Linesman

by S. K. Dunstall

  “Linesman?”

  Ean smiled at the governor. “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.”

  “I don’t know enough about the job to have an opinion yet,” and thought he imagined the warm approval in Michelle’s blue gaze.

  “And so you should think that,” said one of the men who’d come over with Michelle. He was in uniform—although Ean couldn’t pick the world—and had been one of the first to swarm them when they’d stepped out of the lift. “It’s dangerous. We don’t know what we’re playing with here. We shouldn’t even touch it.”

  “That’s why we have the linesmen,” Michelle said smoothly.

  “And didn’t one of your linesmen get killed recently.”

  Michelle’s lips tightened.

  “That was nothing to do with the ship,” Abram said, close behind Michelle as usual. “That was something else altogether.”

  “Still. It shows that we’re meddling in something we’re not supposed to be. Blow it up, I say. Get rid of the damn thing before it kills any more of us.”

  They had found something. Ean tingled with expectation. It might not be the confluence, but it was new and unknown.

  “But Admiral,” said Governor Jade. “Think what we can learn from it.”

  “Every crackpot in the universe will be thinking of that as soon as it becomes public knowledge.”

  If the representatives gathered in this room were anything to go by, everyone knew about it anyway.

  Whatever “it” was. Since lines nine and ten were only used to travel through the void, and Abram and Michelle had recruited level ten linesmen, it was likely to be a ship. But what kind of ship could generate such a gathering of VIPs?

  “It’s a warship,” the admiral said. “Will Redmond or Gate Union stay away once they know?”

  The three major political groups—Gate Union, Redmond, and the Alliance—had been on the brink of war for years now. In the ten years Ean had been at Rigel’s, he had seen the balance of power shift subtly, but surely, away from the old power, the Alliance, toward the other two groups. Over the past six months, he’d also had to fix a lot of warships, many of them built in the last twenty years.

  Gate Union, in particular, was becoming quite powerful. The union had started out as a loose affiliation of worlds that had agreed to monitor and assign void jumps—after all, no one wanted to jump cold, that was deadly. They made up a network of sector “gates,” tracking each ship, controlling their passage through. These gate worlds had become the major trade routes because all jumps went through their controllers. Fifty years before Ean had been born, they had formalized that loose affiliation into a political entity. Gate Union.

  A lot of the cartels were covertly pro–Gate Union. The cartel houses were close to the gates—after all, the big money came from lines nine and ten—and the nines and tens were all on the ships that jumped through the void.

  Ean realized, suddenly, that the Alliance had to be worried about that. Control the void, and you controlled shipping.

  “That’s why we are here,” Michelle said. “To prevent Gate Union or Redmond getting anywhere near the ship. To protect and claim what is ours.”

  The gong chimed for dinner then, and huge doors slid open at one end of the room. “Admiral, Governor,” and she walked in with them to the formally set dining tables now exposed.

  Rebekah swept in behind them.

  Ean waited until most of the others had moved in, then followed. Thankfully, another orderly was there to seat him. He was placed at a table halfway down. If Rigel’s ranking lessons made any sense, that meant that he was halfway up the pecking order. Rebekah was at a table nearby; Michelle was at the top table, and Abram at the second table. Michelle’s table was a riot of richly dressed color. Abram’s table was all uniforms and fancy braid.

  The woman on Ean’s right wore a Balian uniform. He recognized it from the Picasso, which had been the first military ship he’d ever worked on. A massive warship, it had also been the first big ship he’d worked on. He had no idea of her rank, though, or her age. She was slender and looked fit, and her skin was flawless, but her eyes looked ancient, and the fingers that reached out to pick up her glass looked more like claws than hands.

  The man on his left was a civilian. And Michelle was correct. The skimpy, see-through shirts were in fashion—for both men and women. Unfortunately, they required a perfectly sculpted body underneath, and this man was carrying some flab. The shirt hid nothing, and showed a roll of fat at the bottom.

