Hammer and Crucible

by Cameron Cooper

“You’d better go sort out your exit,” Newman said.

  That was going to be tricky. If it had been an internal landing bay like those at New Phoenicia, I could have used an external hatch to climb out, move carefully around the ship and use one of the admin doors to the bay to ease out, all without raising the attention of any official parties monitoring the ship.

  Only, we would be connected by a tunnel to the station itself. Any external hatch was just that, an exit to pure vacuum.

  We had to use the cargo door. It was the only one which would be connected to the station.

  “Thanks, Captain,” I murmured. No point getting pissed at him. None of this was his fault, and he had been as fair-handed as he could be. “I’ll settle with your purser and square things away.”

  “That’d be Joy,” he called after me. “You’ll find her in the mess.”

  I found my way to the mess. Joy was there, and frowning over three pads, all battered and scratched, and muttering to herself.

  The thrill of administration. I shuddered, and pulled her attention away from cooking the books, to dicker over the price of our passage. I used one of the un-anchored cards to pay what I thought was an exorbitant rate, but was probably about average, then hurried back to the cabin.

  “We’re about to dock and the Rangers are already waiting for us,” I told Juliyana.

  “Fucking Farhan,” she muttered. “He really did drop the boom on us.”

  “Looks like. Although there’s no point getting pissed at him. He’s watching out for the family in general, which is exactly what he’s supposed to do.” I picked up my sack. “Devonire is a standard first stage vertical sub-station design.”

  Juliyana got to her feet. “First stage modules have external docking. We have to exit exactly where they’re going to expect us to appear. They’ll be waiting for us.”

  “If they’re here for us at all, and that’s not a given,” I told her.

  “Why else would they be here?”

  “It’s a combat vessel. A carrier. That’s overkill for what they think is a family thief.” I frowned. “All the station’s support services and maintenance will be in the bottom tiers.”

  “Run like hell and get lost down there?” Juliyana hazarded.

  “There’s also a cable down to the surface…” Although the cable car itself would rise up through the station to the higher levels, where it would dock with the internal quay to offload passengers. “What I’d give for a suit right now…” Without enviro-suits, we were limited in what we could do.

  “Suits would just slow us down,” Juliyana pointed out.

  True.

  We moved back along the main gallery to the armored door of the cargo hold. Joy stood there with the dour man who had supervised the closing of the cargo bay when we had left New Phoenicia. His name was Harry, as far as I had been able to pick up from the dinner we had taken with the crew just after take off. Both Harry and Joy were waiting with patient expressions. The cargo bay door was tightly closed, with red lights showing all over the armored exterior. It was locked and sealed to contain atmosphere.

  It was standard procedure when connecting to an external docking bay. The connection of the tunnel was an inexact affair, because the docking collar had been designed to dock with the broadest number of ship models as possible. It would clank and hiss and attach and detach a number of times while it found the best purchase against the ship’s hull. Then the tunnel was filled with atmosphere, and the doors at either end could be safely opened.

  Yet accidents could happen. The collar might not fit exactly and the opening of either door could create a gust which knocked the collar loose, exposing the airlock on the station and the cargo bay to explosive depressurization.

  So everyone stood on the other side of the bulkhead doors until the tunnel was properly opened, tested and announced safe.

  “You’re eager to leave, then?” Harry asked us. He didn’t sound at all interested in the answer. He was being polite to two passengers whom he was never going to see again.

  “Yep,” I said.

  Joy considered us with her downturned expression. I wondered if it was just the natural set of her mouth. Some people had downward curving mouths, and when they relaxed, they instead looked unhappy. “You know there’s Rangers out there, right?”

  How much had everyone guessed about us? Or were all civilians, not just spacers, reticent about dealing with authority?

  “I am aware,” I admitted unhappily.

  Juliyana exchanged a glance with me.

  Harry took in our expressions and scratched under his ear. “Ya know, there’s a pair of miniature cargo drums sitting right beside the left-hand side of the bay doors. The blue ones, right?”

