Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Seven, Part Two

 Notes: Did I freak you out last time? I'm sorry! (kinda sorta not really, lol) Have some calculated Kieron to make up for it.

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

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Chapter Seven, Part Two

 

Kieron dropped to his belly to remove his silhouette and reduce his thermal halo as much as possible.  [Is Catie okay?] he pushed over his implant.

No reply.

[Elanus? Catie? Come in.]

Nothing. Not even static. It took far too long for Kieron to push through the fog that had overtaken his mind and realize that the implant wasn’t working. The only reason for it not to be working was if the transmitter responsible for sending their messages to each other was damaged, which meant Catie was damaged. It meant that whoever their assailant in the dark was, they’d managed to damage an important piece of Catie’s hardware.

They hurt his little girl. They shot his daughter.

All the fear and uncertainty in Kieron’s body seemed to melt away, turning heart-pounding adrenaline into laser focus. He hadn’t been a soldier for years, but no one born to fight like he was ever truly forgot their lessons. When Blobby stirred beside him, Kieron reached out and tapped on his back in Morse code: Get in the pack. Look simple.

Thank goodness Elanus had programmed Blobby to recognize all sorts of different coding languages, even ancient human ones. He tapped back Yes. Then action--what?

No action. Stay hidden.

Help—no?

No help. The last thing Kieron wanted was for Blobby to get hurt on top of this disaster with Catie. He waited for the little bot to crawl into the backpack and seal himself in, then began to army crawl forward. He turned his EV suit’s personal sensors up as far as they could go, filtering every sight and sound into the screen and telling Kieron as best it could with its limited ability what he was heading into.

Native flora—B69.26, 26.8% of visual range. Native flora—M34.11, 19.4% of visual range. Native—

Storm system accounts for 78.55% of soundwaves within 3 meters, carrier accounts for 19.25% of soundwaves within 3 meters, 2.2% variability in—

And on and on, until Kieron was sweating bullets inside his suit, but he didn’t stop, and he didn’t stand up. Patience would pay off in the long run, and the closer he got to the creche and their landing zone, the more danger he’d be in. Closer…closer…

Humanoid form within visual range.

Kieron immediately halted. He didn’t see anything with his own eyes, didn’t hear anything either, but with the rain falling so loud that wasn’t surprising. He held perfectly still, and a second later a long, black-clad body materialized out of the mist. It carried a pulse rifle of some kind close to its chest, and the way it held itself made Kieron think it was speaking. He transferred as much internal power as he could to augment the microphones in the headpiece, and a second later he heard—

“—don’t see it. I think you mistook a lightning flash for a heat signature.” Kieron couldn’t hear the reply, but luckily the man was more than happy to go on. “I’m telling you, I’ve been walking all around this place for the past half an hour and I haven’t seen shit, not even a croc. This is a waste of feckin’ time, I’m heading back.”

The rain must be cold enough to help hide Kieron’s body heat from their headsets. He’d been stopped for about a minute now, so it wasn’t surprising he was invisible. Well, not that invisible—if this guy took a few more steps forward he’d bump right into Kieron.

That would be nice. Save him the trouble of running the guy down.

When the man turned in the opposite direction, taking one hand off his gun as he got ready to amble back the way he came, Kieron hopped as lightly as he could to his feet. He closed the distance between them in three long strides, reached one arm around the man’s neck, and jerked it toward him even as he slammed a foot into the back of his knee. A second later he had his target twisted so that a drop of just three more inches would break his neck.

Don’t, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Elanus shouted in Kieron’s head. Don’t kill him! Killing as a first option is how we got into this mess!

Moreno had deserved to be decapitated…but this man might not deserve to die. Kieron switched his break to a chokehold and applied it with extreme prejudice, and twenty seconds later the man was out cold.

Kieron laid him on the ground, took the pulse rifle from around his neck, and inspected it in the dim light. The weapon had to be twenty years old—in fact, it might even be from the same batch of pulse rifles his grandfather had commissioned for the colony a year before everything went bad. The power pack was at half-charge, but the good news was there was no safety on the trigger mechanism. It would fire for whoever held it, two-part security measures not required. Perfect. Kieron picked it up, and as almost an afterthought pulled off the man’s helmet—a cheap, low-end piece that didn’t even give the wearer full head protection—and held it up to his own suit.

“We’re waiting, Doubles,” the voice on the other end of the com said irritably. “Get back here so we can go after the ship already. Boss is pretty confident she can track them as long as we get our hustle on.”

Oh, decisions, decisions…did he approach their ship and bluff his way close, or draw them out to him? Kieron checked his silhouette against the man, “Doubles” apparently, and decided they were too different for him to get close enough to do real damage. Besides, he only had a half-charged pulse rifle, no grenades.

Note to self—always keep grenades on hand.

Drawing them out it was.

“Your man ran into a bit of trouble,” Kieron said. He was distantly surprised by how gravelly his voice sounded. How long had it been since he’d drunk something? Eh, didn’t matter.

There was silence over the com for a moment before a new voice said, “Who the hell are you?” It was a woman’s voice, low and elegant, with an air of command.

Kieron smiled. “Are you the boss?”

“Tell me who you are before I blow you to pieces.”

“Are you that eager to kill your guy? Doubles, is it?”

“Boss, we can’t—” A scuffle on the other end erupted, and a few seconds later the woman came back on.

“Sounds like he got himself into a situation, but I don’t leave my men behind. Forget who you are; what do you want?”

“To talk.”

The woman hummed understandingly. “You’re crew from the ship we fired on, I take it?” Kieron didn’t speak. “That was a regrettable action, but completely understandable from our perspective. We don’t take kindly to trespassers.”

“The owner of this planet is dead,” Kieron pointed out. “And I’m not negotiating with the people who shot at my ship without bothering to ask questions. I’ll meet with you inside the main building of the creche, and I’ll bring your man. You meet me there alone, no second, no snipers. We’ll talk.”

“Done.”

Kieron dropped the helmet back on the ground and raised his eyes. The creche was close, he could enter from the back. The other ship had to be fairly distant; he might get there first.

He’d need to if he was going to avoid be murdered in the next half-hour.