Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty-Nine, Part Two

 Notes: Rescue is underway, yaaaay! Soon we'll all be at Trakta, and then...well, shit. Guess we'll find out. Who freaking knows, with this story.

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

***

Chapter Twenty-Nine, Part Two

 

The ship that had looked massive on the ground was surprisingly small set against the stark blackness of space. Still bigger than Lizzie by far—it held over a hundred lost souls, after all—but far smaller than what it should be for a group of this size. Kieron didn’t even want to speculate on the state of the ship inside. It had to be horrendously cramped with no thought given to human comforts or cleanliness.

Over a hundred people, set adrift in space. They didn’t even have an escort of Traktan vessels along with them. They’d simply been…jettisoned. Set into motion toward a distant planet, and whether they made it there or not was no longer the government’s concern. These people had been disposed of, cruelly, and in such a way that they had to be aware of it. A planet suffering from shortages of Regen wouldn’t waste any of their medical supplies on safe cryosleep for a bunch of refugees. No, they were all awake, living out this new nightmare.

And one of them had figured out how to use the radio.

“—mergency, I repeat, this is an emergency!” It was a man’s voice, low and hoarse, like someone just barely keeping it together. “For the love of—we’re people, we’re not things, you can’t just get rid of us like a suit of clothes that doesn’t fit you anymore! You can’t abandon us out here, or we’re all going to die before we reach a safe port! Are you listening to me? Is anyone listening to me?”

“Lizzie…” Kieron began, but she was already linking their signals. “This is Kieron Carr, out from Cloverleaf Station,” he said briskly once the connection was made. “Give me a sitrep for your ship.”

Nothing. He got silence, then static, like the man on the other side had abruptly killed the connection. “This is Kieron Carr, from Cloverleaf Station, over,” he repeated. “I need to know what’s going on over there before I can do anything to help you. What’s your status?”

“Cloverleaf Station?” This was a new voice, a feminine one. “What…our signal can’t possibly be reaching that far.”

Kieron cut his side of the link and groaned out loud. Force of habit. What was he supposed to say, though?

“Strange and suspicious ship,” Elanus broke in before Kieron could rejoin the conversation, “ignore my confused friend for a moment and break your situation down for me. Any medical emergencies? What are your stores like? How are your environmental controls? Got any fuel? Talk to me.”

“What if you’re a pirate?” the woman said, her voice trembling.

A pirate? What in the hell…piracy was almost unknown in the universe, especially in Federation space. It was too damn expensive to operate a ship like that, and relief points were too few and far between. If you got a reputation for harming others or taking advantage of people, you’d be reported and shut down—with prejudice, if necessary.

But these were Traktans. They didn’t know any better. Almost none of them ever went off-planet—they were nearly unheard of in space. Zak had been a very rare anomaly.

“I’ll ignore that statement due to your understandable ignorance, but—no, actually I won’t. A pirate? Seriously? Why the hell would I be having a conversation with you if I was planning on taking over your ship? Or if I did want to waste my time talking to a group of people on board a vessel which clearly has no defensive capabilities, why wouldn’t I dive into the demands about what you need to give me before I—you know what, no. No. We don’t have time for this. Put Xilinn on the line.”

“Xi-Xilinn? Um…”

“Xilinn Pitu, nice woman, a school teacher, got a couple of kids—actually, we’ve got one of them—and—”

“I’m here!” Every taut muscle in Kieron’s body relaxed as he heard her voice. She was there. They’d found her. It was one thing to hope she was still with the refugees, another to know like they knew now. “I’m here, I’m Xilinn! Who are you? How do you have one of my children? Did Kriev and Laina send you after me?”

“It’s me,” Kieron cut in before Elanus could say something even more embarrassing. “It’s—Kieron.”

“Kieron!” Her voice warbled with desperate relief. “Oh, thank the gods, you made it. Did you—you brought Zakari back, did it all go all right? Is he home?”

“Yeah,” he said, his throat tight. “He’s home.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you! I wasn’t sure you were even going to be allowed on the planet, I…and the kids, what happened with the kids, are they with you? Are you—where are you?”

“I’m not far from your ship, actually.” He filled her in as briskly as possible, glossing over her family’s betrayal and trying to downplay the fact that Szusza hadn’t wanted to come with them. “Pol is here, though. He insisted.”

