“OH?”
“He was Thirtieth Worm.”
“DIRE BELIEVES IT POSSIBLE THAT THE TRUTH OF THE SITUATION HAS NOT YET SUNK INTO YOUR MIND YET. BY THE TIME WE ARE THROUGH HERE, WE ARE GOING TO GET YOU A PROMOTION TO FIRST WORM, THE EASY WAY.”
“Don’t you mean the hard way?”
I looked to the gun, looked back at him, and shrugged. “NO, NOT REALLY.”
That shut him up for a while.
Three more kilometers, two more tunnels full of frightened slaves, and one more dead overseer later, we reached a junction, and from the north, I could hear angry people shouting and screaming. “AND THERE’S THE FIRST MOVE DONE.”
A horde of people fled past me... and I recognized one of them, a pale man with a widow’s peak. He nodded to me, I nodded back and adjusted my aim. “NO,” I said as the pale man moved like lightning and grabbed my demon buddy’s neck with both hands. “THAT ONE’S ON OUR SIDE.”
“Sorry,” said Beta, releasing him and turning around.
His new skin fit him well, all things considered. I was glad Vector had gotten them onto the androids before that stupid dragon rained on my parade. And the skin had set up the first move of my little play.
The first phase had been to send in the skinjobs to infiltrate, assassinate, and disappear back into the crowd. Judging by the panic, it was working. “THE OTHERS?”
“They are scraping up more demons to kill. Oh, and the group of three chasing me should be here in five seconds, coming out of that tunnel.”
“THANK YOU.” I pulled a screamer grenade from my belt, armed it, and tossed it down the tunnel in question. “OH HEY, COVER YOUR EARS,” I told my wormy friend.
“What? Why—”
“TOO LATE.”
The screamers were sonic grenades. The Worms had sensitive hearing, especially through stone or other things they were melded into. First Worm thrashed on the floor, covering his ears too late... and he wasn’t even within the estimated kill radius.
After the screamer burned itself out, I floated over the tunnel and studied the limp forms of three and a half demons. The last one had been caught in the act of extruding himself from the wall, poor bastard. Evidently death interrupted that power.
I drilled them with head shots just to be certain, then turned around to see Delta and Epsilon behind me. Delta was a bit chunky, clad in a brown-haired woman’s form. Small tits, per Gamma’s request. Epsilon was slim, sporting a handsome face and hair drawn back in a blonde ponytail.
“THAT THE LAST OF THEM?”
“It should be. Alpha collapsed the only passage that our mob could flee down. The overseers should be dead by now.”
“DIRE’S KIND OF SURPRISED THEY DIDN’T BRING THE WHOLE TUNNEL DOWN.”
“They tried. It turns out they need a little time to do their geomancy schtick. We didn’t give them that time, and then the mob was too close. You know they’re not too much sturdier than people?”
“NOT TO PHYSICAL ATTACKS, NO.” Energy weapons diffused pretty badly against their scales, it seemed. Some sort of silicoid component. “COME ON, LET’S GET MOVING.”
As we moved through the riled up and confused crowd, I saw a ring of Damned closing in around where I’d left my wormy buddy. “WHOOP! HEY NOW!” I drilled a few, and they scattered...
...revealing a torn up Beta, a pile of disabled Damned, and a cowering demon. I looked over Beta’s exposed metal bones. “YOUR FACE IS HALF OFF.”
“Sorry.” He reached up and tore the rest of it off. “Does this mean I’m off the infiltration crew?”
“Yes. Head back up and mind the exit,” Alpha said, and looking him over, I couldn’t say if he was male or female. He’d gone for slicked-back black hair, androgynous features, and a slim build without any external genitalia. Entirely his privilege, but I wondered if it had hurt his infiltration efforts.
“DOPPELGANGERS,” I tested the word.
Delta stared at me. “What?”
“YOU’RE DOPPELGANGERS! THAT’S THE PERFECT NAME FOR YOUR SERIES!”
“Please,” Delta snorted. “We’re way higher challenge rating than doppelgangers. At least an eight. Apiece.”
“You!” First Worm surged to a relatively upright position, hands clasped to his head, staring at her with awe. “I know that voice! You are the Delta!”
“The Delta? I’m moving up in the world!” She smiled, and offered a plump hand. “Pleezedameetcha!”
“Please! Please let me play the Monsters and Mangonels with you!”
“LATER,” I said, jerking my head toward the now-cleared tunnel. “AFTER YOU SHOW HER WHERE PAGLIACCI’S REBELLION IS RIGHT NOW.”
