When the starship Galileo makes orbit above the colony Volhynia, the ship's crew is more than ready to take a brief but long overdue shore leave. Galileo's chief engineer Elena Shaw, still stinging from a lover's betrayal, is especially eager to find time away from the ship. Once she and her shipmates are settled in a colony bar, the normally reserved Elena meets Treiko Zajec, a former captain in a rogue military counterpart to the Central Corps. Their connection is immediate and soon evolves into a enthusiastic one-night stand.
But upon returning to her ship, Elena is rocked by the news that her crew mate and former lover, Danny, was killed during their overnight leave in the colony below. In that instant, she becomes both a person of interest and an alibi—because the suspect the authorities have arrested is none other than Captain Treiko Zajec.
When the local authorities resist her efforts to have Treiko dismissed as a suspect and and make no move to seek Danny's true killer, Elena launches her own investigation. Soon, she's tugging on the strands of a much larger web of conspiracy and corruption: a web that becomes a deadly snare for anyone wandering too close to the truth.
Ignited by romance and driven by a powerful blend of military sci-fi and vintage crime noir, Elizabeth Bonesteel's debut novel is the first of a planned Central Corps trilogy. Here, she has crafted a shifting stellar landscape that finds humanity stretching its limbs into a frontier still full of risk and mystery. Her on-point exploration of human dynamics in close quarters and masterful manipulation of a layered mystery offer a firm foundation for this exciting new trilogy. The Cold Between navigates the dangerous paths between the stars, the blind spots between friends and lovers and the distance that comrades will go to save one of their own.
