by K. B. Wagers
“You got more out of them than I did,” Nika murmured, standing and leaning against the table next to her. Max glanced away from Chae as the noise level in the rooms suddenly rose with the reappearance of the rest of the team.
“They’re scared, Nik.”
“Not a surprise,” he agreed, but his next words made her realize they weren’t on the same page. “I’d think any newbie Neo would be, and Chae’s been through a bit more than most.”
“No, something about this doesn’t add up.”
“The case is over and done, Max. Let’s focus on helping Chae settle in here.”
There was a bite of command in his voice that had her swallowing down her next words. “Sure. It’s good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be back.” His reply was absent, almost formulaic, and made her stomach clench.
Because unless Max missed her guess, Chae wasn’t the only one holding something back. They were just the easier puzzle for her to figure out at the moment.
She pasted a smile on her face and crossed the room to help Tamago with the food, telling herself with every step that things would be fine.
In time she might even believe the lie.
Interstitial
Commander Nika Vagin/Nik—
I am sorry to have missed you. I was hoping for a day or two of (almost) the whole team back together, but the powers that be decided I needed to head for Earth before you got to Jupiter. Don’t tell Max, but I suspect that was Hoboins’s doing to see how she’d handle being in charge.
It has been a long time since I have written on paper. I don’t know if you know, but my faith has us transcribe our own Bibles from the master copy in our home church as a reminder of how quickly technology can be taken from us.
I confess I will miss being out in the black, miss being with all of you and though—
Look at me, making this all about me when I should be talking about you.
This letter would have been different had I written it two years ago . . . such is the way of it, right? I want you to know you are the best Neo I have ever trained. I say this without hesitation or any equivocation, even as I know you will look at Max and think I am lying. Max still needs someone to look up to, someone with more experience leading, and you are that person.
You are meant to be there and you are meant to be doing the work. I know you doubt your ability in that regard—I can see you shaking your head, but I’m smarter than you, so just believe me on this—and I wish we’d had a bit more time to get you past that, but you have a good team and they will follow you. Just trust in yourself and in them.
Do not forget how hard you worked to be where you are.
Do not forget that you are an amazing human being who is both infinitely capable and so very kind, a combination that is often a rarity in this world.
Do not forget you are a commander in the NeoG and we are better than all the rest.
Go with God, Nika, and with all my love.
Commander Rosa Marie Martín Rivas/Rosa
Seven
Chae watched in silent amazement as Jenks and Max fought. They’d seen both women fight in the Games. It was hard to avoid, since Chae had been part of NeoG by the time Zuma’s Ghost had their first historic victory and then, of course, the Interceptor training facility had been buzzing about win number two from the prelims onward.
They wouldn’t even deny they’d gotten wrapped up in the whole thing, the passing acquaintance they’d had with the Games as a way to kill time on Trappist having evolved into something that sparked a yearning in Chae’s heart.
Especially the piloting bit. They’d watched Master Chief Ma’s flights over and over, amazed by the cool interaction between Max and Ma as they blew through course after course in the most recent Games.
That had fully ignited a fire in Chae’s chest that they’d buried with all the preparation for medical school. And then the events that had landed them here on Jupiter Station had all but eliminated any dreams of flying in the Games. They knew Max would probably take over the piloting seat for the competition. She was so good.
Yet now, with the preliminaries thirteen weeks out, they dared to hope that maybe someone would suggest them for the navigator seat.
Chae already knew they’d probably have to fight in the cage, as that had been Ma’s spot also, and it made their stomach twist into knots. Because watching fights on the screen and dreaming about what it would be like was a whole different matter from sitting within two meters of these incredible fighters they would never live up to.
Max was tall and slender, moving with a fluidity Chae couldn’t ever hope to match. The announcers and her own fellow Neos said that Max made up the ghost portion of the Interceptor team with her ability to predict people’s moves both in the cage and outside it.
