Angelmass

by Timothy Zahn

  “You mean you might be able to dream up some new test that no one’s ever thought of before?”

  The doctor shrugged uncomfortably. “It does rather come down to that, yes,” he conceded.

  “Yes,” Forsythe said. “I appreciate the offer, but I think we’ll pass.”

  Ronyon finished his shoes and straightened up. Can we go now? he signed to Forsythe, his forehead wrinkled with nervous hope.

  Yes, Forsythe assured him. It had been clear from their conversation earlier that afternoon that Ronyon was very unhappy here, lying in a strange bed and being periodically poked and prodded and frowned at by the small army of medical men and women who were continually carting him off to various examination rooms. There was no point in making him go through any more of that, particularly when they’d run out of ideas anyway.

  And in truth, Forsythe was just as anxious to get the big man back at his side. The tension of not knowing what was happening at Lorelei was starting to affect him, making him moody and short-tempered. And everyone from Pirbazari to the temporary staff the Seraph government had insisted on assigning to him knew it The sooner he had Ronyon’s happy innocence around him again, the better.

  “Best of fortune to you, then,” the doctor said. “If he has any more attacks, please let me know at once. Good-bye, Mr. Ronyon.”

  Are we going home now? Ronyon signed as he and Forsythe headed down the hospital corridor toward the admissions desk where Pirbazari should be about finished with the release paperwork.

  Not yet, Forsythe told him, struggling to keep his emotion from showing in his face. For all they knew, there might not even be a home left for them to go back to.

  But of course Ronyon knew nothing about this. For the moment, it was best they keep it that way. We’re going to the Magasca Government Building, he added. We have some temporary office space there.

  Oh. Ronyon paused, his forehead wrinkling a little more. Why aren’t we going home?

  We can’t leave yet, Forsythe said, studying Ronyon’s face. To the casual observer, he seemed to have recovered fully from whatever had happened to him at Angelmass.

  But Forsythe had known him a long time, and he could tell that there was still something lingering below the surface. There were new lines at the corners of Ronyon’s eyes, and a thin film of solemnity lying across his expression like a nearly transparent veil.

  Maybe that would disappear as the memory of the trip faded away. Forsythe hoped so. There are still some things we need to do here.

  You mean like with Hanan and Ornina and Chandris? Ronyon asked. Is Hanan all right?

  To his embarrassment, Forsythe realized suddenly that he hadn’t even checked on Hanan Daviee since hearing that the pilot’s condition had been stabilized. I think so, he signed. If you’d like, we can check on him before we leave.

  Some of the new lines in Ronyon’s face seemed to smooth out. Can we? he signed eagerly.

  Forsythe smiled. Of course, he said. I’m sure Hanan will be happy to see you—

  “High Senator?”

  Forsythe looked up. Pirbazari was hurrying down the corridor toward him, his phone clutched in his hand.

  Come on, Forsythe signed to Ronyon, picking up his own pace, his heart abruptly pounding in his ears. News from Lorelei at last?

  They met in the middle. “I just got a call from EmDef,” Pirbazari said, taking Forsythe’s arm and pulling him off to the side of the corridor. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  Forsythe braced himself. Here it came. “Lorelei’s been taken?”

  Pirbazari shook his head. “No. I mean, I don’t know— there’s still no word from there.”

  He waved his phone again. “It’s Angelmass. The thing’s moving.”

  Forsythe glanced at Ronyon. “What do you mean, moving? Moving where?”

  “Into a lower orbit,” Pirbazari said. “Dropping in toward the sun. Just a little so far, but the change is definitely there.”

  “What’s causing it?”

  “You got me,” Pirbazari said. “In fact, you got all of us. No one at EmDef or the Institute has the faintest idea.”

  Forsythe frowned. “Zar, there aren’t a lot of possibilities here,” he said. “In order to change something’s orbit, you have to apply force to it. Where’s the force coming from?”

  Pirbazari shrugged helplessly. “They’ve checked solar wind, magnetic anomalies, dust concentrations, even looked for stray dark masses that could be affecting it. So far, nothing.”

