A Pale Light in the Black

by K. B. Wagers

  Jenks tapped her fists to Max’s. “Kick his ass, LT.” She headed out of the cage without a second look, knowing that Parsikov was expecting it at this point and anything she could do to unsettle him was worth it.

  She couldn’t get over how fast he was. Every fight, every opening move seemed to come out of nowhere, and Jenks fisted her hands in the pocket of her hoodie as Max only barely avoided a punch just moments after the whistle blew.

  Stepping inside his guard was going to take away so much of his power, Jenks knew it, but the trick was going to be keeping him from taking her to the mat. She did not want an extended grappling session with him.

  Not in the cage, anyway.

  Her laugh burst out into the air. Parsikov looked in her direction and Max’s kick caught him right in the chest, an answering shot for his rib-bruising kick on her in the second round. He staggered back, hands down.

  “Move in on him, Max!” Jenks shouted as the tide of the fight shifted so unexpectedly that the crowd went silent.

  Max moved, dropping into a sweep that Parsikov managed to avoid at the last second, though he stumbled, his footing unsure. The noise from the crowd swelled, drowning out everything else, even Jenks’s own cheers. Max kept her momentum from the sweep, spinning in with a backfist that glanced off Parsikov’s block.

  He was already moving, throwing a punch with his right fist. Jenks cursed.

  Max saw the punch. She just couldn’t block it in time. Jenks could tell by the way she dropped her chin to take the blow.

  It connected and Jenks could do nothing but watch Max go boneless and fall to the mat.

  The cheers of the crowd vanished into silence, broken only by Travis’s shouted “Hold!”

  Jenks was already moving, scrambling for the cage door as Travis bent by Max’s side. “She’s out! That’s match.” He crossed to where Parsikov was pacing on the other side of the cage as the medics came through the door with Jenks behind them.

  She heard the crowd cheering, knew without looking away from Max that Travis was lifting Parsikov’s arm and declaring him the winner.

  “We can roll her,” the medic next to her said. “No neck or back injury on the scan.”

  Max groaned, eyes fluttering open when Jenks slipped a hand under her head. “Fuck me, what happened?”

  Her second laugh bubbled up and out into the air before Jenks could stop it. “You got dropped like a bad habit, Max, and I think Parsikov knocked loose your objection to cursing in the process.”

  “I don’t object, I just don’t do it much.” Max blinked a few times. “Damn it, I knew that punch was trouble. I couldn’t—”

  “You’re fine.” Jenks patted her on the shoulder.

  “Is she all right?”

  Jenks looked up at Scott as he dropped to a knee next to Max, and swallowed back the first answer that came to her mouth. Instead it seemed safer to gesture to the medic, who answered for her.

  “She’ll be all right. Think you can stand, Lieutenant?”

  “I got her,” Jenks said when Scott moved to help. “Tell Parsikov I’ll see him in the cage tomorrow.”

  Scott, surprisingly, nodded once and moved off as Jenks and the medics helped a woozy Max out of the cage to the cheers of the crowd. D’Arcy met them just outside the door and followed them to the changing room.

  “Rosa’s on her way, I’ve got to get to my match.” He reached out and touched Max’s face lightly. “Good fight, kiddo.”

  “Kick his ass, D,” Jenks said, sticking her fist out.

  He tapped it with a grin and took off across the arena.

  Rosa made her way into the changing room with Gloria still clinging to her hand.

  “She’s okay,” Jenks said with a smile. “Hey, Gloria, did your mom kick Chau’s—” She broke off with a grin at Angela’s look and Isobelle’s laughter. “Did she win her fight?”

  “She did! You should have seen her.”

  “I know. I was watching Max fight, though.”

  Rosa crouched down next to Max as Jenks led Gloria away under Angela’s watchful eyes. Her mom had gone home yesterday. Rosa wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t hurt, but she was also not going to let it distract her. They’d all worked so hard for this and there wasn’t anything she could do to change her mother’s mind.

