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*waves madly*
Hi, people. Apologies for the long-ass wait and...this is not the last chapter.
*flails*
I'm just so irritated with myself and how fucking *slowly* i'm writing, anymore, that i was like 'screw it, this is a good place to break'. So I did. So here you go.
As always, thank you, DH - you are the ultimate beta. :)
Also at AO3
you are the one
i am lit for.
Come with your rod
that twists
and is a serpent.
i am the bush.
i am burning
i am not consumed.
Lucille Clifton - 'To A Dark Moses'
Tripoli was a dark little system of three; a nameless brown dwarf, orbited by the shattered remains of what might have once been an exoplanet, with a mostly-water-ice moonlet slinging along in the L3 position. A hundred years or more ago, some wandering pirate had found the moonlet and made a killing with the ice, eventually becoming their own little kingdom, keeping the peace and keeping Tripoli open to whomever was coming through. They even had a station of sorts, in L5; a collection of modules and pods and habitats, all welded and epoxyed together, with skimmers and rigger suits for attitude adjustment, the whole thing having grown and mutated over the years to a weirdly lumpy structure, scatter-shot with blinking safety lights and, most definitely, illegally armed.
Tripoli itself was the mid-point between five bigger, busier systems, smack in the middle of a great, big empty. It had shaved a good two, five, eight and more years off the routes between those systems, linking them in a shorter, mostly linear chain, instead of a long, long skip around the edges of a massless 'dead' zone. A popular place, for those that knew it, and most did. Maybe not the ships that plied the lanes and routes in quadrants billions of light years away, but it wasn't really a secret, anymore.
Troopships knew about it, for sure, and Morgan said the Nebuchadnezzar would skip to Tripoli first; only logical and about the only place ships like the Falcon could reach from Axis that weren't deeper into more populated spaces. So the sooner they skipped out, the better. The captain of the Diomedes agreed, astounded at having the fugitives arrive in a Federation troopship, instead of the Falcon, Tiamat's speed in the skip to Tripoli only adding urgency to their agreement.
The waiting made everyone antsy; Jared spent a lot of time just staying out of the way of hyped up ANGELs in standby mode, training and doing suit maintenance, sparring or fighting or fucking all over the troop decks. They tended to forget that not only could he not hear them, but he wasn't as strong as they were, and had zero training.
Jensen was trying to fix that, daily, with lessons on hand-to-hand that were full of dirty tricks and lethal little moves that worked with or without the armor. And Jared learned, with the muscle-memory of Jensen's body singing to him through the 'net, guiding him like some kind of invisible hand. It was unsettling, though, and nothing Jared had ever imagined himself doing. So that made Jensen a little on edge, not sure if Jared was condemning him or sneering at him. Jared wasn't doing either, but his own inner uncertainly didn't help when Jensen himself wasn't always one hundred percent there. The things the 'net and the drugs and the prison med-unit psych-suppressant had smothered for years were getting stronger, now - creeping up on him when he least expected it, and he was always braced for that mental, emotional ambush. Braced, and scared, and angry, too. And sad and sorry, and Jared looked longingly at the derms Doc had given him seemingly ages ago, wanting to check them both out, just to get some relief.
But he didn't - Jensen wouldn't - and there wasn't anything to be done, unless Jensen wanted it all scrubbed down again, which he didn't seem to, no matter how ugly his memories were. Jared got that, but he hated living in the moment with Jensen, completely helpless under the dual onslaught of memories of a life he'd never lived, and the fury and fear and shame they caused in Jensen.
They had, at least, the distraction of the endless arguments between Morgan and the crew about where they were going next and what, exactly, was going to happen then. An argument that only got more complicated when Doc and Raleigh and the rest were on board.
Turned out, they only overjumped the Falcon by five days, Axis and the Nebuchadnezzar three weeks and nearly four, respectively, in their collective pasts. When the merc ship popped in, skipping down the well and into the elliptic, alarms went off on every deck of the Tiamat. It took an hour for the Falcon's pin-line comm burst to reach them; ID and trajectory and Hello, just us. Everybody calmed down, after that, though Jared could still feel the ghost-shiver of adrenaline and ready steady go that had surged up in Jensen the moment the alarms went.
"Got some serious black market tech on that ship," Jensen said, eyes intent on a screen showing the Falcon's path to Tripoli. "Engineering's gonna want to see the rig they got."
"I'm glad we're done waiting," Jared said, and Jensen flashed him a quick grin, agreement in the 'net, and a steadying down of nerves.
In the middle of the dog-watch that same day, when most of the troops and crew alike were at mess, Morgan had what remained of the executive crew (only the Arms-Com Ensign and Second Nav), the drop-ship pilots, and the ragged remains of troop LT's and sergeants up in the briefing room under the bridge, debating their next move. A handful of ANGEL platoon leaders had tagged along, and of course everyone from Axis, though Morgan looked like he wished it could be kept military only. Silently, Jared pointed out Raleigh, who Jensen hadn't ever met, and Celeste, and the handful of other Diaboli from Axis that Jared had worked with, on and off, for almost a year. The way Jensen noted them, memorized them, and then dismissed them was so distinctly ANGEL, it made Jared grin, even while it gave him a little shiver of unease. It was efficient, effective...cold.
SOP Jensen thought at him, with a little frown, and Jared sighed and nodded and stifled his un-military thoughts.
Morgan was arguing for a place he called 'the Giraffe', that was marked on the star chart as MS 0735.6+7421. Jared asked Jensen what a giraffe was, and got a blank look and shrug in return. Morgan didn't seem to know what it was, either, just that that was what it was called. Apparently, it was a supermassive black hole, full of gases heated to something like fifty-million degrees, that emitted x-rays and gamma rays and it all sounded like a place that might tear a ship, even a troopship like the Tiamat, to bits, or at least cook the crew and suck them down to oblivion.
Morgan rolled his eyes when Jared said this, and the crew and assorted Angels looked impatient and irritated, so Jared retreated to the edge of the briefing room, feeling stupid.
No, in the 'net, a negation of that emotion - a flood of information about what the ship could and couldn't withstand; the shielding and the composition and the deflection waves she could generate. How safe the ship was, things civilians couldn't know. SOP, Jensen thought, this time his mouth curling in a little smile, and Jared leaned against the wall and grinned at Jensen, hands down in his pockets, little nudging memory of that kiss they'd shared, in the Angel showers. Just...because he could. Jensen grinned back, slow and so damn happy, and that kind of….made up for everything.
"Look," Doc said, holding her hands up, palm out, in a everybody shut up gesture. "I can't do this without facilities. State of the fucking art facilities! Which we have at ar-Rāqiṣ! It's completely secure, it's been a hub for the Diaboli for decades-"
"Which is why we can't use it. Now that we've got a vaccine, and a troopship, and fuckin' ANGELS, do you really think they're gonna just let us go?" Morgan's salt-and-pepper hair was longer, curling around his ears and the back of his neck, falling over his forehead. It didn't match the last time Jensen had seen him, and Jared felt Jensen's little twitch of different different like a mental poke, every time. Jared shrugged his shoulder into Jensen's and did his best to distract him, and Jensen apologized with a little, warm uprush of emotion, even as he flinched again. The hair was just a diversion, though, from the knowledge that Morgan (Gunny, superior, lover, the Morrigan, who laid waste when he so chose, like an apocryphal god ) was actually their best ally, and most staunch defender.
"Every fucking Company ship in the 'verse is gonna be looking for us. And you have no idea the resources they can pull."
"Maybe I don't, but I know what we can."
"It won't be enough," Morgan said, and then he made an inarticulate noise of pure irritation, and shoved his flesh-hand into his pocket. He pulled out a data stick, sliding it into the port in the holo unit in the middle of the room, tapping the clear surface as the interface came up. And then a map sprang up, a starfield, rotating as Morgan manipulated it. Everyone crowded in closer, gazing upward, mostly in the plain grey or black or tan coveralls of crew, rank and insignia stitched in a deep gold. The Angels were in down-time navy blue, Archangels with their facial tattoos that made a ripple of back off shudder through Jensen every time. Thrones, who tended toward boutique-surgical quirks, like pointed, tufted ears and single-color eyes, and a couple of Principalities, skin dyed in swirls and starbursts, blue and green, red and purple, silver and gold. They all watched as Morgan tipped the holo, enlarged it, and pointed.
