Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Seven, Part One

 Notes: Yay, an update today! I hope you enjoy the revelations :)

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Seven, Part One

***

Chapter Seven, Part One

 

Naively, Kieron had expected that to be the extent of their collaboration. He would release the probes, they would go out together to gather to data and push their AI search algorithms as far as they could without getting themselves smashed into pieces, and then they’d come back and analyze the data they collected. Preferably alone. Elanus might be the king of the castle now, but he had his own room, his own place in the medical clinic, his own fancy ship. He had places he could be by himself, while Kieron could hole up in the command room and process data—and the interminable paperwork that came with running Cloverleaf Station—in solitude.

He hadn’t counted on Elanus being so goddamned chatty.

“Why do you use the Smith theorem on those outlying clusters?”

“When was the last time you tried a different blend of ferroconcrete and alloys behind the water wall?”

“Are there any pizzas in the food storage locker? I would absolutely kill for a decent pizza right now.”

Kieron did his best to answer as succinctly as possible, in an effort to dissuade Elanus from pushing any further. They were better off when they spent as little time together as possible—it made it harder for Elanus to push Kieron to the breaking point, which in turn made it easier for Kieron to resist killing him. “Because,” “Never,” and “No,” were the answers for those particular questions, and variations on those worked for over a dozen others across the next few days before Elanus finally pushed in a way that Kieron couldn’t ignore.

“How did you get out of the Hadrian Colony, anyway?”

Kieron didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. He knew the stiffening of his body was answer enough. Please, please, don’t let him press. But there were no gods, and even if there had been, they wouldn’t have listened to Kieron.

“You must have been young,” Elanus went on, swiveling his chair in a hundred and eighty-degree arc as he mused out loud. “The Hadrian Colony was only established forty years ago, and it did business with a very limited number of outsiders. Your parents must have been merchants, or pilots, right?”

Kieron focused very hard on the screen in front of him, ingraining the numbers that scrolled across in his brain. Traces of radium…xethalnum…

“The only other survivor I ever met got out as a small child. She told me there were three functioning ships on-planet when the colony’s commanding general decided to blow the place up to keep the Federation from figuring about the private army he’d been breeding. Two of the ships belonged to offworlders, one to the general himself. She and seven other kids were spirited onto one of them, and a few young families made it onto the other.” Elanus twirled in his chair, fingers steepled under his chin, deliberately not looking at Kieron while he “mused out loud,” the bastard, but not stopping, either. “You could have been on one of those. It’s even probable, given what happened to the other ship.”

Kieron didn’t say anything. Frigium…there’s some traces of gold too, huh…

“This next part is all hearsay but it’s so interesting. From what I understand, the general’s daughter fought her way through an entire squad of her father’s followers to make it to his ship, along with her young son, right before the general pulled the trigger on blowing everyone else up. She managed to take off, but she couldn’t quite make it to space before the destruction began. The general blew a bomb he’d placed along a fault line in the core of the planet, causing an entire continent to collapse.” He shook his head. “Nobody had thought the Hadrians were serious when they said they would sooner die than accept Federation oversight. They certainly proved the galaxy wrong, didn’t they?”

Kieron didn’t speak. He couldn’t. He stopped being able to read the numbers on the screen, dedicating all his energy to controlling the trembling that tried to spread through his limbs and send him spiraling down into a well of darkness he thought he’d put behind him two decades ago.

“The ship was damaged, so the woman did the only thing she could think of—she put her son into the escape pod and used the rest of her fuel reserve to blast it through the atmosphere, hoping that one of the other ships would pick it up,” Elanus went on quietly. “And one did. Eventually…or so I’ve heard.”

Or so he’d heard? So he’d heard? Kieron whirled around in his chair, holding onto the arms so tight they creaked in his grip. “I guess someone like you can buy any information he likes,” he said quietly, with the same deadly focus he’d learned in his youth. “Someone rich and bored and looking for a thrill. What did you like best about that story? The sacrifice of the mother for her child, fighting to save him against all odds? What if it didn’t happen that way?” His throat hurt like he was holding back a laugh, or more likely a scream. “Your story is bullshit. Whoever told you all of that is a fucking liar.”

Elanus held up his hands. “Peace, Sparky, peace. I swear I’m not trying to rile you on purpose, I just can’t let a question go once it’s gotten into my brain. It’s a character flaw.”

“You’re a character flaw.”

