Linesman

by S. K. Dunstall

  He was clever all right, for Rossi knew as well as Gann and Orsaya did that Markan had not known about the ship. But anything Markan said now would sound like a lie. Rossi didn’t plan on being alone in a room with Markan and Gann in the near future. Markan would likely kill them both and place the weapon he’d used to do it in Rossi’s hand to make it look like Rossi had murdered Gann.

  “But where is this ship?” the councilor insisted.

  Gann turned to look at him. “It’s at the confluence, of course. It has been here for six months.”

  Rossi didn’t plan on being around when Orsaya failed to get her ship either.

  When the noise had died down enough to hear, Orsaya took the microphone. “When Rebekah Grimes returned from working with the Alliance, she told us the alien ship was like the confluence.”

  She hadn’t told them in as many words, and she definitely hadn’t said the confluence was a ship. She had remarked on the similarities.

  “Linesman Rossi confirmed it after he’d been on the Eleven.”

  He wanted to say it was a lie. He hadn’t confirmed anything. But while Markan might have thought about killing Ahmed Gann, Admiral Orsaya wouldn’t have any scruples. If Rossi got in her way, she would kill him.

  “You forget one thing.” Until now, Rossi hadn’t even realized Iwo Hurst was in the chamber, but here he was, large as life and sitting only two seats away from the Centauran admiral. “Our linesmen have been at the confluence for six months. Six months. And none of them have managed to produce this ship for you.”

  Orsaya gave a slow smile, and it was obvious to Rossi that Hurst had said exactly what she’d wanted him to say. “But Cartel Master Hurst, not all the linesmen have been at the confluence. And the only linesman who wasn’t, managed to produce—and control—the Eleven for the Alliance.”

  “Linesman Lambert,” the Centauran admiral said.

  Orsaya nodded at him. “Admiral Ravenstone is correct. We have interviewed Linesmen Rossi and Grimes and everyone who was returned in the recent treaty. All of them say that Lambert was instrumental in retrieving the ship and in controlling it.”

  No one had ever said Lambert had retrieved the ship. According to Rebekah, they’d found it floating in space. Orsaya was as good with her lies as Gann was.

  “I, too, would like to make a motion to the council,” Ahmed Gann said. “I would like to propose that as an alternative to attacking the Alliance right now, we allow Admiral Orsaya the freedom to continue retrieving the second alien ship unhindered.” The “unhindered” was emphasized, and he glanced at Markan as he said it.

  “I second that motion,” the Yaolin councilor said.

  “I second Roscracia’s motion,” a councilor in a white sash countered.

  The Roscracian motion failed. The Nova Tahitian motion was passed.

  Beside Rossi, Wendell relaxed. “I’m going back to the ship. Be ready to leave at a moment’s notice,” and he strode out of the council chamber.

  • • •

  THEY departed as soon as Orsaya came out of the council session and signed the orders.

  Wendell, his hair cropped close to his head and now sprayed an appalling green with the red still showing through on the roots, was dressed as the captain of a supply ship. “You know what to do?”

  “Damage a line.” It made his heart flutter a little because linesmen didn’t damage lines.

  “Line nine or line ten. Nothing less. It has to be a line they need to get through the void, and it has to be one they’ll send Lambert to fix.”

  “Understood.” He wasn’t an imbecile.

  “You have half an hour to do it. That’s how long it will take to unload supplies. You must be back on the supply ship by then. Galenos will suspect something if it takes longer.”

  Rossi had no intention of returning to the supply ship. “Understood.”

  “Right.” Wendell turned to his crew. Six of them wore casual clothes similar to that of Wendell’s although they looked much better turned out in theirs. Presumably the rest of the fake supply crew.

  Even Rossi was dressed in casual clothes, the first time he’d been out of Rickenback colors since he was five years old. He told himself it didn’t matter because he was never going to wear Rickenback colors again, but every time he caught a glimpse of his sleeve, or the leg of his trousers, it made him feel uneasy, off-balance.

