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  Kari Wang pulled on her suit. “You’re making that up. About the study.”

  “Not at all. A scientist called Abarca. One of those happy accidents they always talk about. Got himself a lover who was a ship captain. Found it annoying the way the captain used to talk to her ship, fondle it. Or so the story goes. They had a fight over it. Captain says something like, ‘Don’t come between me and my ship.’ It split them up, but this scientist was quite turned on by captains.” Halliday wiggled his eyebrows. “If you know what I mean.”

  She laughed at him, not sure if he was having her on. Captain groupies were a famous trope on the vids, but she’d never met one in real life.

  “True story, this. Got himself another captain and shock, horror, what does this captain do but go around talking to her ship and patting it in odd places.”

  “What’s wrong with patting a locker?”

  “If you don’t know, sir, I’m not the one to enlighten you. Anyway, by this time, the scientist in him was getting interested. He sought out another captain.”

  “What? Another partner?”

  “I’m not sure. But this captain had the same predilections as the other two. A paper, as they say, was born. I’ll send you the details.”

  Kari Wang was still laughing as she exited the air lock.

  Outside was nothing but stars and the emptiness of space. All around her. It was grand and humbling at the same time. Up and behind the ship, the blue-and-green solar winds of the Edamon binaries flowed across space. She imagined she could hear it roar. She couldn’t, of course. That was the air circulating in her suit.

  “Suit’s good,” she said to Halliday. “Starting standard exercises now. Moving away from the ship. Going out thirty minutes.”

  Some spacers couldn’t take space at all. Others could take it, provided they were close to the safety of their parent ship. Neither was useful to a spacer who one day might find him- or herself out in space with no ship in sight.

  “Measuring heart, lungs, temperature,” Halliday said. “Are you ready for maneuvers?”

  Maneuvers was a set of acrobatic exercises they practiced both in the suit, in space, and on ship, in the gym. A spacer needed to be able to move accurately in a suit because a miniscule miss when you couldn’t stop could mean the difference between safety and drifting forever in space.

  Kari Wang was good at maneuvers, on ship and in space. She was accurate and agile.

  The familiarity of the drill centered her. She felt calmer than she had since the announcement. No matter what happened, she still had her ship, she still had her crew.

  In her helmet, she could hear the chatter from the bridge. There were two topics of conversation. Or one, rather, with passing references to the other.

  “They called one of the ships the Eleven.” Narelma was on comms. “They say that’s because it’s a new line. An eleven.”

  Kelan McGill was on bridge this shift. “That’s just propaganda. If there was another line, why haven’t we discovered it before?”

  “Because we didn’t know it existed.”

  A dark shape suddenly obscured the stars in front of Kari Wang. She pulled up midtumble, trying to work out what it was.

  The chatter from the bridge continued. “There’s no line eleven because it’s a new line.”

  Then she realized. It was a ship.

  Kari Wang opened her suit comms and cut across the chatter. “What in the lines are you doing on the bridge? Why hasn’t someone said there’s a ship out here yet?”

  The talk stopped.

  “No, ma’am,” Kelan said after a two-second delay to check the boards. “There’s no ship out there.”

  Another black patch appeared among the stars.

  “There are two ships out here now,” Kari Wang said. She gave the coordinates as she fired her jets to raise herself above the ship. Sure enough, there was a black patch on the other side. “Three. Find them.”

  She triggered the alarm herself and fired her jets on a long, wasteful spurt of fuel to get back to the air lock faster. “Coming back in,” she told Halliday.

  It would take ten minutes to get to the air lock. “Somebody find those damn ships.”

  “Looking, ma’am,” Kelan said. “Still nothing.”

  What could hide a ship so well that only the naked eye could see it? “I don’t like the way they’re positioning themselves,” Kari Wang said. It looked like an attack pattern to her. “Get our gunners ready.” She gave coordinates of the third ship. “Although I have no idea how far away from us they are.” Visual references were almost useless in space when you had nothing to relate them to.

