Something From Home
Posted on Wed Aug 26th, 2026 @ 8:59am by Chloe de la Vega
Edited on on Wed Aug 26th, 2026 @ 9:21am
3,743 words; about a 19 minute read
Mission:
Episode 18 - The Edge of Darkness
Location: After 11 - Deck 11 - USS Pioneer
Timeline: MD004 2130 hrs
After-11 sounded wrong.
Chloe noticed it somewhere between pouring a synthehol whisky for a lieutenant from Engineering and watching another plate come back through the service return with most of its contents still on it. She glanced at the remains as she slid the drink across the bar, then looked up in time to catch a distracted thanks before the lieutenant wandered back towards his table.
Usually she'd have got something more for her trouble. A smile, a bit of cheek, perhaps an invitation delivered with considerably more confidence than its owner would possess the following morning. Chloe rarely accepted those, but she enjoyed collecting them all the same.
Tonight, she suspected she could have turned up naked and juggling and half the room wouldn't have noticed.
“Charming,” she murmured, dropping an abandoned glass into the washer beneath the counter.
After-11 wasn't quiet. The music still played beneath the low drift of conversation, drinks were being ordered and people occupied most of the tables, but the usual looseness had gone out of the place. By this point in an ordinary evening, uniform jackets would be hanging over chairs, somebody would be laughing loudly enough to annoy half the room and at least one table would have forgotten that rank existed outside the doors.
Instead, four Marines near the windows had somehow managed to sit together for nearly an hour without starting an argument about sport. Chloe knew three by name and the fourth well enough to remember his drink. One was slowly turning his glass between his hands while another had reduced the bread beside his untouched meal to a collection of increasingly tiny pieces.
She'd heard enough around the ship to know there were things happening beyond After-11 that nobody particularly wanted to discuss. Chloe didn't have the clearance to know all of it, and she wasn't interested in pretending otherwise. People generally told bartenders more than they meant to sooner or later. Until then, she had eyes.
The service return chimed again.
Chloe retrieved another nearly untouched plate and regarded it with growing offence. Someone had rearranged the vegetables sufficiently to suggest they'd at least considered eating them.
“Por favor,” she muttered, tipping it into the recycler. “At least insult it properly.”
A quiet laugh came from further along the bar. One of her regulars sat there with his glass nearly empty, looking tired enough that Chloe reached automatically for the bottle.
He covered the glass with one hand before she could pour.
“You're refusing a refill?” she asked.
“Think I'm done.”
Chloe studied him for a moment. “Should I call Medical?”
That finally drew a small smile.
“Better.” She put the bottle away without argument and pushed the bowl of snacks closer instead. “Although those don't count as dinner.”
“I ate earlier.”
Chloe glanced towards the service return.
He followed her gaze and grimaced. “Don't.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was thinking very loudly.”
That got another smile, enough that Chloe left him to it when someone further down the counter raised a hand.
“Un momento, handsome,” she called, already reaching for a clean glass.
Work carried her on for a while. Two drinks for a table by the viewport, coffee for an officer who looked as though sleep had become theoretical, and an argument with someone who insisted one particular bottle deserved to be called whisky. Chloe moved between them easily, remembering orders and names while keeping half an eye on the lounge.
But every time the service return sounded, she looked.
A sandwich missing two bites. Most of a pasta dish. A bowl of soup left long enough to develop the unpleasant skin replicated soup seemed almost proud of.
The next plate stopped her.
Chloe stood behind the bar examining something brown beneath something beige, accompanied by vegetables that looked thoroughly ashamed to be involved. She took the fork, prodded the centre once and pulled a face.
“All right.”
Maybe people weren't hungry. She could understand that. Whatever this was, however, wasn't helping.
She dumped the plate into the recycler and wiped her hands, her attention drifting towards the kitchen. For a fleeting second she caught something that wasn't there at all: garlic hitting hot oil, tomatoes softening in a pan, the sharp green smell of herbs crushed beneath the flat of a knife.