  Everything would be fine when he got back to line eleven.

  Wendell frowned at his crew. “Can’t you look like workers?”

  “Yes, sir.” They obediently ruffled up, but they still looked as if they’d stepped off a modeling vid. There was something about soldiers, Rossi mused, the way they stood, the way they held themselves.

  Wendell waved an arm half in defeat, half mock disgust.

  “It’s a media ship, sweetheart,” Rossi said to him. “They probably expect their supply crew to come dressed for auditions.”

  “Maybe we should see if we can get one,” one of the uniformed women said. She pushed one cheek forward and held the pose. “How do you think I’d go?”

  “You won’t get an interview, Korta,” one of the casually dressed soldiers said. “You’re arriving in a supply box, remember.”

  “Enough,” Wendell said. He looked at the man standing to his left. By his pips and the logos on his pocket, he was the second-in-command and the navigator. “Have you gotten everything you need, Grayson?”

  Grayson nodded. “Just be ready to come and pick us up when we have our package.”

  Rossi didn’t ask what that meant. It didn’t concern him.

  • • •

  EVEN if he hadn’t felt the lines as they jumped, he would have known they had arrived by the way the Eleven filled his soul and made it hard to breathe. A distant eleven right now, but as the supply ship drew closer, the glory increased.

  He was home.

  He lay back and tried to breathe.

  Grayson and Korta hovered over him. “Oxygen, maybe,” Grayson said, while Wendell’s blotched white face receded and came forward behind them.

  “He’d better do his job. We’re at the media ship,” Wendell said. “Are you capable of moving?” to Rossi.

  Rossi didn’t reply, just stood up and followed them onto the shuttle.

  Grayson and the rest of the uniformed crew packed themselves into two container-sized supply boxes.

  “Unload us gently,” Korta admonished one of the casually dressed women.

  “You wish.”

  Korta made a rude sign and pulled the door closed behind her. Rossi heard the snick of a bolt locking into place from inside the container.

  The six casually dressed crew started to unload, taking extreme care with the two containers, despite what they had said.

  Wendell steered Rossi along the corridor.

  “Where are we going?” Rossi asked. How soon could he break away?

  “Engineering.” Wendell led the way with sure steps that said he’d either been on a ship like this before or he’d memorized the specs. “You had better be able to do this.”

  He paused at the door. Rossi thought Wendell was giving him time to recover, for the uneven beat of the Eleven was taking his breath away. Instead, he crowded close into Rossi’s space—the rudest thing a spacer could do—and said quietly, “Other people can be as obsessed as you are, Jordan Rossi. I want my ship back. This is how I get it.” He stepped back. “Not to mention, the lives of my crew depend on your doing this properly.”

  Rossi straightened his clothes though they didn’t need straightening. Message understood. To Wendell, he was dispensable if he didn’t deliver, and Orsaya wasn’t here to override that. He straightened his shoulders, too, as he followed the other man into the Engineering area.

  Inside, the lines of the ship were overwhelming. Rossi staggered, inadvertently falling aga
inst his new archenemy, Wendell. This was a simple thirty-people cruiser. The lines shouldn’t be this strong. What had Lambert done to him while they’d been on the Eleven that made him feel the lines this way?

  Lines one to six were fine, but lines seven and up were terrible. Wendell could have waited, and the lines would break themselves within six months.

  Wendell gave Rossi a sharp glance but didn’t say anything. “Are you Bonna?” he asked the sole engineer in the room.

  “Who’s asking?” He was just a kid, fresh-faced, with grease under his fingernails and smeared over his coveralls, which fit about as well as Wendell’s did.

  Rossi straightened his own clothes again. It was like an itch you couldn’t scratch.

  “We hear you buy things.”

  Bonna looked wary. “Who told you that?” He glanced from Wendell to Rossi and back to Wendell again.

