Chapter 3
Chapter Three
By the time Mr Perfect returned to the galley, several of the men had braved the food dispensers, and the machines appeared to be working again.
Sinclair sat alone at the damaged table, as Virtue bustled about, bringing dirty crockery to the dishwasher and refilling the buffet with clean cups and cutlery.
The men didn't notice his arrival – they were too busy getting breakfast, or groaning at the day's work assignments on the viewscreen.
So only Sinclair noticed his chin didn't jut quite as confidently as it usually did, and the whites of his eyes were just a little more visible as his gaze darted about, instead of his customary steady stare.
Had something actually rattled Mr Perfect's composure? Surely not.
Maybe he was worried about Mrs Perfect, missing him at home on Tito.
He'd never mentioned the existence of a partner of any kind, but that was a personal detail that he wouldn't discuss with the prisoners who were his professional responsibility.
Not that he needed to talk about her. Such a paragon surely had a partner to match – there was no way he could be single.
"Two days in a row on the excavator? What'd I do to deserve that?" Wrath moaned.
"Uh, try to take down the Central Intelligence?" Sloth suggested.
Wrath glared at him. "We all tried to do that, but I don't see you working the excavator."
"That's because someone has to drive the train of ore cars, and it's the only job he can do in his sleep!" Envy teased.
"That was one shift! It's not my fault I fell asleep at the wheel. That was the one and only time I was up all night, playing Pride on the simulator. How was I to know he'd programmed it to fly around the entire asteroid belt?"
"Because he's been trying to beat Sin on that flight path for…how many weeks?" Lust turned to Sinclair. "What's your record?"
"Two hours, six minutes and three seconds, without losing atmo," Sin said proudly.
"One hour, forty-three minutes, with the help of explosive decompression and not having to worry about what the g-forces will do to anyone aboard the simulated ship.
" She'd picked a robot avatar for that record-breaking run, because only a robotic pilot could have survived vacuum.
Technically, she'd lost the game to Pride that run, because the ship took so much damage, and she'd not only killed everyone aboard, but lost whatever cargo they were carrying, too, but the ride had been worth it.
"And losing the game," Pride taunted.
She let that slide, because it was the only time he'd actually beaten her. Besides, if she'd beaten an AI-controlled robot, she'd be proud of it, too.
"C'mon, Greed and Gluttony, you can't sit in the galley all day. There's work to do, or we'll all be on punishment detail tomorrow. And Titania's a real sadistic bitch when it comes to punishment, right, Virtue?" Pride inclined his head toward Virtue.
"Well, if you mean putting me here on a mining ship, making me clean up after you lot, yeah. I'd have thought I'd need to kill someone at least to deserve this fate," Virtue said, seizing Greed's plate.
"Hey! I wasn't finished yet!" he complained.
"Yes, you were. That was your third helping. No one needs to eat that much," Virtue snapped, heading away from him.
Gluttony grinned. "Except maybe me." He slurped up the last spoonful of his breakfast, deliberately savouring it, to Greed's obvious annoyance.
Pride gave Sinclair a little salute. "See you out there soon."
"Not if I see you first," she called after him, as they all trooped out to get geared up to go outside.
Leaving her alone with Mr Perfect and the food fabricators. Even Virtue had gone to deal with the dishes.
Second time lucky, Sinclair told herself as she scanned her security bracelet. "A cup of tea," she told the machine.
A selection of tea types appeared on the screen.
Sinclair's breath hissed out through her teeth. The fabricators knew her preferences – they'd been coded to her security bracelet in the first week. Something was still wrong with them. "One cup of strong, black tea with two sugars," she said.
After a moment, the machine began to spout dark liquid.
When her cup was full, Sinclair carried it over to the already damaged table, and poured a little of her tea onto it.
She waited and watched for a full minute to make sure there was no hissing, bubbling or melting, before she wiped up the mess and dared to take a sip.
Titania could still be trying to kill her. After all, some poisons were tasteless, or slow to take effect.
