Confluence

CHAPTER THREE: EAN LAMBERT

A whump in the walls and the sudden movement of the station jerked Ean out of a restless sleep. The wee-wah of a hull-breach alert brought him upright hurriedly, only to fly out of bed as something hit the station with enough force to turn it.

“What’s happening?” he sang to the lines.

Line eight came in strong. “A ship. Firing at us.”

“Which ship?” Ean made for the cupboard containing his space suit, the location of which Radko had ensured he knew before she left. As he pulled it on—it still took fifteen seconds—two suited guards burst in. Hana and Gossamer.

Hana checked his suit.

He only half noticed, sorting through the images from the exterior of the station, trying to match them to the sound of the ship the lines had sent him. That one. A freighter, the type that delivered the station supplies every three days. He listened to the lines, heard the damage to lines two and three, watched the bulwarks slam shut, heard the station chatter through line five.

“… Exploded in the shuttle bay.”

“We’re under attack,” Ean said. “Something in the shuttle bay exploded.” The external air lock had bowed out, but inside was a gaping hole that went for half a corridor. The inner air lock must have been open.

The station rocked again. There was another soft whump along the walls. “That’s a bomb,” Gossamer said. He pushed Ean out into the central area.

In the central room, Sale was trying to pull up screens. Nothing. She pounded on a panel in frustration. “We put in state-of-the-art equipment, and it doesn’t work.”

“That’s because the lines are down, sweetheart.” Rossi was still pulling on his suit.

“What? All of them?”

They wouldn’t have air in this part of the station if that were the case.

“No,” Ean said. “Where the damage is.” He was already singing to the damaged lines. Line six, first, because it was more damaged than the others. Why did everyone try to damage line six? Because they controlled the engines, he supposed, but there were other ways to disable a ship.

“What’s happening?” Sale demanded of him.

What did she need to know? What would Abram or Michelle, or even Radko, want to know? “There’s a freighter firing at us.”

“Show me.”

He sang up the station control center and the call going out right now. “Emergency. Emergency. Confluence Station is under attack.” He routed lines farther, to the other ships in the Eleven fleet, and only realized he’d sent the signal to all of them—the media ships included—when he saw the flurry of activity it caused.

Another bomb hit jerked him off his feet. Ean stayed on the floor. More damaged lines. He sang them straight, aware of Rossi singing with him.

Sale opened the comms to the Eleven, the Wendell, the Gruen, the Lancastrian Princess. And to Abram—still pulling on his shirt—on Haladea III. “Are you getting this?”

“Affirmative,” Wendell said. “The attacker is an unmarked merchant freighter but those weapons are military grade. Could have come from anywhere. We’ll be an hour reaching you.” The ships—except the Lancastrian Princess — were already moving. The Wendell had six bombs, the Gruen none. The Eleven was the only ship that could save them.

“The freighter will be ready for us,” Kari Wang, captain of the Eleven, said. “As soon as we get close they’ll jump. Meantime, they’ll do as much damage as they can.”

“Who let them get that close?” Captain Gruen demanded.

“No idea,” Sale said. “How heavily armed is their ship?” She scowled at the screen, then turned to look behind her. “Ean.” She was beside him in an instant. “Do you need oxygen? What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t any of you notice?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Ean got to his feet. “I’m fine, Sale.”

“What are you doing down there, then?”

“I fell.” The recoil as another bomb hit the station knocked him down again. “You wanted something.”

“I want to see that ship. I want to see their specs.”

He had no idea what she meant, and Radko wasn’t here to translate. He guessed, and pulled a feed from one of the cameras on the bridge of the attacking freighter.

He’d prevented a nonfleet ship from using weapons once before, hadn’t he? But that had been by stopping the order going out through line five rather than by stopping the actual firing of the weapon.

Sale tapped a board on the image he’d put up for her. “Give me a close-up of that.”

He zoomed in. It looked like the weapons board on the Lancastrian Princess. The stats looked the same, too, with everything green and the bars high.

“Shit. There’ll be nothing left of us in an hour.”

Dead bodies lay everywhere on the station. People in the outer sections crowded into the inner sections, trampling the slow and the weak.

Another explosion, this one from a slightly different place. The freighter was moving down the side of the station, planting minibombs as it went. Ean pulled the feed tracking the freighter from an external camera on the Wendell.

Sale pounded the board. “We’re a sitting target, and we can’t do a thing.”

“Isn’t the station armed?” Ean asked.

“No.” Sale looked away from the bodies. “Let’s get you to a shuttle, Ean.” Her voice was bleak, full of the horror of walking away from all this. “You, too,” to Rossi.

They couldn’t walk away and leave a station full of people to their fate.

“Can’t we do something?” Ean asked.

