“Keep moving. Ean’s deflecting the orders. Hurry on, he can’t do it forever.”
Radko always understood.
“Small single-man craft exiting the Hellfire,” Craik said.
“They’re lifepods,” Ean said.
“Correction, lifepods,” Craik said at the same time.
Bhaksir called Sale then. “Prisoners are secure.”
“What?” Sale said. “That was hours ago.”
According to the time on Ean’s comms, they had been in the Worlds of the Lesser Gods less than half an hour.
“Can you get Ean to lock them in?”
“He’s busy.”
Ean used lines eight and three of the Confluence to sing the air lock secure. In doing so, he lost control of line three on the station momentarily, and two soldiers made it into the passage.
“Radko,” he called. “There are two armed soldiers heading your way.”
Radko didn’t give any indication she’d heard, and no wonder, for he was piping all the comms into the corridor. If he stopped that, the commander would get his order to the gunners.
Radko rounded the corner and almost ran into the soldiers.
They went down before Ean realized she had fired. She’d always had good reflexes.
* * *
AFTER what felt longer than the longest forever in the void, Radko’s group reached the shuttle.
“In, in,” Radko said. “Don’t forget, Bach’s under arrest. Don’t let him near a weapon. Strap yourself in,” she ordered Bach. “All of you.”
Ean kept singing the commands into the empty corridor as Radko piloted the shuttle out of the bay.
The commander realized his commands weren’t getting through. “Get down to the gunner’s station,” he ordered someone. “Tell them to fire.”
Ean locked all the doors.
“What the hell? Use the emergency tunnels.”
“An unauthorized shuttle has left the station,” someone at another board said.
“Tell them to shoot the shuttle, instead,” the commander said to the person who was unscrewing the emergency hatch.
On the Confluence bridge, the only sound was Ean singing. Ean didn’t know what agreement Sale had made with the Brimstone, but it wasn’t firing at them.
He kept singing as the Confluence grabbed the shuttle and brought it in.
Chaudry grabbed the arms of his seat. “We’re hit.”
“No,” Radko said. “That’s normal.”
“Felt like a hit,” van Heel said.
“It wasn’t.”
Ean stopped singing when the shuttle was safely inside one of the small air locks on the Confluence.
“Comms back, sir,” someone on the station said.
“About time,” the station commander said. “Fire on that blasted ship.”
“Take us home,” Ean sang to the Confluence.
They entered the void as the first gunner pressed the fire button.
* * *
“WELCOME home, Confluence,” Captain Helmo said.
“Radko’s got prisoners,” Ean told Sale. “Two of them.” Was Vilhjalmsson a prisoner?
“Prisoners. Right. That’s where we started. It seems so long ago now.” Sale called Bhaksir. “Stay where you are. We’re coming down. Ean says we have a couple more for you.”
“Faster?” Ean asked the ship.
“Faster.” Confirmation, affirmative.
Sale had already started running. She thumbed open her comms as she ran, “Ma’am,” to Vega. “We’ve at least forty prisoners. The fake paramedics, some Lancastrian linesmen, and two prisoners Radko brought back from the station.”
“Lancastrian?” Vega bit off anything more she might say.
“Sale.” Ean and the ship called together. “Wait.”
She paused. “What’s wrong?”
“We’ll use the faster,” because he had no idea what it was called. At least she’d stopped. “This way,” and let lines three and four guide him to the wall.
Sale kept talking to Vega. “We’ve around a hundred—”
They were sucked into the tube and jerked sideways. Then up, then down, then sideways again, and finally expelled into the shuttle bay, where Ean bowled over three trainee linesmen.
Ean heard the distinct snap of breaking bone. Two linesmen stayed down. One of them was Arnold Peters.
Lines three and four conferred. “Still too fast.”
