Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Thirty-One, Part One

 Notes: Here we go! The penultimate chapter! Enjoy the emotional turmoil, friends!

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Thirty-One, Part One

***

Chapter Thirty-One, Part One

 

“Shouldn’t I—”

“Nope.” Elanus’s hand was firm on Kieron’s shoulder as he turned him in the direction of a doorway not far from the landing platform.

Kieron briefly tried to resist. “But I have to take care of the—”

“It’s all taken care of.”

He huffed with exasperation. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“You were going to say you needed take care of something for Pol, or for Xilinn, or for the other refugees, or you needed to make sure Lizzie is all right or reach out to Catie or pack up your stuff.” The door opened automatically as Elanus got close, and he shepherded Kieron in briskly, never letting go of him. “Right?”

Actually… “Yes,” Kieron said, a little sullen about being so transparent. Elanus smirked at him, clearly seeing it. Stars, if he was this easily readable then he had to be exhausted.

“It’s all taken care of. Hand to heart, it is.” The strange, cylindrical room they were standing in suddenly began to move down a see-through hallway. Kieron glanced down and his eyes widened. They were…very, very far off the ground.

“Don’t worry, it’s safe,” Elanus added, and Kieron didn’t even have the energy to be properly annoyed at him this time around. He was just happy for the reassurance. “And Pol and Xilinn have to get a whole raft of medical checks before they’re allowed anywhere, not to mention Ganian IDs in their implants. Same for the rest of the refugees. Lizzie has instructions to fly back to my private hangar as soon as she can, and Catie is waiting for her there—she’s gotten into opera recently, so get ready for some truly incoherent music over the next few weeks. She has plans to drag Lizzie into it as well, so while they both love you and are happy you’re here, they’re set. It’s all right for you to take care of yourself for a while instead of putting everyone else first.”

“My things,” Kieron began, admittedly weakly but it was all he had.

“As soon as Lizzie lands, they’ll be taken to your room. Which, coincidentally, is also my room, isn’t that convenient?” The platform shifted directions, moving toward an immense, slightly familiar-looking skyscraper in the distance. “So everything really is taken care of. Everything except for you, and that’s where I come in.” When Elanus tugged Kieron into his arms this time, it was easy to go—easier yet because it gave him a good excuse not to glance over the side of the platform. Kieron had never been acrophobic before, but maybe spending all that time on Cloverleaf Station had changed that. After all, it was hard to be afraid of heights when there were none, whereas here it seemed like that was all there was.

A wave of vertigo almost knocked him over, and Kieron leaned harder into Elanus, who held on even tighter. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Except he did. It was hitting him all at once, now that he was in a place where he could let go of responsibility and just exist without having to be on it, be competent, be alert.

Everything had changed. Everything had changed. The life Kieron had spent the last five years living on Cloverleaf Station, a life that had become laser-focused ever since losing Zakari three years ago, was over now. Everything he’d become accustomed to, the rhythms and rituals of his day that he hadn’t recognized the importance of until now—it was all over.

The adventure he’d had with Lizzie rescuing Pol and Xilinn had staved off this harsh realization, giving him a new crisis to focus on. Now he was here, with the man he loved, in a beautiful city on a beautiful world, and he was suddenly falling apart. Kieron tried to slow his breathing, but his lungs seemed intent on disobeying him, fluttering fast and hard in his chest until he could barely get any air in at all. His heart raced and tiny, swirling stars glimmered in front of his eyes no matter how hard he squeezed them shut.

“Okay. Shit, okay.” Elanus held him up with one arm around his waist while the other rubbed circles between his shoulder blades. The lift stopped, and Kieron was suddenly swept off his feet, but he couldn’t even bring himself to care that someone might see it, might think him undignified, might wonder what was going on. He buried his head against Elanus’s chest and let himself be carried away, laid down on a soft bed in a quiet room, let his jacket and shoes be taken off without a fuss.

When he finally managed to open his eyes, all he could make out was Elanus beside him. It was almost—almost—like being back in Cloverleaf Station. Kieron’s heart began to slow, and his breathing finally calmed.

“What the fuck,” he croaked out once he could make his throat work again. Elanus grimaced and held a bottle of water up to his mouth. He drank, and it made his throat feel better but sloshed uncomfortably in his stomach.

“I think you had a panic attack.”

