17. Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Three days of running revised location algorithms, all greatly refined thanks to the fleet of probes guided by Catalina, had left them with only one truly viable spot to check for the remnants of his and Zakari’s old ship.
It was within a reasonable amount of drift from its last known location, it allowed for all the impact variation the ship could have withstood without breaking apart, and it was relatively protected from the rest of the field.
If Zakari wasn’t there, then he wasn’t anywhere.
The thought rested with odd quietude in Kieron’s mind.
It wasn’t that he didn’t feel the importance of such a discovery or look forward to finding out his friend’s fate once and for all.
It was more that … well, there was only so much anticipation and exertion he could take at any one time, and all of that personal bandwidth was being fully occupied right now by Catalina and Elenus.
They’d kept him so busy, working on Lizzie and remembering to eat and sleep and watching light shows in the dark of Hangar Five that, well …
resigned despair just didn’t get the chance to find purchase inside of him.
Which, he knew, was surely a lot of the reason the pair of them had been so insistent on keeping him occupied, but he couldn’t find it in himself to resent it.
He knew better than to try too. Otherwise, he might end up cornered in his room again, having affection and guilt forced on him in equal measures.
“It’s going to be a tough spot to reach,” Elenus commented, tapping the point of his chin with one long finger. “Doable, but tough. Baby, you’ve been working on your new defensive laser array, right? How long until full implementation?”
“Tonight!”
“Pull the other one; you only started that project two days ago.”
“Tonight, Daddeee!” Catalina was insistent, the whine evident both over the implant and in the air of the hangar. Listening to her in two different frequencies had been a little overwhelming at first, but Kieron was quickly getting used to it.
“Since when have you been able to implement system-wide hardware changes in under a week?”
“Since noooooow.”
“She’s getting so big,” Kieron whispered, just loud enough for Elenus to hear him.
“Shut up,” Elenus snapped, but there was no real heat to his voice. “She’s big when I say she’s big. Until then, she’s my baby.”
“Kids don’t work that way.”
“I’mma biiiig ship!” Catalina added because of course she heard everything they said no matter how softly they said it. “Smart and faaaast!”
“I know you are, but—”
“Not a babeee!”
“You’ll always be my baby, and that’s final.”
Kieron headed off the useless argument before feelings could actually be hurt. That was something he knew how to do now. Wild. “If you can get that upgrade done by tonight, then we can test it after some rest and head into the asteroid field at 0400. Does that sound good to you?”
“Mmm.” Suddenly, Catalina sounded a little less sure of herself. “I don’t like it therrrre.”
Elenus didn’t say anything, just raised an eyebrow at Kieron. “I know,” Kieron said after a moment of wrestling with himself. “I don’t like it there either.”
“You doooo! You’re verrry brave. But it makes me scarrrred.”
Uh-oh, tread lightly. “It’s only natural that it makes you scared,” Kieron said gently.
“You were brought here against your will and made to sit in the middle of that place for days. It must have been so exhausting for you to have always been on the alert, especially with that awful guy calling the shots.”
“Heee’s down in the darrrk now, and I’mm with you and Daddee, and I’m still scarrred.”
Down in the dark? It occurred to Kieron that he should probably be more interested in exactly where Deysan Mortiz was being held since he’d been taken into custody.
Elenus had arranged everything—he’d had to since Kieron had been more goo than person by the time he and Moritz had gotten back here. But he could focus on that later.
“I was scared too,” Kieron admitted. “It’s scary out there, extra scary when you have less control over your situation.
But you’re going to have full control when we go out there next, Catie.
I promise. I won’t make you do anything you’re uncomfortable with.
” If he had to, he could finish fixing the Lizzie in another seventy-two hours and take her out instead.
It would put the ship at the very limits of her capability to withstand radiation to go that far and back, but Kieron had no choice. The longer he waited, the longer the odds of finding anything left.
“I don’t want to go.”
“Then you don’t have to,” Kieron said immediately. Elenus straightened, a look of alarm on his face. What? Had he thought Kieron was going to force Catalina to take him out there? “I’ll go in the Lizzie and—”
“I don’t want you to goooo.”
“I have to.”
“Baby, we talked about this,” Elenus said, gentle but firm. “You can’t tell other people what to do. Kieron said you don’t have to go, but he’s going. And I’m going to help him. No more arguments about that.”
“But it’s not saaaafe!” Catalina wailed, and Kieron wished for the umpteenth time that he could hug her, just wrap her up in his arms and hold her tight.
“It’s as safe as we can make it, and—”
“It’s safest with meee, so I’m going toooo.”
Kieron and Elenus exchanged a confused glance. “I thought you said you didn’t want to,” Kieron said.
“I dooon’t!”
“Then—”
“But you’re going, and you’re safer with meee. So I’m going too! I want to be brave like you and Daddeeee!” She pushed the color orange through the implant—firmness, resolve, a little bit of fear but not enough for it to overwhelm her.
“Well, then,” Elenus said, relaxing his spine a little. “I guess you are a big ship now, aren’t you?”
Catalina glowed with his praise. “Yesss!”
“And we’re going to make sure you’re a very safe ship too,” Kieron added. “So let’s make sure we have lots of time to test the laser array, okay?”
“Okay, Keeeeeron.” Catalina’s feed went dark as she refocused on her upgrades. Kieron sighed with relief and turned back to Elenus, only to find himself jerked out of his chair by the man, who was already marching them out of the hangar.
“What? What’s going on?” Had he fucked up? Was he about to get another lecture?
They only got as far as the hall before Elenus turned around, lifted Kieron onto his toes, and latched onto his mouth like it was his sole source of oxygen.
