The Cold Between (26 page)

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T
he longer Greg spent reading over Luvidovich's history, the less he was able to feel sorry that the man was dead.

He had left Carter behind to keep the situation stable on Novanadyr and had taken
Lusi
on his own, setting her course to
Penumbra
's last known location. He doubted he would be able to catch up to Elena and her pirate, even though they were in a civilian ship, but he thought he could close on them enough to be no more than a few minutes behind. He wondered how Captain Solomonoff would take the intrusion. He supposed he would find out quickly if she really was the sort of woman who would preemptively attack MacBride.

But in the meantime, he read.

He had sympathy for Luvidovich's origins. His home life had been horrifically abusive. It would have been heartening to think that Luvidovich had become a police officer to avenge his own miserable existence, but that, it turned out, had been engineered by his father, a prominent politician. What had surprised everyone was that Luvidovich had been good at the job: despite his questionable character, he had a sharp mind. When Stoya
was hired, Luvidovich was given a number of cold cases that he was able to tie up quickly, leading to his promotion. That appreciation, it seemed, had earned Stoya Luvidovich's loyalty.

Until Zajec's arrest for Lancaster's murder.

Luvidovich's police reports had a rhythm to them: initial reports made up of methodical lists of evidence and questions, thorough updates on interviews and investigation, notations of hypotheses and dismissed ideas, and finally details of arrests and confessions. But his report on Danny's murder went a different way. After his initial write-up—in which he had observed, Greg noted with interest, that the body had likely been moved—the focus had turned almost exclusively to Zajec, with the stated purpose of bringing a “known murderer” to justice. Instead of dealing with the case at hand—with Danny, his movements, his background—all of Luvidovich's notes were about ways to legitimately bring Zajec back into custody. He had even tried to think of how to get Elena out of the way, including hiring someone to assault her. Greg's heart had gone black at that. He was glad she had stuck close to the pirate.

But Luvidovich's duty logs and comms, provided by the Novanadyr PD, told a different story than his official reports. While he had not investigated Danny's final movements, he had done thorough homework on the knife. The blade was not unique, but it was unusual. Such knives were not typically chef's tools, but belonged to the butcher family, enabling the easy hand-processing of carcasses. Luvidovich had taken the time to verify that Katya Gregorovich did not butcher her own meat, and then he had sent out a general query on other murders using knives. There were not many—in the days of stun weapons and laser cannons, they were almost never used for violent crime
anymore. But Luvidovich had turned up seventeen knife murders over the last twelve years, and a total of eight performed with some variant of a butcher knife. All eight had occurred on Osaka Prime, which didn't surprise Greg at all, knowing the nature of the place; but he wondered what it would have meant to Luvidovich.

Greg rubbed his eyes, then left them closed, allowing his mind to drift. He would fetch Elena, and then they could return to Volhynia to finish the investigation. He thought about what he wanted to say to her. He'd have to yell at her for going AWOL first; she would expect that, and she wouldn't need to know about his own indiscretion. Then he would promise her they would help Zajec, and he'd keep that promise. And he would find out who had killed Danny and why, and then possibly promote Jessica Lockwood, for nothing more than making him laugh when the universe was falling down around him.

His mother had been like that, he remembered: when he was moody or upset, she would swoop in on him with gentle teasing and optimism, and restore his perspective. He wondered why Jess was in tech; she'd have made a wonderful counselor, or even a doctor. He pictured Jessica in a pale blue jacket, a civilian doctor's uniform, like Caroline. He had always wondered about Caroline going into medicine. She had always lacked empathy, and had never apologized for it. That was one thing they had in common: neither of them apologized. He found it most difficult when he was in the wrong. That was going to make it hard for him to fix things with Elena . . .

He was jerked awake by a proximity alarm. Annoyed with himself, he sat up and studied the readout. Something was approaching, its flight plan dangerously close.
Lusi
's usual clear
visuals were amorphous and incomplete, and he frowned. “Can we get out of the way?” he asked.

Lusitania
paused, and Greg's heart sank. It was never good news when a ship paused. “Insufficient data,” the ship told him.

“What do you mean, insufficient? What kind of a ship is it? What's its ident? What kind of a field is it generating? Make a fucking guess.”

