Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

Ronyon's mouth fell open, and an odd choking sound escaped from this throat. "Treason to the Pax has always carried the death penalty, High Senator," Telthorst said coolly. "Something you should keep very much in mind."

He again looked around the table. "And as long as we have a few minutes, let's discuss the disposition of the rest of Seraph system."

The clock was down to fifteen and a half minutes, and the gamma-spark static was becoming deafening by the time everything was finally ready.

"This had better work, Kosta," Chandris shouted as she strapped into her seat, wincing as a particularly loud crack sounded from somewhere in the console in front of her. "If it doesn't, I don't think we're going to have time to get to the Gazelle and get out of here. You sure as hell won't have time to apologize."

"It'll work," Kosta shouted back from beside her. Chandris couldn't read his voice over the noise, but the hands clenched into taut fists in front of him didn't exactly inspire her with confidence.

"Well, if it doesn't, it was nice knowing you," she called, reaching over and putting her hand on his closest fist. "I mean that."

For a moment he seemed to hesitate, the hardness of his fist under her hand wavering. Then, abruptly, he unclenched his hand and wrapped it around hers, gripping it tightly as they watched the clock count down to zero.

And as it did so, an entire panel of monitor lights went solid red.

Chandris held her breath, straining to hear what was happening back there. But between the noise of the gamma sparks and the sheer distance from where they were at the far end of the catapult section she couldn't make anything out. She thought back over the steps of her reprogramming job, wondering if she could have frogged it up somewhere. If she'd missed a safety and the escape pods shut down...

"There!" Kosta shouted, squeezing her hand even tighter. "Feel that?"

Chandris frowned. And then she did: a gentle vibration running through the deck beneath her chair.

A vibration that was slowly but steadily growing in strength.

She shifted her attention to the midhull visual monitor. Beneath the blizzard of radiation static, she could just make out the double ring of escape pods still attached to the midway tunnel. At the base of one of them, where the pod attached to the hull, she thought she could see a faint flickering of fire from a slightly imperfect seating connection as its drive tried to push it away from the station.

Its drive trying to push it outward, but its attaching clamps continuing to hold it firmly in place. If the pod was a sentient being, the odd thought occurred to her, it would probably be getting extremely frustrated about now. "What happens if the clamps break before the pods burn all the way through the wall?" she asked.

"It should still work," Kosta called. "That much heat alone—"

And then, without warning, the image vanished in a flash of white light. Simultaneously, the deck under Chandris bucked like a scalded cat, there was a bubbling roar from behind her, and she found herself being shoved gently but firmly back into her seat.

"It worked!" Kosta shouted. "Look at that! It worked!"

Chandris squinted at the snow on the monitor. But she didn't have to see anything to know that Kosta's crazy plan had indeed worked. The escape pods, all firing together against the relatively thin hull where they were connected, had burned through or heated through and ignited the fuel canisters she and Kosta had stacked in the midway tunnel. The resulting explosion had broken the station in two, giving their catapult end a solid push forward in their orbit as it simultaneously shoved the net end hard in the other direction.

The essence of a rocket, she remembered from her first page of reading aboard the Xirrus, was to take part of your ship and throw it in the opposite direction from where you wanted to go. Kosta had merely taken the definition to its logical extreme.

Only instead of throwing away the exhaust products of burned fuel, he had thrown away half their ship.

"Look's like we've picked up a slow yaw roll," Kosta reported, peering at another of the snowcovered displays. "Nothing serious, I don't think."

"I think the camera just went out," Chandris added as the faint image on the display was replaced by pure static. The acceleration pressure on her had eased back now, but the inertial readings indicated that they had picked up a nice bit of extra speed. "Either that or the radiation got to it."

"Probably the explosion," Kosta said. "Looks like it took out that whole emplacement."

Chandris swallowed. The camera position in question was a good ways forward of the midway tunnel. "Just how much of the station are you expecting us to lose here?"

"Not enough to worry about," Kosta assured her, swiveling his chair around to another station. "All that's back there is long-term supplies and crew living quarters. We can afford to lose those."

"I was thinking more about general station integrity," Chandris said. "There are only so many blast doors and supporting bulkheads in a place like this, you know."

"We'll be fine," Kosta insisted. "Hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"The gamma sparking," he said. "It's quieter."

Chandris paused, listening. He was right: the noise intensity had definitely gone down. "So we're definitely pulling away?"

"Looks like it," Kosta said, leaning close to one of the displays. "Not all that fast, really, but the difference in speed vectors is definitely on our side now. And of course, the upward bump in speed means we're also moving into a slightly higher solar orbit."

"That's going to make it a bit tricky to 'pult Angelmass out of here, isn't it?" Chandris pointed out. "If it's in a lower orbit than we are?"

"I think we can count on it to figure things out and change course after us," Kosta said grimly. "The point is that we've now bought ourselves some extra breathing space to get the reprogramming done.

So that, hopefully, when it does come after us we'll be ready."

"Right," Chandris said, swiveling around toward a data display. "Let's hold onto that thought, shall we?"

Because there was still one tiny little problem that Kosta didn't seem to have thought about yet. Still, with any luck, she would have that one covered by the time it occurred to him.

Pulling up another of the station's operations manuals, she got to work.

"Ten minutes to catapult, Commodore," Campbell's voice came over the speaker. "We're ready to move into position."

"Very good," Telthorst called before Lleshi could answer, pushing back his chair and standing up.

"Commodore Lleshi, perhaps you'd like to invite our guests to join us on the command deck."

Lleshi looked down the table at Forsythe. "Unauthorized civilians—"

"Yes, yes, I know the drill," Telthorst cut him off impatiently. "But High Senator Forsythe is hardly in the same class as someone's girlfriend who wants to be shown around the ship, now, is he?"

He gave Forsythe a hard look. "Besides, a tour might help convince him that these scare tactics of his are both pointless and ridiculous."

"They're not scare tactics," Forsythe insisted. "I've offered to turn over all the data we have on Angelmass—"

"I never liked ghost stories as a child, High Senator," Telthorst cut him off contemptuously. "I like them even less now that I'm an adult. We're going to Angelmass; and you're going with us to watch how we deal with traitors to the Pax. You might find it instructive."

He gestured to the guards at the doorway. "Escort High Senator Forsythe and his aide to the command deck. On your feet, High Senator."

"A favor if I may, Commodore," Forsythe said, his eyes on Lleshi as he slowly stood up. "My aide Ronyon had a bad panic reaction to Angelmass the last time we were in the area. Somehow, I think, he was able to sense what was out there. There's no reason to put him through that again. I'd like to request that he and my pilot be allowed to leave."