by DC Bastien
"Or he could attempt to use him as a bargaining chip," the Judge mused. "Offer him in exchange for – I assume – leniency or destruction of our evidence."
"And if he does that..." Kip trailed. Would he? Would he burn all this evidence and repeat Ithon's mistake? The man would likely never forgive him for it, but he'd be alive. "Okay, we're not even considering that as an option. Instead, we gotta find a way to find him, then we can take down Baudeline. Entirely legally! With legitimately acquired evidence!" He felt it was important to add that.
"I... uh... I might have... a lead? Maybe?"
"Twinkle, if you do, so help me I will kiss you if it pans out."
"Could you just give me a hug instead?"
"...reckon so. C'mon, girl. Spill."
"Well, when he got took, I was thinking how I didn't really know him. Like, I didn't know if he had any next of kin or anything. So I asked Mes to build up a profile for me so I could... you know. Think better?"
"Slightly stalkery, but acceptable under the circumstances. Go on."
"Captain, if I may?" Mes asked. "I have logs of all of his interactions within my sensor range. I also have access to accounts that he signed into onboard me, plus whenever we handshook with his Ur vehicle."
"You talked to his ships?"
"It was required." Mes didn't even sound the slightest bit contrite. "We also occasionally exchanged information at other times. From this, I have built a digital profile. I have a blueprint for his speech patterns, his interests, his sleep-to-wake cycle, his favoured fictional franchises..."
"You know when I said you were creepy-into us? That's creepy-into us." If Mes ever truly went evil – actually evil – they'd all be doomed. "But if it brings him back, I guess I can live with it. So. Do you... do you know where he is?"
"That's the problem, Cap'n," Biann cut in. "We got the blueprint, but we need the data to search. And... we can't."
"Even with a Judge's credentials?"
"We could maybe get a warrant and ask, but..." The engineer rubbed at the back of her neck. "We thought... Nessin? Like... she might say yes to putting just that through her feed? Not ask her for the data, just... the positives."
"And you really think it will work?"
"Think it's our best shot," Biann muttered.
"I think it has every possibility of working," Mes said, with more conviction.
"Alright. Guess I better spruce up and put my nice face on."
***
[Ashroe: That's right, pimp that pretty face out to save your man.]
[Sianor: We know Nessin's an uber-flirt anyway.]
[Ashroe: Yeah. It's no wonder they both get on so well.]
[Sianor: She's getting such a good deal out of this.]
[Ashroe: And you want to know the worrying thing to me?]
[Sianor: Go on.]
[Ashroe: How is Kip much more morally sound than Baudeline? I mean, yes, there's been no assassination attempts or coups or attempts to turn the whole legal system on its arse, but... the same kind of fuzzy morality.]
[Sianor: Oh. Like, hiding the Bankers? In the first fic?]
[Ashroe: Yeah. I mean, he didn't have the wherewithal to do that by the book. Not really. But he was still happy to do dodgy things to get his little bubble back safe.]
[Sianor: And he is still helping them cover up their involvement.]
[Ashroe: All to get Baudeline. Which you have to admit is at least a little selfish.]
[Sianor: It's very selfish. He wants Ithon back, and he wants the man who hurt him and nearly had him to suffer.]
[Ashroe: Twist the media, cut this corner... nothing like killing orphans, but he does have that dubiousness to him.]
[Sianor: I guess it all comes down to where that line is drawn. Like, would you fail to properly date a report and thus save a starving mother from jail for feeding her kid? Would you let someone off for speeding if it meant they'd testify honestly in a case against a serial killer? Would you withhold someone's name from a minor offence in the news so you could protect his family from retribution?]
[Ashroe: All very complicated things. But at some point, if you angle your lens too wide, you're going to be playing with so many pieces, so many variables, that you will dehumanise the judgement. You'll let three kids burn. And you might not even sleep.]
[Sianor: But did you let them burn, or set them on fire? Is there a moral difference between allowing a fire to happen and actively lighting the match?]
[Ashroe: Definitely. If the baby is on the train tracks (by accident or someone else's hand) and the hundred people onboard need it to die to survive, that is so different to putting a politician's baby there in the first place.]
[Sianor: Baudeline would put the baby there.]
[Ashroe: I suppose that... that really is the crux of it.]
[Sianor: Come to bed for snuggles. I want to end the night on a high. Now the con is all over I just... I want you close.]
[Ashroe: Your wish is my command.]
***
Chapter Thirty-Two – Mission: Dysfunction
Ithon's skin crawled. It just... everywhere Baudeline had touched, he wanted to scrub that layer of skin right off. He stripped everything off in a rush, pulling the not-right clothes away from his skin and walking around his rooms buck-naked.
Pax would get an eye-full, but Pax had seen him nude plenty of times by now. You just had to deal with the fact that AIs got to ogle your junk on a regular basis. He turned the shower on to its hottest setting and walked straight in, not caring how much it hurt.
