Linesman (31 page)

“But the strength of their lines is the sound,” Ean said.

“Maybe.” Katida consulted Abram's comms and compared it to the starfield displayed. She checked the comms again, then pointed to a strong line close to the one Ean hadn't been able to identify. “Which one is farther out?” Tired, old, ready-to-retire or the new ship, she meant.

Ean pointed to the new ship. It wasn't something he could have explained. The lines told him it was farther out.

“Exactly.” She showed Abram and Helmo, who nodded. “Strong lines, for that is almost certainly Qarro's ship.” Her eyes gleamed suddenly. “I wonder if you could find out for us.”

“Let's not try it now,” Abram said hastily. “Ean would probably sing it into the
Eleven
's fleet. Try explaining that to Qarro.”

“Try explaining that to the Alliance,” Helmo said. “It would be taken as an act of war.”

“Pity,” Katida said.

“I might not even have been able to contact it,” Ean said. “It has to be close enough for me to talk to it.”

“Not even through line five?”

“I still need the other lines. All of them.” At least, he thought he did.

“Hmm,” Katida said.

Abram's comms beeped discreetly. “We've fifteen minutes before we need to start back,” he said. “Can you show us the weapons, Ean?”

Ean wasn't sure if it really was fifteen minutes or if he'd done it to divert Katida. He sang the request, and the screen displays changed to the pulsing bars of light. “This is the weapons system.”

“Beautiful,” said Katida.

“And we think these are the targets. Other ships.” Ean pointed to the fluxes that were roughly where the ships had been on the star chart.

The
Lancastrian Princess
was strong again, the media ships weak. The
Gruen
looked like it had on their earlier visit to the
Eleven
, but the
Wendell
looked almost dead.

Ean looked at it. “I don't think it should be like that.”

“Is that the
Wendell
?” Katida asked.

“You can recognize it?”

She shook her head. “Weapons system, you said, and I know Galenos stripped the weapons on that ship.”

Ean looked at Abram, talking softly over one of the boards with Helmo. “Why?” And if he did it for one ship, why didn't he do it for the other? The
Gruen
was still strong.

“Piers Wendell will come back one day to collect,” Katida said. She looked at the lines on display. “How does it know there are no weapons there? Can it tell any ship's arsenal?”

It took a while to translate the question into line terms. By the time he was done, everyone was watching him expectantly, waiting for the answer.

“I think,” because he wasn't sure he understood fully, “it's because they're part of the
Eleven
's fleet.” The lines were a persistent chorus of “our lines.” “They share information.” That seemed to fit in with what he knew of how line
eleven kept the fleet together. “I don't think they can tell what other ships have.”

“It's interesting they don't seem to have a “big picture” view like we do,” Abram said. “When Gruen fired on the
Eleven
the last time you were on this ship, what happened? How did you know she had fired?”

He'd heard her through the lines. “She gave an order.”

“So you heard Captain Gruen,” Katida said. “But you don't know how the
Eleven
identified it as a threat. Or even if it did identify it as a threat.”

“No.”

“Hmm.” She blew out her breath, Abram-style. “I think we have a little further to go before we can use this as a warship.”

“That will come,” Governor Jade said. “Once we have a crew on board, they'll work it out.”

Shimson nodded.

Abram glanced at his comms. “We need to head back,” he said.

Ean noticed he didn't comment on the multiworld crew.

JORDAN ROSSI

THEY DIDN'T GET
to leave immediately, for the council meeting Ahmed Gann had warned them about started while Wendell was making preparations. Orsaya was called to the council.

“Wait here,” Orsaya ordered Rossi.

For a change, he was happy to wait. Soon, Wendell would take him where he needed to be. When Wendell came into the apartments they'd been allocated, Rossi was sitting, sipping Lancian wine.

“Where's Orsaya?”

“Council chambers.”

The blood drained from Wendell's face, leaving it white and stark. “The meeting they were talking about this morning?”

“That's the one.” How in the lines did Wendell do any commanding when his emotions were displayed so obviously on his face?