Sale picked herself up. Her voice shook as she continued. “Hundred linesmen who need medical attention. One linesman is badly injured. Blaster burns. Other problems are line-related. Except Burns, who took a blaster in his suit.” She looked at the linesmen Ean had knocked over. “At least two with broken bones from friendly fire.”
They didn’t need the comms, for the lines were still wide open.
Ean heard Jordan Rossi, somewhere in the background, “Lambert strikes again.”
Bhaksir beckoned to Alex Joy and Hernandez, and pointed to the two injured trainees. They came over.
“Sorry.” Ean tried to help, but they didn’t want him to. He limped away.
“We’ll send shuttles,” Vega said. “We don’t have room for them here. Send them on to Confluence Station. Admiral Orsaya?”
“I’ll need paramedics and guards.”
“Done. Sale, once Lambert returns to a thinking, functioning linesman, get him to move the Confluence closer to Confluence Station. And if you’re listening, Lambert, there’s a difference between moving and jumping. There’s also such a thing as ‘too close.’”
“Hear that, ship?” Sale said, as she tucked her comms back into her pocket. “You move. You don’t jump. And you don’t move too close.”
“How close? Where?”
“Closer to Confluence Station,” Ean said.
The ship started to move.
“What’s it doing now, Ean?”
“Moving closer to Confluence Station.”
“Shit.” Even though that was what Vega had suggested. “How does it know when to stop?”
“Sale will tell you when to stop,” Ean told the Confluence.
“Ship will tell.” A little smugness there. They could worry about that later.
Ean said to Sale, “I said you’d say when we’re close enough.”
“Sh—. How am I supposed to tell it that? And what constitutes close enough anyway?”
Helmo said, “We’ll let you know with plenty of margin.”
Sale took the comms out of her pocket again, looked at it, and put it back. “Make sure it’s a big margin because Ean will have to stop the ship. There’s no way it’s going to do it for me.”
“Yes we will.”
Ean could have told her she’d insulted her ship, but the bay where Radko’s shuttle was had finished recycling, and Radko was exiting. Bhaksir and her team covered them.
Radko spared a quick glance around the massive shuttle deck, then looked him over.
Ean relaxed for the first time since Radko had disappeared into the shuttle bound for Lancia. This was how it was meant to be, with Radko back, by his side.
Although, there was something odd, based on the way she looked at him. Then he realized his helmet was still in place from his trip through the tubes. He grinned at her and kept watching her as he checked his readings before he unclipped it. “Hi.” He couldn’t stop smiling, looking at her, whole and healthy and alive.
Sale looked the prisoners over. She scowled on seeing Bach. The lines echoed something like betrayal. “You’re the reason I joined the Royal Guard in the first place.”
“Then Galenos poached you,” Bach said. “He always handpicked the best.”
Van Heel watched them. Sale, to Radko, to Bach, and back.
The best thing about the Lancastrian Princess cre
w was they trusted each other. If Radko said arrest Bach, then Sale and Bhaksir arrested him. They didn’t argue about it.
“Our crew, too.”
Ean ignored that.
Sale turned to the other prisoner. “Captain Vilhjalmsson. Why am I not surprised?”
“I am. Surprised, I mean.” Vilhjalmsson had put up his hands as soon as he saw Ean. “Especially since I’m helping Team Leader Radko.”
Team leader. She had a team of her own to look after now. Chaudry, van Heel, and Han. She wouldn’t be his bodyguard anymore. Ean pushed away that niggling worry. “Helping. Last time you tried to kill her.”
“Linesman, I know now the folly of doing that on a ship that you control.” He looked around. “Interesting ship, by the way. It’s almost worth getting arrested to see this.”
Chaudry lowered Han carefully to the floor and looked around. Ean tried to see it as the newcomers would see it. Soldiers from multiple worlds, half of them still on the floor, many of them with oxygen. Kentish, surrounded by people trying to keep her alive.
“What happened?” Chaudry asked. “A war?”
Something like that. Only it was their own people who’d started it.
