A Pale Light in the Black

by K. B. Wagers

  Ria sighed. “Fair enough. Look, I’ll be honest, I’m happy to have this off my plate. It’s been a stress I didn’t need. Which sounds cold, I know . . .”

  “But you have a business to run.” Max folded her sister into a hug, trying not to be disappointed that Ria would choose the business over lives. “I get it, but it does sound a little cold. Jenks almost died, and her brother lost his arm. Those people in those photos are real—they had hopes and dreams.”

  So do the ones who’ll die early because their boosters don’t work.

  “I know,” Ria whispered. “Just, tell me you’ll find out who’s doing this and take them apart?”

  “I promise. I’d like Great-Granddad’s journal, too. Not the original, a scan is fine, but I don’t want the edited one.”

  “Why? You’ve never expressed an interest in the history before.”

  “Gut feeling.” Max felt annoyance surge at Ria’s disbelieving look. Her team banked their lives on that instinct. In her family’s world it was just one more strange thing about Max that separated her from everyone else. “This feels personal. Maybe I can find something in the journal as to why.”

  There was a flicker of expression in her sister’s dark eyes that was gone before Max could decipher it. “I’ll send it right away.”

  “Good.”

  “We’ve had security on high alert since Bosco made the connection between the dead and the dupe. We’re trying to figure out a way to test all the batches that went out to see if there are more.” Ria shook her head. “We can’t do a full recall. That would cause too much panic. I’ve got scientists working on a way to reverse the damage.”

  Max nodded. “I love you, Ria. Take care of yourself.”

  “I’ll be fine. You watch your back.”

  “I’ve got people for that now,” Max replied, hooking her thumb at the trio by the door.

  Ria glanced at the doorway. “You trust them?”

  “With my life. This was the best decision I’ve made in a long time.”

  “Good.” Ria leaned in, pressing her cheek to Max’s. “You tell them all, though, if you get hurt I’m sending a hit squad after them,” she murmured.

  “I don’t think you want to give Jenks that kind of warning. You might end up down one hit squad.” Max laughed, squeezing her sister once more before stepping away. “I’ll keep you updated.”

  She caught up with the others and they rode in silence down to the ground floor. By the time they’d checked out and exited the building, Max had an email from her sister and a message from Bosco.

  Bosco, J: Hey, kiddo, your sister said you were in town and working on the same thing I am. Care to chat?

  Max sighed and fired back a response.

  Carmichael, M: Come to London this evening. NeoG HQ. 1800 hours. Otherwise I’ll call you.

  Also, not a kid.

  “So, who’s Bosco?” Jenks asked, and Max rolled her eyes.

  “My sister’s best friend. She’s also now the head of, I don’t even know what, some super-secret corporate espionage task force for LifeEx. We never got along all that well. Luis, message Stephan to get everyone else together. We’ll grab dinner on the way back. I’m buying.” She settled onto the bench next to Rosa, who’d fallen into an odd silence while they were at LifeEx, and strapped herself in.

  “Will do,” Luis replied, and the ship roared into the sky.

  T-minus Thirteen Weeks until the Boarding Games

  “We’ve got sixteen victims we’ve found so far who had DNA in the LifeEx system registrations scattered across the globe. None so far in the habitats. All of them basically died of old age, though none visibly looked any older. We’re trying to quietly follow up on all those who didn’t have the extreme reaction but may have trouble with a booster down the line.

  “I also had three other bodies that seemed to fit the cause of death. We couldn’t identify them until Lieutenant Carmichael suggested we look at the system jumper lists from the early trial runs in 2330. They matched.” Jeanie Bosco pointed to the series of faces hanging in the air behind her.

  Rosa and the others were scattered around a conference room at NeoG HQ, where they’d been for weeks now, trying to untangle the mystery of the LifeEx dupe. While Rosa was grateful for the chance to spend some time on God’s green earth and see her family every night, she knew the rest of the team was getting restless. And some part of her was in agreement.

