A Pale Light in the Black Read online

  “You want an opinion?” There was no sympathy in Jenks’s question, something he was always grateful for from her. She continued at his nod. “Let’s do the bridge first. We’ll take whoever it is out, and I can convince them to call one or both up from engineering. We’ll just ambush them on the way. The odds that engineering will blow the ship are only slightly greater than zero. Survival instinct is strong no matter what is going on here.”

  “You really should have gone to the academy, Jenks.”

  “Pfft.” She rolled her eyes. “I’d be trash as an officer and we both know it. You’re the smarter one. I just know how to sneak up on people.” Jenks tapped the panel and slipped through the door as it opened.

  Nika knew it was more than that, but Jenks was right about the sneaking up on people.

  That’s how he’d met his adopted sister, when he’d been twenty-three, home on leave to deal with the remnants of his grandmother’s life. Jenks had been a fifteen-year-old street dweller his dear grandmother had taken in and neglected to tell him about. Which meant their first meeting had been her thinking he’d broken into his late grandmother’s house and trying to brain him with a frying pan.

  She’d survived the streets of Krasnodar for eight years, and according to the letter written in his grandmother’s shaky hand, she’d been living with her for close to three months.

  That day, standing in his baba’s kitchen staring down into the girl’s wide eyes—one blue, one brown—Nika could hear his grandmother’s voice. “We take in the strays, Nika, and there’s nothing wrong with it as long as you open your heart to the hurt that will come. Because you can’t save them all—but some is better than none. Just don’t lose yourself in the process like your mother did, you understand?”

  And that was how a brand-new ensign in the Near-Earth Orbital Guard had offered a fifteen-year-old girl a permanent place in his family and somehow managed to raise her through his first years in the NeoG without killing both of them.

  He’d done something right in the end. Jenks could have split at any point, but not only had she decided to stay, she also fell in love with NeoG and enlisted the morning of her seventeenth birthday.

  “Hey.”

  Nika jumped when Jenks tapped him on the chest, blinking dry eyes and swearing under his breath. “Sorry, took a trip.”

  “And Commander tells me to focus.” She grinned at him. “Let’s move.”

  Chapter 3

  The interior of the ship was as dingy as the outside and looked like it had been out in space for a hundred years without anyone tending to it. But there were a few signs of recent repairs, opened panels and up-to-date wiring Nika had to prod Jenks past so she didn’t stop to inspect it.

  “Sapphi, can we get some schematics?” Nika asked. He could practically hear Jenks roll her eyes from in front of him.

  “The bridge is this way, I could see it as we came in,” she protested.

  “Here you go, Nika,” Sapphi replied, and the layout of the tiny ship came to life in front of his eyes. The HUD in their helmets was excellent tech, but there was still that image-on-screen bit that couldn’t quite beat how the DD chip displayed the images directly onto your retinas, making everything meld seamlessly with the world around you.

  Dànǎo Dynamics, the consolidation of the shattered tech companies of the east and west, had developed the DD chip as a way to circumvent the wastefulness of their predecessors. The unprecedented organic cybernetics were the first of their kind post-Collapse and still unmatched in their simplicity hundreds of years later.

  Nika had a hard time imagining life without it.

  “One time. I take one wrong turn and you all never let me hear the end of it,” Jenks was muttering to herself as she crept down the hallway. “Besides, we were on solid ground. Have I ever gotten lost on a ship?”

  “You have not.” Master Chief Ma Léi’s deadpan voice came over the coms. “However, that one time on ground you nearly killed us all so, yes, you’ll keep hearing about it.”

  Jenks said something under her breath too fast for the translation software to catch, but Nika had put enough effort into learning her native Khalkha Mongolian to be sure it didn’t need to be repeated for the master chief’s benefit.

  “Jenks, up and to the left,” he said, before anyone else could ask.

  They followed the corridor to the open bridge door. Jenks peeked in, looked back at Nika, and held up a single finger that she pointed to the left before pointing at herself.

