Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty, Part One

 Notes: Time to revisit our old foe...or, kind of. Talk about him, at least. Let's see just how crazy Elanus can get!

(Also,in case anyone is wondering, some of these kiddo conversations come directly from the source in my home. For example, my child went to daycare today in rainbow sequined parachute pants, a neon My Little Pony shirt, and magenta sequined shoes. Yes, she picks her own outfits. It makes her very proud.)

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty, Part One

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Chapter Twenty, Part One

 

Kieron waited longer to do it than he thought he would. Longer than he should have, probably. He meant to do it right when he was finished talking to Xilinn, but then he got to the hangar and Elanus was rolling through a series of holograms so rapid-fire Kieron couldn’t even make most of them out, and with each one he got either a high-pitched “Yeeees!” or a low, rumbly “Noooo!”

There were a lot more “nooooo”s than the other way around, and he finally pushed the holograms away and said, “Honestly, if you’re going to be so picky why don’t you just design your new skin yourself?”

“Because I want youuu to dooo iiiit!”

“Well I want to do it too, but you’re not giving me much to work with, Catie!”

Kieron stifled a smirk as he heard Elanus refer to Catalina as “Catie.” He’d been adamantly against nicknaming her, claiming childhood trauma—“Do you have any idea what kids do with a name like mine? They don’t shorten it to ‘El,’ that’s for damn sure”—but he’d finally broken. Or maybe he didn’t even realize he was doing it. Either way, it made Kieron happy to hear. It was one small way he’d continue to have a presence in their lives even once they’d gone their separate ways.

“What’s wrong with this one?” Elanus asked, pulling up another hologram. This was a maze of swirling lights, sometimes blossoming into flower-like shapes, other times sinking into deep pools of solid color.

“It’s too briiiiight.”

“Since when do you not like bright? Since when do you not like to color yourself like a dozen rainbows got vomited all over a canvas?”

“Since foreeeever! I’m a biiiig girl nowww!”

“Too big for rainbows? Can you even get too big for rainbows?”

“Daddeee! Do a different ooone!”

“Fine, fine.” He swiped through some more imaged until he came up with something pebbly and fine-grained. “How about dinosaur skin? You could even have it in just one, regular, boring color if you want to.”

“Mageeeenta.”

Elanus made a startled sound. “You want me to fly around in a magenta ship? Do you want me to lose all the respect of my peers? Do you want them to laugh at me every time we land? Is that what you want?”

“Mageeenta, Daddee! And feathers!”

“Feath…why would I put feathers on a—how would we even do feathers on you? How is that supposed to work?”

“Dinosaurs did have feathers, you know,” Kieron offered from the doorway. Elanus spun around to look at him, his face momentarily brightening before he put a stern expression back on. Catalina burst into a song of greeting, finishing up with a trilling “eeeee” that tapered off into a register Kieron couldn’t even hear.

“Yes, of course I know dinosaurs had feathers, Doctor Obvious, everyone with the slightest knowledge of ancient Earth paleontology knows that dinosaurs had feathers. I’m just not sure how they’re supposed to be incorporated into a new skin for my ever-so-picky child here.”

“Maybe a different pattern along the thrusters and up at her nose,” Kieron suggested, walking over to Catalina and shaping the idea of it with his hands. “Something arcing back like this…in a complementary color to magenta, which—I have no clue what that would be, that’s entirely up to you.”

“Oh gee, thanks. I think—”

“I liiiike iit!” Catalina hummed gleefully. “Pretty feathers for my front and baaack! And top!”

“Why not just cover you in feathers while we’re at it?” Elanus asked with an exaggerated sigh. “Why not just make you look like a bird instead of a dinosaur?”

“Okaaaay. I’ll look for pretty biiiirds and piiick one!”

“Catie, I—” But her lights had already dimmed, a sign that she’d turned her attention to other things. It wasn’t that she couldn’t split her focus—her brain was designed to perform hundreds of complex functions at once. But, and Kieron knew she’d gotten this from her father, she tended to hone in intensely on one thing at a time when it came to external interactions. It made her a little broody, but Kieron appreciated her thoughtfulness.

“A bird.” Elanus looked at Kieron and raised one eyebrow. “She wants to look like a bird now. Probably a magenta one, given my luck. I’m going to be laughed out of conferences for showing up in a ship that looks like it should be flocking ahead of the storm.”

Kieron didn’t understand the idiom, but he let it pass. “Would you really?”

Elanus scoffed. “No, of course not. Are you kidding me? I could refuse every conference for the next ten years and people would still be begging me to attend on year eleven, asking for a closer look at my baby. When I say she’s advanced, that’s me doing my best to be modest.”

“And you don’t really do modest in the first place.”

“Not in the slightest.” Elanus paused. “So…how did the big reveal go?”

Kieron sighed. “There were tears. It was uncomfortable.”

“You’re doing a very good thing for your friend’s wife, of course there were tears.”

For more reasons than you know. But Kieron didn’t want to get into a conversation about fundamentalism on Thakta right now. He had something else to talk about. He cleared his throat. “I need to speak to you about something.”

Elanus’s hand froze over his projector. “Sounds serious,” he said, his voice casual but his posture already screaming discomfort.

“It is. This doesn’t have to be a bad conversation, though.”

“Why would it be bad?”

“Because I want to know what you’re planning on doing with Deysan Moritz.”

Elanus’s nostrils flared slightly, like he’d just smelled something off. “I already told you—I’m going to turn him over to the authorities on Gania as soon as—”

“No.” Kieron watched Elanus’s facile mouth flatten into a hard line. “Tell me the truth.”

“That is the truth.”

“It isn’t. Not the complete truth, at least. I haven’t looked down in the containment room where you’re keeping him,” Kieron said, feeling tired. He didn’t want to ruin the happy, comfortable thing they had together, but he wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t figure out the truth. Cloverleaf Station, for now, was under his command despite his “boss” being there. “But I will if you don’t tell me what you’re doing to him.”

There was a long pause, and then— “Nothing. Yet. He’s in cryo for the moment.”

That made sense. The cryo containers in the storage areas were capable of holding everything from complex living beings to deadly viral strains if necessary. “And after the cryo?”

Elanus smiled. It wasn’t a beautiful smile. It certainly wasn’t a happy one. “After the cryo? Well, when he finally wakes up, I plan on having relocated his brain and spinal column into a rudimentary, bio-compatible bot. Probably one shaped like a box, that I can shove into a corner and sit on. I’ll give him rudimentary senses and particularly good vision, but I’ll take away all of his physical autonomy and then I’ll use him like the good for nothing piece of shit he is, so he can see how he likes being at someone else’s mercy.

“And when I’m done playing with his emotions and have done my level best to drive him insane, I’ll jettison his box into space and let him float in agony for as long as his batteries keep his brain alive. That’s my plan.” He spread his hands. “What are you going to do about it?”