“It used to be that you could get a cargo payload up into orbit without a ton of regulations, checks, and military supervision. Private industry used to keep a number of public launch sites and windows open and rentable, with a minimum of hassle. Then Mentat the Mindbender snuck one of his mind-control satellites into a launch, and security got nuts for a while. Damn near destroyed the industry in the nineties. But things were quiet after that... up until Doctor Dire managed to smuggle a cargo up around two-oh-oh. Thanks Doc. You're the reason we can't have nice things.”

--Lauren Jane Kolder, in her book “Fly Me To the Moon: My life as a launch technician.”

Icon City shone brilliant from sixty miles up, a glittering bauble of curves and angles where the ocean met the land. From my perspective just below the point where atmosphere hit space, nothing blocked my view. With glee I peered through my cradle’s telescopic sights at my home metropolis.

It had taken a fair amount of work to arrange this. Though I was on a tight timetable, I took a minute to appreciate a view that was normally only available to satellites and high-flying heroes. Icon was a great and sprawling city, glorious but flawed. I would fix it, I would bring out the best in this imperfect metropolis. That was the point of this little excursion, the first step to righting an injustice. Time and effort had gone into this, months of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and now the point of this entire operation lay beneath me.

But not for long.

I flexed my fingers, and the lenses snapped shut. The computers calculated telemetry, and found it good. I spared a glance at the heads-up display, and checked the tracking subroutines. All green. No more excuses to linger.

“Showtime,” I whispered, and hit the rockets.

When discussing it on a particulate level, scientists sometimes call gravity the weakest force. I consider that a bald-faced lie, and the proof of the matter was currently adding to an already impressive acceleration. As the pod shuddered and shook, and I with it, I felt my lips peel back from sheer joy. I knew that the ablative shielding of the pod was burning away as the compression of the atmosphere ground against it. Air has mass, even when it’s doing nothing more than being in your way.

Forces that would turn unprotected flesh into fine red mist howled and gnawed at my chariot, and I laughed with exhilaration. For a few splendid seconds, I knew what Icarus must have felt before the sun melted his wings...

It was over all too soon, and as I got through the outer layers I deployed the chutes. They emerged one after another in a rapid-fire sequence. The first dozen were shredded as fast as they came, providing minimal drag. But physics would not be denied, and as enough tiny pebbles can change the course of a mighty river, the pod slowed enough to forestall a catastrophic impact.

I was coming in hot, but I didn’t want to hit
too
hard. The point of this exercise was shock and awe, not death and destruction.

Well, okay. Maybe a
little
destruction.

Thirty seconds to impact, and I switched my view to the cameras I’d hacked a week ago. The FBI had a perimeter up, standard protocol for cases like this one. Cameras watched both inward and outward, but it was the inward ones I cared about.

I was rather relieved that they’d won the turf scuffle with the Metahuman Response Bureau over the handling of this case. The MRB would have been a hell of a lot harder to hack.

The view from outside the building was clear. Icon City’s courthouse stood as stern and foreboding as it had fifty years ago, when it had been rebuilt after Graygaunt’s trial. It had been wrecked then, and rebuilt stronger and more defensible. Ever since that incident, no one had ever managed a successful assault on a trial in progress. After today, they’d have to reset their calendar.

Twenty seconds to go, as the sky screamed around my pod. The JANUS warhead tracking system would be noticing me any second now, and NORAD would be going on alert. Not that it would do any good, this would be over before they could shoot me down.

I switched to the cameras I’d smuggled into the courthouse. Hadn’t been easy. The scanners on the doors, even on the vents, had been updated as the decades rolled past and the Cold War drove espionage and counter-espionage technology into a maddening spiral. Fear of the Red Menace increased federal funding, and old-but-strong technology secured the building.

