Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Cloverleaf Station, Chapter Twenty-Seven, Part Two

 Notes: Elanus is incapable of meddling. That is all.

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

***

Chapter Twenty-Seven, Part Two

 


The pieces took a week to put together. It was a week of one of the most nerve-wracking balancing acts Kieron had ever had to do. Cloverleaf Station might have been a dangerous place, but oddly enough that was part of what he’d appreciated about it. The station had to be run a certain way in order to keep people safe—there was no room for experimentation or trying to do things a new way when you had to make sure your clients lived through the mining season. And once they were gone, Kieron had only had himself to worry about, which was so much easier than taking the fates of dozens of other people into account.

Elanus had put a stop to that easygoing lifestyle. He had introduced complication as inevitably as breathing, made everything more dangerous but also so much more interesting, and in the end he was the reason Kieron had found Zak.

Handling personal danger? Easy. Dealing with a mountain of bureaucracy that threatened to overwhelm him every half hour? Painful. So Elanus made certain that Kieron didn’t have to deal with it on his own.

The girls helped. Between them, Catie and Lizzie figured out a way to spoof a radiation signature that would fool third-party sensors without compromising Lizzie’s focus, and they set up a proximity warning system that triggered an increase in particle shedding whenever someone got close enough for an in-person inspection. Meanwhile, Elanus read up on Traktan politics and business practices like a mad fiend and, once he felt competent, immediately dove into finding legal ways for Kieron to stay on the planet longer than his visa allowed.

That was the hardest part. The Traktans wanted his money for the berth, but they were scared shitless over the radiation and the health complications it might cause for dock workers. They wanted money, but they wanted him gone more. They went so far as to threaten to tow Lizzie into space and leave her there, whether she was operable or not.

“You can’t do that,” Elanus said in his Kieron-imitation voice. Lizzie had put the overlay together, so that everything Elanus said made it sound as though Kieron was the one speaking, right down to flattening his intonations so he didn’t come off too effusive. “It’s against Federation protocol.”

“We are no longer members of the Federation, Mr. Carr, and—”

“And if they find out you are forcing non-native visitors to your planet off of it, while they’re complying with all your rules and regulations and doing their best to fix unavoidable mechanical issues which you knew about when they landed, they will not send you a strongly-worded letter, sir. They will come and get me in a military ship. Maybe two. Maybe more. You know that the Federation has been looking for a new focus ever since the presidency fell apart. Do you want Trakta to be the planet they focus on?”

“Who do you think you are?” the man on the other end of the call demanded. “You’re not a diplomat, you’re not a head of state—you’re no one to the Federation!”

“I’m the part-owner of one of the largest corporations on a Federation planet,” Elanus replied coolly. “My company employs over three million people across Federation space. We account for almost an entire percentage point of their gross galactic product. We are who people in power listen to, and believe me, when I tell them about this they’re going to be listening really hard.”

“You can expect me to—”

“I expect you to let me finish my repairs and be off your planet of my own volition in the next forty-eight hours, sir. Otherwise? I expect people will remember your name as the man who got Trakta embroiled in a war with the Federation.” Elanus ended the call.

“That was a load of shit,” Kieron accused him, not quite able to keep from smiling at the same time.

“What part?” Elanus asked in his normal voice.

“Where to start? I’m not the part-owner of anything, much less—”

“You’re Lizzie’s father, aren’t you?”

“Um.” Goodness, that was out of nowhere. “I…” The sounds of the ship seemed to slow, almost like Lizzie was holding her breath. “I would be honored to be that, if it was what she wanted, but you—”

“I do!” Lizzie said quickly. “I want that. I want you to be my father, Kee.”

“I…” How had they gotten here again? “I didn’t have anything to do with building or programming you, sweetheart,” he said. “Elanus did.”

“You take care of me,” Lizzie said. Her voice was soft, tentative. “You love me. Don’t you?”

“Of course I do.” That was never in question. “I just don’t want you to make a decision that you’re going to regret.” People—machine or otherwise—didn’t stick by Kieron. He simply didn’t have the personality for it. He wasn’t enough—not affectionate enough, not bold enough, not safe enough, not vocal enough…the ways in which he failed at being a person went on and on. He didn’t expect his…whatever it was with Elanus to last all that long. Maybe a year, if he was lucky. Perhaps two, if they both traveled frequently so that Elanus didn’t have to be around him all the time.

