DIRE : TIME (The Dire Saga Book 3)

by Andrew Seiple

  AFFIRMATIVE. Mechanical arms hissed to life, wobbling as they brought tools to bear.

  The screens showed Hitler on the top floor, just one short corridor away from the ritual chamber. That wouldn’t do. If his guards were in there when Henri kicked things off...

  “SEAL THE RITUAL CHAMBER DOOR.”

  AFFIRMATIVE.

  I watched Hitler parade past one last large hall, with the Eisenjäeger idling near open windows, doubtless to keep the diesel fumes from overwhelming the area. Smart. Breathing was important.

  And on that note... “SEAL ALL ROOMS WITH AT LEAST FIVE GUARDS PRESENT INSIDE.”

  He did so, and I gnawed my lip as I watched the people on screen, oblivious to what was about to happen. What I was about to do was something no hero would ever consider. Something that crossed the line, even for me. I could let them live. I could settle for just boxing them in, and dealing with any escapees as they came. The probability that they’d be a serious threat was low, very low.

  But... at the end of the day, these weren’t just Nazis. These were the elite of the SS. Not an innocent man among them.

  No hero would even consider doing what I was about to do.

  Fortunately, I was a villain.

  “RELEASE THE CHLORINE GAS IN ALL SEALED ROOMS, SAVE FOR THE RITUAL ROOM. AFTER FIVE MINUTES CLEAR THE ATMOSPHERE OF ALL ROOMS, THEN UNSEAL THEM ACCORDINGLY.”

  I watched then for a few precious seconds, as the first of them noticed and started to react, as the panic spread when they found the doors sealed. Then I turned away.

  You do not take joy in killing evil. You do it and move on. That’s the only way to kill and stay yourself, the only way I’d found. It isn't glory, it isn’t self-righteousness; just quietly making the world a better place, without expectation of reward or personal gain.

  That’s the difference between murder and execution. I'd executed them, and that was all.

  A flicker of motion from the ritual room, and I gasped. Loge stood in the center of it, in his original form, grinning and pointing a spear at the startled Thulites. His mouth moved, but I didn’t need to read it to know he was taunting them. Behind him, von Katzen fled to the rear of the machine, out of sight of both groups, and started firing it up. He glanced from Loge to Tesla, hastily fitting himself into a harness. Henri and Bryson raised pistols and started firing, but their focus was the Thulites, and not Katzen.

  The bastard was going to transfer himself into Tesla’s body!

  “SHOW ON SEQUENTIAL SCREENS THE QUICKEST ROUTE FROM HERE TO THE RITUAL ROOM!”

  Images flickered, and I memorized them at a glance, turning even as I did so. A few more steps and I was out the door, charging down the hall, head low, scraping sparking wires as I went and knocking pipes askew, and shattering stairs with my weight. The secret door was shut, so I held my arms up in front of my torso, protecting the shattered armor as I bulled through. Mass and strength combined to shatter the old stonework, and I burst out of the fireplace in front of two startled guards.

  They barely had time to get their submachine guns up and around, before I was on them and they left red smears in the wall as I crushed them into it, pitiful screams echoing through the corridors. I didn’t stop, just used them to cushion my impact and aid my turn, then went running on.

  Out in the courtyard, a siren rose and fell. Someone had noticed that something was wrong. I was down to minutes.

  After a few sharp turns, I burst through the sealed doors of the kitchen, green gas puffing around me in a gout of death. Twisted, gasping forms flopped like fish on the floor, and I crushed one of them beneath my heel as I went. Quite by accident, but I’d be lying if I said I cared. Then through the other door, up the servants' stairs, all the way up to the third floor and the highest tower. Shouts in the distance echoed as I stepped off the stairwell. I’d been neither stealthy nor subtle, and they’d be ready for me now.

  With gritted teeth, I fired up my Mark Four Tesla Deflector. I’d made the thing against Bryson’s orders, but didn’t care much. The battery pack under my suit was good for about a minute of sustained fire, five minutes if I took no hits. I rather doubted I’d escape unscathed.

  Charging down the hall, sending yelling Nazis scattering to either side, I hit the double doors to the upper hall where I’d last seen Hitler...

