Hadrian's Colony: Elanus: Interlude 2

 Notes: Mmm, I felt it was time to revisit Elanus, and...whew. He's going through it. But he GETS through it, so...yay?

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Elanus: Interlude 2

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Interlude: Elanus

 

Elanus Desfontaines was a smart man. A genius. Good under pressure, better under fire. The sort of man capable of handling multiple crises at once, even with a broken leg.

It was hard when one of those crises was his daughter’s terrible fear, manifesting in shaky stabilizers and an unsteady fuel flow that had them bouncing across the clouds in a gut-wrenching effort to hide their plasma trail from any pursuers. It was the only way to be sure they couldn’t be followed—and Elanus would be all over this fucking redesign when he got back to his lab—but with Catie this shaky, he wasn’t entirely sure they weren’t going to fall right out of the sky anyway.

A lightning bolt tore through the air right in front of them, barely deflected by Catie’s faltering electromagnetic shields. Catie’s shrill wail, which had been going ever since the first bullet punched into her hull but had faded somewhat once they got off the ground, rose back up to a frantic, ear-splitting whine.

“It’s okay!” Elanus assured her even as he switched half her control panel over to manual. Catie was her own best pilot, but not right now. Not when she’d just been confronted directly with violence for the first time since Deysan Fucking Moritz set her down in an asteroid field. Not when she was frightened from being confronted by her own liminal mortality.

Not when she was screaming for Kieron. Keeeeeeeeeee…

Elanus couldn’t think about Kieron right now. If he let himself dwell on the fact that he and Catie had just left Kieron and Blobby behind in the pouring rain, surrounded by who-knew-how-many hostiles, Elanus wouldn’t be able to keep multitasking. Kieron was for later; Catie had to be for now

“It’s okay, baby,” he repeated, fingers flying over the panel as he manually input algorithms that would stabilize their very shaky flight. Shit, her power was down to fifteen percent. Stabilized or not, she wouldn’t be able to stay up in the air for long. They’d barely been flying for five minutes and couldn’t have gone more than fifty miles. Elanus activated the scanner, then frowned. No triangulation, bullshit, why don’t we—

The communications array had to be down. The array that also had a radar that allowed for topographical mapping, which was what they needed in order to set Catie down safely.

It was dark, it was raining, they were surrounded by lightning, and they were going to have to set down on a hostile planet blind and hope they didn’t do irreparable damage or send up the equivalent of a “Welcome” sign for the bastards who’d shot at them in the first place.

“Fine,” Elanus muttered. “Fine, fine. Fine.”

“Daddeeee!!!!”

“Sweetheart,” he said, pushing every thready ounce of tenderness he had left in him into his voice. “I know this is hard, but I need you to concentrate. Use every filter you’ve got and find the best possible spot to set down, and I’ll keep us steady while you do it, okay?”

Catie’s harmonics squealed so high Elanus couldn’t actually hear the noise, just feel it rattle in the back of his teeth. “I caaaan’t!” she finally said in a way that he could make out. “It’s too daaaangerous down therrrre!”

“It’s too dangerous up here,” Elanus argued. “We don’t have enough power to stay up, baby, we’ve got to get you down on the ground where you can rest and I can help fix you.” Catie whimpered, but Elanus held firm. “I’m going to start taking us down. You look for just the right spot. Okay?”

“But…buuuuut…”

Eleven percent. Shit. Too late for buts. If Catie couldn’t help, Elanus would get them down himself.

Fuck, if they died doing this, Kieron would never forgive them.

If Kieron dies while we’re doing this, I’ll never forgive myself.

No. Not now. Elanus forced every extraneous thought and emotion out of his mind and body, focusing only on the problem at hand: landing. His hands moved fast, confidently, and he put his implant to work coordinating the various inputs he was gleaning from the edges of Catie’s consciousness—he couldn’t go in too deep to her neural network or risk getting sucked into her panic attack, and the last thing they needed right now was for him to have a seizure.

Fore and aft thrusts, good—coordinate night vision with heat signature seeking, because the last thing they needed right now was to set down in a nest of reptilians—static discharge building near the left deflector shield, moving, moving—altitude dropping to five hundred meters…three hundred meters…one hundred meters…

Fifty meters from the ground, Catie got ahold of herself enough to take control of her whirring gimbals, and the help from the newly-recovered electro-gyroscopes was enough to let them settle on the ground with hardly a bump.

Five percent. Emergency mode activated. Catie’s major functionality was shut down five seconds after they landed, leaving Elanus in almost total darkness except for the strip of pink lights running around Catie’s floor.

“Daddeeee?” Catie whispered.

“Good job, baby.” He leaned back from the control panel with a bitten-back groan. His leg was fucking killing him; even with the Regen shots it was on track to take over a week to heal. Without them—because there was no way Catie was capable of manufacturing something like that right now—it could be months.

No. It won’t be months. We’re not going to be stuck here for months. He was going to fix Catie, they were going to find Kieron, and they were going to get the hell off this awful place and spend weeks, no, months, on the beach drinking neon liquor and having sex and finally getting married and—

“Daddeee, are you hurt?”

“No worse than I was before, honey.” He patted her panel. “You really pulled it together in the end there, I’m proud of you.”

Catie hummed softly. “I’m tiiiired, Daddeee.”

“I bet you are, baby.” Her power cells were almost drained. Sunlight, she needed sunlight. “Sleep, sweetheart. Save your strength. I’m here with you.”

She hummed again, then said, “What about Kiiiieron?”

Elanus swallowed back the lump that threatened to choke off his throat for a moment. “You know he’d want you to take care of yourself too, Catie.”

“But Daddeeee…we left hiiiim…”

Kieron shut his eyes. “I know.”

“We left Blooobby.”

“At least they’re together,” he pointed out.

“But Bloooobby is useleeeess!”

So are we right now. “Kieron is smart,” Elanus said instead. “He knows how to take care of himself, and he’ll take good care of Blobby. He’ll be fine until we can go back and get him.” He might be better off than they were, honestly. Kieron knew how to handle himself, he knew how to hide and hunt and fight. He was fine.

He had to be.

Catie was quiet for a moment, then said, “I caaaan’t talk to hiiiim.”

Elanus bit his lip for a second, glad it was dark. He didn’t need his kiddo wondering why his face was so wet. “You will soon,” he said hoarsely, and hoped it was a promise he could keep. “Rest now, okay? I don’t want to hear from you in the morning until you’re up to ten percent power, at least.”

“Okaaay, Daddeeee.” Catie’s pink lights flickered. “I loooove you.”

He leaned against the bulkhead in case her sensors could still feel his warmth. “I love you too.”