Hammer and Crucible

by Cameron Cooper

  The performance was scheduled for eight hours from now. The nightline was due six hours from now. I had no intention of giving a real performance. I am as graceful as a block of ice. It was going to be close, though…

  Dalton put the dropship down right on top of the marker and shut it down.

  An articulated arm of metal rings extended out toward the airlock on the closest side of the ship. We watched it unfold and lengthen. There was nothing between the rings.

  “Perfect,” I breathed. “A molecular barrier.”

  Dalton grinned. “Better you than me.” He raised a brow. “You look fantastic, by the way. Red suits you.”

  I glared at him.

  “You should pout your lips when you do that,” he added. “Then you’ll have Sagai down perfectly.” He reached and prodded the control panel. “Door’s open, Colonel. Enjoy.”

  I consoled myself with the fact that I didn’t have to go out in a suit made of nanobots. I climbed down the steps into the fragile atmosphere inside the molecular barrier, to await the welcoming committee—a bunch of uniformed men doing their best not to drool.

  I took a very deep breath, plastered a smile on my highly rouged lips and waved enthusiastically, while letting my hips cock coyly.

  It was a very long six hours.

  I’m sure there were women on the station, but I never saw one. Even the lesbians stayed away because Sagai’s core fans were heterosexual men with impossible fantasies. I did my best to tease them while avoiding the wandering hands and colliding bodies, and constantly checked the time.

  A festive barracks dinner was provided, with me at the head of the table next to the station commander, Asucar, who was due for rejuvenation.

  A great fuss was made of making sure I was introduced with suitable hand holding and cheek kissing to every senior officer on the base of the appropriate gender. One of them was Moroder, who seemed just as taken by Sagai as everyone else. He was a thin man with a proportionally thin moustache and mousy hair swept back from a high forehead. His eyes were as sharp as his nose.

  I made sure to rub up against him with no more or less fervor than I had the other officers.

  I’ve never been as eager to escape a regimental dinner as I was to plead for time to prepare and get out of that room. I was escorted by Moroder himself to a little room with a counter and a hastily erected mirror. “The common room is just on the other side of the corridor,” Moroder explained to me. “We will be running your retrospective to…what do you say? Warm up the audience? We have put the lights as you requested, and the first row of benches is twenty-five meters from the back of the room. It isn’t much of a stage, I’m afraid.”

  “All the world is a stage,” I said blithely. “I am a professional, Lyle. I can adapt.” I fluttered my overly long lashes at him.

  He nodded. “I will leave you to prepare.” He pointed to my duffel bag in the corner, which contained more makeup, teeny costumes I had no intention of donning and items which would have been mistaken as stage props by whoever searched through the bag while I was eating. The stage props had raised my brows and made me even more thankful I didn’t have to actually perform for the hyenas out there. I could hear the buzz building in the common room from here, and there was still ninety minutes before the performance was due to start.

  “Thank you!” I called after Moroder. “Oh, where can I find you, if I need something?”

  Moroder pointed down the corridor outside the door. “My office is along there. My name is on it.”

  “You won’t be in the auditorium?” I pouted.

  “I will be there for your performance,” he assured me and left, closing the door behind him.

  I gave him time to walk away. While I was waiting, I moved over to the duffel bag and pulled out an elongated prop, grimacing at the size and shape. I found the reset button on the base, pushed my thumbnail against it and shoved.

  The prop melted. I nearly dropped it, got both hands underneath it and watched the nanobots turn into a perfect facsimile of a Ranger’s standard issue combat knife. More of Lyth’s creative programming.

  I pushed the knife into the built-in sheath on my hip. The feathers hid the hilt. I eased open the door and looked up and down the corridor. This would be the hardest part. I had to move around the station without drawing men like a magnet. The feathers and ruffles and transparent fabric were not even close to discreet.

  The air lock was in the opposite direction to Moroder’s office. I went in that direction…and didn’t meet a soul.

