Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Fourteen

 Notes: We're back! And maybe moving in a positive direction, for once. For now ;)

 Title: Lord of Unkindness, Chapter Fourteen

***

Chapter Fourteen

 

The feeling Ciro gets when he sees Angelo pull up in a plain black pickup sedan that’s seen better days is like when the sensation of being drunk hits you all at once. One second you’re wondering when your buzz is finally going to kick in, and the next you’re swimming in a slightly dizzy sea of pleasure. At least, that’s what drinking does to Ciro, not that he has in a long time. He pushes to his feet when Angelo gets out of the car and sighs with relief when his little bird comes to rest on his shoulder. It’s not enough magic to bring life back into all his limbs, but it warms him up a bit.

“Ciro…” Angelo reaches for him but Ciro shrinks back into the darkness, making Angelo follow him farther down the alley.

“Are you sure you weren’t followed?” he asks as Angelo glares half-heartedly at him.

“Absolutely sure. Are you all right? You look—”

“You need to be positive.”

Angelo looks at him and raises his hands. Golden light dances around them, spreading out like a bubble until they’re encased in its warm glow. It finally dissipates into thousands of sparkling twinkles, leaving Ciro dazzled and dazed in equal measure. “Those will disperse any magical detection that could possibly have followed me,” he says. “I did the spell three times on my way to you. There are no familiars within half a mile, and the only ones I can sense beyond that are a gibbon and two cats. Now come here, damn it.”

Ciro takes one tentative step forward, then another. He reaches out and the second their fingertips touch the drunk feeling is back, only now it’s positively euphoric. He’s too tired to fight the allure of Angelo’s magic, too drained not to let on how much he wants this. He’s too exhausted for anything except joy that Angelo is here, with him, holding him right now. For the first time in months, Ciro lets his defenses down and lays his head on Angelo’s shoulder. It’s a bit of a stretch, he’s got four inches on the shorter man, but Angelo just hums and pulls him in tighter.

“You’re okay,” Angelo murmurs, and Ciro isn’t sure which of them he’s reassuring. The strength with which he holds Ciro is almost enough to bruise. “Thank the gods you’re okay. When I heard what happened at your apartment I wanted to go back in time and beat myself for letting you leave me.”

“Didn’ give you a choi’,” Ciro slurs, his fatigue a fuzzy blanket over his senses.

“And now it’s time for me to turn the tables. I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”

Ciro wants to believe him. He desperately wants to believe that safety still exists, but after six months of exhausting work only to be discovered and hunted down by his family’s fixer, he just can’t muster that level of faith. He’s empty—of magic, of faith, of family, of friends. He’s got nothing left except a tiny bird and the man holding onto him, and Ciro knows the kind thing to do would be to let Angelo go.

He flinches as his bird pecks his forehead—hard. “Ow.”

“You deserve it for whatever you’re thinking,” Angelo says, but there’s no heat in his voice. There is warmth, though; warmth everywhere, all around them, cocooning them together. It almost feels like being back in bed together, and Ciro tries to say as much.

“It is, but we got to lie down whenever we were in bed together.” Angelo kisses the side of his head. “I feel like lying down would be good for you right now. You need rest, sweetheart. Rest and magic.”

It hurts to pry his head off Angelo’s shoulder, but Ciro does it because this is important. “They’ll find my magic if we stay in the city,” he insists. “They’ll find it, then they’ll find me. I can’t hide well enough from my own family, they—”

“All right, all right,” Angelo soothes. “We’ll leave your magic out of it. For now. But we’re past the point where acupuncture is going to do much for you, and you desperately need healing. Your nerves are screaming and you can’t even hear it, Ciro.”

Well, that’s not a pleasant metaphor. “How?” he asks, because it’s all well and good to put on a strong front but Ciro is so fucking tired, and Angelo is so caring and concerned, and he’s just so tired of turning care away. It was hard to leave him the last time; he’s not sure he could even muster the energy to take a single step backward right now.

“I’ve got a place we can go, okay? It’s protected, way better than a goddamn battery factory. I’ll shield us on the way there, and then we can take some time to figure things out for you, okay?”

That sounded good, except… “Too much for you.” Angelo seems like a never-ending font of magical energy, but no one can keep this sort of pace up forever. “You’ll exhaust yourself.”

Angelo winds his fingers into Ciro’s hair and tilts his head just enough so he can kiss his forehead. “It’s not new magic,” he promises. “This is somewhere I set up a long time ago for healing. You’re not the only one who’s needed extra help along the way, so there’s no need for you to feel any sort of guilt whatsoever.”

