Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Thirteen, Part One

 Notes: I'm back, baby! And being very fucking careful about how I sit, how often I get up for breaks, how to stretch my spine...arg. I'm not at 100%, but I've got story for you, so I'll take it ;)

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

***

Chapter Thirteen, Part One

 

Photo by Nadiia Ganzhyi

 

“Talk to me about layout,” Kieron said once Carlisle was able to breathe again. “Entrances and exits, weapons systems, transport.”

“That’s all classified,” she snapped at him from where she was pacing back and forth. Her arms were crossed over her chest protectively, but at least that meant she wasn’t preparing to shoot him at the drop of a hat.

“I don’t give a shit about this place,” Kieron told her bluntly. “Nobody gives a shit about this place.”

She scoffed. “You gave enough of a shit to try and take out the General.”

Momentary madness. Lapse of sanity. Impaired judgement. Stars, Elanus was never going to let Kieron out of his sight again after this. He might even be persuaded to go back to therapy, if it meant he didn’t so stupid shit like that. “That was a mistake,” he admitted. “And I’m pretty sure you know why I made it—” she flinched, but he didn’t press “—so let’s move on, all right? What’s the layout of this compound?”

Carlisle sighed. “It doesn’t matter. Every hall is recorded, every room has cameras. You’re not going to be able to sneak out of here.”

“How about you stop assuming things about what I can and can’t do and start telling me something useful?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Fine. Let’s see what you can do with this.” She slapped the top of the coffee table, and the glass turned opaque. “It’s a standard rectangular compound with star turrets in each corner.” She sketched it all out in quick lines. “Training and medic halls here, barracks here, mess here, supply and storage here. Weapons systems on each tower and lining the walls. They’re solar powered, so not at peak efficiency right now, but more than enough to blow you away in under a second. All ships are kept here, under heavy observation.” She sketched out a round building adjacent to the main one. “And all land vehicles are kept in the center of the compound, with only one entrance and exit, here. Also under heavy observation.”

“Huh.” Okay, that was… not ideal, but not insurmountable either. “Sewage system?”

“Gravity powered over porous rock.”

Gross. It had to come right back up through the rocks they shit on during rains like this. “That’s lazy.”

“It’s efficient,” Carlisle said stiffly. “And also none of your business.”

“It’s my business if it means I can’t use it to escape,” he pointed out. “Water?”

“Cisterns, attached to the roofs. Also under observation.”

Not helpful, then. Time for a different tack. “What are your total numbers?”

“You don’t need to…” This time Carlisle stopped herself. “Just under a hundred.”

A hundred people. The colony had once held thousands of them. Thousands of people, and all but six of them were supposed to be dead. “Any more originals?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not anymore.”

Kieron wanted to ask about it. Who else survived? How did you? How did he? Why didn’t you go out in the pathetic blaze of glory that everyone else did? But it would only hurt to know at this point, not help. “Working in shifts?”

Carlisle rolled her eyes. “What kind of idiots do you take us for? Of course, working in shifts.” She went on to describe a system very similar to the one he’d grown up with—triple shifts, mandatory PT and scut time, a bullshit favoritism system when it came to getting off-planet…the most surprising thing about it all was that any of these people were willing to abide by the rules.

“Why?” Kieron finally asked once she’d laid it all out.

“Why what?”

“Why do people listen to him. To you? Why do they stay?”

She blinked. “Why do you think? He gives them a place to belong.”

“That’s a bunch of—”

“No, listen to me.” She leaned in, staring at him intently. “That’s how he works. It’s how he’s always worked, and it’s always worked. Some people have a kind of…charisma, a way of presenting themselves and saying things that makes people want to listen to them. The General has that. He says a lot of terrible things—truly horrific things, stuff that would make a sane person run the other way.

“But the people who stay? They’re not insane. Most of them just want to belong. They wanted a place that would give them a second chance, or would give them the ability to indulge in beliefs and actions that wouldn’t be permitted in their home societies. He gives them an excuse to be monsters, and they take it.” Carlisle rubbed a hand across her temple. “The comfort rooms? That’s the least of it. Trust me, once they find out who you are…”

Yeah, nothing good was going to come of that. “We won’t be here by the time they do.”

