Fearful Symmetry (The Robert Fenaday and Shasti Rainhell Chronicle Book 2)

by Edward McKeown

  There was a pause, light-speed delay and confusion. “This is Leonidas to unknown vessel. You are not cleared for entry. Please cease your approach. Please heave to for boarding.”

  “Leonidas, this is Fenaday of the Sidhe. Please cease the comedic welcome. I have announced myself. My IFF is working perfectly, as I assume your scanners are. Assuming the laws of physics are as well, I will not be slowing much this side of Atropos. You are welcome to accelerate and meet us there to escort us in.

  “Let’s add to that, Leonidas, that so far your welcome stinks. I have no intention of allowing an illegal deep space boarding of my ship. Your jurisdiction for boarding starts in the low orbit of Olympia, which I will not be entering. Who the hell am I speaking with anyway?”

  “Leonidas to...to unknown vessel claiming to be CPSS Sidhe, stand by.”

  “Sidhe to Leonidas, I will not alter my course and speed at your request. Please advise your intentions.”

  There was no reply.

  “Mr. Telisan,” Fenaday said, almost reluctantly, “bring us to Defense Condition Four.”

  The ship’s alarm whirred insistently. Sidhe’s crew was already at stations from her exit from hyperspace, now all hatches and compartments were sealed. Non-essential systems went off-line. Susan Bernard switched all communications to her console to allow Sharla to concentrate on ECM.

  “Captain,” Sharla said, with an elaborate calm, “the fighters ahead have engaged active fire control. They are locking on to us.”

  “They wouldn’t dare,” Mmok sputtered.

  “Break their locks,” Fenaday ordered.

  “Fenaday to Leonidas,” he called, “what the hell are you doing, locking fire control on us? Leonidas, we formally protest this hostile act. There will be a complaint filed with the Confederate Planets Embassy. Leonidas, there will be repercussions.”

  Silence dragged on.

  “Captain,” Wardell said, “we are coming up on those fighters, fast. Firing range in one minute and forty seconds.”

  “I have broken their firing locks,” Sharla announced in triumph. “All three are trying to reacquire us.”

  “Leonidas, this is Fenaday, requesting visual communication and demanding your fighters cease locking onto our vessel.”

  No reply. He looked at Bernard; she shook her head.

  “Permission to launch fighters,” Telisan said. “We still have time to get them into space.”

  Fenaday shook his head. “Hold Wildcat launch.

  “Leonidas,” Fenaday tried again, “if your fighters do not cease active fire control, I will be forced to assume you plan to attack.”

  “There has been another launch from enemy carrier,” Hafel said. “Bandit is a Crusader.”

  This time Fenaday did not correct her.

  “Mr. Telisan,” Fenaday said, “have the fighters switch to internal power. I want them ready to drop in a second’s notice. Mr. Wardell, return the favor, target those fighters, all fire control on the bridge. Energize main gun too.

  “Sharla, stand by stealth mode.”

  Mmok looked incredulously at Fenaday, “I can’t believe they’ll fire on us.”

  “Maybe they seceded while we were in hyperdrive,” he replied acidly. “Maybe they know why we’re here. I’ve got ship-killers dropping into range. I’ll be damned if I’ll take the chance.”

  “Visual on fighters,” Wardell called. Sidhe’s main screen lit up and fragmented into several views. In the center was a small cluster of lights. Two were close to each other and dimmer. A third flared brighter, obviously far closer to Sidhe. They were the drive engines of the Dagger fighters, diving into the gravity well, seeking to match speed with the braking frigate. The images were subject to relativistic limits. The fighters themselves could be anywhere in a probability cone, depending on their maneuvers. The irony of the physics struck Fenaday. All vessels had their ass-ends pointed toward each other, yet they were closing rapidly.

  “We are coming up on Bandit Three,” Wardell said. “He launched last and is the slowest. Then we will pass Bandits One and Two. They have the best firing solution on us.”

  “We could minimize their firing window by a turn in any direction,” Fenaday said, as if to himself. “It would blow our approach to Atropos and Olympia. We’d spend weeks braking just on the ship’s nuclear torch. Might not even make planetfall. Could have to call for rescue.”

