Garrison Girl

by Rachel Aaron

  Right at Jax.

  Rosalie’s hand froze on the crank. Just as she had been yesterday, Jax was standing on the ground at the base of the wall, staring up at the fifteen-meter titan who towered over him. Only the fifteen-meter titan, because all the smaller ones were dead. The crowd of titans that had followed them all day as they cleaned the wall was now lying on the ground, their necks cut clean through.

  Given his broken swords and the blood on his arms, Jax was clearly the reason why. But though he’d mowed his way through the dozen smaller titans in the time it had taken Rosalie to get the cannon working, he hadn’t touched the big one yet. Before she could wonder why, Jax exploded into motion, sprinting for extra momentum as he fired the left cable of his maneuver gear into the flesh of the monster’s shoulder. The child-faced titan didn’t even flinch. It just turned to follow Jax, its big hands reaching out in a clumsy attempt to catch him as he reeled himself up to land in the crook of the titan’s shoulder, his swords already in position to stab the weak spot at the nape of its neck.

  Like the bearded titan yesterday, the monster’s head snapped back the moment Jax’s blades came down. It fell a moment later, toppling like a tree onto the bodies of the smaller titans. Jax hopped clear as it fell, firing his maneuvering gear at the wall to pull himself to safety as the titan crashed into the dead grass.

  The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds.

  “Wow,” Willow whispered, her voice trembling. “He killed them all.”

  Rosalie nodded silently, eyes as wide as could be as she watched Jax calmly drop back down to the ground to collect the snapped ends of his broken swords so they could be reforged. He must have broken all of the blades he carried, Rosalie realized. She was trying to calculate how many cuts he must have made to go through every blade in his sheath when the thick copse of fir trees at the edge of the field began to rustle.

  “Jax!”

  Her warning came far too late. A massive arm had already shot out of the fir trees, grabbing Jax in a hand big enough to tip a horse cart.

  The new titan had a young woman’s face and long, stringy black hair. It crawled out of the thick copse of conifers on its knees, its cracked red lips curling in a hungry smile as it saw Jax struggling in its fingers, twisting and stabbing ineffectively at the titan’s hand with his broken swords. It wasn’t as big as the one he’d just killed, but its palm was as wide as Jax was tall, leaving him no leverage to kick his way free as the titan lifted him toward its open mouth.

  “I have to take the shot!”

  Everyone jumped. Rosalie hadn’t even realized she was shouting until the words left her throat raw, but she was moving too fast to care. She’d already cranked the cannon into position, smacking the barrel with her fist until it was pointed where she wanted.

  The shot had to be exact. Drop off wasn’t an issue for a shot this close, but even the shiny new cannons on Sina were famously inaccurate. With a rusted old tube like this, she’d be lucky to hit a titan standing right in front of her, which was why every other variable—the wind, the alignment, the tilt of the barrel—had to be perfect.

  For once, though, the age of the Garrison’s equipment provided an advantage. This was a classic iron ten-pounder, the mass-produced workhorse that had been the default example in all of her gunnery manuals. She licked her finger to estimate the stiff breeze from the northwest. When she had it, she smacked her hand against the barrel to slide it a hair to the left so that the muzzle was pointed at the front hollow of the female titan’s throat, directly opposite the weak spot.

  Exactly where she wanted.

  “Fire!”

  She yanked the firing line, and the rusty cannon rocked backward with a deafening boom. The sound was still echoing when the titan’s head exploded like a ripe melon, splattering blood to the tops the trees behind it. But though the titan’s head was gone, its hand was still wrapped around Jax like a vise.

  “Why isn’t it dead?!”

  “Because you only blew off its head!” Willow said frantically. “Unless you take out the weak spot, titans can regenerate any damage!”

  Rosalie thought she had gotten the weak spot. When she looked down at the titan’s headless body, though, she saw Willow was right. For all the blood, the very bottom of the titan’s neck was still there, and it was growing before Rosalie’s eyes, the flesh creeping up from the bloody stump to form a new cranium.

