Unfortunately, she seemed to realize the same thing. I saw her rise up on top of the palanquin, snapped off a shot toward her, but her slaves swayed, moving her out of the way. Then two more of the fire wyrms were on me, and I lost time killing them. She cupped her hands and yelled.
“Men! Turn on your allies!” Her voice had that wibbly feel to it, and a wave of... something, passed through my mind. Rough magic, that, whatever it was. She followed it up with words in a language I didn’t know.
And sure enough, that stopped the heroes. I spared them a glance in between battling phalanxes, and saw Leo tearing at Miss Maskelyne, with a frightened Lady Thrush holding him back, as the Green Knight and Punching Judy danced a deadly dance. She didn’t hold back, hands glowing with chi as she punched holes in his bark-covered form, holes that sealed about as fast as she made them.
I had just a second to realize that I didn’t see Acertijo, and then he was on me. Realization slammed into me about as he did, hitting low and aiming for the joints in my knees, trying to tumble me over.
He damn near succeeded. I staggered, recovered, and his rapier licked out, stabbing for the joints and the gouges the demons had left in my armor.
Shit. Of all the times for an inconvenient mind-control...
“Oh-ho! What’s this!” Lust called out across the battlefield. “That’s one suspicion confirmed. And oh, the chains of desire I see between you... you more than him, mind. Always fun when lovers kill each oth— ack!”
She ducked the blast I sent at her head. But Acertijo used the opportunity to slip in, and dig his rapier through a spear-scratch, into the lower layers. With a pop, blue gel spurted free, and one of my yellow damage indicators flickered into life, on the left-hand side of my HUD. I flexed my arm and snapped the rapier, but he somersaulted back before I could grab him.
“Come on man, snap out of it,” I whispered into the vox. “This is just embarrassing.”
He danced around me, darting back and forth, looking for an opportunity. No response. No hope or help there.
“Such a fine champion should have a proper blade!” Lust called, and followed it up with orders in that weird tongue again. One of her demon soldiers tossed him a glowy sword, and he caught it, hilt-first, with the ease of a practiced duelist.
That was a problem. Those things could hurt me. And I couldn’t return the favor, without hurting Acertijo. A leaden feeling filled my gut, but I fought it down. We both knew the score, going into this. We both knew we’d have to make sacrifices, going up against Maestro. I’d make it up to him afterward, and maybe he’d understand. Maybe.
I leveled my gauntlets at him, and unleashed both particle beams at thirty-percent charge. I’d start light, try to avoid any permanent damage.
Five seconds later, I upped them to fifty percent.
Ten seconds later I was scrambling backward, damage warnings flaring.
Twenty seconds later, I was realizing just how much trouble my hubris had gotten me into.
This was what Acertijo did. His fighting style was built completely around avoidance and dirty fighting. The man was always going up against foes who were bigger, stronger, and tougher. He trained obsessively to avoid, evade, and anticipate incoming hits, and deal out as much as he could in return to the weak points of hard targets. Pair that with some kind of magical bullshit sword that could cut through my armor a bit at a time, and the inescapable and galling conclusion was plain to both of us.
I was losing.
I kicked in the gravitics, darted upwards to get a breather, and he curled himself, leaped six feet into the goddamn air, and swung the blade double-handed in a wide arc. I gasped as it sheered a chunk out of the bottom of my boot... and the rightmost gravitic thruster.
I fell from the sky, wincing as I rattled in my harness, thanking the heavens that I’d installed impact gel cushioning. Desperate, I called up the forcefield and set it to solid, putting it a foot around myself. Just in time too, as he was across and after me and slashing down with relentless strength. My field flared again and again, hard light holding back mystical energies as I saw the demons around us peel back. They were cheering, watching the show like a gladiatorial exhibition from older days.
I watched the field’s output, and sighed. Immovable object was winning against irresistible force, for the minute at least. But I was stuck, unable to move until I dispersed the field to a more diffused setting. Which I couldn’t do with Acertijo hacking at me.
