DIRE:SINS (The Dire Saga Book 5)

by Andrew Seiple

  I ignored him and activated the vox. “Epsilon? Sending you visual. Talk to Maskelyne, tell Dire who these are. Well, not Thrush. Dire knows her already.”

  “I figured. Give me ten seconds.”

  I did. Full evasive, letting the forcefield tank the lightning, and flying in and around the bridge to dodge the physical types. The telekinetic grabbed me a few times with the cables, but never so many that I couldn’t shred them without breaking stride. And in fifteen seconds, Epsilon got back to me. “Stormcaller: Dump him into water. Rue Britannia’s the telekinetic, she’s got zero defense to energy. Hadrian the Wall is the real threat, about as sturdy as you are, no known weaknesses.”

  “OH MAESTRO,” I chortled. “WHAT DOES IT MATTER HOW YOU’VE PROGRAMMED THEM, IF THEY FALL SO EASILY? CHECK IN THREE.”

  One! I went into a barrel roll around Lady Thrush, maneuvered until Stormcaller was right where I wanted him, then blasted Rue Britannia. She fell like a sack of potatoes, smacked into Stormcaller, and both of them tumbled into the river. “ONE!”

  Then my cape ripped free of my back as Lady Thrush used my inactivity to close with me. Tearaway cape! Absolutely essential when you’re up against physical heroes, too many ways it can be used against you otherwise. Without looking I pushed a hand over my shoulder, and squirted the knockout mist I’d gotten from Vector into her face. On my rear sensors, I tracked her fall. “TWO!” She was vulnerable to inhaled toxins, I’d found that out in our first encounter. As she fell I gave her a blast, to knock her onto land, so she didn’t drown in the river. Technically it was two and a half, but I let it slide.

  My hasty adjustment cost me, as Hadrian the Wall caught up, finally. Slower than Thrush, but stronger, he simply grabbed my head between his hands and squeezed. Metal groaned, ceramic started to crack...

  “THREE!”

  My knee caught him about five inches south of his belt buckle, and the impact BOOMed out across the city, shattering the windows set into the tower bridge with its force. Hadrian’s eyes went wide, and he let go of my helmet, to fall boneless toward the bridge below.

  I knew how much punishment I could take. And I knew he’d live. Would have a pretty lousy time pissing for a while, and might need help walking, but he’d live.

  “CHECK—” I turned...

  ...and found six more flyers behind me. “HRM.”

  Maestro laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Below me, I saw black SUV’s rolling up on either shore, and black-suited mooks spilling out, setting up tripod-mounted guns and heavier artillery. “No, not three! Four, five through ten, and pretty much the rest of London! Haven’t you got it through your thick skull yet? This is my city. My empire. My toys. And I don’t care how many I break on you and your little friends.”

  I jerked my head upright, as if I was surprised.

  “Oh yes, don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing! They’re about to have their own little playmates in five, four, three... oh, just kill her you lot.”

  The fliers swooped in upon me, as his men sprayed bullets and rockets in my general direction.

  “Progress?” I whispered into the vox, while I fought for my life.

  “Almost finished,” Epsilon replied.

  “We’ll need three minutes,” Beta said.

  “Hitting resistance!” Gamma called “Nothing we can’t handle.”

  I nodded, and then there was no more time, as I fought in the air until they knocked me from the sky. I fought on the ground, hovering and dashing from SUV to SUV, leaving trails of broken mooks and flaming vehicles behind. Then the ground-bound metahumans caught up to me. I fought until my forcefield failed, and the structural integrity of my armor started to go, bit by bit. This was the dicey part, the riskiest bit of the entire operation, which was why I had chosen it for myself.

  I am Dire. I will not fail. Not while I still draw breath. And besides, I knew the Maestro. Knew how he worked, how he thought. How to exploit that.

  And finally, amidst the gleaming offices of Fenchurch Street, with windows now broken beyond repair and mounds of glass falling from the sky, with my armor at twenty percent and my HUD fizzling and sparking around me, with my limbs sore even through the impact gel and my mask a shattered wreck upon its decoy head, the Maestro spoke once more. “All right, back off from her for a minute.”

