Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Twenty, Part Two

 Notes: Family, huh? Gotta love 'em.

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

***

Chapter Twenty, Part Two

 

Photo by SpaceX, those fuckers. 

 

We’re on the way to Hadrian’s Colony.

They were…they…had…what? Kieron wasn’t the only one struggling with this, at least; Elanus was spluttering, his hands gesticulating in silence as his mouth tried to catch up.

“Who is ‘we’?” Kieron asked before Elanus could quite get himself together.

“Me, Ryu, Xilinn, and Pol.”

“You brought Pol?” Elanus exclaimed, finding his voice at last. “I’m sorry, did I just hear you say that you brought a six-year-old boy into a—”

“I’m seven now,” they heard him call out over Lizzie’s mic.

“Seven, oh, that’s so much better, bringing a seven-year-old child to a planet that not only has the worst weather I’ve heard of since Pandora, it also has a population that consists entirely of murderous monsters, from the huge reptilians to the enormous tunnelers to the frankly idiotic contingent of mercenaries with a daddy complex, and don’t even get me started on the—”

“We’re already on the way,” Xilinn cut in, her voice smooth and pleasant and unyielding. “We’ve been coming your way for almost three days, and with the help of some excellent flight path planning and a rocket booster, we’ve been able to shave a lot of time off our estimated arrival. We should arrive above planet by the end of the week. We will not, of course, be going down onto Hadrian’s Colony, but we can do a lot more for you here than we could just listening to you over the com back on Gania.”

Kieron swallowed the knot in his throat. “Xilinn,” he said, full of guilt, “you two were safe on Gania. Not to mention, you could be called in for an immigration hearing at any time; if you and Pol aren’t there for it, you could have your status as a refugee taken away.”

“Then it’s taken away,” she said simply. “That’s preferable to losing our status because our sponsor died in the middle of deep space when we could have helped save his life. Not to mention all the terrible things that have happened to you since arriving on that planet. Lizzie played back her conversation with you and those brutes who kidnapped you.”

Her voice softened. “You’re so strong and resourceful, and I was confident that you’d be all right in the end, but it sounds like this whole journey has been more of a trial than you thought it would be. We’re your family, though, honey. You know? Zak would have given his right arm for you at a moment’s notice, and I know you’d have done the same for him. If we can do something to give you better odds without hurting ourselves, then why wouldn’t we? Even more, how could we live with ourselves if we didn’t?”

“Excuse me,” Elanus said, finally regaining his voice as he steepled his fingers in front of his chin, “did you say Lizzie is wearing a rocket booster?”

“It’s a refit of the I-9.2 you built for the Alliance military cruisers,” a new voice said. Ryu. The supposed adult in the room, the native Ganian who was supposed to be looking after their house and extended family right now instead of flying them all to the middle of nowhere for no good reason.

“It had better be massively refitted, given the amount of power you can generate with one of those,” Elanus replied, his eyes hazy as he used his implant for calculations. “We’re talking about moving ships that are over a million tons compared to Lizzie’s delicate little six, and out of atmospheres far thicker than Gania’s—”

“Not every atmosphere they’re used for is thicker than Gania’s, don’t pretend that you didn’t build in half a dozen redundancies when it comes to modifications for that, and that’s the standard version, we’re dealing with 9.2—”

“Don’t talk to me about my own inventions like you know them like I do, you don’t, and Lizzie is less than a tenth of a percent the same weight as—”

“Do you trust Lizzie’s ability to evaluate her own components or not? And thanks for asking how it’s working, she’s doing great, we’re literally surfing some of these grav waves instead of being pulled into the fields, and—”

“I’ve got an extra one for Catie,” Lizzie said, and the arguing died immediately. “I’m fit with two, but we only used one of them to take off, Elanus. The other one has a full payload and is already retrofit for me, and I’m sure you can modify it for Catie once we get it down to you. You won’t have to go on raids.”

Elanus was quiet for a moment as he took it all in. “Lizzie, how did you know what I was going to want?”

“I extrapolated based on past data, other instances of successful enhancements for similar problems, and on my own knowledge of you,” she replied. “I think our biggest challenge is going to be ensuring that the rocket lands as close to you as possible; we want to protect your location for as long as we can.”

“My siiister is so smaaart,” Catie said, as pleased as if she’d come up with the solution herself. “Bobby, wait untiiil you meet Liiiizzie, you’re going to looove her.”

“Bobby?” Ryu asked. “Who’s Bobby?”

“A new bot, a lot smaller than the girls, don’t worry about it,” Elanus said, his mind clearly already running in a new direction. “You say you’re going to be here in seven standard days?”

“Approximately,” Lizzie said. “It depends on how we handle the Frigian Belt, but I think so.”

“All right. I want you girls to work together to extrapolate the best possible landing zone for the package when you get here—all we need is for it to be within, oh, a hundred miles of us, Catie?”

“Closer is better,” she said. “Especially if we get freeeeezing rain or iiice, Daddeee. My solar cells aren’t fully charrrged yet, and I’ve been faaabricating more insulation to help retaiiiin heat, but—”

The conversation became technical enough that Kieron couldn’t follow it easily anymore. He was really only sure of two things: one, almost everyone he cared about—and one person he could be persuaded on—were coming to Hadrian’s Colony; and two, that he was worried about that but couldn’t do anything about it at this point. Ryu and Xilinn were right. They were already on the way, and they weren’t going to turn back because they loved them. Loved him.

God, Zak. He thought of his best friend, his easy nature and fierce affection. You’d hate that I pulled everyone into my mess, but you’d be there digging me out of it with them anyway.

They were coming to the Colony. Fine—as long as they stayed in space. There were already too many of them stranded on this awful place. He couldn’t wait to be gone from here for good, and he’d be able to leave without regrets.

Well…with one regret, one massive black hole of a regret, but his mother had made her choice.

I hope she was proud of it in the end.

I wish she’d been proud of me.