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

until Juliyana dug out the nexus and held it up.

“Juliyana, Lyth will take you back to the secondary engine and tell you how to put the relay back in…” I looked at Lyth. “Or can you do it yourself?”

He shook his head. “It requires a torque wrench and fifty pounds of effort to tighten the clamps around it so it properly seats.”

“I’ll do it,” Juliyana said. She let go of Sauli. He rubbed his neck.

I said to him, “You, sit there.” I pointed to the table where his ice cream was melting.

“Should I ask Dalton to stop by?” Lyth asked at the door.

“No. Now the shriver is loaded, I’ll be fine.” I watched Sauli’s eyes as I said it.

His jaw rippled. Yeah, he’d known the shriver was empty. But he was just naïve enough to not consider that a bluff can work both ways.

Although it didn’t really matter if he had. I could handle him if he forced me to it. He wouldn’t like it, but by that point, it wouldn’t matter what he thought of us.

I wanted to avoid that downward spiral if I could. I sat where Juliyana had been sitting and rested the shriver in the corner of the bench and the wall, where I could snatch it up again if I needed it. It was also out of Sauli’s reach.

The waitress came up, with a smile, as if nothing had happened. “Coffee, honey?”

“Please.”

She went away.

Sauli watched her go. “What is this place, anyway?” he said.

“Why don’t you eat your ice cream?”

He pushed the bowl away.

I calculated he’d been down in the engine compartments for twenty-four hours. He had to be starving. I sat back. “The chef here makes the best waffles I have ever tasted. They’re crisp on the outside and soft inside, and the maple syrup is warm, so when it pours into the squares, it soaks into the waffle. They serve cinnamon ice cream on the top, and that melts under the syrup, too.”

Sauli’s gaze shifted to the melting bowl of ice cream.

There was the sound of a flare up of flames from the direction where the kitchen would have been, and loud sizzling. “Oh, and bacon,” I added. “And hash browns that are perfectly fried.” I sniffed and damn if I didn’t smell cooking bacon. Was Lyth listening in and stage managing?

Sauli’s stomach rumbled loudly.

The waitress came back with a tray. She put my coffee in front of me, cream and sugar, and a small platter holding jams, honey, and warm syrup, which steamed gently.

She winked at me and went away.

I made a great show of pouring in the cream and sugar and stirring. Then I slurped noisily.

“I know who you are,” Sauli said. His voice was strained.

“You think you know,” I assured him.

“You’re all over the news feeds. You’re wanted, all of you—except that freak thing. Her—Juli…juli…”

“Juliyana.”

He nodded. “And the other guy, the naked one. Him, too, but not for nearly as much as you two.”

“They’ve got bounties on us already?” I asked, genuinely surprised. And for more than Dalton’s price—he would consider that an insult, I knew. I pushed the ice cream bowl back in front of Sauli. “Try it with syrup,” I coaxed.

His hand curled into a fist on the table. He didn’t reach for the spoon. “I just want to go home,” he muttered.

“Is Keeler your birthplace?” I asked.

“Yes,” he muttered, his gaze moving to the ice cream once more.

“Ball-bounder, hmm? But now you’re working in space. That’s enterprising of you.”

The waitress appeared. “Your usual, Captain,” she said, and placed a loaded plate in front of me.

As I didn’t have a “usual” order, this had to be more of Lyth’s manipulations. I looked down at the meal and tried to look enthusiastic. A large waffle, with ice cream and a big pat of melting butter. Golden hash browns, a stack of bacon that still sizzled. Scrambled eggs, toast fresh out of the toaster. Sausage links.

Everything an immature palate craved.

I picked up one of the hash browns and crunched it between my teeth. Sauli watched my mouth work. I swallowed and smiled at him. “Want some?”

He shook his head.

Stubborn…

I didn’t reach for the knife and fork. “Look, Sauli, I have to be frank. If you and I don’t come to some sort of arrangement, then my options for what to do with you get a lot shorter.”

He looked startled. “You said you would take me home. Eventually,” he added bitterly.

“Why did you decide to work in space?” I asked him.

“What?” He frowned at the apparent change of subject.

I shrugged, ate another hash brown, then pushed the plate away from me to make room for my coffee. “Most ball-born people tend to stay dirt-side. Living and working in space is a hard transition to make. Most people can’t adjust. It’s just too strange. There’s no cozy farmstead up here. No job security, no seasons. It’s hard to make a living and it’s high risk, too. After a few years, most earth-born go back to dirt-side.” I was exaggerating, but not by much. There wasn’t a lot of immigration up and down gravity wells. “It takes guts to make it up here among the stars,” I told him. “So you must have really wanted it. I’m wondering why.”

Sauli cut his gaze away from me, to peer through the window at the antiquated street scene on display. As he looked, a ground vehicle pulled up on the other side of the street. It had a flatbed on the back, and a whole family climbed out of the cab, the mother and father helping little kids climb down. A dog jumped down from the flatbed—one of the old species with fur and tails and wagging tongues that I’d only read about in historical novels.

I marveled at Lyth’s grasp of psychology.

Sauli tore his gaze away from the view. He stared at the breakfast platter which was only inches away from his forearm, now. “I wanted to…to see what it was like up here.” He sounded