The Cold Between by Elizabeth Bonesteel Page B

dangerous. ” Jessica was looking at her friend with naked admiration. “You are out of your mind. So how was he?”
    Elena thought of all the ways she could answer that. She thought of the night behind her, of how he had touched her, of how he had spoken to her. She searched until she found the right word.
    â€œThorough,” she said.
    Jessica stomped with impatience. “Elena Marie Shaw, after all the years we’ve known each other, all you’re going to give me is ‘thorough’?”
    Elena considered. “Extremely thorough,” she amended.
    Departure time neared and they were still down four. It was Jessica who cleared up the discrepancy for her. “Someone said Foster pulled the infantry guys back early,” she said. “Didn’t say why.”
    Elena frowned. Jessica seemed unconcerned, but Elena didn’t think Greg would have pulled any of them back early without a solid reason. If it had been an incipient emergency, he would have told all the senior officers, but she could not shake her unease. He would be awake when they got home; no matter how acidic he insisted on being, she would have to ask him.
    Greg never took shore leave—captain’s privilege, he always said. Six months ago she would have cheerfully stayed home with him, enjoying his quiet company. As things stood, though, it had been easy for her to decide to leave. Their friendship had been strained for half a year, and the public argument they’d had two weeks ago had undone the last of her equanimity. If she had stayed behind, she would have run into him, and he would have goaded her into shouting at him again. Losing Danny should have hurt more than losing Greg, but she had so few true friends in her life. Lovers were easy; she felt she had left Danny behind already.
    Greg was not so easily replaced.
    She climbed onto the shuttle and settled into the pilot’s seat to steer them out of the main hangar. The morning sun blazed through the front window, and in deference to Ted’s quiet groanshe engaged the polarizer. She angled them upward, keeping the incline gentle as they transitioned from the planet’s gravity to the ship’s artificial field. The sky darkened quickly as they rose through the clouds, and then the stars came out. She brought them around to the planet’s night side, and there, sleek and streamlined, graceful as a swan with wings outstretched, drifted the CCSS Galileo. Her ship. Her home.
    Galileo had been state-of-the-art once, seven years ago, when she had first been christened. Even now, with all of the larger, faster ships that had been deployed since, the little craft was a gem, although Elena acknowledged she might not be entirely objective. Certainly the ship’s hull bore some battle scars, the sleek metallic surface discolored and battered here and there; but she could still outfight a vessel twice her size, and even with a slower top speed, she was faster off the mark than any ship that had been built since.
    Demeter was both newer and larger, outfitted with cutting-edge tech out of Ellis Systems’ research branch, and Elena overheard her crew make disparaging comments about Galileo from time to time. She let it go, aware of where her own loyalties would lie if their positions were reversed. They were lucky they didn’t have to deal with Commander Jacobs, her old boss, who would have slapped them down publicly and succinctly, and with more than a few insults. Jake had always been impolitic and passionate, and in the year since his death she found she missed that part of him the most.
    Only a year ago. Just a year. A year ago Jake, not Elena, had been chief of engineering, and she had been content working for him. A year ago she had had Danny to keep her warm, and Greg to keep her sane. Now she had none of them, all lost, one way oranother. In recent months she had considered transferring off of Galileo, leaving behind all of the pain and