  She heard the order go out, felt the ship mood change. Five minutes to get back, and she’d never felt so helpless in her life.

  Four minutes.

  “Still no—” Kelan said, then, “Shit. They’ve uncloaked.” Alarms started clamoring. “That’s some cloaking device. And it’s four ships, not three.” He opened the comms. “Gunners, you’d better be ready.”

  “Warn them,” Kari Wang said. She didn’t want to kill anyone by accident, especially not a former friend turned enemy. Or even a former enemy turned friend, if it came to that.

  Kelan’s voice came strong over the comms. “This is the GU . . . the Kari Wang. We are a working warship and armed. Please identify yourself.”

  Will said, out of breath, into Kari Wang’s private comms. “They’re equidistant from us and each other. It’s too much of a coincidence to be natural.” She guessed he had run to get to the bridge.

  Three minutes back to ship.

  She checked the positions on the screen in her suit helmet. Their symmetry made a perfect triangular pyramid, with the Kari Wang at the center.

  “Identify yourself,” Kelan repeated.

  The four ships disappeared.

  “They jumped,” Kelan said.

  Kari Wang didn’t like it. They’d been too well positioned to be doing anything other than targeting her ship. She arrived at the air lock—at last—and waited impatiently while it cycled through.

  “See if you can find out what they did.” She didn’t wait to remove her space suit, just released the helmet, so it dropped down her back, and ran for the bridge, clumsy as it was. “I want to move the ship out of the direct line of anything those four ships might have fired at us. Get me some coordinates.” Just because they couldn’t see it coming didn’t mean there wasn’t anything. It had been a deliberate attack pattern.

  “New coordinates 230.113.144,” her navigator said.

  Everyone was calm. Even the ship seemed settled. They’d done this before, they were used to it. That was good.

  She checked where the move would put them. Well away from any danger. “Move us now,” and as she arrived on the bridge, she compensated automatically for the momentary change in gravity that accompanied the thrust of jets.

  “We managed to identify the ships before they jumped,” Will said. “GU Byers, GU Haralampiev, GU van Andringa, and the GU Akaki.”

  All combat class. Small ships, with crews of twenty or less. It smelled to Kari Wang like a quick hit-and-run.

  The ship bucked. The board readings went crazy.

  The presence that was the ship inside Kari Wang’s mind disappeared.

  “By its signature, they’ve surrounded us in a Masson field,” Will said. “That’s what it feels like. But it’s too big.”

  The largest known Masson field was a meter in diameter. Large enough to chop any unwary body into pieces if you stepped into it. This was impossible magnitudes larger. Except . . . a Masson field did work around four equidistant points. If that was the case, then coming toward them was a massive flux capable of chopping the whole ship into pieces.

  “Set the emergency jump,” Kari Wang said. Every fleet ship had an emergency jump set. One that would get them out of
trouble. “Jump as soon as you can.” She pushed away the worry that the jump would be sabotaged. After all, they’d been Gate Union ships. Who knew what they’d meet at the other end?

  How long did they have?

  She felt the ship respond sluggishly to Kelan’s request and knew, even before he said it, that they couldn’t make the jump. “Lines aren’t responding, ma’am.”

  It solved the question of what happened to the lines inside a Masson field, anyway. They were damaged. No one had ever made the field large enough to test that before. She didn’t realize she’d placed her hand on the line chassis and whispered comfortingly to it—not until she saw Will’s quick look.

  A Masson field was made up of a network of force lines that undulated in long sine waves between the four nodes. The waves sliced through any matter in its way. That included metal and ceramics, which was the basic makeup of all ships.

  Maybe the size of this one could help them. How far apart would the waves be?

  “We’ll skip between the force lines,” she decided. “Jensen,” to her navigator.

  Jensen nodded, fingers dancing over the board.

  But they were out of time. The wave sliced through the bridge like a hot wire through wax, chopping the ship into neat-edged pieces. Kari Wang’s second-last conscious thought, as the wave caught her at the knees, was that they would never have been able to dodge the field. The sections were too small.

