DIRE : TIME (The Dire Saga Book 3) Read online

  DIRE: TIME

  By Andrew Seiple

  Text copyright © Andrew Seiple 2016

  All Rights Reserved

  With thanks to Richard Roberts, a pioneer in the field of awesome supervillainy!

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1: DIRE - MAYHEM, DESTRUCTION, AND MISHAP 5

  CHAPTER 2 : VORPAL – MAKING A NAME 19

  CHAPTER 3: DIRE – HEAVY METAL THROWDOWN 30

  CHAPTER 4: DIRE – AN ALLIED RESISTANCE 40

  CHAPTER 5: MARTIN – THINGS FALL APART 48

  CHAPTER 6: DIRE – TRAVELS AND TRAITORS 58

  CHAPTER 7: BUNNY – ARCO TRIUMPH 72

  CHAPTER 8: DIRE – BAD MOON RISING 85

  CHAPTER 9: DIRE – THE HOUR OF MITTERNACHT 99

  CHAPTER 10: MINNA – PROXY SHELL 111

  CHAPTER 11: DIRE – IN THE HOUSE OF DARKNESS 123

  CHAPTER 12: VORPAL – FEAR BEYOND REASON 133

  CHAPTER 13: DIRE – WHOM GODS WOULD DESTROY 143

  CHAPTER 14: DIRE – ONE NIGHT IN BERLIN 154

  CHAPTER 15: MARTIN – CHOICES 165

  CHAPTER 16: DIRE – CASTLE WALLENSTEIN 174

  CHAPTER 17: BUNNY – END OF THE ROAD 181

  CHAPTER 18: DIRE – WALLENSTEIN 3D 190

  CHAPTER 19: DIRE – THE LAST CRUSADE 199

  CHAPTER 20: DIRE – FUTURE IMPERFECT 213

  CHAPTER 21: MINNA – THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME 222

  AUTHOR’S NOTE 230

  CHAPTER 1: DIRE - MAYHEM, DESTRUCTION, AND MISHAP

  “This just in! Westmarket is under villainous assault! The science-villain Doctor Dire is on the rampage, and all residents are instructed to seek shelter, and avoid any sign of conflict until— wait. What do you mean, all the residents are gone? How?”

  --Daniel Long, Icon Channel Six live news broadcast, on the day of the Westmarket district's destruction.

  I tumbled through the apartment wall, spraying bricks and mortar and debris behind me as I went. Hit the street, bounced, rolled, clipped a car so hard its windows shattered, and came to rest with my torso and rump embedded into a city bus. Car alarms shrieked, the rest of the northern wall groaned and collapsed, and my teeth ground against my mouthpiece as I rocked inside the interior harness of my power armor.

  In retrospect, telling the ten-foot-tall cyborg to hit me with his best shot had been rather cocky, as taunts go.

  I shoved my arms out to the sides, servos and actuators thrumming with power as I pushed myself out of the bus, and got my metal-shod feet on solid asphalt. Well, relatively solid. I’d built this heavy suit to handle stage one of this afternoon’s plans, which included about a ton of angry cyborg.

  “PATHETIC,” I said, eyeing the damage readouts. No, not pathetic at all, actually. But not outside of expected tolerances, either. Siegebreaker, the most physical of my old nemeses, was strong, tough, and smart. I'd never defeated him in hand-to-hand combat before. But I'd never built a suit this powerful before. And reading the numbers, I felt my lips peel back from my teeth.

  I could do this.

  “BEFORE THIS DAY IS OUT, YOU SHALL KNEEL BEFORE DIRE!”

  I posed, moving until my heads-up-display chimed. The sound told me that I’d reached the best angle of light and an optimal stance for the cameras on the news helicopters buzzing overhead.

  I have an app for that. Saves so much trouble, really.

  In the line of work I'm in, it isn’t enough to get the job done. You have to get it done with style. And that means making the crowd ‘pop’. Poses, taunts, banter, and even taking a good hit or two, well... those are all small prices to pay for building heat and getting the watchers worked up and invested.

  Two massive white metal-and-plastic hands burst from the wall's rubble, crushing bricks and sweeping them aside as a blue-and-white humanoid shape shoved itself through, and straightened up. It glared down at me through a blue visor, before settling into a sumo-like stance, hands outstretched and ready for me.

