DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) (34 page)

I watched through the tac-net as one of the kaiju turned from pursuit, alerted by Grim’s group. I fretted for a moment, but I shouldn’t have. Grim flew straight into the clutching vines, scythe slashing, cutting them to bits. The thing lunged at him, missing, and tried again. But every time it lunged it seemed to sink a bit. Gravedigger? Yes! I watched trees near the thing topple, as the ground around it softened, drawing it downward.

A massive club of vines twisted together managed to crash into Grim, sending him splattering against a tree... but he pulled himself back upright, muscles and bones snapping together instantly as he flew forward and cleaved back into the thing, relentless. He was unstoppable!

While he drew all the attention, a flash of blue on the far side of it caught my attention, as Vorpal leaped through the trees. Her blade flamed as it caught the thing in the largest clump of vines and it howled and thrashed. It sent vines her way, but she danced back, and Epitaph stepped up next to her. The white stone woman let the vines wrap around her, then grabbed them right back and
pulled
. I watched her drag the thing away, winding it around a tree, while Vorpal beat it to flaming bits and Grim chopped it apart faster than it could regenerate. The whole fight took less than a minute, and I had to focus my attention back to my landing zone, as I pulled up, dispersing momentum and straining my gravitics.

I saw Chaingang flinch as a BOOM shattered the windows of the remaining cabins when physics caught up with me. He shouted something, but I couldn’t hear him, not with my sound baffles on. He was up to about fifty with his mob. Half of them he sent down toward the dock, running with the boxes, and I took down as many as I could with particle beams. He was tough. I was up against clones, so I’d set them to lethal. They crisped and fell, and occasionally I’d cut off the progenitor of a major branch, so multiples would fall and collapse to goo. It was pretty effective, and for a moment I thought we wouldn’t need the rest of the plan. If I could whittle him down fast and stun his main body, then we could destroy the flowers at our leisure.

That was the hope, up until the point that Vector pointed his organic gun at me, and shot a long stream of liquid my way. I aborted my fire to dodge, and I was glad I did. Where the liquid fell, the ground smoked and sizzled. Acid of some sort. I watched it melt gravel, and swore in amazement. Nasty, nasty stuff.

Chaingang used the opportunity to grab up several fallen, spilled boxes, and huck them toward the dock. Vines rose up out of the water to grab them.

“Alpha team, go!” I yelled through the tacnet. In the east, four contrails rose as they burst from their van and jetted into the air, using the afterburners on their crude but effective jetpacks. They’d be over here in seconds.

Vector fired at me again, and I rose to try and get out of range of his sprayer. And then I cheered, as the first wave of zombies ran into the clearing.

Turns out that corpses don’t have to worry about pain or exhaustion. As long as their leg muscles are relatively intact, they can go at speeds that most living folks can’t match for long. They dogpiled the professor, taking him down. With that done, I resumed my assault on Chaingang. A few boxes had made it to the water, but they were still there, held by the kaiju under the dock. Without commands, it wasn’t doing anything, not smart enough to run.

I started mixing in Phlogiston beams with particle beams, setting the boxes alight, burning the flowers. Chaingang fought like hell, literally throwing his own bodies in front of my shots, but he couldn’t stop my inexorable progress. However, I couldn’t get a shot off at his main body. He’d hidden it in one of his clusters, and there were too many of him in the way. As many as I was taking out, it wasn’t enough to thin him down in a timely fashion. I’d win eventually, but it would take a while.

Fortunately, we’d planned for that. It was the reason that the battle had been silent for me.

I grinned, as Chaingang stopped, and shook his head. I laughed as I watched every copy of him fall over, weeping. Slowly the outermost duplicates of him started deflating, one by one, until only a few remained.

Whippoorwill stepped out of the woods, followed by Deadweight, who had his own set of earplugs. She was gesturing, her hands languidly tracing out a sad song. I watched her for a bit, then glanced back to Chaingang, found him down to a few copies. I flew down to hover above his original body, switched to the tasers, and blasted him until he dropped.

“Trouble!” Hicks called through the tacnet.

I switched over to their view, and gasped.

Vines were rising from the lake, flinging rocks and tree trunks at the jetpack troopers. I watched one get clocked, and groaned as his link went out. The kaiju hit
hard
.

“Evasive!” I said. But as I did, I took a look at the vines, and my eyes went wide. That was more than one kaiju down there. That was a either a lot of them, or one really, really
big
kaiju.

Well. We had a way to fix that, didn’t we? We had their master at our mercy. I turned toward Professor Vector, who was still struggling under the bulk of the zombies. I watched as he threw a dead man off, only for the corpse to jump back to its feet and run back, newly-broken ribs protruding through its putrid flesh.

