Chelen City: Chapter Four, Part One

 Notes: More story, and it's actually on time! YAAAY! Assassins, they're not always what they appear to be...

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Four, Part One

***

Chapter Four, Part One

 

It was a little unusual for a would-be assassin to stick around after their attempt failed, but given the personal relationship Elanus had with this one, he figured the least he could do was have a chat with the man before he threw him out.

“What the fuck was what?” Elanus asked. “The part where I didn’t let you get the drop on me thanks to Kieron, or the part where you ought to be drooling out on the floor but are still standing instead?”

Ryu made a noise of exasperation. “The first, obviously!” He glared at Kieron. “Look, I don’t know much about you, but if this idiot hasn’t explained things to you yet, you ought to know that my attempts to kill him just now were completely superficial.”

“He did tell me about that,” Kieron said, managing to keep a level voice despite the tension Elanus saw through his shoulders. Kieron didn’t like surprises, and Ryu now represented an unknown. “And obviously I would never step in your cultural norms. That was all self-defense.”

“That’s shit and you know it.”

Kieron shrugged. “I’m not responsible for your shitty timing. I walked in first, I felt endangered, I took care of things. Now.” He lifted his gun again and pointed it at Ryu’s chest. “I’d like to learn some more.” And then—

Three more shots before Elanus could stop them—gut, chest, and head. “Whoa!” Elanus shouted, reaching out for Kieron’s shoulder. “That’s plenty, that’s more than plenty. You’re going to overload his nervous system at this rate.”

Kieron shook his head. “But I’m not. Look at him.”

True to Kieron’s word, Ryu was already straightening up. He looked fine, physically, but the expression on his handsome, angular face was incredulous. “What the fuck.”

“Nothing, huh?” Kieron switched the gun for a knife. “What about this?”

Ryu held up his hands. “I can see this has gotten off to a very bad start,” he said placatingly. “I didn’t realize you’d hired a bodyguard. I can—”

“He’s my lover, not my bodyguard,” Elanus clarified, caught between appreciating Kieron’s willingness to cause damage and satisfying his curiosity about this whole thing. “He just really likes me whole and healthy and, y’know, not threatened in the quiet of my office by a former employee in a stealth suit.”

Ryu narrowed his eyes. “Current employee.”

“Former. You fucked off to be Deysan’s personal assistant, and his employment with LifeShip Enterprises has been very thoroughly terminated.” The ship he’d died in had been destroyed by asteroids three days after Elanus and Kieron had orchestrated his downfall, in fact.

Ryu didn’t seem to believe Elanus’s claim. “Look, I don’t care where you stashed him or how you’re making him suffer, but I need information only he has about a personal situation of mine. It’s time-sensitive, so if you can give me access to him for just a standard day, I would appreciate it.”

Elanus was starting to get a sinking feeling. “I can’t.”

Yep, there it was, the lines around the eyes and pursing of the lips—signs of mounting desperation in a man as good at hiding his feelings as Ryu. “You can. You have to. I need to talk to him.”

“No, believe me, I genuinely, absolutely, literally can’t give you access to the man. He’s dead.”

Ryu’s bronzed skin took on a faint green patina. “No.”

“Yes.” Kieron was talking this time, but the underlying air of animosity had completely vanished from his voice. “He’s very, very dead. Take what I did to you and multiply it by radiation poisoning. The real question is, what do you want from him?”

“I…” Ryu seemed to have run out of air. His posture, so square and strong, folded in on itself, his shoulders bowing along with his head as some terrible reality suddenly drilled through his layers of confidence and bluster. “No,” he whispered. “Oh no. No, that can’t—no, I need him.” He staggered backward until he hit Elanus’s desk, but instead of using it to support himself, he sank down onto the floor in front of it, eyes staring at some horror Elanus could only guess at. “No, no, no…”

Kieron lowered the knife, then put it away entirely. “Gania doesn’t subscribe to ritual sacrifice, does it?” he asked Elanus quietly.

“What? No!” Only the most sophisticated barbarism was allowed on Gania. “Why do you ask?”

“Because the way your assassin is behaving makes me wonder why he’s suddenly expecting to die. He didn’t expect to die when I was shooting at him, but a few words about Deysan Moritz being dead and all of a sudden he’s lost all his self-control. So, no culture of required suicide to follow someone of a higher class into some bullshit afterlife?”

“No!” How completely abhorrent. “Do places like that even exist in the Federation?”

