The Cold Between

The Cold Between is a military science fiction novel by the American writer Elizabeth Bonesteel, published in 2016. It is the first book in her Central Corps series and pairs a murder investigation with an old cover-up in the history of the service both of its main characters belong to.

Commander Elena Shaw is the chief engineer of a Central Corps ship, and her crewmate Danny is murdered on Volhynia, a colony world. The police arrest her lover, Treiko Zajec, and Elena knows the charge is wrong because Trey was with her when Danny died. She begins retracing the dead man's final hours to find out who killed him and why the investigation has settled so quickly on an innocent man.

What the two of them find connects the murder to the explosion of a Central Corps starship at a wormhole near Volhynia twenty-five years earlier. The Central Government has lied about the disaster ever since, and is prepared to fight the outlaw PSI rather than let the truth out. Elena and Trey are left choosing between the institution that made them and what they now know about it, with the authorities closing in behind them.