The Scarab Mission by James L. Cambias

Author:James L. Cambias
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Action & Adventure, Hard Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781982192396
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2023-01-03T05:00:00+00:00

Anton went to do his job. The two groups shared the little kitchenette on the ground floor, though their food supplies were rigorously separate. Certainly Anton had no desire to sample either the dinosaur’s gory food or the corvid’s carrion-scented rations.

As he was working Jaka stuck her head in. “Solana will be joining the rest of us for dinner. Make some extra for her.”

He was improvising a soup from the ration packs Jaka had bought to fill the shuttle’s supply bins, so it wasn’t hard to stretch it. He used protein chips for soup stock, carb sticks to thicken the broth, and vegetable cubes for flavor. A little salt, one scrap of pork jerky finely minced, and a generous dash of fish sauce and you had a meal fit for…well, a gang of shady salvagers and occasional hijackers who were used to getting by on far worse. A little more salt and half a liter of water did the trick.

“Can you use some extra ingredients?” said Solana as she entered the kitchenette. She rummaged in her group’s half of the refrigerator and took out a package of a dozen peanut dumplings. “Will these go with what you’re making?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll put them in right at the end. Don’t want them to get overdone.”

She stood watching as he stirred the pot. “I’ve never seen anyone cook before. Don’t you have a printer?”

“Jaka got the shuttle from a salvager who was getting ready to scrap it. No food printer, no oxygen recycler, and no power plant. She could only afford two of the three. So instead we have a hundred kilos of Trojan Empire emergency rations, only thirty years older than I am.”

“Where did you learn to cook? Did you create templates?”

“No,” he said. “Back in my home hab everyone learned how. We grew wine, too. And I used to cook for the other people in the dormitory.”

He didn’t explain that he’d learned in order to stretch the meager food provided. Pooling rations and making soups or stews let everyone feel as though they’d had a real meal. What he cooked back then had been even more watery and a lot more bland than what he was making now, of course. Printer templates were allocated on the basis of service to the Transfigurance Movement, and the politicas, by definition, were of no value at all.

Jaka bustled in again. “There you are! Solana, dear, I’ve got a question for you. Be honest: do you trust the dinosaur?”

“Pera? Yes, absolutely. She can be kind of gruff but she keeps her word.”

“Mm. Because it occurs to me that Atmin and Yanai might be trying to scare my team away with these stories of traps and something lurking in the darkness. Tell me, do you know anything about that?”

“No. That’s just not like either of them. Besides, Atmin and Utsuro both ran into traps before you even got here.”

“Did you actually see them?”

“I was right there when Utsuro stepped on a mine! I kept it from going off so that he could get away.

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