A Pale Light in the Black

by K. B. Wagers

  Max felt her heartbeat ratchet up a notch as she crept past the cargo and peeked around the corner. A woman huddled on the floor with a handful of kids, all under the age of ten. Her arms were wrapped around them and her head snapped up when Max cleared her throat.

  “Lieutenant Max Carmichael, NeoG. Ms. Perrilin,” she said, reading the woman’s name off her DD chip handshake and hoping she was pronouncing it right, “I’m going to ask you to stand up carefully for me. Are you armed?”

  “N-no. I’m a teacher. We were supposed to do a science lesson today.”

  “Are you going to arrest us?”

  Max caught Jenks’s eye from behind the group before looking down at the kid whose handshake read Manuel Terz, undecided. “I’m reasonably sure I won’t need to,” she said with a smile. “But we’d like for you all to be somewhere safer.”

  “My dads are engineers.” Manuel slipped out of his teacher’s grasp and Max held up a hand at her gasp.

  “Really?” Max ushered the kid toward the others, Jenks herding the rest of the group along after. “This is Petty Officer Aki Murphy, she’s also an engineer.”

  It took them several minutes to get the kids situated as Rosa and D’Arcy peppered August Perrilin with questions. At a wave from Rosa, Max nodded to Locke and they headed for the door to start their sweeps.

  “Hey, Sapphi, which direction are the stairs so I can mark Jenks’s arm?” She winked at Jenks, who was gaping at her.

  “Go right, LT, you’ll have a chance to spread out before you run into any crew.” Sapphi’s voice was thick with suppressed laughter.

  Jenks, Tamago, and Akane headed to the left; Max and the others went right, Locke and Ma falling into formation behind Max in the wide corridor. That was the one good thing about freighters: there was more space to work in. But there were also more places to hide.

  “Children.” Rosa shook her head with a sigh as she and D’Arcy headed through the eerily silent ship toward the bridge.

  “Not a huge surprise,” he replied. “Most of these freighters are long-haul. Easier to get crew if they can bring their families.”

  “Less that and more about this captain putting them all at risk by smuggling shit with children on board.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Sapphi, are we going to be able to get on the bridge when we get there?”

  “I’m working on it, we’ve almost got this hacker locked down. Give me five minutes.”

  “You’ve got two.”

  “Doesn’t work like that, Rosa, and you know it.”

  “We could just knock,” D’Arcy said with a grin as they stopped in front of the door to the bridge.

  The captain hadn’t responded since his initial refusal to heave to and Rosa doubted a polite knock on the door would garner any different response. “Just wait,” she said with a smile, watching the clock ticking in the corner of her vision. At the 120-second mark, the door slid open.

  Rosa winked at D’Arcy and slipped through the door. The captain, a burly man with a wild black beard, was already rushing her way. Rosa sidestepped him, driving her elbow into his back on his way by and scanning the room for other targets. There was a redheaded kid who didn’t look over fifteen sitting at a console muttering as they furiously tried to regain control of the ship, and the first mate had a sword in her hand but seemed to be hesitating.

  “Put it down,” Rosa said. “You don’t want to do this.”

  “Janna!” The captain grunted and Rosa glanced quickly over her shoulder to see D’Arcy pulling that same damn sword-stealing move he always did. Only this time he hit the captain in the face with the hilt of the man’s own sword.

  Janna gripped her sword tighter and Rosa put her free hand up. “I’m serious. You will not win this. Do you know what your captain is carrying?”

  “He said it would be good. We’d get paid a lot of feds. We could buy another ship, start a fleet. I could maybe even send Patch to school on Earth.”

  “Janna, I’m not going to lie to you, this isn’t a good situation. But you put that sword down and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  “Janna, don’t you dare!”

  “Gun!” D’Arcy shouted.

  There was an abrupt squelching sound and Rosa watched as the first mate’s eyes went wide and the woman lunged, not toward her but toward the kid. She didn’t even have to look around to know D’Arcy had killed the man, and she was hoping she wouldn’t have to do the same to the first mate.

  “Mama, I’m blocked.” The kid at the console finally realized there were other people in the room and froze, staring at Rosa with big blue eyes.