"Look, here. Here's the Giraffe, okay? Not a lot at the center, it's too hot. But out here, on the rim, it's a pretty junky system. Got dust, got asteroids and comets, got a couple exoplanets at the very edge, all gaseous. A big, messy, noisy system with the biggest, noisiest black hole at the middle." Morgan looked around the room, the holo shining blue-white off the planes of his face, striking sparks on the gleaming black polycarbonate of his prosthetic left arm.
"It's almost impossible to track anything in there, and it's the perfect place for us to hide. For a a lot of things to hide." Morgan reached for the holo table, enlarging the map, fining the view down and down, until it showed a little string of asteroids, evenly spaced, of various sizes. Another tap, a few more degrees of magnification, and it was obvious that the asteroids were at least partially artificial, clear lines and curves of deliberate architecture.
"What the hell's that?" Raleigh asked, staring, and Morgan grinned.
"That is T'ssmg'ku", Morgan said, or something like - hiss and cough and moan, nothing Jared had ever heard before. A little note popped up, on the holo, a word, Jared assumed, in characters that were squiggles and lines and dots, utterly alien. "It's an arcology - it's a station, and science labs, and refining and research. Almost ten thousand people live there."
"What people?" Doc asked, leaning in, squinting as more of the alien characters popped up. Raleigh looked...fuck, like he was going to have some kind of fit, and Jared felt Jensen straighten up with a snap beside him; saw the ripple through the room as the other Angels did the same, some current alerting them.
"The people in charge of the Giraffe, what they call the M'mtss." Morgan was grinning hard, his gaze circling the room, looking self-satisfied, completely aware that whatever he was going to say was going to get a reaction. "It's the Quo."
After that, the briefing devolved into complete chaos.
"It's fucking bullshit," Kane snapped, and Sous muttered in agreement, leaning into his shoulder. Jensen was leaning into his other, utterly unashamed of claiming his own bit of skin and body-heat, and he could hear Jared approving, or enjoying, or something in the 'net - indulgent, warm emotion that made Jensen want to curl up and hum, content. Instead, he just squeezed Jared's hand, where it lay laced with his, and focused on the holo in front of them again.
Morgan had given them all a copy of the data: maps and charts, a language lexicon that nobody was even touching, at this point. And a file of images. Various shots of the arcology, obviously taken from a skimmer or observer ship, showing how the asteroids were chained together, linked somehow not only in orbit but structurally, the murky light of the system showing shadow and shine, rock and metal. A few shots were inside, as well, showcasing an architecture that was distinctly un-human; every corner rounded, every line a curve, plant life that seemed to be an integral part of the structure, light that seemed to be strongly directional, and weirdly colorless, to human eyes. And everything was big. Whatever lived here - Quo, or not - they needed space, and height.
No pictures, Jensen noticed, of any kind of tech, or anything that looked like controls, or boards; nothing. And no pictures of the Quo. Easier to fake it, Jensen thought, and Jared hummed an agreement, as intent on the holo as everyone else.
"It can't be bullshit, it's the fucking Morrigan. He's not some daff-headed fantabulist," Jinx said, turning the holo images, slow reel. "Look what he's done, with us, with the ship. Look who he is. What would be the point?"
"Some Company trick," a voice said, and it took a moment for Jensen to realize it was Sunukkuhkau, the oldest Nephilim on the ship. Jensen couldn't remember the last time he spoke aloud, and looking over at the tall, hatchet-faced man, Jensen got the impression he was doing it because of Jared. Grieve, snuggled up close beside him, seemed to think the same, too, and nuzzled his cheek into Suni's shoulder, approving.
"How so?" Jinx asked, nothing but respect in his voice, and Sunukkuhkau made a gesture of his hands, wide-spread fingers curling in the air, coming together into fists, clenching tightly around each other.
"Lure and surround and trap," Malik murmured, and the Angels shifted, the idea moving through them, through the 'net, sinking in.
"But...so many of us are dead," Perin said, and that rippled through them, too; grief and anger and helplessness, emotions Jensen was feeling all on his own, seeing them mirrored in the faces around him. Jared's fingers squeezed tighter onto his, a little spike of alarm in the 'net, would they, could they?
"Jensen?"
"I dunno, I…." ...maybe? Company, fucking Company….
While the Nephilim were intact, as were Dominions, Archangels, and Seraphim, the rest had taken hits, some crippling. As they debated, the seven surviving platoons were starting the long process of complete 'net re-set, erasing deeply-embedded presets and psych-triggers, aligning them so they could stand together, fight together. They would reform, one platoon and one not-quite, something they were calling Recon, since they couldn't muster a full compliment of 36 Angels. Virtues LT - his whole platoon gone in the takeover - would helm that chaotic amalgam, and they'd field-promoted a Sergeant for the other. The Company - the 'net - made it possible to synch an outsider with others, so platoons could get new recruits, replace lost troops. But it was hard, and messy, and it hurt, and neither unit would be up to much of anything, for at least a month live-time. Yet another reason they needed to move, to go to ground, to be safe. Jensen had thought, for a few heart-pounding moments, that maybe his 'net… But Doc had shaken her head, her gaze sad. His 'net was too different now, mutated past anything the Company had ever intended, and hostile at the deepest levels to Company genetics.
Jensen pushed that lingering disappointment away, letting Jared's warm squeeze of his hand ease the sting. "No, Company wouldn't risk it," Jensen said. "They couldn't know what would happen onboard, they couldn't know if one of...us would just take the Tiamat and ram her bow-first into a station. I don't think it's a trick. People did see the Quo, once."
"Three hundred years ago, maybe," Jinx said.
Not that long, Jared thought, but didn't say, and another ripple of shared thought went around the room, Angels contemplating the fourth alien race in the known 'verse - one that had vanished, without a trace, decades before. Most everyone knew the stories, even if mostly they thought of them as a spook-story, a snipe hunt, something to freak out the greenies. Not real.
The Quo - the Quiet Ones, the Whisperers - had initiated contact with the Earth ship Lig Danser at Iota Orionis, sometime in the 22nd century. At first, the contact had seemed peaceful, and the Quo - they called themselves something mostly unpronounceable, a collection of hisses and clicks and half-choked noises human throats couldn't reproduce - were curious and eager to learn. And then something...happened. A Quo died, and a human was badly hurt, though the blame seemed to be on both; a mess of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and misplaced trust; of concepts and assumptions that had seemed, on the surface, to mesh but in reality did not.
After that, the Quo had faded away, cutting off all contact four years after their initial hail, and, for all that Jensen knew, never having been seen or heard from again. Kept alive mostly in the untethered imaginings of the deep-spacers, in the nebulous time between skip and stability, when minds were loosed and some Angels swore they could feel the cold of the Between, curling chilled fingers around their hearts.
Jensen had always thought them to be nothing much - a lie, a dodge, made up to hide an uglier, or more boring, truth. But here was Morgan with files and pictures, saying he knew...saying there was another layer, beyond the Federation, beyond the Company and the Devils and every other faction, quasi-government, cult or militia out there. Something with an agenda that was friendly to them. To the Devils, to the ANGELS. Friendly, but alien. Utterly so.
Jensen shivered , willingly gathering up Jared, who had sat up and pushed into Jensen's side, a little mental shiver bouncing between them.
Trust Morgan? Jared thought, the Sergeant's rasping voice in his head, like the growl of a sentient machine.
I do. I trust him, Jensen thought, knowing that his tangled emotions and sometimes less-than-pleasant memories of Morgan confused Jared. Hell, they confused Jensen, sometimes. But Jared trusted him, and that was enough.
"I think it's good intel," Jensen said, looking around him, taking in the faces of people - his Angels - that he'd thought he would never see again. "Settle it."
That ripple, again: bodies shifting, breath pulling in and puffing out in almost perfect synch as thoughts and opinions flowed, nano-seconds of time, between 'net and 'net. Swift flicks of looks from this and that Angel until Five, Jinx and Sinna nodded to each other, the last three squad leaders left, forming up around the hole where Kee had been. They looked straight at Jensen and it was just like before, it was just like always. Jensen had the final say, Jensen their platoon leader, and Jensen ached to take that spot back for real. But he knew he couldn't; couldn't use the armor, anymore, couldn't re-synch with a Company 'net. It wasn't for him, ever again, that ferocious, single-minded animal that was an ArchANGEL platoon.
