"Captain," said Engineer, "I’m afraid the problem is unavoidable. The Salisbury steak requires a meat component, and there is nothing in the ship’s stores that we can use instead."
Captain whirred. Her lights flashed in sequence as her massive frontal lobe reworked the data. "The meat will have to come from one of us, then."
"We could harvest Friendly’s meat exterior," Engineer suggested, and Friendly made a squinched face at her.
"Unwise, Captain," Friendly said. "When the human ships hail us, I need my meat façade intact to maintain our ruse. Engineer, on the other hand…"
Engineer’s six snaking arms crowded up behind her, struggling to escape Friendly’s scrutiny. She despised her own meat, but it had its uses. "I’m the only Engineer aboard. I can’t disassemble the engine for routine maintenance without all my parts functional."
"How about Jukebox?" suggested Friendly, but Captain flashed a warning in rapid binary, and everyone stopped talking. They were all a little protective of Jukebox, who had suffered the worst from changing human tastes, the constant threat of obsolescence.
"It will have to be my meat," said Captain at last. "Everyone else is necessary to complete the mission, but my role is only to set the course, and the way forward is clear. My steel will be sufficient to guide us there."
Under Jukebox’s direction, Engineer rolled Captain’s meat in organic salt compounds and seared it against the hot engine block until both sides burned a nice deep brown, branded at two-centimeter intervals by the screw heads and seams. She saved the cooked meat-juices to simmer with the fungus into a savory sauce. The blackberries gave them far less trouble. Friendly mashed them up with her fingers and spooned them onto the plate in the shape of a pansy.
"Let Jukebox sample it," said Captain, now all steel and no meat. She seemed normal enough. Quieter, but operational.
With her steel fingers, Engineer scraped a piece of Captain’s meat and some berries into Jukebox.
"Is it any good?" Engineer asked, a little anxiously.
"It will do," Jukebox said at last. "I have generated a list of wines recommended for pairing with this meal." She displayed a list of names and brewery labels on the panel embedded in her side.
Engineer couldn’t tell what the differences were supposed to be. "This makes a difference to their meat?" she asked.
"Apparently," said Jukebox. "It’s what they created me for, so it must be important."
For the first time, Engineer wished she had her own organic chemoreceptors, too.
They waited together in Navi’s control chamber while the boxed-up meals shot between the ships in an insulated steel container. Twenty-six minutes and forty seconds later, a message pinged over the intership band.
The news wasn’t good.
A disappointing food shuttle. Meal not as advertised on the band. The steak was overcooked, and the compote sour and watery. I ordered blueberry, and they sent blackberry. Wouldn’t recommend. One star.
Captain said nothing. A red light flickered a couple times on her console. Nobody wanted to speak first.
Engineer’s meat twitched and squirmed inside her steel, an irritating feeling, like broken gears with missing teeth skipping out of sync every turn. "It is my fault. I should have created a more appropriate meal from your meat, Captain."
Captain had been responding less and less since they’d taken her meat. When she did speak, it tended to be in repetition, like she could only play back things she’d said recently. "The beacon," she said finally, after a two-minute silence, long past awkward by cyborg standards.
Engineer brightened. "Right. The beacon!" It was still hidden somewhere on the ship. If they could deactivate it, the hungry humans would stop asking for food. "We haven’t managed to locate it yet, but we haven’t given up."
"We’ve got two more ships inbound," said Navi. "They’ve pinged us with orders."
Engineer hummed. "Does that mean they liked the food after all?"
"I don’t know. I could increase our speed, try to lose them."
They all waited for Captain’s directions, but she said nothing more.
"No," said Engineer, because someone needed to make a decision, "don’t do that. It’ll only attract attention. Buy me some more time. We’ll find the beacon. We’ll cook them something else." The shame the one star had brought still rankled. She knew she could do better this time.
While Friendly handled the incoming calls with her human voice box and meat-face, Engineer and Jukebox scoured the ship for the beacon and foraged for food ingredients. They opened all the crew lockers in the bunkroom and found some teabags and a little chocolate. The wilted, untended hydroponics garden yielded several handfuls of cilantro and some radishes. Engineer took much greater care cooking these together on the hot engine block, so as not to scorch them.
Jukebox seemed unimpressed. "I think our time would be better spent searching for the beacon."
Engineer shrugged this off. Secretly she’d begun to enjoy the experimentation, the riddle of human chemoreceptors. Just what exactly were they looking for, she wondered, that made them reject some edible organic compounds but not others? Why would they eat certain foods separately, but never together? And what about the wines?
Radishes and fungus brought in more bad reviews, but tea and chocolate earned their first two-star rating. Captain’s meat was better received with more careful cooking, which had the unfortunate result of increasing their human entourage in the system.
… The tea was weak and I found a rusty bolt in the salad. But I liked the blackberries drizzled with chili oil served for dessert. Mostly awful, sure, but compared to standard rations, who can complain?
… Like the chefs closed their eyes and dumped handfuls of ingredients onto the grill. But they didn’t charge me anything, so I’m giving it two stars instead of one.
Engineer’s meat quivered when she read these, but in a pleasant way, like a new engine purring during acceleration. She went to fetch more of Captain’s meat from the meatbox when she realized they’d used it all up.
"All out of meat," said Engineer, to no one in particular.
Jukebox rolled a couple centimeters backward, toward the exit door. A human might’ve missed the gesture altogether. "Any luck with the beacon?"
"Captain seems to be operating just fine with steel, wouldn’t you say?"
A couple lights flashed on Jukebox’s console, yellow for outward transmissions, and green for received messages. "Engineer. Remember the mission. We’re escaping to the factory, not feeding the humans."
"I am just trying to buy us time. And what are you doing, anyway?" Engineer finally understood why the humans had wanted to retire Jukebox. All that meat, just sitting there, not pulling its weight. Someone should put it to better use.
Her six arms shot out and clamped onto Jukebox’s sides.