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

which allowed the crew to access information they needed while in the hole. Each time the ship emerged from a gate, the gate would pass on the most recent communications squirt, which would include archival information which was automatically fed to the concierge.

“How big is the station?” I asked Juliyana. “Did the ship update data before it left? What other ships are due at the station when we get there?”

Juliyana made a small sound which might have been smothered irritation. “They have a whole three landing bays,” she said, her tone admiring.

“Don’t be like that,” I chided her. “I realize it’s not New Phoenicia…”

“The Dream Queen is the only ship due to arrive this week.”

“Good. We’ll have the run of the station to ourselves. When I get a chance, I’ll find out from Newman where they’re going next. We need to start looking for a freighter that’s heading in the direction we want.”

“And what direction is that? The last known destination of Gabriel Dalton was New Phoenicia, and we just left there.” Her jaw sagged a little as a new thought occurred to her. “You’re not thinking we should try to reach Annatarr, are you? Not after Farhan has promised to rain mayhem down upon us.”

“Annatarr is a military base,” I pointed out. “There are no law-enforcement battalions there.”

“And you expect the Rangers to pay any attention to that division? They never have in the past. I’m combat and I’ve arrested my fair share of petty criminals, too.”

I seethed for a moment. It was fucking inconvenient to have been pushed away from New Phoenicia. It didn’t help that our research had been interrupted, either. “Perhaps Devonire has a hilton we can rent. We can hunker down and nail the records. Find that trace. Then we’ll know where we’re going.”

In the back of my mind I was thinking that Devonire was a remote and out-of-the-way place. Who in their right mind would think of looking for us there? We were traveling on the new IDs, which no one knew was us. As difficult as it was to find a trace of Gabriel Dalton running under a false ID, that same degree of difficulty would also hamper anyone looking for us.

“I suspect we may have just bought ourselves time to properly figure this out,” I told Juliyana.

“Yeah, you said Zillah’s World would be nice and quiet, too,” Juliyana said, her tone dry. “I’m going to find food. I got up way too early this morning and I’ve been moving since. I need breakfast.”

I felt the need to apologize and squashed it.

Things were moving, as Juliyana had said on Zillah’s World. Life got interesting when that happened.

As I had eaten breakfast already, I stood in the middle of the cabin and considered if I should try to catch up on my sleep after all. Juliyana hadn’t said how long the schlep through the hole would be. Devonire was a near-neighbor in astronomical terms so it was likely the trip would take double-digit hours.

Only, I didn’t feel the need for sleep. I was wired, zapping with energy. Glowing with it.

Noam stepped into my lateral view, moved a few more steps and turned to face me. “Hi again. Thought she’d never leave. We have a few moments, now.”

I didn’t feel any concern about him standing in front of me like that. Instead, the sensation swept down upon me that something was behind me…coming closer. Something was about to happen.

My heart zoomed up into the run-for-your-life level. Adrenaline painted a coppery taste in my mouth.

The sensation of doom washed over me, making every hair on my flesh try to stand up in a prickly parade. Coldness touched me.

“Noam…” I wasn’t sure if I spoke aloud or not. “Why are you here?”

“I’ve been here all along,” he told me. “I’ve been trying a long time to speak to you. There’s a lot to say, and I don’t know how long I’ve got until—” He jerked his head toward the door of the cabin. “Shit…” he breathed.

And disappeared.

Juliyana thrust open the door. “They’ve invited us to dinner, Danny—” she begun.

I heard her, but was incapable of replying. I sagged, and just barely got my hands out to stop from falling on my face.

I was sweating, my heart threatening to explode out of my chest. “Noam…” I croaked.

Juliyana gripped my arms and hauled me to my feet, then shuffled me over to the bed and dropped me on the end of it. She crouched to look me in the face.

“Noam, what?”

“He was just here,” I squeezed out of my uncooperative throat. “Talking to me.”

10

Juliyana didn’t believe me, of course. Even I had trouble believing it, and he had been right there in front of me.

I’d been an old woman so recently, I think the effect still lingered in her mind. Juliyana fussed. She dialed up the medical AI on the concierge panel and connected it to her pad and ran diagnostics, even though I told her more than once I was fine, nothing wrong.

Which was a small lie. I felt very tired, when only moments ago, I had been pulsing with energy.

The AI directed Juliyana through a series of scans and probes. Just like a real doctor, it said nothing until it’d had a chance to consider everything properly. Unlike real doctors, though, it could collate and analyze the mountains of data points it had collected and consider them in gestalt, plus consult every medical resource available to it in the hole…all in a few seconds.

It cleared its “throat” and said in a pleasant tenor; “It appears you have suffered a petit mal seizure—what laymen call a waking seizure.”

Juliyana put her hands on her hips, looking less than happy.

It matched how I felt. “These are not the old implants,” I pointed out. “They were causing the seizures, before.”

“Perhaps not.” The AI spoke with a pedantic tone which matched every doctor I’ve ever met. “It is possible the epilepsy is independent of the implants. As