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

been in atmosphere, the wake of our passage would have rocked the bigger ship and tossed around everyone inside it.

The gate loomed and appeared to be leaning away from us because of the angle of our approach.

“Capacitor ready,” Lyth said softly.

The gate glowed, the center aqua blue and peaceful, beckoning us.

“Entering,” Lyth added, as we drove through the pond and into the blankness of the wormhole behind it.

I blew out my breath and relaxed.

Juliyana met my gaze. “The carrier. Was it following us?”

“Through null-space? I would have said that was impossible, two days ago.” I grimaced. “One more thing we have to figure out,” I added.

I went over to Dalton’s shell. It was completely closed. “Lyth, open it, please. Wake him gently.”

“Inertia was too high, at the end, there,” Lyth began as he started the wake cycle on the side of the shell.

“You did fine, Lyth,” I told him.

The shell gave a soft popping sound then retracted on either side. The protective gel which had covered Dalton completely pulled aside with it. Dalton looked like he was asleep. The shell stole one’s consciousness, which I think Dalton would be relieved about, as he was already mildly claustrophobic. He wouldn’t have liked the sensation of being smothered which a fully closed shell imparted.

He drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes.

I gave him my warmest and most reassuring smile. “We’re safely in the hole.” I held out my hand. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”

He took my hand and stepped out of the shell and shuddered. “Make that two.”

We all headed for the diner. There was no discussion. We just gravitated there like electrons.

We slid into the same booth we had used that morning.

The waitress came over with her tray and placed heavy-bottomed glasses in front of us. Each had five centimeters of liquid in it. “I figured you could use a belt,” she told us and winked and went away.

Dalton was the first to knock back his shot. He hissed and placed the glass very carefully back on the table.

We followed suit. Even Lyth made a show of gulping his whisky, drawing the air over his tongue like a true aficionado of grain alcohols did.

Juliyana held her empty glass up to the waitress, tapped it, and held up four fingers. Then she turned back to us. “They’re tracking us. Somehow.”

“Not possible,” Lyth said.

“A lot of impossible things have happened lately,” I said. “Best not make that argument unless you can back it up.”

“I can back it up,” Lyth said. “It is impossible for anyone to track us inside a wormhole, because we’re not in proper space. I could prove that with mathematics, but I doubt you’d understand it.”

Dalton snorted and patted Lyth on the shoulder. “Way to make us all feel inadequate.”

Lyth looked alarmed. “But you really wouldn’t understand…” he said quickly.

“I’m sure we wouldn’t. Relax, Lyth. We’ll take it as a base fact for now that we can’t be tracked inside the array. So how did they know we were coming?”

Juliyana pressed her fingers to her temples. “The data…” she said.

We all looked at her and waited.

Juliyana sat up again. “Look, we’ve been making queries for hours and hours, all of it sensitive data, right? We didn’t stop to question how the Lythion could suck up live data like we were in ordinary space. We just used it because it was very, very convenient. So all these delicate questions were put out there into the data stream.”

Dalton wiped his finger around the bottom of his glass, picking up the last of the excellent whisky. “And we’ve already agreed that anyone involved in the Drakas disaster asking about anyone else involved in it would ring alarms across the empire.” He looked up. “We must have rung every alarm out there.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t explain how they knew where we would emerge,” Juliyana said, in a tone that said she was working it out, arranging pieces.

“It’s a wormhole,” I said. “Lyth doesn’t know how he gets the data, but we’re in a hole with two ends—the data must come through one of them.”

“The arrival gate,” Lyth said. “The hole collapses behind us.”

I stared at him.

“That’s something I could have lived without knowing,” Dalton growled.

Juliyana pointed at Lyth. “That’s how they figured out where we were going to emerge—or maybe they figured we were already in normal space, because they don’t know we can get data in the hole. They tracked the origin of the query and it led them to the gate at Sh’Klea Sine. So they raced there. Any ships on the other side of the galaxy would have got there before us, ready to greet us.”

I turned to Lyth. “You have to stop pulling in live data,” I told him. “Right now.”

“It could already be too late,” Juliyana pointed out.

“Right now, Lyth,” I insisted.

He nodded. “Done.” Then his brow smoothed out. “By the way, there is something else you should know.” His tone was grave.

Lyth took us to the room/space where he and Juliyana had been peering up at the starfield, which showed an interesting tendency toward conservation of energy. He could have simply shifted the diner around to show us his findings. Or perhaps he was sensitive enough to understand that my preference for my room to remain frozen extended to other spaces, too.

The representation of Sh’Klea Sine was gone. In its place was another station—one of the vertical ones with a fat belly and hundreds of levels—a bit like the Umb Judeste. An ochre rock of a planet hung above it, with the light from a red sun bathing both.

“Wow…” Dalton breathed, clutching his whisky glass to his chest, his chin up.

“That’s our destination?” Juliyana asked. “I don’t recognize it.”

“I said to stop pulling data, Lyth,” I snapped. “What part of that did you not understand?”

“I’m not pulling data,” Lyth replied. “This is an archival file of Polyxene. You’ll notice it isn’t moving? We also won’t have updates on who is