Linesman

by S. K. Dunstall

  “Governor Jade is like a limpet,” Michelle said. “So hard to disentangle once she gets her suckers on.” She sat down, rested her head on the table, and closed her eyes. “My bones hurt.”

  Abram clasped her shoulder in a quick gesture of encouragement.

  Michelle looked tired and ill. The skin on the cheek facing Ean was white and waxy and very fine. She looked young and vulnerable and hardly old enough to leave home, let alone be running a ship full of VIPs on a mission where one misstep could turn into an interstellar war. Suddenly, Radko didn’t seem as young anymore.

  “Are you the youngest person on this ship?” Now that he thought about it, Ean could remember the princess’s being proclaimed heir not long before he—Ean—had left to join Rigel’s cartel. That proclamation would only have happened when she came of age.

  Michelle opened her eyes and looked up at Ean. The dimple flashed out in a smile. “Not anymore,” she said, and sat up properly as Rebekah swept into the room.

  Rebekah nodded at Michelle and Abram and ignored Ean. Ean nodded at her, as if she had greeted him, too.

  Two orderlies followed, bringing welcome tea and sandwiches. Ean poured because he could see that despite his seeming calm, even Abram’s hands were shaking slightly. Ean seemed to be recovering better than the other two. Maybe that was because he had rested and eaten while they’d had to work. Or maybe because he’d had more exposure to the lines.

  Rebekah looked down her nose at him. He didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what she was thinking, that he didn’t even know it was the host’s job to pour. He didn’t care. He was just sorry he’d put the others through such a terrifying experience.

  He pushed sandwiches toward Abram. “Eat,” he said, and made it an order. He held the plate almost up to Abram’s face, so that he had to do something. Abram took a sandwich to avoid a scene.

  Ean held the plate almost under Michelle’s nose. “You, too.”

  Michelle went whiter if that was possible.

  “I’m the expert here,” Ean reminded them. “I know what to do.” He didn’t, but food had helped him.

  Michelle reluctantly took a sandwich.

  “Expert,” said Rebekah. “You’ve spent your whole life mending second-rate lines and learning bad habits. I wouldn’t call you an expert.”

  Ean placed the plate between Abram and Michelle and watched Abram take another sandwich without prompting. He smiled. In this, at least, he was the expert.

  He didn’t want the other linesman sniping at him all the time, demeaning him. Maybe he deserved it. After last night, the Alliance probably wouldn’t let him anywhere near the ship, but he was at least along for the ride. He hoped.

  “Rebekah, let’s agree on one thing. You are the ten they hired. You are the expert. I’m here by accident.” Two more sandwiches disappeared. “So let’s now work together on it. Maybe I can help. This is too important to let anything get in the way.”

  “Help,” said Rebekah. “You’ll probably get us killed.”

  He wondered if that was her real fear.

  “You started late. You’re untrained.”

  He’d had ten years of training.

  “You sing to the lines.”

  Did everyone know that? Or had she done some research of her own last night, too?

  “So you don’t hear music?” Abram asked, taking another sandwich.

  “There is no music,” Rebekah said. “He’s crazy, untalented, and wild. If he’d been taught properly, he wouldn’t hear any music. And those rumors you hear about the strength of his lines are just that. Rumors.” She leaned forward, as if by getting closer, she could convince them. “I know you think you have brought along the two best tens, but you haven’t. He’s a dud.”

  Rumors? In the silence that followed, Ean realized the sandwich plate was empty. He stood up and went over to the door. He couldn’t contribute to the conversation. It was about him, not at him, and Abram and Michelle would do what they would. But this was one thing he could do.

  “Could we have some more sandwiches, please,” he asked one of the guards outside the door.

  He went quietly back to his seat.

  No one else had moved although they all watched him.

  “Look at him,” Rebekah said. “He has no idea how to behave in real society; no idea what is proper.”

