Hold Fast Through the Fire

by K. B. Wagers

  Maybe it’s better to just rip the bandage off, she thought. If you’re in the room when he finds out about Chae, there’s less a chance that he’ll go off on them.

  “Hey, LT, stop daydreaming!” Jenks elbowed her in the side, and Max shook her head.

  Nika was hugging Sapphi and Tamago at the same time while Chae stood off to one side, gripping their bags and watching the welcome with a look Max knew all too well.

  Yearning.

  “Chae.”

  The kid dropped their bags and snapped into a picture-perfect salute. “Lieutenant Carmichael.”

  “Max,” she corrected, unable to stop the smile at how much that motion reminded her of herself only two years ago. She crossed to them with open arms. “We’re a rather huggy bunch around here, unless you have an objection.”

  Chae’s startled look was followed by a nod of consent and they stepped forward into Max’s hug.

  “Welcome to Zuma’s Ghost,” Max said. She could have sworn the newbie Neo muffled a sob as they hugged her back.

  Nika watched from between Sapphi’s and Tamago’s heads as Max enveloped Chae in a hug before his sister hit all three of them like an asteroid.

  “Welcome home!” Jenks kissed him noisily on the mouth. “We didn’t miss you at all, but it’s nice to see your face again.”

  “You’re such a liar,” he said, and grinned at her.

  Tamago and Sapphi wriggled free, protests echoing into the air, and Nika laughed as he scooped his sister into a hug. “I did miss you, brat, for reasons unknown to all of humankind.”

  “Because I’m the most interesting woman in the universe, that’s why.” Jenks pressed her forehead to his and Nika realized there were tears in her mismatched eyes—one blue, one brown. “Doge missed the hell out of you.”

  “I’m sure he did.” Nika squeezed Jenks once more, kissed her on the forehead, and then dropped her to the deck, bending over to pat the ROVER on the head. “Missed you, too, buddy.”

  “Welcome back, Commander Vagin.” The AI’s voice came over the com, but it warmed Nika’s heart just as much as any of the other greetings.

  “Don’t tell Max I said this,” Jenks said, “but it was a good idea to come down and meet you.”

  “This was her idea?” Nika glanced over to where Sapphi and Tamago were introducing themselves to Chae, both of them pulling the somewhat shocked-looking spacer into welcoming hugs.

  “She’s taking the family thing pretty seriously.” Jenks shot him a sly look. “I’m not calling you Mom and Dad, though—just FYI—because that’s weird.”

  Nika reflexively cuffed his sister in the back of the head, wincing at her yelp of surprise. “Shit, sorry.” He still forgot the metal of his prosthetic wasn’t going to connect the same as his real hand.

  “God damn! Reminder to me not to let you hit me with that. Can you punch through a door? We should put you in the cage matches.”

  Trust his little sister to make it into a joke. Jenks seemed to realize what had come out of her mouth and snapped it shut. Nika couldn’t stop his laughter, though, and was thankful it erased the sudden uncertain look creeping over her face. He pulled her into a second quick hug and then released her.

  “I missed you, brat. No, I’m not going to be in the cage matches, and you’re fine. You don’t need to apologize. Go say hello to your new Neo, Chief.”

  “Yes, sir, Commander, sir.” Jenks skipped away, crossing paths with Max, the pair exchanging a quick, complex handshake as they passed each other.

  “Thank God you’re here,” Max said, and though the smile on her face was genuine, Nika saw the tightness around her eyes and wondered at the cause. “Rosa left a week ago and I was starting to think these three would gang up and stuff me into an airlock before the real commander got here.”

  “I think ‘real commander’ is a bit of a stretch,” Nika replied, suddenly unsure about his initial inclination to hug her. “You’re as much in charge of this bunch as I am.”

  “I’m just the lieutenant.” Max took a step forward, stopped, and sighed. “I was going to go straight in for a hug, then I second-guessed myself and now I feel like the window closed and this went awkward fast?”

  “I’m still game for a hug.” He spread his hands apart.