Another pause. “Possible dreadnought level shipping freighter,” it said at last.

“Going that fast?”

“Field signature is a seventy-two percent match.”

“Why the uncertainty?”

“Field signature is distorted. Telemetry is not on record. No ident.”

“What do you mean, ‘no ident'?”

“The ship is not broadcasting any identifying information.”

What the fuck is this thing?
“Where's it headed?”

Lusi
rattled off familiar coordinates. It was headed for
Penumbra.

“Do we have time to adjust the field?”

“No. Recommend dropping out.”

Greg swore. “Try to keep a fix on it. Drop to sublight.”

The field vanished, and Greg found himself hanging alone among the stars, no planets visible in any direction. “Regenerate and start up again, same destination,” he said. It took just over three seconds for
Lusi
to restore the FTL field.

“Where's that ship?” he asked.

Lusi
's response was instant. “Unidentified ship is still on course for
Penumbra.
She is now three minutes ahead of us, with her lead increasing.”

He thought for a moment. “Hail her,” he said at last, “but keep your ident to yourself unless it's requested.”

There was a long pause. “No response,”
Lusi
said at last.

Protocol stated he should keep hailing the ship, and report its presence to the nearest traffic control facility. In this case, that would be Volhynia. So much for protocol.

“
Lusi,
keep following that ship,” he said. “If she drops out, we do, too.”

“Acknowledged,”
Lusi
said. Greg kept staring into the light of the FTL field, wondering what he was chasing.

I
t was the weightlessness that woke Trey: the sudden, disorienting loss of body mass. But when he opened his eyes his senses were overwhelmed by the flashing orange and red lights in the cabin, and the wailing klaxon. Elena was already up, her hands finding protrusions in the wall to hold on to, hauling herself toward the pilot's console. Outside the window he saw not the steady blue of the field, but stars, spinning in a wobbly circle.

This was not a timed alarm. They had been thrown out of the FTL field, and they were spinning out of control.

He could not hear Elena's shouting over the alarm. He found the edge of one of the cabinets and pulled himself off the sofa, keeping his momentum slow and steady as he worked his way forward. On
Castelanna,
they trained frequently without gravity. Even so, he was amazed at what his body remembered.

Elena had pushed herself toward a panel under the console and had pried off the access circuit; he suspected she was trying to shut off the noise. Methodically he pulled up the ship's diagnostics. Basic systems were intact, but the field generator was completely blown, and even their sublight engine was damaged.
A quick look at the logs revealed they had been shoved out of the field by another ship, and he frowned. They were lucky to be alive, but who would have done such a thing? Not even Novanadyr PD would be that brutal, if they had been able to find them in the first place.

The alarm went silent, and mercifully the gravity reengaged. He told her quickly what he had found. “Local scans show nothing,” he said. “They must have moved on.”

She swore fluently. “That couldn't have been a coincidence,” she said. “Nobody collides in-stream anymore. Someone shoved us out on purpose.” She climbed into the copilot's seat and strapped on the harness, pulling up a mirror of his console. “What are the odds they'll politely leave us for dead?”

Trey had been reading in location data. “They may feel a follow-up is unnecessary.” He met her eyes. “
M'laya,
we are in the radiation belt.”

Her eyes widened, and then she went back to the console. “Ship, what's our interior radiation?”

“Ambient 2.8,” the ship said pleasantly.

Trey frowned. “What about external?” he asked.

“Ambient 3.7.”

“Something is wrong,” he said, half to himself. He spun through the star charts. “
Sartre,
run a navigation diagnostic.” He shook his head. “How can it be clean here?”

“We need Ilya,” Elena said. “Isn't there some theory about EMPs and radiation?”

“On occasion, EMPs have been observed to neutralize radiation,” he remembered.

“
Sartre,
” she said, “what's the official recorded radiation level at this location?”

There was a brief pause. “Ambient 13, critical 22.2.”

She looked at him, and her dark eyes were grim. “I think someone has been falsifying the official numbers,” she said. “How far are we from the wormhole?”

“Two hundred thousand kilometers,” he told her. “We must be leeward of it. I'm not reading any—”

Far too close to them there was a flash, a light pattern Trey knew: a field closing down after an emerging ship. He set the ship's scanner on it, but the device kept spinning, confused.