Jenks, however, was neither tall nor slender. The CPO was, as Max had gleefully pointed out Chae’s first night there, a centimeter shorter than Chae at 153 centimeters, and built like the bruiser she was.
Both of them were infinitely more impressive than Chae could ever hope to be.
They noted that as the whole team sat along one side of the sparring mat. Other Neos in the gym had started wandering over to watch the show.
“They’ve both gotten faster,” Nika murmured, more to himself than anyone else. Chae didn’t have much to base that on but they were inclined to agree when Max dodged out of the way of a spin kick from Jenks that would have knocked all the air out of her lungs if it had connected.
Instead she landed a blow between Jenks’s shoulder blades with her palm that sent the chief flying into the mat. Curses blistered the air, mixing with the cheers and laughter of the crowd.
Jenks rolled to her feet, but she didn’t rush at Max like Chae expected. Instead she braced her hands on her knees and took several deep breaths, keeping one wary eye on the lieutenant standing and waiting patiently in the center of the mat, her hands up and an amused look on her face.
“Do you need a break?” Max asked, sending the crowd into laughter once again.
Jenks grinned back, smoothing a hand over the strip of bright purple hair she had braided and tied into a ponytail at the base of her skull. “You haven’t beaten me yet, Max. We’re not starting today.” She gestured. “Come on. Let’s go.”
The pair clashed again. Chae heard Nika’s sharp indrawn breath as Max couldn’t avoid Jenks’s sweep and hit the mat hard.
But Max rolled, and the elbow that would have landed in her gut hit the mat instead.
“Putting on a welcome-back show for you?”
Chae looked away from the fight as a big man sat down next to Nika. His DD handshake read Commander D’Arcy Montaglione, he/him. Chae froze.
Nika laughed and held out his hand. “D’Arcy, good to see you.”
“When did you get in?”
“A week ago.”
“We’ve been out, just got back in last night.” D’Arcy glanced past Nika at Chae and studied them for a moment before reaching across. “Commander D’Arcy Montaglione, Dread Treasure.”
“Spacer Chae Ho-ki.”
There was a flicker of what could have been recognition in D’Arcy’s dark eyes, but he didn’t say anything and Chae relaxed a fraction.
They knew the commander by reputation only, both in the NeoG and his previous life with Free Mars, the separatist group Chae’s own fathers had been a part of before they moved to Trappist to start a new life.
The assembled crowd cheered and Chae looked back at the fight to see Max on the mat, Jenks with an arm pulled tight against her throat.
Max reached up and tapped Jenks’s forearm and the pair rolled away from each other to their feet. They reached out and tapped fists twice, then Jenks turned on a heel and crossed to the bench with a pleased grin on her face. “Win for me. You’re up, Chae.”
“Don’t break them, Jenks,” Nika said.
“I would never.”
Chae got to their feet, rubbing damp palms against the
ir thighs.
“You’ll be fine,” Max said. “Just don’t watch her hands too much. She’ll use them to distract you.”
“That and her mouth,” Tamago said.
“Stop giving away my secrets,” Jenks replied.
“Your mouth isn’t a secret, Jenks,” someone called from the crowd, and laughter filled the air.
“Ha, ha.” Jenks waved her hand. “Master Gunnery Sergeant McGraw, I’m so glad you volunteered to be my punching bag for this demonstration. Come here so I can show my newbie how to make a big guy drop to his knees.”
“Good fight,” Nika said as Max sat on the bench next to him.
“She gets me with that every time. Hey, D’Arcy, how was Trappist?”
“Messy as usual. We were out on One-d helping with a major cleanup from some summer floods,” he said at Nika’s curious look. “Swear to god I’d just read about a drainage project in the works for that same habitat around two years ago. I guess whatever they put together couldn’t handle the water volume.”
Nika knew exactly what the problem was, but he couldn’t say anything. The drainage project had stalled due to lack of quality materials. Yet another casualty of Tieg’s greed.
“Is there a problem, Petty Officer Hunter?” Max’s question shook Nika out of his thoughts and he looked up to see the lanky PO from Avenging Heroes glaring in their direction.
