Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Three, Part One

 Notes: On we go!

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Three, Part One

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Chapter Twenty-Three, Part One

 

So. This was what it felt like to be totally unmoored, lost in the depths of space and wondering whether or not he was going to bump up against the right planet or not.

It was an unfair comparison, Elanus knew that. Kieron was right here, lying in their bed, asleep instead of unconscious for the first time in days. Neither of them was lost, not exactly, but…shit, how long had it been since Elanus had had to manage without Kieron? Over a year. More than a year of having him, sometimes having each other so intensely it was remarkable they didn’t hate each other in all honesty, a year of pain and injury and anguish and a love so intense that it seemed to spread to every corner of Elanus’s life.

And it could be so much worse, he had to remember that. It could be so much worse. He had Kieron alive. They were together. Kieron might not remember him perfectly, not yet, but regular Regen injections over the next few weeks would probably do a lot to help him. He would probably remember their past together, the life they’d been building. He had better remember the girls, because that was a pain that Elanus just didn’t know how to help. He couldn’t do it on his own; he couldn’t make them another father or find them a different version of the same thing. Kieron was Kieron, and he’d built special relationships with both of their daughters. They needed him, and he needed to remember that.

It's been one day. Less than a day. Five hours. And he’s more upset about this than you are, so stop wallowing and start figuring out the rest of your shit. First things first: finishing off Moreno.

It went without saying that Moreno couldn’t be president. Elanus had prepared for a hard sell to Caria, and it was hard, but not for the reasons that Elanus had thought it would be.

“Putting me into a position of authority over an entire planet is a farce!” she’d cried as she’d stalked about the room, a drink in one hand while the other gesticulated wildly. “Look at my track record for good decisions, hmm? I fostered an insanely brilliant mind in Deysan and then lost him to greed and envy. I turned my back on you when the two of you started sparring and you ended up being right about everything. I refused to believe there was a conspiracy going on in the highest levels of our government about the existence of Elfshot Disease, and even that turned out to be true! How can I be a good leader when I can’t even tell the difference between right and wrong?”

“You don’t have to do it for long,” Elanus pointed out. “Be the interim president, be there long enough to stabilize things and put an official stamp on the work that needs to happen. In a year, if you want to put forward a new name for office, you can and we can formalize an election. But that process needs to be cleaned out as well, or it’s going to be the same old political families rising up over and over again, and I think we’ve seen that they’re not prepared to change as needed.”

Given that Moreno was even now “investigating” the heinous attack on the Cabinet that had been captured on camera by Restaria and sent to Fritz, who’d just broadcasted it from his studio a few hours ago, it was safe to say that change came slowly. If Moreno had the slightest hint of self preservation, he’d be liquidating his assets and getting his ass off-planet as quickly as possible. Instead, he was entrenching. He was settling in to fight.

Fine. Elanus was more than ready for a fucking fight.

Already the polls were against Moreno, thanks to some careful social media sculpting led by none other than Catie. Lizzie, for her part, was slowly breaking in to the technological leviathan of a stronghold in which Moreno had shut himself away, capturing bits and pieces of his code and integrating them into a system-wide virus that she would trigger on Elanus’s order. His girls did flawless work, and soon Moreno would learn that, to his detriment.

Caria had come around, as Elanus had known she would, with the promise that she wouldn’t have to stay in the position for long. The only issue was making sure she was able to stay in it—technically, they were going to be breaking a number of treaties with the Alliance government they were a part of, and if this was interpreted through the lens of being a coup, things could get very bad very quickly. Even with the Central System armed forces in a shambled right now, they still had way more armaments at their disposal than Elanus could get his hands on or make in a hurry.

That was where Restaria was going to come in. Xe was going to be the emissary of Gania’s cause to the current president of the Alliance, none other than a man who’d been accused a time or two of instigating a coup himself—Sigurd Liang. Once in charge of the Academy on Olympus, now the admiral was in charge of holding the entire Alliance together. There had been several moments when Elanus was sure things were going to slip into utter chaos, yet Admiral Liang always seemed to be able to pull it back again.

The last thing a man like that needed was a distraction in the form of one of their outer allied planets enacting a coup. No, Restaria was going to go there, undone and unaccompanied except by an AI who would keep a close eye on xir, and xe was going to explain every fucking thing to Liang all on xir own. And then…well. They could keep xir or get rid of xir, what the fuck ever. Elanus didn’t care as long as Restaria never, ever came back to Gania.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That was painfully true in Restaria’s case.

“Elanus.”

He cleared his throat. “Go ahead, Lizzie.”

“I’ve got eighty percent of Moreno’s built-in systems linked and prepared to be locked on your signal. It will take another five hours to get to eighty-five percent, and another full day to approximate a hundred percent. His algorithms get much denser the closer to the center of his web I get.”

“Eighty percent should be adequate,” he said. “Begin the process, but only in the fringe of the system. I want Caria and Fritz to be there for the takedown. She needs to be seen as being in control.”

“So that you aren’t.”

“Exactly.” He paused. “And what about the other little project I had you look into?”

Lizzie hummed. “I verified the release of data didn’t come from the office of Delilah Farraday. It was from a personal implant modem belonging to Ghislaine Farraday.”

Her wife. Her loving, Ganian wife betrayed her trust and sold her patient out to Restaria. “Thank you.”

“What do you want to do about them, Elanus?”

“I’m still thinking about it,” he said, running one hand delicately through Kieron’s hair. His fiancé didn’t stir, too tired to wake. That was fine.

He could sleep for now. Elanus would take care of him. He’d be here for Kieron, no matter how long it took to set him to rights. As for the rest of it…

Well, all that would be settled much, much more quickly.