Ch 7

Rokuten Aerie was an ancient military instalment, a very ancient one. in fact, it was estimated to be one of the first that had been built on the planet and positively oldest still in use. Though it had been in existence since the days immemorial and had served the last hundred years as a preserved historic monument, it had still remained partially in its original use and seen constant upgrades. Built as layers upon layers, mined inside a table mountain overlooking the main pass to the valley plain which located the besieged city of Rokuten, it also was almost ideally located to house their campaign HQ.

Still, Rocket had no trouble seeing the flaws in its archaic design and almost naive belief the original builders had had for the imperviousness of hard rock to protect them against any assault. He knew better. The stone floor felt cold even through the soles of the shoes they'd given him along with the rather old fashioned collared white shirt and black trousers. They had yet to return his suit and other stuff and Rocket had a fairly good idea about the reason for the delay.

"So what kind of self-defense systems are in place here, please don't tell me there's none at hand?" Rocket asks interrupting his tour guide monologuing about the all-important historical facets of the instalment which Rocket couldn't have cared less.

"Well, umm. I'm sure we have enough forces stationed here to man all stations. I mean it's not likely for those aliens to scale up the walls or anything like that and we have planes and bazookas if they try it from the air." His guide, Junior Officer Underhill, a rather young-looking lad explains in earnest. making Rocket sigh in annoyance. He'd already nicknamed the youngling as 'Junior' after his military title and at the moment t felt quite apt.

"If you say so. -Just lead me to my son's room and have us arranged to be staying together while you're at it."

"Certainly, sir. I'll pass on the request. Right this way." The young officer replies taking a sharp turn to the left at the next corner in the maze of corridors while Rocket did his best to memorize it all.

Rocket noted to his satisfaction that the room the military types had given to Trey was larger and much less austere than his. Of course, it was still windowless and had that big and heavy half domed metal door with a sliding view slit like all the personnel rooms at the keep but it was still notably personalized and comfy. If not by much except in the way of some creature comforts such as a thick but rather worn out rug carpet, fairly nice looking pipe framed metal bed with thick blanket and mattress, stool and table and some other little things that made it look more like a guest room than a cell.

The only reason his son isn't jumping straight up and rushing to hug him is the fact that his both legs are in casts which doesn't stop the kit from using his wheel chair to get into hugging distance as soon as the door is opened. Rocket bends down to hug his son in earnest while fighting back tears of joy and sadness. Big men don't cry after all and he surely wasn't about to start now.

"Well? You can bugger of now, pal." Rocket grunts to his escort while surreptitiously wiping moisture from his eyes on the back of his arm. The man hesitates but momentarily before leaving and closing the door behind him to give them some much needed privacy.

"So, how have you been treated son? Been all right?" He asks ruffling his son's guard hairs between the ears.

"They've been nice. Gotten a lot of ice cream and then when fever went away and then they took me to this place with a big shiny light and... it hurt lots when I was put on a table but then this one doctor gives something and puts a mask over my face and it didn't hurt so much and I got all sleepy, and then I woke up and my legs were in this hard-thing and the nice lady, who promises to give me more ice-cream for being so good, says it's called 'cast' and that I'm not supposed to scratch my legs even when it itches real bad." Trey starts animatedly.

"I know son, it can sometimes hurt a lot before you get better." Rocket agrees recalling some of his own much less gentle medical procedures.

"Want to see my drawings, daddy?" Trey asks suddenly and is already pulling away and wheedling towards the desk where several crude child's drawings were scattered about. "Oh, sure thing." Rocket says feeling a bit uncertain of how to react. What he recalled he had never been asked to judge someone's drawings let alone child's. Come to think of it he'd never been allowed to draw freely either when he was young.

"Oh, it's very nice... I -ahh like the -broom? a lot." He tries, making his best to understand and appreciate what was depicted in the crude crayon drawings. "That's you and that's your gun daddy and that's the meanie lizards blowing up." Trey explains pouting a little and pointing at the 'broom' that was held by a weird looking lumpy thing drawn in blue that was pointing "the broom" at leaner and more elongated weirdly bloated figures that were drawn in green and crisscrossed with spiky yellow lines in star pattern.

