“If I were Gate Union, and that happened,” Katida said, “my first thought would be to hack into the new void gate and send two suicide ships in together to blow it and whatever world was close by—probably Lancia—into a supernova.”
Ean stared at her, the breakfast he’d eaten roiling queasily in his stomach.
“We’re thinking of doing it to them, too,” Katida said.
Her line told Ean they weren’t serious but that they had considered it. He picked up his glass of tea and drank while he considered what to say. He had to hold it in two hands because his hands were shaking. Could the aliens have found a way around two ships appearing together in space? Once he knew the ship better, maybe he could ask the lines.
“Even if we don’t blow each other’s gates and surrounding worlds to pieces,” Katida said, “the Alliance access to gates will be heavily restricted. Our economies will suffer.” She tapped the tabletop where she’d drawn her map. “And so will theirs. That’s why they don’t want war. That’s why they wouldn’t have tried to blow us out of space to get the Eleven. And it’s definitely why they would never have tried to kidnap Lady Lyan. For fear of the exact reprisals they got.”
She drew another dot on the table, away from the other two. “That’s why it means that Roscracia and their faction are in the ascendant. They want war. They have a lot of support and—if rumor is correct—they have the Linesmen’s Guild behind them as well.”
Ean hadn’t heard that rumor. “Why do they want war anyway?”
“Power. They can see the Alliance falling apart. They see it as a chance to become the only political group in the galaxy.” Katida snorted. “I don’t know why they bother because if they wait long enough, the Alliance will fall apart naturally.”
That could take fifty to one hundred years, Michelle had said.
“But they don’t want to wait, and Admiral Markan, of Roscracia, is determined it’s going to happen now. He’s almost as charismatic as Lady Lyan, and he talks a lot of sense. The longer the war drags on, the more it costs each world. A single political unity will enable better trade and more affluence.”
There was one flaw in Katida’s argument. “If that’s so, then why was Gann involved in the kidnap?”
“That.” Katida shook her head admiringly. “Fiendishly clever of Markan. Gann is his biggest threat inside Gate Union, so Markan sets him up. And Orsaya, too, for she was in charge of trying to get the alien ship. Markan needs Gann out of the way because Gann alone can sway the council. So I hear, and this is rumor, mind.”
Where did she get her information, sitting on the ship like this?
“Markan called in a lot of favors to get the council—and the military—to agree first to Yannikay’s little exercise, then to kidnapping Lady Lyan. But since Orsaya is in charge of the operation, if anything goes wrong, she gets the blame. No doubt that’s why she called Wendell in to do the actual kidnapping. He’s the best.”
It seemed unfair to Ean. “So they know Markan organized it, and he still wins.”
“Not exactly wins in this case, for we’ve still got that ship out there. I imagine Markan thought he’d be head of the Gate Union fleet by now. Instead, he has to finagle a new council meeting and ensure that everyone knows where the blame lies. He’s up against Ahmed Gann, who is most unhappy.”
She hadn’t gotten that information from Ahmed Gann because, through the lines, Ean had heard Abram interrogate Gann. Spoken with, Ean corrected himself, because at that level of politics one didn’t interrogate one’s enemies, one “spoke with” them. The whole thing had been very civilized.
He hadn’t told Abram he could hear through the lines yet although he suspected Abram already knew.
He turned to the screens himself.
The news today was all about the signing of the peace treaty. Coral Zabi and Sean Watanabe were both on-screen—different screens—talking about it.
The sound was up on the Watanabe screen. “This is Sean Watanabe from the special convoy traveling with the Alliance ship Eleven, reporting to you on the historic treaty that is to be signed in just minutes.”
Abram hadn’t told the media their ships had been effectively confiscated. Instead, he’d brokered a deal with both groups, allowing them to tag along and report on what happened with the alien ship. Whoever had made the actual deal had done a brilliant job. The ships had been named, specifically, and it was generally thought in media circles that if they changed ships, the Alliance would use that to back out of the deal.
