I took them anyway, frowning at what was left. In the end I came to the safe room that Martin had described. The heavy steel door lay on the floor before it. Scorch marks showed where someone had welded the frame around it, cutting the reinforcing bars out of the concrete to get through. There were still crates left inside. For a moment I felt hope, but it was dashed after a quick inspection. Everything that had been food or ammunition was gone.
I was about to give it up and head back to camp to report failure, when a pump-like mechanism caught my eye. It was clamped to a desk, and had what looked like a simple piston setup. I leaned over for a closer look, and my errant memory identified it as a bullet press. And identified the proper usage of it.
Wait. You could make bullets without a factory?
Another moment of observation told me that this desk held most of the tools that I'd need to do that, and a third moment of searching turned up boxes of primer, slugs, and powder under the desk. Those hadn't been taken by the looters.
I didn't see any brass, but the house was full of casings, now, wasn't it? Surely not the fifty-thousand that Martin wanted, but enough to get us started. So I got to work packing up the tools and boxed materials into some of the empty crates, and then roamed the house, gathering the brass casings by the handfuls. After this, if we needed more I could probably go and scavenge the church. I doubted the police had bothered to sweep up there yet.
I knelt down to pick up some casings that had found their way into the remnants of a bedroom, and some instinct prompted me to glance up into an unexpected glare of light. There was a fist-sized hole punched in the wall, and I caught a glimpse of the silhouette of a head poking up from behind the roof of the nearest house. It had some sort of mask or goggles, that flared red to my vision. I zoomed in, zoomed in again, but didn't get a clear resolution before the head retreated back down below the level of the roof.
Someone was watching me.
I resumed picking up casings, as casually as I could. And deviating a bit from the pattern I'd set, I climbed up to the second floor. It was going to be tough to get a better angle on my watcher without alerting them to my intent.
I came to a wide window frame that was now filled with jagged glass and cleared it out with a hand, making a show at looking around at the ground below. Which is how I spotted the second one, crouched against the wall, directly under me.
He wore a grey outfit, a tight bodysuit with what looked like a layer of dull-black plastic armor over the joints and vital spots. He had a grey mask, featureless save for two red-lensed eyes and a WEB symbol above them. He had a longarm of some sort slung on his back.
WEB. My pursuers from the sewers, back again. Stalking me again.
The figure looked up, I looked down, and he took off running.
“WAIT.” I kicked in the gravitics, and burst through the window. As I did, my forcefield flared to life, repeatedly, as muzzleflash erupted from the first watcher's spot, and a the POP-POP-POP of an automatic weapon sounded through my audio filters. A slow warmth spread through my suit, as the thermal vents struggled to compensate.
Well. That answered the question of whether or not they were hostile.
It also meant I couldn't try to take the runner down with the coilgun unless I wanted to test the armor against automatic gunfire.
I started evading, dodging from side to side as I went after the runner. He was fast enough to get back to his friend's location, before I could close the distance. He dove through a window and vanished. I could follow...
No. They'd had time to set the ground. I reversed thrust, flipped around and put my feet on the wall to stop my momentum. Once slowed and on the ground again I switched the mask over to thermal sight. The thin drywall of the house was no match for the advanced sensors.
The one who'd gone inside was waiting in the bathroom. The one on the roof was moving up, trying to get a bead on me now that I was next to the wall and out of his line of fire. And there were two more figures inside, waiting in the room I had almost gone flying into. They were set up at angles where they could catch me in a crossfire.
Clever. Not clever enough. I switched off the forcefield and activated the coilgun. A quick grab of the grip to pull the barrel into place and aim it, and then I waited for the right moment. The one on the roof was nearly at the edge before I found a good shot.
I put a spike through his foot from below. He screamed and fell, and I ran over to him and kicked him until he stopped moving. They'd shot at me with live rounds, so I didn't feel any particular urge to hold back. On the other hand, they hadn't yet done anything to justify killing them.
