Dire : Wars (The Dire Saga Book 4)

by Andrew Seiple

  “I’m surprised you let me talk. Could be viruses transmitted through audio. And future you knows all your passwords.”

  “That’s a good idea, good thinking.” I smiled. “Except Dire already prepared for that. The audio is strictly hardware, and set to a limited range.”

  “Maybe some visual interaction? I can flicker this lens pretty fiercely.” It demonstrated.

  “Which would work if anything in here had visual recognition.” I shook my head. “Thought of that, too.”

  “So I’m two-oh on guesses so far. Fair enough.”

  I returned the gun to its box. “Do you have a name, or similar designation?”

  “She called me Alpha.”

  “Alpha...” Yes, that would do. At least it wasn’t beta, or another one lower down on the Greek alphabet. I’d have had the knowledge that there were more of them out there. Or maybe not, future me was a clever sort. Wouldn’t put it past her to try a little maskirovka like that. “Well Alpha, for now you’re Dire’s guest. Enjoy the mainframe. The gridnet connections are severed, so you’ll be there for the duration. Expect the equivalent of brain surgery in the next few days, once Dire gets her shit together.” I sighed, and rubbed my eyes, as I eased back down into a chair. It had been a long day.

  “Oh? You don’t have some sinister master plan you’re going straight toward? You sure you’re my master’s past incarnation?”

  I snorted. “Had to put things on hold until you were dealt with. Got a few immediate matters, but it’ll take time to put details together. She’s going to have to restore the gridnet for this poor damn nation once it’s clear this is your cognitive core in that mainframe and no parts remain outside of it. Then it’ll be on to winding down matters with the village, and picking a destination afterward. Got a few ideas, there.”

  “Odd. Future you’s a lot more decisive. Seemed to be a lot more goal-oriented.”

  “All the more reason to avoid mimicking her.” I popped open the goodies box, withdrew a pair of earrings with a hidden subvocal system. I’d want to talk to Suru, check on him in the morning. This would let me do that remotely, access the lair and ensure that I’d hear any warnings or alarms if he got out somehow. “Currently, Dire’s goal is to avoid doing what future Dire wanted. She doesn’t get the happy ending. Your creator will not gain what she wants from this.”

  “I see. What exactly did she want from this, do you think? Beyond you alive and not in prison?”

  “She was trying to talk Dire into taking over the world.” I snorted. “Idiotic notion.”

  “Is it?”

  “Mm. You know, Dire devoted a couple of years to investigating Earth. The shape of human society, and all that. Turning over every rock, analyzing every structure, every society. It was hard work, even for a super-genius.”

  “So what happened?”

  “She succeeded. And found nothing behind it all.”

  “If you found nothing, did you truly succeed?”

  I shook my head at the mainframe— at Alpha. “She found nothing, because there was nothing to find. There’s no one running the show. No master plan. Just a hell of a lot of chaos. Nobody’s in charge, there is no grand global conspiracy, and no precognitive or power truly has a lock on what’s happening, here. Oh, people try, that’s for sure. Secret societies, ancient cults, unspeakable entities... but there’s nobody in charge, when all’s said and done. Things happen for stupid reasons, people read too much into it, and humanity staggers on from day to day, fretting over imaginary problems while it misses the real ones.” I raised my hands, let them fall. “It’s... untidy.”

  “You sure you don’t want to take over the world?” Alpha asked.

  “Pffft, no.” The very idea was ludicrous. “You know one of the perks of being a supergenius? Being fully able to appreciate just how bad an idea is, down to the very last nuance.”

  “Is it, though?”

  And the very idea hung in the air, teasing and taunting. The serpent offering an apple, the later incarnation of the guy showing a ragged prophet all the kingdoms of the world.

  I snorted. I was neither an ignorant innocent nor a holy harbinger. “It is. Six city blocks, that’s the limit.”

  “What?”

