Angelmass

CHAPTER 31

They were four hours on their way toward Lorelei when the first sign of resistance appeared.

"They appear to be mining ships, Commodore," Chief Sensor Officer Dahlgren said, peering back and forth between his displays. "About thirty of them, moving in on individual intercept vectors. The nearest ones have started tracking us. Looks like they've got fairly low-grade target acquisition systems, possibly something adapted from a mining sensor package."

"Weaponry?" Lleshi asked.

"Minimal," the other said. "The best they've got are medium-focus lasers, again probably adapted from standard equipment, plus some probe rockets with small, primitive warheads."

"How primitive?"

Dahlgren shrugged. "They're non-nuclear, just a few kilograms of high explosive each. Frankly, sir, they look almost handmade."

Lleshi exchanged frowns with Campbell. "Did he say primitive or pathetic?" Campbell asked. "What in the worlds do they think they're doing?"

"Maybe trying to distract us," Telthorst put in. "Ever think of that?"

Lleshi lifted his eyebrows to Dahlgren. "Lieutenant?" he invited.

"No other craft showing, in either inner or outer scan range," Dahlgren said. "And we're coming to the edge of the main asteroid mass, which means they're running out of places to hide. I suppose they could have mines planted on some of the rocks we haven't passed yet, but if so they're going to be pretty low-yield."

"And still only HE?" Lleshi asked.

"No radiation readings to indicate nuclear."

"I don't like it," Telthorst growled. "They can't just be sacrificing men and mining ships this way. I strongly recommend we launch fighters and engage them at a safe distance from the Komitadji."

Again, Lleshi and Campbell exchanged glances, this time looks of mutually strained patience. "That won't be necessary, Mr. Telthorst," Lleshi said. "The Komitadji's defenses are quite capable of dealing with this threat."

"Unless it's a feint."

"It's not a feint," Lleshi said, feeling his temper beginning to strain. "This is the tactics of desperation; nothing more. The Empyreals are throwing whatever they have at us in an attempt to slow us down until they can bring real warships into the system."

"They almost certainly don't realize there's still a net left in the system and that we control it,"

Campbell added. "They'll be counting on defense forces from the other four systems being able to sweep in on us. With that assumption, any delaying action will seem reasonable to them, no matter what the cost."

"At any rate, dropping and regathering fighters would take time I'm not willing to waste," Lleshi concluded.

"What's the hurry?" Telthorst asked. "As you say, there's nothing the Empyreals can do."

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Or could it have something to do with that liner that left Lorelei orbit an hour ago, just after the Thunderhead took out their kick-pod catapult?"

Lleshi had hoped Telthorst hadn't noticed that. "Yes, the liner is part of it," he confirmed, keeping his voice steady. "We naturally want to cut it off at the catapult before it escapes."

"Why?" Telthorst demanded. "At their current acceleration, it'll take them nearly as long to get there as it will us. Long before then the absence of scheduled kick pods will certainly have alerted the enemy to our presence here. What do we care if they leave with confirmation that the Komitadji is in Lorelei system?"

His eyebrows lifted. "Unless, of course, you have other plans for the liner. Or for the Komitadji."

The man was definitely smarter than he looked. "What other plans could we have?" Lleshi asked.

"None, I hope," Telthorst said darkly. "Because as I'm sure you're aware, your orders are to take and hold Lorelei system."

"My orders are to bring the worlds of the Empyrean under the authority and dominion of the Pax,"

Lleshi said, enunciating each word precisely. "My initial strategic instructions are to take and hold Lorelei system."

"To use as a bargaining chip to force open the rest of the Empyrean," Telthorst bit out. "That means you are to sit and hold and consolidate."

"The Balaniki group is already holding the net," Lleshi countered. "When the Macedonia group reaches Lorelei, they will hold the spacelanes around the planet. My orders make no mention of sitting."

"I see," Telthorst said, his voice deadly quiet. "So in other words, victory is as good as achieved.

Congratulations. So what are your intentions?"

Lleshi looked him straight in the eye. "The Supreme Council refers to this campaign as a rescue mission," he said. "Our stated purpose is to save the people of the Empyrean from the ongoing invasion of angels."

"And?" Telthorst prompted.

"It therefore seems only right," Lleshi said, "that we push our attack into our true enemy's home territory.

"I am therefore taking the Komitadji to Angelmass."

