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

I held up a hand. “Help me up,” I demanded. “Then you can explain to me what the fuck is going on.”

“I thought you were way over on the other side of the empire,” I said to Juliyana as the elevator pod rose up through the levels. We had the pod to ourselves because I’d shooed off everyone who tried to get on it. If I own the joint, I’d use the privileges which came with it. I wanted to be alone for a moment while I put myself back together. An old woman already looks vulnerable. No need to add to the impression.

Juliyana was an exception. Her, I wanted right next to me until I sorted this out.

“You were in the war with the Quintino Rim folk,” I added. Talking was not fun.

“The Quintino offensive ended ten years ago,” Juliyana said stiffly.

I shrugged and pressed my fingers against my jaw once more. I’d ask Andrain to scope the bone, just in case. I was his most consistent patient, these days.

As we passed through the greenhouse levels, Juliyana squeezed the strap of her sack, her throat working. I noticed and stayed silent. The anger would push it out of her. No need to tax myself going after it.

She held onto her tongue until we got off the elevator at my level.

“You’re not at the top?” she asked, surprise lifting her voice, as she peered up and down the blank corridor. Unlike most strangers to the barge, she had correctly named the orientation. Arriving ships always emerged through the gate with the bulk of the barge to their right. The wharf was at the bottom, down by the reaction engines. Ships cruised the length of the barge, all two kilometers of it, to reach their berth. Newts erroneously assumed the irregular, ugly triangular barge was lying down, despite internal gravity running across the ship.

If Juliyana had been a typical newt, she would have asked why I wasn’t at the end of the ship, not the top of it. But then, if she had been a typical newt, she wouldn’t have known the top of the ship was where the senior members of the family lived, and corporate headquarters were located right beneath where the gate attached to the ship like an astronomically sized hook-eye.

Because Juliyana was a Ranger, she was used to quickly orienting herself according to the local gravitational pull, even in strange places. “Up” was always against the pull of gravity. The convention saved officers from handing confusing orders to subordinates.

I stopped myself from being impressed by her grasp of local conventions. “Why should I be at the top?” I asked, as I headed down the corridor. “I’m not the CEO.” I palmed open the door to my apartment and let her in.

I followed, moving stiffly. I went straight over to the printer, clicked though to analgesics, and selected the biggest dose of the strongest meds the terminal would issue me. In response, it demanded my finger. I put my forefinger against the pad, let it draw a drop of blood. That would have Andrain demanding I attend his clinic, for sure. I’d deal with it later. For now, I just wanted to numb my jaw. I guessed there was a lot of talking ahead.

The printer pinched the end of my finger and injected the painkiller.

Juliyana parked herself on the only comfortable chair in the sitting room and stared at the wall. I had it set for a tropical beach. The waves were crystalline clear and made a pleasant background murmur. The sun was hot, and the sand came right up to the edge of the floor.

“Get out of my chair.”

She picked up her sack and stood. I sat down.

Juliyana looked around for another perch. Then she shrugged, put the sack at her feet and straightened.

“Start talking,” I told her.

She stared at me, instead.

“Ten seconds, then I’m paying you back for the punch.”

She blinked. “It’s just…you’re different from how I remember you.”

“I got old. It happens.”

“I’ve never seen it before. Does it…hurt?”

I scowled. “Your ten seconds are up.”

She put a hand on her hip. The hip was just above where the butt of her pistol would normally be. A furrow dug between her brows. I wondered if she was aware of how much she projected her thoughts. She said quickly, “You set up my father. You handed him over to the Imperial Shield.” Her expression darkened and her jaw grew hard. “You got him killed.”

Then, damn it, she wept.

While Juliyana got her shit together, hunched up in my chair, I printed a second armchair. I could afford that much. While it was growing to full size, I printed two random meals, five hundred calories each, and hot. We both needed it.

Juliyana didn’t allow herself more than a moment or two of self-indulgent pity. While I ate, she picked at the contents of the steaming bowl in her lap and gave me an incoherent story about conspiracies and bad intentions and wars and shoddy business practices…it sounded to me like just another day in the empire.

I finished my bowl, surprising myself. Getting knocked to the floor was good for the appetite, apparently. I put the bowl aside and held up my hand. “Stop, stop. Back up and start again.” I drew in a breath and added in my best military tone; “Report, Lieutenant.”

Juliyana colored to her hairline. “It’s Private now, remember?”

I had forgotten.

Yet my command got her turned around properly. She put the bowl on the floor beside the chair and pressed her hands together. “I found a report, don’t ask me where, but I verified the serial number, it’s legit….” Her wrists paled as she pressed harder. Her fingers slid between each other and gripped. “When Noam died, he wasn’t with the Rangers. He was doing something mysterious for the Imperial Shield. And you approved the transfer. You never told me that. You never told anyone.”

I weighed that