From Chef To Crafter To Conqueror: Book1 - Chef Read online

  Satisfied that all was in order I headed to the rear of the kitchen to my personal workspace and checked over my mise-en-place. After nodding satisfactorily to myself that everything was in order, I looked over at my team again and saw they were still getting the main meal ready for the crew. Then I got started on the officer’s meal.

  The tradition for the officers of a naval ship, in this case, spaceship, was to have a different meal than the rest of the crew and it went all the way back to the antiquated navies of Earth. Back then the officers were all of the nobility. And they would gather for their meals that were paid for by their personal funds and were of significantly better quality than the normal crew fare.

  This tradition continued on throughout human history even to the point of being a part of our current Space Force’s tradition. Although now the regular crew meals were of quality on par with the officers and paid for by the government. The main difference being preparation and not ingredients or cost.

  With the advent of the organic 3-D printer, foodstuffs became an infinite resource and we could now create any type of raw food ingredient in existence. Preparation however was another story and that was where the Food Service Corps and chefs like yours truly came into play. Even though any ingredient could be made it took a true craftsman, artist if you will, to make an exemplary and delicious dish.

  The klaxon alarm sounded out again and I braced myself as the ship’s shields blocked the first salvo of the enemy plasma blasts causing the ship to rock in response. My team was so well trained though that they immediately went back to work after the ship steadied, though the alarms didn’t stop.

  I nodded to myself not surprised considering how much we trained but still impressed with their professionalism. It was something I was taught from a young age, diligence and hard work led to industriousness and success.

  My father’s heritage was predominately a mix of Japanese and Korean. Which was rare nowadays because most people were like my mother who was a conglomeration of many races. The interesting thing about my father’s heritage not only being rare was that the cultures he descended from were crazy about hard work, diligence, and industriousness.

  I think due to that heritage he instilled a concept called Kaizen in me from an incredibly young age. Kaizen is essentially the idea of doing something over and over ad nauseam and improving on it slowly over time until you reach a state of perfection, which you can never truly reach. It’s actually a bit more complicated than that but that’s the gist of it.

  My thoughts drifted back to my father while my body went on autopilot, grabbing and prepping ingredients one after the other for the officer’s meal, with the practiced ease of a true master chef. I had done the tasks so many times my hands moved of their own accord. Whether chiffonading aromatic greens or peeling, slicing, and dicing root vegetables and starches, I could do it all even in my sleep.

  He had passed away the year before I enlisted in the Space Force, right at the turn of the century, December 2099. It had been a pretty shitty Christmas overall that year. First, I had been dumped by my high school girlfriend which had seemed so important before the accident… before the war.

  I knew the two weren’t related in reality but in my mind, I always connected them. It was one of the reasons I put some much effort into cooking, why I joined the military, and why I pushed myself as hard as I could. Even though it was as a chef and not a traditional frontline fighter.

  That long ago morning we had a fight, to this day I still couldn’t remember exactly what it was about. It was some dumb thing, a chore I hadn’t done, not having cleaned my room or something like that. What I did remember was calling him a selfish asshole as I walked out the door for school. That was it and that was the last time I saw him.

  A semi-truck had plowed into his car while he was driving through an intersection on his way to work. The stoplight had malfunctioned and the self-driving truck didn’t stop. It was a freak one in a million accident they said. It was just plain bad luck they said.

  That night the first shots of the First Intergalactic War were fired. The space colonies of Mars, the moons of Jupiter, and the various other space-based mining cooperatives had banded together. They created the Independent Space Confederacy and promptly seceded from the United Earth Federation.

  The leaders of our Earth government couldn’t let that happen and they sent ships out to Mars to end the rebellion. Unbeknownst to the Earth fleet, the ISC was ready and pretty much mopped the floor with the Earth Expeditionary Forces.

