Vale shoved Thomas away from her, right in the direction of his oversized son. Tiny Thomas caught his father, slowing him enough so that the pair just gently bumped into the wall behind them. The elder Thomas swung his arms around weakly, getting slower by the second. Finally, he stopped moving, his eyes half-open as Thomas the Younger slapped his cheeks.

“Hey!” the younger Thomas yelled. “Hey! Dad! Wake up!”

“Oh my God,” shrieked Philippa. “You killed him!”

“I didn’t kill him,” Vale said. “And you shouldn’t use the Lord’s name in vain. Right, pastor?”

Pastor Lorence said nothing. His face had gone so pale that his skin was practically green.

“You bitch,” snarled Tiny Thomas, gently pushing his comatose father to the side. “I’ll fucking kill you-“

“No,” said the captain, interspersing himself between the larger passenger and the security officer. “You won’t. Not unless you want to join your father in the brig.”

We don’t have a brig, Vale thought. Just a half-dozen or so smallish areas where a person can be reasonably restrained.

Tiny Thomas’s beady eyes flitted between Captain Patek and Vale. That tiny, hellraiser of a voice deep in Vale’s soul encouraged her to make some sort of gesture, goad the little prick into attacking, show him some of the zero-g-jitsu she’d practiced so often when she was younger. But now, in combat mode, she caught the thought, and released it, and prepared herself for a second round of block, sedate, and separate.

Here we go. It was not a thought, but an instinct, as she saw the younger Thomas slowly bending his knees, preparing to jump. But an ironclad voice rang out in the crowd of diners.

“Don’t. You. Dare.” Bethany, wife and mother of that branch of the passenger clan, called out to her son in a steely voice that matched the glint in her eyes. Almost immediately, the fight went out of the block of flab-covered granite masquerading as a young man.

“Yes, Mother,” Tiny Thomas said in a dull voice. He pushed himself backwards, looking down between his feet, as he bumped into the wall next to his father.

“Thank you,” said the captain to Bethany. She ignored him, and instead floated out of the room without a single look at anyone else.

Captain Patek turned to Diego. “Doctor,” he said, “please monitor Mr. Alaskine’s vitals as he recovers from his...ordeal.”

“Of course, Captain,” Diego replied. The captain floated out of Vale’s path, but not before he gave her a hard, disapproving look.

Vale remained emotionless. She floated forward, reaching out for the larger Thomas as she removed several plasticuffs from a pouch in the pants of her flightsuit. Although her eyes may have been on her prisoner, her attention was totally on the Thomas who was still conscious.

She spun the comatose man around until his face was pressed against the wall, then used the plasticuffs to zip together his arms and legs. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the rest of passengers leave, along with Fungko. Nought stayed behind, as did Diego, who had his fingers on Thomas’s wrist while checking his watch.

Vale could sense the raw, animal rage hiding behind the younger Thomas’s disinterested expression. Once again, the imp in her rose up, but this time she was unable to quiet it.

“Go ahead,” she said quietly, loud enough for Thomas and Diego to hear, but no so loud that the first mate could. “Make a move. I promise you, the good Doctor here is quiet skilled. He’ll be able to reattach an ear, reseat a tooth, put a pin in an arm bone, whatever you’ll need after I’m done with you.”

Vale could practically hear the younger Thomas’s enamel crack as she pulled his father away and started propelling him towards the exit to the breakfast nook.

“Mr. Nought,” she said, passing the first mate, who was looking at her with a mixture of exasperation and fear. “Cheers.”

“So,” Diego said as the pair of them slowly brought Thomas down the long hallway to the cargo hold. “That was...wholly necessary.”

“I thought so,” Vale sighed.

“You’re probably going to regret this.”

“Regret drugging him instead of putting his nose through the back of his head? I regret it already. Oops, shit.”

As they approached a corner, Vale accidentally gave the unconscious man too hard of a shove. He bounced off the wall, spinning, and would have cracked his head on an instrument panel protruding from the opposite wall if Diego didn’t put himself between the two.

“Sorry, double-D,” Vale said. “But that does remind me, I’ll need a refill on that knockout mix for my glove.”

“Oh wonderful,” Diego said icily. “I love helping violent people get a means to their ends. You know that shit can kill someone, right?”

Vale shrugged. “Well, my normal approach would result in blood ‘n bits clogging up the filters. Is that what you want instead?”

“You know that it’s not an either-or situation, right?” Diego replied, rubbing his sternum from where the unconscious Thomas had flown into him, elbow first. “Besides, there’s a decent chance he’ll throw up within fifteen minutes of waking up. So you have that to look forward to re: your precious filters.”

“Throwing up?” Vale said. “What kind of shoddy black market drugs are you pushing on these poor people?”

Diego groaned and rubbed at his temples. “Vale. Girl. I love you. But I love being a doctor more. And I especially love being a doctor who doesn’t have to do jack shit on these flights because nothing bad enough should happen that I need to actually do my job.”

“The working man’s mantra,” Vale replied drily.

“So where are we taking this ugly cube of a man?”

“Meh,” Vale said. “Auxiliary storage. There’s nothing important in there, it’s hard for the passengers to find, and there’s a bunch of footholds and handholds in there for easy restraint.

“Not a bad idea.”

