Notes: We're cooking now, darlins. Be careful, the kitchen might burst into flames.

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Interlude: Elanus

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Interlude: Elanus

Photo by Praveen Sundarajan 

Elanus liked this part of the plan. Naturally, he did—this wasthe part of the plan where he got to be center stage. Kieron might bitch about “risk/reward”and “statistical likelihood of you annoying someone into shooting you” buthonestly, his sweetheart needed to have more faith in him. No one could holdattention like Elanus could when he was in the mood for it, and wow washe in the mood to be on everyone’s mind and monopolizing their eyes right now.

The other part of the plan, the one where Kieron used Catie’sadmittedly brilliant cloaking technology to sneak back into the base afterBobby shot Carlisle with an emetic that was messy enough to make anyone want toput her away for a while rather than deal with all that, that part he didn’tcare for. It was so risky for Kieron. Catie’s tech was good, the best,undeniably—Elanus would know, since he’d overseen the manufacture of it allhimself—but there were a lot of bodies in that compound. If someone so much as bumpedinto Kieron at the wrong time, his cover would be gone; he’d be in the middleof enemy territory without backup other than Bobby, who Kieron had alreadyexpressly said was to retreat after delivering the shot to Carlisle.

Of course he hadn’t, because Bobby loved Kieron to thepoint of exhaustion and Elanus could understand that. But he was playing itvery safe, staying hidden and well out of sight. And with Elanus not wanting torisk Catie by getting her too close to the compound, the best option was to waltzin and hold their eyes firmly on him while Kieron figured out how to getCarlisle out.

And stars, this would have been so much easier if they couldhave just said “fuck it” or if she could have had the good sense to die beforemessing up her son’s mind beyond all belief, but Elanus could handlecomplications. He could, better than most people in fact. And it allstarted with the Swarm.

The Swarm was not, in fact, something he just made upoff the top of his head right before swanning out there into the open, thankyou very much, Kieron. It was the culmination of years of tinkering, a subtle,mobile self-defense system that he’d designed for the anti-assassination marketand never got around to putting out as Catie’s original systems took up moreand more of his focus.

The Swarm, which he was able to mobilize with some of theleftover parts from Bobby’s creation and a massive algorithmic download by thegirls, was an AI-directed, piecemeal shield made of over a thousand movingparts that only disengaged from his body when they needed to block an attack.On him, it looked like he was wearing a particularly glittery shirt, but thepieces working in concert could deflect everything from energy weapons toold-fashioned bullets to chemical attacks. The pieces were astonishinglymobile, and with a few modifications from Bobby’s code—thanks for the betatest, baby boy—Elanus felt confident he could stand up to whatever these idiotscould throw at him for the time it took to get Carlisle out.

First things first, to meet and greet. He walked along thedirt path, ignoring the pain in his leg to keep his gait steady—no way was hegiving up that weakness while they were watching. Once he got within visualrange of the base, he tapped into the signal that had hunted them down earlier.“Good afternoon, folks,” Elanus said genially. “I hope you were serious whenyou said you wanted to negotiate, because if you made me waste my time walkingin this fucking mud puddle of a planet you call home just so you could bitchand moan like a bunch of babies, I’ll give my orbital team the go-ahead to burnyou out regardless of whoever you’re holding hostage.”

There was a moment of silence before a response camethrough. “Oh, we see you perfectly clearly, Mr. Desfontaines.”

Elanus smirked. “Oh good, you know who I am. Saves us somuch time and trouble, doesn’t it?”

“We sure do know it. And we know if you were serious aboutbombing us, you’d have done it already, but you’re whipped. Carlisle’s boy’sgot you locked down tight, doesn’t he?”

“Mm, sometimes he does,” Elanus said with a wink. “But it’sall completely consensual, I promise you. I’d never let a boy lock me upotherwise.”

“We don’t need to listen to your disgusting homosexualagenda, you—”

“Oh, like you know anything about agendas, homosexual andotherwise,” Elanus snapped right back. “You people have got to be the worstteam I’ve ever seen when it comes to executing a goddamn plan. How long haveyou been on this planet, and you’re still having your movements controlled bythe weather, of all things? If you had your own orbital station, youwouldn’t be in this mess. Better yet, if you had a habitat dome that extendedinto the upper atmosphere, you could launch from the ground any time you wantedinstead of waiting for the wind to be right, my god. It’s embarrassingto watch you stumble around so chaotically. I can help you change that, though.”

“We want cloaking technology.”

“You don’t need cloaking technology,” Elanus said ina long-suffering voice. “The last thing you need is cloaking technology if youactually want this colony to be a viable place to live instead of a place yousit and wait and die of boredom in for months at a time. You needinfrastructure, you need raw materials and the technology to work them, youneed the building blocks of an actual civilization, not to live on the Fringeand putter around like the universe’s most incompetent pirates.

“When’s the last time you actually took another ship inspace, hmm? It’s probably been years. And mercenary work is thin on the groundright now with so much Central System aggression turning inward, isn’t it?Nobody’s reaching out—everyone is trying to consolidate their own position inspace, except for you people. There are times to buck the trend, gentlemen, butright now isn’t one of them.”

There was a longer pause, and when Trapper came back on hesounded a bit hoarse, like he’d been shouting. “The hell you know anythingabout our situation, Desfontaines! And the hell you’ve got the things you’retalking about for trade. I know you’ve got cloaking tech, I’ve seen itwith my own eyes, and that’s the price for Carlisle. All the rest of it isnothing but smoke, pretty words to try and distract us from the fact that we’vegot the upper hand here. So fuck you and take this seriously.”

“Oh, I do take you seriously,” Elanus assured him as heglanced at the readout screen his implant was projecting across his right-sidevision. There was Kieron’s tracking marker…he’d been immobile for the past twominutes, but now he was moving again. Very, very slowly. Shit. Elanusneeded to drag this out. “I do, I promise, but I’ve also got to be honest with you.The cloaking technology you’re referring to is intensely proprietary. I’mtalking billions of credits here; I’m staking my companies’ fortunes on it, infact.”

“I thought you were the AI ship guy,” someone else’s voicecut in. There was a tussle on the other side of the connection, and Elanus bitback a grin.

“I’m that too,” he said. “But that ended up being so messy,so many people fighting over the tech and the kidnapping incident and spendingall that time on the Fringe when I should have been on Gania and let me tellyou, it left me soured on the whole thing. No, I’ve set that aside for now infavor of metamaterials, and the cloaking technology is the peak of my processthus far.”

“Then that’s what we want.”

“I understand that, but what I’m telling you is thatwhat you want is not going to happen in the way in which you want it, got it?”

“…what?”

“I’m saying that—”

The marker stopped, then seemed to shake a little. “What thefuck was that?” someone screamed over the com.

Ah. Kieron must be using his Swarm. Which meantElanus needed to get the fuck out of the way before—

He didn’t even hear the shot before it burst into atoms fivefeet in front of him, the interlinked shield using a proprietary blend of quantumflavordynamics to keep all forms of blowback from touching him. Elanus staredat the conflagration and grinned. “It worked!” he crowed.

“You weren’t sure it would work?” Kieron snapped.

“Worry about yourself, baby,” Elanus replied as he brokeinto a job back toward Catie. “Or do I need to be worried about you too?”

“We’re fine, I just need to—oh, shit.”

The com cut off abruptly.

“Kieron?” Nothing. “Kieron?”

Nothing but silence.