The Cold Between (15 page)

“As I am the holder of grudges,” she told him, “I will blame them for you, if you don't mind.”

“That seems an equitable division of labor,” he agreed.

They fell silent again, and he kept his arm around her waist, acutely aware of his hip brushing hers at every shift of the tram, and he did not realize until later that any doubts he had had about her had vanished.

T
he police had been thorough in searching Trey's flat. Everything he owned, everything that had been neatly shelved or stacked in drawers the night before had been pulled down and tossed to the floor without any pretense of organization. Clothes were strewn in a path from the entryway to the bathroom; in there, they had opened the walls around his water generator and left it in pieces. Elena went in to give it a quick once-over; she thought all the pieces were there, and that she could probably repair it without much effort.

Trey was clearly not thinking about repairs. He called from the living room, where he was clearing debris off of the coffee table. “In the bedroom,” he said, “there is—there was a small figurine. Clear resin. It looks rather like a cat. I kept it on the windowsill. Can you see if you can find it?”

She left the bathroom and headed into the bedroom. The bedding had been tossed to the floor, and the wardrobe opened, all of his clothes and spare linens scattered in a heap. She began sorting items by type as she dug for the figurine.

She should not have felt so calm after her outburst. She hated losing control, and she had lost it completely, in front of a man
she barely knew. But he had listened, and been kind, and had made no excuses for anyone, and somehow all of the festering anger and pain had thinned. She did not feel strong, precisely, but she felt quiet inside, waiting for whatever happened next, and she thought, if he kept holding her hand, she might get through it.

What is it,
she wondered,
that makes him so much easier to trust than Greg?

She lifted a pillow and tossed it onto the bed, and out of the pillowcase rolled a small figurine. Retrieving it, she held it up to the window. It was foggy white, and partly translucent, and although it did not resemble anything in the real world, she understood why he had described it as a cat. It had a sinuous grace, a plump inertia about it, that was distinctly feline. As a work of art, it was both crude and remarkable. She carried it back into the living room.

He had cleared the coffee table and most of the couch, and was sitting, studying the table's polished surface. He looked up at her. “Is it damaged?” he asked.

“I don't see any chips or cracks,” she said, “but I also don't know what it looked like before.” It would have been there, she realized, last night; she had not registered many details beyond him. “It's pretty. Where is it from?”

“Sarah made it for me at school, when I first returned.” He held the cat up to the light, studying the base of it, then placed it in the center of the table. He studied it anxiously, unmoving, and she wondered what he was waiting for.

After a moment there was a blue flash in the corner of the table's surface, and then a pulse of violet light radiated out from the figurine. The polished tabletop became traced with faint
blue instruments, crude touch interface controls, laid out with elegant efficiency. She drew in a breath; like all engineering students, she'd had to manufacture an off-grid system as part of the mechanical curriculum, but hers had been far less sophisticated. This one was a work of art, its interface clean and instantly comprehensible, containing exactly what it needed and no more. She watched him frown at it, and felt like she was seeing him for the first time: he had made this thing, this beautiful machine, and she'd had no idea it was there.

He glanced up, then looked surprised at her stare. She crossed her arms and frowned at him. “If I'd had any idea,” she told him, “I'd have been a lot more careful with your coffee table last night.”

His expression rippled, and she thought he was trying not to laugh. He had laughed the night before, when their utter failure to balance on the table had ended up with both of them on the floor in a graceless heap. “My dear,” he said to her gravely, “this comm will be difficult enough without such marvelous memories in my mind.”

She felt her face warm; she should not have said it. She made her way around the table and sat next to him, feeling his eyes on her face; she watched the interface, looking for the inputs. “How do you connect?” she asked him.

“It uses a combination biological and cryptographic code,” he said. “I have a key that will encode the message so it can only be read by someone who has a corresponding key. If I want to target it specifically, I add the destination bio key to my own, and their signature is verified as well.”

“How do you know the crypto keys?”

