Crisis Cuisine

                Bright blue laser beams streaked through empty space at the speed of light. It was something of a tautological observation, saying that light travelled as fast as light travels, but felt appropriate in the circumstances. Bright flares of superheated metal shone from both fleets as the dazzling blasts found their marks; that sort of thing was a real nightmare for everyone aboard, but it hurt the engine crews most of all. Getting rid of heat in the vacuum of space was difficult at the best of times. Half the ship was designed to get rid of the engine's heat exhaust under normal operation, so the hull being gradually melted by enemy fire only made the situation worse. A few more direct hits and the whole crew would be forced into vests and shorts for a week; the laundry rota just couldn't take that kind of strain, not after the annual festival of sports and spilled drinks a mere week earlier.
                In much the same way that the ongoing grand fleet battle was an intense and busy time for the captain, weapons teams, and engineering crews aboard the Starship AnteMeridian, the festival had been an utterly relentless period for Clemence Udon. Clemence was one of a handful of head cooks serving aboard the AnteMeridian, tasked with providing the whole crew, and their civilian families, with sustenance that kept them nutritionally well-appointed as well as gastronomically interested. The criticality of this role was often a shock to new recruits, but in the depths of space there was no 'just popping to the shop' for something a person fancied, nor had matter replication technology taken off enough to provide each cabin with its own source of free meals, so a full and experienced catering team was paramount to the success of any voyage.
                Replicated food was always being investigated, of course. Initial experiments had yielded promising results, with the only complaints taking the form of 'slightly dry bread' and 'my apple was in fact two wooden models of kittens, sewn into a single oversized jumper', but the technology had failed to scale well outside of a lab. The captains were always promised that a replication system would be brought in soon, just after the next technology review, but in reality until they could resolve the 'calamitous overheating' problem, and fix the 'propensity to spit out a seemingly infinite number of staplers, even with the power disconnected', they would be stuck with conventional, manual methods of food preparation.
                Clemence himself was unfazed by the lack of modernised sustenance generation technologies. Neither pan nor skillet intimidated him, and to whisk was to breathe. He knew that he had the skill, the experience, and the training to make it through a cauliflower wellington as easily as katsu sauce on toast, or a simple thrice-baked lime, and consequently the time pressures of traditional cooking meant nothing to him. This attitude was, in part, the reason for his specialisation into crisis cuisine.
                Early into humanity’s journey to the stars, they had identified the requirement for space warfare. After all, war was one of humanity’s primary pursuits back on Earth, and if a home from home was to be made, then they couldn’t do without a bit of old fashioned, pointless combat. However, the vast distances and enormous scales of space travel meant that it was commonplace for battles to be waged over days or even weeks, and therefore catering was no simple matter of ‘wait until you’re done with the killing and then you can have your dessert’. It became far more critical for digestive matters to be outsourced to professional cooks who could, among other things, identify the key nutritional needs of every group of personnel, prepare a specialised dish for them in good time under combat conditions, and maintain high standards of presentation throughout. It was all the pressure of a high-class kitchen and a combat zone in a single place, but with fewer gunshots and more sautéing.
                "Pasta nearly boiled! Do we have lemon slices?" he called out to the kitchen, snapping frantically from station to station.
                "Yes, chef." replied Gallie Prospect, Clemence's most trusted, and only, junior cook. She was operating a blender with one hand and finely dicing some dill the other. For the lack of anything else to do, her legs were practicing some gentle salsa positions. "Lemons are on the chopping board and ready to go.  Dill readiness is imminent, and blended fruits are on target."
                "Excellent work, Gallie." Clemence replied, elbow deep in a frosty metal urn of citric sorbets. They were his pride and joy when it came to dessert, lovingly prepared the previous evening with as much fresh fruit juice as he could muster from the ship's fruit hold. It was a source of constant contention between himself and the captain that they were yet to outfit the AnteMeridian with an auxiliary fruit store; it was on Clemence's list of requests for every budget review, and the cost benefit analysis was clear to see. Somehow, Captain Nebulon just couldn't grasp the vital role that high quality sorbet played in keeping the ship running.
                 "Draining required in T minus 1 minute. Not one of those irregular, barbarian minutes they use in this system either." Clemence added.
                Reverberating through the hull came the dulled sound of a distant impact. It shook the whole vessel, sending Clemence off-balance and threatening to topple the whole sorbet urn upside down, but some quick thinking and a deep disregard for the integrity of his ribs saved the precious dessert from potential disaster.
                "Status report! Dill, lemon, pasta and blended fruits!" barked chef Udon.
                "Dill integrity nominal. Lemons rolled but not compromised." reported Gallie.
                "Pasta still boiling. Tide mark at an angle within the pan due to impact, and minor spillage on the hob." added Barry Onne, another of the head cooks. Barry had charge of a different selection of decks and crew divisions, and should, technically, have been in his own kitchen. Having initially popped in to borrow a corkscrew, he had become distracted by a pasta pot nearing completion.
                "Grateful for your assistance, Barry." Clemence acknowledged curtly.
                "Smoothies have taken some spillage; estimate a 2% loss of total volume onto the floor, cupboards, and legs of the junior cook, chef." Gallie said finally.
                "Acceptable losses for an active combat situation." assessed Clemence, restoring the sorbet urn to its place on the countertop, and decanting a further scoop into the waiting bowl. “This, Gallie, is exactly why we always make more than we think we’ll need.”
                “Understood, chef.” acknowledged the junior cook, smoothie dripping from the calves of her trousers. She hurried her way over to the pasta. “Ready to drain on your mark.”
                “Wait until the clock strikes three, nought point 6, A.M.” instructed Chef Udon, watching carefully the boiling-clock hung on a set of overhead cupboards. “Ready… and… remove from the boil.”
                In perfect synchronicity with the instruction, Gallie hefted the vast pot of boiling water and starchy carbohydrates off the hob, and into the sink for draining.
                “It looks like you’re under control here.” said Barry, sounding a little nervous. Clemence suspected that he was fearful of another spillage. “Mind if I borrow your corkscrew for some minutes?”
                “Some? Not very specific there, chef.” laughed Clemence. “In this kitchen we state the times we mean, even if we have to revise those estimates later, but each to their own I suppose. Of course you can borrow it; what’s mine is yours, friend.”
                With a nod and a bow, Barry Onne grabbed the corkscrew and made his escape, while the unmistakable sound of starchy water over-spilling the sink and soaking into a junior cook’s sleeves filled the kitchen.
                No further rocking of the galley came in the next few minutes. Using the relative calm while they had it, Clemence and Gallie finished preparing their dishes in double time and had the food plated, the plates trayed, and the tray personed by Celemence himself. He addressed Gallie directly as he prepared to make the delivery.