The child in question, who’d been sitting and listening with huge eyes up to this point, chimed in, “Because otherwise I was running away, Mama!”

“Oh, my darling.” Kieron could tell she was crying, but doing her best to hold it together regardless. “You should have stayed with Mama Laina and Papa Kriev. They would have taken care of you.”

“No! I hate them! I want to be with you and Kieron and Lizzie!”

“But you—”

“It’s done, boohoo, let’s move on,” Elanus interjected, and Kieron was for once glad of it. “Give me your ship’s specs. Active propulsion?”

“None,” Xilinn said, sounding more grounded now. “We were sent up attached to rockets, set on a course and then just…let go.”

“Shitty, but workable. Guidance?”

“Basic,” a new voice said. “We know where we are, but we have no way of avoiding anything we might come upon out here.”

“Not that it’s likely you will, but okay. Facilities?”

“Rudimentary,” the new voice opined dryly, “and I say that as someone who’s lived for months at a time on Duras Two.”

Elanus whistled. Duras Two was one of the wonders of the universe, a sandy planet with brutal windstorms that created rare mineral interactions in the atmosphere, filling every night with one of the most beautiful natural light shows ever seen. It was a hellishly difficult planet to live on, though. “Shit. Okay. That leaves out reorienting you. I can send ships in to transfer you to, but it’ll take them at least three days to converge. Can you make it that long?”

“Do we have a choice?”

Kieron could practically see Elanus’s eyeroll. “I mean, no, not really, not if you have any sense of self-preservation at all. As long as you don’t fuck shit up too badly, we can get Federation recovery vessels to you, but the only ship close enough to touch right now is at max capacity for human cargo at the moment, so you’re gonna have to hold yourselves together until backup arrives, got it?”

“Trakta won’t let any Federation vessels within a million kilometers of the planet,” the person said. “They’ve got the planetary defenses to back that up. You could spell our death warrants if you come in like that. What if they decide to simply shoot us instead of let you help us?”

Elanus hummed. “That would be bad, sure, but you’re actually moving pretty quickly. You’ll be at the far end of that range in three days, and I’ll be able to figure out how to scramble everyone’s signals so they have a hard time tracking us.”

The voice scoffed. “Sounds impossible.”

Elanus laughed. “You’ve never met me, baby. I do the impossible every day.”

“And on that note,” Kieron interjected, “you should go back to doing the impossible and leave us to do the same. Lizzie, please obscure our location in case we get pinged.”

“Yes, Kieron.”

“I’ll be close if you need to talk something through with me, Xilinn,” Kieron said gently. “But I think it’s a waiting game right now. If you’re wondering if you can trust us, though…you can. We’re going to help you.”

“I know you will,” Xilinn said. “I’ll make sure everyone else knows it too, but…Kieron…was there really no way you could bring Szusza along?”

He bit his lip for a second. “No. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she said immediately, but he knew it wasn’t. None of this was all right.

The only thing that would make it better was saving them all, but that was going to take more time that Kieron had thought. No simple virus to overtake their guidance system, no—this was going to be messy.

And he would be here for all of it.

Traveling!

 Hi darlins!

Sorry for this late post--we're traveling and I've had no time to write, thanks to the holiday just around the corner. So no Cloverleaf Station this week, but for those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you're somewhere warm and loving and feel safe. For those who don't, I wish you all the same.

Love,

Cari

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty-Nine, Part One

 Notes: The escape from Trakta continues! Come share some tension with Kieron and company, darlins!

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

***

Chapter Twenty-Nine, Part One

 

Not running was hard. If Kieron had been alone he would have, racing the span of the two berths as quick as possible and counting on his speed to keep him safe. Trakta, for all it was an incredibly annoying place with tonnage of arcane rules and regulations, didn’t have a military tradition. On some planets, running in privileged zones like ports was tantamount to inviting arrest, or even death. Here, he doubted they even had the weaponry to make it happen. Yes, running would be the easiest thing…if he were alone. But he wasn’t. He was with Pol, and Pol couldn’t run that fast.

