DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) (23 page)

I raced through the streets, dodged parked and abandoned cars as I curved southward. I came to what had to be Broadoak, and into the roundabout that Bunny had chosen as an ambush site. And a glance told me everything I needed to know. Things had gone wrong.

A pair of blue-clad forms, slumping from windows of the bodega across the street. A third blue-clad form slumped over a burning car, slowly roasting as its ammunition cooked off. Three more blue-clad forms in full retreat west, one of whom jerked and fell bonelessly to the ground as I watched, as bullets found her. No sign of Bunny, which could be good or bad.

And in the middle of it all, powering through the wrecked cars that blocked its way, was a riot control vehicle. It swiveled its turret, and the machine gunner within it sent tracers after the retreating Militants. Six sets of thick wheels, scored armor plate, and ten solid tons of FUBAR to our plan. Behind it, a handful of pickup trucks and vans were parked. Black-clad gangers were using them for cover, shooting at the few muzzle flashes firing back from the surrounding buildings.

They hadn't mentioned a riot vehicle during our planning. It looked like their intel wasn't as solid as we'd thought, and now we'd pay the price.

I took a second to study the riot control vehicle. It was an APC, complete with firing slits and a wedge-shaped front. It was bulling over the wreckage that blocked off the northern road, clearing a path for the vehicles behind it. The turret had a bit of a limited arc, I thought. It couldn't engage within fifteen feet or so of the vehicle, judging by the workings I could see. But I could see no real weak points, and my coilgun didn't have a prayer of busting that armor. Two smokestacks poured out black vapor, as it growled and surged forward. Not a hydrogen cell system, then, nor an electrical motor. I'd have been surprised if it was that, with the weight involved and the city grid down. No, this was old-school diesel, carcinogenic as it was.

I wondered what was inside? Gangers, obviously, but how many and how much of a problem would they be?

It occurred to me I could answer that and tackle the main problem at the same time. Because while the APC was big and scary, it was only the distraction. The real problem lay in those pickups and vans behind it.

I was moving as I called up the ball drone, activated it and put its viewpoint in a screen within a screen. I got a nice view of the inside of my compartment, before I pulled it out. I angled myself low to the ground and punched on the forcefield. When I saw my chance I flew barely two feet from the street, coming in fast. The turret started to swivel around toward me, but it was too late as I slowed, braked with my feet coming up to straddle one of the firing slits on the APC. I shoved the ball drone inside and immediately leaped away, twisting, towards the main part of the Black Bloods' column. I used the few seconds before I hit them to study the view of the drone... and I got a quick shot of the APC crammed full of guys with body armor. They were hauling assault rifles. One of them, a guy with a skull tattooed over his face shouted “Grenade! Button down!” and picked up the drone. He shoved it back outside through the slit it had come through.

Heh. Hadn't expected  that. I directed the drone to roll out of the way and had no more time for it, because then I was in among my foes and the surprised Bloods were starting to send lead my way.

Not that it mattered much, not now. My suit was strong enough to lift small cars, and sturdy enough to shrug off clubs and knives. The only way the APC's turret could fire upon me was if they decided to risk their own people, their own vehicles.

I moved through them like a wolf among dogs. I lashed out with vicious strikes at the ones I could reach, dropping three of them. I didn't hold back, and they fell before me, broken and bleeding. Once I was done I hopped up in a short, jumping flight, and landed among a pair of them trying to run across the street. A rattle of gunfire and my forcefield flared as a low heat rose, but one of the Bloods cried and fell. A stray bullet had found him and his thigh was a red ruin. I grabbed his friend, pulled him as I spun around and used him as a human shield as I charged the shooter. I bowled him back and over into a pickup truck bed before beating him senseless with the riddled corpse of his friend.

Once done I discarded both of them and boosted my gravitics to go after three of the Bloods who were trying to wrestle open the back doors on one of the vans. I slammed one of them into the van so hard the side crumpled a bit, but his friends gave a shout of triumph, as they levered a heavy bar away from the doors and ran.

