A Pale Light In The Black (by KB Wagers) Reread - Chapters 50-51 (Really Chapters 42-43)

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.

We've finally come to the end of the story - or at least of this novel.  Max is in danger and our antagonist's plans are revealed!  Will the crew find her in time to save the day?  Well, not to spoil anything, but I've been calling this an optimistic novel for a reason.....




Chapter 50 (42):

Quick Summary:  Zuma's Ghost infiltrates the lab via an airlock, with Sapphi hacking the cameras to maintain stealth....to the surprise of a hungry scientist.  Meanwhile, Sammi reveals that she wants Max to help her contaminate the family's private stores of LifeEx - and not with the dupe but with a special version designed to purposely trigger an exaggerated version of the aging side effect, as she did with the two men found in the river - who had gotten cold feet at the plan.  Sammi reveals that her latest serum supposedly makes her immune to the syringe of side effect she's holding, which is contagious.

But before more can happen, a guard interrupts Rosa and Jenks interrogating the scientist, triggering an alarm.  They ask the reinforcements to come in and move in to the facility towards Max, who is no longer tied down......because Max has responded to the confusion with by untieing herself with a hidden razor and running...only to be confronted by a guard with an illegal pulse rifle, but not before she spies Jenks around the corner.  Sapphi shuts down the lights, and in the confusion, Jenks attacks the guard and Sammi, and in the confusion Sammi is stabbed by the Syringe....and begins to melt from rapid aging.

Max and Jenks run, with them calling Sapphi to have her shut own the ventilation and put the facility on lockdown, with the two sliding perfectly under a bulkhead before it closed....

Chapter 51 (43):

Quick Summary:  In the debrief, Max explains what happened, and she and Jenks tag team Nika into getting back to his rehab - prompting Rosa and Ma to laugh about how close the pair are now.  As the team gets back to business, Ria gives Max a call to wrap things up, and Max yells at her for refusing to help the investigation and costing lives...and threatens to arrest her if she tries it again.

In a nice bookend from the novel's beginning, Max reveals to Ria that she guessed Ria's hand in getting her assigned to Zuma, but Max tells Ria to never interfere like that again - the NeoG is her family now.

Thoughts:  And we're done!  Like I hinted above, it's a happy optimistic ending, although obviously things aren't completely done - after all, Sammi's organization was powerful enough to infiltrate Navy and NeoG ships, I find it hard to believe that NeoG has really shut them all down completely.  But the crew has come together as a new family, they've won the Boarding Games, and are new a finely meshed unit.  There's really little to say about these two chapters - although Sammi's death is incredibly creepy and uh ew - so I think i'll use this post just to wrap up in general.

One of the reasons I loved A Pale Light in the Black so much is how optimistic it is about a future for our own world that isn't THAT far out (400 or so years), even if the book posits that it took a societal collapse to get there.  It's not a perfect future - there's still poverty on the streets in places, the most important drug in society is unavailable to those who either aren't rich or aren't able to work for certain government or corporate employers (oh hi Health Insurance!) and life off planet may not quite be so easy either (Trappist not being self sufficient is a good indication of that).

But it's a future where race, gender, and sexuality questions are basically non-issues, with people of mixed races, genders, sexualities coming together no matter what their cultural background or language.  There are still assholes - there will ALWAYS still be assholes - and monsters who need to be stopped, but it's a world in which progress HAS been made after all the trouble, and it's thus one that I'd really love to live in.  And we see that with the crew of Zuma's Ghost, a family of people from completely different backgrounds, who come together to trust and love each other through it all.  And honestly, I love reading that, it just makes me so happy.

And so i can't wait to read more of it - even if that "it" takes our focus to new places - whether that be off planet, or on other characters (Sapphi and Tamago are more ciphers than anything even after this book, and I'd love to know a lot more about them).  I hope anyone who's been following this reread agrees with me.