Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Eight, Part Two

 Notes: TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK! TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP--you get the idea ;)

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Eight, PartTwo

***

Chapter Eight, Part Two

 

The pizza, sitting at the back of the station’s industrial freezer, had been there since time immemorial. Kieron honestly wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out after he put it into the oven, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually pretty delicious. Of course, he’d grown up on soldier’s rations and whatever he could scrounge off the ground when he was a child, so anything digestible fell into the “good” range for him.

Elanus, presumably, had a more refined palate. The fact that he was eating the pizza with every sign of enjoyment as well was a bit of a relief. “So,” he said in the middle of his third slice, “first things first, we repair the Lizzie. That shouldn’t take me too long—she’s not as good at self-repair as Catalina is, but she’s lightyears better than the human-centric hulks most people fly. Then, take two, we head out again and—”

“Probes,” Kieron cut in. “Those come next. Now that we’ve narrowed down your ex partner’s location, we’ll do a lot better with a new round of probes to update the maps.”

Elanus pouted. “Boring.”

“And after that,” Kieron continued like Elanus wasn’t being obnoxious, “I’ll be the one going out in the Lizzie while you stay here and keep recovering.”

“Oh, no.” Elanus shook his head and put his slice of pizza down. “No, no, no. The Lizzie is my ship, I’m the one who does the flying.”

“Not when you’re recovering from broken ribs, you’re not.”

Elanus made a “pssht” sound. “What, these old things? They’ll be fine by tomorrow!”

“They’ll still be very fragile. One wrong move could have you writhing on the floor of your ship again at a crucial moment. It’s a serious safety issue. For me too,” Kieron added when he saw Elanus open his mouth to object again. “If you really want to get this done as quickly as possible, then you’ll let me take the Lizzie out tomorrow while you monitor from here. This is just going to be another prep mission, mostly working with probes and sensors, so it’s not like you’ll be missing a lot.”

“But what if it’s more than that?” Elanus’s voice had gone low and intense, his eyes feverish. “What if you find my baby? What if Catalina reaches out to you and you don’t even realize it because you don’t understand her?”

“It’s not like I’m going halfway across the galaxy,” Kieron said with an eyeroll. “We’ll be within transmitting distance. You’ll hear and see everything that I do.”

“That’s not—”

“This is the reality,” Kieron insisted, abruptly done with negotiating. Fuck, he was so sick of Elanus pushing and pushing and pushing all the time, and never taking a moment to step back and realize that in fact, maybe things would have gone a little better if they’d taken it slow.

You know things are bad when you’re being the voice of reason.

“You can either suck it up and watch from the station, or we can send probes in from here, probably lose half of them on the way, and not go out until I’m assured that your ribs aren’t going to poke through your chest wall or impale one of your organs,” Kieron continued. “But I’m not going to risk your life just to get to your ship a few minutes or hours or even days earlier. And if Catalina is as impressive as you say, and she loves you as much as you claim, then she wouldn’t want you to do that either.”

Elanus sat back, a pensive expression on his face. “Why do you really care?”

“Why do I care about what?”

“About my health. It’s not the safety issue, you could just knock me out again. If it’s about the liability you’d face, there is none. My condition is well-documented and you won’t incur any sort of penalty if I were to die here.”

“I don’t want to have to knock you out again. And you realize you just cleared the way for me to kill you if I wanted to,” Kieron pointed out. “That’s not very smart.”

“You’re not going to kill me,” Elanus replied. “You’re not even tempted to, which puts you in pretty rarified company when it comes to people who have to be in close quarters with me for any period of time. I have to say, it’s…surprising.” He tilted his head. “Weren’t you raised to be a killer? What’s keeping you from doing it, especially now that there’s no fear of retaliation?”

Kieron wasn’t sure if he felt angry, sick, or hurt. Maybe a mix of all three. He dropped his own piece of pizza, pushed the serving plate toward Elanus, and got to his feet. “I’m done. Put whatever you don’t want in the recycler. Let me know when you’re done with repairs.”

