'The World Where Yesternight You Died - part 25
Here we go, guys, here we go!! The last three chapters. Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!
My first and most heartfelt thanks goes to my beta,
Darkhavens, who has been an absolute *dream* of a beta, an a wonderful friend, besides.
Secondly - and always - to Sweptawaybayou, whose encouragement and excitement and just general awesomeness has kept me going when I just wanted to curl up and cry over how damn *blocked* I was, and how slow it all happened. You are the best, bb. The very best.
Lastly - to you! To my constant readers who have stuck by me and kept reading and just...been there. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!
IT'S DONE!! IT'S DONE!! :D
Also at AO3.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
James Oppenheim - Bread and Roses
The med bay - the last one, the others having been transformed into quarters, mess, rec - was hushed, the lights a dim amber-pink, the machines muted. Tiamat Angels sat or stood in groups, huddled into each other, silent. The 'net was hushed, as well; every other Angel in the arcology, even the greenies, doing their best to keep the 'net...calm.
But stories were passed, images and moments, until the 'net was Kee. Kee suiting up, singing the strange and hypnotizing battle-song she'd found in some archive somewhere, O Fortuna...velut luna...statu variabilis…. Kee explaining sailing ships - and having to also explain the sea, and waves and wind and tides - but ships; sailing, fighting, discovering; ships flying, leaping, dancing on the waves. Kee on shore leave, picking fights just to fight, and buying drinks for the losers; Kee rallying her squad, leaping to the fore, eager and vicious and canny. Kee laughing, Kee dancing, Kee's dark skin tinted red and blue and green under bar lights, sheened with sweat and glitter-stick, moving to the music like her ships, leap and glide and sway. Kee's sweet, full-lipped mouth and high-arched nose and laughing, furious, tender gaze…
Sinna shuddered in the 'net, Kee-and-Sinna rippling out to all of them.
The 'net sang with her, and laughed with her, and shivered with her, and fought with her. In the med bay, suspended in a generation tube, the cool, blue gel cradling her, Kee rode silent and still. Healing, so Doc said. Getting better, but not yet better.
Give her a week, Doc said, data scrolling down and down the lenses of her optics, obscuring her eyes. Let's get her back to stable, first. Then we'll fix everything. Then, the vaccine, and Kee could be, would be, part of them again.
Jensen lifted his head from Jared's shoulder as someone came in, and every Angel stirred, heads coming up, turning to the entryway, silent and in sync. Morgan was standing there, with Raleigh and a Quo, maybe Shoumei, it was hard to tell. Something like a chill breeze came through the 'net, shivery and unpleasant, and Jensen pushed himself to his feet, untangling from Jared and Kane and Five, dragging the edges of his sweater closed across his chest.
He stepped around clusters of Angels wrapped up in blankets and each other, heading for Morgan. Jared said something, low and unclear, and Jensen felt him getting up, too, and following, determined.
"You shouldn't be here," Jensen said, to Morgan, to all of them.
"We have to talk," Morgan said. Blackbox data, and that sent another ripple through the 'net, this one prickly and attentive; focused, in the way a sniper is focused. Important, Morgan insisted. Jared's hand slid into Jensen's, warm and strong, callused and scarred, and Jensen cast it to the 'net.
Go we stay find out tell us go
"Alright," Jensen said, and they slipped out. The cooler, white-blue lights of the arcology seemed especially harsh, after the deliberate, amber dimness in the med bay, and Jensen leaned into Jared as they walked, feeling chilled. His head was still back in there, with his squad (Kane's squad), with his Angels.
"Ahn-gel...iss well?" the Quo asked, and Jensen blinked up at the long, so-solemn face that was bending down over him, fireflies doing a lazy little orbit, slow pulse of pale yellows and blues. Shoumei, waddling a bit more in her state, huffing along as if out of breath already on this short walk.
"She-"
"Yes," Jared said, "she's well. She's healing," in a tone that said she would be. She’d better be, and nothing and no one was going to interfere in that. Or contradict it. Getting better, she is, she's fine, all good.
"Yes," Jensen agreed, in the face of Jared's insistence. He could feel the shoved-down current of fear and worry under it all, and had no desire to add to it. "She's fine. Are...are you-?"
"Su, su, su," Shoumei said, and a firefly darted down and hovered in front of the curved bulge of Shoumei's abdomen, chiming softly. "All happy."
"That's good," Jared said, and Shoumei huffed softly and then hummed, something low enough to be felt in Jensen’s bones, a soporific, almost numbing sensation.
The babies hear that wonder what that sounds like from Jared, a moment's distraction, and Jensen couldn't imagine that basso rumble being all around you, all encompassing.
Up ahead was a small seating area, just a little bubble off the corridor, a digital port with a 'view' of the system and wide, Quo-sized padded shelves to lean on. Quo didn't really ever sit, their tails got in the way, but rather sprawled and leaned and draped. One shelf was down low, for feet maybe, and Morgan sank down onto it with a sigh. Raleigh stayed standing, gazing up at the digital port, his hands hidden in the folds of his Quo-style robe. Shoumei leaned her knees onto a padded shelf and reclined forward, elbows on another, higher one, giving a little sigh.
"So, what did you find?" Jensen asked, and Morgan rubbed his flesh hand back through hair that was longer now, grown out of its military brush-cut. Jensen could see the bright, silver threads in the black, thicker at his temples than ever before.
"The Company... Those Angels on that ship - they called it the Annihilation - they weren't conscripts, or volunteers, the Company made them."
"Made?" A flurry in the 'net, from Jared, of his own birth-story: his mothers choosing DNA, carrying him; the child who died. Jared shied from that, as if surprised at the memory, at the up-rush of emotion. Jensen reached for his hand and squeezed lightly, tugging him a step closer, and Jared smoothed the memory away. Hard on the heels of that was another memory, one that Jensen had no hope of avoiding.
Exogenous wombs, he thought, doing his own internal flinch as the birth rooms of the Glorianna flickered through the 'net; the murky fluid, the decomposing remains, the living infants being subsumed into dead flesh….
"No, Christ!" Morgan shook his head, as if shaking that away, and lifted his polycarbonate hand, clicking the fingers together, startling Raleigh, who looked away from the port and blinked at them. "You tell them, you're the damn expert," Morgan said, and Raleigh shuffled around to face them.
"What we found, and keep in mind, the ship's crew knows this information, so it was mostly supplemental, medical records, that sort of thing," he said, eyebrows going up, a sort of 'do you understand?' look on his face. Jensen nodded. "It seems, from the medical and personnel records, and some embedded Company files accessible only to the Captain, the Company is now...wholesale creating Angels. Not recruiting, like Morgan said. They've made some kind of...DNA template, and they're running birthing labs."
"But those Angels-" Jared said, and the images from the ship were in the 'net: the sprawled bodies with too-long hands and arms, with backward-bending legs, with teeth like something out of a nightmare. The 'net shivered like a plucked thread, and Jensen pushed out Raleigh's information, sparking questions, the hum of thousands of minds wanting to know.
"What was on that ship wasn't- didn't look human," Jensen said, and Raleigh nodded, a whole-body bob he seemed to have picked up from the Quo.
"It was, mostly. It started human. But the Company is using some non-human DNA, as well. There were- In the medical records, it was there for treatment options or-"
"Yeah, don't fucking care, Raleigh, just tell us," Jared said, and Raleigh glanced up at him and then away, staring into some middle distance, his face schooled to an expressionless mask. Jensen forgot, sometimes, that Jared had worked for the Diaboli first. That Jared was, in fact, someone who had done dangerous things before, and made hard choices.
"Yes, well. We saw that there were three cell lines. Human, animal - we're not sure what, yet, it looks like canine - and...and xénos DNA."
What is that canine what is xénos what what what in the 'net, confusion, a rising sense of unease, and Jensen felt it like a cold hollowness in his gut.
"Animal? How is that even possible?" Jared said, overlapping Jensen.
"What does that mean, xénos?"
Xénos canine query query query, and the whole catalogue of combined Angel data scrolled past in the 'net, searched, sorted, collated, compared. It was over in a blink, in a heartbeat; before Raleigh could open his mouth.
"Alien DNA? Dogs and aliens?" Jared blurted, and Raleigh flinched. "What the hell? How in fuck-?" Jared was losing it, fast. Jensen turned and grabbed and held on, curling around him physically as well as in the 'net, warding off, for a moment, the reaction from the others as the information spread out, hit, and then bounced back, hurled by the force of query query query avoid wrong no no no.
"Yes, it's- They...it's Stick DNA," Raleigh said finally, and Jensen turned to glare at him, his lips pulling back in a snarl; felt it, in the 'net, the ingrained revulsion, the hate. Stick.
The enemy that humans - Angels - had been fighting for decades; longer, counting all the years in skip-space, all the time that wasn't time, for some of them. Stick, that had come out of nowhere, an enemy that was completely unknown and unknowable: implacable, vicious, endless. Long, thin bodies like twisted sinew and bone, flat, nearly noseless faces and lipless mouths like skulls like bones like nothing human nothing alive, with their protuberant, whiteless eyes and clawed fingers and voices that ranged into the infra and ultrasound, putting every Angel in hearing range on edge.
Stick, who had killed more Angels than any other enemy, and seemed to never, ever tire, waver, run out.
How could they why did they better off they're dead better off dead wrong avoid avoid avoid no no no
The 'net was chaos, ramping up to insanity, and for a moment Jensen let it, wallowing in the fury and fight and adrenaline that flooded him. As good as a go-pack, it was an instant fix: heart pounding, blood singing, skin tingling. He wanted to move, to leap, to rend and tear and destroy, and all over the arcology, he could feel the greenies falling into snarling, snapping fights. Shoving, cursing, kicking, punching; release, after so long doing nothing.
Fighting. Almost as good as fucking. Sometimes, as good.
Jensen grinned fiercely, fists clenched. He whipped his head sideways at a sudden movement and saw Morgan on his feet, both hands up, and Jared…
Jared was moving away, breathing hard, his eyes wide and shocked. For a moment, Jensen was nothing but impulse, reflex, and instinct. He snarled and grabbed at Jared, getting him by his shirt, shoving him, and then turning, arms flung out, crowding Jared back. Knees bent and hands flexed, chin down, he glared at Morgan and Raleigh and Shoumei.
"Fuck off, back off," Jensen growled, and Raleigh did back up a step, looking confused. Morgan just froze, hands spread, looking somewhere off to the side, not quite at Jensen. Not quite.
