WinterStar

by Blaze Ward

  Kathra just studied the man, one eyebrow raised in surprise.

  “Kitchens are not always convivial places, Commander,” he announced in a simple voice. “At least, not until you reach well-run ones. I have been stabbed or slashed several times, requiring stitches or glue to close up, on top of all the times I have been punched, shoved, or burned. The warriors around you do not intimidate me, for all that any one of them could bounce me off the walls and appliances until they got bored or I broke. I am here to cook. If you have other requirements, Commander, I will attempt to meet them as best I can, or perhaps find myself unemployed and standing bereft on a platform again.”

  “Again?”

  “It will not be the first,” he said in a flatter voice. “I do not expect it to be the last, either. Now, what should I prepare for dinner that would remind your killers that they are friends and comrades, rather than wherever they ended up at lunch today?”

  “Something exotic,” Kathra decided. “Spicy and new, to remind them that this is a grand adventure.”

  She watched his eyes grow distant within, seeking something.

  How could she tell any of them that she had hired this man for two such radically unrelated reasons? First, because she had simply grown bored and listless with Ugonna’s pedestrian cooking. They all had. Stew was not a treat, the fortieth or sixtieth time you had it, regardless of how the cook might play around with ingredients.

  They had already come round to understanding what a new cook could do, especially a great one challenged to keep outdoing himself.

  But second, and far more important to Kathra, was to remind everyone that while the Mbaysey were a tribe of outsiders, they could not grow insular as a result. Fresh blood would be needed on a regular basis. Fresh ideas, just like they regularly had to trade the excess metal ingots ForgeStar produced for grains grown on the surfaces of planets they never visited.

  Her war with the Sept would not be fought with guns. She would lose quickly and be erased from history if she sought to challenge that mighty empire on a level footing. But she could win by providing an alternative to the planetary-based thinking that made so many others grow stale.

  Kathra could have invested in an autochef capable of taking any manner of input chemicals and ingredients and spitting out meals that were good enough to satisfy your nutritional needs.

  Those machines had no soul whatsoever, which was why much of the Sept relied on them. They had lost their own dreams, and were losing whatever elements of identity they had once possessed. The Mbaysey had managed to retain that element for this long.

  Kathra Omezi, Commander of the tribe, was looking for something far greater.

  Part II

  Commander

  9

  Daniel had even reached the point now, after four months aboard WinterStar, that he was willing to admit that he really had gotten lackluster and predictable, back on Genarde. That was the downside of being awarded the prestigious Golden Diamond. Once you had one, your menu was almost permanently locked in at that point.

  Every meal had to meet the standards of the magazine, or more specifically, the critic that had snuck in that night and awarded you rock star status. No option to experiment now with a new menu, as tourists and locals would flock to your counter because you had established a thing. They wanted that thing, and no other thing would do to replace it.

  Daniel wondered if any of the others like him had ever had such a quiet crisis of conscience. He supposed so. More than once, a top chef had suddenly closed down their restaurant for reasons never adequately explained. Daniel had always assumed a combination of burnout and poor sales, except, upon reflection, all of those places had been popular and well-regarded. Famous and successful.

  It had taken Angel and her new boyfriend to show him how unhappy he had gotten as an artist. The business side had been fantastic, and dreary. Daniel supposed he owed her an apology for all the things he had said, even if only in his mind, and probably for all the insults and invective Lucrèce and the staff had most certainly fired off at the woman and the rumors likely started.

  She hadn’t broken him. She had merely gotten him angry enough to realize how much he hated cooking such a limited menu. Such a limiting one. How Seasonal had come to represent something almost as predictable as asking the autochef for dinner or calling for delivery. How that Golden Diamond, so proudly displayed, was a chain affixed to his ankle like he was a criminal.

  He didn’t do Seasonal aboard WinterStar. Couldn’t. He was back to the bistro days. Whatever was available and fresh, often with no more than a few days warning from the various vegetable growers, and only a few days to use something at its peak, else it had to be made into sauces and pestos that could be frozen for later use.

  Every day an adventure in randomness. Except that his entire customer base came in for almost every meal, and he never served more than forty people at any one time.

  And, thank the very gods above, they didn’t all like the same thing. Breakfast was not continental nor English, to follow the two main, classical threads that had come into space with humanity. He had to find a way to satisfy frequently three or even four different sets of requests and dislikes, each of three meals per day. And the various groupings of the warrior women changed, based on what he did to feed them. Even better, not all of them wanted breakfast, so much as perhaps leftovers from last night stashed in the cooler and reheated, or an early lunch because they might be on a different personal clock from the rest of the staff.

  He was running a boarding house. Almost a bed and breakfast, when he thought about it, smiling with the mental breakthrough.

  Daniel could not remember having ever been as happy in his adult life. Even opening either of his restaurants had been more about the stress of making money back for his investors and building his name, than about actually enjoying himself.

  Weird.

  He also did not cook for the three hundred or so crew that made up the rest of WinterStar. The two populations were divided into comitatus and support, and even something so fundamental as the kitchens were divided into two, distinct groups.

