by K. B. Wagers
“You and I both know who.”
The realization hit with the same power as the debris. “Oh god.”
“Nika! Max! Can anyone copy me?” Sapphi’s voice came over the team channel, startling both of them.
“We read you, Sapphi,” Nika replied. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
“Oh thank the gods. Tamago and Chae are in the Interceptor bay helping with wounded. Where are you two?”
“Just hanging outside in the black.”
“What?”
“The shuttle got hit with debris,” Nika said. “Antilles and Jun are alive. We need someone to send a ship to fetch them.”
Max was about to comment when Doge said, “Jenks’s vitals have dipped again.”
“Sapphi,” Nika asked, “do you know where Jenks is?”
“Tivo just sent me a chat message, which in addition to the Babels are two things that are actually working, thank Hera. Can you imagine the shitstorm if we all couldn’t understand each other? He’s with Jenks and they’re taking her to medical. She caught a piece of debris in the side and needs surgery.”
“What’s Tivo doing back here?” Max asked. “Where’s my brother?”
“Search me. I can’t get anything else to cooperate right now, LT. Whoever did this didn’t only set off bombs but some kind of weirdness that’s hammered the shit out of our coms, on top of the Coms office being a smoking crater. DD chips are sort of working, and I’ve managed to get our team channel stabilized. But handshakes and locators are fucked. We’re—”
“Sapphi, we need you to focus—”
“I am fucking focused, Nika. I’m also pissed. Our friends are dead. Admiral Hoboins is dead. Jenks could have been—” Sapphi’s sudden sobs filled the coms.
“Sapphi, breathe in and out for me,” Max said gently. “This is awful, and we need to get inside so we can help. Doge is telling us we can get in through airlock six-six-seven, but that’s inside access only. Will you meet us there and let us in?”
“Yeah. I’m only a floor up from you, LT. I’ll be there in a few,” she replied. Max heard the connection cut off.
“There’s a maintenance ladder up and over the other side.” Nika pointed and Max reached out to link her gloved hand with his.
“We’ll be okay, Nika.”
“Sapphi’s right,” he whispered over the com, but he squeezed her hand back. “They wanted to hurt us.”
“Yes. So we need to do what you just told Sapphi to do: focus. First we have to get inside. Then we need to get in touch with Stephan. If the Laika is back in port, we’ll talk to Scott and get a secure com through the ship if we can. At the very least I can try to get a hold of Ria and route something encrypted through her.” Max let her brain focus on the problem, drowning out the worry for her friends with an anger and determination to find the people responsible for this and make them pay.
You picked a fight with the NeoG, Senator. I hope you’re ready for the wrath that’s going to follow.
Twenty-Seven
Nika stared, disbelieving, at the soot-streaked face of Captain Davi Kilini. “What did you just say?”
“I’m sorry, Nika.” The Intel officer blinked rapidly but her tears slipped free anyway and slid down her cheeks. “The explosion was targeted. It leveled their offices. Stephan and Luis were working late. We got a positive ID off what we could find, but I—I don’t have anything more right now.” She glanced over her shoulder. “And I’m sorry to drop this on you and go, but I have to get back to this.”
“No, I understand. We’ve got troubles of our own here.”
“I know. Before I go, though, you’re not alone up there, okay? Admiral Chen is sending emergency equipment your direction and the Navy’s scrambling more ships. If he’s alive, D’Arcy is the senior Interceptor commander there and currently the senior NeoG officer on board. And Admiral Christin from the CHNN is in overall command of the station until we can get a new NeoG staff sent your direction.”
“I’ll let D’Arcy know.” Nika nodded. “Thanks, Davi. I appreciate it.”
“I’ll talk to you again soon, Nika. I’m so sorry.”
The screen in Captain Troika’s ready room on the Laika went dark. Nika pressed his fingers to his mouth, struggling to keep everything in before giving up and letting his own frustration pour out. He could hear Max crying behind him and her brother’s attempt at whispered comfort.
“Fuck.”
