Bartolomeo Ja was a student at Fleet School.[1] He was first introduced in Children of the Fleet.
History[]
Past[]
Bartolomeo was born on Earth in Macau to a member of the International Fleet or a free miner family or was a grandchild of one. At some point he went into space and eventually was accepted into Fleet School. Eventually, he became the commander of the team he was a part of.[1]
Children of the Fleet[]
When Zhang He started talking with a newbie, Dabeet Ochoa, Bartolomeo told He to stop wasting his valuable time with who he saw as useless. He opted to continue, and Bartolomeo threatened Dabeet that he would invoke Urska Kaluza, the commandant of Fleet School. The two did not care and continued building the structures in the battleroom.[1]
Eventually Bartolomeo warmed up to the idea of the battleroom constructions and joined Dabeet and He's practice squad, giving them some advice though he was still skeptical. They later tried out the strategies during a real battle.[1]
Several days later, Ja woke up before the rest of his team as he was the commander on the day of a battle. He caught Dabeet still awake, and he told Ja that he got up early to work. Afterward, Ja's team won the battle. The defeated team wanted an explanation for the constructions, so Lieutenant Odd Oddson asked Ja to explain. He confessed that he had never done it himself, so he delegated to Dabeet, who delegated to Zhang He.[1]
When Dabeet said he would be attending battleroom practice less, Ja did not seem to care.[1]
Bartolomeo heard that a group of terrorists were on the station and met up with Zhang, Monkey, Timeon, Ignazio, and Ragnar in the service corridor. When Dabeet arrived, he explained that the terrorists' ship was loaded with Vacoplaz explosives that were rigged to blow up simultaneously and destroy the station. They made their way to the airlock and planned to evacuate the ship's atmosphere to blow it away from the station. Since Dabeet already had a suit on board the ship, he took charge and said he would do it. The plan was for Dabeet to blow out the atmosphere, jump out as soon as he saw the station, and grab the line that Monkey would throw out for him, and she would grab him to pull him back. After he agreed to follow her rules, they saluted each other and Dabeet headed inside the ship.[1]
Bartolomeo was positioned alongside Timeon inside the airlock, waiting for Dabeet and Monkey to reenter to catch them. Monkey had a hole in her suit but Dabeet had saved her by locking his onto her abdomen. Bartolomeo shook hands with Dabeet and thanked him for saving the station. After a few minutes of dialogue between the cadets, Dabeet burst into tears and thanked all of them for helping. Monkey hugged him and the others clapped his shoulders and reaffirmed their gratitude.[1]
Suddenly, they remembered that the raiders were still onboard the station, likely in the battlerooms. The group decided to head to the commandant's office and use the intercom to tell them to surrender. Dabeet tried to delegate to Bartolomeo, but he insisted that Dabeet do the announcement. He spoke to the invaders and told them that whoever was in charge of them had set them up on a suicide mission that had failed, and told them that they should surrender unless they wanted to be killed by the Fleet ships that would soon arrive. The group told Dabeet that he had done a good job, and Bartolomeo went with Timeon, Zhang, and Ragnar to make sure the terrorists had given up. They found that two of the raiders' officers had been shot dead by their own men and two were critically injured, but they had been locked in the battlerooms until Fleet personnel arrived.[1]
During the dinner celebration after the attack, Dabeet was constantly being approached by students so he could not finish his food. Eventually Bartolomeo moved the crowd away so he could eat. During this, the head of security Robota Smirnova appeared and explained that the Fleet had been planning an operation to board the enemy ship before Dabeet and his team blew it away, saving their lives. She also told the students that Urska Kaluza was in custody for being a collaborator of the terrorists and informed Dabeet that his mother was safe. Dabeet began to cry and Bartolomeo and his friends comforted him.[1]