“No volume control is what I hear.”
“More or less. But they’re definitely with the rebels, now?”
“The Southern Chamis? The tribe you know? Yes. I don’t know about the Northern tribes. My guess is that they’re staying aloof, seeing how it shakes out. Not that there’s enough of them to do much more than act as guides and guerillas.”
I coughed. Coughed a little more when it didn’t ease that tickle in my throat. That smoke I’d unleashed was pretty nasty stuff, for all it was ultimately harmless. “Hm. Well, better get going now. Lunch break’s about over. Thanks for the talk, and the offer.”
His shoulders sunk just a fraction, barely noticeable if I hadn’t been watching him. He was relieved. Why?
“Thank you. Remember what I asked, and good luck. Try not to get on Doctor Dire’s bad side. I’ve read her file and it’s not pretty.”
Now he’d gotten me curious. But I pushed aside vanity, muttered a final goodbye, and headed back inside to pay my bill.
But I wondered. That slight bit of relaxation, just when I was about to leave... for that matter, why was he out there in the first place? And this was the first time I’d seen him in a suit, ever. Strange. True we had been bumping around a tribal village for the time I’d known him, but it just didn’t seem to match up with the picture I had of him.
Possibilities streamed through my mind, weighed and discarded in a heartbeat, until only a few remained. And my curiosity demanded action.
So after I paid the bill and hit the street I made sure Mitch saw me leave, and once out of sight doubled back around via a shortcut, and got to a corner a few hundred yards away. Thanks to the thick smoke, he couldn’t see me. Whereas I... I had toys. I slipped my contact lenses out of my purse, and put them in, blinking until the HUD came up. Then I blinked through the various sight modes, until I was looking at Mitch’s heat signature with thermal vision.
I smiled, as another figure moved through the smoke, and sat down across from him. A short man, built like a wrestler or a bodybuilder. Their heads moved, they were obviously talking.
That made sense. It would have been poor security to let us meet. This was doubtless another contact, one he didn’t want to risk compromising. I turned to leave—
—and the smoke eddied away, just for a second, as the wind picked up. I saw who Mitch was talking with.
I knew that face.
And as my breath caught in my throat, he glanced my way. I turned it into a coughing fit, hid my surprise behind my hand as I walked away, but I still thought I could feel his eyes on my back.
I knew he heard my footsteps. He had good hearing. Obscenely good hearing.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. I wanted to just get back to the palace, take my armor back from Alpha, and fly away.
I did none of those things.
I was Dire. And Dire did not give in to fear. Did not show weakness to her enemies. Instead I forced myself to walk normally, and take a roundabout route back to the palace.
Spetta was waiting at my desk, arms crossed. “You’re late.”
“Sorry. Ran into an old friend who almost died when the rebels...” I gestured. “He’s alive. Had to catch up, make sure some other friends were alive, too.”
Her face softened. “I see. Please do not make it a habit. The tyrant has high standards, and I would hate to see you fired over a misunderstanding.”
“Thank you.”
She grinned, the most evil grin I’d ever seen out of her. “Thank me after you do the paperwork. Since you were late, you’re getting the form ninety-sevens.”
Didn’t sound too bad. How much trouble could they be, for a super-genius?
Fifty form ninety-sevens later, I was regretting my bravado. It wasn’t that they were difficult in and of themselves; it was that they required a lot of back and forth checking with the records. The non-computerized records. The forms themselves dealt with reimbursement and hazard pay for the military, pay that hadn’t gone through since the various Ministers and Corazon himself looted the treasury and fled. But thanks to the slow trickle of taxes, it looked like the government would be able to cover the current bout of forms ninety-sevens. As well as some other minor expenses.
We needed more money, though. I was reconciling the outgoing flow with the numbers Spetta had presented me this morning, and they weren’t encouraging.
But that was for another time. I had more important problems right now. Specifically, one big golden-armored problem.
I tapped my earring. “Alpha?” I whispered. “Call her into your office. Use a diplomatic duties excuse.”
“Sure thing,” he voxed back.
Five minutes later, after Spetta had left us to our discussion, I heaved a sigh and sat down on the visitors’ chair. “Cru—”
Whoa! I stopped, mid-word.
The guy had super-hearing. The streets were mostly empty. And while El Presidente’s office was reasonably soundproofed, I didn’t think it was that soundproof.
So instead I scribbled out a note, and showed it to Alpha.
He whirled around, crunched the office chair to bits in his haste, and stomped over to peer out the window.
