Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Five, Part Two

 Notes: A little more conversation before we buckle down to business ;)

 Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Five, Part Two

***

Chapter Five, Part Two

 

Kieron wasn’t expecting the answer to his “When do we start?” to be “Tomorrow,” but there it was. He blinked at Elanus, feeling thrown off-kilter. “What?”

“Tomorrow,” Elanus replied, a pleasant smile on his face. “Now that we’ve worked out our agenda, there are a few changes I need to make in the Lizzie—a little housekeeping, so to speak. Not to mention, I’ve been flying on next to no rest for the past hundred and eleven hours, and that’s a lot even for me. I need to catch up on my beauty sleep if I’m going to be as useful as I need to be.” He stood up, back to towering elegantly over Kieron in a second. For a guy who claimed to be tired, he moved like he had all the energy in the world. Tall, handsome, and full of life…it was like fate had reached out and dropped the guy of Kieron’s dreams into his lap.

Too bad he was such a fucking asshole.

“How long do you need?” Kieron asked, staring just past Elanus’s face.

“Aren’t you accommodating all of a sudden, Sparky?”

Kieron bristled. Was there no way to please this guy? “I can be something else real easy.”

“Oof, hey.” Elanus raised his hands in mock-surrender. “Don’t get me wrong, I like accommodating. It just doesn’t seem to be your style.”

“It’s how I get every time someone threatens me into compliance,” Kieron replied sweetly. “I like to lie low until I get a clear chance to stab them in the back or cut their throat. Not,” he added, “that I would do anything like that to you, boss.”

“Oh yeah? Are you sure of that?” Elanus looked at him a little more closely. “Kieron Carr…with that name, that carriage, I think odds are even that you come from the Hadrian colony.”

Kieron felt the blood drain out of his face even has his hand automatically reached for the knife it had taken him months to train himself out of keeping at his hip. Luckily, he didn’t need a knife to be taken seriously. He had Elanus bent back across the control station, one arm across his throat as the other hovered over potentially fatal pressure points, before the other man could finish the final syllable of colony.

“Whoa, whoa!” Elanus’s mock-surrender had transformed to a real one, his hands not trying to push Kieron away—that would be futile—but plainly open and vacant in his line of sight. “No harm, huh? No harm, it’s all right, I’m not an enemy. What am I going to do, report you? Who to? There’s no one left.”

“There are plenty of people out there who would pay a hell of a lot of credits to get their hands on me,” Kieron growled. “And you just happen to be able to pick out what I am? My file says—”

“Drifter, I know, I read it.” Elanus’s voice was astonishingly calm. “Drifters are the best designation for someone like you, aren’t they? Someone who’s been everywhere, influenced by everything…and I respect that, I do. I swear, on my baby’s life, I’m not here for you. It’s pure coincidence that I figured out what you are, and it’s only because I know someone else from the Hadrian colony.

“Someone alive!” he added with a wheeze as Kieron’s grip tightened. “A friend of mine, I swear it! I haven’t turned her in and I wouldn’t turn you in either.” His glittering gaze met Kieron’s as he said, with perfect earnestness, “No one deserves to be taken apart just for who they are. Not my baby, and not you. I’m no threat to you, Kieron. How dumb would I have to be, to threaten you right now? My life is literally in your hands.”

“Then why did you mention it at all?” Kieron asked, reason slowly coming back online in his brain as adrenaline stepped aside. “Why bother?”

“Because I find it hard to shut up sometimes,” Elanus replied. “I ramble to myself and everyone around me a lot, and things can slip out without me being aware of them. I’d rather get this out of the way now instead of during our mission, when it could cause a real problem.”

That was a good point. Kieron inspected Elanus’s face for any trace of dishonesty, monitored to his heartbeat and his other biometric tics, but there was nothing to suggest he was being anything but sincere right now. Slowly Kieron leaned back, removing his weight from Elanus’s body. The taller man closed his eyes for a long moment, then let out a gusty sigh and held out his hand.

“Help a guy up, huh?”

Kieron rolled his eyes. “Oh my god, you’re ridiculous,” he muttered, but he helped Elanus to his feet.

“Thanks, Sparky.” Elanus winked at him. “Trust me, your secret is safe.”

