Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

Forsythe might have been reading his mind. "There's no way I can keep my presence on Seraph a secret anymore," he told Kosta. "Aside from all this, I need to take Ronyon to the hospital and have him checked over."

Kosta felt a twinge of guilt. Preoccupied first with the Gazelle and then with Hanan, he'd completely forgotten Ronyon's near-collapse before all this had started. "Yes—Ronyon. How is he?"

"Resting in his cabin," Forsythe said. "He seems to have gotten over that panic attack, though that could just be the sedative Ornina gave him. I'll collect him and we'll get off."

Behind them, the door opened and Chandris walked in. "How is he?" Kosta asked her, glancing at the hatchway display in time to see the ambulance drive off.

"He's all right for now," she said tiredly. "Whether he's going to stay that way they don't know yet.

I've got to get the ship off the strip and back to the yard."

"I'll get out of your way, then," Forsythe said, standing up. He glanced at the hatchway display, now showing free of reporters, and moved toward the door. "Mr. Kosta, I'll contact you at the Institute."

He left, the control room door sliding shut behind him. "What was that all about?" Chandris asked as she began shutting down the Gazelle's systems.

"Something strange is happening with Angelmass," Kosta told her. "I don't think I should talk about it right now."

"Fine with me," Chandris said, her thoughts clearly elsewhere. "So you two are getting together later?"

Kosta opened his mouth... closed it again. It had been a perfectly casual question, asked in a perfectly casual way. But this was Chandris, and he was slowly learning that with Chandris you always had to look beneath the surface. And in this case, below the surface meant—"You still gunning for that angel?"

She turned to look at him, her eyes suddenly hard and cold and far older than they had any right to be. "Don't get in my way, Kosta," she said quietly. "I mean that."

"Stealing Forsythe's angel isn't going to solve anything," he said. "All it'll do is get you in trouble."

"Only if I get caught," she countered. "Anyway, why do you care if I get in trouble?"

"I don't know," he shot back. "Probably because you'll drag Hanan and Ornina down with you, and I don't want them getting hurt. That's not why I'm here."

For a long moment Chandris just looked at him, an unreadable expression on her face. "Look," she said at last. "They need money. Desperately. What do you expect me to do, just sit around and watch them go under?"

"Of course not," Kosta said. "But there has to be some other way to raise money than by stealing Forsythe's angel."

"How?" Chandris demanded. "Sell something? Look around you—they haven't got anything of value. Except—never mind."

"Except what?" Kosta asked.

Her lip twisted in obvious annoyance with herself. "They've got a second angel stashed away in the storage room," she said. "But don't tell them I told you—no one's supposed to know about it."

Kosta frowned. "They've got a second angel? Why haven't they sold it?"

Chandris shrugged. "Maybe it helps them stay on good terms with each other. I asked you once whether angels could do that kind of thing, remember?"

Back when they'd first run into each other at the Institute. "Yes," Kosta murmured, his thoughts racing. A spare angel... "How long have they had it?"

"A couple of years at least. Maybe more. Why?"

Kosta shook his head. "Just curious."

From somewhere forward of them came a dull thud. "That's the tow car connecting up," Chandris said, turning back to her board. "You've got about two minutes to get off if you don't want to ride all the way back to the Yard."

Kosta shook himself out of this thoughts. "Right," he said, getting to his feet. "I'll be in touch."

"I'll be at the hospital later if you need me," she told him distractedly, her attention back on her work. Okay.

He paused at the door and looked back at her. A spare angel. A spare angel, moreover, that had spent a good deal of time since its capture in the vicinity of Angelmass. "Say hello to Hanan and Ornina for me," he added to Chandris before ducking out into the corridor.

Because there was a good chance he wouldn't make it anywhere near the hospital himself tonight. A

very good chance indeed.

The Gazelles service yard was dark when Kosta returned that night, in marked contrast to several nearby yards whose outside lights were blazing brightly as huntership crews worked to prepare for early-morning launches. The Gazelle itself was sealed, but that was no problem: on that first trip out, Ornina had given him the combination for the exterior lock.

Inside, it was even darker than the yard outside, with only the dim night panels giving a ghostly glow to the corridors. For a long moment Kosta stood just inside the hatchway, listening for sounds of life. But there was nothing. Obviously, Chandris and the Daviees were still at the hospital.

Alone or not, though, his training had been very specific on the proper procedures involved in breaking and entering. Slipping his shocker from his pocket, he adjusted it for a wide field of fire and got it nestled inconspicuously across his right palm with his thumb resting on the firing stud.

With the angel box he'd borrowed from the Institute in his other hand, he headed for the storage section at the bottom of the ship, wishing his heart wouldn't pound so loudly.

But the flowing adrenaline was all for nothing. He saw no one and heard nothing along the way, and he reached the storage room without incident. Here, as everywhere else, only the night panels were on, their faint light throwing dark fuzzy shadows everywhere. Lowering the angel box to the deck, he reached for the wall switch—

"Don't bother," Chandris said from his left.

—and even as he spun toward the voice a dazzling light flared to life in front of him.

He squeezed his eyes shut, automatically throwing his left arm up to protect his face from the glare.

"Chandris?" he called. "Come on, it's me. Jereko."

"I know," she said, her voice icy. "I was expecting you. I figured telling you about the Daviees's spare angel this afternoon would flush you out."

Kosta winced. He'd done it again. The great Pax spy, making a thorough mess of it.

And, naturally, making a mess of it because of Chandris. "I'm not here to steal the angel," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "I just need to borrow it overnight to run some tests."

"What, the Institute's run out of angels?" she countered sarcastically.

"Theirs aren't any good for this," Kosta told her. "I need one that's spent a lot of time near Angelmass."

"They've all done that. That's where they come from, remember?"

"That's not what I mean," Kosta insisted. "Look, can't we sit down and talk about this?"

"Stay where you are," she said sharply. "I've got a cutting torch, and I'm not afraid to use it. You give me trouble and I'll slice you in half."

Kosta frowned at the shadow behind the light. "What in the world has gotten into you, Chandris?

Come on—you know me."

"Do I?" she demanded. "Or do I just know the role the Pax taught you to play for us?"

And there it was. The moment Kosta had been dreading ever since his ship and the cocoon had been blown out of the Komitadji's cargo hold into Empyreal space. "It's not a role," he said, a part of him marveling at his own unexpected calm. After all the worrying and nightmares, the actual event had become anticlimactic. "I really am a researcher. They just sort of maneuvered me into this job."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means they came by one day and hauled me out of school," Kosta told her. "Said they needed someone with my expertise to find out what the angels were and how they were affecting the people of the Empyrean. They said the angels were an alien invasion, and that if we didn't stop it both the Empyrean and the Pax would be taken over and destroyed. I guess they convinced me that I could keep that from happening." He shrugged uncomfortably. "Maybe I convinced myself."