by David Smith
‘Ah Chief Burns, just the man I wanted to see’ smiled the Steward.
The huge ginger chef eyed him warily. ‘What the fuck do you want?’
Calmly the Steward replied ‘Commander Grosvenor has asked me to arrange a dinner for three in the Officer’s Mess. I need to sort out a menu for Commander Grosvenor, the Captain and Professor Shaw.’
‘And what the fuck has that got to do with me?’ challenged the chef.
The Steward was used the the chef being difficult, but this seemed contrite even by the chef’s usual surly and obtuse manner. ‘Well, as you are the ship’s chef, I assumed that you would be the person to speak to in respect of food, menus and the like?’
The chef weighed this concept carefully, but grunted non-commitally.
The Steward attempted to appeal to the chef’s vanity. ‘Food is incredibly important in social affairs. It’s been said that food is like making love . . . ‘
‘What? A lot of fuss to stick something in someone’s mouth for five minutes?’
‘Well the phrase I had in mind was “best made with finesse and passion”’ sighed the Steward.
There was an awkward pause and the Steward eventually dared to ask ‘Sooooo. What could you prepare for a dinner party?’
Chief Burns grunted again. ‘If they come down to the Galley they can have haggis provencale like every other fucker.’
‘Ah. I was hoping for something a little more . . . classy?’
‘Classy??’ growled the chef ‘Listen here shithead, haggis provencale is a modern fusion of classic old world cuisines. It’s classy as fuck!’
The Steward sighed. ‘So what does it consist of?’
‘Haggis boiled in vintage beaujolais obviously, you fuck-wit’ snarled the chef.
‘What about herbs and spices?’ asked the Steward.
‘Herbs?? Spices?? Do I look like I’m fucking French??’ roared the chef.
The Steward remained calm in the rising storm of the chef’s anger. ‘Is there another choice on the menu?’
‘Yes!’ shouted the Chef ‘Eat the haggis or don’t eat the fucking haggis!’
Sensing that he wasn’t going to win this conflict with reason or by appealing to the chef’s sense of duty, the Steward played his trump card. ‘Very well, chef. If you’d care to prepare your haggis provencale for three at 2100 ship’s time . . . ‘
‘Whoa!’ said the chef in immediate alarm. ‘Hang on now, you never said anything about this being a late evening do.’
The steward did his best to look surprised. ‘Apologies chef, but if we’re going to be serving a nice, classy meal, we’ll want to do it at a classy time. Dinner is always at eight, so by the time we serve drinks and perhaps an aperitif . . . ’
‘No. No. No way. You can forget that! I knock off at six. End of.’
‘But chef, the rest of the party is already arranged! How will I . . . ‘
‘That’s not my problem sunshine! I knock off at six. Always have, always will. You’ll have to find another sucker to cook for you’ grunted the chef, looking decidedly smug.
‘Oh very well chef, I’ll make other arrangements. Sorry to have bothered you’ replied the Steward working hard to hide his smile.
--------------------
Dave wasn’t sure what to expect but went formal in his full dress uniform, making sure he was there ten minutes before dinner. The Steward met him and said ‘I hope you don’t mind Captain, but I took the liberty of asking Yeomen Sriwak and Carmichael to cook for us this evening.’
David had no objections: the two Yeomen were recent transfers into the catering department and unlike most of their colleagues were talented chefs.
Sriwak spoke virtually no English, but cooked an amazing array of seafood and Thai dishes, while Berty Carmichael had trained with a Michelin starred chef in his younger days and was conversant with a large array of classic French and Italian dishes. After months of having to live with Chief Burns’ seemingly endless repertoire of haggis-based concoctions, they had seemed like a gift from the gods.
Izzy arrived at 2000 sharp in her smartest uniform too, but the professor joined them five minutes late, obviously intending to make an impact with her entrance. When the turbo-lift stopped, Dave half expected to see the professor turn up in the close fitting silver cat-suit she’d worn when they caught her.
