Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Nine, Part One

 Notes: Oooh baby, we're cooking now! Prepare to meet someone even more annoying than Elanus ;)

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Nine, Part One

***

Chapter Nine, Part One

 

It wasn’t sulking. Kieron wasn’t the type of person who sulked. He was brisk, he was professional, he was prepared to do his job. He absolutely wasn’t sulking when he didn’t bother to open his door when Elanus knocked, or when he ignored the slice of pizza on a plate left outside of it, or when he did his pre-flight check in total silence while Elanus hovered nearby, watching him with eyes as dark and consuming as a black hole. It wasn’t sulking, it was self-defense.

Who knew he’d be so sensitive about being called out on his heritage? Zakari and his family had never mentioned it, because they were kind and understanding and not beautiful, rich, self-entitled assholes. It was the sense of hurt he got from the question that bothered Kieron the most. Why should he be hurt? He didn’t care what anyone thought of him, so why should he care when it came to Elanus?

He wasn’t sure why he cared, but he did. That, more than anything, hurt. It was so much better when Kieron was alone, and nobody could make him feel anything. It was so easy to be cool, calm, and controlled when he was alone. Maintaining that sort of control over himself had been one of his biggest sources of satisfaction since he’d first gotten off of the colony. Losing that control now was…disconcerting.

“All right.” He set his helmet in the Lizzie’s other driver’s seat. He was in his greenie suit, mostly because he knew it annoyed the hell out of Elanus. “I should be back in two hours. You’ll be able to monitor communications from the main console as long as an especially big asteroid doesn’t block the way.”

“Great. Fantastic. Shiny.” He didn’t move, though.

So much for trying the indirect route. “You can go now.” Kieron enunciated each word slowly and clearly.

“I don’t know if I should let you go, Sparky.”

Kieron felt like tearing his hair out. It was amazing how fast Elanus Desfontaines could evaporate his veneer of control. “You need to make up your fucking mind, because I’m tired of trying to figure out what you want only to be slapped down when you change for the seventieth time.”

Elanus stared at him in disconcerting quietude for another minute, then nodded and left. Just like that, without a parting shot or a final insult or any of the things that Kieron had honestly expected. He was immediately on edge, because what, but he was more ready to take advantage of the escape route being offered. He shut the doors, got the engine purring, and a few minutes later was heading back into the asteroid field, with Lizzie responding beautifully to his most minute adjustments. Elanus might be an asshole, but at least the man knew what he was doing when it came to repairs. Maybe he had a few redeeming qualities.

“So, now that I’ve got you alone…”

Ugh. Kieron tried to ignore the radio. Unfortunately, safety protocol didn’t allow him to shut it off completely, which meant that even though he had no intention of responding to his irritating companion, he couldn’t avoid listening to him.

“I was thinking that I ought to apologize to you. For something. I guess for calling you a killer, but let’s be honest, that’s the buzz when it comes to the Hadrian colony and you’d probably be offended if I implied you were nothing but a big soft catterpet.”

Fuck you, I’m not a catterpet.

“I bet you’re being offended right now, aren’t you?”

Fuck you times two.

“It’s okay, it’s not like I can tell from here, except I think I kind of can. If you really didn’t care, you would have finished the pizza with me. How you could let it get all gross and congealed outside your room—that’s just wasteful, Kieron. It’s not like you’ve got a friendly dog to clean up after you here, which…do you think we should rescind that rule? Let people bring pets onto the station?”

Absolutely not, are you insane?

“Probably not. The smarter ones might end up getting into places they really shouldn’t be, and a lot of them aren’t as resilient to radiation as we are. So to speak. Actually, now that we’re talking about that—”
We’re not talking about anything, you are talking about everything.

“I understand that the greenies are, like, your own personal form of pacifier, but it’s a little insulting that you don’t trust my technology to keep you safe after you’ve seen it in action. I mean, c’mon, the Lizzie is amazing and you know it. No other ship—apart from Catalina, of course, but she’s more than just a ship—could do so well for you out there. Do you honestly think that greenie suit is going to save you if something goes that catastrophically wrong? You’d get, what, another ten minutes of life out of it? Fifteen, if you were really lucky? What could you do with that?”

Not listen to you, which would be a pretty good way to spend the last ten minutes of my life. Even as he thought it, Kieron didn’t really believe it though. There was something about Elanus, something in addition to his profusion of irritating qualities, which made being with him kind of…enjoyable. Even when he was being a terrible human being, which had been most of the time so far.

“My point,” Elanus droned on like he didn’t have a care in the world, like Kieron didn’t need all his concentration for getting back to the part of the asteroid field where they’d identified Catalina’s call, “is that you should have a little more faith in me. I’m flippant, but I’m not an idiot. Why do you think I let you get away with benching me today? Even I can acknowledge when I’m in the wrong.”