“Until you start rambling to someone else and slip up.” Ugh, that was a good point. Maybe Kieron should just…

“No, nope, I see your murder-hands getting twitchy, and no,” Elanus said sternly. “It’s only on my mind right now because you’re on my mind. Once we’re done here, and we never have to see each other again, it’ll fall right out of my mind. I generally don’t keep close track of things that aren’t immediately relevant to my life. If that’s not good enough for you, I’ll let you put a neural block in.”

That was a…decent solution. Not great—neural blocks weren’t invisible to a professional, and they weren’t foolproof either, but it was probably the best Kieron was going to get. He nodded and took a step back, and watched as Elanus’s shoulders dropped about an inch with newfound relief.

“Threatening the boss with death on the first day,” Elanus said, shaking his head as he walked out of the room. “You’re a firecracker, aren’t you, Sparky? I’m going to send you some specs for the Regen unit,” he added in a louder voice as he strode down the hall. “The changes are non-negotiable. Let me know if you don’t have any of the parts required, and I’ll see you in eight standard hours!”

Then he was gone, turning toward the hangar and out of Kieron’s line of sight. As soon as he vanished around the corner, Kieron stepped mechanically over to his chair and sat down in it, dropping his head into his hands.

Holy shit. He’d nearly murdered Elanus Desfontaines. Elanus Desfontaines, ridiculously wealthy inventor and entrepreneur, who also happened to be his boss. All because of…of…

No. He wasn’t going to let his mind go back to that place. He’d gotten out of Hadrian young, too young to get the full “benefit” of the genetic training and modification. He’d foolishly thought that because of his youth, and the fact that no one was supposed to have survived the Hadrian massacre, that he could keep his name. It wasn’t such a remarkable name, after all. Plenty of people had similar ones.

More the fool he.

His implant beeped with a new message. Kieron activated his internal viewer and opened the file. It was a blueprint for a Regen unit, only this one definitely had some non-standard additions. The upgrade to the health scanner alone…why did it have to be so specific? That was one of the great things about Regen—it healed broadly and perfectly, without needing to be directed. So why insert a program designed to limit its own potential?

Just do it. You’ve pissed the guy off enough for one day. Not to mention, Kieron needed some sleep too after such a concerted clusterfuck. An hour of unconsciousness should be enough for him—a luxurious amount of sleep for a Hadrian, honestly—but he was tempted to push it to two, just to put this day out of his mind for a little longer.

Work will help. Work always helped. Before heading for the Regen unit, though, he got his algorithms back up and processing the limited data that came in from Cloverleaf’s sensors. Every byte of refinement could make the difference between life or death out there.

And Kieron couldn’t die. Not yet. Not before he found Zakari.

After that? He’d have to wait and see.

New Release: A Monstrous Light

 Hi darlins!

Yep, it's true, A Monstrous Light is finally out there for everyone outside my Patreon! This is a dark but fun m/m fantasy romance that includes four custom illustrations, lots of whump, and a happily ever after, because I'm not into THAT much tragedy ;)

I'll have more Cloverleaf Station for you tomorrow!

A Monstrous Light

 

What do you do when the person who's your whole word vanishes in a monstrous light?

You hunt him down, of course. Across continents, to the edge of the Waste, through death and deception all the way to the corpse of the creature who would have killed you both.

And when you find him? Well.

You do what you have to to keep him. Anything you have to. Even killing.

Even dying.

 

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Five, Part One

 Notes: More Cloverleaf, yay! A bit of a short chapter this week, but with the holiday on Thursday it's all I can do to carve out this time, so...please enjoy! It's all cards on the table, so to speak.

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Five, Part One

***

Chapter Five, Part One

 

“Your information on the paths of the meteors, how good is it?” Elanus asked, turning back to the console and opening up Kieron’s programs.

“Right now? Compared to my historical data, probably ninety-eight percent accurate,” Kieron said, then before Elanus could do more than intake an excite breath continued, “That’s only right now, and only because I’ve uploaded positioning data from hundreds of mining trips over the course of this season. Every minute that passes, my information becomes more and more inaccurate, and inaccuracies out there will get you killed.”

“I told you, my ship can take the radiation.”

“For two hours,” Kieron reminded him. “That’s not enough time to fly out there and find your ship blind. We need to narrow things down into search patterns, then use probes as advance scouts so that you have more accurate information on meteor placement before you go out there.”