"Qemuel," he said, and Jensen twitched, a hard tremor going through him. "Jensen, stand down, Christ. Tell them to stand down," Morgan said, and Jensen could see his jaw was clenched; could see that Morgan's hand was shaking, his pupils blown wide, his lungs heaving. His polycarbonate hand made tiny, mechanical noises, internal servos reacting to the adrenaline spike, to the emotions, to the 'net.
"Jensen?" Stop, please stop them, stop, us you me we us stop them, please Jared's hand curled over Jensen's shoulder, Jared was pouring a shaky 'calm down' into the 'net, and Jensen stiffened, wanting to shake him off, get him back. Get him into some corner and away from Morgan and Raleigh Morrigan, the Morrigan, outsider, other, not us, not us.
"Jen, please," Jared said.
Then someone else was there, pushing in: Sinna, in the 'net. Sinna, and then Suni, and then Kane, throwing out calm, and safe and us Angels home all in all in stand down, safe home. Jensen blinked and took in a sharp, heaving breath, and then he leaned into it, lending his strength, more than the rest. He pushed it out, driving it home. Jinx and Five and Perrin and Grieve followed in a cascade, soothing, smoothing, curling around; settling the 'net, with long, slow pulses of warmth and affection and home us all home home. They enfolded the troop-ship crews who'd come in, the drop-ship pilots and medicos, Morgan and the rest of the officers that were left, enveloping them all.
"Fuck," Jensen said, and felt his shoulders sag, the fight going out of him under the calming onslaught in the 'net. He could feel the veterans, the most level-headed of them all, deliberately dampening everything, muffling every response. It was like trying to push smoke, and Jensen let it go, reaching back to grasp Jared's hand and pull him in close before looking back at Morgan, and Raleigh.
And then he turned his gaze to Shoumei, who had lumbered upright, every firefly spinning out from her and diving at Jared and Jensen, circling them and then darting back as Shoumei waddled closer. She opened her arms, fingers unfolding from their curled position in her palms, claws unfolding with them. Her reach spanned almost three meters, with long, coarse, beaded hair hanging down. The fireflies darted and danced between them.
"Whhee haff...sseen. Ahhn-gullsss...no...gud," she said, 'sonics booming along under the words, shivering in Jensen's bones. "Whhee...go. Ahhll. Ahhll go. In…" She lapsed into Quo, hisses and rumbles, and a firefly danced forward, shivering blue light. "In time three weeks, T'ssmg'ku commence iynght srahzss. To where these are made."
"But," Jared started, and then stopped, bewilderment in the 'net. Iynght srahzss - the process that had brought the troopships, and then the Annihilation to the arcology. Opening a hole in space, reaching into the Between and pulling out a ship...ships. It was still a mind-boggling process, one Jensen didn't understand at all; hell, none of them did.
But now Shoumei was saying…? "The whole- You're taking...everything, all of this is going to Salome?" Jensen asked, and Raleigh was looking awfully smug, while Morgan looked faintly ill.
"Ssssaah…r'me, su, su, su, we take, thhiss, thhat...go, puuull, zisss!" Shoumei seemed excited and unconcerned, gesturing wide with her huge hands, fireflies spiraling up and around and back down.
"But, all? This whole-? How?"
"Not all, not everyone," Raleigh said, edging around Shoumei's arm, giving that little bob to her that she returned. A firefly came and danced across the beading of Raleigh's Quo-style robe, chiming softly. "Just the main arcology, obs-con, and the Angel quarters. The 'ponics and all is staying here, the science stuff, the observatory...the children."
"How is that possible?" Jared asked finally, explosively, throwing his hands up, and Jensen couldn't help smiling at him, his own confusion in the 'net. But something was else there, too. Something more.
Excitement.
"We...really aren't totally...sure," Raleigh said, blinking rapidly as the firefly drifted up and basically bounced off his nose. His hand lifted, as if to shoo it away, and Shoumei trilled softly. The firefly pulsed, pale green to bright white, then green again, and darted back to the Quo, joining the rest. "Thank you," Raleigh said. "They've done it before; we've reviewed the logs of those times. It's...hell, man, we're so far behind the curve on this. Just- They can, we will, and then, once we're at Salome..." Both Raleigh's hands came up, this time, an wild gesture conveying 'who knows' and 'total chaos' and 'brace yourselves'.
"Yeah," Jensen said, and felt Jared's agreement in the 'net. He glanced over at Morgan, who was staring up at the digital view, hands firmly locked behind him in parade rest stance that betrayed the thread of worry coming off him. Jensen hesitated, and then sighed, reaching out.
Morrigan, tell them, Jensen thought, and Morgan looked over at him. After a moment, he nodded his head, a fractional lowering and lift of his chin. His gaze went back to the port, and then he pushed it all out into the 'net: graphs and power schematics and the plan, the timeline, all of it; a briefing as in the old days. Jensen pushed it along, adding his stamp, feeling the wavefront of information spread out through the still agitated Angels. It spread, and was absorbed, examined, turned over and shaken. It was flung back, in some instances, disbelieving and frantic, and then Morgan was asking Raleigh something and conveying the response; answering questions, calming emotions, reassuring, as steady as he'd always been under fire.
"Shoumei," Jensen said, and then stopped, not sure how to go on, how to say it. "Shoumei, the Quo… What are you-? What do you think should be done? To the Company. For making these...new Angels." The translator firefly hissed and boomed and trilled, and Shoumei blinked long-lashed eyes, her fingers working, the tips of her back-curved claws tapping along the underside of her forearms. She tucked her long snout down, regarding Jensen and Jared from her great height.
"Whhee...haf pu-lan. 'Ou sssee, Jen-zen. No kill," she added, and the fireflies whirled up around her, chiming, before darting out, weaving around Jensen and Jared and then back, settling again, like bright beads along Shoumei's shoulders and throat. "No kill, Ahhn-gul. 'Ou sseee."
Three weeks seemed like forever, and not nearly enough time at all. The Quo went about as if nothing of importance was happening; as if they did this all the time. And hell, maybe they did, who would know? It all seemed just too damn easy.
Jared occupied himself with the 'ponics rooms, mostly; clomping around in the construction mech, moving giant crates of stuff; helping adjust the walls, the various units of heat, water filtration, hatchery. He helped reconfigure the fish tanks and the bubble-shaped crop cages; maximum efficiency in a system already streamlined and nearly perfect. He went out in the Quo skimmers, observing the arcology from outside; watched the Quo in their own versions of waldo-run, remote mechs doing the prep necessary to decouple the arcology, and leave part of it behind. It was interesting, for sure, but it let him have a little mental quiet, too; out there in the black, nothing but the thin skin of the skimmer between him and all of the Beyond.
It kept his mind off...things. Kept his mind off of what they were prepping for, which was something he'd never thought he'd do, ever again: go back to Salome. It had been his home for years. His only home, once he'd gotten the news, a year and more after the fact, that both his mothers were dead: that Mommy Signey had shot herself; that Mama Jaasau had died from an overdose at Signey's hand. He'd put Kin-Gin away in the darkest reaches of his mind, after that, and Salome became...everything. The drab dormitories; the cold, white hospital rooms; the silent classrooms where they'd plugged in and drilled, over and over, learning the skills they needed, first, to navigate their new bodies. And then, later, learning the most basic of skills on computers: maintenance, monitoring - the kind of scut work that any system still needed, and needed done by humans.
The lucky ones, like Jared, got past that, eventually. They learned new skills and graduated to more advanced jobs, more complex systems. The unlucky ones… Well, someone had to clean out filters and mop floors and prep food. Someone had to make sure incinerators burned everything, or magnetic catapults shot their encapsulated waste at the right time, to intersect with some system's star, and burn into nothing thousands of kilometers above the surface.
The idea that he'd be stuck in a grey coverall, making check-marks on a digital clipboard for the rest of his life had driven Jared into a cold, terrified frenzy of learning. Day after day and year after year, learning, until he could choose his job, choose a bigger apartment, choose clothing or food or blankets or entertainment that wasn't on the Company Basic list.
He'd said goodbye to Salome, and to the Company's rigid lock-step years ago (so many years, now; the Between like an ocean, and his previous life out of sight, sunk below an impossible horizon, forever out of reach). He’d found things outside of the Company; found the Diaboli; and found out the truth about the 'net. He'd found Jensen, and the Angels. He’d found so very much more than he'd ever hoped to.
Going back…it was hard to picture, hard to deal with. Once he'd got free, he'd never wanted to see Salome again.
Us all us be alright in the 'net, from Kane and from Sinna and from Kerrin, but from others, too. From the greenie in the 'ponics with him, who called themselves Than, with a soft, hissing th, and had incredible, swirling, keloid scars all over the dark skin of their arms and chest. The same, from some of the oldest veterans; from Jensen, whenever he stopped being distracted by whatever new thing Raleigh or Morgan or one of the Quo was telling him.
Us all yes, alright, sorry sorry, Jared thought, and directed the mech to step over to the charging station. He backed it in, carefully, and felt the little click and hum when it plugged in. Everything's fine.
Okay to be scared, we're scared, no worries, all of us, here together holding okay Than thought, glancing up from their contemplation of one of the fish tanks; bright silver-blue-green flash of scales and bubbles and water in the 'net.
"Yeah," Jared said, and just sent back warm and grateful and us in the 'net, a feeling like being hugged. Across the room, Than grinned.
Jared let himself down out of the mech and shook out his hands, bending back and forth, loosening up muscles that had stiffened a bit in the padded, full-body waldo. He dragged on a jacket; the 'ponics room was warm, and the corridors Quo-cool, and he had sweated through his shirt. He walked out of 'ponics, heading toward Angel quarters, wanting a shower and doing his best not to step down too hard or swing too wide, the ghost-sensation of the mech's stride and reach still in his muscles.
The quarters were dim, as they usually were; amber-green-pink and comforting. A handful of Angels were drawing on a wall, the same plant fiber as the others, but this one altered to make the surface more porous, and smooth. They were outlining a swooping, curling design, pots of colors ranged all around them, some of it already spattered on their skin. Painting naked, because why not? Easier to clean up, and more fun.
Jared admired the art for a moment and then walked on. He wanted to drown himself a little bit in the heat and steam and the silken, slightly spicy-smelling soap-foam the showers dispensed. He wanted to just stop thinking. He shed his clothes into the laundry chute and pressed his thumb to one of the panels by the bay of showers. Six people could easily fit into a Quo-sized shower, and the Quo favored huge grids overhead, with water falling down in sheets, and steam coming up from underneath.
