by K. B. Wagers
Nika managed to suppress most of his flinch. Sapphi didn’t mean for the question to be cruel, but what few filters she’d had seemed to have been burned up by the electrical surge. He’d done his rounds with the members of his crew after Max had forgiven him—would have done the same even if she hadn’t, but it felt right to sit down with them each individually and apologize. Still, it was a lot easier to forgive than to forget.
“I did feel that bad.” He smiled. “I thought it had to be done.”
Sapphi made a face and reached out. Nika took her hand, rubbing a thumb over the scars on the back. Grief choked him, made his next words come out barely above a whisper. “I almost got you killed, Sapphi. I’m so sorry.”
“You already apologized. So did Chae.” She patted her other hand over the top of his. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told them: The people responsible are the ones who are running this thing. They’re the ones who have to pay. So stop blaming yourself, okay? Before I get annoyed and zap you.”
“Did you get the ability to shoot electricity from your fingertips from this adventure?”
“Sadly no, but I can rig up something on your seat in Zuma if you don’t watch it.” Sapphi grinned. “I am working on a dedicated team chat program. It’s maybe not regulation, but I’ll feel better if I know for sure we’re encrypted above and beyond CHN protocols.”
“I’ll take the heat on that if something goes sideways.” He nodded. “You do whatever you need to. Thanks for always looking out for us, Sapphi.”
“It’s my job,” she protested, but the pleased look on her face told him the compliment had made her happy. “Anyway”—she flipped the jammer off with her thumb—“the projections for the Boarding Action went up thanks to that session. I’m feeling pretty confident about our chances, to be honest.”
“As hard as we’ve been training, I’d hope so,” Nika replied, glancing past Sapphi as Tamago and Chae came into the quarters. “Turn that back on, Saph,” he ordered in a low voice as he got to his feet.
Tamago was gripping Chae’s arm and the spacer looked not quite panicked, but damn close as Tamago ushered them to a chair.
“What happened?” Nika demanded.
“Julia,” Chae whispered, looking around the room as if they expected her to pop up at any second.
“We’re safe here,” Nika said, and pointed at Sapphi, who held up the jammer. “We were expecting this. Take a few breaths, Chae, and tell me what she said.” He tamped down on his own fear in an effort to calm Chae down. The fact that they were unharmed was a good sign.
They visibly relaxed, at least a little. “She wanted to congratulate me for crashing the ship. I tried to do like the chief coached me and asked if there were other people like me on the station.”
“Did she tell you?”
“No, but she seemed impressed? She didn’t care about the bugs being discovered. I said I wanted to help more.” Chae suddenly covered their face with their hand as if they’d just remembered something. “I’m so sorry, Commander. I think I screwed up. I told her you and the LT had a fight and you were thinking about getting out of the NeoG. I suggested it would be a good idea for them to see if they could recruit you.”
Nika blinked at Chae. “You what?”
“I’m sorry! I know it wasn’t the plan. I thought if they had other people watching they’d know you and Max had been fighting and maybe if they believed it they’d rather have a commander than just a new spacer and they wouldn’t know that you were working for Intel already.”
Nika couldn’t stop a laugh and Chae flinched.
“I’m sorry, sir. I screwed up.”
“No. It’s all right, Chae.” Nika waved a hand in the air. “I wasn’t laughing at you. You did good. Great, actually. Did she buy it?”
“I don’t know? Maybe? She said she’d run it by her boss. What should I do?”
“Nothing.” Nika patted Chae on the shoulder, his mind already running through the options, and he liked the plan that was forming. “I’m going to tell Stephan and see what he thinks.”
“But sir—”
“You may have gotten us an even better line into their operation than we were hoping for when we came back here. If Julia’s boss decides to get in touch, I’ll be able to tell her exactly what she wants to hear.”
Interstitial
Dai—
All right, I gave you two weeks. Are you going to talk to me face-to-face now? Or at least answer my chat request? Or just respond to this email?
I know I deserve this silence and I know I said I’d give you space. I just . . . it’s killing me, Dai.
I miss you.
I’m sorry I didn’t get this right. I wish I could find the words to show you how much you mean to me. I think you’d understand if I said I love you like I love my boys. It would rip my heart out if something happened to them and it would rip my heart out the same for you.
I was trying to do my job, but I forgot that part of my job is keeping all of you safe. Then I made it worse. I didn’t think about the fact that your job is also about keeping your people safe. Max said I should listen better instead of being so sure I know the answers. All I want is the chance to actually do that.
I’m sorry. Please call me. Write me.
Anything.
Luis
Twenty-Five
Jenks looked around the empty quarters on Jupiter Station and took a deep breath as she messaged Coms on her tablet. “Hey, Sully.”
“Hey, Jenks. Just caught me before I go off duty. What do you need?”
“Can you put a call in to Luis for me?”
“Sure thing,” they replied, and she felt a burst of relief when they didn’t tease her.
The writhing mass of snakes in her stomach didn’t need any encouragement. The screen resolved just as Jenks swallowed.
“Dai,” Luis said, smiling at her as if she hadn’t been ignoring him for two weeks.
