Linesman (38 page)

JORDAN ROSSI

ROSSI WAS SURROUNDED
by the confluence.

It was the most glorious music he had ever heard. It was love. It was beauty. It was joy.

Lambert's voice interwove through the lines, bringing them together, pulling in every line he had. Including Rossi's, and every other linesman on the station.

Rossi gave his gladly.

It lasted forever, and it was over in a second.

•   •   •

ORSAYA'S
people dropped to the ground. One of them grabbed Gann and pulled him down, too.

Rossi noticed that in a half-detached way, even as he watched them pull Lambert down—not that Lambert needed any help because he was already falling.

Then his own face hit the deck—he hadn't realized he was falling, too.

The soldiers inside the shuttle bay mowed down the ones outside, and vice versa. By the time they realized they were
killing their own team and turned aside their weapons, it was too late. Orsaya's people picked off the rest.

Two guards seized Lambert and pulled him in and onto the shuttle. Another two seized Rossi's arms. They almost jolted his shoulder out of its socket as they pulled him along.

They strapped him into a seat.

A guard slipped into the pilot seat and started preflight checks. Another strapped herself into the comms seat.

“Get me Wendell,” Orsaya ordered. “And a safe path to Wendell's ship.”

Stupid woman. Didn't she realize the station had jumped?

Stupid Lambert. Didn't he realize the danger in moving a station? Particularly one where the lines hadn't been primed. Particularly one where extra sections had been built onto the shell. He was just lucky they were alive.

Not that Rossi felt very alive right now.

The lines were clear. He heard Markan ordering, “Fire on the shuttle as soon as it exits.”

Markan hadn't realized yet that his message wasn't going anywhere.

“Go,” Orsaya ordered her pilot.

“Fifteen seconds for the air to recycle, ma'am.”

Orsaya nodded, but she looked twitchy.

Someone shoved an oxygen mask over Rossi's face, and he realized his heart was trying to beat alien time again. Line time. Two sets of line time.

Wendell came online. Rossi heard line five before the comms came on. “Orsaya, you can't let Lambert control things like he does.” He was the calmest Rossi had ever heard him. It was almost scary. “Kill him before he does anything else. At the very least, gag him.”

They exited the shuttle bay to, “This is Commodore Galenos from the
Lancastrian Princess
, to Confluence Station and Gate Union ship
Wendell
. Surrender now, and we will not harm you.”

Orsaya shook her head. “That man has cast-iron balls. He's surrounded by enemy ships and he still thinks—”

“Orsaya,” Wendell cut across her words. “Have you checked your screen yet?”

The proximity alarm started wailing. The pilot swore and
moved his hands swiftly over the board. “What in the nine hells would come this close to a station?”

“Another shuttle,” someone said, while the woman at the comms brought the viewscreen up.

Rossi craned his head to look.

“What in the hell is that?”

EAN LAMBERT

THE VIEW ON
the screen reminded Ean of his recent spacewalk, when he'd been so close to the Galactic News ship that he had no idea if he was up or down.

It was a ship.

The noise of the lines overwhelmed him. The beat of the second eleven was subtly different from the beat of the first.

“God,” said the comms-person, and for a minute she sounded like Losan. “Get away from it.”

“It's huge,” someone else said.

“Are you seeing this?” Orsaya demanded of Wendell.

“Oh yes.”

The proximity alarm got louder.

The pilot swore as he powered the reverse thrusters. “We'll hit the station at this rate. For God's sake, someone, get me a clear space.”

“On it,” said the comms-person.

Ean sat back and listened to the lines. It was different being inside the shuttle. In here, he felt safe, surrounded by the lines, snuggled up against the security of the bigger ship—now with its full eleven lines. Not that they were in perfect health, but they were okay, although line one was quiet. He whispered a
special welcome to line nine, which had come back from the dead, or wherever lines came back from when they were so damaged they were almost the equivalent of dead. The deep, resonant line sounded in his head.

The shuttle crawled on.

“Have you gotten me a space yet?” demanded the pilot.

“It's not as easy as you think. There's a lot of junk out here.”

There were a lot of ships. Ean could feel the lines.

They slid slowly past a gaping hole in the side of the ship.

“Holy Jackson and Philtre,” one of Orsaya's people said. “Did you see that?”

The metal was serrated, as if a gigantic shark with particularly large teeth had taken a shuttle-sized bite out of it.

“I hope a weapon did that.”

“A weapon with teeth,” someone murmured uneasily.

The underside of the ship was pitted and scored. Even discounting the bite, this ship had been in the wars.