  Siegebreaker. The only organic part left to him was a brain somewhere in that massive robotic body. We’d been battering at each other for about four minutes now, and both of our shells had the scars to prove it.

  My goal; to figure out just where that brain was installed, preferably without killing him.

  His goal; hit me until I stopped moving.

  “I won’t kneel to you!” His synthesized voice roared back. “Tell me what you did with Schrodinger!”

  “HMHMHMHMHMH... HAHAHAHHAHA!”

  He charged, swinging fists that could have palmed fire hydrants without fully closing.

  I kicked in the gravitics, using flight to give me a speed boost as I dove aside, and drilled him at point-blank range with a particle beam. Seventy-five percent charge, which staggered him, knocked him off balance, and pushed him into an SUV. He slammed through the oversized vehicle, in a spray of glass and metal and fake-leather upholstery, but managed to stay on his feet.

  The beam left a small crater on his back, revealing shiny composite material beneath the hardened plastic shell. Ah, this was new.

  Another woe of working in this field: sure, you get to wield weaponry that can shoot satellites out of orbit, but you never actually know how tough your opponents are until you get into a fight with them. There's a fine line between ‘good enough to hurt your foes’, and ‘whoops, now they’re chutney’.

  I’d killed a single hero in my career-to-date. Even though I’d had a good reason for it, the act had pretty much sealed me into my current role.

  “SCHRODINGER LIVES AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO. DIRE CANNOT SAY THE SAME FOR YOU IF YOU CONTINUE THIS FUTILE STRUGGLE. SURRENDER!” I flew up as he swerved around, and tossed a Fjord Nino at me. The small car sailed past as I rolled to the side.

  He skidded to a stop, and his visor flashed as he glared up at me. “Never!” he tensed his legs, rockets flaring to life as he prepared to go airborne after me.

  “THEN FALL BEFORE DIRE!” I roared, and shot him with both particle beams, at ninety-percent charge.

  In that split second, as my gauntlets flared with energy and the brilliant golden light streamed into the collectors, I watched where he put his arms. He couldn’t dodge, he’d been preparing to jump and it was too late to shift. I’d fired the beams at him often enough in our fight— he knew the signs. There was no cover out in the middle of the street for him to get behind, not that it’d help anyway.

  I'd blast him. And no matter how much his mind told him that he could survive this, instinct would rule him, and he’d try to protect himself. Cover his vulnerabilities...

  And with glee, I watched as he shielded his upper chest.

  I kept the beams on him for a good three seconds, driving him into the ground, punching open the asphalt, sending billows of steam skyward as I rammed him through the street. Through the water pipes, through the sewage lines, through the very veins of the city itself, as water sprayed and sewage burst up in great brown and black gouts, splattering the streets.

  When my HUD started chiming heat warnings at me, I let the particle beams lapse, and surveyed my handiwork as displaced water and sewage roared back in.

  It was a glorious mess. And also an important part of my second goal, today. Sure, it looked like wanton destruction for the fun of it, but it was all part of the plan.

  Well, maybe a little fun.

  That said, I didn’t have more than moments to revel in the destruction. It’d be time to move to phase two shortly. I activated my comm. “Martin, is the frag zone prepped?”

  “Yeah. Everyone’s out. Ready for the coop da grase”

  “The what now?”

  “Y’know, the killin’ strike.”

  �
�Pretty sure the p’s silent,” I said.

  “Really? Shit, hard to tell. It’s a couple of those words I only read before, never heard.”

  “You never tried to use it before this? Never got told the right way to say it?”

  “Well, my old crew wasn’t ‘zactly full of grammar Nazis—”

  The water churned below, geysered upward in a burst of sewage effluent. I dodged it, knowing what was coming as a hurtling metal form jetted through it, fists extended. “Whoops!” I chuckled, as I darted back. “Get back to you later. Baby’s feisty.”

  Siegebreaker corrected his course to intercept me.

  I could have dodged. I didn’t. I twisted, acted like he’d caught me by surprise, and his massive metal fist latched onto my midsection, as he cut the jets and bore us both to the ground.

  Metal sprayed when the first layer of my back armor gave way like it was supposed to, and then I was embedded in the pavement.

