Elizabeth Bonesteel - The Cold Between

“What did you think?” she asked irritably. “That there were hordes of them down there, and one of them diverted me while the others hunted down Danny?”

He was staring at her, but she knew the look. That was exactly what he had been thinking. “Come sit down,” he said at last, and took a step toward a bench next to the herb garden.

Now you want to keep this private? “We do not have time.” But she followed him, and she saw the others turn away, losing interest in the argument.

When she sat, he turned toward her. “Tell me.”

“That man they’ve arrested. Treiko Zajec. He’s the man I was with last night. And unless they completely bollixed up the time of death, he could not have murdered Danny.”

“You’re sure of this.”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t step out, comm someone else? What about while you were sleeping?”

“We didn’t sleep.” He looked away, and she felt like shaking him again. “Greg, the ident. Are we really sure it’s him?”

“He’s the right age,” he said, “and he’s apparently known to the local PD.” He rubbed his eyes, and for a moment she glimpsed his extreme fatigue. She wondered if he had commed Danny’s sister yet. “Elena, what the hell is a PSI captain doing in a place like Novanadyr?”

The Fifth Sector was not their usual patrol. Galileo took the Fourth Sector, and was familiar with the PSI ships that shared their territory. Greg had met all of the officers, had even befriended a few of them; Elena knew most of their names. But even outside of the Fifth Sector, everyone in the Corps knew the names of its PSI captains: Piotr Adnovski, Valeria Solomonoff, Aleksandra Venkaya, and Treiko Zajec.

The dark-eyed chef. Her lover.

“He’s retired,” she told Greg. “He said about six months.”

“Why Volhynia?”

“He was born there.”

“Why’d he leave?”

She thought of the sister who did not want to acknowledge him. “He didn’t say. Greg, why does it matter?” She shifted, wanting to run to the hangar and get moving. “He didn’t kill Danny, and I need to make a statement, or they’ll hang it around his neck.”

“I’ve talked to the cops,” he said. “Stoya, and that kid they’ve got in charge of it. They’re not stupid. You really think they’re just going to hang it on an innocent man?”

“That kid they’ve got in charge of it is part of the problem,” she said.

His face grew wary. “Why?”

She told him.

“Oh, that’s fucking marvelous, ” he snapped. “The chief fucking investigator, knocked on his ass by the most notorious pirate in the sector, over you. ”

“So you see why I need to make a statement.”

He shook his head. “Elena, you can’t go back there. What do you think they’re going to say when they find out you and Danny were lovers? You really think that’s going to help the guy?”

“What are they going to do, call me a liar? With Central backing me up?” He just looked at her, and after a moment her stomach dropped. “Oh,” she said.

“You go down there, you’re just going to make it worse.”

“You’re telling me Central doesn’t care who killed Danny?”

“It’s not about that.”

His expression had closed again, and she clenched her teeth. God, this secrecy is bullshit. “Greg,” she asked him, “what’s going on?”

“You know the political situation with Volhynia.”

Everyone knew the political situation here. Volhynia: the planet that didn’t require terraformers, had a healthy, growing population, was a tourist center, and a scientific hub. Central needed people to believe that Volhynia was not the exception: that humanity was able to thrive out here, that they weren’t fighting a losing battle against score after score of hostile environments.

But she could not believe Central would let the murder of one of their own go unpunished. “I don’t believe it,” she said flatly. “It’s something else, Greg, something that you’re trying not to tell me.” I’m going back with or without your permission, she told him silently, so give me something to work with here.

He was staring at her intently, eyes serious, evaluating her. He frightened some people when he was like this, but she knew better. He was trying to understand, trying to read her mind, trying to figure out how much he really needed to say. Before, he would not have hesitated; he would have known he could trust her. In all fairness, before, she would have trusted his advice without needing to know why he gave it, too.

Now, she needed to know. After a moment he looked away. “This is command-level intel, Elena,” he said.

“Who the hell am I going to tell?”

He shot her a look. “MacBride is reporting that Demeter was hit by PSI.”

She thought for a moment he was joking. “Bullshit,” she said.

“He is reporting,” he told her, “that they approached the PSI ship Penumbra outside the Phoenix hot zone, and when they asked what the ship was doing there, they were fired upon.”

“Penumbra.” She had a vague memory of having heard the name. “That wasn’t Captain Zajec’s ship.”

Greg shook his head. “Solomonoff’s.”

“She doesn’t have the reputation for being crazy.”

“None of them do.”

“But Central is still letting MacBride file this work of fiction.”

His lips tightened. “He’s an experienced Corps captain, Elena, and a die-hard patriot. And why in the hell would Niall MacBride make up a story that makes him sound like a coward?”

True enough … MacBride was all ego and bravado, but he did his job, and he did not have a reputation for running away. “So Central thinks something is up with PSI.”

“Central is watching very carefully right now.”

“So carefully they will let Volhynia convict a man for murder who had nothing to do with it. ”

His face took on a careful expression. “Kind of a coincidence,” he said, “that of all the people in that bar, Zajec talked to you.”

Bastard, she thought, but something had occurred to her. “Listen—I’ll allow for the possibility that it wasn’t my wit and charm that made him take me home.” She hated saying it. She certainly did not believe it—not after last night. “But think about this: let’s suppose, for a moment, that PSI has some secret scheme that involves making MacBride look chickenshit, and picking off our mid-level infantry grunts one at a time. Does Central really want Captain Zajec in the hands of the authorities on Volhynia? Where by the end of the day they’ll have him locked up in some room so far belowground he’ll never see sunlight again? It makes no sense, does it?”

Please, she thought at Greg. Please understand what I’m saying.

He was staring away from her, his eyes aimed at the herb garden, seeing nothing. “Why do I feel like you’d say anything to get me to agree to this?”

“Because I’m right,” she told him, “and you know it.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “Central won’t want him locked up on Volhynia,” he said, “but they’re not going to want him running around free, either.”

That was an angle she had not thought of. “But—”

“You can’t have it both ways, Elena. You tell me he’s useful? I agree. That means we use him.”

“He’s retired, for God’s sake,” she snapped. “He doesn’t know what happened to Demeter. ”

“And you know this how?” He opened his eyes and stared at her, his gaze hard. “This isn’t some guy you picked up at a school dance. This is a PSI captain who runs into you while we are on alert. Central isn’t going to buy ‘he’s retired.’”