The Cold Between - Elizabeth Bonesteel

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with him. It bothered her that his former profession was an asset to her restaurant. She still insisted he stay in the kitchen, invisible to the diners; but word had spread that Katya Gregorovich had a pirate for a chef, and curiosity had brought customers in droves. He liked to think they kept returning because of his cooking, but realistically he knew that most of them were just hoping to catch a glimpse of him. It gave him an odd sort of satisfaction, knowing that strangers thought better of him than his own blood.

      He walked along the sidewalk past the restaurant window, and caught the shadow of someone moving inside. Katya would not open for another half hour, but she would have been there since 5:30, preparing. Trey thought back: at 5:30 he would have been washing the woman’s long, dark hair.

      Since his return to Volhynia, he had been approached by men and women alike, attracted by strange misconceptions of the life he had led. This woman had not spoken to him as a PSI soldier; she had spoken as an equal, as a friend. As someone interested in him, and not the uniform he used to wear. He had actually felt glad, for the first time in months—perhaps years—to be what he was.

      He began to hum again.

      He stepped into the alley behind the restaurant. The kitchen was in the basement, and the separate entrance helped Katya preserve the illusion that he was some paid stranger, and not her family. He had always excused her treatment of him, even felt deserving of it. Today, though, he found himself tired of penance. Perhaps it was time he stopped apologizing for his choices. Perhaps it was past time to face the world as it was, the good with the bad.

      The wind shifted, and he froze, still thirty meters from the entrance.

      Not here. Not my home … When he was fifteen years old, Castelanna had been hit by a Syndicate raider. Trey, who had not yet seen battle, had run haphazardly into the middle of the fighting. By the time he arrived there was only one raider left alive, and before he had a chance to do anything Fyodor had used a pulse rifle to blast off the man’s shoulder. The invader had dropped, dead before he hit the floor. Trey had been hit with a spray of human blood and flesh, and it was days before he stopped smelling death.

      Forty-two years later, he smelled it on the wind.

      He crossed to the opposite side of the alley, his back against the wall. He could see, just beyond the basement entrance, a heap that might have been a man, and a dark shadow on the pavement that had nothing to do with the morning light. He inched closer, alert for movement. Nothing. The odor told him that whatever had happened had been over for hours.

      When he got close enough to get a good look, he began cursing and did not stop. The man was young: thirty, perhaps thirty-five. In life he had been handsome, slender and fit, his yellow hair striking against his olive-gold skin. Now all trace of animation was gone. He stared straight up with pale brown eyes that were already sinking back into his head, long-congealed trickles of blood tracing from the slash across his throat onto the cement beneath him. His torso and abdomen were a mass of haphazard cuts and slashes—much of him was now indistinguishable from any other piece of meat—but even underneath the blood Trey recognized the same black and gray uniform he had sent the woman away in that morning.

      The dead man was one of hers. And Trey, the outsider, was going to have to deal with it.

       CHAPTER 5

       Galileo

      Greg watched the shuttle pull in, easing to the floor of the hangar without a bump. The autopilot, he supposed; even Elena, as obsessive as she was about flying, allowed Galileo to handle the artificial gravity transfer. Still, it was a testament to her flying skills that he could not tell by sight. He had watched her fly through atmospheric turbulence and antiaircraft fire, her hands steady and true, her mind always on the task before her, no matter what waited on the other side.

      He was dreading the task before him, but at least it was action. Galileo had been fortunate enough to suffer few losses through the years, but in the Corps death was an inevitability. To Greg, losing one of his own crew always felt like a missed opportunity, some horrible mistake he had no way of correcting, and the futility of it enraged him. All he could do now was break the news to her compassionately, give her as soft a landing as he could. What waited for him on the other side was the search for answers, and the vain attempt to convince himself that justice would mean anything at all. Justice, he had found, was a flimsy illusion used to stave off anger, and anger always won in the end.

      He kept his eyes on the ship as the hangar was sealed from space and oxygenated, and as the massive outer bulkhead closed. The shuttle settled to the floor and powered down, and the side door opened, disgorging a mix of his crew and Demeter’s, all lumbering with a lack of sleep. He saw Jessica Lockwood, as crisp and composed as she had been the night before, and Ted Shimada, looking slightly green. Elena came out last, her eyes scanning the shuttle’s hull, reflexively checking for damage.

      Wherever she had been, she had changed her hair; it was knotted at her neck, more loosely than usual. When she left the night before it had been down, and she had fussed with it, self-conscious about the change. Now she seemed relaxed, almost liquid, as if movement were effortless; she shot a smile at the ground crew sergeant that nearly shattered Greg’s calculated detachment. She was not, he knew, a great beauty by any objective measure, but he was years past any kind of objectivity about her. He wished he could stop the universe and keep her frozen in this moment before he had to break her heart.

      He wondered if it would have been easier or harder six months ago, before he had needed to retreat from her. She might have already been home on Galileo when he received the news, sitting with him in the cafeteria over an early breakfast. He would have had time to take care of her before he had to focus on anyone else; he could have held on to her for a while, steadied her until she could stand on her own. She would not have been isolated from him, unable to take comfort, unable to hear anything in his words but the failure that had let a man die.

      Harder. Definitely harder.

      “You could say hello, you know.”

      He looked down at Lieutenant Lockwood. Unlike Elena, Jessica was a classic beauty, wide-eyed and round-faced, and she used it like a cudgel when she needed to; but what he always noticed first about her were her shrewd green eyes. He suspected few people bothered to lie to her. He could not start now.

      She had seen it in his face already, and her expression sobered. “Is this about the recall, sir?”

      Anger flared, and alongside it guilt. He should have recalled everyone, not just the infantry. He should have immediately pursued any officer who did not respond. He should have thrown Will Valentis in the brig for insubordination. It all would have been too late anyway. “No, Lieutenant,” he told her, keeping his voice neutral. She would hear the whole truth soon enough. “But if you could start gathering people in the pub, I’m going to have to make an announcement.”

      She went white under her freckles, but he saw her straighten. “Yes, sir,” she said. She hesitated for a moment. “Do you need me to stay?”

      She had followed his eyes and was watching Elena as she ran her hands along the shuttle’s exterior. “That’s all right, Jess,” he replied, more gently. “Just get the others together.”

      She gave him a salute and disappeared out into the hallway. He closed his eyes for a moment, wishing for the last six months of his life back, then entered the hangar.

      Elena looked up at his step, and she stiffened, all that liquid grace gone, waiting for him to reach her. He caught sight, as he drew closer, of a bruise on her neck—no, he realized, momentarily disconcerted, not a bruise. She had found company. It surprised him—it was unlike her to move on so quickly from a broken love affair. He wondered who it was; he had not noticed her showing an interest in anyone since her breakup with Danny Lancaster. Then again, he had always done his best not to look.

      He stopped in front of her, and unlike Will Valentis she held his gaze, her dark eyes steady.

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