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

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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.