and dangling from one hinge. Inside, darkness beckoned. Great. Just great.

Well, maybe he was still here.

“MISTER WILLIS. THIS IS DOCTOR DIRE.”

No response.

“SHE WISHES TO BARTER WITH YOU, AND HAS PRODUCT.”

Nothing. From my position above, I saw a pair of people two streets over run for it.  They retreated into one of the houses and slammed the door. Only prudent, really. I landed and walked in the front door, switching the mask's low-light mode on as I did so.

The first body was about ten feet back, lying where it had taken cover behind a kitchenette. The antechamber between here and there was shredded, and brass casings covered the floor. Blood smeared one of the walls, and as I picked my way through the house it became pretty clear that however paranoid Willis had been, he'd had reason to be so. I couldn't say whether or not he was one of the corpses I found, but it was pretty clear that there was no one left here to conduct any sort of business. Nor was there anything much left to sell. The places which looked like they might have had something of value were wrecked, with items strewn all over and nothing of worth left. I did manage to find a few small boxes of bullets, but they weren't of the caliber Martin had advised.

I took them anyway, frowning at what was left. In the end I came to the safe room that Martin had described. The heavy steel door lay on the floor before it. Scorch marks showed where someone had welded the frame around it, cutting the reinforcing bars out of the concrete to get through. There were still crates left inside. For a moment I felt hope, but it was dashed after a quick inspection. Everything that had been food or ammunition was gone.

I was about to give it up and head back to camp to report failure, when a pump-like mechanism caught my eye. It was clamped to a desk, and had what looked like a simple piston setup. I leaned over for a closer look, and my errant memory identified it as a bullet press. And identified the proper usage of it.

Wait. You could make bullets without a factory?

Another moment of observation told me that this desk held most of the tools that I'd need to do that, and a third moment of searching turned up boxes of primer, slugs, and powder under the desk. Those hadn't been taken by the looters.

I didn't see any brass, but the house was full of casings, now, wasn't it? Surely not the fifty-thousand that Martin wanted, but enough to get us started. So I got to work packing up the tools and boxed materials into some of the empty crates, and then roamed the house, gathering the brass casings by the handfuls. After this, if we needed more I could probably go and scavenge the church. I doubted the police had bothered to sweep up there yet.

I knelt down to pick up some casings that had found their way into the remnants of a bedroom, and some instinct prompted me to glance up into an unexpected glare of light. There was a fist-sized hole punched in the wall, and I caught a glimpse of the silhouette of a head poking up from behind the roof of the nearest house. It had some sort of mask or goggles, that flared red to my vision. I zoomed in, zoomed in again, but didn't get a clear resolution before the head retreated back down below the level of the roof.

Someone was watching me.

I resumed picking up casings, as casually as I could. And deviating a bit from the pattern I'd set, I climbed up to the second floor. It was going to be tough to get a better angle on my watcher without alerting them to my intent.

I came to a wide window frame that was now filled with jagged glass and cleared it out with a hand, made a show of looking around at the ground below. Which is how I spotted the second one, crouched against the wall, directly under me.

He wore a gray outfit, a tight bodysuit with what looked like a layer of dull-black plastic armor over the joints and vital spots. He had a grey mask, featureless save for two red-lensed eyes and a WEB symbol above them. He had a longarm of some sort slung on his back.

WEB. My pursuers from the sewers, back again. Stalking me again.

The figure looked up, I looked down, and he took off running.

“WAIT.” I kicked in the gravitics, and burst through the window. As I did, my forcefield flared to life, repeatedly, as muzzleflash erupted from the first watcher's spot, and a the POP-POP-POP of an automatic weapon sounded through my audio filters. A slow warmth spread through my suit, as the thermal vents struggled to compensate.

Well. That answered the question of whether or not they were hostile.

It also meant I couldn't try to take the runner down with the coilgun unless I wanted to test the armor against automatic gunfire.

I started evading, dodging from side to side as I went after the runner. He was fast enough to get back to his friend's location, before I could close the distance. He dove through a window and vanished. I could follow...

No. They'd had time to set the ground. I reversed thrust, flipped around and put my feet on the wall to stop my momentum. Once slowed and on the ground again I switched the mask over to thermal sight. The thin drywall of the house was no match for the advanced sensors.

