RavensDagger

  Chapter Twelve - Diime

  Humans o eat. It was right up there with the o drink, sleep, defecate and fuck. So it came to be that in space, where space itself is ironically a premium and where people are packed in tighter than sardines in a , things like food o be made in such a way as to take up as little room as possible.

  The solution to this existed already.

  MREs tained everything that a soldier o keep going. They were small, easy to carry, retively lightweight, and would block up a solider's guts like nothing else, eliminating the o defecate and doing a number on their willio fuck.

  So they were perfect for space travel.

  Plus, at the tail end of the first inter-system war, there were enough cargo tainers full of them to drown out a small y.

  So, the average space-farer grew used to eating out of a bag. The better fvours were traded like a currency, and corporations everywhere rejoiced in the simple arithmetid logistics of feeding crews with pre-packaged meals.

  Two meals per persowelve-hour shift. Easy maths.

  Then some perverse captain had an idea. What if he fed his crew with food that didn't taste like a bad mixture of rubber and cardboard, spiced with micropstics? Cooking in space existed already, but so far it had remaihe prerogative of luxury yachts and cruise ships.

  The captain discovered that warm meals, while more expensive fistid space, increased creiness by a signifit amount. A happy crew was a crew that would accept a slightly lower pay, which at the end of the day, meant a slightly lower overhead.

  Lauded as a financial genius, this captai on to unch a new career selling kit modules desigo be fit into pre-existing spacecraft hulls. It even came with a free recipe book!

  Gunships, tugs, fightercraft and any really small ship couldn't really afford to have a galley, but those were now the exceptions rather than the rule.

  The Held Together had one of these pre-made galleys installed. It was a wohat the ship hadn't e with oo begin with, seeing as how it was just rge enough to serve as a passenger ship as well as a carghter.

  At the moment, a big, rather burly man was behind the ter, sleeves rolled all the to his shoulders, and his left arm, all e and exposed wires, was on full brazen dispy.

  The arm ended in a der from which several tools were poking out. Scissors, a whisk, several knives. Enough implements to give a professional torturer some wild ideas.

  "Hawk!" Twenty-Six cheered. "What's for supper?"

  The man, Hawk, looked up and grinned. He had probably been handsome once, Ivil admitted, but age did as it usually did and had turned him into more of a grizzled old man than anything else. "Nothing too special. Got some fish-sub at port and some authentic Korean sauce imported from Earth. Get ready for something spicy!"

  Twenty-Six's eyes went wide, and she even cpped her haedly.

  Ivil took a deep breath through her nose, and had to admit that whatever Hawk was cooking, it smelled nice. Spid sweet in equal measure.

  "You're one of our passengers?" Hawk asked, gesturing at Ivil with a whisk, then a khen a rotating spoon.

  "I am," Ivil said. "I'm Evelyn Ville. I take it you're the ship's cook?"

  "Cook, er, sometimes s officer," Hawk said. "On a ship this small you 't just do the ohing. Everyone o pit a hand to help." He waved his missing limb. "I sure did. Hah!"

  Ivil smiled a little, allowing herself to be amused by the man's simple humour. Then she felt someorying to pull her and gnced down at Twenty-Six. "e on, there's no assigned seating here. Just plop yourself down wherever. Hawk always serves us after we're sat."

  "Thank you," Ivil said as she allowed herself to be pulled over to the table.

  Twenty-Six sat across from her and blinked while looking Ivil right in the eyes. "So! Did you go to any iing pces, being an astro-archeologist?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "A few," Ivil said. "Mostly those who think they're my higher-ups wao stay on or around Mars, but I've never been fond of sitting in one pd letting things happen. I've been to almost every p in the system."

  "Almost?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "I've never flown to Mercury," Ivil said. "I should visit one day, just to say that I have. What about you? You're from Saturn, right?"

  "Yep! But other than that, I've been to... Ceres, Jupiter, some of its moons of course, and then bae to Titan and such. We did a mission down by Mars once, but it was a quick hop and drop, and that was it. I really haven't seen that much of the system for someone who practically lives on a spaceship."

  "That's unfortunate," Ivil said. She wondered if she was handling this whole small talk thing well. She was he most sociable person. Once, she'd made an effort to be polite and ingratiate herself, but the time when she was so weak that she o rely on the opinions of others was long past. This, at least, was good practice. "I'm sure you have plenty of time to visit other worlds. You're still young. At worst, you could pick a job on a ship heading to the pces you want to see."

  "Ah, I could, but that would mean leaving this old beauty behind," Twenty-Six said. She patted the table. "I've put in a lot of sweat to make sure she lives up to her name."

  Ivil nodded along, but was distracted as the door into the room opened. A trio of unfamiliar people walked in.

  The first was an older woman, maybe twenty years Ivil's senior. She was wearing a jumpsuit with a well-worher jacket over top of it. There were a few patches on its shoulders and front. Ivil reized some of them as the insignia of Jovias from the third inter-system war.

  The woman was blohough now her hair had lightened with a few streaks of white. She had the look of someone who had aged prematurely, stress pushing her hard.

  Behind her was another, much younger woman. She walked with a straight back, eyes fixed ahead and face locked in the ral mask of a politi. She retty. Ivil couldn't help but notice it. High cheekbones, a noble bearing, and clothes that might very well ore than what the ship made in a year.

  It wasn't just nice clothing, it was the sharply-angled and pristinely cut outfit of the nobility of Phobos. Tight pants with a wider cut at the bottom, corset beh a leather jacket. All entirely impractical for life onboard a ship. A mo over one eye, the gss on it flickering through a few readouts.

  And she had cores. A few of them. She wasn't quite a C-csser, but it felt like she might only be a couple of cores short.

  Behind them, taking up the rear and making the others look better in parison, was a gangly man in a patched-up jumpsuit. He was carrying a small crate before him, and smiling dopily at the woman in the fine dress.

  "Is that the captain?" Ivil muttered to Twenty-Six.

  "Yeah! And that's the princess," Twenty-Six said. She raised a hand to wave. "Captain! This is our other passenger! Her name's Evelyn."

  The captain frowned for a moment, then o Ivil. "A pleasure," she said. "Missy mentioned you were onboard already. I hope you don't mind matg our itinerary?"

  "I'm ready to leave whenever," Ivil said. "Do you have a departure time?"

  "Soon," the captain said. "Tomorrow, in fact. Twenty-Six, we have st checks after dinner?"

  "Sure thing, boss," Twenty-Six replied with a casual salute.

  The man following the captain brought his crate over to the kit, and theurned. "o beauties," he said as he extended a hand to Ivil. "You just let me know if you need anything, love."

  Ivil stared at the hand, the the gaze of the so-called princess.

  There was an instant and unmistakable fsh of womanly uandiweehis guy was a moron.

  "Donny, don't be a creep," Twenty-Six said.

  The princess sat down on Ivil's left. "Aurora Sterlinworth," she said.

  "Evelyn Ville," Ivil replied. "You're from Phobos?"

  "And you're Martian," Aurora said. "You look... familiar."

  "I get that a lot," Ivil replied casually. "But unless you're well-versed in the history of the st few inter-system wars, then I'm sure we've never met. I'm a professor of astro-archeology at Hels U."

  "Ah, not a subject I'm intimate with."

  The awkward moment was salvaged as Hawk swept into the room, a rge tray ahead of him. "Everyone's here! Well, not Missy, but that's expected. I've made something special, you'll love it!"

  ***

  RavensDagger

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