Alliance, page 14
part #2 of Linesman Series
They all looked up as Fergus came in. He’d changed out of his House of Rickenback uniform.
“We had to wait for the all clear,” he said. “Did Gate Union really attack us?”
Sale shook her head. “Someone tried to snatch Ean and used that as a diversion.”
“Gate Union?”
“Why would they bother?” Ean asked. “Rigel and Paretsky think I’ll be back with Rigel soon. I’d be in Gate Union territory then.”
Abram tapped the table eleven-time. “Gate Union supports House of Sandhurst, and Iwo Hurst wants to be Grand Master. I can’t see them supporting Paretsky.”
“If Markan heard that Rigel and Paretsky planned to meet Ean, he might take advantage of the fact that Ean would be in the open, ready to snatch,” Orsaya said. She looked at the newscast replaying in silence on the wall. Panicked civilians packing the spaceport. Soldiers marching the streets. “Except I expected more from him.”
How did you define more? Any way you looked at it, Ean’s would-be captor had successfully stirred up everyone on Haladea III. They’d declared a state of emergency for tonight because of the panic. Those who hadn’t tried to leave on the first shuttle they could get—shuttles were locked down now—had tried to raid the supermarkets. Others had barricaded themselves in their buildings. Even others had gone to the media and demanded the newly formed government do something about the attack.
What did they expect? There was a war on.
Abram’s comms chimed. A text message. He thumbed it open and glanced at the message that came up. He forwarded it on to all of them in the room.
Mendez and companions escaped while being transferred to main jail. External assistance. Suspect military intervention.
There was a momentary silence.
“Was Rigel involved?” Abram asked eventually.
Ean shook his head. Radko shook hers.
“I don’t think Rigel was part of whatever Mendez did,” Ean said. Rigel had been . . . Rigel. “If anyone was making plans, it would be Paretsky.”
“Paretsky left not long after you did,” Fergus said. “I stayed to talk with Rigel. I can’t work out if he sees a way to get back his ten, or if they’ve forced him into it.”
Probably both. Rigel was like that. You could bully him, but he was always looking out for opportunities at the same time.
“But they can’t make me go back,” Ean said. Could they? Vega would be happy. Finally rid of him.
“No, Ean,” Abram said.
Orsaya said, “Even if they try, we’re at war. We’d just ignore them.”
“I don’t think this is aimed at you, Ean,” Fergus said. “Paretsky sees this as an opportunity to get back his old position. He thinks he can’t lose. He’s already planning to call Leo Rickenback to sort it out. If Rigel gets you back, then Paretsky wins because ‘he’ negotiated it. If you stay here, then Leo looks incompetent because he’s not doing his job. Paretsky and Rigel both know you’ll stay here.” Fergus ran his hands through his hair. Worried, Ean thought, for his old boss. “There’s already a backlash against selling the higher-level contracts.”
It was the Grand Master’s job to sort out line disputes, but what if you weren’t technically under the auspices of the cartel system anymore? Maybe Ean should make his own call to Rickenback.
* * *
AFTERWARD, Abram walked back to their transport with Ean. Bhaksir’s team escorted them, four in front, four behind, and Radko in the middle with Abram and Ean.
“Everything’s locked down, so we can’t send you back to the Lancastrian Princess tonight. We’ve put you in the most secure barracks we have.” Abram smiled. “Which coincidentally happens to be the same barracks we’re placing the Eleven’s crew in as they arrive.”
“All of them?”
He understood what Ean was asking. “Full linesmen and singles.”
Ean’s mouth was dry at the thought of it.
Abram said to Bhaksir, “We’ll have to send mixed guards out to the barracks with you. A full contingent of Lancians will be out of place.”
Bhaksir nodded. “How many of us?”
“Two from your team, in uniform. Two from Sale’s.” Who weren’t in uniform. “They can be off duty. I’ll ask Katida and Orsaya to send some along as well.”