                “Good work on these. The next dish list is on the hyperboard; please start preparations so that we can hit the ground running upon my return.”
                “Yes,chef.” Gallie replied, dutiful as ever, with a salute that left a small drip of lemon juice on her forehead. “Permission to clean the smoothie from my trousers and the brine from my jacket?”
                “Granted, on the condition that it does not delay the meal prep.” said Clemence, as he turned on the spot and hurried from the galley.
                With the nimble hips of a gymnast, the poise of a catwalk model, and the shoes they’d bought several years beforehand, Chef Udon briskly sashayed his way through the chrome and quartz corridors that led away from the galley of the AnteMeridian. Sharp, ninety-degree turns, and staircases that led up and down from partial levels would have been a problem for terrestrial chefs, but thanks to gyroscopically-stabilised hover-tray technology the task of carrying a whole department’s worth of meals with a single hand was rendered trivial. No manoeuvre was too ambitious for the latest generation of trays, and despite trying on several occasions, Chef Udon had never spilled a drop of even the most aggressively brimmed soup while using one.
                Despite the urgency with which he had otherwise been cooking and moving, Clemence paused for a moment when he reached the wide, floor-to-ceiling window that served as an overlook of the ship’s surroundings. The grand battle was raging as fiercely as ever.  The AnteMeridian was but one ship, and not even an especially large one, of the fleet that had been dispatched from the Federation of Time Keepers. The larger ships were spread out in a vast hemisphere in space, forming a back-line of bombardiers while the smallest vessels darted at hypersonic speeds among volleys of laser fire and conventional weaponry. It was an all-too-common sight for Clemence, but one that he couldn’t help staring at every time.
                The Federation of Time Keepers, as their name cunningly suggested, asserted authority and control over all tracking and logging of the passage of time, with a reach that extended throughout the known universe of populated worlds. Of all the possible reasons to form an interstellar fleet of combat units, engineering cadres and landing crews, no-one on Earth, at the start of humanity’s journey to the stars, had anticipated that clock formats would be the one to finally make it happen. They’d all suspected it would occur at the hands of the usual candidates; mining companies claiming mineral rights, corporations seeking to extend their influence, and shady scientific conglomerates searching for clandestine bases from which to conduct their dangerous and unethical experiments. While all of those things had indeed happened, to some extent or another, the Federation of Time Keepers was the first to gain real traction, for much the same reason that wars on Earth had been won by the side who could most clearly relay to one another which film they’d like to watch that evening, when all the unpleasantness was over and they could finally put on their comfy socks.
                In turned out that using the Terran format for time across a vast swathe of populated worlds with their own orbits, their own periods of spinning, and their own complex cosmological geometries was an absolute ruddy nightmare for communicating anything to anyone. Hwoever, none of those worlds had any intention of being the one to change first, or at all in some cases, and so instead of solving these relatively minor logistical problems, they allowed them to spiral out of control instead.
                Take, for example, the case of Hades Inc., a super corporation of scientists committed to creating hell-like environmental conditions, for reasons that were never adequately explained, even to their own shareholders. In a subterranean research complex on one of the smaller planets in the Caloridian System, they had discovered a way to keep plumes of fire and brimstone erupting almost indefinitely using some previously banned seismological technology and bicarbonate of soda. Naturally, they had wanted to tell their superiors of this great success without the threat of interception by prying eyes, and so they sent an encrypted communication containing all the pertinent details. The decryption key, unfortunately, was based on the known duration of lightspeed travel between their lab and the home hub on Earth. This planet on the Caloridian system made use of their own five-hour clock, where one Caloridian hour was one point seven Earth hours. When the message reached earth, the time from transmission to receipt could not be rectified because of discrepancies in the two time systems, and decryption of the message, as well as the accompanying warning to avoid trans-fatty acids where possible, could not be completed. Thus, as a direct consequence, the whole board of Hades Inc. died of elevated cholesterol, and the corporation was dissolved immediately.
                With disaster after disaster of this kind occurring, the Federation of Time Keepers had gradually accumulated support and resources. Their promises that humanity would no longer be denied mineral rights to worlds over which they had no claim, that commerce laws would not be able to keep up with corporate expansion, and that real evil research could be committed without needless dietary calamities, won over world after world that they reached out to, until they were sufficiently powerful to bring whole systems in line whether they liked it or not. The Federation of Timekeepers had grown from a set of chronology enthusiasts to an empire in its own right.
                So it was that Clemence Udon found himself staring out at the lightshow of interstellar warfare yet again, set against the four multi-coloured suns of the Tri-Sol system, so-named due to a clerical error by the astronomers of 22nd century Europa. This time around, the enemy were rebellious sundial enthusiasts, who had amassed a sizeable fleet from all worlds within the system. Their entire colonial existence, they posited, had been built around the use of complex multi-source sundials that incorporated the chaotic, unstable orbits of the four suns for which they had been misnamed. Not only would it be disastrously complicated to implement a more universal time system, but they’d have to relabel all of their existing clocks, that would be a massive pain the neck.
                As ever, the Federation had not taken kindly to refusal, and their fleet had turned up outside Tri-Sol as a show of force, like a postal delivery worker putting a ‘sorry, we missed you’ card directly into your hand at the door. In many cases this was enough to bully reluctant worlds into submission, and Federation away teams could then quickly retrofit appropriate timekeeping measures onto the populated worlds. Unfortunately, this had not been one of those times.
                Chef Udon forced himself away from the window, before the sorbet grew too warm. Resting the tray on his head, he climbed down a narrow service ladder, smugly reminding himself that this route would have been right out of the question with a normal tray, and once again thanking the universe for gyroscopic stabilisation technology. The metal rungs of the ladder were warm on his hands; heat must have been spreading through the ship’s superstructure from the laser impacts around the hull. This revelation only strengthened Clemence’s conviction in the dishes he’d planned for the crew of the engine bay.
                Even at the best of times, the engine bay was the warmest part of the ship. Contrary to expectations of ‘the cold vacuum of space’, the real challenge with crewed vessels didn’t come from warming them up, but from cooling them down. With nothing to conduct heat away from the hull directly, they relied on radiative cooling and, occasionally, on an ice bath from a passing comet haulier. Many of the fins and outcroppings on the surface of the AnteMeridian existed not just to make it look, as the Federation’s shipbuilder’s design guide put it, ‘cool and spacey and stuff’, but also to maximise cooling potential. The majority of this heat came from the operation of the engines, and consequently the engine bay was toasty warm at all times. When the additional thermal load of laser fire, both from the ship’s own weapons batteries and the incoming attacks from enemy vessels, was added to this, things got quite out of hand.