  Forsythe rubbed his chin, trying to visualize the configuration out there. An inward change in orbit, he remembered from college physics, meant an increase in orbital speed. And with Angelmass Central running in the same orbit ahead of it … “It’s moving closer to the station,” he murmured.

  “Yes, but not very fast,” Pirbazari said. “And Central is pretty heavily shielded. At the rate Angelmass is gaining, it’ll be at least a couple of weeks before it even starts to pose a radiation hazard. And of course, if the orbit continues to sink, it may end up too low to bother the station by the time it passes anyway.”

  “I wouldn’t want to bet on that,” Forsythe said. “Especially since we don’t know how or why it’s sinking in the first place. Better have the station personnel prepare for evacuation, just in case. Do they have any ships there?”

  “EmDef can have a transport to them in twenty minutes,” Pirbazari said. “There’s also a double ring of emergency escape pods set around the tube connecting the catapult and net sections of the station. They’ve got steerable drive nozzles with enough fuel for half an hour of steady bum time, plus two weeks’ worth of life-support.”

  “Shielding?”

  “Huntership-grade sandwich metal,” Pirbazari assured him. “Actually, the pods are the main shielding for the connection tube.”

  “All right,” Forsythe said. “Speaking of hunterships, what’s being done with the ones that are out there?”

  “They’ve been alerted,” Pirbazari said.

  “That’s all?”

  “Well …” Pirbazari floundered a moment. “The orbit’s only changed a little. They can surely compensate for that.”

  “Only if the change stays small,” Forsythe said tartly. “And since we don’t know what’s causing it, it’s going to be a little hard to make any guarantees. Have them recalled to Seraph.”

  Pirbazari seemed taken aback. “You really think that’s necessary?” he asked.

  “Unexplained radiation surges and now impossible orbital shifts?” Forsythe countered. “I think we’ve gone slightly past necessary.”

  Pirbazari’s lip twitched. “All right,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll talk to EmDef.”

  ‘Talk loud and firm,” Forsythe said. “And while you’re at it, see if they have any mechanism for moving Central into a higher orbit. Whatever’s affecting Angelmass may hit the station next, and I don’t want its orbit dropping just in time for Angelmass to plow into it.”

  “I’ll check,” Pirbazari said. “I know they stock some supplies for asteroid miners who sometimes stop by. Maybe they’ve got a few strap-on boosters aboard.”

  Forsythe grimaced. It would take a lot more than a few boosters to get something the size of Angelmass Central moving. But it would be better than nothing. “Just have that evacuation transport standing by.”

  “It is,” Pirbazari said. “EmDef tells me—”

  He broke off as Ronyon suddenly grabbed Forsythe’s shoulder. Forsythe looked up, to find the big man staring wide-eyed down the corridor behind Pirbazari. It’s Ornina! Ronyon signed excitedly, bobbing his head that direction. And Chandris!

  Forsythe shifted his eyes down again, expecting to see the women walking through the front door on their way to see Hanan.

  What he saw instead was the two of them hovering in the background as two emergency room techs wheeled in a gurney with a blood-soaked figure on it.

  “Looks like Kosta,” Pirbazari said, peering down the corridor. “What the hell h
appened to him?”

  “An accident, maybe,” Forsythe said, an odd feeling stirring in his gut. “Let’s find out.”

  They arrived just as the group reached the elevator. It was Kosta, all right, his face puckered stoically. “What happened?” Forsythe asked.

  “Oh, High Senator,” Ornina greeted him, her own expression tight but controlled. “There was a—well—”

  “Someone I used to know came by the Gazelle,” Chandris spoke up. “He had a knife.”

  “And showed Mr. Kosta how it worked, I take it,” Forsythe said. Like both Kosta and Ornina, he saw, Chandris’s expression and voice were under careful control.

  But as Forsythe studied her, it seemed to him that her face had aged ten years since the last time he’d seen her.

  “He was going to take me away,” she said softly. Her eyes closed briefly; and when she opened them, they seemed to have aged another ten. “Kosta saved my life.”

