The Cold Between (39 page)

She stared for a moment at Foster's wife's face. At some point Valentis would come in here, and dig through all of Foster's possessions. On impulse she opened the top dresser drawer and closed her hand around Elena's hair ribbon, tucking it into her pocket and zipping it in safely. When he returned, she would put it back. If by chance he didn't . . . it was nobody's business if he'd saved an old hair ribbon, was it?

“You'd better come back,” she said to the empty room . . . and then she turned and fled.

Elsewhere

T
his will work,
Elena thought, laying isotope cubes over
Lusi
's weapons batteries.
We will get home, and find
Galileo,
and Bob will take care of Greg.

Which was a foolish hope, she reflected. Even if her repair of the engine mount held through the wormhole, she had seen enough damaged engines to suspect it might not withstand the stresses of entering an FTL field. It was possible, of course, that the wormhole would absorb the destruction of the planet, as it had absorbed so much else; but even with all of the anomalies it had displayed, that seemed unlikely. The most likely scenario was that the return trip through the wormhole would tear the engine mount apart again, and they would be stuck drifting in normal space until the blast from the planet overcame them.

And that was if the explosion she was currently setting didn't destroy them first. She was acutely aware that her idea was very close to the stunt that had destroyed the
Phoenix,
and that her assertion that the contained isotope would be more stable than whatever chunk of raw dellinium Captain Kelso had used was nothing but guesswork. The casing helped, but even the nanometer gap she had to pry open to insert the detonator made the
substance spike alarmingly. The thing seemed to have nothing like a predictable matrix; power spun and roiled within it like an angry animal. No wonder Ellis was still working on the containment. She knew why people wanted it; it was powerful and fascinating, and seemed like a miracle. Annihilation often looked that way, if you were the sort of person who always assumed you would survive.

She focused on her task, laying a cube over one of the fuel reserves and sliding her spanner—at its thinnest setting—through one seam. Objectively their deaths did not matter, but subjectively she discovered she cared very much if they survived. She had never felt so strongly that she had more left to do with her life.

She wondered what Danny would have done if he were with them. She had never thought of him as particularly bold or brave, even early on, when all of his flaws had been endearing. He never took an assignment with anything less than enthusiasm and good cheer, but he never volunteered for anything, either. He was a good soldier, and would always have been a good soldier; but he would never have been extraordinary.

Except that they would not be here if he had not followed the clues. Insight or dumb luck—it didn't matter now. He had died because someone needed this to stay a secret, and because he had died, they had a chance to change it all.

Danny Lancaster, savior of humanity.

He would have enjoyed that.

She steadied the last cube in place, then pushed herself to her feet and climbed back over to
Sartre.
“How is he?” she asked, as she sealed
Lusi
's door for the last time and secured their inner hatch.

She turned to Trey, who had stood when she walked in, then followed his eyes down to Greg's face. Greg was awake, his eyes on her, and she felt a ripple of relief. She took a step closer and knelt next to him. His skin looked gray and bloodless, and he was still covered in a sheen of sweat, but his gaze was steady on her face as she leaned over him.

“Greg?” she asked.

“He fades in and out,” Trey told her. “His pressure has stabilized, and the internal bleeding has slowed. The radiation damage is a more immediate concern; that fine medkit does not seem to be equipped for radiation exposure. When we get to the other side, we will need to find him a doctor quickly.”

“
Galileo,
” Greg said.

“When he speaks,” Trey said, and she caught a hint of dryness in his tone, “that is almost always what he says. I do believe he said something about your Commander Valentis as well. Something about hitting him harder.”

“Did you hit him?” Elena asked Greg.

“Bastard,” Greg mumbled.

She made herself smile at him. “I'm sorry I missed that.”

Greg took a shuddering breath, and said, “Off my ship.”

“When we get back,” she assured him. She stood and turned to Trey. “I've got the trigger set on remote, rather than a timer. It's all guesswork anyway, and given everything that's gone wrong I'd rather have the flexibility of blowing it ourselves. What's our countdown?”

“Three minutes, eighteen seconds,” Trey told her.

