“You’re not far off, there. Another year in shadow before Dire surfaced again, that was the plan. But plans must evolve as reality shreds them.” I gnawed my lip. “She still hates the CIA, for what they did. For the innocents they killed in that half-assed assassination attempt.”
“Believe me, they’ve done plenty of the sort all throughout the hemisphere.”
“All in the name of keeping America on top, by shoving everyone else to the bottom.” I closed my eyes. “Hate to see the assholes win this one.”
“Well... what’s the goal? What was the goal when you started this?”
“Keep civilians from dying. Keep the next ruler from violating human rights and torturing and killing his people.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all.”
“Well, how do we do that? Without violating human rights, and killing people?”
“You left out torturing.”
“You gave the troops pain lasers. We already fucked that one up.”
“Point.” I chuckled. “Damn it. Only way out she can see is through.”
“Through?”
“Was going to turn the country over to Ricio or Damiano. No. Neither would work. Ricio’s competent, but he’d kill rebels and there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t fall into Corazon’s mold. Damiano’s not so competent but better hearted... but he’d gladly ally with the people who had no problem letting Corazon torture and kill people.” I scowled. “Then there’s the Maestro to consider. Absolutely no clue what he’s doing behind the scenes, but odds are good it’s bad, and putting one of those two in front of him would be like throwing a baby up against a wolf.”
“So what you’re saying...”
“She’s going to have to keep being the tyrant. At least until the election year’s over, and the civil war’s done.” I resumed my flight. The rightness of my decision peeled away my fatigue, and though I still ached, I felt lighter for it.
“That Mister Riddle hero is gonna be upset.”
“Who? Oh, him.” I remembered how easily he’d infiltrated my bedroom. “Yeah, he could be a problem. Going to have to have a serious talk with him later. Explain the situation fully. Hell, maybe he could be an asset? Wonder if he knows what the Maestro’s up to.”
“Working with heroes now?” Alpha’s voice was back to its regular warmth. “Future you would definitely not approve.”
“Good,” I snorted. “Besides, technically he’s a villain. According to the guy who used to run the place, anyway. Things are different down here.”
That really seemed to sum it up. Things are different, down here. The last few minutes of the flight were silent.
The jungle gave way to farms, cleared patches as the ground grew rockier, hills thrusting up through the canopy, breaking up the verdant green. The squat, low buildings of Malo Verde followed, scattered in between and around a mountain valley that showed scars from the days when copper mining was still a thing.
Troops bearing the jungle camouflage of Mariposa’s army watched me come in through binoculars. Some observed from where tents circled around cooking fires, others were posted on rooftops, awaiting my arrival. Radio chatter went up the chain as I pulled up for a landing, gravitics humming as I drifted to the ground outside Malo Verde’s courthouse. A little scarred, a few holes in the wall, and some bloodstains in the gutter testified to a last stand, of sorts. I wondered if those who had fought here were now working away in my factories, under the watch of the unblinking guardbots. Or if they were the row of body bags I’d spotted just outside of town, awaiting burial after they’d been identified and their families notified.
The doors looked narrow, so I waited. No sense in adding more damage to the building.
After a few minutes, General Ricio emerged, guards first, keeping an eye on the perimeter. I decided not to tell them that I’d already scanned the neighboring buildings and sniping points more thoroughly than any un-augmented eye could cover. No sense in detracting from their jobs.
“Empress,” Ricio nodded to me, face worn from the last few hours of work. He’d gotten no more sleep than I had. “Your command?”
“LET US FINISH THIS REBELLION.”
“Very well. You are certain you wish to be in the vanguard? After yesterday’s attempt?”
“THE REBELS ARE NOT THE ASSASSINS. THEY ARE PAWNS AT BEST. AND SHOULD THE ASSASSIN SURFACE AGAIN, THE SHOOTER WILL FALL LIKE THE REST.” And she would, too. We’d gotten such good data, from observing her, that I had several programs ready to help compensate for her unnatural aura. If she turned up again and she leveled so much as a pea-shooter at me, she would die. But I doubted she would. You don’t risk a black ops asset as valuable as that in open warfare, where artillery makes mockery of such things as conditional immortality.
