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

their ugly cargoes were placed out of the gaze of passengers and residents. The freight bays were a good two kilometers away.

Juliyana rounded on me, her expression concerned. “Billy doesn’t have to stake out all the bays. He just has to stake out the shuttle that will get us there.”

“He doesn’t know we will use freighters,” I pointed out. “He still thinks I’m an old woman, forced to use the commercial crawlers.”

“That depends. His information was good enough to find you the moment you turned down rejuvenation. His sources are probably just as good on this station. I bet he works here a lot, rounding up his recruits.”

I pulled up a schematic of the city on my pad, irritated. I should have anticipated this myself. It had been too long. I was out of practice. I studied the map, locating the clump of landing bays we needed to reach and the layout of the Mag-line which would get us there.

I looked up at Juliyana. “Are you feeling energetic?”

“What does that mean?”

I held the pad out to her and traced the route with my fingernail. “This will get us there.”

“It’s not a shuttle line, it’s just streets and avenues.” She tilted her head. “Avoid the shuttle…”

I nodded. “Walk, jog, run, walk. Less walking than running.”

Juliyana shortened the straps on her sack and shrugged it into a more comfortable position. “Time is ticking.”

We ran.

We made the Dream Queen with only a few minutes to spare. We were both breathless. Rather than feeling like I wanted to curl up and die, I was energized. I was jumping out of my skin. I could get used to this all over again, I decided. Exertion was fun.

The captain, whose name was Newman, we discovered, was not waiting for us on the loading ramp. His 2IC was a spare, withered woman with a deep voice and no sense of humor, called, hilariously, Joy.

I was very grateful she was expecting us. She was the type of second who followed procedure, no matter what, to make up for Newman’s casual style of captaincy. If Newman had failed to advise her we were expected, she would have turned us away.

She waved her pad over each of our wrists, and I held my breath. Now we would learn if the new IDs we had paid for were worth the money Juliyana had spent on them.

Joy turned the pad to check the readout. “Right, Maisie and Maariki. Your crush status checks out. Up the ramp, to the back of the bay. Turn left into the main gallery. Find someone there. They’ll point you to your cabin.” She smiled, a mirthless expression. “Welcome aboard.”

We were directed to the cabin by distracted crewmembers, who were hurrying along the gallery, intent on their responsibilities. The working freight ships had minimal crews, sometimes slicing the personnel down and redistributing responsibilities so each crew member was doing the work of two or three others. During a long haul, that was not onerous. During departure and arrival, and especially while hooked up at the station, where they offloaded and uploaded new cargoes, the crew barely slept.

It was no wonder Captain Newman had sought alone-time in the bar with a glass of his favorite tipple, just before takeoff. It was possibly the only rest he’d had since arriving at New Phoenicia.

The ship was clearly preparing to leave. The reaction engines rumbled, making the whole ship gently vibrate.

The cabin we were directed to was as cramped as promised. The bunk doubled as a gravitation shell for two, even though for the standard acceleration of the freight ship, we wouldn’t need it. It was there in case extremely high gee maneuvers were required. There were few times when such a need arose. Crush juice let spacers withstand a lot. I could remember only a few occasions from my time on military carriers when we had been ordered to our shells. Usually, sharp acceleration and deceleration only occurred if the ship was trying to evade something. In the military, that was usually another ship, or another ship’s weapons.

A freighter might have to dodge unexpected and extremely large objects, like asteroids which were not mapped, or even other ships who were out of their shipping lanes.

While we were still making our way to the cabin, the ship moved away from the station and kicked into gear. I drew in a breath, as inertia tried to press the front of my rib cage in to meet my spine. It was an illusion, of course, although it had been a long time since I had experienced high gee. I paused, breathing steadily.

Juliyana lifted her brow at me. “Okay?”

I nodded. I was still breathing. The nano bots were doing their job.

We continued walking, both automatically falling into the wading stride one used when under high acceleration. Captain Newman was not hanging around. As we stepped into the cabin, I felt the tiny lurch which ships gave when they moved through an array gate and into a wormhole.

I threw my sack on the floor beside the bed. I didn’t expect to have to touch either of them before the flight ended. Only then did it occur to me to check our destination.

Juliyana was ahead of me. She stood at the concierge panel, making herself familiar with the ship’s directory and services.

“Where are we heading?” I asked.

She tapped a few more times, then said, “Devonire.”

“Never heard of it. That might be a good thing.”

Juliyana tapped a few more time. “Devonire III. Single departure point station, over a single city, servicing a continent of farmers. No other major exports besides produce.”

It would make sense that a freighter would be heading for such an outpost. A single note economy would rely upon imports of everything else.

I resisted the temptation to pull up my pad and consult the archives on the size and capacity of the space station. Now we were in the hole, I couldn’t access the usual networks.

The ship’s concierge held permanent archive in its memory,