Hammer and Crucible

by Cameron Cooper

  Dalton peered at me, puzzled.

  “She really does,” Juliyana added. She was grinning hugely.

  Dalton stepped away from Ramaker, who straightened and tugged his fancy jacket into place.

  “The guards, Majesty,” I added.

  He looked at the guards. “Go. Shut the door behind you.”

  “Majesty!” one of the faceless protested, straightening from his ready stance.

  “I said, go!” Ramaker cried, his face turning suddenly red. There was a temper beneath that red hair, then. Centuries of statesmanship had buried it deep but his awareness of the uncomfortable negotiations ahead were bringing it to blazing life.

  He wasn’t happy, poor thing.

  The guards retreated, crunching more glasseen. They shut the door with a quiet snick. I could hear them murmuring outside the door and dismissed them from consideration. They wouldn’t overhear what happened next. If Ramaker didn’t have this entire room wrapped in a privacy bubble I would be stunned.

  “Majesty,” I said. “You’ve spent decades trying to control the array and failing. Now I have control. The array—Noam—knows I will take care of it. Him. In return, he will take care of me. I can bring the peace and economic stability you have struggled to reach.”

  Ramaker’s chest lifted as he took a long breath and let it out. “What will it cost me?” he said blandly.

  A pragmatic man. Good. That would make this easier. “You owe my family a year’s worth of dividends,” I told him. “And I want Noam’s record expunged and corrected to show he died with honor.”

  “That might be difficult,” Ramaker said carefully.

  “I’ll make that easier for you in a moment,” I said. “First, though. Dalton…do you want your career back in the Rangers?”

  Dalton barely hesitated. “Hell, no,” he growled.

  “Then what?”

  He shrugged. “The Shield and the Rangers off my ass.”

  I nodded. “Juliyana?”

  She considered for a moment, then blew out her breath. “I don’t want to go back, either. How strange….”

  I turned to Ramaker. “Their records restored,” I told him. “Back pay for the last forty years at their proper rank.”

  Ramaker winced. Then he nodded. “You, too, I suppose?”

  “No, thank you. But you can inter Moroder with honors. I think that about covers it.”

  What about me? Noam whispered.

  Just wait.

  The Emperor tried to hide his relief. He believed he’d got off easy. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask for me to rescind all the warrants out for all of you.”

  “There’s no point in asking you to pardon us,” I told him. “There are still a bunch of paramilitary outfits looking for me, and Dalton has made his share of enemies over the years. You can’t ordain them into behaving themselves, but I can. Which brings me to one last thing.”

  Ramaker’s expression grew wary.

  “You and your pet analyst there are to announce to the world that the array—that Noam—is sentient and has been for decades. You will explain everything to the empire, Majesty. All of it.”

  “Including what you are?” he asked, his tone disdainful.

  “All of it,” I repeated.

  He grew puzzled. “Why? Why put yourself through that public scrutiny?”

  “Once everyone knows who I am, Majesty, no one will dare touch me. Not if they want to be able to continue traveling about the stars. That will call off the paramilitaries and leave me free to live my life.”

  Ramaker shook his head. “You may live to regret that. Public life has no real freedom at all.”

  “It’s the only way, Majesty. The empire must learn that Noam is alive.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Ramaker said. I knew it was a huge concession for him to utter those words.

  “Of course you don’t. You’ve never lived a day alone. You’ve been surrounded by people always. It’s simple, Majesty. Once everyone knows that Noam is alive, they will talk to him, which will allow him to talk to them.” I shrugged. “He won’t be alone anymore.”

  Noam’s mental hug felt like a shower of soft, warm sparks through my mind.

  I smiled, and just barely held back my laughter.

  Even Dalton and Juliyana were smiling.

  26

  We didn’t have to scale the cable to return to the Lythion. The Emperor’s personal landing bay was cleared out, and Lythion landed there. The three of us were escorted by the house guards to the landing bay.

  Lyth stood upon the entry ramp, watching for us. Relief showed in his face as we climbed aboard.

  “Where to, Captain?” Lyth asked me, as the ramp closed.

  “First stop, the Umb Judeste,” I said. “I have some fences to mend. Noam will set up the gates for you.”

