“Barbaric or not, they’re working. Redmond has done more with linesmen than your world or my world would do in a lifetime, and they’ve done it in fifteen years.”
“We’ve done some exceptional work of our own, recently,” Bach said.
“Not like this. Wait till we get those ships. You’ll see what—” Jakob broke off as his comms sounded. Radko saw the shadow of his hand move as he flicked it on. “I told you not to disturb me.”
She listened hard, but didn’t catch the reply.
“Talk sense, man.” Jakob pushed the call onto the wall screen. Radko looked up properly, and saw that was to free his hands so he could fill the syringe with green liquid from the jar on his desk.
The caller was Martel. “The alien ship is here.”
“Here?”
“Right in our space.” The volume rose as Martel spoke, until he was almost shouting. “Which stupid idiot thought that would be a clever trick? Because it wasn’t. It was downright dangerous.”
Bach pointed his blaster at Jakob. “This is supposed to be a three-world initiative. The ship was to go to Redmond. Does the Worlds of the Lesser Gods plan on going it alone?”
Jakob waved him away. “It was supposed to go to Redmond. But who cares. We’ve got the alien fleet. All of them?” he asked Martel.
His comms was going crazy with people trying to call him. He ignored them.
“Isn’t one enough?”
Jakob looked at Bach. He ignored the blaster. “They only brought the one ship? You said we take one ship, and it brings the whole fleet. It didn’t matter which ship.” He lifted the comms to talk into it again. “Which ship is it?”
“Which bloody ship do you think it is? It’s massive. And it’s close. Oh, and it’s threatening to use a destructive green field.”
Radko started to hope.
“Contact your man,” Jakob said to Bach.
Bach opened his own comms. “Status report, Rigg.”
There was no answer.
Bach would only be calling the ship if it was his people who had stolen it. How many Lancastrians were involved in this betrayal?
“Come on,” Jakob said. “How hard can it be to steal a ship and send a message?”
An alarm sounded. First in the corridors outside, then over the speaker. Jakob clicked back to Martel. “What’s happening?”
Martel glanced sideways. “It’s an internal alarm. I’ll call you back.”
“I hope it’s not someone panicking about the ship. We have captured it.” Jakob clicked off, then added under his breath as he waited for Bach’s call to be answered, “We’d better have, anyway. Come on, it can’t take this long.”
It could if Rigg wasn’t in charge of the ship. The lines would be blocking the calls.
Martel called back. He had Dr. Quinn on split screen. Quinn started talking almost before the call was open. “They’ve attacked our linesman.”
“We’re not under attack.”
“They’re all out cold, or screaming, or… Do something. Get rid of it. Now.”
Radko grinned. The ship out there was one of the eleven ships. Probably the Eleven itself. And she knew which linesman would be on it.
Time for a rethink on her action plan.
She spoke softly, under the noise. “Ean. Can you hear me? Flash the lights once if you can.”
The lights blinked.
Good. “I need someone to free me.”
Bach turned his head to watch her, but he didn’t raise his weapon or stop her. Hopefully, he wouldn’t realize what she was doing until it was too late.
“I have at least two people on the station with me,” Radko said. “Hopefully, three. They’ll be in cells. Or two of them will.”
“Calm down, Quinn,” Jakob said. “You know how the lines on the alien ship affect the linesmen.”
Quinn was working himself into his own heart attack. “That’s why the ship wasn’t supposed to come here. Look at them.” He brought up visuals of rooms and corridors. Dozens of linesmen, most of them on the floor, all of them trying to breathe. One of them didn’t look to be breathing at all.
If only one ship was here, Ean had used line seven, and they would still be in contact with the other ships in Haladean space. “Vega will identify my team for you,” Radko said.
“It felled half the linesmen,” Quinn cried.
“See if you can rescue them,” Radko continued. “If you can, get them to come here. But tell them I’ve two armed men here who are as good as any of our own people, and not to underestimate them. If you can’t get them here, get them to the shuttles.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: EAN LAMBERT
Ean started to sing open Vega’s comms, then realized that the lines were already open to the fleet ships.
“You heard that?” he said to Vega.
“The whole fleet heard it,” Vega said. “And you might mention to Sale that instead of ignoring us, she’d do well to leverage off our experience. She has four experienced battle captains here, plus the crew of the Lancastrian Princess and Fleet Admiral Orsaya. You have two teams, and a whole station opposing you. Not to mention that based on the rankings on those uniforms, the station is likely to be armed. As soon as they realize they don’t have control of the Confluence, they’ll start firing.”
“Heard and understood, ma’am,” Sale said.
Ean didn’t have time for this. “Vega, do you have—”
“Coming through,” Vega said, and it was, finally.
Three images. Ean pushed them up to the screen on the wall.
“The man on the left is Yves Han,” Vega said. “The young man in the middle is Arun Chaudry, and the woman is Theodora van Heel.”
Ean remembered Chaudry and van Heel. “The prisoners.” He sang up the camera views in their cells for Sale and everyone else on the bridge of the Confluence, then sang the doors to their cells unlocked.
“Let me talk to them,” Sale said.
He turned on the speakers to each cell, sang a comms line open, and connected it between Sale’s comms and the speakers. “On your comms.”
“Thank you.” Sale picked up her comms. “Chaudry, van Heel. Can you hear me? This is Group Leader Sale, on the Confluence.” She spoke Lancian.
“Yes.” Van Heel looked around warily.
“We can see you through the cameras in the room, but we can’t hear you. Nod if you can hear us.”
They both nodded.
Ean could hear her. Why couldn’t Sale? “Sound on the security feed?” he asked the station.
“Sound? No sound?”
So however Ean was getting it, he was getting it straight through the lines; from line one, not through the feed he’d redirected for Sale. Who didn’t put sound on a security feed?
“Ean. Ean.” It was Captain Helmo, as insistent as Abram could be. “Are you listening to me?”
“Listening,” Ean said.
“Good. You cannot send those people unarmed into Radko’s room. Get them some weapons before they get there. There’ll be weapons around. Find some.”
Weapons? Right. Line eight would know.
He sang to line eight on the station. “Show me your weapons?” Much like he had earlier on the Confluence, and again, like the Confluence, he got an overwhelming overlay of weapons. “I don’t know what’s what? Or what’s where.”
“We have unlocked the doors for you,” Sale said to van Heel and Chaudry. “We’ll unlock them all the way to Radko. First, we need to arm you.” She glanced at Ean. “Are you ready?”