They walked in silence for a while. It was the first time he’d had to talk with Abram since he’d moved on world. Ean wanted to tell Abram that Michelle was missing him and ask if he would call her, but it didn’t seem appropriate, not with a whole team listening in.
“Admiral MacClennan has been seconded to the Division for Alien Technology and Affairs,” Abram said, as they turned into a larger corridor. At this time of the night, it was as empty as the last one. Or maybe Abram had made sure it was. “He’ll be working with you and Captain Kari Wang to help her settle onto the ship.”
“Do you trust him?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t given us any reason not to, but Nova Tahiti blindsided us on this.” Abram shrugged. “Maybe they simply saw an opportunity.”
Or they could be trying to oust Lancia as the main power in the New Alliance. Ean had to remind himself that six months ago he would have been delighted to see that happen. He glanced back at Radko. Now he had a shipful of people who’d be devastated if Lancia was ousted. People he cared about.
Life had been simple once. Him, the cartel house, and the lines.
He looked around the gray corridors they were moving through. The only strong lines close were the twos, threes, and fives. He wanted to be back on ship with full sets of lines. He realized he’d stopped, and the others had all stopped, too, waiting for him.
“I think you should install a full set of lines here,” he told Abram.
Abram smiled faintly. “That suggestion is never going to come from me, and I suggest it never comes from you either.”
“Why not?”
“Because we both know what you can do with a full set of lines.” Abram started moving again.
“What does that mean?” Ean asked Radko, as the two of them followed.
“It means he knows what you can do with a full set of lines.”
What sort of answer was that?
FOURTEEN
STELLAN VILHJALMSSON
WHEN MARKAN CALLED, Stellan had to use iris, fingerprint and DNA identification to take the call. Markan was in real time, so he was somewhere in the Haladean sector.
“They’re taking Lambert to the barracks at Nordia.”
Nordia was a secondary barracks on the north edge of the city.
Stellan scraped his tongue against the bottom of his top teeth. He hated the bitter taste of the chemicals on the DNA swab. “So I’m not going anywhere near Nordia then.” Why had Markan called in the middle of a job? He usually left Stellan alone to work.
“What? So you have me expend resources and risk my people just so you can say you’re not going now.”
“I didn’t ask you to expend resources.” Was he telling Stellan what to do now? Jobs didn’t always work to plan; you allowed for that.
The look Markan gave him was strange. “Plus I object to expending resources on people who don’t matter. Why in the lines didn’t you use trained soldiers rather than a bunch of rejects we kicked out of the fleet?”
It was Stellan’s turn to give Markan a strange look. “Why did you call, Markan?”
“Why? Because you demanded to know where they were going to put Lambert tonight. You made me risk half my covert-ops people getting your useless team out of prison. You should have used a real team.”
What was going on?
“Talk to me, Markan. Don’t get angry,” for that was usually Markan’s next emotion. “Tell me what happened.”
Markan spluttered. “Tell you—”
“Markan.”
“You tell me what happened.”
That would be the simplest. Stellan sat back. “Lambert has a trace, incidentally.” Maybe he could co-opt Randella Abbey to cut it out. Since she was here, and she knew who he was. “I don’t have a team, useless or not. I’m working alone.”
“What about—?”
“Wait. I haven’t finished,” Stellan said. “I followed Lambert out of the Night Owl. He and his girlfriend”—who wasn’t a girlfriend, she was a bodyguard—“got about two blocks. Then they were attacked.”
“Are you telling me someone in the New Alliance is trying to kill him?”
Stellan shook his head. “They didn’t want to kill him. The ringleader was very handy with his knife. He could have stabbed Lambert anytime.”
“Then who?”
“If we want to talk to him, Markan, there’ll be others who want to as well. I’m sure you haven’t told anyone outside Roscracia your plan. Worry more that they used Roscracians to do it if that’s who you say they were. We could be being framed.”
