![The Hatching.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/deeanndmathews/KlVzstug-The20Hatching.png)

Each one of the hatching gem-jellies you see there could have evaporated me and my entire ship, fresh out of its egg sac. 

You wonder how I got close enough to take the picture, right?

There are a lot of dumb things to do in the universe.  If your last name is Kirk, even if you're not the one with the big fleet ship, even if you are just a freighter captain, you're going to do some of those dumb things, especially if you fall in love.  

I met her as only a Captain Kirk could – I was that one young freighter captain who had a famous fleet captain for a cousin and so got invited to a party in San Francisco where his type of people were while he was out of town.  

I met Vlarian Triefield there.  She was a full admiral already, unusual because of her young-looking age and also because there just aren't that many women admirals around.  She was probably enough older than me to be my mother.

I fell head over heels in love anyway.  Just go on and laugh. 

There are some women that are ageless – human lifespan of course is much longer than in former days and there are some very long-lived humanoids, but that's not what I mean.  She had beauty and style and vigor and a taste in jewelry and fashion and fun that one rarely meets in a woman of any age – her personality sparkled more than everything she had on.  

And understand – she had a lot to do to beat what she had on.  This was a woman who in her off time described the galaxy as a well-ordered collection of celestial gems, and she looked the part, her gold-olive skin set off by her abundant black hair and how she had it coiled around her face, her rich garnet-colored velvet evening gown also setting off that same face, ending at the glimpse of a golden ankle and a stout black heel.  She was tall, so it was only an inch, but it made the point: every inch a woman, but eye to eye with any man there in terms of having the right to be there. 

She had three pieces of jewelry on –  but what pieces, all black noble opals, flashing rainbows and out of her jet black hair because of those earrings, her necklace demanding that you look at that fine neckline but then keep your eyes up, because of all the colors that opal was flashing!

Of course, I wasn't the right Kirk in that environment to even make the attempt to approach her – at first.  But I got myself together as I saw that the captains and admirals of her own fleet were bouncing right off in their attempts.  They didn't realize it – she was playful and funny and sweet – but they weren't getting anywhere because she knew them and knew she wasn't interested in them.

I was different.  Too young, of course, but hey, definitely different.  I arranged to “bump into her” at the end of a dance set.  

“Oh, pardon me, Admiral, ma'am.”

“No harm done, young man – oh, you're J.T.'s cousin, aren't you?”

“Yes, ma'am, but just a freighter captain – still not sure why I was even let in here to bump into you!”

She laughed.

“Kirks are interesting people, wherever they find themselves, including the ability to bump into people they want to meet.  Your cousin J.T. got you in because he knew you would make the best of it.”

I knew I was blushing, but Kirked up.

“I am building a business following the fleet around, and of course I can't embarrass the family reputation with the ladies, ma'am.”

She came right back.

“I don't generally do boy toys, but you do have a fine business record, you've been networking like the young professional you are, and you have all that cute Kirkishness, so let's talk!”

We both laughed hard about that exchange.  Doubtless the older, more experienced admiral could have torn me to shreds, but she played fair … she let me know I was out of my league, but she respected the fact I was in the game and playing it to win anyway!  Thus began one of the most wonderful evenings of my entire life … I still get dizzy in the head, thinking back about that dazzling woman parking herself by me for the rest of the evening.

Of course that's all that it could be, for a lot of reasons that had nothing to do with the age gap … she was heading out with a whole fleet the next day for the deadly Cnidaria Nebula.

Somebody had to do it.  The gem-jellies were a kind of crystal jellyfish in space, and with the same deadly habits to their prey – ships.  They wrapped their long tentacles around vessels and turned on the atomic microwave, reducing anything in their grip to dust.

The Cnidaria Nebula had a lot of asteroids that kept the population of gem-jellies alive, but their numbers were increasing to the point where they were venturing out to eat passing vessels.  At least, that was the prevailing theory in the news.

Admiral Triefield understood crystalline structure better than any human in the entire galaxy, and had volunteered to put that knowledge to work.  She had already put up defense systems that had allowed the passage of vessels through the outer Cnidaria system in relative safety, but now the creatures were migrating to new exit points and threatening additional systems.  It had been determined that it was necessary to control the population directly … and to do that, somebody had to go into the Cnidaria Nebula and do some deadly business.  

Admiral Triefield was unafraid.  

“I look good for my age – perhaps you have noticed, young Captain Kirk,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am, I certainly have,” I said.  

“But I have lived long enough not to regret passing away in the effort to provide safety for others – these creatures must be contained or destroyed, and somebody has to do it.  Why not me?”

“Others might regret your passing away, you know.”

“So soon, young Kirk – we've only known each other six hours!”

“One minute was enough for me.”

![Fractal Evergreen Branch 3.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/deeanndmathews/FRfJMXEU-Fractal20Evergreen20Branch203.png)


The party had been over; we had been wandering around San Francisco's ancient and still lovely Golden Gate Park by moonlight while I was none-too-quickly walking the admiral home from the party.  

She had put a wrap on that was all black velvet and lace, and the lace was sheer and covered her back with this pattern:

![hibiscus star.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/deeanndmathews/JKX0Wc9O-hibiscus20star.png)


Just a supernova of blooming beauty … and she had all those powerful men around and was saying goodbye to them … but let me touch those big, pretty shoulders with the gold-olive skin shining, and let me cover them from the view of everyone else. 

