Part 57 (1/2)

make a final decision.”

”What decision is there to make?” Telthorst put in contemptuously. ”Your forces are outnumbered, outgunned-”

Lles.h.i.+ snapped his fingers at the comm officer and gestured, and Telthorst's microphone was

abruptly clicked off. ”Commodore-”

Lles.h.i.+ cut him off with a single glare. ”My apologies, High Senator,” he said. ”I am quite willing to discuss these matters with you. An unarmed shuttle with yourself, a pilot, and no more than two

others aboard will be permitted to approach. A fighter escort will guide you to the proper docking bay.”

”And then?”

Lles.h.i.+ smiled tightly. ”However our discussion goes, and whatever your decision, you and your

party will be permitted to return unharmed to Seraph before any action is initiated on our part. You have my word on that.”

There was just the briefest pause. ”Very well, Commodore. I'll be there within the hour.”

”I'll look forward to our meeting, High Senator,” Lles.h.i.+ said. ”Komitadji out.”He gestured to the comm officer, and the microphone went dead. ”I trust you realize what a fool you're being,” Telthorst bit out, his face flushed with anger. ”He knows what the rights and responsibilities are-we laid it all out for them months ago, before they closed their systems to us. All he's doing is stalling, giving themselves more time to prepare.”

”To prepare what?” Lles.h.i.+ countered. ”They have nothing down there that has a hope of standing up to us.”

”Maybe they expect reinforcements,” Telthorst said acidly. ”Or didn't it occur to you that there are four more systems worth of Empyreal wars.h.i.+ps out there?”

Lles.h.i.+ shook his head. ”There will be no reinforcements. By now they know we're here, or at least suspect it, and each system is scrambling to prepare its own defenses. No one has enough s.h.i.+ps or soldiers to spare for the others.”

Telthorst folded his arms across his chest. ”So you're just going to let this High Senator manipulate you into holding off your attack?”

”I'm going to try to set his mind at ease about the future of his world,” Lles.h.i.+ corrected. ”If you don't like it, you don't have to sit in on the discussion.”

”Oh, I'll be there,” Telthorst promised softly. ”I wouldn't miss it for the world. Any world.”

They had been sitting beside each other for about twenty minutes, each deeply involved in their own reading, when Chandris finally finished her particular manual and came up for air.

The gamma clicks had become noisier. Much noisier.

Moving stealthily, trying not to break Kosta's concentration, she slipped out of her chair and crossed to the ranging section of the control board. On the monitor, Angelma.s.s seemed brighter and angrier than ever, but that could still be just an optical illusion. Seating herself at the board, she keyed for some numbers.

It wasn't an illusion. Angelma.s.s was indeed getting closer.

Dangerously close.

Swallowing hard, forcing trembling fingers to function, she keyed for a review and projection. Two hours total, Kosta had estimated, before they would be ready to throw Angelma.s.s out of the system. Call it another hour and forty minutes on the clock, then. The question was, did they have that one hundred minutes left?

The computer projection was quick, precise, and unambiguous. They did not, in fact, have a hundred minutes.

They had exactly seventy.

She ran the numbers again, and again. But each time the projection came up the same. Long before

they were ready to make their move, it would be all over.

She looked over her shoulder at the back of Kosta's head, leaning toward the reading display with oblivious intensity. He could have run once she and Hanan had sprung him from Forsythe's office.

He could have vanished into the s.h.i.+kari City underground, or gone off into some wilderness area, and waited for his Pax friends to arrive in force, as they surely would eventually.

Instead, he'd risked everything to come out here. Risked his life to try to help the people of Seraph.

How was she going to tell him that that sacrifice had been for nothing?

Abruptly, as if sensing her thoughts or at least her absence from beside him, Kosta's head jerked up.

”Chandris?” he called over the gamma noise.

”Back here,” she called.

He swiveled around in his chair... and she could tell from the look on his face that he already knew.

”Angelma.s.s?”

”Closing fast,” she said. ”Computer calls it an hour and forty minutes until impact. But thirty

minutes before that happens the radiation will fry us even through Central's s.h.i.+elding.”

His lip twitched. ”You're sure?”