by K. B. Wagers
Rosa thought it made him look distinguished, but she knew that people still thought looking older was a bad thing. Some stigmas never changed.
“Come in, shut the door.” Lee waved away the screens hanging in front of his deeply lined face. “Take a seat.” The gravelly order was accompanied by a quick smile.
“Morning.”
“Somewhere,” Lee replied. “Welcome home, Commander. I was just reading the reports. You did good out there.”
That was high praise from the taciturn vice admiral, and Rosa felt a little glow of pleasure in her chest. “Appreciate it. We enjoy what we do.”
Hoboins chuckled. “So tell me about this system jumper you found that the whole base is buzzing about.”
Rosa settled back in her chair and gave her report, Nika occasionally interjecting and Hoboins stopping them both to ask questions.
“Odd that it was empty,” Lee said as Rosa’s report wound down. “Not unheard of, though. There was a system jumper found just last year in the same state. Salvagers probably ejected the bodies into deep space after they commandeered the ship.”
“Really?” Rosa blinked. “Do you have access to the report on it?”
“It was a naval op, I think—let me pull it. Pure bad luck on the salvagers’ part.” Hoboins laughed as he tapped on his desk. “They were hiding out on an asteroid in the Kuiper Belt the Bastille was doing bombardment tests on. Here it is.”
Rosa nodded as the file pinged its arrival in her DD chip. “I’ll take a closer look at this, see if there’s anything that matches what we found.”
“I’m sure the techs will be able to retrieve the information that PO Khan downloaded off the ship on their own, but have her hang on to it for now. Never hurts to have multiple copies.” Hoboins leaned back in his chair and scrubbed a hand over his short, salt-and-pepper hair. “What’s your take on it?”
“I just gave you my report, Admiral.”
“So you did. I also read Khan’s as you were talking. She thinks there’s something ‘not right’ about those disappeared system jumpers.” Hoboins’s expression was amused. “Master Chief Ma edited her report again, didn’t he?”
“You know he did. He won’t let her send out any formal communications without approval after that last incident.” Rosa laughed and shook her head.
“I might agree with her,” Lee said, suddenly serious. “Between that and the fact that one of them tried to bribe you, it makes me uneasy. But we don’t have anything to go on and you know how HQ is about gut instincts and the budget.”
Rosa sighed. “Do I ever.”
“Anyway, I’ve sent you a list of the missing jumpers and their ID codes. I want you to keep an eye out on patrol, Commander. Just in case.” Lee shrugged. “And for anything else that seems—not right.”
“Will do, Admiral.”
“Off-Earth is sending a hauler in to pick up that ship, so anything Master Chief Ma wants to look at is going to need to happen in the next few days.”
“I’ll let him know,” Rosa said with a nod.
“Good. We’ve already sent the five people you picked up back with a Navy destroyer that was headed for Earth. I’m going to let HQ deal with them from there.” He sighed. “Given there were no passengers and moreover no sign of people on the jumper, I doubt the human trafficking charge will stick, but we’ve got them on the others. We’ll leave the case open for the moment, but I suspect it’ll get shuffled out of our hands when they get to Earth.”
It wasn’t perfect, but Rosa would take it. She didn’t want to think about what had happened to those colonists—best-case scenario they’d been dead already when the smugglers found them and their bodies ejected from the ship. Worst case—well, there were too many of those to go into.
“Works for me. I’ll let Jenks know she can keep poking at it but to keep me updated.”
“Okay. Now for the topic we’re all avoiding.” Hoboins steepled his fingers and looked between them. “Have you told the rest of the team about Nika’s impending transfer?”
“Tonight,” Rosa said. “Why?”
“Probably going to have to revise that timetable, Commander.” He gave her that grin he so loved when delivering unexpected news. “Your new lieutenant is two days early.”
Chapter 5
Max stood on the deck of the docking bay and looked around with a wild mixture of excitement and awe rolling around in her chest. Lime-vested deckhands scrambled back and forth, running past where she’d pressed herself as far out of the traffic flow as possible.
