The Cold Between. Elizabeth Bonesteel

stood up and circled behind his desk, parsing that. “Why not?”

      “Sir, I—dammit, Captain, I’m under orders here. From people who outrank you.” He sounded desperate. “I can’t just give you this investigation. It’d be my career.”

      “It always comes back to your career, doesn’t it, Will? It’s never about the crew, or even the mission. It’s always what’s in it for you.”

      Will had reddened. “That’s not fair, Captain. What I’m doing for S-O is important.”

      “Yes,” Greg said icily. “I’m sure it is. So important you can’t tell a living soul, so now we’ve got a dead one.”

      “You’re not putting Lancaster’s death on me.”

      “Then tell me who to put it on, Will.”

      Will exploded. “I’ve told you! I—” He looked away, then got to his feet, agitated, running his fingers through his short black hair. He was graying here and there; Greg had not noticed before. “Lancaster spoke a lot with the Demeter crew, yes.” He began to pace. “You know what he was like; he wanted everyone to get along, and most of our crew hasn’t exactly welcomed them with open arms.”

      Greg thought that went both ways, but he let it pass. “Would they have discussed anything proprietary with him?”

      Will had stopped at Greg’s window and was looking down at the planet. “They shouldn’t know anything proprietary,” he said at last.

      That had cost him, and Greg tried to remind himself to appreciate that. “But if they did,” he pressed, “would they have told Lancaster?”

      “I won’t speculate.” Will’s expression had closed, and Greg thought that small admission was the only thing he was going to get.

      Greg allowed himself to rub his eyes; there was no point in posturing anymore. Will had told him all he needed to know about how deeply Demeter was involved in all of this. Any further investigation was going to have to be his own. The problem was how to ensure he could investigate unencumbered. He did not want to make an enemy out of Will, not in the middle of a crisis. It had crossed his mind, however, that they might be beyond that point.

      “Here’s what’s going to happen, Commander.” He spoke calmly, wanting Will to understand that his decision was not made in a temper. “We’re going to stay here as long as it takes to get Lancaster’s death resolved. That means more than just Novanadyr charging his killer; it means we find out why he did it.”

      “Central won’t allow that.”

      “You let me worry about Central.” There were delaying tactics he could use, everything from semantic arguments to outright lies. If he achieved his ends, he thought the Admiralty would forgive him, or at least not come down on him too hard. “But in the meantime … I’m shutting you down, Commander. Your investigation stops right now. S-O gets nothing until we find out what happened to Lancaster.”

      “You can’t do that, Captain!” Will turned on Greg, shouting into his face. “They are not just my superior officers. They are yours as well, and this will not be tolerated!”

      Greg held on to his temper. “Maybe not,” he said evenly, “but that’s on me, Will. I’m revoking your external comm privileges, effective immediately.”

      And to his astonishment, Will laughed. “They’ll bust you for this,” he said, with certainty.

      “Maybe.” Greg wondered exactly who Will’s allies were. “But if they do, it’ll be after we get answers for Danny Lancaster.”

       CHAPTER 6

      Jessica sat before a cup of bitter coffee, surrounded by her silent and somber friends. After the captain’s speech, about half of them had stayed in the pub: more than a hundred people, including the Demeter crew members. They might be self-satisfied jackasses, but their distress seemed genuine. Danny had spent a lot of time talking to them, even Lieutenant Commander Limonov, widely known to be half-mad. Danny had listened to the man’s ravings, all his tin-foil-hat theories of aliens and government conspiracies, with what had always seemed to be genuine interest. Now Limonov sat with his crewmates, scowling miserably into a clear glass of dark liquid, and Jessica reflected that everyone needed someone to listen once in a while.

      “Excuse me.”

      Along with the rest of the table, Jessica looked up. Captain Foster stood over them, his demeanor grave and military, unrecognizable from the hollow-eyed, resigned man she had left in the hangar.

       Damn, he’s a good actor.

      “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but I need to borrow Lieutenant Lockwood for a moment.”

      The others murmured excuses and one by one removed themselves from the table. Jessica wondered at that; surely she and the captain should have been the ones to leave. But it was deference to him, she realized: no matter how big a jerk he was to Elena, no matter what sorts of rumors persisted in the hallways, Captain Foster’s crew adored him. She adored him a little herself, which irritated her sometimes; she did not like to think she was subject to military psychology. But she had to admit, no matter how well she got to know him, no matter what stupid mistakes she saw him make, she would always be willing to walk into death for him.

      He waited for the others to leave, then dropped into a chair next to her. He was a good-looking fellow, her captain. A bit on the thin side, sure; but he had a handsome, chiseled face just this side of perfection, well-muscled arms, and lovely, long-fingered hands that gestured gracefully when he was speaking. And his eyes, of course. Those eyes, light gray and black, strange zebra-stripe eyes, laser-bright against his dark skin. She had thought, when she met him, that they were a cosmetic affectation. It had not taken her long before she realized affectations were alien to him. He dealt purely in somber reality, although she caught flashes, sometimes, of lightheartedness. As she looked at him now, he seemed weary and defeated, and she wondered how much was Danny, and how much was Elena.

      Jessica did not understand it at all. For months Elena had seemed to recognize, on some level, that Foster needed to keep away from her, and had tried to give him space; and then everything had blown up a few weeks ago in the pub. Jessica did not believe he had really meant the things he had said, but she knew how Elena held a grudge. He was going to be a long time rebuilding that bridge, if he could do it at all, and she did not think having to break the news of Danny’s death had eased any tension.

      “Did Commander Valentis say anything useful?” she asked him.

      She had seen the look on his face when he had left with Valentis. Five months ago Foster had handed her the first of Commander Valentis’s reports to Shadow Ops, with a carefully worded request for her to see what she could make of the parts that had been redacted. Without explicit authorization to decrypt, she had simply documented the algorithms, and how long it might take a competent hacker to break them.

      When he had shown up with the next report, she had asked why he was confiding in her, and not Commander Broadmoor, his security head. “Because you’re more loyal to me than to the rules,” he had told her.

      She had never been sure what to make of that, but she couldn’t disagree.

      He unfolded his long legs under the table and crossed them at the ankles. “Not so you’d notice,” he replied. “Double-talk about Lancaster and the Demeter crew, and how it’s all just a coincidence it happened on this cargo drop.”

      “You believe him?”

      To her surprise, he paused. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

      On top of everything else, she found herself hit with a wave of unease. “You think his story is credible.”

      “I