  He supposed she meant the sandwiches. It wasn’t proper, but it was necessary. Was she really complaining about his linesmanship or about his coming from the slums?

  Abram finally blinked and took a mouthful of tea. “You seem remarkably well informed,” he said.

  “I’m a linesman. I have to know what threatens us.”

  “Threatens?” Ean couldn’t stop the word.

  “A wild talent with no control.” She spoke to the others, as if one of them had asked it. “He’s not trained.”

  He didn’t want to start defending himself, but she kept on about that. “I did ten years’ training.”

  “With second-rate trainers who all said that you did your own thing, no matter what they taught you.”

  Sometimes the way the trainers did things twisted the lines into the wrong shape.

  “By the time you came into the cartels, you had already learned so many bad habits, no one could fix them. They should have been trained out from childhood.”

  The sandwiches arrived then. Either they’d had them premade, or someone else’s sandwiches had been diverted. He knew, subliminally through line one, it was the latter. This was a ship that looked after its boss first and everyone else second. It was also a ship that—collectively—knew the sandwiches were for Michelle and Abram even though Ean had asked for them. How did it know that?

  “However I do what I do”—Ean wondered if he should just shut up—“I am a certified ten. If the Grand Master had been worried about my abilities, then surely he wouldn’t have certified me.”

  “He is only certified because Rigel chose a public certification.” She was still talking directly to Abram and Michelle, still acting as if they had made the comment. “He would never have passed a private ceremony.”

  Ean remembered the ceremony. He’d been embarrassed and ashamed. Other tens were certified in a private audience with the Grand Master, but Rigel had refused to pay the extra cost. “You can go in with the lower grades. They’ll find your level there just as well, and we’ll save on the cost of the special ceremony.” Rigel could be funny about money. Sometimes he was lavish, sometimes miserly.

  So Ean had endured the humiliation of being publicly tested for every level along with a hundred other linesmen. They’d had to send for special testers above level seven because they didn’t have anyone suitable there.

  “I’m beginning to think Rigel’s cleverer than he acts,” Michelle murmured to Abram. “Let’s take another look at that contract later.”

  Abram grunted what might have been assent.

  Ean thought it was time to get the conversation back on track. “We’re here to talk about the ship,” he reminded Rebekah. Not about how unfit he was for the task. They’d found that out last night.

  “I’m finding this conversation particularly interesting,” Abram said. He poured them all more tea—except Rebekah, who hadn’t touched hers. “It’s important to know our tools.”

  So Ean sat back and sipped tea while Rebekah and Abram discussed just how bad he was.

  “The rumors about his strength. How do you think they started?”

  “He’s a con man and a charmer. Most of the tens are at the confluence.”

  All of them were. Except him, and now Rebekah. And who was going to repair the higher lines now?

  “He’s done basic repairs on every ship for the last six months. Naturally people are grateful to him. They feel a sense of loyalty.”

  “Surely that is the cartel’s fault,” Mic
helle said. “If you leave only one person doing maintenance, people are bound to be grateful to him. Particularly if he does a good job.”

  At least Michelle was defending him.

  “But that’s just it,” Rebekah said. “He appears to do good work, but it—”

  “Falls apart and needs repairing again immediately,” Abram suggested.

  “No,” said Ean, because one thing he did know was that his lines were clean.

  “No one knows,” Rebekah said. “No one knows what damage he is doing, because no one can tell how he repairs the lines. He sings to them. As if that’s going to do any good.” She leaned forward again. “Suppose a line fails while it’s passing through the void.”

  Abram nodded. “Can I get a list of ships he has repaired in the last six months? I might check what has happened to them.”

  She nodded back.

  Ean sipped more tea.

  “So why didn’t Ean go out to the confluence?” Abram asked. “Surely, if you didn’t want him repairing the lines, the smartest thing to do would be to send him out there and leave other tens doing the repairs.”

  “At the confluence?” Rebekah was shocked. “Think of the damage he could do.”