But he had this, for now, and it had to be enough.
"The Giraffe, then," Jensen said, and the whole of them gave a collective sigh of agreement and capitulation. "I'll tell Morgan."
"Word in the 'verse is, nobody knows what went down with the Quo," Morgan had said. He'd stood at parade rest, flesh hand locked around polycarbonate wrist, his dark, intent gaze tracking the gentle spin of the holo as it swung through long ellipse of the Quo arcology orbit, years in the travelling.
Thing is, the Quo don't fight. Not with each other, not with anybody else. Seems impossible, 'specially with the Stick around, but they don't. Haven't for centuries of their own history. They didn't like what we were doing, fighting our way through the 'verse, but they were willing to overlook it, if we were willing to try other things. We needed to take a few more steps along our evolutionary curve, they could see that, and they wanted to...give us a boost." Morgan had grinned humorlessly and flexed his polycarb arm, the soft whirr and hum of its internal servos audible in the hush of the room.
"We haven't made much progress. But seems like, right before they disappeared, they got wind of the ANGEL research. They were already light-years ahead of us, tech wise. Hell, they always will be. Tracking correspondence and communiqués and sifting through notes and proposals...it was nothing to them. The way they are, their minds, their tech...nothing is a secret. Nothing is kept from anyone, even children. They're wide open, all the time. They had a better handle on our language than we did on theirs, for all they can't really make most of our sounds, and we can't make theirs, so nothing was really stopping them from getting the complete picture.
"But what the Angel system could become - what was planned for it, way back then - it scared them, and it...disgusted them." Morgan's gaze had skimmed over the Angels in the room, who'd looked back, stony-faced. "It was, to them, a kind of...abomination. To meddle in a mind; to deliberately change how it thought, and reacted... They could see further than those first scientists ever could. They decided we were just too damn crazy for our own good, and definitely for their good. So, they backed off. They just...faded away. They had a more efficient skip-generation than we did, at the time, and the 'verse? Is wide."
Morgan had stepped up to the holo table and spun the zoom down, until the Giraffe was a swirling spot of light adrift in a vast, populated space, galaxies upon galaxies, humanity a thin web tenuously linking so very few points of life and warmth.
"Space is big, and they had time. Time for us to figure ourselves out, or kill ourselves off. But they didn't forget us, or what we might do. And they still don't fight - won't fight. But they're willing to shelter us, and lend us tech, and put an end to what the Company is doing. Gene-meddling, mental alterations - they see it as the ultimate betrayal of sentience. To wield that much control over another's body and mind and the…they call it the sgchyss. Something like. The soul. To them, it's something akin to genocide, what they think the Company can do. What it will do, in their estimation. The Quo see helping us as a mission of mercy, and we'll take all the help we can get."
Morgan had leaned on the edge of the holo table, the sparkling dance of galaxies swirling over his skin, and he had grinned, and it was the razor-sharp snarl of the Morrigan, the battle crow. "Thing is, how they see us ending this, and how we see it...are two very different things. So we have to move forward carefully. Very, very carefully. Ladies and gentlemen, we are giving ourselves over to true believers. Better start tryin' to scrub out the bloodstains."
There was enough of a support structure at Tripoli for the Tiamat to re-supply and repair, and prep for the long series of skips that would take them to the Giraffe. Morgan gave them forty-eight hours, no more, no less. The Angels who would be deep into the throes of the 'net re-set would actually be helped by a skip-out, rather than hurt. It still wasn't going to be pretty, though.
A swarm of mercenary ships and pirate skimmers and random, hopeful entrepreneurs invaded the Tiamat at all hours, offering everything from black-market parts and ANGEL chem to 'ponic-grown food, drugs, and medicines. Any number of warm bodies were on offer, as well, tempting in their eagerness and variety. They took on some of the parts - the few remaining crew amazed at just how much was out there - most of the food, and a few of the medicines, hand-picked by Doc, Celeste and the three remaining Tiamat medicos. Sous and the Thrones LT, Trejos, sorted out the drugs and found a few things that would work with the 'net, and Morgan pretended not to see, knowing full well exactly how many drugs ANGELs used, needed, and wanted. One of the drop-ship pilots got his still going again, churning out raw alcohol that reeked of glycol and burnt sugar-substitute.
While skip-prep went on all around them, the Nephilim retired to quarters with ten or so hoarded liters of the pilot's disgusting skip-whiskey (his name for it) and a dense block of opium-soaked hemp. They had a little internal sorting of their own to do, and Jensen stood there, grinning so hard it hurt, as Kane was inducted in as the newest squad leader amidst shouting congratulations and ululating cheers. His squad would be short an Angel, but
no less for it, and as Sinna carefully acid-etched his new designation into the breastplate of his armor, every Angel stepped up to congratulate him, his new squad forming up one by one, to stand tall behind him.
Jared went up, too, a little uncertain, but riding the bursting happiness that Jensen couldn't even begin to control. He gave Kane an awkward hand-shake, and then shook his head and pulled Kane in for a hard, body-wrapping hug. Kane laughed, the shorter man managing to actually lift Jared up off his feet by a few inches, leaning far back, before spinning him away, into the crowd. Then he looked at Jensen, and Jensen stepped up last, his heart pounding. Happy, fuck yes, because Kane would do good, he was worthy. But sad, too, under it all. Just a little.
"Kane," Jensen said; it was all he could say, his throat aching and his hands shaking, his belly knotting up and his eyes stinging, tears threatening to spill over at any moment. And then they did spill, as Kane reached out and pulled Jensen in for a hard kiss and harder hug, his face pushing into the thin skin behind Jensen's ear.
"Missed you," Kane said, his voice thick. "Missed...thought you...were dead, hurt, it...fuck, Qemuel," Kane rasped, and Jensen hugged back just as hard, lips pressed to Kane's temple.
"I know. I know. Me, too. Missed you," Jensen whispered, his body reacting in the old way, to the familiar heat and scent of Kane's, the way his hands curved around Jensen's ribs, the way they fit together, knee to hip to chest.
Jensen leaned in and closed his eyes and was just there, for a long, long moment, and then he pushed back, lifted his head up off Kane's shoulder and grinned at him. His gaze flicked back to Malik and Grieve, Sous and Perin, all of Kane's new squad, and his chin went up, that little 'come hither' gesture they all knew, and they all surged forward, surrounding Kane, dragging him back, laughing, now; touching, kissing, owning him, like they needed to, like they wanted to. Like they had for Jensen, ever-so-many years and stars and battles ago. This time was theirs, was for them and for Kane. Jensen felt a moment's bone-deep misery, watching all of the Angels retreat to the skip-couches and bunks, drink being passed, and little anodized pipes of the poppy-smoke; watching hands and mouths and bodies touch and curl and take possession.
You and me and yours and mine and us, there's us, still us. A confused, insistent rush of emotion from Jared, a mix of hurt and need and something like anger, or maybe betrayal, and Jensen turned and found Jared, standing with his arms crossed tight against his chest, huddled into an angle of the wall. Out of the way of the crowd, watching Jensen through long strands of disordered hair.
I know you us me you our own, each other's, I know, sorry, sorry…. Regret and longing and a little shame, and Jared's head came up as his shoulders sank, as his arms slipped down.
"Fuck, Jensen, I'm…. Sorry. I didn't mean to- I'd feel that same way, I guess, if I…if I'd lost-" Family, heart, mama…. Jared bit his lip, hard, and sniffed, irritably wiping the blade of his palm under his eyes, as he looked away, trying to reel in the emotions he was sure Jensen didn't want - couldn't care about, in the storm-surge of his own unhappiness.
"No, don't-" Jensen took two quicks steps right up into Jared's space, close enough to feel his heat, the strong muscles of his thighs tight against Jared's own. His belly and his chest lifted as Jared breathed, and Jensen breathed, too, in sync, in time. "We know, we both know lost small cold, so cold, all alone, all alone hurting. I don't mind. But us, we, together now, same, you and me, us we've got something else. Okay? Is it...are we....enough, is it enough am I...?"
"Oh, fuck," Jared said, rough-voiced, and his arms came around Jensen and his whole body seemed to envelope him, muscle and bone, skin and heat, fingers digging into Jensen's back. And Jensen grabbed him back, hugged Jared just as hard, holding on, holding tight, against the surging, aching rush of loss and misery, loneliness and longing.