I started after them... and went ass over elbows, as something struck me from behind. Hard.

For a second I thought they'd opened up on me with a heavy weapon, or the APC gunner had decided 'screw it', and taken the shot. But my forcefield hadn't triggered, which meant that whatever had struck me was too slow to trip it.

I pushed off of the ground, started to turn, and someone snarled and hit me. I bounced off the hood of a nearby car before tripping the gravitics and pushing backwards over the vehicle. I looked down to see what sort of attack was being thrown my way... and what I saw made my blood run cold.

It wasn't the fact that it looked like a woman wearing shredded and tattered clothes. It wasn't the fact that it had a mouth full of teeth that were way too big, and way too many. It wasn't the fact that she was crusted with dried blood, offal, and worse things. No, it was the fact that I knew her face.

I'd stared into her dead eyes, a few nights back. She was one of the corpses from Sangre's bed.

She howled and leaped after me, bounding like some sort of predatory cat, as I put the car between myself and her. I clocked her a good one as she came over the roof at me, sending her flying back. I felt bone crunch as I punched her, but she didn't slow down, scrabbling back to her feet the second she landed and stopped rolling. She howled, and there was nothing human in it.

That's about the point that the rest of the Black Bloods opened up on me, and my heat level went from mild, past uncomfortable, and straight into painful.

What were they doing?

They were hitting her as often as they were hitting me. But she wasn't falling. She twitched back and forth, weaving and stumbling as the bullets knocked her about, blew red craters in her flesh. But as I watched the craters started to shrink and seal, and her steps toward me never faltered.

I looked at the back of the empty van, saw bars between the body of it and the driver's area. The kind you'd expect to see when transporting a dangerous animal.

I couldn't stay here, or I'd be roasted after enough bullets. My main mission hadn't changed, even if they'd somehow raised the dead and given them powers. I dashed over to the nearest group of shooters, going low and ignoring the she-creature pursuing me, as I slammed into the Bloods. A few quick punches put them down, but by then the woman had caught up to me, and I felt hands grip my shoulders, and squeeze.

CRRRRRRKKKKkkkkkk...

Against the odds, she was pulling the plates apart. I reached behind me, grabbed her, and twisted, throwing her over my hip and through the window of a parked pickup.

Then the first tracers started going by me, and I dived backwards, kicking in the gravitics. With as much heat as I had right now, a single heavy-caliber bullet could incapacitate me. I had to fight smart. I got to cover behind another van and dispelled my forcefield, let the heat roll off me in waves that steamed the cold air. And I cycled up my coilgun, selecting the spike rounds.

With a burst of broken glass, and a wrenching motion, the woman ripped her way through the pickup's door and charged me. I put a spike into her face, and she staggered. She was hissing like a leaking teapot as she shook her face, clawing at her skull. With a sick horror I realized that the spike was in her brain but she wasn't stopping. She wasn't dying.

The rattle of bullets on metal and the van behind me shifted. I ran forward, and tracers chased me as I kicked in gravitics and boosted my speed as much as I dared. I ran past the woman, stiff arming her toward the APC as I did so. She shrieked... a different note to it than I'd heard so far.

I skidded to a stop, kicked on the forcefield again, and dropped to a crouch as I snapped my neck around to look at her.

She was burning.

One of the tracers had found her, judging by the smoking hole in her chest. This hole wasn't closing like the other wounds had done. She fell over, shrieking and making an unholy racket, and I flew straight up as tracers swung back around to try and cut me down.

She could be burned. That was useful to know. Between that and the spike, she looked to be out of it. A glance around before I started angling back for another pass showed that I'd taken out about half the Black Bloods, and the others were either running or having their own troubles as the few Militia left were merrily sniping away.

That just left the APC. Although...

I glanced over the holed, burning, and shot-up vehicles that it had fired through to get to me, and saw another van rocking back and forth. There was a muffled howl rising from it. At least one more of these creatures in there, by the sound of it.