"Okay, so what about mommy and your brothers, did you draw them as well?" Rocket points out, quickly changing the subject as even he with his limited understanding of children was pretty sure that kits drawing their parents killing Badoon probably wasn't a healthy sign and it was making him uncomfortable for some reason.

"yah, here." Trey suddenly sniffs and hands the drawings to his father from under the pile almost without looking. Making Rocket frown in worry about what he might see and is relieved to find something fairly normal looking instead of something akin to mutilated bodies or... Well, okay it's a stick figure, Rocket suspected it to depict Ashen, stalking... Stalking behind the window? It hit him then. Oh man, his kit was going have as fucked up upbringing as his father's by this rate. Trey's next question however gets Rocket totally off the thought track he was on.

"Daddy? when we're going to see mommy again? I want to go home."

"We-, I mean, -I, ahh, I don't know son. Hopefully soon." Was all he could think to say. It was probably pointless to explain to a child as young as Trey that his mommy and brothers were possibly dead by now. Hell, he hadn't fully processed it even himself yet.

"Yeah, I miss mommy too." Trey sighs giving his father a hug he didn't even know he needed.

"Say, how'd you like to have a little walk with me around the base Trey and maybe get to see a bit of view?" Rocket suggests figuring it to be a decent distraction for Trey to get his mind of from his mom.

"Hey you! Get over here." Rocket whistles poking his head out of the door way to get his 'chaperon's' attention. The Young officer is leaning idly against the wall but snaps himself up to attention to look at Rocket in alarm, nearly dropping the paper he had been reading to kill the time. "You're going to take us for a tour, got it?" Rocket announces pushing the door fully open and starts to cart out Trey sitting at his wheel chair. The poor kit had both legs in cast which made walking in any form a pretty big no, no way, no el happeno.

The final part of the 'tour' brought Rocket and his son to the flight deck & hangars at the upper two-thirds part of the Mesa (by Rocket's own estimation.) The slightly dusty hangar area was clearly a very late addition to the fortress and hosted maybe five to six archaic jet airplanes, probably 10 at most and of those present fully half were clearly civilian and it was here that the thing which had been bothering Rocket for a while came to light. -Procyon-6 barely had an army! Or rather a one that could be called as such. It was in fact pretty obvious why. Without external threats a unified planet would have very little need for trained soldiers when conscripts and police would be perfectly good to handle any civil unrest or emergency.

The great curved riveted-steel blast doors were closed now but Rocket spotted a 'doggy door' at the far side.

"Come on son, let's get some fresh air, shall we?" He announced with a fake cheer and started towards the door.

"But, but you can't go there, sir! It's off the limits." The young officer shrieks almost frantically in protest and tries to grab Rocket's arm.

"Bite me, jar-head." Rocket sneers in response, starting to wheel Trey at a trot-pace across the landing strip while shooing off the officer, running after them, which made Trey giggle.

Outside the beautiful sunset panorama was slowly turning to night. Unfortunately, their view was marred by the ravaged city beyond the valley, still smoldering and glowing against the increasing gloom in parts and even from this far it was obvious that the Badoon now held complete control over the city. It was also obvious that the meager and outgunned military of the Planet would have no chance of regaining it. At the distance, against the backdrop of darkening sky Rocket could make out the tiny slivers of light reflecting from the three-mile-long Badoon mother ship orbiting somewhere high and far above the planet and also way beyond the reach of anything the Procyonians could throw at it.

"It's a nice sunset isn't it, Trey." He finally says feeling the somber quiet having lasted long enough.

"Will mommy and my baby bros be all right? The kit asks yawning slightly. It had been a long day for a kit as young as him.

"Your mom's a tough cookie, son. She'll make it and is keeping your brothers safe. We'll just have to wait a bit, I'm sure..." Rocket sighs hugging at his son in the cold night breeze. "Promise?" the kit whispers and Rocket suddenly finds it impossible to hold back a tear and not just because his spinal implants decided to painfully remind him of their presence but from a set of emotions he wasn't used to handling.

"Don't cry, daddy. Mommy will be back." The kit assures with all his youthful trust placed in to believing that adults would make things to be better eventually.