  “Put your sword down, Janna, please.”

  The sword clattered to the deck and Rosa breathed a sigh of relief.

  “All crew, this is first mate Janna Cantrel. You are ordered to stand down and comply with the NeoG’s orders. Captain Fitch is dead, I am in command. Lay down your weapons.” The order rang over the ship coms and into the air from several speakers.

  Max bit down on the curse as she shoved her knee into the woman’s back. “Hear that? Stay down.”

  “Lieutenant, you good?”

  Max finished cuffing the woman. “Yeah.” Then took the hand Lieutenant Commander Steve Locke from Dread Treasure offered and got to her feet, leaning back down to pick up her sword. “What’s the situation?”

  “Middle deck is cleared. There’s a handful of crew who aren’t paying attention to the surrender order.” His grin was sharp. “D’Arcy said to head down and give Jenks a hand.” He waved Aki Murphy over. “Take this one to Commander Montaglione.”

  The Neo nodded and grabbed for the woman, hauling her to her feet and out the door.

  “Hey, Jenks, where are you?”

  “Section forty-three” came the reply over the com, followed by a grunt. “Little busy, LT.”

  Max hit Locke on the shoulder as she headed for the door. “Jenks started the party without us. We’d better hurry.” She sprinted out the door and down the corridor, sliding down the stairs with Locke on her heels.

  They rounded the corner. Jenks was in a sword fight with a guy who was wielding a crowbar like he knew how to use it. Another crewman was trying to circle around Jenks, and Max tapped him on the shoulder with her sword.

  “I wouldn’t,” she said, and the man froze. “Hands behind your back.”

  Locke moved in to cuff him. Max waited until he was secure and then stepped around the pair. “Need some help, Jenks?”

  “Naw, I got it.”

  The man snorted. “I’m gonna crush your skull in and then your friend’s.”

  “Then what?” Max asked.

  “What?”

  “Ship’s ours,” she said with a shrug. “Your captain surrendered. Where are you going to go?”

  He frowned, and Max saw Jenks shift, but she waved her off with her left hand hidden partially behind her leg. “Anywhere’s better than here. I won’t end up like those poor bastards on Trappist,” he said.

  “You don’t have anywhere to go, and you’re not getting two steps before—” Max stopped and smiled. “Do you want to know what’s going to happen? The real version, not the crush-our-skulls fantasy. You’re going to swing that thing at Jenks here, she’s going to catch it. She’s stronger than she looks. She’s going to reverse it on you and hit you in the throat, but it won’t crush your larynx. She’s got better control than that.

  “But that means you’ll lunge forward and I’m going to have to run this sword straight through your heart.” She held her sword up and it didn’t waver at all. “Seems like a shit way to die.”

  The crowbar clattered on the grating when he dropped it.

  Jenks kicked it away. “Get on the floor.” She slapped her sword to her back, cuffed him, and stood up and pointed a finger Max’s way. “Two things—you totally stole my fight, but I’m going to let it slide because you just Westley’d that idiot.”

  “I’m sorry, I what?”

  Locke’s snick
er turned into a full-blown laugh. “Oh my God, Jenks. Max, don’t ask her, it just encourages her.”

  “I need no encouragement.” Jenks took her sword back and he shook his head, still laughing at Max’s confusion. “It’s a classic, LT, we’ll watch it when we get back to Jupiter.”

  “Okay.” Max pointed at the door behind them. “That’s the cargo bay we want, let’s go take a look at what was so important as to start this fight in the first place.”

  “You two go. I’ve got this one, and according to the crew list everyone else is accounted for,” Locke said. “D’Arcy and Rosa are headed down. The McKelvey just docked and is bringing reinforcements.”

  Max nodded and followed Jenks to the door. She pulled up the manifest lists as they slipped into the cargo bay. “Supposedly the stuff they picked up on Trappist-1e is over there.”

  “Do they say what it is?” Jenks scanned the cargo bay as they crossed to the area marked on the grid.

  “A shipment of strawberry plants? Really?” Max frowned. “Trappist-1e is still struggling for self-sufficiency. Why would they be shipping live plants away from the planet?”