And a wooden spoon tapping the back of an impatient little hand.
Chloe stared at the kitchen doorway for a moment before looking back across After-11. The Marine was still dismantling his bread. The engineer still hadn't touched his whisky.
“Madre mía,” she murmured. “This is depressing.”
She crossed to the control panel and removed the evening menu from the table displays before taking the food replicator offline.
Someone noticed almost immediately.
“Chloe? The menu's gone.”
“I know.”
“Was that deliberate?”
She gathered her long black hair behind her head and tied it back. “Very.”
“So what are we supposed to eat?”
Chloe came around the end of the bar, already heading for the kitchen.
“You're not ordering anything.”
“That doesn't answer the question.”
“No, cariño, it does. You just don't like the answer.”
She pushed open the kitchen door.
“What are you doing?”
Chloe looked back at him, one hand still on the door, and this time the smile came easily.
“Cooking.”
Then she disappeared inside.
The kitchen door closed behind Chloe and dulled the lounge to a murmur.
For a few seconds she simply stood there, hands resting on her hips, looking around at a kitchen she knew almost as well as the bar outside. It was perfectly serviceable, gleaming, efficient and designed by people who apparently believed food preparation should resemble minor surgery. Chloe had spent enough time in it to make it behave more like a kitchen, although there were limits to what even she could do with Starfleet's fondness for spotless surfaces and equipment that beeped at her.
“All right,” she murmured, moving towards the cold storage. “Let's see what you've got.”
She hadn't planned a menu. That would have required admitting she'd decided to feed half the ship rather than merely becoming irritated with a replicator, and Chloe wasn't quite prepared to give herself that much credit.
Fresh vegetables came first, then chicken, stock, peppers, tomatoes, beans and anything else she thought she could bully into cooperating. She rejected one container after barely opening it, stole another from the back of the refrigeration unit and began laying everything across the preparation counter.
Her hands found a rhythm before her head caught up.
Knife against board. Turn. Slice. Sweep aside.
The first onion was halfway beneath the blade when Chloe stopped.
She stared at it.
“Absolutely not.”
The onion went back.
She could almost hear Selena's offended voice from years ago, appalled that her daughter might commit some unforgivable culinary crime simply because she had seen somebody on a cooking programme do it.
Cebolla? En mi arroz no, cariño. Quieres matar a tu madre?
Chloe smiled despite herself.
“Still dramatic, Mama.”
The words came out before she thought about them.
Her knife slowed.
Only for a moment.
Then the tomatoes were under it instead.
Soon the kitchen began to smell different. Oil warmed in broad pans, chicken browned, peppers softened at the edges and tomato reduced slowly into something rich enough that Chloe finally stopped resenting the room. She opened a container of herbs, crushed some between her fingers and frowned.
Rosemary.
That was better.
A memory came with it anyway.
She couldn't have been more than ten, perched on a stool in the restaurant kitchen because she'd insisted she was old enough to help. Selena had been working beside her while Charlie and Antony circled the preparation counter like poorly trained predators, waiting for something edible to stray within reach.
Antony's hand had appeared beside Chloe's elbow.
The wooden spoon in Selena's hand had struck his knuckles without her even looking.
Fuera.
He had protested innocence with half a piece of chicken already in his mouth.
Chloe remembered laughing so hard she'd nearly fallen from the stool.
The knife paused against the board.
She hadn't thought about that in years.
Or perhaps she had. Just never for very long.
Chloe scraped the peppers into a bowl with rather more force than necessary and reached for the next pan. “Right. Enough nostalgia. People are starving.”
Nobody answered, which was preferable.
She worked faster.
The rice went in later, spreading through the pans as stock took on colour around it. Chloe adjusted the heat, tasted, frowned, added seasoning and tasted again. Something still wasn't right.
She reached for the herbs.
Stopped.
Not yet, cariño.
