by K. B. Wagers
“Rosa.” A big man lounging in what Max was sure was a beach chair tossed them a lazy salute from underneath a ship marked with a skull decorated with flowers. “You headed out?”
“Couple of days.” Rosa waved a hand. “Commander D’Arcy Montaglione, this is our new lieutenant, Max Carmichael. Max, the commander is in charge of Interceptor team Ay13, Dread Treasure.”
Commander Montaglione stuck a hand out but didn’t get up, and Max shouldered her bag so she could shake it. “Pleasure.” He grinned, white teeth flashing bright against his dark skin. His grip was firm, callused fingers squeezing for a moment before he released her. “What’s your comp?”
“My comp?”
“For the Games.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Hand-to-hand, I guess?”
Dark brown eyes flicked from her to Rosa and the grin widened. “Oh, Rosa, did they saddle you with a total newbie just a few months before the prelims?”
“You think it matters? We’re still going to kick your ass.”
“We’ll see, I guess. Nice to meet you, Max.” D’Arcy winked at her. Rosa grabbed Max by the arm, kicked D’Arcy’s boot with a decent amount of force, and walked away muttering curses in Spanish that were either too fast or too complicated for Max’s Babel to translate.
“Ignore him,” Rosa said, finally seeming to have run out of words.
“He’s not wrong.”
“Yes, he is. You’ll do fine. We all will. And D’Arcy is just as invested in us doing well as the rest of NeoG will be. His team is good, but they haven’t even broken the top three in the preliminary rankings for the Games the last two years running. If he does make it into the top two with us we’ll be competing together against the other branches.”
“What event does he—” Max stopped herself and tried again. “What’s his comp?”
Rosa smiled. “Picking up the lingo is a good sign. He’s a sword fighter, and a good one. Hell in the Boarding Action, too.” She pinned Max with a look. “In more ways than one.”
“Oh?”
“He likes to sweet-talk his way into people’s beds, so stay away from him. Smooth as overpriced tequila, but will leave you with a shitty taste in your mouth the next morning all the same.”
“Oh.” Max blinked and raised her hand. “I don’t, no, you don’t have to worry about me.”
“Ah, that’s right.” Rosa nodded. “I saw the ace designation on your file. Thank God above for that. I have enough trouble with Jenks.” Rosa pointed behind her. “Just tell him you’re asexual if he comes sniffing around. He’s an ass about a great many things, but he’ll respect a no.” She smiled and gestured at the ship looming ahead of them. “Here she is.”
Max dragged in a breath, grateful when Rosa ducked under the ship and headed for the other side, giving her a moment alone.
The Long-Range Interceptor Zuma’s Ghost was the same as her sisters in the bay, and yet not. With five narrow stripes on her tail section—three blue, two green—and a front panel that had been dented and pounded back out so that only a shadow remained, she was a thing of beauty. Narrow and sleek, but rising up almost thirty meters in the air, she was built for space, atmo, and underwater. Once upon a time the hull panels had been white, but the years had reduced her shine to a dingier finish despite obvious attempts to keep her clean.
The Interceptors were long-range craft, designed to hold a crew of six but with capacity for a hundred additional temporary passengers should it be required. They had a pair of rail guns that fired Magsten rounds, seventeen-centimeter-long projectiles that could punch a hole in any unshielded hull.
Max ducked under the ship, trailing a hand along the plating until she came out on the other side. By the outer door, the painting of a grinning man with a half-rotted face stared down at her, somehow managing to look both pleased and disappointed.
Max gave him a pat as she stopped just outside. “Permission to come aboard, Commander?”
“Granted, welcome aboard.” Rosa stuck her hand out with a smile. “Sleeping quarters are upstairs, your room is on the starboard side. Careful with the door, someone likely pranked it.”
Max chuckled and shifted her bag as she grabbed for the rail by the stairs. “Thanks for the warning.”
T-minus Thirteen Weeks until Prelim Boarding Games
“Did you expect it to be more exciting?”