  A call to arms by the powers that be went out calling on all patriots of the Earth. My father had served in the military and whether or not it was because of our fight before he died, I felt like I owed it to him to join. So, the next day I enlisted. It was my way of making it up to him.

  I know it doesn’t quite make sense but I was a dumb teenage kid and it sounded good at the time. Plus, I was a red-blooded young eighteen-year-old who was full of heroic thoughts of piloting spacecraft and saving our Earth empire running rampant through my head.

  Boy was I wrong, on all accounts. I enlisted in Space Force to fly spaceships or space fighters but I didn’t know that there was an AI placement system that picked the best job for you. They said it knew what suited one’s specific talents. My talents were apparently cooking food.

  This was due to my family owning a restaurant and me having learned the skills to be a cook at a young age from being forced to help out. But come on, I didn’t join the Space Force to be a goddamn cook! I could have stayed home and done that in our family’s restaurant.

  At first, this was a huge blow to my ego. I was severely depressed but I used my dad’s passing as motivation and decided to give it my all, despite my personal feelings. He had also taught me to suck it up and not be a victim. It was as if after he died all the stupid platitudes and sayings he told me finally made sense. And my unfinished teenage brain had an epiphany that he had been right all along.

  Go figure, it took him dying for us to start seeing eye to eye. Anyway, I went into boot camp full speed ahead and gave it my all. Graduating at the top of my class in every category from shooting to schooling to uniform maintenance. By the end of training, my Drill Instructors couldn’t believe I was going into the Food Service Corps. And even though they objected they were also subject to the AI’s decisions.

  The ship rocked again but I just rolled my lower body with the movement and continued the food prep. The 3-D printer was creating ingredient after ingredient and I grabbed each as they came slicing, dicing, peeling, and shredding.

  Basically, doing the dance of cooking with each of my practiced and precise movements, even as the walls and ground shook and alarms blared around me. I saw my crew shoot worried looks at each other and our surroundings but they kept on cooking regardless of their fear.

  This time the shaking and rocking lasted for more than a few seconds, almost half a minute. Even my well-trained crew couldn’t keep working through this as ingredients, cookware, and cooks fell uncontrollably to the deck or crashed into the bulkhead.

  I kept my feet though, mostly thanks to my Martial Arts training. And when the ship finally settled I went around helping up those of my staff that had fallen especially hard. Just as I lifted FS3 Clark up off the ground the klaxon alarm began to sound in a different, more ominous way.

  “Chief, that’s the call to abandon ship!” FS3 Clark squeaked, his voice cracking as he looked at me wide-eyed with fear.

  For a moment, when I heard the alarm the same fear struck me. The fear of the unknown, the fear of being adrift in space, escape pod or not, that was scary as hell. Thankfully, the young Food Serviceman, who was just a week shy of turning nineteen years old, helped shake the fear from me before it could set in.

  I cleared my throat and put on a stoic face, the same one I used whether I was fighting an MMA match or cooking veal tournedos, and looked the young man in the eyes.

  “Don’t worry FS3, you have nothing to fear but fear itse
lf.” I struck a slight pose as I quoted one of our most famous historical wartime leaders.

  My demeanor helped calm the young man down, young man? I was only five years older than him. I shook my head at the thought. To his credit though he bucked up and even gave me a grin.

  “Jeez Chief, you even quote those old fogies at times like this? You really are a history nut.” FS3 Clark laughed, now somewhat in control of himself.

  I was about to tell him where he could stick his comment, but the ship rumbled and rolled again and the rest of my culinary team shouted out in fear, bringing us back to our present situation.

  “Everyone let’s go. You hear the abandon ship alarm. Don’t panic, we’ve trained for this. Move out!” I commanded, using my NCO voice for added effect.

  The familiar command voice eased my crew enough to shake off the fear and they sprang into action. No one ran or panicked as we left the Mess Hall in an orderly and concerted fivesome, with me taking up the rear. Once out in the corridor, we kept moving with a sense of purpose, even though the hallway was shaking more often than not.