  “So what do you think of this ship they found?” the civilian asked.

  Ean forced himself to look at the man’s face. He probably couldn’t afford one anyway, but he was never going to buy a shirt like that. He fell back on the answer he had given before. “I don’t know enough yet to think anything.”

  The soldier on his right nodded. The military seemed to like his answers, at least.

  “But you must have an opinion,” the civilian insisted. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and his breath smelled of wine.

  “Not really.” Ean’s voice was going again. He took a mouthful of the wine in front of him. What he really wanted was some warm tea.

  The soldier laughed. “Give it up, Tarkan,” she advised. “He’s one of Lady Lyan’s men. Of course he’ll be discreet.”

  Tarkan was a formal title used on the three Gaian worlds. Rigel’s etiquette coach had covered that much. The man was a landowner and a parliamentary minister. And if a Tarkan could end up halfway down the dining room, who in the worlds was on the higher tables?

  “Admiral Katida,” the soldier said, holding out her hand to Ean.

  “Ean Lambert.” They shook hands. He didn’t add a title. They already knew he was a linesman.

  “I know,” she said, making him wonder momentarily if he had said it out loud anyway. “You worked on one of our ships. The Picasso. The captain was very pleased with your work. He’d had it in three times in three trips before that. Hasn’t had to take it in since.”

  Maybe he should ask her captain to put in a good word with the captain on this ship. Ean smiled at her, and she smiled back. Her smile was more than warm, it was sizzling and held an invitation. She held his gaze until he had to look away. Right now, he needed another drink. This sort of thing didn’t happen to Rigel’s people.

  Eyes lowered, he looked back to the Gaian on the other side. Naturally, he saw the shirt first, and raised his eyes a second too late to be really polite. He could feel the color rising in his face.

  The Gaian smiled at him and pulled in his stomach muscles. He held out his own hand in turn. “Tarkan Heyington.” His hand clasp was warm and a little too long.

  “Delighted.” Ean had to rescue this conversation somehow. He indicated the tables. “It’s a diverse mix of worlds,” he said. “Did everyone send a representative?” He thought that topic was safe enough.

  “Every single member of the Alliance,” Admiral Katida said. “Lady Lyan has done a remarkable job.” She grimaced, and added, “I am glad I am not in charge of keeping this particular ship safe. If anything happens to us, it will start a galaxy-wide war. Lady Lyan has guts putting us all together like this. I’ll give her that.”

  Ean thought of the harmless-looking freighter he had seen in the viewscreen. It didn’t appear to have much protection. “People must have seen you arrive,” he said. He’d probably seen some of them himself yesterday, on the long walk from the primary landing site to the carts. You couldn’t hide that many ships, especially not ships carrying high-ranking government and military dignitaries.

  “Of course people saw us arrive,” Tarkan Heyington said. “We’ve been on the vids all week. But who would dare stay away from the party celebrating the impending nuptials of Emperor Yu’s oldest daughter to Yu’s close personal friend, Sattur Dow. Not I. I wouldn’t dare.”

  It was rumore
d that Sattur Dow owned half the galaxy. Ean didn’t know if the rumors were true. He did know Dow was a hard man, not someone he’d want his daughter to marry.

  When Ean had been a boy—almost too young to remember but everyone in the slums remembered this—Sattur Dow had bought up Settlement City for the mining rights. He’d given the inhabitants two days to leave. On the third day, he’d sent in a demolition crew with explosives. By nightfall, a city that once held half a million people was a pile of rubble. The influx of refugees to Ean’s home district had caused turf wars that had lasted years.

  “Nor would anyone else here refuse to come to the wedding,” Heyington said. “Except the daughter, of course. Who, rumor has it, is not happy about it at all. So—according to rumor again—she decided to take off and study the confluence, hoping that her father will get over this latest foolishness like he did last time.”

  Which solved, once and for all, the question of whether Michelle was one of the legitimate or illegitimate offspring.

