Hammer and Crucible by Cameron Cooper (book recommendations for teens .TXT) 📕

I was starting to have some ideas about that. The Supreme Lythion dropping into our laps as it had would open up our options in ways I was only just starting to encompass.

My room was as I had left it…only the bed was made. Oh well, I could live with that much intrusion. I went over to my travel sack, which was still sitting upon the wheeled platform on which it had arrived last night. My pad had more data I could add to the discussion back in the diner.

“Danny,” Noam said urgently, behind me.

I whirled, my heart shooting straight up into the infarction range. “Noam…”

He moved toward me, looking as real as the bed he was skirting. He held up his hands. “Now you’re here, we really need to talk.”

“You’re not here,” I told him. “You’re just my mind blowing a gasket.” I felt sticky and prickling and panicked. But I clung to what I knew—what I thought—was happening, for it helped me anchor myself.

“You’re right. I’m not exactly here,” he said. “But this is the only way for now I can reach you. You have to listen to me, Danny. They’re coming for you.”

More doom and gloom. More scary forecasts. I shook my head. “No. No more. I’m tired of this.” I made myself straighten despite my blood pressure making me hunch in and clutch at my chest. “I want you to leave, Noam.”

“No, you don’t. Not really.” His tone was wise and gentle.

“What more do you want?” I cried. “I’m doing everything I can to figure out what happened to you. I’ve…fuck, I’ve rejuvenated, stolen money to do it, and now the family want my neck. The Rangers are after me, and not just for the money, anymore. I’m tired of being smacked around by this, Noam. Every move I make, someone tries to swipe at me. I just wanted to die in peace, and now I have another ninety years of the empire dumping bullshit on me…”

Noam just looked at me, the corner of his mouth lifted. My heart ached. I’d seen that amused, tolerant expression so many times before!

“Did you go mad?” I whispered, my eyes prickling.

“Did you really give up?” he asked.

Truth time. I’d been here before, lately. “No,” I whispered and felt the veracity of it in my gut. “No, not really.”

Noam nodded. “That’s what I thought. Ask Dalton about Michael Powell Moroder.”

What the fuck…! I stared at him, my thoughts racing with more than the sensation of doom that always accompanied his arrival.

Noam glanced over his shoulder. “Michael Powell Moroder,” he repeated, then walked away.

Through the wall.

I sank onto the bed, my pulse sounding like canon fire in my head and my whole body shaking with the adrenaline overload.

15

It wasn’t a surprise to find the galley empty, for I had lingered in my room, recovering, for longer than I had originally intended to be there.

The galley looked the same as when I had left it, which was surprisingly reassuring. I still wasn’t sure I liked the idea of a living space that changed outfits more often than me.

I looked for a concierge panel, or even the printer, which was usually next to one. I couldn’t spot either, so I raised my voice and tried anyway. “Lyth, where is Dalton?”

He said from behind me, “He’s in his room. I’ll show you the way.”

I turned and followed him back down the corridor to one of the other doors that had appeared on the inside wall of the corridor. I glanced at the lockers and drawers in the corridor itself. “Are they decorative?” I asked Lyth.

“The outer hull wall is as solid as any non-gaseous or non-liquid form,” he replied. “But they are all empty,” he added. He stopped at a door three down from mine and gestured to it.

I glanced at the doors in between. “Juliyana has one…who has the other?”

“Perhaps I do,” Lyth looked mischievous.

I rolled my eyes and raised my knuckles to the door, then shifted my hand to the keyplate and pressed it. “Dalton, it’s Danny. We need to talk.” I looked at Lyth. “If he lets me in to talk, I need you to leave us alone for a bit.”

“Concierge only,” Lyth promised. He turned and walked away.

I put my fingers against the keyplate once more. “Dalton. Gabriel. It’s important.”

After a moment, the door slid open.

I did a doubletake on this threshold, too. The room was not a room at all. It was a dock on a still lake, with mist-shrouded and tree-carpeted mountains on the other side. A cool breeze drifted off the water. Lapping sounds came from beneath the planks of the dock and I could smell lake water, faint but distinct. To one side was a rickety table and a single round-back chair, beside a battered and scratched printer maw enclosed inside an object I had only seen in history videos—a refrigerator, I think they called them.

On the other end of the dock was a comfortable easy chair, facing the water and the cloud-wreathed mountains. Behind the chair was a hammock, hanging from posts on either side of the dock.

Dalton sat on the edge of the hammock, perfectly balanced. He’d had practice in sleeping in one, clearly. “I came here to think,” he complained.

“Think? Or brood?”

He scowled. “Think,” he said firmly. “And if I wanted to, why shouldn’t I brood? If you and Juliyana are right about Noam, then I’ve lost forty years plus, fucked up my health, risked dying most days of the week, and it was for nothing. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and signed the wrong set of orders.” His tone was deeply bitter.

“Not for nothing,” I said firmly. “If you were just the average officer, you’d still be signing papers somewhere, safe because you don’t ask questions when told to jump.” I paused. “You did something that goosed them, Dalton.”

He breathed heavily. A gusty sigh.

I changed subjects—just for