“Our job is to protect you. Not them. Let’s move, Ean. Before they clog the shuttle bays in their panic.”

“Too late for that.” Ru Li indicated the shuttle bays on the side of the station opposite the freighter. The passageways were jammed with people headed for the shuttles.

“Where’s the station manager?” Sale demanded. “He should be stopping this.”

“In hospital, sweetheart.” Rossi had stayed calm and immovable throughout. Did he ever panic? “He had a heart attack last night. Remember.”

How convenient was that heart attack now?

“What about his second then?”

“Fighting fires,” Ean said, and he meant it literally, for the older man who’d been present in the stationmaster’s office last night was using a fire extinguisher to put out an electrical fire. “What can we do, Sale?”

“Get you to safety.”

That wasn’t what Ean had meant.

“The shuttles are too dangerous,” Bhaksir said.

Leaving by shuttle was only going to save those on the shuttle. There were two thousand people on Confluence Station. Ean looked around for inspiration. The station was part of the Eleven fleet. Could the lines do something?

“Are they shooting at shuttles, or just at the ship?” Sale asked.

“The ship, but they’re not dodging the shuttles either.”

Another explosion spun them in a crazy circle until line four—gravity—kicked in.

Sale looked at the screens. “They’ve another layer of station to destroy before they get here. Ready some lifepods for the linesmen.” She turned to Ean and Rossi. “You two do what you can to disrupt them in the meantime.”

“I hate to point out the obvious,” Rossi said, “but mere tens need to be closer to the lines to do much.”

“Ean then. I don’t care what you do. Put static in the lines for all I care. Blast them with noise at full volume. Anything to distract them.”

Noise might be a deterrent. Ean chose someone having hysterics and forwarded it through to the freighter. He pushed the volume up on the comms and continued to keep it up.

As a deterrent, it worked for about two minutes.

He had to hold them off for an hour, and according to Kari Wang, the freighter would jump before their own ships got close enough to attack, anyway.

He couldn’t hold them off for that long.

How did he reduce the time for a ship to get there, to fight them? There was only one way that he could think of. Through the void.

The only fully armed ships were the Lancastrian Princess and the Eleven, and the Lancastrian Princess was not around.

Ean sang to the lines on the Eleven. “We’re being attacked.” He showed them the freighter and Confluence Station. “You need to jump close enough to defend us.” He changed his tune to target specific lines. Line seven, to keep the ships together in the void, but to allow them to jump a single ship. Line nine, to enter the void, and line ten to make the jump.

Rossi lunged at Ean. “Stop him. He’s crazy. He’ll kill us all.”

He was too late, for they were in the void.

In the infinity that was the void, Ean had time to straighten the damaged lines on station.

That wasn’t right. The Eleven was supposed to jump, not the station.

They exited the void. Ean couldn’t tell who was swearing the loudest. Sale, Kari Wang, or the freighter captain.

“Ean,” Abram said, and Ean concentrated on that, for everyone else was yelling at him. “You’ve switched places with the Eleven, and Captain Kari Wang is heading at full speed for the freighter.”

The station wasn’t supposed to jump.

“Ean,” Abram was insistent. “If you don’t do something in the next three minutes, she’ll hit it.”

The Eleven rocked then anyway, under a shot intended for Confluence Station.

“Protect yourself,” Ean said to the Eleven. “That field.” For it was the only thing he could think of. Then added hurriedly, “But don’t kill us.” The field had a limit of two hundred kilometers. Abram insisted each fleet ship stayed at least twice that distance apart.

“We won’t destroy you.” The lines were a comforting sound in his head. “You are of our line.” The resonance on line eight changed to include the special song that was the green protective field.

Inside the freighter, the captain was yelling, “Reverse thrusters. And for the lines’ sake, get that jump ready.”

The song extended in a thick, green stream. It reached the first of the fleeing shuttles, flicked them like motes of dust. Ean thought he heard the sonorous song of the void underneath it.

It reached the freighter.

“Jump,” the freighter captain said.

The freighter lines disappeared.

Ean pushed Rossi away and dragged himself to his feet. There was a difference between a jump and a push, and that had been a push. But where had the Eleven pushed the freighter to? The void? He thought he’d heard the void come in at the end.

Rossi snarled. “You are insane.”

“Nicely done, Ean,” Abram said.

Ean looked around the room. Everyone was laughing. The insane after-battle-adrenaline laughter. Through the comms, he heard Wendell say to Kari Wang, “Nice control there.” It was seconded by Helmo and Gruen.

“Thank you.” Kari Wang was still swearing. “No thanks to Lambert. But when we’ve learned to use this thing properly, we’ll be able to turn it on a pinhead.”

