“Doesn’t tell us much,” Sale said. “Keep them up there so we can see what he’s doing. She looked at Bhaksir. “Prepare a boarding party.”

  Bhaksir nodded.

  “Not you,” Sale said, as Radko hesitated. She was, after all, part of Bhaksir’s team. “You have your job.”

  That made it official, Ean supposed. Radko was his bodyguard.

  “We’ll cover you from the third quadrant,” Helmo said.

  The intruder had two weapons, but the crews on the Gruen, Lancastrian Princess, and the Wendell watched the screens so closely they knew the exact moment he was about to fire. Bhaksir was taking evasive action before each shot had left the ship.

  Boarding the ship was anticlimactic. The stranger didn’t fight. He held up his hands when Bhaksir stormed on and allowed himself to be arrested. Hana and Gossamer led him back to the shuttle.

  “That was too easy,” Sale said. “What are we missing?”

  “He was outnumbered,” Ean pointed out.

  “Ean, if you’re going in as a suicide ship, you don’t give up without a fight. You try to take some of your enemy with you.”

  Ru Li was checking the boards. “Bhaksir, you need to see this.”

  Bhaksir took one look and waved Ru Li away. “Let’s get off this ship, people. He’s rigged it to blow.”

  They ran back to the shuttle so fast Ean had difficulty switching the feeds to follow their progress. Bhaksir counted down as she ran. In five-second intervals.

  “Fifty-five. Fifty.”

  Beside Ean, Radko clenched her fists and took up the count, stopping between to whisper under her breath, “Hurry, hurry.”

  “Go,” Bhaksir said, when they were back on board. No one strapped in before Hana took off.

  Ean held his breath until the shuttle pulled away.

  “Ten seconds. Hurry,” Radko said, more a plea than anything.

  An alarm on the intruder’s ship beeped. Recorded laughter poured out from the speakers.

  Sale scowled at the screen. “This guy’s got a real sense of humor. Crash positions, everyone.”

  Radko pushed Ean onto the floor.

  If Radko thought it bad enough to make him take cover here, on the Gruen, then Bhaksir and her team would never survive.

  “Five.”

  “Let go of the ship,” Ean sang. Urgently. “Let it jump. Now.” For he could feel that the only thing preventing the ship from jumping was the line eights’ hold.

  The eights let go. The ship disappeared.

  The alarms stopped.

  “Is the ship still there?” he asked Radko, braced above him.

  She didn’t hear him. She was watching the shuttle on the screen, whispering under her breath, “Hurry, hurry.”

  “Where’s the ship?” Sale demanded. “It should have blown by now.”

  Ean pushed Radko away and climbed to his feet. “It probably did.”

  “So where’s the explosion?”

  “I think somewhere else. The place it was trying to jump back to before.”

  “Nice,” Helmo said. Ean could feel his relief pouring in through the lines on the Lancastrian Princess. And from the Wendell. And here, from Sale and Radko. “Poetic justice and a message, all in one neat package.”

  “Let’s hope he had some companions back there,” Wendell said. “I’d like to think this guy’s antics scared them as much as it scared us.”

  “What happened, Ean?” Sale asked.

  How did he describe it?

  “Linesman’s view,” Radko prompted.

  That was easy. “The lines didn’t like the ship’s jumping so close to their lines, so line ten kept stopping him by moving sideways a bit. I think. Afterward, when he kept coming back, line eight—all the line eights—held the ship here while Bhaksir went out to his ship. The bomb triggered—was it a bomb?”

  Sale and Radko both nodded.

  “Then we let go, and the ship jumped, because that’s what it was trying to do.”

  “Nice,” Sale said. “Well done. It’s handy having you around.” She turned to Craik. “Take your team down to the shuttle bay to greet Bhaksir. I want this maniac locked up tight. Search him thoroughly.”

  “You’d better search the trainees,” Helmo said. “The timing is too coincidental to be anything but deliberate. They waited until they could accurately pinpoint where a ship was. One of them will have a trace.”

