Linesman by S. K. Dunstall Page A

hair was honey brown, it waved in the same place Michelle’s did. She glanced at her comms. “Finish your plate,” she said. “You’ll want to be at the next briefing.”
    He would? Ean finished his meal, and she showed him where to put the dirty plate. She was thorough, at least, at training him in all the right things to do. He just hoped he remembered it next time. After which she led him at a quick trot back to the briefing room, which turned out to be the dining room from last night. This time he could almost keep up.
    There was one spare seat. Radko pushed him toward it, and he slid in just as Captain Helmo started speaking. Radko leaned back against the wall near him and lifted a boot to set against it in what he was coming to recognize as her characteristic waiting pose. Surely she didn’t have to wait for him. Was he really under guard?
    â€œA 4.15-kilometer circumference,” the captain said, and the ship flashed on-screen. Ean promptly forgot Radko.
    It was a sphere. The surface was a deep blue-black that should have blended with space and made it impossible to see, but the blue gave it just enough color. On the curve of the sphere, they could see the distorted reflection of another ship. It was so clear they could read the markings on the side. EMPIRE SUN , from the Haladean cluster.
    â€œIt’s a perfect sphere,” the captain said. “Our scientists say there isn’t a single blemish.”
    The image changed to a Haladean warship. “The Haladeans sent two ships.” Captain Helmo paused. “The images are of the first ship, taken from the second ship. The first ship is ten kilometers out, the second, thirty.”
    Even in port, the larger ships tethered hundreds of kilometers apart and let the shuttles go between. A big shipstopped mostly by inertia. Whoever had taken a warship that close to two other ships had a damn good pilot.
    Two yellow lines showed under the image. One was three times as long as the other.
    Two smaller shuttles, bristling with guns, detached from the side of the closer ship. A line at the bottom of the screen counted off the meters as the ship inched closer. More than one of the military audience members shuddered.
    A third line appeared under the other two, and a counter started at ten and counted down as the ships moved forward: 9.9; 9.8.
    At 9.7 kilometers, the sphere pulsed green. They watched the pulse come toward the shuttles. Both shuttles disappeared. The pulse kept going. Then, suddenly, the ship was gone, too. Still the pulse kept going. The kilometer line crept up. Past ten kilometers. Past twenty. Past thirty. The viewscreen glowed brighter and brighter green. Then everything went black.
    â€œThe ship was transmitting right to the end,” the captain said quietly.
    Michelle took up the story. “The Haladeans came to us.”
    Even Ean knew the Haladeans were at war with Redmond. They could ill afford to spare warships even to examine something like this, and they definitely couldn’t afford to have them blown up.
    â€œWe—the Alliance—gave them ships in return for . . .” She waved an arm at the black screen. “We have five ships at a hundred kilometers out, all ready to jump at the slightest sign of a pulse.”
    â€œBut what about the lines?” asked Governor Jade. “How will the linesmen help?”
    â€œEvery ship has linesmen up to at least level six,” the captain said, and he could have been looking straight at Ean, or maybe Ean was just feeling guilty. “The linesmen on the Haladean ship identified the presence of something that felt like lines on the alien ship. They said that in the messages they sent back. Our own linesmen corroborated that when we arrived. They didn’t know what level, only that it’s greater than six.”
    Line nine was the void, and line ten twisted the void and moved whatever was in the void to a different place, but