Her hand remained suspended over the pan.
It was ridiculous. Three years, however many light-years from Valencia, and her mother could still stop her putting rosemary into a pan too early.
Chloe slowly put it back down.
“Fine.”
She could picture Selena's smug expression.
That was worse.
By the time the first pans were simmering properly, Chloe had somehow acquired enough food to feed considerably more people than she'd intended. There were roasted peppers waiting beside them, bread warming, two smaller dishes she'd started because apparently one bad decision required several accomplices, and a bowl of dressing she'd made entirely from memory.
She stood back and surveyed the damage.
“Madre mía.”
This had got out of hand.
Through the narrow service opening she could see part of After-11. Somebody had already noticed the smell. One of the Marines near the windows had turned in his seat, looking towards the kitchen with considerably more interest than he'd shown his dinner.
Another face appeared briefly at the opening.
“Chloe, what are you making?”
“Nothing.”
“It smells like something.”
“Then enjoy the mystery.”
The face disappeared.
Chloe shook her head and returned to the nearest pan, but there was a smile at the corner of her mouth now.
She tasted the stock once more.
Closer.
Not quite her mother's, but close enough to irritate her.
Chloe reached automatically towards the spice shelf, then hesitated again. For years she'd stood beside Selena and assumed there would always be another afternoon to ask what she'd done differently. Another Sunday in the restaurant. Another pan pushed towards her with a spoon and an instruction to taste.
Apparently she'd spent most of those opportunities arguing that she already knew.
“Idiot,” Chloe muttered.
Whether she meant herself at ten, herself at seventeen or herself now, she wasn't entirely certain.
The kitchen door opened behind her and somebody cautiously leaned through.
“Is it safe to come in?”
Chloe turned, wooden spoon in hand.
“No.”
The head vanished immediately.
She looked down at the spoon.
Then laughed.
That, at least, sounded familiar.
By the time Chloe finally opened the kitchen door again, the smell had done most of the advertising for her.
Several heads turned as she emerged carrying the first wide serving dish against one hip, steam curling from the rice and chicken beneath a scattering of peppers and herbs. Whatever discretion she might have intended had disappeared somewhere around the point she'd started a second pan.
“Before anybody asks, no, you cannot order something else,” she announced as she set it down on the bar. “Tonight you get what you're given, and you say thank you.”
Someone further along the counter peered suspiciously into the dish. “What is it?”
Chloe looked at him. “Food.”
“I can see that.”
“Good. We're making progress.”
She disappeared back into the kitchen and returned with another dish, then bread, roasted peppers and enough smaller plates that the bar rapidly stopped looking like somewhere people came to drink and started resembling the beginning of a family dinner nobody had realised they'd been invited to.
The first few approached cautiously.
Chloe watched a young officer take a serving, examine it as though Starfleet regulations might require a tricorder scan and finally taste it.
“Well?”
He was still chewing.
Chloe planted both hands on the counter. “Careful. Don't overwhelm me with enthusiasm.”
His eyebrows lifted. “That's actually really good.”
“Actually?”
He immediately reconsidered his choice of words.
Chloe smiled sweetly and handed him another piece of bread. “Go away.”
That did more for the room than anything she'd tried earlier.
Curiosity brought people towards the bar first, then the smell did the rest. Plates appeared in hands. Chairs shifted. Someone from the Marine table came over for four portions and returned several minutes later because apparently four had been an opening estimate rather than a firm requirement.
Chloe caught sight of the Marine who had spent most of the evening reducing his bread to crumbs. He was eating now, not much, but enough that she stopped checking.
She turned away before he could notice.
Within twenty minutes the lounge had changed without anybody announcing that it had. Conversations had begun travelling beyond individual tables again. Somebody called across the room to ask what another person thought of the food and received an opinion considerably louder than necessary. One uniform jacket had found its way onto the back of a chair, then another.
Chloe kept moving.
