Catastrophe Jones

This is Issue #105 of DeathWatch, an ongoing Serial. Click that link to go find ‘A Beginning’ and read from there, if you need to catch up.

Happy Reading!

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Kieron, Djara, Hana, and the rest came to stand near her. Weapons were tossed to the side, and they each lifted their hands up and out, and were summarily bound. It wasn’t until they were separated that Jules began to panic. Once their weapons were taken and their hands were bound in locking cuffs, soldiers began to lead them in opposite directions.

It was then that Jules began to panic. “No,” she said. “No, you can’t — you don’t. NO.” She struggled against her captors, a look of wild fear and fury rising in her eyes. She tried to follow after Hana, but was jerked back toward the officer who held her lead.

“Jules–” Kieron began. “Deep breaths. We won’t be able to handle anything if we panic–”

“FUCK you,” she growled at him, furious. “Don’t let them take Hana! You don’t know. You don’t know what these monsters can do–”

“Demoro!” The officer holding Jules’s rope cried. The rest of them stopped, reining in their horses, waiting. The officer who spoke looked down at her and said clearly, “Though we speak the vulgar tongue as you, we are less monsters than you. You are the ones who have invaded our homeland, and killed thousands of our people. Our children.”

Jules glared up at him. “This ship was a scouting ship! We helped stop that. I would never–”

The officer on the horse leaned down, close to Jules, and hauled up on the rope, pulling her up so she strained on her toes. The tension in the group rose, watching her be handled roughly. He stared down at her, his dark eyes narrowed in both fury and indignance. “Shall we say then, Centralite, that just because some of a people have done monstrous acts, not all of a people are monsters?” the officer asked.

Jules breathed sharply, panting, angry and strained as she was. “What are you going to do with her?”

“The same thing that shall be done with anyone we feel may be of use,” the officer replied. “She will be questioned. Broken if necessary, to get the answers we seek. And then you will all be taken back to the inner city, to the Palace, likely, to be given to the Prince.”

“And what shall the Prince do with us?”

“Whatever he pleases,” the officer said, sounding almost bored. “He is the Prince. If you are unlucky, you will be given to the Guardian, who will impale you upon his sword, and burn you from the inside out, for daring to attack our lands.”

Hana bowed her head and tried not to cry.

“Keep us together,” Jules offered. “This was a ship full of cadets. They don’t have any real knowledge of the Centralis forces.”

“And unless you’re going to tell me everything you know, you have nothing with which to bargain, either,” the officer said, rolling his eyes. He began to lower her.

“Wait, wait!” she cried.

He didn’t listen.

“Demoro!” Jules shouted. “Habeo corpore meum! Accipe me.” She looked like she might fall apart at any moment, and yet she gritted her teeth and stared the man down, a mix of hope and fear on her face, naked and desperate. “Accipe me, in vicem eas.”

That look sent a chill down Kieron’s spine. He knew some of the words used in the Academy were similar to Ilonan, and knew from Sha’s brother’s books that it was because the language known as Ilonan had been bastardized and broken down into many of the languages on his side of the Ridge. He knew at least the gist of what she’d said. Take me, instead of her. He wondered how and why Jules knew enough Ilonan to speak with clarity — enough to make it so that the Ilonans would understand her… but the crew might not. He wondered how many had served with Jacob long enough to have seen any of his books, if any of them had read them, had learned enough to know Centralis’s place in the war.

He was thrown out of his reverie by the sound of a cannon being fired from on high. In the distance, the smoldering wreckage of the Jacob was blown further to bits.

The officer stopped, stared down at Jules, considering her for some time. His dark eyes settled on her pale ones and seemed to take all of her into account, massive, furious personality and all. He finally shrugged, gesturing to the group. They were led off by the officers all in one direction. He hauled her up and over the saddle in front of him, draped against the horse, and shouted to the others, “Ambulent simul.”

Hana was lead back to the group, wide-eyed and shaken.

Kieron moved to be closer to her.

“What’ll they do with Commander O’Malley?” she wondered, looking at him. “Why’d they take her instead?”

“It’ll be okay, Hana,” Kieron lied, trying to keep his expression reassuring. “She’s more valuable because she’s an officer. They–” His voice broke, and he paused, clearing his throat and closing his eyes. “Jules knows how to handle herself. She’s already saved me twice in the last two hours.”

Uncertain, Hana kept looking off toward where the officer had ridden, carrying his cargo. “And now she’s saved me, but Brody, who’s going to save her?”

Kieron tried to sound confident, but was certain his voice was only somewhere between grim and shaking. “We’ll have to.”

The officers turned and began to lead them off, into the rolling hills, skirting what was becoming a bloody battlefield. They could see Ilonan calvary forces riding in, soldier in silks and armor, banners fluttering, guns and spears and tasers. People from the Jacob and the Adoria fought in tangled knots of comrades, while airships descended out of the storm, looking for reasonable places to put down, and unload their crews.

Kieron and the Jacob’s people that had already been collected saw their crew captured or killed across the battlefield, until those that were left were chained and marched.

They did not know where they were going — but at least they were all going together.

Almost, anyway.

