Chapter 2
Step into the beating green heart of the Demeter — half wilderness, half cultivated miracle, Engineered for Life?.
Here, a river sings to the rhythm of the ship’s engines, and orchards climb the sunlit terraces beside untouched forest. Every breath is a promise: humankind can thrive among the stars rooted in the soil that made us.
Cass’s last words to Marcus, frantically swiping a dossier of files onto a tablet, had been: “report to the farm, lay low, and read the files! You need to know everything I do.”
He didn’t actually. Not a single soul questioned him.
One quick scan by a harried Marine and two bots and he’d stepped straight into Cass’s life.
He remembered laughing with his friends at the earnest dewy-eyed types who were selected.
Until the AI chose Cassius. I laughed at him too.
Said he didn’t have to leave the system to get out from father’s shadow.
A curious shame filled him at the memory.
Which was work. Cassius fucking Ahmet worked! All fucking day. It was tedious in the extreme, supervising a crew of machines planting some sort of tuber. Better than the unholy mess of the rest of the ship, but still. Labor? At his age? His knees, his back, every part of him was a misery.
Marcus, the first fingers of doubt tapping his shoulder, spent most of the day sneaking peeks at the dossier and gaping at the farm.
None of his senses indicated they were in space, one hull breach from the frozen vacuum.
Rather, he stood in the shade of a slow moving planter, his bare feet scuffing through dark crumbling soil.
A breeze, ripe with the smells of green things and living soil, cooled his scratchy head.
Ignoring the stupid tubers, he turned into it, closing his eyes, pulling his jumpsuit open enough for the air to reach skin.
This certainly wasn’t one of the floating farms Marcus remembered from Junior Farm Corps.
Awe he hadn’t indulged in since he was a boy seized him as he turned in a circle.
The biosphere, one of five orbiting earth, filled the entire bottom half of the ship.
A glance at the dossier, it was nearly fifteen miles long?
Behind him terraces of trees rose to the walls?
Horizon? It was hard to tell where the ceiling was.
Or, roof? Top? Interlocked panels showed blue sky, with a blazing sun moving across it.
If he squinted he could make out the edges of individual panels, but as soon as he blinked the illusion reasserted itself.
Despite his public persona of debauchery and high living, he couldn’t entirely kill his interest in such things.
Sweet, studious Cass had highlighted several passages.
And now I am pretending to be Cassius, I suppose I can be a little less jaded about it all.
He had to hold out six weeks; the Colony ship would be out of communications range. After that point, the Demeter’s was beyond recall, Earth’s courts lost jurisdiction. Marcus’ creditors and the police would be forced to release Cassius. Six weeks. It seemed simple when they planned it.
Despite the unfinished corridors and frantic whir of welding bots, a makeshift bar had appeared beside the Persephone’s hangar — a cargo bay with a few crates, a plasma heater for light, and a half-dozen Marines who’d decided to make it home until launch.
They were already well into a bottle when Marcus dropped onto a crate and offered to help them finish it.
“Fleet sends us across the system, gives us a ship with half the walls missing,” one of the vets grumbled. “And now they say we have to get Matched before we cross the line of the elliptical?”
Another snorted. “Better than dying alone.”
“What do you mean? Match? What sport?”
The Ceremony of Matching, called the Match, will take place before the line of the elliptical has been crossed.
Marcus jumped at the voice, clear in his implant as much as the air around them. He forgot the Demeter’s AI was listening. He’d need to be careful. The Marines didn’t seem troubled, immediately began to argue with the AI.
“I’m not letting some machine pick my bed partner. The fuck you mean?”
“Say that again?” Marcus asked, horror breaking over him.
I will reveal the pairs and triads, summoning each individual forth to be joined with their designated partner or partners.
“Dunno mate,” one of the older women said. “You heard what the AI can do? She Matches you to the gene. They’re building the new world from scratch. Everyone needs to be… compatible.”
Marcus nearly choked on his drink. “Compatible? You mean the AI’s arranging romance now?”
I’m not arranging romance, Demeter said.; The Match is the social foundation of the new colony.
“Thought you Terran boys love that design for belonging crap,” another Marine said, raising a brow.
