Linesman

by S. K. Dunstall

  “Ean?” Radko touched his arm gently. She was never afraid to touch him even if it meant getting zapped. She should be.

  “Um.”

  Jordan Rossi was watching him with something approaching contempt. What must the other linesman think? A bumbling fool who couldn’t even walk by himself. Once he’d been proud to call himself a ten. Now he was acting like he was the idiot half brother they were all ashamed of. And a little scared of, too. Worried he’d go berserk.

  “I can walk.”

  “Let’s do it, people.” Sale handed out oxygen from the shuttle store, while Losan and two others set up the second stretcher and tied the prisoners to it.

  Michelle reached out to pull Ean close enough that their helmets touched. “He’s only a ten,” she said softly. “Not worth your worrying about.”

  Rossi obviously heard the comment. He stood tall, sure of himself and his place, and raised a cynical eyebrow. But the observation somehow diminished him and made him suddenly ordinary. Ean smiled and gently patted the side of Michelle’s Plexiglas. “Thanks.”

  • • •

  RADKO checked Ean’s oxygen. “When we get back to ship, he does basic space survival,” she told Michelle.

  Michelle nodded.

  “A linesman who works on ships regularly would already know that,” Rossi said, and the inference was obvious. Tens worked on ships because they had the higher lines. If Ean didn’t know basic ship survival, he wasn’t a real ten.

  Even that didn’t diminish Ean’s peace.

  “Comms.” Sale held out her hand with the comms Ean hadn’t even realized he’d dropped.

  “You could use the shuttle comms,” Jordan Rossi said.

  Ean knew what Sale wanted. He took the portable comms and sang to alien ship line five. A song of communication and contact: a song to Abram.

  The reply was instant. “Galenos.”

  Ean handed the comms to Sale and kept singing.

  “We’ve landed safely, sir. Atmosphere inside the ship is lethal within half an hour. We’re 3.2 kilometers from our entry point, sunside. We’re now off to find the ship controls.”

  “Good.”

  Michelle took the comms. “Abram. We’re safe here. We have Ean. Look after yourselves now.” Which was so much what Ean wanted to say he almost stopped singing. “Before any diplomats get wasted,” Michelle added, which Ean was sure was a pointed reminder that she—Michelle—wasn’t the only one he had to save.

  Abram just laughed. “Thank you, Misha,” and Ean knew, as clearly as every other Alliance member listening, that Abram wasn’t going anywhere until Michelle was safely back on the Lancastrian Princess.

  Radko seated herself at Michelle’s feet. Losan had put her shoulder back in for her, but Ean could see she was still in pain. She flexed her shoulder carefully and switched the blaster to her left hand. Ean hoped she could fire with the other hand.

  Then they were off.

  • • •

  THEY found their first body two corridors up. It was octopedal in shape, with eight limbs from a round torso and a large head above it. Even though the limbs all extended from the same circumference, two sets of two were obviously arms and two sets were legs. The arms ended in three fingers.

  “Two fingers and an opposable thumb,” Sale said, on closer investigation. “And hard, horny growth at the bottom of the feet—analogous to hooves.”

  “Four hands,” Craik said. “This ship is going to be a bitch to pilot.”

  “No decomposition,” the prisoner pilot said, in a heavy, foreboding voice. Now that he was conscious, he was taking an active interest in the ship. He and Sale looked at each other.

  “We’re on a ship,” Ean said. “You need sun and warmth for that.”

  “You need bacteria,” Sale said. “And there are always bacteria on a ship.” She rubbed her visor, as if she’d meant to rub her eyes, and moved on.

  The next body—two of them—were at the junction of the same corridor.

  “Similar height,” Sale noted. About 80 percent of normal human height. Most of the humans had to stoop to get through the doors.

  These bodies hadn’t decomposed, either. The skin was gray with black streaks. Ean wondered if that was because they were dead or if it was their natural color. They wore no clothing, but some of them had designs that appeared to be tattooed onto the skin.

  This time it wasn’t just Sale and the pilot who looked at each other.

  After that, they found bodies everywhere.

  It was a big ship, and the shuttle bay was nowhere near the bridge. It made for a long walk. In one big common area there were over a hundred bodies. So many they had to clear some away to get the stretchers through.

  “It’s like the Balao,” Jordan Rossi said, his rich tones full of horrified fascination.

  Crazy ship.

  They had videos of the Balao. A news team had gone in soon after she’d been found and filmed every single room. People everywhere, their dead faces contorted in some unknown terror, bodies still preserved even after the ten years it took to find her. You could visit the ship, a macabre museum, if you wanted. They’d taken the bodies out, of course, destroyed the lines, and replaced both with plastic models. Ean had never been to the museum and never watched the video either.

  He didn’t realize he was singing a song of comfort to the lines until Jordan Rossi said, with some irritation, “Does he do that all the time?” Underneath, Ean could smell the fear through Rossi’s line ten—or hear it, really, because smells didn’t come in through the suit; but it registered in Ean’s brain as a smell. He wasn’t sure if Rossi was scared of him or of the ship.

  “Yes,” said Radko, short, sharp, and conversation-stopping.

