Hold Fast Through the Fire

by K. B. Wagers

  “Locker rooms are this way.” Jenks couldn’t quite believe it as Asabi fell into step beside her, bodyguards trailing behind, and soon the sounds of the academy gym faded into nothing more than a muted roar.

  Asabi’s bodyguards had stopped at the entrance of the locker rooms and Jenks grabbed for a towel, scrubbing at her head as she tried to think of something to say in the silence.

  “I am so terribly sorry, my friend.”

  Jenks looked up and Asabi was holding out a hand. She didn’t think as she took it, but the act of grabbing on to someone seemed like a natural thing to do lately.

  Even if the trans woman was still practically a stranger.

  They’d exchanged a few emails before the explosion, indulged in some harmless flirting over SocMed that drove their fans wild, but never in a million years would Jenks have considered that someone like Asabi thought of her as a friend.

  “I am lost without him,” Jenks whispered, trying and failing to offer up a smile.

  “I cannot imagine how you feel.” Asabi squeezed her hand. “I wish the world were a kinder place where good people didn’t get hurt so often.”

  “We fought before the explosion,” she said. She couldn’t tell Asabi the whole story, but Jenks could tell her that much. “I was so mad. I apparently talked to him just before, but I don’t remember.”

  “Would you forgive him again if you had the chance?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  Asabi touched the fingers of her free hand to her lips and gestured upward. “He knows, then. Trust in that small comfort.”

  Jenks stepped into the offered circle of Asabi’s arms. Her chest was a confusing mass of feelings, but for a moment it all slipped away. “I appreciate you coming to watch a fight.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it. I wish I could stay longer.” Asabi smiled as they separated. “I know you’re busy and I’ve taken up enough of your time. Please stay in touch? I’m here if you need anything at all.”

  “I will. I promise.” She waited until she was alone in the locker room to press her hand to her side.

  “I just exchanged hellos with Asabi Han,” Max announced, looking somewhat dazed as she came in. “She said she was very excited about my piloting competition. Was that your doing?”

  “We’re apparently friends.” Jenks grinned and then winced.

  “You hurting?”

  “Fuck yeah.” She didn’t look at Max, but there wasn’t any point in denying it. On a good day she should have finished a match against Hunter with either a knockout or a lot more points. “This might not go very well, LT.”

  “Not if you’re dragging ass.”

  Jenks looked at Max in shock until her friend laughed.

  “Seriously, Jenks—you won. You keep doing what you can until you can’t. You know Nika’s going to be pissed when he realizes we weren’t entirely truthful about how well you’ve recovered?”

  “I know, and I’ll take the heat for it, but I had to do this.” She offered up a half-hearted smile at Max and the other woman crossed the locker room to wrap her arms around her. Jenks leaned into the embrace. “He’d want me to keep fighting, right? I’m not just fooling myself about that to justify getting in the cage?”

  “You’re not. We all feel like that, Jenks, to varying degrees. But we need to keep doing this—”

  “Until we can’t.”

  “Yeah. This is so much more important than just the Games.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. Or the rest of the crew. Sapphi’s still not sleeping well. Tamago’s doing a good job holding it together for all of us, but I think they’re going to burst any second. Chae’s maybe doing the best of us all.” Jenks sighed and turned to look at Max. “How are you?”

  The question seemed to surprise her and Max stared at the bank of lockers for a moment before she found the answer she was looking for. “Scared,” she whispered. “Scared of how angry I am all the time now. Scared for the NeoG, scared for everyone I care about. I know how these people operate, Jenks, and they think they’re untouchable.”

  “I’m going to do a lot more than touch them.”

  That got the smile Jenks was aiming for and Max pressed their foreheads together with a sigh. “There hasn’t been a good time to tell you this until now, but when I saw Doge out there in the black and thought you’d—”

  “You’re gonna make us both cry, LT, and you’ve got a piloting semifinal that you need dry eyes for.” Jenks squeezed Max tight. “I know,” she mumbled. “I know how you feel and I love you, too. Go on. Tell Chae to soar like an eagle.”

