DIRE:SINS (The Dire Saga Book 5)

by Andrew Seiple

  And then I whirled and put a full-blast particle blast through two more pillars.

  “Acertijo, get your guys on rescue now. Get the tased scientists on the second floor out. The building collapses in thirty seconds.” I jetted to the far end of the chamber as Mister Big hurtled past me, and turned to Miss Maskelyne. “CHECKMATE IN ZERO.”

  They’d been hoping to play the long game, let Mister Big wear me down then send in Punching Judy to back me up. The Green Knight and Human Harrier... I checked area footage in a snap second, nodded. The Harrier was down, armor broken, and the Green Knight was hauling him up the stairs. I flicked my gaze back to Miss Maskelyne, and it was worth it, as I watched her face twist in horror as she realized what I’d done. “Leg it!” she yelled to Punching Judy, and took her own advice, headed for the stairs.

  I watched, as Mister Big’s head snapped around. Ichor seeped from countless wounds in his fake-suited skin, but he seemed no worse for the wear from that or his exertions. His manic, unwavering grin widened, and he loped toward the fleeing women.

  Fuck it. No way that guy was human, and there were heroes’ lives on the line. I amped up my particle blasters past their safety measures, and drilled him with a hundred-fifty percent charge.

  And then I walked to Vector’s escape elevator, transferred all my power to my forcefield, as I dialed down the detection velocity, and crossed my arms as my smoking gauntlets shunted waste heat in a smoldering, wavering radius around me.

  My laughter chased Queensguard up the trembling, groaning, and collapsing stairwells as the building fell on me and I didn’t care.

  “Scientists are out.” Acertijo whispered through the vox.

  “I have eyes on Vector!” Alpha said. “Uh, he’s kind of panicking. Also the ceiling’s giving way above me.”

  “Give Dire a visual, then drop and shield him,” I decided.

  “On it!”

  I got a glimpse of the control room from the inside, walls buckling, and Vector scrabbling at the floor, dumping vials full of goo and melting the metal... but slowly, too slowly. He’d built his protection too heavy, and been trapped in a bulky box of his own making. It was sad, in a way. Also sobering. The guy had only been in the villain business one less year than I had, and he was still making rookie mistakes. I resolved to have a talk with him once we unbent his brain from Maestro M’s fuckery.

  But I wasn’t just spying on him to criticize his technique. I was figuring out exactly where he was, and how to get him out of there without killing the guy.

  The viewpoint blurred as Alpha burst through the grate above and dropped, and I moved without hesitation, dropping the forcefield for a split second, ignoring the rain of debris that showered down upon me, and blasting a wide shear with particle beams, blowing a hole in the side of the escape pod, directly above Alpha and Vector. Then a running leap, skidding to a stop as the ceiling collapsed downward, and ending in a crouch over Alpha and Vector.

  I flipped the forcefield back on, with a bare ten-foot radius, just in time. Metal cascaded down, lights blew, and everything went dark. Concrete and debris and circuitry and buckled sheets of metal ground around our bubble, and the bits of garbage that had gotten through pattered off me, clattered off of Alpha, and tumbled around on the bottom of the area, occasionally spattering against Vector.

  He’d been screaming throughout, and evidently saw no reason to stop now. I didn’t grudge the man his fear: he’d had a rough day.

  Still, after half a minute, it began to irritate me.

  “VECTOR.”

  He kept screaming.

  “ALPHA, GET OFF OF HIM.” I eased up. Alpha slithered free of him, limbs unhinged from sockets, attached only by cables. Right, he’d had to slither through the vents. “PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, WILL YOU?” He started snapping bits back to other bits.

  Vector peered cautiously through the crook of his arms, where he’d crossed them over his face. Then he pushed himself backwards, scrabbling through the rubble until his back hit the forcefield. He stared around, then looked up to me.

  I realized that he could see in the dark, too. We were both operating in a lightless tomb now, a capsule under the earth and stone and remnants of the building above. “YOU’VE DONE SOME MODS, HAVEN’T YOU? A FEW UPGRADES?”

  He stopped screaming, blinked at me through broken glasses. “Just a few. You made a serious mistake, getting this close.” He reached into his lab coat, pulled out a spray bottle.

  “YOU DO REALIZE THAT HER FORCEFIELD IS THE ONLY THING BETWEEN YOU AND A FEW HUNDRED TONS OF RUBBLE.”

  He looked to me, looked to the bottle.

