Hammer and Crucible

by Cameron Cooper

  Juliyana was the occupant. She had made some adjustments. The plain floor/observation deck had become a mountainside lookout. Deciduous trees I could not name ranged on either side, whispering in an unfelt late evening breeze.

  A fire crackled in a stone circle, and Juliyana rested in a fold-up camping lounger, wrapped in a plaid rug, a mug in her hand that steamed gently.

  I hesitated.

  “It’s fine. Come in, Danny,” she said.

  To her left, an identical chair rose up from the earth and formed properly. A folded plaid blanket laid on the seat.

  One of the wheeled platforms bumped over the flattened grass and weeds, up to the chair. It held another steaming mug.

  “Coffee at this time of night?”

  “It’s hot chocolate.”

  I settled on the chair and put the blanket over my knees. It wasn’t cold, but the blanket just felt right. The chair was at the right angle to lean back and study the stars.

  “The hot chocolate is the perfect touch.” I picked up my mug. The wagon melted into the ground. “I thought Lyth might be here, too.”

  Juliyana grimaced. “I wanted to be alone.”

  “I can go,” I offered.

  “I don’t mind you. You’re…” She frowned. “I want to say you’re peaceful to be around, only things happen around you all the time. I guess…you know how to stay silent, when you need to.”

  I stayed silent and sipped, gazing up at the stars. There was no moon to steal their light and no nearby city to throw up a masking glow. It was a pitch black night sky. Stars reeled in their circuits. Nebula glowed pink and purple and red.

  I didn’t recognize any of the constellations, but the thick white mass of stars banding across the sky I did know. “The galactic hub,” I murmured.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Juliyana replied just as softly. “This place is perfect. Seeing this—it’s just what I needed right now.” She hesitated, then added, “I love the stars. Space. I love being out there.” She glanced at me self-consciously.

  “You don’t need to apologize. Star-faring is in our blood, you and I. I didn’t join the Rangers to be a soldier, or even for the free rejuvenations. I joined because it would get me into space, out there.” I nodded at the stars.

  Juliyana gripped her mug in both hands and stared at the contents. “I’ve been on permanent below-surface duty since Noam died.”

  “That’s pretty standard for grunts,” I said as gently as I could.

  “The bowels of ships, the basements of buildings, the deepest interiors of stations.” She said it in a monotone, looking up at the stars. “They won’t put me back in the combat cadres. They won’t leave me in a unit long enough to make friends or even prove myself. I get moved around, every few weeks or months, with my record just ahead of me, priming COs to distrust me right off the bat.”

  “But you’ve out-lasted them, so far.”

  She nodded and lifted her chin to indicate the stars. “Because of them. Because I want to be out among them once more.” She looked at me. “So fuck ‘em. Fuck everyone. I won’t cave because they’re prejudiced assholes. I will see this thing through and I will get out there once more.” She drained her cup with a convulsive jerk of her wrist.

  When she thought I wasn’t looking, she turned her chin and discretely wiped the tear tracks on her cheeks.

  I let her have her privacy, while I picked out the nearest stars, trying to see if I could discern globular bodies with my newly restored vision.

  “Whatever it takes, huh, Danny?” Juliyana said. Her voice was normal.

  I kept my gaze on the stars. “All my money. The backpay, danger benefits, health…all of it.”

  “All the money which is gone now?”

  “Yeah. I used it for bribes.” I glanced at her to catch her reaction, then away, my heart thudding harder that it needed to. “Bribes, travel, ‘investments’. None of it worked. I couldn’t even get his remains back, let alone a millimeter of truth.” I kept my chin up as if I was studying the heavens but closed my eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so foolish and exposed.

  After a moment, Juliyana said, “You did try, then!”

  The genuine pleasure in her voice made me look at her, startled.

  She was smiling. “You let me think you didn’t give a damn.”

  “I didn’t. Not after all this time. Although I’m here—still here, despite what we know, now, so I guess I really did mind, after all.”