  It was exactly what they’d taught her in titan anatomy class. But now that Rosalie was seeing it with her own eyes, her brain was actively rejecting it. How does anything live without a head?! There was no sanity, no aspect of science or nature that could allow this, and yet it was happening. The titan had already regenerated up to the jaw line, its new bottom teeth poking up through the red flesh of its gums like white mushrooms. As its head regrew, the titan’s hand squeezed Jax even tighter. As his face began to turn purple, Rosalie realized he’d been right. For all her training, she really didn’t know anything about fighting titans. She couldn’t, because fighting titans made no sense. There was simply no way to properly prepare for a creature that didn’t care if you blew its head off.

  “We have to get down there,” she said, stepping away from the cannon. “We have to cut its neck before it regrows enough to finish killing Jax.”

  “Um, Rosalie?” Emmett said, pointing at the ground.

  Rosalie jerked back. The monster in the fir trees hadn’t been the only lurker. Two other titans had crept out of the brush as well. Neither was particularly big, but Rosalie hadn’t even killed one titan yet. There was no way she was taking three by herself, and Willow and Emmett’s lack of maneuvering-gear skills meant they wouldn’t be much help. If they didn’t do something fast, though, Jax wasn’t going to make it.

  “Just shoot it again!” Willow said desperately. “That’s what you’re here for, right?”

  Rosalie shook her head. “The neck stump’s too small a target. I’m a good shot, but no one’s that good. Even if I did land it, Jax would just get laid out for the other two to pounce on.”

  The two new titans had crept perilously close to the headless one now, their empty eyes locked on Jax like greedy children eyeing a sweet. If she’d had more shells, she could have taken them all out, but the ammo box had only one shot left. Rosalie loaded it anyway, focusing on sliding the silver canister into the barrel as she forced herself to be calm and think. There had to be a way to do this. Had to be a…Her head shot up, and then she whirled on Emmett so fast he jumped. “What’s the lift capacity on vertical maneuvering gear?”

  “Two hundred kilos,” he replied without missing a beat. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I think I’ve figured out how we’re going to do this.” Rosalie pointed at the titan holding Jax. “I need both of you to shoot your hooks into its hand. Fingers, wrist, doesn’t matter. Just get the hooks in somewhere they won’t come out.”

  “Are the cables long enough for that?” Willow asked, looking at her spools. “I’ve never extended mine all the way.”

  “They should be fifty meters,” Rosalie said. “Or one wall’s worth. If each of you dangles down the wall on one cable, you should be able to get your other into that hand.”

  Neither Willow nor Emmett looked happy about the idea, but they did as Rosalie asked, securing the barbed hooks of their cables firmly in the stone at the top of the wall before lowering themselves down. When they were dangling at the halfway mark, they fired their cables at the titan. It took them a few attempts to land the shot, but eventually both had their hooks firmly buried in the flesh of the titan’s fingers.

  Not a moment too soon. Jax was no longer moving, and the titan’s head had almost completely regenerated. No skin had grown yet, but its skull was fully formed and there were eyeballs in its sockets. At this rate, Rosalie estimated they had less than a minute before it fully healed. If they were going to do something, it had to be now, so the
moment Willow and Emmett called that they were ready, she pulled the string, firing the cannon.

  But not at the titan’s neck.

  Just as before, the cannon rocked on its supports, echoing with a boom across the overgrown fields. Unlike before, though, it wasn’t the titan’s head that exploded. It was its arm.

  The high-explosive shell landed perfectly below the titan’s elbow, blowing a hole straight through the forearm and separating the hand that was crushing Jax from the rest of the monster’s body. The blast sent the clutched fist flying into the air, but Willow and Emmett were already on it, reeling in their cables as fast as the flywheels could go.

  Even with the two of them, the extra weight of Jax and the titan’s hand was almost more than the motors could take. Now that she had taken her second shot, Rosalie jumped in as well, swinging down the wall and shooting her free cable into the titan’s severed flesh between the thumb and the wrist.

  “Pull!” she shouted, hitting the triggers on her maneuvering gear to reel herself back up the wall. “Pull!”

