VI

The cafeteria crowd had already begun to thin out by the time Jacen and Naomi came around. It was, if one was referring to Earth-time, just after lunch. Most the people had since gotten their meals, scarfed it down, and filed out. So much was the routine.

Naomi entered the shortening line with Jacen behind her. There wasn't a distinct aroma given off by the food today, just an odorless scent of steam with a hint of grain. Her pallet wasn't in the mood for the menu today, but it was either this or nothing. She had a few sweet-nothings stashed away in her bunk that she could've went back and snacked on, but they weren't fulfilling. Her gut needed some real food. Food Mamá used to prepare: Ajiaco, Lechona when the relatives came over, and Changua for breakfast. And her favorite dish, that Abuela used to make so well, was Bandeja Paisa with Tres leches cake for dessert.

It wasn't until Jacen nudged her shoulder that she realized she was holding up the line. She made up the gap in a few strides, catching a few sidelong looks from the others in the process. Everyone wanted to know, she guessed. What were the Grunts up to? Were they coming after them? Were they safe? Their looming, "are we going to be okay?" stares irritated her in a way she couldn't quite explain. In the grand scheme of things, no, they weren't okay, but they had relative safety for now. She could hear the murmurings behind her as she shuffled forward—their fears, their apprehension of what to expect, their families, the vocal groaning and explosive sighing. Whatever. She put it out of her mind as she was next in line.

"Faraji," she greeted with as much false vigor as she could muster. "How's it?"

A slender middle-eastern man raised his dispassionate eyes, estimating the remaining food as a few more people filed in behind Jacen. He centered his focus on Naomi with limited interest. He reached for one of the plastic bowls on the drying rack. "Same 'ole junk." He held the bowl underneath the spigot of one of the two freestanding food containers and turned the knob. A white, creamy substance drained from the spigot and into the bowl, having the consistency to that of over-diluted oatmeal. He saw the distaste that came over Naomi's face as he dropped a plastic spoon in the bowl.

"Sorry. We're running low on the good stuff," he said. "Gotta dial everything back for a while."

Naomi accepted the bowl, denying the urge to snatch it and chuck it across the room. "What happened to the double-rations allotted to combatants? This'll barely feed us."

Faraji gave a nonchalant shrug. He didn't want to argue today. "That privilege is waived if the conditions worsen, which they have. We all have to make sacrifices. You don't like it? Take it up with Rey and the A.I. This was his call. Now, if you don't mind, I have more people to feed."

A boiling rage welled up inside Naomi. The temptation to retaliate surged through her. She looked over his shoulder at the ten or so people in line, their eyes seemingly echoing the same incentive if she didn't move alone. There was nothing more he could say. His allotment was given. Had to accept it.

Jacen watched her walk away without another word to find a vacant table. He adjusted the tan cap on his head that was heavily tattered, pulling the brim just above his eyes. A bowl of food, if you could call it that, was placed in his hands with a look of growing frustration in Faraji's eyes.

"You gonna give me hell, too?"

"We all have to make sacrifices, right?" he echoed and went on his way.

He went over to the table where Naomi was sitting and sat down beside her. She wasn't eating, despite the very vocal protest from her stomach. Loss of appetite, he knew. He didn't say anything at the moment, just shoved a spoonful of the goop in his mouth. There was no use chewing the stuff. It was simply an energizer, a combination of vitamins and minerals to keep the body going for hours. The taste hung somewhere between bland oatmeal and honey. It was available for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Never spoiled. There wasn't much variety beyond that, just rice, dried and salted meats, unfulfilling ready-made meals, and MREs. If you wanted quality meals, you imagined it.

Jacen didn't mind it too much. The crap did what it was supposed to do. It was better to be grateful for what you had then have nothing at all. He and Naomi knew that better than anyone, but he understood her frustration. Sometimes you just wanted something to go your way. He had another spoonful, taking a quick sweep of the room with his eyes. The chatter was at a minimum, an exchange of words here or there. No laughter. It was the norm. The tail end of the lunch rush was always comprised of the workers, the combatants, and generally anyone who had a consistent job to perform to keep the place running.