  I panted, crouched low, one arm over a gouge that revealed sparking circuitry, other hand out flat, ready to blast down my assailants. I looked to the left and right, surveying the semi-circle around me. I’d disabled about half of my opponents, I thought, but more kept arriving. Like most major metropolises, London had heroes and villains out of proportion to its population. I wagered I’d settled the hash of about a third of them. “He’s getting ready to gloat,” I voxed. “Beta?”

  “We’re online.”

  I let out a sigh of relief, and straightened up, staring at my frozen attackers. Movement from the rear and two black-suited men emerged, carrying a briefcase of a sort I’d seen before. They squatted down in front of me perhaps forty feet away, and cracked it open as a holograph fuzzed, revealing the Maestro’s upper half, wearing a bathrobe, and his ever-present bowler hat. He shook back untidy blonde curls, and raised a glass of wine in my general direction. “Ah, the woman of the hour!”

  “AH, THE DIPSHIT OF THE MILLENIUM.”

  “Come come, Doctor. There comes a point where bravado becomes useless.”

  “AGREED. THIS IS FUTILE.”

  Maestro M cocked a pencil-thin eyebrow at me, and took a sip of his drink. “So you see reason after all? Going to teleport off to someplace you imagine to be safe? Go ahead, try it.” He grinned, widely. “See. What. Happens.”

  “HM? OH NO, SHE’S NOT GOING ANYWHERE.” I straightened up. “YOU OPERATE IN SUCH A MANNER THAT TIME IS ON YOUR SIDE, NORMALLY. AND WHEN YOU MEET HEROES THAT CHALLENGE THAT SCENARIO, YOU ESCALATE TO DRIVE OFF YOUR ATTACKER, THEN REARRANGE MATTERS TO MAKE THINGS MORE DIFFICULT FOR THEM THE NEXT TIME THEY COME FOR YOU.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re starting to bore me, Doctor. You do know you’ll live through this, yes? Can you imagine what’s going to happen to you, once you’re under my thumb? Do you know how bad it’s going to get? I do. And I’ll tell you this for free; it’ll get worse the more you bore me. So you’d best practice some quality bants, and muster some sort of entertainment, or—” he glanced offscreen. “What the fuck?”

  “Got it!” Alpha cheered in my ear.

  “THAT WOULD BE YOUR LINE TO THE NUCLEAR SUBS GOING DOWN,” I said, smiling. “NOT THAT WE COULDN’T COUNTER THOSE IF THEY GOT LAUNCHED, BUT DIRE FIGURED THE HEROES NEEDED SOMETHING TO KEEP THEM BUSY.” Talking out of my ass there, but hopefully he’d buy it.

  “Tch. So you played the sacrificial lamb. Got me monologuing! Sly cunt.”

  “THERE’S THAT WORD AGAIN.” I stood up, held my arms out wide. “SHE TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT WORD.”

  “Boring. Minions, kill—”

  “NOW!”

  Light flickered around me, glimmered... and HUDs went from red to green, as my viewscreen shifted and an undamaged one replaced it.

  I lifted a now whole gauntlet and studied it. “Teleportation successful,” Beta confirmed.

  “Good job. Now move, he’s got something prepared,” I told him, then turned on external speakers again.

  “YOU ENJOY PLAYING THE ESCALATION GAME, MAESTRO, AND YOU’RE GOOD FOR AN AMATEUR. BUT DIRE?” I jetted into the air, raining down particle beams at full blast, scattering my unprepared foes like chaff. “DIRE PLAYED THIS GAME WITH CRUSADER, YOU MEWLING WHELP! AND SHE FUCKING WON!”

  “It doesn’t matter!” he howled from the screen, as his minions dropped it and fled. “I have more! I always have more toys! And if I can’t kill you, then I’ll rip your allies and friends to pieces! The whole city’s awake now, and the mobs are hitting the streets! You’ll have to slaughter innocents or die!”

  “YES, ABOUT THAT.” I voxed Delta. “Ready for your moment of glory?”

  “Oo
oooooo yeah!”

  “SHE HAS AN ARMY TOO.” I popped open my wristguard and pushed a big, glowy red button. It didn’t actually do anything but click and beep, Delta was the one who had synched everything up. But presentation is everything, really.

  From hundreds of locations around London, from forgotten storage lockers to crawlspaces inside empty apartments, several hundred metal android shells went online. Less than a second later Delta synched up with each and every one of them, forking her persona over and over again to assume direct control.

