Alliance Page 4

  Fergus had learned the basics already and was now singing to the lines as if he’d been born doing it. He practiced all the time, even when Ean wasn’t there. Their “training” nowadays consisted of Ean’s checking to ensure Fergus was still singing the lines true, then the two of them singing together, communicating with the lines.

  When Ean found his mind wandering—again—to the next day’s training, he tried to pull himself together. Fergus always gave 100 percent. So should he. “Let’s have another go to see if we can discover what line seven does.”

  So far, the alien lines and the humans hadn’t come to a common understanding on what it was that seven did. When Ean asked, he got a vivid impression of the void and the communality of the lines. When Fergus asked, he got completeness.

  They started by greeting the sevens. They greeted them together, every line on every ship. When they had first begun doing this exercise, Ean had tried to greet each line individually, starting with the seven on the ship they were on. He had found that Fergus couldn’t sing to a single seven. He always sang to them all.

  All the sevens answered back to him, too.

  Ean wasn’t sure if it was a function of single-level linesmen that they couldn’t differentiate between individual lines, if it was specifically line seven, or if it was Fergus. He hoped it wasn’t just Fergus. He knew the other man worried about it as much as he did.

  He listened while Fergus sang.

  It wasn’t that Fergus couldn’t pick out single lines. Today, he picked up that line seven on the Galactic News ship was slightly off and sang it into true. Yet even when he sang the line straight, it was more a communal effort than directed solely at the line that needed fixing.

  If Ean was honest, he addressed the lines in a similar way sometimes, but he could single out a line to talk specifically to if he wanted without talking to all the others. Was it simply the way linesmen were taught? After all, lines were social, more like a hive mind than individuals.

  “You try by yourself.” It was the last thing they did every session. Get Fergus alone to ask line seven what it did while Ean listened. It was a forlorn hope, but they kept asking, hoping that one day the answer might make sense. The lines were patient, always answering, no matter how many times they were asked.

  Fergus asked, and was answered. “Completeness? That’s us?” and Ean heard strong agreement and an equally strong sense of the void.

  “Completing the void,” a dispirited Fergus said when they gave up half an hour later. “How?” He sat down and rested his chin on his hands. “Maybe there’s no human equivalent for line seven. I mean, they are alien, and the aliens have two brains.”

  That was theory only, for no one had been able to dissect an alien yet. The ship crew were in stasis, like those of the crazy ship Balao. No one knew if the humans on the Balao were dead yet, so how could they know if the aliens were?

  Ean shivered, trying not to think about crazy ships.

  “Or some other part of their body,” Fergus said. “Something humans don’t have an equivalent of.”

  Fergus didn’t normally get depressed.

  “We didn’t think line eight had a human use either,” Ean said. “We know now. Seven will come, Fergus.”

  “Do we even know what line eight does, really? Sure, it protects the ship, but define protection. You say it’s security, but security for what? Are we misinterpreting that, too?”

  “When I talk to the eights, I get a feeling of—” How did Ean say this in words? It was easy in his mind, where words and thoughts jumbled with the other senses. “I get a feeling of protection. As if that’s what the line’s job is. To protect.”

  Was Fergus right? Was Ean assuming it was security because the eights protected their ships? After all, humans had spent five hundred years pushing the lines straight when they could have been communicating with them. “Who knows?” he said. “We could be wrong.”

  “That’s comforting, at least,” Fergus said, and Ean could hear through the lines that he did find it comforting.

  “We’ll work it out one day,” Ean said. “Completing the void, and when we do, it will be so obvious, we’ll wonder why we didn’t understand it.”

  * * *

  WHEN Ean arrived in the workroom-cum-office after dinner that night, Michelle was standing at Abram’s desk, staring at the main screen. Admiral Orsaya and Abram—both currently on Confluence Station—were on the comms.

