I leaned back and considered the small, twenty-inch hologram I’d made of him as he paced back and forth on my bed. He’d gone from captive to pet, and hadn’t shown any signs of dissatisfaction with his lot. I’d even left some connections deliberately open, that would have given him more power and capability if he’d decided to betray me. He hadn’t taken them.
Was he a trap from my future self? I didn’t think so. Timeline decay had done a number on his capabilities there. Future me had shifted things beyond all recognition, she would literally never be, now.
I’d been betrayed twice before, and twice it had caused disaster. Caused my friends to die, directly or indirectly as a result. I didn’t have that many friends to begin with.
Could I afford to make one, here? Afford to trust, even with so much on the line?
I pushed aside my feelings, and looked at it with the cold clarity of logic. And a couple of seconds of assessment decided me. I couldn’t afford not to trust, here. He was the only person I had around immune to the Assassin’s trick. Sure, I had Suru, but she was nowhere near the same level of intelligence. Lacked initiative, and I wasn’t about to program that into her. Not with her tied into the critical systems the way she was.
“Alpha, you’ve passed the test,” I said, laying back and easing my head onto the pillow, wincing as the bruise on my temple settled funny.
“There was a test?”
“Life’s a test.”
“Oh now you’re getting philosophical on me.”
“Eh. Sometimes you have to put Descartes before the horse.”
He groaned, but rallied. “Want me to get you some wine from the rack, so you can keep existing?”
“What?”
“I drink therefore I am? Never mind. You just brought up Descartes, so...”
“Bad jokes aside... you’re in. Suru, upgrade Alpha to grade one protocols.”
“What the— just like that?” Alpha’s eyes grew wide. “And what exactly are... oh. Oh wow.” Across the room from me, my armor started dancing a shuffle step.
“Yep. Gave your server a backdoor into the brute suit. Going to need that in a couple of days. Can’t be in two places at once otherwise.”
Alpha face-palmed. “This is going to be one of those over-complicated plans that’s going to include details to cover things that might not happen, isn’t it? Future you did those all the time.”
“Yeah, probably.” I rolled over and went to sleep.
The next morning, Alpha was sitting at the foot of my bed, looking annoyed.
“Hm?”
“Did you have to put in the smokestacks? The factories don’t even need those!”
I glanced over at the window, and grinned. The morning sun was blotted out by a nice, gray cloud that hadn’t been there yesterday. It filled the sky, rendering the whole city hazy and dim. “Ah, perfect!”
“Perfect? Take a look at this morning’s paper!” Alpha pulled up a holographic sheet, and waved it at my face. I glanced it over, pursed my lips.
“Those are a lot of exclamation points.”
“You’ve got about a thousand people in the clinics due to a nagging cough!”
“Yes, she’s rather proud of that.”
“For what? Giving people silicosis?”
“No, actually. The smoke’s an irritant, but not a lethal one. Even the most asthmatic sort won’t take any real harm from it. The stuff’s eco-friendly, won’t even hurt bugs.” I grinned. “Got this stuff from Professor Vector a few months back. He didn’t know what to do with it, so Dire picked it up for a song.”
“Well the clinics are full to bursting and the paper is ripping you to shreds.”
I read it over, shrugged. “Compared to the American press, it’s pretty tame. Corazon had them well-trained.” That reminded me of that rebel I’d spoken with, a few days ago. Her father had been an editor for the paper...
It also reminded me of the other rebels, and some progress that desperately needed to be made. “Go let Spetta know Dire wants to see her in ten minutes.”
“Alright.” Shaking his head, Alpha dissipated.
Shortly thereafter, Señorita Spetta took notes in shorthand as I paced and ticked down the day’s business.
“THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS IS SIMPLE. SHUT DOWN THE STATE BROTHELS.”
“Doctor?” She blinked.
“DIRE LIKES LEGAL BROTHELS. THEY’RE NECESSARY TO MODERN SOCIETY, AND THEY REDUCE THE ABUSE OF PROSTITUTES AND THE PREVALENCE OF DRUGS IN THE INDUSTRY. HOWEVER, A FEW DAYS AGO SHE LEARNED THAT WOMEN ARE BEING COERCED INTO THEM. THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE. SHUT DOWN THE STATE-RUN BROTHELS. WE’LL LET THE PRIVATE SECTOR PICK UP THE SLACK, THERE.”
“Very well, Doctor.” She made a note of it. “But this will remove a high-earning source of revenue from our taxes.”
“SPEAKING OF THAT, ARE THE US CORPORATIONS COMPLYING WITH HER DEMAND?”
