Even as the ship rose into the sky La'Shay heard clamoring and banging. Her heart dropped as Roman's head and one of his arms popped out of the slowly closing hold in the cargo door and he screamed his nickname for her again. 'Shay!' as strange as he'd become, she still didn't want to see him decapitated she thought, though she did hate that he called her Shay. But the height and the closing door was too much for even love-struck Roman. His head disappeared back into the cargo doors. There was some more scuffling and yelling in another language, (La'Shay did not know Japanese curse words, but from the tone it wasn't hard to guess that's what they were) and then Roman's hand shot out the cargo door one last time and dropped a parcel before being yanked back inside before the latch shut.
Despite the temper tantrum La'Shay couldn't help but catch it. It was light and fluffy, cotton or hemp or some sort of plant fiber wrapped carefully and labeled battus philenor on a piece of paper in Roman's nearly illegible cursive.
'They're pipevine swallowtails,' cracked over her radio, 'beautiful like you…' and then the Arrow leaned back, blasted into space, and La'Shay was once again left alone. Except not exactly. She had the cosmos, and now, some peace and quiet.
After a moment of watching the Arrow fade into the sky, she looked down at the package in front of her. She carefully unwrapped it and found 22 little husks carefully wrapped in fabric. One chrysalis was wiggling back and forth. La'Shay found herself overwhelmed with emotion as the creature slowly emerged from its chrysalis. It had dark blue, nearly black wings that sparkled iridescently in Wholhom’s sun and white spots along the edges of its wings that La'Shay couldn't help but think looked like fireflies. She smiled. Roman Jupiter. A man she never thought she'd be so glad to be rid of, and a man she knew she'd never forget.
Chapter 23
The flight out of Wholhom’s gravity well was far worse than the flight in. Farah tried to study the aphid fungus hybrid she’d discovered but ended up just killing more peanuts. Ikamon spent his time cleaning aquariums for the clams he’d procured from Wholhom’s oceans but scrubbed one tank so vigorously he cracked the plazzglass. Catalina worked on her report for the Institute, trying to pay special attention to the details of the genetech and the carbon mouthparts of the aphids they had never actually seen but instead found herself writing primarily about Dr. Winston. Only Finn seemed undistracted by the stress the newest member of the crew was piling on the ship, but she was unshakable when flying the Artemis and besides that, was as far away from him as the layout of the Artemis would allow.
They were all suffering because Roman Jupiter would not stop crying.
‘He won’t stop crying,’ Farah said, incredulous.
‘He stops to eat, but he does that so late at night, that it’s hard to notice,’ Catalina said with a shrug.
‘And it doesn’t piss you off?’
Catalina smirked mischievously. ‘I just hope he cried this hard for me.’
Farah rolled her eyes.
Roman entered the dining hall. Ikamon pushed him from behind.
‘But I don’t want to eat! I’m not hungry for anything but peanut butter,’ Roman’s tone was petulant.
‘You cannot eat just that, you know? Come, try this.' Ikamon shoved a beer in front of Roman. Roman sipped it between sniffles. ‘It’s,’ sniff, ‘pretty good,’ sniff, ‘what kind of hops?’
Ikamon shot a smile at Farah, who rolled her eyes further than Catalina thought possible. ‘Cascade, we got some a few planets back. Earth-3 maybe?’
Roman’s face dropped. ‘Shay was from Earth-3!’ He wailed, inconsolable, heartbroken, a wreck.
‘Captain,’ Fin’s voice sounded over the comm. ‘We’re free of Wholhom’s gravity well, err… close enough given our crew.’
‘Perfecto, take us to Earth-1’ Catalina immediately cursed herself. She should have given those orders to Fin privately.
‘Earth-1?’ Farah was incredulous. ‘Why in Darwin’s name are we going to that dump?’
‘Captain, I assure you that I have enough preservatives to delay another visit home,’ Ikamon said.
‘Institute’s orders,’ Catalina said.
‘What sort of orders send an O-class to any of the Earths, let alone the run-down original? Farah said, her anger darkening her caramel skin.
‘Despite Ensign Jupiter’s contributions on Wholhom, he has been court-marshaled. We are to take him to Earth-1 for processing,’ Catalina said.