  My harness rocked softly, and I chuckled. The impact gel was doing its job. Worth every penny I’d paid old man Morgenstern for the recipe.

  Still had no idea why he’d spared me last year. Doesn't matter at present. Ruminate later, deal with massive metal fists now.

  Siegebreaker held me in place with one hand, and hammered massive strikes onto my limbs and joints with the other. Metal flew from the impacts, revealing the black, segmented hyperceramic secondary layer. That one gave softly every time he struck, transmitting force back into the half-inch of impact gel that was the third layer.

  The impact gel gave not at all. The impact gel absorbed the kinetic energy and used it to turn into an equally hard solid for a microsecond, then reverted to liquid form as the energy dispersed.

  He might as well have been a boxer pounding a sandbag twice his size. Sure, if I let him keep doing this eventually he might accelerate his strikes to the point that the bag would rupture, but I had no intention of letting him get to that point.

  Besides, I had another motive in letting him get this close.

  I waited until his elbow was on the upswing, grabbed his head with one crumpled gauntlet, and triggered the ion pulse.

  He froze, and smoke billowed out of the vents to either side of his visor, as the blue light went dark. The burst just short-circuited every electronic device in that part of his body.

  With my other hand, I rerouted energy from my particle beam array to my servos, and burst free of his suddenly-slack grip with a quick wriggle, and a roll to my feet. My cape fluttered red in the wind as my suit stood, more silvery metal falling away to reveal the black segmented plates below.

  “AND SO YOU FALL.”

  The whole point of letting the fight get so far wasn’t to figure out his weakness but to beat him without killing him. The ion pulsars fried any electronic circuitry they hit. I could have hosed Siegebreaker down from the get-go, but that would have meant destroying the life support devices that kept his brain alive.

  He staggered upright, turned slowly to orient on me. Backup camera? Smart. “I’m not down yet!” he yelled, and put his hands up in a boxing stance. “Try that again! Come closer...”

  “FUCK NO.” I targeted his legs, sent ion bursts into them and watched him drop, sending fragments of asphalt flying in all directions. “STAY DOWN.”

  He started dragging himself toward me. I drilled his arms, carefully avoiding his chest. Finally he froze, unmoving, grasping hand stopped inches from my waist.

  I ignored him, and activated my comm again. “Big Boy’s down. Status?”

  Vorpal snarled. “Blonde bitch is pissed. If it weren’t for the forcefield I’d be dead.”

  “I’m keeping her on her toes, but with Quantum running interference I can’t get a solid shot in,” Bunny groused.

  “The stunner’s no good?” I asked.

  “Quantum’s got a device on the ground. Since he set it up, energy weapons fizzle.”

  Huh. He’d probably planned to use that on me.

  “Martin, any chance you can snipe that?”

  “Naw, it’s inside his forcefield. But I could suit up, and take it down from up close—”

  “Negative.” I snapped. “You’re the reserve. You don’t get stuck in like that.”

  “I can handle it. Why I always gotta be reserve, anyway?”

  “No time to argue,” I evaded. “Listen, Vorpal Bunnies, think you can hold them for another couple of minutes?” I was experimenting with humor, to lighten a rough situation.

  “Ja!”

  “Of course! And stop calling us that!”

  “Mmmm.... no.”

  “Jerk.”

  “Supervillain, remember?” I snarked. “Gotta have some perks.” But as I joked, I was already in motion, flying north. The cameras I’d placed around the area yesterday had just picked up Freeway.

  Freeway is a veteran hero, a speedster, and a serious problem. While he doesn’t have the oomph to tackle me directly, he's very good at running support for heroes who can.

  The few visible shots I had of him showed him standing still, talking to someone via a headset. The headset was new. Metahuman Resource Bureau issue? Or had he purchased something from an inventor?

  In any case, I’d counted on Freeway showing up for this next part. What I hadn’t counted on, was the massive blast of flames spiraling up at me from below. I twisted aside, dodged left—

  And got nailed by a metal soccer ball.

  The damn thing hit harder than anything that size had any right to, but compared to Siegebreaker’s punches it was a love tap. Nothing the gel couldn’t handle. Still, something about it caught my attention. Something familiar...