A rush that surged and ebbed and then rose again, different, loss changing to having, desolation to joy. It was natural - it was like breathing - when Jensen's mouth found Jared's and they stood for a long, long space of time, just breathing, just tasting, Jared's hands slipping up under Jensen's shirt and sweater, Jensen's hands creeping up into that ridiculous, incredible hair….
Jared broke away, laughing, his face wet as he looked down at Jensen with eyes that seemed to hold all of the stars in them, galaxies and supernovae, bright and blooming. "It's not ridiculous love it, you love-, you love my hair."
"Civvie. Greenie Like some kind of crazy weed, like softest thing I ever...just want to touch…. It'll foul every filter on the ship."
"Not my problem," Jared said, grinning, and Jensen grinned back. Then Jensen was pulling Jared away from the wall, across the room, tugging on his hand and looking back, going for the skip-couches and the tangled sea of bodies, of Angels, that lifted and fell, arched and writhed, curled and stroked and breathed together.
"Jared..." he started, and Jared didn't even hesitate. He pushed and pulled and tugged at clothing until they were both naked, pale in the rich light of the room, gleaming, in Jensen's eyes. Both of them carrying scars, both of them marked, in so many ways, by the Company, by death, by struggle.
Someone laughed, and someone put out a hand - moved a thigh - more hands, and more, and Jensen and Jared both toppled down onto the soft, springing surface of a couch, a knee here and a shoulder there, heat and sweat and soft sounds of pleasure. Someone - Malik - pushed one of the little pipes into Jensen's hand. Propped on an elbow, Jensen applied the little hot-stick to the hemp (no open flame on a ship), and took in a long, long drag of the smoke. It was hot and sweet-scratchy in his throat, expanding in his lungs, instant light-headed rush. Jared, half on Jensen and half on his side, was taking a swig of skip-whiskey and his reaction to it shuddered through the 'net and Jensen laughed, coughing out smoke, as Jared choked.
"Fuckin'- fuck, what the hell do they make this out of?"
"Dead Suits," Sinna said, her own voice rough from smoke and whiskey and cheers. Jensen traded with Jared; took a long pull of the whiskey and felt it burn his gums and tongue and throat, roll up fumes into his sinuses and start a coal in his belly, heat radiating out. He took another long drink as Kane dragged Malik down, kissing and sucking at his throat, his jaw, and then tossed the null-safe cup toward an empty spot of cushion. Jared was letting smoke trickle out through his nose, slow exhale, and Jensen got another hit, whiskey and hemp and poppy combining in them both to a warm, drifting slide.
Sinna lifted the pipe from his fingers and Jensen reached for Jared, warm and pretty and touch me in the 'net, slow surge of intention that seemed to take forever. Jared grinned at him, untangled a leg from between someone else's, and crawled right into Jensen's space.
Jensen ended on his back, looking up at Jared's face, the long ends of his hair tickling Jensen's cheeks, and Jared grinned some more and did a little snaky twist of his neck, sliding his hair across Jensen's face, shivery-slick. Jensen huffed out a breath, watched the hair lift with the air and did it again. His hands crept up into the long strands, to pet and comb and tangle in, and Jared settled firmly between Jensen's sprawled thighs. His body was known and unknown; muscle memory coming through the 'net, feedback echo of sensations. Like fighting, from Jared, curl of amusement.
Jensen knew, instinctively, what Jared liked, what felt good, but it was still amazing to discover that a slow rake of blunt nails down Jared's spine would make him arch and hum, eyes going half shut. Incredible to watch, when Jensen's fingers slid into the cleft between Jared's cheeks, how Jared's eyes seemed to go dark and blaze up at the same time, plump lower lip caught in his teeth, his hips grinding down on pure instinct. Flushed and faintly glistening with sweat, every sensation seemed to stretch out forever, to quiver and echo and rebound, over and over.
"Jen-sen," Jared breathed, and dipped his head to nip at Jensen's throat, that point right under his ear, that made Jensen shudder and his thighs come up, gripping Jared's hips. Jared curled his back and bit again and rubbed the length of his hard cock up Jensen's belly and then back, and Jensen pulled at his shoulders, dragging him down. Both of them were breathing shuddery-fast, both of them clutching and pulling and wanting and needing-
"Jensen, can I, do you want- me us, in you, like this, this, this?"
"Yeah, yes, fuck." Jensen turned his head, groaning, to find Jared's mouth and they both jolted, startled, when a cool hand reached down, trailing slick from Jared's balls to the head of his cock, to Jensen's hole. Jared's head whipped around, arms gripping tight around Jensen, and Jensen rubbed his hands up Jared's back, soothing.
Angels, it's okay, just Sinna, no harm
Sinna grinned, all sharp edges and sweat, turning away to catch the dark bud of Five's nipple in her mouth, squirming down on Five's hand. Jensen's fingers came up to touch Jared's chin with the slightest pressure, and Jared turned with him, looking down.
"Okay? It's just, it's- Angels, just Angels family, how it is, doesn't mean-"
"No, I know, I..." Jared took a deep breath and rolled his hips, gliding now, cock to cock and a little slither lower, pushing at Jensen's hole, sliding past. "I want...this, I want us us us can I please you, is it, is this-?"
"You know it is," Jensen breathed, and he tilted his hips up, one heel digging into Jared's thigh, the other in the small of his back as he reached down between them to curl his fingers around Jared's cock, little gasp and shiver between both of them. Pushing, pulling, getting him right there, until Jared pushed and then pushed again, breathing hard, and Jensen arched up and pushed back and let him in. The first hard, sweet burn faded to something else, clutch of muscle felt from both sides, shivery feedback that built up fast, nearly overwhelming in minutes, both of them crying out, clutching bruises.
Until Kane caught one of Jensen's hands, lacing it with his own, grounding him with that touch. And Sinna reached over again and tugged at Jared's hair, rubbing her fingers through and through it, her head tipped back in bliss at what Five was doing between her thighs.
Jared half-laughed, half-gasped, going still for a moment, and Jensen craned up to get one, two, threefourfive kisses, nipping at Jared's mouth.
"God, it's...I can feel you, I can…so much it's so much is it really...so good, I didn't know, didn't know, you in me, me in you How'd do you...not do this all...fucking day?" Jared gasped out, and then looked down in happy surprise as Jensen started to laugh. Vibrations rolled through his body and through the 'net, rippling out, rebounding back, both of them laughing as Jensen lifted up and clenched down hard. Jared rolled his hips and rutted down, harder and faster, groaning into Jensen's neck and laughing, too, still, and Jensen gripped Kane's hand tight and clung to Jared and felt himself unravelling, opening; tipping over the edge and falling, electric-stutter spasms locking him into a hard, desperate curve as Jared shoved in harder and bit down, salt on both their tongues.
Sinna's hand tugged at Jared's hair, a tingling prickle, and Jared pulled against it, gasping against Jensen's throat. Jensen got his own hand off Jared's back and slid it up, into the strands, bumping into Sinna and then dislodging her as she groaned aloud and clutched frantically at Five's shoulders, thighs flexing.
Jensen looked up at Jared to see Jared watching him watch them - felt that moment's jealousy and then acceptance in the 'net, the unfolding understanding. You and me and me in you and us and them and us... Jared thought, and Jensen caught it and sent it back, then clenched around Jared's half-hard cock and yanked him down for a long, long kiss.
And got his tongue bit, hard, as the klaxon sounded and the lights flashed, and Angels startled, cursing and yelling, bodies scrambling all around. Jared coming up off and out of Jensen with a shocked noise, leaving Jensen groaning, thighs clamping together because fuck, he hadn't been ready for that, not at all, fucking damn.
Sorry, sorry, fuck, what…?
"Battlestations, all hands, battlestations and skip-prep. Prepare to break dock and skip out, get your area secured and get to stations. Long range scan is showing imminent skip-down. Not a drill, people. It's too big and too clean to be anything but the Nebuchadnezzar, and we are fucked if she gets in before we get out.
Repeat: Nebuchadnezzar on long-scan, all hands to battlestations and immediate prep for skip-out. Move, people, let's go."
Part Eighteen
Thanks for all your patience, my lovely, lovely readers.