Ean decided to keep out of Kari Wang’s way for a while.

The attack was midnight news. Here, and—if you believed Ru Li—throughout the Lancian sector as well. Ean hoped Radko’s family was keeping her occupied enough to keep her away from the vids.

Abram gave a press conference in person this time. Ean watched it from his rooms on Confluence Station. He didn’t go into the shared area, for Rossi still twitched when he came near. He seriously considered singing Rossi’s lines calmer, but that wasn’t going to end anywhere good.

He watched the Blue Sky Media feed. Sean Watanabe hadn’t been so animated in months.

“Is the New Alliance ready to move against Gate Union at last? Yesterday, they unveiled new technology in the form of intersector communication. Today, they showed what power the alien ships have given them. An hour ago local time, a disguised freighter attacked Confluence Station and was repelled by one of the alien ships. Is this the next step in their war against Gate Union?”

Ean flicked over to Galactic News, where Coral Zabi was interviewing someone in a mottled purple uniform. “And what of the rumors that the New Alliance staged the attack themselves to demonstrate how powerful the alien ships are? We have with us Admiral Markan, from Roscracia.”

Markan was the military commander of Gate Union, although—according to Abram and Michelle—he was struggling to keep that command right now. Especially given that his plan to win the war by denying the New Alliance access to jumps wasn’t going as well as he’d planned. Not only that, the Redmond/Gate Union accord was shaky right now, and that had to be worrying Markan, for the line factories were all on Redmond worlds. If Redmond went its own way, Gate Union was as vulnerable as the New Alliance. It was all very well to control the jumps, but if Gate Union didn’t have line ships to jump with, they weren’t any better off than the New Alliance.

Zabi turned a professional smile on Markan. “Before we start, can you tell us where you are right now, Admiral?”

“Merchett,” Markan said.

Merchett was the major Gate Union world in the Lancian sector. Ean smiled. It must have hurt Markan to say that. Especially since Markan’s home world, Roscracia, was three sectors on from Lancia and half a galaxy away from the Haladean Cluster. He would have made the trip specially to find out if the rumors of instantaneous communication were true.

He was finding out they were.

“And I’m Coral Zabi, from Galactic News, currently situated close to the New Alliance capital, Haladea III. Galactic News is making history tonight, being the first to report live in real time between sectors.” Zabi smiled her professional smile again.

From the scowl on Markan’s face, he hadn’t planned on being part of that history.

“Admiral, did Gate Union attack Confluence Station earlier?”

Ean sighed. Markan’s answer would be as slippery as one of Abram’s.

Sure enough. “We are at war. Why would we hide the fact that we are attacking our enemy by disguising the attacker as a freighter?”

Maybe because a Gate Union battle cruiser wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near as close.

“So you believe this was a message from the New Alliance,” Zabi suggested. “Showing what they could do. You think they would pretend to attack one of their own bases?”

“It’s hard to know what to think,” Markan said. “I don’t know what the New Alliance planned. Fact. Gate Union is at war with the New Alliance.” He paused long enough for Zabi to open her mouth to ask the next question. “I imagine the New Alliance was waiting for an opportunity to show off that particular piece of technology. A controlled experiment might be safer for them than taking their showpiece into a real war situation, and the New Alliance might well consider the station expendable.

Expendable. All those people who had died. Yet Zabi was nodding.

Ean switched back to Blue Sky Media. They were showing the jump and what had happened after.

From the outside, looking in, it didn’t look much. You couldn’t see the explosions. The station spun a little, but not as noticeably as it had when you were on it. If it hadn’t been for the feed Ean had sent through—which was showing on half the screen—you might not have known it was under attack.

Suddenly, Confluence Station wasn’t there and the Eleven was. Heading at speed toward the freighter.

They weren’t getting the Eleven feed. Ean was glad about that.

The Eleven’s green field pulsed out. Both the Eleven and the freighter fired thrusters. The green field enveloped the freighter.

Ean switched off the vid.

As well as the freighter, they had destroyed every shuttle in a two-hundred-kilometer radius. Shuttles with people on them. Innocent people who’d been trying to escape. Innocent people who’d been going about their business ferrying goods, until Ean had unleashed the Eleven.

He would have liked to talk to Radko about it. She wouldn’t judge. She wouldn’t say, “It’s war, don’t worry about it.” She’d listen.

What was the problem with Radko’s family, anyway? Radko had once said the crew on the Lancastrian Princess was her family. That Abram Galenos had given her a life.

Why wouldn’t anyone talk about what was wrong?

The lines must have picked up some of his worry, for Jordan Rossi’s own thoughts came through the lines. “Hey, Bastard, sing your own lines straight rather than corrupting everything on the station.”

Ean sighed and lay back on his bed.