Breach of Containment

by Elizabeth Bonesteel

  All because they had stolen his last memory of the man he had loved.

  “Did you know,” she asked him, “that there was something on the other side of that wormhole?”

  “It was a guess,” he said. “There had been an EMP flare recorded decades earlier. A flash of a dellinium signature. Everybody put it down to equipment misreading the data due to the pulse, but Shadow Ops spent a lot of time on analysis. They decided there was enough of a chance that it was real that they wanted to send a ship.”

  “And they didn’t tell the Phoenix about the dellinium.”

  “They had some reason to believe that a fairly large percentage of Central captains would balk at the idea of retrieving what would basically be a doomsday weapon.”

  “You knew.”

  “Yes.”

  “Before they left.”

  “Yes.”

  “That they’d be trapped in the gravity well. That they might not survive the journey, or even be able to get back.”

  “Yes.” He wondered if that would kill her sympathy for him. He hoped so.

  She sat back as well. “I think, Admiral, that you didn’t know you were being monitored. That makes your situation a little bit different than mine.”

  “You think there are no Ellis sympathizers on Galileo, Chief? Would you say the same for their family, their friends? And those people on Budapest—they’re strangers to you, aren’t they?”

  She held up a hand. “Okay. I take your point. Just—” She sighed. “Okay. I won’t tell anyone your plan.”

  “That is a promise?”

  “On my honor, sir.”

  He knew enough about her to take that as intended. “All right. I’ll outline the plan, Chief. But I’ll tell you right now: I hope you tell me I’m wrong, that it won’t work, or that there’s another way in or another way out. Because right now, with the intel we’ve got?

  “Whoever goes in there after Ellis is probably going to die.”

  Chapter 29

  Late at night, when her conversation with Admiral Herrod had finally drawn to a close, Elena ducked into one of the small kitchens on Galileo’s lower level and pulled up a vid of her mother.

  Over the years since Elena had left home, they had fallen into the habit of sending vid instead of chatting over live comms. Elena’s mother worked air traffic control, backing up the automated systems over the Alaskan Islands and the Chukchi Sea, and her ever-shifting schedule meant her free time rarely synced up with Elena’s. Elena was fond of her mother’s vids, full of randomness and acidic observations about people; Maggie Shaw had never much cared what people thought of her, and led her life with cheerful tactlessness. Elena had managed to pick up some of that attitude, although she had never quite managed her mother’s complete obliviousness; but the more important lesson her mother had taught was to trust her instincts. And right now, in the face of this fragile, ill-formed mission from which she would not return, Elena needed to remember that lesson.

  The vid had arrived a few days after Budapest had left Io en route to their first cargo drop, and was little more than a laundry list of meaningless details her mother had forgotten to mention the last time they spoke. Elena watched as her mother, dressed in trousers and boots and kneeling in front of a flower bed, trowel in hand, ran down the mundane school accomplishments of Elena’s cousins. Elena tuned out the words, focusing instead on her mother’s hands and their methodical digging, her ungloved fingers growing grimier as she made room for seedlings. Her mother had always enjoyed starting gardens more than tending them, and Elena couldn’t remember if it was the right time of year to plant.

  “Your uncle Mike said to remind you not to cross Bear,” Maggie said, cleaning some dirt out from under a thumbnail with brisk efficiency. “I don’t know what he means, really. Savosky’s a good person. Do you remember, when you were eighteen, and he brought his crew to dinner? There was that nice woman who was not as standoffish as the rest. I showed her my garden. She made polite noises, but she didn’t know a damn thing. People think they can fool you, don’t they?” She laughed. “Anyway. Mike is full of shit, as usual. He worries what everybody else thinks, and when I yell at him, he says he’s too tired to fight. I think some things need doing even when you’re tired, don’t you?” She dusted off her fingers. “Drop me a line when you can, love. Bye.”

  Elena played the message three times, studying every moment. She did not resemble her mother. Her mother was short and slight, fine-featured and fair-haired and pretty, like the rest of the family. Elena didn’t look like any of them, not her uncle or her cousins or even her irritable, thin-lipped grandmother. It would have been easy to grow up feeling like an outsider, but her mother had always treated her with unvarnished delight, never less than pleased that Elena was exactly who she was.

  Elena had met so few people in her life who made her feel at home.

  The fleet was still half a day away from Earth, even at their accelerated pace. She and Herrod had discussed a detailed identity, and he had triggered a stealth program to embed a long work history for her pseudonym with the food vendor. She had expected to depart right away, but Herrod had told her altering the vendor’s schedule was too risky, and aligning her trip with the delivery drop meant there were hours yet before she could go. The timing left her caught between urgency and inertia. Half a day before she had to worry about what might happen to her mother, and all of her alien relatives.

  Half a day to stop the fleet.

  The plan was fragile, and relied far too much on goodwill and luck, but given the circumstances, she couldn’t disagree with Herrod that it was their best chance. She thought, if she could keep her head, she might be able to stop Olam, never mind that she would never know for sure.

