Breach of Containment Read online

  Dedication

  For the ones we carry

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part I Chapter 1: Budapest

  Chapter 2: Galileo

  Chapter 3: Yakutsk

  Chapter 4: Galileo

  Chapter 5: Yakutsk

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8: Galileo

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12: Cytheria

  Chapter 13: Galileo

  Chapter 14: Cytheria

  Chapter 15: Galileo

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17: Yakutsk

  Chapter 18: Galileo

  Part II Chapter 19: Yakutsk

  Chapter 20: Budapest

  Chapter 21: Yakutsk

  Chapter 22: Galileo

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25: Yakutsk

  Chapter 26: Galileo

  Chapter 27: Yakutsk

  Chapter 28: Galileo

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32: Galileo

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34: Interstitial

  Chapter 35: Galileo

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37: Yakutsk

  Part III Chapter 38: Indus Station

  Chapter 39: Galileo

  Chapter 40: Yakutsk

  Chapter 41: Interstitial

  Chapter 42: Yakutsk

  Chapter 43: Indus Station

  Chapter 44: Chryse

  Chapter 45: Yakutsk

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47: Galileo

  Chapter 48: Indus Station

  Chapter 49: Galileo

  Chapter 50: Indus Station

  Chapter 51: Galileo

  Chapter 52: Yakutsk

  Chapter 53: Indus Station

  Chapter 54: Yakutsk

  Chapter 55: Indus Station

  Chapter 56: Budapest

  Chapter 57: Indus Station

  Chapter 58: Yakutsk

  Chapter 59: Budapest

  Chapter 60: Yakutsk

  Chapter 61: Budapest

  Chapter 62: Yakutsk

  Chapter 63: Galileo

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Epilogue

  We

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise for the Central Corps series

  By Elizabeth Bonesteel

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  T minus two days—Yakutsk

  “Hey, Dallas! Come have a look at this.”

  Dallas turned and squinted at Martine. On the nearly airless plains, the line between Lena’s brightness and the stardusted black of open space was crisp and painful, and the backlighting always fucked with Dallas’s eyes. Eye surgery might help, but that took money; and scavengers, even as experienced as Dallas, never made much money. The dealers made the money, and Dallas didn’t understand why more didn’t take their hoard and escape. After the failure of the Great Terraformer Experiment, they should have been leaving Yakutsk in droves.

  Dallas wouldn’t leave. Dallas preferred Yakutsk without diffuse sunshine, orbiting Lena with nothing but its thin atmosphere and meager gravity. Dallas had spent thirty years in the domes, and had childhood memories filled with jet-black days clomping across the dusty surface of the moon in weighted boots, finding discarded shipyard parts and the occasional trash—or wreckage—from passing freighters, starships, and even Syndicate raiders, and collecting it like gold. When the terraformers had been activated a year ago, Yakutsk had become alien, and any pleasure Dallas had felt scavenging the surface had dissolved. It seemed so wasteful, forcing a perfectly reasonable moon into a role it had not been born to play. Domes were efficient. Domes took nothing they did not need. Domes made sense.

  So many people had been frightened and angry the month before when the terraformers had failed, and they’d had to move back into the old covered cities. The days had grown jet-black and familiar again, and Dallas had been relieved.

  The object Martine was looking at was also silhouetted by the big gas giant, and getting close enough to see would require Dallas to drop a large, ungainly fragment of cargo hull. Freighter wreckage was almost always profitable, if mundane; Jamyung, the trader who paid them most promptly, always said he wanted the unusual, but Jamyung bought more standard parts than anything else. Dallas had built an entire career off of spotting the ordinary and scavenging quickly, bringing in three times the salvage of other scavengers and making twice the money. Breaking down this chunk was going to take time, and the afternoon was wearing on. Taking a few moments to placate Martine might cut the day’s payoff by quite a bit.

  Martine was new. Dallas remembered what it was like to be new, and the sting of realizing you really were in it on your own.