Carrying him was also out. On the off chance a person or defensive device did kick in when it detected Kieron, he didn’t want Pol to get targeted along with him. Almost every planet, even the aggressive ones, had safeguards in place when it came to protecting children. No one Pol’s height would be deliberately hit, but if Kieron had him up against his chest…no such guarantee.

They’d have to walk it. Quickly. The chameleon suits would help a bit, at least. “Put your feet on top of mine and hold onto my hands,” Kieron murmured to Pol. The little boy complied, finally silent, his eyes red and his cheeks stained with salt. “If I tell you to run, head toward the ship playing music.” Lizzie, listening in, would know what to do. “If I fall down for any reason, you keep going.”

Pol shook his head but didn’t outright say no. Kieron figured that was as good as they were going to get. He glanced out the skimmer door. “Lizzie, plot best course and overlay in my implant,” he murmured. A second later, a glowing blue line appeared on the ground in front of him, edged with distance readings and time estimates. “Good girl.”

“Elanus said you’d like the metrics,” she said bashfully.

Of course he was right. Kieron briefly wondered how hard it was for Elanus to be sitting wherever he was right now—still in Catie, probably, as they were almost back to Gania—watching this play out. Catie’s silence, at least, was logical. She was working on a different puzzle.

“All right.” Here we go.

Kieron walked with a measured pace out of the skimmer. It only took a few steps for Pol to relax into his hold and let his legs loosen up so that the two of them moved in tandem. Keeping his focus wide and his senses sharp, Kieron walked the line Lizzie had laid out. It was tempting to second-guess parts of it, things that sent him toward open areas and out from the shadows of the ships he was skirting, but he trusted her. She knew better than he did where the surveillance was, and how to minimize its impact.

They got through the first berth well enough, but by the time they reached the second an alarm began to blare. “I’m sorry,” Lizzie murmured in his mind, “I couldn’t find an angle for that final ten feet that kept you out of visual range. Standard response is imminent.”

“Understood. How many bodies?”

“Six, including the one already in our berth. The other five are coming from the northeast, and they have a bot with them.”

“Of course they do.” It was getting harder to step smoothly, the alarm making Pol tense and stiff. “See if you can do anything about the bot, I’ll handle getting around the people. Can you give Pol the same overlay?”

“Of course.” A moment later, Pol gasped as Lizzie gently reached into his implant and gave him the same map as Kieron.

“Pol.” Kieron pulled the little boy off his feet and knelt down in front of him. “Follow Lizzie’s line, okay? She’s ready for you.”

“I want to stay with you,” Pol murmured, his voice a spidery, fearful creak.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Kieron said. “I promise. But I need you to be brave right now and go to Lizzie, okay?”

Pol was crying again, but he nodded. “Okay.” Then his eyes widened as Lizzie spoke directly into his mind. Kieron didn’t know what she was saying, but it seemed to work, because the boy turned and began to stumble, slow but picking up speed, toward the ship.

His news wasn’t so nice. “They’re within ten meters of your current position.”

“Give me a two-meter signal for first contact.”

“Yes, Kee.”

Kieron stayed where he was, pressed against a matte gray plastisteel wall, and shut his eyes. He listened to the pound of incoming feet, mapped their owners out in his mind, and—

“Two meters.”

He turned, ducked down under the swing of the man in front’s arms, grabbed him by the knees and threw him back into the rest of his squad even as he relieved him of his weapon, a low-energy stunner. Kieron immediately turned and shot the bot, which had been bringing its own stunner to bear—a far more powerful version, one that could cause paralysis with a single pulse if it got him somewhere vital.

His first shot made it whirr a bit, but didn’t knock it out. Kieron shot it again as he launched himself into the pile of people ahead of him, bracing his free hand on an indignant guard’s shoulder as he kicked the man behind him in the face. He spun, sweeping three sets of legs out from under their owners, then punched each of the landed ones in the throat—not hard enough to break the hyoid, just hard enough to make them convulse and wonder if he had.

Of the last two, one was still on the ground from the head kick and the other was struggling to get a clear shot at Kieron around his team. Kieron took the chance away from him by stunning the man himself. All five of them down, he turned and—

Bzzt! He dove for the pile of bodies, the shot that would have taken him in the head hitting his left shoulder and upper back instead. He gritted his teeth at the sudden numbness and forced himself to roll, shooting the bot again and again until it finally began to smoke. “Fuck,” he muttered.

