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

Then…light once more and air around my face. I opened my eyes, to look through the faceplate that had formed. Juliyana wore the same matte black environment suit. Her eyes were wide behind her faceplate, but she nodded at me and bent over the arm of the pilot’s chair and hit the door controls.

Warning klaxons sounded. She muted them.

Air was sucked out of the cabin until the door had equal pressure on both sides. With a clank I could feel through my feet, but couldn’t hear, the door slid open.

“Ten seconds,” Dalton warned in my ear.

Between the edge of the floor at the open doorway lay nothing but vacuum and a very long way below, the surface of Eugorian II. We hovered ten meters away from the very lowest section of the bottom of the Imperial dome. Ten meters was just outside the borders of the proximity alarms. One facet, forty meters across, was directly in front of us. It was opaque with dirt, for this tucked away corner of the dome was right up against the Emperor’s private landing bay.

Then the second sun rose, a dazzling white ball which spilled its energy upon the planet and the city…and the dome itself.

I threw up my arm as the glittering array blinded me. Then the faceplate compensated, adding a layer of polarization that cut the dazzle.

I lowered my arm, still blinking, and watched the dome, waiting.

The polarization ran down the dome like water over an upturned bowl. As it reached the facet we hovered beside, I eased back a step or two and took a running leap out of the door.

All I needed to do was push beyond the reach of the pseudo gravity field of the drop ship. Momentum would do the rest.

I got my hands and feet out in front of me as I floated through the air. I was aiming for the top of the facet, for the dome’s gravity would reach beyond it a meter or two, and pull me down.

Halfway across, when I could feel the lightness of zero gravity, I pressed my left thumb against the sensor on the side of my glove’s index finger. There was no sensation that anything had changed, but the sensor glowed a muted green.

I began to drop as the gravity from the dome kicked in. I pushed forward with my hands, reaching for the glasseen steel. I slapped my hands against it as my body was dragged down.

My hands stuck like limpets.

Using them as leverage, I swung my feet up and planted them squarely against the dome. They stuck, too.

I bent my knees and elbows, pulling myself in against the facet. Then I broke the grip of my right hand by rolling it slowly to one side. I reached into my belt, pulled out the tether launcher and turned carefully to sight toward the drop ship. Juliyana stood in the doorway watching me.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Yes.”

The drop ship was coated in the same masking nanobot skin as the rest of the Lythion. With the suns blazing behind it, it was a dark shadow. Nothing glittered or even gleamed. It also shielded me from the blast of the suns, letting me aim at Juliyana.

I triggered the launcher. The guiding weight shot toward her, trailing unbreakable cable behind it.

Juliyana caught the weight as it slapped her belly, then wrapped it around her waist and hooked it to itself. She couldn’t attach it to the nanobot environment suit, because Lyth wasn’t certain a sudden jerk against them wouldn’t disperse them the way his fist dispersed if he tried to put much effort behind it.

But the bots would withstand the few minutes we would be outside.

I attached the rear end of the launcher to the facet next to my hand. It used the same powerful suction devices that were on my hands and feet.

“Attached,” Juliyana said and disappeared inside the ship. She would be firing up the self-directing program that Lyth had left in the AI’s core for this moment.

The ship dropped sharply, as the hover engines reversed. The cable played out, then slowed, as Juliyana reappeared at the open door of the drop ship. She stepped out into vacuum.

I reversed the launcher and the cable wound up, bringing Juliyana with it, while the drop ship floated back beneath the city and disappeared from our view.

“The drop ship is heading back to you,” I told Dalton.

“Copy.”

“As soon as you have it, go park yourself on the back side of the gate,” I added, watching the cable slow even more as Juliyana drew closer.

Twenty hours ago, Noam had suggested the Lythion hide behind the gate.

“It won’t hide a damn thing,” Dalton had argued back. “When the gate isn’t active, with a wormhole showing, you can see the stars right through the middle of it.”

“As soon as the Lythion is through, I will deactivate the gate and set up an ion screen that will reflect the view behind the Lythion. It will look like you’re staring through the ring. No one will realize anything is wrong, unless someone tries to leave Eugoria through the gates.” He smiled. “Then they will find it doesn’t work.”

“Okay, so the chances that anyone is leaving the system today is pretty small,” Dalton said. “But there has to be a shit ton of ships trying to arrive here in time for the celebrations. What happens to them?”

“There are, indeed, many ships traveling toward the gate,” Noam said. “The first of them will request the gate form an exit one hundred and three minutes after we emerge.”

“That’s our window, then,” I said. “We have just under two hours to get this done.”

Now Dalton growled at me through my earpiece, “I know my bit.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I know you do. Can’t help being a Colonel.”

“Shit, and she apologizes,” Dalton said. “Now I know the impossible can happen.”

I reached out and took Juliyana’s wrist as she was drawn up alongside me and pulled her hand up