It was like being in a rainstorm, only warm. Well, hot, actually. Jared tended to go for high heat, and the shower cycled on, pre-set by his ident to his preferred temperature. He stepped under with a sigh of pure pleasure, tipping his face back and letting himself become soaked. His skin, chilled by the long walk and drying sweat, began to warm, pinking under the heat, and Jared gathered a handful of foam and rubbed it lazily over his belly.
Soft warm good that's good… Shallow thoughts, going out into the 'net - the soft hiss and patter of the water, the rich slide of the foam, the spicy, warm scent. Muscles loosened and his hair clung to his shoulders and-
Feels nice, feels so good, down, go down…. Jensen, in the 'net, on the move; leaving obs-con and striding away down corridors toward a bubble-lift, needing a damn break, fuck and so warm want to touch you, touch you, reach down, yes, there, touch, let me feel, oh, good, good….
"Jen," Jared breathed, and slid his palm along the filling shaft of his cock, squeezing gently. He rubbed a calloused thumb over the head, and that little spear of pleasure darted out into the 'net.
Warm warm good there, oh- Someone else keyed in, feeling it, and Jared stroked himself again, and again. Jensen was moving faster now; off the lift, corridors away, the ghost sensation of his hand on Jared's hand right there.
Jared's skin shivered with the sense-memory of that touch, and he felt the first, delicious little cramp of arousal in his belly, down deep, muscles going tight in anticipation, cock nearly all the way hard. He cupped his balls with his other hand and tugged gently, legs moving apart, and oh yes, there, c'mon, harder more
No, from Jensen, and then he was there, in the shower, bare skin and reaching hands, turning Jared under the water, pushing him right up against the warm, pleasantly pebbled, water-running surface of the shower wall.
"No, that's for-" Me that's mine look at you oh kiss me, want your mouth, so good
Mouth to mouth, Jensen's thigh nudged between Jared's, hips slotting together, Jensen's cock half-hard between them, pushing up against Jared’s belly. Skin slipping on foam sliding on skin, slippery and perfect; Jensen's hands on Jared's hips, back, up between his shoulder blades….
Feel so good so good love it love you oh, there, more, want….
"Jen, Jensen," Jared said, getting both hands on Jensen's ass to drag him closer, grinding against him, kissing him and kissing him, lost in a feedback loop of sensation, of his hands on Jensen and Jensen's hands on him. His body and his body and his and his and they were the same, they were distinct but they were the same, and Jared was gasping, arching up, eyes mostly shut in the shower-rain, but he could see himself, he could feel….
He could feel Kane and Malik, someone shoving someone into a wall, laughing, fighting stubborn fasteners. He could feel Perrin and Grieve, half naked in the armor bay, fingers and lips, Grieve's mouth on Perrin's breast. He could feel Suni, curled with half a dozen greenies, just feeling the tides of emotion and sensation, skin on skin enough. He could feel Sinna, and Jinx crowding up behind her, just holding on, Kee so far away but Jinx warm and alive and Sinna taking the comfort of that, he could feel-
me, me feel me, Jared, you me us, Jared, Jared
He could feel Jensen. He fell back into his body with a gasp and groan, and they were on their knees, on the pliant, warm flooring of the shower, Jensen pushing Jared back and down, legs bent under him, his back in a bow. Hips up, thighs wide, Jensen's fingers were pushing in, pressing and sliding; Jensen's mouth was on the head of Jared's cock, sucking and licking; Jensen's hand was on Jared's balls, squeezing, tugging.
"Oh, fuck, oh- I-" feel you feel you us me you us all all Jensen Jensen And it all rushed back in and rolled over him; thousands of them kissing, holding, touching, fucking, loving. It was so much, it hurt. It was glorious; it was overwhelming.
Jensen's fingers inside, twisting and rubbing and pressing, made Jared writhe, one hand on the curve of Jensen's skull, his whole body arching up and grinding down, over and over. Jensen's mouth, cooler than the water, was insistent and clever and relentless.
Jensen's own cock was achingly full, trapped between his doubled-up leg and belly, a glancing sensation that only made Jensen harder, higher. Jensen pushed down, his tongue working, sucking hard as three fingers pressed up, and Jared sank the nails of one hand into the floor and the fingertips of the other into Jensen's scalp, yelled out loudly, and came.
And so did Malik, and Perrin, and others; orgasms like sunbursts, like sparks, like rolling waves, sensations as different as the different bodies, different desires. They came, crashing through the 'net and leaving them all gasping, laughing, groaning.
Jensen licked the softening length of Jared's cock and then leaned up over him, his cock riding against Jared's hip. Jared groaned and rolled on his side, uncurling his legs. He reached down, fingers curling around Jensen's cock, and their mouths slid together, his own salt-musk taste on Jensen's tongue. Other tastes, other mouths, other hands, all through the 'net all over again, a second wave, and a third, more…. Until they were all sated, drained, done, the 'net settling to a humming, glowing thing, satisfaction and affection and tired, wanna sleep, good, warm, hungry, make some food, come lie down, be close, do it again, do it again, here, us, all, Angels Angels Angels….
"We'll be okay, Jared," Jensen said, pushing the water-soaked hair off Jared's forehead; kissing his jaw, his throat, his mouth. "We'll be okay, you'll see, we're fine," he said, and Jared nodded, eyes shut, content to just hold and be held, to just…hang on. Just hang on.
Jensen sighed, fingers twisting in the hem of his sweater, straining the threads. He was in a briefing room, watching Doc and Raleigh and Shoumei and a couple other Quo standing huddled in front of a floating console; the blurry images illuminating Doc's optics to sheer blue-white. The Quo boomed and hissed and rumbled, and Doc waved her hands around, and Jensen was just...so fucking done with it.
T-minus three days, and they had come to Jensen with some kind of news; something that would make a difference, apparently, but Jensen didn't even care. He'd been on edge, ramped up, ready to go for days, just like every other Angel in the arcology. He was exhausted from being fucking ready-not-so-steady, and these 'briefings' were making everything worse. Like endless jump-scares in a vid file, he just could not settle; there was always something new, something else. And most of the damn time, it didn't mean fuck-all.
Jensen was just damn tired; just wanted to go. He was trying to keep that jittery, snappish energy out of the 'net, but the greenies were endless wells of it. They'd never had this much down time; didn't know what to do with it, with themselves; didn't know how to deal with it. Fucking was starting to look a lot more like fighting, and fighting was verging on berserker rampages, and it was getting damn hard to keep them even marginally in control. And on top of all that, there was an extra current of unease, of agitation, that was dragging them all down even more, because some of the Angels had said they weren't fighting - said they could not fight, and the debate and discussion was...heated.
Thank the stars and rebel medicos for still-concocted cocktails that could head off the worst of the rages, but even that wasn't a fix. Most of the older Angels didn't like the idea of the greenies being dependent on drugs, handed out by the Quo, the Diaboli, or their own medicos. Getting away from the Company was supposed to fix that, not just shift the dispenser. Solutions were varied and ongoing, but until they actually got this damn… confrontation over with, they couldn't really settle on any one thing.
So, add another layer to the frustration and the brewing discontent.
It was past time to just be done, and Jensen had no more patience for any more meetings, any more useless information.
"You got anything I really need?" Jensen said, a little louder than he'd intended, and the fireflies swarming the Quo rose up en masse and descended on Jensen, all of them flashing, humming, chiming. Whispering Quo words and Human words, they swirled around and around him until he had to twist his fingers in the sweater and resist the urge to run screaming. "Chugn, chugn!" he snapped, and the Quo - a different one, not Shoumei - called them back with a rising, trilling hum. The fireflies zipped away, and Jensen took a deep, steadying breath, feeling Jared in the 'net, Kane and Jinx, Suni. All of them sending calm calm calm; all of them with the same restless energy seething along under their skins.
"Yeah, we got something. Chugn," Doc said, batting at fireflies, and the other, new Quo called them away again, looking agitated themselves. "You can- We can do this," she added, and the Quo hissed and hummed at each other, and then bobbed in a solemn wave and shuffled their way out, bobbing at Jensen as they left. Shoumei laid a heavy, bony hand on Jensen's shoulder for a moment as she went by.
Then it was just Doc and Raleigh, and Raleigh settled onto a padded ledge with a sigh. Doc stood halfway between, her hands stuffed down into the pockets of her lab coat, her optics stuttering and flaring, endless scrolls of information that, Jensen thought, would make him nuts.
Like the 'net, Jared thought, little thread of amusement, and Jensen snorted.
Not. Fuck, here we go, he sent, as Doc took a deep breath and turned her head so she faced Jensen squarely.
"It's- We found out- It's a damn mess," Doc said, and Jensen felt his temper sparking like a phosphor grenade, and ruthlessly strangled it down.
"Just fucking tell me, fuck, you're making me fucking crazy!"
"It's about Kee. About the ship," Doc said, and Jensen subsided.
"Okay. What about her? Is she alright? I thought she was doing alright." She was, Jensen was sure of it. She was still in the generation tube, still lightly sedated and with a machine breathing for her, but that was mostly because her condition had been so bad to begin with. The generation gel was giving her body a break, taking over the healing, in a way, while the vaccine in her blood cleared away the old mess, sweeping her clean with cytokine storms and wracking fevers. Healing, no matter what it looked like. Doc thought, with the tweaks that the Quo had made, she might even regrow tendon and bone, nerves.
Might get her her arms back, her legs, her fucking gastro-tract. Might. They were working on it, teasing out stem-cell lines and finding how to trigger specific functions, but it took time. It all took time.
Sinna did nothing but stand or sit outside the tube, talking, singing, watching. So full of bursting, terrified hope and love, the 'net sang with it day and night, a constant, incredulous, joyful ache.
"She's fine. We'll get her off the breather and open the tube, let her talk, at least, before we go. It's about what happened on the ship."
"Mutiny, right? Or...they tried to kill the Angels?"
"Not quite," Doc said, and she flicked her fingers out, calling the console over to her side, tapping an icon and opening a square of fuzzy, blue-grey light over it. "This is internal monitoring. Recordings. It was autoed all over the ship, Angel quarters and crew, everywhere. And Kee's feed, coms- You get it," Doc said, and Jensen nodded. All troopships were like that, always had been. You didn't shit, shower, or sleep without a camera recording you; price of the 'net, price of your life.