  “So are we going to the confluence?” Ean asked. Please let them be. He wanted so desperately to go. He’d just never have imagined Lancia would be the world to get him there.

  “Of course not,” Katida said. “Telling everyone she’s studying the confluence gives her an excuse to get some tens. That’s why we’re here. There are four cartel houses on this planet.”

  Rigel’s was the smallest and most insignificant, and Sandhurst wasn’t one of them.

  “But—” Tarkan Heyington held up a hand to forestall Ean’s next question. Not that he had one. “The Emperor is determined this time. If the daughter won’t come to him, then he will go to the daughter, and all of us will go with him.” He shook his head admiringly. “Like the admiral said, she’s got guts. Right under everyone’s nose.”

  Ean looked around the room. “So are you all here for the ship or are some just here for the wedding?” And was Michelle actually getting married or not? There would be some guests you had to invite to the wedding—like Yu’s grandmother, former Emperor Consort Jai—but he couldn’t see her among the dignitaries, and based on her reputation, you wouldn’t want her on a secret mission either.

  “Oh no,” Katida said. “Every single person here is handpicked for this mission.”

  Except him, but he didn’t tell Katida that.

  Ean glanced up at the head table, to where Michelle was laughing with Governor Jade. The woman he had met today didn’t look the sort who would come up with such a complex conspiracy. Or maybe she could. She’d been prepared to kill for revenge. Which was typical of a Lancastrian, even down to planning it out. “So when does the Emperor arrive?”

  “Tomorrow. But we’ll be gone by then.” The Tarkan waved an expansive hand, nearly knocking Ean’s wine over. “Sorry,” as Ean rescued his glass. “At least, we’d better be. I’m sure he doesn’t want that particular wedding to happen any more than his daughter does.”

  “Sattur Dow wouldn’t mind,” said another admiral from farther down the table.

  Ean pondered the mix of people on board as he listened. If Gate Union took this ship out, the Alliance would lose a large number of high-ranking soldiers and politicians in one swoop. He hoped that Abram, who Michelle had said was responsible for security, was good at his job.

  Even so, how long could it stay a secret? “People will suspect something.” There were too many dignitaries, too many soldiers, for people not to notice.

  “Haven’t you been watching the vids?” Tarkan Heyington asked.

  “I’ve been a little busy.” He hadn’t seen the vids in months.

  “He’s a ten, Tarkan,” Katida said. “He has better things to do with his time.”

  “Should still watch the vids. Best indicator of public sentiment around. And driver of it. But I suppose a linesman doesn’t have time for politics.”

  Ean shrugged.

  “Let me give you some advice.” And the Tarkan leaned close. “Linesmen do play politics. Especially the higher levels.” He leaned even closer, so that their arms were touching. Ean could feel the warmth through the jacket of his formal uniform. He managed not to lean away. “That’s why I’ve heard of that woman over there”—he inclined his head toward the table Rebekah was at—“while I’ve never heard of you, whom the admiral’s captain is so taken with. It’s not how you do the job, it’s always about how you play the people.”

  Rigel had believed something similar. It hadn’t got Rigel anywhere.

  The Tarkan laughed. “Look at his face, Admiral. He doesn’t believe us.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for someone who thinks doing a good job is the only thing that’s required.” Katida sounded wistful. She gripped Ean’s other arm. “Hang on to your delusions as long as you can.”

  It was time to rescue the conversation again.

  He gently disentangled himself from them both on the pretext of taking another mouthful of wine. “So what—” His voice had mostly gone again. He took a second mouthful. “So what will the vids do when the Emperor arrives and finds us gone?” It was bizarre to talk about an undertaking like this in terms of how the media would react. Shouldn’t they be discussing how Gate Union and Redmond would react?

  “Well, the ones who predicted it will say they knew she’d run all along. The others will dig up something.”

  “Predicted it?”

  “Public sentiment is 70 percent for her running, 25 percent against,” Katida said.

  “And the other 5 percent?”

  “Undecided.”

  He’d seen opinion polls himself, but he’d never been intimately involved in one like this. That made it different.