Wendell went whiter, if that was possible. “How long since she left?”

“An hour, maybe less.” Maybe Rossi should order some food to go with the wine. It was making him light-headed.

Wendell snatched the glass out of his hand. “We need to get there. Now.”

“What the?”

“Hurry.”

“Do you mind?”

“You don't understand,” Wendell said. “I heard about that meeting. She's going to lose. No matter what she thinks she can do to beat Markan, she can't. The council will vote to remove Orsaya from her position. They'll put Markan in charge.”

Wendell was as insane as the rest of them. “We can all see that coming.”

“You still don't understand.” Wendell pushed Rossi out the door. He was like Sale, deceptively strong for his build. “Once Markan is in charge, he'll cancel the order to get Lambert. He'll use House of Sandhurst to get the ship.”

If Markan even realized there was a ship yet. Even Rossi still wasn't convinced there was.

“And if he cancels the order to get Lambert, I lose my chance to get my ship back.” And Rossi lost his chance to get back to the
Eleven
. “We need her to sign those orders before she goes into that council meeting.”

Rossi put on a spurt of his own. “Why didn't you say that?”

•   •   •

THERE
were guards on the doors of the council building, barring everyone from entering. It was a big crowd, and there was a barrage of press drones. Obviously, someone scented news inside. Wendell walked straight past them. Half a block farther down, he swerved into a building with a big aircab sign, where he took a lift up to the rank and chose one of the smallest vehicles.

After he'd paid for a night's hire, he sat and did something on his comms.

“I thought we were in a hurry,” Rossi said.

“We are, but this is delicate work. Don't talk.”

Rossi didn't ask. He didn't want to know.

Ten minutes later, the aircab rose, out of the ranks, up into the sky, where it circled the city, then seemed to drop down again into exactly the same place.

“Didn't work?” Rossi asked.

“Of course it worked,” Wendell said, as the aircar came down gently in the rank at the top of the council building.

There were guards up here, too, but they were expecting the cab, and the two of them. They checked their comms and waved them through. Wendell even made small talk with one of them. Rossi didn't think they'd ever finish.

“She'll be in the visitor's chamber at the back,” Wendell said in the lift down. “Which is lucky for us because we don't want to have to walk through the councilors to get to her.”

“You've obviously done this before,” Rossi said. “How many times?” He hoped Wendell knew what he was doing.

“Never,” said Wendell cheerfully, and they stepped out into the corridor with more guards. “Message for the councilor,” he said to one of the guards. Rossi noticed he didn't say which councilor. “I have to deliver it personally.”

He showed his comms.

Rossi wanted to know what the comms said. The captain had to be lying about never having done this before because he was too smooth not to have.

“You know the drill,” the guard said. “Stay at the back until one of the stewards lets you through.”

“Of course.”

The guard let them in and closed the door behind them.

They were too late.

Orsaya was at the front of the chamber at the first speaker's desk, with Markan looking daggers across at her from the other speaker's desk. For a moment, Rossi thought Wendell would launch himself down onto the stage. He edged away slightly.

Markan was speaking. “We know what that ship can do. We know what power it gives to the Alliance, and we can only guess what secrets they might learn from it. We already know it has a weapon more powerful than our worlds can build. We want that weapon. We
need
that weapon. And who knows what else is on that ship that could be used against us.”

He looked around, making eye contact with every councilor. Rossi looked, too, and noted there were admirals up the back, in some of the visitor's seats. They were familiar, like the scarlet-uniformed Centauran. These were the people who had been seated around Markan earlier in the day.

“You heard Linesman Rossi earlier. Right now, they don't know any more about the ship than we do.”

Markan was preaching to the converted. Everyone in this room wanted that ship. Rossi could see already that they would do anything to get it. He crossed his arms over his chest, suddenly cold.

Beside him, Wendell twitched as if he wanted to jump into the middle of the conversation. As for Orsaya, she didn't even look as if she was going to interrupt. In fact, even though she wasn't smiling, Rossi could tell she was pleased with the way things were going.

