Almost as if on cue, a low, inoffensive bell rang through the all of the loudspeakers on the ship.

“Dinnertime,” Vale mumbled to herself. Then, a second later, “Ugh.”

----------------------------------------

Hearing all of the voices in the kitchen area made the back of Vale’s neck crawl. Dinner time was, without a doubt, her least favorite part of the day. She was a loner by nature, and really didn’t enjoy more than five minutes worth of company with people whom she genuinely liked. Dinnertime was a time for her to spend twenty minutes – and usually longer, usually at least forty – with some of her least favorite people.

At least, her least favorite people who weren’t trying to kill her, at least.

Yeah, don’t be so sure about that, Vale thought to herself as she squeezed into the kitchen and dining module, catching a death glare from Little Thomas as she did so.

She thought about giving back the same glare that he gave. But, more than likely, that was what he was looking for. So she thought next of just ignoring him entirely, which wouldn’t do anything to make her feel better about having to have dinner with him. Then she thought of Teek, snapping the finger guns and double-clicking her gums, and wondered exactly how red that would make Little Thomas’s ears go.

In her head, he was crimson.

Little Thomas, without breaking eye contact, gently pulled his eldest son, Tiny Thomas, back over to him and whispered into the young man’s ear. Lacking all tact, Tiny Thomas turned his head around to give Vale a death glare equal to his father’s.

The resemblance between the two was uncanny. Vale really could imagine what Little Thomas, the elder, looked like twenty-five years earlier when she looked at his Tiny progeny. In truth, neither of them were that small at all. Little had spent most of his adult life working manual labor – and, Vale was guessing, hopping himself on underground growth hormones, steroids, and painkillers just to keep his body from disintegrating from decades of manual labor. He had thinned down somewhat since their journey to Uranus began, and he definitely had more gray in his close-cut hair and his chin stubble than when he started.

Not easy to keep up, is it? Vale thought smugly, wondering how much of his performance drugs he had been able to smuggle on board with him. Then she remembered how, just a few months before, she’d almost failed a set of leg raises, a routine with counts that she’d established when she was fifteen years old.

Seething internally, she flashed a quick glance over at Tiny, whose face, although twisted up in a sneer, housed the deadest, dumbest eyes she’d ever seen in her life. She wasn’t sure how much Tiny had inherited his father’s chemical muscle dependency, but she’d have been incredibly surprised if Little hadn’t started grinding up old-school beef hormones into Tiny’s breakfast cereal the second he had teeth to chew it with. His neck had yet to disappear into the chemically enhanced deltoids his father sported, but she knew it would only be a matter of time.

Outside of the two Thomases, Vale was really the only person onboard who used the gym facilities. And although she never mentioned it to anyone, just like the Thomases she felt like the equipment was rather weak. Nothing like the high-quality machines on some of the bigger ships in which she served – again, a long, long time ago.

Hell, she thought, amused, I’m still able to complete a hundred weighted situps on these machines. That’s how you know they suck Her pride twinged, and she gave a cool look to both Thomas Sr. and Thomas Jr.

You’re not the only ones here who’ve diverged from the natural in order to increase their strength, Vale thought. There was a flashbulb memory – or at least her brain’s attempt to set one off, before she was able to grab it with her mental fingers and slowly rub it into dust.

Long rows of beds, she saw as disintegrated before her. Long rows of beds. Beds with bodies on them. Bodies with sheets on them. Sheets with blood-

Tiny Thomas growled, angry that Vale didn’t even seem to be fazed by the twin glares from him and his father.

“What are you lookin’ at, huh?” he said, turning slightly, bending his knees, preparing to launch himself across the module at her. His father’s hand tightened around his arm, holding him in place. Little pulled himself closer to Tiny’s ear, his lips moving soundlessly as far as Vale could tell across the room.

Vale looked away as if bored with the whole exchange. Tiny struggled against his father’s hand for a little while longer, then shook the older meat block off of him and returned to adding a double helping of steak to his tortilla.

She played out in her head what would happen to Tiny if he actually came at her the way he wanted to. The captain would be pissed. Having an officer assault a passenger, even in self-defense, mean a myriad for problems for a captain to solve. From recently freed blood coagulating in the air scrubbers, to the reviews and ratings that could be expected that would be left behind after such a scuffle, to the undoubted visit from the various regulatory bodies...it was, at best, a hassle. And at worst...

Don’t think about that, Vale thought, making her way over to the smallish line for the tortillas, rice, beans, protein, and salsa packets that had been taken out in preparation for the evening’s dinner.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Don’t think about whether or not sticking a thumb through his eye to his brain would somehow improve his behavior...or result in him forgetting the color ‘purple’.

“Locking eyes with passengers, Vale?” said a dry voice at her elbow. “Is there something you need to disclose to the captain?”

Vale rolled her eyes at Diego, who was readjusting his glasses as best as he could. Even without the gravity of a planet beneath them, the doctor’s glasses always managed to find a way to be crooked. He sighed, then grabbed a tortilla packet from the container, cut it open with some scissors that had been tethered nearby, and shoved the now-empty packet into a nearby recycling chute.

“Not me, Doctor D,” Vale replied, her hackles slowly lowering.

“Well I’m not surprised,” Diego said, maintaining his flattened affect as he spread some refried beans and a block of sticky rice all over the bottom of his tortilla. “After all, they’re not even his best feature.”

