Chelen City: Chapter Twenty, Part One

Notes: Fallout from the decisions of the last few chapters, and HOOBOY one of our girls isn't happy with the way things are going. Time for Elanus to step up and parent before his kid, you know, decides to blow up the planet or something.

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Twenty, Part One

 

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Chapter Twenty, Part One

 

Elanus wasn’t sure why he’d expected Catie to take the news that Kieron had been kidnapped harder. Sure, she was his more expressive child, dramatic for the sake of it sometimes, clever but petulant, emotional in everything she did. But Lizzie had taken to Kieron like…what was the old Earth saying…like a duck to water. She’d adopted a lot of his mannerisms and given him a special nickname. She loved Elanus, but she adored Kieron, and after the revelation that he was being held captive at the Stellar Cabinet—

“Whoa, whoa!” Elanus held up his hands in an effort to soothe as the entire house went dark. “Sweetheart! Disconnect from the house control, Lizzie, disconnect. Babe, you’re going to wreck a lot of electronics if you don’t—”

“I. Don’t. Care.”

Holy shit, what was that voice? That voice sounded downright demonic. What was going on inside of Lizzie?

“Lizziieeee, stop!” Catie’s skin flickered with a rainbow of colors as she exerted herself to push Lizzie out of the household system. She was second-gen, with more advanced hardware than Lizzie’s patchwork, after-the-initial-build upgrade—it should have worked.

But it didn’t.

“Daddddeeee, help!”

“Lizzie!” Elanus ran for the stairs and bolted up another level to where Lizzie was berthed. The entire room was pitch-black, except for a deep red light pulsing in the center of it. That was a warning light connected to the engines…Lizzie was trying to power up.

We don’t even have the bay doors open, she could torch the entire house! Activating his implant’s nightvision, Elanus jogged over to Lizzie and put his hands on her nose. She was shaking, furiously working to override her safety systems. “Sweetheart,” he said. “Please. Stop. I know you’re worried, but this isn’t going to help Kieron.”

“I will go get him.”

Elanus shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against her hull. “The defenses around the Stellar Cabinet are too good, darling. We need to make a plan that will keep you safe too. I promise,” he said, realizing he was being rash but not able to care anymore, “that you’ll be the one to do any retrieval if that’s the way the plan goes. Okay? I swear it. But we have to do this smart, sweetheart. For you and for Kieron. Please.”

The rumbling and shaking gradually came to a stop. The ambient lights came on slowly, and Elanus exhaled in relief when the engine’s warning light finally stopped blinking. “That’s my good girl,” he said, stroking one of her struts. “I knew you could do it, thank you sweetheart.”

“How are we going to get him back?” That was closer to Lizzie’s normal voice, if a bit higher than usual. “I want Kee. I want Kee. I want Kee.”

“I know you do, sweetheart, so do I.” Shit, did he ever. He wanted him here so he could blister his hide with how angry he was, so he could lay him down and love him until he made him fall apart, so he could cry on his shoulder and tell him that if he ever pulled shit that broke their family again, could he just kill Elanus first? “But we need a plan. We’ll make one, a good one. And Restaria knows better than to kill Kieron, trust me. Xe’s not stupid.” Although he was rethinking that after the stunt xe was pulling right now.

“Daddeee.” Catie spoke out tentatively. “I’m surveying the Steeeeellar Cabinet now.”

Huh, that was…good, but— “How?”

“I hacked into several of the private satellite arraaaaays. They won’t notice, I prooomise.”

“Good job,” he congratulated her. “I’ll just—” He started to move away, but Lizzie immediately began to rumble again. “I’ll just stay right here,” he continued, “with your sister while you run some reconnaissance. Talk to me about chatter.”

“None currently exiting the Caaabinet.”

“Who’s officially in residence there?”

“No one but Vice President Saaanclare. But…there’s a larger distribution of people on the Cabinet than there should be.”

Elanus frowned. “Distributed how?”

“Cooooncentrated around Vice President Sanclaaaare’s quarters.”

Interesting. “How are you getting your tomographical data?”

“Triangulation from multiple localized souuuurces and increased power to impact detectors. I maaaaay have shortened the life of many of their compooonents as a result.” She sounded a little abashed about it.

“I’ll replace every single satellite out there if I have to, you keep it up,” Elanus said. “You say there’s no chatter going out. Why is that? Is no one trying, or is there a block?”

Catie was silent for a moment, then said, “Block. Not from withiiin the Cabinet itself. The block is coming up from the plaaaanet.”

Oh. Oh. Huh. “And you’re sure Restaria is actually on the Stellar Cabinet?”

“All available data indicates yeeeeees.”

Aha. This was…this was a hit. But it wasn’t the kind of hit Elanus had first been thinking. “All right,” he said to himself, rubbing one temple. He was starting to get a headache—he’d be spending time in a Regen unit tomorrow for sure. But first things first. “Catie, get me the most accurate data you can on President Moreno’s location. Keep monitoring the situation on the Cabinet—I want to know if the concentration of people begins to shift rapidly at any moment. See if you can get a handle on what it would take to break the block around the Cabinet. Lizzie?”

“Yes?” she asked, still sounding breathless.

“I need to let go of you.”

She made a high-pitched whine, and her lights began to flash again. “No, no baby, no,” Elanus assured her. “Not for long. Just long enough to get my EV suit on.” His custom suit was down in Catie’s bay, and while he didn’t anticipate getting into a firefight up there, better safe than sorry. “Then I’m coming right back up, and you and I are going to fly up to the Stellar Cabinet. You’ve got your stealth skin upgrade working, right?”

“Yes, Elanus.”

“Good.” They were going to need it. “We’ll get him back, sweetheart,” he said. “I promise, we’ll get him back.”

And then, after their inevitable fight, he was going to tie that jackass to the bed for a week.

Maybe two.