Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

"Oh, I'll be there," Telthorst promised softly. "I wouldn't miss it for the world. Any world."

They had been sitting beside each other for about twenty minutes, each deeply involved in their own reading, when Chandris finally finished her particular manual and came up for air.

The gamma clicks had become noisier. Much noisier.

Moving stealthily, trying not to break Kosta's concentration, she slipped out of her chair and crossed to the ranging section of the control board. On the monitor, Angelmass seemed brighter and angrier than ever, but that could still be just an optical illusion. Seating herself at the board, she keyed for some numbers.

It wasn't an illusion. Angelmass was indeed getting closer.

Dangerously close.

Swallowing hard, forcing trembling fingers to function, she keyed for a review and projection. Two hours total, Kosta had estimated, before they would be ready to throw Angelmass out of the system.

Call it another hour and forty minutes on the clock, then. The question was, did they have that one hundred minutes left?

The computer projection was quick, precise, and unambiguous. They did not, in fact, have a hundred minutes.

They had exactly seventy.

She ran the numbers again, and again. But each time the projection came up the same. Long before they were ready to make their move, it would be all over.

She looked over her shoulder at the back of Kosta's head, leaning toward the reading display with oblivious intensity. He could have run once she and Hanan had sprung him from Forsythe's office.

He could have vanished into the Shikari City underground, or gone off into some wilderness area, and waited for his Pax friends to arrive in force, as they surely would eventually.

Instead, he'd risked everything to come out here. Risked his life to try to help the people of Seraph.

How was she going to tell him that that sacrifice had been for nothing?

Abruptly, as if sensing her thoughts or at least her absence from beside him, Kosta's head jerked up.

"Chandris?" he called over the gamma noise.

"Back here," she called.

He swiveled around in his chair... and she could tell from the look on his face that he already knew.

"Angelmass?"

"Closing fast," she said. "Computer calls it an hour and forty minutes until impact. But thirty minutes before that happens the radiation will fry us even through Central's shielding."

His lip twitched. "You're sure?"

"I've run the numbers three times," she said. "We've got seventy minutes, exactly. How far are you on your reading?"

"Not far enough," he said grimly. "I've got at least another half hour to go, and it looks more and more like the programing will take a solid hour after that. Even with two of us working on it."

"Then it's over," Chandris said gently, or as gently as she could when she had to practically shout the words. "Come on, let's get back to the Gazelle."

"No."

She sighed, getting to her feet and crossing to him. "Jereko, it's over."

"No it's not," he repeated flatly, his eyes flicking around the room. "We can do it. We have to do it.

We just need to buy ourselves some more time."

"How?" Chandris demanded. "This isn't the Gazelle, where we can outrun the thing if we can find the right direction. This is a space station. It hasn't got any drive engines."

"Then we have to find a way to slow Angelmass down," Kosta said slowly. "Decoy it, maybe..."

He trailed off, an odd light suddenly in his eyes. "I hope you're not thinking what I think you're thinking," Chandris warned, her stomach suddenly tight. There was something about that look that reminded her of Hanan and Ornina, hell-bent on being noble and self-sacrificing, no matter what the cost.

And if that cost included the Gazelle... "May I point out that the Gazelle's our only ticket out of here?" she said carefully.

"I know," he said, swiveling back to his board. "Is there any spare fuel aboard? Like for shuttles and hunterships that have run short?"

"I can check," Chandris said, sitting down beside him again and pulling up a floorplan and inventory list. "Jereko..."

"I know," Kosta said, leaning close to look at the schematic. "Trust me."

"And if you're wrong?"

His breath was warm against her cheek. "I'll try to have enough time to apologize."

The shuttle had been prepped, the pilot chosen and briefed; and Forsythe was looking over all the information the Empyrean had on Pax law and government when the word came that the Seraph huntership net had been shut down.

"What do you mean, shut down?" Forsythe demanded, frowning. "I left specific orders that it be left open."

"They say the command came from Central," Pirbazari said, his voice studiously neutral. It was a tone he'd used a lot in the past hour, Forsythe had noted with a growing uneasiness. "With Angelmass about twenty-one light-minutes away, that means the signal was transmitted within twenty minutes of their arrival at the net. Figure in maneuvering, docking, and debarkation time, and it looks like shutting down the Seraph net was the second thing they did once they got onto the station."

"The second thing?"

"Yes," Pirbazari said. "Shutting down Central's own net was number one. Seraph Control says the telemetry for that came through a few minutes before their own net closed down."

Forsythe forced himself to meet the other's gaze. "You still think I've made a deal with Kosta, don't you?" he said quietly. "Fine. Then tell me this: what does shutting down the net here gain him?"

"I don't know," Pirbazari said evenly. "But then, I don't know what going up there in the first place gains him. All I know is that the Komitadji destroyed one of Seraph system's main nets on the way in; and now Kosta has shut down two more. Coincidence?"

"He's been hanging around Angelmass and the Institute for months," Forsythe pointed out. "Surely he knows by now that the huntership system is binary linked. Those nets make no difference to traffic in or out of the system."

"One would think he'd know that," Pirbazari acknowledged. "But maybe he's a slow learner." His right eyebrow twitched. "Or maybe there's something else going on that I don't know about."

"If there is, I don't know about it either," Forsythe said, feeling sweat breaking out on his forehead.

Pirbazari was, as best he could tell, about half a micron from breaking his self-imposed silence and announcing the whole story over the EmDef HQ loudspeaker system.

The only things that might be holding him back were a lack of proof and whatever residual loyalty he still might have for the man he'd worked with for so long. And neither of those were going to last forever.

"High Senator?" General Roshmanov called from the doorway. "Your shuttle is ready."

Pirbazari waved in acknowledgement. "That's it. Let's get to it."

Forsythe braced himself. Possibly not even through the next thirty seconds, he amended. "You're not going, Zar," he said.

Pirbazari had been looking down as he fastened his jacket. Now, slowly, he looked up. "What?"

"You're former military," Forsythe reminded him. "You know too much about EmDef procedures, personnel, and tactics. If Lleshi reneges on his promise, we can't afford for you to be in their hands."

"What about you?" Pirbazari demanded. "An Empyreal High Senator?"

"I know a little about military expenditures and far too much about council etiquette," Forsythe said with a grimace. "Nothing that's going to help with their war effort."

"But this isn't just a war effort," Pirbazari countered. "This world-swallowing technique of theirs is as much political as it is military. And you're the local expert on political matters."

Forsythe sighed. "What do you want me to say? Someone has to go."

Pirbazari's shoulders hunched fractionally. "So you're going alone?"