"Do all of your boyfriends cook?" Madsen whispered to Dan. "Cause you could have come out ages ago. We can be very accepting if people feed us."
Dan smiled and shoulder bumped his bunkmate. "You might want to see what he's cooking first."
"I am making a new dish," Bakala said. "It's a blend of Consortium and American cuisine, newly created aboard this here ship." He had brought a box of supplies. He ran his finger along the metal counter top, drawing a circle and then tapped twice. The circle changed color as it grew hot.
"It heats up?" Jensen said, astonished.
"You didn't know that?" Bakala replied. "What have you been eating all this time?"
"We've been going to the mess, or eating snacks," Dan replied.
"By the Watcher, you poor people," Bakala said. "I definitely have to feed you now." He placed a circular cracker-like flatbread on the heated spot. He spread a bean paste across the top, followed by sun-dried tomato paste. Then he scattered some olives, chopped veggies and cheese across the top. "Shoo," he said to Dan and Madsen. "I will bring it when it's ready."
Dan and Madsen made for the back of the room. Jensen was already slid into his seat and was toying with his slate. He had his wife on Skype and they were talking.
The door slid open and Kleppie came in, followed by Kavi. Dan had known that the two knew each other, but not that were close enough for dinner dates. Kavi looked no worse for the incident with the men, but Dan knew the damage might not be visible on the outside. She gave him a smile and a nod.
When they got back to the table, she shied away suddenly. "Can you?" she gestured at Kleppie.
"Of course," he replied and slid in first, so she wouldn't be trapped.
"How are you doing?" Dan asked her.
"I am... doing," she said. "Kleppie has been good to talk to me these last few days. A good ear, you might say. I," she paused. "I don't really want to talk about it tonight though."
"Of course," Dan said.
"But, thanks."
"I should probably get off, we are about ready to eat here," Jensen was saying to his wife.
"Nonsense," Bakala said as he came back with the first plate, "she should join us, of course. Kavi?"
Kavi touched the back of the projection and threw it at the wall. Nicole Jensen appeared on the view screen, with her baby daughter in her lap.
"Wow, we didn't know you could do that either," Madsen said.
Bakala slid the plate over to Madsen and returned to the kitchen. The baby on Nicole's lap fussed and cried. "She's been teething," Nicole groused.
Jensen started laughing. "You know I lost four teeth in the blast, hit my head on a stair railing? So when we came on board the healers poked around in there and then stuck these patches or something in there. Said 'you'll be fine.' And off I went. Every couple days they make me open up and they inspect them, or pull them off and replace them. I didn't think nothing of it, just do what they say, right? So this morning I wake up sweaty, with my jaw aching and drool all over my pillow."
He paused in telling his story to accept a plate from Bakala. "So I go to the healer and ask what's up. He's like, 'oh, your new teeth are coming in. Once they break the surface you'll feel better.' So tell our daughter I know what she's going through."
Before long Bakala had served them all. Dan thought the food was delicious and said so. "In America," Kleppie said. "Pizza doesn't usually come with bean paste and goat cheese, but really this is pretty good."
They ate and talked well into the evening hours. The attack on Kavi had affect more than those involved. The captains working together, had ordered curfews on all the common rooms. People on both sides were being cooler, more hesitant about contact. The partying, if not over, was on hold for the last week. Dan didn't care. This quiet conversation between friends suited him better anyway.
The subject of the rape, and Kavi's reaction was touched upon only one other time that night, when Kavi teasingly said, "and Kleppie here, being such a nice guy, has even offered I should tie him up. That way I can feel safe and in control."
"How sweet and pervy at the same time," Jensen joked.
"I aim to please," Kleppie said with a slight bow.
The next morning Dan was woken by a knock at their door, followed by Cheyenne's voice. "Good morning, breakfast anyone?"
"What the hell?" Madsen muttered as he stumbled out of his bunk in a pair of boxers and slid the door open. Dan climbed out of his bunk and followed suit.
