Hammer and Crucible

by Cameron Cooper

  I certainly didn’t.

  Plus, the freighters headed to destinations which were banned to commercial passenger lines. That included military bases, Imperial facilities and xenophobic worlds who nevertheless needed external supplies because they were not self-sufficient.

  It was the only efficient way to get around the galaxy, if you didn’t own your own ship.

  However, because freight travel was technically illegal, even though everyone did it, there were no official postings for berths. One had to know someone, who knew someone else, who was aware of a freighter with room and could hook you up with its captain in order to obtain passage.

  Most of those conversations and hook ups took place in the bars and shops and cafés where I stopped by that morning. I spent a little money, left a larger tip and asked a few questions of whoever was behind the counter.

  It isn’t an instantaneous process. I would have to circle back to these joints to follow up on my original question. The first answer I usually received in response to the question of passage was accompanied by a blank look and an innocent expression, along with a declaration that they had no idea what I was talking about. Then I would thank them for their time and leave a large tip.

  When I went back the second time, the innocent act would be dropped. If there was passage available, I would be introduced to a crewman, right there and then. Or I would be offered the chance to leave a message to be delivered to the ship, soonest.

  There was always a danger that the berth they had available would be already sold by the time I caught up with someone from the ship. As travel by freighter was so common, though, if I missed the first opportunity, another would be along shortly. I just had to persist in asking.

  I continued my rounds. I was braced for it to be a long morning, with my kidneys afloat with disgusting coffee and my stomach protesting over printed food passed off as freshly made. Except life suddenly got interesting, shortly after I had completed my first round of the most likely places to find passage.

  I had rented a refresher to rid myself of some used coffee. Not for the first time, my reflection in the mirror startled me. It would take time to get used to looking at that young woman. She appeared to know nothing of the world.

  I had never requested such a young cosmetic age before. Youth was not an advantage in the military. It was better to look older and wiser, especially in the higher ranks.

  It was while I was staring at the clean line of my jaw, with not a sag or sign of loose flesh anywhere, that I realized that no one had glanced at me with that startled second I had become accustomed to before the rejuvenation.

  I was blending in, now. This deceptively young appearance would be useful.

  I stepped out of the refresher. The door had nearly closed on me, locking me out unless I paid for another use, when I saw a tall man with useful shoulders and a military bearing, moving through the crowd on the concourse, his head turning as he searched every face.

  Billy Kurzel, Agent At Large.

  I eased back into the refresher and let the door shut, my heart thudding.

  It could be purely coincidental that Billy was here on New Phoenicia. As one of the largest commercial hubs, it saw a lot of traffic, which would make it rich pickings for Billy and his ilk. He could be here merely to fill his quota of recruits.

  Only, my gut said that wasn’t the case.

  Billy and the people he worked for were not going to give up on me without effort. They had already taken a swipe at me after I had told them no. That should have warned me they were determined.

  Now I had a measure of exactly how dogged they were. They would follow me wherever I went, to continue their one-sided negotiations when they caught up with me.

  9

  Billy did not know about my rejuvenation. It was likely he would look right past me if he saw me, but I didn’t want to take that chance.

  I leaned against the shower stall and punched in a message to Juliyana.

  Her acknowledgement came almost at once, which was a relief.

  I renewed my rental on the refresher and waited inside until Juliyana tapped on the door. I stepped out.

  Juliyana carried our two sacks, both of them bulging. I didn’t remember mine being that loaded before.

  She shrugged. “You said pack for both of us. So I used the space in your sack for some of my stuff. I’ve been here for weeks. I picked up some clothes.”

  I told her quickly about Billy.

  “He doesn’t know what you look like but he knows what I look like,” Juliyana pointed out. “I hope he has reason to remember me,” she added with a growl.

  “All men are attached to their testicles. I guarantee he remembers you,” I assured her. “I just didn’t want you walking into him out there. We’ll have to sneak off the station.”

  “Have you found passage yet?”

  I thought of the barkeep with the barrel chest and a quiet manner. He hadn’t bothered with the bullshit about not knowing what I was talking about. He had pocketed my tip. I had a feeling he was the most likely prospect to be able to connect me to a suitable freighter. “There is a bar, The Oriental Monkey, just up the concourse from here. Let’s hit that one first.”

  “Yeah, I know that one,” Juliyana said. “You said Billy was moving clockwise around the concourse?”

  Like a great many very old stations, the core of New Phoenicia was a wheel which, once upon a time, had spun to impart gravity. That was before antigrav fields had come into common use.

  Pseudo-gravity allowed entire cities to be built in space over their mother planets, for normal folk could live on the stations year-round without ill effect. Even freighters used pseudo-gravity, to avoid some of the nastier complications of long-term weightlessness and low gravity.

  “Yes, he was moving clockwise,” I told Juliyana.

  She thought it through. “By now, he could have moved right around the ring. We may meet up with him as we head for the bar—assuming he’s actually circling and not stopped somewhere.”

