Angelmass

She'd taken to watching him. And found that he, in turn, seemed to be watching her.

Ship's security, she'd thought at first, looking for a passenger named Chandris Lalasha who hadn't gotten off at Lorelei like she was supposed to. It had seemed the most likely explanation, particularly since she couldn't find any way to check up on her attempts to erase that identity from the Xirrus's computer. As a result, she'd wound up wasting several hours of precious late-night study time in Toomes's room setting up contingency hiding and escape plans.

But the days had gone by, and the mystery man had continued to keep his distance. In fact...

Deliberately, she looked at him. For an instant their eyes met, before he wrenched his gaze back to the menu and pretended mightily that he hadn't been looking at her at all.

Chandris looked back at Toomes, a hard knot settling into her stomach. He was probably just new to the upper class, that was all. New to the upper class, interested in her, and too bashful to breathe straight. That was probably it. Really it was.

But the knot refused to go away.

Abruptly, she drained her wine and stood up. "Can we go now?" she asked Toomes.

A flicker of surprise, then the hunter's smile was back. "Sure," he said, polishing off his own drink and getting to his feet. Maybe he was reeked enough, maybe not; but at the moment Chandris didn't care. She just wanted out of here. And if it meant having to endure more than just Toomes's pawing hands for once, she could handle it.

Taking his arm, forcing an unconcerned smile onto her face, she led him out of the room.

Keeping his head bent over the menu as if he was looking at it, Kosta watched surreptitiously as the woman and her escort left the dining room. Damn it all, he cursed himself silently. Talk about looking guilty. Why don't you just stand up, a

He took a deep breath. Relax, he ordered himself. Just relax. He had no proof, after all, that she was even remotely co

He took another deep breath and forced himself to focus on the menu, wishing yet again that he hadn't insisted on going upper-class in the first place. The theory had seemed solid enough at the time: since most scientists and students would probably be riding in cheaper sections of the ship, the passengers up here would be less likely to recognize that he wasn't part of the Empyreal scientific community.

Or so the logic had gone. It had never occurred to him that the upper class would be so homogeneous in dress, behavior, and style that he would never really feel like he fit in.

He ran his eye down the menu's price list, an unpleasant warmth rising to his cheeks. Yes, it had been logical... but down deep, he couldn't help but wonder it had really been quite that neat and tidy.

If perhaps the real reason he'd wanted to go upper-class had been a private desire to poke a figurative finger in Telthorst's a

It was a worrying—hell, a downright scary—thought. Because he was in enemy territory now, with his survival balanced on his ability to keep his mind completely and unemotionally on his mission.

Indulging in childish displays of pique or sport, even mild ones, could land him in an Empyreal jail cell. Or worse.

The waiter—a human waiter here, not simply an intercom plate—appeared at his side. Hoping desperately that he would pronounce everything right this time, he began to order.

CHAPTER 6

"Your attention, please," the voice came from overhead. "Shuttle number one has now docked; repeating, shuttle number one has now docked. All passengers holding debarkation cards for shuttle one may now prepare to board. The officers and crew of the Xirrus thank you for traveling with us, and we hope to see you again in the near future."

Don't hold your breath, Kosta thought back at the speaker as he picked up his travel bag and went over to join the line forming at the shuttle bay door. Not if he could help it would he ever fly this or any other Empyreal spaceliner again. Between that woman and his own superheated imagination his nerves were already shot to hell, and the mission had hardly even begun. When the time came to get back to Lorelei, he vowed, he'd charter a private ship or something and to the laughing fates with the expense.

Unless, of course, Commodore Lleshi and the Komitadji got here before that. Which would leave him stuck on the ground smack the middle of a war zone...

Superheated imagination, he chided himself, and put the thought firmly out of his mind.

The stairway linking the Xirrus to the shuttle seemed steeper going down, somehow, than it had a week ago when he'd been going the opposite way. An illusion, of course; just the same, he took it a shade more carefully than he probably needed to.

He was two steps from the bottom when he saw her.

Sitting between two uniformed men in the front passenger row.

Looking straight up at him.

For a single, horrible instant Kosta's brain froze, momentum alone getting him the rest of the way down to the shuttle deck. Those uniforms the men were wearing—vaguely like those of the Xirrus's officers, but at the same time markedly different from those he'd seen while aboard. And the look the woman was giving him wasn't like anything he'd seen on either crew or passengers. It was cold and hard, and more than a little accusing.

He'd been right all along. She was indeed Empyreal security.

Run, was his first, frantic instinct. But there was nowhere to run to. Fight, then. His right hand twitched around the handle of his travel bag, aching to drop it and haul out the tiny commando-issue shocker hidden in his side pocket. Shoot all three—get to the command deck and hijack the shuttle—

With a supreme effort he forced his hand to hang onto the travel bag. Forced his feet to start walking. Forced his throat to relax. Until they actually haul out their weapons and restraints and tell you you're under arrest, his instructors on Scintara had told him over and over again, always try to brazen it out. Easy enough for them to say, safely tucked away in a Pax military base; but the more his brain unfroze, the more he realized that he really had no alternative.

Directly behind the trio was an empty aisle seat; with only a brief hesitation, he lowered himself into it. You want brazen? he thought darkly back at the memories of those instructors. Fine; I'll give you brazen.

It wasn't until after the shuttle had detached and was on its way down that he remembered on a conscious level something else they'd taught him: Whenever possible, try to get above or behind your opponents.

Perhaps, he thought, they'd trained him better than he'd realized.

The trip seemed to last forever. None of the three people sitting in front of him paid him the slightest attention. For all anyone could tell, they might have been totally unaware he was even there.

Not that that was any comfort. If they didn't feel the need to keep close tabs on him it probably meant they had plainclothes backups somewhere behind him. So much for taking the high ground, he thought once. But there was still nothing to do but sit tight and wait.

Eventually, they reached ground, landing on the kind of glidestrip Kosta had seen back at the Lorelei spaceport. From what he could see through the windows there seemed to be about as much traffic here as there had been at Lorelei, though both ports seemed to have both space- and aircraft sharing the same facilities. That was a new one on Kosta; on even sparsely developed Pax worlds like Scintara the air and space fields were kept strictly separate. The Empyrean, he decided, must have far less of either kind of traffic than the Pax.