The two admirals matched stares.
Another committee member stirred. This one wasn’t an admiral. He was only four seats away from Orsaya. “I concur with Markan. It is appropriate to have a linesman present when we are discussing lines.”
Rossi revised his imaginary pro-Markan count up. So many people so obviously supporting the Markan faction meant those worlds would support Sandhurst, too. It hadn’t been this bad when Orsaya had dragged him off on this crazy escapade. What had changed since then?
He laughed to himself. What had changed was that in between, there had been a botched attempt to first murder, then kidnap the Crown Princess of Lancia. It should have made the Orsaya/Gann faction ascendant. He suspected it had done the opposite.
Orsaya looked at the committee member who had spoken. Her expression was eloquent. Didn’t they already have a linesman present?
“An unbiased one,” the committee member said.
He would keep, but Rossi would remember him. He could have pointed out that Hurst technically wasn’t a linesman, just a cartel master, but he didn’t. He wanted to know what Hurst planned.
“Very well,” Orsaya finally agreed after another long, cold pause. She turned back to Markan. “I know what you are doing. Remember, this is my operation. If you—or your linesman—obstruct us, I will put in a formal complaint.”
Orsaya might have said she was in charge, but she let others do the questioning, only intervening when the questions went off track.
What had happened? How had it happened? What was the ship like? How had they gotten onto the other ship? How did the alien ship control the Gate Union ships?
Wendell’s answers were as clipped as Rossi’s own.
“Listen,” Rossi said finally, angrily, when they started on about the new lines. “I had experience on that ship. I had experience with those lines. You took me off. You exchanged me for that—” He couldn’t say bitch here, linesmen had to show some solidarity. “Rebekah Grimes.” And for Fergus. “What sort of stupidity is that?”
Orsaya fixed him with an icy glare. “The stupidity is entirely your own, Linesman.”
How dare she call him stupid?
“Linesman Grimes engineered the death of a shuttle crew. If you fail to realize the implications of that, you are stupider than even I thought.”
Twice.
Iwo Hurst opened his mouth as if to argue, then thought better of it.
“Lancia’s terms of exchange of linesmen were nonnegotiable.” Orsaya’s lips straightened into the thin line Rossi was coming to know so well. “Maybe, Linesman, if you want us to believe we are working on the same side, you might start cooperating, and telling us what we want to know.”
The military gentleman sitting beside Orsaya—another admiral—leaned close to her and said under his breath, “Maybe we should just kidnap Lambert.”
“Believe me,” she said, equally quietly back, “if I could, I would.”
Rossi heard it, clear as clear, through the lines.
TWENTY-EIGHT
EAN LAMBERT
REBEKAH GRIMES WAS tried for war crimes two hours after the ships moved to Alliance space.
Ean was the only one who didn’t attend the trial. It didn’t make any difference. He could feel it through the lines, heard it on line one more clearly than if he’d been there. And on Rebekah’s line ten.
It was a somber ceremony. The only sounds were the voices of the witnesses called to trial—there weren’t many of them—the questioners—Abram, Michelle, and Captain Helmo—and Rebekah Grimes’s clear, succinct answers.
What had happened after the shuttle had left the Lancastrian Princess? She didn’t know. Why didn’t she know? She just didn’t know. How had she killed the crew on the shuttle? No comment. Why did she destroy the lines? She had no idea what they were talking about. How had she ended up on a Gate Union ship? She was a linesman, trying to get home. Naturally, she would hail the closest ship.
All the way through, Ean could hear the satisfaction that emanated from her line. They couldn’t prove anything.
At the end, Abram said, “Linesman Rebekah Grimes. We accuse you of the deliberate murder of at least ten Lancastrian soldiers, along with the destruction of a shuttle belonging to the Empire of Lancia. We accuse you of conspiring in the attempted murder of Crown Princess Michelle of Lancia, and of all occupants of the Lancastrian Princess.
“You can accuse all you like,” she said. “You cannot prove any of it.”
“Circumstantial evidence points to your being involved.” The lines vibrated with the emotion in Abram’s voice. “As such, you have been tried and found guilty.”
“I’m a linesman,” Rebekah said. “Outside the jurisdiction of the Alliance or Gate Union. The cartels will try me and find me guilty or not.”
The cartels would never find her guilty. Ean understood that now. She’d been working with Gate Union and the cartels. Not to mention, she was a level-ten linesman.
Abram was the one who executed her.
The execution was followed by a wash of satisfaction from the lines. It was done. Their coworkers had been avenged.
Afterward, Ean stayed in the fresher long after the water ran out.
TWENTY-NINE
JORDAN ROSSI
THE GRILLING WENT on for hours.
The investigative committee wanted to know everything.
The ship?
“Massive,” Rossi said, remembering the big common room where they’d found over a hundred bodies. “It will crew at least a thousand, probably more.”
The aliens?
“Dead.” Then he amended it to, “It’s a crazy ship. Like the Balao. Bodies everywhere.”
That started a hum of excited conversation that didn’t stop until Markan demanded silence.
The new line?