  “The debris has the same characteristic pattern of the weapon that took out the Kari Wang two months ago,” Orsaya said. “Chopped into pieces, as if multiple shearing forces at right angles had acted on the ship.”

  The attack on the Kari Wang had tipped the temporary uneasy peace into outright war.

  Katida and Orsaya and a dozen other military personnel had discussed it in gruesome detail the day after it had happened. How cleanly the edges had been cut, how the two-meter intervals were smaller than any known ship compartment, so no matter where the field cut, it would always kill everyone on ship. If not from the initial shear, then from the immediate loss of air afterward.

  “Impressive,” everyone had agreed.

  “The problem is,” Orsaya had said, “Gate Union doesn’t have a weapon like that. At least, they didn’t nine weeks ago.”

  Orsaya was Yaolin, one of the twenty worlds in the New Alliance that had come from Gate Union.

  “What about the weapons the Kari Wang was testing?” Katida had asked.

  Orsaya hadn’t said an outright no, but she’d shaken her head doubtfully.

  After that, they’d gotten on to the detail of the space suit Captain Kari Wang had been wearing at the time. The captain’s legs had been sheared off in the wave, but the design of the suit had allowed it to seal and stop the bleeding. It was Nova Tahitian built, and had kept her alive for two days until the medship arrived.

  That discussion had been even more gruesome than the one about the weapon itself. Ean had tuned out, but everyone was well pleased with the design of the suit. Some of the admirals had said they might look into that brand for their own fleets. Anything that kept someone with such catastrophic damage alive long enough to be rescued was good, in their opinion.

  “This ship, the Buttress Flyer, carried a research crew of twenty—headed by one Professor Gerrard—from the University of Ruon,” Orsaya said now to Michelle and Abram. “They were investigating dark matter on the edge of intergalactic space, running experiments and beaming the data back, which is how we come to have this feed.”

  On-screen, Ean could see the black of space with a thin sprinkling of stars.

  There were two feeds. The first from the bridge, where the captain was saying to his navigator, “I swear I will never work with university people again. You know what that idiot wanted today. Fresh fruit. Out here in the middle of nowhere. When he won’t let us jump anywhere because it might ruin his experiment.”

  “More likely because he’s too tight to pay the jump fee,” the navigator said.

  “I told them. They’re Ruon citizens. They’ll have to book weeks ahead if they want to jump anywhere. You know what he said?”

  “That science is above politics?”

  “No.” The captain put on a lecturing tone. “You don’t need to worry about that, Captain James.” He tapped the side of his nose. “I have people I can call on.”

  On the other feed, the owner of the pompous voice—it was an uncanny likeness—was saying, “Are you questioning my methods, Hannah?”

  “No, Professor. I just wonder if the background radiation is interfering with our readings.”

  On-screen, on the bridge, a ship appeared out of the void.

  A proximity alarm sounded. Six months ago, Ean hadn’t even known there was such a thing.

  The voices on the bridge changed, suddenly alert.

  “Ship at 124.6438.278,” said the captain. “Check on those idiots,” he said to the navigator. “Tell them to get into their emergency suits.”

  “If they’re too stupid to work out what to do,” the navigator said, but he stood up. “I bet they haven’t done a thing. I’ll be as quick as I can.” He stopped as he looked at the screen. “There’s a second ship at 124.6438.281. And a third at 137.6438.278.”

  “And a fourth.” The captain was grim. He ran his hand across the boards, presumably to open line five, for he said, “This is the Buttress Flyer. Ships who have just arrived in this sector please identify yourselves. And get the hell away from our space.” Ean knew if this hadn’t been a recording, he would have heard it through line five and felt the wash of panic that came with it.

  “I repeat,” the captain said. “You are in occupied space. Get the hell out of here.” There was the noise of someone’s thumping something hard—probably a panel. “Why in the lines won’t one of you answer me?”

  He kept talking until the ships disappeared offscreen.

  “They jumped,” the navigator said.