  On the Wendell, Captain Wendell nodded, as if he’d come to the same conclusion.

  “Sh—” Sale bit off what she’d been going to say. “We’re unlikely to have another ship jump into our space in the short term,” she decided. “Surely it would take time to set up. The trace can wait.”

  Helmo nodded.

  Ean looked at Radko. “We’d better get back to the trainees, I suppose.”

  * * *

  “SHOULD we start hunting for traces?” he asked, as they started back. It felt as if they’d been gone hours, but it couldn’t have been long. He could see through the lines that some linesmen were still out, Hernandez—Balian’s seven—being one of them. Fergus and Chantsmith were organizing the more alert linesmen into helping load those still comatose onto stretchers.

  “No,” Radko said. “Wait until we have more people.

  “What if Gate Union uses it to send another ship in?”

  Sale thought they wouldn’t, but what if she was wrong?

  “They won’t have one ready.”

  How could everyone be so sure? Yet the mood on all fleet ships had definitely lightened. As if everyone thought they were out of danger.

  “Not many people volunteer for suicide missions,” Radko said.

  They collected Rossi—still not quite at the bridge—on their way back.

  * * *

  THE cargo hold was empty.

  Ean hadn’t been paying any attention; he’d been watching Bhaksir’s shuttle arrive back safely. He looked around the empty cargo hold, then checked the lines.

  The first of the paramedics, with her stretcher, entered the shuttle bay.

  “Radko.” He brought up the image on his comms.

  “I see it,” Radko said, and pulled out her own comms. “Bhaksir, Craik. You might want to wait until we get the linesmen out of there.”

  There was a shout from the shuttle bay and the crackle of blaster fire. Then more shouts and the pounding of feet, followed by a shouted, “Don’t hit the linesman.”

  “You’re a little late,” Bhaksir said tersely. “The prisoner escaped. He took a hostage. Who in the lines let them in here?”

  FOUR

  EAN LAMBERT

  CHANTSMITH WAS DOWN, being attended by paramedics. He was alive, at least, for he moved, although his left side was burned.

  “The suicide pilot escaped,” Bhaksir said into her comms to Sale. “He’s got a blaster. And a hostage. Fergus Burns.”

  Ean sang the corridor line feed up onto a screen on the bridge, and another in the shuttle bay. “Follow them,” he told the lines. “Keep showing where they are.”

  Sale said, “Craik, take a team after him. Bhaksir, your responsibility is the linesmen.”

  Through the lines—and on-screen—Ean saw the escapee prod Fergus with the stolen blaster and motion him over to a panel. He opened the panel and felt around inside. The song of lines three and five changed. An acrid smell made Ean sneeze.

  The image disappeared offscreen.

  “We’ve lost the images of that sector,” Sale said.

  The pilot had destroyed the link between the camera and the comms. But though the image might have gone, Ean could still see through the lines, and Fergus’s line seven was clear. “They’re near the jumps. Come on,” to Radko. “I can tell where he’s going.”

  “Let me know when we’re getting close,” Radko said. She opened her comms. “Ean and I are in pursuit. He says they’re at the jumps.”

  Ean made for the lifts. He’d used the jumps once. He hadn’t liked it then, didn’t want to always practice them in emergency situations.

  Their escapee exited at level three, and from the surge in Fergus’s line and his stumble as they exited, Fergus hadn’t used jumps much either. It wasn’t an experience for the faint-hearted.

  “Level three,” Ean said.

  “Bastard’s heading for Engineering,” Craik said. “He can do a lot of damage in there.”

  “Wait,” Ean said. “Come around from the other side. I’ll lock the doors so that instead of your chasing him, he runs into you.”

  Craik’s team ran past the first set of jumps and kept running toward the next set, nearer the crew quarters.

  On the bridge, Perry said, “He’ll be in Engineering before they can stop him.”