  “Get some rest.”

  “I’ll try to pass that message on to my head.”

  Max snorted.

  Jenks stretched experimentally, wincing at the sharp pain, and headed for the showers.

  Normally this time would be filled with watching endless footage of her opponents for the prelims, but Jenks cued up a different set of files on her DD chip as she showered, dried off, and changed into clean clothes.

  The files were on the only opponents who mattered. All the faces and names from Project Tartarus were slowly resolving out of this blurry mess of pain. She knew the others were doing the same thing—they’d talked about it before leaving Jupiter Station, when Sapphi had told them she’d managed to find a way to lock down their team server so that no one would be able to get into it.

  Nika had gone for it and surprised Jenks by ordering Sapphi to load all the information they had on the operation into the team server. From there they could all access it, and Jenks had taken the opportunity to download every bio they had on potential suspects.

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  She looked up at the familiar voice, an indescribable feeling of love flooding her chest. “Ma.”

  The retired master chief crossed the locker room and scooped Jenks into a hug. She clung to him like he was the only solid thing in the world.

  Ma held her just as tightly, until gently setting her down. As usual there were no useless platitudes from him. He just touched his forehead to hers and looked her in the eye. “You didn’t message me back.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I get it. Max told me.” He paused, studied her. “Where are you?”

  “Still here, Master Chief.”

  He smiled and patted her face as he straightened. “You were dropping your left elbow a lot in the fight. That where you got hurt?”

  “Yeah. Piece of shrapnel right in my side, nearly took out my kidney.”

  Ma reached in and touched her where the wound was, applying just enough pressure to make her wince. “Still sore?”

  “Still healing,” she admitted. “Plus Hunter got a good punch in.” She’d never lied to Ma and she wasn’t about to start now. From the minute she’d set foot in Zuma’s Ghost the man had been like a father to her.

  You know, the last time that thought crossed your mind Hoboins died.

  Jenks cleared her throat, dancing away from the pain with practiced ease. “You bring the girls?”

  “Nope, just me and Rosa.”

  “Rosa’s here, too?”

  “She went to watch Nika.”

  “That’s good. I was about to head that way myself. Now I have company.” She looped her arm through his and rested her head against his shoulder. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Likewise, Chief.”

  Jenks didn’t even bother to hide the smile that put on her face.

  Nika took a deep breath as he saluted Senior Chief Jen Davis with his sword. The fighter from Super Nova met him in the middle of the ring and gave a little nod as they tapped each other over the heart with the points of their swords. Their suits lit up in the flashing notice of a mortal wound.

  The crowd stayed quiet as the fighters backed off and the referee reset the match. They’d repeated this ritual with every sword fight. Nika hadn’t been sure of the reaction when he’d suggested it, but all twenty members of the NeoG competing in the sword had responded yes
without hesitation.

  Now the fight was on for real. Jen was Nika’s height, but he remembered her being fast and he realized as she moved in that she’d gotten faster over the last two years.

  The whistle was loud in his ear. “Point to the senior chief!”

  The red mark on his suit pulsed just above his left hip and Nika smothered a curse.

  Get out of your head, Vagin. You know what you need to do. Just let your body do it and stop fighting it.

  Stephan’s orders were firm and as Nika took a second deep breath, he spotted Rosa off to the side. She had her arm around Jenks’s shoulders and was whispering something to his sister.

  The vibration of feet hitting the mat dragged his attention back to the fight, but Nika didn’t panic. He lasered in on the action, and as he ducked under Jen’s swing, he grabbed her front leg and pulled. Her footing slipped and she went down.

  His sword arm had started the motion before he’d even touched her leg, and the tip hit the same spot he’d tapped before the match, lighting up her suit.

