Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Fifteen, Part Two

 Notes: Nothing. Is. Ever. Easy. For. Kieron!

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

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Chapter Fifteen, Part Two

 

Photo by Maximilian Jaenicke

Carlisle’s ship was heavy with fuel fumes. It was almost enough to make Kieron’s eyes water, and he was wondered for a moment how Carlisle had managed to spend a full hour in this thing without getting sick before he remembered her EV suit. “Is there another one of those?” he asked.

“No,” she said, taking the helmet off. She winced as she realized why he’d asked. “Shit. I didn’t know it was going to be that strong.” She reopened the back hatch of her ship, and the smell dissipated a bit. It was colder, but that was preferable to marinating in that stench. “I had to refill the tank from the inside of the ship,” she explained as they moved a bit closer to the door. They left the General where he was, still unconscious. “I couldn’t hook it up to the refilling station directly without someone noticing, so I used bottles from the reserve stores instead. It got a little messy.”

Clearly. Kieron bit back the urge to snap at her—what was done was done, and he was lucky she’d waited for him back there. “The skimmer is as good as dead,” he said instead.

“I figured. That’s why I led us in here.” For all the lines of strain in her face, Kieron could see she felt a little proud of herself. “This deep in the canyons, we’re untraceable. The rock has too many minerals in it that interfere with signals of all sorts. Even from above, unless it’s letting off nuclear levels of radiation, it’s not going to be visible.” She nodded at Blobby. “I assume that thing doesn’t really have a nuclear battery in it.”

“It doesn’t.” Kieron wasn’t exactly sure what Blobby ran on, but he was pretty sure of that much.

“Good.” She nodded. “Naturally the canyons are one of the first spots the others will look for us, and even without a functioning tracking device we don’t want to risk being spotted. As soon as the smell has cleared out a bit more, I’ll lift us out of here and we’ll head to a secondary location where we have a better chance of lasting until your other ship makes it down to pick us up.” She patted the ceiling above them. “This one’s good on planet, but it’s not space safe.”

“Ah.” Was now the right time to tell her that they didn’t actually have another ship in orbit? “What about the weather? I thought ships couldn’t get through these storms.”

“There’s a pattern to them that we ought to be able to take advantage of,” she replied, her lips twisting with a bitter smile. “I’d know. This is the third of these meta-seasons I’ve lived through, and I could have gotten a meteorology degree at any Alliance university after all the research I did on them. With a little bit of work, I’ll be able to tell when a lull is coming. You’ll send up your distress signal, and then it’ll be a race to see who gets to us first—your people or mine.”

“His,” Kieron clarified. Carlisle tilted her head in question. “His people, not yours. I think it’s safe to say that they’re not going to take you back at this point.”

Carlisle was silent for a moment. “True,” she said at last. “That’s…true.” She wouldn’t quite meet his eyes. “It’s for the best, though.”

He wasn’t sure she really believed that, but he’d take it. “All right. I guess we should—”

Blobby chirped. Kieron stared down at him. “What?” Blobby chirped more urgently, then rolled out of his arms and over to where they’d left the General sitting. He still appeared to be unconscious, and yet one of his arms was stretched out over the control panel. Before Kieron or Blobby could get to him, he jammed his finger down on one of the buttons.

There was a faint “clunk” beneath their feet, and then a new and differently foul scent began to waft through the air. “Did he just empty the sanitation system?” Kieron choked out.

Carlisle was way less sanguine, stalking over to her father in a second. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she shouted in his face. “You know what that’s going to do!”

“Oh, daughter,” the old man wheezed, opening his eyes to gaze at both of them. “I’m…counting on it.”

“What will it do?” Kieron asked. Neither of them answered him, too busy staring each other down to bother. “What will it do?” he repeated, more loudly.

“It’s a fucking target on our backs,” she said, finally looking over at him. “Fuck. We need to get out of here right now.”

“What’s going to target us based on the smell of our…” The answer came to him before he even finished the sentence. “Predators? Reptilians?”

“There’s more than those little lizards hunting people on my planet,” the General said proudly. “These canyons are the home of something far worse. These beasts need good, hard soil to make their tunnels, not the crumbling stuff out on the plains, not the solid rock where my station is built.” He managed to lift his head a bit. “They’re already on the way, no doubt.”

Kieron didn’t remember any animal larger than the reptilians from his childhood, but the look on Carlisle’s face indicated that she was taking this very seriously. “Go move the skimmer,” she snapped. “We need to back out of here right now.”

“Just go up and over,” Kieron said.

“It’s too narrow at the top of the canyon, just do what I say!”

Fucking…fine. He turned around to run back over to the skimmer and move it as far as its low battery would allow, but Kieron didn’t make it more than a few steps out the hatch when the emergency lights on the skimmer suddenly flared as the ground beneath it seemed to punch it. The skimmer flipped up and over, landing on its back. Kieron stared, transfixed, as out from the ground emerged something like…they could have been a dozen black, shining shovels criss-crossing each other like antique scissor blades, except they were far sharper than any shovel he’d ever seen. There was something hungry about the way they sought out the edges of the skimmer’s roof, then crunched down on it like it was no harder to break apart than the shell of a nut.

What…the hell…were those things?

“Kieron!”

“Coming!” He ran back into the ship and Carlisle shut the door behind him, then shoved the General’s chair into the hold, away from the controls.

“Are you insane?” she demanded. “If a borer takes out my ship, we’re all going to die! You won’t be spared!”

“I won’t be made into a bargaining chip with my own damn people,” he spat at her, sweat pouring down his forehead. For all that he looked ill, the General appeared satisfied. “If this is how I die, then at least I die a martyr for the glory of my cause and the—”

Kieron punched him. Hard. The old man’s head snapped back and he fell unconscious. A second later Kieron envied him, because the ship jolted so hard from a hit to the bottom of it that he flew up into the ceiling, barely saving himself from a concussion by blocking with his already damaged arm.

Ow, fuck!

“Hang on to something,” Carlisle yelled as she threw herself into the pilot’s seat. “This is going to get rough!”