“I don’t get those.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Elanus’s eyes were a little sad—not pitying, but filled with a melancholy compassion. “I think if anything, you’re overdue for them. That’s not a criticism,” he added quickly, “I’m not saying anything bad about you and you’re very tough and smart and everything admirable and you know you can believe me because I would never leave you in charge of one of the girls if you didn’t have your shit completely together. The thing is, you’ve lived almost your entire life under immense stress—life or death, do or die stress. Obviously you’re going to do in that situation, because you don’t want to die. You’ve managed yourself and everyone around you like a fucking pro for years, and now…you’re here. With me.”

“Why should that make me panic?” Kieron didn’t understand. “I’m happy to be here with you, I swear I am.”

“I know! I know you are, you think I don’t know that? I’m fully convinced of just how amazing I am, you don’t even have to tell me because I know it.” That look on his face said he well and truly did, and Kieron relaxed a little bit further. “But for the first time in years, you don’t have any major responsibilities. There’s no one to save, there’s no station to keep running, no concrete goal to pursue. You spent five years living on a fucking death trap in one of the deadliest corners of space humanity has ever been stupid enough to attempt to colonize, you think that didn’t leave some marks in your psyche? It did.”

Elanus tapped the side of Kieron’s head with two fingers. “And that’s fine. It just means you’ve got a few bumps in the road ahead of you when it comes to learning to live without constantly looking out for ways you could die.”

It made sense. Kieron hated that it made sense. “Bullshit,” he muttered.

“Aw, listen to you and your quaint, old-fashioned swear words. Do you even know what bull looks like? Also, why were ancient humans so concerned with different kinds of shit—it’s so redundant. They could have been far more creative with their cursing, as far as I’m concerned. Then again, I’m not a historian, so for all I know there are plenty of ancient cultures with a lot more imagination than that, but I don’t know the examples personally and clearly neither do you—”

“Please shut up.”

“Tell me you get it first.”

Kieron sighed. “I get it.”

“Will you see a psychologist for it?”

“I…” Kieron hated, hated, hated psychologists. He’d been forced to see them at several critical junctures in his life, and had always felt that they were looking for reasons to tell him he was broken. Who the hell wasn’t broken in some way? But the glimmer of concern in Elanus’s eyes was enough to sway him. “Fine. But I refuse to be locked up.”

“Why the fuck would you be locked up?”

Kieron laughed. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been the primary subject of several scientific papers. I was in a psychiatric hold on Trakta when I first arrived for three months, they were so excited to investigate my psyche.”

Elanus’s lips thinned. “That won’t be happening here.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear. I will ruin entire GDPs if anyone tries to do that to you.”

Kieron laughed again, and this time it felt easier. “You’re so dramatic.”

“Only when it comes to the people I love.” When Elanus reached for him, Kieron went, letting himself be pulled until he was lying half on top of Elanus. He traced the lines of the man’s immaculate facial hair, the swirls and curves, the plane of his jaw and down his neck.

Elanus inhaled sharply. “Sooo,” he drawled, “are we starting something here? Because it’s fine if we’re not, I just want to know so I don’t make the wrong move, which I know seems impossible but lo and behold it does happen sometimes, and—”

Kieron leaned in and captured his mouth in a fierce kiss. “Yeah,” he breathed when he finally pulled back. “We’re starting something.”

Notes on stories and what to expect next!

 Hi darlins!

Just a quick update to let you know that I'm alive (Christmas is a blur of presents and food, oy) and will be posting the next-to-last chapter of Cloverleaf Station tomorrow. Yes, we're almost to the end! Very exciting :) And as for what comes next...

Well, I had a lot of ideas and was reminded of a whole lot more I could write about, but then I wrote tomorrow's chapter. And tomorrow's chapter kind of opens a whole can of worms that I want to dig into, so the next story--probably novella-length--is going to be a continuation of this one, from the perspective of Elanus. We're going to have him dealing with the refugees, handling the repercussions of killing his former business partner, trying to hide sentient tweenage ships that really don't want to be hidden, keeping his business running, and quite importantly, keeping his lover from falling apart.

Why would Kieron be falling apart? Read tomorrow and find out!

So yes, that's what the blog holds next. For fans of Cloverleaf, this is surely good news. For those who aren't fans...I'm sorry! I've got more content coming on Radish (M/M urban fantasy this time, I post as Cari Z there), a continuing exclusive Patreon story, and a newsletter story I have yet to decide on but apparently it's going to be about dragons, so possibly set in the Luckless world. This is in addition to all the other books I'm writing, because I'm a little bit mad, so! Links below if you're interested, otherwise you get two more chapters of Cloverleaf Station and then--Chelen City.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Cari_Z

Radish: https://radishfiction.com/ (it's an app)

Newsletter: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/x1x1m4

Happy Holidays and best wishes!