“Where the hell is it?” Elena asked, looking at the same data.

“Location information is distorted,” the ship said.

“How about a visual, then? Give me three sixty.”

The ship projected a mocked-up three-dimensional view of themselves and the space it could detect around them—including, in the periphery, the swooping, conical gravity well of the wormhole. Elena plunged her fingers into the image, twisting it around like a puzzle, zooming in at anything that looked unusual.

“There!” He caught sight of it just for a moment, a large dark shape, rippling and distorted as if it were underwater. After a few seconds it disappeared again.

Elena went back to the ship's console. “Comms are down,” she said tersely. “
Sartre,
how much maneuverability have we got?”

“Engines are at eighty percent power,” the ship said. “Manual navigation only.”

She unbuckled herself. “Have you got her?” she asked Trey.

“As much of her as there is to get.” He pulled up the ship's thruster control. It made for crude steering, but it was better than nothing.

Elena got up and headed aft. “I might be able to pull apart the field generator,” she suggested, opening up an access panel in the floor. “Maybe get us something we can vent at it.”

Trey glanced at the holographic readout. The massive ship rippled into existence again; it was closer to them, matching its path to their rotation. He did not think there was much that would be effective against it, but he shared her need to try.

“We are being targeted,”
Sartre
said cheerfully.

“Hang on to something,” Trey called to Elena.

He waited until the cloaked ship let off a shot. It was a directed plasma stream, designed to open them up like a butchered animal. He watched it move closer and closer . . . and then he slammed the ship's thrusters on full. They leapt forward, angling out of the shot's trajectory, and he caught a glow of red in the holographic display.

“Heat damage to the ship's stern,”
Sartre
said. “Rear observation disabled.”

“How are you doing?” Trey asked.

“We've got almost no charge left,” she replied, “but if you can buy me another twenty seconds, I can get us two good shots. Maybe we can take out her guns.”

The ripple was coming around again. Trey tensed, wondering if she should have tried to fix their navigation first, and then he noticed something odd. The rotation of the stars out the window was changing. “
Sartre,
overlay a gravity map on the display.”

He saw it then, the familiar cone shape, the characteristic parabola of a gravity well. It was a strong one, too, which did not surprise him, given its origin. “The wormhole is pulling us,” he told her.

“Can we use it to accelerate away?” she asked him.

“I will try, but we will need to be careful.”

“Why?”

She had heard it in his voice. “It is very strong,” he told her.

“So are the guns on that monster out there.”

“I am not certain which is the greater threat, Elena.”

She made one last adjustment, then turned to look at the display. She swore again, and went back to the copilot's seat. “I don't think we have a choice,” she said grimly.

The ripple was coming around again. Whatever was maneuvering it, pilot or computer, it had figured them out: it was matching the curvature of their path, angling to fire an intercept shot. Elena watched its trajectory, and glanced at Trey.

“They're not out of Novanadyr, are they?”

He shook his head.

“You fly,” she told him. “I'll fire.”

U
nidentified ship is dropping out of the field,”
Lusi
said.

Greg frowned. They were still an hour away from
Penumbra.
“Where?”

Lusi
rattled off coordinates, and his eyebrows went up. It had to be unmanned, then, and there was no way he could follow it there. “How long would your shields last against the radiation?”

There was a long pause, and immediately Greg became alert. “Specify parameters,”
Lusi
said at last.

“The unidentified ship dropped out in the middle of the radiation belt,” Greg said. “How long could your shielding protect me if we dropped out in the same place?”

Another pause. “Conflicting information,” the ship said at last.

“Explain.”

“Reported radiation levels are ambient 13. Detected radiation levels are ambient 2.7, fluctuating to 5.4 in the vicinity of B1829.”

Greg knew which he was inclined to believe. “What's the source of the reported radiation levels?”

“Central Government push update received 2.7 hours ago.”

He made a decision. “
Lusi,
drop out of the field on top of that ship.”

“Recorded radiation levels are not compatible with survival.”

“Acknowledged,” he said. “Apologize to my crew if I accidentally kill myself.”

The ship said nothing. They were still two minutes behind.