The aliens would have been smart enough to have crew ready as soon as a ship was available.
“So you’re telling us we have no control over who goes on which ship? Is this a plot by Lancia to grab the Confluence itself?”
He was not going to tell anyone about Sale. Not right now. “I am telling you to sort out which ship each world will get. Sort it out now, and I will endeavor to introduce the ships to their linesmen. Otherwise, I cannot guarantee you will get the ship you negotiate for.”
“This is a plot. A plan by Lancia to—”
The noise from the chamber swelled.
“Admiral Carrell.” Ean was grateful for his voice training, which allowed him to raise his voice enough to be heard here on world, even without the lines. “Admiral Carrell. Do you know how we stopped Redmond stealing Scout Ship Three?”
He waited until the noise had subsided.
“I promised it a crew of its own. I introduced the ship to its crew.” Ean searched the hall for Councilor Shimson. He bowed to him. “Councilor Shimson, Admiral Trask,” who was seated next to him. “I promised Scout Ship Three to Xanto.”
The council members started talking over each other.
“Why does Xanto get a ship first?”
“How can a ship choose its own crew?”
“You have to stop this happening. Surely you control the ships.”
“Intelligent ships. It’s a farce, to force us into deciding before we’re ready.”
“Which ships are choosing? We need more time.”
“Mightn’t be a bad idea to move faster. We get our own ship, with entrenched linesmen. Lancia couldn’t drag it back after that.”
The noise of over one hundred people speaking at once battered at him. Ean held his hands up to stop their talking. For a wonder, they quieted.
“These are alien ships. They are sentient.” If the members of the council didn’t know that by now, they were living in denial. “They don’t think as we do. For us to have control, tell me who gets which ship, and I will introduce the linesmen of that world to their ships. As long as they see progress, I think the ships will wait longer.”
“And the Confluence,” Admiral Carrell demanded.
“Give me two linesmen from every world for it. Pledge those linesmen as part of your gaining your own ship.”
Someone whose voice Ean didn’t recognize said, “But the Confluence hasn’t got a captain yet.”
He really wasn’t going to mention Sale. “I’m sure all of you already have a captain in mind. Put their name forward. Let the council decide. Just give the Confluence a crew while you’re deciding.”
He held up his hand for silence again. And got it. “I don’t need to remind you of the fragility of the fleet.” This was a closed session, after all. Everyone here knew facts that weren’t general knowledge. Like how the fleets jumped together unless they had a linesman in control. He wasn’t sure if they all knew it had to be a line seven, but they knew the limitations. “If Scout Ship Three had jumped, the whole fleet would have jumped into enemy territory.”
He paused, then added, “I urge you to act now to be sure the ships are under your control.” Abram and Michelle would have been proud of his double meaning there. “Before it’s too late.”
He left the council chambers as more animated chatter broke out. This wasn’t his decision to make. The council needed time to argue.
Emperor Yu and the Factor of the Lesser Gods were in the outer chamber, along with the media and support staff who were locked out when a closed council was in session.
Yu paced. The man was always pacing. The Factor was speaking with two well-dressed officials. His body language was eloquent. The horror, the shame, the sense of betrayal. It wasn’t hard to surmise they were talking about the attempted theft of Scout Ship Three.
If Michelle did marry the Factor, they’d be able to converse in body gestures alone. Michelle and Abram could hold silent conversations, too. Only they hadn’t needed grandiloquent gestures. They’d held whole conversations with a raised eyebrow or a twist of lips.
Yu stopped pacing when he saw Ean. Ean was glad of Bhaksir and her team, who fell in around him and marched him out, looking straight ahead. They exited the gallery before the media descended.
“We should stay and see what the Factor says,” Ean said.
“No.” Bhaksir took him straight to the roof. “We’ve orders to get you back on ship as quickly as we can.”
To be honest, he was glad. Here on world, he was blind and deaf. He didn’t know what was going on. How easily one got used to having access to the lines.
“Can we watch the council meeting?”
Bhaksir nodded, and Ean listened to the regular business until it was time to call the Factor.
The Factor stood before the councilors, tall and imposing. “Council of the New Alliance. I come to you with this plea. The Worlds of the Lesser Gods are vulnerable. Our former ally, Redmond, has deserted us. We stood alone. Then, out of the goodness of your hearts, the New Alliance is considering us as potential allies. You have adopted us and made us feel welcome. And how do we repay you?”
He paused, long enough to let the message sink in but not long enough for Admiral Carrell to interject.
“With treachery. A traitor from my own party. A man I trusted. A man working with my enemy, our enemy, to steal what is yours.”
He was a mesmerizing speaker. By the time he got to the end, Ean wanted to applaud.
Some members of the council did.
“What will happen to those traitors? To this man I trusted with my own life? Will they receive the punishment that is due? No. They will languish in a prison for the rest of their life. I ask you, councilors. Isn’t that too kind?”
Another pause.
“Will they even give us the information we require? On the Worlds of the Lesser Gods, we deal with betrayers as they deserve. We take them, we break them. We get our answers. And then we destroy them.
