Scowling, she reached down and loosened the bars that kept her legs locked in the machine, pulling herself free while holding onto the frame to keep her from floating off in a direction she didn’t want to go. She unhooked the pouch of water from its spot on the machine, buckled it back around her waist, and stretched the straw up to her mouth, sucking down a few sips of the lukewarm liquid.

“Ugh,” she said. She started to pull her way towards the exit of the small segment of the ship that had been reserved for both the exercise equipment and extra cargo. But when she saw the figure floating in the doorway, she stopped herself entirely.

“Fungko,” she said sharply, “can I help you?”

“Mm,” Dag Fungko replied, sucking down some dark liquid from a nearly empty pouch squeezed in his flabby fist. His hand slowly scratched the wide stomach protruding from his open flight vest, the flesh covered by a thin, stained t-shirt with a distended face printed on it. It was a girl – well, whatever trashy fab-site he brought it on most likely labeled it as a “woman”, but knowing Fungko, it was a girl – drawn in twenty-first century Japanese style, her mouth open and tongue protruding in a look of ecstasy while a line of blush crossed her over her nose, each end stopping beneath one eye. The face, however, was so stretched out from Fungko’s over-round chest that it barely looked human at all.

And the conundrum continues, Vale said to herself, her eyes narrowing as she watched Fungko undress her with his eyes. Unlike in her gym back on the station, she wore long sleeves and exercise pants while doing her circuit on the spaceship’s four exercise machines. It was standard protocol back on military ships, and even when it wasn’t on the various civilian craft she flew on, she stuck to it. No matter how good the air scrubbers were on your craft, it still wasn’t polite to let your sweat float off and into the shared atmosphere.

The conundrum, however, was the inner debate as to how she would handle someone like Fungko if she were at her gym back home, working out in shorts and a sports bra, while some disgusting blob of a man treated her like his own personal peep show. Would she cover up, taking away his chance at cheap entertainment? Or would she dress the way she preferred, fuck you, buddy, why should she change who she was just because he was a creep?

Then she laughed, out loud actually, startling Fungko out of his creepy reverie. That’s right, she said to herself. I’d just kick the shit out of him.

“Somethin’ funny?” Fungko asked, out of the corner of his mouth that he wasn’t using to chew on his straw.

“Just solved an ongoing problem I’ve been having,” Vale said with a sickly sweet smile, wondering how loudly Fungko would squeal with her thumb in his eye. She wiped some more sweat from her brow with the towel, soaking it up before it could profane the recycled air.

“Either tell me what you want, Fungko,” she said, “or leave.”

Fungko half burped, half hiccupped, and put the empty cola pouch in the large pockets on the leg of his flight suit.

“Yeah, uh,” he said, rubbing the corner of his eyelid, inspecting his finger for whatever gunk was there, then putting it back to his eye. “I’m gonna need you to clear out your stuff in C-7. You can put it in A-2, that’s fine, I even got some space in H-6, but-“

“C-7?” Vale said, confused. “I don’t have anything in C-7.”

Fungko shrugged. “I got a crate with your tag on it.”

“Well, you fucked up your tags, then,” Vale said, omitting the “again” she wanted to add to the sentence, while taking a long sip of too-warm water from her bag and hiding her disgust. She maintained eye contact with Fungko, who slowly pulled out an open bag of chips from another pocket in his pants and even more slowly started eating them one by one.

Is he a genius? Vale wondered. Because from anyone else, that would be a hell of a power move.

She nodded towards the chips. “Those aren’t regulation foodstuffs, are they?” she asked.

Fungko shrugged. “Cap’n said it was okay. So long as it was part of my weight allotment.”

Vale wanted to gesture to his waistline and ask how much of that was part of her weight allotment, but she figured it wasn’t worth it.

She shook her head. Fucking power move.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s take a look at this cargo that’s supposedly mine.”

“Uh...” she said, fifteen minutes later, standing by a large bulkhead with a yellow C-7 spray-painted on it.

“Yeah,” Fungko said. “Feel kind of dumb now, don’tcha?”

Vale gave him a look, and instead of saying anything, decided to think about the nice little pop sound his kneecap would make if she kicked it. She leaned down, running her hand over the cool, black top of the mostly carbon-fiber container that had been magnetically locked against the bottom of the storage bay.

“You check with the captain?” she asked. “You sure it’s not his?”

“He’s the one who tagged it as yours,” Fungko said. “See.” He held out a tablet for her to take a look at, but she ignored it.

There was an electronic latch keeping the thing closed. A number pad sat next to a thumbprint reader on the front of it. Vale reached out with her thumb.

“Aw come on, don’t open it,” Funko whined. “Shit’s gonna get everywhere if you didn’t pack it right.”

“Shut up,” Vale said, pressing her thumb against the reader. A bright blue line around the rectangle of the reader flared to life as soon as she touched it, but an instant later it turned to red. Vale rubbed her thumb against the side of her pants and tried again, only to get the same result.

“Huh,” she said, pushing herself up to standing, keeping her feet hooked into the toe-holds to keep her in place.

It was a high-tech lock box. Matte black, almost as long as she was tall, and reaching almost up to her knees. She would have said military, but...

A few thoughts popped into her head, but she wanted to confirm with the captain before she started speculating.

“Yeah,” she said, “put in it A-2, I guess.”

“Me put it in A-2?” Fungko snored. “How about you put in in A-2.”