 Hi Darlins!

Soooo...it's been a weird few days. My parents were part of an evacuation due to a wildfire near their home. It was lifted this morning, but it's put everything on delay, including all my writing. Plus it's my week to look after my kidlet while my man works (we're switching next week), and we're getting ready to have temperatures plunge to a thirty-year low in another day, and I just...haven't written. Anything.

But! We all need a break sometime, and I hope you get one as well. I'll finish up Cloverleaf Station (for now) over the next few weeks, and then we'll start on a new adventure. I wish you a very happy holiday season, and I hope you're safe and healthy and happy. I appreciate you all so much. Thanks for hanging in there with me on this blog <3

Cari

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Thirty, Part Two

 Notes: We're winding this arc down! Probably two or three more posts and then we'll be...gosh, not done, HA, not with all the loose ends I left dangling, but done for now. Then we can figure out what the heck I should write on the blog next. The next part of this? Something completely different?

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Thirty, Part Two

***

Chapter Thirty, Part Two

 

After that, Kieron worked harder to keep up with Lizzie and Catie’s technical arrangements and manipulations, which were somehow getting them all to Gania two days ahead of schedule. He also made sure to schedule time for Pol and Xilinn to talk every standard day, sometimes twice. Xilinn’s implant had been shut down, like everyone who’d been on the refugee ship, and the mercy fleet didn’t have the technology to reinstate them, but they made private communications possible for the mother and son. No one else over there needed them, after all—it would be far too dangerous to communicate with someone back on Trakta via implant, and all ship-based comms were being intercepted by the government.

Making time for himself was harder. There was just too much to do. Lizzie should have never felt like she had to take such a leading role for this mission—she was just a child herself. That she and Catie would go behind his back to do so wasn’t surprising. They were both compassionate people, and Catie at least had Elanus’s sense of mischief. But he was…he was the parent, damn it. He wasn’t going to be like his own mother, throwing a child into the wilderness and telling it to survive, or else. He was going to take care of Lizzie, and Pol, and everyone else he damn well could until he didn’t have to anymore.

Pulling that off meant consuming more coffee than was good for him, having short daily Regen sessions to replenish his reserves, and putting a good face on their still-precarious position. Everyone involved in this, from Xilinn to Pol to Captain Hu to Elanus himself, was relying on one person to make sure it all stuck together: Kieron. He wasn’t going to let them down by being too tired or too fuzzy-headed to handle whatever came their way.

Apart from some sickness on board the mercy fleet vessels thanks to ill refugees and an engine malfunction that had them all paused while Lizzie in her “Kieron” guise figured out what to do for it, though, it went as well as he could hope. They made it to Gania in good time, and although everyone was restless by the time they got there, no one was actively having a mental or emotional breakdown, which…had been a problem early on. Thank goodness the mercy fleet had a large staff of medical professionals in addition to Regen treatments, because they’d caught three near-suicides and were treating a host of anxiety disorders in the refugees.

Elanus had coordinated with Captain Hu to provide informational sessions on Gania and what to expect when they got there for everyone, but Kieron mostly ignored those. He had to, if he was going to have time for everything else. That’s why he thought it was excusable when they finally had Gania in their sights and all he could do was stare at it for the longest time. It was so…shiny. The oceans were shiny, the land was shiny, the city was shiny…

“There is a great deal of mica in the natural environment,” Lizzie supplied quietly.

Kieron sighed. “How did you know what I was thinking, hmm?”

“You haven’t blinked in nearly a minute, Kee. I assumed it was a reaction to the planet, and that the mostly likely cause was the unexpected appearance of it.”

“Good assumption.” He rubbed his eyes, which were rather dry now. “You’ve got the landing coordinates, I take it?”

“I do.”

“I’ll let you handle taking us in, then.” He glanced at Pol, who was also rapt at the striking image of Gania. “Ready to see your mother?”

“Yes,” Pol whispered, reaching out and taking Kieron’s hand. Kieron gave him a gentle squeeze as they neared the planet, finally descending through the atmosphere and heading toward Chelen, Elanus’s home city. The mercy fleet followed suit, and soon they were all landing at a large, well-appointed space dock at the edge of the metropolis, held up on elevated platforms.

