Notes: Family, huh? Gotta love 'em.

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

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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 onestruggling with this, at least; Elanus was spluttering, his hands gesticulatingin silence as his mouth tried to catch up.

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

“Me, Ryu, Xilinn, and Pol.”

“You brought Pol?” Elanus exclaimed, finding hisvoice at last. “I’m sorry, did I just hear you say that you brought asix-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-oldchild to a planet that not only has the worst weather I’ve heard of sincePandora, it also has a population that consists entirely of murderous monsters,from the huge reptilians to the enormous tunnelers to the frankly idioticcontingent of mercenaries with a daddy complex, and don’t even get me startedon the—”

“We’re already on the way,” Xilinn cut in, her voice smoothand 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 shouldarrive above planet by the end of the week. We will not, of course, be goingdown onto Hadrian’s Colony, but we can do a lot more for you here than we couldjust 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 calledin 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 preferableto losing our status because our sponsor died in the middle of deep space whenwe could have helped save his life. Not to mention all the terrible things thathave happened to you since arriving on that planet. Lizzie played backher conversation with you and those brutes who kidnapped you.”

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

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

“It’s a refit of the I-9.2 you built for the Alliance militarycruisers,” a new voice said. Ryu. The supposed adult in the room, the nativeGanian who was supposed to be looking after their house and extended familyright now instead of flying them all to the middle of nowhere for no goodreason.

“It had better be massively refitted, given the amountof power you can generate with one of those,” Elanus replied, his eyes hazy ashe used his implant for calculations. “We’re talking about moving ships that areover a million tons compared to Lizzie’s delicate little six, and out of atmospheresfar 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 comesto modifications for that, and that’s the standard version, we’redealing with 9.2—”

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

“Do you trust Lizzie’s ability to evaluate her owncomponents 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 thefields, and—”

“I’ve got an extra one for Catie,” Lizzie said, and thearguing died immediately. “I’m fit with two, but we only used one of them totake off, Elanus. The other one has a full payload and is already retrofit forme, and I’m sure you can modify it for Catie once we get it down to you. Youwon’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 ofsuccessful enhancements for similar problems, and on my own knowledge of you,”she replied. “I think our biggest challenge is going to be ensuring that therocket lands as close to you as possible; we want to protect your location foras long as we can.”

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

“Bobby?” Ryu asked. “Who’s Bobby?”

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

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

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

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

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

God, Zak. He thought of his best friend, his easynature 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 stayedin space. There were already too many of them stranded on this awful place. Hecouldn’t wait to be gone from here for good, and he’d be able to leave withoutregrets.

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.