Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty-Five, Part Two

 Notes: DAMN IT, PLOT! I was about to finish this story and then you swept in and--ARG!

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty-Five, Part Two

***

Chapter Twenty-Five, Part Two

 

Kieron moved with purpose through the crowds outside Nephra’s spacedock. Now that he knew what was happening here, he could see evidence of it all over the place—the frenetic way people were haggling with each other over deals that should have been settled way before a face-to-face meeting, the way some folks strutted about with Traktan colors on full display while others looked haunted, wearing neutral shades and none of the insignias of Traktan culture. Citizens versus non? A new layer of separation for a people who had spent so many decades unified?

It was sad, but it wasn’t Kieron’s concern. He was here to put things right for Xilinn and her family and then to move on to his own. Seeing Elanus for the first time in days made the longing Kieron felt for him so much worse, and Catie and Lizzie’s bickering made his heart ache. He wanted them all to be together. More than anything, he wanted that.

He checked his implant, making sure nothing new had come in from Xilinn—not since he was still several days out. She’d requested he meet her at their family home, where a descendancy unit had been temporarily installed to confirm DNA once he arrived. It seemed convoluted to him, but he’d do whatever she wanted. It was time to lay Zak to rest, and put his family’s minds at ease.

He rented a skimmer and let it fly him out of the city center, to the northwestern part of the city, right on the outskirts of the lush, misty forest that covered the northern part of the continent. It was a wild place, only visited by research biologists and pharmaceutical manufacturers, and Kieron had to admit he wasn’t surprised to see the number of ships buzzing over it right now. This forest was one of Trakta’s most precious natural resources. If they were going to be cut off from the Federation, it was vital that they start looking for other ways to take care of themselves.

The skimmer set down outside Xilinn’s house, and after a moment’s consideration, Kieron told it to wait. It would cost more to keep it here, but he wanted to be able to leave quickly if needed. He walked up to Xilinn’s front door and knocked. A few moments later, it opened to show—

Not…Xilinn. It was Laina, one of Zak’s other wives. “Mr. Carr.” She smiled, but it didn’t get as far as her eyes. She looked stiff, like she might shatter if she shut the door too hard. “Thank you for coming.”

“Where’s Xilinn?” Not his most diplomatic moment, but Kieron didn’t give a damn about that. He’d never been particularly close to Zak’s other spouses, and he wasn’t about to be stopped from seeing Xilinn by this one.

“She’s unavailable. She asked me to take the item from you today.”

Kieron saw red. He bit the inside of his lip almost hard enough to draw blood, then gritted out, “What’s inside this box isn’t a fucking item. These are the last remains of your husband, Zakari Zemay, and he deserves to be treated with a little more respect from one of his spouses than being referred to as an ‘item.’”

Somehow Laina managed to stiffen even further. “I think I know better than you the consequences of what you hold. If it is him, which isn’t sure yet as far as I’m concerned, then of course he will be interred with the rest of the family in the crypt. Regardless, your part in this is now over.” She held out her hand expectantly.

Behind her, Kieron caught a glimpse of movement. It was Pol, hunkering behind the stairs, looking somewhere between sad and frantic. He made a motion with his hands, waving Kieron—in? Was he supposed to try and get in?

He looked back at Laina. “Let me apologize,” he said, and her hand wavered as her eyebrows rose. “I don’t have any right to make demands, and I realize this is a difficult thing for you and your family to have to deal with. I’m sorry. It’s been a very long trip, though, and I’m exhausted. I’d really appreciate a cup of tea before I go, and if possible…confirmation that this really is Zak.”

Her posture softened a bit. “I suppose that’s…expected of our hospitality. Come inside.” She moved back and he stepped through the door, disinfecting light touching everything from his shoes to his hair as he came inside.

“No contaminants,” an AI voice intoned. Laina relaxed further.

“Come.” She turned and led the way to the kitchen. Pol was nowhere to be seen now.

