DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) (10 page)

“Yeah. Proven badass, better than military-grade hardware, genius, gadgets... makes sense, yeah? Except the part where it doesn’t.”

“Now you’re making no sense.” She said, unfolding her arms, and pointing at him. “We don’t have much time to waste. We need to start planning.”

“Listen,” Martin said. “It’s too much money.”

“What?”

“Even the lowball here of ninety grand, that’s a zero it shouldn’t have. Let alone three-fifty large!”

“So the cargo is important.” She folded both of her arms behind her back, and paced in irritation. “Get to the point, minion.”

“ACTUALLY, DIRE SHALL EXPLAIN...”

And I did.

But as I finished laying out the theories, she kept pacing. What I could see of her eyes behind her mask was hard, and suspicious.

“You are overlooking the most likely theory,” she said.

“WHICH IS?”

“This is a very important cargo, and worth more than we’re being paid to whoever wishes it hijacked.”

“And the virus?” Martin asked.  “How’s that fit in with that notion?”

“Obviously it is there to track us, if we try to flee and keep the cargo for ourselves.”

The original Chaingang fished around in his pocket, hauled out his phone, and stared at it. Then his hand tightened, and plastic cracked as it shattered and broke, the neo-lithium battery cooking off in a flare of electricity.

“Shiiiiit,” said Martin. “Got all your fingers, man?”

Chaingang showed him his empty hand. Untouched, save for a few scorchmarks. “No problem.”

Vorpal shook her head. “You honestly believe her?”

“She has no reason to lie,” Chaingang said. “Besides, I can get another phone.”

Vorpal raised her arms in front of her, palms up. “Conspiracy theories! There’s no proof to any of it!”

“DIRE CAN PROVIDE THE SHIPPING SCHEDULE, AND THE CODE OF THE VIRUS IF YOU WISH IT TO BE INDEPENDENTLY CHECKED.”

“Which we cannot do in the timeframe we have remaining,” Vorpal snarled. “How do I know you are not playing us?”

“AND WHAT WOULD YOU TAKE AS PROOF THAT SHE HAS NOT OFFERED ALREADY?”

“Come out of there. Come out of that shell and say it to my face.”

“Now hold on a second—” Martin began. I raised a gauntlet, interrupted him as I stood.

Vorpal took a step back as I rose, armor unfolding to its full eight feet of steel and menace, looming over her and sweeping my cape back behind me. I looked down upon her, and she put her hand on the hilt of her blade, half-drew the weapon.

My hands flexed inside the gauntlets, in a specific, pre-set pattern. With a hiss of escaping gas, the air supply vented into the room as the back cracked open. I wormed my hands free of the sleeves, grasped the edges of the suit, and pulled, hoisted myself out of the armor. My mask detached from the reinforcing pylons that held it in place with soft ‘snks’ as the bolts retracted. At no point did it leave my face, as I stepped out of the armor, and down to the floor.

Glass crunched under my feet, as I walked around the armor, looked down at Vorpal as she stood there, hilt of her sword still in her hand, eyes flicking up and down as she studied me. I moved in, until our faces were perhaps half-a-foot apart.

“You are brave,” she said, finally.

“DIRE IS CONFIDENT.”

Her head jerked back, and her lips pressed together in a thin line.

“You know what my blade can do, and you still left your armor.”

A threat or a test? I wondered. She’d tested me once already.

“YOU THINK DIRE ANY LESS DANGEROUS WITHOUT HER ARMOR? FOOLISH, THAT.” And it was. The armor was programmed to defend me, and kill everyone in the room if I was harmed. Well, everyone except for Martin. He’d reminded me to add that part, when I was telling him about my contingencies.

Vorpal stared at me, eyes narrowed.

Then she nodded, and let her sword slip back into its sheath.

To the left, squelching noises, and we glanced over to see Chaingang’s duplicates dissolving back into mush, as the tether retracted into his navel. He looked back at us. “What? If you’re not going to fight, then I don’t need them.”

Martin laughed, and the tension dissolved, just a bit.

“You are telling the truth about the shipment, then?”

“YES.”

Vorpal puffed her cheeks out, sighed in frustration. “And here I thought my luck had turned. Still, there is a chance that we may yet receive payment.” I moved back to my armor, leaned against it as I watched the others discuss.

