The Cold Between (31 page)

G
reg had to convince Elena that cannibalizing
Lusitania
was the right thing to do.

“She's bad off,” he told her bluntly. “The hull repair will hold here, but on a trip back through that wormhole? I don't want to bet anybody's life on it. Your ship is in much better structural shape.”

She had conceded his point, but he could see as they rummaged through
Lusi
's carcass how unhappy she was. For a woman who made a point of having very few personal possessions, she had a hard time letting go of inanimate objects.
Lusi
was only two years old. He supposed she would have memories of Jake associated with it.

He wondered, not for the first time, how different their lives would be if they had not lost the old man. Elena would not have that constant air of sadness about her, of irreplaceable loss. And Jake would not have tolerated their fighting; he would have locked them in a room together until they shouted through it, and Greg would not be standing in the middle of nowhere trying to think of something to say to a woman he had known for seven years.

It's not memories of Jake,
he realized abruptly. Standing in the middle of nowhere, Elena was hanging on to the only thing she knew she could still count on: her machines. She had done the same thing after Jake's accident, methodically repairing the engine damage, hiding from everyone she knew until she had figured out how to cope. He could not believe he had not put it together before.

After all these years, I am still learning who she is.

Lusi
's resources notwithstanding, they were going to need another power source. Despite current wormhole theory, which held that they should have been trapped inside the thing, bouncing from end to end, this particular wormhole had a functional exit. Zajec's readings had shown an asymmetrical gravity pattern, which meant they would need some significant engine power to propel themselves back the other way. Even that was only a theory. Despite the fact that both their ships and the gray bird had come through without incident, he had no confidence that the reverse trip would be as uneventful. On top of that, Elena had reported seeing other exits as they came through. Even if they survived, there was no guarantee they would make it home, much less be anywhere near any kind of energy source.

Halfway through transferring
Lusi
's utilitarian food supplies into the other ship, he noticed Elena was carefully dismantling what was left of the stellar collector. He stopped and watched her set aside half-melted slivers of circuitry and fused carbide sheets. “You can't take all of it,” he told her.

She kept her eyes on her task. “If we have to, we can break the photocells down and grow new ones.”

“That's a two-week task.” She said nothing, and he crouched
down beside her. “Elena, we don't have two weeks of supplies. You're wasting time.”

“I'm thinking of contingencies. That's my job.”

She still would not look at him, and he fought off annoyance. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you took off.”

That earned him a glare. “Maybe
you
should have thought about that before you followed me.”

She looked tired. Her lips were bloodless, and the skin under her eyes was puffy, but there was energy in that glare. Anger always gave her fuel, no matter how spent she was, and she always knew where her opponent was vulnerable.

And he never could just let it go.

“What were you planning to do?” he retorted. “Defect to PSI?”

“They're not the enemy, Greg. We needed the help of someone we could trust.”

We.
He would not have thought allegiance was so fluid for her. “So you shoot halfway across the sector instead of coming home?”

She opened her mouth to say something, then closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was looking at her hands. “Why doesn't matter,” she said flatly. “What matters is getting out of here.”

“Yeah, which is why you don't need all that crap.”

“Fine.
Fine.
” She threw the spanner down and got to her feet, stalking to the other side of the cabin. “So what's
your
brilliant idea?”

He stood. “Same plan we started with. Pull what you can use right now in the other ship, and leave the rest.”

“And if we don't find a power source?”

“We can't plan for everything, Chief. Let it go, and let's—”

“Don't you
dare
start pulling rank on me. There are three of us here, Greg, and you don't get to make unilateral decisions this time.”

“Of
course.
” Irritability was getting the better of him. “Your pirate. The guy you've known for a day, that you ditch your career over.”

“Do you know why I trust him, Greg?” Her glare never wavered. “Because he is honest with me.”

“And you know this how? Some secret psychic ability you discovered by sleeping with the guy?”

That pushed her over. “Right, of course.” She threw up her hands. “It always comes down to a personal attack with you. Well I'm tired of it, Greg. Here in the land of nowhere, with no contingency plans, I am officially
sick
of you attacking me!”

“Well then maybe you could try sticking to the subject for once in your life!”

“Fuck you, Greg, I've had it. Either you tell me what your problem is, or you leave me the hell alone.”

