A few days later, I was working the lunch service, dolling out insipid red sauce over piles of overcooked pasta. I'd been assigned to a star destroyer in the 9th fleet with a tough-sounding name I couldn't recall, like the “Emperor's Fierce Wang” (which probably wasn't it), and that had lost much of its crew in the battle that I also had barely survived. In fact, much of the fleet had been reassigned after the debacle that lost the Empire's now non-existent and certainly now no longer unbeatable superweapon.
Obviously, I was in no condition to work after seeing half my former kitchen-mates die in various manners involving fire, toxic fumes and flying metal shrapnel. The droid-medic, however, thought otherwise and cleared me for duty shortly after the three-person escape pod I had squeezed into with five other people had been picked up. Scanning over the blistering skin on my arms and my scalded face and chest, the mechanical doctor stated, with what I guessed was its version of digital boredom, that I had only mild, topical damage that would not interfere with my duties, and printed out a prescription for some nasty smelling skin cream. On the plus side, the cream worked remarkably well, and all I had left of the burn was some intense redness all over my face and arms. On the negative side, the cream did nothing to hold back the visions of Joe in flames screaming and writhing in pain every time someone turned on the plasma grill.
“Hey! A little service here!”
Oh, right: work. I'd been having a hard time keeping track of things if I didn't keep myself moving. I mouthed something like an apology and doled out the crewman's carb and sauce, which was enough to keep him moving along. Working the front end wasn't my favorite, but, after breaking out into cold, paralyzing sweats every time I turned on the plasma grill, the Head Chef buzzed more credits off my pay and posted me here. Generally, serving wasn't that bad, but every so often you got some bozo yahoo like,
“Lookee here! Looks like someone got shore leave and got sun! Crazy sunburn you got there!” said some bozo yahoo, who naturally was followed by a posse of bozo yahoos who dutifully laughed too hard at the hilaaaarious joke. Judging by their sleek black unitards, these particular assholes were fighter pilots, the crème de la crème of the fleet – or, at least, that's what they thought and how they behaved towards any of the non-commissioned crew. “Shiiiit! And we're in the middle of a war. Who's dick did you suck to get your chance to hit the sands of Tattooine?”
Ordinarily – that is, before my former kitchen was destroyed – I didn't have to deal with these guys, since I only made the regular blah food for us lowly support staff, while they ate at their crewmen's mess; but, with the crewmen's mess still drifting in the void of space, among many other of the ship's systems, it meant I had to put up with their arrogance and self-importance. It was best to ignore these guys and hope they passed quickly.
“Whassa matter, Suntan-Man? Tongue too tired from all that rimming to talk?” taunted the pilot again, as his friends guffawed. “Oh, man! Look at that! He's getting even redder than before! Seriously, buddy, that's one amazing tan you got. You gotta tell me your secret to getting shore leave!”
It's alright. It's alright. I'd been given a hard time by these guys before. I could let it pass. I stiffly served out portions of their lunch, thanking the steadiness and semblance of dignity that my mechanical muscle memory gave me, as they continued their inane comments and I clenched my jaw until my temples hurt. When they were gone, I took some deep breaths and calmed myself by imagining all the clever replies that I could have threw back at them, like: “Why? Are the dicks you're sucking not working?” or (and this would have definitely gotten me a serious beating) “If you want shore leave, you could try doing your job, like not get your ass kicked by the Rebels.”
A minuscule part of me reminded me that these pilots risked their lives every time they went out there, and that, really, they were keeping us alive and defending us – but then I remembered that was the bullshit the propaganda droid spouted at us every morning during our Eff'n Pee drills, that is, our Faith and Pep drills. After five years of hearing it almost every morning, I tried to tune out the saccharine sweet, over-the-top earnest mechanical voice, but it was inevitable that their mind-fuck message would worm itself into my brain. Hell, I could probably lead those ridiculously choreographed drills now, to the point of replicating the rhythmic salutes, chest clasping, and patriotic singing. What nonsense. Pride for the Empire, my ass. Goddamn it. I only work here. Fuck those self-entitled pricks.