She smacked the table and the image disappeared. “Have you missed everything I’ve been saying? You’re stuck here, we’re all being watched, and it’s controlled by a computer system in the General’s own quarters. He’s got the best protection, and we’ve got nothing to get past it with now.”

“That’s not true, actually,” Kieron replied. He pulled the single unit of Blobby he’d kept ahold on out of his pocket.

“You’re not going to be able to threaten him with an explosion the way you could on the ship,” Carlisle said. “Whatever that thing of yours is, right now it’s being stored in a bunker beneath the center of the compound. We keep all our excess ammunition there as well—it’s been designed for explosions to go down instead of up. Even a nuclear device won’t be enough to scare him.”

“It’s not a nuclear device.” Kieron smiled down at the smooth, black oval in his hand. Then, very deliberately, he tapped out a message in MORSE. He tapped it once…twice…three times, then waited.

“What are you—” Carlisle went quiet as the piece suddenly began to vibrate in his hand.

Long…short short…long… Kieron closed his eyes and concentrated. “A few seconds’ delay in communication,” he murmured. “But he’s able to configure himself, and he thinks he can get out of the place he’s been shut into.”

“Who is he?”

Kieron ignored the question. “Pull up the schematic again so I can pass them on. We’ll let him see how well he can get the lay of the land before I ask him for anything specific.”

Carlisle looked furious. “Any transmissions will be picked up for sure! You’ve just doomed us before—”

“Not these ones,” Kieron assured her. He was almost sure he was right, too. If tech on Gania couldn’t pinpoint communication on the level Catie and Lizzie operated on, then this Podunk fucking compound wouldn’t be able to detect Blobby. “I swear. Now pull up the schematic, then let’s start brainstorming our next step.”

“Which is?” she asked skeptically.

“Weapons for the two of us.”

Missing a day because...

 I've got a persistent health problem I'm trying to keep from becoming chronic, and today's a bad day. I'm sorry, darlins! I'll try to have Lord of Unkindness on Thursday :(

Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Twenty-Seven

 Notes: Oooh, we're not playing around now. Things are about to get very messy for Ciro.

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Twenty-Seven

***

Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

 

Photo by Madelynn Woods

He comes back to himself in fits, his hearing resurfacing before anything else. Stupid, so stupid, I should have set up guardrails. Ciro knows how to defensively disengage from his magic; it’s almost an unconscious reaction to potential threats for him at this point. He was so flustered and so worried about Annette that he didn’t even think of it, though. Jesus Christ, Annette, what is she—

“—take to leave us alone?” That’s her, teary and fragile. Ciro vaguely registers arms around his body. Annette is holding him close, protective.

“More than you’ve got,” Nephele says in Maria’s voice. Everything about her is grating like this; Ciro can’t believe he didn’t realize the switch immediately. Then again, what could he have done even if he had? She had Annette at gunpoint. “I’m quite impressed you and your family managed to fake your death so well, and trust me, my uncle will be getting back to your parents about that, but you better than anyone should realize that there’s nothing that can keep me and Ciro apart. Nothing and no one.”

“He’s not going to be happy with you,” Annette tries.

Nephele just laughs. “Who cares about happiness? None of us are in this for happiness; happiness is a chemical trick of the brain. I can order him a dose of happiness in a syringe every morning if it means he’s mine.”

“Don’t you care that he doesn’t love you?”

Nephele’s voice drops to a growl, hard to force out of Maria’s petite frame. “What the fuck would you know about it, huh? Did you care that he didn’t love you? Did you care that he’d rather screw boys in bathrooms or go for joyrides on your friend Angelo’s cock in the back of a limo than give you his loyalty, huh? Did you care that he only ever thought of you as a friend, never a fuck?”

Ciro feels Annette tense. It’s a tension he recognizes, the kind that comes from holding the truth inside rather than spewing it like venom at your target. She sounds appropriately cowed when she murmurs, “I thought love would come over time, like it did between his parents.”

