The Cold Between (35 page)

“How close do you suppose they are to getting the containment working?” Greg asked her.

“No way to tell,” she replied. “It could be years. They could have it already. That system up there is on autopilot.”

“If they had it already,” Trey pointed out, “they would be using it.”

“Don't discount the political issue,” Greg said. “Dellinium power is going to freak people out, and with good reason. They'll have a marketing problem, in addition to an engineering problem. Even a contained isotope is going to be dangerous. And who the hell trusts a corporation to follow all the safety protocols? Even one like Ellis?”

“They need a reason,” Elena said. Reality opened before her, a great dark pit swallowing the last of her illusions about Central. “Like a physical threat.”

Trey nodded. “Introduce the material first as a weapon, something required to keep the people safe.” He sounded tired, and she remembered then that he had grown up viewing Central with suspicion. He had spent his life waiting for this possibility, and it had been hidden here all along. “Once there is public acceptance, Ellis will be able to use as much of this stuff as they wish.”

Greg scoffed. “Dellinium as a weapon is insanity. That's a fast, one-sided battle, and anybody left over is going to be blown back to the dark ages. Nobody is that crazy.”

It would not have to be insanity, Elena thought. All it would require was good intentions.

“The pirate is correct.”

The voice came out of the dark behind them, and all three turned and shone their lights up the sloped path.

Stoya stepped out of the shadows. He was in a radiation suit, but through the clear material of the hood, Elena could see the pallor of his skin. He was gray, and his eyes were sunken; she thought some of his hair had fallen out. Despite his color, his skin was shiny, as if he were coated in egg, and he blinked too often. That he was on his feet at all was a testament to how healthy he had once been. Now he was nearing death, probably within hours.

Elena thought she should have found that horrifying.

All three of them pulled their guns, but he did not react. “There is no need for you to be alarmed,” Stoya told them, and he was healthy enough to sound irritated. “I am hardly a threat to you.”

“You're the pilot of that bird,” Greg said. “You shot at me.”

Stoya nodded. “That was my mission. I was to kill all of you.”

That small revelation was the only piece of information she had heard lately that fit at all. “You fucked that up,” Elena said, “didn't you?”

Stoya would not look at her. “They did not tell me the wormhole had such a gravity well,” he said. “When you were pulled in, Zajec, I assumed it was because your ship was small. Or your pilot was inexperienced. I did not expect to be trapped.”

“Or shot at,” Greg snapped.

Stoya nodded, unrepentant. “Just so. The cloak . . . it is useful, but it drains too much from the ship's defenses. They should redesign it.”

“Who asked you to kill us?” Elena asked.

Stoya finally fixed his eyes on her. “You are the engineer. How are you planning to get back?”

“You don't actually believe we're taking you with us?” This question came from Greg. Elena wished he meant it, but she knew him.

“I believe you want to know what happened to your officer,” Stoya said impassively, “and I believe I am your only source. If you take me with you, I will tell you what you want to know.”

He had to know what was happening to him. Trey took a step toward him. “What do you expect to accomplish by leaving this place?”

Stoya looked at Trey, his gray eyes holding something like respect. “People who can build a cloaked ship . . . they may yet have something that could help me.”

Elena knew far less about medicine than she did about dellinium, but radioactive materials figured prominently in her work, and as far as she knew science was further from a treatment for advanced radiation poisoning than a functioning hardware cloak. She thought Stoya knew it, too; but if he insisted on deluding himself, she was not beyond using his belief. She exchanged a brief glance with Trey, who moved closer to Stoya, his handgun pointed steadily at the man's gut. “Put your hands against the wall,” Trey said. Stoya obliged, and Trey patted him down thoroughly. She had no doubt he would know where to look for hidden weapons. “He is unarmed,” he said at last, stepping back.

Reluctantly, Elena holstered her gun. “Stay out of the way,” she told him. “We will not wait for you.”

Greg was more direct. He walked up to Stoya, and stared down at him until the man looked back. “If you try anything,” he said evenly, “if you so much as slow us down, I'm throwing you off the ledge. Understand?”

Stoya managed a grim smile. “I would expect no less,” he said.

She turned back to the cubes of isotope and caught Trey's eye. Something was bothering him; she frowned slightly, and he just shook his head. “It is nothing,” he told her, in the same language he had used to speak to Valeria.

She wanted to hold out a hand to him, to comfort him; but she was acutely aware of Stoya, still leaning against the wall where Trey had searched him, watching all three of them with his sharp, humorless eyes. For now, she would have to trust what he told her, and trust he would let her know if he needed her.

For now, she had a box to open.

Galileo

E
xplain to me,” Emily Broadmoor said to Jessica, “why I shouldn't report you for this.”

“Because I am following orders, ma'am. Just like you.”

