by K. B. Wagers
“Nika can give you a tour of the station itself when he gets back, though the Commander might want to. Did you get a log-in?”
“Yes.” Max patted her pocket. “Commander Seve gave me one.”
“Let’s get you hooked in, then. Over here.”
She followed, whistling at the sight of the terminal. “Wow, I haven’t seen one of these for a decade.”
“Welcome to Jupiter Station,” Ma said wryly. “The fancy equipment doesn’t make it this far out unless H3nergy pays for it or the admiral really kicks up a fuss.”
Max knew that meant almost nothing got replaced on the station unless absolutely necessary. Despite their altruistic tagline of Helping Humanity with Helium-3, H3nergy would watch its bottom line first. And Vice Admiral Hoboins would only rattle the trees for something really important.
“No worries, I know how to use one.” The false brightness in her voice didn’t fool Ma, but Max fished the log-in disc out of her pocket and inserted it into the slot under the palm scanner.
Nothing happened.
“You have to kick it, Ma!” Sapphi hollered from across the room, her instructions followed by a gale of laughter from Tamago.
“Good rule for most stuff around here,” he muttered, giving the computer a thump with his palm. The screen flickered and came on.
“Welcome, Lieutenant Maxine Carmichael. Please place your right hand, palm down, onto the scanner and line up your right eye with the circle on the screen. Don’t blink.”
Max complied with the computer’s instructions, her eye watering as the green light of the retinal scan took its sweet time.
“Identity confirmed. Maxine Theodosia Carmichael, Near-Earth Orbital Guard lieutenant, clearance level alpha-nine, logged to Interceptor team Zz5—Zuma’s Ghost. You are now connected to the Jupiter Station Network. Please download the station map and all assorted orders as they come in. Welcome to Jupiter Station and have a nice day.”
Max’s internals pinged at her as the connection to the network was established and dutifully started the downloads. She blinked twice to clear the notification from her vision.
“You can send and receive messages off-station with your internals,” Ma said. “But the connection is usually more stable if you use a tablet and go through the main coms. Any face-to-face video will have to go through coms, obviously.”
“Makes sense.” The microscopic wormholes that the communications office could open up would allow for instantaneous coms between here and pretty much anywhere with an equivalent system. Max’s DD chip was good enough for a quick conversation as far away as Earth, but it was dangerous and would give her a headache like no other.
“Hey, I’ve got some bags for Lieutenant Carmichael. Where should I put them?”
Max turned away from Ma toward the door. “I’ll take them, thanks.”
“No problem.” The deckhand dropped the bags and took off with a wave.
“How did you manage that?” Tamago was staring at her with awe as Sapphi scrambled off her bunk and over to the doorway.
“I didn’t,” Max replied. “Commander Seve took care of it.”
Ma chuckled. “Sapphi, help her get those to her room. Tamago, let’s go down and get dinner for everyone. I’m reasonably sure Rosa will want to eat in here rather than down in the mess.”
“My bags were missing for a week,” Sapphi said as the pair left the room. She patted her hips with a grin. “Jenks and I are a size match this direction, but on me, all her pants looked like someone had taken a laser cutter to them at the shins.”
“Sorry.” Max wasn’t sure what else she could say. The part of her that wanted to fit in whispered that she should have told the commander to let her bags do their usual route, but a larger part was glad she could sleep in her own things tonight.
“Eh, perks of the name,” the woman replied with a grin and a shrug. “I don’t blame you for it.” She grabbed a bag and headed for Max’s room before Max could protest. Max grabbed the other and followed. “Jenks might, but we’ll just pretend like they didn’t show up.”
“Seems like she has plenty of reasons not to like me already.” It was hard not to make that sentence sound self-pitying, but Max ignored the voice in her head that tried to shout at her about it.
