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  “Good. Get us some rotation, and have engineering start putting the kick pod catapult together.”

  The weight warning trilled through the command deck; and as the huge ship started almost imperceptibly to rotate, Lleshi turned to look at Telthorst. “You see now why we weren’t all that worried about risking the Komitadji.”

  The Adjutor gazed back, his eyes hard. “Two hundred million kilometers further and you wouldn’t be in a position to gloat,” he said pointedly. “Our vector would have passed straight through that star out there and we’d all be very, very dead.”

  “Agreed,” Lleshi nodded. “Which I imagine is why it took the Empyreals so long to get rid of us. Laser-point precision on top of a fast field reconfiguration.”

  Telthorst looked at the dim star on the viewscreen. “I suppose they expect us to be impressed by that.”

  Lleshi shrugged. “I’m impressed. Aren’t you?”

  The Adjutor looked back at him, his lip twisted in contempt. “Impressed, Commodore? Impressed by a people who’ve become so sheep-like that they won’t kill even in their own defense? You’re too easy to please.”

  “Am I?” Lleshi countered, the slow unprofessional burn starting again. “Those Empyreals were risking their lives, Adjutor—make no mistake about that. If those Spearhawks had hit them they’d have died, with or without those fancy sandwich-metal hulls of theirs. In my experience, sheep seldom come equipped with that degree of courage.”

  Telthorst’s expression didn’t change … but abruptly Lleshi felt a chill in the air. “Admiration of one’s opponents is said to be a useful trait in diplomats,” the Adjutor said softly. “The same doesn’t apply to soldiers. Bear in mind, Commodore, that we’re not dealing with men here. We’re dealing with men under alien control. There’s a considerable difference.”

  “I’m aware of what we’re up against,” Lleshi said, keeping a firm grip on his temper. “But then, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To rescue our fellow human beings from these dangerous angels?”

  The lines around Telthorst’s mouth deepened. “Don’t mock me, Commodore,” he warned. “I may not profess admiration for their soldiers the way you do. But I wasn’t the one who set up a dry scorch run, complete with a full complement of fighters and Hellfire missiles ready in their launch tubes.”

  Lleshi swallowed a curse. He’d hoped that in all the excitement Telthorst would have forgotten about the Beta simulation. Not only hadn’t he forgotten, he’d obviously even taken the time to monitor that part of the exercise. “My orders are to subdue the Empyrean and bring it under the Pax umbrella,” he said stiffly. “I intend for my crew to be ready for any contingency that may arise in the act of carrying out those orders.”

  “I applaud your foresight,” Telthorst said. “Just remember that the operative word is ‘subdue.’ Not ‘destroy’; ‘subdue.’”

  “Understood,” Lleshi growled. No, of course the operative word wasn’t “destroy.” You could put an Adjutor into a cold sweat simply by suggesting something with cash value or money-making potential might be damaged. “Let me remind you in turn that that was the main reason we chose the Kosta feint over the other scenarios Spec Ops suggested. If he isn’t caught, he may be able to provide us with valuable information on the angels.”

  Telthorst snorted. “Of course he’ll be caught. Isn’t that the whole purpose of a feint? To get caught?”

  Lleshi nodded reluctantly, feeling a twinge of discomfort. Dangerous situations were hardly anything new to him, and he’d had his fair share of ordering men onto what were little more than suicide missions. But always before they’d been military men, who had known what they were getting into and had had the best possible chance of getting out alive. Not a civilian with barely eight weeks of training.

  Especially not a civilian who’d been lied to straight from square one about what his contribution was expected to be. “He may get lucky,” he said.

  Telthorst eyed him thoughtfully for a moment. “Perhaps. I’d like a copy of that Lorelei data pulse.”

  Lleshi caught Campbell’s eye, nodded. Wordlessly, the other stepped over to Telthorst and handed him a data cyl. “Thank you,” the Adjutor said, getting to his feet. “If you need me, Commodore, I’ll be in my stateroom.”

