Titans: The Resistance
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Issue #28: “War at Sea” Pt. 3
Written by: Jay McIntyre
Cover by Jaimie Rimmer
Edited by: Brian Burchette[/center]
“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore” Vincent van Gogh“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” Antoine de Saint-Exupery-1-
Argent desperately flipped to one side, falling off her silver arc of energy as she did. But it got her out of the way of the missile, if just barely.
She felt the concussion of it's passage, felt the heat of the rocket, saw it's fire, saw and smelt it's smoke.
Then she hit the choppy water, hard.
Her legs and arms and side lit up with pain, but thankfully nothing was broken. She was shocked, her breath knocked out, and in no shape to aim, but she was in a very, very bad mood. So she fired silver arcs blindly down into the water below.
Deriven, for his part, gestured at the missile and shouted a word. It shot far further into the sky than it should have been able to, and then instead of a regular explosion, it burst into a firework.
Smiling, Deriven almost missed the Markovian marines coming up onto the deck to engage him. He barely gestured in time to stop the bullets from hurting him, then made a sweeping gesture and knocked them overboard.
-2-
Rose backed up slowly as a huge brutish thug of a man came through the opening. He was well over six feet, with a strategically shaven head, and muscled like a bull. In each hand he cracked a silver whip that had a strange purple glow.
“Back when we rescued Argent from Italy,” Terra said quietly, “One of the enemy had a weapon like that. It hurt Supergirl. But it didn't strike me as Markovian tech.”
The brute grinned sourly. “We've learned to adapt new weapons from any source since you betrayed us, princess.”
Terra had no answer to that.
Behind this monstrous thug came two Markovian soldiers, in a heavy, padded armor that none of them could identify, but Anarky had the nasty suspicion it would insulate against his electric cattleprod. They carried heavy armament; rifles that were almost cannons, almost certainly laser weapons of some sort.
“They've been studying us,” Anarky muttered.
This was not exactly a surprise to Rose. “So this was a trap all along, then?” she asked the brute.
“Not exactly. Having strike teams like this on convoys is standard procedure now. Not that you'll have to worry about it ever again,” he said, and lunged forward with both whips.
Knowing better than to block those whips with her blades, which would enable the brute to disarm her, Ravager backed off. The two soldiers aimed their weapons and fired. Terra blocked one blast with a chunk of rock; Anarky ducked and rolled to avoid the other.
Terra shoved her rock into the brute, and it exploded into fragments; but he shook it off and grinned. The two heavy weapons soldiers fired again, and one of the plasma bolts scored Anarky's shoulder. He hissed in pain and threw his cattle prod like a javelin, but the soldier's armor absorbed the strike and left him unaffected by it. Anarky was weaponless now.
Terra slammed another, bigger rock into the brute and it knocked him off his feet, and he lost hold of one of his whips. He started to get up, cracking his whip menacingly, but Ravager spun in and cut his head off with one graceful stroke.
This left her vulnerable to the soldiers, however, who opened fire. She went into another desperate spin and the bolts only scorched the edges of her body armor. Anarky and Terra both suffered near misses from the blasts in the relatively enclosed space.
Anarky charged and body tackled one of the guards and started bashing his head into the wall, but the soldier kicked him off. So Anarky went for the only unprotected body part...the neck. He settled his hands around and squeezed.
The man tried to raise his weapon to fire but Anarky kicked it away. He started punching Anarky in the ribs but the extremist held on like grim death, until it finally was death for the soldier.
Ravager, meanwhile, had cut the other one down. “Next time, apply pressure and break his neck,” she advised.
Anarky nodded and retrieved his cattle prod, and after some thought, hefted one of the enemy guns as well. Terra picked up one of the whips.
“We can have Supergirl look at both weapons when she comes back,” Terra said.
“And use them in the meantime,” Ravager agreed. Perhaps, she thought, there was hope for Terra after all.
They continued their hunt through the ship.
-3-
Green Lantern had been aiding Deriven clear the decks. He could have cut the ship in half, but that would risk the lives of the others. Ravager might have been willing to take that risk, but Lantern wasn't. He knew all about revenge and hate, but after the initial rush of adrenaline, he was far more strategic, a lesson Alan and the Corps had instilled in him.
