Redstone Ch. 18 Pt 1

Notes: Aaand, new perspective! I think I've written more POVs in this story than in any other I've ever attempted. We're starting to wind things up, and yes, Robbie's situation is...mostly resolved. Enjoy!

Title: Redstone Chapter 18, Part 1

*** 

As soon as Isidore woke up, he knew something was wrong. Going down hadn’t been a surprise; Wyl had signaled that the prison was going to be gassed today, and Isidore had been careful to keep them down in the heart of the prison, veins prickling but heart easy in the knowledge that he, Kyle and, frustratingly, Pence would be safe from the chaos that was certain to emerge when people started waking up.

Pence’s adoption of their living quarters—not all the time, because after a while the iron got to him, but for a few hours every cycle—was annoying but not, Isidore had to admit, the worst thing he’d ever experienced. The man was a gifted storyteller and kept Kyle distracted, and he had more than a few skills that might be useful under the right circumstances. Not that it really mattered; as soon as Garrett had the information that Hummingbird was stealing out from under the nose of the Warden, he’d be able to negotiate for Kyle’s release. Perhaps another week, two at the outside, and they’d be free of this place. Pence wouldn’t be, though.

He’d given up the story of how he’d come to be here so easily that Isidore was more than half convinced it wasn’t true, but it was entertaining nonetheless. “I lived footloose and fancy free in the Central System for years,” he’d expounded while Isidore and Kyle had worked their way through some sticky meal bars. “Thanks to the help of a brilliant little bug I wrote, I worked out who in whatever city I’d have the best luck imitating, then did a bit of work on my appearance and passed myself off as them for a while. Businessmen, trust-funders, even politicians: people will give you a lot of leeway if they think you’re someone important. I hardly ever had to provide identification, in the small provinces. It was a glorious scam,” he said with a pleased sigh.

“Of course, eventually I imitated the wrong man. He caught me at it, actually; I was in one of his penthouses. He was supposed to be gone, but.” Pence shrugged. “Such is life. And after a bit of wrangling, I ended up here.”

“This doesn’t seem like the right place for someone who basically committed identity theft,” Kyle said doubtfully.

“Very astute, little lamb.” Pence refused to elaborate any further, though, but he gave them a wink to soften the lie. When they all fell down the next day, the sleeping gas working too fast for much preparation, Isidore spared a brief thought for how he might actually miss Pence once he and Kyle were out of here.

Pence was the farthest thing from Isidore’s mind when he woke up though, for all the man was mumbling a blue streak over knocking his head against the floor when he’d gone under. There was too much noise filtering down the passage, way too much for the aftermath of a gassing. This wasn’t prisoners fighting it out amongst themselves; this was a concerted effort by many against a few, and if he focused Isidore thought he could detect the whine of bot gears shifting too abruptly to be quiet.

“Fuck.” Something was wrong in the Pit, really wrong. His mind told him the best thing to do was wait down here where it was safe and ride it out, but his instincts were screaming at him to move. He reached out and shook Kyle’s shoulder; he was already awake, just looked a little blurry. Pence was still on his back, affected more by the gas. “Come on, we have to move.”

To his credit, Kyle just nodded. Isidore helped get him to his feet, then led the way down the hall, disruptor firmly in hand. If they were being swarmed by bots right now…

But no, no they weren’t. There was a swarm, for sure, but it was prisoners on guards. Isidore held Kyle back at the entrance to the Pit, staring disconcertedly out at the carnage taking place. It looked like two separate fights had been going on, although one was already over; he could smell the blood in the air, even if there wasn’t much to see over the wave of bodies. The other guard was still on his feet, but he had only one bot left. It was inevitable he’d die, at this point, despite how fiercely he…fought…

Recognition hit Isidore like a shot to the heart, and he actually lurched forward a step before he got control of himself again. Isidore recognized that fighting style; he’d seen it back on Paradise when he’d been a mechanic working on the Federation forces’ fleet of vehicles. Robbie. That was Robbie, which mean something had gone terribly, awfully wrong.

“Fuck.”

“What is it?” Kyle murmured, staying discreet even though he was clearly disturbed by the scene.

“Give me a moment; I need to think.” He couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t. Protecting Robbie wasn’t his mission. He had to take care of Kyle.

The bot went down, and Robbie was bowled over after another few seconds of fighting like a madman. Isidore almost bit through his tongue when he lost sight of him. No, no, nonono—

Then Rory happened, saving the day only to ruin things himself. Isidore knew he was breathing too fast, knew even as Kyle tugged at his arm, worried and wondering, that he was going to do it. He was going to spoil everything because he couldn’t just watch this, he wouldn’t. He’d sooner die himself.

“Stick with Pence,” Isidore heard himself say, the sound feeling very far away as he walked into the room. “Garrett will get you out.” He reached a hand up to his mouth, toward the tooth that would cause a big enough explosion to take out a good half of the people in the Pit. Rory wasn’t looking at him; no one was, all the focus on Robbie and the macabre scene playing out between the two men. He could do this. He had to.

The second before Isidore activated the grenade in his head, a shower of sparks erupted from the main door. It clanged to the ground a moment later, and a security bot rolled into the room. This bot was like none Isidore had ever seen, though; it had some weapons sticking out of it that were downright illegal for security bots, and even as Isidore ducked, it started to fire a mini-laser which burned tiny, perfect holes straight through people. “Alert! Alert! Sound the alarm! Alert! Alert! Sound the alarm!” it blared over and over, burning a swathe through the prisoners who dared to move toward it. It reached Robbie’s side and tore him out of Rory’s slack, astonished grasp, picking him up and cradling him even as it injected a syringe straight into Robbie’s neck. “There there. There there. There there.”

Rory growled and reached for Robbie again, and had a hole burned through his hand for his trouble. All around the Pit people were groaning in pain, most of them alive but all of them wounded. The bot swirled its head in a circle, eyestrip glowing menacingly as it surveyed the prisoners. It paused on Isidore, but moved on after a moment. “There there. There there. There there,” it repeated as it turned and rolled right out of the gaping hole it had left in the Pit, taking Robbie with it.

“What the bloody hell is going on here, petal?”

Pence’s voice shocked Isidore out of his fugue. He shook his head, silent as he weighed his options. This was…a fucking mess, was what it was. No guards were rushing in to shut things down, more than half the prison population was going to need Regen for bot-inflicted burns, and Robbie was possibly gravely injured. If Isidore waited to do this all the right way, the closest to legal way, there very well might be new leadership in place that would refuse any and all requests for transfers while they figured out what the hell had just gone down.

Isidore couldn’t take that risk. If not even Robbie was safe, then there was no way Kyle would survive that long, especially not with the prisoners in a state of upheaval. And besides…the door was open.

Isidore reached out and grabbed Kyle’s hand. “We’re getting out of here,” he said. He could still see the bot in the distance. If they stuck close to it, they could follow it through the doors. From there, he’d be able to find his way to the hangar. Robbie and Wyl’s ship would open to him, and if anyone was going to forgive him for an act of piracy, it was them. “Come on.”

Another hand found his. “You’re not going anywhere without me, darling,” Pence said grimly.

“Then shut up and keep up,” Isidore said, and he tugged them into a run as he chased down the bot. Hopefully it wouldn’t turn around and shoot him when it saw the three of them behind it.

