Linesman (29 page)

JORDAN ROSSI

THE GRILLING WENT
on for hours.

The investigative committee wanted to know everything.

The ship?

“Massive,” Rossi said, remembering the big common room where they'd found over a hundred bodies. “It will crew at least a thousand, probably more.”

The aliens?

“Dead.” Then he amended it to, “It's a crazy ship. Like the
Balao
. Bodies everywhere.”

That started a hum of excited conversation that didn't stop until Markan demanded silence.

The new line?

Rossi stared out across the room. The new line was his. These people could never comprehend the magnificence of line eleven. His gaze moved down to Iwo Hurst, in the second row, as intent as anyone else on his answer. Give them the lines, and he was giving it to Sandhurst, too.

The scarlet-uniformed Centauran admiral laughed, half-hopeful. “There is just the one new line, isn't there? I mean, is it likely that we'll see a whole new set of lines one day?”

Rossi refused to think about the twelve lines displayed on
the ship. Of the inane joke Sale had dared to make. “Isn't one line enough?”

“Didn't someone mention line twelve?”

He stared the admiral down. “Only as a joke.”

The weapons?

“I have no idea, but a linesman turned them on and off.”

“Linesman?” Iwo Hurst sat up, but he was drowned out by the scarlet admiral asking, “What sort of weapon caused the heart attacks?”

The truth about a linesman's weakness was for linesmen alone. “They used line eleven,” Rossi said. “I'm not clear how.”

“How did they know enough about the ship in order to make that happen?” Markan demanded. “You said they hadn't been on it before.”

“It was as new to them as it was to us. I think.” Rossi paused to consider his answer. They'd think he was trying to remember how it had worked rather than just working out what to avoid saying. “Some form of human-line interaction,” he said eventually. “Much like the way linesmen interact with lines now, I suppose.”

Like Linesman Lambert did, anyway.

No one had invited the shuttle pilot to this session. He would probably have talked about the singing, which Rossi didn't want to do. The pilot had worn the same beige uniform as Orsaya, so no doubt he'd reported everything to her, but from the looks of this room, Orsaya would try to keep some facts close to her chest. She might need them soon.

Rossi chose his words carefully again. He had to tell the truth, but he also wanted to misdirect Sandhurst. If House of Sandhurst became the de facto line guild, he'd lose any chance at obtaining line eleven, for Sandhurst would keep it for their own tens. “They had a linesman with them. Ean Lambert,” and the glance he exchanged with Iwo Hurst showed how much use that would have been. At least, he hoped that was the way Hurst interpreted it. Now, he needed to misdirect everyone as to how much of the work Lambert had done. “But they made me work, too. For example, I was the one who worked with line five so they could contact the
Lancastrian Princess
.”

Let Hurst know how invaluable he'd be. There was grim
satisfaction in the knowledge that he
had
linked the lines, but he wasn't going to mention just how he'd done it.

Luckily for him, he'd mentioned the magic word—Lambert—that could be guaranteed to distract Orsaya.

“What sort of things did Lambert do that you couldn't?” Orsaya asked. It was the first question she'd asked in hours.

Here he could redirect with equanimity, given that Orsaya had implied that la Dame Grimes would be imprisoned until the Linesmen's Guild could get her out and therefore wasn't around to call him a liar. Long enough for him to go back to his line, at least. “I'm not clear. Lambert and Grimes both spent time going close to the ship, apparently. They're linesmen, so I imagine they learned something from those trips.”

“How do you think Lambert did it?” the admiral beside Orsaya asked.

Rossi could feel their excitement through the lines. He was tired, that was all. He was imagining things, and whatever Sale had made him do to the comms had done something to his nerves—not that he normally had nerves—and he still hadn't settled. That was all. And if Lambert had done anything to his ability to read the lines, he was going to kill him.

He'd had enough.

“It's a crazy ship,” he said. “Another
Balao
, with dead bodies everywhere. Lambert is as crazy as the ship. Not only that, he taints every linesman he comes in contact with.”

Through the lines, their excitement reached another level although you couldn't tell from their faces.

“You came in contact with him,” Orsaya said. “Are you tainted?”

He'd walked into that one. He could see the other questioners drawing away. Iwo Hurst, too. He could imagine how Iwo would use this later.

“Of course not,” Rossi said, ignoring the whisper of the lines that told him he lied.

Orsaya leaned closer. She was as crazy as Lambert was.

“Crazy or not,” Admiral Markan said, and he obviously wasn't doing it to save Rossi's reputation, “we need that ship. If we attack now, we—”

“Lose another ship,” Wendell said.

“We are prepared now. We won't lose—”

Orsaya cut across them both. “We don't need the ship. We need Lambert, and if you haven't worked out why yet, Markan, maybe you could leave me to do my job because I have.”

This was taking Lambert worship too far, but she seemed to have acquired another devotee because Wendell gave her a sharp glance, then nodded.

She might even be right because there was no denying that Lambert did control the
Eleven
.

“We need the ship, and we need linesmen,” Iwo Hurst said. “Sane ones,” and he deliberately looked away from Rossi as he said the last.

If Rossi let him get away with that, then Hurst would be Grand Master within a month.

“Like those from the House of Sandhurst?” Rossi said. “They're going to be a
lot
of use, given that everyone except Rebekah Grimes has spent the last six months at the confluence doing absolutely nothing.” It didn't matter that he'd done the same. He was here now, and he had to break their confidence in Sandhurst.

He could see he'd scored. Orsaya was right. The last six months had left people worried about the higher-level linesmen.