Hi, people. Apologies for the long-ass wait and...this is not the last chapter.
*flails*
I'm just so irritated with myself and how fucking *slowly* i'm writing, anymore, that i was like 'screw it, this is a good place to break'. So I did. So here you go.
As always, thank you, DH - you are the ultimate beta. :)
Also at AO3
you are the one
i am lit for.
Come with your rod
that twists
and is a serpent.
i am the bush.
i am burning
i am not consumed.
Lucille Clifton - 'To A Dark Moses'
Tripoli was a dark little system of three; a nameless brown dwarf, orbited by the shattered remains of what might have once been an exoplanet, with a mostly-water-ice moonlet slinging along in the L3 position. A hundred years or more ago, some wandering pirate had found the moonlet and made a killing with the ice, eventually becoming their own little kingdom, keeping the peace and keeping Tripoli open to whomever was coming through. They even had a station of sorts, in L5; a collection of modules and pods and habitats, all welded and epoxyed together, with skimmers and rigger suits for attitude adjustment, the whole thing having grown and mutated over the years to a weirdly lumpy structure, scatter-shot with blinking safety lights and, most definitely, illegally armed.
Tripoli itself was the mid-point between five bigger, busier systems, smack in the middle of a great, big empty. It had shaved a good two, five, eight and more years off the routes between those systems, linking them in a shorter, mostly linear chain, instead of a long, long skip around the edges of a massless 'dead' zone. A popular place, for those that knew it, and most did. Maybe not the ships that plied the lanes and routes in quadrants billions of light years away, but it wasn't really a secret, anymore.
Troopships knew about it, for sure, and Morgan said the Nebuchadnezzar would skip to Tripoli first; only logical and about the only place ships like the Falcon could reach from Axis that weren't deeper into more populated spaces. So the sooner they skipped out, the better. The captain of the Diomedes agreed, astounded at having the fugitives arrive in a Federation troopship, instead of the Falcon, Tiamat's speed in the skip to Tripoli only adding urgency to their agreement.
The waiting made everyone antsy; Jared spent a lot of time just staying out of the way of hyped up ANGELs in standby mode, training and doing suit maintenance, sparring or fighting or fucking all over the troop decks. They tended to forget that not only could he not hear them, but he wasn't as strong as they were, and had zero training.
Jensen was trying to fix that, daily, with lessons on hand-to-hand that were full of dirty tricks and lethal little moves that worked with or without the armor. And Jared learned, with the muscle-memory of Jensen's body singing to him through the 'net, guiding him like some kind of invisible hand. It was unsettling, though, and nothing Jared had ever imagined himself doing. So that made Jensen a little on edge, not sure if Jared was condemning him or sneering at him. Jared wasn't doing either, but his own inner uncertainly didn't help when Jensen himself wasn't always one hundred percent there. The things the 'net and the drugs and the prison med-unit psych-suppressant had smothered for years were getting stronger, now - creeping up on him when he least expected it, and he was always braced for that mental, emotional ambush. Braced, and scared, and angry, too. And sad and sorry, and Jared looked longingly at the derms Doc had given him seemingly ages ago, wanting to check them both out, just to get some relief.
But he didn't - Jensen wouldn't - and there wasn't anything to be done, unless Jensen wanted it all scrubbed down again, which he didn't seem to, no matter how ugly his memories were. Jared got that, but he hated living in the moment with Jensen, completely helpless under the dual onslaught of memories of a life he'd never lived, and the fury and fear and shame they caused in Jensen.
They had, at least, the distraction of the endless arguments between Morgan and the crew about where they were going next and what, exactly, was going to happen then. An argument that only got more complicated when Doc and Raleigh and the rest were on board.
Turned out, they only overjumped the Falcon by five days, Axis and the Nebuchadnezzar three weeks and nearly four, respectively, in their collective pasts. When the merc ship popped in, skipping down the well and into the elliptic, alarms went off on every deck of the Tiamat. It took an hour for the Falcon's pin-line comm burst to reach them; ID and trajectory and Hello, just us. Everybody calmed down, after that, though Jared could still feel the ghost-shiver of adrenaline and ready steady go that had surged up in Jensen the moment the alarms went.
"Got some serious black market tech on that ship," Jensen said, eyes intent on a screen showing the Falcon's path to Tripoli. "Engineering's gonna want to see the rig they got."
"I'm glad we're done waiting," Jared said, and Jensen flashed him a quick grin, agreement in the 'net, and a steadying down of nerves.
In the middle of the dog-watch that same day, when most of the troops and crew alike were at mess, Morgan had what remained of the executive crew (only the Arms-Com Ensign and Second Nav), the drop-ship pilots, and the ragged remains of troop LT's and sergeants up in the briefing room under the bridge, debating their next move. A handful of ANGEL platoon leaders had tagged along, and of course everyone from Axis, though Morgan looked like he wished it could be kept military only. Silently, Jared pointed out Raleigh, who Jensen hadn't ever met, and Celeste, and the handful of other Diaboli from Axis that Jared had worked with, on and off, for almost a year. The way Jensen noted them, memorized them, and then dismissed them was so distinctly ANGEL, it made Jared grin, even while it gave him a little shiver of unease. It was efficient, effective...cold.
SOP Jensen thought at him, with a little frown, and Jared sighed and nodded and stifled his un-military thoughts.
Morgan was arguing for a place he called 'the Giraffe', that was marked on the star chart as MS 0735.6+7421. Jared asked Jensen what a giraffe was, and got a blank look and shrug in return. Morgan didn't seem to know what it was, either, just that that was what it was called. Apparently, it was a supermassive black hole, full of gases heated to something like fifty-million degrees, that emitted x-rays and gamma rays and it all sounded like a place that might tear a ship, even a troopship like the Tiamat, to bits, or at least cook the crew and suck them down to oblivion.
Morgan rolled his eyes when Jared said this, and the crew and assorted Angels looked impatient and irritated, so Jared retreated to the edge of the briefing room, feeling stupid.
No, in the 'net, a negation of that emotion - a flood of information about what the ship could and couldn't withstand; the shielding and the composition and the deflection waves she could generate. How safe the ship was, things civilians couldn't know. SOP, Jensen thought, this time his mouth curling in a little smile, and Jared leaned against the wall and grinned at Jensen, hands down in his pockets, little nudging memory of that kiss they'd shared, in the Angel showers. Just...because he could. Jensen grinned back, slow and so damn happy, and that kind of….made up for everything.
"Look," Doc said, holding her hands up, palm out, in a everybody shut up gesture. "I can't do this without facilities. State of the fucking art facilities! Which we have at ar-Rāqiṣ! It's completely secure, it's been a hub for the Diaboli for decades-"
"Which is why we can't use it. Now that we've got a vaccine, and a troopship, and fuckin' ANGELS, do you really think they're gonna just let us go?" Morgan's salt-and-pepper hair was longer, curling around his ears and the back of his neck, falling over his forehead. It didn't match the last time Jensen had seen him, and Jared felt Jensen's little twitch of different different like a mental poke, every time. Jared shrugged his shoulder into Jensen's and did his best to distract him, and Jensen apologized with a little, warm uprush of emotion, even as he flinched again. The hair was just a diversion, though, from the knowledge that Morgan (Gunny, superior, lover, the Morrigan, who laid waste when he so chose, like an apocryphal god ) was actually their best ally, and most staunch defender.
"Every fucking Company ship in the 'verse is gonna be looking for us. And you have no idea the resources they can pull."
"Maybe I don't, but I know what we can."
"It won't be enough," Morgan said, and then he made an inarticulate noise of pure irritation, and shoved his flesh-hand into his pocket. He pulled out a data stick, sliding it into the port in the holo unit in the middle of the room, tapping the clear surface as the interface came up. And then a map sprang up, a starfield, rotating as Morgan manipulated it. Everyone crowded in closer, gazing upward, mostly in the plain grey or black or tan coveralls of crew, rank and insignia stitched in a deep gold. The Angels were in down-time navy blue, Archangels with their facial tattoos that made a ripple of back off shudder through Jensen every time. Thrones, who tended toward boutique-surgical quirks, like pointed, tufted ears and single-color eyes, and a couple of Principalities, skin dyed in swirls and starbursts, blue and green, red and purple, silver and gold. They all watched as Morgan tipped the holo, enlarged it, and pointed.
