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

  “Assassination?” Fenaday said in disbelief.

  “Times are changing, Fenaday. You remember the beginning of the Second Sector war? The Conchirri slaughtered millions, rolled over the military of the Seven Species. Why? Because we were a joke. The Confederacy was powerless, a trading house for the member planets. The member planets’ forces were small and poorly led. That’s how the Conchirri got as far as they did. Once we organized, we wiped them out.

  “That’s not going to happen again, Fenaday. The day of every planet going its own way is over. The Confederacy is evolving. Next time something comes charging out of the night, and there will be a next time, it won’t slaughter millions of civilians before we can fight. No more free lunch.

  “Jalgren Pard is the leader of the Engineered, the genetically enhanced who are taking over the planet. They regard all other humans as inferior, not without some justification, as you know from being around Rainhell. We fear Pard plans to take Olympia out of the Confederacy. We don’t need an empire of superhumans in that area of space. Hyperspace is thin there; the currents make transit from Olympia to Socha, New Eire, and Retief unusually fast. Olympian forces could strike those colonies before anything could be done about it.

  “We have an interest in retiring Pard and his separatists,” Mandela said, leaning back in the chair. “Rainhell has her own interest. I don't know what it is, but she wants him dead. She went in with a team of five others, including Daniel Rigg. We lost contact with them ten days after they landed, nineteen standard days ago. We don’t know if Pard got them, or if someone local just got lucky.”

  “Is she dead?” Fenaday asked softly. It burned on his soul that she’d gone after Pard without him. He’d sworn to her, that day on Enshar, he would help her against her old enemy.

  Shasti’s sadness came back to him in a rush. “I was an expensive toy, Robert, built to spec and just for him to play with. One day I decided I didn’t want to be a toy anymore. I escaped. Sometimes, when he finds out where I am, he tries to have me killed. Pride, I suppose.”

  In the months since their return, Fenaday hadn’t acted on his promise. Now, it might be too late. If the answer was yes, Mandela would not leave the room alive. Pard would be next.

  “We don’t know,” Mandela said, unaware of his nearness to death. “We don’t have good contacts on Olympia. Right now, our embassy staff is bottled up in the capital. We can’t even get at the few field agents we have. That’s where you come in.”

  “What do you want?” Fenaday growled.

  “The Olympian government can restrict our movements, prevent Confederate military people from even landing on the planet. What they can’t do, is turn down a visit of state from the captain of the Sidhe, savior of Enshar.”

  Fenaday looked at Mandela. “It won’t work. We’d be under observation all the time, surrounded by their security, for our own protection. We’d have no freedom of movement.”

  “You’re refusing?” said a visibly surprised Mandela.

  One for me, Fenaday thought. “No, you bastard. It’s no more impossible than the Enshar Expedition. I’ll take Sidhe and as many of the old crew as I can persuade to come or would trust. I’ll also need as many of your people as I can get back to make this visit look at all probable.”

  “Mourner and her medics said they would serve with you,” Mandela said. “Rask is raring to go after his friend Rigg. Mmok hates your and Rainhell’s guts, but then he hates everybody. He’ll go.”

  “Mmok,” Fenaday said, surprised to hear the half cyborg’s name. “I thought he was dead.”

  Mandela snorted. “He was never that alive that you could kill him. We rewired him, patched up the human parts. He’s back and meaner than ever.”

  “Great,” Fenaday said, without enthusiasm. Mmok was Mandela’s watchdog. He controlled four Humanform Combat Robots and a platoon of other mechs through equipment planted in his shattered body. The HCR controller was a considerable asset, but a difficult companion. Fenaday and Mmok almost drew on each other in Barjan Deep. He knew Shasti and Mmok disliked each other on sight.

  “What I’ll need most,” Fenaday said, “is Telisan. I don’t think I can pull this off without him.”

  Mandela shrugged. “I can reactivate his reserve commission.”

  “The hell you will,” Fenaday said. “He’s engaged now. I’ll send him a personal request. You’ll take it by courier. If he’s crazy enough to come, the courier can bring him back. I won’t have him forced.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Is the stealth protocol you built into Sidhe current?” Fenaday asked.