  Then it hit me. Everyone was in the auditorium, waiting for Sagai to appear.

  Five minutes later, I was inside the utility room with the airlock. The airlock itself was tiny—barely enough for one man to cycle through at a time. That was a good thing in this case. It would be quicker to fill with air once Dalton stepped into the chamber.

  I waited, my heart running hard, all my senses straining to hear anyone approach. I remember time stretching out like this on other missions and battles—particularly on the run-up to the start.

  The lock clicked and hissed as the atmosphere vented. I held still, waiting to see if any alarms sounded, or people came running to investigate.

  Nothing.

  I moved over to the wheel and waited for the green light, then cranked the wheel. It was heavy. No accidental spin would open that door. It took deliberate effort.

  The outer door jutted a few centimeters, then a black glove slid over the edge of it and hauled it open enough to let Dalton’s black-suited figure through. He turned and shut the door, hauling on the interior wheel, then cranked it closed until the lock dropped and showed red once more. Air pumped back into the space.

  I was already at the outer door. As soon as it cycled and lit green, I turned it open.

  Dalton stepped in and I shut it behind him. He pulled off the helmet, looking very unhappy.

  “You made it,” I assured him. “You don’t have to go back that way,” I added. “I know where Moroder is, too—a bonus.”

  “Only I can’t clump about the station in this,” Dalton pointed out. “Lyth missed something in this grand plan of his—I thought of it, halfway around the base.”

  “No, he didn’t miss it,” I told him. “Turn around, let me get at your air pack.”

  “Why?” But he turned anyway.

  I found the control panel Lyth had demonstrated to me and punched in the code.

  Dalton sucked in a shocked breath as the suit moved around him. It flowed and shifted, until it resembled one of the midnight blue Imperial Shield officers’ uniforms.

  Sweat dotted his temples. “I walked around out there wearing nanobots?” he breathed.

  “We figured you’d rather not know until later.”

  He swallowed and nodded.

  “Sweep your hair back, make it look like you tried to comb it,” I added and took him back through the station. As we approached the room I should have been in, I pointed to the door into the common room, where even more noise was coming. Dalton nodded.

  There were men lingering in the corridor now. They were, I presumed, trying to find a pretext to see Sagai. When they saw her walking toward them, they all straightened and puffed out, while trying to make it look like they hadn’t seen me at all.

  Dalton moved up and held out his elbow and I slid my hand under his arm and smiled up at him, to the acute disappointment of every man we passed. They were so pissed about it, they didn’t register Dalton at all, except as bigger, broader-shouldered competition.

  I stopped at the door with Moroder’s nameplate and Dalton silently moved to one side. I knocked and pushed into Moroder’s office in a flurry of feathers and panic. “Lyle! Hells bells, Lyle, the mirror just fell off the wall! There’s glass everywhere!” I flapped my hands at him, as Moroder rose to his feet, confusion playing on his face.

  “Oh, you have to help me, Lyle,” I said breathlessly, moving closer.

  He figured it out, but not soon enough. I pushed the injec
tor against the side of his neck just as he realized my hands were moving around him instead of over him and tried to jerk out of the way.

  He stiffened and grew still, breathing hard.

  “You won’t be able to move until that wears off,” I told him. “Also, you can’t speak just yet.” I pushed the used injector into the same pocket the knife sat in. “It’ll just hurt if you try, so don’t bother.”

  His throat worked, proving he was an idiot. His face creased in pain, as he said with uncooperative lips, “hooo?”

  I went over to the door and opened it. Dalton slipped inside, moved straight over to Moroder, scooped him up over his shoulders and moved out again. I turned the old mechanical lock on the inside of the door and shut the door again.

  We moved farther along the corridor, away from the dressing room and Moroder’s office. This was the front administration section of the base, but everyone was off duty for the day and most of them were in the common room already. The place was deserted.

  “Morale’s low,” Dalton observed. “No one working overtime.”