“I, the Factor of the Lesser Gods, ask this of you. Let us take these people and find out what they know. Let us treat them with the contempt they deserve. Allow me to salve a small amount of the harm that was done to my worlds, to the reputation of my betrothed’s world. Grant me this means of making amends.
“I will escort them personally. I will ensure the correct questions are asked. I will share this knowledge with you. With all of you.”
It was a measured dig at the Department of Alien Affairs.
He got applause, and Ean heard Carrell’s “Well said.”
Afterward, when the noise had died down, Abram asked the first question. “So you are proposing to take these thieves back to your world and torture them?”
That question raised a chorus of complaints. “Come, Galenos,” Admiral Carrell said. “You can’t tell me Lancia never tortured anyone.”
“I’m not even trying,” Abram said. “But I question whether it is necessary. We have efficient questioning techniques of our own. Humanitarian ones. Can we trust that the Worlds of the Lesser Gods will pass the information they receive back to us? If we allow them to take these people and question them, how do we know what results we will get back? How do we know they will be questioned?”
It was the closest anyone had come yet to accusing the Worlds of the Lesser Gods outright of being involved.
Ean couldn’t see what Michelle thought of that.
“If you are so concerned about their not doing the right thing,” Carrell said, “why don’t you send someone with them to oversee that it is done properly.”
“Hear, hear,” another councilor said. And a second, then a third.
“I propose we vote on the Factor’s request that he be allowed to take the criminals back to the Worlds of the Lesser Gods,” Admiral Carrell said. “With the proviso that we are allowed to send two observers. One from
Lancia, another chosen by the council by vote.”
The vote went seventy-one to sixty-nine, the Factor’s way. Michelle voted for the Factor’s proposal; Abram voted against. It was the first time Ean could recall that Michelle and Abram hadn’t voted the same way.
Emperor Yu, from the visitor’s gallery, volunteered Commodore Bach as the Lancastrian to accompany the prisoners.
“After all,” he told Michelle when they were back on the Lancastrian Princess, “we need someone we can trust to oversee the operation.”
Ean eavesdropped unashamedly.
“You honor us all.” Michelle looked cool and composed, but through the lines Ean could hear how utterly weary she was, could taste the bitterness and the exhaustion. She looked over to Commodore Bach. “I would appreciate it if you would go. I have the utmost trust in you.”
Bach bowed low. “Thank you. Be sure that everything I do, I do only for Lancia.”
* * *
EAN was on Confluence Station when the shuttleload of prisoners boarded the ship Lancia had provided for the trip back to the Worlds of the Lesser Gods. He waited with Sale and Orsaya while it jumped.
How had the Factor gotten a jump so quickly?
“One hopes Commodore Bach’s team is enough to cope with whatever the Worlds of the Lesser Gods puts forward,” Orsaya said.
Ean wasn’t sure he trusted Bach yet.
Renaud Han hadn’t called from Baoshan Barracks, either, so he didn’t know what was happening with Radko.
He had other things to worry about right now, for Abram, Katida, and MacClennan arrived at Confluence Station. All four admirals from the Department of Alien Affairs. Here to talk about the “incident” at line training yesterday.
Ean, Rossi, and Sale joined them.
Orsaya’s staff got them sandwiches and tea. Sometimes, Ean thought the only thing working soldiers ate was sandwiches.
No one talked about what had happened that morning at the council meeting. Instead they talked about the Factor’s initial visit to the Confluence. And about the visitors’ line knowledge in general.
“The Factor was fishing,” Orsaya said. “He’s heard stories about Lambert.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t keep it a secret anymore,” Abram said. “Enough people know or suspect by now. We also have Sattur Dow asking questions about things he shouldn’t know. Someone is feeding him information.”
“I thought you ran a tight ship, Galenos,” Orsaya said. “I can’t imagine your staff giving out information like that.”
Abram blew out his breath but didn’t say anything.
“Everyone on the Lancastrian Princess is reliable,” Sale said, her voice cold.
Orsaya smiled. “Well-spoken, Group Leader. We all know that. But Galenos is as aware as we are that someone is passing information to people like Dow. There is a high probability that someone is Lancastrian.”
It wasn’t anyone on the Lancastrian Princess.
“So we come now to yesterday’s problem,” Katida said. Ean didn’t know if it was a deliberate attempt to change the subject.
“I take full responsibility,” Sale said. “I was aware of the tension. I should have acted earlier.”
No way would Ean let Sale take the blame for something he’d done. “It wasn’t Sale. She offered to help, but I wanted to sort it out myself.”
“What actually happened?” Katida asked. Her lines were muted, as if she was deliberately trying to hide them. Ean didn’t pry. He opened his mouth to answer, but Sale spoke first.
“Lambert had—has—a reputation among other linesman. Many of the multilevel linesmen in this group were aware of that reputation.”
“I didn’t control—”
“Let Group Leader Sale complete her explanation,” Orsaya said.
Ean closed his mouth.
“The problem was compounded by the fact that Linesman Rossi, a known level-ten linesman, attended the training but did not run it.”
More nods.
