Confluence

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: EAN LAMBERT

As expected, when Ean introduced the trainees to line eleven, the surge sent most of the multiple linesmen to the floor. Even Hernandez.

Especially Hernandez.

Unfortunately, there were more linesmen than they’d ever had before, and half the paramedics were trainees as well. They’d trained in the techniques, but experiencing it firsthand was something else again. They struggled, because there was little you could do to help a linesman whose heart was trying to change its rhythm—except give them oxygen and wait until things settled back to normal.

Ean grabbed an oxygen tank and moved over to the closest linesman having trouble. It was Lina Vang. He pushed the mask over her face. Mind over matter, where the linesman’s mind was trying to control the body. Luckily, human bodies were resilient.

“It’s important to ensure they get oxygen,” Ean told the two Xanto singles. He nodded at the other Xanto multilevel. “See how he’s having trouble breathing. If you’re not sure, oxygen never hurts.”

Kentish grabbed another canister.

There were still a lot of unattended multilevel linesmen with breathing difficulties.

Ean raised his voice, amplified it through the Gruen speaker system. “Those of you who are still standing. You all know the theory about what to do for line-related incidents like this. If you’re still standing and not administering oxygen, why aren’t you?”

For a while, attending trainees was all he had time to do.

Afterward, he sat on the dais, elbows on his knees, and watched the paramedics attend the final few who still needed attention. Four paramedics attended one linesman. Ean could hear the distress in her lines. She was a four.

“Fix,” the Eleven offered, and the other ships in fleet agreed. “Fix.” Ean could feel the ship lines tapping at the edges of the line four.

“No, no. You’re too strong.” He could taste the strength and the alienness in the lines, even those of the human ship, who were learning fast from their fleet parent. Ean could almost see the linesman turning gray. He jumped up, but even as he stood, the four lines disappeared.

No.

He hurried across.

Sale stepped in front of him. “You can’t do anything, Ean.”

He knew he couldn’t. The lines were gone. “But—”

“They sign a waiver. They know the danger.”

No one expected to die from a line-induced heart attack, even if it sometimes felt as if you were going to.

“I hear you’re killing off linesmen now,” Rossi said at dinner.

They were all there tonight. Orsaya, Rossi, and Orsaya’s people; Sale, and Craik and Bhaksir with their teams.

“Only the ones he doesn’t like, Rossi,” Ru Li said.

“I’ll be careful, then,” Rossi said.

Ru Li looked at Hana. “Did he just—?”

Orsaya took a sip of Yaolin whiskey and visibly savored it. Everyone had alcohol tonight. Nearly everyone, anyway. Hana and Ru Li weren’t drinking, and nor was one of Rossi’s minders. Ean wasn’t sure if everyone else was drinking because Orsaya was there, because they were off duty, or because it had been a truly bad day.

“We’ve had preliminary results from the autopsy,” Orsaya said. “Linesman Park showed evidence of narrowed arteries. Her medical records show no indication of it.”

“Those medical requirements aren’t there just so we have the healthiest crew in the fleet,” Sale said.

Orsaya knew that already, and Ean could hear through the lines that Sale was only saying it to vent some of her own frustration.

“The medic on her last ship but one—six months ago now—recommended surgery. She was booked to go in after her current tour.”

Until the alien ships had come along, and everyone wanted linesmen. Or maybe they had planned all along she would arrive after her surgery, only there’d been this mad scramble to supply linesmen since Emperor Yu had announced Michelle’s engagement.

Ean hated Yu more than he hated anything in his life.

Except, perhaps, Sattur Dow.

Rossi gripped the table. “A little strong, Linesman. We don’t all need to share.” He gritted his teeth, and Ean could hear the effort it took to loosen his hold.

“Sorry.” But Ean couldn’t stop it all, for little eddies of anxiety about Yu—and yes, some hatred, too—whirled around him and the ship.

Orsaya watched them.

Sale leaned across. “Are you okay, Ean?”

“Fine.” It was a lie. Ship was agitated, and he with it.

Except, he wasn’t on the ship. He was on Confluence Station, and the agitation was coming from the Lancastrian Princess. Coming from Ship himself.

Ean had never heard Captain Helmo express such strong negative emotion.

“If you—”

He held up a hand to silence Sale.

Whatever had caused Captain Helmo to momentarily lose his customary calmness was gone.

“Nothing,” Sale said, putting away the comms Ean hadn’t seen her take out.

“Nothing on my end either.” Orsaya had her comms out as well.

The Lancastrian Princess was a flurry of activity. Ean could hear it, but couldn’t tell what was happening. He asked the lines, and got literal answers.

“VIP module brought online.”

He could tell that for himself.

“Welcome. Unwelcome welcome.” The kitchens were busier than normal. Preparing for something.

Visitors. Unwelcome ones. Sattur Dow was the most unwelcome person Ean could think of.

“Sattur Dow is coming.” Surely he didn’t warrant that much activity. And not only from the Lancastrian Princess. The linesman on the Galactic News ship was getting excited.

“Coop, you have got to see this.”

“I’ve a news show to deliver.”