  I nodded. I knew what he was talking about. They were pale blue vertical, rectangular sealed crates, the cheapest type of freight, used by families and individuals for heavy stuff which couldn’t go via the bulk parcel services.

  “Carry one of them,” Harry said. “Up against your chest. No one would see your face unless they wanted to.”

  “I’m not that strong,” I pointed out. The drums had to weigh more than me and Juliyana put together, when they were loaded.

  “They’re empty dead-head, this trip,” Harry said.

  Thank you, I mentally breathed. “Where do you want them parked, beyond the lock?”

  “Anywhere you put ‘em down will be fine. We can find them again, and it’s not like there’s anything in them we have to deliver.” He shrugged.

  The cargo bay door gave a little beep.

  “Pumping,” Joy warned.

  The tunnel was attached and atmosphere being pumped in.

  My gut tightened.

  “Best come over this side,” Harry said. “Soon as the door opens wide enough, you can go.”

  We moved over to his side. The cargo bay door’s readouts were flashing notifications and warnings about insufficient pressure beyond the door—not that we could open it, now, anyway. Nothing would unlock the door, short of a nuclear blast, until the air equalized on the other side.

  Then all the beeps and alerts and flashing lights turned off.

  Silence.

  Juliyana pulled in an unsteady breath, her gaze fixed on the door. Her feet were spread in a ready stance.

  A heavy thud of titanium bolts opening sounded inside the door. Then the hiss and breaking of the seal around the door as it shifted. A pause to let the air into the interior of the seal, to break the vacuum which held it locked.

  Then the door rumbled to one side.

  As soon as the door was wide enough to get through, Juliyana slipped through it and was gone. I followed her.

  Juliyana had sensibly moved around the edge of the cargo bay, where a corridor of space was kept free, instead of down the center lane which was also kept open. The cavernous room had cargo carriers stacked up nearly to the ceiling.

  I jogged after Juliyana. No need to move at top speed yet—I had glimpsed the outer door of the station at the other end of the tunnel—it still wasn’t open yet.

  I found Juliyana at the edge of the cargo bay doors, which were fully retracted. She hoisted one of the two crates up into her arms, as if she had expected it to be heavy. It looked heavy, because the shell was reinforced with thick ribs. Yet Juliyana nearly threw the crate over her shoulder.

  Forewarned, I picked up the other crate. It was as light as a feather. We stood by the doors, watching the outer station airlock door, waiting for it to crack open.

  With a hiss and a sigh of old pneumatics and pumps, the door cranked open. I could hear the wheels grinding, somewhere inside, and gears moving on metal tracks with a heavy ratcheting sound.

  There were people on the other side of the door, becoming steadily more visible the wider the door opened. I scanned them. Dirty overalls, basic blues, browns, greens. None of the charcoal black uniforms I was braced for.

  “Ready?” I breathed.

  “Fuck no,” Juliyana breathed back. “Onl
y way is forward, though.”

  True.

  “Don’t run until we have to,” I warned her as the door came to a shuddering halt. I stepped out onto the interleaved metal plates of the tunnel. The sheath around the tunnel was opaque, so I could see basic shapes, but no details. I walked along the tunnel, my boots making the plates shudder and yaw. I wondered what the really heavy cargo containers did to the tunnel when they were lorried over to the station.

  I hitched the barrel up into a more comfortable position and kept walking. A woman with ruddy cheeks and a put-upon air stood at the wide door, a pad in hand. The chief stevedore.

  I wasn’t concerned about her stopping us for formalities, for all of those would have been sorted out while the Queen moved from the gates to the station.

  “In a hurry, then?” she asked, her voice gruff.

  “Hot date tonight,” I murmured as I stepped up onto the station floor and felt solidness beneath my feet.

  The other workers who had been milling about the door were drifting away. Their job of coupling the ship had been done.

