Linesman (3 page)

The name painted three stories high on the side was
LANCASTRIAN PRINCESS
. The bay door they headed for had an enormous “
1
” stenciled on it.

The door in the freighter ahead irised open to let them in. The shuttle docked. The door closed behind them. This was definitely a private shuttle, and this was its regular docking pad.

Ean silently followed Michelle out into the ship proper.

The interior was luxurious. The softly textured walls and carefully placed lighting made the whole thing look like an expensive hotel. Everything was way above Rigel's standard. Ean couldn't even begin to calculate the cost of the fittings.

Even so, the ship had a military feel. It didn't help that the staff wore gray uniforms piped with black, and that every single one of them walked straight and upright. They all noticed Ean, and he could see that they filed whatever they had noticed for future reference.

Michelle led the way quickly through the center of the
ship to a room that looked like an office on one end but housed a comfortable set of three couches at the other.

One man was in the room. An older man. He looked up as they entered. “Misha. I found you your ten.”

Misha was an affectionate form of Michelle, used among close friends generally. So this man—who wore the gray-and-black-piped uniform everyone else did—was a close friend.

“I found us a ten, too,” Michelle said. “And I bet he didn't cost as much as yours did.”

The uniformed man looked at him, and Ean was suddenly aware that he hadn't showered for more than two days, that his Rigel-cartel greens were sweaty and crumpled, and that he needed a shave.

“This is Abram,” Michelle said. “He runs security and pretty much everything else.”

Abram counted the bars on Ean's chest. “A genuine ten?”

“I couldn't kill him.”

“So you hired him instead?”

“I didn't hire him,” Michelle said, and her smile showed the full brilliance of the generations of genetic engineering that had made it, plus a dimple that same genetic engineering had probably tried to wipe out. She placed her card on the reader and brought up the contract. “I bought him.”

Abram read the contract, then nodded slowly. “That would upset Rigel.”

Ean thought it time to get back some control. He was a ten, after all. “If it's all right with you.” He had to stop, because his voice came out thin and thready. He cleared his throat, and was glad the second attempt came out more strongly. “I haven't had time to clean up. I didn't get a chance to collect any clothes.”

Abram looked at Michelle, who shrugged. “Rigel will send his things on.”

Abram switched to Lancastrian. “We don't all have personal servants who have things packed in five minutes, Misha. His effects are unlikely to arrive before we leave.”

“I'll replace them then.” Michelle spoke Lancastrian, too. “I'd like that. He has a good figure under those stinking clothes.”

“And so like you to know that already.” Abram sighed and switched back to Standard. “I'll get someone to show you a cabin and get you some clothes,” he told Ean, pressing
a button on the screen as he did so. “Our other ten will be here at 19:00. We leave when she arrives.”

An orderly in a gray-and-black uniform appeared at the door.

“Take Linesman”—he looked at the contract—“Lambert down to Apparel and get him a standard kit. I'll organize a room for him while you do.” He looked at Ean. “We eat at 20:00. I'll have someone call you.” He half turned away, hesitated. “Your voice. Is that normal?”

“Just strained.”

“Take him via the medical center.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ean followed the orderly in silence. Abram was the sort who'd look up Ean's record as soon as he could. He—they—owned the contract now. Nothing was private to them. That little slip with the language wouldn't happen again.

The orderly—a tall, willowy woman who looked to be a little younger than Ean and whose name above the pocket said
RADKO
—was polite, but not truly friendly. Even so, she took time out to show Ean various parts of the ship. “Mess hall down there,” she said. “Officers generally eat with the crew. Unless they're invited upstairs, of course.” She looked sideways at him and for a moment Ean thought she was going to ask what rank he was. “Main lift well. Although most of us use the jumps, of course.”

It was a well-run ship. The lines were clear and steady, their song bright and joyful in Ean's mind. Unusually, line one was the strongest. This was a crew who worked well together and looked after one another and their ship.

Or almost joyful, Ean amended. He could hear a slight off tone in line six. It was only minor, but it jarred because everything else was so perfect.

“And this is the off-duty area,” the orderly said. Ean thought, from her tone, that it wasn't the first time she'd said it.