  “AND ALSO THAT DIRE CAN SURVIVE BEING CRUSHED IN SUCH A MANNER. CAN YOU?”

  His face crumpled, and he dropped the bottle. The lid popped off, and I watched drops of something horrible eat into the floor like hot water through tissue paper.

  “NOW WHY DIDN’T YOU USE SOMETHING LIKE THAT TO GET OUT OF HERE?”

  “It’s a hold-out spray,” he muttered. “Not enough to make a big hole.”

  “SEEMS LIKE AN HONEST MISTAKE. WON’T BE YOUR LAST, THOUGH.”

  “Say what now?”

  “YOU’RE GOING TO LIVE THROUGH THIS, VECTOR.”

  The tension drained out of him. “Oh god.” I watched the adrenaline ebb, as he felt around in his coat with trembling fingers, pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  “NOT MUCH AIR IN HERE.”

  “I don’t need much. I installed some alveolic scrubbers after a nasty incident in Belize. They’re the only reason I went back to the tobacco, really.”

  I had no idea what those might be, but they sounded biological. He lit a cigarette, took him three tries to get the lighter straight. “You know, the first time you tracked me down, I was terrified. Chaingang told me you were the one to watch, even though Vorpal had the deadlier power. It’s why I held so many kaiju in reserve. Didn’t make a difference in the end, though, and there I was trapped in a space about this size. Maybe less. And then you let me go. You just up and let me go.”

  “THE WORLD NEEDS YOU, VECTOR. YOU HAVE MUCH TO OFFER HUMANITY, IF YOU CAN GET PAST YOUR CURRENT DIFFICULTIES.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can believe you. I... but then I should be dead, shouldn’t I? Not like you couldn’t, if you wanted to. I watched on the screens as you fought off Queensguard singlehandedly. You know how many nightmares I’ve had about that team? Shit, you’re soloing teams. And the Mark III. Jesus.” He rubbed his eyes, took a few steadying puffs on the cigarette. “I thought I’d come so far, but I’m still just a dabbler at this. You’re... good at being bad.” he chuckled. “Yeah, okay, what do you want?”

  “FOR STARTERS, WE’RE GOING TO GET YOU CLEAR. ALPHA, ARE THE CIRCUITS STILL INTACT?”

  “Oh yeah. Kept them as secured as I could.” He cooed at them fondly. “Mah babies!”

  “Say what now?” Vector squinted at Alpha.

  “DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT. WE’RE GOING TO TELEPORT TO A MORE SECURE LOCATION.” I got on the vox. “Acertijo, you ready to leave?”

  No answer.

  “Uh-oh,” Alpha said.

  I closed my eyes, feeling dread rise up. Of course something would go wrong once we had everything in hand. This was my luck, my damnable luck! I forced my temper down, tried to calm myself. Perhaps he was just talking with the heroes, unable to break away. Maybe in a minute he’d be free to respond.

  Seconds crawled by. No response. “Acertijo?” I tried again.

  The vox channel clicked open. “Help—” Then it slammed shut again.

  He’d sounded panicked. This was not how Acertijo ever sounded, not while the mask was on. The dread throbbed behind my temples, and I closed my eyes, swallowed hard.

  “Ah shit,” Alpha said. “Alright, so if you teleport me up to see what’s going on—”

  Gears turned, as I analyzed the situation. “NO,” I said. “WE’RE GOING TO NEED YOU TO GET VECTOR SQUARED AWAY.” I whispered the next part into the vox. “You’re the on
ly one who has a shot at using that mind control device on him.”

  “Right, you could just pop me up and right back...”

  “AND DEPENDING ON WHAT ACE— WHAT OUR ALLY HIT, YOU MIGHT GET FRIED RIGHT OUT THE GATE. DIRE CAN’T LEAVE TO DO A SCOUTING RUN, BECAUSE IF SHE DOES THE BUBBLE COLLAPSES. NO, YOU TELEPORT OUT AND TAKE VECTOR. DIRE WILL GO SEE TO MATTERS HERSELF.”

  “Then whatever it is gets you, and we’re still screwed!” Alpha waved his hands.

  “NO YOU’RE NOT. YOU’LL BE CLEAR AND AWAY AND WITH SUFFICIENT RESOURCES TO DEPART THE COUNTRY.”

  “I’m liking the sound of that.” Vector said.

  “Shush,” Alpha told him. “Oy. Yeah, you’re the boss. I just want it on record that this is a bad idea.”