“Not in the Federation, no,” Kieron said mildly. It occurred to Elanus that there were a lot of things he didn’t know about Hadrian’s Colony, but one of the things he did know was that they had essentially wiped themselves out in a mass suicide at the behest of their leader. That was…it was…

It was something Elanus was going to table to talk about at a later date, because right now he had his former partner’s former personal assistant hyperventilating on his floor and he didn’t want that. “Ryu,” Elanus tried, coming over and kneeling down in front of him. Not too close, not stabbing-close, but close enough to make a connection. “Why do you need to talk to Deysan so badly?”

“He…” Ryu made an effort to focus on Elanus. His big dark eyes were wide and scared—he had never let himself appear scared in front of Elanus before, never. “He’s the only one who can fix me.”

“Why do you need fixing? What’s wrong with you?”

“Elfshot,” Ryu said, and Elanus went cold. Kieron stiffened as well. “Deysan discovered a cure for Elfshot Disease. I was halfway through the trial treatment when he left. He said he would transmit the rest of the program to me, but he never did. Everything I’ve been through, all the progress, it’s going to be lost if—I—I need him to tell me the rest!”

Deysan worked out a cure for Elfshot Disease?

My disease?

There had to be an angle here, and Elanus was going to find it.

Chelen City: Chapter Three, Part Two

 Notes: Am I actually getting this out on the right day? God I hope so. Anyway, enjoy some bureaucracy and an assassination attempt!

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Three, Part Two

***

Chapter Three, Part Two

 

Chaos was fun, but it had its limits.

Elanus had to lock his implant down after the third time one of his minions tried to project their question at him both verbally and mentally. “Don’t be rude,” he said, and a few people had the grace to look slightly ashamed. “You haven’t even waited for introductions.”

“Apologies,” his secretary, Martel, said with a frown at the rest of them. “Queue up or get out,” he told them, and the people obediently lined up. “Please introduce us to your companion.”

Elanus motioned at Kieron, who was standing with his hands relaxed at his sides, doing his best to project an air of normality. Wow, it wasn’t until Kieron actually tried to be normal, for whatever that designation was worth, that Elanus realized how sharp his movements normally were. He might have a civilian implant, but years of training as a child had done their part to make him more dangerous than the average person. He’d probably learned to make himself look harmless on Trakta.

Nope, not thinking about that wretched idiocracy right now.

“This is Kieron Carr,” Elanus said, keeping his smile firmly in place. “Be sure to treat him far better than you vicious brutes treat me.”

Of the ten people staring at his lover, only one of them is close to Kieron’s size—Vini Mae, who was born on a planet in the Central System and now worked in his engineering department. She seemed curious, but wasn’t about to let it distract her from getting her question answered first. “Nice to meet you, now talk to me about processors,” she shouted before Elanus could whisk Kieron away.

“Get back in line,” Martel snapped. “I bent the rules by letting you come to meet him here at all. Don’t make me lock you out of the cafeteria.”

Vini gave him a shocked look. “You wouldn’t. It’s Taco Tuesday! I love Taco Tuesday!”

“Then shut up and wait your turn.” Martel pointed at someone in a very nice suit—Elanus thought it was his head of legal. “Dravus, you go first.”

“We’re being petitioned on all sides to release data on the latest version of LifeShips,” the dark-skinned man said. He was head of legal because he was unflappable, but this morning was as close to worried as Elanus had ever seen him. “The claims are of varying legality, but we’re going to have to respond to some of them. At the very least, the ones from the government.”

Ahh, yes. The grinding gears of bureaucracy descended like a shroud. “Let’s walk and talk,” Elanus said, and headed down the long way to his office. Kieron kept pace beside him. After a moment, Elanus reached out and took his hand. Murmurs erupted behind him.

Yeah, soak it in. He’s mine. Elanus was willing to bet that some of his more cutthroat executives were already wondering what they ought to be bribing Kieron with to get more favorable decisions for their problems. He hoped they went high quality instead of insultingly provincial.

They walked. He talked. Martel kept everyone in line as best he could, and Kieron didn’t say anything but his eyes were constantly moving, taking in everything he saw and categorizing it accordingly. By the time they got to the office, only three people were left, and Martel was able to wave them off with promises of “later” before finally shutting the outer door and nearly collapsing against it.

“I’m so sorry about that,” the heavyset man apologized. He actually looked a bit sweaty standing there. “I had everything worked out, I swear, an actual schedule of appointments and confirmation from all parties, and then something went wrong in the system and people got word that they were all moved to the same time, which of course was the time you arrived. I can’t explain it.”

