Hammer and Crucible by Cameron Cooper (easy books to read txt) 📗

Juliyana’s smile faded. She generated a privacy bubble with her pad and leaned forward.

I refilled my glass of wine and leaned forward, too. With the privacy bubble in place we could shout at each other and no one would hear it, only people learn to read lips for this very reason. So we kept our heads close together and murmured.

“It has been an interesting few weeks,” Juliyana began.

“You got the IDs?”

She nodded. “You’re Maisie Carol. I’m Maariki Junia. They’ll stand up to basic scans. It would have cost three times as much to have DNA records adjusted to match ID, so I didn’t bother with that. It’s not like we have to run on these forever.”

“We can always figure something out later, if we need to. That will do for now.” I could understand her concern about funds. Just a few days of travel as a civilian had reminded me how expensive it was.

“So what comes next?” Juliyana said. “Now you can use the freight lines, where do we go?”

“I was hoping you would have the answer to that from your research while I was gone.”

She nodded. “I’ve spent a lot of time in records lately. The problem is, if Dad was not with the Imperial Rangers when he died, then he was clearly with the Imperial Shield. We can’t just walk up to the Shield and demand answers.”

“Our only line of inquiry now is Noam’s CO at the time. Gabriel Dalton.”

Juliyana winced.

“What is it?”

“Well, I did find out where he is. I mean, where he isn’t. The man’s a deserter, Danny.”

“Deserter? Major Dalton?” I ran that through my mind, turning it over. “As much as I hate to admit it, the man did show some traits of a personality which could consider desertion a viable option,” I admitted. “Did he duck out to avoid charges?” That seemed the most likely.

“I don’t know. There’s nothing in the records to say what happened. One day he was on the job. Next day he was gone. The last entry says he is wanted for desertion, after failing to report for duty three days in a row.”

“Maybe we can track him down. I don’t give a damn if he’s wearing a uniform or not. I just want him to answer some questions. Where was he posted when he rabbited?”

“Annatarr,” Juliyana replied.

“Annatarr?” I repeated, shocked all over again. The moon base on Annatarr had been my last posting. That was where I knew Dalton from. “Dalton was serving there forty years ago. Did he get a posting and come back?”

She shook her head. “That’s where he was posted, forty years ago. That’s when he bolted.”

I drew a breath. “When? Exactly?”

Juliyana said, “A month after Noam died.”

“A month…” I repeated. My heart thudded heavily. The pulse spike had nothing to do with an old woman blowing too much energy, anymore. “The timing is fucking suggestive.”

“It’s more than that,” Juliyana replied. She tapped her pad. “He didn’t just desert. He disappeared. Completely. I searched for traces of him—and I’ve grown good at it. He took a civilian shuttle from the moon across to the station. He bid for passage on a freighter heading for here, as it happens—New Phoenicia. He never got off the freighter. There’s no wrist scan showing his ID. Nothing. For all I know, the freight crew shoved him out an airlock while they were in the hole. Which isn’t possible.”

Exposure to whatever existed inside the wormhole tended to destroy ships. At least, the scientists presumed that was what happened. Every year a few ships jumped into gates and failed to emerge at the other end. As loss of the ship and all passengers and crew was the cost of testing the theory, no one had tried.

This ship had emerged, but without a passenger.

“How many passengers got on, and got off?” I asked.

Juliyana grimaced. “Thirty, at each end.”

“He changed IDs mid-flight,” I breathed. That was the reason for Juliyana’s grimace. Thirty passengers, thirty possibilities. She had spent her time tracing the movements of all thirty passengers, from that journey, through to today, trying to find the anomalies, the odd man out.

No wonder she needed steak.

“It’s our only lead,” I pointed out. “We have to chase down all the possibilities. Starting tomorrow, I’ll help you.” I yawned, suddenly. They had warned me I would spend a lot of time sleeping for a while. I was going through a type of reverse puberty.

Juliyana grinned. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

“Home?” I asked, startled.

Home, it turned out, was a little house on a narrow street, with daylights and faux clouds overhead, currently blanked out so the real starscape could shine through the translucent areas of the dome. It was late.

Juliyana trudged up the rickety stairs and opened the door to one of the upper rooms. It was a bedroom, with a narrow bed and a dresser and not much else.

I put my sack on the dresser. “It looks perfect,” I declared.

I slept like a teenager.

The next day we settled at the small table in the tiny kitchen with a pot of coffee between us. My screen emitter sat in the center of the table where we would collate our findings. Our pads and coffee mugs were in front of us.

Juliyana threw up a list of the thirty passengers of the Yarrow’s Pride onto the emitted screen.

“Crew, too,” I said. “Desertion is a capital crime.” In fact, it was the only automatic capital crime. “He had nothing left to lose. Killing a crew member and taking his place would be nothing, after that.”

Juliyana grimaced and put the crew list up, too. “Although you’d think the other crew members would have noticed the switch.”

“Not if he did it at the very last minute. They might have found the body after they arrived at the station, but by then, the passengers would be gone. They wouldn’t report it to the Rangers, either. They’re freight grunts.”

Freighter companies and spacers preferred to look after their own, even if