He led us about three kilometers through twisting tunnels—
—to a solid wall of stone, with gasping heads and twitching hands protruding from it.
My good mood vanished instantly. Shudderworm’s hellions had noticed the rebellion, and dealt with it in the most expedient manner possible. Boom, squish, and a few hundred Damned were now trapped under thousands of tons of rock for a very, very long time.
I felt my lips skin back against my teeth. “WE KILL THAT FUCKER. THEN WE FREE THESE POOR BASTARDS.”
“Why?” First Worm asked.
There came a crack of flesh on scales. That would be Alpha, I knew. And sure enough, I heard my First Android whispering to him. I don’t know quite what he said, because I was already moving, already searching for a way around.
I found one. And then I found Pagliacci.
Slicked in blood from head to toe, holding a demon aloft with one mighty-thewed arm, he had his other hand buried deep in an open wound in the creature’s side.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Alpha muttered.
Pagliacci pulled his hand free in a shower of gore. The demon convulsed, and its mandibles gaped wide as the evil clown fed the demon one of its own internal organs.
“Not going down too well? Stuck in your throat” Pagliacci cooed to it. “Well, that’s the choke.” He dropped the demon, turned to me, and smiled with his bloody hand up in greeting. “You’re late.”
“YOU’RE DISGUSTING.”
“You knew what I was when you accepted my offer.” He cracked his neck, studied his hand, and straightened a broken finger. “Or so you thought, anyway. Shall we move on?”
“LET’S.” Okay, so I hadn’t collected an angry mob full of motivated Damned, but I wasn’t about to leave him wandering around in these dark tunnels.
At my back.
First Worm skittered far back, keeping the Chorus in between himself and Pagliacci. Alpha drew back his hand to slap the demon again, but in an eyeblink, Delta grabbed Alpha’s arm and shook her head. He backed off, and Delta draped her arm over the demon’s shoulders.
Pagliacci, for his part, fell in next to me as I hovered through the tunnels. “I was having fun while I was waiting for you.”
“SHE SAW YOUR IDEA OF FUN REMOTELY. LOOKED LIKE A RIOT.”
“Are you surprised?”
“NOT REALLY. THAT’S MORE OR LESS YOUR THING. REBELLING AGAINST THE RIGHTFUL AUTHORITIES AND INCITING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WHO REALLY KNOW BETTER THAN TO DIE IN YOUR SERVICE.”
He chuckled, honest, open laughter, and I welcomed it. Better that than the Hannibal Lecter shit he had tried earlier. Still, the statement seemed to draw more amusement than it was worth, and I was glad when the creepy fucking clown stopped laughing.
“We are not far,” First Worm whispered, quivering in fear as Pagliacci shot him a glance.
“GOOD. THIS WILL DO, THEN.” I gestured to a large, open cavern.
Then I adjusted my particle cannon and fired upward. Shrapnel rained off my forcefield, making me flare with light in the darkness, as everyone else scattered. I paused a few seconds, then shot another blast up into the ceiling.
When the dust settled, First Worm was thoroughly unsettled. “There’s no way they will not have heard that!”
“RIGHT. WE SHOULD PROBABLY BE RUNNING. TO THE EASTERN CAVERN
S!”
They followed me while I killed my force field and cycled power to the gravitics. Behind me the ceiling shook, and stone ground on stone. “THEY’VE BEEN TRACKING US SINCE WE ENTERED THE TUNNELS,” I explained. “THE SONICS PROBABLY BOUGHT SOME TIME, BUT IF THEY’RE SENSITIVE ENOUGH TO HEAR ROCK SCRAPING ON ROCK, THEN THEY’RE SENSITIVE ENOUGH TO HEAR THE SOUNDS OF FIGHTING. THEY WERE WAITING TO SEE HOW THINGS WENT IN YOUR PART OF THE ACTION,” I gestured back to my Chorus. My Doppelgangers, now. “BUT WITH YOU?” I moved my finger to Pagliacci. “THEY HAD NO REASON NOT TO DROP MORE OF THE TUNNEL TO CATCH A STRAGGLER ONCE YOU FINISHED OFF THAT LAST GUY. THEY WERE PROBABLY JUST WAITING FOR HIM TO CHECK IN. HENCE THE BLAST.”
Alpha wasn’t sold. “I’m not sure how that helps us. Once they finish dropping the tunnel they’ll be able to find us again, with a little persistence.”