Two single-level linesmen came up with oxygen.
“He’s been stunned,” Radko said. “Oxygen won’t help.”
Chaudry checked Han over. “He’ll be fine.” He looked at Vilhjalmsson, then over at Kentish. Ean heard the hum of uncertainty through line one, and it wasn’t Confluence line one.
The lines were certainly listening, though.
In fact, the whole of the Confluence fleet was considering Chaudry.
“Yes.”
“That one.”
The Confluence cut over the top of them all, strong and loud and brooking no dissent. “This one is mine.”
“Yours,” agreed the other ships, and all 1,291 lines exuded satisfaction. “We like him.”
Ean watched Chaudry make his way toward Kentish. “Radko. He’s a linesman.”
“I know. Level one?”
He nodded.
Radko looked at van Heel. “She’s a linesman, too.”
“If you’re looking at me,” van Heel said. “I’m no linesman. I did training, sure, but I failed certification.” She wasn’t bitter about it, so for her it was a long time in her past.
“I’ll tell you what I think she is. Turn around. I’ll tell Sale and Bhaksir.”
Ean turned around so he couldn’t see her. But after everything that had happened, the lines were wide open. He couldn’t block them. “I can see. You’re holding up eight fingers.”
Radko clasped her fingers together under her chin and smiled. A proper smile, that showed off the dimples that were so like Michelle’s. “It’s good to be home, Ean.”
Ean smiled, too, as he turned around. “It’s good to have you home.”
“We’re glad you’re back, too,” Bhaksir said. “Couldn’t you have left a user manual or something?”
“It’s simple, Bhaksir. He’s a linesman. He thinks like a line. Remember that, and you’ll be fine.” Then Radko sighed and looked at Bach. “Can I borrow your comms, Ean? I need to call Admiral Galenos.”
He handed it over. He hadn’t used it much recently. He was getting used to working direct with the lines. “You can keep it, if you like.”
“And if we need to track you?”
“That didn’t seem to bother him last time he was without a comms,” Vilhjalmsson said.
“You’re fishing, Vilhjalmsson. Ean, can you make this secure, please? As secure as it can be.”
“With him here? He works for Gate Union.” They didn’t normally show people what Ean could do.
“Point taken. Let’s do this outside. Bhaksir, van Heel, you’ve got the prisoners.”
“I still fail to see why I’m a prisoner. After all, I was trying to rescue you.”
Radko stopped at the door. “Last time I rescued you. You repaid me by stealing something from me.”
Ean followed her out.
“I missed you, Radko.”
“I missed you, too, Ean.” He heard the truth of it through the lines.
He smiled at her and kept on smiling as he sang the comms line secure. “How private do you want this call?”
“Very private,” and her face turned grimmer than he’d ever seen it before.
“I’d better tune the others out, then.” He sang the other ships out of the loop, even the Lancastrian Princess, which was her home ship, and she should have been reporting to Vega.
“Do you want me to go back in there?”
Radko shook her head. “Sir,” into the comms as Abram answered. “A private word with you, if I may.” She stressed the “private.”
“Give me a moment.”
How much did Abram already know? He must know about the attempt to steal the ship. All the admirals would by now. If they didn’t, they’d hear it on the news vids soon enough, for Ean could hear the linesman from Galactic News.
“I’m telling you, Coop. That wasn’t an exercise, no matter what they put it out as. You go after the full story.”
“The success of your last call has gone to your head, Christian.”
“Have I been wrong before? No. Go after the story, Coop.”
“Line secure,” Abram said, and Ean dragged his attention away from the Galactic News ship.
“Thank you, sir.” Radko paused a moment. “I arrested Commodore Bach for treason, sir.”
Abram was off ship, so Ean couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “Where is he?”
“On the Confluence at the moment, sir. I plan to transport him to Confluence Station.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
The first of Orsaya’s shuttles arrived as Radko and Ean went back inside.