  One man. On the left. I’ll take him.

  Nika nodded and Jenks slipped in through the door. He shifted his grip on his sword and scanned the corridor as a voice echoed from inside, then he followed her in.

  “Boson, are you and Hobbs about done with the engine? The longer we hang out here the better the odds get that the cops are going to show.”

  “Those odds just went through the roof,” Jenks said. She had her sword up and under the man’s chin before he could even twitch toward the console. “Hi. I wouldn’t. Prison’s not great, but it’s better than being dead.”

  The man swallowed.

  Nika leaned in on his other side. “What’s your name?”

  “Shaw.”

  “Listen up, Shaw. I want you to get on the com and have Boson and Hobbs come on up to the bridge. If you so much as hint there’s something going on, you’re going to have one last bad day. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do it.”

  The man’s hand shook as he reached slowly for the console, his eyes locked on Jenks’s down the length of her sword. “Hey, guys? Will you come up here for a minute?”

  “What happened to ‘get this shit done now’?”

  “Don’t argue. You need to see this.”

  There was an exasperated sigh from the other end of the com and then silence.

  Nika tapped Shaw’s hand away from the console and the man put it back in his lap. “Was that a yes?”

  “Hobbs is short-tempered, but he’ll be up.”

  Jenks leaned and frisked Shaw, raising an eyebrow at the gun she pulled free. “On a spaceship? You trying to kill yourself?”

  Shaw swallowed. “It’s necessary insurance.”

  “Right.” She shared a look with Nika before turning her back on Shaw and poking at the console. “Your routing computer says you came from Trappist-1e? But the records say this boat never made it there. Now you’re back here. That’s a long way off target for this jumper, Shaw, and too far for you to fly on your own. What were you doing out there? Where are you headed? Why come all the way back here first?”

  Nika kept an eye on the door as Jenks continued to poke through the ship’s systems and peppered Shaw with questions, the man getting more and more anxious as the seconds ticked away.

  Then her tone changed. “There’s no people. Commander, the computer says there are no people on this ship.”

  “I’m seeing that, Jenks,” Rosa replied over the com. “Our targets are secure. Tamago is questioning them.”

  Shaw froze when Jenks turned her gaze toward him. “Where are the people who are supposed to be on this ship?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, we just salvaged this.”

  “Oh fuck off.”

  “Jenks,” Nika said.

  Shaw cleared his throat. “Look. You’ve stumbled into trouble beyond recall. You can’t run far enough away from this. I could give the lot of you more money to just walk away right now—more than you’ll see in your entire military career. You don’t know what you’re messing with, our employers are—”

  Jenks moved like a snake, flipping her sword over and bashing the guy in the temple hard enough to make him slump over, unconscious.

  “What?” she said at Nika’s look. “He was being annoying. Let’s get him cuffed and go wait for the other two.” She glanced back at the computer. “There’s some other stuff here but it’s coded. Hey, Sapphi, I’m uploading this to my DD chip.”

  “Got it,�
� Sapphi replied. “My uncle always says double backups are best.”

  “All right—let’s get the rest of these guys in custody and call it a day.”

  “Jenks . . .”

  “What?”

  “He had a gun,” Nika said, grabbing his little sister by the back of the neck and tapping his forehead to hers. “The others might also. Be careful.”

  “Always.” Her smile was quick. “Either side of the door. I’ll let the first one through for you to deal with and take the second.”

  He could hear the footsteps and voices echoing up the corridor and released Jenks with a nod. “Deal.” He backed up to the other side of the door and took a deep breath, holding it.

  The first man stepped through. He was half the size of the hulking bear of a man behind him, but there wasn’t time to change the plan. Nika muttered a curse under his breath as Jenks grinned.

  “Near-Earth Orbital Guard! Stop right there and put your hands behind your head,” he ordered.

  The one in front put his hands up. He was a short, nervous-looking man with pale features, and Nika grabbed him by the collar of his dirty jumpsuit.

  Jenks didn’t have the same luck.

