Linesman (27 page)

“An alliance of weak worlds makes for a weak alliance,” Katida said.

Ean was still unsettled by the realization that all the work Michelle and Abram had put in would still come to nothing if Gate Union ultimately defeated them. “Isn't that why you have an alliance? Because you are weak on your own.”

“Sometimes,” Katida agreed. “Sometimes you do it because it makes good business sense. Look at Gate Union and Redmond, allying even though they hate each other because together they are strong enough to take on the Alliance and beat it.”

Ean wasn't sure if that meant she agreed with him or not.

Katida stared broodingly down at her plate. “I knew the Alliance was falling apart. I just hoped it wouldn't happen in my lifetime. Lady Lyan had better produce another miracle soon, or even Balian will pull out.” Balian was Katida's home world.

Katida looked up into Ean's shocked face. She looked tired. “I'm only one person,” she said gently. “I'll do what I can, but politics tends to get in the way. Ultimately, I have to support my government or be tried for treason.”

Ean tried to remember who the Balian ambassador was and couldn't.

“We're just lucky we have the
Eleven
.” Katida stabbed at the food on her plate as if she'd like to kill something. They ate in a morose silence for a time.

“Everyone's worried about Gate Union,” Ean said eventually. “But Redmond's the only one with line factories now. Hasn't anyone thought about that?” He had. Gate Union might control the void entries, but right now, Redmond controlled the supply of lines.

“Oh yes,” Katida said. “You can be sure we have. The one saving grace in all this is that Redmond did destroy the lines at Shaolin. I hear tell some factions in Gate Union aren't happy about that. Especially given Shaolin is unofficially Gate Union territory. Redmond says it was coincidence, of course, but no one believes it.”

Ean remembered the dinner party of the first night and the deals being struck. “So do you think Varrn truly didn't know how the earthquake worked?”

“Who knows with a two-timing shark like Varrn. Even if he did, he would have tried to make us think he didn't.”

Katida sat back to look up at one of the screens on the wall. The screens in the dining room were perpetually on now. “Redmond's not the only problem Gate Union has. Or us. This could be the start of the end for the Alliance.”

Ean turned to look at her. “We just won a war.” Sometimes Katida was too paranoid for her position as an admiral, but in this case, Michelle and Abram were as pessimistic as she was, and Ean still didn't understand why.

She waved it away. “The fact that they tried what they did shows who really is in command over there. And it's not good. You see, Ean.” She moved her plate aside to draw on the tabletop with her finger. “There are factions in Gate Union. Over here we have Yaolin and Nova Tahiti and their supporters. They've been ascendant for the last few years, and it's mostly because of the people they have in power.”

Individual people were more important in politics than Ean had ever thought. If Michelle and Abram weren't Lancastrian, then Lancia wouldn't be as powerful as it was in the Alliance. Emperor Yu was feared, often hated, and even Ean could see that no one supported Lancia for Yu. He certainly didn't. They were supporting it for the combination of Yu's daughter—who would inherit the throne—and for the steady military presence of Abram Galenos.

Katida jabbed at one of the spots she'd drawn. “Ahmed Gann, from Nova Tahiti, is the most powerful backroom manipulator in Gate Union. When he makes a deal, it can make or break worlds.”

Why had such a powerful man been on the shuttle with Rossi then?

One might as well ask why Michelle was out here with the
Eleven
, Ean supposed.

Another jab, another spot. “And Yaolin has Admiral Jita Orsaya, who practically runs the Yaolin fleet.”

Ean didn't have to ask what Katida thought of Orsaya, he could hear the approval through her line.

Katida circled the ring of worlds she'd made. “These are what we call the moderate worlds. The ones who don't want all-out war.”

It was nice to know some people didn't want to fight. Ean heartily approved of that.

“Every single one of their economies is heavily tied up in trade with Alliance worlds, you see. If Gate Union takes this war to the next logical step, it will stop the Alliance using the void gates.”

“I don't see why that's a problem,” Ean said. “We'd just start up our own gates.”

