Purity Read online

  “Twice daily we had vitamin and protein paste to supplement our nutrient drinks.” K made a face. “If that’s what you mean by food then I would rather not have any. I never liked that paste very much.”

  “Oh, I think we can do a little bit better than protein paste. Come on.” Boone led her further up the hall until they ended back at the mess hall. He was glad to see that no one else was up and bitching about breakfast being late. Loki, especially, could be a picky eater though when he cooked he expected them all to eat Erian high holiday food which was much too frou-frou for Boone’s taste. He preferred plain old home cooking—the same recipes that had been handed down by his ancestors from Earth-that-was. Especially for breakfast.

  “What are we supposed to do?” K asked.

  “Fix breakfast for ourselves and the rest of the crew. Don’t worry, you’ll like it.” Boone was already rummaging in the cold storage unit for the ingredients he wanted.

  K walked over and tapped the food simulator experimentally. “Why don’t we just use this? Isn’t it what Mom used to make that strange sweet drink—the hawt shauklat you gave me last night?”

  “Hot chocolate,” Boone corrected her. “And the food sim doesn’t make anything nutritious—it only simulates the taste and texture of what you want without giving you the actual substance. As far as your body is concerned, you might as well be eating or drinking water. Not exactly the breakfast of champions.”

  K frowned. “What will we do then?”

  “We’ll cook. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon. How does that sound?”

  “I have no idea. What do you want me to do?”

  “Here,” Boone said. “Let me show you…”

  To her credit, he found K was a hard and willing worker even though she obviously had no idea what she was supposed to be doing. Boone put her to work cracking the eggs into a bowl and whipping them with a whisk while he made the pancake batter.

  Of course, this meal might be handed down from his ancestors but he doubted anyone from Earth-that-was would recognize the ingredients he was using to make the familiar fare. He only used two eggs even though he was cooking for four—himself, K, Mom, and Loki. That was because the eggs were from hens genetically modified to withstand the heavy G-forces of Colossus. By Earth-that-was standards they would have been about the size of an ostrich egg—an extinct bird Boone had only read about. Also, the flour in the pancake mix was ground from spliced wheat and the ‘bacon’ was actually strips of pre-cooked porcine substitute. But it was close enough as far as Boone was concerned and as the smells of cooking began to fill the small mess hall, his mouth was watering to taste his efforts.

  K seemed interested in the food as well. “That smells…different,” she remarked as Boone flipped another pancake onto the large oval serving platter.

  “Different as in good?” He raised an eyebrow at her.

  “I don’t know.” She frowned. “But when I smell it, I start to salivate and…and I feel strange here.” She put one hand over her flat stomach. “Hollow somehow. Empty.”

  Boone was delighted. “You’re hungry, that’s what you’re feeling. Your suit was probably shooting you up with appetite suppressants along with everything else. How else could they keep you from ever eating anything?”

  “What’s hungry?” K seemed honestly curious and Boone was glad to see that for once she didn’t try to deny that her suit had been giving her meds.

  “It’s that hollow feeling inside. Your stomach is sending messages to your brain to let you know it’s time to eat. Here, try a bite.” He tore off a tiny piece of warm pancake and held it in front of her mouth. “Come on, darlin’, open up.”

  Hesitantly, K parted her lips. Boone popped the shred of pancake into her mouth before she could change her mind and then watched expectantly.

  At first she let it sit there on her tongue but then she seemed to get the idea. Slowly, she began to chew and a strange expression came over her delicate features. “It’s sweet,” she said, swallowing at last. “But not as sweet as the shauklat. And it’s warm and soft between my teeth. I like it,” she concluded at last, looking up at him.

  “Wait until you try the bacon.” Boone tore off a piece of that and fed it to her before she could protest. K chewed again and her eyes went wide.

  “Salty. And crispy. It crunches when I chew it.”

  “That’s bacon for you.” Boone grinned. He hadn’t expected to like having to keep K near him constantly—for one thing she was the enemy and for another she didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor. But this was actually fun.

  He’d always enjoyed cooking and introducing others to good food but to actually introduce someone to the entire concept of food was completely different. It was almost as though K was a baby or a child that hadn’t been allowed to mature and she was just now seeing the universe through fresh eyes. I always wanted to be a father, Boone thought dryly as he coaxed her to try the scrambled eggs. But this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

  He didn’t really see her as a child, though, despite her asexual appearance and unfamiliarity with things he considered basic and everyday. There was too much of the trained killer in her for that. And she had a woman’s self-assured grace and confidence, even if she didn’t have any curves to go with them.

  “So you like it?” he asked, giving her another piece of pancake, this time dipped in simulated maple syrup.

  “I do. It’s strange but I really do.” She looked thoughtful. “In fact—”

  “What the hell is she doing here?”

  They both looked up to see Loki standing in the doorway. He was dressed in his usual flamboyant attire with a gold laminate cross-cut shirt and tight blue flack pants tucked into his gold and white boots. Fancy clothes aside, it was the scowl on his face that worried Boone.

  “K’s helping me make breakfast,” he said mildly, hoping to defuse the situation.

  “You’re letting her touch the food? Great, just great.” Loki threw up his hands. “Why not just hand her a plasma rifle and draw a target on all our heads while you’re at it, Boone? Or better yet, hand her a bottle of poison in case she didn’t bring enough of her own.”

  “She’s not poisoning your damn breakfast, Loki. She didn’t even understand the concept of food until about half an hour ago. All her life she’s lived on nutrient drinks and protein paste.”

  Loki’s gold ringed eyes widened. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s true.” K stepped forward, her eyes flashing. “I have never tasted solid food until Boone gave me some just now. And if I were going to kill you, I would not choose such a cowardly method as poison. There is no honor in such treachery.”

  “There’s no honor in attacking an unarmed ship, either, but you did that,” Loki shot back. “Chall is dead because of your honorable methods.”

  To Boone’s surprise K actually looked slightly ashamed of herself. He wondered if she realized she was showing more and more emotion as time passed without her suit.

  “I did not wish to kill those aboard your vessel,” she said quietly. “I wanted to take the lot of you to the pshalite mines. But my commanding officer ordered that you must all die. He believes Erians are so depraved they cannot even make good slaves.”

  “And now you find out you’re one yourself. Ha!” Loki gave her a bitter grin. “That must really burn your hide—Princess Purist a filthy Erian.”

  K took a step forward, her black-on-black eyes narrowing dangerously. “I am not like you.”

  “No, you’re not. I’m not a soulless killing machine.”

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough. Break it up.” Boone stepped between them and put a hand on each of their shoulders. Loki was stiff with anger but what really worried Boone was the tension he could feel coursing through K’s slender frame. Loki could handle himself in a fight but K was a trained killer and Boone was betting she could be lethal, even without her suit.

  “I don’t like this,” Loki said, speaking to Boone bu