  The fragment dropped back to the moon’s surface, sinking gently in the low gravity to hit the dusty exterior with a quiet thump. Shuffling in weighted boots, Dallas crept up next to her to look at what she held in her hands.

  It was cuboid, about fourteen by fourteen by three centimeters, and entirely unadorned. In the verdant light of the gas giant it was difficult to be clear on the color, but Dallas’s unreliable eyes cast it as more or less gray. What kind of reaction was Martine expecting?

  “It’s a box,” Dallas said.

  Martine shook her head, disagreeing. Up close, Dallas could see the flash of excitement in her eyes. “It has no seams,” she said. “None, Dallas. It’s solid.”

  “Machined.”

  “Why would someone machine a random box? Besides, Dallas—feel it. It’s warm.”

  “Can’t feel anything through the suit.” And if it’s warm, it’s probably radioactive, you damn fool. But Dallas ran a scan—no ionizing radiation, only thermal. And sure enough, the thing’s surface temperature was nearly 37 degrees. Body temperature. Out here in the near-vacuum of Yakutsk’s frigid, terraformless night. “Must be something inside.”

  Martine was grinning. “How much do you think he’ll give me for it?”

  “Jamyung?” Dallas scoffed. “Not fucking enough. He’ll tell you it’s shit, worth nothing.”

  “Then I’ll keep it.”

  A vague uneasiness crept up Dallas’s spine. “No, Martine. Get rid of it. Or just drop it. Leave it out here.” That seemed wrong as well, but it felt important to get Martine away from the thing. Dallas clomped back to the hull fragment and wrenched a chunk of polished alloy off of it, extending it toward her. “Take this. He’ll give you good money for this. It’ll keep you in retsina for a week.”

  Of course she wasn’t listening. She was tucking the box into her pocket. Dallas shrugged and took the fragment back. “Suit yourself.” But Dallas fought a wave of amorphous dread, and no matter how superstitious it seemed, one thought persisted: That thing shouldn’t be coming back into the dome with us. It shouldn’t be near people at all.

  A few hours later they took the surface crawler, heavy with the day’s haul, back to the dome. Martine was chatty, talking about dinner and the game tournament starting at their pub this weekend. She seemed cheerful, almost manic, and Dallas couldn’t stop feeling uneasy. She was herself, only . . . odd.

  Jamyung will buy the box, Dallas thought determinedly. We can go off and have dinner and tomorrow everything will be the same.

  But as it turned out, Dallas’s first instinct had been right. “What the fuck is that?” Jamyung asked dismissively, and only Dallas saw the curiosity in the trader’s eyes.

  “Don’t
know,” Martine said. Dallas had tried to teach her, but she was fucking awful at playing it cool.

  “Fifty,” Jamyung said.

  Even Martine was outraged at that. “Come on! The thing’s hot. It’s got a power source, at least.”

  Jamyung picked up the box and turned it over in his hand. Dallas could see it better, here inside the dome: it was still that nondescript gray, but it had slightly rounded corners and edges, as if it were designed to be held. Something about the proportions gave it a strange sort of grace. Uncharmed, Jamyung tossed it back to Martine. “If it’s a power source, it’s a fucking weak one.” He paused. “Fifty-five.”

  “Sixty,” Martine said, just as Dallas said “Eighty.”

  Jamyung pinned Dallas with a look. “You guys unionizing on me?”

  One for one. All the scavengers were taught that. You started teaming up, you lost all your business fast. But Dallas had to say something. “You know it’s different.”

  “Different is useless.” But then Jamyung sighed, and Dallas thought something in the trader might have softened a little. “All right. Seventy. But that’s it, Martine. No more arguing, or you get shit.”

  Martine kept her hand outstretched as Jamyung counted out seventy in hard currency into her palm. She set the box back down on the trader’s desk and waved at Dallas. “See you at the pub,” she said, and ran off.