“Kieron, c’mon—”

He didn’t even pause on his way to the door. “Also, fuck you.”

“Kieron.”

But he didn’t stay to hear it. He didn’t want to listen to the first person who knew the truth about his origin in so long—since Zakari—ask him why he wasn’t a heartless murderer. Because of course, what else could come from a place as awful as Hadrian’s colony? What else could grow there, on the surface of that dark planet, barely illuminated by the distant, cold dwarf star that had kept them in a perpetual winter? What was there to do for anyone from that awful place, except fight against all comers in the race to be the best? The most cold, the most cruel, the most ruthless. Someone like his grandfather.

Someone like his mother.

“Kieron!”

No. He wasn’t ready for more yet. He had to paper over his weaknesses first. He entered his quarters, shut the door behind him, enabled all the locks, and turned on the soundproofing.

Maybe a few hours of meditation would help.

Or a few days’ worth.

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Eight, Part One

 Notes: All's well that ends well! Or at least, all's not hopeless and everyone is still alive, so...yay?

Title: Cloverleaf Station, Chapter Eight, Part One

***

Chapter Eight, Part One

 

In the quiet of the infirmary, Kieron glanced at Elanus’s vitals for what felt like the hundredth time since he’d gotten the man in here. Stable. Normal. His brain function was fine, his blood chemistry was fine…looking at him now, you’d never guess that less than an hour ago, he’d been on the verge of a fatal hematoma to the brain after suffering two broken ribs. Apparently one of them had come perilously close to puncturing one of his kidneys.

Great. Just great. Kieron had nearly killed his boss. Fan-fucking-tastic.

The urge to sink into a familiar well of despair called to him, but he fought it off and used his implant to query the larger computer database. He directed the results to be sent to his tab—reading for too long inside his own head made him dizzy—and began to read up on humanity’s issues with Regen and how they could manifest.

The most common issue with Regen was total rejection, either in the form of simple allergies or a perilously complex inability to use the technology at all. The allergies could be cured with time and a lot of genetic exposure therapies, but people who couldn’t use Regen at all—dubbed Naturals—were shit out of luck. They didn’t get the benefits of Regen, the slowed aging and increased health and massive boost to healing. They simply lived like humans had lived for hundreds of thousands of years before Regen existed, and they died that way too.

Elanus wasn’t a Natural, that was clear. In the modified Regen tank, his body was taking the therapy very well, if in a highly targeted way. The healing fluid was only allowed in contact with the parts of his body that had been damaged—everything else was left alone.

Okay, that was a clue. Kieron did a little more winnowing. Not an allergy…probably not the result of a strange drug interaction…probably not the result of the guy getting on the bad side of an organ harvester…gah. There were just too many results to go through. The universe was a big place, and the reasons for Regen to fail were growing all the time thanks to new generations of genetic modification and—ah.

AI, show Gania-specific, population-wide, Regen-related diseases.

Aha, there it was, right there at the top. An autoimmune disorder expressed by five percent of the male population of Gania, point-two percent of the female population.

Elfshot Disease. That’s a fanciful name. Ganians, Kieron was slowly learning, were a strangely fanciful people. At least Elanus was.

Back to the description. Random internal attacks…weakening of cell structures…periods of intense decline and equally intense improvement…inability to undergo full Regen submersion… Oh god, the pictures of the Ganians who had been fully submerged in Regen were hideous, their bodies growing out of control as their capricious immune systems took “healing” as “assault.” When the therapy was targeted and carefully controlled, though, the Regen worked exactly as it was meant to. Apparently there was a damage threshold in there somewhere, although the text said it was different for every one of the afflicted.

Kieron was grateful he hadn’t gone over it. Bad enough he was going to be tossed out into space after assaulting his boss so badly the man had to get fucking Regen for it, he’d really be dead if—

No. He needed to calm down. There were extenuating circumstances, and those were firmly on Kieron’s side. Elanus had been out of control, so focused on finding Catalina that he hadn’t cared about the damage the Lizzie was taking. Much deeper into that asteroid field and the ship would have been too damaged to make it back to Cloverleaf, and then they’d have had the distinct displeasure of dying of radiation together once the Lizzie’s shields failed, if they weren’t pulverized by asteroids first.

