Alliance, page 5
part #2 of Linesman Series
“How do you want to do this, Ean?” Sale asked.
Until now, the only people he’d trained had been Fergus and Rossi and the linesmen on the Lancastrian Princess. Fergus had taken to singing to line seven as if he’d been born doing it. Rossi? He thought Rossi was coming along better than Rossi wanted to admit, but it was asking a lot, going against a method Jordan Rossi had spent his whole life using.
“I’ll start by introducing them to the lines,” he said. “Like we did with Fergus.”
“Singing to the lines,” Rossi muttered. “Who’d ever have thought it would come to this?”
Sale nodded. “Good,” she said to Ean. “We’ve emptied a cargo hold. There are oxygen stations all around, and plenty of paramedics.” Line eleven was a slow, regular thump-kerthump beat that tended to give strong human linesmen heart attacks as their own heart tried to beat the same line time. The stronger the linesman, the worse they succumbed to it. Ean, luckily, was starting to get used to it.
“I want ten minutes at the start to make sure everyone knows what to do when someone has an attack.” She wasn’t asking, she was telling him.
“Okay.”
These linesmen were going to think they were all crazy.
* * *
ON the Gruen, they were greeted by Team Leader Perry, who was nominally in charge at the moment, for the Gruen captain wasn’t on board. Captain Edie Song was seldom on board.
“The trainees haven’t arrived yet,” Perry said. “The paramedics have. They’ve set up in the large cargo hold.”
“Thank you.” Sale led the way down.
Ean paced the large expanse nervously as he sang to the lines, explaining what he was going to do.
The Gruen was one of the Eleven’s fleet ships, so he expanded his song to include them all.
“We’re here. We’re with you. You are of our line.” The underlying tone was supportive. Even line eleven, a subdued beat behind them.
Ean relaxed. “Thank you.”
He looked around the training area. It was an ordinary cargo bay, larger than he was used to. Nets hung around the walls like great wall hangings or some crazy playground for adults. On the Lancastrian Princess, Captain Helmo had recently emptied a storeroom and opened it to the crew, who spent half their rec time clambering over the nets. Even Radko spent her spare time there. It was the most popular place on ship.
The floor was crisscrossed with covered channels. When the cargo holds were in use, the cover folded back to allow the nets to be hooked into fastenings built into the channels.
The main difference between this cargo hold and the one on the Lancastrian Princess was the temporary oxygen stations built into the netting on the walls, spaced two meters apart. A pair of paramedics manned every third station, with an extra pair either side of the dais set at the end.
“Incoming,” Bhaksir said, glancing at something on her comms.
Twenty soldiers in different uniforms flooded in. They looked around as if wondering what was going on.
Both elevens were quiet. Ean hoped they’d remain quiet. He rubbed his hands down the side of his gray uniform. There was one familiar face. Engineer Tai, from the Lancastrian Princess. He didn’t need to be here, for Ean was training all the Lancastrian Princess linesmen, but as Michelle had pointed out, “They’ll expect us to send someone from my ship. They’ll be worried if we don’t.”
“Shouldn’t they expect you to train your own linesmen,” Ean had asked. “After all, I work for you.”
“Logically, yes. Emotionally, no. If we don’t send Tai, people will think I’m getting favors.”
Tai smiled at Ean briefly as he swept past.
Fergus made a soft sound of surprise. “They’re not all sixes.” He nodded at a woman in the blue of Balian. “Look at that.”
Ean and Rossi looked. Then they looked again, and all three of them moved closer—almost synchronized—to see if they had miscounted. Seven bars under the name.
Another high-level linesman from Balian. How many more was Admiral Katida hiding? And was Katida—a level eight—the highest, or did she have some nines and tens tucked away, too?
The name above the Balian’s pocket was Hernandez.
“What’s your problem?” Hernandez demanded.
Rossi shook his head slowly.
“Where does Balian get you people from?” Fergus asked.