  “Well, Captain?” Mmok asked, emphasizing the title.

  “It’s a bluff,” Telisan said. “It must be.”

  Fenaday straightened in his chair. “Launch fighters. Have them do a small burn to put them two thousand meters ahead and to either side. Gentlemen and ladies, we are going straight in.”

  The Wildcat fighters dropped, surging out to their assigned positions with only a quick thruster burn. Their speed matched Sidhe’s own.

  “Leonidas,” Fenaday said, “I am coming up on your fighters, and they are still ranging on me. This is CPSS Sidhe, protesting an illegal attack by Olympian Self-Defense Forces.”

  “Nearest fighter has locked and fired two anti-shipping missiles,” Sharla called.

  “Shit,” Mmok said.

  “Weapons free,” Fenaday called. “Get those missiles! Telisan, order our fighters to...”

  A brilliant, silent flowering of light spread across the screen.

  “Good work, Sharla,” Telisan cried.

  “Not me,” she replied, “the carrier signaled a self-destruct on the weapons.”

  “Wardell, Telisan, hold fire,” Fenaday ordered.

  “Sidhe,” announced a new voice over the speakers, “this is Commodore Aswa of the Olympian Self-Defense Force Navy. A most regrettable error has occurred. Your vessel defolded into normal space in the middle of a naval exercise. I am ordering all forces to stand down. Please stand by for visual communication.”

  Bernard brought up Aswa’s picture on one of the panels of the main screen. He was a striking black man with a noble bearing and perfect features. Fenaday took an instant dislike to him.

  “Confirming,” Sharla said, relief in her voice. “All three fighters are taking a course well away from us, heading for their carrier.”

  “Captain Fenaday,” continued the Olympian officer, “we are mortified at this stupidity. I was not on the bridge when you were detected, and our people foolishly imagined your vessel was a surprise part of the exercise.”

  “Can’t they read a transponder?” Fenaday snapped. “We have been broadcasting Confed ID since we defolded and our arrival was announced by courier and the Embassy.”

  “Captain, that information was not shared with us. Clearly, there has been a mistake. We did not expect your vessel in this area. There have been a series of errors almost ending in tragedy. On behalf of all Olympia, I offer our most abject apologies. This is an inexcusable welcome to heroes of the Confederacy.”

  “What are a few rads between friends?” Fenaday said, in a cold rage. “Who ordered those missiles fired?”

  “Captain,” Telisan interrupted, “readings are in. The weapons were low yield and clean. Probably Mark Ones. We took no radiation inside the vessel. The fighters picked up a few rads, nothing significant.”

  “The weapons were launched without authorization,” Aswa replied smoothly. “I personally ordered them detonated, as soon as I realized what had happened.”

  “I intend to prefer charges,” Fenaday stated.

  “As do I myself, Captain. I suspect a court will not administer a harsher sentence than has already been given. The weapons went off very near the launching fighter. Her pilot received a far greater dose than is healthful. He may not live, even with the best of care.”

  “We are clear of system traffic and active range finding,” Sharla said.

  “Secure weapons,” Fenaday said slowly. “Cease active fire control. Mr. Telisan, initiate fighter recovery. Set defense condition one.”

  “Captain Fenaday,” Aswa said, “all Olympia welcomes your arrival and that of your ship a
nd crew. You are cleared all the way to low orbit of Marathon on Olympia.”

  “Thank you, Commodore, but we will assume high orbit of Marathon till we are assured of a better welcome than what we have received to date. The conduct of your military has left us shaken. We have been fired on with nuclear weapons. Please see to it that there is no military traffic on our route. We do not want an escort. This matter is far from over, Commodore.”

  “I understand your anger, Captain, and I share it. We will honor all your requests in the hope of salvaging your good opinion. I will make a full and candid report, accepting all responsibility for the incident. We are transmitting all the necessary codes for your entry into Marathon’s traffic pattern. Is there any other way we can serve you?”

  “Only by keeping your distance. Fenaday out.”

  The screen returned to the star field.

  “I have their code transmission in the virus buffer,” Bernard said. “It’s clean.”

  “Quite a welcome,” Telisan grinned. His reflective golden eyes and leathery skin gave him a leonine look.