  A soft coughing sound came from overhead. Lythion spoke, his tone apologetic. “I thought you should know. I’ve found Moroder.”

  “Acean isn’t a station at all,” Lyth explained, as we stood around the navigation table on the bridge. “It’s Alkalost’s moon—an airless, point one gee orbiting rock.”

  A crescent edge of a green world turned beneath a moon radiating sunlight. Then the view shifted to focus upon the moon and the sunlight faded as the moon revolved to reveal the nightside. The view focused in, while I hoped Lyth was still using archives for this. I would have asked, only I had jumped on him once before, and if he was more stupid than the average AI, and was using live feeds, then it was too late to do anything about it. I concentrated on the display, instead.

  Low, half-buried buildings were revealed, most of them bunker types—windowless, armored against weapons and radiation, and impenetrable. The buildings were connected by a star of enclosed catwalks. I’ve seen dozens of barracks that look exactly the same, but they were in atmospheres, or under domes. This place looked bleaker than hell.

  “It is an Imperial Shield research and manufacturing post,” Lyth continued. “They use pseudo gravity in the living areas and research labs, but the manufacturing plant takes advantage of the near-absence of gravity. It makes it possible for a single grunt to move heavy objects around.”

  “What do they manufacture?” Dalton asked, as he studied the moon and rubbed his stubble-covered chin. His hair was ruffled. I suspected Lyth had pulled him from deep sleep. As I could no longer reem him out for slovenliness, I ignored his appearance.

  “I couldn’t absolutely confirm what they build there,” Lyth said. “The data is obscure and conflicting. The research center projects are easier to find, and quite unremarkable, which makes it likely that the research function of the base is a blind.”

  “A fake front over a pile of misdirection?” I asked.

  “Yes, which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that this is one of the locations where the Shield puts together array gates.”

  “The actual gates themselves?” Juliyana said, her interest deepening. She frowned at the rotating moon. “You mean, we’ve uncovered the location?”

  I could understand her incredulity. Where and how the Shield put together the jump gates was a closely and ruthlessly guarded secret. The myths about the manufacturing process had driven gossip for as long as the empire had existed.

  When I was a child, we had scared each other into shivers by describing how the gates were made of spare parts of humans who had died, melted onto metal…and sometimes not so dead humans were used, and their screams were how ship AIs found the gates.

  The gates were biomechanical—the Imperial Family had never denied that. How the biomass integrated with the mechanics was where the secret lay. Also why biomass was needed at all…

  One could take advanced education degrees studying the jump gates and the array, yet only the most gifted academics were ever invited to undertake such study. The degrees were administered by the Imperial Shield, of course. Public handbooks outlining the degrees showed a range of subjects surrounding the array and the gates, but nothing about the function of the gates themselves. It was likely another deliberate omission, because even course subject titles and descriptions might hint at processes they didn’t want to share.

  “This might be a construction location,” Lyth told Juliyana. “It would not be the only one, if it is. But it could also be a way-station that only constructs a component of a
gate.”

  “That, I can confirm,” I said. “I’ve seen the family records when the Carranoak barge found McCreary Landing. Imperial Shield ships came through the barge gate and put together the gate for McCreary Landing right there in space. And there were fourteen ships—each with a separate part. The gates are only put together into a functioning whole in their final position.”

  Juliyana looked disappointed. “I wanted to see how big they really were.”

  “Two kilometers across,” Lyth said. “Except the barge-towed gates, which are much smaller.”

  Juliyana rolled her eyes at him.

  Dalton made an impatient sound and pointed at the revolving moon hanging over the navigation table. “So, Moroder is on this station…somewhere. It looks small standing over it like this, but there are a lot of places in those buildings where he might be. We can’t land next to the front gate, lean out and beckon him over. And we can’t sneak in there and hunt for him. They’re going to notice the Lythion floating overhead, and that’s presuming we can make it past all the security layers guarding this place.”

  “You can’t get in there,” I said. “It’s Imperial Shield and a gate facility. We won’t get near it in this ship, even if Lyth knows how to fake Imperial ship IDs—”

  “Not yet, but I’m working on it,” Lyth said.