However, from somewhere she’d conjured a dress. Like her catsuit, it was silver, and it fitted her body closely, but where her catsuit was clearly intended to be a purely functional garment, the dress was there to accentuate her beauty.
The tiniest of silver chains formed a halter around the Professor’s elegant neck, and from it hung a soft silky fabric that sat in loose folds that plunged to reveal the slightest hint of a cleavage. Below this the fabric pulled taut around her slim hips, laying flat across her fabulously toned abdomen, and a long split in the skirt on one side revealed a similarly toned and tanned expanse of leg.
She’d added make-up that Dave had assumed she wouldn’t need, but it served to accentuate her fine facial features and emphasised her striking eyes and full lips. She’d pulled up her long hair to add height and body although a few loose curls strayed down either side to make the look more casual while framing her beautiful face.
The professor was already a tall woman, but she’d worn high, strappy heels that brought her eye to eye with Hollins. She towered over poor Izzy, who suddenly felt very plain and insignificant.
‘Good evening, Captain, Izzy’ she husked in a soft, slightly breathy voice.
Dave was taken aback by her appearance. He’d noted that she was an attractive woman, but now dressed for an occasion, she was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. ‘Good evening, professor. You look . . . stunning.’
She smiled coyly ‘Why thank you Captain. I have to thank your Steward, he found this dress from somewhere. I wouldn’t have picked anything this bold, but he persuaded me that it would suit me.’
Dave was suffering from a severe lust-overload as he led the professor to the single table set with three places. At the back of his addled brain an internal dialogue was considering whether he should quiz the Steward about how he found a ball-gown to perfectly fit the professor in the middle of nowhere, or just give a field promotion to a man who clearly understood what makes women desirable.
He pulled a chair out for the professor and his internal dialogue fell silent. He saw that there was no back to the professor’s dress, the soft fabric falling in an elegant loop all the way down past the small of her back, skimming dangerously close to the top of her fabulously pert posterior.
Izzy caught him staring as she walked past him to take a seat for herself and whispered ‘For god’s sake Hollins, stop dribbling!’
Dave took the third seat and as he did the Steward approached and addressed the professor. ‘I’m afraid we can only offer a limited meal this evening, professor. I’m sure you’ll appreciate that an exploration vessel has limited space for the finer things in life, so we’ve had to do what we can with what little is available to us.’
The professor smiled warmly. ‘That’ll be fine, Steward. I’m used to living on ration-packs so I’m sure anything you’ve prepared will be an absolute gourmet treat for me.’
The Steward smiled in return and said ‘Very good ma’am. Well as I said, we don’t have much to work with so a simple seven course meal will have to suffice. We’ll start with cocktails and a light antipasti before the meal. Your first course will be a bruschetta topped with sun-dried tomatoes, olive-oil and herbs, followed by an Italian ribolleta broth, then a light salad. We’ll serve a citrus sorbet as a palate cleanser for the fourth course and have a slight break for you to talk amongst yourselves before the fish course, which will be a Thai classic. The main course will be beef braciole with romano cheese and cuore di bue tomato sauce and we’ll finish the meal with a mascarpone cream topped with summer berry puree. Coffee will be served with a selection of fine European cheeses and fruit.’
Dave w
as flabbergasted. ‘Glad you didn’t go to too much trouble Steward.’
The Steward took the sarcasm with his usual unassailable calm. ‘We do what we can, sir.’
Dave was half tempted to ask where the hell the Steward had found the ingredients for such a meal, but Professor Shaw spoke and as he looked at her, he lost interest in anything the Steward had ever done.
She was warm, engaging and funny as well as stunning to look at, and led the conversation wherever she felt it should go. The cocktails flowed as did the wine that came after it, and if Dave had been a little less absorbed in the Professor and her tales he might have noticed Izzy’s growing discomfort.
Far too often Dave found himself sneaking a look at the Professor only to look away as her piercing eyes met his. As the evening wore on, the conversation became less guarded and more light-hearted.