It was the media who had pointed out that the Eleven—everyone had picked up Sale’s broadcast and was using the name—was a long way from the nearest servicing depot and that if they couldn’t take their ships away for servicing, they’d have problems. So the Alliance had “reluctantly” included servicing in the agreement and gotten themselves more concessions out of it because the media really wanted to stick around.
Ean was going to service the first ship soon.
He had asked Katida who’d made the deal, and she’d just said, “Watch any contract you sign with Abram Galenos or Lady Lyan. They always get what they want.”
His own contract had another ten years to run.
On-screen, Michelle and Ahmed Gann appeared together in the doorway.
A rustle of expectation swept through the dining room.
“Convenient that one of our prisoners turns out to be Gann,” Michelle had said. “I really worry that our luck will turn soon. It’s been too good for too long.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Katida said. “They kidnap Lady Lyan, naturally they will send someone of equivalent stature to bargain for her release. Don’t forget everyone expected us to be making concessions to get her back.”
Privately, she’d said to Ean, “What was lucky was your being kidnapped along with her.”
“I wouldn’t say that was luck,” Ean had said. They were lucky they hadn’t been killed. “And we weren’t exactly kidnapped. Only Michelle was. The rest of us were collateral damage.”
However it had happened, Ahmed Gann apparently had authority to deal on Gate Union’s behalf, and now they were here to broker a peace settlement that Ean didn’t really understand; but it involved Gate Union’s giving up some pretty hefty concessions in order to placate the Alliance, not to mention getting its prisoners back.
The Linesmen’s Guild had also given up some concessions to get Jordan Rossi, with a lot more reluctance and—so rumor had it—only after Gate Union had interceded. One of the things they had given up was Rebekah Grimes. That particular bargaining point had been nonnegotiable. Everyone on the Lancastrian Princess knew what would happen to Rebekah Grimes. Ean felt sick when he thought about it. He wondered if Rebekah knew yet.
Another thing they had given up was Fergus Burns, at Sale’s and Radko’s insistence. They’d thought he might be able to help with the Eleven because he’d been able to read some of the instruments. Jordan Rossi wasn’t happy about it, even though Ean had heard—at least three times through the lines—Rossi tell Fergus he was fired as soon as they got back to Rickenback.
He didn’t know what Fergus thought.
On-screen, an admiral in a beige uniform with the formal Gate Union rainbow sash over her left shoulder, and the blue-striped sash of her home world over her right stepped next through the door, followed by Abram.
“Jita Orsaya,” Katida said, watching her. “I’ll bet she’s spitting.”
Like Katida, she looked ageless. Her face and figure looked young, but something about the way she held herself made Ean think she was quite old. He tried to see her hands but couldn’t.
Orsaya was an admiral, Abram only a commodore, but no one questioned his right to be the military representative for the Alliance.
The meeting was held on planet, on the supposedly neutral world of Iris.
“It’s not,” Katida had c
onfided to Ean. “It’s loyal to Gate Union.”
“So why go there?” Ean asked. What could be more stupid than walking into an obvious trap?
“Jita Orsaya has given her word we will be protected through the signing of the treaty.” Then Katida did the baring-of-teeth smile whose meaning Ean still hadn’t worked out. “The Alliance has promised that if any one of the ambassadors so much as gets threatened, then we—that means you and line eleven—will start taking out cities.”
Ean hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He had dutifully moved line eleven’s fleet close to the planet on request, but only after a dozen Alliance warships had descended on and disarmed the Wendell and the Gruen.
The prisoners came next. Two ships’ worth, guarded by Abram’s people. Captain Gruen was a petite woman with gray hair and permanent frown lines. She looked exactly as Ean expected.
Captain Wendell was a shock. Ean had expected someone like Abram, or a male Katida. The reality was a tall, skinny stick of a man with white skin and dyed maroon hair and a uniform that just made regulation.
