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

by Edward McKeown

  “All right,” he snapped. “I will do all that I said. If I can save her, I will. Does that suffice for you?”

  “Yes,” she said, surprising him with a smile.

  He turned away, still angry. “It is for this sort of foolishness that Lord Pard thinks me weak and unfit,” he growled. “How he would laugh to see me so.”

  Tanaka reached and touched his arm. He glared down, offended.

  “I was much sought after in Denshi,” she said softly. “I could have served any lord, any of the Engineered. Many of them were more powerful and promising than you at the time. I chose you and serve only you. Because no matter how you came into the world or how you were raised, you kept a man’s heart and soul.”

  Confusion warred in Vaughn’s mind. Somehow, her words made him feel like he was inhaling champagne. He fought the feeling. It was just another symptom of his weakness. Pard always warned him of the danger of being ruled by women. He looked at Tanaka, beautiful for all that she was not Engineered. They had never been more than teammates, yet she held a special place with him. He wanted her approval, the look she gave him when she was pleased with him. A look he received so rarely and least of all from Pard. It was the look on her face now.

  “Come,” he said gruffly. “We stay too long here.”

  “Yes,” she said, still smiling slightly. “As you say.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  How absurdly easy, Paula Kallian thought. In an age of ultra technology, among professional spies and assassins, she could learn Antebei’s plans because she could walk into his office and look at the flat screen holo monitor the head of Section Seven left on. She almost laughed. Antebei, head of Denshi Security, so sure of himself, did not take even basic precautions in his own lair. Hubris, she thought. The Engineered always likened themselves to the early Greeks: perhaps they even mirrored their ancient arrogance.

  She wondered if the most effective spies were always secretaries. There was a bitterness to that thought, Kallian acknowledged. Antebei did not think enough of her to worry about it. No more than he thought of her needs or desires when he took her.

  Quickly, she read the screen, recognizing the name Moussa. Yesterday Antebei had asked her for their files. The Moussa brothers served Oldark, but as head of Security, Antebei could requisition operatives from other sections at need. She had processed the memo to Oldark; that and the attached files led her to believe this was the move Vaughn wanted her to watch for. Quickly, she scanned the text. She’d guessed correctly. Antebei had ordered the Moussas to board Sidhe and bomb the vessel. She studied the graphics of the starship. Ships were outside of her experience, but she recognized Sidhe’s silhouette from the news. The flashing icon for the bomb blinked in an area she thought might be the engineering spaces. Kallian was too afraid to try to copy the file. Antebei couldn’t be that lax; there would be some security protocol. She thought of paper and pen, but it would take too long. She had no sophisticated spy gear on her. It would never have gotten in through office security. No, this was enough risk for now. Her nerves stretched to the breaking point. With a gasp, she backed out of the office, heart pounding.

  She got hold of herself, then walked out to the outer office, nodding to the guards on duty. It was lunchtime, and she often went home. It would give her time to do the book code. On the way back, she would stop at a public communicator and ask for Channel Z. It was as much as she dared.

  *****

  Misa Tanaka hurried into Vaughn’s inner office. “News,” she said, excitement in her dark eyes. “Kallian called in. I have the recording. Antebei has an operative named Moussa, perhaps two with the same name, I can’t tell, going up to the Sidhe with the supply shuttles. The plan is to bomb her engine room. That’s all the information she sent.”

  Vaughn grinned savagely, his blue eyes lighting. “At last,” he said. “At last, he has gone that one step over the edge. Antebei is trying to buy Pard’s favor by killing his rival, for the insults he gave them both, as if Pard is as vain a peacock as he is. Ah, this is a rich feast, indeed. Fool, to imagine Pard would be pleased by the death of the most famous captain and ship in the Confederacy. Think of the scandal, the investigation by the Confederacy and our enemies. What a fool.”

  “Are you sure?” Tanaka asked, her look impenetrable. “Fenaday has his woman, flaunts it publicly and faces him down in public. Something even the Army does not dare. He may be more pleased than you think. Engineered or not, he is a man.”

