The answer that came back was quiet and blue and smelled like hot blood.
“Not your green field.” They’d kill everyone within a two-hundred-kilometer radius, friend and foe.
“Not the automatic defense system. The…” Quiet, blue, hot blood.
“Ready to what?” Kari Wang asked.
Use? Do? “The thing.”
“That’s really helpful, Lambert. I need more information.” She opened the comms. “Those of you not at active stations, see if you can work out what Lambert’s talking about.”
“It’s line eight,” Ean said.
What questions would Radko ask?
Is it a weapon? How do you use it?
“How does it work?”
In line eight’s song, the tune twisted and turned into a hot, blue ball.
“I think it’s a weapon,” Ean said. “Can you fire at a specific ship?”
“Of course.”
“The GU Salvan has fired,” Mael said. “Two missiles, coming this way.”
Kari Wang checked her boards. “Calliope. Fire jets eighty-seven and eighty-eight. Five seconds on full thrust.”
“Can you fire at that one?” Ean made the sound for the GU Salvan.
For a moment, they were in the void. Line eight released something, then they were out again.
“Lambert. Do that again without my permission, and I will kill you personally.”
A bright blue ball of flame engulfed the GU Salvan. The metallic smell of hot blood swamped Ean momentarily. The lines on the GU Salvan went dead.
Ean put a hand to his mouth. Lives and lines, so easily wiped out.
“And what did you do, anyway?” Kari Wang asked.
The three single eights started cheering.
“GU Salvan has been neutralized,” one of them—Boleslav—said.
“How do you know this?” Kari Wang demanded.
“Didn’t you see it, ma’am?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“There are no lines left alive on that ship,” Ean said.
“Another missile leaving the GU Salvan,” Mael said. “And another. No, scratch that. Lifepods exiting.”
At least something had come out of it alive.
Ean watched the exiting pods while Kari Wang turned her attention to the next ship Summers had assigned her. “Can we do it again?”
She had to stand right in front of him before he realized she was talking to him.
“Can you?” Ean asked line eight.
“Time. Wait.”
“Not yet, I think.”
“Let me know when it can.”
Ean nodded and went back to watching escaping pods.
The sounds of war went on around him. The Eleven destroyed another ship, and damaged two more. It was hit twice, neither time badly.
“Ready,” line eight said finally.
Ean took a deep breath.
One of the Gate Union ships disappeared. It had jumped. Then another, and another. In five minutes they were all gone, scattered no doubt over the galaxy to whatever jumps they’d been assigned.
Ean blew out his breath.
Summers was all smiles over the comms. “Thank you, Captain. Your presence here routed the enemy. It was good to see you in action. Most impressive.”
“We’re still learning the ins and outs of the ship,” Kari Wang said. “Once we know it, then you’ll see impressive.”
The lines sang with pleasure. “You will.”
Kari Wang patted the console, then called up the Wendell. “If we’re to jump together, I’d prefer to be closer. We know how much space we have to clear.”
A lot, because Abram didn’t like the ships too close together. But at least Kari Wang was prepared to jump home cold. Although, really, when you had instantaneous communication between two sectors, and feeds from ships in the other sector, how dangerous was it? The jump took a millisecond, and you knew what was there.
Even so, Ean was going to make good and sure the jump was a safe one.
Afterward, while the Eleven made for its rendezvous with the Wendell, Kari Wang walked around the ship.
“Walk with me,” she said to Ean.
He wanted to sit and think, but he could tell from the lines that she’d insist if he didn’t. He trailed her out, and Bhaksir trailed him.
Kari Wang stopped and talked to some of her crew close by. “Well done,” she said. They talked some moments, then moved on. As they moved off Ean noticed she listed slightly to the left. So the fight hadn’t been as easy as it looked. He was glad about that.
“You should sit down,” he said.
“I need to check my crew,” she said. “Was this your first fight?”
“No.” He’d been in a battle before, back when he’d been with Orsaya on the shuttle, escaping from Markan. Kari Wang wouldn’t be satisfied with a no. She’d keep on at him until she got to the root of what she thought was the problem. All Ean wanted was to forget what had happened. “Today was… it was so easy to destroy a ship full of people. Normal people like you and me. And they didn’t have a chance. We just—”
Either ship—the one they had destroyed with the green protective field or the one they had destroyed with the hot blue ball that no one but the eights had been able to see—and the Eleven was as bloodthirsty as its crew. But then, ship sentience came in part from its crew, so a warship would think that was right.
“It makes you wonder what damage the aliens did to each other,” Kari Wang said.
They knew what damage they did. Some ships looked as if they’d been bitten in two; on other ships, the lines were so bad Ean still hadn’t fixed them properly.
“That weapon I couldn’t see. Does every ship have that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask later.” When he could work out a way to formulate the question. Maybe he should approach each ship and ask it if it had one. “There is so much we don’t know.”
Kari Wang stopped to talk to more crew. Ean waited, quiet beside her.
After they resumed their walk, she said, “You did well today.”
“Thank you.”
“And it’s comforting to know that our leading linesman isn’t going to opt for the kill every time if he can help it.”
CHAPTER EIGHT: DOMINIQUE RADKO
They had a two-room suite on the liner to Redmond. An outer room for Tiana Chen’s staff, and an inner room with a huge double bed that was bigger than Radko’s cabin on the Lancastrian Princess.
The screen on the wall, tuned to a news channel, was as tall as she was.
“I could get used to this.” Van Heel looked around the outer room with satisfaction. She settled onto a comfortable couch. “Toss me some fruit, Chaudry,” for Chaudry was inspecting the contents of the bowl on the table.
“I don’t even know what most of it is,” Chaudry said.
“I don’t care. Send some over.”
“I need sleep,” Radko said. This was the third time zone, and third set of daylight hours she’d been awake for. “Stay in quarters. Do any prep you think you might need, but if I don’t get some rest, I’ll be useless.”
She jerked awake when they turned up the sound. The first word she heard was “Eleven,” followed soon after by “alien ships.” She recognized the voice of the man being interviewed. Admiral Markan of Roscracia.