And it hurt. It did. His scalp screamed and his blood vessels panicked and his body asked him if he'd finally lost his mind. Hands clawing over clean tiles, head bashing lightly into them. Kissed. They'd kissed. Kissed, and it had felt as good as it felt wrong.
Kissed, and his traitorous dick had wanted more, but he'd... he'd said... Through the spray coursing down his neck, clinging to his calves and swirling around his ankles, he blinked. Water gathered into rivulets around hair, the trails threatening to touch his lips like Baudeline had. He growled and threw his head back into the spray. Eyes closed, like a flower seeking the sun.
Wanting wasn't a sin. Wanting wasn't wrong. Doing was. And he had loved him, once. Loved him so much that when they'd split up, Ithon had been sure he'd never love anyone else ever again. When he'd left him, he'd pretty much gone to pieces. Barely eating, barely functioning, taking all his leave days in one go.
He'd spent days in bed, just surfacing when his stomach complained too much. It had been really rather pathetic, all things considered. He remembered the greasy feeling of old, stale sheets and food cooked in too much oil and fat. Remembered the non-stop stream of vids that turned into hours of silence that turned into showers so warm he nearly ended up hospitalised, but somehow still felt wrong.
Ithon missed Kip. He did. Even though this was the longest they'd been around one another since their Academy days and just after, he had always... they'd always had something. If it had remained as snark and occasional flirting, it would still have been... special.
Baudeline had been his rebound from a relationship that had never happened. There was no other way to see it. He'd wanted Kip, then Kip was gone, and then there was this wonderfully driven, dedicated Judge. Someone who understood, someone who he could talk to about all the dark things he saw on the streets. Someone who he could confide in, and someone who he could take comfort in.
But not Kip.
He'd missed his barbed tongue, missed the way he made Ithon's blood boil and his hands want to move and his tongue want to more and his whole body say YES. He'd missed him, but he'd told himself to move on. To get beyond it. To...
Then it had all fallen apart.
Eventually he'd seen Kip again, and each time it had hurt, but a good kind of hurt. He'd never really expected them to consummate their relationship, not sure if the flirting was just that on the other man's side. Definitely never thought they'd share a bed night after night. He loved him
. It was dumb, but true. He loved him. He loved his stupid jokes, and his weird temper, and his dumb pet names, and his insistence on not pronouncing all the letters in 'aluminium', and his constant, deliberate cracking of joints, and the puffy, sticky-up hair he had in the morning, and the way he would fight you over the slightest hint of unfair treatment, and how he'd throw himself between any number of weapons and someone he barely knew, and how he just – he was perfect and broken and stupid and pretty and annoying and wonderful.
He loved him. He loved him, and he wondered if throwing himself on the Ur's mercy hadn't been some kind of self-flagellation over the fact he'd once tried to pick Baudeline over Kip. Or how he thought he wasn't deserving of the happiness they could have together. Or, or, or...
Ithon sunk down to the floor, legs curled and hands on his feet. The water continued to fall, but Pax had the decency to lower the temperature and the pressure without being asked. He was crying, but it was just because he was frustrated. He couldn't do anything but wait and hope someone would come save him, or hope Baudeline would somehow get bored of holding him, or... basically anything. He had no control. None.
And it was terrifying.
***
[Sianor: No. No. You have a ban. The size of your ban is such that I would need to somehow work out how to make letters bigger somehow, or maybe come over and yell it into your ear. How dare you write that when I'm in the shower?]
[Ashroe: He just – he told me he had to!]
[Sianor: You are both of you wicked, nasty, sinful, terrible Human beings.]
[Ashroe: You love us. Both of you. Both of us.]
[Sianor: Beside the point.]
[Ashroe: He loves his Kip.]
[Sianor: Kip says that bit is okay but the angst is not.]
[Sianor: Nor is the implied... I mean... he didn't, right?]
[Ashroe: Not even going to answer that.]
[Ashroe: Maybe the answer is in those boxes.]
[Sianor: You had to bring up the boxes!]
[Ashroe: You hadn't mentioned them in a while. I thought it was time.]
[Sianor: I am going to tickle it out of you.]
[Ashroe: It won't work, I had two siblings, remember? I can resist tickle torture.]
[Sianor: What if I pout?]
[Ashroe: Nope.]
[Sianor: Dangit.]
[Ashroe: We can speed up the posting again. I think we'll be fine.]
[Sianor: Yeah, then we can just spam the last few chapters again.]
[Ashroe: Ithon is going to want all of the cuddles when they get him.]
[Sianor: He will get them. Oh, will he get them.]
***
"Of the possible matches, I've done some investigation." Kre looked up from her tablet, ears flicking slowly and curiously.
"This is the part where you give me good news, Fluffy."
"Relatively," she conceded. "Several were long-standing accounts that seemed to correlate with normal single-location workers. Access from a main domestic area and a main professional one, with some dotted recreational areas. A few accounts stopped accessing some time ago. Some I could rule out as they seemed to be used at times when Avery was with us."
