'The World Where Yesternight You Died' - part 27
EPILOGUE! And once again - thank you guys, so very much. :D
Also at AO3.
So does she not take wing like a living thing
Child of the moving tide?
See her pass with grace on the water's face
With clean and quiet pride.
Our own tall ship of great renown still lifts unto the sky
Who will know the Bluenose in the sun?
Stan Rogers - 'Bluenose'
Jensen leaned on a padded Quo ledge, ankles crossed, hands in his pockets as he watched the ebb and flow of traffic go past, most not sparing him a second glance. That was nice, being ignored. He'd had enough attention to last him a lifetime. Jared was somewhere in the offices, talking to Doc, just visiting. They didn't get back to New Salome all that often; not since the Quo had moved it here, in place of the original.
It still made Jensen's brain hurt, when he tried to figure it all out.
New Salome was a Quo arcology, and absolutely massive: big enough to house and hold every last survivor that had been on Salome back when; three-point-eight million indentured, medicos, science staff, management, and security. Over twenty-five years later, New Salome held most of them still, all of them cured of the Company's last, worst 'net, all of them offered homes, and jobs, and comfort forever, if they liked, or passage away home, if they had such a thing, anymore. Most had not, and most had stayed, joined in later years by almost a million Quo, tens of thousands of Stick, and several thousand humans, from Earth and everywhere. New Salome was a hub, now - a destination, a place; not one hundred percent human, or Quo, or Stick, just a vast space for learning, for discovery.
Science happened on New Salome, but not the science of coercion and pain; not the science of war, or slavery, or power. Something much more gentle, but no less magnificent for it, no less life-altering. The Company's 'net was as it should have been, all along; a tool for healing, a resource for those in need. Not a straightjacket, not an embedded addiction. So much more. Stick tech and Quo tech and human tech combined and transformed.
The IAS was there, too; Independent Angel Starships shipyards, and headquarters, when they weren't on the skip, weren't exploring, and peacekeeping, and learning from the Stick. ArchANGELS and their ships, moving, going, flying the void, living in the Between more often than not.
After the Quo had taken Salome, Jensen and the Angels, the Diaboli, and Hakase had spent five days in a tense, three-way standoff, Stick and Company ships both bristling and on edge, ready to attack - or bolt - at a moment's notice. It had taken everything they had, every promise, every scrap of data, to convince both sides to come in, to talk, to understand.
In the end, the Stick had come first, touching down at the arcology dock in shuttles like clusters of dark, spiky, metallic crystals. The Quo had met them, unarmed and unarmored, sending a wave of silent panic through the 'net. But the Stick had kept their word; they'd come only to talk.
The Company ships had come in soon after, surrendering without fuss, crew and troops escorted to quarters under Angel guard, hard-faced, grimly correct. The Angels on board had been ordered out; last order from the Captains, to come out without armor, to surrender and be held.
'They'll execute them all,' one Captain had said, under his breath to another; unaware the fireflies were listening and reporting. Jensen had been so furious and disgusted he'd had to walk away for a few minutes, shutting himself out of the 'net so as not to bring all hell down on that man.
The made Angels had come out in silent ranks, slope-shouldered and wary, moving with a strange, stalking grace on their back-bending legs, huge eyes blinking in the Quo light. Their commanders - the 'mothers' - towed in their midst, none of them under their own power. Five 'retired' ArchANGELS with missing limbs, on respiration, in half-tubes; lost souls thought long dead. Suni had recognized one, a gaunt man with a missing eye and faded, geometric tattoos on his throat and shoulders. Tiamat ArchANGEL long before Jensen or even Morgan's time. Suni had flooded the 'net with that man, their life, their false death on a nameless, forgotten moon The 'net had spiked with anger, and grief; with joy, at his homecoming. But that man - all the 'mothers' - had been dazed and only half aware, drugged and isolated, in dire need of Quo medicine.
