The Cold Between (24 page)

He engaged the connection again. “
Galileo,
can you detect any FTL activity in or around the general flight pattern between here and the PSI ship
Penumbra
?”

“Specify variance.”

Elena would not take a direct route, Greg knew. He gave
Galileo
a wide area to work with.

“Seven matches,” the ship said at last.

“Anomalies?”

“One. No fixed origin. No flight plan. No transponder activity. No active ident.”

“Check the specs of the FTL field against an M-series civilian cruiser model.”

The answer was immediate. “FTL field within the parameters of a field generated by an M-series civilian cruiser.”

He commed Jessica without thinking. “She's headed for
Penumbra.
”

Jessica let off an impressive litany of swears. “What are you going to do, sir?”

“With Zajec, she's probably safe with them,” he decided. “We need to find Stoya, and get some traction on these murders. In a couple of hours I'll—”

The chime that interrupted him had become a familiar tone over the last several weeks, but it had been days since he had heard it. He left Jessica on the line, and pulled up the message headers. Same bogus auth code, same artificial ident. He displayed the message.

You don't believe that boy was killed over curiosity, do you?

“Sir?” Jessica prompted.

“Change of plans,” he said, walking as he spoke to her. “I'm going after her.”

“What happened?”

Elena was headed for
Penumbra,
and the wormhole. She was headed directly into whatever Central had asked MacBride to deal with, whatever Lancaster had been investigating that got him killed. “I need her back before this comes apart,” he said. There was no time to explain further. “Find Chief Stoya, Lieutenant. And get me whatever you can on those anonymous messages.”

“Sir, Commander Valentis—”

Shit.
He had counted on returning to
Galileo
much sooner. “Tell him you're doing research for me,” he told her, “but don't say what. Make something up if you have to.”

“Yes, sir.” She sounded unhappy.

“And Jessica—be careful.”

“Of Commander Valentis, sir?” When Greg was silent, he heard her exasperated sigh. “What's going on with him?”

“All you need to know,” he told her, “is that his comms are restricted, and I wouldn't have left him in charge if I'd had another choice.”

“You had two hundred and twenty-two other choices, sir.”

“I can't get into it now, Jess.” She didn't need to know that he was flagrantly disobeying orders. If she didn't know, they couldn't punish her. “Just—whatever else you do, don't let him take those auth codes away from you. You have my full authorization to do what you need to keep that access, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir . . .”

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

There was a pause, and Greg thought he knew the look she had on her face. “Nothing, sir,” she said at last. “Don't worry about the ship, sir. I'll look after her.”

He had to admit it made him feel better to hear Jessica say it.

Interstitial

T
ake off your clothes.”

Elena stood up and headed for the bathroom in the back of the shuttle. The spec sheet on the ship had specified a Level Three medkit—not enough for surgery, but enough to stabilize some pretty serious injuries. At the very least it ought to have a tissue scanner. With luck it might even detect broken bones.

She had been impressed at how well their stolen ship had handled the change in direction. She had expected the FTL field to shudder, or to dissolve within a few minutes; but instead it had stabilized, albeit at a slower speed than she wanted, and the engines were running well within tolerances. They would reach the radiation perimeter in a little more than six hours. In five, Novanadyr would hit the Dead Hour, and they would be able to send a signal to Captain Solomonoff. She did not know how doggedly the police planned to pursue them, but after what she had seen she had no intention of risking recapture.

She wanted to wrap Trey in blankets and make him lie down, and sit anxiously over him until she could get him to a doctor. She had seen enough combat wounds to have a good sense of
how badly someone was hurt. None of Trey's wounds looked deep, but the sheer number of cuts had to be straining his system, and she knew he had taken far too many blows to the head. He needed rest, and he needed better medicine than she would find in a Level Three medkit. Maybe she should have taken him back to
Galileo
after all.

Except that Greg had refused to help him.

She could have brought him back anyway, she supposed. She had enough friends there. Bob would have looked after him, no matter what Greg might have ordered. But he would have been a prisoner, and she would have been unable to do anything for him at all. And whatever Central was up to, whatever game they were playing . . . she would be hiding behind her uniform, hiding behind her concern for one man, and pretending none of it mattered.

She had never been any good at letting things go.

She found the medkit, still sealed, tucked behind a door in the corner of the shower. The owners had gone for the upgraded model; it did, indeed, have a deep bone scanner. She walked back into the cabin, finding Trey slowly undoing the buttons of his shirt.

“This was easier when we were running,” he said ruefully.

She set the medkit down on the pilot's chair and took over undoing the buttons for him, keeping her face professional. “Adrenaline is remarkable,” she said briskly. “It allows you to pull on a stranger's shirt,
and
knock out a policeman with a chair. Thank you for that, by the way,” she finished, tugging the tail of the unbuttoned shirt from his borrowed trousers.

