Hold Fast Through the Fire

by K. B. Wagers

  “Jenks—”

  “Sapphi died!” She sliced a hand through the air, cutting Tivo off. “If it hadn’t been for Tamago she would have stayed dead. If it hadn’t been for Chae landing Zuma we’d all have died.”

  “You seem a hell of a lot more willing to forgive them for betraying you than us for doing our jobs,” Tivo snapped at her.

  Luis winced, then sighed. “Damn it, Tiv, don’t—”

  “I had my talk with Chae and I know where they stand. I forgive them because I’ve been there,” Jenks hissed. “Trapped between the choice of betraying your friends or watching them die. No one to trust, no one to help. I’ve lived through the threats and the beatdowns and my friends dying because of choices I made. I knew there was something wrong with that supposed accident with the cargo on your ship.” She pointed a finger at Tivo. “I should have pursued it, not let you talk me down.

  “I know how Chae felt and why they did what they did. That’s why I forgive them. Because they didn’t have a choice, but you did. You chose the mission over the people. And that’s your decision. But that means you don’t get to be around people, especially me. So fuck you both for this.” She shoved a cart near her, the sudden noise and violence putting both men back on guard. “Do you understand that I could have talked Chae through it, coached them on what to do and say to put those bastards at ease? Of course you don’t. You didn’t stop to consider that angle for a second, did you?”

  Luis rubbed at his chin and sighed again. “You’re right. We didn’t.”

  His easy agreement only made her angrier.

  “You put my crew in danger. I get we’re just pawns in your game and don’t matter to the great minds at Intel, but I’m their chief. I’m responsible for them. This is the only family I’ve ever had and I would rather die than let them get hurt. I’ve been tearing myself apart trying to live up to what Ma did for this team and you just fucking pissed on it all.”

  The men shared a guilty look and Tivo reached a hand out. “Jenks, that’s not fair. With what’s on the line here—”

  “Oh, fuck you and your greater-good speech,” she snapped. “We go out into the black every day knowing we may not come back because of the oath we swore. We’d have gladly put our lives on the line for this if you’d done us the courtesy of telling us what we were up against. But you didn’t, you just fucking—”

  Luis put his hands up. “All right, Jenks, you’ve made your point. Maybe we should have been up front about it, but that’s not how this went down. What do you want?”

  “I already told you: for you both to leave me alone.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked away.

  “Okay,” Luis said softly. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  “No, we won’t.” The words slipped out before she could stop them, fueled by pain and a history of picking the safer, closed-off road where emotions were concerned. “I mean it, I don’t want to see either of you again outside of work. I can be an adult about that, but everything else is done. I can’t—I can’t be with people I don’t trust.”

  There was a moment of painful silence and then Luis sighed. “Come on, Tiv.”

  “You’re just going to let her—”

  “Yes, because that’s what she wants right now and I respect her enough to pay attention to the boundaries. Let’s go.”

  As soon as they were gone Jenks slid down to the floor with her arms wrapped around her waist, the unshed tears burning in her eyes. Doge crept closer and pressed his head to hers.

  “I am sorry.”

  “For what, silly dog?”

  “You are hurt.”

  “Yeah, I am.” She cupped his head and pressed her lips to the metal. “I’ve still got you, though, right?”

  “For as long as you keep fixing me.”

  “I will always fix you, I promise.” She buried her face against him.

  “They also hurt.”

  “Good.”

  “No, not good. Hurt is not good, you said so. I liked them. They made you happy, more than the others. Until they suddenly didn’t. I don’t understand you humans sometimes.”

  “Me either, buddy.” Jenks sighed and got to her feet. “Come on, we should put this pump back together like we said we would.”

  “You okay?”

  She smiled at Blythe as the woman approached. “Yeah. I’ll get this fixed back up and get out of your hair. You got that part?”

  “Right here.”

  It was easy to fall back into the rhythm of repairing something, watching it come together under her hands. She handed the completed pump over to Blythe with a little flourish. “There you go. I got sort of interrupted inspecting everything else, but it seemed like that valve was the only issue.”

