“That stands to reason,” Sale said. “The Confluence knows we’re here. It opens doors for us.”
“It does?”
“How do you think we get around the ship?”
He hadn’t thought about it at all. Initially, he’d asked the ship to open the doors. He’d assumed Sale’s team had added human triggers. They’d brought technicians in to add human screens. Engineer Tai had supervised that.
“I’m sure it thinks we’re deaf, dumb, and blind, but it recognizes us, weird creatures that we are.”
Deaf, dumb, and blind, maybe, but it had recognized that Sale wanted to be heard and amplified her voice. It would do other things for her, if she asked. The way it had shown her the medical center. He’d bet they’d talked about it here on the Confluence after they’d discovered the medical center on the Eleven.
She could ask… what? He looked around for inspiration, and his gaze fell on the electric cart that both Sale and the ship hated so much.
“You should ask the Confluence to show you how to get to the bridge fast, Sale. Tell it that you need to get places quickly. Ask for another way.”
“And how is it going to understand me, let alone tell me what I want to know?”
“The Confluence can sense what you want. Like before, when it amplified your voice.”
“The lines can certainly sense humans better than most humans can sense the lines,” Sale said. “That’s obvious. But we need linesmen to really talk.”
“She wants transport,” Ean whispered to the lines. “She doesn’t want to use—” How did one describe a cart? He tried to remember back to what he had felt through the lines.
He should suggest to Abram that Sale be included with the captains when they talked about the lines. But that would give the Confluence ideas. Did he care? He liked Sale. She would be good for the ship.
But right now, he had training, and the lines were waiting. He turned his attention back to his job.
Line five.
On board Confluence Station, Orsaya was saying, “I don’t know what time the linesmen will be back.”
Line six.
All the way up to line ten. And finally, line eleven.
“Gently,” Ean cautioned. “Human lines. Weak.” And line eleven was gentle but it was strong and close, and still took all the multilevel linesmen down.
Nadia Kentish dropped to her knees beside Lina Vang, who’d gone down hard. She signaled to a paramedic. “Over here.”
On board Confluence Station, Yu was already preparing to depart. What was the point of going all that way out to a ship and leaving almost immediately? Orsaya stopped to answer her comms. Carrell slowed to wait for her. Dow and Yu kept walking toward the shuttle.
With the strength of the lines on the Confluence, Ean could hear and see them as clearly as if he’d been standing beside them, could taste how glad Orsaya was to see them gone.
Dow said quietly to Yu, “She bought it.”
Orsaya couldn’t hear it, but Ean could, through the lines.
“Of course she did. I knew exactly how my daughter would react, Sattur. She has protected this linesman all along, may even have some personal feelings for him. Of course she would send him to what she perceives as safety.”
Yu had deliberately pushed Michelle into sending Ean to the Confluence. He’d wanted the linesmen there. Why?
What had they done?
“Sale,” Ean said. “We have a problem. I think it’s a trap.”
“Over here,” Kentish called. Ean heard the force of it through the lines. She was a nine, and strong with it.
“Trap?”
The paramedic making his way across to Kentish veered toward Ean. He wrapped an arm around Ean’s neck and jerked him back. Ean felt the hard muzzle of a blaster against the side of his neck.
That sort of trap.
Another paramedic pointed a weapon at Sale.
They weren’t supposed to be armed. After the riot on the Gruen, none of the trainees were allowed to carry weapons.
Other paramedics had weapons out. Half of them made for Ean and Sale. The others circled the fallen and not-fallen linesmen.
Bhaksir pressed her own blaster against the back of the man holding Ean. “Move away from him.”
Ean hadn’t seen her take her weapon out. Or move. He’d bet the paramedic hadn’t either.
“Drop it,” the paramedic said to Bhaksir. “Or I kill him.” He looked around at the rest of Bhaksir’s team, who had their weapons out, too. “All of you.”
“Oxygen,” Kentish demanded.
“Keep still, and none of you will get hurt.”
Kentish stood up.
A paramedic raised his weapon.
Fergus jumped in front of Kentish, deflecting half the blast.
They both went down. Scout Ship Three wailed.
The lines came on, urgent, insistent. All ships.
“Radko,” and they opened, without request, to show Commodore Vega at her desk, listening to a message. It was sound only. There was no visual.
“Put your weapons down,” Sale said to Bhaksir. “We’ll let the lines sort this out.”
Ean, she meant, but Ean was listening with Vega to Radko, trying to see at the same time if Fergus and Kentish were all right.
“You are a traitor to Lancia, Commodore Bach,” Radko’s words came through the comms. “You have conspired with Redmond and the Worlds of the Lesser Gods to steal an alien line ship. You have betrayed Lancia, and the New Alliance.”
Ean heard Jakob’s unmistakable voice. “If someone won’t do it, I will.”
“You, and Captain Jakob, and—”
Then Radko stopped speaking.
“No.” Ean’s heart thudded in panic. He pushed the paramedic away, ignoring the blaster held to his neck. “Radko.”
Ten blasters rose simultaneously.
“Hold,” the paramedic yelled to his own team. “Don’t kill the linesman.” Sweat dripped off his face. “You crazy moron. If I say don’t move, you don’t move.”
Ean hardly heard him. Dead man’s message, Vega had called it. The message you sent when you knew you weren’t coming home. Was Radko already dead?
He tried to concentrate on what was happening on the Confluence but couldn’t stop listening with Vega.
If they killed Radko, he would blast them all out of space.
The Confluence lines surged. “Battle,” and the linesmen who’d started to recover went down again.
The lines on the other ships took up the refrain. “Battle. Battle.”
Peters, who had recovered enough to understand what was happening, clambered to his knees. “We’ll die rather than surrender this ship.”
“No surrender. We fight.”
“We fight.” That was Peters, too, who claimed he didn’t hear the lines.
“That woman is Emperor Yu’s cousin.” This voice had clipped Lancian vowels. Commodore Bach. “He won’t take kindly to your killing her.”
“If Yu wants to negate our agreement by sending his own team, he would do well to consider the message I send him.” Jakob’s voice changed, as if he was looking elsewhere. “Find out if she’s had the truth serum yet, and if she hasn’t, for God’s sake give it to her. I want to question her before I kill her.”
She wasn’t dead yet. Ean breathed again. His legs wouldn’t hold him any longer, and he sank to the floor.