Angelmass

CHAPTER 33

"ETA to catapult, five minutes," Campbell announced. "Speed has eased up to twenty-one hundred.

Looks like we've picked up a little gravitational acceleration."

"Acknowledged," Lleshi said, glancing over his own boards. Everything was ready; all systems showed green. For the past two days the Komitadji had been following a standard, minimum-time acc/dec course, driving at constant acceleration toward the distant catapult for the first half of the distance, then flipping over and decelerating at the same rate. Trying to beat the slower spaceliner to the catapult.

It had been a long, hard race, and it was coming down now to a laser-etched finish. But Lleshi had run the numbers, and the Komitadji was going to win.

"Commodore Lleshi!"

Lleshi bit down hard on the first words that sprang to mind. "Yes, Mr. Telthorst?"

"What in the name of the laughing fates is going on here?" the Adjutor snarled, hobbling to an awkward stop in the slight gravity of the Komitadji's slow rotation. "We're supposed to be heading for that catapult out there."

"And we are," Lleshi said. "Our ETA is just under five minutes."

"Then why are we in free-flight?" Telthorst demanded. "Our speed relative to the catapult—" he squinted at Lleshi's board "—it's over two thousand kilometers per hour. We should be decelerating—should have been decelerating the whole way."

He jabbed an accusing finger toward the tactical display. "Now we're too close. We can't possibly decelerate the rest of our speed away fast enough."

"No, we can't," Lleshi agreed. "I didn't intend to."

"Really," Telthorst said frostily. "May I ask what exactly you did intend to do, then? Wave at the station as we shot past it?"

Lleshi gestured to the tactical display. "The spaceliner out there has a catapult ETA of nineteen minutes," he said. "A standard acc/dec run, if I had stayed with that, would have had us arriving nearly ten minutes behind it."

"The Empyreals already know we're here, Commodore," Telthorst bit out. "They sent a courier ship into the system, remember?"

"Two of them, actually," Lleshi corrected. "A second courier hit the net about eighteen hours ago, while you were sleeping."

Telthorst's eyes narrowed. "Why wasn't I told?"

"It wasn't necessary," Lleshi said. "As with the first, the Balaniki captured it without trouble. Captain Horvak has the crew aboard for questioning; if he'd learned anything he would have relayed it to me."

"And of course you would have relayed it to me?"

"Of course." Lleshi felt the corner of his lip twist. "Don't worry, this ship was also captured undamaged," he couldn't resist adding.

For a moment Telthorst just looked at him. "We'll ignore that for the moment, Commodore," he said at last. "You're supposed to keep me fully informed—fully informed—on all aspects of this operation. But we'll ignore that."

He jabbed again at the tactical display. "What we will not ignore is that this whole silly race has been a waste from the very first. A waste of time and fuel, neither of which we have to spare. It doesn't make a half-penny's worth of difference if that spaceliner gets away; and now it appears you aren't even going to get that half-penny's worth of profit out of it."

"On the contrary," Lleshi told him. "It could make a great deal of difference. And the spaceliner isn't going to get away."

"Really." Telthorst looked over at the main display, now showing the view aft toward the catapult they were racing toward. "Then you'd better plan to wave extra hard at it," he said. "Because in a few seconds you're going to have your first and last close-up look at it."

"I'm aware of the timing, thank you," Lleshi said. "SeTO?"

"Board is green, Commodore," Campbell said briskly. "Long tubes ready for launch."

"Long tubes?" Telthorst echoed, looking like he'd been hit in the face. "You're wasting Hellfire missiles on a spaceliner?"

"Hardly," Lleshi said, smiling tightly. "Hellfires aren't the only things on a warship that can be launched through the long tubes."

Telthorst's face was a twist of confusion. "What in hell's bank are you talking about?"

"Just watch," Lleshi advised. The timer clicked down to zero—"Fighters: launch."

From the cluster of tubes along the big ship's centerline came a faint rumbling growl, more felt than heard, as the mass-driver launching electromagnets activated. In his mind's eye Lleshi could see the wave of fighters riding that magnetic wave, accelerating through the Komitadji's core at a punishing ten gravities. They reached speed and shot out the bow of the ship, traveling at twenty-one hundred kilometers per hour.

Or rather, they came from the tubes at twenty-one hundred relative to the Komitadji. Since the Komitadji was traveling backwards at that same speed, the fighters emerged effectively stationary between the catapult and incoming spaceliner.

In perfect position to draw a line in the sand.

"Full deceleration," Lleshi ordered. "Fighter command?"

"Fighters moving to interdiction positions," the fighter commander called as the roar of the Komitadji's engines began to rattle the command deck. "Giving challenge to the spaceliner."

