by K. B. Wagers
Worth it, Max thought. Whatever happens. She’s alive. Jenks is alive.
Rosa grabbed her by the collar of her suit before she even cleared the airlock and jerked her in so close their noses almost touched. “You ever pull a stunt like that again I will have you court-martialed so fast you’ll be in storage before your parents hear so much as a whisper about it. Am I understood, Lieutenant?”
Max swallowed. “Perfectly, Commander.”
Chuckling, Rosa tapped her forehead to Max’s. “‘I’m really sorry about this, Commander.’ You are a piece of work, Carmichael. Thanks for saving lives.”
“Just another day in the NeoG,” she replied, blinking away the threatening tears.
Rosa laughed out loud and pushed Max toward the others, who swarmed around her, hugging and joking. Then the crowd parted to reveal Jenks. “I said something about saving my life, didn’t I? Thanks, Max.” She tapped her fist to her chest twice. “You got my back.”
Max fought with the second round of tears as she tapped her own fist to her chest and swung it out to connect with the back of Jenks’s. “You’ve got mine.” The woman grabbed her forearm and yanked her down until Max’s forehead touched hers.
“Welcome to the Interceptors,” Jenks said with a wink.
“About damn time.”
“We are never going into space again,” Constance declared.
“Mom!” Shala squirmed out of her mother’s grip and bounced in a circle. “It was the coolest! Like something out of a movie! How old do I have to be to join the NeoG?”
Rosa’s lips twitched as she fought to maintain a neutral expression, and Max covered her mouth with a gloved hand to hold in her laughter.
Chapter 27
The rescue had cost them half a day, but Zuma’s Ghost was on her way back to Jupiter when Max laid Jenks’s EMU on the floor of the common room and started peeling away the outer shell.
“That is fried,” Sapphi murmured from over her shoulder. Jenks was on the opposite side and set aside the panel Max handed her without comment.
“It shouldn’t be.” Max frowned, staring down at the circuit board they’d just revealed inside Jenks’s EMU pack. “This is—” She broke off, froze. “Fuck me.”
Both women recoiled in surprise at her curse. “What?”
“Get Rosa.”
Jenks, surprisingly, didn’t argue, and instead scrambled to her feet and raced for the bridge.
“Ma, get my pack,” Max said, taking the EMU when he handed it over. With quick, efficient movements she stripped it open and laid it next to Jenks’s.
“What’s going on?” Rosa asked as she crouched down.
“This was supposed to blow.” Max looked up at Rosa, watched the color drain from her face. “This wasn’t a random accident. Someone sabotaged Jenks’s pack. Look at this.” She pointed at the circuit board of her pack and then at the ruined one. A twisted piece of wire poked out from the middle of the board just to the left of the blackened mass in the middle. “That’s not supposed to be there.”
“Could the short have—”
“No.” Max shook her head. “There’s no way. That’s not a shifted wire. It’s a whole new set put in to cause it to overload when the thrusters had been burning for a long enough time.”
Jenks nodded. “She’s right, Commander. I know these packs inside and out. That wasn’t there when we did maintenance on them before leaving for the prelims. It’s not supposed to be there.”
“Why the fuck would someone want to kill Jenks?” Sapphi asked.
The predictable jokes didn’t come as Rosa shared a grim look with Max. “Photograph everything. I’m calling the admiral. Ma, take the stick from Tamago and push us as fast as you dare.”
“Who could have gotten to them?” Sapphi said. “They were locked in the ship the whole time we were on Earth.”
Max swore again and scrambled to her feet, sliding down the stairs and then stumbling to the bridge. “Ma, bring us to a full stop!”
Rosa spun. “Lieutenant, what are you—”
“If they got to the EMUs, what would have kept them from messing with the ship itself?”
Rosa froze as Max’s words collided in her head. It lasted just a moment before she snapped back to the present. Ma had already reached over Tamago’s shoulder and cut the engines and now he was on the com, sending out a distress call on the military channels. They’d shut down all the other systems, including long-range coms back to Earth, and the shorter-range coms were a bit like throwing a bottle out into the ocean and hoping someone found it.