“My ex-partner would agree with you.”

Kieron stopped his teeth from grinding. “Tell me about him,” he said, forcing himself to sit back and at least appear relaxed. “Since you’re so interested in talking about the past. What did you do to make him steal your ship and go on the run?”

Elanus raised one eyebrow. “You assume I did something?”

“I have met you, haven’t I?”

He laughed. “Fair enough. I’m sorry to disappoint you, though, but all Ganians are quirky. It’s part of our charm.” He gestured down at his elongated body. “We’re the physical oddballs of greater humanity, and the weirdness doesn’t stop at our height. Curiosity is bred into us. It’s what’s made Gania the creative and scientific heart of the Central System planets. I could have done more, I’m sure, to make my partner happy, but I assure you, Deysan left of his own accord after fucking his life over.

“On Gania, it’s common for university students to acquire patrons to help support their art and inventions,” Elanus continued. “Especially those of us who didn’t come from money. Deysan was my patron. He was an established name as a shipwright, and he loved the idea of an entirely new life form.” Elanus shook his head. “What he loved was the idea of playing god. I was lucky I’d hired a good attorney before signing any paperwork, because he’d have had me sign over every invention I came up with for the rest of his life otherwise.”

“The Ganian system sounds like a built-in power imbalance,” Kieron said. “Like it exists for the exploitation of students.”

“Oh, it does. But there are established limits for what’s considered appropriate within patronage, so it could be worse,” Elanus said with a shrug. “Anyhow, we shared ideas for a decade before I decided to start the Life Ship company. I let Deysan buy in as an investor. That should have been all I did, but I was so used to sharing a workshop with the man that I gave him access to mine. And it’s proprietary information.” He smiled with false brightness. “And then before you knew it, he’d claimed ownership of my data, sold my ship, and ran, hoping I’d be so busy putting out fires that I wouldn’t be able to track him down.”

Kieron frowned. “But why did he—” A sudden alarm sounding behind him made him turn to inspect the data. “One of the probes found something,” he said, leaning in.

Elanus joined him. “What is it?”

“Traces of an iso-paxitran mix.”

“My baby is leaking,” Elanus breathed. “Holy fuck, he better not have damaged her fuel system, or I will kill him.”

“We have to find him first,” Kieron said dryly. “He’s in the sector that took out my miners.” And the geography of it was in flux, Kieron could tell. “We’ll have to go in slow and careful, and—”

“Fuck that.” Elanus pushed off the control panel and stalked out of the room. “If you’re not on board in five minutes I’m leaving without you.”

So yeah, story delay because...

 We were supposed to have access to daycare this week (except Friday) for the kiddo, but it turns out she was exposed to Covid last week at said daycare. We get it, it happens, but since she's too young for the vaccine, she and all the other unvaccinated kids in her class have to quarantine for ten days (we're getting a Covid test of course, but regardless of result she still can't go back to school until the ten days are over, at which point it'll be the holiday break). So that means all the time I was going to use to finish up my end-of-year freelancing contracts is basically halved.

I'm not working regular contracts next week, so I should be able to write a lovely Cloverleaf Station chapter for you then, but this week is all trying to hit unexpected deadlines for me. Sorry, darlins. We're all feeling well and probably fine, thank god, but we're also hella busy (trying to keep up with ONE small child is exhausting, how do you parents of multiples do it? HOW?). This after LOSING this month's Patreon story installment because of a mistake after my computer auto-updated. It's been a rough stretch writing-wise, for me.

Please, accept my apology and have a marvelous Christmas if you celebrate it, and enjoy your time with family and friends if at all possible. I'll be back with more Kieron, Elanus, and space weirdness next week ;)

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Six, Part Two

 Notes: Can it be, we're actually making positive progress toward treating each other like human beings? Break out the champagne!

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Six, Part Two

***

Chapter Six, Part Two

 

Kieron didn’t do impressed, not anymore. Too many times he’d been drawn into the larger world with the promise of something beautiful, something awe-inspiring, something that was meant to be special only to be let down, sometimes violently. He’d long since stopped listening to people when they promised him things, and had resolutely refused to allow his heartbeat to quicken when he saw something amazing. So what? There was plenty of amazing out there in the universe.