‘Oh, well why didn’t you say so?’ Farah smiled.
‘Captain, gomenasai, I must object. We have a duty to the Charter. We cannot forget about Epsilon-V for some courier mission, you know? I did not survey the seas there in any detail. There could be monsters worse than those that took Doctor Mercurian. Squid larger than even my ancestors could imagine,’ Ikamon shuddered.
Catalina clenched her jaw. Typical. If Farah was happy, then Ikamon rebelled. Far worse though, was Roman’s reaction.
Like a child denied a lollipop, Roman’s eyes welled up with tears and he began to bawl.
‘Oh cruel injustice! What have I done to deserve this emotional dose of pesticide? This unfairness to my very metamorphosis? I was living a simple, but admittedly flawed, existence on Bulletar, from where I was plucked like a flower not yet gone to seed. I was kidnapped, I had thought with the noblest of intentions, but now I discover that I will not be fulfilling the Charter as I did for poor Shay, but instead will have my wings plucked and be put in some horrid embalming jar on Earth-1! They say the pollution is so thick there moths can’t even navigate by the moon. Oh, mankind is far more twisted than anything natural evolution has devised on the 51 worlds.'
‘Captain,’ Fin’s voice came over the comms.
‘What pilot?’ Catalina snapped.
‘We’re receiving a code orange from Juxor. Some creature from their oceans is eating up their carbon deposits and destroying their machinery.’
There was a moment of silence on the ship, then everybody started talking at once.
‘I have been to those oceans, this is a new threat, and must be studied-’
‘If you pick Jupiter over our orders we could lose the ship-‘
‘Might as well just throw me into space because it’s obvious we’re not going back for Shay.’
The only voice Catalina really heard was her pilot’s. ‘I can get us to Juxor in ten days, and it’s on the way to Epsilon-V.’
Catalina, like any Captain worth her badges, knew how far Juxor was from Epsilon-V or any of the other nearby worlds. She had thought it would take a few days longer to get there though.
‘A code orange is technically more urgent than Aprocrita's order to return Ensign Jupiter. It's certainly more important. Juxor's carbon is building the inner worlds. Losing it would cripple our growth. Fin, fire up the Bubbledrive. Take us to Juxor.’
‘Aye-aye, sir.’
‘Now, the rest of you get out of here. You are dismissed to your quarters. I need you rested and ready by the time we drop from Bubble.’
‘You don’t have to tell us twice, Captain,’ Farah said, slapping Ikamon’s butt. He jumped but smiled and walked a little faster. ‘I love it when you fight back,’ Catalina heard Farah say and tried not to think of the leather outfit she’d seen her in before.
Roman was turning to go. Catalina called out to him. ‘Ensign Jupiter, a moment.’
Roman nodded weakly and stood there, shoulders slumped.
Once the crew had left, Catalina put a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t so much as move when she did, when once that would have been enough for him to try to tear her badges off.
‘You did well down there. Really good work. You understand why we need you up here, don’t you?’
Roman nodded. ‘Yes sir, but if that’s so, then why were you going to take me to Earth-1?'
‘I can’t just disobey orders. You did good work on Wholhom, if you do good work on Juxor maybe I can convince the Institute to let you serve out whatever punishment here on the Artemis. And if not you
could always defect like you tried to do on Wholhom.’
Roman managed a weak smile. ‘I somehow doubt I’ll ever do something like that again. Shay was special.’
‘And Betriz wasn’t?’
‘Who?’ For a moment Roman genuinely seemed to forget the woman he’d been in love with for the last year. In that moment Catalina considered their distance to the nearest airlock and what sort of weapon she would need to knock him unconscious. ‘Betriz… you know she didn't like the scent of flowers? Still, better her than being with someone who is going to take me to Earth-1’
Despite all her years representing the Institute Catalina’s jaw clenched strong enough to bend steel when Roman said that. After a moment of clenched teeth she said, ‘I’m glad you could give up Dr. Winston for the Charter.’
‘Really, I missed it, sir. I missed trying to help people and I missed finding everything life has turned into out there. I missed the hunt as well. Wholhom had fireflies too. I haven’t missed a planet yet. That video you showed, that was truly Epsilon-V?’
‘The biggest you’ve ever seen.’