Nephele laughs. “Who’s been feeding you fairy tales, huh? One of the cousins? Maybe my dad? He loved to play pretend, but it’s all bullshit, Annie. Ciro’s parents married for the same reason mine did—to make powerful children who would help expand our family’s empire. But Aunt Mei’s family didn’t let on that she had a history of cystic endometriosis. She was lucky to get carry Ciro to term; she lost half a dozen pregnancies, I think.” She hums, and Ciro can hear the leer in it. “You know what would have been great? If good ol’ Uncle Victor had married you instead of promising you to Ciro. Then he and I could be together without worrying about making weird babies, while you and his dad pumped out a new generation of Hamblys.”

Annette pounces on that, but she seems a bit distracted too. Not physically—magically. She arrived at the house with just one familiar, but Ciro knows she has more. Where are they? “You just said it yourself, it’s not safe for you and Ciro to have children together. Surely his father won’t let you two marry.”

“Eh, I’ve had my eggs plucked out already and frozen. We can do IVF, test the little brats for abnormalities before putting them in a surrogate. We’ll get enough good ones that way. Besides, I’m not marrying Ciro because I want to have his babies.” Her voice sounds closer, like she’s leaning in. “I’m marrying him because he’s mine. From the second I saw him, I knew he was going to be mine. One single fucking thing in this world is going to be mine, and I decided it was going to be Ciro when I was five years old, so don’t even think about trying to screw me out of it now.”

Maria leans back again. “You’re just a bonus, bitch. A means of keeping Ciro in line. Maybe you’ll get lucky and Victor will let you become his concubine after all, instead of killing your whole family as punishment for your filthy lies, but I kind of doubt it.” She’s satisfied by that, Ciro can tell. “Now, be quiet until my actual body gets here and I might even let you travel in a seat on the plane instead of in a pet carrier in the hold.”

“I wondered why you looked like this,” Annette murmured. “Is she magical?”

“Nope,” Nephele says with a pop to the “p.” “Not that it matters, since bullets can kill a familiar just as well as a spell. Now how about you be a good little girl and guuuhhhhhh…” Her voice drops a full octave, going lower and lower until Ciro hears the thud of her hitting the ground.

“Ciro!” Annette pats his face, gently at first, then harder. “Ciro, c’mon, I can’t get you out of here without your help. We don’t have much time!”

Ciro forced his body to remember he’s got eyes. They blink, scratchy and painful, but a few more and he can see well enough to catch sight of Annette’s fearful but determined face. To the right, he sees Maria lying on her front, face blank, as one of Annette’s cats sits heavily on her back, teeth buried in her neck.

“I can’t keep her down for long,” Annette warns as she gets up, three more cats happily curling around her feet. Ciro has a raven perched on either side of the couch, unnaturally still, but they begin to stir as he does. “We’ve got to leave, now.”

He shakes his head with a wince. “I can’t go without Maria,” he says.

“She’s working with Nephele!”

“No, she’s being compelled. She’s important to Angelo, I can’t…” He can’t believe he’s about to say this, but he’s still reeling from magical aftershock and there’s no Angelo to talk him out of it right now. “I have to stay.”

“With Nephele?” Annette couldn’t sound more horrified. “Are you crazy? Did you hear any of what she just said? She’ll destroy you! She wants to marry you, she wants to leash you. She’ll never let you go once she gets her claws into you.”

Ciro knows all that. He also knows that he can’t let someone else pay for the mistake he made in making himself known in the first place. Maria doesn’t deserve that; if he goes along, he might be able to bargain for her release, or to force his family to leave Angelo and Annette alone. If he runs, though…if he runs again, if he runs with her, there will never be any chance of reconciliation. Just death. Given the resources the Hamblys can bring to the table, probably the deaths of the people he loves instead of the ones he loathes. He won’t do it. He can’t.

“Leave,” he insists. “You can make it. Leave now, go to…go to Angelo, or…”

“I’m not leaving you!” Annette insists, her chin trembling even as her voice firms.

“You have to. Please, you have to.” He grips her hand as tight as he’s able. “You’ve got to warn Angelo. Tell him what’s happened. Tell him I’m…I’m working on getting back to him.”

Maria stirs. Annette’s familiar bites down harder, but it’s clear the spell is losing its potency.