  “Oh good.”

  Nika wrapped his arms around her, felt her return the hug, and even the sick feeling in his gut about what he was going to have to do receded somewhat. “It’s really good to be back,” he murmured. “Thank you for this.”

  “All I did was remind you where you belong. Welcome home.” She pulled away and looked over her shoulder. “I was going to send Jenks and the others to get dinner so we could have a quick talk with Chae. There’s something we need to address. I don’t know a better way to put this than—”

  “I know,” Nika said. “We talked about it on the flight over.” He glanced past her; the others were chattering away, Chae still looking more than a little stunned. “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting you to want to talk about it right off the bat.”

  “I wasn’t expecting you to know about it, so we’re even.” She laughed in obvious relief. “Stephan?”

  Nika nodded. “Bosco?”

  Now it was Max who nodded. “I asked her to do some digging after something Hoboins said piqued my curiosity. I can send you the files she got me.”

  “I’d appreciate it.” Nika gestured subtly toward Chae and the rest of the crew. “And I’m up for doing this however you want to.”

  “I just thought it would be better to get it out in the open now.” Max turned around and whistled. “Chae, you’re with us. You three go get us dinner and meet us in quarters in twenty.”

  Sapphi, Tamago, and Jenks headed off with parting waves and Nika waited with Max while Chae grabbed their bags and crossed the deck to them.

  “Admiral Hoboins is in a meeting so we’ll touch base with him tomorrow,” Max said as she headed out of the docking bay and toward the zero-g tube. “Chae, have you used these before?”

  “Just during training.”

  “They’re easy, though Nika could tell you I made a fool of myself the first time I was in one with him and that was with plenty of experience.” Max grinned and neatly stole one of Chae’s bags from their hands, slinging it over her shoulder and grabbing for the bar. “We’re going up, just push off a bit on your way out of the tube and stick close to the side. Nika will be right behind you.”

  Nika followed the pair, more than a little enthralled at how easily Max had handled things. She had been awkward and botched her first landing when they’d met, though not as badly as she seemed to remember. Now she soared upward effortlessly while keeping one eye on Chae and a hand ready to grab the spacer if they got too far away.

  It was more than just navigating the station, though. It was how on top of the situation with Chae she was. How she had organized the welcome. How she had been so welcoming.

  He’d known she would settle into her role, had seen hints of it over the last two years. But seeing it now in real time made something in his chest ache.

  Max is a leader and you’re just here to help Stephan out. Simple as that.

  “You okay?” Max’s question knocked him out of his daze and he saw the flicker of concern when he grabbed for the bar by the exit to the Interceptor quarters.

  “Fine,” he lied. “Just thinking about how things change.”

  She smiled, first at him and then at Chae, though the spacer was staring at their boots and missed it. “Some things. Quarters are the same. You get Rosa’s room along with all those other commander perks. Speaking of, hot water’s been iffy for a week. I recommend standing outside the spray when you’re washing your face, ask me how I know.” Max rolled her eyes and pressed her hand to the panel next to the door, unlocking it.

  “Chae, no one wanted Ma’s bunk, which frankly was kind of a surprise given it’s a floor-level one. So you’re good to put your stuff right there.” Max pointed at the lower bunk, ign
oring the way her heart hammered a bit at the prospect of this confrontation.

  She’d read everything Jeanie Bosco, head of security for LifeEx, had sent her about the Trappist Heist and one Chae Ho-ki. Despite Jeanie’s thoroughness, Max’s gut was telling her that something was missing.

  The now nineteen-year-old should have been on their way to medical school, following in the footsteps of their brilliant parents.

  She could hear her own parents sneering judgment in her ear at the thought that someone would waste their medical expertise in the backwater of the habitats. What was the point of becoming a doctor if you weren’t serving the greater good by joining the CHNN?

  The irony of them thinking that someone’s path was only good if it was with the Navy was still enough to leave a foul taste in her mouth. She hadn’t spoken to her parents or her older sister Maggie in nearly two years. Instead, Ria, Pax, or Scott caught her up on the family situation in their weekly communications.

