Dekker's Dozen: The Last Watchmen

Return to Osix

Dekker's Dozen #010

Prognon Austicon watched with a mixed feeling of satisfaction as the full force of the warship Salvation's weaponry rained down upon the Jerusalem fortress. The planet shuddered and the blast-wave rippled outward, annihilating everything within miles of ground zero, including the krenzin protestors. Austicon knew the pain this choice must have caused Dekker.

He whirled and walked away from the view-screen and tapped a large, stone cask. Just one of two, the sealed vessels had been fit with electronic, remote locks. Austicon gave an order, "Leviathan, load this onto my ship. The arboleans and humanity may have purchased a little more time, but their end has still been assured," he grinned.

"These containers hold the arboleans' only natural predators, the arbophage scarab. Capable of surviving extreme conditions, even complete vacuum, they live to eat: but only eat one thing. These little beauties slip into torpor without sensing suitable food-sources."

Leviathan mentally contacted two Mechnar units to complete the loading task while his god monologued.

"Everything is subject to the food chain." Austicon smiled wide and wicked. "Do you know what my natural predator is?"

The psychic assassin knew the answer. None existed.

Austicon stared at the second, sealed and repurposed sarcophagus. "Dump that one into the atmosphere above the planet Rico."

Return to Osix

Dekker stumbled down the smoking, hot blast crater. The craggy depression was all that remained of the once stalwart Jerusalem. Frustrated, he kicked a charred femur which lay half buried within the dust. Dekker screamed at the top of his lungs: raspy and painful—the groan of a desperate man.

Small pyres of burning refuse flickered randomly. The flames offered the only color in an otherwise deathly gray landscape.

Dekker staggered through the destruction he'd unleashed and toed through the debris, hoping against hope that Krav had survived. His orders to annihilate the great city, the only community to successfully maintain autonomy from the MEA, weighed heavily on him. Survivors were not expected, but Dekker prayed for at least the one.

He desperately needed Krav to be right. Krav had walked into a deadly situation sustained only by his faith in an ancient myth. Ezekiel had chastised his fellow Jew for such misguided beliefs—but if Krav was right, if he'd survived, then Ezekiel could be wrong. Maybe he could be wrong about Dekker's morbid destiny, too. If Krav is dead, then perhaps so are the Watchmen, faith, and everything Jude Knight stood for.

Dekker arrived at the lowest depths of the crater and sank to his knees. With bare hands he dug through the ash and slag. He overturned cinders and cracked bone; all flesh had been vaporized—flash boiled by the orbital bombardment.

A blackened skull disintegrated as Dekker uncovered it. The next handful of soot contained a hard lump of metal. He held it up and examined it, noticed the markings and ornate metal work. Having owned the stolen artifact for almost all of his adult life, he recognized Nehushtan despite the twisted, mangled form. This was Krav's grave.

Vesuvius stepped behind him. "I know you wanted to restart your life here, to resume the Watchmen and honor your father, to hit reset on your life."

Her words hung heavy in the air. Dekker set his jaw. His face resolute and grim, he'd put off emotion: become a man of action and dedicated resolve.

He stood and faced her. "Krav is dead." He sighed as one whose fate had also been sealed here.

She put her hand on his chest. "Your eyes tell me you're giving up on everything, Dekker Knight. Is there still an us? Do I get a say? Or will you end that, too? Because everything has felt new so recently with you and I. I know you wanted a fresh start, so why must this kill our dreams and why must they wait until you bury Prognon Austicon? You will bury him; I know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. So why can't you wait to restart your life until after his death?"