“Go now,” he says, pointing at the door that leads to the garden. “Over the wall. Hide yourself however you have to, just go, and don’t stop until you’re with someone safe.”

Annette shakes her head, tears falling now, but she knows he’s right. “I want you to come.”

“I wish I could.” But you know them as well as I do. They found me. They’ll never let me live any other way. Go while you can.

She helps him up onto the couch, stifling sobs, then kisses his forehead before recalling her familiar. One of Ciro’s ravens takes its place and he bears down, down, down with it, until Maria  has a hard time breathing. “I’ll find a way to help you,” Annette promises.

“Be safe,” Ciro says. “That will help me most of all.”

“What do I tell Angelo?”

Tell him that I love him more than I ought to, and I’m so grateful for him, and I’m so sorry that I ruined everything. “Tell him I need him to be safe too.” God, he’s going to be so mad. Hopefully Annette can quell the worst of it. “Now run for it.”

She runs. Ciro watches her go until he can’t anymore, and finally the potency of her spell vanishes as her familiar is called back to her, evaporating like mist. Maria sits up with a groan, looks around, and settles on Ciro. When she smiles at him, it’s pure Nephele—huge and toothy. “And here I thought you were dumb.”

“And here I thought you were smart,” Ciro parrots back. Maria chuckles.

“Smart enough to make you stay. You’re all levers, baby.” She crawls over so that she’s practically in his lap. “I look forward to pushing them,” she murmurs. “One by one.”

“You can try.”

“Oh, I will. It’ll be a lot easier once I convince your daddy to let me go ahead with the operation this time.”

Ciro suppresses a shudder. “One of us needs to be mobile.”

She laughs. “Oh Ciro, you’re underestimating just how furious your father is. You’ll be lucky if he lets you keep both your legs after this shit.” She grabs him by the arm and stands. “Time to go, baby. I can’t wait to see you again…in the flesh.”

This time the shudder breaks through. Maria just laughs and hauls him toward the door. “Hope you didn’t leave anything you like in here,” she says as they leave. “Because I’m going to burn this place to the ground.”

Ciro pulls back against her grip. “No! You can’t do that, it’s—”

Maria pulls him in close and shoves the muzzle of her gun against his gut. “You don’t dictate terms anymore,” she growls. “I do. So you can sit and watch, or you can sit and watch while bleeding from the stomach, your choice.” Ciro doesn’t so much as twitch. “That’s what I thought. Now be a good boy for me and get the gasoline out of the trunk.”

Hadrian's Colony: Interlude: Catie

 Notes: It was time to check in with our favorite drama girl and see how she's coping. And the answer is...well, read on and you'll see.

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Interlude: Catie

***

Interlude: Catie

 

 

Photo by Thomas Koukas

It felt like dreaming.

With her power hovering around five percent, Catie was sluggish and sleepy, all her internal processes slowed to a crawl in an effort to keep her most necessary functionality alive. Her central core, her heater so Daddy didn’t get too cold, her most basic sensors to help monitor whether or not someone or something was getting close to them. Apart from that, she just had the hardware that was built into her frame, a part of the metal itself—which included vibration monitors.

Vibrations told her a lot, honestly. Even with her optical array off, she could still tell what her Daddy was doing. A little movement here, a fumble over there, the soft shudder of a sharp exhale in the air as he shifted his broken leg…poor Daddy. Catie didn’t know how it felt to have a broken leg, but maybe it felt a little like getting her communications array shot to pieces. Like a part of herself was missing all of a sudden, something she’d taken for granted before it stopped working altogether.

No, humans didn’t just stop working like that, though. Daddy still had his leg, after all. It just hurt. Catie’s mood festered as she thought about how useless she was to him right now. But what could she do at five percent power? He told her to wait until ten percent before trying anything, and she wanted to listen to him, but…

It was the work of moments to calculate the ambient level of sunshine in the air and the time it would take to produce five percent more power if she put her solar sail out. The problem was, extending her solar sail would use up at least three percent of her remaining power, and once she dipped into one percent she’d be put all the way to sleep. That left her one percent of leeway, which really wasn’t very much, even for a person with a mind made to calculate like she had. Surely it was safer just to wait for the solar cells in her exoskin to absorb enough power to get her back to full functionality, then do it. It should only take—one-point-two standard days, or two-point-five-three Hadrian days. Not that long. Not that bad.