There was a beat and then the man shook his head. “No, Lieutenant.”
“Then find somewhere else to be before I tell Jenks you’ve volunteered for a two-on-one demonstration.”
Nika wasn’t sure what surprised him more, the razor-sharp edge in Max’s voice or the angry look Hunter shot at D’Arcy before walking away.
“Sorry, D’Arcy,” Max murmured, still watching Hunter for a moment before she looked in Nika’s direction. “We’ve managed most of it since Hoboins sent him to Trappist, but Hunter’s uncle was killed in the Hellas fight. He might be a problem.”
“What am I missing here?” Nika asked.
D’Arcy shrugged. “Consequence of having me take over the task force was telling everyone about my life before the NeoG. It was—” He stopped and looked at Nika. “You heard about that, I’m assuming? That I used to be Free Mars?”
“Oh.” Nika nodded as pieces slipped into place. “Yeah, I heard.”
“You have a knack, Vagin, for making my disloyalty to the CHN sound like no big deal,” D’Arcy said.
“Because it’s not a big deal to me,” Nika replied. “I understand what you were fighting for then and I know who you are now. You’ve had my six in the black more times than I can count. That’s all that matters.”
“Thanks,” D’Arcy said with genuine gratitude.
“Jenks, hold it there.” Max came up off the bench.
His sister had let McGraw off the hook, it seemed, and now had Chae wrapped up in a choke hold, but she’d paused at Max’s order and was nodding enthusiastically at whatever Max was saying to Chae.
“She knew from the moment she stepped on this station two years ago,” D’Arcy said with a wave of his hand in Max’s direction. “Little shit apparently used her family connections and looked up my file when she was assigned to Jupiter. Came asking me about explosives when that thing with the LifeEx went down and someone tried to blow Jenks’s EMU pack.”
“She never said anything.” Granted, it wasn’t like Max to gossip for the sake of it, and they’d probably never been in a position where she felt like she could tell him.
I guess I’m not the only person keeping secrets.
“Max knows when to talk and when to keep her mouth shut.” D’Arcy settled back against the wall. “We’ll have to work together, but I get it if you don’t want to be—”
“I already told you: you’re my friend, D’Arcy,” Nika cut him off. He stuck his fist out. “I’ve got your back.”
“Well, all right then.” D’Arcy tapped his fist to Nika’s, and though his smile was easy, Nika could see the relief in his eyes. “You going to be able to wrangle those two?” D’Arcy asked, and Nika turned his attention back to the mat. “They’ve gotten to be thick as thieves in the last year.”
“Should be fine,” Nika replied. Max had taken Chae’s place in the hold and was demonstrating a way to get out of it that would work for the shorter Neo.
“Rumor is you were working with Stephan a lot in the sword ring back on Earth. Do I get to see that soon?”
“You asking me on a date, Montaglione?”
D’Arcy laughed. “Not without clearance from Carmichael. I’m looking at the Games, Nika. Curious if you’re up for a run.”
Nika blinked in surprise. “You know Zuma’s probably not a contender. We haven’t talked about it, but I assumed we were just going to take the year off and focus on work. It’s going to take a lot to get this team up to speed.”
“You probably want to make sure those two are on the same page,” D’Arcy said, tipping his head toward the mat. “Not to mention Sapphi and Tamago. They’re all talking about a three-peat.”
Mark that up as another thing you’ve missed, Vagin, he thought. Apparently the rest of the team was planning on making a run at the Boarding Games and here you are, content to hide in a corner.
“Sounds like I’m outnumbered,” he finally said, and forced a smile he hoped D’Arcy wouldn’t pick out as fake.
“Excellent.” D’Arcy tapped Nika on the knee and got to his feet. “I’ve got to go talk with Hoboins, but come find me at Corbin’s tonight and I’ll buy you a beer. We can talk about strategy and when I’m going to get to kick your ass in the sword ring.”
