Notes: Enjoy some family bonding time!

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

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Chapter Twenty, Part One

Photo by Felix Mittermeier 

“All right.” Kieron watched the next morning as Elanusleaned on Catie’s front console like a general surveying the field of battle. “Let’sgo through the facts. Carlisle told you that they got ships out during lulls inthe weather, correct?”

“Right,” Kieron said.

“And yet according to my calculations, Catie’s calculations,and Lizzie’s weather data, we’re not going to be getting any significant lullsfor the next month and a half. Is that right?”

“Yep.”

“Yesss.”

There was a pause. The more it grew, the more uneasy Kieronbecame. He knew there was lag time for communications with Lizzie thanks to thesheer distance between them, not to mention the awful weather, but this waspushing it. Elanus waited a few more seconds, then said, “Lizzie? You with us?”

“Sorry!” Her response sounded almost a bit surprised. “I wasdistracted. However, you’re correct, Elanus. You experienced the closest thingto a lull two days ago. The weather should continue to deteriorate for the nextten days, to the point where it will actively slow down my transmissions.”

Kieron frowned. “Are we getting a freeze?” He onlyremembered seeing icy rain once on the Colony, but it had been accompanied bywind so fierce that the falling crystals were turned into miniature spears.Even the general had postponed outdoor activities until the worst of the stormpassed.

“I don’t know if it will freeze or not, Kee, but the windwill pick up, and the rain should increase. You might see some changes in barometricpressure that could lead to a tornado system as well.”

Elanus rolled his eyes. “Tornadoes. Of course. Wonderful.Every time I think I have a handle on the problems this place is going to throwat us, it comes up with something even worse than before. Tornadoes. Lovely.”

“I don’t ever remember a tornado,” Kieron offered.

“You might not have been told.”

“Our trainers didn’t believe in hiding bad news from us.”

“Your trainers…your fucking parents might have beensmart enough to realize that spreading word of a natural phenomenon capable ofripping apart your home would only create panic that there was no good answerfor.”

That was possible. Kieron didn’t really think it was likely,but he shrugged and let Elanus get them back on track. “All right, so we’re notgoing to fly our way out of here any time soon, not without finding some way ofsignificantly boosting Catie’s engine power.” He frowned. “I thought I was soclever doing everything on you with renewable resources, baby, but there’ssomething to be said for good, old-fashioned rocket fuel too. We’d get a lotmore bang for our buck if I had the right tools for tinkering with your engineand a decent high-octane propellant.”

“I don’t wannnt you to tinnnker with my engine,” Catiepouted. “I liiike it just the way it iiis.”

“You have a beautiful engine, Catie,” Kieron reassured her,stroking Bobby’s back where the little bot was perched in his lap.

“I was just thinking out loud, it wasn’t a real plausiblepossibility,” Elanus said. “We can’t retrofit you to that extent here, and I’dnever do it without your permission. But if we could make some sort of attachedrocket that could heighten our acceleration—”

“Without killing us,” Kieron added.

“Right, G-forces, I haven’t forgotten them but let me finishmy thought, if we could heighten our acceleration enough to work withthe storms and use them to propel us up and out of the atmosphere, wecould conceivably reach escape velocity in under five minutes of flying.”

Kieron shook his head. “We’d need real-time telemetry datafrom Lizzie, and she can’t give us that without being here herself. It’s nothappening.”

“She and Catie can come up with predictive models that takethe lag time of the satellites into account!”

“We don’t have the parts to build a rocket like that!”

“We might be able to get them with a few raids.”

Aaand here it was. “Elanus, really?”

Elanus spread his hands. “What? Do you just expect me to sithere for the next umpteen weeks doing nothing but twiddling my fingers while werisk being found by the murderous assholes who raised you when we could bebuilding a rocket to get ourselves out of here?”

“Yes!” Kieron said, not quite at shouting volume but close. “That’swhat I expect, because it’s better than risking the health and safety of our familyto wait a little bit instead of raiding a bunch of heavily armed mercenarieswith a big grudge against me for parts that we can live without right now. Notto mention you’re basing our chances for escaping the atmosphere on unfoundedspeculation instead of actual data.”

“Early mathematical models indicate that I’m right!”

“You’re going to have to do better than ‘early mathematicalmodels’ to get my buy-in for risking our children in a ridiculous escapeattempt that—” Kieron quieted down suddenly when he realized Bobby was shaking.“Oh Bobby, what’s wrong?” He got a rapid-fire tapped response. “No, we’re notfighting.”

“It souuunds like you’rrre fighting.”

Elanus snorted. “This isn’t a fight, this is a casualdisagreement. Catie, please, you’ve seen Kieron and I at our worst, do youactually believe that we’re fighting right now?”

“Noooo, but Bobby doesn’t know any beeetter.”

Elanus walked over, his limp almost gone, and whisked thelittle bot out of Kieron’s arms. “Don’t worry, honey,” he crooned, “I’m notfighting with your daddy, I love him to absolute pieces even though he has nofaith in my genius, don’t worry.”

“I have plenty of faith in your genius,” Kieron said, tryingto keep his voice level, “I just think that it’s reckless to try and speed up ourescape when the safest thing to do is hunker down and wait it out.”

“Right, because waiting things out has worked so well for usin the past! Were we or were we not surprised by those fucking savages andnearly taken out less than a week ago—hell, less than four days ago—and now youwant to prolong our exposure to a group of mentally unstable anarchists when wecould be—"

“Stop.” That was Lizzie, her voice unexpectedly firm. “I wasgoing to wait to tell you this, but now I think you have to know.”

“Know what?” Elanus blanched white. “Don’t tell me you’re amom. You’re too young to be creating your own little sentient codes, Lizzie!”

“No, Elanus!”

Oh, thank god. “What is it, then?” Kieron askedlevelly.

“Um…we’re on the way to Hadrian’s Colony.”