The Cold Between (30 page)

Trey drifted next to her. “If you would like to look after him,” he said, his voice low, “I will finish sealing the oxygen leak, and see how her systems are running.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “You can triage a Corps troop ship?”

He raised his eyebrows back, looking amused. “I am familiar enough with this model,
m'laya.
I would not attempt to transfer any of the power systems without your assistance, of course, but I can evaluate how badly she is damaged.” He laid a hand on her arm and lowered his voice. “Elena, my dear, he is alive. Whatever he says to you, remember that you are happy about that.”

Her face warmed; he could read her so well. She put her hand over his and squeezed his fingers. “I won't kill him until you come back,” she promised; and as she had hoped, he shot her a grin before turning away to leave her alone with her captain.

She followed Greg in, pulling off her hood as her feet touched the ground and stripping off the safety suit. Layers bothered her; she always felt too hot and too confined. She felt Greg's eyes on her as she carefully folded the suit, replacing it in the closet where she had found it.

“You're out of uniform, chief,” he said.

Well, he had come back to himself quickly enough. “Yes, sir,” she said simply. She turned around to face him, arms folded, waiting. He was scowling at her.

“You care to explain yourself?”

“Could you be more specific?”

He snapped. “Fuck
that,
Elena. You broke a criminal out of prison, stole a ship, and ran for PSI? And what the fuck happened to your comm unit? I report you AWOL and your career is
done,
do you get that?”

She did. But what she didn't get was why he thought that mattered now. “Why wouldn't you help him?”

“What the fuck do you think I'm doing here?”

“I don't know!” Months and months of shouting at her, and she was tired of it. “I don't know anything, Greg. I don't know why you didn't tell me why we took
Demeter
's cargo, or what really happened with
Penumbra,
or why Danny was digging into the
Phoenix.
I don't know why you sent me down there to move Trey from their prison to our prison when you
know
he didn't have anything to do with any of this. I don't know why you have been lying to me and shutting me out for six months!”

“I haven't lied about anything.”

“Bullshit, Greg. Don't play me for a fool, and don't talk to me like I'm some fucking
subordinate,
because we are hell and gone the middle of nowhere, and I am done playing the good soldier.”

His expression darkened, and for a moment she thought he was going to shout again; but then he turned away from her, his gloved hands coming up to rub his face. He looked down at himself; he was still in his safety suit. Irritably he pulled down the zipper and tugged it off, tossing it on the couch where she and Trey had been sleeping. He sat down on the other sofa and looked up at her, his eyes bleary. She wondered if he had had as little sleep as she had.

“Did either one of you have anything to do with that cop getting killed?”

She frowned. Who was he talking about? “What cop? Who's dead?”

“They found Luvidovich lying on the floor of the cell you left him in,” he said.

He was watching her face closely, but she had no lies to betray. “I didn't think I'd hit him that hard,” she said faintly. Killing a police officer, even in self-defense, was going to complicate the situation.

“It wasn't the hit that killed him,” Greg told her. “His throat was cut. Just like Danny's.”

She stared at him for one long moment, adding that piece of information to her stack of mismatched puzzle pieces, then turned and headed back to
Lusi
to fetch Trey.

Galileo

J
essica was a superlative cryptographer, and this goddamned message header was bullshit.

The captain had told her it was Admiralty, but Jessica thought he was wrong. It was official, certainly; she knew enough of Corps crypto techniques to recognize the telltales. But it didn't use any of the official conventions, and without some kind of Rosetta stone, she was shooting in the dark. It was almost as if the sender had come up with a completely different language. She knew a handful of cryptographers with that kind of skill, but she was only on speaking terms with a few of them. With the ship on battle alert, she'd never get clearance to comm anyone anyway.

Not that it would help. She lay down on the bed and looked at the ceiling, letting the glyphs and equations fade from her mind. She wasn't going to find the sender; she wasn't even going to find the origin. Without Foster's access, she wouldn't even have been able to read them. This guy was really good.

And he hadn't become really good overnight.