Wait. Wait a minute.

Why wasn’t he saddened by Whippoorwill’s song?

I turned to her, made ‘cut’ motions, and she froze.

“She’s off.” Deadweight confirmed.

I moved closer to the pile, reached in to pull the gun away from Vector. I couldn’t. I tried harder, got nothing. It was like it was stuck to his hand.

I reached in, grabbed both his arms, and hauled him up... and stared into a frothing, lunatic’s face devoid of intelligence or anything but malice. No glasses, and his eyes were huge pupils. His lab coat was dirty, and the body below was misshapen. The gun wasn’t stuck to his hand, it
was
his hand. The pack on his back
was
a part of his back.

I tased him and dropped him. That seemed to work at least. “Body double!” I shouted through the tacnet. “No eyes on Vector! Spread out and look!”

The rest of the Graveyard Gang burst into the clearing. I removed my sound baffles. Whippoorwill wouldn’t sing with so many friendlies close. “RIGHT,” I boomed. I glanced over at the crates, still entangled with the Kaiju under the docks. “GET THOSE BOXES AND DESTROY THEM. DIRE’S GOING TO HAVE TO—“

“Dire what the hell is this mess?”

A familiar voice, but an unexpected one. I turned, and Freeway stood fifty feet away, tapping his feet, glaring at me.

The Graveyard Gang hesitated, and I waved them toward the kaiju. “GO! KILL THAT THING! DESTROY THE FLOWERS!”

“Uh-uh.” Freeway vanished, reappeared between them and the docks. “Not ’till you start telling me what the hell this is about.”

God damn it! What was
wrong
with the heroes in this city!

Simple. That was the key, keep it simple.

“EVIL BIOLOGIST IS MAKING PLAGUE FLOWERS, DIRE AND HER ALLIES ARE DESTROYING THEM.”

“Got proof?”

“LOOK AT THE KAIJU, MAN! LOOK AT THE KAIJU!”

He disappeared again, then blinked back. “Okay, good enough. I’ll help.”

“AND IF THAT ISN’T ENOUGH— WAIT, WHAT?”

“MRB’s on their way. If you’re lying they’ll sort it out. Either way once that’s done I’ll kick your ass. You got until then to stop this plague, doctor.”

“Hey!” Whippoorwill yelled.

“My statement stands, kid.”

“UH. OKAY!”

I watched him step aside, and the Graveyard Gang charged into action. They used the same tactic, for the most part, but with Deadweight’s zombies reinforcing them, they literally had a few extra bodies to help manage the creature’s aggression.

Well, that was good. While they were doing that, I could look for Vector. I turned, rose up a bit to survey the area—

—and caught a man in a fringed leather vest and a coonskin cap sneaking up on me. He had camo paint smeared across his face, but the dull stare and unshaven messy hair identified him in a heartbeat.

“TIMETRIPPER?” I shrieked. “GO THE HELL AWAY AND STOP BOTHERING DIRE!”

I blasted him, still on lethal settings, and didn’t care. This was the absolute
worst
time for the bastard to show up!

He fell, his body in bits, and Freeway was there, grabbing my arm and trying to force it back. “Damn it Dire! There was no call for that!”

“WE’RE NOT THAT LUCKY!”

“What?”

We both watched as his remains rippled, and disappeared in a puff of light.

Freeway stopped, then his gaze whipped over my shoulder, and his eyes narrowed. “Behind you!” But too late, as the world slowed, and it was like moving in molasses...

But Freeway wasn’t slowed. He jogged around me at regular speed, and I heard the meaty smack of a fist hitting flesh. Everything sped up again, and I turned... as six more Timetrippers, all in different outfits, jumped out of the bushes.

“No escape, Dire!” he called, in eerie unison. All save the last one, who was a beat after the rest. They turned to glare at him.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Said one.

“Sorry man. I blew it.”

“We practiced for like fucking hours,” said another. “I think, anyway. It was a baller party.”

“Dude, you can’t blame me, that blonde was totally wanting the dong. I couldn’t concentrate with all that business up in my face.”

Another waved his hand. “Wasn’t worth it man, she was a lousy lay.”

The first one glared at him. “You asshole! I was trying to hook up with her all fucking night! Not cool man, not cool!”

The insults flew like bullets, as they quarreled. I slapped my gauntlet over my face.

“THIS. THIS IS WHY DIRE HATES HEROES. WORLD’S GOING TO END IN PLAGUE BECAUSE OF THE WORST TIME TRAVELLER EVER.”

