A Pale Light In The Black (by KB Wagers) Reread - Chapters 29-31 (Really Chapters 24 & 25)

Welcome back to my reread of K.B. Wagers' "A Pale Light in the Black!"  You can find the other posts in this reread here.  For those somehow seeing this post first instead of the others, A Pale Light in the Black is a space opera featuring a SF space version of the Coast Guard in an optimistic future universe.

Yeah, I didn't think the world could get more depressing when I started this reread, or that we would have such a clear inkling of problems with the modern military and to see it deployed on our own American soil - with the actual Coast Guard being surprisingly among the military deployed by Donald Trump to Washington D.C. according to some reports (it's kind of unclear).  I don't mean to bring these real world issues into these posts - this reread was started for me to read a very positive book in a future I could wish for, and to get any other readers into such a similar book, because god I could use that around now.  But kind of hard to ignore it entirely given the above, sooooo yeah, that's a thing that has to be mentioned.

This Reread Part will cover the next Letters segment, and the next two chapters, which the book labels as Chapters 29-31, but more accurately by my count is Letters 24-25.  Here we have some serious action:  Two NeoG cruisers conduct an actual Boarding Mission and one of our heroes is seriously injured!

So here we go:

Letters (Chapter 29): Luis to Jenks; Jenks to Max; Nika to Max:  Luis finds footage showing a System Jumper smuggler, the mysterious dead Popsicle, and Max's stalker from the Prelims all together.  Meanwhile, Nika informs Max that a smuggling ring's warehouse that might be connected to it all just had a freighter leave it and provides the necessary authorization for Zuma's Ghost to intercept them......

Chapter 30 (24): T-Minus Seventeen Weeks Until the Boarding Games:

Quick Summary:  Max brings Jenks' and Nika's info to Rosa and reveals that she may have abused her Carmichael info network to find out that D'Arcy used to be a terrorist and had asked his expertise on the sabotage of Jenks' Jetpack and the System Jumper crew, to Rosa's amusement.  She then reveals about the freighter and Rosa and the team prepare, along with Dread Treasure to board and seize the freighter.  Inside the Freighter they find a group of scared children, a Captain bent on resistance to the point of basically committing suicide by NeoG, and Jenks fighting a crewman who is armed with a crowbar - Max ends the fight by explaining to the crewman what Jenks will do to him in vivid detail - aka "Wesley"ing him as Jenks puts it and then they discover what the Freighter is smuggling:  liquid with the LifeEx logo.

But as Max returns triumphant to the other officers, she learns that not everything is good:  In an attempt to enter the smugglers' warehouse on Trappist-1, an explosion left Nika seriously injured....to the point where he is being shipped home to emergency medical care by a Navy ship.  In a grim mood, Max manages to keep Jenks in line by asserting command authority, so that she will join Max and Ma in boarding the Navy ship to check on Nika.....

Thoughts:  Again action sequences are far more interesting and fun to read in their full content than to sum up, so this is a chapter that doesn't lend itself well to summary.  But we do get some strong info this chapter: D'Arcy was a Mars Separatist (which isn't further explained beyond those two words, but seems pretty self-explanatory in the context) and Max is kind of an asshole for taking advantage of that.  Freighter pilots in this world often take families along to convince crew to go along on the long journeys....but school on Earth seems to be idealized at least for the co-captain of the Freighter.  And 400 years from now in the future, some passionate lovers of 20th/21st century culture will still remember The Princess Bride Apparently.

And then there's this chapter's distressing cliffhanger: Nika's in serious danger and the crew is in serious danger of falling apart emotionally as a result.  Max, master at reading people, is able to read Jenks enough to know the only chance of keeping her in line - and not having her lash out at others - is to pull rank, but man is that depressing to read, given how Jenks deserves comfort instead....


Chapter 31 (25):

Quick Summary:  Onboard the Navy cruiser, the team discovers that Nika's attending physician is Max's father, Rear Admiral Josiah Carmichael, who greets them with a cold reception.  That said, Nika is receiving the best possible care and will survive....but will almost certainly have to lose his arm.  Jenks naturally breaks down and the team decides to wait for Nika to wake up instead of making the decision to amputate without him.  Getting on the com with Rosa, Max and her commander have a not so subtly covert conversation implying NeoG ought to hold on to the "LifeEx" from the freighter for testing without alerting the company, since doing so might result in Ria seizing the evidence again....

Thoughts:  A much shorter chapter than the last one, but one with an emotional punch.  For everyone involved.  For Jenks, who has to deal with the injury to her brother, the person who basically is her adopted parent, and whom she trusts the most, which will even if Nika survives completely change Nika's life.  For Max, she has to deal with seeing Nika, a man she's grown to care about through long distance communication, injured AND at the same time deal with her cold passive aggressive father.  And even poor Ma, who insists he's fine by it, is given the cold shoulder by Max's dad, who is supposed to be a longtime friend.  Just a brutal way to have to cope with tragedy.

But the team will move forward, as seen by their stealthily talking about how they can keep the case and the facts to NeoG going forward: the case was stolen from them once, it won't be again.  And with Nika's injury, now it's personal.....

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Next time around, I think we'll do a 3 chapter recap since the 2nd chapter from this one is sort of a cliffhangery one that's incomplete on its own, but that'll be in two weeks so I can continue writing my Hugo recaps.