                Clemence dismounted the ladder, stepped into the red hot engine bay, and hurried, sweaty, towards their collection of tables in the breakout area.
                “Food’s here!” he cried, placing his tray down on the table and efficiently setting its contents out for the eagerly descending crew to enjoy. Knowing ahead of time that this would be the most summery part of the ship, Clemence’s crisis cuisine training told him that the crew would require cooling down, rehydration, and freshening up in equal measure. Therefore, he had chosen to leverage the natural freshness that came from citrus, and provided an array of sorbets, a collection of chilled lemon pasta salads, and a selection of tropical coolers. Diligently ensuring that the cocktail umbrellas were at the regulation thirty degree angle, that recyclable paper straws were pre-bent, and that none of the pasta bowls had too much lemon dressing pooled at the bottom, Clemence completed his laying of the table in near record time. Promptness was just another part of his training.
                “Thank you, Chef Udon.” said Chief Engineer Cogxyx. Despite the engine having very few conventional moving parts, no pistons of which to speak and certainly no hydrocarbon fuels, the chief engineer was, somehow, always covered in oil. She took a cloth from her waistband to wipe her hands clean. “This looks like it’s just what we need. Are these ones lime and pistachio?” she asked, pointing towards the greenest of the sorbets.
                “Good eye, yes. Lime, pistachio and just a hint of mint for maximal freshness.”
                “Wonderful.” she said, grabbing at the bowl. Clemence could already see oily fingerprints on the otherwise pristinely white porcelain, but held his tongue. Yet another aspect of crisis training was to let these things go in the moment, and have a good shout into a bin when the coast was clear later on. He planned a route to the nearest, most secluded bin in the back of his mind. “I’ll have this down in record time, without the use of a single savage sundial!” she added. Clemence chuckled politely at the rightful jab she’d thrown towards the Tri-Sol heathens, but the pain of an oily bowl ran too deep for true mirth.
                Amid muttered thanks and a few gentle queries from the rest of the red-faced, perspiration-soaked engineering crew, Chef Udon watched on as the variously cooling and refreshing dishes were taken, one by one. They were like a queue of schoolchildren waiting to receive their pittance of rubbery beans and gaseous sausages, but Clemence took pride in knowing that the food for which these brave service personnel waited was worth their time. The more fortunate, or possibly less critical, staff were able to sit at the tables and eat, taking the opportunity for a rest while it presented itself. Others, however, were forced to take bowls, plates and glasses back to their work stations and continue keeping the AnteMeridian service worthy.
                As a consequence of his personal service model, Chef Udon tended to need to hang around for a while after delivering the food, such that he could gather the plates and take them back to the galley. This might have been considered inefficient by a lot of people. Having the head chef, a critical member of the kitchen team, spend a significant amount of their time both delivering food and loitering while it was eaten, might not have been the best use of his time. However, it gave the diners access to the chef for direct feedback and questions, and it gave Chef Udon a chance to make observations about how his meals went down. In particular, Clemence observed with considerable discomfort as a young man tried to place his glass of smoothie on a sloped control panel, while resting a bowl on his thighs and balancing a plate on the centre of round-tipped joystick. It was a work of purest ambition and optimism, almost as titanic in scale as trying to enforce a single time format on every populated world in the known universe, but to his credit there was no spillage to be seen while the chef was watching. Immediately the cogs began to turn in his mind, thinking of how he could serve future meals such that this balancing act was unnecessary, or at least much easier to achieve. Perhaps he could request hover-crockery from Captain Nebulon.
                Clemence turned away from the bowl balancer, determined to keep the man’s record of success intact, even if it was by ignorance of failure. Although he’d been there many times before, it was always a pleasure for the chef to drink in the scale and elegance of the engine room. The wall space, as with most parts of the ship, was filled with time pieces wherever possible, shining out the time in its one true format for all to see, and from which all might find their determination bolstered.  Various equipment racks, control panels, desks containing more buttons than Haberdasheron V, the tailoring world, and other work stations took up the majority of the floor space. Arranged in concentric rings, they were focused on the real business end of the engine bay.
                Dominating the room, sitting in the centre and stretching from the floor to the ceiling, was a vast toroid of shining metal plating and transparent viewing ports. As Clemence understood it, the power was generated by something similar to nuclear fusion, but involving far more words; words like ‘hyper-confinement’, ‘extraneously over-stimulated meta-stable excitations’ and ‘really good at revving’.  Through the windows he could see the slowly pulsing mirage of colour that the fuel within produced, transitioning through the full spectrum of visible colour every few dozen seconds and generating a satisfyingly scientific humming sound. During peaceful missions this humming was generally drowned out by smooth jazz, but combat had been previously declared a jazz-free time, for obvious reasons.
                As he watched the colours pulse, to the sound of both the humming of the engine and the clicking of cutlery against sorbet bowls, it put Clemence in mind of making a rainbow sorbet in honour of the engine crew. His thoughts raced through how to flavour and dye each layer of the dessert appropriately, and how much of the work he could delegate to Gallie as a development exercise. More sorbet urns would be required, of course, so that would need to be taken into account in his budget for the upcoming maintenance and upgrade schedule, but storage at low temperatures could be achieved easily. All they would need to do is freeze the desserts within the kitchen, and then place them in a vessel to be stored outside of the ship, attached by an insulated chain. He was sure that it could be sold to the captain as a set of missile-lock spoofing devices in the worst case.
                “Chef?” asked a voice next to him, snapping him abruptly from his considerations of full-spectrum sorbets.
                “Yes, how can I help?” he asked, more by reflex than anything else, as he turned to face the short, middle-aged woman addressing him. Her uniform marked her as a principal confinement engineer, as did her nametag to that effect.
                “I was just wondering how you get the flavours mixed so evenly in this blood orange, pineapple and beans-on-toast sorbet. It’s incredible that those three could be married together at all, let alone achieving a unity that offends none of the senses, much like the unity of time keeping that we spread in our great mission.”
                “Oh, well that’s quite easy really.” he replied, taken a little off guard. It was rare for any of the crew to ask him technical questions about the dishes during combat. “You see, I don’t try to make three separately viable sorbets and then combine them. Instead, I take the individual recipes and think about how to mix them at the pre-freezing stage; they will interfere with one another in unpredictable ways, so one has to simply make allowance for that and give this mixture the respect it deserves.”
                “I see. Does the bean sauce, in that case, not get separated by the pineapple though, leading to an unstable state that causes a confinement failure?” she followed up. Clemence suspected from her choice of words that there was an ulterior motive to her line of enquiry.
                “It did to begin with, yes, good instinct, but I was able to add an alkaliser to the mixture first that held the pineapple juice at bay… this isn’t really about sorbet, is it?”