  The air was filled with the whine of metal on metal as their cables reeled in. The titan’s severed hand was enormous. Rosalie had no idea how much it weighed, but their gear was chugging the whole way. Even after the three of them made it to the top, it took all the gas left in their cylinders to raise the severed hand holding Jax to the wall’s edge. Then they had to pull themselves, grabbing the titan’s fingers and tugging with all their strength until, at last, the smoking fist flopped onto the top of the wall.

  The moment it landed, everyone fell over. Rosalie was the first back to her feet. She slammed the handles of her maneuvering gear into the blades at her thighs, drawing her hardened steel swords with a clang of metal and slamming them into the sinews of the titan’s still-clenched fingers.

  “Jax!” she yelled, hacking at the already withering flesh. “Hang on! We’re getting you out!”

  He gave no answer, but Rosalie wouldn’t have heard one. She was too busy cutting the fingers off, slicing each one at the joint to break the titan’s rigor mortis grip until, at last, the hand fell open and Jax collapsed gasping onto the stone.

  Rosalie slumped to the ground as well, her body heaving in exhaustion while Willow ran in to check on Jax, who was coughing up a storm. Beside them, the titan’s chopped-up hand was starting to steam, releasing a horrific stench. On the grass below, the titan who’d grabbed Jax had fully regrown its head and was staring in confusion at the blown-off stump of its severed arm. It was not, however, looking at them. None of the titans were. There was no more pileup, no more threat to the safety of the wall, which meant…

  “We did it,” Rosalie said, panting and grinning at her squad. “They’re not beating on the wall anymore! We’re safe!”

  “We’re alive,” Emmett said, looking down at Willow, who was rubbing Jax’s back to help him breathe. “We’re alive!”

  They were better than alive. They’d won. They’d protected the wall. They’d saved Jax. Markus’s soldier had fallen due to his own foolishness, but no one else had died. Their squad was safe. They could all go home. Everything was fine!

  “We won!” she cried, hugging Emmett, who’d come over to help her up. “We did it! We—”

  She stopped with a gasp. Jax was suddenly right in front of her, his face terrifying in its anger.

  “Who told you to fire the cannon?!”

  C

  H

  A

  P

  T

  E

  R

  S

  I

  X

  Rosalie sat nervously on the cold bench, shuffling her feet on the brick floor as she waited for the desk sergeant to call her name. It was her first time in the western tower, which housed the controls for the gate as well as the offices of the woman who controlled it: Gate Lieutenant Brigitte Morris.

  She wasn’t sure how long she’d been waiting. The guardroom’s only window had been bricked over years ago, but it had to be late evening. Everyone else in her squad had already given their report and been dismissed. She was the last one, sitting with her hands balled anxiously in her lap until, finally, the scruffy soldier who served as the gate lieutenant’s secretary called her name.

  Rosalie jumped to her feet, but the veteran just pointed down the hall at the lieutenant’s office. Stomach sinking, Rosalie marched out of the guardroom with her head held as high as she could manage, opening the battered door with a quiet click.

  The gate lieutenant’s office was smaller than she’d imagined. As the officer in charge of the Trost Gate and the forward walls, Lieutenant Brigitte was outranked only by Captain Woermann himself. In Rosalie’s experience, that kind of power meant perks like a spacious office and nice furniture, but Brigitte’s cramped workspace looked more like a root cellar. It had windowless brick walls, a low board ceiling, and a brick floor worn down by decades of boots. The only furniture was an ancient wooden desk and a little iron heater in the corner. There wasn’t even a chair for visitors, not that Rosalie could have used it. As a subordinate here for a chewing out, her duty was to stand and take it.

  When the door closed, Brigitte tucked the papers she’d been reading into a drawer and leaned forward, planting her elbows on her now-empty desk as she scowled at Rosalie. “Do you know why you’re here, Private?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rosalie said, keeping her back straight and her eyes locked on the detailed map of the gate and the surrounding landscape pinned to the wall above the lieutenant’s gray-haired head. “I fired the cannon despite my officer’s direct order not to.”

