Growl, growl, growl.
Zhao Wan'er heard the sound from beside her; she, Su Lan, Chu Xuan, and the others all turned in unison to look at Xue Xiaoxiao's belly.
Xue Xiaoxiao clutched her little stomach and pouted. "I've barely eaten in days. If Senior Su Lan hadn't given me a nutrient ration she'd been saving, I'd have starved to death by now."
"You know — we've been so busy talking about the ship and the battle, and now that it's quiet I really am hungry. Wait here a moment." Zhao Wan'er headed for the hangar door.
"Excuse me, coming through." She squeezed her way to the doorway, and there the scent from outside hit her full in the face, waking every hungry worm in her belly. Back before she'd left Zhao Chen's ship she'd grabbed some ingredients to take along, but she'd long since eaten through them. After food made from natural ingredients, going back to synthetic fare really was the difference between heaven and earth. These past few months she'd lost a good 10 pounds.
Ignoring the startled looks around her, Zhao Wan'er walked straight out the hangar door — and the beast-folk crewwoman guarding them didn't so much as stir. The sight left a good many onlookers stunned.
"Hey! Why does she get to leave?" a Heaven's Glory student blurted, pointing at her retreating figure.
The Northstar students in the know gave the Heaven's Glory lot a look reserved for idiots.
"She's our Commander's little sister. What do you think?" the beast-folk crewwoman said flatly.
Little sister?
The teachers and students who hadn't known went blank. So that was the connection.
Under their watching eyes, the girl walked into that heaven of a canteen. Familiar with the place, Zhao Wan'er stepped up to the counter and, practiced, ordered four or five people's worth of food in one go, then swiped her ID. She held a listed post in Zhao Chen's Owl Dragon Fleet, after all — nominally the captain of a T2 Queen Bee-class Heavy Carrier — and with the month almost out, her meal allowance would only go to waste unused.
"Wan'er."
A call came from behind, and she looked over — to the table where Zhao Chen and Charlotte sat. Zhao Chen was waving her over. The food would take a while anyway, so she went and sat down beside him, her attention drawn at once to the all-fish feast in front of Charlotte.
She leaned to Zhao Chen's ear and murmured, "Is Charlotte really of the White Tiger Clan? You sure she isn't a white cat or something?"
"I've been wondering that myself," Zhao Chen said with a nod, dead serious.
"Charlotte… is of pure… White Tiger… blood!" Charlotte declared her bloodline's purity around a fish bone she hadn't finished sucking clean.
Zhao Chen and Zhao Wan'er both nodded — of course we believe you — then caught each other's eye, a shared, unspoken understanding passing between them.
"You going to keep sitting in the hangar?" Zhao Chen asked her. Back on the bridge he'd already messaged her that she was free to leave — the restriction didn't apply to her. But she'd said she'd rather stay.
"Ehh… for now it's probably better I stay with Senior Su Lan and the others. Running off to enjoy myself alone would hardly look right." She mumbled it.
Zhao Chen nodded. For the moment he let only Zhao Wan'er and Chu Xuan move freely about the ship — and even Chu Xuan's range was limited. As for the rest, they could sit tight in the hangar.
"The two academies' people in there — pretty hungry, are they?" Zhao Chen took a bite and looked at her with a smile.
Zhao Wan'er nodded. "A little longer won't kill them, though. I just want to bring some food to Senior Su Lan, and Xue Xiaoxiao… and the others…" As she spoke she glanced at her brother, a touch anxious he might refuse.
"They're your friends — bring it in, it's fine. Once you've eaten, I'll grant them movement clearance for the dormitory block beside the hangar as well. Take them to an empty dorm room and get them a bath." He pulled a face of open distaste. "Three days without washing — you all reek. Now hurry up and get away from me; you're ruining the taste of my meat." He made a show of pinching his nose.
"I stink?" Zhao Wan'er blinked, sniffed at herself — and promptly gagged.
Blegh…
It really did knock you flat. Three days unwashed would have been one thing; the trouble was that for those three days they'd lived cheek-by-jowl with the bugs, and some of the creatures' fluids had even splashed onto them. The smell was… beyond words.
"You actually think I stink… then I'll smoke you out!" Zhao Wan'er set her face, and the next second flung herself at Zhao Chen tooth and claw.
Bowl in hand, Zhao Chen leaned aside and, at the same time, used a foot to press a second bowl against her face. As for why the extra bowl — because Zhao Wan'er's face carried a certain smell too.
"Mmmph— mmmph—" She struggled; but against Zhao Chen's physique now, she was no match at all.
Before long the cook's call came from the counter — Zhao Wan'er had made a point of saying she'd fetch the food herself.
"Hmph! I'm off to take Senior Su Lan and the others their meal!" Utterly defeated, she stalked to the counter, seething, and found a cart already prepared, laid with the food she'd ordered. Thanking the cook, she pushed it out of the canteen and toward the hangar next door.
The two academies' people crowded at the hangar door could only gaze and imagine — plums to quench a thirst.[1] But the sight of Zhao Wan'er coming back, and pushing a food cart no less, took them by surprise.
"Move, move, move!" Her voice arrived before she did.
"Make way." The beast-folk crewwoman helped part the crowd at the door so the cart could roll smoothly inside.
As it passed through the crowd everyone caught the aroma rising off it — but with the lids on, none could tell what waited underneath. One thing was certain: it was something delicious.
"Sorry to keep you all waiting." Zhao Wan'er wheeled the cart up before the wide-eyed Xue Xiaoxiao, then pressed a button, and the cart unfolded itself into a makeshift dining table, a few seats ringing it. Under the gaze of the two academies' people, she lifted the covers.
In an instant the aroma flooded the whole hangar.
A platter of rice, and a platter of bread. In the middle, dish after dish of meat — fish soup, pork-rib soup, stewed beef brisket, red-braised lion's-head meatballs, pizza, braised chicken wings, potato cakes… counted out, a full 10 dishes. And one platter set aside just for fruit: a few slices of cut watermelon, a few clusters of grapes.
A ripple of swallowing went round the crowd.
This spread was no less than a fine restaurant's.