He would love for that to be true, but… “The clin’c?”

“Maria’s handling it. And before you ask, no, she doesn’t know where this place is but she can get in touch with me if anything goes wrong.” He kisses him again. “No one is being inconvenienced. No one is being bothered. Dig up your inner rich boy and lean into it for once, all right? You do, in fact, deserve nice things.”

Ciro chuckles and gives up. He gives up and gives in, and when he pulls back to look at Angelo he can tell the moment Angelo realizes it. The other man’s face lights up with a brilliant smile, and his eyes shine with relief. “Okay,” Ciro says. “I’ll go with you.”

“That’s my boy.” He kisses Ciro right beside his ear, which gives Ciro a convenient excuse for the shudder that works its way down his spine that has nothing to do with the touch, and everything to do with the words. “Come on, into the car. Let’s get this show on the road.” Angelo helps Ciro in, going so far as to recline his chair and fasten the seatbelt for him. Ciro loathes being managed, babied, but it’s different when Angelo does it. It’s not like his father, taking a responsibility away from him because he doesn’t trust Ciro to handle it. It’s not like with Nephele, trying to do things for him to lock him in close to her and make him dependent. Angelo’s just doing it because he wants to be nice to Ciro.

He’d thank him, but once his head is down it’s all Ciro can do to keep his eyes open. The hum of the car starting is the final straw; he goes from watching the blurry landscape go by to waking up when the hum abruptly stops. He opens his eyes, painfully; the lids scrape like knives, and his throat is dry enough that he immediately starts coughing.

A water bottle appears in front of him. “Drink, babe,” Angelo encourages, then gets out of the car. Ciro drains half the bottle and pours a little over his eyes as a stopgap measure to making his own moisture again. His bird, now sitting on the dash, squawks at him judgmentally.

“I’m doing my best,” Ciro mutters. The look in the tiny raven’s eyes indicates that it’s really not at all sure of that. “Thanks a lot.” He drinks the rest of the water, then slowly unbuckles himself and gets out of the car. The sedan is parked in front of a small, abandoned-looking building that reads Church of—oh. Um. Wait, what?

He stares at Angelo, who’s pulling bags out of the trunk. “You’re a scientologist?”

Angelo laughs. “No, the sign’s just to keep people from going in. Although we are close to Gilman Hot Springs, but just because I wanted access to the water, not because I want anything to do with the people. You can enter, though, I already unlocked the door.”

Ciro walks dubiously over to the ramshackle building. He turns the handle, opens the door, steps inside…

And blinks. And blinks again.

What the…

Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Seven, Part Two

 Notes: Did I freak you out last time? I'm sorry! (kinda sorta not really, lol) Have some calculated Kieron to make up for it.

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

***

Chapter Seven, Part Two

 

Kieron dropped to his belly to remove his silhouette and reduce his thermal halo as much as possible.  [Is Catie okay?] he pushed over his implant.

No reply.

[Elanus? Catie? Come in.]

Nothing. Not even static. It took far too long for Kieron to push through the fog that had overtaken his mind and realize that the implant wasn’t working. The only reason for it not to be working was if the transmitter responsible for sending their messages to each other was damaged, which meant Catie was damaged. It meant that whoever their assailant in the dark was, they’d managed to damage an important piece of Catie’s hardware.

They hurt his little girl. They shot his daughter.

All the fear and uncertainty in Kieron’s body seemed to melt away, turning heart-pounding adrenaline into laser focus. He hadn’t been a soldier for years, but no one born to fight like he was ever truly forgot their lessons. When Blobby stirred beside him, Kieron reached out and tapped on his back in Morse code: Get in the pack. Look simple.

Thank goodness Elanus had programmed Blobby to recognize all sorts of different coding languages, even ancient human ones. He tapped back Yes. Then action--what?

No action. Stay hidden.

Help—no?

No help. The last thing Kieron wanted was for Blobby to get hurt on top of this disaster with Catie. He waited for the little bot to crawl into the backpack and seal himself in, then began to army crawl forward. He turned his EV suit’s personal sensors up as far as they could go, filtering every sight and sound into the screen and telling Kieron as best it could with its limited ability what he was heading into.