  “If he’s stopped somewhere, it’s not a problem for us. So let’s assume he’s circling. We’ll go the long way around, which means we’d be following him, and won’t come face to face with him.” I picked up my sack. It should have been heavy, although the weight didn’t bother me at all as I slung it over my shoulder.

  “Around, then?”

  “Around,” I confirmed.

  The mild-mannered barman did know someone who knew someone. When we walked into the bar, he jerked his chin at me, then jerked it at another patron.

  The man in dirty overalls and spacer boots sat at a table by himself, watching the news headlines stream across the screen behind the bar. A half-eaten sandwich and a glass of something or other was in front of him.

  I approached his table, while Juliyana hung back at the bar. “Can I get you another drink?” This close, I could see he was drawing close to his next rejuvenation. His whiskers were silvered and his jowls lose. His eyes were keen enough as they swept over me.

  “You’re not propositioning me, are you?” he asked, his voice gravelly.

  I shook my head.

  His gaze flickered toward the barman. As the bar was behind me, I could only presume the barman had silently indicated that I was safe to speak to.

  The spacer relaxed and pushed the chair opposite him out with his boot. “Sure, I’ll have another.”

  I waved to the barman, who was already pouring the drink out of a bottle with a label I didn’t know. I sat down.

  “You’re looking for passage, then?”

  “Depends on how soon you’re leaving,” I said.

  His brow lifted. “Most people, it depends on where I’m going.”

  “As long as where you’re going is away from here, I’m good with that.”

  He rubbed his chin, his whiskers rasping. “Is taking you aboard gonna be a problem for me?”

  It was a fair question.

  “Not if we leave here fast enough.” I paused.
“There’s two of us.”

  His gaze shifted to Juliyana at the bar. “Your mother?”

  “Granddaughter.”

  He snorted. “Serves me right.” He considered me some more. “I can take two, if you don’t mind sharing the room. The bunk’ll take two.”

  “Not an issue. How soon are you leaving?”

  “This is my last meal before dust-off.” He nodded up at the barman, as the man put the spacer’s glass of whatever in front of him. “And my last glass of Nightblack, too,” he added. “We’re a dry ship. I don’t need the hassles, you understand?”

  “Perfectly,” I assured him. All Ranger vessels were completely dry, too.

  “Military, right?”

  “It shows?” I was surprised. This renewed body had the flexibility of youth, before parade stance had a chance to calcify the carriage.

  “It’s in the eyes,” he told me. “Known my share of officers…yeah, thought so,” he added, looking pleased with himself. He reached for his new drink. “Thirty standards from now. Bay thirty-four. I’ll take your money when you and your granddaughter make it there.”

  I appreciated his honesty. Lots of spacers would have insisted upon taking my money now and not given a damn if we made it to the ship or not. Although, this close to dust off, the captain—and I was fairly certain he was the captain—has nothing to lose by waiting to see if we made it to the bay. His chances of finding another passenger to fill his empty cabin were extremely low given there were only thirty minutes left before their departure.

  I nodded to him and got to my feet as he took a big slug of the glass of Nightblack. “Thirty minutes. We’ll be there. Thank you.” I paused. “Can I buy you another glass of Nightblack, to tide you over until you arrive at your destination?”

  “Yeah, I could be talked into that.” He hissed around the bite of the liquor.

  I moved over to the bar and paid for the man’s drinks, with another tip for the barman. “Thanks for your help,” I told him. I left the card he had slid back to me on the bar and put my finger on it. “There might be a man asking about two women looking for passage off-station.”

  The barman glanced at the card, then at me. For the first time I saw the mock innocence on his face. “Two women?” He shrugged.

  I pushed the card back toward him. “Keep it. The change is yours.”

  He made the cards disappear as he finished pouring the captain’s second drink.

  Juliyana handed me my sack, I nodded at the barman, then at the captain, and we left.

  “Bay thirty-four, about twenty-eight minutes from now,” I told her as we merged into the clockwise moving stream.

  “You figure Billy has the landing bays staked?”

  “I would, if I were Billy.” I looked around for navigation signs. A big station like Phoenicia had them everywhere. I spotted the readout and looked in the direction of the lower-digit bays. “It could take us all twenty-eight minutes just to get to the bay,” I said. “It’s at the far end of the city.”

  The remote location made sense. The big commercial lines paid over the odds for central bays. The military got preferential placement, too. Freighters and their ugly cargoes were placed out of the gaze of passengers and residents. The freight bays were a good two kilometers away.

  Juliyana rounded on me, her expression concerned. “Billy doesn’t have to stake out all the bays. He just has to stake out the shuttle that will get us there.”

  “He doesn’t know we will use freighters,” I pointed out. “He still thinks I’m an old woman, forced to use the commercial crawlers.”

  “That depends. His information was good enough to find you the moment you turned down rejuvenation. His sources are probably just as good on this station. I bet he works here a lot, rounding up his recruits.”

  I pulled up a schematic of the city on my pad, irritated. I should have anticipated this myself. It had been too long. I was out of practice. I studied the map, locating the clump of landing bays we needed to reach and the layout of the Mag-line which would get us there.

  I looked up at Juliyana. “Are you feeling energetic?”

  “What does that mean?”

