A Pale Light In The Black (by KB Wagers) Reread - Chapters 32-34 (Really Chapters 26-28)

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.

When we left off, we were in the middle of this book's second act - the team has gotten together in tight, won the Boarding Game prelims, and is now investigating just what exactly the System Jumper smuggling was about and how it connects to LifeEx.  Unfortunately, while the NeoG's boarding operation of a new smuggling freighter went off more or less without a hitch, a parallel NeoG operation on Trappist-1 to hit the smuggling facility the freighter came from resulted in an explosion that gravely injured Nika.

Now, Jenks, Ma, and Max are onboard a Navy ship carrying Nika - who's being tended to by Max's asshole father - as they attempt to figure out what to do next......


Chapter 32 (26):

Quick Summary:  Rosa second guesses her decisions not to allow Max/Jenks to investigate the System Jumpers earlier, blaming herself for Nika's injuries, before Sapphi shuts her down.  They quickly resolve to go over the evidence from their boarding with a fine tooth covert comb, and Stephen assures them he'll do the same, even providing special encryption.

Onboard the Navy ship, Nika wakes up as Max is visiting and reading poetry to him, as if in one of his dreams.  Nika insists that they wait no longer - his arm is going to come off at some point, it might as well come off now.  After the decision is made, Jenks angrily declares that she will find whoever is responsible and hurt them no matter what anyone else tells her....and is surprised when Max tells her to calm down just so they can hunt down the culprit TOGETHER instead of on her own.

Thoughts:  A quick turnaround chapter here, as the crew gets its new mission for itself clear:  Find the culprits no matter what, and make them pay.  Max and Nika's relationship becomes more clear - Nika was dreaming of Max, huh - and its notable how willing Stephen is to let Rosa hide secrets from him....despite being the head of intel, he trusts absolutely that Rosa has good reason for not making public the results from the freighter boarding, and is willing to give her rope to investigate on her own.

On the other hand, this suggests we're probably not going to see much if any regular NeoG Coast-Guard-esque work for the rest of this book, so if you enjoyed that space rescue, well, hope for something similar in the next book, not this one, because we're probably pivoting away from that.....

Chapter 33 (27): T-Minus Sixteen Weeks until the Boarding Games

Quick Summary:  Luis and Max talk about Jenks for a bit before returning to trying to figure out what the System Jumping scheme was really about....when Max remember's her sister's comments about a "Dupe" weeks ago - meaning Ria knew all along.  Luis helps Max commandeer a NeoG ship and they gather the rest of the team for a trip to LifeEx headquarters to confront Ria in person, hoping to throw her off balance and get some answers.....

Chapter 34 (28):

Quick Summary:  Max introduces the team to Ria, and Ria initially denies knowing anything about a Dupe, until Max and Jenks confront Ria with Nika's injury and the discovered fake LifeEx.  Knowing the jig is up, Ria tells the truth: for the past year, someone has been trying to slip the fake LifeEx into the real distribution channels....and the fake LifeEx has a 1 in 20 chance of causing rapid aging and immediate death - and the defect appears to be intentional.  The System Jumpers were indeed carrying this fake LifeEx, and Luis theorizes this is a plot to take down LifeEx by destroying consumer confidence in it.

Ria agrees to Max's demand to cooperate with the investigation and puts Max in contact with Ria's head of security, a woman named Bosco who Max has had bad history with.  Max's gut further tells her that their family history is part of the cause here and asks Ria for a copy of their grandfather's journal to look over.....

Thoughts:  And now we get into the meat of things as to what's going on and as we expected it has direct ties to Max's beloved/hated family business: LifeEx.  The most valuable drug in the world, and someone is trying to get people killed with a counterfeit version in order to destroy its reputation....a ghastly plot, even if the death wasn't by rapid aging.  Given LifeEx's prominence and importance to governmental operations - to say nothing of all of humanity - it's kind of infuriating even to a reader to know that Ria was covering this up: if in our world the MMR vaccine had been tampered with to cause significant numbers of people to die in order to gin up anti-vaccine sentiment, of course governments around the world would be treating it as a massive priority (or well, I'd hope so, who knows with the current administration).  Private companies cannot be trusted to police such things themselves, which is what Ria was trying - and honestly, this is kind of too big a thing for NeoG and really should have more governmental agencies involved.  But, I guess this is a book about the NeoG, so well, it's gotta stay with them lol.

It should be noted that even throughout this plot heavy section, Wagers does a great job showing us the team gelling as a family, even including Luis (the most patient love interest ever) in that: the team banding together around Max as her new family in place of the old one Ria represents, to stand up for the person Max is instead of the one Max's parents would wish her to be - even if Ria is one of the better ones of Max's siblings (not saying much there).

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Next time: Max digs into her grandfather's diary, and Max and Jenks get into another bar fight!  With  actual bad guys this time, I swear!