The Foundry | Part Four | Chapter Thirty-Seven
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Four | Unmasked; Unbound; Unleashed
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Gliding on quiet had been the name of the game through Scarlet’s approach. Fox was leaving himself most suspiciously silent through it all. Echo wasn’t worried; he’d pipe up if anything changed.
Auluré was the name of their enemy’s vessel of war, the same which bore through space and time in aim of capturing The Foundry, before planning on jumping it back to where they aimed to surround it with overpowering force. They’d prove one arm of separatist force from within Elaria; old powers since fallen to tides of change, now returning for their throne of dominance over this broadest civilization of space.
By shuttling off to the far-side of Chiron, Auluré made research into its war faring capabilities neigh impossible — on this mission planned by the women themselves, Echo and Rory were endeavoring to change that..
Monarch was complete again with its Bliss returned; Rory’s warship of such elegant and multifaceted design. Itself, the most recent chosen example which would be shown to all initiates before the designing of their own.
No matter which feeling-bits of themself which Echo may have felt hidden beneath their awareness, Rory knew themselves as well as anyone.
Her ship was wrought of that very same excellence, and a most purifying notion to witness in flight for the eyes of any who had lessened themselves for others. There would be no holding back in the design or execution of Monarch’s ability to manifest its willpower, itself owning such war faring capabilities which would prove unmatched in these times to come.
“Fourteen thousand clicks and closing fast.” Bliss’s voice had spoken in her smoothest delivery, such innate and harmonic softness borne within the tones which betrayed the truth of her conscious reality, that complete and utter ruthlessness buried beneath. Echo thought it was the hottest thing ever.
“Mhm” — “Yep” — “Same over here.” Fox spat back in monotone.
Echo felt a coursing anxiousness within her, knowing the words had been heard by Rory in Monarch — hoping they not recognized their own, most private affectation so clearly present within them.
“Are you fucking serious?” Rory’s voice piped through Scarlet’s comms.
Echo was laughing nervously as she’d lied through her teeth, “That’s just how he talks, dude.”
The silence which followed was most worrying to Echo. She’d feared they might regret taking part in this renewed friendship knowing how much she still clearly thought of them in other scenarios.
Rory was chuckling herself when she’d said, “Sure.”
Auluré was on the float, though not bearing those speeds of Rory and Echo’s mirrored slingshots around the farthest reaches of Chiron. Having peaked to maximum velocities so far before the apex of their flame-fueled, gravity empowered orbit was when they’d gone dark, and rode the speed undetected to these farthest reaches of that mammoth planet.
There’d been a challenge held between them on the near entire cycle they’d been making their way around its breadth, and for much time it’d been a stalemate between the two.
Echo had been the one to hold out longest, with her entire field of Scarlet’s awareness open to perceive all of that planet and the distance they’d truly been traveling. Rory won most competitions between them, but this was something Echo was getting good at. She’d kept going after they called it quits, speaking through comms in clearest distress to signify their surrender, “Okay, fuck off.”
The bliss of that victory was still within Echo, as well as the mental anguish from facing the terrifying scope and most immense distances being somehow squeezed into the unfit workings of her human brain. She’d find this effort she was been undertaking with Chiron to be both a blessing and a curse by the end. Echo felt sometimes as if she was becoming part of those whirling cloudscapes herself.
It was a most beautiful feeling, though the very part which could get her into trouble.
“We got this, dude,” Echo blurted through comms with projections of upmost authority, her heart swirling with most powerful energy as she’d witnessed Auluré growing close.
While Echo’s display of confidence may have been a bit too bold in face of their current circumstances — she was right — they did ‘got this’.
All ranks which had been bestowed were essentially revoked as the shift towards hierarchical structures were being undone entirely throughout The Foundry, themselves a product of that man who’d have seen himself Commander.
Each person’s authority would be defined by their actions, which had in-fact lifted Rory to stature of that beyond which might have be prescribed a Lieutenant. It may have even be argued they were the one commanding The Foundry’s entire force, despite their previous status as only a pilot, but not yet graduate.
Every deserving pilot had been bestowed that honor in a ceremony held in the arena itself, below the ever-twirling might of The Great Generator, surrounded by all of their peers and leaders. It was an exciting time for all. Echo had been the first initiate in-line to have their warship made real, and the joy of being able to fly Scarlet in manifest form above that ceremony was an unknowably powerful event in Echo’s life, it was all they’d needed to cut free from every last bit of their old, shattered self, and find the truest conviction of their deserved place in this institution.
Poe had graduated alongside Rory, and they’d found a way to return in haste, skipping those afterparties to meet with Echo and Leopold who’d been working on their own to calculate the findings from their orbit of Chrion, and all they’d captured therein of Auluré’s means to wield war.
They’d warships their own — this enemy — answering the most puzzling question of all to Echo; why Alan had left Oblivion behind. Still, she couldn’t have ever imagined that regardless, Osiris was like a guardian angel to that man. His intelligence had seen to help Alan overcome those addictions that riddled him into the darkest expression of himself which Echo had first met. She worried greatly for his wellbeing in leu of that disconnection, most specifically.
It was a hardest thing to pass Auluré in silence, knowing it contained not only a one she loved, but those many peers whose freedom might help turn the course of this war. Yet the mission had been one of purest stealth, and Echo’s urgings to believe in herself had been held down by the presence of her own guardians; Fox, and her friend Rory.
They’d been spending more time together of late, just the two of them, getting an excellent rosin from D’Artagnan which was compelling laziest expressions of comfort seeking. There had even been one night Echo spent beside them, and within their bed. It was a most healing thing.
After they’d left Leopold behind, still most determined to mine the data for usable information they might offer the newly reformed Council in their next cycle’s session. Rory invited Echo back to her room.
Something in it felt different to Echo. She’d have not believed what her belly was speaking if it wasn’t for the synchronicity she’d found within those same unknowable perceptions after their battle with Zabroth, and what they led to; which hadn’t worked out how either of them hoped, The Beefster had simply not been built for Rory or the purposes they’d each brought to that private run of The Rumble, and Elektra had proven far too much of a woman for the man.
Echo had a great debate within herself as they’d made passage through the hallways. Knowing they were friends, and that’s what Rory wanted them to be, but being fully cognizant of the need her body was screaming at her, and how they also seemed quite ready to capitalize on that.
She’d figured out how she would do it. What she would say. How they might hold this, if what she’d anticipated was actually coming.
Later, after they’d gotten themselves most toasted on that incredible rosin, she’d seen it in their eyes. The intent they had with her this evening. Echo knew herself most helpless in this scenario. Yet, she’d also found herself quite aware that it wouldn’t change a thing.
‘How could it?’ She was thinking. ‘I’m already fucked.’
Still, there’d been a part of her which was long determined to hold this boundary unless Rory were to express some deeper sentiment of feeling they had not, and she’d utilized those words uncovered to find some balance within the nuance of this evolving situation.
“Only for tonight.”
That’s what she’d told them — the lie she decided would hold it properly — most aware that she would be repeating that phrase anytime they wished, as long as she’d not found a relationship which demanded otherwise of her. She always knew it, right from the beginning, and she’d heard the concept resonating from her body itself again, as Rory finally kissed her — at longest last, grabbing the back of her head and choosing to have her melt at their touch — the notion she’d also find herself repeating in any such future-scenarios, along with the space of her head in much private time between those occasions she’d be praying not too rare, and one Echo had known well before.
“I’m so fucking hers.”
That’s just how Fox talks.