Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Three, Part Two

 Notes: Hey, more Cloverleaf, yay! Meet this jackass right here. He'll grow on you, I swear. Like a fungus.

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Three, Part Two

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Chapter Three, Part Two

 

“I’m going to be in docking position in five minutes,” Mr. Desfontaines went on, like he hadn’t just thrown Kieron’s entire planet off its axis. “You’ve got that minus thirty seconds to open one of the bay doors for me.”

“There’s no ready room in the single operational bay for your ship,” Kieron responded automatically, his mind running calculations even as his hands began to shake. “I need twenty minutes to get my ship moved and ensure you don’t run into anything on your way in.”

“Nonsense, this is a trim little craft and she’ll scootch right into a corner. Bay Five, right?”

How did he know that?

“I’ve got access to all your computer logs,” Desfontaines went on, and Kieron’s heart suddenly squeezed so hard in his chest that he almost lost consciousness for a second. “If they’re accurate—which they’d better be—then I’m sure you can get your ship moved over just, what, a meter to the left as one enters the bay, and I’ll be able to glide in right beside you.”

“I’d have to exit and reenter to make that space. I need more time.”

“You’ve got ground rollers, don’t you? They show as operational. Use them instead. Four minutes now.” The computer began an automatic countdown to opening the bay’s outer doors.

That fucker had remote access to the control system. He couldn’t force the doors open from the outside, but he could start the sequence, gear everything up for the opening. If they stayed in that ready state for long, their circuits would start to fry.

Kieron didn’t waste time swearing, just took off at a run toward the bay. He did have ground rollers, stacked up in the back corners of the bay, but he hadn’t bothered to leave them initialized since his was the only ship in here and it would require extra fuel to keep them operational, even in an inactive state. There was no time for that, not on this asshole’s schedule.

He was going to have to move the ship himself.

“Station,” he shouted to the AI as he ran, “Reduce gravity in Bay Five to one-tenth Earth norm.”

“That will exceed stated energy parameters for—”

“Override parameters, just do it!”

“Affirmative.”

Kieron lost ten seconds grabbing his maintenance boots from his room, and another twenty seconds in the sealed operations room between the station and the bay, waiting for the gravity shift to be completed. Then the door opened, he stepped inside—

And nearly propelled himself straight into a stack of reusable cargo pallets. Shit. It had been a while since he’d had to get around in such light gravity. He activated the magnetic seals on the bottom of his maintenance boots, the ones he wore when he was doing low- or zero-gravity repairs, and was immediately resituated on the floor.

All right. Now to see if his gut instinct with the gravity change had been correct. He headed over to the wall next to his ship, all ten tons of her, and ran out the cables that he normally used to keep cargo from floating into space and attached them to her landing struts.

“Two minutes, Sparky. Better get those doors open.”

Kieron was sweating as he made sure the cables were properly attached, then activated the pulleys that would draw them tight. This system was hardwired into the walls of the bay itself, and therefore always accessible, unlike the ground rollers that had a separate operating system and power supply. The cables drew taut, but his ship didn’t move.

He increased the power by ten percent. Still nothing. He shouldn’t be surprised—a ten-ton ship was very light by modern standards, but still a hell of a lot of weight. He increased power by fifty percent, close to the maximum he could expect the cables to take before breaking.

The Daring Do began to move. It made a terrible scraping sound at first, but once inertia was overcome, it went more smoothly. A quarter-meter. Half. It was getting really close to the wall now. Aaaand…..stop! He hammered the button to shut down the pulley, but didn’t bother to detach them as he had less than—

“One minute. Better open those doors or I’ll smash into the side of your station, and then things will really be fucked.”

This guy had no idea what fucked was, but he would soon. Kieron ran back for the operations room and resealed it. “Station, open outer doors to Bay Five!”

“You must remove prior environmental modifications to open the outer doors.”

Fuck, how had he forgotten that step? “Station, return gravity to normal, then open outer doors!”

“Affirmative. Gravity change initialized. Opening doors in ten seconds.”

“Here I come, Sparky. Better roll out the welcome wagon now, or get ready to explain a hell of a lot of damage.”

“You’re insane,” Kieron muttered. Naturally his com picked it up.

“Nah, I just know how to motivate people to get things done. You’ve got five seconds.”

The doors began to open. They seemed to be moving more slowly than xenon’s half-life, but he knew it was all in his mind. This asshole had him spooked…and Kieron was more than a little angry about that.

The doors were only halfway open when the nose of the incoming ship nudged between them. It was a slender, needle-like thing, not a spacious passenger liner or even a blocky-but-functional cargo carrier. This was a vessel that had been designed with one thing in mind: speed.

Aerodynamics were a nonsense consideration in space, generally, but apart from being slender the vessel also looked amazingly light, and…what was the exterior of that ship made out of? Kieron couldn’t tell, but he was sure he’d never seen anything quite like it before. It seemed to…ripple, almost, like it was changing based on the environment around it. As he watched, it went from something very glittery and hard-looking to something duller, more matte. Not soft, exactly, but it somehow gave the appearance of softness.

The ship settled in without a problem next to the Do, and the outer doors closed as steadily as they’d opened. Kieron watched numbly as the ship went through a shutdown sequence, finally going almost completely dark on the outside. Then a hatch opened in the side of it, and out stepped—

A Ganian! He hadn’t seen one in almost twenty years. Ganians were humans who’d been permanently altered by the environment of the planet they’d colonized, Gania, several thousand years ago. The gravity there was so low, and the environment so resistant to modification, that the people who lived there had grown long and lean, to the point that few Ganians ever stopped growing at less than seven feet tall. Some even hit eight or nine, but this guy—Elanus—had stopped around seven and a half feet, it looked like. Kieron, at six feet even, felt a little strange having to look up so high as the lanky man walked toward the sealed operations room.

Elanus Desfontaines was dressed in a black bodysuit, clearly custom, that clung to his form in very fitted ways. He had the close-cut but elaborate facial hair of a male Ganian, the design meticulously sculpted from the point of his chin to his temples, where he let it grow out more naturally. His skin was light brown, accented with what looked like coppery paint in places, highlighting his sharp cheekbones and the knife’s edge of his long, patrician nose. He was very pretty as far as people went, for all that he seemed skinny enough to break over one knee.

“Hellooooo? Let me in, already.”

Kieron blinked, then pushed the button to open the sealed room. A moment later Elanus stepped inside, having to duck down slightly to keep from bumping his head as the decontamination process began.

“Not really designed for a Ganian, is it?” he asked, glancing around before finally looking at Kieron with a smirk. “We’ll have to make sure that’s—gah!” He stumbled back against the wall, one hand pressed to his freshly punched jaw as his eyes widened slightly.

Kieron shook out his stinging knuckles. “Welcome to Cloverleaf Station. Sir.”