![]() Try to imagine how those beings would feel to discover they’d violated their principles for an overpriced appetizer.” It’s not as though we’re talking about beings eating one another for survival. “Then how did you miss learning that most non-Neblokans abhor cannibalism!” Huido restrained the urge to snap his lower pair of massive handling claws with considerable difficulty, and continued in what he hoped was a more reasoning tone. “The certification cannot be counterfeited!” You did pass, didn’t you?” This with a suspicious rumble.Ĭhef Neltare looked shocked. Still, you did pass the Trade Pact certification. “I understand your species’ culinary traditions are more–” the Carasian struggled to find a word in Comspeak to encompass proudly cooking one’s parents for the ceremonial first feast of the next generation and settled for: “– liberal than those of other Trade Pact species. ![]() The incensed chef had already accounted for most of tonight’s entrées. Huido Maarmatoo’kk, owner of the famed Claws & Jaws, as well as what he hoped would prove a growing number of franchises throughout this quadrant of space, lowered his great claws to the floor in a conciliatory posture he trusted the Neblokan could read and thus forestall any further launches from the menu. Seen in the light, his gleaming black carapace and jointed arms were streaked with a granular pink substance of highly suspicious origin and several wilted sprigs of garnish. “I assure you, Master Chef, semantics are very much the issue here,” the Carasian took a careful sidestep to move clear of the stove and into what had seemed a generous aisle way, until he narrowed it with his bulk to barely passable. “Semantics, I tell you! I spit at semantics.” An glob of bile-yellow sizzled across the stovetop. ![]() “Perhaps–a special menu? To highlight your vast and undeniable talents in some, ah, less controversial way?” The Food Inspectors alone–” A huge shape rose from behind the stove, head plates pulsing with agitation. There simply isn’t a restaurant on the station that will allow sapient-based dishes to be served. Believe me, Chef Neltare, I mean no insult. “I’ll leave today! Now! Before supper! You will have not only no Master Chef, but no clientele at all, Hom Huido!” “You try to confuse my genius with mere semantics?” the Neblokan shouted, reaching for another bowl of doomed salad. ![]() There were, after all, only three Trade Pact Certified Multi-Species Master Chefs on Plexis. While it wasn’t a particularly impressive display–evolution and culture conspiring to produce a species prone to the “find a crevice large enough to hide your head and hopefully more” philosophy of conflict resolution–this Neblokan had the bottomless courage that came of knowing oneself to be indispensable. The Neblokan standing in the middle of the aisle between the stove and the sous-station glared back, his shoulders forward and flared to their maximum width. “We can serve Humans liver paté–we certainly can’t serve them Human liver paté. I mean–think of the clientele.” There was a clanging sound, as though pots had fallen loose inside a cupboard. “Whatever name we use for your new paté…I can’t add it to the menu. “But, Chef Neltare,” a voice more accustomed to booming than pleading emerged faintly from somewhere behind the eyes. Until dozens formed an anxious, bead-like row. Now, they exchanged worried looks as the argument grew suddenly–and ominously–quiet.Ī cautious eye, gleaming black, peered over the edge of the mammoth, steaming hot stove. Suffice to say the regular staff had long ago run, and in one case, slithered, out the service entrance to where they could listen at the door in relative safety. What appeared to be body parts from several different species had been tossed in every direction, their flight paths marked by bloody trails of red, ochre, and corrosive green. Knives protruded hilt-first from cupboard doors. This one, in the rear of The Claws & Jaws: Interspecies Cuisine, looked like a scene from a low-budget horror vid. Excerpt from To Trade the Stars (No spoilers) PrologueĪ kitchen can be a dangerous place for an argument.
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