Solbidyum Wars Saga Book 1: Battle of the New Orleans Read Online Free Page A

found the dish to be a bit spicy, not that it bothered me a lot, but I have never been that big a fan of spicy food.  Aside from that, it wasn’t a bad dish and it seemed to satisfy my need to eat.
    Then I realized that I was sooner or later going to need a toilet facility…probably sooner, as I had now been traveling on this ship for several hours.  I didn’t recall seeing one on my earlier tour of the ship, so I thought I’d better not wait long to solve that particular problem.  I had no idea what to do with the dishes and chopsticks, so I left them on the table.
    Oddly, I found the facilities right between the control room and the quarter’s area on the other side of the wall where I stood when I first descended into the ship.  I was rather surprised to find both the toilet area and what I assumed to be showers in a common location.  One partial wall was a full-length mirror, which I found a bit unnerving.  The two motion-activated lavatory basins operated a bit differently from what I expected; unlike the basins on Earth that generally poured water onto the hands from a spout, these sprayed the water up onto the hands from a raised portion in the center of the bowl, and the dirty water ran down the perimeter and into a drain.  A few seconds of soapy solution was automatically followed by clean water for rinsing.  I wondered how I was supposed to brush my teeth, but that came much later.  The toilet was something else altogether and it took me a few minutes to figure it out.  It was not the conventional bowl arrangement that I recognized, nor was it the recessed in-the-floor contraption like those used by some societies on Earth.  Instead, it was a sort of reclining contrivance that, frankly, I’m at a loss to describe.  Fortunately though, I managed to figure it out and the waste disappeared afterward, so I assumed I did it right.
    Upon leaving the facilities, I decided to take a closer look at the crew quarters and infirmary.  The two cabins that appeared to be for single individuals were more or less the same; both had a single bed that was a bit larger than those in the four-person quarters.  I was surprised that these rooms weren’t equipped with private toilets and showers; but apparently, everyone was expected to use the one facility.  I assumed these individual cabins were meant for officers.  Similar to that in the galley, the walls of all the quarters contained cabinetry that opened to reveal shelves, this time containing clothing items in one area, blankets and bedding in another, and what I imagined to be personal items in another.  I also noted that all of the quarters were equipped with a viewing screen, all repeating the same headgear instructional video again and again.  I hoped I was not going to have to listen to this thing until the ship got to wherever it was going – or until I died… whichever came first.
    I stepped back into the infirmary and once again examined the mummified body.  It looked like a typical human male with maybe a two- to three-day beard growth on the shriveled, dry face.  The body was covered in a one-piece jumpsuit or coveralls that appeared to be quite dirty and stained… and not at all like those I had found in the quarters.  Even the cut and type of textile was different.  Something about this individual caused me to feel that he had not actually been part of the crew; but if he wasn’t, why was he here and where was the real crew?
    I again scanned the walls for cabinetry when I recognized a unique compartment door with a keypad panel beside it.  I looked at it for a second, then crossed the hall back to quarters where the video was now playing for about the hundredth time.  I watched intently as the instructor retrieved the headband from a similar wall compartment.  With a sense that I had discovered something important, I returned to open the infirmary compartment and was not surprised to see a headband identical to the one in the video.