Native flora—B69.26, 26.8% of visual range. Native flora—M34.11, 19.4% of visual range. Native—

Storm system accounts for 78.55% of soundwaves within 3 meters, carrier accounts for 19.25% of soundwaves within 3 meters, 2.2% variability in—

And on and on, until Kieron was sweating bullets inside his suit, but he didn’t stop, and he didn’t stand up. Patience would pay off in the long run, and the closer he got to the creche and their landing zone, the more danger he’d be in. Closer…closer…

Humanoid form within visual range.

Kieron immediately halted. He didn’t see anything with his own eyes, didn’t hear anything either, but with the rain falling so loud that wasn’t surprising. He held perfectly still, and a second later a long, black-clad body materialized out of the mist. It carried a pulse rifle of some kind close to its chest, and the way it held itself made Kieron think it was speaking. He transferred as much internal power as he could to augment the microphones in the headpiece, and a second later he heard—

“—don’t see it. I think you mistook a lightning flash for a heat signature.” Kieron couldn’t hear the reply, but luckily the man was more than happy to go on. “I’m telling you, I’ve been walking all around this place for the past half an hour and I haven’t seen shit, not even a croc. This is a waste of feckin’ time, I’m heading back.”

The rain must be cold enough to help hide Kieron’s body heat from their headsets. He’d been stopped for about a minute now, so it wasn’t surprising he was invisible. Well, not that invisible—if this guy took a few more steps forward he’d bump right into Kieron.

That would be nice. Save him the trouble of running the guy down.

When the man turned in the opposite direction, taking one hand off his gun as he got ready to amble back the way he came, Kieron hopped as lightly as he could to his feet. He closed the distance between them in three long strides, reached one arm around the man’s neck, and jerked it toward him even as he slammed a foot into the back of his knee. A second later he had his target twisted so that a drop of just three more inches would break his neck.

Don’t, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Elanus shouted in Kieron’s head. Don’t kill him! Killing as a first option is how we got into this mess!

Moreno had deserved to be decapitated…but this man might not deserve to die. Kieron switched his break to a chokehold and applied it with extreme prejudice, and twenty seconds later the man was out cold.

Kieron laid him on the ground, took the pulse rifle from around his neck, and inspected it in the dim light. The weapon had to be twenty years old—in fact, it might even be from the same batch of pulse rifles his grandfather had commissioned for the colony a year before everything went bad. The power pack was at half-charge, but the good news was there was no safety on the trigger mechanism. It would fire for whoever held it, two-part security measures not required. Perfect. Kieron picked it up, and as almost an afterthought pulled off the man’s helmet—a cheap, low-end piece that didn’t even give the wearer full head protection—and held it up to his own suit.

“We’re waiting, Doubles,” the voice on the other end of the com said irritably. “Get back here so we can go after the ship already. Boss is pretty confident she can track them as long as we get our hustle on.”

Oh, decisions, decisions…did he approach their ship and bluff his way close, or draw them out to him? Kieron checked his silhouette against the man, “Doubles” apparently, and decided they were too different for him to get close enough to do real damage. Besides, he only had a half-charged pulse rifle, no grenades.

Note to self—always keep grenades on hand.

Drawing them out it was.

“Your man ran into a bit of trouble,” Kieron said. He was distantly surprised by how gravelly his voice sounded. How long had it been since he’d drunk something? Eh, didn’t matter.

There was silence over the com for a moment before a new voice said, “Who the hell are you?” It was a woman’s voice, low and elegant, with an air of command.

Kieron smiled. “Are you the boss?”

“Tell me who you are before I blow you to pieces.”

“Are you that eager to kill your guy? Doubles, is it?”

“Boss, we can’t—” A scuffle on the other end erupted, and a few seconds later the woman came back on.

“Sounds like he got himself into a situation, but I don’t leave my men behind. Forget who you are; what do you want?”

“To talk.”

The woman hummed understandingly. “You’re crew from the ship we fired on, I take it?” Kieron didn’t speak. “That was a regrettable action, but completely understandable from our perspective. We don’t take kindly to trespassers.”

“The owner of this planet is dead,” Kieron pointed out. “And I’m not negotiating with the people who shot at my ship without bothering to ask questions. I’ll meet with you inside the main building of the creche, and I’ll bring your man. You meet me there alone, no second, no snipers. We’ll talk.”

“Done.”

Kieron dropped the helmet back on the ground and raised his eyes. The creche was close, he could enter from the back. The other ship had to be fairly distant; he might get there first.

He’d need to if he was going to avoid be murdered in the next half-hour.

No Lord today...