  Crazy ship. No one knew what made a ship crazy. Everyone knew if you jumped in one, you died. This particular ship had jumped three times since without incident. But no one had been on the ship when it jumped, Ean reminded himself.

  One thing was certain. Michelle was never going to be on this ship when it jumped. Her people would destroy the ship—and Ean—before they let that happen. So the only option left was to find the weapons controls and defeat the Gate Union ships by force.

  As they got closer to the lines, Ean could hear just how bad they were, hurting as badly as the Lancastrian Princess after the attack, as badly as the Scion, the ship Ean had finished mending the day before Rigel had sold his contract to Michelle.

  Even line eleven, which had seemed so strong, was damaged.

  “The lines are bad,” he said, to no one in particular, and Jordan Rossi half nodded in agreement.

  Maybe they had some common ground after all.

  TWENTY-THREE

  JORDAN ROSSI

  EAN LAMBERT WAS as crazy as everyone said. Crazier. And the way he sang.

  Crazy Ean Lambert on a crazy ship. It could only lead to disaster.

  This ship was like the confluence, and Lambert’s song soared and swelled in and around it, almost as if he was talking to it. It was a song of comfort and calm, a song that said, “We’re here. We’ll help,” and the confluence likeness of the ship calmed at it.

  How dare he presume to know what the confluence wanted? How dare he even sing in the presence of it?

  Fergus was no help. He watched Lambert with an openmouthed fascination that bordered on awe. Rossi really was going to have to sack him. He felt a momentary regret for twenty years’ good service, but Fergus and the confluence just didn’t mix.

  He concentrated on breathing. The confluence always took his breath away.

  The Alliance soldiers had the upper hand for now, but this ship—this confluence—was his. Rossi didn’t care how, but when this was over, the confluence would be his.

  A ripple of amusement ran through the lines and even trilled out in Lambert’s song. A strong sense of negation follo
wed.

  “These lines are already claimed,” Lambert said.

  So he was a mind reader now. It gave Rossi the creeps.

  “You’re thinking at the lines,” Lambert said gently.

  The magnificence of the confluence-like song came in then and made it hard to breathe, which saved Rossi from having to think. Even crazy Lambert had to stop singing for a while.

  They stopped their relentless run to let the two linesmen recover. Rossi thought that if he’d been the only one affected, they might have kept running.

  “Anyone remember how to handle a heart attack in a space suit?” the soldier in charge asked.

  “Oxygen, get them out of it as soon as you can and into a hospital.”

  “You’re guessing, Craik. When we get back, that’s another thing you’re all going to learn. You okay, Ean?”

  Lambert nodded.

  Soon after that, they came out into a large space that was the operations room or bridge. The screens were still on although the colors were in the blue spectrum. Come to think of it, the whole ship had a bluish tinge.

  The combination of lines and confluence brought Rossi to his knees.

  It was generally believed that line strength was even. No matter where you were on a ship, the strength was the same. That wasn’t the case on this particular ship. Here on the bridge, the lines were so strong, it was difficult to think.

  Lambert made straight for the covered-in hood, where the lines were strongest. The padded stool beneath it was low enough, and about the right shape to hold the body sprawled in front of it. From the seat, one would have a good view of the whole room. The Captain’s Chair, presumably, and they had probably just met the captain as well.

  A body was a body. So far as Rossi was concerned, it was just another piece of debris to clear away.

  Lambert’s song rose in the space, and multiplied, until it resembled a choir.

  “How does he do that?” Fergus asked.

  Rossi didn’t care except that the other linesman was taking the sound of his confluence. If he kept singing like that, it wouldn’t matter anyway. He’d have no voice left.

  “UV filters,” the lead soldier said, and everyone except Lambert snapped the filters on. The injured soldier—Radko—had to limp over to do it for him. Judging by the electricity that crackled around her suit, there was a lot of static on the line chassis. Lambert just kept singing. Rossi knew he imagined it, but some of the lines were starting to feel stronger.

  With the filters blocking out most of the blue, the screens were almost ordinary. A starfield—maybe not the way humans represented them but obviously a starfield nonetheless. The ships were flickering bars of light. When Rossi put his hand close to a screen, he could feel the vibration coming from it.

  The lead soldier, whose name turned out to be Sale, put her hand up to feel it as well. “This whole room is talking to us, and we can’t understand it. Ean.”

  He half turned to look at her.

  “Which are the weapons? And how do we use them?”

  “I need to fix—” still in song, then Lambert looked at the prone Lady Lyan—unconscious again—and said, “Sorry.” His song changed, rich and warm. Rossi imagined that line eight got stronger. Line eight. He tried to ground himself.

  Fergus was studying the flickering bars of light on the starfield screen. “They’re lines,” he said. “Look. Ten for each ship.”

  Most of them came over to see.

  They were lines. Rossi could feel it in that part of him that normally reacted just to the lines. He put a hand up to one particular set, and his line sense got stronger. He took his hand away, put it back again. He put his hand to another set. These lines were weaker, poorly maintained.

  Imagine what you could do if you could tell the strength of the lines without having to physically visit the ship. Then Rossi snorted to himself. As if. No human had even come up with a tool to show the presence of lines—that’s what linesmen were for—let alone display the health of them.

