DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) (26 page)

The figure was six feet tall, give or take an inch. An older man, with hair of white and gray, and a well-cut green business suit that had to cost more than it had taken to build my armor. He had a gut on him, looked to be about three-hundred pounds or so. His face was unsmiling, and his eyes were blue and hard. He leaned upon a black-and-silver cane with a ball for a head, and held a glass of liquor in his other hand. And I knew him, from pictures and footage I’d reviewed long before I’d ever planned malice against his corporation.

“AEGON MORGENSTERN.”

“Doctor Dire, I presume.”

I floated over to the desk, moved around it. He raised an eyebrow, and finished his glass with two quick swallows.

I triggered the universal remote built into the armor. Nothing happened, save for a few angry popups on the computer terminal. Serious countermeasures on that thing. Hardware-based? Possibly.

“You’ve caused me much grief. May I ask why?”

“ONE OF YOUR EMPLOYEES CAUSED DIRE MUCH GRIEF. SHE RETURNS THE FAVOR.”

“Mm. So you assault my business, put my employees into hospitals or graves, and cause property damage? For shame, Doctor.”

I ignored him, searched under the desk, found the computer. I hoisted it onto the desk, popped the casing. Impressive; near a match to my own. Better parts, but the design wasn’t as efficient.

“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” He asked.

“YOU’RE STALLING. WAITING FOR YOUR ARMORED TROOPS TO SHOW UP.”

“That would be incorrect. I’m honestly interested in what you have to say about this.”

Something in his voice caught me. I paused, turned to look at him. He’d shut the vault door behind him, leaned on his cane with a faint smile half-hidden by his beard. He looked every inch a jolly old rich uncle on the sitcom of your choice, and I trusted it not a bit.

Danger
, my instincts told me. I abandoned my dismantlement of his hard drive, and straightened up. “ARE YOU, THEN?”

“Here,” he said, moving over to a wall panel, and sliding it aside. “A gesture of good faith.” Buttons gleamed in the revealed cavity, red and green and yellow.

I leveled a gauntlet at him. “NO TRICKS.”

“No more than usual.” He hit one of the green buttons, and the room shook. I should have shot him then, but I hesitated, and as I did, layer after layer of metal panels interspersed with black panels slammed down over the windows, into sockets on either side of the glass.

“A mix of carbon fiber nanotube sheets, titanium, chobham, and a few things of my own personal mix. No one enters, no one leaves. Not until we’re done here.”

He closed the panel again, turned to face me fully. “And now we have privacy. I trust you’re recording all of this?”

“YES.” I had planned to blackmail his company, after all. In the event that I saw something incriminating around here but failed to secure it, a sight-based record was better than nothing.

“Well. If you were streaming it through the grid, now you’re not.”

I checked my signal. Yep, cut off from the broadcast grid.

“IF YOUR PLAN WAS TO INTERRUPT DIRE’S POWER SOURCE, YOU FAILED.”

He stepped forward, cane ticking silently on the rug as he moved his ponderous bulk. “Hm? No, no. I can see your design incorporates a generator core and a backup battery. Not often done these days, but I suppose given your origin, it’s understandable.”

I started to take a step back, caught myself. My origin? What did he know about me? Was it something I didn’t?

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” I kept my palm pointed at him, particle cannon ready. He circled the room, and I loomed still as a statue, his eyes locked to my mask’s eyesockets, and vice-versa.

“Why, the Blackout, of course. You rose to your power in the darkest of times, saw the true underbelly of the world, once the veneer of civilization slips away. Saw what we’re really capable of. And though the day was saved—” he sneered, before settling his face back into its pleasant and bland expression and continuing “—in your heart you know it could happen again. It drives you. It’s your fear, Miss Dire.”

“A FEAR YOU SHARE, MISTER MORGENSTERN. DIRE RECALLS SEEING YOUR BUILDING AND AIRSHIPS OPERATIONAL DURING THE CRISIS. YOU HAD GENERATORS OF YOUR OWN, AND FAILSAFES READY TO GO.”

He spread his hands. “Some of us remember the time before we put our faith in computers.”

“GOOD. THEN YOU WON’T MIND IF DIRE BORROWS THIS.” I reached over, popped the hard drive free of the casing.