The house was large, as all family houses on Trakta were—Zakari, having three spouses, had been in one of the smaller polyfamilial units that Kieron had known about. It was common for families to grow as large as ten spouses, with twenty or more children. They had stopped at four, though. Four spouses, four children…and Xilinn had limited herself to having Pol and Szusza with Zak, whereas Laina had one with each of her husbands.

Speaking of husbands, where was Kriev? Shouldn’t he be here for this is Xilinn couldn’t be? It was a rather important moment, after all.

“Please sit,” Laina said, pointing to a stiff wooden chair before instructing the kitchen to begin making tea for them. Red tea, specifically—Kieron’s least favorite. Which Laina knew, as he’d lived in this house with them for three years.

Kieron was more glad than ever that he’d turned down Zak’s offer to marry in, so long ago.

All through it, Lizzie’s green light shone steadily in the corner of his eye, watching it all quietly. When Laina finally brought the tea and sat down with him, Kieron was prepared. “Thank you,” he said with a small smile. “It’s very gracious of you. I promise not to take up much of your time.”

“I appreciate that.” Laina’s eyes danced over to the climate-controlled box that held Zak’s arm and hand. “That’s really all you found?”

He nodded. “And we were lucky to get that much.”

“We? You took on a new research partner?”

“No, the station got a new boss.” And Kieron didn’t want Laina to know anything about him. He rolled his eyes. “The ‘hands-on’ type, although I think one off-season at Cloverleaf was enough for him.”

“I daresay.” She relaxed a bit more, sipping slowly at her dark red tea. Kieron joined her, holding back his wince as the acidic wash of it coated his tongue and teeth. He lacked the sensory receptors to really appreciate this particular plant like a native Traktan could. “I’m sorry Xilinn couldn’t be here,” she added. “She’s going to be detained in the capital for…some time. It was a very last-minute thing.”

“I’m sure she’d be here if she could.”

“Of course. He was our husband, after all.” Her eyes went back to the box. “Speaking of…if you don’t mind, I should get this into the descendancy unit to ensure its authenticity. The process shouldn’t take more than a minute or two.”

“I understand.” A minute or two. She was going to chuck Zak’s remains into a DNA tester to make sure they were real, no ceremony of homecoming or convocation of the family—it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t right. Xilinn and Kriev and all the children ought to be present for this.

What the hell was going on here?

Laina set down her cup, picked up the box, and left. A few second later, Pol’s head appeared around the kitchen door. “Uncle Kieron!” he whispered. “C’mere!”

The boy looked frantic. Kieron glanced in the direction Laina had left, then chucked his awful tea down the sink and headed for the hall. Pol took his hand and tugged him down the hall and into a small room—Pol’s own room, from the familiar look of the background here. He shut the door and said, “Please, you have to help!”

“Help how?” Kieron asked the little boy, whose teary eyes looked far too big for his face right now. “What’s going on?”

“Mama’s been taken!”

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty-Five, Part One

 Notes: We've made it to Trakta! It's all downhill from here, right? Mmm...maybe not.

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty-Five, Part One

***

Chapter Twenty-Five, Part One

 

By the time they got to Trakta, Kieron and Lizzie had progressed to the point where they spoke for hours every day, sharing stories and facts—she loved facts, loved being able to know things for sure—and playing little games to pass the time. Kieron still got time to himself whenever Catie or Elanus reached out, which he knew he needed, but the novelty of being someone that another person was relying on still hadn’t worn off. He loved Catie, but she would always first and foremost be her father’s child. Lizzie had more of an independent streak, and while she adored Elanus, she was also less inclined to refer to him as “Daddy” or “Father” or any other diminutive. With Kieron, though…

“Kee?”

“Yes, sweetheart?” he asked as he began to go through the stream of navigation guidelines for landing Lizzie on Trakta.

“Do you have to go?”

“What do you mean?”

There was a pause. “Do you have to leave me?” Lizzie finally asked, her voice small. “I don’t want to be alone in the hangar.”