  He went to the bridge lift platform; paused there. “By the way, you’ll want to do a complete survey of this system,” he added over his shoulder. “As long as we have to leave a functioning catapult here anyway, we might as well see if there’s anything worth coming back for.”

  “Thank you,” Lleshi said. “I am familiar with standing orders.”

  “Good.” For a moment Telthorst let his gaze drift leisurely around the balcony, as if to remind them all who was ultimately in charge of this operation. Then, without another word, he disappeared down the lift plate shaft to the lower command deck and left.

  Bastards, Lleshi thought after him. Carved-ice bastards, every one of them. He turned back to his console, keyed for an engineering status report. Work on the kick pod catapult was already underway, with an estimated completion time of five days.

  At which point they would be able to send word back to the Pax that Kosta’s drop had been successful. And the Empyrean would be on its slow, leisurely way to defeat.

  “Tell engineering that as soon as the kick pod is away they’re to put triple shifts on the main catapult construction,” he instructed the comm officer. “I want it ready in four months.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With a grimace, Lleshi keyed for a copy of the Lorelei data pulse. To be trapped out here for four months, only marginally in touch with what was going on with his task force, was going to be an unpleasant exercise in patience. But for the moment, at least, he possessed information that no one else in the Pax had. Plus five days to decide how much of that information would go out with the kick pod.

  Settling himself in his seat in the ship’s slowly returning gravity, he began to read.

  The timer pinged quietly, and Kosta looked up from his reading. The twelve hours Lleshi had insisted on were up, and a careful look at the displays showed no Empyreal ships within inner scan range.

  It was time to go.

  Unhinging the control cover, he turned and then pressed a button; and with an awful racket of explosive springs he was shoved back into his seat as his tiny ship was thrown forward through a tunnel that magically appeared in the rock-textured surface of the cocoon. He held his breath, waiting tensely for the inevitable enemy fighter ship that must surely have been skulking behind an asteroid waiting for him.

  But nothing. Not as the tiny ship oriented itself; not as it began its pre-programmed flight inward toward the Empyreal world of Lorelei; not even as Kosta breathed a sigh of relief and dared to relax. The gambit had worked, and he was on his way. Heading to Lorelei, and a rendezvous with a little automated spy system the Pax had managed to set up before their last talks with the Empyreal leaders broke off some months back.

  And after that it would be on to Seraph. To Seraph, and Angelmass.

  Staring out his viewport at the distant crescent of Lorelei, Kosta felt his stomach tighten. I won’t fail, he’d told Lleshi confidently. But now, far from the bright lights and purposeful men and women of the Komitadji, the words echoed through his memory like so much empty bravado. He was alone now, in hostile territory, facing an enemy possibly more alien now than it was human.

  A little trip to heaven, Lleshi’s last words echoed through his mind. It had been something of a running gag, that, during Kosta’s training: the fact that the breakaway colonists who’d founded the Empyrean a hundred eighty years ago had chosen an ancient term for the highest reaches of heaven.

  Question was, had the choice of that name indeed been purely coincidental? Or had it been an indication, even way back then, of the angels’ subtle influence on people’s minds?

  There were all sorts of questions like that hanging over this mission. Questions currently without answers. Questions he, Kos
ta, was supposed to find answers for. Overwhelming, deep, impossible questions …

  And then, as the enormity of the whole thing once again threatened to drown him, the image of Telthorst’s face floated up into his mind. That face, and all that contempt …

  “Forget it,” he said aloud to the memory, the sound of the words echoed oddly by the displays curving around in front of him. If Telthorst expected Kosta to land on his face just to accommodate the Adjutor’s preconceived notions, he could forget it.

  The pep talk helped a little. A flashing light on his console reminded him that the cocoon’s escape tunnel was still on standby; keying in the proper commands, he watched as the false asteroid sealed itself up again and then went inert. Briefly, he hoped inert meant exactly what it said, then put it out of his mind. Surely the masterminds behind this mission had understood that if the Empyreals came across a ship berth disguised as an asteroid it would be a dead giveaway that the Pax had slipped in a spy.

