Commodore Lleshi ordered. The paraconducting underskin gave its usual stutter of protest; and abruptly, the stars vanished from the viewscreens.

After all these months in the middle of nowhere, the Komitadji was going home.

Lleshi gave his displays a quick check, but it was more from habit than anything else. The Komitadji had been ready for this flight for a long time.

"Breakout in five seconds," the helmsman announced. "Three, two, one—"

The stars came back. "Position check," Lleshi ordered.

"Position computed, Commodore," the navigator said a minute later. "We're just under three million kilometers from Scintara."

Lleshi nodded. Considering that they'd started nearly seven hundred light-years away with an essentially untested catapult, they were lucky to have gotten even this close. "Compute course for Scintara," he said. "Engage when ready. And get a comm laser on the planet; let them know we're here."

"They already know, Commodore," the comm officer spoke up. "Message coming in."

Lleshi keyed his board, and a moment later a familiar face appeared on his screen. "This is Captain Horvak aboard the Pax Warship Balaniki," he said. "Repeat: Captain Horvak calling Commodore Lleshi."

"We've acknowledged, Commodore," the comm officer said.

Lleshi nodded, mentally counting off the twenty seconds it would take for the signal to make the round trip. He'd reached twenty-one when Horvak's face changed. "Welcome back, Commodore," he said briskly. "You're the last to arrive—the rest of the task force has been assembled for nearly a week now. Everything seems to be go; we got a kick pod from the Skean two days ago with the cocoon's confirmation that it's built itself a hyperspace net. At least it thinks it has," he amended. "I suppose we won't find out for sure until we try to use it. Final green light came from the Supreme Council yesterday, along with the usual spate of last-minute amendments to the plan. Nothing major—I'll dump you a copy."

His lip twitched. "And the doomsday pods are here, sitting under heavy guard in far orbit. That's making us very popular with the people of Scintara.

"That's about it from this end, unless you have any questions. If you can give us your ETA and status report, we'll set up the operation count-down."

"Navigation?" Lleshi invited.

"ETA will be a little over thirty hours, sir," the navigator said. "Plus probably an hour for orbit insertion. We're too low on fuel to make more than a tenth-gee acceleration."

Lleshi glanced at the proposed course profile on his board. "How much can we cut that by having Scintara send out a fuel ship to rendezvous with us?"

Across the balcony, Telthorst stirred. "There's no need for that, Commodore," he said. "A few hours'

savings isn't worth the effort of sending out a fuel ship."

Lleshi glared at him. First that power-play nonsense about moving their catapult halfway across the solar system, and now this. "You heard Captain Horvak," he said, keeping his voice as civil as he could. "The task force is waiting. Has been waiting, for a week."

"Then a few hours one way or the other isn't likely to make a great deal of difference to them,"

Telthorst countered coldly.

Lleshi turned away from that thin face, resisting the urge to push the exchange into a full-fledged argument. He should have expected Horvak's mention of the four doomsday pods to spark this kind of reaction from Telthorst. With two hundred kilograms of painstakingly created antimatter in each pod—an explosive yield theoretically in the gigaton range—they represented a huge expenditure of Pax money. But there was no way around it. The four hyperspace nets that sealed off all approaches to the Lorelei system had to be taken out if this attack was to accomplish anything at all.

And given the Empyreals' fancy sandwich-metal construction this was the only method that the experts had come up with that had a chance of doing that.

But Telthorst undoubtedly didn't see it that way. Until the assets of the Empyrean lay open before him, he would see nothing but how much this whole operation was costing.

He probably hadn't even gotten around to considering the danger the pods in their current positions represented to the people of Scintara. Except, perhaps, for how much an accidental detonation would cost to repair.

"Inform the Balaniki we'll be arriving at Scintara in approximately thirty hours," he instructed the comm officer quietly. "Mission refitting will begin at that time."

"Yes, sir," the comm officer said, and turned back to his board.

Lleshi leaned back in his seat. Someday, he told himself silently, the Adjutors would overreach themselves. They would push the rest of the Pax just that little bit too far and bring destruction down upon their own heads.

He could only hope that he would be there to see it.

The Seraph catapult had called in the report while the Gazelle was on its way down, with the result that an ambulance was already waiting when Chandris set the ship down on the landing strip. An ambulance, and a dozen reporters.

"Uh-oh," Kosta muttered under his breath as he eyed the latter group.

"What?" Chandris growled as the ship rolled to a stop. She'd mentioned earlier that this was the first time she'd ever landed the Gazelle on her own; but if she'd found the prospect daunting, Kosta hadn't been able to see it in her face during the approach. Then, as now, her single-minded obsession with Hanan's condition had left no room for anything as trivial as nervousness.

"Those reporters," Kosta said. "The High Senator didn't want anyone knowing he was here."

"Nurk the High Senator," Chandris said shortly, releasing her restraints. "Stay here and watch things—I'm going to open the hatchway."

She all but ran to the door, nearly bowling Forsythe over as he stepped into the control room. A

muttered word that might have been an apology, and she was gone.

"How is Hanan?" Kosta asked.

"Not good," Forsythe said, walking over to Chandris's vacated seat and sitting down. He looked tired. "He doesn't seem to be in any immediate danger, though."

"Any idea what's wrong?"

"Some kind of neural feedback through his exobraces, I assume. Beyond that, I haven't a clue."

Kosta nodded soberly. "I know the feeling. Oh, your cyl's still there in the comm panel. Thank you."

"No problem," Forsythe said, pulling it out and dropping it into his pocket. "You have no idea what's causing these surges, do you?"

Kosta shook his head. "What happened out there is theoretically impossible. At least, by any theory I've ever heard." He threw Forsythe a sideways look. "And it's getting worse."

The High Senator was gazing at the hatchway display and the medics busily preparing their equipment. "You're saying the surges are getting stronger?"

"I meant the whole thing is getting worse theoretically," Kosta said, wondering if he should be telling Forsythe this. The numbers he'd pulled were still highly preliminary, particularly given that they'd been recorded in the middle of that surge.

But if they were right... "You remember when we saw the Hova's Skyarcher I said that it must have gone pretty deep toward Angelmass to have gotten that much radiation damage?"

Forsythe nodded. "Hanan agreed with you."

"Right," Kosta said. "I've pulled the records from the Gazelles inertial navigational system and compared them to the position data from Angelmass Central's beacons. There's a definite discrepancy between the two."

"So the inertial data is wrong."

"I wish it was that simple," Kosta said. "The problem is that during the surge the beacons show us moving closer to Angelmass while the inertial system shows us moving away from it. A drive misfire wouldn't have done that. Neither would the maneuvering jets or the solar wind."