Post by markymark261 on Jul 22, 2010 16:40:09 GMT -5
Titans Resistance
Issue #40: “Atlantis, Part Three”
Story by Jay McIntyre
Art by Ryan Alcock
Edited by Mark Bowers
Issue #40: “Atlantis, Part Three”
Story by Jay McIntyre
Art by Ryan Alcock
Edited by Mark Bowers
Treason is not own’d when ‘tis descried; Successful crimes alone are justified.
-John Dryden
“He who wishes to be a tyrant, and does not slay Brutus, and he who wishes to establish a free state, and does not slay the sons of Brutus, maintains his work for only a short time.”
-Machiavelli
-1-
Atlantis was at war.
The Royals had led the Titans up to an overarching balcony. The air bubble had shrunk around them, to give the Royals room; they had murmured something about getting water-breathers for the surfacers, if they were down here much longer.
Clearly the city was tearing itself apart; while none of them could exactly count numbers at this range, the city seemed evenly divided between loyalists and renegades.
The renegades were clearly attacking the Royal Castle itself, trying to bring it down.
“Unbelievable,” King Orin murmured.
“Our son,” the Queen pointed, her voice pained.
He was amongst the rebels, urging them on. They saw him turn, notice Princess Tula, and power up, preparing to kill her.
“How could he possibly...?” the Queen began in a pained voice.
“We must get down there,” the King said, turning to go.
Starfire waited no longer, but screamed a battle challenge and leapt over the railing. Green Lantern followed her, using his ring to supplement the air bubbles they had already been given.
The Queen looked after the Titans, admiration flickering through her eyes. Then she stared down a moment longer at her son, still having a hard time believing what she was seeing. Then she turned to follow her husband.
-2-
“What have you done?!” Tula shouted, as she exchanged blows with her brother.
“What needs to be done,” he answered. “I will mourn you, sister, but your blind obedience to the old order means you must die the same as the oth--”
She knocked him back, horrified and disgusted. Where had her brother gone?! What was this....this thing in his place, that pretended to be him? “You cannot turn your back on our heritage like this! Can’t you see you are doing more harm than good?”
“No more words,” he answered, shooting up off the ground and charging towards her. “Fight and die, as you must for Atlantis’s future.”
She stopped his charge with a well-placed kick, then brought both fists down in a double hammer blow to his back.
“What have you become?!” she shrieked. “What happened to you?!”
But she should not have spoken. Recovering, Garth took her out with a leg sweep, then reached down and grabbed her by the throat.
“I realized what I must do to save our people,” he said, and meant it. “I am sorry, sister....” His grip tightened.
There was a blast of green light, and abruptly Garth and Tula were knocked apart. Green Lantern kept firing, blasting away at the traitor prince.
Lantern closed the gap until two rebels grabbed at his feet. He shook them off easily, but that gave Garth time to blast him with superheated water, knocking him away.
Garth tried to find Tula in the battlefield, but in the confusion he had lost sight of her. He tried to force his way through the ranks to find her, but as he did Green Lantern started hassling him again. Seething with irritation, he knocked the surfacer away with another blast of superheated water and disappeared into the fighting himself.
-3-
Terra above all felt some weird and unwilling sympathy for Prince Garth; like him she had rebelled against her family and tried to initiate social change. But while she had not yet seen much of Atlantis, it was clear to her that they were not trying to conquer the sea floor. Nor even, she noted, trying to take revenge against the surface nations for various environmental outrages. They were wary and hostile, but not out for revenge. And they had, after all, been willing to see them as surfacer envoys.
Prince Garth’s agenda, so far as she could discern it, would seem to be to replace the Monarchy with a different power structure. While her own experiences had soured her on the concept of the Crown, she didn’t believe he was trying to replace it with anything better.
Green Lantern was helping Princess Tula against Garth, she saw; so she raised a group of rocks and slowly rotated them around herself as shields, as she forced away those rebel soldiers that were getting too close to her.
She gestured and brought up rock walls around the base of the fortress, knocking rebels away from the castle. Then she moved those walls inwards to buttress the royal home, mitigating the damage they had previously caused.
-4-
The Mantis Lord scowled. Reports were most troubling. The foolish prince had done his part admirably; but loyalists were apparently putting up stiff resistance; and what was worse, the surfacer envoy had sided with the loyalist faction, further bolstering their cause. The Mantis Lord was honestly surprised by that; he thought the surfacers would have taken advantage of the situation for themselves. He would destroy them afterwards, of course; but that they would even pretend to help the sea kingdom was strange.