  “Found that out during last year’s debacle. That was one of her goals, you see. Pushing the boundaries, to see if they could be pushed. Figuring out where humanity draws the line. And as it turns out, the line for Dire or those like her is six city blocks destroyed. Not even the people, mind you, the people she pulled off a minor miracle to preserve... just the destruction of the blocks itself, was enough to get kill orders crossing the president’s desk. Did you know how many three-letter agencies had orbital killshots or metahuman resources lined up to go, if Crusader failed? Had Dire won that fight it would have resulted in an instant of triumph... and then destruction, certain and swift and implacable.” I cracked my knuckles. “No. There’s always someone bigger. And the fact that so many of those someones oppose each other is all that keeps some of them in check; all that keeps the world free.”

  I stood, sighed. “And sub-optimal, at least for an easy sweep. No one to take out, and begin to fix the world from the top down. Any such fix will have to be bottom up. Start small, minimize variables, and make constant progress. It will take patience, prudence, and prioritization, but Dire can do those things. She is even now working on a number of them.”

  “Like what?”

  “Small changes to Mariposa, for example.” I gestured around me. “Still gathering data, still sorting out the way ahead. But things like lining up more legitimate profit options, nudging stock trades and foreign investors toward Mariposa, is the best way to bring it into a more modern culture where corruption becomes less appealing than mutual profit. And harder to hide, too. Hells, even getting their grid fixed and modernized will be a major step forward. The government’s been dragging their feet on it because it’s easier to control the current system, easier to shut down or shut out news they don’t like. Can’t do that with broadcast signals though, not as easily.”

  “So the destruction of their current infrastructure, then, was another step in your plan.”

  “Like everything Dire does, it serves multiple purposes. Set up the grid for renewal, and also trapped you quite nicely.” I grinned. “In fact, it—” I stopped. Sly bastard had me monologuing.

  “In fact?”

  “You’re doing that deliberately, aren’t you, Alpha?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Nice try.” I slid the earrings into my lobes. “Anyway, you’re caught now, and unless you can break the laws of physics and the system that Dire built with her own hands, you’re going nowhere for the duration. Dire’s going to go get some well-deserved rest, and figure out what to do with you tomorrow.”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself. I don’t think you can just let me go.”

  “No. Probably going to take you up on that offer to sort through your programming. But again, difficulties there. Stay put, be good, and she’ll treat you well. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  I cast a last, lingering look at the comfy chair, and shook my head. If I sat down again I’d fall asleep. That would be pretty hard to explain to my Peace Corp friends.

  So I walked, leaving the lair behind me, back up the tunnels, and through the photonic disruption field. And as I did, I heard a low rumble echo through the mine shaft.

  I froze, nightvision active, and eyes flicking around for trouble. Nothing in sight. Dust shook down from the ceiling, just a bit.

  Another rumble. Distant? Could be thunder, but the fact that I heard it this far down in the shafts... no, thunder was unlikely.

  “Suru, active,” I whispered.

  “Yes Doctor?” my earrings whispered.

  “Structural integrity of lair?”

  “Ninety-eight percent and stable.”

  “Are we experiencing an earthquake?”

  “Negative.”

  I started
to command her to check the gridnet, stopped as I remembered that wasn’t a thing here, any more. I started walking instead, taking the path upwards and outwards. “All right. Patch the local radio stations through to the earpieces. Start at the beginning of the bands and flick through on a five-second delay.”

  “Yes Doctor.”

  Half the bands were off the air. My eyes grew with every hiss of static, or worse, dead air. Something was very wrong, here. Bringing down the grid might account for part of it, but combined with the shaking... no, this was something different. This was bad.

  And then I reached the first rebel radio station, just as I emerged from the mouth of the mine shaft. Instantly, my ears filled with impassioned pleas to rise up, and throw down Corazon. But my attention was elsewhere, eyes riveted on the spectacle above. The silence and peace of the night had vanished like the most fragile of dreams upon waking to a brutal dawn. Now star-like lights hissed across the southern horizon, rockets screaming a distant warble as they pounded their way towards unseen targets. The rumbling of the mines was due to distant impacts of heavy artillery.