Rossi stared out across the room. The new line was his. These people could never comprehend the magnificence of line eleven. His gaze moved down to Iwo Hurst, in the second row, as intent as anyone else on his answer. Give them the lines, and he was giving it to Sandhurst, too.
The scarlet-uniformed Centauran admiral laughed, half-hopeful. “There is just the one new line, isn’t there? I mean, is it likely that we’ll see a whole new set of lines one day?”
Rossi refused to think about the twelve lines displayed on the ship. Of the inane joke Sale had dared to make. “Isn’t one line enough?”
“Didn’t someone mention line twelve?”
He stared the admiral down. “Only as a joke.”
The weapons?
“I have no idea, but a linesman turned them on and off.”
“Linesman?” Iwo Hurst sat up, but he was drowned out by the scarlet admiral asking, “What sort of weapon caused the heart attacks?”
The truth about a linesman’s weakness was for linesmen alone. “They used line eleven,” Rossi said. “I’m not clear how.”
“How did they know enough about the ship in order to make that happen?” Markan demanded. “You said they hadn’t been on it before.”
“It was as new to them as it was to us. I think.” Rossi paused to consider his answer. They’d think he was trying to remember how it had worked rather than just working out what to avoid saying. “Some form of human-line interaction,” he said eventually. “Much like the way linesmen interact with lines now, I suppose.”
Like Linesman Lambert did, anyway.
No one had invited the shuttle pilot to this session. He would probably have talked about the singing, which Rossi didn’t want to do. The pilot had worn the same beige uniform as Orsaya, so no doubt he’d reported everything to her, but from the looks of this room, Orsaya would try to keep some facts close to her chest. She might need them soon.
Rossi chose his words carefully again. He had to tell the truth, but he also wanted to misdirect Sandhurst. If
House of Sandhurst became the de facto line guild, he’d lose any chance at obtaining line eleven, for Sandhurst would keep it for their own tens. “They had a linesman with them. Ean Lambert,” and the glance he exchanged with Iwo Hurst showed how much use that would have been. At least, he hoped that was the way Hurst interpreted it. Now, he needed to misdirect everyone as to how much of the work Lambert had done. “But they made me work, too. For example, I was the one who worked with line five so they could contact the Lancastrian Princess.”
Let Hurst know how invaluable he’d be. There was grim satisfaction in the knowledge that he had linked the lines, but he wasn’t going to mention just how he’d done it.
Luckily for him, he’d mentioned the magic word—Lambert—that could be guaranteed to distract Orsaya.
“What sort of things did Lambert do that you couldn’t?” Orsaya asked. It was the first question she’d asked in hours.
Here he could redirect with equanimity, given that Orsaya had implied that la Dame Grimes would be imprisoned until the Linesmen’s Guild could get her out and therefore wasn’t around to call him a liar. Long enough for him to go back to his line, at least. “I’m not clear. Lambert and Grimes both spent time going close to the ship, apparently. They’re linesmen, so I imagine they learned something from those trips.”
“How do you think Lambert did it?” the admiral beside Orsaya asked.
Rossi could feel their excitement through the lines. He was tired, that was all. He was imagining things, and whatever Sale had made him do to the comms had done something to his nerves—not that he normally had nerves—and he still hadn’t settled. That was all. And if Lambert had done anything to his ability to read the lines, he was going to kill him.
He’d had enough.
“It’s a crazy ship,” he said. “Another Balao, with dead bodies everywhere. Lambert is as crazy as the ship. Not only that, he taints every linesman he comes in contact with.”
Through the lines, their excitement reached another level although you couldn’t tell from their faces.
“You came in contact with him,” Orsaya said. “Are you tainted?”
He’d walked into that one. He could see the other questioners drawing away. Iwo Hurst, too. He could imagine how Iwo would use this later.
“Of course not,” Rossi said, ignoring the whisper of the lines that told him he lied.
Orsaya leaned closer. She was as crazy as Lambert was.
“Crazy or not,” Admiral Markan said, and he obviously wasn’t doing it to save Rossi’s reputation, “we need that ship. If we attack now, we—”
“Lose another ship,” Wendell said.
“We are prepared now. We won’t lose—”
Orsaya cut across them both. “We don’t need the ship. We need Lambert, and if you haven’t worked out why yet, Markan, maybe you could leave me to do my job because I have.”
This was taking Lambert worship too far, but she seemed to have acquired another devotee because Wendell gave her a sharp glance, then nodded.
She might even be right because there was no denying that Lambert did control the Eleven.
“We need the ship, and we need linesmen,” Iwo Hurst said. “Sane ones,” and he deliberately looked away from Rossi as he said the last.
If Rossi let him get away with that, then Hurst would be Grand Master within a month.
“Like those from the House of Sandhurst?” Rossi said. “They’re going to be a lot of use, given that everyone except Rebekah Grimes has spent the last six months at the confluence doing absolutely nothing.” It didn’t matter that he’d done the same. He was here now, and he had to break their confidence in Sandhurst.
He could see he’d scored. Orsaya was right. The last six months had left people worried about the higher-level linesmen.
Orsaya supported her chin on her clasped hands, elbows on the desk, and visibly relaxed. Rossi thought she had never looked so dangerous. “How do you plan to get the ship, Markan? March into Alliance territory and take it from them? Right under the vids of two of the largest media organizations in the galaxy.”
