DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) (9 page)

I tapped my fingernails on the wall.

Just what kind of cargo were we going after?

I started digging around and got absolutely nowhere.

The only reason I’d been able to trace the funds back to Morgenstern was due to the nature of the interfaces required by the financial institutions that they dealt with. They were actually much looser than the internal countermeasures of Morgenstern Incorporated’s systems. No matter how good my gear and how skilled I was, it soon became apparent that the majority of their databases were kept on internal, wired servers. I’d need to be onsite and directly accessing them in order to get at their data.

All right. If I couldn’t get that, then what else could I get to?

I spent about an hour poking around, and thinking over my options, checking out the parts of their network that were accessible through gridspace, and the thought came to me, that the shipping networks that dealt with their trucks were stored outside of corporate headquarters. They were handled through a subsidiary corporation, New Dawn Transportation.

And their databases were
not
so well protected. Half an hour got me answers that brought more questions.

I thought I saw the nature of things, but I wanted to bounce it off of Martin. Supergenius was a fine power, but there was no substitute for cunning and experience. But I didn’t see the point in interrupting his sleep over it. Assuming he got up somewhere around seven to eight, I had perhaps three hours to wait. I’d need him rested for the meet tomorrow.

I got another cup of coffee, checked on Bunny. She was shivering now, so I dug out a blanket and threw it over her. I had the air conditioning cranked up high in the living section of the warehouse. It was July outside, and even the ocean’s proximity did little to cut the mugginess.

Hm. Hadn’t I promised myself a hot tub session?

That killed another half an hour. It was a good use of it, too, even if I had to keep the bandaged portion of my back out of the tub. I finally dragged myself out of the soothing, swirling water when I started getting sleepy. I’d only rested for a few hours before my new teammate’s call had woken me up.

Back to the black T-shirt and jeans. A new bra, though, the old one was getting kind of... manky? Yes. That was a good use for the word.

I split the last few hours checking on Bunny and doing another code check on the new armor’s operating systems. I hadn’t planned to use it this early, so I’d have to hope that there were no major problems that needed attention. No testing like live testing.

Midway through, it occurred to me that my client was probably expecting me to take the payment he’d set up. It would look suspicious if I didn’t, so I used one of the dummy accounts I’d set up months ago, and swapped it over. Twenty-thousand dollars... I could do a fair amount with twenty-thousand. No major improvements over what I already had, but it was good emergency money, or materials for a few more assembly robots.

Or a down-payment on a permanent site. This lair was temporary, after all.

Finally, I heard Martin stir. “The hot tub’s on the left side,” I called.

“Hot tub? Shit.”

“There’s a toilet in that room too.” I was teasing him but he took it literally.

“I didn’t mean literally shit. Just like... shit, a hot tub! That’s the life!”

“Ah. All that in one word?”

“The word’s got nuances. Gots to listen to the tone.”

“Good to know.”

He coughed. “So how’s...?”

“Bunny?”

“Yeah, shit, forgot her name there.”

“She’s sleeping, Dire thinks. Got most of the broth down, and took plenty of water.”

“Aight. Gimme ten.”

I gave him twelve, and used the time to prepare breakfast.

Once we were both tucking into oatmeal, I decided the time was right to broach my concerns. “So. Dire did some hacking on our client.”

He froze, mid-spoonful. “That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

“Well, it’s a good thing she did, because Dire’s pretty sure something’s fishy about the job.”

“Hm.” He took a bite of his oatmeal. “Well, I didn’t want to say anything there, and later there wasn’t no time to talk about it.”

“You knew?”

“Naw. It’s that the money’s too good.”

I raised an eyebrow. “For a suit of power armor and a supergenius operator?”

“Even still, for a job this simple there’s one too many zeroes. I mean, I been out of the game a few years so maybe the prices gone up some, but it seems like too good a payoff for this low a profile. If it was something more in the public eye, sure, but this? Naw.” He finished the oatmeal, started in on the fruit cup.