  “DULY NOTED. NOW GO.”

  They went, Alpha holding onto Vector, and the two fading out in flickers and flashes of light. He had to be within touch range to teleport Vector, that was a limitation of the system. Wasn’t a factor with Acertijo, the man had a transponder beacon on him.

  But he hadn’t activated it. Or couldn’t.

  For about the hundredth time I wished he’d just let me put a damn camera on him. But no, Acertijo didn’t want me watching him work. That had been an argument and a half, back in the Southwark flat.

  “Arrived okay?”

  “Yeah,” Alpha voxed back. “Vector’s not resisting. Imma tase him and slap him into the chair for reprogramming.”

  “Remember, we’re just trying to remove the triggers. That’s all.”

  “I give it about fifty-fifty odds.”

  “Alright.” I swallowed away my fears, and shut off the channel.

  Time to go save Manuel.

  I checked my mental coordinates against the map, arranged for a destination beyond the walls of the compound, and activated my own teleporter trip.

  Light flared, and glimmered...

  And I faded in right in the middle of a goddamn battle. An army, a small army of blue-skinned, bronze-armored things surged forward, pouring towards the compound from all directions, clambering over collapsed walls, dive-bombing the center of it with motherfucking dragon-worm-things that spat fire, and charging it on the backs of things that looked like a cross between elks and snakes.

  In the remnants of the compound, Queensguard, Leo, Lady Thrush, and Acertijo fought for their lives against shrieking, whooping forms that darted and danced and stabbed with gleaming spears, shot arrows from great bows of horn and sinew, and did their damnedest to drag the heroes down.

  A spear bounced off my armor. I backhanded its wielder without looking, and suddenly they noticed me in their midst. They screamed unintelligible words and parted like a blue and bronze sea, revealing a palanquin, held aloft by at least a dozen chained, muscular, nude men. A silvery feminine leg flashed from the curtains, found purchase as a slave cupped his hands in front of it. Another leg followed, and a woman wearing the least amount of costume I’d ever seen proceeded down, before hopping off onto the ground and turning to face me.

  “There you are, Doctor Dire,” her voice carried in the silence. Even the ones at the wall had stopped fighting. “Pride sends his regards.”

  Realization crashed through my mind, and I sighed. Of course he’d had her ready as cavalry. Ready to go reinforce whichever Sin I focused on first.

  “AND YOU WOULD BE LUST.”

  Her smile was all the answer I needed.

  CHAPTER 9: LUST MAKES FOOLS OF ALL MEN

  “I'd seen many things through my life, but this was the first time I'd seen an all-out war. The legions should have crushed her, crushed us. They didn't. But once magic came into the picture, well, things got rather, hmmm, dicey. I would have spared Lady Thrush the sight, that's my only true regret. It was bloody. She'll be a time getting over that.”

  --Mr. Leo, formerly of 'The Lion and the Unicorn' heroic duo

  There’s a bit of a disconnect in public opinion, when it comes to skimpy costumes. Especially when you’re talking about superheroes and supervillains. One third of the population gets upset that some of the costumes out there leave little to the imagination. Either because they have hang-ups, or think children will be corrupted, or some other reason that usually translates into barely-veiled jealousy. Another third of the population gets a little too into it, haunting costume paparazzi sites, surfing and trying to find nipple slips or jock flops, and ensuring that prostitutes and bordellos the world over do a brisk trade in cosplay nookie. The third part of the population, recognized that a lot of times the skimpy costumes were there to distract opponents and make enemies underestimate the wearer. Skimpy costumes were usually dangerous, not least because they were a challenge to the world, that the wearer neither needed nor cared about armor.

  My viewpoint lay solidly in the third part of the population, and even I had to concede that this lady just wasn’t wearing enough clothes. Oh, she looked fine enough, but the impracticality of it made me wince.

  “YOU ARE IN ENTIRELY THE WRONG PART OF THE WORLD FOR THAT OUTFIT.” Seriously, between the rain and the nettles and the chilly seasons, it had to be rough on her. Not to mention the lack of chest support, which judging from her frontal view, had to be hell on her back at the best of times.

  She laughed, half-covering her mouth with the back of her hand in a way I’d only seen in anime. I spared a glance from side to side as I did so. Come to think of it, her little army of demons or whatever gave off that sort of vibe. Reddish blood dripped from my gauntlet where I’d flung my would-be spearman aside, and I considered it until her laughter slowed and died.