“Yeah. if it’s office politics, the money might be on the level,” Martin said. “Might.”

“The other possibilities are either an outright double-cross, or a distraction,” Vorpal pondered.

“I don’t think that someone would use Mister Fixer to burn us,” Chaingang said. “If word got back to him, then Fixer wouldn’t take work from them again. That’d hurt, to lose a pricey contact like him.”

“But we can’t rule it out,” Martin said. “So my vote is we ditch this one.”

“Bad idea,” Chaingang said. “We took the money. We’re the ones who lose Fixer, if word gets out we ditched.”

“A price I’m not willing to pay,” Vorpal said. “But how do we cover ourselves?”

I tapped the chin of my mask, as an idea occurred to me, and the plan I’d been mulling over finally fell into place. “DIRE MIGHT HAVE A SOLUTION.”

CHAPTER 7: RED LIGHT, STOP

“You'd be surprised how a lot of emergency measures turn out to be really bad ideas in the long run. Especially when you forget about them, and the villains don't. Hahaha. Yeah, there's no way this won't hurt my ratings.”

– Off-the-record statement by Icon City's Mayor Tressler, after the Interstate Three Outage in 2000.

Past the glittering skyscrapers of Downtown, west of the crumbling neighborhood of the Brownstones and east of the Westmarket District, sat the eight-lane highway of Interstate Three. The last time I’d been over this way, it had been choked with abandoned cars, in the aftermath of the power loss from Y2K. An empty stretch of icy road, barren and silent save for the howling January wind.

Now it was a healthy network of trade and transport, with cars and trucks surging in and out of the city, garish blood cells humming their way along asphalt arteries, to and from the heart of Icon. With this many electric cars drawing power from the city’s broadcast array, the air above it hummed and thrummed and danced with power.

I had a pretty good view of the highway in the valley below, as I stared out of the window of a Little Nero’s pizza parlor off to the side of a busy truck stop, trying to ignore the stains and sticky patches of the ancient booth that my posterior was occupying. My fingers danced and flew over the laptop in front of me, as I checked over my various programs.

Hacking private corporations, even banks, was one thing. Hacking the parts of the Grid that controlled this section of highway? That was pretty hard. I wasn’t the first to think of this, and even though I was good, there were a lot of preventative measures in place. That was fine, though. I’d gotten the crucial subroutines in place, with fifteen minutes to spare. That left me with time to kill.

I considered the lump of greasy pizza on the plate in front of me, and grimaced. At least the breadsticks had been good.

Couldn’t figure out why the lumpy lady at the counter had asked if I was a ‘lot lizard’, though. I’d never come across that term before. Judging by the way she snuck glares at me whenever she thought I wasn’t looking, it probably didn’t mean anything good.

I turned away from her, and considered myself in the reflection of the window glass. Simple denim jacket, baseball cap, a red t-shirt with a local sports team on it, and some loose jeans. And with my hair hanging loose and down to my shoulders, it hid the subvocal earpiece pretty well.

I tapped it on to private channel one. “Martin? You in position?”

“Yeah. Pulling up now. Sorry ’bout the delay, Bunny was awake.”

“Yeah?” That was a good sign. She’d slept pretty much the whole day yesterday. She still took food and water, though, so we assumed she was healing. Good to hear we’d assumed right. “How was she?”

“Groggy. Out of it. Weak. Not too happy to see me. I had to help her uh, use the bathroom.”

I caught a flicker of motion in the reflection, caught the lumpy pizza wench sweeping a broom along the floor near my booth, craning her head, obviously trying to see the laptop’s screen. I looked at her, just a flat stare, and something in my eyes warned her off. She retreated back to her counter, eyes tight and mean behind her thick glasses.

I wondered how she had spent her time during Y2K. An uncharitable part of me suggested that she’d probably locked herself in the storeroom with the food until it was over.

The earbud had been quiet, and I realized that I’d been idle too long, let my tongue slip away from the contact point. I opened the channel again.

“—pretty sure she won’t cause trouble. She can barely walk, I mean. Gotta say, that girl’s a trooper. You can tell she’s in pain and shit, but she gives no fucks.”