The city itself was an amazing sight, with buildings so tall that they seemed to create their own ecosystem of light and dark, heat and cold. Kieron was sure he saw clouds drifting off one of the larger ones—perhaps created by releasing water into the sky? Why bother, though? He’d have to ask Elanus…whenever he saw him, which likely wouldn’t be for hours yet.

City officials came in a delegation to meet them, along with immigrations experts and several lawmen. After reviewing documentation with both Kieron and Captain Hu, they allowed the passengers to be released from the ships. The first person off a mercy fleet vessel was Xilinn, and the second Pol saw her he dropped Kieron’s hand and ran with all his speed toward his mother. She cried out and opened her arms to him, and then…

It felt too personal to watch. That had to be the reason that Kieron’s eyes were tearing up. Or perhaps he was just too tired to do this right now, too tired for more lines and more questions and more demands. He’d done so much already, more emotional lifting than he’d ever done before in his life. The physical was something he could handle, but this? And now it was almost over, and he was more exhausted than ever, and all he wanted was…

A warm hand on his shoulder made Kieron spin around, but his body knew who it was even as his mind briefly panicked. He immediately leaned into Elanus’s tall frame, burying his face against the other man’s chest. Elanus smelled like lightning and fresh rain and machine oil, like he’d been in his workshop right before flying here like some sort of angel. He held Kieron up with ease, which made it that much easier for Kieron to allow himself to sag, just a little bit.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Elanus laughed. “I never thought I’d be reduced to monosyllables like this, but I suppose you’re always surprising to me.”

“Mm.” Kieron’s hands tightened across the back of Elanus’s shirt.

“Mm indeed.” Miraculously, Elanus shut up and just let Kieron hold onto him after that. This, this was what he needed, what he’d been missing. Someone who wasn’t a dependent, or a beloved child, or a fellow professional he needed to keep at a distance. He’d been missing his partner, the understanding and support that only that person could give him. He had a partner. Not just someone he loved, but someone who made him feel like everything was going to be all right, because they were together again.

“I’ve got you,” Elanus said at last with the faintest tremor in his voice. “I’ve got you.”

Good.

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Thirty: Part One

 Notes: Time for some PARENTAL DISCIPLINE, because you knew the girls would meddle when they got the chance.

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Thirty, Part One

***

Chapter Thirty, Part One

 

Kieran should have counted on the girls.

To hell with that; Elanus should have counted on the girls. He’d programmed them, after all—made them into the thinking, feeling, whole-person beings they were. Catie was brilliant and Lizzie was right there with her, and Lizzie had already managed to surprise Kieron more than once. Analyzing risk factors, creating code that acted better than any shield, working together to do something far more efficient and safer than their parents could—that was them. And they did it so well that Kieron was completely taken aback when, on the second standard day, still three hundred thousand kilometers inside Trakta’s orbit, he found himself being woken out of a fitful sleep by the leader of a mercy fleet out of Daenar.

“Lizzie, this is Captain Kingston Hu of the relief vessel Caladrius. We’re nearing the indicated coordinates, please advise.”

Kieron tried to pull away from Pol, who whined in his sleep and clung to Kieron’s shirt. The boy had been hard to deal with over the past standard day, careening from wildly excited about reuniting with his mother to terrified everything was going to fall apart. His anxiety had passed straight on to Kieron, who didn’t know how to handle it—he’d trained himself out of the physiological reflexes of anxiety as a child, and trying to understand how to deal with Pol’s state was harder than it should have been. It had ended with both of them exhausted, on the verge of breaking from too much, too quickly.

“Captain Hu, this is Captain Kieron Carr of the Lizzie,” Lizzie said before Kieron could dislodge—and probably wake up—Pol. “Thank you for responding so quickly. I trust the signal spoofers are working well for you?”

“Brilliantly,” Captain Hu said in an appreciative tone. “I have to thank you for these. They work better than anything I’ve ever seen before.”

“We have some very smart engineers on staff,” Lizzie-as-Kieron demurred. “Do you need any assistance linking up with the refugee ship?”

“No, this part we’ve got down to a science. As long as there are no problems, I anticipate we’ll be able to get all of them on board before shift change, no more than four hours.”

“Excellent. Did you bring your scrappers? I know in the contract negotiations you mentioned needing aurellium, and given that their ship is Traktan, it’s likely to contain several kilograms of it in the circuitry.”