The one who'd gone inside was waiting in the bathroom. The one on the roof was moving up, trying to get a bead on me now that I was next to the wall and out of his line of fire. And there were two more figures inside, waiting in the room I had almost gone flying into. They were set up at angles where they could catch me in a crossfire.

Clever. Not clever enough. I switched off the forcefield and activated the coilgun. A quick grab of the grip to pull the barrel into place and aim it, and then I waited for the right moment. The one on the roof was nearly at the edge before I found a good shot.

I put a spike through his foot from below. He screamed and fell, and I ran over to him and kicked him until he stopped moving. They'd shot at me with live rounds, so I didn't feel any particular urge to hold back. On the other hand, they hadn't yet done anything to justify killing them.

Ksssh! POP-POP-POP! More bullets. My forcefield hummed, and a wave of fresh heat blossomed as I dove to the side, kicked in the jets, and ended up behind an old Chievy Casanova. Cracking noises filled the air; one of my remaining assailants at a window, hosed bullets in my general direction. I narrowed my eyes, waiting for the reload, but another window shattered, and one of his buddies opened up from a different vantage.

Bullets rattled off the car in front of me, and wisps of vapor started to escape. If the hydrogen reservoir touched off it'd be bad.

I gauged the forcefield, my current heat level, and my hydraulics. A couple of bullets that made it through the car rattled off of me, but their impact had been blunted enough that they weren't much of a difference.

All right. Here went nothing!

I crouched, planted my hands under the car, and took hold. Standing, I jerked it above me. My hydraulics were whining and gasping, and I tried to ignore the rising heat as the gunman started to see what I was doing, and cut loose on my unshielded form.

It was like standing next to a furnace, and sweat poured from me as I leaned back...

And heaved the car into the house.

Modern fuel cells aren't designed to blow easily. The phlogiston exchangers are rigged with quite a lot of safeguards.

On the other hand, they're not supposed to be shot repeatedly, then tossed into solid objects in a manner designed to crumple their fuel cells. Pretty sure that voids the warranty. The resulting explosion knocked me back about five paces.

My thermal sight was useless in the face of the merrily burning flames. But no more gunshots were coming my way, so that was something. I picked my way around the wreckage, and peered to the side of the house. The one I'd dropped was trying to get up and failing. Good. I had questions for him. Mostly about what the hell they were thinking, shooting at me like that.

Another glance to the house to make sure it was safe. I saw nothing, so I moved back out of the firing vectors they'd been using, and shut down the force field. I had been starting to roast in there. Any more and I would have been burnt.

A whistling noise behind me, and I dove to the side as I turned. A small speck in the sky from the south resolved itself into the form of a figure growing larger as I watched. I flipped the coilgun's ammunition to nonlethal. The whistle grew into a shriek, and the figure landed in the center of the cul-de-sac, sending a spray of snow billowing up around him.

And then he stood up.

He was a tall and broad-shouldered man, dressed in green. He had a black streak diagonally across his front that ended at his shoulder in an arrowhead design. He wore a domino mask over his eyes that left most of his face exposed. He was clean-shaven, with olive skin, and long black hair. He had something on his back, a harness with rods sticking out of it.

I looked at him. He looked back at me and nodded. His face was grim, and his eyes never left my mask's eyesockets as he reached behind him and drew one of the rods. With a twist and a 'hiss', it unfolded itself into a spear. My mask chimed, and displayed words.

BALLISTA

INDEPENDENT HERO

POWERS: UNKNOWN – KINETIC RELATED.

“You can surrender now if you like. Save yourself a beating,” he rumbled.

“WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS WITH DIRE AND WHY ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A FIGHT?”

“Name's Ballista. And I know that armor, even if you tried to hide it. You're the one who killed Scrapper.”

Oh shit.

“THAT WASN'T HER. THE BLACK BLOODS—”

“Three goddamn weeks, tracking him down. Three goddamn weeks, trying to find out where they'd hid him, what they did to him. And then, just as I get a solid lead, you go in and kill him. Steal his armor. Go on a rampage.” He gestured at the burning house behind me.

“THIS IS ACTUALLY THE RESULT OF DIRE DEFENDING HERSELF—”

“Dire, huh? Typical of your sort, but I guess most of the good names are taken.” He shifted his feet, spread his arms. “Doesn't matter, you can tell your lies to the MRB. You'll have plenty of time for that when you're sitting in one of their cells.”