“Take the smaller plate, cariño. You've already been back twice.”
“I've not.”
“You think I don't count?”
“You said counting was important.”
Chloe pointed the serving spoon at him. “I'm beginning to regret educating people.”
A lieutenant waiting beside him laughed, and Chloe caught the sound more than the joke. It wasn't forced. Nobody looked guilty afterwards.
That was better.
She scraped the bottom of the first pan and realised with some alarm that she'd underestimated just how efficiently a room full of Starfleet personnel could consume free food.
“What exactly did you put in this?” somebody asked.
“If I tell you, you'll start having opinions.”
“I already have opinions.”
“Yes, I've noticed. Most of them are wrong.”
The officer grinned and moved off with his plate.
Chloe turned to replenish the bread and nearly walked straight into another patron waiting at the end of the counter.
“You made all this?”
She glanced towards the rapidly diminishing food. “Unless you think the replicator suddenly developed self-respect.”
“No, I mean properly. From scratch.”
“Mostly.”
He tasted what was on his fork, considering it for another second. “Where'd you learn?”
“My mum.”
The answer came before Chloe had even finished setting the bread down.
Her hand stopped against the basket.
It wasn't a particularly remarkable question, and the answer shouldn't have been remarkable either. She'd probably said those two words hundreds of times growing up. At school. To customers in the restaurant. To people who asked why a girl her age knew how to handle a kitchen better than some adults.
She just hadn't said them in a while.
The officer nodded towards his plate, oblivious to the half-second he'd accidentally stolen from her. “She taught you well.”
Chloe looked down at the bread.
“Yeah,” she said, quieter than before. “She did.”
Someone called her name from the other end of the bar.
Chloe's head came up immediately.
“Coming.”
She picked up the serving spoon and moved away, slipping straight back into the room before the memory could settle anywhere inconvenient.
By then the last of the first pan had gone, and the second wasn't looking particularly secure either. Chloe found herself serving, arguing, flirting and policing portion sizes with considerably more success than she'd had pouring drinks earlier.
The Engineering lieutenant from before had returned to the bar, his abandoned whisky apparently forgotten somewhere behind him.
He held out his empty plate.
Chloe looked at it, then at him.
“More?”
He gave her what was presumably meant to be his most innocent expression. “Please?”
Chloe stared for a second before the corner of her mouth twitched. “Careful, Oliver. Any minute now you're going to start asking if I have somewhere warm for you to sleep.”
A couple of people nearby laughed and the lieutenant looked down at his uniform, then back at her. “I don't think the orphan look works for me.”
“No,” Chloe agreed, already spooning another portion onto his plate. “Far too well fed.”
“I wasn't five minutes ago.”
“Keep talking and you won't be again.”
That shut him up, although the grin remained.
“See?” Chloe slid the plate back towards him. “Much better.”
Behind him, the four Marines near the windows had started arguing about something. Chloe couldn't make out the subject from the bar, but one of them pointed accusingly across the table while another laughed through a mouthful of food.
Chloe heard it.
She didn't look over this time.
She simply reached for the next plate.
The rush didn't end so much as gradually lose interest in being a rush.
By the time Chloe realised nobody was waiting for food anymore, the second pan had been scraped almost clean and the bread basket contained one lonely piece that looked as though it had survived through administrative error. After-11 had settled into something much closer to itself again. Not quite normal, and Chloe wasn't going to insult anyone by pretending a decent meal had somehow fixed whatever waited beyond the lounge doors, but conversations were travelling between tables now and somebody near the windows had started laughing hard enough to annoy the people beside them.
The Marines were still there too. One had his jacket hanging from the back of his chair and another was defending some apparently unforgivable sporting opinion with enough enthusiasm to require hand gestures.
Chloe collected a stack of abandoned plates from the bar and carried them towards the service return.
Better.
She didn't dwell on it.
Someone tried to surrender an unfinished glass as she passed and Chloe caught it neatly by the rim. “Leaving already?”
