The men in the tugs were good. Less than seventy seconds after Pod One had disappeared, Pod Two had been nudged into the edge of the ellipsoid. Twenty seconds later, it followed its brother into the void. Three minutes after that, Pods Three and Four had likewise been sent on their way.

The first phase was over. It was time now to see if all the time and effort-and yes, all of Telthorst's precious money-had indeed bought the Pax the foothold it coveted in Empyreal s.p.a.ce. "Move us in, helm," he ordered, alternating his attention between the chrono and the nav display. If Pod Three had blown on schedule, the primary and secondary blast and radiation waves should have now washed over the Pax asteroid. The sensors there would have noted the event...

On the display, the flashing yellow light flicked to green. "Net activated," Campbell announced.

Lleshi shifted his full attention back to the chrono. Theoretically it had activated, anyway. Whether it had actually done so they wouldn't know until they reached Lorelei s.p.a.ce.

"Commodore, the net is green," Telthorst prompted.

"I heard, thank you," Lleshi said.

"The energy wave front has pa.s.sed the net," Telthorst persisted, an edge starting to creep into his voice. "We don't want to give them time to pull themselves together."

"I'm aware of the tactical considerations," Lleshi said, continuing to watch the seconds tick past. The explosion's main wave front would indeed be well past the asteroid by now, but there would also be slower but still dangerous debris expanding outward behind that front. He gave it a few more seconds, then nodded toward the comm officer. "Scintara Catapult, launch when ready."

The stars disappeared.

Automatically, Lleshi counted down the seconds, muscles tight with tension. If the scheme hadn't worked, the Komitadji would soon be going on yet another trip to the edge of nowhere. The stars returned...

The scheme had worked. Instead of the distant triangular-pyramid array of Empyreal catapult ships they'd encountered their last time into this system, there was only the false asteroid concealing their own net floating off their starboard stern.

"Incoming!" Campbell snapped.

Lleshi shifted his eyes to the tactical as the collision alert warbled across the bridge. But it was not, as first reflexes had a.s.sumed, an attack by survivors of the doomsday pod. It was, instead, a scattering of asteroid fragments sweeping like retreating soldiers across the sky. Three of the shards, according to the tactical, were on a direct course for the Komitadji.

It was far too late for the big ship to maneuver to avoid them. Gripping the arms of his chair, Lleshi braced himself; and with a thundering crunch of metal, the pieces slammed into the hull, shattering to gravel with the impact.

"Damage report," he called, peering at the hull monitors as the debris ricocheted off into oblivion. He needn't have worried. The Komitadji was the ultimate warship, with the ultimate elephant's hide to match. Even a high-speed encounter with bits of flying asteroid seemed to have done little more than dent the outer hull. "And locate the nearest blastpoint," he added. "Scan for enemy ships or bases."

"Damage report, Commodore," the comm officer called. "Partial collapse of Number One hull at three points in sectors A-22 and A-31; no breech. Light impact damage to Number Two hull in the same sectors; no reduction in structural integrity. Number Three hull unaffected. Four sensor nodes are out of commission; minor concussion damage to various pieces of equipment in portside locations."

"Acknowledged," Lleshi said, looking at the back of Telthorst's head. "I see we didn't wait at Scintara quite long enough, after all."

Telthorst didn't reply, or even bother to turn around. "Still," Lleshi couldn't resist adding as he turned back to the business at hand, "it's good to know the designers of the Komitadji's hull spent their money well."

"I have the blastpoint now, sir," the sensor officer called.

Lleshi had seen the computer-projected results of a doomsday pod explosion several times, most recently during the planning sessions for this invasion. But he had never seen the actual aftermath of the weapon until now.

On a planet, it would undoubtedly have been an awesome vision of destruction and carnage; a strategic hydrogen warhead multiplied by a thousand. Here, in the middle of an asteroid field, the results were more subtle but just as real.

And, in their own way, just as horrible.

For a thousand kilometers around where the Empyreal net had been, s.p.a.ce was empty. Completely and totally empty. Every solid object within that sphere, be it asteroid, sandwich-metal-hulled combat ship, or fragile human body, had been disintegrated down to its component particles. Outside that zone, everything else seemed to be in motion, with small chunks of rock hurling outward and even large asteroids now carrying a vector component away from the point of the blast. Each of the asteroids the telescope screen was able to get a clear view of seemed partially shattered or half melted.