  And with that chore out of the way, the ship was back on automatic, where it would remain until they reached Lorelei. Keying one of the displays for a continual status report on his course, Kosta returned to his reading. The data pack Lleshi had sent down to him was far more extensive than he’d expected, and it was going to be a bit of a push to get it all read in the five days before planetfall.

  But he would manage it. If for no better reason than that Telthorst probably didn’t think he could.

  The cocoon remained inert for six hours more, until Kosta’s ship had passed beyond any theoretical possibility of detecting a change in its status. Six hours of totally wasted time; but the vast network of computers and sensors and fabricators built deep inside the rock was patient, and its designers had considered it absolutely imperative that Kosta believe he had left nothing behind him but an empty shell.

  Quietly, stealthily, the network activated itself and began to look around. Even without its inertial memory to guide it, the sensors would have had no difficulty locating the center of the net fields which had caught the Komitadji. The hive of Empyreal ships buzzing around the area would have been all the indication it needed.

  Quietly, stealthily, the sensors reached out, delicately probing and studying. It would take time—considerable time—for it to achieve its programmed goal.

  But the network was patient.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Your attention, please,” the cool, middle-class voice came over the spaceport softspeaker system. “The twelfth and final shuttle for the spaceliner Xirrus has now arrived at Gate Sixteen. All remaining passengers should come to the check-in counter at this time for pre-flight confirmation and boarding. Repeating: your attention, please—”

  Seated at the far end of the waiting lounge, half hidden behind a large decorative vase, the girl hunched a little deeper into a contour chair that felt too large for her and watched as the last group of passengers gathered their things and walked over to join the line at the check-in counter. She brushed the freshly blonded hair carefully away from her face, feeling a familiar tightness squeezing her throat. In a minute she would have to get up and join them. And if Trilling Vail was watching from hiding, like she was …

  She took a deep breath, an acid tightness swirling in her stomach. It was the same feeling she always got when she was getting ready to score a track and suddenly had the impression that the targ was onto her. The horrible demand of a crucial decision: whether to keep going, and hope her twitches were wrong, or to pop the cord, lose all the prep time, and look for a targ who would more easily part with his spare cash.

  Should she pop the cord on this whole crazy idea? It still wasn’t too late to do that, she knew. She could get up right now and walk out of the spaceport and try to bury herself somewhere on Uhuru instead of going off to a whole new world.

  Only she couldn’t Trilling had friends everywhere on Uhuru. Sooner or later, he’d catch up with her. On Lorelei … well, at least she’d have a head start.

  Maybe. Reaching into her pocket, feeling the same tingling in her fingertips that she always got when handling merchandise that had cost her blood and sweat to get hold of, she slid out the precious piece of threaded plastic. Chandris Lalasha, the name at the top said, and for probably the hundredth time she wished she had had the time and money to have a new ID made up. She hadn’t used the Lalasha surname since she was thirteen, a year before she met and moved in with Trilling. But if he got into the spaceline data listings the Chandris part would be a dead giveaway.

  She snorted to herself. If he got in, hell. When he got in. Trilling was the one who’d taught her how to crack into fancy computer systems. Her only chance was that he wouldn’t expect her to do something this crazy, or at least that he wouldn’t think she could get enough money together this quickly to spring for a spaceliner ticket.

  But, then, who knew how Trilling’s mind worked these days?

  Unconsciously, Chandris tightened her grip on the plastic card. She’d heard a kosh brag once about how he’d killed someone with a spaceliner ticket. She wondered if any of that story had been true.

  The line was beginning to shrink now, the passengers showing their tickets to the reader display and attendant and disappearing down the boarding tunnel. Chandris licked her lips, wincing at the unfamiliar tart/sweet taste of expensive lipglow, and got to her feet, heart thudding in her ears as she went over and joined the line. This was it; and it was Trilling’s last chance to stop her. She’d sat over in that corner for four hours straight, watching every single batch of passengers as they headed down the tunnel, making sure that Trilling hadn’t slipped aboard. If he didn’t make this last shuttle she would be safe. At least for now.

