Episode 02: Mudd Pie

Inspired by Mudd’s Women, a story by Gene Roddenberry and teleplay by Stephen Kandel.

TALOS is personal project, just for fun: a short-story retro-imagining of classic Star Trek original series episodes, told from the perspective of the unseen crewmembers down in the lower decks.

GOOD FOOD IN SPACE, IT AIN’T EASY. We got a bank of freezers for the real stuff just off the galley, but let’s face it, nothing tastes right after being frozen for months. We also got a big old pantry of dry goods, and when we hit a planet with food that humans can eat, I stock up on fresh veggies and sometimes even meat, but it never lasts long.

The food replicators can make anything that’s been programmed into their menu, but really, y’all? That stuff ain’t fit to eat. You know what it’s made from, right? Amnotic sludge stored in a tank down on Deck Eighteen. Order up a replicated turkey sandwich? It ain’t bread and mayonnaise and turkey and lettuce, no sir, it’s amnotic sludge from Deck Eighteen. Falafel and hummus? Nope, amnotic sludge. Wonton soup? Amnotic sludge. Mashed potatoes and red-eye gravy? Sludge. No matter what you order from that fancy computer, it’s just one ingredient: sludge. And really, nobody likes to think on it, but everybody knows how that sludge tank down on Deck Eighteen gets refilled. A starship is a closed system. Food gets eaten, processed by your gut, pooped out, then processed again by the ship’s plumbing back into amnotic sludge. When you eat a replicated meal, there ain’t no telling how many times it’s been eaten before.

—

I USED THE LAST OF THE BACON this morning. I almost cried. Saved five strips for the captain. Fried ‘em up nice, then made his eggs in the bacon grease as a treat. I told him it was the last rasher until we hit another Earth colony. He came back into the kitchen after he ate and thanked all of us. Told us he’s from Iowa. Told us his grandma is a dairy farmer, has a big old place out in the country near Des Moines. Says he worked on the farm in high school, making cheddar cheese. He’s legitimate, bona-fide. But just a kid, really, in his thirties. I know my rating duties don’t exactly spell it out, but my most important job is to keep him happy.

I’ve been doing this job for a long time, and I know the old saying is true: if the captain ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. I’m just doing my part. I may be a simple cook, y’all, from a small town in North Carolina, but I believe in the Starfleet. I love this ship, this crew. Humans gotta explore; we can’t help it. God baked it into us. It’s our righteous destiny. But explorers also gotta to eat, just like anybody. I feed their bodies, and I do my best to feed their souls. We humans best explore the stars with fire in our hearts and good food in our bellies.

—

SAW SOME ACTION TODAY. Some damn fool merchant captain got in trouble and we had to follow him into an asteroid field to rescue him. I knew something was up when the galley lights kept going in and out. Turns out the fool was trying to run from us. Anyway, they say we beamed him on board just before his whole ship blew up, but we burned out our lithium crystals trying to protect him. Fool. The good news is, we’re headed for a mining colony to make repairs. Rigel 12. I looked it up. Not much there, but the computer says they have a greenhouse farm where I might be able to barter for some fresh food. I got my fingers crossed.

—

IT IS NOT MY LUCKY DAY. One of our ship drivers came in here for breakfast, says we barely made it to Rigel Twelve. Says our lithium crystals are in bad shape and there’s not enough juice for me to beam down to the planet. So much for the greenhouses and fresh vegetables. He says maybe after we get the lithium we need, and get the engines fixed, that maybe then I can go down. He didn’t seem very hopeful, though. Says it’s a real backwater place down there. A bunch of rough miners working lithium claims.

—

THAT MERCHANT CAPTAIN WE RESCUED came into the mess today along with his cargo. Turns out this man, he’s a real piece of work.  His cargo, y’all, was women. Women. Turns out he’s delivering mail-order brides to miners on Rigel Twelve. They got married by subspace radio, if you can believe it. Calls himself a love broker. Don’t that just take the cake. That boy Kyle who runs the transporters says the women were dressed like prostitutes when they beamed aboard. He said the merchant captain treated them like they were sacks of potatoes. I know his type. I’m old enough to have plenty of experience judging a person. This merchantman, he’s so full of himself that there’s room for nothing else inside him. Slick and sleazy. A predator. His name, it turns out, fits him good—it’s Mudd.

