Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Two, Part One

 Notes: CATIE STOP MESSING WITH THE BED!

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Two, Part One

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Chapter Two, Part One

 

Their bunks were made of reformable materials that could rise up from the floor or extend out from the wall, or some of each. Catie had complete control over the design, which meant that when they decided to snuggle up, she could create the right configuration easily.

It also made it very easy for her to mess with them.

“Catie,” Elanus sighed after she made the bed smaller for the third time in a row. “We don’t need to be squished against each other to go to sleep. It’s better if we aren’t squished together, honestly.”

“Buuut this waaaay you’ll be warrrrm!”

“You have control over the temperature,” Kieron said. “You can ensure that we’re warm.”

“Buuut this waaay—”

“Catie!” Elanus’s voice was unusually sharp. “Make the bed normal and then stop monitoring us for a while. Run some calculations on the things we might find when we get to the colony.”

“But Daddeeee!”

“Catie…”

“Fine,” she grumped. The bed expanded by another foot, but also fell two inches at the same time, nearly banging their heads together. The cabin lights dimmed, the air immediately cooled, and a blanket fell out of the ceiling—out of the ceiling, when did she move it up there?—and on top of them in such a way that it hits their heads, not their bodies.

“Great,” Elanus muttered, throwing the blanket open and covering their legs as best he could. “Now she’s pouting. Just what we need, a pouty ship.”

“A pouty daughter,” Kieron said.

“A pouty child. Honestly, what does she even want us to do?”

“Get along, of course.” What did every child want from their parents? “Didn’t you find it reassuring when your parents acted friendly toward each other?”

Elanus laughed. “My foster parents, you mean?”

Oh, right. Elanus had been given away by his parents as a child once he was diagnosed with Elfshot. “Sorry,” Kieron said awkwardly.

“It’s all right. My foster parents were actually pretty good people. They had another child with Elfshot, so they didn’t get caught up in my health complications. Their kid was great.” He sounded wistful. “He used to follow me around all the time, trying to do whatever I did. I was eight years older, so I wasn’t always nice about it, but he was so sweet. Jayse died when he was five, though. Aortic aneurism.”

Kieron swallowed the “sorry” that tried to jump out of his throat. Elanus didn’t need more apologies for the sadness of his life. He needed—well, he deserved—a happy future. Kieron wished he could give it to him. He wanted to give it to him.

He just wasn’t sure that he could yet.

“I don’t know anything about my father,” Kieron offered after a moment. “Apart from the fact that he wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t even a member of the colony. My mother was negotiating on behalf of the colony for supplies with several Central System planets, and when she came back she was pregnant.”

“I’m a little surprised that was allowed.”

“Oh, they wanted women to have babies,” Kieron said. “They actually wanted to set up a cloning facility, but they couldn’t afford the equipment for it and it’s illegal in the Alliance anyway. I think if they’d made their mark as mercenaries for hire, that was the next step.”

“A cloning facility.” There was a wealth of judgement in Elanus’s voice.

“I know, it’s a terrible idea. They didn’t care, though. All the general wanted was to be able to make as many good little soldiers as possible.”

Elanus hummed thoughtfully. “And yet the colony’s population never even rose above a thousand.”

“Right.” Kieron laughed. “He wanted a personal army, but he was also incredibly racist and didn’t want to let anyone into the colony who didn’t look like him. Not a visionary, that man. But he was a hell of a fighter…or at least that’s what they taught us growing up.” He remembered the propaganda holos they were shown every morning in class—all about how magnificent their fighting force was, the wars they’d turned the tide for, how amazing their tactics and armor and weapons were. When they all grew up—aka made it to age thirteen, which was when they could officially join a unit—they would be part of the greatest army the universe had ever seen.

The reality was a lot less grand than that. They weren’t freedom fighters, or even mercenaries—they were scavengers picking at the edge of larger conflicts or vulnerable communities like a school of sharks, nipping and biting where they could but swimming away whenever things got hot.

“It was all bullshit,” Kieron said. “All of it. I knew it when I lived there, but I really understood it once I could do research on my own. My grandfather was a complete failure on his home planet, which was a tiny place on the Fringe to start with. He couldn’t hack it in their military, but he idolized the service. He used his inheritance to buy an antique ‘fleet’ of three ships and persuaded just enough like-minded idiots to join him, then set themselves up as tyrant kings on the colony. Even then, nothing was ever good enough, until finally he pushed too far and…”

“Boom.”

“Boom,” Kieron agreed. “He pissed off the wrong senator and paid for it.”

“And so did you.”

So did we all. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Okay,” Elanus said easily, then leaned over and cupped Kieron’s face with his broad, elegant hand. He tilted up his chin and kissed him, slow and deep and possessive, and Kieron promptly melted into a puddle.

Good thing they were lying down.