Linesman (20 page)

JORDAN ROSSI

ORSAYA SWITCHED TO
an unmarked ship to go to Barossa. The new ship looked like a freighter and was probably as much of a freighter as the
Lancastrian Princess
. It bristled with arms, and everyone on board—except Rossi, Fergus, and Rebekah—carried weapons.

Rossi spent the trip trying to drag information out of Rebekah Grimes, who showed considerable reluctance to tell him anything about the mysterious ship or its lines. He wasn't sure if she was keeping it from him or if she genuinely didn't know.

“We are working together on this,” he pointed out.

“I'm not stupid, Jordan. I've told you as much as—” They both looked up as Orsaya entered the cabin.

“We're having problems getting a jump into the sector,” she said. “Too many tourists apparently.”

Her meaning was clear, but Rebekah didn't get it. Or chose not. Rossi took out his comms.

Orsaya nodded. The first polite interaction the two of them had exchanged.

“This is Linesman Rossi,” he said to the gate controller. The controller would see from his ID, and from the bars on his
shirt, that Rossi was a level-ten linesman. “I need to get to Barossa.”

“Sir.” He was gratifyingly apologetic. “Traffic around Barossa is
extremely
heavy right now.”

Rossi waited.

“I can get you in to ten AUs out.”

Eighty-five light-minutes.

“Or if you can wait, sir, I'll put you on the priority list for the next available slot.”

They wouldn't get in much farther even if they did wait, and Rossi had no plans to end up part of a supernova of a thousand ships just to get a few thousand kilometers closer to their target.

“Ten AUs is fine,” he said. “Send it through to the captain.”

“Thank you,” Orsaya said, when he clicked off. It seemed to him that the words came hard.

She arranged for a shuttle to take both linesmen to the four-hundred-kilometer limit.

“Observe that limit,” she said. “The Alliance will happily blow you out of the sky if you don't.”

Fergus hadn't been going to come, but when Rebekah said, just before they departed, “This ship was attracted by the confluence, you know. It arrived not long after,” he changed his mind.

Rossi scowled. So Fergus didn't even trust him to reconnoiter on his own. He hadn't contacted Rickenback yet, but when he did, Fergus would be looking for another job.

At four hundred kilometers, there was a faint hint of something that might have been confluence-like that tugged at the empty spot inside him and made him want to cry.

“We have to get closer,” Rossi said.

Fergus watched him the way a lynx eyed a rickenback it was planning to bring down for dinner.

Rebekah's eyes narrowed. “We couldn't feel it this far out before,” she said. “Something has changed. Lambert was right, though. It
is
like the confluence.”

Comparing this to the confluence was like comparing the model of an atom to an atom itself, but there were similarities.

“We have to get closer,” Rossi said again.

“Can you hear music?” Fergus asked, just as the
confluence likeness swelled and filled Rossi's mind with awe until he thought his heart would burst with the grandeur of it.

The alien ship they were watching on-screen blinked out.

Rossi cried out—he couldn't help himself—but he didn't think Fergus or Rebekah noticed.

An angry Admiral Orsaya met them in the briefing room. “How are they doing this?” She wasn't upset with them.

“It's definitely confluence-related,” Rebekah said.

Rossi nodded.

An orderly buzzed Orsaya. “Captain Wendell reports he is exactly where he planned to be, Admiral. But he does have company.”

Orsaya looked as if she'd like to throw the comms at him. “Two media ships, one alien ship, and one goddammed Alliance warship.” The last was almost a shout.

“Yes, Admiral.”

Technically, the
Lancastrian Princess
was a modified freighter. Rossi bet it was armed well enough to function as a warship.

“Exact same positions as before the jump,” the orderly said. Rossi was surprised he remained so calm given that Orsaya was radiating an almost-physical anger. “Captain Wendell is going to compromised plan B.”

“At least something is working to plan,” Orsaya muttered. She clicked off and turned to the linesmen. “So, tell me what you discovered about the lines on that ship.”

EAN LAMBERT

WHEN THEY CAME
out of the eternity of the void, Ean was on the floor. He couldn't breathe. Guards yelled at him, and the only reason they didn't touch him was because Radko stood over him and protected him. Abram must have warned her because she didn't touch him.

“Let him recover.”

“What's he making that noise for? Shut him up.”

He was still singing a single note.

“It's how he copes with the jumps.”

The guard didn't believe her. “No one gets affected by the jumps.”

Ean gasped for air and tried to stand up. He tripped over the rope that chained him.

“Just move,” the guard ordered.

Finally, Radko loaded Ean onto the back of the guard in front of him—his name was Losan—and they resumed with a shuffling walk that had more to do with the timing of line eleven's beats than anything else.

“I can't breathe,” Losan said, and they had to stop and let Ean down. Losan stood, hands on his knees, gasping for
breath, and no matter what the guard said, neither he nor Ean could move for two minutes.

“Maybe if I just lean on you,” Ean said, finally, and they resumed their eleven-beat shuffle.

