by K. B. Wagers
After Grant left she cued up the call. “Julia, how’s our Neo?”
“Clueless as usual. What do you need them to do?”
“I want you to tell them who you work for. Tell them we’re watching and that you’ll have instructions when they get to Jupiter Station.”
“You want them scared?” Julia’s vicious nature was part of the reason she’d been chosen for this job.
“Not so much that they’ll run, but enough that they won’t think to breathe a word of what we want to anyone. They’re our second pair of eyes on what the task force will be up to and I want to be able to route ships around the NeoG in my sleep, understood?”
“No problem, boss.”
“Good.” She disconnected the call and stared back out at the storm growing over the ocean. Despite what she’d told Grant, it was almost time to cut and run, but not before Melanie Karenina paid the NeoG back for ruining her life.
Five
Spacer Chae Ho-ki muttered curses in as many languages as they could think of while they sprinted through the crowded bay.
One bad choice years ago, and a cascade failure of epic proportions followed. It felt like it was never ending. Even the bright spots of the last few years were now tarnished black like burned bones.
“Please don’t let me miss this transport. That’s all I ask. Throw a thousand more things at me after and I will take them on. But just give me this one thing.”
As usual, the universe didn’t listen. They crashed into a burly Navy spacer and went flying sideways.
“Watch where you’re going!” The spacer’s eyes narrowed further as they realized Chae was in a blue-gray NeoG uniform, but before they could do anything more than take a step forward Chae scrambled back to their feet.
“Sorry!” they called, and vanished into the crowd.
There were few benefits to being all of 154 centimeters tall, but one was that it was easy to get lost in a mass of people, and Chae took full advantage of that now. They dodged another near-collision and hit an open space as the crowd cleared.
“Please still be there. Please still be there . . .”
Their heart leaped in celebration when they spotted the NeoG transport still in the dock, but it was quickly followed by a crushing drop when the DD handshakes of the two men standing at the loading ramp resolved in their vision.
“Fuck,” Chae muttered, and gripped the strap of their bag as they skidded to a stop a few meters away. They walked briskly the rest of the distance, trying to catch their breath.
“There they are.” The smile on Commander Nika Vagin’s face seemed genuine, but was that a tightness around his blue eyes? “Ho-ki, I was about to call Admiral Kwon at the Interceptor training facility and make sure something didn’t happen to you.”
“I’m sorry, Commander. I was—” Chae cut off the babbling explanation and snapped into a salute. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
Your fucking new commander doesn’t want to hear about how your ex-girlfriend hasn’t really been your girlfriend for the last few years but just someone criminals paid to keep track of you, Chae, so shut your mouth.
“You’re good,” Nika said after a moment’s pause and a glance at the NeoG captain standing next to him. “It gave Hiro and me a chance to catch up.” Nika smiled again. “Let’s get you settled so we can get moving.” He grinned at the captain. “I know you’re itching to try this ship out.”
Hiro grinned back. “Not every day we get new equipment. I’m going to have to send Max a present.”
“You know she’ll kick your ass if you do.”
“Tell her I wouldn’t mind.” Hiro’s grin widened and Nika rolled his eyes. Chae was so shocked by the interaction they almost missed the commander reaching for the bag at their feet.
“I’ve got it, Commander.” Chae snatched it up, spotted a flicker of something on their commander’s face, and bit down hard on the inside of their cheek to keep from saying something stupid.
“Come on.” Nika jerked his head toward the loading ramp. Chae hoisted their other bag higher onto their shoulder and followed.
“You were born on Mars,” Nika said as he turned left down a pristine corridor. The Gajabahu was a brand-new transport ship, just off the line. Chae remembered hearing something at basic about the test ships that could open mini-wormholes allowing for in-system transport for the NeoG, but it hadn’t been anything more than scuttlebutt. “Have you been out past the belt yet?”