  “Nope, we will update it and more. There’s some additional holographic equipment we’ll add. You’ll get something completely new, an Intruder shuttle. They cost as much as your frigate and are nearly invisible to microwave emitters and radar. We can’t do anything with those crappy old Dakota shuttles of yours. The checkbook is open, Fenaday.”

  “Not enough. You want Pard dead. He’s one of the unofficial leaders of a planet, head of an order of assassins. I’m going to have to go through a lot of people to get to Shasti, if she’s still alive. I want a written authorization for any killing occurring in the course of this mission. It will be signed in my new lawyer’s office.”

  Mandela smiled. “I can’t do that. It’s not legal anyway. There would be no force of law to it.”

  “I don’t need force of law. I have you and you are the law. I want to know that if I go under, sacrifice everything I’ve gained back, you go with me.”

  “No,” Mandela said flatly.

  “Oh, don’t take it so hard, old boy,” Fenaday said, with a dangerous cheerfulness. “I’ve left detailed descriptions, computer-generated artist renderings of you, along with every detail of your blackmailing us during the Enshar Expedition in lots of places. It’s all very secure. Ready to go, if I croak unexpectedly. Bet you haven’t found even half of them. So if I go, you go anyway.”

  Mandela cocked a head at him quizzically. “I’ll just deny everything—call them phonies, put up jobs, simulation, etc.”

  “Ah,” Fenaday said, “very true. I’ll never get you put away. I don’t need to. You can’t survive in the spotlight, spymaster. Your career as what you are will be over. Maybe you can get a nice slot in the Department of Agriculture.”

  Mandela sighed. “It’s the personal touch, you know, very foolish of me. I should never have met you myself that day on Mars. It was stupid.”

  “Yes,” Fenaday said, suddenly curious. “Why did you do it?”

  “I knew your wife. Recruited her for Intelligence myself. She was one of the best, ambitious as hell, which I guess caught up with her. I even liked her and I don’t let myself do that. I was sure you were going to get killed on Enshar. The least I could do, if I was going to get her husband killed, was do it face to face. Like I said, stupid, an amateur’s error.”

  “True,” Fenaday said, “but it’s the only human thing I’ve ever known you to do.”

  “No good deed goes unpunished,” Mandela replied easily. “Say I agree to this idiocy, so you get my ass posthumously, if you lose yours.”

  “Then I and the crew go, so long as we’re on the right side of the law. Those of us who survive, won’t live under your shadow for the rest of our days.”

  Fenaday leaned forward, his face expressionless. “I had better find her alive. I truly had better. I was nothing when you hired me for Enshar, but I’m getting bigger all the time. Maybe one day I’ll come for you.”

  Mandela grinned broadly and stood. “Dream on, rookie.” He walked toward the door, stopped and turned back. “Of course if you ever do get that big, Fenaday, you’ll be me. Then you won’t have any choices at all.

  “My people will be in touch tomorrow. Good night, Fenaday.”

  Fenaday sat in his office after Mandela left, holding his head in his hands. Reaction sank in. Shasti might be gone. It was a replay of that nightmare moment when the young officer came to the estate to tell h
im his wife was missing, presumed lost. It was happening again. He fought the clenching of his stomach, shaking in every limb.

  He didn’t know where he and Shasti fit into each other’s lives. After long agonizing years, he’d finally accepted Lisa’s loss yet had not been able to go on from there. Shasti offered little help, insisting on living in the present. Only now did he realize it might be because she had difficulty imagining any future for herself. In many respects, she was an emotional newborn, inexperienced with anything more complex than the simple physical need for sex. They sheltered each other, brought together by circumstances and desire. It sufficed for Shasti.

  He didn’t know if he loved her. It was not as it had been with Lisa. He’d felt no doubts then. Their lives fitted with near perfect symmetry. He did know that Shasti was the most important person in his life now. If she still lived.