She bristled visibly. “If you have a problem, say so now.”
“No problem,” Ean said hurriedly. “We’re surprised to see a seven outside the cartel houses, that’s all.”
“Says a man who wears the uniform of Lancia and has ten bars on his pocket.” She looked at Rossi. “Or a Yaolin uniform.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Rossi said.
Ean was glad Sale called for their attention then. “Every single one of you,” she said, glaring at someone who’d succumbed to the ecstasy of line eleven and wasn’t listening to her. Ean looked around. There were more of them not listening than he realized.
Sale sighed, and the irritation in her voice increased noticeably. “All of you, look around at your companions.”
Most of them did.
“If they’re not looking back at you, nudge them. Jab them hard if they need it.”
Ean moved over to a six nearby who was smiling. He waved a hand in her face, while the linesman next to her jabbed her in the ribs. She turned to them both, still smiling. “It’s . . . incredible.”
“You get used to it.”
“Look around you, check where the oxygen stations are,” Sale said.
They looked around. A couple of them sniggered at the excess.
“You’re linesmen. Prone to heart problems when the lines get too much. Yes, all of you,” to one man who protested at that. “I don’t care how fit you think you are. I don’t care that the medics tested your heart for every condition known to man before you came here. You’ll have problems. Does everyone know where the oxygen stations are?”
A few rolled their eyes.
“You’re an ungrateful lot, but you’ll thank me for this later. I’m going to show you what to do in the case of line-induced heart problems.”
“Line-induced?” Hernandez asked.
“That’s what I said.” Sale looked around. “I need a volunteer.”
Ru Li waved and indicated himself.
Sale scowled at him. “You’re so short, no one will see you.” He was also an exhibitionist and kept the whole team entertained with his mimicry. “All right then. Come up. You can do it on the dais.”
Ru Li leaped onto the low platform from standing.
“Show-off,” muttered Tai, who was standing near Ean.
Sale beckoned to one of the paramedics, who came forward with an oxygen tank and mask. “Do your thing, Ru Li.”
Ru Li started gasping for breath.
“Oxygen.”
The paramedic held up the oxygen tank.
“Mask.”
The paramedic held up the mask.
Ru Li was acting his heart out. Choking, gasping, and looking as if he couldn’t breathe. Ean wished the paramedic would give him oxygen. “What if he’s not acting?”
A linesman snatched the oxygen tank out of the paramedic’s hand and pushed the mask over Ru Li’s face, turning the valve high.
“Well done,” Sale said. “What’s your name?”
The name above his pocket was Chantsmith. Chantsmith started CPR.
Ru Li pushed him—and the oxygen—away. “Enough. I’m choking.”
Sale looked back at the trainees. “Remember where the oxygen is. Remember what to do. You’ve all done CPR training. In fact, you did a refresher this last tenday. You know what to do next. Most of all, don’t panic. Be like our collected friend here.” She nodded at Chantsmith. “Don’t panic.” She paused, long enough to be sure she had their undivided attention. “Now, meet Linesman Ean Lambert. Ean.”
She stepped down.
Ean stepped onto the dais.
The faces that stared up at him were a mix of antagonism and skepticism. Some—like Hernandez—were openly hostile although Ean wasn’t sure if the hostility was directed at him or just Hernandez’s natural expression. Behind them were familiar faces. People he knew. People he trusted. And underneath it all, the music and support of the lines.
“We’re going to greet the lines,” he said, and was glad his voice remained steady. They’d greet the whole fleet, for all of the Eleven’s ships were listening in. After all, the Gruen was one of theirs. “One line at a time. I will sing. Then you sing. Match my song exactly. After that, the line will answer. If you don’t hear the line answer, don’t worry. For some, it takes practice.”
Some of them started to look doubtful. Others looked as if they had no idea what he meant. A few had been primed and knew what was coming. Interestingly, Hernandez wasn’t one of those who’d been primed.