"Catapult lasers responding," Campbell reported, a touch of contempt in his voice. "Looks like basic meteor defenses. Pitiful."

"They're still powerful enough to cause damage," Telthorst pointed out stiffly. "Those fighters are expensive, too."

"Instruct the fighters to stay clear as best they can," Lleshi ordered. Telthorst's precious money be damned; he simply didn't want to waste valuable pilots. "We'll have plenty of time to deal with the catapult defenses once we've finished decelerating and can get back to the station."

"And then?" Telthorst demanded, challenge in his voice.

Lleshi smiled. "Then perhaps I can make you that half-penny's worth of profit."

"We've shut down all the nets except the one here," General Akhmed said, tapping a spot on the tactical display. "That will give us only one entrypoint to defend. Our destroyers are arranged thusly—" he indicated the green triangles hovering protectively around each of the four catapult ships "—with support ships and fighters forming defensive screens. It's a standard three-layer defense, easily capable of holding long enough for the catapult ships to send any intruder packing."

"What about the Seraph and Central huntership nets?" Pirbazari asked.

"Binary linked to each other," Akhmed said. "They don't enter into the calculation."

Forsythe shook his head. "Not good enough," he said.

Akhmed's eyebrows lifted politely. "I beg your pardon, High Senator?"

"A standard containment approach may be good enough to deal with the occasional Pax military probe," Forsythe told him, gesturing toward the schematic. "But we're talking full-bore invasion here. The Pax may not be willing to play your game with them."

Pirbazari cleared his throat. "It's not a matter of playing games, sir," he said. "The nets are the only way into the system. If they can't get out of the net area before they're 'pulted away, that's that. They don't have a lot of say in it."

"Then how did they get into Lorelei system?" Forsythe retorted. "Because they are there, Zar. That courier we sent has been silent for over twenty hours. How long does it take to put together a collapsible skeeter catapult?"

Pirbazari's mouth tightened. "Ten hours," he conceded. "Twelve at the outside."

"Leaving them plenty of time to have looked around and written up a report," Forsythe said. "If they aren't talking, it's because someone has shut them up. You have any candidates in mind other than the Pax?"

"With all due respect, High Senator," Akhmed said politely, "what exactly is it you want us to do?"

"For a start, how about arming the hunterships?" Forsythe said, reaching over and pulling up another list. "They have the best shielding of anything in the Empyrean."

"They're designed for a high-radiation environment, sir, not combat," Pirbazari reminded him. "Pax lasers and plasma jets might not bother them, but I wouldn't bet on their chances against high explosives."

"Nonsense," Forsythe said firmly. "Explosives are nothing but high energy in a compact package.

Anything that can survive Angelmass's energy output shouldn't have trouble with a few warheads.

Put some weapons aboard and we'll have another layer of defense."

Akhmed and Pirbazari exchanged glances. "Sir..." Pirbazari said hesitantly.

"What?" Forsythe demanded, looking back and forth between them. "You don't like the idea of being prepared?"

"It's not that, sir," Pirbazari said. "It's just... I think we're both wondering if you might be overreacting a little."

Forsythe took a deep breath, a blistering retort dropping into place in his mind like a missile in its launch tube.

And then he took another look at the expression on Akhmed's face... and suddenly felt his blood freeze.

He'd forgotten he was supposed to be wearing an angel.

His retort and frustrated anger vanished together in a sudden flash of panic as his eyes dropped to the angel pendant around Akhmed's neck. It had been a bad slip. Possibly even a fatal slip. Angelwearing politicians weren't supposed to be so quick to advocate violence, not even in self-defense.

They were quiet and placid and confident, three qualities Forsythe was definitely not manifesting at the moment. If Akhmed suspected—if he demanded the High Senator turn over his own pendant for examination—then Forsythe was finished. It would mean scandal and removal, probably even prosecution.

And in the midst of it, the Pax would sweep into the Empyrean and destroy it. "What do you mean?" he asked between stiff lips.

"All I mean is that we know how the Pax sees things," Pirbazari said. "Everything is either profit or loss to them. Even if they somehow get past the defenders and the catapult ships, they're hardly going to lay waste to Seraph."

"That means that whatever happens, we've got time," Akhmed added. "Time for negotiation or political maneuvering." His eyes flicked down to Forsythe's angel pendant. "Or for combat, if it comes to that."

"I suppose," Forsythe murmured, watching the other closely. But if Akhmed had figured it out, it didn't show in his face. "I'll leave it in your hands, then, shall I?"

"I think that would be best, High Senator," Akhmed agreed, sounding relieved. Even for an EmDef general, apparently, going head to head with a High Senator was an unwelcome fight.