  “I’ll send you the bill if it still doesn’t work.” Blythe grinned. “I appreciate the assist, Jenks of the NeoG. You want some free advice?”

  No. “Sure.”

  “I’m not great with people. Machines were always easier. You can usually trust them not to let you down as long as you put the work into them, like this good boy here. But they still break. So do people. Difference is, it’s not your job to fix people. It’s their job to fix themselves.”

  “Not sure I’m following this advice, to be honest.”

  “I said it was free, I didn’t say it was good.”

  Jenks let out a laugh, even though it was weak, and nearly dissolved into tears. Blythe reached out and took Jenks’s hand. “From what I heard you have every right to be angry at them. You sit with that for as long as you need. Maybe they’ll fix it, maybe they won’t. It’s not your job, though. Understand?”

  “Yeah, I think I do.”

  “Good. Come on back to my shop anytime.”

  Jenks nodded and slipped out the door, nearly running into Tamago in the process. “What are you doing here?”

  “Came looking for you.” Tamago lifted a slender shoulder.

  Jenks arched an eyebrow at them.

  “Luis maybe told me to.”

  “He tell you why?” she asked with a sigh.

  “Only that you were upset.” They looked around. “No one is bleeding, though, so I’m not sure what to think.” They heaved a sigh and looked at her through their black lashes. “I’m sorry for this morning. I was out of line.”

  “Maybe for punching Chae, but even then you’re entitled to be angry, Tama. I’m the last person who could tell you otherwise.” She pulled her friend into a hug.

  Tamago clung to her. “I liked Chae,” they whispered. “I want to forgive them, but I don’t know if I can trust them again.”

  “You don’t have to figure it out right now, you know?” Jenks pressed a kiss to the side of Tamago’s head and released them. “Let them earn it. They know they fucked up and they want to be a part of this team, which means they need to make amends.”

  “You say that to Luis and Tivo, too?”

  “No, I told them to fuck off.”

  Tamago gave her a look of pure disbelief. “You know you’ll forgive them eventually.”

  “Brat.” Jenks slipped her arm through Tamago’s and headed back across the street. “Chae wouldn’t have been in this position in the first place if they’d told us what was going on. I’m mad at them for putting you all at risk.”

  “They put you at risk, too. Don’t shrug your shoulders at me, Khan. I’m as mad at them as you are, I just hide it better. They were so wrapped up in the end result that they didn’t stop to think about the road right in front of them. Stephan treated us all like NPCs to be thrown at the final boss rather than actual members of the party.”

  “You are such a nerd, I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Tamago replied. “And I know you’re hurting but trying to hide it because big, bad Jenks, the girl from the mean streets, doesn’t get hurt.”

  That hit a little too close to home and Jenks knew her laugh rang false. “It’s fine, Tamago.”

  “No, it’s not,” Tamago said, coming to a stop. �
��And it doesn’t have to be. This is yucky.” They cupped Jenks’s face. “And it’s okay to say so.”

  For a moment Jenks allowed herself the weakness of dreaming she could throw herself into her friend’s arms and cry, but her survival instinct was stronger, overriding everything else. “Hey, you know me. I’ll be all right.”

  “Sometimes I want to bite your stubborn ass.”

  “Don’t flirt with me if you’re not going to follow through.” Jenks grinned up at them and Tamago rolled their eyes with a laugh.

  “Jenks.” Doge only said her name, but the inflection was strange. She turned her head slightly, suddenly realizing the darkened street she and Tamago were on was deserted.

  Except for the gang of half a dozen people headed their way.

  “Tama, when I say go I want you to run for base as fast as you can. Doge, you go with them and keep them safe. You have permission to shoot to kill.”

  Doge whimpered.

  “Don’t whine at me, dog.”

  “Jenks, no,” Tamago whispered.

  “You don’t whine, either, Petty Officer,” she said. “This is an order.