  She wanted to wrap this up and get back out into the black.

  Why did you give us the stars, God, if you didn’t want us reaching for them?

  “That doesn’t include Sebastian Cane. So the total of original travelers headed for Trappist is four at the moment, and that’s not even the weird part.” Max picked up Bosco’s narrative seamlessly. The pair bickered like cats and dogs, but seemed to be working together relatively well. Probably in part because Jenks had punched the older woman in the nose the first time she’d sneered “kiddo” in Max’s direction and Luis had had to drag Jenks out of the room.

  Rosa, however, had gotten in the security chief’s face immediately after and told her that the next time she failed to refer to Max with the respect she was due as a lieutenant of the NeoG, she wouldn’t let Luis step in and save her from Jenks. If she didn’t handle it herself.

  Bosco knew when she’d been beaten, but whatever apology had passed between her and Max had been made out of the earshot of the others. That was three weeks ago, and it seemed as though everyone was now working together.

  “Four corpses mysteriously appearing on Earth isn’t the weird part?” Jenks demanded.

  “Cane died in the river. These three”—Max pointed at the three people on the left—“their bodies were found in an apartment in New York last month.”

  Rosa sat up in her chair as the images appeared. “That’s not possible.”

  “They look like they’ve barely aged a decade,” Luis said. “They should be closer to a hundred and thirty, right?”

  “Right, if we assume they were either not frozen when they left Earth or thawed very shortly after takeoff. We don’t have any way to know for sure.” Bosco tapped the console and brought up a photo of a smiling couple and another of a young man. “This is Ostin Prech and Robin and Simon Holute, assigned to the system jumper An Ordinary Star. They headed for Trappist-1 on June 17, 2330.” She tapped the console again. “Ostin was thirty-two. Robin was fifty-four. Simon fifty-seven.”

  There was a moment of silence. Jenks pointed at the screen. “LifeEx doesn’t do that.”

  “It’s not supposed to,” Max agreed. “It slows the aging process, doesn’t stop it. We still age, children grow up on a normal schedule, the serum kicks in when the cells start having trouble.”

  “The dupe slows the aging process at a rate that appears to be three times better than the current version of LifeEx. It also is a one-and-done,” Bosco said. “No follow-ups, no additional treatments. I’d kind of appreciate if everyone in this room kept that information to themselves. We certainly don’t want people seeking out this dupe, and that news is just the sort of thing that might make them.”

  “Of course,” Rosa said for everyone, giving her team a stern look that made it clear they’d answer to her if they violated that agreement. They all nodded back. “Good. We’re assuming they started taking the dupe some point shortly after 2330, right?” She got up to pace the room. “Which means that the drug was already in development.”

  “At least in early stages,” Max agreed. “Though how?”

  “The components of maishkin are a closely guarded secret,” Bosco agreed. “Up until last year when we found the first signs of the dupe no one but family and a few loyal employees had even gotten a look at the compound.” The woman shoved her messy black bangs out of her narrow face. “We questioned the employees as soon as we realized what was going on, followed them for months. Backtracked and triple-checked their security clearances. Nothing. Not a hint to indicate that one of them had passed it on to a buy
er.”

  “And family?”

  Rosa slid a sideways glance at Max and then returned her gaze to Bosco, who was grinning. “There were some objections initially,” Bosco replied. “But I convinced your sister to let me do some digging off the record. Still nothing.”

  “There was a scandal involving a cousin of Max’s a few years ago, wasn’t there?” Rosa asked.

  The flat stare directed her way froze the room into silence. Bosco blinked once, slowly, and then nodded. “Islen Carmichael is harmless—well, she’d object to that categorization—but she’s not involved.” The smile wasn’t quite natural and Rosa raised an eyebrow.

  “Something we need to know?”

  “Islen runs a traveling clinic up and down the Congo most of the year. During the rainy season she camps on the south end of Lake Tumba and folks come to her. She’s been there since before this started, and though her issues with the family have caused a great deal of tension, she wouldn’t do anything to put people’s lives at risk.”

