The Cost of War (Part 5)
26 Sep 2016Jubei Himura
"Hell-bent, soul is spent
Nothing left but to repent
I've gotta dig myself back out of this hole
This isn't my fight, This is my war!"
This is My War by Five Finger Death Punch
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Watching yourself can be very surreal, and very eye opening.
I started paying attention to the video about halfway through, roughly around the time Noxa shot the guards with tranq rounds. Drumpè was walking around me, not paying attention to the events happening around him. He was too focused on his own plan and his own hype. I could see myself getting more and more upset as Drumpè gloated about his goals and methods.
...and it only got worse from there.
* * * * * *
"Oh? Seems your friend is getting quite feisty..." Drumpè said as he finally noticed Noxa moving toward the main bridge area. "Commander, you have an unwanted visitor!"
The Commander jumped out of the flight chair and landed a few feet away from Noxa. He slowly pulled my sword out of the sheath and angled the point of the blade at Noxa's face. His stance was weak, and it was apparent that Noxa saw it too.
"Using a sword against my knife..." Noxa said as he brought his knife up to a defensive position. "isn't that a bit unfair?"
"What do I care?" the Commander replied as he charged forward.
The thrust was sloppy and Noxa easily deflected the blade with the back of his own knife, then moved inside his thrusting arm to deliver a hard punch that shattered the visor of the Commander's H.E. suit helmet. The blow effectively deactivated the nanites that held the helmet together. The Commander staggered back as the rest of his helmet disintegrated, revealing long blond hair and a face that showed a hint of Pacific heritage.
"Sorry," Noxa smiled, repositioning his knife, "I meant unfair for you."
"Don't get cocky!" the Commander yelled as he leapt forward again with the sword recoiled back along the side of his body.
This time the strike was well executed. Noxa barely had time to dodge the slash, getting an unexpected haircut in the process. The Commander anticipated the dodge and followed up with a spinning back-kick that connected with Noxa's ribs, sending the Inquisitor reeling. He recovered quickly and side-stepped the Commander's barrage of downward slashes.
"Now this is what I call a party!" Drumpè exclaimed as he watched the battle with his back to Jubei, who was fidgeting with something at his feet. After about twenty seconds Jubei stood up slowly, having released the bonds at his ankles, and nimbly jumped over his arms to bring them to his front. "Looks like your friend's in trouble there killer-GAK!"
The top of Jubei's boot connected with the side of Drumpè's head, sending him spinning to the ground. He hit the floor hard with a sickly thud; Jubei turned and was about to help his friend when the sound of Drumpè's laughing made him pause.
"Yes!" shouted Drumpè. "That's the kind of power and violence I need. Pity, if you had joined my crew I would have hidden and forgiven the atrocity you committed here... killer."
"Stop calling me that," Jubei said through clenched teeth. He started walking toward Drumpè. "I'm nothing like you. You're sick!"
"Haven't you realized yet?" Drumpè nearly laughed. "I call you killer because that's what you are. A stone cold killer. You killed my PMC crew, the guys at security, and my PMC elite."
Jubei stopped. "Wait, what do you mean 'the guys at security'?"
"Oh, riiiight, you didn't know...the men at security weren't part of my PMC group," the businessman shrugged. "They were Unionist peace negotiators seeking a 'diplomatic' end to the war. Haha! I was going to use them as meat puppets for experimentation, but you ended that possibility."
"No..." the Inquisitor was visibly shaken by this new information.
Jubei turned his head to see Noxa deflecting slashes from the Commander; even though Noxa was an expert with knives, the Commander had an advantage in distance using the sword.
"Toraken, dageki," Jubei commanded. The Commander shrieked and dropped the sword as its plasma energy burned his hands, giving Noxa a chance for some payback.
No one noticed Drumpè had pulled out a medical injector from his coat pocket.
"Time to even the odds and join the festivities!" he said as he pressed the injector to his neck and pressed a button. Drumpè grunted as the contents entered his bloodstream. He roared as his cells mutated and doubled, causing his body to grow twice its original size.
Drumpè exhaled slowly looking directly at Jubei. An instant later, he planted his shoulder squarely into the Inquisitor's chest in a brutal charge that was so fast that the recording either skipped a frame or couldn't pick up all the movement. Jubei was launched across the bridge and into the control panel by the pilot's chair, causing the other instrument panels around the bridge to sputter and spark. The sparks caused the boards and panels to smoke and catch fire. Gritting his teeth, the Inquisitor started getting up when Drumpè lifted him up by the collar of his Remlok.
The flames grew as the anti-fire measures in the Corvette failed to engage. Drumpè shook Jubei in the heated air like a ragdoll until the Inquisitor grabbed both of the crazed businessman's arms and violently pulled himself toward Drumpè's face. The resulting impact from Jubei's forehead broke Drumpè's nose and front teeth, sending the big man staggering backwards holding his face. Landing nimbly on his feet, the Inquisitor stood still with his head down as if trying to anticipate Drumpè’s next move. However, all that came from behind the businessman's huge hands was the twisted sound of laughter.