“We’re on the Gruen.” He sang the sound that other lines used to identify the ship. “This is line one. I’m saying hello to it. He sang the greeting. “Now it’s your turn. Sing. Exactly what I sang.”
Three voices raised above the rest. Fergus, who could always be relied on, Engineer Tai, who’d done this almost as often as Fergus and Rossi had, and Jordan Rossi, who’d never admit that he sang to the lines, but he did.
“Wait,” Ean said when they were done, and waited for the line to answer. Then, “Line one, Helmo’s ship.”
Tai sang this particular line with gusto, and the line answered him back in kind.
They went through the other line ones in the Eleven’s oddly assorted fleet. After the Gruen and the Lancastrian Princess, they greeted the Wendell, Confluence Station, the two media ships, and, finally, the Eleven itself.
“Line two,” Ean said, and started on the line twos in the same order as he’d done with the ones.
He didn’t watch the people in front of him. He closed his eyes and listened for their lines. Some of them were openly skeptical, not hearing when the lines answered back. There were a couple who might have heard something.
“Line three.”
He went through the lines, all the way up to ten.
He opened his eyes and looked at the trainees. He could feel line eleven waiting. “Line eleven,” he said, and sang the greeting.
Line eleven greeted him back. A strong heartbeat of sound that sent him to his knees. He normally coped better nowadays, but here, in this cargo hold, he picked up some of the raw newness of the trainees. “Sing,” he urged them with what voice he had left. A paramedic pushed an oxygen mask over his face.
Sale stepped up to the dais again. “It’s important to know when oxygen is enough and when you need to kick-start the heart. For the heart is still beating. Or trying to, anyway. It’s—”
Line eleven surged again.
Line ten shuddered sideways. Line ten! Whose sole job was to move them from one place in the void to another.
“—that your brain is telling it to beat nonhuman time.”
No one was listening.
Ean struggled to stand up. “Something happened,” he told Sale.
“Line-related?” Her gaze swept the trainees, who were all on the floor, lying on their side, lower arm supporting their head, oxygen masks over their face in the classic heart-attack pose Ean had come to know well. Paramedics attended the worst of them.
The Balian, Hernandez, was almost as bad as Rossi.
Ean shook his head.
An alarm sounded—the long whoop, whoop that signified an enemy attack. A mechanized voice said underneath it, “Proximity alert.”
That was followed by Team Leader Perry. “Ship at position 3467.3418.2467. It’s trying to jump into our space.”
Through the lines, Ean could hear crew on the Lancastrian Princess and Wendell say almost in unison, “The Gruen has shifted position.”
Had the Gruen gone into the void to do it?
It looked as if Gate Union had finally tried to jump a ship into the middle of the fleet. If line ten hadn’t moved the ship, they’d be dead now and wouldn’t even know it.
How had the ten moved them?
Some of the lesser-affected linesmen struggled to get up.
Sale was already moving, as was Craik and the rest of her team. “How many, how close?”
Ean glanced back at the trainees. They had plenty of support and wouldn’t be doing much for a while. Fergus was competently handling things.
He followed Sale.
“One ship, but they’re too damn close.” Perry’s voice shook. “They jumped in.”
“Shit.”
A set of lines Ean hadn’t even realized was close disappeared. The relief through line one was so strong, he could taste it.
The attack alarm stopped.
“It jumped,” Perry said. “For a moment there, I thought we were toast.”
Sale slowed. “Probably some crack-brained tourist trying to get close to the alien ships.” Ean could hear she didn’t believe that.
Line ten rippled again. Another funny, sideways ripple like the first.
“I think it’s back,” Ean said.
The attack alarm sounded again, and the proximity alert under it.
Perry’s voice was shriller this time. “The crazy bastard. He’s jumped back in.”
Sale started running again. “Just shoot him. Who’s on the weapons?”
