by wildbow
“Come again?”
“He wants to know if you’re okay with deciding what territory you get after the job is done,” Grue said.
“Yeah.”
“Grue, Tattletale, Regent?”
“I’m with her,” Tattletale jerked a thumb my way. Grue nodded, glancing at Imp.
“I’m not about to be left out,” Regent said. “But maybe you could pony up a nice cash bonus?”
I could hear the slightest of sighs from Coil. “That can be arranged.”
“Cool.”
“Then that’s settled. I’ve been made aware that Dragon is also making a bid to claim, seize and lock out digital goods within the city. Victor has agreed to work with my teams and do what he can to minimize the damage. If there’s nothing else—”
“There is something,” Tattletale said.
“Do tell.”
“That data we grabbed from the PRT offices. You crack it yet?”
“Some. It’s badly degraded.”
“I need it. As much as you can give.”
“Done,” Coil said. “I can show you the way.”
“One other thing. You said we had access to all of your resources?”
“Yes.”
“Just how much money are you able to spare?”
“We can discuss that on our way to the room where the databases are stored,” he said, firm. “Undersiders, Travelers, I wish you luck.”
He strode off with Tattletale following.
Too easy, I thought. He made that promise too easily.
But it was something.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Monarch 16.2
“We’re not going to be able to take on Dragon without a plan,” Grue said. “A damn good one.”
“You taking point on this?” Trickster asked. He stepped forward to unlock the gate and held it open for us.
I knew Grue well enough that I noticed the delay before he responded. “I don’t have a plan, but I’ll take lead if we need it.”
Was he hesitating? We hadn’t really asked a lot of Grue since he’d been taken by the Nine. Lisa had expressed concerns that he might be shaky if we put him under the pressures a leader had to handle, and the others had apparently agreed. They’d talked about nominating me.
I wasn’t sure I was up for the role, but I was even less sure about having Grue calling the shots when he might shut down or get distracted at a crucial moment. I didn’t know what form his trauma might take in this kind of situation. Our side consisted of Trickster and Sundancer from the Travelers, with Regent, Shatterbird, maybe Victor, Grue, Imp and me. Grue’s own self-preservation or his feelings for Imp and me could cause him to play it too safe when we needed to make a decisive strike.
“Actually—” I started to interject, but the words disappeared the second everyone turned my way. Grue’s attention, in particular, was making it hard to be confident. I didn’t want to hurt him, and trying to figure out how to phrase things without hurting his feelings, raising a sensitive subject and actually saying what I wanted to say…
We’d stepped outside. The half-finished building that loomed over the entrance to Coil’s underground base sheltered us, allowing intermittent sunlight through where plywood hadn’t yet been erected to fill the gaps. Patches of bright and dark. I turned and looked at Grue, trying to read him, to see if there was some clue about what he’d say.
Regent spoke up, “Spit it out. Actually what?”
“Can I?” I asked. “Can I take point here?”
When in doubt, keep it simple.
“You have a plan?” Trickster asked.
“Maybe. No, plan is the wrong word. Call it a strategy.” I was studying our group, assessing the tools we had at our disposal. “But it’s becoming a plan as I think about it, and I think Imp plays the key role here.”
“Fuck yeah!”
“Imp?” Trickster asked. “Dragon can see her, can’t she? She’s the most useless person here. I mean, I know I’m not in any shape to fight, but at least my power does something.”
“Fuck you,” Imp snarled.
“No,” I said. “We can definitely use her.”
“Let’s hear the plan,” Grue said. I was relieved that there was no anger or irritation in his voice, nothing to indicate he was upset over my co-opting the leadership role.
“The first priority will be making sure Bitch, Genesis and Ballistic are okay. I’m thinking the easiest way to do that will be to pay the heroes a visit at the PRT headquarters.”
“Dangerous,” Grue said.