  “Yeah,” Mmok said. “Just like the ones the Conchirri used to throw.”

  “Well, we are still alive and inbound,” Fenaday said. “It was pretty clever actually. They set up a live fire exercise, and we blunder into it. The Navy isn’t warned of our arrival through some bureaucratic mix-up. Some hothead takes a shot, claiming he thought we were a holo-image enhanced target drone. Either we’re hit or we take evasive action and lose our approach vector for months. Better yet, we get so mad we just jump out for home. The most they lose is some low-level operative.”

  “You forced their hand by refusing to alter course,” Telisan added. “After we launched fighters, their chances for hitting us with one or two weapons were minimal. So they aborted.”

  Mmok crossed his arms. “I’ll bet they weren’t expecting us to be remilitarized. It must have been a nasty surprise when our fire control and ECM kicked in. Without them we’d be toast.”

  “Let’s press the advantage,” Fenaday said. “We’ll draft up a complaint to the embassy, broadcast it in the clear. If the public on Olympia doesn’t know we are coming, they will now. Let’s tell them about the reception we received.”

  “Good,” Mmok grunted, “makes sense.”

  Sidhe plunged in, riding her fusion torch, heading for the gas giant Atropos. Chaos rippled out from her arrival.

  *****

  In the tallest tower of the uplands desert complex, Mikhail Vaughn stood very still before the master of the Denshi, reporting failure, something not well tolerated in the Guild of Assassins. Lord Jalgren Pard listened to the details of the battle with Rainhell with no visible signs of anger. He played idly with a small, black-lacquered box, one of a number of Asian curiosities dotting the office. It looked incredibly fragile in his bear-like hands.

  “I take full responsibility for the outcome of the assignment,” Vaughn concluded. “My team performed their best. It simply was not good enough.”

  Pard nodded his massive head. “At least you didn’t blow up half an apartment complex on the evening news.” He heaved a sigh. “The fault is not yours alone,” continued Pard, to Vaughn’s concealed surprise. “I did order you to take her alive, if possible. She has grown formidable since she left us.”

  “My Lord,” said Vaughn, hesitantly, “we were told Rainhell was Third-Generation, among the last of that lot, to be sure, but...”

  “You suspect she is more,” Pard growled. He leaned back in his chair; the exotic woods and fine leathers creaked under his weight.

  “Yes,” he said. Gathering his nerve, he continued, “She shrugged off a laser hit. The speed of her reflex action is amazing. She was nearly a blur when in movement, even to my eyes, and I am optimized for reflex speed and coordination. Then there was the leap. I could not have made that distance. I do not think even Antebei, for all his athletic skills, could have.”

  Pard stood. Vaughn stiffened slightly, but the giant Denshi merely walked to the window overlooking his desert complex and the mountains beyond. The deep, rich Persian carpet muffled his steps. Pard brushed a small wind-chime, a delicate tracery of ancient ivory and crystal. It yielded a few silvery notes. The sun was near to setting and it painted the horizon with vivid oranges and yellows. Armored glass automatically cut the glare to acceptable levels. Still it caused the burnished gold and Chinese red of the walls to glow with inner life.

  “You are right,” he said, in a slow, heavy voice. “And it is past time you learned this information if you are to cope with Rainhell.

  “I was working with Chief Geneticist Negola, back in ‘47. Many new technologies were coming out, some of which we later abandoned. We decided the time had come to push the envelope and work on a prototype. Not merely to advance incrementally, but to leap whole generations. Negola started a special laboratory. We used every technique, every wild theory, to create a prototype of an engineered human beyond anything previously envisioned.” Pard’s face grew rapt, as he discussed his dream, his driving force, the creation of the perfect human.

  “It was all in vitro, of course, controlled labs, artificial wombs. There were disappointments naturally, monsters, abortions in the hundreds. Then one day we came up with a perfect baby girl, the one offspring of the Special Lab. Even we did not know what we had. We put everything we could think of in her germ plasm: bio-controlled melanin, endorphin on demand, night sight, ultra-fast healing and more. Apparently the resistance to burns took, from what you say. No, we don’t know the upper limits of her abilities. I suspect Rainhell herself does not know them. She escaped this complex before her final training and experimentation could begin.”