“If I were Gate Union, and that happened,” Katida said, “my first thought would be to hack into the new void gate and send two suicide ships in together to blow it and whatever world was close by—probably Lancia—into a supernova.”

Ean stared at her, the breakfast he'd eaten roiling queasily in his stomach.

“We're thinking of doing it to them, too,” Katida said.

Her line told Ean they weren't serious but that they had considered it. He picked up his glass of tea and drank while he considered what to say. He had to hold it in two hands because his hands were shaking. Could the aliens have found a way around two ships appearing together in space? Once he knew the ship better, maybe he could ask the lines.

“Even if we don't blow each other's gates and surrounding worlds to pieces,” Katida said, “the Alliance access to gates will be heavily restricted. Our economies will suffer.” She tapped the tabletop where she'd drawn her map. “And so will theirs. That's why they don't want war. That's why they wouldn't have tried to blow us out of space to get the
Eleven
. And it's definitely why they would never have tried to kidnap Lady Lyan. For fear of the exact reprisals they got.”

She drew another dot on the table, away from the other two. “That's why it means that Roscracia and their faction are in the ascendant. They want war. They have a lot of support and—if rumor is correct—they have the Linesmen's Guild behind them as well.”

Ean hadn't heard that rumor. “Why do they want war anyway?”

“Power. They can see the Alliance falling apart. They see it as a chance to become the only political group in the galaxy.” Katida snorted. “I don't know why they bother because if they wait long enough, the Alliance will fall apart naturally.”

That could take fifty to one hundred years, Michelle had said.

“But they don't want to wait, and Admiral Markan, of Roscracia, is determined it's going to happen now. He's almost as charismatic as Lady Lyan, and he talks a lot of sense. The longer the war drags on, the more it costs each world. A single political unity will enable better trade and more affluence.”

There was one flaw in Katida's argument. “If that's so, then why was Gann involved in the kidnap?”

“That.” Katida shook her head admiringly. “Fiendishly clever of Markan. Gann is his biggest threat inside Gate Union, so Markan sets him up. And Orsaya, too, for she was in charge of trying to get the alien ship. Markan needs Gann out of the way because Gann alone can sway the council. So I hear, and this is rumor, mind.”

Where did she get her information, sitting on the ship like this?

“Markan called in a lot of favors to get the council—and the military—to agree first to Yannikay's little exercise, then to kidnapping Lady Lyan. But since Orsaya is in charge of the operation, if anything goes wrong, she gets the blame. No doubt that's why she called Wendell in to do the actual kidnapping. He's the best.”

It seemed unfair to Ean. “So they know Markan organized it, and he still wins.”

“Not exactly wins in this case, for we've still got that ship out there. I imagine Markan thought he'd be head of the Gate Union fleet by now. Instead, he has to finagle a new council meeting and ensure that everyone knows where the blame lies. He's up against Ahmed Gann, who is most unhappy.”

She hadn't gotten that information from Ahmed Gann because, through the lines, Ean had heard Abram interrogate Gann. Spoken with, Ean corrected himself, because at that level of politics one didn't interrogate one's enemies, one “spoke with” them. The whole thing had been very civilized.

He hadn't told Abram he could hear through the lines yet although he suspected Abram already knew.

He turned to the screens himself.

The news today was all about the signing of the peace treaty. Coral Zabi and Sean Watanabe were both on-screen—different screens—talking about it.

The sound was up on the Watanabe screen. “This is Sean Watanabe from the special convoy traveling with the Alliance ship
Eleven
, reporting to you on the historic treaty that is to be signed in just minutes.”

Abram hadn't told the media their ships had been effectively confiscated. Instead, he'd brokered a deal with both groups, allowing them to tag along and report on what happened with the alien ship. Whoever had made the actual deal had done a brilliant job. The ships had been named, specifically, and it was generally thought in media circles that if they changed ships, the Alliance would use that to back out of the deal.

It was the media who had pointed out that the
Eleven
—everyone had picked up Sale's broadcast and was using the name—was a long way from the nearest servicing depot and that if they couldn't take their ships away for servicing, they'd have problems. So the Alliance had “reluctantly” included servicing in the agreement and gotten themselves more concessions out of it because the media really wanted to stick around.