"Look, here. Here's the Giraffe, okay? Not a lot at the center, it's too hot. But out here, on the rim, it's a pretty junky system. Got dust, got asteroids and comets, got a couple exoplanets at the very edge, all gaseous. A big, messy, noisy system with the biggest, noisiest black hole at the middle." Morgan looked around the room, the holo shining blue-white off the planes of his face, striking sparks on the gleaming black polycarbonate of his prosthetic left arm.
"It's almost impossible to track anything in there, and it's the perfect place for us to hide. For a a lot of things to hide." Morgan reached for the holo table, enlarging the map, fining the view down and down, until it showed a little string of asteroids, evenly spaced, of various sizes. Another tap, a few more degrees of magnification, and it was obvious that the asteroids were at least partially artificial, clear lines and curves of deliberate architecture.
"What the hell's that?" Raleigh asked, staring, and Morgan grinned.
"That is T'ssmg'ku", Morgan said, or something like - hiss and cough and moan, nothing Jared had ever heard before. A little note popped up, on the holo, a word, Jared assumed, in characters that were squiggles and lines and dots, utterly alien. "It's an arcology - it's a station, and science labs, and refining and research. Almost ten thousand people live there."
"What people?" Doc asked, leaning in, squinting as more of the alien characters popped up. Raleigh looked...fuck, like he was going to have some kind of fit, and Jared felt Jensen straighten up with a snap beside him; saw the ripple through the room as the other Angels did the same, some current alerting them.
"The people in charge of the Giraffe, what they call the M'mtss." Morgan was grinning hard, his gaze circling the room, looking self-satisfied, completely aware that whatever he was going to say was going to get a reaction. "It's the Quo."
After that, the briefing devolved into complete chaos.
"It's fucking bullshit," Kane snapped, and Sous muttered in agreement, leaning into his shoulder. Jensen was leaning into his other, utterly unashamed of claiming his own bit of skin and body-heat, and he could hear Jared approving, or enjoying, or something in the 'net - indulgent, warm emotion that made Jensen want to curl up and hum, content. Instead, he just squeezed Jared's hand, where it lay laced with his, and focused on the holo in front of them again.
Morgan had given them all a copy of the data: maps and charts, a language lexicon that nobody was even touching, at this point. And a file of images. Various shots of the arcology, obviously taken from a skimmer or observer ship, showing how the asteroids were chained together, linked somehow not only in orbit but structurally, the murky light of the system showing shadow and shine, rock and metal. A few shots were inside, as well, showcasing an architecture that was distinctly un-human; every corner rounded, every line a curve, plant life that seemed to be an integral part of the structure, light that seemed to be strongly directional, and weirdly colorless, to human eyes. And everything was big. Whatever lived here - Quo, or not - they needed space, and height.
No pictures, Jensen noticed, of any kind of tech, or anything that looked like controls, or boards; nothing. And no pictures of the Quo. Easier to fake it, Jensen thought, and Jared hummed an agreement, as intent on the holo as everyone else.
"It can't be bullshit, it's the fucking Morrigan. He's not some daff-headed fantabulist," Jinx said, turning the holo images, slow reel. "Look what he's done, with us, with the ship. Look who he is. What would be the point?"
"Some Company trick," a voice said, and it took a moment for Jensen to realize it was Sunukkuhkau, the oldest Nephilim on the ship. Jensen couldn't remember the last time he spoke aloud, and looking over at the tall, hatchet-faced man, Jensen got the impression he was doing it because of Jared. Grieve, snuggled up close beside him, seemed to think the same, too, and nuzzled his cheek into Suni's shoulder, approving.
"How so?" Jinx asked, nothing but respect in his voice, and Sunukkuhkau made a gesture of his hands, wide-spread fingers curling in the air, coming together into fists, clenching tightly around each other.
"Lure and surround and trap," Malik murmured, and the Angels shifted, the idea moving through them, through the 'net, sinking in.
"But...so many of us are dead," Perin said, and that rippled through them, too; grief and anger and helplessness, emotions Jensen was feeling all on his own, seeing them mirrored in the faces around him. Jared's fingers squeezed tighter onto his, a little spike of alarm in the 'net, would they, could they?
"Jensen?"
"I dunno, I…." ...maybe? Company, fucking Company….
While the Nephilim were intact, as were Dominions, Archangels, and Seraphim, the rest had taken hits, some crippling. As they debated, the seven surviving platoons were starting the long process of complete 'net re-set, erasing deeply-embedded presets and psych-triggers, aligning them so they could stand together, fight together. They would reform, one platoon and one not-quite, something they were calling Recon, since they couldn't muster a full compliment of 36 Angels. Virtues LT - his whole platoon gone in the takeover - would helm that chaotic amalgam, and they'd field-promoted a Sergeant for the other. The Company - the 'net - made it possible to synch an outsider with others, so platoons could get new recruits, replace lost troops. But it was hard, and messy, and it hurt, and neither unit would be up to much of anything, for at least a month live-time. Yet another reason they needed to move, to go to ground, to be safe. Jensen had thought, for a few heart-pounding moments, that maybe his 'net… But Doc had shaken her head, her gaze sad. His 'net was too different now, mutated past anything the Company had ever intended, and hostile at the deepest levels to Company genetics.
Jensen pushed that lingering disappointment away, letting Jared's warm squeeze of his hand ease the sting. "No, Company wouldn't risk it," Jensen said. "They couldn't know what would happen onboard, they couldn't know if one of...us would just take the Tiamat and ram her bow-first into a station. I don't think it's a trick. People did see the Quo, once."
"Three hundred years ago, maybe," Jinx said.
Not that long, Jared thought, but didn't say, and another ripple of shared thought went around the room, Angels contemplating the fourth alien race in the known 'verse - one that had vanished, without a trace, decades before. Most everyone knew the stories, even if mostly they thought of them as a spook-story, a snipe hunt, something to freak out the greenies. Not real.
The Quo - the Quiet Ones, the Whisperers - had initiated contact with the Earth ship Lig Danser at Iota Orionis, sometime in the 22nd century. At first, the contact had seemed peaceful, and the Quo - they called themselves something mostly unpronounceable, a collection of hisses and clicks and half-choked noises human throats couldn't reproduce - were curious and eager to learn. And then something...happened. A Quo died, and a human was badly hurt, though the blame seemed to be on both; a mess of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and misplaced trust; of concepts and assumptions that had seemed, on the surface, to mesh but in reality did not.
After that, the Quo had faded away, cutting off all contact four years after their initial hail, and, for all that Jensen knew, never having been seen or heard from again. Kept alive mostly in the untethered imaginings of the deep-spacers, in the nebulous time between skip and stability, when minds were loosed and some Angels swore they could feel the cold of the Between, curling chilled fingers around their hearts.
Jensen had always thought them to be nothing much - a lie, a dodge, made up to hide an uglier, or more boring, truth. But here was Morgan with files and pictures, saying he knew...saying there was another layer, beyond the Federation, beyond the Company and the Devils and every other faction, quasi-government, cult or militia out there. Something with an agenda that was friendly to them. To the Devils, to the ANGELS. Friendly, but alien. Utterly so.
Jensen shivered , willingly gathering up Jared, who had sat up and pushed into Jensen's side, a little mental shiver bouncing between them.
Trust Morgan? Jared thought, the Sergeant's rasping voice in his head, like the growl of a sentient machine.
I do. I trust him, Jensen thought, knowing that his tangled emotions and sometimes less-than-pleasant memories of Morgan confused Jared. Hell, they confused Jensen, sometimes. But Jared trusted him, and that was enough.
"I think it's good intel," Jensen said, looking around him, taking in the faces of people - his Angels - that he'd thought he would never see again. "Settle it."
That ripple, again: bodies shifting, breath pulling in and puffing out in almost perfect synch as thoughts and opinions flowed, nano-seconds of time, between 'net and 'net. Swift flicks of looks from this and that Angel until Five, Jinx and Sinna nodded to each other, the last three squad leaders left, forming up around the hole where Kee had been. They looked straight at Jensen and it was just like before, it was just like always. Jensen had the final say, Jensen their platoon leader, and Jensen ached to take that spot back for real. But he knew he couldn't; couldn't use the armor, anymore, couldn't re-synch with a Company 'net. It wasn't for him, ever again, that ferocious, single-minded animal that was an ArchANGEL platoon.