I ran through my options. Not many good nonlethal ones. I’d have to touch him to use the taser, and his blade was bronze. Not very conductive. Couldn’t give him a hit and zap him that way. I didn’t have any concussion missiles left, thanks to taking on the army. Couldn’t hit him with a particle beam, he was too dodgy. Even at widest spread, I’d need some distraction, or something to give me an edge if I wanted a prayer at landing a shot.
I wasn’t packing anything else non-lethal enough to take him down without risking death. And I wasn’t willing to make that sacrifice. I’d lost enough friends, in the few years that I could recall. Be damned if I’d lose my first boyfriend like this.
Lust. Lust was the key, here. I didn’t know much about magic, but I doubted that a quick little mind control zotz like what she whipped out was very strong on the mojo-meter.
Her laugh rolled across the battlefield again, snooty and spoiled, and I gritted my teeth. I barely knew her, and I hated her.
And that gave me an idea. “Alpha? Dire’s going to need to talk to Vector.”
“What? I just got him through the first wave of triggers! He’s like half-deprogrammed. I think. This is some screwy stuff.”
“Do it. We can go and un-zap the rest of him later.”
“Well, you’re the boss. Gimme a bit.”
The seconds crawled, and I didn’t waste them. I couldn’t do much to Acertijo, or attack anyone else with the forcefield configured like this, but I could and did reroute damaged functionality to redundant circuitry. This suit didn’t have the repair-drone swarms that my previous one had, but it had a few internal mechanisms that allowed rudimentary patching.
Twenty-three seconds passed, in all, before Vector got on the vox. He sounded groggy, and I sympathized. Rough days were no fun, even when I was the one delivering them. “What the hell do you want from me now?”
“Lust,” I said.
“Okay, number one, who the hell is this and if you want that I’m not in much of a shape to help you out there, lady.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “This is Dire, unmodulated. She’s fighting Lust. Is Lust as much of an asshole to you as she is to her enemies?”
“Huh. Holy shit, you actually sound normal. That’s going to help with my therapy bills, maybe. But yeah, Lust is a bitch. Stupid fucking magic half-fae magical girl who can make hormones dance with a gesture. Doesn’t make any scientific sense!”
“Dire knows, believe her, she knows. So how do you unbind some poor male sunovabitch who she’s bound?”
“Why should I tell you that?”
“Alpha, tear his thumbs off.”
“Whoa whoa whoa no—”
“We’ve got no time to dick around here. There’s a hero’s life on the line.”
“You care about that? Oh hey, let go of my hands! No, wait!”
“Hold off, Alpha,” I instructed. “Sorry for the rough treatment, but she’d like to take the guy out non-lethally and he’s not returning the favor. You know how it is.”
A bit of silence. “Yeah,” he said, voice heavy. “Yeah I do. I wish I didn’t.”
Heroes and villains had developed a dichotomy, as the social order sought to integrate superpowered people and bright costumes into the fabric of reality. Rules had developed, written and unwritten. Heroes don’t kill... except that wasn’t precisely true. So long as a hero didn’t kill civilians or other heroes, the occasional accident against a villain is overlooked. And if the target is a killer themselves, then the ‘accident’ is rarely scrutinized. And the r
ules said nothing about maiming or permanent injuries, or casual use of potentially lethal force. Most of the heroes who’d been in the business for a while try to reign in the hotheads, but don’t always succeed. From what I’d studied, the nineties had been the last example of that; dark heroes everywhere, grim crimefighters who didn’t care about collateral... and messy business all around.
On the villain side, you pretty much had to use kid gloves against heroes. If you didn’t, then you’d get branded a killer or a butcher, and the reasonable heroes would turn a blind eye as the more brutal heroes hunted you down. It was by no means an equitable situation, but for the moment, it was something we all had to work around. And on the whole, it did lead to fewer fatalities or career-ending injuries than the alternative.
“So tell Dire the secret,” I voxed. “How do you break Lust’s charm spell or whatever fucking Dankness and Dragons effect she’s throwing around here?”
“I think it’s more like a suggestion spell, if you want to get technical about it. Uh... well, I did do some research on her, mainly because I trusted her about as much as a polecat in heat.”
“Going to assume that means not very.”
“Pretty much. Okay. She’s got fae magic and shit. True names are a big thing, there, from what the experts I’ve talked to tell me. Do you know the hero’s real name?”