Or maybe exactly because of that.
“Hey.” She scrubbed a hand through her now silver-and-black hair and attempted a smile of her own.
“It’s nice to see your face.”
“I don’t think this is going to work.”
The words that had been rolling around her head for two weeks flew out and Jenks regretted them as soon as she said them at the look they put on Luis’s face. “I—fuck me.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “This was a bad idea. I should just go.”
“Dai, you hang up on me and I’ll be on the next transport out there.”
“I can’t do this,” she whispered, feeling the tears start and scrambling to hold them at bay even as the words spilled out of her like a ship venting air into space. “I tried. You deserve better. I’m no good at relationships. Not like this. I’m not worth it.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have given you that much space,” he muttered.
She opened her eyes. “What?”
His smile was gentle, if blurred by her tears. “All the ‘I’m not worth it’ dialogues have been going full-blast in your head, haven’t they, Dai? That things have to end and people leave you and nothing lasts forever?” His words were an echo of what she’d said to Max yesterday and she couldn’t stop from rubbing a hand over her heart.
“Maybe. Okay, yeah, but that doesn’t mean they’re not true.”
“They’re one hundred percent not true, and I’m the one who fucked up here. I’m the one who needs to apologize. Who’s been trying to apologize. This is about you trusting me and me blowing it; don’t try to gaslight yourself into making it about how you don’t deserve to be loved.”
She stared at him, more than a little surprised at how neatly he’d called her out. Her own therapist had said almost the same thing but Jenks had blown her off, so sure in her own brain that she’d done something to deserve it.
I’m not telling Ilka she was right, damn it. I’ll never hear the end of it.
“You don’t have to close yourself off, Dai. It’s okay to open ourselves up to people
we love. It’s not easy, and sometimes it’s damn hard—especially when an idiot opens his mouth and says something stupid—but it’s all part of love. It’s going to burn you up, Dai, staying closed off like this. You need to let people in.
“Besides, you promised me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s been and gone.”
“Nope, it’s just around the corner.” He smiled again, this time with that wicked spark in his eye when he knew he’d won the argument. She’d just tried to throw it away, but now she couldn’t imagine never seeing that again.
“Did you sucker me into some never-ending contract?”
“Maybe. In my defense, I knew you’d try to dodge it, though. But I meant what I said, Dai. You deserve to be loved. You deserve to have someone listen to you and help you figure out how to be the kind of NCO you want to be. I want to be that person if you’ll let me. If you’re willing, I’d very much like to keep having the chance to show you that you are everything to me.”
“Why are you so stubborn?”
“Why are you?”
She laughed, but pressed a hand over her eyes as the tears finally escaped her at the same time. “Why won’t you just let me end this? Wouldn’t it be easier for you not to have to put up with my bullshit?”
“Dai, look at me.”
Jenks sniffled and wiped the tears away but made herself look him in the eye. “Seriously, why do you—”
“Hey, hush for a second and listen. If you really want to end this, okay. I just don’t want you to do it because you think I’m going to leave first. If you recall, again, I’m the one who fucked up, not you.”
“I don’t know what I want,” she whispered, knowing it was at least partially a lie. She wanted him.
“Love isn’t a series of favors to be paid back. It’s just loving someone—all of them. You deserve to be loved because everyone deserves to be loved. You just happened to get stuck with my ass.”
“I like your ass. God. Sorry, I’m not trying to deflect all this, I swear.”
“It’s all right.” Luis grinned. “I’d like the rest of my life to show you how grateful I am for you promising me tomorrow.”
“I guess.” Jenks heaved a theatrical sigh, knowing even as she did that Luis would see it for the relief it truly was. “I’m sorry I didn’t kiss you goodbye.”
“I’ll see you in four weeks. You can make it up to me then. Let me win a fight . . .”
“Not on your damned life.”
“Are you going to let Tivo apologize, too?”
“Maybe. Will he grovel like you did?”
“Altandai Khan, he’s been miserable.”
She laughed and glanced at the clock in the corner of her vision. Along with the flashing notification of her upcoming meeting there was a message from Tivo. “I’ll talk to him later, I promise. I’ve got to go meet with Hoboins about how Chae’s doing—I’d better get out of here. I’ll call you later?”
“Tomorrow. I’m working late tonight. Moms have the boys for the weekend anyway. I love you, Dai.”
“Love you, too.” She blew him a kiss and then the tablet went black. She flopped back onto her bunk and rubbed both hands over her face one more time, surprised by the feelings rushing through her and the ridiculously strong urge she had to laugh, or cry, or possibly both.
Jenks cranked up the music on her DD chip and gave Doge a nudge as she slipped off her bunk and headed for the door.
“Your serotonin levels are up.”
She smiled down at the robot dog and patted him on the head. “Yup.”
“Why did you attempt to end things if it made you so sad?”
Jenks skidded to a halt. Doge frequently surprised her. The AI wasn’t particularly complex, nor was it top of the line, though it had been at the time of its creation. Rather, it was simply a good twenty-year-old program that had a whole lot more freedoms than its descendants.