"I know son, I know. It's just something I got into my eyes" He assures Trey, slowly swinging him at the crook of his arms as if he were still a newly weaned kit. the kits eyelids slowly droop and once he falls asleep, Rocket returns him back to wheel chair and pulls a blanket over him and very carefully stretches until the barely audible click signals the slightly displaced artificial spinal disc having slid back in place. Prompting Rocket to let out a relieved sigh.

"Don't say a word." He warns the officer who was having that weird look some people get when they see other people parenting but have no personal experience to relate to it.

At the evening Rocket had figured to spend some spare time with his son before late supper was served and to get the boy's mind of from his mother & brothers for a while but instead of 'normal' things that kits of his age were excepted to talk about, Trey was pretty soon questioning about things which a kit of his age, in Rocket's opinion, shouldn't have any need to worry at all...

"But daddy if they have this really big ship to hold all of them in space, then why aren't they all here already?"

"Roche limit, son. That's the only hurdle to slow them right now. You can't dodge that limit." Rocket says, absently doodling something on a piece of paper.

"What's that?" Trey asks eyes squinting at the drawing, trying to remember if he'd ever heard of something like that.

"Well... ahh, okay. You know that all things have a mass and weight but they're not really the same thing, I'll explain that too someday. So, about this mass... you following me so far. Right?"

The kit nods understanding at least some of it prompting Rocket to continue.

"Okay, bear with me, this gets a bit complicated. All these things that have a mass, including this planet we're in, pulls at one another like a magnet pulls at iron, if you will, it's actually a very weak force but its proportionate to mass of the objects so this planet pulls very much, which is also why things drop down once you let go of them... That is commonly called gravity. A Roche limit is the closest that a huge but still smaller than this planet sized object can come at something as big as this planet without being ripped apart from being pulled into it and those Badoon mother ships are very, very big... But the real cache is that if the object is small enough -it can close-in safely. So, they can only send smaller ships down and that makes it slower to send in all their troops. Now does that make any sense to your question son?" Rocket explains while further elaborating the points with the drawing he'd made.

"Wow daddy, You're so smart! -" Trey announces in wonder. The remainder of his sentence is cut by a set of sharp noises coming from outside the door.

"Get behind me, son. NOW!" Rocket orders turning to face the door, brandishing the heavy wooden chair. He barely even registered ripping it apart to be used as improvised shield and Tonfa, positioning himself at the corner by the door, Trey clinging to the back of his waist for support. Rocket was pretty sure there were at least three maybe four persons behind the door. He waited as someone was rattling the latch and opened the door slowly before entering with his gun first.

The height at which the gun was held was an indication enough that the carrier was a raccoonoid. How dare they! after all I've done for them already. How dare they threaten my only kit like this! Rocket fumed in his mind.

He immediately struck at the gun hand, forcing its carrier to drop the weapon and launched against him. Smashing his opponent against the wall, hard enough to wind him temporarily, giving Rocket enough time to grab the gun from the floor and jump back to avoid possible return fire from the enemy outside the room.

"Open wide and say AAARRGGH! Mother Krutacker" Rocket growls pointing the assault rifle at the face of the masked man on the floor. To his slight surprise the man on the floor immediately rises his hands up in surrender yelling in panic. "Don't shoot boss, please. Don't shoot, It's me Roork!"

Rocket stares at Roork, now ripping his ski mask off to reveal his face and then at the "three stooges" standing and shuffling uncertainly at the hallway with currently unconscious Junior lieutenant Underhill. "Well don't just stand there. Get in here you flarking idgets! And drag Junior in before someone else sees you." He growls almost shaking from rage at their stupidity. The three men nearly jump to obey. Rocket is too angry to pay attention on Trey slowly crawling under the bed to hide from all the angry adults.

"Give me those, you dolts! Now what the flark were you idgets thinking? or let me correct, you weren't thinking AT ALL. You're lucky you didn't kill that poor sod you dast idjets!" Rocket basically spits as he grabs the guns away and piles them on the table behind him while his men slowly take of their masks and stare at their feet in shame like school kids caught on cheating at tests. "Now is there anything you sorry sons of bitches would like to say to explain yourselves?"

"We- we thought you were held as a hostage and we're tired of waiting for something to happen." Roork finally courages enough to open his mouth.

