Moon-Base-One
Penn could feel three of his team come up behind him and the three faces on his screen turned to those people over his shoulder, “Hey guys!” Bobcat said, “Want some company?”
Bree responded, “Will you stuff more coffee in one of them?”
“Coffee?” Marcus answered, “We just sent you twenty kilograms in a pod a couple of days ago.”
“She’s a hoarder of the stuff,” Coach quipped. “She stores half and then eyes everyone who looks like they are putting too much into the pot.”
Bree slugged Coach, “I’m not hoarding, you poor excuse for a coffee snob. I’m making sure that the coffee is kept fresh!”
The three men on the video watched the two verbally spar. Coach turned slightly towards the barista, “Those are vacuum sealed containers that you are keeping, might I add, in vacuum!”
Bree sniffed, “No rats.”
Rea Lea was smiling at the two behind them, a glint in her eye.
“How the hell,” Coach began, “are rats going to get up here?”
“Is it completely impossible, one hundred percent, that there are no rats on any of these containers?” She asked magnanimously.
Coach’s mouth turned down into a slight frown, “It approaches it!”
“But, it ISN’T one hundred percent!” Her eyes opened wide, “And where am I going to be if the precious stash of coffee is ruined? It isn’t like there is a Starbucks around the corner out here!”
“It isn’t like we can’t send up another pod,” Marcus began only to have Bree turn to the monitor and stick a finger out at him.
“If I wanted your take on how to help me with my post-apocalyptic coffee plan, I would have told you what to say.” She turned back to Coach to start into him again.
William leaned towards Marcus, “That lady needs her caffeine I think.”
Marcus nodded his head, too shocked to say anything.
Bobcat was beginning to understand how Jeffrey felt when the three of them wouldn’t calm down. He looked at Penn, who shrugged in response.
Rea Lea piped in from behind Penn, “Why don’t we put them together up at L2?”
“What?” Asked Bree, momentarily pulled off of her coffee conversation with Coach.
“That’s a good suggestion,” agreed Marcus. “We can use the mitigated gravity situation at L2 and start creating a temporary space station with the containers.”
“That’s not a small moon,” quipped Bobcat.
“It’s a hundred cargo containers all jacked together,” finished William. “I think we need to consider how best to connect them together, using the existing brackets. Jeffrey wants them gone post-haste.”
“Do they all have to be connected right now?” Asked Penn.
“No,” answered Bobcat, “But as soon as we have everything, we are delivering to you the first eighty. The following twenty will be along soon.”
“When should we expect the first eighty?” Penn asked.
Bobcat looked over his shoulder to Marcus and raised an eyebrow. Marcus grimaced, “Like you don’t already know the answer.” Marcus looked at the screen and smiled, “In about half an hour or so.”
That caused all four of the Moon-Base-One team listening in to stare at the screen like four adults who had been told they were expecting quintuplets.
Bree whispered into the silence, “I’ll get the coffee.”