Max shifted in her seat to look at Ma. They were eight hours into their twelve-hour shift. Rosa, Sapphi, and Jenks would be waking up in an hour or two. For right now it was quiet. Tamago was in the back watching sword-fighting videos.
Max liked the quiet. With only three people awake, the ship seemed impossibly huge. The overlap hours were the hardest, when everyone was up and the space was loud and filled with noise.
Like with so many things, though, she was getting used to it and had stopped jumping at the laughter and the good-natured shouting that seemed to be a hallmark of this close-knit team.
It was amazing how quickly she’d settled into life on board Zuma’s Ghost. This first week had passed in the blink of an eye as they’d done training runs and patrolled the area between Jupiter and the asteroid belt.
“Not really?” She smiled and shrugged. “I knew there would be long stretches of waiting, that’s the way of it.” It was giving her time to study up on the mission specs and the Games, anyway. “Going to the Navy probably would have been safer.”
Ma chuckled. “That’s your parents talking.” He shook his head. “Safe is relative, you know that.”
“Why’d you join the NeoG, Ma? Why didn’t you retire?”
“The girls asked me the same thing,” he replied with a smile. His daughters, Julissa and Anabelle, were grown with families of their own. “I told them I wasn’t the kind of man who could sit still and do nothing for whatever time I had left. Which was mostly true. But . . .” He let out a soft sigh. “Ai loved being out in the black and I couldn’t stand the thought of being in a house on Earth all by myself. As long as I’m out here, it feels like she’s still here with me.” He tapped his hand to his heart.
Max reached out and touched his hand with a smile. “I miss her, too.” She remembered Ma’s wife. Ai had been full of laughter and always moving. She’d welcomed Max into their home with a kindness that had been lacking in the Carmichael family, and the young Max had clung to it like a lifeline.
“She’d be making fun of me for being so sentimental.” He smiled. “She loved you, Max. She’d be proud of where you are now.”
They lapsed into silence, and Max put her attention back on their course. The asteroid belt didn’t ever look like people expected it to, with a bunch of massive rocks spinning together through space and crashing into each other.
Instead, the asteroids were spread thin, even though they numbered in the millions; and there were massive stretches of space without any asteroids in the belt at all, thanks to Jupiter’s gravity.
It was easy to say space was big, but you never got the actual sense of just how much black nothing stretched out in front of you until you were there. Max tapped at her console, sliding her finger along the course line. At the moment, Zuma’s Ghost was at the outer edge of one of the Kirkwood gaps and she could see two asteroids ahead of them.
“Hey, Ma? Do you mind if I adjust our course?”
“You realize you’re in charge, right, Max?”
She felt her cheeks heat and was glad they were the only two people on the bridge. “Yes, but Zuma’s more your ship than mine. You’re the pilot.”
“She’s not my ship, Max, she’s ours. I appreciate your consideration, just remember who’s in charge. What do you see?” He leaned over to look at her console display.
“That asteroid will intersect with our route in about seventy-two hours.” She pointed at the closer of the two. “It’s not a big deal, the asteroid is less than a kilometer across, but it’ll come close enough to us that we’d probably end up doing a correction to make sure we avoid it.”
; “Best to do it now, then,” Ma said.
Max made the correction and looked up to find him studying her. “What?”
“Did you figure that out just from looking at it?”
Max shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah? Asteroids are easy, they don’t change orbit unless something makes them change.”
“You mean unlike people?”
“Most people are still pretty predictable,” she replied.
Ma nodded. “You know for the piloting competition there has to be an officer and an enlisted person in the cockpit, right? One pilot and one navigator. Rosa and I have worked together well, but I’m thinking that maybe she should give up the seat to you.”
Max stared at him suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because of that.” He laughed and thumped a hand down on the console. “Listen. I’m good at what I do; the navigation helps, but I can usually see what’s coming, and despite my old-man status I’ve got reflexes.” His exaggerated expression had Max laughing despite her nerves. “But I’m thinking that you and me might make an unstoppable duo. I’ll talk to Rosa about it and we’ll run a simulator when we get back to Jupiter, see how it goes.”