Kieron could argue that to a court. He had visuals, he had data, he had the ship itself as evidence. He can’t get rid of you yet. It should have felt reassuring, but sitting there watching the purplish-blue bruise he’d put on Elanus’s temple slowly vanish under the effect of the Regen, all Kieron felt was guilty.

He hated that he felt emotionally invested enough to feel guilty, but there was something about Elanus that seemed to sweep Kieron along with him. He was so…lively, and to a person who’d been expecting to spend nearly half a standard year by himself out here on the station, that liveliness was both obnoxious and thrilling.

“You stare as loudly as you speak,” Elanus said.

Kieron startled right out of his chair. He’d been so wrapped up in his own head that he’d missed the signs that treatment was ending. His pulse raced, and half a dozen questions fought their way toward his lips. What the hell was going on out there? Why didn’t you tell me you have Elfshot Disease? Do you realize you could have gotten us both killed?

In the end, “How do you feel?” was the one that came out first. Kieron was a little disappointed with himself for that.

“Practically perfect in every way,” Elanus quipped, staring down at his body, so carefully arranged in the modified Regen tank. “It looks like you did an adequate job of getting me back to fighting fit.”

“Your ribs won’t be a hundred percent for another day,” Kieron said without inflection.

“Ah, well, ribs. Always a little tetchy, those.” Elanus turned his head to look at Kieron and smiled. “Calm down, would you? None of the terrible things you’re thinking about are going to happen.”

What?

Fortunately, Kieron didn’t have to ask that question out loud. Elanus seemed to read it right off his face.

“Look, this was my fault. I get that. I went too far out there, and because I hadn’t told you about my condition, your reaction ended up causing a bit more of a mess than it needed to.”

“A bit more of a mess?” Kieron echoed. “I almost killed you. You were bleeding into your brain, you—you had two seizures on the way back to the station, you could have had a stroke, this could have been fatal.”

“I’ve almost been killed over fifty times since I was first diagnosed,” Elanus said blithely, detaching the headpiece and sitting up in the tank. “Once more doesn’t really qualify as an emergency at this point.” Liquid sloshed around him, and he blinked down at his body. “You kept my shorts on.”

“I wasn’t about to strip you naked,” Kieron retorted.

“Aw, too bad. Anyway, the point is, I should have been more forthcoming about myself, and I wasn’t, and for that I’m sorry. But look!” He grinned at Kieron. “Here we both are, no worse for wear, with several mysteries solved and a firm goal ahead of us. I’d say the day has been a complete win.” He held up a hand. “And before you think about hitting me or grabbing me or anything else again, I ask that you remember I’m a fragile flower in need of gentle treatment.” His eyes sparkled. “Two near-death experiences in one day is a new record for me, after all.”

You…I…this…

Kieron startled himself by laughing. He hadn’t intended to. A diatribe about personal responsibility had been right there, on the tip of his tongue, and instead he was laughing so hard he was almost gasping, laughing like he hadn’t laughed for years. It was the relief. The stress. It had to be—Elanus wasn’t that funny. But whatever it was, Kieron welcomed it. He didn’t even flinch away from Elanus’s feather-light touch to his shoulder.

“There you are,” he said with satisfaction. “Now, move so I can go clean up and get into some fresh clothes. Then we’ll talk. And eat, I’m starving.”

Kieron wiped his eyes, fighting down the urge to hiccup. “I’ll get out a pizza,” he said.

Elanus’s mouth dropped open. “You told me there were no pizzas!”

“I lied.”

Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Seven, Part Two

 Notes: Time to up the foolishness! INCREASE FOOL FACTOR BY TEN!

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Seven, Part Two

***

Chapter Seven, Part Two

 

Suddenly coming face to face with the Elanus who Kieron had first met was jarring. Gone was the annoyingly curious, sporadically charming man who’d been dogging his footsteps and questioning everything. This was the CEO who was accustomed to being obeyed without a second thought, the man who was clearly prepared to ruin Kieron’s future on Cloverleaf Station if he didn’t get what he wanted, now. This was the guy that Kieron was going to have to keep alive out there in the asteroid field, and he wasn’t making it easy.

