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

stressed. I’m not sure he was aware that he had reached for the ice cream bowl and taken a spoonful.

“You wanted to see beyond the curvature,” I added. “Find out how other people lived.”

He nodded, still not looking at me and very carefully not looking out the window.

“How long have you been working at Keeler station? You’re qualified, right?”

“I got my papers three years ago.” His tone was defensive.

That put him in his late twenties, right where I had pegged him. He was a newt.

“Then you’ve been working at the station for ten years at least,” I said, and pushed warmth into my voice. “You’ve outlasted the spineless ones that creep home after a few years, then.”

He glanced up at me, startled. He pulled his gaze away once more.

“What I don’t understand, Sauli, is why you’re in such an all-fired rush to get back to Keeler again.”

He met my gaze again.

I shrugged. “You wanted to see what it was like in space.” I leaned forward. “Look around, Sauli. You’re in space. Right in it. Not parked on the edge, on a geostationary body.”

He blinked.

“We’re in the hole right now. We’ll be emerging…actually, I’m not exactly sure where we’re heading. Lyth?”

An emitted screen displayed in the air over the table, showing a system with a blue sun and four planets. The one circling farthest from the blue giant had a tag over it. Androkles Prime.

Sauli looked around for Lyth, then back to the map, frowning.

“Have you been to Androkles Prime?” I asked Sauli, as the map cleared.

He frowned. “You know I haven’t.”

“It’s a commercial hub. A whole city floating in space, built up around one of the largest space stations in the Empire. A million people live there. Permanently. Another ten million pass through the station every year.”

Sauli’s frown was one of deep thought. He reached out to the plate in front of him and scooped up a piece of bacon and bit the end off and chewed, all while thinking. “I’ve seen videos of Androkles.”

“We may not stop there for long.”

“Because the Rangers are after you,” he added, around his mouthful of bacon.

I nodded. “That, too. I’m not entirely sure where we’ll go next, but it will be somewhere else in the Empire. Three days ago, we were at Polyxene.”

He finished that piece of bacon and reached for another, completely unaware of what he was doing. “It doesn’t bother you, not knowing where you’re going to be next? That people are chasing you?”

“The chasing bit bothers me,” I admitted freely, as he scooped up a handful of hash browns. “Here.” I held out the knife and fork to him, and he took them, his gaze on my face. “The not knowing where I’m going…no, that doesn’t bother me at all. I was in the Rangers for decades. I often didn’t find out where I was going next until I read my orders as we shipped out. You get used to it. It’s part of a spacer’s life.”

He absorbed that, as he cut into the waffle and ate a mouthful. “You’re not what I thought you would be like.”

“What did you think I would be like?”

“A criminal.” He shrugged.

“I am a criminal—at least, I’m wanted for crimes people think I committed.”

“Did you?”

I wavered. “Sort of. It’s a long story,” I assured him. “Look, Sauli, I’ll give you a choice. If you really want to be square jawed and obstinate, I can lock you into an inertia shell until we pop out at some place, somewhere, and offload you. I’m not sure where that would be, but I would give you enough money to get back home on a crawler.”

His nose wrinkled at that option. He might have spent ten years on a geo-stationary structure, but he’d still absorbed the spacers’ prejudice against commercial space travel.

“Or I can lock you in a stateroom here, and not let you out, which means you can move freely around the room, but with no outside communication. Or…” I paused. “You can move freely around the ship, and see some of the places that we go, and what we’re doing. Then, when I have finished my business with the…with the Rangers, then I will fly you right back to Keeler.”

Sauli chewed, considering. “If I don’t ask you to lock me up in some way, then won’t I become a criminal like you?”

“I’m not a criminal yet,” I pointed out. “Nothing has been proved and I haven’t been tried. There have been a lot of misunderstandings…but you don’t need to worry about any of that. When we drop you off on Keeler, you can tell everyone that we did keep you locked up. I won’t dispute it, even under oath.”

He took a huge mouthful of hash browns and chewed.

“So,” I said. “Inertia shell, locked room, or work for your passage?”

“Work?” he said, sounding alarmed.

“You have to pay for your food and accommodations, and I could use a good engineer.” I smiled. “You won’t be able to sabotage the ship anymore. Lyth will monitor everything you do.”

“Lyth…is he…a hologram, one that can manipulate objects?”

“Lyth is the ship. This is the Supreme Lythion and Lyth is Lythion’s avatar. Lyth?”

Lyth rose up from the floor and gave Sauli a polite smile. “Captain?” he asked me.

“Sauli?” I said.

Sauli grimaced. “I don’t know how to do anything but my job.”

“That’s all you have to do,” I assured him. “We’ll keep you out of everything else. You have my word on it.”

Sauli pushed the nearly empty plate away from him. “Then I guess…I’m your engineer. For now.”

“Thank you,” I told him…and meant it. “Lyth, has Juliyana finished replacing the relay nexus?”

Lyth said with a straight face, “She is having trouble with the torque wrench.”

Sauli snorted.

“Go with Lyth, please, Sauli, and replace the nexus. Remember that Lyth knows exactly what you are doing and will be watching, even if he is not physically looking over your shoulder.”

“As you will be working upon what is essentially me, I must supervise,” Lyth told him.

Sauli took a