Free Alien Caged by Tracy St. John Page B

they’ll need to be as healthy as we can keep them.”
    “Where are we taking them?” Elisa had asked.
    Dr. Stroud grimaced.  “I was told it was none of my business.  I get the feeling it’s not a good place, however.”
    The head doctor had disappeared, along with a shuttle, two weeks later. 
    Elisa’s station, as stringently clean as she’d left it, consisted of a cutting surface that never absorbed bacteria, a sink, a cooktop, and a flash roasting/baking oven.  For the food she would prepare, she had to go to the end of the busy kitchen.  The cavernous space, light on personnel, was still thunderous with a cacophony of clattering dishes and thuds of chopping.  Even with only ten people working there, they managed to be loud.
    Elisa stopped by the cooling units and pantry on her way to the thawing bins, where she’d set in frozen ground sausage and beef the night before.  A raid on an Adraf trader had netted familiar Earther foods en route from Haven Colony to Dantovon seven months ago.  They’d come across no other ships carrying food of any kind since then. 
    She traveled through the thick savory smells of lunch, her mouth watering.  The beef stew cooking for the ship’s crew would contain more broth than meat.  The scent still managed to be divine.
    Elisa took her security key and clicked it to unlock the units where she kept the prisoners’ food and supplements.  It had become necessary to keep the items secure when the other cooks had begun dipping into the supplies behind her back.  Elisa’s rigorous protection of food Captain Walker had ordered set aside for the Kalquorians was not regarded well.  She hummed her nervousness as she went into the pantry, sure the rest of the kitchen staff was staring hatefully at her.  She didn’t dare look to make sure.
    Elisa snagged a nearby cart and loaded it with the ingredients she needed.  Lunch’s menu was meatloaf, herbed mashed potatoes and cauliflower, and a fruit salad.  Miragin had offered lavish compliments for her meatloaf when she’d tried it out on the Kalquorians two weeks ago.  Zemos had a particular affinity for burritos, and Oret, while he kept his opinions to himself, always smiled at the sight of liver and onions.
    Deciding that would do for dinner, Elisa put liver into the unit to thaw.
    She took the lunch ingredients back to her station and set about making meatloaves.  Elisa wished she had fancier fare to offer the Kalquorians besides roast chicken, hamburgers, and the like.  Steaks would have been nice.  It had been a long time since Elisa had seen a steak on the battlecruiser.
    Each Kalquorian got a full-sized meatloaf.  They were big men with huge appetites.  Elisa slid the first 25 into the flash oven, smiling to herself in expectation of Miragin’s delight.  The circumstances were awful, but it was nice to cook for people who appreciated it.
    She turned back to her prep block and the smile fell off her face to see the kitchen manager Lester Sprague glowering from the other side of her area.  His gaze wasn’t directed at her but at the other 48 meatloaves and the rest of the food to be prepared for the prisoners.  Sprague was a hardliner like the first officer.  He despised the Kalquorians.
    Taking a deep breath to calm her suddenly pounding heart, Elisa said, “Good morning, sir.  How are you today?”
    The grim face rose to look at her.  Sprague wore cook’s whites, which were already splattered with the morning’s work.  His yellow-flecked blue eyes, nested in wrinkles that owed to as much squinting as age, were always bloodshot.  Elisa noted he hadn’t shaved this morning, the salt-and-pepper scruff patchy on his jaw.
    He nodded to her.  “Miss Mackenzie.”
    He managed to be polite to her even though anger drove the creases deep into his face.  Sprague always looked like that when he saw what the Kalquorians got to eat.
    A familiar statement came from his thin, scowling lips.  “It sure seems a