Alliance, page 37
part #2 of Linesman Series
Rossi’s diagram was similar to Ean’s, except he knotted the ends of his lines, and he didn’t have the thick lines going to line eleven.
“What’s this?” Wendell pointed to the thicker line.
“Line eleven.” Eleven to seven, or seven to eleven, he wasn’t sure which.
“Which proves one thing,” Helmo said, and added, when everyone looked at him, “Lambert sees more lines than other linesmen.”
“He claims he hears them,” Rossi said.
Ean had never claimed he heard more lines than anyone else. Sure, he might hear them differently, but that didn’t mean he heard more of them. It was time they brought the conversation back to the topic of interest.
“We came out of the void. Rossi—” He stopped.
Kari Wang took over smoothly. “Rossi appeared to feel a lot of time had passed. Mael and Lambert didn’t seem to notice the time.”
“Except Mael’s teeth weren’t black anymore,” Ean said.
“How long since he’d drunk the black fire?”
“Just before he went into the void.”
“It takes a couple of hours for the black to wear off,” Helmo said. “More if you haven’t eaten or drunk anything with it.”
“No time passed,” Kari Wang said. “Or not obviously to me.”
“Or to us,” Helmo said.
“I checked the recordings.” Helmo pulled up the recording of his own ship bridge, of the Wendell bridge, and the Eleven. He played them side by side with a clock underneath, counting seconds in real time. He started where Ean gave Mael the black fire, and stopped when Radko was helping Ean off the floor. There were no noticeable pauses as there had been when Kari Wang had taken them into the void. “I can’t tell when you went in or came out of the void. Can you tell from the Eleven’s instruments?”
Kari Wang shook her head.
Even Ean couldn’t tell, not from a recording. He knew roughly from the singing when he’d gone in, but time didn’t flow the same with the lines, so he couldn’t say with any certainty.
Wendell sat back, arms crossed. “Watch the captain,” he suggested. “She’ll do something. Twitch, or look up, or . . . something. What do you do when you enter the void, Marcus?”
“I’m usually watching the boards,” Helmo said. “Waiting to see that we’ve come out the other end without killing everyone.”
Wendell grunted what might have been a “me, too.” “She’ll do something. She’ll know.”
They started at the black fire again, and watched carefully. It took four rewatches before they agreed that a specific twitch was the actual time of entry into the void.
“Scientific,” Rossi said.
“I recollect a certain linesman making disparaging comments about scientists who studied the lines,” Wendell said.
Rossi looked at him, opened his mouth to say something, and Ean heard the music of Rossi’s lines alter as he changed what he was going to say. “Even I wouldn’t base line theory on a single twitch.”
“Let’s check the time after,” Wendell said. “When we all went into the void. See if it’s standard.”
They forwarded the recordings to when Ean said, “I’ll make it fast,” and watched until Wendell said, “That was the void.”
They watched it three times, and could pick the moment they went into the void from the way the three captains twitched at the exact same time.
Then they watched again while Fergus sang to line seven and Ean took them in and out again. This time only Kari Wang twitched.
“So there you have it,” Fergus said, as they all sat back and contemplated the screen. “It’s official. Captains twitch on entering the void.”
“Or exiting,” Helmo said. “Going in is never my worry. It’s coming out.”
“Mmmh,” from Wendell, and Kari Wang nodded.
“I’m sure some enterprising academic could find a paper in it,” Helmo said. “I don’t, personally, care. I’m more interested in line seven. Do we think we can jump individually if Fergus is on board the Eleven? Or better, since he’s already on the Lancastrian Princess, can he do it from here?”
“Or from the Wendell?”
“Such demand,” Rossi said to Fergus. “Your ego will be unbearable.”
Fergus smiled. “It will be nice to be useful. After all, what’s a line without a purpose?”
Fergus didn’t have an ego, not like Rossi’s.
Rossi’s lines surged. “That means Ean and I can also shift individual ships.”
It was no secret Jordan Rossi wanted an eleven of his own. If he couldn’t get the Eleven, he wanted the Confluence. It was easy to see his plan. Use line seven to jump the ship he was on. Personally, Ean doubted he’d be strong enough to cope with the Confluence, given that Rossi still needed oxygen on a regular basis when he came into contact with line eleven.
Wendell leaned close. “When was the last time you saw lines connecting ships while you were in the void, Rossi?”
“I don’t make a habit of singing in the void.”
He was going to try it now. Sure as there were lines.
“You’d want to do it under supervision then,” Fergus said, “in case you get stuck.” Fergus could remind Rossi of things like that, and Rossi would listen.
“Speaking of supervision,” Helmo said. “Let’s get our plan together. We need to present it to the admirals.”
The planning lasted until 04:00 hours. Helmo and Wendell made a ferocious, determined team. Ean suspected Kari Wang might, too, but she didn’t have as much invested in the success of this as the other captains did.
Fergus was almost as bad.
“We have a pool of emergency jumps,” Helmo said. “We buy them from ships that aren’t affiliated with the New Alliance. If we can convince Galenos this is important enough, he’ll use one of those.”
