Ouch. Wait a minute...
“THOSE SOUND LIKE SUICIDE MISSIONS.”
“They should be. But there’s a flash of light around their driver’s positions every time the trucks get close. We think they’ve got a teleporter.”
I exhaled. A newly surged metahuman? Unlikely. This sounded like someone who knew their powers pretty well. Which meant... “OKAY, THAT’S BAD. THE MOST LIKELY EXPLANATION IS THAT THEY HAVE ENLISTED METAHUMANS ALONG FOR THE RIDE.” Now I understood why the US hadn’t sent an aircraft carrier along.
“So the stories are true then? The US does use metahumans? Shit, if this leaves the room, desertion rates will triple.” Ricio put down the bottle, rubbed his eyes.
“WELL THEN. KEEP IT SECRET.” I flexed my fingers. “DIRE WILL TAKE CARE OF THEM IF THEY MAKE AN APPEARANCE.”
“Do not take this the wrong way, Empress, but are you sure you can?”
“ACTUALLY, YES. US PROTOCOL FOLLOWS MOST MODERN MILITARIES IN THIS AREA. THE ONLY METAHUMANS ALLOWED TO SERVE ARE THOSE WHO CAN BE KILLED BY CONVENTIONAL WEAPONRY, AND POSSESS RELATIVELY SIMPLISTIC POWERS.”
He blinked. “I’ve never heard of that before.”
“THE US GOVERNMENT HAS A TIER SYSTEM FOR METAHUMANS. IT’S HARDLY A PRECISE FACTOR, BUT ONLY TIER SIX AND ABOVE ARE PERMITTED TO ENLIST. DIRE’S A TIER FOUR, BY THEIR RANKING. MUCH MORE RAW POWER”
“Does that take their powers into account?”
“NOT PRECISELY. BUT THEY’LL BE SIMPLE. NO HIDDEN SURPRISES.”
The great nations had experimented with military metahumans off and on through the decades, sometimes to disastrous effect. They only wanted people they could kill if they got mind controlled or otherwise turned. And they only used people with simple powers, to prevent unforeseen consequences on the battlefield. Someone like El Hombre Último, for example, could slaughter his own side if the enemy caught on to his limitations. He wouldn’t be allowed to enlist.
This didn’t mean that complicated powers didn’t have their place. Rumor had it that the black ops community was full of them. After seeing... well, not seeing Canadian Girlfriend in action, I was inclined to agree with that rumor.
Regardless, Ricio seemed mollified by my confidence. “All right. So what’s the battle plan?”
We spent the next hour reviewing maps, plotting tactics, and figuring out priorities. Ricio knew his stuff, and if he was planning on betraying me, I saw no sign of it. Outside the sound of rifles cracking in the distance rose and fell, and every ten minutes or so, a whistling thump heralded another artillery shell incoming. Nowhere near us, thankfully. I had the robots primed to scatter even so, in case they spotted incoming.
Finally, we were done, and I exited out into the sunlight.
And straight into a flash of light, as the terrain around me changed. I found myself staring at a scrubby field, a half-ring of tanks, and three figures wearing camo. One of them, a woman with sandy brown hair, put down a pair of binoculars and immediately dove behind a tank.
One of the remaining figures floated up about a foot into the air, and pointed at me. “Doctor Dire! Stand down or die!”
They’d been lying in wait for me, and I’d walked right into their trap.
CHAPTER 15: ON DEADLY GROUND, FIGHT
“...Oxenfree, bring her in. It's time for a blanket party.”
--Last radio transmission of the late Lieutenant Alexander Ramon, USMC, 1982-2003
It was my blessing and my curse, that none would ever truly be able to comprehend me, comprehend the speeds that my mind could harness, when necessary. Super-genius included super-comprehension, and right now it was going into overdrive.
The one with the binoculars had probably been the teleporter, getting line of sight on me to warp me in. Which meant that we were only a few miles away from Malo Verde, most likely. Probably a good line of hills behind me, but activating the rearward cameras would take entirely too long.
