Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

"You heard the man," Lleshi said. "Standard course toward Seraph."

A slight frown creased Djuabi's forehead. But he nodded and gave the helm the order without comment or question.

With a distant rumble of engines the Harmonic began accelerating. Lleshi kept his eyes on the master screen as the liner moved out of the net focal area, watching for any signs of suspicion from the EmDef ships.

But they were still just sitting there, drifting unconcernedly beside their assigned catapult spacecraft.

Completely oblivious to what had just happened.

Telthorst would undoubtedly have called them fools. Lleshi couldn't help but feel sorry for them.

He gave the Harmonic five more minutes worth of distance before nodding to Djuabi. "Far enough," he said. "Open the lifeboat bays."

"Lifeboat bays open, aye," the captain said formally, gesturing the order to the appropriate station.

"Acknowledge."

"Bays open," the officer at the station growled. Unlike his captain, this one was making no effort to hide his rage and shame. But then, he wasn't wearing an angel, either. "All bays show open."

Djuabi looked back at Lleshi. "Your move, Commodore."

"Thank you." Lleshi lifted his hand comm to his lips and clicked it on. "First wave: launch."

And on the board, the Harmonics outer hull erupted with drive trails as a hundred small spacecraft blew outward like spores from a flowering plant, using the liner's rotation to give them an extra boost.

But they weren't the liner's lifeboats. Those had all been offloaded at Lorelei.

These were Pax Vlad-class fighters.

"Attack pattern Alpha," Lleshi ordered. "All fighters."

The EmDef ships were on the move now, shifting to intercept vectors and accelerating to meet the enemy. "Remember your targets," Lleshi reminded them softly. "Not the destroyers, but the catapult ships."

In quick succession, the squadron leaders acknowledged... and as he watched the master screen Lleshi felt a tight smile touching the corners of his mouth. The gamble was still balanced on a knife's edge, but the waiting was over. Now, at least, he had some control over the outcome.

Taking a deep breath, holding the hand comm ready, he watched the ships prepare to engage.

"They came out of the Harmonics lifeboat bays," Pirbazari told Forsythe as he held open the door to the Government Building's executive conference room. "The EmDef guard ships have engaged."

The conference room was surprisingly crowded, particularly for eight o'clock at night when everything was supposed to be closed and senior governmental officials were supposed to be at home. Either all of them had been working late, or else word of the attack had passed quickly enough for them to come back here to take advantage of the direct EmDef information feed.

Some of the officials were speaking urgently on their phones. Others were talking tensely among themselves or just standing in stunned silence as they gazed at the main comm screen at the far end of the room. The screen had been rigged with a multi-view array taken from the various ships and monitor satellites in the net region, giving them all a front-row seat to the battle.

"Tactics?" Forsythe asked quietly as he and Pirbazari pushed their way between the conversational knots. Ideally, a High Senator would have been instantly and deferentially ushered to the best vantage point in the room. The fact that no one had apparently even noticed him said a lot about the stunned state they were all in.

"Looks like they're going for the two closest catapult ships," Pirbazari said. "Numbers One and Three. Their first goal will be to disable the catapult so that the rest of their force can come in."

"Or so that we can't throw out the fighters," Forsythe said. "Or maybe they don't want us throwing out the liner?"

Pirbazari shook his head. "It would take some serious reconfiguration of the catapult ships to get to the liner now," he said. "You can see the Harmonic was careful to get well out of the center of the pyramid before launching the fighters."

"Then why is it going back in?" a short woman standing beside Forsythe asked. "I mean, if all the fighters are already gone?"

Forsythe frowned. She was right: the liner had shifted course and was accelerating on a vector that would take it close to the Number Two catapult ship. "Zar?" Forsythe murmured.

"The Pax must still be in command there," Pirbazari said. "On his own, a liner captain would certainly get his ship out of a combat zone as quickly as possible."

"Obviously," Forsythe said. "But what exactly is he doing?"

Pirbazari exhaled slowly. "That I don't know," he admitted. "EmDef counted a hundred fighters, and that's all the lifeboat bays a ship that size has. And the fighters are too big to have doubled up."

Forsythe rubbed his chin. "What about other weapons? Could they have loaded heavy lasers or other missiles aboard?"

"Where would they mount them?" Pirbazari countered. "There aren't any weapons bays or pods on a liner. It's got a couple of meteor-defense lasers, but those aren't big enough for anyone to worry about."

"EmDef seems worried about them," someone else said, pointing. "Look—there they go."

The EmDef destroyers guarding Number Two were indeed on the move. Leaving one of their number behind as close-support to the catapult ship, the rest were now accelerating to intercept the incoming liner. "A feint?" Forsythe suggested.

"I'd say there's a feint going on somewhere," Pirbazari agreed tightly. "They only need to hit two of the four ships to disable the catapult. Yet between the fighters and the liner, they're now threatening three of them."

And given the odds the Pax ships were facing, it didn't make sense for their commander to split up his forces more than he absolutely had to. "Maybe they're just going for insurance."

"Or as you said, one of them is a feint," Pirbazari said. "Designed either to draw off or pin down some of the defenders." He nodded at the screen. "The question is, which one?"

The battles for Numbers One and Three were burning fiercely now, the opposing ships lighting up with the faint flashes of laser and plasma weapons, or the brighter bursts of missile explosions. The EmDef destroyers were by far the larger craft, and with hulls modeled on those of angel hunterships they certainly had the thicker skins. In a straight slugging match, even top-of-the-line Pax fighters probably wouldn't stand a chance.

But the enemy commander was too smart to play it that way. His fighters were far more maneuverable than the destroyers, and he was using that edge to his full advantage. Dodging in and out of the EmDef defense formation, the Pax ships worked against the destroyers, worked the destroyers against each other, and systematically pumped small missiles through the screen at the two catapult ships.

Most of the shots missed, or were blocked by the destroyers, or were eliminated by defensive fire en route. But a few of them were getting through. Too many of them.

And as Forsythe listened to EmDef Command's running commentary, he realized that the situation out there was rapidly becoming serious.

Still, the Pax fighters were taking casualties, too. One by one, occasionally in pairs as a lead pilot and his wingman were caught in the same blast, they flashed and shattered and winked out.

But not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. Through a red haze of anger and frustration and fear, Forsythe watched as the two catapult ships continued to take hit after hit.

And then, suddenly, the operational end of Number One flared with a blue-white fire. "What was that?" someone yelped.

"They got it," Pirbazari confirmed. "Not the whole ship, but the part that counts."

Someone else swore. "Then why don't they leave it?" he demanded. "Look at them. Isn't it enough that they knocked out the catapult? Now they want to kill everyone aboard, too?"