Surprisingly, the bot led the way straight to the ship hangar. Wyl was already there, completely blind to everything except Robbie as he lurched forward toward his husband. “ZeeBee, status!”

“Alive and recovering. Currently, he is under the influence of Regen. Expected return to consciousness in three-point-seven standard hours.”

“Oh.” Wyl shuddered and leaned against the bot’s sturdy body, bringing his head close to Robbie’s. “All right. All right. Fuck, it’s all right.”

“Not completely,” Isidore said. He could see it took effort, but Wyl eventually lifted his head and looked at him. “Hi.”

“Oh. Oh, shit, Isidore!” He was being hugged before he could stop it, something that was sure to cause conniptions in the central security room, but Isidore couldn’t care less. “Fuck, are you okay? What are you doing here?”

“Seizing the day,” Isidore said, feeling a little like falling apart now that he was in friendly arms. “There’s bound to be an inquest, they’ll ask questions, it isn’t safe—it never was, but now—”

“No, you’re right,” Wyl agreed, finally letting him go to look at his companions. “Mr. Alexander. And…”

“Pence, mate.” He almost sounded normal. “Just Pence.”

Wyl looked at Isidore. “He’s with you?”

“He is now.” Whether Isidore wanted it or not, apparently.

“Then he’ll come along. Let’s kick this shithole to the curb. ZeeBee,” Wyl addressed the bot, “get Robbie situated in the ship. You guys, follow him. I’ll be right there.”

“What are you going to do?” Isidore asked.

Wyl smiled darkly. “Since there’s no reason to be subtle anymore, I’m gonna kill every fucking camera and tracking system in this fucking place before we leave. Let them try to send someone after us once I’ve punched their eyes out. Go, go.” He waved them toward his and Robbie’s little ship, then headed to the nearest control panel.

Isidore followed ZeeBee on board, still clinging to Kyle and Pence. They settled into the tight quarters right behind the pilot’s chair, and Pence turned to Isidore with a raised eyebrow. “Interesting friends you’ve got, my dove.”

“You have no idea,” Isidore said dryly.

“We’re really leaving?” Kyle asked. He sounded dumbfounded. “Right now?”

“It’s an opportunity we might not get again.”

“But what about my lawyer? And what about—” He stopped speaking when Isidore shook his head.

“They’ll weather the storm better than we would. This is just a course change, Kyle. We’re not throwing away the map.”

“What map, pet?”

Isidore breathed a sigh of relief when Wyl joined them, firing up the engines and heading for the nearest airlock, which opened obediently to his command. “The one that leads to the end.”

Whatever that was, now.

Redstone Ch. 14, Pt. 1

Notes: New Redstone, and back to Isidore and Kyle we go! Thanks for following along on my updates, and thanks for pointing out where I need to do some editing--I promise I'm taking notes, my friends, I'm just a poor communicator sometimes.

Title: Redstone Chapter 14, Part 1

*** 

Nearly all of life for prisoners in Redstone necessitated a waiting game.

They waited for food, most of them crowding around the troughs that opened in the walls like the pigs they were forced to imitate, the more powerful or the weakest ones hanging back to be served by subordinates or steal a bite when no one was watching.

They waited for a chance to get clean: the showers came on once a day, for five minutes. Cold to wet you down, briefly hot with a spray of soap to cleanse, and then cold again. There were two rooms for showering, ostensibly divided by gender, but in reality one belonged to Klia, one to Rory. There was a hierarchy of cleanliness, as with everything, and if you weren’t part of a crew you either had to beg a bucket from someone, find a new source for water, or risk getting naked in among the press of some of the worst humanity the Federation had to offer. Outright rape was common, and “voluntary servicing” in the showers even more so.

Prisoners waited for the most basic of amenities, with wild-eyed fear and resigned acceptance and feral, savage glee. Prisoners who ran the show made other people wait for them, but in the end everybody waited. The constant lack of occupation led to people making their own, mostly in the worst ways possible. Bloodsports, gambling, sex and murder: they were brutal past times, but at least they gave people something to do.

An unexpected side effect of his new, strange status in Redstone was that Isidore suddenly had more free time than he’d had before. It wasn’t a welcome development. He has a master trader, the man who could get people things that worked in strange ways, surprising ways. He could help piece together a revenge or soothe an ache or shed a ray of light into darkness so complete it felt like being inside a cold, dead womb at times. He traded for what he needed, and he had enough spare parts set aside that he could afford to trade for Kyle as well. It took time to make all the things that people wanted, though, and that pleasantly occupied time had before now been the best part of his day. After coming to an accord with Rory, though…

“Hello, pet,” Pence purred as he suddenly appeared in their section of the hall. Kyle started, and the only reason Isidore didn’t jump was because he was welding something and had trained himself out of being surprised when he was holding the sort of heat that could melt metal. He turned his machine off and glared at Pence.

“What are you doing here?”

“I wished for a glimpse into the heart of the dragon, where you two darling boys have made your hearth and home!” he said with a smile. “I must say, it’s just as uncomfortable as advertised. How on earth do you stand the pull?”

“Willpower.” In reality, Isidore was so used to the way the iron tugged at his blood that he barely noticed it now. Kyle had so recently been in the tank that his body was still minimizing the side effects: the nausea, the headaches, the way the magnetism could make your skin crawl. Hopefully they’d be out of here by the time their surroundings really began to tell on him. “What do you want?”

“I came to deliver your offerings, of course.”

“What kind of offerings?” Kyle asked, trying not to show his sudden interest. What was occupation for Isidore wasn’t quite as entertaining for Kyle, who was a decent engineer but didn’t find inspiration in it.

“Pure and holy offerings of esteem and sacrifice, to the man who went to a one-on-one meeting with Rory and lived to tell the tale, little lamb,” Pence said, slinging a bag off of his shoulder and laying it out on the ground.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Isidore said with a sigh.

“I can be a dick too, if that’s more your style, love,” Pence said instantly. Kyle almost smiled, which delighted the interloper. “Aw, your lamb likes me, Isidore. Doesn’t his regard soften your heart toward me?”

“No, not really.” There was only one way this was going to end, though, and that was with Pence making his presentation. “Fine. Show me what you’ve brought.”

“First, let me just say how utterly horrifying it was to be hunted down by representatives from the biggest sides in our never-ending battle and told I was the perfect delivery boy,” Pence said, a frown coming to his ruddy face. “I didn’t think my favoritism was that blatant, but then I’m not good at ignoring beautiful things and you’ve not beaten me senseless yet, so I suppose people were bound to think we liked each other.”

“Which is wrong.”

“Oh darling, don’t play coy. You know I adore you,” Pence said brightly. “If I didn’t, I would just have kept all this wonderful supplies for myself. Yet here I am, laying it at your feet.”

“You would never have held onto it by yourself,” Isidore retorted. “You’d have been mugged in a matter of minutes if you hadn’t brought this stuff down to me.”

“Beloved, it’s all a matter of perspective; we’ll just have to agree to disagree,” Pence said. “Now, let’s survey your spoils, shall we? Food bars from Klia’s side of the fence—I hadn’t thought you did much business with her, she must really be desperate to get on your good side now,” he noted. “A bucket of water, pre-soaped from this morning’s ablutions courtesy of Rory. That was quite fucking heavy, by the way, my dove. It almost broke my back with its splish-splashing about.”