But he had this, for now, and it had to be enough.
"The Giraffe, then," Jensen said, and the whole of them gave a collective sigh of agreement and capitulation. "I'll tell Morgan."
"Word in the 'verse is, nobody knows what went down with the Quo," Morgan had said. He'd stood at parade rest, flesh hand locked around polycarbonate wrist, his dark, intent gaze tracking the gentle spin of the holo as it swung through long ellipse of the Quo arcology orbit, years in the travelling.
Thing is, the Quo don't fight. Not with each other, not with anybody else. Seems impossible, 'specially with the Stick around, but they don't. Haven't for centuries of their own history. They didn't like what we were doing, fighting our way through the 'verse, but they were willing to overlook it, if we were willing to try other things. We needed to take a few more steps along our evolutionary curve, they could see that, and they wanted to...give us a boost." Morgan had grinned humorlessly and flexed his polycarb arm, the soft whirr and hum of its internal servos audible in the hush of the room.
"We haven't made much progress. But seems like, right before they disappeared, they got wind of the ANGEL research. They were already light-years ahead of us, tech wise. Hell, they always will be. Tracking correspondence and communiqués and sifting through notes and proposals...it was nothing to them. The way they are, their minds, their tech...nothing is a secret. Nothing is kept from anyone, even children. They're wide open, all the time. They had a better handle on our language than we did on theirs, for all they can't really make most of our sounds, and we can't make theirs, so nothing was really stopping them from getting the complete picture.
"But what the Angel system could become - what was planned for it, way back then - it scared them, and it...disgusted them." Morgan's gaze had skimmed over the Angels in the room, who'd looked back, stony-faced. "It was, to them, a kind of...abomination. To meddle in a mind; to deliberately change how it thought, and reacted... They could see further than those first scientists ever could. They decided we were just too damn crazy for our own good, and definitely for their good. So, they backed off. They just...faded away. They had a more efficient skip-generation than we did, at the time, and the 'verse? Is wide."
Morgan had stepped up to the holo table and spun the zoom down, until the Giraffe was a swirling spot of light adrift in a vast, populated space, galaxies upon galaxies, humanity a thin web tenuously linking so very few points of life and warmth.
"Space is big, and they had time. Time for us to figure ourselves out, or kill ourselves off. But they didn't forget us, or what we might do. And they still don't fight - won't fight. But they're willing to shelter us, and lend us tech, and put an end to what the Company is doing. Gene-meddling, mental alterations - they see it as the ultimate betrayal of sentience. To wield that much control over another's body and mind and the…they call it the sgchyss. Something like. The soul. To them, it's something akin to genocide, what they think the Company can do. What it will do, in their estimation. The Quo see helping us as a mission of mercy, and we'll take all the help we can get."
Morgan had leaned on the edge of the holo table, the sparkling dance of galaxies swirling over his skin, and he had grinned, and it was the razor-sharp snarl of the Morrigan, the battle crow. "Thing is, how they see us ending this, and how we see it...are two very different things. So we have to move forward carefully. Very, very carefully. Ladies and gentlemen, we are giving ourselves over to true believers. Better start tryin' to scrub out the bloodstains."
There was enough of a support structure at Tripoli for the Tiamat to re-supply and repair, and prep for the long series of skips that would take them to the Giraffe. Morgan gave them forty-eight hours, no more, no less. The Angels who would be deep into the throes of the 'net re-set would actually be helped by a skip-out, rather than hurt. It still wasn't going to be pretty, though.
A swarm of mercenary ships and pirate skimmers and random, hopeful entrepreneurs invaded the Tiamat at all hours, offering everything from black-market parts and ANGEL chem to 'ponic-grown food, drugs, and medicines. Any number of warm bodies were on offer, as well, tempting in their eagerness and variety. They took on some of the parts - the few remaining crew amazed at just how much was out there - most of the food, and a few of the medicines, hand-picked by Doc, Celeste and the three remaining Tiamat medicos. Sous and the Thrones LT, Trejos, sorted out the drugs and found a few things that would work with the 'net, and Morgan pretended not to see, knowing full well exactly how many drugs ANGELs used, needed, and wanted. One of the drop-ship pilots got his still going again, churning out raw alcohol that reeked of glycol and burnt sugar-substitute.
While skip-prep went on all around them, the Nephilim retired to quarters with ten or so hoarded liters of the pilot's disgusting skip-whiskey (his name for it) and a dense block of opium-soaked hemp. They had a little internal sorting of their own to do, and Jensen stood there, grinning so hard it hurt, as Kane was inducted in as the newest squad leader amidst shouting congratulations and ululating cheers. His squad would be short an Angel, but
no less for it, and as Sinna carefully acid-etched his new designation into the breastplate of his armor, every Angel stepped up to congratulate him, his new squad forming up one by one, to stand tall behind him.
Jared went up, too, a little uncertain, but riding the bursting happiness that Jensen couldn't even begin to control. He gave Kane an awkward hand-shake, and then shook his head and pulled Kane in for a hard, body-wrapping hug. Kane laughed, the shorter man managing to actually lift Jared up off his feet by a few inches, leaning far back, before spinning him away, into the crowd. Then he looked at Jensen, and Jensen stepped up last, his heart pounding. Happy, fuck yes, because Kane would do good, he was worthy. But sad, too, under it all. Just a little.
"Kane," Jensen said; it was all he could say, his throat aching and his hands shaking, his belly knotting up and his eyes stinging, tears threatening to spill over at any moment. And then they did spill, as Kane reached out and pulled Jensen in for a hard kiss and harder hug, his face pushing into the thin skin behind Jensen's ear.
"Missed you," Kane said, his voice thick. "Missed...thought you...were dead, hurt, it...fuck, Qemuel," Kane rasped, and Jensen hugged back just as hard, lips pressed to Kane's temple.
"I know. I know. Me, too. Missed you," Jensen whispered, his body reacting in the old way, to the familiar heat and scent of Kane's, the way his hands curved around Jensen's ribs, the way they fit together, knee to hip to chest.
Jensen leaned in and closed his eyes and was just there, for a long, long moment, and then he pushed back, lifted his head up off Kane's shoulder and grinned at him. His gaze flicked back to Malik and Grieve, Sous and Perin, all of Kane's new squad, and his chin went up, that little 'come hither' gesture they all knew, and they all surged forward, surrounding Kane, dragging him back, laughing, now; touching, kissing, owning him, like they needed to, like they wanted to. Like they had for Jensen, ever-so-many years and stars and battles ago. This time was theirs, was for them and for Kane. Jensen felt a moment's bone-deep misery, watching all of the Angels retreat to the skip-couches and bunks, drink being passed, and little anodized pipes of the poppy-smoke; watching hands and mouths and bodies touch and curl and take possession.
You and me and yours and mine and us, there's us, still us. A confused, insistent rush of emotion from Jared, a mix of hurt and need and something like anger, or maybe betrayal, and Jensen turned and found Jared, standing with his arms crossed tight against his chest, huddled into an angle of the wall. Out of the way of the crowd, watching Jensen through long strands of disordered hair.
I know you us me you our own, each other's, I know, sorry, sorry…. Regret and longing and a little shame, and Jared's head came up as his shoulders sank, as his arms slipped down.
"Fuck, Jensen, I'm…. Sorry. I didn't mean to- I'd feel that same way, I guess, if I…if I'd lost-" Family, heart, mama…. Jared bit his lip, hard, and sniffed, irritably wiping the blade of his palm under his eyes, as he looked away, trying to reel in the emotions he was sure Jensen didn't want - couldn't care about, in the storm-surge of his own unhappiness.
"No, don't-" Jensen took two quicks steps right up into Jared's space, close enough to feel his heat, the strong muscles of his thighs tight against Jared's own. His belly and his chest lifted as Jared breathed, and Jensen breathed, too, in sync, in time. "We know, we both know lost small cold, so cold, all alone, all alone hurting. I don't mind. But us, we, together now, same, you and me, us we've got something else. Okay? Is it...are we....enough, is it enough am I...?"
"Oh, fuck," Jared said, rough-voiced, and his arms came around Jensen and his whole body seemed to envelope him, muscle and bone, skin and heat, fingers digging into Jensen's back. And Jensen grabbed him back, hugged Jared just as hard, holding on, holding tight, against the surging, aching rush of loss and misery, loneliness and longing.