“One linesman in particular, Arnold Peters, has been spreading resentment. In the classes themselves, and outside of them. He is, by all accounts, convincing, and was at House of Rigel while Ean was there. He’s telling them horror stories.
“We knew there was a problem. It was manageable until yesterday, when Captain Jakob and Redmond tried to steal the scout.” Sale glanced over at Ean and Rossi. “Lambert took corrective action by moving the ship closer to the Eleven fleet.”
He was Lambert now. No one in Sale’s team ever called him Lambert.
“The bastard jumped the ship cold,” Rossi said. “He has no consideration for the welfare of anyone else on the ships.”
He wasn’t going to let Redmond—or the Worlds of the Lesser Gods—steal a ship.
“Linesman Rossi reacted by trying to prevent Lambert from moving the ship,” Sale said. “He grabbed a weapon and attempted to shoot him. Lambert’s bodyguards protected him and disarmed Rossi. Except the trainees saw a top-level linesman attacked for no obvious reason. They came in to defend him.”
Sale looked at each admiral in turn. “The problem was quickly resolved with the assistance of all crew on board the Gruen. However, Captain Gruen demanded a lockdown, as people were still angry. And her ship was damaged.”
Katida’s lines leaked amusement. “And we couldn’t have that, of course.”
“No, ma’am,” Sale said, then back to all four admirals. “That’s all, sirs.”
They turned their attention to Ean. Four intense gazes were unnerving.
“Do you have anything to add to the facts?” Katida asked.
He heard the slight emphasis on “facts,” both through her voice and through the lines.
“No, ma’am.” It felt strange calling Katida ma’am. “Except the fault is all mine. I was in charge.” Sale shouldn’t blame herself. He’d been running the training. “But I disagree with the implication that I have no concern for other people and their welfare. The jump was perfectly safe. If I only cared for the ships, I would have allowed the ship to be taken. It wanted crew. All the alien ships do.” He pressed his lips together before he said anything further.
Katida turned back to Sale. “Do we have a plan for dealing with future problems?”
“We were hoping that as the linesmen learned more about the lines, they would come around.”
“If we get rid of Peters?”
“I’m not sure that will solve the problem,” Sale said. “Although we have discussed that.”
They’d mentioned it. Was that the full amount of their discussion, or had they talked about it elsewhere?
“Peters makes a lot of noise,” Sale said. “But they’re linesmen. The singles should be realizing the benefits by now and shutting him down, even if the multilevels aren’t. But the singles are almost worse than the multilevels. He shouldn’t have that much influence. Not on his own.”
“So there may be a second troublemaker,” Katida said. “Any idea who?” Her lines didn’t sound surprised. None of the others looked surprised either. It was almost as if they expected it.
“No, ma’am. We haven’t ascertained that yet.”
“The question,” Admiral MacClennan said, “is whether the trouble is deliberate, or whether they’re just linesmen aggrieved about the training?”
Ean hoped they weren’t trying to find excuses to absolve him. “How could it be deliberate?”
“Ean,” Katida said, “you truly do need to spend some time in my military. Build up some paranoia.”
“Put Burns in,” Orsaya suggested. “He’s a single. Many people still believe he’s Rossi’s assistant. There might be some sympathy there.”
“What if they think he’s a spy?” Fergus worked with Ean. If the trainees turned on him, he’d have no chance.
“I’ll put him in a protective suit,” Abram said. E
an had a suit of his own back on the Lancastrian Princess. He’d never worn it, other than to try it on. “Although we won’t be close enough if anything goes wrong. Ean?”
“The lines will look after him.” They considered Fergus part of the Eleven fleet, and the Gruen was an Eleven ship.
“You’d better make sure he’s safe, bastard.”
“I will, but why don’t you do something about it as well?”
Rossi crossed his arms over his chest and didn’t answer.
Orsaya said, “We’ll all be watching to see what we can find. Burns will be the most protected man in the whole of the New Alliance.”
Did the trainees realize they’d now be watched by four fleets?
Abram called Fergus up immediately. “Burns, we’re placing you on the Gruen. Group Leader Sale and Linesman Lambert will explain what you need to do.” Then he called Gruen. “We’re sending Linesman Burns to the Gruen temporarily. Please look after him.”
She nodded. “I’ve sent through a list of damages.”
“We’ll have it attended to,” Abram promised, and clicked off.
What did Gruen do after a battle, when her ship was badly damaged? Hound the admiralty until it was fixed?
After that, they walked down to the shuttle bay together.
“Abram.” Ean dropped back.
Abram matched his pace to Ean’s. This close there were more lines around his eyes than there had been, and he looked tired.
“Did the council say anything? About getting crew for the fleet ships.”
Abram smiled. “You certainly stirred them up. Made them a lot happier, actually. They’re scared of Lancia and worried they’ll lose their ships to us. Your message this morning gave them a way to be sure they don’t, without actually admitting Lancia is a problem. You’ll have your ships allocated soon.”
“Good. Because the ships are already choosing their own linesmen. The Confluence is vetting each linesman who comes on board.” And not only the linesmen. Should he tell Abram about Sale?
Confluence Page 30
