DIRE:SINS (The Dire Saga Book 5)

by Andrew Seiple

  Plan B, then.

  They were skilled, they had good tactics; they had teamwork that put a lot of hero groups I’d fought against to shame. But there’s a certain amount of raw force that renders skill ineffective. And when combined with a little master-class kayfabe, well...

  I’d spent the last few years becoming Doctor Dire. Time to remind them of that fact.

  “FOOLS!” I dialed my particle cannons up to their widest spread, and blasted them straight down. The floor of the building below me disintegrated, and rubble sprayed out a few hundred feet. All but the Green Knight dove for cover. He simply lifted an armored elbow in front of his face, took the shrapnel, regenerated the hits and kept on coming.

  “CRETINS!” I drilled the Green Knight straight in the chest with a hundred-percent charge, spread out just enough to avoid killing him. He tumbled head over heels, bounced off the remnants of a few parked cars, and struggled to rise. Most of his chest was gone; he could survive that. I’d watched enough footage of him, and taken his measure with the shrapnel blast.

  “YOU DARE STAND AGAINST DIRE! THIS IS NOT HER DOING, BUT SHE SHALL FINISH THIS FIGHT. IN THE ONLY WAY POSSIBLE.”

  I hovered into the air, free of the barrage of annoying energy constructs. The Human Harrier was looping around, firing missiles that left smoking contrails as he corkscrewed toward me. I popped chaff, and sent a wave of micromissiles back at him. The explosions burst around me, rattling my forcefield but causing no damage. I put my hands down at an ideal arc and laughed, my voice echoing throughout Southwark, screeching and grinding. “HMHMHMHMH... HAHAHAHA!”

  And then a whole bunch of errors flickered across my HUD, as something blitzed me from behind. I blinked, checked the video feeds in a microsecond, and comprehended what had happened.

  Rumjack had tried to hit me in the head with his bottle.

  I twisted, got away from the surly ghost, leaving him in my dust. The bottle had passed straight through my headless helmet, an entire foot above my actual head. But that had been way, way too close.

  He stared at the bottle, stared back at me. Swayed a bit. Narrowed his eyes. “Ere! There ain’t no head in there ta be conked!”

  And Lord love ’em all, they jumped right to the wrong conclusion.

  “She’s a robot! This is a distraction!” Miss Maskelyne called, from the window of the office building she’d hidden in. Well, she was half-right. “Real Dire’s got to be in there, watching us and laughing while she does whatever her plan is!” Miss Maskelyne pointed toward my hovering forcefield-shielded workshop.

  Uh-oh.

  “That’s a bloomin’ robot?” Punching Judy shrieked. “Wot the hell’s the real one packin’, then?”

  “Doesn’t matter!” The Human Harrier called, his weapons readjusting as he hovered just out of my missile range. “You know what this means? We don’t have to hold back anymore!”

  “And neither do we!” Five pairs of metal heels hit the building rooftop nearest me, and I laughed in joy as five Dire-masked skeletal bots raised their faces to me, each mask marked with a different Greek letter.

  The cavalry was here, and just in time.

  “Okay everyone, just like the sims,” Alpha said, hopping to the ground and making a beeline for Punching Judy.

  “I’m sorry about this,” the one marked Beta said, moving to back him up. “I don’t want to hurt any of you.”

  The one marked Gamma started parkouring from building to building, scaling toward Maskelyne. “The leader’s mine. Delta, keep the Green Knight busy—”

  “Uh, Dire’s the boss, remember?” The Delta-marked one pointed at me. “Hi Mom! Can I be a girl, too?”

  “Just do as Gamma says,” The one marked Epsilon advised, as he went to back up Alpha. “You know how she gets.”

  Okay. I could work with this. Kind of weirded out about being called Mom. “DIRE SUPPOSES YOU LEFT THE HUMAN HARRIER FOR HER, THEN?”

  “Well duh, you’ve got the only flight capability here.” Delta shrugged. “Whoops!” She dodged a stream of pulse rounds from Harrier.

  “ETA for the teleport’s at three minutes, boss,” Alpha whispered through the vox. “Let’s give’em a dance.”

  “DON’T MIND IF SHE DOES!” I rocketed toward the Harrier, and through my telescopic sights, I could see his mouth peel back into a grin under his translucent lower faceplate.