"So...the Annihilation was tracking something. From the data, it seems like skip emissions, and some radiation and-"
"Skip to the good part," Jensen said, rubbing his hand back over his head and kneading at the nape of his neck. He'd clipped the hairs there again, short and fine, and it felt soft and bristly at the same time, still interesting to his fingertips. Jared, away in the 'ponics, feeling it, sent back his own satisfaction at that, how it felt to him, and Jensen grinned to himself, shivery pleasure easing his nerves for a moment.
"They were tracking the troopships, the ones that we grabbed. And, it seems, tracking iynght srahzss, too," Doc said, her accent credible, the words...disquieting.
"You mean they knew - know - where we are? Where the Quo are? They know about this place?" Jensen said, and Doc nodded, then shrugged.
"Maybe?" The shift, it took a hell of a lot of power. It did stuff, with energy and dark matter and the fucking...fundamentals of space and time as we know it." As she spoke, Doc waved her hands around before shoving them back into her pockets. "It was loud, if you have the right ears on. The Company twigged to it, somehow, or it was just loud enough... We dunno," Doc added, in the face of Jensen's scowl. "They know, so it's just mentioned in the damn records, okay? They're not gonna detail what they already know and that's not the fucking important part." Doc stopped and sighed, reaching up to scrub her hands back through her hair, which she'd shocked to bone-white and chopped off even shorter. It stuck up every which way, little rainbow sparkles along the strands.
"What is the damn important part?" Jensen asked, and Doc came to sprawl down on the ledge Jensen had sat on, leaning back against the wall, one leg tucked up under her, the other stretched out on the wide, padded surface. The console followed, the frozen image from whatever vid file Doc had called up still there, waiting.
"The important part is, Kee knew what was going on. What - who - they were tracking. Knew what they were going to do, which was capture as many Angels and Diaboli as possible, and...and nuke the Quo."
"What?"
"Yeah, they... That was in the briefing packet. They wanted to get troops back; probably want to take the vaccine and the new 'nets apart and discover a fucking antidote or something. But they wanted the Quo gone. Out of the picture."
"Fuck," Jensen muttered, and tried not to let anything out into the 'net. Not yet. Not until he had it all. They could do that? Who in fuck was the Company in bed with, that they had gotten that far, that deep? Killing another species - genocide of another sentient race - and no one to care.
"So, Kee knew?"
"She knew. She told them, told the troops. Kee killed that ship, Jensen," Doc said. She stretched up and tapped something on the console and the vid started to play. It was a holo file, set up like a presentation for a briefing, though there was only Jensen to see. It was data, mostly: intra-ship chatter, maintenance logs and ops, readings off the engines, life support, everything. The trace of skip-runs left behind by the ships, showing as a twisting path through space that the Annihilation was following, short-jump by short-jump, shaving months off their travel time but still having to stop, recalibrate, reorient every handful of jumps.
It was a tedious process, exacting; something Jensen hadn't been sure the Company knew about. The military certainly didn't like it known that you could be tracked through skip-space, though even this newest ship had had to double back after losing the trail sometimes, casting about in ever-widening fans of telemetry, bouncing off ice-rocks and passing planetoids. Not something most ships could do.
Jensen watched as data flows raced up the image and vanished. Vid feeds showed the strange, sad Angels drilling, eating, sleeping, and he let that, at least, out into the 'net, feeling the attention of hundreds of Angels come to bear.
They never laugh, someone said, in the 'net, and Jensen nodded to himself, feeling others hear that, notice, confirm. No laughing, no playing, no music. The closest they came to being like Jensen and his Angels were when they bedded down, huddling together in nests of blankets and cushions, skin to skin but….
Like children. Like...animals, Jared thought, and others agreed. They showed a reflexive need for touch that hadn't, somehow, been stripped away.
He watched as all the Angels, all over the ship, stopped at the same moment, standing or crouched or lying motionless for only a handful of seconds. Then they moved, with purpose, striding through the ship, long, backwards-bending legs pushing them fast, faster; knuckles grazing the floor occasionally, for balance, for speed.
They flowed as one toward the armory, suiting up - until the ship noticed. And then it was...war, armored troops against armored troops against crew against Angels who hadn't made it into armor in time. The first decompression came with a flash of shrapnel and fire, section seals slamming down, bodies crushed, crew and troops dying together.
All over the ship, it was utter chaos. A group of regular Marine troops tried to get to Kee and were repelled by a wave of Angels. Armored Angels destroyed locks and crawled over the hull of the ship, blasting into defended strongholds, venting troops and crew into space, destroying the ship as they destroyed the crew; destroyed themselves.
The last Angels went into engineering, and to the skip array. They sabotaged it with pulse-plasma rifles and their own long, clawed hands before crawling back to Kee to settle around her. They died there, over days; no drugs, no food, no water, and the ship a powered-down hulk.
Jensen watched with a cramp in his gut and pain somewhere around his heart, wanting to scream, to rage, to grieve. As strange as those Angels had been, they hadn't deserved to die that way, in the black and the cold, unnoticed, unmourned. But there wasn't time to mourn - not then, and not now. They had to go. If the Company could track the Quo, they could be on their way, and all of the Quo could be in such incredible danger.
He gestured to Doc to play it again, and let it spool out in the 'net even as Doc was typing at the console, sending the footage to dataspots and consoles in Angel quarters. When the vid had played again - frozen again on the image of Kee's station, and the last Angel shuddering into stillness - Jensen got up, nodded distractedly at Doc and Raleigh both and then left.
Jensen walked fast, blindly, following the 'net, lost in the seethe and jump and flash of thousands of Angels watching, seeing, drowning in sensation. From every far-flung place in the arcology, every Angel did the same, dropped what they were doing, and moved. They converged into quarters, and sealed those accesses, that deck; locked themselves away from every one and every thing that was not...
Us all us Angel family safe home us we us us!
Jensen made his way into the tight-packed bodies around Kee and Sinna, reaching out and catching hold of Jared's hand as it reached back for him. Kane came crowding in behind, and Sous. Jinx, Grieve, Suni, Five - all, all of them. Morgan and troops and ship's crew, all the same.
They all crowded in, close as they could get, filling the decks, body to body, hand to hand, huddling close. Not talking, no noise at all, just the vid playing in silence on various consoles, dataspot holos like columns of white static, grey shadows.
The 'net flared and surged, loud as thunder, whispering, submerging them all in emotions too strong to process alone. Bewilderment, fear, horror. And then, gradually...anger. Hate, like chemical fire, leaping from mind to mind and body to body. Emotion that became physical; a low, moaning growl went up from Angel throats all over quarters. A growl that transformed to yells, to shouts, to shrieks. A boiling, incandescent fury, centered around the Company, the vid.
Jensen let himself be lost in it, tipped his head back and roared, and he felt Jared doing the same; felt Jared's hand all but crushing his; felt Kane's fingers in his shoulder like a vise; felt the overwhelming ache of sorrow, of loss, of desperation.
In the midst of it all, like a thread of cool blue water, Sinna concentrated on Kee. She pushed and pushed and pushed, but gently, so gently… And like the snap of a light, suddenly, Kee was there, awake, in the 'net, flaring out presence and power like no other. Different. Changed.
Like the shockwave of a bomb, Kee Kee Kee rolled out, through the net, silencing them all. A hush rolled through quarters, only the hard breathing of some Angels and a few startled whimpers from the greenies. Silence, and Kee, overwhelming.
Report report report, Kee thought, and Jensen - all of them - could feel the faintest edge of panic.
Home, Sinna thought, hard, Sinna here, home, safe, home, and some of the greenies picked it up, shoving in recklessly. Kee pushed them away - out - smothered them to quick silence.
Report!
Raziel! Jensen thought, command mode, fast and strong. All in, home safe, safe port, all in. He took a hard, deep breath, ordering his thoughts, gathering in Jinx and Jared and Sinna and Kane. And then he opened wide, and poured out everything, all of it. From his 'death', to the Diaboli, to the vaccine, to the taking of the Tiamat; the attack by the Nebuchadnezzar, the Quo, the arcology, iynght srahzss and the other Angel ships, to, finally, the Annihilation being found, and brought in, and Kee being discovered; Stick DNA and the vid file.
As he showed her everything, others joined in, feeding in this or that bit of information, observation, experience. More and more and more, until it was a chorus, thousands of voices strong, faster and faster until the last, until the grief, the fury, the hate.
Kee took it all, absorbed it in silence, and then pushed that silence out, so strong in the 'net, herself, but not. Changed by the Company, she showed them, so that she alone could control the hundreds of Angels on the ship.
Mother hive queen maker all she thought, and then a profound and heart catching sorrow rolled over them, as Kee showed them those Angels. Showed the blunted, simplistic minds that had come back to her. No individuality, no complexity, just the most basic of impulses: food, water, warmth, touch. Obey the Mother, be good for her, fight and hurt and die - all for the Mother. She showed them the last fight; the quick, eager compliance with Kee's order to rise up, take over - kill the ship. She showed them their hurt and bewildered fear as they died, curled around Kee's station, soothed by her praise but hurt hurt cold Mother cold as they slipped, one after the other, away.
It made Jensen's heart ache, made him catch his breath on a shuddering sob as Kee's grief hit them, deep and drowning, all-encompassing.
Kee Raziel safe now home now here we're here I'm here, Sinna, please, Kee…. Sinna pushed in, a tiny mote of cool blue in the smothering, boiling grief. Jensen boosted her - Jared did, and Kane too - and the pressure slowly lightened as Kee gradually let it go. They pushed it down and away until it was gone, and it was only Kee and Sinna and us all us we home here safe
Jensen, Kee thought, and Jensen could see her in the dim, amber-blue light in the tube, a shadow that shifted, blind head turning a fraction, half her face obscured by the breathing apparatus. He could feel her slipping back, just a little, into that drugged and painless twilight of the tube, of the generation gel, into healing sleep.
Here. I'm here, Kee.
Tell them. Make them. It's time, Qemuel. Time to go, Kee thought, and the image of iynght srahzss was in the net, and Salome; Company headquarters. And then fire, like a sun going nova. Utter annihilation.
Time to go.
nutánqus - my male cousin
nutánqusosqew - my female cousin (Coastal Algonquian, Carolina and Virginia)
'O Fortuna' is from Carmina Burana.
Part twenty-six.
