Dinner Bell - All Characters

Naomi seemed suspicious of where the Captain got all the extra money from. How could she afford all of this food and still put a new....thing in the engine room. She wondered who Cassidy had sold her soul to for this. Still she did nothing other than mumble and grumble as she helped herself to the delicious food. It wasn't as if they could sell it back and she'd rather eat the exquisite food now than let it go to waste. She smiled at Hudak as she ate. Her scowl reappeared as Cassidy entered the galley.

"I reckon, so, ma'am," Kieron said as he entered the galley, drawn by the promise of good food and fellowship. He wore his customary Fruity Oaty Bars T-shirt and some Kwan Li jeans. A checkered bandana kept his longing, unkempt blond hair out of his eyes. His face bore a light stubble and his normally tanned skin was beginning to pale from lack of sunlight.

"Though it ain't th' only thing a feller can make wine out of," he informed them, pulling out a chair for Cassidy with a "Ladies first."

"I 'member back when we wuz aroun' twelve're such, me an Mike found us a recipe for somethin' called "Tea Wine." Apparently, you took a whole buncha tea bags, put 'em in with sugar, yeast and water, and then just let the whole mess sit around in a plastic bag for a few months. After it was done, Mike talked me into drinkin' a whole bottle of it. I remember thinkin after I got outta the hospital that it purely did have somethin' of a kick to it. Yessiree indeed."

"Well it's what you can expect," Hudak, the diminutive soldier added while plopping the apple juice down in favor of Doc's wine. "And I didn't steal it from no one sir."

Hudak's looked Gordon up and down, and of course, pretended to be offended with the notion of him stealing food. "After we finished our last job, Captain gave me three hundred credits, that 71 above usual, to stock the galley with. I requisitioned it all fair and square from a nice old couple at the Farmer's market back on Trinity. We been eating kinda boring stuff lately while we were doing our last two jobs. So I went out and picked up as much overstock and bulk as I could get."

Hudak looked at Phineas. "I still have the logistics paperwork and receipts so you can add it to your files later. I just figured it didn't make too much sense to advertise it all. Didn't want anyone going through my cupboards looking for food that I got plans to use." While maybe said in a light tone, Hudak's words were a clear warning to not go and raid the cupboards.


Then, while everyone was digging in and the Doc was offering up his wine, Cassidy chimed in from down the hall. Her voice preceded her through the hatch turned doorway into the galley. "Who owns a vineyard? I want a vineyard? What's a vineyard? That one of them fancy places people grow berries to make wine?"

Phineas took a seat at the table, helping himself to some modest portions of the meal Hudak had prepared, and got himself a glass of water from the tap. When the Doctor returned with the wine, Phineas decided it would be impolite to turn down the offer, so he fetched a small metal cup from the cabinet and held it out to be filled.

" This certainly is an impressive spread you've served up," Phineas complimented the chef." Feels like near forever since we had proper food." Picking up a pair of chopsticks from the basket of cutlery on the table, Phineas tucked in.

Gordon entered the room, freshly cleaned, and tired as hell after his last duties, he grinned ear to ear after smelling the food. "Garlic? Whitefish? Butter? Hudak, who did you steal this from?" Gorgon gave a smile and sat himself down, offering his cup to be filled with whatever was on hand. Once the wine came out he quickly drained the apple juice, pausing halfway through to grin from ear to ear, and offered his glass to the Doc. "Shiny. Thank you." Gordon nodded a thanks and sipped slowly and grinned again. "After hours and hours of meetings and reports, and general garbage, I needed this. Bureaucrats talking wears on a man's patience in a way nothing else can." Offering some brief explaination for why he was gone so long.

The doctor had only sat down for a moment before standing right back up as if he had forgotten something. He took one look at the meal on the table and decided it needed something.

After excusing himself, he briskly walked not to the engine fermentation system in the back of the ship, but to his bunk. The jury-rigged system was fine for getting hammered, but the flavor left a lot to be desired. No, for a meal like this, he returned with something he'd either been saving for a long time, or he had a source of income no one knew about. "Everyone else is putting their best on the table, so who am I to keep hiding this?" And at that, he waited for whoever wanted to hand him their glass to pour some red wine. Finally, with a bit of a grin, he answered the question he knew was coming. "When I was between jobs I tried opening a private practice briefly. One of my patients didn't have a lot of money, but her step-father owned a vineyard." Of course that wasn't quite how it happened, but it was close enough.

It was dinner time. One of the things Ancient Sands had to offer that other ships out here in the Black didn't was a very well stocked galley. Doctor Cross had commented more then once that the galley was more well stocked then his own facilities. Cassidy had responded with her own half serious jest that a well fed crew operates good enough to not need no medical services. It was hard to argue that good nutrition did help a body more then bad nutrition.

And a happy crew worked better then an unhappy one. Dinner tonight, thanks to Hudak's decent cooking skills consisted of buttered noodles, fresh slices of tomato, fresh garlic bread whose scent clearly was a welcoming from the ordinarily stale, recycled air, engine grease, and mechanical steel. AND THERE WAS MEAT! REAL MEAT! Even Phineas wasn't sure where Hudak had managed to hide it, but he'd managed to hide several large slabs of whitefish, which were peppered with rare herbs and seasonings.

As soon as everyone started entering the mess hall and taking their spots at the huge half circle table plastered against the wall or at least started getting their plates (a set of see through blue glass things) Hudak filled each person's out of place tin cups from a jug of apple juice. Everyone could plainly see that he was quite pleased with himself, even though the small man was looking mighty cunning in his blue and orange checkered (with white dots in the middle of each checker) apron.

"Dig in ladies and gents. I know that no power in the 'Verse could stop you anyway."