  Her last conscious thought was that her space suit had automatically sealed itself.

  TWO

  EAN LAMBERT

  EAN LAMBERT WAS on the Lancastrian Princess, halfway through his voice lesson with Messire Gospetto—self-proclaimed vocal trainer to the famous—when Captain Helmo announced through the speakers, “All staff. Parade assembly on the shuttle deck.”

  Ship lines had been melancholy all day, but at that they dipped to a cold, bitter low Ean could taste. He checked the lines. Michelle was in the workroom she and Admiral Abram Galenos shared, knuckles pressed against her mouth in an uncharacteristic display of uncertainty. She glanced toward the speaker, took a deep breath, and exited the room.

  Gospetto threw up his hands. “How am I supposed to work with this going on?” Ean knew by now that the theatrics were all for effect.

  “That’s us,” Radko said. “I’m sorry, Messire Gospetto. We’ll have to cut this session short. I’ll escort you back to your shuttle.”

  Which was, of course, bound to get him moving fast because all the action was on the shuttle deck. Ean wondered if Radko had done that deliberately.

  They made good time, but when they got there, Radko had to subtly coerce Gospetto into his own shuttle, and he resisted. It was only when Ean moved toward him that he backed away hurriedly. Ean had once accidentally used the lines to throw Gospetto across the room, and the voice coach had never forgotten it.

  “We’ll have to remember that trick next time we want him to leave,” Radko said, as they hurried down to shuttle bay six, where the soldiers were lined up with parade-ground precision outside the air lock.

  It was bad enough people’s thinking Ean was strange. He didn’t want them scared of him, too. Although Gospetto had spent days in the hospital because of it.

  They were last into line.

  Captain Helmo and his senior staff stood to one side. Michelle stood with them, any uncertainty hidden behind what Ean thought of as her politician’s face.

  Ship mood was somber.

  “Linesman Lambert.” It took a moment for Ean to realize the words were coming through line one, that Helmo was speaking to him. Could a captain do that?

  He turned to look at Helmo.

  “With us, please,” and Helmo inclined his head.

  Ean slipped out of line.

  The air lock opened. Two hundred soldiers snapped to attention.

  Ean slid in behind Helmo as Abram walked out with a woman who wore commodore’s pips. Two hundred soldiers saluted.

  The woman’s gaze stopped at Ean—the only one who hadn’t saluted—before moving on to the captain. “Commodore Jiang Vega, Chief of Security for Crown Princess Michelle of Lancia, requesting permission to come aboard.”

  They’d known it was coming. Abram’s promotion to admiral had been ratified weeks ago—even before the official formation of the New Alliance—but the ripple of unease that spread through the ship was so strong, it was a wonder the assembled soldiers didn’t sway under the force of it. It forced Ean back two steps.

  “Permission granted,” Helmo said.

  Vega outranked Helmo, but everyone seemed to expect that he had to grant her permission. Abram had never asked permission to board. After this, Vega wouldn’t either.

  No one, not even Abram, went onto the bridge without requesting permission first, though.

  Michelle’s personal assistant—Lin Anders—followed Abram and Vega over to the captain’s party. Before Ean had been able to listen in to the lines, he hadn’t even realized Michelle had an assistant on board. He’d thought Lin was another of the many dignitaries who crowded around Michelle at every opportunity.

  Abram smiled at Ean. Lin scowled.

  Ean wasn’t sure what he thought about Lin. He thought Lin was a little scared of him, worried that he’d snoop through the lines and spy on him.

  “If he doesn’t have anything to hide, why would he worry?” Ean had asked Radko once. Besides, why would he even want to spy on him?

  “It’s the thought of what you can do, Ean.”

  “I don’t go out of my way to spy on people.” Did Radko think he spied on her? “Are you worried I will—” How did you ask? Spacer Radko had been his constant companion since he’d been on board the Lancastrian Princess. Ean wasn’t sure if she was watching him, or was there to be sure he didn’t get into trouble. Probably both. After all, he was a civilian on a military ship.