“We
have
to take that ship from the New Alliance before they work out how to use it properly.”

At least half the chamber nodded in agreement.

“We know it requires linesmen to work it.” Markan made eye contact with the councilors again. “Ladies and gentlemen of the council, we all know that the only high-level linesman the Alliance has on call is faulty, whereas I, we—”

“I wouldn't say he's faulty,” the scarlet-uniformed Centauran said. “He's damned good, in fact. At least our people think so.”

If looks could impale, the Centauran would have been speared, particularly as some of the other people in the room were nodding.

Markan took a moment to recover, and when he spoke, his voice was slightly more clipped, but he managed to smile. “Nevertheless, Lambert is only one linesman, while we, with the support of House of Sandhurst, have a third of the top-level linesmen.”

“Most of whom are nonfunctioning right now,” interjected Orsaya. “The only—”

Markan overrode her. “The linesmen recover once they are removed from the confluence. Jordan Rossi proved that today.”

How dare Markan drag him into this when he had so obviously snubbed him earlier.

Markan's voice firmed and echoed around the chamber. “Members of the council, I say to you. We
need
that ship. We need it
before
our enemy learns how to control it. We must attack now to acquire it, for without it, we sit waiting to be annihilated at the Alliance's whim.”

He got a standing ovation for that.

“We cannot afford to wait, as Admiral Orsaya here is asking us to do. We cannot afford to give the Alliance a weapon that will allow them to win this war.”

“It's only a weapon,” Wendell muttered to Rossi. “Wars are won by people, and by the decisions they make.”

The comment was lost under the cheers from the council.

A councilor wearing a sash with the same purple markings as Admiral Markan's stood up. “I would like to put a motion to the council. I would like to propose that the council stops mucking around and finally takes control of this war. I would like to propose that we place Admiral Markan in charge of retrieving this ship and that we ask that he does it immediately.”

Ahmed Gann's clear voice rang across the chamber. “Even if it means that we are declaring war on the Alliance?”

“We are at war in all but name now,” the Centauran admiral said.

“Councilor Gann,” the Roscracian councilor said, “everyone knows your reluctance to bring this thing to outright war, but war is inevitable. If we don't act now, the Alliance will control the timing with that ship of theirs. One might almost say that you are helping them by holding us off.”

“Because of the ship?” Gann asked. “You say”—and he held up his hands to silence the councilors. It was a measure of the respect they accorded him that they quieted and let him speak—“that what you want right now is the ship. You are prepared to initiate hostilities to get it. Why?”

“Why—” The word practically burst out of Markan's mouth. “We've just spent the last hour debating—”

Gann held up his hand for silence again. “I am not denying the logic of your argument, Admiral Markan. I am not denying I want an alien ship as much as you do. What I am asking is why precipitate a war we don't know we can win for a ship that's in enemy territory when we have another alien ship here, in our own territory, that we can collect without firing a shot.”

The silence was absolute. Someone coughed and smothered the sound hastily.

“Admiral Markan, I have known about this second ship for days, and I am not even on the war panel. You are.”

Rossi imagined he heard the swallow of the water as the
cougher took a mouthful. He definitely heard the soft thunk as the glass went back onto the table.

“If you knew this already, Admiral Markan—and you must, for after all, are you not part of the war panel—then why are you still pushing us toward fighting the Alliance right now? I ask myself what could you gain? Destabilization of the Alliance? Or destabilization of Gate Union?”

Fergus Burns had once said, “Never cross Ahmed Gann. He has a way of turning defeat into victory.” Maybe he'd been right.

“That's absolute nonsense,” Markan said, but he was drowned out by one of the councilors at the back calling out, “If you're so certain there is a ship here, Gann, produce it.”

“That is what we were trying to do.” Gann looked at Markan. “Is that why you insisted on this council being called so hastily, Markan? Because once everyone knew about this ship, your arguments would be useless.”

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.