Mission from Mars, Part 4 of 4
Posted on Mon Mar 31st, 2025 @ 9:42pm by Crewman Mateo Gardel & Staff Warrant Officer Oliver Sylver
2,647 words; about a 13 minute read
Mission:
To Boldly Go
Location: Shuttlebay 2, Deck 6, USS Fenrir
Timeline: Day 12
[ON - Continued from Part 3. And, now, the conclusion...]
Oliver smiled as he walked over from outside up the ramp to the cargo hold, carrying a large bouquet of tulips. "Ah, all sorted then?" he asked, with an easy spring in his step. He also had a bag over his shoulder with some small items he had picked up. Nothing too interesting, not really, but he didn't get down on Earth that often anymore. So he took advantage of this little trip. He went to the locker to secure the bag and then gently put the flowers down. His eyes went to Mateo and then the crate.
Mateo heard him before he saw him—footfalls light on the shuttle ramp, a soft shift in the air behind him as the hatch closed and balance returned to the pressurized space. He didn’t look up right away, too focused on syncing the magnetic anchors with the embedded latch points along the deck. The low hum of the force field engaged as it stabilized over the crate’s edges in a faint shimmer of blue, the containment field snapping into place like a sealed breath. He liked that part—systems behaving as they should, safeguards triggering in sequence. It offered a kind of reassurance that people rarely did. Satisfied, he straightened—just in time to catch a flash of saturated color in the corner of his eye. Tulips. A whole bouquet of them, carried loosely in Oliver’s arm with the kind of casual care that suggested they mattered.
Mateo’s gaze lingered longer than he realized, his head tilting slightly as he took in the warm oranges and pinks, the almost velvety curve of each bloom. They were vivid, freshly cut, and—he assumed—fragrant, though he didn’t step close enough to check. He didn’t understand the rules of flowers in practice. In his books, they always meant something: apology, admiration, desire, grief, love. The symbolism was often stated outright, neatly packaged for emotional consumption. But out here in real life, stripped of narrative framing and italicized meaning, it was harder to decode. He wondered, idly, how he might respond if someone gave him flowers. Would his chest warm the way it did when a character in his novels felt seen? Or would he freeze up, unsure of how to react, worried his response would be wrong, excessive, or underwhelming? The thought lodged somewhere between curiosity and quiet dread. He approached it like a theory: stimulus plus gesture, filtered through the uncertainty of social expectation. Results… inconclusive.
“They’re nice,” he offered, nodding toward the bouquet as Oliver moved to stow them. His voice was even, but there was sincerity beneath it—genuine appreciation for their color, their form, the strange human impulse to carry something so fragile through the world just to give it away. No sarcasm, no irony. Just the truth. He turned back to the containment field and gave the interface a final glance, then moved forward, his fingers brushing the wall panel as the secondary field shimmered into place with a muted hum. The ship vibrated faintly beneath his boots, systems preparing for launch. “Cargo’s stable,” he added as he took his seat, voice a touch softer now. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
"Alright then," Oliver took a packet and moved to the pilot's seat, taking it with confidence. He held the packet out to Mateo, looking at him. "Here, to snack on while we're heading back. Dutch syrup waffles. Fresh, non-replicated," he added and placed it in Mateo's hands before he reached to the controls. "Permission to return to orbit...authentication codes..." he muttered to himself as he pressed the buttons to send the message through. With the amount of traffic it was easier than trying to cut through with an audio transmission.
Mateo accepted the packet with both hands, blinking down at it like it had been materialized out of nowhere. The wrapping was simple, but the weight in his palms told him enough—this wasn’t some replicated substitute with perfectly uniform layers and chemically engineered syrup. It was real. Handmade, probably. His fingers skimmed the edge of the packet, pausing over the seal before cracking it open with a quiet reverence he didn’t even realize he was affording it.
The scent hit first—warm caramel and cinnamon, rich and golden like something conjured out of memory rather than a ration pack. He pulled one of the stroopwafels free, careful not to snap it, and held it for a moment between his fingers. It was still slightly pliable at the center, the syrup clinging faintly to his fingertips in a way that felt... almost indulgent. He took a bite, slow and deliberate, and the flavor bloomed instantly—buttery, spiced, sweet without being cloying. His eyes closed briefly, unbidden, and a soft hum of approval vibrated low in his throat.
