Empty Toward The Moon

Chapter Twenty One

Mocha was proud to say he could help with the filtration and plumbing system. I was happy to hear of how much they'd learned over the last month. Obviously everything wasn't learned, but rather they had the schematics, training material and troubleshooting guidelines for every possible situation, including anti-rodent insulation. The team on The Chaser had set us up really well. They gave Mocha and Latte enough of an education to know how to go about learning more of what they needed to learn while we were dirt-side.

"All right. I think we're almost done, Cia." Cade pulled me away from my thoughts and waved me over to the family lounge as Mocha, Phill and Latte collected the last of the boxes and crates for storage in our last module.

I walked into the main living space of our new base. The family room had two doors connected to other modules on our right and another connecting door on our left. I went left into the bunk room to find walls dividing the circular space up. There was over one hundred square meters of space inside each hab module which made for small rooms inside each individual bunk room.

Three rooms were placed on either side of the long corridor in the middle of the dome with another connecting door at the end for the refresher. Beyond the refresher was a bathhouse with three large separate bathroom spaces. Only the left most divided space was set up as a bathroom with the portable bath rigged up to the plumbing system that Phill and Mocha set up. I am ever so grateful that the plumbing system digs its own channels for pipes to fit into underground. I can only image how long the whole base would have taken to set up if we'd had to dig everything ourselves.

Back in the lounge, folding seats enough for the six of us had been set up. Small warm lights were sprinkled on the ceiling like stars with a tall lamp at each 'corner' of the room. I say 'corner' but the whole room was an open circular space. Large bright coloured rugs covered the hard floors and a few holo-prints hung on the wall flipping through a bunch of photos of The Chaser crew. My face popped up every so often.

The far wall opposite the entrance held the kitchen module unit, which surprised me. A long bench reached about five meters across, extending back to curve with the outer wall. A food fabricator sat on one end of the bench and a conventional oven sat on the floor below it. The other end had a sink with two washer units next to it, one for dishes and another for clothing materials. It was really well designed. A stand alone bench stood before this back bench and held cold and dry storage for fresh and dry food stock.

Dishes, utensils, cups, glasses and cooking equipment. The kitchen was well stocked.

Phill finalised the settings on the food fab and closed the unit up. He checked the food stocks were filled up then ran a cleaning cycle.

"This wont take long, then we can all have a nice cuppa." He waved us over to the seats to sit down. Gianni took a seat next to Cade and thumped his chest.

"Did you have it delivered yet?" She asked and I assumed this was the surprise that Nova told me about.

"What? Oh, yeah. Ducky has it inbound in five minutes. Phill can you bring me a beer from the fridge, mate?" Cade scratched the stubble on his face.

"I thought we weren't allowed to drink. Wasn't that one of your rules for conditions for living on this dirt-ball?" I raised an eyebrow as I sat on the other side of Mama Gianni. She tucked me in next to me and scoffed at her immature husband.

"Just this once. There is enough for a celebratory house warming drink, then I'm taking the rest home with me." He turned his head away, trying to hide the blush that creeped up his face. I tried to hide my laugh when Latte started giggling behind her hand. She pulled Mocha down into a seat then helped Phill serve drinks, both hot and cold.