“What do Wendell’s crew think of him?” he asked Katida. The crew were impeccably dressed, as well turned out as Abram’s guards, almost as if they were trying to make up for their captain’s undress.
“Follow him to the ends of the universe,” she said. “Don’t be fooled by appearances, Ean. He’s Gate Union’s rising star. Youngest captain. Brightest mind. Although,” she added, “this kidnap fiasco might set his career back a little.”
Then came the linesmen. Jordan Rossi, big-chested and confident, smart in his midnight blue with the leaping gold rickenback on the pocket. The blue was almost the same color as Michelle’s skirt and jacket had been that first night. Fergus Burns, same blue outfit but looking washed-out beside Rossi. Ean couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but as the camera closed in on the linesmen, he could see the black shadows under Fergus’s eyes and white lines around his mouth. As for Rebekah Grimes, he couldn’t tell what she was thinking either. A cynical half smile turned down one corner of her mouth, but that could have meant anything.
The ceremony didn’t take long. The agreements had been made days before, the contracts checked and triple-checked by the lawyers and everyone else. All they had to do was sign them.
The only exciting bit was when Gruen refused to go when the prisoners were being handed over. “I’m staying with my ship,” she said. Her own people had to drag her out, and she went screaming all the way.
“One crazy ship in the making,” Katida said.
Captain Helmo would have stayed with his ship. “Wendell didn’t want to stay with his.” Ean was disappointed.
“Don’t underestimate Wendell, Ean. He’s not stupid enough to fight a fight he’ll lose. He’ll be back—with a crew—to collect if he wants it. When we’re not expecting it.”
“Maybe we should have kept the captains,” Ean said. No one understood the bond between captain and ship, and it was definitely stronger on some ships than others. Being asked to choose between your allegiance to your world and your allegiance to your ship would be hard. He wondered what Captain Helmo would do. Steal the ship back if he could, probably, and take a dive into the void with it if he couldn’t, with the lines in full agreement.
Ean shivered at the thought.
TWENTY-SEVEN
JORDAN ROSSI
JORDAN ROSSI FELT like doing some screaming of his own.
He watched, stone-faced, as they sedated Hilda Gruen and carted her off on a stretcher to the hospital.
“What about you?” the orderly asked Captain Wendell.
“I’m fine,” Wendell said.
He wasn’t fine. Rossi could see the anger that radiated out from him, could even feel it in the lines—and if that bastard Lambert had tainted his linesmanship, Rossi was going to strangle him with his bare hands even if he had to listen to the lines singing while he did it.
Rossi remained stone-faced as he watched on-screen the wrap-up of the short ceremony. He continued to watch as the Alliance representatives—including their tame media—left. It was dusk when they did, and the six ships hung as low, artificial stars in the northern sky. Not long after their shuttles reached ship, they blinked out.
He didn’t think at all, because if he did, he’d think about the ship-confluence and how it had been taken away from him.
He and Wendell made a silent circle of two inside a relieved, chattering crew, who hadn’t expected to get out alive.
The silence of the ship-confluence was like an empty hole in Rossi’s soul. He mocked himself for it. You hated the confluence. But it didn’t ease the pain.
• • •
FINALLY, he and Wendell were summoned to a meeting.
It was held in the largest senate hall on Iris. Ahmed Gann was there with another man. Tall and thin, with the classically handsome features of a politician. Both of them were dressed in the long black ceremonial robes of the Gate Union Council. The rainbow sash of Gate Union crossed the left shoulder while the sash on the other shoulder denoted their home world. The green nebula for Nova Tahiti on Gann’s, the blue-striped sash similar to the one on Orsaya’s uniform on the other man’s.
Rossi still hadn’t worked out which world she came from. Once Fergus would have told him immediately, but there had been more important things to know these last few days.
“Council has convened a meeting for this evening,” Gann said to Orsaya. “They’re looking for someone to blame. Markan has called in every favor he has. The odds are stacked against us.”