Ean was going to service the first ship soon.

He had asked Katida who'd made the deal, and she'd just said, “Watch any contract you sign with Abram Galenos or Lady Lyan. They always get what they want.”

His own contract had another ten years to run.

On-screen, Michelle and Ahmed Gann appeared together in the doorway.

A rustle of expectation swept through the dining room.

“Convenient that one of our prisoners turns out to be Gann,” Michelle had said. “I really worry that our luck will turn soon. It's been too good for too long.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Katida said. “They kidnap Lady Lyan, naturally they will send someone of equivalent
stature to bargain for her release. Don't forget everyone expected us to be making concessions to get her back.”

Privately, she'd said to Ean, “What was lucky was your being kidnapped along with her.”

“I wouldn't say that was luck,” Ean had said. They were lucky they hadn't been killed. “And we weren't exactly kidnapped. Only Michelle was. The rest of us were collateral damage.”

However it had happened, Ahmed Gann apparently had authority to deal on Gate Union's behalf, and now they were here to broker a peace settlement that Ean didn't really understand; but it involved Gate Union's giving up some pretty hefty concessions in order to placate the Alliance, not to mention getting its prisoners back.

The Linesmen's Guild had also given up some concessions to get Jordan Rossi, with a lot more reluctance and—so rumor had it—only after Gate Union had interceded. One of the things they had given up was Rebekah Grimes. That particular bargaining point had been nonnegotiable. Everyone on the
Lancastrian Princess
knew what would happen to Rebekah Grimes. Ean felt sick when he thought about it. He wondered if Rebekah knew yet.

Another thing they had given up was Fergus Burns, at Sale's and Radko's insistence. They'd thought he might be able to help with the
Eleven
because he'd been able to read some of the instruments. Jordan Rossi wasn't happy about it, even though Ean had heard—at least three times through the lines—Rossi tell Fergus he was fired as soon as they got back to Rickenback.

He didn't know what Fergus thought.

On-screen, an admiral in a beige uniform with the formal Gate Union rainbow sash over her left shoulder, and the blue-striped sash of her home world over her right stepped next through the door, followed by Abram.

“Jita Orsaya,” Katida said, watching her. “I'll bet she's spitting.”

Like Katida, she looked ageless. Her face and figure looked young, but something about the way she held herself made Ean think she was quite old. He tried to see her hands but couldn't.

Orsaya was an admiral, Abram only a commodore, but no one questioned his right to be the military representative for the Alliance.

The meeting was held on planet, on the supposedly neutral world of Iris.

“It's not,” Katida had confided to Ean. “It's loyal to Gate Union.”

“So why go there?” Ean asked. What could be more stupid than walking into an obvious trap?

“Jita Orsaya has given her word we will be protected through the signing of the treaty.” Then Katida did the baring-of-teeth smile whose meaning Ean still hadn't worked out. “The Alliance has promised that if any one of the ambassadors so much as gets threatened, then we—that means you and line eleven—will start taking out cities.”

Ean hoped it wouldn't come to that. He had dutifully moved line eleven's fleet close to the planet on request, but only after a dozen Alliance warships had descended on and disarmed the
Wendell
and the
Gruen
.

The prisoners came next. Two ships' worth, guarded by Abram's people. Captain Gruen was a petite woman with gray hair and permanent frown lines. She looked exactly as Ean expected.

Captain Wendell was a shock. Ean had expected someone like Abram, or a male Katida. The reality was a tall, skinny stick of a man with white skin and dyed maroon hair and a uniform that just made regulation.

“What do Wendell's crew think of him?” he asked Katida. The crew were impeccably dressed, as well turned out as Abram's guards, almost as if they were trying to make up for their captain's undress.

“Follow him to the ends of the universe,” she said. “Don't be fooled by appearances, Ean. He's Gate Union's rising star. Youngest captain. Brightest mind. Although,” she added, “this kidnap fiasco might set his career back a little.”