Page 17 of Cloverleaf Station

“The Ganian system sounds like a built-in power imbalance,” Kieron said. “Like it exists for the exploitation of students.”

“Oh, it does. But there are established limits for what’s considered appropriate within patronage, so it could be worse,” Elenus said with a shrug. “Anyhow, we shared ideas for a decade before I decided to start the Lifeship company. I let Deysan buy in as an investor.

“That should have been all I did, but I was so used to sharing a workshop with the man that I gave him access to mine. And it’s proprietary information.” He smiled with false brightness. “And then before you knew it, he’d claimed ownership of my data, sold my ship, and ran, hoping I’d be so busy putting out fires that I wouldn’t be able to track him down.”

Kieron frowned. “But why did he—” A sudden alarm sounding behind him made him turn to inspect the data. “One of the probes found something,” he said, leaning in.

Elenus joined him. “What is it?”

“Traces of an iso-paxitran mix.”

“My baby is leaking,” Elenus breathed. “Holy fuck, he better not have damaged her fuel system, or I will kill him.”

“We have to find him first,” Kieron said dryly. “He’s in the sector that took out my miners.” And the geography of it was in flux, Kieron could tell. “We’ll have to go in slow and careful, and—”

“Fuck that.” Elenus pushed off the control panel and stalked out of the room. “If you’re not on board in five minutes, I’m leaving without you.”

***

Suddenly coming face-to-face with the Elenus who Kieron had first met was jarring. Gone was the annoyingly curious, sporadically charming man who’d been dogging Kieron’s 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,” Elenus 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—” Elenus 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.”

Elenus 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 Elenus as he piloted the state-of-the-art ship. It had AI helm control, of course, but Elenus 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 Elenus 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 Elenus was 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.”

“We’re still following our last path,” Elenus 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.”

Elenus 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?” Elenus 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!”