Losan did it hard. By the time they reached the holding cell, he was gasping harder than Ean.

“Crazy,” one of the guards who'd escorted them said. “Enjoy the loony—both of them—but don't kill him, or Admiral Varrn and Tarkan Heyington will have your blood. Oh, and Admiral Varrn wants their uniforms. He thinks they might be useful.”

“Wonderful,” the new guard in charge said. “Why do we always get the dreck jobs?” He surveyed the prisoners. “I'll unlock you one by one. Fold your shirt and pants and put them over here. Boots and belts there. If you try anything, I'll shoot.”

He didn't mean
he
would shoot, exactly, because he took care to remove his weapon and place it on the desk at the other side of the room. There were four other guards with blasters, which they held ready.

He started at the front of the line and unlocked one leg at a time, so that even while removing their uniforms, they were still always fastened to at least one other person.

Ean just lay on the floor, glad to be stationary, and tried to get his breathing under control.

As he stabilized, the music of the lines crystallized. This ship had the strongest lines of the five. Line one was almost as strong as Captain Helmo's line one. Maybe, if he listened hard enough, he could hear what was going on through the ship, like he sometimes could on Michelle's ship.

The stronger the line, the better he could hear it. Which meant, he supposed, that he would always be able to listen in on line one on Michelle's ship—Abram wouldn't be happy. There was a knack to it. Each ship had its own signature sound, and each line had its own tune. Together, the two made a unique music for each line. All you had to do was concentrate on the right music and let the rest fade into background.

Finally, he mastered it.

Varrn, Heyington, and another man were arguing about the ships.

“Those five ships are the exact same positions as they were before the jump,” the third man said. “That had to be planned.”

Ean could tell they were talking face-to-face, not through the comms, so the line had to be picking up ambient sounds from the ship. How little of the lines did they really use? Imagine the things you could use it for. Like spying.

Maybe Ean wouldn't tell Abram about being able to do this.

“As was that attack on our linesmen.”

What attack?

“She came prepared, gentlemen. Even down to wearing a suit on her own ship. She and Galenos probably planned this. They've been waiting days for this exact attack.”

“She's got a trace,” Varrn said.

The other man snorted. “Trace my eye. You can't take four—five—ships and place them exactly where they are just on a trace. Jumps like that take skill and time to prepare. And as for Helmo's even trying it. He's crazier than Yannikay and likely to get us all killed. Even his precious Lady Lyan.”

Something in the line changed, Ean couldn't tell what it was.

“No, gentlemen. Lady Lyan had help on this. She knew in advance this would happen. Galenos knew in advance where we would go. And only two people could have told him that.”

“Are you accusing us, Captain Wendell?” Tarkan Heyington asked.

“One of you,” Captain Wendell said. “Yes.”

There was silence. Ean was sure if he could manipulate the lines enough he could see what was happening as well, but he didn't have the strength, or the knowledge, to do it.

“And the other of you has to be thinking what I'm thinking,” Captain Wendell said. “You said they didn't control the alien ship, that they hadn't been near it. Yet here it is, along with two tame media ships Lyan has been feeding propaganda to for days. In our territory. At the same time as every linesman on our ship succumbs to a heart attack.

“We are vulnerable, gentlemen. One of you has given away a strategic location and made us susceptible to the
same sort of attack we used on them. Not to mention that the first attack should have destroyed their ship altogether but, how convenient, it didn't. They were expecting that attack and protected their lines somehow.”

The guard shook Ean, jerking him out of his trance. Every line on the ship shuddered. The lights went down momentarily. He lost track of what was happening with the captain.

Ean stared at him.

“You. Out of your clothes. Now.” The guard hit him. “Get undressed.”

He and Radko were the only two still in uniform. Everyone else was in their underwear and socks. Ean hadn't even felt them undo the rope on the left leg. He started to undress with hands that shook. It took ages to pull off his boot. The guard hit him twice. “Hurry up.”

The second time, Radko said, “Leave him be,” and jumped on the guard.

Her reaction was totally out of proportion to what the guard had done. “I'm fine,” Ean said, but she ignored him, belting into the guard with the same single-minded strength she'd used on Ean days earlier. Maybe she just liked to hit things when she was upset.

Three of the guards converged on Radko, which made the Alliance guards swarm around to protect her. Ean, under the melee of bodies, lost track of what happened then—except that Radko, who was still tied to him, nearly pulled his ankle off.

When it was over three still bodies lay on top of him, which was almost as bad as a line-eleven-induced heart attack.

“Nicely done, Radko,” said the Alliance prisoner who'd been at the head of the line. The name on the pocket of the uniform she was putting on was
SALE
.

“I think he wrenched my ankle,” Radko said.

What about his ankle?

Someone pulled the bodies off. Ean didn't know if they were dead or alive. They were certainly still. He looked away from the two remaining guards on the floor not far away, one of whose head was twisted at an impossible angle.

“Who's got the key?”

The guard had dropped the key. It was lying under Ean although how it got there, Ean didn't know because he hadn't moved.

