“IN THE END, YOUR FATE IS DIRE,” I rumbled, standing on the chunk of half-melted slag that was Putnam’s fallen statue. Thirty feet away her flames guttered, as she struggled to stand, failed, and fell. Just a naked tanned woman, bruised and battered. The flames had somehow cushioned my strikes, for which I was grateful, but I hated to see what I’d done to her.
“My fate,” she whispered, drawing herself up, leaning against a broken wall. “is not yours to make.”
I sighed again, and looked over my damage readouts. She’d melted chunks out of the first couple of layers, and caused me to vent the outermost layer of impact gel. The stuff simply didn’t react well to heat. So, only about nine more layers to go, and she’d start making real progress. Yeah, she had no chance against me. If she’d been working as a team, if she’d had more experience... tears in the rain, really. I was out of her league, plain and simple.
“SIT DOWN. YOU!” I pointed at a rebel peering through a window a block away, who flinched back. “FIND HER SOME CLOTHES.” I turned my attention back to Escala. “HOLD STILL, AND DIRE SHALL SEE THAT YOU ARE TAKEN TO A HOSPITAL.”
“Too late.”
“WHAT?”
“Look to the north.”
I did. I saw the beach, and the ocean rolling beyond. And then, at the edge where the sea met sky, I saw them.
And my hopes withered within me. Frozen in horror, I blinked until my vox activated. “Alpha? Patching you through an image.”
“Ohhhhhhh fuck.”
I pushed my sensors out that way, hit solid ECM that fuzzed my carrier waves out a scant two miles away. They’d been creeping up on us the whole time, and I hadn’t noticed, simply engrossed in fighting Escala.
Those were ships out there. Big ships. Military ships. And in this part of the world, that meant only one thing.
The United States had decided to take a direct hand in this war.
I radioed General Ricio. “PULL BACK. WE’RE DONE.”
“My infantry companies are almost to the city! What are you doing?”
“THE US MARINES WILL BE HERE IN TEN MINUTES OR LESS. THAT’S WHEN THE FIRST AMPHIBIOUS VEHICLES AND HELICOPTERS WILL BEGIN DROPPING TROOPS. DO YOU WISH TO BE HERE FOR THAT, GENERAL?”
“Jesus Maria... sí, sí Empress. Pulling back immediately.”
He was a smart man, a military man. I didn’t have to explain the problem.
Alpha was smart, but not military. “What’s the problem? You can probably hold them off long enough to take out the rebels, grab the leaders—”
I switched back to the vox. “You’re from the future, so you probably don’t know. Ever since the eighties, the nineties or so, the cultural movement in the United States has grown toward viewing the military favorably. The average citizen will view the average soldier as performing a great duty, and worthy of the highest respect. It’s practically worship, in some areas.”
“Okay, but we’re in Mariposa, not the States...”
“Right, but any military action taken against the United States forces or even near the United States military, will be taken as an act against the troops. And this is an election year.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. The United States would instantly become unified against Mariposa. And against Dire. We lose. We lose hard, and everything we worked for goes up in flames.”
I left him to contemplate that as I turned my charred, scarred mask back to Escala. “YOU WIN THIS TIME, MOTHER OF FLAME. DO NOT LET YOUR STRUGGLE BE IN VAIN.” And I took to the skies, as around us hundreds of rebels cheered. Clever girl. She’d beaten me after all.
And somehow... I didn’t mind. The war had shifted, now. As cunning as I was, as much tech as I could bring to the table, it had become a completely different battlefield in the blink of an eye. This was, as strange as it sounded, more my speed. Less moral issues, more of a logistical problem. I couldn’t simply fly over and beat down the big problem. I had to figure out a way around it that worked out for as many people as possible.
As I flew, Alpha spoke again. “The Maestro’s calling.”
“He’s a little late, if he’s offering a warning. Put him through.” I triggered the vocal filter again.
“Good evening, Doctor. We do seem to be making a habit of this, don’t we?”
Evening? I glanced up at the sun, still high in the sky. A potential slip there, a clue? I’d remember that. “Good evening, Maestro M.”
“I do admire your composure, in the face of adversity. Two full battalions, of America’s finest. Almost flattering, really.”