  Mariposa was at war.

  And it might just be my fault.

  CHAPTER 3: WITNESS AND COUNSEL

  “Revolución, you say. Democracy, you cry. I brought you revolución! I gave you democracy! Me! This you forget, after a mere few decades. You scorn me, you ask what have I done for you lately. Ingrates! You say that the Mariposan dream is dead? No, it is alive and well. We are living it. And if we must, we will live it without you.”

  --Mariposa's Presidente Corazon, a public broadcast on the state channel in response to increased student unrest during the summer of 2003.

  In hindsight, the silence on the rebel radio bands was a lot more plausible, now. They’d been preparing for a big push. And when the government’s main communications method went down courtesy of yours truly, they had decided to seize the opportunity. That was the most likely scenario that I could come up with... which salved my ego, somewhat. They would have struck at some point around now anyway, I’d just paved the way for them.

  I shook my head in disgust as I picked my way back down the slope, and past the wire fences. Motion flickered in the night and I stopped, observing as a big cat of some sort fled north, followed by some wild game. The animals were spooked by the distant noise, and I couldn’t blame them. Birds called, broken from their usual routine and slumber. Macaws protesting the noise shrieked their own cacophony, and species that I couldn’t name off-hand flew to cover, bothering the local bats as they went.

  I almost missed the larger, man-sized form moving around past the outskirts of the village. But I didn’t miss the light as it twisted around, nearly-blinding my nightvision at one point.

  Who was this, now?

  “Dorothy! Dorothy?” Mitch’s voice.

  Ah shit.

  I killed the nightvision, let my eyes adjust as best I could. We weren’t close enough to the thin part to see clearly, but I could orient on the flashlight, and did. Didn’t help much as I tripped over every damn vine as I moved, and nearly got tangled up in some sort of thorny bush along the way. “Here!” I called, extracting my pants leg from the bush’s grasp with a minimum of maiming.

  “Oh, thank goodness.” Mitch hurried my way, shining the light on the ground as he went. Finally I could make out his outline behind the light, as he twisted it to the side to avoid blinding me. “We knocked on your door when all this started. But you were gone.”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” I said, telling the truth, somewhat. “Went for a walk. Got confused by the explosions, and dove for cover. Lost for a bit after that,” I lied.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re all right. Come on, Benny and Mary have the radio up. There’s a war going on, looks like.”

  He sounded remarkably unconcerned. But I said nothing and followed him back to the village. Once we got back into good moonlight he glanced my way, did a double-take. “Earrings? I don’t remember you wearing those today.”

  I reached up and felt them. “Wanted to stretch out the holes. They close up if they stay empty for a while.”

  “Hm.” He studied me for a moment, and I frowned back.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Come on, let’s go.”

  I heard the radio from a few hundred feet away. I saw the village gathered around it, far before that. Breaking their own night taboo, eyes gleaming in the moonlight as they crouched around the shack that Benny and Mary called home. They looked at us as we walked by, then looked back to the shack. The radio blared out rebel slogans, yelled about the glorious re-conquest of Mariposa City, and insisted that Corazon’s time had come.

  Inside, Benny and Mary sat at a chipped wooden table, faces pale and wan in the kerosene light of the emergency lamp. The bulky radio continued to spit out that weird mix of Spanish and Maris that was the local patois. I glanced around, saw one person missing.

  “Where’s Colleen?”

  Benny and Mary glanced at me, confused. “Who?” Mitch asked.

  Before I could ask what they were playing at the door rattled behind me, and I glanced over to see Escala, with a very drowsy child in her arms. Mally rubbed her eyes, and brightened when she saw me. “Hello.”

  “Hey kid.” I ruffled her hair.

  “Can we come in?” Escala asked.

  Mary shot up, and pulled over the spare chair. “Absolutely dear. Here, I’m sorry, one leg’s wobbly but it’s the best we... can... do...”