The other ships they were facing, however, were under no such protection. His only concern there was to leave enough intact for Ravager's pirate fleet to claim as booty. He thought he could manage that.
He slammed an emerald lance into the nearest ship, and it began to take on water. Then he floated down and scooped Argent up. She wasn't seriously injured, he judged; just mad and spitting up water.
“Submarine,” she sputtered.
He nodded. Forming a bubble of air around them both, he went below and looked around in the murk until the light from his ring located the ship (he could have just asked the ring where it was, but he didn't do that sort of thing unless he absolutely had to; an area where he and Alan disagreed).
Being illuminated by him, the ship fired four torpedoes, which exploded harmlessly against his shielding. He and Argent combined their attacks on the submarine, and soon it was open to the water in a rush of bubbles, sinking and creaking, collapsing in on itself.
-4-
Deriven went below decks in search of Ravager and the others. What he found instead was a pair of machine pistol-wielding madmen, frothing at the mouth. He idly wondered if the Markovians were putting their soldiers and marines on some sort of steroid.
Mundane chemicals were not his specialty by any means; but as he saw it, a potion was a potion was a potion. He waved an idle hand and they slammed into the walls, collapsing into unconsciousness. But his troubles were not over by any means.
A sailor leapt at him with a dagger. There was a uneasy sheen on the blade; poison. Deriven muttered a word, and the arc of the blade turned into the wall, where it stuck fast, despite there being no magnet.
“Jump overboard,” Deriven told him. The wild-eyed man stared a moment, then bolted for the top deck.
Another man rounded a corner and fired at Deriven three times. But Deriven's words prevented the bullets from ever reaching him; they simply vanished. Enraged and confused, the man charged and tried to spit the mage on his bayonet. But on contact the entire weapon turned into a solid chunk of lead and dropped to the ground.
“You are nothing but an animal,” Deriven said to him, and turned away. The man made to move after him, beginning to shout an insult, but the coarse comment ended in a scream, which turned into a howl, as the man fell on all fours. Fur sprouted, and he became a wolf. The beast fled in terror from the mage who made it.
To Deriven, this was all a waste of time. He wanted to bring realization of magic into the world, and also to contact the Atlanteans. While he appreciated what Rose were the others were doing, to him it was just marking time.
-5-
Ravager and Terra shared an uneasy glance. After the brute and his soldiers, they hadn't encountered any real opposition.
“This is too easy,” Terra muttered, and Ravager nodded her agreement. Terra went up another notch in her estimation.
“Where are they?” Anarky groused. “Surely they're not all in hiding!”
“It's not the regular sailors or marines that concern me,” Ravager said, “But more special surprises like those toughs we've already faced.”
“You think there's more?” Terra prompted.
“I think there's something more, that's for sure. I've just no idea what.”
“What,” said Anarky, “You think there's some sort of special effect cliché around every corner?”
She stared at him. “I'm a pirate. I am a cliché, honey.”
“Point,” he conceded. “But still...”
“No, I don't expect another amazing enemy to fight around every corner, I do expect more opposition, and for the crew to do something more than just mindlessly throw themselves at us...”
The ship shuddered and groaned.
Ravager paled. “Like blowing their own engines, for instance.”
Terra looked grim. “I'm sure mother has given orders to kill us at all costs.”
“Figures,” Ravager agreed.
“What a fun thought,” Anarky chimed in.
“They must have set the ship to blow once we beat their special troops,” Ravager reasoned. “Run!”
But Terra was already floating away on a rock at speed, Anarky hot on her heels. Rose's estimation of Tara went up another notch as she followed.
-6-
“Are you all right?” Green Lantern asked Argent.
“I'll live,” she spat, angrily. Her anger wasn't directed at him, he knew that, but it made him bristle all the same. He forced the feelings down.
“Let's concentrate our firepower on the remaining--” he began, but then the ship below them began to groan and tremble.
“The others are in there,” Argent shouted…
They went to assist, to try to find the others within, but one of the other surviving ships opened fire on them. Lantern's shield dissipated the attack, but it certainly shifted their attention.