  This won’t destroy Ellis, she had warned Herrod.

  We know, he said. But it’ll damage their power, and most importantly, it’ll expose them. They’ll lose public support. Sometimes real transparency is the best weapon you’ve got.

  She didn’t point out the irony of Shadow Ops trying to destroy an enemy with transparency.

  Restless, she left the kitchen to drift through the atrium. Someone had planted lemon trees, still too small for fruit. She imagined a future atrium, full of row after row of fruit trees, the air heavy with sweetness, the luxury of fresh food. Galileo’s food production systems were fully automated, even with fresh ingredients, but she knew there were people in the crew who loved to cook. Bob Hastings, for one, was not bad at pastry, but she thought Redlaw would be the one who did the most experimenting. He had a way with flavors, combining things she never would have thought tasted good together. Fruit and vegetable, savory and sweet, sugar and maple and lemongrass and rosemary. Things she never would have thought of.

  She would never taste them.

  All of this would be here after she was gone, and that was more comforting than she would have expected. They would all go on as she had gone on, year after year, despite who she had lost. Treharne, gone before her eyes. Jake, the first close friend she had lost. Danny, lover and betrayer. She had carried them and remembered them, and told herself that meant something. It meant nothing to them. They were gone, just as she would be gone, and she supposed someone would carry her as she had carried them.

  This is pointless.

  She had made a choice, and she wasn’t going to change her mind, and what was the point in wandering through the atrium missing people who were still there? Who didn’t even know she was leaving? She should be doing something with this time: taking in the view from engineering, the sounds of her ship, the smell of the machine she knew so well, the cadence of the environmental systems, the lights, the gentle vibration of the engines keeping Galileo in a precise orbit. She should be opening her heart and soaking up everything that had ever given her strength, all the things that she loved, that gave her this life she so desperately did not want to give up, that gave her so much worth dying for. She should fling open her arms and hold everyone for as long as she coul
d, until she had to leave them to keep them safe. She had so few hours left. Why was she standing in an orchard, determined to be alone?

  Who could she talk to, who would let her do nothing but soak up their company without having to explain why she needed it? Who would understand without having to ask?

  She went to find Greg.

  Chapter 30

  “You can come all the way in, you know,” Greg told Elena.

  She stood just inside the door, which had slid shut behind her, and was looking around the room, hands on her elbows. Nervous, but Greg didn’t know why. She looked tired and anxious, and he couldn’t tell if she had been crying, or just desperately needed to. Maybe it’s finally all crashing in on her, he thought, and no wonder. She had been dealing with so much, even before all of this had happened.

  Her being home was the only good thing to come of any of it.

  He had been reading when she showed up—or rather staring at text, scanning the same paragraph over and over, absorbing nothing. Mindful of the news that Olam was too far ahead of them to pursue, he had kept the crew focused on Yakutsk. He felt certain Galileo would be needed in some capacity, but he suspected they would be far more effective out here than tearing back to the First Sector with everyone else. And his crew were tired of sitting and waiting. He had seen them nervous and worried before, but the level of destruction they were being asked to deal with was unprecedented. He thought if he could keep them focused on their duties they might be less inclined to plan revenge.

  Not that revenge sounds like such a bad idea.

  Elena smiled nervously and took a step into the room. Her eyes went to the window—as always, he realized. Every time she walked into a room, she wanted to see what was outside of it. He wondered, sometimes, what it was like to live like that, constantly restless, constantly looking beyond what was in front of her. For most of his life he had thought himself alone in his restlessness, and then he had met her. Even then, years had passed before he understood why, after a lifetime of uneasiness, he felt so much more peaceful when she was there.

  “Do you want something to drink?” he asked her.

  She kept staring out the window. “Yes, sure,” she said at last. “Tea.”

  That much hasn’t changed. She had always drunk tea with him. In the mornings, at breakfast in one of Galileo’s kitchens, it was always coffee, strong and bitter, and she didn’t seem in the least bit discerning. But whenever she sat with him, to talk, to strategize, or just to be silent, it was always tea. Just as dark and bitter, though, and he often teased her about it.

  Tonight he only handed her the cup. She brought the mug up to her nose and inhaled the fragrance of the dried leaves, flavor slowly leached by the hot water. Her eyes dropped shut, a faint smile crossing her lips. “You always have the good stuff,” she said.

  He had started buying it because he knew she liked it. After she left, he had never tossed the leftovers. Despite her words, she must have noticed it was old. “Perks of the job,” he told her.

  He sat down again in the armchair he had been in when she arrived. He still had music playing in the background. Old stuff, from his childhood; probably older than she was familiar with. There were only five years between them, but one of the places the age difference showed was in the sort of music they liked. She danced for exercise, and would play all kinds of things—new, old, ancient. But when she relaxed, she stuck with whatever was current, and stayed entirely away from nostalgia. Variety, she had said once; but he put it down to that same rush-ahead restlessness.