  “They know what they’re doing,” Sale said.

  Ean sang the doors on level three locked. All the doors except those in the corridor that led to the jumps Craik was leading her team to.

  The escapee tried the first door. Found it locked. Moved on to the next. He stopped at the third door and took something from his pocket. The melody of line three changed. Ean changed it back. The melody changed again. Ean changed it back.

  On the third attempt, line eight joined in. A surge of sound that crackled and spat. The escapee swore and dropped his tool.

  “You can do that?”

  “He should not have been harming the ship.” Another of the lines might have sounded smug. Line eight was serious.

  “Thank you.”

  A pleased hum followed. Lines liked to be acknowledged.

  The escapee snatched up his tool and prodded Fergus on.

  Craik and her team had reached the jumps. “Still level three?” They were already jumping.

  “Yes.” The lift arrived on level three. Ean started toward the escapee and Fergus.

  Radko stopped him. “Are we following him, or are we going the same way Craik is?”

  “Same way as Craik.”

  “I want to follow.”

  Ean turned and ran the other way.

  “How close, Ean?” Craik asked.

  He had to stop to answer. “Two corridors.”

  “And us?” Radko asked.

  Fergus’s line was strong. “Maybe the same.” He sang to line seven. “Be ready.”

  Fergus’s line surged. “Okay.” He sounded as out of breath as Ean.

  “Keep moving,” his captor snarled. “You hold me back, I’ll kill you.”

  If he’d been going to kill Fergus, he would have done so by now. He must see some value in having a hostage.

  Through the lines, Ean saw Craik and her team thunder round the corridor in front of the captor, who turned. He dragged Fergus back the other way, toward Ean and Radko, using Fergus as a shield between him and the approaching soldiers.

  “We’re close,” Ean said. “Around the next corner.”

  Radko stopped. Ean leaned against the wall, trying to get his breath back.

  “Can you get Fergus to drop as he comes around the corner?”

  “I’ll try,” and he sang careful—somewhat winded—instructions to the line seven that he knew was Fergus. “Drop fast as you come around the corner.”

  He hoped that was a nod from Fergus, for there was no other reaction.

  He could hear their footsteps now, not just through the lines. Hear Craik, behind them, shouting, “Stop, or I’ll shoot.”

  Fergus’s drop was more fall than drop, and he nearly took his captor down with him. Luckily—for Fergus—the other man caught himself in time. He straightened. Into a faceful of blaster fire from Radko.

  Craik and her team arrived then and held their weapons while Radko checked the downed man.

  “He’s dead.”

  Ean helped Fergus up. “Katida once said no one ever used blasters on a ship because you could damage the ship.”

  “Someone lied then,” Fergus said. “All I’ve seen used are blasters.”

  “That,” said Craik, “is because the people we fight use blasters. We don’t always have them on the heat setting, mind. Sometimes we put them onto stun.”

  “I haven’t seen them on stun,” Ean said. “Are you okay, Fergus?”

  “I am.” Fergus was shaking. Ean could feel his relief through line seven. He could hear the lines reassuring Fergus although Fergus wasn’t listening right now. “I was so relieved when you contacted me through line seven. I thought I was dead. I know I should have tried to stop him. But I couldn’t. I just wanted to stay alive.”

  Ean patted him on the shoulder. Awkwardly, like Sale might.

  Craik called for a stretcher. “Not going to lug a maniac through the ship if we don’t have to.”

  Ean looked at them crowded around the body, then looked at Radko and Fergus. “We should get back.” The linesmen were his responsibility.

  * * *

  THE trainees were on the shuttle, waiting—they thought—for Sale to give the okay to take off. They didn’t know it, but even now, Sale was instructing Craik and her team to search them.

  Most of them had recovered although two paramedics hovered close to Hernandez in case line eleven grew strong again. Another two attended Chantsmith.

  “What was that?” one of the trainees demanded. “An alien attack?”