The Lizzie strained his own determination not to be impressed. Kieron was glad he was wearing his greenie suit when he got inside, so that the gasp he let out was shielded from Elanus. The ship was incredibly luxurious, despite its tight size, with surfaces that yielded just enough under his touch to let him know they were responsive, reactive to their surroundings. The furnishings themselves looked like old-world wood and leather, which of course was ridiculous—who would waste such things in a ship? And yet…

“You know, that suit is excessive in the Lizzie,” Elanus informed him as he slipped into the pilot’s seat. “She’ll more than suffice when it comes to your protection for the next few hours, if you’d care to be more comfortable.”

“We’ll see,” Kieron replied, but he did deign to take his helmet off. The air smelled faintly sweet…some sort of floral aroma he couldn’t identify, but it was warm and spicy in his nose. The door shut behind him, and Elanus patted the co-pilot’s seat.

“Join me. You might as well learn the basics of operating her while we’re out there.”

There went his heart again. Damn it. Kieron sat, though, and pulled the safety straps over his bulky suit.

“Lizzie’s AI is perfectly capable of getting her in and out of docking, but I’ll show you how to do it manually,” Elanus went on, then turned and winked at him. “If you ever open up the doors, Sparky.”

Oh, right. Kieron used his tab to open up Docking Bay Five, and just a few moments later they were sailing out into space. “That was fast,” he commented.

“Her propulsion system is based on old-school fusion reactors combined with some of the latest in energy storage capability. Basically, the entire ship functions as its own battery, and the propulsion system is modified to adapt to that.”

“The radiation shielding too?” Kieron watched as Elanus’s fingers danced across the controls, picking out things he could recognize here and there—the outline of the ship was particularly elegant, color-changing to show which thrusters were responsible for what movement, with a radiation-sensing overlay that would gradually turn from green to white as the shields broke down. Currently, even though they were out of the shadow of the station now, there was no more radiation within the Lizzie than Kieron would have experienced in the regular sunlight back on the Hadrian colony.

“So.” Elanus set them on a course toward the meteor field. “What do your little probes have to tell us? And please, just upload it directly to the Lizzie’s computer so she can incorporate their data into her mapping.”

“Let’s see how many get back to me first,” Kieron muttered as he accessed the probes.

Download most recent data?

Yes.

He got information back from ten out of eleven of them. The only one that didn’t respond was the one he’d sent farthest out, toward a cluster of mini meteors that had given a number of his miners problems over the last few years. They were full of heavy, valuable metals, but almost impossible to work with thanks to their penchant for bouncing off each other and ships alike when even slightly disturbed. He marked that location with a red X, then input the rest of the data into the Lizzie.

“These are the closest to the station,” he said, highlighting five of them in blue. Potential paths forward appeared on the viewscreen in front of them. “They’re broadcasting from well-known locations. I’m leaving them static for the time being—they’ll last up to a month if I don’t drain their power too quickly. I’ve got them set to react and record any unusual movement in the meantime. These next ones—” he made them purple “—are farther out, near targets that are still well-known, but more dangerous. This is the usual limit of the distance that miners like to go. There are plenty of specimens to work on within this band of meteors for now. Once you go much farther, things start to get complicated.” He pointed to the red X. “I only had one mining ship travel this far out this season, looking for rare metals. They made it back the first time.”

“But not the second time?” Elanus inferred.

“They pushed their luck too far. Their ship was caught between two meteors and couldn’t get out of the way in time. They died quickly, at least.”

Elanus huffed a sigh. “So we’re going to be sifting through floating ship debris as well as meteors?”

Kieron stared at him. “No, of course not.”

“You just said—”

“I said the miners died. I didn’t say I left them and their ship out here.”

Elanus blinked. “You…mounted a retrieval operation…for dead people?” He shook his head. “Wait, no, why am I surprised? Of course you did. That’s your whole reason for being here, isn’t it, finding a dead body to bring home.”

“I didn’t do it for their sakes,” Kieron said, a little harshly. “Ship debris would make this entire field less stable than it already is. If I left every ship that had an accident out here to float, the region would only become harder to navigate. It’s my job to keep this station prosperous, and that makes retrieval a part of my job.”

“Isn’t that incredibly dangerous?”

Um… “Yes?”

“Ah…hmm.” Elanus’s clouded expression cleared up. “I should have expected this from you.”

“What? Why—”

“Here, let’s navigate to some of the closer ones. You can practice flying while I start running my own sensor array. It’s been a long time since Catalina passed through, but we may yet be able to find traces of her energy signature.”