“No, Commander.” The lie came organically. They hated that it did, but there wasn’t an easy way to say Yes, I was born on Mars but I lived on Trappist until I got arrested.
Nika stopped at the base of the stairs and laughed. “I get you’re still kind of in basic mode, but Nika’s fine unless it’s an emergency or I’m chewing your ass for something, Ho-ki.”
“Okay.” Chae could feel the commander’s first name stick in their throat and it took obvious effort to get it out. “Nika.” Chae closed their eyes with a sigh. “And if it’s all right, I prefer just Chae.” They swallowed down the urge to explain that it made them feel closer to their fathers to use their family name.
Nika laughed again, but it was kind and reminded Chae of their fathers even more. He reached out and patted them on the shoulder. “It’s perfectly fine. We’re a team now. It gets easier, I promise. Come on, we’re just up and on the right.”
Chae followed, guilt and fear a twisting snake in their belly. You made peace with this choice, Chae, just play it out, they reminded themself. Fix the problem, stop the cascade. Everyone will be safe.
Nika stopped at an open door and gestured Chae in. “Home sweet home, at least for the next few hours.” He followed them in, the door sliding shut behind him.
Chae put their bags down on the empty bed and turned around to find Nika leaning against the door with his arms crossed over his chest.
“So, as my grandmother used to say, if you ignore the bear in the corner for too long it’ll eat you. You want to tell me what it is a nineteen-year-old prodigy did to land themself in a plea deal that involved joining the NeoG?”
Chae’s heart dropped through the floor of the ship.
Missed point. Can’t backtrack to former. Cascade failure imminent. One more step until full explosion.
“I was told they were going to seal the record,” they said in a quiet voice.
“It was sealed.” Nika’s expression didn’t change. “You can find out a lot working in Intel.”
A lot, but not the reason. Or he wouldn’t be asking me.
“I don’t know what specifically, that’s why I’m asking you. That part is sealed well enough we couldn’t get the info,” Nika said, as if he’d read Chae’s mind.
“I’ll tell you now that Lieutenant Carmichael probably does know what landed you in hot water,” he continued. “She’s got better connections and she’s thorough. She’s also polite and may let you wait to tell her. I won’t. I want to know if you’re going to be a danger to my crew. If I should com Hiro and tell him we’re putting you back out in the bay.”
“You can’t,” they said in a rush. “I have to be here.”
It was the wrong thing to say and Chae knew it the moment Nika’s expression went dark. They braced themself, expecting the worst.
It’s all going to fall apart. My parents will end up dead or vanished and I’ll have given up everything for nothing.
But Nika didn’t move, didn’t push away from the door, and his expression didn’t change. He just issued a quiet order in a voice so calm it was terrifying. “I’m your commander, Spacer Chae. I can do whatever I want.”
It was so hard not to flinch, and Chae knew they did anyway. The words left them in a rush. “You remember the Trappist Heist a couple of years ago? It was all over the news?”
“Yes.”
“That was me.”
Nika stared at the kid as the words filtered into his head, crashing into memories he’d rather leave in the dust. Memories of Trappist and fire and the
crush of a building collapsing. It took more work than he wanted to admit to himself to shake it loose and keep poking. The lie and the bluff he’d tossed at Chae had done the job of getting the spacer to admit why they were here without Nika having to reveal his source beyond the vague allusion to his time at Intel.
“You’re the one who broke into a NeoG warehouse, stole a bunch of medical supplies. Military medical supplies.”
Chae was twisting their fingers together until they realized what they were doing and shoved their hands into their pockets. “Yes, sir.”
The muscles in Nika’s back unclenched a little. He’d read the file from Stephan before leaving HQ—it had been big news just before the hundredth anniversary of Games, which they’d lost. And then not a peep on the newslines. He remembered Sapphi’s offhand comment about someone being arrested, but the government wasn’t talking about who.
