Page 13 of Cloverleaf Station

Then he was gone, turning toward the hangar and out of Kieron’s line of sight. As soon as he vanished around the corner, Kieron stepped mechanically over to his chair and sat down in it, dropping his head into his hands.

Holy shit. He’d nearly murdered Elenus Desfontaines. Elenus Desfontaines, ridiculously wealthy inventor and entrepreneur, who also happened to be his boss. All because of … of …

No. He wasn’t going to let his mind go back to that place. He’d gotten out of Hadrian young, too young to get the full “benefit” of the military training and genetic modification. He’d foolishly thought that because of his youth, and the fact that no one was supposed to have survived the Hadrian massacre, he could keep his name. It wasn’t such a remarkable name, after all. Plenty of people had similar ones.

More the fool he.

His implant beeped with a new message. Kieron activated his internal viewer and opened the file. It was a blueprint for a Regen unit, only this one definitely had some nonstandard additions. The upgrade to the health scanner alone … why did it have to be so specific? That was one of the great things about Regen—it healed broadly and perfectly, without needing to be directed. So why insert a program designed to limit its own potential?

Just do it. You’ve pissed the guy off enough for one day. Not to mention, Kieron needed some sleep, too, after such a concerted clusterfuck. An hour of unconsciousness should be enough for him—a luxurious amount of sleep for a Hadrian, honestly—but he was tempted to push it to two, just to put this day out of his mind for a little longer.

Work will help. Work always helped. Before heading for the Regen unit, though, he got his algorithms back up and processing the limited data that came in from Cloverleaf’s sensors. Every byte of refinement could make the difference between life or death out there.

And Kieron couldn’t die. Not yet. Not before he found Zakari.

After that? He’d have to wait and see.

Chapter six

Eight hours had never passed so slowly.

Kieron did his best to fill the time. He refined and re-refined his algorithm, until the numbers were so stable that improvement simply couldn’t happen without more data. He made the modifications to the Regen unit, resolutely not wondering why it had to be so good at targeting specific problem areas instead of doing the full complement of healing it usually did.

He even sent out his first wave of probes, something that normally filled him with a calm sense of purpose. The probes were his best bet of finding Zakari, and this time around he had more data for them to go on than ever before. The odds were the best they’d ever been … except for the fact that he had to find Elenus Desfontaines’ ship first.

That was the worst part. Not the finding of the ship—Kieron was resigned to that, as well as he could be resigned to anything that wasn’t finding Zakari. No, the problem was the fact that he was actually looking forward to finding the mysterious ship. Elenus’s description had captured his attention, like nothing else had managed over the past two years, and now Kieron had to grapple with the fact that his heart, which had always been so stalwart, wasn’t as fixed as he’d thought it was. There shouldn’t be room for any longing in his life, other than finding Zakari’s body. So why did he have to suppress a shiver at the thought of looking for Catalina, the ship that was more than just a ship?

Is it because of Elenus?

Kieron had a lot of fucked-up habits, but lying to himself usually wasn’t one of them. Sure, it had been a long time since he’d been attracted to someone—not since Gil, a miner he’d met two seasons ago now. It had been even longer since he’d actually been intimate with another person, almost five years. Zakari had worried about him, saying Kieron was deliberately isolating himself, that he needed to reach out and give a little bit in order to get.

“It’s fine if you don’t want it, but I know you do,” Zakari had said more than once, his round face puzzled. “So why not have what you want?”

It was an unfinished argument between them and would remain that way forever now. Regardless, Kieron knew what longing felt like, and while there was more than a hint of that emotion in the way he looked at Elenus, it was only a physical urge. He could deny himself any physical urge that wasn’t immediately necessary for survival.

No, it wasn’t the prospect of exciting his body that drew him to this project … it was the potential of interacting with something so far beyond his understanding that made Kieron anxious to start looking.

A living ship. A ship that was its own entity, that could handle the radiation of the quasar and take its pilot to places no being had ever seen before. How incredible, how fantastic. It was exploration at its most basic and essential, the sort of thing Kieron had dreamed about from the moment he’d first allowed himself to dream. Kieron’s hands shook just thinking about it, and that was completely unacceptable.

He did a mini-triathlon on the exerciser to work his nerves off, running, cycling, and using the special zero-g setting for a swimming facsimile that left him exhausted but finally tremor free. He showered, using more water than he ought to, but if he ran out, at least he had someone to complain to now. He shaved, changed his clothes, ate a bland but nourishing meal, meditated for a bit, and then finally, finally, Elenus emerged from his ship with a tired but satisfied expression.

“She’s ready,” he said and held out a hand for the tab Kieron was holding. “Did you get the changes made to the Regen unit?”

“Yes.” Kieron waited for the other man to look over the log of his last eight hours. He saw when Elenus’s eyes got to the exercise portion—they skipped back up to read it a second time, then looked at him with far too much amusement.

“You ran twenty kilometers, cycled for fifty, and swam for ten, all before meeting with me? And you still had time to do the busywork?”

“I’m sorry, was any of that supposed to be challenging?” Kieron replied, not bothering to hide his sarcasm. Elenus wouldn’t buy him being polite and obedient anyway.

“No, but it was supposed to take time and help you keep your nose out of my business,” Elenus replied. “I see I underestimated your ability to give yourself busywork. Or”—and now he smiled—"do you get off on punishing yourself?”

I’ll get off on punishing you. “Are we going, or have you reconsidered?”

“Ooh, touchy! I’m not judging your kinks, Sparky. God knows I’ve got enough of them myself.” Elenus handed the tab back. “How far out will your probes be by now?”

“Between five and fifty kilometers,” Kieron replied. “Depending on which route I set for them.”

“Are they sending data back live?”