“Blaster down, nice and quiet.”
She put her blaster down and used the hand she was lying on to ease out the comms she’d taken from the assistant. She’d never get out of this alive, not if Bach had this to hide. The most important thing was to let Lancia know he was a traitor.
She managed to push it behind her, and one-handedly thumbed the comms on, praying that it didn’t beep. She pressed in the emergency code she knew by heart.
“What’s that?”
She realized she’d been whispering to line five, much like Ean might sing. “Please, don’t make a noise.” But the lines didn’t hear her, of course.
Bach kicked her blaster away. “My Lady Dominique.” His voice was as sour as Vega’s could be.
“Lancastrian?” Jakob asked.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Jakob raised his weapon.
Bach knocked his hand away. “Don’t kill her. She is cousin to His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Yu. And important to our plans.”
He should have let Jakob kill her. Why keep her alive when she might escape and report what he had done?
It was too late, anyway. The comms behind her was capturing all this. Vega would piece it together, and she and Admiral Galenos would chase this traitor down and destroy him.
“Cousin?” Jakob asked.
“You are a traitor to Lancia, Commodore Bach.” Radko made her voice clear enough to carry to the comms behind her.
“Doesn’t the cousin work for Galenos?”
“She is part of the personal security complement for Her Royal Highness, the Crown Princess Michelle.”
Radko kept her voice clear. “You have conspired with Redmond and the Worlds of the Lesser Gods,” for they had to be working together. “To attempt to steal an alien line ship. You have betrayed Lancia, and the New Alliance.”
“Oh, for—” Jakob spun the control on his blaster. “If someone won’t do it, I will.”
“You, and Commander Jakob, and—”
Jakob fired.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: EAN LAMBERT
Ean heard the Confluence’s “Welcome home” as Sale and her team docked.
“This is not their home. That is the Lancastrian Princess.”
Abram hadn’t understood his message. Helmo would kill him for stealing his crew. So would Vega. Maybe even Sale herself although Sale did give the ship a pat as she came on board. He’d seen Kari Wang do the same thing on occasion, and Captain Gruen, as well. But Sale was a group leader, four promotions away from captain yet.
“We choose.”
“You’ll get your people soon.”
There was no way the New Alliance would give the ship to Sale. Everyone was worried Lancia would take the Confluence. That was another reason the ship would never be Sale’s.
“Do you know about politics?”
Blue misunderstanding.
“Power factions.” Ean didn’t have the words to describe it. “Worlds.”
“Worlds?”
How did you describe a world to a line ship? They must know they were there because they avoided them, but Ean had never seen them depicted on the displays of the ships. “You know about suns.”
“Suns?”
Of course they knew about suns, and, if his surmise was correct, flicked enemy ships into them. “Those big balls of energy in space.” He used the tune for Bose engines for energy. “They have worlds surrounding them.” Line four and line two. “People live on these worlds.” Line one. “Our home ships, if you like. Where we come from.”
More blue confusion. He might as well have been speaking gibberish. Which he probably was to the lines. It was like line seven all over again. They could be saying exactly the same thing to each other, but they didn’t have the knowledge to link it to something both of them understood.
“Anyway, these factions will send you more people.”
“More people is good.”
They needed to get Sale away from the ship while those “more people” bonded. And keep her away afterward. Did a ship ever have two “Ships”? Ean didn’t think so. But they did bond with new captains if they didn’t have one—as was shown with the Eleven’s accepting Kari Wang. Best to get Sale off the ship and see what happened.
“Ship is ours.”
And he’d have to stop worrying about it while he was on a Confluence fleet ship. Let Abram deal with it.
He was glad the shuttle of paramedics arrived then. Forty of them, all wearing Lancian gray. A new batch again, for Ean didn’t recognize any of these people. Didn’t whoever was in charge of assigning paramedics understand they were taking the linesmen onto the strongest ship in the two fleets? They should have sent experienced people.
None of these paramedics had been on the Confluence before. They were a long way past the original group supplied by the Lancastrian Princess, Balian’s Captain Seafra, and Yaolin’s Admiral Orsaya.
There were four shuttle decks on the Confluence, each of them immense, each of them easily able to hold the full group of trainees, as well as forty paramedics, Craik’s team, and Bhaksir’s team.
The deck they used for training was set up for human linesmen, with oxygen tanks spread throughout the vast space. The other three—all of them a long trek through the ship—were closed off. They didn’t have breathable air yet. You always had to wear a suit on the Confluence, for you never knew when you might step into alien atmosphere.
Before Michelle had bought his contract, Ean had never worn a space suit. Now, he sometimes felt as if he lived in one.
The first trainee shuttle arrived, disgorging forty trainees onto the shuttle deck. Then the next. And the next.
Peters was in the first batch, along with the four Xantos.
Nadia Kentish looked around. “It’s as big as a barracks parade ground.”
“You’d get used to it,” Lina Vang said, but she sounded doubtful.
Scout Ship Three sounded smug. “Not like me. I’m sneaky and fast, and not too big.”
None of the Xantos answered, but they all looked around, as if wondering who had spoken.
Ean turned to what he had some semblance of control over. “Do you want to talk to them?” he asked Sale.
“Of course.”
As Radko would say, “Was the sky on Lancia purple?” Sale always addressed the trainees.
“Who goes first? You or Rossi?”
“Rossi. So I can do damage control if I have to.”
Damage control. Ean shivered. Michelle had used those words earlier today, talking to Yu.
Rossi had an orator’s voice, and he knew how to use it. “Linesmen.”
He got instant silence.
“The best way to learn the lines is to experience them firsthand. You need to be where the lines are. There are some”—and he glanced at Ean—“who believe you should practice it as some nebulous art in a far-off spaceship, but nothing matches firsthand experience. I, Jordan Rossi, level-ten linesman, know that. That is why you are here. After today, all of you should understand what is different about these lines and how you have to respond to them.”