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Grass Eaters | 29 | Steakhouse III
🕑 Added 2024-03-23 16:47:06 +0000 UTCMNS Seuvommae
“Bah, red sixteen. Give me another card.”
“You sure about that? Your token stack’s looking pretty thin,” cautioned the dealer, Baedarsust, also the ringleader of the motley crew. His day job as one of the four backup shuttle pilots of the Seuvommae meant that he had the most free time of the group.
“Go big or go home,” the unlucky mechanic quipped as she pushed all her remaining tokens into the center of the makeshift table, the flat top of a pulled engine part from one of the defunct shuttles.
Technically, gambling was not allowed in the Malgeir military. But of all the unenforced rules of discipline in its loose chain of command, this was probably the most unenforced one.
“It’s your loss.” Baedarsust shook his ears and revealed her new card, a red nine. The mechanic groaned as she tossed her cards back into the pile and dramatically collapsed into her chair.
“Stupid game anyway,” she whined sourly. “Why are we cooped up in this creaky tin can, playing rigged card games, when we could be living it up on port leave?”
A few of the others, a diverse mix of low-level hangar bay officers, muttered their agreement, their eyes betraying a similar discontent.
Baedarsust shrugged noncommittally. “I’m not sure. Word in the vents is that Euntribent has some grudge against Grass Eaters since they killed someone in his family.”
One of the other mechanics snorted. “Stupid grudge if you ask me. They’re not even the same species. Hell, if you asked me, the Terrans look less like the Znosians and more like one of those Granti pets that they used to keep before—”
“Nobody asked you,” Baedarsust interjected, cutting him off.
Another mechanic cut in, “I don’t think it’s just the Grass Eaters. Euntribent has a problem with one of the bigshots on the Pesmod.”
“Says who?”
“One of the pack leaders on the sensor crew. They’ve been placed on triple shifts since they missed the hidden Grass Eater ships last week. They really ticked off Euntribent this time.”
“How could those idiots have missed three ships in visual range? I bet my day’s wage they were drunk on moonshine again, weren’t they?”
“No, word is that these Grass Eaters can actually make their ships vanish. Like, make them literally invisible.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Baedarsust said, his voice laced with skepticism. It wasn’t the first time the sensor crew had let the ship down.
“Yeah, that sounds like the kind of bogus excuse they’d use for getting us stuck in space when we could be down there getting wasted—”
“Do Grass Eaters even drink? I don’t think that was in the field manual—”
“If the idiots who wrote the field manual actually knew what they were writing about, this war would have been over years ago—”
Baedarsust added, “Actually, someone on the comms crew said they do have a bar down there, and the Grass Eaters are paying.”
“Seriously?! Why does the Pesmod crew get the VIP treatment downstairs and we’re stuck up here?”
Baedarsust shrugged for what felt like the hundredth time. “No idea. I tried pinging my guy Frumers down there, but they haven’t been responding.”
“Well duh, they’re partying it up down there,” the mechanic snorted.
“Yeah, an open bar? I doubt any of them are even conscious by now.”
Just then, Baedarsust’s datapad vibrated on the table, glowing with an incoming call. “And what do you know? It’s Frumers from the Pesmod.” He tapped the screen to activate the speaker. “Where are you guys calling from? Sounds a little too quiet to be a bar —if that’s even real.”
“Hey!” Frumers’ voice crackled through the datapad. “Oh yeah, the open bar is legit, but we got shuttled to one of their hotels now. What’s it called again?” There was some muttering off-screen. “Four Seasons. Funny name, eh? It’s because they have four seasons on their home planet instead of six. Can you believe that?” Frumers sounded ridiculously smug with himself for putting two and two together to make twenty-two.
“Fascinating. Why didn’t you answer our fifty-seven messages earlier?” Baedarsust asked, not hiding his patience. “We were about to send a search party.”
“Oh yeah, get this! The Terrans have this bizarre tech that jams our signals in the transit zones. But hey, we’re back online now that we’re at the hotel.” Frumers paused to look off-screen again, and his eyes widened, “Dude, you won’t believe it. This hotel has its own bar too, and they’ll deliver drinks right to us. Right to our door! Crazy… I think they have the stelgi too…”
“Hold on, deliver to your door? Stelgi? What are you talking about?” Baedarsust was growing increasingly baffled.
“Oh, you have no idea! They turned Spommu into a Grass Eater!” Frumers burst into laughter. “Can you even picture that? Spommu, a Grass Eater!”
“What are you on about? Did the Grass Eaters drug you?”
“Okay, okay, let me back up since we’re waiting for drinks to be delivered to our room. Drinks! Delivered to your room! What a concept! Anyway, back up. Right. The Terrans took us all to this fancy restaurant. It’s called Soerru Steakhouse, like the famous one in Malgeirgam. But it’s not quite the same as the one back home. It’s some kind of an imitation with a Terran twist to it. There was so much grass on every dish, but somehow, it tasted amazing.” Frumers looked off-screen again. “They have food too? Oh no, I… can’t, I’m still so full. Yeah, ok, tomorrow morning.”
