Tempered

  Tempered

  Space Chef Book One

  T S Paul

  Copyright © 2019 by T S Paul

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The Space Chef series (and what happens within/characters/situations/worlds) are Copyright (c) 2019 by T S Paul and Great God Pan Publishing

  Geraldyn "Jerrie" Cobb. 1931-2019 "She had the right stuff at the wrong time." Don't be afraid to reach for the stars.

  Contents

  1. Bang You’re Dead

  2. Luggage is Life

  3. Too Many Cooks

  4. Stupid Rules

  5. Turds Suck

  6. Are You Talking to Me?

  7. Draw!

  8. I Need to Get My Freak On

  9. Plans Within Plans

  10. Lemon Bars Rule

  11. Follow the Yello Brick Road

  12. Trouble

  13. Watch Out for Hickies

  14. Things That Make You Go Boom!

  15. Cry Havoc

  16. Who Likes Oysters?

  17. Not My Job

  18. We’re Where?

  19. Food Orgy

  20. Land?

  Author Notes

  Also By T S Paul

  Bang You’re Dead

  “We’re being overrun! I say again, we’re being overrun! Sector six… I rep…” My comms system screeched in my ear and then there was nothing but silence. Number Six in our team was positioned at the base in an advisory and communication role, but the voice on comms, over our supposedly secure net, wasn’t him.

  “What the flaming hell? Number Two, do you have eyes on base?” Thinking, not speaking, was the way we did it in the new special forces. Direct Mind Communications, DMC, or high-tech telepathy as we grunts liked to call it. All the best of the best of the best were equipped with it. Ten million credits a pop is what I’d heard from my friends among the nerds. Nerds were what we called the techs.

  “Negative, One,” our sniper and overwatch responded.

  Triggering my internal AI, I allowed it to scan the area. Rules of engagement for this op precluded the use of the scans, but if the base was gone…Fuck it. "Turn the scans on. Use my authority. Everyone report in. I want location and status."

  "Three and Four, main dig site, nominal activity.” Three along with Four were our primary guards and solid core of our squad.

  “Five, inbound, rigged for pickup.” Five was in charge of both transporting the team and coordinating with our Navy contacts.

  “Six?” Breaking OPSEC, I triggered our comms channel. “Six, report status.”

  The silence was deafening. DMC didn’t allow for static or interrupted service unless there were no other receivers. Even then, with the right transceivers, it was possible to use it to go interstellar. At least in theory.

  “Fuck,” I muttered to myself. Triggering an all-comms signal, I called the rest of the team. “Three, Four, make ready for extraction. Possible, I repeat possible, inbounds. Five, do you have intel on pickup?”

  “Overwatch picked up a massive heat signature just outside the perimeter. Scans revealed it to be Polywogs. Looks like the entire village plus. One, I think our friends here tipped them to what they were digging for,” Five explained.

  I cursed again, this time to myself. Stupid freaking nerds and turds. What was it about civilians that makes them constantly run their mouths so others could hear them? “All units wrap it up for immediate extraction. My location. Time to go, boys.”

  “Boss lady, what about the Turds?” Three asked me.

  “Drag them out if you have to, but it’s time to go. My orders don’t include dying for that junk,” I replied.

  “Understood,” Three replied.

  “What a freaking cluster-fuck this was.” It was all I could to not scream bloody murder. It had started out fine at first before it went straight to hell. Spec-op units were not babysitters. Never have been, never will be. Not under my watch. But orders are orders, and these were doozies.

  “Protection detail!” Yelling at a NWC General officer is never good, and the very moment the words slipped out I knew I was truly screwed.

  If it was even possible for a human to reach through a comm link, General Rychard Gryb would be the man to do it. His wrath against noncoms was legendary. The ground-pounders called him Ol’ Blood and Guts. Those of us in the space service called him a dick, because he was one. As I was about to find out the hard way.

  “Your unit is supposed to be the best of the best of the best according to the newsies. This is the chance to prove it. Orders are orders. Do you understand me, Specialist Lewis?” Gryb growled at me. “One of our survey vessels picked up traces of Xeno radiation out on the Radial Spiral. If you’ve paid any attention to past missions, you’ll know what that means.”

  I took a deep breath and answered, “Aliens. Is this another lost colony, sir?”

  Tricky Dick smiled at me through the comm console. “All the details are in the report. This one is perfect for you, Lewis. It should be a walk in the park.”

  Saluting, I disconnected before fouling the air with the best or worst curses I could think up or imagine. A walk in the park was how the one and only mission I’d served on with ol’ Dick was described. It was an interdiction assignment. We were blockading a world full of colonial idiots whose only crimes were wanting to eat without paying through the nose for it. Then Colonel Gryb was sent in to get his feet wet. You can’t be a General officer if you’ve only ever worked in supply. Trust me when I say that Nerds should never lead troops. Bad things happen. Things went belly up and Spec Ops were the scapegoats, again. Our relationship with the regular armed forces has never been the same.