Next to me, Freeway shook his head, watched four of them tackle the other two, who were trying to start a fistfight. “This is one for the memoirs, all right.”

Wait. Wait a minute...

Timetripper only showed up when Freeway did.

A paradox. Older Timetripper told me I could beat him with a paradox.

A wild idea occurred to me.

Could it really be that simple?

“HE’S GOT YOUR MEMOIRS. FREEWAY, HE’S BEEN TRACKING DIRE BY THE DATES IN YOUR BOOK!”

The quarrel stopped. They looked back to us, looked to each other, and nodded.

“FREEWAY! DON’T PUT DATES IN YOUR BOOK!”

They charged, and time slowed.

“Okay,” said Freeway. “But there's no way it's that simple—“

BIP!

They were gone. Time was back to normal. We waited a few seconds, looked around. Nothing.

“GUESS IT IS THAT SIMPLE.”

The air shook with raw fury, trees toppled from the force of a primal roar.

We both glanced toward the lake, which was a writhing mass of tentacles. “OH. RIGHT. PLANT MONSTER.”

“On it,” Freeway said, and disappeared.

For a second I started to follow him... then stopped. That wasn’t my job. Vector and the flowers were my job.

But how could I find Vector?

Maybe I didn’t have to. All I had to do was take the flowers out of play. Vector would live, and Grim would be happy.

I activated the Geiger counter, started scouting around. I tagged the remaining patches of pollen around the clearing with the phlogiston beam, scooped up remnants of the boxes and tossed them into the merrily burning fire that was the van. Finally, the only part that was left was in the cabin that Vector had originally emerged from. I entered...

And swore, as I looked down into an open trapdoor, and a long, wide tunnel that vanished into the Earth. Vector had booked it early on, and the Geiger counter confirmed traces of pollen down there. With shrinking hope I jumped down and followed.

CHAPTER 20: WELL-EARNED REWARDS

“If you're in the game for long enough, you start realizing that it's not how you win the fight, it's how many people walk away afterward. Because at the end of the day, you're doing it for the people. You're doing this to save lives, you're doing this to make the world a better place. And you need good people for that, because they sure as heck can't make the world better if they're dead.”

--Freeway, in his smash-hit autobiography “Memoirs of a Life in the Fast-Lane”

The tunnel was close, twisting and curving. Thankfully I had nightvision built into my mask. It was also too close for me to stand upright. Fortunately, I didn’t have to stand. Instead, I tucked into a ball and used the gravitics to propel myself along, like a bullet in the barrel of a gun.

I almost ran into him before I realized he was there, hunched over and gasping in the dark of the tunnel. He had a glowlight with him, protruding from the pocket of his lab coat. I hauled myself to a stop, watched him for a second. He was shaking, and he had a thin cardboard box tucked under one arm, and it was sending the Geiger counter crazy.

I unfolded, scraping the tunnel walls and he turned, fear evident on his face. “Who’s there! Stay away!” He fumbled in one pocket, brought out a test tube. “I’ll use this, I will!”

“Scare,” I whispered into my mask, and I watched red light flood the tunnel as my eyesockets illuminated with hellish red glow, overpowering the green of his glowstick.

“Oh,” he whispered, shaking. “Oh no.”

“OH YES.”

He slumped against the wall, heedless of the mud streaking his already grungy lab coat. “Oh god. I knew the escape tunnel was too long.”

I laughed, and he shrank in on himself as the echoes boomed around the corridor. Privately though, I thought it a good cautionary tale. A shorter escape tunnel, or even something like a maze to slow me down, and he would have escaped.

“IT WAS A GOOD TRY. NOW, SURRENDER THAT BOX.”

He looked down at it. Started to lift it, stopped. “This— this is the culmination of a lot of work. A year of work. A year stuck working with the devil himself. You can understand my reluctance.”

I powered up my particle beams with a whine, adding a golden glow to the tunnel as the emitters flare. “YOU SPEAK LIKE YOU HAVE A CHOICE.”

He stood, put the test tube away, and straightened his glasses as he met my eyes. “You... you always have a choice. Every day, you always have a choice. Whether it’s to see the world as it is and try to fix it, or to turn away and hide your face! I... I’m not sure I’d prefer to live, with this gone.”

Passion in those words.

“DIRE IS SURE THE PEOPLE YOU KILLED IN AFRICA WOULD DISAGREE.”

“It should have worked!” He screamed, tears falling from his eyes. “It should have worked... I never... but that’s why I have to keep trying, you see?” He said, pulling his glasses free, and running his muddy sleeve on his face, smearing the dirt in with tears. “If I don’t, then they died for nothing. If I don’t, then I’m a murderer, worse than a murderer.” Sobs racked him, his entire body shook as he cried.

