Hammer and Crucible Cameron Cooper (web ebook reader TXT) 📖

have suggests that general direction,” I said cautiously.

She rolled her eyes. “Presume that everything the data suggests is true, just for a moment. The Emperor arranged the Crazy Years, so he could take back the array. Then he covered up everything and misdirected.”

“Misdirected how?”

Juliyana shook her head. She wasn’t going to be derailed. “What if my father was involved in the Emperor’s schemes to arrange the Crazy Years? Then, him going mad and shooting out the Cygnus military forces and dying right after that was a very neat way of getting my father off the board. He was dead and unable to blow the whistle on the Emperor.”

I stared at her, my heart doing little flattery things. We were talking in the privacy bubble, yet I still had the need to check over my shoulder to see if anyone was listening. “That really isn’t something you should suggest out loud,” I said.

“No one can hear us.” She was calm. But then, she had spent weeks contemplating the data I was still trying to wrap my head around. She had adjusted to the enormity of the concepts.

“Or maybe Noam just went mad,” I said.

“He was transferred to the Imperial Shield,” Juliyana said, as if that discounted my suggestions completely.

“Where he did the work he was assigned, and then he went mad.” My throat was aching. “No conspiracy, no power-hungry Emperor.”

Juliyana scowled and picked up her pickle. She turned it to show me the knobby outgrowth at the end. “There. It’s like all the vinegar collects in that bump.” She took a bite and winced as she chewed.

I returned to my sandwich.

We reached Zillah’s World eighteen hours later. Fourteen of those hours had been spent waiting on Melenia. Zillah’s world has extra screening which most stations don’t bother with. All of them were bio scans, designed to find anyone with high risk viruses or parasites. Such people were isolated and put on the nearest shuttle away from the station.

Only the harvest teams and a select few biochemists were allowed upon the surface of the planet. They collected and sampled the plants in the equatorial jungle belting the planet. Even though the quarantine prevented just anyone from landing on the ball, the scientists who administered Zillah’s World were still highly cautious about introducing diseases and bacteria amongst the residents of the sprawling hospice and research station floating overhead. Those bugs might be transmitted down to the surface by the research team and the harvesters. Xeno-bugs amongst the natural pharmacy down there would be a disaster for more than Zillah’s World’s single-themed economy.

Once our skin was sterilized and our internal biome classified as safe, we were permitted to move around the public areas of the station. I asked the directory to give me the nearest hospice outlets, while scratching at my arm. The scanning process was supposed to remove all the seared skin cells, but there were always some left behind. They would itch and irritate until they flaked away.

The directory showed me the layout of the station, then tracked a path for me to a clinic about a kilometer away.

Juliyana lifted her brow. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“I’m a big girl. I think I can ask for a crush shot all by myself. Why don’t you find a hilton and get some shut eye?” It was one of the basic axioms of a Ranger. Get sleep when the opportunity presented itself.

Juliyana nodded and hitched her sack back into place. She glanced at the directory, probably committing to memory the location of the clinic I was heading for. Then she turned on her heel and moved down the corridor. There was no public concourse on this station. It wasn’t a major traffic hub, but a destination. The people who actually got off a ship were here for a purpose. Either they were patients, professionals or laborers, here for therapy or work.

I turned in the opposite direction to Juliyana and made my way through the pristine white corridors. I found subdued steel glass walls and a negative pressure door, with a discreet sign bearing the name of the clinic. Zillah Garden Advanced Medical Clinic and Services Inc. I went inside.

There was an actual human at the front desk. He looked me over and tapped on his pad. “Rejuvenation, yes?”

I snorted. “I’m here for crush juice, that’s all.”

He lowered the pad. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

“Why not? You sell crush juice, don’t you?” It was a rhetorical question. Everyone offered crush juice.

He gave me a strained, polite smile. “We would have to do a scan to establish a baseline, but I can tell just by looking at you that your bio markers would not fit the profile range for the safe administration of crush juice.”

I stared at him, my heart thudding. “So, basically, you’re saying I’m too fucking old?”

He grimaced. “I suppose that would be one way to state it, yes.”

4

Things got heated after that. At least, on my side.

The core of the ZW station was a research and hospice. Surrounding that core were dozens of for-profit clinics and therapy centers, plus all the support services—food, accommodation—who provided the station with its economy. Given the weird and wonderful chemicals available via the bio-cocktail on the surface, people came here for alternative therapies available nowhere else. The station also provided the straightforward therapies, too.

Including crush juice.

If Zillah Garden Advanced Medical Clinic and Services Inc. did not intend to give me the crush shot I wanted, I was sure the next clinic along would be happy to take my money. I headed for the door, intending to turn left and walk until I came across that clinic.

Before I could reach the door, though, the assistant got a hand around my elbow, while talking fast. He was sweating. It was his job to add to the clinic’s revenue stream. Turning customers away would not look good.

He managed to get me into one of the consultation room, seated in a comfortable chair,