Elanus smiled tauntingly. “I thought you weren’t going to let me use your probes?”

“I’m not,” Kieron said. “I’m going to use them. You’re going to show me how to fly your ship, and I’ll conduct the search myself.”

The smile was gone far faster than it had appeared. “Absolutely not. That ship has a completely proprietary and revolutionary design even if it isn’t the absolute latest experimental mdel, and I won’t hand it over to someone who could profit from its secrets.”

Kieron sighed. “I don’t care about your ship except insofar as it’s going to let me do a better job searching the local meteor cluster for our targets.” Elanus’s expression changed from offended to intrigued. “Your target,” Kieron corrected, mentally cursing himself for slipping up so quickly. “Looking for your target.”

“Oh come on now, you were doing so well there for a second!” Elanus said, spinning his chair to fully face Kieron and folding his hands over his flat stomach. He stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles—the chair had an auto-adjust, but it hadn’t been made with Ganians in mind. Facing the console probably made him feel more condensed than a neutron star.  “Tell me more about this target of yours. It’s only fair,” he added as Kieron continued to stay silent. “You know what I’m looking for out here. It’s time to lay your cards down on the table.”

Fucking Ganians and their gambling metaphors. If Kieron hadn’t met a few of them already in his time here on Cloverleaf Station, he wouldn’t have any idea what Elanus was talking about. “It’s a ship,” he said after a moment. “Mining class, an X-250.”

“Small but tough,” Elanus noted. “How long has it been out there?”

“Twenty-seven standard months.”

Elanus abruptly uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “Excuse me? Twenty-seven months?” He had gone from looking amused to furious. “That ship is dead. Its systems are dead, its engine is dead, and whoever was in it is definitely dead. How is this any sort of priority? Why should your search for this outweigh my pursuit of something that’s alive and—”

“And a machine,” Kieron interjected, spitting the word viciously. “You can say what you want about your AI being sentient, but it’s still a fucking machine. Even cyborgs don’t get the rights that organic lifeforms do in the Federation—you think a ship is going to qualify as more important just because you’ve outfitted it with some fancy programming? And yeah, there’s your crooked partner too, but you don’t give a fuck about his life. My ship might be gone, but it was piloted by a person with a family, and that man’s body needs to be recovered for their sakes.”

Elanus’s ire had melted away almost as fast as it appeared. He was so changeable, it was a wonder he had time to feel half of what flittered across his face. “There’s some truth to that,” he said, as though he were being generous. Prick. “But dead is dead. Surely you can at least see that my ship needs to take priority here, given that it contains a living human being.” He smiled crookedly. “Even if I would like to see him roasted from the inside out with radiation, that’s not all my call to make. Deysan has hurt a lot of people, and he should pay for his crimes before a court of law. Where, incidentally, I’d be willing to fight you about the classification of my ship, but that’s neither here nor there right now.”

Kieron gritted his teeth. The hell of it was, Elanus was right—at least about this part. A rescue mission of a living person took precedence over recovering the dead, and every court in the galaxy would back him up on that. “Fine. Your ship is the priority, but the probes are still mine, and only available in limited quantities. Their control systems are very finicky thanks to the amount of radiation shielding I’ve had to install on them, so they’re very difficult to fly. I need to be as close to them as possible in order to maximize the odds of recovering your missing ship, and that means I need to be the person flying the one you arrived in.”

Elanus traced the edges of his intricate facial hair before nodding abruptly. “There’s only one thing to do, then. We’ll have to handle her together.”

We what now? “Your ship’s interior is too small for both of us to move around in there,” Kieron protested.

“It’s built to house two,” Elanus replied. “Not comfortably, but the safety equipment is there. It won’t be the smoothest ride you’ve ever had, but I’m not letting anyone else handle her controls, and you’re not letting anyone else pilot those probes. That makes us co-captains of the Lizzie on these expeditions, Sparky. Any questions?”

Co-captains. Holy hells. In a space that tight, it was going to be hard enough to avoid committing an act of homicide, much less keep his mind as sharp as it needed to be to pilot the probes. Still, what choice did he have? “Just one question,” Kieron replied. “When do we start?”

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Four, Part Two

 Notes: Here come the truth bombs! Hopefully everyone will survive intact!