They often looked at Jacen in the corners of their accusing, judgmental eyes. It was a common theme. There was an unwritten code between them—UNSC associated with UNSC and refugees remained with fellow refugees. It was a certain clique system that Jacen didn't particularly care for. They hadn't gone out of their way to get to know him, but as long as they did their jobs then it didn't matter to him. That's how it was, but Jacen wasn't going to be a mediator. He would take allies where he could get them.

Naomi finally started eating, taking in a half-spoonful at a time. She grunted, reached into her leather brown jacket to retrieve a sugar packet she'd taken from the coffee line. Tearing it open, she sprinkled it over the food and mixed in.

Jacen looked over, smirked. "You couldn't get me one? Scandalous, just scandalous."

"I didn't want to introduce sugar into your diet." She took a taste test. Good enough. "You being on your period and all."

Jacen sniggered, took a sip from his juice carton.

Naomi shook her head with a humorless laugh. "We put our lives on the line and they cut our rations. Outstanding."

"Mm." Jacen licked the remnants of his meal from his fingers. "You heard Faraji. We're running low. Couldn't expect the food to last forever, right?"

Naomi knew that; she just didn't expect them to be redlining this soon. They had enough foodstuffs to last 10 years plus, easy. Then again, who would've thought they would've been three years away from that? Couldn't fathom it. "Just wouldn't mind some variety."

"I hear you," nodded Jacen. "If it makes you feel any better, I have some saltines and peanut butter in my room. You're welcome to it."

She glared at him accusingly. "Don't patronize me, Jacen."

Jacen stood up, collecting his bowl and empty juice carton. "Don't say I never offered."

Naomi watched him leave in her peripheral, uttering an expletive out of earshot. She forced down the rest of her meal out of necessity and pushed the bowl to the side before pulling her obsidian hair back into a loose ponytail. Arms folded, she rested her head on the table with eyes shut. Her body finally unclenched from the tension brought on by the Grunts. She just wanted a shower and a few hours' sleep.

"Buenos tardes, mamacita."

So much for silence.

Naomi raised her head, looking into the blue, owl-like eyes of man of medium-build in hunter green coveralls. If her day hadn't gone to hell, it certainly did now. "Can I help you, Aaron?"

Aaron Polanski sat down at the table with a closed-mouth smile, resting his forearms before him. He examined Naomi with inquisitive eyes, jumping from the reddening blotches and cuts around her face and arms. "Heard you and Pearce stirred up a hornet's nest today?"

Word travelled fast. How he knew was beyond Naomi. Or maybe he didn't and just wanted to see what she'd day. At any rate, a quick look around the room revealed a few curious stares and open ears. Jeez, did Aaron know anything about discretion? She leaned forward, out of earshot from the others and close enough to smell the fading coffee on Aaron's breath. "This isn't the time or the place for this kind of talk. Wouldn't want to start a panic, right?"

Aaron leaned back from her face, considering it. He saw the stares, the cattycornered way they sat to listen in on the words spoken from the fighters. They had the inside knowledge, something inaccessible from the casual outsider. They were tasked to keep everyone safe and alive for another day. Aaron ran his thumb across his brow. "Right. Well, my guys collected the weapons you raided. Good find. We don't have much ammo for the carbines, almost nothing for needlers, but we're good on plasma pistols." He let out a small chuckle. "Looks like they put up a helluva fight, though."

"Almost makes you think they don't like us," Naomi humorlessly quipped. She dumped her spoon in the bowl and prepared to leave. The energy needed to conversate with Aaron was well above what she had at the moment. She knew what he wanted to know every detail about the raid, of which he was entitled to; but he would have to wait.

Jacen came back to the table, nibbling on a toothpick wedged in the edge of his mouth. He caught Aaron's eye and ceased chewing on the spear of wood in his teeth. "Aaron."

"What's goin' on, Pearce?" replied Aaron. "I was just letting Naomi know we got the weapons. We plan on training some new guys soon. Let me know if you're game."

Naomi got up and walked away. "Nice chat, Aaron." She glanced up at Jacen. "Later."

"Yeah, later." Jacen returned his attention to Aaron and attempted to disguise his disinterest. "I'll sleep on it."

"Cool," Aaron nodded.

Jacen left it at that and began to make his exit, vying for some well needed privacy. He didn't make it through the doorway before he was stopped.