‘Then there’s that, Captain. Maybe we can go there before my court-marshal instead of me defecting?’
‘You think you’ll be able to carry on well enough until then?’
‘You kidnapped me from Shay, and my choice is either work for you, or you will turn me into Earth-1 at your earliest convenience?
Catalina smiled inwardly. She finally had the slippery bastard. ‘Looks like it. You know I heard they don’t even grow angiosperms on Earth-1 anymore? No pollinators left. Nothing there but grasses and pine trees.’
Roman shuddered. ‘I just wish you would have let me stay with Shay. We had a spark. Do you know what I mean?’
Even after Roman’s blatant dismissal of what they’d once had, Catalina wanted to say yes. Yes, she knew what that was and that she’d had it. They had had it together, but how could she admit it? She didn’t dare say such a thing if Roman now thought of her like he did Betriz. They’d been together a year, and he’d lived as a groundworm for her. His six months with Catalina was probably forgotten long ago.
‘If you evr need me, Ensign, I’ll be in my quarters,’ Catalina said and turned to go. Part of her would always belong to Roman Luz Jupiter, but the captain in her was glad to see that what they once had had together was gone, and that Roman’s old habits were back. Like a bumble bee in a field of flowers, Roman could never settle for just one.
The engine in the back of the ship hummed and then they were in Bubbledrive. Lights flickered through the port holes and Catalina smiled to herself as the universe ticked by faster than nature itself intended. She loved her work and what it meant to mankind and was glad to have a full crew even if one them was a hopeless romantic. But despite his personal problems Roman had proven himself. He was crew on the Artemis now, nothing more, nothing less. He had been court-martialed, Catalina thought with a grimace, but perhaps there would be a way to keep him on board until they could make it to Epsilon-V. Catalina was beginning to wonder about more than her orders to take him to Earth-1. Why hadn’t the Institute sent them back to Epsilon-V? Catalina had never disobeyed an order from the Institute before, but then, she’d never doubted the Institutes’ devotion to the Charter that it was supposed to uphold. Catalina sighed. It’d be hard to convince the Generals back on Earths 1-5 that Roman was the best for the Artemis, but Darwin take her if Catalina wasn’t sure he was.
She turned back once more to look at the silly-hearted fop. She had cared for him so much once, and thought he’d cared for her. Catalina stayed herself. This was what Farah warned her about. This was what she knew she must do, watch someone she’d been naive enough to love chase other women without a thought to Catalina. She would have to do it for the Charter. She looked back at Roman, at his broad shoulders and stubble, his neat hair cut that was nevertheless untamed. There used to be a look in his eyes that seemed to say he’d give her worlds if she’d but let him. It had been so hard to watch it go then reappear, directed at another woman. Catalina supposed she’d never see that look of wanton lust and desire directed at her again… except Roman’s eyes were wide with it right now. Why is he grinning?
‘Sola… I’m sorry, Captain Sola,’ his words dripped charm. ‘You said something about your quarters?’
‘Is there something wrong, Ensign?’
‘Tell me, does the Institute still expect crew to adorn badges?’
‘Yes. If badges are to be awarded for our work on Wholhom, we’ll print them ourselves and have a small ceremony on board,’ Catalina said guardedly. ‘Why?’
‘Because I humbly request that if my actions on Wholhom earn me a badge, that your delicate hands lay it upon my chest.’
Catalina turned on a dime and marched out, ‘Perfecto,’ she muttered as she left Roman and his stupid smile to himself and promised herself to never, never feel so much as an iota for the loose-hearted idiot again.
Acknowledgements
There is no way I could have got this story to where it is today without help. I would like to thank my beta readers. Brian Becker, I hope you find the changes to your liking. Hayz, thanks for the encouragement, girl! A huge thanks to my day Tom Mitchell, who edited this thing despite spending his days proofreading all day long. I don’t know how you did it. Thanks to my mom for still believing that I can be anything I want to be. Most of all I would like to think my darling wife and mother of my son. Raquel, you have the patience of an orb-weaver spider, the stamina of a soldier ant, and the devotion of a honeybee. I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I will work tirelessly to write enough strange naturalist poetry to make it so, or you know, let you and Leo eat my body if this doesn’t work out.