“It’s perfectly all right,” Elanus said, knowing exactly what was going on here. “I don’t blame little bugs like that on you. I’d rather get the lot of them out of the way early, to be honest. We’ve probably saved half the day, although seriously, most of that could have been messaged.”

“Impossible,” Martel replied.

“No, I really think that—”

“They wanted to see you,” Kieron said. Martel looked at him approvingly. “They obviously missed physically being in your presence. They’ve messaged you for months now, but this is the first time you’ve been back here since you left for Cloverleaf Station, right?”

“It is.” Well, how sweet, but hopefully their curiosity had been sated. “Thank you for your assistance, Martel. I’ll take it from here.”

His secretary frowned. “I can stay and organize your calendar again, it’s no problem.”

“Don’t worry about it. Go put out some fires and meet me back here in, oh, an hour or so.” The upcoming confrontation shouldn’t take any longer than that.

“If you’re sure…”

“Very sure. Go on.”

Martel heaved a long-suffering sigh, but left. Now only Elanus and Kieron were left in the outer vestibule that led to his office.

“So.” Kieron didn’t give himself away by nodding his head, but his eyes were active. “Nice place.”

“Thank you.” Elanus smiled in the sleaziest way he knew how. “Want to see my desk? It’s wide enough for two.”

“Desks are a shitty substitute for beds, but okay.”

“You haven’t seen this desk,” Elanus said as he pressed his fingertip to the reader outside his office door. In a second, it read his DNA and opened the door automatically. “Gentlemen first.” He waited for Kieron to stride into the too-large room, seeming completely unconcerned and perhaps a little playful as Elanus followed. Any second now…any—

“Stop.” Kieron pushed back against Elanus’s chest and lashed out with a dagger at the same time, cutting something nearly invisible in front of them. A second later he deflected a series of darts that would have hit Elanus in the chest, but were at the perfect height to perforate Kieron’s head. They didn’t, but Elanus was immediately on edge. Expecting attack was one thing, but seeing Kieron nearly get shuffled into the “acceptable losses” category made him feel extra murderous. He reached out to grab Kieron and pull him back when a shadow detached from the ceiling and fell to the ground right in front of them. Twin blades struck out, one for each of them, lethally fast.

Kieron parried, spun once, kicked the attacker in the middle of the chest, then pulled the gun Elanus had given him that morning and shot their assailant in the back of the neck.

The shot wasn’t going to kill the attacker, just paralyze him. Or it should have paralyzed him. Instead, the man straightened up, ripped the shimmer-cloth mask off his face, and glared at Elanus like he’d lost the plot. “What the fuck was that?” Ryu demanded.

Elanus had the same question.

Chelen City: Chapter Three, Part One

 Notes: Guess who hasn't caught up with her own freaking schedule and FORGOT to post the story yesterday? This girl! *sigh* Please enjoy, belated as it is.

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Three, Part One

***

Chapter Three, Part One

 

Being among the uppermost echelons of society came with undeniable perks. One of those perks was the transit system. Travel by tube was popular on Gania for a lot of reasons. The city was basically a mass collection of skyscrapers, with so little actual ground between them that there was no “ground” traffic. Ship and hovercraft use was circumscribed outside of the government and port buildings due to how many of the best landing sites were private property—not to mention, no one wanted to risk them hitting the tubes.

The tubes were enclosed moving platforms, some of them several stories high and large enough to squeeze a hundred people into easily. They were somewhat similar to ancient Earth subway systems, only these weren’t underground, they were all in the air. The lower stories of buildings were thick with tube stops, tube routes, and tube repairs. The upper levels were reserved for those who had the money to pay for privacy.

The entire tube system was heavily protected and preserved—tubes were safe, reliable, good for people, and good for business. The few times anyone had started trouble in a tube, they were shortly thereafter disappeared. Elanus, who had grown up using these tubes, was completely comfortable stepping into the one that connected to his home and programming in the route to his offices.

Kieron wasn’t remotely as comfortable, and he didn’t mind Elanus knowing. “This thing can’t be safe.”

“It’s completely safe,” Elanus assured him as the platform inside the tube began to move. “They’re literally built into the skeletons of the buildings themselves, and by ‘built’ I mean ‘grown.’ It’s a whole process with carbon nanotubes and a few different types of transparent steel and a lot of stuff I’m not supposed to talk about, so if you want to learn more you’ll have to glean it from blueprints.”