  “You fired it twice,” Brigitte corrected, leaning back in her chair. “Do you understand why firing the cannons is such a big deal?”

  Jax’s explosion earlier had given her a hint, but before he could explain why he was so mad, Markus’s squad—who’d fled when Jax went over the wall—had come back with a bunch of soldiers and everything had gone crazy. Too crazy, in Rosalie’s estimation. What was the point of even having cannons if shooting one got you treated like a criminal? The confusion must have been clear on her face, because Brigitte sighed.

  “Cannon shots on the wall mean danger,” the lieutenant explained. “Trost sits in the same southern position on Wall Rose that Shiganshina occupied on Wall Maria when it fell. There’s not a soul in this city who doesn’t know that, or who doesn’t understand what the sound of a cannon could mean. The only reason the people of Trost are able to live their lives in peace is because we keep that fear from them. That’s the Garrison’s job. We don’t just walk the wall. We are the wall. So the next time you decide to play hero, Private, I suggest you find a quieter way to do it.”

  Rosalie lowered her eyes, feeling like she was going to cry. As the soldiers were marching them back along the wall, she’d noticed the streets of Trost seemed oddly active, but she’d never considered that it could be panic, or because of her.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t think—I didn’t know that I—” She took a deep breath. “Did my actions cause damage to Trost?”

  “No,” Brigitte said solemnly. “The local military police kept things from getting out of hand this time, but panic of the sort you could have caused is one of the most dangerous situations we face out here. The titans will eat us if they ever break through, but fear can make us eat ourselves. You attacked Trost as much as you did the titan when you fired that cannon. That’s a violation of your oath of service to the Garrison, and you must face consequences for it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rosalie said shakily. “I understand what you’re saying, and I don’t disagree, but…”

  The lieutenant cocked a gray eyebrow. “But?”

  “I don’t see what else I could have done,” Rosalie finished. Because if she was going to stick her foot in her mouth arguing with an officer, she might as well go for the knee. “If I hadn’t shot the cannon, Jax would have—”

  “I�
��m well aware of what Sergeant Cunningham did,” Brigitte said angrily. “Your squadmates told me what happened. There’s no question in my mind that your actions saved the life of Sergeant Jackson Cunningham, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that you disobeyed a direct order and fired the cannon without permission. These are offenses that must be punished. I won’t have anyone saying I went easy on you because you’re Charles Dumarque’s daughter.”

  The mention of her father made Rosalie’s blood run cold. “You’re not going to tell him about this, are you?”

  The lieutenant looked disgusted. “This is the Garrison, not boarding school. Unless they die in combat, I don’t make a habit of talking to my soldiers’ parents. You’re going to have to face this on your own.”

  Rosalie nodded and pulled herself straight, meeting the old lieutenant’s eyes as she braced for the worst.

  “Rosalie Dumarque,” Brigitte said formally, “as a trained cannoneer, you automatically entered the Garrison as a private first class. As of tonight, you are demoted to private second class.”

  She’d been expecting that, but Rosalie still couldn’t stop from wincing. Private second class was the lowest rank in the Garrison, but Brigitte wasn’t finished.

  “I’m also continuing your assignment to Jackson Cunningham’s squad.”

  Rosalie blinked. “I—I’m sorry, ma’am. Is that…it that part of my punishment?

  “No,” Brigitte said. “It’s Cunningham’s.” Her expression softened to the point that Rosalie thought she looked almost amused. “Jax has been a frustration of mine for a long time, but ordering his squad to stand down while he faced a dozen titans alone is one of the cockiest, stupidest stunts he’s ever pulled.”

  Rosalie clenched her jaw.

  “Your use of the cannon was unauthorized and very poorly thought out, but the rest of your solution was brave, creative, and effective. We need more soldiers who aren’t afraid to use their brains. Cunningham tells me you don’t belong here. The fact that you passed the Red Line is proof enough for me that you’re serious, so until you break another rule, you stay right where you are.” Her lips quirked into an actual smile. “You and Jax will have to learn to get along.”