The food came and went, all fabulously prepared, a treat for the eye as well as the palate, and more and more wine came and went too. At one stage, Dave mentioned that he’d taken ball-room dancing classes as a child, and inevitably the professor was also a skilled dancer. She persuaded him to waltz with her while Izzy sat and simmered at having to play the spare wheel.
As they returned to their seats, giggling, Izzy mentioned ‘I learned to waltz too, Hollins. My father always said a lady should know the classic dances.’
‘That’s nice Izzy. Now where were we professor?’
--------------------
Dave woke up in his quarters the next morning with a distinctly fuzzy head. He tried to focus on what he’d managed to wheedle out of the professor and then realised he couldn’t even remember all of the meal, much less the conversation that had flowed around it.
He remembered the professor being down in the Officer’s mess and he remembered how absolutely stunning she had looked.
He also remembered how warm and alive she had felt in his arms as they danced, and how amazing she had smelt.
He had a vague notion that someone else had been there too. He remembered the conversation with Izzy earlier in the day about having dinner together, but he couldn’t remember if she’d turned up.
He was sure she’d have been there. Yes, she was there. A mental image drifted across his mind of Izzy’s stern unsmiling face. Yes, she had most definitely been there.
In his alcohol soaked brain, gears finally began to mesh and turn, and it occurred to him that Izzy had not looked at all happy. Why on earth was that? It was her idea for them to have dinner together.
More odd memories floated across his mind. He remembered the coffee after the meal. The professor had asked him to dance with her again, and their coffee had gone cold. That was when Izzy had left, without saying a word. She had looked oddly upset.
Dave remembered thanking the Steward and taking their leave. He very vaguely remembered taking the professor up to the Bridge, then down to Deck 3 where she’d asked to see the Stellar Cartography Suite, and the Cryptology Suite where Park and Sato had been trying to unlock Professor Hubert’s personal logs.
Then they’d gone down to his quarters for a night-cap.
A sudden, very bad feeling made Dave sit up in bed.
He realised he was naked. Looking towards the entrance of his sleeping quarters he could see his dress uniform abandoned on the floor. Midway along the trail of discarded clothes was a beautiful, soft, silky dress that spread out across the deck like spilt quicksilver.
There was no sign of the professor that had been filling the dress last night and Dave knew he’d been played. That was when he spotted the note beside the bed. He picked it up with a groan and read the note, hand-written in flowing script as elegant as the author.
‘David,
I’m sorry I’ve had to leave under less than ideal circumstances. Someday I’ll return the data-storage unit, but in the meantime I’d suggest you treat everything Professor Hubert tells you with suspicion: he’s not a nice person.
Thank you for a perfect evening, I genuinely can’t ever remember having such a wonderful time.
Rhiannon’
There was a beep from beside the bed and Dave pressed the answer button. The image of his Liaison Officer appeared on the comm-units small screen. She looked furious.
‘Where is the slut??’ demanded Izzy.
Dave groaned inwardly. ‘Good morning, Izzy. I’m afraid we’ve been had.’
Izzy’s tone was as cold as deep-space. ‘“We” haven’t been had, Captain. I knew I couldn’t trust that scheming cow.’
Dave tried desperately hard not to roll his eyes. This was going to be painful. He hugged the bed sheet around himself to cover his nakedness and tried to rephrase his words. ‘I’m sorry Izzy, I was taken for a ride . . . ‘
He winced. That hadn’t sounded like he’d intended it to.
‘She just screwed me over?’ he added even less diplomatically.
Izzy looked terribly upset, and he could see her eyes sparkling with what he assumed were tears of frustration.
Izzy couldn’t answer, turning away as she cut the comm-link.
--------------------
ASBeau whistled. ‘She was a hell of an operator!’
Hollins nodded mutely.
ASBeau pulled up details of the professor’s activities the night before. ‘She managed to access the cryptology suite, disconnect Hubert’s data-storage unit and transport over to her ship without raising a single alert. Even then, she’d scrambled the transporters local memory circuits so it didn’t log the coordinates that she’d transported to. We have to assume that it was her that started the fire that’s destroyed Professor Hubert’s yacht before she transported to her own ship. We detected the ion trail of an unidentified vessel a few hours later, but she was long gone by then.’
