Page 24 of Cloverleaf Station

Kieron gripped the probe, then triggered it with the route he’d picked out. Its little exhaust ports puffed, and a second later they were underway.

Most of the asteroids were easy to see coming. The probe adjusted its course automatically, taking in the data its fellows broadcasted and carrying him unerringly forward. Kieron overlaid the route on the faceplate of his helmet, using his implant to check and double-check that things were going according to plan. So far, so good. They were a third of the way to where he expected Catalina was, and he still had six minutes of probably decent physical health before things got bad. At this rate he’d—

The probe suddenly darted down, pulling so abruptly Kieron almost lost his grip on it. A second later he noticed a small, reddish cylinder with a bright green light on one end dart through the space they’d just occupied. One of Moritz’s explosives, no doubt.

He recognized the type—once they stuck tight, they could be triggered. The timer for each of them could be independently controlled, but messing with them meant setting them off. Kieron was vaguely grateful that he’d opted not to waste time fucking with the one stuck to Lizzie—that was going to be a job for future-Kieron, or more likely, future-Elenus. Right now, he needed to make sure he survived this tenacious floating bomb.

What did he have, what did he … ah. Fumbling a little, Kieron reached for the compartment on the probe that held its solar sail. The probes almost never lasted long enough to need the solar sail for power out here, but they came standard with this model. Kieron grasped for it, his eyes on the cylinder that kept darting back and forth, like a fish hunting through dark water for prey as it came closer and closer to them.

He needed to get something in front of it, needed to distract it before it got any closer because it was definitely getting closer. Uncomfortably close, close enough that he could see the flicker in its light, close enough that he could watch the lens reshape itself as it zoomed in on him. If this thing was broadcasting an image back to Moritz, he was fucked.

Not as fucked as if he let himself be blown up right now, though.

Finally, finally Kieron got the probe’s solar sail out. Detaching it from the casing, he triggered it to expand and threw it in the direction of the explosive. The sail began to spread, glittering as it soaked up all the dim, deadly light from the quasar that it could, a brilliant red octopus floating up through an ink-black ocean—

The explosive found it. There was a moment where the sail crumpled around it, swaddling the device like a child, before it blew up.

There was no concussion wave—nothing to carry it in. The explosive was small enough that it hardly made a dent against the darkness, but it would have been more than enough to end both Kieron and his ride. And he didn’t have another handy sail to distract another one with, so if they were followed again …

The space around them stayed clear, though. The probe got back on track, only losing forty-eight seconds to the detour in the end. Kieron cursed the loss all the same. He was feeling bright now, sprightly, but in that weird way where he also couldn’t quite feel his limbs. Like, he knew they were there, that they and his brain and his heart were all cooking in the fierce radioactive glare, but he couldn’t quite single them out. They were fuzzy, numb, and strangely buoyant all at once.

“Where are you?” Kieron muttered as they cleared the next large asteroid. There were only two left of an appropriate size to be hiding Catalina and also close enough for him to reach before death. He’d counted on it being the first one. Without that help … he held his breath as the probe rounded it, and—

There she was. There was the ship that was Elenus’s child, there was Catalina. She was beautiful even from this far out—camouflaged to match the surface of the asteroid, but Kieron could still see her silhouette. Versipellious skin, morphable and teachable—magnificent. She was small, but he could already tell that she was something special. As he watched, he saw a faint glow pulse down the ship’s body and back up. Some sort of charging mechanism? Was that how she maintained her anti-radiation shields?

Her heartbeat?

Stop being fanciful. Or rather, it was time to be even more fanciful but Elenus-style.

There was only one way onto Catalina, and that was through her main hatch, just like with the Lizzie. Undoubtedly, Moritz had commanded her to keep it sealed—had commanded her to do everything she could to preserve his life. As he was her captain while she was out of touch with Elenus, that was all she had to go on. She was a child, obeying a cruel uncle while waiting desperately for her father to come reclaim her. What would she do if she heard Kieron suddenly?

Well … Kieron hoped she’d let him in. He opened the file that he’d downloaded to his implant and piped it into the greenie’s radio, wincing at the effort it took. Fuck, his brain was starting to resist using the implant. He needed to get this done, fast. Hopefully, Catalina didn’t have any proximity alarms ready to trigger, because he was going to have to get close for this.

It had been ten minutes now. Moritz was probably trying to talk to him. Kieron had very little time to make a go of this. Releasing the probe once he was close enough to Catalina that he bumped right up against her hull, he set his hands down on her skin.

Then he activated the voice file and let Elenus do the talking.

***

For almost half a minute, nothing happened. Kieron felt despair well up inside him, fueled by the sickness spreading through his body. What if Catalina was somehow deaf to the world? What if Moritz had exerted a more forceful kind of control over her; what if Kieron was about to cook in his greenie suit out here, clinging to the hull of a baby ship like a barnacle while Elenus went progressively more insane back at the station?

“… I mean, c’mon, the Lizzie is amazing, and you know it. No other ship—apart from Catalina, of course, but she’s more than just a ship—could do so well for you out there …”

Kieron turned his head toward the surface of the ship, fighting the urge to puke as he closed his eyes. Well … there were worse ways to die than with Elenus’s voice in his ear. It would be nicer to go with his hands on Kieron’s body, but he couldn’t have everything. Besides … he didn’t want anyone to have to watch this. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

Was it like this for Zakari? How long did he have to think about it? What was going through his head, what was he feeling? Did he cry?

Probably he’d cried; Zakari had cried at the smallest things. He had been the most empathetic of all his spousal group, which had gotten him some teasing but also made him a natural locus for comfort and problem-solving. Surely he’d cried when he knew he was about to die. It was only human.

Kieron wasn’t going to cry. Not over his own fate. But Catalina … he did feel terrible for her. If she really was sentient the way Elenus had described …

Pink light washed over his face, and for a moment, Kieron thought his eyes had started bleeding. Then he realized that no, the pink was outside of him—it was a change in the ship’s skin, all centered around where he was pressed. Catalina was responding to him! He forced himself to focus on the pulses, trying to understand them. Was it some sort of code, or …

The signal for unloading in a cargo bay! He moved to the side to clear the door, and a second later, a gap started to appear. With it came Catalina’s scream. He could feel it in her hull, echoing through his physical connection to her. It hurt her to open her outer doors, hurt her badly, some sort of biofeedback loop Moritz had set up, perhaps, but she was still doing it. Slowly, bit by bit, she was doing it. As soon as the door was open enough for Kieron to slip through, he did so. The door closed behind him, and the warning lights inside of Catalina began to shut down.

Kieron’s throat ached, and his whole face felt swollen as though he’d been hit in the face with a piece of rebar. He needed to focus, though—he was inside, but the job wasn’t over yet. Moritz hadn’t been sucked out into space, so he had to be in here somewhere. Kieron needed to find him and neutralize him.

He needed to be able to open his fucking eyes first. When had he even closed them? They felt … gummy, gluey, and if it wasn’t blood, then it was probably lymph, and he—