The Cold Between. Elizabeth Bonesteel

conspiracies and rumors of alien invasion. He had almost let it destroy his life. Now he had been part of Central Corps for fifteen years, nine as captain of his own ship, and he had learned that the simplest answer was almost always the truth. Central did not have the resources for an expansive cover-up, even if it would have provided some benefit—and there was no discernible benefit to the loss of 456 trained soldiers.

       What is the half-life of the radiation produced by the destruction of a hybrid nuclear starlight engine?

      He swept his hand through the message, and it disappeared. “Galileo,” he asked, “what’s the current radiation level at the site of the Phoenix disaster?”

      There was an almost imperceptible pause as his ship queried the larger net. “Current radiation levels at location 345.89.225,” Galileo told him in her warm androgynous voice, “are ambient 13, critical 22.2.”

      Meaning you’d melt before you got anywhere near it. Greg put his thumbs over his eyes. “A nuclear starlight explosion nets what, sixteen, eighteen?”

      “Nuclear starlight explosion yields are dependent on size, configuration, attendant materials, fuel levels, ionic—”

      “Okay, okay,” Greg said, and the ship fell silent. Officially the Phoenix had not been carrying cargo. Deep space exploration had been her charter: the elusive search for alien life, which no one anymore thought would be successful. Boring stuff. Even the wormhole at the center of the Phoenix’s patrol territory was uninteresting, the meager secrets of its unapproachable entrance having long since been exhausted. His mother, before she left, had seemed unenthusiastic, despite her love of space travel.

      There was no data on the Phoenix’s fuel levels, or anything else. Despite twenty-five years of long-range scans, the unique audio signature of the ship’s flight recorder—which might have provided them with everything from engine status to last-minute comms—had never been detected, despite the extensive debris. The recorder should have had sufficient shielding to survive the hybrid blast. Yet another anomaly that had never been explained.

      “Assume one-half fuel level on a sixteen-ton D-10 config. What yield does that give you?”

      His ship answered promptly. “Sixteen point one seven, repeating.”

      Greg did some quick math. Assuming the maximum seven-year half-life, the Phoenix’s residual radiation should have hit ambient eight less than twelve years ago, ambient four six years after that. “So here’s a question,” he said. “What type of cargo might spike the previous explosion to produce radiation of fifty-six?”

      “Armed hybrid torpedoes,” Galileo returned promptly. “Ellis Systems terraforming modules 16 and 45. Twelve kilos of dellinium ionic solids. Seventy tons of—”

      “Stop.” The dellinium rumor was old, based on readings right after the explosion that had been corrupted by the nearby pulsar. Once the initial shock wave had passed, they found no evidence of dellinium at all, much less twelve kilos of the stuff. The Phoenix had carried no terraformers, and even if she had, Ellis had been a tiny research company at the time, not yet building heavy equipment. Weapons seemed the most likely conclusion … but then he was back to conspiracy theories. If the Phoenix had been hauling weapons, surely something, somewhere, would have come out about it; an exploratory mission never carried that much firepower.

      There were no answers. There would never be answers. He should have learned to live with it by now. He had learned to live with it, even in the face of messages sent to him, year after year, by lonely and desperate people convinced the Corps knew more of the accident than they were telling. It had been years—decades—since he had given those theories any credence. And yet … there was something different about this message, sent anonymously, and the two that had arrived before it, spread over less than two weeks. He could not believe that it was coincidence that they had diverted to Volhynia, so close to the site of the disaster, at the same time as the messages started to arrive. Someone knew something—was trying to tell him something—and he could not work out what it was.

      It unnerved him to realize how easy it would be for him to fall into that abyss all over again.

      After his mother died, he worked toward joining the Corps because it was what she had wished for him. He had been in the field nearly two years, barely a lieutenant, before he had accepted she had been right: he belonged here. He had saved lives. He had ended wars and transported engineers to repair failing terraformers and weather converters. He had made food and medicine drops, carted researchers and humanitarian workers to worlds where people were struggling to make the unlivable into a home. He had made a difference, just as his mother had always told him he would. Despite that, though, all he ever saw at night—as he lay awake awaiting whatever meager portion of sleep would be granted to him—was her name among the dead.

      The low chime of his office comm shook him out of his glum thoughts. A message ident flashed before his eyes: Adm. Josiah Herrod, Central Admiralty, Earth. Greg frowned. A real-time call from the Admiralty, and vid at that: they wouldn’t have allocated the bandwidth unless something was up. Out of habit he straightened, and felt a moment’s relief that he had been avoiding alcohol for the last two weeks. Off-duty or not, he didn’t want to talk to Herrod while he was drunk.

      “Connect,” he told Galileo.

      A moment later the admiral’s face appeared before him. He was seated at a desk similar to Greg’s, but instead of stars, the window behind him revealed a span of green grass and the wall of a blue-gray brick building. The light was dim, and Greg was not sure if it was early morning where Herrod was, or evening. “Admiral Herrod, sir,” he said formally, and saluted.

      “At ease,” Herrod said automatically. Herrod was roughly twice Greg’s age, although his gray hair still retained much of its original dark brown. He had a broad face, a broad nose, and a perpetual frown, and Greg had the impression the man did not like him much. For Greg’s part he found Herrod too often stiff and uncompromising. Of course, this was not an unusual affliction for Corps brass who had been long out of the field, and it had been more than thirty years since Herrod had been off-planet. Still, he tolerated Greg’s idiosyncrasies, albeit with less grace than some of his peers; and if he sometimes lacked subtlety in his decision-making, he had been known, when presented with evidence, to change his mind. He was not the most nagging of Greg’s superior officers, and he had never been prone to vid comms across five sectors for no reason.

      “What can I do for you, sir?” he asked.

      Herrod’s hands were folded on the desk before him, and Greg saw his fingers clench. “What you can do for me, Captain,” Herrod said, “is explain to me what you’re doing loitering over Volhynia.”

      Greg frowned again. Herrod would know; their presence here was official. “We took on Demeter’s cargo on Aleph Nine, sir,” he explained. “Volhynia was the last drop.”

      “I’m aware of the cargo transfer,” Herrod snapped, and Greg thought perhaps this was not some kind of test after all. “What I want to know is why you’re still there.”

      At that Greg became annoyed. It was easy for a man stationed on Earth to ask such a thing; he had no real idea of what life was like for a starship crew. But Herrod had spent time among the stars, albeit decades ago, and Greg was frustrated by how much the admiral seemed to have forgotten. “My people have been out for nearly half a year, Admiral, and they haven’t had a break since Aleph. You want to explain to me why you’re using a live vid signal to complain about my crew taking shore leave?”

      “You want to explain to me why your crew is taking shore leave when we’re in the middle of a diplomatic incident?”

      All of Greg’s irritation vanished. “I’m unaware of what you’re talking about, sir.”

      “Your ship was briefed on approach, Captain Foster,” Herrod said severely. “If you’ve been ignoring Central’s reports—”

      “No, sir,” Greg said. His gut felt cold