“You have the worst self-esteem. The worst,” Elanus groaned. “And I’m going to do something about that, but first let’s establish that Lizzie, like Catie, is a new kind of person who is capable of telling us who she wants as her guardian. I’m on there because I can’t not be, in addition to the fact that I love her very much, but you’re on there because she wants you to be. Is that clear?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t especially believable, but it was clear. He and Elanus could fight it out once he finally got to Gania.

“Good. Part of being her guardian is assisting in maintenance of her assets. Lizzie and Catie combined have a total of—” And here he named a number that might have stopped Kieron’s heart if he’d been genuinely able to envision it, but his mathematical prowess ended at ten zeroes. “—in research and development funding, so that’s more than enough to qualify you for the board. That means part ownership. And believe me when I say that if I told the nearest Federation planet to Trakta what they wanted to do, they would be more than happy to ride to the rescue.”

“But I don’t need rescuing,” Kieron pointed out, ignoring the less comfortable parts of Elanus’s speech for now.

You don’t. But the people that the government is about to load up and set adrift on a slow boat to another planet definitely do. The only reason I haven’t complained yet is because I don’t want word to get out to the wrong person, and I’m waiting for a Ganian commander I’m friends with to be in position to help mobilize rescue efforts. We’re going to save Xilinn, and these little shits aren’t going to be able to do a thing to stop us once we’re in space. It’s the stuff planetside that I’m more worried about. How are you going to get to Pol?”

“I’ve got that all worked out,” Kieron replied. That had been far easier than dealing with the bureaucrats, a simple matter of programming the right mods into a skimmer and synthesizing a few invisibility suits. Not invisible to the naked eye, not really, but they were totally invisible to all computers except the one who’d programmed the algorithm that had made them. Kieron had grown up in suits like these, all part of his early training, and making them with Lizzie’s help had been incredibly easy. Actually sneaking out of the port and getting Pol? No problem.

“If you’re sure,” Elanus said. “I’m tracking chatter on when the ‘dissidents’ are going to be sent away, and it’s looking like sometime tomorrow night. Can you coordinate pickup of Pol by then?”

“I can.” Kieron was still reluctant to go without Szusza, but Elanus had a point when he said that they needed to keep things as simple as possible right now. If he had to, he could make a stealth skin for Lizzie and come back for her. Or…maybe not his daughter. Something expendable, in case they were fired on.

“Then get ready to add kidnapping to your illustrious list of achievements, darling.”

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty-Seven, Part One

 Notes: Welp, here, have some more plot. Mmm,  ploooot, so tasty...

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

***

Chapter Twenty-Seven, Part One

 


It wasn’t often that Kieron saw Elanus speechless. It was even less frequent for Kieron to be the cause of this silence—right now might, in fact, be the first time he’d ever managed it. Not even him being on the brink of death seemed as stunning as the fact that he was…well…

Elanus pointed a finger at him. “Let me get this straight—you want to break into a government facility on a hostile planet to save a political dissident and kidnap her children at the same time, then try to make it off planet with them all in one piece, while involving Lizzie in your hopefully death-defying acts of lawbreaking? Is that it?”

Sure, it sounded bad when he put it like that. Apparently the dumbfounded silence part was over.

“That’s the basics,” Kieron said, and was treated to Elanus closing his eyes and rubbing his fingers along the side of his head like Kieron was giving him the universe’s biggest headache. Which, to be fair, he probably was.

“And you don’t see the many massive problems inherent in this plan?”

“I see them,” Kieron said. “I just don’t know what to do about them.”

Elanus threw up his hands. “You could leave Trakta like you planned and come back to us on Gania, for starters! That would do it!”

“That was my first choice,” Kieron confessed, “but only before I talked to Pol. Xilinn made her decision and is suffering the consequences of it. I don’t approve of what the government is doing to her, but I also acknowledge that she’s an adult. Pol, though…he’s stubborn.” Kieron grimaced as he thought about Pol’s declaration back at the house. “When he says he’ll run away, he absolutely means it.”

“Tell his other mother what he means to do and she won’t let him.”

“She won’t be able to stop him.” Or care to stop him, probably. She would treat the kid’s declaration as an empty threat. Not to mention, the thought of going back on his word to Pol left Kieron feeling ill. “He’ll run, he’ll get lost in that forest, and he’ll die.”

“He might not.”

Kieron shook his head. “I’m not willing to bet his life on a ‘might.’” He wasn’t going to let Zak’s son risk himself like that.

Elanus stared at Kieron for a long moment, then began to laugh. “You—I thought I knew how far you were willing to go,” he said around his helpless chuckles. “I thought I—I should have seen this coming, you spent years looking for a hand, for fuck’s sake. You risked your life for Catie before you even knew her. Why wouldn’t you do just as much for an actual living, breathing child?”