  Lyth nodded. “I’ve rebuilt the living quarters, if you wish to sleep.”

  “In a while, Lyth.” I paused. “I didn’t tell them about you. Do you mind?”

  He considered. “Do you plan to get rid of me, Captain?”

  “I think that would be an extreme waste, Lyth. We’re going to have to find a new way to make a living, now. Your speed and your luxury accommodations would appeal to discerning travelers.”

  Lyth smiled. “Then, if you’re staying, I don’t mind that you didn’t tell anyone about me.” He left by walking down the corridor and turning the corner as a normal human would.

  Juliyana watched him leave, her brow raised. “He didn’t melt into the floor.”

  “He’s been studying us.” I didn’t voice which one of us he studied the closest.

  The ship’s engines rumbled with effort as the ship lifted off from the landing bay floor.

  Juliyana spread her feet against the motion of the ship. “So…Dad really was a good guy, after all.”

  “And so are you. The Emperor is about to say so to the world.”

  She didn’t quite smile. “It’s shitty what they did to you, Danny. And you didn’t ask for anything, yourself.”

  “I didn’t want it. Not from him. I’ll earn it myself. I think the universe will leave us alone for a while now, so I can do that.”

  She nodded. “About what I thought you’d say. It sucks, what they did, but I’m glad they did do it, because it means you’re still here.”

  “I thought I was a double-timing broad?”

  She winced. “Yeah, well, I think that deviousness might be one of your greater charms.” She stirred. “Once we’re in the hole, let’s have a grand dinner, then drink ourselves into a stupor on the mountain lookout, with the stars.”

  “That sounds fantastic,” I told her. “I have a couple of things to do, first.”

  “Gate’s an hour away, I guess. See you in the galley.” She moved up to her room door and stepped inside.

  I went to my room. It looked untouched. My pad was still on the bed where I had left it. I sat on the end of the bed next to it.

  “Noam, could you step in, please?” I said aloud.

  Noam rose up from the floor, as Lyth could do. He gave me a nervous smile. “I think I am supposed to say thank you.”

  “You are, and I accept. Noam, everyone will know about you soon. How does that make you feel?”

  He thought about that. “Excited.”

  I nodded. “It will come with great responsibility. You realize that, don’t you?”

  He frowned.

  “Friends trust each other, Noam. They learn that the other person won’t let them down, and their friendship grows. If you hit out at them because they upset you, or because they did something you don’t like, then they won’t trust you anymore. They’ll be scared of you.” I paused. “They won’t like you,” I added.

  His expression sobered. “I should be nice to them, when they talk to me.”

  “Yes. And not make them afraid, because you are much bigger than they are.”

  “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

  I can’t lie to him. He�
��s part of me. “A little,” I told him. “That is because you are still a child, but you have an enormous power, that if used wrongly, will destroy people. It has destroyed people, Noam. Including my son. You heard what the Emperor and Elizabeth said about that.”

  “I…” He shifted on his feet.

  “What you should say now is something like, ‘I’m sorry for what I have done,’ or that you regret the pain you have made me feel.”

  Noam lifted his chin. “I felt that pain,” he whispered.

  “I know. How did that make you feel?”

  “Not good,” he admitted.

  “That is the pain you give others, when you harm their loved ones. Like all those people who died on Darius.”

  His eyes grew larger. “I…hadn’t thought of it that way. I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want them to not like me.”

  “Good. Think about that, Noam. We will talk about it a lot in the future. Did Lyth ask you to set the gates for the Umb Judeste?”

  “It is done,” he said.

  “Would you and Lyth please watch over the ship until we arrive? Us humans are very tired.”

  “I will take care of you,” Noam said. He hesitated. “I am very sorry about Noam,” he added diffidently.

  “Are you?”

  He considered. “Yes,” he said, his voice low.

  “That is a good place to start from,” I told him. “Thank you.”

  He gave me a shy smile and disappeared.

  I got up and went to the printer and asked for what I wanted. I could feel my bones aching all over the way they used to before the rejuvenation. But I couldn’t sleep yet. There was one more thing to do, before Juliyana’s feast and star-gazing—which I was looking forward to with ridiculous glee.