  The lines flickered and faded as if they had gotten strong, then weak, then strong again. Lines nine and ten didn’t flicker. Which made sense, Rossi decided. No one was jumping. Then, far off to the edge of the field, lines six, nine, and ten flared into being, then steadied, and the other seven lines came on. Line ten was very strong.

  “A ship just arrived,” Rossi murmured and didn’t question how he knew. He could feel it in the lines.

  The ship in the center of the screen had twelve lines.

  Rossi stared at it, convinced at first that the confluence was affecting his eyes. He nudged Fergus, who would soon be unemployed, but he could make himself useful while he still had a job. “What’s that center one?”

  “That’s probably us.”

  Fergus was normally quicker than that, but it was too late then anyway because the starfield was replaced by a screen of pulsing lights and sound.

  “What the?”

  “This is the weapons system,” Lambert said.

  “I told you this thing was going to be a bitch to drive,” Craik said.

  That wasn’t Jordan Rossi’s problem. His was much closer. How to get Ean Lambert away from his lines.

  Sale didn’t, quite, throw up her arms. “You’ll have to guide us,” she said to Lambert.

  “No, look,” Fergus said. “They do everything by the lines. Color and sound.” He indicated a row of lights showing strong on line eight. “These must be the weapons.”

  Lambert nodded. “Line eight is security.”

  How did he know that? No one knew what line eight did.

  “And these must be the targets.” Fergus indicated the fluxes that were roughly in the same positions they’d been on the star chart.

  Fergus had always had a knack for lines. He’d come to House of Rickenback to train as a linesman, but he’d never been certified. Rossi often wondered how resentful that made him. And why the confluence hadn’t attracted him the way it did real linesmen. He’d been immune.

  “And the strengths would be the strengths of the lines,” Fergus said.

  Lambert touched the two weak sets. “So they will be the media ships. And this one”—strong on line eight and above but weak on the lines below and especially weak on line six—“this will be Captain Helmo.” He sang the last, rather than spoke it, a tune Rossi recognized from earlier. His voice dropped back to normal. “The strength of the lines includes the people.”

  Crazy as it was, Rossi could feel they were right.

  Fergus nodded.

  “Might I remind you,” Rossi said pointedly to Fergus, “that this is the enemy.”

  Fergus looked at him, then fell silent.

  Line eight was exceptionally strong on Helmo’s ship. Did that mean his security was exceptionally strong, too? Rossi could well believe that of Galenos.

  Lambert continued. “So these two will be the Wendell and the Gruen. And this ship over here”—the one that had just arrived—“it has a ten on it.”

  That would probably be Rebekah Grimes. Rossi gritted his teeth in a smile that was closer to a snarl. First, Admiral Orsaya refused to take him to the confluence, had the cheek to stun him, in fact. Now she had obviously decided that what was happening here was more important than the confluence. She had better not think she was going to send him away from this ship now.

  “God,” said Craik. “Doesn’t it recognize anything except lines? What happens if there’s an asteroid in the way? It doesn’t see it?”

  “I just want to shoot them,” Sale said. “Tell me how to do it.”

  Lambert sang to the lines.

  The confluence swelled, sending Rossi to his knees. Line eight strengthened and kept strengthening.

  “I turned the shield back on,” Lambert said, his voice hoarse. “And we’re moving toward Captain Helmo’s ship.”

 
Then his eyes rolled up, and he fainted.

  “Brilliant,” Sale said. “Now what?” She stamped her foot hard against the deck. “This line of yours,” she said to Radko. “Is about as reliable as—”

  Radko said mildly, “Lines need a safe place.”

  What in the lines did she mean by that?

  “There’s a lot of ambient noise,” Fergus said. “Even I can feel it, and I’m sure Jordan can. He was bound to be overcome eventually. Both of them are.”

  Fergus really did seem to forget what side he was on.

  Sale looked at him for a full half minute. “Okay,” she said finally. “You two line experts”—she indicated Fergus and Radko—“can look after line twelve here. While you”—she looked at Rossi—“get me a comms to Commodore Galenos.”

  “I should be looking at the higher lines,” Rossi protested. “There are two extra lines here, on this ship.”

  Sale looked exasperated. “I know that. We’re on this ship, too, so get me that comms.”

  Fergus looked up from where he crouched beside Lambert. “The lines don’t work that way. He can’t get you a comms.”

  She glared at Fergus this time. “If Ean can get me a comms, then he can get me one, too. He’s got ten bars on his shirt, hasn’t he.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “The lines don’t work that way, sweetheart,” Rossi said.

  Sale looked from him, to Lambert, and back to Rossi again. “It’s not exactly line twelve, is it.”

  What did that mean?

  “If they do it for him, you can make them do it for you, too.” She stepped up close and thrust her blaster into his chest. “And as you pointed out to your friend there. You are prisoners. You are expendable. If you want to stay alive, make yourself useful.”

  How dare she?

  “He’s a level-ten linesman,” Fergus said. “You should treat him with more respect.”

  “I treat people with the respect they earn. So far, he hasn’t earned any.”