                “An alkaliser you say? Interesting… so you passivated the unsettling component before combination, and that then left you with a more sustainable fuel mi- er, sorbet recipe?”
                Clemence looked at her down the bridge of his nose, and then nodded slowly.
                “You’re a genius!” she cried, excitedly jumping up and down on the spot. “Thank you. I mean, yes you were right that this wasn’t strictly about sorbet. I’ve been experimenting with a new fuel mix that could get us almost double the energy output from the engine for the same temperature conditions, and your sorbet reminded me so much of it that I thought there may be parallels! You might just have given us the edge in this battle, Chef Udon. Thank you!” she explained, words leaving her mouth more quickly than her tongue could properly form them, before hurriedly placing her crockery down. Without sparing the time, regardless of format, for another word, she fled back to her work station and started fussing urgently over the valves on some chemical inlet pipes.
                Forcing himself not to think about the implication that his sorbet tasted like ship fuel, Clemence could bask in his unknown engineering knowhow for only a few moments. Before long, all of the other engine crew members had finished their meals. With a hover-tray now restocked, and a whole department of staff cooled back down to effective operational temperature, he glanced up at one of the many timepieces adorning the walls of the engine bay. The one true format looked back down on him, simultaneously an edifice of judgement and a promise that all would understand what he meant when he relayed the time. The clock’s ability to provide such clarity and security had, of course, been hard-won.
                In the early days of the Federation there had been as many internal struggles as external ones. Determination of what the one true format should actually be was a polarising nightmare, resulting in a civil war over the time truth that should be broadcast to the rest of the universe. Traditionalists had championed the use of the standard Earth 24 hour format, asserting that everything must be related back to the mother planet, despite that being the main problem to begin with. Modernist detractors pointed this out to little effect, other than grumbling and unnecessarily personal attacks on the character of their opponents. The benefit of greater numbers worked on their side, however, and their position that a numbered system of hours before and after the meridian of the planet in question would be better became the accepted norm.
                This notion gained traction among a lot of colonies, despite nearly every non-Earth world having a day that could not be divided into an integer number of Earth hours, but it had not satisfied the generalists. They argued, using their fists and some directed energy weapons, that it would not be helpful to have one clock that ran from nought to twelve, one that went from nought to six point three, another that ran into the low hundreds, and so forth. Was twenty four hours three days or barely enough to qualify as afternoon? How anyone would know how much time had passed from one measurement to the next when a ‘day’ could be either ten or four hundred hours long was too hard to envisage, they claimed, and they made that point abundantly clear with the body count.
                After many such iterations of a format update, the emergence of a new logical argument to modify the updated system, the fighting of a bloody civil war over it, and a subsequent format update to take that argument into account, a format was finally agreed upon that didn’t incite open warfare. It ran thusly:
                1) A.M. and P.M. designations were to be used at all times. These could encode information as to whether a certain time was in the rise or fall of the sun, and provide better read-across between worlds than midnight-to-midnight numbering systems could. Seventeen thousand lives were lost in establishing that rule as a good one.
                2) The length of the hour was to be kept constant, even if it meant non-integer numbers of hours in A.M. and P.M., which must also be equal in length. Ten thousand lives and a mid-sized family camp site were sacrificed in gaining acceptance for this criterion.
                3) Time reports were to be made with both the time since noon or midnight, depending on A.M. or P.M. designation, as well as the ratio of that time to the total hours between noon and midnight. This would provide the important proportionality that was otherwise uncertain when the length of a day was variable. A particularly divisive proposal, this rule had cost over a hundred thousand lives, led to the detonation of one of the less popular moons of Saturn, and caused the Federation of Time Keepers to be barred from all public libraries indefinitely. Although costly, the victorious side maintained that it was worth it.
                With the weight of such history hanging over him, and having satisfied himself that he was still just about on schedule, Clemence made his exit from the engine bay.
                Back in the galley, it appeared that Gallie’s preparations for the next order were well under way. So well were they under way, in fact, that the smoothie stains were nowhere to be seen on her legs.
                “Chef in the kitchen.” he announced, returning his hover tray to the worktop. “I see you found time to get changed, Gallie. Looks like all the initial chopping is done though, so that’s fine.”
                “Yes chef.” She confirmed. “Unfortunately, once I was in the new trousers I sat on the old ones, and then had smoothie stains on my buttocks. I therefore had to change a second time, but misfortune fell, as did a carafe of beetroot juice that had been improperly stored on a high shelf.”
                Gallie gestured towards a bright purple stain on the worktop and the ground behind her. Clemence nodded sagely.
                “This claimed the third pair of trousers as well as the jacket I was wearing. Since my third change, however, I have remained untainted.”
                “And how long ago was that?”
                “It was... “Gallie glanced up at a clock embedded into the ceiling. “… twelve seconds ago, chef.”
                “Then it’s a good thing I didn’t get back any earlier. Now, on with preparations. Do we have support from Barry?”
                “No, chef. He’s attending to the Dramatic Background Music team at the moment.”
                “What’s he taking them? Hopefully something that’ll keep their vocal chords protected, good foods for preventing fret-wear on the fingers, and plenty of omega oils for healthy ear development?” asked Clemence, more out of professional curiosity than anything else, while he donned an apron for the cooking to come.
                “Yes, chef. They’ve got plenty of room-temperature water, and a dairy-free serving of synthetic fish with extra collagen.” confirmed the junior cook, while attempting to hold five bottles of opened food colouring in one hand. Drops played threateningly around the rim of each one, ready to claim the life of another uniform.
                “Good enough.” said Chef Udon. Crisis cuisine was an art as much as it was a science, and each chef had their own take on how to satisfy the critical needs of ship personnel in a combat situation. Such grand-scale pitched battles as the one in which the AnteMeridian was currently engaged could last for days, sometimes weeks depending on the range and power of the larger batteries, and therefore variety was as important as nutritional completeness for the crew. When trying to find tens of different meals that provided the same nutrients, it was inevitable that one chef might make desperate choices that another would refuse, and only professional courtesy kept them from warring among themselves in such circumstances.
                Behind Chef Udon, the servitor bots had emerged from hatches around the room. They were busily unstacking plates from the hover tray and placing them into the UV-screened washing up area.
                Clemence’s next order was for the bridge, where the captain and other ranking officers gave orders, received reports, and made overarching decisions about the ongoing battle. It was the nerve centre of the AnteMeridian and held the largest concentration of epaulettes in the whole ship; consequently the pressure there was as high as could be. Looking at the list of dishes to be prepared and served, Clemence ran over his mental checklist again and again, to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything or made a misstep of logic.