Not directly, apparently.

“You’re probably calling bullshit on me in your head, but it’s true. I could have forced things, but I didn’t, because I respect your opinion. I respect you, and I’m telling you that out loud because I think you might not see that, but I feel like you should know it. I can’t even imagine how hard it must have been to come from a place like Hadrian’s colony and end up even a semi-decent human being—”

Thanks for that gracious evaluation.

“—and you’re way more than semi-decent, I’d go so far as to call you ‘exemplary’ if it wasn’t for your inclination toward smacking me, but—kkksht—kkksshtkk—kkkkkkkttteeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

Elanus’s voice broke up in the wake of the sudden interference. Now that Kieron knew what he was listening for, he could identify the particular harmonics that marked this metallic cry as Catalina. Elanus’s baby was still screaming.

Kieron found himself gritting his teeth, and forced himself to stop. He released the latest round of drones, and watched as they spread out in a glittering array in front of him through the viewscreen, shiny silver balls twisting and correcting as they made their way in between the asteroids between him and Catalina. Hopefully they’d come up with more specific information this time, something that would let him get close enough to—

One of them suddenly blipped out. The occasional impact wasn’t unheard of, but that had been fast. Kieron watched with first curiosity, then dismay as another drone vanished, then another, then another. After five minutes, fifty percent of them were gone, and the data coming from the rest of them was what could only be called “garbled.” What the hell was going on out there?

“Impact detection,” Lizzie’s AI announced.

Impact? What impact? He hadn’t felt a thing. Kieron checked the instruments, looking for the damaged panel, and found nothing. “Locate impact,” he said.

“Front dorsal panel.”

That was right on top of him. Kieron glanced up automatically, but of course he didn’t see anything. What the—

“Hello there,” a new voice suddenly said. This wasn’t a person he’d heard before, but the accent was familiar. Male, older, curled his vowels like a lock of hair around a finger—this had to be Elanus’s partner, Deysan Moritz.

How the hell was he broadcasting through all this space junk?

“Whoever you are, I’ve got a proposition for you. I suggest you hear me out before making any rash decisions. Otherwise, I’ll have to detonate the bomb I stuck to your ship.” The man laughed. “My little trinkets are pretty good at hunting down energy signatures, aren’t they? I took out most of your drones that way. Don’t think I won’t do the same to you.”

Oh. Oh, fuck.

That wasn’t good.

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Eight, Part Two

 Notes: TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK! TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP--you get the idea ;)

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Eight, PartTwo

***

Chapter Eight, Part Two

 

The pizza, sitting at the back of the station’s industrial freezer, had been there since time immemorial. Kieron honestly wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out after he put it into the oven, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually pretty delicious. Of course, he’d grown up on soldier’s rations and whatever he could scrounge off the ground when he was a child, so anything digestible fell into the “good” range for him.

Elanus, presumably, had a more refined palate. The fact that he was eating the pizza with every sign of enjoyment as well was a bit of a relief. “So,” he said in the middle of his third slice, “first things first, we repair the Lizzie. That shouldn’t take me too long—she’s not as good at self-repair as Catalina is, but she’s lightyears better than the human-centric hulks most people fly. Then, take two, we head out again and—”

“Probes,” Kieron cut in. “Those come next. Now that we’ve narrowed down your ex partner’s location, we’ll do a lot better with a new round of probes to update the maps.”

Elanus pouted. “Boring.”

“And after that,” Kieron continued like Elanus wasn’t being obnoxious, “I’ll be the one going out in the Lizzie while you stay here and keep recovering.”

“Oh, no.” Elanus shook his head and put his slice of pizza down. “No, no, no. The Lizzie is my ship, I’m the one who does the flying.”

“Not when you’re recovering from broken ribs, you’re not.”

Elanus made a “pssht” sound. “What, these old things? They’ll be fine by tomorrow!”

“They’ll still be very fragile. One wrong move could have you writhing on the floor of your ship again at a crucial moment. It’s a serious safety issue. For me too,” Kieron added when he saw Elanus open his mouth to object again. “If you really want to get this done as quickly as possible, then you’ll let me take the Lizzie out tomorrow while you monitor from here. This is just going to be another prep mission, mostly working with probes and sensors, so it’s not like you’ll be missing a lot.”

“But what if it’s more than that?” Elanus’s voice had gone low and intense, his eyes feverish. “What if you find my baby? What if Catalina reaches out to you and you don’t even realize it because you don’t understand her?”

“It’s not like I’m going halfway across the galaxy,” Kieron said with an eyeroll. “We’ll be within transmitting distance. You’ll hear and see everything that I do.”

