A ragged echo followed his song. “Keep the ship safe.” The trainees.
Hernandez threw up her hands.
“Safe,” promised the eights, while the scout showed Ean its new lines.
Without a level-seven linesman—and one who knew what he was doing—they couldn’t jump the scout ship without jumping all the ships. The question was, did they know how to jump the ships at all? And if they didn’t, what was the point of boarding it? Did they think they could camp there while their linesmen worked out what to do?
“Boarded safely,” said one of the suited figures, this time in Standard, and Ean recognized the speaker. Jakob. “Come in Iolo.”
“Receiving you loud and clear.”
Ean was getting used to juggling multiple ships and lines. While he concentrated on the scout and its immediate lines, he heard Vega call Helmo. “The Iolo is the ship Jakob caught to go home. It jumped at 23:11 hours last night.”
The communication was real-time. How long had the Iolo been in this sector?
He knew one person who would know, for she was paranoid about strange ships.
“Captain Kari Wang. When did the Iolo arrive?”
“Five days, twenty-three hours, and six minutes ago.” Kari Wang knew the exact date and time of arrival and departure for every ship in the Haladean cluster. “It arrived with the Lancastrian Emperor.”
Vega said, “Yet to all intents and purposes, it jumped at 23:11 hours yesterday.”
“No it didn’t.” Kari Wang was positive.
“Redmond has a cloaking device,” Wendell said. “And some of these people were speaking Redmond. They would have cloaked, then moved away.”
But the Iolo wasn’t a Redmond ship. It was registered to the Worlds of the Lesser Gods; for otherwise, it would never have been allowed anywhere near the New Alliance headquarters. Although, given that Jakob had sent Redmond a message, it was likely Jakob was working with them.
“Ten minutes to jump,” the captain on the Iolo said.
On the scout ship, there was a flurry of activity. Two of the linesmen held a U-shaped bar—as big as they were and twice the length—against the wall. Their knees were bent, their faces red with the effort.
The third linesman gave a thumbs-up.
“Electromagnetic loops in place,” Jakob said. “Decloak when ready.”
“Acknowledged,” from the other ship. “Decloaking. Engaging magnets from this end.” Whatever the linesmen were holding thumped against the wall, dragging them with it, nearly knocking them off their feet.
The linesmen stepped away.
“Enemy ship has decloaked,” Helmo said. “We can all see it now.”
“Run test,” the captain of the Iolo said. “Reverse thrusters at 0.01 speed.”
Ean didn’t notice anything, but a minute later Captain Helmo said, “Scout ship moving at same speed and direction as enemy ship. Electromagnetic field detected. Strength, forty Tesla.”
It must have been a strong magnet, for no one commented on how close the ships were.
“Eight minutes to jump,” the Iolo captain said.
Last time Ean had prevented a ship jumping, it had been with the cooperation of all the line eights in the Eleven fleet. Could he do the same thing with the Confluence fleet?
“Can you hold the ship?” he asked the eights.
“Hold?”
How did he explain it? “Stop the Iolo jumping through the void.”
“But they’re not jumping.”
The lines didn’t understand the concept of future. They understood now.
On another ship—seemingly forever away right now—the engineer for Galactic News was calling his producer.
“We’re recording,” the producer said in an angry whisper.
“Coop. Something’s happening. Something big. You’ve got to check it out.”
“We’re on air.”
“Coop, you have to listen to this.”
“Take over,” the producer told his assistant, and stalked out of the studio.
Ean had to meet that linesman one day. He should be here, training. “The media’s about to get involved.”
Someone, he wasn’t sure who, pushed that through to Abram.
Six minutes.
Ean didn’t know what he had done last time to hold the ship in their space, and he didn’t know how to convince the lines to do it. If he couldn’t prevent the ship from jumping, what could he do?
What did he know?
The Iolo had one jump. If they couldn’t get a jump, they wouldn’t move their ship. Therefore, Ean only had to hold it until the jump window was gone. Or until their own people could capture the ship. Which was four hours for the Kari Wang, more for the other ships.
Unless he moved the ship closer. Which would prove, once and for all, that ships could jump cold.
“Move that ship cold, bastard, and I’ll kill you myself.”
Jordan Rossi had never trusted the ships the way Ean had.
“If I don’t, Redmond will get the scout.” And possibly, the whole fleet.
“You’ll kill us all,” Rossi said.
Rossi was wrong. Ean wouldn’t kill them. The lines would ensure ships didn’t jump into each other. He changed his song to target the enemy ship.
“I need you to come.” He tried to visualize the place in space that the ship needed to come to. He could hear the ships in his mind. A symphony of sound, where each sound placed the ship in a certain position, and he could tell where they were in relation to each other. “When they tell you to jump—” But he couldn’t tell them where yet because they’d jump there now, and that meant the jump would be wasted. He had to make the captain of the Iolo think his jump was gone.
Rossi grabbed Bhaksir’s blaster. “If you won’t stop him, I will.”
“Jump in four minutes,” the Iolo captain said.
Bhaksir grappled for her blaster. But Rossi was determined. Ru Li and Hana came running to assist.
“You have no idea how dangerous he is.” Rossi managed to get his finger through the trigger of the blaster. He fired as Bhaksir chopped her hand down on his.
Hot pain lanced Ean’s thigh. The bulk of the burn went onto the deck, left a sizzling hole in the floor.
Gruen would kill them.
Bhaksir chopped down again. Something cracked, and Ean shared the pain of Rossi’s broken wrist as it washed through the ship. It didn’t stop him. Not until Ru Li and Hana wrestled Rossi’s arms behind his back and put them into a restraining band.
“He’s got a broken wrist,” Ean said.
“I don’t care what he’s got,” Bhaksir panted. “He’s insane. And I am more than happy to kill him right now.”
Two minutes. Ean’s leg was agony, and he could feel waves of pain from Rossi as well.
“I’m not the insane one,” Rossi said. “He has no right to play with our lives like that.”
Nadia Kentish snatched Bhaksir’s blaster off the floor and pointed it at Bhaksir’s throat. “You have no right to treat a level-ten linesman like that.”
The trainee linesmen surrounded Bhaksir and her crew. Many of them had their own blasters out now. The only ones who stood apart were the three Lancastrian linesmen. But they didn’t help their fellow Lancastrians either.