I’d had to use pseudoplastic microdot cameras sprayed onto the jurors as they left their hotel, masked by an errant splash from a malfunctioning sprinkler system. Not a bit of metal in those cameras, and taken by themselves they lacked the power to be detected by the e-mag scanners. But once I’d gotten enough of them inside, they’d networked and activated. They were burning out at a phenomenal rate, but I only needed them for the next few seconds. And as the blurry picture inside the courtroom resolved, I scowled and fed the micro-corrections into my pod’s maneuvering rockets. That damned prosecutor was pacing again, and he was occupying floorspace I’d planned to be bare. I’d have to come down near the bailiff instead, and he’d probably be injured by my landing. Definitely wouldn’t kill him, probably wouldn’t be fun. With ten seconds to go, I had to accept the cost.

Five seconds, and daylight started to seep in through cracks in the pod. It was coming apart now, just as I’d designed it to. The largest chunks were breaking off, hurtling in different directions to their pre-planned destinations. I was left with a plug of shielding below, and the payload riding it down.

The dome of the courthouse rose to meet me, and as the sonic boom of my descent echoed above the city I rode my chariot of fire down to the mortals below.

It made a horrific crash when it hit the roof, and I was glad for my audio filters. I felt everything vibrate above me as the shielding plug flew to pieces, breaking through the layer of armor in the dome’s infrastructure.

It cleared the way for the payload that was my power armor to plummet through the ceiling of the courtroom and slam into the floor, the sheer force of the impact knocking the bailiff head over ass into the wall. And as I crouched in a perfect three-point stance, the fragments of my pod found their destinations; key points of Icon City’s power grid.

The lights died, as the broadcast energy towers for the district went out one by one. The only one spared supplied power to Sara’s Mercy, the main hospital for the district. While they had generators, I didn’t want to interrupt any operations in progress. I’d set myself a goal of no fatalities for this operation. Death was counterproductive to my goal.

Unfortunately, the surviving tower meant that the blackout wouldn’t last long as the grid rerouted. I had to make the most of the chaos.

And chaos it was! Screams echoed through my audio sensors, and in the darkness my night vision saw the spectators and officials yelling and scrabbling at each other, coughing at the dust brought down from the ceiling, or frozen in shock.

I stood.

Cloth whispered against steel as my armor unfolded, all eight feet of it rising up to look down on the people around me. “Scare,” I breathed into my mask.

The scene took on a red tint as my mask’s eye sockets lit up with bloody red light. Screams intensified, as my burning red eyes stared at the jury, seeming to materialize out of the darkness.

The lights flickered on, and the screams turned to confused babbling as they got their first look at me. Horrified gazes traced the bulky lines of dark gray metal armor, the blood-red cape that ended in a cowl around my white ceramic mask.

“SILENCE,” I demanded, and my voice echoed throughout the courtroom. It was grinding metal, it was discord, it was the dying shriek of something horrible and unknown to modern man. It was a voice designed to go straight to the hindbrain and remind the listener that our species had started out as prey.

It was pretty damned good, and I was proud of it. I’d spent weeks getting it right.

The crowd shut up, save for some random whimpering and one poor old woman sobbing into her hands.

The bailiff groaned, and flopped an arm over to cover his ears. I breathed a sigh of relief to see it. He’d be fine. Movement at the front drew my eye, and I saw the two FBI guards grabbing the accused, hauling him toward the nearest exit. They pushed through the crowd, and I shook my head.

“NO. YOU’RE NOT LEAVING JUST YET.”

I aimed a gauntlet at the exit sign glowing above the door.

Particle beams are lovely things. Pure kinetic force, capable of penetrating heavy armor or stunning an unarmored target, depending on the charge and spread you put behind them. Or in this case—

Light flashed, tracing a crackling line between my hand and the sign, and it exploded into sparking fragments.

The crowd shrieked, the FBI agents halted, and their captive shook his shoulders free from their grasp.

Young, thin, dark-skinned, with tattoos visible on his lower arms where the orange jumpsuit didn’t cover, Martin Jackson looked much as I remembered him. He turned to face me with a wide grin, and a look of smugness that made me snort to see it. He raised his handcuffed wrists, and waved at me.

“Hey Lady.”

Shocked murmurs rose, at the realization that the armored hulk among them was female. I rolled my eyes. We’d just hit a new millennium, this really shouldn’t be an issue anymore. But I’d worry about educating people later, right now I had momentum going for me and I needed to milk it.

