v

They were in space.
Flash and Aspirin sat in the cockpit. Aspirin steered. As navigator, Flash paid close attention to her fingers, and also the stars.
"Your hair looks great," said Flash.
"Thank you," said Aspirin.
After a few more minutes, Flash said, "Hey, listen."
"I have no choice," Aspirin replied with bitterness.
Flash went on. "We are both very attractive people."
"Please stop," Aspirin blurted. "I'm sure I've said this before, but there will never be anything between us except this control panel, this lever that may or may not open my secret food hatch containing my hoard of fried cheese dumplings, and this big red flashing light that says DANGER.
...Oh, crap!"

--

The Talon was also in space.
In the bunk-room, Operative X was taking another nap. This left first-mate Y, who was the clone of X from his dashing university days, in charge.
He sat at the controls.
"Excellent," said Y. "Right on target."
"Stop looking at yourzeelf in see mee-roor," came the bored, lilting, exotically-accented voice of a shapely woman with obsidian dark curly hair and stunning, full, scarlet lips. She held deadly-looking guns in her hands and posed in the doorway.
"Silence, Lieze," said Y. "I'm the one giving orders here. I must look the part." He tweaked a bang.
"You should be zeh moh-del," Lieze snarked with a dramatic eye-roll. She smiled, proud of her wit.
"I was," Y said sadly. "I actually have magazine cutouts of myself pasted above my bunk if you want to see th-"
Lieze cut him short with an impatient wave of one of her deadly-looking guns. "Look. Zomesing is bleenk-eeng."
They gazed at the Qandarian ship in the hologram laser-lock panel.
"It looks like a misshapen ham," Y observed with much glee.
"You mean eet looks like ham, peri-ohd," said Lieze seductively. "Zere is no shape to eh ham eenyway."
Y rubbed his hands together and chuckled a malicious chuckle. "Alright, boys and girls. Let's make us a sandwich!"
There was a pause.
"I have not the hunger," Lieze said politely.
"No, no, no. A sandwich, as in, a ham sandwich," Y explained.
"We have just zee Galaxy Paste," Lieze said, confused. "In bacon flavor only."
"I mean let's destroy this Black Star ship you breathtakingly gorgeous dolt!" shouted Y, slamming a fist into his forehead. He shrieked with the pain of it.
"Well, you could have zed zomesing along sose lines," Lieze remarked, disdainful. "You are become so much like Capitain-X, from whom you are zeh clone of all but brains."
She pressed the blinking DEPLOY MISSILES button.

--

In the food dock, Chef was boiling potatoes in a microwave oven and marveling at the patent inefficiency of this technique.
Beneath the dazzling white stovetop, X-Ray was tweaking wires and pipes. A curse and some sparks wafted out every now and then.
Tank walked in, twisting her hair around her finger and humming the melody from one of Tank's Elevator Tunes. She stopped, and sniffed the air like an alarmed beagle.
"What are you doing, Chaz?"
"Yoga," Chef snapped. "What does it look like I'm doing?"
"It smells like you're making lunch," Tank said, "but it looks like something else."
The microwave was making a funny gurgling sound. Chef uttered a loud, angry exclamation and removed a dish of blackened burnt potatoes.
"Oh," Tank said, "I didn't know they came in that color."
Fortunately for all, the next words that came out of Chef's mouth were masked by the blaring of the alarm system.