  “—and you can’t get in there by devious methods,” I finished. “We can’t coax Moroder to come to us, either, because the Shield will saturate any travel he takes off the moon with tethers and tracking and security screens that will probe down to the DNA level anyone who comes near him. Anything that entices him off-planet will make them suspicious.”

  Dalton scowled. Juliyana chewed the inside corner of her mouth, looking unhappy.

  “You can’t get in,” Lyth said, “but Sagai Skylark can.”

  “Who the fuck is that?” I demanded.

  Dalton laughed. And kept laughing. He swung away from the table, holding his sides, his shoulders shaking.

  Juliyana frowned, watching Dalton. Then she looked at Lyth, her expression demanding an answer.

  Dalton swung back. “Oh, let me,” he said, sounding breathless, smiling hugely. His gaze met mine. “Sagai Skylark is an exotic dancer. And she does resemble you.” His smile radiated even harder. “Especially with the right makeup and jewelry and…clothes.” His gaze shifted down and back up to my face.

  My cheeks burned, which irritated the shit out of me. I glared at Lyth. “I can’t pretend to be her and just turn up. It will raise their suspicions, too.”

  “Sagai Skylark has consented to putting on a performance at the base,” Lyth said. “The contract was signed over a year ago—she is so in demand that her calendar is filled far ahead.”

  “Please say this is the only way,” Dalton begged Lyth.

  “I believe it might be,” Lyth replied.

  Dalton gave a happy sigh.

  Which did nothing to allay my irritation. “One,” I said heavily, “they will scope her DNA when she arrives, to make sure she’s who she says she is.”

  “I can get around that,” Lyth said. “A simple switch of records—purely temporary.”

  I wanted to growl. “Two,” I added, “there is a real Sagai whatever out there. What do we do with her? We can’t have her turn up on the base, too.”

  “I can take—” Dalton began quickly.

  “No, Juliyana can do it,” I interjected. Then I grimaced, for I had committed myself. “I don’t want you anywhere near the woman,” I told Dalton.

  “Besides, Major Dalton should be there to question Moroder,” Lyth said.

  “I’m supposed to put him in my pocket?” I asked and wondered if Sagai’s clothes even had pockets. I suspected not.

  “There are two side airlocks where personnel can enter the base, but they can only be opened from the inside,” Lyth said. “I can overcome the locking mechanism so that security is not alerted to the opening, but it is a pre-Accord lock. It requires a human hand to actually open the doors.”

  “Me,” I concluded. Before the Ordi Accord, which had been signed five years before I resigned, all airlocks anywhere required manual manipulation for safety reasons. A human had to open the door because computers could be overcome. In a little war between the Ritomari and the Ordi, the Ritomari military forces had extorted the Ordi to open the airlocks by holding shrivers to the heads of their children. The Ordi overrode the computers and exposed themselves and the military base to explosive decompression. The entire Ordi force had died in three horrible minutes.

  The Ritomari regimental commander who had devised the strategy was tried by the Imperial high court and executed, which didn’t comfort the Ordi greatly. The Accord was reached and signed by every state in the Empire inside a year, agreeing that the human factor must not be mandatory in the control of airlocks.

  Apparently, the Imperial Shield considered itself above such laws. Or they just hadn’t got around to upgrading.

  Either way, it made them vulnerable.

  “So, Dalton comes with me as a stagehand or something,” I begun.

  “Manager, would be better,” Lyth said.

  Dalton grinned.

  “But he stays on the ship, while I go into the base, which means security will be watching the ship.”

  “Watching you, more like,” Dalton said, his voice dreamy.

  “Security will passively watch the ship,” Lyth said. “When the nightline reaches the base, Dalton can slip out of the ship and walk around to the airlock, where you can let him in.”

  Dalton’s smile evaporated. “Wait…it’s airless out there!”

  Lyth nodded. “You will be wearing an environment suit—non-reflecting of both heat and infrared, so you won’t show on scans.”