  Chapter Five

  Telisan, former Confederation fighter pilot and first officer of the Sidhe, sat on the clifftop listening to the sound of the ocean, a sound he loved. Denla’s yellow-white sun threw long, crisp shadows on the lavender seas below the cliffs. The white cliffs cast back the sunlight defiantly.

  Behind him sat the ancient monastery of the Selen warrior-monks, an immense pile of white stone quarried from those same cliffs. Telisan was not a monk. Far from it, as the two young ladies he was engaged to would cheerfully attest. Of course, only one was a true female. The other was a demi-female. All three Denlenn genders were necessary to have a child.

  He’d enrolled in the monastery to learn the traditional empty-hand fighting arts of the warrior-monks. Telisan had become interested in it through his friend Fenaday, a master in a similar ancient human art. A fight on Mars, with thugs employed to stop the Enshar expedition, had taught Telisan that his skills in space were not mirrored on the ground.

  After returning to Denla a year ago, rich beyond ordinary measure, he found himself sick of war, of so-called adventure. He maintained his reserve commission to do the flying he loved. Otherwise, Telisan withdrew from the world. For the most part, beyond Selen training, he looked forward to long periods of idleness.

  Telisan had spent several hours in training. Now he meditated under the open sky, loving the beauty of sea and surf. Evening breezes riffled through his long, mane-like hair. Suddenly, his head came up. He thought he heard a voice. Telisan listened intently. Denlenn hearing was not as acute as their eyesight. This time he heard his name. Standing, he looked down the beach to see a lithe form running by the waterline. He recognized Sharla, his demi-female fiancée.

  “Sharla,” he called and waved as she spotted him. As he started down for the beach, worry struck him, a not uncommon experience now that he was engaged. He’d never worried back during the war.

  Sharla caught up to him at the foot of the cliff, vibrant despite the long run from their dwelling. The demi-female was very athletic, if not beautiful. They’d met on the Empress Aran, where she served as a computer-tech in the weapons section. Her sense of humor and intelligence drew him to her; physical attraction came later. In his eyes she became more desirable every day. To a human they would look much alike, tall, with bronze, leathery-looking skin, rough mane-like hair, cat-eyes, thin almost lipless mouths. Sharla was slightly smaller than he, though tall for a demi-female. She was flat-chested but with a feminine curve to her hip. There were other details that would have been lost on an outworlder.

  “Yes, darling,” he said. “Has something happened?”

  “Arel,” Sharla replied, addressing him by his first name, something only a family member or lover might do, even then only when they were alone. To all others, no matter how close, he would always be Telisan. “There is a naval officer at the apartment. He bears an urgent message for you.”

  “Where is Arpen?” he asked.

  “Entertaining the young man,” Sharla laughed. “I believe she is in the process of making yet another conquest. The ensign will doubtless tell her anything she wants to know by the time we get there.” They set off for the apartment at an easy jog. After a few hundred yards, Sharla gave him a wicked grin and lengthened her stride. He smiled back and matched his lover step for step. Together they raced around the headland.

  Set into the cliffside above them was a Reika, a traditional country inn. The inn’s dark wooden beams and tiny gardens had stood there for several hundred years. The monks disapproved of such luxury, tolerating it only for the sake of visitors. Sharla and Arpen had taken rooms there to be close to him after he enrolled at the monastery. Beyond the quaint structure he could see part of a Confederate naval shuttle. Its fins reached over the waxy green of the nearby trees.

  When they reached the Reika, Sharla’s prediction proved to be true. Arpen was entertaining the young human in the common room. The ensign, chatting eagerly with her, didn’t notice their arrival.

  Arpen smiled warmly as they entered. Like all true females, Arpen was an empath. She couldn’t read minds but sensed emotional and physical states. True females comprised only a fourth of the Denlenn species, and the males and demi-females were their traditional protectors, though since the war this too was changing. Twenty years ago it would have been unheard of for an alien to meet a Denlenn female in person. The Confederacy and the two Sector Wars had altered much.

  Arpen’s huge, dark-brown eyes drew one in. She was beautiful, small and curvaceous. Her physical attractiveness probably did not cross the gulf of species between her and the ensign. Her warmth and empathy did. Arpen could make anyone feel like the center of the universe merely by talking to them. Telisan had met her on the hospital ship Solace where he convalesced after the Battle of the Rings.