“TRUE. HOWEVER, THAT WASN’T JUST A DISTRACTION. IT WAS ALSO A SIGNAL.” The tunnel behind us filled with the sound of collapsing caverns. But we were well away from the blast center. They were firing blind. If they hadn’t been, we wouldn’t have gotten this far. It had been a gamble but a small one.
“A signal for what?” Alpha asked.
The ground shook, and rock tumbled, ahead of us, for a change.
“We’re fucked!” Delta skidded to a halt.
“NO. THERE’S SOMEONE FUCKED HERE,” I said, as light pierced the caverns from above and a chi-infused bubble rolled down the newly-created ramp. It popped, revealing familiar figures. “BUT IT’S NOT US.”
Punching Judy straightened up, peered at us through the nightvision goggles I’d made her a week ago and squealed as she ran past me. “Delta!”
“Sweetie!”
Ahead of me, Vector adjusted his spectacles and looked away. Five Spitters crouched next to him, glaring around with their heat-sensitive pits. Khalid, blade free and glowing bluer as he approached, squinted at First Worm. “Ah. Terrestrials. This one seems remarkably alive at the minute.”
“HE’S A TURNCOAT. SPEAKING OF WHICH, WE HAVE ONE MORE POINT OF BUSINESS.” I stabbed my finger north. “THEY’VE GOT AN UNKNOWN METAHUMAN. WE’RE GOING TO ADD HIM TO OUR COLLECTION.”
Punching Judy’s lips popped as she pulled them away from Delta’s face. “Hey! Stop talkin’ about us as if we’re pokermons!”
“NO,” I told her, “GET YOUR ASS OUT OF HERE BEFORE WE GET GEODUDED.”
My collared demons peered down from the hole in the roof as we headed out, and I waved at The Cat and First Whisper, impatiently. “YES, YOU TOO, COME ON.”
We ran. Well, they ran, I flew. Khalid kept pace beside me easily, legs eating up meters without hesitation. “YOU’RE DOING REMARKABLY WELL.”
“This time I took my combat elixirs before the descent.”
“He’s running on full buffs!” Delta shouted.
“Neeeeerrrrrdddd!” Judy shouted back at her. “Whoop, tunnel’s changin’. Hold on.”
The tunnel around us groaned. As before, rock started to crumble against rock...
...and Judy whipped her arms around, hopped up on the nearest stalagmite, and posed. Energy pushed out of her, white and black waves of it, and I shivered as it passed through me.
The tunnel stopped creaking.
“What was that?” First Worm asked, reeling. I gestured to Pagliacci, who grabbed his arm and pulled him along.
“THAT WAS CHI MANIPULATION.”
Back before this whole mess started, I’d researched Judy’s supergroup in preparation for our inevitable encounter. She’d been one of the most dangerous of the Queensguard and the most flexible. Her chi manipulation not only allowed her to hit stupidly hard, but she could do things like, oh, stabilizing unstable geomantic forces.
Like whatever the hell sort of sorcery the worms were using to collapse the tunnels.
And after a few minutes, with Judy stopping every thirty seconds to do a new pose and flashy thing, I started to see a red glow ahead. “COMING UP ON THE END OF IT. GET READY.”
“Oh, we are,” a familiar voice echoed as we burst out into a vast cavern. Coiled on pillars of stone planted in the lava, Shudderworm and about twenty of his lackeys greeted us by slamming their hands simultaneously into the ground, sending sprays of stony spikes blasting throughout the cave.
I tanked a few on my forcefield, twisting aside as I flew, and rained down golden fury onto them. As I did so I saw chains above me, massive chains threaded through countless loops of stone. Those had to have been geomancied up there, I was fairly sure. Following the chain back towards the center of the cavern, I saw a pillar of iron held lengthwise, something like a SWAT team breaching ram the size of a skyscraper.
And sitting underneath it, wearing the first pair of trousers I’d seen in Hell that my crew hadn’t made, was a man with a cleft chin, black, spit-curled hair, and a torso with muscles that looked like they’d been poured into a mold.
He looked back at us, sat the skyscraper down, and started bounding through the pillars.
“INCOMING HERO!” I bellowed, sparing a glance at my teammates. Judy was posing and flexing for all she was worth, undoing the spikeshots as fast as they came. Couldn’t spare her from that, it was pretty important. Khalid was leaping from pillar to pillar, throwing vials and cutting down demons. No help there. Vector was cowering in the back and directing his Spitters to chase and acid-blast the demons trying to flank us, so he’d be useless for this. Meanwhile my Chorus was too busy running interference and defending the metahumans, so here we were.