It occurred to me, that I could probably solve two problems at once. It'd be risky, but we were well past the point of safety and caution. I gnawed my lip, as I checked my heat level. Not great, but I could maybe take a hit or two. Good, I'd need that.

I flew to the shot-up van, dropped, and put it between me and the APC. They fired anyway, but not before I reached up and flipped the bar away from the doors. Another screaming, once-human thing came raging out of the open doors. Before it could get its bearings or the turret could get a bead on either of us, I grabbed it around the waist, and jetted toward the APC.

As I flew, I triggered my universal remote for the first time. As bullets and tracers whistled around me, and a round ricocheted off the field, I aimed it at the APC and checked my options. The heat level in my suit rocketed up, and I bit back a scream as the bare flesh of my arms sizzled and seared where it was pressed against the metal of the suit, but I hung on and selected “EMERGENCY DOOR RELEASE.”

I flew towards the back of the vehicle, and the door fell open with a crash, revealing perhaps twelve very surprised looking men in black outfits. Before they could react, I skidded to a stop and threw my howling, thrashing burden into the guts of the APC among them.

Then I slammed the door shut again.

I held it there as the screams started to rise, and gunfire cracked and spattered within. I walked with the APC as it jerked to life and tried to pull away, keeping that door shut with every bit of strength in my suit and ignoring the horrible sound and smell of my arms burning. My nerves screamed at me, but the alternative was worse. And finally the heat subsided to merely a painful level. At about the same time as the APC slowed to a stop, and I heard a hatch clang open up front.

Someone was swearing, shouting at the top of his lungs. The hatch clanged shut again, and I popped my head up above the edge of the vehicle's top.

That was almost a serious mistake. He'd been waiting for me, and I barely had time to get my head down again as the figure up top hosed down the space it had been in with full-auto fire.

The back of the APC shuddered, as something slammed against it, and a scream from within turned into a wet gurgle.

“You know what I fucking hate?” A man's voice called, from the front end of the vehicle.

“WHAT'S THAT?” I seized the opportunity to drop the forcefield and bleed off some more heat for a few precious seconds. My arms throbbed, feeling raw and puffy. I tried to ignore them.

“Amateurs. Wanna-bes. Dumb asses who think they can come out of nowhere and disrupt a perfectly good op.”

Something came singing over the top at me, something small and round. I snapped the forcefield back on, and broke right with my gravitics to full so fast that I worried about damaging them. Behind me I heard the APC door slam open, a snarl, then BOOM! As the explosion faded and I found new cover behind a burning pickup, a few bullets chased past me. One ricocheted and hit the forcefield, and I growled in frustration as my suit warmed again. This guy was good.

But I had more than one vantage point, didn't I? I flicked my eyes down to the ball drone's viewscreen, and spun the little bot around to look at my enemy.

A large man, perhaps six feet and with a considerable gut to him. But every inch was covered in black ballistic armor, complete with a skull-shaped metal mask and a helmet over top it. He wielded an assault rifle with several attachments that I identified as a laser sight, gas venting system, underbarrel grenade launcher, and, of all things, a bayonet to the side of the barrel. He used that bayonet as I watched, strolling around behind the APC to the bloody, squealing wreck of what had been the madman I'd thrown into the APC. The armored guy stuck the bayonet into the man, holding him down, and fumbled in one pouch before pulling out a stick of some sort. He scraped it, and as it ignited I saw it was a road flare. The armored man dropped it on the squealer, and leaned on the bayonet with both hands while the squealer burned.

“AND YOU WOULD BE STIG.”

“A-firmative. Got any last words?”

His back was to me. Was he cocky or stupid? Didn't match with the description I'd been given... I scanned around with the ball drone, and my breath hissed in my throat, as it saw the small plastic case that he'd propped up nearby, before breaking cover. My memory told me that was a claymore mine, and gave me the specs on what it could do. If I charged him now he'd trigger it, and I'd be caught by a cloud of ball bearings driven by a plastique explosion.