Their Angels had crowded around them, uneasy and warily protective, and then the Stick had come in, fifteen or more from the various ships and something unexpected had happened. The made Angels had noticed en masse, heads lifting, nostrils flaring, their bodies turning toward the Stick. A low, strange sound had rumbled out of them, scattered at first, and then more - all - hundreds of throats making a rasping growl of sound that the Stick answered; a wavering, ultrasonic bubbling noise, thin and piercing, that made Jensen's brain sing.
The made Angels had pressed in tighter for a moment, to the 'mothers', and then they had, by ones and then handfuls and then all of them, stalked away, headed straight for the Stick.
Quemuel, should we stop them? What should we do?, from Kane and Jinx and even Suni, confusion and a little fear, for what might come next, for these strange, new Angels.
The made Angels had shouldered in amongst the Stick and sniffed at them, reaching for them with clawed fingers, skin on skin, a moment's contact. The Stick had reached back, their long, thin hands and gnarled arms reaching, touching; tracing the lines of ports inset into the Angel's backs, the sounds they were making coming harder and faster, an ominous, chittering grind that sounded like...anger. The made Angels hadn't seemed bothered; they'd settled down, crouched on their haunches, six and eight deep around the Stick envoy, going silent, eyes half-shut as the Stick had continued to speak to them.
'They are...family-not-met, branch removed,' Hakase had translated, and Alinx had further rendered it.
'Cousins. They say cousins,' she said.
'What do they want with them?' Jensen had asked, that Captain's off-hand supposition of execution still a lump of knotted anger in his belly.
'Take, they. To nest. To home,' Hakase had said. Six days later, at Salome, the 'mothers' - improved, improving, becoming well - had said their Angels 'knew' the Stick. They couldn't explain it, limited as they were. But they weren't afraid, and they wanted to stay near them, nearly all the time. Wanted to go wherever the Stick went, which made for rather strange company, when Stick, Quo and Diaboli gathered to discuss just what was to be done with the Company suits they'd lifted out of the famed (and apparently real), oasis of luxury and privilege deep under Salome's surface.
It had been...a relief, in a way, when the Stick had finally gathered in all the hundreds of made Angels - Cousins, people had taken to calling them, to avoid confusion - and skipped away in their crystalline-spiked ships.
The Company suits were the next to go: gone to human justice, with just over a yobibite of data on a softly opalescent Quo storage capsule. The Hissa Hila and Captain Onray had volunteered for that mission, and skipped out with a full brig, two Quo, Raleigh and Alinx in tow. The trials - and seventy-three executions - had scandalized and entertained human space for a decade.
Jensen had stopped paying attention once the Hissa Hila had returned; Jared had stopped caring once every bit of DNA from Salome - Stick, human, Angel and Glorianna - had been consumed. The Stick had done that, before they'd left; asked and received the favor of the Quo, moving the scarred, deserted Salome into the pull of the Giraffe system's monstrous black-hole heart. The Stick had bombarded her with some new and devastating weapon, shattering her like glass, reducing her to a silent, furious seethe of dust, fire, and electricity.
As the black hole's implacable pull had dragged the shattered, burning remains of the planet into a long, slow slide into oblivion, the Stick ships had shrugged off the gravity and skipped away, with every Cousin on board.
Jensen watched as a Cousin and three attendant Stick moved slowly down the crowded concourse, a little bubble around them as Quo, other Stick, and Humans alike gave them room. The Cousins aged quickly, even cured of the Company's 'net, and this one looked near the end. Gone gaunt, stooped, and slow, their eyes dim, skin sagging, they were draped in a kind of soft shawl of shimmering cloth around their shoulders and ribs. They clung to the Stick on either side of them, half-supported, and the Stick kept up a constant, soft murmur, grinding clicks and raspy trills, their gnarled-seeming hands so gentle, their long, quick strides reduced to slow shuffles to keep pace.
The Cousins were loved, in the way that Stick defined it; kept and cared for and mourned, when their too-short lives were over. The best ending, Jensen thought, that they could have hoped for. As Jensen watched, he suddenly saw a tall, dark-haired man moving across the broad space of the concourse, and he felt his mouth stretch into a grin.
