He’d managed to put aside his pique with Niko and her recklessness. The Plerium might represent the last of their cash, but she wouldn’t have bet that way if she hadn’t thought Dabry would win the bet for her. The thought simultaneously warmed and irritated him; he forced it fully into the warmed section and breathed out slowly, letting the last of his irritation seep away.

“Well,” he said, “first, let’s determine what raw materials we have to work with. Ship, what food do you have?”

“There are replicator blocks aboard sufficient for six months,” the ship said. Its voice came as always from the wall, but Dabry noticed that the biomachines with him were also speaking the words, their mouths moving silently.

“What plant stuffs do you produce aboard?”

“None.”

Dabry’s jaw worked briefly. “None of the plants used in your air filtration system are edible?”

The ship was nonplussed. “They are there to clean the air, not to be eaten.”

“Mmm,” Dabry said. It was a gentle sound that would have made any soldier who knew him uneasy. “Very well. We have replicator blocks. What cooking apparatus do we have access to?”

“I have three Fancher replicators, freshly serviced,” the ship said, experiencing pride. They were the highest end around, a mere four decades ago.

“And?”

The pride ebbed. “What else is needed?”

“Surfaces on which to prepare the food and ways to alter its temperature, for a start,” Dabry said. “Very well. Some of that we can improvise perhaps.”

“I have remembered a useful spice resource,” the ship said.

Dabry’s eyebrows rose in optimism.

“Arpat preferred his food past replicator spice levels,” the ship said. “I have over a dozen flavors of hot sauce aboard. They are stored in his quarters.”

Dabry knuckled his forehead with one of his hands while the other three sought one another as though for comfort. “Very well,” he said. “I’m going to need all the luggage I brought aboard.”

He glanced around. “Can you expand this room by three or four square meters more?” Glancing up at the ceiling a few inches from his nose, he added, “And perhaps raise the ceiling even farther.”

The ship performed all these requests, still uncertain what to make of all of this. The creature known as Dabry moved with assurance and confidence; he apparently had little doubt that he could produce a meal worthy of winning the bet, even under these supposedly adverse conditions. The ship was not sure whether that was admirable or foolish, but the point was moot, it told itself. The facilities were not subpar, no matter what any of them had implied.

Nonetheless it continued observing.