Cheyenne was standing in the hallway in front of a small cart. "Good morning," she repeated, smiling at them.
Madsen was staring at her in shock. "You're, you're up?" he gasped.
"And looking a lot better," Kleppie said from behind Madsen.
Madsen hadn't seen Cheyenne since the press conference, nearly three weeks ago now. He probably didn't realize that she was spending several hours out of the tank now. Plus, Kleppie was right, she was looking better.
Her face and neck still had a lot black and her eyes were still a pair of goggles, blank white. But the back of her head had mostly recovered and her hair was nearly an inch long already. She was wearing a light blue top with gold fringe that hung halfway to her knees, and matching slacks. Her lips were a pale pink of new flesh. Her smile and her posture were pure Cheyenne Walker.
"What brings you here this morning?" Dan asked as he returned the smile.
"My first day on the job," Cheyenne answered. "Figured I'd start with my old crew."
"Job?" Kleppie asked.
"Yeah, Walker, what's up with that?" Madsen asked.
"Just Cheyenne," she corrected. "I got get used to it anyway. I talked to Captain Dowlings, with Captain Lannister's permission of course, about finding a job on the ship. Turns out she was happy to find me something to do."
"A job, earn some Consortium money," Kleppie said. "That's a great idea. I wonder if the Captain would let me?"
"I don't know," Cheyenne said. "I mean my case is kind of special."
"Heroes get all the breaks," Jensen complained sleepily as he made for the toilet.
"That's not what I meant," Cheyenne replied. "I mean with me not going back and all, I got to adjust."
"Not going back?" Madsen sounded suspicious. "What do you mean?"
"To Earth," Cheyenne said.
"You're not going back?" Kleppie spluttered.
"Look at me," Cheyenne protested. "Radiation quarantine is more than halfway over. In another couple weeks or so, we will be free. Do you think I am going to be recovered by then?"
Everyone looked crestfallen. "But, what will you do?" Madsen asked.
Cheyenne shrugged. "Lana and Janda say they will stick with me, be my healers as long as I need them. It'll likely be months, or a year or more. Hopefully I can stay on whatever station is above America, the Colorado one. Or I could go on the base ship, one of the other stations, but I don't really want to do that. Anyway, I'll just have to adjust. And eventually, once I am more recovered, that will probably mean figuring out some job I can do. So why wait?"
"And what job have they found you?" Dan asked.
"Breakfast cart. It's just temporary. This ship isn't equipped with educational facilities, so they can't train me for anything serious. It's entry level or nothing. Luckily they have a ton of entry level stuff they aren't doing because they don't have enough workers to provide services for the entire crew. Like the breakfast cart." She gestured at the cart. She angled it so they could see it. The sides were covered in small pop out trays. "I have a variety of pastries, hot and cold. I have drinks, juices and coffee both. That's one Earth tradition these people definitely share, morning coffee. There's tea, too. There's a bunch of stuff we wouldn't consider breakfast but it's good, little things of stir fry or noodles. There's this potato dish that isn't too far from hash browns."
"Wow, looks good," Kleppie said. She popped a fold out box filled with potatoes and vegetables out of one tray and handed it over, along with a fork.
"And you just push this around?" Madsen said.
"Yup, apparently they've only been making you guys eat in the mess because they don't have enough workers to be delivering food all over the ship."
"You know," Dan said to Kleppie. "Lannister just might go for it, if you pitch it right. They need help. Our crew needs something to do these last few weeks, or we're all going to get batty with cabin fever and curfews. Jobs, on a voluntary basis, of course, could be the trick.
######
Kleppie wolfed his potatoes and downed a cup coffee. He followed Cheyenne on her rounds, talking excitedly the whole time about the prospect of getting a job himself, and of Cheyenne staying. He said he considered immigrating as soon as relations between America and the Consortium normalized enough to do so. He had joined the Navy to see the world. Now the world seemed too small for his taste and the galaxy beckoned.