“All right. Well, here’s what Dire knows. The money paying us for the job against Morgenstern Incorporated is coming from Morgenstern Incorporated.”

“No shit?” Martin’s face fell. “Yeah, okay, this is fishy alright.”

“It gets worse. There was a timed tracking trojan in the memory stick we got from the client.”

“A what to the what now?”

“A bad computer virus. Timed to go off shortly after the scheduled hijack.”

“Yeah... this is sounding worse and worse. Was the downpayment money in the account, at least?”

“Twenty-thousand of it.”

“So let’s take it and bail. If it’s this fishy, I guarantee they don’t intend to pay us the rest of it. If they start putting shit out about how we ran, we can bring up the virus, or reveal who they really are. Our rep might take a hit, but theirs will take worse.”

“We could drop it...” I finished my oatmeal in a few bites. “But Dire is disinclined to do so. Particularly with the other information she’s found.”

“Which is?”

“There’s another convoy going out at the same time. Better protected, in a different part of the city, heading north. The long-term record of this shipment had been erased, but, well, their systems administrators should learn to empty their recycle bin more often.” I offered a predatory smile.

Martin didn’t share the smile. He leaned back in his chair, rubbed the back of his head with one well-muscled arm. “Okay. There’s a couple of reasons this could be happening.”

“Any of them good for us?”

“Hell naw. Well, maybe. Depends on your definition of good.”

“She’s listening.”

“Okay.” He held up three fingers. “First thing I can think of is this is a smokescreen. They’re smuggling something out on that secret convoy, and we’re being paid to hit a decoy convoy and kick up a fuss, draw eyes to it.”

“Possible. Whose eyes?” I pondered. “Heroes? You seemed certain this would turn into a fight with patrolling heroes.”

“It will. If we go through with it, I mean. Anyways, it could be heroes. Could be someone else.”

“All right. The second possibility?”

He folded a finger. “It’s a trap to catch villains. Have them hit a convoy, heroes or Morgenstern Security goons are waiting to show off new technology or some shit, and we’re walking straight into the ambush.”

Paranoia flared. “How likely is this?”

“Unlikely. They wouldn’t have used Mister Fixer if they were doing this. But there’s also possibility three.” He lowered his ring finger, leaving the middle one pointing skyward.

Thanks to my popular culture television time, I recognized the gesture and  chuckled. “Did you mean to do that?”

“Yeah. A big screw you, but uh, not from me. Or to you. Um...” he folded his finger. “Sorry, I guess this worked cooler in my head. Anyway, basically, I’m thinking that possibility three is one part of the company is trying to fuck over another part of the company. Like this is two executives running ops against each other, or one department’s been doing shady shit and they’re trying to get it blamed on another department. Or something.”

“Office politics?”

“Morgenstern’s a big tech R&D company. Electronics, machines, chemicals... all that sort of stuff. Lots of money in that. Office politics can get pretty cutthroat at that sorta level. And Old Man Morgenstern’s supposed to be a hardass. Comes down hard on anyone who gets the company in trouble.”

“Does he?” I tilted my head back to look straight-on at him. “Wait, is he that famed among the gangs?”

Martin snorted. “Fuck no. Rich old white assholes don’t come to our fucking hoods ’less their limo drivers get lost. But I read about him in the Wall Street Record. Company’s got a pretty fascinating history, business-wise.”

“Fair enough.” I nodded. “So which of the three possibilities do you think awaits us?”

“None, because we’re smart enough to take the downpayment and run. Right?” He studied my face. “Well, shit.”

“You’re right.” I told him.

“Yeah?” He looked surprised.

“Yes. The tone is everything, when you say ‘shit’.”

His face fell. “Goddammit.”

“Relax. The only reason Dire’s contemplating unraveling this Gordian knot is because there’s a team involved, and she told them she’d meet with them. We’ll lay our findings before them, and see what they make of it.”

“Right, because random mercenary villains are totally known for their sterling fucking judgment.”

I didn’t have a good retort to that, so I made him wash the oatmeal bowls.