“Sorry.”

“Officers have their own bar up on the fourth.”

The bar on fourth was one bar Ean wasn't likely to end up in. He wasn't even sure he would end up in this one. Which left him precisely where? Stuck in his room, probably, given that they weren't on-selling his contract immediately.

“Here's Apparel.” The orderly seemed glad to have arrived.

Ean stripped and stepped into the cubicle, where a grid of lights started at his feet and moved upward, building a perfect model of him. They didn't have tailoring modules in the Oldcity slums. The first time he'd ever stepped into a cubicle like this had been ten years ago, when he'd started at House of Rigel. He hadn't known what to do. Rigel had had to show him.

When he stepped out, the orderly said, “Your kit will take twenty minutes. I'll bring them over to your cabin when they're done.”

So at least he had somewhere to stay. “If you don't mind.”

“Of course not, sir.”

The “sir” was new, and as she led the way back to the newly allocated cabin, Ean thought he knew why. The soldiers' quarters—and he couldn't help but think of them as soldiers—were comfortable, but they were a marked contrast to the luxurious quarters that Lady Lyan—whichever lady she was—inhabited. Somehow, Ean had scored himself a cabin on the luxurious side of the cruiser. Some tens would accept that as their right. Rigel's people might be trained to handle it, but he—Rigel's only ten—had never experienced it.

“I'll get your clothes, sir,” the orderly said, and loped off.

Ean left the door unlocked and went into the fresher. Michelle was right. He did stink. He soaped up, letting the needles of water wash the stink away. Eyes closed, thinking of nothing but the bliss of the warm water, the song of the ship flooded into his mind, still with that slightly off tone on the sixth line. Ean hummed a countermelody under his breath, trying to coax the line straight, but it was no use. Humming didn't work. He had to sing it.

The orderly was waiting when he came out, the freshly woven clothes in a neat pile in front of her. Standard issue included underclothes and shoes, Ean was glad to see. She handed him an outfit.

“Thank you. You don't have to wait on me.”

“Of course not, sir. But there's still the medic.” She pointed to a uniform placed apart. “That's the dress uniform. You'll be wearing that tonight if you're dining with Lady Lyan and Commodore Galenos.”

Commodore Galenos being the casually introduced Abram,
Ean presumed. “Thank you,” and he smiled his appreciation. “I know nothing about uniforms, ranks, and what to wear.”

The orderly smiled back. “I didn't think you did, sir.”

Ean was sure she didn't mean it as an insult.

“The medic's expecting you. To look at your voice and to check you over. He's already called to see where you are.”

“Let me put these on first.” Ean took the clothes into the bedroom. He had a separate bedroom, which he was sure wasn't standard military practice. He dressed quickly. His uniform was gray with the characteristic black piping. The only decoration was a tiny cloth badge woven into the pocket on his left chest and the name—
LAMBERT
—above it. Ean didn't count the bars on the badge, but he knew there would be ten. It was a total contrast to the pocket of his companion, which was covered with badges.

He came out, and the orderly left at a fast walk. Ean followed. “Radko. That is your name?”

The orderly glanced back. “Yes, sir,” she said.

Ean wished she wouldn't keep calling him sir. “Thank you for all this, Radko.”

“Just doing my job, sir.” But she smiled and somehow the atmosphere seemed lighter as they made their way through the corridors to a well-equipped hospital. It was worrying that a ship this size needed a hospital so equipped. What was this ship?

The medic was waiting for him. “At least you've cleaned up some,” he said, as he made Ean strip his freshly donned clothes and lie down under the analyzer. “I hear you stank when you came on board.” He held up a hand to stop any comment—not that Ean had been going to make one. “Nothing travels faster than shipboard gossip. Not even a ship passing through the void.”

“Even on a military ship like this?”

“Especially on a military ship like this.” Which confirmed, once and for all, what type of ship he was on. Ean wished he'd taken more notice of politics suddenly. He didn't want to end up in the middle of a battle.

“What happened with the voice?” the medic asked.

“My own fault. Too much—” It sounded so lame. “I was singing.” He wondered how the other ship was going. It had
probably moved on by now. Ships didn't stay in port any longer than they had to.