“Or, ooh, here’s an idea,” Vale said, pretending as if a genius thought just came to her. “We can have captain can tell his cargo engineer to move the cargo, which is his job-“

Fungko raised his hand. “Yeah, okay, I got it,” he said. “H-6 it is.”

Vale’s eyes were practically slits as she and Fungko engaged in another staring contest. Once more, he pulled out his chips and began eating them. And once more, Vale’s head was filled with sugarplums of violence.

One of these days, Fungko, she thought, I’m going to absolutely wreck you. And yeah – I’m going to enjoy every second of it.

“Any words for the captain?” she said, turning away from him and using various toe-holds and hand grips to pull herself across the cargo bay.

“Sure,” Fungko said, crunching his way through the last bits of the bag. “Tell him to enjoy happy hour.”

“Security Officer Vale. How can I help you?”

Vale grunted. “Need to see the captain.”

“The captain,” said First Mate Veronica Nought, “is busy. What can I help you with?”

Vale shrugged, and raised her hands. “I get it. He’s a busy guy. But I need to discuss a matter that exists between me and him. So, if you’ll just let me talk to him...”

Nought stiffened, and Vale would have sworn she could see a bit of a blush creep into the shorter woman’s cheeks.

“He is currently on the hook with Prism Control,” Nouight said, adjusting her large, round glasses, even though they were not in need of any sort of adjustment. Why even wear glasses? Vale asked herself the question every time she saw the somewhat chubby first mate touching them. The only people she ever knew to wear them did so for fashion purposes, but Nought actually need them to see.

For real, though. The fuck? Fixing my eyes was one of the last invasive things that-

Vale’s head filled with gray static, soft, but unyielding. Yeah, she said to herself, we don’t think about that stuff. Remember?

Fortunately, she was rescued from her thoughts by loud, mixed laughter coming from further up the command canister. She looked at Nought, who had both pinkened and stiffened even further.

“Really?” Vale said. She gestured. “Prism Control, huh?”

She opened her mouth widely to shout, but Nought pulled herself closer.

“Vale,” she said, her eyes wide, but with embarrassment instead of fear. “Don’t. Please.”

You little idiot, Vale thought. She crossed her arms, then nodded towards the front. “And how long has she been there?”

“What does it matter?”

“What does it matter, what does it matter?” Vale said, getting loud. She gestured forth. “Passengers should stay in passenger areas. And crew,” she continued gesturing to both herself and Nought, “should stay in crew areas.”

Nought chewed on the inside of her cheek, unable to make eye contact with Vale, who had her hands up in an exaggerated way.

“Well?” Vale said.

Nought shook her head slowly.

“Come on,” Vale continued, “this could only help you out.”

“I’m not sure I know what you-“

“Is that Vale?” called a man’s voice from the front. Defeated, Nought’s shoulders slumped, but Vale took no joy in the victory.

“Yeah, captain. It’s me.”

There was a pause. “Well get on up here, girl, don’t keep me waiting.”

Vale heard a female voice murmur something, and the captain laughed again, accompanied by the joketeller. Nought moved to the side, eyes swept downwards, and Vale paused as she passed her.

“Look,” she said. “It’s not...”

“It’s not what,” the first mate replied. Vale felt herself torn in a few directions. On the one hand, there was always the tinge of the hierarchy buried deep within her. Up until a few years ago, she wouldn’t even have dreamed of giving a first mate any shit. Not even if the officer was a prick, which Nought wasn’t – just overly stiff when it came to her role as the captain’s supposed right-hand woman.

On the other hand, the woman was struggling. And on the third hand, for all of the shit that Vale had been put through to be turned into the person she was...she couldn’t help but be glad that she didn’t turn out to be someone like First Mate Nought.

“Never mind,” Vale mumbled, and she pulled herself up the command canister to the control room.

She could smell the alcohol as soon as she poked her head into the space. Ignoring the several hundred regulations she was aware of regarding drinking while in command, she offered a thin smile to the two occupants inside.

“Captain,” she said, nodding to the mid-forties gentleman in the co-pilot’s seat.

“Ma’am,” she said, nodding to the same-aged woman in the pilot’s chair.

“Security Officer Vale,” said Captain Davis Patek, giving a friendly gesture with his hand. “How can I help you?”

“Just need a minute of your time, sir,” Vale said.

“Mm,” the captain replied, taking a sip from the tiny bottle he held in his hands. “You know how I know this isn’t important?”

In the next seat over, Phillipa giggled. When Vale glanced at her, she covered her mouth like a school girl. Then, also like a school girl, she attempted to hide her own tiny bottle out of sight.

“Well, sir,” Vale said slowly, returning her attention to the captain, “I supposed if it was really important, I wouldn’t be asking for your permission to speak with you first.”

“Exactly!” the captain said excitedly. “Exactly! I mean, I’m happy to help, of course I am, but I’m just so excited to have someone on board who gets it, you know?”

He sighed, shook his head, and took another toss from the bottle. “Well then,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

Vale thinned her lips. “Well, sir, it might be best to have this discussion between just you and me.”

“Oh,” the captain said, stretching his scruffy, handsome features as he looked over at Philippa. “Ohhh, a private dalliance with Security Officer Vale.”

Phillipa began giggling again, and Vale found herself wanting to give the woman two smacks – one for Vale, and one for First Mate Nought.

And maybe a third for good measure.