Nika watched him go and blew out a breath. Most of the crowd had filtered away as Max and Jenks had settled into an intense training discussion with Chae.
“That’s new,” he murmured to himself as the two women went through the same complicated handshake routine he’d seen the day of his arrival.
“Lot of stuff new, Nik.” Tamago’s soft voice carried through the crowd noise. “You’ve been gone for a while.”
He jumped and looked over. The petty officer had slid down the bench, silent as a ghost. They were good at that, slipping in and out of spaces without being noticed.
“You really thought we weren’t going to do the Games?”
“It was more weighing the odds,” he said. “Chae’s brand-new and I’m not exactly at the top of my form here.”
“You think Sapphi hasn’t calculated for all of this?” Tamago’s question was gentle, and as always their calm presence eased some of the worry coiling itself in Nika’s chest. The petty officer was amazing. Rosa had once said they could talk the planets into new orbits if they chose, and Nika knew in this moment she was right.
“Can I see?” They held their hands out and Nika shifted so he could rest his right hand on their palms. “It feels really close, weight-wise. Skin texture is a little strange, but that’s probably just me and my sensitive fingers. I miss the tattoo.” They looked up at him and smiled. “You’re not quite back yet, are you, Nika? I’m not expecting you to be the same, but you’re still not sure who you are.”
It shook him how easily they’d read him. But it didn’t pay to deflect now, so he went with a half-truth. “Basically.”
“Well, you’re wrong. You’re you. A little different, but that’s life, right? It changes all of us whether we want it to or not.”
He pulled Tamago into a hug so they couldn’t see the tears in his eyes. “I missed you, Tama.”
“I missed you, too. Max goes a long way to balancing Jenks out, but with Rosa and Ma gone the rest of it was falling on me and you know I love her, but it’s also exhausting AF. I don’t know how she lives in her own head.”
“She’d say practice.” Nika chuckled. “Here’s hoping having a newbie to wrangle will divert some of that energy, but I’m happy to take the burden off your shoulders.”
“Not really a burden. Just a lot of work. Jenks is going to do great,” Tamago said, squeezing Nika
once more before sitting up. “She doesn’t think so, but she’s really good at this.”
Nika looked back at the sparring circle, surprised at Tamago’s observation that Jenks was concerned about anything. His little sister was normally the self-assured one of this bunch.
She didn’t seem concerned right now. Instead, Jenks was currently waving her arms in the air, and Max had an arm resting on Chae’s shoulder, the pair laughing at whatever wild story she was telling them.
I’m doing this to keep them all safe.
He wasn’t sure if he believed it was worth the lies, but there was nowhere to go now but forward. Nika looked back at Tamago.
“Yeah, she is.”
Several days later Max dragged in a breath and tried not to let her trepidation show as Chae banked the craft they were flying into a hard port-side turn and blew past the course marker with less than a meter to spare.
“Are you seeing this, LT?” Sapphi said on their direct com. “Sorry, you’re in the passenger seat, of course you are.”
“Actually, my eyes are shut tight—” Max choked on a laugh, mostly because Chae cut the engines for a second, dropping them thirty meters down. It was a trick that worked only because the simulator course they were on was in atmo with a decent gravity reading. But it did work.
As terrifying as this was, Max was also in awe. Ma had been an amazing pilot with over forty years of flight experience between his Navy and NeoG service. Max’s help on navigation had improved upon what was already there.
Chae was something else entirely, though. She’d never seen anyone who could fly like this. It was indescribably gorgeous. And—as her grip on her armrests testified—a little scary.
An alarm blared and Chae swore. “Sorry, LT,” they said, reaching over and slapping it off. “I usually turn those stress indicators off when I fly—their parameters are too sensitive.”
“They’re there to keep the ship from breaking apart around us, Chae.”
“I know.” They shot her a quick smile. “But if you’re paying attention, a ship will give you plenty of warning before that happens. You just have to listen. Bit harder in a simulator, though.”