Cloverleaf Station: Chapter One, Part One

 Notes: HIIIIII! Let's get going on the new blog story, WOOOO! This one is Sci-Fi, Bonded universe (but new characters), and takes place close to a giant quasar on the edge of the Fringe. Yes, it's going to be super fun and I hope you enjoy it along with me! Regular updates should happen on Tuesdays. Let's DO THIS!

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter One, Part One

***

Cloverleaf Station

Chapter One, Part One

 

On the outskirts of the Fringe, parsecs away from the central planets of the Federation and all of the modern amenities that the people who lived there enjoyed, floated a round, pockmarked ball the size of a generation ship. To a casual passerby—not that there were every casual passersby out so far, only miners on the hunt for the rare-mineral-rich asteroids that this corner of the galaxy was home to—it almost might have been mistaken for a moon.

If moons came in the most lurid, neon shades of green imaginable, that was.

The ball was called Cloverleaf Station, and for nine months at a stretch, it was home to anywhere from fifty to a hundred souls: a mixture of miners, scientists, and a few seasonal workers. For the next five months, it was home to exactly one man—Kieron Carr, the station master and the only person who was permitted to live there while the station’s usual stellar shield orbited out of the way, leaving Cloverleaf exposed to direct radiation from the quasar that it, and everything else out here, revolved around.

Thanks to that intense radiation, Cloverleaf Station was nearly half a mile in diameter, but had less than half of that available as livable space. Its external walls were constructed from a blend of concrete and metal alloys that were thirty feet thick. Beneath the concrete was ten-foot-deep layer of water, followed by yet more radiation-resistant plating.

By the time all of that layering was finally penetrated, the residual radiation that got through was akin to spending an Earth day out in the sun, nothing that regular Regen treatments couldn’t take care of.

Of course, it got worse when the docking bay doors had to be opened and closed all the time to get ships in and out. When the radiation from the quasar was at its peak—when the valuable debris field that had convinced the Federation to put Cloverleaf Station out here in the first place—it was simply too dangerous for anyone to work outside the safety of the station. Sitting still meant losing money, so most of the regulars took that five months to go sell what they’d mined, while scientists returned home to crunch data and write papers.

It was lonely during this time on Cloverleaf Station, but Kieron found he liked lonely, these days. If he couldn’t have the company of the one person he craved, the next best thing was no company at all. Heading into his second year alone, he was more than ready for everyone else to get the hell out.

He really would have liked for them to do it without making a fucking mess of things before they left, though.

“Mason’s Bay, Mason’s Bay, check in. Over.”

“They’re probably busy screwing each other’s brains out,” Kieron’s assistant Dave said with a snort. “The Masons are the horniest couple on this station, and that’s saying a lot.”

“Horny or not, they never miss a check in,” Kieron replied as flatly as he could. He wasn’t a huge fan of Dave, who sucked at everything that Kieron had wanted him to be good at. Seriously, how could the man burn food so bad even the kitchen’s regenerator wouldn’t take it back to reuse it? That left Dave looking after the controls and minding the comms while Kieron had to manage hosting services, exactly the opposite of the way he’d hoped it would work out.

Kieron would not be renewing Dave’s contract to work at Cloverleaf if he applied again, that much was damn sure.

“Well, I guess we just keep trying. I’m gonna go get a burger first though, you want one?”

“No.” After a second, Kieron remembered to add, “Thanks.”

“Sure, man. Sure.” Dave left, and Kieron settled in to figure out who else was out there right now.

By this time tomorrow, Cloverleaf Station would be out of the shadow of Big Momma, the enormous asteroid they usually huddled behind, whose bulk did a pretty good job of deflecting the worst of the radiation not only from the station, but also from a lot of the smaller asteroids that made this a worthwhile destination for miners. Once you went beyond the big shadow, if you didn’t have the latest version of Cloverleaf’s composite AI to help guide your ship from safe zone to safe zone, your engines would burn out real fast. Once they quit, if you were still in the hot zone, the amount of time you could expect to survive dropped precipitously.

It meant that Kieron, and Dave, had to keep meticulous notes on who was out, where they were, and what their charted course was if they wanted to have any chance of helping them when something went wrong. There were only three ships left on Cloverleaf that didn’t belong to employees, and two of them were currently docked, so at least Kieron didn’t have to worry about going after anybody else. Where had the Masons been headed?

He pulled up their flightpath, then groaned. “Dave, you fucking dumbass.” This plan was from two days ago, completely useless to him now. Sure, it was the responsibility of the ship’s crew to log a new one each time, but it was the responsibility of the station masters to nag them until they did.

He tried the com again. “Mason’s Bay, Mason’s Bay, this is Cloverleaf calling. Over.”

Nothing. Kieron broadened his bandwidth, extending his frequency detector farther into space. This close to a quasar, space was anything but quiet. The sound of the radiation came through across the radio, a constant emission of white noise, getting louder and louder as—

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!”

“Shit!” Kieron almost jumped out of his chair as the strangest signal he’d ever heard out here poured in over the radio. Good grief, t was almost like a scream. What the hell was—

The strange sound cut off as quickly as it had come in, and at the same time a new signal was suddenly audible.

“—leaf, come in Cloverleaf, this is Mason’s Bay and we—crackle—elp, over! Repeat, we crackle immediate cracklecracklecrackle.”

Oh fuck, there they were. Their signal was being bounced off something else that might move at any time, shit—he needed new angles fast. Kieron set the program to work triangulating the signal’s path while he still had the mystery object to bounce it off of. A moment later, their location came in.

They seemed to be drifting about fifty thousand kilometers away, a short hop in his ship, the Daring Do. Unfortunately, they were on path to drift straight out of the shadow of Big Momma and into the direct radiation of the quasar. Kieron estimated they had less than fifteen minutes of shade left before they started to bake. Literally.

“Dave!” he shouted, sending the route directly to his implant before he jumped out of the chair. “Get in here!”

No one replied.

“Dave!” The com should have automatically picked up his request and relayed it. If Dave had turned his implant to mute again so he could listen to music on his retro headphones, Kieron was going to murder him. He ran out into the hall and almost directly into his assistant, who had a plate stacked high with food in one hand and a tall, frosty shake of some kind in the other.

“Hey! I was just heading for—”

“Get in there,” Kieron said, hustling Dave toward the control panel and sitting him down. He took the food and drink out of the man’s hands and laid it all on the table behind them—now was not the time for another spill in the command center, the last had been bad enough. “The Masons are in bad shape. Let me out of the bay and then track me, I’m going after them.”

“But…um…”

“Track me and stand by to help!” Kieron rushed toward the docking bay before Dave could say another word.

He had only minutes to save lives, and none to waste by taking one right now.