  She drank the tea, still silent, and he watched her. The ship’s running lights shone through the window, and the usual warm gold tones of her skin were cast in blue. The artificial color in her hair looked brighter as well, and the light threw shadows over her face, making her eyes huge and prominent above her wide cheekbones. The expressions that face could take on, from humor to anger to hurt to absolute self-righteous rage. She was not striking the way Jessica was, or even his ex-wife; but he could never take his eyes off of her. He wanted to see every expression she could make, read every line written in her heart.

  That hasn’t changed, either.

  “Do you remember when we met?” she asked him at last.

  Reminiscing. Not like her, not really; but he supposed under the circumstances it made some sense. “I do,” he replied.

  “I was nervous.”

  She had put in for a transfer to Galileo from Exeter. He only had one engineering spot left when he saw her application, but he knew before he met her that he would take her. Her reputation preceded her, and Çelik, her previous captain—not one for hyperbole—had praised her unreservedly. But nothing had prepared him for the woman he met, eager and ebullient, not at all like the serious and experienced soldier he had seen in her records and reports. He had quizzed her on everything he could think of, trying to trip her up, trying to shake her out of whatever strange, artificial mood she was in. In the end, he had to piss her off to do it.

  “You already had the job, you know,” he told her.

  “You might have told me.” Her tone was mildly reproachful, and he thought her mood might be lightening.

  “That would have defeated the purpose of an interview.”

  “I wanted the job so badly,” she said, half to herself. “Jake had coached me over and over, quizzed me on everything I already knew. I needed to get off Exeter, but it was more than that. I wanted to come here.”

  “Why here, specifically?”

  Her eyes dropped, and he thought, even in the cool light, that he could see her blushing. “I’d heard about you,” she said, and he remembered she had friends who had been serving with him on Arizona, classmates of hers from the Academy. “I didn’t really believe it. After Exeter, I figured wherever I’d go I’d end up reporting to assholes. But they said you weren’t like that. That you weren’t sarcastic or belittling. That you were different.”

  He was surprised. “I figured you came for the hardware.”

  Another ghost of a smile. “Galileo was part of it, yes,” she admitted. “But really, I fell in love with her after I got here. Mostly it was you. I felt like you were my last chance. My whole life, all I’d ever wanted was to join the Corps, and my first year was awful. Just . . . painful. Not just the bad luck and the dreadful missions, but day-to-day unpleasant. I was thinking, Is this going to be my life? After everything I’ve fought for, everything I thought I wanted, this is the price of being able to serve? But when I heard about you, I thought maybe, just maybe, what I wanted was still out there somewhere. I just hadn’t found it yet.”

  He seemed to have something caught in his throat. “You never said,” he told her.

  She shrugged, embarrassed. “It seemed like a lot to drop on your head,” she said. “That all of the dreams of my life were down to that day I met you. But I liked you. Even when you deliberately jerked my chain, I liked you. You made me laugh. You listened to what I was saying. You didn’t let me get away with anything, but you weren’t obnoxious about it. You were—”

  “Familiar,” he finished, and she met his eyes, surprised. “By the end of that interview,” he told her, “I felt like I must have met you somewhere before. Like we’d known each other as kids, and I’d just lost track.” He had not recognized it at the time, but he had fallen into her that afternoon, a cool, soothing lake after a lifetime of hot dry days.

  And he had never climbed out again.

  “Yes.” She smiled. “Like if I suddenly started talking about my cousins, you’d know who I meant. It was odd. It doesn’t happen to me much,” she confessed, “feeling so comfortable with people.”

  Why, he wondered, is this coming up now? “I have a short list of people like that,” he told her. “I’m not even sure about everyone on it. My dad falls off and on.”

  “Family is a whole different issue,” she agreed. “My mother—” She stopped. “It’s strange. She is the least like me of anyone in my family. I think that’s why we get along
so well. She doesn’t ever assume she’s going to understand what I say or do or want, so she takes my word for it. She trusts that I know myself. And she always—” Her voice broke, and he saw her swallow. “No matter what I was trying to do, she always assumed I’d succeed. And if I failed, she’d pick me up and turn me around to try again. Never scolding, never making me feel bad. Just ‘Oh, well. Up you get, Elena!’ with the same faith and good cheer.” She shook her head. “It’s weird. Of all of them . . . I love her the most. And I have the fewest regrets about how I left things with her.”

  He wanted to tell her she would see her mother again. He wanted to believe he’d see his father again. Somehow, just now, he couldn’t see beyond this one night. “I think you’re lucky to have each other,” he said at last.

  The music changed, and she smiled in recognition. “God, this song. I was sixteen when this came out. I played it so often at work that Mike made me listen to it on my comm so I wouldn’t drive everyone else mad.”

  Greg smiled, too, listening to the slow, sentimental rhythm. “I was in my last year of college, and we hadn’t heard about enlistment acceptances yet,” he remembered. “I was climbing the damn walls.” And drinking. Every night, he had been drinking, but he had still been young, and he hadn’t lost control as easily back then. “I remember thinking, If I don’t get in, this song will be the soundtrack of my failure.”