After Miguel and I left the weapons bay and stored the O2 tanks in a second locker labeled for used tanks, we made the roundabout trip back up to the mess hall, where dinner had just begun. About half the crew present seemed to have already received their meals and were eating and talking with each other, while the other half were waiting in line by the counter with trays waiting for their food. The meal was some sort of quesadillas with rice, and it smelled far better than any of the slop I had to endure back on the Cairo.
Miguel clapped me on the back and sauntered off towards a smaller table off to the side, where the XO and a few other officers sat with their meals, including Lt Michaels. I made my way to the line and grabbed a tray for myself. The person in front of me, a woman with black hair in a short braid turned to look at me. One eye was very obviously cybernetic, a metallic green with a visible stream of data running down the cornea.
“I assume you’re our new engineer?” she asked me with a grin.
“Yes. EN3 Damien Manelis. Pleasure to meet you,” I answered, returning the smile.
“EN1 Layla Emmerson. I’ll wait for you at the end of the line, take you over to our little pack of buffoons. Though I would be prepared, the moment you sit down half the room is going to converge on you,” she warned.
“Hah, yeah,” I sighed. “Miguel said the same thing.”
“Hey, it’s a small ship, small crew,” she shrugged, moving forward in the line. “It’s a good idea for everyone to know everyone else, even when you don’t often have to work closely with some people.” As she spoke, Seamus placed several of the small quesadillas on her tray and ladled rice onto it, smiling as he did so.
“You want the hot sauce with your food?”, he asked her jovially.
“Seamus, I’ve been here for the past two years, you know my answer is yes,” she said, rolling her eyes. He grinned as he pulled out a bottle and poured a liberal amount of red sauce into a compartment on her tray. As she moved out of the line to wait for me, he began to serve my food.
As he did so his smile became wicked and conspiratorially he said, “She brought that concoction on in her personal effects you know. I nearly broke my back figuring out how to recombine our supplies into a convincing recreation of the stuff.”
Layla’s voice cut in. “Yes, yes, we all know you’re a wizard Seamus, no need to brag about it to every new guy who comes through the line.”
He winked at me, and I grinned before moving to join Layla.
“Alright, so once we sit down, the crew is going to let you take a single bite before the flood begins,” said Layla as we walked over to a table where four other people sat. “Tradition. We like people to get a taste of the impossibility of Seamus’s cooking before they get overwhelmed.” We sat down across from each other at the end of the table with the other 4 engineers, who nodded to me with knowing grins on their faces.
“Okay…”, I said hesitantly, then took a forkful of the yellow rice. I inspected it, and it looked like typical mexican fried rice. Pork, beans, peppers, the works. I put the fork in my mouth, and was shocked. Sure, I had been hearing all day that Seamus was incredibly good with a reconstitution matrix, but this was just ridiculous. Hell, this was better than some food I’d gotten in actual restaurants before. “Holy shit,” I said around the mouthful of rice.
“Right?”, said the engineer who sat next to me, a bald man with a smirk on his face. I nodded, and then as if that was the signal to attack, the surrounding crew who had been watching with almost predatory looks in their eyes descended upon the table.
Back on the Cairo, there had been a sort of hazing ritual. When a new member of the crew came aboard, the rest of their division would fabricate some sort of dire emergency while they were on watch, then watch through the security cameras as the crew member would run around like a headless chicken for an hour or so before letting them in on the joke. As far as I could tell, this was the Ozymandias equivalent. Although instead of driving a new crew member into a panic, the idea was to put the new crew member into an incredibly chaotic and unrelenting social situation.
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I met and shook hands with person after person, some of them simply introducing themselves and heading back to continue their meal, and some sticking around to join the rapid fire omnidirectional conversation that whirled around me. Hell, some of them circled back around, grinning as they introduced themselves to me for a second or even third time. I looked off towards the counter where I saw Seamus and Miguel, watching the proceedings with beatific smiles upon their faces. Eventually the mob dispersed and headed back to their meals talking and laughing as they went.
“Sorry about that,” said the man next to me, chuckling. “You know how people are about traditions.”