“Catie is a living child,” Kieron said. “So is Lizzie.” The color of the console rippled, Lizzie offering him a sign of her affection.

“Look at that.” Elanus sounded a little wistful. “You’ve already got her under your spell.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Lizzie. It’s clear she adores you—don’t you, sweetheart?”

“Yes, Elanus.” Lizzie’s voice was a little shy, but she sounded firm. “I love Kee.”

Kee, what the hell. Pet names. Gods save me from pet names, it’s so cute it makes me want to vomit.”

Kieron frowned. “Don’t do that.”

“It’s a turn of—oh, never mind.” Elanus sat back in his chair and stared up for a moment. “All right. You want to rescue Xilinn, grab Pol, and make it off-planet without hurting Lizzie, is that the extent of it?”

Kieron shook his head. “I want to get her daughter too. Szusza.”

Elanus shook his head. “That’s probably not going to happen. You said she’s at boarding school, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“Nope. You won’t have that kind of access or the time to make it. You’re going to have to take the boy and run.”

Kieron felt frustration rise up in him. “How can I face her knowing I left her daughter behind?” he demanded.

“The daughter who gets along with the rest of the family and has siblings she enjoys and is in a school that she likes and who hasn’t, as far as you know, complained about her mother’s situation at all?” Elanus shot back. “That daughter? This is one of those brutal compromises you sometimes have to make in the face of bad situations, Kieron. You know that. There are legal avenues open to us if we let her stay, but if you kidnap her all bets are off.”

“But won’t I already be kidnapping Pol?” he asked, vaguely alarmed at the direction this conversation was going. It was his own idea, he knew that, but hearing Elanus say it made it seem so much more real.

“No,” Elanus said, shaking his head. “Because Pol is going to run away.”

“Elanus—”

“And then you’re going to pick him up and take him to Lizzie.”

Kieron shook his head. “We’ll be scanned by the port authority. They’ll see an extra person.” So he might as well get in trouble for two.

“No they won’t, because Lizzie’s going to dial up her ambient radiation so that their scanners are rendered useless and they’re more anxious than ever to get you off planet.” Elanus looked so smug. “Nothing worries the local bureaucrats more than ships that look like they might go ‘boom’ on their watch.”

Oh, that was actually a good idea. Of course it was, this was Elanus Kieron was talking to. He was ridiculous, but he was also a genius. “What about Xilinn? How will I get to her?”

“You won’t. She’ll come to you.”

What was he talking about? “I don’t—”

“Kiieronnn!” Catie broke in, her voice impatient and shrill. “Pleeeeease let me plaaay you my sooong!”

“Rude,” Elanus said gently. “It’s not nice to interrupt, baby.”

“But you told me to wait for teeeeen minuuuuutes, Daddeeee!”

“I did, but—”

“Yes,” Kieron said. “I want to hear your song.” He could wait for Elanus’s revelation for a few more minutes.

“It’s orcheeeeestraaaaal!”

Or thirty minutes.

 

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty-Six, Part Two

 Notes: Welp, look who got smacked upside the head by the plot baton. *waves hand* Mmyep, it's going to get complicated again. Hope you're ready for that ;)

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

***

Chapter Twenty-Six, Part Two

 


It took less than five minutes for Pol to tell the rest of what he knew, and another five for Kieron to verify what he’d said and to look into things more closely. Then he spent one minute standing there and fuming in silence to himself as he did his best not to panic in the face of Pol’s obvious hope and fear.

Xilinn was being held in a government-run “retreat” for dissidents. It wasn’t quite a prison—the people confined there lived in individual, small apartments and had access to green space—but it was surrounded by a security fence, patrolled by armed guards, and allowed no communication with the outside world. Her implant had been deactivated, showing her as “unknown” whenever someone reached out to it. But that wasn’t the worst thing. Even her husband’s own complicity in turning her in—he’d put up no fight when she was removed from their home, offered no protest, all in an effort to smooth things over with the couple he was currently courting—wasn’t the worst thing.

The worst thing was that she, and everyone else in the retreat, were about to have their citizenship revoked and be sent off-planet in one week. And once they were gone, they would never get back onto Trakta.