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This is Issue #104 of DeathWatch, an ongoing Serial. Click that link to go find ‘A Beginning’ and read from there, if you need to catch up.

Happy Reading!

PREVIOUS

* * *

With his sharp steel put away, the high-ranking Ilonan who faced down Djara bore a thin-lipped grin that wasn’t even smug — simply somewhere between arrogant and resigned. He seemed faintly put out by the battle on his home soil, as though he had better things to take care of, and the contempt with which he viewed the invaders wasn’t disguised in the slightest, except with perhaps the faintest bit of curiosity. At first, he did not respond to her words, to her proclamation, and the words hung in the air, a threat of violence that echoed the screaming, snarling fights that were occurring in the once-green fields further south, with other crewmembers that had fallen and not yet found comrades. Finally, he took a step forward, as though acknowledging her hatred, her fury. He stared at Djara, and his eyes were dark and cold as he said, “Kneel. You live if you kneel. I will bring you in if you yield. If you attack–”

Jules interrupted his offer, and shouted a long string of unintelligible curses, most of which Kieron couldn’t understand, but imagined were Kriegic. They sounded angry enough to be Kriegic, at least, all full of harsh gutturals, animalistic in its sound and intensity. She was red in the face and clenching her fists, holding tight to the gun in her hand, not yet ready to surrender it to the approaching enemy.

The crew looked almost amused at the outburst, heartened that she was not cowed, while a few of the Ilonans looked almost scandalized, and glanced to their commander as though for reassurance.

Djara lifted a bloodied hand, the red of it gleaming dully against the dark earth of her skin, looking furious and broken, and shouted to the crew, “Do as they say!” She looked back over her shoulder to Jules.

The Maxima‘s former Quartermaster had a pale face, and trembled as she stared at the Ilonans, who had them surrounded, and then she looked to Djara, pleading and warning all at once.

Djara looked back over her shoulder to Jules, and shook her head, tears streaming down her face, and she moved as to bend a knee, her face crumpling in grief.

One by one, the soldiers in Kieron’s group began to kneel, looking lost to do so. His knees ached and his ankle throbbed in agony as he dropped down, looking at Jules, then at Djara. You’d better have one fuck of a plan, he thought. We can’t just surrender; they’ll kill us anyway.

Djara sobbed aloud as she let one knee touch the sodden earth. One hand reached out to grasp the enemy’s uniform to steady herself as she sagged, uttering a wail of despair.

The Ilonan reached a gloved hand to pluck her fingers free of the sash over his jacket, saying, “You and your soldiers will be taken to–”

And with that, Djara curled her fingers around the hand that moved to hold hers, and used it to rise swiftly, driving her knife up and into his soft belly.

Kieron gaped, moved to stand back up, but his injured leg folded beneath him, and he went down with a cry, rolling and lifting his taser to try to defend himself.

The Ilonan exhaled suddenly, forcefully, and could not draw breath again as Djara stood tall, lifting him up with her strike, the punchknife that had been concealed in her fist resting firmly under his ribs. Blood poured out over her hand, steaming in the chill of the day’s storm, black-red against the purple-grey of the world.

It was the signal the rest of the crew had been waiting for, perhaps — those who had served with Djara before rose and launched themselves at the Ilonans, screaming and fighting with every last ounce of will they possessed. They might be oughtnumbered, but they weren’t going to go down easy. The cadets standing with them only hesitated a moment before stepping in to the fray. Jules began to take quick shots against anyone close enough she could get, aiming for vitals, occasionally managing to put the muzzle of her pistol to the eye of an Ilonan. The fight grew ever more gory, minute by minute, until the mud beneath their struggling boots was red and black.

Djara reached up with her other hand to clutch the Ilonans’s throat, watching his face as she squeezed the last of the life from him, punching him again and again, each landed blow opening him up further, spilling more blood, until she was soaked in it, and he had gone still. She threw the Ilonan down and threw herself into the battle, stabbing and slicing, no longer simply a woman but also a machine made for death. She felled three more Ilonans before Kieron managed to take down one, and when it was over, and the small skirmish had ended, even Hana stood tall, trembling, a gash on one cheek, with dead bodies at her feet.

Regrouping, doing a headcount, checking the wounded, Jules redistributed recovered weapons, and helped Kieron get on his feet. “That’s gonna slow you down,” she noted.

“No more than the bullet holes,” Kieron grimaced, looking at the blood on his uniform.

“Duly noted,” Jules said, rolling her eyes. “All right, everyone! Let’s keep moving to higher ground. Up this hill, and to the forests. We’ll be able to hide, might even get some rest!”

“We’ll have to move fast,” Hana called. “There’s a lot more Ilonans on the ground than I would have expected coming from the Domitors!”

Kieron worked to keep up, walking with everyone, panting and gritting his teeth against the pain of his foot. “They must’ve had–”

“Reinforcements,” said Jules, stopping at the crest of the hill.

As the rest of the crew joined her, they saw why she simply set down her gun, and lifted her hands up and out. Even she knew when she was beat — she was ready to fight, but not against an entire assembly of Ilonan cavalry.

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