  “It was actually the other way around,” Kosta murmured.

  “Save your strength, Jereko,” Ornina admonished him gently. “Our first-aid bandages weren’t able to stop the bleeding, High Senator, and the Gazelle’s medpack was shut down with most of the rest of the ship’s equipment.”

  The elevator doors opened. “You don’t need to explain,” Forsythe assured her. “Go get him fixed up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ornina said, as the techs got the gurney into the car. “Thank you, High Senator.”

  The two women got in with the others, and the doors closed. “Left arm and chest,” Pirbazari commented. “Both of them slashes instead of penetration wounds. He should be all right, assuming he hasn’t lost too much blood.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Forsythe said, gazing unseeingly at the closed doors as all the question marks surrounding Kosta came flooding back. His mysterious funding source, his shadowy background, the anomalies in his manner and speech.

  And all the questions now set against a Pax invasion of Lorelei.

  And suddenly, it all came together. “He’s a spy,” he breathed. “A Pax spy.”

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Pirbazari’s jaw drop. But even as he turned to face him, he could see his aide’s surprise turn to understanding. “I’ll be damned,” he said quietly. “Are you sure?”

  Forsythe hesitated. Yes, he was sure. But at the same time, he also had no actual proof.

  Which was, after all, the question Pirbazari was really asking. “Not yet,” he told the other. “But I will be.”

  He glanced up at Ronyon, who was silently following the conversation with a puzzled look on his face. “I’m going to take Ronyon back to the office,” he said. “As soon as Kosta is patched up, you bring him to me.”

  “Right,” Pirbazari said. “You want me to bring the others, too?”

  “Just Kosta,” Forsythe said. “And watch him, Zar. Watch him very closely.”

  “Don’t worry,” Pirbazari said. “I will.”

  The stars emerged from the blackness, and the Harmonic had arrived.

  “Seraph EmDef Command to liner,” a tart voice came from the bridge speaker. “Identify yourself.”

  Captain Djuabi turned his head toward the bridge master screen, where the net and catapult ships showed in a tactical-type display. Each of the four catapult ships had three or four Empyreal Defense Force ships hovering watchfully nearby. “This is Captain Djuabi of the liner Harmonic” he said, his voice stiff.

  Far too stiff for Lleshi’s taste. From his vantage point directly in front of the captain, carefully outside of the range of the visual comm camera, the commodore lifted a warning finger. Djuabi’s lip twitched, just noticeably, and he gave a microscopic nod.

  He would cooperate, all right. Not that he had many other options. With his liner’s command areas all under Pax control, Djuabi had no choice but to comply with Lleshi’s orders. At least, not if he valued the lives of his crew and passengers.

  Djuabi shifted slightly in his chair, the movement sending a faint glint off the gold pendant and chain around his neck. Telthorst had wondered, rather pointedly, whether any number of human lives would even be a consideration for a man wearing an angel.

  Perhaps they were about to find out.

  “Point of origin?” Seraph Command asked.

  “Balmoral,” Djuabi said. Apparently it was still possible for a man to he with an angel around his neck, at least under duress.

  “Please transmit your papers,” Seraph Command ordered.

  Djuabi nodded to the man at the comm station. The Pax officer at the board set to work, fumbling only slightly with the unfamiliar control layout.

  Lleshi rubbed his thumb slowly along the side of his index finger, striving to release some of the tension churning through his stomach. Everything was balanced together on this moment, a moment in which there was nothing he could do but watch and wait. The Balmoral papers the officer was sending out were as good a forgery as the Komitadji’s Crypto Group had been able to create, but nothing was perfect. If Seraph Command had a particularly sharp eye, or a particularly well-programmed computer, this gamble would crumble like soft stone under a mason’s sledgehammer.

  And if it crumbled, so would the entire mission. Plus, undoubtedly, the rest of his career. Telthorst would see to that.

  For perhaps half a minute nothing happened. Lleshi gazed at the master screen, watching the slow drift of the catapult ships across the starry background and wondering about the capabilities of those EmDef ships escorting them. The defenders were destroyer sized; small but heavily shielded and undoubtedly well armed.