  On the second feed, Gerrard continued lecturing Hannah. “I spent years on these calculations. I wouldn’t forget such a vital thing as radiation.”

  “Shouldn’t we find out what the alarm is about, Professor?”

  “In a moment, Hannah.”

  On the bridge, the navigator said, “I’m just glad they didn’t jump into us.” He made for the door. “I’ll go check on our paying customers. Placate them if need be.”

  “Wait,” the captain said sharply. “Something’s not right. Let’s do a systems check fir . . .” His voice slowed, and kept slowing, so the rest of the words were dragged out to a tenth of their normal speed. The few stars on-screen undulated, as if the ship had been pushed up, then down again, then disappeared altogether.

  Orsaya’s face reappeared on Michelle’s screen. “That’s all we have.”

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  “Sixty days,” Orsaya said.

  “The same day as the attack on the Kari Wang?” Michelle asked.

  “We think it may have been a practice run.”

  “Four ships.” Abram said. “Equidistant?”

  “Unconfirmed. Given the coordinates for the second and third ships, and the approximate location of the first, we can extrapolate the likelihood. There’s a ninety percent probability of that being the case.”

  Abram’s face was unreadable. Ean wished Abram was on the Lancastrian Princess. That way he’d have a better idea of what he was thinking

  “Studying dark matter, you said?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Abram paused, and Ean got the impression that he was considering whether to ask his next question. “Snooping into a Ruon ship,” Abram said. “What’s so important about dark matter, Orsaya?”

  “Nothing that I know of.” Orsaya’s gaze was serene, but the undecipherable glance she sent Ean’s way was scarily sharp. He had to remind himself they were on the same side now. “It’s how he got the money to finance the expedition that interests me.”

  Abram raised a brow.

  “Gerrard had two passions. Dark matter and line ships.”

  Ean didn’t even know what dark matter was.

  “An odd pairing,” Abram said.

  “Everyone has hobbies,” Orsaya said.

  Orsaya’s own hobby—linesmen—was more of an obsession. It was easy to see why she’d follow someone who was interested in line ships.

  “He could tell you more about the Havortian than I could. Back when he was still talking about it, that was. Then he got the money for this trip to investigate dark matter, and suddenly the Havortian might as well have not existed.”

  “You think he was paid off?”

  Sometimes, the jumps in logic made Ean dizzy. How did you get from someone’s not talking about the Havortian to being paid off?

  “Dark matter is an unfashionable study. Gerrard had been trying for years to get funding. This experiment he’s doing is very expensive. Yaolin investigated funding for it.”

  Ean could translate that one. Orsaya had wanted Gerrard’s information about the Havortian, and if she could have gotten it by paying for his experiment, she would have.

  “It was too expensive for us. And that trip there”—Orsaya indicated the screen, which had earlier shown the destruction of the Buttress Flyer—“that was the culmination of five years’ planning.”

  Abram nodded slowly. “He learned something about the Havortian that someone was prepared to pay for.”

  “We’ve spent five years trying to trace the source of his funding. Every time we think we’re close, the game changes on us. That comment there”—Orsaya indicated the screen again—“about his having no problem getting jumps, is the best hint we’ve had in years. Gerrard’s from Ruon, which is an Alliance world and always has been. Thus the funding isn’t from a New Alliance world.”

  Ean could see Abram, frowning as he did when he thought.

  “Professor Gerrard’s work wasn’t important enough to warrant silencing him,” Orsaya said. “He might simply have been unlucky. After all, you can’t test a weapon like that on an armed warship. The ship might fight back.”

  The Kari Wang hadn’t fought back. It hadn’t had time.

  Ean shivered at the casual way Orsaya assumed someone might pick on an unarmed ship. Imagine if that truly was the case and some top secret military experiment decided to try out its deadly weapon on you because you were isolated and no one would notice that you were gone.