  “I don’t have a suit,” Dalton shot back, his face turning red.

  “You will have in about three hours. It’s nearly done,” Lyth replied.

  Dalton’s jaw worked. “I hate suits!”

  It was my turn to smile.

  “Okay, then,” I said.

  18

  We had four standard days to put everything into place, and it took all four of them, working nearly around the clock. We took sleep in snatches, ate for energy, also in snatches and usually standing up.

  I learned a lot about Lyth’s capabilities in those four days.

  First, we docked at Polyxene. Juliyana was the only one to step off the ship and that was to fake a signature on the invoice for solid state mass for the reaction engines and the secondary service engines that ran everything else on the ship that wasn’t part of the free-flowing living section…although Lyth’s construction nanobots diverted excess energy to help with the draw, too.

  The entire time we paused at Polyxene, Lyth remained on the bridge, a still figure remotely monitoring the landing bay doors, the security feeds and watching for any alerts telling us we’d been coupled to the ship that had blasted its way back into the gates at Sh’Klea Sine.

  “We need to develop unofficial fuel sources,” Dalton observed, watching Lyth’s unmoving shape.

  “Later,” I said, in agreement. “Right now, we have other priorities.”

  “They won’t matter a damn if pulling up at a station for fuel lands us in an Imperial net.”

  “Then you find that source for us,” I said, irritated.

  “I will!” he shot back and stalked off the bridge.

  I felt a teeny bit sorry for him. He was suffering proactive claustrophobia, anticipating what, for him, would be the horror of being enclosed in an airtight suit. We had all carefully avoided telling him the suit was made of Lyth’s construction nanobots, pre-programmed to hold their shape even away from the reach of the ship. He’d find that even more terrifying.

  After Polyxene, we took a three-phase jump to Keeler IV, which was Sagai’s homebase. The jump-jump-jump shaved fourteen hours off the direct jump, for we crisscrossed the empire in giant strides. Most ships went direct and put up with the time in the hole b
ecause they had to pay gate taxes, landing fees and more, all of which piled up when you crisscrossed. As the Lythion seemed to be able to circumvent the gates’ demands for compensation, the only factor we needed to take into consideration was the duration of the jump. That made the back-and-forth viable and this insane scheme do-able.

  Juliyana slid through the Keeler landing bay doors into the station proper, a small pack over her shoulder, while we waited…and finished preparations.

  Two hours later, she jogged back onto the Lythion, and reported in somewhat breathlessly to me. She wore the simple uniform of a deliveryman, and the shirt was ripped at the sleeve. I didn’t ask for explanations.

  “Done,” Juliyana told me. “Secure. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Somewhere in the depths of the station, Juliyana had stashed the real Sagai Skylark with food and water, and a pad that would self-actuate in two days and let her send out a cry for help.

  Lyth didn’t wait for my command. He connected with traffic control, got permission to leave, opened the external door, and lifted off.

  Dalton held out a heavy duffel bag to me. “It’s time,” he said gruffly. He had a bigger bag over one shoulder.

  I nodded and took the bag.

  Lyth parked himself over Acean, carefully positioning himself so that whoever tried to take a look at the ship would be dazzled by the red sun directly behind him. “You’ll be out of range if you don’t leave in three minutes,” he warned us via the dropship’s interface. “Good luck,” he added.

  I let Dalton take the controls. It would give him something to do and take his mind off the next few hours.

  He piloted with more skill than I presumed he had, even though the ghost AI resident in the drop ship did most of the work. “You’ve been hanging out on freighters,” I said.

  “Worked on more than one,” he said, still gruff. “It’s the only way to stay hidden, long term. Now shut up, I have to make nice with Acean security. And you have to get ready.”

  Dalton spoke to Acean control without engaging imaging. He was polite, even charming, as they traded IDs for the drop ship and the station. I moved to the back of the ship and changed into the flamboyant daywear that Sagai Skylark was known for. Lyth had provided clothes, a full profile, and personal details—enough for me to get by for a few hours.