  “Hey there,” she said to Max. The lieutenant was sprawled on the bench, an arm over her bruised face.

  “Hey, Commander.” She cracked an eye open. “I think I wanna switch to the sword.”

  Rosa chuckled and patted Max’s shoulder. “You’re all right. Rest up, we’ve got a match this evening. We’ll have someone take you back to the village and you can sleep until your flight with Ma.”

  Max didn’t protest, so Rosa patted her again and got to her feet. She wanted to shower and change, then get back out into the arena to watch D’Arcy’s fight. The championship pilot match was in three hours, and while she was reasonably certain Ma would beat Staff Sergeant Rig for the third year in a row even with Max being a little loopy, she wanted to be there to watch it.

  Navy would be running their shot through the Big Game at the same time, and then in the evening the major entertainment was NeoG’s final Boarding Action match against Navy.

  She checked Sapphi’s stats as she headed for the showers. They were still up, but not by much. One wrong step here, one missed point or lost match there would make all the difference.

  Meanwhile, the reports from Stephan were still filtering in. The Trappist PeaceKeepers had locked down yet another facility on the far side of the planet, and the NeoG crews around Trappist had snapped up one more shipment trying to make its way to Earth.

  “There you go again.”

  Rosa looked over her shoulder at her wife. “I what?”

  “You had that ‘this is super serious’ look on your face.” Angela grinned, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned in the doorway of the shower.

  “You know there are rules about ogling people while they’re showering.”

  Angela laughed. “I married your ass, I’ll ogle it all I want.”

  Rosa rinsed her hair out, sticking her face under the running water with a sigh. “I was actually thinking about this case we’ve been involved in,” she said, wiping the water away from her face with a hand.

  “Towel’s on your left.” Rosa felt Angela’s fingers brush hers as she took the towel. “The one you can’t talk about?”

  “Yeah.” Rosa pressed the towel to her face for a moment before meeting her wife’s eyes. “I didn’t ever tell you thank you the other day for trusting me.”

  “I know you. If I’d really needed the reason why, you’d have given it to me. This isn’t all about the case, though, right? I know how much these Games weigh on you.”

  “We were this close last year and it all fell apart. I don’t want that to happen again.”

  “It’s not all under your control, love.” Angela held out another towel as Rosa turned off the water and gestured for her to turn around so she could dry her hair. “What were you thinking of when you were fighting the lieutenant commander?”

  “I was, uh . . . nothing, really?” Rosa frowned.

  “It showed. You were focused.” Angela took her by the shoulders and turned her with a smile. “You doubt yourself so much, my love, but you are so amazing. Believe that for me, in this last fight. No matter who you go up against. Fight like your life, or ours, depends on it.”

  Max’s words from earlier in the week filtered back into Rosa’s head. “The Interceptors do this for a living. All day, every day.”

  Now it was time to show them all just how true that was.

  Boarding Games—Day Five

  “Rosa, are you listening?”

  Rosa dragged her eyes away from where Scott paced the opposite side of the ring to focus on Max. Her lieutenant was none the worse for wear after yesterday’s fight, though she sported an impressive-looking bruise and partial black eye on the left side of her face. “I’m liste
ning.” She took a deep breath.

  “He’ll lead with his sword, but the dangerous part is always his feet,” Nika said. “Watch them. The moment he shifts his weight, you reach down and hook his ankle with your sword.”

  “And if he takes my head off?”

  “He’ll swing. You duck.” Nika smiled. “I have faith that your reflexes are faster.”

  “You’re up by three points,” Max said. “He’s frustrated. He’ll push because of it. Be ready.” She pointed and Rosa glanced behind her at where Angela and her daughters stood. Gloria was jumping up and down, cheering as loud as she could. “You’re fighting for them, Rosa, for us. Get out there and win this.”

  Rosa nodded, her eyes still locked on her family. Angela bent down to say something to Isobelle, laughing at the response, and when she came up her eyes locked on Rosa’s.