  “Go.”

  Twenty-One

  Max stood in the conference room, staring at the shifting data on the wall in front of her, occasionally reaching out to stop the flow of information and read something more closely.

  “When I saw it yesterday I thought, ‘That’s a face I haven’t seen in a while,’” D’Arcy said as he joined her. “Tea?” He passed over one of the steaming mugs in his hands.

  “Thanks.” Max tipped her head at the screen. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Vincent Grant.” He tapped the image of the hard-eyed man in the news article Max had been reading and then pointed up at the photo next to Senator Tieg’s.

  “You knew him?”

  D’Arcy’s laugh was humorless. “Thankfully by reputation only. He’s an ex–Mars PeaceKeeper and was heavily involved in the suppression of the protests in ’09.”

  “Stephan was there, too, right?” Max glanced across the room to where the Intel commander was talking with her brother and Nika.

  “He was a baby, a shiny lieutenant on his first Intel assignment off-world.” D’Arcy grinned at her, but it faded quickly and he sighed. “We were on opposite sides, Max. Most of the time I let it stay in the past. I lost my temper yesterday and I shouldn’t have. He and I have both done things we regret.”

  Max nodded, but it was hard to process that the man next to her had once been part of an organization she’d been brought up to believe was wrong. Ironically, it was less difficult to realize her parents’ black-and-white view of the situation wasn’t the reality. Everything about the Mars riots was more complex than the news and the CHN wanted people to believe.

  What she knew was D’Arcy. Trusted him with her life. He’d wanted his home safe and free, and she couldn’t fault him for that. “Why did you join, D’Arcy? Why come to the NeoG when we were basically your enemy?”

  “I didn’t have much of a choice, though it wasn’t the NeoG I was mad at. And for the most part they were actually trying to keep the peace. When everything went down I ended up in custody and was given two options. This seemed like the better path, one where I could make a difference,” he said after a moment of silent contemplation. “There are people I left behind who feel like I betrayed everything we fought for just to keep from going to rehab, but it’s more complicated than that.”

  “Most things are.” She pointed at Grant. “Tell me about him.”

  “He’s dangerous, Max. Like I said, we never tangled personally, but I lost friends to him and his squad. People were yanked off the street and turned up dead later. The end of it all involved a member of the NeoG killing a protestor—a friend of mine, Hadi Shevreaux.”

  “I remember reading about that. The captain in question was arrested and charged with excessive force. Discharged from the NeoG and sent to rehab. It was a big reason why the CHN finally came to the table with Mars.”

  “Still didn’t quite work out like we’d hoped, but things are a little better.” D’Arcy nodded. “Melanie Karenina. She was a captain who worked with Grant pretty closely, I think—you’d have to ask Stephan. He’s the one who investigated her and brought her in.” Max raised an eyebrow in surprise, while D’Arcy continued. “Have you talked to your sister? How’s Bosco doing?”

  “This morning.” Max nodded. “And she’s stable.” The burst of relief she’d felt when talking to Ria reappeared in her chest.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Max. You didn’t know.”

  “Yeah. I keep feeling like I should have, though. She sent me the information she’d gathered about Julia Draven, including an Off-Earth employee roster with a photo showing a very different woman from the one I met.” She glanced at the door as Chae slipped through and a moment later Luis and Tivo came in, wearing identical expressions of frustration and hurt. “I suppose it’s a good sign they’re still alive?”

  “Who? Oh.” D’Arcy chuckled. “They tried to talk to Jenks?”

  “I told them to leave her be.” Max shrugged. “She took this promotion more seriously than people expected her to, and having Sapphi get injured because they all chose not to read us in really did not sit well with her.”

  “She wasn’t the only one. You still mad at Nika?”

  “Mad? Not really.” Max caught Chae’s eye and waved the spacer over. “‘Hurt’ is a better word. That ache that comes three days after you take a kick to the stomach, you know?”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “LT?”