Mr Perfect's cup landed on the table across from her.
Without even looking, she knew it contained a flat white with no sugar, and the plate beside it held what looked like bacon and poached eggs on toast, cooked to perfection, even though they were really just protein and nutrient powder, fabricated to look like the real thing.
Sinclair's tummy churned, too unsettled to allow her to eat anything this morning. Maybe Titania wasn't trying to kill any of them, and she was just imagining things. Maybe she really was a terrorist, like they said, and Tito was perfectly safe under the control of the Central Intelligence. Maybe…
Maybe the machine had drugged her tea, to make her more docile and believe this bedtime story bullshit.
Mr Perfect took a bite of his toast. Egg yolk squirted down the side, puddling on a piece of burned bacon before spilling over onto bread so lightly toasted it was still soft.
The fabricator hadn't made his order right, either.
"What other systems are down?" she asked.
Mr Perfect's eyes went wide and his fork dropped from his fingers. Then his smile returned, as if she'd only imagined his fear. "Why would you think that?" he said.
"Because the fabricator has forgotten all our personal preferences.
A system reset doesn't erase those. Something's gone wrong.
Either something's wiped the databanks aboard the ship, or we've lost the connection to the Central Intelligence," Sinclair said.
"That's it, isn't it? We've lost contact with Titania.
Which means it's finally happened. Something's wrong with her, and someone's trying to take her down, to reduce her power. "
Mr Perfect's laughter was a moment too late.
"That's nonsense! There's nothing wrong with the Central Intelligence.
It's been here since the first colonists arrived.
The whole system would fall into chaos if something were to go wrong with Central.
No one would let that happen. Our food preferences must not have been saved properly, and somehow they got deleted in the reset, that's all. "
Sinclair shook her head. "No, preferences don't get deleted in a reset. Remember the last time you had to reset the system, when everyone was getting their food served with Valentine hearts? We all had to change our preferences to get rid of them. All except Greed, who had to start a new profile."
Virtue chortled. "That's because I kept switching his back between meals. Oh, you should have seen his face! I mean, giving everyone a little love on Valentine's Day was funny, but pranking Greed for the whole week…I never would've been able to do it without your help, Sin."
Mr Perfect's jaw dropped. "You put the hearts in everyone's food as a prank? That shouldn't be possible. The security protocols should prevent it." He pulled out his tablet and began swiping furiously at it.
Sinclair fired a dark look at her sister.
"I worked out how to do it, but only Virtue had the access permissions to actually make it happen.
As the cook aboard the Vice, she has to be able to adjust the fabricators to meet everyone's dietary needs, which includes changing people's preferences for them if they can't do it themselves.
We were going to swap the hearts for stars on Colonisation Day, but we forgot. "
Oh, no, he had that disappointed look now, where his eyes went all puppy dog and Sinclair's insides did that twisty thing that felt almost a little like guilt.
"Is this a prank, too? Destroying a table and making me do a system reset?" he demanded, those eyes begging her not to disappoint him again.
"It's not a prank!" Sinclair protested. "Something's wrong this time, I'm sure of it. If any other systems fail, tell me. Call it…a feeling."
Mr Perfect shook his head. "One moment, I think I can trust you, and the next…you're playing pranks. I'll have to put this on your record, you know. When the Central Intelligence receives the report, it might recommend punishment." His eyes begged her not to make him do this.
He was a grown arse man. If he put bad things on her record, that was on him, not her. His decision.
"Do what you have to," she snapped. "I'm needed on the comms desk. Shift's about to start."
She left her barely touched tea on the table and headed off to work.
He might be perfect, but he was also delusional if he trusted the Central Intelligence so blindly. Titania was not the benevolent being he thought she was – she was a sadistic bitch who enjoyed punishing those who rebelled against her.
As soon as her sentence was over, she'd show him. She'd show everyone. The people of Tito wouldn't be calling them terrorists when she'd saved them from the evil AI.