Markan looked at the comms in his hand, which he’d used earlier to push the details of Lambert’s whereabouts through to Stellan.
“So you didn’t ask for this?”
“I haven’t gotten to the interesting part yet,” Stellan said. “He had two teams on call. They were there in thirty seconds.”
“Two teams?”
“And another four on call at the barracks.” He thought about the chase. “I grabbed Lambert while the Lancastrians were mopping up. They were after him in half a minute.”
“They probably tracked his comms.”
“Teach your ancestor to hunt worms,” Stellan said. “The first thing I did was throw away his comms. Yet they knew exactly where we were at all times. And they called in soldiers to come around the other way to block us off. They have instant access to a lot of soldiers.”
If he hadn’t let Lambert go, and used the crowd to cover his own escape, he’d have been the one sitting in jail right now.
“So if you say you were working alone, explain this evening’s priority request to get your people out of jail.”
“The only priority request I put through tonight was the attack alert.”
“Someone used your code, and your name, and asked for an emergency op to get your people out before they were questioned.”
Stellan realized he was rubbing his hand. He was glad Markan couldn’t see him. Or register his heart rate, for the blood was pounding in his ears. Jobs could go to hell, but there had always been one absolute. Markan had his back, and he had Markan’s. Now someone had breached that.
“There wasn’t any request.” Someone had to have hacked Stellan’s account, used his codes to make the request look legitimate.
“Damn.” Markan checked his comms. “They’ll be long gone.”
Stellan had to find out who the blue-haired woman was. “I’ll get security vids from the Night Owl. I need you to identify a woman. Randella Abbey’s best work, or so she says. She’s military.” Abbey had told him that much.
“That crazy—” Markan was smart enough not to finish it. “I’ll get a list of people she’s treated.”
It would be a long list. “I’ll see what I can do from here.” Back to the real job at hand. “Markan, what aren’t you telling me about Lambert?”
Markan looked as if he had no idea what Stellan was talking about.
“He’s as closely guarded as Lady Lyan herself, yet I’d never heard of him before this job.”
“And I’d never heard of him until Orsaya risked everything to bring him out to Confluence Station.” He started to say something, stopped, rubbed his chin, then said it anyway. “Orsaya knew long before anyone else what was out there. She thought Lambert was the only one who could get the ship out.”
That high up the Gate Union admiralty you didn’t have to like the people you worked with, but you knew their strengths and weaknesses. Markan had never liked Jita Orsaya, but he had admired her work.
She had also been line obsessed.
“She owned linesman Rossi’s contract by then, so she’d probably tried to get the ship with him and found he couldn’t.”
That certainly wasn’t common knowledge. This was the most Markan had opened up about the whole fiasco that had led to the discovery of the Confluence fleet and the creation of the New Alliance. Stellan had heard parts of it, and ferreted out other parts, but Markan had never spoken about it.
“How long beforehand?”
Markan shrugged. “Who knows? She was in charge of the whole operation. She was supposed to be sharing information.”
And Markan always shared information, too. Stellan bit down the obvious retort.
“I’m sure she knew not long after Linesman Grimes arrived back. If Grimes mentioned it to her cartel master, Hurst didn’t mention it to me.”
“Line business.”
“Exactly. I’m sick of them and their damned line business.”
Stellan hoped again that the line was secure even though he knew it was. This sounding off was better somewhere private. He changed the subject.
“I’ll try to find another way to get close to Lambert.” Which would be more difficult than he had first anticipated. Plus he had to hold him long enough to get some answers. “Let me know when you find out who cracked the codes.”
“Speaking of which,” Markan said. “I’m sending through a new code now. Don’t give this one away.”
Stellan made a rude gesture, then checked the code. It had the same accesses as the previous one. “Thank you.”
FIFTEEN
EAN LAMBERT
THE TRIP TO the barracks site took half an hour. Radko and Ean wore Lancian uniforms. Hana, Ru Li, and Gossamer wore plain clothes. They were accompanied by two guards in Yaolin beige, two in Balian blue.