  “Have a care,” Vaughn warned. “Pard is not like lesser men.”

  “No disrespect intended,” she said, “but there is a danger in believing one’s own propaganda. Pard may denounce Antebei in public, even punish him, but secretly, he will be pleased.”

  Vaughn grunted, unhappy but forced to consider the idea. “All the more reason to foul his plans. They bode ill for Denshi and my own plans, no matter how Pard might secretly feel. If the attempt miscarries and reveals incompetence, that will be the downfall of Antebei. He only just survived blasting an apartment of civilians into the evening news. Another such failure will seal his doom.”

  “Excellent,” Tanaka nodded. “But how best to ensure it?”

  “The simplest solution that fits the facts,” he replied. “Did Kallian say how long after the supply shuttle leaves before the bomb goes off?”

  “No, it would be at least five hours; long enough for the shuttle to get down and the crew dispersed. It will be obvious the shuttle delivered the bomb. They would be intercepted on landing if it exploded while they were still in the air. They may fail. Security will be almost impossibly heavy on the ship.”

  “Possibly,” Vaughn said, “but give Antebei his due. The Moussas are the best infiltrators Denshi ever produced. They’ll come up with something. We will give Fenaday a call when they start down. When he finds the weapon, the Moussas will be arrested on landing.” Strong, perfectly even teeth showed in a broad grin. “How will poor Antebei escape his fate then?”

  *****

  Sidhe refused the civilian contractor shuttles permission to land in her shuttle bay, claiming it was full from three Dakotas. Fenaday’s Wildcat fighters picked up the small cargo vessels and tankers from well outside fighter gun range, escorting them until they split to dock at various cargo airlocks around the blood-red hull of the privateer. Fuel, water, food, oxygen, all manner of supplies were lofted to the star-frigate in the small tenders. The trip to Olympia had been hard on the vessel.

  Mmok’s security was not overwhelmed, but it was busy. He couldn’t use the HCRs or lesser robots where they could be seen, so he fell back on Rask and Sidhe’s remaining Landing Expedition Assault Force Troops under Li.

  Contractors trooped on to the starship. Security checked them in. Boxes, crates and cylinders came out of the shuttles. Hoses were attached for fluids and fuels. Each was monitored at the filter point by a ship’s technician to protect the vessel from poisons or chemicals.

  Dean Moussa stepped onto the deck of the Sidhe and found himself face to face with a Denlenn of indeterminate gender. The nametag said Sharla. He decided it looked more feminine than not. A brisk and effective security check was made of the people and cargo with him. Very professional, he thought approvingly, almost as good as Denshi. Not that it would work on the Moussas.

  Sidhe crew checked each cargo unit as it came in. First came cylinders filled with synthetic meat for the ship’s kitchens. One special cylinder concerned him. It looked like all the others, but the cylinder was double walled. A low-level EM field prevented Sidhe’s scanners from detecting its hollow interior. That interior held meat of a sort. His identical twin brother, Aran, lay unconscious in it, held under by a REM sleep emitter. Denshi surgeons had improved on nature’s almost perfect match. Both men were identical down to fingerprints. It would take a retinal scan or brain wave analysis to tell them apart. Even there, the differences were minimal.

  Sidhe’s crew ran a portable scanner over each cylinder as it came in. Many cargo boxes would
be opened; the synth-meat, in its rather disagreeable liquid form, was unlikely to be. They had planned on its being scanned all the closer. This was the moment of danger. An apish Morok trooper waved a scanner over the two-meter long cylinder. Satisfied, he waved an overlong arm at Moussa.

  Moussa’s crew made their way under close escort of Sidhe security to one of the small holds. Sidhe was a warship, her holds compartmented to reduce the risk of explosive decompression. The series of small compartments made it harder for the starship’s crew to keep a constant eye on them, though it was clearly impossible to escape the area of the ship they were confined to. Dean made several trips to and from the shuttle. He made it a point to speak to several of the security crew, assuring that they would remember him as being on the Sidhe. None answered him in anything but monosyllables, but that didn’t matter. Moussa nodded at the foreman of the Olympian stevedore crew, a Denshi plant. The man nodded back casually. Dean joined a group headed for the Olympian shuttle. Once aboard, he slipped into a hidden compartment in the Olympian vessel. He knew none of Sidhe’s crew would board the shuttle, but if they did become suspicious and check, he would still not be found.