  Jenks kicked one of the cargo pods, a round barrel marked live plants, keep cool, and looked at Max. “Can I open it and find out?”

  Max nodded and Jenks popped the lid off. There was a whoosh of pressure releasing and both women stared into the barrel at the liquid-filled bags marked with the recognizable LifeEx logo.

  “Well,” Jenks said finally. “Shit.”

  “Yeah.” Max rubbed a hand over her face.

  Jenks leaned against the wall as Max argued with her sister over the com. The lieutenant had learned her lesson from the previous incident and was being very careful about not mentioning what was in the forty barrels out of frame.

  “I just need to know if there have been any break-ins. Anything that wasn’t covered in the press?”

  “And I need to know why you need to know, Max.” Ria shook her head. “We’re on an unsecured channel and you’ve probably got half a dozen people in the room with you. You know I’m not going to talk about sensitive company issues in such a public setting.”

  Max’s snarl was poorly concealed and Jenks reached a hand out, staying out of the tablet’s camera as she put it on Max’s arm. It was a fascinating thing to watch, how an interaction with her family messed with her control, but they needed that patience back. It was only a matter of time before Ria found out about the LifeEx in this cargo bay, but they could use all the extra time they could get before she stuck her nose into their investigation again.

  “Fine. I’ll call you when I have a secure channel.” Max shut down the com without waiting for a reply from her sister.

  “Take a breath, LT.” Jenks waited a beat as Max complied. “They get to you, don’t they?”

  “Always.” Max rubbed at an eye. “It feels like all my patience, all my control, just flies out the airlock. The company.” She spit the word out and threw her hands up in the air. “It’s always the company, the name. The legacy. I hate it so much sometimes.”

  Max took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m sorry, I’m sure you don’t want to hear me—”

  “Hey.” Jenks shook her head. “I get it. You don’t have to apologize. They care more about something else than they do about you and it hurts. My parents were the same. Only difference is I don’t know what it was they loved more than me.” She gripped Max’s hand tight. “You’re a good person and a better Neo. I know I was hard on you when you started, but you’re a part of this team. Which means you’re our family now.”

  Max’s answering smile wobbled and Jenks shook her head. “Do not get teary on me, LT.”

  “Hush and go see if Ma needs help.” Max gave Jenks a little shove and went to meet Rosa and D’Arcy at the entrance to the cargo bay.

  Max’s heart stuttered when she caught sight of the grim look on Rosa’s and D’Arcy’s faces. “What is it?” She watched as Rosa’s gaze flicked to where Jenks stood at Ma’s side across the cargo bay and then returned to her. “Rosa, what is it?”

  “There’s been an explosion.”

  “Where? On the ship?” Max had a moment to wonder why the alarm system wasn’t going wild before Rosa replied.

  “No. On Trappist-1e.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Nika’s been hurt.”

  The air rushed out of Max’s lungs at the words. Words that for a single terrifying moment she hadn’t been able to hear past the hammering of her heart. Words she’d been sure were going to end with “killed” instead of “hurt.”

  “What happened?”

  “There was an explosion at that warehouse in the Horst district on Trappist-1e the TPK was investigating. We don’t have all the details yet, but it looks like there was a lab hidden inside the warehouse. Nika and his team were on-site along with TPK officers serving the search warrant when it blew. We—”

  Max squeezed her eyes shut as Rosa broke off and cursed under her breath in Spanish that the Babel either couldn’t or wouldn’t translate.

  “They’ve got him loaded onto the CHNN carrier Hamilton Bane, and she’ll be opening a wormhole here in under an hour. Max, he’s hurt bad, and Jenks . . .” Rosa blew out a breath. “Jesus preserve us, she’s going to melt down.”

  “What do we need to do?” Max looked at D’Arcy, who lifted his hands.

  “Get her back onto Zuma without her hurting herself or anyone else. If we’re getting Jenks on that CHNN ship, she’ll need to be ready—and composed when you hook up with it,” he said. “I know that’s a lot given the circumstances, but they won’t let her on if she’s raging.”