When they got there, they were greeted by Lancastrians on the desk. Why had Abram worried about a full Lancian crew? Everyone would think they worked here.
Then Ean walked into the rec room.
There were uniforms of every color from the New Alliance. The pale green of Eridanus, the mottled gold/green of Haladea, the gray of Lancia, the beige of Yaolin, the deeper beige of New Viking, the mottled purple-gray camouflage of Al Fawaris—which reminded Ean of the purple camouflage of Roscracia. Lots of colors. Lots of noise.
There were even people in casual clothes. Coming off leave or going on, Ean wasn’t sure. His own group fitted well here.
Radko pushed her way through to a table that had spare seats on one end. The noise level dropped as people stopped to study them, then rose again. One old soldier in an Aratogan uniform—he looked ready to retire—nodded at them and slid along the bench to talk.
“Are you just in?”
The pocket below his name—MAEL—where the lines would be, if he had them, was blank. This was a single-level linesman.
“Arrived on planet today,” Radko said. By now Ean was used to the misdirection. People heard what they expected to hear.
Hana and one of the Balians went to get drinks.
The girl who slipped into the seat beside Mael looked too young to be a soldier. She wore a Haladean uniform. “One,” pointing to Radko. “Two,” to Ean. “Three. Four,” to the Balians. “Five, six,” to Ru Li and Hana. “Seven, eight,” to the Yaolins. “Nine,” to Gossamer. “Where’s the other one?”
“Other one?”
“Matching pairs. Out here it’s like being on a generation ship. Two by two.”
Radko looked as mystified as Ean felt.
“Tinatin has a point,” Mael said. “They do bring us in pairs.” He looked around, then pointed to an Aratogan sitting with a Lancastrian and a Ruon. “That’s my double over there.”
His double was half his age, two-thirds his height, with group-leader markings on her shoulders. The Lancastrian and Ruon also had group-leader markings. Ean could see that they had bars below their names. At least four bars for each of them. They were linesmen and ranking soldiers.
“What?” Ru Li asked. “Like you’re bonded or something?” Even though he knew they weren’t. Ean never wanted to get into a lying contest with Ru Li. He would lose.
Mael’s snort turned into a laugh that was nearly a choke. “That one. She couldn’t bond to anything that isn’t metal and solder. She’s a machine.”
“A robot?” Ean asked. Maybe Mael meant she’d had prosthetics, like Captain Kari Wang. Although they didn’t say Kari Wang had prosthetics, they said they’d rebuilt her legs. Maybe she had metal bones.
“Sheesh,” Mael said, and Ean got the feeling if there had been less people around, Radko would have said, “Figuratively, not literally.”
Hana arrived back with foaming pots of something alcoholic. “You’ve got two choices here. Swill or no swill.”
Ean took his glass. “So which one’s this?”
“He’s a raw one,” Mael said, and everyone nodded. Ean supposed they were talking about him. He shrugged.
Hana held her glass up. “This, Ean, is swill. No swill is nonalcoholic.”
“This isn’t bad,” Mael said. “You should taste what passes as alcohol out on the rim. Although there’s some good stuff out there.”
One of his companions rolled her eyes. “You and your black fire,” she said.
Mael smacked lips. “One day I’ll get some, and you can taste it. It’s indescribable.” He took an appreciative sip of his own half-finished drink. “They have real bars here on Haladea III as well. Off duty, I can take you around some.”
“We’re going to every bar in the city,” Tinatin said.
Ru Li said, “At the rate they’re building, you might find it hard to keep up. Looks like a new bar being added every day.”
“Or more,” Mael said. “We went to the Outlook center last week. They had three more bars since the week before that, which is when it opened.”
Ean listened to them talk around him. It was harder than he’d expected to broach the subject of lines. Tinatin was a one. He could see the single bar below her name.