  Winding down from my tirade, I reviewed the special orders Dickie sent me. “Mutherfucker.” That was all I had to say. I was pretty sure my team would say the same.

  After the fiasco on New Kansas, special operations was split up. Our ten teams were scattered across the Confederation. Used to operating out of stealth carriers, it was a hell of a shock to be based on every shithole space station they could find to stick us on.

  My team was on RMF-02, otherwise known as Nerdbase two by almost everyone in the space service. The New Worlds Confederacy is what humanity decided to call themselves after the last great war. As my grandfather once told me, “we’d had enough of Earth and the United Nations. Getting rid of them was the singular goal of every colony world.”

  What a war is was, too. I regret not even being a gleam in my daddy’s eye for it. Reading some of the reports made me believe it was a glorious time to be a warrior. Especially when the nukes started flying. What a rush it must have been!

  I’ve been to Earth. There’s not all that much left. In the end, they glassed the planet. Every so often a bunker filled with pissed-off Earthies is exposed and they send in the troops. Killing women and children isn’t really my thing. They don’t pay me enough to consider it.

  Nerdbase two is one of the oldest stations still in operation. It actually dates from before the war. Originally used as a fleet resupply base in the Alpha Centauri system, it was towed to right on the edge of unclaimed space more than twenty years ago. The station was supposed to become a beacon for new exploration and expansion, but that was until they discovered a blackhole, one sector over. Most starship captains won’t get within half a sector of one of those monsters, so this place wasn’t used.

  Besides the survey corps, we’re the only ones who use it now. There’s a couple dozen Nerds assigned to keep the station from falling into the sun, but most of them are screw-ups
or exiles. Since they have a choice, most survey ships go elsewhere if they can help it.

  “Three! Where the fuck are you?” It was all I could do to not scream bloody murder into the night sky. I had a job to do, but the bad guys were out there somewhere. Freaking Polywogs. Who knew they could attack like that?

  The planet we were on wasn’t located on any of the approved Confed maps. That should have been a big-assed red flag to command right there, but trust those weenies to ignore it. Aliens weren’t new. Dozens of new species popped up every single year and the Polywogs were no different. Short, round, and stupid is what the reports read.

  The exploration ship that scanned the planet claimed to find only the one village complex, but past experience had taught me to not trust that. Pollywog base, as the Turds called it, lay at the open end of a long valley, our dig site opposite it. On the ground, everything looked natural. Only from space could the entire picture be seen. The valley wasn’t natural.

  I’d read the report three whole times before it registered in my head. What can I say, I’m a ground-pounder, not a pilot. The “valley” was actually a crash site. Sometime in the past, a very large ship augured into the ground here, and the natives were the survivors of that crash. That was my theory anyway, and one the Turds discounted.

  Turds are what we called the Confed Science Division. Guarding them constituted more than half of all our duties. Duties which were usually of a questionable nature, like this one.

  “One…” Three’s voice echoed through my head.

  “Sitrep Three,” I demanded. This was not how we operated, even out on the fringe.

  “The Turds, One, they won’t leave. Cooper refuses to leave to site,” Three started to explain.

  “Goddammit Three! You don’t take orders from them, you take them from me! A shit ton of very angry natives are about to descend on that site and kill everyone in it!” I yelled.

  “Casey, I’m just telling you what he told me. I’ve got the automated turrets set up at the entrance already,” Three responded. I could hear panic in his voice.

  “Three, wait one. Five? Is it possible to strafe the dig site? I need one good pass to clear an exfiltration route for Three,” I asked of him.

  “Roger,” Five responded.

  It was against protocol to put Navy assets in danger like this, but my team was my team, and they came first.

  “This wasn’t part of our orders,” the navy pilot yelled at Five as he struggled with the shuttle’s controls. Atmospheric pressure coupled with low gravity and a combat drop didn’t make for easy handling.

  Operative Five, known as Frankenburger by his teammates, gripped the back of the pilot’s seat so he could lean over. “If we don’t slow those hostiles down, my team won’t make the shuttle.” Reaching into his hip holster, Five drew out his pistol. Bringing it up to the pilot’s head he replied, “and if they die...you die. Understand?”

  Lieutenant Daniel Martone shivered as the ice-cold pistol touched his ear. Down deep, he cursed himself for volunteering when the entire flight line had said no. It would be the last time he did that ever again! “Understood. Hold on, this is going to be a bit rough,” Martone exclaimed as the shuttle slid sideways toward the ground.

  There are two kinds of navy shuttles: assault and regular. Martone was flying one of the regular ones because the Turds had sworn the Polywogs were pacifists and cowards. Neither one of those statements was true. Not even in the least, as both Martone and Five was about to discover.

  Luggage is Life

  You have to love space to work in it.

  I was looking out the broad windows of Space Dock five at just a tiny portion of the Confederation Navy, and wondering what the future might hold for me. When I’d enlisted oh so many years ago, I’d never thought my life would be like this. Grunt work in special ops didn’t prepare me for this. My perseverance did.