“And it’s something Dragon will anticipate, I think,” I said. “It’s a safe bet to say she’s smart, even if the actual machines aren’t getting her full attention or if they’re dumber because their artificial intelligences don’t function at the same level as an actual human brain. She’s still organizing the suits, and she’s going to be able to anticipate that we might go for the most vulnerable elements of their operation, the local heroes.”
“You’re thinking we go after them?”
“We have to. The individual suits are going to be tough to take down, if not outright impossible. We can take down the local heroes and get leverage, information, or at least stop them from interfering when we go up against one or more of Dragon’s suits.”
“Makes sense,” Trickster said. “Unless we’re putting ourselves in that worst-case scenario where we’re dealing with multiple suits plus the local heroes.”
“It’s possible. Even here, I’m willing to bet my left hand that there’s going to be a Dragon suit parked on the roof of that building, or somewhere near by.”
“And you’re thinking we use Imp?” Grue asked.
I nodded. “We can leave her there as a saboteur, maybe, or just have her in place to get information or methodically take threats out of action. But it won’t be that simple. They’ll have security cameras throughout the building. Which means we need to take them out if she’s going to walk around without a problem. Regent, can Shatterbird kill all the cameras and lights in the building without killing anyone? Nothing explosive.”
“A gentle break? I’d have to be close. Closer if I don’t know where it is.”
“And by ‘I’ you mean Shatterbird?” Grue asked.
“Yeah. I can’t get that far from her though.”
“I can probably find the location to target with my bugs. But getting Shatterbird in close means we need a distraction. So this is a two-pronged plan.”
“The problem with that,” Grue said, “is this is also a plan with a lot of steps, each dependent on the success of the step before it, as well as the success of the second ‘prong’. If we fuck up or run into a snag somewhere along the line, it falls apart.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And we’re going to be outnumbered and outgunned, even if we don’t count the squads of PRT uniforms that are going to be stationed in there. But I think we can use that to our advantage.”
“Disguises?” Sundancer asked.
“No. Not disguises. Let’s hurry. We’re working with a hard time limit, we have to travel on foot, and we’re going to be forced to stay out of the open as we travel.”
* * *
Grue filled the area with darkness as we approached, and then cleared enough away for us to talk. With luck, it would help keep them from detecting us with any of the countless tools tinkers like Dragon, Chariot or Kid Win had at their disposal. Radar, thermal imaging, stuff I’d never even heard of.
They had modified the PRT building since our last visit. The windows had been destroyed when Shatterbird had attacked the city, and were now filled with screens and plywood. PRT uniforms stood on the rooftop, observing the surrounding area. Trucks ringed the area, each with police officers, detectives in bulletproof vests and more PRT uniforms standing nearby.
One of Dragon’s suits was perched on the rooftop of the tallest building in the area. The legs were long enough that the knees rose above the body, ending in four sharp points, and wing panels seemed t
o join each of the legs, like the flaps of skin between the legs of a flying squirrel. The actual body was low to the ground, with a long tail that had entwined from a point at the back of the rooftop to the front, caressing the corner closest to me. The head swiveled slowly from side to side, scanning for threats.
It wasn’t the drone ship. Good. That would have been disastrous. But I didn’t know what this suit did. The feature that caught my eye was the wheel. As big around as the suit was long, the spoked wheel ran through the shoulders of the suit, jutting straight up. It rotated slowly, arcs of electricity occasionally flashing between the center and the edges, killing any bugs that settled on the spokes and leaving a heavy scent of ozone in their wake.
I described the general shape for them.
“Anyone recognize what Skitter’s describing?” Grue asked.
“That’s not the one that came after me,” Sundancer said.
“It’s in my territory,” Trickster said. “Maybe she picked it to come after me?”
“How do you counter a teleporter?” I asked.
