The Foundry | Part Two | Chapter Thirteen
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Three | Dominion
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Chapter Thirteen
Oblivion unshrouded directly behind Scarlet.
“God dammnit!” Echo shouted, cutting speed immediately, pulling herself up into a spiral of ascending barrel-rolls.
She’d been able to sense the vroom of near passing buzz-shards, and Scarlet was informing of the target lock Alan would soon have solutioned upon her. After the first three times he’d pulled this Echo had been finding time to visit the simulators in off hours. There was a plan developed which she was looking forward to seeing in action.
This simulation, known as ‘Night Hawks’, would gift initiates, seniors, and graduates alike the opportunity to take their own mechs head-to-head in space.
No AI companions existed in this sim, and the level of immersive connection to their warships was buffered by a constant and gentle reminder of their physical bodies, along with less input from the sensorial algorithms coded into their simulated crafts. That way they could freely blow each other into smithereens without murdering one another.
Fox wasn’t ready for that yet anyway. Although, he’d been coming along quite nicely with Echo’s practiced touch — far and away the star of her class’s newly developing intelligences.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Alan cackled with an heir of arrogance through the comm-link.
Resolving her heading through the tumult of senses and g-force born into her body, Echo went full-on, engaging her drive core and each supporting afterburner, only needing a few touches of thrust to guide herself towards that true target.
Chiron was dead ahead.
Echo had been booking time in the observation portals of the outer habitation ring. She’d been practicing with extended sessions of open-eyed meditation upon Chiron’s storm. The gas giant’s epic cloudscapes were of such contrasted variance, but colored through by its darkened amber base-nature. Intricacies witnessed in its enormous, ever-roiling storm would cause a sinking, swimming, shrinking sensation — moments where the true size of this planet registered within Echo’s mind, in part, stretching it from the inside — especially when considering the planet’s own place of insignificance within the greater cosmos.
She’d made the mistake of using an intelligence to run the numbers on how many duplicates of The Foundry could be fit into the spherical circumference of Chiron.
1.9 quintillion wasn’t a number she’d really considered before.
The planet would bore itself into the dreams of all who made home at The Foundry — there was some consciousness within Chiron itself — and they never seemed to be gentle.
Still, Echo had been finding herself change by the witnessing of what others might avoid seeing. She’d not want to look away until all the fear had burnt away from within, and Alan hadn’t been joining her on these excursions. Nobody really did this, to be honest.
He was pretty hurt for a while about what happened, especially when Echo made it clear how entirely premeditated it all was, and how much she still thought he’d deserved it with the way he treated her so long.
Yet, after Echo snapped out of her mania which had followed ‘the thing she saw in that place’ she’d felt bad for lying. She even found herself concerned for Priscilla. That woman had never been fit to be a pilot. She was carried by Alan the entire time and everyone knew it. Echo was realizing she might have saved her life after she’d heard Priscilla officially split with Alan and called piloting quits.
Most of Echo’s concern about the woman was actually for the role she’d likely take as administrator of some kind within The Foundry, and how that spelled trouble by her estimation.
There’d just not been need to do all that back-arching, or to have enjoyed destroying her that much. It had been Alan who’d done her wrong. The way Echo shielded people from honest seeing in the past would manifest as a blindness towards those she loved. With all the growth she was finding through her commitment to excellence, and especially with those expansive wonders of Chiron purifying the egoic sense of importance she’d once held, there’d not be space within the woman to placate the self-told lies of unconscious manipulators. Even if they made her heart sing.
Alan never talked about the things she’d say or send to him about how he was acting or had treated her, but he would read them, and listen, then think about it. While he’d go quiet in his processing, and not find the will to share those thoughts and feelings, she’d feel the shift in his energy towards her afterwards. That was more than enough is what she’d found. There was even a growing hope in Echo he might finally be that one who’d grow into the person she’d always imagined herself with. Someone who could really take care of her, and she’d feel most capable of doing the same for in return by the giving of her love.
“Where does it look like I’m going?” Echo had finally called back over comms, driving Scarlet towards this simulated visage of Chiron, its size filling every bit of her shipborne senses.
Alan Undroth’s place of origin was far from Atreya, Chiron, and this solar system The Foundry called home; Boreál.