“You are my problem!”
It burst out of him, hot and angry and futile. “You've been my problem since the day I met you!”

She stared at him, silent, and he swore, looking away.

“I didn't mean that,” he said.

“Then what did you mean?”

Her voice was calm and quiet, and all of the anger drained out of him. Suddenly he wanted more than anything to lay it all at her feet.

“Last time we were on Earth,” he told her, “I found another man in the house with my wife. She said she thought it was
understood, with me being away so much. I told her I'd never cheated on her, and she said, ‘How is that my problem?'”

He heard a noise, but when he looked up her expression had not changed. “So that's your excuse?” she asked him stiffly. “Your marriage falls apart, and you decide to be an asshole?”

“It didn't fall apart,” he told her. “She doesn't want a divorce. She wants me to try it her way, and because I'm a fucking idiot I said I'd do it.”

She crossed her arms again. “Still not seeing the connection.”

He should be used to feeling foolish in front of her. “When I got back to
Galileo,
and all of my old routines kicked in . . . everything looked different. Suddenly half my crew wasn't just half my crew. They were—potentially, anyway—
options.
I settled on Caro when I was twenty-four years old. That's a lot of years since other women were options.”

“So is that what this is all about?” Her voice was tight. “That after seven years, it finally crossed your mind that I was a woman?”

“No.”
It was all coming out in the wrong order. “All of the others—that was new. You, I never forgot. Never. Not from the first time we met.”

He watched her absorb that, uncertainty crossing her face, a blush creeping over her skin. “So how does this explain your systemic nastiness?”

“I needed you to stay away from me, Elena.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn't want them!”
There was no getting around it anymore. “One hundred and seventeen women on my ship, Elena, some of them so beautiful they make you look like a
genetic mistake.
” She flinched at that, but he could not stop
now. “And I didn't want any of them. I only wanted you, and there you were curled up with that mental defective boyfriend of yours, the latest in a long line of mental defectives, and yes, goddammit, the only way I could cope with that and fucking
function
was to get you to back the hell off!”

She had frozen at his words, her hands back to gripping her elbows. That uncertainty was still there, and he wondered what he had said that was unclear.

“You couldn't just tell me this?”

He rubbed his eyes, tired of trying to figure her out. “I believe I just did.”

She gave a gasp that was almost laughter. “So the meanness, the exclusion, the public animosity, the insults—all of that was down to
lust
?”

That was not the word he would have chosen. “Elena—”

“No, I want to make sure I have this right.” She let go of her elbows and took a step toward him. “After seven years of working together, of evacs and supply drops and bullshit politics and friendship, for God's sake—all of a sudden, I become this
thing
you can't have.”

Good God, she hadn't listened at all. “No. What I feel—”

“Don't tell me what you
feel.
” Her voice had turned to ice, and she wasn't looking uncertain anymore. “Don't try to tell me that you care, because that's so much worse. You
abandoned
me, Greg. This is what it means to you, to care for someone? God, you're making me have sympathy for your wife.”

He closed his eyes. This was the crux of it, and he had to figure out how to undo it. He could no longer remember what Jessica had told him to say, although he was certain it had been good advice. “Elena, I'm—”

“Don't you dare tell me you're sorry! Everything I ever said to you, everything I thought you were to me, it's all been a lie. Do you think you're the only person who's had a bad time of it, who's felt betrayed and alone? Like there's nothing—” She broke off, turning to the wall, and he realized she was swallowing a sob.

He knew what to say this time. “I was drunk that night, Lanie. I didn't mean any of it.”

“That's always such a good excuse for you, isn't it?” she spat, furious. “Too drunk to know any better. Too fucking drunk to
mean it.
To mean that you'd only been friends with me because I was
pathetic
and nobody else liked me. That I'd done nothing but nag you for seven years, that if you had to have a
surrogate wife
I'd be the last woman you'd choose. That I only got this job because you had to do a favor for your dead friend!”

Jessica had left out that last one. “I didn't mean any of it, Elena.” He stood his ground, refusing to flinch from her anger. “And whether or not you can hear it right now, I am sorry for saying it.”

“I'm sorry, too.” The tears had stopped, but her breathing was still shallow. “I'm sorry I trusted you. I'm sorry I presumed we were ever friends. I'm sorry I never saw you for what you really are.”