Which meant that perhaps Forsythe had overreacted after all. Not about the Pax invasion, certainly, but about the possibility of Akhmed realizing he wasn't wearing an angel. The state of mind created by the general's own angel might even be working in Forsythe's favor, making such suspicions unlikely.

Still, the momentary uncertainty had served a useful purpose. Even as he tried to single-handedly whip the Empyrean into battle readiness, Forsythe needed to remember there was a mask he had to wear. It was a lesson he would take care to remember.

"I'd best leave you to it, then," Forsythe said, stepping away from the display and offering Akhmed his hand. "Let me know immediately if there's any new information."

"I will, High Senator," Akhmed promised. "Don't worry, sir. We're a considerably harder nut to crack than the Pax might think."

I hope so, Forsythe said to himself as he and Pirbazari left the building. I sincerely hope so.

"Almost done," Gyasi announced, poking his head up over the box he was fastening. "You?"

"Just about," Kosta said, double-checking that all the foam padding was in place around the delicate spectrum sampler before putting the packing box lid in place. "I can't believe we were actually able to get all this stuff together."

"Shows what clean living will do," Gyasi said dryly, setting the top of his box carefully into place and working the sealing levers. "Okay. Finished."

He collapsed into a chair beside the stack of boxes, waving a hand vigorously at his face as if fanning himself to cool off. It was an unusual gesture for Gyasi, one Kosta had never seen him make before.

And because it was unusual enough to catch Kosta's full attention, he also spotted the other's subtle, almost furtive glance at his other wrist.

At his watch.

Kosta turned back to his own packing box, a sudden surge of uncertainty running through him. It could have been a totally innocent act, of course; Gyasi simply wondering how long they had been working, or how long it had been since lunch.

But it could also be as un-innocent as a paranoiac's nightmares. Half of the stuff piled around them was in this room illegally, shamelessly borrowed or flat-out stolen from labs neither Kosta nor Gyasi had any business even being inside.

Gyasi hadn't objected to their private scavenger hunt. He'd been rather enthusiastic about it, actually, cheerfully and efficiently doing inventory searches to pinpoint the items on Kosta's list. So cheerfully and efficiently, in fact, that at times Kosta had thought he could even give Chandris's professional larceny some stiff competition.

Problem was, this was the same Yaezon Gyasi who'd also spent a lot of time around angels.

So was Gyasi waiting for someone? The police, or an Empyrean Defense Force anti-espionage force? Helping Kosta neatly wrap up the evidence for them?

Or was Kosta simply fighting against the pangs of conscience? He'd spent a fair amount of time around angels, too.

He got the top onto the box and sealed it into place. "Done," he said. "I guess we're ready to call a line truck and start moving it."

"Yeah," Gyasi said, making no move to leave his seat. "How are the repairs on the ship coming?"

"Better than expected," Kosta said, an unpleasant tingle starting to vibrate across his skin. Gyasi couldn't be that tired. He was waiting for something, all right. "Chandris has a gift for getting people to do what she wants."

"I can believe that," Gyasi said. "When is it supposed to be ready?"

"Sometime tomorrow," Kosta said. "She's supposed to pick up the credit chit this afternoon."

"You never told me how she'd pulled that one off."

"She never told me how she pulled it off," Kosta countered. "But Ornina checked up on this Stardust Metals group after Toomes called me. The business is legitimate, anyway, even if whatever Chandris has planned isn't. Come on, let's get this stuff out of here."

Gyasi's face twisted. "Well, actually..."

He didn't seem inclined to finish the sentence. As it turned out, he didn't have to.

Across the room the door swung open. Kosta turned toward it, his hand twitching reflexively toward his pocket before he remembered he'd surrendered his shocker to Hanan.

"Hello, Mr. Kosta," Director Podolak said, stepping into the room. "I see you've been busy."

"Director Podolak," Kosta said, the words coming out as a half sigh. It was worse than the police.

Worse even than Empyreal security. Those he could have resisted, maybe even successfully.

But not Podolak. Not the woman who'd done so much to help him over the past few months. Not the woman who'd supported his work at every step along the way.

Not the woman who'd trusted him.

"I'm surprised we still have an Institute out there," Podolak commented wryly as she walked into the room, glancing at each stack of boxes as she passed it. Doing a mental inventory, no doubt; she probably knew exactly how many test tubes and marking pens each lab was supposed to have.

"Looks to me like half of it is right here."

"I need it to run an experiment," Kosta said. To his mild surprise, his voice was clear, his tongue working without tangling over itself. A far cry from the fumbling, easily panicked amateur spy he'd been when he first landed in the Empyrean. "My credit line is still frozen. I didn't think we had time to waste jumping through bureaucratic hoops."