Ean saw the scramble on the bridge through the lines as Perry gestured to one of his team to get to the weapons panel. “Beyer, sir, but we’re not primed. It will take a couple of minutes to bring the guns online.”
Sale burst onto the bridge. “The guns should always be primed.” She moved alongside Beyer and started bringing up panels.
“I’ve got it.” Craik took over. “Answer your comms,” for Sale’s comms had been sounding since the first ship had appeared. She had two calls. Helmo and Wendell.
The ship disappeared again.
The alarms stopped.
“If he jumps back,” Sale said, “he’s doing it deliberately.” She opened her comms to both captains at the same time. “Sale.”
“We’re preparing for an emergency jump,” Helmo said. “Have Ean ready to call both fleets in.”
Sale looked at Ean. He nodded. He could hear the preparations on both ships.
He sang in a soft undertone to all the ships in the Eleven and Confluence fleets, trying to keep the panic out of his own lines. “We have to jump.”
“Now?”
Ships liked to jump. Sometimes Ean forgot that. Sometimes he wondered if their natural habitat actually was the void.
He was about to confirm, when line ten shuddered sideways again. “The ship’s back.” He could hear the new set of lines, close to the Gruen.
“Gruen’s moved again,” Wendell said.
“Ship’s back.” Perry had gone beyond panicked; his voice was high enough to make Ean’s ears hurt.
“God,” said Helmo, which was the strongest word Ean had ever heard him use. “We can’t keep being this lucky.”
“It’s not luck,” Ean said. “It’s—”
A chorus of lines overwhelmed him. “Fix broken lines,” the Gruen said, urgently, backed by 135 other sets of lines.
It wasn’t hard to guess what they meant by broken. A ship that kept coming back into the same space, over and over, when other ships would logically stay away. Except, how did you fix it?
Ean could only think of one thing to do. He sang—to all the line eights—for they controlled security. “Hold him here. Don’t let him jump again.” And he pulled as hard as he could on his own line eight.
The other eights joined his line, and the intruding ship was locked into a stationary web.
“Ready to jump,” Helmo said. “Ean.”
“No.” It came out in song, on the comms, for Ean hadn’t yet learned how to hold lines and communicate at the same time. He shook his head frantically at Sale. There was no need to jump anymore.
“Not ready, Captain,” Sale said.
The only reaction from Helmo was a blink. Wendell threw up his hands and started a fast pace around his own bridge.
People on the other fleet ships wouldn’t even know this was happening.
Rossi did, for Rossi had dragged himself out of his eleven-induced stupor and was weaving his way toward the bridge—following the sound of Ean’s lines.
“The ship can’t move now.” It came out in song, too, on all three ships, and over the ship’s speakers because he couldn’t let go of the lines to take them off.
The Gruen crew looked at him strangely, but he’d worked with Sale before. She understood. “How long?”
He shrugged.
Sale turned to Craik. “Is that gun ready yet?”
“Another minute,” Craik said. “It wasn’t in standby mode, it was off.”
“What’s happening on that ship, Ean?” Sale asked.
The eights seemed to be holding the ship on their own. He loosened his own hold. The other eights kept tight hold of the rogue ship. He sang a quick thank-you to the lines, then used line five to put the security feed from the intruder’s ship onto Sale’s comms. And into Helmo’s and Wendell’s. All three promptly pushed the feed onto larger screens on the bridge. He wished he’d thought of doing that himself.
“If I sang the ship into the fleet, I could see everything.”
“No.” Explosively from Helmo and Sale, but Wendell stopped pacing and was considering it.
Sale looked at the screen, where a lone man—dressed from head to toe in black—was trying to get control back. He looked up at the camera, as if he could sense they were watching him, and snarled.
“Friendly soul,” Sale said. “How many weapons do we think he has? Can you give us different views, Ean?”
There were four cameras on the bridge. Ean showed them all, one in each quarter of the screen.