“You deal with them,” Argent said. “I'll find the others!”
Lantern wasn't sure of that course of action, but now was not the time to argue. He let her go.
-7-
Meanwhile, the Sweet Lilli was engaging the second Markovian warship.
Originally, they had been shielded by Green Lantern, but as he became more involved in the battle he was unable to divide his attention.
Not that Wintergreen minded any. This was the sort of battle he lived for. Unlike the previous conflict around Themyscria, this was a straight up, one-to-one conflict, and what was more; it was an act of piracy – a ship raid!
“At ‘em lads!” he roared. “Hit them with everything!”
The ship obliged him, cannons firing. It did the old man's heart good. It reminded him of the halcyon days when he himself had still been almost young, when Rose had truly been a child.... when Deathstroke had still been alive.
Not that he had any regrets or doubts following Ravager as a leader; indeed, doubt never crossed his mind. He was as loyal to her as he had been to her father. It was just...he wished she would listen to him more often, not take so many stupid risks.
He didn't want to lose her like he had her father.
They were giving as well as they got, maybe a little better. Markovian warships were better designed for massive settlement bombardment. Not that this didn't mean that they couldn't hit the Sweet Lilli and hit it hard; but their accuracy wasn't all it could have been. The pirates, on the other hand, made their living off of being able to disable enemy ships. Even warships. All the time. A pirate crew who couldn't do that wound up in Davy Jones' locker faster than most.
So while the Sweet Lilli was shuddering under the enemy attacks, the enemy Markovian vessel was faring far worse, and began to suffer various explosions. Soon enough it was taking on water.
Wintergreen's only regret was that they would be unable to properly loot it. But warships usually didn't have much in the way of loot for that very reason, anyway.
As the warship began to sink, a counterpart to the brute that Rose and the others had faced in the first warship came on deck, brandishing a huge spiked mace. He made an athletic run to the prow of his sinking ship and leapt for theirs.
Almost casually, Wintergreen shot him with his own personal weapon, a Desert Eagle, while he was still trying to make that nigh-impossible leap.
The shot itself didn't kill the brute, but it did a fine job of arresting his momentum. He juddered and his forward progress was halted, and he fell out of the sky and into the sea.
He began to swim toward the ship, but had to let go of his weapon, and it was hard to swim well when you were leaking blood form a gut wound.
Even so, Wintergreen was taking no chances. “Finish him off,” he ordered, adding his own weapon's thunder to the cacophony of rifle shots and cannon fire aimed at the brute.
-8-
Deriven almost crashed into Ravager as they were exiting the ship.
“We gotta get out, it's gonna blow!” she shouted.
Deriven might have been able to do something about it, but stabilizing technology was not his strong point. He might have been able to shut down the reaction.... or he might have caused a premature explosion. So he didn't argue, just turned around and started running.
They were racing back towards the deck when they ran into Argent. She didn't waste any time in discussion; she simply turned around and started running too.
A pair of marines intercepted them.
“<You idiots,>” Terra shouted in Markovian, “<We'll all die here, you too!>”
“<If it insures your death,>” one of them said simply. They raised their weapons.... and silver energy blades from Argent caught them both.
“We don't have time for this!” Terra shouted, and clenched a fist. A huge rock bashed a hole in the hull ahead of them. Terra, Ravager and Anarky climbed aboard and shot out the hole, whilst Deriven simply flew out and Argent followed on an arc of silver.
“Lantern!” Ravager shouted to the ring-wielder. “The ship's gonna blow! Can you contain the explosion?”
Without wasting time on replying, Lantern wrapped a shield around the ship.
“Aren't you going to ask me why I care about the explosion?” Ravager prodded Terra.
Terra looked at her as though she were insane. “Of course not. The radiation.”
“Good call,” Ravager nodded. Terra improved still further in her estimation. The only thing she lacked was.... aggressive initiative. There were worse faults.
“While I'm taking care of this,” Lantern said, “The rest of you mind mopping up?”
The others turned. They saw that the Sweet Lilli was taking out the other warship, and Lantern had disabled one of the cargo vessels; and Argent already knew that they had disposed of the submarine. That left two merchant ships with sailors and marines still on defense. Already the occasional pot shot was zipping past them.
