by Rachel Aaron
Rosalie froze, staring uncomprehending at the now empty air in front of the gate. The Colossal Titan was gone. Vanished as fast as he’d appeared. She was still struggling to understand how that was possible when she saw that all the titans in the field below were now walking toward her.
Toward the broken gate.
Rosalie turned and sprinted back to the edge of the wall, yelling at the others to get moving. The attack had just begun.
* * *
The base was in absolute chaos when Rosalie arrived. Lieutenant Brigitte was in the center of the maelstrom, shouting orders for all squads to man the ground cannons on the road in front of the breached gate. She grabbed Rosalie the moment she landed. “Did you see it?”
Rosalie nodded rapidly. “It was the Colossal Titan, Lieutenant. It kicked in the gate and knocked all the cannons off the wall, then disappeared.”
She expected Brigitte to question the last part, but she’d forgotten the lieutenant had been at Shiganshina. She’d seen this before, and her old face was hard as stone as she released Rosalie. “Get to the cannons in front of the gate,” she ordered, turning back to the rushing soldiers. “All of you! I want every person in this base at that gate to hold the line. The titans do not enter Trost!”
Her shout was still echoing up the wall when Rosalie felt the deep, familiar boom of titan footfalls.
“Everyone to the cannons!” Brigitte roared, shoving past Rosalie to sprint toward the permanent ring of cannons that had been pointed at the inner side of the Trost Gate for the past five years. “If you’re not firing or loading, I want you running ammunition. Empty the damn armory if you have to, but we are holding this gate!”
She was still shouting when Rosalie reached her station. Emmett slid into position a few seconds later. He was helping her open the rusted firing hatch when Willow showed up with a box of shells. “Here!” she said, dropping the ammunition on the ground beside Rosalie. “I’ll be back with more.”
Rosalie could see two titans through the hole in the gate. They peered through the shattered brick with delighted faces, staring into the city as if they had all the time in the world.
She grabbed a shell as Emmett finally popped the rusty hatch. The moment the breach was open, Rosalie shoved her shell inside and slammed the hatch shut again, taking only enough time to ensure the barrel was pointed in the right direction before she pulled the firing line.
“Fire!”
The shot exploded, rocking the cannon back, and the ten-meter titan that had stepped through breached gate stumbled, its head blasted off its shoulders. Before Rosalie could celebrate her good shot, though, the headless titan’s fallen body was pushed aside by two more giants shoving themselves through the tunnel, their idiot faces grinning with glee.
“Reload!” Rosalie cried, scrambling for the next shell as Emmett opened the barrel for her. “Quickly!”
More cannons were active now. The din of their explosive shots drowned out even the thunder of the titan’s footsteps. Inside the tunnel the Colossal Titan had kicked through the gate, monsters fell on top of each other, their bodies blown to pieces by the constant explosions. The titans were packed in so tight, no shot could miss, but it didn’t seem to matter. Every time one monster went down, two more stepped in to take its place, their sleepwalker faces fixated on the humans behind the cannons as they pressed relentlessly forward.
“There’s too many!” Rosalie cried as she fired again. “Even if we kill one with every shot, we just can’t fire fast enough.”
“But we have to,” Emmett said, his face pale. “If they get through…”
He looked over his shoulder at the street behind them, packed with panicking civilians. Rosalie swallowed.
“We have to find a way to block that hole,” she said as they reloaded. “Any ideas?”
Emmett bit his lip. Before he could answer, they heard the clatter of hooves. Rosalie took her next shot, blasting a five-meter titan in half. Only then, while Emmett was reloading, did she turn to see Captain Woermann and his guards pulling their horses to a stop.
“Stand down!” the captain yelled, his voice high and shaking with fear. “The gate is lost! Everyone grab whatever you can and fall back through the city to Wall Rose!”
“Ignore that order!”
The roar came from Rosalie’s left, and suddenly Brigitte was there, her weathered face scarlet with rage. “All troops stay in position!” she bellowed. “We hold the line!”
