The Justiceers - Part Two: Chapter Eight
the next chapter in my forthcoming novel
The Justiceers
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two: Wave of Mutilation
2.8
Flames from The Nebberath’s thrusters cut a streak above the devastation formerly known as Oliath.
After so long waiting, watching, Arthur’s gut had finally spoken. They were to act. He’d draw out this ghost, its attachments clear to him now, he found a point of leverage and he’d wield it.
Miriam sent Arthur along in their dropship, staying upon The Nebbearth, needed above for this mission they now undertook. Their home wasn’t built ideally for flight within such atmosphere, but she could make it work with a little love.
Though she’d never advertise it, Miriam was a top-tier pilot. Now empowered by connection to the goddess within, she soared with divinity. Along with the help of The Nebberath’s guardian and Justiceer legend, Laurentine Daemenos, there was nothing she couldn’t do.
“Can we make this go faster?” Arthur questioned from the ground, growing impatient, gut clamouring about the imminent emergence of their specter. He was exposing himself boldly here, and it made him feel naked to be in this darkness alone.
Miriam chimed back, echoing through the bubble-shield actively preventing cosmic levels of radiation from curdling Arthur’s insides, speaking straight from some thrill-born state of zen.
“Love — we’re doing the very best we can right now.”
The Nebberath’s effector fields were of scope far beyond those within The Beast, and to use them required getting nearer Grammaton’s surface, submerging within its atmosphere, enabling this excavation to become possible in the slightest.
Its fields were clearing wreckage from the site of the former High Court complex, Miriam cutting circles in those highest skies above — they were getting close now. She’d worked the rubble back before Arthur took the drop pod.
He’d landed a click away and rode The Beast through the graveyard which had become this formerly majestic city. There wasn’t a mirror left standing. No building had survived the bomb’s fallout, a truly ominous sight to witness, lowest structures of those lucky few shielded enough by their surroundings retaining only a level or two of standing detritus.
Arthur was directing The Beast’s effectors to help with peeling back this final layer over what they knew to be the resting place of their target; that seemingly indomitable AI. Buried here, no-doubt undamaged, it would be irradiated upon unearthing and exposure to Oliath’s toxic air — if you could still call it that.
Expecting The Conclave’s envoy in now less than a half-cycle of planetary time, this object far beyond the scope which could be stowed in The Nebberath’s hold, knowing their fleet would include ships outclassing their own in both size and scope of technological capability — the goal here was twofold — clear and tag this wicked cube of high intelligence for its extraction upon the envoy’s arrival, and draw out the ghost.
Arthur’s gut knew, more than anything else determined from those mysteries pervading the planet’s data, his ghost was in league with this intelligence.
Enormous of slabs of wreckage were swept away from the ground, Arthur looking on from safe distance, the scope and volume of its mass enormous, thrown effortlessly into one of the overgrown mounds now growing so high by force of The Nebberath’s mighty strokes of effectuation.
“That should do it,” were Miriam’s last words.
At that very moment the unthinkable happened — a sight Arthur would see, sounds he would hear, their vibrations to be remembered — one which wouldn’t be believed for some time.
The Nebberath had exploded into magnificent fireball in the skies above Olitath.
Esoteric waves of hopelessness before unknown to Arthur had struck him, witnessing that expanding vortex of flame, the thousand shards of his heart splaying into the darkness above.
Arthur’s home was gone, and Miriam along with it.
Those moments following the eruption of Arthur’s soul in the sky were not of thought, they were of rage. For a few most dreadful seconds he’d nowhere to point it all but himself. Having planned this mission, dictating terms of its execution, he’d bear this weight always.
In those few terrible ticks of time’s great wheel, Arthur almost lost his mind to the agony and despair. Shock would fail to describe it. Shattered, was his heart.
Arthur hated himself more deeply than anything before. That was, until he saw the speedship landing; Ash Ūnderlìk emerging from within, shrouded by a formfitting energy-shield of the like he’d never seen.
They were smiling—that cunt was smiling.
A booming crash of thunder sang in the darkness above. Arthur’s gut knew it wasn’t thunder at all; Grammaton didn’t have storms. This wasn’t his ghost standing before him, it was just another tool. The one he’d really want was hiding in the sky. It was they above who’d been the one to destroy everything he loved most, who he’d go to the ends of universe to kill.
For now, Arthur thought, this one before him would do.
“Tricky fucking bitch,” Arthur spat in rueful honor of his mortal enemy’s quite ridiculously superhuman reflexes, and Miram’s oft repeated nomenclature.
Ash was staying one step ahead, and he was taking everything The Beast had to give. Not one moment passed where his spirit hadn’t been immersed in the purest fury of flame. Something was changing within him, every second, his godhood was coming out.
This had to be ended. Senseless hatred and bloodshed — mortal terror wrought upon sisters and brothers of soul — what madness could inspire such a thing? He’d purge the entire universe of this evil.
Something in him had felt so connected to his ghost, afraid of them, gut speaking in such muted yet ominous tones. They were an unusual human being — if a person at all.
This fast bitch wasn’t either, that was for sure. Arthur’s gut knew they’d been leading him somewhere, into a trap. He didn’t care. They were going to find out what happens when you fucked with a god.
His Miriam would be avenged tonight.
Arthur fired volleys of The Beast’s never-before used homing knives, seeing less than half of them make it back as designed, deflected, even snatched from the air by this ‘fucking psycho’ as they fled through what was left of Oliath, tearing it to pieces around them.
He’d been leveraging the effector fields to lob every piece rubble he could, tearing down the largest remains of buildings to try and ‘bury this fuck’, and the goddamned super-soldier wouldn’t be brought down.
Humans made into such weapons of war had been known throughout the galaxy, borne only to civilizations of despicable moral fiber. Witnessing one within the breadth of The Periphery, was a most shameful thing to Arthur.
Within his arms was the modified repulser canon, tuned to twist guts through its most viscous sonic vibrations, though he’d not yet found himself in range to use it. Arthur planned to stop this bitch’s heart tonight, if they even had one.
There would be no end to the change that the god Arthur was becoming in these moments would bring to the galaxy. He would cleave this evil from The Periphery if was the last thing he did.
They were drawing Arthur into the sewers, a structure at last in which they could hide, that ‘fucking coward’.
He’d not hesitate a single moment before thrusting The Beast forward off that precipice to follow them within, uncaring of the consequences in any respect, barely reacting to the luck he’d found as Jane took it upon herself in applying their effector fields most judiciously, breaking their fall and leaving Arthur miraculously unhurt.
He couldn’t care that his gut screamed of foolishness, closing himself in such close quarters, proceeding into those tightest tunnels, providing this walking weapon a plethora of advantages they’d exploit.
Arthur didn’t know that he cared about anything anymore.
It was then the voice cut through on his com-piece, that man’s voice. Gut knew immediately — this was his ghost. Those words he’d said had instantaneously forged more conviction in Arthur’s heart than ever resided there before, remaking him. He’d feel his destiny revealed.
“I hope you enjoy what you’ve earned with your foolishness, Justiceer.”
