Remnants of Trust. Elizabeth Bonesteel
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Remnants of Trust - Elizabeth Bonesteel страница 18
Название: Remnants of Trust
Автор: Elizabeth Bonesteel
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Научная фантастика
isbn: 9780008137847
isbn:
At last, an easy answer—but not one she wanted to give him. “No, sir. All the analytical memory is gone. Volatile storage doesn’t even have echoes left. I found a partial bio key that was probably intended to wipe the evidence after the fact, but there’s not enough to attempt a match.” She fought a wave of depression. “We can’t find out, sir. The information is just not there.”
Another pause, then: “Okay.” He had regrouped, just in those few seconds. “I want you back on Galileo. Get in touch with the Admiralty—Herrod, if you can get him, but otherwise anyone but Waris—and get this area quarantined. We’ll need another ship for the wounded, but I want it clear this is a crime scene. Get him to agree to that.”
“You think he will?”
“If he doesn’t,” Greg said grimly, “that tells us something right there. After you’ve talked to him, get a crew over here to finish the core analysis.”
She felt a bubble of indignation. “Sir—” she began.
“Jessica.” His voice was gentle, the way it got when he was about to tell her she was an idiot. “Is this job so delicate that you’re the only one who can do it?”
“Are you telling me I’m replaceable?”
“I’m telling you you’re the second-in-command, and you need to delegate, because you’re not at all replaceable and right now I need you. Pick some people you trust, and get them on the job.”
“I don’t trust anyone.” That wasn’t precisely true. Emily had some damn good crypto people. None as good as Jessica was, but hadn’t she just been thinking that what this job needed most was patience? “It feels wrong, sir,” she confessed, “passing this off on someone else.”
“I know.” And that, of course, was the worst part: he did. “But right now that’s your duty, Commander. We have good people. Trust them to do their jobs.”
Within a few minutes, she was able to find a space on a shuttle back to Galileo, and she sat in silence next to a half dozen of Exeter’s crew, all with minor abrasions, all somber and still. None of them seemed inclined to look at her, and she felt that strange indignation again. Who am I to be heading home, to my bright room and my well-lit corridors and all the people I love? Why do I deserve that peace, when these people have lost everything in the space of a few minutes? Because they had to know they would never be going back to Exeter. She wondered if they would have the chance to retrieve their possessions, and she resolved, if she had the power, to make sure they were given the time.
She wanted to talk to Elena. Elena always let her rant, and never tried to slow her down or tell her she was being silly. Elena was one of a very few people who had ever seen her cry. But Elena would be handling her own raft of shit right now—or, rather, avoiding it. She was just like Greg that way: she went stony, handling what was in front of her, all emotion shoved aside. But unlike Greg, the emotion eventually caught up with her, and she would flame out in a burst of grief and rage, days, sometimes weeks later.
Greg swallowed everything. Elena held on until she flew apart. As much as Jessica admired them both, neither was teaching a lesson she wanted to learn.
Galileo
Nearly seven hours later, Elena finally flew home.
It had occurred to her, during the fifth hour she was floating outside going over the burned-out remains of Exeter’s decking, that she ought to pass the task off to someone else. Someone uninvolved, who had not been awake for twenty-five hours. But there was something in her that wanted the worst of it laid out starkly before her, so she could get on with the anger and grief and move beyond it. She hoped if she stared point-blank at the horror long enough, she could jolt her way past the leaden numbness in her stomach.
Everyone on the shuttle with her was ambulatory, the worst of the casualties having been moved hours earlier, and once she landed she left them to disembark on their own. She had it in her mind to head for her room and a long hot shower, but the halls were full of strangers. Exeter’s crew. Based on the crowds, possibly all of them. Cassia was still hours off, and she suspected her room, along with most of the rooms on Galileo, had been commandeered to be used as temporary quarters.
Nowhere to be alone, then. Of course, given her mood, perhaps that wasn’t so bad.
The pub was both overcrowded and more subdued than she was used to seeing it. All the tables were filled, and soldiers stood in groups, drinks in hand, some talking in low voices, others just looking around or staring down at their feet. The pub’s wide windows faced into the stars, the view uninterrupted by planets, space stations, or other ships. Greg would have done that deliberately: positioned them so the most popular common space on the ship would not be overlooking the wreck. He was always so careful about such things. How many hours since she had spoken to him? She could not remember. She could not remember much of the day, now that she was thinking of it. That numbness, more familiar than it should be.
God, I need sleep.
Instead she scrounged a cup of tea from the bar and wandered toward the windows, letting her eyes rest on the stars, willing the tension out of her body, trying to relax, muscle by muscle. But the stars were letting her down: all she could see, every time she blinked, was burned corpses, disintegrating filament, and the last Syndicate ship escaping into the dark. She closed her eyes, and she saw the dead woman again, and in her ear Farias whispered, “No help …”
“Songbird?”
That familiar voice, so hesitant. For a moment she felt something that was not despair. She opened her eyes and turned to face him. “Dee,” she said, and almost smiled.
Even while shifting debris with him on Exeter, she had noticed how little he had changed over the years, although she supposed her memory was selective. Apart from his formerly shaved head—now covered in half of a tight-curled centimeter of black hair—and the utter exhaustion on his face, he could still have passed for twenty-six. His face was unlined and unscarred, despite his battle experience, and his broad shoulders were still well-defined enough to show through his thick uniform shirt. She remembered wondering, when she had first met him, if any of it was fat; and then she had seen him training, half-dressed, his dark skin stretched over nothing but muscle and sinew. She remembered how his skin felt under her hands as she traced those muscles with her palm: smooth and cool, except when he woke at night, when it felt clammy, her palms sticking as she tried to soothe his nerves. The nightmares had lessened before she left, but they had not disappeared, and she wondered if he still had them.
She did.
Part of her wanted to embrace him again, just to prove to herself that he really was all right; but he was not on his own. Jimmy Youda stood next to him, looking less exhausted, but far more drunk. She gave him a nod, and a smile, and he waved his glass blearily at her. Uninjured, at least; she wondered where he had been during the battle.
He had aged less gracefully than Dee, although he had started out more handsome: lean, chiseled, striking—almost as head-turning as Greg, although СКАЧАТЬ