Kieron hesitated to call the next few hours “fun,” because fun wasn’t something he really felt qualified to have. However, he couldn’t deny that it was…stimulating, learning to fly an entirely new ship, checking in on his probes while someone else did the scanning, looking into the heart of the meteor field and the quasar without worrying about his or anyone else’s health.

That was the most beautiful thing, he thought as a massive meteor floated by. A second later the distant quasar came into view, so terribly bright it would blind him instantly if he were to look at it without proper shielding. As it was, the Lizzie did a good job of keeping the view manageable, even better than his own ship.

This was the swirling, churning heart of a new galaxy. This was a place that, in hundreds of millions of years, might have its own planets, its own systems. Perhaps not—this was a relatively small quasar compared to many others, but the fanciful part of Kieron liked to imagine that it would grow up to become something magnificent. If only he’d been able to continue his earlier research, with Zakari…they might know so much more about this quasar by now.

“You look like you’re in love.”

Kieron blinked, then slammed the button that cleared the viewscreen, leaving only data and sensor images. “Nonsense.”

“No, I’ve seen the faces of people in love before, and you matched them perfectly,” Elanus went on, like the jerk he was. “With the quasar itself? I’ve got to warn you, romances between humans and infant galaxies are doomed to failure.”

“It’s not a romance,” Kieron snapped. “I spent my first few years here studying it, that’s all.”

“Ah. A scientist whose love for quasar research has been frustrated.”

“It’s not my love for research that frustrates me.”

“Love for your friend, then?”

Kieron shouldn’t reply, he shouldn’t give Elanus anything the man hadn’t earned somehow, but sitting here in his marvelous ship, Kieron was moved for the first time to give something of himself for free. “Imagine experiencing nothing but conflict all your life, competing and fighting and running for every scrap, and then being told that you didn’t have to do that anymore. That you could live another way, with more than fear and anger in your heart. Imagine being brought into a family like that, hurting them again and again because you just didn’t understand but always, always being forgiven. Imagine having that.”

He frowned down at the controls. “And then imagine losing it. And this time around, you refuse to be forgiven, because you know their forgiveness is a lie. Who wants to live a lie?”

He glanced briefly at Elanus, expecting yet another quip or casual insult, but instead he got a dark, steady stare that made Kieron shift in his seat for no reason he could pinpoint. “We should get back,” Elanus said at last. “Do you have enough data to send out another round of probes?”

“Oh. Yes.”

“Good.” He took over the helm control, turning them back toward Cloverleaf Station in silence, and Kieron was too afraid of what it might mean to risk breaking it.

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Six, Part One

 Notes: Almost ready for the first venture into the radiation-filled space between the Station and our goals! Have some introspection and snark to warm you up ;)

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Six, Part One

***

Chapter Six, Part One

 

Eight hours had never passed so slowly.

Kieron had done his best to fill the time. He refined and re-refined his algorithm, until the numbers were so stable that improvement simply couldn’t happen without more data. He made the modifications to the Regen unit, resolutely not wondering why it had to be so good at targeting specific problem areas instead of doing the full wash. He even sent out his first wave of probes, something that normally filled him with a calm sense of purpose. The probes were his best bet of finding Zakari, and this time around he had more data for them to go on than ever. The odds were the best they’d ever been…except for the fact that he had to find Elanus Desfontaines’ ship first.

That was the worst part. Not the finding of the ship—Kieron was resigned to that, as well as he could be resigned to anything that wasn’t finding Zakari. No, the problem was the fact that he was actually looking forward to finding the mysterious ship. Elanus’s description had captured his attention like nothing else had managed over the past two years, and now Kieron had to grapple with the fact that his heart, which had always been so stalwart, wasn’t as fixed as he thought it was. There shouldn’t be room for any longing in his life other than finding Zakari’s body. So why did he have to suppress a shiver at the thought of looking for Catalina, the ship that was more than just a ship?

Is it because of Elanus?

Kieron had a lot of fucked-up habits, but lying to himself usually wasn’t one of them. Sure, it had been a long time since he’d been attracted to someone—not since Gil, a miner he’d met two seasons ago now. It had been even longer since he’d actually been intimate with another person, almost five years. Zakari had worried about him, saying Kieron was deliberately isolating himself, that he needed to reach out and give a little bit in order to get. “It’s fine if you don’t want it, but I know you do,” Zakari had said more than once, his round face puzzled. “So why not have what you want?”