  “Challenge accepted, Doc,” he boomed, as he pulled into a spiral. “Try not to crash too quickly!”

  I had analyzed the Human Harrier. I’d watched the footage, listened to the interviews, and even joined his goddamn fan club at one time. That had been a waste, it hadn’t netted me any insight that the Gridnet hadn’t been able to supply, but his autographed drinking mug had made a nice toothbrush holder, at least.

  But the point of it was this: he’d seemed like the weak link in the team. Not through armament, certainly not for his speed, but in his attitude. He was the maverick, the loose cannon of the team, the thrill-junkie. A common attitude among pilots the world over, and well, he qualified.

  Even in the face of devastation, among the ruins that Punching Judy thought were the graves of hundreds, he was wanting to test himself against me. He didn’t just want to win, he wanted to beat me.

  So I taunted, I teased, pretended to have a hard time dodging his tracers, let the forcefield soak some rounds it didn’t have to. I fired at him with the particle-beams on stutter, imitating his gatling guns. And through my telescopic sights I watched his mouth go from a grin, to puzzlement, to annoyance.

  “You bloody cu—” he finally roared, biting the last word off before he could finish.

  “CAREFUL THERE.” I paused, floating in midair as his latest round of bullets pattered from my shield. I waggled a finger at him. “CAN’T HAVE THE IDOL OF EVERY SIXTH-GRADER CURSING IN PUBLIC. SIMPLY NOT DONE.”

  We’d attracted attention by now. Newsvans at the edge of the periphery. They hadn’t had time to scramble choppers yet. The police were keeping people well back... and for a change, they didn’t have to try hard. The ruins made so far and the firepower we were slinging was discouraging. Also, British lookey-loos didn’t seem to be as suicidal as American bystanders. Just a thing, I supposed.

  I turned my back on him, a calculated insult. “OH, BY THE WAY—”

  I heard his jets amp up behind me, whirling around, cape flaring as the fool finally came in for the charge.

  Give him this, he had speed. He had range. No way in hell I could get a lock on him. But with my forcefield, there was no risk of him seriously damaging me from afar, not unless he deployed weapons that ran the risk of deadly collateral if they missed. Which left one option. Close-range.

  I could do close-range.

  “—CHECKMATE IN ONE.” I said, as I took his punch without flinching, lashed out faster than I’d moved before, and wrapped my arms around him in a bear hug.

  And I squeezed.

  Built for speed, yes. Sturdiness? Not so much. His engines were big, obvious flip-up jets, that burst in fiery sprays as my arms ripped through them. He yelled, pounded on my mask with augmented strength, but to no real effect. I kept on squeezing, hearing joints buckle, watching smoke burst out as servos gave.

  When I was done I dropped him, and he spiraled downward, popping a HALO chute as he went. Fire-suppression had done its job, kept him from any real harm, kept the chute from risking a stray spark.

  I could have shredded the chute, didn’t. He could probably survive the fall, it was only about eighty feet, but none of his team was nearby, and I didn’t want to risk any real harm to the guy.

  I turned my gaze instead to my... offspring. Well, Alpha’s offspring. Based on code and designs we’d whipped up together, of course. Siblings. Definitely his siblings.

  Damned if they weren’t working together like a close-knit family, I was gratified to see.

  Alpha and Beta were tag-teaming Punching Judy, harrying her like a pair of wolves as her chi-infused fists and feet left glowi
ng contrails in the air. Alpha was sans an arm and most of one shoulder, but he was still darting in and slapping at her, sparks flying from his electrified hand. He’d gone for taser mode, good. Beta, by comparison, was wielding a piece of jagged rebar like a quarterstaff. He fought defensively, but every time she turned from him he tried to trip her up, or catch her arm as she struck at Alpha. I didn’t see any damage on him, but I didn’t have time for a full inspection and he wasn’t properly in my friend-or-foe net yet.

  Delta was on the Green Knight. Literally, on him. She was choking him out, as he thrashed around the ruins, slamming into walls and rolling. Every now and then she’d shift to minimize harm or even let go to leap over a damaging obstacle. She seemed pretty banged up, probably at the edge of her limits, but that was fine. Destroying their android bodies would do nothing, so long as their server blades were intact.

