The idea of having a home, even one that by Hadrian’s own admission we would visit only infrequently was a very strange one. I couldn’t remember ever having a home not since Q… My brain sheared away from whatever it was I had been thinking about like the unconscious reaction that pulls a hand away from a hot stove. I was perplexed for a moment, unable to recall what I had been thinking about. Hadrian was looking at me slightly askance.

 

“Are you ok?” he asked with evident concern. I shook my head as though to clear it.

“Yes,” I responded feeling a sudden growl in my stomach. “Just… I don’t know exactly.”

 

“Lets get some food.”

 

The kitchen of the Caladonian was a simple affair. Most ships I had traveled on tended towards the extravagant when it came to galleys, but once again Urien’s unsophisticated background shone. It might have been an exaggeration to even call it a kitchen, it rather resembled a massive larder. Cheeses, preserved meat, and other dry goods hung from hooks in the ceiling or were piled high on shelves. An entire wall was given over to barrels of ale and mead stacked and secured with netting against the bumps and shocks of transition. Several vast cooling units dribbled unhealthy smelling coolant gasses and haunches of grox, ambull and other meats could be seen hanging within. Vegetables tended to be freeze dried in sacks, though there were a few refrigerated bins containing greens and root vegetables which I had to assume had been acquired on Moldar. A reasonably sophisticated servitor was in the process of making a stew in a vast cauldron, clicking and whirring as it poured minced garlic into the pot in a pungent spray from one of its extruder nodules. It seemed an extremely odd place to be in a ball gown and I felt more than a little foolish as we took a loaf of still warm bread from a cooling rack and loaded up a platter with meat cheese and what condiments we could find. Hadrian demonstrated his familiarity with the set up by finding a crate that contained stoneware bottles which turned out to contain a very crisp but not unpleasant cider. There was a refectory beside the kitchen, although judging by the thin coating of dust and the smell of old antiseptic the crew rarely used it, preferring I imagined to eat in Urien’s main dining room in the tradition of armsmen rather than in shifts like a naval crew might have done.

“So what is the plan once we get to Danubis?” I asked around  mouthful of bread and salted grox.

 

“I suppose its too much to hope for that we can just level the place from orbit?”