“Got it,” the comms-person said. “But you're not going to like it.”

“Get me away from this ship.”

“Coordinates 172-184-267.”

“I'd like to get a bit farther out.”

“Not going to happen,” Comms said. “You want to see this.” She put it up on-screen. “I'm taking this from Confluence Station. They're otherwise occupied at the moment and haven't noticed we're patching in.”

She panned 360 degrees.

The Gate Union ships had gone. Ean could have told her that. The station had jumped along with the
Eleven
's fleet. He recognized the shapes of the ships he knew. Even better, he could place them against the lines in his head. The
Lancastrian Princess
. The
Wendell
and the
Gruen
. The media ships. The
Eleven
. Confluence Station. He recognized the lines.

And here, in the first quadrant, another alien ship similar to the
Eleven
, only four times the size.

“Holy—” Ean wasn't sure who'd said it.

Behind the new eleven was a fleet of smaller ships. Alien ships. Row on row of them. They filled the screen.

Even Orsaya was speechless.

Gann was the first one to break the silence. He gave a humorless laugh. “Imagine Markan if you'd brought that out before his coup,” he said to Orsaya.

Orsaya nodded, and Ean got the feeling she wasn't even thinking of the war right now. “Impressive.” She shook her head and visibly pulled herself together. “No doubt Roscracia would find a way around it.”

“I just hope there's no one left alive on there,” Comms said. “Or if there is, that they know we're friends.”

Ean didn't think anyone was alive. The line ones were too quiet.

•   •   •

MARKAN
finally stopped trying to call ships that weren't there and called Wendell instead.

“Fire on that shuttle.”

“I don't have any weapons.” Ean might have imagined that Wendell's voice was extra cold, but he didn't imagine—through the lines—the look Wendell gave the comms at Markan's request. He was getting used to dipping into the lines he wanted to see/ hear while tuning out the rest.

Markan snapped off the comms with more force than needed. “Organize two armed shuttles,” he told someone near him.

Ten thousand kilometers farther out, a ship flicked out of the void. Ean didn't see it on the shuttle screen, it was too far away, but he saw Wendell's and Markan's reaction to its arrival.

“Magnify,” Markan said.

Someone did.

It was a massive Alliance mothership.

Motherships were the biggest ships in the fleet, the size of a small moon. One of them could reduce a planet to scorched earth in a few hours.

“Bloody hell.” Markan leaned on the comms until the shuttle crews he had just dispatched answered.

“Destroy that shuttle. Ensure everyone on board is dead, especially Lambert.”

“And Orsaya?” his aide asked.

“Lambert is the only one who can control those ships
right now. Get rid of him, and we'll have the upper hand because we have all the tens.”

Abram was ordering armed shuttles out, too. Ean could see from the distances that the Gate Union shuttles would arrive first.

It was time to even the odds.

“Markan is sending out armed shuttles,” he said.

Orsaya gave him a sharp look, as if she knew he wasn't telling the full truth. “How many?”

“Two.”

The pilot was already recalibrating the controls. “Get me a path through this junkyard.”

It might as well have been a junkyard. All the line ones were poor. There was nothing alive left on the ships. Right now, it was a good thing because the alien lines were stronger than those on the human ships. If they'd been fully active, Ean doubted he would have been able to even pick out the lines of the
Lancastrian Princess
, let alone lines he knew less well, like Confluence Station.

“Make toward the
Eleven
,” Orsaya said, then to Ean, “You can get us in behind the protective barrier the way you did with Lady Lyan's ship.”

Once inside the barrier, she was safe from both Markan and Abram. Ean didn't want that. “I have to sing.”

She nodded.

Ean took a deep breath. He wasn't just going to sing the
Eleven
's defense down, he was going to open every channel he could to Abram.

Something hit the shuttle on the port side and knocked him against the wall.

“Damn,” the pilot said, and pushed them forward so fast their gravity increased momentarily. They went so close to the new eleven, Ean was sure they scraped against it.

Markan's shuttles must have been fast.

“Get among the smaller ships,” Orsaya said. “It will be harder to hit us there.”

The pilot nodded, then slowed to an almost stop as a laser beam went past and heated the damaged hull of the confluence ship.

“Nice flying,” said half a dozen voices.

“Thanks.” The pilot was too busy sweating—and swearing—to bask in the praise. “Someone get me a fast way out of here.”

Ean was glad the confluence ship didn't have a protective field like the
Eleven
did.

The field. He'd almost forgotten. Dodging laser beams could do that to you. He sang a quick command to the
Eleven
's line eight to turn off the field and only when he was done he remembered he'd meant to open lines to Abram as well. Would Orsaya notice if he sang again?