It was the worst kind of catch-22. Without citizenship and with a record of protest, they wouldn’t be able to return home. But with the stigma of being a person from Trakta, the Federation wasn’t going to be eager to welcome them onto any of their worlds either. If they were given formal refugee status, things would change, but even with Lizzie’s help looking, Kieron couldn’t see any sign that they were going to be so formally dismissed. Instead, it seemed like all these people—over two-hundred—were going to be shoved onto ships, something many of them had a deep, desperate fear of—and jettisoned into space with no guidance or help.

They were going to lose their collective minds.

“Kieron?” Pol’s hands tugging at his sleeve were enough to pull Kieron out of the silent communication he’d been engaged in with Lizzie. “Is Mama going to be okay?”

“I don’t know,” Kieron said honestly, then winced as Pol immediately began to cry. “Wait, no, that—hang on, it’s okay, just…” He pulled the kid into his arms and shushed him as he wailed. “No, really, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to help her.”

“How?” Pol demanded tearfully.

How indeed? [Lizzie, can you come up with an assessment of the facility where the dissidents are being held? Use whatever processing power you can spare from controlling your radiant radiation for this, it’s an emergency.]

[Yes, Kieron. Shall I tell Catie and Elanus what’s happening as well?]

He sighed. He didn’t want them dragged into something that was none of their business, but…maybe if it was Kieron’s business, it was their business too. Definitely if it was something he was going to involve Lizzie in, they needed to know about it. [Yes, but don’t give them too many details.]

[All right, Kee.]

Kieron looked back at Pol. “I’m not sure yet, but I promise I’ll do everything I can to rescue her.”

“Can you bring her back here?” Pol asked.

“No,” Kieron said with a sigh. “I’m afraid not. You…you know Papa Kriev and Mama Laina are courting another couple, right?”

Pol scowled. It was an unfairly cute expression on his little, round face. “It’s all they talk about,” he grumbled. “Parsen and Vivi all the time, gross. They have three kids, too.”

“You’d be a much bigger family with them around,” Kieron noted. “It would mean more playmates, right?”

“No, because they’re all old kids. Like, ten! And they go to schools that are far away from home, and now Papa Kriev and Mama Laina want to send me and Szusza and Filip and Ophred to schools like that too!” He crossed his arms grumpily. “I won’t go. I’ll run away first.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Yes I can!” Pol pointed at the forest. “I can run away in there! I’ve done it before—I got lost for a whole day before Mama found me! She said it was lucky she caught me before nightfall, because otherwise I could have been eaten by a cavernous tree.”

“Um.” Kieron tried to parse that sentence. “A carnivorous tree?”

“Yes!”

Actually…Kieron scanned a quick breakdown of Trakta’s flora and fauna in his implant and shuddered. Xilinn had been right to be worried. There were actual carnivorous trees in this forest, highly prized for the many pharmaceutical compounds that could be derived from the digested remains of their victims, usually an indigenous monkey-like species. If Pol ran in there, and no one went after him…

“You really shouldn’t do that,” Kieron said.

“I will!” Pol insisted, actually stamping his foot on the ground. “I will if I can’t see Mama again soon! I will, I will, I—”

“Okay, okay.” Kieron held up his hands. “I need to figure out a way to help your mama, though. That means no running off yet, not even if your other parents are talking about her like she’s never coming back. I won’t leave the planet until I make sure she’s safe.”

“You promise?” Pol asked.

“I do.”

“Okay.” The child took a deep, wobbly breath. “I promise to not run away, then, even if Papa Kriev and Mama Laina are shitheads.”

Kieron blinked. “Where did you hear that word?”

“From Devin at school! He says that about his other parents all the time,” Pol said proudly.

Not for the first time, Kieron wondered how harmonious many of these group marriages really were. He’d done the right thing, refusing Zak’s offer to bring him into this one, even though it hurt at the time. He’d never have been able to keep so many people from going after each other’s throats.

“Pol!” It was Laina, in the backyard a few dozen meters away. “Where are you? It’s time for dinner!”

“Go with her,” Kieron whispered. When Pol began to shake his head, Kieron elaborated, “I can’t look for your mama if I’m here watching you. I’ll stay in touch, though, I promise.” How, he wasn’t yet sure, but he’d do it.

“You have to,” Pol whispered fiercely.

“I will.”

Pol! I won’t ask you again!” Laina shouted. “One more delay and you spend your next day off cleaning the family shrine!”

“I’m coming!” Pol shouted, then turned and ran for his house. Kieron watched him go, then climbed back up to his skimmer.

“To the port,” he said when it prompted him about destination, then sat back and rubbed his temple with one hand.

He was going to have a lot of explaining to do to Elanus when he got back to Lizzie.