2503.14 28/31 — Veil #Writever #Mars #SpaceOpera
The day the Decath pressured Marisela's grandfather into denouncing her mother's achievements for Mars, announcing he was a hostage with a knife to his throat, Mari had wanted to announce she was pregnant. Her synthsilk hid little by the time the NADS Secretary of State delivered his ultimatum, but Mari put it off again. Because of her part in "Suiting up the Nisei," then with her father's help, convincing people that women could perform increasingly unoccupied men's jobs, she earned recognition for marshaling people to causes. On vid from Herschel, having helped win a vote to build the martian-designed cargo vessels the Onēsanue championed, her mother stopped mid-conversation, pointing.
Mari hadn't known how to interpret her shocked expression. "I chose Rufus."
"I'm going to be a grandma?"
May Ri worked at it, volunteering crèche duty with Rufus since critical work took Mari all over the globe and her makers and designing didn't require travel or set meeting hours. Mari's second, a boy, was thanks to Rachel, who turned out to be biologically male to some people's chagrin, but not entirely to Mari who'd wondered about her attraction to the girl—which went out the airlock when she later found herself attracted to other women. The nisei often slept in pods, and no martian cared about biological correctness the way Earthers did. Regardless, it was a cute rando on one of the old asteroid ships (best she could calculate) who accounted for her third sansei, fulfilling her colonial duty early. Like her father, like most male imports, she visited her family a week every couple months.
May Ri missed her eldest despite the grandkids.
Manette, her second, filled the void, joining May Ri's engineering echo group as a trainee, taking after her mother. Both homebodies, they often worked together in the same dome, Mani helping iterate May Ri's railgun development before May Ri's departure, this despite having her first girl by a podmate. That meant nursing, which she was especially well built for. She became a wet nurse when she decided she liked it. Her mother thought her weird, but at 18 she was a grownup. A book plate let Mani work both jobs effectively.
May Ri's unplanned for 5th daughter, Moria, found a special place in her heart. Unlike her mother, her quiet loner girl got the luxury of doing what she wanted from the start: paint—which meant murals. The 13-year-old's rainbow-colored abstracts increasingly filled hallways and entire domes with joy, with rolling melting circles and ellipses, or fractal explosions, or… was that daisies? Auntie Reina found ways for her to travel between dome crèches, to spread her visual happiness wider.
Maureen and Miriam, the twins, turned into stalkers at puberty, startling their mother, suddenly anywhere she might be. Worse, they finished each other's sentences; they were fraternal, one with sandy and the other with dark hair, which ruined the effect. Soon they finished May Ri's sentences, often predicting what their mother would say to colleagues, or want, bringing her that. The uncanny pair studied everything, but especially liked vehicles—helios, rovers, shuttles, gunships. Not building them, but fixing and maintaining them. The mechanics loved living in no-grav and suits, but kept returning to their mother's construction unit, to "care" for her, because they of all May Ri's daughters understood their mother's demons.
The twins gathered their siblings and their father, Rufus and Raquel, Reina and her pod, the week before the Earther fleet encounter, celebrating their mother's birthday with Chicken Three Ways (eggs, soup, and fried spicy) cooked by Mani, eggy-fluffy golden challah fresh-baked by Raquel and Mari, and chocolate cake baked by Mani decorated by Moria. Even the sansei grandkids attended, kept strategically occupied and fed by Mani.
Ten days later, NADS nuked Herschel, where Big Sister worked as vice-director. The family never saw Marisela again. Reina remarked that at least after Hiroshima—nuked by NADS's secular precursor state—survivors had air to breathe.
The twins characterized it as a veil lowering across their mother's heart. The years of preparation, the building, the launching, the trips to 16 Psyche, the provisioning—it went from protecting Mother Mars to revenge at all costs, even if it cost of her life.
Nobody could guarantee success, regardless of vehemence. More importantly, their mother had taught them emotion interfered with getting the job done.
The twins won their berth on the SS Bradbury by merit, and kept it over May Ri's objections because the Onēsanue insisted. They hoped it would give the mission commander a reason to live. #RSMarsNeededWomen 28
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