Really weird to see my armor on someone else. Well, under someone else’s control, anyway.
“SO WHAT DO WE DO?” he asked.
First, give Dire back the armor, I wrote. Then she’ll need you to go and get some of the nastier files and records out...
I waited for him in the courtyard of the palace. The guards held their stations in silence, ordered to keep their safeties on, regardless of what happened. A few protested. “GUNS WON’T MAKE A DIFFERENCE HERE,” I told them. Didn’t do morale any good, but that was the least of my worries right now.
Hours crawled by, and I amused myself by coordinating the continuing construction with Suru. I’d used literal tons of resources, ferried over from the mines bit by bit, through the tunnel that my bots had built. The stockpile that I’d laid in over the months was depleting rapidly, and I set twenty of the bots to harvesting ore, poking around through the old shafts, looking for more. Plenty of copper, plenty of other resources that the mining equipment couldn’t reach back in the day. The hills were still rich, if one had the tech to exploit them.
The hills... why was Mitch so interested in them? There were a good four or five mountainous patches throughout Mariposa, forming a loose range that cut diagonally across the country. The Northern Chamis tribes claimed the largest of the hilly regions, and had built their defenses so well that even the army hadn’t been able to dig them out during the last revolution. The highest mountains had served as rallying points for the rebels as well. But for the CIA to be so interested, that indicated something more than the desire for a staging ground.
A shadow fell across my mask. I looked up, thoughts interrupted, as a golden man descended from the smoke-filled sky.
Golden armor sheathed him from head to toe, culminating in a helmet with a grilled visor. White cloth showed where the armor did not, including a cape that shone and rippled in the sunlight, rustled as he touched ground so gently his feet didn’t make a sound.
“CRUSADER,” I named him, ignoring the gasps from around the courtyard, the muttered conversations as the guards shrunk back or crossed themselves or simply stood and stared like deer who’d just found an elephant in their midst. I watched with a quiet chuckle as one of the guards who’d argued to keep his safety off very slowly put his gun down and stood there, hands in plain view on the wall. Told you so.
“Doctor Dire.” His voice was just as even as I remembered it, back during our first encounter. He’d calmly asked me to stop my rampage. I’d declined. The resulting fight had demolished precisely six city blocks.
Frankly I was proud to have lasted as long as I had against him. I’d once watched this man punch out a god.
Put bluntly, Crusader was probably the toughest thing on this planet. Nothing physical could wound him, not in any way that mattered. And he had some sor
t of healing factor, so that anything that got through didn’t matter after a few seconds or minutes. I’d found that he had a slight vulnerability to sonic effects, probably a downside to his super-hearing. But as weaknesses went, it wouldn’t suffice. If I’d spent a week turning the entire city into a sounding board for a sonic trap and sacrificed everyone within a twelve-mile radius when it went off, I might have been able to knock him unconscious. Maybe. For a few minutes, perhaps.
Hell, the only reason he wore that golden armor was because it was magical metal that regenerated, so he wasn’t naked after every serious fight.
And as tough as he was... he was stronger. I’d never seen the upper limits of his strength. I never wanted to. Suffice it to say he spent every day of his life holding his full strength in check, to avoid causing collateral damage.
I had no way to beat Crusader if it came to a fight. Not here, not now. And frankly... I didn’t want to. Because as much of an inconvenience as he was to villains like myself, he was a living embodiment of hope. The amount of lives he’d saved over the course of his career staggered the mind. He’d literally saved the world, time and again, without a demand for reward or for any other visible reason beyond the goodness of his heart.
But I knew why he did it. I’d set him on the course myself, after all.
And therein lay the key to my victory here. Potential victory. Again, I was walking a knife-edge, and I wasn’t surprised to find sweat rolling down my brow as I stared into his helm, and he stared into my mask’s eyesockets.
The moments crawled by, as the tension crackled, and finally I could take it no more. “WOULD YOU CARE FOR SOME TEA?” I gestured to the service cart to the side of the courtyard.
“No, thank you.”
“WE ALSO HAVE COFFEE. TO BE HONEST IT’S FAR SUPERIOR TO THE TEA.”
“What are you doing here, Doctor?”
“RULING. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, CRUSADER?”
“Ruling, you say?” He folded his arms, feet apart, looking up at me and I’d be lying if I said that stare didn’t send my stomach roiling. He could tear me out of the armor with as much effort as a grown man ripping open a cardboard box. “Is that what you call it?”