“Two battalions?” About a thousand to fifteen-hundred men, give or take. Not all of them combatants, of course, but enough to pretty much roll over the government forces. “Does seem a bit much.”
“Let’s be honest, shall we? You have no chance of prevailing, here. No matter the skill, there’s a certain level of force that is impossible to outmaneuver. I think, my dear Doctor, that the time has come to discuss your future. And I have an offer there, that I think you would surely love to hear.”
“Do you now?”
“Allow me to elaborate.” His voice dropped to a whisper, and my head pulsed like a drum. My whole body jerked in a spasm of tangled nerves, and for a brief second down and up swapped places. What the hell was this?
Distantly, I was aware of my suit slowing, as my fingers unclenched from the control sticks. I almost seemed to be fading in and out, between sleep and reality. And the Maestro’s voice thundered through it all, his whisper louder than a shout.
“I want you, Doctor. You’ll be a perfect fit for our group. Wrath’s currently empty, and you’ll fit that sin oh so very nicely. Join me, Doctor. Join us. Leave this pathetic island behind. Obey me, and oh the things we’ll do together!”
My mind, I thought, and it was like trying to push the thoughts through soggy tissue, he’s trying to get into my mind.
“Trying? Oh you silly cow, I’ve been in there since our last conversation.” I’d spoken out loud? Had I? I couldn’t tell. Distantly, I was aware of the armor chiming, and activating anti-mind-control procedures. Useless, I was currently over miles of jungle and the mentalist was nowhere near. The Maestro’s rasping whisper kept going, resounding through my skull. “I put my triggers all through your head, laced them through your memory like a spider injecting its toxins. All it took was the keyword to bring all that up at once. Nothing too elaborate.”
My muscles seized up, and I started thrashing... I felt my brain slipping away from me, consciousness fading...
No.
The fool had gone for my memory.
I was the master of that. I’d seen to that myself, with surgery of my own doing.
I was Dire. And I would not be mindfucked by some petty, third-rate little villain who phoned in his monologues.
So I fought, even as my armor hovered in midair, searching for targets. I fought, knowing that it would be finding and killing innocent targets here in the space of minutes if I didn’t regain control.
And finally, I won. My thoughts became my own, and my brain stopped trying to escape through my ears.
“Suru, cut signal!” I shouted, and the silence rolled in like a wave of soothing balm. I sighed as my muscles unclenched, shouted passwords until the armor went out of homicidal mode. Checked the sensors, found I’d stopped about half a minute from a farm. Good. Almost caused some deaths there. For a few minutes I just hung in the harness, sweating and feeling like a wrung-out dishrag.
The palace, first. I’d get back and quarantine the guard that had delivered his holoemitter, investigate and figure out who else he’d corrupted. Then I’d figure out what to do about the American invasion. After twenty minutes of flight, I landed in the courtyard, and made my way to my office without trouble.
Two people sat there, waiting for me.
“SPETTA? EL HOMBRE ÚLTIMO?”
“Maria says you wish to speak with me, Tyrant?” El Hombre stood, frowning. “Why?”
I looked to Spe
tta. She smiled widely, but her eyes were glazed and distant. “You should have accepted his offer.”
She pulled El Hombre Último’s pistol out of his waistband, ran back, aimed it at his head—
And I realized that I was now the closest person to El Hombre Último.
Spetta pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 13: COUPS AND RIDDLES
“No matter how big you are, a bullet in the right place will usually crimp your style.”
--Sonido del Pistolero, renowned Mexican metahuman mercenary
There’s a feeling, I don’t quite know the word for it. That moment when the adrenaline hits but it’s too late, and your eyes go wide. You know there’s nothing you can do, you know you’re dead, and everything slows down but your muscles don’t even twitch because your nerves are still dealing with the shock.
Click.
The hammer fell. The gun refused to fire. I unfroze, barreled past El Hombre Último. The hammer fell once more, twice, then my shoulder was between them, spikes and all.
And Spetta, still smiling wide, put the gun to her head. I grabbed her arm, held it up and away as she clicked through the chambers of the revolver, and not a single shot fired.