  Wendell scratched his head. Some of the green powder flaked off onto his shoulders. Rossi tried not to shudder.

  “A mutual friend.” Wendell glanced sharply at Rossi. His message couldn’t have been clearer. Get to work.

  Rossi didn’t advertise to the world what he was doing, not like Lambert did, so he watched while Wendell brought something out from under his jacket, concentrating carefully on separating the lines.

  His concentration faltered when he saw what Wendell placed on the bench.

  A disruptor.

  Bonna leaned forward to look at it. “Where’s the power pack?”

  It didn’t look to be missing anything so far as Rossi could see.

  “I’m not stupid,” Wendell said. He glanced again at Rossi. “He’s got the power pack. After you give us the money.”

  Wendell had better not pull him into this.

  Rossi gently teased the lines apart. Whoever had left the higher lines on this ship in such a mess should face a disruptor themselves. Still, the lower lines were clean. Someone had mended them recently. Galenos had probably sent one of his own engineers in. It wasn’t this engineer, for sure, because he didn’t have a solitary bar on his coveralls.

  Bonna rubbed his nose and pursed his lips. “Weapon like this,” he said. “Easy to trace.”

  “Extra easy,” Wendell agreed, and pointed to something on the holster. “Note the markings. This is a new model. First of its kind.”

  Bonna nodded. “How much?”

  “It’s 350K.”

  “Daylight robbery.”

  “A new one would cost twice that.”

  More like ten times that, but if Wendell truly had been selling stolen goods, he couldn’t ask anywhere near the real value.

  “I’m not paying half price for something that’s so easily traceable. Especially when I can’t sell it for any more than that.”

  Rossi closed his eyes and let them haggle.

  Fixing lines took a combination of native talent and mental skills, all honed with thousands of hours of practice. A good linesman could feel the energy exuded by a line, could sense whether it was damaged, and could use all those hours he’d spent training to push the line back into place. Beginners often accidentally pushed the lines out of shape. If they weren’t stopped in time, they even broke the line. Rossi had never broken a line, and the last time he’d pushed one the wrong way, he’d been ten years old.

  Sweat beaded his forehead. He slowly pushed line ten away from what it should be. The very act brought acid to his stomach and gave him heartburn.

  He couldn’t do it.

  Bonna touched his arm. “Are you okay?”

  In his exposed state, the touch was like a jolt of electricity. Rossi pushed him away. “Don’t touch me,” and realized that he’d pushed the line away, too.

  Alarms went off on every board.

  Rossi scrambled to push the lines back into place.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit.” Bonna pressed ACKNOWLEDGE buttons, and pressed them again when the alarms came straight back on.

  Wendell pressed the disruptor against Bonna’s chest. “What did you do?”

  He looked as if the alarms had given him a fright, and he had automatically grabbed the closest weapon. He should have known better. If Rossi had succeeded in damaging a line, the alarms would have gone off anyway.

  “Shit.” Then Bonna realized what he was holding. He pushed it away. “No power pack, remember.” He frantically pressed acknowledgments across the board again.

  “Is this how you get out of paying us?”

  “What?”

  Wendell was line-raving crazy.

  “Of course it’s not.”

  “Give me 50K.”

  “Geez,” Bonna said. “You must want that money bad.”

  “I want it now.”

  “Okay. Here’s 50K.” Bonna slammed his card down on the reader. “You are one crazy sumbitch.”

  Wendell checked the credits. Nodded. “Give him the power pack,” he ordered Rossi.

  Rossi had no idea what Wendell wanted him to do. “If you—”

  Bonna cleared the alarms again.

  “It’s in your right pocket,” Wendell said, and it was.

  It hadn’t been there when Rossi had boarded the supply shuttle. He handed it over.

  Bonna snatched it out of his hands. By the time they exited, the disruptor had disappeared from the bench top.