Jumps were precious. It was a big ask.
“Do we need a Gate Union jump?” Ean asked. “We know where the ships are in this sector. Can’t we jump locally?”
All three captains shuddered, and a wave of almost terror swept the lines. “No cold jumps,” Helmo said.
Back all those months ago, when the suicide ship had tried to jump into Gruen space, the Eleven and the Gruen had prevented it. “What about the suicide ship Gate Union sent through? We stopped that. Surely we can risk a jump to an area we know is safe.”
“No.” Wendell was as forceful as Helmo.
They should trust their ships.
“I can’t believe the alien ships required gate controllers in every sector.” Otherwise, there would be more evidence of aliens.
“Not until blind jumps are proven technology,” Helmo said.
How could they prove it if the captains wouldn’t let them jump?
“You realize,” Kari Wang said. “That none of us knows how to set a jump on the Eleven.”
That pulled them up short. They all laughed, the sort of laughter you did at 04:00 when you hadn’t had any sleep.
“Ean can do it,” Helmo said.
Ean didn’t even know how to set a normal jump. “Suppose I can’t.”
“You’ll work out a way,” Helmo said, and called Abram. “Admiral, we need a jump.”
Only Helmo or Michelle would wake Abram at 04:00 hours to ask for that.
“Wish I could do that to some of my admirals,” Wendell muttered to Kari Wang, and she nodded.
Abram didn’t look as if he’d just been woken. “Right now?”
“It’s not that urgent,” and Helmo smiled somewhat sheepishly. “I’m used to having you instantly available.”
“This jump?”
“As soon as you can would be nice. We want to jump the Eleven.”
Abram became more alert. “The whole fleet?”
“No. Just the Eleven.”
He didn’t have to say any more. Abram knew what that meant as well as they did. He knew, too, that Helmo wouldn’t have woken him for anything trivial.
“I’ll see what I can do.” From the pause that followed, Ean thought Abram must have been doing some snap thinking of his own. “The Eleven is watched closely. People noticed the ship disappeared for five seconds yesterday. I might put it out that we’re doing more experiments.” He smiled. “Gate Union is getting complacent. It will be good to give them something to worry about.”
It made acquiring jumps more dangerous, but Ean could see why he was doing it. The media had speculated already that yesterday’s jump was an experiment gone wrong.
“I’ll get you that jump, and I look forward to your report.” Abram clicked off.
Now all Ean had to do was convince the Eleven to jump to the coordinates Abram gave them. He hoped he could do it.
THIRTY-SEVEN
STELLAN VILHJALMSSON
WHEN STELLAN CAME around, his head ached so much he wondered if he was dead. It took a moment through the haze of pain to see Neela Cotterill sitting by his bed.
She handed him a bottle of water. “I’ve heard the dehydration headache is debilitating,” she said.
He grabbed the water. If it was drugged, he’d know next time, but right now he wanted anything that might stop the headache. As he glugged it down, he realized he was naked. Nudity didn’t bother him, but the fact that she knew to strip an assassin so he couldn’t get to any of the tools in his clothes was disturbing. So far as he knew, it was a military practice.
“Mendez and Charlemaine have weapons trained on you,” his captor said. “I won’t tell you where they are, but I have put the fear of the lines into them about you. The danger is that they’ll shoot you by mistake. If you want to stay alive, move slowly and telegraph what you plan to do.”
Stellan took another long mouthful of water. “Do I know you?”
“I sincerely hope not,” she said. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to hide my identity. But I know you, Stellan Vilhjalmsson, and you’re going to help me get what I want.”
“To kill Lambert?”
“Personally, I would love nothing better, but I wasn’t trying to kill him last time. I needed him to get me access to something.”
“And you don’t need him now?”
“No. I need you, and your plan to get to him.”
Which she shouldn’t have known about. The water hadn’t helped Stellan’s headache at all. He couldn’t think properly.
“We can help each other,” Neela said. “I need to get out to the Gruen, and I have the one part of the plan you don’t yet have. Once we get there, I can get us onto the ship.”
“How?” And more importantly, how did she know his plans? The only person who knew about them was Markan.
“I worked on the Gruen.” He couldn’t read the raw emotion behind that, but it choked her voice. “I have access if I can get close enough. They would have destroyed the ship if they’d destroyed my accesses.”
She had cracked his codes. She might even be able to do it.
There would be a catch. There was always a catch. But if she could get him onto the Gruen, he’d sort that out when he came to it. “Suppose I agree. What’s in it for you?”
THIRTY-EIGHT
EAN LAMBERT
ABRAM HAD A jump when Ean woke from the two-hour sleep he’d managed to snatch.
“It’s later today,” Abram told him. “So follow standard procedure for the morning.” Which meant line training on the Gruen. “You can go straight from the Gruen to the Eleven when it’s time.”
The captains were nervous about the jump. So much so that it came strongly through the lines, and infected everyone else on ship with nerves.
Ean wasn’t worried about the jump. He trusted the Eleven to avoid other ships. Hadn’t it helped the Gruen avoid them last time. No, his worries were more practical.