“Are you mad, woman?” Captain Woermann cried, barely holding onto his reins as his horse reared in fear from the thunder of constant cannon fire. “You’re just wasting shells!”
“The Garrison does not abandon its post!” Brigitte yelled at him. “We will keep the titans back with our lives to buy the rest of Trost time to evacuate.”
“How dare you defy an order from your captain!” Woermann shouted. “This is insubordination!”
“This is our job!” Brigitte shouted back. “I failed at Shiganshina. I will not fail here. Until I’m stabbing my way down a titan’s throat, I will hold this gate.”
For a moment, Woermann was too taken aback to speak, and then rage beat fear as he gestured to one of his guards. “I give the orders here, Lieutenant!” he cried as the guard leveled his rifle at Brigitte’s chest. “This is your final warning! Stand down now!”
Brigitte glared down the rifle barrel so hard, the man holding it flinched. “No.”
From the corner of her eye, Rosalie saw Woermann jerk back on his horse. His bluff had been called; clearly he didn’t have the resolve to follow through on his threat and shoot her. He was looking at the soldier as though he didn’t know what to do next when the sudden crack of a gunshot cut through the air.
Rosalie screamed, dropping the shell Emmett had just handed her in the rush to help her lieutenant. But Brigitte was still standing. It was the soldier who’d gone down, his rifle discharging harmlessly into the air as he was knocked off his horse by someone flying in from the left. Someone with gleaming swords who was already on top of the soldier wrenching his arms behind his back.
Jax.
The rest of Woermann’s men were frantically pulling their rifles now, taking aim at Jax as the downed soldier screamed. Rosalie was reaching for her swords when Brigitte grabbed her arm.
“You have a job to do, Dumarque,” she growled, her eyes fixed on Woermann. “Shoot your cannon. We’ll handle this.”
Rosalie didn’t see how that was possible. Woermann had a whole ten-squad with him. But before she could argue, another soldier dropped off the barracks roof, swinging down to crash into Woermann’s men like a pendulum, knocking them off their horses.
“Cooper!” Jax yelled, grabbing a rifle from the soldier closest to him. “Here!”
Cooper caught the gun without looking and swung it like a club, knocking another soldier to the ground.
“Dumarque!”
Rosalie jumped. Lieutenant Brigitte was in her face, grabbing her shoulders with both arms. “Focus, Solider,” she growled, shoving Rosalie at her cannon before turning to yell at the entire firing line. “All of you, ignore the force from HQ and focus on my voice! I want three soldiers on each cannon—one loading, one firing, one running ammo. If you are not doing one of those three things, get back to base and help unpack the reserve shells. Go go go!”
The order came not a second too soon. In the half minute she—and apparently everyone else—had been distracted, the titans had made it through the breach and were now walking into the city.
Furious with herself, Rosalie took aim and fired, shooting the head off a crone-faced titan who was reaching with clawed fingers for the cannon squad closest to the gate. The explosion hadn’t even finished before Emmett was there, shoving the next shell Willow had brought them into the back of the cannon. He closed the cap and locked it, then jumped out of the way as Rosalie took aim again, cranking the barrel down to shoot the
legs out from under the fifteen-meter titan with a barrel chest and a bald head who was currently standing at the mouth of the breach.
As she’d hoped, the shot knocked the monster backward, blocking the hole with its massive body. This bought the other teams time to finish killing off the titans who’d made it through. Rosalie was lining up a kill shot when she heard the crack of a rifle directly behind her.
She smelled the blood before she felt the spray across her neck. When she looked down, her left arm was covered in bright red.
“Brigitte!”
The scream was so raw and angry, Rosalie didn’t recognize it as Jax’s voice until he was suddenly there. He caught the lieutenant before she could fall, pressing his free hand down on the blood spreading rapidly across the front of her uniform.
“You,” he snarled, turning on Woermann, who was sitting on his horse with a shocked look on his face. “You did this!”
