“Aren’t the Worlds of the Lesser Gods enemies with Redmond now?”
“Supposedly,” Vega said. “Which makes you wonder why the Factor is running around with a Redmond-based linesman on his staff.”
Ean sighed, and Confluence Station sighed with him. And speaking of which, Confluence Station was still too chirpy for a station whose equivalent of its captain was in intensive care.
“Are you still there?” Vega asked. “Because I’ve nothing else to say. I’ll keep you informed.” She clicked off.
Ean stared thoughtfully at the comms. The ships were quiet. The Lancastrian Princess was the most uneasy. Helmo—and Michelle’s—worry about what would happen now permeated the whole ship. On the Wendell, Wendell was dyeing his hair, and everyone on the ship exuded satisfaction about that. What was the story there?
The Gruen was content. Hilda Gruen was pacing her ship, pulling the occasional trainee into line. “I don’t care if you’re a level twenty. On my ship, you do as I command.”
Ean had always thought linesmen were treated as special. It didn’t seem to be the case on fleet ships. Or maybe it was because Gruen didn’t have any crew but the trainees.
“We’ve got crew,” the Gruen lines told Ean, and showed him. The two original Aratogan teams who’d been assigned to the ship. Along with Esfir Chantsmith.
The Blue Sky Media ship’s captain was drunk again. He always drank.
The Galactic News ship buzzed with enthusiasm. Christian, the engineer, was talking to Cooper, the producer, about something.
And Confluence Station was going along as if everything was normal.
Maybe, for the station, it was.
“Where is Ship?” Ean asked, and used the tune that denoted the station. Had he upset the station by asking the obvious, when the station commander was still unconscious in hospital?
Confluence Station obligingly showed him a dimly lit passage where the tired, older man Ean recognized from Patten’s heart attack was talking to a mechanic.
That was Ship?
Ean could sense, roughly, where on the station it was. “I need to talk to him.”
Line five obediently opened a line.
“It’s okay,” Ean sang. “I’ll do it face-to-face.”
“Face-to-face?”
“Human to human,” and Ean tried to convey the idea of two physical beings talking together. He wasn’t sure he succeeded.
“Why, when you have the lines?”
“Because.” Why? “Because Ship doesn’t have lines like we do. Not the same.”
He got brown confusion and the scent of eucalyptus.
He looked around for Radko, remembered she wasn’t there. “I’m going for a walk,” he told Bhaksir.
“Do you need to?”
Did he? He was doing his job, finding out more about the lines. “Yes.”
“Where, and for how long?”
“I need to talk to the man who was in Patten’s office when he had the heart attack.”
“Can’t you use the comms?”
“You sound like the station.”
Bhaksir gave him a look that showed she didn’t understand what he said. “It would be safer.”
“I’ve a station of lines to protect me.”
“That doesn’t stop you getting into trouble,” Ru Li said. He snapped to attention as Bhaksir glared at him. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“For that, you’re on bodyguard duty,” Bhaksir said. “You and Gossamer. Keep your comms open, and I want to hear from you every five minutes.”
“Five minutes is a little excessive, ma’am.”
“Why don’t I show you my route, so you can see us all the time.” Ean sang it up on screen for her. “And hear us.”
“Did you just volunteer for bodyguard duty?” Gossamer asked Ru Li, as the three of them left. “You knew she would pick you because of what you said.”
“It’s more fun than being stuck in a boring control room,” Ru Li said.
Should Ean remind them that Bhaksir could hear everything they said?
* * *
CONFLUENCE Station Ship had moved on to the engine room by the time Ean caught up to him.
Bose engines were reputedly quiet, but they still made a lot of noise up close.
A station didn’t need a Bose engine for everyday running, but it needed one for the initial jump through the void to position the station, and since the biggest cost was the engine itself, the Bose also powered the station.
Ean looked at the line chassis. Where did it end if they didn’t have a bridge?
Up close, the man the station had identified as Ship looked more tired than he had the other night, if that was possible. The name on his shirt was Ryley.
“Nonstation personnel aren’t allowed in this area,” Ryley said.
“We’re part of the fleet,” Ean said. Did Ryley know that he meant Eleven’s fleet?
“Even fleet personnel need clearance.” Ryley turned and led the way back. “I don’t know how you even got through the doors.”
“I do,” Ru Li murmured, as they turned to follow.
Ean hurried to walk abreast of Ryley. “How long have you been on this station?”
“Is that any of your business?”
“Twenty years,” the Station sang in his mind, and Ean smelled eucalyptus again, only this time it was younger eucalyptus.
Ean blinked. Twenty years. These were human-built lines, cloned from the Havortian and from the Havortian’s descendants. They’d had five hundred years of human conditioning. Unlike alien lines, they understood the concept of years.
“I didn’t know you were that old.”
Ryley looked at him.
“Older,” the lines said.
Ean got a black sense of a long period of time. Alien, yet familiar, intermixed with human years. That, and something he’d experienced not all that long ago, a time when he’d been talking to Katida. He frowned, trying to place it. And got it. The fresh, new-cloned feeling of the station Governor Jade had co-opted for Aratogan use before the fleet had moved to Haladea III.