Oh, Maxine, what have you done? You are out in the middle of nowhere. That familiar worried voice was whispering in her ear.
“I am right where I’m supposed to be.” She only wished her declaration weren’t so shaky.
“Watch yourself!” A woman in a CHNN uniform shouldered past her with an aggravated snarl. “Goddamned space cops, nothing better to do than stand around and stare.”
“Lieutenant Carmichael, trouble here?”
Max froze and pasted a smile on her face for the tiny NeoG commander who’d just stepped into the Navy lieutenant’s path. The woman wasn’t looking at Max but glaring up at the Navy woman with a look that could have melted steel.
“Tell your newbie to stop standing in the middle of traffic, Commander.”
“Little more respect there, Diesov, unless you want me to write you up a recommendation for a long-haul tour out of the system? I know Admiral Christin doesn’t want another conversation with Vice Admiral Hoboins about how shit his spacers’ manners are. On top of that, Lieutenant Carmichael has been in a year longer than you and is with Zuma’s Ghost, so probably best to behave yourself.”
Max watched the woman’s eyes widen and there was a second of silence before she looked in Max’s direction. “Sorry about running into you, Lieutenant.”
“It’s all right.” Max felt like she was missing something big here, but before she could sort it out in her head, the Navy lieutenant gave them both a nod and stalked off.
“Sorry about that, Max. I’m Commander Lou Seve, Vice Admiral Hoboins’s chief of staff for Jupiter Station.” She stuck her hand out with a smile and Max took it. “Orbital Control rang and said you were in a bit early, and I was trying to get here as quick as I could to avoid just that kind of incident.”
“I probably should have been watching where I was standing.”
Lou snorted. “Look, maybe things are more polite at HQ, but out here the rivalry between branches is in full force and it often involves a lot of punches thrown. You’ll want to watch yourself while you get the feel of things. And stick close to your teammates for a few days. The admiral is in a meeting, coincidentally with Commander Martín and Lieutenant Commander Vagin of your new team, or he’d have come down to see you himself.”
“I appreciate it, but it wasn’t necessary.”
Lou waved her off. “Someone needed to do it, as you just saw, plus you’d have gotten lost without being connected to the station net. Which, speaking of, here’s your log-in.” She passed over the fist-sized glowing disc and Max blinked at the old tech but didn’t comment.
“I highly suggest using the map function for the first few weeks unless you have a ridiculously good sense of direction. Do you?”
Max shook her head, thinking about how she’d gotten turned around at HQ on her very last day there and ended up in the basement. “I do not.”
“Use your map.” Lou stuck a finger in her face, though her smile was warm. “There’s no shame in it.”
“Thanks.” Max reached down for her bags, looking up at Lou when she put a foot on one.
“Don’t bother with them.” She smiled even as she flagged down a passing deckhand in a lime-green vest. “These are Lieutenant Carmichael’s bags; take them to Interceptor Five’s quarters.” She pointed across the docking bay. “Straight there, got me? I will come looking for you.”
“Sure thing, Lou.”
“That wouldn’t have been necessary,” Max sai
d. “I could have carried them.”
“Not up to the admiral’s office. Besides, first-timers on the station end are supposed to have their luggage take a little joyride.” Lou grinned. “Now, normally I’d have gone with it, but the fact that you flew in on a freighter with no fanfare and only have two bags says a lot about you. So I’ll pay you in kind with clean laundry from the get-go.” She patted Max on the arm. “Come on.”
Max followed Commander Seve through the winding corridors of the station and up through a low-g section to the vice admiral’s offices, where the sound of voices drifted through the door at the far end of the room.
Lou smiled and pointed at a cluster of chairs against the wall. “Sit.”
Max sat.
I am right where I’m supposed to be.
“I know the promotion doesn’t kick in quite yet, but I get to call you by your new rank first because I’m in charge. I’m going to miss you, Commander,” Hoboins said as he got up from his desk and held out his hand to Nika. “But since we know Rosa here won’t go—”
“Can’t go, Admiral, I’m pushing the bounds of my faith’s patience as it is,” Rosa said with a smile.