“Mostly. They took the payment option. Your new minister of the interior thinks that they’ll delay paying any real money until... they have to.”
“UNTIL THEY’RE CERTAIN DIRE’S GOING TO BE AROUND FOR A WHILE,” I corrected. “THAT WHAT YOU WERE GOING TO SAY?”
“Well, yes.” She watched me, wary from behind her lenses.
“NEVER BE AFRAID TO SPEAK YOUR MIND.”
“If you say so, Doctor.”
“SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS.” I handed back the thumb drive of applicant files. I’d altered one of them, given her my own face and a new name. “SCREEN THE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT APPLICANTS. INTERVIEW THEM AND HIRE THREE OF THEM... MAKE SURE ONE OF THEM HAS FAMILIARITY WITH THE UNITED STATES. DIRE WILL NEED AN AMBASSADOR. TAKE CARE OF IT TOMORROW, IF YOU CAN. NO LATER THAN THE DAY AFTER.”
“I will make it my priority,” she promised. “Not today, though?”
“NO. DIFFERENT PRIORITY TODAY. CALL IN THE PRESS, DIRE’S GOING TO TAKE THEM ON A TOUR OF HER FACTORIES. SET IT UP FOR THIS AFTERNOON, AFTER LUNCH. OH, AND ONE MORE THING. GOING TO NEED YOU TO GET A BASEBALL BAT, SOME BARBED WIRE, AND ENOUGH PURE CAPSAICIN OIL TO COAT THE BAT FROM TOP TO BOTTOM.”
I didn’t think it was possible for her to look more confused, but she agreed to see what she could do.
A few hours later I met Ricio outside my largest factory. Transformed overnight from a mere husk of brick and wood, it now boasted shiny metal walls, a massive smokestack that rose five stories into the sky, and large metal doors encrusted with gnashing gears. Three or four reporters huddled in a knot, as far away from me as they could manage without appearing to cower, looking like they wished they were anywhere but here. Their camera crews were even further back, wearing dust masks and scarves and other makeshift respiratory aids so they wouldn’t cough into the mikes.
Behind my mask, I smiled. I pushed my gauntlet against the door, and the skull-like crenellations above it lit up with glowing green eyes. “Welcome, Doctor Dire,” it rasped with a grinding voice. The doors groaned open, and more smoke poured out, sending the reporters into coughing fits.
“AS YOU CAN SEE, WE UTILIZE ONLY THE FINEST TECHNOLOGY TO CREATE AN EFFICIENT AND STERILE WORKING ENVIRONMENT!” I gestured, motioned them to enter. The inside resembled nothing so much as an abattoir, with grated floor and sharp, unnecessary spikes lining the ceiling and walls. Ominous-looking machines growled and spat out parts, and tiny robots ferried them back and forth between stations.
If one knew where to start, one could theoretically follow the parts from beginning to end, where weapons not unlike bulky rifles were stacking into ports in the wall, transferred by pneumatic tubes to a central container for shipping.
I was proud as punch. One night, that’s all it had taken my little construction bots, to build the machines that built the machines that made the guns. And then build in all the other machines that served no purpose beyond sparking randomly, making ominous noises, and looking like the lovechild of a horror film and the most dangerous industrial hell you could imagine. With every step, we passed a new OSHA violation.
�
��FULLY AUTOMATED, OF COURSE. BUT EASILY AUGMENTED BY A HUMAN WORKFORCE. WHY, PRODUCTION WILL SURELY TRIPLE ONCE WE ADD IN THE FIRST SHIPMENT OF PRISONERS!”
One of the reporters raised his hand. “You are planning to use prisoners for hard labor?”
“OF COURSE! AS IT TURNS OUT, THAT’S PERMISSABLE WITHIN THE BOUNDARIES OF MARIPOSA LAW.”
“But what of UN laws?” Another, braver one asked. “There are some who would see this as a human rights violation.” She spoiled her brave question by coughing in the middle of it, getting too much of a snootful of the smoke.
“BAH,” I waved a hand, pretending to be irritated. “SHOULD HAVE CHANGED THE LAW IF YOU DIDN’T WANT A TYRANT USING IT. BUT DIRE PROMISES TO GIVE ANY CONCERNS RAISED THROUGH DULY DESIGNATED CHANNELS THE ATTENTION AND CONSIDERATION THEY DESERVE.”
“Empress, excuse me,” the tallest of the reporters said, eyes glittering as he muffled his face with one sleeved arm. “This smoke, is it truly necessary for the construction of these weapons?”
That voice... hearing it muffled, jogged my memory. And those eyes looked familiar too, I’d seen them through a pair of goggles last night, I’d wager my life on it.
