DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) (21 page)

“SHE DOESN'T PLAN TO FIGHT ANYONE ELSE UNLESS THEY START IT.” I waved at the spear stuck in the ground. “CASE IN POINT. AS TO TRIBUTE OR CONSCRIPTION, NEITHER SEEM LIKE A GOOD WAY TO RESTORE ORDER TO THE AREA.”

“All right. What are you doing here?”

“INITIALLY, ATTEMPTING TO TRADE THE KILO OF SUBSTANCE YOU DETECTED FOR AMMUNITION. BUT—” I indicated the house.

“—THE DEALER PRESENT WAS DEAD WHEN DIRE ARRIVED. SO SHE SETTLED FOR SCAVENGING THE MATERIALS HERE.”

“I see. We're going to have to confiscate the poisoned cocaine, you understand. The stuff causes amazing amounts of trouble, we've had three villains get origins from it within the last half a year or so. Not to mention the fatalities...”

I unsealed the compartment and tossed the stuff over, fanny pack and all. “FINE. DIRE HAS WHAT SHE CAME FOR IN ANY CASE. TRADE WITH A DEALER OR TRADE WITH YOU, IT'S ALL THE SAME.”

Kinetica caught the pack. Quantum continued. “You might want to be careful about that. Given your aesthetics, people are already going to be thinking you're a villain. I really can't fault Ballista for jumping to conclusions.”

What? He was lecturing me? I was sitting here, wasting time while my people were working themselves sick to prepare for a life-or-death struggle, and he was lecturing me? The arrogance, the sheer gall of the man!

“DIRE CARES LITTLE FOR SUCH THINGS. SHE IS DIRE, AND LABELS ARE THE FORTE OF THE SIMPLEMINDED. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING ELSE TO RATTLE ON ABOUT?”

Kinetica chuckled. “Aw, that touched a nerve.”

“YOUR CONDESCENSION IS NOTED AND TREATED WITH THE RESPECT IT DESERVES. THAT IS TO SAY, NONE.”

Her grin turned into a sour look. But Quantum's voice cut back in before she could respond. “Several days back, there were several explosions in a building in the northeast, in the Brownstones district, known formally as the Leroy Russ housing project. They resulted in the collapse of that building. Do you know anything about that event?”

Hm. Truth or die time. Did I trust them enough to give them the full story? No. Did I believe that they could tell if I was lying? I couldn't rule it out, thus I had to treat it as if they could. On the other hand, I believed that I'd answered their previous questions to their satisfaction. They probably wouldn't attempt to fight or stop me at this juncture. My leg twinged again, and I shuddered. It was a good thing, that this was going peacefully.

“YES. THAT BUILDING CONTAINED DIRE'S SECRET LAIR.”

That got their attention. Kinetica straightened up, and punched the air. “Yes! Finally, a clue!”

“Maybe.” Quantum was more reserved. “You were attacked, yes?”

“SOMEONE ATTEMPTED A BREACH. THEY WERE STUBBORN ENOUGH TO START CARVING THROUGH SOME FRANKLY LUDICROUS LAYERS OF DEFENSES. DIRE DEPARTED MIDWAY THROUGH.”

“Hm. You realize that you're going to be held liable for this once we sort the city out?”

I raised a hand, let it fall. “AND HER ATTACKERS WILL NOT?”

“That's why it'll be a matter for the courts, most likely. I can recommend a good lawyer, property damage is his specialty. Do you know why WEB was attacking you?”

“NO IDEA.”

“Interesting. Thank you for your time—”

“WAIT.” Dammit, no, now I deserved some questions. “TELL HER OF WEB.”

“That would take a long time. It's complicated.”

Kinetica shook her head. “It's actually really simple if you give her the short version. A bunch of techno-terrorists with a yen to rule the world, and the resources to afford to hire lots of stupid people and give them lots of advanced weapons and armor they can barely use. They're as— bad folks.”