"Well, I'm not... Now how many of you are involved in this mess? I might be able to-" Rocket sighs frustrated and is about to launch into another tirade about their perceived lack of character when his interrupted by heavy knocking from the door. "Open it!" Rocket whispers, quickly directing the three men to stand against the table to hide the guns piled on it while he shoves the unconscious officer in to the blind spot corner and throws a blanket over the form, knowing it wouldn't stand to anything but the most casual of glances. Agent Samase Brightwater and a full contingent of soldiers are lined up behind the door wearing full tacti-gear and by all appearances they're also ready to use them.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything, Am I?" Samase inquires almost sickeningly sweet while peering at Rocket and the four men gathered about. "In a manner of speaking... Yes." Rocket admits, quickly realizing that the Flerken was already out of the bag.

"Yes' I'm sure you have a perfectly good explanation why those three nitwits by the table are trying to hide a pile of assault rifles behind their backs and Junior lieutenant Underhill has been hidden under the bedcovers by the corner... For your sake his better not be dead or seriously injured." She says sounding very close at hauling the whole lot to lockup in no time at all if Rocket's explanation wasn't satisfactory.

Rocket gropes at his face and his ears flatten forward, trying to think of what to respond. "They thought I was being held as a prisoner, can't really blame them for thinking that after the way you people restrained my contact with them... Anyway, I already told these four here that they're all idjets for trying to "rescue" me and luckily nobody's died yet. I don't think my other men have much to do with this other than just going with the group."

Samase scrutinizes Rocket before seemingly making a decision about something.

"I may regret this later, but we really could use your expertise with one of our recent R&D projects... And it would be counter-productive to lockup all your men when we're already chronically understaffed -But! Regiment, take Junior lieutenant to infirmary and these four into brig, I'll question them later. Come see me in the morning and the sooner you have cleaned up this mess and returned those weapons back to the vault the better, Mr. Raccoon -and don't even dream of shirking from this meeting." She says sternly before Leaving Rocket alone with his son while escorting his men way into custody.

"Aww, flark! It's all going to shitter." Rocket grumbles taking a small metal flagon out from his pocket to have a good swill from it to steady his nerves. He stares at the floor for a long time after the door has closed and turns to look at Trey still hiding under the bed. Man, that stuff hit the spot, well worth the small bit of bribes for the officers to get it... Nidnene could grumble all she wanted about drinking in front of the kits, but she wasn't here now and such a small sip could hurt nobody. It wasn't like he was offering it to his kits damn it!

"You can come out now, son." He says leaning back rather casually in his chair, feeling the relaxing effect of the strong booze already. There's no answer from Trey.

"C'mon stop playing and come out, Trey. It's all dusty in there. You'll get your fur dirty." He frowns slowly getting impatient. He waits for full three minutes listening the child breathing rapidly under the bed. The flark was wrong with the kit?

"Okay, that's it, now get out of there already." Rocket grumbles in annoyance and lifts the bed up from the corner which only makes Trey scream "no" and scoot into farthest the corner under the bed from his father.

"Fine." Rocket barks resisting the urge to just throw the bed aside, lowering the bed back down instead. "Damn kits, I need a drink." He mutters giving a one more exasperated look towards his kit hiding under the bed and then looks at the already drained flagon before leaving and slamming the door shut behind him.

Trey hides under the bed for a good while more before he crawls out and climbs on the bed, shuffling a bit to hide under covers, all dusty. His partially fallen asleep by the time his notably inebriated father returns to check on him. He can feel his father coming closer, warm breath reeking of liquor and smoke leaf as he lowers down to sniff at his son's ears poking from under the blanket. He screws his eyes shut at this, just hoping his father to go away. His father... It wasn't difficult to accept that this male would be his daddy -his father, especially when mommy said he was and he'd been so nice to them but this; this male no longer felt like the one they'd found sleeping at the couch and who'd helped them to get out from the ruined stadium. He felt so alien now, so wrong. Maybe if daddy would stop drinking that smelly thing that adults drink and get all weird after... Yeah, he'd tell daddy not to do it any more in the morning and daddy would stop doing it. Yeah, he'd do that as soon as that stranger hovering over the bed would go away. Trey though and with that comforting plan firmly in mind he slowly drifts back to sleep.

After those few agonizing minutes Rocket stands up without so much as sniffing loudly and tiptoes drunkenly out of the room to sleep at someplace else for the remaining night.