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

“No one came aboard. They’d have to ask me, first. No one asked.”

The boy shifted his aim from Lyth to me as we spoke. “I wound the access hatch open,” he said. “That’s my job,” he added. “You people abducted me!”

I put it together and sighed. “We took off too fast for you to get off.”

“You’re an engineer?” Juliyana asked, lowering her hands.

Dalton stirred and groaned, and the boy’s shriver dipped down toward him, then jerked back up to move across the three of us. Juliyana raised her hands once more as it swung toward her.

“You might want to put that down,” I told him. “You’ll get exhausted trying to keep up.”

“You have to take me back,” he said. “Right now.”

“You’re an engineer,” I said. “You know that’s impossible. We’re in the hole. You’re just going to have to be patient. We can get you back to Keeler eventually, but it’s going to take time.”

“The Rangers will come for you,” he said, his voice high with tension. “You can’t keep me here.”

“Shit, we’re kidnappers now?” Dalton said, from the floor.

I looked at Lyth. “We are the priority here. He’s pointing a gun at us.”

Lyth nodded.

And melted into the floor.

The boy sucked in a terrified breath. “Where did he go?” His voice was even higher.

Lyth rose from the floor, right behind him. He reached around the boy and plucked the shriver out of his hands. The boy squealed and staggered away from Lyth, his hands up.

If he had been wandering around this ship long enough to find a locker full of old weapons and see walls move and the floor to grow animated objects, it was little wonder he was terrified. Everything about the Lythion was well out of his few years of experience.

Juliyana stepped forward and hooked an arm around his neck, her other hand gripping her wrist. A choke hold she could use to control him.

He gave a little shriek. He was hyperventilating.

As terrified as he was, he’d still had the sense to find a weapon and confront us. That took guts. I moved in front of him and raised a finger to my lips. “Shh…”

He stopped struggling and breathed heavily, staring at me with wide-open eyes.

“What is your name?”

He swallowed. “Sauli.”

I nodded. “I’m Danny. Juliyana is behind you, and this is Lyth.”

Lyth raised his hand. “Hello.”

Sauli swallowed.

“And Dalton is behind me,” I added.

Sauli’s gaze shifted back to Dalton then sheered away and came back to my face.

“Are you hungry, Sauli?”

He mulishly didn’t answer.

I nodded as if he had. “Juliyana will take you to the galley. You can ask for anything you want, but the door won’t open if you try to leave. Do you understand?” I shifted my gaze to Lyth, who nodded. He’d make the galley secure.

“In a while, I’ll come and speak to you again, Sauli.” I gave him my best smile. “We will get you back home,” I promised him. “But right now, there’s a few things we have to take care of.”

Sauli examined my face, looking for sincerity. Then he slumped in Juliyana’s arms, relief painting itself in his very young face. He nodded.

Juliyana let go of his neck and took his arm in a more-or-less friendly grip. “Come on,” she murmured, tugging him down the corridor to the galley door. “Dalton, get some clothes on, will you?” she flung over her shoulder, irritation coloring her voice.

I glanced at Dalton. He was already heading for his room, his bare shoulders rigid. He slapped the door controls and stepped in without looking back at us.

Lyth stood with the stillness that I’d come to learn was him reaching across the ship, controlling and directing. “What is it?” I asked him and plucked the shriver out of his hand. It looked wrong on him.

I flicked open the energy housing, to extract the energy pack.

It was empty.

I laughed out loud and shut the housing once more. Had Sauli known it was empty? He was an engineer. It was a good bet he had known. I shoved my grudging respect up a little higher.

“There is a relay nexus missing from the secondary service engine,” Lyth said, his voice remote.

I frowned. “What does it run?”

“Among other things, the air scrubbers. The engine has been out of service for some hours.” His gaze shifted to me. “Although with so few humans aboard, you won’t run out of oxygen for many hours yet.”

“But we will run out, eventually,” I said grimly. I gripped the stock of the shriver. “Right…” I turned and marched to the galley. Lyth considerately opened the door for me before I pummeled the keyplate.

Juliyana and Sauli both sat at a booth—not our usual one, which pleased me. Sauli looked up as I entered, dropped the spoon of ice-cream he’d been lifting to his mouth, scrambled off the bench and ran. The fool ran straight past Juliyana, who calmly thrust out her boot.

He tripped and measured his length on the linoleum floor and groaned.

Juliyana wiped her mouth of ice cream, then hauled him to his feet and wrapped her elbow around his neck and squeezed.

He turned red in the face.

“What have you done?” she asked him.

He tried to speak. A squeak came out.

“Let him talk,” I said, coming up to them.

Juliyana relaxed her grip a little.

“Where is the relay nexus?” I demanded of him. “Or did you think we wouldn’t notice it was missing until we started gasping for air?”

Sauli’s mouth clamped in a hard line. “You get it back when you take me home.”

I shook my head. “You’ll die before that happens. We all will. When I said we can’t break off what we’re doing to get you back to where you belong, I fucking meant it. You’re stuck on this ship for days. When we suck in CO2, so do you. Get it?”

Sauli didn’t cave.

I considered him. “How big is the relay, Lyth?”

“Twelve centimeters across, three deep, ten in width,” Lyth replied.

“Juliyana, search his pockets.”

Sauli sighed. Now he caved. I saw it in his eyes. I waited