  Ean had pleaded and bargained to get out there. Rigel had always refused. “We make more money doing repairs,” he’d said.

  Ean realized he was biting his bottom lip and tried to stop. He took a sip of tea, but his breath caught at the wrong time, and he breathed in a mouthful of liquid. He missed the next bit they said while he was coughing tea everywhere and mopping it up, but he did hear Michelle say, “The cartels have to take some of the blame for what has happened. Leaving one person to make all the repairs, then blaming him for getting the kudos seems a little harsh.”

  Rebekah flushed an ugly brick red. “You are not a linesman,” she told her. “The confluence, it’s . . . You have no idea.”

  Abram coughed gently. She closed her mouth on an audible click of teeth.

  Abram glanced at Ean and then at his comms. “It is time we talked about the ship,” he said.

  Ean carefully folded the cloth he’d used to mop up the tea and didn’t look at anyone.

  He continued to look at the cloth while they watched videos of the various linesmen discussing their experience. The highest was a six, the lowest a three. They all said the same thing. They could tell that the ship had lines, but they couldn’t recognize which lines or what levels. All of them agreed it felt like higher-level lines. All of them sounded a little awed and overwhelmed.

  “Not much to go on,” Abram said, when they were done. “We’re hoping you two will find out more.”

  “And we don’t know what triggered the pulse?” Rebekah asked.

  “No. Could be proximity. Could be detection of weapons. Could be someone on the ship who thought the Haladeans got too close.”

  “One hundred kilometers is too far out,” Rebekah said. “We need to get closer. You have to be close to the lines to read them.”

  At least she was thinking, now that she had finished deconstructing Ean’s character.

  Abram raised an eyebrow at Ean, who nearly didn’t see it except that Michelle nudged him with her knee. He hoped he understood the question. “I have always worked close to the lines, too.” Even ten kilometers was too far away. “I don’t see how we can get close enough to talk to them”—he caught Rebekah’s scowl at his unfortunate use of words—“without getting ourselves blown up.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, they discussed the lines. Ean didn’t contribute much. Compared to Rebekah’s experience, he knew nothing, and if what Rebekah said was true, then anything he did say was likely suspect anyway. Was he really as bad as she claimed?

  Michelle nudged his knee again. He looked up, and had absolutely no idea what the question had been. Abram and Michelle exchanged a quick glance. Michelle shrugged and lowered her eyelashes in what looked almost like a tiny nod.

  Abram stood up abruptly. “We’re all tired. Maybe we could think about this and reconvene later. After dinner. Back here at 21:00.” He looked at Ean. “You should get some rest.”

  “Yes, sir.” It was effectively an order, in a tone that demanded a military response. Ean stood up, nodded to them all, and left the room. Michelle came out with him. From the corner of his eye, Ean saw Abram turn to Rebekah once they had gone. More discussion about him? Or a serious talk about what they could do with the ship?

  Once outside, reaction set in, and he had to tuck his hands under his arms to stop them from shaking. He was almost glad Michelle walked with him because it meant he had to keep himself together as they passed through the foyer, now teeming with military and civilian predinner drinkers, nodding to people he’d met last night. At least six of them tried to waylay Michelle, but she said, “Business,” and kept walking alongside Ean.

  The lift, mercifully, was empty, and Michelle used a code to take them straight to their floor.

  Ean said, “You don’t need to guard me all the time.” And the one doing the guarding shouldn’t be the Emperor’s oldest daughter. “I’m not likely to damage your lines.” Except that he already had if Rebekah was right. Line six. He leaned back against the wall and tried not to think about that.

  Michelle’s mouth twisted down in a half wince, half smile. “Is that what you think we’re doing?” She followed Ean out of the lift, through the central room with the three couches at the end, and down to Ean’s room. She even followed him inside.

  Ean looked at her, then turned away. Michelle could do what she liked, but he was going to get clean. He felt soiled and dirty. He turned and walked through the bedroom toward the bathroom, pulling off his shirt as he did so.