“That’s not—”

“This is the reality,” Kieron insisted, abruptly done with negotiating. Fuck, he was so sick of Elanus pushing and pushing and pushing all the time, and never taking a moment to step back and realize that in fact, maybe things would have gone a little better if they’d taken it slow.

You know things are bad when you’re being the voice of reason.

“You can either suck it up and watch from the station, or we can send probes in from here, probably lose half of them on the way, and not go out until I’m assured that your ribs aren’t going to poke through your chest wall or impale one of your organs,” Kieron continued. “But I’m not going to risk your life just to get to your ship a few minutes or hours or even days earlier. And if Catalina is as impressive as you say, and she loves you as much as you claim, then she wouldn’t want you to do that either.”

Elanus sat back, a pensive expression on his face. “Why do you really care?”

“Why do I care about what?”

“About my health. It’s not the safety issue, you could just knock me out again. If it’s about the liability you’d face, there is none. My condition is well-documented and you won’t incur any sort of penalty if I were to die here.”

“I don’t want to have to knock you out again. And you realize you just cleared the way for me to kill you if I wanted to,” Kieron pointed out. “That’s not very smart.”

“You’re not going to kill me,” Elanus replied. “You’re not even tempted to, which puts you in pretty rarified company when it comes to people who have to be in close quarters with me for any period of time. I have to say, it’s…surprising.” He tilted his head. “Weren’t you raised to be a killer? What’s keeping you from doing it, especially now that there’s no fear of retaliation?”

Kieron wasn’t sure if he felt angry, sick, or hurt. Maybe a mix of all three. He dropped his own piece of pizza, pushed the serving plate toward Elanus, and got to his feet. “I’m done. Put whatever you don’t want in the recycler. Let me know when you’re done with repairs.”

“Kieron, c’mon—”

He didn’t even pause on his way to the door. “Also, fuck you.”

“Kieron.”

But he didn’t stay to hear it. He didn’t want to listen to the first person who knew the truth about his origin in so long—since Zakari—ask him why he wasn’t a heartless murderer. Because of course, what else could come from a place as awful as Hadrian’s colony? What else could grow there, on the surface of that dark planet, barely illuminated by the distant, cold dwarf star that had kept them in a perpetual winter? What was there to do for anyone from that awful place, except fight against all comers in the race to be the best? The most cold, the most cruel, the most ruthless. Someone like his grandfather.

Someone like his mother.

“Kieron!”

No. He wasn’t ready for more yet. He had to paper over his weaknesses first. He entered his quarters, shut the door behind him, enabled all the locks, and turned on the soundproofing.

Maybe a few hours of meditation would help.

Or a few days’ worth.

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Eight, Part One

 Notes: All's well that ends well! Or at least, all's not hopeless and everyone is still alive, so...yay?

Title: Cloverleaf Station, Chapter Eight, Part One

***

Chapter Eight, Part One

 

In the quiet of the infirmary, Kieron glanced at Elanus’s vitals for what felt like the hundredth time since he’d gotten the man in here. Stable. Normal. His brain function was fine, his blood chemistry was fine…looking at him now, you’d never guess that less than an hour ago, he’d been on the verge of a fatal hematoma to the brain after suffering two broken ribs. Apparently one of them had come perilously close to puncturing one of his kidneys.

Great. Just great. Kieron had nearly killed his boss. Fan-fucking-tastic.

The urge to sink into a familiar well of despair called to him, but he fought it off and used his implant to query the larger computer database. He directed the results to be sent to his tab—reading for too long inside his own head made him dizzy—and began to read up on humanity’s issues with Regen and how they could manifest.

The most common issue with Regen was total rejection, either in the form of simple allergies or a perilously complex inability to use the technology at all. The allergies could be cured with time and a lot of genetic exposure therapies, but people who couldn’t use Regen at all—dubbed Naturals—were shit out of luck. They didn’t get the benefits of Regen, the slowed aging and increased health and massive boost to healing. They simply lived like humans had lived for hundreds of thousands of years before Regen existed, and they died that way too.

Elanus wasn’t a Natural, that was clear. In the modified Regen tank, his body was taking the therapy very well, if in a highly targeted way. The healing fluid was only allowed in contact with the parts of his body that had been damaged—everything else was left alone.

Okay, that was a clue. Kieron did a little more winnowing. Not an allergy…probably not the result of a strange drug interaction…probably not the result of the guy getting on the bad side of an organ harvester…gah. There were just too many results to go through. The universe was a big place, and the reasons for Regen to fail were growing all the time thanks to new generations of genetic modification and—ah.

AI, show Gania-specific, population-wide, Regen-related diseases.

Aha, there it was, right there at the top. An autoimmune disorder expressed by five percent of the male population of Gania, point-two percent of the female population.