Telthorst's face went rigid. "What?" he snarled. "If you think you can—"

He choked down the rest of the sentence. "That's an insane move," he said instead, his voice still tight but under control again. "You saw what happened on our first trip to Lorelei. The minute we show up in a Seraph net, they'll throw us straight out again."

"I know." Lleshi gestured to the display. "That's why I need that liner."

"Explain."

"You don't give the orders aboard this ship, Adjutor," Lleshi reminded him. "You'll see when we get there."

Telthorst glared at him with an expression that was pure hatred. "I could give the orders aboard this ship, Commodore," he said quietly. "I could declare you incompetent and take command. Despite your obvious contempt for the Adjutors, I do have the authority to do that."

"Perhaps," Lleshi said. "But only if you can persuade everyone else aboard to believe you. And can prove me incompetent."

For a long minute the only sound was the hum of soft conversation from the command deck below.

On the balcony itself, no one spoke, and Lleshi had the odd impression they were all holding their breath. Perhaps they were. "In two days there will be no need for me to prove your incompetence,"

Telthorst said at last. "You'll have proved it for me."

"Perhaps," Lleshi said. "Until then, I am still commander of this ship."

Telthorst's eyes darted to the tactical display. "And what does the commander choose to do about those incoming enemy ships?"

"I've already told you," Lleshi said. "Commander Campbell?"

"Harpies locked onto incoming spacecraft," Campbell said briskly and, to Lleshi's ear, with a note of quiet relief in his voice.

"Fire Harpies," Lleshi said, his eyes still on Telthorst.

"Harpies firing, sir."

Ornina shook her head. "Who would have believed it?" she murmured.

"I'm not sure I believe it myself," Kosta admitted, searching her face and Hanan's for some clue as to what they were really thinking about all this.

As if he, with his eight whole weeks of secret agent training, would be able to decipher any such clues even if he did spot them. "But even if I'm misinterpreting the facts, the facts themselves are still there."

"I believe it," Hanan said, his pinched face thoughtful in the dim light. "So many other things suddenly make sense now."

"Like Ronyon's fear reaction when we hit the system," Chandris said. "Somehow, he was able to sense it in a way the rest of us couldn't."

"Yes; Ronyon," Hanan said. "Other things, too. Do you remember what Jaar Hova was like, Ornina, when he first started flying his huntership?"

"He was a nice man," Ornina said, nodding. "A bit gruff around the edges, but essentially a nice man."

"He wasn't very nice to me when I came looking for a job," Chandris murmured.

"No, he wasn't very nice at all there at the end," Hanan agreed. "So many of the others have gone sour, too. Or bitter, or just plain mean. I've always assumed it was the stress of an angel hunter's life that had gotten to them. Perhaps instead it was all that time spent close to Angelmass. Close to all that evil..." He shivered. "So what do we do about it?"

"The first step is to prove there actually are such things as anti-angels," Kosta told him. "Either to find a pseudo cloud chamber track or, even better, to actually capture one."

"What about the damage to our angel?" Hanan suggested. "Can't you use that as proof?"

"We're not using it," Chandris said.

"No, but—"

"We're not using it," Chandris repeated, her tone accepting no argument.

"She's right," Kosta seconded, mildly surprised that he was on her side on this one. From the quick look she shot him, she was apparently surprised, too. "Besides, all it proves is that something is happening out there. We still need an anti-angel to show what that something is."

"All right," Ornina said, a sudden decisiveness in her voice. "What do you need from us?"

"I can get the test equipment together," Kosta told her. "At least, I think so. What I need is a ship to take it out to Angelmass."

"That means the Gazelle," Chandris said. "So we need you to get repairs started on it as soon as you can."

Ornina pursed her lips. "I can try," she said doubtfully. "But Gabriel's repair schedule has always been something of a work of fiction."

"We don't need Gabriel," Chandris said. "You get a private repair firm on the job. I'll supply the money to pay for it."

Ornina looked at her. Shifted her eyes to Kosta; back again to Chandris. "May I ask how?"

"Legally," Chandris assured her. "That's all you need to know."

"Of course it'll be legally," Hanan said firmly. "We know that. All right, that's the rest of you. What about me?"

Ornina frowned. "What about you?"

"What's my job in this?" Hanan asked.

"I think lying there getting well should about cover it," Kosta said.

Hanan drew himself up, or at least drew himself up from the neck up. The rest of his body didn't seem to want to move. "Now see here, everyone," he stated with exaggerated dignity. "I am the captain of the Gazelle; and the captain does not simply lie around while his ship is on a mission."