  With the klaxon alarm blaring deafeningly and the flashing emergency red lighting of the hall, the journey became a terrifyingly surreal experience. It was like some kind of jacked-up Lovecraftian carnival ride but not a fun-filled carnie full adventure. Instead, it was real life and death with the promise of an endless freezing vacuum as the prize.

  We kept our proverbial shit together though and made it to the escape pods in a timely fashion. Luckily for us, the Mess Hall was on the same level as the escape pod bay so we didn’t need to take a lift or ladder to another deck. My Sous Chef, FS1 Trajan, hit the door panel on the wall and before the escape pod portal finished opening my crew was already quickly shuffling inside.

  “Shit! My father’s knives!” I hissed, as my crew left the blinking and shaking corridor and entered the already quarter full bay ahead of me.

  “Chief?” FS1 Trajan asked, looking back at me questioningly and with not a little bit of trepidation.

  “Go ahead FS1, I have to go back to the Mess Hall, I forgot something,” I told him, then did an about-face and double-timed it back down the corridor. My Sous Chef’s objections were lost in the blaring of the evacuation alarms.

  The rest of the ship’s crew had begun abandoning ship as well and were coming towards me. While I was heading the opposite way down the now mostly full corridor. Due to that, it took me over twice as long to get back to my Mess Hall as it did to leave it.

  But I eventually made it, after what seemed like an eternity, and slammed my hand on the door panel barely pausing for it to open before I sped inside. A particularly vicious attack hit the ship right then. So hard, that I was knocked from my feet and tumbled to the deck of the Mess Hall dining area.

  “Critical damage received. Ship’s hull integrity compromised. All escape pods are to launch as soon as possible. The ship will suffer serious hull breach in the next three minutes. All crew not in the escape pods will be subject to ship destruction. Countdown initiated: 3:00… 2:59… 2:58…” The ship’s AI sounded out as the vessel suffered another more serious bout of bone-rattling explosions. This time accompanied by a groaning so loud it could be heard over the blaring alarms.

  My Neural Implant initiated a countdown in the upper right-hand corner of my internal virtual HUD, Heads Up Display, small and out of the way so as to not impede my vision. It ticked slowly down, a digital manifestation viscerally representing the end of my short life.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…” I kept repeating the word as my mantra over and over like a metronome as I got up from the deck and hurried as fast as I could to the back of the kitchen and my station.

  Various foodstuffs, ingredients, and utensils were strewn about my previously immaculate workspace. And my boots crunched over the littered deck as I sped to my station. Less than a minute had gone by but my racing heart and quaking surroundings made it feel like an eternity.

  Suddenly, I was at my station and reaching for my father’s handcrafted leather-bound chef’s knife case when I froze. The beautifully stitched whorl patterned case was still on my prep table but not in its proper place. It was sitting open on the corner of the prep table sans one blade.

  Not only was it missing my favorite knife but it was halfway off the table and about to fall. I dashed forward and grabbed it right on time just as it started to teeter and fall. With no time to feel relieved I then cast about the area with my eyes scanning for the missing knife while time ticked ominously by in my periphery.

  Then I saw the familiar metallic glint of my knife blade quickly followed by my Neural Implant highlighting the tool with a soft semi-translucent blow glow. I dropped to my knees and shoved some food debris and prep towels out of the way revealing the object of my search.

  A mother of pearl handle inlaid in silver and gold filigree with jade accents along the grips combined with a handcrafted ten-inch blade that rippled and sparkled under the flashing emergency lights like a rainbow stuck in the red color spectrum. It was forged from meteorites by one of the most famous Japanese sword makers in the history of humanity, Goro Nyudo Masamune.

  I’d always questioned my father’s story about the knife set, like why would a famous historic sword maker make a chef’s knife set? Did they even have that style of knives back then? He always shook his head at my questions and told me the same thing every time.

