Confluence

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?”

“Working on it,” Ean said, cold with sweat. What if he couldn’t get them anything? Think. What would Radko suggest?

Get a plan to use with the overlays.

“I need a plan of the station,” he sang. To all the lines, for he didn’t know which line would be responsible for it.

He got his schematic, and still didn’t know which line had given it to him. Maybe all of them.

“And Lambert.” Vega’s tone was caustic. “Don’t sing the station into the fleet. We’re in enough trouble as it is without adding theft to our list of crimes.”

It wasn’t her crime. It was his.

“Understood.”

“Understanding isn’t necessarily equivalent to not acting, in your case.”

Ean tuned her out by singing his request again to line eight. “Show me your weapons. Only this time, put it on the station plan.”

The various weapons were overlaid on the schematic. Captains and seconds conferred, but it was Admiral Orsaya, listening in on Confluence Station, who said, “Level five, that looks like a bank of lockers. It’s where we keep the blasters on station here. Might be worth a try.”

Ean reoriented himself and the newly escaped prisoners. “I’ve got it. Locking all the doors except those to the lockers.” He’d learned the hard way that the simplest way to prevent anyone from stopping them was to lock the other doors. Everywhere on the ship.

Naturally, that caused a flurry of calls to the engineering section. Or maintenance, rather, for it was a station.

“Right,” Sale said to van Heel and Chaudry. “Follow the open doors to the weapons. If anyone stops you, knock them out.”

They took off running.

Ean opened the doors for them.

When they had a long stretch of corridor and no doors to open, he sang up the cameras again, and sent them to the captains of the other ships and Confluence Station. A five-by-four matrix, cycling through, one new image every five seconds, with the oldest one dropping off. “See if you can find Han.”

He turned back to opening doors for van Heel and Chaudry, and the rest of his attention to what was happening in Radko’s room.

He was glad to have something to concentrate on, for the discomfort of the linesmen was starting to get to him. Those who were still left standing, for he was queasily aware that many of them weren’t moving.

Why didn’t someone give them oxygen?

In Radko’s interrogation room, Commodore Bach was saying exactly that. “Give them oxygen, then. Those paramedics were sent with the trainees for a reason.”

“What the hell do they need oxygen for? The air on station’s fine.” Jakob thrust readings in front of Bach.

“Line eleven interferes with the heart-brain mechanism,” Radko said. “Their heart tries to pump a different way. If you don’t get out there and give them oxygen, some of them are likely to suffocate.”

Ean cheered. “Thank you, Radko. Thank you.”

“And you know this? How?”

“She is one of Galenos’s people,” Bach said.

“Galenos has a lot of people under him.”

“Do you want to save your linesmen?” Radko asked. “Because you should be getting oxygen to them.”

“She also works with Linesman Lambert. That’s why you need to keep her alive.”

“When did you plan on telling me this?” But at least Jakob called Dr. Quinn. Ean followed the call through to the other end, where Quinn was ignoring it.

Jakob called up a soldier. “Get down to Dr. Quinn. I need him to answer his comms.”

Ean opened the doors for the soldier as he jogged down to where Quinn was working on one of his linesmen. “Commander Jakob wants to talk to you.”

“I’m busy. I’ve got three linesmen down with heart attacks.”

The soldier took out his own comms and called Jakob. “With Dr. Quinn now, sir,” and held the comms close to Quinn’s ear.

“Dr. Quinn. Your linesman needs oxygen.”

“Suddenly you’re an expert on what the problem is.”

“All of them. They all need oxygen,” Ean said.

Radko said, at the same time, “They all need oxygen.”

“Why doesn’t Dr. Quinn already know this?” Jakob asked.

“I don’t know,” Radko said. “Any normal doctor would.”

Why didn’t Quinn know it? It was the first thing Abram and Michelle had tried when Ean had been struck down by line eleven. Thank the lines for Radko, who did.

“I love you, Radko,” Ean whispered. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He became aware Sale was looking at him. “She’s good,” he said, and turned back to what was happening on station.

“Send your own soldiers down to do it if Quinn won’t,” Radko said.

Jakob glanced from her to Bach and back again.

“Works with Lambert,” Bach reminded him.

Jakob called up a group leader. “Get oxygen to the linesmen. Every single one of them if necessary.”

Ean sang the doors unlocked between them and the linesmen.

Van Heel and Chaudry reached the weapons store.

“Ean,” Sale said. Ean was already singing the locks on the cupboards open. “I need to talk to them again.”

He sang open the link to the speakers close to the weapons store.

“Take extras for Radko and Han,” Sale ordered. “If you can find holsters in a hurry, take them, and take spare blasters. Radko can fire two at once.”

And hit separate targets on the bull’s-eye with them, multiple times in a row. Ean had been to weapons practice with her.

Now he had to send van Heel and Chaudry back to Radko, avoiding any of the soldiers Jakob had sent to treat the linesmen.

And they still hadn’t found Han.

“Sale,” Craik said. “You need to see this.”

Sale came across to look. “What is it?”

“Not sure yet.”

“Ean,” Vega said, “the corridor where they’re holding Radko. All the way down to the lifts. The security camera is on a loop. Someone has tampered with it. We’re not getting the proper image. We can’t see it. Someone is hiding out in that corridor. Find out who, and what?”

Ean hurriedly dragged his attention away from what was happening inside Radko’s prison room to the corridor outside. “Two men,” he said. “Armed.”

They were outside Radko’s door, one on either side of the doorway, weapons raised. One of the men signaled.

“They’re about to attack.” Ean readied himself to sing line eight.

The second man nodded.

Ean recognized him from the image Vega had sent through. He changed his tune. “Unlock the door.”

“We’ve found Han,” he told Vega.

The two men charged into the room together. As they did, Ean saw the first man’s face. A man he’d only seen twice but whose features were etched in Ean’s memory.

Stellan Vilhjalmsson. Gate Union assassin, and a man who’d already tried to kill Radko once.

“Protect Radko,” he sang to station line eight.

“Protect? Radko?”

“In the room. That one.” How did you explain to a strange line what you wanted it to do? “The protection field.”

Human-built lines didn’t have alien knowledge behind them. One thing was for sure. The Havortian had never used its protective field. The Lancastrian Princess and the Gruen must have learned it from the Eleven.

For a frantic few seconds, Ean considered singing the station into the Confluence fleet, no matter what Vega said. Instead, he sang the lights down in a panicked hope that if they couldn’t see Radko, they couldn’t fire on her.

The emergency lights stayed up, and they weren’t run on lines.

“Sale. Radko’s in trouble.”

“So are we, Ean. A class-two warship’s just arrived.”

“Two now,” Craik said.