—

OUR CAPTAIN IS ON TO MR. MUDD. He’s put the man up on charges. Holding a captain’s mast hearing as we speak. I hear Mudd’s merchant license has been pulled and that he’s got a rap-sheet that stretches from here to Sol. One of the women came in here this morning. Her name is Magda. Pretty little thing, just a girl, maybe nineteen. I can tell from the way she holds herself that she’s from a tough background. She sat at a table in the corner, by herself. Some of the new nonrates were having breakfast at the next table. Staring at her. They’ve heard the stories about her and the rest of Mudd’s women. Rumors are spinning through both our ship’s hulls like potatoes in a blender. Was she a sex worker? Was she being trafficked against her will? Or is she really a mail-order bride, voluntarily here to marry a stranger? I mean, if you think on it, these miners will amass a fortune over a ten-year contract and then retire young and wealthy. A marriage contract means she’ll have claim over some of that fortune. But that don’t make it right. For lots of reasons.

She looks young and scared. I can’t know for sure, but I’m willing to bet that Magda’s story is not pleasant. Either she’s out here against her will, or she’s so desperate to escape her situation at home that she’s willing to pawn herself off to a complete stranger, a lithium roughneck on a barely-livable planet, months from civilization.

I waited on her myself. Went to her table with fresh ground, fresh brewed coffee. That, we got plenty of, I saw to it before we left drydock. I got us a five-year supply of vacuum-packed, stasis-treated coffee beans. Listen, y’all, a starship runs on lithium, coffee and nerves. I can’t do much about lithium, but I sure can help with the coffee and nerves.

“Good morning. I’m Janeel, chief cook in these parts. Got some fresh coffee here in this pot, and some hot pancakes back on the griddle. How about some breakfast?”

She looked up at me like she didn’t understand. Maybe she didn’t speak standard English. But then she nodded.

“Coffee would be nice.”

I put a mug in front of her. She didn’t look at me, just watched the coffee pour. When it hit the brim, she nodded, then gave me one of those sideways glances that a cat gives somebody it’s not sure it can trust.

“Thank you.”

I smiled at her. “Pancakes and maple syrup? We’re out of blueberries but I got some pecans I brought from back home in North Carolina I can sprinkle on there.”

“Where’s North Carolina?”

“It’s on Earth, honey. Where are you from?”

Her lips got tight. “I grew up on Tantalus.”

She looked me full in the face, as if daring me to react. I tried not to. Tantalus is a penal colony. A remote asteroid rehab facility for the criminally insane and untreatable. I didn’t ask how a girl might grow up on Tantalus. Maybe one of her parents was a prison guard or something.

“Bet that was fun,” I said.

She looked down into her coffee, then blew on it and took a sip. “It’s delicious.”

“Better not serve bad coffee on this ship. There’d be a mutiny. How about those pancakes?”

She nodded. I went back and made the girl a short stack. I sprinkled more pecans than normal, gave her a little extra butter and syrup. She was too skinny. Not healthy.

“Here you go.” I put the plate in front of her. She looked up at me when I didn’t leave. I gave her my best trust-your-grandmother Janeel look. “What are you doing out here?” I said it so the nonrates couldn’t hear.

Turns out people will trust their cook, even more than their bartender. Especially an old woman cook like me, with a smeared apron and holding a pot of coffee. I cultivate this image. I know this ship has counselors, but people will tell their cook things they’d never admit to a counselor. Ship’s confidant might not be in my job description, but it’s my favorite duty.

She shrugged. “Looking for something better, I guess.”

“That man Mudd, he promised you something better?”

I saw resignation in her eyes. She was too young to have that expression.

Now y’all, I don’t get mad very often, but I felt the holy fire rising in me, clawing up from my gut, all fiery and tight. I remember being a nineteen year old girl. I was stupid when I was nineteen, but I had my family looking out for me, making sure I never let my stupid run away with me. I bet this girl didn’t have anybody watching over her stupid.

Well, watching over stupid is what I do best. There’s 400 souls on this ship, and a whole bunch of them are the same age as this girl. I watch over all their stupid.

I decided to sit down at the table with her. She took a deep breath. She was wound up tighter than a clock spring. I looked her in the eye and whispered, “This Mudd. He ever mistreat you?”

She gave a little malicious snort. “No. Not like that. If he did, I would’ve slashed his throat.”

She wasn’t exaggerating, I could tell. She looked completely capable of slashing the man’s throat. She’d grown up on Tantalus, after all.

“But you don’t like him much, do you?”

She didn’t answer, but the way she ground her teeth told me everything. I nodded. “If it makes you feel better, he’s going before the mast today. Sounds like the captain’s going to put him in prison for a long time.”

Her eyes hollowed.

“What?”

“Mudd’s a criminal. He’s a wanted man. He’s going to prison.”

She put her coffee down. She was breathing hard, all of a sudden.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“If he goes to jail, what happens to us?”