A throat cleared, and Greg turned to see Zajec looking in from the other ship's cabin. He had painted his face with polite disinterest, although Greg had no doubt he had heard every word. Unlike Elena, though, Zajec would not have found Greg's confession a surprise. Greg thought he had known all along.

“I apologize for interrupting,” Zajec said, “but I have found something I believe is of interest.”

Elena was looking at him, brusquely brushing the tears from her cheeks. “What is it?”

His face changed, just a little, and it took Greg a moment to recognize sympathy. “
Lusitania
was recording as she fell through the wormhole,” he told them. “Along with the telemetry data—she has acquired the contents of the
Phoenix
's flight recorder.”

Galileo

J
essica found Bob Hastings sitting at his lab table, the ceiling lights dim, staring out into the infirmary at nothing. He was almost certainly stinking drunk, but he wore it well. He wore everything well. If Jessica considered older men, he would have been first on her list. Not that he didn't look his age, with his white hair and the wrinkles furrowing his dark skin; but he had good-humored blue eyes and some damn fine cheekbones. He was in good shape, too; he ran with the captain sometimes, and although he usually quit before he hit ten kilometers, the distance never wiped him out.

He had known Greg Foster for all of the captain's thirty-seven years, and Jessica was unsure how much he was able to deal with just yet. She wondered if she might be better off encouraging him out of the room so she could talk to Ted alone.

“Hey, Doc,” she said kindly, “how are you holding up?”

He shot her an acid look. “How the hell do you think?” He spoke clearly enough, but his eyes were not quite focused as he looked her over. “Why aren't you drunk?”

“I've had no time.” She waved her palm at the wall, and the ceiling glowed a little brighter.

He lifted a glass off the table. “I thought you were confined to quarters.”

She walked over and sat next to him. “What else did Commander Valentis tell you?”

He snorted. “You know I did that, too? Called him ‘Commander' instead of ‘Captain.' He fakes compassion pretty well in front of the crew, but one-on-one, he's kind of an asshole.” When she did not respond to that, he took another drink. “He told me you were confined until you decided to tell him what you and Greg had been up to.”

“‘Up to'?”

“He has been suggesting that the two of you were . . . involved.”

Involved.
Trust Doc Hastings to use the euphemism even when he was soused. “He sure did jump to that conclusion fast,” Jessica grumbled.

“You consider the possibility he's spreading rumors to discredit you?”

She stared at him for a moment. “The fact that you even ask that,” she said, “raises a number of disturbing possibilities. You don't like Commander Valentis, do you?”

“I don't know him very well, which I find more disturbing, given how long I've worked with him. That he'd try to spread a rumor that you and the captain were lovers seems ham-fisted, even for him. But Valentis does, from time to time, screw things up rather spectacularly.” He drank again. “Nobody believes it, of course.”

“Yeah, because Foster doesn't do that,” she said, remembering what Ted had said.

He gave her a curious look. “Actually, I was thinking because
you
don't,” he told her. “Don't discount your own reputation here,
Jessica. Valentis can say what he wants, but people know you. They're not going to believe it, no matter how often he says it.”

And damned if that didn't make her feel better. “Those
Demeter
assholes will believe it,” she said.

“Funny thing about them,” he said. He drained the glass and put it down. “All that gossip they were spreading before, about the chief and the captain, and her being responsible for Danny's death? They're not saying it anymore. All of that got switched off, like someone cut the power.”

The infirmary door opened, and Ted strode over to the lab table and stood with his hands on his hips. “I've got five minutes.” He glanced over at Bob. “Hey, Doc. How are you doing?”

“Everybody asks that,” Bob said with some asperity, “like it's some huge damn mystery. Always nice to see you, Lieutenant Shimada. Care for a drink?” He reached behind his back and produced an unlabeled flask, tipping clear liquid into his glass. Jessica caught a brief, sharp whiff of raw alcohol.

Ted shook his head. “I can't. I have to be sober when we attack some people. Speaking of which . . .” He frowned at Bob's glass, and Jessica remembered what a puritan he could be when he was on duty. “Shouldn't you be, too?”