“Jenks is naturally suspicious,” Sapphi said as she set Max’s bag down on the bed. “Don’t take it personally, LT. She’ll come around. Get yourself settled. The commander should be back soon and Ma will have sweet-talked someone in the mess for extra dessert. We’ll do a proper team dinner to welcome you. Rosa’s big on those.”
Max was glad that Sapphi was already headed for the door and didn’t see her wince. Family dinners at the Carmichael level usually entailed an hour-long torture session of listening to her siblings get praised for whatever successes they’d had that day. As they’d left one by one, she’d been the only one to face the brunt of her parents’ expectations.
The door slid closed with an odd sort of finality and Max sank down onto her new bed with a sigh.
Hopefully this is different.
It’s gotta be different.
“Why don’t you just ask her?”
Nika raised an eyebrow at Tamago’s question. “I didn’t want to pepper her with questions.”
“Sapphi is,” they said.
“Tamago.”
“Fine. What do you want to know that you can’t look up on your own? There’s this neat thing called the ’net. It’s been around for a while, even survived the Collapse.”
“Your sarcasm is improving. I think you need to stop hanging out with Jenks,” he said with a smile. They grinned at him in response. “What’s the deal with her family?”
“You mean as far as LifeEx or as far as her immediate family—who are all mostly naval officers?”
“Immediate family.”
“Her oldest sister took over LifeEx this year. As of March 14, 2435, Earth date, she became the president and CEO. Two other siblings, Maggie and Scott, and her parents are CHN Navy. Her sister Patricia, who’s a year older than Max, is a CHN senator. Elected last year.”
“I heard the rumor they weren’t particularly happy about her decision to join the NeoG?” Nika glanced across the room.
“Yeah. The family is normally pretty good about quashing rumors, but there was a hell of a row in a public restaurant,” Tamago replied. “There’s video, if you feel like looking it up. I’m not going to share it, though.” They made a face. “You know me, I like the feel-good gossip, and that was definitely not. Seriously, Commander, this is all stuff you could ask her.”
“I don’t want to pry.” He knew he was going to catch hell for that the second the words left his mouth. Tamago grinned, understanding washing over their face.
“Oh, I see.” They held up their hands. “You’re on your own here, Nik. Celebrity gossip is one thing. I’m not standing in this puddle while you put a live wire in it.”
“You are the worst.” He wrapped an arm around their shoulders and hugged them to his side. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Same as, Nik.” They hugged him back. “Same as.”
“You settled in?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Good.” Rosa studied the nervous woman sitting across from her before nodding her head. “Max, I’m sure you feel a little out of your depth, but I’ve read the exit reports from your instructors in London. They all had very nice things to say about you.” She leaned forward, bracing her forearms on her thighs. “None of that matters out here in the real world, yeah? We do the jobs or people get hurt. There’s little room for error and even less for hesitation.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Rosa chuckled. “Automatic answer. I know it’ll take a while to wear that headquarters shine off you. I don’t expect things to be easy here, Max. This crew has been together for a while. Nika’s departure will leave a void. Look at me.” She waited for Max to meet her eyes. “You’re not expected to fill it. You’re expected t
o be yourself and the team will find a new way to work with you. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re not going to work to find a new way, either. Not if what I read about you is correct, and I expect that as much as I expect the rest of the team to do their work. What’s your biggest worry?”
Max blinked, the words already forming in her mouth, and she only just held them in. Rosa shook her head with a smile.
“Don’t second-guess it, Carmichael, you had an immediate answer. I won’t feed you some bull about it always being the right one, but don’t ever second-guess yourself and not tell me the first thing that comes to mind when I ask you.”
“I’m afraid of failing,” Max said. “Of letting people, my team, down.”
“Well,” Rosa said. Her team, she said, not her parents or her family. I wonder why that is? “One of the things you’ll learn about me, Max, is that I don’t coddle and I don’t lie. You’re going to fail. You’re going to let people down. It’s an inevitable part of living in God’s universe.” She smiled, hoping it tempered some of the harshness of her words. “What you do after, that’s the important moment. Remember that.”