  I moved over to the door where I had entered earlier and put my hand on the grab bar and waited.

  When Lyth remotely pushed the bar down, as a signal, I shoved the door open and moved out into the molecular tunnel. Right then, I didn’t give a damn about the nothingness on the other side of the metal rings. I was braced for someone to shout at us—which couldn’t happen in zero atmosphere—or for shriver bolts to sizzle by us. Nothing happened, though. Lyth had short-circuited their security feeds and if anyone was watching the feeds instead of the frank retrospective on Sagai Skylark that was by now running in the common room, then they would see nothing.

  We hauled Moroder up into the drop ship between us and folded him up so we could prop him up on the bench behind the pilot chairs, his head against the bulkhead to keep him upright.

  I injected him with the second dose. Moroder worked his jaw and swallowed.

  “Now you can speak,” I told him. “But you still can’t move, so don’t try. You’ll just fall down and force us to pick you up again.” I took out the knife. “The juice in you will make you garrulous and inclined to talk. This—” I waved the knife, “—is to make sure you talk about the right thing. Ready?”

  Moroder narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”

  “That isn’t the topic,” Dalton said, standing over him.

  Moroder’s gaze flickered up to Dalton and back to me. “You’re not Sagai.”

  I patted his cheek. “That’s the only warning you get,” I told him. “Now, I’m going to give you a name, and you will tell me everything you know about that name. Ready?”

  Moroder shook his head, but said, “Yes.” Then he grimaced. “Yes, yes, yes, yes…” He pressed his lips together, halting the torrent with sheer force. His eyes were filled with fury and wariness. Sweat showed on his forehead.

  “Lieutenant Noam Andela,” I said, and waited.

  Nothing. Moroder’s eyes got even larger, and his pursed mouth worked, but he held it in.

  “Damn,” Dalton breathed. “Stubborn bastard.”

  I stabbed the knife lightly into Moroder’s thigh—a shallow nick, but the juice would enhance the pain temporarily.

  Moroder howled, his throat straining. “Stop, stop, no, no, no, I knew him, I knew of him, I never met him, but I know the name, yes I do, it was years and years ago and I signed the orders, but I never met him. He wasn’t meant to be on my staff. They explained it to me. Sign the papers, all is forgiven, then I could be a good officer. So I signed and that was it, only was it a year later I think it was a year later I heard about what he did, about the name, I don’t know if it was him, I never met him, but I heard what he did and then I really knew something was wrong and they said I should take this job here even though it was a demotion but the pay was better and I understood so I said yes please don’t kill me, please, please, please—”

  Dalton slapped his hand over Moroder’s mouth. “He doesn’t know anything!” he hissed.

  Moroder had stopped talking. His eyes were very big and glassy and filled with fear. “He’s not afraid of us at all,” I said. “He’s afraid of them. Let go of his mouth a moment.”

  Dalton stepped back.

  “Who told you to sign the transfer orders, Moroder?”

  His mouth worked. “Don’t re-re-remember.” He squeezed his lips together, stopping himself this time.

  “He does remember, he’s just too afraid to say,” Dalton said. “He doesn’t understand that we’re the ones he needs to be scared of.”

  “You don’t know them, you don’t understand what you’re facing, you’re fools if you think anything would make me talk to you, I like my life too much, I won’t tell you anything—”

  “Even if we kill you for it?” I interrupted, speaking over the top of his babble.

  “They’ll kill me anyway, they will, they will, you don’t know, oh you don’t know, you can’t conceive—”

  “That the Emperor is behind this?” I asked. “I know.”

  Moroder shut up. All the color drained out of his face.

  “Fuck…” Dalton breathed, sounding disgusted and distressed at once.

  Confirmation.

  I felt as gray as Moroder’s face.

  Lyth’s voice came from the pilot’s consoles. “Danny, two ships just emerged, seconds between them. Combat class Dreadnought, and Imperial Shield Frigate. I’m coming to get you. Get out of there. Now.”