CHAPTER 6: MEETING THE TEAM

“Why aren't there more villain teams? Buddy, have you ever tried to work with villains? Villains don't like working with villains! It's not like cats and dogs, it's more like chainsaws and chihuahuas. Or chihuahuas with chainsaws. Messy, noisy, and sad.”

--Cue Ball, one of the founding members of the Icons

Kayfabe.

It was a concept that Martin had shown me. He’d put forward the notion that the whole costumed ‘scene’ was deliberately overblown, to lower fatalities, collateral, and unnecessary escalation. Moreover, he’d shown me enough episodes of professional wrestling to illustrate the point.

And sure enough, when I started playing to the persona of an insane genius, an implacable and unstoppable power-armored force of science, I’d gotten people to follow me into battle. I’d won allies, gotten respect, and though I had been too busy at the time to analyze it...  it felt good. It felt
right
.

I had built an image and a reputation and controlled how people saw it and reacted by never breaking character in public, and maintaining it no matter how hard things got. I had played to the crowd so well that the play became reality, or close enough that my goals were accomplished.

Things had gone almost precisely to plan in the courtroom, because I’d acted like Ballista and his ilk expected me to act, and by doing so, managed to get the
real
job done while they were thinking they were in the equivalent of a steel-cage match.

That time-traveler had been a weird anomaly, but that had worked out too, sort of.

In any case, I’d be meeting with unknown metahumans here, with their own reputations, personas, and goals. So it behooved me to make a good entrance, establish my place in the pecking order, and build my character right at the start.

After examining the address the unnamed villain gave me, I’d come to the conclusion that it was a challenge. She’d told me to come in costume if I could, masked if I couldn’t. But the address was on a busy street, and in the middle of the day; there would be many eyes watching. She was testing my ability to covertly infiltrate the place. Logical. There were plenty of villains out there who would have trouble. Fortunately, I had the materials on hand to accomplish the task.

At ten minutes until noon, the van that I’d chopped and modded into an entirely new van pulled up around the back of a decrepit strip mall, that had all of two active businesses in its eight storefronts. Boards and black paint covered the windows of the rest of them.

Martin, wearing a pair of overalls and a cap, walked around to the back of it and opened the doors, pulling out a dolly and manhandling a refrigerator-sized crate onto it. Through the camera that I’d put on the outside of the crate, I got a good view of the street beyond, the liquor store across the street, and the packed sidewalk. It was lunch hour for the employees of the factories a few blocks beyond, and they were drifting around to the various eateries, fast-food joints, and places of relaxation before the daily drudgery of their jobs had to resume.

The box was lighter than it should have been, due to the spare gravitics system I’d rigged in the bottom; a legacy of my first flight test with an earlier version of the armor. It let Martin place it on the dolly, and push the dolly along. True, a dedicated observer could see a telltale shimmering in the few inches between the crate and the ground, but we wouldn’t be outside long enough for it to be an issue.

And just as described, one of the doors had deep gouges on it. After a bit of looking around to make sure none of the others were similarly scratched, Martin wheeled the dolly up the ramp and tried the door. It opened, and he wheeled the dolly into the darkness.

“Wrong door, man,” a male voice said from the shadows in the back of what had once been a convenience store. “Turn around and walk away.”

I hadn’t equipped the cameras on the outside of the box with nightvision. But no matter, if it came to a fight my particle beams would pierce the cardboard easily enough.

“Wait.” Ah.
There
was the female voice I’d heard over the phone. “You’re in the right place after all, aren’t you?”

The box tilted straight, and I saw Martin pull the dolly back.

Now.

I hit the red button, and the box blew away with a soft WHUMP, as smoke billowed out. Shouts, and a sizzling noise, and I responded with a low laugh through my mask’s modulator. “HMHMHMHMH... HAHAHAHAHHA...”

“Is this a fucking joke?” The woman shrieked.

“NO. THIS—” I hit the green button, and the smoke blew away, small fans venting it up.

“—IS DIRE. LOOK UPON HER, AND DESPAIR.”

