Alliance, page 29
part #2 of Linesman Series
“I thought it was ordinary, too,” Fergus said.
Ean’s comms beeped. It was Kaelea.
“Don’t cut me off, Ean. For old times’ sake.”
“I’m listening,” Ean said, for what else could he say? He moved away so Tinatin and Mael didn’t hear as clearly, but they could, of course. Everyone could.
“You should talk to Rigel again. I know you think he did badly by you, but he’s trying to help now.”
“I don’t think he did badly.” He wished he wasn’t holding this conversation on a ship with strangers. And Jordan Rossi. “I like it here. I like my job.”
“You’re a ten. You should be in a cartel house.”
“Not going to happen, sweetheart,” Rossi murmured, almost to himself.
Was he talking about Ean or thinking about himself?
“Ean. Are you—?”
He waited. There was a long pause.
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’m not going back, Kaelea.” The shuttle chimed for landing. “I have to go.” Ean clicked off.
He could feel Rossi’s amusement through the lines. That was normal. Ean could ignore that.
“The girlfriend?” Rossi’s question was almost malicious.
“No.”
But Rossi wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at Radko. Radko looked daggers back.
Tinatin pursed her lips, but she didn’t say anything as the shuttle had pulled into Confluence Station.
They exited onto the station as line eleven surged. How much did that surge have to do with Tinatin’s disapproval? Or Radko’s?
“Sometimes you need to get the whole story before you make snap judgments,” Radko said to Tinatin. She lifted an oxygen tank off the wall.
“Don’t need any.” Although Ean did stagger a little as he made his way down the passage. “Listen to line one, Tinatin. What do you hear?”
He heard disappointment. Loud and clear. Coming from Tinatin. Maybe a bit from him, too, because he expected people to be continually impressed with the lines. He moved away to sing a greeting—for after all, he was on Confluence Station, so it was only polite to greet the station lines.
The lines greeted him back.
Tinatin didn’t sing, but she heard.
“What did it say?” Mael asked.
“It said hello, like the other one.” Tinatin glanced sideways at Ean. “And don’t upset the other line. He’s our line.”
TWENTY-SIX
SELMA KARI WANG
HER DIVE OFF the stairs had unsettled Kari Wang.
If she hadn’t tried so hard to save her life, she could have simply fallen to her death. Which was as it should have been, given her whole crew—and her ship—had already died. If she’d had time to think about it, would she have let herself fall?
After line training, Sale and her team took Kari Wang over to the Eleven, as if they expected that the more time she spent there, the more she would bond with the ship. She wouldn’t.
She wandered the Eleven, melancholy and alone.
What could she have done to save her ship? Her crew?
Anything?
Nothing?
Something?
The Eleven was huge, but she was determined to walk the whole of it, no matter how long it took her, no matter how much her legs complained. It was her own penance, in a way, for surviving when everyone else had died.
The ship was made up of interlocking hexagonal blocks—six sides around, with a top and a bottom—linked together in a honeycomb. Some of the more modern Gate Union ships—the GU MacIntyre, the GU Burnley—used a similar honeycomb. The center hexagon housed the bridge with its line chassis. Each hexagon was surrounded by its own hexagonal corridor, with openings into other hexagons.
Kari Wang stopped to examine one of the openings.
It was thick enough to act as an air lock, and could close on demand. As yet, only Ean Lambert had managed to close them with any regularity.
“Line three,” he’d told Kari Wang as he’d sung them closed. “You’ll have lots of people who can open or close them.”
Kari Wang had held her breath until he’d opened them again, and decided that meant her crew would have to go around in pairs, for single-level linesmen would never be able to close the doors.
They’d traced the airflow, heating, and cooling. They thought each hexagon could be self-sufficient. If they could work out how they were fueled.
As for the fuel source. That was built into the exterior surface of each hexagon, and so far as they could determine worked together to produce power similar to the way a Bose engine did. Kari Wang was glad so many of the crew were sixes. The way they explained it to her, every wall was part of the engine. The propulsion units were hundreds of tiny jets built into the same surface. It was, as Spacer Craik said, a bitch to drive. Although, once they worked out how to pilot it, it was going to be the most accurate ship anyone had flown.
Where had the hexagonal design come from?
Young Benita Chay, from her own ship, would have known. Chay had been passionate about ships, spending all her off-duty time with the engineers. So much so that Kari Wang had investigated what training had been available to turn a spacer into an engineer.
The reply from Fleet was still unread in her comms.
She pulled her comms out now, and had to work out how to scroll through old messages.
“State of the art,” Grieve had said, when he’d given it to her.
“I’ll try not to break this one.”
The joke had gone flat. Grieve wasn’t responding well to lighthearted right now.
She found the message.
Yes, a spacer could become an engineer. Even better, Fleet offered traineeships, which meant Chay could earn while she learned and spend most of her time on her home ship if her captain was agreeable. Chay would have loved it.