The adrenaline buzzed through me, and it was all I could do to focus and pluck the gun from her fingers without tearing her hand off. She slumped limp in my grasp, and I let her go. Instantly El Hombre was there, cradling her, eyes wide, face showing the same shock that I felt.
When I could talk again, I turned to him. “THE GUN. UNLOADED ALL THIS TIME?”
He shook his head, arms wrapped around Spetta. “No.”
“THEN...” I popped the cylinder, shook out six bullets.
And a sardonic voice came from the corner. “I borrowed your gun while you were sleeping, Adrian Blanco. I replaced the percussion caps of your bullets with rubber fakes.”
I turned, to see a purple and gold figure slide through the transom above the doorway to the bedroom. Señor Acertijo. Mister Riddle.
“HOW DO YOU KEEP GETTING IN HERE?”
“Boss, he’s back—” Alpha phased in. “Ah. Did I miss something?”
“THANK YOU,” I told Señor Acertijo.
The hero waved a gloved hand, idly. “I didn’t want Adrian getting depressed and possibly killing an innocent. There are at least two or three of them in this palace, somewhere, I am sure.”
“WHATEVER THE REASON, YOU JUST SAVED DIRE’S LIFE.”
“What?” Alpha shrieked. “What the hell did I miss?”
The hero shook his head, goggles glinting. “A typical intrigue by the Murder Maestro.”
“OH. SO THAT’S WHAT THE ‘M’ STANDS FOR.”
“This man did something to Maria?” El Hombre Último asked, lowering her to the floor and standing, glaring at the hero. “This Murder Master?”
“Murder Maestro,” Acertijo corrected. “Forget vengeance for now my friend, he’s quite far away. No, our next move should be surviving his backup plan. He always has one. Layers within layers, to protect his interests—”
“Door!” Alpha shouted. “Breaching charge, boss!”
“ON IT!” I threw myself in front of the door, arms spread wide, just in the nick of time. The sound and fury of a shaped charge at point-blank range, and metal shrapnel blasted me full in the mask.
But I was Dire, and I built my devices well. Even though the suit was damaged, even though the armor had literally been through the fire earlier today, the shrapnel was no more to me than a spring breeze.
More importantly, I’d shielded the group behind me from a messy death. All for El Hombre Último of course, who would redirect his wounds to...
Ah.
It was going to be that kind of game, was it?
“PROTECT EL HOMBRE ÚLTIMO!” I called back to the group, and waded into the hallway. I was met by bullets, squads of my own palace guard drawn up in double ranks on either side of the hallway and sniping around corners. The bullets did no more than the rebels’ bullets had... but I wasn’t the target, now was I?
The name of the game was the Last Man standing. All they had to do was get enough kill shots into El Hombre while I was around him, and one would strike me down.
I could fly away, get some distance and return fire... but no. No. That would leave Spetta to be slain in her friend’s arms when they pushed in and wounded him. And Acertijo as well. Though I barely knew the vigilante, he’d saved my life. No, it would be a poor way to repay his deed.
“YOU DARE?” I roared at my own guards. “STAND DOWN! YOUR EMPRESS COMMANDS IT!”
A pause, as the bullets ebbed, and for a second I thought they would listen. But then the intercom crackled to life, and a familiar, whispering voice echoed through the stone halls.
“Hello again, Doctor. You really should have accepted my offer. You know, it’s not too late. Should I elaborate?”
A flash of pain... and gone. I laughed, and my mask echoed it as the halls shook. “YOUR PETTY TRICKS ARE NO MATCH FOR DIRE’S WILL. YOU SHALL RUE THIS DAY, YOU PETTY LITTLE MINDRAPIST.”
“Resistant? How?” Maestro M hissed. “I had you. I had you, woman!”
Before I could answer, Acertijo spoke up. “Turns out you don’t know everyone she hangs with, compadre.”
“You!” Pure venom in that shout. “Pompous little purple... ah, I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“A mistake I shall use to end you, with every waking minute of my life.” A faint squeak sounded, a noise I hadn’t heard before. Sounded like... old hinges? I fired up the rearward camera, and suppressed a chuckle as I saw Acertijo opening up a section of the wall next to the decorative fireplace. He beckoned, and El Hombre Último picked up Spetta, and retreated through.