  There was more there, but Rosa was sure Bosco would try to break her nose if she pushed any further, so she filed it away with a nod. She’d talk to Max about it and see what else they could dig up on this other, and it seemed slightly more, renegade member of the Carmichael family, who had some kind of history with the security chief.

  Jenks blurted, “Is anyone else bothered by the fact that we have four missing travelers who just appeared out of the goddamned blue?” Rosa shot her a look about the language and the petty officer had the grace to wince. “Sorry, Commander,” she said, but continued on. “Or is it just me? I said those ratios were off. Those system jumpers didn’t vanish into the black.”

  “Someone deliberately rerouted them,” Tamago said. Rosa looked at them across the room. They were frowning, which was never a good sign, but she picked up on the thread.

  “Whoever it was is involved in—or in charge of—this operation,” she said. “My assumption is that our mystery boss got their people on the system jumper lists leaving for Trappist, fully intending to make the journey and settle on one of the Trappist planets. And somehow they did that without getting tagged as actually arriving there.”

  “And once there, they began manufacturing the dupe.” Max rubbed her hands over her face with a groan. “Less regulation would definitely make it easier.”

  “They’d have to have figured out how to make it first,” Bosco said.

  “When the wormhole tech was developed, they took the chance to vanish. No oversight and no record of their existence.” Ma whistled. “It’s an easy way to disappear, but the question is—”

  “Why?” Max finished.

  “Why disappear?” Jenks echoed. “They could still have worked on the dupe even as registered citizens of the Trappist habitat. It wouldn’t have prevented them from doing anything illegal.”

  “If they were wanted on Earth for something, it would stand to reason they didn’t want to be registered,” Tamago offered.

  “However, some of them had to stay on record. It would be the only way for them to get supplies.” Sapphi looked up from her spot in the corner. Rosa knew she’d been listening even as she searched through files on her DD. “At least one of the ships got picked up and taken to Trappist officially. They could have facilitated things from the inside.”

  “This is a long game,” Luis said, and grim looks met his announcement. “Someone’s been looking to disrupt or take over LifeEx production for over a hundred years.”

  “Who?” Rosa asked.

  Bosco shook her head at the same time Max did. “I’ve been looking at way more recent suspects, not someone with a hundred-year-old grudge against the Carmichael family.”

  “So, weeks of digging on this and we still have nothing?” Jenks dropped her head to the table in front of her with an audible thump.

  “Not necessarily,” Stephan spoke up from in front of the window. He’d been standing with his back to them, staring out into the dark while Bosco and Max were summing things up. “We’ve got pieces that are starting to come together. We’ve got possible motives—namely bringing down the Carmichael hold on the production of LifeEx and/or disrupting the military’s ability to travel out in the black.”

  “Or both,” Luis muttered.

  “We just don’t know who’s responsible.” Max rubbed at the back of her neck.

  “We’ll find them,” Stephan replied. “I think it’s a good idea to call it quits for today, though. We’ve been working hard between this and keeping up your training for the Games.” He glanced at Rosa. “Take the rest of the evening off?”

  He was right. They’d dead-ended this for the moment until something else broke.

  “Sounds good to me,” Bosco agreed. “I’m going to take the company transport back to the Americas, check in with Ria, pack a new bag, say hi to my cats. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon?”

  “That works, we’ll call you if something comes up.”

  Bosco tossed a salute and strode out of the room, taking the tension with her.

  “I really want to punch her again, Rosa,” Jenks murmured, and Max laughed.

  “That’s a regular occurrence.” Then she sighed. “She’s a decent person, loyal to my sister. Just abrasive as can be.”

  “All right.” Jenks stood, slapping her hands on the tabletop as she did. “I need a drink. Max is coming. Luis, you in?”

  “I don’t get a say?” Max asked.

  “Wow, I got dropped to second place.” The air woofed out of Luis when Jenks elbowed him in the stomach.

  “Sapphi, Tamago?”