“Yet you persevered,” Isidore said dryly.

“Well, it’s rather a precious resource, isn’t it? I couldn’t very well spill it and let it go to waste. Speaking of spilling, there’s a canteen of drinking water in there was well, and some prodigious inventor even included a vial of what I can only suppose is…” Pence unscrewed the top of the medicine vial, took one sniff and promptly started coughing. “A bloody fucking paralytic,” he managed around his coughs. “Dear heart, take it before I spill it everywhere.”

Kyle got there before Isidore. He sniffed it, smiled, and then took a sip. Isidore could smell the pungent odor of the rotgut from five feet away; he could only imagine how absolutely foul it had to taste. “How can you possibly drink that?”

Kyle shrugged. “I went to prep school. Alcohol on site was forbidden, so we had to brew our own in secret. Meal bars were a good way to do it, actually, there’s lots of sugar in them. I got drunk off this stuff for the first time when I was fourteen.” He sipped again. “This is better than most of what I got back then, actually.”

“I never thought of prep school as such a dangerous place,” Pence said once he’d caught his breath. “Honestly, drinking that must be like getting kicked in the testicles, if your testicles reside in your throat. You’re a masochist of the first order, little lamb.” He cast a sly sidelong glance at Isidore. “My understanding of your preferences has just grown by leaps and bounds, petal. I’d let you hurt me if it truly made you happy.” He pointed at the half-full vial. “But not with that. Bind me, whip me, make me call you papa while you bugger me senseless, but leave that vile chemistry out of it.”

“Are you done?” Isidore demanded. “Because if that’s all, you can go.”

Pence frowned. “What, don’t I get a smidgeon of praise for bringing your gifts all this way? Can’t you spare me a soupçon of your regard and, possibly, your largesse for my efforts?”

“You can’t honestly tell me that you haven’t already lifted a meal bar or three from the stash you brought me.”

Pence grinned unrepentantly. “You know me so well, my dove! But only two, because I’m not a fool. Much more than that and someone would sniff me out. Still, I’d happily accept a kiss in exchange for my services.”

“You remind me of an old fairy tale,” Kyle said suddenly. “The frog prince. Only in this case you’re bringing your own golden ball to the princess and demanding that she take it in exchange for a kiss.”

“I like how you so easily cast your mentor in the role of princess. It speaks volumes about your level of comfort together,” Pence remarked. “And I think I’d rather be thought of as…Puss in Boots.”

Isidore wasn’t following, but whatever that meant made Kyle smile. “I can see that.”

“You’re a well-educated man,” Pence congratulated him before returning his attention to Isidore. “Now, darling. Please.”

Whether it was because Pence begged with such blatant insincerity, or because he could make Kyle grin, Isidore decided to be generous. Besides, it had been a long time since he’d seen this much water himself. “How about a hot bath?”

Pence’s eyes went wide. “Petal, don’t tease.”

“I’m serious. Faces, hands, underarms and groins only; this water has to last all three of us. And don’t even think about getting naked.”

“But you want me to very thoroughly clean my groin, don’t you?”

“Be as thorough as you like, just stay decent.” Isidore got his welding tool out and opened up the container of slightly gray water. A three-second blast should do it before too much of it went up in steam…he lowered the tip into the water, and then turned on the heat.

There was steam by the time he was done, thin, enticing tendrils floating off the top of the water, but almost none of the water was wasted. Pence and Kyle both moved in and dipped their fingertips simultaneously. Kyle seemed pleased, but the look of rapture on Pence’s face verged on orgasmic.

“Hot water,” he breathed. “I haven’t felt hot water since the last time I was forced into the showers. Two years ago now,” he added absently, missing or ignoring the look that Isidore and Kyle shared. “What bliss.”

Isidore sighed. Being nice probably wasn’t going to pay off in the long run, but he couldn’t help it. “You two go first. Don’t use it all.”

“Oh, darling.” The smile Pence turned on him was the most genuine expression he’d ever seen on the man. “You might have to tie me up to stop me, but I’ll try to be good. Thank you.”

Isidore nodded. “You’re welcome.”

Redstone Ch. 9, Pt. 1

Notes: Back to Kyle and Isidore we go! We're finally getting into the meat of the story, tripping merrily down the lane of plot and action and narrative tension. My favorite things. Enjoy, and never fear, everyone will get their time in the sun. So to speak, I mean.

Title: Redstone Chapter 9, Part 1.

 

***

Kyle didn’t do well being forced into stillness. He could do it; it actually came very easy to him, the art of not being noticed, of making yourself small and unavailable and uninteresting, and he wasn’t sure why. It was an ingrained habit, one of those abilities that it seemed he should have had memories of learning and didn’t anymore. He could shrink and vanish without knowing why, and because of that he tried to avoid doing it. Kyle was inherently reluctant to ever agree with Cody’s friend Ten about anything, but he had to admit that ze had a point in making hir life’s unofficial motto “Go big or go home.” If you were going to commit to a course of action you should do it wholeheartedly, which was why Kyle was here in the first place.

It stood to reason that he should listen to more experienced voices when it came to keeping him alive now, but Isidore’s plan still grated on him a little bit. “I still don’t see why we have to delay this anymore.”

Isidore smiled at him. It wasn’t a condescending smile, not in the least, but it was measuring in a way Kyle didn’t quite understand. Like he was being held up to a standard he wasn’t sure how to reach, and for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to him, Kyle wanted to hit and exceed any measure that Isidore could think of. “We need the time to prepare.”

“The other inmates already know I’m here. There’s nothing to be gained by not facing them sooner.”

Isidore shook his head. “Meals might as well be feeding frenzies here. Lots of deals go down when food gets distributed, and they’re the most dangerous times in Redstone, which is saying a lot. We can handle emissaries and small groups, but crowds will be hard to negotiate until we make more secure alliances. So until we have the means to do that, we’re avoiding mealtimes.”

“What will we do when we run out of food?”

“We won’t.” Isidore indicated a stash of ration bars underneath the exterior hull of a robot that had somehow been ripped apart like a corn husk. That wasn’t supposed to be possible with this level of nanomaterials. They were harder than Old Earth diamonds.

“But we can’t let them think we’re afraid,” Kyle persisted. “The longer we hide away back here, the more they’ll rationalize trying to get rid of us when we finally do appear.”

“I don’t actually plan for us to be here all that long,” Isidore said. “No more than a day, just enough for us to get the bits and pieces we need to do some deals.”

“What kind of bits and pieces?”

Isidore looked over his stash of goods consideringly. “I think we need to take another bot. They carry all sorts of tradeable parts, and one should be heading our way pretty soon.”

Kyle was lost. “Why?”

“It’s protocol with new arrivals, especially when the guards lose sight of one of them. They send the bots in to do a body check, make sure everyone is accounted for. If someone is missing then the guards themselves will come in, but they’ll probably gas the place first, and that…” Isidore wrinkled his nose. “That’s a nasty experience. It’s hard to recover from and it disrupts the chain of command, so they don’t like to do it, but will if it’s necessary.

