“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.’”
“And you don’t, either, do you?” She felt anger taking over again. “It’s so easy for you to believe that he could have fooled me, that I could have turned a blind eye to some fucking conspiracy.”
“And it’s so easy for you to dismiss the possibility because the guy’s got some personal charm.” Before she could object, he added, “Will you fucking think for a second? You want to believe this guy? Fine. But think about how it looks from the outside, to people who’ve never met him. We need to talk to him, Elena. This isn’t about tact or diplomacy, this is about people shooting at each other.”
“So you want me to arrest him.”
“I want you to do what you have to do to get him up here,” he told her. “Appeal to his better nature. I’m sure he doesn’t want war any more than we do.”
And yet we’re the ones talking about taking prisoners. She shook her head. “I’ll get him released, Greg. But if you want him up here, either he comes willingly or you send someone else down to grab him. I won’t do it.”
She saw his jaw set and his fists clench, and she wondered if he would risk giving her a direct order.
She wondered what she would say to him if he did.
At last he nodded, and she felt a flood of relief. “You go down there,” he told her, “you give your statement, you get him out. And you do your damnedest to convince him Galileo is the safest place he could be right now. Whether