Cloverleaf Station, Chapter Twenty-Seven, Part Two

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

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

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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.”