“I know. I did. But I didn’t like it,” he said.
She pointed to Wolfgang’s untouched tea. “You interested?”
“Yes, please,” Hiro said, smiling gratefully. He took a look at his tablet and frowned, then squinted. “This phrasing is painful; looking at these instructions I’m assuming they were written by the killer. They’re trying to kill me.”
Maria raised her eyebrows. “That’s a very subtle way to kill someone. And unless you’re being irritating and sarcastic, you just implicated yourself because you’re the only Japanese-speaking person on board, Hiro.”
“That’s why it’s such a clever trap for just me!” He took a sip, sighing. “Fine. We should get to work, though. If the killer wants us dead again, they might just starve us to death this time around and not have to lift a finger.”
“You two are pretty gruesome,” Joanna said. “Can you at least have some respect for the situation?”
Hiro grimaced. “Sorry, Doctor. Just trying to keep from spiraling into screaming, Oh my shit we are really going to die for real and drift in space forever and end all of clonekind and be responsible for killing thousands of people.” His voice remained even throughout this statement, and Maria stifled a laugh.
“Just trying to lighten the mood, Joanna,” Maria said.
“Do what you must to get through this, just maybe keep some of it out of my earshot,” Joanna said.
“I just thought of something,” Hiro said. “Does hooking up the new printer mean we have to reprogram it with all our likes and dislikes and allergies and stuff?”
“Nah, I have a backup of all that on a drive that’s not attached to IAN,” Maria said. “Our biggest challenge is working on an empty stomach.”
Joanna cast a sympathetic look toward Maria. “Good luck to you both. I’m off to run tox screens on the old food printer.” She secured a plastic top to her mug, set it carefully in a cupholder on the right side of her wheelchair, and headed out of the kitchen.
“So are we okay?” Hiro asked once they were alone.
“I barely know you, Hiro,” she said. “I don’t know what to take lightly and what to take seriously. Especially after yesterday. So be careful, and we’ll be okay.”
“I can’t believe this didn’t come with more languages,” Hiro said. “Only the drive with this info was in the box?”
“Yeah.” She got up to clean up the detritus and packing material from the box. When she picked up the cardboard, she saw it. Now that they could see the bottom of the box, the ragged cut was obvious.
“Hiro, look.”
“I’m guessing you and Wolfgang didn’t do that when unpacking?”
She held it up to the light. “No.” She turned the cardboard over and saw among the packing material one sheet of an instruction manual stuck on a piece of tape. It was torn, the rest of the manual gone.
“Why would someone mess with our food printer manual?” Maria asked, pulling the paper free.
“And paper instructions? Next are we going to be hooking a sled dog up to the ship to regain our momentum?”
Maria took the different hoses and wires and laid them out neatly on the floor, waiting for Hiro to give her instructions on what to do. He read on the tablet for a bit, his face growing more and more scrunched with annoyance.
“Why a sled dog?” she finally asked, the question gnawing at her. “Why not a horse pulling the ship?”
“It’s cold out there. Dogs are better equipped to pull a sled, or a spaceship, in the cold,” he said without looking up. “Now let me read.”
She got up to start putting the kitchen in order while he read. Most of their appliances were anchored to the floor or walls, so it was only small things like utensils and dirty plates and cups that she had to clean up.
She found the box of knives that she had brought from home and opened it. “Well, shit.”
She took the box to the table and showed it to him. “We were killed with the chef’s knife, right?”
“Yeah, we didn’t find any other weapons,” he said grimly. Three knives were missing from their spots in the box.
“We know where the chef’s knife is, but the boning knife and cleaver are gone.”
“The good news just keeps on coming,” he said, not smiling. “Something else to tell the captain, I suppose.”
Maria sent a ping to Katrina on her tablet.
“Report,” Katrina said.
“We found my box of knives, Captain, and it’s missing three. One of them is the chef’s knife, which we’ve already found in the cloning bay, but the other two are still missing.”
“Did you find any of them buried in a body?”
“Well, no, not yet—”
“Then get back to fixing the printer. Call me when you find clues, not the absence of clues.”
The tablet beeped as she severed the connection.
“Dang, she’s cranky,” Hiro said.
“You’re one to talk,” Maria said.
He bobbed his head, avoiding eye contact. “I really think the person who wrote this hated people and wanted to laugh as they starved to death,” he said.
“Think it’s another case of sabotage?” Maria asked, only half joking.
“No, I think it’s a case of an asshole tech writer. But you do have to wonder about the missing instruction book.”
He stood up and looked at the items Maria had laid out, and then back at the tablet. “Got it,” he mumbled and started telling her what to do with each thing. They worked together for the next hour, Maria biting back irritation when he made jokes or a translation didn’t work very well. She got shocked twice trying to set up the computer to interface with IAN, despite IAN’s guidance.
“There it is. I can see it,” IAN said. “Well done, Ms. Arena.”
“I need to get my backups,” she said.
“No need,” IAN said. “This food printer is fully capable of analyzing a person’s tastes via saliva sample.”
Maria stepped back and surveyed the printer with new respect. “That’s some impressive computing,” she said. “It’s still a behemoth, though.”
Hiro took the mugs to the sink. “Behemoth. I like that name. We’ll call it Bebe for short. If you don’t need me anymore, I’ll go check on the drive. You’ve still got some knives left—and Bebe!—to protect you in the meantime.” Then he was gone.
“Now it’s just you and me, Behemoth,” she said. “I’m not afraid of you.”
Honestly, there were a lot of things she was afraid of on the ship, but at least Bebe wasn’t one of them.
The captain had not returned to the medbay since leaving last night. Joanna was relieved, but had slept in the other hospital bed for sure. Unfortunately the dead bodies were making it a somewhat unpleasant room to stay in. Not to mention unsanitary.
The clone’s life-support systems still worked diligently, showing that the older captain was not quite dead yet.
Joanna stretched in her chair. She needed a shower. And really needed food.
She maneuvered her chair to her lab in the corner of the medbay, but before she could get started on her screening, someone was knocking on the door. She opened it remotely with her tablet.