After a decade of exploration, Captain Mondragon had returned to Earth-1 to be promoted to captain and been placed in charge of this cutting edge vessel owned by the Institute for Organic Expansion. The first member of her crew was already on board. Fin's flight instructors gave her sterling praise, and when Catalina found out that Fin had applied to work on the Artemis and no other ship, she had agreed to have the young pilot go on the first test flight of her new vessel. Fin proved she could control the ship with ability that was almost supernatural. When she was also able to explain how the various automated engineering systems worked, its oxygen processors comprised entirely of species of plants and algae instead of the standard carbon-sink converters on most vessels, the odd orientation of its artificial gravity, its bizarre bacterial engines that could use sunlight to make fuel that could warp space and make faster than light travel possible, Catalina had canceled her other interviews. Catalina could hardly wrap her head around what she'd been given. It seemed that there were too many high-hoped, outlandish ideas on one vessel for it to possibly work. When Catalina had first been assigned to the ship and given permission to crew it with whomever she wished, she'd wondered if the Institute had simply hoped that the whole thing ran out of sugar in between stars and they simply floated off into nothingness never to be seen again, but her crew disproved that nightmare time and time again. Farah Relkor, Kensei Ikamon, the talented Fin, and the late Dr. Patrick Mercurian had saved countless lives, and helped the Institute hold up its end of the Charter on close to a dozen worlds. They had been to every inner planet, the star systems closest to Earth and most accessible by Bubbledrive. They had learned to use the Artemis's awesome capabilities to clone bacteria, modify insects, and spawn fish so that the Institute's hundred year old promise, of fresh air, clean water, and either healthy sea or soil, had been upheld.
Humanity had flourished in the Interstellar Spring, as it was called, and was now poised for what the Institute called the “Second Spring.” Five worlds held Earth's name, thriving colonies of close to a billion each. Another dozen worlds were inhabited by millions of people edging ever closer to the manufacturing capabilities present on Earths 1-5, and dozens more remained on the fringes of inhabited space waiting to be colonized. Every one of these planets needed to be surveyed to find if the Seedpods had been successful, to see what life had made of the planet, or if life had made it at all. Dead worlds had been discovered, even among the inner planets, and as they moved farther and farther from Earth-1, what they would see would be ever less predictable, or at least, that was the case if Epsilon-V was any indication. If Catalina was going to continue to do that work, continue to find new life forms and uphold the Charter and protect life in all its forms, both human and otherwise from the relentless grind of the Corps and their burbdomes, she would need an ecologist. And there was no man better than Roman.
Captain Mondragon sighed deeply and leaned against the wall of her ship, hardly flinching when she touched moss. It simply meant Farah Relkor’s experiments were going well.
'Captain, are you sure about this?' Farah asked.
'Hell no. But we don't have any other choice. Kensei, you said you kept in touch?'
'Yes Captain… I have eh… heard tell of his … exploits.' Kensei said. 'I would have notified him in advance if you had told me.'
'If I didn't tell the two of you, I certainly wouldn't tell him.'
'Yes Captain,' Kensei replied, making no attempt to hide his smile.
'Ensign Fin, you got the ship?'
'Aye-aye Captain.'
'Well then by all means Mr. Ikamon, lead the way.'