  Glancing to one side, I made sure my bags were with me. I could cope if one or two of the massive carry-ons got misplaced, but losing my knives? That would be a disaster!

  I rubbed my hands together. Another tour and another ship, Confed 002. The Washington. Her being one of the oldest battleships in the fleet didn’t make one bit of difference to me. It was just another tour, an important one, but just another ship. A big one, though.

  Checking my ship’s chrono on my left arm, I could see both station time and departure. If I paced it right, I could board ship exactly when I was supposed to be there. That meant I could mosey a bit and enjoy what sights were to be had on the station. Space Dock Five was a hell of an upgrade from some of the shitholes I’d been in during my previous life. I shook my head to chase those thoughts away. That bit was long gone.

  For me, the Washington was a new post. I’d never shipped with them before. Every four to six months I was reassigned to another ship. My primary job these days was to see to the training of the crew, making the cook staff that much more. Anyone can, by rote, read a recipe or allow the Robo-chef to do it for you. It took a master chef to make it properly. I tried to seek them out and train them properly.

  I have a reputation in the fleet for being a harsh taskmaster. As reps go, it wasn’t that bad, but when I showed up to a ship without warning...they tended to freak out a bit sometimes. This was going to be one of those times if the expressions on the faces of the watchman ahead said anything to me.

  The New Worlds Confederacy encompassed six galaxies to date. That meant there were more than ten thousand ships to choose from in the Navy. Not that I have any choice where I was to be sent. BuShips and Admiral Hawthorne took care of that for everyone. I had a small amount of sway to not be assigned minelayer or tanker duty after having to do that for several years consecutively, but that glitch was on them, not me. There was a small notation in my file about that situation. Being trapped in one place did temper my knife skills and give my sauces just that much more punch, though. It always brought a smile to my face when I remembered the frown on the captain’s face. For as much grief as he gave me about the crew’s food, he would miss having me around. Good chefs were hard to find in the navy. Especially pretty ones like me.

  I was surrounded by crewmen trying to board the ship around me. My things stuck out. It was an unusual swabbie who had six very large floating cases with them. Floating cases that were taller than I was.

  “Orders,” the watchman asked, his eyes not looking at me as he thrust the reader toward me.

  Waving my hand over the reader, I smiled as it made a loud beep. I was a special. Not regular crew or an officer. While a part of the crew in general, my direct orders came from Central Command, Admiral Hawthorne’s office, not the captain. Although I was to follow his orders to the letter in most cases. As Chef of the Fleet I was outside his command, technically.

  The watchman looked down at the strange beep and then into my eyes. “Chef?”

  I snapped to attention and said, “Master Chief Chef Casey Lewis reporting as ordered.”

  At my display the induction line slowed to a stop, with both watchmen now eyeing me. The man in front of me scanned my uniform with his eyes quickly noting the very few sewn-in decorations as his eyes crossed my chest. I had to stifle a giggle at that. My former career didn’t give way to tight-fitting uniforms, or snarky cooks for that matter.

  “Open them up,” the watchman ordered, motioning to my floating cases.

  Keeping my hands where they could see them, I motioned with my chin. “Read the bottom part of my orders. The cases stay unmolested by order of BuShips.”

  Not to be swayed, the man motioned again. “Open them up.”

  I shook my head. “Not happening. Orders are orders, and those are mine.”

  Still holding the reader, the man slid his hand downward toward his holstered weapon. I almost did the same until my brain informed my muscles it wasn’t there anymore. Chefs didn’t carry, normally. “Shooting me would be a bad thing, officer.”

  The man’s hand trembled as it registered he was caught.
Turning his head back over his shoulder he called for the officer instead. “Sir?”

  A tall thin man dressed in Confed Blue stepped away from the ship’s bulkhead. Just from the way he walked I could tell he had trained at one of the system’s prissy private military academies. The Navy went south the moment those in charge authorized that can of worms! Tut-tut, breeding, and all that. My eyes rolled all by themselves every single time I encountered one of them. Rich boys playing soldier is what they were. Wilted flowers when it came to any sort of fight. It was all I could do to not shake my head in sorrow.

  “Problem?” The officer asked even as he looked me up and down. Two pips over a circle of stars made him a lieutenant.

  “Orders sir, she’s uh…” the watchman stuttered, fumbling for his tablet.

  “Spit it out, what is it!” the lieutenant spat out.

  Handing the tablet over, the star sailor pointed out the orders, “BuShips sir.”

  “Lewis? That’s you?” he asked me.

  Snapping to attention I saluted. “Sir. My orders come from Admiral Hawthorne himself.”

  “Sir, the cases…” the watchman traced his finger down to the end.

  “Give me that,” the lieutenant snatched the pad away. Squinting at the orders, he snapped back to me. “Captain’s orders. Open the cases.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry sir, but I cannot. Admiral’s orders.”

  My orders caused friction on every ship I encountered. Being outside the direct chain of command wasn’t something most naval graduates were prepared to deal with. But there were reasons for the commands.