  Back in Sidhe’s cargo compartment, in the back and out of sight, the Denshi foreman manipulated a control on the elder Moussa’s cylinder. Quickly, it opened, automatically ceasing the REM sleep wave keeping Aran under. The foreman pulled him to his feet as he sorted himself and his equipment out. A lanyard attached the C-8 explosive charge to his body. The foreman left without a word. Sidhe security, believing the compartment empty, followed him back to the airlock.

  Aran did not waste an instant, climbing up a pile of supplies to the electrical maintenance duct running toward Engineering. The passage was large enough to allow for repairs and doubled as a ventilation shaft. It was still a tight fit for a man in a hurry. His portable hand comp guided him as he wormed his way to a vulnerable coolant and fuel junction. Sidhe used a fusion torch for her main drive, but she carried a considerable supply of highly reactive rocket fuel for her thrusters. It was the work of a few seconds to plant the bomb. The resulting blast and secondary explosions would take out the frigate, well-built though she was.

  With no excess motion, he made his way back to the cargo area. If the plan was working right, he should be in Hold Four, where the loading was still going on. He reached the compartment and looked down. Good, they were still working in there. He dropped a micro-periscope in. Looking around, he located the guards. A check of his pocket comp told him that the next screen would let him into the back section of the hold. Grunting slightly, he wormed his way to that screen, opening it with a micro-cutter when the screen balked. He checked again with the micro-periscope; the image on the portable computer screen remained clear.

  Aran slid down onto some stores scaffolding, replaced the screen, climbed down and walked out to join the other stevedores. They ignored his appearance and filed past the Sidhe guards, trailing their servos and carts. On another world, such duties would have fallen on robots with only a few human supervisors. Fortunately for his mission, Olympia held such machines in disfavor. As they trooped into the airlock bay to the shuttle, a long Morok arm reached out and hooked Aran. “Hold it, you.”

  Obediently, Aran stopped, turning to face the red eyes and blue countenance of a goblin-like Morok. This one wore ASAT fatigues and officer pips.

  The foreman of his team walked over. “Is there a problem?”

  “I didn’t see this guy go out to the hold,” the Morok growled. “My tally sheet shows him as back on the shuttle already.”

  “Come on Lieutenant,” the foreman said, “your guys checked us out as we came out of the ship the first time. We’ve been in and out a dozen times. You just missed him coming back out, that’s all.”

  “Maybe,” the Morok said. “Hey Li, bring a scanner.” An oriental human came over, his scarred face betraying nothing as he ran a scanner over Moussa. The Denshi operative tried to look merely annoyed. Inside he was worried. The bomb had been sealed in an atmospheric pack, so C-8 particles would not cling to him. If even a tiny trace escaped…

  “Nothing, sir,” Li said.

  “Fingerprint check?” the Morok asked.

  “He’s the same guy we checked in here before.”

  Rask walked onto the Olympian shuttle and did a quick head count. It tallied. No extra people. How had the Olympian gotten past them coming out? Still, he was clearly the same man. He walked back over to the guard station, still convinced something wasn’t right.

  “Happy?” Aran asked.

  The Morok gave him a toothy grin of primarily canines. “Only when I’m eating human babies.” Li smiled for a split second then suppressed it. “OK, get back on the shuttle. You can sit out the rest of this unloading. I don’t want to see your face out here again.”

  Aran shrugged. “Hey, I get paid anyway.”

