Chapter 4, part 1
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Just shy of 18:00 hours, the CEC Main Mess Hall was already packed with a crowd of famished workers converging from all over the station, lining up like cattle as they approached the distribution window to collect their trays of preprocessed dinner rations. It wasn't long before the hall was filled with the endless droning of countless conversations rising from the various tables and blending into each other. A group of several engineers gathered at a long, banquet type table near the end of the hall by the windows, overlooking a view of a distant planet revolving far below. They each greeted each other with chauvinistically joking remarks as they approached to take their seats. One of them looked down at his plate of food with a look of disdain.
"Shit just gets more and more tasteless every time. I mean, are they trying to piss us off, or what?"
He picked up a wedge of tomato, sniffed at it and disgustedly dropped it back onto the plate.
"Organic my ass. This thing probably had testicles on it before they sliced it up."
The man next to him just laughed boorishly and elbowed him, then returned to dragging his greasy, unwashed fingers around in circles on his plate of meatloaf, periodically sticking them in his mouth to suck them clean.
"Eat up, Collins. That shit'll put hair on your chest, and god knows you need some of that."
Collins, annoyed at the provocation, simply ignored him and muttered under his breath.
"Fuck you, Carter. You're an asshole."
Carter just smirked, mocking his friend, and returned to hunt for morsels around his plate, grunting between each breath he took. Collins glanced up to the other engineer sitting across the table from him.
"So White, you guys still on double shifts down in the hangar these days?"
White, who appeared to be physically exhausted and trying his best to digest a dry, nearly stale piece of bread, raised his brows, staring down at his plate.
"Yeah, they got us working round the clock down there. I never saw so many beat-up ships in my life.. pieces of shit, they are. I still don't know what the hell the CEC is thinking, filling their fleet with those friggin' liabilities."
Penopoulis, the man sitting next to White, was listening to his words. He nodded and chimed in when White was finished.
"Yeah, you'd think with as many credits as the CEC pulls in in just one week, they'd be able to buy themselves a classy-ass fleet of rides. I mean, they probably bring in a hundred times my year's salary in one day with just the Peng they peddle around here alone."
Just as he finished, a young woman wearing the garb of a medical practitioner walked by with her tray, and having caught the tail end of his sentence, just curled her lip in abhorrence and continued on, refusing eye contact with any of them. The men, undeterred, all smiled and whistled, sending out crude catcalls and waving their hands in her direction as she passed. Carter vulgarly grabbed his privates, making the gesture obvious to her.
"Speakin' of Peng, hey baby! You busy with those stiffs in the morgue tonight? If not, I got one for ya right here!"
She just tsked, stiffened her shoulders and continued walking away towards her table across the room. The men laughed and returned to their conversation.
"Ah, she's just shy. Probably just been cooped up on this floating dogterd of a station too long."
They all fell silent for a moment and returned to their food, still making nasty remarks to each other about the quality of their meals. Despite their apparent distaste, they all consumed it with gusto, occasionally whacking the hands of their neighbors attempting to steal from the others' plates. After a while, Collins looked back up at White and the others.
"Speaking of being cooped up - you guys heard the news? Guess who's back on board."
Without removing their eyes from their meals, they distractedly responded.
"Yeah, who?"
Collins picked a piece of cornbread out from between his teeth and swallowed.
"Isaac Clarke. He's back from the Ishimura. The Creedence found him somewhere out there. And from what I've heard, they got him in executive lockdown somewhere."
White nodded, looking down as he remembered Isaac, who had been one of his fellow friends and coworkers for several years.
"Yeah, got wind of that. He's been back for a few days now. Heard he's involved in some pretty deep shit about that whole Ishimura thing. They say he saw the Marker, touched it with his bare hands."
White's voice went silent as he fell deep into thought. He was silently lost in admiration of Isaac's experience, secretly having long coveted the chance to see the Marker for himself. Carter, far less sympathetic, just snorted at White's statement, inadvertently ejecting a chunk of saliva-moist cornbread across the table onto Penopoulis's sleeve.
"You gotta be kidding me, you bleeding heart Unitologist dick-sucker. Isaac's a fuckin' nut job now. Word has it that he flipped out, killed a bunch of the crew and ate their brains. Say they found him with one of their heads in his hands, all ritual like.."
Carter tried to hold a serious face at the end of his explanation and with his arms mocked a cradling gesture, but the others just scoffed at him, knowing he was full of it. Carter eventually broke a toothy grin and looked back at White.
"I'd say you two have a lot in common with that Unitology crap. You should get together when he gets out of the Hole and sacrifice some babies for the 'better cause'."
White huffed indignantly, trying his best to ignore Carter's derogatory remarks. Penopoulis, who at this point was plucking the pieces of pre-digested food Carter had launched at him from his sleeve and flicking them back at Carter's plate, shook his head.
"Dude, you're an idiot. You've just been listening to people who got too much time on their hands. Isaac ain't no nut job, they just gotta do their standard debriefing, that's all."
Carter raised an eyebrow in Penopoulis's direction, childishly flicked the morsels back at Penopoulis, and with a baiting tone in his voice responded.
"Ohhhh, yeah? Well if he's so normal, why they got him on executive lockdown, anyway? Only suicidals and real fuck-ups end up there after a mission."
Collins shook his head.
"Nah, it ain't that bad. He's just caught in the system now, seeing what they can get out of him. I heard that Mattock's already looking into filing for an appeal to get him out, so he'll probably be back in a few weeks."
White nodded, downing the remainder of his plate's contents.
"Yeah, well shit - I sure hope he gets back here soon. We could really use an extra hand down there... I need some time off."
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