“What if I can’t jump the ship to a specific location?” Ean asked Radko.
“You’ll manage,” Radko said. “You don’t always do it the way people expect, Ean, but you get there in the end.”
There was always a first time to fail. Unless you were Abram or Michelle. Ean was sure fail wasn’t even a word they understood.
“Trust the lines, Ean. You and they will work it out.”
* * *
THE New Alliance refused to put all three top-level linesmen into the experiment. Jordan Rossi was moved off the line ships altogether and taken down to Haladea III.
He refused to go. “If you destroy my eleven,” he sang to Ean, “I’ll kill you myself.”
Not that Rossi had a specific eleven in mind. He wavered between the two, whichever he thought would be easier to get.
Orsaya must have expected resistance, for she went out to Confluence Station herself to be sure he went down to the planet. Ean heard, through the lines, Orsaya tell her assistant, Captain Willow Auburn, “You know what to do if he refuses to go.”
“Yes, ma’am,” and Auburn checked the settings on her weapon.
Ean hoped Auburn’s blaster was on stun.
Rossi had always had a problem going out of range of line eleven. “There is no reason to go off station. If it’s as safe as Lambert claims it to be, I will be fine here.”
“We’ve been through this before, Rossi.” Confluence Station was part of the Eleven’s fleet.
“What? You don’t think your pet wonder boy might botch a simple thing like uncoupling a ship. Get out of my lines, bastard. Unbelievable.”
“Look at it this way,” Willow Auburn said, as she raised her weapon and fired. “If Lambert fails, you get full control of the Confluence eleven.” She holstered the weapon and caught him as he fell. “We’re doing it for his own good. You’d think he’d be grateful.”
Orsaya managed a tight laugh. “Jordan Rossi?”
Rossi couldn’t even talk to line eleven. Ean wiped his hands down the side of his uniform. Who would talk to them if he failed?
“We won’t fail.” It was a collective thought, from the lines as a whole. Sometimes they did that, thinking as a single unit rather than as individual lines. “Why would we?”
He hadn’t yet told the lines what they were to do, for he couldn’t get lines to understand the concept of future. Once he explained it, they would expect to act immediately.
He couldn’t lie to them and tell them he believed them when he wasn’t sure he did. The lines would pick up the dishonesty. So he laughed, a little shakily, instead. “I wish I had your confidence.”
In return, he got an outpouring of support, boosting his lines, so that he started to believe they could do it.
That kind of reinforcement could be dangerous.
“You okay?” Radko asked.
“The lines are confident.” Overconfident, but if he had doubts he shouldn’t be thinking of that because he couldn’t separate his thoughts from the lines.
* * *
EAN was glad to arrive on the Gruen.
At least today Song would come to her ship, for Abram had insisted the captain be there for the duration of the experiment.
What if something went wrong, and Song and the ship hadn’t bonded?
What if Ean worried so much about it that it caused a problem when it wouldn’t have otherwise?
* * *
LINE training was good today. There was an air of expectancy among the lines that even the trainees caught. The ship buzzed.
Afterward, as they waited for the shuttle to bring Captain Song out to the ship, Linesman Hernandez came up to Ean.
“We should be part of it,” she said.
Song’s shuttle would take the trainees back to Haladea III. All nonessential personnel were to go off ship.
“It?” He pretended to not understand.
“This thing that’s happening. We are linesmen. We have been trained. We should be part of it.”
Radko said, before Ean could reply, “That’s why you won’t be part of it.”
Especially not Linesman Hernandez, who was their best hope after Rossi if anything went wrong with Ean.
“That’s not a good enough reason.”
“Spacer,” Bhaksir said, from behind them both. “Are you disobeying an order?”
“I’m saying that if it’s line-related, we should be part of it.”
“All nonessential personnel are to return to Haladea III for the duration of the exercise.”
“This ship is our base while we’re training.”
Bhaksir looked at her. Hernandez looked as if she was going to argue some more.
“Would you like Admiral Katida to reinforce your orders?”
Hernandez turned away, muttering, “You wouldn’t have a hope,” under her breath.
“Anyone else want to argue?” Bhaksir said, and glared at Tai as he looked as if he would speak. “Don’t put me in an awkward position, Tai.” Because, of course, Tai could have argued that technically he belonged on the Lancastrian Princess, and therefore should be allowed to be part of it. “You’re on secondment.”
It said something for Abram Galenos’s people that Tai didn’t argue although he wanted to, and his lines—all the way up to six—hummed his unhappiness with the decision.
THIRTY-NINE
SELMA KARI WANG
THE SHUTTLE OUT was crowded, despite the fact they’d kept the numbers on the Eleven to a minimum. They’d brought Jem Abascal, because he was a seven. A full seven, but everyone involved in the plan thought that having someone Katida had primed would be smarter than picking a single seven, although Ean Lambert had pointed out that they didn’t know if the multilines could do what the single lines could. They’d brought Mael because he was a nine, and because he’d been there from the start. And Tinatin, because it was easier to bring her than to leave her behind.
If Tinatin ever went into covert operations she’d be damned good at it if somewhat unconventional.
