Chapter 4: Routine Verification

I woke in a bunk barely wider than my shoulders to the sound of somebody banging a tray.

"Up," Dax called through the door. "Breakfast. The crew wants to look at you."

"Which crew?"

"All of them."

The mess hall of the Meridian held about forty people, and every one of them stopped chewing when I walked in.

Nobody said hello.

I took a tray and sat at the end of a long table by myself.

A huge man with a gunnery chief's stripes was sitting three seats down.

He looked at me for a long time.

"Don't unpack," he said.

"I've got one bag."

"Then you'll find it easy to carry out."

A pilot with a shaved head snorted into his coffee.

"Eleven of them," the pilot said. "We kept a list. Eleven high scores, and every one of them went back to the Station in a medical pod."

"I heard," I said. "Dax told me."

"Did he tell you why?"

"He said to ask the Commander."

The two of them exchanged a look.

"Nobody asks the Commander," the gunnery chief said.

I picked up my spoon.

"I'm not asking you to like me," I said. "I'm asking you to pass the salt."

The pilot looked at the salt, then at me.

Then, slowly, he slid it down the table.

"She's got a mouth," he said.

"She's got a score of zero," the gunnery chief said. "That's what's funny about it."

"Funnier than a ninety," said a woman at the next table, to nobody. "The ninety-twos kept crying."

Dax dropped into the seat across from me and stole a roll off my tray.

"Don't mind them," he said. "They like you. This is how they say it."

"It's a terrible way to say it."

"It's a Fleet way. Wait until they stop talking to you, that's when you're in trouble."

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