a/n: Mathias is coping with a disappointing Valentine's Day. Let's try and perk him up, shall we?

All the good things belong to Monolith Soft.

Mathias (7 roses)

Petals and leaves were scattered around the field workbench in the Curators' drive station. He probably should have booked time at proper lab bench, but he'd been too excited to wait. More fool he. Mathias frowned at the mess. He was fighting a wave of very honest if very unfair resentment. He'd hoped to use his lucky acquisition of the Earth flowers for a molecular comparison with a new species of Miran flower. If he could demonstrate that the Miran flowers acquired C-13 at different rates than plants from home, then that would show … well, it didn't matter. Even before the earliest results demonstrated the sheer junk quality of data, he'd realized this was never going to work. He had no idea how the roses had been grown, or when they'd been harvested. He couldn't assume they were from the same plant, or even the same breed. More to the point, these weren't samples from home. It was foolish to think this would be a valid measurement of anything. Everything, new sample or old roses, it all had had been grown on Mira, after all.

Still, they were the closest he'd get to proper Earth plants, barring some heroic efforts to regulate an artificial environment. He might as well run the rest of the samples through, on the odd chance that something interesting manifested itself. He turned to look at the remaining seven flowers when the bay darkened due to a passing skell.

However, the shadow didn't move, and the bench remained dim. Mathias considered whether he should move to an indoor lab, but checked to see if the skell was likely to be moving soon. It wasn't a skell. The sunlight was being blocked by the imposing figure of the Commander of BLADE.

"Where'd you get those, son?" Vandham said brusquely, pointing to the flowers. "Never mind, just give them to me. I'll pay you good credit."

Mathias hesitated. "Sir, I'm not sure…"

"Name your price and hand them over."

"Sir, I was thinking of using them for an experiment."

"And I'm planning to give them to an important contact." His blocky hand was already reaching for the flowers.

Mathias frowned with concern. "I think that might be misappropriation of BLADE resources."

Vandham's hand remained steepled over the flowers, but it didn't close. His tone was resigned. "Son, I am this close to selling Director General Chausson to the Ganglion for flowers like these. What's the experiment?"

Mathias began a disjointed but highly enthusiastic explanation of his plans. He'd covered the basics of the new flowers from Noctilum, their strange (even for Mira) luminescent properties, especially with respect to distribution, the possible influence of C-13 (or, dare he hope, C-14), the advantage of using a control group of Earth plants, the tricky question of Miran influence on colonial plants and the resources needed to address that issue, when the Commander cut him off.

"Any plant from home will do, and your experiment is mostly in the planning stage, I take it?"

"Well, yes, we only received the Noctilum samples this morning, but I can't use just any Earth plant. You see, the problem is …"

"1500, here, tomorrow. Give me a finished pitch and we'll see how much we can get you." Vandham swept the pink flowers off Mathias' bench gently, then gave him a thump on the shoulder that rattled the young man's molars. "And expect the Curators to get a nice bump in the division rankings next week." He moved swiftly away, leaving Mathias to sweep up the remaining floral detritus.

a/n: Asking a research chemist to review a fanfiction is a tricky thing, full of pitfalls. The things we do for love.

Next up: Vandham. It was supposed to be short. It never is. Wonder where he's going?