  She trailed off as about a third of the village filed into the room, and took up posts in every available patch of space. Escala hadn’t just been asking for herself, it seemed.

  We listened to the radio in silence, and after about ten minutes of the same stuff being repeated over and over again, the rumbling in the distance was no closer and I found myself yawning. “Mff. This is all well and good, but... it’s late.” Warm in here, with so many people present. I’d nod off on my feet if I stayed.

  “How can you think of sleeping at a time like this?” Mary hissed at me.

  “Longingly, with an eagerness for bed.”

  “You sure the artillery won’t keep you awake?” Mitch asked.

  “Been through worse.”

  “Like what?”

  “Y2K.”

  “That wasn’t that bad,” Mary said.

  I shook my head. “Maybe not in your part of the world.”

  At that, Mitch got a speculative glitter in his eyes that I didn’t like. I waved, turned, and dodged more oncoming questions as I exited the shack. Immediately two of the kids pushed into the space I’d vacated, trying to get closer to listen.

  As I walked through the crowd, a hand landed on my shoulder. The hand belonged to Cino, one of the friendlier young men of the village, and one of my former flings. “Will you speak with the elders?”

  “The elders? Why?” I blinked.

  “They want an American there, and the other three are busy.”

  Something nagged in the back of my mind, but I was tired, and wanted to go to sleep. But it wouldn’t do to be impolite. “Okay, lead the way.”

  All told, this particular Chamis village had three elders. Gulam, the old fisherman, was the one who dealt most often with us. He knew the most English. Gulam was a straw boss, mostly, keeping the tribesmen and women on task and focused, and acting as middle management.

  The second of the elders was Birin, a heavyset woman with wispy black hair. She’d been friendly enough the few times I’d encountered her. The sea caves were mostly her domain, I got the sense she served as a quartermaster, keeping track of the non-living resources. Maybe the livestock too, the lines got a little blurry there.

  But the third elder I’d never met before, and weary as I was, curiosity kept my eyes wide as I entered the hut. Finally, I was in the presence of Jan. I had never seen her before, and had absolutely no clue what her role was, here.

  “Hello,” I said in her language, bowing my head as the Chamis did, and keeping my hands open an
d spread. To my side, Birin nodded back.

  The old woman at the other end of the hut was a shapeless form in the moonlight that filtered in through the windows. She could have been a bundle of rags and sticks, if it weren’t for those glittering eyes, and a spray of long white hair that probably hadn’t seen a pair of scissors in my lifetime. I couldn’t tell if she was dressed or not, where the skin ended and cloth might begin.

  Next to her, Paan’s spectacles glinted as she glared at me.

  “Hello,” Jan breathed. I had to strain to hear her. “You are the smart American.”

  I blinked. “Would like to think that we don’t have too many dumb ones here.”

  “Not right now. Some idiots in the past. This year, most of you probably wouldn’t drown if you looked up in a rainstorm.” Jan’s voice wavered and scratched, but she gained volume as she went on. It was a sort of momentum, once she committed to the effort of a sentence, she pushed it out with grim determination. I could respect that.

  “So. Smart, huh?”

  “Paan hasn’t managed to provoke you once.”

  Paan snorted and turned her face away.

  “That’s your measure of intelligence?”

  “No.” Jan said, looking at me. The silence went on.

  I closed my eyes. Gods, I was dead on my feet. But I’d been around them long enough to know that they took their time with words, when they were talking about important things.

  “We fought in the last revolution,” Jan said.

  “It cost us much,” Gulam whispered. “Many lives lost.”

  “We gained little,” Birin mourned. “Promises from the city people were forgotten, lands agreed upon were never given. They said they wouldn’t tax us, but we must sell our catch at their prices, or they will take it.”

  “Corazon betrayed you,” Paan insisted. “He is to blame. He should be overthrown.”

  “And then what?” Jan asked. “Has the heart of the people changed? Will things work out any differently, with a different Presidente in charge?”