See you glad to see you, Jensen thought, and he saw Jared's mouth turn up into a smile, dimples showing. Not looking much older than he had, years ago, when he'd pulled Jensen out of Hell. It was the 'net, Doc said. The 'net and all their skip time. Not perpetual youth, but a definite slow down, a life stretched out, longer than most.
Jared stepped around the Stick group and the Cousin, and then stopped as the third Stick held up a hand. They all stood there for a moment as the Stick - a head taller even than Jared - spoke for a moment, and then Jared turned and inclined his head to the other Stick - to the Cousin. The Cousin swayed, seeming confused or perhaps overtired, and then reached out, slowly, with one hand.
Jared didn't move as the hand touched him; skimmed lightly over his shoulder and arm, and then slipped away. Jared said something to the Stick and then he was sliding around the slow-moving group, striding fast toward Jensen in his alcove.
What did they want?
God,that was- "That Cousin was the one from the 'ponics, back in the Giraffe? The one that kept turning up down there," Jared said, a cascade in the 'net of memories over twenty years old. One particular Cousin had loved to sit in the 'ponics room, humming and hissing at the swarms of fish in the tanks, and rubbing their cheek and fingers on the long cascades of plant life that spilled over from the crop bubbles.
"They're going to the 'ponics garden here. They...they're dying, and they wanted to see the fish and the plants one more time. They remembered me," Jared said, and the 'net ached for a moment, a sharp hurt in Jared's throat, in his heart.
Jensen pulled him in for a hard hug and a brief kiss, his hands rubbing up and down Jared's back for a moment while he poured warmth into the 'net.
"I'm glad they remembered. You were kind to them," Made it warm for them, made it safe, that was good, you were good
"I wish…" Jared said, on a shaky sigh, and Jensen hugged him again. They all wished, that the Cousins didn't fade so quickly; that they would have more than such brief times to explore, to learn what they could, to live.
Stick love them, they're taken care of, Jared thought, and he sniffed and straightened up and aimed a shaky smile at Jensen. "Guess you're ready to get the hell out of here?"
"Always am," Jensen said, and laced his fingers with Jared's, tugging him into motion toward the nearest lift bubble. Down twenty-seven levels and out, to the skin of the arcology, was the IAS Glorianna II. Jensen's command, Jensen's ship. Jensen's and Jared's, though Jared denied it every time.
They had a contract with a Stick ship, to skip out to the far, thin edge of the Milky Way, and help test a new sort of ship. A ship that could slide into faster than, into the Between, and then accordian it, fold it down tight, making the distance being skipped even bigger. The Stick had their eyes on Centaurus A, a galaxy outside the Milky Way, and one they wanted to explore. It had come as a bit of a shock to humans that both Stick and Quo homeworlds were within Earth's own galaxy, a galaxy that humans were happily knocking around in, pretending to be the only sentient beings around.
It was not a surprise to Jensen at all that both races wanted to explore further afield. The Quo, because they were insatiably curious, and the Stick because, through all of their history, they were nomads; roamers who had moved from continent to continent and then planet to moonlets to other planets, to other systems. Always restless, always going.
In that way, Angels and Stick had a lot in common.
The lift bubble slowed and stopped, and they stepped out, dodging incurious traffic and massive mechs that stomped past like something out of prehistory, hauling goods, moving loads. A port was inset into a niche nearby, and Jensen was drawn to it, like he always was; drawn to stand and look out.
Fifty meters beyond the port, riding the docking clamp like some predator at rest, was the Glorianna II. A Quo ship built to Angel design; a ship of sleekly curving lines, long and low and utterly beautiful, in Jensen's eyes. She looked like something crouched and waiting, ready to leap; she looked as if she could fly forever. The skip array arched over the stern like spun glass and smoke, enormous and deceptively fragile looking. When she skipped, the array glowed, violet and brilliant blue, salt-white. She swam the Between without a whisper or a wake, untraceable; something gifted them by Stick engineers, whose own ships were ghosts in the seas of faster-than.
