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

the middle of—then he has wisely stayed hidden for decades. He should probably stay hidden for another thousand years.”

“He needs our help to bring down the Emperor,” Juliyana breathed. “So he can come home.”

I should have expected Dalton to buck accepting the inevitable. He’d been fighting off the odds for too long. He wanted facts, relied on what his own senses told him, and we could offer nothing right now, except for a handful of coincidences.

Noam had only ever appeared to me when I was alone and had gone away the moment he sensed we were about to be interrupted, so I left Juliyana and Dalton arguing in the galley and locked myself in my room to think. I turned it over and over in my mind, fitting together odd coincidences, strange events and happenings, and how everything we had done since Juliyana socked me in the jaw had led us inexorably toward the Emperor.

But still…

Dalton’s doubt was a powerful factor that made me pause, because there was a tiny seed of doubt in me, too.

“Noam, if you can hear me now, I really need to talk to you,” I said into the air, feeling like a fool.

No answer.

Not long after that, the concierge pinged for my attention. “It’s Dalton,” Dalton said from the other side of the door, his voice sounding strained through the speaker. “We should talk.”

“Let him in,” I said tiredly.

The door opened and Dalton stepped through, carrying a pad. “I told Lyth to give the kid a room. He’s decorating.” His mouth turned down.

“That’s why we need to talk?”

He shook his head and moved closer to the bed. He looked around the featureless walls. “Cozy,” he remarked.

I waited.

Dalton gripped the pad between his hands. “I got Lyth to help me dig for the Emperor’s upcoming itinerary. The real one, not that public bullshit.” His jaw flexed. “The Noam thing…it doesn’t really matter what’s true. We still need to figure out what the fuck happened to him, and what the Emperor had to do with it, right? If we’re to get our lives back, we have to solve it.”

“Bottom line, yes,” I said. “Did you find where he’d be? One of his fake IDs?”

“Nope. Tracking the IDs only works for events that have already happened—all the documentation that they generate. Can’t do it for the future.” He paused. “But there’s one thing happening next week that is a rock-solid certainty.”

I sat up, jolted as Dalton had wanted me to be. “Birthday Honors,” I breathed. “He’s always at them. Always. Why have them if he’s not?”

Dalton nodded. “It’ll be a security nightmare, Danny. The Rangers, all the cadres—military, support and law enforcement—they’ll all be in the Imperial City that week. They’ll be the city, that week. And the Imperial Shield headquarters and training center are there, too. The Shield will be at full force.”

“It would be complete and utter madness to go anywhere near there,” I added.

“Exactly,” Dalton said. “They won’t expect us to try. Only…” He paused again. His gaze, I realized, was measuring me.

“What?” I prompted.

He held out the pad. “Moroder’s murder. They’ve pinned it on us.”

I didn’t take the pad. I didn’t need the corroboration. “Of course, they did,” I murmured, with a sigh.

“That’s going to make the Shield and the Rangers all the more determined to find us,” he pointed out. “They think we killed one of theirs.”

Both of us had been on the other side of that equation. We had not spared energy, time or resources finding those who unjustly injured one of our own. Even though we had once been among their ranks, the Rangers would not hesitate now. It might even make them angrier, because they would feel betrayed, into the bargain.

Alarm filtered through me as I considered the full implication of this news. I stood up. “Where did you get this, Dalton?” I demanded. “How? It’s new. We shouldn’t have caught up with this news until we emerged…Lythion, get your ass in here, now!”

Lyth assembled immediately.

“You’re pulling newsfeeds through the gates!” I raged. “Exactly what I told you not to do!”

Lyth held up both hands. “I did not—I have not, I swear.”

I pointed to the pad in Dalton’s hand. “Then how is he accessing fresh news?” I demanded.

Lyth glanced at Dalton. “I don’t know.”

“You’re lying!”

“I am not.”

“Is this when you tell us you’re incapable of lying?” Dalton asked, sounding weary.

“He can lie,” I snarled. “His waitress construct fooled Sauli with bullshit about my usual order.”

Lyth nodded. “In the hierarchy of priorities, you outrank Sauli, so I lied to assist you. But no one outranks you,” he added, his tone intense.

“Not even me?” Dalton asked. I couldn’t tell if he was faking the wounded tone or not.

“No,” Lyth said, his voice flat and sincere. “Sorry,” he added.

“Well, that’s a perspective altering confession,” Dalton said dryly. “Guess I know my place.”

I held up my hand. “Wait. If Lyth isn’t pulling from newsfeeds, then how did you get the news update? It isn’t possible.”

Dalton looked startled. Then his eyes narrowed. “Another impossible coincidence?” he asked.

“You can’t argue with physics,” I replied. “Ask Sauli—he’ll tell you with graphs and mathematics why it isn’t possible to break natural laws. If Lyth didn’t pull in that feed—”

“I didn’t,” Lyth added, his voice low and firm.

“—then who did? We, the humans on the ship, can’t.”

“That’s not all that dropped onto my pad,” Dalton said. He turned up the pad and swiped. “I found this, too. I wasn’t going to say anything—not just yet. But now…” He swiped a last time, then turned the pad around and pushed it toward me. “Read it,” he said softly.

His tone and the look in his eye made the hairs on the back of my neck try to stand up, with a painful prickling. Reluctantly, I took the pad.

Looked down at it.

It was a death certificate, dated forty-odd years ago.

Noam Basim Andela.

My eyes prickled.

“Scroll down,” Dalton added.

I scrolled, blinking to clear my vision. The security seal for the certificate, with