Nika muffled a smile of his own. This back-and-forth between Hoboins and Rosa had been happening for as long as he’d known the both of them.
The Earth-Bound Church, an offshoot of evangelical Christianity, had sprung into existence almost instantaneously with the first moon habitat.
God made the Earth and on it we should stay.
We are the shepherds and the keepers of her and it is our duty to protect her.
He’d heard the commander whisper those words often enough to know them by heart, even if they weren’t part of his own, more lax, New Tech faith.
Rosa had a dispensation from her pastor that allowed her off-planet in the service of NeoG, as a concession to the Coalition government’s recognition of the church as a legitimate faith at the beginning of reconstruction.
However, the boundary lines had been drawn at the solar system’s edge, and that meant no postings in Trappist and no long-haul flights out of the Sol system for any faithful members of the Earth-Bound.
“Won’t, can’t, whatever. I’m still stuck with you while Nika gets to run away to Trappist-1e.” He tapped on his desk console. “Lou, bring her in.”
The door opened, and the vice admiral’s chief of staff escorted in Lieutenant Maxine Carmichael. No, Lieutenant Maxine freaking LifeEx Carmichael. And now she was a member of the Interceptors. Nika could scarcely believe it. She was a decent handful of centimeters taller than him, with a riot of brown curls bound into a collection of knots whose neatness probably would have impressed a naval inspector, but out here in NeoG territory just made her look painfully straitlaced.
Nika muffled a groan as he thought about the terror that his sister could be with someone who wanted to do things by the book.
He was going to have to have a long talk with Jenks before he left, and now he wished he’d done it sooner. The reality of his departure settled into his bones and Nika shook off the sudden sadness as he crossed the room with a hand extended.
But Carmichael had snapped into a salute that had all three NeoG officers exchanging amused glances.
“At ease, Lieutenant,” Hoboins said, returning her salute halfheartedly. “Welcome to Jupiter Station. This is Commander Rosa Martín, head of the Interceptor team you’ll be joining, Zuma’s Ghost. Commander Nika Vagin is headed for Trappist-1e, but he’ll show you around the team and station before he leaves us. You two, this is Maxine Carmichael.”
She has pretty brown eyes. The stray thought caught Nika by surprise. Thankfully the lieutenant was too lost in her own confusion to notice, and Nika stuck his hand out a second time when she dropped her salute. “Maxine.”
“Max, please. It’s very nice to meet you.”
He had ten million questions, but they were all going to have to wait until he could get Tamago alone. He was pretty sure Max wouldn’t want to answer them, but Petty Officer Third Class Uchida Tamashini was an expert on celebrity gossip and they’d be able to fill him in on pretty much anything.
For the moment, though, he should probably mind his manners before his baba rose up from the grave and slapped him about the head and shoulders. “Commander, unless you want to talk with Max here, I can show her to quarters and introduce her around?”
“Go on,” Rosa said with a wave of her hand. “Get settled in. I’ll talk with you later, Max.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Nika saw her hand twitch with the urge to salute and couldn’t stop himself from chuckling as he took hold of her upper arm and directed her back out of the vice admiral’s office.
“Did you have a good flight?” he asked, waving at Lou as they passed her desk.
“Very much so. Thank you. I took a freighter out from Earth a few days ago. The view coming in was stunning.” She slipped out of his grasp, a mask of impressive politeness dropping into place.
A freighter. Nik’s curiosity grew. He’d have assumed that a Carmichael would have a private transport or take a naval flight rather than schlep four days in a freighter. As distantly polite as the answer had been, he caught the hint of warmth in her eyes. She was telling the truth about the view, and unless he missed his guess she’d really enjoyed flying in on a freighter.
This one was a puzzle. It was a shame he wasn’t going to get to stick around to solve it.
“Where were you stationed before, Max?”
