The Justiceers - Part Two: Chapter Nine
the next chapter in my forthcoming novel
The Justiceers
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two: Wave of Mutilation
2.9
Ash was thriving.
Existing in such freedom of flow, owning the power Carrigan endowed, bringing it to bear upon his enemies, there’d been nothing before which made them feel so complete. Their energy was electric within, quite literally, as if they’d been made for this.
Having lured that Justiceer into the sewers of Oliath, scouted by their fair master’s drones, Ash found great pleasure in the precognitions now seen flashing ahead. This would be a most enjoyable achievement to earn for their liege. The rewards they’d receive were unimaginable to Ash.
Time was no longer a concept familiar to them, lost within their cursed gift, seeing their own person as nothing more than a fabric woven into reality itself, concepts of individuality so completely forsaken.
Still, Carrigan loved them, and they knew it inside. He’d never show it. Ash could feel it though, they swore, someday he’d prove it to them. Perhaps this day, one of such immense glory, where they’d bring his righteous vengeance upon this hypocritical swine so justified in selfish lies of morality.
Carrigan taught Ash much about this scourge which needed purging from the galaxy, explaining how their ideals were those of petty gerrymandering and morality policing meant to keep people lost in the foolishness of hope.
Though they’d not understand a bit of what he’d said, they believed their love regardless, and would bring these hypocrites to absolution for his honor. It would be this day Ash earned his love for real.
Carrigan did it. He was feeling very pleased with himself. One down — one to go. They’d fucking suffer too, his little reject would see to that.
He’d not let the Justiceer respond to his words, cutting the line, watching from his feeds planted within the sewer’s uppermost structures, hoping they’d squirmed inside. Something within Carrigan felt connected to them. He’d not known what it was, but it made him want to kill them all the more. They somehow felt like the only real threat he had.
Intuitions were not something Carrigan Marks was accustomed to. His ways of being were thoughtless and born of purest blindness and hatred. That’s all which had gotten him here. Now, watching the spiritual fool spring his trap, he noticed a deeper understanding of his connection to this Justiceer bloom from some unknown and forgotten place inside.
Carrigan discarded the notion out of hand.
There was no place in his mind for intrusive thoughts. He’d known better than to fall for foolish voices within throughout his lifetime. It’s what had brought him to such incredible heights of success. He would not change his ways now, not for some peculiar feeling, even one so oddly intriguing, which somehow triggered that same sensation he’d feel in his chest on those private occasions with his letters from his past.
Watching the Justiceer make his way deeper, precluding themself by moving beyond the view of his hidden cameras, Carrigan opened the line to Ash’s inner ear.
“He’s coming your way,” he’d warned.
The cistern Arthur found himself in was enormous beyond what his greatest imagination would’ve dreamed possible, with pillars alone the size of buildings.
He’d thought then of how only such massive installations of support could’ve made sense, considering these ceilings remained in the face of such powerful forces unleashed above.
Oliath’s cistern was a famous feature from that newfound city of ruin. Grammaton itself sporting such little freshwater, smatterings of lakes and underground rivers found in its deepest and most secret places, only one of which had ever been tapped for usage by its people.
Off-world imports would meet population’s demands, filling this massive holding with purified waters brought from the oceanic planet, Malta, which The Periphery had found residing in this same system quite fortunately. Without it, colonization of this planet would’ve never been possible in the first place.
Arthur’s gut could feel ‘the cunt’, creeping in some darkest corner. He’d shred them. The cannon of sonic terror was within his grasp, and it would tear their guts out. There was no way they might maneuver around the weapon, its waves no-doubt able to penetrate their energy field. He’d scramble their insides.
Arthur planned to take it slow from there, and make sure he had something to place in front of their foulest lord, show his ghost what a Judge of The Justiceer’s was capable of when you’d turned them bad. Then he’d purge this galaxy of all that man’s sickest seeds of legacy. None would remember his name, whatever it happened to be, and Arthur would see all he cared about burn around him.
There was a shot in the dark.
It glanced clean off Arthur’s bubble shield. He’d not take the bait. Arthur hoped they weren’t that stupid, a part of him wanting this to be a challenge, needing something to breathe into his newfound godhood with.
His gut confirmed what he’d known. It had only been a petty tactic of diversion.
Cutting straight out across the access platform parting the nearest two chambers of still water, Arthur found himself shimmering inside. Miriam was here. She’d made it to some safe place on the other side. He’d known she would do it quickly. There was nothing which could have made Arthur feel better in this moment than to remember she’d always be with him.
Arthur then received a down pouring onto his crown which he found most distinctive, and along with it had come her words so clearly.
‘Turn back,’ she’d said.
He’d brought The Beast to a stop as another diversionary shot rung off the top of his shield. This would be the most difficult decision Arthur could ever think of making — to choose between his rageful lust for revenge in this moment, or reason. She was trying to save him.
Knowing this feeling again within his heart, realizing she could be there for him always, he’d felt the most crushing weight of realization crashing down. Arthur made a mistake.
He found himself doing something then, which he’d never done before in his life—Arthur Katrinus relented.
They were chasing him now.
Arthur fled as fast as The Beast would take him, Miriam’s light shining foreward, insight pouring so freely. There was no end to the love he’d felt in that tunnel traversed at highest speed, and it was all for her.
The way she’d borne hope into his heart through the cycles with her lightness of spirit, that missing spark which brought the most from Arthur, had finally shown him what it meant to love, and he knew he’d see her again beyond.
Just aware this would come to pass, and of how he’d carry her light’s presence in his most sacred chamber until that fated time, would power Arthur forward to do greatest things imaginable within The Periphery.