Ornina drew herself up, too. "Hanan—"

"Compromise," Kosta put in quickly. "We've got at least a couple of days' work ahead on the ship before we can head out. If, Hanan—if—you're a good boy and you lie there and heal, we'll think about taking you with us when we go."

"That's better," Hanan said, blandly mollified. "Wise old ship's captain, you know. Fountain of knowledge and sage advice—"

"Or failing that, a little extra ballast," Ornina said with a sigh. "All right. I'll get a service contract written as soon as Shikari City opens for business."

"And make it a rush job," Chandris told her. "As many men and crews as you need. I'll make sure we have enough to pay whatever they want."

"Chandris—"

"People are already dying out there, Ornina," Chandris said quietly. "We have to stop it. Whatever it takes."

Hanan cleared his throat. "All of us?" he asked. "Including you, Jereko?"

Kosta braced himself. He'd been waiting for this other shoe to drop ever since he'd revealed his true identity to them. "If you think it'll help, I'm willing to turn myself in."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Chandris jerk slightly. "Wait a minute," she objected. "You can't make him do that."

"Why not?" Hanan asked.

"Because—" She hesitated, just a fraction of a second. "It'll tie up the rest of us six weeks from Sunday, that's why. They'll be bound to investigate his link to the Gazelle, and we'll never get off the ground."

"Maybe if I turn myself in you won't have to," Kosta suggested. "If I can convince them of the danger, maybe they'll mount an official study. A full Institute investigation will find an anti-angel a lot faster than we could."

"If they believe you," Chandris countered. "Would you believe a self-confessed spy?"

"If he had the data, yes," Kosta said, wondering why she was arguing so hard on his behalf.

And then suddenly it hit him. "Look, I wouldn't have to call them right now," he added. "I could hold off a day or two. Plenty of time for you to get away."

The look on her face was like someone had just slapped her. "Is that what you think?" she asked quietly. "That I'm just worried about me?"

Kosta winced, feeling ashamed. Now, for the first time since realizing who and what she was, he suddenly saw her not as a con artist but as merely a young woman struggling to survive a battering life. "No, of course not," he managed. "I just thought..."

Helplessly, he looked at Hanan. "Come on, fountain of sage advice, I'm drowning here," he growled.

"A little help?"

"Oh, I don't know," Hanan said thoughtfully. "It's quite instructive to watch the two of you. At any rate, I wasn't going to suggest you head straight over to the police. As Chandris rightly points out, it would at the very least bury us in official paperwork and paperwork shufflers. But."

He lifted his eyebrows. "When this is all over and we have the proof we need, you will need to come clean. There's no way around that."

"I understand," Kosta said. "Do you want me to write you out a confession or something right now?"

"No," Hanan said. With a clear effort he turned his right arm over and opened his hand. "But you might give me your weapon."

Kosta blinked. "How did you know about that?" he asked, pulling the shocker out of his pocket and laying it across Hanan's palm.

"Because I'm a wise old ship's captain, of course," Hanan said with a straight face.

"Don't pay a bit of attention to him, Jereko," Ornina admonished, standing halfway up and peering uncertainly at the weapon. "He was just guessing. How dangerous is this thing?"

"The safety's on," Kosta assured her, showing them both the small switch. "And it's tuned to its lowest setting besides. Even if you managed to accidentally fire it, you'd only shock your target a little."

"Good." Hanan closed his hand on the shocker and yawned prodigiously. "So are we finished for the night?"

"As far as I'm concerned." Kosta looked at Chandris. "You have anything else?"

She shook her head. "And I have a busy day tomorrow. I'd better get back to the ship and get some sleep."

"Sleep fast," Ornina warned her. "Ship repair services open at six in the morning, and I hope to have someone at the Gazelle by seven. Did you happen to pull up a damage survey, by the way?"

Chandris nodded. "I can transmit it here to you if you want."

"Yes, please," Ornina said. "It'll save time in the morning if I can tell them what exactly they'll need to do." For a moment her eyes searched Chandris's face. "You know, we can probably scrape up the money from somewhere else."

"I said I'd take care of it," Chandris told her, standing up. "You just concentrate on getting the ship ready to fly."

"All right, dear," Ornina said, giving Chandris a small and clearly forced smile. "You take care, then." She looked up at Kosta. "You, too, Jereko."