  “No. He was human,” Ean said, then he realized what attack they meant. “Oh, you mean that. It was just a strong line.” Line training felt like hours ago now although according to his comms, only twenty minutes had passed.

  He moved among them, singing softly to the lines, trying to gauge how they were from a combination of line one on the Gruen and the trainees’ own lines. Fergus and Radko followed, doing their own human version of the same thing by talking to each of them. Craik and her team followed them, scanning for transmitters.

  Sale joined them there. “Any problems?”

  “Not so far.” Or none more than people irate at the thought they were being accused of siding with the enemy.

  He had two people left to check. Chantsmith and Hernandez.

  Sale tapped her comms to get the linesmen’s attention. “The shuttle will take you back to Confluence Station, where you’re all scheduled for medicals. Make sure you have them before you return to your home ship or station. Watch out for each other. If you think someone is in difficulty, push them to the head of the queue. The medic assigned to you is experienced in line-related difficulties. Tell him about any problems you might have.”

  That might be the medic from the Lancastrian Princess, or—more likely—one of the doctors in Orsaya’s team who looked after Rossi.

  Craik found a transmitter on Chantsmith’s back. Ean thought that he might be mortified if he hadn’t been doped up with painkillers. Ean couldn’t tell much from his lines at all.

  One more. Hernandez?

  “What are you looking at?”

  That sounded normal.

  “Everyone’s fine,” Ean told Sale.

  “Good.” She shepherded him, Fergus, and Radko off the shuttle. “All clear,” she told the shuttle pilot.

  They watched the lights on the air lock cycle from green to red and eventually back to green again.

  “Hernandez is strong,” Ean said. Initially, she had been as bad as he and Rossi had been when they’d first come across the full strength of line eleven.

  Fergus nodded. “She doesn’t respond like a seven, that’s for sure.”

  Sale looked at them both sharply.

  “Can’t you tell?” Radko asked. “Isn’t that how you discovered what line Admiral Katida was?”

  He had, but, “I need her alone and somewhere quiet for that.” Line quiet, he meant, without being surrounded by other human lines all learning to communicate as lines did. “And she’s prickly enough that if she knows what I’m doing, she’ll try to block me.”

  “That strong?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  * * *

  “SO,” Katida said at breakfast. “I hear the alien lines won’t allow two ships to jump into each other’s space.” Her smile was ferocious. “That must be worrying Gate Union right now. How soon before we get the human ships to do the same?”

  They had been on a human ship, the Gruen. “I think line eleven did something first.” But after that, the Gruen line ten had moved the ship away from the suicide ship without any further help. And because he knew she was going to ask, “I don’t know if they can do it without line eleven.”

  “Pity.”

  Had all alien ships been part of an eleven fleet? Surely, they would have had lone ships. How did they deal with potential collisions? It wasn’t something you could practice without being sure of the result.

  “Is it line seven, do you think?” Katida asked.

  “No.” That was one thing he was certain about. Line seven had done nothing at the time.

  Right now, everyone seemed convinced Gate Union wouldn’t try again. So much so that Fleet Control had stopped the constant random moving of ships. “What if they do send another suicide ship?”

  “Will they succeed?”

  “No . . .” The lines would call on him to fix the “broken” lines. He’d talk to them anyway, to make sure they did.

  “It’s a pity we can’t get non-eleven-linked human ships to do the same. Then this war would be a battle of equals rather than one side with a massive hold over the other.”

  “We’ll work out how they do it, eventually.” The ships had proven yesterday they could avoid each other. Unfortunately, no one wanted to try it without more testing. And you couldn’t test if you didn’t jump.

  “I know we will, Ean. But will it come in time for us to force Gate Union into giving us jump slots?”

  “You wouldn’t need slots then.”

  “We’d still use jump slots,” Katida said. “We can’t train everyone in the new process. It would take years. We still need to regulate traffic. The gate system is the best way to do that. We don’t want to destroy it.”