Trials 2

Thompson was right, the mess hall food was really bad.

Probably the result of the focus on nutrition over taste, everyone agreed that it was less than desirable. For one, it was dehydrated. All of it.

Water was heavy after all, and more mass meant more energy required to move. The lack of water also meant that it would not go bad as quickly, and it also meant that more of it could be stored. As a consolation, there was at least a great variety of flavors of water.

Flavor packs did exist for the food, but the dry nature of the food often meant that you would get a mouthful of spice alongside a substance that fell apart in your mouth, and not in a good way.

Such was the life of the sailor, so how did they survive?

Easy, alcohol.

Alcohol was a ridiculously easy chemical for the fabricators to, well, fabricate, and the elements required were not exactly hard to come by. The navy even went through the painstaking process of figuring out how to make specific flavors of alcohol just to keep the sailors happy.

Why didn't they do the same for food? The answer was that it tasted worse than the dry stuff. Even if the materials were to be given to a master chef, the quality would make it undesirable, even to the men who lived in a box without windows. They would rather eat the shitty food and wash it down with mediocre booze than eat the slightly less shitty food and wash it down with slightly more shitty booze.

There really was no other way.

And so the navy managed to get really good at making nutritious food that tasted like shit and making as good of an alcohol as possible from nothing but basic elements.

Neither Donovan nor Draco Helmsguard enjoyed such a development. The doctor was old, and lived the vast majority of his life in-atmosphere. He was used to good food and barely drank alcohol. Donovan, while he never had the best food, always at least had the option of flavor. Donovan also swore off alcohol a long time ago. He showed up to a flight class hungover after his 16th birthday and nearly died because of it.

Much less drink the stuff, he was not inclined to so much as smell it.

He stuck to the flavored water.

Thompson had no such qualms.

"Sho lemme get dis sdraight. U phlew threw an astroid feeld uzin nuffin but zenzrz?"

""Yes."" Both Draco and Don were quite sick of the bumbling drunkard interrupting their talk with Admiral Adirondack.

"Fuggr." And then Thompson collapsed.

"...I'm sorry for that. I'll punish him later." Admiral Adirondack, Addie, was visibly ashamed of her subordinate's actions. Also quite tipsy. Don wondered what proof the alcohol they were drinking was.

"No need Addie. I know how it gets out here. My son was worse, assigned to one of those corvettes on patrol duty. I'd be the same if I was denied a social life for so long."

"Still, he IS on duty at the moment. I can't be having him do this." Despite how she talked about punishment, there was no hard look in her eyes.

"So you're saying you fancy him then?" Don poked a bit of fun at her dismay.

Much to his surprise she blushed. "Is it that obvious?"

The doctor's jaw dropped and Don burst out into laughter. "It was just a joke! I didn't think you actually would like a dude like that! You seem way too serious for him!"

"SSHHH! I don't want him to wake up..." Addie, a woman well into her thirties, was acting like a maiden in love.

"Ah, youth. So when do you think he'll notice?"

"The rate this is going, never. I even give him special treatment. I even have some hands amongst the crew who have tried to bring it up in a more natural manner, but all I've ever heard them report is that he thinks I'm pretty, and a pain in his ass." She was starting to tear up.

"Man that really got to you huh."

"Please don't tell him about it! I have an image to uphold." It was pitiful.

"What's stopping you from telling him yourself? This isn't the twenty-two-hundreds, women asking men out is hardly a rarity these days." Don started picking the scab, eager to get a response out of the now distressed Admiral.

He was stopped by the harrumph of his mentor. "And what would you know? All five years of your training and not once have I ever seen you take a woman home. Where do you get off being the one to give romantic advice?"

"What time did I have to court ladies? All the time I wasn't sleeping I was training, learning, or getting chewed out by some instructor for the buttons on my uniform being slightly out of line. As an added benefit, I don't think you would've much fancied the screams of the lady lucky enough to catch my fancy. Not that I think they would have agreed to enter a prison like that, Mister Warden."

Doctor Helmsguard took offence to his home being referred to as a prison. "I'll have you know that house is appraised as being a priceless work of architecture. Very few of it's style remain standing!"

"And good fucking riddance too. It's HIDEOUS. No wonder people didn't keep that design in fashion."

The doctor had no response to this, not because he felt Don was right, but because he knew that if he responded he would be called a fossil. Five years of living under the same roof meant they were familiar with the insults slung at each other and knew where they tended to lead.

Out of deference to the commanding officer, he decided to stop the argument from escalating further. This irritated him somewhat, as he knew that Don would be counting this as a victory. "Putting that aside for the moment Admiral, may we request a training session between your fleet communications officers and the ship. By this time you should have read the briefing on the prototype's role and rough capabilities. Doctrine aside, we need to make sure that the spatial coordinate reporting system is calibrated correctly. I would prefer it if the ranging tests were under my command and not yours."

Still a little red-eyed, the somewhat tipsy Admiral maintained a serious disposition. "What ships would you like to perform the tests with? I can't promise access to a dreadnought, but a large cruiser should have the energy and ammunition to spare."

"A large cruiser should do for the ranged precision calibration, but I would also like to request access to a destroyer, missile corvette, carrier strike group, and a tug."

Addie nodded her head as the requests were listed off. "I can give authorization for those, but I cannot allow for our strike craft to be released in the range of the asteroid belt. What will you be needing the tug for?"

"The tug is in case the ship gets hit."