  The air lock was the same size as the external door. Another door exactly the same dimensions was on the other side of the ten-meter wide airlock. It was closed. Instead, a man-sized door to the left, in the side wall, was propped open. It had similar warnings and locking mechanisms to the main cargo door. The workers were leaving through it.

  I turned toward the door.

  “Welcome to Devonire,” the stevedore told me. She made it sound like a curse.

  I grunted, a wordless acknowledgement.

  “Thanks,” Juliyana said, her voice strained.

  I stepped through the door and only then realized that the crate wasn’t just obscuring my face, it was also blocking my view. There was a whisper of sound and the sensation of a very large space around me. The ceiling was up high. The main level of the station would be as open as possible, with a central core where the cable car passed through.

  To my flank, on either side, I saw bright lights and white walls—standard neutral station décor. Observation windows to my right, which was the direction of the other two ships’ landing bays. Four combat Rangers in their dark uniforms stood at the windows, peering at the newly arrived ship.

  My heart seized. My breath, too.

  I turned in the opposite direction, which put my back to them, and started walking swiftly along the curved wall. If I kept following it, I would move out of their sight. Then I could put the crate down and go looking for a way down to the lower levels—or up to the cable car pier. Something…although my options were severely limited right now.

  “We look stupid carrying these,” Juliyana muttered.

  I agreed.

  “Hey! There she is! Andela! Juliyana Andela! Halt!”

  “Fuck, they don’t even realize it’s me,” I bitched.

  “They’re going to know in a second,” Juliyana said.

  We kept walking.

  “Andela! I said halt!” one of the Rangers bellowed. Around us, the few people lingering on this level of the station were whispering, wondering what was happening.

  “There’s only four of them,” Juliyana said.

  A shriver bolt singed the floor between us and my heart gave another dance of fright and concern. They had opened fire among civilians pretty damn quick. They weren’t even sure it was us, damn it!

  “Four of them, two of us. Through them, then?” I said.

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  Going through them would ensure they didn’t get up again for a while. That would give us time.

  “On my count,” I said. “One, two…three.”

  I put the crate down thankfully, spun, and sprinted back toward the four Rangers, who were also breaking into a run after us.

  I saw their eyes open as they realized we were bringing the fight to them. I didn’t fool myself, though. These were combat-trained cadre. We had to surprise them if we were going to put them down. “Temporary stopper only!” I yelled at Juliyana and leapt at the first of them as he came within reaching distance.

  It was a short fight, and brutal. It had to be. Killing them outright would have been easier and quicker, but I wanted them still breathing when we were done. That required sleeper holds and numbing strikes…and moving fast to maintain our surprise factor, which didn’t give us much of a margin, but it would have to do.

  My first dropped to the ground with a sigh. The second was reaching for me, which made it easier. I slid under his arm, came up behind him and rammed my pointed knuckle into the nerve junction under his ear.

  His arm dropped, numb.

  Another strike to the side of his knee and his leg bent, unable to hold him up. He staggered, tried to thrust out the leg that wasn’t working and fell over.

  Juliyana stood breathing hard over her two, who were moaning and rolling on the ground. Then she looked over my shoulder and her eyes widened.

  I spun around.

  There was an open area by the wall which hid the cable car shaft, filled with tables and chairs. Bar on one side. Café on the other .

  Nearly every chair was filled with Rangers, who were now leaping to their feet and reaching for their shrivers.

  “Fuck,” I breathed.

  A whistle sounded, so piercing it made me wince. I spared a glance to the right.

  A man stood farther down the concourse, waving toward me. Civilian clothing. Long utility coat. A mass of unruly brown hair and piercing blue eyes. Square chin.

  “Move it!” I yelled at Juliyana and sprinted in his direction. He waved us on, his arm movements picking up speed.

  We sprinted, ducking between and around civilians, who were doing their best to get out of the way and not moving nearly fast enough. Their sluggishness preserved our asses. The Rangers wouldn’t shoot at us if there was a chance they could hit civilians.