Orsaya supported her chin on her clasped hands, elbows on the desk, and visibly relaxed. Rossi thought she had never looked so dangerous. “How do you plan to get the ship, Markan? March into Alliance territory and take it from them? Right under the vids of two of the largest media organizations in the galaxy.”

“If you ask me, the Alliance is a little too fond of manipulating the media,” one of the other interrogators muttered. “
I
wouldn't like them that close all the time. Too worried it would backfire on me.”

“I hear their tame media cost them a fortune,” the admiral from Centaurus said. “Galenos had to agree to maintain their ships for them.”

There were chuckles around the room. “That's the media. Out for anything they can get.”

Wendell sat up straight. “What do you mean?” Rossi
didn't need the lines to feel the sudden energy crackling from him.

Markan shot the original speaker a poisonous glance. “We can handle the media.”

Orsaya laughed. “Isn't that what you said just before Yannikay so publicly declared war on our behalf by deliberately attacking three Alliance ships and leaving the media to film it?”

“That was hardly—”

“They're calling it the Seven Day War, and they blame Gate Union for starting it.”

“And who botched that particular piece of action?”

Wendell jumped to his feet. “Objection.” He stalked to the edge of the dais. Rossi thought he was about to jump down and throttle Markan. By the way half a dozen people around Markan jumped up, hands to weapons they didn't have, they did, too.

Wendell settled for a clenched fist and remained on the dais although he did look as if he'd like to hit someone. “The brief was to kidnap Lady Lyan. That was done. We carried out our part of the operation. Despite all the problems.”

“That was nothing—”

“Nothing to do with you? Markan, you gave me the order. I was there when Orsaya tried to argue you out of it. We both did.”

Rossi looked around to see where the dark green uniform of Wallacia—Wendell's home world—was. There, a man and a woman in almost the highest tier, in the center.

“We all have operations that go bad, Markan. Be big enough to accept that and don't start blaming other people for it. Particularly not when those other people did their job. Despite everything.”

It should have gotten Wendell a reprimand from his own boss, but the woman just looked at the man beside her and shrugged.

Orsaya's cold voice cut across the tension. “And despite all your plans for takeover, Admiral Markan, you forget one important thing.” Her gaze swept the whole room. “You all forget it.” She let the silence grow until Markan looked as if he was about to speak. “We don't even know if we can beat the Alliance yet, especially not while they have that ship.”

Markan subsided.

Iwo Hurst said into the silence that followed, “Assuming you get the ship, you will need a linesman.”

Rossi could see what he was doing. He would have done it himself. Pull the attention back to the things that were important to you, and all Hurst wanted was the
Eleven
.

In his dreams.

“Allowing Ean Lambert near a ship with lines is tantamount to inviting disaster,” Hurst said. “Who knows what damage he might do.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that six months ago,” Orsaya said. “When you sent all your linesmen off to the confluence and left Lambert as the only one available to fix the higher-level lines. Think of the damage he might have done to
those
ships.”

At least half the people in the room moved uneasily at that. Even Rossi would have done so except he'd heard it all before.

The Centauran admiral said, “We've had ships repaired by Lambert. Our captains are more than happy with the results. So much so that they're demanding Lambert now. More people should sing to the lines, I say.”

Iwo Hurst didn't, quite, move away. “Anything Lambert did would have been accidental. I'm sure he had no idea what he was doing or how.”

From where Rossi had been, it had looked as if Lambert knew exactly what he was doing.

The awkward silence that followed that was broken by Wendell. “You said Galenos made a deal with the media ships. What was the deal?”

Markan gave him a sharp look. “How is that relevant to what we are discussing here?”

“Maybe we're all getting tired,” the admiral who'd first mentioned the media said. “I know I am. I'm sure we'll get back on track after some food, maybe a drink.”

Orsaya and Markan looked as if they could go for hours more, but half the room was already standing. “Excellent idea,” the Centauran admiral agreed.

Rossi followed Orsaya and Wendell into the restrooms. He was more exhausted than if he'd spent a day fixing particularly bad lines.

“You said they made you use the comms,” Orsaya said to him, as she washed her hands. “That you managed to do part of what Lambert can do.”

“Sweetheart, don't think I want to do what Lambert does.” But a traitorous part of him did. The ability to use the lines rather than just repair them. It made his heart beat as fast as the confluence did. “Lambert has no idea what he is doing, and the whole thing is likely to fall on top of him and whoever travels with him. One day, your enemy, Lady Lyan, will be just another corpse in stasis, people visiting her in a museum just like they do to the
Balao
.”

“The people aren't in the museum,” Orsaya said repressively. “They're in labs being carved up. Or rather”—she finished drying her hands—“trying to be carved up, because no one has yet managed to circumvent whatever stasis field surrounds them enough to do it. No one knows if they're even dead yet.”

Wendell made a sound like he wanted to be sick, and to be honest, the thought turned Rossi's stomach, too, but he wasn't squeamish.

He looked at Wendell. He was young for a captain, and that reaction—along with the white skin under the bad dye job—didn't fit what Rossi had heard about Gate Union's up-and-coming finest. “No stomach for it, Captain?” he asked, maliciously. It was nice to be able to put someone down. It made him feel more normal.

“No stomach,” Wendell agreed, which effectively stopped any further baiting. He blocked the door as Orsaya started to move out.

It occurred to Rossi then that they were the only three in this washroom. Surely that was unusual, given how long they'd been interrogated and how close these particular facilities were to the meeting rooms.