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Four, Part Two

***

Chapter Four, Part Two

 

“Identification.” Elanus stalked back into the control room and practically threw a badge at Kieron, who managed to grab it without fumbling. “Verify it and let’s get the hell on with this.”

Kieron inspected the badge. It was a modern one, with combination DNA marker and biometric signals tested. He pressed it to the AI’s badge reader to verify that it was a real Federation-issued ID badge, then laid it flat on the surface of the control station where the computer could cross-verify as Elanus was read. “Thumb,” he said.

Elanus pressed his thumb to the silvery area in the corner, and a second later the control station lit up in positive response. “Identification confirmed,” the station AI said in her slightly flat, never quite welcoming voice. She sounded a lot like how Kieron felt right now. “Welcome to Cloverleaf Station, Director Desfontaines.”

Director. Shit. He had an official title and everything. Kieron was so fucked.

“Good.” Elanus sat down and began operating the control panel like he’d been doing it for months, immediately going to the log of most recent events.

“If you tell me what you’re looking for, I could help you find it,” Kieron offered reluctantly.

“If you’ve done your job and logged everything properly into the system, I shouldn’t need your help,” Elanus replied, not even looking at him.

Fine. This was fine. Watching all his meticulous maps get shoved out of the way, losing the progress he’d made with the search algorithm, undoubtedly having to explain it all the moment this asshole wasn’t totally preoccupied with whatever he was searching for now—that was all fine. Kieron sat back in the chair that Dave had customarily laid claim to, sighing when something crunched beneath his butt. He stood back up and pulled a protein-supplement wrapper out from the back of the seat. Chunky choc-cherry flavored.

Fucking Dave.

“Eating on the job?” Elanus asked snarkily as he continued to scan the log. Kieron didn’t bother to reply, just put the wrapper in the nearest recycling unit and sat back down. He watched in silence as Elanus scrolled back one day…two days…three. He paused when he got to the rescue of the Mason’s Bay, reading through the terse report and glancing at the visual recording before moving on without saying a word.

Yeah, I do my job. What the hell is your job here, fucker? A little farther into the log, Elanus suddenly stopped scrolling. He stared down at the screen for a long moment, then delicately tapped an audio file.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!”

Kieron startled in his chair, unnerved by the sound of that strange scream. He still couldn’t place it, had logged it as some sort of audio distortion from one of the miners’ ships, but from the way Elanus’s face went from cool and detached to heartbroken in a matter of seconds settled that for him. This was no distortion. This was something deliberate, and it was bad news.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Elanus murmured, stroking over the audio icon. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m here now, I’ll find you.” He took a deep breath, then straightened his back and stared at Kieron. “I need to track the source of this signal down.”

He needed to what now? “There’s no way to figure out the source of the signal, since it’s no longer broadcasting,” Kieron pointed out.

“Then I need the best guess you can put together so I can get out there and start looking for it.”

Kieron’s jaw dropped. “Are you insane?” he managed after a second.

Elanus smirked. “Not today, I don’t think. Are you?”

“You can’t go out there right now. It’s deadly. Without Big Momma blocking the radiation from the quasar, you’ll be dead in a matter of minutes. Dead-dead, as in non-Regenerable.”

“I’m party to information that you don’t have, and it says I absolutely can go out there right now with no ill effects.”

Holy hells, this guy had a death wish. “No mobile, man-made technology has been found that completely blocks radiation this strong,” Kieron explained like he was speaking to a child. “Even this station isn’t perfect under these circumstances, and its walls are over fifty feet thick, with metallic alloy, concrete, and water layers. If you try to go out there, you’re going to die a horrible death.” Ask me how I know.

“I’m delighted to say that, in fact, I have a ship that is capable of withstanding such high amounts of radiation for hours at a time,” Elanus replied blithely, folding his elegant hands. “It’s right there in the name of my company. Lifeship Enterprises is concerned not only with operating on the nano-edge of technical ship specs, it wants to protect human life in whatever situation it might get itself into. That includes being stranded in a situation where high radiation is a factor. My ship continuously sheds and renews its outermost hull when the current skin has absorbed as much cross-spectrum radiation as it can. While that skin is functional, so is the ship, and so is the pilot.”