“Yes!”
“Good one. Okay, use it and try to talk him down. And good luck.”
“Cool, thanks. Alpha, get his head de-scrambled the rest of the way. Going to wrap this up shortly.”
“Wait, let’s talk about—”
I clicked over to Acertijo’s channel. “Manuel Dijimenez.”
He flinched backward, reached a hand up under his mask, and I heard static over the vox as he yanked his earbud free.
Well okay, that was an encouraging reaction. I straightened up and held out a hand, palm up. “FIGHT THIS. THIS ISN’T YOU.”
He stood there, goggles locked on me, sword drawn back, point aimed right for my chest. Right at where my head really was, in the suit. For the first time, I regretted telling him about that little trick.
Fuck, no help for it. With the vox down I’d have to say it out loud. “MANUEL DIJIMENEZ. BREAK FREE OF HER CHARM! FIGHT THE COMPULSION!”
The battlefield stilled. The heroes still squabbled in the back, but they were out of it. The demon soldiers turned, looking from me to Acertijo.
Acertijo shook.
The tip of the sword dipped down. And he dropped it, to the bloody grass, as he clutched his head.
I turned my attention to Lust, as I let the forcefield fade, building up a massive blast. “TIME TO FINISH THIS”
“I quite agree,” Lust purred. “Now, my new pet.”
And Acertijo moved, fast and in my peripheral vision, stomping the hilt of the fallen sword and kicking it up to his hands, as he lunged towards me.
I half-turned toward him, and that’s all that saved me. With the force of his weight behind it the blade dug into the most severe of the gashes, sending sparks flying as it cleaved through layer after layer. Red damage reports filled my HUD and I screamed, and the sword burst through the harness, narrowly missing my eye.
A cold line across my left temple. Pain, and wetness running down onto my ear.
He’d cut me.
Colder still was the realization that I’d failed, and the knowledge why I’d failed.
He’d lied to me. Acertijo had lied to me. Manuel Dijimenez wasn’t his true name.
Señor Acertijo had never trusted me enough to tell me his real name.
I brought my arm around, sparking and whining as the servos ground, working through the catastrophic damage my armor had just taken, and I unleashed upon him the blast I’d charged up for Lust. He flew back, crumpled on the ground, and didn’t move. Alive, dead, I was beyond caring as I got my shaking gauntlet around the hilt, grasped the sword, and tore it free from the armor.
I stared at it, blood running down the blade. My blood. Fuck that, I remembered I was up against a magician and dropped the blade, before disintegrating it with a tight burst, blood and all.
Then I turned back to Lust. “NOW,” I roared, my chest burning with rage, my throat choked and tears unshed bubbling up under my eyes, “WHERE WERE WE?”
“Oh, he’s a keeper all right,” Lust chuckled. “Not for you, but for me, I think. Since you seem to enjoy swordfights so much, I think I’ll let my other toy finish you off. I’m getting bored of him anyway.” She snapped her fingers and faded back into the crowd of her guards, as they parted to let a short figure through.
This one was not a demon. It was shorter than I stood when unarmored, clad in a green tunic and pants, with a bloodstained white hooded overcoat. A leather bandolier of vials striped diagonally across the tunic, and his black boots bore him forward, inexorably, to where I stood on the field. His sword was curved, and his face bore a scowling silver mask that reminded me of my own. But instead of empty eye sockets his own peered out from behind the mask, glazed and full of pain.
And I knew him. I straightened up as he approached, bringing the sword up, and pulling a vial from his bandolier with his free hand.
“HELLO JANISSARY. DIDN’T EXPECT TO SEE YOU HERE.”
He stopped, just for a second. I leaned into him, and took the second biggest gamble I’d taken today. “IS THIS WHAT GOD WANTS OF YOU, KHALID BASARAN?” He dropped the sword, dropped the vial onto the soft grass, and clapped his hands to his head. I took that as a good sign. “FIGHT IT! KHALID! BREAK FREE OF THE SPELL!”
The Janissary screamed, wrenched the mask from his face, and collapsed.