“They are taught to us,” he told her. “They rotate fairly frequently, but you get used to remembering.”

“Will the one you're using still be active?”

“No. But she will recognize it, and she will take the message anyway.”

She looked over at him; he was still frowning. “Why will the comm be difficult?”

For a moment his face took on a puzzled look, as if he were translating in his head again. Then he said, “Valeria does not like me.”

She wondered what he had left out of that statement.

It took well over a minute, but he saw a subtle violet pulse traverse the table, and then she heard a voice speak a single word she did not recognize. The voice was a woman's, calm and cool and uninviting.

Trey spoke, and she heard him say his name. When the woman replied, Elena started piecing the words together: it was another Russian derivative, and some of the articles were similar to the language Stoya and Luvidovich had spoken at the police station.

She was not going to pick up much in this conversation, though. They were bickering, and speaking quickly. Just when the woman's tone became most heated, Trey spoke in Standard: “And you know I would not have contacted you had there been another alternative.”

The language switch, she suspected, would have clued the woman in to the fact that he was not alone. She caught his eyes, and he nodded at her. “Captain Solomonoff,” she said formally, “I am Commander Elena Shaw of the CCSS
Galileo.
” She was nothing but nerves; it had been easier talking to Trey in a crowded bar.

“What is it I can do for you, Commander Shaw?”

Valeria Solomonoff's Standard was unaccented, but the ice in her voice was unmistakable. Elena did not react to it. “One of my people was murdered last night here in Novanadyr,” she said. “We have found some information that suggests what happened might be tangentially related to something that happened several weeks ago.”

“And what is the reason you believe I may be interested in this?”

Elena had spoken to enough officers in her career to know when one did not want to talk to her. “The incident involved your ship.”

Valeria was silent for a moment. “Why is it you believe I will discuss anything with you?”

“Because I am looking for the truth.”

It was a weak argument, and Elena was not surprised that Valeria scoffed at it. She began arguing with Trey again, and Elena saw the ire rising in his eyes. Whatever reason Valeria had for disliking him, Elena suspected they knew each other very well.

“Wait, please,” she interrupted. Trey stopped and looked at her, his expression apologetic. “I am doing this wrong,” she said quietly.

He took her hand, and she tightened her fingers around his. “Be direct,” he told her, and she looked into his steady dark eyes and started again.

“If you know my ship,” she said, “you know we do not patrol the Fifth Sector. We are here delivering cargo for another ship that took some damage. The CCSS
Demeter.
Her captain claims you attacked them.”

“If I had,” Valeria replied, no longer trying to hide her hostility, “why do you suppose I would speak of it to you?”

“Valeria—” Trey was annoyed, but Elena squeezed his hand again.

“It's all right, Trey. Why would she trust me?” She was going to have to trust first. “Captain, I'm off the record here. I have heard so many stories at this point I don't know who I am supposed to believe. I have heard a story about PSI firing on
Demeter,
and I can't think of a single logical reason why that would happen. I'd be inclined to ignore the story entirely, except that I can't think of a reason Captain MacBride would lie, either. None of this may have anything to do with anything,” she concluded, dispirited, “but it's the only lead I have, and I don't want this killer to escape. I know you don't know me, but I am asking you, Captain. Please help me.”

The line was silent, and for a while Elena thought the woman would not answer her. When she did, her voice was entirely different: all antagonism was gone, and she sounded as exhausted as Elena felt.

“We did fire on
Demeter,
” she said. “But they fired on us first.”

Elena closed her eyes. She had suspected it—it was the only way PSI's behavior made sense. “Did you take casualties?” She desperately wanted no more dead.

“Minor injuries only,” Valeria said, and Elena thought she appreciated the question. “My field generator, on the other hand, is currently being held together by goodwill and hope.”

Trey squeezed her hand again, and she held on tightly. “Do you know why they shot at you?”