Kieron’s brain felt frozen in place, like every thought and emotion that had been churning in him since this asshole sat down was suddenly put on hold as he grappled with this statement. It couldn’t be. That just wasn’t possible, it wasn’t…but if it was…and Elanus had gotten here in one piece, after all…

The sudden urge to get on this guy’s good side was intensely annoying, but Kieron would do anything if it meant upping his chances of finding Zakari. Still, he needed to be thorough.

“All that aside,” Kieron said, although the last thing he wanted right now was to push that incredible knowledge aside, “it’s not that simple. The signal has to be actively transmitting to find it—there’s no way to trace it in space this heavy with audio interference. Have you figured out a fix for that problem too?”

Judging from the way Elanus scowled, he hadn’t.

“I assume that whatever it is you’re tracking is similarly shielded?”

“No,” Elanus said, which surprised Kieron. Before he could tell the guy “then you’re fucked,” he went on, “It’s actually the next generation in Lifeship design, way better than what I’m flying. My ship is good, but it can only stay out there for a few hours before it burns through the special mix that gives the skins their resiliency.

“I have the tools with me to grow more,” he added before Kieron could even open his mouth, “but that’s going to take time to set up, and the ship’ll still only be able to fly for a few hours before needing to refuel. The ship that’s out there has a proprietary AI-system and a biomolecular generator in its core that recycles and cleanses old particles to be used again. It’s got a body, and a brain to drive it. And inside it all, there’s a heart that years for connection.” He smiled briefly, and it made him look terribly handsome. That asshole. “I’ve created more than just a new generation of spaceship. Catalina is an entirely new lifeform. She’s my child. And three weeks ago, she was stolen from me.”

Kieron was surprised at how invested he felt, even if half of what this guy was saying had to be hyperbole. “By who?”

Elanus bared his teeth in a snarl. “By my fuckface of a business partner, who cut a deal with a competitor to give them Catalina, the only working model of this design, for an obscene amount of money. And,” he added reluctantly, “he also did it for the chance to fuck me over. We’ve been on the outs practically since we began the company, but I never thought he would go this far.”

“Why didn’t he go straight to your competitor instead of running out here to the middle of nowhere?” Kieron asked.

“Because my baby is loyal and I’m smarter than I look,” Elanus replied briskly. “Now that we’ve shared out life stories, maybe we can get back to figuring out a way to track down Catalina’s signal and rescue her from that festering asswhore.”

“Well, you can’t just fly into the meteor field. You can’t,” Kieron reiterated as Elanus opened his mouth to inevitably argue. “Even with a radiation-resistant ship, the meteors don’t have set orbits around the quasar. I’ve been tracking them ever since I got here, and while my files are good, they’re not perfect. If you want to make it more than a hundred kilometers deep in there, you’re going to have to scout your path with probes.”

Elanus frowned. “I don’t have any…but I saw from your tracking spreadsheet that you do.”

The hells? How had he had the time to look at that, much less read any of it before he swiped it out of the way? “I do, but I’ve got my own time-critical project that requires their use.”

Elanus leaned forward. “I can see that you’re slow on the uptake, so let me make this perfectly clear: I’m your boss. My word is law on this station. If I say you have to put your little private project on hold, then you do, no questions asked. Got it?”

“If you try to requisition my private equipment for your personal gain, I’ll file a complaint,” Kieron shot back, all efforts to restrain his anger abandoned in the wake of this fresh threat. “I’ll take it over your head. You might have bought the contract to run this place, but that doesn’t mean my contract is invalidated, and I’ve got permission for private research that requires those probes during the off-season here.”

Elanus’s eyes narrowed. “Are you seriously challenging me on this?”

“Fuck around with me and find out. I’ll make your life here a living hell if I have to.” Kieron couldn’t let this guy run over him, couldn’t let him tear away everything he’d worked so hard on for the past two years.

Abruptly, Elanus sat back in Kieron’s chair, laughing out loud. “You are definitely not what I expected to find out here,” he chuckled. “All right. We’ll work something out so that we both get what we need. Sound amenable to you?”

It sounded like a series of interminable fights, but as long as it meant keeping the option of searching for Zakari, Kieron could live with that. “Got it.”

Elanus waved his hand in a rolling-type gesture.

“Boss,” Kieron added with a sigh.

Elanus grinned. “Very good.”