  “Oh, I’m going to have fun with you. Now, little man, kneel.”

  She gestured at me, and her smile grew to a pearly-toothed sneer...

  ...that died, as I laughed, my own roaring electronic scream booming and echoing around the battlefield. The parts of her army nearest me shifted back, giving way against the wall of noise and I saw a few clutch at their helms, claw at their ears.

  Magic types had a reputation for being out of touch with current events. She’d just confirmed the truth of the stereotype.

  “YOU SAD LITTLE SACK OF SYCOPHANTIC SEDUCTION. DO YOU EVEN WATCH THE FUCKING NEWS?”

  “Oi, bimbo!” Lady Thrush shouted from behind me. “That’s a bird in there!”

  We both looked at her. She turned bright red and sank down to the ground, from where she’d been flying. Kid heroes, goddamned kid heroes, kill your moments every time if you don’t watch them.

  The rest of the heroes were simply watching, and damn them too. This was the real bad guy, right here! Idiots. At least Acertijo had an excuse, he couldn’t break cover.

  But for the rest of them, useless, one and all. Up to me to handle matters, as usual.

  “Well,” Lust said, trying to recapture the moment. “No matter. Women merely require a slight realignment. My servants can keep you entertained until you’re ready to be bound— what are you doing?”

  I’d knelt, but not to her. I’d noticed that the creature I’d felled had a gray cloak. I took it, dipped it in the spreading puddle of blood on the ground until it was red, and stood. As she stared, horrified, I draped it around my shoulders and riveted it in place with my tech gauntlet. I’d lost the previous cape down in the basement, after all. This would do until I could get a better replacement.

  Wind riffled the tall grass. The demon soldiers around me took another step backward, weapons pointed at me. Most trembled, quivering with tension... no, with fear.

  I looked to their mistress. “DIRE IS GOING TO WALK ACROSS THIS FIELD AND BEAT YOU UNTIL CANDY COMES OUT,” I told her. “ANY QUESTIONS?”

  “You, you, you...” she’d gone pale. “I have an army!”

  “THEY BLEED.” I flicked the blood from my gauntlet, and spattered the nearest bronze shield. The creature holding it hissed and backed away three steps. “THEY DIE.” I’d actually talked this situation over with Manuel. Apparently he wasn’t so harsh about killing nonhumans. A little hypocritical, I
thought, but whatever. I could work with that. “AND THEY ARE INSUFFICIENT TO STOP DIRE.”

  “Kill her!” Lust shrieked, pointing at me with one perfectly manicured hand. Her black hair twisted in the wind, as she fell back behind her bodyguards.

  For a second no one moved.

  Then I walked forward, at an unhurried pace, and everyone moved.

  They came for me with spears, and I scattered them with golden light and knocked them asunder. They came for me with swords that glowed white and the missiles did for them. They launched arrows at a speed no human could match and my forcefield flickered and flared like a pulsing sun, blinding the nearest and making them easy prey for a casual backhand or a quick blast. They came for me with those big fiery worm dragon things, and it turned out that my heat-seeking missiles had no problem locking on to those ginormous beasties.

  They died, and they died, and they died, and blue bodies, brass-armored corpses, and red blood covered the grass behind me as I walked.

  It wasn’t entirely a curbstomp. Some of them managed to get a strike or two in before they died, and a few slower arrows didn’t trigger the forcefield. They ripped up my outer layers a bit, but I could handle it. Rough calculations told me she hadn’t brought near enough of an army to stop me from my objective. I’d make it there with functionality to spare.

  “MAESTRO SENT YOU OUT HERE WITH NO INTEL, NO WAY TO TAKE HER OUT, AND NO HOPE. WHY DO YOU SERVE THE WRETCH?” I asked her, as I casually grabbed one of the braver spearmen, threw him at a dragon-thing, tangling its wings and sending it crashing into a cluster of archers.

  “Go to hell!” Lust stepped out and glared at me. “Maestro’s great!” She darted back before I could draw a bead on her.

  Those were exactly the words Vector had used. Same facial expression and everything. “You get that footage, Alpha?”

  “Oh yeah. This might help. I’m trying to talk the guy out of a bad headspace right now.”

  I smiled, and in the rear cam of my HUD, I saw the heroes charging forward. Finally! With them piling in, we could probably get to Lust before she managed to adjust her powers or whatever the hell it was she was doing.