“Okay,” he murmured, lips curving faintly as he looked toward the forward viewport. “That’s illegal.” It wasn’t sarcastic—well, maybe a little—but there was real appreciation behind the words. Mateo didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, but this? This was dangerously good. He took another bite, slower this time, as if trying to memorize the taste.
And without looking over, he added softly, “Thanks.” It was casual, offhand, the kind of gratitude that didn’t need eye contact or grandiosity to be sincere. Just a quiet acknowledgment—of the gesture, of the kindness, and maybe a little bit of the fact that, despite everything, it was nice to feel looked after.
Oliver smiled as they took off, giving a small shrug. "My boyfriend introduced them to me. It's now my personal mission to teach others about the deliciousness of fresh, handmade stroopwafels..." he said and glanced at him. It was good to see the young man relax a bit. He had worried, as he always did, about this new wave of enlisted who seemed so serious...so hard working. Sure, he had been too, maybe less serious before the war. Things were just different now. And the kid had sad eyes. Oliver was always a sucker for that, ever since he had gotten out of the orphanage. Whatever hard edges he had gotten since then had been polished off by years and by Verity.
He plotted in the course and sat back, running a hand over his face. A quick flight back, traffic wouldn't be bad once they exited Earth's atmosphere. "Did you get what you needed down there, Mateo?"
Mateo didn’t answer right away. Instead, he glanced back over his shoulder toward the crate secured at the rear of the shuttle, its reinforced casing pristine beneath the soft interior lighting. Everything inside had been labeled properly, sealed with care, temperature-stabilized without even a flicker of deviation. Not a single item missing. Not a single error. He’d come down here expecting delay, frustration, maybe even a damaged pouch or two. But instead? Precision. It made him feel—strangely—relieved. Maybe even respected, in a quiet, procedural kind of way. That last one was harder to admit, even in his own head.
He shifted back in his seat, brushing the faint dusting of crumbs from his fingers before licking the last trace of syrup from the pad of his thumb. The movement was quiet, casual, but not careless. He savored the taste like it might vanish if he didn’t make the most of it. Then, with meticulous ease, he folded the empty wrapper into a neat, perfect square and slipped it into the side pocket of his uniform. He didn’t like clutter. Didn’t like leaving a trace of himself behind. The stroopwafel had been a gift, and like everything he valued, he handled it with precision.
"Yeah," he said finally, tone even but sincere. “Everything’s accounted for. No damage, no contamination, no mislabeling. Even the immuno-isolates were still perfectly chilled.” He paused, then added with a wry exhale, “That doesn’t usually happen.” His gaze drifted toward the viewport again. “Either someone on the ground actually gave a damn, or someone up here rattled the right cages.” He didn’t look directly at Oliver, but the weight of his glance angled in that direction all the same—a quiet acknowledgment. “Either way… I got what I needed.”
He was quiet for a beat longer, letting the engines hum around them, before turning his head. “What about you?” he asked, quieter now. “You get what you needed down there?” The question came out casual—but the glance that followed wasn’t. For all his reticence, Mateo didn’t ask things he didn’t care about.
"I did," he admitted as he looked at Mateo, a quick glance, before he looked ahead again. Keeping an eye even if everything was being handled by the computer for the most part. The minuscule adjustments that were needed when piloting. "It's the small things that matters, especially if we're going to be away from the Sol system for a while. The treats that we can enjoy fresh. You'll find a lot of people have delicacies packed in their quarters ready for a...moment where they need to remember where they came from. Or want to be. Or feel safe."
Mateo didn’t reply immediately. His gaze lingered on the space beyond the viewport, where Earth was beginning to fade behind them, its curvature thinning into the familiar blackness of orbit. The atmosphere had already burned away most of the color. Soon, it would be just a pale dot—distant, the way it always felt.
He shifted his weight, elbow propped against the armrest as he watched the light disappear. He knew the exact coordinates of Buenos Aires by heart, but from up here, everything blurred into one slow turn of cloud and ocean.
His fingers brushed his uniform pant leg in an idle rhythm, slow and steady. He could still smell the faint echo of vanilla—a candle Renata always had burning in the evenings, tucked safely on a bookshelf they never once let wax spill onto. It had mixed with the sharp, citrus scent of his hair and the lavender-mint body wash still clinging to his skin, soft reminders layered beneath the sterile hum of the shuttle’s recycled air.