Valeria sighed. “Perhaps you can tell me. It makes very little sense from our side. We were headed for Cygnus, and were recharging our batteries out by the wormhole, well outside the
hot zone.
Demeter
appeared, and I did not think much of it. Certainly it seemed off of her usual path, but we like the spot because it is quiet, and I saw no strangeness in them choosing it for the same reason.

“But then Captain MacBride contacted us—on an open line, so all in the area would hear—and commanded us to remove ourselves from the proximity of the wormhole, or he would fire on us.”

“You did not believe him.”

“I do not have the luxury of disbelieving such a threat,” Valeria said. “I have almost one thousand people on my ship. But I was puzzled. I have known Captain MacBride for many years, and this seemed uncharacteristic. If he had needed us to move for some operation he wanted to stage, he need only have asked. So I asked him what the issue was, and he replied by shooting. We defended ourselves.”

Valeria had a point, Elena thought. If the only requirement had been for
Penumbra
to move, he could have accomplished that without any altercation at all. “Did he leave when you shot back?”

“He did not retreat. We did.”

“Why?”

“His second message was not over the main comms channel,” Valeria said. “It was tunneled directly to me. He said, ‘Please, you have to go.' Do you know Captain MacBride, Commander Shaw?”

“Only by reputation.”

“He is not a man who says ‘please.' I took him at his word. He fired at us as our field was forming, which is why the generator is currently unreliable. I do find myself wondering if his bad aim was deliberate.”

“Do you think he was coerced?”

“I do not know. I do not believe, based on his behavior, that he was being coerced directly. But I was given the distinct impression that he was not happy doing what he was doing.”

Orders, then. It was the only answer. “I know it changes nothing, Captain, and I cannot speak for anyone but myself right now. But what was done to your ship—it is against every order I have ever been given, every oath I have taken, and everything I personally believe. It was an act of war, and no one I know would condone it.”

Valeria changed languages again, and said something Elena thought might have been
That is a very practiced speech.

Trey answered her in Standard. “She means it, Valeria.”

There was silence on the line again, and Elena realized what Trey's change of language had done: he was telling Valeria that he trusted her, that Valeria could trust her, too. “Does this information help you with your murder?”

It didn't. It was baffling, random, tangential. And it was the only thing she had stumbled on that seemed large enough for someone to kill for. “It means,” Elena replied, “that something is very wrong, and I don't know what it is yet.”

“How was he killed, your man?”

“His throat was cut,” Elena told her. “And then his body was dumped on Trey's doorstep.”

“You have been implicated, Treiko?” Valeria sounded worried, and Elena thought her dislike could not run very deep.

“I have been framed,” he corrected. “And although I can think of a great many reasons why I might have been a useful target, I cannot rule out the facts of my childhood as the cause.”

“Which would mean the authorities are involved.”

“I have dealt with the authorities before,” he said dismissively. Elena suspected the woman knew him well enough to know it was bravado. He changed the subject. “Where was Rosaria, with
Castelanna
?”

“We left them at the pulsar,” Valeria said. “We did not think we would need them. We could signal them easily enough from where we were settled. The EMP helps, sometimes; it can filter out some of the low-quality stream traffic, at least briefly.”

Elena wondered how long Valeria had been with PSI. “Did you know the
Phoenix,
Captain Solomonoff?”

There was a pause. “That was a very long time ago, Commander Shaw. Why is it you ask?”

“Her chief medical officer,” Elena told them, “was my captain's mother.”

“My condolences to your captain,” she said. “But is it relevant?”

“It is a coincidence,” Elena said. “I don't like coincidences.” Her head was spinning. “I appreciate your candor about
Demeter,
Captain.”

“I wish you luck on your investigation,” Valeria said. And then, after a pause: “Treiko.”

“Yes?”

“Stay away from the authorities. Look after yourself.” She added one more phrase after that, in her own language; Elena thought it was
Don't do anything foolish.
Elena saw a flicker of warmth in Trey's eyes. He said something in response, gentle and soft, and the table went black.