“With that thing, apparently,” Regent commented. “So we’re dividing our group?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m tracking you guys with my bugs. Take your time getting into position. Better to take a bit longer than to alert them too early. Grue’s with me. Trickster, Imp and Sundancer stay here, keep out of sight at all costs. Regent and Shatterbird, you stay here in the darkness for cover until we make a move, then head out and circle around. When we’re all in place, I’ll let you know.”
Grue and I headed out, navigating through back alleys and side streets, detouring far enough away that the curve of the road kept us out of sight of the officers stationed by the intersection, with my swarm to check for any bystanders and Grue’s darkness to keep us off the armored mech’s radar. I used my bugs to start tracking the people inside the headquarters.
Heat and humidity were my allies here. The main floors had open areas with desks and areas with blocks of cubicles, packed with officers working elbow to elbow. They’d worked long days, judging by the heavy taste of the sweat on their skin, and they’d let food pile up. With the general warmth of summer, bugs were secretly thriving. Some vegetable mush had leaked from the trash can to the bottom of a bin, maybe spaghetti or some pizza sauce, and maggots were happily devouring a meal there. Small flies had amassed where the trash hadn’t been promptly cleared away, and piles of paper offered a home to the enterprising spiders that wanted to devour this growing population of pests.
I’d worried I wouldn’t be able to get my bugs on everyone present without alerting them. It wasn’t a problem in the end. A small number of maggots could be delivered by a fly, dropped into the midst of an officer’s shoelaces, the pocket of their pants or the holster of their gun. From there, it was easy enough to keep track of where they were moving and what they were doing. Counting the bodies, checking the various people inside, I could tell that Bitch, Genesis and Ballistic weren’t present. Nobody matched their build or style of dress, in costume or out.
On the third floor the three local members of the Protectorate were in the company of the Wards, a pair of PRT uniforms and the woman I took to be the Director. Triumph seemed to be okay, I could sense the general shape of Miss Militia, as well as Assault. I didn’t spot Prism, Cache or Ursa Aurora. That was good.
All of the Wards were present, too: Weld, Clockblocker, Flechette, Kid Win, Vista, and Chariot.
We had two big guns. If we were willing to be monsters, to go all out, it would be a fairly simple matter to hit them with Shatterbird to slow them down, use Sundancer’s sun at maximum power, tear the building apart and incinerate the residents before everyone could clear out. It wouldn’t even be hard.
But what was the point if we went that far? I was in this to save Dinah. It didn’t do any good if I ruined the lives of a hundred Dinahs in the process—the daughters and sisters of the employees here, fathers, mothers and other people who did nothing to get caught up in this war.
“This spot good?” Grue asked, stopping.
I looked around. We didn’t have a view of the building, but we did have a view of Trickster. Which is what we needed.
“It’s good. One minute while I fill them in.”
“Feel confident?”
“Wish I had time to practice this before trying it in the field,” I replied.
“Yeah,” he answered.
I used my bugs to spell out the various information they needed. The presence and location of the armored suit, the general number and location of the enemy forces and the floors they were currently on. It took me a few minutes to spell everything out and verify that they understood.
The plan called for a distraction. Sundancer would take the lead on that. I signaled the go-ahead, and she created her orb, shoving it down through the road’s surface. However many thousands of degrees it was, it melted through pavement and bored into whatever pipes and drainage spaces were beneath the roads.
When it rose through an intersection some distance away, it was significantly larger. Sundancer began bringing it steadily towards the headquarters, moving in towards the opposite face of the building that Grue and I were closest to.
The Protectorate headed to the windows to see what was happening. I highlighted the window frame with my bugs, clustering them so a general rectangle surrounded the area. Did Trickster have the ability to see them through the window? It was hard to calculate the angles—
I found myself in the midst of the local heroes. Bugs exploded out from within my costume, covering them. Capsaicin-laced bugs found every uncovered eye, mouth and nose before they realized what had just happened. My bugs could sense Triumph bending his knees to lunge for me—
And I’d shifted a few feet to the right. Even as my orientation and senses were thrown by the sudden movement, my bugs let me figure out where I’d moved a fraction of a second before the enemy did. I was already reaching for my baton, whipping it out to its full length.