A skimmer drifted down her side, spots illuminating the glassine and spun poly-ceramics of her, her skin a gradient of opaline colors, gleaming and perfect.
Want me to come back later? Jared teased, watching Jensen more than the ship, smiling in that way that made Jensen want to curl himself around and inside and through Jared, and never let go.
Three of us, I can share, Jensen thought, and then laughed out loud as something complicated and obscene came through the 'net. Something anatomically impossible.
Kane, you freak-
Hurry up and get aboard, get your dick wet later. We're in final count, ready-steady-go, c'mon Commander
Always late. Remember that time at Reveille, we got the call-?
Went into a briefing with his dick still hard-
That time he was drunk-
Jared was leaning against the port, laughing hard enough to send tears down his cheeks as every stupid, embarrassing, and explicit thing Jensen had ever done in front of the brass came flooding through the 'net, from Kane and from Jinx, from Kee and Sinna away on the station, from Malik and Five and Suni and even Morgan, up in obs-com, playing the diplomat to some new group of Earth tourists.
Fuck you bastards, you were there for half those, Kane, hell, you instigated-
"Too late," Jared wheezed, as Jensen's push-back was drowned in more memories, more images, a wave of purely ridiculous stunts starring Jensen AR and his amazing libido, fuck. Jared snorted inelegantly and slung an arm around Jensen's neck, yanking him in for a kiss.
"Don't care, you're mine, I'll take it, you fucking idiot," Jared muttered, and Jensen got his hands in Jared's hair and dragged him down for a kiss that left them both breathless and grinning, hips doing a slow grind against each other.
"Gotta move, gotta go," Jensen said, not letting go, just wanting to be in that moment, in that space, for just a little longer.
C'mon, Quemel, ready-steady-go-go-go, time to fly, time to sail, dream the Between Kane said, Jinx said, laughter and affection and excitement. Like the Glorianna II, they were straining at the tether, ready to leap, ready to fly.
Jensen could feel it, in his bones, in his blood - Jared could too - and they broke apart on a laugh, hands catching hands, turning and running, shouting, across the docks. The bubble lift lofted them upward to the access and they stepped inside; watched as the lights cycled and the lock disengaged and then they were inside, the spice-citrus scent of quarters in their nose, following the corridors that glowed with color and design. Swirls of color, geometrics, figures and names and words, ran along the walls, everywhere.
ANGEL ship, Angel design, Angel colors and scents and sounds. Their own world, from Captain to mess hall.
Commander on board rippled through the 'net as Jensen and Jared made their way to the bridge. Jensen settled into his chair and Jared went aside to his own small observation post, already sharing the meeting with the Cousin with Grieve, with Five, with the rest.
In the count, steady on, lock, brace, and ready, from com-prime, in the 'net and over coms, and Jensen - all of them - felt it as the engines flared to life, a low and steady hum through her, through their bones. Prep and undock went smoothly, quickly, and then she was free, lifting easily away and, a moment later, powering up, and up, and up, until the Glorianna II was racing away, driving through the invisible sea.
The array came online, sending a brief burst of infrasonic through their bones. Stern observation cams sent them the image of the array opening wide, stretching out. Huge, translucent wings of energy that curved up and around, crackling with life.
"Array online, skip in the count, in twenty," com-prime said, and all around people settled, bodies eased back, last-second checks were done and logged and the whole ship seemed to go still. Quo-designed cuffs, that would carry skip-drugs to them, curved up and around wrists all over the bridge, a brief shiver of opalescent at the edges of Jensen's vision.
Jared,, Jensen thought, and all of his love, all of his need, all of his gratitude and desire and admiration for the man went with that single thought. It flowed out, came back, and then spilled over, catching the whole ship up in warmth and affection, in family, love you, all in all safe all us we family
Six, five, four, ready, steady, go go go
The Glorianna II leaped, a fish in midnight seas, and vanished in a froth of phosphorescent energy; the last flip of an intangible tail, and she was gone, into the Between, riding the currents of faster-than, and dreaming of far, far shores.