  Jamyung had picked up the box again and was turning it over in his hands. He noticed Dallas almost as an afterthought. “You need to stop doing that,” Jamyung said. “She’s good enough without your help.”

  “You were ripping her off,” Dallas pointed out.

  Jamyung tossed the box on his desk and opened a drawer, pulling out Dallas’s payment. “Sixty was a decent price.”

  “Eighty was better.”

  Jamyung snorted. “You’re too smart to be a scavenger, Dallas. You should be on my end.”

  Dallas wouldn’t have Jamyung’s job for all the currency in that desk. “I like it out there.”

  Jamyung shook his head and handed over the money. “Uninhabitable and freezing, except when we’re facing the sun, and then your env suit will melt right into your skin unless you’ve got one of the fancy ones the military are hoarding.”

  “Maybe they’ll get the terraformers working again.”

  Jamyung shot him a jaundiced look. “You think anybody’s going through all that again, you’re a damn fool. The surface is done. You should come in here and work for me.”

  It wasn’t the first time Jamyung had offered, and it wouldn’t be the last time Dallas would refuse. “Bird in the hand,” Dallas said, and took the money.

  “Suit yourself,” Jamyung said. “Go beat Martine at whatever bullshit game she’s hauled off the stream this week. And fuck, Dallas, stop telling her what her shit is worth. She learns on her own or she’s no good to me.”

  “Okay.” Dallas turned to the door, then stopped. “What are you going to do with it?”

  Jamyung’s eyebrows shot up. “What do you care?” And then his expression grew cunning. “You got a buyer?”

  “Nope. Just curious.” Dallas lifted a hand. “See you tomorrow.”

  But all the way to the pub, currency clanking and waiting to be spent, Dallas thought about that box lying on Jamyung’s desk, and couldn’t shake the feeling that, defunct terraformers or not, the days on Yakutsk were never going to be familiar again.

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Budapest

  Elena ran in patient circles around the perimeter of Budapest’s largest storage bay, the space around her filled with stacked crates towering like massive city blocks. The bay would be clear in a few hours, after they dropped off the seed stock and dried roots on Yakutsk, but even then there would be little room for exercise beyond running. A freighter, she had learned over the last year, wasn’t like a starship. Starships were designed for sustaining large crews over long-term missions, and generally sported a fair number of human-centric spaces. Freighters were rarely out longer than six weeks, their crews rarely larger than ten people. Living space was not prioritized. All of Budapest’s crew quarters were small—if Bear Savosky, Budapest’s captain, operated with ten crew instead of six, she would have had to share—and there was no separate gym space.

  Early on in Budapest’s venerable life, Bear had started packing cargo to leave a two-meter gap around the edges of the storage bay. Back when she had first met the freighter captain, when she was just sixteen and awed by any interstellar vehicle, even this inelegant, utilitarian cargo ship, she had remarked on it. “It was either make space for running,” he had told her, “or set the gravity to one-point-two so people can get some exercise walking across the kitchen. The last thing you want after a long shipping run is to get home and find out none of your clothes fit you anymore.”

  Elena had been young, her metabolism still half child, and the statement had confused her. Now, at nearly thirty-five, she was grateful for his practicality.

  Arin lapped her for the third time, and she smiled. Bear and Yuri’s adopted son was nineteen. He was also taller than she was, and so much more energetic; but he had no patience for a marathon. She watched him disappear around the corner, his heavy footfalls echoing around the cargo and off the tall ceiling, and resisted the urge to catch up with him. Controlling her natural competitiveness had been one of her hardest lessons at the Academy, but she had learned to pick a pace and stick with it, even if it was slow. The sprints she always lost, but she had done well over long distances. She had even won a few endurance runs.

  But when it came down to it, she preferred dance to running. Here on Budapest, where there was no room, she missed it. With dance, time went more quickly; when there was music, it was so much easier to let her mind drift. She would be twelve weeks without dancing, out to Yakutsk and back. Running was an efficient method of exercise, but it left her restless and bored. She needed more than the mundane rhythm of her feet against the floor, and her heartbeat in her ears. She needed more than monotony.