“The iron disrupts the vid feeds so they don’t have a way of looking this deep into the core. That means sending a bot down here. We’re the only ones this deep, so by the time it gets to us we’ll be the priority assessment.” Isidore rubbed his long, thin fingers together. “We need to open it up and get some parts out of it, but keep it functional so that it can record our identities and get back up to broadcast level.”

“How are the two of us going to take out a robot guard?” Kyle asked. He tried not to make it sound like a demand, but he felt uncomfortably out of his depth here. He was used to being…okay, not the best, so to speak, but the one who knew what was going on. He’d been a star in the Academy thanks to his public position and his secret one both, but now he was the one struggling to catch up. “They’re armed, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they are.”

“And they’re nearly indestructible.”

“Also true,” Isidore agreed. “This is definitely going to be easier with you around; handling one of them by myself was rough.”

“You still haven’t explained how we’re going to do it.”

“Psychic powers.” At Kyle’s blank look, Isidore relented. “Actually, I rigged a molecular disruptor up a month ago. We’ll let it scan me first, and then while it’s scanning you I’ll puncture its control system and temporarily shut it down. I’ll take out the parts we need, turn it on again and let it toddle back up to the main room.”

How the hell… “Where did you get the parts for a molecular disruptor?” Kyle demanded. “And why didn’t you have it when you came after me yesterday?”

If Isidore was put off by Kyle’s tone, he didn’t let on. “I didn’t have it for two reasons: one, it requires too much power to be moved from where I’ve jimmied the cord into the wall,” Isidore gestured at the band of light inset in the stone. “And two, it could be considered a heavy weapon. If it was seen by the guards, they would have no choice but to come in to confiscate it, and I don’t want to have to deal with being rousted.”

“Where did you get the parts for it in the first place?” Kyle might not know much about what went on in Redstone, but he was quite sure that the guards weren’t lax enough to make it possible for prisoners to create heavy weaponry on a regular basis.

“Some of them I traded for. Some of them I stole for myself. But the most important part?” Isidore held up a long metal wand threaded with scavenged wiring. It looked nothing like a traditional molecular disruptor, the large size presumably necessary so he could compensate for lower power. The tip of it, though, the part that was going to do the impossible by cutting through things that should be almost impossible to cut, it was…odd. Kyle looked closer. The piece was semi-circular, thin and slightly iridescent. Now that Kyle thought about it, it actually looked like a…

“Is that a nail?”

Isidore smiled again. “One of my toenails.”

“You implanted a fake nail? How did that not get caught?” Isidore must have bribed the clinic staff somehow to get them to overlook a fake body part.

“I didn’t implant a fake, I actually grew this one.”

Kyle shook his head. It was enough of a cue for Isidore to continue. “I seeded the growth bed for this nail with the chemical components needed to create a part like this. I figured that even if I didn’t get the chance to build a disruptor, it couldn’t hurt to have another built-in weapon. It’s incredibly hard, naturally, but I programmed the stem cells to release once the growth had achieved the preset length. It literally fell off into my hand.”

The process Isidore was describing was waaay more complicated than he was making it seem. Kyle had done decently in his fabrication and modification classes at the Academy, but this was a whole other level of creation. “What did you do before you came here?”

“I was in cosmods.”

Kyle shook his head. “This is not cosmodification. Cosmods are for aesthetic reasons, they’re simple. This is…not simple.”

“It’s nothing compared to convincing a person’s body to grow itself a tiger tail,” Isidore demurred. “Solaydor is the Central System’s leader when it comes to this technology, and I worked with some very good people while I was there. I picked up a lot.”

“I guess so,” Kyle agreed. “You must have—” He stopped as Isidore held a hand up suddenly.

“Noise in the corridor,” he murmured. “The bot has a loose wheel.” He glanced at Isidore as he quickly hid the wand under a pile of scrap. “Remember, let it scan me first and after that, keep its attention long enough for me to work.”

“How long will that be?”

“Not long,” Isidore said soothingly. He didn’t have time for anything else: the bot wheeled into view and stopped in front of them, its green eyestrip glowing brightly in the dim hallway.

“Identify yourselves, inmates.”

Isidore stepped up smartly. “Prisoner 2571.” The glow flared as the bot recorded Isidore’s irises, then swiveled to focus on Kyle.

“Identify yourself, inmate,” it repeated.

Kyle carefully didn’t look over at Isidore as he said, quite honestly, “I’m Kyle Alexander, and I don’t know my prisoner intake number.”

The bot whirred for a moment. “Unable to process. Identify yourself.”

“My name is Kyle Alexander, and I do not have an official intake number.”

“All inmates have corresponding numeric values.”

“Well, I don’t.” Isidore was easing the wand out from under the scrap. Kyle kept talking. “My arrival was a little precipitous, honestly. It’s not surprising that I don’t have a number yet.”

“All inmates and personnel have official intake numbers.” The bot scanned his retinas. “No existing match in database. Error: unidentified inmate. Conclusion: intruder. Course of action: immediate apprehension.”

That didn’t sound good. “Wait, there’s a good reason I don’t have a—” The armature on the front of the bot began to crackle with the snap of a heavy-duty taser. “Wait, stop!”

The bot lifted the taser toward him, and Kyle had just a moment to brace himself for the feeling of thousands of volts coursing through his body before the noise and light suddenly stopped. The bot’s arm dropped and its eyestrip went dark. He sighed as Isidore appeared from around the back of the bot, the disruptor firmly clasped in one hand. “That was close.”

“That’s bad,” Isidore said, frowning fiercely as he started to cut into the side of the bot. “No intake number means you’ll have to be retrieved and officially entered into the system. We’ll have to make an appearance in the main room, and we’ll have to hold our own for as long as it takes for the guards to get their heads out of their asses and do your intake properly.” He jerked a small piece of metal out of the bot, then got started on another section. “Not that the guards aren’t a problem all on their own, but you’ll be vulnerable in the crowd.”

“I thought the whole point of claiming me was to make me less vulnerable.”

“Claiming you was done to keep you alive for long enough to get down here,” Isidore corrected. “I had a plan, but that plan isn’t worth much if you’re not official and we can’t keep people off your back long enough to get you that way.” He removed a few more things, then went to work at the back of the bot’s headpiece. “The guards can’t be trusted. I know you’ve got a lawyer here trying to ensure decent treatment for you, but—and this isn’t a criticism, just an observation—they haven’t been very effective so far.”

“No,” Kyle said, thinking guiltily of Demarcos and how frantic he had to be now. “He hasn’t.”

“So we’ve got new problems. Not just keeping you alive in the Pen—the dining hall, it’s called the Pen—but keeping the guards from screwing with you.” Isidore put the wand down and closed something up on the back of the bot’s head. A moment later, it whirred to life again. Kyle unconsciously tensed, waiting for its arm to start snapping with electricity.

Instead it turned and headed back down the hall without another word. “What did you do to it?”

“Hit restart, basically. It’s programmed to return to its charging station, and as far as it was concerned it had no mission here. It already reported an unofficial prisoner, though, so the guards will be on the lookout soon enough. We’ll have to get up there if we don’t want this whole place gassed.”

Isidore looked more than a little downtrodden, which was disconcerting. Kyle wanted to shrug off the worries; being afraid wasn’t going to get him anywhere, and even though he wanted to dwell on the what ifs, he resolutely turned his mind away from them. “We’ll handle it. What did you take from the bot?”

