Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Twenty-Four, Part One

 Notes: Oh my goodness, are we almost done? I think we're almost done! Wow! This one's been a bit of a wild ride, huh? One more week to wrap it up and then...I don't know what happens next! Obviously we've got to resolve things on Trakta, but I'm still working out the details of how. I might write a shortie fic in between to cleanse my mental palate. We'll see!

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

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Chapter Twenty-Four, Part One

 

Photo by Geronimo Giqueaux 

 

It was easy to be quiet, in the aftermath.

There was nothing for Kieron to do. No heavy lifting, no investigation, no preparation. Lizzie nailed the drop with all the propulsion equipment that Catie was going to need to get back into space, and it was mostly preassembled. The last bits were tricky enough that only Elanus could see them through, so that left the rest of them with a lot of time on their hands.

Bobby didn’t speak audibly, just tapped when he wanted to say something. Elanus had already offered to outfit him with a voice system, but Bobby had declined for now. “But don’t you want to be able to talk to people who don’t understand Morse code?” Elanus had asked, and Bobby had simply replied, [No thank you.] And that was that, for now at least. And Carlisle…

She didn’t speak much to anyone. She hardly made eye contact with Kieron—which was strange, because she made plenty of eye contact with Elanus. They were antagonistic, but in a teasing way, able to engage in an almost lighthearted fashion that was simply impossible with Kieron. He wanted to be offended, wanted to have the energy to rage and demand answers, to wonder what it had all been for if she was just going to ignore him now, and yet…he didn’t. He didn’t have that energy. He felt detached, almost entirely dissociated from his body. Floaty, and distant, and still.

Elanus had noted it, because of course he had. “You need better medical care than we can give you in the middle of nowhere,” he muttered as he laid a hand on Keiron’s forehead in an embarrassing act of checking his temperature.

“Sorry, Daddeeee,” Catie said sadly. “I did the best thaaat I could.”

“I know you did, baby, you did great.”

“You did great,” Kieron echoed, because it was true and because it was all he could think to say in the moment. He wished he could do more, but he just felt…empty. Hollow.

Coming here had changed nothing for him. Nothing. He didn’t have any deeper understanding of himself or his past actions. He hadn’t been gifted with any new memories of the time between when he started at Cloverleaf Station and when he woke up in Elanus’s house on Gania, Regened right out of his own mind. He had all the feelings he’d had before—more, even, shame and anger on top of the love like some sickening cauldron that bubbled inside of him, threatening to spill over and fill the emptiness with its toxicity. All he’d done here was make himself worse.

And save his mother, but she didn’t even want to be saved, so…

Bobby tapped out something from where he sat in Kieron’s lap. [Breathe, Papa.]

Kieron tapped back, “I’m breathing.”

[Breathe better.] So Kieron made an effort, and Bobby hummed and settled in once more, and that was all Kieron spoke for the whole day, and that was all right.

With the limited capacity he had for emotion right now, he was rather surprised that his family was taking his silence so well. Not that Elanus and Catie couldn’t carry a conversation for days just the two of them, and they did a good job of drawing Lizzie and Xilinn and even Ryu into everything from technical discussions to simple chatting, but they didn’t push him to speak. No one did, and Kieron was all right with that. He knew it couldn’t last, but there was something nice about not having to work to put anyone else at ease right now.

The countdown to getting off Hadrian’s Colony changed, it seemed, on a daily basis. As soon as the chassis was in place, they had to make sure the fuel cells weren’t compromised; as soon as the fuel cells were verified, they had to recheck the chassis; as soon as Catie was secure, they had to find the best break in the weather to attempt it. That was the hardest part, and it took a week of concerted effort on both Catie and Lizzie’s parts to independently choose the same window for takeoff.

And they had five minutes to make the most of it. “—because the layer of frozen methane shifted unexpectedly by several thousand meters, Elanus, and—”

“I believe you, baby, I believe you,” Elanus said as he rapidly moved about the cabin, prepping the living space for launch as fast as he could. There were only two chairs and there was no question who was sitting in them, but he’d already fabricated a harness that could clip to the wall and floor for Carlisle. She sat in the makeshift seat without complaint, her expression steady. Kieron watched Elanus buckle her in, then distractedly did the same for himself.

