The Cold Between (10 page)

She paused before answering, and he wondered if that was good or bad. “Not in a way that will help,” she said at last.
“Central's rigid when it comes to troops on Volhynia, and I didn't do myself any favors by losing my temper in front of the press. There's a good chance they'll demand I leave, which means we need to—”

Her comm chimed, and she muted it, but almost immediately the tone was repeated. This time she frowned, resigned. “I apologize,” she said to him.

“For what?”

“For this,” she replied, and completed the connection.

“You have fifteen seconds,” a man's voice said, low and menacing, “to explain why you cut me off.
Twice.
”

Her response was terse. “I was busy.”

There was a pause before the man replied. “You were
busy
?” His incredulity was palpable. “Was this five seconds ago, or while you were
having a tantrum
in front of the fucking chief of police, not to mention every goddamned streamer in this sector? You realize your entire chain of command is watching that right now?”

She swore, looking chagrined.

“Yeah,
now
you're thinking about it, after it's out on the public fucking stream! Now how about you answer the question, Chief, before I bust you back to ensign for insubordination?”

This, Trey realized, had to be her captain, and he was using a tone Trey, who'd had to use it on occasion, recognized very well. What was curious was her complete lack of deference. “How about this?” she snapped in return. “How about I knew all you were going to do was
shriek
at me, and I had better things to do than listen?”

“You—are you forgetting my direct order? The one where you give that pirate his alibi, and get your ass back to the
ship? The one that
did not
include threatening the local cops with authority
you don't have
before you snuck out the back door?”

Trey's stomach turned. She did not know the people she was dealing with. “What did you say to the police?”

She looked away. “I told them Central would take over the investigation if they didn't do it properly.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Captain Zajec, sir.”

Another pause on the line. “Captain,” the man said formally, as if he had not been threatening his officer a moment before, “we haven't been introduced. I'm Captain Greg Foster, CCSS
Galileo.
”

Trey knew his name, of course, and a little of his reputation, but he did not think the circumstances were shedding the best light on the man. “A pleasure, Captain,” Trey told him, “but I do not use my title any longer. May I express my condolences on the loss of your officer.”

This time Trey heard him sigh. “Thank you, Mr. Zajec,” Foster said, and he sounded old and tired. “And may I say, I am sorry you've become tangled in all of this. Our only goal is to see the killer brought to justice.”

Glib and practiced, Trey thought, but not necessarily insincere. “Thank you, Captain. Although I do not think our police are yet convinced they should look elsewhere.”

“Why did they suspect you to begin with?” Foster asked.

Trey closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face; he did not want to have this conversation now, but he could not see Foster allowing him to put it off. “A number of reasons, actually,” he told the captain, feeling the woman's eyes on him. “One is be
cause I was PSI, and Volhynia has an uneasy relationship with us. Stoya was appointed, in part, due to the tension between PSI and some of the local Syndicates who are moving to become legitimate traders. Another is simply because I am a stranger, and this is a small colony.” He took a breath. “Mostly, though, it is because I committed a crime here when I was a child, and they cannot prosecute me for it.”

“What did you do?”

Ah, well. It's not like I'm ashamed of it.
“I killed a man,” he said.

Trey felt rather than saw her grow still.

“If they know it, why can't they arrest you?” Foster asked him.

They could, of course. They could arrest him, and he could confess, and even on Volhynia—even in Novanadyr, where he had so few friends—no jury would convict him. “They cannot make a case,” he said simply.

“So instead, you're just the guy they arrest whenever they need a warm body?”

Trey risked a glance at the woman; her eyes had gone wary, and he was surprised how much that stung. “In this case they were not without reason. I found your officer outside the kitchen of the restaurant where I work. And yes, Captain, it would be a remarkable coincidence, except that the body was moved there.” He had wanted to tell her earlier, when Ancher was still there, but something had told him this was as important a detail to keep secret as her relationship to the dead man.

“How do you know?”

Trey chose as few words as he could. “There was not enough blood.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I know death.” And he thought, captain to captain, that he would not have to say anything more.

“I think Luvidovich knows it as well,” the woman said. “Stoya is keeping him from investigating properly. I don't know why, but Luvidovich isn't happy about it.”