A familiar voice immediately began to chide him. “What the hell have you done to yourself? No, scratch that, get to Lizzie, there’s a situation, then you can tell me about whatever dumbass thing you just accomplished.”

“You suck,” Kieron wheezed at Elanus as he forced himself to stand. The stunner’s blast had gone deep enough to impact his breathing. That wasn’t good. It would wear off, but the tissue paralysis in the meantime could make things…challenging.

“You suck, now go save Lizzie and Pol!”

Save them? Why did they need saving? He rolled to his feet, keeping the stunner close and casting a wary eye around for more people. The alarm might be silenced now, but he didn’t trust it. “Lizzie?”

“It’s okay,” she crooned. Not just to him, but to Pol. “It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you. Just wait oooone moment.”

“Lizzie, what happened?” he asked as he ran for her, best route be damned. The hatch was on the other side, and as he rounded the back of the ship he saw what he’d dreaded—Pol held fast in a guard’s arm, a smirk on the man’s face as he turned to look at Kieron.

“Put the weapon down right now, or—”

That was as far as he got before the hatch he was standing in front of abruptly opened just far enough to crash into the back of his head hard enough to shatter the helmet he was wearing. He fell to the ground just as Kieron dashed forward to grab Pol, who was shaking but otherwise looked all right.

“She saved me!” Pol exclaimed, looking at Lizzie with stars in his eyes. “She said she would save me and she did!”

“She’s the best,” Kieron agreed as he awkwardly got the two of them on board. “Lizzie, we need to go, now.”

“Yes, Kee.” The hatch was already closed, the flight sequence already finished. He felt Lizzie began to shake as the engines engaged.

Kieron got Pol strapped in, then grabbed the portable Regen unit and fixed it to his shoulder just as Lizzie began to lift off. He sighed as feeling slowly seeped back into his damaged shoulder.

“You are a goddamn idiot, you know that? If I was there right now, I would smack you silly.”

Kieron snorted. “Love you too, El.”

“Damn right you do. Ready for rescue number two?”

Did he have a choice? In truth, though, he was more than ready. “Let’s do it.”

They soared out of the port, and Lizzie put on extra speed to get them to atmosphere level in under a minute. Soon the blue sky was left behind for the soothing darkness of space, and Kieron sighed with relief.

One last thing, and then they could head home.

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Twenty-Eight, Part Two

 Notes: We're moving, we're going, we're getting up and out of here...slowly, but it's happening!

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

***

Chapter Twenty-Eight, Part Two

 

Flying back in the disguised skimmer was tense, made worse by the roaming patrols that got thicker and thicker the closer they got to the port. Nobody, and nobody, wanted people watching this vicious deportation. Kieron finally had to hand the controls over to Lizzie, because there were just too many ways for him to screw up—especially with a five-year-old boy hanging onto his arm as he cried hopelessly into Kieron’s shoulder.

Telling Pol to sit down and buckle up had met with a tantrum of epic proportions, so Kieron had settled on asking him to be quiet and hang on while Kieron took care of getting them where they needed to be. He’d even had the gall to be irritated by it at first—if he’d thrown a tantrum like this when he was a child, he would have been made to sleep outside overnight with no blanket, after he was whipped so hard he couldn’t sit down. Why was Pol so upset? Wasn’t he happy he was going to see his mother again?

It wasn’t until Kieron finally took the time to really look at Pol that he finally understood. This boy, this sweet, happy little boy who ought to be at home with all of his parents right now, with his siblings too, ensconced in the comfortable world he’d always know, had been ripped straight out of that comfort zone. Kieron could only guess when Pol had stopped feeling happy, but he’d clearly stopped trusting Laina by the time Kieron first visited with Zak’s remains. He’d lost faith in his own home, in the family unit that was supposed to be on his side, to support him in an uncertain world.

Instead his mother had been stolen away from him, his other parents were already moving on, his sister had thrown the lies she’d been told about their mother right into his face, and now he knew that Mama Laina didn’t believe his intentions to go into the forest enough to come after him. She was willing to risk him being eaten alive because she thought she knew him better than he knew himself. And to top it all off, when the one person who was on his side, who had promised to get him back to his mama, was a stone-faced son of a bitch like Kieron…

Shit, he would cry too.