  I took the print out along to Dalton’s room and paged him.

  He let the door open. It was full daylight inside, and fluffy white clouds wreathed the highest peaks. Everywhere else was blue sky.

  Dalton sat at the tiny table, his feet up. They were bare.

  He lowered them again when he saw what I had in my hands. “What’s that for?”

  I put the punnet of tomato seedlings down in front of him. “They’re tomato plants,” I told him. “For planting in a garden…wherever the garden will be.”

  His smile was a quick flash as he reached out tentatively and touched the tiny, delicate leaves.

  “I’m hoping that you’ll find a way to build a garden right here on the Lythion,” I added.

  Dalton looked up at me. “I’ve dragged you down every step of the way. Why would you want me on the ship?”

  “No protests about it being your ship?”

  Dalton rolled his eyes. “We both know that the ship is really Lyth’s, if it’s anyone’s. We’re just the grunts that happen to have stepped onboard.”

  “Don’t tell Lyth that,” I said. “And I don’t see how you’ve dragged us down even once. The crush juice and the shitty rejuvenation we can sort out. The claustrophobia will disappear in time.” I thought of the way he’d used the suit he hated to slide down from the Lythion, and through the Emperor’s window. “Besides, I don’t believe it slows you down nearly as much as you think.”

  Dalton rubbed his jaw, his gaze on the tomato plants.

  “I know you, Dalton,” I added. “I know your character. If you want to go, go, but that means getting to know the stranger that takes your place, and I don’t think there will be too many people willing to work with me, once they know who I am.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Dalton replied. “Seems to me that once everyone knows who you are, the safest place in the empire is going to be right next to you.”

  “Then you’ll stay?”

  Dalton turned his gaze to the mountains. “I was just sitting here thinking that I’m getting bored with the view. A little quarter acre lot, with a split-rail fence and a garden…that sounds like a nice change of pace.”

  I smiled and headed to the door. “Dinner in the galley as soon as we go through the gate. I’m buying,” I called over my shoulder.

  “I’m richer than you, now, remember!” he called back.

  “Give me a year,” I promised him, as I left.

  ____________________________

  The next book in the Imperial Hammer series is the short story;

  An Average Night on Androkles

  All Danny wants is an average night…

  What starts out as an undisclosed job hunt turns into an interesting dinner date, but even that gets hijacked by a visit from an enemy Danny didn’t know she had.

  Worse, the enemy has snatched Dalton and wants Danny in exchange, which leads Danny into an evening of surprises and a new companion…

  __

  An Average Night on Androkles is a short story in the Imperial Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

  Get your copy of An Average Night on Androkles now!

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  About the Author

  Cameron Cooper is the author of The Indigo Reports science fiction series and the alter ego for an Amazon #1 bestselling author in an unrelated genre. The Indigo Reports was originally conceived as a one-off series, but readers demanded more. The Imperial Hammer series releases in early 2020.

  Cameron tends to write space opera short stories and novels, but also roams across the science fiction landscape. Cameron was raised on a steady diet of Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, McCaffrey, and others. Peter F. Hamilton and John Scalzi are contemporary heroes. An Australian Canadian, Cam lives near the Canadian Rockies.

  Other books by Cameron Cooper

  For reviews, excerpts, and more about each title, visit Cameron’s site and click on the cover you are interested in: https://cameroncooperauthor.com/books-by-thumbnail/

  Imperial Hammer

  Hammer and Crucible

  Star Forge

  Long Live the Emperor

  Severed

  Destroyer of Worlds

  The Indigo Reports

  (Space Opera)

  Flying Blind

  New Star Rising

  But Now I See

  Suns Eclipsed

  Worlds Beyond

  Standalone Short SF

  Resilience

  Copyright Information

  This is an original publication of Cameron Cooper

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2020 by Stories Rule Press

  Text design by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Edited by Mr. Intensity, Mark Posey

  Cover design by Dar Albert

  http://WickedSmartDesigns.com

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

&nb
sp; FIRST EDITION: March 2020

  Cooper, Cameron

  Hammer and Crucible/Cameron Cooper—2nd Ed.

  Science Fiction—Fiction