Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two

 Notes: Almost to the Dun-Dun-DUUUUNNN!

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two

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Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two

 

Photo by Scott Rodgerson 

 

The sticking point was Carlisle, as Elanus had so quickly pointed out. Kieron had been ready to argue that point until Elanus had elucidated, in detail, the many and varied ways they could take out the mercenary base.

“They’re sitting geese, if you’ll pardon my Eartherism,” he said once the two of them were back with Catie and Bobby. Communications with Lizzie and her passengers were open once more, carefully protected against eavesdroppers this time, and the feed had been absolutely awash with ideas. Elanus had taken them all in, mixed them together, and offered them up on a silver platter to Kieron in less than fifteen minutes, which was good since their hour was almost done.

“We control external communications, and thanks to the storms they have no chance of getting off-planet, not with a ship and not with a weapon. We have the technology to do everything from set off an EMP to release a Regen-resistant virus inside their base without them being able to do shit about it. Except shit, a lot.”

“Eww, Daddeeee.”

“I’m just saying, between Bobby’s knowledge of their layout and Lizzie’s potential for orbital bombardment, we’ve got options.”

“All of which presume we’ve gotten Carlise out in advance,” Kieron pointed out.

“True,” Elanus agreed. “So I think we’ve got to take a two-pronged approach to our interaction with them. We don’t have a lot of time to waste on specialty tech, so I think we’ll have to open with offering them the concealment tech.” Catie and Lizzie’s cloaking technology wasn’t energy based, at least not wholly; there were layers upon layers of it, all of them combining to give the girls skins that could hide from everything from radiation detectors to infrared to the naked eye.

All they had to do, for the sake of appearances, was hide one of them from the naked eye. Luckily, the metamaterial that could do that was something Catie could easily replicate. “It’s jussst simple atomic-level oooptical laaaattices, Kieron,” she told him when he looked dubious. “I could maaake that in my sleeeep!”

“You don’t sleep,” Lizzie put in.

“Why are you so llliteralll? Ugh!”

“That’s a decent opening gambit to talking with Trapper,” Kieron said. “But it doesn’t address how we get Carlisle out.”

“Patience,” Elanus told him. “It’s not the opening gambit to the entire game, of course. That’s going to involve Bobby going in and doing some detective work.”

Kieron frowned. “I don’t like the idea of Bobby going in there without support.”

“He’ll have support,” Ryu said over the com. “In that you all will be close by, talking him through whatever it is he’s doing.” The “obviously” was very evident in his voice, even though Ryu didn’t bother to say it. It was clear that Elanus felt the same way, and even his girls were sanguine about the prospect of Bobby rolling into a base full of hostiles alone for the sake of gathering intelligence.

Kieron wasn’t so sanguine. Bless his family, he loved them to pieces but none of them had been trained in group tactics or, consequently, gained a sense of group responsibility. They were all of them shooting stars, the best of the best, capable of doing so much on their own that they didn’t need to rely on anyone else to cover their backs for the most part. While Kieron was willing to admit he probably had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility by comparison, he still wasn’t comfortable with putting so much of the heavy lifting on the little bot’s shoulders, especially since Kieron was a hundred percent sure that Carlisle wouldn’t be alone right now. No, she was going to be surrounded by multiple guards at a minimum, likely all of them heavily armed. They might even have EMP pulses of their own, ready to defend themselves against an incursion from Bobby after what had happened last time.

“I think…” he said slowly as he worked his way through the problem, “I think we’re going to have to come up with a plan that allows for Bobby to work from a distance.” He explained his worries, and to his credit Elanus immediately incorporated those potential restrictions into his plan, bouncing ideas off Kieron rapid-fire.

“We incorporate shielding against an EMP.”

“That’s imperfect and could result in Bobby being stranded in their base, no way.”

“Then we part him out so that all of him doesn’t need to go in.”

“He’s already lost over thirty percent of his starting mass since we got here, and you don’t have the right parts to replace it. No.”

“But it’s far from fatal, and—”

“No.”

“Fine. But if you’re thinking I’m going to give you the go-ahead to handle infiltration on your own after what happened to you last time in there, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“I’m not. I promise. But…if we can get the timing just right, we ought to be able to combine a few of our other plans to make the odds of getting Carlisle out of there without further injury to her or us way more likely.”

“Do tell.”

So Kieron told him. At first no one said anything at all, and then Xilinn started to laugh. “It will work,” she said. “That will definitely work. They’re not going to want to keep her around if you can pull that off, especially if they’re trying to focus on negotiations with Elanus at the time.”

“It attacks her dignity pretty severely, though.”

Kieron shrugged. At this point, he didn’t have any space left in him for concerns around his mother’s sense of dignity or lack thereof. “She’s survived a lot worse. She’ll survive this too.” Or she would if he had anything to say about it.

She might never forgive him for saving her, but at least Kieron would be able to live with himself. He didn’t have to be able to live with her.

He nodded at Catie’s countdown timer. “We’ve got less than half an hour to decide whether this is doable or not. Let’s not waste it.”