“Hey,” he said, awkwardly setting his hands on Pol’s shoulders. “It’s going to be all right.”

“No.”

“Okay, no,” Kieron agreed with a sigh. “It’s not going to be all right—not the way it was before. I wish it could be, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. But I promise that I’m not going to let you down. I’m not going to leave you behind, I’m not going to let anyone take you away from me. We’re going to make it to my ship, and we’re going to make it to your mama’s ship, and we’re all going to leave together.

Pol sniffled and wiped his snotty nose on one already-damp sleeve. After a moment’s consideration, Kieron stripped off his camouflage coat and draped it around Pol’s shoulders. There. Now he could get his snot on that.

Serves me right for not thinking to bring a shammy.

Kieron felt them begin to move again, Lizzie creeping the skimmer forward whenever she computed that it was safe enough. He checked the control panel to make sure there were no warning lights or issues popping up—but of course there weren’t. Lizzie knew what she was doing, and she knew she could come to him if it got hard.

Pol needed to know that too.

Kieron sat on the floor and put his back to the nearest wall. This skimmer was a small one, not really equipped for more than two passengers, especially not if they weren’t sitting up front. It had accessibility options that made it possible for people in mobility chairs to remote-drive it from the back, but he didn’t need that either. He needed to make Pol comfortable. He patted the floor next to him, and Pol slumped down and against his side, leaning heavily against Kieron.

“I miss Szusza,” he wailed before Kieron could even say anything. “And Filip and Ophred! And I miss Mama Laina and Papa Kriev and my pet tree crab Sparky! I miss my room and my toys! I miss my tab and my shows!”

Now wasn’t the time to remind Pol that he’d brought the tab along in his little backpack. Kieron stayed quiet and let the boy talk. “I want it to be like it used to,” Pol cried. “I want my family, I want all of them together, I want to be happy with them. I miss them. I miss them!” He turned his face and wept a fresh set of tears into Kieron’s side. Kieron, his own throat tight, put his arm around the little boy’s shoulders and held him close as he let his fears and his hopeless dreams out.

“I know,” he said after a moment. “I know you miss them. I wish you could have stayed with them, stayed all together. I know that being with me isn’t the same. Things change, and it’s all right to hate those changes for a while.” Shit, what else could he say? “But things will get better, too. I promise. Your mama loves you so much. Once you’re together again, you’ll feel better.”

“I want them all!”

“I wish I could make that happen for you,” Kieron said helplessly. “I—”

“Kee?”

He turned his focus to Lizzie. “What is it?”

“You are two berths away from me. I’m afraid this is as close as I’ll be able to get you in the skimmer, though. You’ll need to make the rest of it on foot.”

On foot… “How many people and cameras are between us and you?” The camo skins he’d made up should protect them from being easily spotted by people, but cameras were more challenging.

“Only one person, but numerous cameras. I won’t be able to shield you until you’re on board.”

Shit. He should have planned for this. “How quickly can we leave once we get there?” he asked.

“If I begin initialization procedures now, we can leave two-point-four minutes after sealing the hatch door.”

Two-point-four minutes? They could survive whatever these people threw at them for that long. It was possible they wouldn’t even notice, given how focused they all were on the launch. Speaking of… “When is the other ship heading up?”

“Unclear. Technicians appear to be finished with their work, but there are still people being transferred on board.”

Too bad. If they could have used the big ship’s launch as a distraction…but no. It was better to get off-planet before someone wised up to what Kieron was doing. “All right, we’ll head to you on foot. Start initialization procedures immediately, and make sure you stay in my head, okay?”

“Yes, Kee.” Lizzie sounded very earnest. “I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t, baby.”

Pol looked up at Kieron, apparently over his tears for the moment. “You have a baby?” he asked.

“Um.” Well, it wasn’t exactly a lie. “I do, yeah. I’ll introduce you once we’re on board my ship, okay?”

“Babies can’t fly ships,” Pol told him very seriously.

Kieron grinned. “This one can,” he said as he grabbed for the other, smaller camouflage suit he’d made just in case. “Take off that jacket and I’ll help you into this, okay?”

It was time to get out of here.