  And then they moved.

  I received reports as I fought the heroes and villains and minions, tanking bullets and dodging rockets, beating up clockwork unicorns and the inventor who made them, punching out paragons and trading blasts with energy controllers. While I fought another third of London’s metahumans, Delta’s drones slipped out and found the mobs as they formed. And they tackled them head on.

  Fast, sturdy, stronger than humans by a factor of three and equipped with any number of nonlethal takedown devices, they sowed panic all out of proportion to their number. With no need to see in the darkened corners of the city, they used hit-and-run tactics to thin the herd, get the angry mindzapped minions shouting and attacking the darkness and each other, and generally cause chaos.

  Wasn’t perfect. For every few hundred people they put out of commission an android fell, cornered or caught by a lucky shot or strike, but that was fine. They were just buying me time until the last members of our team reported in.

  A distant explosion. “You were right to tell us to move,” Beta told me over the vox. “Need us to set up again?”

  I considered. “No. He’s down to the lower-level metas. They aren’t a significant challenge. Pack it in, and get over to the Tower for Stage Three.”

  “On that, we’re about done,” Alpha said. “Already got responders on the continent working to restore matters, but we’ve got at least a ten-minute window.”

  “Good!” I flew down to scoop up a villain whose schtick seemed to be making duplicates of himself every time he got hit, and carried him out to the Thames. I dropped him in, and finished off the rest of my pursuit with a barrage of concussion missiles. The towers of the Tower Bridge groaned and listed to the side, twisted ruins as glass and gears rained down into the river below, and the bridge warped. My laughter echoed over all... I didn’t find it particularly funny, but one had to keep up appearances, after all. It was the custom around here.

  “That just leaves one. Gamma?”

  “They say yes. Not that I can tell.”

  “Perfect! Let’s end this. Stage Three, everyone.”

  I landed, my restored cape fluttering in the thermals of the ruined street around me, as I walked toward the tower gate. A slight hum and a shift of lights to my right, and Miss Maskelyne, Alpha, Epsilon, and the Green Knight teleported in at my side, matching my pace without skipping a beat. To my left, shadows darkened, and Gamma, Lust, Khalid, and Rumjack oozed out of a crooked doorway that definitely didn’t go to where they had come from. After a moment they fell into step as well.

  When we were almost to the gate, a faint rattling noise came from above, and Delta hit the ground behind me, followed by Punching Judy and the Human Harrier. Then a flicker and Beta and Vector teleported in.

  Just one missing, but that was fine. I knew he was where he needed to be. Aggravating though he was, he never missed his cues.

  I imagine it must have looked pretty badass, if anyone could have seen it.

  And then, as usual, a hero had to go and fuck up the perfect moment.

  A scream of pure rage rose behind me, and I turned to see a newly-conscious Lady Thrush zooming at me, fists outstretched in a classic paragon double-punch. Mister Leo hung from her neck, whether trying to apply a chokehold or clinging for dear life I couldn’t tell.

  “YOU ARE KIDDING,” I managed, before she was upon me. I swirled my cape like a matador and she whipped past, turned, and started another run...

  “Enough of this,” Lust snarled, and snapped out a hand. Again came that pulse, that I’d felt back in faerie, and Lady Thrush hit the street, plowed up a few yards of pavement before she came to a rest. Leo flipped up and surfed her back until she stopped, then lifted her head free of the pothole she’d made. “Er, well, hello then.”

  Our whole line stopped and stared at him. The lion-man raised his sleeve to his muzzle, and coughed, awkwardly. “What the devil is happening? Who’s that smarmy fellow on the loudspeakers?”

  “TROUBLE. WE’RE GOING TO SETTLE HIS HASH.”

  “Five more minutes, Mum...” Lady Thrush muttered, as she lifted her face and blinked gravel out of her eyes. “Hm? What? Ow.” She stood up, looking at the semi-circle of metahumans and androids around her. “Queensguard? What? We were guarding London, just like you asked us to...”

  “Fall in line, kid,” Miss Maskelyne said. “You too, old lion.”

  Say this for heroes, they didn’t ask questions.

  I did, though. “Gamma, quietly ask Lust if her whammy is going to keep the two junior heroes under control for now.”

  Gamma sidled her way over to the enchantress, and I saw their heads bob for a second. “She says yes, but any long-term stuff is still unaffected. So they’ll probably need some deprogramming later.”