  And this time around Lleshi didn’t have any doomsday pods available to use against them. Still, they surely wouldn’t be able to stand up against the full might of the Komitadji.

  Assuming he was able to make such a confrontation happen.

  The vector on one of the distant ships shifted momentarily as it moved to keep the Harmonic within the catapult focal area. They were playing this cautious, all right. Lleshi took careful, measured breaths as he kept his eyes moving around the bridge. Win or lose, there was no way he was going to show nervousness in front of the Empyreals.

  “Harmonic, you’re cleared for Seraph,” the voice came. “Fly safe.”

  “Thank you,” Captain Djuabi said. He touched a switch, and the comm light went dark. “Instructions, Commodore?” he asked calmly.

  “You heard the man,” Lleshi said. “Standard course toward Seraph.”

  A slight frown creased Djuabi’s forehead. But he nodded and gave the helm the order without comment or question.

  With a distant rumble of engines the Harmonic began accelerating. Lleshi kept his eyes on the master screen as the liner moved out of the net focal area, watching for any signs of suspicion from the EmDef ships.

  But they were still just sitting there, drifting unconcernedly beside their assigned catapult spacecraft. Completely oblivious to what had just happened.

  Telthorst would undoubtedly have called them fools. Lleshi couldn’t help but feel sorry for them.

  He gave the Harmonic five more minutes worth of distance before nodding to Djuabi. “Far enough,” he said. “Open the lifeboat bays.”

  “Lifeboat bays open, aye,” the captain said formally, gesturing the order to the appropriate station. “Acknowledge.”

  “Bays open,” the officer at the station growled. Unlike his captain, this one was making no effort to hide his rage and shame. But then, he wasn’t wearing an angel, either. “All bays show open.”

  Djuabi looked back at Lleshi. “Your move, Commodore.”

  “Thank you.” Lleshi lifted his hand comm to his lips and clicked it on. “First wave: launch.”

  And on the board, the Harmonic’s outer hull erupted with drive trails as a hundred small spacecraft blew outward like spores from a flowering plant, using the liner’s rotation to give them an extra boost.

  But they weren’t the liner’s lifeboats. Those had all been offloaded at Lorelei.

  Th
ese were Pax Vlad-class fighters.

  “Attack pattern Alpha,” Lleshi ordered. “All fighters.”

  The EmDef ships were on the move now, shifting to intercept vectors and accelerating to meet the enemy. “Remember your targets,” Lleshi reminded them softly. “Not the destroyers, but the catapult ships.”

  In quick succession, the squadron leaders acknowledged … and as he watched the master screen Lleshi felt a tight smile touching the corners of his mouth. The gamble was still balanced on a knife’s edge, but the waiting was over. Now, at least, he had some control over the outcome.

  Taking a deep breath, holding the hand comm ready, he watched the ships prepare to engage.

  CHAPTER 37

  “They came out of the Harmonic’s lifeboat bays,” Pirbazari told Forsythe as he held open the door to the Government Building’s executive conference room. “The EmDef guard ships have engaged.”

  The conference room was surprisingly crowded, particularly for eight o’clock at night when everything was supposed to be closed and senior governmental officials were supposed to be at home. Either all of them had been working late, or else word of the attack had passed quickly enough for them to come back here to take advantage of the direct EmDef information feed.

  Some of the officials were speaking urgently on their phones. Others were talking tensely among themselves or just standing in stunned silence as they gazed at the main comm screen at the far end of the room. The screen had been rigged with a multi-view array taken from the various ships and monitor satellites in the net region, giving them all a front-row seat to the battle.

  ‘Tactics?” Forsythe asked quietly as he and Pirbazari pushed their way between the conversational knots. Ideally, a High Senator would have been instantly and deferentially ushered to the best vantage point in the room. The fact that no one had apparently even noticed him said a lot about the stunned state they were all in.

  “Looks like they’re going for the two closest catapult ships,” Pirbazari said. “Numbers One and Three. Their first goal will be to disable the catapult so that the rest of their force can come in.”