Page 8 of Cloverleaf Station

“Two minutes, Sparky. Better get those doors open.”

Kieron was sweating as he made sure the cables were properly attached, then activated the pulleys that would draw them tight. This system was hardwired into the walls of the bay itself and therefore always accessible, unlike the ground rollers that had a separate operating system and power supply. The cables drew taut, but his ship didn’t move.

He increased the power by ten percent. Still nothing. He shouldn’t be surprised—a ten-ton ship was very light by modern standards but still a hell of a lot of weight. He increased power by fifty percent, close to the maximum he could expect the cables to take before breaking.

The Daring Do began to move. It made a terrible scraping sound at first, but once inertia was overcome, it went more smoothly. A quarter meter. Half. It was getting really close to the wall now. Aaaand … stop! He hammered the button to shut down the pulleys but didn’t bother to detach them as he had less than—

“One minute. Better open those doors, or I’ll smash into the side of your station, and then things will really be fucked.”

This guy had no idea what fucked was, but he would soon. Kieron ran back for the operations room and resealed it. “Station, open outer doors to Bay Five!”

“You must remove prior environmental modifications to open the outer doors.”

Fuck, how had he forgotten that step? “Station, return gravity to normal, then open outer doors!”

“Affirmative. Gravity change initialized. Opening doors in ten seconds.”

“Here I come, Sparky. Better roll out the welcome wagon now or get ready to explain a hell of a lot of damage.”

“You’re insane,” Kieron muttered. Naturally his comm picked it up.

“Nah, I just know how to motivate people to get things done. You’ve got five seconds.”

The doors began to open. They seemed to be moving more slowly than xenon’s half-life, but he knew it was all in his mind. This asshole had him spooked … and Kieron was more than a little angry about that.

The doors were only halfway open when the nose of the incoming ship nudged between them. It was a slender, needlelike thing, not a spacious passenger liner or even a blocky-but-functional cargo carrier. This was a vessel that had been designed with one thing in mind: speed.

Aerodynamics were a nonsense consideration in space, generally, but apart from being slender, the vessel also looked amazingly light, and … what was the exterior of that ship made of? Kieron couldn’t tell, but he was sure he’d never seen anything quite like it before. It seemed to … ripple, almost, like it was changing based on the environment around it. As he watched, it went from something very glittery and hard looking to something duller, more matte. Not soft, exactly, but it somehow gave the appearance of softness.

The ship settled in without a problem next to the Do, and the outer doors closed as steadily as they’d opened. Kieron watched numbly as the ship went through a shutdown sequence, finally going almost completely dark on the outside. Then a hatch opened in the side of it and out stepped—

A Ganian! He hadn’t seen one in almost twenty years. Ganians were humans who’d been permanently altered by the environment of the planet they’d colonized, Gania, almost a thousand years ago. The gravity there was so low, and the environment so resistant to modification, that the people who lived there had grown long and lean, to the point that few Ganians ever stopped growing at less than seven feet tall. Some even hit eight or nine, but this guy—Elenus—had stopped around seven and a half feet, it looked like. Kieron, at six feet even, felt a little strange having to look up so high as the lanky man walked toward the sealed operations room.

Elenus Desfontaines was dressed in a black bodysuit, clearly custom, that clung to his form in very fitted ways. He had the close-cut but elaborate facial hair of a masculine Ganian, the design meticulously sculpted from the point of his chin to his temples, where he let it grow out more naturally. His skin was light brown, accented with what looked like coppery paint in places, highlighting his sharp cheekbones and the knife’s edge of his long, patrician nose. He was very pretty as far as people went, for all that he seemed skinny enough to break over one knee.

“Hellooooo? Let me in, already.”

Kieron blinked, then pushed the button to open the sealed room. A moment later, Elenus stepped inside, having to duck down slightly to keep from bumping his head as the decontamination process began.

“Not really designed for a Ganian, is it?” he asked, glancing around before finally looking at Kieron with a smirk. “We’ll have to make sure that’s—gah!” He stumbled back against the wall, one hand pressed to his freshly punched jaw as his eyes widened slightly.

Kieron shook out his stinging knuckles. “Welcome to Cloverleaf Station. Sir.”

Chapter four

Elenus Desfontaines just stared at Kieron for a moment, his thumb wiping up the thin trail of blood that was meandering down the corner of his mouth as he took Kieron’s measure. Kieron straightened his back and mentally ran through every relevant passage in the rule book that would allow him to argue for leniency from a review board because there was no way he wasn’t getting fired for this, but he’d be damned if he let this fancy bastard have his way without a fight.

His dark thoughts were scattered into confusion when the Ganian began to laugh, straightening up to his full height and shaking his head ruefully. “I suppose I should have expected that,” he said, blotting up the last few traces of blood before shrugging. “At least it shows you’ve got a backbone, which is more than I expected given some of the reports that have been coming from this place.”

I should never have put Dave in charge of filing status updates. It was all Kieron could do to keep from audibly grinding his teeth.

“Still, consider yourself on thin ice until you convince me otherwise,” Elenus went on. “It’s one thing to tell a guy off; it’s quite another to introduce yourself fist first.”

“Says the man who almost ran his ship into the side of the station,” Kieron muttered. Elenus clearly heard him—of course, he did, Ganians were renowned for having all the latest physical mods and upgrades. He could probably hear Kieron’s heartbeat if he used his implant to modulate his ears just right.

“Clearly you’ve got questions,” Elenus said. His smile went sharp, the edge of teeth showing between his lips as much a warning as the exposed blade of a knife. “And I’ve got answers, but first I need to look at your activity log for the past week.”

Kieron frowned. “Why?”