Originally entered at https://tabaqui.dreamwidth.org/201842.html - comment where you please!
Also at AO3.
So does she not take wing like a living thing
Child of the moving tide?
See her pass with grace on the water's face
With clean and quiet pride.
Our own tall ship of great renown still lifts unto the sky
Who will know the Bluenose in the sun?
Stan Rogers - 'Bluenose'
Jensen leaned on a padded Quo ledge, ankles crossed, hands in his pockets as he watched the ebb and flow of traffic go past, most not sparing him a second glance. That was nice, being ignored. He'd had enough attention to last him a lifetime. Jared was somewhere in the offices, talking to Doc, just visiting. They didn't get back to New Salome all that often; not since the Quo had moved it here, in place of the original.
It still made Jensen's brain hurt, when he tried to figure it all out.
New Salome was a Quo arcology, and absolutely massive: big enough to house and hold every last survivor that had been on Salome back when; three-point-eight million indentured, medicos, science staff, management, and security. Over twenty-five years later, New Salome held most of them still, all of them cured of the Company's last, worst 'net, all of them offered homes, and jobs, and comfort forever, if they liked, or passage away home, if they had such a thing, anymore. Most had not, and most had stayed, joined in later years by almost a million Quo, tens of thousands of Stick, and several thousand humans, from Earth and everywhere. New Salome was a hub, now - a destination, a place; not one hundred percent human, or Quo, or Stick, just a vast space for learning, for discovery.
Science happened on New Salome, but not the science of coercion and pain; not the science of war, or slavery, or power. Something much more gentle, but no less magnificent for it, no less life-altering. The Company's 'net was as it should have been, all along; a tool for healing, a resource for those in need. Not a straightjacket, not an embedded addiction. So much more. Stick tech and Quo tech and human tech combined and transformed.
The IAS was there, too; Independent Angel Starships shipyards, and headquarters, when they weren't on the skip, weren't exploring, and peacekeeping, and learning from the Stick. ArchANGELS and their ships, moving, going, flying the void, living in the Between more often than not.
After the Quo had taken Salome, Jensen and the Angels, the Diaboli, and Hakase had spent five days in a tense, three-way standoff, Stick and Company ships both bristling and on edge, ready to attack - or bolt - at a moment's notice. It had taken everything they had, every promise, every scrap of data, to convince both sides to come in, to talk, to understand.
In the end, the Stick had come first, touching down at the arcology dock in shuttles like clusters of dark, spiky, metallic crystals. The Quo had met them, unarmed and unarmored, sending a wave of silent panic through the 'net. But the Stick had kept their word; they'd come only to talk.
The Company ships had come in soon after, surrendering without fuss, crew and troops escorted to quarters under Angel guard, hard-faced, grimly correct. The Angels on board had been ordered out; last order from the Captains, to come out without armor, to surrender and be held.
'They'll execute them all,' one Captain had said, under his breath to another; unaware the fireflies were listening and reporting. Jensen had been so furious and disgusted he'd had to walk away for a few minutes, shutting himself out of the 'net so as not to bring all hell down on that man.
The made Angels had come out in silent ranks, slope-shouldered and wary, moving with a strange, stalking grace on their back-bending legs, huge eyes blinking in the Quo light. Their commanders - the 'mothers' - towed in their midst, none of them under their own power. Five 'retired' ArchANGELS with missing limbs, on respiration, in half-tubes; lost souls thought long dead. Suni had recognized one, a gaunt man with a missing eye and faded, geometric tattoos on his throat and shoulders. Tiamat ArchANGEL long before Jensen or even Morgan's time. Suni had flooded the 'net with that man, their life, their false death on a nameless, forgotten moon The 'net had spiked with anger, and grief; with joy, at his homecoming. But that man - all the 'mothers' - had been dazed and only half aware, drugged and isolated, in dire need of Quo medicine.