“You have to slow down,” Kieron said as they entered the field. It was easy to navigate right now, with all of their latest data already input into the helm’s AI, but there was no guarantee of accuracy, and the farther they went, the harder steering was going to become.

“The traces are already faint. If we wait any longer, he may move out of range,” Elanus replied tersely.

“He might already have moved out of range. There’s no sense in risking your life on a maybe. Take it slow, or a mistake could be deadly.”

“This mistake has—” Elanus bit off whatever he was going to say next, but the look on his face was a potent mix of poisonous rage. “You don’t understand.”

“I know,” Kieron said, as close to placating as he could manage. “But I want to. Okay? I do, but we have to be smart right now. Don’t let your partner kill you by making you rush this part.”

Elanus huffed a heavy breath through his nostrils, then slowed the ship’s power down by twenty-five percent. He nodded at the secondary control panel. “Search for more signs of those trace elements. Make sure the AI is recording—I want an updated search path and a map of potential hiding spots as soon as possible.”

“Got it.” Kieron put his head down and went about his task, extending the sensor reach as far as he could go without compromising its strength and doing his best not to watch Elanus as he piloted the state-of-the-art ship. It had AI helm control, of course, but Elanus was on it the entire time, shaving seconds off their path, reorienting them around asteroids and unexpected debris—doing everything he could to speed them up without actually speeding them up.

Kieron appreciated the fact that Elanus had actually listened to him. Maybe working together with him wouldn’t be an absolute fiasco, even when he got uncomfortably demanding. Kieron could handle demanding, as long as it meant Elanus taking his input into account. As good a pilot as the guy was, and as advanced as his ship was, Kieron was still the one with actual experience in this capricious asteroid field. He knew how quickly it could surprise you, and he wasn’t about to let them get stuck or killed out here before he’d found Zakari.

“More iso-paxitran,” he reported quietly. “From two parts per million to five parts.”

“We’re still following our last path,” Elanus replied, his gaze firmly on the viewport. “No significant deviations required yet. Fuck, we should have been processing the sensor data while we were here, it would have saved us so much time.”

“We still would have had to head back to the station soon,” Kieron reminded him. “We were coming up on the Lizzie’s radiation absorption limits.”

“We have the suits.”

“You told me you didn’t think they’d be necessary.”

“Is there a reason you’re being a pain in the ass right now, Mr. Carr?”

Danger, danger. “Just a little reminder that slow means success out here, Mr. Desfontaines,” he replied stiffly. “You think I didn’t want to charge out and find Zakari as soon as he went missing? I’d be dead right now if I had though, and dead a dozen times over if I rushed it. The only advantage we have is our knowledge of the asteroid field and the security of having a home base. Don’t let that advantage go to waste.”

Elanus shook his head. “You don’t understand what’s at stake here. That son of a bitch has taken what is essentially a child—a youthful living creature, wholly dependent on her pilot for almost every decision she makes—and thrown her into a highly stressful situation that never gets better. Deysan is relying on her AI and sensors to keep him safe, when it should be the other way around. I didn’t have time to let Catalina grow up before Deysan took her, time to let her circuitry learn and evolve and…now she’s stuck out there, and it’s damaging her psyche, Kieron. Do you get that? She is being traumatized every minute we leave her out here with him. The longer she stays, the harder it will be for her to recover.”

Kieron frowned. “There’s no way to…I don’t know, wipe her drives clean and—”

“No, no, what part of living being do you not understand?” Elanus snapped. “I can’t just remake her central processors, that would be like killing her! She wouldn’t be herself anymore, and I’m not going to do that to her unless that bastard damages her beyond repair. How would you like it if someone gave up on you just because you had a plethora of mental issues? Which, hey, you do!”