“Hmm? Oh, batteries.” He indicated the little pile of chips. “Battery backups. Not big ones, since the bots shouldn’t need them, but they’re one-shot wonders for a lot of prisoner tech. Plus a few other things that no one else will care about, including a—” His voice broke off for a moment as he swept his hand through the pile and settled it firmly onto the iron bench. Isidore pressed his palm as flat as it could go, his eyes intent. Kyle watched as his frown suddenly blossomed into a brilliant smile.

“Robbie and Wyl are here! Oh, they have the best timing.”

“Who are they? And how do you know that?”

Isidore waved his hand at Kyle, who noticed for the first time that the palm looked…hmm, darker than the rest of his skin. Tougher, somehow, like a callus had built up over the entire thing.

“Wyl just told me.”

Redstone Ch. 1, Pt. 2

Notes: Here's part two, and we get to meet Raymond! The interpersonal plot thickens, and a hint for next time: the POV is going to change. Kudos to whoever guesses who's perspective is coming next.

Also, I got a lovely piece of art from Caitlin Ricci to accompany this story. Isn't it beautiful? I'm so pleased to have it, huge thanks to her.

Title: Redstone Chapter One, Part Two: Brotherly Love

***

Kyle had never had a pet, growing up. Not a real one, not the kind that followed you and fawned over you, the kind that begged for attention, for any scraps of affection that you would give it. He’d resented it some as a child, because a lot of his peers—the elite, the richest of the rich—not only had designer pets, they were even allowed to bring them to boarding school. Kyle remembered looking at fluffy epaulet snakes and catterpets and even an actual dog once and yearning for something of his own, something that would love him without reservation. As he got older, though, he started to recognize that feeling, and the kinship it sought out within him. He knew that feeling, he did. And he both loved it and loathed it so violently that just thinking about it made him retch.

That was how Kyle felt about Raymond. And the worst part was, he had no idea why.

One and a half standard years of his life Kyle spent with Raymond Alexander, who was already the president of the Federation, already a phenomenally successful politician and businessman. Ray had never been married, never had children. He’d never tied himself down to his biological family; the animosity between him and Foster had been evident even to Kyle. Ray didn’t seem to love anything, and Kyle couldn’t remember why he felt the way he did about his brother.

He heard the outer door chime, and stood up off his bed. He wasn’t about to face his brother from a position of weakness. They were the same height in bare feet, and it was the closest to equal that Kyle could make them under his current circumstances. The inner door opened, and Raymond Alexander, the President of the Federation, walked in. He was tall and frosty in pale shades of purple and silver, golden-brown hair gleaming, his sharp-jawed expression of sternness familiar. An aide followed him in, a mousy-haired woman who’s head barely came to the middle of Raymond’s chest. He handed her his tab, then waved her away. She cast one wide-eyed look at Kyle before scampering back into the outer chamber. The door closed behind her, and the President was replaced by Ray.

“Damn it, Kyle,” Ray said, his unflappable mien giving way to something that looked vaguely tired and disappointed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t give me that,” Ray snapped. “There’s no monitoring in here, it’s against regulations. You don’t have to pretend to be mind-controlled when it’s just the two of us, now tell me the truth.”

Yeah, right. For all that his brother bothered with regulations, which was not at all when they didn’t suit his purposes. Kyle wasn’t about to victimize his own case by breaking protocol. “I don’t know what you mean,” he repeated. “I would hate to do anything that made you unhappy with me.”

Ray’s lips thinned as he frowned irritably. “Have it your way, then.” He sighed heavily and shook his head. “I have to say, I’ve been over and over this in my head and I still don’t understand why you’re doing this. What happened, huh? What happened to you, to turn against me like this? We’re family, Kyle. We’re almost all that’s left of the Alexander line. We should be allies, not enemies.”

“I agree,” Kyle said, as blandly as he could manage while his mind raged. You killed them, you were behind it, all of it, you killed them, you didn’t care that they were family then!  “I am your ally, brother. You wanted Cody Helms dead. I only tried to do what you wanted.”

“I never wanted anyone dead.”

Kyle couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up out of him. “Right,” he agreed, trying to sound less sarcastic, less hateful. It was hard. “Of course not.”

“Shut your disrespectful mouth and listen to me,” Ray snapped. “Listen to what I’m telling you. I don’t need to kill children to get what I want, do you understand? It serves no purpose and would endanger me unnecessarily. I’m not responsible for the independent actions of all of my people or those who’d like to be in my inner circle, but I can guarantee you that I never spoke or wrote out an order to have anyone at The Academy killed.”

You never needed to say a word, when your assassin was a psychic. “I know,” was all Kyle said.

“You don’t believe me, though.”

“I believe everything you say,” Kyle said in a sing-song tone. “I love you the best, remember?”

Ray stepped in close all of a sudden, and Kyle’s breath caught in his throat. He was frozen, caught in the sights of a gun and unable to move away. Bright blue eyes stared into his, and Kyle felt his heart jackknife in his chest when Ray reached up and cupped his face in both of his hands. Ray had large hands, broad-palmed and long-fingered, and they covered the sides of Kyle’s face from the edge of his jaw to the soft, thin skin of his temple. Ray cradled Kyle, keeping him utterly transfixed.

“That’s the greatest shame of all of this,” Ray said, and there was genuine sadness in his voice. “You do, don’t you? You lost so much I never intended for you to lose, but you always kept that. I knew it, even when there was no good way for me to use it. She wrested you away from me again and I lost my chance to perfect you, but that stuck. The love stuck.”

It did. It had. The love Kyle felt for his brother was like a river running rapid through his body, filling him and scouring him all at once, rough and tumbling and cold. He loved Ray—he felt it like a sore he couldn’t excise, like a fate he couldn’t escape. Kyle loved him and he didn’t know why, or why it hurt so badly to do so. He just stood there and trembled with the force of it, the confusion of such an overwhelming adoration. I do, he wanted to say. I do, I love you, and I hate it, I hate it, I hate you.

“Kyle.” Ray shut his eyes for a moment, fine lines of stress radiating out from the edges of them, before he leaned in, tilted Kyle’s head down and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I wish I’d done better by you. I wish I’d managed to keep you with me.”

Then he let go of Kyle and stepped back, and Kyle felt like he’d suddenly been saved from drowning. Ray straightened the violet collar on his suit, then his long cuffs, before speaking.

“You’re being sent to Redstone, as I’m sure you know by now. The length of your stay is undetermined, but the sooner the trial the sooner you’ll be out of there.”

“And the weaker my case will be.”

Ray smiled thinly. “It’s none of my business how your legal team is managing preparations. Your mods will be deactivated tomorrow, and you’ll leave the following day. No one in Redstone has active mods, so you won’t have to worry about competing,” he added, completely insincerely. Kyle shuddered lightly, and wished he hadn’t as Ray’s smile grew.

“You’re going to wish you’d never stepped out of my shadow, little brother,” Ray promised him. “You think you’re smart, but you have no idea the level I’m operating on. Whatever you have planned, whatever you’ve been counting on to save you—it’s not going to happen. You’re just a bump in the road, Kyle. I’ll roll over you and come back stronger than before. It’s a shame you won’t be around to absorb the lessons of your perfidy.” He nodded his head. “Goodbye, Kyle.”

