Alliance, page 13
part #2 of Linesman Series
“She tried to kill you.” It was a feeble protest.
Ean stood up. “It was nice to see you again, Rigel,” even though it hadn’t been. He waited for Kaelea and Radko to let him out. For a moment he thought Kaelea wasn’t going to move, but she did, after an obvious bump from Radko.
“It was good to talk to you again, Kaelea. Maybe one day when you’re mending lines close by you could call me, and we’ll meet.”
With a war on, and her on one side and him on the other, that was unlikely.
Kaelea’s gaze stopped at Radko, slid past. “I’d like that.” She sat down again. Fergus moved from his place beside Paretsky to slide in beside Kaelea.
Ean hesitated, not sure whether to wait for Fergus or not. Radko pushed him on. “Let’s go somewhere quiet,” she said. Ean looked back as they walked away. Fergus was talking again to Paretsky and Rigel. He said something that made them laugh. Kaelea was watching Ean.
He half smiled at her.
“Your girlfriend?” Radko asked.
“No.” Few linesmen had regular partners. “I slept with her occasionally.” He didn’t know if Radko had a partner. Would it be rude to ask?
Did he really want to know?
The dark-haired stranger followed them out.
“Do you see the man who was over near the blue-haired woman?” Ean asked.
“I do. Keep walking. Act as if you haven’t seen him.”
That was hard to do when he wanted to keep checking over his shoulder.
“He’s got a knife.”
“I’m betting he’s got more than one,” Radko said, grimly. “Sing my comms open to Bhaksir, Craik, and Sale.”
“Sale’s on the Eleven,” but Ean sang line five.
Sale wasn’t on ship. Ean could hear that her line was almost as close as Bhaksir’s was.
“What do you want me to tell them?”
“Nothing,” Radko said. “I want the channel open.”
It was open. He could hear bar noises from Bhaksir’s comms.
“A whole team left the bar after you did,” Bhaksir said. “Following you. It might be coincidence.” She didn’t sound as if she thought it coincidence. “Turn left at the next corner. See if he follows.”
Radko turned left.
This street was narrower and quieter, but there was still a sprinkling of pedestrians.
“They turned, too,” Bhaksir said. She sounded as if she had started running. “Whatever you do, Radko, don’t turn left again. The next four streets along are dead ends.”
“Understood,” Radko said.
“We’re thirty seconds away.”
There was a rush of footsteps behind them. Ean thought it was Bhaksir until the black-haired man grabbed his arm.
He tried to pull away.
Radko chopped down on the other man’s wrist, hard enough to jar Ean’s arm.
The attacker swung around to her instead.
Two more men came in to help the first. Ean bumped one out of the way. It was like hitting a wall.
Radko’s knee connected with the black-haired man’s crotch.
“Bitch.” Although it was more of a wheeze than anything.
Thirty seconds till Bhaksir arrived. More attackers converged. How many were there? A whole team, Bhaksir had said.
Ean punched one of them. A feeble punch, but it felt as if he’d broken his hand. He bumped the attacker out of the way instead and tackled the second one.
Another man wrapped an arm around Ean’s neck and jerked him backward. Radko kicked Ean’s captor and punched another at the same time.
This was the longest thirty seconds outside of the void.
Passersby stopped to gawk. One passerby reached out and tripped up another attacker. The attacker turned on the rescuer.
“Thanks,” Ean gasped, “but don’t get involved.”
Bhaksir thundered around the corner then, and made straight for Ean’s rescuer.
Ean stepped in front of her. “No, no. He’s on our side.” He pushed the rescuer away. “I told you. Don’t help.”
Bhaksir kicked at the person who’d tried to strangle Ean. He went down, and stayed down. “Stay out of this, civilian.”
The civilian backed away, to Ean’s relief, but Ean didn’t have time to be relieved for long for the black-haired man grabbed him again.
Ean tried Radko’s trick, but Radko was there before him, punching the black-haired man away.
Two attackers converged on Radko, one high. She ducked away from him, and Ean used the bulk of his own body to bump the other one away.
“We’re going to have to teach you to fight,” Radko said.
Ean saw a flash of ochre and brown behind Radko.
The flick knife.
Desperation gave him strength and speed. He charged, knocked the flick knife away from Radko’s back, and pushed down. Into the dark-haired man’s thigh.
Ean pushed harder.
The dark-haired man howled.
Bright blood spurted.
Ean stepped back, shaking.
Nobody moved.
Ean became aware that Craik’s team, and Sale, had arrived.
“Anyone else want to try with knives?” Sale asked. There was a member of Craik’s team behind each attacker, pressing a weapon into his or her back.
“These are needle guns, incidentally. Feel the spikes.”
Based on the careful way they moved, they recognized the weapons.
“Radko,” Sale said, and gestured at the blood.
Radko knelt beside the black-haired man and took a mini medikit out of a pocket on her belt. “Keep still,” she told him. “Or you’ll bleed to death.”