“INTERESTING RIDDLE, THAT,” I said, turning from him and gesturing wide in a perfect photo op. “THIS IS THE SMOKE OF PROGRESS! IT SHALL PERSIST UNTIL MARIPOSA IS BROUGHT KICKING AND SCREAMING INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY! SO LONG AS DIRE REMAINS, THIS SMOKE SHALL ACT AS A BEACON, STANDING AS A RESOLUTE SYMBOL OF HER LONG-TERM COMMITMENT TO MARIPOSA!”
“I see,” the reporter said, and his eyes glinted with humor as I looked back to him. “Thank you, Empress.”
“These weapons,” Ricio said, and I saw that he’d picked one up before it got through the port in the wall. “What precisely do they do?”
“HAND IT OVER AND SHE’LL SHOW YOU.” He did so, and I took it from him, and drilled him in the knee.
“Gah!” He howled, going down as a red beam lanced through his leg. He clutched his knee, rocking back and forth, swearing like a sailor. He called me some thoroughly nasty things, that I ignored. And after a minute, the swearing slowed, and he peeled his hands away from his leg to stare at the unbroken leg of his trousers.
“What just happened there?” he asked.
“PAIN HAPPENED, GENERAL. A BLAST OF ENERGY THAT EXCITES THE NERVES, WITHOUT DAMAGING THE BODY. IT FELT LIKE BURNING, YES?”
“Yes.” He accepted my hand as I helped him up, but I could read his face like a book. He’d hold this against me. Especially since it was on-camera.
Good.
I handed him the rifle. “ADJUSTABLE FOR DURATION AND INTENSITY. THE BASIC SETTING DISABLES FOR A FEW MINUTES. SHOULD BE ENOUGH FOR THE UPCOMING FIGHTS.”
He chewed his lip. “I don’t see a magazine.”
“THEY ARE POWERED THROUGH BROADCAST ENERGY.” I pointed at the smokestacks of the other buildings my bots had re-constructed over the night. “THAT’S RIGHT, AS OF TODAY, MARIPOSA CITY IS NOW ENJOYING THE BENEFITS OF MODERN TESLA-DESIGNED TECHNOLOGY. BROADCAST ENERGY, AND SOON, A LOCAL GRIDNET TO GO WITH IT.”
The reporters forgot some of their fears and concerns at that announcement, crowding forward with questions. I laughed, and fielded them as best I could. I watched as Ricio thought through the issues there, and frowned. Good man. Sharp man.
After the bulk of the questions were done, he sidled up next to me. “These guns aren’t going to be of much use if we get outside the power broadcast range.”
“THOUGHT OF THAT TOO.” I snapped my fingers, and a few heavy, quadrupedal robots shambled out of the back. “MOBILE SIGNAL BOOSTERS. WE CAN SEND THEM IN BEHIND YOUR FORCE, AND YOUR GUNS WILL BE FULLY POWERED SO LONG AS THEY’RE DOING THEIR THING.”
I made sure the reporters got that clearly.
All of this today, it served three purposes. The first was to paint myself as a horrible villain, and the aesthetic was probably selling it by itself. The second was to give the rebels a fighting chance. I was actually downgrading the army with less lethal weapons, which had a crucial weakness in that they needed the booster bots to function outside of Mariposa City. The third reason... well, that hadn’t happened yet. I was kind of surprised about that. Normally he was much more on the ball than this.
BIP!
Ah, finally! Speak of the Devil. Or in this case, the Fool...
“HELLO TIMETRIPPER,” I said, turning to consider one of my most annoying foes.
He was a scrawny little guy, scraggly brown hair, this time wearing a pair of blue-lensed Lennon glasses. Appropriately he’d dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts. Chicken-like legs ended in a pair of sandals, and he reeked of rum.
This little jerk was one of the most powerful metahumans in the world. And he’d been trying to stop me for years. About half the time I made a public appearance, he’d show up and try to either capture me or move me somewhere in time where I couldn’t do any harm. The last time he’d done this an unexpected technological interaction had thrown us back to World War Two. It had been a bad trip all around, especially the ending for that little caper.
“YOU FOOL, YOU’VE PLAYED RIGHT INTO DIRE’S HANDS! THIS TIME THE ADVANTAGE IS HERS!” I thundered, pointing a finger at him while reporters scattered to either side.
Ricio, bless his heart, started to bring the rifle up. I pushed it down. “NO, YOUR EMPRESS HAS MATTERS IN HAND.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so, Doc,” Timetripper said, and all around the street, copies of him phased in. “After the mess you’re gonna make of this place, I can’t sit by and do nothing.”