Words fought behind Kyle’s teeth, curses battling entreaties, loathing toiling against pleas. In the end he kept his mouth shut, not trusting what would come out of it. Ray waited for a long moment, the strangely eager look of anticipation giving way to disappointment before he finally turned and left. The inner door shut, and Kyle felt like his legs had been snapped in half. He collapsed back onto the bed, folding into a hundred sharp angles like a protein, body and mind and soul all in a state of disarray. His heart was going too fast, and his brain felt like it was muffled from cryosleep, slow and dizzy.

No one else could do this to him, no one but Ray. Kyle hated the effect his brother had on him, he did, so why did everything in him feel like it was dying when Ray said goodbye, like it might be the last time they ever saw each other? Why did he want to scream and beg Ray to come back to him, to forgive him, to hold him again? Kyle would never give in to those impulses, but they were so strong, so fierce…

The sudden blare of the alarm startled him out of his swirling circle of self-loathing. Kyle looked up as a synthetic warden hummed into the room, an expression of polite concern on its artificial face.

“You have injured yourself, Inmate.”

“I have?” Too late Kyle realized that he’d bitten right through his lip, warm and sticky blood flowing over his chin.

“I will take you to the infirmary.” The warden moved forward and, before Kyle could object, picked him up off the bed, perfectly supporting the core of his body as its programming demanded.

“I can walk just fine.”

“That is not protocol, Inmate. I will transport you.”

Shit. Kyle rolled his eyes but didn’t try to escape the warden’s grasp. It might be the last time a jailer showed him any sort of consideration, even if it was completely unnecessary—he should get as much out of it as he could. Kyle touched his chin, then looked at the bright red stains on his fingertips.

How much blood did he really share with Ray? Why had he and Foster been so at odds? Those were questions that had plagued Kyle for his entire life, ever since he first met Ray as a small child. The introduction had been brief, an interlude in a space station as both parties traveled elsewhere. Kyle remembered the chill in both voices as his brother and father greeted each other, and the way Ray’s voice got somehow colder when he addressed Kyle’s mother Haven. Kyle had expected to be ignored, but instead Ray knelt down in front of him. He hadn’t said anything, just stared for a long moment. Kyle remembered how his mother’s hands had tightened on his shoulders to almost the point of pain, like she was going to jerk him back at any second.

He blinked in surprise as the warden laid him down on a Regen bed. “You will be well momentarily, Inmate. This event of self-harm has been documented.”

Just what he needed. “Great.” The Regen tube closed over his head and Kyle settled back against the soft, contouring surface of the bed. It was overkill for a bitten lip, but he had the feeling that this, too, was going to be the stuff of dreams before long.

He’d better enjoy being healthy while it was still an option.

Redstone Ch. 1, Pt. 1

Notes: Hi guys! I'm back from Japan and unfortunately sick, naturally (I could feel it happen on the airplane, freaking person with a cough one row back from me) but still able to write. This is the beginning of Redstone, the newest entry in the Bonded universe. It's going to be multiple POV, Kyle Alexander and several others, and you're going to reacquaint yourself with all sorts of people from previous stories. It's also going to be kind of dark, because well...prison. And this universe is entering a kind of dark place for a while. But! You know I won't hurt you that bad. Keep the faith, darlings.

Title: Redstone Chapter One, Part One: Memories

***

It wasn’t the solitary confinement that bothered Kyle so much as the waiting. He could handle being alone. He honestly preferred it much of the time, despite being trained from a very early age to work a room, to capture the attention of a crowd and hold it. Kyle wasn’t naturally gregarious, but nature didn’t matter when the combined expectations of an extroverted father and a politically-minded brother had guided his actions for most of his life. Kyle was smart, and he’d always been able to gauge which way the winds of guardianship blew. He also learned far more about the darker side of family dynamics quite young, and if that meant he needed to become something new in order to survive, then he did.

Kyle stared at the ceiling of his cell, the surface undulating with a mint green light that was meant to be calming. It might have started out that way, but his anxiety was high enough now that it didn’t even come close to working. The lavender aromatherapy that scented the air was merely cloying, and the faint thrum of music that was meant to soothe grated instead. Kyle was well aware that his current imprisonment was just about as comfortable as it could be, given the charges, but the uncertainty of his future imprisonment took the comfort out of his present circumstances.

Would he get to stay here until his trial? During it? Or would he be sent off to Caravan or Redstone? He didn’t know much about either place and his implant had been curbed, cut down to only very basic functions, so he couldn’t look anything up either. His counsel could only come to see him once a standard week, and their conversations had been so busy that Kyle hadn’t remembered to ask about the details of the prisons.

Dwelling on it only made it feel worse, like the room was constricting, pressing in on him. Kyle hadn’t had a panic attack for years now, but thinking like he was thinking was tempting fate. He needed a new train of thought.

He rolled over on his mattress, felt it shift to cushion the new layout of his body. A smart mattress was just a little luxury, but probably one he’d be giving up if he went to prison. The last time he’d gone without that kind of amenity for any length of time was when he was seven years old. The escape pods on his father’s ship had been about the bare essentials, and Kyle had existed in the five-by-five foot space for ten days before his emergency beacon was located. By the time he’d been found the air in the pod had been redolent with the stench of vomit and urine, and he’d been unresponsive. He could remember his sister reaching for him, though, pulling him into her arms despite how filthy he’d been. Kyle’s memory had always been too sharp for his own good.

He shut his eyes, remembering. They’d been making a trip to Ceyla, his father at the helm, his mother and three of Kyle’s older siblings along for the ride. He was the youngest, the baby out of the eleven kids that Foster Alexander had fathered so far. His father had been larger than life, looming like a titan in Kyle’s young eyes. There was love there, but fierceness as well. Kyle hadn’t felt comfortable alone with his father, so he spent most of his time with his siblings. Ariana had only been two years older, and they’d played and done lessons together, his mother overseeing things with a distant gaze from where she sat on the couch and played with her tab.

Kyle remembered the alarms. Blaring sirens, flashing orange lights. His mother startling, dropping the tab to the ground. That had been odd to him—she never dropped things, was never less than utterly elegant. He remembered his father’s voice over the com: “Get the kids into the pods, Haven, now.” It was the last thing Kyle had ever heard his father say.

“Come on, you two.” His mother took his and Ariana’s hands and led them out of the central sitting room and down the hallway, past the bustling crewmen moving with a purpose that Kyle didn’t understand, all the way to the very end where six tiny pods waited, each with its own orange and yellow door. She’d opened one of them and pushed Ariana toward it. Ariana had balked.

“I want to stay with Kyle!” she’d insisted, taking his hand and pulling her along with him. He’d gone willingly, wanting to stay with her—and she wanted him to. Why should they be apart?

“They aren’t big enough for two of you,” his mother had replied. “It won’t be for long, Ari.” She’d leaned in and kissed his sister’s forehead, then forcibly separated their hands. Ariana had resisted, accidentally scratching Kyle’s wrist with her fingernails as they were pried apart. But she’d gone into the pod without more fuss, and a moment later it was Kyle’s turn.

“What about Bryn and Polla?” he’d asked as she’d settled him back, buckling him into the overlarge chair.

“They’re coming, Kyle, they’ll get into pods too.”

“And you and father?”

