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

it closed until the lock dropped and showed red once more. Air pumped back into the space.

I was already at the outer door. As soon as it cycled and lit green, I turned it open.

Dalton stepped in and I shut it behind him. He pulled off the helmet, looking very unhappy.

“You made it,” I assured him. “You don’t have to go back that way,” I added. “I know where Moroder is, too—a bonus.”

“Only I can’t clump about the station in this,” Dalton pointed out. “Lyth missed something in this grand plan of his—I thought of it, halfway around the base.”

“No, he didn’t miss it,” I told him. “Turn around, let me get at your air pack.”

“Why?” But he turned anyway.

I found the control panel Lyth had demonstrated to me and punched in the code.

Dalton sucked in a shocked breath as the suit moved around him. It flowed and shifted, until it resembled one of the midnight blue Imperial Shield officers’ uniforms.

Sweat dotted his temples. “I walked around out there wearing nanobots?” he breathed.

“We figured you’d rather not know until later.”

He swallowed and nodded.

“Sweep your hair back, make it look like you tried to comb it,” I added and took him back through the station. As we approached the room I should have been in, I pointed to the door into the common room, where even more noise was coming. Dalton nodded.

There were men lingering in the corridor now. They were, I presumed, trying to find a pretext to see Sagai. When they saw her walking toward them, they all straightened and puffed out, while trying to make it look like they hadn’t seen me at all.

Dalton moved up and held out his elbow and I slid my hand under his arm and smiled up at him, to the acute disappointment of every man we passed. They were so pissed about it, they didn’t register Dalton at all, except as bigger, broader-shouldered competition.

I stopped at the door with Moroder’s nameplate and Dalton silently moved to one side. I knocked and pushed into Moroder’s office in a flurry of feathers and panic. “Lyle! Hells bells, Lyle, the mirror just fell off the wall! There’s glass everywhere!” I flapped my hands at him, as Moroder rose to his feet, confusion playing on his face.

“Oh, you have to help me, Lyle,” I said breathlessly, moving closer.

He figured it out, but not soon enough. I pushed the injector against the side of his neck just as he realized my hands were moving around him instead of over him and tried to jerk out of the way.

He stiffened and grew still, breathing hard.

“You won’t be able to move until that wears off,” I told him. “Also, you can’t speak just yet.” I pushed the used injector into the same pocket the knife sat in. “It’ll just hurt if you try, so don’t bother.”

His throat worked, proving he was an idiot. His face creased in pain, as he said with uncooperative lips, “hooo?”

I went over to the door and opened it. Dalton slipped inside, moved straight over to Moroder, scooped him up over his shoulders and moved out again. I turned the old mechanical lock on the inside of the door and shut the door again.

We moved farther along the corridor, away from the dressing room and Moroder’s office. This was the front administration section of the base, but everyone was off duty for the day and most of them were in the common room already. The place was deserted.

“Morale’s low,” Dalton observed. “No one working overtime.”

I moved over to the door where I had entered earlier and put my hand on the grab bar and waited.

When Lyth remotely pushed the bar down, as a signal, I shoved the door open and moved out into the molecular tunnel. Right then, I didn’t give a damn about the nothingness on the other side of the metal rings. I was braced for someone to shout at us—which couldn’t happen in zero atmosphere—or for shriver bolts to sizzle by us. Nothing happened, though. Lyth had short-circuited their security feeds and if anyone was watching the feeds instead of the frank retrospective on Sagai Skylark that was by now running in the common room, then they would see nothing.

We hauled Moroder up into the drop ship between us and folded him up so we could prop him up on the bench behind the pilot chairs, his head against the bulkhead to keep him upright.

I injected him with the second dose. Moroder worked his jaw and swallowed.

“Now you can speak,” I told him. “But you still can’t move, so don’t try. You’ll just fall down and force us to pick you up again.” I took out the knife. “The juice in you will make you garrulous and inclined to talk. This—” I waved the knife, “—is to make sure you talk about the right thing. Ready?”

Moroder narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”

“That isn’t the topic,” Dalton said, standing over him.

Moroder’s gaze flickered up to Dalton and back to me. “You’re not Sagai.”

I patted his cheek. “That’s the only warning you get,” I told him. “Now, I’m going to give you a name, and you will tell me everything you know about that name. Ready?”

Moroder shook his head, but said, “Yes.” Then he grimaced. “Yes, yes, yes, yes…” He pressed his lips together, halting the torrent with sheer force. His eyes were filled with fury and wariness. Sweat showed on his forehead.

“Lieutenant Noam Andela,” I said, and waited.

Nothing. Moroder’s eyes got even larger, and his pursed mouth worked, but he held it in.

“Damn,” Dalton breathed. “Stubborn bastard.”

I stabbed the knife lightly into Moroder’s thigh—a shallow nick, but the juice would enhance the pain temporarily.

Moroder howled, his throat straining. “Stop, stop, no, no, no, I knew him, I knew of him, I never met him, but I know the name, yes I do, it was years and years ago and I signed the orders, but I never met him. He wasn’t meant to be