Their Angels had crowded around them, uneasy and warily protective, and then the Stick had come in, fifteen or more from the various ships and something unexpected had happened. The made Angels had noticed en masse, heads lifting, nostrils flaring, their bodies turning toward the Stick. A low, strange sound had rumbled out of them, scattered at first, and then more - all - hundreds of throats making a rasping growl of sound that the Stick answered; a wavering, ultrasonic bubbling noise, thin and piercing, that made Jensen's brain sing.
The made Angels had pressed in tighter for a moment, to the 'mothers', and then they had, by ones and then handfuls and then all of them, stalked away, headed straight for the Stick.
Quemuel, should we stop them? What should we do?, from Kane and Jinx and even Suni, confusion and a little fear, for what might come next, for these strange, new Angels.
The made Angels had shouldered in amongst the Stick and sniffed at them, reaching for them with clawed fingers, skin on skin, a moment's contact. The Stick had reached back, their long, thin hands and gnarled arms reaching, touching; tracing the lines of ports inset into the Angel's backs, the sounds they were making coming harder and faster, an ominous, chittering grind that sounded like...anger. The made Angels hadn't seemed bothered; they'd settled down, crouched on their haunches, six and eight deep around the Stick envoy, going silent, eyes half-shut as the Stick had continued to speak to them.
'They are...family-not-met, branch removed,' Hakase had translated, and Alinx had further rendered it.
'Cousins. They say cousins,' she said.
'What do they want with them?' Jensen had asked, that Captain's off-hand supposition of execution still a lump of knotted anger in his belly.
'Take, they. To nest. To home,' Hakase had said. Six days later, at Salome, the 'mothers' - improved, improving, becoming well - had said their Angels 'knew' the Stick. They couldn't explain it, limited as they were. But they weren't afraid, and they wanted to stay near them, nearly all the time. Wanted to go wherever the Stick went, which made for rather strange company, when Stick, Quo and Diaboli gathered to discuss just what was to be done with the Company suits they'd lifted out of the famed (and apparently real), oasis of luxury and privilege deep under Salome's surface.
It had been...a relief, in a way, when the Stick had finally gathered in all the hundreds of made Angels - Cousins, people had taken to calling them, to avoid confusion - and skipped away in their crystalline-spiked ships.
The Company suits were the next to go: gone to human justice, with just over a yobibite of data on a softly opalescent Quo storage capsule. The Hissa Hila and Captain Onray had volunteered for that mission, and skipped out with a full brig, two Quo, Raleigh and Alinx in tow. The trials - and seventy-three executions - had scandalized and entertained human space for a decade.
Jensen had stopped paying attention once the Hissa Hila had returned; Jared had stopped caring once every bit of DNA from Salome - Stick, human, Angel and Glorianna - had been consumed. The Stick had done that, before they'd left; asked and received the favor of the Quo, moving the scarred, deserted Salome into the pull of the Giraffe system's monstrous black-hole heart. The Stick had bombarded her with some new and devastating weapon, shattering her like glass, reducing her to a silent, furious seethe of dust, fire, and electricity.
As the black hole's implacable pull had dragged the shattered, burning remains of the planet into a long, slow slide into oblivion, the Stick ships had shrugged off the gravity and skipped away, with every Cousin on board.
Jensen watched as a Cousin and three attendant Stick moved slowly down the crowded concourse, a little bubble around them as Quo, other Stick, and Humans alike gave them room. The Cousins aged quickly, even cured of the Company's 'net, and this one looked near the end. Gone gaunt, stooped, and slow, their eyes dim, skin sagging, they were draped in a kind of soft shawl of shimmering cloth around their shoulders and ribs. They clung to the Stick on either side of them, half-supported, and the Stick kept up a constant, soft murmur, grinding clicks and raspy trills, their gnarled-seeming hands so gentle, their long, quick strides reduced to slow shuffles to keep pace.
The Cousins were loved, in the way that Stick defined it; kept and cared for and mourned, when their too-short lives were over. The best ending, Jensen thought, that they could have hoped for. As Jensen watched, he suddenly saw a tall, dark-haired man moving across the broad space of the concourse, and he felt his mouth stretch into a grin.
