Angelmass

Though considering there were five Empyreal worlds to the Pax's thirty-six, that was hardly a startling revelation.

The shuttle came to a slightly bumpy stop at the terminal. A second bump a moment later heralded the arrival of the ramp, and Kosta tried to prepare himself for whatever action was about to be necessary. Another small thump and a whisper of fresh air, and the door was open. Retrieving his travel bag from beneath the seat, swallowing once to clear his ears, he joined the rest of the passengers in standing up and traffic-jamming the aisle.

The woman and her companions were first in motion, the other passengers, not surprisingly, yielding them the right of way. Kosta took advantage of the gap to slide in directly behind them. Travel bag gripped tightly in his left hand, he followed them up the covered ramp, fighting hard to quiet his heart.

They went down the ramp together, the three of them still ignoring him. Kosta felt his back itching, and it took all his willpower to keep from turning around to see if there was a gun pointed at it. They reached the last bend, rounded it—

And came in sight of the two police officers waiting there.

There was no doubt of who they were—the Empyrean used standardized police uniforms, recognition of which had been part of Kosta's second day of training. Nor was there any doubt as to who they were after. Their eyes were pointed his direction, the amused half-smiles creasing their faces clearly meant for him.

Brazen it out. Brazen it out. Clenching his teeth, Kosta forced himself to keep walking toward them, his hand slipping of its own accord into his pocket. His fingers found the flattened half-cylinder of the shocker; clicked off the safety...

"So, Lieutenant," one of the police said, stepping up to the three people walking ahead of Kosta.

"This is your ghost stowaway, eh? Looks solid enough to me."

Kosta nearly ran the group down as the universe abruptly tilted around him. Somehow, he managed to sidestep them without a collision and kept walking, his face burning with equal parts relief, adrenaline rush, and embarrassment. It hadn't had anything to do with him at all—none of it had. She was the one all the official attention was focused on, not him. No wonder her escort hadn't seemed to notice him.

In fact, now that he thought about it, it could very well be that all those strange looks the woman had given him aboard ship might have been her wondering if he was Empyreal security watching her.

So much for the expert spy's first brush with danger, he thought, feeling like a complete fool. It would have served him right if he'd fallen down those last two steps on the shuttle and broken his stupid leg.

His right hand, he noticed suddenly, was still gripping the shocker in his pocket. Carefully, he slid the weapon's safety back on and withdrew his hand, feeling a fresh bead of sweat as he realized what he'd nearly done to himself. If he'd pulled the shocker and started shooting...

Relax, he ordered himself. So you're not an expert spy; you knew that going in. Learn from it, and then forget it.

Ahead, he could see a line of low tables arrayed across the end of the roped-off area he and the other passengers were walking through. Customs, they'd called it at Lorelei; entrypoint formalities, by whatever name. Kosta's own travel papers were forged, of course, and from the begi

And nearly dropped them as a sharp yelp of pain came from behind him.

He spun around, fresh adrenaline flooding back into his bloodstream, suddenly frozen fingers fumbling with papers and travel bag in a mad scramble to get to his shocker. The woman stowaway was charging straight toward him, weaving in and out of the crowd of befuddled passengers with all the skill of a professional linegainer. Behind her, partially blocked by the confusion in her wake, he caught just a glimpse of the two police officers bent over in obvious agony and the other two men belatedly in pursuit.

Should I stop her?—but even as the automatic question popped into his mind it was too late. A flash of blue and silver in his face, a gust of perfume-scented wind, and she was gone, brushing his arm just enough in passing to knock the papers from his hand.

"Hey!" he shouted reflexively, diving for the papers before they could get trampled or lost among all those feet. He got one, and was bobbing for a second—

The heavy body didn't quite slam into him, but it didn't quite manage to stop, either. "Get out of the way!" a voice snarled in Kosta's ear. A pair of hands grabbed his shoulders and pushed, killing what was left of his balance in the process. He managed to let go of his travel bag in time to break his fall, and with a flurry of uniformed pant legs they were gone.

"You okay?" another voice asked as a hand gripped his arm and helped him to his feet.

"Yeah," Kosta said, looking at the man. One of the Xirrus's other passengers, he vaguely recalled the face. "Thanks."

"No problem. What all did you drop?"

"I think this is everything," another man offered into the conversation before Kosta could answer. He held out a fistful of papers.

"Thanks." Kosta took the papers and leafed quickly through them. "Yes, they're all here."

"Craziest thing I ever saw," the first man commented, craning his neck to look over the crowd.

"What was that all about anyway?"

"I heard someone say she was a stowaway," Kosta said, shuffling his papers into some semblance of order and picking up his travel bag. His left wrist stung where he'd broken his fall, but nothing seemed to be broken. "Where'd she go, anyway?" he asked, trying to peer ahead through the crowd flowing around them.

"She jumped over one of the customs tables," the second man told him. "Vaulted, rather. Real nice move."

"Couple of ship's security people took off after her, but they'll never catch up," the first man said.

"Not with the crowds out there."

"Not at the rate she was going," the second added dryly.

"Anyway, thanks," Kosta said, taking a step away. "Both of you."

"No trouble," one of them said with a wave as they retrieved their own cases.

Kosta moved back into the flow of passengers toward the customs tables, feeling a fresh sense of rather limp relief. So now there was an escaped stowaway loose in the terminal attracting the bulk of official police and security attention. If he'd arranged it himself he couldn't have come up with a better diversion. Well worth a sore wrist and a few scattered papers.

A strange tingle went up his back. Those men back there. Those busy, important men, who'd taken the time and trouble to help a stranger...

No. No; surely not. It was the politicians who were supposed to be under angel control. Surely the Empyreals didn't have so many of the things they could afford to hand them out to run-of-theaverage businessmen.

Still, he couldn't help wondering if he'd still be scrambling around on the floor for his papers if this had happened at the Scintara spaceport.

Even without everything else that had led up to it, Kosta decided afterwards, he would probably have found the customs formalities anticlimactic. As it was, they verged on the deathly boring.

There was no baseline computer check of his identity, as would have been done at any Pax spaceport. No retina comparison against the one on his passport; no layer-scan of his papers, his travel bag, his clothing, or his body; no stress-monitored questions about his business in general or his reasons for coming to Seraph in particular. They checked his passport, confirming that his face matched the picture grained into it, glanced over the rest of his travel papers, and ran his travel bag through a simple contents scan.