  ...and almost died as multiple automatic guns opened up on me from three directions. I snapped my arms in front of the broken parts of my chest armor, tanked hits from heavy caliber guns, watched my deflector field fizzle and dissipate, and backed out of the door so fast I crunched trenches in the shattered tile floor. Throwing myself to the right, I slammed myself back against the wall.

  Okay. Frontal assault? Bad idea.

  Grenades clinked on the tile next to the door, and I ignored them as the blasts shook the castle. My armor was proof against those, and it gave me time to think. More importantly, it had given me time to review what I’d seen.

  I closed my eyes, and remembered the scene, my memory as precise as video footage. Six Eisenkriegers, at three different points in the hall, with the Eisenjäeger clawing at the sealed door to the ritual room. Hitler’s guards were gone, as was Der Füehrer himself. Well that was fine, he couldn’t get far and I could acquire him later. I only needed him for the endgame, really. What I needed right now was to neutralize those Kriegers, and get to my allies beyond before Von Katzen could complete the mind transfer.

  More grenades, and an occasional Panzerfaust rocket. They weren’t accomplishing much except tearing up the floor, and I wondered how much it could take before—

  Images of my first fight against power armor flashed through my mind. I’d been on the back foot of that one too, until I’d changed the fight by introducing another dimension into the mix. Why not try the same trick here?

  I knelt, and slammed my fist through the floor, sending shards of brick flying in all directions. Pulling it back, I stared through the hole into a dusty and unused room below. Cloth drapes over furniture, old weapons stacked in racks, and rats, nothing more.

  Good enough.

  Three more punches and the floor cracked, started to collapse around me, and I rode it down, ending in a three-point landing on the floor below. Damn near cracked that open too, but I leaped off and away from it as it shattered, hit the door to the north with a titanium-alloyed shoulder. The door didn't open; it fragmented. I gazed upon a long gallery, with paintings lining every wall, wide, airy windows letting in light and air...

  ...and a series of rappel ropes dangling outside them, ascending to the floor above. Well, that answered the question as to where Hitler’s guards had gone. About a dozen of them were in front of me, gaping at my sudden entrance. Two of them scrambled to slide a rocket into a Panzerfaust that a kneeling man was training my way.

  “NONE OF THAT NOW.”

  One of my particle beams fizzled and sparked as I fired, but the other one worked just fine, and the red mist they left behind splattered on the paintings of solemn-looking knights and kings behind them.

  The rest of the group opened up with small arms, backing toward the windows. I paid them no mind, and started firing up, into the ceiling above.

  Into the room full of Eisenkriegers.

  I couldn’t see them worth crap, and with my mask and its advanced sensory array gone, I couldn’t track their thermal signatures through the floor. But they weren’t my main target. My ceiling was their floor, and after the third shot, dust and rubble heralded the collapse as tons of stone came crashing down upon me. I hunkered down and rode it out while my world shook and turned into a cacophony of grinding, collisions, and shrieks. I think I was laughing, it was hard to tell. For too long I’d been stuck outside of my awesome metal shell! For too long I’d been forced to work with just my meat alone! Now I stood as I should... strong and powerful and invulnerable.

  Well, mostly. The damage readouts spat out a troublesome report by the time the ceiling was done falling on me, and my power reserves were do
wn to eighty-two percent. Particle beams were draining. Not really made to work with the emergency cells at all.

  I had no time to mourn, though. Thrusting my gauntlets up, I dug my way through the rubble, passing the wrecked shells of Eisenkriegers as I went. They weren’t built to deal with this sort of thing. My ride was.

  Then I broke through the surface, and a steel boot to my head was the first cue that I hadn’t gotten all of them. Shielding my weakened faceplate with one arm, I lashed out with the other, until an echoing clang told me I’d connected. I continued the sweep, routing power into the servos, and was rewarded with a clatter and a crunching noise, followed by a hollow screaming. Risking it, I put my arm down and pushed my lower half free of the rubble, clambering to my feet. In front of me one of the Eisenkrieger suits thrashed, its exhaust pipes bent and damaged and blowing black smoke, and one of its legs bent at an unnatural angle. Blood spraying out from one knee joint told me that the leg had given out before the suit had.

