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

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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?”