For a crew on alert, an awful lot of them were passing the time before the attack in the pub. Ted and the engineering crews were running diagnostics on the ship's nav and weapons systems, and the infantry was busy with combat drills in the gym, but most of her fellow techs were here, clustered in the corners drinking coffee and speaking in quiet voices. Bob Hastings's nurses and medical associates were here as well, looking patient and stoic, hoping they would not be needed.

Jessica was hoping none of them would be needed, but Emily wasn't going to make it easy. Her boss was sitting at the table across from her, arms folded, her expression downright unsympathetic. “He's following orders, too, Lockwood. This order is from the Admiralty. He's not following some glory-seeking whim.”

Well, at least she'd properly assessed Valentis's personality. “The Admiralty didn't have all the facts,” Jessica pointed
out. “And the one guy the captain talked to voted against this attack.”

Emily's eyes narrowed. “And exactly how did you get that little piece of information, Lieutenant?”

Oops.
“He just—” It was no good; she was a dreadful liar. “Look, ma'am, Captain Foster gave me some leeway, and I've been using it. And isn't figuring out whether or not we should be attacking a ship full of potentially innocent people more important than how I got the intel?”

“Why haven't you gone to Captain Valentis with this?”

That was where she and Emily always got stuck, Jessica realized. To Emily, there was a process, and she trusted it. It wasn't that Jessica mistrusted the process; it was that individuals were far more important. “Permission to speak candidly, ma'am,” she said.

Emily sighed. “Lockwood, if this discussion was on the record, you'd be in the brig already.”

“He wants this too much.” It wasn't everything she suspected, but it summarized the worst of it. “Without a direct order from Central to stand down, he's going to take that PSI ship, whether or not he believes me. Or them, for that matter.”

Just then a new crowd wandered in: about a dozen of the soldiers from
Demeter.
They were in high spirits, talking and laughing, and Jessica wondered if they were bothering to stay sober. Sure enough, they went straight to the bar, and one of them began rummaging through the bottles. They ignored the stares of the
Galileo
crew, making jokes and toasting each other as if they were celebrating.

“Bastards.”

Jessica looked back at Emily, surprised. The older woman was staring at the
Demeter
soldiers, and Jessica didn't think she'd ever seen such strong emotion in her face. Emily's glare was beyond resentment; Jessica thought it was outright hatred. The security chief stared for several seconds, then turned back, her expression professional again.

“Okay,” Emily said, “this is how we'll handle it. I'll send a message to Admiral Herrod, outlining what you've told me here.”

Jessica felt a wave of relief. “Thank you, ma'am. I—”

“And then,” Emily went on, “I'm taking the whole thing to Captain Valentis.”

At that, Jessica's stomach dropped. “Ma'am, you—”

“I won't mention your name, Lockwood. I'll tell him Foster and I discussed it all before he left. He's an officer. He has an obligation to uphold his oath. He might not like what I tell him, but he'll listen.”

Jessica felt certain that Emily was wrong, but without facts to back up her feelings, there was nothing she could say. “As you like, Commander,” she said.

But Emily did not move to leave. “You know Captain Foster punched Valentis before he left.”

Jessica nodded. “I heard. I also heard he deserved it.”

Much to Jessica's amazement, Emily's eyes twinkled. “I think he broke Valentis's nose.”

“Wish I'd seen it,” Jessica said with a smile.

Emily sighed. “I liked working for him,” she said, half to herself. “And I suspect I know what he would have done with this order. But it's not my place to say, Lieutenant. Nor is it yours.” Her gaze grew hard again. “You keep your nose clean.”

“Yes, ma'am. And truly, ma'am—thank you for listening.”

Jessica made her way to the atrium, taking in the simulated mid-morning light, and waited on a manicured path by the herb garden. Ted arrived a few minutes later, peering around furtively. He was, in many ways, a horrible spy, and she found it rather charming.

“How'd you get away?” she asked.

“Limonov's been ignoring me for the last fifteen minutes. His guys keep fucking up the battle drills, and he's getting pissed off at them. I can give you maybe ten minutes before he comes looking for me.”

“Come on, then.” She hurried out of the garden and down the hall, and he followed her.

“What's going on?” he asked.

“Emily's going to call Herrod,” she told him. She wanted to run, but there were too many people in the hallway. She could not afford that kind of attention.

“That's good, yes?”

“And then she's going to tell Valentis she did it.”

“Ah.” He thought. “Where are we going?”

“Foster's quarters. Valentis will relieve her of duty. Might even put a guard on her. We can't wait and see.”

“What's in Foster's quarters?”

“If I'm right,” she told him, “he has an off-grid in there somewhere.”

“Which you need for what reason?”

“I want to talk to Captain Solomonoff.”

Ted stopped dead and grabbed her arm. “Jessica. You can't.”