Chapter 5
They followed the map on Ikamon’s tablet down straight streets that ran between towering rectangular skyscrapers. High up above the synthetic force field of a sky glowed a harsh blue. Catalina found herself wondering what could possibly compel Roman Jupiter of all people to live in corporate burbdome. The cities had no natural bodies of water, no plants, and no insects. Catalina thought of them as huge factories where people moved to pretend like they were living somewhere more rugged than Earth-1, but in reality the Domes were far more sterile than Earth-1 had ever been. Housing people was the singular purpose of the burbdomes, and in Catalina's opinion, even that they did that poorly. There were no natural places, no plants, not even manicured lawns or carefully trimmed trees. The wealthy chose to either live in the towering heights of the buildings tall enough to actually graze the artificial ceiling, or near the edge of the dome's shield, far from what realtors marketed as the energizing “hustle and bustle” of automated cars, trains and gravbusses. The corporations claimed the burbdomes were far safer than living off the land and under the Charter, and the data was beginning to support them. They'd only had one cataclysmic failure, a total system collapse on Texas that had cost millions of lives, but that was over a decade ago and the corps had fixed the anomaly or so they claimed. Still, Catalina didn't trust the things. Burbdomes felt claustrophobic to her, despite the towering buildings and far away force field. They felt as if life went there to die. That was one of the reasons she loved her job so much, because she was upholding the Charter, and ensuring that people had a right to live off the soil and the sea with their own two hands instead of clustered together in one of these prefabs. That was also one of the reasons she respected her crew so much, they were Naturalists who detested sanitized dome life almost as much as they loved getting their hands dirty studying the wild ecology of the 51 Seeded worlds. That passion was also one of the reasons she had fallen in love with Roman and made his residency here that much more troubling to her.
The crew of the Artemis trekked past countless buildings distinguishable only by the ever-increasing digits until they arrived at 143,571. Far more people than that lived on Bulletar. It was one of the inner planets after all and had been established decades before the Corps had perfected their burbdomes cities. Plenty of people still lived outside fishing and farming for their sustenance, mining ore, trying to make something of themselves instead of just data crunchers and pencil pushers for the big Corps. Catalina sighed. She had imagined a hunt through the wilderness to retrieve Roman from somewhere out in the wild, instead he was in a box with a number on a door that was left slightly ajar.
Kensei, seeing this breach of etiquette went to knock, but Farah quickly caught his hand.
'Shh… I heard voices,' she said, and leaned in.
Despite her professional responsibilities, Catalina found herself putting her ear to the empty door.
'Your legs and arms are florescent petals and I am but a viceroy butterfly, transfixed by this beauty. Never before have I seen skin like yours. Never again will I lay eyes on a beauty so sweet. We are meant for each other, pollen and pollinator, each wondering which initiated this fantastic romance, and each knowing it will never end-'
'Yeah… about that,' said a high female voice.
'Time knows no limits save eternity, and not until I met you did I understand what the endless could truly mean.'
'Roman, we need to talk,' the woman said flatly.
'Then talk my dear, and like the drops of rain echoing in the forests as they splash off of the petals of a delicate jungle flower, I will hear every sound and it will all wash over me.'
'Roman… I don't think we should be together anymore.'
'Mm… Captain,' Kensei said and cleared his throat, 'perhaps we should knock.'
'Shut up Ken this is gonna be good!' Farah said and elbowed him in the ribs.
'-but a bee cannot survive without its flower.' Roman finished.
'That's the thing. You're always going on about bees, lightning bugs spiders, but you live in this city with me. Maybe you belong out there,’ the woman said patiently.
'But my love, we've been over this. You detest the natural world. It's one of the reasons why you moved here away from our nest of hammocks near the equator.'
'Yes. You're right, I don't like the natural world, but you do. We don’t have a lot in commo
n. I mean, don't you miss the flowers?' the woman's voice had a touch of annoyance in it, yet Roman blithely answered, seemingly oblivious to her disinterest.
'Of course I do, that is why I have brought a flower to you! Behold, our apartment can be filled with the sweet aromas of the jungle, like the Monarchs of Earth-1 I can migrate back and forth between the jungle and our home, bringing you gifts ever sweeter, until it feels that we are again in the wild.'
'That's not legal Roman. The cities are supposed to be clean.' Her tone of voice made it sound as if they'd been over this many times before.
'This flower will but clean the air and leave a delicate aroma that is far sweeter than those Ortho-scents you insist on buying.'
'You did get rid of those!'
'They are artificial and entirely unappealing flavors, my buttercup. This lily, harvested deep in the rain-canyons of the south is far sweeter and more subtle than those manufactured odors.’