Bob stared at him calmly. “Unless
Penumbra
has acquired a few missiles in the last month,” he said, lifting his glass, “this is going to be a really short battle.” He downed the contents of the glass.

Jessica gave Ted a look, and he relented. “Can we talk here?” he asked her.

Hastings raised his eyebrows. “Is this where I should be leaving?”

“Maybe,” Jessica told him.

He took a deep draft of the unidentified liquor. “Doctor-patient privilege,” he stated. “If anyone asks, I'll tell them you two were in here for fertility advice.”

Jessica grinned; Ted looked horrified. “Will they believe that?” he stammered.

“We would have beautiful babies,” she declared. “Spill it, Shimada.”

He cleared his throat. “So along with Limonov, Valentis has put five of the
Demeter
people in the machine room with me, and they're feeling pretty gregarious, here on the eve of nuking the PSI ship that dinged their windshield. I steered them toward Danny, and right away they start taking shots at Limonov. With the guy right there.”

Limonov, it seemed, was beginning to earn Ted's sympathy. “Did you find out what he said to Danny?”

“That's what they were giving him crap about. He gave Danny the same weird line he gave you,” Ted said, “about the wormhole singing. Only Danny doesn't ask him about the wormhole. Danny asks him about Volhynia, and how long the observatory has been there, and what happens to it during the EMP when they shut down the power grid. And Limonov starts feeding him all of his scary stories about what really happened to the
Phoenix.
”

“Anything plausible?” Jessica asked.

Ted shook his head. “He's got some interesting ideas about aliens,” he admitted, “which would be cool if there was any evidence to back them up. But here's the thing: When the
Phoenix
blew, where do you think the first readings came in from?”

It was Bob Hastings who answered. “Novanadyr Observatory,” he said.

Jessica blinked. “So the first news of the
Phoenix
came off of Volhynia?” She felt a tingle up her spine again.

Bob raised his eyebrows at her. “They're the closest manned access point,” he told her. “Central's got some relays now—around the hot zone—but at the time there wasn't much interest about the wormhole. They'd shot some probes into it and found nothing, so it pretty quickly became this boring, immutable object. Novanadyr wasn't studying it in particular; they just took the data when the blast happened.”

“That pub that Danny went to,” Jessica said. “Didn't Elena say it was a big scientific hangout?”

Ted looked chagrined. “I figured he was just telling her that to try to lure her to join him.”

“So Danny was trying to corroborate Limonov's stories,” she concluded. “But—why would he care, Ted? Limonov is a nice cluster of crazy, but nothing he's got is unusual or new.”

“Except,” Ted pointed out, “six months ago, Volhynia's happy little pulsar has a spike, and suddenly Central gets cagey about PSI ships hanging out around the wormhole.”

She shook her head. “Draw me a line.”

“EMPs, Jess,” he told her, and she thought he was pleased with himself. “If the right sort of EMP catches the right sort of radiation field, it can neutralize it.”

“You think Danny found out the radiation field is gone?” She frowned. “
Galileo,
what's the radiation reading around B1829?”

“Current radiation levels at 345.89.225 are ambient 13, critical 22.2.”

“That's not a live reading,” Bob said into his glass.

“Can you put that down for one damn second, Bob?” she snapped. When he looked at her, she tried again. “
Galileo,
what is Novanadyr Observatory reading from the wormhole?”

There was a pause. “Insufficient information.”

“What the fuck does
that
mean?”

“It means,” Ted told her, “that she has asked, and nobody will tell her.”

She had a thought. “
Galileo,
has anyone else asked you for direct data from Novanadyr?”

“Yes. Lieutenant Commander Daniel Lancaster asked for that data sixteen days ago.”

“Did you have data then?”

“No.”

She frowned. “This doesn't make sense,” she reasoned. “If the flight recorder has been broadcasting, the whole damn sector would have heard it. What could Danny have put together that got him killed?”

“Maybe it wasn't what he put together,” Ted guessed. “Maybe it's what he wanted to do about it.”

Hastings took a moment to drain his glass. “I can't speak to why, but given how odd the actual murder was, I took the time to investigate a little myself. In the Fifth Sector, there have been only three knife murders in the last twelve years. One was Danny, and two were opportunistic.”

“Who gets opportunistic with a knife?” Jessica asked.