“No, no. You have to see this. A ship’s arrived.” He put it on Cooper’s screen.

It was a massive fleet carrier, bearing the colors of Lancia. Apart from the mother ships—which were too expensive and big to move around much—this was the largest ship in the Lancian fleet.

“So,” Cooper said. “Another warship. We’re surrounded by the line-blamed things, Christian, and I have a show to get out.”

Ean sang the image onto the main screen. If the other linesman were interested, so was he.

Everyone around the table stopped and watched, seemingly transfixed.

“But look, Coop.” Christian zoomed in to a close-up of the ship, where there was an enormous pattern of light displayed on the hull.

A familiar pattern. Ean saw it every day on the shoulders of his crewmates.

“That is the Lancian flagship. That’s—”

“Emperor Yu,” Orsaya said.

Judging from the grim look on Orsaya’s face as she rose and went into her apartment, closing the door behind her, Yu’s arrival wouldn’t be well received.

Ean left, too, into the semiprivacy of his own room, where he could still see—and hear—the others, silent at the table.

Michelle was sitting on Abram’s couch in her workroom, staring at nothing. He heard a song of resoluteness, and a whiff of steely gray determination. Michelle had known her father would come. That was why she had insisted Abram stay away from the Lancastrian Princess, as well as Ean.

He sang gently to the comms lines. Yu would be hours yet. He got that from the ship chatter.

Michelle looked up. “Ean.”

He could smell the fizzy citrus smell the lines associated with her. “Are you okay?”

She gave a smile that came out more like a grimace. “I’ll be happier when it’s over.”

“One way or another,” the lines whispered underneath her.

Whose thoughts were they picking up? Ean shivered.

Michelle had never been one to let depression get in the way of practicality. She said now, “Sometime soon, I will invite you to a function to welcome my father and to introduce the Factor. I know you will be too busy to attend.”

He didn’t need the stress on “too busy” to understand what she meant, but right now he was more concerned about other things. “The Factor is here, too?”

“Of course. That is why my father has come. To introduce me to my betrothed.” And by the sound of it, to make himself wildly unpopular. “No doubt, while he’s here, he will petition to address the council.”

Which, from the way she said it, was the real reason she thought the Factor and her father had arrived.

“But, Ean—”

“I understand. I’m a busy, busy linesman.”

It got a smile out of her even if it didn’t have a dimple. “Take care of yourself.”

“I will. The lines will take care of you, too, Michelle.”

The Lancastrian Emperor departed as soon as Emperor Yu had settled into quarters on the Lancastrian Princess. How long did he plan on staying?

Sattur Dow arrived with the royal party. A day earlier, that would have been the worst of Ean’s problems. Now it was the least of them. Radko was safely away. Ean hoped it was safely, anyway.

Dow brought his own entourage. Two servants and two assistants. With Emperor Yu’s own Royal Guard, and the Factor’s guards and support staff, the ship was nearly as full as it had been when Michelle and Abram had first gone chasing the Eleven.

How many support staff did one need?

Commodore Bach, in charge of the Emperor’s security, didn’t need the sophisticated surveillance equipment he set up in the VIP area Helmo set aside for him.

“I am sure we’ll be aware of any security issues that crop up long before Bach is,” Helmo had said, aloud on the bridge, the day after that had been set up.

“Naturally,” Ean sang, through line one.

Vanje Solberg, Helmo’s second-in-command, looked at him in query.

Helmo smiled. “Message received, Vanje.”

Solberg didn’t ask. He and Helmo weren’t as close as Wendell was with his second, Grayson. One day, Solberg would take a promotion and captain his own ship. The lines would notice his going, but they wouldn’t miss him the way they missed Abram’s not being there.

What made specific humans important to the lines on a ship?

Ship itself—the captain—was always important. But the ship singled out specific members of the crew as well. Esfir Chantsmith, for example, was a Gruen favorite. And no doubt Trask’s singer with the damaged arm was a favorite on his own ship.

Sometimes, the lines didn’t have anyone else. The Confluence looked favorably on Sale and the team she took across with her, but they were the ones who spent most of the time on ship. Who else did the Confluence have? Would the ship give up Sale when it got a new captain? Ean didn’t think so. That was something else he would have to talk to Abram about.

But not right now, not while Yu and the Factor were here. Nor while Sattur Dow was, either.

Sattur Dow’s staff’s whole job seemed to be to find Radko. One—a youth named Ethan Saylor—kept calling Vega and demanding to see Radko.

“Spacer Radko is on special duties,” Vega said, every time. “As soon as she arrives back on ship, I will notify Merchant Dow.”

Saylor said the same thing every time after he clicked off. “Stupid bitch. You won’t last long. I’ll be sure Merchant Dow personally requests your dismissal.”

Ean never heard him ask it of Dow, so he didn’t know if Saylor meant it, but he wasn’t above a little petty meanness of his own in return.

“Too cool,” he sang to line two, directing heating into Saylor’s room; and when Saylor complained about that, “Too hot.”

Which lasted until Captain Helmo twigged to what was going on, and said sternly to both Ean and the ship, “Not on my ship, you don’t.”