Originally entered at https://tabaqui.dreamwidth.org/201434.html - comment where you please!
My first and most heartfelt thanks goes to my beta,
Darkhavens, who has been an absolute *dream* of a beta, an a wonderful friend, besides.
Secondly - and always - to Sweptawaybayou, whose encouragement and excitement and just general awesomeness has kept me going when I just wanted to curl up and cry over how damn *blocked* I was, and how slow it all happened. You are the best, bb. The very best.
Lastly - to you! To my constant readers who have stuck by me and kept reading and just...been there. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!
IT'S DONE!! IT'S DONE!! :D
Also at AO3.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
James Oppenheim - Bread and Roses
The med bay - the last one, the others having been transformed into quarters, mess, rec - was hushed, the lights a dim amber-pink, the machines muted. Tiamat Angels sat or stood in groups, huddled into each other, silent. The 'net was hushed, as well; every other Angel in the arcology, even the greenies, doing their best to keep the 'net...calm.
But stories were passed, images and moments, until the 'net was Kee. Kee suiting up, singing the strange and hypnotizing battle-song she'd found in some archive somewhere, O Fortuna...velut luna...statu variabilis…. Kee explaining sailing ships - and having to also explain the sea, and waves and wind and tides - but ships; sailing, fighting, discovering; ships flying, leaping, dancing on the waves. Kee on shore leave, picking fights just to fight, and buying drinks for the losers; Kee rallying her squad, leaping to the fore, eager and vicious and canny. Kee laughing, Kee dancing, Kee's dark skin tinted red and blue and green under bar lights, sheened with sweat and glitter-stick, moving to the music like her ships, leap and glide and sway. Kee's sweet, full-lipped mouth and high-arched nose and laughing, furious, tender gaze…
Sinna shuddered in the 'net, Kee-and-Sinna rippling out to all of them.
The 'net sang with her, and laughed with her, and shivered with her, and fought with her. In the med bay, suspended in a generation tube, the cool, blue gel cradling her, Kee rode silent and still. Healing, so Doc said. Getting better, but not yet better.
Give her a week, Doc said, data scrolling down and down the lenses of her optics, obscuring her eyes. Let's get her back to stable, first. Then we'll fix everything. Then, the vaccine, and Kee could be, would be, part of them again.
Jensen lifted his head from Jared's shoulder as someone came in, and every Angel stirred, heads coming up, turning to the entryway, silent and in sync. Morgan was standing there, with Raleigh and a Quo, maybe Shoumei, it was hard to tell. Something like a chill breeze came through the 'net, shivery and unpleasant, and Jensen pushed himself to his feet, untangling from Jared and Kane and Five, dragging the edges of his sweater closed across his chest.
He stepped around clusters of Angels wrapped up in blankets and each other, heading for Morgan. Jared said something, low and unclear, and Jensen felt him getting up, too, and following, determined.
"You shouldn't be here," Jensen said, to Morgan, to all of them.
"We have to talk," Morgan said. Blackbox data, and that sent another ripple through the 'net, this one prickly and attentive; focused, in the way a sniper is focused. Important, Morgan insisted. Jared's hand slid into Jensen's, warm and strong, callused and scarred, and Jensen cast it to the 'net.
Go we stay find out tell us go
"Alright," Jensen said, and they slipped out. The cooler, white-blue lights of the arcology seemed especially harsh, after the deliberate, amber dimness in the med bay, and Jensen leaned into Jared as they walked, feeling chilled. His head was still back in there, with his squad (Kane's squad), with his Angels.
"Ahn-gel...iss well?" the Quo asked, and Jensen blinked up at the long, so-solemn face that was bending down over him, fireflies doing a lazy little orbit, slow pulse of pale yellows and blues. Shoumei, waddling a bit more in her state, huffing along as if out of breath already on this short walk.
"She-"
"Yes," Jared said, "she's well. She's healing," in a tone that said she would be. She’d better be, and nothing and no one was going to interfere in that. Or contradict it. Getting better, she is, she's fine, all good.
"Yes," Jensen agreed, in the face of Jared's insistence. He could feel the shoved-down current of fear and worry under it all, and had no desire to add to it. "She's fine. Are...are you-?"
"Su, su, su," Shoumei said, and a firefly darted down and hovered in front of the curved bulge of Shoumei's abdomen, chiming softly. "All happy."
"That's good," Jared said, and Shoumei huffed softly and then hummed, something low enough to be felt in Jensen’s bones, a soporific, almost numbing sensation.
The babies hear that wonder what that sounds like from Jared, a moment's distraction, and Jensen couldn't imagine that basso rumble being all around you, all encompassing.
Up ahead was a small seating area, just a little bubble off the corridor, a digital port with a 'view' of the system and wide, Quo-sized padded shelves to lean on. Quo didn't really ever sit, their tails got in the way, but rather sprawled and leaned and draped. One shelf was down low, for feet maybe, and Morgan sank down onto it with a sigh. Raleigh stayed standing, gazing up at the digital port, his hands hidden in the folds of his Quo-style robe. Shoumei leaned her knees onto a padded shelf and reclined forward, elbows on another, higher one, giving a little sigh.
"So, what did you find?" Jensen asked, and Morgan rubbed his flesh hand back through hair that was longer now, grown out of its military brush-cut. Jensen could see the bright, silver threads in the black, thicker at his temples than ever before.
"The Company... Those Angels on that ship - they called it the Annihilation - they weren't conscripts, or volunteers, the Company made them."
"Made?" A flurry in the 'net, from Jared, of his own birth-story: his mothers choosing DNA, carrying him; the child who died. Jared shied from that, as if surprised at the memory, at the up-rush of emotion. Jensen reached for his hand and squeezed lightly, tugging him a step closer, and Jared smoothed the memory away. Hard on the heels of that was another memory, one that Jensen had no hope of avoiding.
Exogenous wombs, he thought, doing his own internal flinch as the birth rooms of the Glorianna flickered through the 'net; the murky fluid, the decomposing remains, the living infants being subsumed into dead flesh….
"No, Christ!" Morgan shook his head, as if shaking that away, and lifted his polycarbonate hand, clicking the fingers together, startling Raleigh, who looked away from the port and blinked at them. "You tell them, you're the damn expert," Morgan said, and Raleigh shuffled around to face them.
"What we found, and keep in mind, the ship's crew knows this information, so it was mostly supplemental, medical records, that sort of thing," he said, eyebrows going up, a sort of 'do you understand?' look on his face. Jensen nodded. "It seems, from the medical and personnel records, and some embedded Company files accessible only to the Captain, the Company is now...wholesale creating Angels. Not recruiting, like Morgan said. They've made some kind of...DNA template, and they're running birthing labs."
"But those Angels-" Jared said, and the images from the ship were in the 'net: the sprawled bodies with too-long hands and arms, with backward-bending legs, with teeth like something out of a nightmare. The 'net shivered like a plucked thread, and Jensen pushed out Raleigh's information, sparking questions, the hum of thousands of minds wanting to know.
"What was on that ship wasn't- didn't look human," Jensen said, and Raleigh nodded, a whole-body bob he seemed to have picked up from the Quo.
"It was, mostly. It started human. But the Company is using some non-human DNA, as well. There were- In the medical records, it was there for treatment options or-"
"Yeah, don't fucking care, Raleigh, just tell us," Jared said, and Raleigh glanced up at him and then away, staring into some middle distance, his face schooled to an expressionless mask. Jensen forgot, sometimes, that Jared had worked for the Diaboli first. That Jared was, in fact, someone who had done dangerous things before, and made hard choices.
"Yes, well. We saw that there were three cell lines. Human, animal - we're not sure what, yet, it looks like canine - and...and xénos DNA."
What is that canine what is xénos what what what in the 'net, confusion, a rising sense of unease, and Jensen felt it like a cold hollowness in his gut.
"Animal? How is that even possible?" Jared said, overlapping Jensen.
"What does that mean, xénos?"
Xénos canine query query query, and the whole catalogue of combined Angel data scrolled past in the 'net, searched, sorted, collated, compared. It was over in a blink, in a heartbeat; before Raleigh could open his mouth.
"Alien DNA? Dogs and aliens?" Jared blurted, and Raleigh flinched. "What the hell? How in fuck-?" Jared was losing it, fast. Jensen turned and grabbed and held on, curling around him physically as well as in the 'net, warding off, for a moment, the reaction from the others as the information spread out, hit, and then bounced back, hurled by the force of query query query avoid wrong no no no.
"Yes, it's- They...it's Stick DNA," Raleigh said finally, and Jensen turned to glare at him, his lips pulling back in a snarl; felt it, in the 'net, the ingrained revulsion, the hate. Stick.
The enemy that humans - Angels - had been fighting for decades; longer, counting all the years in skip-space, all the time that wasn't time, for some of them. Stick, that had come out of nowhere, an enemy that was completely unknown and unknowable: implacable, vicious, endless. Long, thin bodies like twisted sinew and bone, flat, nearly noseless faces and lipless mouths like skulls like bones like nothing human nothing alive, with their protuberant, whiteless eyes and clawed fingers and voices that ranged into the infra and ultrasound, putting every Angel in hearing range on edge.
Stick, who had killed more Angels than any other enemy, and seemed to never, ever tire, waver, run out.
How could they why did they better off they're dead better off dead wrong avoid avoid avoid no no no
The 'net was chaos, ramping up to insanity, and for a moment Jensen let it, wallowing in the fury and fight and adrenaline that flooded him. As good as a go-pack, it was an instant fix: heart pounding, blood singing, skin tingling. He wanted to move, to leap, to rend and tear and destroy, and all over the arcology, he could feel the greenies falling into snarling, snapping fights. Shoving, cursing, kicking, punching; release, after so long doing nothing.
Fighting. Almost as good as fucking. Sometimes, as good.
Jensen grinned fiercely, fists clenched. He whipped his head sideways at a sudden movement and saw Morgan on his feet, both hands up, and Jared…
Jared was moving away, breathing hard, his eyes wide and shocked. For a moment, Jensen was nothing but impulse, reflex, and instinct. He snarled and grabbed at Jared, getting him by his shirt, shoving him, and then turning, arms flung out, crowding Jared back. Knees bent and hands flexed, chin down, he glared at Morgan and Raleigh and Shoumei.
"Fuck off, back off," Jensen growled, and Raleigh did back up a step, looking confused. Morgan just froze, hands spread, looking somewhere off to the side, not quite at Jensen. Not quite.
