Linesman

by S. K. Dunstall

  Sale stood back and let Craik and Losan untie their prisoner. When they were done, she prodded him with her blaster. “Up.”

  Gann got up, scowling.

  Lady Lyan watched from the other stretcher. “Ahmed Gann,” she said wonderingly. She looked at the soldiers surrounding them and smiled. It must have hurt. “You do well in your prisoners, people.”

  They all smiled back, and the ship-confluence smiled with them.

  TWENTY-SIX

  EAN LAMBERT

  THERE WAS A whole phalanx of people to greet them. They cheered as they came through the triple doors of the shuttle bay.

  The paramedics took Michelle first, Radko second, and Ean third.

  “I’m fine,” he protested, but they pushed him onto a stretcher and took off after the others.

  Behind him, armed soldiers moved in to surround the prisoners.

  Gospetto lay, bruised and gray, on the farthest bed in the hospital. He watched with disinterest as they carefully checked Michelle—he obviously didn’t recognize who it was—and turned his head away when he saw Ean. Ean thought that might be the end of his voice lessons.

  He planned to go to his own room, to shower and go to bed, but the medic ordered him to stay put. “You’re under observation.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Galenos’s orders.”

  The medic wouldn’t like that. He’d like it even less when he heard about the bodies on the other ship. He’d want Ean out of his hospital so fast, he’d probably kill him to do it. Ean wanted out before that happened.

  Abram dropped by an hour later.

  He looked down at Michelle. “You live a charmed life, Misha.”

  Gospetto sat up, suddenly more alert. Abram and Michelle both half glanced at him. Ean knew, and he knew Abram knew, too, that if Gospetto hassled Michelle too much, the medic would probably slip the voice coach some triphene to knock him out.

  “Truly charmed?” Michelle asked, raising a brow.

  Abram just laughed. “Some of the fate has to go back the other way, Misha. Consider yourself grateful.”

  “But seriously,” Abram said. “That’s about as close as you’ve come to getting yourself killed since you were fifteen, and you stepped in front of that crazy free trader who planned to blow your father away. If you ever do that again I’ll—” He didn’t say what, but Ean thought it was more the audience that stopped him than want of a drastic enough punishment.

  “It worked,” Michelle said softly.

  “You were lucky,” Ean said, staring up at the ceiling. “Because if they had killed you, then your people would have killed me not long after, so it would have been a pointless sacrifice.” Even now, the horror of what might have happened made him numb.

  Michelle raised herself on an elbow to look at him.

  “Linesman has a point,” Abram said. “And you should be resting, incidentally. You’ve an interview in ten minutes.”

  Michelle grimaced.

  It was Ean’s turn to raise himself on his elbow. “She’s sick,” he pointed out to Abram.

  “I know. It won’t take long.”

  “It’s called manipulating the media, Ean,” Michelle said. “Using what you have to your advantage.” She sat up. “You’ll have to help me to the couch.”

  It was called cold-blooded and heartless, and for a moment Ean didn’t like Abram much.

  “You can do it here,” Abram said. “More appropriate.” He bared his teeth in a parody of a smile at Ean. “More picturesque.”

  “Don’t tease him,” Michelle said.

  • • •

  THEY brought a portable video comms and set it up at Michelle’s bed.

  Abram didn’t even let Michelle make up.

  “She’s bruised,” Ean pointed out. The bruising had spread, and was visible at the base of her neck, across her shoulders, and down her arms.

  “That’s the whole point, Ean,” Michelle said. “To show how badly I was treated.” She was white and didn’t look as if she’d last an interview.

  Someone had knocked Gospetto out. Ean didn’t know who’d done it—the medic hadn’t gone anywhere near him—but he was unconscious, and that was a good thing. Otherwise, he would have tried to get into the interview. Even Ean knew that, and Abram must as well.

  Abram moved Ean to another bed.

  “You think I’ll hog the interview, too?”