“Hmm. Let me see you breathe.”

For the next ten minutes, he peered into Ean's throat, X-rayed it, and finally gave him a drink of something warm. It soothed as it went down.

“The miracles of modern medicine,” the medic said. “We can tailor your genes so that your voice is deep or high, but we still can't fix a strained larynx. Although”—he paused— “if it's truly damaged I can replace it with a synthetic one.”

Ean shuddered.

“I thought not. If you continue to sing like that, maybe you should take some lessons on breathing and voice control. Have you been trained?”

Ean shook his head. Rigel had paid for lessons on how to speak with a faultless Standard accent, but there hadn't been any voice training with it.

“So you won't use your voice so badly that you strain it again, will you.” It was an order.

“No, sir,” Ean said meekly, and the medic let him go.

Radko escorted him back to his rooms and left him there.

He had two hours until dinner. Ean set the alarm on his comms—it wouldn't do to be late—then kicked off his boots and lay down on the bed.

He couldn't sleep. The off tone on line six buzzed into his brain and set his teeth on edge. After ten minutes he sat up, then stood properly—he wasn't going to be able to do this sitting down—got himself a glass of warm water from the sink in the bathroom, took a deep breath, and started to sing.

The line responded immediately. This was one beautifully tuned engine. It didn't take long. When it was done, Ean flopped back across the bed and didn't hear anything more until the increasingly loud, persistent beep of the alarm dragged him out of heavy sleep a hundred minutes later.

EAN LAMBERT

FOR A MOMENT,
Ean lay there and thought about staying in bed.

The alarm beep grew louder, and he realized it wasn't the alarm at all but the comm. He pressed receive.

Abram's face came up. “Ean. Formal dinner tonight. Did Radko show you what to wear?”

Should he stand to attention? What rank was a commodore anyway? The hell with it. He'd been introduced as Abram, Ean would keep on thinking of him as Abram until told otherwise. He wasn't a soldier. “Yes, thank you. The uniform with the thinner piping and the fancier shoulders.”

Abram smiled faintly. “That would be it,” he agreed, and clicked off.

Ean dragged himself out of bed. He had seven minutes to get ready. If Abram thought it important enough to tell him what to wear, then he probably shouldn't be late. He showered in three, only wondering afterward whether showers were rationed on ship, shaved again—maybe he should depilate if he was going to be here awhile, a lot of spacers did—and dragged on his second new uniform for the day. Then there was only time for a quick comb-through of his hair—
thankfully, combs were part of the standard kit, too—and he was out the door with two minutes to spare.

He almost ran into Abram.

Michelle joined them at the lift. She wore a close-fitting midnight blue silk slit skirt that emphasized more success of the genetic engineering of body shape—and probably hours spent daily in the gym—plus a more-than-close-fitting white crop shirt that stretched across her chest, so fine it really didn't hide the breasts underneath, so short that as Michelle lifted her arm to work herself into the matching blue silk jacket she carried—also close-fitting—she exposed five centimeters of muscled abdomen.

“I can't believe you're wearing that,” Abram said.

“This,” Michelle said with dignity, “is the height of fashion for both men and women.”

“For a formal dinner?”

The genetically enhanced smile flashed again. “At least three other people will be wearing shirts like this. Bet?” She held up a hand.

Abram's palm met hers. “I don't know why I'm so stupid,” he said.

The lift stopped.

They stepped out into a room of richly dressed people and were instantly swamped. Rigel would love this. It was what he'd lived for, what he'd trained his people for but had never managed himself. At least, not at this level.

Ean saw two minor royals who'd been in the vids, a politician from Ganymede whose name he couldn't remember, and so much military braid he could have set up his own private navy. There had to be a hundred people in the room, probably more. Hadn't Abram said they were departing into space at 19:00 hours? He could hear from the ship lines that they had, so where had all these people come from?

How big was this ship anyway?

The glitterati wanted to talk to “Lady Lyan.”

Ean slipped away. This was a lot of people calling Michelle Lady Lyan. Which meant that this woman really was one of the Emperor's children. Or that he, Ean, was right in the middle of planning for one of the biggest political conspiracies of the century. Or that there were a lot of gullible people out
there. Get them far enough away from the center of power, and they'd believe anything.