They unlocked the rope between Radko and Ean first and Radko's ankle immediately swelled to three times its normal size. She used the dead guard's knife to slice off part of his shirt for a makeshift bandage, then said, “Damn. I suppose we should have kept their uniforms.”

“Don't worry about it,” said Sale. “Not sure any of us want to be sensible about something like that right now.”

“Could mean the difference between us rescuing Princess Michelle or not,” another guard said.

“Or the time between getting caught because we delayed to take their uniforms off.”

As soon as Sale unlocked the Alliance ropes, two more guards set to clipping the same ropes back onto the unconscious—and dead—enemy guards. Two others picked up the weapons and checked them. Losan and a fifth guard went over to the door.

“They're key-coded,” Losan said.

Radko used Ean's shoulder as support to get to her feet. “Ean can open it,” she said, hopping over to the wall. “Just don't ask him to support me after you do it.”

“He can't fight. If he supports you, he'll at least be useful.”

Radko hopped over to the door. “He's like a live wire after he's done something with the lines. My hair's still standing up from last time.”

She did have a lot of static in her hair.

“Or maybe he should help me,” Radko said. “He'd throw me the length of the corridor much faster than I could move.” She jerked her head at Ean. “Come and do your thing, Line Twelve.”

“Line Twelve?” Sale asked.

“It's a joke.” Ean stood up. It hadn't been funny the first time.

“No joke.”

Ean put his hand on the keypad. He wasn't sure he could do this again.

Five line eights came in to answer him, and he nearly shook apart with the vibration that sent him to his knees. “All
the way to Princess Michelle, please,” he begged, because he couldn't do this for every door. Through the lines he heard Captain Wendell order someone to check on the prisoners. Wendell's affinity for his ship was as strong as Helmo's. “And lock all the other doors. Please,” which might slow Wendell's crew down.

“Can you walk?” Radko asked.

He nodded, not sure he could. “We must hurry. The captain knows something is wrong.”

She hauled him up, hissing at his touch. Her hair stood out straight from her head again.

“I'll follow.”

“We all go together.”

The other soldiers finished re-dressing. At least Ean still had his uniform on. It would be mortifying if he couldn't even get dressed.

They left at a run. Radko half leaning on him, half supporting him with Losan on the other side of Radko, his arm around her shoulders. Occasionally, Ean and Losan touched.

“Oh God,” Losan would moan then, but he did it in the rich, deep tones of line eight. “Oh God.”

“Shh,” said everyone.

They came to a locked door.

“Ean.”

“Wrong way,” Ean said with certainty. All the doors to Michelle were unlocked.

So they turned to the other door even though it led to a tiny corridor they could barely run through. Radko had to support herself as she hopped through.

“This is a Greunig cruiser,” Sale said. “The hospital will be aft. We're heading fore.”

“This is the way.” Ean could feel it in the way the walls tingled, in the urgency of the
Lancastrian Princess
's own line eight. “We have to hurry.”

They turned into an even narrower tunnel. Sale wanted to turn back, but it was too cramped. Ean didn't tell her that the door behind them was locked now. He didn't know how he knew that. He tried to listen in to line one but couldn't concentrate. He did hear line five, however.

“They know we're gone.”

No one said it, but he could almost hear their emotions. He'd brought them into a trap. They all thought it, except Radko, who patted his shoulder. “Trust the lines.”

It sounded like something he would say.

They came out into the shuttle bay via one of the access tunnels, behind the bulk of a shuttle preparing for takeoff, well clear of the guards waiting for them at the air lock.

Ean wondered for one sick moment if his desire to escape had overridden his original request, then the door opened, and twenty armed soldiers entered, running. In their midst, two more soldiers pushed a stretcher.

Radko pulled him back. The others had faded behind the shuttle. He hadn't noticed. Sale made a small move he hardly recognized as “come here.”

She was standing under the shuttle. “Open that,” she mouthed, pointing to an emergency hatch.

He hoped he understood what she was saying.

“I can't—” But someone—Radko again—was already hoisting him up so that he could reach.

Ean sang softly, under the noise of the engines, through the line of the main ship as a command to the shuttle. “Please, open. And please, no alarms.”

The surge of the lines as they answered his request knocked them both to the ground. Losan caught them and swore softly. His hair stood out from his head. Ean could see the effort it took to let them go without making a sound.

Half of Sale's people were already through the hatch. Sale beckoned to Losan.

He and a woman called Craik helped Radko up first. They lifted her until she could grab the bottom of the emergency door and swing herself in. Then they hefted Ean up. His entry was more undignified. Two below lifted while two above grabbed his arms and pulled him in. They dragged him away from the door, teeth gritted, hair flying wild.

“The door,” Sale whispered when everyone was in, and Ean crawled back to the emergency exit and sang to line eight again.

It felt like hours, but Sale led them out of the tiny passage—she obviously knew her way around this type of shuttle—and down into a storeroom. If they pressed their ear to the
wall, they could hear the activity in the main cabin, where the guards were still strapping Michelle in.