                The highly important members of the bridge team were going to be rushing from station to station, shouting reports and orders to each other and standing ready to take or give instructions at a second’s notice. It was important, therefore, that their food was nutritionally complete and high in energy, but also light, easy to chew, and bitesize, so that their mouths were never too full or too preoccupied to keep the communication going. On a more cold and clinical day he might have gone so far as to say that it should be borderline flavourless, to minimise the distraction afforded by eating, but his pride as a purveyor of delicious foods had got the better of him this time. A meringue would be decadent in some people’s eyes, but the bridge crew deserved a treat.
                To a background lightshow of the servitor bots using high-powered UV beams to ablate away any leftover food and sterilise the dishes, Clemence and Gallie worked like drone ants to get the next order cooking. Deep fryers boiled furiously on the hobs, spitting oil onto Gallie’s lapels, while hot coffee dripped down the spigot of the cafetiere and soaked into her sleeves. For a while there was only the noise of the blender, mechanically grinding and whisking away until the meringue mixture was forming firm peaks, just like Clemence had been taught in officer school, but this soon enough gave way to the usual shouting of status updates and instructions.
                Respite came only upon completion. Exhausted, multi-coloured from the various spills and stains that she’d accumulated, and red in the face from the ovens she’d been unloading, Gallie dished up the final meringue for Clemence.
                “All ready to go, chef.” she panted, looking more like the floor of a painter’s workshop than a junior cook. Her dedication to getting the job done, much to her the cost of her own dignity and appearance, was something that Chef Udon always appreciated.
                “Good work, Gallie. Get yourself cleaned up, if there are any clean uniforms left, and then you can start on the final order of the day. We’re nearly there.” he said, snatching up the hover tray and beginning the long sashay to the bridge.
                This time, Clemence did not pause at the large window. From the corner of his eye he saw a bright flash of fire, as the oxygen inside an enemy ship erupted into flames when its engine was destabilised, but he tried not to think about it. Instead, he focused on getting into the direct service lift that ran from galley to bridge, and planned his route around the various control panels and stations from which the bridge was composed.
                “Chef on the bridge!” he announced as he stepped out. The bridge was a cavernous room, not as large as the engine bay but enormous compared to the lavatory. This wasn’t a necessity for containing large equipment or structures, but to allow viewing screens and windows that showed as much of the space outside as possible. In effect, it was like standing in a glass dome, or snowless snow globe full of button-banks, flight controls, weapon systems, and status readouts for basically everything in the ship. One of the many screens in the sea of lights and numbers would be a report on energy usage in the galley, but that was hardly the most important thing to monitor at the moment.
                “Enemy hull approaching melting point, captain. Anticipate that three more volleys will lead to a full liquidation event.” reported weapons officer Marley.
                “Good. Prepare to fire the ignition torpedoes when it does, with simultaneity measureable across all systems in a unified manner.” the captain ordered impassively. She stood with her hands folded behind her back, surveying the vista of battle ahead of the AnteMeridian. From the clockwork-print on her greatcoat to the digital displays on her boots, she was everything that an officer of the Federation of Time Keepers should be; dangerously obsessed with clocks.
                Wordlessly, Clemence moved in a clockwise fashion around the room, delivering his creations to the crew who were far too preoccupied to pay him any mind. To each one he gave a steaming mug of coffee for rapid-working alertness, a plate of chips for slow-release carbs that could be taken by hand, one at a time, and a bowl of salted cashews and peanuts on which to snack. Finally, to cap off the whole meal, there was a lemon meringue pie for each member of the crew, colour-coded with food dye to match their respective uniforms.
                “Time report!” barked the captain.
                “Four hours and twelve minutes, nought point six, A.M., local time on Tri-Sol Five.” replied one of many timekeeping officers.
                “Keep me updated as it progresses.” the captain acknowledged, bafflingly.
                In order to give everyone a good view of the battle, and to keep them from acting as sound baffles against one another, each work station was on a subtly different sub-level, making the whole bridge a disastrous mess of trip hazards, hidden steps and hard-to-reach surfaces. It was here that the hover-tray really paid for itself, keepign the precious cargo safe even as Clemence stumbled and staggered around. Just as he was trying to lower a meringue to the communications officer, he was thrown clean off his feet by a shell impact that rocked the AnteMeridian. With more drama than was strictly necessary, everyone on the bridge lurched from one side to another. Sparks sprayed out from the comms officer’s desk, courtesy of the bespoke sparking unit that had been installed for these purposes.
                “We’re still missile-locked by that detestable frigate, captain.” said security officer McJones Jones O’Jones. “Permission to don a space-suit and take it down myself?”
                “Permission denied, Mc.” said Captain Nebulon. “It’s time for your dinner first.”
                With a deeply shocked and aggrieved expression, the security officer turned to the dinner clock above his work station; as the captain had claimed, it was his time for tea, and Clemence’s arrival lent further weight to the argument.
                 “After you’ve eaten that, we can address the possibility of you single-handedly taking down a whole ship using nothing but a sharpened metal bar.”
                Clemence couldn’t help looking up at that remark, and seeing that the weapons officer was indeed clutching a metal bar with a spike at one end. Shaking his head, he got back to his feet, finished handing down the meringue, and redoubled his efforts to get around the bridge quickly. There was no way he would allow late dinner service to take the blame for this aggressive frigate not getting destroyed.
                No sooner had he reached the weapons officer than the plate of chips was taken directly from him. In one smooth motion they were inhaled, all in one go, with much choking, spluttering and straining following shortly afterwards. It made a mockery of the bitesize intent of the meal, especially when the coffee was unceremoniously splashed on top of the half-chewed potato mess in his mouth.
                “On this ship, Mr O’Jones, we take the time to chew our food properly! Ten seconds of chewing per mouthful as per the chewing clock!” snapped Captain Nebulon at this display, pointing irritably at the chewing clock on her own jacket. O’Jones made some kind of reply, but it was utterly inaudible.
                Not wishing to be involved that matter for any longer than was necessary, Clemence kept on moving and depositing plates as he went. The remaining bridge officers adopted a far more reasonable approach to consumption, taking chips or nuts one at a time, and enjoying single mouthfuls of meringue on its own merit as the situation allowed.
                When he reached the captain’s empty, throne-like seat at the centre of the bridge, Clemence carefully selected her specially prepared plate. Although the food was identical, the chips had been arranged into a clock face showing one of her favourite times; ten past three. It was this kind of personal touch that, Chef Udon hoped, would keep the captain grounded in her humanity during the horrors of interstellar combat. Usually he would want to hang around to see the response, and to gather up the crockery, but O’Jones’ self-choking mission was too much for the chef’s tastes. He kept moving at full pace until the hover tray was completely empty, and then hurried to the elevator.
