Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Ten, Part One

 Notes: Time to get some good, old-fashioned radiation poisoning in the name of rescuing the damsel in distress. When Kieron goes wild, he really goes.

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Ten, Part One

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Chapter Ten, Part One

 

It only took a minute to triangulate the most likely position of Catalina and her domineering passenger given the size of the asteroids out there and where the probes had been left active. That was one more minute Kieron didn’t have to spare before traversing the space between them. Closing up the greenie suit, bringing a probe back into grabbable range, and collecting the one thing he thought might actually save his life once he found Catalina took more time he didn’t have. Once he opened up Lizzie, the clock really began. He approximated his survival in the greenie at exactly twelve minutes, but for the last three and a half of those he’d probably be either in agony or unconscious from radiation poisoning.

He was going to have to spend so much time in the fucking Regen tank if he survived this.

“All right,” he whispered to himself, programming the course into his implant and linking it up with the probe waiting just outside Lizzie’s door. “Time to go.” He forced his way through the safeguards, opened up the hatch, and…

Felt nothing, not even a tingle. That was the insidious thing about radiation poisoning—it started so subtly. He’d probably feel better than usual in another few minutes, which was good because he was going to need the boost in order to navigate the asteroids between here and Catalina, especially since some of them were armed with explosives.

Kieron gripped the probe, then triggered it with the route he’d picked out. Its little exhaust ports puffed, and a second later they were underway.

Most of the asteroids were easy to see coming. The probe adjusted its course automatically, taking in the data its fellows broadcasted and carrying him unerringly forward. Kieron overlaid the route on the faceplate of his helmet, using his implant to check and double-check that things were going according to plan. So far, so good. They were a third of the way to where he expected Catalina was, and he still had six minutes of probably decent physical health before things got bad. At this rate he’d—

The probe suddenly darted down, pulling so abruptly Kieron almost lost his grip on it. A second later he noticed a small, reddish cylinder with a bright green light on one end dart through the space they’d just occupied. One of Moritz’s explosives, no doubt.

He recognized the type—once they stuck tight, they were triggered. The timer for each of them could be independently controlled, but messing with them meant setting them off. Kieron was vaguely grateful that he’d opted not to waste time fucking with the one stuck to Lizzie—that was going to be a job for future-Kieron, or more likely future-Elanus. Right now, he needed to make sure he survived this tenacious floating bomb.

What did he have, what did he…ah. Fumbling a little, Kieron reached for the compartment on the probe that held its solar sail. The probes almost never lasted long enough to need the solar sail for power out here, but they came standard with this model. Kieron grasped for it, his eyes on the cylinder that kept darting back and forth, like a fish hunting through dark water for prey as it came closer and closer to them. He needed to get something in front of it, needed to distract it before it got any closer, because it was definitely getting closer. Uncomfortably close, close enough that he could see the flicker in its light, close enough that he could watch the lens reshape itself as it zoomed in on him. If this thing was broadcasting an image back to Moritz, he was fucked.

Not as fucked as if he let himself be blown up right now, though. Finally, finally Kieron got the probe’s solar sail out. Detaching it from the casing, he triggered it to expand and threw it in the direction of the explosive. The sail began to spread, glittering as it soaked up all the dim, deadly light from the quasar that it could, a brilliant red octopus floating up through an ink-black ocean—

The explosive found it. There was a moment where the sail crumpled around it, swaddling the device like a child, before it blew up.

There was no concussion wave—nothing to carry it in. The explosive was small enough that it hardly made a dent against the darkness, but it would have been more than enough to end both Kieron and his ride. And he didn’t have another handy sail to distract another one with, so if they were followed again…

The space around them stayed clear, though. The probe got back on track, only losing forty-eight seconds to the detour in the end. Kieron cursed the loss all the same. He was feeling bright now, sprightly, but in that weird way where he also couldn’t quite feel his limbs. Like, he knew they were there, that they and his brain and his heart were all cooking in the fierce radioactive glare, but he couldn’t quite single them out. They were fuzzy, numb and strangely buoyant all at once.

“Where are you,” Kieron muttered as they cleared the next large asteroid. There were only two left of an appropriate size to be hiding Catalina, and also close enough for him to reach before death. He’d counted on it being the first one. Without that help…he held his breath as the probe rounded it, and—

There she was. There was the ship that was Elanus’s child, there was Catalina. She was beautiful, even from this far out—camouflaged to match the surface of the asteroid, but Kieron could still see her silhouette. Versipellious skin, morphable and teachable—magnificent. She was small, but he could already tell that she was something special. As he watched, he saw a faint glow pulse down the ship’s body and back up. Some sort of charging mechanism? How she maintained her anti-radiation shields?

Her heartbeat?

Stop being fanciful. Or rather, it was time to be even more fanciful, but Elanus-style.

There was only one way onto Catalina, and that was through her main hatch, just like with the Lizzie. Undoubtedly, Moritz had commanded her to keep it sealed—had commanded her to do everything she could to preserve his life. As he was her captain while she was out of touch with Elanus, that was all she had to go on. She was a child, obeying a cruel uncle while waiting desperately for her father to come reclaim her. What would she do, if she heard him suddenly?

Well…Kieron hoped she’d let him in. He opened the file that he’d downloaded to his implant and piped it into the greenie’s radio, wincing at the effort it took. Fuck, his brain was starting to resist using the implant. He needed to get this done, fast. Hopefully Catalina didn’t have any proximity alarms ready to trigger, because he was going to have to get close for this.

It had been ten minutes now. Moritz was probably trying to talk to him. Kieron had very little time to make a go of this. Releasing the probe once he was close enough to Catalina that he bumped right up against her hull, he set his hands down on her skin.

Then, he activated the voice file and let Elanus do the talking.