"So how many are unaccounted for?"
"Three."
"Three. There's three people out there who could be Ithon?"
"It was a larger pool before I—"
"No," the Captain said, hands up. "It's more that there's two other people who could be my asshole boyfriend. I thought he was pretty much the only annoying asshole like that."
"In a universe with so many sentient species, it is unsurprising to find others who match our descriptions."
"Still don't like the thought of multiple Ithons. One's enough. Okay... can the Judge get a warrant through to search these places without Baudeline finding out, or can Nessin turn on the cameras, or do we just...?"
"Brute force?" she supplied, happy to say the things he seemed shy of admitting.
"Yeah."
"I suspect that if we sought a warrant, Baudeline would find out. Requesting camera access might work, though the system is likely set up to lock down, and trying to circumvent that would give the game away."
"Not so happy barging in on innocent folks, though..."
"We could do both. We could put a ship outside – or close as damnit – and put a camera request through. Simple, like. Identity check stuff. And if they refuse, try to do a force update or something, then if they still refuse land the team?"
"...it will, of course, lead to very terrified civilians if they simply valued their privacy and they thought the media company had sent armed guards to enforce an End User Agreement."
"Yeah, but imagine how compliant your userbase would be if they thought Ardeshir would turn up to get them to keep to their agreement? Alright. Eru still down for this?"
"As long as each of the ships has their own autonomous control. She... does not want to have the commanders follow your lead after last time. I'm sorry." It was embarrassing, but she did agree on some level. The Captain's lead had ended up wiping out two of their elite teams. He'd managed the assault on the fake Cil perfectly, but Baudeline's Whale attack had been completely out of left-field. Even if Eru trusted him, the Ardeshir would not.
"No, I... I get it. It's okay."
"Would you like to handle the three consecutively, or simultaneously?"
"I think we gotta hit 'em all at once, just in case."
"So you will wish us all to split up?"
"Think it's for the best."
Kre considered for a moment. "Please allow me to 'lead' one of the three groups. I am actually versed in combat and rescue scenarios. I also understand Sianar workings, and the crew I was assigned to would follow me. I assume you and the Judge will lead the other two?"
"Yeah, we were going to." He looked at her assessingly, fingers sliding over his lips the way they always would in deep thought. "You sure you're happy doing that?"
"Outside of simulator games, I am the one with the most experience, yes," she insisted. "And I want to. I didn't want to lead my whole people, but I can lead a ship to do something I believe in."
"Well, in that case, we might as all pick our seconds."
***
Saidhe watched as the Captain fussed over the navigation console. He didn't need to, the Ardeshir accompanying them had plotted out the optimal course and all she had to do was follow them. "What makes you so sure you picked the right one?"
"I just had a feeling. I looked at the search results, and... I just had a feeling."
"Was it a certain taste in adult fiction?"
"What, no, I – you dick," he said, seeing how she was barely holding it in. "We had no need of that."
"It doesn't mean you're not having a healthy sex life if you enjoy adult fiction, Captain. Or so the glamour blogs all say."
"Sai, I know Kre goes through periods of needing a, uh, scratching post... but do I need to get you fixed, too? Your obsession with mine and Ithon's sex life is worrisome at best."
"I'm trying to take your mind off the terrible, no good things going on," she said, mildly. "And it's funny being able to wind you up for a change. You get all defensive around Ithon."
"I... do not."
"You do too," she said.
"I'm not getting into one of those fights again."
"Alright."
"Good."
Saidhe smirked at her console, watching the readouts. Xaix was fussing over the Captain for once, instead of stealing his chair. Maybe because he wasn't sitting in it, it lost its appeal.
"I'll find you a nice guy to settle down with. See how you like it," the Human grumbled.
"He'd have to be hella fine, Cap'n."
***
[Sianor: So, are you going to tell me why you're grinning like a lunatic? We only have one day left together! Are you so happy to be rid of me?]
[Ashroe: Nope.]
[Sianor: Oh, really?]
[Ashroe: Are you wishing I could be here lon
ger?]
[Sianor: You have to ask?]
[Ashroe: Humour me.]
[Sianor: I wish you were here a whole month. Two. Maybe six, then we could do a Hades and Persephone thing.]
[Ashroe: Am I Persephone in this analogy?]
[Sianor: Guess so.]
[Ashroe: Hmm. Okay. Never thought I'd be anyone's Persephone, but I can dig it.]
[Sianor: Come on, you're driving me crazy!]
[Ashroe: I have some good news, you see.]
[Sianor: You do?]
[Ashroe: Well, I hope it is. I wanted to see what you thought about spending more time with me, first.]
[Sianor: Spit it out!!! SPIT. IT. OUT.]
[Ashroe: Check your emails.]
[Sianor: Check my...]
[Ashroe: 3.]
[Ashroe: 2.]
[Ashroe: 1.]
[Ashroe: 0.5...]