  The man stood where I judged the starboard landing bay doors were—the landing bay with the rusted-up hulk with the clean lines and rail guns.

  He moved toward the doors and we drew closer. I don’t think I had got around to taking a breath since I had broken into a sprint. There wasn’t time.

  He pulled open the man-sized door and held it open as we got there. I skidded on the floor—moving too fast—then pushed off with my hand and dived through the door, my heart screaming.

  As I dived, a shriver bolt tore through the air over my head and sizzled against the interior of the air lock.

  The man bolted the door and pressed his hand against it. “That won’t hold them long,” he said. “Move it.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Juliyana demanded.

  “Later,” I told her. “Quickly. Onto the ship.”

  We followed him over to the other side of the airlock and onto the flimsy tunnel leading into the guts of the rust-bucket.

  Thudding on the outer lock door. Yelling, barely heard.

  I didn’t fool myself. They were Rangers. One of them even now would be screaming at the station’s traffic controller, demanding they open the bay door remotely.

  We thudded across the tunnel and into the dark interior of the ship. As soon as we all hit solid flooring, he yelled, “Shut the doors! Get us out of here! Maximum speed!”

  “Aye, captain,” came a disembodied voice—a man’s tenor, with a snap in it that said he was hurrying.

  The door of the ship slammed closed behind us and the seals hissed.

  “I’ll have to break the connection to the station,” the pilot added.

  “Do it,” he told her. “Do whatever it takes. Just get us to the gate and into a hole, before they get that carrier of theirs unhooked and coming after us.”

  “I can outfly that carrier,” the pilot said, sounding amused.

  “I believe him,” the man added. “He’s cocky, but he knows his stuff.”

  Even as he spoke, the rumble of engines shivered the floor beneath our feet.

  There was the softest of jolts as the ship moved.

&nbs
p; I was impressed. From cold to moving in…what? Ten seconds? That was impressive. Maybe the pilot, whoever he was, had kept the engines in trickle-over state, ready to go, just in case.

  Our savior leaned against the wall with one hand and let out a deep breath. He raised a brow at me. “Hello, Danny.”

  “Hello, Gabriel,” I replied.

  “Gabriel Dalton?” Juliyana said, her hand flashing to her bare hip. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  11

  “Later,” Dalton told Juliyana gruffly. He turned and ran along the corridor we were in—a long, loping stride which swallowed ground quickly. “We still have to beat that carrier to the gates,” he yelled over his shoulder.

  “Dalton, Danny?” Juliyana said, turning to me, her hand gripping her hip.

  “You heard him. Later,” I told her. “Let’s get out of here, first.” I took off after Dalton.

  The ship was bigger than I had first thought it to be. It took a few minutes to make our way to the bridge. I guess any ship, when parked beside an Imperial carrier, tended to look teeny in comparison.

  The corridors were refreshingly wide, lined with lockers and utility cupboards, and other services panels—blank walls weren’t left blank for long on a ship. Sooner or later something was bolted to them, or hung on them, or cut into them. Space was always tight.

  The corridors we ran through were empty. Was everyone on the bridge? The corridor echoed as we followed Dalton. It didn’t curve, but it did jig to the left then back to the right, following the spine of the ship. It meant the bridge was toward the front and centered.

  Then up a ramp, and the bridge opened up before us.

  There was no one there. Not a single fucking soul. “What the hell?” I breathed, looking around the area.

  Dalton strode forward, toward the triple screens at the front of the deck, as if the empty deck was not a surprise to him. The screens were set to show the forward view, which at this point displayed Devonire station sliding to our starboard as the ship turned, preparing to blast toward the gate. The gate was in sight already—a giant, bio-mechanical ring hanging in space, looking quite small from here.

  It had taken Newman’s ship over an hour to cover the distance between the gate and the station. It was a lot of time for the carrier to catch up with us—or just shoot us out of the sky at their leisure. Their mauler cannon bolts could travel faster than they could, a fact I had relied upon in the past when I had been standing beside the captain’s shell, directing his efforts.