“HQ,” she replied. “I was Admiral Chen’s aide.”
“You mean head of NeoG Admiral Chen?” He frowned. “You were the admiral’s aide.”
She looked at him in confusion. “Yes, that’s what I said. I applied for Interceptor training last year and just graduated. Pretty normal process.”
Somehow he managed not to trip over his own feet, but Nika came to a stop and stared at Max. “You left a post at HQ to join the Interceptors?”
“I graduated first in my class, Commander,” she replied, shoulders stiff, and Nika knew he’d put his foot in it.
“Sorry, that wasn’t—” He held a hand up and smiled. “I wasn’t calling into question your abilities. Just maybe your sanity.”
“I was wasting my life behind a desk, and as much as I enjoyed working for Admiral Chen, I joined NeoG to be out here.”
It was the note of longing that did him in, buried beneath the stiffness. He knew exactly how it felt to be wholly unsuited for planet-bound work. “That I can understand. Welcome to Jupiter Station, Max, and to the Interceptors.”
Max tried to listen to Commander Vagin as he led her through the corridors of Jupiter Station, but at least a third of her brain insisted on detailing her failures from the moment she’d met him.
Wrong greeting. Check.
Too formal. Check.
Defensive and standoffish about your place here. Check.
“. . . there’s bound to be some interest in who you are, of course, but if it gets to be too much just tell Ma and he’ll put a stop to it.”
“Ma?”
“Master Chief Ma Léi. We all just call him Ma because someone has to mother this bunch when Rosa and I aren’t around.” Nika’s smile was sympathetic. “I’m sure this seems odd to you. Things are a lot less formal out here than they are at HQ, Max. But don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”
She forced a smile, knowing it didn’t do quite a good enough job hiding her nerves, and not quite sure how to tell Nika that growing up, Ma Léi had been a fixture in her household. He was an old friend of her father’s who’d retired from the Navy and, rather than enjoying himself or starting a lucrative career as a private pilot, had enlisted in the NeoG not six months after his retirement.
Unsurprisingly, her father had disapproved.
Max, of course, had been ecstatic.
They went down what felt like kilometers of rounded halls, through two low-g sections where Nika bounced easily from one entrance to another and caught her
without commentary when Max fumbled the first landing. She learned quickly and nailed the second transit, trying to tell herself the spark of approval in his blue eyes shouldn’t mean as much as it did.
You don’t need approval from every damn person you come across, Max. She’d worked so hard to break herself of the ingrained response, but the unfamiliar situation and nerves threw her right back into old habits.
“Interceptor quarters,” Nika said, gesturing at the hallway with a smile. “There are twenty-three teams stationed here, though we’re rarely all on base at the same time. We just got back from a nine-day haul in the belt yesterday. Asteroid, not Kuiper,” he clarified as he tapped the panel near the door marked with a number five. It slid open, allowing a wave of sound out. Nika winced. “We’re here. Sorry about the music.”
“That’s music?” She followed Nika into the room and blinked. Two people were dancing in the middle—one with black hair that hung in a straight braid, the other with bright orange spikes sticking up in a row across the middle of a shaved scalp. They were both dressed in what she was reasonably sure was their underwear and nothing else, while a third person sat on a nearby bunk with a mess of holo-display screens hanging in the air like ghosts.
“So, welcome to the Interceptors,” Nika said again, nearly yelling in order to be heard over the din and sounding a hell of a lot more rueful about it than the first time.
Chapter 6
“Jenks! Turn it off, we’ve got a visitor,” Nika yelled, and Max jumped.
“Doge, music off.”
The music stopped and silence filled the room, broken only by Nika’s sighed question: “You two want to at least put some pants on to meet your new lieutenant?” There was a yelp of dismay from the black-haired person, whom Max recognized from the files she’d been given access to on the way to Jupiter even as her DD chip tagged Petty Officer Third Class Uchida Tamashini, they/them.
The others just laughed.
“Is that a ROVER?” The question was whispered, slipping out before Max could stop herself.