And look they did, as I sat upon a throne made of twisted steel bars, with jagged spikes protruding from the top of the thing. Smoke wisped from the armrests, and the two iron skulls that gaped open-mouthed at the end of them. The buttons that operated the thing were hidden behind the skulls. I had a few more than the ones I’d already used, but the situation didn’t call for pyro, or an ejection from my seat, or a self-destruct.

Not yet, anyway.

I sat slouched into the thing, one gauntlet supporting my mask’s chin, the other stroking the left skull absent-mindedly. Even sitting, my armor was a good six feet tall, dull gray metal with black reinforcing plates over the critical components. Behind me, my cape and cowl were bloody red, as were the glowing eyes of my mask.

I’d aimed for the effect of red glowing eyes staring through the smoke as the rest of me materialized to their sight, but it was hard to tell if I’d succeeded.

As they studied me, I studied them.

The woman was clad in dark blue, almost a jumpsuit, with a silver mask that covered the top half of her face, and left her almost white-blonde hair flowing loose and long behind. Her eyes were blue, her stance was guarded, and she was leveling a thin sword at me that roiled and flickered with silent electricity. She was a bit taller than average, shorter than my unarmored form. Her build was athletic, as far as I could tell under what appeared to be her padded costume. Armor? Maybe something light, that didn’t impede movement.

Her lips were set in a scowl. She hadn’t liked my entrance one bit, I supposed.

In the other corner, stood a muscled, bulky man, bald and shorn of facial hair save for a short beard-mustache combination. His skin was a bit pale, and I couldn’t tell if he was pissed or bored. His arms were bare and crossed over a similarly bare chest... In fact, the only clothing he wore was a pair of long, loose shorts. No socks, no shoes. Given what I could now see of the general mess of this deserted store, and the broken glass and metal scattered about, I thought him either brave or foolish. He stared at me with unwavering intensity, dark eyes narrowed as they flicked up and down my frame.

“You’re noisy,” the woman muttered. “The walls are thin. Tone your voice down.”

I hit a white button on the armrest, and a hissing, wavering mutter filled the room.

“A WHITE NOISE GENERATOR,” I explained. “IT WILL MUTE DIRE’S VOICE, KEEP HER WORDS WITHIN THESE WALLS.” At the same time I lowered my volume a notch, out of politeness.

“Dire...” The electricity on the sword vanished, with a faint snap. She tucked the sword behind her, sheathing it on her back. “You were on the news, recently. Not good.”

“I beg to fucking differ,” Martin said.

“And you?” She asked. “Wait. The one from the trial.”

The man spoke, for the first time. His voice was higher than his appearance suggested, mild and calm. “The way it looked, you were hauled out of there, armor frozen. They didn’t say anything about you and him escaping.”

“THEN THE FBI IS CONCEALING THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER,” I stated. “DIRE ACHIEVED HER OBJECTIVES, THEN DEPARTED.”

“At the cost of a suit of armor,” The woman said. “Sloppy.”

“IT WAS A CHEAP, DISPOSABLE SUIT,” I gestured at my current form. “THIS ONE IS NOT SO CHEAP.”

“What are its capabilities?” Yes, definitely an accent, you could tell when she said longer words.

“FLIGHT. ENHANCED STRENGTH. SUFFICIENT WEAPONRY TO LEVEL A BUILDING OR TWO. A TOP-QUALITY SENSOR SUITE.” The basics, really. “WHAT DO YOU BRING TO THE TABLE, BEYOND AN ELECTRIFIED BLADE?”

“It’s not the blade,” she said. “It’s me.” She reached over to a shelf, and picked up a steel ruler, discarded among the other junk. With a flourish, electricity crackled up the ruler. With another flourish, the energy vanished, as flames burst into life around it. With another flourish, the flames were replaced by steam, and what looked like a sheen of frost.

“IMPRESSIVE,” I said simply.

“Not yet,” She smiled, smug. Another flourish, and the ruler went black. Sheer black. My sensors threw back errors, when they tried to focus on it. What
was
that?