“Yes, and thank you for pointing that out! We…” Captain Hu and Lizzie kept chatting, and Kieron…well, he knew he ought to get up and take over. Knew he ought to speak for himself, to be himself, to take command, but…the truth was, he didn’t know the details of what Lizzie was talking about. He knew about the mercy fleet, of course, but that was as far as he’d gotten before Pol broke down. It shouldn’t have mattered—they weren’t supposed to show up for another full day, plenty of time to make decisions and run them by Elanus, but instead…here they were. Now. Transferring refugees, and Kieron had apparently slept right through everything that had led to this point.

[Are you hearing this?] he sent along his implant to Elanus. There was a pause, and then—

[Catie! Did you help your sister subvert an entire fleet into doing your bidding?]

[Um…] Those were Catie’s harmonics in his mind, pink and bright…and sheepish. [Maaaybe? But it is a mercy fleet, Daddeee! Just nooot the oriiiginal one. Theyyy’re headed to another disaster now, so weeee could have the clooose one.]

[Catie.] There was a sense of Elanus very deliberately pausing, probably reining in his anger. He tried to do that when he was talking to the girls. [That’s not your call to make. You can’t just take over communications for entire fleets and reroute vessels because you feel like it!]

[Weeee didn’t! Lizzie said Kieron was siiiiick and needed Pol’s mamaaaa! This will get her moooore quickly!]

[Not the point, young lady!]

There was an electronic huff. [Just because yooooou’re old and slooow and huuuuuuman, doesn’t mean weeee should be puniiished for—]

[It’s not that,] Kieron interrupted before Catie could go full temper tantrum on Elanus. [You’ve both shown a lot of initiative with taking the lead on this. You’ve come up with some brilliant plans, and I’m proud of that, but. Catie, you didn’t tell us what was going on. You and Lizzie didn’t even bother to inform us, much less ask us.]

[Lizzie said you were tiiiiired,] Catie whined.

[It’s true,] he said. The colors inside Lizzie were warbling between warm and cold—she knew they were talking about her. She was probably listening in. [I was. I am. But that’s not a good enough reason to leave me out of the loop. What if things went wrong? What if the mercy fleet you rerouted ended up in trouble because of it, or if their captain had an alternate reason for wanting to come into Traktan space? And what about what you gave him to get them here? Your spoofing algorithms are cutting edge, the best…and now they’re in the hands of someone we don’t know, that we haven’t vetted, someone who could use them for all sorts of things that aren’t legal and could hurt a lot of people. Do you see where I’m going with this?]

[But…I thought we were doing good!] This was Lizzie. [I thought you would be happy, Kee.]

[I’m happy you’re looking out for me,] he assured her. [Less happy you’re giving away what should be very specialized information to a man we’ve never met before without any sort of failsafe. The Traktan refugees aren’t having fun, it’s true, and Pol does need his mother, and I am sick and tired. But that’s life, honey. We get through the tough times and end up safer, or at least I hope we do. In this case? Now we don’t know.]

[Oh.] That was both girls, Catie sounding contrite, Lizzie sounding devastated. [We’re sorry.]

[You should be!] Elanus finally couldn’t contain himself anymore! [Why do you have to be so smart? I should have given you both slower processors, it would keep you from growing up so fast and getting to the point where you want to argue over everything, and—what’s next? Huh? You decide someone’s been mean to Kieron so you invade their planet? You think Pol needs his own moon so you steal the tech you need to swipe it for him? After we get these people back to Gania, you girls are grounded, do you hear me? No connectivity for a week!]

[Daddeeeee!] Catie wailed. Lizzie didn’t say anything. [That’s not faaaair!]

[Neither is going behind our backs to arrange all of this. Be happy it isn’t for a month.] He closed his link, and a moment later Catie closed hers too, although not before she sang a little song at Kieron. That left him alone with Lizzie.

[Are you really angry at me?] she asked after a moment.

[I’m not angry, I’m just a little disappointed.] He wasn’t expecting her to wail when he said that, but she did, all the colors around him going dark, muddy purple.

[I’m sorry,] Lizzie said in a small voice. [I thought it was helping you.]

[It was, in a way. But it’s also not good that you negotiated in my name, with someone I don’t know, and went so far as to imitate me over the comm without asking my permission.] Pol stirred again, and Kieron sighed and tried to hold still. [But I know you won’t do it again.]

[No, I won’t. I promise.]

[Good. Thank you.] Reaching out, he patted the wall of the ship. “It’s okay,” he murmured out loud. “It’s all going to be okay.”

And the purple slowly lightened to blue.