Then he turned back to the screen where the Seuvommae crew was waiting impatiently.
“Every dish? There was more than one dish?” Baedarsust asked the question on everyone’s mind.
“Oh yeah, there were so many dishes. Four of them, and an appetizer, and a dessert.”
“Appetizer?”
“Look, Baedarsust, do you want me to tell the story or are you going to repeat everything I say back to me? Yes, appetizer. They literally start their meal with a dish of food. Then, when you finish that, they take the plate away and give you more. Four more! Anyway, the rumors are true. They do eat meat, most of them anyway, but they also eat grass.”
Frumers continued his story meanderingly, “These plates I ordered… I think they gave me meat from four different animals. There’s the Soerru, which was two different plates. There’s the aquatic one. Oh wait, no, I got two aquatic ones. One had a red shell and the other was completely soft — melts right in your mouth. Actually, both of them melt in your mouth, but the first one was chewy. And there was another one, a small land animal: light colored, chewy meat. That’s four. Oh, there was also the eel. Five.”
“So… chewy and soft. Your vocabulary is as vast as the space between your ears.” Baedarsust rolled his eyes.
“Hey, I’m a hangar bay officer, not a restaurant critic. And you have to be here to understand.”
“And you ate the grass?”
“Baedarsust, buddy. I ate every leaf, every straw, and every weird little fruit and seed they had. It was fantastic. There was sweet. There was savory. They had so… many… flavors,” Frumers buzzed with excitement.
Baedarsust rolled his eyes but couldn’t suppress a smile. “Yeah, yeah, that’s great and all, but what’s the word on the open bar?” he asked impatiently. After all, whatever idiocy they were up to down there, a good drink was a good drink.
“Oh yeah, honestly, we were so full we didn’t go. Instead, we went to some low gravity game field where they turned off the inertial compensators. So they give you this stick, right? And you smack this small white ball and try to guide it into a hole in the ground. Quaullast was a natural; he had the lowest score… which means he won! Haha, yeah, they do some things backward here. They insisted on taking a picture of Quaullast and putting it on their wall; not sure if that’s because we’re the first aliens they’ve seen or if he genuinely just did that well… Hold up a sec.” Frumers then ducked out of the video frame but was back almost instantly, holding up a peculiar glass bottle filled with clear liquid. “Check this out: the drinks have arrived!”
Baedarsust and the crew aboard the Seuvommae craned their necks, squinting to read the label on the bottle. “What drink is that?”
“No clue. I don’t read Terran either.” Frumers shrugged as he inspected the bottle, then asked off-screen. “What did you get me… some kind of local grass root thing, apparently.”
He took an experimental sip. “Ohh, it’s got a kick to it. Definitely booze though.” Then, Frumers chugged the remainder of the bottle, ending with a satisfied groan. “Whew… that hits the spot. Hang on, let me go get another.”
He returned, this time holding a different, more ornate bottle with darker coloring. “This one is from some fruit.”
“How many did you guys score?” Baedarsust questioned, half-amused and completely envious.
“Two each. The Terrans are picking up the tab, so why not? Seriously, why are you guys still up there? Is Euntribent still flipping out at the sensor crew?”
Baedarsust sighed. “Yeah, it’s a mess. I doubt he’s gonna let any of us leave the ship.”
“Oh, you guys are missing out, big time. I’m not kidding. All the food is great, and it’s all free. Oh yeah, I took pictures of what we had for dinner. Here, let me send them to you.” Frumers seemed to tap on his datapad for a moment and a series of mouthwatering pictures showed up on Baedarsust’s datapad.
“If you guys don’t believe me, you should really come smell it for yourself. Hey, you’re a shuttle pilot, right? Just take a shuttle and zoom down here yourself! How mad could Euntribent get? Anyway, I have to go… one of the other squads is going to check out the low-grav water park. We’re not going in, but… hehe, that should be fun to watch.”
As the call ended and Baedarsust set down his datapad, the rest of his crew stared at him expectantly.
“What?”
---
To his own surprise, Baedarsust’s gang of troublemakers did manage to fuel and start up one of the Seuvommae’s two semi-working shuttles after some fiddling and plenty of backseat driving.
“Phew! I’m glad I paid attention when they taught me to do this back in training instruction,” Baedarsust mumbled, wiping sweat from his brow as he carefully guided the shuttle into the airlock.
“Wait a second, you’ve actually flown one of these rust buckets before, right?” his mechanic asked, concerned.
“No, but it’s not that hard,” he assured, oozing confidence. “They designed this to be easy to fly. Besides, it’s not that far.”
After a series of hair-raising near misses and intense page-flipping through the old-school field manual, the shuttle roared to life. It wedged itself into the claustrophobic airlock, drained the atmosphere, and broke free from the metallic jaws of the Seuvommae.