  Rossi stopped halfway down the hallway. “You are insane. You knew the alarms would go off. Why panic now?”

  “So he didn’t realize it was us.” Wendell smiled and ran his hands through his hair. More green powder flaked off. He looked extraordinarily pleased with himself. “That went well. He won’t even mention we were there. Would you?”

  Well, no, not if he’d just bought a disruptor from them. An obviously illegal disruptor.

  “And giving him a weapon of that magnitude—”

  “Relax,” Wendell said. “The power pack doesn’t work.”

  “He’s an engineer. He can get another power pack.”

  “The weapon is tagged.” Wendell smiled again. “We want to catch who he sells this stuff to.”

  Certifiably crazy.

  “Does Orsaya know you have little side projects like this?”

  “Relax.” Wendell started moving again. “It’s all part of the preparation. We needed an excuse if we got caught. Keep moving, the others will have almost finished unloading by now.”

  Rossi stayed where he was and shook his head. He was right where he needed to be.

  Wendell sighed. “Orsaya warned me about this.” He took out a blaster and fired.

  Rossi felt the familiar sting of a blaster set to stun.

  THIRTY-TWO

  EAN LAMBERT

  EAN WAS ENJOYING the fresher when the line on the Galactic News ship went. In his father’s apartment on Lancia, the fresher had been on a one-minute cycle, and the water had been almost cold and rationed, so that if his father chose to use the fresher that day, then Ean couldn’t. One of the best things about becoming a linesman was his discovery of real freshers, where the water was hot, and you could stay until you were clean and warm, and longer if no one complained. Where you could cleanse five times a day if you wished.

  He scrambled out and just remembered to pull on some clothes before he went running down to the central office. Michelle was the only one there, going over figures on one of the screens.

  Ean wiped away a trickle of water that chose that moment to drip down his face. “I need to get to the Galactic News ship.”

  Abram had sent Engineer Tai over to mend the lower lines as soon as the contract had been signed, but Ean still hadn’t been across to fix the higher lines. It was planned—in Ean’s suddenly seemingly full schedule—for three days hence.

  “Lines?” Michelle was already reaching for the comms as Ean nodded.

  It beeped before she could get to i
t. Abram.

  “Is Ean there?”

  It was Michelle’s turn to nod.

  “Engineer Bonna from the Galactic News ship called. They’ve a problem with their lines. He’s blaming the work we did the other day.”

  Michelle raised an eyebrow at Ean.

  “It’s not the lower lines,” Ean said. “They’re fine.”

  He sang softly to line eleven, and through that to the lines on the media ship. Line ten was worst, but all the higher lines were bad.

  “Line ten mostly.”

  “Of course it would be.” Abram sighed. “You can’t fix it from here?”

  “I—” He didn’t know. He tried, but he wasn’t close enough. “I think I could if I were in the void.” There wasn’t any distance in the void.

  Abram tapped eleven-time on the console where he was. Ean heard it through the lines and through the comms. “It would be an interesting experiment, but for the moment I think we’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”

  He clicked off, and, through the lines, Ean heard him call, “Sale. I want your team to take Ean over to the Galactic News ship. He needs to fix the lines. Take Radko with you.”

  Michelle made them all tea. “Sit with me.” She patted the seat beside her. “It takes time to organize a shuttle.”

  Ean couldn’t sit. He prowled restlessly. “I should have fixed the lines like I promised I would. Then this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “You can’t be everything to everyone, Ean. You have to accept that all you can do is what you can do.”

  It sounded like something she told herself. Ean looked at her and saw sadness in her face. “But what if you know you should have done something and didn’t?”

  “You don’t live in what might have happened, Ean, you live with what you can control. Always look forward, not back.”

  It sounded like the Yu house motto. Always look forward.

  When Abram arrived, he blew on his tea, even though it was probably already cold by now, and said, “I want you to take Fergus Burns with you. I want you to assess his lines.”