  Max smiled at Chae, and though the worried look in their eyes didn’t diminish, they at least smiled back. “Tell me how you met Julia, from the beginning.”

  “She was working on a drainage project near our habitat. I used to go up and watch on my off days. We struck up a conversation and—” Chae sighed and lifted a shoulder. “I thought she cared, LT. But I was a target from the beginning, wasn’t I?”

  “I think so. They knew who your fathers were. They were looking for someone to slip into the NeoG.”

  “Why a newbie?” D’Arcy asked. “Seems like a better idea to find someone with more pull.”

  “That’s a good question. I think, though, they were looking long term,” Max replied. “Owning someone from the ground up is a good idea if you’re planning for decades. These people aren’t amateurs—they had enough power to convince people on a naval ship to beat Chae up. You don’t do all this for a get-rich-quick scheme. They clearly see something in Chae to not just kill them then.”

  “The people who beat me on the Laika said it was nothing personal,” Chae whispered. “That they did what they were told.”

  Max nodded. “Chae’s smart—and a brilliant pilot. It wouldn’t be hard to predict they’d work their way up the ranks while Tieg and whoever else is responsible had the threat of their fathers’ lives to hold over them, not to mention all the things they’d done since.”

  D’Arcy whistled low. “I already didn’t like Grant, but the rest of these bastards are working their way up my list.”

  “Me too, I—” Whatever Max had been about to say vanished when Tamago’s panicked call came over the team com.

  “LT! Jenks is in trouble!”

  Max saw Nika jerk as the message rang in his ear, too, and he looked her way before sprinting for the door.

  “It’s Jenks,” Max said out loud to D’Arcy before following. “Tamago, breathe and give me a sitrep.”

  “I’m at the east gate with Doge. We were headed back. Six or so people converged on us in the street. Jenks ordered me to take Doge and go.”

  “Jenks, do you copy?” Nika said.

  “Little busy” came her breathless reply, and then a grunt. “I have no fucking clue where I am, so don’t ask.”

  Jenks took in the faces of the people closing in on her. None of them had handshakes, but she recognized one from the wall in Stephan’s conference room. “Vincent Grant,�
� she said. “Am I supposed to be impressed I warranted a personal appearance?”

  “You should be impressed I didn’t just drop you here and now.”

  Jenks had to admit she was at least curious about that. “To what do I owe the honor of still being alive?”

  “You’re really a mouthy one, aren’t you?” Grant shook his head. “I’ve got a message for the NeoG: back the fuck off or things are going to get ugly.” He grinned. “Uglier.”

  Jenks kept an eye on the two people circling behind her. This was a fight she didn’t want to have. It didn’t matter how good she was, six-on-one odds was bullshit beatdown territory.

  I’ve done my time in that arena, no thank you.

  But she wanted to keep them distracted and not give them a reason to go after Tamago.

  “When you say ‘uglier,’ can I get a reference point? Like uglier than shorty over there? Or uglier than you?”

  Grant’s hard stare didn’t waver and one of the toughs cracked their knuckles.

  That told her everything she wanted to know—they might not kill her today, but they had no compunctions about beating the shit out of her.

  “Okay, fine. You’re all under arrest.” Jenks ducked under the swing from one of the people behind her, grabbing them and bringing her knee up hard between their legs. “Worth a try,” she said, dropping them to the ground.

  Grant had his fists up and was advancing on her with enough composure to make part of her want to test herself against him.

  But this wasn’t the time for a contest, so while she rushed at Grant, she actually elbowed the person next to him in the head instead, hard enough to send them staggering into Grant. The move worked in her favor and Jenks sprinted around the corner, away from the base. Maybe two down, but she wasn’t trusting her luck, especially with the sounds of pursuit already loud behind her.

  Let them thin out, take them out one by one if you can. Watch your step, don’t get cornered.

  All those lessons she’d learned on the streets of Krasnodar rose back up without any effort. She’d stayed alive, not always by being tougher but by being smarter than everyone else. Jenks ducked into the shadows of an alley.