But, ultimately, it was no matter. The revolt had served its essential purpose, of setting the Atlanteans against each other. As long as they continued to fight, they would weaken one another, and make his victory inevitable. The survivors would be his slaves.
Those the shark men didn’t eat, that was.
“Give the command,” he said to one of the shark men chieftains. “Start the attack.”
The shark chieftain grinned as only his kind could. “We have waited long.”
The Mantis Lord stood. “But you shall wait no longer.” He left his personal chambers to lead the armies of shark men against Atlantis.
They were close to the great citadel of the sea, but not so close as to be easily detected by even the outlying noble and merchant houses. Now, with the city at war with itself—and the foolish Prince Garth’s lieutenants mobilizing their own outlying forces to assist him—no one would notice their arrival....until it was too late. The Mantis Lord grinned behind his mask.
He strode out onto the deep abyssal plane, the armies of the shark men lined up behind him. He lived for moments like this; he felt a thrill he’d not felt since the old days, when he’d tried to take Atlantis through intrigue alone, rather than combining it with overwhelming military force. But that experience had taught him something; the shark men were much more biddable servants than renegade Atlanteans had ever been. But it was a lesson he’d had to learn the hard way, as he himself had been born into relative obscurity in the lower classes of Atlantis. He smiled to himself; much of the Prince’s rhetoric about looking out for the underclasses had come directly from him. Garth didn’t know that, of course.
The boy was admirably bloodthirsty as a zealot should be; but he was otherwise a fool. A useful fool, but a fool all the same. But this was no longer the time for rumination. Now, at long last, victory would be his.
He turned, cloak sweeping behind him in the deep, dark currents of the Atlantic, and overlooked his soldiers, rank upon rank of shark men, vanishing into the darkness of the depths of the sea, illuminated only by their personal glowstones, casting just enough dim blue-green light to see by. They had come out of their grottos to serve him; the time of their conquest and vengeance had finally come.
“Charge!” he ordered, then turned away and began the march. They tromped after him, to Atlantis.
To war.
-5-
Ravager and Anarky discovered a problem. For themselves, personally.
Between Deriven’s magic and Green Lantern’s ring, they could breathe and survive the crushing pressure of the sea depths. But they couldn’t counter the phenomenal strength of the seafloor-dwelling Atlanteans. The Atlanteans came by it naturally; in hand to hand combat, Ravager and Anarky were outclassed.
Ravager’s blades were useless, unable to even break the skin of the sea folk. Anarky’s taser was marginally more effective, but once its electrified current was free, it could go anywhere....including at themselves or their allies.
But neither of them had come this far into fighting metahumans unprepared. Anarky had a number of grenades and capsules that, while functioning differently underwater, would still play havoc with the enemy’s sinuses and nervous systems; and Ravager was very familiar with the rope-a-dope tactic, something her father had taught her years before she had met the Titans.
So while they weren’t making quite the same progress as the others, they were at least holding their own. Their real trouble came when dealing with lesser members of noble houses, with their unnerving ability to superheat the water and blast them with it.
-6-
Starfire was having a ball.
Since she had joined the Titans (though she thought of her joining more as a temporary military alliance), she had been trying to acclimate to the backward human culture. Admirable in its fascination with violence and weapons, and their art was not bad, but they lacked passion in some areas. It was puzzling to her. The attempt to unify the various nation states under peaceful council rather than by conquest was not something she understood. Tamaran’s Imperial House had taken over by dominating the other houses with military force. There was war and there was passion; peace, nothing more than the pause between them.
The Kryptonian had tried to be helpful. Starfire didn’t want her help. Kai-Al might find humans fascinating, but that race of staid scientists would find anything fascinating. Koriand’r gave her credit for bothering to leave her cloistered homeworld at all; that was more passion than most of that weak race showed. But she didn’t want a tour guide to this planet, much less a friend. The human member of the Lantern Corps was far more interesting, and gave her a perspective she could grasp.
But now, at last, she was able to fight. This undersea city was in the midst of its own civil war; so much the better!
She flew/swam through the water, blasting the rebel faction with ease and grace. The occasional heated water that came her way was easily deflected. She was stronger than a surfacer human by several magnitudes; but in brute strength, the Atlanteans had the edge. This didn’t bother her; a tactical problem to be overcome like any other. She just kept “flying” and relying on her agility to get her out of any direct combat situation in which she found herself. The only danger would be if she let a group of them get hold of her.