  No time to reflect, as two more were on me, charging awkwardly through the rubble. The broken terrain kept them from getting up a full head of steam, and it gave me time to turn and meet them, squatting low and spreading my arms in a rudimentary fighting stance.

  They were the pinnacle of Nazi Power armor, circa nineteen-forty-two. They had twice my mass, hyperdiesel engines that ensured two hours of fighting from a full tank, hydraulic servos that let them lift tanks with a bit of effort, armor plating that could withstand one or two solid Panzerfaust hits before it risked failure, and mounted machine guns that were more like belt-fed anti-tank guns.

  They were strong. But I am Dire.

  Even with my suit crippled, its armor broken and its advanced sensory suite down, even with the dents and dings and mobility systems at half-speed, and the gravitics pretty much gone... even with exposed circuitry that they targeted and pounded in an attempt to go after my ‘weak’ points, I thrashed them like a giant pitted against cranky children.

  I’d built this suit to stand against Crusader, and by god, it had. The Eisenkriegers did damage, sure. Circuits broke, sparks flew, armor plates cracked under hydraulic fists... but in the end it was they who staggered and fell, and I roared. My triumph echoed through the shattered hall like a hero of old, breaking the windows with my amplified cry and shaking the rubble in my joy.

  Fighting, destroying... this, I knew. This, I could do.

  I climbed the rubble ramp, and hauled myself up, ramming fingers into shattered stone to climb to the ritual room door that was now a good fifteen feet above the shattered remnants of the antechamber.

  The ritual room’s door was still sealed. I fixed that with three good punches. On the third one, the frame had warped far enough that I could get my gauntlet’s fingers around it, and pull it out past me with one yank. I almost laughed as I saw Grant back in the strobing light of the machine, pointing a pair of pistols my way.

  “IT’S HER. RELAX.”

  He didn’t relax, pointing at the machine, lightning flickering and ripping through the air around it. “Tesla’s in there, and we can’t get close!”

  I vaulted up into the room, grabbed the wall for balance as I examined it. Bryson and Henri were off to one side, hiding behind a pile of dead Thulites. The Tzadikim huddled in a far corner, with Timetripper cowering among them. Bryson stood in the center of the room. He gestured at me, shouting as his cane indicated points on the machine. I nodded as I considered them... it was a good plan, hitting those points in order would shut the thing down safely, and let them approach.

  It was a good plan, but the dials indicated eighty-percent mental transfer completion. Shutting it down now would leave both Katzen and Tesla a screaming, mismatched mess, their minds no longer their own. Best case was something like insanity. Worst case was a vegetative coma.

  I gnawed my lip. How to fix this?

  And then I remembered Eisengeist’s comments, about how the machine was sensitive to electromagnetic interference.

  “BRYSON!”

  “What?”

  “TESLA’S ESSENTIALLY IMMUNE TO ELECTRICITY, CORRECT?”

  “Yes!”

  I moved in front of Bryson and Henri, charged up my remaining functional particle beam, flicked it to generate maximum electromagnetic interference, and unleashed a wide-angle burst into the machine.

  The results were dramatic, and it took a few seconds for my visual sensors to depolarize. Flare shielding... worth every penny.

  But eventually I could see again, and I sighed in relief as the dial ticked down, the transfer reversing. It had aborted the operation, and was shunting von Katzen back into his body. I limped past the machine, to the rear of it where the wall of lightning had once blocked my allies from getting back there...

  Oh. Oh my. Von Katzen wouldn’t be waking up from this. Von Katzen wouldn’t be waking up at all. Overloading the machine had electrocuted him, and only a charred husk remained. Unlike Tesla, he wasn’t protected against wild current.

  I glanced at the machine. The dials were still indicating a successful return. But to where?

  “Miau!” von Katzen’s cat insisted, perched on top of the machine, fur puffed out so that it resembled a football made of fur. I stared at it for a long moment, eyeing the pulses of electricity that jumped from the cerebral diodes in arcs up toward it.

  Was there something like human hatred in that gaze? No, impossible. Or was it?

  “BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY,” I decided, and brought my particle cannon to bear. But the thing jumped down into a crevice of the machine, and was gone.