“NO. THAT’S PRETTY MUCH WHAT SHE’S DOING. AND SO FAR? IT’S BEEN GOING PRETTY WELL.”
“This city’s hospitals fill with the gasps of the innocent, you arm your soldiers with weapons designed to torture, you gained your position literally through bloody murder, and you think that things are perhaps going well?” A faint touch of heat in his voice. This could go bad at any second. Nonetheless, I had my course plotted and I stuck to it.
“IT IS GOING VERY WELL. NO THANKS TO YOU.”
“I have had nothing to do with this. This is your—”
“ALPHA. ROLL THE TAPE.”
The tea cart not only held refreshing beverages, it also concealed the projector nicely. I ignored the lights that played over my armor, as the first picture shone on the wall behind me. Gasps and cries from the guards told me that it was every bit as horrible as we’d thought it, back when Alpha and I put together the sordid little show.
Crusader reeled back as if he’d been struck. “What is this! What have you done!”
“CHECK THE DATE ON THE SLIDE. THIS WAS THE FATE OF MANUEL GARDANO’S FIRST WIFE, WHO SPENT A FEW YEARS IN CORAZON’S DUNGEONS AFTER THE REVOLUTION. YES, THEY CUT THE BABY OUT OF HER. NO, THEY DIDN’T NEED TO.”
She’d been infamous for spending money freely while peasants starved. But she hadn’t deserved what Corazon had done to her. Nobody did.
The lights flickered as the picture changed, and Crusader’s helmet shook, as if he was denying what he was seeing. “That child,” he whispered.
“THAT BOY WAS THE NEPHEW OF A POLITICAL OBJECTOR TO CORAZON’S REIGN. CORAZON HAD EVERY MEMBER OF THE OBJECTOR’S FAMILY LINE WITHIN TWO GENERATIONS ‘DISAPPEARED’. THE CHILD DIDN’T LAST TOO LONG IN THE PRISON CAMP. HIS HEALTH DEGRADED RAPIDLY, AS THE PICTURE SHOWS. DID YOU KNOW THAT THE HOLES IN HIS CHEEK WERE CAUSED FROM MALNUTRITION?”
One of the guards up on the wall retched, started to turn away. “YOU!” I shouted. “YES YOU! DO NOT LOOK AWAY! THIS IS WHAT YOUR LAST BOSS DID! THIS IS THE MAN WHO SIGNED YOUR PAYCHECKS! YOU FOUGHT FOR HIM. YOU KILLED FOR HIM. THIS IS ON YOU...” I stabbed my finger at the soldier, and lowered it to Crusader's face. “...ALMOST AS MUCH AS IT IS ON HIM.”
And my heart soared, as he took a half-step backward. Perhaps in shock, perhaps he was distracted, but that half-step told me that I was on the right track. Silently I flicked my fingers in the pre-arranged signal, and Alpha flicked through the slides. Behind me on the wall the damning record, the bloody remains of Corazon’s reign slapped over each other like layers of skin peeling aside from a raw, seeping wound.
“THIS IS YOUR FAULT, CRUSADER. THIS IS YOUR FAILURE.”
“You don’t know what you speak of.”
“OH, BUT SHE DOES. EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THESE ATROCITIES? THEY HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE ACTIVE. THEY HAPPENED ON YOUR WATCH.”
He shook his head. “I cannot be everywhere at once.”
“YET HERE YOU ARE, NOT A WEEK INTO DIRE’S REIGN. WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE LAST TYRANT CAME TO POWER? WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THIS BLOOD WAS BEING TORN FROM THE INNOCENT?” I stabbed a finger back towards the wall.
“Enough!” He raised his hands... and lowered them again. “You know the difference. You know why.”
“TELL HER. TELL THEM, MORE IMPORTANTLY.” I gestured to the guards, pale and silent and wary. “TELL THEM WHY YOU DID NOT THROW DOWN CORAZON. TELL THEM WHY THEY HAD TO SUFFER.”
He stared at me, for a long moment. “Humanity must be guided by their free will. They must have the ability to choose.”
“AND WHAT CHOICE DID THOSE BORN UNDER THE LAST TYRANT HAVE?”
“It is possible that he would have seen the error of his ways. That he would change.”
“HE HAD FOUR DECADES TO DO THAT. AND WHO CARES IF HE REPENTED? WOULD THAT BRING BACK THE THOUSANDS HE KILLED? WOULD THAT UNDO THE TORTURE HIS SECRET POLICE DID, OR THE RAPE THAT HIS ENFORCERS INFLICTED?”