                “Chef leaving the bridge. I’ll get the plates back a bit later.” he said, to no acknowledgement from anyone. He didn’t take it personally, given the circumstances, and quickly re-entered the lift before O’Jones could try to force the meringue into his maw whole.
                When he made it back to the galley, Clemence was surprised to find it totally depopulated. There was no sign of either Barry or Gallie, no equipment running, and no note to say who had gone where or to do what.  A little disappointed, especially with the impending need to cook for the Clock Repopulation Squad, Chef Udon placed the hover-tray down and wandered into the main body of the galley. On the floor, glistening and fresh, was a puddle of what transpired to be brine, along with a trouser-shaped dry patch. The mystery of where Gallie was, it seemed, had been solved rather neatly, without much investigative effort.
                Assured that she would be back as soon as the ship’s supply of fresh uniforms was thoroughly depleted, Clemence glanced over his own order listing for the final meal of the day. It was one of the simpler collections of dishes, in fairness, comprising a selection of practical, easy-to-transport foods that were predominantly pre-prepared. There was a small amount of baking to do still, but that wouldn’t be too much trouble to start off solo. Rolling up his sleeves to avoid soiling them, something that he suspected Gallie may never have done in her life, Clemence set about mixing up his all-important dough.
                Behind Clemence, the doors slammed open. This was impressive, since the door was in fact a bead curtain.
                “Chef Udon! It’s an emergency!” cried a voice, urgently. Expecting to see one of the bridge officer’s dragging the blue-faced, choking security officer into the galley, Clemence turned to see something entirely different; one of the medical officers was dragging a colleague by the collar of their lab coat, which probably wasn’t helping whatever the emergency was.
                “My goodness.” gasped the chef.
                “It’s Dr. Tengo, she’s in a bad way.”
                “Well you’re the medics, why did you bring her here?”
                “It’s her brassica levels; they’re dangerously low. It’s the only explanation for such strong cravings; she was going to tear the whole theatre apart in her fury for a broccoli floret so we had to sedate her.” explained the officer quickly. “Can you help us?”
                “Of… of course. But we can’t give broccoli to someone in this state; they’d never appreciate the rich variety of textures between large stalk, thin stem and, of course, the floret itself.”
                “No… no of course… I hadn’t even begun to think of that.”
                “Get her on the stool, and I’ll see what I can do.” Clemence instructed, hurrying to his refrigerator and scanning through the crisper drawer at the bottom. Lurking in one corner, just where he expected it to be, was one half of a large cauliflower. “This should do it.” he muttered to himself, roughly tearing off a floret and slamming the fridge door shut.
                His hands were a blur as he grabbed bowls, opened taps, splashed the floret into the water and slammed the whole assembly into the microwave. Power was set to maximum. Time was set to a beautifully formatted one minute and thirty seconds.  That gave him all of a minute and a half to grab a side plate, a fork, and what rudimentary means he could think of to perform an emergency seasoning.
                He was barely half way to the spice rack when the microwave pinged, declaring that the life-saving, beige vegetable was done. Clemence grabbed at a couple of jars, then rushed back to the now boiling water. Using a set of metal tongs he fished out the chunk of cauliflower and roughly separated it into bitesize lumps, of the sort that would, in hindsight, have been perfectly serviceable for the bridge crew. A light seasoning of salt, pepper, and star anise dusted its way over the steaming veg, and Chef Udon was on the move to his customer.
                “Is she ready for the meal?” he asked.
                “Yes, yes I think so. I noticed these red marks around her neck,” explained the science officer, indicating towards a red band at around collar height on Dr. Tengo. “Do you think that they could be something to do with the brassica deficiency?”
                “I think that’s where you dragged her through half a ship by the throat.”
                “Ah. Yes that might have the same effect.”
                With a porcelain clatter the plate was placed in front of Dr. Tengo, whose eyes began to flicker open at the smell.
                “Is… is that cauliflower?”
                “Yes. We need you to eat it immediately.” Clemence said, but the doctor had already snatched it up in her bare hands and was biting down into it. Like a feral animal she gnawed at stem and floret alike, greedily sucking down the vegetable as if it were her first breath of air after a terrifying spacewalk with no air supply. Something wild and furious in her eyes started to fade, and some humanity filtered back in. To see such a difference in her explained the officer’s actions in full, and no longer would the chef feel judgement about a collar-dragging.
                “That’s better… how did I get into the galley?” she asked, curiously.
                “I brought you here.” explained the science officer. “Don’t worry about why; the point is that you’re alright now.”
                Dr. Tengo looked from her companion to Chef Udon, and then down at her plate.
                “Cauliflower… oh no, I didn’t go into a brassica rage, did I?”
                “I’m afraid so. I told you that you should have eaten your dinner before starting another treatment. It must be sitting in your quarters waiting for you; a whole cabbage to avoid exactly this situation! But it’s not important for now. We need to get back to the operating theatre; there’s a tonsillectomy half way done.”
                “Oh my gosh!” cried the doctor, leaping to her feet in shock. “What are we still doing here, let’s go! Thank you, chef.”
                “You’re a lifesaver chef.” added the officer, and they both ran at full pelt from the galley, leaving Clemence with a wet plate, some clean cutlery, and a slowly fading adrenaline high. He rubbed at his forehead with one hand, as if comprehension of the situation that had just unfolded might be attained by massaging it into his skin, and slowly staggered back to the ovens while the servitor bots set about cleaning up the plate. There was more cooking to do, and these dramas could not be allowed to distract him from it.
                “Oh, chef! You were quick.” gasped the junior cook, remerging into the galley a few minutes later, sparkling white in her clean uniform. “Is something the matter on the bridge?”
                “No, nothing untoward. Well, there was a potential choking hazard that I wanted to be away from, but other than that things were fine.” he appraised, elbow deep in a bowl of biscuit dough. “You missed the fun in here just now though; a brassica deficiency in medical. Where have you been?”
                Gallie hurried past Clemence, and grabbed a mop from an emergency floor-cleaning cupboard.
                “I had to borrow a uniform from Barry’s galley, chef. We’re out of spares because there was an incident with the brine…”
                “Yes, I saw.” said Clemence, taking a look at the brine puddle that still occupied the floor. “You sat in it for some reason.”
                “It was only a spill, I didn’t drop the jar or anything. The preserved protein-chews are drying out in oven three, and my trousers are drying out in oven five.” explained the junior cook. With a few deft strokes of the mop she’d absorbed the whole brine puddle, and was preparing to wring the head out over her own lap when Clemence caught her eye.