Yeah, unlike poking the gorilla, said the rational part of Vale’s mind, fully returned now that the time for fighting had finished. She’d had run-ins with dozens of Thomases over the years, as well as a few with whatever the female version was. They were often stupid, but occasionally cunning within that, and they held onto grudges until death. She never really had to worry about life or limb with them – but they did tend to make things more complicated for her. The best course of action was to either stay away from them entirely, or kill them once enough groundwork for a self-defense argument could be established.

God I hope we get to the Prism soon, Vale thought. And I think that’s the first time I’ve ever felt like that. But the sooner that they dropped the Thomases and the rest of the incognito chrisfash on their new home, the sooner Vale would no longer have to worry about either Thomas taking their revenge.

“Hey, Doc,” she said lightly as the pair approached the blast doors leading to the auxiliary storage area, “you ever chip a human?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You know. Like a location device. You ever tag a man? It’d be nice to know where this guy is at. That way I don’t turn a corner somewhere and take a pipe to the face, you know what I mean?”

“What? I’ve...never chipped a human,” Diego said, his hackles raised. “That...that just goes completely against-“

“Yeah, yeah,” Vale said. You’ve definitely chipped one, she thought. You’re a terrible liar. Besides, I’ve seen your file, I know what corp labs you’ve worked at, I know some of the med trials you’ve participated in, you absolutely have chipped a few folk in your life. So don’t pretend-

“Don’t the ship’s security systems have ways of tracking people anyway?” Diego asked, realizing how badly his guilt was showing and trying to deflect from it.

“Yeah,” Vale said, “but I don’t always trust those. It’s always good to have a backup. And anyway, I was joking. How’s he doing?”

“He’s fine,” Diego said. The doctor had taken a blood sample using his equivalent of a field medic’s Swiss army knife, a small handheld tablet with intake ports that could be used to draw blood, analyze chemicals, and more. He sprayed the tip of a needle with a fast-hardening foam to avoid sticks, detached it from the table, and stored it in a special pouch in the side of his pants.

“Too bad,” Vale sighed. She went about securing Thomas to a spare spot on the bulkhead. “This going to mess him up if he stays here overnight?”

“No more than a bad mattress back at home,” Diego said, eyeing Vale’s restraint job. “It’d be better to get him in a medical tent. The chances of vomit-“

“Yeah, no,” Vale replied. “Regulations state that your area has to remain unlocked unless there’s a strict need as defined by the captain. And I really don’t feel like having Tiny sneak in, unhook his father, and have the pair tandem hunt me from one end of the craft to the other.”

“Hm,” Diego said as Vale finished up. “You want me to wake him up now?”

“Nah,” Vale replied. “Let him sleep it off.”

“Fair enough.” The pair left the auxiliary storage room and closed the door behind them. Vale entered a series of codes into the keypad next to the door, and the green LED indicator on the panel switched from green to red.

“So,” Diego said, “do you think the captain has had sex with Philippa yet?”

“Doctor Diego,” Vale replied, feigning shock. “How can you ask such a question?”

Diego rolled his hand in the air, encouraging the invevitable punch line.

Vale obliged. “...when the actual question is, ‘does the pastor like to watch?’”

“There it is.” The pair reached a T-intersection in the hallways. Medical was to the left, and Engineering – and hopefully Teek, with some answers, was to the right. As was the kitchen, with the as-of-yet unformed tortilla that Vale owed to the chief engineer.

“Take about fifteen minutes for me to get you a new vial,” Diego said, taking the one that Vale worked free from her glove.

“I’ll stop by later,” Vale replied. “Gotta take care of something else first.”

“Want me to go with you?” Diego asked. Vale raised an eyebrow, and the doctor raised his hands. “Hey, look, the dumber Thomas might have some ideas. I’m not going to get between the two of you, but he might be less interested to act if there’s a witness-“

“Or he might take out any witnesses to ensure he can’t get fingered later on.”

Diego wrinkled his nose. “Do...people still use that term in that way?”

“I do.”

“Yeah, you should stop.”

Vale laughed. “Get out of here, Doc. I’ll see you later, yeah?”

Diego waved over his shoulder as he floated down the hallway, leaving Vale to the rest of her tour.

“Teek? You here, buddy?” Vale craned her neck, trying to see around the banks of computers, equipment, and other machinery filling up the engineering space.

“Ahem.” Vale turned around to find herself almost face to face with the chief engineer, who was floating upside down in front of her.

“Boo.” Teek said. Vale held up a tortilla stuffed with peanut butter, marshmallows, and honey. Teek reached out and took it from her, a suspicious look on their face.

“It’s your favorite,” Vale said, “made just the way you like it.” Teek opened their mouth and took a big bite out of it, chewing with their mouth open as they continued to regard Vale with a look of annoyance and suspicion.

“What?” Vale asked. “You hear about the scuffle at dinner? You annoyed you missed it? Or are you annoyed that I knocked out the big man before you got a chance to?”

“Weird sitch,” Teek said through a mouthful of sticky gluten.

“Dinner? Nah, pretty straightforward. I poked the bull, but gave him the horns.”

“Your crate,” Teek said. “Arrived with a shipment of mundane food items. Fungko signed for it without raising any suspicions-“

“Of course he did.”

“Already had the captain’s preapproval, so wouldn’t have mattered anyway.”