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

Notes: OH NO PLOT! WHAT? IS THAT A CLIMACTIC CONFRONTATION I SEE COMING? I think it is ;)

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

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Chapter Twenty-One, Part Two

 

Photo by Cem Salini 

The moment seemed frozen, a chill spreading through the air and restricting everything, even the breath in their lungs.

Trapper. The man who’d been ready to shoot Carlisle out of the sky when they escaped from the compound. The man who Kieron had rammed with the skimmer, sending him flying and inevitably breaking bones. He sounded a bit wheezy even now, but there was a fierce satisfaction in his voice as well. And why not? They’d been careless, and now they were caught.

“Engage concealment protocols,” Elanus said, the first one to break the ice—of course. “Girls, hide those signals.” It was too late to deny their existence, but he seemed confident that at least they could keep things from getting worse. There was a deep hum, a flicker of Catie’s lights, and then…

“You think you can hide?”

“Comm power, please,” Elanus said smoothly. Catie’s walls rippled anxiously with changing colors, but she complied. “I actually feel quite confident in our ability to hide,” Elanus said into the void.

“And yet here you are, talking to me right now.”

“Isn’t that what you want?” Elanus asked lightly. “To talk? Hopefully to use whatever little piddling satellite capacity your people have to hone in on our position? Mm, sorry, I’m afraid we’ve already blocked that capability. We’re completely invisible to all your sensors right now.”

Was that true? Elanus was speaking like it was, but then he was the master of projecting confidence.

“I think the ability to talk is all you’ve got, in fact,” he continued. “Because if you actually saw us in any meaningful capacity, you’d be attacking us right now.”

“We don’t—”

“You do. Don’t even pretend you don’t, because you do. You’re opportunistic scavengers who would rather attack from the shadows in an effort to take out your prey than even attempt something like that head-on, and I don’t want to hear your justifications because, quite frankly, there are none.”

“You landed on our sovereign territory without permission, and you expect a parley?”

Elanus laughed, sounding as carefree as ever, but Kieron heard the coldness beneath the merry sound. “Sovereign territory? Any official charter for settling this planet was nullified the moment over ninety percent of the population died, and even then, the original charter was for thirty years, I believe, and without engaging the continuation clauses and paying the necessary fees, that original term ended almost twenty years ago.”

There was a long pause, and then—“You think you’re pretty fucking smart, don’t you? But we’re the ones who saw your ship arrive, we’re the ones who were just waiting for you to slip up and broadcast to them, and we’re the ones who have enough mobile weaponry to atomize any attempt you make to get supplies from up there down here. Our satellites might not be perfect, but they’re more than enough to track any drops. Judging from the ship we shot up earlier—” Elanus’s hands tightened into fists “—you don’t have the offensive capabilities to survive a fight for them, either.”

“Do you have the speed for it, though?” Elanus shot back the second Trapper stopped speaking. “Your ships rely on conventional fuels that are undoubtedly in limited quantity, unless you’ve set up some sort of hidden refinery or specialized algeic growth tanks, which I sincerely doubt as that would require the capacity to be a decent resources manager. Even if you do track a drop, you’d have to beat us there, and you don’t even know where we are.”

“We know where—”

“Knowing we’re on the same continent as you doesn’t count,” Elanus interrupted briskly. “That’s a given, but I repeat, if you had the slightest idea where we were right now, you’d already be attacking us because you feel confident in your ability to take out our ship. You’re not, so you don’t. Frankly, I doubt you’d get within a hundred miles of a drop point before we were able to swoop in and vanish again.”

That was a blatant fabrication—once they got to the drop, which was going to be heavier than Catie’s entire frame, the retrofit would have to happen on site. Kieron marveled at his fiancé’s ability to bullshit through the most fraught situations. Had he done this before?

Something niggled at the back of Kieron’s mind…Elanus in an argument with another man, drawing him out, killing him through his own hubris…then it was gone.

Fucking memory loss.

“So, nice try, but I think we’re going to have to pass on your attempts at intimidation for now, thanks so much. Don’t worry, we’ll see ourselves out.” Elanus waited for Catie to shut down the com, then said, “Okay, we’ll have to change the drop plans, break up the pieces into smaller packages that can be retrieved the way I indicated, but it shouldn’t extend our stay by more than a week or so, and—”

“Now, hang on.” Trapper was back. “It’s clear you’re not a man to take lightly, so let’s be reasonable about this.”

Oh, now they want to be reasonable.

“There’s no need for us to get violent with each other,” he went on. “You made a mistake in coming here, but we made a mistake in attacking without due cause. Let’s call that even. What about a trade, instead? You share your ship’s cloaking technology with us, and we’ll give you something precious in return.”

“You don’t have anything we want,” Elanus scoffed, but that cold feeling was starting to creep over Kieron again.

He held up a hand even as Trapper said, “Are you sure about that? Because the man of yours we captured, he sure bled a lot while he was running around over here. We did a few tests on what he left behind, and would you believe, he’s got a relative living among us?” Trapper’s voice deepened. “A mother, nonetheless. One of our little lost boys found his way home after all these years.”

Kieron shook his head at Elanus, who was looking at him wide concern in his eyes. “She’s dead,” he muttered. “She…” She has to be dead.

“Say hello, Carlisle.” There was a moment of silence, then a short scream and a curse. “She’s missing an eye,” Trapper went on, “and half the bones in her right arm are broken, but it’s her. Check your visual feed if you don’t believe me.”

Elanus pulled it up, and a projection appeared in the middle of the hold. It was Trapper in an old-fashioned chest stabilizer standing beside a bloodied woman who looked absolutely filthy from mud and gravel. She glared ahead with her one good eye. “Don’t you dare,” she snarled. “Don’t you dare come for me.”

“You can listen to her if you want,” Trapper added, “but if you don’t come for her, boy, I’ll make sure her last days of life are an agony you can’t even imagine.” He grinned sharply. “I’ll give you an hour to think it over.”

The image vanished, and a suffocating silence fell over them all once more.

She’s alive. My mother is alive.

For now.