 Because I've been sick and tired and gross while looking after my equally-gross family of late (I think it's some kind of cold? We tested negative for the Big C but DAMN this is hanging in there). It's put a damper on my energy and free time, but I hope to be back up and running next week.

Allow me to pay a cat tax via my coworker Ronaldo in apology. As you see, he's also low-energy today. Or maybe it's just because he's a cat.

Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Seven, Part One

 Notes: Ooooh, time for some ACTION! Poor Catie, that's all I have to say.

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

***

Chapter Seven, Part One

 

The sensors Elanus and Catie provided were rudimentary, capable of transmitting environmental data from up to half a mile in diameter from them that Catie could then synthesize and interpret. With Lizzie actively working on assessing weather patterns from space, the idea was that these monitors could help the girls begin to identify when conditions on the ground and conditions in the air created a window of opportunity to leave. Catie’s energy stores weren’t fully recovered, and without changing over her solar radiation absorption to thermal, they weren’t likely to be anytime soon—the clouds were just too thick, the rain too persistent.

They had one shot to get off this planet safely. Kieron wasn’t going to waste it.

That didn’t mean Elanus had to like the plan.

“We can have Blobby set the sensors,” he grumbled from where he was stuffing the last of them into the backpack Kieron would be carrying over his EV suit.

“Blobby doesn’t even have a steady gait yet, much less the ability to assess the terrain and potentially handle reptilians on his own,” Kieron replied as he stepped into the legs of his suit and began to zip it up. His thin, one-piece undergarment was still slightly damp from the last time he’d been out, and the clammy feel of it on his groin made him want to shudder, but he controlled it. The EV suit would warm him up and dry him out soon enough.

“He’s got to get better somehow.”

“Yes he does,” Kieron agreed. “With adequate supervision and oversight. We want to build up Blobby’s confidence, after all, not tear it down. He’ll be more successful if I’m out there with him, and this way neither of us will be alone.”

Elanus sighed and leaned his head back against the wall. “I don’t like it.”

Kieron took in the dark circles under Elanus’s eyes and the way his cheekbones had sharpened over the past few weeks. Being confined on a ship as small as Catie was hard for someone so active, and his injury was uncomfortable enough to keep him awake for much of the night. He was exhausted, he wasn’t eating well, and they couldn’t heal him quickly with the autodoc due to the power issues.

This is why we have to go. We can’t hang around and wait for things to fall into place; we have to make it work. Kieron knelt down in front of Elanus and put one hand on his chest. The other he placed on his lover’s cheek, skimming his thumb over the prickles of Elanus’s beard. “It’s going to be all right,” Kieron told him. “I won’t be alone, and you and Catie will be in contact with us the whole time. And once we’re in space again, we can go wherever you want to recuperate.”

Elanus opened one eye. “Anywhere?”

“Anywhere?”

“Yes.”

“Including Galena?”

Kieron rolled his eyes, but he smiled anyway. “Including a planet dedicated to nothing but spa services and pleasure, yes.”

“Medical breakthroughs too,” Elanus reminded him. “We’re partnering with Galenian scientists on reversing some of the effects of Elfshot Disease in Regen-resistant individuals, the results have been pretty promising so far. We could call it a work trip. I could write it off on my taxes.”

“Taxes?” Kieron raised his eyebrows. “What are those?”

“Oh, haha.” Kieron didn’t blink. “Stop it, you know what taxes are.”

“Kind of? I mean, I’ve never had to pay any, so…”

Elanus looked downright scandalized. “You’re a fully-fledged adult! How can you not have paid taxes over the course of your life?”

“Who would I have paid them to?” Kieron asked, then leaned in a kissed Elanus on the tip of the nose.

“The place you lived in, of course! Not here, you were still a minor, but surely on Trakta—”

“I was a refugee on Trakta,” Kieron reminded him as he stood up and pulled the suit up over his shoulders. “They don’t let refugees have permanent status there, so everything we had was from the government. Basically, they paid to maintain me, not the other way around.”

“Cloverleaf Station, then. The government running it—”

“It was classified as a hardship outpost,” Kieron said with a smirk. He didn’t often scandalize Elanus, this was kind of fun. “There were no taxes associated with my pay because of it. Seemed like a small perk at the time, but I guess I should have appreciated it more.”

Elanus stuttered but managed to blurt out, “Gania then! Chelen City levels municipal taxes against every inhabitant, no matter what their resident status is.”