  He heard her swear as the big guy spun on his heel and ran. Tamping down the desire to follow, Nika cuffed the first man, reciting his rights as he did. “What’s your name? You going to give me any trouble?”

  “Boson, and no.” He shook his head. “Dead men don’t give trouble.”

  For some odd reason, that made Nika think of his father and he laughed. “You’d be surprised. My old man caused us trouble long after he drank himself to death.” He put Boson against the wall. “You sit here and don’t move.”

  He grabbed his sword and sprinted into the hallway, just in time to see Jenks shoulder-check the other salvager in the back. The man flew forward, landing hard on the grated floor of the corridor.

  “Stay down.” She stepped on the man’s back and put her sword against his neck. “I am Petty Officer Altandai Khan of the Near-Earth Orbital Guard and you are in violation of the Earth Space Treaty of 2195. The charges are human smuggling, illegal salvage, and resisting arrest.” She smiled down at him. “Have a nice day.”

  “Pack it up and stow it. Nice run, people.” Rosa tapped a fist on the concentric circle shield of the NeoG that was painted on the interior of the ship. “We’ll debrief at zero seven hundred tomorrow, but I want your reports ready before the meeting. Before, as in prior to my ass standing in front of you at zero seven hundred. I’m looking at you, Jenks.”

  “Commander.” Jenks spread her hands wide with a grin. “Why you always gotta call me out?”

  “Because you sent me a file last time with nothing but ‘That mission sucked’ written in it four hundred times and some ancient-ass memes,” Rosa countered. Jenks was an excellent Neo, but her obsession with the twenty-first century didn’t always translate well into official reports. “Get yourselves some dinner.”

  “It did suck,” Jenks muttered, dodging Nika’s swing and racing for the door. She’d somehow timed it so the pressure lock released just as she hit it and jumped down onto the deck of the Jupiter Station docking bay with her robotic dog, Doge, trundling along at her heels.

  Rosa kept from sighing, instead nodding to Sapphi and Tamago as the pair exited the ship, and glanced back into the cockpit. “You good, Ma?”

  “I’ve got it. I’ll do a pass on my way out, don’t wait for me.” Ma waved a hand without looking away from the readouts scrolling in front of his eyes.

  “Don’t stay too long,” Rosa ordered, and the master chief grunted an assent that was the closest to an agreement she’d get. She shouldered her bag and swung out of the side door of Zuma’s Ghost, patting the sleek white ship as her boots hit the deck. “Thanks for bringing us home, girl.”

  Rosa switched off her Babel as she crossed the massive expanse of the NeoG’s docking bay. The shouting around her devolved into a mix of languages without the benefit of the translation tech embedded alongside her cochlear nerve. She preferred the somewhat scattered nature of the talking. The bulk of it was Mandarin; she’d never quite picked up the language despite repeated efforts to learn, but the rhythm of it was soothing and the lack of knowledge on her part meant her brain didn’t attempt to do any work to understand it.

  She could hear bits of her native Spanish as well as English peppered among the conversations. It was a wonder how such a simple thing as the Babel had brought humanity closer together in the aftermath of near extinction. The Collapse was a distant memory lost to over three hundred years of history, although kept alive by scholars and people like Jenks, who was mostly fascinated by the beginning of the twenty-first century rather than the bloodier end of it.

  They’d survived it, somehow. Whenever Coalition politicians were feeling particularly nostalgic they’d go on about how humanity put aside their differences, pulled together, and saved not only themselves but the planet before stepping out into the blackness of space.

  She was sure the reality was vastly different from the story they spun.

  Rosa automatically reached for the pendant tucked beneath her thermal undershirt, fingers rubbing the worn disc as she murmured the litany of her childhood. “We are protectors of the Earth, and it is our duty to keep her and stay upon her always.” The irony of it wasn’t lost on her, but Rosa was willing to carry the shame that her family meant more to her than her faith and she would do her duty for them.

  Even if it meant going off-world.