“Well, you’re the Tyrant-for-life,” Ricio smiled. “You sure we can’t get a clear line of succession before you go out there? Just in case?”
This was the point where I’d been planning to announce him as my chosen successor. But that had been before the talk with Alpha. Before he’d rubbed my hypocrisy in my face.
“SHE’LL COME BACK ALIVE, OR YOU’LL BE DEALING WITH A NEW RULER IN THE REBELS. IF THEY’VE GOT THE OOMPH TO STOP DIRE, THEN THEY’LL ROLL OVER ANYTHING ELSE YOU’VE GOT.”
A flicker behind his eyes, but he nodded, his face losing emotion. “As you say.”
Yeah, he was going to take a shot during the battle, if I showed any weakness at all.
But I am Dire, and Dire is never weak.
“BEGIN THE ADVANCE, GENERAL.” I took to the sky again. “AND REMEMBER, AS MANY PRISONERS AS POSSIBLE. DEAD MEN CANNOT WORK.”
His reply was lost as I screamed away, heading North.
Putnam’s Providence was founded after the First World War, by a British officer who claimed to have found God on the battlefield. He was charismatic, and the jury was still out on whether or not he was an early metahuman with powers of fascination, or simply a very skilled con man. He convinced quite a few of his friends back in Britain to help him back a massive land purchase in the UK-owned territory of Mariposa, and proceeded to recruit more faithful from the poor fishing villages along the Northern coast. It wasn’t long after his arrival that he declared himself a prophet, and instituted many changes in the local religions. Polygamy being one of them, and himself being the most profligate benefactor of that law, it made one suspect that his motives were less than pure.
He’d died in the forties, and twenty percent of the populace born after his arrival north of Malo Verde would grow up with him as a common ancestor. But the mystique hadn’t passed on to his fellow ‘disciples’, and their corruption and abuse as they tried to hold onto power after he passed was one of the motivators for the original revolution that brought Corazon to power. With Britain in horrible shape after the Second World War, and Cuba on the rise, the US had decided to back the dictator and Britain had pulled its assets back with minor grumbling, at best. The truth was they could no longer afford to keep Mariposa as part of the Empire. The sun set no longer on British soil here, and for a time people were happy. But it didn’t last. Never does. Human nature denies long-term satisfaction, always people reach for the next highest fruit on the tree, regardless of how many are in their basket. Though to be fair, Corazon did go full on fascist after a few years.
Fitting then that the revolution would end here, where the previous one had started.
The city itself was a port town. On this side of the mountains, the jungles thinned into meadows, and the soil was harsh and wind-whipped, poor for farming, poor for growing. Not much cover, no real terrain features to help provide elevation, nothing but a big, wide front to defend. And the Rebels didn’t have anywhere near the people to cover every approach.
I flew in, as the sun hung high overhead, not a cloud in the sky. My sensors were extended to full-sweep, and I was running cool. The truth of the matter was, I didn’t know just what kind of weaponry they could bring to bear. So I was bai
ting them, drawing out their firepower to take the measure of their potential before my more fragile troops arrived.
They called it ‘tanking’ in the video games I’d experimented with. A noble profession, and far easier to do than playing the damn healer. I was never any good at that.
But as I swooped low and slow over the scrubland, not a single shot rose to meet me. No signatures registered on my thermal apart from game animals, people in houses, and the occasional shepherd or livestock creature.
Where were the sentries? Where were the barricades? Where were the chokepoints? True, there weren’t many, but Ricio still had to bring his trucks down, and the roads were the best bet for that. But the roads, aside from being unusually empty, had no blockades.
Shit, I would have at least torn them up a bit. Weren’t many of them, and anything to slow the trucks would have been good.
But as I approached Putnam’s Providence, my questions were answered. And I didn’t like a single one of those answers.
Damiano and his rebels had spent every minute they had fortifying the city itself.
The blockades were at the city limits, the single highway that stretched this far North had been collapsed at the overpass, and sandbags blocked off several side roads. Not all the side roads, the ones that remained had been turned into what looked like pretty effective choke points. If he wasn’t up against a foe of Ricio’s caliber, they might even have worked.