I let out a deep sigh, surprising myself by how tight my chest had been once the air had been let out. The reality was that I was lucky to have this job. The galactic economy was pretty rough these days, and it wasn't easy getting something that had any security at all, not to mention even the basic benefits. Sure the salary wasn't great, but, working for the Empire, you were fed three meals a day, had clean quarters to leave in, and the benefits, at least, were decent (medical and dental is included, plus one week guaranteed vacation and one free chiro and massage appointment). So long as you're human and willing to shill for the Empire doing crappy jobs, you could at least be set for a little while until the war blew over. At least, that's what I had told myself when I applied for the job.
Seeing the sauce tray was getting low, I started ladling more into it, but then had to stop when the slopping red sauce started to give me visions of the pools of blood, guts and miscellaneous appendages that had been strewn among the dead and dying crew along the way to the escape pods. The ones that were still moaning low and pleading for help were the worst: if they'd been dead, their stunned, doll-like eyes just would have jus sat there – instead of begging to be saved as you ran by, unable to do anything else except stumble along and feel their damning stares on your back.
Shit, I wasn't doing well at all. Fortunately, judging by how full the mess was, the lunch rush was pretty much over, so all I had to do was coast the rest of my shift. I took out my cleaning cloth and started to meticulously wipe down the counter to make myself look busy. It was then when the shit really hit the fan.
I had gotten into a real nice groove of cleaning at that point (you know that nice zone-out feeling when you're doing your thing and you could be doing it for hours and you wouldn't even know?) and was finally getting somewhere with those grease burns, so I was none too impressed when I was interrupted, by yet another black-clad pilot asking for something that didn't register.
Why did the guy have to come to my station? Couldn't he see I was busy? I reluctantly broke my cleaning focus to look at the guy, and, man, was he in a weird get-up. Either he decided to take part of his starfighter with him or he was in some kind of experimental suit, but he was half covered in these funky mechanical attachments that whizzed and banged whenever he walked. Putting down my scouring brush, I asked him, “What did you say, bud? You're going to have to speak up.”
“Can I have a plate of the pasta with the white sauce?” the guy said again through some kind of respirator; no wonder I couldn't hear what he was saying.
Fine. Whatever. It was only one person anyhow. I picked up my tongs from the trays, but then I noticed that the guy didn't even have a plate or tray for me to put his noodles on. Either he was some kind of newbie or an idiot. Looking at his get-up again, it was possible that he was one of the crippled (sorry, handicapped) workers management took on as part of their affirmative action policies that they thought made their public image look good. I couldn't settle on which one he was, so I decided to play it safe and assume he was a new guy – you never knew how sensitive those cripples were with whatever deficiency that got them a free pass into the Service.
So, I said, with what I thought was some pretty good clearness and patience, “You gotta get a plate and tray from the beginning of the line,” before getting back to my cleaning.
“Pardon?” the guy replied, to my annoyance.
What wasn't clear about what I said? I replied again, trying to keep my cool with this cripple-pilot who apparently was also deaf in addition to being retarded, ?
??A tray. A plate. You gotta get a tray and plate. And, by the way, there's only red sauce, no white, so you'll have that or nothing.”
I only got a stunned-animal look in response to that one. This was starting to get annoying. “Look, you need a plate and tray if you want me to serve you any food. Go get them from over there,” I said pointing in the direction of the sign very prominently labeled with 'Line Begins Here.' There. That should do it. The Empire must be really desperate these days if they're taking on half-wits like this guy.
“Get me a plate of pasta,” the mechano black-clad cripple-retard said, this time with tinges of impatience and anger, which pissed me off even more. Honestly, WTF?
“I aint getting you no pasta. Go get a plate,” I growled.
“You are going to get me a plate of pasta now.”
“...What? No, I'm not. Go get your own damned plate!”
“You WILL get me a plate of pasta!”
“I'll get you nothing!”
“Give me my pasta!”
“Go get a plate!”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yeah! Some fucking idiot who can't get their own fucking plate!”
“Get me my pasta before you regret it!”
“Get a fucking plate!”
So, this was starting to get out of hand, especially as I was pretty close to hurling some choice speculations about the guy's mother and whatever feral beast she molested to beget him, but I was stopped by an annoying voice from not too long ago that interjected,
“Hey, Suntan-Man, give me another serving here. I'm starving,” the asshole pilot from before piped in, tapping his plate on the counter expectantly. The standard was that the crew was allowed one serving, and if they wanted more, they'd have to pay out of their own pocket; but this clever guy decided come in through the exit station to bypass having to pay. If there was one thing I had no patience for, it was people who couldn't queue and wait their turn. This was it. I couldn't take two fucking idiot pilots at once.