“You can remember what you were before? The Havortian?” All human line ships had been cloned from the Havortian.
“Havortian?”
Ean sang the tune that had recognizably been the freshly cloned station he remembered from months earlier. He was unsuccessful, for all he got was lime-green uncertainty in return.
“How old is the station?” Ean asked Ryley.
Ryley looked at him again. “Thirty-six years.”
“And you’ve been on it for twenty?”
A strong, purple unease flooded the lines. This man was Ship all right.
So Ship didn’t have to be the captain. Which meant Sale might still be able to be Ship on the Confluence, if she wanted to be.
“If you knew that already, why did you ask me earlier?”
“I didn’t know before. The station told me.”
The purple unease grew.
Ryley stopped at a door. “Here’s the no-go zone.” He tapped the yellow warning sign. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. “See that. It means you.”
“I don’t think that’s going to stop him,” Ru Li murmured.
He got a sharp glance from Ryley. “Or your friends.”
“I am a linesman. My responsibility is the welfare of the lines on this station.”
“Jordan Rossi looks after the lines on station.”
He did. And he was doing a good job. Say what you might about Rossi, where lines were concerned, he delivered. Especially now he’d started singing to them.
“And as for being a linesman,” Ryley said. “I spent six months on this station with linesmen like you.” He glanced contemptuously at the ten bars above Ean’s pocket. “Not one of you lifted a finger to do any
work on the lines in all that time.”
Ean bit his tongue, so he didn’t say that Rossi had been one of the linesman here then, and he hadn’t.
“This is our linesman,” Ru Li said. “He’s not like the others.”
“I don’t want to see you down here again,” Ryley said. “If I do, you can be sure I’ll have a word with your team leader.” He looked at the bars on Ean’s shirt. “Or your cartel master.”
“Thank you for your time.” Ean led the way back, aware of Ryley, staring after them, a little cloud of purple unease.
“That seemed pointless,” Ru Li said. “Bhaksir’s right. Couldn’t you have done that through the comms?”
“No.” Because what would he have learned through the comms? Nothing. Instead, he now had a strong sense of the man who controlled the station.
* * *
BACK in his temporary new home, Ean called Abram. He made the line secure from habit although today he could feel something tapping at the edges, asking to be let in. It was a familiar sound—the Lancastrian Princess—and for a moment Ean almost let it hook in.
Except . . . why was the Lancastrian Princess listening in?
“How are you, Ean?” Abram asked.
Ean held up a hand to silence him and sent a quick query down to Lancastrian Princess’s line eight. Was the ship asking to listen in?
“No.”
He followed the tentative whisper of sound back. It was on the Lancastrian Princess. There. And there.
By now Helmo had heard what was happening, and the sudden surge of fury—they were doing this on his ship, his beautifully protected ship—galvanized line eight.
Eight surged. The lines trying to listen in disappeared.
Ean’s comms chimed. Helmo. He sang Helmo into the connection with Abram.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m checking to see if the lines are secure now,” Ean said.
He sang every single line on the Lancastrian Princess and got answers from them all. There was no untoward activity. He sang to the other lines in the fleet. Nothing on the Wendell, nothing on the Kari Wang, nothing from Confluence Station. There were two illegal comms on the Gruen. Both of them with trainees. Ean got the Gruen to short them out. The media ships were sending to their usual spies, but nothing that the New Alliance wasn’t aware of.
“All clean,” he said, eventually. “The Lancastrian Princess was the only affected ship.”
Helmo, his arms crossed, looked and sounded the unhappiest Ean had ever seen him. “Our security is usually good.”
“Yes,” Abram said. “I almost wish you hadn’t destroyed them. I suspect if we’d been able to investigate the codes, we’d find they came out of Palace Security. No one else would have been able to slip anything in.”
Palace Security. Vega was Palace Security. But then, Ean realized after one horrified moment, so was Commodore Bach.
“Bach is spying on you?”
“He won’t be doing it without a specific request.” Abram’s tone was grim.
“Yu?”
“Yes. Spying on his daughter.”
“I’ll ask Vega to investigate,” Helmo said, and Abram nodded.
Ean said, “I’ll ask the ship to let you know if it happens again, Helmo.”
“Thank you.”
After he clicked off, Ean realized he hadn’t talked to Abram about Confluence Station. Or about Sale.
SIXTEEN
EAN LAMBERT
AFTER THE DISCOVERY of the Confluence fleet, the Alliance—as it had been then—had taken control of Confluence Station, and the New Alliance had used it for a temporary headquarters until they’d moved to Haladea III. Most people believed it had been handed back to its former owners afterward, and that its owners had continued to lease it out. After all, it wasn’t needed at the confluence anymore. There was nothing there now.
They were wrong. The station was an official spoil of war, and though Patten and his staff retained corporate dress, they were employed by the combined governments of the New Alliance. The governance fleet, Kari Wang had called it. It was an appropriate name.
Access to the station was restricted.
The Factor requested permission for Captain Jakob to meet with Linesman Rossi. Orsaya couldn’t see it, but Jakob was with the Factor, sitting out of sight of the screen.