He pulled the shirt off of his shoulders and looked at it; his cuts had bled. He bunched it into a ball and tossed it in a corner.
“I believe it was you who saved me,” he said to her, and began unfastening his trousers.

She tore her eyes away from his injuries. She did not think there were three square centimeters of his flesh that were free of marks. She circled behind him first, as he stepped out of his pants and nudged them into a corner with the shirt. Pulling out the scanner, she aimed first at his head, panning slowly.

“You have a minor concussion,” she told him. “You need sleep.”

“I could have diagnosed that myself,” he told her, but he smiled as he said it.

His injuries were, individually, not severe. There were not as many cuts as she had thought, and almost all of them were shallow, capillary-level bleeders. He had one deep cut in his shoulder, but the coagulant healing accelerator in the kit would take care of that. She scanned him head to toe, and again from the front, to confirm what she had found. With enough rest he would easily heal, and probably within a few days.

But it was not only new injuries that she had seen. Throughout his body, mostly in his arms and ribs, there were decades-old signs of broken bones. The fingers of his right hand, so long and expressive, had taken the worst of it; whatever mobility he had now was something of a miracle. Most of the breaks had been overgrown, sustained before he was an adult.

“You said he never hurt you that badly,” she said quietly.

It took him a moment to figure out what she meant. “He was quite careful, actually,” he told her. “He knew how much he could get away with. My hand was an error.” He flexed his fingers. “My mother shouted at him after he did it. She told him
my teachers would notice. That was the first time I realized she knew what he was doing to me.”

She pulled out the deep-cut kit, and began carefully cleaning his shoulder. “But you did nothing until he turned on Katya.”

“When it started, I was too young. When I got older . . . it became a point of pride, to do nothing in the face of his rage. I would think, from time to time, that if he lost control and ended up killing me, it would be a sort of victory. But no, I could not watch him turn Katya into the same kind of creature.”

She blinked; it would do no good for him to see her weep over him. She used a small syringe to douse the puncture wound with enzymes. “I did not speak to her long,” Elena told him, “but she seemed all right. Like you, really. Stubborn.”

He laughed a little. “She is, isn't she? It is an odd thing for me; I wrote to her, over and over through the years, but she never wrote back. I did not know her. I am only just beginning to see who she is. I do not remember much of her when she was little, except that she would hide behind me when she was frightened, and that she always did what our mother told her to do.”

“It's hard to imagine her being timid.” She laid a dermal patch over his wound and smoothed the edges with her fingers. “There is a shower back there if you want,” she told him. “There is a place you can sit. I can help, too.”

He flexed his shoulder carefully. “I will try on my own, thank you,” he said. Then he met her eyes. “
M'laya,
when you threatened Stoya on the street—did you want to die?”

She shook her head. “No. I wanted to kill.”

She did not drop his eyes, and after a moment he nodded and headed into the bathroom. While he turned on the water she
began opening drawers. The owner was closer to Trey's proportions than Ancher was, but he did not keep much clothing here; still, she found black trousers she suspected were pajamas, and a stack of folded undershirts. She thought they might fit her well enough, too, if she could find a belt.

There were sheets and blankets tucked in the drawers as well, luxurious soft materials that appeared to be custom-made to fit over the sofas. The ship might not be outfitted for long journeys, but for a few days, at least, they would be more than comfortable. If they needed more than that, she thought they could trade some of the ship's interior furnishings at someplace like Hadron or Calexys; it wouldn't get them a lot, but they could buy food and any parts they might need for a week or so. With luck,
Penumbra
would take them in, and all of her planning would be moot, but she always felt better when she had options.

She could hear the water splashing. He was moving around, at least, and she resisted the urge to call out to him. Instead she pulled out the clean clothes, and then began hunting for food. The owner had been far less interested in provisions; there were some utilitarian staples in the cabinets, and some preserved meals, but they were only a few steps above MREs. Still, they were nutritious, and she thought if he was hungry the quality would matter less.

He took a long time in the shower, but when he came out his wounds were cleaner and he had washed his hair. Some of the cuts had begun to ooze, but her bandage had held, and despite his injuries he seemed in far better spirits. When he saw the clothes she had found he smiled. “We are living in luxury,” he remarked. He tossed his towel into the bathroom and began to get dressed.

She took a shower after him, removing her undershirt and borrowed trousers only after closing the door to the bathroom. Despite having spent the last half hour with him naked before her, she was shy about stripping in front of him. The ship had an inductive water heater, and she thought she could have stood under the warm spray for hours. As it was she soaped twice and washed her hair, closing her eyes and turning her face into the stream. When she emerged at last she found he had laid out clothes for her as well; they would be far too big, but they were clean, and without the memories of the clothes she had removed. He turned away while she dressed, and she felt a momentary flutter of disappointment.