But Ricio would know how to beat these, the instant he saw them. They were between simple wooden houses, and Ricio had mortars. Bring the houses down, eliminate the cover they provided, then pick away on the unfortified flank until the rebels would have to fall back. It would be bloody, brutal, and there would be no avoiding casualties.
Well, that’d have to go, then.
Muzzle flashes from rooftops, all along the southern perimeter. They’d seen me. No way to hit me, not at this range, and they didn’t have big enough bullets for me to care. My sensors had gotten a good look at the Assassin’s railgun/plasma monstrosity when it cored my helmet yesterday. They registered nothing like that down there, and so I swooped down already knowing the outcome.
The Rebels had enthusiasm. They had idealism. They were willing to fight, to die for their cause.
They just didn’t have enough boom.
I touched down in front of the southernmost barricade, and bullets slicked off my armor like rain from a waterproofed coat. “YOUR WEAPONS ARE USELESS!” I roared, sweeping sandbags aside, through the nearest house with a massive backhand. “KNEEL BEFORE DIRE, OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES!”
Shouting, panicked faces fell back before me, as I kicked their barricade apart like a bully demolishing a sand castle. More bullets, and a few grenades at entirely too close a range. I winced as one young man caught shrapnel and fell from an errant explosion. Fatal? Maybe. I couldn’t stop to help him, couldn’t show the weakness of compassion here. This was war, and if I was less than terror incarnate, then they would fight to the last and too many would die.
So I finished dismantling the barricade as fast as I could, wrecking the crew-operated weapons they’d put here, and flying on to the next one. Working from the outside of the city in, demolishing fortification after fortification, flat-out ignoring everything they brought to bear on me.
They fired at me with guns of all shapes and sizes. I ignored them.
They threw grenades and fired rocket-propelled grenades from launchers. They were noisy but had no more effect than scarring up my outer layer.
At one point they wheeled a fucking howitzer out from a side-alley, and let me have it. That one rocked me forward a step or two, and they cheered... until I straightened up and glared at them. That one ate a particle beam that blew the field piece into bits, and I felt no guilt when one of the crew fell screaming. You fire a damned artillery piece at someone, you can’t expect them not to shoot back.
After that, the gunfire slackened. It never disappeared, not completely. They learned to keep the bigger weapons away from me, since I’d break off from the barricade and take them to pieces.
Perhaps twenty minutes passed, before my vox crackled. The broadcast node robots had moved into range, and my signal piggybacked on the return echo.
“Report?”
“Ricio’s moving up. The forward element will be here in half an hour.”
I looked around. The rebel barricades were down. I’d located and broken a few heavy weapons. Barring possible metahuman interference, not much more for me to do.
“You mentioned a metahuman team up here, back during the palace assault.”
“According to the obsolete future timeline, yes. They prevented the rebels from getting a foothold in Putnam’s Providence.”
“Haven’t seen hide nor hair of them. Odds are good the CIA canceled the delivery to Corazon’s people. We might get lucky, here.” I moved to the center of town, where the statue of Reginald Putnam kept watch over his settlement, thumbs stuck in his belt, grinning over a broad bronze belly at his descendants. Rather Buddha-like, I thought, if Buddha had been a horndog beyond compare.
Hell, maybe he had been. I didn’t know much about that particular religion.
“You should know that Ricio’s moving the missile squads up on your flank.”
“Heh. About as expected.” TOW missiles, wire-guided and meant for use against tanks. They’d cause my suit some damage, but nothing that it couldn’t handle. Ricio had probably figured that out, wouldn’t use them against me unless something else was causing me trouble.
But for now, my trouble was over. I decided to rest, and conserve my strength for the next stage of things.
I sat in the sun, watching the rebels through my thermal sight, as the warm rays beat down, making their outlines waver as I spied them through the thin walls of the city’s houses and businesses. They were keeping a loose perimeter, watching me. The bullets slackened off, until finally my suit wasn’t getting shot every few seconds.