  The commander did hold a weekly lottery that gave five people from the Support staff the chance to dine with the comitatus, but she otherwise kept her warriors isolated enough to add…what? Prestige? Mystery? Something.

  He didn’t know. And didn’t care. He was slowly learning the rest of the crew, faces that he really never saw otherwise, since his cabin was close to the kitchen and the gymnasium he used was one reserved for the comitatus. Eventually, all of WinterStar’s crew would come through once, and he would have notes enough that he could work with the staff kitchen to do something.

  At least he had finally had a chance to meet Ndidi Zikora, the young woman cook from the other kitchen that he would have groomed to take over his spot eventually, were he the commander here. She was junior to her peers in that kitchen, like Ugonna, but in another league for her culinary skills. Ndidi would have been able to find funding to open her own bistro on Genarde, were she planet-bound. Perhaps been good enough to earn her own star in another two decades, when she reached his age.

  For now, he was content sharing his recipes with her, retiring to his cabin at night and translating twenty years of professional kitchen work down onto paper. He was too young to be retiring, but this felt more like training the next generation of cooks, and he had plenty of experience on both sides of that equation.

  Before him was lunch. Handmade corn tortillas filled with shredded chicken in a tomato and corn salsa, the former fresh and the latter from cans traded from a recent TradeStation run that had swapped iron and exotic metals for corn and rice, the main grain exports from Viltri. The planet also did beef, but Commander Omezi had taken him seriously on the benefits of chickens, so she had concentrated there instead, only bringing aboard a few tonnes of ground beef for mixing into things, rather than steaks.

  Daniel could get many eggs out of a chicken, plus an eventual meal fro
m the meat and another from bone broth. Nobody seemed to mind stew now, but it also wasn’t as mundane as had been before. Today’s tortillas had been wrapped around shredded chicken and refried beans, doused in a spicy white sauce made from dried habanero peppers, and baked in casserole dishes.

  Daniel watched with pride as the comitatus filtered in. Each plate got three to six stuffed rolls, each about the size of one of the taller women’s long fingers, and a side of Spanish rice, almost the color of blood because one of the ClanStars had delivered such a bounty of tomatoes and onions last week and he didn’t feel like canning sauce until tomorrow.

  He planted himself off to one side as the women made their way to the two communal tables and built up a low roar of noise and laughter. Many smiled and a few made gestures he hoped were salutes in his direction.

  It was good.

  Commander Omezi and Erin Uduik came in together, deep in some discussion that only slowed down as they filled their plates and went to a corner. He counted heads and every woman was present. Daniel took a sip of sweet tea and considered the amount of rice in the main trough. He had a smaller one stashed in the warmer, behind him in the kitchen, against hungry warriors coming back for seconds, but it could also be stashed for something useful tomorrow, depending on his whims.

  Silence fell.

  It came so abruptly that Daniel was afraid he had gone deaf.

  His attention spun back to the room in front of him, and he had the shock of his life.

  Almost as one entity, the women rose, meals half eaten and utensils placed silently on the table. Slowly, they shuffled out of the room in perfect lockstep, these women who never did anything as one.

  “Hello?” he called, but got no answer.

  Not even a nod. Nothing.

  Spectre Sixteen was closest to him, so he stepped towards her. Stina Carte, one of the few Anglos on the ship, and the only one in the comitatus, her skin a burnished gold so light it reminded him of the snows back on Genarde that nearly burned the eyes to look at some days.

  Daniel stepped in front of the woman, trying to get her attention, but those green eyes were focused past him. She didn’t even glance down at him, or shove him to the side like Daniel had expected most of the warriors would do. Instead, she slipped to one side and was past him so quickly that all he could do was grab a wrist, expecting a punch or an elbow for his pain.

  “Carte, what’s going on?” he almost yelled as she used her stronger muscles to drag him forward in spite of setting his feet.

  She wriggled like a fish and slipped away from him, but moved no faster than a mild walk. Daniel jogged after her, following the eerily silent group into the corridor outside, where they walked along single file in no greater order than how they had emerged from the mess hall.

  He made his way up the line to where the commander walked. A snap of his fingers in front of that woman’s face did nothing more than trigger a blink. He grabbed her wrist, as he had done with Spectre Sixteen, and found out just how strong the woman was when she absently bounced him off a steel wall without even glancing his direction.

  Daniel cursed as he shook his head. Rather than get bounced again, he stepped close to the commander and just walked along, studying her.

  He made more sound on the deck than the rest of these twenty-three women combined. Spectre Fourteen, Elyl Wardams, was the smallest woman in the comitatus, barely over one hundred fifty centimeters. She was still stronger than Daniel, but he stepped close and kind of sidled sideways to stay in front of her. Wardams was Spanic, in skin tone, redder than him in skin and perhaps in hair as well.

  Those dark, brown eyes that didn’t focus on anything seemed to glow with a strange, inner light, but nothing he could do got any sort of intelligent response out of her, or any of the rest.

  He followed the comitatus to a corner, and saw them merge into another line made up of the staff side of the crew, mixing and mingling without any commentary or even sounds. He followed, trying to move silently, unaware of what was going on.

