Page 73 of Cloverleaf Station

Elenus hummed. “That would be bad, sure, but you’re actually moving pretty quickly. You’ll be at the far end of that range in three days, and I’ll be able to figure out how to scramble everyone’s signals so they have a hard time tracking us.”

The voice scoffed. “Sounds impossible.”

Elenus laughed. “You’ve never met me, baby. I do the impossible every day.”

“And on that note,” Kieron interjected, “you should go back to doing the impossible and leave us to do the same. Lizzie, please obscure our location in case we get pinged.”

“Yes, Kieron.”

“I’ll be close if you need to talk something through with me, Xilinn,” Kieron said gently. “But I think it’s a waiting game right now. If you’re wondering if you can trust us, though … you can. We’re going to help you.”

“I know you will,” Xilinn said. “I’ll make sure everyone else knows it too, but … Kieron … was there really no way you could bring Szusza along?”

He bit his lip for a second. “No. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she said immediately, but he knew it wasn’t. None of this was all right.

The only thing that would make it better was saving them all, but that was going to take more time than Kieron had thought. No simple virus to overtake their guidance system, no—this was going to be messy.

And he would be there for all of it.

Chapter thirty

Kieran shouldn’t have underestimated the girls.

To hell with that; Elenus shouldn’t have underestimated the girls. He’d programmed them, after all—made them into the thinking, feeling, whole-person beings they were. Catie was brilliant, and Lizzie was right there with her, and Lizzie had already managed to surprise Kieron more than once. Analyzing risk factors, creating code that acted better than any shield, working together to do something far more efficient and safer than their parents could: that was them. And they did it so well that Kieron was completely taken aback when, on the second standard day, still three hundred thousand kilometers inside Trakta’s danger zone, he found himself being woken out of a fitful sleep by the leader of a mercy fleet out of Daenar.

“Lizzie, this is Captain Kingston Hu of the relief vessel Caladrius. We’re nearing the indicated coordinates, please advise.”

Kieron tried to pull away from Pol, who whined in his sleep and clung to Kieron’s shirt. The boy had been hard to deal with over the past standard day, careening from wildly excited about reuniting with his mother to terrified everything was going to fall apart. His anxiety had passed straight on to Kieron, who didn’t know how to handle it—he’d trained himself out of the physiological reflexes of anxiety as a child, and trying to understand how to deal with Pol’s state was harder than it should have been. It had ended with both of them exhausted, on the verge of breaking from too much, too quickly.

“Captain Hu, this is Captain Kieron Carr of the Lizzie,” Lizzie said before Kieron could dislodge—and probably wake up—Pol. “Thank you for responding so quickly. I trust the signal spoofers are working well for you?”

“Brilliantly,” Captain Hu said in an appreciative tone. “I have to thank you for these. They work better than anything I’ve ever seen before.”

“We have some very smart engineers on staff,” Lizzie-as-Kieron demurred. “Do you need any assistance linking up with the refugee ship?”

“No, this part we’ve got down to a science. As long as there are no problems, I anticipate we’ll be able to get all of them on board before shift change, no more than four hours.”

“Excellent. Did you bring your scrappers? I know in the contract negotiations, you mentioned needing aurellium, and given that their ship is Traktan, it’s likely to contain several kilograms of it in the circuitry.”

“Yes, and thank you for pointing that out! We …” Captain Hu and Lizzie kept chatting, and Kieron … well, he knew he ought to get up and take over. Knew he ought to speak for himself, to be himself, to take command, but … the truth was, he didn’t know the details of what Lizzie was talking about. He knew about the mercy fleet, of course, but that was as far as he’d gotten before Pol had broken down.

It shouldn’t have mattered—they weren’t supposed to show up for another full day, plenty of time to make decisions and run them by Elenus, but instead … here they were. Now. Transferring refugees, and Kieron had apparently slept right through everything that had led to this point.

[Are you hearing this?] he sent along his implant to Elenus. There was a pause, and then—

[Catie! Did you help your sister subvert an entire fleet into doing your bidding?]

[Um …] Those were Catie’s harmonics in his mind, pink and bright … and sheepish. [Maaaybe? But it is a mercy fleet, Daddeee! Just nooot the oriiiginal one. Theyyy’re headed to another disaster now, so weeee could have the clooose one.]

[Catie.] There was a sense of Elenus very deliberately pausing, probably reining in his anger. He tried to do that when he was talking to the girls. [That’s not your call to make. You can’t just take over communications for entire fleets and reroute vessels because you feel like it!]

[Weeee didn’t! Lizzie said Kieron was siiiiick and needed Pol’s mamaaaa! This will get her moooore quickly!]

[Not the point, young lady!]

There was an electronic huff. [Just because yooooou’re old and slooow and huuuuuuman, doesn’t mean weeee should be puniiished for—]