Isa made her way to her first self-defense lesson. Gliding along the handrails, she wondered how exactly that would work without gravity.

Rip was already waiting in the ship's small gym, talking to Marga.

"There you are." Rip gave Isa a big smile. "Buckle up." They pointed at a harness which was attached to the floor using several thick, elastic bands. "Can't use the magnets, they use too much power."

"Let's try this." Isa donned the harness, and the bands automatically adjusted until her shoulders, arms, and feet felt a comfortable pressure. Marga and Rip both put on their own devices, forming a small triangle with Isa.

"Alright, warmup first; follow my lead." Rip sank into a squat.

An hour later, Isa lay on the floor wheezing. Rip handed her a towel, and Marga had fetched water for everyone. It took a while until Isa could muster the will to peel out of the harness and drink her water.

"Why did I just do that?" She asked, floating with her eyes closed and the towel wrapped around her head.

"Peer pressure?" Marga offered.

"How are you both so fit?" Isa gestured vaguely at them both.

"I've been training for years." Marga said with a hint of pride in her voice.

"And I got so much tech sewn into me, you really shouldn't use me as a reference." Rip grinned. "It's just you against yourself."

"So, how does all of this help?" Isa opened her eyes. "I'll be too tired not to sleep?"

"Sure, that too." Marga smiled. "Other than that, I can only tell you how it helped me. I feel more in control of my own life. Say some asshole on a station gets weird; I know how to protect myself."

"What if they're teched up, too?" Isa asked.

Marga looked at Isa, then at Rip, pointed a finger gun at their chest, and pulled an invisible trigger, causing Rip to collapse dramatically and float away.

"Tomorrow we start weapons training." Rip announced, still floating.

31/X

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Isa was sitting in the infirmary of the Tori, her hand wrapped in bio-gauze. She was staring into nothing, her eyes chasing thoughts somewhere near infinity until Ada spoke to her.

"So what happened?" Ada offered her a pouch of water.

"Couldn't sleep." Isa accepted the pouch and took a sip. "I had to do something, anything, so I went to work on the the casing again." She sighed. "I messed up and it twisted, and when I tried fix that, I fucked it up even more." Her hand clenched around the water pouch. "Now there's no casing, and probably blood in the transmitter."

"There will be enough time to fix all of that." Ada said calmly. "You'll have to get used to waiting. It's part of the whole deep space exploration thing." She smiled softly.

"How do you do it? How do the others do it?" Isa asked.

"Disposition, training, therapy." Ada chuckled. "You cannot compare yourself to the established crew of a spaceship. Not everyone is made out to be cooped up in a metal bubble in the vacuum of space with a bunch of weirdos."

"OK, so disposition is clearly not it." The hint of a smirk played around Isa's mouth. "Now what? Therapy?"

"Something like that." Ada nodded. "We should sit down regularly and talk, and we'll try some training."

"Like, meditation, and resilience training?" Ada raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, no." Ada grinned. "Rip is going to start you on self-defense training."

30/X

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Isa threw the casing she had been working on for the better part of the last day at the workshop's wall, then groaned with frustration as the lack of gravity made her spin away in the opposite direction. Flailing, she grabbed for the workbench, cutting her hand on one of the tools.

She screamed.

Within seconds, Ada appeared in the door carrying a medkit, gliding through the air gracefully as always, which further annoyed Isa, who was now holding on to a vent, the bleeding hand clamped under her arm to prevent blood bubbles from escaping into the room.

"WHERE'S THE DAMAGE?" Ada had to scream to overpower the stream of expletives Isa was producing. She tried to take Isa's hand, who pulled away angrily.

"Don't touch me!" Isa hissed, and Ada paused, lifting her hand. In the meantime, Rip had entered the workshop. In the blink of an eye, they took in the situation and stopped, shooting Ada a questioning glance, which Ada acknowledged with a small nod.

Isa's burst of rage subsided and made way for silent sobs and tears.

"Can I see your hand now?" Ada asked without moving.

"I'm sorry." Isa sobbed and pulled her hand out from under her arm.

"It's OK." Ada sprayed the wound with sealant. "But we need to deal with this." She gave Isa a hard look. "Without drugs."

29/X

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Marga had retreated to her room to finish the re-analysis of the sensor backlog and promised to notify the ship feed as soon as she would be done, and while Isa knew that it made no sense, she had passed the door three times in the last hour, hoping for it to open. Her lips felt raw again, and Rip had cut her off from more coffee. She was just about to ask Ada for help when the ping finally came and the crew assembled in the control room.

"So, what we can probably detect are tiny heat spikes when the thing navigates to follow us and weak radio noise when it calls home. The brunt of the signal is directed away from us, but it needs to turn up the power the further we go." Marga pushed the flight path onto the main screen, with an overlay showing sensor events. "Since it tries to stay quiet and we're not changing course until we're through the zone, it might not be a problem after all."

"If no one on the other side decides to ask for an update..." Isa grumbled.

"True." The captain nodded. "But that's out of our hands. Launching a missile would certainly draw attention." He tapped a finger on the table. "Even if it makes a noise and gets found, we have a good headstart."

Bjorn nodded.

"And once we're through, we wiggle a little, pinpoint it, and turn it into debris." Rip grinned and rubbed their hands gleefully.

"Or we hijack it and find out who sent it." Marga said, shaking her head.

"Either way, exciting days ahead." Ada shot Isa a worried look.

28/X

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