It seemed to Rossi that Gann was a lot more comfortable around Orsaya than her own councilor was.
Orsaya’s face was grim. “I hear you.” She and Gann looked at each other and sighed in unison. “So this is it?” Orsaya looked at her own councilor. “You are aware of the consequences from here?”
He had a politician’s voice, clear and ringing. “If we lose or do nothing, we drop down to a second-class world. If we win, things will remain as they are. We are aware that Roscracia and its allies will try to crush us. Our worlds have voted. We say try this one last thing. It is worth the risk.”
Orsaya nodded at Gann. “You know what to do if you need to.”
“I know what to do.” He half bowed to her, and he and the other councilor left.
Orsaya stared after them. “Once in the void,” she muttered, and turned and left the room herself.
“You realize there’s a third option,” Wendell said, as he and Rossi followed her out. “You win, and Markan decides to destroy you anyway.”
Rossi had no idea what they were talking about.
“Roscracia was always going to destroy Nova Tahiti and us with it,” Orsaya said. “The trick is to win so powerfully that they can’t. If we win, it will take a coup to oust us.”
Wendell raised an eyebrow.
All Rossi had been worried about was Sandhurst’s taking control of the line guild. He’d spent too long at the confluence. He was out of touch with important happenings.
The large senate hall where the hearing was to be held was awash with uniforms, full of top-level military from the Gate Union worlds. Prominent among those on the first row of curved seats that faced the dais was a dark-haired man in the distinctive purple-brown camouflage uniform of Roscracia. The name on his pocket said MARKAN. He was laughing with an admiral dressed in scarlet. So this was the infamous Admiral Markan who wanted so badly to go to war that he had talked Gate Union into what had to have been the stupidest kidnap plan in a long time.
Not that it looked to have destroyed his standing any, from the way he and the other admiral were laughing together, but that could have been for show. Rossi knew as well as anyone how important it was to always look as if you were winning even when you weren’t. Although based on what Rossi had just witnessed, Markan wasn’t going to be laughing for long.
So
metimes politics even turned his stomach.
There were two lonely empty seats on the raised dais. So, it was to be an interrogation.
Orsaya took a seat in the bottommost tier facing the dais, close to the far left. She exchanged a cold nod with Markan, seated in the middle of the same row. Given how they obviously felt about each other, it was probably a good thing everyone had been asked to leave their weapons at the door.
Rossi tried to work out who in the crowd were pro-Markan, pro-Sandhurst, and who were on the Gann/Orsaya side. He couldn’t tell.
The only other civilian in the room was Iwo Hurst, the Sandhurst cartel master. He was seated in the second row, behind Markan.
Hurst looked at Rossi, then away.
Admiral Orsaya frowned at Hurst. “What is he doing here?”
Markan said, “The line cartels feel a linesman should be involved in the questioning.”
Oh yes, there was no doubt Roscracia fully supported House of Sandhurst’s bid for line supremacy.
“Surely, then, Leo Rickenback should be here.”
Surely Janni Naidan should, given that Gate Union knew well who the cartel power brokers were, and that Morton Paretsky and Rebekah Grimes were both unavailable. Although Rossi would have settled for Rickenback. Leo was his cartel master, after all. The only communication he’d had from Leo so far was a cryptic apology, which didn’t make any sense at all. Maybe it was for not being able to get here.
Iwo Hurst said smoothly into the tense silence, “As you can imagine, Rickenback is somewhat busy right now. I am here in his place.”
Rossi knew he was missing something important. It was a pity Fergus wasn’t here. He could work out the nuances faster than anyone.
“This is military business, not line business,” Orsaya said.
“Lines are involved,” Markan said. “It is appropriate to have a linesman here.”
There were a lot of nods in the crowd. Rossi wondered if Orsaya was overconfident of her ability to take Markan down. He had a lot of support here.
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