“
Galileo,
” she said, “have you seen this kind of crypto code before?”

“Specify parameters,” it said.

“You should know what I'm thinking, not what I'm saying,” Jessica grumbled, but it was a fair question. “Okay, how about this. This is a weird ident, yeah?”

“The referenced ident is comprised of cryptographic techniques not in wide use,” the ship agreed.

“So have you seen anything similarly unusual?” Before the ship could ask for clarification, she added, “Not identical—although, yeah, that, too—but the same kind of not widely used technique?”

“Specify time frame.”

“God,
Galileo,
you're only seven. Search your whole history. Knock yourself out.”

At least the ship understood slang. “Seventy-nine matches found,” it said.

Holy cats.
“Seriously?”

“Seventy-nine matches found,” the ship repeated helpfully.

“How many recipients?”

“Four.”

“Specify, you stubborn thing.”

“Gregory Foster. Robert Hastings. Anton Jacobs. William Valentis.”

All senior officers—and two deceased. In spite of herself, she shivered.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a chime at the door. She sat up and swept her work aside just as Galileo displayed
Captain Valentis.

“Well, this can't be good,” she said to herself. She stood and came to attention, facing the door. “Let him in.”

Valentis stepped into the room, and the door closed behind
him. “At ease,” he said. His eyes ran over the walls, the table, her chairs, and finally rested on her. “I've come to see how you're doing, Lieutenant.”

Well,
that
was flat-out bullshit. “As well as can be expected, sir.” If it had been anyone else, she would have asked the same question in return; but she already knew this was not that kind of a visit.

He clasped his hands behind his back and walked up to her window. “Yes,” he said. “We're all pretty shaken by this. Probably not the best time for us to be going into battle, but I suppose it can't be helped.”

Damned if he didn't sound regretful. “Is it inevitable, do you think, sir?” she asked. Maybe he could give her some hope. “Going to war?”

“War is a frightening prospect. Nobody wants it. But it's our job out here to protect people, to keep the peace. It's possible
Penumbra
's a rogue, and we're not challenging all of PSI. But they've taken out two of our people already, and—”

“Two?”

His eyebrows twitched, and she regretted the interruption. “They murdered our captain, Jessica. Between that and what was done to
Demeter,
it seems clear that pirate on Volhynia murdered Lancaster.”

“What about the chief, sir?”

He arranged his face into something plausibly sympathetic. “She may not have known,” he allowed, “but that's going to be for a military court to decide. We can't help her unless she turns herself in.”

“Does she even know she's in trouble?”

At that he looked irritated, and she realized, once again, how little patience he had. “Unless you think she's a fool, Lieutenant Lockwood, Commander Shaw is quite aware of the consequences of her actions. Do you think she's a fool?”

Jessica straightened and looked ahead. “No, sir.”

For the moment that seemed to mollify him. He began pacing in front of her, slowly, like a university lecturer. She had seen Captain Foster do it hundreds of times; Valentis looked like a spidery mimic. “I admire your loyalty to your friend, I truly do,” he said. “But I'm asking you to remember your loyalty to
Galileo,
and to the Corps. I know you don't care for me. You're hardly the only one.” He managed a self-deprecating smile. “But I'm in command now. It wasn't my choice, but that's where we are. And I need to know you'll work with me moving forward.”

He sounded flinty, tense, like a rubber band ready to snap. Which was understandable, given what he had been through. She suspected she was a little close to the edge herself. But that wasn't what bothered her.

What bothered her was that he was lying.

She was not sure if it was what he was telling her, or simply his pretense of sympathy, but something in what he was saying was completely and utterly wrong in a way that made her hair stand on end. “I understand, sir,” she said, as professionally as she could. “I'm sorry I've disappointed you, sir.”

He fixed her with those eyes of his, so dark they were nearly black. Lanie had dark eyes, too, but hers were always filled with light. Even when she was unhappy—even in the depths of her grief over Anton Jacobs—Lanie's eyes held warmth and love. Valentis's eyes were empty. “I believe you, Jessica,” he replied.
“And I'm willing to start over with you. I need everyone on this mission. I need to know you are on our side.”