“I doubt that matters,” Foster said. “After your impromptu press conference, they're going to start asking about you as well as Danny, and they're going to spin it as a very neat setup. I can protect the chief, Mr. Zajec, but I have no influence over the treatment of Volhynian citizens. If you'd consent to visit
Galileo,
we could offer you protection.”

Her expression had changed, grown wary again. This time, however, Trey did not think she was being wary of him. There was more to this conversation than he was seeing. “Thank you, Captain,” he said formally, “but I prefer to take my chances. My family is here.”

“We could protect them, too, if it comes down to it. This whole thing should be cleared up in a few days, and it'd be one less thing for us all to worry about.”

Odd,
Trey thought.
First an offer of help, then manipulation
. The woman was looking away, squinting into the afternoon sun, her lips thin. “I will consider your offer,” he said at last. It was the truth, at least. “But for now, I would like to remain home.”

“The offer stands if you change your mind. Chief, I'll expect you back here in—”

“I'm staying, Greg.” She said it quietly, and with complete conviction.

There was a long pause. Based on Foster's behavior so far, Trey would have expected the captain to start shouting again. Instead, when he spoke, his voice was immeasurably more gen
tle, and Trey began to wonder at the relationship between the captain and his subordinate. “We've discussed this already, Chief.”

“We haven't,” she told him. Her voice was tight, as if she had swallowed something thick. “I owe him.”

“You don't owe him
anything.
”

“
We
owe him,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “The police aren't going to do a damn thing, and I'm not going to leave this alone while a murderer goes free.”

“That's not your call, Elena. It's not mine, either.”

“If it was me who'd been found dead,” she asked bluntly, “what would you do?”

Foster was silent.

“I want to find out where he was last night, what he was doing there, and what he was into that made someone want to kill him.”

“You know it may have just been a robbery.” Foster was considerably more subdued.

“With the police covering something up?” Her tone had softened; this, it seemed, was detente. “Please, Greg. Just a little more time.”

The pause was longer, and Trey took the time to study her. With Ancher she had been practiced, composed, unconcerned with his reaction. Here she stood, tense, her face bleak, desperation in her eyes. Heart on her sleeve. It mattered to her, what her captain was going to say, and Trey thought it went far beyond whether or not she received permission.

“His financials show he was at that bar he'd been talking about,” Foster said at last. “Gregorian's. His last charge was fifteen minutes before he was killed. That's where you want to
start. I'll give you six hours. You dig up what you can in that time, and then you come home. And if the cops twig your connection with Danny, you come up sooner, understood?”

She closed her eyes. “Understood, Captain.”

“I want a report in three hours, Chief. No excuses. You cut me off again, it better be life or death, or I'm writing you up, and I'm not kidding. We clear?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, composed. “We're clear.”

The captain signed off. When she looked up, she did it slowly, and the eyes that met his were guarded. “Who did you kill?” she asked him.

All the questions he had for her, all the things he needed to understand about the conversation he had just heard. Well, if he was to ask her to trust, perhaps he would have to trust first. “My stepfather,” he told her.

“Why?”

“He was beating my sister,” he said. “He had beaten me for years, but I suppose he was getting bored. One night he turned on her, and I stopped him. As it turned out, I stopped him forever.”

He looked away. It was an old story to him now, and it was difficult for him to feel anything around it but sadness.

He could feel her looking at him, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her arm move—toward him, not away. He looked up, and found the guarded look had shifted.

“That is not a crime, you know,” she said. “That is self-defense.”

“He was not hitting hard enough to kill,” he told her. “He never hit terribly hard. Most of the time I was not even badly hurt. When I hit him back—I had never done that before.”
He remembered how it felt, heaving the little portable heating unit that had been the first thing his hand had found, hearing the unmistakable sound of a skull being crushed, seeing the man drop, eyes open, switched off like a light. “I cannot say I did not mean to kill him. I can say I am not sorry I did.” He searched her face. “What kind of man does that make me, do you think?”

Her arm dropped back to her side, but she took a step toward him. “I think you must have been a brave child.” He saw sadness in her eyes—and something he recognized as admiration. Something small and bright flared inside of him, and he straightened.

“I did not feel brave,” he confessed. “But over the years, I have come to believe I was strong.” With some effort, he shook off the past. “Elena. Is that what you prefer to be called? Or is it Chief? Chief of what?”