For a moment, Rosalie didn’t know what he meant. Captain Woermann didn’t even have a rifle. Several of the other soldiers did, though. The shot that had hit Brigitte must have been an accident, but that didn’t matter to Jax. Nor did it stop Woermann from pulling the pistol off his belt as Cooper rushed over to back Jax up.
“She got what she deserved!” Woermann shouted, moving his gun frantically between the two deadly-looking soldiers. “She was disobeying orders! You all heard her! It was insubordination! Mutiny! She would have been hung for treason, anyway.” His voice cracked. “It wasn’t my fault!”
“You’re still dead,” Jax snarled, pressing his hands tighter against Bridgette’s wound. “I’ll—”
“You can’t do anything!” Woermann cried, pointing his pistol at Jax’s head. “You attacked my men! That makes you co-conspirators.” The gun began to rattle in his shaking hands. “I could shoot you all!”
“Not with just one gun,” Cooper said, his normally carefree voice cold and deadly.
Rosalie exhaled slowly, assessing the situation. She could hear all the cannons still firing behind her. Between their roar and the shouts from the city, none of the other teams were close enough to realize what was happening. Woermann’s men that Jax and Cooper hadn’t knocked out had fled when Brigitte went down, leaving their captain alone. Alone and desperate and holding a gun, which he was almost certainly going to use if Rosalie didn’t do something.
“Emmett, Willow,” she said quietly. “Take over the cannon for a second.”
“What?” Emmett yelped, but Rosalie had already stepped away, walking swiftly past Jax, Cooper, and Brigitte to put herself between them and Woermann.
“Rosalie!” Jax hissed, grabbing her arm with a bloody hand. “What are you doing? Get out of here!”
Rosalie shook him off and focused her attention on Woermann’s pistol, which was now pointed at her head.
“Miss Dumarque,” the captain said, lowering his gun, though not by much. “This is no place for a lady of your station. Get on my horse, we’re leaving.”
“No,” she said, glaring at him. “We’re not done here.”
“Are you insane?” he cried, his wild eyes flicking up to the titans barely held back by the cannons. “This fight was lost before it began! Brigitte was leading you all to suicide!”
“Lieutenant Brigitte was upholding the mandate of the Garrison!” Rosalie yelled back. “We swore an oath to protect the people of Trost at any cost!”
Woermann’s pale, terrified face turned scarlet. “Enough!” he bellowed, shoving his gun at her face. “I am your captain! You follow my orders, and I order you to retreat!”
“We will not retreat!” Rosalie cried, leaning forward until her forehead was touching the barrel of his pistol. “You want a mutiny? I am Rosalie Dumarque, the king’s cousin! By my birth and name, I am the highest authority present, and as of this moment, I am taking over the Gate Division of the Trost Garrison.”
Woermann jerked back in his saddle. “You can’t do that!”
“Too bad!” she yelled. “Because I am. There are tens of thousands of men, women, and children who still need to be evacuated. It’s our duty as soldiers of the Garrison to buy those civilians as much time as we can, so that’s what we’re going to do. If you have a problem with that, go ahead and shoot me.”
The gun rattled louder in Woermann’s shaking hands, but he didn’t lower it. Rosalie stood her ground, staring up the pistol’s barrel at the man on the other side, daring him to pull the trigger.
“Rosalie,” Jax whispered, his voice terrified. “Rosalie, don’t do this.”
“I’m the only one who can do this,” she said calmly, never taking her eyes off Woermann. “I’m noble. If he shoots me, it won’t matter if he retreats all the way to Sina. He’ll still hang.” She smiled coldly. “And he knows it.”
Captain Woermann’s terrified eyes flickered like he was going to pass out. Then, with a high-pitched curse, he yanked back his pistol and whirled his horse around, galloping as fast as he could down the street full of panicking townsfolk.
Rosalie dropped to her knees, her chest heaving. Jax was at her side at a second later, grabbing her with his bloody hands and hugging her so hard she saw spots. “Don’t you ever do anything that bloody stupid again!”
She nodded, still panting. Then she turned to look at Brigitte.