  “That’s a kill shot. Match, Commander Vagin!”

  He held a hand out and she took it with a rueful grin. Nika pulled her to her feet. “Good fight, Jen.”

  “Was it? Over a lot quicker than I wanted. Should have known those stories about you losing your edge were just stories.” She hugged him. “It’s good to have you back in the ring.”

  “Good to be back.”

  Nika slipped under the ropes and into Jenks’s arms. “Smooth,” she said.

  One of the things that really hurt about all this was how subdued she was. This was Jenks’s second-favorite time of the year, but it was shadowed by so much pain.

  “How was your fight?” he asked.

  “Easy peasy.” She shrugged. “Won on points.”

  “Against Hunter?”

  “Yeah.” She moved out of the way before he could push, but that alone was enough to tell him D’Arcy had been right in his guess that Jenks would fight even if she wasn’t fully healed. She should have destroyed Hunter, and Nika wondered if it wasn’t just an injury that took their fight to the limit.

  He wondered if his sister had gone the full three rounds for the punishment.

  Before he could say something that would certainly get him punched, a friendly voice said, “Nika,” and Rosa wrapped him in a hug. He hugged her back, somehow translating all the unspoken things he needed to say into the embrace. When she pulled away, there was sadness in her eyes. More important, though, there was love. “There are no words,” she whispered. “So we let God pull our prayers from our hearts and our tears.”

  “From your mouth to Saint Ivan’s ears.” He managed a smile. “Hey, Ma.”

  “Nika.” Ma hugged him so tight Nika felt a rib pop. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Likewise, although my ribs might disagree. How are your kids and grandkids?”

  “Doing well.”

  “We’ve missed you both. How are things down here?”

  “Tense,” Rosa replied, slipping her arm through his as they followed Ma and Jenks back through the crowd to the locker room. “The explosion was close enough to the academy to make all of us wonder if we’re next.”

  “You won’t be.” Nika shook his head and Rosa lifted an eyebrow at him.

  “You going to tell us what’s going on?”

  “I can’t. I can tell you it wasn’t Free Mars, but that’s all for now.” Even that was technically forbidden, but this was Rosa. Yet apparently that magnanimity wasn’t received in the way he hoped. He knew he was in for a fight because of the way Rosa’s lips drew into a thin line. “Listen—I’m not putting the two of you and your families at risk, and telling you would put you at risk. Please, don’t argue with me.”

  “Hoboins, Lou, everyone else.” She shook her head. “They were our family, too, Nika.”

  “I know,” he replied. “Believe me, I do. But the people responsible are dangerous, they’ve proven that already. I’ve let too many friends die. So you have to trust me on this and stay out of it.”

  Rosa opened her mouth to protest, but Jenks’s quiet “Please” rocked through the room.

  “All right,” Rosa said, sharing a quick look with Ma. “We’ll keep our noses out of it—for now. But if you need us, you call us.”

  “I’ll always need you, Rosa.”

  She laughed.

  “Seriously—we will.”

  Rosa seemed to be able to accept that, nodding at him.

  “We’re going to head for the hangar and catch the rest of the semifinals,” Ma said. “I hear your new pilot is better than me.”

  “It’s a possibility. Paired with Max, I think they could eventually set all the records.”

  “That good?”

  “It helps that they have young eyes, I’m told.”

  “Did you go through asshole training when you got your promotion?” Ma asked.

  “I’m told I come by it naturally. Ma, I make fun because I miss you,” Nika said, and it had the bonus of being the truth. “Look, I’m going to clean up. How about you two go ahead and Jenks and I will meet you there?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “You know they’re not going to keep their noses out of it,” Jenks murmured as the pair walked away.

  Nika sighed. “Yeah, I rather expect not. But hopefully we can keep them at enough of a distance that they won’t get caught up in the real serious shit.”

  “I know.” She bumped her shoulder into his. “You should do that kind of quick-and-dirty fight more often.”