“If they have a job,” Kieron agreed. “Which I didn’t, because I was on medical probation thanks to my history here on the Colony. So my taxes were deferred to my sponsor, who is—”

“Me.” Elanus’s eyes were wide. “I can’t fucking believe it. You’ve never paid taxes. That’s unreal. I’ve been paying taxes since I started my first business, I was eleven, and you’ve never paid taxes in your whole life.”

“Well, cheer up. Soon we’ll be married and then I’ll start paying taxes,” Kieron said cheerfully as he shouldered the backpack full of sensors, then held out a hand to Blobby. The little bot was on four legs this time, but made a fifth tendril to wrap around Kieron’s hand.

“Joint taxes aren’t the same thing!” Elanus protested, but he was laughing as Kieron and Blobby jumped down from Catie’s door.

“Life signs?” Kieron asked.

“Nnnone that I cannn detect,” Catie said. “The sensorrrs will help me keep you safe once you’re beyooond my normal rrrange.”

“Sounds good. Let me know when I’m far enough to place the first one.”

“I wiiill.”

Kieron looked down at Blobby, who created two eye-like bulges and looked back up at him. “Ready to go, little guy?” Blobby danced back and forth on his legs for a moment. “Great, let’s go.”

It was raining—of course it was raining—and cold enough that Kieron’s breath steamed in the air despite the ambient temperature being above freezing. They were fairly close to a geothermic feature that kept the ground warm, while the rain was one step above sleet. It was uncomfortable, but Kieron was still grateful to be out doing something and stretching his legs. A fresh surge of compassion for his fiancé welled up.

Anything he wants, he promised to himself as he and Blobby rounded the creche building and started making their way through the low scrub brush speckled here and there with tall, spiky-leaved plants in shades of gray and green. If I have to sit through an entire Galenian opera, I will. Just one, though. Those things could go on for days.

They made it about a kilometer before Catie said, “This is a good spooot, Kierrron.”

“Got it.” He awkwardly reached around to the backpack, pulled the near edge open, and got a sensor out. It was a nubby little black device made from the same alloy as Blobby, and it glistened even in the faint sunlight. Kieron collapsed the button on top that would permanently activate it, then set it on the ground. “Are you reading that?”

“One momennnt…” It took about a minute for Catie to come back with, “Yesss, I am now. Go southeast forrr the next one.”

“Will do.” There was no polar north on Hadrian’s Colony, but there were standards that could be used to transpose cardinal directions on novel environments. Kieron got his bearing, then headed out, Blobby bumping along beside him. The little bot didn’t seem as bothered by the terrain today. “You’re doing a good job of keeping your feet beneath up,” Kieron said to him, and Blobby’s tendril warmed for a moment in his grasp. Was that the bot’s equivalent of a blush, or a hug?

They laid two more sensors over the next hour and a half before finally deciding to call it quits. The rain was getting worse and the temperature was dropping rapidly. Puddles were turning icy, and Blobby was starting to slip more and more. “We’re heading in,” Kieron said.

“Good,” Elanus said. “These readings are a good start, but we might have to replace that first sensor. I’m getting some strange feedback from it.”

Kieron frowned. “Strange how?”

“Strange as in they don’t match any of the environmental readings we’ve taken so far, but they’re not concurrent with reptilian life signs either. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that it was a…”

“Was what?” Kieron prodded when Elanus went silent. “Was what?”

“Daddeee?” Catie said, her voice going high-pitched. “It’s charging!”

“Up, baby, get us up, now!”

“What’s happening?” Kieron demanded, breaking into a run as he towed Blobby along. “What—”

Fire erupted in the distance, marked with concussive sounds that could only be manmade. A second later a dark shape rose into the air, punctured here and there with bursts of flame. It took Kieron a second to realize that the shape was Catie, getting off the ground with a terrible whine of her overstrained engines.

Catie and Elanus were being shot at.

“Kieron, where are you?” Elanus demanded.

“Don’t worry about me, go!” he shouted. “Get to safety!”

“We won’t leave you here alone!”

“Get Catie out of here!” She was screaming in fright—not pain, thankfully, she didn’t the receptors for that, but it had to be scary to feel her hull being battered so violently. “Go!”

“Fuck,” Elanus bit out, but then Catie was moving, slowly at first but gaining speed. A few more shots hit her as she sailed over Kieron’s head, but then she was lost to the storm.

Kieron could only hope that whoever had been firing on Catie didn’t turn their guns on him next.