Cooper had taken over holding her wound, but the old lieutenant was terrifyingly still and pale. Her chest rose in tiny, ragged motions beneath her blood-soaked jacket, but that was the only movement she seemed capable of, and not for very much longer.
Jax must have realized it too, because he bolted back to his commanding officer. “Hold on,” he said. “I’ll get Willow to—”
“No,” Brigitte wheezed. “Hold…the gate.”
“We will,” Rosalie promised, kneeling beside Jax. “We’ll hold them back, Lieutenant. Until everyone is out.”
Brigitte’s eyes fluttered open. “What the…hell are you doing…Dumarque?” she gasped, staring at Rosalie in fury. “Get back…to your…damn…cannon…”
Her voice faded, and then Brigitte fell still, her blue eyes staring empty at the sky. Jax closed them a moment later, gently brushing his bloody hands over her face before turning to Rosalie. “I guess you’re in command now,” he said. “What do we do?”
Under any other circumstances, Rosalie would have taken that as a joke. But Jax’s voice was as grim as the blood on his hands, and she already knew the answer to his question.
“We follow Brigitte’s last order,” she said, turning back to the broken gate where the titans were still pushing through despite the roar of the cannons. “We hold.”
“We can’t keep this up forever,” Jax said.
Rosalie shook her head. “We don’t have to. We just need to keep them bottled up in the gate long enough for the civilians to escape. How much ammunition do we have?”
“Not enough,” Cooper said, looking over his shoulder at the base where soldiers had formed a chain to transport boxes of shells from the armory to the cannon line. “Brigitte hoarded ammunition like she knew this day was coming, but at the rate we’re burning, even her supplies won’t last long. If we keep firing all-out like this, we’ve got enough for ten, maybe fifteen more minutes.”
That wasn’t good enough. The streets around them were still choked with fleeing people. There was no way everyone could escape through the gate on the other side of the city that quickly.
“We’ll just have to figure out a way to use less ammo,” Rosalie said, running her hand through her tangled braid. “Any ideas?”
Jax was about to answer when the road fell quiet. Not silent—there were still alarm bells and screaming and the thunder of giant footsteps—but the boom of the cannons had stopped.
“Are we out already?” Jax demanded.
“No,” Rosalie said, heart pounding. “It’s a gap. When you have multiple teams, sometimes everyone has to reload at once.” It
was perfectly normal, one of those unavoidable scenarios every cannoneer was trained to just push through, except this time, they couldn’t.
“Fire!” Rosalie screamed as titans began pouring through the undefended gate. “Someone fire!”
The cannon assault resumed immediately as teams finished reloading, but they’d lost precious ground. The titans were now pushing through the breached gate as fast as the explosions could knock them down. One more gap like that, and the Garrison would be completely overrun. The only solution was constant fire, but how could you keep that up without firing everything you had?
Rosalie’s grabbed Jax’s arm as the idea finally came to her. “We can do a round!”
Jax arched an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“A tactic I learned at the academy,” she said as they ran back to her cannon, where Emmett was still firing with Willow frantically reloading for him. “We fire in a sequence—one cannon, then the next, then the next and the next until we’re back at the beginning. Each cannon reloads while the next is firing. That way, we can have a shell landing on the breach every few seconds and we’ll use less ammunition because no two cannons fire at the same time.”
“No wasted shots,” Cooper agreed. “I get it. But what about Jax and me? We’re ace at killing titans, but we can’t shoot to save our lives.”
“You’ll be back there,” Rosalie said, pointing to the city block beyond the cannons. “If we’re all firing at the breach, there’s no chance to switch targets if something does get through. That’s where you come in.”
“We’ll guard your backs,” Jax finished with a grin. “If any titans get past the firing line, we’ll move in and take them out.”
Rosalie nodded, and Jax turned to Cooper. “Round up our best killers,” he ordered. “We’ll form a semicircle on top of the apartment buildings. That’ll give us the best angle to come in on our wires if any of those bastards go for the cannon teams.”