Ksssh! POP-POP-POP! More bullets. My forcefield hummed, and a wave of fresh heat blossomed as I dove to the side, kicked in the jets, and ended up behind an old Chievy Casanova. Cracking noises filled the air; one of my remaining assailants at a window, hosed bullets in my general direction. I narrowed my eyes, waiting for the reload, but another window shattered, and one of his buddies opened up from a different vantage.
Bullets rattled off the car in front of me, and wisps of vapor started to escape. If the hydrogen reservoir touched off it'd be bad.
I gauged the forcefield, my current heat level, and my hydraulics. A couple of bullets that made it through the car rattled off of me, but their impact had been blunted enough that they weren't much of a difference.
All right. Here went nothing!
I crouched, planted my hands under the car, and took hold. Standing, I jerked it above me. My hydraulics were whining and gasping, and I tried to ignore the rising heat as the gunman started to see what I was doing, and cut loose on my unshielded form.
It was like standing next to a furnace, and sweat poured from me as I leaned back...
And heaved the car into the house.
Modern fuel cells aren't designed to blow easily. The phlogiston exchangers are rigged with quite a lot of safeguards.
On the other hand, they're not supposed to be shot repeatedly, then tossed into solid objects in a manner designed to crumple their fuel cells. Pretty sure that voids the warranty. The resulting explosion knocked me back about five paces.
My thermal sight was useless in the face of the merrily burning flames. But no more gunshots were coming my way, so that was something. I picked my way around the wreckage, and peered to the side of the house. The one I'd dropped was trying to get up and failing. Good. I had questions for him. Mostly about what the hell they were thinking, shooting at me like that.
Another glance to the house to make sure it was safe. I saw nothing, so I moved back out of the firing vectors they'd been using, and shut down the force field. I had been starting to roast in there. Any more and I would have been burnt.
A whistling noise behind me, and I dove to the side as I turned. A small speck in the sky from the south resolved itself into the form of a figure growing larger as I watched. I flipped the coilgun's ammunition to nonlethal. The whistle grew into a shriek, and the figure landed in the center of the cul-de-sac, sending a spray of snow billowing up around him.
And then he stood up.
He was a tall and broad-shouldered man, dressed in green. He had a black streak diagonally across his front that ended at his shoulder in an arrowhead design. He wore a domino mask over his eyes, that left most of his face exposed. He was clean-shaven, with olive skin, and long black hair. He had something on his back, a harness with rods sticking out of it.
I looked at him. He looked back at me and nodded. His face was grim, and his eyes never left my mask's eyesockets as he reached behind him and drew one of the rods. With a twist and a 'hiss', it unfolded itself into a spear. My mask chimed, and displayed words.
BALLISTA
INDEPENDENT HERO
POWERS: UNKNOWN – KINETIC RELATED.
“You can surrender now if you like. Save yourself a beating,” he rumbled.
“WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS WITH DIRE AND WHY ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A FIGHT?”
“Name's Ballista. And I know that
armor, even if you tried to hide it. You're the one who killed Scrapper.”
Oh shit.
“THAT WASN'T HER. THE BLACK BLOODS—”
“Three goddamn weeks, tracking him down. Three goddamn weeks, trying to find out where they'd hid him, what they did to him. And then, just as I get a solid lead, you go in and kill him. Steal his armor. Go on a rampage.” He gestured at the burning house behind me.
“THIS IS ACTUALLY THE RESULT OF DIRE DEFENDING HERSELF—”
“Dire, huh? Typical of your sort, but I guess most of the good names are taken.” He shifted his feet, spread his arms. “Doesn't matter, you can tell your lies to the MRB. You'll have plenty of time for that when you're sitting in one of their cells.”
I scowled. “YOU CHOSE THIS FIGHT.”
I kicked on the gravitics and jetted upwards. And he leaped after me, moving faster than I expected, from someone that large. I tried to twist aside, but he caught me by the calf and threw me towards the ground. I slammed into it, rattling around in the armor like a peanut in a shell, crying out in pain. My left knee was on fire, and I fought to stay conscious. He'd wrenched the leg or worse, and I didn't have time to think. I rolled to the side and a good thing I did as he threw the spear at me.