The tanks were M1A2 variants. Only four of them, but their main guns would put a hurting on the suit, and at this range they couldn’t miss. I thought the suit could take it, but it had been through some rough times recently, and the repair bots hadn’t been able to bring it back up to full specs. The tank line was two-hundred-and-three feet away, so they’d get in at least one volley before I closed. If there was any consolation, it was that they weren’t all aimed directly at me. Only two were in position to get a good shot, the others were swiveling as my mind worked at light-speed. Which meant that the teleporter’s power wasn’t precise, thankfully.
And that brought my thoughts back to the three metahumans before me. No idea what the black guy on the end did, but he was crouched and tensed, eyes white and fixed on me under the brim of his helmet. The fact that the teleporter was gone suggested she was fragile. The flyer... hard to say. Still, the situation was far from unsalvageable.
“DIRE DOES NOT SURRENDER.” I said, jetting to the side, and firing up my rearward camera.
And I heard, as it were, the sound of thunder.
A giant kicked me right in the ribs, and I rocked in the harness as the suit flew backward, smoking. Damage readouts blared. I’d caught a shell to the mid-section, and four layers of armor were gone. Not compromised, just gone from my torso. If not for the impact gel, I’d probably be dead.
Nothing behind me but thinning trees and hills. I’d suspected as much, it would have been stupid to put anything they wanted to keep in front of a line of Abrams blasting away.
Speaking of which... Mid-tumble I reoriented, activated my protesting gravitics, and shot upward. No reason not to bring death from above here, flight was the one advantage I had over—
Light flashed, and I was back in the field again. In a different spot, thankfully, as the tank guns started training around on me again.
That was why the teleporter was still on scene. To lock me down.
Couldn’t go up, she’d teleport me back. Couldn’t ditch to the sides or retreat to the rear, she’d pull me back into the killzone. Only way out was through. So what happened if I rushed forward?
Obviously the two unknown metas would come into play.
I brought my gauntlets up, slammed some particle beams toward the tanks.
The beams bent in midair. Hit something a few yards away, glancing off of blue fractal-patterns that faded into visibility for a scant second. I watched the crouching soldier tremble, as my shots deflected away. Forcefield generator, okay. So they had the interdiction, they had the defense... that left the remaining guy, the flying one, for offense.
BOOM!
And the tanks. Couldn’t forget the tanks. I twisted, took the shot on my shoulder-pad, which blew into shrapnel and sent me head over heels. The gyros were getting a workout, here.
Damage readouts blared yellow as I clambered back to my feet. Three seconds. Average time for a skilled loader in an Abrams was three seconds. Targeting wasn’t much of a problem at this range. Laser targeting would light me up no matter how I evaded, and judging by how my armor was getting shredded, those were APFSDS rounds. Depleted uranium, going by the way my Geiger counter was chattering.
This. This was why most sane villains don’t go directly against the US military. No matter how big you are, there’s always someone bigger.
But the situation was far from unsalvageable. I ran through the list of tactics, decided upon my play.
The forcefield blocked my beams, yes. But it let the cannon rounds through. Odds were good that it did nothing for physical objects.
I flew up ten feet and cut loose with concussion missiles. Wouldn’t do squat to the tanks, but they weren’t supposed to. I was targeting the ground around them.
Dirt fountained upward, and I grinned. “Laser that!” I’d bought a few seconds of cover. If there hadn’t been metahumans in play, I’d turn and flee. But as it was...
“HOO-AH!” The flying soldier came out of the dirt like a missile, barreling straight for me.
“Charlie One in the breach, hold fire!” An u
nfamiliar voice squawked from back among the tanks. And then I was punching the flier, and he was slamming into me, and we were tumbling.
Say this for him, he was a marine. Bunny, a veteran of my acquaintance, had given me rudimentary training in boxing. The rest of my melee skills had come from super-powered brawls, and painful experience. I wasn’t the greatest fighter in the world. This guy, he had close-quarter-combat skills and training, and just enough superpowers to back it up. He was hitting me three times for every blow I got past his guard, and every one of his strikes dented, tore, or ruptured armor.