“Yeah,” I said. My head was still spinning slightly from all the people. Sure it was only thirty or so people that had participated, but they made every effort to create as much chaos as they could in the process. “EN3 Damien Manelis,” I said to him, proffering my hand.
“EM1 Philipp Siegert,” he said, taking my hand and giving it a vigorous shake. “You handled that mess better than some people do, including a certain former shipmate we all know and love.”
“I’ve already forgotten half of their names, man,” I said, shaking my head.
“Ah, but you’ve at least gotten an impression, right?”, said the man sitting next to Layla. His hair was the odd silver color common among the descendants of liberated human slaves from Kestaran orbital foundries. “You’ve at least seen all their faces, met them, if only briefly. EM2 Zachary Kallsmeut by the way, just in case mine is one of the forgotten ones,” he said.
“I suppose so,” I mused. “Has anyone ever freaked out at that? It was kind of stressful.”
“Didn’t you hear what Phil said?”, asked Layla. “A certain former shipmate.”
Ah. Carmichael. “Right,” I said. “Well, I hope I do better around here than he did.”
“Trust me, it’s not that hard,” laughed Phil. “Carmichael was the only person I’ve ever seen that Miguel didn’t like. Miguel actually looked pissed off after giving him the tour, and that’s something I’ve only ever seen when people fuck up real bad.”
“Yeah,” remarked Zachary. “Oh, before we forget. These two mutes over here are EN2 Galina Romanova and EM3 Mitchell Kaczynski.”
“Hi,” the small brunette woman on the other side of Phil said quietly.
“Hey,” followed up the thin man sitting next to Zachary.
“Hi guys,” I said.
“Don’t worry about them,” said Layla with a smile. “They’re not unfriendly, just really quiet. All the time. It’s hard to get more than one word responses out of Mitch if it’s not work related.” He grunted in response, shoveling a forkful of rice into his mouth.
“Chief, Joseph and Akecheta are on duty right now, you probably met them in passing during the tour. I imagine Miguel hurried you past them to show you the gun?” Zachary asked.
“Yup,” I answered.
He sighed. “He always does that, at least with the engineering crew since we’re so close to the gun. He could at least give us time to actually introduce ourselves to Chief on the way down. Between you and me,” he looked around checking for, I assume, Miguel, “He’s got a bit of a fetish for the thing. He talks about it like it’s his wife.”
As informal as Miguel was, I was a bit uncomfortable delving into rumors about him. “If you say so,” I said noncommitally.
Layla must have noticed my discomfort, so she redirected the conversation. “Anyway Damien, where are you from?”
—
The rest of the meal passed uneventfully, just food and conversation. I told the story of life on the Rigel colony for the second time that day, and I learned a few things about my fellow engineers. For one, Zachary was indeed descended from former slaves. His ancestors had been sold to the Kestarans after the first raids by the Hexel pirate clans. For another thing, Galina, while quiet almost all the time, had a tendency to blurt out some of the dirtiest jokes I had ever heard whenever someone said something that gave her an opportunity.
They were fun. Good to talk to, with a variety of interesting things to say about a number of topics. I asked them about the test that I would be taking tomorrow, and they confirmed what Miguel had already told me. According to Phil, the only real changes were in shaping the magnetic containment field a bit differently. The only reason it was classified was that someone might be able to extrapolate the purpose of the modification if they saw it.
Eventually, dinner wound down and we all took our trays over to the kitchen where Seamus and his assistant, who I had not yet been introduced to, were already vigorously scrubbing trays and engaged in animated conversation. We all dispersed, some of us going back to the tables to sit and wait for their watch to begin in a few hours, some heading to their berth, and I headed for the rec closet to grab a neural patch.
After stripping down to my shirt and boxers and climbing into my bunk, I read through the materials I had been sent on my tablet and attached the neural patch to the back of my neck. They were right of course, the changes were simple. Just tune a few magnets here, speed up the matter/antimatter reaction there and boom. Modified reactor, all set to power some wormholes. I disengaged the simulation and sighed. It had been a big day today and tomorrow would be another. I rolled over onto my side, and promptly fell asleep.