Max nodded. “Yes, Commander.”
“Rosa works fine. Save the ‘Commander’ thing for when we’re in deep shit or I’m yelling at you.” She grinned. “Shadow Nika for the rest of the time he’s here, see what you can pick up. It’d be a wasted opportunity otherwise. We’re headed back out in just a few days, so don’t get too comfortable.” She stuck out her hand. “Welcome to the Interceptors, Carmichael. It’s nice to have you on board.”
T-minus Fourteen Weeks until Prelim Boarding Games
Nika was gone and a pall had settled over the team almost without pause. Max lay on her bed, flipping the still sealed paper envelope over in her hands.
“Old-fashioned, I know, but it’s tradition,” he’d said with a smile as he handed it off. “I hope Zuma’s Ghost treats you well, Maxine Carmichael.”
The calendar alert in her DD went off and Max stood with a sigh, setting the letter back onto her neatly made bed and straightening the sheets one more time before she left the room. The rest of the team was likely down in the training area already, so she cued up her map and headed out the door.
The station had a pleasant background hum. The sound of fully functional air and water recyclers, of electricity singing in the wires, of humanity just going about their lives.
It wasn’t fair to say that HQ had felt dead by comparison. For starters, the buildings had been on Earth and so the hum was vastly different with HVAC and concrete to muffle the sounds of people.
But Jupiter Station had a heart. Max could feel it beating under her feet. The gardens up top that Nika had taken her to see after dinner the first night were the station’s lungs. And awkwardness with people aside, she felt like she belonged here.
“Now I just have to prove it,” she whispered when the anxiety started twisting in her gut. “You knew you were getting into the Games when you came out here, so stop trying to avoid it.”
She’d diligently read the files on her teammates, but hadn’t looked at the Games folder Sapphi had so helpfully provided to her at all. Her normal determination to learn anything and everything she could was buried under a fear about the Games she couldn’t quite put words to.
Like it or not, Max, here you are. Probably time to stop dodging it and ask Sapphi directly.
Max swung out into the low-g chute that ran through the center of the military section and started down the ladder with smooth, controlled jumps.
She hit the bottom and headed through the wide entrance to Jupiter Station’s training area. The space gave one the true size of the mushroom stalk of the station and by extension the size of the station as a whole. An area as long as a fútbol pitch stretched beyond the doors. People were lifting weights and running on treadmills near the entrance, but Max could see all the way to the back, where the sparring areas were located.
She spied Ma and Jenks tangled together on a mat and headed in their direction. Sapphi watched from a nearby bench, shouting encouragement.
Or heckling, it was hard to tell.
“My third grandma hits harder! Kick her ass, Ma! Hey, LT.” Sapphi patted the bench next to her. “Have a seat. Unless you want to go watch Tamago and Rosa, they’re in the corner over there.”
Max sat and watched as Jenks deftly avoided Ma’s punch. “So, the Boarding Games?”
“What about them?”
“Can you tell me . . .”
“What?” Sapphi raised an eyebrow and waited.
“Well . . . everything.”
“Space oddity, please tell me you’re pulling a long joke on us?” Sapphi pleaded.
Max shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”
“Even though Honorable Intent competed last year?”
“Even though. I really don’t know much about the Games. The HQ team is mostly Intel folks, and they’re all in a different building. I didn’t interact with them very much.” Max thought of Commander Yevchenko, who used to stop by to see Admiral Chen on occasion. She was fairly sure he was on the team, but she couldn’t have picked the others out of a lineup.
Sapphi rubbed her hands over her eyes. “Okay,” she said, and then unleashed a bright smile. “We’ll be fine. Basics. So—there are six competitions, okay? Some are individual events, others are team based. Each competition has a total available point score of thirty, plus another five for the winner. If you want a detailed explanation of points and scoring and you have five hours to kill, I can tell you how it works, but most people don’t care enough.”
“Maybe later?”