  When Admiral Hoboins had told her and Rosa about the new spacer, he’d said they were from Trappist. But when Max had looked at the file, she’d found it as barren as one would expect for a brand-new recruit.

  A brand-new recruit from Mars.

  It wasn’t like Hoboins to get that information wrong and so she’d gone digging, trusting her gut just like Rosa had encouraged her to for two years. On the surface it was little more than Chae joining the NeoG, passing through basic and then a year of Interceptor training to land on Jupiter Station’s doorstep.

  It had been a week later when Max had remembered the news reports. The Trappist Heist had been all over the newslines just before she’d left HQ for Interceptor training herself, and she remembered snippets of a conversation between Stephan and Admiral Chen about catching the people responsible—the name Chae had factored heavily in that conversation.

  They said “people,” but here Max was with a single kid who’d put their future on the chopping block for whoever else had been involved in the heist.

  And not just any heist: a heist of medical supplies for an outlying habitat on Trappist-1d called West Ridge. A habitat that should have been well provisioned and taken care of, per CHN regulations.

  Yet that was about all Max could find. That, and the results of Chae’s plea deal, signed off on by Admiral Chen herself, for them to join the NeoG.

  When her gut still didn’t settle, Max had reached out to Jeanie Bosco. She’d never much gotten along with her older sister Ria’s lifelong best friend, but they’d come to an understanding a year ago when Max and the rest of Zuma’s Ghost had helped stop a plot to destroy LifeEx and the Carmichael family.

  Amazing how saving someone from the figurative fire can do wonders for a professional relationship.

  Two days later Max had a wealth of information that raised more questions than it answered, but it was enough for her to piece together that Chae had taken the fall for their parents and everyone else involved in the theft.

  Again, on the surface it looked as though they’d done so willingly, and their scores at both NeoG basic and Interceptor training showed a spacer who was more than determined to prove themself on the job.

  Yet there was still something scratching at the back of Max’s intuition. How had Chae found out about the supplies? It was weird enough that a shipment of medical items would be languishing in a NeoG warehouse, but for a teenager from the habitats to know about them just didn’t add up.

  I wonder if Stephan told Nika anything else.

  “How do you want to handle this?” she murmured to Nika as she walked with him to Rosa’s old room.

  “I’ll follow your lead.” He tossed his bag onto the neatly made bed. “Like I said, we had a conversation already.”

  “I’ll get you Bosco’s files after so you can look at them, and we should talk later to compare notes,” Max replied. Nika hesitated for a moment, but then he nodded as they crossed the main room.

  “Chae, come have a seat.” She pulled out a chair at the table in the common area and sat, waiting for the spacer to take a seat before she continued. “I told Sapphi to dawdle for me, but we’ve still got a little less than twenty minutes. You want to use it to tell me the story of why a supersmart teenager decided it was a good idea to steal from the military?”

  Chae’s glance at Nika spoke volumes and Max had to swallow down a laugh when Nika murmured, “I told them you’d probably wait to ask.”

  “Old me, maybe.” Max rested her elbows on the tabletop and then her chin on her folded hands. “New me would like to know who I’m working with from the beginning. I have a decent guess based on what I read in the CHN files, but guesses are messy and get people killed.”

  Chae visibly gathered themself. “Lieutenant, if you’ve read the files, you know the story. I stole things, got caught, the NeoG offered me a deal. I took it and ended up here.”

  “You’ve been practicing that one for a while, haven’t you?” she asked, hearing Nika’s poorly suppressed snort of laughter. “Chae, I’m not judging you on this. If anything I think you did the right thing. I looked at the requests from that habitat and you should have had the supplies months before you decided to break into that warehouse.”

  Max leaned back in her chair. “I’m honestly more curious about why you, a sixteen-year-old at the time, were the one who took the fall. Did your fathers make you because of their work with the TLF?”

  “No!”