'I don't want subtle, I want the Ortho-scent I bought! You stink Roman! And your flower doesn't smell any better.'
'Told you he stinks,' Farah hissed. Before Catalina could reply they heard what was probably the aforementioned flowerpot smash to pieces.
'And I'm sick of your hair clogging the drain and your poetry about nature. I'm sick of it all! I just want a break!'
Perhaps it wasn't the flower pot, for something else crashed against the wall and tinkled into a hundred pieces.
'But darling, how can a poor viceroy hope to survive if-'
Something far heavier smashed against the ground. Catalina actually felt the apartment shake.
'I don't give a shit about the viceroys or gypsy moths, and I especially don't give a shit about you or your damn fireflies!'
With that, the door flung open and the woman strode out and stood between Catalina, Farah, and Kensei without seeming to notice them. She was close to two meters tall, had short, bleached hair, a nose ring and tremendously large breasts. In her hand she held a jar with a single stick and lonely firefly that blinked its abdomen weekly in the harsh glare of the artificial light up above. She raised the jar up above her head and hurled it to the ground. It smashed into pieces between the feet of the crew of the Artemis. The woman went back inside and from the sound of it, began to trash the rest of their home.
Roman, it seemed, had finally heard enough. He dashed out of the apartment and fell to his knees between the trio of voyeurs. Catalina cleared her throat to speak, but Roman didn't notice her any more than the hulking big-breasted woman had. Instead he very gently, almost daintily, snatched the firefly out of the air and cautiously tucked it into a small vile that he pulled out of his pocket. The insect being safe, he immediately turned back to the door, which had been slammed shut in the brief moment he'd left the apartment, and began to pound upon it.
'Darling Betriz, please let me in! I know you're mad! But think of the poor honeybee left without a hive, lonely it wanders until it too succumbs to that most devastating of all ailments- heartbreak.’
Betriz had apparently heard enough of this, and now only wanted to hear the sounds of whatever possessions Roman had once owned smash to bits.
Catalina, seemingly shaken of her stupor, put a hand on Roman's shoulder.
‘Jupiter!'
He turned to face her and for a moment it was as if she was meeting him for the first time all over again. He was tall and broad shouldered, with unruly dark brown hair that managed to make his neat haircut look messy. His strong nose held up admirably between his brown eyes. He was clean shaven but already a healthy shade of stubble graced his cheeks. He looked at Catalina and for a moment said nothing, then grinned his big wicked grin. With that smile Catalina didn't feel as if she was seeing him for the first time. She remembered everything that smile meant to Roman, skinny dipping in alien waterfalls, chasing fireflies into moonlit fields, and the glow of it aboard their last ship, the R.L. Carson, when they'd both been but crew, and against her better judgment Catalina had slept with a junior officer.
'Sola, I… I haven't seen you since the trek between Tenagra and Bulletar.'
Catalina Solaris Xao Mondragon remembered much of their time together, but she had forgotten that he'd always called her Sola. She might have lost it at that moment, thrown her arms around him despite all that he'd done to her, but then she heard something else smash inside the apartment, and she remembered precisely why she'd left.
'I see you're still with Betriz.'
Roman nodded. 'She's amazing. So passionate.'
'You dumped Cat for her, you callous idiot,' Farah said before something smashed through the window, sprinkling the sidewalk with plazzglass.
Roman shrugged. 'Can a firefly be blamed for seeing another light in the distance? Can a butterfly taste but one flower?'
'I need you,’ Catalina said, looking up into Roman’s brown eyes for a glimmer of what they once held for her. Seeing nothing, she finished weakly, ‘on my crew.’
'I cannot leave her,' Roman said.
'We need an entomologist. You're the only decent one we know,’ Farah said.
Roman smiled at that. 'Perhaps the hypotheses are true! Even beetles can make honey if sufficiently coaxed.'