Ean stepped back to give them room. Stepped back farther as Bhaksir’s team moved in with the plastic handcuff ties. He found himself next to the stranger who had tried to help. The man was wiping his hand, as if some of the blood from the man Ean had stabbed had spurted that far.
Ean forced away guilt. “Thank you for helping.”
The stranger smiled. “It was educational. Two teams instantly at your disposal.”
Was he being funny?
“How did you know it was two teams?” He was probably a military man, off duty, trained to respond like Sale and the others were. “Which fleet are you from?” Sale or Radko might put in a good word for his assistance.
He glanced back at Radko, and was surprised to realize he’d moved farther away than he’d meant to. He stepped toward safety.
Only to find something pressed against his stomach.
He looked down. Ochre and brown, spattered with the red-brown of drying blood.
THIRTEEN
EAN LAMBERT
“WE BOTH KNOW what this is,” the stranger said quietly. “I know how to use it. And we both know the end result. Don’t draw their attention. Don’t do anything stupid. Move back slowly.”
Ean moved back slowly. “Are you going to kill me?”
“If I wanted to do that, you’d be long dead by now.”
Which was a relief although why did everyone want hostages nowadays. First Fergus, now him.
Ean’s comms was still open. They heard Sale’s call to Abram—although hopefully this man didn’t realize she was calling Abram.
“Turn it off,” the stranger said.
Ean hadn’t turned a comms off by hand for so long he fumbled doing it.
“If you try to warn them, I will kill you.”
They backed around the corner. A left corner.
The relief that flooded Ean made him shake. Bhaksir had said these were dead ends. This man couldn’t take him anywhere except back the way they had come.
“Give me your comms.”
Ean handed it over.
His captor tossed it away.
“What do you want with me?”
Their alley was little more than a court, with a building on both sides and one at the end. There were doors in each of the buildings. His captor chose the one on the left.
“Ean.” Radko’s voice. “Stay silent,” his captor warned, and tried the door. The door was locked.
Shades of Fergus’s race through the Gruen. It was a pity these doors weren’t line controlled. Ean could have opened it to let the other man through, then sung it shut. Or the other way around.
“Ean.” Voices, coming closer.
Ean tensed, ready. As soon as Radko and the others came round the corner, he would push this man—flick knife and all—and run.
His captor raised his knife, as if he’d realized what Ean was thinking.
Ean stepped back involuntarily.
The other man used the blade to push a wad of something between the door and the handle. He closed the blade, then released it again, quickly.
There was a quiet whumph. The door swung open.
“Ean.” Radko and Bhaksir came around the corner.
Ean’s captor shoved him inside the door and pushed it shut behind them. “Run.”
Ean tried to trip him.
The civilian recovered midtrip and scissored his legs to trip Ean instead. “I want you alive, but you don’t have to be whole. I’ll break your legs and carry you if you get too clever.”
He looked as if he meant it. Ean considered it momentarily. It would slow them down long enough for Radko and Bhaksir to reach them.
Maybe.
The civilian hauled Ean up.
They stopped at the lift. Ean’s captor reached in, pressed three buttons, and stepped out again. “Move,” he said to Ean, and they kept running, past the lift, onto the stairs.
They went down.
“What do you want with me?” Ean asked as he stumbled and regained his balance.
“Shut up and keep moving.”
The civilian pushed Ean in front of him. “Move faster, or you may end up at the bottom in more than one piece.”
It couldn’t be far down. They had been at ground level. Ean ran, focused on where he put his feet. His captor pushed him to move faster. How were Radko and Bhaksir going to find him? They would have followed the lift.
“Stop.” His captor pushed the knife toward him. Ean stopped, hands on his knees, breathing deep. He was fitter than he had been months ago, but if this man thought he wasn’t, so much the better. As he waited, he listened for lines—any lines that might be around to help.
The building was old, preline. There was nothing he could use.
Or was there? One line. The other man’s comms. He pulled in his breath to sing.
Another whump, and a lighter patch appeared where a door had been.
“Out.” The civilian pushed Ean out.
He stepped onto a ledge and found the barracks spread far below him. Ean grabbed at the railing in front of him, which creaked, and moved.
The civilian grabbed him away. “I didn’t bring you this far just to have you fall down a cliff.
“We’re better back inside.”
“With your friends. I don’t think so.” He pushed Ean to the left. “Save your breath. You’ll need it.”
Speaking of breath. Ean kept one hand against the wall as he made his way carefully along the path cut into the cliff. Just a tiny song, to the line that was close. “Open a channel to Radko’s comms,” only he didn’t have time to find Radko’s line without the ship as an intermediary. He extended the song to include all ships on both fleets, in case his signal wasn’t getting through. Surely someone would be listening and understand what he was trying to do.
“Are you singing?”
“I do it when I’m nervous.” What information could he pass through that would help Radko? “Anyone would be nervous walking along the side of a cliff like this.”
Now that he was getting used to it, he could see they were on a walkway between two sets of the steep stairs that soldiers climbed to get to the plateau that housed the Night Owl and other bars. In fact, they were coming close to one set of stairs now. It was blocked by a large iron gate.