Cardamom and ginger lingered too—memories steeped into comfort. Her tea for sore throats. Salty popcorn with Benji during loud, late movie nights—always soundtracked by music bleeding through his brother’s headphones, insistent and unfiltered. The kind of noise you pretended to hate, then missed when it was gone.
He didn’t try to capture the feelings. He let them pass, like background radiation—steady, distant, and inevitable. He could carry the memory of home without chasing it. The taste, the smell, the light. All of it was tucked away, deep enough to keep him moving forward.
What Oliver said made sense. Probably true for a lot of people. Comfort snacks. Favorite meals. A bottle of something tucked away for hard days or celebrations. A way to hold on to something familiar when the universe got too big, too strange. He didn’t begrudge anyone that.
But for Mateo, the idea didn’t quite click. Home wasn’t a flavor he could preserve in storage. It was Renata’s sharp laughter echoing from the kitchen. Benji’s godawful music rattling the windows while he insisted it was retro. The sound of footsteps on the tiled floor. The faint scent of saffron and citrus. The hum of a fan during humid nights. Nothing you could pack. Nothing you could replicate.
So instead, he focused on the work—on discovery, on forward motion—because stopping long enough to really miss it felt dangerous.
“I get why people do it,” he said finally, voice low. “But I think if I tried to bottle it all up… it’d lose something. Not everything survives replication.” His eyes flicked briefly toward Oliver. “Some things only exist in the moment. You either catch it or you don’t.”
He didn’t elaborate further, and he didn’t need to. That was as close to sentiment as he was going to get today.
Oliver sighed, not out of annoyance or anything like that. It was the sigh of someone who was considering what was being said and giving it its due. "You're right in that," he said after a moment. "Some things naturally come in a little packet. Other things just...are there for the moment and you don't think of it for years, then a scent or a sound brings it back to you like a comet. It's...well, it's life, isn't it?"
Mateo’s gaze lingered on the slow swirl of cloud and blue receding in the viewport, the Earth now half-shadowed in the shuttle’s climb. “Olfactory memory’s processed in the limbic system,” he murmured, almost absently. “Same region that regulates emotion. That’s why it hits so hard—scent, sound... they don’t ask permission. They just happen.” His tone started like a textbook citation—precise, detached—but the edges softened as something less academic crept in. A flicker of vulnerability beneath the fact.
His gaze drifted, not quite focused anymore, and something about the way he sat changed—still, but tighter around the edges. “Sometimes I wish it didn’t hit as hard,” he said, quieter now, voice lowered with the weight of the memory. “You go years without thinking about something, and then it’s just there—full color, full volume. And for a second, you’re not here anymore.” He paused, the silence stretching. “You’re six again. She’s folding towels on the terrace, the fan’s on low, and the whole place smells like citrus and sun-warmed cotton.” He blinked slowly, lips pressing together as if sealing the memory shut. “It’s just a scent,” he added, softer still, “but it ruins you for a whole minute.” He drew in a quiet breath through his nose, grounded again. That was enough.
Oliver smiled weakly, looking ahead at that. It sounded warm, it sounded nice. Like family. He had never experienced that. Maybe it was why he was investing so much into his relationship with Verity. "Weird, huh?" he glanced at him before he shook his head. "The brain's capacity to just blindside you when you least expect it."
He did some minor adjustments on their course, to do what he loved to do...take in an angle that showed their ship in its full beauty. He couldn't help the smile as the USS Fenrir filled their view, docked, with the lights showing. "And some views you just want to keep close forever."
Mateo followed Oliver’s gaze, his own eyes narrowing slightly against the sharp brilliance of the starscape beyond the viewport. And there she was—Fenrir. Sleek, angular, perfectly poised in the soft cradle of dock lighting. Even now, still tethered, she looked like she belonged to the stars.
He didn’t say anything at first. Just sat there, taking it in. He wasn’t sentimental about ships, not the way some people were. But there was something about Fenrir that made his chest tighten a little. Maybe it was the fact that it didn’t feel like punishment anymore. Maybe it was the fact that, for once, he wasn’t dreading what came next.
His fingers brushed the edge of his PADD again, then stilled.
“Yeah,” he said quietly, gaze never leaving the glass. “Some views are worth keeping.”
And for once, he didn’t follow it with a joke.
[END]
Crewman Mateo Gardel
Medical Science Specialist
USS Fenrir
&
Staff Warrant Officer Oliver Sylver
Flight Control Officer
USS Fenrir
[PNPC - Hanlon]
RSS Feed