'God damnit Captain, I tried, but this is exactly the bullshit I'm talking about. He's got this bitch trying to kill him and he's sticking around. Forget this, forget him, he'll never listen to reason. Come on Ken.'
Ikamon turned to go and spotted two men marching towards them in dark uniforms. 'Authority.'
There weren't any police in the burbdomes, not like there were on Earths 1-5, but there were definitely people who were paid to make sure everyone followed the rules. It seemed smashing one's apartment to holy hell was against said rules.
'Perhaps you should go with the captain and let Betriz calm down. It would be unfortunate if the authority found your lampyridae and eh… evacuated it,' Ikamon said.
This, finally, seemed to knock Roman from his trance. He glanced to the pocket that now housed the firefly and back to Catalina. 'That would be most unfortunate. I believe she is ready to lay her eggs. It would be a pity for those uncouth brutes to get their hands on her. They have no respect for the delicacy of life you know, none at all.'
'Then come with me. We'll let Ikamon and Relkor handle them, and we'll go have a nice quiet chat about your lamprydae.'
Roman nodded and Catalina grabbed his hand and led him away from the Authority.
'No officers, we are here to solve the problem. It seems this poor woman is done with some loafer, we're here to get his things and get him outside of your fine dome,' Farah said as Catalina and Roman rounded the corner.
Chapter 6
Once out the sight and screams of Betriz, Roman said nothing to Catalina, only held her firmly by the hand and led her through the burbdome. The place was a maze of right angles. Sidewalks crisscrossed above and below streets that were all connected by convenience ramps and passenger ports. Nowhere did a street intersect another at anything besides a ninety degree angle and why should it? The entire city had been designed for efficiency. It would never need to be expanded. There would be no growth. If all went as the Corps claimed it would, nothing would have to be done to the place for the next century besides scheduled maintenance. After a time and countless right and left turns the gray apartment doors ended and they found themselves in a commerce sector. Now instead of rows of doors the sidewalk was lined with rows of plazzglass windows behind which manikins and people sat and chatted blandly. Roman led her into one of the buildings, a purported coffee shop. Much to chagrin of her Colombian ancestors, Catalina was not a coffee snob. Though her first officer was perpetually trying to turn her into one. Officer Relkor would not allow the captain to drink anything but her own heirloom varietals of coffee selected from the worlds they’d visited, hand roasted and percolated to perfection. This place was not filled with that.
Roman, perhaps finally noticing Catalina, withdrew his hand and mumbled an apology about how Betriz liked to com
e here. Immediately Catalina missed the touch of his hand. Though the callouses and grit she'd grown to expect from his work in the field had softened, his firm, supportive grip had not. Roman had amazing hands, hands that could hold an angry scorpion at bay or delicately put a leg band on a butterfly. Catalina took a deep breath. These were exactly the kinds of thoughts she must avoid if she was to recruit Roman. Catalina checked that her badges were straight in the reflection of a plazzglass display case filled with confectioneries manufactured deep in the burbdome, ordered some sort of coffee inspired concoction for both of them, and led Roman Jupiter to an empty table.
They sat down and Catalina looked in his eyes again. She always forgot how tall Roman was. Not as tall as that amazon Betriz had been, but for a space man, 185 centimeters wasn't too shabby. He certainly towered over her scant 160 centimeters. His broad chest made him look much bigger still. A man chiseled from a boulder. Catalina sighed. Now was not the time.
Roman seemed to have read her mind. 'I still dream of you. Of how you looked in the captain's quarters under the light of Bubbledrive streaming through those grand windows.'
Catalina felt herself smile despite her professionalism.
'What happened to you?' Roman blurted.
There it was. That was the Roman Jupiter that Farah was always complaining about.
'I became a Captain of the Institute's most advanced O-class ship.'
'O-class?' Roman's brown eyes perked up. 'I heard some of those have living libraries large enough to hold ten thousand separate specimens.'
Fireflies and Cosmos: Interstellar Spring Book 1 Page 2