  “Rangers and Shield?” Dalton said. “Now, that’s interesting.”

  Moroder was staring at me. His fingers twitched. “You. You’re Danny. Andela. Imperial Hammer. I know you. You’re…you…here…no.”

  “Congratulations,” I told him, reaching for the third and final injector. “You’ve finally seen past the makeup.” I injected the restorative. “In a few seconds you’ll get feeling back and be able to move. Don’t try anything stupid, or we won’t let you go.”

  The threat and the implied promise of release should contain him until we got out of there. Dalton was already behind the controls. The drop ship engines fired up.

  Moroder slumped as the rigor left his muscles, but he didn’t look relieved. He rubbed his hands together as if they were cold, studying me. “You’ve killed us all by coming here,” he said. His words were measured now he had control.

  “I was dead anyway,” I told him. “So were you. We just haven’t got around to disincorporating for them yet.”

  “Danny!” Dalton yelled in warning.

  I hauled Moroder to his feet and moved him over to the door and slapped it open. “I suggest you run to the bunker.”

  “You’ll break the seal while I’m still in the tunnel,” Moroder said. The sweat was rolling down his face now.

  “I’ll certainly break the seal if you don’t move your ass. You’re wasting my time, Moroder. Move it.”

  I pushed at his shoulder, forcing him to take the step down. Three metal steps, then into the tunnel. He was still breathing and started to run. I shut the door, as the engines dropped into the load-bearing revolutions, the deep vibrations you felt in your bones. “Do not lift off until he’s inside!” I shouted at Dalton.

  “You’re too soft. He will warn them we’re coming if you let him live,” Dalton shouted back. His hand hung over the hover controls.

  “That is an order, Dalton!” I slapped the screen beside the door, to watch Moroder running for the bunker door. “I will tell you the second he’s out of the tunnel.”

  Moroder slowed in the middle section, for the pseudo gravity of the bunker didn’t reach quite that far, and neither did the gravity field from the drop ship. There was just enough to move through the area if you moved slowly, but Moroder had been running. He hit the lighter gravity area and overbalanced and fell to the ground, his arms cycling wildly. It was a slow-motion fall, but there was some natural gravity on this rock—enough to pull him downward, instead of letting him float in the direction he had been mov
ing.

  One hand hit the metal footpath first, and the impact flipped him in a slow roll over onto his back. He flailed again, his feet kicking, as his back settled on the path.

  He looked up and screamed.

  The little green lights on the tunnel ribs had switched to red.

  I spun away from the view of Moroder dying of exposure, fury gripping my throat. “Dalton, you asshole!”

  Dalton had screens in front of him. He’d watched it. He shook his head and slapped at the controls. “It wasn’t me!” he shouted, as the drop ship lifted up at a velocity that broke every ball-bound flight regulation in the known worlds. The backwash would have blown in windows, only the base had none.

  I gripped the handrails and made my way to the copilot chair as Dalton pushed the dropship forward, sliding over the top of the bunkers with centimeters to spare. He was grimacing as he directed the ship up in a near vertical climb, clawing for clear space.

  “Take the controls,” he said breathlessly. “If I pass out…”

  I rested my hands lightly on the panel, feeling the mirror controls moving under my fingers. “Show the gates on screen one,” I told the AI. “And the Lythion on screen two.”

  The views changed, showing the gates and the Lythion. In front of the gates, growing larger with every second, were the two black Imperial ships. From this angle, they were foreshortened black hulks, for they were heading directly for us.

  The Lythion was also moving fast, also foreshortened, so it was impossible to tell how close it was to the dropship.

  “Gonna be close,” Dalton wheezed.

  “Turn away from the gates,” Lyth’s voice said calmly.

  “That turns us away from you!” Dalton shot back.

  “I’ll intercept,” Lyth replied. “If you remain on your current heading, they will reach firing range before I reach you. If you turn, it gives me time.”

  “Do it, Dalton,” I snapped.