So that was how he’d done it!
“Every minute of your life, hm?” The Maestro’s voice went back into smug mode. “All three of them? Tick tock! Goodbye, Doctor. Perhaps you’ll survive this, but your city will not. Minions! Resume fire! Kill them. Fight them to the last.”
Fuck. He had a bomb. Of course he had a self-destruct mechanism. Layers within layers, Acertijo had said. And one of the old supervillainous staples never went out of fashion. When in doubt, when your primary plan fails, you can still blow everything up.
That’s about the point the guards started chucking grenades.
At this distance it was suicide. They didn’t care. The explosions thumped and rattled, and were all the worse for the narrowness of the stone hallways. I charged up my particle beams and returned fire, keeping them low, trying to stun rather than kill. There was a chance they could be de-programmed, a chance whatever mind control the Maestro exerted could be undone. But the effort was futile. The guards didn’t care about collateral, and chucked grenades with abandon, even when their stunned colleagues were collapsed on the floor nearby.
“ALPHA,” I roared, not bothering to vox. “THE BASTARD SET US UP WITH A BOMB!”
“Figures!” Alpha returned. “Want me to look?”
“ACERTIJO, YOU KNOW THIS FORT’S SECRETS?”
“Yes!” He yelled, leaning out of the doorway long enough to chuck a flash-bang at an advancing wave of guards.
“ALPHA, WORK WITH THE HERO. FIND THE BOMB AND CALL DIRE. DO NOT TRY TO DISARM IT YOURSELF!”
I waded through the halls, crouched down to fit within them, raining down golden fury upon my own people. As I went, I brought up the sensor suite... and found it damaged. The layers Escala had melted had screwed up the external antenna. Biting back a curse, I rerouted the circuits, directed my repair spiders to prioritize the antenna as I went.
A minute crawled by, as I hunted my own men. “Status?” I voxed Alpha.
“Still looking! It’s not in the sea cave!”
Of course not, because that would be too easy. Odd, that’s where I would have hidden the thing. Put it someplace inaccessible, and unnoticeable, and El Presidente’s escape route certainly fit the bill.
Wait.
“Check again! Che
ck underwater,” I voxed. “Depending on what it is, the water might not affect it.”
“On it. Whoa. Oh holy fuck.”
“What?”
“It’s nuclear. The Geiger counter you set up is going off.”
Nuclear.
I did the math, based on the limited knowledge I had of the science. The numbers were bad. Very bad. And that’s even before the radiation came into play. “Tell Acertijo not to touch anything!” Without pausing I turned and smashed through the wall, triggered my gravitics, and half flew, half fell into the ocean below the cliff.
“Where?” I yelled at Alpha, as I stomped along the bottom of the bay. A minute and a half before detonation, perhaps, if the Maestro had been honest.
“It’s outside of my projection range! Give me a second!”
I entered the sea cave, and a purple-gloved hand plunged into the water, dropped a glowstick down, down to the bottom of the inlet.
And there it was, conical and lit by faint red LED’s along a box attached to its side. Not big, as warheads went. Perhaps the size of an engine block for a truck.
Forty-five seconds left, confirmed the LEDs on the box. Thank gods for classical supervillain customs. I knelt beside it, studied it for ten of them.
Then I slapped my gauntlet through it, and tore out the workings with one fluid motion.
“Boss, what the hell?” Alpha shrieked.
We didn’t explode.
“Nuclear bombs are fragile. Getting the reaction to go off takes more than impact. A lot of things have to happen in sequence, with properly-functioning mechanisms firing at the appointed time, for the reaction to occur.” I straightened up, and watched the timer tick down to zero. Sparks flashed in the water, but we remained un-nuked. “So sometimes the simplest ways are best.”
“You punched out a nuclear warhead.”
“Just a small one.” I fired up the gravitics... and they choked.
Great.
One damaged cave ledge and several tries later, I managed to get the suit up and out of the water. Cracked a few stalagmites as I rolled over. My optics fuzzed a few times... breaches in the suit had allowed seawater in to the circuitry. The spiders would be busy for a while on this one. Hell, I might need to sit down and do some spot-welding the hard way.
Dire : Wars (The Dire Saga Book 4) Page 21