"Yo, Pearce! Grab a smoke?"

It was as close to outside as one could get. A small, cube of a room that was nothing but wall-to-wall windows with smeared, water-blotched glass. It looked out across the two buildings of the camp, the sloth-like clouds casting an ever-present rust-orange haze across the lifeless easel of browns of various tints.

Aaron couldn't stand it. He sat reversed on a metal folding chair, arms resting on the backrest with a smoking cigarette between his fingers. A splash of green or blue would've done the moon wonders on the eyes, instead it was an eye-sore and internally wrenching to him. If God was the Master Painter, he certainly must've went through a melancholy period when He made Titan. No life sustainability, frigid temperatures, incessantly long days, and seasons that lasted over seven Earth-years. A dream if you were a mutant snowman.

He inhaled the nicotine, feeling the satisfying burn in his chest before blowing out the smoke. "Y'know, with the right elements, gases, dust particles, and no clouds not as thick as my aunt's Judy's waistline, we could be looking at an entirely different sky. Maybe one with color. Probably wouldn't be blue, but it'd be something."

Jacen looked over at him, fiddling with his lighter in his hands. In one sentence Aaron could always describe his entire makeup, and it was always random. Jacen liked random. Random meant unpredictable. Unpredictable people were dangerous, for Jacen himself prided himself on being unpredictable as consistency made you a target, a creature of habit. Habits could be studied and used against you. They never canceled each other out, unpredictable people; it only dissolved into rampant chaos with, of course, unpredictable outcomes. There was a certain thrill about it that he couldn't explain. Naomi never understood it.

"When did you become an expert in meteorology?"

Aaron shrugged. "Never have. I read it back in college." He inhaled again. "Tried to impress some girl. She was one of those environmentalists: recycled everything, low-emission lifestyle, vegan. Athletic-type. She drove this hatchback hybrid, took four or five bucks to fill it up."

"And this means what to me?" Jacen flatly responded.

Aaron shook his head in disapproval. "Jeez, you're not good at small talk."

Jacen flipped his lighter open, watching the flame flickered back and forth from his breath. "Maybe because I like the main course instead of the appetizer."

"You're 'bout as bad as that little Spanish firecracker of yours." Aaron cleared his throat and stubbed out the cigarette on one of the stacks of crates that lined the room's walls. "What jumped her apple cheeks anyway? She's fierier than usual."

Jacen gave him a change the subject, you're not privileged to such information look.

Aaron held up his hands, palms out. "Fine, whatever. She didn't want to discuss the raid earlier, something about being in the public. I was hoping you'd be more… forthcoming. We're a team, remember?"

Team? That was a strong word coming from Aaron. If he meant they were a united front of sorts, then he was sorely mistaken. They were just two men among others who were sandwiched together in a crap situation with even crappier odds. Nothing more, nothing less. But they were in the same vein when it came to being Rey's own tiny army of makeshift soldiers, so he had a valid point… albeit a thin one.

"We found something in there," Jacen started, gaining Aaron's undivided attention. "Something that's been keeping them alive all this time. It's some type of… eel-looking thing that's manufactured conditions inside that compound that's perfect for those little cretins."

Aaron nodded along with the words. He could believe it. Aliens weren't fictional anymore, so he was up to believe anything. If there was an alien living among the Grunts that was capable of providing a functioning environment, he was sure Pearce was telling the truth. He continued to absorb what Jacen was telling him, about how the alien had no reaction to them and presented no threat to them at all. A non-lethal Covenant? Now that was the stuff of dreams. If seeing was believing, then Aaron wanted an up-close and personal examination.

"What's the play? Rey has to have something up in the works."

"If he does, I don't know anything about it." Jacen stepped down from the crates he was sitting on and pocketed his lighter. "Mum's the word, okay?"

Aaron pretended to zip his mouth shut and gave a thumb's up. Jacen walked out, leaving a pack of cigs that was a fourth of the way gone. Aaron grabbed them from atop the crate, extracted one, and stuck one between his lips. He leaned forward in the chair, eyes searching aimlessly through the glass before settling on the floor. A grievous sigh followed as he buried his face in his hands. "We're screwed."