His family was royalty from one of Elaria’s oldest monarchies. Although their time had passed, roles becoming nothing more than that of ceremonial celebrity, the influence they’d sway within this civilization of the stars was massive. He’d come to Boreál — The Foundry — to outrun the reach of his family’s oversight, and find some way to earn their admiration from afar, while discovering personal freedom not possible within their sphere of influence.
Chiron was not a sight he’d handle well, churning his gut and causing his head to spin when seen or pondered too long, never taking to the task which Echo had made her own of late.
She was beginning to have that feeling of surging premonitory satisfaction which spoke quite plainly of a plan’s successful fruition coming near.
“You okay, hon?” She’d teased.
Carving hard right and down thirty-five degrees, exposing the broadside of her warship just enough for that needed temptation, Alan bit on her lure, firing a blast of kinetic energy intended to knock her ship’s cutting-maneuver asunder, forgetting the countermeasures she’d spoken of installing the night before, proving that either the boy still hadn’t learned to listen, or was just too distracted by Chiron.
Before his contained wave of force-energy made it halfway she’d it prepped; absorption shields active and waiting.
The reception of that kineticism was transfigured on impact, and the return blast of electromagnetic dampening reached Oblivion almost instantaneously, casting it adrift on the float. Alan shouted in frustration as he’d tumbled end over end.
“Oh, fuck you!” He’d yelled over comms as Echo cut her drive core and twisted Scarlet on a heading towards his bearing.
Tiny bursts of her thrusters guided her in, coming to match speed with Alan’s rolling crawl toward Chiron’s great mass of his own demise. Scarlet had kept her crown aimed towards Oblivion’s helpless top-spin as she floated in a cylindrical orbit, with perfect perpendicularity to its path towards the planet.
“I want you to look at it, Alan,” Echo said, simply being mean.
“Then I will let you die.”
He was laughing as his comms opened to have him spout, “Oh my god, go fuck yourself.”
“Look at it, Alan — look at it.”
She’d been going to his bunkroom most every night of late. Echo was not eager to spend time in her own room across the hall from Cameron’s. She hadn’t a clue what Rory and they were up to, and she’d been making every effort to keep it that way. Echo had either been sleeping in Alan’s bed, taking over Leopold’s — which would see him on the couch — or when there weren’t any options, she was just sneaking back to her own room with earbuds in the middle of the night, and then playing music nonstop until she’d left the next waking-cycle.
One night, she was stuck with an uncharged pair of buds and just decided to catch a few hours of sleep in her lucky simulator’s hardchair inclined to its fullest, and she’d the strangest dreams.
Alan and Echo were doing pretty well, better than she expected, at least, after the fallout had cleared up a bit. They’d been taking care of each other lately in reciprocal ways, which she’d never before felt in the relationship.
Echo was thinking about that as she’d rolled onto her side so she could watch him sleep.
Having the opportunity to be here with Alan was healing the history of negligence she’d felt with him before, because in an honest relationship, the truth was Echo didn’t need much at all. She’d only wanted someone to take care of with her own loving affection, who could bring that delicate side out, and made her feel a more complete person to stand beside.
Once regulated into those things, past the scary parts which inflamed her insecurity, no longer triggered by the genuinely avoidant and self-suppressed personality traits of those people she’d find herself drawn to — Alan was discovering her the purest gift to his own thriving, and himself quite able to recognize how she was supporting him to pursue happiness in all moments. She just seemed so much more relaxed and at peace too, like there wasn’t a worry in her head.
To Echo, it felt like the blessing of having back all of her energy. For so long she’d worried about this one thing; finding somebody she loved who would call her their own. Now, being so relieved of that concern, with it out of the way, every bit of her power was back, and she couldn’t stop smiling about it.
As she’d drifted off there, just inches away from Alan, Echo was only grateful. The companionship was really nice. All those laughs shared, the opportunities to be herself freely around one who’d not judge her for it, and the pretty imaginings of a new potential future which would form in her mind were all amazing. Yet, the real reason Echo was feeling truly happy once again, was only because she had the chance to do that thing she’d always wanted most, and was now getting it most every morning; waking up beside a person she loved.
