Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

"But I already know about it," Kosta persisted. "And I do good work—Dr. Qhahenlo can vouch for that."

Gyasi cocked his head at Kosta. "You're pretty eager to get in on this. Any particular reason why?"

Kosta looked him square in the eye. "A couple of reasons, yes," he said evenly. "Both of them my own business."

"Ah," Gyasi said carefully. "Okay."

Kosta shifted his gaze back to Kruyrov. "I'm going back to my office—got a couple of test ideas I want to sketch out. Let me know what Dr. Frashni says, all right?"

"Okay," Kruyrov said, as carefully as Gyasi.

First rule of espionage: don't draw unnecessary attention to yourself. His instructors' warning echoed through Kosta's mind as he left the room. But at the moment he didn't much give a damn.

Lulled by the casually friendly people here and all the idealistic talk of quantized good, he'd drifted a long way from the original thrust of his mission to the Empyrean.

But with Kruyrov's discovery, that drift was now over. Because if the angels were in fact some rudimentary form of intelligence, even if only in specially arranged formations, then there was indeed an alien invasion going on in the Empyrean. Benign, perhaps... but perhaps not.

The image of baby Angelica, sleeping peacefully in her crib, rose before his eyes. The sins of the fathers, the old, old proverb ran through his mind, are visited upon the children.

Muttering a curse under his breath, he hurried down the corridor toward his office. The hell with drawing attention to himself.

Forsythe read the report slowly and carefully, savoring every detail. There it was. At last, there it was: the ammunition he needed to finally shake up those infuriatingly complacent colleagues of his.

Violent surges of radiation, damaging over a dozen ships and destroying one of them outright—it was absolutely custom-fitted for him.

He keyed back to the first page and the author's name. And with a wonderful touch of irony, it had even come from Jereko Kosta, the man whose work Forsythe had tried so hard to quash.

He keyed for the master operations file. That, at least, would be easy to fix. Freeing up Kosta's credit line shouldn't take more than a minute or two. It might even be a good idea to throw some extra funding in his direction, provided he could be trusted to stay with this line of research. A personal grant might help, or maybe even a personal visit—

Forsythe paused, his fingers resting lightly on the keys. There was a flashing star by Kosta's name, directing him to another file. He called it up, noting as he did so that it had just been attached the previous morning, and began to read.

He was still in the middle of the first page when he groped out his call stick and signalled for Pirbazari.

He had finished the report and was starting to reread the salient parts when the aide arrived. "Yes, High Senator?" he asked, closing the door behind him.

"This report on Jereko Kosta," Forsythe said. "Did you handle it personally?"

"Yes, sir," Pirbazari confirmed. "Interesting, isn't it?"

"If you define 'interesting' as making no sense, then it's absolutely fascinating," Forsythe growled.

"How does a paper trail just disappear? Particularly a paper trail with this much money attached to it?"

"I don't know, sir," Pirbazari said. "At least not yet. We're going over the intermediate steps with a light-chopper, but so far nothing." He cocked an eyebrow. "But we did get something in this morning's Balmoral skeeter that might go a ways toward explaining it—I was just getting ready to flag it for you when you called me in. Clarkston University in Cairngorm claims they've never heard of anyone named Jereko Kosta. Not from Lorelei or anywhere else."

Forsythe stared at him, a cold knot forming in his stomach. "What?"

Pirbazari nodded grimly. "Yes, I remember seeing the transcript in his record, too. And presumably the Angelmass Institute wouldn't have let him in without seeing the original."

Forsythe looked down at the display, a strange taste in his mouth. "Or a very good forgery of it."

Pirbazari nodded. "Exactly. I'd say there's a good chance that our Mr. Kosta has some kind of elaborate con game going. I did a check on the flight he took to Seraph aboard the Xirrus. There was also a teenage girl aboard, using the name Chandris Lalasha. She bought passage from Uhuru to Lorelei, but then gimmicked the ship's computer somehow and stayed aboard. A flag picked up the glitch, and they were finally able to track her down just before reaching Seraph. According to their investigation, she was a con artist working in and around New Mexico City."

"Has she fingered Kosta?"

"Not exactly," Pirbazari said dryly. "They landed her in custody, but as soon as they hit ground she kicked out a couple of guards and disappeared into the spaceport crowd. Far as I know, they still haven't caught her."

"You think she and Kosta are working together?"

Pirbazari shrugged. "It's the most reasonable explanation. It's hard to believe she could have escaped from the spaceport without an accomplice."

Forsythe nodded, feeling his lip twist. Kosta as a reputable scientist could give him the backing he needed to stop the flow of angels. Kosta as a con artist was worthless to him. "So what are they up to? What's the Angelmass Institute got that's worth stealing?"

"There you've got me," Pirbazari admitted. "The Institute's loaded to the ceiling with expensive equipment, but it's all highly specialized stuff. Resale value pretty near zero. Could be something to do with Institute funds, or maybe some kind of blackmail scheme."

Forsythe looked back at the display. Perhaps a personal visit, he'd just been thinking. "Let's go ask him."

Pirbazari's jaw dropped, just noticeably. "What?"

"Let's go ask him," Forsythe repeated. "Well, maybe not ask him, at least not directly. But let's find out what he and this teenager are up to."

"Well..." Pirbazari said slowly. "I suppose we could. Hardly qualifies as proper High Senate business, though."

"It concerns the angels, Zar," Forsythe reminded the other sternly. "The angels, the Institute—maybe Angelmass itself. That makes it High Senate business." He let his expression soften into a tight smile. "Besides which, a con artist used to dealing with police may not be nearly as adept at handling a High Senator. Or a former EmDef commander."

Pirbazari nodded, his expression that neutral one he seemed to be wearing more and more these days. "Yes, sir. With your permission, I'll go make the arrangements."

"Keep it small," Forsythe called as he headed for the door. "You, me, Ronyon, maybe one more, plus the crew. And keep it quiet, too. I don't want word of this leaking out."

Pirbazari paused at the door, and for a moment Forsythe thought he was going to insist on an explanation. But—"Yes, sir," was all he said.

The door closed behind him, and Forsythe swore gently under his breath. But Pirbazari and his neutral looks were the least of his worries at the moment. The key to stopping or at least slowing the flow of angels was—maybe—within his reach.

Kosta's data could prove vital to the Empyrean's survival. Even if Kosta himself wasn't.

Deep within the cocoon, the fabricators came to a halt. The task, at long last, was finished.

A tiny tunnel appeared in the side of the asteroid shell, similar to the one Kosta's ship had emerged from but much narrower. A chunk of rock rolled out, moving just quickly enough to drift slowly ahead of the cocoon. If the task force was on schedule, the next Pax ship would be coming into the nearby Empyreal net in six days, eighteen hours, and twenty-seven minutes. It would leave with the data-pulse satellite's message.

Shifting into low standby mode, the cocoon settled down to wait.