There is usually a nice quiet period, right after a captain declares liberty and before your crew has a chance to get into portside trouble, where an ambitious man can have something vaguely resembling a break—so, of course, that's when Brando tapped me in the Feed.
"Captain, I thought we agreed that you were gonna let me know the next time you ordered anything for the crew? We've got room for this stuff, but it would have been helpful to know that I needed to account for it when arranging our consumables."
…what?
I opened up a voice channel to Brando directly in the feed and tapped the security cams in the hold to see what the hell he was talking about. "I ordered what now?"
Brando, who was well aware of my habits, stepped up to a pallet of meal packs and waved his hands. Upon review, it didn't look like a huge order, about a quarter's worth of meals for one medium humanoid. I didn't see what the issue was until I realized the labels were all blue. I zoomed in on the label and realized they were specialized meals like the ones we got for Coro, but meant for someone with different enhancements.
"What in the…" I muttered and pulled up the most recent invoices on my tablet.
Sure enough, there was an order for 'SynFuel Augmentation Nutrition Packs (ANP1) - Assorted Flavors'
We usually bought ANP3 for Coro and, indeed, there was a pallet of that too from my usual supply order. ANP1 was on the lower end of augmentation support and had 15% more fat and calories than the standard meal packs plus some extra vitamins. Some people even ate them by preference. I had no issue with having them aboard the ship, but Sin had said she didn't need special meals. Now, Doc had flagged her file with a request to review that decision since she wasn't putting on weight the way she should be. I'd decided to let Sin have her liberty before starting that conversation. Had Doc decided to just order the food anyway? It wasn't that xe didn't have the authority to do so, but xe usually cleared their orders with me so I could relay it to Brando and avoid exactly this kind of situation.
Or, maybe Elaine had ordered it? Usually, she did the supply orders on my behalf for the crew and it wouldn't be outside the scope of her authority to upgrade Sin's meals if she thought it was necessary. If that was the case, though, then why hadn't these packs arrived with the rest of our supplies when we docked?
I checked the ID code attached to the order, expecting it to be Doc's or Elaine's. Those were the two people, aside from me, who had emergency authorization to make orders on behalf of the ship. I found my own code staring back at me, but when I checked the billing code I found the order had not been billed to the ship. What's more, I recognized the code as the one Evander used when he was pushing through an upgrade to the ship.
"It's from our investor, Brando," I reported. "I'll have a word with him about unilaterally adding onto our supply orders in the future."
"The new girl has interesting friends," Brando snorted. "I suppose he's behind the other delivery we're expecting today? I just heard from the ship fitters. We're on their schedule for later today. I don't know what's coming, but it's got the part codes for medical equipment."
I put my face down on my desk and counted in my head until I felt less like swearing.
"I'll let Doc know," I sighed. "Do me a favor, once you've got the supplies stowed, and see if you can figure out what upgrade we're getting now?"
"It looks like a med pod," Brando replied. "Not sure which kind. I'll get you the specifics in a bit."
A med pod?
I thought about it for a second and reluctantly admitted that we were probably overdue to get one. Doc couldn't always be on duty and it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that xe could get hurt one day. There was also supportive care that was just easier when you used a med pod.
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Mercifully, Doc agreed with me when I told xe to expect the fitters and why.
"I've been meaning to request one," xe admitted as I lingered in the hall outside the clinic. I'd decided that this was an 'in person' conversation. "I just hadn't settled on which model I was going to pitch to you. I must have taken too long and our investor got tired of waiting. The HaloMed Solar is a very nice unit; nicer than what I thought we could afford."
"He prefers to buy something once," I agreed.
I was feeling a little bit better about the meal pack fiasco, in light of this additional upgrade. Yes, I'd been worried about Evander's interest in Sin and, for a second there, I thought he'd escalated to directly interfering with the care of one of my crew members. The med pod's arrival told me that he'd had a couple of things in the queue for us and the meals were just part of it.
This was probably his way of telling me I was being cheap, again.
I watched a spider-like bot skitter across the corridor floor. It had a little refuse bag attached to its under carriage and was picking up larger pieces of detritus that had gotten into the corners where the deck met the bulkheads. I'd gotten used to seeing units like this go through a couple of times a day, working ahead of a different unit that swept and mopped the deck overnight. I thought back to what I'd learned about how Sin's auxiliaries worked.
The increased neural activity from sharing her brain with the auxiliaries probably had a noticeable caloric demand. It would explain why she was still so thin, even for a low-g native.
I'd never met Evander in person or even had a video call with him. This wasn't the first time that I'd had cause to wonder if that because of something other than his preference. It was entirely possible that he was augmented himself and just knew better than we did what feeding a bot driver would look like. This was our first port of call after our stop at Fjord and, going by the date on the invoice Brando had shown me, he'd placed that order as soon as we'd signed her.
I was probably overthinking things. We'd rescued Sin from dire straits. Evander was probably just making sure she transitioned into her new berth comfortably so we didn't end up with either another Jace situation or losing our new driver to a hospital stay.
Amanda pinged me and saved me from an anxious spiral.
She was on the deck when I found her, standing her watch, and doing some light research while we had a station connection to the Feed Network.
"Any word on Mimir?" I asked, since she only had one project right now that I knew of.
"Quit reading my screen," she grumbled, but nodded. "They made it onto the Orange Watch List with the guild. Skipped Yellow entirely. Captain Kavara is confirmed missing along with all hands. I got some unwanted attention from our Guild Rep when I filed Sin's hiring paperwork with our mail dump."
"Do I need to get involved?" I asked. Things tended to get serious when a captain had to enter the conversation. Conversations with an XO could be a little less formal.
"Nah," Amanda said, shaking her head. "I copped right away to finding her on Fjord in medical crisis and we fixed her service jacket right away. They don't care about that. They want information about Mimir. They want a statement from her, but it can be a written report. It sounds like they've found a few other refugees from Mimir and just want to see if she confirms their story."
I nodded. The Spacers Guild would be less concerned with us fudging a service jacket to spring an innocent person from lockup on a semi-corrupt station. That was below their sight line and technically there was no rule saying we couldn't, so long as Sin didn't complain after and we put things back the way we found them before she signed with us.
"The only problem was that one of the survivors reported that Sin had been killed during the mutiny," Amanda continued with a sad grimace. "I had to send them her recent biometrics to confirm she's who she says she is. According to our Rep, one of the witnesses said they thought one of the mutineers spaced her, but wasn't sure. It must have been someone else."
I shuddered. Explosive decompression was one of the worst ways to die in space. The only positive thing you could say was that at least they died fast. The Articles of Condemnation listed the airlock as the method of disposal for a condemned spacer, but even then it was common practice for Captains to administer a lethal injection ahead of time so they were only spacing a body.
Thinking of Sin's starved state when she came aboard, I could only imagine how she'd survived aboard that ship. The mutineers thought she was dead. She must have hidden somewhere until she saw her chance for escape and seized it. You could do that on a leviathan they were big enough that a single crew member's use of atmosphere and water was a rounding error. I wondered how many other refugees were still aboard Mimir, hiding and waiting for their chance to jump. I hoped they managed to find a safe exit.
"What does Sin say happened?" Amanda asked, turning to me, and I found I couldn't meet her eyes.
"I didn't ask," I admitted. "It seemed better if I didn't officially know."
She had an unimpressed look on her face when I went to check her expression, but then she sighed and shook her head.
"It's your call, Captain," she said. "It does sound like we need to officially know, now."
That, we did. I wasn't looking forward to hearing the story, though.