Morgenstern laughed. “Ah. How rich. All this because Billings cheated you. How ridiculous this whole situation is.”

“THAT WAS HIS NAME? SURPRISED YOU HAVEN’T TAKEN THE COST OF THAT OUT OF HIS HIDE.”

He stopped laughing, and his face was like stone, eyes glaring out from under a heavy brow. “Who says I haven’t? Though I don’t give a damn if supervillains lose their payday, I have a reputation to think of. Mister Billings was greedy. He is no longer in my employ, and will trouble you no further.” His face slid back into the kindly uncle’s guise. “I, on the other hand, intend you an end of trouble.”

I tucked the hard drive into my utility compartment. “ODD CHOICE OF WORDS. SHOULDN’T IT BE NO END OF TROUBLE?”

“Oh no, it ends here for you. Thus, it is an end of trouble.”

“IDLE THREATS. GOODBYE, MISTER MORGENSTERN.” I swiveled my gauntlet toward the wall, set the particle beam to maximum penetration, and fired.

Yellow sparks. Nothing but yellow sparks.

He laughed as I tried again, and got nothing but more sparks.

“Golden tinge to the beams, and a distinctive whining sound on the charge. You’re using Clarke reactions to activate the particle streams. Useless if I flood the area with mischarged ions, as I did before I left the safe room.”

Ouch. That would do it. I lowered my gauntlet, and stared at him. “YOU KNOW THIS ONLY SLOWS HER, YES?”

“Oh, well, I’m quite sure you’ve got the strength in that suit to tear through the walls panel by panel. But it will take you time you don’t have.” He jabbed the cane toward me. “Because I’m going to beat you like a drum, doctor.”

“YOU MUST BE JO—”

I never saw him move. Didn’t see him swing it either, but suddenly the ball of the cane was crashing against my mask, damage alarms were going off, and I was knocked backward into the wall, crunching through the hardwood paneling to find heavy steel beneath. I reeled, pushed myself free... and the fat man moved like a leaping ballerina, crossing the distance in a flicker, and swinging the cane like a baseball bat, cracking against my arms repeatedly as I raised them to fend him off. Steel groaned and deformed under the pressure, as I watched half-inch thick reinforcing plates buckle and dent.

“WHAT THE HE—”

He twisted, hooked my leg with the tip of the cane, and tumbled, twisting as he did so and sweeping it out from me. I kicked on the gravitics just before I hit the floor, jetted away, and he pursued, leaping over the desk with a nimbleness belying his bulk.

“My property!” He roared, catching me one-handed just as I straightened upright, and landed a blow to his midsection. It should have broken bones, but it phased him not an inch, didn’t even budge him. “You come to my property, and harm my people!” The cane descended once, twice, thrice, hammering my left shoulder joint in the same spot, and with a grinding CRUNCH, my shoulder pauldron went flying away.

I hammered my right hand toward his face with a punch that could pulverize concrete, and he spun the cane, deflected my forearm a few inches, and jammed the pointed end of it under my right pauldron. Damage reports flickered to life, and I struggled to move my arm, couldn’t. He’d jammed the motivator.

“And for what? Money? A pathetic and paltry sum!” I brought my left arm around, grabbed for him, got the suit, but he tore free. He twisted his legs into mine, seized the oaken desk behind him for leverage, and rolled. And with incredible, inexorable strength he brought me to the ground facefirst. I barely managed to arrest my fall one-handed, before scrabbling, trying to free the cane from my shoulder motivator.

WHAM!

I shook, as he brought something heavy down on my weakened back plates.

“Really, you know what gets me the most? Shoddy craftsmanship.” He remarked, conversational now as I watched yellow damage indicators flare red, and circuits give. “That steel plate you’re using is utter trash. Titanium would be better.” I grabbed for the cane again.

WHAM!

Fragments went flying, and I bounced off the ground, rattling around in the armor hard enough to bruise.

“HOW ARE YOU—”

WHAM!

“Ah, a hardened mono-ceramic underlayer. Not entirely idiotic. Wait, I think I get the principles at work. The outer layer’s ablative, hm? Saves resources on replacement.”

WHAM! CRACK!

My face smacked into the mask, leaving a spray of blood as my nose crunched into it. Ow! The pain shook me, and I gave up grabbing for the cane, braced as best I could for impact.