  “We’ll leave that to the Queensguard. These won’t be the only people they have to deprogram.” I scowled at the sounds of riots, and scared mobs in the distance. He’d turned London into his hive and put himself in the spot of the queen bee. For all the good it had done him; he might as well have not bothered. I considered the devastation my fight had wrought in just four frantic minutes.

  Hell, what was a little more? I raised an arm, and blew the tower gates into shrapnel. When I lowered my gauntlet, I caught Queensguard glaring at me. “OH, LIKE WE’RE NOT GOING TO BE RIPPING THE HELL OUT OF THE REST OF THE PLACE. GET OVER IT.”

  They let me take the lead. I waved the Greek Chorus forward, and we swept for traps and sensors as we went, using pinpoint blasts and tools to destroy and disarm them as we went. None of them were armed. There were a few instances where they could have been triggered remotely, but weren’t.

  Now why was that? The Maestro was up to something. That concerned me... he’d gone quiet too soon. Instinct told me he still had a few cards up his sleeve, ones that my preliminary plans hadn’t taken care of. That could be disaster, if I’d missed a trick. Costumed battles between experienced metahumans usually consisted of both sides bringing their cards to bear, and usually the last person to pull off a clever trick ended up winning... or getting away to fight another day. We couldn’t afford either option with Maestro M.

  I heard a hell of a racket, as a horde of Beefeaters, half in uniform and others in drawers charged us, with goddamn pikes. The Tower’s honor guard, by the looks of it. I let the heroes deal with them, concentrated on disarming traps until we’d crossed the courtyard to the building that was our goal.

  Jewel House, it’s called. The resting place of the Crown Jewels of England. A fortified keep within the compound, a vault for the most precious symbols of Britannia’s reign. A popular place for visiting tourists... and home to an insidious parasite.

  The jewels were in the fortress, but once they had resided under Jewel House, in their own fortified vault that occupied most of the Tower’s courtyard area. They had been moved out of there in the mid-nineties... about the time when Maestro M discovered his true vocation. And according to Lust, he’d had the basement expanded, converted into his command and control center, and a set of luxury apartments.

  It was a good setup, as evil lairs went. He had the very symbol of England’s rulership within a short walk. The lair was literally in a massive bunker that could withstand nuclear blasts, and he had an easy choice of escape routes.

  Speaking of which... “Alpha?” I whispered through the vox. “The escape tunnels are accounted for?”

  “All three of them. Some minor opposition in the last two
, but bullet scars make me look macho, right?”

  I honestly hadn’t noticed, but yeah, he was a little banged up. “Yes. Yes they do,” I lied as I used my universal remote to disarm a series of claymore mines, and descended the utility stairs into Jewel House’s basement. Behind me, the heroes finished up with the entirely-outmatched Beefeaters, and hurried to keep up.

  Down into the bunker, through every obstacle in our way, and it was still too easy. He wasn’t suicidal, I knew that. Didn’t match his profile. What did he have up his sleeve? Had my counters covered every part of his plans?

  More importantly, would the heroes I was forced to work with ultimately fuck it up? Maestro needed to die, and they wouldn’t pull the goddamn trigger. But if I reached him first...

  ...as if on cue, Miss Maskelyne caught up with me. “Allow me,” she said, gesturing at a vault door as blue vines grew from it, and forced it apart.

  “YOU’RE TOO KIND,” I muttered, stepping forward, sensors on full, looking for the ambush, looking for the trap.

  There wasn’t one.

  There was, however, a twenty-foot deep blast wall of glassteel, separating the room into two halves. The front part of the room, the part we’d just entered, matched the description Lust had given of a command center. Walls of televisions, outdated consoles, seats that had layers of dust over their pleather backs. Half the screens showed my mask, I saw with amusement as I looked about.

  And in the center, on our side, an old, old man in a life-support pod. Tubes fed into the bulging veins of his spotty arms, an EKG beeped relentlessly, and a panel showed a veritable Rosetta stone of chemicals going into his bloodstream. He lay still, still as death, save for his yellowed eyes, which darted back and forth unblinking. He couldn’t blink, for cruel metal devices held his eyes clamped open, and nozzles to the side periodically squirted them with mist, keeping them from drying out.