  As it hovered back and rammed me again, four or five times in rapid succession, I realized where I’d seen it before.

  “YOU DARE TO USE DIRE’S TECHNOLOGY AGAINST HER?” They were! Whoever they were, anyway. This was the old Destructorb system I'd built to take on Hardware when he'd tried to collect a bounty on me! Powerful, versatile, fast... and so very, very fragile. I'd discontinued them due to that design flaw.

  I backhanded it away, knocked it into a water tower, and watched it crumple and fall smoking to the ground. Yep, still the same problem with the shock absorbers.

  And a silvery ball about the size of a subcompact car rolled out from behind a building. My eyes grew wide as I traced the design of it, and my mouth opened in pure joy as it flipped into the air and unfolded into a suit of slim power armor, with the curves of the sphere becoming segments of rounded carapace. Beautiful! I recognized some of my design principles, but whoever this guy was, he’d put his own spin on things and taken it in a different direction.

  “Hey Doc!” A synthesized voice echoed from the silver-suited man’s helmet. “Blind villain says what?”

  “WHAT ARE—”

  He brought his gauntlets together and dazzling light flared, bathing my face in blinding glow. Which did precisely nothing, thanks to my military-grade flare compensation hardware and my tacnet’s multiple camera feed extrapolation.

  “—YOU TALKING... OH. WELL, THAT WAS CUTE.” I said, and snapped off a volley of mid-power particle beam shots at him. He went ass over heels, but before he hit the ground he was a ball again, rolling in a zig-zag pattern away from my blasts.

  “Normally that works a whole lot better,” I heard him mutter through my audio sensors.

  “MOST OF YOUR FOES PROBABLY HAVEN’T HEARD OF FLARE COMPENSATION.”

  “Speaking of that...” he said.

  Okay, this guy was clearly a mouthy hero. And a statement like that meant bad news about to hit. I killed the hover, did a dead drop until I was a few feet above the street, and used the gravitics to do a low altitude skim. Kind of like a hawk doing a solid swoop on a pigeon.

  Which was good, because the air behind me exploded into flames, so hot that even at this distance my suit sent up warning chimes.

  Most of my thermal shielding had been on the outer layer of the suit. And the impact gel didn’t react well to fire, or similar
effects. While I’d likely survive even a sustained burn, it wouldn’t be fun; it’d mean a few new injuries and scars, and I’d have to abort stage three. I’d come too far to abort stage three!

  I hit the ground, rolled, and looked around the empty city street. Those flames were coming from somewhere, and a quick flip of my visual sensors over to thermal tracking showed a figure among the parked cars. I flipped back to normal vision and zoomed in.

  The gas mask, the fatigues, the dog tags... Semper Fire. He’d been active in Cobbles Cove, fighting the Kriegers gang. His powers involve fire control, and he’d gotten nothing but good press, particularly for his restraint. Evidently he’d kept collateral and injuries to a minimum. Impressive for a guy whose signature was howling blasts of flame.

  He was pretty far from his normal stomping grounds, but I didn’t have time to muse on it as I charged him, throwing aside a sedan with a sweep of one arm, bulling through the cover between us.

  “Hey! Over here Deedee!” I heard the round battlesuit user yell, but ignored his taunts. This was no online game; he could draw no aggro here! I saw Semper Fire dance back from his cover, hop up onto the bed of a pickup truck, and point his hands at me as flames gathered, growing as I charged. But I was almost upon him—

  My collision alert howled, but it was too late to change directions as a brown blur solidified in front of me. I caught a glimpse of Freeway, sweat pouring down his face, before he disappeared from existence; then there came an echoing clang as I slammed full tilt into something brown, unyielding, and about five feet tall. I caught it for balance, fingers scrabbling so I didn’t flip head over heels...

  And it grabbed me back.

  I looked down into a small, brown face, sculpted from some sort of pottery. It looked all the world like the statue of an ancient armored warrior, finely sculpted with a mustache, goatee, and a headwrap that pulled his hair into a scarved topknot. The carved eyebrows narrowed, the eyes squinted at me, and his mouth opened and shut as he spat out words in a language I didn’t recognize.

  “Yeah, Jian Hu Ren says you’re being a jerk,” the power armored buffoon called out.