  The pinging of incoming messages echoed in her head as her DD chip connected with the station’s network. They’d been on patrol for nine days on Zuma, waiting for a sign of that ship in the asteroid belt, and the connection was too spotty filtered through the Interceptor ship to waste on personal messages. Now that she was back, the accumulated news started pouring in.

  Rosa quickened her pace, weaving in and out of the crowd and slipping into the low-g corridor that led to the Interceptor team quarters. Her team’s common room was predictably empty, and equally predictably a disaster of hastily tossed gear, as the others had dumped their stuff and headed for the bar.

  She stepped over Jenks’s duffel with a laugh. She didn’t blame her crew in the least and would make her way to join them as soon as her call was done.

  Tossing her bag onto the narrow bed in her room, Rosa grabbed the tablet from the docking station and tapped in her code, checking the time sync with Earth.

  “Coms, Sullivan here—hey, Commander, welcome back.”

  “Hey, Sully, put me through to home, will you?”

  “Can do.” Ernie Sullivan grinned at her. “You made it back under the wire, didn’t you?”

  “Just. But I had to—you know Gloria wouldn’t forgive me if I was late calling on her birthday.” Rosa shook her head. “Anyway, thanks for holding a line open for me.”

  “You know I’d do anything for Gloria, but it’s been quiet and there’s not a lot of outgoing coms right now, so it was no trouble. Tell her happy birthday for me,” they replied. “Vid-com is live and ringing on the other end. Have a good night, Commander.”

  “Thanks, Sully, you too.” Rosa blinked away the surprising tears that had crept into her eyes as the screen flickered and her wife’s face appeared. “Hey, baby.”

  Angela Martín’s dimples were peeking out from her round cheeks as she attempted to keep from smiling. “You were cutting that close.”

  “We just got back, but it was never in doubt. How’s the birthday girl?”

  “Bouncing around the house. Mama is trying to keep her out of the pile of presents. Here, talk to your mother for a moment.” The camera Earth-side fuzzed a little as Angela moved through the sunlit house and handed the tablet off. “Gloria, your mama is calling all the way from Jupiter!” she called from off-screen.

  “Rosa.” Inez Martín’s face appeared, smiling brightly at her daughter. “You’re not getting enough sleep.”

  “I sleep fine, Mama. How are
you?”

  “Missing you every day you are not on God’s green earth.”

  Rosa suppressed a smile and a sigh. “I’ll be back soon for the prelims.”

  “It will have to be enough.” Inez glanced over her shoulder. “I have been taking Gloria to church as I promised. I keep hoping Angela and Isobelle will join us, but they do not.”

  “I hope you’re not pushing. We talked about this.”

  “A mother’s hope springs.” Inez smiled as the noise level grew. “God watch over you in the black, my darling daughter. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Mama!” A whirlwind of dark curls launched herself into the picture.

  “My baby girl, how are you?”

  “I am eight. Finally!”

  Rosa laughed. “Yes, yes you are. Happy birthday, my darling.”

  “Did you send me a moon rock for my birthday?”

  “I haven’t been anywhere near the moon, but I did send you a present. Go ask Grandma Sia for the box with the gold stars.”

  “I miss you,” Angela murmured as Gloria ran off shouting at the top of her lungs. “Iso said to tell you hi, but she had work so she had to run.”

  “Tell her I love her and I got her email the other day.” Their oldest daughter was better at writing than these face-to-face talks, so Rosa didn’t push her too much. “I miss you, too.” She reached a hand out, tracing her wife’s face with a fingertip. “We’ll be home in a few months for the prelims.”

  “I know . . . it’s just hard.”

  “It is. But we agreed it was worth it. There’s not much longer. I do the full forty and it’s permanent benefits. That means LifeEx treatments, not just for me and you but for Isobelle and Gloria.”

  “I know.” Angela forced a smile, though her brown eyes were heavy with sadness. “Doesn’t make the nights any easier.”

  “It doesn’t, but it’s only temporary.”

  “Don’t mind me, I’m just being maudlin.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Angela whispered.