Ean heard the request, for he was listening carefully to all comms to and from the Lancastrian Princess. And Orsaya’s frosty reply.
“Our linesmen are busy, Factor. It might have escaped your notice, but we have a lot of ships to repair and limited access to cartel linesmen. I cannot approve of anything that takes them away from their work. Especially not Linesman Rossi, who is one of only two tens we have available.”
“Admiral Orsaya, why not let Jakob tag along when Linesman Rossi is repairing lines, then. That way, he could work while they talked.” The Factor’s smile was meant to charm, Ean could tell.
“I have just explained, Factor. He is busy. I don’t need him distracted by foolish questions.”
“I am sure they wouldn’t be foolish questions, Admiral.”
“To a linesman, talking to a nonlinesman, every question about lines is foolish. Or haven’t you noticed.”
“We would not annoy him.”
Orsaya snorted. “Everything annoys him.”
“Surely one visit.”
“Factor. There is a war on, and every single member of the New Alliance wants access to my linesman. I am pleased he is popular, but tell me why I should put you ahead of them?”
She clicked off.
She didn’t see the expression the Factor made afterward. Ean did.
“I doubt you’ll charm that one,” Jakob said.
“If she didn’t have a linesman, I wouldn’t care.”
Ean should let Orsaya know about this conversation. Or maybe Vega would, for she was listening as well.
“She won’t be a problem,” the Factor said. “We can get at Rossi anytime, no matter what she says. I am sure you can get to Confluence Station. We only need to find out when he’s there.”
Jakob nodded. “What about line training? He assists there, doesn’t he? Why don’t we go along to that? It should be easier.”
Not if Ean had anything to do with it.
It wasn’t the only conversation Vega was listening to. She was listening in on Michelle, entertaining Sattur Dow in one of the VIP lounges. Vega looked to be giving that conversation more attention.
“I had thought to see my betrothed here.”
“My cousin Dominique?”
“Yes.”
“Sattur.” It was strange to hear him called by his first name. Ean had never heard him referred to as anything but his surname or his full name. Even the media used his full name. “Dominique is a soldier. You need to talk to her commanding officer, Commodore Vega.”
“Commodore Vega is being particularly obstructive. I was hoping you might do a friend of your father’s a favor and perhaps intercede for me.”
Ean was sure the “friend of your father” was a pointed reminder that Sattur Dow was, in fact, a close friend, and that Michelle would do well to remember that.
“I could do that. Although I must warn you, I have little to do with the soldiers who run this ship.” Which was an out-and-out lie, but Ean would bet she’d pass any lie-detector test they cared to use on her.
Michelle nodded to Lin, who tapped something into his comms and brought it over to her.
In her office, Vega switched both channels off and sat up straighter—if she could sit straighter than she normally did—before answering Lin’s call. “Vega.”
“Her Royal Highness, the Crown Princess Michelle,” Lin said, and handed the comms to Michelle.
If they had to go through that process every time Michelle answered her c
omms, she’d never get much work done. Lin wouldn’t either.
“Your Royal Highness.” Vega’s voice became respectful. She inclined her head in a half bow. “What can I do for you?”
They hadn’t talked to each other like that since the first day Vega had come on board.
“My guest, Sattur Dow, would like to meet his betrothed, my cousin Dominique. I believe she is part of your staff. He is upset you have denied access to her.”
Vega didn’t pretend not to know who she meant. “Your Highness. I have already explained to Merchant Dow that Spacer Radko is away on a covert operation.”
Her tone wasn’t exasperated, which it should have been. Or would have been if she’d been talking to anyone else. Who was the act for? Sattur Dow? Emperor Yu? Or both?
“Surely you can send her a message to contact us. Or bring her back and put someone else in her place.”
Surely, Sattur Dow wasn’t fooled by this farce.
But they kept on going.
“Unfortunately, no,” Vega said. “On a covert operation, you do not contact the operatives. It endangers the mission.”
“My Lady Dominque is in a unique position. Surely, once you knew she was betrothed—by the decree of the Emperor himself, no less—you would have reconsidered.”
“Had I known about it, yes.” Some of Vega’s natural bite was back. “But this mission was planned two weeks beforehand. Spacer Radko always meant to leave after seeing her family. Maybe if she had mentioned her changed circumstances, I might have reconsidered. Unfortunately for you, she omitted to do that.” She quivered with apparent righteous indignation that didn’t come through the lines. Line one reflected wariness more than anything else.
“My Lady Dominique is a low-ranking spacer,” Sattur Dow said, and Ean had to hold his own lines in at the insult. “Surely it is unusual to send a spacer on a covert mission?”
“Not that unusual. On operations like these, you take the one with the strongest abilities in the area. Not to mention I also wanted to see how she would perform as the leader of a team.”
“Abilities.” Sattur Dow’s eyes gleamed. “So it was to do with line ships?”
“Why ever would you assume that? Especially on a covert op. No, sir.” Vega’s tone was flat. “Radko has more specialized skills than that. She speaks perfect, unaccented Redmond.”
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