"We will," Kosta promised her. "Come on, Chandris, let's get going."

"High Senator Forsythe?"

With a jerk, Forsythe started awake, the muscles in his neck screaming with the sudden movement.

He was, he discovered with some embarrassment, sprawled across one of the couches in the fifthfloor hospital lounge where he'd apparently fallen asleep. "You startled me, Zar," he said reproachfully, blinking his eyes to clear them. The horizon outside the window, he noted, was starting to lighten with the coming of dawn. He'd been asleep for probably the past five hours or so.

"Sorry, sir," Pirbazari apologized. "Are you all right?"

"Sure." Forsythe said, frowning at the tightness of his aide's expression. "What's the matter?

Ronyon?"

Pirbazari shook his head. "A level-one message just came in from Uhuru. Lorelei has gone silent."

Something got a grip on Forsythe's throat. "What do you mean, 'gone silent'?"

"It's been twelve hours since the last scheduled skeeter to anywhere," Pirbazari said. "That puts the last one six hours overdue."

And there were five skeeter-sized catapults in the system, any one of which could fire out the regular capsules if necessary. "Could the planetary catapult have gone down, and for some reason they couldn't get a transmission to any of the ones in the belts?"

"Not likely," Pirbazari said. "For starters, there are six different official transmission systems out to the asteroids, plus all the commercial and private channels the government can commandeer in a pinch. And SOP is to send something on schedule, even if it's just a notice that systems are temporary down."

Forsythe hissed under his breath. "Which means all five catapults have been knocked out."

"Looks that way," Pirbazari conceded. "And fast enough that no one had time to get out a warning."

"How fast would that be?" Forsythe asked, reaching to his throat and tightening his neck clasp back into place.

Pirbazari pursed his lips. "Not much more than an hour. Maybe an hour and a half, depending on how badly the situation caught them napping."

" 'The situation'?" Forsythe bit out. "Is that the official EmDef term for a Pax invasion?"

"We don't know that it was an invasion, sir," Pirbazari warned. "Or that the Pax was involved.

Jumping to conclusions isn't going to get us anywhere with EmDef Command."

"Oh, the Pax is involved, all right," Forsythe said grimly. "I don't know how they did it, but it was them. If EmDef Command hasn't figured that out, they all ought to be fired. What's anyone doing at the moment?"

"Uhuru sent a quick courier to Lorelei four hours ago to look things over," Pirbazari said. "As of my last check, it hadn't yet responded."

"And when it does, it'll report back to Uhuru anyway," Forsythe said, retrieving his jacket from a nearby chair and slipping it on. "Where's the local EmDef HQ?"

"Eastern end of the huntership yards," Pirbazari said, dropping into step beside Forsythe as the High Senator headed for the lounge door. "Far side of the launch dishes."

"Good," Forsythe said as he pushed open the door and hurried out into the quiet corridor, still with its night lighting in place. "I want a courier of our own sent to Lorelei right away, with a collapsed skeeter catapult aboard."

"You think that's a good idea?" Pirbazari asked carefully. "The only way for the Pax to have destroyed the skeeter catapults at all four nets would have been for them to have overwhelmed the defenses there. Those sectors will be crawling with Pax ships."

"True," Forsythe said. "But follow it through. If they've destroyed the defenses at the nets, there's a fair chance they also destroyed the nets themselves."

"Which would mean the whole system would be open to their incoming ships," Pirbazari pointed out.

"And to ours," Forsythe reminded him. "If we can put something small into the system, maybe at a good distance from anything the Pax would be interested in—"

"There's a fair chance it could sit there quietly and put together a skeeter catapult without being noticed," Pirbazari finished for him, the first hint of cautious hope tugging at his voice. "It might work. But what if there's still one net working?"

"Then we'll have lost a courier," Forsythe said. "Hardly worth counting after we've lost a whole system."

"I suppose not," Pirbazari murmured.

Forsythe threw a sideways look at him. "Something?"

"I was just wondering," Pirbazari said slowly. "All those mining ships we armed."

"What about them?"

"We gave them targeting systems," Pirbazari said. "But we never gave them any instruction about tactics or strategy. I hope they've organized themselves into some kind of guerrilla-style resistance among the asteroids instead of just throwing themselves uselessly at incoming Pax ships."

Forsythe grimaced. "Let's hope they were smart and not just brave," he said. "In the meantime, let's see if we can find out what's going on."