“Oh.” Well, that was… “Um. I have to go somewhere that you can’t precisely fit, but you’re welcome to keep an open line to my implant. That way you can see what I see.”

“I waaaant toooooo!”

Kieron chuckled. “Only one other mind in my head at a time, please. Otherwise I won’t be able to think straight.”

“I asked first,” Lizzie said a bit petulantly.

“Iiiii’m oldeeeerrrr!”

“First come, first served,” Kieron said firmly, and Catie made a whining noise. “If I’m here more than a day, you two can trade off, all right?”

“Wait, you’re only going to stay for a day?” This was Elanus’s voice cutting in now. Kieron felt on the verge of being overwhelmed. He hadn’t talked to all three of them at the same time since leaving Cloverleaf Station. “Seriously? After all that travel, after all that work, you’re just going to hand the hand over and fly?”

“If I’m lucky,” Kieron muttered as Lizzie entered the atmosphere above the smaller second continent of the planet. Elanus, for once, didn’t push him. Kieron was grateful for that.

Trakta was a developed planet, with thousands of cities, but the second continent was comparatively much more rural than the larger primary one. Lizzie followed the flight path that would lead them to the northernmost city, Nephra.

Landing was easy—Lizzie handled it so smoothly Kieron didn’t even think about intervening in any step. Once they’d finally put down in a commercial landing space, though, she asked a bit timidly, “Was that good?”

Kieron smiled and patted her console. “It was perfect. You can follow along on my implant and watch, okay? Remember how we practiced?” Slowly, a soft green light came into focus in the bottom right corner of his vision. “Can you see all right?”

“Yes. Thank you. I can’t wait to see a whole new planet!”

“Or at least part of one,” Kieron amended. His implant was beeping insistently with an incoming communication from the port authority. “Hang on, Lizzie.” He switched his focus. “This is Kieron Carr.”

“Mr. Carr, this is Commander Xelo with Nephra Port North. We’re detecting unusual levels of radiation from your ship.”

“We came here straight from the Cloverleaf Quasar,” Kieron replied. “That’s probably why.”

“Our projections indicate that more of that radiation should have dissipated before your arrival here.”

Lizzie’s hull is an older version of Catie’s radiation shielding. It must be more absorptive. In the background, he could hear Elanus swearing softly over the ship speaker. “I’ll have to perform some diagnostic tests to figure out the issue. Is this going to preclude us from keeping our berth?”

“No,” the voice on the other end of the message said reluctantly, “the levels aren’t quite that high. But we’ll have to keep other ships a farther minimum safe distance from yours. You’ll incur as much as twice the original docking fee.”

“Do it,” Elanus urged him almost silently.

“That’s fine,” Kieron said. “Anything else?”

“If the interior of your ship is poorly shielded, your person may have incurred serious radiation damage on your way here.”

That was possible, but Regen could fix a hell of a lot of radiation damage. Ask me how I know. “I presume you have Regen tanks. If it’s a matter of cost, I can—”

“Regen is for citizen use only.”

Kieron was surprised. “Why is that?” he asked. “Regen gel is a readily available resource, and Federation law states that—”

“Regen is for citizen use only,” the commander reiterated firmly. “If you become sick, you’ll have to return to your ship or leave the planet altogether. Any attempt to circumvent this will be met with force. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” Kieron said quietly.

“Good. You may debark.” The communication ended. A light on the console blinked, informing Kieron that a holo call from Elanus was waiting for him.

Holo calls from this distance took an obscene amount of power. It had to be something serious.

He accepted the call. It was the first time he’d seen Elanus in three weeks, and he looked a bit wild around the edges, the crisp lines of his beard beginning to blur, his hair standing up like he’d been running his fingers through it.

He was gorgeous. Kieron had to clear his throat. “Hi.”

“Trakta is being kicked out of the Federation.”

Kieron closed his eyes for a moment to help get his brain back online. “There hasn’t been any news of that,” he finally said.