CHONK!
My way was blocked. I twitched the flight controls, levered myself up without putting pressure on my wounded leg, and stared at the spear that he'd sunk into the pavement just ahead of me. The spear had been at least six feet long in his hands. Now only two feet of its shaft was sticking out of the ground.
I wasn't sure my forcefield could stop something on that scale. Not without giving me second-degree burns, or worse. Given the already accumulated heat... yeah, I had to leave it off for now, or bad things would happen. Better to lose an arm or a leg than to roast all of me.
He hit the ground, just as I finished getting upright. My leg throbbed in rhythmic pain, sharper than the ring of bruises where Scrapper had manhandled my arm. I couldn't run, and the flight system was too slow with him at this close a range. And if he caught me with one of those spears, then I'd be done.
I hovered low to the ground, lined up a shot with the coilgun, and he charged me. I dodged to the side and he skidded to a stop, sending up a spray of snow. He reached out for my arm, and I twisted, and put my fist into his jaw. As I did so, I met a strange resistance. For a split-second my hand slowed, and it hit him with a lot less force than I'd intended. It still rocked him back a step, and I used it to get distance and blast him with a beanbag round to the chest.
He ignored it, and this time I saw it move oddly as it slowed. He hauled out another spear, and popped it to its full length. I darted behind a hedge. The burning building at my back was smoking in earnest now, sending dark plumes into the sky.
Then his arm jerked forward and I rose into the sky, drawing my legs up under me before I could think about it. The pain nearly sent me into a nosedive, and I bit down a scream as it felt like every nerve in my body throbbed in horrific unison. But the spear missed me, speeding by almost faster than I could track it.
“Give up!” He yelled, and I shook my head. Attacks against him were slowed, and his spears were faster than they should be. When he'd grabbed my foot, what had he done? Initially I thought he'd pulled me to the ground, but what if he'd sped or slowed my leg, and let my momentum do the rest? And his entrance had been showy, but not as hard on the ground as it should have been.
It wasn't superstrength. He was adjusting the speed of things he touched. Maybe himself, too, which was how he'd done that enormous leap to get here without pancaking himself.
While I thought, I threw myself into short, rapid boosts, pelting him with my limited beanbag supply every time he got near. They were shots that would take down normal men at this range, but every one that got close had the same end result. It would slow and hit him with minimal force. And after the sixth one, I noticed something very, very interesting. Not only did they slow, but so did he. For that split-second, he was moving a bit slower, until the shot hit him and bounced off.
I glanced back at the burning house, and nodded. It had a nice, big porch with wooden support pillars.
Another spear whistled by, piercing my hoodie and jerking me backward as it ripped a long swatch of it away. I feigned a tumble, waited until he dived at me, and leaped over him, leaving him stumbling and between me and the house. I switched to spike rounds, and fired, not at him, but at the pillars next to him. He took them as misses, ducking for cover as tore into the supports. And then I closed, sidling onto the open end of the porch. He grinned in triumph, and closed with me, coughing a bit at the smoke. I smelled it myself, seeping in through the holes in my helmet. We both had to breathe.
I slowed, and he did the same, forewarned by something. “Giving up?”
“NO.” I put up my arms like I'd seen the smackbrawl wrestlers do, arms wide and high. “YOU MAY, IF YOU WISH.”
He grabbed my arm and twisted, and I went with it, letting him jerk me to the ground. Even braced, the impact jarred my leg, and a high whine escaped my clenched teeth.
And while he grinned in triumph, I used my free hand to aim the coilgun, and put a point-blank beanbag round into the main support. With a sharp 'crack' it gave, and a few hundred pounds of wood and shingles started to collapse in on both of us. He looked up in horror. I twisted my left arm, grabbed ahold of his elbow, and grabbed for his throat with my right hand.