See you glad to see you, Jensen thought, and he saw Jared's mouth turn up into a smile, dimples showing. Not looking much older than he had, years ago, when he'd pulled Jensen out of Hell. It was the 'net, Doc said. The 'net and all their skip time. Not perpetual youth, but a definite slow down, a life stretched out, longer than most.
Jared stepped around the Stick group and the Cousin, and then stopped as the third Stick held up a hand. They all stood there for a moment as the Stick - a head taller even than Jared - spoke for a moment, and then Jared turned and inclined his head to the other Stick - to the Cousin. The Cousin swayed, seeming confused or perhaps overtired, and then reached out, slowly, with one hand.
Jared didn't move as the hand touched him; skimmed lightly over his shoulder and arm, and then slipped away. Jared said something to the Stick and then he was sliding around the slow-moving group, striding fast toward Jensen in his alcove.
What did they want?
God,that was- "That Cousin was the one from the 'ponics, back in the Giraffe? The one that kept turning up down there," Jared said, a cascade in the 'net of memories over twenty years old. One particular Cousin had loved to sit in the 'ponics room, humming and hissing at the swarms of fish in the tanks, and rubbing their cheek and fingers on the long cascades of plant life that spilled over from the crop bubbles.
"They're going to the 'ponics garden here. They...they're dying, and they wanted to see the fish and the plants one more time. They remembered me," Jared said, and the 'net ached for a moment, a sharp hurt in Jared's throat, in his heart.
Jensen pulled him in for a hard hug and a brief kiss, his hands rubbing up and down Jared's back for a moment while he poured warmth into the 'net.
"I'm glad they remembered. You were kind to them," Made it warm for them, made it safe, that was good, you were good
"I wish…" Jared said, on a shaky sigh, and Jensen hugged him again. They all wished, that the Cousins didn't fade so quickly; that they would have more than such brief times to explore, to learn what they could, to live.
Stick love them, they're taken care of, Jared thought, and he sniffed and straightened up and aimed a shaky smile at Jensen. "Guess you're ready to get the hell out of here?"
"Always am," Jensen said, and laced his fingers with Jared's, tugging him into motion toward the nearest lift bubble. Down twenty-seven levels and out, to the skin of the arcology, was the IAS Glorianna II. Jensen's command, Jensen's ship. Jensen's and Jared's, though Jared denied it every time.
They had a contract with a Stick ship, to skip out to the far, thin edge of the Milky Way, and help test a new sort of ship. A ship that could slide into faster than, into the Between, and then accordian it, fold it down tight, making the distance being skipped even bigger. The Stick had their eyes on Centaurus A, a galaxy outside the Milky Way, and one they wanted to explore. It had come as a bit of a shock to humans that both Stick and Quo homeworlds were within Earth's own galaxy, a galaxy that humans were happily knocking around in, pretending to be the only sentient beings around.
It was not a surprise to Jensen at all that both races wanted to explore further afield. The Quo, because they were insatiably curious, and the Stick because, through all of their history, they were nomads; roamers who had moved from continent to continent and then planet to moonlets to other planets, to other systems. Always restless, always going.
In that way, Angels and Stick had a lot in common.
The lift bubble slowed and stopped, and they stepped out, dodging incurious traffic and massive mechs that stomped past like something out of prehistory, hauling goods, moving loads. A port was inset into a niche nearby, and Jensen was drawn to it, like he always was; drawn to stand and look out.
Fifty meters beyond the port, riding the docking clamp like some predator at rest, was the Glorianna II. A Quo ship built to Angel design; a ship of sleekly curving lines, long and low and utterly beautiful, in Jensen's eyes. She looked like something crouched and waiting, ready to leap; she looked as if she could fly forever. The skip array arched over the stern like spun glass and smoke, enormous and deceptively fragile looking. When she skipped, the array glowed, violet and brilliant blue, salt-white. She swam the Between without a whisper or a wake, untraceable; something gifted them by Stick engineers, whose own ships were ghosts in the seas of faster-than.
A skimmer drifted down her side, spots illuminating the glassine and spun poly-ceramics of her, her skin a gradient of opaline colors, gleaming and perfect.
