Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

"Angelmass has been exhibiting strange behavior over the past few weeks," Forsythe said. "It started with radiation bursts, and has progressed to where it's actually changing its orbit."

"How?"

"I don't know," Forsythe said. "But I'm sure that if you ask nicely, Mr. Kosta will be happy to give you the complete story when he gets back."

Lleshi's reaction to Kosta's name was little more than a lifted eyebrow. Telthorst's was much more dramatic. "Kosta?" he repeated. "Kosta?"

"Yes," Forsythe said. "I see you know the young man."

Telthorst flashed a dumbfounded look at Lleshi, looked back at Forsythe. "Kosta," he muttered.

There was a tentative plucking at Forsythe's sleeve. Mr. Forsythe? he signed, an oddly intense expression on his face. Jereko and Chandris didn't go to study Angelmass. They went to throw it away.

Forsythe frowned. "What?"

"What?" Telthorst asked.

"Just a minute," Forsythe said, leaning toward Ronyon. "What do you mean, throw it away?"

"Throw what away?" Telthorst demanded. "What are you talking about?"

"Just a minute," Forsythe snapped back. "Ronyon, tell me again. What are Jereko and Chandris doing?"

Ronyon threw a furtive look at the other end of the table. Jereko said Angelmass is going to try to hurt people, he signed. He said the only thing they could do was use the catapult to throw it out of the system.

"That's crazy," Forsythe said. "He can't be serious."

"Bad news, High Senator?" Lleshi asked calmly.

Forsythe looked over at him, wondering what he should say. The truth? Or something that sounded at least plausible? "He says Kosta believes Angelmass is too dangerous to stay here," he said. "He says they're going to try to use Central's catapult to throw it somewhere out of the system."

Telthorst inhaled sharply. "Is that even possible?" Lleshi asked. "I was given to understand that the Seraph and Angelmass nets and catapults were linked together."

"They are," Forsythe murmured, the shutdown of the Seraph net suddenly making sense. "But if he shut down the net at this end... I don't know. He might be able to do it."

"And he has shut it down, hasn't he?" Lleshi asked. "He's shut down both nets, in fact."

Forsythe nodded. There was no point in lying; a well-equipped warship like the Komitadji would certainly have picked that up. "We were guessing he didn't want company."

"This is a trick," Telthorst put in, his fingertips rubbing restlessly against the table top. "He's making all this up."

Lleshi pursed his lips. "Mr. Campbell?" he called.

"Crypto Group confirms, Commodore," a disembodied voice replied briskly from one of the upper corners of the room. "He's using a dialect of the old Unislan sign language, and we've got enough for a baseline. Actual message: 'Jereko says Angelmass will hurt everyone. He says they must throw it away out of the area using the catapult.' "

"Thank you," Lleshi said.

"Nonsense," Telthorst insisted, jabbing a finger toward Ronyon. "An idiot like that? No one would trust him with that kind of information. I tell you it's a trick."

"Why are you getting so upset, Mr. Telthorst?" Forsythe asked, frowning at him. "I thought the whole reason for the Pax coming down on us in the first place was to protect us from the angels. You should be happy someone wants to get rid of the source."

For a long moment Telthorst just stared at him, his agitation and uncertainty coalescing into something hard and certain and vicious. "So that's how it is," he ground out. "You turned him. Kosta figured it out, and you turned him, and he told you."

"Told us what?" Forsythe asked carefully.

Telthorst turned to Lleshi. "Get the Angelmass net reactivated," he ordered. "Right now. We have to go out there and stop him."

Lleshi blinked. "What in the world are you talking about?"

"You fool," Telthorst bit out contemptuously. "Don't you understand? Angelmass is the reason we're here. It's the only reason we're here."

Lleshi threw an odd look at Forsythe. "But if the angel threat is removed—"

"To bloody hell with the angels!" Telthorst snarled. "What do the angels matter? What does anything from this flea-speck group of third-rate planets matter?"

He shot a look around the table. "It's Angelmass that we want," he said, his voice low and brittle. "It blazes out more energy in a second than this entire miserable world probably uses in a year.

Terawatts and terawatts of power, just waiting for someone to tap into it."

"And that's what this is all about?" Forsythe asked, staring at him in disbelief. "Energy?"

"Why not?" Telthorst countered. "Energy is the road to wealth and power. It always has been. And free energy, like this, is nothing less than a gift from the laughing fates. Angelmass could run an entire floating colony, or give us a cheap way to terraform worlds—"

"Or power a shipyard?" Lleshi asked.

"Indeed it could," Telthorst said, his eyes suddenly shining. "You've seen what the Komitadji has accomplished already, in a bare handful of years. How much more could you accomplish with a dozen more ships just like it? Tell me that."

"The question isn't what I could do," Lleshi said quietly, his tone that of a man who has suddenly found the solution to a private puzzle. "The question is what the Adjutors could do."

Telthorst's lips compressed into a thin line. "Order the Angelmass net reactivated, Commodore."

"And if I refuse?"

Telthorst drew himself up. "Then I will be forced to take direct command of this vessel," he said, his voice suddenly stiff and formal as he pulled a folded sheet of paper from inside his jacket. "I have authorization from the Adjutor General himself."

Lleshi looked down at the paper, but made no move to touch it. "Mr. Campbell?"

"Sir?" the voice came again, sounding considerably more subdued than it had been the last time.

"Do we know how to reactivate the Angelmass net?"

"I believe so, sir, yes," Campbell said. "We have the telemetry readings from when it was turned off earlier, plus the signal it sent to deactivate its Seraph counterpart. Comm and Crypto say they can invert the instructions to turn either or both back on."

"Then do so," Lleshi ordered. "Both of them. If the Seraph net goes on, we can assume the Angelmass one will, too."

He looked across the table; and suddenly, it seemed to Forsythe, he wasn't carrying his years nearly so well anymore. "Unless there are special codes that would be needed, High Senator?"

Forsythe shook his head. "No codes, Commodore," he said. "No one expected any of this to be of military significance."

Lleshi nodded. "Mr. Campbell?"

"Signal sent," Campbell reported. "Seraph net... is up and running. We're painting a diagnostic, but it seems to be functioning properly. Time to Angelmass net activation, approximately twenty-one minutes."

"We'll want to be ready to jump the minute it's up," Telthorst warned. "We don't want Kosta shutting it down again before we can get through."

"Commodore?" Campbell asked.

"You have your instructions, Mr. Campbell," Lleshi confirmed quietly. "Prepare the Komitadji for catapult. You'll need to recalibrate their equipment for our mass."

"Already on it, sir."

"And make sure all weapons are standing ready," Telthorst added. "Energy weapons and missiles both."

He looked at Forsythe. "Because I doubt we'll be able to talk the traitor out of this scheme," he added softly. "In fact, I doubt it's even worth trying."

Blindly, his wide eyes fixed on Telthorst, Ronyon clutched at Forsythe's sleeve. What's he talking about, he signed urgently. What does he mean?

"He's talking about shooting at Jereko and Chandris, Ronyon," Forsythe told him. "He's talking about killing them without even offering them a chance to surrender."