6. Chapter 6
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?”
“Not yet. That takes a lot of energy,” he said when Elenus frowned, “and I need to spare as much as I can for their thrusters and AI controls. We can start downloading data when we’re out in your ship. The probes have a hard time broadcasting through the station.”
“Big thick hunk of junk,” Elenus muttered. “Fine. We should be able to stay out for three and a half hours before we need to return and let Lizzie patch herself up. You help set the course, but I do all the flying.”
“Fine.” For now, at least. “Let’s go, then.”
“Ah, wait.” Elenus held up a hand as Kieron made to walk toward the ship.
“First things first: a little safety briefing. It’s standard procedure before bringing on a new crew member,” he added when Kieron’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
“You think I’m going to break protocol and give you another chance to make a complaint about me? ”
“It’s not like you couldn’t get me arrested the moment Cloverleaf Station is back in the shadows,” Kieron replied testily. “I think we’ve reached a détente, don’t you?”
“Still. This is a specialized safety briefing, and it’s very short, so humor me.
” Kieron sighed but nodded. Elenus smiled brightly and rubbed his hands together.
“Excellent! So, all the normal stuff, blah blah blah pressure suit, plus I’m the captain, and you do what I say, and also, there is a very specialized med kit in the Lizzie that will walk you through what you might have to do for me if at any point I go unconscious. ”
Kieron frowned. “Why would you go unconscious?”
“I probably won’t,” Elenus assured him.
“Probably isn’t good enough.”
“God, you’re like a catterpet, gnawing a koi to the bone.
” Elenus shook his head. “Suffice it to say, if for any reason I can’t communicate with you, the stuff in the med kit will stabilize me long enough to get me back to the revamped Regen unit in the clinic.
All right? It’s nothing contagious, don’t worry about that.
Now.” That devilish smile was back. “The longer we stand here arguing, the more radiation your little probes absorb, and the less use we get out of them before they shut down. So let’s make the most of the time we have, shall we? ”
Kieron hated that he made a good point. “Fine. But this isn’t over,” he warned as he marched around the man and headed for his ship.
He almost missed Elenus’s low mutter of, “You’d better hope that it is.”
Almost.
***
Kieron didn’t do impressed, not anymore.
Too many times, he’d been drawn into the larger world with the promise of something beautiful, something awe-inspiring, something that was meant to be special, only to be let down, sometimes violently.
He’d long since stopped listening to people when they promised him things and had resolutely refused to allow his heartbeat to quicken when he saw something amazing.
So what? There was plenty of amazing out there in the universe.
The Lizzie strained his own determination not to be impressed.
Kieron was glad he was already wearing his greenie suit when he got inside so that the gasp he let out was shielded from Elenus.
The ship was incredibly luxurious, despite its tight size, with surfaces that yielded just enough under his touch to let him know they were responsive, reactive to their surroundings.
The furnishings themselves looked like old-world wood and leather, which of course was ridiculous—who would waste such things in a ship? And yet …
“You know, that suit is excessive in the Lizzie,” Elenus informed him as he slipped into the pilot’s seat. “She’ll more than suffice when it comes to your protection for the next few hours if you’d care to be more comfortable.”
“We’ll see,” Kieron replied, but he did deign to take his helmet off. The air smelled faintly sweet … some sort of floral aroma he couldn’t identify, but it was warm and spicy. The door shut behind him, and Elenus patted the copilot’s seat.
“Join me. You might as well learn the basics of operating her while we’re out there.”
There went his heart again. Damn it. Kieron sat, though, and pulled the safety straps over his bulky suit.
“Lizzie’s AI is perfectly capable of getting her in and out of docking, but I’ll show you how to do it manually,” Elenus went on, then turned and winked at him. “If you ever open up the doors, Sparky.”
Oh, right. Kieron used his tab to open up Docking Bay Five, and just a few moments later, they were sailing out into space. “That was fast,” he commented.
“Her propulsion system is based on old-school fusion reactors, combined with some of the latest in energy storage capability. Basically, the entire ship functions as its own battery, and the propulsion system is modified to adapt to that.”