DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) (20 page)

I scowled. “YOU CHOSE THIS FIGHT.”

I kicked on the gravitics and jetted upwards. And he leaped after me, moving faster than I expected from someone that large. I tried to twist aside, but he caught me by the calf and threw me towards the ground. I slammed into it, rattling around in the armor like a peanut in a shell, crying out in pain. My left knee was on fire, and I fought to stay conscious. He'd wrenched the leg or worse, and I didn't have time to think. I rolled to the side and a good thing I did as he threw the spear at me.

CHONK!

My way was blocked. I twitched the flight controls, levered myself up without putting pressure on my wounded leg, and stared at the spear that he'd sunk into the pavement just ahead of me. The spear had been at least six feet long in his hands. Now only two feet of its shaft was sticking out of the ground.

I wasn't sure my forcefield could stop something on that scale. Not without giving me second-degree burns, or worse. Given the already accumulated heat... yeah, I had to leave it off for now, or bad things would happen. Better to lose an arm or a leg than to roast all of me.

He hit the ground, just as I finished getting upright. My leg throbbed in rhythmic pain, sharper than the ring of bruises where Scrapper had manhandled my arm. I couldn't run, and the flight system was too slow with him at this close a range. And if he caught me with one of those spears, then I'd be done.

I hovered low to the ground, lined up a shot with the coilgun, and he charged me. I dodged to the side and he skidded to a stop, sending up a spray of snow. He reached out for my arm, and I twisted, and put my fist into his jaw. As I did so, I met a strange resistance. For a split-second my hand slowed, and it hit him with a lot less force than I'd intended. It still rocked him back a step, and I used it to get distance and blast him with a beanbag round to the chest.

He ignored it, and this time I saw it move oddly as it slowed. He hauled out another spear, and popped it to its full length. I darted behind a hedge. The burning building at my back was smoking in earnest now, sending dark plumes into the sky.

Then his arm jerked forward and I rose into the sky, drawing my legs up under me before I could think about it. The pain nearly sent me into a nosedive, and I bit down a scream as it felt like every nerve in my body throbbed in horrific unison. But the spear missed me, speeding by almost faster than I could track it.

“Give up!” He yelled, and I shook my head. Attacks against him were slowed, and his spears were faster than they should be. When he'd grabbed my foot, what had he done? Initially I thought he'd pulled me to the ground, but what if he'd sped or slowed my leg, and let my momentum do the rest? And his entrance had been showy, but not as hard on the ground as it should have been.

It wasn't superstrength. He was adjusting the speed of things he touched. Maybe himself, too, which was how he'd done that enormous leap to get here without pancaking himself.

While I thought, I threw myself into short, rapid boosts, pelting him with my limited beanbag supply every time he got near. They were shots that would take down normal men at this range, but every one that got close had the same end result. It would slow and hit him with minimal force. And after the sixth one, I noticed something very, very interesting. Not only did they slow, but so did
he
. For that split-second, he was moving a bit slower, until the shot hit him and bounced off.

I glanced back at the burning house, and nodded. It had a nice, big porch with wooden support pillars.

Another spear whistled by, piercing my hoodie and jerking me backward as it ripped a long swatch of it away. I feigned a tumble, waited until he dived at me, and leaped over him, leaving him stumbling and between me and the house. I switched to spike rounds, and fired, not at him, but at the pillars next to him. He took them as misses, ducking for cover as they tore into the supports. And then I closed, sidling onto the open end of the porch. He grinned in triumph, and closed with me, coughing a bit at the smoke. I smelled it myself, seeping in through the holes in my helmet. We both had to breathe.

I slowed, and he did the same, forewarned by something. “Giving up?”

“NO.” I put up my arms like I'd seen the smackbrawl wrestlers do, arms wide and high. “YOU MAY, IF YOU WISH.”

He grabbed my arm and twisted, and I went with it, letting him jerk me to the ground. Even braced, the impact jarred my leg, and a high whine escaped my clenched teeth.

And while he grinned in triumph, I used my free hand to aim the coilgun, and put a point-blank beanbag round into the main support. With a sharp 'crack' it gave, and a few hundred pounds of wood and shingles started to collapse in on both of us. He looked up in horror. I twisted my left arm, grabbed hold of his elbow, and grabbed for his throat with my right hand.