He shoved both hands into his hair and folded over, the anguished curses spilling out into the air around him. How had this all gone so wrong? Had Senator Tieg’s people planned this all along or was it because of what had happened on Trappist?
Please, God, don’t let us have been responsible.
But he was fairly sure that wasn’t the case. This was too well-thought-out to have been a spur-of-the-moment response. This was terrorism without the fear of consequences—terrorism with no list of demands.
It was violence because it could be, and that’s what scared him more than anything.
But that just made him—for maybe the first time in a year—more resolved to get into the thick of it.
To kick some ass.
He struggled to take a breath through the pain and started going over the next steps, trying to tamp down the angry voice in his head saying they should just fly to Earth and arrest Senator Tieg.
You know it won’t bring him down. Stephan said as much. You’ll have to be careful, Nika, smarter than them.
“Nika.” Max laid a hand on his back. He looked up, and she was composed. Whatever grief she was feeling was packed away behind a calm facade. He worked to mirror her. “Tivo just messaged me. Jenks is out of surgery. We should go.”
“Yeah.” He straightened. “Commodore, can you tell Captain Troika thank you for the use of their coms?”
“I will. And I just got a message that the Off-Earth engineers have been retrieved and they’re fine.”
“Good. Thank you.”
“Anything you need, Nika, just let me know. We’ve already got our people in the medical bay helping out, and we’re going to put our maintenance folx to work cleaning wreckage out of the Interceptor bay as soon as we get the go-ahead.” Scott held his hand out, gripping Nika’s tightly when he took it. “The Navy is not going to stand idly by. An attack on the NeoG is an attack on all of us.”
“We appreciate that.”
Scott nodded grimly and touched Max on the back as he walked them out onto the bridge. They were greeted with solemn looks and soft words that continued as Nika and Max headed off the ship.
Words of sympathy, of support, of shared anger and determination.
He wanted to soak it in.
He wanted to scream that thoughts and prayers weren’t enough.
But he just kept walking. Because he was a commander, and that’s what he was supposed to do.
Max exhaled and rubbed a hand over her face as they came off the ship onto the dock and headed into the station, Doge still following at her side. “Nika, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” he replied. “What I want to do is go to Earth and—”
“Me too,” she said before he could finish the sentence. “And I also know we can’t.”
He dragged in another breath, fighting for the same well of calm he pulled from during sword matches. “Navy has station security covered. Right now our focus is our people. We’ll tend to the wounded. Send our dead to their rest. Then we’ll figure out what to do next.”
“Do you think this was because of us? We spooked them on Trappist; was it bad enough to cause this kind of reaction?”
It was just like Max to have already thought of the question he’d asked himself. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Julia’s interaction with Chae didn’t seem like someone who was spooked. This isn’t the kind of thing you pull off on a whim. They had to have planned it.” The warning Grant had given Jenks replayed in his brain and Nika swallowed hard. “They told us they were going
to do something. I didn’t even think they would—”
“Commander Vagin.” The Neo at the door of the medical bay greeted them and pointed to her left. “We’ve got your sister in the room just down the hall. She’s not quite awake yet, but I think the doctor is still in there with her, and so is Lieutenant Parsikov.”
“Thanks, Mahira.”
“Nika.” Tivo looked up as they came into the room and got to his feet. Dr. Shaylan was bent over the bed, talking softly to a slowly waking Jenks. “She’s okay. She’ll be fine.”
“What happened?” Max asked, then shook her head and clarified. “What are her injuries?”
“She was in the corridor outside Hoboins’s office when the explosives detonated. I don’t know how she survived.”
“Doge,” Max murmured, reaching a hand out to touch the ROVER’s head.
Tivo took a deep breath, letting it out on a shaky exhale. “I owe you, dog, big time. A piece of shrapnel hit her in the left side, punctured her stomach and kidney. They pulled it and cleaned it out, but Dr. Shaylan wants to wait a few days before sealing her up for good just in case there’s an issue.” He looked down at Doge with a soft smile. “She was worried about you, buddy. Where’d you find him?” he asked Max.