“Ted—”

“That's more than mutiny. That's treason, Jess.”

She shook her arm free. “I'm not going to
tell
her anything,” she said, annoyed. “But I need to hear it from her side. If she killed our captain, I want to know why, and we're getting nothing but bullshit from our own brass.” She started walking again. “With an off-grid, she won't know anything about us if we don't tell her.”

Ted fell into step with her again, but she could tell his enthusiasm was dampened. “If we survive this,” he mumbled, “I'm never letting anyone I know take shore leave again.”

The hallway before Foster's quarters was empty, and they ducked in and closed the door behind them. Jessica took a moment to let her eyes sweep the room: a bunk with a table next to it, a standard-sized dresser, a couch and two chairs, and a low bookcase. He had given the space almost no personalization. There was a stack of real, bound books on the bookcase, but no artwork, no color, no decoration on the walls or around the window.

Over the dresser was projected a single still photograph of a strikingly beautiful, ice-pale blond woman in a white medical coat. Jessica found herself surprised Foster would keep a picture of his wife so close after what he'd confessed to her.

“We're looking for something flat and reflective,” she told Ted, heading for the bookcase. “Like a sheet of glass or polymer. Something that you could embed some circuitry in.”

Ted started with the nightstand, pulling open the single drawer. “It's empty,” he said, sounding puzzled. “Has someone cleared this place out already?”

“I don't think so,” Jessica said. She picked up a book, exam
ined the binding, felt the edges of the stiff cover. “I think he just lived like this.” She found nothing in the first book; setting it aside, she picked up the second.

Ted had knocked his fingers against the sides of the nightstand and switched to the dresser, pulling open the top drawer. She heard him rummaging around, and then he grew still. “Oh,” he said, and something in his voice made her stop and turn. He was staring into the drawer, unmoving.

She carried the book with her to join him. “What is it?”

Ted just nodded toward the drawer. It contained a dozen pairs of underwear, stacked in threes, each folded so uniformly a robot might have placed them there. Nestled behind them, in one corner, was a plain gold ring. In the opposite corner was a burgundy satin hair ribbon, as precisely folded as the underwear, tucked against the back of the drawer. It took her a moment to realize what was bothering Ted: wrapped around the ribbon, barely visible, was a long, dark hair.

“His wife's a blonde,” Ted said quietly.

Jessica remembered the ribbon. She had loaned it to Elena for a party, years ago, some formal reception for a bunch of admirals. Elena had pulled it out in annoyance less than an hour into the party, and had mislaid it. Jessica had reassured her that it wasn't important, but her friend had been irritated with herself when she hadn't been able to find it again.

Apparently the captain had found it first.

Jessica looked between the ring and the ribbon. Two separate lives, never the twain shall meet. She shook herself. “Later, Ted.”

She found a partial transceiver in the third book, and Ted found the other piece tucked into the bed frame. They sat on
the couch and placed the pieces on the table; Jessica let Ted do the delicate work of joining the halves. After a few moments the polymer sheet strobed once with a violet glow, and then the controls were projected before her eyes, pale orange and sharp, as clean as any modern comm setup.

“You can leave if you want,” she said.

He shook his head. “If
Penumbra
's innocent,” he said, “we're following an illegal order. I'm not taking off after all this. Do it.”

Jessica keyed in a message for
Penumbra,
adding only
Galileo
's general ident for authentication. She expected to have to wait for a response while Solomonoff validated the auth, but the connection was accepted almost immediately.

“
Galileo,
this is
Penumbra.
” The voice was a woman's. She spoke Standard with a flat accent, as if she had been raised on Earth. “I have been trying to reach you.”

That brought Jessica up short. “I—who is this?”

“This is Captain Valeria Solomonoff. To whom am I speaking?”

“This is Lieutenant Jessica Lockwood,” she said. “Why have you been trying to contact us?”

There was a pause, and when the woman spoke again, she sounded almost gentle. “I am sorry to have to inform you,” she said, “but your captain has been lost.”

Jessica looked at Ted; she suspected her expression was as puzzled as his. “Yes, we know, Captain. We were told he was shot down. That you shot him down.”

“No,” Solomonoff said. “It was not us. It was the other ship.”

She did not sound worried. Jessica was beginning to feel deeply uneasy. “What other ship?”

“It had no ident.”

Ted spoke up. “Captain Solomonoff, I'm Lieutenant Tetsuo Shimada. Is the ship still out there? Can you give us its position?”

“I am afraid not,” she told him. “Between ours and your captain's efforts, it was shot down as well. It went through with him.”

“Through where?”

Captain Solomonoff sounded genuinely grieved. “We tried to follow,” she told them. “To pull him out. But he was too close. There was nothing we could do. Your captain, I am afraid, was pulled into the wormhole.”