A rush that surged and ebbed and then rose again, different, loss changing to having, desolation to joy. It was natural - it was like breathing - when Jensen's mouth found Jared's and they stood for a long, long space of time, just breathing, just tasting, Jared's hands slipping up under Jensen's shirt and sweater, Jensen's hands creeping up into that ridiculous, incredible hair….
Jared broke away, laughing, his face wet as he looked down at Jensen with eyes that seemed to hold all of the stars in them, galaxies and supernovae, bright and blooming. "It's not ridiculous love it, you love-, you love my hair."
"Civvie. Greenie Like some kind of crazy weed, like softest thing I ever...just want to touch…. It'll foul every filter on the ship."
"Not my problem," Jared said, grinning, and Jensen grinned back. Then Jensen was pulling Jared away from the wall, across the room, tugging on his hand and looking back, going for the skip-couches and the tangled sea of bodies, of Angels, that lifted and fell, arched and writhed, curled and stroked and breathed together.
"Jared..." he started, and Jared didn't even hesitate. He pushed and pulled and tugged at clothing until they were both naked, pale in the rich light of the room, gleaming, in Jensen's eyes. Both of them carrying scars, both of them marked, in so many ways, by the Company, by death, by struggle.
Someone laughed, and someone put out a hand - moved a thigh - more hands, and more, and Jensen and Jared both toppled down onto the soft, springing surface of a couch, a knee here and a shoulder there, heat and sweat and soft sounds of pleasure. Someone - Malik - pushed one of the little pipes into Jensen's hand. Propped on an elbow, Jensen applied the little hot-stick to the hemp (no open flame on a ship), and took in a long, long drag of the smoke. It was hot and sweet-scratchy in his throat, expanding in his lungs, instant light-headed rush. Jared, half on Jensen and half on his side, was taking a swig of skip-whiskey and his reaction to it shuddered through the 'net and Jensen laughed, coughing out smoke, as Jared choked.
"Fuckin'- fuck, what the hell do they make this out of?"
"Dead Suits," Sinna said, her own voice rough from smoke and whiskey and cheers. Jensen traded with Jared; took a long pull of the whiskey and felt it burn his gums and tongue and throat, roll up fumes into his sinuses and start a coal in his belly, heat radiating out. He took another long drink as Kane dragged Malik down, kissing and sucking at his throat, his jaw, and then tossed the null-safe cup toward an empty spot of cushion. Jared was letting smoke trickle out through his nose, slow exhale, and Jensen got another hit, whiskey and hemp and poppy combining in them both to a warm, drifting slide.
Sinna lifted the pipe from his fingers and Jensen reached for Jared, warm and pretty and touch me in the 'net, slow surge of intention that seemed to take forever. Jared grinned at him, untangled a leg from between someone else's, and crawled right into Jensen's space.
Jensen ended on his back, looking up at Jared's face, the long ends of his hair tickling Jensen's cheeks, and Jared grinned some more and did a little snaky twist of his neck, sliding his hair across Jensen's face, shivery-slick. Jensen huffed out a breath, watched the hair lift with the air and did it again. His hands crept up into the long strands, to pet and comb and tangle in, and Jared settled firmly between Jensen's sprawled thighs. His body was known and unknown; muscle memory coming through the 'net, feedback echo of sensations. Like fighting, from Jared, curl of amusement.
Jensen knew, instinctively, what Jared liked, what felt good, but it was still amazing to discover that a slow rake of blunt nails down Jared's spine would make him arch and hum, eyes going half shut. Incredible to watch, when Jensen's fingers slid into the cleft between Jared's cheeks, how Jared's eyes seemed to go dark and blaze up at the same time, plump lower lip caught in his teeth, his hips grinding down on pure instinct. Flushed and faintly glistening with sweat, every sensation seemed to stretch out forever, to quiver and echo and rebound, over and over.
"Jen-sen," Jared breathed, and dipped his head to nip at Jensen's throat, that point right under his ear, that made Jensen shudder and his thighs come up, gripping Jared's hips. Jared curled his back and bit again and rubbed the length of his hard cock up Jensen's belly and then back, and Jensen pulled at his shoulders, dragging him down. Both of them were breathing shuddery-fast, both of them clutching and pulling and wanting and needing-
"Jensen, can I, do you want- me us, in you, like this, this, this?"
"Yeah, yes, fuck." Jensen turned his head, groaning, to find Jared's mouth and they both jolted, startled, when a cool hand reached down, trailing slick from Jared's balls to the head of his cock, to Jensen's hole. Jared's head whipped around, arms gripping tight around Jensen, and Jensen rubbed his hands up Jared's back, soothing.
Angels, it's okay, just Sinna, no harm
Sinna grinned, all sharp edges and sweat, turning away to catch the dark bud of Five's nipple in her mouth, squirming down on Five's hand. Jensen's fingers came up to touch Jared's chin with the slightest pressure, and Jared turned with him, looking down.
"Okay? It's just, it's- Angels, just Angels family, how it is, doesn't mean-"
"No, I know, I..." Jared took a deep breath and rolled his hips, gliding now, cock to cock and a little slither lower, pushing at Jensen's hole, sliding past. "I want...this, I want us us us can I please you, is it, is this-?"
"You know it is," Jensen breathed, and he tilted his hips up, one heel digging into Jared's thigh, the other in the small of his back as he reached down between them to curl his fingers around Jared's cock, little gasp and shiver between both of them. Pushing, pulling, getting him right there, until Jared pushed and then pushed again, breathing hard, and Jensen arched up and pushed back and let him in. The first hard, sweet burn faded to something else, clutch of muscle felt from both sides, shivery feedback that built up fast, nearly overwhelming in minutes, both of them crying out, clutching bruises.
Until Kane caught one of Jensen's hands, lacing it with his own, grounding him with that touch. And Sinna reached over again and tugged at Jared's hair, rubbing her fingers through and through it, her head tipped back in bliss at what Five was doing between her thighs.
Jared half-laughed, half-gasped, going still for a moment, and Jensen craned up to get one, two, threefourfive kisses, nipping at Jared's mouth.
"God, it's...I can feel you, I can…so much it's so much is it really...so good, I didn't know, didn't know, you in me, me in you How'd do you...not do this all...fucking day?" Jared gasped out, and then looked down in happy surprise as Jensen started to laugh. Vibrations rolled through his body and through the 'net, rippling out, rebounding back, both of them laughing as Jensen lifted up and clenched down hard. Jared rolled his hips and rutted down, harder and faster, groaning into Jensen's neck and laughing, too, still, and Jensen gripped Kane's hand tight and clung to Jared and felt himself unravelling, opening; tipping over the edge and falling, electric-stutter spasms locking him into a hard, desperate curve as Jared shoved in harder and bit down, salt on both their tongues.
Sinna's hand tugged at Jared's hair, a tingling prickle, and Jared pulled against it, gasping against Jensen's throat. Jensen got his own hand off Jared's back and slid it up, into the strands, bumping into Sinna and then dislodging her as she groaned aloud and clutched frantically at Five's shoulders, thighs flexing.
Jensen looked up at Jared to see Jared watching him watch them - felt that moment's jealousy and then acceptance in the 'net, the unfolding understanding. You and me and me in you and us and them and us... Jared thought, and Jensen caught it and sent it back, then clenched around Jared's half-hard cock and yanked him down for a long, long kiss.
And got his tongue bit, hard, as the klaxon sounded and the lights flashed, and Angels startled, cursing and yelling, bodies scrambling all around. Jared coming up off and out of Jensen with a shocked noise, leaving Jensen groaning, thighs clamping together because fuck, he hadn't been ready for that, not at all, fucking damn.
Sorry, sorry, fuck, what…?
"Battlestations, all hands, battlestations and skip-prep. Prepare to break dock and skip out, get your area secured and get to stations. Long range scan is showing imminent skip-down. Not a drill, people. It's too big and too clean to be anything but the Nebuchadnezzar, and we are fucked if she gets in before we get out.
Repeat: Nebuchadnezzar on long-scan, all hands to battlestations and immediate prep for skip-out. Move, people, let's go."
Part Eighteen
Thanks for all your patience, my lovely, lovely readers.
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