There weren't many Lancastrians. Michelle, Abram, himself, plus three more men in uniform talking together over near the drinks table, watching their arrival. One of them said something quiet to the others, then made his way across. He'd be lucky to talk to Michelle right now. He'd be better waiting until the scrum had quieted.

But the soldier angled off and came straight to Ean.

“Linesman Lambert.”

This close, it was easy to see his rank. The ship's captain. Like everyone else on board, he had a veritable pocket of badges. The name above the pocket said
HELMO
.

“Yes.” What could the captain want with him?

“Nobody touches the lines on my ship except my crew.”

He could argue that technically he was part of the crew. “Line six was off.”

“We were aware of that. We were taking steps of our own to fix the problem.”

They'd been taking their time about it. He thought about apologizing, but the captain didn't give him time. “Keep out of my lines,” and turned and walked away.

That was one person he hadn't impressed. Ean collected a drink from a passing server and turned to survey the crowd. No one else came near him. He wasn't sure if it was the uniform—one richly dressed man handed Ean his empty glass—or if it was just that there were really only two centers of conversation. Michelle, of course, and a woman in a long blue silk dress that from a distance was almost the same color as Michelle's.

The woman's glossy brown hair was piled on top of her head in an elegant bun. Her green eyes were made up as a blue-and-green piece of art. A butterfly. With red spots. The red color was picked out again, shiny and glossy on her lips. She looked like a princess dressed up for a gala occasion. Then she moved and Ean recognized her.

Rebekah Grimes, from the Sandhurst Cartel. Sandhurst Cartel was the prime supplier of linesmen, known for their quality and service. They had twelve known tens at last count,
and Rebekah was the best of them. Abram must have gone straight to the top. How much had he paid?

Ean moved closer.

“Just came in from the confluence,” she was saying as he got close enough to hear her. He didn't hear the murmured reply, but when Rebekah answered, “You cannot imagine,” Ean thought it might have been about the glory of the confluence.

“And how do you feel about this mission?” He was close enough now to hear the other speaker, a swarthy woman with so much gold jewelry he was amazed she could hold her arm up to take a sip of her drink.

“Excited,” Rebekah said. “Delighted to be part of it. Happy to be working with people like this.”

So she knew more about it than he did.

“And the other ten? You have worked with him before? Out at the confluence, maybe?”

“Other—” For a moment, Rebekah looked disconcerted. Ean was glad she didn't know everything. She recovered quickly. “I have worked with most tens.”

Not this one, she hadn't. She probably didn't even know who he was.

Ean normally worked alone. Rigel had no one to pair him with, but jobs involving tens were usually single anyway. No one could afford two tens. He didn't often get to talk to other people of his own level. Not only that, this was Rebekah Grimes. He could learn a lot from her. He felt a flutter of anticipatory pleasure. Please let Michelle not on-sell his contract until they had finished this job.

The woman with the gold bracelets handed her empty glass to Ean. He reached for it with a sigh. It was the uniform. Plain and unadorned. This wasn't how he wanted Rebekah to see him—as a servant.

Michelle, whom Ean hadn't even seen come over, plucked the glass out of the woman's hand just before Ean touched it and passed it back to a real server. Radko. Ean looked around. There were more soldiers here than he realized—and most of them were carrying trays. No wonder she thought he was the hired help.

Radko smiled at him.

“Governor Jade.” Michelle picked up two full glasses. She handed one to the gold-adorned woman, and one to Ean. “So you've met both our tens.”

Ean quietly slipped his other, half-finished glass onto Radko's tray as well.

“Ean Lambert.” Rebekah sounded as if she'd swallowed a lemon. She nodded regally and half turned to talk to Michelle and the governor. It seemed accidental, but the turn placed her so that her body was facing away from Ean.

She knew him. He made himself smile. “Rebekah.” If she didn't want to talk to him, then he didn't want to talk to her. He nodded to the other woman. “Governor.”

The governor had obviously decided to ignore her faux pas. She nodded graciously back. “So what do you think of our project, Linesman?”