“What is his best-“

Diego put a finger over his mouth. “Can’t say,” the doctor said. “Violation of doctor-patient confidentiality.” He spread salsa and a bag of chicken over the base of his tortilla and folded it up.

“Well tell me this, Doc,” Vale said, grabbing her own tortilla packet and snipping it open with the tethered scissors. “You’ve seen all of our vitals. Who do you think would win in a fight, me or Little Tommy?”

Doc sighed before grabbing a pouch of freeze-dried apple juice and heading over to the cuisine rehydrator. “What do you think, Vale?”

There were layers to Diego’s response, assuredly. But Vale was interrupted before she could start peeling them away.

“Security Officer Vale,” said Nought, sliding in next to Vale at the food prep station.

“Mr. Nought,” Vale replied, putting the finishing touches on her tortilla in the form of vacuum-sealed chicken.

“I saw that you came in the direction of Engineering,” Nought continued, cutting open the bag for her tortilla as she put a tube of bean paste into the heater. “Did you happen to speak with Chief Engineer Teek over there?”

Ah. Wonderful, Vale thought, closing up her tortilla.

“I did.”

“And did they say that they were joining us for dinner?”

Vale’s hands ran over the available drinks. Coffee? Juice? Tea? Fleeing this scene, holing up in my room, and eating my little tortilla like a rat in the dark?

“They did not.” Water. Maybe some light fleeing, gotta keep my options open.

Vale turned towards the eating area, her eyes trying to figure out the least objectionable spot for her to squeeze into. But Nought, clearing her throat, caused Vale to turn back to her.

“I’m sorry, Security Officer Vale-” Nought began coldly.

“You’re apologizing to me an awful lot today,” Vale replied.

Nought’s voice caught in her throat. She made an annoyed face, then shook her head.

“To clarify,” she continued, “did Chief Engineer Teek not say if they were going to come to dinner? Or did they say that they were not coming to dinner?”

“Come on, Nought,” Vale said, “what do you want from me? Teek likes their privacy. If they’re good at their job, what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that the captain decided at the start of this journey that he would honor the pastor’s request and have all crew and all passengers share one meal together each day,” Nought said. She continued to assemble her own tortilla, her voice quiet, not wanting to give the others in the room any sense of the bristling and the posturing going on between her and Vale.

“So take it up with Teek,” Vale said.

“Teek won’t talk to me,” Nought replied. Vale let out a laugh.

“Okay, look, Teek goes their own way, that’s for sure. But even they won’t just flat out ignore a conversation with the First Mate.”

Nought selected tea, heating it up while grabbing prepping injectors of milk and sugar. “No, I mean Teek literally won’t talk to me. All I get are those whistles, and buzzes, and beeps that they make.”

“Well, Teek talks when the other stuff doesn’t cut it,” Vale said. “I mean come on, you ever play charades? I’m pretty sure you can figure out how to have the conversation.”

“I’ve tried. I’ve failed. The captain is starting to get annoyed.”

“So have him talk to them.”

“If he has to talk to them, then…” Nought’s voice trailed off. The two women shared an awkward silence together as the tea finished heating. Nought took it from the heating element and injected the cream and sugar.

“If he has to talk to them, then why does he even have a first mate, huh?” Vale asked. Nought didn’t answer.

You’re a fucking child, Vale thought, but her internal inflection was that of fatigue instead of anger. She sighed. “Look, I like Teek. And I think Teek likes me. And...well, you and me, we don’t get along, but I don’t dislike you. I swear.

But in Teek’s mind, there’s adequate reason to avoid these...happy little gatherings. I mean, imagine them trying to figure out where to sit? And the problems would only continue from there. I can’t help you, Mr. Nought. I’m sorry.”

Vale left Nought to finish fretting over the tea and glumly joined the others. She glanced longingly at the empty space in the corner next to Doc Diego, but then turned her attention to the women on the other side of the room.

Segregated seating, she thought to herself. Fuckin’ awesome, man. There was space in between the childlike Felicity and Augustine, Little Tom’s daughter.

There are worse places to eat, I suppose, she thought, eyeing the spot between Phillipa’s other two daughters, A and C. But as she approached, Phillipa, on the other side of Felicity, took the girl by the arm and repositioned her on the other side of her. She gave Vale a thin smile that the security officer returned as she took her spot, now with Phillipa on her one side and the gloomy Augustine on the other.

Preacher Lorence, Phillipa’s husband, cleared his throat on the other side of the room.

“Let us pray,” he said, closing the watery gray eyes he kept behind his gold-rimmed glasses. Vale left her filled tortilla to float in the air in front of her, offering up her hands to the women on either side of her. Phillipa’s hand was soft, and almost greasy from the lotions and moisturizers she was constantly applying - the very stuff that would be in much shorter supply once she got to her new home.

I wonder how long it will take before she cracks and begs to be sent back to civilization, Vale wondered. She started to picture the scene, imagining what the woman would look like when she finally dropped the fake cheer that she carried with her all the time, but her thoughts were interrupted by Augustine’s icy-cold digits wrapping around her fingers on the other side.

Jesus, kid. You gotta get Doc to take a look at your circulation.

“Father above, around, and through,” the pastor began.