“Any ships in the vicinity of two-three-eight, niner-niner-eight-three and one-zero-seven point seven. This is the NeoG Interceptor Zuma’s Ghost. We are dead in the water. Requesting assistance.” He clicked off the com. “Sapphi, run a full diagnostic.”
“Do you really think someone would mess with the ship?” Rosa asked Max in a low voice.
“I don’t know, but can we take the chance?” Max rubbed at her neck. “Right before we got the call about Portsmith High, Sapphi was telling me the press guy who was following me around all prelims wasn’t actually with the press. His pass wasn’t in the system anywhere and neither was he.”
“Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”
Max had the grace to look embarrassed. “I was going to tell you, I just didn’t think it was a big deal. It’s normal for me to be followed around by the press, Rosa. And with the prelims?” She lifted a shoulder. “Then the rescue, and—”
“Okay, fair enough.” Rosa held up a hand to stop her explanation and then raised her voice. “I want everyone in suits, right now.” She grabbed Max and dragged her off the bridge, talking as they dressed.
“Let me get this all straight. Someone was watching you during the prelims, someone we now know wasn’t on the press roster. Someone snuck onto my fucking ship and fucked with the EMUs.”
“Jenks’s, at least. Mine was clean. We’ll have to strip all the others and see.”
“Why would someone do this?”
Max shook her head and grabbed for her helmet. “That I don’t have an answer for, Commander.”
“We’re going to get one.” Rosa put a hand over Max’s. “Hold off on the helmet but keep it right next to you in case we need it.”
Rosa’s brain was combing through the problem as she headed back to the bridge, trying to make sense of the seemingly random pattern in front of her. She glanced around. Everyone was on the bridge and suited up, helmets at their sides. Tamago called out results of the diagnostics to Sapphi, who was scanning the software for any sign of tampering.
Max had crossed to Ma and was leaning over the console, doing a search for nearby ships as the master chief continued to repeat the distress call.
Her team. Rosa felt a swell of pride that overtook the fear. They’d jelled at the prelims and the rescue had been the final piece to pull Max completely into the fold.
The emotion vanished all too quickly. They were vulnerable out here. The military channels were encrypted, but there could be bandits or smugglers in the area with illegal tech, and the sight of a lone Interceptor might be enough to override the limited good sense any criminal would have not to mess with the NeoG.
Someone already lost that good sense, she thought. Trying to kill my people.
Rosa fisted her left hand, stepped back off the bridge into the quiet space below, and prepared a message to Stephan. They were already past Mars, and with the systems shut down the message would take a bit to reach him, but it would at least give him a sense of where to start looking if something happened.
“Stephan, Rosa here, obviously.” She smiled at the camera. “We’re in a spot of trouble. You probably already heard about Jenks’s difficulty with her EMU and the rescue, but we’re at two-three-eight, niner-niner-eight-three and one-zero-seven point seven. The ship is functional, but we’re not sure if we can move without something going wrong. Max discovered the EMU had been tampered with, which means someone was in
our hangar and our ship during the prelims. Recommend you pull all the video surveillance of the hangar for the last week. Might want to tell others to look into their own gear as well. And I’ll . . . well, hopefully I’ll talk to you soon.” She nodded and disconnected, sending the message on the command channel.
“Rosa, I’ve got an incoming transmission.”
She looked up at Ma and forced a smile. “Coming up.” She pulled herself up the stairs and settled into the chair as Tamago vacated it.
“Zuma’s Ghost, this is Captain Finnegan Vaughn with the CHNN carrier Fury Road. We got your distress call. We’re half an hour out, but can push if needed.” Vaughn was a pale man with carefully tamed copper-bright hair and dark brown eyes. But his smile was genuine and Rosa felt the tension in her gut unwind a little.
“Good to hear from you, Captain Vaughn. This is Commander Rosa Martín Rivas. All crew is fine for the moment. We have life support. It will be good to see you, but no need to push past safety measures.” Rosa glanced sideways when Sapphi gave her two thumbs up to confirm the image and name matched their files for the Navy carrier.