“And they've got power,” Quantum said. “Alone in this city, their power armored troops are operating just fine regardless of their location. That's suspicious.”

“FUNNY YOU SHOULD MENTION THAT. FOUR OF THEM AMBUSHED HER HERE. NOT POWER ARMORED, MIND YOU.”

I indicated their staging point. “THE FIGHT WAS WHAT DREW BALLISTA, BUT THEY ESCAPED IN THE CONFUSION ONCE HE ATTACKED.”

I'd lost a chance to find answers. Damn it Ballista! He couldn't have listened...

“Well. That is interesting. Do you know why they might be after you?” Quantum asked.

I shook my head. “ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA. PERHAPS THEY DESIRE HER TECHNOLOGICAL SKILL?”

“It's possible, I suppose. But given the timing, I doubt it. Watch yourself in the future, Doctor, they're nothing if they're not persistent. Well, if that's all, I think we're done here. Good luck and behave yourself.”

Kinetica floated back up into the hatch, and it closed. I weighed my options, swallowed my pride, and held out a hand. “WAIT.”

“I'm sorry, but we're all very busy here, I don't—”

“WILL YOU HELP AGAINST THE BLACK BLOODS?” I tried to make my tone polite. It sounded no different.

A sigh crackled over the speaker. “I wish we could. But the entire nation's in trouble, not just the city or the district you're in. The sooner we can find the cause, the sooner we can fix it. The answers you gave us here helped with that. And if WEB troopers were here, we need to go track them now, to have a shot at fixing this. Good luck, Doctor, and keep hope.”

“LOOK! EVEN A DAY OR TWO CAN HELP SAVE THE LIVES WITHIN THE CAMP—”

They departed, leaving me hovering in the street.

“IT'S YOUR CITY TOO! THEY'RE YOUR PEOPLE TOO!” I shouted at their departing craft. But they were gone, and I was left by myself, among the ash drifting down as the fire burned itself out.

I picked up the crates with much difficulty, and flew back to the camp. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on.

At least I'd gotten some answers, even if they'd only led to more questions

I noticed the difference in the camp as I approached. Several new tents in a ring, around the shacks and the original tents. More barrels and more fires, burning hot enough to send up plumes of gray smoke. More people, too. By the look of it, at least fifty more had shown up in the couple of hours I'd been away. Children shrieked, pointed, and scrambled away as I came in. After waiting for the zone to clear, I landed in front of the sickbay. I put my burdens down next to the shack, and beckoned one of the new people over. “YOU THERE, DO YOU KNOW ANY OF THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE AROUND HERE?”

“Um. There's the wheelchair guy,” the unassuming young man replied, tugging on the hood of his hoodie.

“GO TELL HIM TO ASK MINNA OR MARTIN OR JOAN TO TAKE CHARGE OF THIS STUFF, THEN COME BACK AND WATCH IT UNTIL SOMEONE COMES TO PICK IT UP.”

He headed off. I headed into the sickbay, stooping a bit to do so. The power armor added half a foot to my height, and the doorway was already fairly low after all. I limped and favored my right leg as much as possible, but I couldn't help jarring the left one with each step, sending pain straight up it. I bit my lip to prevent screaming. This was going to suck.

Khalid hurried up, putting his hands on his hips after he reached up and steadied the swaying lantern. The weight of my advance on the floor had set it rocking. “What are you doing, bringing that thing in here? You are too heavy.”

I triggered the manual release, and he stepped back as it unfolded. After the hissing stopped I stared at him, my sweat-clumped bangs across my left eye. I must have looked like hell, because he put his hand to his mouth.

“She did it because this is probably going to hurt, a lot, and she'll need your help to get out of it without making the damage worse.”

“What in god's name happened?”

“A hero decided to pick a fight.”

He shook his head, offered me his arms. I took them, and tried to lever out without using my legs. It didn't happen. I grunted in agony as I jolted my foot, flashes of red filled my vision because the pain was so bad. Finally with a yank I was out, but despite myself I couldn't help stumbling and putting weight on my left leg. I felt it bend below the knee, just before a howling agony swept me into merciful unconsciousness.