“See? Told you we can do it,” he gloated, gesturing at the optics screen. “And look, it’s right there. I can literally see the Grass Eater ships taking off from the port.”
A voice from the backseat chimed in. “How are we going to land? Do they even have docking ports for our shuttles? And what about EVA suits? Did anyone pack those in case our shuttle ports can’t dock with theirs?”
Baedarsust shared an awkward glance with the mechanic. “I didn’t think that far. I thought one of you had that figured out.”
“You what?!”
Suddenly, a voice crackled through their comm system as they wondered what to do. “Seuvommae shuttle, this is Atlas Interplanetary. State your planned route, over.”
Baedarsust fumbled for the microphone. “Uh… hold on Grass Eaters. We’re not sure. We’re just trying to get down to the port… Give us a minute, we’re trying to figure out how this works.”
After a slight pause, the voice returned, tinged with mechanical boredom. “Seuvommae shuttle, Atlas Interplanetary. We have your destination as Atlas Port. You have strayed significantly from the approved flight corridor and have not filed a flight plan, so we are taking navigational control of your vehicle as per Sol Spaceflight Safety Regulation One-Two-Four Dash Five. Your destination is Atlas Main, large hangar two. You are third in the queue. Your estimated time of arrival is fourteen minutes. Over.”
Before anyone could protest, the shuttle jerked unnervingly. Baedarsust hurriedly announced, “That wasn’t me! They’ve got the controls now. We’re on remote autopilot… for docking… somewhere.”
“That’s a little unsettling that they can do that,” his mechanic said as the screen updated to show their destination more-or-less near the spaceport they were supposed to head to. “But at least we’re going the right way.”
Muttering to himself, Baedarsust keyed the microphone again, “Uhh Atlas Interplanetary, do you happen to have docking ports for our shuttles?”
“Seuvommae shuttle, Atlas Interplanetary. Your reserved large hangar bay is fully airlocked and your shuttle will fit. No compatible docking ports or further pilot action is necessary. Have a good day. Over.”
---
“They’ve what?” Euntribent exclaimed furiously, his spittle watering the ship bridge floor. “That’s desertion! Get me in touch with the local authorities!”
“But sir, you specifically said we should maintain radio silence—”
“Idiot! That was then. This is now. Turn our communications back on. Get the Grass Eaters on the line and tell them to hand over our deserters!”
Fumbling nervously with the controls, the comms officer initiated a connection. After exchanging a series of messages, he turned back to Euntribent, his face a pale shade of green. “The Terrans are asking what we plan to do with the deserters.”
“They’re deserters!” Euntribent roared, popping the red veins in his eyes. “What do they think? We’re going to send them out the airlock the second the Grass Eaters hand them over! And make sure you tell them we want our shuttle back too. Remind them that is property of the Malgeir Federation Navy!”
---
Atlas, Luna
“… anyway, given the threatened penalties involved, the six crew members have requested asylum and to not be sent back to the ship,” Minister Tsai, the Terran diplomat, explained over the communication device to Ambassador Niblui. “And while we would normally be willing to remand the prisoners to your jurisdiction despite the lack of an official extradition treaty, we can’t in good conscience hand over prisoners that face capital charges in your Federation… Not publicly, at least. And… it would look bad for both our peoples for this to be our first— I’m sure you understand what I’m getting—”
Niblui slapped her paw against her forehead repeatedly, her fur rippling with each impact. “I understand, Minister. We must work out those details as soon as possible. In the meantime, would it be possible for a return to be arranged if we can guarantee they will not face the death penalty upon their extradition? Or any legal penalties other than a reprimand? I can make that promise in writing.”
Tsai didn’t skip a beat. “That would be acceptable to us. Would you like us to shuttle them to the Pesmod?”
“Yes, please,” Niblui replied, sighing in relief that the Terran diplomat understood the nuance involved. If they were sent straight back to the Seuvommae, Euntribent would probably have executed them anyway, regardless of what she ordered or promised. “We’ll have Fleet Commander Grionc bring them home on the diplomacy shuttle.”
“Understood. We’ll send their empty shuttle back to the Seuvommae to avoid any misunderstandings, of course.”
“Thank you.” Niblui hesitated, but decided to ask anyway, “I have an additional unrelated request regarding our stay, minister.”
“What do you need? Please. Let us know if anything is unsatisfactory.”
Niblui said hurriedly. “No, nothing like that. The accommodations you provided were wonderful. This request is related to that. Well, you see… several of my people on the ground have discovered the wonderful food delivery service at their hotel and are asking if we can possibly deliver some food to their shipmates back up on the Pesmod. I realize this may be a big ask given the fuel expenditures involved, but we will happily pay for—”
“No need, Ambassador. In fact, we have a shuttle service for that too. I’ll have them send the SoerruSteakhouse menu to your ship for them to peruse. I’m glad that your people found it enjoyable. Several restaurants, including Soerru at the port, have been badgering me about franchising opportunities, after this war of course…”