  Despite her breaking of traditional barriers, it was Arpen who asked to formalize their triad, to avoid scandalizing their conservative families, she claimed.

  Arpen stood gracefully. “Welcome back, Telisan. This is Ensign Horowitz from the naval courier Cheetah.”

  The young man snapped to attention and saluted. “Captain Telisan, I have a ‘for your eyes only’ communication.” He extended a hand with a data crystal.

  Telisan took it, looking warily at the small crystal, “Excuse me, dears.”

  He went into the other room. Despite the antique trappings, the inn held a modern computer system decorously hidden within an old chest. He activated the house computer then ran a military encryption program. A holographic image appeared. It bore the face he expected: Robert Fenaday.

  “Hello, Telisan,” said the image. “I hope this message doesn’t beat my congratulations on your engagement and the gifts I sent. Those are coming slower. Even I can’t afford to rent a naval courier.

  “My friend, I have a terrible problem. Mandela offered Shasti a shot at assassinating Jalgren Pard, head of the House of Denshi on her homeworld. You don’t know much of her history with Pard. If my word means anything to you, then I’ll tell you he has it coming. Mandela claims Pard is a threat to the Confederacy. That’s his story anyway.

  “She dropped on Olympia with a team, including Dan Rigg. She’s overdue…she may be dead. I’m going in after her, and if she is dead, to deal with Pard. Mandela says they cannot turn down a visit from the Sidhe.

  “Telisan, this is my problem. It isn’t right and it isn’t fair to involve you. You’re engaged to be married. You would be a fool to come. But come anyway, I need you.” The image faded.

  Telisan sat, deeply troubled, mulling over Fenaday’s message. Assassination by the Confederacy? He found it hard to believe. The war machine created when the member planets organized under the Confederacy had outlived the Conchirri. As the old planetary militaries reverted to local governments, the cream of the military and the most modern equipment stayed with the Confederacy. Some advocated a stronger central government in the aftermath of the war. Perhaps, as many suspected, there was no way back to the old system. Still, the idea of assassination shocked him.

  He knew of the Olympians. Since he’d met Shasti, he’d paid more attention to their activi
ties. A delegation from Olympia had been on Denla months ago, buying war surplus shipping and equipment as the Denlenn military demobilized.

  Such issues were irrelevant. His friends needed him. He owed debts to Shasti and particularly to Fenaday. They’d struggled together in the great quest to save the entire Enshari species. No matter that Fenaday and Shasti were forced into the venture by the government. Without them, Belwin Duna’s mission would have failed. Telisan owed his life and honor to both the humans.

  He returned to the parlor. “Ensign Horowitz, would you wait outside the door please?” The ensign nodded and left, giving Arpen a broad smile as he departed.

  Telisan turned to his fiancées, explaining the situation. They’d never met Fenaday but knew every detail of that desperate voyage. “I do not know how to explain. I have only lied once in my life, caught between my oaths to Robert and to Duna. I failed to tell Fenaday about Duna’s knowledge of what we would face on Enshar. A lie of omission, yet no less a lie. He forgave me. I do not think that, being human, he realized how great a sin this was to forgive. He handed me back his trust as if I never breached it. As if I had not sent him blind into a monster’s den. This has never lain easy in my mind, as you know. To deceive an enemy is one thing. Falseness to one’s own is an alien taint I wish I had never encountered.

  “Now he needs my help. The venture is desperate. I wish, my dears, that I felt I could turn this down.”

  Arpen looked at him with sympathy. “Of course we must help your friend.”

  It took a second to sink in. “It is only I who need go,” Telisan hastened.

  Arpen now studied him with mild amusement. “I am sure your friend will appreciate the services of a fine surgeon.”

  “Arpen,” Sharla protested, “it will be much too dangerous.”

  “Weren’t you planning on going?” asked Arpen.

  “Of course,” Sharla said in surprise. “That’s different. I’m demi-female.”