  Abram’s eyes were bloodshot, and he looked almost as bad as Michelle did, ready to drop although not as bruised. “If you have a secret weapon, Ean, it’s best not to show everyone what it looks like.”

  “It’s hardly a secret,” Michelle murmured. “Not anymore.”

  • • •

  MICHELLE lasted exactly four minutes into the interview. Long enough to assure the twin shocked faces of Sean Watanabe and Coral Zabi that she was fine, and long enough to start giving shaky answers to their questions of how she had been kidnapped and who had done it. Then she fainted.

  Abram stepped in smoothly to cancel the rest of the interview.

  Ean could imagine the mad scramble that must be happening on both ships to put that on air. In fact, he couldn’t just imagine it, he could hear it through the lines.

  “Isn’t it bad to show weakness?” he asked Abram.

  Abram watched the medic check Michelle. “Emperor Yu is sending a message.” He said it absently, not really paying attention.

  “The Emperor?” When had he come into the picture, and how could Abram know what message Emperor Yu wanted to send?

  Abram turned to look at him properly. His mouth was a thin white line. “Don’t mess with my daughter.”

  Ean didn’t see how one could get that out of an interview that showed how weak Michelle was.

  “For Aquacaelum and the Gaian worlds. Retribution will be swift. People will expect it after that.”

  Lancastrians knew revenge.

  Abram sighed. “It’s just a pity she collapsed before she named names. Now she has to do another interview later.”

  Couldn’t they just do a media release?

  Abram saw his look. “It’s not quite the same.”

  The medic finished. Abram moved up to sit beside Michelle’s bed.

  “What happens now?” Ean started to ask, then realized the futility of it. Abram was asleep.

  • • •

  AS soon as Ean could escape, he did.

  As he left the hospital, they brought Jordan Rossi in, pale and gasping and under guard. Losan was one of the guards.

  “Lines a bit much for him,” Losan said, unsympathetically. “He keeps going on and on about the glory of the confluence. We’re sick of it. Then he keeps having heart attacks.”

  Line eleven still floored Ean on occasion, but nowhere near as often as Rossi succumbed. Was that because Rossi had spent less time with the line while Ean had gone through the void with it and was becoming used to it? And why did Rossi insist on mentioning the confluence every time he talked about line eleven?

  Ean wandered down to Engineering. The lines, at least, were pleased to hear from him. They were better than they had been when he left, and today, Captain Helmo and Engineer Tai were happy to let him sing to them. Or maybe not happy, but Captain Helmo gave his permission anyway.

  As he sang, line eleven came in strong. Ean wasn’t sure how it joined in but suddenly he was singing to all six sets of lines, strengthening them. The Lancastrian Princess’s lines were strongest, because they were closer. The media ships’ weakest. He still had to make good on that promise. He’d have time to do so now. He hoped.

  To really fix them, he’d still have to go to each ship. He reiterated the promise he’d made to them those short days ago although it felt a long time now.

  Line communication was two-way. As he sang, Ean could see the empty bridge of the Eleven
, he could hear Coral Zabi’s producers discussing a special angle to the Michelle story, he could smell the food Sean Watanabe was eating while his producers did likewise.

  He was going crazy. Once, all he’d had to worry about was the noise, but more and more, the lines were spilling over into the other senses, so that he couldn’t differentiate what was real and what was just a feedback loop. Watanabe’s meal smelled damned good. It made his stomach growl with hunger.

  Captain Wendell and someone who reminded Ean of Sale were going over a lunatic last attempt to try to break free from the Alliance. It wouldn’t work, Ean realized suddenly, because line eleven considered the Wendell one of its ships now.

  Ean changed his tune to include a comms to Wendell’s ship. “It’s a suicide mission, and it won’t work. All you’ll do is kill people.”

  He hoped it only went to the Wendell.

  Ean couldn’t see Wendell, but he could see the Wendell ship line surge in power, and he thought that might have come from the captain.