She accepted the diversion. “I am Commander Elena Marie Shaw, chief of engineering,” she said formally. “Elena, if you like, or Lanie. What do you prefer? No title, I understand.”

“My friends call me Trey,” he said. On impulse, he held out his hand. “How do you do, Elena?”

She laughed a little, and took his hand in hers. Her fingers were warm, and he felt a ripple of electricity; he should have asked her name the night before. And yet, it had been rather delightful
not
knowing. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Trey,” she said, and his name sounded warm on her lips.

He dropped her hand, somewhat reluctantly, and said, “I know Gregorian's. It is not far, and there is a place on the way we can find something to eat, if you are hungry.” He did not imagine she had had much time for food.

“Food is your answer to everything, then,” she said.

Not everything,
he thought, but now, perhaps, was not the time to remember the night before. “We will both be the better for it, I think. Elena.” He turned her name over in his head. “That is a Volhynian name, you know.” He began walking, and she fell into step beside him.

“There are more Russians in Alaska than in Novanadyr,” she said.

“So you must have known a great many Treikos.”

She looked over at him, and he had a brief memory of the night before, the wind tugging at her hair. “Actually,” she remarked, sounding shy, “you are the first.”

He could not imagine why that would please him, but it did.

Galileo

C
offee, Lieutenant? Something stronger?”

Jessica Lockwood, perched on the edge of the chair across from his desk, gave him a look. “Hell no, sir. I just came from the pub, and I've watched enough people getting drunk for one day. Including Commander Valentis.” She watched as he stood and poured himself a cup of coffee. “He's in kind of a complaining mood. A loud one. Do you like pissing him off? Because one of these days he's going to take a swing at you, and it'll be your own damn fault.”

Greg would have bet most of the money he had saved over the years that Will would never do something so wildly against the rules. “He used to have more of a sense of humor. Do you remember?”

“You're romanticizing him in your memory, sir. He's always been a stiff. The difference is he used to laugh at your jokes, and he doesn't anymore.” She glared at him. “There's a lot of that going around.”

Greg had learned, in recent months, when and why Jessica would start snapping at him. She was as dispassionate as any field-seasoned admiral, and she only lashed out when she was
particularly tired or upset. This time, he guessed a little of both. “How are you doing with all of this?” he asked.

Her lips tightened, and for an instant he caught real grief in her bright green eyes. “I don't like death, and I don't like unknowns,” she replied. “So naturally, I'm hugely fucking pissed off, and not fit company for anyone. Yourself, sir?”

Greg had just finished talking to Danny Lancaster's sister. He suspected his current state of mind was written deeply into his face at the moment, but the last thing he wanted to do was discuss it. “I managed to get Admiral Herrod to let us stay,” he told her instead.

“No shit. I didn't think he had a heart.”

“It's not heart, it's regulations.”
Which is,
Greg thought,
a little unfair to the admiral.
Herrod had responded with no sarcasm at all when Greg had told him he wanted to keep
Galileo
where she was until the crime was solved. He had, however, quoted Greg the exact line from Central's treaty with Volhynia that outlined Central's authority to do exactly nothing to interfere. Herrod had used the word
nothing
a number of times.

“I also talked to the chief.”

Jessica crossed her arms. “Did you tell her yet that she's not getting any help?”

“You know we won't leave her on her own.”

“Which is a sideways way of saying Central is happy to drop her in the soup, because Volhynia is some kind of untouchable public relations gem that makes everybody forget how many colonies need our help, which is somehow a good thing.” She frowned, and he waited her out; he was familiar with her political views—he even shared them, despite his obligation to be officially neutral. Eventually she said, “What's he doing there, sir?”

That was not the question he had expected. “You mean Captain Zajec?”

She uncrossed her arms and waved her hands at him. “
Yes,
sir, I mean Captain Treiko fucking Zajec, who has kicked more Syndicate tribes in the teeth than all the Fourth Sector PSI ships together. What the hell is he doing on Volhynia, planet of the wastrels?”

“That's a little harsh, don't you think?” She glared again, and he relented. “He was born there. And he doesn't use his title anymore.”

“You talked to him?”