"Move us out of the net area," Lleshi ordered the helm, feeling oddly ill. "What about Lorelei's kick-pod catapults?"

"There was one with each net," Campbell said. He sounded as awed as Lleshi felt, though there was no indication of the disquiet the commodore himself was feeling. "There's also the one near Lorelei itself."

The tactical display shifted to a projected schematic of the planet Lorelei, showing the small catapult in high polar orbit around it. Simultaneously, one of the telescope displays lit up with a slightly fuzzy real-time view. "The light from the nearest pod explosion will reach Lorelei in about three minutes," Campbell went on. "That will be the first they'll know about our attack."

And the enemy's first act ought to be to put a quick alert message together and get a kick pod out to that catapult. "Run a confirmation on the catapult location," Lleshi ordered. On one of the aft displays, the Balaniki flickered into view as it was caught in the Pax net. "What about the main catapult?"

"It's...o...b..ting ahead of Lorelei in the planet's leading Lagrange point," Campbell said. "A pretty good distance out; they won't be able to get a ship there very quickly."

Provided there weren't any ships already on the way. But there was nothing Lleshi could do about that. Besides, with the Pax net now the only door into Lorelei system, it wasn't nearly as critical that word of the invasion be delayed.

Still, the more time they had to consolidate their position, the better. Reaching over, he punched his direct feed to the Balaniki. "Captain Horvak?"

"Yes, sir," Horvak replied briskly. "Thunderhead is loaded and ready, awaiting your orders. If the Empyreals are still on the same schedule, their most recent kick pod went out half an hour ago."

Which meant that if they could knock out the kick-pod catapult, it would be another five and a half hours before the other four Empyreal systems would even begin to suspect anything was wrong.

If. "You've received our up-to-date sensor readings?"

"Received and calibrated in," Horvak said. "We're aligned and green."

"Good." Lleshi shifted his gaze to the display showing the Balaniki. "You may fire when ready."

"Yes, sir. Thunderhead: fire."

There was nothing to see, really; only a half-imagined flicker of movement just before the circle of warning lights around the opening in the Balaniki's nose went out. But the sensor display showed what human eyes were too slow to catch: the slender black missile that had been launched from the ma.s.s driver running the entire length of the Balaniki's centerline, now hurling toward the distant planet. Lleshi looked back at the main display, silently counting down the seconds; and abruptly, the missile's solid-fuel core ignited, burning with incredible ferocity and adding to the missile's already blistering velocity at an acceleration that would have crushed a human crew.

It would take the Komitadji over two days to reach Lorelei from here. The remnants of the Thunderhead missile would make that same trip in just under an hour.

At which point, if the sensor data and computer calculations were correct, the warhead would fragment into a cloud of ultrafast hundred-gram particles and slam into Lorelei's kick-pod catapult, shattering it and cutting off the Empyreals' fastest method of contacting the outside universe.

On a Pax world, Lleshi knew, confusion and sheer bureaucratic inertia would delay the launch of an emergency kick pod at least that long. On an Empyreal world, under angel influence, there was no way to know if the Thunderhead would be in time.

Or, for that matter, whether the Thunderhead would even hit its target. If it had been misaimed, or if unexpected gravitational or solar wind forces deflected it even slightly off its proper course, those hundred-gram weights could conceivably slam full into the planet Lorelei itself at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

And if they did, the destruction the doomsday pod had caused out here among the small number of EmDef defenders would be multiplied a thousandfold among the people of that world.

Innocent people. People whose salvation from the angel threat was the purported reason for this military activity in the first place.

"We're wasting time, Commodore," Telthorst said impatiently.

Unfortunately, this time the little man was right. The Thunderhead missile and Lorelei were now in the hands of the laughing fates. Whether or not the alert went out on the kick-pod catapult, the Komitadji's next task was the same: to capture and secure the main catapult running in orbit ahead of Lorelei.

Preferably before the Lorelei government got its act together and got a ship up there and out of the system. But to capture and hold it nonetheless. "Acceleration alert," he ordered. "Lay in a minimum-time course for Lorelei."

And as the acceleration warning sounded and the big ship began to move, he wondered vaguely what had happened to Kosta.

The hospital corridor was quiet, its lighting slightly muted to late-night levels, as Chandris slipped in through the stairwell door. More importantly for her purposes, the area also seemed to be deserted.