She swallowed. “Of course I'm on our side, sir,” she said.

“I'm glad to hear that. I'm lifting your restrictions for the duration of this mission. We can revisit the incident when all of this is done.” He reached out and touched her arm. “If we can get along for the next few weeks, I may not have to report this at all.”

It was everything she could do not to rip her arm out from under his hand. She took a moment to steady her breathing before she replied. “I appreciate what you're doing for me, sir. Thank you, sir.”

She stood stock-still and measured the time in heartbeats. After far too many, he took his hand off of her, and the oxygen returned to the room. He glanced around as he turned to go. “You've done nice things with your quarters, Lieutenant,” he remarked. “Very attractive. Very feminine. I bet not a lot of people know that about you.” He shot her a cold smile. “We'll talk again after we stand down.”

He left the room.

More than anything in that moment Jessica wanted a shower. Instead, she stepped out of her quarters and looked up and down the hall to make sure Valentis was gone. With everyone at battle readiness the halls were nearly empty. She left her room behind and headed for the infirmary, sending a message to Ted while she walked. When he answered, she said, “Can you get away?”

“I don't know.” Ted sounded irritable. “Valentis put Limonov in charge.
Limonov.
Never mind the crazy stuff; that man hasn't touched a starlight drive in fifteen years, minimum, and
he's
telling
me
what to do?”

“Not relevant at the moment, Ted.”

“
Not relevant?
If Lanie were here, she'd be kicking his ass right out the door.”

If Lanie were here,
Jessica thought,
she'd be organizing a mutiny against William Valentis.

“Listen,” Ted was saying. “I dug up a couple of things on—”

“Not over a comm, Ted.” Her caution was probably misplaced, but she didn't want him saying anything in front of the
Demeter
crowd in engineering, either. “I need you to meet me in the infirmary. I just had a seriously creepy chat with Valentis. It wouldn't surprise me if he's monitoring everything I do.”

“He can't do that. He doesn't have that kind of crypto skill.”

“He doesn't have to,” she pointed out. “He just needs to know someone who does. He's not stupid, Ted. He's very not stupid. Also,” she added, the thought finally surfacing, “I'm not so sure he's really following orders.”

Ted paused. “I'll tell Limonov I've got, I don't know, motion sickness or something,” he said at last. “He'll want me to get it checked before we reach
Penumbra.
I'll meet you there.” He ended the connection, and Jessica broke into a run.

Elsewhere

H
e should not have been surprised at Luvidovich's death.

Trey sat on the couch opposite Foster as Elena's captain told them what they had left behind on Volhynia. Elena paced between them, peppering Foster with questions and filling him in on their escape and eventual ambush. Trey tuned most of it out. He felt no need for clarification; it was easy enough, once Foster related Stoya's history, to piece together what had happened. Luvidovich had amassed enough circumstantial evidence to credibly accuse Stoya of Lancaster's murder. Killing Luvidovich made sense in that context; Stoya was both covering his tracks and reinforcing public perception of Trey's guilt. What Trey could not figure out was why Stoya would have killed Lancaster to begin with.

He felt robbed.

Despite Elena's ministrations, his shoulder ached where Luvidovich had stabbed him, and the smaller cuts across the rest of his body sent faint signals of pain every time he shifted. He had bruises on his face from being beaten that morning.
That morning.
He remembered Luvidovich putting his hands on Elena at the bar, how much he had enjoyed knocking the boy to the
ground, how he had known, somehow, that he would see him dead someday. He had been still, fists clenched, silent, as Luvidovich had beaten and tortured him, and now he would never have the chance for revenge.

He wondered if Stoya had saved his soul.

He tuned in again when Foster told them he had instructed
Penumbra
to contact Central. Elena just scoffed at him. “You really think that will help?”

“Central isn't the enemy, Chief,” Foster said.

“Well they sure as hell aren't friends,” she snapped. “Enough's enough, Greg. We answered your questions. What the hell has been going on?”