“Okay, I’ll—”
The coms lit up, cutting her off. “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is mining vessel Viridian Hold requesting assistance from any ship in the vicinity of six-seven-seven, niner-niner-four, one-zero-seven point eight.”
“Viridian Hold, this is Near-Earth Orbital Guard Interceptor Zuma’s Ghost. What is your status?” Max replied.
“Electrical short in our drilling equipment started a fire, Zuma. We got it taken care of but the short fried our nav system and our long-range coms. We’ve been stuck on this rock for three hours and I don’t mind saying it’s really good to hear your voice.”
“No problem, Viridian. Looks like we’re about twenty minutes away. How’s your life support?” Max glanced up when someone put their hand on her shoulder. Rosa gave her a nod and then finished tying back her brown curls.
“It’s good for now, Zuma, doesn’t look like the short affected those systems or our power. We’ve got our suits should we need them, but we were working when the fire happened so the suits are already at half-full.”
“Roger that, Viridian, we’re on our way. Hold fast.”
“See you in twenty, Zuma.”
Max hung up the com and looked back at Rosa. “Good morning,” she said, and the commander laughed.
“Just enough time to pump some caffeine into Jenks. Got that called into Control, Ma?”
Ma nodded. “They’re sending a tow our way. Should be a few hours, but Viridian only has a crew of eight.”
“We’ve got the room. Let’s bring them on board and siphon off the O2 from their recyclers rather than wait to see if something else goes wrong with their system.” Rosa tipped her head toward the stairs. “You ready, Max?”
“Commander?”
“You took the call, Lieutenant, so you get to go over and say hi.” Rosa waved at the door. “Don’t worry, Ma and Jenks will be with you. It’ll be fine.”
Max nodded and headed for her cabin, sliding a hand down to the pocket on her right leg as she climbed the stairs to the second level. She still hadn’t read the letter from Nika, but had started carrying it around like a talisman. For some stupid reason just the presence of the thing gave her assurance.
Likely would help even more if you actually read it.
“I will, after this, I promise.”
The twenty minutes sped by in a rush of prep, nerves, and more jokes from Jenks than Max had expected. But moments after they’d landed on the asteroid next to the drill rig, all the joking slid away and she watched Jenks efficiently check over Ma’s gear and then perform the complicated handshake she’d seen everyone do. No one had taught it to her and Max couldn’t find her way past her uncertainty to ask.
“Lieutenant.” Jenks performed the same check on her, minus the handshake.
Tamago passed their swords over with a nod.
Max blinked. “We expecting trouble?”
Ma handed Max her sword and then slapped his own to his back, the magnetic clasps catching with a click. “SAH.”
“Shit always happens,” Jenks supplied with a brief smile, Tamago nodding from behind her.
“Everything seems on the level,” Rosa said. “But it’s wild space out here, Carmichael. For all we know, pirates could have taken the rig and called in a fake problem to try to get their hands on an Interceptor.”
“That seems like a lot of work for a lot of trouble that would follow.”
“Possibly.” Rosa smiled. “But you stay alive longer if you’re suspicious. This is a different world from HQ, best to learn that now.”
“Understood, Commander.” Max kept her sword in her hand as Tamago reached for the airlock.
“It wasn’t the flashiest of rescues, but not bad for a first.” Jenks patted Doge on the head and stretched her legs out under the corner table at Corbin’s. “Plus it bought us a freebie day back on station, so what’s to complain about?”
“Nothing I can see,” Tamago replied with a shrug, lifting their own beer in answering salute. They scanned the bar and then made a face. “Ugh, naval annoyance alert.”
“Where? Aw shit,” she muttered when she spotted the pair of naval officers and watched as they cornered Max the moment she walked into the bar.
