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

been outvoted. Fine. No problems. You can be captain as long as you’re on the ship. But when we get out of this hole, we’re diving straight back into another one. I’m taking you back to your barge, lady, and dumping you on it.” He glanced at Juliyana. “Both of you.”

Juliyana put her chin on her fist. “Why did you run away from the Rangers, Dalton?’

“None of your fucking business,” he shot back.

“He was warned to take a dive, so he did,” I said.

Dalton crossed his arms. “Can we get more coffee?” he bitched, looking for the waitress.

Juliyana didn’t move. She kept her gaze on Dalton. “Answer me this, Dalton. You’ve been running forty years plus. Did you never stop to ask yourself why you’re running?”

“I’m running because I’m wanted for desertion,” he growled. His glance flickered toward me.

“I’m not the still-active Ranger here,” I pointed out.

Juliyana smiled. “I’m off-duty and on hiatus,” she replied. “So let’s be frank. The desertion is just the symptom. The reason you ran is the crux. It fits a pattern.”

“You think you know why I ran, huh?”

“I don’t believe even you do,” Juliyana replied. “You just think you do. I don’t care why you think you ran, though. The interesting thing is that just over a month after Danny resigned, you had a sudden need to disappear and never be found again. Have you considered, Dalton, that either throwing you into a brig for whatever you think you’re running from, or, as actually happened, having you run and stay wanted and off the grid, was exactly what someone wanted?”

Dalton put his coffee mug down. Slowly. He only just found the table with the bottom of it, because he was staring at Juliyana. “You’re saying Danny was forced to resign?”

He was not stupid. I gave him that.

“Danny thinks she resigned of her own free will, but what if everything was set up to push her into a place where she thought resigning was the only viable option? What if you were pushed into a place where you thought running was your only option?”

Dalton leaned forward. He was hooked. “Why?” he demanded, his voice showing a hint of strain.

“It got both you and Danny off the board,” Juliyana replied. “You were Noam’s CO. Danny was throwing her weight around, trying to exonerate Noam, to find out what really happened, because she doesn’t believe he went mad, either.”

“And what about you?” Dalton said.

“I was already off the board. I was stripped of all rank. I’ve been stuck in maintenance on shit assignments in every small corner of the Empire ever since.”

Dalton winced. “Damn…” he breathed.

“Anyone who had a reason to want to learn the truth was dealt with,” Juliyana finished. “Even Darcy, Noam’s partner, has been neutralized.”

“Only, I wasn’t digging into what happened to Noam,” Dalton pointed out.

“You did know he had been reassigned to the Imperial Shield,” I said. “You’re the only person in the Rangers who knew. So they caused you to run, and changed the orders so it looked like I issued them.”

“Why you?” Dalton said. “Why not just destroy the transfer orders?”

“It would discredit me, if I ever tried to claim again that Noam was not the cause of the Drakas disaster.” I grimaced. “The orders would make it look like I was crazed with guilt for shoving him into an assignment that drove him mad.” I shrugged.

Lyth said softly, “No, the orders were changed so that Juliyana would come to find you.”

We all stared at him.

“You know that?” Juliyana said.

“I cannot demonstrate that it is true, but it is the simplest explanation. Danny had already been judged as a mother crazed with grief and forced to resign. There was no need for additional measures. The real orders were too easy to find. All they needed the false orders to do was prompt you into acting.”

“You know something about this, Lyth?” I asked warily.

Lyth shook his head. “I’ve been stuck in a junk park for nearly a century, cut off from everything. This is the first I’ve heard of Noam Andela’s actions at Drakas—although I am now up to date with the public records…such as they are.”

He had been quietly processing all the public data while we had been convincing Dalton he hadn’t run of his own free will at all.

Dalton scrubbed his face with both palms. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he said. His voice was hoarse. He didn’t like the idea that he had been manipulated any more than we did. “So I knew he’d been transferred to the Imperial Shield. So what? How is that a threat? I signed transfer orders every fucking week.”

“Do you know who he was reporting to in the Shield?” I asked. “The orders didn’t say.”

“Transfers to the Shield don’t specify CO or unit,” Dalton said. “You know that as well as I do.”

“But you do know who he was assigned to,” I replied. I was absolutely certain of it, because Dalton was the type of officer who not only asked questions he shouldn’t, he made sure he had sources who could give him the answers. He had never been a soldier who could blindly obey. He questioned everything. It was the reason he had still been a Major despite a thirty-year career in the Rangers. He knew how to work within the system…to a point.

Juliyana leaned forward eagerly. “That’s why you were made to run,” she added. “You knew too much.”

Dalton swallowed. “You’d better tell me everything.” This time, it wasn’t a demand. It was a plea.

I left the three of them in the diner, with Juliyana holding their rapt attention while she went through all the evidence and suggestive documents she had on file. Although, the only ironclad proof of any wrongdoing was the transfer orders with my chop on them, alongside the real orders.

We needed proof, something that would stand up under the blaze of public scrutiny and not look like the pair of us—or Dalton, for that matter—were delusional from