  His story was that we were the great, great, great, great, great, great, great descendants of the legendary sword maker on my father’s side. The knife set was actually a collection of historic blades that were passed down and added to for generation after generation.

  The set started with a Bunka then a Gyutou was added. Followed by a Sujihiki then an Aogami Yanagiba, a Nakiri Bocho, a Honesuki, and then most recently a Petty. For some reason, there was a Tanto as well but my father said that was a gift from an old family friend so we were obligated to have it as part of the set.

  The fact that there was a short sword-style blade as part of the knife kit meant there was more to the story than my father told me and I always meant to ask but never got the chance. The AI’s countdown jogged me from my melancholic musing and impressed the need for me to hurry, the numbers in my periphery aiding the AI’s voice. I put the knife back in its case with its brethren and held it tight as I took off sprinting towards the Mess Hall exit.

  “1:59… 1:58.. 1:57…” The AI intoned like the harbinger of death.

  The doors slid open and I took off into the corridor at full speed, now that the way was unblocked by any crew members, as most or all of them had already made it to the escape pod bay. I was probably the only dumbass not already gone or abandoning ship.

  “Ryo!” Ensign Mallory called from the entrance to the escape pod bay. She was standing by the doorway frantically waving me on as I sprinted towards her down the roiling corridor.

  “Sonya, you waited,” I said breathlessly, as made it to her just as the AI’s countdown hit the thirty-second mark.

  “No time. Go!” She practically yelled in my face as she pushed me through the portal following behind me as fast as her tiny well-muscled legs could carry her.

  I couldn’t believe I was even entertaining thoughts like that in this situation. The human mind is a crazy thing. I shook my head to clear it as we sprinted together down towards the last escape pod that was left, which just happened to be at the far end of the bay.

  Time slowed down and it felt like every second the AI called out, a minute or even an hour went by. I know for a fact that I ran faster than I had ever run in my entire life but it felt like I was moving at a turtle’s pace in my mind. The escape pod bay shook like an earthquake was happening in space. The deafening sound of grinding and tearing metal along with explosion after explosion rang out over the AI’s countdown.

  And then suddenly time sped back up going back to normal and we arrived at the sole remaining escape pod with just fifteen seconds and counting to go. Thankfully,
the escape pod was already powered up and ready to launch. Due to it already being half full containing the Captain and the Executive Officer.

  I didn’t even hesitate at the surprise passengers. I just plopped myself as gracefully as a falling sack of potatoes into the closest seat and began strapping in with Sonya just a second behind me. The escape pod door was already closing before she was even fully inside.

  “Strap in Ensign! Cookie, glad you could join us,” Captain Orosio said dryly, or at least as dryly as he could while making himself heard over the alarm, the AI, and constant explosions, his Texas twang making light of the grave situation.

  The escape pod hatch finally clicked shut and the Captain punched the launch button.

  “Hold on to your butts!” Captain Orosio shouted at the same moment our escape pod’s boosters fired, slamming us all into our seats while our faces and cheeks were peeled back by the force of the launch.

  “3… 2… 1…” The AI finished the countdown.

  “We’re not gonna make it!” Major Stevens yelled through gritted teeth and the g-forces that pushed on his face.

  “The hell we aren’t!” Captain Orosio yelled in response.

  “Time elapsed, core meltdown imminent, prepare for ship destruction.” The AI sounded in the escape pod’s cabin.

  For a brief second as our escape pod rocketed away from our now abandoned spaceship, the universe went thunderously silent. A brief moment of peace before a hurricane of tumultuous sound and light descended upon our tiny escape pod. Sonya and I locked eyes for just a moment and shared a small sad smile.

  And then the universe exploded…

  CHAPTER 2

  There was one time when I was a child that I almost died. Well, there were quite a few times that I almost died but that isn’t the point. There was one time in particular that I came as close to dying as I can remember. When I was four years old my father took me on a fishing trip to a beach with a long jetty that ran out into the ocean.