Sneak Peak! Diamondcrabs and Mangoes
The metal pipe rattled and shook, and like something out of the Wild West, thick black sludge erupted from the ground. The group of organic engineers cheered. It was the third find they’d had this month, and if the analysis of the crude oil-like compound was anything like the last few underground seas they’d discovered, it represented billions of credits once refined and traded to the other inhabited worlds. Juxor would continue grow wealthy off of the natural carbon resources it housed just beneath its surface, as would the men who came to this planet to help develop the resource.
‘The priest will be happy,’ one man dressed in coveralls stained black with the tarry sludge said as he twisted a gasket and slowed the gusher of carbon slurry to a trickle.
‘Oh I already am, and outside of the worship ceremonies on the seventh day, I am not a priest, just a faithful servant of the Organic Church, and your planetary marine biologist.’
‘Yes Mr. Kane,’ the worker said, smiling bashfully like a kid caught saying bad words and not being reprimanded as harshly as he’d expected.
‘How is it looking Dr. Kirk?’ Kane asked.
Roberth Kirk approached the hologram of Kane. He was far less dirty than the laborer. He consulted a tablet connected to a vial of the black carbon-rich sludge. ‘Very good sir. Purity rivaling the old fossil fuel deposits of Earth-1. This is the best find we’ve found on land.’
‘It’s as the Doctrine says, those who search will find what they are searching for,’ Kane said.
‘Mother Ocean provides,’ a good number of the men in grungy coveralls muttered, an affirmation of their faith. Dr. Kirk frowned at the men.
‘We need to get this cleaned up Mr. Kane. If Dr. McKenna’s hypothesis is correct we have very little time. A lighting storm is approaching.’
The holo of Mr. Kane laughed. When he did the workers laughed with him. ‘Osha’s hypothesis, if you can call it that, has been proven correct only a handful of times, and has been flat out wrong dozens more. Besides Doctor, you are hundreds of meters inland. You should be quite safe from any oceanic alien bugs, if I recall what Osha named them.’
The men laughed at that. Again Dr. Kirk frowned.
‘That will be all Doctor. Now, leave the
devoted to their work.’
‘I have room for more,’ Dr. Kirk said to the group of men.
Some of them looked at the hologram of Kane but no one stepped forward.
‘You have your beliefs. We have ours,’ the man who’d spoken earlier said. Some of the men behind him nodded. Dr. Kirk sighed, climbed into a drone and took flight.
From there the perspective of the holo shifted to the camera mounted underneath the drone. It lifted up to see that the men and carbon-sludge well and machinery were on a small island, and that to the horizon was nothing but ocean broken up here and there by other islands, most of which were bare and rocky, though a few supported tufts of green. The sky was a thunderhead thicker than anything ever seen on Earth-1. Bolts of energy cracked from the sky to the sea. The drone started to fly off towards the east when the Doctor started to curse.
‘Back down! Down!’ he yelled and hammered something on a keyboard but it was too late.
Over the ridge of a sandy dune on the small island scuttled a wave of creatures.
‘Enhance,’ Captain Catalina Solaris Xao Mondragon said and the holo obliged. It zoomed in on one of the creatures. It had a craggy exoskeleton, four legs, and two arms tipped with shimmering dark metallic looking claws it waved menacingly. It was hard to tell their size, bigger than a man’s hand certainly.
‘The report says they’re made of diamond, the claws are anyway.’
Captain Mondragon nodded. ‘Proceed.’
The crab like creatures poured over the sand dune and made for the machinery slick with the carbon slurry. The men didn’t hesitate. One of them had a tool that sprayed a liquid on the crabs then sparked and the creatures were burning. They did not stop, but only added a high pitched squeal to their unwavering march towards the men.
‘Get on!’ Doctor Kirk yelled but the holo of Kane spoke louder to the men.
‘If we lose this reserve their population could multiply. We have to stop them now.’
The men reached for their weapons. Some of them had ancient projectiles probably manufactured on Juxor since transporting them through space was dangerous and illegal. Others had simply sharpened pieces of metal. They attacked the crab creatures with mirthless determination as wave after wave of the creatures scuttled past them and onto the machinery that had found the organic sludge.
Fireflies and Cosmos: Interstellar Spring Book 1 Page 10