His mother’s smile had been tight. “Of course. We’ll all be together again soon. You just be brave and quiet and this will all be over soon.” She’d kissed his forehead too, stroked one hand over his cheek, then left the pod and shut the door. Kyle had been too stunned with the speed of it all to object, to cry, to do anything other than sit there, quiet and as brave as he thought he could be, as the pod was ejected from the ship. And then…

Nothing. For ten days. And he remembered it, he remembered every crawling minute of it, every awful fumble of his too-small fingers at the harness that restrained him until he finally just squirmed out of it, the work of hours. He remembered looking through the small porthole trying to see other pods, or the ship, or anything that looked familiar, but there’d been nothing. Nothing but the blackness of space.

Kyle had tried the rudimentary radio attached to the pod’s tiny control panel, but no one had responded. He had looked for directional controls but none existed for the tiny pod. He’d found the emergency store of food and the rudimentary toilet, and then he’d settled back in to wait. And wait. And wait.

He remembered being found, and too out of it to respond to his oldest sister’s gentle exhortations. Berengaria was one of the children from his father’s first marriage, and he’d never gotten to know her very well. But she’d smelled good, and her bright blonde hair was familiar, and Kyle had finally felt warm again once he was wrapped up in her arms. It had been hours before he felt ready to talk, but when he finally did he asked, “Ari?” Berengaria shook her head.

“Her pod doesn’t seem to have made it. There’s no sign of it in the wreckage of the ship, but there were no pings from her emergency beacon either.”

Wreckage? Kyle had wanted to ask, but that was when the tears caught up to him, the first time he’d cried since he’d been ejected into space. His oldest sister had held him and soothed him as best she could, but she wasn’t his mother, and she wasn’t Ari. She wasn’t important to him yet, and she couldn’t make him feel better about the horrible things. Not until later did that happen, and only briefly.

Kyle remembered everything, everything from about the age of three on, until he was eight years old and Berengaria lost custody of him to Raymond. Raymond was the oldest of the Alexander children, more than fifty years older than Kyle, and he hadn’t known much about Raymond other than his father had disliked him and Berengaria hated him. He could see the tears of frustration on Beregaria’s face, and hear the distress in her voice. He could hear his brother, projecting confidence like only a politician could. He remembered being swept up in strong arms that held him too tight, jerked away again from yet another sister and taken off with Raymond. And then…

Nothing. He had absolutely no memories from the next year and a half of his life, right up until he started boarding at the Academy prep school. It had taken years for Kyle to realize that that was wrong, that something had likely been deliberately done to him to wipe those memories from his mind. By the time he’d been able to do anything about it, he’d decided not to. He didn’t need memories from his childhood to know that Raymond was an absolute dick.

Kyle couldn’t have jumped onboard Admiral Liang’s covert operation faster. Research into his family’s deaths had been damning, not just about his parents’ but other siblings as well. The more he learned about Raymond Alexander, President of the Federation, the less he knew he could trust the man. Family was nothing to his brother, power was everything. Power and prestige. The chance to take that away from Ray was worth everything to Kyle, even his freedom. Even his life.

Although getting to keep those would obviously be way better.

The door chime dinged. Kyle sat up and turned to face it, curious. It wasn’t the right time for a meal, and he wasn’t supposed to see his counsel for another two days.

But there his head lawyer was, a grim expression on his face. Kyle felt his heart sink.

“Prison, then?”

“Redstone,” his lawyer confirmed. “Our injunctions were denied by the new judge, who incidentally was brought on just this week after Judge Carter succumbed to some very startling and unexpected allegations of misconduct.” He shook his head helplessly. “There’s nothing I can do to stop the move, Kyle. All I can do is push for a faster trial, which is going to make gathering the witnesses we need difficult. I’m sorry.”

Redstone. Not Caravan, which would have been bad but was at least in the Central System, which followed guidelines and had oversight for their prisons. Redstone was a maximum-security detention center in the middle of nowhere that held some of the worst offenders the Federation had ever taken alive.

“Also…your brother is here. He wants to meet with you.”

Fuck. And Kyle had thought that this day couldn’t get any worse.

The Academy Post #37

Notes:  Hey there darlins! So, while this is technically the last part of The Academy, please keep in mind that I’m going to be posting snippets from our boys’ break every so often, so you’ll still get to see plenty of them. Also, I…I did this thing. Where I wrote a plot bunny into the end of this fic to set up something else which, if you’re interested, could also be a story for you guys, because clearly I’m insane and need to be writing more of this. It’s just, arg, I keep writing people I find interesting and then abandoning them and now I see a way to reel them all back together, courtesy of our dear Admiral Liang, and why not? It could be epic. This damn thing is already epic, this is a 100k+ word novel now. I’m going to get it, and Love Letters, onto their own pages this week before starting Soothsayer, so you can read them in one long go instead of searching through tens of old posts to put it all together.

Also, Soothsayer’s format is going to be a little different, but we’ll talk about that when we get there. Probably next week, possibly the week after and next week will be a snippet from these guys, depending on…everything. Anyway, let me know if I should write the story I hint about at the end of this one!

Thank you so much for reading, everyone, I appreciate it and all of your comments and encouragement along the way. This story has been such a long, fun journey for me to write. Stick with me for Soothsayer, I promise it’ll be lots of fun, and again, you haven’t seen the last of our boys. I mean, I’ve left Ten and Cody frustrated…can’t be having that.

Title: The Academy

Part Thirty-Seven: Flying, Or Fleeing

***

The Academy’s regular school year finished up much like it had every other year that Sigurd Liang had been in command. The tests ended, results were announced and those cadets that had failed in certain subjects were pulled aside for additional work or, in the few cases where things had reached a tipping point, released from their service. There was a brief ceremony for those who were graduating, and official first assignments for the cadets whose records were good enough to get them onto a ship without needing additional training or education. There was the inevitable space port traffic jam as parents descended upon the Academy to retrieve their children for the break. There were a few press conferences, a few parties to attend, plenty of soothing and discrete directions to be done, and this year there was the very public send-off of the most troublesome quad in Hebe Tower to contend with as well.

Actually, that part went swimmingly. The diplomat in charge was Jason Kim, former Federation officer and currently the only human to hold dual citizenship with an alien race. Sigurd had first met Jason decades ago, when Jason was fresh from his own stay at the Academy. He’d come onto Sigurd’s ship as an ensign, and before the end of his tour they had become, if not friends, at least amicable colleagues. That bonhomie hadn’t diminished with the passage of time, and Sigurd appreciated the brief chance Jason’s competence gave him to relax.

“It’s good of you to take them,” he murmured as they stood to the side of Jason’s ship, the Ysenniarr, a Federation diplomatic cruiser retrofitted to be more acceptable for Perel. The four young people in question were darting back and forth between classmates, a few parents—Jonah had stuck around, although Garrett’s tenure had been necessarily brief—and their baggage, which Ten, of course, was fretting nonstop over.

“It’s fragile,” Ten exclaimed again, loud enough that they could have heard hir across the entire campus, much less the moderate-sized landing pad they were all crowded onto right now. “Do you not understand what that word means, should I use something with fewer syllables? If you dislodge any of my set-up, I will—what kind of idiot are you, that one is clearly meant to go the other way around, are you malfunctioning? Have your circuits gone soft?” It was a little bit amusing to listen to the cadet castigating a robot, but Sigurd carefully kept any semblance of a smile off his face and watched as Cody came to the rescue, distracting Ten while the rest of hir things were loaded onto the ship.