  “Not the fresher,” Michelle said, and beat him to the door. “It was hard enough to get you out of it last night, and there were two of us then.”

  She blocked the whole door. The geneticists had built for height. Not too tall to be freakish but tall enough to give an imposing physical presence. Ean’s eyes looked straight into hers. She smiled at him, showing dazzling white teeth. “Let’s sit on the bed for a moment and talk.”

  That was probably an order, too. Ean turned and walked back to the bed and sat on the end of it. It was a big bed—probably the third largest bed in the whole ship. He deliberately didn’t think about anything, and most especially didn’t think about last night. Or today’s meeting.

  Michelle sat down beside him. “Is that what you do, make for the fresher when you’re upset?”

  Ean fell back onto the bed and covered his face with the shirt he still carried. “Is there some point to all this?” He didn’t want to look at Michelle, didn’t want to hear her answer.

  Michelle was silent for so long that Ean thought she was waiting for him to look at her, so he finally lowered the shirt. Michelle was staring at the opposite wall—which suited Ean fine.

  “Abram likes you,” Michelle said, eventually.

  And everyone sang to the lines, too. Ean covered his face again. He didn’t want to hear lies.

  “But his first job is to protect the people on this ship—me especially, but everyone else, too—and he’s got a problem. How do you get someone close to that thing without getting them killed? And we need that ship.”

  “It’s only a ship,” Ean said. Yes it was new and unknown and exciting, but it was still just a piece of machinery.

  “The Alliance is very fragile at the moment,” Michelle said. “Gate Union is delaying jumps for Alliance ships. It may not seem much, but it’s limiting our access to the void, and it’s going to get worse. Plus, with the line factory at Shaolin gone, Redmond owns all the lines, and we know who they’re affiliated with. They can stop us buying line ships.”

  “Would Redmond remain affiliated with Gate Union if they controlled supply of the lines?” Michelle might be being overly pessimistic. “After all, they’
d drop half their potential market,” Ean said.

  “They don’t need to do it forever. Just a few years. No ships, no jumps. We can all see what will happen then. It doesn’t matter how much military power we have, without the void, without the ability to travel faster-than-light, we can see that we will become second-class citizens compared to those who can.”

  They could set up their own void gates, but even Ean could see the danger in that. It only took one ship to deliberately jump through to the wrong place, and you destroyed a planetary system.

  “Plus, we’ve a dozen internal wars threatening to tear us apart. If we can’t pull together, the Alliance won’t exist in twenty years. You can imagine what will happen to a world like Lancia.”

  Ean couldn’t. Lancia had been a major power broker in galactic politics for the whole four hundred years the Alliance had been in place. If he’d thought about it at all—and he hadn’t—he would have assumed that Lancia would go on to become the same in Gate Union.

  “We need this ship. We need a rallying point.” Michelle’s voice was bleak. “Not to mention that if Gate Union or Redmond get hold of it and work out what it does, then they have a weapon that can defeat us.”

  Ean really should have studied more politics.

  “You’ve taken good care to make sure they don’t.” Three jumps in a row, and another one tonight if he was hearing the lines properly. He wasn’t looking forward to that.

  Michelle laughed a mirthless laugh. “They’ll find us, and it will be much faster than we want them to. If the media can’t do it, the linesmen will.”

  “Linesmen?” Surely she didn’t mean him. Ean felt sick. “You think I—?”

  Michelle pulled the shirt away from his face. Blue eyes gazed into his. “No. We don’t. As you said earlier, you’re an accident. No one knew you were coming. But we pulled a lot of strings to get Rebekah Grimes on board. And everyone knows the cartels are pro–Gate Union.”

  Even Rigel had been, and if Ean had thought about it, he would be, too.

  “You think Rebekah is a spy?” She worked for a cartel. She would do the job she was paid to. “But she’s a ten.”