                “Maybe leave that until later, yes? And also find a better way of doing it. We can’t run through all of Barry’s uniforms as well.”
                “Yes chef, sorry chef.”
                “Not a problem.” he said, just as another impact rocked the AnteMeridian. Mop and junior cook alike were sent spiralling to the ground, and a plastic colander fell from its hook on high, bouncing harmlessly off Chef Udon’s head and landing in the bin.
                “Damage report.” he ordered curtly, propping himself up on the work surface. The dough bowl, although displaced from the worktop, was glued onto his arm by virtue of the dough within, and therefore had been no calamities there.
                “Mop unscathed. Minor leakage from the head onto the floor again. I’m fine, aside from a thirty percent chance of a bruise upon my right thigh. Clothing still feels dry. Colander will require third-degree disinfection.” rattled off the junior cook efficiently. There was a pause for Clemence to respond, which he chose not to do. “We’ve taken a few hits this time, chef.” she added, more quietly.
                Arm still lodged firmly in a large, round mixing bowl, Chef Udon turned slowly to look down at his fallen junior cook. With splashes of brine and smoothie in her hair, half a dozen uniforms further on than when she started the day, and genuine concern in her eyes, he saw someone he used to be. He’d never sat on the floor in a puddle of brine, admittedly, but he remembered what it was like to take the brunt of spills and support a more senior crisis chef. After so long in the business, he’d forgotten that their work was primarily executed when they were all at risk of dying in a fiery eruption. A death potentially awaited them during every meal, one which was beyond their control
                “We have, Gallie. But if we keep these good people nourished in the best ways we know how, then you can trust them to get us all home safely, alright? The AnteMeridian’s been through worse than this.”
                Gallie nodded and looked down at the floor. It wasn’t the most convincing statement of confidence and good faith that Clemence had ever seen.
                Quickly, he pulled his arm free from the dough and fished around in some of the overhead cupboards. Ingredients in boxes, tubs and bags had been thrown around from the blows they’d taken during the battle, and some fell out onto him as he searched, but he paid them no mind. Working one-handed, by virtue of the dough situation, but still maintaining high efficiently, he threw a bit of this and that into a bowl, slammed it into a microwave, and beeped confidently at the buttons. While it whirred away to itself, he carefully packed away the fallen items back into their respective homes, restoring order where he had found chaos. A bright ‘bing’ told him that the microwave was done, and carefully he removed the bowl, popped its contents onto a saucer, and turned to face his junior cook.
                “Gallie?” he said.
                Her head snapped upwards, as if she’d suddenly become aware of how long the floor had held her attention.
                “Sorry , chef. I’m here, I’m ready.” she said, but Clemence held up one doughy hand, and then offered the saucer with the other.
                “For you. A cake to celebrate your personal best number of uniforms per day. You’ll get a bigger cake next time you break the record, and there will be a next time, alright?” he said, a small smile breaking through his stubbly jowls.
                “I… really?”
                “Have a cake break, catch your breath, and then help me out when you feel up to it.” Clemence told her, pushing the plate a little closer to her. With a grateful nod the junior cook accepted her prize.
                While Clemence scooped and shaped the dough onto a set of baking trays, Gallie sat straight-legged on the floor eating her cake. In all honesty Chef Udon had been expecting her to get up and move somewhere more sensible, but didn’t complain while he stepped over her to get to the ovens. Number three, as had been discussed, was full of protein chews, and five was occupied by trousers, so he chose oven four instead, set the timer, and set about the rest of his preparations.
                “Ok, chef. I’m ready to help again. Thank you.” Gallie said, standing up and taking her place at Clemence’s side.
                “Good. Looks like you managed to eat that without getting any on yourself; you’re growing more powerful by the moment.” he said with a smirk. A proud smile spread itself across Gallie’s face.
                “Yeah… yeah I guess I did.” she replied. Chef Udon congratulated himself on both a successful application of crumb-free cake baking, and resolution of yet another crisis through cuisine.
                “We’ve lost some time against the schedule though, so let’s get these meals finished and dished up. There are hungry people out there.”
                With the renewed vigour that only the fear of impending death and a nice cake could provide, Gallie and Clemence tore around the kitchen like a hurricane of culinary knowledge. Jerky-like protein chews were fetched from the drying oven and left to cool, while the heat from their baking tray was  used to melt blocks of refrigerated energy syrup. Multi-valve combat canteens were tossed from one chef to another to be variously filled or sealed, and biscuits were wrapped en masse in grease-proof paper. Empty plates and lunch boxes had been transformed into ready-to-go dinners, and the hover-tray once again bore its burden.
                “All good to go, chef.” Gallie declared, after placing the final bottle down.
                “Then I’ll see you in a few minutes. Get this cleared up, please, and then take a load off. You’ve done good work today.” he said, without looking back, as he made his final trip of the day.
                Once more past the viewing window he sashayed, tray held high. Even if he’d stopped to look, and really taken care over the details, he might well have missed the small silver shape that jettisoned from high above him on the AnteMeridian’s upper gunnery decks. There was no way he’d have been able to tell that it was human-shaped, not a hope that he’d have identified the sharpened steel bar in the human’s hand, and no chance that he could have predicted it was on a direct course to collide with the Tri-Sol frigate that had been harrying them.
                Down another service lift the chef travelled, and, once at the bottom, the doors opened into the hive of activity that was Clock Repopulation.
                A vast, open hangar bay stretched away from Clemence as he stepped out. Lining the sides, some few hundred metres away, were neat rows of Reformatting shuttles. One could have been forgiven for thinking that they were military troop transports, on account of them being exactly that, but the troops they carried had a very particular task; to retrofit any timepiece they saw into the Federation approved true format. Rushing to and from these shuttles were logistical staff pushing hover-trolleys of equipment, pilots carrying out pre-flight checks, and, of course, the Reformatters themselves, bedecked in brass and black armour that bore the sign of the cog.
                Alongside the shuttles were brass tear-drop structures, the size of an immodest family home, containing huge clocks that could autonomously deploy on hostile worlds and broadcast the one true time across whole heathen planet. Traditionally targeted on the clock towers and billboards of enemy colonies, they were one of the most direct and effective means of replacing illegal formats that the Federation had; hearts and minds are slow to change, but clocks change twice per year, as the saying went.
                Chef Udon, carrying his high-stacked tray of food, felt tiny compared to everything going on in the hangar. But, he reminded himself, even the tiniest morsel can give a body what it needs to complete great works.
                “Ah, the chef! Just on time. The one, true time. A report on comestibles, if you please.” demanded Commander Noxis Tock. Clad head to toe in brass and black armour, with over ten clocks on his chest alone, the commander personally led all away-missions on hostile worlds. To see him in full gear implied that they would be departing soon.