I looked to First Whisper, then over to The Cat. They were focusing mainly on staying alive. “YOU’RE WITH DIRE. COME ON.”
Then someone grabbed onto my legs, and with a squeak of surprise, I shot up further into the air.
“Slowly, please. That lava looks painful.” Pagliacci told me, arms wrapped around my knees.
“SHE SHOULD DROP YOUR ASS INTO IT.”
“That may be the fate of us all, if that man is who I think he is.”
I stayed silent rather than admit he had a point and jetted past the main part of the fight. As we passed Khalid, his blade flared with white light, and I jerked my head away before my mask could overload. Pagliacci grunted in pain. “GOOD TRICK, BAD TIMING, KHALID.”
“So inconsiderate of him,” Pagliacci agreed.
First Whisper passed me, half her skin crisped, with The Cat hanging on for dear life in her arms. She shot me a needy glance as she went, then pouted as I ignored her obvious pain.
I was a little impressed, but Khalid had warned me not to encourage her. Positive reinforcement would lead to obsession and that would lead to nothing good.
As I got closer, the man flew up to meet me, face silhouetted against the glow of the lava for a split-second... and I knew him.
“HOLY FUCKING SHIT.”
He frowned. “Please watch your language, ma’am.”
“YOU’RE THE AMERICAN PARAGON.”
“I was.” He stopped, and we regarded each other from a hundred yards away. Pagliacci tapped my hip, and I flew down a few dozen feet, so he could drop and land on the biggest pillar of basalt. This close to it, I could see bare footprints literally dug into the stone. I glanced upward, to where the iron skyscraper hung just above the track that had been worn into the basalt.
First Whisper and The Cat dropped on the stone next to Pagliacci, and the American Paragon hovered down, face solemn as he stared at me from across the way.
“IT’S CRUDE, BUT EFFECTIVE.” I pointed at the giant ram. “THEY HAVE YOU DRAW IT BACK, THEN RAM IT INTO THE ROCK WALL. EVERY HALF HOUR, OR SO.”
“It takes that long to pull it out and draw it back.”
“THEN THEY GEOMANCY UP NEW LOOPS FOR THE CHAIN, AND EXTEND IT THROUGH THE NEW TUNNEL. RINSE, REPEAT, AND YOU END UP WITH A MASSIVE COMPLEX OF TUNNELS.” I glanced up, where some of the rock loops were looking rather crumbled. “PROBABLY TAKES A HELL OF A LOT OF MAINTENANCE SO THOSE LOOPS DON’T GIVE WAY. THE WEIGHT ON THEM IS PRETTY SERIOUS.”
“
That’s about the size of it.” His pectorals strained and he punched a fist into an open palm, making my gravitics whine, and fight desperately to keep from being pushed backward from the wave of force. Below me First Whisper wailed as she flew toward the edge. Pagliacci caught her and The Cat with a grunt of effort, straining against the wind but managing to succeed at the last second. Lucky, lucky evil clown.
There is a reason that flying, superstrong superheroes are called paragons, and it was hovering right in front of me. This man had defined three generations of heroes of his type, and he’d killed more Nazis than most divisions had during his time on the Western Front.
His time had ended rather abruptly, though, and I had a hunch I knew why. I’d been back then, and I’d seen the Nazis’ personal equalizer for problems of American Paragon’s caliber.
No matter how strong you are, there is always someone stronger.
“I’ll ask you to retreat, Ma’am. There’s no way for you to win this fight.”
“DID YOU RETREAT AGAINST SCHWARZER RITTER?”
He froze, a look of pain crossing his face. “No, and look where it got me.”
“But that wasn’t your sin, was it?” Pagliacci’s voice oozed from below. “That wasn’t what brought you down here. It was just what sealed the deal.”
“That’s none of your business, sir. Please leave.”
“WHY? WHY WORK FOR DEMONS?”
“I don’t have a choice in the matter. This is my penance.” He glanced back to Shudderworm and the bulk of the fighting. I glanced back as well. Half the Spitters were down, and Khalid was on the defensive. They’d taken down a handful of the demons, but the ones that were left were coordinated and strong. It could go either way... unless I resolved this quickly and reinforced them.
“And I can’t let you stall me,” he said, coming to the same conclusion I did. “If you won’t leave, I’ll have to make you.”
I dropped as he came for me, but he was faster than a Spitfire, just like his comic books had said. My breastplate rang like a gong, the breath went out of me, and I hurled back a few hundred feet. For a desperate second I was vulnerable, while the gravitics churned to compensate...
DIRE : HELL (The Dire Saga Book 6) Page 23