“YOU CAME HERE FOR JUDGEMENT,” I rumbled, letting my arms fall behind my cape as I paced from side to side, a restless armored tiger in among prey.

“YOU SHALL RECIEVE JUDGEMENT. BUT NOT ON HIM. NOT ON MARTIN JACKSON.”

“Order! There will be order!” The judge had found his voice, and I turned to him, the metal of my suit creaking in the sudden silence as he fell still.

“YES. YES, THERE WILL BE ORDER. DIRE SHALL BRING THIS CITY TO ORDER, DRAGGING IT KICKING AND SCREAMING IF SHE HAS TO.”

I pointed at him, and he shook, fighting to keep his fear off of his face. The right honorable Judge Meyer Blonstein. Old. Rich. Known for being a hardass. To the public eye, not a bad judge. But I’d done my homework on him, and I hadn’t liked what I’d found behind his public face.

“MARTIN JACKSON DESERVES A TRIAL BY HIS PEERS, AND THERE ARE NONE OF THOSE TO BE FOUND HERE.”

“Unrepentant criminals, you mean?” The judge shot back. “I see at least one other here.”

Ah, he still had a little courage left in him. Time to crush that.

With a bound and a sweeping backhand, I shattered the podium out from under him. He fell, and I caught him by the tie with my free hand, hoisting him into the air. Slowly, slowly, as he choked and clawed at his neck. I didn’t want to snap his spine by going too fast or being too forceful.

“SHE KNOWS, MEYER. SHE KNOWS ABOUT THE KICKBACK THE COLD HARBOR SUPERMAX GIVES YOU FOR EACH CONVICT YOU SENTENCE TO LIFE THERE.”

His eyes widened as he stared down at me, and his fingernails rasped down my mask, sought for some vulnerability. I had none for his fingers to find, and I continued without mercy.

“AND THANKS TO THE TIME-DELAYED MAILS SHE PREPPED THROUGHOUT THE GRIDNET, EVERY NEWS STATION IN THE COUNTRY IS CURRENTLY LEARNING ALL THE DIRTY... LITTLE... DETAILS.”

Up to and including him fucking a lobbyist in his office. The Supermax had tucked that footage away as blackmail. I’d found it on their files, after a good solid hack.

“YOU ARE CORRECT IN ONE ASSESSMENT.” I dropped him, as he sobbed for air, tearing his tie free from his fat neck. “THERE ARE AT LEAST TWO UNREPENTANT CRIMINALS IN THE ROOM. BUT MARTIN JACKSON IS NOT ONE OF THEM.”

I turned to the jury. Most of them shrunk back, and a couple of them shrieked. The FBI agents had spread out during my tirade, I noticed. Getting good firing angles, places they could take shots without risking too many civilians. Just like their handbooks and training instructed.

I was counting on that.

The jury wasn’t as cool-headed as the agents, not by any measure. Two of the older women and one of the middle-aged men were crying in fear. Half of the rest were frozen, gazelles watching a lion in their midst. Only a few were watching me with anything like calm. One younger-looking man even had his phone out, recording. I smirked to see it, the checkpoints had been lax or he’d been determined to smuggle it in, or both. Good. I wanted people to see this. I wanted footage of what I did here.

“AND YOU LOT.” I pointed at them, and one of the crying women fainted. “HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE EVER MISSED A MEAL? HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE EVER LIVED WITHOUT A ROOF OVER YOUR HEAD? HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE GONE INTO THE HEART OF ENEMY TERRITORY ALONE, RISKING EVERYTHING TO SAVE YOUR LOVED ONES?”

No reply. Didn’t expect any. Rhetorical questions, really. I continued with a disdainful sweep of my arm. “A JURY OF HIS PEERS. BAH! NONE OF YOU ARE HIS PEERS. HE’S WORTH TWENTY OF YOU.”

Where my arm passed, the crowd flinched back. And I squinted, a little surprised. I’d expected to be interrupted by now. I hadn’t prepared any more material.

Time to ad-lib? Looked like.

“AS SUCH, DIRE DECLARES THIS TRIAL A FARCE. SHE WILL NOW ESCORT MISTER JACKSON FROM THESE PREMISES—”

BOOK: DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2)

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