The pilot opened the throttle, and the shuttle surged across space between the huge confluence ship and one of the smaller ships. The shuttle rocked, and moved off track as something hit it from the starboard side. Something else hit just after from the port side.

The comms-person said, “Alliance shuttle. Armed.”

“We know that,” the pilot said.

“Incoming.”

“Incoming from this side, too,” the comms-person said. “We're sandwiched in the middle.”

The pilot did something else with the controls that made Ean's stomach flip, and flip again.

“Nice flying,” everyone said again.

“I can't keep this up,” the pilot said.

They made for the next ship. Like its parent, it was scored and burned although it was whole.

“Incoming.”

They dived behind the smaller ship. Then behind another.

The third had a huge metal bite taken out of it. It was a wonder it could fly.

“I don't know who these guys were fighting,” someone said, “but I don't want to meet them.”

“They're as battered and bedamned as we are,” Ahmed Gann said, looking at the next ship they passed. This one was whole, but the exterior was burned and the outer metal scored.

He sighed. “Too little too late. We got the ship even if we can't use it. Still. I'm glad we'll die rather than watch our own side destroy us.”

It was interesting he didn't say the Alliance would destroy them.

“Don't be such a defeatist, Gann.” Orsaya glanced back at Ean. “We still hold the wildy.”

The wildy was a wildcard in an old card game played on the Yaolin worlds. Rare and precious, it could turn a low hand into a winning one—or a winning hand into a losing one—depending how you played it.

She opened a channel to the
Lancastrian Princess
. “Galenos, before you continue shooting, let's remember who I have on this shuttle with me.”

She waved her blaster in Ean's face. “Say something to your friends, and make it short,” and pushed the blaster into the side of his cheek.

What did Abram and Michelle need to know most?

Politics.

“There was a battle on the station,” he said. Would she fire if he said the wrong thing? “Orsaya and Ahmed Gann against the rest.” The last was muffled through the hand Orsaya put across his mouth.

He thought about biting her.

“Our own people are trying to kill us,” Orsaya told Abram. “Maybe you could do something about it. Then we'll talk some more.”

Ean heard the amusement through the
Lancastrian Princess
's lines, smelled it even as a cinnamon redmint fragrance, as Michelle said, “And there she has us,” and could see both Abram and Michelle shaking their heads over it.

Abram's voice didn't show any of that amusement when he said, through the comms, “Acknowledged.” He opened a line to Confluence Station. “Admiral Markan. The shuttle is under our protection. Call your shuttles off, or we will be forced to attack them.”

“What the—? Galenos, keep out of this.”

Their shuttle nosed out from behind the ship. Two Gate Union shuttles fired on it simultaneously. This time the shudder on the starboard side flipped them over.

“Starboard engine gone.” The pilot edged back.

Abram was already on the comms to Markan. “Fire on the shuttle again, and we will fire on the station.”

A mothership firing on a station would probably obliterate everything in the surrounding space, too—including the
shuttle and all the alien ships—so Ean was relieved to hear Abram open a line to the
Gruen
, and say, “Aim for the station and prepare to fire, then hold until I give the order.”

Why hadn't he pulled the weapons boards out on the
Gruen
, too? Or was it a bluff? The station was part of the
Eleven
's fleet now. What would the
Eleven
do if one of its ships fired on another?

Then, back on the original line, Abram said, “Confluence Station, prepare to be boarded. Shuttle, be ready to return to the station once we have control.”

It was quiet in the shuttle. Rossi's and Ean's gasping breaths—both lines eleven were strong at present—were the only noise under the everyday mechanics of circulating air and heating. There was a slight off noise in the air-conditioning. Someone needed to fix line two on this shuttle.

The two Alliance shuttles zoomed past them, lasers firing. On-screen, they joined battle with the Gate Union shuttles. The lights from the lasers flickered on the hull of the ship they were sheltering behind. It looked like lightning in space.

“Time to talk,” Orsaya said to Ahmed Gann. “Remember that without Lambert, those ships out there are useless debris. Ask for everything we want and more.”

She looked consideringly at Ean. “I don't want you interfering.” She gestured with the blaster she held. Two soldiers came over and strapped his arms securely to the seat.

Ean struggled. “I haven't done anything to you.”

“I want to control this particular conversation, Linesman.”

When they were finished, he couldn't move from the shoulders down.

He should have sung the line open. He opened his mouth to do so now, but another soldier shoved a gag into his mouth. He thought he would choke and had to turn his face away.