Go ahead and laugh.  Almost everyone else already was.  “Poor baby Kirk,” I heard one captain saying.  “His cousin is going to have to need to have a long conversation with him about getting carried away with women out of his league.”

I would have said, “You go on and laugh, but notice who is leaving with her.”  But here is the thing about being with a woman like that: the gravitas of her personality balanced out my hard edges.  There was no need to say anything to anyone whom she did not judge worthy to walk off with her.  

“You learn fast,” she said as she rewarded me with a smile as bright as the white counterpart of the opals she was wearing.  

Then she rewarded me even more.  When the city's famous fog started blowing in, she nestled back into my warmth, and suddenly I was a young freighter captain cuddled up with a fleet admiral.

The woman had snatched my heart and put it in her jewel collection, and was planning to go out and possibly get killed and take my heart with her.

“Young man, the fleet is full of good women your age.  I've made sure of it.  But in terms of specialized knowledge on this subject, the Lord has only given so many people that, and I am the ranking one.  Duty calls, as it calls the 15 good captains and crews that will be going with me.  ”

“Yes, ma'am, I understand.”

It doesn't pay to argue with an older woman, especially if she is an admiral, and she didn't want to argue anyway.  

“Thank you for a wonderful last evening on shore leave, young man,” she said to me when we reached her home in the ancient Richmond District.  

“I hope I've given you a reason to get home alive from your journey,” I said.

“More than enough, Captain Kirk.  You keep building your business – what you do is just as important as what your cousin J.T. does.  Exploration is necessary, but having food, clothing and shelter is too, and you keep life going out in space for us humans.”

She paused.

“As you probably have guessed from my name, I wasn't born on Earth, and I'm not all human either,” she said.  “My great-grandfather was one of the first human settlers on Spica 5, and ships like yours kept him going until he and the other settlers were able to grow enough food to survive.  I don't look down what you do, because I wouldn't be here except for men like you.

“In that same first year, a ship crashed on Spica 5, and only one child survived.  My great-grandfather took in that little girl as his own, and, years later, his son made it official by marrying the girl.  That marriage was 100 years ago.  Grandmother is still alive, and named me.  Valerian is the name of one of the few Earth flowers that grows readily on Spica 5, but V is also for Vulcan.”

“So, you're one-quarter Vulcan.”

Now, her long, silky and ridiculously thick black hair made sense, as did the pointedness of her features and the logic that she had brought to her official work. But that also meant...

“You're a lot older than I think, aren't you, ma'am?”

“Well, how old do you think I am, young man?”

“You look like 35, but you're an admiral, so you have to be at least 40.”

“That's Grandmother's genome at work …  let me guess that you are around 25.”

“24, ma'am.  I present as an old soul and people think I'm closer to J.T.'s age, but you guessed right.”

“I'm an algebra problem for you: the result of 5x minus 35 then divided by 10 equals your age.  Solve for X when you get home, but don't lose the main point: you keep building yourself up, young man, and do what you do.  Just think of it as my generation making sure yours has the best chance possible.”

She could feel that I didn't want to let her go, no matter what the facts were, and I knew that any woman that spent six hours walking around with a man didn't want to leave him either.  But this woman was a full admiral, and one-fourth Vulcan as well.  Obviously it was done.  It had been a glorious evening, but it was done.

I kissed her anyway, and lost my mind because I could feel that she welcomed that kiss, and my embrace.

She was gone in the next minute – our little love affair had been brief, but spectacular.  

But I had lost my mind.  I wasn't going to let it or her go.

There were things she could do with her fleet that I couldn't do as a freighter captain.  There were a bunch of things I could do that she couldn't do because I was a freighter captain.  Dumb things, but things.

I stayed up all night, reading through all the data that Admiral Triefield and those working with her had gathered about the gem-jellies.  I didn't have to understand all of it; I just needed to know if there was anything those gem-jellies would not eat.

One of the few things they would not eat was aluminum – they avoided aluminum like the plague.

The problem in the Cnidaria Nebula may well have been that they had eaten most of the asteroids that were appetizing to them.  Admiral Triefield had noted the probability the previous year as an alternative to the theory that the creatures were simply multiplying to great numbers.  

So: the next day I had to go buy a few things.  I sold everything I owned except my half-interest in my business – that I signed over to Rufus Dixon, my best friend and business partner – and combined that money with my life savings to buy a new ship, have it electro-plated with aluminum, and put plenty of rice and beans on board in addition to a few other necessary items.  

Dix probably woke up later that day and wondered why and how I had gone insane.  I couldn't explain to him or anyone else.  There wasn't time.  It was three days to the Cnidaria Nebula by the speed Admiral Triefield and her fleet were traveling: the non-emergency standard of Warp 1, but I would be a day behind, I had to get there first, and all I could personally afford was a vessel that could do Warp 2.  What would take her 72 hours would only take me 36 hours, but she would be 24 hours ahead, and so would be only 12 hours behind me in the end.  

It would be the dumbest 12 hours in my family's history.  

But, somebody had to do it, and if it was going to be done in space, Cousin J.T. didn't need the burden in his career of doing it.  So, it had to be me.  

*To be continued ... the pine branch was an early fractal I made when I started with Apophysis in 2016, an the other two were made in May!*