So Foster told them, going back six months, explaining his second-in-command's investigation, and his original belief that it was related to
Demeter.
When he told them about the anonymous messages he had received, Elena turned her back to him, her arms crossed. Trey could see the look on her face: lost, hurt, and angry.

“So you knew it was about the
Phoenix
all along,” she said.

Foster stared at her back. “I didn't know shit, Elena,” he told her. “All I knew is someone was trying to jerk my chain, and they weren't doing a bad job of it. I didn't have a thing apart from a stack of messages from an anonymous crank.”

From there any pretense of peace between them collapsed. Foster insisted on repeatedly taking her to task for cutting him off to rescue Trey, and she could not hear the deep worry behind his words. Instead she accused him of abandoning them, of following the rules out of cowardice.

“
Cowardice?
” he shouted. “I brought down two fucking platoons! With
actual weapons,
not kitchen implements.”

“You were too late,” she shouted in return. “While you were making sure you weren't going to get in trouble for breaking the rules, Luvidovich was
torturing
him! He'd have been dead before you showed up!”

And that was the other fascinating part of all this: Elena had been quite clear on her feelings for Foster, but she seemed spectacularly oblivious to his for her. Trey didn't know what kind of a poker face the man had in other situations, but every word and gesture he made betrayed how close to the bone she cut him. On some level, Trey reasoned, she had to know; every shot she took was true, designed for maximum impact. And Foster kept engaging her, kept coming back, kept fueling her anger.

Trey had been the same with Valeria. And Elena, like Valeria, knew exactly how to hurt someone who loved her.

They began arguing over Will Valentis, for whom Elena clearly had little affection.

“What makes you think he won't report
you
AWOL, Greg?” she was saying. “On the off chance we all reappear, he'll want to keep
Galileo
for himself.”

Foster shook his head. “That won't happen,” he said decisively. “Central won't give him
Galileo.
He's not captain material, and he knows it.”

Now that, Trey thought, was curious. “How does he know?” Trey asked.

Foster looked across at him, surprised. “It comes up in Eval.”

“Every year?”

“He's ambitious. Most people are. But he knows he's not viewed that way, and not only by me.”

Trey frowned. He had chosen Rosaria as his first officer ten years before he retired because he knew she would make a
strong leader someday. “Why would you keep him as a second if he could not take over for you?”

“Will's a good foil,” Foster told him. “He does good work.” He turned to Elena. “You remember how he was after Jake died?”

A shadow crossed Elena's face, and Trey thought Foster had evoked the painful memory deliberately. “He kept the crew organized,” she said, for Trey's benefit. “He kept them all together. Kept them busy. He did a good job.”

“So he is a steady man under pressure, your Commander Valentis.”

“Yes,” Foster told him.

“He handled the loss of your previous engineering chief.”

“He kept people on shift, but made sure everyone had downtime. Didn't ding anyone for being late or not getting everything finished, but made sure everyone was accounted for. Made sure we were looking after each other.”

“I imagine Lieutenant Lancaster's death was different,” Trey remarked. Elena was watching him closely.

“Of course it was,” Greg said. “They were friends.”

Trey raised an eyebrow at Elena, and she nodded. “More so after we broke up,” she told him.

“But Commander Valentis was not friendly with your Commander Jacobs?”

Foster nearly laughed. “No. They were oil and water.”

“Still, one would think that sudden death would be handled much the same way.”

“I thought so, too,” Foster admitted. “But Will was really shaken up. Had no idea what to do with himself. I hadn't known they were so close, but I've never seen Will like that before. He—”

He broke off, staring at Trey, but it was Elena who said it. “You think he's a part of it.” Her voice was mostly air.

“I think,” Trey said, “that he knows more of what happened to that poor boy than he has told. Why is it you do not consider him command material?”

“Because he's an antisocial asshole,” Elena interjected.

Foster looked annoyed. “You have never liked him,” he retorted, and Trey recognized an old argument.

“It's the truth,” she insisted. She turned to Trey. “He has the regs memorized, which isn't in itself a bad thing; I've got most of them memorized myself.”