  In the moment between one heartbeat and the next, Rosa was twenty-two again, staring into those brown eyes for the very first time, feeling the words tangle themselves together in her mouth.

  Then she was twenty-three, getting down on a knee in front of their friends to ask Angela to marry her. Forty-three, struggling through the birth of their first daughter. Fifty-one, watching Angela do the same with Gloria. All the years in between filled with love and laughter and the endless yawning distance of the black between them.

  “Fight like your life, or ours, depends on it.”

  “I don’t know what passed between Commander Martín and her people during the break, Pace, but Captain Carmichael didn’t have a chance in that last round of their fight.”

  “Too right, Barnes. I’ve watched Martín fight a lot of rounds over the past few years and she’s never been as focused as she was when that round started. For those of you just joining us hoping to see the end of the Carmichael-versus-Martín fight, you are too late. Less than fifteen seconds into the round, Commander Rosa Martín landed a blow that Captain Carmichael’s suit registered as a mortal wound. It was a stunning sliding strike across his chest and won the match for the NeoG team.”

  “It was a thing of beauty. If you watch the replay, Martín is gunning for him the moment she turns around and the whistle blows. She wanted this fight over with and did she deliver or what, Pace?”

  “Her win puts the NeoG in a significant lead over Navy. However, the NeoG team still has to get through the Big Game, and this evening we’ve got the fight you’ve all been waiting for. We thought for a few minutes there that Lieutenant Max Carmichael would steal the spotlight from Lieutenant Tivo Parsikov in the semifinals and leave us with an all-NeoG championship round. But his knockout of the ghostlike Carmichael was a doozy.”

  “I’m sure her ears are still ringing from that, Pace. Though she held her own yesterday as the navigator for Master Chief Ma’s win in the piloting competition.”

  “Without a doubt, Barnes. Without a doubt. Anyhow, things are heating up on this final day of the Boarding Games. Stay tuned here on TSN to see how it all plays out. Will the NeoG go home with a trophy? Or will they once again fall to the might of the naval team?”

  Watching a fighter tells a lot, but it’s never the same as being in the fight. Jenks ducked under Parsikov’s swing, landed a punch of her own that didn’t seem to faze him much, and scrambled out of reach.

  “You gonna make me chase you around the cage?”

  “It’s the only approved way to wear you out in public, right?” she replied, and watched his grin flash.

  Everything had vanished. The crowd. The referee. It was only the pair of them, and the first two rounds had gone by in the blink of an eye. They each had a handful of points and more than a handful of bruises.

  She’d managed to get a lock on Parsikov’s left shoulder and dislocated it briefly in the first round. He’d favored it the rest of that round but his team had popped it back in for him and it didn’t seem to be bothering him now.

  The biggest problem, Jenks knew, was that she couldn’t keep running away. She was burning through her reserves. They’d just started the third round and she was already sucking air into her lungs in big gulps.

  She blocked Parsikov’s jab, kicked for his knee, and spit a curse into the air when he somehow managed to avoid it at the last second. He was so fucking fast.

  His answering punch hit her in much the same way he’d tagged Max. Jenks reeled, crashing into the cage wall, and instinct alone kept her moving. She felt the impact of Parsikov’s follow-up kick as it rippled through the links, and continued to roll to her right, trying to give her head time to clear.

  I am not going to win this.

  The thought was painful and more than a little terrifying.

  But above all it pissed her off.

  The fucking hell I’m not.

  She ducked under Parsikov’s guard, landed two punches to his gut before his answering roundhouse clocked her right upside the head and sent her flying to the far side of the cage. She hit the wall and went down on a knee.

  It had been his left arm. The one she’d dislocated in the first round, and it still hurt him. That was the only reason she was still conscious.

  The roar of the crowd was a jumbled mess, except, for just an instant, Jenks heard Max’s voice as clear as a bell.

  “Left side! Use his left side!”

  Jenks wiped the blood from her mouth as she stood. Took a deep breath. Straightened her shoulders. The crowd fell silent, or maybe not, but it was quiet in her head and that was all she needed.