“If you ask me, the Alliance is a little too fond of manipulating the media,” one of the other interrogators muttered. “I wouldn’t like them that close all the time. Too worried it would backfire on me.”
“I hear their tame media cost them a fortune,” the admiral from Centaurus said. “Galenos had to agree to maintain their ships for them.”
There were chuckles around the room. “That’s the media. Out for anything they can get.”
Wendell sat up straight. “What do you mean?” Rossi didn’t need the lines to feel the sudden energy crackling from him.
Markan shot the original speaker a poisonous glance. “We can handle the media.”
Orsaya laughed. “Isn’t that what you said just before Yannikay so publicly declared war on our behalf by deliberately attacking three Alliance ships and leaving the media to film it?”
“That was hardly—”
“They’re calling it the Seven Day War, and they blame Gate Union for starting it.”
“And who botched that particular piece of action?”
Wendell jumped to his feet. “Objection.” He stalked to the edge of the dais. Rossi thought he was about to jump down and throttle Markan. By the way half a dozen people around Markan jumped up, hands to weapons they didn’t have, they did, too.
Wendell settled for a clenched fist and remained on the dais although he did look as if he’d like to hit someone. “The brief was to kidnap Lady Lyan. That was done. We carried out our part of the operation. Despite all the problems.”
“That was nothing—”
“Nothing to do with you? Markan, you gave me the order. I was there when Orsaya tried to argue you out of it. We both did.”
Rossi looked around to see where the dark green uniform of Wallacia—Wendell’s home world—was. There, a man and a woman in almost the highest tier, in the center.
“We all have operations that go bad, Markan. Be big enough to accept that and don’t start blaming other people for it. Particularly not when those other people did their job. Despite everything.”
It should have gotten Wendell a reprimand from his own boss, but the woman just looked at the man beside her and shrugged.
Orsaya’s cold voice cut across the tension. “And despite all your plans for takeover, Admiral Markan, you forget one important thing.” Her gaze swept the whole room. “You all forget it.” She let the silence grow until Markan looked as if he was about to speak. “We don’t even know if we can beat the Alliance yet, especially not while they have that ship.”
Markan subsided.
Iwo Hurst said into the silence that followed, “Assuming you get the ship, you will need a linesman.”
Rossi could see what he was doing. He would have done it himself. Pull the attention back to the things that were important to you, and all Hurst wanted was the Eleven.
In his dreams.
“Allowing Ean Lambert near a ship with lines is tantamount to inviting disaster,” Hurst said. “Who knows what damage he might do.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that six months ago,” Orsaya said. “When you sent all your linesmen off to the confluence and left Lambert as the only one available to fix the higher-level lines. Think of the damage he might have done to those ships.”
At least half the people in the room moved uneasily at that. Even Rossi would have done so except he’d heard it all before.
The Centauran admiral said, “We’ve had ships repaired by Lambert. Our captains are more than happy with the results. So much so that they’re demanding Lambert now. More people should sing to the lines, I say.”
Iwo Hurst didn’t, quite, move away. “Anything Lambert did would have been accidental. I’m sure he had no idea what he was doing or how.”
From
where Rossi had been, it had looked as if Lambert knew exactly what he was doing.
The awkward silence that followed that was broken by Wendell. “You said Galenos made a deal with the media ships. What was the deal?”
Markan gave him a sharp look. “How is that relevant to what we are discussing here?”
“Maybe we’re all getting tired,” the admiral who’d first mentioned the media said. “I know I am. I’m sure we’ll get back on track after some food, maybe a drink.”
Orsaya and Markan looked as if they could go for hours more, but half the room was already standing. “Excellent idea,” the Centauran admiral agreed.
Rossi followed Orsaya and Wendell into the restrooms. He was more exhausted than if he’d spent a day fixing particularly bad lines.
“You said they made you use the comms,” Orsaya said to him, as she washed her hands. “That you managed to do part of what Lambert can do.”
“Sweetheart, don’t think I want to do what Lambert does.” But a traitorous part of him did. The ability to use the lines rather than just repair them. It made his heart beat as fast as the confluence did. “Lambert has no idea what he is doing, and the whole thing is likely to fall on top of him and whoever travels with him. One day, your enemy, Lady Lyan, will be just another corpse in stasis, people visiting her in a museum just like they do to the Balao.”
“The people aren’t in the museum,” Orsaya said repressively. “They’re in labs being carved up. Or rather”—she finished drying her hands—“trying to be carved up, because no one has yet managed to circumvent whatever stasis field surrounds them enough to do it. No one knows if they’re even dead yet.”
Wendell made a sound like he wanted to be sick, and to be honest, the thought turned Rossi’s stomach, too, but he wasn’t squeamish.
He looked at Wendell. He was young for a captain, and that reaction—along with the white skin under the bad dye job—didn’t fit what Rossi had heard about Gate Union’s up-and-coming finest. “No stomach for it, Captain?” he asked, maliciously. It was nice to be able to put someone down. It made him feel more normal.
Linesman Page 28