Sapphi’s laugh was clear and bounced around her like an unattended child at a candy store. “It’s okay—you won’t hurt my feelings if you say it sounds boring, LT. It is . . . to most people.”
“So maybe not.”
Sapphi laughed again, then continued. “The comps are hand-to-hand, a piloting obstacle course, hacking, sword fighting, the Boarding Action, and the Big Game.”
“The Big Game?”
“The final puzzle,” Sapphi replied with a nod. “That one’s a team activity. It’s timed. You’re given a mission simulation and have to figure it out before the clock runs out. Faster you figure it out, more points you get, plus you’re racing against the times of all the other teams. The points teams have earned from the previous year’s Big Game help set the order for this year’s. Obviously going last is preferable. And the order of all the competitions isn’t fixed, it’s drawn randomly at the start of each Boarding Games.”
“Makes sense. So where do I fit in?”
“Don’t know yet,” Sapphi replied, and at first, it was a bit of a gut punch. No one ever seems to know where I fit in. And yet Sapphi hadn’t said it with malice—she was just stating a fact in a way that made it clear that Max was going to have a place. As Sapphi continued, the trepidation Max was feeling at being here at all was tempered by the ensign’s casual acceptance.
“Nika was our best sword fighter,” Sapphi said. “More accurately, he was the best sword fighter across all the branches. But he’s obviously gone now. So that leaves Rosa and Tamago, who both have experience where you don’t. You’ve got a longer reach than I do, which would be helpful in the hand-to-hand. Three members from each competing team face off in a single-elimination bracket there. Standard competition rules. Cage match. Obviously no deadly strikes allowed, but broken bones happen. Right now the three are Ma, Jenks, and me. I’m decent in a fight, but it’s not a lie to say Ma and Jenks carry the points in that comp. Are you a fighter, Max?”
“I—” A thousand worries flooded her mouth, choking off her answer. Max realized she wasn’t even sure how to answer that question. She’d fought for this, but it was the first thing in her life she’d really ever gone for. “She’s good,” Max murmured instead as Jenks knocked Ma to the mat with enough force to rattle his teeth. He rolled to the side, narrowly e
scaping her descending elbow.
“Oh yeah.” Sapphi grinned. “Jenks is one of the best I’ve ever seen, if not the best. She’s currently sixty-three and zero. The undisputed champion for six years running now.”
“She’s never lost a fight?”
“Officially, no.” Sapphi shrugged. “A few practice rounds here and there have been called as draws, but she’s won every competition round she’s been in. And this past year she’s been performing at a whole other level. Which is good, because there are a lot of people gunning for her.” She looked at the sparring pair with narrowed eyes and yelled, “Jenks, if you let him get a hold of you and choke you out, you’ll never hear the end of it!”
Max thought about her sparring at the academy. She’d treated it like everything else, an obstacle to overcome, and while she knew the running joke had been that she only ever hit someone as a means of avoiding a fight, she also knew that she was very good at figuring out where people were going to be and how they were going to move.
I can do this, if they let me.
Jenks heard Sapphi’s taunt and twisted, sliding out of Ma’s grip before he could complete the hold. She dropped down and used her lower center of gravity to flip him over her shoulder. He hit the mat with a thud and his laughter bubbled up into the air.
“I swear one of these days I’m going to get that hold on you.”
“Not anytime soon, Grandpa,” she replied, reaching down and helping him to his feet. “But keep trying.”
“You are a brat,” Ma said, accompanying his words with a slap to the back of her head. “I’d think you’d have more intelligent insults than the ones the Navy boys use.”
“Oh, ouch. If only your punches hurt as much as your words,” Jenks said, skipping out of the way before he could smack her harder. “Triumphant once more,” Jenks crowed, grabbing the towel Sapphi threw at her. “You and I should go, Lieutenant.”
Rosa laughed from behind her. “I don’t think so, Jenks. We’ll work her up to you.”