A Breath Of Fire

So far, my career as a farmer had been unimpressive.  While I was learning the ropes, I got pregnant.  Then I got my skull bashed in and had to take a year off to recover.  Six months after resuming work in the greenhouses, I was pregnant again.  I was hoping to give Michael a son, but Serena has her father wrapped around her finger just like sister Eve.  Biologically, Serena and Eve have the same father.  Unlike her sister, Serena was conceived from my egg.  Michael wanted to name her after me but I was adamant.  One Saffron is enough.

 

Eighteen months passed and our family grew again.  This time, a son, Martin. He is the biological child of Kelissa and Martin, who served on the Falcon Hunter.  They spent two years with the first Eve, and they died with her in battle against the Raptor.  We love Martin as if he were our own flesh and blood.  We will also make sure he knows everything we do about his biological parents.

 

Martin will be my last.  Each pregnancy was progressively harder on me and I spent the last month of Martin’s pregnancy in bed.  I wanted to argue with the doctor when she told me it was time to stop.  But my own body was telling me the same thing.  I am finished birthing babies.  Time to focus on raising them and finally spend some time on farming.

 

Martin is born four and a half years after Apollo’s launch.  The conflict between naturals and clones is a memory.  We have moved past that.  The ship itself is doing fine.  But we are not meeting our yield expectations in the greenhouses.  No one is going hungry.  Yet we are consuming our stored food supply faster than the plan called for.  We’ve got to feed ourselves for many years before there will be a chance of growing food under the open sky of our new home.  At this rate we will starve before we get there.

 

I know I will not solve this problem.  I’ve learned how to make the hydroponic mixture and start the seeds.  I know when a plant is getting too much or too little water and when it is ready to harvest.  But I do not know why the yields are low.  The plants look healthy to me.  This problem will be solved by the scientists, or not at all.

 

Our fate is out of my hands.  I focus on being a mother and a wife.  Michael has become more important in the leadership of the ship.  Admiral Pullers trusts him and has gradually given him more authority.  I support my husband any way I can.  When I am not in the greenhouses I spend my time chasing after children.

 

Years pass and for the first time in my life, there is stability.  I have routines.  Getting the kids out of bed, bathing them, getting them dressed, preparing meals.  Eve begins school, followed in two year intervals by Serena and Martin.

 

I was 18 when Randleman bought me at auction.  When the Apollo launched I was 26.  When I walked a scared but excited Martin to his first day of school, we were eleven years into our journey.  I was 37 years old.

 

The children are amazing and nothing like what I expected.  Eve is the splitting image of her mother.  Just a smaller version.  The doctor says she is completely healthy, but will always be tiny, due to her premature birth.  That may be a good thing for the rest of us.  She can be sweet when she wants to.  On those occasions, she reminds me of my long lost friend.  Unlike the first Eve, my daughter has a fierce temper.  And she is fearless.  More than once on a playground, a boy or a bigger girl tried to take a toy from her, or boss her around.  They usually exited in tears.  Sometimes they were bleeding.  Those times, Eve reminds me of me.

 

Serena looks a lot like me, and a little like Michael.  But her personality is 100% Serena.  She always has a smile on her face, and is the calmest child I’ve ever been around.  If she didn’t look like me, I’d wonder if the test tubes got mixed up before she was implanted. 

 

Serena is an artist.  We stopped giving her toys.  She never played with them.  Art supplies are limited on the Apollo.  She learned how to draw with anything she could find.  She made paint by mixing cleaning chemicals with ground up crayons.   At age nine, she began playing guitar.  The instrument was almost as big as my daughter.

 

Martin does not share any genes with Michael, but he is definitely a daddy’s boy.  He is his father's shadow when Michael is home.  He went through a phase where he imitated his father’s every movement.  I was glad when he got over pretend shaving.  Too much to clean up.  He was one of the best dressed kids in school, as he insisted on wearing the same style of clothes as his father. 

 

Ten years pass, seemingly in a heartbeat.  Martin is a teenager.  He and his father have developed a much more adult hobby.  Every evening, when Michael gets home, father and son watch the daily news.

 

They watch the ship’s internal news segment, followed by the feed from Earth.  We are 21 years into our journey.  We have travelled six light years since launch.  Which means the feed we get today was sent from the relay station at Jupiter six years ago.  Every day, we are farther out of touch with our home planet.

 

Eve is in college, in engineering school.   She is a student along with her mother.  I have been taking biology classes part time for several years.  Science does not come easy to me but I am determined to learn what I can.  We are still struggling with the greenhouse yields.  It is a serious problem.

 

To make up for our food shortage, we have put a hold on new pregnancies.  But that is a short term strategy.  Eve and her cohorts have reached child bearing age.  We can only wait so long before they must start raising their families.  If we have no more children, the youngest of our females would be in their sixties when we reach Eridani.  Too old to become mothers.

 

The senior staff began discussing the idea of voluntary suicide for older crew members.  With fewer mouths to feed, there would be enough to begin the next generation.  Michael and I talked it over.  Once Martin graduates from college, if the problem has not been resolved, we will volunteer.

 

The first Eve, along with Martin’s biological parents and 84 others did not hesitate when they faced certain death in battle against the Raptor.  We will not dishonor their memory by being less willing to make the same sacrifice.

 

So I had a powerful incentive to help solve the problem.  I studied and learned.  Eve graduated college and became an ensign in the Navy.  She was determined to follow in the footsteps of Admiral Pullers, her adoptive grandfather.

 

Serena did not go to college.  Instead she followed me into the greenhouses.  She spends her work shifts tending plants.  She says it keeps her mind free for songwriting, poetry, and sculpting, her latest passion.

