Why Is This Human in My Kitchen?

Posted on Sun 3rd Jun, 2018 @ 12:46am by Lieutenant Damion Ildaran & Morva
Edited on on Mon 15th Jun, 2020 @ 5:26am

1,080 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Brushfires
Location: The Slug & Grub #1, Deck 1554
Timeline: MD-16, 1000 hours

Damion Ildaran entered the Slug and Grub Restaurant #1, located on the Ferengi barge named Contentment. Having received approval from the Starbase 109 Chamber of Commerce to open a repair shop for his cover as Corin Durant, he now had to make the cover functional by finding work.

I hate Ferengi food. I swore I would never be around it again after I left Boze's ship. Ah, well. I need the work, so here I am. Damion paused as a young male Ferengi in a green tailcoat met him at the host stand. "Table for one, sir?"

I'd rather die, Damion thought. "I'm here to see Morva," he said. "Her replicator's not working?"

The host looked Damion up and down, seeing a tallish, bearded human with brown hair pulled into a ponytail, attired in blue coveralls and carrying a toolkit in one hand. "I'll take you to the kitchen," the Ferengi said. "Morva's been ... difficult to deal with, all day, what with the replicator being offline." He gave Damion (or Corin Durant) a sidelong look. "Are you actually capable of knowing what constitutes good Ferengi food?"

"I've worked for Ferengis before," Damion said as the two of them walked toward the kitchen. "I've probably got as good a palate for Ferengi food as any human is likely to have."

He opened the kitchen door for the Ferengi because his arms were longer, took a look inside the kitchen and blinked. All of the kitchen staff were dead silent, staring frozen in terror at a tiny Ferengi woman clad in a white chef's toque, who pressed flattened, dark blue splotches of... egg? up against a cook's lobes. "What are you?" the older Ferengi woman said in an almost reasonable-sounding voice.

"An-an idiot omelette, Morva."

"I'm glad you figured that out." Morva tossed both flattened rounds of cooked egg into a disposal and handed the younger cook a dishtowel to clean her lobes with. Then Morva hastily washed her hands. "Do not ever combine mursquid ink with raw krellfish eggs again. Yes, the ink gives them a lovely color, but it also denatures them when heated, and we don't want that. Makes the eggs come out hard and rubbery."

She glanced toward Damion and the restaurant host. "Merat, why is this human in my kitchen without a hair covering?"

Merat cleared his throat. "He says he can fix the replicator, Ma'am."

Morva pinned Damion with a glare. "Can you?"

"Most likely. Depends on what's wrong with it." Damion extended his hand. "Name's Corin Durant. Good to meet you, Morva."

"We'll see if it is," she said with a sniff. "I can't shake your hand; I just washed mine." She glanced at her restaurant host. "Thank you, Merat. Find this human a hair covering, and then back to the customers with you. How much do you charge, Mr. Durant?"

Damion took out a small tricorder and began running it over the replicator as Merat gratefully left the kitchen. "I'm a hell of a lot cheaper than Thurmond, if that's what you're asking, and better than most of their competitors."

"Hmph. That remains to be seen," Morva said. "Well, go on. Have a look. Riss, try another batch of eggs, and no squid ink with them, this time."

Muted conversation returned to the kitchen, much to Damion's relief, and he studied the scan results. "You have one simple problem that caused two other complex ones," he said at last. "One of your circuits is fused. That's easy enough to replace. But it threw your z-resolution off, so it needs to be recalibrated. It's not producing layers of even thickness in the build area. That'll throw your recipes off. The more serious problem is, that damaged circuit is also causing your selector to select the wrong raw materials, and you definitely don't want that."

The Ferengi woman nodded. "Luckily, the fail-safe subroutine still works. While I do have the occasional customer I might want to poison, actually poisoning them is bad for business, so I'm not in favor of it," Morva said. "How much to fix everything?"

Damion took out his PADD and began entering the quote but didn't show it to Morva. Instead, he eyed her. There was a right way and a wrong way to deal with Ferengi. "That'll be 250 credits."

Morva laughed. "On my deathbed! 180."

"You must think I just give my time away," Damion said. "245."

"And you must think I have money to squander. 185," Morva said.

"185! I've a girlfriend to support. She has expensive tastes. Wants me to take her to that Orchidy Jazzy place all the time."

Morva shrugged. "Not my problem. Pick a female who's not so extravagant."

"Absolutely not happening. All right--240! And it's paining my bank account to offer you that."

"I am not even tempted," Morva shot back. "I could get the Starfleet folks to do it at a better price. But I'll be generous and propose 190."

Damion snorted. "Starfleet. Pfft. Think they're such a much. Half of them would've missed the z-resolution issue. 235."

"So you say," Morva commented in a bored tone as Merat returned and handed Damion a hair net before vanishing again. "Mr. Durant, you might as well stop wasting your time."

"It is never a waste of time to haggle with a businesswoman who knows the value of services. Even if her estimations are a bit low."

Morva drew herself up to her full height. "I am not haggling! I am bargaining. There is a difference--which you would understand if you had any inkling of culture about you, hu-man." She sighed dramatically. "I'll take pity on you and offer 195."

Damion folded his arms over his chest and stared at her. "Tell you what--I'll give you a break. 200 even--if you'll tell people who fixed your replicator. Presuming you agree I do good work, of course."

"That is the only circumstance under which I'd take that sort of deal," Morva assured him with a sniff.

"Excellent, then. Two hundred for the work, and I'll throw in parts."

Morva looked back at him and gestured with her hands in a shooing motion. "Well? What are you waiting for, Mr. Durant? Lunch is in two hours. I haven't got all day." She glanced at the young cook. "Riss! Those eggs look much better. Excellent work! Now, let's see if we can make a sauce with the mursquid ink. Your mistake gave me an idea...."

 

RSS Feed

Comments (5)