“Outside.”
“In the corridor?”
“In the black. We were testing helmets and . . .”
Nika crossed to the bed as Max and Tivo debriefed and their conversation faded into the background. “Doctor.”
“Commander. Hey, Chief, your brother’s here. You want to wake the rest of the way up for me?”
“No.” Her grumpy mumble was accompanied by a flutter of eyelids and Nika smiled as he reached down for her hand.
“I brought your dog,” he said. Doge nudged up against his leg and rested his head on the edge of the bed.
Her mismatched eyes were still clouded with confusion, but Jenks rolled her head to the side and smiled a lopsided smile at Doge. Nika let her hand go so she could pat the ROVER on the head. “Good boy. You saved my life.”
“You are my friend,” Doge replied.
Nika put his hand over hers. “How are you feeling?”
Jenks heaved a big sigh. “High.” Then, like a switch had been flipped, she blinked and stared at him. “There was a bomb.”
“Yeah, we know,” Nika said at the same time the doctor said, “Easy, Chief.” Shaylan put her hand on Jenks’s shoulder and pushed her back down against the bed.
“One day I’m going to remember to not move when I’m injured.”
“Not likely,” Shaylan muttered, and moved away to check a monitor.
“Nika, what happened?”
“Explosions in the Interceptor bay, Coms, and where you were.” He shook his head, making a deliberate choice not to tell his sister the rest of the news right now. “I’m sorry. Both Admiral Hoboins and Commander Seve were killed in the explosion. Our crew is okay, but there are other deaths, and we don’t have a total yet.”
Her expression didn’t change, but he felt her hand flex where it was pressed between his fingers and Doge’s head. “You all probably have work to do. You don’t need to babysit me. Can Doge stay?”
Dr. Shaylan nodded from across the room.
Jenks groaned. “God, Nika. No one tell Luis, he’ll freak out. Just tell him I’m fine if he asks, I’m sure Intel will be all over this. I’ll message him tomorrow.”
Nika swallowed, the words stuck in his throat, and nodded. “Okay. Get some rest, and we’ll see you in the morning.” He leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to her head, turning away before she could see the tears.
Tivo and the doctor followed him out into the hallway as Max said her goodbyes to Jenks in private.
“What is going on?” Tivo demanded.
“There was a bomb—”
“No. There’s something else. Something you didn’t want Jenks to know.”
Nika stared up at the big man with the awful realization that the news was going to hit him just as hard as it would hit Jenks. There was no easy way to do this.
“We talked to Earth before we came here,” he replied, keeping his voice low and his words formal. “They hit the Intel building where Commander Yevchenko and Senior Chief Armstrong were working. Captain Kilini confirmed their deaths. They’re gone.” He grabbed for the lieutenant’s arm as Tivo rocked backward, shock on his face. “I’m so sorry.”
“What the—no, that’s not—he can’t—fuck.” There was sadness and anger in the man’s blue-gray eyes as he repeated the curse like a prayer and then his knees gave out.
Nika caught him around the waist, holding Tivo up with no small amount of effort.
“Chair. There’s a chair over here.” Dr. Shaylan took Tivo’s other arm and ushered him into the seat, putting a hand on the back of his neck and pushing his head between his knees.
“Breathe, Tivo.” Nika crouched next to him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He looked up and caught Max’s eye as she came out of the room. “I’d stay, but I need to go find D’Arcy and tell him he’s in command of the NeoG on the station for the moment . . . ,” he said. But he couldn’t make himself stand up. Knowing what to do wasn’t the same as wanting to do it.
Max nodded. “I’ll stay here. You go.”
Nika got to his feet, the sound of Max trying to help Tivo with his grief following him down the hallway.
Chae was filthy, exhausted, and tired of finding the broken bodies of friends. Even as they despaired, crawling under a pile of rubble close to the emergency field, they knew it could have been so much worse.