Kieron would be all right. He would. He would. He was always kind and understanding, and she knew he didn’t blame her for leaving him behind. She knew he wanted her to be safe and to take care of Daddy first and foremost. She knew he didn’t think that she’d abandoned him, even though she felt like she had.

Plus, like Daddy said, he had Blobby. And Blobby was dumb, and Blobby was just a baby, and Blobby didn’t know how to do hardly anything at all, but Kieron would teach him something useful, probably, and then maybe even before Catie was at full power again, they’d find them, because Kieron always found her, and then almost all the family would be together again and Daddy would be happy and…

Daddy? Catie didn’t have the power to vocalize, but she directed her remaining sensory power to where Elanus was lying on the floor, trying to figure out what had her spooked. Continued respiration…continued heartbeat, but…both were below normal, and slowly decreasing.

Oh no…Daddy was in trouble. Catie sent a pulse of vibration to the floor where he was lying, and he groaned faintly, but it wasn’t enough to wake him up.

Oh no oh no oh no…what was she going to do? She couldn’t leave Daddy to lie there for another two-point-five-three days while she charged to ten percent; that would be incompatible with his continued health. She needed to trigger the medbot to prepare a stimulant and a painkiller and produce a better splint for his leg, but that intense fabrication would run her power down too fast. She’d hit one percent before she could administer it to him.

Catie ran more calculations. If she extended her solar sail, she ought to be up to seven percent power in approximately three-point-four hours. Once she hit seven percent, she could begin fabrication and only lose five percent power, which would keep her above the one percent critical shutdown mode. She could start fixing Daddy and keep powering herself up. Three hours was better than two days…unless someone found them in that three hours and she didn’t have the power to escape. Or if the thicker storm clouds moved in overhead and blocked the sun, reducing the effectiveness of her solar sail. Or if—

Stop. Be decisive. That was something Daddy had talked a lot to her and Lizzie about—being decisive. Making a decision and sticking with it, even if you couldn’t prove a hundred-percent chance of success by taking that path. Catie knew she tended to be conservative with her numbers—who could blame her when confronted with the potential for disaster? She had a brain capable of massive amounts of complex calculation! Surely it was always best to follow percentages.

But a percentage was just a chance. There was no perfect way to predict the future, and for once Catie decided she was glad of that. If she could perfectly predict the future with her calculations, then she’d already have decided that between Kieron’s uncertain fate and Daddy’s poor health, the odds of them all meeting again, much less escaping from Hadrian’s Colony together, were almost negligible. But Catie refused to entertain that idea. If she did, if she started letting doubt seep into her mind now, she’d just start screaming again, and no one needed that.

It was time to act like an adult. Be decisive. Fine. Catie prepared a series of subroutines to take automatic effect even if she lacked the power to direct them consciously. Keeping a sharp eye on her battery levels, she readied herself to launch the solar sail. The material was lightweight but tough, and as long as the current levels of wind, sun, and rain persisted for the next three hours, she would be able to do everything she needed to for Daddy without running herself down to nothing. It was her best chance. She hadn’t made a thorough enough study of human physiology to know for sure what was happening with him, but it scared her that he wasn’t waking up and talking to her. He always talked to her when she needed him.

Be decisive. For Daddy, for Kieron. Even for dumb Blobby. Catie took the equivalent of a deep breath, a pulse of energy briefly lighting up her wiring, before she initiated the launch of the sail. The panel on top of her body slid open.

Four percent.

The trigger mechanism launched the sail up and out, forcing it to spread itself over her chassis.

Three percent.

It settled over her chassis, tugged a bit here and there by the wind, but overall stable. Now, to orient the cells in the proper direction…just a little more…

Two percent. Warning. You are reaching critical power failure.

Catie felt the cells ping comfortingly as they hit the proper angle for maximum sun exposure. Muzzy and fuzzy, she released the subroutines, then settled into her quiet, dreamy headspace again.

Three hours. Daddy would make it three more hours. She would help him, she would fix him, and he’d fix her right back.

Then they’d go get Kieron back.