Page 2 of Cloverleaf Station

No one replied.

“Dave!” The comm should have automatically picked up his request and relayed it. If Dave had turned his implant to mute again so he could listen to music on his retro headphones, Kieron was going to murder him. He ran out into the hall and almost directly into his assistant, who had a plate stacked high with food in one hand and a tall, frosty shake of some kind in the other.

“Hey! I was just heading for—”

“Sit down,” Kieron said, hustling Dave toward the control panel and forcing him into the control chair. He took the food and drink out of the man’s hands and laid it all on the table behind them—now was not the time for another spill in the command center; the last had been bad enough. “The Masons are in bad shape. Let me out of the bay and then track me, I’m going after them.”

“But … um …”

“Track me and stand by to help!” Kieron rushed toward the docking bay before Dave could say another word.

He had only minutes to save lives and none to waste by taking one right now.

Chapter two

You have to keep calm.

You have to run.

Keep it together.

Fuck keeping it together—literally every second counts—RUN!

This was the conversation that had played out in Kieron’s head every time he got a rescue call for the past two years. The battle between urgency and clear-headedness, between personal safety and mission success, became more fraught every time he went through it.

For a while after things went so terribly wrong with Zakari, he’d trended hardcore toward flagrantly ignoring his personal safety for the sake of the rescue. After one of those escapades had ended with the woman he was rescuing dying anyway, and him having to spend a week in a Regen tank regrowing several layers of his skin, his distant supervisor had suggested that he was possibly not in the right frame of mind to be working on Cloverleaf Station.

“Especially after what happened to your friend … it might not be the right place for you at this time in your life. There are other stations between here and Delta Nine that you might do better at.”

Kieron knew he would probably do something very rash if he were transferred away. He couldn’t leave Cloverleaf Station, not until he accomplished what he had to. So he boxed up all his insecurities and desperation, settled into the persona of a professional, and stopped acting recklessly. He was personable to clients, he was amiable to travelers, he managed not to smother Dave for being the worst second ever. He was as normal as normal could be, when it was nothing but a façade over the crackling, memory-haunted hellscape of Kieron’s innermost thoughts.

It was only when he slept, or at times like this, that the cracks surged to the surface of his psyche. He couldn’t afford to fuck up, he couldn’t … but he couldn’t let the Masons die either.

He threw himself into the Do’s pilot’s seat and sealed the door. “Open Shuttle Bay Five.” He left his personal ship in the smallest, most private shuttle bay, the one that required the fewest resources to get in and out of.

“Copy that,” Dave said over the comm. Kieron fired up his engines and waited for the shuttle doors to open.

And waited.

And waited.

“Dave …”

“Sorry! Sorry, just looking for the right button, hang on.”

“Triple circle in green on the righthand side of the center console. Don’t forget to input your ID number.”

“Right, got it, just … you’re still logged in.”

Kieron resisted the urge to grab something sharp and hold on until he bled. “Log. Me. Out.”

“That’s kind of your job, dude.”

You can’t kill him. Keep it together. “Right now my job is to help the Masons, so override my information with your hard code and get me out there.”

“Right, just … I don’t think I remember my hard code?”

“It’s. On the back. Of your ID card.” Short sentences. Just breathe. “Type it in. Now.”