“Duty.”
“Disgusting habit.”
“Some of us have jobs.”
Chloe looked around After-11, then back at him. “Get out.”
He laughed and did exactly that, taking two others with him as the doors opened onto the corridor and briefly admitted the harder white light outside.
Chloe carried on clearing.
Only when the lounge had thinned enough for her to hear the music properly again did she realise she hadn't eaten anything herself. Tasting while cooking counted only if she was willing to accept several spoonfuls of sauce and one stolen pepper as dinner, which even by her standards seemed optimistic.
There wasn't much left.
She scraped together a small serving from the bottom of the remaining pan, rescued the final piece of bread and leaned against the inside of the bar rather than bother finding a table. The rice had caught slightly at the bottom, which was the best part anyway, and Chloe took a mouthful while watching two officers argue quietly over whether either of them was fit to attempt darts.
She chewed.
Then frowned.
Another bite confirmed it.
It was good. She knew it was good because she'd watched enough people come back for seconds to remove false modesty from the equation.
But it wasn't right.
Chloe lowered the fork and stared at the plate as though the missing answer might eventually reveal itself.
Selena's had tasted warmer somehow. Richer around the edges. There had been something underneath the rosemary and tomato that Chloe could remember perfectly until she tried to name it. She'd watched her mother make the dish hundreds of times. Helped her make it. Complained about being made to chop vegetables, stolen pieces from the pan, insisted at fourteen that she could do it better and been thrown out of the kitchen for her trouble.
She should know.
Her fingers tightened slightly around the fork.
“Come on, Mama. What did you put in it?”
Nothing arrived.
No remembered correction. No wooden spoon. Just the hum of the Pioneer beneath her feet and the soft clink of somebody setting a glass down at the other end of the room.
Chloe took another mouthful anyway.
Still good.
Still not hers.
She abandoned the plate beside the till and reached beneath the bar for her personal PADD. The display came alive beneath her thumb, showing messages she'd ignored, a shopping list she'd forgotten making and several notifications that could continue waiting until the heat death of the universe.
Her contacts were only a few touches away.
Chloe knew that because she had checked before.
Not often.
Enough.
She scrolled past names from stations she'd worked on, old acquaintances and people she had promised to keep in touch with before proving exceptionally bad at it. Then her thumb stopped.
**Selena de la Vega.**
There was still an image attached to the contact. Her mother smiling at something outside the frame, hair pinned back because she'd probably been working when Chloe took it.
Chloe stared at it.
Three years was a stupid amount of time.
Long enough for anger to become habit. Long enough for silence to start pretending it was a decision you kept making rather than one you'd made once and never known how to undo.
Her thumb moved towards the contact.
“Chloe?”
She looked up sharply.
The Engineering lieutenant stood at the bar again, this time holding two empty plates and wearing the cautious expression of a man approaching somebody who had already threatened his food supply once that evening.
“Sorry. Where do these go?”
Chloe looked at him, then down at the PADD.
Her thumb never reached Selena's name.
She turned it face-down beneath the counter and held out one hand for the plates.
“Three meals in one night, Oliver. I'm starting to think you really are homeless.”
He surrendered them with a grin. “You fed me.”
“Yes, and look what happened. Now you keep coming back.”
“Could be worse.”
Chloe glanced towards the room.
Someone had changed the music. The Marines were still arguing. A woman at one of the smaller tables had stolen food from her companion's plate and was being loudly accused of betrayal. Glasses needed collecting, somebody wanted another coffee and the last piece of bread had disappeared while Chloe wasn't looking.
Her mouth curved.
“Yeah,” she said, taking the plates from him. “Could be.”
She dropped them into the service return, tucked the PADD further beneath the counter and reached automatically for a clean glass as somebody took the newly empty stool in front of her.
“What can I get you?”
A Post By
Chloe de la Vega
Owner, After 11, USS Pioneer
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