“Jenks, you know Rosa said if you start another bar fight she’ll have to write you up.”
“I’m not going to start a fight, promise.” She got to her feet and wove through the few patrons dotting the bar. It was a weeknight and the place was mostly empty. “Might finish one, but I won’t start it.”
Nika would be laughing at her, but just because she didn’t fully trust her new lieutenant didn’t mean she was going to leave Max to fend for herself.
“What’s a Carmichael doing slumming it in the space cops?” the taller of the pair of officers asked. He didn’t see Jenks approaching, which gave her the perfect opening to jam an elbow into his ribs and step on the foot of the other lieutenant blocking Max against the bar.
“Shit, sorry!” Her smile was bright as the sun. “It’s so crowded in here tonight. Someone must have shoved me. We’ve got a table over here, Lieutenant.” Grabbing Max by the wrist, Jenks made her escape before the pair could react. “You wanna watch out,” she said, even as she listened to see if either of those fools was going to follow. “Navy doesn’t come over to this bar all that often, but sometimes they do. When that happens it’s only to start shit.”
“Thanks.”
Jenks knew Max was hurting from the jerk’s comment. Her expression didn’t change from the same placid one she always wore, but her shoulders slumped as she curled inward, trying to escape the feeling. “Hey, Lieutenant, it sucks. We get it a lot, you just have to learn to ignore it.”
Jenks slid a hand up Max’s back, pressing between her shoulder blades until she was standing straight again. “We’re motherfucking NeoG,” she murmured, pleased when Max smiled.
“You don’t ignore it.”
“I do when the commander gets too much flak over me starting bar fights.”
That got a laugh out of her new lieutenant, but it faded just as quickly and Max gestured over her shoulder. “I’ll go get a table. You don’t have to pretend like you want me to sit with you.”
Jenks almost let her go, but then her brother’s voice echoed in her head.
“She’s also lonely and could use someone to watch her back.”
He knew. Nika knew that was the one thing that could get Jenks’s sympathy. She’d known lonely before she met the Vagins, and it was a feeling she wouldn’t wish on anyone.
“Nope,” she said out loud, tightening her grip on Max’s wrist. “You’re part of the team, you sit with us.”
Letters
Lieutenant Maxine Carmichael/Max—
Lieutenant Commander Saynor left me a handwritten note like this when I took his place, thoug
h I’ll tell you the same thing she did, which is that you don’t have to try to find some real paper to write me back on. You know how to get a hold of me and please, if you need anything—advice, a friendly ear—anything at all, just email me.
Here is what I want you to remember:
You earned the right to be here. It was not given to you. You claimed it. You paid for it in blood and sweat and tears.
You are smarter than you realize and you will still make mistakes. We all do.
You are part of a team now. That means you don’t have to go it alone. Relying on others doesn’t make you weak, it makes you stronger.
Sometimes you can do everything right and death will still come for people. Learn what you can and then let it go into the black. Don’t carry it around with you. The weight of it will drown you.
Good luck, Max, and take care of them for me.
Commander Nika Vagin/Nik
T-minus Twelve Weeks until Prelim Boarding Games
“Zuma’s Ghost, we’re getting a request for help from the Enceladus Research Station. Their power went down and they’re running on emergency backup. The company has techs on the way with replacement couplings, but their arrival time is cutting it pretty close to when their air runs out. You’re the closest ship to the station—seemed to me like Jenks could rewire those into some semblance of power, or should we get one of the boats here to bring them a few spares?”
“We can do it, Control,” Rosa replied, sitting up in her seat. “Send us the coordinates.”
While Rosa was talking, Max pulled the specs on the research station and scanned through the information. “There are only eleven people at the station. Worst-case situation, Commander, we could bring them aboard until the repair techs get there.”
“We’ll keep it on the list, though they don’t seem to be in nearly as bad straits as those miners were.” Rosa nodded and turned in her seat. “Hey, Jenks?” she called out over the coms. “Come to the bridge.”