  She smiled at Tivo and blew him a kiss.

  The frown hadn’t finished forming across his handsome face before she was sprinting across the cage at him. Two steps, three, a handful more.

  She swerved to the left at the last second, knowing he would follow. Jenks planted her bare foot on the wall of the cage and launched herself into the air, grabbing Parsikov by the throat and jamming her right fist up against his carotid artery, securing it with her other hand. She locked her legs around him, pinning his right arm to his body, leaving his weakened left arm free.

  She couldn’t keep him in this hold for more than five seconds per tournament rules, and the clock in her head seemed to tick down with agonizing slowness.

  Five . . . four . . .

  Jenks grunted as Parsikov desperately slammed her back against the wall, the pain rocking through her with each blow, but she held on.

  Three . . . two . . .

  Come on, you bastard, pass out on me.

  She felt him go slack, and let go as he toppled forward, pushing off his back and landing on the mat as he hit the ground hard.

  Travis dropped to the mat next to Parsikov, checked him, and then slapped his palm down. “He’s out! That’s match!”

  There was a heartbeat of stunned silence and then the crowd erupted into wild celebration. Jenks bent over, dragging in air even though every breath hurt. She straightened, found Max’s eyes through the cage wall, and tapped her fist against her heart before thrusting it into the air.

  “Still undefeated, Jenks,” Travis said, grabbing her other wrist and hoisting upward. “Winner, Petty Officer Altandai Khan!”

  Max followed Tamago onto the podium, the cheers of the crowd filling the air. “Good job, Lieutenant,” Rosa said, taking the medal from the man behind her and putting it around Max’s neck.

  “You too, Commander.” She stepped to the side as Rosa repeated the action with everyone else on the team. She felt Tamago slip their arm around her waist and leaned into them for just a moment, her vision going misty.

  “Spectators! I give you the winners of the hundred and first Boarding Games—the Near-Earth Orbital Guard!”

  Max caught Scott’s eye and barely managed to keep her mouth closed when her brother snapped into a salute, the rest of the Navy team following. She nodded in her brother’s direction before she slung an arm around Jenks’s shoulder and pulled her close.

  “To family, Max.” Jenks hugged her back.

  “To family.”

  One Week Post-Games
<
br />   Max woke in the unfamiliar room at HQ and lay for a moment in the dark, listening to the quiet breathing of Sapphi and Tamago. Rosa was with her family, Ma with his. Jenks had spent the night at Luis’s apartment.

  Life had settled back into something of a routine after their victory at the Games, though Max was surprised by the order from Admiral Chen to head for London rather than go back to Jupiter Station. Despite losing the tail of the men from the bar, Stephan had dug up a new lead on their mysterious Gerard and that was enough to bring Zuma’s Ghost back for the hunt.

  She slipped from her bed and grabbed for her gym clothes, making her way in the dark to the bathroom and closing the door behind her before turning on the light. She kept her eyes half-closed against the bright assault and flipped it off again as soon as she was dressed.

  The officers’ gym nearby would be open, but hopefully not all that occupied, and she needed to go for a run.

  Just her luck—the gym was empty. Max headed for a treadmill in the corner, hopped on, and started flipping through files as she ran.

  Yet try as she might, she couldn’t leave the journal alone and kept coming back to Thomas Gerard. Dead or not, there was something tying him to her family and to LifeEx. Stephan had found mention of Gerard buried deep within the darker parts of the ’net, whispers of a revolution that would save humanity.

  What Max couldn’t figure out was what that had to do with Alex.

  “What were you up to, Great-Granddaddy?”

  Spurred by a sudden thought, Max ran another search through the journal.

  Can hardly believe he’s dead. What a waste. I thought I knew him better. It was horrifying how casual he was about the danger. “Built-in population control,” he called it. The risks are too great, even for an extended life span beyond what the safer option provides us. We’re so close to the edge already, I couldn’t take the chance that his drug would slaughter one person in twenty. He wouldn’t listen to reason. I had to tell the authorities.