“You total bitch!” Lust shrieked. “You think this will help you? I’ve finished calibrating the spell for women now, and you—”
I analyzed the tactical possibilities, weighed the risks, came to a horrible conclusion, and knew I couldn’t stay. I grabbed Khalid, and triggered the emergency teleporter. The world faded out in a burst of light before she could finish her sentence or throw any spells my way.
We’d taken down Envy, but Lust had won the field. And oh gods, the cost.
CHAPTER 10: CATCHING UP WITH OLD FRIENDS
“One asks, sometimes, what I do with the time in between crises. I answer, quite honestly, that there is never any time between crises. There are simply crises occurring that one does not always see at the time they happen.”
--Suspected metahuman known as the Last Janissary, during a discussion with MRB agent Rook
I faded in to the middle of the workshop, and let the Janissary fall to the floor. Alpha looked up from a converted chair that had electronics hanging from every part of it. Our spare television had gone into the machinery, and the screen showed a human brain, with glaring red spots through it.
“In the fucking amygdala, too?” Vector was the chair’s occupant, and he was fiddling with a video game controller, shifting the view around the dots, analyzing them and twiddling buttons. “No wonder I feel so angry!”
I looked at Alpha. “YOU’RE LETTING HIM DEPROGRAM HIS OWN BRAIN?”
“He’s better at it than I am.” Alpha spread his arms. “Whoa, you look like you tried to french kiss a woodchipper and it went in for second base. And who the hell is that?”
“THE NEXT CANDIDATE FOR THE CHAIR. DID YOUR MAKER EVER MENTION THE LAST JANISSARY?”
Alpha’s arms fell to his side. “That’s him?” He squatted down. “Thought he’d be taller.”
“JUDGE HIM BY HIS SIZE, DO YOU?”
Vector snorted, then winced as the machines beeped. “Ow. Don’t make me laugh when I’m poking my brain.”
“Okay. I’ll get him strapped down until Vector’s done. So what’s the plan to rescue Acertijo?”
“HIS TRANSPONDER. PULL HIM THROUGH.”
Alpha tilted his head. “Shit. Sorry, no can do. He just went off the grid.”
“HOW?”
“No idea.”
The tension drained from me, and with the release c
ame anger. Anger at betrayal.
“How are we gonna save Man—” he shot a glance at Vector.
“DON’T BOTHER.”
“Boss?”
“HIS NAME’S NOT MANUEL DIJIMENEZ.”
“What?”
“HE LIED. HE LIED TO DIRE ABOUT HIS— ABOUT HIS FUCKING NAME.”
“Oh. Oh shit.”
The emotions I’d been holding at bay during the battle swooped in, and I shut off the armor feedback, let my body tremble in the harness. I cried, freely, behind my mask. I cried because I’d trusted him, and he hadn’t trusted me. I cried because I’d left him behind to gods knew what sort of torture and pain and I couldn’t trust myself enough to say that his betrayal hadn’t been a factor. I didn’t think I could have saved him, not before Lust cast her spell on me. But there would always be that doubt in my heart.
It had been a twelve-percent chance in the end, that was my analysis. Heroes could get away with those sorts of odds. Me, with my shitty luck? No. And with heroes nearby, my standard anti-mind-control measures wouldn’t work. Too much chance of collateral.
Heroes nearby. That was my big hope. Ironic, and aggravating, though it was. Queensguard were too big, too noticeable for Lust to enslave like she had apparently managed with Khalid. Hopefully they’d prevent her from quietly disposing of Acertijo until I could find a way to save him.
After a minute, I pulled myself together. The side of my head was throbbing like a fucker, and the dampness on my ear had spread down my neck. Time to do something about that. I knelt and popped the armor release, and Alpha immediately ran over. “Oh shit!”
“Looks worse than it is,” I told him, straightening up. “Probably.”
“So this is you?” Vector asked, glancing at me. The machinery beeped again. “Ow! Shit! Why the hell does this even hurt? I don’t have anything in my brain that’s capable of registering pain!”
“That fits Dire’s design principles,” I told him, pulling my hair aside while Alpha went and got the first aid kit. “Doing stupid stuff gets you hurt.”
DIRE:SINS (The Dire Saga Book 5) Page 11