"I see." Podolak shifted her gaze to Gyasi. "Mr. Gyasi, would you excuse us a moment?"

Gyasi stood up without a word, flashing a single glance at Kosta as he stepped out the door and closed it behind him.

"This is very disappointing, Mr. Kosta," Podolak commented, sitting down in the chair Gyasi had just vacated. "I would have thought that by now you'd know you could come to me with problems like this."

"I know that," Kosta conceded, feeling a flush of shame. There was no anger in her voice or face that he could detect, but her quiet calmness had an undercurrent of hurt to it. "I didn't want you involved.

It was my idea, my gamble. I didn't want anyone else in trouble if it didn't work out."

"What about Mr. Gyasi?"

Kosta lifted his hands. "I didn't want him, either, but he insisted. Anyway, he was already in on it."

"In on this theory of yours that Angelmass has become a focus of evil?"

Kosta grimaced. Gyasi would have told her everything, of course. "I know it sounds crazy," he admitted. "But I've already found indications that something in or near Angelmass has an eroding effect on angels."

"But no actual evidence?"

Kosta thought about the Daviees' angel, and his promise to keep its existence a secret. "Nothing I can use, no," he told her. "That's what all this equipment is for. To see if I can find and identify an anti-angel, the equivalent quanta of evil."

Podolak shook her head. "There is no quantum of evil," she said quietly. "Any more than the angels themselves are quanta of good."

Kosta frowned. "I thought the Acchaa theory was pretty well accepted around here."

"Acceptance doesn't equal truth," Podolak said. "I don't know what the angels are, or how exactly they affect the people they come in contact with. But the idea that they're little chunks of something as vague and undefinable as 'good' simply doesn't work."

"Why not?"

"Because they do not, in fact, force people to do the right thing," Podolak said. "Not always."

Kosta studied her. Podolak's eyes were steady on him, an odd layer of tension about the corners of her mouth. "What do you know," he asked carefully, "that the rest of us don't?"

Her lips tightened. "That in the past ten years, with the angel program well established, no fewer than seven High Senators have been caught in embezzlement, fraud, or influence-peddling."

Kosta felt his jaw drop. He'd been expecting her to trot out some esoteric data from the Institute's angel-control studies. "Are you serious?"

"In that same time," she added, "at least fifty other angel-wearers have also skated over the edge."

"And you managed to keep all this a secret?"

"The High Senate has been very good at covering up the problems," she said. "And for what it's worth, most of the people involved turned out to have serious mental or emotional instabilities they'd managed to hide up until then."

"Even so," Kosta protested. "Isn't this something the people ought to know about?"

"Yes, it is," she admitted. "And if it were up to me, they would."

"So who is it up to?" Kosta asked. "The High Senate?"

"Even most of the High Senators don't know," she said. "Only the top leaders, plus a few senior EmDef officers. Their view is that seven High Senators in ten years is hardly a terrible failure rate."

Kosta snorted. "More likely they just want to cover their tails after all these years of telling the people how safe the angels have made them."

"No, I don't think so," Podolak said. "The problem is that the angels do work, at least most of the time. They've made the High Senate run more smoothly and efficiently, as well as drastically lowering the crime rate."

"How drastically?"

"Substantially," Podolak said. "In the twenty years before the introduction of the angels, over two hundred High Senators were indicted, censured, or removed from office for illegal or unethical behavior."

"I guess that is significant," Kosta conceded.

"And the same pattern has translated over into EmDef and the local government sector of angelwearers,"

Podolak said. "So you can see their point in not rocking the boat at this stage."

"But you don't agree."

Podolak sighed. "You're right, the angels have made the people feel safe. The problem is, they've made them feel too safe. The normal vigilance a population needs to maintain toward its elected officials has been dulled, if not completely eliminated. Even if the angels were perfect, that wouldn't be a healthy thing. As it is, it's more than a little dangerous for the society."

Kosta felt his throat tighten. "Not to mention the Pax. The whole reason they're breathing down our necks is that the High Senate has convinced them the angels are an irresistible alien force."

"Perhaps," Podolak said. "Still, if it wasn't that excuse it would be something else. The Pax just likes to conquer people."

Kosta looked around at his stacks of equipment boxes. "So what is it you want me to do?" he asked.

"The same thing that all good scientists want," Podolak said. "I want you to find the truth."

"And then?"

"Let the political and social chips fall where they have to," Podolak said, standing up. "Now. You and Mr. Gyasi need to get going, I expect. Unfortunately, neither of you can check out this much equipment at once."

She smiled faintly. "Which means I need to go to the gate with you. You'd better call for some luggage carts; you're going to need them."