He tried to stop me but he was moving slowly, so slowly as the porch roof fell in on him in equal slow motion. Before he could stop me I had his throat in one large gauntlet.

I squeezed. Not at the armor's full strength, but enough. He started turning blue, watching helplessly as the seconds passed in slow-mo and the shingles pattered off of him. I knew then that I'd won. He was shielding both of us from the falling roof, and he had no way to get rid of my hand. If he slowed it down, it wouldn't stop me from choking off his air. If he sped it in a different direction, his throat would go with it, given my grip. He'd be killing himself either way.

It took about two minutes to choke him out. I gave it about three after he sagged and went totally limp, to make sure. Getting us both upright again without killing him or banging my leg was a major effort , but I managed.

I carried him forth from the burning house, and laid him on the street outside. His chest rose and fell shallowly. Good. He'd been obstinate, but he hadn't earned death. A thought struck me and I glanced to the side, looking for the gray-and-black suited man I'd incapacitated earlier. There was no sign of him, and I bit back a curse. This nonsense had wounded me to no gain. Then again...

I looked at the house. The fire hadn't reached the second floor yet, by the looks of it. If I moved quickly something could be salvaged.

Rather than risk the ground floor inside, I broke out the wide window in the side of the house to make my way to the safe room. It took a little while to finish packing the crates and secure the rest of the casings. By the time I was done my leg felt like a red-hot-iron had been jammed into the bone, and I was coughing from the smoke that surrounded me. Finally, I grabbed the three crates, balanced them, and hovered through the window as the floor started to collapse behind me. That had been a bit close...

When I emerged, the light level shifted and darkened. I glanced upward to see that an aircraft had me in its shadow, as it descended. A familiar-looking aircraft, one I'd seen a few nights back. It was the triangular-shaped craft that Tomorrow Force had been using, back at my old lair.

I flew down to the street, glanced over at Ballista. Still out. I put the crates down and hovered a foot off the ground to keep pressure off my leg, as I crossed my arms. For the love of grace, could I not finish this errand in peace?

The aircraft stopped about twenty-feet off the ground, and the engine pulse thrummed through me. I didn't know the source of the craft's power, and that spooked me in a way I couldn't define. It was the first time I'd hit technology my mind didn't instantly identify and explain, and that only emphasized how badly I was outmatched. I had a second-hand suit of armor, a glorified electromagnetic blunderbuss, a forcefield which cooked me if it got too overloaded, and a major injury. If it came to a fight, this was going to be ugly.

I gnawed my lip. Could kayfabe help me here? Maybe. If I could avoid seeming weak, I'd be in a better position. Kayfabe was the art of controlling and shaping the narrative, and I'd be at a disadvantage if I let them take the lead. So I decided to give it a whirl.

“AH, TOMORROW FORCE. WELCOME. YOU HAVE SAVED DIRE A GOOD DEAL OF TROUBLE.”

“Dire? That's you?” A hatch in the craft opened, and two figures fell out. One was a large robotic form. Siegebreaker. He hit the ground, and unlike Ballista, he sprayed broken asphalt for a few feet around him. He straightened up, rolled his shoulders in a way clearly meant to intimidate. The second figure was the blonde, Kinetica. She dropped at a much slower pace, ended up hovering five feet off the ground. She crossed her own arms, stared at me with frank curiosity.

“SHE IS DOCTOR DIRE, IF YOU WISH HER FULL NAME.” I gestured. “SHE NEEDED SOMEONE TO GET THIS MAN TO A HOSPITAL, AND YOU CAN SAVE HER THE TRIP.”

“Oh. Let me guess, you just freaking happened to find him this way,” rumbled Siegebreaker. “Pull the other one, it's got bells on.”

“OH NO. HE ATTACKED DIRE, AND DIRE DEFENDED HERSELF. IT WAS A MISUNDERSTANDING ABOUT A MUTUAL ACQUAINTANCE.”

I saw one of Kinetica's eyebrows rise above her goggles. “You took down Ballista?”

“NO REAL CHOICE IN THE MATTER.” I gestured at the two feet of spear sticking out of the road.

Siegebreaker snorted, an electronic 'blat' that took me a second to decipher. “You mind if I look him over?”

“PLEASE DO. SHE HAD TO CHOKE HIM OUT. HE'S STILL BREATHING, THOUGH.”