Everyone had assumed it was the separatist group—the Trappist Liberation Force—but the TLF had denied involvement. Nika could see the thread clearly now that he had all the pieces. Stephan was fairly sure the kid had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, trying to steal materials for the chronically undersupplied habitats, and circumstances spiraled out of control when Tieg got wind of the case—Chae became the perfect patsy to obfuscate why stealing supplies was necessary in the first place. The fact that their parents were involved with the TLF had been the lock on the door.
“That’s a big job to pull off alone. Someone set you up?”
“No, sir. I planned it all and I was there on-site.”
Nika immediately softened his expression. He was pushing too hard, scaring them when he needed them to trust him. “That a fact? I don’t like it when people lie to me, Chae.” He watched the kid’s back straighten and they squared their shoulders to meet his gaze.
I’m a hypocritical son of a bitch two seconds into this. Saint Ivan help me.
“Officially it was me,” Chae said.
“Then I’m asking you to tell me the unofficial version.”
Chae took a deep breath, then said, “They were going to arrest my parents, too, and some others who helped. My fathers are doctors on Trappist-1d. We needed the supplies. I saw a way to get them. My parents do good work out there in the habitats, sir. I figured better me than them. So I took the deal the CHN offered.”
Nika had questions, but he knew Chae couldn’t answer most of them and filed them away to ask Stephan later.
The doctors on the habitats shouldn’t need to steal medical supplies. They were sent enough to handle whatever might come up, and more as requested. But Nika had already seen the flow Tieg had managed to set up: the dissemination of habitat supplies to numerous warehouses on Earth and then a complex network of shuffled shipments, supposed pirate attacks, and paperwork errors had led to the disappearance of trillions of dollars’ worth of supplies over the last two years alone.
He studied Chae. The kid was doing that look-past-the-commander’s-shoulder thing Nika remembered all too vividly from Interceptor training. Nika switched on his com. “Hiro?”
“Right here.”
“We’re good to go.”
“Roger that. Enjoy the ride.”
Nika couldn’t stop the audible snort and saw Chae flinch out of the corner of his eye.
“Commander, are you going to tell the others?”
God damn if the kid didn’t sound terrified. They were in this deep. Nika shook his head. “No. It’s your story to decide what to do with. Like I said, though, Max almost certainly knows already, but she probably won’t push you to tell her right away.” He felt the slight tremor in the floor as the ship lifted off and he pushed away from the door, hitting the panel to open it. “However, I’ll say this: secrets don’t last, Chae, and they’re hell on the soul. Out in the black you need to be able to trust the people you work with.”
Nika paused with his left hand on the doorframe. “Get settled. I hear this trip is a little rough. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nika didn’t correct them for the “sir” instead of his name, and he waited until he was down the corridor to exhale. That had gone better than he expected, and yet he knew Chae hadn’t told him the whole truth. But that was expected, too: There was no way the kid was going to just fess up that they’d been approached and threatened by Tieg’s associates. That if they didn’t cooperate and feed information about the new NeoG task force over, their family was at risk.
You didn’t exactly set things up for the kid to trust you, either, Nika. Stephan’s voice was in his head.
Hopefully Max would be better at getting the spacer to open up. And even if Nika couldn’t tell her about the op, he knew once she talked to Chae for two minutes her instincts would kick in and she’d follow that thread all the way to the end. He made a note to mention to Stephan that it could be an issue if Max dug too deep, especially if she involved Sapphi in it. Zuma’s hacker was a pro at finding out things no one else could.
I’ll worry about what I can control, he thought. Like not getting killed by Hiro or this new test ship. Nika grabbed for the railing with his right hand as the ship took off with a jolt. The prosthetic worked as it should, and yet his arm still felt different, more than a year and a half later, even with everything synced perfectly. The doctors insisted that was in his head, but as far as Nika was concerned it didn’t fucking matter.
His arm was gone.
