A Pale Light In The Black (by KB Wagers) Reread - Chapters 27 and 28 (Really Chapters 22 & 23)

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're finished the first half of this book and now it's time for a break in the fun (well kind of) for some long term plot ramifications!  So I guess its too late for me to say you can easily catch up, but well, if you want to try it's well worth your time - and these posts aren't exactly going anywhere mind you.

You may note the jump in chapter numbers in the title of this post.  As I mentioned a few posts ago, the book doesn't include the Chapter number at the top of every chapter, titling many chapters with just the timestamp or "Letters."  Given the shortness of the Letters (1-2 pages), I'd have assumed those wouldn't be counted as chapters, but here we are, and our first Chapter # in a while seems to have counted them, jumping us from what I assumed was Chapter 21 to Chapter "27".  For continuity sake I'll be using both chapter numberings from here on out.

Anyhow, last time out, a heroic space rescue nearly went horribly wrong, as Jenks' pack malfunctioned, sending her and an 11 year old girl spiraling out of control in space right in the trajectory of deadly solar radiation....until Max disobeyed orders to save them.  Truly awesome stuff, and someone should make a TV show just of such rescues seriously.

This time around, we get the aftermath, as the crew discovers the malfunction wasn't as innocuous as it seemed......



Chapter 27:

Quick Summary:  Max examines Jenks' EMU along with Sapphi and Jenks, and quickly realizes that it was sabotaged so that it would fail the moment Jenks began to rely upon it.  Knowing it had to have been sabotaged by someone who gained access to the ship during the Prelims, Zuma's Ghost is forced to stop the engines and call for help, for fear of further sabotage.  Thankfully they're picked up by a Navy ship in the area (named Fury Road, ha!).  A call from Stephen at NeoG Intel reveals that the culprit managed to evade the cameras, showing this was a professional job, and the crew starts brainstorming what the motive could be behind it before Jenks remembers the scared threats of the crew of the System Jumper.....

Thoughts:  Okay first of all, Fury Road is a much better name for a cruiser than any of the NeoG ones (sorry Flux Capacitor).  No but seriously, here we start getting into the main plot - that nearly disastrous fun mission was nearly disastrous because of bad guys - and it certainly seems likely, as Jenks suggests, they were connected to the mysterious System Jumpers.  Meanwhile, those bad guys were able, not just to kill prisoners on board a navy ship (the 5 Jumper crewman as discussed in a prior chapter) but to board Zuma's Ghost, sabotage the EMU, and get out without being seen.  That's serious skills, and requires also some serious access.....

Chapter 28: T-Minus Nineteen Weeks until the Boarding Games

Quick Summary:  After the ship is found clean and Max and Rosa theorize as to what the System Jumper could have been smuggling, Max attempts to go to sleep.  Restless, Max goes to the gym with Jenks and Doge....and while multitasking, discovers Maishkin, the secret LifeEx compound was found on one of the smugglers' clothes.  Oh and Max then nearly fries her brain by calling her sister Ria with her DD directly to ask about it.  And of course Ria responds by forcing her way into the Navy and NeoG records and removing them from their custody.....causing the Admiral to get right pissed at Max.

Thankfully, Max has her own copy of the files, which she gives to Sapphi and together with Jenks, they call Nika for some theorizing.  Nika, like everyone else, yells at Max for abusing her brain and says he'll check around on Trappist.  When Max leaves, Jenks and Nika have a heart to heart about Nika's interest in Max.  Finally, Max calls Ria to yell at her, to which Ria justifies herself by mentioning the fear of LifeEx knockoffs.....

Thoughts:  This is a long chapter, even if it's all about figuring out what's going on.  We finally have an answer as to what exactly the System Jumper may have been trying to do, and it involved LifeEx - the life extending/protecting compound that is the basis for Max's family fortune - to Max's great dismay.  Of course, Max's impulsive nature almost kills her brain, almost results in them losing access to the files needed to investigate, and gets her yelled at so....she has more of a headache here - although Jenks calling up Nika to talk is a nice treat for Max to compensate (not that Jenks agrees with that).

I mentioned earlier in this blog that Max is nowhere near as stick in the mud about rules and such as Nika once feared, and Wagers contended on twitter that Jenks was responsible for that shift.  But things like this, her earlier actions, her rescue in space, etc., showcase Max has always been a bit more of a loose cannon than she seems: and has an impulsive streak that can get her into some serious trouble.  Which well, with the rest of the crew makes them all a pretty impulsive bunch, except for maybe Rosa and Ma, and only Rosa has command authority over Max.

Will that impulsiveness ever result in greater problems?  Well I wonder.......(Spoiler: Yep.  Yep it will).

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Next Time:  Nika's Investigation leads to a full scale multi NeoG unit boarding mission of more smugglers, and disaster strikes one of the team!