"Let me ask you, killer..." Drumpè's voice still shook with laughter. "provided you survive, what will you tell their families? What can you say to the children who no longer have fathers or to the wives who no longer have their husbands? You're the reason they aren't here anymore because you murdered them in cold blood... killer."
He laughed through his broken and missing teeth, launching specks of blood into the smoke-filled air.
Jubei's shoulders shook a bit before dropping. He didn't move while Drumpè gloated over what he was going to do with the people left over from the fallout of the drug usage. It wasn't until Drumpè was describing the conditions the children would face that he realized that Jubei's hands were clenched and shaking.
"Oh? Struck a nerve did I?" Drumpè smiled his greasy, now near-toothless, smile. He stretched, showing off his new muscles. "Well come then! I can barely feel anything you can throw at me and I... "
Drumpè immediately stopped talking when he saw Jubei slowly raising his head. The Inquisitor leveled his gaze at Drumpè and glared hard at the tyrannical figure who took a step back in horror. Jubei didn't speak, he just let out a low growl with every exhale of breath. Nanites in the Remlok that Jubei wore were being disrupted and fell off of his upper half, resembling a tattered and torn shirt that hung near his waist. The hair on his head slowly and listlessly stood on end as he took a step forward. The air around him seemed to repel the embers that floated near his person.
Drumpè charged at the Inquisitor again, this time throwing an unbelievably rapid punch. However, Jubei simply side-stepped to avoid the attack and countered with a thrust-kick to Drumpè's ribs. The businessman recovered quickly, though, and launched a hard one-two combo, punching Jubei in the stomach and head. Jubei dropped low from the blows but quickly rose with a jumping uppercut. The force of the punch lifted Drumpè into the air and sent him into the centre pillar that separated the hallway from the bridge proper. The impact bent the pillar slightly, shaping itself to Drumpè's body.
"Ugh, heh, I actually felt that," Drumpè said as he slowly stood up. Turning his head to the side, he spat blood onto the floor. "However, you are just a pest that needs to be squashed under my heel!"
"Dogs often bark loudly in a vain attempt to scare off predators," Jubei growled as he slowly advanced on Drumpè, menace glowing in his eyes. "This is the end."
. In a last-ditch effort, Drumpè jumped at Jubei with a diving punch. Jubei simply stepped to the side and let the overgrown businessman hit the floor.
"You are nothing! Just some meat-puppet whose strings are about to be cut!" Drumpè screamed as he stood up and drew back his leg, readying for another assault.
However, Jubei caught the knee in his hand easily and squeezed until there was a sickly crunch. As the businessman reeled back in pain, Jubei didn't hesitate to deliver a one-two combination with a right roundhouse kick followed by a spinning-back kick that sent Drumpè into the pilot's console. Again the frame of the recording seemed to skip as Jubei suddenly stood in front of Drumpè. He glared hard at the fallen businessman as he grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the floor.
"As I said, this is the end," Jubei said as he brought his right arm back, flexing his hand like a claw. "Now experience death for each sin!"
The lights on the bridge cut as Jubei finished speaking. Emergency lighting systems failed to engage and the bridge was illuminated only by the dull light of the dying fire. Sparks flew very briefly, showing Jubei's silhouette in various stages of attack. A horrible scream filled the air as Jubei’s fists rapidly rained blows on Drumpè’s body.
When the lights finally came back on, the body of Douglas Drumpè lay embedded in the twisted metal of the pilot's console. It was a truly horrible sight, one that shakes a person down to their very soul. His arms were twisted in disturbingly unnatural ways and his body was covered in severe indents. The center of his chest had a sickly blackened hole the size of a fist. However, it was Drumpè's face that was the most shocking as it was twisted permanently by his last moments of pain. His mouth was open in a horrific scream and his eyes were now no more than black holes. His whole face was burned black.
Jubei was already walking toward the lift, his Remlok started to self-repair as the nanites began to cover his torso again. The doors to the lift opened, but there was no elevator; without a pause, the Inquisitor jumped down the shaft.
* * * * * *
The holo-vid shut off and everyone in the courtroom was silent. I could feel their eyes looking at me, horrified at what they had just seen. Then the room was filled with murmuring as they shared their thoughts about the shocking images..
Noxa walked up to the defence desk. "Shortly after these events, the ship suffered catastrophic damage from the 'modifications' that I had previously loaded into the Corvette's engineering kernel system. Thankfully, I found Jubei unconscious at the bottom of the elevator shaft with his Remlok still intact; this came in useful as we had to escape the Corvette before it exploded. I was also exceptionally lucky that my datapad downloaded every email, instant message, document, and burst transmission before the resulting explosion."
"And did this mass retrieval of data yield anything of interest?" asked Chancellor Blaine with interest.
"Indeed it did." Noxa smiled ear to ear. "We found out that Drumpè was backed by a Patron from this very system, and in fact, he's sitting in this room."