“No! Get the fuck out of here. Go to the head of line! You got your serving already!” I yelled at the new pilot, painfully clenching my fists around the tongs.
“Aw, man. Just a tiny bit of pasta, buddy....” the guy whined, and I should have noticed his next comment when he saw the funny-suited pilot I'd been wrangling with: “Oh, shit...”
“Fuck off! I've had enough of this! You want pasta? You want fucking pasta?! Fine!” I cried out; and, completely flipping out losing hold of my shit, I threw my tongs onto the floor... and proceeded to throw handfuls of noodles in the pilots' faces.
What happened after was never spoken of again in the official records, and carefully deleted from the surveillance cameras. You have to understand that there were two things going on: first, we'd just lost a major battle, and there was a whole lot of pent of anger and frustration that had been building, not to mention borderline nuts like me who didn't take much to get unhinged; second, there was a long and venerable history of food fights in the Empire's Service.
Not surprisingly, food fights were officially prohibited in Section 5 Clause 2a of our contracts entitled, 'Relations of Crew and Comestibles', where it stated that “The above-signed Crewmember would restrict their relations to edible products to being consumed by the Crewmember, and categorical not be used as an item of trade or an item of aggression or both.” There had been clever ways around that clause, so they later added, “In cases where the Crewmember is feeding another Crewmember in the instance of physical handicap or perceived physical handicap, the edible item is never to be made airborne, and must always be in contact with the feeding implement until it has reached the feeding orifice of the Crewmember being fed.”
Food fights, however, were a whole lot of fun, and so, at certain times when morale was low, they might be tolerated, though with some pretty strict unspoken rules. Foremost among the rules was that whoever started it would get pretty severely punished – which was pretty effective in keeping them from starting. Once the food fight started though, everyone else had immunity, under the dubious argument that the fight had been induced by a collective madness that was impossible to resist. The last food fight of note was on the mess of the star cruiser Empire's Fist, where it was said that the fight lasted so long and involved so many people that almost all the food on the ship had been trampled on or smooshed onto the wall, and the crew almost died from dehydration and starvation before they could reach the closest stardock to resupply.
Our food fight wasn't as dramatic, but the Great Unspoken Food Fight on the Emperor's Fierce Wang started shortly after my noodle flinging, with someone's delighted cry, “Food fight!” Whereupon a pandemonium of flying food erupted into the messhall air, forming a frenzied reddish-brown cloud above the heads of all the crewmen, who were laughing and cursing with abandon.
Being at the source of the food, I joined in the craziness, throwing the rest of the noodles, the sauce, the crappy meringue pies that were only good for throwing anyway, the flaccid salad no one ate but was always there to make it seem we served a full meal, and bottles and bottles salty salad dressing that actually seemed to add a nicely aesthetic counterpoint to all the red sauce flying around. By the end of it, anything remotely edible had went airborne and had coated everyone and everything with a thick crust of luke-warm gunk. By the time everything toned down, I felt like I was wearing a full ten pounds of extra mass.
Throughout it all, I laughed and laughed and laughed, until I cried and bawled, collapsing into a heap against the serving counter, dazed, feeling at turns inexplicably guilty, then happy, then depressed. I was eventually gently pulled up from the slippery floor by a few troopers who escorted me to the brig.
“You must be crazy,” one of the troopers said, not unkindly. “I can't believe you did it, but you're going to be a legend.”
“A dead legend,” the other trooper added mirthlessly. “Hope it was worth it.”
“Come on, let him enjoy it for now,” the first trooper chided.
Wait, what? They can't possibly execute me for a food fight. A few weeks in solitary and probably a few months without pay, but death was pretty unlikely. I told the troopers as much. They looked at each other with a bemusement that said, “This guy can't be that stupid,” and one of the troopers replied to me,
“You started a food fight right in the face Dorth Vadah. Lord Vadah. Second only to the Emperor. You threw noodles in Dorth Vadah's face.”
Shit.