This thing in its place was perfect in every conceivable way, but it wasn’t his. He knew it every time he picked up a sword, though after a year of Stephan beating the absolute shit out of him in the practice ring he could at least trust that he could hold his own in a boarding action.
But he wasn’t winning any tournaments with it, not anytime soon.
Nika blew out a breath and continued up the stairs, trying to ignore the voice in the back of his head telling him he’d made a mistake accepting this job and everyone would be better off if he’d officially stayed with Intel rather than hide in this lie about being an Interceptor commander again.
He’d thought he’d been good with the choice, but it seemed like all his insecurities, all his worries and fears had slammed down on him the moment he left Earth, and trying to ignore them was like trying to ignore a siren wailing in his ears twenty-four/seven. Despite what he’d promised Stephan, he knew he was in over his head.
I’ve got a new team member I’m not sure I can trust, and I’m going to be lying to people who trust me in the process.
What the hell am I doing?
Chae sank down onto the bed as soon as they were alone in the room, gripping the back of their head with both hands and fighting to hold in the scream that wanted to tear through the air.
It was worse than they’d feared. Worse even than Julia’s parting shot, delivered with a cool and unforgiving kiss.
We’ll be watching, Chae, don’t forget that. We own you now, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll do as you’re told. Keep your mouth shut, do what we tell you, and everything will be fine back home.
“I can’t trust anyone except myself.” They murmured the words like a mantra.
They wanted desperately to believe the kindness in Nika’s eyes was real. That everything would be okay and they could just play out this punishment with the NeoG, keep their family safe, and maybe someday this nightmare would end.
Secrets don’t last, Chae. Nika’s words were ringing in their head.
These secrets have to last, though. Or everyone I love dies.
Six
“What are we doing here again?”
Max rolled her eyes at the question. Jenks knew very well what they were doing, and the chief wasn’t as annoyed about it as she was pretending to be.
“Starting a new tradition,” she replied anyway. Max hoped she looked more relaxed than she felt, standing at the edge of the docking bay with her hands in her pants pockets as the transport pulled into its spot. “We’re family and family makes the tim
e to say hello and goodbye.”
“Bye bye bye.”
“Oh stop, Jenks,” Sapphi said with a laugh when she started singing. “You’re not fooling anyone. We know you’re as hyped to see Nika as the rest of us. You’re practically vibrating with excitement.”
“Fine. I am excited to see him.”
“And the newbie,” Max reminded her.
“Of course the newbie.” This time Sapphi’s wicked grin was identical to Jenks’s. “What was their name again?”
“Pretty sure their name is not the master chief.” Jenks held her hands up with a laugh when Max leveled a look in her direction. “I kid. I’m sure Spacer Chae Ho-ki will fit right in with the rest of us.”
“They prefer to be called Chae,” Max said. She hoped they would fit in, knew how much Chae’s nerves must be jumping. She’d been through it herself on her first day at Jupiter Station. And their new crewmember had even more reason to be nervous.
Sending us a nineteen-year-old kid caught up in something far bigger than themself, Admiral Chen. I hope you know what you’re doing.
Max couldn’t say how she knew, only that something in her gut told her the head of the NeoG had been the one to pull the strings behind Chae’s assignment in much the same way she’d put Max with Zuma on the request of her older sister, Ria. She wondered if Nika knew about Chae’s record. She’d debated sending him the information she’d gotten and eventually decided against it, wanting to tell him in person so she and Nika could talk about how best to handle it. It hadn’t felt fair to tarnish his first meeting with Chae with “Hey, your newbie got busted stealing medical supplies on Trappist-1d and did a plea deal with the CHN.”
Even worse, Max didn’t know how Nika would react. That was a shocking realization. A man she’d been talking with for more than two years and she didn’t have the first clue how he would handle this.
She hoped the compassion she’d seen when he talked about Jenks’s early days living on the streets would extend to a stranger, but Max couldn’t stop that voice in the back of her head from whispering that people could surprise you in the most unpleasant of ways.