The explosion had happened in the early afternoon, when most of the Interceptor crews were still in meetings or back in their quarters. A handful of ships were out on patrol and wouldn’t be back for at least eighteen hours.
If the explosion had happened now, several hours later, the bay would have been packed with people. Two whole crews would have been in the Boarding Action freighter. The pieces of it that were left were currently being hauled away from the space outside the station by a pair of Navy ships. It had been blown out into the black when Flight Control went up in flames.
Chae dragged in a breath and held it, listening, praying they’d hear signs of life. Nothing but silence echoed back. They rolled onto their back with a sigh and started to scoot toward the opening at their feet.
Something protruded from the burned and twisted wreckage above them and Chae reached a tentative hand up to the mass of wires. They tilted their head, suddenly realizing that this was the edge of what was once Flight Control’s massive window looking out over the bay.
And you are touching an explosive charge.
Chae yanked their hand back and then rolled their eyes. “It’s so obviously been detonated.” They fumbled in their cargo pocket for the pliers that had found their way into it during the chaos and reached up, prying off the evidence as carefully as possible.
They started to compose a message on the team chat that Sapphi had gotten up and working, but stopped just as abruptly. They had no way of knowing what was being monitored. Stuffing the evidence into their right cargo pocket, they slid free of the wreckage and scrambled to their feet.
“Whatcha looking for, Chae?”
Julia’s voice raked over their spine and Chae tightened their grip on the pliers as they turned.
“Survivors.”
She smiled. “Find anyone? Such a tragedy.”
“How can you smile?” Realization dawned on them. “You did this.”
Julia clucked her tongue at them. “We warned you, didn’t we? Higher-ups decided that there was entirely too much sniffing around and it was time to put a stop to it.”
“You were trying to kill us?” Chae tensed.
“Such a high opinion of yourself.” Julia snorted a delicate laugh. “No, Chae. We hit the people we meant to hit.” She gestured around the bay. “This was mostly to set the stage correctly for what’s to come.”
“And the problems with the coms
? It’s not only because you dropped a bomb in there, is it?”
Her smile spread. “You’re so smart. That was just a little added test. A new EMP designed for coms only. Seems to be working quite well, doesn’t it? A nice layer of chaos on the whole thing.”
Chae’s horror grew and Julia’s smirk only served to destroy their tenuous hold on their temper.
“Fuck you!” They put all their fury and grief behind the punch and it snapped Julia’s head back. She staggered away, holding her face, but Chae followed, hitting her again just like Jenks had taught them.
And this time they used the pliers.
Be relentless. Always press forward. When you’re as short as we are you can’t afford to let up on your opponent.
“Whoa! Whoa!” Hard arms locked around Chae and dragged them back. They struggled, but whoever it was didn’t let go. “Chae, it’s D’Arcy. Stand the fuck down, Neo.”
“They’ve lost it!” Julia exclaimed, and Chae spit at her.
“She’s responsible for this.” They felt D’Arcy’s grip loosen as the commander tried to process their words, and managed to slip free. Chae launched themself at Julia, hitting her around the middle and taking her to the deck.
“God damn it, Chae!”
“It’s Julia!” they shouted, trying to get a grip on her as she screamed and thrashed underneath them. They heard the pounding of footsteps as their fight drew attention across the bay.
Someone grabbed Chae and pulled them up, but before they could protest again D’Arcy moved forward and put a boot in the middle of Julia’s stomach. “You stay down,” he ordered, the violence in his voice putting a jagged edge on each word.
“Chae, are you hurt?”
They blinked at Nika. He was dressed in an unfamiliar space suit—it was white, not covered in smoke or blood except for the smudges on his arms where he’d grabbed them. That threw Chae for a moment until they remembered Nika and Max had been outside testing helmets.
“Sir, it’s Julia. I couldn’t—she did this.”
Nika’s blue eyes went hard as he looked past Chae at the woman on the floor. He reached down, and Chae heard D’Arcy’s indrawn breath and then the muffled clang as Julia stabbed at him and he blocked the knife with his right hand.