Trickster switched me again before I could strike Miss Militia with my combat stick. Vista was in front of me, and without really thinking about it, I struck her in the most vulnerable area I could reach, across the bridge of her nose, swatting her in the ear with a stroke in the opposite direction.
Another swap, not a half-second later. We were counting on my swarm-sense giving me the edge in this chaos, the close proximity and unclear positioning of their allies would keep them from hitting me with the worst of their powers. I caught Miss Militia in the midsection with my baton, swung overhead to try to catch her hand, but missed when Trickster teleported me again.
Assault kicked me before I could recover and strike my next target. The hit didn’t feel that hard, but it sent me sliding across the floor, into a trio of chairs with plastic seats.
“The window!” Miss Militia choked out the orders through the pain of the capsaicin and the massed bugs. “Block Trickster!”
I climbed to my feet. I’d waited too long to signal for an exit. The plan had been to bring Grue in as I wrapped up my initial attack, let him use his darkness to disable, steal whatever power would serve best and dispatch the enemy. They’d caught on to what we were doing, and they were making their counter-move. If Trickster couldn’t see me, he couldn’t swap me with anyone, meaning I was on my own.
My opponents were suffering, though. Clockblocker was gone, teleported out as I’d teleported in. Miss Militia, Vista, Flechette, Triumph, Chariot and Kid Win were down, more or less out of commission with their eyes swollen shut and the bugs crawling into their ears and airways. At Miss Militia’s instruction, they had backed up to the window, blocking Trickster’s view.
Besides bringing Grue in, the plan had been for Trickster to swap the heroes out as he spotted them, using bystanders or any officers in the area. Right this moment, he should have eyes on the uniforms on the roof, could switch their locations with that of the heroes, but he wasn’t. Maybe he felt it was more dangerous for me to be up against
a cop with a gun or a PRT uniform with containment foam than against heroes we’d already disabled.
Or maybe he was fucking me over on purpose. No, it didn’t make sense. He had his teammates to rescue. I was still suffering latent paranoia from Coil’s ‘test’.
Still, the other heroes were more or less incapacitated. That left me to deal with Weld, Assault, the two PRT officers and the Director. She was an obese woman, two-hundred and fifty pounds at a minimum, with an unflattering, old-fashioned haircut that might have looked good on a model with the right clothes to go with it. Neither Weld nor Assault were advancing, choosing to block my access to the exits. The area was some kind of office, filled with desks, chairs, cubicles and computers. More like an office building than I’d expected from a law enforcement facility.
“This—” the Director started, stopping to cough and gag as one of the capsaicin bugs found the inside of her mouth. It had already smeared its payload along the inside of Vista’s nostril, so the payload wouldn’t be that intense. “This was a mistake.”
“If it wasn’t a little reckless, Dragon would have probably anticipated it.”
“You’ve trapped yourself in here. Two other Dragon models are already on the way.”
Fuck.
“Good,” I told her. I was pretty sure I managed to hide the fact that I was lying through my teeth.
She straightened, pressing one hand to her right eye. “Is this Tattletale’s plan?”
“Mine.”
“I see, and—”
I didn’t hear the rest. Behind my back, Assault moved to kick one of the desks. It went flying into the air in the same instant I threw myself to the ground. I could feel the rush of wind as it passed over me, hurtling into a cubicle. I scrambled for cover.
“Prescience. Interesting,” the Director called out, as I ducked low and used the cubicles to hide. “We assigned you a thinker-one classification, but perhaps we fell short.”
“I really don’t care.” I used my bugs to speak, so they couldn’t use my voice to pinpoint my location. She was trying to distract me so the others could act, or buying the Dragon suits time to arrive. I was calling in more bugs to the area and slowly gathering them around myself, now that I didn’t need to worry about people spotting them.