  On top of that . . . running reminded her of Galileo, and of Greg. Always Greg. For so many years he had been the anchor of her routine, from breakfast to duty to the gym. She used to watch him run, kilometer after kilometer, sometimes more than twenty in a day. For years she had wondered what he was running from. She had eventually concluded that he wasn’t trying to escape anything specific; he just felt the need to run. Movement. Forward. Anywhere but here.

  A broken man. She had no good reason for missing him.

  Arin came around again. “Slow old woman,” he said to her as he passed, and she laughed, taking off after him. She caught up, and he ran faster; his long legs brought him past her again, but not as far as he might have wanted. When they reached the inner door, he dropped to a walk, breathing heavily. In sympathy, she stopped as well.

  “‘Slow’?” she objected.

  “I beat you, didn’t I?” He bent down to scratch the head of the sturdy orange tabby cat seated by the door. Mehitabel, Budapest’s standoffish and ubiquitous mascot, twitched her ears irritably and continued washing her face.

  “Only because I stopped.” Elena threw a towel at him.

  “I’ll make sure you catch up with me next time.” He grinned at her, and blushed, and she didn’t quite know what to make of it. She had never seen him flirt with anyone, regardless of sex. Even if she had—she was nearly old enough to be his mother. She knew he was fond of her, but it had never felt like a crush.

  Although . . . She thought again of Greg. Heaven knows I’ve never been particularly good at picking up on that sort of thing.

  She had not spoken with Greg in nearly a year. She had spent six months on the CCSS Kovalevsky after the Admiralty transferred her off of Galileo, and there they had talked frequently; but when she had decided to resign from the Corps, she had told him nothing in advance. Only Jessica Lockwood—Greg’s second-in-command and Elena’s friend—had known what Elena was going to do, and she had, after some plea
ding on Elena’s part, kept it to herself.

  “He’s going to hit the ceiling,” Jessica had warned.

  “Then the Admiralty will know he had nothing to do with it.”

  In her most honest moments, Elena wasn’t entirely sure that protectiveness was the only reason she hadn’t wanted to tell Greg ahead of time. She had been increasingly careful in what she shared with him, sticking mostly with conveying any intelligence she had picked up from her crewmates on Kovalevsky. She would ask after Galileo and all of the people she loved. She would ask after him, and his father and his sister back on Earth, and tell him only good things about Kovalevsky and Captain Mirov.

  Telling him the truth—that being in the Corps but not being on Galileo was like flaying her skin open every single day—would have led to a conversation she did not want to have. Returning to Galileo was not an option. In Greg’s early career, he might have had the clout to swing it, but he’d lost any influence he had on the other side of a wormhole.

  Becoming a civilian, she had reasoned, would give her different intelligence channels from the ones Greg and Jessica would find through the Corps. And it would be less of a daily reminder of having left behind everything and everyone, outside of her blood family, that had ever meant anything to her.

  Elena kept her eyes on the cat. Mehitabel was still not reacting to Arin’s ministrations, but Elena was certain she was beginning to hear the quiet rumble of a purr. Mehitabel did not care much for Elena—possibly, Elena had to admit, because most of their interactions involved Elena chasing the cat out of the engine room—but the animal was consistently and quietly affectionate with Arin, and Elena couldn’t fault her for that. “Maybe next time,” Elena remarked, “I won’t let you get ahead in the first place.”

  Arin laughed, and Elena’s comm chimed. She reached behind her ear to acknowledge. “Morning, Yuri,” she said. “What’s up?”

  Yuri was Budapest’s comms officer, second-in-command, and head mechanic. He was also nominally Elena’s superior officer; but Budapest had the reflexive informality of all civilian organizations, and she had learned—most of the time—to roll with it.