“Shoulder straps.”

“Hmm?” He looked up at Elanus, who was gazing at him with an obscure blend of patience and pain on his face.

“Shoulder straps, darling. You forgot them.”

“Oh.” So he had. He started over, not objecting when Elanus double-checked his work before sitting down himself. Bobby extended a set of legs over Kieron’s ankles and settled in down low, and then it was time to go.

The chassis that Lizzie had deployed for her sister was a bulky circular thing, a bit like a belt, that integrated into Catie’s midline structure and fuel system. It was essentially a donut-shaped rocket capable of generating immense lift, not so great for steering or fine control. Catie was going to be using all her personal resources to keep them on course while using the rocket to power them through the storm, which…the rain seemed thick to Kieron, lashing at her viewscreen and occasionally pelting it with pieces of grass that the wind had whipped up.

“Running eeengine check.” A series of numbers flew by on the control panel, percentages that meant little to Kieron but were clearly relevant considering how Elanus pored over them.

“Looks good, sweetheart, how’s the telemetry?”

“Gooood, Daddeee.”

“Still solid, Elanus,” Lizzie said. “But you’ve got to go in the next thirty-two seconds if you’re going to hit the window.”

“Copy that, baby. Catie, let’s get out of here.”

“Yes, Daddeeee.”

The rumble that accompanied her engine coming online was genuinely startling. Catie was usually as soft as a whisper compared to other ships, but the chassis propelled her noise level up by a thousand percent. Kieron actually had to cover his ears, the roar became so loud. He couldn’t feel the heat of the fire she was spewing, but he knew the ground beneath them had to be scorched. After a ten-second buildup, Catie launched into the air so hard Kieron felt like his lungs had been punctured. He was driven down into his seat, G-forces too heavy to resist, and stared blankly at the ceiling.

It had to be worse for Elanus, but he was still looking at numbers and talking to Catie. Shouting, more like, but he had to if he was going to be heard over the noise. “You’ve got this, baby, hit the line, hit the line…we’re off by a kilometer. West, baby, we’re off by two kilometers…shift us, baby, shift us or we’re going to hit the ice!”

“I’m tryyyying, Daddeee! The power is—” There was a ka-chunk, and a piece of ice broke apart over her viewscreen. “Ow!”

“Cut power to the right side!”

No arguments—Catie cut power, and the ship began to spin wildly, hurtling across the high sky instead of up.

“Restart in three, two—now!”

The chassis engine flared to life immediately, stilling their spin so fast that Kieron’s stomach could barely hold itself together. Carlisle couldn’t; he heard her retch, but there was nothing he could do to help. They began to ascend again, and this time…

“We’re in liiine, Daddee!”

“Good girl, you’ve got this, we’re close to breakout. Hold it steady, sweetheart, hold it steady…almost there.” Catie rumbled and roared, the force of the chassis so intense Kieron wondered that his girl was able to keep herself together under so much force. If she ran into trouble in the upper atmosphere, there was nothing anyone would be able to do.

She’s fine. Catie knows herself, she knows what she can do. Elanus is helping her. Straining, Kieron reached his closest hand out to the control panel and laid it near one of her sensors. He couldn’t speak, but he could still communicate. I’m here too, baby, you’ve got this.

It took a moment for Kieron to realize the noise had stopped, his ears were ringing so hard. Catie cut the extra engines, and the whine died down to nothing as he realized her viewscreen had gone black. And there, in the distance, was another very familiar ship.

The viewscreen came to life, and they got visuals for the first time since reconnecting with Lizzie and her crew.

“You made it!” Xilinn exclaimed, squeezing her son so hard that the boy tried to wriggle away even as he laughed. “Oh ancestors, oh thank you, you’re all right.”

Ryu, beside her, was less expressive but still gave them a grin. “It’s good to be out of there, huh?”

“You have no idea,” Elanus said, beaming at the others.

Kieron blinked and stared, taking them all in, and then the view switched to exterior. Lizzie’s skin was tinted pink, and Catie began to giggle.

“Don’t make fun of me,” Lizzie chided her sister, then—“Kee.”

Kieron finally found the strength to raise his head. “Hey, Lizzie,” he murmured, feeling lighter than he had since he woke up. “It’s good to see you again.”