Kari Wang deleted the message with a savage swipe. Except, of course, she wasn’t familiar with the new-style comms and the message wouldn’t go. It took three tries, and by the end of it she was blinking so furiously, she couldn’t see the screen.
* * *
KARI Wang reached the outer edge and followed the ramp up to the top level of hexagons. She ended up in a storeroom. Most of the storerooms were still half-full. A ship partway through a long voyage, Kari Wang decided.
Much like her own had been.
The day before the end, she’d walked with Will through chambers like this.
Sure, the computers could tell her what was there, but she liked to get a feel herself. A half-full store told a better story than figures on a screen. Plus, it was a good place to think, or to talk privately.
Will had wanted to talk about the tests they were carrying out.
“I’m worried about them,” he’d admitted.
“I thought they were going well.”
“Too well,” he’d said. “They’re giving us exactly the results we’re expecting. It’s like we’re testing weapons that have been in service for years. So much so I wonder what we are testing, if it’s not the weapons themselves.”
“So you think they haven’t given us the real thing?”
“I don’t know what they’ve given us,” Will said. “Maybe we’re decoys while they test it elsewhere. Or maybe we’re not testing the weapons at all. Maybe we’re testing something else.”
Gate Union had spent 10 million credits modifying Kari Wang’s ship for this mission, and a billion credits on the weapons they were to test, so they were testing something. But Will had good instincts. “What else could it be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the equipment we’re using to test it with. Why else give us something we can predict the results on?”
“They look like new weapons.”
Will gave a disparaging snort. “A pretty package doesn’t make any difference. I’m telling you, those weapons are not new.” He’d worked with weapons all his career. He’d know. “You know what I’m worried about. That someone promised Gate Union weapons they couldn’t build, and now they’re trying to cover it up. And we’re part of that cover-up.”
“I’ll check it out,” Kari Wang had promised.
It was another thing she hadn’t finished.
Kari Wang sighed and looked at the boxes stacked in the storeroom. This particular storeroom was full of empty packaging.
Aliens and humans had a lot in common. They both recycled their rubbish. Which was common sense. In space, waste was your enemy.
They both used nets to secure their cargo although the alien nets were made of a light metal-carbon mesh and took two people to secure—four-handed aliens meant Kari Wang’s crew would perpetually work in pairs—while human nets were lock and click.
And, of course, there was the hexagonal shape of the modules the ships were built with.
She didn’t want to return to the bridge, so she made her way to one of the weapons bays on the outer perimeter of the ship. The place where her own crew would have congregated. Not everyone was convinced they were weapons bays, but Kari Wang knew they were.
Ean Lambert joined her there, the ever-present Radko beside him.
“Tinatin and Mael are on their way back to Haladea III.” He looked as if he was about to say something else. Didn’t. Instead, he sang softly to the ship. A song of comfort. She got the impression the song was directed as much at her as it was at the ship.
Kari Wang wished he’d go away. “Why don’t you take that elsewhere?”
Lambert stopped singing. Listened. Then sang again. “She’s miserable. She’s sore. Her other lines died. Give her time.”
A rush of adrenaline carried her across to him. Spacer Radko stepped between them. “He’s a line, ma’am. It’s how he communicates. Lines share information, whether you like it or not.”
Lambert didn’t even notice. “Sore? Like . . . broken lines.” He glanced her way, stepped back, as if startled at seeing her so close. “No. Not fix. Human lines. They’re fragile.”
“All your crew will communicate aurally,” Radko said. “Lines share. Nothing is private. You’ll need to get used to it.”
Kari Wang turned away.
She looked around the weapons bay, trying to shut them out. Spacer Radko loomed tall and menacing nearby. She was harder to shut out than Lambert himself, and Kari Wang had no doubt she’d protect her charge by any means necessary.
Lambert had gone back to his original song of comfort. Coaxing the lines, calming them. At least, that was what it sounded like.
If only he would shut up.
She ran her hands over the outside casing of the bay. It didn’t fit right. Will would have decreed it damaged.
Lambert stopped singing again. She heard voices in the corridor. Grieve and Fitch, coming their way. Her blessed isolation was rapidly filling with unwanted people. She blocked them out and turned back to the casing. “This mechanism is damaged. It must be fixed before anyone uses it.”
Lambert’s silence was different this time. She turned and glared at him. He hurriedly started singing again, an obvious explanation of what she had just said. He broke off halfway through. “Yes. That’s exactly the problem.” His face split into a wide smile. “The ship is happy you understand.”
“We need to go back,” Grieve said.
Kari Wang gave a last backward look as she went. It was like leaving something familiar.
Like leaving the Kari Wang.
Surely not.
“Are you okay?” Lambert asked.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I need to visit—” a ship like her own, whose weapons bays would be similar to the Kari Wang’s. “The Wendell.”
“Right now?” Grieve asked, and she detected a hint of martyrdom in his voice. “Because we’ve a schedule.”
“After I’ve finished for the day,” she amended, and added, “I’ll let you wheel me back to the shuttle.” It would be a slow trip back if she had to walk it, for the long walk around the ship was starting to catch up with her.