                “Yes, sir. Recognising that the Clock Repopulation Squad’s work is as delicate and critical as that of a watchmaker, whilst also functioning as a fully outfitted military unit, your meals are composed of no-nonsense food that will travel well and not gum-up any equipment, timing or military. You’ve got protein-chews, freshly dried, non-crumble biscuits, high-energy-density drinks in valve-fitted bottles, and expanding vegetable jerky.” recited the chef, pointing from one dish to the next as he went.
                “Excellent. You’re the best of the best, Udon, and I’m glad I’ll be eating your work while I head out to do mine. We can measure the simultaneity using our perfectly aligned clocks, by the grace of the format.” Tock said, making the well-known sign of the time format with his fingers.
                “Aye, sir.” Clemence replied, making the sign back. “Where would you like me to serve this?”
                “Just pour it into this bag.” Tock answered, holding out a duffle bag marked ‘food’. It pained Clemence to treat the meals so roughly, allowing them to be mixed carelessly around in a single, large bag without any thought to their presentation, but it was not his place to question. Crisis cuisine was not a job for comfort, and sometimes the crises would have to be his own. “We’re going planet-side in just a few minutes, you see. Got to bring the good news of ante-or-post-meridian, a good, honest number of Earth hours, and the critical ratio to these sundial worshipping monsters.”
                “As you say, sir. The one true format will set them on the right track, at the right time.” Clemence said, quoting from official Federation propaganda materials. It made the commander smirk.
                “You’re a good sort, chef. If only more people could share your firm understanding, your strong grasp, your fundamental acceptance of the truth of the one true format. All of this might be avoided. All of this unpleasantness, and combat. Granted, I wouldn’t have any need to wear my snappy uniform, but that’s a small price to pay.”
                Flicking the gyroscopic stabiliser to ‘off’, Chef Udon allowed the hover-tray to tip, and its cargo to slide unceremoniously into the duffle. The clattering of crockery and sealed vessels drilled painfully through his head and he dreaded to think what would happen if one of the troopers wanted to know what flavour of drink was held in which bottle, but it wasn’t his place to argue. When the last paper parcel of biscuits had tumbled in, he restored the stabilisation of the hover-tray, and nodded to the commander.
                “Excellent. These will sustain us for another two meridian switches, I expect. Possibly three. We will expect to be back from this sortie by then, of course. It’s a quick strike to retrofit some key administrative infrastructure, as well as a prominent clock tower in a major capitol city.” explained the commander, giving quite unnecessary levels of operational information to the catering staff. “They might seem like small, maybe even insignificant actions, but I promise you that even a single unformatted time piece is an act of defiance. It’s a statement that someone thinks the one true format isn’t so true after all. We both know how many people died for this format, don’t we chef?”
                Clemence nodded.
                “And none of us are welcome in a public library. That’s a burden we bear for the universe, chef. We must remember to do our duty, having already paid the price. But I can’t stand around here discussing the finer points of our work until the next meridian; thank you for the supplies. Dismissed.”
                After another nod, which hid the extreme relief that Chef Udon felt, he made his way back to the service lift. His day’s work was very nearly done.
                Collecting Gallie from the galley, where she had been diligently tidying away the remaining mess, Clemence made his way into Barry Onne’s kitchen. Already waiting there was another of the crisis chefs, Tenda Quill, sitting on a stool in one corner and yawning. The turmeric staining on her jacket told of a tough shift.
                “We got through it, Tenda.” Clemence said, by way of greeting.
                “Just about. I lost a whole spice rack to that last salvo we took; crushed by a heavy iron skillet. I managed to salvage enough to make an energising curry for the exhausted personnel down in the weapons bay, but it threw my plans right out of whack for feeding the Home Time Cadre.”
                “Relying on turmeric to calm them down?”
                “Exactly. You know how they get a few days into a battle like this, seeing sabotage around every corner. I had to make a substitute of camomile tea for something a little relaxing in the end.”
                Clemence shook his head, sadly. It should never come to that.
                “How was yours?”
                “Can’t complain. Had to bail out of the bridge when O’Jones tried to inhale his meal in one, and Tock just made me pour the hover-tray into a duffle bag.”
                Gallie’s mouth dropped open in shock, and Chef Udon nodded, eyes closed, for want of anything else to say about it.
                “Where’s Barry, anyway? I’m starving.”
                “He’s still out serving the Custodians. Gave them an ambitiously unspillable soup, so that they can eat without thinking about work too much, and they’re probably bending his ear off about it.” explained Tenda.
                “I’m just going to start cooking for us. I can’t be waiting around right now.”
                “You know what Barry’s like about his kitchen, Clemence. Very particular.” warned Chef Quill. Gallie looked between them, quizzically.
                “It’ll be fine.” dismissed Chef Udon. “He’ll get it, we’re hungry and he was having a long one. He’ll be grateful for the help.”
                “Not sure he will be.”
                “I’ll ask for forgiveness instead of permission, then.” Clemence persisted, walking between the work surfaces and checking for any notes about what he was preparing for the chefs’ meal. Not to be overlooked, the crisis chefs had their own culinary requirements in a battle, generally taking the form of something simple and quick to cook that is carb heavy and decadently rich. A skewer left on the side caught Chef Udon’s eye, and he picked it up to fiddle with and generally ponder while he scouted for a note, or an order ticket. Perhaps it was to be vegetable skewers in a truffle sauce, or ‘bread-on-a-stick’. In any case it looked strong and sharp enough to pierce block of steel as if it were jelly. Clemence worried for the future of his teeth if skewers of this fearsome specification were required.
                Finding nothing else of which to speak, Clemence turned to the ovens, just in case something was already in there, cooking away on low. Scanning his eyes across the dials, they all seemed to be off, and none of them had a timer set, although one of the displays seemed to be faulty. Curious, he stepped directly in front of it, and stared at the numbers. It was showing the time, plainly enough, but with a sinking feeling Clemence realised that there was no ratio of hours, no A.M. or P.M., and a number far in excess of the hours used by the ship. It wasn’t a Tri-Sol timestamp, of that he could be sure, but nor was it the one true time.
                Something moved into view in Clemence’s periphery. Standing there, staring at him with a mixture of shock and fear, was Barry Onne. In his hand was a vegetable knife, clean from the knife block and ready for the ingredients that the servitor bots had just delivered to the work surface beside him. He looked at Clemence, at the skewer in his hand, and to the clock, joining one thing to another in his mind. Clemence looked back at him, and the clock, the ingredients beside him, and the knife in Barry’s grasp. His own grip and Barry’s stayed firm. No-one moved. No-one spoke. The clock ticked.