“What’s going on, Commander?”
“We’ll talk once I’m on board,” she replied, watching his eyebrow quirk in response.
He dipped his head. “Hang in there, Commander, we’ll see you soon.”
“Jenks.”
Jenks stopped prowling the captain’s ready room at Rosa’s quiet call, settling against the wall and crossing her arms over her chest. She wasn’t built for this cloak-and-dagger bullshit. She just wanted them to point her at a target and tell her to beat the shit out of it.
Captain Vaughn frowned and rubbed a hand over his smooth chin. “The ship should be fine, but we’ve got an extra field up and I’ve cleared the bay to be safe. If it blows or something goes wrong, though, we’re still going to be in for a hell of a ride.”
The door slid open and Vaughn’s XO stuck her head in. “Sorry, Captain. I’ve got a Commander Yevchenko on the coms from NeoG Intel. He’s wanting to know if we’ve got Zuma. I guessed Commander Martín might want to speak to him directly.”
“Thanks, Bea, put him through here.” Vaughn nodded.
The screen lit up in the center of the table, revealing Stephan. Jenks spotted Luis just behind him. Their eyes met and she forced a quick smile.
“Everyone okay, Rosa?”
“Intact. Ready for a nap, though.”
Stephan’s chuckle had zero humor in it. “Got your message. We’re looking into it.” His eyes flicked to Captain Vaughn. “Appreciate you picking up our folks, Captain, and I’d hate it to seem like we’re kicking you out of your own ready room—”
“But you’re kicking me out.” Vaughn grinned and held up a hand. “No worries, Commander, I know how things go. I’m going to go make sure Zuma’s Ghost has a place to sleep for the next day.”
Jenks tracked the captain as he left the room. He seemed very nice, for a naval type, but her nerves were screaming and her already fragile trust in people had been blown out of the water in much the same way she should have been. Right now, she trusted the people in this room and the two men on the screen and that was it.
Full fucking day on a Navy ship. I am going to get demoted again.
“Dai?”
It took several seconds for Luis’s voice to filter in and she blinked, realizing everyone was looking at her. “Sorry, what?”
“You okay?”
“I’m pissed and I need something to hit.” She closed her eyes. “Sorry, Commander.”
“Don’t be,” Rosa replied.
“We’re going over the hangar footage, Rosa,” Stephan said after a nod in Jenks’s direction. “If someone got in there, we’ll find them.”
“What do you mean ‘if’? We saw the tampering with our own eyes.” Jenks knew the snap in her voice was earning her a look from Rosa, but she couldn’t stop herself.
Stephan held up a hand before Rosa could say something. “Sorry, Jenks, just habit. It’s not that I don’t trust you. Did you take the EMUs out of the ship, or are they still on Zuma?”
“They’re still on the ship,” Rosa said. “I know there’s a risk they could blow, Stephan, but Max took thorough photos. On our ship it’s slightly more controlled access than on a ship where I don’t know anyone. I’m not a complete newbie at this, you know.”
“I know, just covering bases. I’m glad you’re all safe. We’ll check in again when you get to Jupiter. I’ve sent a message to Admiral Hoboins, so he’ll probably be contacting you soon.”
“I was planning on talking to him next. Let me know if you find anything, Stephan.”
“Will do.”
Jenks caught Luis’s eyes again and held them until the screen vanished. She pushed away from the wall and started pacing again. This time Rosa didn’t stop her.
“Start throwing out ideas, people,” she said instead. “I don’t know what’s caused this sudden interest in having Jenks, and potentially the rest of us, dead; but I’d like to figure out who’s doing it before they get another chance at it.”
“I’ll start,” Max said. “The Games.”
Jenks skidded to a halt and stared. “Really?”
Max shrugged. “Some people take things too seriously. It doesn’t have to make sense to us. I don’t think we should discount it.”
“Agreed,” Rosa said. “People have killed for far less important things. What else?”
“That guy you punched out eight months ago in the bar.” Sapphi held up her hands when Jenks pinned her with a look. “He was in the wrong, but didn’t he shout something about how you’d regret it when the MPs hauled him away?”