“It’s what Grennson needs,” Jason said neutrally, but Sigurd felt the unspoken rebuke lurking within those words. He had promised to take care of Grennson, and despite his efforts the cadet, and his quad mates, had come close to disaster their first year. “I’m sure by the end of their break, there will be better preparations by all of us for what lies ahead.”

“Assuredly,” Sigurd replied. With most people he would have left it there, to maintain some of his air of implacability, but with Jason he felt compelled, obligated even, to continue. “I may yet make mistakes, but I don’t make them twice. I have leverage to utilize.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Jason said, glancing at him. “Don’t worry, Grennson wouldn’t hear of not coming back next year. He and Darrell have become as close as any brothers, and the other two have been drawn in as well. I’ll make sure they’re taken care of.”

“Their parents will be pleased to hear that.”

“Those who have them,” Jason agreed. “I have the approved list of contacts for everyone but Tiennan. Is that an oversight, or deliberate?”

“Tiennan hasn’t spoken with hir parents in many years,” Sigurd said. “And hir guardian is currently unavailable, so the list is correct. As long as ze can get in touch with Cody’s parents in case of trouble, Ten will be all right.”

“I never would have thought Garrett Caractacus would become so domestic,” Jason mused with a little smile on his face.

“No one would have. One of the universe’s mysteries,” Sigurd said. “It looks like they’re finished with loading. I hate to rush you, but our port schedule is very finely tuned right now, and we can’t afford a delay.”

“I understand.” Jason turned and held his hand out to Sigurd, who shook it firmly. “Good luck, sir.”

“I think the one of us needing luck for the next few standard months is you,” Sigurd replied urbanely. “Have fun with the children.”

“I plan to.” Jason left him and headed back to his ship, where his husband greeted him with a Perel embrace. Cody was saying a lengthy goodbye to his father that Ten eventually interrupted so that ze could get a hug of hir own, and then Jason was ushering them all onto his ship. The door closed, and Sigurd stepped back into the safe zone so that the ship could take off.

He felt a presence at his back, but didn’t need to look to know who it was. “So, Master Sergeant, they’re all still in one piece.”

Jessup snorted quietly. “Not for lack of some folks trying, sir.”

“True. Yet they survived, thanks to the bonds they forged together.”

“Don’t forget the part you played in their making it through the year, sir,” Jessup said, but Sigurd shook his head.

“Nothing I did was noteworthy. The safety of my cadets is my responsibility, and whatever lengths I go to ensure that is nothing more than expected.”

“Beg to disagree, sir.”

Sigurd shrugged. “Regardless, I believe you now owe me some instruction in remedial field maneuvers, Master Sergeant.”

Jessup sighed. “Lane will kill me,” he muttered. “I promised her a beach vacation.”

“We can’t have your wife committing homicide on my best sergeant,” Sigurd said. “Take the additional vacation, but I expect you to give four hours every afternoon to cadet assessment via Hermes. Sound fair?”

“That’s…very generous, sir,” Jessup replied, the surprise clear in his voice. “Very generous of you.”

“I have my moments,” Sigurd murmured. And my motivations. “Leave today and you’ll be back in time for the hands-on work at the end of remedial term. Give your wife my best, Master Sergeant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The sound of the Ysenniarr departing covered his assistant’s retreat, and by the time the ship had vanished, Sigurd was alone. He shared a nod with Jonah Helms before turning and heading back to his office—they had already said everything that needed saying to each other. Back in his office, Sigurd set his official hat and jacket aside, then said, “Hermes, activate Mercury protocol.”

“Protocol active, Admiral.”

“Get me Hummingbird.”

“Initiating contact.” If Hummingbird was in a secure location, she would respond to his call; if not, she’d get back to him as soon as she could make things secure. Sigurd had a lot of operatives, but Hummingbird had always been a favorite. It was partially on her recommendation that he’d allowed Cody into the Academy in the first place, although she’d warned him that Cody would never make much of a spy. Well, she’d be happy to be proven right.

Thirty seconds passed, then a minute…two minutes…Sigurd was resigned to calling back when suddenly the connection came through. “Good evening, sir.”

“Hummingbird.” Sigurd smiled reflexively. Tamara Carson had come to the Academy from Pandora with one goal in mind, and she’s pursued it with such single-minded purpose ever since that Sigurd had to admire her. She was his best and most loyal protégé, and had no compunctions about officially “flunking” out of the Academy before unofficially joining his personal operation. Her father had been less pleased, but Captain Carson had other concerns out on Pandora that overshadowed his dismay. “I’m pleased you could make contact, I thought for sure they’d have you at some official dinner.”

“I’m the Alexander’s ‘charity hire’ sir, I don’t get invited to those parties,” she said dryly. “I get to work late in the legal office instead. I was going to call you tonight, actually. I have news about Fledgling.”

Sigurd’s heartbeat sped up a bit. “I was hoping you did. What did they decide?”

“The Powers That Be have decided to make an example of Fledgling, as a sign of their disapproval of his unauthorized independent action on their behalf.” The irony in her voice was so heavy Sigurd could practically hear it thud against the floor. “He’s to be imprisoned while awaiting trial. They’ve determined to deactivate most of his mods, and despite how opposing council is pushing things, the trial could be a long ways off. I think the Powers have decided that this might be just the opportunity they need to get Fledgling out of the way themselves. Pay off a few guards, turn off a few machines, and let the prison do its work on him.”

“Damn.” Sigurd shut his eyes for a moment, feeling the paper-thin lids scratch uncomfortably. He had been worried something like this might happen. “Which prison?”

“It’s been narrowed down to two. Either Caravan or Redstone.”

Caravan was Sigurd’s preference. He had contacts there, people he trusted to assist him despite the Alexander’s overwhelming influence. Redstone…that was another matter. That was truly dangerous. “Keep me up to date, Hummingbird. I need to know the moment a decision is made.” If it was Redstone, Sigurd would have to scramble. He’d need to expand his net, exert his influence, all while keeping his operation strictly under the radar. “Have you heard from Puffin?”

“No,” Tamara said with a sniff. “She’s too high and mighty to check in on a regular basis, apparently. Where do you get these posh operatives, sir? They need some serious attitude adjustments.”

“We must make do with what we have,” Sigurd replied, already composing a message in his head to Garrett Caractacus. If anyone had the contacts to do what Sigurd had in mind… “Thank you, Hummingbird. Stay safe.”

“Thank you, sir. Get some rest.”

“Connection ended,” Mercury reported a moment later.

Sigurd stared at the top of his desk, threads of timelines and schemes and people whirling across each other in his mind. Nothing disturbed him like pointless loss of life, especially given his own unfair advantage in that arena. If the trial went poorly, if Kyle went to the wrong prison, if if if…he would wind up dead. Sigurd couldn’t allow that to happen. He was going to have to reach way, way out, plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Thank heavens it was the Academy’s break. There was no way he would be able to organize his movements at this level of complication if Ten were still here threatening anarchy with every other experiment.

To work, then. “Mercury,” he said, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers. “Get me Symone St. Clair.”