"Qemuel," he said, and Jensen twitched, a hard tremor going through him. "Jensen, stand down, Christ. Tell them to stand down," Morgan said, and Jensen could see his jaw was clenched; could see that Morgan's hand was shaking, his pupils blown wide, his lungs heaving. His polycarbonate hand made tiny, mechanical noises, internal servos reacting to the adrenaline spike, to the emotions, to the 'net.
"Jensen?" Stop, please stop them, stop, us you me we us stop them, please Jared's hand curled over Jensen's shoulder, Jared was pouring a shaky 'calm down' into the 'net, and Jensen stiffened, wanting to shake him off, get him back. Get him into some corner and away from Morgan and Raleigh Morrigan, the Morrigan, outsider, other, not us, not us.
"Jen, please," Jared said.
Then someone else was there, pushing in: Sinna, in the 'net. Sinna, and then Suni, and then Kane, throwing out calm, and safe and us Angels home all in all in stand down, safe home. Jensen blinked and took in a sharp, heaving breath, and then he leaned into it, lending his strength, more than the rest. He pushed it out, driving it home. Jinx and Five and Perrin and Grieve followed in a cascade, soothing, smoothing, curling around; settling the 'net, with long, slow pulses of warmth and affection and home us all home home. They enfolded the troop-ship crews who'd come in, the drop-ship pilots and medicos, Morgan and the rest of the officers that were left, enveloping them all.
"Fuck," Jensen said, and felt his shoulders sag, the fight going out of him under the calming onslaught in the 'net. He could feel the veterans, the most level-headed of them all, deliberately dampening everything, muffling every response. It was like trying to push smoke, and Jensen let it go, reaching back to grasp Jared's hand and pull him in close before looking back at Morgan, and Raleigh.
And then he turned his gaze to Shoumei, who had lumbered upright, every firefly spinning out from her and diving at Jared and Jensen, circling them and then darting back as Shoumei waddled closer. She opened her arms, fingers unfolding from their curled position in her palms, claws unfolding with them. Her reach spanned almost three meters, with long, coarse, beaded hair hanging down. The fireflies darted and danced between them.
"Whhee haff...sseen. Ahhn-gullsss...no...gud," she said, 'sonics booming along under the words, shivering in Jensen's bones. "Whhee...go. Ahhll. Ahhll go. In…" She lapsed into Quo, hisses and rumbles, and a firefly danced forward, shivering blue light. "In time three weeks, T'ssmg'ku commence iynght srahzss. To where these are made."
"But," Jared started, and then stopped, bewilderment in the 'net. Iynght srahzss - the process that had brought the troopships, and then the Annihilation to the arcology. Opening a hole in space, reaching into the Between and pulling out a ship...ships. It was still a mind-boggling process, one Jensen didn't understand at all; hell, none of them did.
But now Shoumei was saying…? "The whole- You're taking...everything, all of this is going to Salome?" Jensen asked, and Raleigh was looking awfully smug, while Morgan looked faintly ill.
"Ssssaah…r'me, su, su, su, we take, thhiss, thhat...go, puuull, zisss!" Shoumei seemed excited and unconcerned, gesturing wide with her huge hands, fireflies spiraling up and around and back down.
"But, all? This whole-? How?"
"Not all, not everyone," Raleigh said, edging around Shoumei's arm, giving that little bob to her that she returned. A firefly came and danced across the beading of Raleigh's Quo-style robe, chiming softly. "Just the main arcology, obs-con, and the Angel quarters. The 'ponics and all is staying here, the science stuff, the observatory...the children."
"How is that possible?" Jared asked finally, explosively, throwing his hands up, and Jensen couldn't help smiling at him, his own confusion in the 'net. But something was else there, too. Something more.
Excitement.
"We...really aren't totally...sure," Raleigh said, blinking rapidly as the firefly drifted up and basically bounced off his nose. His hand lifted, as if to shoo it away, and Shoumei trilled softly. The firefly pulsed, pale green to bright white, then green again, and darted back to the Quo, joining the rest. "Thank you," Raleigh said. "They've done it before; we've reviewed the logs of those times. It's...hell, man, we're so far behind the curve on this. Just- They can, we will, and then, once we're at Salome..." Both Raleigh's hands came up, this time, an wild gesture conveying 'who knows' and 'total chaos' and 'brace yourselves'.
"Yeah," Jensen said, and felt Jared's agreement in the 'net. He glanced over at Morgan, who was staring up at the digital view, hands firmly locked behind him in parade rest stance that betrayed the thread of worry coming off him. Jensen hesitated, and then sighed, reaching out.
Morrigan, tell them, Jensen thought, and Morgan looked over at him. After a moment, he nodded his head, a fractional lowering and lift of his chin. His gaze went back to the port, and then he pushed it all out into the 'net: graphs and power schematics and the plan, the timeline, all of it; a briefing as in the old days. Jensen pushed it along, adding his stamp, feeling the wavefront of information spread out through the still agitated Angels. It spread, and was absorbed, examined, turned over and shaken. It was flung back, in some instances, disbelieving and frantic, and then Morgan was asking Raleigh something and conveying the response; answering questions, calming emotions, reassuring, as steady as he'd always been under fire.
"Shoumei," Jensen said, and then stopped, not sure how to go on, how to say it. "Shoumei, the Quo… What are you-? What do you think should be done? To the Company. For making these...new Angels." The translator firefly hissed and boomed and trilled, and Shoumei blinked long-lashed eyes, her fingers working, the tips of her back-curved claws tapping along the underside of her forearms. She tucked her long snout down, regarding Jensen and Jared from her great height.
"Whhee...haf pu-lan. 'Ou sssee, Jen-zen. No kill," she added, and the fireflies whirled up around her, chiming, before darting out, weaving around Jensen and Jared and then back, settling again, like bright beads along Shoumei's shoulders and throat. "No kill, Ahhn-gul. 'Ou sseee."
Three weeks seemed like forever, and not nearly enough time at all. The Quo went about as if nothing of importance was happening; as if they did this all the time. And hell, maybe they did, who would know? It all seemed just too damn easy.
Jared occupied himself with the 'ponics rooms, mostly; clomping around in the construction mech, moving giant crates of stuff; helping adjust the walls, the various units of heat, water filtration, hatchery. He helped reconfigure the fish tanks and the bubble-shaped crop cages; maximum efficiency in a system already streamlined and nearly perfect. He went out in the Quo skimmers, observing the arcology from outside; watched the Quo in their own versions of waldo-run, remote mechs doing the prep necessary to decouple the arcology, and leave part of it behind. It was interesting, for sure, but it let him have a little mental quiet, too; out there in the black, nothing but the thin skin of the skimmer between him and all of the Beyond.
It kept his mind off...things. Kept his mind off of what they were prepping for, which was something he'd never thought he'd do, ever again: go back to Salome. It had been his home for years. His only home, once he'd gotten the news, a year and more after the fact, that both his mothers were dead: that Mommy Signey had shot herself; that Mama Jaasau had died from an overdose at Signey's hand. He'd put Kin-Gin away in the darkest reaches of his mind, after that, and Salome became...everything. The drab dormitories; the cold, white hospital rooms; the silent classrooms where they'd plugged in and drilled, over and over, learning the skills they needed, first, to navigate their new bodies. And then, later, learning the most basic of skills on computers: maintenance, monitoring - the kind of scut work that any system still needed, and needed done by humans.
The lucky ones, like Jared, got past that, eventually. They learned new skills and graduated to more advanced jobs, more complex systems. The unlucky ones… Well, someone had to clean out filters and mop floors and prep food. Someone had to make sure incinerators burned everything, or magnetic catapults shot their encapsulated waste at the right time, to intersect with some system's star, and burn into nothing thousands of kilometers above the surface.
The idea that he'd be stuck in a grey coverall, making check-marks on a digital clipboard for the rest of his life had driven Jared into a cold, terrified frenzy of learning. Day after day and year after year, learning, until he could choose his job, choose a bigger apartment, choose clothing or food or blankets or entertainment that wasn't on the Company Basic list.
He'd said goodbye to Salome, and to the Company's rigid lock-step years ago (so many years, now; the Between like an ocean, and his previous life out of sight, sunk below an impossible horizon, forever out of reach). He’d found things outside of the Company; found the Diaboli; and found out the truth about the 'net. He'd found Jensen, and the Angels. He’d found so very much more than he'd ever hoped to.
Going back…it was hard to picture, hard to deal with. Once he'd got free, he'd never wanted to see Salome again.
Us all us be alright in the 'net, from Kane and from Sinna and from Kerrin, but from others, too. From the greenie in the 'ponics with him, who called themselves Than, with a soft, hissing th, and had incredible, swirling, keloid scars all over the dark skin of their arms and chest. The same, from some of the oldest veterans; from Jensen, whenever he stopped being distracted by whatever new thing Raleigh or Morgan or one of the Quo was telling him.
Us all yes, alright, sorry sorry, Jared thought, and directed the mech to step over to the charging station. He backed it in, carefully, and felt the little click and hum when it plugged in. Everything's fine.
Okay to be scared, we're scared, no worries, all of us, here together holding okay Than thought, glancing up from their contemplation of one of the fish tanks; bright silver-blue-green flash of scales and bubbles and water in the 'net.
"Yeah," Jared said, and just sent back warm and grateful and us in the 'net, a feeling like being hugged. Across the room, Than grinned.
Jared let himself down out of the mech and shook out his hands, bending back and forth, loosening up muscles that had stiffened a bit in the padded, full-body waldo. He dragged on a jacket; the 'ponics room was warm, and the corridors Quo-cool, and he had sweated through his shirt. He walked out of 'ponics, heading toward Angel quarters, wanting a shower and doing his best not to step down too hard or swing too wide, the ghost-sensation of the mech's stride and reach still in his muscles.
The quarters were dim, as they usually were; amber-green-pink and comforting. A handful of Angels were drawing on a wall, the same plant fiber as the others, but this one altered to make the surface more porous, and smooth. They were outlining a swooping, curling design, pots of colors ranged all around them, some of it already spattered on their skin. Painting naked, because why not? Easier to clean up, and more fun.
Jared admired the art for a moment and then walked on. He wanted to drown himself a little bit in the heat and steam and the silken, slightly spicy-smelling soap-foam the showers dispensed. He wanted to just stop thinking. He shed his clothes into the laundry chute and pressed his thumb to one of the panels by the bay of showers. Six people could easily fit into a Quo-sized shower, and the Quo favored huge grids overhead, with water falling down in sheets, and steam coming up from underneath.