 

Martin finishes his second year of college.  We are 25 years into our journey.  There is still no resolution to the food shortage.  We have run out of time, run out of options.  The senior staff formalizes a plan to encourage voluntary suicide for the older crew members.  Admiral Pullers gives an impassioned speech over the ship's network and writes his name at the top of the list.  Michael and I are next.

 

We did not know that the ship would solve the problem for us two days later.  In a terrible way.

 

I was in a greenhouse when a loud noise pulsed through the ship.  The lights went out.  The floor shook and knocked me to my knees.  When the emergency power kicked on,  alarms were sounding all over the ship.  There had been an explosion.  A forty foot diameter hole opened up in the hull. Fires were burning, toxic gases were circulating in the air supply.  There was panic and chaos.  And death everywhere.

 

The doors and hatches closed and locked automatically as designed.  The damaged part of the ship was isolated.  We put out the fires and cleaned the air.  But we could not bring back the dead.  Of the 1204 crew members, we lost 358 lives.  More than a fourth of us. I knew every one of the dead.  So many gone.  Daniel, who I spent two years with on the Avenging Angel.  My good friend and mentor Leisl. 

 

And Michael.  Beloved husband and father.  Gone in an instant.  I am grateful that all of my children survived.  But without Michael, there is a hole in the center of my heart.

 

The parts of the ship that are open to outer space are permanently sealed off.  We do not have enough material or spare parts to repair the hull breach and much of the damage caused by the explosion or the fires.  Luckily, none of the greenhouses received any unrepairable damage.  We will attempt to limp our way to Eridani like a wounded animal.  For a year, every man, woman, and child on the Apollo worked 12 hour shifts, seven days a week, to fix what we could of the damage.

 

Eventually the engineers figure out what happened.  A design flaw, compounded by the way the ship was assembled.  The ship is inspected from top to bottom for other instances of the problem, repairs are made.  We continue the journey.

 

I throw myself into tending the greenhouses.  I do alright during the long shifts.  The work keeps my mind occupied.  But at night, when I am alone, I think about Michael.  I start drinking myself to sleep.

 

The days turn into months.  Time becomes blurred as alcohol becomes a routine part of my day.  It numbs the pain.  It also dulls my senses, and allows me to not hear the concern in other's voices.

Eve confronts me when we run into each other in the cafeteria, and I am so drunk I slur my words. We argue.  In front of a dozen people, she yells at me.  "I don't even want to talk to you right now.  I can't believe brave, fearless Saffron is now a lush."  She turns and walks away.  I am humiliated.

Things come to a head a few days later when I pass out going down a ladder.  When I wake up, my old antagonist, Lieutenant Cooley is looking down at me.  "Don't worry Saffron, the medics will be here in a minute.  They will take care of you."  It must have been karma that made Cooley the person to find me.  The look of pity on the face of a former enemy cut me almost as deep as Eve's harsh words a few days before.  I had hit bottom.  I gave thought to ending my life.

When Serena and Martin showed up at my quarters, I was expecting a lecture.  Instead, each grabbed me by an arm and insisted I go with them.  When I asked where we were going, Martin said, "You will find out soon enough.  No more questions."  They brought me to the cafeteria, we sat down.  Moments later, Admiral Pullers, Eve, and Jarek Dvorsky walked in.  Pullers spoke.  "Saffron, I have ordered Captain Dvorsky to escort you on a walk.  Since you are a civilian, I cannot order you to go with him.  That is why I brought Eve.  I hope you will listen to your daughter."

I look at Eve.  She says, "If you ever want me to speak to you again, go with Captain Dvorsky."  For the second time in a week, my daughter walks away from me in anger.  Jarek held out his hand.  "Saffron, it would make my day go a lot easier if you will walk with me.  Would you give me the pleasure of your company?"

It feels good to be walking next to a man.  I ask where we are going.  Jarek says, "Deck 7, Passageway 5, Compartment 17." 

I recognize the address.  "That is Serena's workshop."  I wonder what my children have cooked up.

When we enter the studio, we are stunned.  I had heard Serena talking about the memorial she had been planning since the explosion.  Through the grief and the alcohol induced haze, I had not really listened.  Now that I was standing in front of it, I was overwhelmed.  It had the same impact on Jarek.  He stood there, silently, tears streaming down his cheeks. 

There is no stone on the Apollo.  Serena had used her creativity once again, and had gotten Eve and her engineer friends to help.  They had come up with a resinous material that became stonelike when it dried.  Serena and her fellow sculptors had carved a memorial to our fallen, out of what appeared to be granite.

It was a simple but powerful tribute.  The names of the ships, and the people, who had died to get us where we are.  I started at the top, and read the name of every ship, every person.  Sidewinder, Falcon Hunter, RoadRunner, Cooperstown, New Hope, DeltaMiner, and Ramses.  The 87 men and women who did not hesitate to trade their lives for our chance at freedom.  The 142 sailors on the Raptor.  People I had never met, but my actions led to their deaths.  I felt like I should memorize every name. 

Next were the 358 who died in the Apollo fire.  When I got to Michael's name, I put my fingers on the stone.  I felt the angle of the letters.  I marvelled at how many hours it must have taken to make this. 

I looked at Jarek.  He was tracing Leisl's name with his fingertip.  We looked at each other.  Jarek said, "I could never be Michael."  I said, "I could never be Leisl."  He put his arms around me and pulled me close.

The next morning, after breakfast, I asked Jarek to marry me.  He said yes.

I have not touched alcohol again.  Being Mrs. Jarek Dvorsky is keeping me busy.  And I had relearned a forgotten lesson, standing in front of the memorial.  The living have an obligation to the dead.  To never stop moving forward.  We must make sure their sacrifices were not in vain.