“Dire thought you hated the Midtown Militiamen. Not so much with the Militiawomen?” It was difficult to put a teasing tone in your voice over subvocal mikes. But I thought he sounded a bit defensive when he replied, so I counted it successful.

“Hey now, ain’t like that. Still think those fuckers are the worst gang around.”

“Now that the Black Bloods are gone, you mean.”

Silence for a bit. “Well yeah. Anyway, I’m in position. See me?”

I looked across the highway, to the Mcbeefy’s that occupied the lot nearest the northbound exit. The van was there, and there were no signs that anyone had taken its presence amiss. “Very well. Going to check with Vorpal.”

“Cool. Think she’s got that stick out her ass yet?”

I smiled. “Stranger things have happened.”

“I ain’t holding my breath.” He had a point. We’d spent hours yesterday planning and plotting, and she’d tried to adjust things every step of the way, or insist that she take a leading role for the entire operation. We finally compromised, and gave her authority over this half of the operation. I had control over the other half, and was also in reserve if I was needed on this end of things. I had the sense that she was used to a different way of doing business, one where she needed to assert her authority often and loudly, in order to avoid being marginalized.

Was that how most villains operated? No wonder nobody had conquered the world yet. At least Chaingang had been easy going, even if he’d gotten bored midway through and gone on a food run. His taste in tacos left something to be desired, though; my stomach was still a little off from that takeout.

Well, no sense in putting it off any more. I tapped the earbud over to channel three. “Vorpal. Are you in position?”

“Traffic is shit here.” She replied, sour as ever. “But I should be able to do this. Worry about the others, not me.”

“As you wish,” I said, tapping her channel off. I leaned back in the booth, ignoring the sucking noise my jacket made as it peeled away from the backrest.

A glance to the side showed the lumpy woman whispering into her phone, hand cupped around her mouth. She shot another sidelong glance my way, and I rolled my eyes. Some people just couldn’t mind their own damn business.

Then again, I couldn’t fault her instincts. I
was
bad news, and here for nefarious purposes. Just not for her, today.

I tapped over to channel two. “Chaingang. All set?”

“Yeah. I got the easy job, here. All the rest of you are complicated, mine’s just like wait for stuff to happen, then go get ’em. Long as your armor does its job, we’re golden.”

Chaingang and my empty armor were covering the truck that the client had wanted us to hit, and the setup on Route 5 west out of the city was a lot simpler. A mere two lanes through some rolling hills, past a couple of old quarries and farmland, some of which had been converted into a nature preserve. Surveying this spot, I was more certain than ever that this job was bad; the route was chock full of ambush points, hard for the convoy to defend.

Given my choice I would have preferred to make a token effort at the grab, maybe commit Chaingang or Vorpal to put up a show, then retreat if there was any serious resistance or a trap. But Vorpal had argued against the idea, insisting that there was still a chance that the client was acting in good faith. In which case, we’d have to go through with the grab, if we wanted to fulfill our end of the bargain.

So we’d split up, to hit both convoys. Chaingang and my suit, governed by its battle computer and my own multi-tasking capacity for the rural route, and myself, Vorpal, and Martin would try a strike on the secret convoy heading north.

The strategy was simple. We’d hit the convoy we’d been paid to hit, first. If the one on the rural route was a trap or had no cargo, then it meant that there was something valuable in the northern convoy that we could ransom back to our treacherous client. We’d take it and do just that. If the rural route was on the level, then we’d get the cargo and back away from the northern convoy.

Channel three clicked on. “I have visual!” Vorpal said. She sounded eager, and I couldn’t blame her. Stakeouts were boring.

I glanced at the highway to the west. Traffic was moving at a pretty good pace. Hours to go yet before the businesses let out, and the nine-to-five crowd drove home. No major accidents, or delays, or anything of the sort. Vorpal was stationed about five minutes south, so it was on me to delay things, give the rural convoy a chance to get to our primary ambush spot.

“Between exits?”

“Yes. I count four SUVs,” she added. “More than we expected, yah?”

“Two more. Still within parameters.”

I waited, timing it, peering southwest from the window, zooming in with my contact lenses until I caught sight of what had to be the semi-truck in question. And yeah, there were four black SUV’s in a loose diamond formation around it. I waited, let them get within half a mile of the exit, before I acted.