I remembered Doc Quantum, earlier today. How he’d condemned me for my choices. For choosing to fight back and save my people, instead of trying to find a gentler path that just hadn’t been an option.

I remembered how Quantum hadn’t listened. Didn’t understand.

So I decided that I would listen.

“WHAT DOES THE POLLEN DO?” I asked.

He held up a finger while he regained control, and the sobs slowed. “I... ah.. I... what?”

“THE POLLEN. IT DOESN’T DO WHAT MORGENSTERN WANTED. WHAT DOES IT DO?”

“It, ah, it suppresses the immune system. Stops lethal or crippling allergic reactions. Only to a limited set of artificial agents, mind you. A specific variety of prions. The immune system was the problem, you see.” I didn’t, but he seemed to gain strength and confidence as he spoke. “I didn’t account for all the variances in individual physiologies. Amateur mistake. I used too small an initial sample, and as a result people died. But if you take the variable out of the equation, then there shouldn’t be... the problems I had with the first batch.”

“PEOPLE SHOULDN’T DIE.”

He took a deep breath, let it out. “Not if I do it right. But I was too ambitious with the first batch. Tried to do too much. I need to be a lot more cautious. This isn’t a be-all-and-end-all solution, but it’s a crucial step. I need... well, a lot more research.” He scowled, and jammed his glasses back on his face. “I’ll be damned if I kill anyone else because I screwed up.”

He meant it. Unless he was one hell of a liar, he was honest in his desire to improve humanity. Save the world.

How was this different from my own goal?

He wanted to fix the world. I wanted to fix the world. Morgenstern did too, we just had vastly different ways of going about it. What gave me the right to stop him?

Was it because he used plagues, and genetic manipulation? Horrifying in some ways, yes, but then so were many of my own inventions. I was carrying weapons that could level city blocks in seconds if I turned loose their full force. But I trusted myself with them, trusted that I wouldn't use them improperly.

Could I trust him to do the same?

“ANOTHER QUESTION. THE POLLEN FROM THESE FLOWERS. IS THERE A CURE?”

“Well, I, I suppose, but why?” He blinked. “It doesn’t do anything by itself, it just makes it easier for my own other solutions to affect you without... side effects.”

“NONETHELESS, IS THERE A CURE?”

“Well, no. But it’s not permanent. Couldn’t get this batch to have a lasting effect before Morgenstern—” He cleared his throat. “In any event, the effects of this batch wear off in a few months. No way to really notice, either, it just gets absorbed and cleared by cellular replacement.”

No, I decided. This was a man who had learned from his mistake. This was an acceptable risk.

I gestured with a hand. “OPEN THE BOX.”

He hesitated, and I flared my mask’s glowing eyes. “OPEN IT!”

It was full of flowers. “TAKE ONE AND GO.”

“I... what?”

“DID DIRE STUTTER?”

“No... I... you’re sparing me?”

“YOU WANT TO FIX THE WORLD?”

He took a deep breath, let it out. Hope filled him, and I knew how fragile that emotion was. “Yes. With all my heart.”

“THEN GO. AND REMEMBER DIRE’S MERCY.”

I took the box from his hand, and awkwardly, he seized the biggest looking flower, tucking it into his labcoat. I turned, curled into a ball, and whirred away down the tunnel, leaving his fate in his own hands.

I opened the tacnet. “Vector escaped. Dire managed to grab the last of the flowers from him, though. What’s the situation, Grim?”

“Burning the last of the kaiju. As soon as the big fight’s done, the sorta-truce with Freeway’s over. We’re going to bug out here and let him finish up this one once it’s weak enough.”

I nodded. “Good. Vorpal?”

“I don’t have a good way of escaping. Can you pick me up?”

“Easily. Team Alpha?”

Hicks responded. “Recovered our downed trooper. We’re bugging out.”

“Good. Beta?”

Vasquez responded. “If it’s all over but the crying, we’ll bug out as well.”

“Fine by Dire.” I burst out the end of the tunnel, darted out of the cabin, unfolded and chucked the last flower box into the fire. “Vorpal, your ride’s here.”

A blue and grey shape darted back from the waterline, evaded a few vines, and ran towards me. I scooped her up, and flew south, through the trees. “Farewell, all. Good work.”

Grim’s channel clicked on, privately. “You too. Thanks, by the way.”

“Don’t be. Vector escaped under his own power.”

“Uh-huh. See you ’round, Doc.”

When we were a few miles clear, I looked to Vorpal. “DITCH THE HEADSET.” She yanked it off and tossed it in the canopy of a passing tree.