  Then I looked over to Gamma, and of course that’s where our streak of good luck ended. Gamma was frozen in place, trapped by a Houdini-style series of padlocks, chains, and ropes all made from blue hardlight. Which meant—

  “They just breached the forcefields,” Epsilon spoke through the Vox. “Moving to engage.”

  “You’re back there?”

  “It seemed logical to keep one of us in reserve.”

  I nodded, as I flew back to the workshop at full-speed. The forcefields rushed up at me...

  ...and flickered, let me through without a hiccup. Never build a bunker that doesn’t let you enter or leave. Seen a lot of good villains hoisted by their own petard, that way.

  In the middle of the workshop, Miss Maskelyne was frantically punching at one of my interface consoles, teeth gritted as she hacked through my encryption. Vector was down, seemingly unconscious. Khalid fought a delaying action against Rumjack, who was chasing him over and around the furniture. Khalid had scrounged up a sword from gods-knew-where, but it passed right through the dead seaman without any real effect.

  To hurt a ghost, you needed something special. Fortunately, I’d studied his particular weakness, as well. “JANISSARY!” I called, popping open a utility compartment and reaching within—

  —only to freeze, as Maskelyne turned and hit me with something that sent my HUD straight to blurred and chaotic pixels. Blinded, and as I tried to move my arms, I found that my controls were somewhat scrambled as well. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I chanted to myself as I started a fast-reboot and diagnostic. She’d hit me with a short-range visual virus. It wouldn’t keep me down for long, but for one vital instant I was vulnerable.

  She didn’t waste time. An impact against my chest, and I toppled, rocking in the harness. Another impact, and my viewscreen cleared, to show her standing over me, striking at me with a blue hardlight cane, sending layers of armor flying with each hit. “You’re pretty resilient for a robot!” she said, sending a spray of gel spattering against the wall.

  “And you’re rather short-sighted for a human.” Epsilon said.

  “Look out, Masky!” Rumjack yelled... too late, as Alpha’s sibling shot her in the back with one of my mega-tasers. The magician-themed hero jerked and jittered and sparked, trapped as he applied the volts. I clambered to my feet, cursing at the damage readouts.

  “Oi! Stop urtin’ her!” Rumjack reached down towards a chair, and pulled a ghostly copy of it from the physical object.

  Then he hucked it at us.

  It passed right through Epsilon, struck Miss Maskelyne and knocked her free of the current—

  —and clipped me, spinning me around in the harness. The body armor moved with me, and I fell down again.

  “Not a robot after all? Well then!” Rumjack rolled up his sleeves. Khalid’s sword swiped through him again. “Looks like I found yer weakness, missy!”

  “THAT MAKES TWO OF US. JANISSARY! SLICE!”

  I drew a softball-sized glass sphere from my utility compartment, and tossed it over to Khalid. He obeyed, and bisected the glass globe...

  ...spraying water everywhere.

  Some got on Rumjack, and didn’t go through him. “Uh-oh.”

  Khalid’s next strike took his head. Cleanly severed it flopped to the floor, and fell through, cursing up a storm throughout. The rest of Rumjack’s body flailed around blindly, but Khalid kept on swinging, and more and more fell away with each strike. “What is this?” He called.

  “SEA WATER. JUST SEA WATER.”

  “Ah. He died by drowning, then.”

  “NO CLUE. BUT MAGOS MYSTERIUM USED IT AGAINST HIM FOUR YEARS BACK.”

  “Many ghosts are affected so, harmed by the things that killed them in life. He will recover.”

  “COUNTING ON THAT. AS TO RECOVERING...” I turned my attention back to Miss Maskelyne. She was attempting to crawl across the floor, hardlight constructs fallen behind her, slowly dissipating into errant photons. “...YOU CAN DO THAT OUTSIDE,” I decided. I hauled her up by the neck of her suit jacket, and exited the forcefield.

  “FOR THE RECORD, NOT THAT YOU’LL BELIEVE HER, THIS EXPLOSION WAS NOT DIRE’S DOING. BUT THE SAFEGUARDS THAT SAVED EVERYONE HERE? THOSE WERE DIRE’S DOING.”

  She garbled something back at me. Probably some variation of ‘you’ll never get away with it.’

