She was wondering how she could tactfully suggest that he eat a bit less without offending his ego when there came the sound of a throat clearing drew both of their attention. David, still languidly stretched, gave an irritated look to someone off-camera. "What is it?" He snapped, clearly irritated.
"Apologies, Captain," she heard one of the bridge crew say, but we've just received a priority message from the Head Chef Bot. It says there's some kind of altercation going on in the galley."
David sat up in alarm; he did not like the sound of that! He had visions of some sort of brawl going out of control, perhaps even damaging the kitchen equipment or, worse yet, the chef bots themselves! The thought of losing the gourmet feasts he'd been happily guzzling since liftoff and having to subsist on the bland, tasteless emergency rations sent a cold chill down his spine.
"I'm on my way," he said, kicking off from his seat and floating towards the door with practiced ease and uncustomary haste. "Contact Security Chief Sawyer and get him down there, ASAP!"
"Yes, Sir!" The unseen crewman said, and quick as a wink David was out the door.
Elizabeth stared at the empty Captain's chair, unsure what to do. There were still several things they were supposed to discuss before the check-in was officially complete: General ship performance, crew morale, any specific problems...
Crewman Scott floated into view, his belly gently bobbing up and down like a cork floating on water, though still concealed by his uniform, thankfully. He hadn't grown as much as David--or maybe he just hadn't been as negligent about the state of his uniform. It was hard to tell--she wasn't all that familiar with him.
"Apologies, Ma'am," he said with polite professionalism. "The Captain has been called away."
"I can see that," she said, amused in spite of herself, though a part of her was concerned with what the problem in the galley could be.
'Maybe a pair of crewman got into a scrap over the last piece of pie,' she thought, barely suppressing the urge to give an unladylike snort. The thought was absurd. Not because the men wouldn't fight over something like that (she was certain they would), but because even with the way the crew of the Dionysus had clearly been indulging their appetites, they couldn't possibly have eaten that much pie in only a month. She'd seen that galley inventory; thanks to hypercube technology (the ability to store items in a space physically larger on the inside than the outside, an amenity that had been deemed as too costly to supply for the Hippolyta), there was enough pie in the Dionysus's storage to feed a nation for a year, to say nothing of the other items tucked away into the overflowing larder. She felt a pang of envy: the supply manifest for her vessel hadn't been nearly so generous, in quantity OR in quality.
She shook the cobwebs out of her head; what was done was done. There was very little point worrying about it now, even if she might cheerfully kill for just one of those brownie bites David had engulfed like a python swallowing a particularly plump pig.
"Since the Captain has been called away," she said, choosing to match the crewman's professionalism even as she prepared for a slight breach in protocol, "perhaps you can finish this call on his behalf: Are there any problems on his behalf. Are there any problems to report?"
"No, ma'am," Scott said, giving a crisp salute. "All systems are performing well within tolerances; Chief Engineer Stockford knew what he was doing when he signed off on the plans for this beauty."
Elizabeth could hear Jeffries grinding her teeth behind her, and she resolved to have coffee with the woman later to provide a sympathetic ear, knowing full well who had really known what they were doing when designing the ships.
"The only things out of the ordinary," Scott went on, "are the way the laundry system consistently shrinks our clothing. I'm on my third uniform since last check in."
"Right," Elizabeth said, caught between amusement that her husband wasn't the only one in denial and disbelief that, well, he wasn't the only one in denial.
"Fabricating replacements so often is putting additional strain on the replicators," Scott continued, "but they're performing well within tolerances, and our stores of convertible matter haven't been appreciably affected."
The replicators worked somewhat similarly to old-fashioned 3D printers. By drawing on a supply of "junk matter" (Elizabeth couldn't remember its proper name and wasn't particularly fussed about it), the replicator could use complex chemical processes to convert it into various other forms to produce everyday items. It couldn't be used to create food or living beings, but the synthetic polymers comprising their uniforms were a cakewalk. Thankfully, replicators were one of the amenities that had been included on the women's ship, though the supply of "junk matter" was a fair bit smaller...like everything else on the Hippolyta.
"Other than that, everything is performing normally," Scott finished with a pleasant smile.
"I'm glad to hear that," Elizabeth said. "Please inform my husband I look forward to hearing from him at the next check in."
"Will do, Ma'am," Scott said with another salute. "Dionysus out."
The screen had barely gone dark before Jeffries exploded, a stream of what Elizabeth could only assume were truly vile curse words flowing out of her mouth. She couldn't be sure, since Jeffries was speaking Old Icelandic. She definitely caught the name "Stockford" though, and given the way the woman pounded her free palm with her fist, she could guess what the rant was about.
"Come on, Jeffries," she told the woman, trudging towards the door and clapping the other woman gently on the shoulder (though the increase in her own strength and the still too-high gravity turned it into a blow that would have staggered the engineer if she hadn't already been built like a valkyrie, and only become more so over the last few weeks). "I'll treat you to some coffee and you can get it out of your system."
As she walked, her thoughts turned back to the new belly her husband was sporting, and to the mental image she'd had of him claiming the new world with an enormous gut hanging off his torso.
She didn't understand why, but the idea sent a little tingle of excitement through her.
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