She reached out to squeeze his fingers, for him or for herself, she wasn't sure. “Let's hope nobody's coming the other way,” she said, and turned to the cockpit.

She was only half joking.

Because they did not know if Stoya had sent a message back. They did not know if the lab systems pinged periodically with status. If anything solid was coming through when they were trying to return, the best-case scenario would be that they would be stuck inside the wormhole for the rest of their lives.

She brought the ship about, and they tugged their explosive payload toward the wormhole. Trey strapped himself into the copilot's seat to monitor their position. Elena watched through the window, counting stars, until a spot of darkness came into view: the rear of the object. She flew a spiral around it, giving it a wide berth, then slowed as the corona began to show. The window polarized as they centered on the entrance.

“One kilometer . . . now,” Trey said.

The magnetic clamps gave a deep thrum as they released the
Lusitania.

“It's pushing back on us,” she reported, “but we're holding steady.”

“Five hundred meters,” Trey said.

There was nothing to do now but watch. Elena reached out a hand, and Trey took it.

“Ten meters. Detonation.”

The flare caught them first, pouring around their ship like sunrise. Before them the wormhole spun and thrashed, beautiful and menacing. “Gun it,” she said, and the ship's engine lit up to full throttle just as the percussion wave struck them. She held her breath . . .

They remained whole. A lurch of inertia hit her as the artificial gravity struggled to keep up, and then they were inside.

She felt their engine vibrating with effort, but there was no turbulence, even when the ship drew power away from the internal lights and the three of them were illuminated with nothing but the color of the anomaly. She had that same strange sensation of deafness; still, in the midst of it all, she thought she heard Trey say
It's beautiful.
She could feel his hand through the fabric of her glove and she squeezed tightly, hoping.

And then, without fanfare, they burst out the other side, stars and space surrounding them as if they had not just done something remarkable. Freeing her hand, she pulled up a star chart. “Where and when are we?” she asked the ship.

“Fifth Sector, adjacent to B1829, radiation zone. Time and date 3258.00.19. Earth-relative 0028.”

She closed her eyes, relieved. The time skew, if it existed, had been a small one. They were back, and they were where they needed to be. Now all they needed—

“We have a proximity alarm,” Trey said, his voice tense. “Right outside the radiation zone.”

“Have they seen us?” she asked.

“They aren't moving toward us,” he told her.

“How many?”

Trey rotated the visual to take in the other side of the ship, and all of Elena's relief deserted her.

Closest to them was a hybrid ship of some kind, larger than most ships the Corps ran. Elena saw the lines of old Type 18s and Atlantis-class explorers in her, along with some engine banks that were clearly D series, as new as the ones they deployed to the border ships in Sector Four. Some of her was custom, lovely organic sweeping lines, expanding cabin space as
well as strengthening her structure. She was dark, mostly silver-black, with a few dull scars that looked recent. Her nose was pointed away from them. Elena had never seen a PSI ship up close before, but she knew who this had to be.

But the beautiful, foreign ship was not what caught her eye. It was the ship beyond the PSI vessel that twisted her gut with dread. Nose to nose with
Penumbra,
her external weapons glowing with charge, was
Galileo.

Will had apparently been busy.

She hit
Sartre
's comm, and was greeted with nothing but blankness. Frowning, she hit it again, but next to her Trey was analyzing the signal. “They have blocked it,” he said tersely.

“Blocked how?”

“They are not accepting incoming comms traffic,” he told her. “Complete blackout.”

There was no way
Penumbra
could have done something like that. Elena stared at the ship, her heart going cold.
Galileo
had deliberately shut off comms contact. Such things weren't entirely unheard of, especially during delicate operations; but in this case she suspected Will had a different motivation. He couldn't have known they were coming out of the wormhole. If the Admiralty hadn't ordered the blackout, he was hiding from something else. Possibly someone asking him what he was doing provoking war with PSI.

And yet, if they couldn't get the two ships to move, war wouldn't matter.