  I looked around. “Olly olly oxen free, kids. Come on back, it’s time to leave.”

  “Already back in base, boss,” Alpha whispered. “Gonna need a new body. Judy did for my old one and she’s loose.” I got visual on Alpha’s shattered remnants, and the harlequin-themed martial artist. She took one look at me and headed my way, with a look of utter horror. I glanced beyond her, saw Delta running from the Green Knight, and Beta snapping Gamma free of her hard-light chains. The Human Harrier was off sheltered next to a couple of blown-over cars, unloading at Delta whenever he had a clear shot.

  And more importantly, every camera I could see was pointing directly at me. Perfect. I eyed Punching Judy, did some quick math, and gave her a few seconds before I raised Miss Maskelyne above me.

  “AND SO YOUR HEROES FALL!”

  I threw her down, then turned my back and drifted serenely back to the workshop, arms folded. Around me, I tracked my still-moving minions as they hopped, leaped, and scampered up the surrounding buildings to dive one by one into the forcefield and through.

  I waited just long enough to confirm that Punching Judy was in position to save Maskelyne, then followed my androids in. “Punch it!” I voxed to Alpha, as I held still. This was going to be a rough transition, no help for it...

  ...and with the shimmering lights, came a twisting, vibrating sense of movement, and some rolling nausea. I choked it down, rode it out. When I opened my eyes Khalid was sitting with his head in his hands, muttering silent curses.

  Vector, for his part, was curled on the floor and hurling for all he was worth. “Ack! Oh... ugh, that was... what was that?”

  “JUST PLAYING DEAD? GOOD.” I decanted from the armor, knees wobbling as I stood free, sweat dripping down every part of me. “Alpha, take charge. No lights, no viewscreens of the facility or the outside, keep all visual feed patched into your own sensors, and no displays. We’re up against a clairvoyant, no sense in giving him an easy fix on us.”

  “Done. You need to...”

  “Yeah, she knows. Take four hours, everyone. Been a long day, and it’ll only get harder from here.” Khalid and Vector started to ask questions, but I ignored them, dragged my tired ass upstairs.

  The bedroom was where I’d left it, even if the roof was gone, replaced by concrete and pipes of the underground vault I’d kept as a safehouse and fallback point. I brushed debris from the blankets and collapsed into bed without disrobing.

  If real life had been a rom com I might have stared longingly at the empty spot next to me and felt all sorts of angst and gloom because my boyfriend wasn’t there. But I was still pissed at him. It had been a mostly shitty day, and I was fucking wiped. So I took a pass on the moody teenager stuff and just fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 13: A MEETING OF THE MINDS
/>   “Yeah, you spend like eighty percent of your time plotting, and like twenty percent DOING. Supervillainy's got a lot of similarities to middle management in the wageslave office of your choice.”

  --Mister Malevolent, retired villain and costume consultant

  Okay, so it hurt a bit when I woke up to a cold bed, felt around for Manuel, then remembered what had happened yesterday. Technically yesterday, even if it was somewhere in the wee hours of the morning. Gods, I was tired.

  Tired and on the back foot. As usual, my mind had sorted matters as I slept, and come up with certain realizations that had escaped me in the heat of the moment.

  Metal knuckles rapped on the door. “Boss?”

  “Alpha?” I rolled over and stared at the open doorway, and the android leaning against it. “Got yourself a new shell?”

  “We’ve got enough in storage here that I figured it was fine. You good to go, or you wanna hit the snooze button?”

  I lay there and looked up at the place the ceiling wasn’t. The forcefield hadn’t covered the roof when the building exploded around our apartment. The rough concrete and pipes could belong to any underground facility in Britain, so I wasn’t too concerned about Sloth catching a glimpse of them.

  I still felt like hell.

  “It would be nice, to roll over and go back to sleep. But...” I chewed my lip. “No. There’s things to discuss, and we’ll have to do it promptly and properly, or else our situation gets worse. After that, then it’ll be time to move.”

  “No rest for the wicked,” Alpha sighed. “I don’t get tired, and you’re making me tired just looking at you.” He shook his head. “Minion-ing is tough.”

  “Well, now you’ve got some others to spread the burden around to.”

  “Pssh. Riding herd on that bunch is more work.”