“CORRECT. YOU WILL NOT SIT BY,” I said, grinning so wide that my face felt like it would come off. “Suru, execute program Clockblocked,” I whispered into my vox feed.
“Acknowledged, doctor.”
“YOU WILL IN FACT BE RUNNING. VERY FAR AND VERY FAST.”
“Look, after all the shit we’ve been through, I’ll give you a chance to leave before... before... oh shit. What the fuck is this?” Timetripper staggered.
The world hummed.
One by one his duplicates disappeared, as the hum grew and then faded to nothing. Timetripper leaned against a stop sign, and threw up. “What did you do?” He called, his voice hoarse and cracked.
“IT’S CALLED A CHRONAL REGULATOR. AND IT ONLY HAS ONE JOB. IT NORMALIZES THE FLOW OF TIME AROUND IT.” I’d spent a few months inventing it, after our last trip. Analyzing the unexpected interaction with his powers, figuring out how it had done that, then building a device to interact in a slightly different way. It sat in a corner of my lair now, merrily thrumming away.
“Normalizes...”
“YEP. DIRE IS THE BEST DICTATOR! OTHERS WERE MERELY CONTENT TO MAKE SURE THE TRAINS ARRIVED ON TIME; SHE ENSURES THAT TIME ITSELF RUNS SMOOTHLY.” I stalked toward him, feet clinking and crunching on the pavement, as he backed up.
“Uh, hey now...”
“YOU’VE HAD THIS COMING FOR QUITE SOME TIME.” I touched a button and the side of my armor hissed open, revealing a storage compartment. From it I drew the baseball bat I’d spent the morning wrapping in barbed wire. From another compartment I drew out the big bottle of capsaicin oil, the hottest Spetta could find. Lovingly, I shattered the neck of the bottle against a wall and slathered the barbed baseball bat in the essence of hundreds of hot peppers.
Timetripper stared, jaw dropping open as I emptied the skull-and-crossbones emblazoned bottle, and threw it over my shoulder before looking at him. My gauntlet dwarfed the bat, but I kept a firm grip on it as I pointed it in his face. “YOU SHOULD REALLY BE RUNNING.”
He did, and I chased him around the city, laughing my ass off the whole way. It worked! My invention worked! No more would I have to put up with time travel bullshit! Never again would I be yanked into the past or future or have to deal with future versions of myself manipulating me. I was free, finally free, and the fact that I managed it while giving the most annoying enemy I had the scare of his lifetimes was a good bonus.
Finally I
cornered him in a dead-end alley. The cameramen had fallen behind in the last few minutes or so, so we had privacy. I stalked up to him as he whimpered and covered his face.
And I dropped the bat at his feet.
“REMEMBER THIS. REMEMBER WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED.” I probably wouldn’t have killed him if I’d gone to town. Even when he was depowered, he had some sort of weird backup power that kept his ass alive. The worst that would have happened was that I would have probably sent him back to a backup point, like a video game save getting restored. No point to killing him, even if I’d wanted to.
No, humiliation was so much sweeter.
“THE EFFECT ENDS ABOUT TWENTY MILES TO THE NORTH. GET OUT OF HER CITY, AND KEEP GOING.”
And I turned my back and left him there, sobbing, with a hot bat at his feet. It’s the little things, really, that make this career so worthwhile.
I radioed in to check back with Ricio, and set up the logistics flow for getting the guns and bots to his troops. Not hard, since they were still all in town. I also made it very clear that we needed prisoners to work the factories and broadcast stations and other buildings I was constructing, so at this point any and all surrendering rebels were to be escorted to the facilities and handed over to the guardbots. Torture-free, preferably. I wanted healthy workers, after all!
He sounded dubious about the matter throughout, which was good. Smart man. I sincerely hoped I could get him to betray me when the time was right.
When I got back to the palace, Alpha intercepted me. “Possible trouble,” he said, pointing to my office door.
I switched to the vox channel. “Oh?”
“One of the guard officers let himself in, put a briefcase on your desk, and left.”
“Really...” Strange, that. The man was risking death or my displeasure, for a delivery?
Well, it could be a bomb, I supposed. I entered, and gave it a good scan.
There was something in there. But it wasn’t a bomb. “Someone’s got a message for Dire,” I said, oh-so-delicately opening the case with the thick fingers of the brute suit.
The second I cracked it open, the hologram emitter inside sprang to life. A figure shimmered, a stranger with a smile that promised mayhem and malice in equal amounts.
Dire : Wars (The Dire Saga Book 4) Page 15