  “Why raise her in the common crèche?” Vaughn asked, disturbed for reasons he did not understand by the story.

  “Even then the Selected had begun to distrust our kind,” Pard replied, “recognizing in us the seed of their obsolescence. Rainhell was an expensive product, possibly irreplaceable. We deemed it safer to raise her as a regular Third-Generation female. Our enemies in the Army, the Neo-Reformists and others would have made her a target if we singled her out for too much special treatment. Also many years passed before we knew she had any real value, that she was actually an improvement.”

  “Finally, it is not unknown for jealousies among our own to result in premature deaths. Is it, Mikhail?”

  Vaughn swallowed, remembering several prior rivals of his lost in “training accidents,” and the near misses of the last several attempts Antebei doubtless arranged for him.

  “So, how do you plan to kill Rainhell?” Pard asked as he returned to his desk and dropped back into his reinforced chair.

  “Do you still wish to keep the matter secret?” Vaughn asked. “It is what hinders us the most. If we went public, we would have her in hours.”

  “Idiot,” Pard snapped. “Do not look for easy solutions. We are at a critical stage with the Outsiders. Our plans for a treaty are coming to fruition soon. Only now are our people reaching sufficient numbers to wield real power. Many are offworld with the Overman project. Most of our strength still rests in alliances. Revelation of the existence of the Outsiders will shatter these alliances and pull this planet out of our grasp.

  “Rainhell is too public a figure to murder in the open. She is here illegally, doubtless to destroy me. She does not dare go public either. We could have her legitimately arrested. Once she was in prison, it would be simple to kill her. No, we are both in the shadows, and so it must stay. We have the advantage, we have time on our side.”

  “Then it will remain difficult and perhaps more so,” Vaughn replied. “We are infiltrating Quest, Bremardi and Neo-Reformist Territory, though slowly. I suspect the Army is aware something is up. Our agents, tracing associates of Leda Jenner, keep finding Army imposed dead ends. Our field people and theirs scuffled near Leda Jenner’s ‘safe’ house in the Ionian Mountains, near Manki. Our people escaped without loss. They inflicted considerable casualties on the a
mbushers.”

  “I suspect General Dominici’s hand in all these Army difficulties,” Pard said. “She is no friend to our interests. I shall have Antebei’s people double check on this. Army is his department. Perhaps he could double our watch on her.”

  “How is Antebei?” Vaughn asked coldly. “Has his ego recovered from killing fifty civilians on planet-wide media?”

  Instantly, he regretted the comment. It was petty and would not serve him well with Pard. “Sorry, my Lord.”

  “He is probably still busy raping his secretary, though why he wants such low order trash is beyond me,” Pard looked annoyed. He cast a sidelong glance at Vaughn. “This Paula creature distracts him too much; perhaps I should have her destroyed.”

  Vaughn was Denshi, a killer from his childhood years. Still, he had no taste for killing the helpless. What merit was there to stalking lambs? He saw himself as a killer of tigers. In one lay honor and the glory of the hunt. The other was work for butchers, or worse, a killer like Antebei, for whom murder was a type of sex. He knew Pard was baiting him, but his own temper, usually carefully controlled, slipped. Vaughn felt his face grow hot and could not check his voice.

  “Murder the woman for Antebei’s flaws? Why?” he demanded. “The fault does not lie in her. Another will merely be forced to take her place.”

  “She could die too,” Pard said. “What matter?”

  “You would put Band-Aids on bullet wounds,” Vaughn returned bitterly. “It is Antebei who is weak and unfit, though you refuse to see it.”

  “What of your own weakness?” Pard snapped. “Conscience, scruples, honor, these have no place in a life of power.”

  Vaughn looked him in the eye, greatly daring. “I’m a warrior, not a butcher. I lead by example, not fear. We do what we have to do to survive. You know I would cut down any threat to Denshi, male, female, old or young, but as the ancient samurai, I do not draw my sword to gather watercress. This woman is no threat.”

  “Perhaps,” Pard asked, with a faint look of amusement, “this secretary, positioned as she is with Antebei, is an agent of yours?”