“Especially the ones you've broken,” Foster put in.

She ignored him. “But with Will, they're the first thing he goes to. Like he can't understand what's going on unless he puts it in the context of some rigid definition.” She turned back to Foster. “You said Will's a good foil. You're an intuitive decision maker. You know what's right, you just don't always know why. Will pushes at you, and makes you figure out the why of it all.”

“How is that bad?”

“Has he ever changed your mind, Greg? Even once?”

“I—” Foster broke off, and Trey thought she was getting through. “I don't change my mind much.”

“You change it with me all the time.”

Trey refrained from remarking on that.

“That still doesn't make him guilty,” Foster insisted.

Elena's jaw set. “Greg, think about it. Has he ever once made an argument to you that made sense? Beyond the letter of the law? You see the big picture, how it all works together; he just sees scaffolding.”

Foster fell silent, and Trey carefully avoided looking at him. “Captain,” he said, “how many people knew you were coming after Elena?”

“Jessica knew,” Foster replied, subdued. “Lieutenant Lockwood. And I told Will. He was—” He broke off, looking chagrined. “He thought I was being unreasonable.”

“Did he know you were violating orders?” Elena asked.

“Yes.” His eyebrows knit together. “Even though my call to Admiral Herrod was encrypted.” He met Trey's eyes again, and this time all Trey saw was a soldier, old and tired. “You're suggesting he set me up.”

“He's always wanted
Galileo,
” Elena said, and Trey knew she believed it.

“But he's not a killer, Elena.”

Trey had found, throughout his life, that there were very few people who would not kill under the right circumstances. “He is ambitious,” he said matter-of-factly. “He has been thwarted in those ambitions, repeatedly, by one man; and he has recently been granted an opportunity to excel by a governmental organization with great political power.”

“Fifth Sector crime is hardly a political bombshell,” Foster protested. “They're using him because he's desperate.”

“You have said yourself you do not believe local crime is the subject of his work. And the line between desperation and murder can be quite thin. On this point you may trust me.”

Trey could see it in Foster's eyes: the beginning of disillusionment, the grief of loss. “I can't believe it of him,” he said flatly.

“That's because you're usually a good judge of character,” Elena told him, and Trey thought she meant it as a kindness.
“Will wasn't dangerous before, but they weren't dangling a carrot in front of him before.”

Foster shut his eyes for a moment, his expression grim. “
Demeter,
” he said at last. “He asked me to take on
Demeter
's mission.”

“Why'd you say yes?”

“I'd been a jerk about his investigation.” When Elena raised her eyebrows at him, he looked away. “I knew he was under orders, but I was pissed off. I thought I ought to make it up to him, and he said it would help.”

Foster's jaw had set, but Trey didn't think he was angry anymore. There were more questions, but Trey knew better than to pursue it. “Captain Foster,” he said, “are you feeling well enough to help with repairs?”

Elena flashed him a look, but accepted his change of subject. “I want to see if there are enough field generator parts left between the two ships to construct one,” she explained. “And if we can wire our scanners into
Lusi
's, we might be able to find ourselves a power source that can get us out of here faster.”

The two of them began to discuss strategy, and Trey let himself tune out again. He must have been told, at some point in his career, how old Greg Foster was. He knew a little of the man by reputation, despite the fact that he flew in a different sector; but on Volhynia, listening to his well-worn arguments with Elena, Trey had constructed a mental picture of a much older man. A man his own age. This man was young, and handsome, and angry and full of fire. He was at the start of his career, the start of his life, with nothing but heroism behind him and hope at his feet. He had none of Trey's aches and pains, none of Trey's mistakes.

Trey watched Elena. She was gripping her elbows tightly, body language still and closed as she listened to Foster and gave him instructions. Trey had thought her perceptive. He had felt she could see him, that if she had forgiven him, perhaps what he had done was forgivable. He closed his eyes for a moment, then rose to his feet. “I will reset the scanner interface here,” he told them, and walked around them to the pilot's console. He did not look back. If Elena was watching him, he did not want to know.