“Not this Terran boy,” Marcus said, slumping back against the crate. “I decide my own fate. No computer’s going to tell me who to—”
His wrist beeped.
A faint shimmer projected above his hand — a holovid, scratchy and delayed. A little girl appeared, laughing, curls flying around her face, two big brown eyes and a wicked little smile that mirrored Cassius’s perfectly.
“She look just like you!” The vet laughed, elbowing him. “That your kid?”
Marcus’s throat tightened. “My niece,” he said softly. “Look at her. My God. Look at her little nose.” No message but the image was enough. Cass was safe. He’d made it.
Marcus’s vision blurred, the arguments breaking out between the Marines dull and far away.
Reality broke over him, not the half baked theory of a quick swap, but the truth as it stood.
He was never going home. He was sacrificing everything.
My brother, my niece, they will have the life I would have just wasted anyway.
Someone shoved a chair, hard enough to screech against the deck. “Can the AI even Match you old fucks?” a younger Marine sneered.
The vet swung before the insult finished leaving the man’s mouth. Fists cracked flesh. The bay erupted in motion, chairs flying, curses echoing off steel.
Marcus ducked, laughing despite himself. A stool skidded past, followed by a Marine tackling another into a stack of rations. He could have stayed out of it. But chaos had always felt like home.
One last night as the bad twin.
He tossed back the rest of his drink and pushed to his feet. “Alright, boys,” he said, yanking off his shirt. “Let’s make it memorable.”
Demeter’s three chimes brought Leo to his senses.
He’d slept poorly, nightmares of Phobos made him sluggish.
He’d been staring at himself in the mirror for a full ten minutes, making himself understand the plain black uniform coat with Ares, Director over the ColonyStar logo.
The concept couldn’t seem to take hold. Thirty years. Done.
Leonus you are running three minutes late. Remember, the first item on your schedule is the disciplinary hearing.
“Apologies, Demeter,” Leo said.
There is no need to apologize. And the black looks good on you.
Leonus tugged his jacket straight. The black was... fine. Plain, looked good. It would be fine. Everything was fine. As Demeter had predicted, there was a certain amount of chaos after launch. So at least he’d be busy.
“What a terrible way to start the day…”
It will be fine.
Leonus and the three other directors and all their staff settled in with no more than polite nods. He supposed he’d get to know them all soon enough.
Thankfully, the first group were easy enough, a pack of brawling Marines from the Persephone he chewed through in Fleet Latin, before sending them off to scrub the heads by hand for a week.
He may be in the black coat now, but by Olympus, they would conduct themselves as if the Admiral of the Fleet were still aboard.
After those sniveling pups were sent away, Leo took a deep breath.
It was only when the door closed behind them that he caught the tone of the room: confusion, surprise and a deep, deep disapproval. The StarColony staffers murmuring behind their hands.
“Director Ares,” Principle Director Basim said, leaning ever so slightly on Leo’s new title. “Maybe before the others come, we should decide on more… appropriate consequences.”
Oh. Of course. Humiliation tightened his collar to a steel ring, something he had to swallow around.
“Emotions have run high,” she said gently. “Realization of the permanence of our journey is setting in. Sentencing should be light. And focus on pleasant, grounding tasks.”
“That’s absurd,” Leo snorted. “Discipline–“
“Important of course but perhaps we can be more…”
“Lenient?” he asked, a sneer trying slip into his voice. He crushed it. Ruthlessly.
“Empathetic. Some of those Marines are considering joining us,” said the Terran administrator, who’d been the Farm Corps Colonel yesterday and a puling lieutenant when Leo decided the fate of his entire planet.
“And they won’t be Marines anymore.” His words, and the superior little smile, stabbed like knives in Leo’s heart. “One might even be your Match!”
“Very well,” he said, holding himself still and calm by raw will alone. Nausea swung the room in a slow circle. “I apologize.”
“There is no need. It is your first day,” Basim said, genuine kindness apparent under her words. “And we are colleagues here.”
“Thank you.” Leonus unclenched his jaw. He tugged the jacket again, stomach roiling.
“Send in—“ he checked his notes. “Captain Cassius Ahmet Sutherland.” General Sutherland’s son? God I hope he is nothing like his father!