“Someone is trying to kill you,” Kieron pointed out. “You’re saying that this can’t be compromised by a projectile, or flooded with a poisonous gas, or—”

“I mean, it could be,” Elanus allowed. “I’m not saying that that’s impossible, but it won’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would be insane. The people trying to kill me aren’t that serious about it—at least, not in a way that would lead to mass casualties.”

“It’s insane not to think that someone could take advantage of your built-in biases and use them to get the drop on you,” Kieron said. He bounded tentatively on the platform as it sped them along, inertial dampeners keeping them from feeling like they were being pressed up against the back wall. “If I were trying to kill you, this is the first place I’d try to get you.”

“You’re not Ganian,” Elanus pointed out.

“I don’t have to be a local to be paid to kill you.” Kieron bounced again, then looked around. “There are weapons out there that could penetrate these walls, if someone wanted to be very specific. If they didn’t care about doing more damage—if they really were insane—then it would be so easy to take out a whole platform full of people.”

So they were going to talk about the potential for death in here. Okay. “There are sensors that detect hazardous materials and keep people from bringing personal weapons on board.”

Kieron arched an eyebrow. “Like the ones I’m carrying?”

“This is a private tube, it doesn’t count,” Elanus replied. Kieron didn’t look away. “Fine, those sensors can be gotten around using the right materials, but most people don’t have access to things like that!”

“Yeah, and an everyday person probably didn’t get it into their head to try and take you out,” Kieron said, then sighed. “I’m not trying to speak badly about your system. I know it works for you, and it’s worked for generations. It’s just very different from how I was raised.”

“You were raised in a death cult,” Elanus pointed out. “I think it’s safe to say that they’re not a good standard for comparison. Twelve hundred colonists, and fewer than ten survived in the end?”

“I know, it’s fucked up.” Kieron shrugged. “But there are fucked-up people everywhere, Elanus. There’s at least one other fucked-up person with a background like mine here. Refugees, tourists, business people…stranger things have happened.”

It was amazing how Kieron could make Elanus worry about things he had never worried about before in less than a minute. “Well shit.”

That made Kieron laugh. “Then again,” he went on in a lighter tone of voice, “I guess fucked up is relative. You don’t bat an eye about assassination attempts that would have me hunting people down.”

“Can you really do that?” It was something Elanus hadn’t felt comfortable enough to wonder out loud before this. “I know you grew up in a very militaristic society, but militaristic doesn’t necessarily mean murderous. Were you actually trained to kill people as a child?”

“Not ‘people,’” Kieron said, his smile dropping away. “Everyone who was designated a person was safe. I was trained to kill rats. Rats could look like people, they might even have been people once, but by the time they were rats, they just existed to be disposed of.” He turned and looked out the window. “By the end, I would have been considered a rat. I failed a lot of my mother’s tests, and that wasn’t allowed. I was the direct heir to my grandfather’s legacy. I had to be better than everyone else, and I wasn’t.”

Elanus didn’t know what to say to that. They’d already explored the ramifications of Kieron’s very disturbing past, and they were heading into a situation where they both needed to be on point. Elanus stepped up so that he was pressed to Kieron’s back, wrapped his arms around the shorter man’s shoulders, and gestured to a building in the distance. “That’s where my company does a lot of the fabrication work for our shipyards. We create the pieces there, and then the large ones go up the space elevator to be constructed in zero g, while the smaller ones go to our personal port.”

“It looks busy,” Kieron remarked, his eyes catching on the rows of lights lining the edges of the skyscraper.

“It is. Apart from scheduled maintenance, my employees run constantly on alternating shifts. No one works more than twenty-five hours a week, of course—more would just be cruel on the construction lines. My main office building, that’s where we’re heading, is the home of bureaucracy, legal, and R&D.” He smiled. “They work longer hours than the people on the line, but not by much. I try to be fair.”

“You ought to let them work less, since they have to put up with you on a regular basis.”

“Stars, you’re mean,” Elanus said, full of admiration. “If I could hire you to frighten people for me, I would.”

“Sorry.” Kieron turned around and pulled Elanus down into another kiss. “You’ll just have to live with me instead.” He suddenly grinned. “How many people get caught having sex in these things?”

“Um…”

“Welcome to LifeShip Enterprises Headquarters,” the tube intoned as it slowed down. “Please watch your step.”

Elanus reluctantly put some space between them. “Ready to find a saboteur?”

“I’ll watch your steps if you watch mine,” Kieron replied, and then the doors opened.

About ten people began speaking at once, all trying to get his attention.

Elanus grinned. It was nice to be back at work.