WHAM!

CRUNCH!

“Tch. They don’t make coatracks like they used to. Hold still, Doctor Dire.”

Like hell! I got my hands around the cane, popped it free— and Morgenstern grabbed it, twisted, and I screamed as he broke both gauntlet and fingers as he ripped it from my hand.

“Ah, just the thing to continue your beatdown. Good idea, Doctor!”

CRUNCH! CRACK! THUD!

I rolled, cradling my broken hand, as pain roared and pulsed up my arm. But there was no escape, as he hammered blows into my side, my front, my legs, wherever he could reach. And every blow dented or warped armor.

I needed respite. I needed to seize the initiative. I needed to stay conscious!

And in the hell of my pain, an idea occurred to me.

As I fetched up against the desk, and he started working over my shin joints, I turned to glare up at him, holding out my unbroken arm like a shield over my mask. I coughed, and spat out blood until I could speak. “GOOD ANALYSIS ON THE ARMOR.”

He actually stopped to grin, the cheeky bastard, leaning on his cane as he removed a handkerchief from one pocket, and mopped his brow. “Thank you. Glad we agree.”

“HOWEVER, YOU MISSED ONE FEATURE.”

And he couldn’t see me smile under my mask, as I triggered every explosive charge along the front of my armor.

KRAK-KRAK-KRAK-BOOM!

A cloud of shrapnel ricocheted off my armor, depleting the last of my forcefield. It studded the desk, ripped through the shag rug, slammed into the ceiling, burst lights, and tore toward Morgenstern.

The bastard wasn’t surprised, though I don’t know
how
. He jumped straight up, tucked himself into a ball, and twisted to cover his face... but couldn’t escape. I watched him get blown back into a fish tank, and collapse into the water, torn and shredded. In the now-dim light of the penthouse, his blood looked blue.

I panted, and my busted nose throbbed. My hands braced underneath me, and I hissed as red-hot pain ran up my arm, from my broken fingers. I braced against the desk, and my steel digits left grooves in the top of it as I ground to my feet. I tried the gravitics, and they stuttered a bit, hummed to life. I floated into the air, and headed toward the nearest window, at a quarter speed.

“All right. I suppose I had that coming.”

I froze, and turned. No fucking way.

He was standing up in the ruins of the tank, goldfish flopping and dying around him, his front smeared with blue. Great, jelly-like oozing globs of blue goo, wobbling out from slashes in his abdomen and chest and legs.

“WHAT ARE YOU?”

He barked laughter, rubbed a hand along his face, and studied the red blood that smeared it. Some of the shrapnel had nicked his face.

“Human. Simply human. With a few tricks, mind. And some impact gel. Lovely stuff, that.”

He shrugged out of the ruins of his suit, and I gasped as I saw what was beneath it.

There were a series of bags, black rubber or some similar substance, all full of the blue goo if the ruptured ones were any indication. What I had taken to be a rather impressive gut was actually a large bag of the stuff. Beneath it was something like an exoskeleton, only I saw no motivators, motors, or pistons. The only thing there were weights, solid iron ones that he dropped piece by piece, until he was clad only in a pair of briefs. Beneath the frame of weights and the sacks of goo he was wiry, muscular, chiseled like an athlete. There were still signs of age on his body... a few liver spots, a few wrinkles, but he seemed to shed decades as he shed his disguise.

“YOU’RE A COSTUME. A METAHUMAN.”

He barked laughter, hooked a toe under his cane, and flipped it up to his waiting hand. “No. I was correct the first time. I’m human. Peak human, mind you, in every way. I’m everything a human could be.”

I looked at the few bits of shattered steel armor left on my front, and the cracks on the ceramic underlayer. “SHE BEGS TO DIFFER.”

“Oh, well. That’s just simple Maula-maula warclub technique. Learned from the Gorilla warriors of the Mistwarrior tribe, last time I was over there. And I’m controlling the pain from the few injuries you’ve inflicted on me with hypnotic biofeedback techniques acquired from the ancient mystics of the Seventh Gate. But at the end of the day, you’re going to die at the hands of a human.” He bowed, extending an arm, and never taking his eyes from me. “Just a very good human. Unlike you, I’m afraid.”