Sale put Bhaksir in charge of the prisoners and Craik in charge of the trainees. “Load the injured first—prisoners and linesmen. Then the rest of the prisoners, and finally the rest of the linesmen.”
They ran out of stretchers before they finished loading the prisoners. Luckily, it wasn’t too far to Confluence Station, and the next two shuttles were well supplied.
“That’s it,” Sale said, as the last trainee was loaded. “Let’s go.”
They took Bach and Vilhjalmsson on their own shuttle.
As they waited for the air to cycle at Confluence Station, Bach said, “I want His Imperial Majesty present when we talk to Galenos.”
“No,” Ean said.
“He has the right, Ean,” Sale said.
“I don’t care. Yu is not getting anywhere near Abram.”
“Why not?” Radko asked.
“Because Yu wants to kill Abram. To get his seat on the council.”
Bach’s mouth turned down in a twisted smile, leaving Ean with the uneasy feeling he was missing something. Off to one side, Vilhjalmsson’s eyes widened. It was the only change in his expression.
Maybe one day Ean could keep his face as expressionless. And remember not to blab personal Lancian information to their enemies. Vilhjalmsson didn’t need to know about Yu and Abram.
“Fair point,” Sale said, and turned back to the other prisoners.
“When Galenos arrives,” Bach said. “I will make the same request of him. He will be obliged to grant it.”
Sale looked at Radko. Radko took out her comms.
Ean hastily sang it secure for her. This time, they couldn’t go outside to hide what he was doing.
“Sir, Commodore Bach requests the presence of His Imperial Majesty when we question him.”
Abram blew out his breath. “Transfer Bach to the Lancastrian Princess instead.”
“Ean says the Emperor is trying to kill you.”
“Probably.” Abram didn’t look surprised.
He�
�d known about it.
“We can’t let you go, sir.”
“You have arrested the Emperor’s right-hand man, Radko. I can’t let you face that alone.”
“I’ll release him, then.”
“Thank you, Radko, but His Majesty will catch up with me eventually. Let’s not sacrifice your work. I will meet you on the Lancastrian Princess.” Abram clicked off.
Ean became aware he’d taken Radko’s hand in his own. She gripped tight.
He stayed close to Radko as they exited the shuttle. He wouldn’t have changed what he’d done, but it had brought Abram into the very danger Michelle had worked so hard to avoid. Yu would arrest Abram. He had an excuse now because Ean had taken the ship without permission, and Sale’s team, who should have demanded he come home immediately—with a weapon to his head if necessary—had stayed to help. Abram, as head of Alien Affairs, was responsible for the alien ships. He was responsible for what happened on them. Was forcing the linesmen onto the Confluence part of a plan to discredit Abram?
Ean called Michelle. She’d tried so hard to prevent this meeting. She didn’t answer. She was already talking on her comms to Abram.
The call was nearly over. “I’m sorry, Misha. I have to do this.”
“I know.”
Ean couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
“Take care. See you soon.”
He shouldn’t be listening in, but Michelle was clearly hiding her thoughts. From him? Or from Abram?
* * *
EAN and Orsaya watched Captain Auburn march the last of the paramedics down to the cells and tried not to think of the meeting ahead.
He wiped his palms down the side of his trousers. Maybe he should sneak in a blaster. He didn’t know how to fire one, but how hard could it be? Point and grip.
“Katida is bringing in her own warship to transport the prisoners to Haladea III,” Orsaya said. “Given they were attempting to steal an eleven ship, we deem it’s better to get them onto a world as fast as we can.”
“Especially since they were trying to steal the whole fleet.” It was hard to concentrate on mundanities. “They knew they could take one ship, and all of them would go.”
Radko looked shattered, and Ean didn’t know what to do about it. Short of begging Yu not to arrest Abram.
They watched four members of Bhaksir’s team march a handcuffed Commodore Bach onto the shuttle.
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