Security - Keith R. A. DeCandido [15]
Corsi wanted to tell him to get his hands off hers. She wanted to tell him to get the hell out of her quarters and mind his own damn business. She wanted to tell him to stay out of her life.
But then she remembered the conversation from which Stevens had quoted. It was right before they went to the Lokra system, and she had said something else then: “Life is too short to waste it.”
So instead, she told him about Izar.
Chapter
7
U.S.S. Roosevelt
in orbit of Izar
TEN YEARS AGO
L ieutenant (j.g.) Domenica Corsi shivered as she entered the security office. The Roosevelt’s security chief, Lieutenant Heinrich Waldheim, always kept the office at arctic temperatures. He said it was to keep people sharp, but Corsi was convinced he just did it to annoy everyone.
When Waldheim summoned her, she had been doing her bridge rotation at tactical, keeping an eye on both the planet below them and the massive telescope nearby. Izar’s orbit took it in proximity to the Heyer Array, the largest telescope in this sector, for the next two months. The Roosevelt was providing some maintenance on the array, which meant shore leave for those members of the Roosevelt’s complement not involved in the Heyer mission.
That shore leave was especially welcome to Corsi. She’d been waiting for this mission for months.
Waldheim was sitting in the security office behind the big desk covered in padds, his massive frame barely fitting into the standard-issue Starfleet chair. His thick arms were folded over his equally thick chest. Corsi had been serving under Waldheim since she graduated the Academy, first as a grunt on the Soval where he was deputy chief, then here, taking her along to be his deputy chief when he was promoted to chief of the Roosevelt. As a result, she knew what his arms being folded meant: he was about to give her a duty she wouldn’t want, but for which he—and she—had no choice.
If this means I don’t see Dar, Heinrich, I promise, I’ll take that outsized head of yours right off with the family ax. Don’t think I won’t. It had been hell maintaining her long-distance romance with Academy-mate Dar Ableen—everyone told them they were insane to try to keep it going after graduation, that Academy relationships had a shelf life of about six seconds after you got your commission—but they’d done it, through her two shipboard assignments and his three planetary or starbase ones. But this was also their first chance to be together since that trip to Pemberton’s Point over a year earlier, and she was not going to let anyone blow it.
The other person in the office probably had something to do with what was going on. A pale, petite woman with long auburn hair, she wore the drab blue one-piece uniform with the flag of Izar emblazoned over the heart that indicated an Izarian peace officer. Charged with maintaining law and order on this human colony-turned-Federation-member world, the flag had a rendering of the red-green planet with fireworks behind it over a white background.
“Lieutenant Domenica Corsi, this is Officer Christine Vale.”
The younger woman offered her hand, and Corsi took it, noticing the stylized D on the cuffs of her uniform. “You’re a detective?”
Vale nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We’ve had a couple of homicides.”
That caught Corsi off guard. Homicides were rare beasts in the Federation, much less multiple ones on the same world—though she had a vague recollection of Dar mentioning something about some murders on Berengaria when he was assigned there. “Really?”
Breaking the handshake, Vale said, “Really. Two women have been killed by a phaser set on burn, one a week ago, the second last night. I think it might be connected to some other cases in the Federation. However, for