Want me to come back later? Jared teased, watching Jensen more than the ship, smiling in that way that made Jensen want to curl himself around and inside and through Jared, and never let go.
Three of us, I can share, Jensen thought, and then laughed out loud as something complicated and obscene came through the 'net. Something anatomically impossible.
Kane, you freak-
Hurry up and get aboard, get your dick wet later. We're in final count, ready-steady-go, c'mon Commander
Always late. Remember that time at Reveille, we got the call-?
Went into a briefing with his dick still hard-
That time he was drunk-
Jared was leaning against the port, laughing hard enough to send tears down his cheeks as every stupid, embarrassing, and explicit thing Jensen had ever done in front of the brass came flooding through the 'net, from Kane and from Jinx, from Kee and Sinna away on the station, from Malik and Five and Suni and even Morgan, up in obs-com, playing the diplomat to some new group of Earth tourists.
Fuck you bastards, you were there for half those, Kane, hell, you instigated-
"Too late," Jared wheezed, as Jensen's push-back was drowned in more memories, more images, a wave of purely ridiculous stunts starring Jensen AR and his amazing libido, fuck. Jared snorted inelegantly and slung an arm around Jensen's neck, yanking him in for a kiss.
"Don't care, you're mine, I'll take it, you fucking idiot," Jared muttered, and Jensen got his hands in Jared's hair and dragged him down for a kiss that left them both breathless and grinning, hips doing a slow grind against each other.
"Gotta move, gotta go," Jensen said, not letting go, just wanting to be in that moment, in that space, for just a little longer.
C'mon, Quemel, ready-steady-go-go-go, time to fly, time to sail, dream the Between Kane said, Jinx said, laughter and affection and excitement. Like the Glorianna II, they were straining at the tether, ready to leap, ready to fly.
Jensen could feel it, in his bones, in his blood - Jared could too - and they broke apart on a laugh, hands catching hands, turning and running, shouting, across the docks. The bubble lift lofted them upward to the access and they stepped inside; watched as the lights cycled and the lock disengaged and then they were inside, the spice-citrus scent of quarters in their nose, following the corridors that glowed with color and design. Swirls of color, geometrics, figures and names and words, ran along the walls, everywhere.
ANGEL ship, Angel design, Angel colors and scents and sounds. Their own world, from Captain to mess hall.
Commander on board rippled through the 'net as Jensen and Jared made their way to the bridge. Jensen settled into his chair and Jared went aside to his own small observation post, already sharing the meeting with the Cousin with Grieve, with Five, with the rest.
In the count, steady on, lock, brace, and ready, from com-prime, in the 'net and over coms, and Jensen - all of them - felt it as the engines flared to life, a low and steady hum through her, through their bones. Prep and undock went smoothly, quickly, and then she was free, lifting easily away and, a moment later, powering up, and up, and up, until the Glorianna II was racing away, driving through the invisible sea.
The array came online, sending a brief burst of infrasonic through their bones. Stern observation cams sent them the image of the array opening wide, stretching out. Huge, translucent wings of energy that curved up and around, crackling with life.
"Array online, skip in the count, in twenty," com-prime said, and all around people settled, bodies eased back, last-second checks were done and logged and the whole ship seemed to go still. Quo-designed cuffs, that would carry skip-drugs to them, curved up and around wrists all over the bridge, a brief shiver of opalescent at the edges of Jensen's vision.
Jared,, Jensen thought, and all of his love, all of his need, all of his gratitude and desire and admiration for the man went with that single thought. It flowed out, came back, and then spilled over, catching the whole ship up in warmth and affection, in family, love you, all in all safe all us we family
Six, five, four, ready, steady, go go go
The Glorianna II leaped, a fish in midnight seas, and vanished in a froth of phosphorescent energy; the last flip of an intangible tail, and she was gone, into the Between, riding the currents of faster-than, and dreaming of far, far shores.
Originally entered at https://tabaqui.dreamwidth.org/201842.html - comment where you please!