Sometimes it seemed like Doge was still learning, which was something she hadn’t shared with anyone else. In part because she wasn’t sure what it meant, but also because she didn’t want to risk him getting taken away.
She paused the music and went to a knee by his side. “How do I explain it? Humans can be really weird, Doge. We think we want something and then get scared when we get it.”
“Why, though?”
Jenks laughed and scratched at her face. “This is complicated, buddy. You want me to explain shit I can’t even say to my therapist yet.” She laid her cheek on his head. “I’m afraid of losing him. I don’t trust that anything good in my life is going to last. So my brain insists it’s better to push him away than wait for that to happen.”
“Because you want to control it?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You can’t control people like machines, Jenks.”
She blew out a breath at the echo of Blythe’s words. “Tell me about it, buddy. To be honest, I can barely control machines most days. Come on. I’m not going to be doing anything except getting my ass chewed by Hoboins if we’re late for this meeting.”
“This is wild,” Max said over the com after the new helmet was sealed into her suit. She reached up and patted at the now-solid surface. Even though the engineers at Off-Earth had explained to her exactly how the new polymer worked, it was still hard to wrap her brain around.
“That is one word for it.”
Max turned around to face Nika and tried not to laugh at the anxious expression on his face. “We’ll be okay,” she said. “They’ve been tested eight million times already, right, Antilles?”
The pilot of their shuttle was also one of the head engineers for Off-Earth’s liquid helmet project and she turned around in her seat with a grin. “Absolutely. If anything goes wrong, Jun’s right there and they’ll pull you back in before you can even get frostbite.”
“I am not worried about frostbite,” Nika replied, and Max choked down a second laugh. “You know Jenks would have jumped at the chance to do this, so explain to me why I’m here again?”
“Because she has a meeting with Hoboins that starts in two minutes and Antilles has to catch the transport back to Earth this afternoon.” She reached out and patted his shoulder. “And because she’d think this was so cool she couldn’t be critical of it. Whereas I trust you to treat it with all the seriousness of someone who’s aware of their own mortality.”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t.”
Max looked over at Jun. The other Off-Earth engineer was dressed in an old-fashioned helmet and EMU. Their job was to monitor all the vitals and, as Antilles had just noted, haul Max and Nika into the shuttle should something go wrong. “We’re good to go here.”
“All right, closing my doors,” Antilles replied, and the doors between the cockpit and the rest of the shuttle slid closed and sealed.
“The film is reactive, though we’re far enough away from the sun out here it likely won’t trip the filters,” Jun said. “Let me know if you feel light-headed or out of breath at any point.” They paused. “If you hear a whistling sound, you want to close your eyes tight and pull your head down as far as possible into the suit. I’ll bring you back in, but the helmet might explode.”
“Oh, holy Saint Ivan, why did I agree to this?” Nika muttered.
Even Max took a deep breath at the word “explode,” but breathed out as the back of the shuttle slid open, revealing Jupiter Station and the massive gas giant hanging in the black behind it. They were on the side of the station away from the traffic pattern, and close enough that she immediately felt dwarfed by the sheer size of the station itself.
The pair of mushroom-shaped structures were connected by several tubes that varied from five to thirty meters in diameter. The smaller tower was for H3nergy personnel and civilians, while the larger housed CHN military.
For just a moment she was back to two years ago, watching the station from the bridge of the freighter G’s Panic. That overwhelming sense of home hadn’t gone away.
“Commander, Lieutenant? How are you doing?” Jun’s voice dragged Max back to the present and she turned so she could get a look at Nika. She gave him a questioning thumbs-up that he returned and Max wished that there was some way they could talk privately. But even out here in the black they had to route everything through the suit coms, and there was no way to know who was listening.
“We’re doing good so far.”
Which meant Max couldn’t ask Nika just what his plan was as far as Melanie Karenina went and how he was going to win the woman’s approval without getting both himself and Chae killed.
She’d tried to offer herself up instead, but Nika had refused. Though his primary reason had been that no one would believe for a second Maxine Carmichael would break the law, he also insisted that as the commander, he bore the responsibility.
She’d had to concede he was right on both points.
She hit the thruster on her EMU, keeping an eye on the tether as they sailed farther away from the shuttle and toward the station. “You think Hoboins would be surprised if we knocked on his window?”
Nika laughed and it was only a little strained. “He might. I doubt we could get that close with the shuttle before the warning sensors went off, though.”
“Looks like someone is doing maintenance over there, which means the sensors would be off, but we are technically working.” Max reached up and tapped on her helmet and swore she could hear Nika’s wince over the coms. “Let’s run these tests, Jun.”
“All right. First one is the full thruster burn, increments of fifteen, thirty, and forty-five seconds . . .”
Jenks had turned her music back on and she danced as she made her way into Hoboins’s office with Doge at her side. “Lou!”
Commander Lou Seve, Hoboins’s chief of staff, looked up from her desk and sighed. “Jenks, why did you bring the dog? You know how he feels about them. I love you, Doge, but the admiral has issues.”
“No offense taken, Commander,” Doge said, and Jenks grinned.
“I brought him because I figured you needed the break. How’s his mood today?”