CHAPTER 13: War's Bloody Stigmata

“If there's one good thing to this mess, it's the fact it got people asking how the hell did they smuggle THAT into the city, and keep it hidden for so long?”

--Phillip Guzman, survivor of the Y2K blackout, and former confidant of Doctor Dire

I came back to myself, with my brain feeling like ten miles of bad road. My eyelids fluttered, and I stared at a cloth ceiling. I lay still and concentrated on breathing, until I heard a sound I couldn't identify. A slurping noise? My legs were mismatched in their comfort. The right one felt fine as ever, and I wiggled the toes on my right foot without trouble. My left leg was numb to the hip, however, and felt oddly warm. There was pain, but it was muted. What was going on?

I craned my head up a bit, and Khalid came into view. I was on one of the sickbay cots, and he was crouched over my leg. The pants had been cut away to the knee, and he was rubbing a green gel into the flesh. I tried to wiggle the toes on my left foot, and the pain put me out again. Just before I went, I heard him say “No! Hold still, don't move yet—”

When I awoke again the light had shifted, and the shadows were longer on the wall. Khalid was not in sight. I craned my neck, found my lower body covered with a sheet. I lifted it, looked down at my leg. A brace had been set there, with two slim metal rods and bandages binding between them. Green goo crusted the bandages.

I felt no pain at all, and that worried me. Gritting my teeth, I wiggled my left foot's toes. They wiggled with neither problem nor pain. I tried lifting my leg. It lifted. I tried clambering out of bed, and strings tied to my brace prevented me from going anywhere. Bells attached to them jangled.

Noise came from outside, and after half a minute, Khalid came in. He caught me sitting up and untying the strings from my brace. “Lie down and stop fussing,” he commanded.

“Too much to do.”

He grabbed my shoulder. “The bone is still weak. Lie down and let it work.”

“The bone was broken. Dire remembers that much. How—”

He shook his head. “Not broken. Looked worse than it was. Nearly broken, though. You damaged the tendon. Rest, and let it heal.”

I gnawed my lip. It had certainly looked broken to me. But it looked straight now, and a few flexes demonstrated a good range of movement. There were only a few twinges of pain. It was nothing like the screaming agony I'd had earlier.

“You did something,” I mused. “What?”

Khalid sighed. “It does not matter. Listen, your people will need you soon. You must rest.”

“The bullet press, has it been taken? Is it being used properly?”

“I will send someone to ask. For the love of god, woman, lie down. Do not make me sedate you.”

“You wouldn't.”

“You made me the doctor in charge of medicine here, no? So listen to me.”

Couldn't argue with that. But still... “Compromise?” I suggested.

He took off his spectacles, rubbed them against his shirt. “What?”

“Do you have anyone else to take care of yet?”

“Through the grace of the angels, somehow, no. Despite people's best efforts to injure themselves and give themselves hypothermia by camping on a New England beach in January, we are as yet unafflicted by the dead and dying. I am sure that people will do their level best to change this fact as time goes on.”

“So no, then.”

“So no,” he confirmed.

“Perfect!” I smiled. “You're now Dire's runner until more pressing matters draw you back. Please go visit the following people, and ask them to stop by when they get a second...”

A minute later he was exiting the sickbay, grumbling under his breath in a language I didn't know. I chuckled and lay back, glancing about. He'd left a bottle of water near my head, along with a sandwich of some sort. I drank the one and ate the other, and found my mood much improved by the time Khalid returned with Martin.

“Shiiiit,” Martin gaped at me. I leaned back, grinned, and saluted him with the water bottle.

“Your acquaintance was dead when Dire got there.”

“Someone got Willis? Fuck, wish I could say I was surprised. Now that I think of it, sumbitch musta shown his guns to like dozens of people. Things go to shit, I'm not the only one who'd think 'hey, that jackass has bullets and guns to spare'.” He pulled up a chair, shook his head. “Sorry, shoulda expected that I guess.”