Rebekah's smile was almost condescending. “This is your first real job, isn't it, Ean? Until now, you've been doing odd jobs, or so I hear. You haven't been anywhere near the confluence.”

His jobs had been challenging lately. He smiled at the memory of his last job. He'd done well. He knew that. But it was interesting that the foremost linesman knew what he'd been doing.

“Linesman?”

Ean smiled at the governor. “Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“I don't know enough about the job to have an opinion yet,” and thought he imagined the warm approval in Michelle's blue gaze.

“And so you should think that,” said one of the men who'd come over with Michelle. He was in uniform—although Ean couldn't pick the world—and had been one of the first to swarm them when they'd stepped out of the lift. “It's dangerous. We don't know what we're playing with here. We shouldn't even touch it.”

“That's why we have the linesmen,” Michelle said smoothly.

“And didn't one of your linesmen get killed recently.”

Michelle's lips tightened.

“That was nothing to do with the ship,” Abram said, close behind Michelle as usual. “That was something else altogether.”

“Still. It shows that we're meddling in something we're not supposed to be. Blow it up, I say. Get rid of the damn thing before it kills any more of us.”

They had found something. Ean tingled with expectation. It might not be the confluence, but it was new and unknown.

“But Admiral,” said Governor Jade. “Think what we can learn from it.”

“Every crackpot in the universe will be thinking of that as soon as it becomes public knowledge.”

If the representatives gathered in this room were anything to go by, everyone knew about it anyway.

Whatever “it” was. Since lines nine and ten were only used to travel through the void, and Abram and Michelle had recruited level ten linesmen, it was likely to be a ship. But what kind of ship could generate such a gathering of VIPs?

“It's a warship,” the admiral said. “Will Redmond or Gate Union stay away once they know?”

The three major political groups—Gate Union, Redmond, and the Alliance—had been on the brink of war for years now. In the ten years Ean had been at Rigel's, he had seen the balance of power shift subtly, but surely, away from the old power, the Alliance, toward the other two groups. Over the past six months, he'd also had to fix a lot of warships, many of them built in the last twenty years.

Gate Union, in particular, was becoming quite powerful. The union had started out as a loose affiliation of worlds that had agreed to monitor and assign void jumps—after all, no one wanted to jump cold, that was deadly. They made up a network of sector “gates,” tracking each ship, controlling their passage through. These gate worlds had become the major trade routes because all jumps went through their controllers. Fifty years before Ean had been born, they had formalized that loose affiliation into a political entity. Gate Union.

A lot of the cartels were covertly pro–Gate Union. The cartel houses were close to the gates—after all, the big money came from lines nine and ten—and the nines and tens were all on the ships that jumped through the void.

Ean realized, suddenly, that the Alliance had to be worried about that. Control the void, and you controlled shipping.

“That's why we are here,” Michelle said. “To prevent Gate Union or Redmond getting anywhere near the ship. To protect and claim what is ours.”

The gong chimed for dinner then, and huge doors slid open at one end of the room. “Admiral, Governor,” and she walked in with them to the formally set dining tables now exposed.

Rebekah swept in behind them.

Ean waited until most of the others had moved in, then followed. Thankfully, another orderly was there to seat him. He was placed at a table halfway down. If Rigel's ranking lessons made any sense, that meant that he was halfway up the pecking order. Rebekah was at a table nearby; Michelle was at the top table, and Abram at the second table. Michelle's table was a riot of richly dressed color. Abram's table was all uniforms and fancy braid.

The woman on Ean's right wore a Balian uniform. He recognized it from the
Picasso
, which had been the first military ship he'd ever worked on. A massive warship, it had also been the first big ship he'd worked on. He had no idea of her rank, though, or her age. She was slender and looked fit, and her skin was flawless, but her eyes looked ancient, and the fingers that reached out to pick up her glass looked more like claws than hands.

The man on his left was a civilian. And Michelle was correct. The skimpy, see-through shirts were in fashion—for both men and women. Unfortunately, they required a perfectly sculpted body underneath, and this man was carrying some flab. The shirt hid nothing, and showed a roll of fat at the bottom.

“So what do you think of this ship they found?” the civilian asked.