Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Twenty, Part One

 Notes: Enjoy some family bonding time!

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

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Chapter Twenty, Part One

 

Photo by Felix Mittermeier 

“All right.” Kieron watched the next morning as Elanus leaned on Catie’s front console like a general surveying the field of battle. “Let’s go through the facts. Carlisle told you that they got ships out during lulls in the weather, correct?”

“Right,” Kieron said.

“And yet according to my calculations, Catie’s calculations, and Lizzie’s weather data, we’re not going to be getting any significant lulls for the next month and a half. Is that right?”

“Yep.”

“Yesss.”

There was a pause. The more it grew, the more uneasy Kieron became. He knew there was lag time for communications with Lizzie thanks to the sheer distance between them, not to mention the awful weather, but this was pushing it. Elanus waited a few more seconds, then said, “Lizzie? You with us?”

“Sorry!” Her response sounded almost a bit surprised. “I was distracted. However, you’re correct, Elanus. You experienced the closest thing to a lull two days ago. The weather should continue to deteriorate for the next ten days, to the point where it will actively slow down my transmissions.”

Kieron frowned. “Are we getting a freeze?” He only remembered seeing icy rain once on the Colony, but it had been accompanied by wind so fierce that the falling crystals were turned into miniature spears. Even the general had postponed outdoor activities until the worst of the storm passed.

“I don’t know if it will freeze or not, Kee, but the wind will pick up, and the rain should increase. You might see some changes in barometric pressure that could lead to a tornado system as well.”

Elanus rolled his eyes. “Tornadoes. Of course. Wonderful. Every time I think I have a handle on the problems this place is going to throw at us, it comes up with something even worse than before. Tornadoes. Lovely.”

“I don’t ever remember a tornado,” Kieron offered.

“You might not have been told.”

“Our trainers didn’t believe in hiding bad news from us.”

“Your trainers…your fucking parents might have been smart enough to realize that spreading word of a natural phenomenon capable of ripping apart your home would only create panic that there was no good answer for.”

That was possible. Kieron didn’t really think it was likely, but he shrugged and let Elanus get them back on track. “All right, so we’re not going to fly our way out of here any time soon, not without finding some way of significantly boosting Catie’s engine power.” He frowned. “I thought I was so clever doing everything on you with renewable resources, baby, but there’s something to be said for good, old-fashioned rocket fuel too. We’d get a lot more bang for our buck if I had the right tools for tinkering with your engine and a decent high-octane propellant.”

“I don’t wannnt you to tinnnker with my engine,” Catie pouted. “I liiike it just the way it iiis.”

“You have a beautiful engine, Catie,” Kieron reassured her, stroking Bobby’s back where the little bot was perched in his lap.

“I was just thinking out loud, it wasn’t a real plausible possibility,” Elanus said. “We can’t retrofit you to that extent here, and I’d never do it without your permission. But if we could make some sort of attached rocket that could heighten our acceleration—”

“Without killing us,” Kieron added.

“Right, G-forces, I haven’t forgotten them but let me finish my thought, if we could heighten our acceleration enough to work with the storms and use them to propel us up and out of the atmosphere, we could conceivably reach escape velocity in under five minutes of flying.”

Kieron shook his head. “We’d need real-time telemetry data from Lizzie, and she can’t give us that without being here herself. It’s not happening.”

“She and Catie can come up with predictive models that take the lag time of the satellites into account!”

“We don’t have the parts to build a rocket like that!”

“We might be able to get them with a few raids.”

Aaand here it was. “Elanus, really?”

Elanus spread his hands. “What? Do you just expect me to sit here for the next umpteen weeks doing nothing but twiddling my fingers while we risk being found by the murderous assholes who raised you when we could be building a rocket to get ourselves out of here?”

“Yes!” Kieron said, not quite at shouting volume but close. “That’s what I expect, because it’s better than risking the health and safety of our family to wait a little bit instead of raiding a bunch of heavily armed mercenaries with a big grudge against me for parts that we can live without right now. Not to mention you’re basing our chances for escaping the atmosphere on unfounded speculation instead of actual data.”

“Early mathematical models indicate that I’m right!”

“You’re going to have to do better than ‘early mathematical models’ to get my buy-in for risking our children in a ridiculous escape attempt that—” Kieron quieted down suddenly when he realized Bobby was shaking. “Oh Bobby, what’s wrong?” He got a rapid-fire tapped response. “No, we’re not fighting.”

“It souuunds like you’rrre fighting.”

Elanus snorted. “This isn’t a fight, this is a casual disagreement. Catie, please, you’ve seen Kieron and I at our worst, do you actually believe that we’re fighting right now?”

“Noooo, but Bobby doesn’t know any beeetter.”

Elanus walked over, his limp almost gone, and whisked the little bot out of Kieron’s arms. “Don’t worry, honey,” he crooned, “I’m not fighting with your daddy, I love him to absolute pieces even though he has no faith in my genius, don’t worry.”

“I have plenty of faith in your genius,” Kieron said, trying to keep his voice level, “I just think that it’s reckless to try and speed up our escape when the safest thing to do is hunker down and wait it out.”

“Right, because waiting things out has worked so well for us in the past! Were we or were we not surprised by those fucking savages and nearly taken out less than a week ago—hell, less than four days ago—and now you want to prolong our exposure to a group of mentally unstable anarchists when we could be—"

“Stop.” That was Lizzie, her voice unexpectedly firm. “I was going to wait to tell you this, but now I think you have to know.”

“Know what?” Elanus blanched white. “Don’t tell me you’re a mom. You’re too young to be creating your own little sentient codes, Lizzie!”

“No, Elanus!”

Oh, thank god. “What is it, then?” Kieron asked levelly.

“Um…we’re on the way to Hadrian’s Colony.”