“Quite alright,” I affirmed. “Did you see the bullet press?”

“Yeah. Abes knew what that was. We got some of the layabouts workin' that shit now. Wish we had more brass, but this'll be good for maybe a thousand or so nine mil, and that kind of bullet fits most our guns. Guzman and Sparky got guns to everyone who can shoot now. Maybe thirty people.”

“Thirty.” I bit my lip. Not much, not with a vicious, brutal gang after us. “Well, it's a start.”

“Yeah. So, uh, what happened?”

“Ballista happened. Seemed to think that Dire killed his old mentor, Scrapper.”

“Well. You kinda did.”

Behind Martin, I saw Khalid straighten up, and take a short breath. His eyes flicked to me, and I closed my own.

“True, but Ballista didn't know it was self-defense. Which leads Dire to wonder who told him about it, and left out pertinent details.”

“Militia, probably,” Martin shrugged. “Fuckers practically worship heroes. Slip them intel and help, supplies and shit whenever they can. Wannabes and asskissers, all of 'em.”

I studied his face, spotted no deception that I could tell. Didn't mean he wasn’t a good liar, though. “It doesn't make sense for the Militia to point Ballista at her, to weaken us in the face of the Black Bloods. They should be strengthening us instead, that's the logical move.”

“Nah, see... they get you out of the way, they can come in as heroes. Then they claim this turf themselves, be heroes of the people and shit.”

“And die against the Black Bloods,” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “Just a theory. So. Hate to ask, but... uh... you got that thing I gave you?”

“If you're talking about the nuevacoke, no.” At his frown I elaborated.

Khalid stepped closer. “Wait, wait, wait. You had some of that psychic drug? Where did you get that?”

Martin glanced over at him. “Bought it cheap from someone offloading it in a hurry, before I knew how much of a pain in the ass it was to move. Been sitting on it ever since. Ain't crazy enough to try to give it to my regulars, and too much heat to offload it out of state.”

So it had been a disposable asset to Martin. Hm. That indicated possible bad faith, the fact that he'd sent it with me. Was he playing his own game here? Now? With so much on the line?

Khalid was talking again. “That substance is an abomination. You should have destroyed it.”

Martin tilted his head, considered Khalid through narrow slits of eyes. “I'm curious as to how a bone doctor knows about that shit. Way I heard it, government hushed it up as soon as they found out what it did.”

Khalid folded his arms, and glared back. “I have colleagues who dealt with the fallout from that substance. I wonder if you knew people on the other end of it.”

“Listen, Doctor, I ain't got time for shit from people who never missed a damn meal in their life. Now if you ain't got—”

“Enough,” I said. They shut up, and looked to me.

“So we're making more bullets, good. Are any other preparations underway?”

Khalid nodded. “As a matter of fact, I think Captain Guzman wanted to talk to you about something, there.”

“Good. Please go send him in.” I grinned, as the short man headed out of the shack.

The grin faded, as I looked to Martin, and he looked back. “Something funny about the good doctor,” I muttered. “Dire's leg doesn't hurt a bit.”

Martin nodded. “He's either in the trade or in the costume game if he knows about nuevacoke. Don't know any costume healer types, though. And if he was in the trade I'd know, so he ain't.”

“So an unknown costume then? Encouraging,” I mused out loud as I lined up my logic. “The Black Bloods have no known superpowered individuals. He's unlikely to be a plant.”

“I don't like him,” Martin said, raising a hand and dropping it in a dismissive motion. “But shit, I don't like plenty of people 'round here and that don't matter.”

“Best not to look at the gift too carefully, then,” I concluded. “Not here, not now. He's more likely to help us than hurt us—”

The cloth at the door was pushed aside. I shut up as Khalid returned, followed by the stooped form of Guzman. He split a grin when he saw me, but even the shifting wrinkles that squirmed over his face couldn't hide his worry. “Lying down on the job, Doc?”