“Do we have a name on him?” Rosa asked, and Sapphi nodded.
“I’ll have to dig a bit, but it’s in the Jupiter Station records.”
“We’re going to be here awhile if we put everyone I’ve punched on the list,” Jenks said, dropping into a chair, and Rosa chuckled.
“True, I think we’ll limit it to the last year or so.”
Jenks put her head on the table as her teammates tossed out every altercation she’d been involved in over the last year. As strange as it was, the list proved to be at least somewhat amusing and the knot of tension in her shoulders loosened.
Then, suddenly, the words of the man they’d arrested on that system jumper flooded into her brain.
“You’ve stumbled into trouble beyond recall. You can’t run far enough away from this.”
“Fuck.” She lifted her head to stare across the table at Max. “The system jumper.”
T-minus Nineteen Weeks until the Boarding Games
“Ship’s clean.” Ma dropped into the seat between Max and Rosa in their quarters. “She’ll be out of quarantine tomorrow. Whatever those bastards did, it looks like it was only to Jenks’s EMU.”
“Why not ours?” Rosa asked, shoving a hand into her hair. Her nerves were on high alert since they’d gotten back to the station. “Tamago and I were on the ship with Jenks and Nika. Why aren’t they coming after us?”
“Maybe they were hoping to pick us off one at a time, make it look like more of an accident.”
“An Interceptor going boom certainly would have drawn a lot of attention.” Ma shook his head.
“We were doing a lot of digging on it before the prelims,” Max said. “What if we kicked over a rock and made them twitchy?”
“I feel like I owe you an apology, Max,” Rosa said.
“No you don’t.”
“How do you figure?”
Max smiled. “We still don’t know if the system jumper is the answer—we’re reaching, at this point. You were right that we didn’t have enough to push for reopening the case and we still don’t. But even if we had?” She shrugged. “It wouldn’t have changed how things went down.”
The younger woman’s assurance effectively doused Rosa’s guilt. “How do we find a link?” she asked.
“I feel like there’s something staring me right in t
he face and I’m missing it,” Max said. Her voice was quiet, her eyes unfocused. She’d been scanning records since they’d gotten back to Jupiter in an effort to find something that would indicate what Jenks’s would-be killers could be after. “I keep coming back to the question of why did they hit us on Earth?” She blinked, refocusing on Rosa across the table. “Jupiter Station has security, but it’s not foolproof. There’re too many civilians in and out of here for that. The security at the prelims was supposed to be top-notch.”
“Your stalker got in,” Rosa said, and Max nodded.
“And whoever tried to kill Jenks got into the docking bay where the Interceptors were. Which tells us something, doesn’t it?” Max crossed her arms when neither Rosa nor Ma responded.
“It means they’ve got some pull on Earth, but potentially not out this far. And something happened between when you picked up that system jumper and the prelims to make them feel like they needed to move.”
“More chaos at the Games, too,” Ma said. “Our people know who’s supposed to be in the bay here, they would have stopped a strange face. But on Earth? They could have gone onto Zuma’s Ghost dressed as anything.”
“Right. Has Commander Yevchenko had any luck with the bay surveillance?” Max asked. Rosa shook her head.
“No, whoever did it was deliberately avoiding the cameras. Intel’s trying to figure out if there was tech involved or if they were just doing it the old-fashioned way.”
“How’s Jenks handling this?” Ma asked.
Rosa chuckled. “Mostly annoyed that it’s overshadowed our win. You know how she is. She wanted a few days to celebrate before we got back to work.” She rubbed at her medallion. “And I partially agree with her. I wanted to be able to come back here and get to work, but not like this. We’ve landed ourselves in the middle of some conspiracy. I know it sounds weird, but if we could at least figure out what they are so willing to kill us for I’d feel better about it.”
“I suspect that’s the dangerous bit,” Max said with a ghost of a grin sliding over her face. “Smuggling seems the most likely scenario, since ‘lost’ system jumpers would be the perfect transports. Off the radar, low power, practically unknown.”