She swiped the ruler to her right, negligently... and it passed through a shelf, without slowing and without any visible effort on her part.

CLANG! The shelf fell in two pieces, clattering across the floor. She tossed the ruler aside, the anomaly-generating energy surrounding it dissipating before it hit the ground. “Now you can be impressed,” she said. “My name is Vorpal. I doubt you know it.”

No point in feeding her ego, wouldn’t fit the attitude I was portraying. I shifted my mask to look directly at the half-dressed muscleman. “AND YOU?”

“I’m Chaingang.”

“POWERS?”

He pointed to his left.

SNAPSPLAT! Something shot out of his abdomen, splattered on the floor. A bloody rope or a tether or part of his intestines or something, and in a matter of seconds, the goo on floor roiled, bubbled, and surged upward, reshaping itself into a roughly humanoid form until a bloody, duplicate of Chaingang stood, the tether from Chaingang’s  abdomen leading into his back. As I watched, it mopped its face, and beneath the gore he was as pale as his maker. Same beard, same hard-to-read look, and as my gaze fell downward out of perverse curiosity, I noted that he was wearing the same shorts.

“Jesus,” Martin whispered behind me. “That was messy.”

I was a little disgusted myself, but the mask hid my reaction. “THE PANTS?” I inquired.

“Superscience stuff,” he said. “First thing I bought after I had enough money. Don’t want to do my dupe thing near a school or a playground and end up with my dick flapping in the wind near kids. The fucking cops would put a sex offender charge on me. I don’t need that kind of thing.”

“Smart,” Martin said. “That’s the kind of mean little shit most would do, aight.”

As I watched, the duplicate of him pointed left with two fingers, and with another ripping splatter, two tethers shot forth from its abdomen, and pair of copies rose from the goo.

“I’m also tough and strong,” he said. “Not a lot, I can’t go toe-to-toe with Ragequit, or anybody like that, but I can take down most guys without getting more than bruises, and bench press eight-hundred or so. Bullets hurt but I can take a few before I drop, and I heal pretty good. The healing part’s for me, not these guys. They just turn to mush if the tether breaks or they take too much of a hurting.”

“And you?” Vorpal glanced to Martin. We’d discussed this part, and I hoped he’d stick to the script. Their reaction so far was within predictable boundaries, we had a decent response ready for it.

“Planning, connections, knowledge of the city, and overwatch,” he said. “No powers. Just support. Oh, and first aid if you need it. Hopefully won’t come to that.”

Good.

“Ah, a henchman then,” said Vorpal, sneering. “Well, try not to get in the way.”

Not good. Martin shifted behind me, and I heard him draw in a breath.
Come on Martin, she’s baiting you...

“You know, I been trying to remember where I heard your name,” he said.

“And?”

“I haven’t. You’re new in town, ain’t you?”

Her sneer faded a bit. “And if I am?”

“Seen a lot of new vills try to make it in the ’Con. Seen a lot fail. Think they’re hot shit, then get over their heads, or pick a fight they can’t win. Average street life of a new villain ’round here... maybe two months.”

Her face was blank now. Deliberate, I thought. My own lips curved in a smile. Masks meant that I didn’t have to use a poker face.

“That said, there’s no shortage of new ones. Risks are big, but the scores are bigger. Like this one. At first look, anyways.”

She folded her arms. “What do you mean?”

“How much he offer you? Hundred grand? Hundred fifty?”

This wasn’t according to script. I contemplated interrupting him, but decided to trust his instincts for now.

Vorpal was frowning. “One-twenty, if you must know. Rude to ask.”

He looked over to Chaingang. “Same for you?”

“Ninety for me.”

“Jesus, you got robbed.”

Chaingang didn’t look upset. “Oh yeah? How much did he offer you?”

“Didn’t offer me shit. No powers, I’m just here to support the Lady.” He thumped my throne. “Her, he offered three-fifty.”

Vorpal’s jaw dropped. “Three hundred and fifty thousand? Wait.
Her
?” She studied me again.