It was like being in a rainstorm, only warm. Well, hot, actually. Jared tended to go for high heat, and the shower cycled on, pre-set by his ident to his preferred temperature. He stepped under with a sigh of pure pleasure, tipping his face back and letting himself become soaked. His skin, chilled by the long walk and drying sweat, began to warm, pinking under the heat, and Jared gathered a handful of foam and rubbed it lazily over his belly.
Soft warm good that's good… Shallow thoughts, going out into the 'net - the soft hiss and patter of the water, the rich slide of the foam, the spicy, warm scent. Muscles loosened and his hair clung to his shoulders and-
Feels nice, feels so good, down, go down…. Jensen, in the 'net, on the move; leaving obs-con and striding away down corridors toward a bubble-lift, needing a damn break, fuck and so warm want to touch you, touch you, reach down, yes, there, touch, let me feel, oh, good, good….
"Jen," Jared breathed, and slid his palm along the filling shaft of his cock, squeezing gently. He rubbed a calloused thumb over the head, and that little spear of pleasure darted out into the 'net.
Warm warm good there, oh- Someone else keyed in, feeling it, and Jared stroked himself again, and again. Jensen was moving faster now; off the lift, corridors away, the ghost sensation of his hand on Jared's hand right there.
Jared's skin shivered with the sense-memory of that touch, and he felt the first, delicious little cramp of arousal in his belly, down deep, muscles going tight in anticipation, cock nearly all the way hard. He cupped his balls with his other hand and tugged gently, legs moving apart, and oh yes, there, c'mon, harder more
No, from Jensen, and then he was there, in the shower, bare skin and reaching hands, turning Jared under the water, pushing him right up against the warm, pleasantly pebbled, water-running surface of the shower wall.
"No, that's for-" Me that's mine look at you oh kiss me, want your mouth, so good
Mouth to mouth, Jensen's thigh nudged between Jared's, hips slotting together, Jensen's cock half-hard between them, pushing up against Jared’s belly. Skin slipping on foam sliding on skin, slippery and perfect; Jensen's hands on Jared's hips, back, up between his shoulder blades….
Feel so good so good love it love you oh, there, more, want….
"Jen, Jensen," Jared said, getting both hands on Jensen's ass to drag him closer, grinding against him, kissing him and kissing him, lost in a feedback loop of sensation, of his hands on Jensen and Jensen's hands on him. His body and his body and his and his and they were the same, they were distinct but they were the same, and Jared was gasping, arching up, eyes mostly shut in the shower-rain, but he could see himself, he could feel….
He could feel Kane and Malik, someone shoving someone into a wall, laughing, fighting stubborn fasteners. He could feel Perrin and Grieve, half naked in the armor bay, fingers and lips, Grieve's mouth on Perrin's breast. He could feel Suni, curled with half a dozen greenies, just feeling the tides of emotion and sensation, skin on skin enough. He could feel Sinna, and Jinx crowding up behind her, just holding on, Kee so far away but Jinx warm and alive and Sinna taking the comfort of that, he could feel-
me, me feel me, Jared, you me us, Jared, Jared
He could feel Jensen. He fell back into his body with a gasp and groan, and they were on their knees, on the pliant, warm flooring of the shower, Jensen pushing Jared back and down, legs bent under him, his back in a bow. Hips up, thighs wide, Jensen's fingers were pushing in, pressing and sliding; Jensen's mouth was on the head of Jared's cock, sucking and licking; Jensen's hand was on Jared's balls, squeezing, tugging.
"Oh, fuck, oh- I-" feel you feel you us me you us all all Jensen Jensen And it all rushed back in and rolled over him; thousands of them kissing, holding, touching, fucking, loving. It was so much, it hurt. It was glorious; it was overwhelming.
Jensen's fingers inside, twisting and rubbing and pressing, made Jared writhe, one hand on the curve of Jensen's skull, his whole body arching up and grinding down, over and over. Jensen's mouth, cooler than the water, was insistent and clever and relentless.
Jensen's own cock was achingly full, trapped between his doubled-up leg and belly, a glancing sensation that only made Jensen harder, higher. Jensen pushed down, his tongue working, sucking hard as three fingers pressed up, and Jared sank the nails of one hand into the floor and the fingertips of the other into Jensen's scalp, yelled out loudly, and came.
And so did Malik, and Perrin, and others; orgasms like sunbursts, like sparks, like rolling waves, sensations as different as the different bodies, different desires. They came, crashing through the 'net and leaving them all gasping, laughing, groaning.
Jensen licked the softening length of Jared's cock and then leaned up over him, his cock riding against Jared's hip. Jared groaned and rolled on his side, uncurling his legs. He reached down, fingers curling around Jensen's cock, and their mouths slid together, his own salt-musk taste on Jensen's tongue. Other tastes, other mouths, other hands, all through the 'net all over again, a second wave, and a third, more…. Until they were all sated, drained, done, the 'net settling to a humming, glowing thing, satisfaction and affection and tired, wanna sleep, good, warm, hungry, make some food, come lie down, be close, do it again, do it again, here, us, all, Angels Angels Angels….
"We'll be okay, Jared," Jensen said, pushing the water-soaked hair off Jared's forehead; kissing his jaw, his throat, his mouth. "We'll be okay, you'll see, we're fine," he said, and Jared nodded, eyes shut, content to just hold and be held, to just…hang on. Just hang on.
Jensen sighed, fingers twisting in the hem of his sweater, straining the threads. He was in a briefing room, watching Doc and Raleigh and Shoumei and a couple other Quo standing huddled in front of a floating console; the blurry images illuminating Doc's optics to sheer blue-white. The Quo boomed and hissed and rumbled, and Doc waved her hands around, and Jensen was just...so fucking done with it.
T-minus three days, and they had come to Jensen with some kind of news; something that would make a difference, apparently, but Jensen didn't even care. He'd been on edge, ramped up, ready to go for days, just like every other Angel in the arcology. He was exhausted from being fucking ready-not-so-steady, and these 'briefings' were making everything worse. Like endless jump-scares in a vid file, he just could not settle; there was always something new, something else. And most of the damn time, it didn't mean fuck-all.
Jensen was just damn tired; just wanted to go. He was trying to keep that jittery, snappish energy out of the 'net, but the greenies were endless wells of it. They'd never had this much down time; didn't know what to do with it, with themselves; didn't know how to deal with it. Fucking was starting to look a lot more like fighting, and fighting was verging on berserker rampages, and it was getting damn hard to keep them even marginally in control. And on top of all that, there was an extra current of unease, of agitation, that was dragging them all down even more, because some of the Angels had said they weren't fighting - said they could not fight, and the debate and discussion was...heated.
Thank the stars and rebel medicos for still-concocted cocktails that could head off the worst of the rages, but even that wasn't a fix. Most of the older Angels didn't like the idea of the greenies being dependent on drugs, handed out by the Quo, the Diaboli, or their own medicos. Getting away from the Company was supposed to fix that, not just shift the dispenser. Solutions were varied and ongoing, but until they actually got this damn… confrontation over with, they couldn't really settle on any one thing.
So, add another layer to the frustration and the brewing discontent.
It was past time to just be done, and Jensen had no more patience for any more meetings, any more useless information.
"You got anything I really need?" Jensen said, a little louder than he'd intended, and the fireflies swarming the Quo rose up en masse and descended on Jensen, all of them flashing, humming, chiming. Whispering Quo words and Human words, they swirled around and around him until he had to twist his fingers in the sweater and resist the urge to run screaming. "Chugn, chugn!" he snapped, and the Quo - a different one, not Shoumei - called them back with a rising, trilling hum. The fireflies zipped away, and Jensen took a deep, steadying breath, feeling Jared in the 'net, Kane and Jinx, Suni. All of them sending calm calm calm; all of them with the same restless energy seething along under their skins.
"Yeah, we got something. Chugn," Doc said, batting at fireflies, and the other, new Quo called them away again, looking agitated themselves. "You can- We can do this," she added, and the Quo hissed and hummed at each other, and then bobbed in a solemn wave and shuffled their way out, bobbing at Jensen as they left. Shoumei laid a heavy, bony hand on Jensen's shoulder for a moment as she went by.
Then it was just Doc and Raleigh, and Raleigh settled onto a padded ledge with a sigh. Doc stood halfway between, her hands stuffed down into the pockets of her lab coat, her optics stuttering and flaring, endless scrolls of information that, Jensen thought, would make him nuts.
Like the 'net, Jared thought, little thread of amusement, and Jensen snorted.
Not. Fuck, here we go, he sent, as Doc took a deep breath and turned her head so she faced Jensen squarely.
"It's- We found out- It's a damn mess," Doc said, and Jensen felt his temper sparking like a phosphor grenade, and ruthlessly strangled it down.
"Just fucking tell me, fuck, you're making me fucking crazy!"
"It's about Kee. About the ship," Doc said, and Jensen subsided.
"Okay. What about her? Is she alright? I thought she was doing alright." She was, Jensen was sure of it. She was still in the generation tube, still lightly sedated and with a machine breathing for her, but that was mostly because her condition had been so bad to begin with. The generation gel was giving her body a break, taking over the healing, in a way, while the vaccine in her blood cleared away the old mess, sweeping her clean with cytokine storms and wracking fevers. Healing, no matter what it looked like. Doc thought, with the tweaks that the Quo had made, she might even regrow tendon and bone, nerves.
Might get her her arms back, her legs, her fucking gastro-tract. Might. They were working on it, teasing out stem-cell lines and finding how to trigger specific functions, but it took time. It all took time.
Sinna did nothing but stand or sit outside the tube, talking, singing, watching. So full of bursting, terrified hope and love, the 'net sang with it day and night, a constant, incredulous, joyful ache.
"She's fine. We'll get her off the breather and open the tube, let her talk, at least, before we go. It's about what happened on the ship."
"Mutiny, right? Or...they tried to kill the Angels?"
"Not quite," Doc said, and she flicked her fingers out, calling the console over to her side, tapping an icon and opening a square of fuzzy, blue-grey light over it. "This is internal monitoring. Recordings. It was autoed all over the ship, Angel quarters and crew, everywhere. And Kee's feed, coms- You get it," Doc said, and Jensen nodded. All troopships were like that, always had been. You didn't shit, shower, or sleep without a camera recording you; price of the 'net, price of your life.