  Max’s gut was screaming at her and she put a hand up as Rosa started forward. “Commander, let me do this.”

  “You?” Rosa shook her head. “Max, she’s going to start throwing punches. I’m not even joking when I say she could kill you.”

  “I know that, but I also think I can do this without her getting violent.” The disbelief surging across everyone’s faces didn’t make the knots in her stomach any easier to deal with, but Max straightened her shoulders and looked Rosa in the eye. “Commander, trust me. Reading people is one of the few things I’m good at.”

  “I thought you couldn’t get a handle on Jenks?”

  “Not most of the time. But this? This I think I’ve got. Do you have details?”

  Rosa glanced in Jenks’s direction and finally nodded. “I’ll send you the file. You get one try. If she loses it, you get your ass out of the way.”

  “I will.” Max took a deep breath and headed across the cargo bay with Rosa trailing behind. D’Arcy whistled a complex tune and the members of Dread Treasure converged on them with uniform precision. Just in case they needed to dog-pile Jenks.

  “Hey, LT, I was just thinking, why would they be smuggling LifeEx to Earth? Wouldn’t the other way around make more sense?”

  “Petty Officer Khan, come sit down. We need to talk.” Max made eye contact with Sapphi and Tamago, who were standing nearby.

  “What?” Jenks snorted and laughed, but she complied, boosting herself onto a nearby cargo bin. “You look really serious. What’s up?” she asked. “Commander?”

  “Lieutenant Carmichael’s in charge at the moment, Petty Officer,” Rosa replied.

  “Look at me.” Max gestured until Jenks’s eyes tracked back to her. “The clock is ticking, I need you to remember that after I tell you what I’m about to tell you. You’re going to have to go back to Zuma, get packed, and be ready to go. You don’t get to fall apart until I tell you. That’s an order, am I understood?”

  Jenks’s eyes flicked to Rosa as she worked the answer over in her mouth before allowing it free. “Yes, Lieutenant. You’re understood. What is going on?”

  “Commander Nika Vagin was severely injured in an explosion at approximately thirteen hundred hours on Trappist-1e. He’s on board the CHNN ship Hamilton Bane coming through a wormhole to Jupiter and then continuing on to Earth. They’ll st
op long enough for us to board.” Max kept everything phrased in the most precise terms she could find from the file Rosa had sent, the most grounding military procedure that she could hammer past the emotions she knew were rolling around in Jenks’s head right now.

  Because she’d figured one thing out about Jenks in the last few months, and that was that Jenks would wiggle around rules as long as she thought she could, because the close-knit structure of the Interceptor team encouraged familiarity over rank. But give her a direct order, put her on a mission, and she followed protocol without question.

  “Nika’s h—”

  Max watched as Jenks’s hand gripped her sword hilt over her shoulder and raised her voice slightly. “Petty Officer, are you listening to me?”

  “I’m listening, Lieutenant.” There were tears in her eyes, though, as she got off the crate. Tamago was already crying, a hand pressed against their mouth.

  “Good. Let’s go then, we’ve got a ship to meet. Sapphi, go with her. I’ll be right behind you both.”

  “Can I—can I take Doge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Jenks said mechanically. She headed across the cargo bay with Sapphi at her side.

  Max glanced at the people still staring at her. “What?”

  “How did you do that?” D’Arcy asked. “Because that was amazing.”

  “I’m her officer,” Max replied. “And that’s what she needs right now. We’re all hurting, but no one as much as Jenks, and it would tear her apart if I let it. So I didn’t let it. You ever notice how she switches when she’s on a mission?”

  “Like hitting a button. To be honest, I always assumed it was because of Nika,” Rosa murmured. “I would have approached her as a friend.”

  “It wouldn’t have been wrong,” Max said with a soft smile. “Except we don’t have the time. You as a friend would have meant she could break down. Me as her lieutenant means there’s a job to be done. This way, she’s forced to be Petty Officer Khan until I tell her otherwise.”

  “Go on then, Lieutenant.” Rosa gave a sharp nod. “Ma, I want the three of you to stay together. And keep your eyes open.”