I forced myself not to flinch as he moved forward, visor trained on me. Those biceps were bigger than my torso. He could probably rip my armor apart with only his hands, and I didn't have a single thing that could even inconvenience him. But he stopped at Ballista, knelt, and his hands were gentle as he poked, and observed the man. Finally he nodded. “Huh. Not bad.”

Kinetica was taking the opportunity to study me. “You know, the third-person thing sounds really weird.”

“IT IS DIRE'S METHOD OF SPEECH.”

“Uh-huh.”

“THOSE WHO DISLIKE ITS DISSONANCE CAN DEAL.” I wasn't about to admit to her that I couldn't help it. Show no weakness, not to these predators.

She shrugged, but moved on to a different topic. “Why did Ballista attack you?”

“HE SEEMED TO THINK THAT DIRE KILLED SCRAPPER.”

“Shoot.” She seemed to reign herself in. “That would do it. Scrapper was his mentor, when he started out. He's been going nuts over the search for him, these last few weeks.”

“FRUITLESS, DIRE FEARS.” I sighed. “THE BLACK BLOODS CAUSED SCRAPPER'S DEATH WHEN WE ATTEMPTED TO ESCAPE THEIR CUSTODY TOGETHER. DIRE DID SALVAGE HIS ARMOR, AND WEARS IT NOW FOR THE NEED IS GREAT.”

Siegebreaker rose, with Ballista in his arms. “Hey K, put me back up there, huh? It's not bad, but chokeouts can cause complications, I wanna make sure he gets proper treatment until we can drop him off.” She nodded, and raised a hand in a lifting motion. I watched as Siegebreaker rose through the air, back into the hatch.

I nodded, and bent to pick up the crates. As I did so, a speaker snapped to life on the outside of the craft. A man's voice, calm and pleasant, spoke from it. “Doctor, would you mind a few more questions?”

I recognized the voice. Doc Quantum.

“SHE HAS LITTLE TIME FOR SUCH. HER PEOPLE ARE IN DANGER.”

“You're also standing in front of the destroyed residence of a known drug dealer, with crates full of explosive chemicals, and what appears to be a kilo of highly illegal psionically-enhanced cocaine hidden in your armor. Even discounting the bodies littering the residence, our scans are turning up a lot of disturbing things.”

“What?” shouted Kinetica. “That shit again? That goddamn psychic drug stuff? I thought we cut off the last source of that back in July! Dammit, dammit—”

“Language, dear.” Quantum's voice was chiding, now.

“Right, right, sorry. Alright. So, are we taking her in after all?”

“YOU SPEAK AS IF IT'S A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.”

A new voice came down from the aircraft's speakers. “I'm afraid that it is, sorry.” Ah. This would be the one who'd spotted my drone. The unknown quantity.

“AND YOU ARE?” I asked.

“Hm. I suppose our PR department has much to answer for. I'm Schrodinger, how do you do? Oh, by the way, I control fate.”

“A BOLD CLAIM.”

“One I can prove. Allow me to demonstrate. Point at somewhere in the street, not too close to you.”

I chose a random spot. “NOW WHAT?”

“Now it's lampshade time. Wait for it... ah, there.”

A 'POP' from the direction of the house, as it groaned and fell in. A spray of fire as a facing window gave, and with a crash, a lamp was blown into the air... Falling to rest at the exact place I was pointing.

I pulled my arm back. Okay, that was impressive.

“So, with respect, I think we'd like to ask you a few questions.”

“UPON CONSIDERATION, DIRE CAN SPARE YOU A FEW MINUTES. BUT THERE ARE PEOPLE'S LIVES ON THE LINE, HERE.”

Kinetica nodded. “That's actually about our situation, too.”

“ALL RIGHT. DIRE MIGHT HAVE A FEW QUESTIONS OF HER OWN.”

“We've heard reports of a power armored warlord in the northeast,” Quantum said. “Would you be her?”

“WITHOUT KNOWING THE RUMORS, SHE CAN'T REALLY CONFIRM THEM,” I said. “SHE IS TRYING TO ORGANIZE A DEFENSE OF HER CURRENT AREA AGAINST THE GANG WHO CALL THEMSELVES THE BLACK BLOODS.”

“Hm. No plans to fight anyone else? Or collect tribute, or forcibly recruit anyone?”