He tried to stop me but he was moving slowly, so slowly as the porch roof fell in on him in equal slow motion. Before he could stop me I had his throat in one large gauntlet.
I squeezed. Not at the armor's full strength, but enough. He started turning blue, watching helplessly as the seconds passed in slow-mo and the shingles pattered off of him. I knew then that I'd won. He was shielding both of us from the falling roof, and he had no way to get rid of my hand. If he slowed it down, it wouldn't stop mefrom choking off his air. If he sped it in a different direction, his throat would go with it, given my grip. He'd be killing himself either way.
It took about two minutes to choke him out. I gave it about three after he sagged and went totally limp, to make sure. Getting us both upright again without killing him or banging my leg was a major effort , but I managed.
I carried him forth from the burning house, and laid him on the street outside. His chest rose and fell shallowly. Good. He'd been obstinate, but he hadn't earned death. A thought struck me and I glanced to the side, looking for the gray-and-black suited man I'd incapacitated earlier. There was no sign of him, and I bit back a curse. This nonsense had wounded me to no gain. Then again...
I looked at the house. The fire hadn't reached the second floor yet, by the looks of it. If I moved quickly something could be salvaged.
Rather than risk the ground floor inside, I broke out the wide window in the side of the house to make my way to the safe room. It took a little while to finish packing the crates and secure the rest of the casings. By the time I was done my leg felt like a red-hot-iron had been jammed into the bone, and I was coughing from the smoke that surrounded me. Finally, I grabbed the three crates, balanced them, and hovered through the window as the floor started to collapse behind me. That had been a bit close...
When I emerged, the light level shifted and darkened. I glanced upward to see that an aircraft had me in its shadow, as it descended. A familiar-looking aircraft, one I'd seen a few nights back. It was the triangular-shaped craft that Tomorrow Force had been using, back at my old lair.
I flew down to the street, glanced over at Ballista. Still out. I put the crates down and hovered a foot off the ground to keep pressure off my leg, as I crossed my arms. For the love of grace, could I not finish this errand in peace?
The aircraft stopped about twenty-feet off the ground, and the engine pulse thrummed through me. I didn't know the source of the craft's power, and that spooked me in a way I couldn't define. It was the first time I'd hit technology my mind didn't instantly identify and explai
n, and that only emphasized how badly I was outmatched. I had a second-hand suit of armor, a glorified electromagnetic blunderbuss, a forcefield which cooked me if it got too overloaded, and a major injury. If it came to a fight, this was going to be ugly.
I gnawed my lip. Could kayfabe help me here? Maybe. If I could avoid seeming weak, I'd be in a better position. Kayfabe was the art of controlling and shaping the narrative, and I'd be at a disadvantage if I let them take the lead. So I decided to give it a whirl.
“AH, TOMORROW FORCE. WELCOME. YOU HAVE SAVED DIRE A GOOD DEAL OF TROUBLE.”
“Dire? That's you?” A hatch in the craft opened, and two figures fell out. One was a large robotic form. Siegebreaker. He hit the ground, and unlike Ballista, he sprayed broken asphalt for a few feet around him. He straightened up, rolled his shoulders in a way clearly meant to intimidate. The second figure was the blonde, Kinetica. She dropped at a much slower pace, ended up hovering five feet off the ground. She crossed her own arms, stared at me with frank curiosity.
“SHE IS DOCTOR DIRE, IF YOU WISH HER FULL NAME.” I gestured. “SHE NEEDED SOMEONE TO GET THIS MAN TO A HOSPITAL, AND YOU CAN SAVE HER THE TRIP.”
“Oh. Let me guess, you just freaking happened to find him this way,” rumbled Siegebreaker. “Pull the other one, it's got bells on.”
“OH NO. HE ATTACKED DIRE, AND DIRE DEFENDED HERSELF. IT WAS A MISUNDERSTANDING ABOUT A MUTUAL ACQUAINTANCE.”
I saw one of Kinetica's eyebrows rise above her goggles. “You took down Ballista?”
DIRE : BORN Page 18