That wouldn’t stop this civilian for long.
“What happens when you run out of explosive to unlock gates?” Radko was used to interpreting for him. She might understand what he was trying to say.
“Do you ever shut up?”
He thought about saying, “Not often,” but that would probably antagonize the other man. Instead, he waited while the other man pushed explosive into the lock and raised his voice around when the whump would come.
“Is anyone listening?”
“Listen,” and Ean found the knife pressed against his stomach. “One more word—or note—out of you, and you’ll find this through your side. It won’t kill you straightaway, mind. You’ll have plenty of time to do what I want first.”
What did he want him to do? The distraction had come at the worst possible time, for Ean had missed any replies from line five, if there were any.
He didn’t have time for any more singing, for the civilian forced him down the steps at a run, pushing other stair climbers out of the way.
“Sorry,” Ean gasped, to one person he nearly knocked over.
They were two flights from the bottom when Ean saw guards in gray, running from the barracks. Three, four teams of them.
They’d heard him.
The civilian slowed.
There were shouts from above. The civilian glanced back. “Your friends found us quickly.” It was almost conversational. Like it had been earlier, when he’d commented on Ean’s having two teams come to rescue him. “So you have a trace.”
A line was as good as a trace any day. If Ean had the breath, he’d have sung his thanks to the line five that had helped him.
The civilian took out his comms and punched in a code. “I need an out,” he said. “Give me—” Ean only noticed the pause because he was used to it from Abram and Michelle and Helmo. This man was used to making quick decisions. “Attack on the New Alliance parliament building. And another one on the barracks.”
Next moment, the whoop, whoop of the attack alarm sounded. From the loudspeakers on the ground; from the comms of every soldier around them.
“You’re not seriously going to attack?” Ean asked.
Every soldier around them turned to run downstairs.
The civilian grinned. “What do you think?” He took hold of Ean’s arm lightly. “Keep up, or you’ll get trampled. No one will stop for you.”
They joined the flood of people running downstairs.
Running. He was glad for the other man’s grip on his arm, because he was right, no one would stop if he fell.
Radko would probably make him run up and down stairs after this.
The gray uniforms below him made a wedge that the people coming downstairs flowed past. They stopped every Lancastrian they could, but they missed many.
The civilian pulled Ean off to one side, and they streamed past in a crowd that was mostly Aratogan camouflage brown and Balian blue, while the Lancastrians stopped three of their own from the center of the crowd.
Crowds could be used by both sides, and he’d have to move fast, or otherwise the civilian would separate him from this particular crowd.
Ean stopped so suddenly that the civilian almost lost his grip. It was enough. Ean wrenched free and darted into the crowd of soldiers heading toward the barracks.
Would Radko still be looking for him?
He wasted precious breath to sing to the fives around him, to open the channel to Radko as he had before. “Here. Don’t follow the other one anymore.”
He caught a glimpse of civilian clothing and put on a spurt.
The stranger would expect him to make for the safety of the Lancian soldiers. Or the safety of the biggest group.
Instead, he found a group of Balian soldiers and pushed into the middle of them, nearly tripping himself as he did so.
One of the Balians grabbed him. “You’re heading the wrong way, soldier. Lancia’s barracks are over there.”
“Admiral Katida,” Ean gasped. He didn’t have enough breath left to explain.
The civilian had disappeared, and the Balian barracks was coming into sight.
The Balian looked at him and didn’t loosen his hold. Fair enough, if it got him to talk to Katida.
If Ean had more breath, he’d have sung the comms around him open. He didn’t.
They were three steps away from the gate when someone grabbed Ean’s shoulder.
He squawked and tried to pull away, then realized that person was talking to him. “Ean.”
“Radko. I have never been so glad to see anyone in my life.”
* * *
“WE identified most of them,” Abram Galenos said at the hastily convened meeting afterward. Abram, Katida, and Orsaya were there, along with Ean, Radko, Sale, and Bhaksir. Michelle wasn’t. She was at one of her interminable functions. She wouldn’t have come anyway. This was a military meeting.
“Their leader—the man Ean stabbed—is Mendez. He’s ex–Roscracian military. He was kicked out, suspected of selling military secrets to anyone who would pay. The people with him were all ex–Roscracian military, too.
“We’ve footage from the Night Owl. We know that the woman who tipped Mendez off spent time talking to Randella Abbey. If we can’t pick her up, we’ll pick Abbey up.”
Something in the grim way the other two admirals nodded made Ean shiver.
“They must know he’d be protected,” Katida said.
“Linesmen don’t normally need protection,” Abram said. “Maybe they thought it would be an easy snatch. They know now, and have to be wondering why.” He looked at Orsaya. “They may try to snatch Rossi next.”
“It’s covered.”
“Make it visible,” Abram said. “So they think we are simply protecting the higher-level linesmen.”
“I hear you,” Orsaya said.
“Maybe you should—” Ean stopped. If they didn’t draw attention to the fact that Hernandez was a ten, too, she’d be safe.