No, not completely. There was a more brightly lit alcove area just off the center of the corridor behind a wide window-shaped service opening, and as she eased the stairwell door closed behind her she heard the faint sound of shuffling feet and papers.

Still, as long as she stayed at this end of the hallway-and as long as none of the duty nurses poked their heads out through the service window-she ought to make it okay. Moving as quietly as she could, she headed down the corridor, hugging the wall and trying to look all directions at once. It was a job more suited to a kitty-lifter than a lowly con artist like herself, and she was beginning to sweat by the time she reached her target door. Easing it open, she slipped inside.

The room lights had been turned completely off, but there was enough of a glow from the indicators on the various medical monitors for her to make out the outline of the big man lying motionlessly beneath the blankets. She was halfway across the room, concentrating on not finding anything to bang her shins on, when she spotted the other figure sitting half propped up in a chair beside the bed, clearly asleep. Hesitating only a moment, she changed direction and circled the end of the bed to the chair. She reached out to the other's shoulder, wondering belatedly if this had been such a good idea after all, and gently squeezed. "Ornina?" she whispered.

The woman awoke with a start. "What-?"

"Shh, it's all right," Chandris hastened to a.s.sure her. "It's just me, Chandris."

Ornina sagged tiredly in her chair. "Oh, Chandris, you startled me," she said with a sigh. "Wait, let me get the light."

"No, don't," Chandris said. "I don't want to wake up Hanan."

"It's all right," Hanan said from the bed. "I'm already awake."

Chandris grimaced. "I'm sorry," she apologized as Ornina groped for the small light on the bedside

table and flicked it on. The glow was dim, but Chandris still blinked a couple of times before her

eyes adjusted. "I was trying to be quiet."

"And you succeeded admirably," Hanan said, his voice as cheerful as always. But his face in the faint light was drawn and seemed to Chandris to be deathly pale. "I just don't sleep well in hospitals, that's all. Probably the food."

"We missed you here earlier tonight," Ornina said. "Visiting hours-" She squinted at her watch.

"Aren't they over yet?"

"Long over," Chandris admitted, feeling even more uncomfortable about this intrusion. "And I wouldn't have bothered you so late at night except-look, I need some advice."

"You've come to the right place," Hanan said, nodding toward the other guest chair against the back wall. He did not, Chandris noted uneasily, raise a hand to point to it, as he normally would have. Not a good sign. "Pull up a chair and tell us all about it."

Chandris took a deep breath. "The reason I wasn't here earlier-"

She broke off as, behind her across the room, the door swung stealthily open and a figure slipped inside. She spun around, automatically scrambling for a cover story to tell the nurse- "Ah," Kosta said lamely, his face a study in awkward surprise. "Uh-"

"Is it a party?" Hanan said cheerfully into Kosta's discomfiture. "I love parties."

"What are you doing here?" Chandris demanded.

"I'm sorry," Kosta said, sounding thoroughly chagrined now. "I'll go."

"No, please," Ornina said, getting up from her chair. "Here; sit down."

"No, no," Kosta said hastily. "I'll go. I just thought..."

The pieces suddenly clicked. "You thought I came here for Ronyon's angel, didn't you?" Chandris

accused. "You followed me from the Inst.i.tute."

Even in the dim light she could see Kosta's face redden. "Do you blame me?" he countered. "You tell me to trust you; and then you head straight here to the hospital. What was I supposed to think?"

"Whoa, everyone," Hanan cut in. "Could we get a little annotation on this argument? For starters,

what do you mean, Ronyon's angel? Don't you mean High Senator Forsythe's angel?"

"Forsythe isn't wearing an angel," Chandris told him. "Ronyon's got it. I was thinking that since

everything about that was illegal anyway, one good crime deserved another.""Or to put it another way, she was planning to steal it," Kosta said. "She's been planning it as far back as the Gazelle."

"Oh, Chandris," Ornina said. The sorrow and disappointment in her voice was like a twisted knife in

Chandris's stomach. "Please. Don't."

"I just wanted to find a way for Hanan to get well," Chandris said, hearing an unaccustomed note of pleading in her voice. "He needs it more than ever now."

"I'll be all right," Hanan a.s.sured her. "Really I will. The Gabriel Corporation's picking up the bill for all this, and the doctors say the long-term prognosis is hopeful."

"I don't want hopeful," Chandris said, the taste of bitterness in her mouth. "I want you well."

"I know," Hanan said, smiling sadly. "And I appreciate it, Chandris, more than you can ever know.