She took three rebels down with one starbolt, whirled, and avoided attacking a loyalist at the last second. The one difficulty in this fight that did worry her was telling friend from foe. The loyalists wore the armor of the palace guards or the calm colors of the ordinary citizenry; the renegades wore the square-shaped dark patterned outfits favored by certain merchant houses and the shoddy rags of the underclass. The way the two groups fought each other helped separate them also. But even so, one snap judgment, one hasty starbolt, would result in her attacking their own side.
That sort of thing did concern her, loyalty being as important as anything else.
So she focused and timed her shots more carefully.
-7-
Deriven had remained with the Royals as the other Titans scattered into battle. He followed them out of the front door of the castle seeing Terra reinforce the foundations.
“You have done right by us, whatever your reasons,” King Orin said. “Now we must fight.”
“My lord, hear me. I sense something approaching the city. Such is one of my gifts as a mage, and I fear that--”
“The shark men,” the King cut him off, his expression one of horror. “Of course. They would use this to their advantage, and it cannot be coincidence.”
“Surely Garth is not fool enough to work with the Mantis Lord?” Queen Mera gasped.
“Probably not directly,” the King reasoned. “But I’ve no doubt he’s behind this. I must face him. My Queen, will you repel the shark men?”
“And the Mantis Lord,” she nodded grimly. “It will be my pleasure.”
“Go with her, magus,” Orin said, using an honorific Deriven had never heard aloud before, but he recognized its ancient source. “The rest of your allies are in the citadel. She will need your assistance.”
“By your command,” Deriven said, bowing.
Orin looked at him with respect in his eyes, and then they parted ways.
-8-
Argent hurled silver arcs here and there. She took care to stay over loyalist troops; her silver arcs couldn’t get her as high as Starfire, nor were they as maneuverable. And she was even more worried about being grabbed. She didn’t have any of Starfire’s alien agility, though her transformation meant she was no longer strictly human, either.
Supergirl flew ahead of her, slamming into the enemy ranks, using heat vision with precision. On one occasion Argent was able to coordinate with both Supergirl and Starfire, combining their energy attacks to cut a swath through the renegade foe.
While no tactician, Argent judged that the loyalists would have been able to win the battle against the renegades on their own....with far greater casualties, of course.
But that didn’t take into account the new attacks that Argent could hear. The shark men had arrived.
--9--
Cries of alarm came from the Atlantean rebel rear flanks as the shark men slammed into them, but Deriven was already there with the Queen.
They met the enemy at the gate, where the Mantis Lord was leading his forces. A few of the shark men had fired long-range weapons, catapults mostly, before entering the city proper.
Deriven knew the history of the sea citadel, as much as any surfacer did. The Mantis Lord was a more recent development, standing there in his hideous helmet, sleek armor, and weighted cape, trident in hand. But he knew the shark men, all right. Sauhaugin, they had been called in the old days. Humanoid sharks with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, a barbaric clan structure, and absolutely no concept of mercy.
“Your intervention,” the Mantis Lord said, in a voice like the grinding of stones, “has changed nothing.”
Deriven smiled and twitched a finger.
The Mantis Lord shouted in surprise as he shot upwards through the water at incredible speed. Deriven made another gesture, and the front rank of shark men turned into harmless fish.
“Will he die?” Mera asked.
Deriven shook his head. “He’ll regain control and come back down long before pressure change becomes an issue. But he’ll be weakened.”
She nodded. “Good. I’d rather kill him myself.”
The shark men were neither cowards nor superstitious; for a moment they were surprised and perhaps a shade unsettled, but then they came on again.
The Queen went to meet them, blasting them with superheated water and punching with powerful blows, striking with graceful kicks. Their razor-sharp teeth were more than strong enough to bite into her, but this was an old game, and she knew their tactics.
With her on the battlefield—and various guards coming up behind—Deriven could not unleash lightning into the shark men. As Anarky had noted earlier, the lightning would go anywhere. But Deriven had plenty of other options. He turned one shark man into stone, turned another against its fellows, made a third insane so that it rampaged blindly through its own ranks.
The rebels who could see the shark men turned to face them also, which both strengthened the defense against the shark men and weakened their own attacks against the loyalists within the city.