"So...the Annihilation was tracking something. From the data, it seems like skip emissions, and some radiation and-"
"Skip to the good part," Jensen said, rubbing his hand back over his head and kneading at the nape of his neck. He'd clipped the hairs there again, short and fine, and it felt soft and bristly at the same time, still interesting to his fingertips. Jared, away in the 'ponics, feeling it, sent back his own satisfaction at that, how it felt to him, and Jensen grinned to himself, shivery pleasure easing his nerves for a moment.
"They were tracking the troopships, the ones that we grabbed. And, it seems, tracking iynght srahzss, too," Doc said, her accent credible, the words...disquieting.
"You mean they knew - know - where we are? Where the Quo are? They know about this place?" Jensen said, and Doc nodded, then shrugged.
"Maybe?" The shift, it took a hell of a lot of power. It did stuff, with energy and dark matter and the fucking...fundamentals of space and time as we know it." As she spoke, Doc waved her hands around before shoving them back into her pockets. "It was loud, if you have the right ears on. The Company twigged to it, somehow, or it was just loud enough... We dunno," Doc added, in the face of Jensen's scowl. "They know, so it's just mentioned in the damn records, okay? They're not gonna detail what they already know and that's not the fucking important part." Doc stopped and sighed, reaching up to scrub her hands back through her hair, which she'd shocked to bone-white and chopped off even shorter. It stuck up every which way, little rainbow sparkles along the strands.
"What is the damn important part?" Jensen asked, and Doc came to sprawl down on the ledge Jensen had sat on, leaning back against the wall, one leg tucked up under her, the other stretched out on the wide, padded surface. The console followed, the frozen image from whatever vid file Doc had called up still there, waiting.
"The important part is, Kee knew what was going on. What - who - they were tracking. Knew what they were going to do, which was capture as many Angels and Diaboli as possible, and...and nuke the Quo."
"What?"
"Yeah, they... That was in the briefing packet. They wanted to get troops back; probably want to take the vaccine and the new 'nets apart and discover a fucking antidote or something. But they wanted the Quo gone. Out of the picture."
"Fuck," Jensen muttered, and tried not to let anything out into the 'net. Not yet. Not until he had it all. They could do that? Who in fuck was the Company in bed with, that they had gotten that far, that deep? Killing another species - genocide of another sentient race - and no one to care.
"So, Kee knew?"
"She knew. She told them, told the troops. Kee killed that ship, Jensen," Doc said. She stretched up and tapped something on the console and the vid started to play. It was a holo file, set up like a presentation for a briefing, though there was only Jensen to see. It was data, mostly: intra-ship chatter, maintenance logs and ops, readings off the engines, life support, everything. The trace of skip-runs left behind by the ships, showing as a twisting path through space that the Annihilation was following, short-jump by short-jump, shaving months off their travel time but still having to stop, recalibrate, reorient every handful of jumps.
It was a tedious process, exacting; something Jensen hadn't been sure the Company knew about. The military certainly didn't like it known that you could be tracked through skip-space, though even this newest ship had had to double back after losing the trail sometimes, casting about in ever-widening fans of telemetry, bouncing off ice-rocks and passing planetoids. Not something most ships could do.
Jensen watched as data flows raced up the image and vanished. Vid feeds showed the strange, sad Angels drilling, eating, sleeping, and he let that, at least, out into the 'net, feeling the attention of hundreds of Angels come to bear.
They never laugh, someone said, in the 'net, and Jensen nodded to himself, feeling others hear that, notice, confirm. No laughing, no playing, no music. The closest they came to being like Jensen and his Angels were when they bedded down, huddling together in nests of blankets and cushions, skin to skin but….
Like children. Like...animals, Jared thought, and others agreed. They showed a reflexive need for touch that hadn't, somehow, been stripped away.
He watched as all the Angels, all over the ship, stopped at the same moment, standing or crouched or lying motionless for only a handful of seconds. Then they moved, with purpose, striding through the ship, long, backwards-bending legs pushing them fast, faster; knuckles grazing the floor occasionally, for balance, for speed.
They flowed as one toward the armory, suiting up - until the ship noticed. And then it was...war, armored troops against armored troops against crew against Angels who hadn't made it into armor in time. The first decompression came with a flash of shrapnel and fire, section seals slamming down, bodies crushed, crew and troops dying together.
All over the ship, it was utter chaos. A group of regular Marine troops tried to get to Kee and were repelled by a wave of Angels. Armored Angels destroyed locks and crawled over the hull of the ship, blasting into defended strongholds, venting troops and crew into space, destroying the ship as they destroyed the crew; destroyed themselves.
The last Angels went into engineering, and to the skip array. They sabotaged it with pulse-plasma rifles and their own long, clawed hands before crawling back to Kee to settle around her. They died there, over days; no drugs, no food, no water, and the ship a powered-down hulk.
Jensen watched with a cramp in his gut and pain somewhere around his heart, wanting to scream, to rage, to grieve. As strange as those Angels had been, they hadn't deserved to die that way, in the black and the cold, unnoticed, unmourned. But there wasn't time to mourn - not then, and not now. They had to go. If the Company could track the Quo, they could be on their way, and all of the Quo could be in such incredible danger.
He gestured to Doc to play it again, and let it spool out in the 'net even as Doc was typing at the console, sending the footage to dataspots and consoles in Angel quarters. When the vid had played again - frozen again on the image of Kee's station, and the last Angel shuddering into stillness - Jensen got up, nodded distractedly at Doc and Raleigh both and then left.
Jensen walked fast, blindly, following the 'net, lost in the seethe and jump and flash of thousands of Angels watching, seeing, drowning in sensation. From every far-flung place in the arcology, every Angel did the same, dropped what they were doing, and moved. They converged into quarters, and sealed those accesses, that deck; locked themselves away from every one and every thing that was not...
Us all us Angel family safe home us we us us!
Jensen made his way into the tight-packed bodies around Kee and Sinna, reaching out and catching hold of Jared's hand as it reached back for him. Kane came crowding in behind, and Sous. Jinx, Grieve, Suni, Five - all, all of them. Morgan and troops and ship's crew, all the same.
They all crowded in, close as they could get, filling the decks, body to body, hand to hand, huddling close. Not talking, no noise at all, just the vid playing in silence on various consoles, dataspot holos like columns of white static, grey shadows.
The 'net flared and surged, loud as thunder, whispering, submerging them all in emotions too strong to process alone. Bewilderment, fear, horror. And then, gradually...anger. Hate, like chemical fire, leaping from mind to mind and body to body. Emotion that became physical; a low, moaning growl went up from Angel throats all over quarters. A growl that transformed to yells, to shouts, to shrieks. A boiling, incandescent fury, centered around the Company, the vid.
Jensen let himself be lost in it, tipped his head back and roared, and he felt Jared doing the same; felt Jared's hand all but crushing his; felt Kane's fingers in his shoulder like a vise; felt the overwhelming ache of sorrow, of loss, of desperation.
In the midst of it all, like a thread of cool blue water, Sinna concentrated on Kee. She pushed and pushed and pushed, but gently, so gently… And like the snap of a light, suddenly, Kee was there, awake, in the 'net, flaring out presence and power like no other. Different. Changed.
Like the shockwave of a bomb, Kee Kee Kee rolled out, through the net, silencing them all. A hush rolled through quarters, only the hard breathing of some Angels and a few startled whimpers from the greenies. Silence, and Kee, overwhelming.
Report report report, Kee thought, and Jensen - all of them - could feel the faintest edge of panic.
Home, Sinna thought, hard, Sinna here, home, safe, home, and some of the greenies picked it up, shoving in recklessly. Kee pushed them away - out - smothered them to quick silence.
Report!
Raziel! Jensen thought, command mode, fast and strong. All in, home safe, safe port, all in. He took a hard, deep breath, ordering his thoughts, gathering in Jinx and Jared and Sinna and Kane. And then he opened wide, and poured out everything, all of it. From his 'death', to the Diaboli, to the vaccine, to the taking of the Tiamat; the attack by the Nebuchadnezzar, the Quo, the arcology, iynght srahzss and the other Angel ships, to, finally, the Annihilation being found, and brought in, and Kee being discovered; Stick DNA and the vid file.
As he showed her everything, others joined in, feeding in this or that bit of information, observation, experience. More and more and more, until it was a chorus, thousands of voices strong, faster and faster until the last, until the grief, the fury, the hate.
Kee took it all, absorbed it in silence, and then pushed that silence out, so strong in the 'net, herself, but not. Changed by the Company, she showed them, so that she alone could control the hundreds of Angels on the ship.
Mother hive queen maker all she thought, and then a profound and heart catching sorrow rolled over them, as Kee showed them those Angels. Showed the blunted, simplistic minds that had come back to her. No individuality, no complexity, just the most basic of impulses: food, water, warmth, touch. Obey the Mother, be good for her, fight and hurt and die - all for the Mother. She showed them the last fight; the quick, eager compliance with Kee's order to rise up, take over - kill the ship. She showed them their hurt and bewildered fear as they died, curled around Kee's station, soothed by her praise but hurt hurt cold Mother cold as they slipped, one after the other, away.
It made Jensen's heart ache, made him catch his breath on a shuddering sob as Kee's grief hit them, deep and drowning, all-encompassing.
Kee Raziel safe now home now here we're here I'm here, Sinna, please, Kee…. Sinna pushed in, a tiny mote of cool blue in the smothering, boiling grief. Jensen boosted her - Jared did, and Kane too - and the pressure slowly lightened as Kee gradually let it go. They pushed it down and away until it was gone, and it was only Kee and Sinna and us all us we home here safe
Jensen, Kee thought, and Jensen could see her in the dim, amber-blue light in the tube, a shadow that shifted, blind head turning a fraction, half her face obscured by the breathing apparatus. He could feel her slipping back, just a little, into that drugged and painless twilight of the tube, of the generation gel, into healing sleep.
Here. I'm here, Kee.
Tell them. Make them. It's time, Qemuel. Time to go, Kee thought, and the image of iynght srahzss was in the net, and Salome; Company headquarters. And then fire, like a sun going nova. Utter annihilation.
Time to go.
nutánqus - my male cousin
nutánqusosqew - my female cousin (Coastal Algonquian, Carolina and Virginia)
'O Fortuna' is from Carmina Burana.
Part twenty-six.
Originally entered at https://tabaqui.dreamwidth.org/201434.html - comment where you please!