“They’re doing their damndest to make sure there isn’t news about it. The Federation severed diplomatic ties last month, and they’ll be pulling out their military assistance and major investments soon. The banking system is on the verge of collapse. Trade is going to be hugely impacted. There will be repercussions felt from this for decades.”

“Why, though?”

“Inclusiveness versus fundamentalism,” Elanus said tiredly. “Trakta’s parliament is passing laws that explicitly go against the Federation charter. They did it knowing they were going to get slapped, and have layers and layers of failsafes in place to make sure word gets out slowly and the panic can be minimized. Their efforts aren’t going to work for much longer, though. They’re running out of Regen and they can’t synthesize it themselves.”

Ah. All of a sudden the worries over radiation and the fee gouging made more sense. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” There went Elanus’s hand through his hair. “Kieron, they can’t know about Lizzie. If they realize they have a novel, cutting-edge technological wonder in their docking bay, they’ll never let you go. They’ll impound her and ransom her, if I’m lucky, or take her apart in an effort to find out how to make more of her. That’s nothing to say of what they could do to you, which—they’re exiling their own people to other planets, I can’t imagine they’d be too fussed over stealing your things and kicking you onto a transport, or just shooting you through the head and being done with it. I can’t—you have to—”

“Elanus.” Kieron smiled at his…him. “I’ll make sure Lizzie and I are all right.”

“It’s bad there.”

“I’ll handle it.”

“It could get worse.”

“I’ve had way worse,” he reminded Elanus, and that got a smile.

“Please be safe,” Elanus said at last. “And head for Gania as soon as you can.”

“We will.” It was going to be all right. The situation was worrying, but he and Lizzie would get through it. No one was going to keep the four of them apart.

No one.

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty-Four, Part Two

 Notes: Let's have a conversation with Lizzie, shall we?

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty-Four, Part Two

***

Chapter Twenty-Four, Part Two

 

Plotting the course to Trakta was straightforward. Three weeks of gentle flying—gentle for Lizzie or Catie, but a pace that would have pushed the Daring Do to the breaking point—and Kieron would be there. He planned to stay no more than a few weeks, preferably just a few days, before heading on to Gania. And then…

He didn’t know. He didn’t know what came next. He didn’t know what to do with his future, where to use his skills, what to dedicate his life to. He had hopes, certainly, but he just didn’t know anything for sure. It was hard, this limbo state, but to be fair, he’d been here before. And he wasn’t a boy of twelve this time, so that counted for a lot.

He decided to focus inward, to pay closer attention to what was going on around him. For the first few days of travel, it was almost like they’d never left Cloverleaf Station. Catie talked to them non-stop, spending copious amounts of time chatting with her sister, and Elanus was on the com almost as frequently. It was only after Elanus’s energy finally ran out and he had to either go to bed or start hallucinating that things became quiet. It was actually a little disconcerting.

Remember where you are. You’re inside a being, an intelligent life form. She can talk with you. Reach out to her. It wasn’t in Kieron’s nature to reach out first, but with Elanus and Catie he’d never had to. Perhaps Lizzie required a different touch.

“Lizzie?”

There was a pause, and then—“Yes, Kieron?”

It was a little bittersweet, hearing a voice so similar to Catie’s and yet so different. She didn’t drawl in the same way, didn’t elongate her vowels in that babyish fashion that was so endearing, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t, well. Still a baby. And you had to be careful with babies. “How are you feeling lately?” Kieron asked gently. “I feel like we haven’t spoken much since we began our trip.”

“We haven’t. I’ve spent twenty-nine-point-two standard hours in conversation with my sister and seventeen-point-five hours in conversation with my father, but only two-point-one hours with you.”

Wow. So little? Kieron opened his mouth to reiterate his question, but Lizzie beat him to it. “I feel sad. I don’t think you like me as much as you like them.”

What? “I do like you,” Kieron insisted. “I like you so much, Lizzie.”

“But you don’t speak to me as often as you spoke to either of them. And they speak to me far more often than you do. I have been led to understand that willingness to engage in conversation is a sign of affection, and you don’t want to talk to me.”