  A quiet voice in the back of his head whispered. That was the one that had watched too many horror movies as a child, and offered several for comparison now. It did not make Daniel feel any better when he could not refute the images standing up side by side with the scene before him. Especially as the crowd made their way down a stairwell to where all the Spectre fighter ships and SkyCamels were generally parked on the outer dock.

  For a moment, he began to panic at the thought that all of these silent women were about to board the shuttles and fly away, leaving him alone on a haunted starship. Then he heard the sound coming up from below, something remarkably like an airlock hatch opening.

  It was the first thing he had heard since the commander and her comitatus fell deathly silent.

  But if the whole crew was entranced, who was down there?

  And how had they done it?

  10

  Daniel had let himself fall to the very back of the line of women, most of them at least as tall as him and many much bigger. It provided for a strange sort of cover as he willed his feet to move more silently than he ever had before.

  Something was happening. Something dreadful.

  Down the stairs they had marched, to the outer deck, the one at slightly over one gee of gravity, where the spinning hull looked like a top from the outside.

  The Spectre ships were loaded into individual launch tubes after maintenance was completed. The spin of the ship would add that much extra push to get them clear of the ship when they ignited their thrusters, and it freed up a repair deck that ran all the way around the ship’s waist.

  The commander and what appeared to be her entire ship crew were walking to gather in the large space, facing an airlock where a SkyCamel could land and be drawn inside for unloading.

  What had happened to everyone? And why had he been missed?

  Daniel moved down a side corridor rather than enter the space with the women, wishing again that he had a weapon of some sort, even for just the cold comfort it would bring him. Not that he was anywhere near as dangerous as most of the women in the next room, but still.

  He should have grabbed a knife.

  Daniel made a mental note to find a good Sakimaru knife, the kind sushi chefs used, and keep it in a pocket in the future. Not as good as a butcher knife, but far easier to conceal, and he was almost good as these women would be with it, if he pretended he was boning out a chicken, rather than a man.

  The silence was eerie, broken only by the quiet hum of the life support systems pushing air around. Daniel sidestepped a small row of tiny blueberry trees in large pots along the hallway and worked his way towards the bow. The next batch of berries would be ready in about a week, glancing at them.

  He was just about to return to his kitchen for the biggest chopper he could find when he heard a voice.

  A man’s voice. Alone?

  Daniel had been the only male aboard the entire ship this morning. Who in the seven hells was this? And how had someone snuck up on the paranoid warrior comitatus of Commander Omezi?

  And what had he done to them?

  That was the question that left Daniel cold. Frigid and brittle, like any movement he might make would cause him to shatter into sand and dust.

  “At last I have found you,” the man boomed in a voice that sounded like six people speaking in perfect harmony with a reverb system running behind them.

  Daniel froze, like a mouse hearing the owl’s striking call.

  “You have led me such a merry chase, Commander,” the man’s voice continued. “System after system, tracking your signals and exhaust, bouncing around the rim of the fools in the Sept Empire like a hunting dog on a short leash.”

  Wait. You aren’t from the Sept?

  Who’s out there?

  What?

  Daniel had never left the confines of the enormous Sept Empire until he boarded WinterStar. Intellectually, he knew that the political structure centered on the human homeworld was tiny comp
ared to the rest of the known galaxy, but even that part was small. What was a thousand stars, compared to the billions surrounding them?

  Daniel pretended to be the kind of mouse he was always hunting in the cupboards as he moved to an open hatch. Turning to face the wall, he pressed himself up against it and slid sideways like molasses pouring on a cold day, hoping that whoever this man was, he was facing the long axis of the room, and that the one or six of them were facing away from him.

  One man.

  Man?

  Maybe.

  Bipedal with bilateral symmetry. Arms. Legs. Trunk. Head. Tall boots and heavy gloves in white, while the rest of the clothing was an ugly, neon lime color. No hair on an oversized, bald head with skin that reminded Daniel of a pair of ostrich skin boots one of his cooks had liked to wear everywhere.

  The proportions on the man were all wrong, to Daniel’s eyes, with legs too long and a head too big for the torso and arms. For the briefest moment, Daniel had to suppress a snicker, as his mind considered the creature to be what you might get if a T-Rex was transformed into a human shape, with those stubby arms competing with an oversized face for silliness.

  But he held his silence.

  There was only the one person. The creature was facing away.

  The crew and the comitatus were facing in such a way that someone might have seen him, if they had mind to do so. Those women’s eyes really were glowing now, a golden white utterly at odds with the dark brown eyes of most of them. Those who had been born Mbaysey.

  “I have long considered what I might do with an entire vessel of women,” the man boomed out in a snarl that left Daniel cold with rage. “And an entire fleet.”

  Yes, he knew what fantasies most men would have in this situation. Doubly so if the beast was somehow mind-controlling them. Most teenage boys went through and past that phase at some point. Usually about the time they turned thirteen. But those tones reminded Daniel of his own silly and stupid fantasies. And where they had taken him.