It was an unfinished argument between them, and would remain that way forever now. Regardless, Kieron knew what longing felt like, and while there was more than a hint of that emotion in the way he looked at Elanus, it was only a physical urge. He could deny himself any physical urge that wasn’t immediately necessary to survival. No, it wasn’t the prospect of exciting his body that drew him to this project…it was the potential of interacting with something so far beyond his understanding that made Kieron anxious to start looking.

A living ship. A ship that was its own entity, that could handle the radiation of the quasar and take its pilot to places no being had ever seen before. How incredible, how delightful. It was exploration at its most basic and essential, the sort of thing Kieron had dreamed about from the moment he’d first allowed himself to dream. Kieron’s hands shook just thinking about it, and that was completely unacceptable.

He did a mini-triathlon on the exerciser, running, cycling, and using the special zero-g setting for a swimming facsimile that left him exhausted, but finally tremor-free. He showered, using more water than he ought to, but if he ran out at least he had someone to complain to now. He shaved, changed his clothes, ate a bland but nourishing meal, meditated for a bit and then finally, finally, Elanus emerged from his ship with a tired but satisfied expression.

“She’s ready,” he said, and held out a hand for the tab Kieron was holding. “Did you get the changes made to the Regen unit?”

“Yes.” Kieron waited for the other man to look over the log of his last eight hours. He saw when Elanus’s eyes got to the exercise portion—they skipped back up to read it a second time, then looked at him with far too much amusement.

“You ran twenty kilometers, cycled for fifty, and swam for ten all before coming to get me? And you still had time to do the busy work?”

“I’m sorry, was any of that supposed to be challenging?” Kieron replied, not bothering to hide his sarcasm. Elanus wouldn’t buy him being polite and obedient anyway.

“No, but it was supposed to take time and help you keep your nose out of my business,” Elanus replied. “I see I underestimated your ability to give yourself busy work. Or,” and now he smiled, “Do you get off on punishing yourself?”

I’ll get off on punishing you. “Are we going now?”

“Ooh, touchy! I’m not judging your kinks, Sparky. God knows I’ve got enough of them myself.” Elanus handed the tab back. “How far out will your probes be by now?”

“Between five and fifty kilometers,” Kieron replied. “Depending on which route I set for them.”

“Are they sending data back live?”

“Not yet. It takes a lot of energy,” he said when Elanus frowned, “and I need to spare as much as I can for their thrusters and AI controls. We can start downloading data when we’re out in your ship. The probes have a hard time broadcasting through the Station.”

“Big thick hunk of junk,” Elanus muttered. “Fine. We should be able to stay out for three and a half hours before we need to return and let Lizzie patch herself up. You help set the course, but I do all the flying.”

“Fine.” For now, at least. “Let’s go, then.”

“Ah, wait.” Elanus held up a hand as Kieron made to walk toward the ship. “First things first, a little safety briefing. It’s standard procedure before bringing on a new crew member,” he added when Kieron’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You think I’m going to break protocol and give you another chance to make a complaint about me?”

“It’s not like you couldn’t get me arrested the moment Cloverleaf Station is back in the shadows,” Kieron replied testily. “I think we’ve reached a détente, don’t you?”

“Still. This is a specialized safety briefing, and it’s very short, so humor me.” Kieron sighed, but nodded. Elanus smiled brightly and rubbed his hands together. “Excellent! So, all the normal stuff, blah blah blah pressure suit, plus I’m the captain and you do what I say, and also, there is a very specialized med kit in the Lizzie that will walk you through what you might have to do for me if at any point I go unconscious.”

Kieron frowned. “Why would you go unconscious?”

“I probably won’t,” Elanus assured him.

“Probably isn’t good enough.”

“God, you’re like a catterpet gnawing on a koi.” Elanus shook his head. “Suffice it to say, if for any reason I can’t communicate with you, the stuff in the med kit will stabilize me long enough to get me back to the revamped Regen unit in the clinic. All right? It’s nothing contagious, don’t worry about that. Now.” That devilish smile was back. “The longer we stand here arguing, the more radiation your little probes absorb and the less use we get out of them before they shut down. So let’s make the most of the time we have, shall we?”

Kieron hated that he made a good point. “Fine. But this isn’t over,” he warned as he marched around the man and headed for his ship.

He almost missed Elanus’s low mutter of “You’d better hope that it is.”

Almost.