  Radko had laughed, a comforting sound. “No, Ean.”

  Radko wasn’t scared of him. Michelle wasn’t either.

  “Her Royal Highness, Crown Princess Michelle,” Abram said to Vega.

  Vega saluted, then took out her weapon and held it out, palms upward, toward Michelle. “Your word is my law. By the oath of all who serve, I pledge to protect you. I will lay down my life for yours. If you find me lacking, or in any way unsuitable, end this pitiful life now, for I have sworn, by my honor, to serve you. “

  Michelle could have taken the weapon and killed Vega right there. It wouldn’t have been murder, for it was written into the law of Lancia that a member of the Emperor’s family had the right to refuse the oath of a guard, and the right of refusal was to take the weapon and use it on the person declaring allegiance. Michelle wouldn’t even have been the first to do it.

  Michelle hesitated—which must have made Vega sweat, for it made Ean sweat—then pressed her own palms together under her chin. “As heir to the House of Yu, I accept your sacrifice.”

  Vega relaxed fractionally. Ean knew if Michelle wasn’t happy with Vega, she could easily reverse the decision with a single blast at any time. Vega had to be aware of that.

  “Captain Helmo,” Abram said.

  Helmo nodded his thanks. “Dismissed,” he said to the crew, and they marched out, one synchronized unit. All except the last team, who moved over to the shuttle and started unloading crates of Vega’s luggage. She had a lot of it.

  “You’re with us, Ean,” Abram said, as Ean wondered if he should go, too.

  Michelle and Abram stood apart as Helmo introduced the officers. “Ship second, Vanje Solberg. Navigator, Ming Ju. Ship third, Chang Damodar. Senior linesman for the New Alliance, Ean Lambert.”

  Vega’s gaze dropped to Ean’s shirt. He thought she was looking at the ten bars on the pocket, but she said, “I thought he was part of Her Royal Highness’s personal staff. Why does he wear a fleet uniform?”

  They were th
e only clothes he had.

  And if Vega knew that Michelle owned Ean’s contract, then she knew Ean’s history and the history of everyone else on Michelle’s staff. Lin Anders should worry more about that.

  “The uniform affords him some protection,” Abram said.

  Vega gazed sharply at Abram. “I fail to see why a high-level linesman needs protection.” Not challenging him—no one challenged Abram—but subtly exerting her right as the new head of Michelle’s security to question potential security issues. “They are the most protected species in the galaxy.”

  Species. She made it sound like they were aliens instead of humans. They weren’t even a different race. Some humans were born with line ability, others weren’t.

  “I also fail to see why a level-ten linesman is contracted outside of a cartel house.”

  If you listened to Jita Orsaya, the cartel houses wouldn’t retain their dominance for long. The military would purchase every high-level contract they could. Ean knew a lot of New Alliance fleets were trying to do so. Many of their admirals had asked him for advice. Some had asked for recommendations. As if Ean would know. Until Michelle had bought his contract, he’d never met another level-ten linesman.

  “He’s actually a level twelve,” Abram said. “The only known twelve in the galaxy, and that’s the best-kept secret in the New Alliance right now. We also have a ten. Jordan Rossi is contracted to Yaolin and answers to Admiral Orsaya.”

  “I have heard of him, at least.”

  Abram smiled faintly. “Ean is a well-kept secret,” he said. “We like to keep it that way.”

  Michelle’s comms chimed a reminder. She glanced at it. “You must excuse me,” she said. “I have a subcommittee meeting I must attend on Confluence Station.”

  They watched in silence as she made her way down to shuttle bay one.

  “Bay one holds a four-seater?” Vega asked.

  “Her Royal Highness’s personal shuttle,” Helmo confirmed.

  “And her bodyguard?”

  “We have a team on Confluence Station.”

  “No protection on the way?”