“Briefly.” Greg thought back to the conversation. Zajec had come across as pragmatic and sincere, and Greg could understand why Elena doubted his involvement. Zajec's reputed shrewdness had been apparent as well, as Greg was fairly certain the man knew exactly why he had been offered asylum.

“When is she coming back?”

“A few hours yet,” he told her. “She's working with him.”

“You gave her permission to stay.” It wasn't a question.

“I did.”

Jessica held very still for a moment. “Have you
ever
said no to that woman, sir? She's not an investigator. She's not even infantry.”

“She's a certified combat pilot,” he reminded her.

“She is a
mechanic,
sir, and no matter how well she flies in a war zone, this is not something she can cope with on her own.”

“She's not on her own.”

“Screw Valentis, sir,
I
am going to hit you.” Her arms folded again. “Were you not explaining to me a few hours ago how we
couldn't trust PSI? And now you've left her down there, without Central backup, with nobody to lean on but a PSI officer, never mind that he's retired? You explain yourself, sir, or I'm going down after her myself.”

He briefly considered pulling rank and shutting her down. He was not in the habit of explaining orders. But right now . . . right now he needed someone who would ask the right questions, without being afraid of how he would respond.
That used to be Elena,
he thought ruefully; but Elena was not the only good officer he had. “The conversation we are about to have never happened, Lieutenant. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” She did not even blink.

He told her first about
Demeter,
and waited until she had stopped swearing. “Between you and me, Lieutenant,” he said, “I agree with you.” He tried and failed to remember if he had told Elena the same thing.
Probably not,
he realized. “MacBride's story is bullshit, but I'm less worried about his lousy lie than I am about who he is protecting. There are too many coincidences to let it go.”

She shook her head. “You want coincidence? Ask me what I've found out about Danny.”

He leaned back and folded his arms. “You telling me he was investigating
Demeter,
too?”

“No, sir. He was investigating the
Phoenix.
”

For a moment he rolled her words over in his mind, trying and failing to make them fit into what he knew of the world. “Explain,” he said at last.

She leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “I can't, sir,” she said. “But it started a couple of days after we left Aleph Nine with the
Demeter
crew and cargo. He hauled up all the public records: official reports, crew manifests and schematics, old news stories, retrospectives—even whacked-out conspiracy theories.”

More than most people would have bothered with, Greg realized, although less than he himself had seen. “Did he have an angle?”

“That's harder to say, sir,” she hedged, some of her enthusiasm ebbing. “He wasn't much of a diarist. He was doing some scientific research as well, but that may have been unrelated.”

“What kind of scientific research?”

“Electromagnetism. Pulsars. Specifically, Volhynia's pulsar. He seemed particularly interested in the research that was done at the observatory down on the planet.”

Novanadyr Observatory, Greg recalled, had been the first station to report readings from the
Phoenix
explosion. “That may not be as unrelated as you think.” She raised an eyebrow at that, but he wanted the rest of her report first. “What else?”

“Well, he had an appointment set for today, sir. With Commander Valentis. At fifteen hundred hours.”

The anger that lit his gut was becoming familiar. More secrets. “Had Commander Valentis acknowledged the meeting?”

“Acknowledged and accepted, sir. He didn't tell you, did he?”

“He's not required to tell me.” She knew that, of course, but he was reminding himself as well. Lancaster might have asked Will to keep the meeting to himself. Which would explain why Greg had not known of it when Lancaster was alive, but offered Will no excuses at all now that the man was dead.

What the hell had Lancaster found?

“I need you to find out who he's been talking to,” he told her. “Everything. I want to know who he had breakfast with, who he
played cards with, all of it. I want to know why he was hanging out with the
Demeter
crew.”

She shifted in her chair. “They don't like me, sir.”

“Surely you can charm your way past that.”

“I don't like them, either. And I'm not very good at faking it.”

He had not thought of that. He found it oddly pleasing to think that if she ever decided she disliked him, he wouldn't have to guess. “All right, then, get Ted Shimada to help you.” Shimada was easygoing and facile, and a good friend of Elena's on top of it. Greg found his unrelenting good cheer irritating, but he could not deny that the man could get along with almost anyone. “But there's another piece to this, and I don't want him in on it.”

“If you tell me there's something worse than an escalating conflict with PSI, I may throw things.”