Ouch. But Kieron could see Elanus’s point. “I want to save her,” he said at last. “I want to help you get her back, but I want us to—”

“—eeeeee—”

“That’s her!” Kieron could tell the moment he lost any and all of Elanus’s attention. The sound was similar to what he’d recorded on Cloverleaf Station, but softer. Like someone whispering for help instead of shouting it. Or…

“—to get around this big one up here, it’s the only asteroid in this section that’s large enough to hide them and if we’re close enough to get a signal this clearly, then—”

“What if it’s a fake?” Kieron asked.

Elanus turned wild eyes toward him. “What the hell do you mean?”

“What if your partner is forcing her to make this noise? I mean, come on—there’s no way he wouldn’t know she was broadcasting this, right?” Kieron pushed. “He might not have cared when they were entering the asteroid field because there was no way to go after them—if you hadn’t come by I’d have brushed it off as an anomaly. But he must know it’s going on now. Why is he letting her make it? Or making her make it?”

“He’s not that smart!”

“He was smart enough to escape with her!” Kieron protested. “Just—check around for surprises before you go flying us into a subsection of the asteroid field that’s killed more people than any other place here!”

“Keep your eyes on your sensors and shut the fuck up,” Elanus replied, turning back to the control panel with an air of finality. “I know what I’m doing. We need to—” A proximity alarm began to sound, and the Lizzie came to a stop. “What—no—”

“Too many unknown variables ahead to compute a safe course,” the ship announced. “Waiting for clearance before continuing.”

“What?”

“There’s too much floating around out there for your ship to handle it,” Kieron said gently. “It’s okay. We’ve got probes loaded, let’s send them out and collect some data and then we’ll come back better prepared to get through this part of the field and—”

“Fuck it.” The proximity alert cut off as Elanus punched a code into the control panel. The ship lurched a second later as he took control of the helm.

Kieron stared at him, his mouth falling open. “Are you insane? You can’t hand-fly an asteroid field!”

“Watch me.”

“Elanus!”

“Seeing as how we might die if you keep distracting me, you’d better sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.”

Dumbfounded, Kieron watched as Elanus carefully piloted them closer to the tight-floating debris field in front of them. They made it a meter in…ten meters…twenty meters…

Dink.

“Impact on aft portside hull,” the AI intoned. “Damage minimal.”

“Elanus…”

“Shut up.”

Dink. Dink-dink. Dink dink—thud.

“Impact on front starboard hull. Panel is at eighty-two percent capacity.”

“We need to turn around,” Kieron insisted. “We don’t know how to fly this safely!” He triggered the probe release. “A day, maybe two, and these will help us figure it out, all right? But we have to leave before this gets any—

Thud. Thud—CRUNCH. The ship actually went into a spin with the last hit.

“Impact on aft portside hull. Panel is at fifty-five percent capacity.”

“We have to turn around!” Kieron snapped. “Elanus!”

“We’re so close!” The other ship’s cry was getting louder, a pathetic keen.

Thud. THUD. CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH.

“Impact on—”

Elanus shut the audio off.

Kieron knew he wasn’t going to turn around. Not while he was in control of the ship. Which meant…

He could kiss his future here goodbye.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, and—one, two, a sharp elbow to Elanus’s ribcage to get him bent over and a second strike to his temple to put him down, and Kieron slid into the pilot’s seat and reversed their course immediately. They took more hits, more than he cared for, but after a few tense minutes they were back out into a section that the AI could handle. He detached his sweaty fingers from the controls and sat back with a sigh, wondering how long it was going to be after his boss woke up that he was kicked off the station.

Wait…what was that red blinking light? Kieron tapped it, then turned the audio back on for good measure.

“—cal emergency! Medical emergency! Lifesaving measures must be taken now! Medical emergency! Medical emergency! Lifesaving measures must be taken now!”

Medical emergency? What the… Kieron looked back at where he’d laid Elanus on the floor, and…oh shit.

Oh…shit. Was he even still breathing?

Kieron dove for the ship’s specialized med kit. Let Lizzie pilot herself back to the station—he had to keep Elanus alive until then.