Hollins clenched his fist. How could he have been so stupid? Izzy sat at the far end of the conference table, staring angrily at him but saying nothing. Her jaw was clenched shut, her eyes still sparkling with barely-controlled emotions.
‘Can we track her?’
ASBeau nodded. ‘We could, but we wouldn’t catch her. Every time she kills the drive on her ship and drifts for a while, we’ll have to stop, take readings and work out if she’s changed course. If she sails close to a star, the ion trail will be diffused enough that it might take us weeks to work out where she’s headed. Realistically it’s not even worth trying.’
Hollins already knew that but had to ask, just to confirm his own stupidity. He sat sulking until Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara broke the awkward silence.
Trying to sound bright and upbeat she said ‘Well if it’s of any interest to anyone, we’ve completed our studies of the system and it’s indigenous population. We’ve filed our initial reports with Command and will continue working on detailed analysis of our data while en-route to our next assignment.’
Dave barely heard her. He was trying to look attentive while wilting under that angry glare from Izzy. It wasn’t like he’d done anything specifically to let her down. He’d failed the whole crew in general and himself in particular. Why was she taking this so badly? So personally?
O’Mara was still outlining her team’s progress. ‘Our first look at the data indicates that there has been significant interaction with a warp-capable society here. The geologists tell us that there’s been significant mining of exotic minerals at several locations around the planet and it’s most likely that a large interstellar society exploited this planet and its people in a great hurry for a very short period. There are also signs of significant damage from orbital weapons, which is the major factor in the unusually high levels of background radiation. Our best guess is that there was a significant interstellar war in this sector, and this was one of the battlefields.’
She looked at Hollins, waiting for some kind of acknowledgement, but he was clearly still lost in his own thoughts.
The First Officer noticed this and decided to speak for him. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant-Commander. It seems we still have a couple of issues to resolve. Fir
stly, we still have to decide what to do with Professor Hubert . . . ‘
The Captain finally contributed to the discussion, interrupting Commander Ruiz. ‘We have to let him go.’
There were groans of objection from everyone around the table except Izzy, and Dave had to hold his hands up to quieten the group so he could explain. ‘I don’t know if it was ever her intention, or just collateral damage, but Professor Shaw has just stolen any evidence likely to result in a successful prosecution of Professor Hubert. When we apprehended him on the surface, we had no indications of any transfers of significant technology, and as the professor himself pointed out, the locals are well aware of the existence of interstellar travellers. Our own science team have already concluded that his interaction is unlikely to have any significant affect on the development of the local culture, so it’s incredibly unlikely a jury at trial would find differently.’
He slumped back in his chair. ‘We don’t have a choice here. We have to release him.’
There were groans, but no further objections. They all knew their Captain was correct.
Ruiz straightened up. ‘Would you like me to go and do that, sir?’
Hollins sighed. ‘No, I’ll do it. This is on me. It’s all on me.’
--------------------
Dave hadn’t expected the professor to be happy, but he certainly didn’t expect the reaction he got.
‘You let her steal my data???’ gasped the professor.
‘We didn’t let her . . . ‘ Dave contended, but this did nothing to calm the professor.
‘YOU IDIOT!! YOU COMPLETE AND UTTER IMBECILE!!!! It’s taken me years to assemble that data! Years!!!’
The professor was red-faced with fury, his eyes bulging and veins throbbing on his temple and neck. Dave was seriously concerned that he might have a heart attack. ‘I apologise professor, but Shaw fooled us . . . fooled me . . . ‘
‘I WARNED YOU!!’ he screamed in Dave’s face. ‘I WARNED YOU THERE WERE THIEVES!!’
‘Yes, and I can only offer my apologies again, but what’s done is done . . . ‘ said Dave, but the professor wasn’t listening. He was too busy pacing up and down the corridor, screaming and swearing at anyone and about everything.