  There. She’d cracked that stoic exterior and Max watched in satisfaction as a fierce loyalty flashed across Chae’s face. Loyalty she could work with, as long as it didn’t impact the team.

  “Make a choice, Lieutenant: either the NeoG is your first and last or you find somewhere else to finish your stretch. I don’t need split loyalties in my crews or on my station, am I clear?” Those had been Admiral Hoboins’s words to Max when she’d made the mistake of trusting her sister instead of her crew, and they rang in her head.

  Zuma’s Ghost had Max’s loyalty now, and more than anything she wanted to know if it was going to have Chae’s also.

  “Go on,” she said, when Chae didn’t continue. The spacer swallowed nervously.

  “My parents do good work on Trappist-1d. They’re only marked as part of the TLF because they don’t ask questions about the habbies who come into their clinic and sometimes they’re TLF. It was better for me to do this than for them to end up in a mining camp, Lieutenant.”

  “Max,” she corrected. “You don’t need to use my rank unless you’re in trouble.” She went quiet, waiting for Chae to look her in the eyes. When they did, she said, “And you’re not, Chae. I just want answers.”

  Nika was watching them, she could see it out of the corner of her eye, and the parade of emotions on his face was an interesting puzzle Max had to tear herself away from to focus on Chae. She told herself she’d follow up later when they were alone. She didn’t buy Chae’s explanation, though it was entirely possible that’s what the kid’s fathers wanted them to think.

  “Feels like it.” Chae dropped their head into their hands once more. “I’ve done everything that’s been asked of me. I don’t know what more you need.”

  Max pushed out of her chair and went to crouch at the kid’s side. An amused voice in her head pointed out that she was only six years older than they were. But there was a lifetime of difference between their situations that she was deeply and painfully aware of in that moment.

  “Chae, look at me. I want to know two things. First, even though you’re not here strictly because of your own choices, are you committed to the NeoG? Can I trust you to look after this team with the same loyalty you’re showing for your family? Can I trust you to let us do the same for you?”

  They lifted their head and Max’s gut twinged at the fear lurking around the edges of their dark brown gaze. A fear that shouldn’t be there just from this conversation.

  Damn it, I hate being right. There’s something else going on here.

  Chae took a deep breath and then nodded
. “Yes. You can.”

  “Good.” She shoved away her own worry as she put her hand on their shoulder. “I thought as much, but it’s always better to hear someone say it out loud. Here’s what we’re going to do: you can tell the others in a time and manner of your choosing. Together or individually, whatever’s easier for you. If you need me and Nika there with you we’ll be more than happy to do that. But you have to tell them before we go out in the black and that means you’ve got two weeks. I don’t want secrets on this team. It gets people killed.”

  Chae nodded as Max stood. “What’s the second thing?”

  “The second? Oh.” Max laughed. “I realize that per the details of your plea deal you’re not supposed to speak with your parents.” Her smile was gentle. “However, that doesn’t mean I can’t talk to them. Would you like me to pass messages along for you?”

  The shock on Chae’s face was echoed on Nika’s.

  “You . . . you can’t.”

  Max raised an eyebrow at Chae’s choked protest. “I’m a Carmichael, and a lieutenant in the Near-Earth Orbital Guard. I realize it sounds a bit arrogant, but I do what I want.” She gave them a level look. “Trust me to do it in such a way to keep all of you safe, if that’s your concern. I’m just letting you know that if you have something you’d like your fathers to know, as your superior officer, it’s my duty to pass that along.”

  There was the fear again, consuming their brown eyes whole before it was buried beneath an apologetic expression so quickly Max wondered if she’d imagined it.

  But she was sure she hadn’t.

  “I’d rather stick to the terms of my plea agreement, Lieutenant, if it’s all right with you,” Chae replied.

  She slipped her hands into the pockets of her pants and nodded. “Fair enough. Offer’s on the table, though, anytime. Go stow your gear.”

  Chae, physically relieved, got up and went to their bunk to unpack.