It was almost peaceful, if you ignored the tension. A weird way to wage war, when you got down to it. I wondered if it was ever like this for regular soldiers, who didn’t have tons of power armor to hide behind. Odd lulls, where you knew the enemies were out there, and they knew where you were, but there wasn’t any advantage to be had so the fighting stopped for a while.
I wasn’t so sure I liked this feeling; I came from an environment where the enemies were doing their damnedest to stop me from the moment they saw me until there was literally nothing more they could do. It was a world where every second counted, the enemies could match or exceed me, and I had to layer plans upon plans to make even the slightest bit of progress.
Here, it was looser. No way to account for every bullet, every angle, every possibility that could come to bear in war. I kept feeling that there should be more I was doing, more to seal down loose variables, and prepare for brightly-colored spandex to appear on the horizon.
But no, there were no heroes here. None were coming. And so I leaned against the statue, uncaring, waiting for my army to show up and secure the win. I would fight then, unleashing all of my nonlethal armaments upon the Rebels, who had about as much chance of stopping me as a bug had against a boot.
It felt... unfulfilling, really.
It seemed almost a relief, when my thermal sight bloomed and switched to overload protocols, shunting me back into regular vision modes. A relief, when a burning woman rose up from behind the Town Hall, hovering in midair as she looked down on me, her skin of fire almost seeming like nudity, as she drifted forward.
Of course Escala had joined the rebels. Of course she’d be here. My luck remained as it ever had been; horrible beyond belief.
“AND WHAT DO THEY CALL YOU, THEN?”
Her voice crackled. “The Mother of Flame,” she told me, using Chamis words.
“SPEAK ENGLISH OR MARIS.”
She switched to English. “You can understand me very well, Dorothy.”
Damn it all. “THAT IS NOT HER NAME.”
“I taught you to hunt. I shared my life with you, Dorothy or Dire. This is how you repay me? Which is your true face? Do you even remember, anymore?”
I sensed another’s hand, here. And going down the list of suspects from the village, I had a pretty good idea whose hand it might be. “THESE ARE PAAN’S WORDS. NOT YOURS.”
“That makes them no less right. I called you Maaya once, when you saved us with golden light. But then I saw the golden light again, as you destroyed my hope. As you struck down Damiano’s weapons for your own glory.”
I closed my eyes. They knew my old identity. No use hiding it, anymore. Not that I wanted to, not when anger already stirred within my chest. Of all people, Escala should understand. Of all people, she should have faith in me.
“HER OWN GLORY?” I roared, flying up to meet her. “HER OWN GLORY! YOU THINK DIRE DOES THIS FOR HERSELF? IT IS YOUR FUTURE THAT SHE IS SECURING! YOUR LIFE THAT SHE IS SAVING! YOURS AND YOUR DAUGHTER’S, ESCALA.” I leveled a gauntlet at her. “SHE SAVED YOU WHEN YOU COULD NOT SAVE YOURSELF. SAVED YOU BOTH. AND NOW YOU SPIT PAAN’S VENOM LIKE A TRAINED SERPENT?”
She hesitated, glancing aside. I pushed the advantage, hating myself for it. “WITHOUT DIRE, YOUR TRIBE WOULD BE DEAD. WITHOUT DIRE HERE, THE REBELS WOULD BE WIPED OUT TO A MAN BY THE END OF THIS DAY. WITHOUT DIRE, YOUR COUNTRY WOULD BE BURNING, BURNING HOTTER THAN YOU DO, MOTHER OF FLAME!” All that time I'd spent learning Chamis, and the words hurt me as much as they did her.
“Let us find out how hot I can burn!” She shrieked, and charged me.
Oh Escala... I sighed to myself, as I began the dance that I’d danced so often before.
I took no joy in it. I took no joy when her flames rolled over me without effect, while my particle beams knocked her back and through buildings. I hated every backhand or slap I landed on her whenever she tried to get close and latch on. And as she fell for the final time, guttering out of the sky like a falling star, I followed her down with tears dripping down my face, pattering against the viewscreen.
Dire : Wars (The Dire Saga Book 4) Page 20