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

“Damn, you actually have changed, haven’t you?”

“I haven’t changed. But I am adapting to the circumstances,” I replied as calmly as I could, even though my pulse had jumped. I didn’t like being called a thief, even though that was exactly what I was—at least for now. I pushed the concern aside. “Why did you desert your post, Dalton?”

“Why did you steal the money and rejuvenate?” he shot back. “Rumor said you were sitting on your stellar barge, waiting for the end.”

“I was,” I replied as calmly as I could. We could go around and around all day, trading I-dare-you’s. I cut through it, instead. “Juliyana found orders transferring Noam to the Imperial Shield, a year before he died. They carried my chop.”

Dalton grew still. “Your chop…”

“I found the real orders, the ones with your signature.”

He sat back. “That’s why you were looking for me. You’re looking into Noam’s death.”

“There’s something odd about it,” I told him. “At least, Juliyana thinks so, and she has a lot of documents that suggest it.”

“Suggest it, or you just want them to suggest it?” Dalton asked. His voice held none of the usual harsh notes.

“So why did you bolt, Dalton?”

His expression closed over. “I got a message that said it would be a smart move to fade over the horizon. It was a source I trusted…so I faded.”

And he had been fading ever since.

“Just like that?” I asked. “No questions?”

“Just like that.” He gazed back at me, unwavering.

I recognized that I would not get anything more out of him right now. “Lyth, how long are we in the hole, for?”

“There are another eighteen hours, thirty-three minutes and forty-seven seconds remaining before we emerge,” Lyth said smoothly, his tone polite and impartial.

I nodded and got to my feet. “Finish your treatment. We can talk later,” I told Dalton. He needed time to unclench. “Lyth, you mentioned staterooms. Show me one of them.”

“Good luck with that,” Dalton said, as I left.

I found out what he meant very quickly, for Lyth walked me along the corridor we had followed when we first arrived. It ran down the flank of the ship and only jigged to the center to lead directly to the bridge deck.

“You may choose any door,” Lyth told me.

I peered at the half dozen security doors along the corridor and frowned. “I don’t remember seeing all these doors before.” I had never fully lost the habit of mentally mapping doors and routes and exits through strange environments. I would have remembered these.

“They were not here the last time you traversed the corridor,” Lyth told me.

I glared at him.

“They’re just doors,” Lyth added, his voice soft. “Here.” He moved over to the nearest one and waved his hand over the keyplate, as if he had biometrics it could scan. The door opened. Only in the back of my mind did I process that he had just opened the door for his own avatar.

I stepped up to the open doorway, curious.

The room beyond was blank, featureless, and huge. “Who uses this place? The fucking Emperor?”

“Too large?” Lyth said.

The walls moved and shifted.

I staggered back a step or two. “What the…” I moved back to the doorway and would have propped myself up against the frame, except I suddenly remembered that the door hadn’t been here a while ago, either. I made myself stand there, my arms crossed, watching the walls…flow.

It was the same type of movement Lyth had used when he turned into a finger and pressed the navigation table power-on button.

“You mean, this entire ship is made of nanobots?” I breathed, awe stealing all the strength from my voice.

“The exterior walls are hardened carbide metal, to withstand the rigors of space.”

“And they’re rusty,” I added, my tone dry.

“Not for much longer,” Lyth replied serenely. “I’m restoring the outer epidermis as we speak.”

He meant it literally. “Right now?” I asked. “Out there?”

“How do you scratch an itch?” he asked me, his tone curious.

“I just scratch. I don’t think about it.” I nodded. “Okay, got it. The epidermis is just you. But these inner walls…even the corridor wall, they’re made up of your nanobots?”

“No. My nanobots are smarter and have inbuilt sensory and communications functions. The bots that the walls and everything in the living section of the ship is made of are pure construction bots. They move, grip and hold still when they’re told to.”

“By you.”

“Yes.” Lyth smiled. “So…is the room of sufficient dimensions to suit you?”

I looked again. The walls, still blank and featureless, were considerably closer together, yet the space was still larger than my apartment on the Judeste. “I could learn to live with it,” I said cautiously. “You created an armchair…” I added. A thought struck me. “Was the galley even there before we got there?”

“It was there before you got there,” Lyth replied. “For a few minutes, at least.”

I had an even more horrible thought. “Was my curry made of nanobots, then?”

“The printer is a perfectly normal printer,” Lyth replied. “The bots just move it with them, as required.”

“The energy needed for something like this…” I murmured.

“Every time the nanobots move, they create kinetic energy, which is drained from them to avoid damaging them, and stored for future use. I never run out of internal energy.” He was very proud of that. “So…what furniture would you like in your room?”

“A bed, for now,” I told him. I was just about to add that I needed pillows and sheets and a thick eiderdown over the top to snuggle beneath, when a bed rose up from the floor, looking unformed and lumpy. The surfaces smoothed out, developed details, grew flat and colored themselves in, until finally, a bed stood there. It was large enough for at least two people, with lots of pillows and a thick comforter.

“I could get to enjoy this,” I said. “Once you’ve made something like the bed, can you change it?”

“It is easier to scrap it, disperse the nanobots, and start again,” Lyth admitted. “But changes are