  The foreman grumbled about the additional workload as Aran headed for the shuttle. Only when he was alone in the Navy shuttle did he allow himself a small smile of triumph. He settled into the comfortably padded chair. Poor Dean would enjoy a far less comfortable ride down in the secret compartment. Then he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  *****

  Kallian was just outside Antebei’s office when the call came in on his most private and secure line. Antebei could have had it routed into his office. He preferred to have her as gatekeeper. Perhaps it made him feel more important. It must be the bomber, she thought. She picked up the tiny wireless headset. A holo flashed before her eyes. It said, “Incoming ultimate security message-for Lord Antebei’s eyes only.”

  “Sir,” she called, not wanting to venture into his office. He looked up annoyed, then his attitude changed when he saw the headset. “The call you have been expecting is holding on Channel R.”

  “Excellent,” he replied. “Initiate transfer.”

  He made a motion over his desk. A Plasteel barrier slid between them, cutting off her sight of him. This suited her fine. Since her last experience of Antebei, she could barely hold her loathing in check. It was a simmering hysteria, lurking just beneath the surface. She pinned her hope on Tanaka, Prime Selected and Denshi, but Selected nonetheless. Kallian trusted no Engineered, male or female. In their two contacts Tanaka was brisk, yet under the hard exterior Kallian sensed sympathy. It was her only hope.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Captain,” Susan Bernard called from her communications station, “I’m getting something here.”

  Fenaday snapped to attention. He and Telisan were just finishing another fruitless scan of Olympia from Sharla’s station. “What is it? The team?”

  Bernard frowned in concentration. “I don’t know. It’s not a communication. There is no call tag on it; it’s a bit of out of place datum. A micro-squeak, compressed data.”

  “Bounce it over to Sharla’s station,” he commanded. Bernard nodded and hit the controls.

  “The team?” Fenaday repeated.

  “A moment, Captain,” Sharla said gently.

  Sharla spent a minute running her computer. “No ID. No route back to the sender. It got through the virus buffer, then signaled its arrival to Bernard’s station. It’s coming on screen. Captain, it’s a message specifying a frequency. It says, stand-by for an incoming message in three minutes on this frequency, two-way video. There’s a decode program attached. Somebody wants to talk to us, discreetly.”

  “Maybe it’s Shasti?” he said turning to Telisan, almost frightened with hope.

  The Denlenn made a peculiar gesture, then realized Fenaday would not understand it and put a hand on his arm. “Think,” he said. “Where would Shasti come by the equipment to do this? Please do not raise false hopes for yourself.”

  “Yes,” Fenaday said, realizing the sense. “Yes.”

  It took years for the next three minutes to pass. Finally the main bridge screen lit with the image of a man’s silhouette, blocked out by a computer mask.

  “Captain Fenaday?”
r />   “That’s me. Who are you?”

  “A friend.”

  “Then show yourself.”

  The image on the screen laughed and shook its head. “I think not.”

  “Okay. What is it you want?”

  “To help you. A very foolish man has placed a bomb in your engine room. I don't know exactly where, or when it is to go off. I suggest you get moving. Good luck and good bye.” The image flicked off.

  “Sound General Quarters,” Fenaday snapped. “Bernard, get me Perez, then Mmok.” The ship’s siren began its syncopated whooping.

  “Perez here.”

  “Carlos, get everyone but the emergency detail out of Engineering. Put what you can on automatic. There may be a bomb in the Engineering spaces.”

  “Dios mio,” Perez swore. “We go.”

  “This is Mmok,” snapped a new voice on the circuit. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Mmok, get your HCRs. Get down to Engineering; there may be a bomb in there.”

  “Affirmative, on my way.”

  “Sharla, you have the bridge,” he grabbed Telisan’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  *****

  “It’s a bomb all right,” Mmok said ten minutes later. “Cobalt detected it during one of her sweeps.”

  Fenaday looked at the innocuous box, hidden behind the electrical trunk. Behind and below him Telisan directed the evacuation of the adjacent corridors and compartments. “They must have carried it in with the supplies we ordered up from the planet. Probably one of those cargo handlers put it here. I don’t know how they got this close to the engineering spaces from the shuttle bay.”

  “I don’t either,” Mmok grunted. “I thought we had everyone under surveillance every second they were on board. Somebody got away, or it’s an inside job.”