--10--
Struggling free of a knot of fighters, Garth realized the timing of this raid was not a coincidence. He realized the Mantis Lord must have spies in his organization, and that infuriated him; but he did not yet realize how fundamentally he had been manipulated by the Mantis Lord.
But as he turned to face them, a fist slammed into his face and knocked him back.
“Traitor child,” the King snarled. “I disown you.”
“As if your approval meant anything to me,” Garth shot back. “Your outdated ways are what have betrayed our people, and I am righting that wrong. And in any case, your priorities are off, as usual. The shark men are attacking, in case you didn’t notice.”
King Orin boiled the water around him, and tried to boil the water in him as well. “The Queen is attending to that issue, with the help of the surfacers. And you fail to see that the timing of their attack is not a coincidence.”
Garth blocked his father’s attack and kicked in response. “First of all, I figured that out as soon as I saw the shark men, you old fool; you underestimate me as always. I will defeat them as well as you. Second, you rely on the surfacers to save you; even by your own outmoded standards, you are weak.”
For just a moment, pity did shine in Orin’s eyes. “You really have no idea, do you....” He shook his head, and walked through boiling water his son put up to deflect him.
Finally beginning to panic, Garth blasted him three more times. His father flinched with each contact, but kept coming. As Orin closed the gap, Garth lashed out with a kick. His father caught his foot and brought his other elbow down on his son’s ankle. Garth screamed as the bone broke, but maintained enough focus of will to try for a groin shot with his right hand as he went down. It glanced off his father’s leg instead, hitting hard enough to bruise the bone.
Orin grimaced. His son had drive, vision, intelligence....and a total lack of understanding of the bigger picture. Where had he gone wrong?
He grabbed his son by the throat and squeezed.
Garth responded by boiling the water around both of them. He surely knew that he would die as well from this action; but Orin realized that Garth was convinced he was going to die, and so planned to take his father with him.
Orin set his teeth, tightened his grip, and slammed his son’s head against the ground. Four times.
Garth’s grip relaxed and he slumped into unconsciousness. His father slung him over his shoulder and started heading back to the palace, knocking the occasional rebel aside. This was neither justice nor kindness; if they survived, he wanted Garth to realize his folly before his execution.
--11--
The Mantis Lord was stunned and shaken, but was able to reverse his course after being lifted several hundred feet. Swimming back downwards, he could see the battle not going well for his side. While this worried and frustrated him, the thought of defeat did not really occur to his mind. He powered up his trident and began blasting away at royal guards.
He saw, and was not really surprised, that renegades were helping to fight the shark men. They thought they were merely changing the political structure of Atlantis, after all; more fool them. He shot one or two with plasma blasts from his trident, then landed amongst his shark men soldiers, looking for a royal guard to kill.
But the Queen found him first.
A shark man saw her coming and moved to attack; but Deriven’s magic caused it to become one with the sea floor. The Queen moved in at speed, face set, eyes grim.
The Mantis Lord never saw her fist coming. It connected with his helmet with an almighty crack that sent him reeling. Before he could recover his wits, she yanked his trident away.
Unlike their traitor son, the Mantis Lord deserved no ceremonial execution; he had been convicted in absentia long ago, after his first betrayal. The Queen went to open fire on the Mantis Lord with his own weapon, but he ducked, and the shot fried several shark men behind him instead.
He kicked the trident away, wisely not trying to retake it, and lunged out with the clawed glove of his left hand, meaning to take her heart.
But she, in turn, had anticipated him; his vicious ways were well known by now. She grabbed his wrist and broke it with one wrench, then punched him in the face.
Again.
And again.
And again.
And once he was dazed enough, she yanked his helmet off and stared into that hateful, familiar face. The face of the desperate, angry commoner named Caldura, who had insinuated his way into Atlantean nobility, and whispered poisoned lies into the ear of Orin’s brother Vulko, and led him to try to assassinate his brother. That plan had failed, and Caldura had slain Vulko and fled, taking the identity of the Mantis Lord.
He had escaped then, but clearly his tactics had not changed, only his wisdom in applying them. But now it would end.
“Die, Caldura,” the Queen hissed in anger and weariness, and broke his neck.
--12--
Princess Tula had suffered two minor wounds, but she could see the battle was coming to an end.
As Terra and Supergirl wreaked havoc on the renegades, she gestured to Argent. The surfacer nodded and followed her to Coral Gate, where they saw the Mantis Lord drop lifeless from the Queen’s hands.