He’d always known a part of his fate was to love in some tragic way.
It finally became clear as Arthur cleared the tunnel, following those messages of direction from his goddess. His heart had always known what the love he was really looking for felt like. It’s why he looked right past Miriam when they’d first met. Those feelings taught it would hold such pain within its structures, that his one would be a cruelest bitch, and this caused him to search in places where that hurt was more overtly present, unknowing until this very moment that Miriam’s love did in fact hold those feelings in his future.
Firstly, she hadn’t shown him all of herself quite yet, darkest bits still to come, but also, that deepest hurt was what he’d feel going on without her.
Beyond every other apprehension and dislike he’d had about Miriam back then, more impactful than even that way his mind disregarded her, was something not even he would acknowledge as he’d pushed away those feeling stirred in his heart.
She was just so much older, and Arthur wouldn’t open to a love he’d have to lose.
The sight of Grammaton’s sky was miraculous to Arthur, those towering lights blotting the stars from view now gone, the cosmos was out in its fullest glory. He’d been running The Beast to its limits for such time.
Miriam’s light had guided him free
Conquering a grueling ascent through a cross-weaving of access pipes, eventually climbing a stairwell which pushed his Beast’s limitations. Arthur came to realize why his gut had plagued about this over so many cycles, working tirelessly to tune functionality within the machine. Without it, he’d never have survived.
Still, there’d been that trailing presence of the ‘tricky fucking bitch.’
There was plenty of energy stores remaining in The Beast, Arthur’s shield holding fast, but there wasn’t a place to go. Hangars at the spaceport had been wiped out. He’d have a shot to make the nearest settlement that was still holding power reserves, if only it hadn’t been separated by cavernous fissures of Grammaton’s shimmer which would stop The Beast cold.
Arthur knew he’d have to make a stand. Having drawn them out of the sewers, he reckoned this was the best shot he’d get. It was time to put this one to an end. So, preparing is was what Arthur did, crafting means to deal with them quickly. He’d worried it was a mistake until he felt Miriam urging him to fight.
They’d emerged at long last, the sight making his gut churn. His heart was pounding so hard that he couldn’t tell Miriam’s light from his own surging willpower. He put The Beast’s throttle to full.
Arthur had prepared well. Ash was frozen.
Weapons were abound in the environment, planted as such, mapped by Jane for her most effectively wielding. Gut had known there was something quite different about this enemy. They weren’t just fast, there was foresight to it. So, Arthur was going to give them more than they could handle.
He was focusing intention on diversionary tactics he’d set-up as distraction — future plans of attack he’d not actually execute, hoping to cloud their precognition — charging as they’d filled themselves with energy literally crackling from their fingertips.
Leaning into his expanding senses, time-slowing in perception, he’d felt an intuitive impression of this person inside himself. What strange feelings they were. Arthur wondered if this was how Miriam experienced others, flowing with such instantaneously effortless receptions of empathy.
This super-soldier was afraid. That’s what he’d sensed. Whatever power they’d within them to see wasn’t showing them happy sights. They wouldn’t be enough, and he could feel them coming to realize it.
A thunderous sound shook the sky, informing Arthur time was running low. His ghost would be here soon and he’d have to be ready for them.
Having planned it, now reaching the precipice determined by Jane’s calculations as most effective, Arthur unleashed it all; homing knives, the sonic cannon’s most concentrated beam, effector fields grabbing and hurling everything it could at once, in four waves.
All would reach his target in near simultaneity.
Those sounds in the sky growing louder, watching his most ruthless salvo come to bear upon this fiend, the moment slowed to a crawl in Arthur’s mind. He was processing everything faster, moving with more vitriol, and glowing with more love than he’d every before at once.
Arthur, this man of a god’s soul, had found his place in the universe. It was destroying scum like this, protecting the innocent from harm, holding true to the feelings he found within.
His ghost’s pawn had been locked in place. For such an extended portion of this glacial moment in time, while Arthur brought his arms to bear, then watched them collapsing into one, he’d sworn he had them.
Then they’d vaporized a largest chunk of granite with an expulsion of viscously charged energy, leaping through its shatters with such perfect heading to be grazed by inconsequential shards of debris. They had made it clear as everything he sent their way came crashing inward, to where they’d been only moments before
They’d landed on all fours, rising to look Arthur dead in the eyes as he brought The Beast to a stop, such pride in their energy.
Then a speedship took their head off clean from behind.
Like lightning it was; the quickness of that ship, the speed of the goon’s bouncing skull ricocheting past Arthur, his perception of time as it landed and the hatch flipped open.
It was a goddess that emerged — Arthur’s goddess. She’d a saddest smile upon her face, fighting back tears in her eyes. Arthur was too stunned to cry. Rage, fear, and pain had been running wild in his blood, and he’d gone through this all before so recently.
He also knew Miriam had left him in the dark, seeing that written on her face.
She’d come over to Arthur, feeling her own emotions more clearly than ever before, sensing how incredibly proud of him she was for facing this all, leading his own charge with such bravery. Arthur could also feel their shared broken heart over the loss of The Nebberath.
That would never stop aching. That was what she’d known would happen and hadn’t been able to tell him.
Reaching her Arthur, their shields meeting to become one, she’d sat upon his lap and given him a softest kiss upon the forehead. Arthur knew he’d forgive her, and there was so much joy to see Miriam alive, but he was also terribly hurt by this all.
Miriam looked back over to the body of that hateful soldier, a sneer emerging on her face before she’d said it.
“I guess there was a limit to how much that bitch could dodge at once.”