Pleasure and relief melted Kieron’s spine, and he sagged into Elenus’s arms, letting the taller man hold him up as he lost himself to the kiss.
There was some sort of lesson here, probably, something pithy that supported the idea of doing good to have good done and so on, but Kieron couldn’t think right now.
Even the simplest philosophy was beyond him.
All that mattered was being with Elenus, taking what the other man was willing to give, and giving it back as best he could. Affection. Comfort. Love.
Kisses that made every nerve tingle.
“Stop making my kid love you so much,” Elenus murmured as he kissed across Kieron’s neck. “Or no, wait, keep doing that, just don’t do it where I have to see it unless you want me to drag you off and fuck you in the middle of the hallway.”
“No fucking in the hallway,” Kieron said, sounding slightly slurred, but how could he be otherwise? He could barely think well enough to form words. “Un … sanitary.”
“Let’s go back to the bedroom, then.”
“Don’t you … shouldn’t we …”
“Catalina’s going to be busy for hours, we might as well relax.” Elenus nipped the edge of Kieron’s ear. “Unless you’d rather look at datasets instead of letting me suck your cock.”
“Bedroom. Now.”
Being a goal-oriented person had never before been so much of a blessing.
Neither of them was in the mood to tease, and it was the work of a moment to mute their implants except to priority messages from Catalina and then focus on each other.
Elenus, true to his word, pushed Kieron down onto his back as soon as he was naked.
He touched him, stroking him to full hardness with a smirk on his face, then bent over and—
“Mmmfuck,” Kieron whispered, his hands coming down to Elenus’s hair so he could—not grip, just give him something to touch back.
It felt better that way, more reciprocal even though this wasn’t a reciprocal act, it wasn’t, he knew that, he knew, but stars, how could it be possible to feel anything so incredible and not be expected to provide something in return?
Elenus pulled back just long enough to say, “You’ve giving me exactly what I want.
Now shut up and let me have you.” It was embarrassing to be caught speaking his thoughts out loud, but Kieron was able to let it go.
Elenus’s mouth was too warm and wet, his hand too tight to be anything but all-consuming.
Kieron breathed, then moaned, and far too quickly, he bit his lip as he began to come, feeling pleasure so good it hurt.
As he fought to catch his breath, Elenus pulled up, already stripping off his shirt. “I need to—can I—”
“Anything.”
“Not smart.”
“You won’t hurt me.”
“I’m gonna try to take that the way I hope you mean it,” Elenus muttered, but whatever uncertainties he might have, they weren’t enough to keep him from taking himself in hand and jerking himself off hard and fast until he came, less than a minute later, across Kieron’s lax abdomen.
“Fuck,” he said, staring down at Kieron with a bright gleam in his eyes. “You look … really good.”
“Messy?” Kieron suggested, with a little smile. “You like messy and gross?”
“I like it when I’m the one who made you that way, yeah.
” To his credit, Elenus cleaned Kieron up before getting the rest of his clothes off and snuggling up close to him under the blanket.
It was cool in the room, but Elenus always seemed to run warm, and Kieron relaxed against him far too easily.
They drifted for a while in calm, satisfied silence. It was perfect, blissful.
“Tell me something about you.”
Kieron tensed right back up.
“Anything at all,” Elenus clarified with a sigh. “I’m not talking about revealing your deepest, darkest secrets here. Just tell me something I don’t know. It can be as simple as your favorite color.”
“Mmm.” Well … Kieron could do that much. “I like green.”
“Green. Okay, why?”
“Because I almost never saw it when I was growing up.” Oops, that was a little more personal than he’d been planning to get, but in for a kilometer, in for a parsec.
“Most of the plants on Hadrian’s Colony were orange or red.
Lichens, clinging to rocks. Algae in the shallower pools.
They were all red or orange or sometimes yellow.
The landscape was very rocky and sandy. Some places had grass, but it wasn’t green.
Some days it felt like everything was red.
” He still associated a sound with the color red, the dull ping of sand and pebbles being flung about by the relentless wind.
“There were some green things in the hydroponics lab, but I was never allowed to go in there. There wasn’t even a window to look through, and by the time they were made into food, it was all powdered anyway. I didn’t see green until after I left the colony. On Trakta, actually.”
“With Zakari?” Elenus asked.
“Yeah. He was the first person around my age that I met after … everything.”
“Everything.” Elenus paused, like he was weighing the word. “Mind if I ask you a few questions about that ‘everything’?”
Kieron didn’t reply. He didn’t like to talk about the colony—it almost always led to more curiosity, which was tiresome, or pity, which was offensive. But for some reason he didn’t want to shut Elenus down … not quite.
“How about I make some guesses instead?” Elenus cleared his throat, running a hand through Kieron’s hair as he got started.
“Apart from the few ships that escaped with some young children, undoubtedly ferried there by worried parents, there were no efforts to leave. That leads me to think this was some sort of death cult, with an entire colony preferring to be killed rather than submit to oversight.”
Kieron bit his lip, holding back words he didn’t want to say but which nevertheless wanted to come out.
“If your mother is who I think she is, and she really did get you onto a ship, it wasn’t because she loved you.
It was because she didn’t think you were worthy of dying for the cause like the rest of them.
She was the general’s daughter—she probably did her best to represent her father and his cause.
Maybe you weren’t the son she’d wanted. Maybe you were too different, too—”
“Stop.” Hearing someone else say the words that Kieron couldn’t wasn’t any nicer than saying them himself. “Please. I can’t …”
“All right,” Elenus said, leaning in and kissing his cheek. “It’s all right. That was a long time ago. You’re here now, with Catalina and me. Nothing will hurt you.”
Staring up into the darkness, Kieron wished with all his aching heart that that was true.