Chaudry should never have been a soldier. He should have been a doctor. Instead, he’d be a linesman. But a linesman could also be a doctor. If they had linesmen who were engineers, why not linesmen who were doctors?
They ate a room-service dinner. On the Lancastrian Princess it would be midmorning. Ean would be training linesmen or looking at alien ships.
Don’t think about her old life.
“Here’s what we do,” Radko said. “Tonight, we break into TwoPaths Engineering by going through the back of the sweet shop.” She sketched a rough plan on her comms. “I saw three cameras. They looked like basic Schwetters to me. We need to disable them, set them onto a loop of some kind. Can we do that?”
Van Heel nodded. “It will be easier if we know which security firm they’re with.”
“MES.”
“Good. I can hack them. What else?”
“TwoPaths has a security net. I think the generator is in the yard out back. We’ll have to blow a hole in the wall to get to it, but it shouldn’t be hard.”
“Blowing a hole in the wall,” Han said. “Won’t someone hear us?”
Radko patted the box of explosive. “You’ve never used this stuff before. It’s quiet.”
“I’ve never done any real soldiering before this trip. Except marching.”
“Me either,” Chaudry said. “I’m thinking maybe Stores wasn’t so bad, after all.”
If Chaudry chose to adopt his line heritage, he’d never work in Stores again.
They spent the rest of the day making plans.
Radko insisted they all take time out to rest. She sent Han and Chaudry off first, afterward van Heel and herself. When she woke, it was midnight. The wind sounded as if it had eased a little. Van Heel was still asleep, and Han was yawning over his screen.
“Where’s Chaudry?”
Han stifled another yawn. “Balcony.”
Radko went out to talk to him. “How do you feel?”
He leaned on the railing and looked up at the stars. “I didn’t see the stars on Redmond. This is only the second time I have seen stars from another world.”
The first time would have been when he was with House of Isador. That was on Centaurus, which was close to Old Earth. Radko had seen the stars on Centaurus. They were a long way away.
“Nothing compares to seeing stars in space. Down here on planet, it’s nothing really.” Especially when obscured by city lights.
“When I joined the fleet, I thought that’s what I’d be seeing. Stars in space. Other worlds. Fighting.”
“Yet you ended up in Stores.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it. When I was a boy, all I wanted to be was a doctor. Until—” He broke off, and looked away.
Radko started to softly sing the fleet anthem. “The stars my destination.”
He took up the chorus with her. “I rise. I rise.”
His voice was clear and light. Radko hadn’t needed confirmation, but this was it. He was definitely a level one.
The song died away. Radko let the silence extend.
“Stores isn’t so bad,” Chaudry said.
Yet he could have been a linesman.
“Tell me, why did you choose to fail line certification?”
Chaudry stiffened. “You don’t choose to fail. You certify or you don’t.”
“You’re a one, Chaudry. You couldn’t have failed. Not unless you did it deliberately. More to the point, once you failed, why didn’t you go back to medical studies?”
She let the silence extend again.
Chaudry turned back to watch the stars. “Do you have a partner out there, back on that ship you came from?”
It was a clumsy attempt to change the subject. It wasn’t going to work, but she answered it anyway, to keep him talking. “There’s someone I like, but he doesn’t know it yet.” And he never would, either, for Michelle had first rights. And she missed him more than anything right now. “How about you?”
He shook his head. “There was a girl at fleet academy, but she just thought I could introduce her to linesmen. She didn’t know—”
Radko turned her back to the stars. She could guess. “That a failed linesman is nothing to a certified linesman.”
“Yes.” It was just a whisper.
“You’re not a failed linesman, Chaudry. You’re a one.”
“When I made line training, my parents were so proud of me. They cautioned me, of course, for not all linesmen made certification. But they were so proud. But a level-one linesman is nothing. Worse than nothing.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I knew what I was long before the ceremony. I could only ever feel line one. I couldn’t do that to my parents. It was better they didn’t know.”
“How do you fail line certification?”
“You pretend you’re trying, but you’re not doing anything really.”
Level ones were rare. How many others had done the same thing? “And you didn’t want to be a doctor anymore?”
“I wanted to die.”
So he’d become a soldier. What was that old joke they used to tell when she was in training? Join the fleet; see the galaxy; shoot people. Or have them shoot you. Which explained the comment on Chaudry’s psych profile that he wasn’t fit for war duty.
“But they put me in Stores.”
Radko smiled at the plaintive tone. “At least we have decent psych people at headquarters.” She turned back to look at the stars, in the direction of the Haladean cluster. It wasn’t bright enough to see, but she knew it was there. “Have you seen your family since?”
“I pretended I was away on training last time they came to Baoshan.”
“Because you failed them?”
“You probably think it’s silly.”
“I failed my parents, too.” Would she ever see them again? Did she care if she didn’t, except as guilt if Yu did something in revenge? Thank the lines Jai the Younger and Hua were close as siblings. Surely their mother, Dowager Empress Jai the Elder, could be relied on to save her youngest daughter if need be. Radko hoped someone like Vega had apprised Jai of the possibility. “My ship is my family.”
“And you lost that when you came to us.”
She hadn’t thought about Sattur Dow and Yu until now. “Probably.” Vega wouldn’t be able to fix it. She banged her fist on the railing hard enough to hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Chaudry said quietly.
One man shouldn’t have that much power. “He destroyed my life.” He was trying to destroy the New Alliance. He was trying to destroy Abram and Michelle. If he did that, he’d destroy Ean, too, and everyone on the Lancastrian Princess.
If he did that, she would destroy him.
Radko took a shaky breath. “Sorry, Chaudry. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”
“Sometimes it helps to talk.”
Said the man who’d joined the fleet because he wanted to kill himself. “Do you still want to be a doctor?”
Chaudry stretched. “We should go inside.”
She laughed and reached out to stop him. “Don’t change the subject, Chaudry. This is important.”
“Why?”
“Because a doctor who is also a linesman is a rare find indeed.”
“Only a one.” It came out bitter.
“Especially a one, since line one shows the health of the whole ship. A doctor who is a level-one linesman would be perfect.” And very much in demand. Chaudry would have his pick of ships in the Lancian fleet. But he’d go to the Eleven or the Confluence. She knew that already.
“Line one shows the state of other lines,” Chaudry corrected. “You don’t need a doctor to fix lines. You need a linesman.”