Tula knew that this would only make the Shark Men fierce in their despair; so she charged forward to assist her mother, Argent right behind.
Argent’s silver blades of power cut through the enemy like ribbons. Deriven was still wreaking magical havoc, and the royal mother and daughter marched forward into the fray, standing tall, standing proud, without fear.
Had Green Lantern been able to see them, he would’ve been impressed. Argent made a note to mention it to him later.
There were still a fair number of shark men to fight, but with the battle in the city ending in the loyalists’ favor, and some renegades having already turned to fight the shark men, it was only a matter of time and attrition.
But the shark men did not run; they fought on, to the death.
By the time it was over, Tula had several bite marks, Ravager had a broken arm, and Starfire was bleeding alien blood into the ocean. And Atlantean casualties had been severe. But they had won.
It was one of the most exhausting, grueling battles the Titans could remember.
--13--
Prince Garth was bound, arms and legs, staring defiantly up at his parents.
“When Vulko betrayed us, he was slain by the Mantis Lord himself,” Orin said. “You are not so fortunate.”
“My cause was still just,” Garth shot back. “And its failure means the eventual doom of Atlantis. This outcome is no different than if the Mantis Lord had won outright. Kill me, old man; it is all you can do, and proves me right in the process.”
“Oh, you will die,” the King agreed. “I just wonder where we went so wrong with you. You would’ve been king, in the fullness of time; surely you could have initiated your so-called reforms then?”
“You still don’t understand, do you?” Garth shook his head. “Not that I should be surprised. You still think in terms of one or a few having the power, just as the Mantis Lord did. Had I taken that crown and throne, I would still have to operate by its precepts, and be part of the problem myself. The monarchy should have ended. It would have been the only way.” He hung his head. “Not that it matters now, of course. All is lost.”
Anarky stirred. “Regime change may very well be a good thing; but replacing a monarch with a plutocracy of merchants is no improvement.”
Deriven winced; but the royals were prepared to overlook that. They were focused on their fallen child.
Garth looked askance at Anarky for a moment. “Your people are less than the shark men. Potentially useful, but no more than that. Not truly people.”
“Where did we fail in raising you?” Queen Mera asked. “Where did we go wrong?”
“Yeah, that’s what has been in my mind too,” Princess Tula sighed.
“You were always concerned with what you believed needed to be done; orders, protocol, royal obligation and so-called ‘duty’. You never stopped to ask what should be done, what actually would make things better. For the commoners, for Atlantis as a whole. Unlike my foolish sister, unlike yourselves, I retained a mind of my own.”
The King shook his head. “We will get no further answers from him.” He looked at Terra. “Your situation is not totally different from his; can you shed any light on this?”
Terra shifted uncomfortably. “I was thinking of those things during the battle, actually. But Atlantis doesn’t want to conquer the sea floor. You would even spare the shark men, if you could safely do so. Markovia is...not nearly so reasonable. At least under the current empress.”
“Had he won,” Anarky put in, “and then repulsed the Mantis Lord, no one would judge him. It’s only treason if you lose.”
Orin nodded heavily. “And he did lose.”
There was a long pause.
“Father,” Tula began, “do you want me to--”
“Nay. This is my responsibility.” He dragged Garth away.
The Titans were surprised he would commit the execution himself, but relieved he would not do it in front of them. As for any moral considerations any of them might have had, they wisely kept quiet.
--14--
Atlantis had lost perhaps a quarter of its entire population in the attack, with a significantly greater number wounded.
Whereas before the Royals had been uneasy about giving Deriven any leeway, now they positively needed his help. Aided and abetted by Terra, he conducted the negotiations. They went better than he could have hoped, but the price was far too high. A not uncommon problem.
All but one of Garth’s co-conspirators had died in battle. The remaining rebel leader, Skiras, was executed as Garth had been. Surviving rebels were given a choice; face execution, or travel to the shark men grottos and kill the surviving number that had not come to the battle, to ensure that this would not happen again. Renegades who survived this act would be pardoned and reintegrated into Atlantean society.
Argent mentioned Lantern candidacy for Tula to Eric, but he pointed out that she was now the heir, and probably would not be willing to take on the additional responsibility. Which did not mean they would not see her again; greater contact with the surface was now inevitable. It also did not mean that some Atlantean some day would not wear a ring; he saw their potential just as Argent had.
It was another week before they returned to the surface. Atlantis was badly scarred and had lost much, but its future was brighter than it had been in thousands of years.
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