  He glanced down at her. “To be perfectly honest I got distracted by you and Rosa and just reacted.”

  She reached up and tapped his head. “You always seem to do better when you stop using this, which is ironic, I know.”

  “That sounds very much like something Stephan told me. That I needed to stop fighting myself so much and just let my body do its thing.”

  Hoboins had said the same thing to him, Nika realized.

  It was going to take a long time before these memories didn’t feel like someone was pouring ice into his heart.

  “He wasn’t wrong.” She smiled sadly. “I know I have a reputation for being impulsive. Like sister, like brother?”

  “Except you’re not,” he replied. “You’re always watching vids and practicing. You go in more prepared than anyone.”

  “Sure. But I’ve got the disadvantage, yeah?” she asked, gesturing at herself. “Too short for the cage in theory, but I make up for it by using what I do have.”

  “Which is what?” Nika asked the question even though he already knew what she was going to say. He’d listen to her for an hour if it meant there was some life back in his sister.

  “I can hit hard and get hit hard. Now this”—she grabbed for his right hand—“this isn’t a liability, Nika, it’s an advantage. Did you know you can catch a sword with it? Like in the ring? It’s not against the rules.”

  It took him a minute to understand what she was saying. “Grab a sword with my hand?”

  “Exactly. I got to thinking about it after Max told me Julia stabbed you on the station. She said you said it didn’t hurt, not like if you’d actually gotten stabbed. So I went looking through the comp rules and can’t find a single thing that would disqualify you if you pulled something like that in the ring.” She grinned up at him. “Someone comes in on you, rather than blocking with your sword, you catch with this hand and boop—poke ’em in the heart.”

  “Poke?” He didn’t hide the grin and she rolled her eyes.

  “You know what I mean.”

  He did, and now that the idea was in his head he could already tell it was going to put down roots and grow. “It’ll be most effective the first time. I probably don’t want to waste it.”

  “Yes. But once you do it, they’ll still have to consider it as part of your repertoire. How many of them are going to be able to adjust to an idea they’ve never encountered before? To try to ignore all their muscle
memory? So don’t overthink it. If you have an opportunity to use it, use it.” She shrugged and he saw the wince even though she tried to hide it.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m fin—” She stopped and took a breath, wincing again as she muttered a curse. “I hurt. Everything hurts, Nika.”

  He carefully wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “I wish I could make it go away for you.”

  “I know. We don’t get to do that, though.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “This sucks. I’m supposed to be having fun, but how can I when our friends are gone?”

  “You don’t think they’d want you to?”

  Jenks pulled away and tossed her hands up in the air, and Nika muffled the urge to tell her to stop moving so much. “I think that the world was fucking ending and people still went about their lives as if it weren’t. Shit, Nik. If I’ve learned anything from all those memes and jokes in the early days of the Collapse, it’s that some people were screaming and the rest of them? They just went about their day. ‘The Collapse will be televised,’” she muttered spitefully.

  Nika wasn’t sure where she was going with her off-topic rant, but he knew enough to just let her get it out. She’d eventually hit on what was really bothering her.

  “Did you know that in 2019 and 2020 there were fires in what used to be Australia where more than a billion animals died and still they didn’t do anything?” Jenks shook her head. “They called it Black Summer. It was the beginning of the end, but it was forgotten about so fucking quickly by the rest of the world. Shit, in part because of the pandemic that followed, but that didn’t even faze them, either!” She hooked her hands behind her head, grimacing at the pain. “I kind of understand it. It was too much to deal with. Part of me wants to just forget and go have fun like I always have.”

  “Oh, Jenks.” Nika closed his eyes as the pain in her voice spiked against his.

  “I think humans are hardwired against our own self-interest. It’s a goddamned wonder we are still alive. There were kids who tried to speak up about the looming climate crisis. Know what they got for it? Death threats and mocking. Told to shut up and sit down.