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

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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.