But I’d built my armored shell myself, with genius unmatched on Earth and raw materials forged layer by layer over months into a war machine unmatched for its size. I’d built it to stand against Crusader, if only for a little while. And though battered, though missing layers, and operating with jury-rigged hardware and software, it still performed its function.
“YOU THINK YOU CAN STOP HER?” I roared, as I managed to grab his arm with one hand, and sink my fist into his gut with the other. He rebounded, ripped his arm free, and surged forward with a knee to my mask. My head rocked back, and I oversold its severity, staggering backward. Sure enough he rocketed forward for a follow up hit, and now he staggered, as my head slammed forward to butt him in his nose. Blood sprayed as he clutched his face, glaring. A hit that would have turned a normal person’s head into chunky salsa, had merely broken his nose.
Paragons. Flying bricks. “YOU’RE NO CRUSADER.” I blasted him at point-blank with the particle beams—
—which curved away as the blue fractals appeared. The force field projector had gotten into the mix.
“Don’t need Crusader to wax your ass,” he honked through his bruised face. “Let’s finish this, Endboss!” He jerked a ka-bar knife out of its holster, and came in for the kill.
My sensors went crazy. Whatever that knife was it had an energy signature, and it was throwing danger signs all over the place. I weighed my options in a microsecond, as he rushed me.
I found my solution.
“CHECKMATE IN TWO!”
When the knife arced straight for my mask, I slammed my gauntlet out, palm first.
The knife went in like an arrow into a foam target. It only stopped when the hilt slammed up against the gash, with such force that the military meta rocked backward. He slammed his feet into the ground, braced, and tried to jerk the knife out—
—and my other hand closed around his arm.
I ignored the whine of the hydraulics, ignored the screaming of the damage reports, closed out everything but the here and now...
...and I closed my hand.
He screamed, high and shrill, as bones pulverized. The second his fingers went limp I jerked my speared gauntlet away. I wasn’t sure if he’d speared my flesh or not. Adrenaline was so high that my blood was roaring in my ears, and I was focused on turning his arm into mush, had to be. If he got away, I was dead, it was that simple.
Blood oozed out from my gauntlet, and he went limp. I gave him a few seconds, to make sure he wasn’t faking. Then I let go. His arm, what was left of it, hung by a shred. Jagged, bloody bone protruded, and as it hit the ground he cried again, softly.
“AT EASE, MARINE.”
I drew out the ka-bar gingerly, dropped it to the ground. Wiggled my fingers, sighed as they responded. Missed the hand. Thank gods for oversized gauntlets.
Then I glared up. The dust was starting to settle, and I could just make out the outlines of the tanks in the distance. I checked my core systems, winced to see what was offline. But the important part was still active, and I nodded in satisfaction as I started to charge up.
When the dust cleared, it revealed me, standing with one foot propped up on the fallen marine. “WAS THAT ALL?” I inquired, hands behind my back, armor hanging in shreds and tatters as blue impact gel bled out to dribble on my human footrest.
“Doctor Dire!” The woman yelled from behind the tanks, which again swiveled to aim their cannons my way. “We say again! Stand down or die!”
I checked her position, checked the force field projector, sighed in relief. They were far enough away I could spare them.
“NO, YOU SURRENDER.” I said, bringing my hands out from behind my back, as they crackled with purple energy. “OR DIE.”
The first tank cannon roared, and I brought my hands down.
A roar of sound, of fury, a rabid scream of physics itself wounded, and the gravitic shear impacted the line of tanks. Metal burst, hydraulic fluid and oil squirting out, mixing with blood of their crew, and the steel behemoths ceased to be a threat.
At the cost of killing the soldiers inside. I closed my eyes, for a second. Gods, I hated to do that. They hadn’t been firing on innocent natives, or slaughtering civilians like the rocket crews I’d killed almost a week ago.
These soldiers didn’t deserve to die like that. But they would have killed me in a heartbeat, were trying to kill me, and weren’t about to let me escape. No choice.
When the dust cleared, the teleporter was running, flat-out running away, stopping to glance behind her every few hundred feet.
I drilled her in the back with a particle beam. She dropped like a stone. I’d set it to stun, so she’d probably live. By rights I should’ve killed her, but at this point I was sending a message. And there was no need for further bloodshed.