“Not by choice, and not for long.” I said. “What's on your mind, Captain?”

“Ships. Well, boats, I guess. More specifically, the boats out on those piers over there.”

“Ah, those. To be honest they're pretty much just scenery to Dire, they've been there so long.”

“Yeah. They're like that to everyone, ever since Nolan's marina shut down, and he left'em to rot. Hell of a waste...”

“You think there's a way to use them?” I quirked an eyebrow. “For what, precisely?”

“Well...” He folded his hands into his pockets, and adjusted his greatcoat. “We got twenty-seven folks who know how to shoot a gun without hitting themselves. Maybe a few more who have the inclination and build to wail on someone with a baseball bat or crowbar if they have to. That leaves more than a hundred folks that'll mostly be in the way.”

“No way around it,” I groused. “Can't turn people away, can't risk the Bloods taking hostages from loved ones left behind.”

“Right. So what if we get the boats seaworthy again, and move the ones who can't fight out when the trouble starts? Get them out on the bay so they're out of it one way or another?” I blinked at the idea.

“On the surface, it sounds good. Unless the Bloods come in with a couple of speedboats...”

“They won't,” Martin said. “Mob's got the Waterfront locked down, and the Bloods got no turf in the south, so the wharves are out for them.”

“Mm. Do we have a way to deal with the ice and the weather?”

“The ice is thin and mostly near the shore,” said Guzman. “Besides, busting it up will keep the youngsters out of trouble. We could start that right away, start dragging the better boats up on the beach.”

“Better,” I mused. “Most of them aren't what Dire would call good to begin with. How long have they been there with no maintenance or repairs?”

“A few years. But I got a plan for that.” He grinned, showing metal dentures. “There's this stuff called 'CL Tight', that Helios put out a few years back. It's industrial-grade, fast-drying caulk. Won't solve all the damage, but it'll make'em good enough to float for a few days. Some of them, anyways. Enough for our purposes.”

“Mm. Do we have enough of this Sealtight?”

“The proper name's 'CL Tight.' and no, we don't even have a drop of it. Local hardware stores don't carry more'n a can or two either, and we need more than that.”

Guzman's grin never changed throughout, even if he did meander around from tangent to tangent. I got the feeling he rather enjoyed being the knowledgeable party in a conversation.

Suppressing my frustration at having to wait, I put on as polite a tone as I could manage. “If we don't have access to enough of it, how is CL Tight's existence of use to us?”

“Because I know where to get a lot of it.” Guzman tapped the side of his nose with one finger, and his grin grew.

I made a 'go on' motion with one hand. “The best place for boat repair in the city is the Dry Dock. It's over near where I-3 meets Route 120. I took my bass fisher there back when I was a boat owner, before the second happiest day of my life.”

I stared at him, and his grin drooped a bit. “You know, the day when I sold my boat?”

I kept staring, and he coughed. “Nevermind. Old joke. Anyway, they've got barrels of CL Tight. A few of those should be more'n enough fer what we need.”

I pursed my lips. “Someone's going to have to sail those boats.”

“Not really,” he said. “Most have oars, and rowing's easy. Long as the weather ain't bad most people should do fine.”

I considered his directions. “Route 120's the highway on the overpass, yes?”

“Yep. Follow it north, it'll curve west, and you'll hit I-3 in about ten mile.” His grin grew wider. “Reckon since you could handle them crates, you can bring back a few barrels of the stuff we need.”

A rustle at the door, and Joan made her way in. “Hun? Sorry to disturb you, but the Militia are back again. They brought more people.”

Perfect. “Help Dire up,” I directed Martin. But as he reached out Khalid rushed next to me, and put his hands on my shoulders.

“What are you doing? You need to rest.”

“Can't look weak in front of potential allies, Doctor.”

“You won't look strong if you fall down and break something in front of them,” he chided. But even as Khalid did so his eyes checked mine, and he nodded as he saw something in them. “You're determined, yes?”