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

narrowed. Then his lifted his gaze up a little. “Lyth, it’s time to do that thing you do.”

“Sure, Gabriel,” Lyth replied.

Nothing happened. I raised my brow at Dalton.

“Hi, Danny Andela,” Lyth said—from behind me.

I whirled.

Juliyana bolted off the table, her hand flashing to her hip, her eyes wide.

A stranger stood there. He was two meters tall, with black hair which needed trimming, a lean physique and a know-it-all grin, which grew broader as I studied him. “Boo!” he added.

Juliyana sucked in a little squeaky breath.

“Hologram,” I murmured. It was a damn good one. I couldn’t see any shimmering edges, or transparent sections. Lyth looked as solid as me.

Lyth shook his head. “Wrong. Sorry.” He leaned toward me, picked up my wrist and gripped my hand and shook it.

I tore my hand out of his grip and backed up.

“He’s harmless,” Dalton said. “So far,” he added, with a judicious tone.

“Android?” Juliyana breathed, moving closer to the thing, gazing intently. “Only, how did you get around the Laxman Syndrome?” She circled the thing, which turned to follow her arc, a smile on its face.

“I don’t know,” Dalton said, his tone sharp. “I know nothing about this ship. Lyth—this one you’re looking at—was standing on the boarding ramp of the ship, waving to me as I moved through the junk park. I could have had a battalion of rangers on my ass, so when he invited me onto the ship, I took the opportunity.”

“You’re all wrong,” Lyth said happily. “Not android, therefore no need to get around anything tricky.”

“You stepped onto a strange, junked and abandoned ship and managed to pilot it to Devonire?” I asked. Although, the junk status explained the rust on the exterior of the ship. Junk parks were damp, unventilated places. Even carbon steel eventually succumbed to the moisture.

“I didn’t do a damn thing to pilot it except ask for permission to dock when we got here,” Dalton said. “The ship flew itself.”

“That’s impossible,” I shot back, still watching Lyth as it spun to follow Juliyana’s circle around it.

“Stay still, damn it,” Juliyana muttered.

Lyth grew still but twisted its chin to watch her circle…and kept twisting. I gasped as its head swiveled right around on its neck, with no apparent damage.

Dalton sucked in a startled breath, too. “Damn…” he breathed.

Lyth looked even more amused. I would have said it was enjoying our discomfort—no, it was enjoying showing off, only ship AIs didn’t have emotions.

Juliyana halted her circling. It wasn’t giving her any more answers than we had so far. “Okay,” she told the thing. “Explain your nature so we can understand.”

“It would be easier to demonstrate,” Lyth said, his smile growing warmer.

“Demonstrate, then,” Juliyana told it.

Lyth melted into a puddle on the floor, with flowing traces of colors which had made up his appearance swirling like paint in water.

We all stepped out of the way.

The puddle didn’t spread the way normal liquid did. It remained exactly where it was…then it shrunk. The colors disappeared before the puddle itself did, turning it to a black, non-reflective mass that…evaporated.

I stepped closer to the place where the puddle had been. We all did.

Dalton prodded at the space on the treaded floor with the toe of his boot. “He did that last time,” he said.

“If you’ll step back a moment,” Lyth said, from the overhead speakers.

We all stepped back.

Lyth grew in front of us once more. I watched it build from a small spill of the complete black, developing size, then details and finally colors…and Lyth stood there once more. He spread his hands, as if to say “see?”

“So yeah, he waved at me,” Dalton said. “And said I should come aboard, that he could get me off the station without alerting the Rangers.”

“What are you?” I demanded.

Lyth put his hands together in a surprisingly elegant movement. “I am an outward extrusion of the ship. I am the ship. You stand aboard the Supreme Lythion. I am my hands, my heart, my tools, for…” He shrugged his shoulders and fell apart.

It was like watching a child’s container of marbles all poured out upon the floor, to bounce and roll and find room for themselves, jostling and knocking together.

Only these marbles were all five-centimeter high versions of the full sized Lyth.

“This is how I can fly myself,” Lyth said, from overhead. “If levers must be pulled or buttons depressed, I can do that…”

The thousands of tiny Lyth figures moved over to the navigation table and ran up the leg to the surface. A bunch of them moved over to the control panel and formed into a disembodied finger, which carefully pressed the power grid.

The navigation table came to glowing life, showing the planetary bodies of an unnamed system, circling a blue-white sun.

The finger turned it off again, then flowed back to the rest of the little figures, which flowed down the leg of the table and back to the space where Lyth had been standing, before.

They came together and rose up into Lyth’s shape once more. “Of course, most of the functions in this ship don’t require a human hand to manipulate them. The ship was designed so I could manage them all. For those few functions which require touch, I can still take care of them.”

“Why?” I demanded sharply. A ship that could fly itself and control its own internal functions was far too powerful, in my estimation. I felt deeply uneasy just standing on the deck of the thing.

“Why, to serve you,” Lyth replied, his smile fading. “That is my purpose.”

“What if your purpose was corrupted, and you decided taking a knife to my throat would serve others?” Dalton asked, his voice raspy. I recognized he felt the same concern I did.

Lyth swayed toward him, raised his fist and punched his jaw…only the fist didn’t make contact. It splintered apart and flakes dropped to the ground, to float over to Lyth’s boots and be reabsorbed.

His hand reassembled. “Impact against any solid-state mass, beyond a certain velocity, destroys this structure’s cohesion.”

“Velocity…” Dalton murmured,