He opened the chair for her.
Lambert and his song followed them all the way back.
* * *
AS soon as the shuttle was under way, she pulled out her comms and called up the Wendell.
“Piers,” she said, when Captain Wendell’s face came up on her comms. “I want to come out to your ship. I want to look at your weapons bays.”
“That’s not going to do you a lot of good,” Wendell said. “Unless you want to see empty space. The New Alliance pulled out the weapons when they captured the Wendell. They haven’t put most of it back yet. We’ve six working cannons, and that’s only after we promised, on our life, not to fire at anyone.”
She didn’t have to listen hard to find the sarcasm. “Damn.”
“What was it you wanted to see?”
“I’m not sure. Something familiar, I think.”
Wendell must have stepped back for a better look at her face, for his own face receded, then came back into view. He ran his fingers through his hair, which needed a redye. She could see the white-blond coming through underneath the maroon. His real hair was as white as his skin.
“What about the Gruen? I don’t think they pulled it apart.”
Why would they pull the innards out of one ship and not the other?
She’d been on the Gruen earlier, when the Eleven crew had done their line training. She’d never looked at their weapons bays. Maybe she should simply wait until they went over again. No, she needed to see it while the thought was still fresh. “Sure.”
He arranged to send someone to collect her after her meeting with the admirals. “You’ll have to organize it. I’m not cleared for the Gruen.”
“Why, because it’s got weapons on it?” They were on the same side, for lines’ sake. Even if the rest of Wallacia wasn’t.
“Something like that,” Wendell admitted.
* * *
GETTING clearance for Wendell took some talking but she got it—with the proviso that Captain Song be present while he was there, and met Wendell for a quick trip over to the Gruen later that day.
“It’s probably the first time Edie Song has been on her ship in weeks,” Wendell said. “It’s almost a demotion for her, given she’s stuck in a fleet she can’t get out of, with only a skeleton crew. She resents it.”
Lambert had sought out Song the previous day. What had he said to her? Kari Wang was torn between a sneaking sympathy for the captain who would have had dreams of glory, only to find she was in charge of a ship that would never be used in war, and disgust that a captain could neglect her own ship so.
“She doesn’t spend much time on her ship,” Wendell said. “Definitely not enough to bond with it. I’m not sure how you’ll go with your ship, actually. Not if you can’t jump in it.”
Why would Wendell assume you needed to jump to bond with your ship?
“We’re here.” The trip had been so smooth, Kari Wang hadn’t felt the deceleration. Or the docking.
Captain Song and Team Leader Perry met them there. Song was younger than Kari Wang had expected, and her Standard was upper-class. Grieve had said Song’s promotion was political. Kari Wang had seen promotions like that on Nova Tahiti. They didn’t always make good battleship captains. The Gruen was a good ship for her, given it was unlikely to ever go into battle.
Kari Wang handed over her comms, with the approval thumbed by all four admirals. “We want to see your weapons bays.”
Song didn’t even look at it. She nodded at Perry, who led the way around to the first bay.
“As you can see, they’ve left me with nothing.”
“At least you have a full complement of weapons,” Wendell said.
“What use are weapons if you never get to use them?”
“You never know when you might need them,” Wendell said.
Her glance was contemptuous. “As if you’ll ever use weapons again. Face it, Captain Wendell, you’re a prisoner in enemy territory. You’re lucky they let you keep your ship.”
Kari Wang felt a surge of anger on his behalf.
“No one takes my ship away from me,” Wendell said. His voice was relaxed, but Kari read determination in Wendell’s demeanor. He smiled. “Or from my crew.” He glanced around the weapons bay. “But if you’re looking to off-load any of these useless weapons, you know where to send them.”
Kari Wang couldn’t tell if he was serious.
The weapons bay could have been found on any Gate Union ship. And no doubt on most of the New Alliance ships. There was nothing about it that reminded her of the Eleven. Nothing in any of the bays reminded her of the Eleven.
Afterward, the three of them went back to a bar on Haladea III. The more Song drank, the more bitter she became about her “promotion.”
“My former captain said he’d rather jump into the void and stay there than travel on a ship I commanded. I showed him. Then they gave me this piece of shit.”
Kari Wang was glad they were off ship. You didn’t insult your ship while you were on it. Most captains didn’t insult their ship off it, either.
“Another drink?” Song asked.
“Not for me,” Kari Wang said. “I’m still on medication.”
“And I’m on duty when I get back on board,” Wendell said. “Can’t set a bad example.”
“Who cares what example you set? You’re a prison captain on a prison ship. No one cares.”
What did the woman want? To twist the knife?
“I care. My crew cares.”
“Your crew—”
Song could insult Wendell as much as she wanted to, but you never insulted Wendell’s crew or his ship.
“Enough on the negatives,” Kari Wang said sharply. “We’re all in the same situation. Let’s dwell on the good for a change.”
“There isn’t any good,” Song said. “Another drink?”