  “Surely, that’s risky,” Abram said. Ean noticed he didn’t say “unlikely.” “The chances of being caught.”

  “Out on the rim. You’d have to be unlucky. We only found it because I had a watch on anything Gerrard did, and there hadn’t been any comms from him for weeks. He was regular about sending data home. Paranoid about losing it.”

  Abram blew out his breath and inclined his head. “I’ll check for other ships that haven’t reported in. Especially those out on the rim.”

  From the face Michelle made, Ean thought that might be a big job.

  THREE

  EAN LAMBERT

  THERE WASN’T MUCH preparation required for the first day of training. Ean and Fergus had planned it—right down to the number of paramedics, how many oxygen cylinders were required, and where they should be placed.

  Their first lesson would be on the Gruen, a Gate Union ship that had been captured by the Alliance—along with the Wendell—when Ean had inadvertently joined them to the Eleven’s fleet. Captains Piers Wendell and Hilda Gruen had been returned to Gate Union afterward, but Wendell and his crew had come back to take their ship. They were now irretrievably part of the fleet because of it. The Gruen had a new captain and a skeleton crew but was otherwise empty.

  Ean had plenty of time to be nervous. These were linesmen—his peers—and he already knew what the higher-level linesmen thought of him. His methods of singing to the lines were not widely accepted. Now he was to teach other linesmen his method.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Radko said, as she, Ean, and Fergus walked together to the shuttle. “You’re a twelve.”

  It was his methods that were in question, not his line level.

  “The highest linesmen outside a cartel is a six, so you’ll get sixes. They’ll be fine.”

  There were at least three higher-level linesmen outside the cartels. Himself, contracted to Michelle; Jordan Rossi, the ten contracted to the Yaolin fleet; and Admiral Katida, who was an eight. Four if you counted single-level linesmen, for Fergus was a seven.

  At the shuttle bay, Bhaksir’s team waited with Craik’s team. Sale was there, too. She had recently been promoted to group leader and was in charge of the teams that went out to the alien ships. Bhaksir now reported to Sale. Ean wasn’t sure if they were all going out to the Gruen or if Sale and Craik were going farther on. He would have asked, but his mouth was dry from nerves, so he sat back and listened to them talk about Vega’s weapons collection and tried to relax.

  “All those crates,” Craik—now the leader of Sale’s old team—said. “Every single one of them filled with weapons. She’s put them on the wall of her office. She even has an Akermanis rifle. It fires real projectiles. Little pieces of metal. Have you seen it, Ean?”

  Why would Ean have been in Vega’s office? He hadn’t even been in it when it had been Abram’s. He shook his head.

  “Pity.”

  “I hear she’s got a Pandora field diffuser,” Bhaksir said. “Imagine that as a weapon.”

  “That’s not a weapon,” Craik said. “It’s a diffuser.”

  “Haven’t you ever narrowed a diffuser beam down to a single point? It’s deadly.”

  The discussion lasted until they arrived at Confluence Station to pick up Jordan Rossi.

  Rossi was everything a level-ten linesman should be. Tall, broad-shouldered, muscled, confident, sure of himself and his ability to manipulate the lines. He’d been a powerful man. He still was, although right now he was on the wrong side of a war—for a linesman—behind a layer of military secrecy so deep he didn’t get to use much of that power.

  Rossi buckled himself into his seat. “It takes twenty soldiers to hold a linesman’s hand?”

  Eighteen, actually, for a New Alliance team consisted of eight soldiers and their team leader.

  “Three linesmen, Rossi,” Sale said. “Orsaya made us responsible for your safety as well.”

  Ru Li, one of Bhaksir’s team, said, “That’s why there are only two teams. We couldn’t fit another team in the shuttle along with your ego.”

  “Ahem,” Bhaksir said.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” although he didn’t sound the least bit penitent.

  Rossi grunted. “Don’t expect any support from me,” to Ean.

  Which was honest, and very Rossi.