“ All right, Dire’s shutting her down... now!”

A rattle of my fingers across the keys, and it was done. I watched in satisfaction, as the shimmering haze over the highways disappeared, and every electric car out there slowed, and started rolling to a stop. The power was down for the next five minutes, give or take.

Originally this emergency override had been put in the power grid as a law enforcement measure. Fugitives escaping via the highway? Shut it down, shut it
all
down. But for all its effectiveness, it was rarely used, and I was seeing the reason why. Only about seventy percent of the cars on the highway were electric. Perhaps twenty to twenty five percent were fueled by hydrogen cells, and they had to adjust to suddenly-slowing traffic, and scramble to avoid their electric cousins. Not all of them made it, and I winced as a few collisions happened. Nothing serious that I could see, not in this part, but I still felt a twinge of guilt as a nasty fenderbender threw a sedan into a guard rail. “Insurance,” I muttered to myself. “Insurance will cover it.”

The few diesel vehicles out there, mainly semi-trucks, fared a bit better. Horns exploded in a frenzy of indignant roars, electric cars used the last of their charge to dodge out of their way, and disaster was averted. Mostly. There was a distant WHUMP, and a thin plume of smoke to the south. I winced to see it.

A part of me knew that I’d hurt people with this, no matter how much I tried to avoid thinking about it. I stared out the window, eyes unseeing, as tempers flared and horns blared.

Was this who I wanted to be? Someone who clawed her way up regardless of who got hurt? Taking a few hundred thousand or million here or there to further my own agendas, at the cost of a few injuries here, or a few dead there?

I shut the laptop, pulled a pair of sunglasses from my pocket, and slid them over my face. The HUD on my contacts flickered softly as it booted up, giving me a window into my armor’s viewpoint. The AR display manifested around my hands, hovering above the table inset into the booth. But I hesitated, holding my hand over the glowing text boxes that were my programs. The guilt bothered me, and I knew I had to think it through.

A breath, then another. I thought back to the beach. To my first friends... homeless, outcast, unwanted. Just trying to find ways to survive the winter, surviving on kindness and their scavenging skills. No one had cared when they died, until everyone else was at risk, too. Sure, the neighbors had shown up to help, but only when their own rumps were on the line. People like that deserved what they got!

I looked down at the highway again, feeling my lips curl back— but no. I couldn’t work up anger. This, too, was a prevarication. Just because my friends had a hard time, didn’t mean that random faceless commuters deserved a bad time, too.

I was trying to make the world a better place. This didn’t help any.

“She’s sorry,” I whispered, reaching out to touch the glass. “She won’t do things this way again.”

And I wouldn’t. I took pride in my genius, didn’t I? From now on I’d put that genius to work, and find ways to my goals without this level of collateral.

“So swears Dire,” I rasped. I powered down the laptop, and tucked it away in my backpack, next to the blocky lump of my backup forcefield generator. Vorpal was using my primary mobile unit; we expected her to come under heavy fire on the approach. Of course, with the broadcast grid down along this section of the highway, she was limited to battery power. If she got in a tight spot, it would only delay the inevitable.

My other gadgets for this were a taser, a pistol version of my particle beam cannons, the universal remote, and three grenade versions of the sonic screamers I’d used in the courthouse. I supposed the subvocal rig and AR contact lenses were gadgets too, but they were more of a utility than anything else.

I did have my mask of course, tucked safely away in the backpack. These days, the thing felt more like my face than my unmasked visage did.

Not that my collection of gadgets really mattered. I was in reserve for this part of things. Acting as overwatch, only reinforcing if needed.

Channel two clicked open. “Here it comes!” Chaingang said. I toggled through the AR menus, maximized the armor’s view to my left contact. And yeah, there was the delivery truck, plain white just like thousands of others in the local area. Two cars behind it, black sedans with four guards apiece, if the information was good. Four-to-eight more in the truck. I couldn’t see into the cab of it to get a count, not with the polarized windows in the way, but it didn’t matter.

The truck was leading. Too easy, too easy by far! That was confirmation enough for me that this wouldn’t go right, but I’d promised Vorpal, so I went ahead with the plan.