“In the other five sectors,” Hastings went on, ignoring her, “there have been a total of seventeen over the last twelve years. Nine disparate and scattered. And eight that took place in the span of five years in one city. Same MO as Danny.”

Jessica's spine tingled. “What city?”

“Fuji Seaport, on Osaka Prime.”

She swore so loudly both men stared at her. “Stoya, that police chief who disappeared? He was hired off of Osaka after being governor of Fuji for five years.
Shit.
”

Ted looked at Hastings. “Can you tie the murders together?”

“The knives are all different, of course,” the doctor said, “but I've had a look at Osaka's records, and I can make a good case all the killings were done by the same hand. As the only evidence, though, it's not enough, especially without motive.”

“So we'd need to interrogate him.” She started to compose questions in her head. “Get someone scary in front of him. Hekekeia, maybe.”

“You're forgetting Stoya's missing,” Bob said.

“So we find him,” she insisted. “We get our hands on him, and the captain can—”
Oh.
“Shit,” she said quietly.

“Well said.” Bob refilled his glass. “We can unravel all of it, and it doesn't change a damn thing.”

“So why don't we tell Valentis?” Ted suggested. When Jessica just looked at him, he said, “You're really telling me we can't trust him with this? This isn't impressions or intuition. This is actual fact.”

“Another actual fact,” she said, “is that he's a lying bastard.”

“What did he say, Jess?”

She thought back. “It wasn't so much what he said as how he said it.” She gave an involuntary shudder. “All I can tell you is that he's gung ho on this fight, and he's already setting Lanie up to take the fall for aiding and abetting.”

“But she can alibi that pirate.”

“He loses the pirate-as-murderer, he loses the reasoning behind this attack.”

“This attack,” Bob pointed out, “was ordered by Central Command, not William Valentis.”

Jessica looked at him. “You're sure?”

“I've seen the order myself,” he said. “And before you think about running to them, Danny wasn't a part of their rationale. It was all
Demeter
and Greg.”

Damn, damn, damn.
It had all made sense before she talked to Bob and Ted. Now all she had was a stack of unrelated questions. Like why Valentis would have been so keen to implicate Zajec if Danny's murder didn't play into the ordered attack. “Bob, can I ask you something way off the record?”

“I seem to be getting asked that a lot today.”

“You ever get any encoded messages from headquarters?”

“You mean the Admiralty?”

“Them,” she said, “or maybe Shadow Ops.”

He was silent for a moment. “Now why would you want to know that?”

“Well that sure sounds like a yes.”

He sighed. “Jessica, there are some things—”

Ted spoke up. “They're a part of this, Bob.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Did you know Valentis has been reporting back to S-O about potentially illegal actions undertaken by this crew?”

Bob's eyebrows shot up. “That does explain a few things,” he said.

“Like the captain's blood pressure?”

“And Commander Valentis's. Man does not take good care of himself.”

“You have had some messages, haven't you?” she pressed.

He nodded. “Seven, all in the last year, all requests for medical records.”

“Whose?”

“The senior staff. The captain, Will, Emily Broadmoor. The chief, after Jacobs was killed.”

“They say why?”

He shook his head. “The regular records they get, of course,” he said, “but they wanted my personal notes and observations. It's not unheard of, especially when an officer is killed, but I did wonder why the requests were spread out like that.”

“When was the last request?”

“About eight months ago. At the tail end of the Pyrraeus mission.”

While they were still in the Fourth Sector, nearly eight weeks before they had gone back to Earth. Long before the pulsar would have exposed the flight recorder. She wondered if S-O had been trying to figure out whom to recruit. “What did you say about Commander Valentis?”

“If you're going to ask me to violate my oath, Lieutenant, you could at least flirt with me first.” At her look, his jaw set. “I was a doctor before I was Corps, Jessica.”

“Do you think you said anything about him that would have made him sound like an easy mark?”

“I will tell you only that I am quite certain that what I said about the captain would have kept him out of any scheme they might have had to subvert the Admiralty.”

“And I know for sure Lanie wouldn't have gone for it,” she said thoughtfully. She thought about Emily, who was on the surface as by-the-book as Valentis, but she was dead loyal to the
captain. Jessica had never understood why, specifically, but it had always made her trust the woman.