Next to Elena, Trey was sending a message to the PSI ship. “. . . have an explosion coming through the wormhole in approximately seven minutes. Magnitude dangerously high. You need to clear the area, Valeria. Get her out of there.”

Captain Solomonoff replied promptly, her voice incredulous.
“Treiko?”

“Yes, Valeria, and there is no time to explain. You need to get the field going and get away, quickly.”

There was a pause. “We can't,” she said softly.

Elena looked over at Trey. He was scowling, looking furious, and if she had not known him as well as she did she would have missed the fear in his eyes. “What do you mean, you can't?”

“Stoya's ship,” Elena guessed. “Greg said you were hit.”

“Captain Foster—is he with you?” she asked.

“He is injured,” Trey told her, and did not elaborate.

“It was not his fault,” she told them. Her voice was stately and gentle, and Elena wondered how anyone could have believed she was mad. “Our field generator was already damaged; the cloaked ship simply finished what
Demeter
had started. But your
Galileo
—she still has a field generator. You can get her away.”

“She's not listening,” Elena said.

“What about the stream?”

Of course.
Unstrapping herself, she opened the ship's console. Tucked in beside the rear scanners was a sleek, boxy commercial-grade streamer. They could priority wideband to everyone if it was operational. “Hang on,” she said, searching for the activation lock; with one quick twist of her spanner, the streamer lit up green.

There was something she needed to do before contacting Jessica.

“This is a General Evacuation Alert,” she said, watching the green light winking steadily. The signal radiated out from their ship, catching the stream wherever it could, reaching the widest
possible audience. “The wormhole will undergo an energy discharge of lethal strength in six minutes, possibly less. Minimum safe distance is estimated to be ten million kilometers. Remove yourselves from this space immediately.” She looped the message, and scrambled back into her chair.

“Do you think,” Trey asked Elena, “that Valentis might be listening without answering?”

“Possibly, but he's not going to answer
us.
”

“Then I will try,” Valeria said. She left them in on the transmission. “Captain Valentis, this is Captain Solomonoff. You are in grave danger. We must talk.”

“Come on, you arrogant bastard,” Elena said under her breath. If she knew Will at all, he would not be able to resist the urge to posture, even if his intent was to blow
Penumbra
out of the sky.

He did not disappoint her. “The only one in grave danger is you, Captain,” Valentis said smugly.
Smugly.
How had Greg ever been able to stand the man? Elena would need to have a long talk with him about his perceptions of people.

She broke in on the transmission. “Commander Valentis, sir, I think there's been a misunderstanding.”

There was a brief pause. Elena expected many things—anger, disappointment, uncertainty—and she got none of them.

“How surprising to hear your voice, Chief.” Will said smoothly. “I'm sorry to find my suspicions about you were correct.”

She wondered what kind of an audience he had for this message. “Back at you, sir,” she said tersely. “But we can discuss that later. That wormhole back there is going to be spewing a
radiation field that will make the
Phoenix
look like a summer heat wave in less than six minutes, and you need to get
Galileo
out of there.”

Valentis laughed. “You must take me for a fool, Chief. We've caught you here, plotting with your PSI friends, and you want me to run off?”

Me,
Elena realized.
Not
us
. Not
Galileo
. Me.
“Sir,” she tried again, “we'll come with you if you want, but there's going to be an explosion, and—”

He interrupted. “If you'd followed orders, Chief, this PSI ship wouldn't have murdered our captain, and none of this—”

“Oh,
please,
” she snapped. “He's not dead. Sorry about that, by the way. But the bastard you sent after him turned out to be a monumental fuckup. Are you going to get
Galileo
out of there or not?”

At that, Will paused, and Elena wanted to reach through the space between the two ships and strangle him. “If he's alive,” Will said, “let me talk to him.”

Shit.
Elena turned back to Greg. His eyes were half-shut, and his breathing was rapid; he was in no condition to respond. “He's indisposed at the moment. Look, can't you just get out of there, and we'll deal with all of this later?”

“I don't think so,” Will replied, his confidence returned. “Your collusion in Captain Foster's death is noted, Chief. When this is wrapped up, we can—”