“I cannot interfere in human politics!” The shout tore from his throat like a thunderclap, and I restrained my laughter. I’d won.
“Do you not understand!” he stepped forward, jabbing his finger at my mask. “I am no tyrant! I cannot decide for the world who rules what nation, or I will become worse than...” he trailed off, midsentence.
“AND NOW YOU SEE.”
“You should not get to decide, either,” his voice was softer now. He was reaching. “You are a metahuman. You know history, you know how that has worked out in the past.”
Oh, I knew all right. That was the reason I wasn’t sticking around here longer than I had to. But I had him on the ropes now, and I had the intellect to pick the remnants of his argument to pieces, with the very history he was worried about.
“AND THERE YOU ARE WRONG. YOU JUDGE HER FOR WHAT SHE MIGHT DO, AND IGNORE WHAT OTHERS HAVE ALREADY DONE! DIRE IS NO IMMORTAL TYRANT. SHE IS NO HIVE MIND THAT CAN FREELY TRANSFER POWERS AROUND ITSELF. SHE CONTROLS NO MINDS, COMMANDS NO DEMONS, AND HAS COMMITTED NO GENOCIDES. THAT LAST ONE, INCIDENTALLY, PUTS HER AHEAD OF PRETTY MUCH EVERY MAJOR NATION ON THE EARTH.” I leaned closer, almost making contact with his finger, staring past it into his eyes. “DIRE IS MERELY A CONCERNED CITIZEN WHO ROSE UP AND DECIDED ‘NO MORE.’ NO MORE TORTURE! NO MORE RAPE! NO MORE MURDER!” I whirled and pointed at the wall of screaming forms in all its gory glory. “YOU WOULD BRING THIS BACK? THEN SHE SHALL STAND AGAINST YOU, AND ALL LIKE YOU! TO THE END, DEFIANCE! A METAL FIST CLENCHED AGAINST YOUR SIN UNTIL THE END OF TIME, AND THE LAST DROP OF HER BLOOD GONE BEFORE SHE’LL LET YOU BRING THE KILLING TIMES BACK AGAIN!”
I ended crouched in a fighting stance before him, beckoning with both hands. The heel calling out the face. Kayfabe at its finest...
...and thank the gods, he wasn’t a wrestling fan.
“You think I want that back? You are mad. That is what I am tryi
ng to stop.”
“OH? THEN ASK YOURSELF ONE THING.” I waved a hand, and the images stopped. “WHICH NATION HELPED PUT CORAZON IN POWER? WHICH NATION OVERLOOKED HIS ATROCITIES? WHICH NATION BACKED HIM, UNCARING, BECAUSE IT WAS CONVENIENT FOR THEIR PROFITS AND POLITICS?” I straightened up. “WHICH NATION ASKED YOU TO COME HERE AND DEPOSE DIRE, TODAY?”
Crusader said nothing, but his hands tightened into fists. The silence lasted for a full minute, before he spoke. “I will be watching you,” he finally said.
“SHE WOULDN’T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY.”
I watched him fly away, and disappear into the smoke. The courtyard filled with utter silence as I picked up the service cart, and carried it back inside. I’d hoped for a cheer or maybe some applause, but frankly I couldn’t blame them for being shell-shocked. I was a bit frazzled myself.
Crusader. I’d faced down Crusader.
“He’s departing the city,” Alpha whispered in my ear.
“Probably safe to talk once we get back to the office, then,” I whispered back.
Once in, I poured myself a stiff drink of brandy from El Presidente’s private stock, and raised the glass to Alpha. “Here’s to guilt. Goddamn, does it work well.”
“You talked down Crusader.”
“See, it’s repentance. He got mind-controlled once, and killed about a million people, give or take. So he’s very sensitive about what he’s done. It’s a weakness.”
“You talked down Crusader.”
“And it’s not that he’s wrong, not really. If humanity is to change, it has to change without help from Metahumanity. It’s why most heroic geniuses and powered types don’t go into politics. It wouldn’t be fair, and their accomplishments would always be accredited to their powers, not their character, or effort, or skill.”
“You talked down Crusader!”
“Which is why Dire’s setting up things for improvement here, and not taking the reins herself. Well, that and it would tie her down and marginalize her at a time that she desperately needs to start expanding her influence globally.”
Dire : Wars (The Dire Saga Book 4) Page 17