Elfshot Disease. That’s a fanciful name. Ganians, Kieron was slowly learning, were a strangely fanciful people. At least Elanus was.

Back to the description. Random internal attacks…weakening of cell structures…periods of intense decline and equally intense improvement…inability to undergo full Regen submersion… Oh god, the pictures of the Ganians who had been fully submerged in Regen were hideous, their bodies growing out of control as their capricious immune systems took “healing” as “assault.” When the therapy was targeted and carefully controlled, though, the Regen worked exactly as it was meant to. Apparently there was a damage threshold in there somewhere, although the text said it was different for every one of the afflicted.

Kieron was grateful he hadn’t gone over it. Bad enough he was going to be tossed out into space after assaulting his boss so badly the man had to get fucking Regen for it, he’d really be dead if—

No. He needed to calm down. There were extenuating circumstances, and those were firmly on Kieron’s side. Elanus had been out of control, so focused on finding Catalina that he hadn’t cared about the damage the Lizzie was taking. Much deeper into that asteroid field and the ship would have been too damaged to make it back to Cloverleaf, and then they’d have had the distinct displeasure of dying of radiation together once the Lizzie’s shields failed, if they weren’t pulverized by asteroids first.

Kieron could argue that to a court. He had visuals, he had data, he had the ship itself as evidence. He can’t get rid of you yet. It should have felt reassuring, but sitting there watching the purplish-blue bruise he’d put on Elanus’s temple slowly vanish under the effect of the Regen, all Kieron felt was guilty.

He hated that he felt emotionally invested enough to feel guilty, but there was something about Elanus that seemed to sweep Kieron along with him. He was so…lively, and to a person who’d been expecting to spend nearly half a standard year by himself out here on the station, that liveliness was both obnoxious and thrilling.

“You stare as loudly as you speak,” Elanus said.

Kieron startled right out of his chair. He’d been so wrapped up in his own head that he’d missed the signs that treatment was ending. His pulse raced, and half a dozen questions fought their way toward his lips. What the hell was going on out there? Why didn’t you tell me you have Elfshot Disease? Do you realize you could have gotten us both killed?

In the end, “How do you feel?” was the one that came out first. Kieron was a little disappointed with himself for that.

“Practically perfect in every way,” Elanus quipped, staring down at his body, so carefully arranged in the modified Regen tank. “It looks like you did an adequate job of getting me back to fighting fit.”

“Your ribs won’t be a hundred percent for another day,” Kieron said without inflection.

“Ah, well, ribs. Always a little tetchy, those.” Elanus turned his head to look at Kieron and smiled. “Calm down, would you? None of the terrible things you’re thinking about are going to happen.”

What?

Fortunately, Kieron didn’t have to ask that question out loud. Elanus seemed to read it right off his face.

“Look, this was my fault. I get that. I went too far out there, and because I hadn’t told you about my condition, your reaction ended up causing a bit more of a mess than it needed to.”

“A bit more of a mess?” Kieron echoed. “I almost killed you. You were bleeding into your brain, you—you had two seizures on the way back to the station, you could have had a stroke, this could have been fatal.”

“I’ve almost been killed over fifty times since I was first diagnosed,” Elanus said blithely, detaching the headpiece and sitting up in the tank. “Once more doesn’t really qualify as an emergency at this point.” Liquid sloshed around him, and he blinked down at his body. “You kept my shorts on.”

“I wasn’t about to strip you naked,” Kieron retorted.

“Aw, too bad. Anyway, the point is, I should have been more forthcoming about myself, and I wasn’t, and for that I’m sorry. But look!” He grinned at Kieron. “Here we both are, no worse for wear, with several mysteries solved and a firm goal ahead of us. I’d say the day has been a complete win.” He held up a hand. “And before you think about hitting me or grabbing me or anything else again, I ask that you remember I’m a fragile flower in need of gentle treatment.” His eyes sparkled. “Two near-death experiences in one day is a new record for me, after all.”

You…I…this…

Kieron startled himself by laughing. He hadn’t intended to. A diatribe about personal responsibility had been right there, on the tip of his tongue, and instead he was laughing so hard he was almost gasping, laughing like he hadn’t laughed for years. It was the relief. The stress. It had to be—Elanus wasn’t that funny. But whatever it was, Kieron welcomed it. He didn’t even flinch away from Elanus’s feather-light touch to his shoulder.

“There you are,” he said with satisfaction. “Now, move so I can go clean up and get into some fresh clothes. Then we’ll talk. And eat, I’m starving.”

Kieron wiped his eyes, fighting down the urge to hiccup. “I’ll get out a pizza,” he said.

Elanus’s mouth dropped open. “You told me there were no pizzas!”

“I lied.”