  “Nikola!” I heard Bryson cry from the front of the device, and I shuffled back that way as fast as I could. The limp had me down to half mobility, and my cell reserves were at sixty percent and dropping. Too much activity, too many alterations, too many vital circuits damaged. I had perhaps ten minutes of action left in me, after that I’d have to jump out, and hope to hell there was nothing left I needed to kill.

  Tesla was sitting up, rubbing his forehead. Bryson held his shoulder, until Tesla pulled his hand away with a wince. Oddly enough, this made Bryson beam in relief.

  “No time, Doc!” Grant shouted, leaning out the door and firing down into the chamber I’d dropped below. A bullet ripped through his chest at one point, but he ignored it, leaned back into cover as more machine guns sprayed lead through the doorway. “Hitler’s escaping, and we got Schwarze Ritter incoming!”

  “That is the reason Hitler was early!” Henri shouted, catching empty pistols as Grant tossed them back and reloading them. Periodically, he’d hand Grant a full one. “Schwarze Ritter arrived this morning. He was made to wait, to ensure he would not snap, but now they will call him in, have called him in by now!”

  Shit.

  This was the component of the plan I’d been least confident about. Taking on a metahuman that had pretty much singlehandedly held the Eastern front up to this point... well, it seemed like a losing prospect.

  “TIMETRIPPER, GOT ANY ADVICE ON SCHWARZE RITTER?”

  “No, man!” he called from the corner, where he’d huddled. “Never heard of the guy!”

  Didn’t surprise me, he was ignorant at the best of times.

  “I interrogated the Master of the Thulites, before we shot him,” Henri said, crawling over to me and staying low as bullets ricocheted off my armor. “Schwarze Ritter’s personal effects are stored in the relic vault outside, where the chapel was once located. If any of his blood remains, it is there!”

  The chapel. Yes, I recalled seeing it, on my way across the courtyard. Given my internal sense of direction, and my rough estimate of where we were...

  “GOOD. TRY TO KILL THESE GUARDS AND GET DOWN TO SECURE HITLER. SHE WILL GO RETRIEVE THE BLOOD.” It had to be there, or else we were pretty much screwed. The best we could hope for was Hitler’s death and a hasty retreat. And while Timetripper could be my ticket out, the others would surely suffer casualties or worse at the hands of Der Schwarze Ritter.

  No. I couldn�
��t leave things like this. I had few enough friends, I'd be damned if I’d abandon my unlikely allies to their fate.

  “BESIDES, WHAT HAS FATE EVER DONE FOR HER, REALLY?”

  “What?” Henri barked.

  I took a running start, and barreled through the southern wall.

  Masonry exploded out around me as I crashed through, reinforced stone crumbling as I fell to the ground. No three-point nonsense this time, the armor was too damaged to make it work. As it was, impact gel struggled to take the hit, and I rocked in the harness, biting my tongue against the impact. I was leaking blue, and that was bad. Still, I was in the courtyard, and shouts of alarm rose from the guard towers as a few intrepid souls opened fire on me. I ignored their shots and gazed around.

  Hitler’s staff car had stopped in front of the first gate, and his guards were shooting at a tall figure that darted and moved among them, striking with an axe in one hand and a spear in the other. I recognized Loge’s true form, lips curved in a cruel smile. If the bullets did anything to him— if they even touched— I couldn’t say, and didn’t have time to observe the scene for long regardless. My destination in sight, I half-ran, half-limped to the chapel, carving a huge divot in the ground from my armor’s glitchy leg.

  Twin oaken doors had about as much chance against me as tissue paper, and I threw them open with a bang, gazing at the large room that made up the entire building.

  And at the suit of golden armor, that lay disassembled upon a rack against the wall.

  A very familiar-looking suit of golden armor.

  I stood there, frozen, staring at the visored helmet, as understanding crashed through me like a tidal wave of despair. I'd fought against him in the future, and lost. Now I was to lose to him in the past, while he was mindscrewed enough to murder me?

  Shouts outside, calls from the Nazis, and cheers. And a sonic boom, a rumble in the sky, as Der Schwarze Ritter arrived, to save his slavers from their just fate.

  But for the love of me, I couldn’t stop staring at that armor.