Ten minutes later we were holed up in the old stone quarry I’d hidden the armor in the last time we pulled off an ambush. A quick phone call to Martin, and he showed up twenty minutes later, with a very grumpy Bunny riding shotgun. Literally. She had her scattergun in her lap, hidden under a newspaper.

Once in the back of the van, I decanted from the armor, stretched the kinks out. “Job well done.”

“Yeah?” Martin asked.

“Stop the van,” I said.

“Why?” But he did it.

“Six million in the bank,” I said.

He slapped the wheel, hunched over it, and when he straightened up he jerked his head back to stare at me. “Bu-what?”

“Yeah that’s why Dire told you to stop the van.” Vorpal and Bunny laughed, but Bunny looked a little stunned, too.

“Six million?” She asked.

“Villainy pays.” I shrugged. “Less morally conflicting, too, when you’re whomping other villains.” Although it wasn’t, really. I’d agonized over Vector, before deciding to give him another chance. Before letting him go.

Martin started the van. “Okay, Miss six million in the bank, have you figured out where the fuck we’re going now that we don’t have any lairs left?”

“Actually, it’s taken care of. Before the mission, Dire went ahead and used some of the payment to rent a vacation cabin on the lake.” Vorpal shot me a glare. “The opposite side of the lake, relax. Ah, you’ll have to de-costume, Vorpal.”

“Yah, yah.” She stripped down in the back of the van, and I tossed her the clothes I’d stored in the armor’s utility compartment. A flicker of motion caught my eye as I did, and I looked back to see Bunny adjusting the van’s mirror slightly. Was she? She was! She was using the mirror to watch Vorpal change without being obvious about it.

Huh. Maybe I could recommend a good, open-minded woman to Vorpal after all.

Well. Business first. I gave directions to Martin, and he pulled the van out of the quarry, up the road, and rejoined traffic.

I waited for him to adjust the mirror back before I broke the silence. “So, Bunny, any plans for the future?”

She shrugged. “My gang fucked me over. There’s good people there, but if the higher ups are corrupt, there’s no fucking point. Everything we tried for, all the good we did, it’s all tainted now.”

“Not all of it.” I said.

She flicked her eyes to me, and rubbed the back of her head. “No. I guess not all of it.”

“Do you have any place to go?” I asked.

“No place that’s safe. No family left in this part of the country. Shit, if the mob’s after me now, and they will be, I need to stay away from them. I’d just drag them into danger.” She looked out the window. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Well...” I said. “If you want, you can take your time. Vorpal’s staying with Dire for now, too.”

“Yeah?” Martin said, shifting the mirror to study me.

“Yes. She’s a good
friend
, and Dire trusts her at Dire’s back.” I smiled at Martin.

Bunny studied Vorpal out of the corner of her eye. Vorpal, for her part, put her feet up on the side of the van, and lay back, relaxing as best she could. “Kirsten.”

“Hm?” I asked.

“My name is Kirsten.”

I nodded. “No name besides Dire, sorry. And Martin’s Martin.”

“Just call me Bunny.” Bunny said. “All my friends do.”

“Yah?” Vorpal studied her, offered a slow smile. “There is a story behind that name?”

Bunny smiled, friendlier than I’d seen her grin before. “Yeah. But it’s best told after a few drinks.”

“Well, the two of you are the least wanted people in the group right now whose faces aren’t known to the authorities, so you can do a beer run once we get to the cabin.” I said, grinning.

We passed the ‘Arbor Haven’ sign on the lonely dirt road, pulled through tangles of obscuring trees, past cozy little cabins nestled back among them. Various cars and trucks studded the driveways, and I saw barbecues in full swing, tourists enjoying a closer communion with the outdoors.

A tall, blonde figure was sitting on the porch swing of Number Sixteen, and Martin gasped to see her. “Oh yeah! This is where you stashed her?”

She clambered to her feet, and a shorter figure bumbled out of the trees where she’d been playing. Both of them moved to intercept the van as it pulled to a stop.

Martin popped the door open, climbed out. “Minna! Long time no mfff—”

She seized him and hauled him in for a kiss.

I looked to Anya, who looked back at me gravely. Behind me Vorpal and Bunny laughed and cheered.

“Ice cream?” Anya asked me.

“Sure.”

She took my hand, and led me into the cabin.

It was nice inside, all hardwood and country kitsch, various farm implements and settler’s tools hanging from the walls. I’d chosen a place with multiple bedrooms, and now I was glad of it.

We’d just pulled a carton of Double Fudgie down from the freezer, when Martin and Minna crashed through the door, still kissing. Martin fumbled behind him, managed to get the door shut on the third try.