  The pair shook their heads. “I think we’re staying in. Royale’s premiering tonight and I want to see if it lives up to the hype,” Tamago replied.

  “My wife is inbound,” Rosa said with a smile. “Gloria’s staying with my mother for the next two days. Isobelle is with friends.”

  “I’ve got work to do,” Stephan said.

  “Ma?”

  “One beer,” he replied. “Then I’m coming back to sleep.”

  “Spoilsport.” Jenks grinned at him and the others chuckled.

  And that was how Max found herself packed into a corner booth in a dimly lit bar where Luis apparently knew half the patrons. She watched as he exchanged handshakes and hugs, kisses in a few cases, and then settled into the booth next to her.

  “Do you do that with everyone?”

  “Do what?”

  “Somehow make them feel really at ease.”

  “I’ve got one of those faces.” Luis chuckled. “It helps that I grew up here, dinky little apartment just around the corner. My mum worked in a synth-flower shop below. It was next door to the grocer’s where my other mum worked. They met there.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “MM, that’s Mom Monica, sold the grocer’s about ten years ago. They still own part of the flower shop, though, and live in the apartment above it.”

  “He’ll talk about his moms all night if you let him,” Jenks said, setting the glasses on the tabletop and sliding into the booth next to Max, leaving the open space next to Luis for Ma. “One water for the lieutenant, one nasty synth-whiskey for Armstrong.”

  “Hey, no judging the drink choice.”

  “Your mom judges it all the time.”

  Max choked down the mouthful of water she’d just taken as Luis laughed. “I feel like I should maybe move seats.”

  “You’re fine.” Jenks put a hand on her arm as she took her beer from Ma with a grin.

  “I’m telling them you said that,” Luis replied.

  “Do it, Gina thinks I’m hilarious.”

  “When did you start calling my mom Gina?”

  It was Ma’s turn to choke back a laugh. Max watched in amazement as the blush spread over Jenks’s brown skin.

  “I may have had lunch with her yesterday,” she muttered into her beer. “We’re not talking about this here.”

  “We should,” Luis said. “You won’t take a swing at me with Max in t
he middle of us. She won’t let you.”

  “Depends on if I think it’s justified.” The words slipped out and Max clamped her mouth shut in shock, but Jenks laughed and the others joined her.

  “You’re not going to have any sympathy there,” Ma said. “They’ve been thick as thieves since Max saved Jenks’s ass.”

  “I never did thank you for that,” Luis said.

  “Don’t bring the mood down.” There wasn’t any heat in Jenks’s order.

  Max settled into the booth, letting the conversation flow around her. The subject jumped from music to the Games to a heated discussion about the ending of a show Jenks and Luis had very different opinions on.

  “That’s my beer, I’m out.” Ma pushed out of his seat and tapped a knuckle on the table.

  “I should—” Max cut off when Jenks clamped a hand on her leg and sent her a pleading look. “Get some more water. Have a good night, Ma.”

  “Don’t let these two cause any trouble.” He smiled and headed for the door. Max slid out from the booth and made her way to the bar.

  “Lieutenant.” The bartender nodded at her.

  “Just water, please.” She passed over her glass and took the refill with a smile. “I really like your eyeliner.”

  He batted his lashes, revealing more of the gold-flecked glitter. “Thanks. I’m trying something new.”

  “It looks good. I can’t seem to manage it.”

  “You have beautiful eyes, don’t stress about it.” He leaned on the bar, motioning her closer, and Max had a moment of panic that her compliment had somehow taken her into territory she was clueless about. “Ask Luis if he knows those three guys in the farthest corner from you. Reggie said they were asking about you all.”

  Max kept her smile in place. “I will, thanks for the tip.”

  “I take care of my Neos.” He tapped his cheek. “Plant one there to keep up the facade, though it was lovely to chat with you. You can, of course, refuse, and my pout will be only partially for show.”

  But Max laughed and leaned in, giving him a dramatic kiss. She grabbed her water and headed back to the table.