Ravager's face filled with a savage glee, her face split in a shark's grin, and Terra saw it.
Terra finally, briefly, in the only way she ever would understand, saw something of what Ravager meant by being “strong”. She would never understand it on an intellectual level, and Ravager would never explain it on an intellectual level, because it wasn't intellectual. It was visceral.
Terra had seen enough terrible things—and done a few of them herself—not to be frightened of that face. But she was profoundly saddened by it.
“Come on!” Ravager screamed. “Let's take ‘em!”
Terra wordlessly swooped down, and Ravager continued to be in full cry, whooping, hollering, laughing in primal rage and joy.
They smashed into the ships hard. Not to sink them, Terra understood that immediately; but to utterly cripple them and take what wealth and goods they had.
If Terra was saddened, Anarky was bemused. He wasn't sure what he had let himself in for, sleeping with a girl like that.
But on another level, he was sad too; because he had been right about her. The difference between Ravager and the Markovian Empire wasn't what they did, but the scope and scale on which they did it.
Argent didn't think about it at all; while she was not nearly as vocal or openly aggressive as Ravager, she was feeling much the same way.
The surviving Markovians didn't stand much of a chance. To their credit, they tried. One of them lined up on Terra, hoping to take her out with a head shot, but Anarky's staff smacked into him and his shot went wild.
After that it was simply a matter of time...and blood.
-9-
The sun was setting, and a soft drizzle was falling.
Terra and Anarky sat on the foredeck of the Sweet Lilli. Deriven had resumed his place on the prow, staring out to sea.
“I'd never seen the actual looting part of piracy before,” Terra said into the silence. “I wish I hadn't.”
Anarky sighed heavily in his mask. “It's really not so different from what the Empire does.”
“Yes, I know that. But there's a difference between knowing and seeing.”
“Yeah,” he agreed heavily. “Ain't that the truth.”
“I'm surprised that Ravager didn't take any hostages for ransom,” Deriven said, surprising them both. He had not turned around.
“Mother wouldn't pay a cent for them; their part of the war machine, they had failed. They were expendable,” Terra said bitterly.
“And they readily demonstrated their willingness to die for their 'cause',” Anarky added.
“But I doubt Rose would have spared them anyway.” Terra continued to stare at Deriven until he turned around and looked at her.
“Why?” he finally said.
“Kill or be killed,” Anarky said. “Nature, red in tooth and claw. Something you should be familiar with.”
Deriven nodded, then shook his head. “Things have suffered more here with the absence of magic than I thought.”
“You have no idea,” Anarky muttered.
“And for all that, she is my friend.” Terra looked away from both of them, staring out to sea. “Though at times it hurts me to say it.”
“Needs must in war,” Anarky said, “Though it hurts
me to say
that.”
“You're the one sleeping with her,” Terra said, turning back to him.
“Exactly. So my conflict is in some ways stronger than yours.”
For a long moment none of them spoke.
“It's odd,” Terra finally said. “I'm glad Robin wasn't here for this, but I wish Supergirl had been. She might have had a rational explanation.”
At that, Anarky got up and walked away.
-10-
Rose was half asleep, drowsing pleasantly in her cabin. Anarky wasn't there yet, but he would come to her soon. She was more than confident in this; she knew.
She had been wrong about Terra, or mostly so. She was strong, after all; she was just reluctant to use that strength unless she absolutely had to. That in itself was a risk, but at least it put her ahead of most people.
Terra would continue to feel conflicted about her; she knew that too. But that was all right. She tended to have that effect on people. She had stopped letting it bother her awhile ago. She couldn't afford to let it bother her.
A good haul today, she thought sleepily. Yes, a good haul.
As she drifted down into sleep, she thought she would have to start worrying about those things to some extent, if she ever did become a mother. But that could wait.
-11-
Anarky came in some twenty minutes later. She rolled over in her sleep but did not stir.
He took off his mask, and for once the face of Lonnie Machin was as expressionless as the mask of Anarky,
He crawled into bed behind her and cuddled her without a word.
She made a satisfied noise in her sleep. Blowing out a sigh, he closed his eyes and did his best to join her in that state.