  She reached the reader and the attendant standing beside it. “Hello,” the man greeted her. For just a second his eyes skipped down across her, taking in her bright blonded hair, her even brighter lipglow, her probably botched attempt at an upper-class outfit.

  And when he looked back up she could sense his quiet amusement. “And you are…?”

  “Chandris Lalasha,” she growled, thrusting her ticket at his face and then waving it over the reader.

  “Nice to have you aboard, Miss Lalasha,” he smiled. “You heading off to college?”

  “That’s right,” Chandris said shortly. “On Lorelei.” The reader pinged acceptance of her ticket, and she stuffed the plastic back into her pocket.

  The attendant shook his head, a smile on his face. “Thought so. I never cease to be amazed at how inventive you college kids get with your travel outfits. Have a nice flight.”

  “Thanks,” Chandris muttered, heading down the boarding tunnel and hoping the sudden heat in her cheeks didn’t show. She’d done it again, damn it all—taken offense at an insult that wasn’t even there. The same touchiness that had kept her stuck in the Barrio and out of the upper-class areas in New Mexico City where the really major tracks were. Or so Trilling had always told her—

  The muscles in her back stiffened, mind suddenly snapping back to where she was. She twisted around, half expecting to see Trilling walking behind her, his shining eyes glowing, his scarred lips grinning their crazy animal grin at her.

  But there were only a couple of last-minute passengers in sight, and no sound or commotion coming from the check-in counter around the corner.

  She turned back, breathing again, and continued down the tunnel. At the end of it waited the shuttle, an oversized plane sort of thing with rows and rows of contour chairs. Choosing one that would allow her a clear view of the door, she let the straps curve into position around her and waited. Trilling’s absolute last chance …

  Five minutes later, the door was slammed shut with a dull thud … and as the shuttle rolled away from the terminal, she felt her muscles unknotting for the first time in hours. For the first time in months. Finally—finally—she could dare to hope that she was free of Trilling Vail.

  And all it had cost was leaving the only home she’d ever known.

  The trip up to the
spaceliner took about an hour. An hour, for Chandris, of absolute magic.

  She had ridden on a regular plane once before, but at the time had been too preoccupied with keeping inconspicuous to really appreciate it. Now, though, it was different. The wispy clouds breaking in front of the shuttle like white nothing; the buildings and hills and forests beneath them; the sensation of flying itself—she drank it all in, pressing her face tightly against the cold plastic of the window so as not to miss any of it. The ground kept receding, the highest clouds cutting off most of the view, and presently she noticed the deep blue of the sky above them was fading into black. The dull roar of the engines faded away to a throaty whisper, leaving her bouncing gently against her straps.

  She spent the next few minutes with fists and teeth clenched tightly, fighting a gut-twisting nausea and a horrible feeling that she and the shuttle were falling back toward the ground. Then, strangely, both stomach and brain relaxed and she was able to concentrate again on the view outside her window. Overhead, stars were visible in the black sky, even though the sun could still be seen off to one side. She marveled at the novelty of that for a while, shifting her attention back and forth between sun and stars.

  Presently, above and ahead of them, she got her first glimpse of the Xirrus.

  It didn’t look like much at first; a sort of toy or model, its shadowy shape outlined by strings of little lights. But as the shuttle kept getting closer, and the shape kept getting bigger, it finally dawned on her that calling a ship like that a flying city wasn’t nearly as much puff-talk as she’d always thought.

  Pressing her nose against the cold window, she smiled to herself. If there was one thing the Barrio had taught her, it was how to survive in a city.

  They arrived at the Xirrus a few minutes later, to the accompaniment of a lot of clanking and the sudden return of weight. Joining the other passengers, she climbed a steep set of fold-down stairs through the roof of the shuttle and found herself in a large room with a huge layout diagram of the Xirrus covering one wall. Her ticket listed her cabin number; glancing once at the diagram to get its location, she headed toward the rear of the ship.