They opened two of the preserved meals, Trey with some trepidation. “I do not understand people,” he said, staring into the container. “All of our technology, and this is the best we can do?”

“They are better than what we get on
Galileo,
” she told him. “We try to take on fresh food every six weeks or so, but sometimes we can't. Sometimes—” She stopped, remembering, and put her food aside.

“Tell me why we are not returning to your ship,
m'laya.
”

He was looking at her with those gentle eyes, all sympathy, as if he had not just been tortured by an accomplished sadist. “Central is neck-deep in all of this,” she told him. “If we go back to
Galileo,
I don't know what they'll do with you.” Central Corps, her chosen home and family, everything she had loved for the last ten years of her life. She felt her face grow hot, and she swallowed, refusing to give in to it. “There's something going on about
Demeter,
and about the wormhole. Central is tangled in this, and it could get ugly very, very quickly. If we
went back to
Galileo,
you'd be intel. You'd be leverage. They might not beat you, but you'd be no less a prisoner.”

“What of your captain?”

My captain is an idiot,
she thought, frustration welling up again. “He seems to think he can work all of this through channels,” she told him. “I don't know if he's being complicit, or willfully blind, or if he can't bring himself to tell me the truth. He doesn't seem to want to accept the possibility that his chain of command is behind this mess.”

“And you are not willing to trust the rules.”

“Not just now, no.”
Maybe never again.

Trey watched her with that look that seemed to ask her to say more, but she could not think what to tell him. Nothing she could say would make sense. Eventually he turned back to his own meal. “
Penumbra
will have its own challenges,” he told her. “I do not believe Valeria will leave me to the wolves. She has never been one to let her personal feelings interfere in what is right. But she will be wary, more of me than of you.”

“Why don't you get along?”

“Hm.” That sound again, the one that she took for embarrassment. “Valeria and I used to be married.”

Of course . . .
That explained all of it: the acrimony, the bitterness, the determined sniping even in the face of a serious situation. He had been on Volhynia only six months, which suggested it was recent. “I see,” she said, and wondered why her voice sounded so strange. “That's—” She was suddenly unable to sit still, and she got to her feet, crossing the narrow cabin. There was a supply list displayed against the wall; she began perusing it. “That would explain how well you—of course.”

“Elena.”

She could feel the heat rising to her face. All she could remember was standing next to him, throwing her arms around him, weeping on his shoulder. “I hope I didn't—I mean, not that there's anything, since we don't really know each other, you and me, and I didn't, I mean I'm not presuming anything, not that there would be any reason for me to presume anything.”
Why am I still talking?

She heard him stand up. “Elena,” he said again.

“And I hope she didn't think I was trying to—or maybe she thought we were, or I was being mean, or trying to, I don't know, hurt her somehow. Not that I could, I mean.”

He was standing right next to her, but she could not turn around. “You are babbling.”

“That happens to me when I don't know what to say. So maybe you could say something instead. Not that you have to, I mean you don't owe me anything, we're not—”

“Elena.” He slid one hand over the back of her neck, and when she looked at him he leaned forward and kissed her.

He tasted of their horrible dinner, and of salt, and of blood, and she had one moment to feel a flare of anger at Luvidovich before she found herself kissing him back, winding her arms around his neck, trying so hard to be careful but wanting desperately to consume him. His hands threaded into her hair and his kiss became more insistent; she opened her mouth to his, kissing him with utter abandon.

He held her against him after the kiss broke, shoulder to hip, all heat and skin, and suddenly everything was normal between them.

“So how does it work,” she asked, “being married to someone on another ship?”

“PSI ships travel in pairs.” He said it as if he thought she should have known. “
Penumbra
and
Castelanna
are sisters. She and I would be apart now and then, when we would separate for a solo mission, but never more than a week or so.”

“Why aren't you married anymore?” she asked.

“When my sister asked me to come home, I assumed Valeria would come with me. She assumed I would stay. There seemed no way to resolve it.” His smile turned sad. “I cannot do what your captain does, Elena. I could not promise myself to a woman I would never see, and I would not ask her to live out her life alone simply because of what I needed to do. We dissolved the marriage long before I left. It has been more than a year.”

“But you are still angry with each other.”

“In truth,” he admitted, “I do not know. She does make me irritable, but she always did. I knew her twenty years before we became lovers. I would like to think, with all we have been through, that we might forgive each other someday.” He studied her face. “But we do not belong to each other, Elena. Not anymore. You have not presumed anything incorrectly.”