  “Getting that 70 percent was hard,” the Tarkan said. “I tell you. I thought we’d be stuck at 50 for a while. Many people thought she’d stay to face her father.”

  “So you—” It was time for another mouthful of wine. Ean took a bigger gulp than he meant to.

  The man on the Tarkan’s left—another civilian—leaned forward. “Don’t let him convince you he did it on his own. We all contributed.”

  “But 20 percent is a big swing.” Ean thought it was safe conversation. Everyone liked praise.

  The Tarkan snorted. “It was more like 50 percent altogether,” he said. “It was only the last 20 that was hard.”

  It was appalling, but it was impressive. There had to be a better way than ruining one woman’s reputation to get a group like this together in secrecy. Not that Ean had ever thought of the Lancastrian royal family as having a good reputation. He would probably have been one of the cynical 30 percent who’d believed the bad news already. Or was that 25 percent?

  “What will you do if we find nothing?” All this secrecy, all this expense, for a ship no one knew anything about.

  “That ship destroyed three Alliance ships,” Katida said. “If the only thing we find is the weapon they used to do that, then it’s worth it.”

  Ean had worked on a lot of military ships in the last six months. Gate Union, Alliance, Redmond. The ships were the same, give or take a few features.

  The second-to-last ship he’d worked on had been a warship. The captain had met him personally and escorted him first to engineering, where line ten was holding together with little more than a thread, then up to the bridge, to the Captain’s Chair, where what Ean thought of as the brain of the lines resided.

  Not that his trainers agreed with that. They were simply lines of energy, they had reminded him, and attributing a brain to any component meant that he would never be able to fix them properly because he couldn’t treat the whole thing as a constant line of energy.

  Captain MacIntyre of the GU MacIntyre had been proud of his ship, which had been the first of the newly designed honeycomb models from the factories at Roscracia. After Ean had finished repairs, they had dined together, and after that, MacIntyre had given him a tour. He’d explained i
n detail how the honeycomb design allowed each sector to be quickly shut off and isolated in the event of a hit; of the titanium-bialer alloy that each sector was built from that could withstand the direct hit of a million-terajoule bomb; and how parts of the engineering section—inside the central honeycomb—were duplicated outside of it and could take the power from the shuttles so there was no single point of failure except for the lines, which were in the exact center of the ship, with multiple layers between them and the surface.

  MacIntyre had been convinced no one could destroy his ship.

  Either Alliance ships were a lot weaker than their Gate Union equivalent, or this new ship—which Ean still knew nothing about—was a degree of power greater than anything known. The way Katida said “destroyed three ships” implied deliberate destruction in a military sense. Ean looked around the room again, at the sea of uniforms and everyone discussing the find with animated expectation.

  Were they going to war?

  He was glad the next course arrived then. It gave him time to chew in silence and think.

  There were ten courses. Small serves, but Ean was still full by the fifth. The people around him seemed to take it as their due. No wonder the civilians tended to be on the plump side.

  The military, with a few exceptions, were more in shape. He had known an old soldier in the Lancastrian slums, so skinny his bones showed through translucent skin, who claimed to have been dismissed from the military for being overweight. At the time, Ean hadn’t believed it—Old Kairo was so thin that, even as a boy, Ean had been able to encircle his skinny wrist with his forefinger and thumb—but now he wasn’t so sure.

  Conversation drifted on to other things. What it was like to be a linesman? He didn’t know what it was like to not be. Had he ever had a crazy ship? No, although privately Ean wondered if the last ship he had worked on might have been if it had been let go much longer.

  The talk switched from there to general talk about crazy ships. Strathcona, whose crew had gone insane. Davida, a military ship Ean hadn’t known about. “Her captain saved his crew, then disappeared into the void with her,” Katida said. And of course, the infamous liner Balao, who had killed her passengers and crew by jumping with the lines wide open—or so it was commonly believed—subjecting them to the terrors of the void, so that they all died of fright.