I hadn’t thought about that. We’re a very long way from any of the established Earth colonies. If the captain took Mudd into custody, what would happen to Magda and the other women?

“I guess we’ll drop you off at an Earth base.”

“And then what?”

This girl had no home, nothing to return to. She believed being a wife to a random roughneck lithium miner was better than what she’d had before. And now, with the pirate Mudd in custody, there was nowhere for her to go. She was desperate. Of course she was, if she’d believed this man Mudd could be her salvation.

I put my hand on hers and kept my voice low. “This Mudd, honey, he’s a pimp. A con man. I know it, you know it too. You shouldn’t be out here. Do you have any family, anywhere? I can talk to the captain. We can help you.”

She jerked her hand away. She cursed. She pushed her coffee and pancakes away, spilling the coffee, then stood up and left the mess. The tables got quiet and everybody in the room stared after her.

“Well, damn,” I said to myself. I examined her uneaten breakfast. Maybe I could save the pecans.

—

I’VE BEEN ON THIS SHIP for twelve years and served under three captains, and this was only the third time I’d ever gotten off the turbolift on Deck Five. Senior officer’s quarters. I walked around the curved corridor until I found the door I wanted. It opened as soon as I pressed the doorbell. The captain was sitting at his desk. He looked up at me with surprise.

“Senior Chief Janeel? What can I do for you?”

I went inside. The door closed behind me.

—

I SAW MAGDA one more time. She nodded at me, but we didn’t speak as we passed in the corridor. She looked determined. Not happy: determined. This woman, young as she is, as eat up by nineteen-yea-old stupid as she is, is strong. Steel forged on Tantalus. Maybe she’ll be okay.

The captain told me he’d tried to convince the women on Mudd’s ship that they didn’t have to honor the marriage contracts arranged by Mudd. That the contracts they’d signed were a sham. That the fee he’d charged was utterly outrageous. That he’d deceived them.

It hadn’t mattered. All of them, including Magda, wanted to stay on Rigel Twelve. Nothing we can do about it, the captain told me. It’s what they say they want. They say they’re not being coerced. I have no choice but to honor their wishes. He seemed as frustrated and as angry as me. Don’t worry, he said. Mudd will get what’s coming to him.

Yes, he will, I thought. This man Mudd, he preys on the stupid in the young. There is no lower calling. In fact, there’s a special place reserved in hell for people like him.

—

MUDD’S WOMEN all beamed down this morning. The ship is repaired, and we’re leaving in an hour. Mudd is in the brig until we can deliver him to an Earth base. I go to visit him. He is surprised to see me. I introduce myself, ask him if he has any dietary requirements. I tell him I’ll be feeding him for the next month or two until we can deliver him to the authorities.  I smile and make nice to the sleazy bastard for fifteen minutes. I ask him if he likes pie. He says he loves pie. I tell him he’s in luck.

Pie is my specialty, I tell him.

—

WHO’S THE MOST powerful person on a starship? The captain, you say? Most people would say it’s the captain. The captain manages risk. The captain dispenses justice. The captain is judge and jury. The captain has power over life and death.

Fair enough.

But it ain’t the captain who dispenses the truest justice on a starship.

It’s the Chief of the Mess.

It’s me, y’all.

—

IT’S DARK DOWN on Deck Eighteen. Nothing but tanks and pumps and pipes and machinery. Not a soul comes down here unless there’s a problem. This is the ship’s bowels. Literally. I’m here for some raw, partially-processed amnotic sludge. The precursor to the stuff the food replicators use to make everything in its computerized menu from sushi to peanut butter. I find a relief valve on the supply side of the tank and crack it open, and let a bit of the stuff ooze into a jar, which I tightly cap. It stinks, y’all.

—

MUDD’S PIE will taste wonderful, that I guarantee. The captain may be judge and jury on this ship, but I’m the executioner. Well, maybe not executioner, but by the time I’m through with our guest, he’ll wish he was dead. My justice is swift and merciless.

Enjoy your pie, Mr. Mudd. It’s a long way to the next earth base.

Until then you’re mine.

The TALOS stories (so far…):

Episode 01: Delta Vega (Where No Man Has Gone Before)

Episode 02: Mudd Pie (Mudd’s Women)

Episode 03: The Countdown (The Corbomite Manuever)

Episode 4: Blood and Salt (The Man Trap, coming ???)

This is a work of fan fiction. It is a labor of love and is offered freely and generates no form of revenue for the author or anyone else. Star Trek is a registered trademark of Paramount Global  (previously ViacomCBS and/or Paramount Pictures and/or CBS Broadcasting, Inc.). The author is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Paramount or CBS.