I turned and walked away. Then there was movement in my peripheral vision, and I turned my battered, scarred mask to face the last standing marine, the forcefield projector. His skin ran with sweat, and his eyes were wide, wide and white against his skin.
He reminded me of Martin, and for a second I closed my eyes. Old failures, missed connections, a friend long gone. When I opened my eyes again the marine was still there, backing away, skirting around on a trajectory that would take him over to his broken-armed friend.
“WHY ENDBOSS?” I wondered aloud.
He shuddered, and his lips opened and shut for a moment. Then he got hold of himself, and fire returned to his eyes. “It’s your target designation.”
“APPROPRIATE. DIRE APPROVES.” I turned and walked away.
Got all of about five hundred yards distant, before the artillery shells started coming in. So the badass walk got turned into an undignified scramble, but at that point there was nobody around to see it. The Brute Suit protected me from the near misses, though at this point the repair spiders were clocking overtime keeping the internal components mostly functional, and my layers of armor were shredded to hell and back.
The artillery cut out as the nearest barricades hove into view. I leaped them in a single gravitic-assisted bound, because I was in no shape to fly.
My vox crackled as I got back within range of the relays. “...boss? Boss?”
“Alpha.”
“What the fuck?”
“US kill team ambush. Damn near did for her.” A few more tank rounds, or that ka-bar in my face and it would have been dead Dire. Hell, if they’d managed to shred the hydraulics enough to slow me down, the artillery might have scored a direct hit.
Lots of ways to die in war.
“Wait, the US broke the whole police action thing to come after you?”
“Technically they teleported her into their lines. If they’d succeeded, they could have claimed that she was attacking them, had strayed into their territory in a blatantly aggressive act of war.”
“What’s to stop them doing that now?”
“Good point. Here, she’s sending you the helmet-cam footage. Distribute that to every onshore media outlet, hit a few of the North and South American ones as well. It shows a failed assassination attempt, we can spin it as that. It’ll muddy the waters enough to delay casus belli.”
“So what now?”
“Hold that thought.” Ricio’s staff jeep was zooming my way. Behind him a pair of hovertanks followed, slaved them to his command.
And now came the moment of truth.
The car screeched to a halt, as he jumped out.
“What happened?”
I let out a breath of sheer relief. Then after he repeated the question, I answered. “AMERICAN KILL TEAM.” Around me the chatter of the lines went silent. The troops were listening in. “THEY FELL BEFORE DIRE. FOUR LESS TANKS YOU’LL HAVE TO FACE LATER.” I debated about mentioning the metahumans, decided not to.
“Good, good. Ah, shall we proceed?”
Ah, right. The speech. I didn’t know if it would do much for morale, but it couldn’t hurt. And actually, with me coming in fresh from the battlefield, it might help sell it a little more effectively.
I nodded. “MIGHT WANT EARPLUGS.”
Then I turned my back to him, calculated the acoustics, and cranked up my volume. The city would hear me. The Rebels would hear me. The US forces would hear me. All would hear me, and tremble!
“SOLDIERS OF ISLA MARIPOSA! WE HAVE NEVER BEFORE FACED SUCH A THREAT UPON OUR SHORES!”
I listened to the echoes, adjusted the pitch.
“THE REBELS, WHO WOULD DESTROY YOU ALL BECAUSE OF SLIGHTS IMAGINED AND EXAGGERATED,” not really so slight, entirely truthful, and in cases not exaggerated enough, “WENT WHIMPERING TO THE GRINGOS LIKE WHIPPED DOGS. THEY HAVE GONE HIDING IN MAMI’S SKIRTS LIKE LITTLE CHILDREN, CRYING BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN BEATEN.”
I adjusted my stance, legs wide, arms on my hips.
“BUT WHO HAS DELIVERED UNTO THEM THAT BEATING?” I threw an arm out, bringing it around in a leisurely sweep, aiming north. “WHO HAS CAUSED THEM TO FLEE, SHITTING THEIR PANTS ALL THE WAY?”
Dire : Wars (The Dire Saga Book 4) Page 24