  I held the pad out to her and traced the route with my fingernail. “This will get us there.”

  “It’s not a shuttle line, it’s just streets and avenues.” She tilted her head. “Avoid the shuttle…”

  I nodded. “Walk, jog, run, walk. Less walking than running.”

  Juliyana shortened the straps on her sack and shrugged it into a more comfortable position. “Time is ticking.”

  We ran.

  We made the Dream Queen with only a few minutes to spare. We were both breathless. Rather than feeling like I wanted to curl up and die, I was energized. I was jumping out of my skin. I could get used to this all over again, I decided. Exertion was fun.

  The captain, whose name was Newman, we discovered, was not waiting for us on the loading ramp. His 2IC was a spare, withered woman with a deep voice and no sense of humor, called, hilariously, Joy.

  I was very grateful she was expecting us. She was the type of second who followed procedure, no matter what, to make up for Newman’s casual style of captaincy. If Newman had failed to advise her we were expected, she would have turned us away.

  She waved her pad over each of our wrists, and I held my breath. Now we would learn if the new IDs we had paid for were worth the money Juliyana had spent on them.

  Joy turned the pad to check the readout. “Right, Maisie and Maariki. Your crush status checks out. Up the ramp, to the back of the bay. Turn left into the main gallery. Find someone there. They’ll point you to your cabin.” She smiled, a mirthless expression. “Welcome aboard.”

  We were directed to the cabin by distracted crewmembers, who were hurrying along the gallery, intent on their responsibilities. The working freight ships had minimal crews, sometimes slicing the personnel down and redistributing responsibilities so each crew member was doing the work of two or three others. During a long haul, that was not onerous. During departure and arrival, and especially while hooked up at the station, where they offloaded and uploaded new cargoes, the crew barely slept.

  It was no wonder Captain Newman had sought alone-time in the bar with a glass of his favorite tipple, just before takeoff. It was possibly the only rest he’d had since arriving at New Phoenicia.

  The ship was clearly preparing to leave. The reaction engines rumbled, making the whole ship gently vibrate.

  The cabin we were directed to was as cramped as promised. The bunk doubled as a gravitation shell for two, even though for the standard acceleration of the freight ship, we wouldn’t need it. It was there in case extremely high gee maneuvers were required. There were few times when such a need arose. Crush juice let spacers withstand a lot. I could remember only a few occasions from my time on military carriers when we had been ordered to our shells. Usually, sharp acceleration and deceleration only occurred if the ship was trying to evade something. In the military, that was usually another ship, or another ship’s weapons.

  A freighter might have to dodge unexpected and extremely large objects, like asteroids which were not mapped, or even other ships who were out of their shipping lanes.

  While we were still making our way to the cabin, the ship moved away from the station and kicked into gear. I drew in a breath, as inertia tried to press the front of my rib cage in to meet my spine. It was an illusion, of course, although it had been a long time since I had experienced high gee. I paused, breathing steadily.

  Juliyana lifted her brow at me. “Okay?”

  I nodded. I was still breathing. The nano bots were doing their job.

  We continued walking, both automatically falling into the wading stride one used when under high acceleration. Captain Newman was not hanging around. As we stepped into the cabin, I felt the tiny lurch which ships gave when they moved through an array gate and into a wormhole.

  I threw my sack on the floor beside the bed. I didn’t expect t
o have to touch either of them before the flight ended. Only then did it occur to me to check our destination.

  Juliyana was ahead of me. She stood at the concierge panel, making herself familiar with the ship’s directory and services.

  “Where are we heading?” I asked.

  She tapped a few more times, then said, “Devonire.”

  “Never heard of it. That might be a good thing.”

  Juliyana tapped a few more time. “Devonire III. Single departure point station, over a single city, servicing a continent of farmers. No other major exports besides produce.”

  It would make sense that a freighter would be heading for such an outpost. A single note economy would rely upon imports of everything else.

  I resisted the temptation to pull up my pad and consult the archives on the size and capacity of the space station. Now we were in the hole, I couldn’t access the usual networks.

  The ship’s concierge held permanent archive in its memory, which allowed the crew to access information they needed while in the hole. Each time the ship emerged from a gate, the gate would pass on the most recent communications squirt, which would include archival information which was automatically fed to the concierge.

  “How big is the station?” I asked Juliyana. “Did the ship update data before it left? What other ships are due at the station when we get there?”

  Juliyana made a small sound which might have been smothered irritation. “They have a whole three landing bays,” she said, her tone admiring.

  “Don’t be like that,” I chided her. “I realize it’s not New Phoenicia…”

  “The Dream Queen is the only ship due to arrive this week.”

  “Good. We’ll have the run of the station to ourselves. When I get a chance, I’ll find out from Newman where they’re going next. We need to start looking for a freighter that’s heading in the direction we want.”

  “And what direction is that? The last known destination of Gabriel Dalton was New Phoenicia, and we just left there.” Her jaw sagged a little as a new thought occurred to her. “You’re not thinking we should try to reach Annatarr, are you? Not after Farhan has promised to rain mayhem down upon us.”