Wow. Two days into this and he was already fucking it up. “I do want to talk to you,” Kieron said firmly, trying to put the weight of his confidence into his words. “I really do. But I’m not as naturally conversational as either Elanus or Catie, and without them to remind me, speaking doesn’t come easily to me.”

“Why not?” Lizzie sounded confused. “I thought humans were a verbal species, that speech is a common trait used for communication among you.”

“Not all humans are created the same way,” Kieron said. “There’s a great deal of biological diversity among us, and then you put genetic engineering in on top of that and in some places, people have entirely given up speaking to each other like this.”

“Like where?”

Oh boy… “Like…the Sisters of Garavar,” Kieron offered after racking his brain for a moment.

“But they are a religious order. Is not religion one of the areas of human interest where speaking among yourselves diminishes the effectiveness of speaking to whatever deity is being addressed?”

“That’s true,” Kieron allowed. “But the Sisters of Garavar take it much farther than any other religious sect. They actually remove their own vocal chords so that they can’t speak. And there are other examples…” What was the one his mother had help up as a great example? Oh, right. “The Trixian space marine corps is one of them. These were soldiers made in biolabs, genetically engineered to grow to full size in a matter of three years and trained from birth to have no curiosity, no personality, to be nothing but living weapons. The people who made them wanted clones, in essence, not individuals who wanted conversations.”

“But that was not the choice of the space marines.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Kieron agreed. “No one can choose the circumstances they’re born into. I was born into a world where children who spoke out of turn were punished harshly, and I learned early on to just…not ask questions. Some people are naturally shy, too—I might have been, but I’ll never know for sure if my reticence to speak is the result of shyness or the rules of my home world.”

“Oh.” There was a moment of silence. “So you do like me, but you don’t like to talk?”

“I like to talk, I just need a reminder sometimes to do it,” Kieron replied. “And yes, I like you very much. I think you’re…” Wondrous. Terrifying. Incredible. “Just as special as your sister is, and I want to get to know you better. What’s your favorite thing about space travel so far?”

“Space!”

There, there was a hint of the childlike wonder that Catie gave off with every word. Kieron chuckled. “That’s great, but what about it specifically?”

“I like…the distance. So big. I can reach out with my sensors for thousands and thousands of kilometers and not find anything else. In the station, everything was so…close.”

“It really was,” Kieron agreed. “What else do you like?”

“I like to ride the gravity waves.” Lizzie sounded a bit dreamy. “They are so strong this close to the Cloverleaf quasar. They feel like a…like…I don’t know. Tingly. Pushing. Soft.”

“Wow.” Kieron stroked his hand over the console, and a little trickle of light followed the path of his fingers. “That sounds really neat.”

“It is. I like it so much.”

“What else?”

“I like looking up names for things. Humans have names for everything! If one language doesn’t know, then another language does. And more than things, they have names for feelings!” There was a harmonic hum. “I want to feel them all.”

“Some feelings are easier to handle than others,” Kieron said. “But I can see the appeal of trying lots of different things like that.”

“What is your favorite feeling?”

“My favorite?” That was a good question. His absolute favorite feeling was the heady, sensual buzz he got with Elanus—so far removed from his usual state of being that the novelty of it still fell all-powerful. But that wasn’t really one for sharing with a child. “I like the feeling of belonging,” he said at last. “Of being part of a community that values me. That’s what being with you and Catie and Elanus gives me, and I appreciate it more than I can tell you.”

“Belonging,” Lizzie said. “Yes. That’s a good one.”

“What about you?” Kieron asked, preferring to speak about anyone but himself. “What’s your favorite feeling right now?”

“I think it’s…surprise.”

He smiled. “Surprise? What’s surprised you lately?”

“You have. I’m so happy you like me.”

Ouch. His heart…it was going to explode. “I’m so lucky to have you with me,” he said after taking a moment to get himself under control. “To talk to and discover new things with. Thank you, sweetheart.”

“Thank you, Kieron.”