He paused, trying to figure out where to start. “I don't know if it's worse, Lieutenant,” he said seriously. “But it's another thing that's too much of a coincidence to be ignored. Just before we put in at Aleph Nine, I received an anonymous message. The first of three. About the
Phoenix
.”

She frowned. “Did you trace it?”

“They've been coming in on the Admiralty channel with an ident that's garbage. I can't even trace them back to their closest routing point.” He paused. “Anonymous messages aren't new. They come in every year around this time. But I've never had one I couldn't trace before.”

He thought she would ask what the bogus ident told him, or what the messages said. Instead she asked, “You get these messages
every year
?”

She stared at him, and he tried to keep his expression neutral. He was acutely aware that everyone on the ship knew his his
tory, and that every year around the anniversary of his mother's death, they gave him a wide berth so he could brood in peace. In the midst of this mess, it all seemed like foolishness. “Some years more than others,” he told her.

“What's in them?” she asked.

“Questions. Innuendo. Conspiracy theories. Nothing definitive.”

“But these—the bogus Admiralty messages—they're different.”

He looked away from her. He had spent years following madness, had nearly lost his life to it. He could not say for certain he was not falling back into the abyss. “The ideas they're floating don't seem completely insane.”
Except that they almost certainly are.

“Ideas about what? It was engine failure.”

She would have been less than ten years old, he realized, and not affected directly. She had not even been on Earth. “There was a lot the public was never told,” he said, and left it at that. “But me getting these messages now, in this sector, so close to the site of the accident—” It sounded thin when he said it out loud.

“You said they started before Aleph. How long before?”

Thank God, she was thinking. “Twelve hours before we arrived.”

“But after we were diverted.” He nodded, and she sat forward. “Someone knew we'd end up here, didn't they?”

“Which suggests the bogus Admiralty code is hiding a genuine Admiralty code. Think you can break it, Lieutenant?”

“Of course I can.” He saw it in her eyes, the challenge, the thrill of the hunt. “It's all connected, sir, isn't it? The messages, the
Demeter
bullshit, poor Danny—it's not a coincidence, is it?”

“It could be, of course,” he allowed. “Except for two things. One, this planet that we've never been to before—that little pulsar that so unspectacularly EMPs it every night? That was the navigational signpost used by the
Phoenix
when they went off to investigate the wormhole.”

“And the other?”

“What was
Demeter
doing by the hot zone, Lieutenant?” He watched her expression changing as she began piecing it all together. “That wouldn't be a bad place for you to start.”

“And I'm going to find this out by charming the
Demeter
crew.”

He knew what she was asking. “This conversation isn't happening, remember? Which means any methods you might need to utilize to find out what you need to find out aren't happening, either.”

She beamed at that, as if he had just released her from prison. “I will tell you nothing, sir,” she promised.

“Don't tell me if you install a back door, either.” If he were trying to dig into Admiralty data, the first thing he would do would be to open a proprietary port into the ship's comms core, just in case his ordinary routes were locked out. It occurred to him, after he said it, that she might have something set up already.

He stood, and she stood with him, turning to the door, eager to start her work. They all needed a mission, he realized, especially now. He wished he liked his better. “Lieutenant,” he asked, before she could leave the room, “do you know why they broke up?”

She was still for a moment before she turned around, and he could tell by the expression on her face that she didn't want to
tell him. “Respectfully, sir,” she said cautiously, “this isn't relevant to the investigation, is it?”

“You
do
know.”

“She's my best friend, sir.”

“She's mine, too.”

At that, Jessica's temper flared. “Not lately she's not, sir, and it's your own damn fault. Why should I tell her secrets?”

He couldn't argue with her. “It matters, Jess,” he said quietly. “He hurt her, and I don't know why, and it matters.”

“Well, you hurt her worse.” He gave her a look, but she didn't back off. “It's true, and you know it. Why should I give you something else you can use against her?” She had raised her voice, and he couldn't remember ever seeing her so angry. “What does it matter why she finally cut him loose? You tell me why you've been a flat-out dickheaded bullying asshole to her for the last six months, and then maybe,
maybe
I'll trust that you don't want to hurt her again.”

He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to think about it. He had not intended to hurt her, but she knew him too well. All he had wanted was for her to give him room, but somehow he had let it go further than that. He was only beginning to understand the extent of the damage he had done.