The news was filled with reports of an international fishery conference. Normally it was a sparsely covered event, the decisions of the conference largely ignored by the super powers and the large corporate fishing fleets alike. But the Princess Sarasvat had attended and announced another huge series of projects. In exchange for a number of concessions on whaling, which the Consortium detested, and internationally agreed and enforced catch limits on all species of fishes, they offered a massive rehabilitation of Earth's oceans. She would bring in terraforming equipment to clean up old oil spills and krill ships to feed the oceans with plankton and krill, to boost fish populations. Finally there would be a series of new Consortium bases in the south sea, including a huge port facility in Antarctica.
Predictably, a few sailors were complaining that we had essentially succeeded control of the international waters. Others were looking on the development with a more speculative eye. Naval warfare was unlikely with the Consortium around and Naval spending was going to be hard to justify. But these revitalization projects meant hundreds of thousands of new ships plying the world's oceans. The Consortium had come here expecting a planet with a population of an estimated 27 billion people, ready to assist in the terraforming of nearby worlds. They had equipment, but not manpower. Princess Sarasvat repeatedly mentioned mixed crews. That led to much speculation about jobs in port towns like their home base of Norfolk.
But it was one tiny detail, missed by almost everyone else, that had captured Kleppie's attention. "The harsh climate of Antarctica," he was saying as they walked back towards Cheyenne's medibay, breakfast service completed, "is ideal for the training people for space. Level one space certification and you can travel on non-civilian rated ships, work in hostile environments like Mars, or on stations that orbit hostile planets. Level two and you can work in space itself, asteroid mining facility, military craft, not that I'd join their military, that sort of stuff. Now, level three, that's deep space craft, exploration, anything."
"Sounds exciting," Cheyenne said.
"The Antarctica base will definitely have a level one certification program. I might have to go deeper into the Consortium for higher level training, but think about it, being an astronaut, traveling the stars."
The door to medibay slid open. Both Janda and Lana were waiting for her inside.
"How did it go?" Lana asked.
"Fine," Cheyenne said. "Of course, I had a helper." She gestured at Kleppie as she said it.
"I was curious," Kleppie said. "I think I am going to ask the Captain if I can get a job, too."
"And he wants to go to this new Antarctica base and learn to work in space," Cheyenne said.
"Who wouldn't? Get out and see the stars," Kleppie said.
"It's not nearly as glamorous as it seems," Lana said with a laugh. "Life onboard a spaceship is a lot routine work."
"Still, I can't blame him," Janda said. "I wouldn't want to live my whole life at the bottom of a gravity well."
"Janda grew up on a station," Cheyenne explained. "Still, I don't think I'm up for space ship crew." She caught her reflection in the mirror. "And with no skin on my face I can't hardly be a kept woman," she joked.
"What's a kept woman?" Janda asked.
"It means some rich man pays all your bills and all you have to do is look pretty for him when he gets home," Cheyenne replied.
"My older brother did this," Janda said. "He's a plasma physics engineer, works on data cubes and crystals. It's an advanced tech field and he makes good money. Mom expected him to find a suitably intelligent, successful woman, but instead he married some meek little market girl, sells flowers or something. This was just a couple month's before I left, and mom was in a right state. My going away celebration, she was trying to be nice about it but you could just tell she didn't approve. I say, you love who you love, right?"
"Right," Kleppie agreed.
"Does it have to be a man who keeps a woman?" Lana asked. She stepped directly in front of Cheyenne, almost nose to nose. "Cause I know at least one person who'd be honored to provide such a service."
Cheyenne giggled nervously. She wasn't sure if healer patient relationships were allowed, but Lana didn't bother hiding her affection for Cheyenne. "How can you..." Cheyenne looked at the reflection again. "I'm hideous."
"It's not your skin I'm attracted to," Lana said. "It's your heart and soul. That shines through everything." She pulled Cheyenne close. Cheyenne rested her head on Lana's shoulder. "A healer's make good money. How much is the cost of keeping someone like you?" she teased.
Cheyenne squeezed her playfully. "You. You can have me for free."