  He sang until Radko risked life and limb to touch him and stop him. “Commodore Galenos said no more than two hours at a time until you can control your voice.”

  Ean blinked at her.

  “A singing linesman who can’t sing is useless. Know your strengths, Ean. And your weaknesses. And deal with them.”

  He blinked again, not quite in human space yet. Line one was clear as clear. He could hear Abram and Michelle talking quietly over a tray of food in the hospital. The sound was so clear it made a picture he could see. Michelle leaning back, exhausted, picking her way through her thoughts. Abram, equally exhausted, picking at the food on his plate. Neither of them ready for this. He could even hear Michelle’s pain and Abram’s exhaustion. It vibrated through him as if he were a string.

  He was mixing the lines so badly, he could smell their food, too.

  “Offer them their ships as a gesture of goodwill,” Abram was saying. “We don’t want prisoners from two warships.”

  He was talking about the Gruen and the Wendell. Ean could feel that through line one as well.

  “No,” Ean said. “They can’t do that.”

  “We don’t want you to lose your voice,” Radko said, and he had no idea what she meant.

  “I have to tell them.” He made off down the passage. His voice was raw, his legs unsteady. Maybe Radko was right. Maybe he should stop for a while.

  Radko sighed and followed.

  He burst into the hospital. “You can’t give the ships back,” he told Abram and Michelle.

  “We can’t?” Neither of them looked surprised that he knew what they were discussing. “Why not?”

  “Because they’re part of the fleet now.”

  “They’re Gate Union warships,” Abram said. “The Alliance would fight over them.”

  “Not the Alliance,” Ean said. “The fleet. Line eleven’s fleet. It’s not going to let you take two of its ships back. Not without a fight.”

  • • •

  THUS ended what the media were calling the Seven Day War.

  Michelle used the filmed attack on the Eleven to demand—and get—agreements from both Gate Union and Redmond. Emperor Yu used the kidnap of Michelle to demand—and get—Aquacaelum and the Gaian worlds kicked out of the Alliance.

  The kidnap plan turned out to be deeper than anyone expected. They took seventeen Alliance worlds with them.

  Michelle called it a pyrrhic victory.

  “Seventeen of the strongest worlds,” Katida said, and Ean could hear the sense of betrayal through her line.

  “At least we’ve only got loyal ones left,” Ean said.

  At its peak, there had been 277 worlds in the Alliance. Time and wars and natural attrition had whittled this down, until in Ean’s day there were 112. Now there were 95.

  Katida snorted. “They’ll be like rats deserting a ship until all that are left are the weak worlds who have no better option and those your charismatic Lady Lyan can convince to stay. She’s going to be busy.”

  Back on Lancia, when Ean’s whole world had been his little neighborhood and the lines, the fact that Her Royal Highness was holding together a wobbly alliance seemingly by charisma alone would have seemed laughably unimportant. There was probably no one Ean had grown up with who would appreciate what she was doing. And why should they, when their immediate worries were whether they had enough to eat that day or somewhere to live.

  If Katida and Michelle were correct, if Gate Union won the war, then Lancia would become a third-rate world like Dante. Ean himself would rather go back to Lancia than live on the hell that was Dante. The people of Lancia wouldn’t appreciate that Michelle had worked herself nearly to death for them, had been prepared to die for them, in fact. No, all they would see was the failure at the end.

  That’s all Emperor Yu would see, too, for he didn’t accept failure.

  “You’re quiet this morning,” Katida said. “Are you worried about today?” For today was the day the two powers signed the peace treaty, although no one thought that would last long.

  Ean shook his head.

  He and Katida had gotten into the habit of breakfasting together even if they never saw each other during the day otherwise. Ean thought Katida might deliberately be doing it to keep an eye on him. Not because she didn’t trust him—he could feel through the lines that she did—but because she wanted to make sure he was all right.

  Sometimes they talked lines. Sometimes they talked politics. Katida thought Ean needed schooling in politics. Today, it was politics.

  “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 onl
y 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.”